All The Little Starts

August 16, 2020

Success is not built in a day.

I'm not just talking about materialistic, career, the stuff-of-dreams success that most people aspire to in their lives. I mean the honest-to-God, real-to-your core, come-to-Jesus self-actualization of knowing yourself and believing in yourself kind of success.

You gotta roll up your sleeves for this kind of success because most of us are hiding beneath a lot of layers of bullshit.

I turned 46 a few weeks ago and came off a true high of stepping into one with myself, loving the sad and tragic journey of loss and grief and struggle to find and reinvent myself that got me here, but having made my peace with it and feeling truly ready to turn the page.

And then something funny happened.

The page got stuck. Like when you spill coffee on your favorite book and it dries and the pages glue shut together. You carefully separate each page to avoid ripping any of them, but it's almost like there's this deliberate pause just to make sure you're actually ready to turn the page.

My pause came in the form of a little dip in my readiness and hopefulness. I once again questioned my worth, briefly played over in my mind some of the melancholy milestones apparently I still hadn't let go of, and I succumbed to a weak version of myself that curled into a fetal position and insisted on staying plugged in utero, stillborn to the greater expanse of world this newer, braver, more alive part of me yearned to explore.

Nothing could break me free from the stagnation so I existed in it all week and I watched it unfold just to see what more it had to tell me.

What it had to say was this. "Dear One, this will be a decade of a million little starts for you." Well, shit. Not exactly what you want to hear when you thought you had it all figured out.

But then I got to thinking. If time is no factor, how bad could it truly be that in my lifetime I could have a limitless amount of times to recreate and reinvent myself and my life if I wanted to? Without giving thought to all the typical questions I could be asking like, "Yeah, but you could get hit by a bus tomorrow and then what?" I instead chose to trust that listening to the opposite of what I'm used to could be a whole new paradigm shift for me. We, our current minds, create what is and what is not possible for ourselves. I'm sure you've all heard the saying, "Life does not happen to you." You are creating all the things that are transpiring in your life. It's a bit of a gut punch to realize that the first time around. You don't want to believe you could single-handedly create your own misery and for so long. But the truth is that we are the perfect jailers of trapping ourselves in a limited reality and that is where things get dangerous. Left to our own devices, some of us will Lord over ourselves and use anything to keep ourselves locked away in these silent cells. Why do we do this? The reasons will be unique for each of us, but I know that a common reason is simply fear.

Why does fear manifest itself so large in our lives? We don't like to make fools of ourselves. We don't like to make mistakes. We don't want to show our true selves to the world and all those people in our lives who's opinions we value. We don't want to show our cracks and scars because it's scary shit. For me, I realized I was most fearful of repeating the same mistakes, fearful of mustering the energy to pour my heart and soul into something again and then possibly ending up with nothing. I simply paralyzed myself into thinking that everything would work out the same as it had in the past because I was in the driver's seat. What I failed to recognize was that all of the circumstances had changed. I had changed. I wasn't even the same person but I didn't even factor that in. I just went straight to my own jugular and took myself out.

Who said self sabotage is only for the weak?

So I write this to say never give up on yourself. Never lose hope. Never trust everything you think. Never put a deadline on your greatness. Always believe in the underdog in you. Always risk looking the fool. Always remember that success is not a singular vision, meant to be conquered and then put on the shelf. Always know that what you desire is a moving target so it's best to be nimble and free of judgment. Life's just more pleasant that way.