Overcoming anything

All of us get stuck in a rut at some point or another in life. It might be a small rut or a giant valley that feels like we will never climb out of. When you’re in that place and life as you knew it, or hoped it would be, feels like it is gone forever and never coming back it can be hard to see a way out.

No matter how bad it feels, life doesn’t have to stay that way, and you don’t have to accept a raw deal in life. We all have the power to turn our life around.

I’ve been at points of my life, more than once, when sadness dominates, when I have been so consumed with negativity that I cannot see even a glimmer of hope. In times like that, what we need is a person, just ONE person who will be our hope for us. Someone to shine a beacon of hope for us.

Unfortunately, not everyone will have someone like that, more often than not we’ll have people telling us to ‘just snap out of it’ or saying ‘it isn’t so bad’.

When my marriage broke down, I broke down. All the feelings I had been keeping locked inside for so many years came flooding out. Feelings that in reality had nothing to do with my marriage, but the flood gates opened and everything came out at once. Years and years of hiding how bad I felt about myself came pouring in out in one giant gush. My husbands affair just gave fuel to my lack of self-worth, it confirmed to me that I wasn’t good enough.

I broke down. I hit rock bottom and I couldn’t see a way back up. I gave up hope, and nothing I did seemed to help me feel better. After months and months of drowning, my wake up call was my supposed ‘friend’ suddenly cutting contact because I wasn’t doing things the way she thought I should. She had very specific ideas on what healing looked like for me, and how I had to go about it. I realised that her beliefs were not what was best for me. I had to do what was right for me and no one else.

That day strengthened me, it gave me a fight that I’d been lacking. It made me determined to carve out a whole new life, solely on my terms.

We cannot live life for other people. We cannot look to others to tell us how to heal ourselves. We can ask for support, but that support has to be positive and not toxic. Else it will just pull us down even further.

Life gives us challenges that we may think we will never overcome. Heartbreak, death, poor health, loss, humiliation, these all happen to so many people. They are normal events that rip us apart and turn life upside down.

The truth is, you can turn any situation around if you have the right attitude. The way we think is everything, and what defines our experiences. A positive attitude can get us through whatever life throws our way.

I am living proof that we can overcome even our darkest hours. Without a doubt, I am sure that my ‘friend’ never expected me to turn my life around when I walked my path and not the one she thought that only way forward. Yet here I am, three years on. Happy, healthy, living an amazing life, content, and confident in myself and choices. I am carving out a whole new life, making plans and big changes, doing things that for years I told myself I could never do.

That to me is one of the biggest positives to come out of the last few years. Showing that only I know what is best for me – just as only you know what is best for you. Other people can support and advise, but at the end of the day it comes down to you. Don’t let others pull you down or hold you back. If their support isn’t 100% in line with the vision you have for yourself, then it is OK to walk away. It is better to go it alone than have ‘toxic support’ that will prevent you from getting where you want to be.

Whatever life is throwing at you right now. Know that you can overcome it. You can turn life around. You can create a whole new life for yourself. Even in your darkest moments, you hold the power within you to rebuild. One single step at a time, no matter how deep a rut you find yourself in, you can and will heal.