The Most Amazing Things Happen At Rock Bottom, Right When You're Ready To Give Up

We are created in such a way as to avoid straining ourselves, to avoid breaking through our laziness barrier, regardless of what good-enough reason may arise.

If something isn’t deemed crucial, we avoid it altogether.

We are built to survive, not to exert ourselves and push ourselves to the limit. We may be elastic, but as far as finding the drive to expand our horizons and our comfort zones, we fall short.

We don’t want to do. We want to be. We want to enjoy life and all that is has to give without actually having to do any work to get what we want.

We expect much from life, and although we don’t expect to be handed our dreams, we await their arrival while seated comfortably.

We know that success and happiness won’t appear on our doorstep, yet we act as if they will.

Be honest for just a moment – you never give it your all.

Seriously, when was the last time that you could truly say that you gave it everything you got?

It’s funny because most people will argue that they couldn’t possibly give every task their best effort because doing so would drain them – as if their very best is a well that may dry up prematurely if overused.

More likely than not, you’ve never given it your all.

Or at least not since you were a child, a time when exerting yourself to your max didn’t seem like the hassle it does today. When you were younger, you didn’t think about whether you were pushing ahead full-force or not.

You had no way of measuring your efforts; you did what you wanted to do and you gave it whatever it is that you had because that’s the only way you knew how to do it.

Now, whether due to fear, laziness or pure habit, you don’t want to give it your all.

Tell me that’s not true. You simply don’t want to do your best. It’s a complicated matter I’m sure, but it most likely has to do with several aspects.

Firstly, exerting yourself, as mentioned earlier, is against your nature. You may have once found it as the most natural thing, a force within you that acted as if from its own accord.

Now, however, thinking about buckling down and focusing feels uncomfortable – and that’s from the thought alone. You haven’t given it your all in such a long time that you’re afraid that it won’t be good enough.

There are few feelings worse than feeling insufficient, feeling that you’re not good enough, that others are better, that you’re lacking. If we never give anything our all, then we can pretend as if our best is good enough to take the gold.

Here’s a wake up call for you: Your best ain’t sh*t.

Luckily, we can give it everything that we’ve got if we want it enough… unfortunately, it often requires us hitting the bottom of the barrel before we do so.

It’s true – often you need to find yourself lower than low before you can rise up and create the version of you that you need to be.

When life takes away from you everything that you have, everything that you’ve ever worked on, everything that has ever fallen into your lap, and you find yourself alone in this great big world, that is when you will do one of two things.

You will either decide to give up, roll over and die, or you will realize that you have absolutely nothing to lose and flip the world on its head.

What you should understand is that when you hit the lowest point of your life, it’s not as if magic happens and your life turns around. Life does nothing on its own other than keep on moving in the direction it was headed.

Only you can change the direction of time. But when you do hit rock bottom, you come to accept a few things.

One, you’re not made of glass. You’re a survivor and will survive no matter what life throws your way. Two, if this is the worst it can get, then there really is nothing to fear. And three, the only way to go from here is up.

With time, effort and ardent dedication, you can turn the worst moment of your life into the best.

I will not sit here and lie to you, telling you that every time someone hits the bottom, that person bounces back up – because that's not always the case.

Some hit the bottom and stay there, wasting away slowly and painfully.

Hitting the bottom does not guarantee a change.

However, it is incredibly conducive to change. It gives you a peek into a reality that is crisp, clear and untarnished by false beliefs and worthless opinions.

You see the world for exactly what it is and that gives you an edge. When you’re at the bottom, there is plenty of room to see how the world turns, how it functions, why it is the way it is and how you can change it.

If you find yourself in such a position and still feel that burning passion in your gut, the passion for life, for glory, for love and wonder, you can turn your worst memory into the beginning of your best.

If you wake up one morning amongst the scum and bums of the earth and decide that you need more, then you are likely to find a drive like no other – a drive that isn’t fueled by passion alone, but by seeing the world in its barest form and understanding exactly how to get to where you want to be.

The most amazing things in life really can happen when you’ve never hated your life more. You just need to hate your life enough and love yourself enough to live the way you were meant to live.

Photo Courtesy: Moritz Aust

For More Of His Thoughts And Ramblings, Follow Paul Hudson On Twitter And Facebook.