It’s time to finish up the week and I want to be honest with you. My writings this week were about a fresh start but I have spent most of my week locked in my office facing another one of my depressed modes that come from time to time. Dealing with depression while writing words of encouragement is not always that easy; it means I’m writing for myself as much as for you.
I have found in life that the many struggles I have gone through and the ones I’m going through now are what give me some of the best ideas that I write and speak about. I was thinking this week of all the artists — from writers of books and blogs like me, to those who paint pictures and do other visual arts, to the musical artists who write and perform our great songs. So many of the great art works of our world came from someone who was dealing with pain and that art or music or writing is an outlet for those feelings.
When making the many fresh starts and startovers in life that I have gone through, I have faced these issues of depression as I did this week every time. If you go back in my history of writing you, will see of one of the topics I talked about was from the movie, A Beautiful Mind. It’s the idea that someone could use the mind God gave them to learn to control the emotions they are feeling and get to the results they want.
In the movie, the main character was a brilliant mathematician, a genius who suffered from a severe psychotic disorder and schizophrenia. When he took medicine to control the disorder, he found the trade-off in his life was too great so he decided he would use his mind and his will to tell himself what was real (his wife, his child and his colleagues) and what was not (his hallucinogenic “friends” who never aged and therefore could not be real).
My point is not that abandoning medicine is the right approach for everyone; my point is that we can take ownership and responsibility for much of what we are feeling and when we do that, we have the power to overcome those feelings that aren’t helping us.
We are all going to have hard times while making a fresh start. In life you would not be starting over if what you had was a success. There are some exceptions to this rule, but usually it was a feeling that made a person decide what he or she was doing was not a success.
I have several friends here in the Dallas area that walked away from some rather nice companies they have built. I have one friend who walked away from the IT field with history at many companies – not because he was not successful by most standards, but because he no longer felt his life was a success. This is one of the many stories I know. Sometimes people are just tired of what they are doing, and say, “That is enough.”
So as we finish this week out I want to leave you with one last idea. It’s your life. If you have chosen to make a fresh start at something in your life; if you have decided you no longer want to do something; if you feel you’re a failure because your last venture did not pay for the life style you wanted and decided to start over; if, maybe, just last year you were not able to achieve the success you wanted to; here are my great words for you: It’s OK. You are still alive so make the fresh start.
This time, consider the entire picture of what you want. Don’t let your feelings tell you that you are a failure; instead, work to control them so that they also encourage you toward your goals. Build your support system. Make a motivational playlist. Find a friend you can talk to about trials to get encouragement. Have an affirmation list to get you past the things that hold you back.
2012 is your year to live your dream, to love what you do and those you share life with. Learn to get past the hard feelings and become the RockStar in your world.
