When Your Life Finally Breaks You

What do you do when life breaks you? What do you do when you finally get to a point in your life where you realize that it is not working? Not just that but you sit with your head in your hands feeling lost, discouraged, and broken. You feel sad, depressed and stressed.

If this is you, keep reading. I'll share a few stories, inspire you, empower you then, I'll share the actual steps to getting out of this. 

Imagine the woman who marries a man who ends up totally ignoring her or worse has an affair. What's she supposed to do now?

Or what about the woman who hates every day in her soul-sucking 9 to 5 job in a small cubicle? How empty she must feel but what direction should she go in when she is simply distraught over her life?

Or the person who loses their job and fears being homeless.

Or worse, a tragic accident happens and totally ruins the trajectory of the planned future.

What to do when you feel like everything in your life is falling apart and your life finally breaks you.

At first blush, this may seem harsh. We realize spending our life pointing fingers isn't the answer. This is holding on to resentment which is toxic. You'll end up living a stressful life full of anger, resentment, and negative thoughts that cause anxiety and depression. 

The answer is two-fold. 

First, make a conscious effort (I know it's hard) but let go. Choose to let go and say in your mind, "I know these thoughts are toxic to my body and I choose to let go."

Secondly, you'll need to take responsibility for what to do with the prison we call "our life" once we discover it isn't working for us or enriching us any longer. Now the word "responsibility" can create anger in us because we feel that someone else or a situation is responsible.

This could be factual and while this may be true, the responsibility we're talking about here is what we do now. When we feel like our life is falling apart, this is when we need to pull ourselves up and take control. 

When life breaks you, it's time to drastically change your life!

You see, I actually do know a little something about this. The first part of my life was completely beyond my control.

I didn't create the prison of abuse then abandonment. I was only a child.

Having a rough start in life brought turmoil to me as a young adult until I began to figure everything out.

While I WAS a victim, I continued to act like a victim and knew that I needed to let go and get out of the victim mindset.

This is another example of how we can't take 100% responsibility for our life but to do the best with the cards that have been dealt to us.

After that though, it is what we do with our life, how we cope and how we respond that is 100% our responsibility. For me, it was the relationships that I went into openly that presented me with heartache and distress.

It was the dead-end jobs that left me unfulfilled. It was never pushing myself to grow that created the boredom. It was not saying "no" to people that brought circumstances in my life that weren't authentic to who I am.

My life is spiraling out of control.

You see, we go through the phases and stages of our life believing that we know who we are, and what we want. A person who wants to be a teacher, then discovers they hate being a teacher now is faced with having to go back to school and start all over. What makes that situation worse is realizing that they did it to themselves. No one forced them to spend money on school and attend all those hours studying.

You realize you didn't know what you really wanted after all. Or, maybe even worse yet, you look at the whole experience as if you failed. 

Ultimately becoming homeless out of pain, abuse and abandonment may have been the outcome for me when I was young but I am grateful. It is this experience that taught me the greatest lesson that I hold so close.

I am strong. 

I am a survivor.

I am worthy of love and so much more.

Ending a very long marriage was difficult, and I did break down. However tragic it was, seeing the lessons I could apply to my new life helped me in moving forward. Now, I know what I want for my relationships. I am grateful for the experience. It has taught me not to settle in love... Even if it was a long, hard lesson to learn.

It is when life breaks you and brings you to your knees, it'll mold you and prepares you to emerge even stronger than before and create a shiny new life. 

Before we can ever hope to live the life we're meant to have, we have to break out of the prisons we've created first.

When life breaks you, It'll be your values that will lead you in the direction you want to go.

It's one thing to know what's wrong in your life, but it's quite another to move forward without bitterness and resentment. Beyond moving forward, being able to grow into grace, love, forgiveness, and joy only comes from knowing your values.

At this point, we realize that we need a life plan. Knowing your values is not enough. You see, as humans, we chase the next big thing and easily become side-tracked. This is exactly why so many people don't reach the level of success in their life that they desire.

Knowledge may be power but it is NOT enough. You need to practice your plan each and every day. You need to make small incremental changes every-single-day in order to see results.

It took me YEARS to create a life that I love and frankly, I'm not quite there - yet. Going from pain, misery, confusion, and overwhelm to a glorious, abundant life isn't something that happens quickly. This is what I help my clients with. If you're ready for the support, let's talk.

The transition takes sometimes years so my advice... Be ready for the marathon but keep your eye on your dreams and your focus on your values, day in and day out! It's simple and over time, it'll compound and one day, you'll look at your life and not even recognize it, in a good way. 😉

All the best!

Sharon Lee - Your Online Life Coach