My guess is the majority of people look on “rock bottom” as a negative experience. It’s my experience that a visit there is necessary to find the life that sits beneath our life story.

Our life story is a fairy tale - one we made up and got comfortable with. It’s like an inner tube that keeps us floating on the surface and provides a false sense of reality.

To preserve your life, you have to find your life which is way below the surface.

We are treading water attempting to keep our illusion alive. You know your life story is an illusion when you are always waiting for something to happen to make life right - “When the kids are grown,” “When I hit the lottery,” “When I get that promotion,” “When I get married,” “When I get divorced,” “When I (fill in your own illusion here).”

Working to make our life story perfect has the same odds of capturing reality in a jar. Life stories are filled with ups and downs, day after day filled with the realities that come our way. Sugarcoating or denying those realities is a feeble attempt to make our life story work.

We get trapped inside our story bubble and continue to float on to nowhere. The best thing that can happen is to have our bubble burst, because if you are floating along, you are filled with a false sense that everything will be okay when you finally get to that “magic” day.

Everyone’s familiar with the rationale of the problem drinker who says, “I’ve never missed a day of work.” That’s floating inside your bubble. The way they deal with life’s ups and downs is wrapped up in the phrase “Bottoms up.” The problem drinker defends their life story until their bubble bursts and they run out of rationales.

Rock bottom is the springboard to life. Your life story no longer matters when you hit rock bottom. You see it as the illusion it is - a false identity that needs constant attention to make it look real.

You are not your life story. You never have been and you never will be. Stop defending who you are not. When that happens, you’ll hit rock bottom - the foundational piece that life is built on.

 

All the best,

John