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No matter where you are in your life, YOU can Reset YOUR life to follow your heart and passions to joy! Normally people have to reach rock bottom before they will stop doing whatever is ruining their lives and try to find happiness. You do not have to be addicted to something to be unhappy with your life. But if your life is without joy, you will manage to ruin whatever you do have.
You do not have to get to the point where you’ve lost your job, your marriage and loved ones, and ruined your relationships with family and friends. If you’re unhappy in a joyless world, decide to change now, while you have loved ones to support you and resources to rely upon. Do it while you have time, and can do it slowly and deliberately, rather than desperately.
When you decide to change your life and follow your dreams, to follow what you know is right for you in your heart of hearts, you, as Sarah does in Reset, will battle a Storm from within you and from those around you. Self-doubt, fear, anger, your past perceived failures will attack you from inside. Those who love you but don’t understand you will attack from outside you. Those who need you to stay who you are, will come down on you the hardest. If you do it now, you can do it slowly and bring your loved ones along with you, leaving the haters behind. So, do it now!
What will motivate you to step up and step out to follow your path, that path you know in your heart of hearts is the right one for you? For Sarah, it is, as it always is, the love and protection of her two girls. On page 13, the Storm around her makes a fatal mistake as it battles for her soul.
She heard the Storm laugh as it played its trump card.
“YOU’RE A HORRIBLE MOTHER! YOU’RE RUINING THEIR LIVES,” Robert screamed into her face, spitting bourbon, echoing laughter through the nothingness.
Sarah felt her girls, their love for her. She’d sacrificed everything for them. She was a GREAT mother! Her soul was incensed and rose from the horror with the power of the Elephant, the Horse reared up on its hind legs, the Storm directly in her sights. The white light and her animals leaped into her spirit. “I LOVE MY GIRLS!” she screamed back, bellowing with a resonant energy she did not know she possessed, echoing deep into the chaos. “YOU’RE THE DEVIANT! YOU WILL NEVER GET NEAR THEM AGAIN!”
From Reset page 13
To make a dramatic change, to truly Reset our lives, we often have to focus on some critical part of our lives that will drive and motivate us. For Sarah, it was always the safety of her daughters. In First Steps, Robert, her husband, had beaten her and abused her and her two girls. She felt trapped in the marriage. Robert’s family was her girls’ only family. She was penniless and he was rich. If she changed things, she could lose all of it, but everyone has a limit.
He gazed up their elegant stairway, now dark and hollow. He was holding onto the polished oak rail and finial with both hands. He was close to bellowing her name again but stopped. Will he head up there? What would he do when he can’t find me? My girls. She prepared to pounce if he began to head upstairs, if he approached their doors. She’d protect them, but it would mean a long, difficult battle for her. Please go into the study. Please.
He just stared up into the darkness.
Then, like a moth drawn to a flame, he turned and headed toward the light, stumbling from the railing to the wall until he could grab the doorframe. Robert steadied himself, lost his balance, an awkward step backward in her direction. Don’t fall.She pulled back from the chair into the shadows. Robert then righted himself once more and took a step into the study, then another.
Sarah closed her eyes and took a breath. Quiet, like a hunter, Sarah. You can do this. Her heart pounded in her chest as she crept from the shadows, sliding around the wall, back against the front door bathed in the light, along it, silent as a cat, then back within the shadows of the wall beside his study.
He wavered in place, searching the study.
As she crept closer, he grabbed a bottle from the file cabinet drawer to his right, opened it and took a long drink. He took another step, one hand on top of the cabinet. She could see his addled mind trying to determine how to navigate to some other object for support. He took another swig. He let go and took one feeble step.
Now!
“Robert!” Sarah jumped into the light at the door of the study behind him.
“Whaaa—” was all Robert could say as he turned around to face her. “You whore!” He slapped her—harder than she’d been prepared for—across her face with his right hand. It shocked her, but she retained a strong footing. “You bitch.” The swing staggered him as well. He took a step back, regained his balance. “Where’s my dinner?” His body rocked toward her, his right hand raised to strike. Just the window she was looking for.
For the first time in their marriage, she used every pound of leverage her 5-foot, 8-inch athletic frame could generate, from her powerful legs through her sinewy right arm, to drive the heel of her hand deep into and through his shocked face, wishing it was possible to carry through the back of his head.
First Steps pages 4 – 5.
I hope your life is not as dangerous as Sarah’s, but I know plenty of people whose lives are at least that bad. Don’t wait until you ruin yours!
What in your life will motivate you to Reset your life? Spouse, children, family, money, satisfaction, depression, alcoholism or some other addiction or illness, or a myriad other things that are making your life sad, joy-less or just sorta good enough. Find it. Use it. Build on it. But do it in a positive way.
I was at a low point, but my life was good-enough. I’m intelligent enough. I can make money. I had my wonderful wife, two grown and powerful daughters and a good support group of family and friends. Good-enough. But I wasn’t happy. I was going through the motions. Going from one job to the next, doing what I was supposed to do. Never what I truly wanted to do, which was to write. How crazy, risky is that?
It’s hard to decide to go from good to great, but it’s way easier to do it that way. Some of the people I know who have Reset their lives did so when they could do it slowly, methodically and effectively. That is the way to Reset your life, when you can, before you lose everything.
One of my friends had built a strong company, but he came to me, unhappy. I helped him sell the business to his partner, and buy a bait and tackle shop on Kentucky Lake. Fishing was his deep passion, and so rather than allowing his depression to anger his partner, ruin his relationship with his wife, the love of his life, and his children, he lives his passion in total joy. But he did it slowly and when he could afford to.
I worked with a friend who’d done “OK” in the big company, but had risen as far as he’d ever rise, was bored out of his skull, and hated what he was doing. He had a wife, a couple of High School age kids who’d be off to college soon, a nice house and yard, and life was, from the perspective of the outside world, good. He’d followed the path to the American life in suburbia. But he was personally miserable. After we talked through where his true passions lay, what his superpowers really were, how he could become best in the world at that, and figured out how he could make money doing what he loved, he built his new world while he still worked for the corporation, and when his new life was ready, he quit and has been happily following his passions ever since.
If you’re unhappy, you have to make a change. I’m going to suggest that baby steps along this path makes the most sense. Start to figure out what you love in life, what brings you joy. Listen to your heart of hearts and do what you know is right for you. Quit things in your life when you know it’s the right time for you. One step at a time is the best way to do this anyway.
