Build Yourself Even When Life Breaks You

Life has a way of testing someone even beyond what they expect. One moment, you may be expecting someone else, and another moment, life may throw something unexpected at you. It may be a collapse of dream, failed plan, breakup in relationship, faded hope, etc. In these moments, it may feel like life has broken you beyond repairs. But what a lot of people fail to understand is that these breaking moments are actually moments of the beginning of powerful decisions. When life looks like it is throwing stones at you, it may actually be giving you the bricks you need to build the structure you want.

A friend shared a personal experience with me about what happened to him. In the place where he was working, he got laid off when the company downside. This made him very disappointed because all the hopes he had came crashing in front of his eyes. But instead of sitting and sulking about what had happened, he decided to pick up the fragments of his life and moved on. He tried applying to a couple of other companies, yet it was like he was invisible to them. This went on for a couple of months, and he was just surviving on the past savings that he had, which was almost running out.

When he discovered that he could no longer continue like that, and that his savings were almost being exhausted, he used the remaining that he had to enrol and learnt tailoring skills. Those periods were the toughest moments of his life, yet he kept on. After a couple of months, he learnt the skill, and he started his own business. What started by just a corner of his house began to grow. He started with just one machine, and with just a couple of materials. He began to get orders to sew for people. At this moment, he now has his own shop with some industrial machines and workers, doing very well. Now, he makes more than what he was paid monthly in his former work per week. This was because he built himself up even when life broke him.

It is worthy to note that being broken, no matter how it looks, is not the end of life, neither is it the end of your journey, rather it is the raw material for your transformation. Sometimes, it is even when life breaks you that it will break you off from illusion. This is because it makes you to confront life, and then see yourself and your situation for what they really are. It is true that even if this can be painful, it is actually not bad. Growth may not happen from the place of comfort, but it happens in moments of pressure, toughness, uncertainties, and even discomfort. If you take a look at gold before it is refined, it is anything but attractive. But after passing through fires and hammering, it will become beautiful. This is what the situations of life does to you.

In order to build yourself up when life breaks you, there are things that you need to understand. Firstly, you need to accept the situation. Denying a situation, or trying to run away from it, may just succeed in weakening you. More so, you cannot solve a problem until you have been able to tell yourself the truth what the problem is. That you have accepted a situation does not mean that you like it, rather it means that you are ready to confront and deal with it. This is the point that you begin to gain control of the whole situation. At that point, you will stop seeing yourself as victim of circumstance, and rather see yourself as a builder of your future.

After you have accepted the situation, then the next step is to take actions towards solving it. It does not stop at knowing that something is wrong, but what are you doing to solve the problem? If a student failed in an exam for example, even if they have accepted it, it will still not solve the problem until the student starts to take their studies seriously and put the required action to it. That you know what to do does not guarantee the result, but you have to do it first in order to see the result. You are the one to determine what eventually becomes of your life, irrespective of your circumstances and situations. But also know that it is your action that will produce the required result.

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