Recently it was necessary for me to write “my story” again, explaining the circumstances around how we discovered the prinicples I now teach and tripled our income in just a few months. As I wrote, I mentioned how I had personally hit an emotional “rock bottom” just before things began to turn around.
I stopped and pondered that. For us, things were pretty bad at the time, but looking back I now realize that there are other people on the planet who are much worse off than we were, when we felt things couldn’t get any worse. We weren’t homeless, we weren’t in jail, nobody was dying… No, we were just strapped financially and severely depressed. Prosperity seemed to elude us at every turn.
As I continued to ponder this, I remembered a number of other people’s success stories I’ve heard, and it seems to be a common thing to hear them mention hitting “rock bottom”. A ball won’t bounce back until it’s hit the ground. It seems to be a natural thing for humankind to begin to head upward only after hitting an ultimate low.
For some, rock bottom was jail. For others, it meant living in their car.
Do you realize what this means? Rock bottom will be different for everyone. Rock bottom is where life has become so intolerable that something inside of you finally looks heavenward and says, “I surrender. I can’t do this anymore. Show me the way.”
In my experience, there were plenty of times where I said, “I can’t do this anymore.” But the upturn only happened after I really surrendered. It’s when the words “I can’t do this anymore” came from a humble, teachable place, instead of a frustrated, angry place.
For me it was when I stopped trying to do things “my way” and was finally willing to really do whatever the Lord was trying to teach me. It means saying, “I am finally ready to listen, and do.”
It’s when you realize that you’ve got to take a risk and put the principles of faith to the test, no matter what. You refuse to think about the worst case, and cling tenaciously to hope, allowing yourself in your mind to see only the results you want.
It’s when you stop resisting out of fear of failure. If you have been afraid to trust, it’s when you have no other choice BUT to trust. It’s when you say, “I will move my feet, and do all I can do with a CALM spirit, and trust that things will work out for me because of it.” There comes a point where you have no other choice. That’s your rock-bottom. You numbly decide that if it all falls apart anyway, you’ll face it when it happens, but for now you’ll put one step in front of the other and just believe, with a calm surrender.
Some people consider an empty bank account rock bottom, while others don’t hit it until they’ve also maxed out their credit cards. Some hit it when they realize for the first time that they can’t make a car payment, while others don’t hit it until the repo man shows up to take the car away. There are those who have dealt with the repo man more than once, and even that doesn’t bother them enough to really hit rock bottom. I’ve since heard of people who have, over time, upped the level of what rock bottom means to them, and in one example, it’s when their bank account gets below $8,000. So, now when the balance gets close to $8,000, that’s when they have their “awakening” and get busy doing something about it.
No matter how successful a person becomes, no matter how much prosperity s/he enjoys, there will always be new challenges. Without them, we wouldn’t grow. How well we handle them depends on how hard it must get before we finally decide to trust the Lord to carry us through. Though we may never completely avoid challenges, we can learn to embrace them and gain the blessing they always contain.
Let’s not wait for things to get any worse. The upturn can happen now. Let today be the day that you surrender, trust, and discover how much better you can thrive when you trust the inner voice that is trying to speak peace to your heart.
Take five minutes to close your eyes and picture yourself living the life you want. Feel it now. Then, trust that things will soon begin to turn around for you. You can’t see it happening, but know that tomorrow’s series of events were just altered because of it. Originally published March 3, 2007
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3 Responses
You are such a genius! I just read this article, and had to stop everything and read it to my wife. What is really cool, is that on Friday, I was going through this exact thing. I just had to trust that things would work out for the best. I was trying to put together $20,000 by the end of the day. I started getting worried that I would not be able to make this investment happen. I chose to believe that I would either get the money together, or something better would present itself. And it did. We no longer need the $20,000 and the deal is twice as good as we were expecting. I am so glad that Faith works. 🙂
Kirk and Mary Evans
Leslie,
I guess I am there TODAY. I am trying to figure out how to make the House and Car payments!!!! For ME that’s it!! Things must change TODAY. So many things have happened in my real estate market this year that for me are… I dont know. I was analysing how I may have attracted this when I finally found the right man to spend my life with. AT least I know that love is the strongest emotion and I am counting on the fact that Using the law of attraction- the things I really want and need right now will come my way. Love your comments. Gwen
Leslie,
This was a great example of the fact that we don’t change unless the pain of inaction gets worse than the pain of change. You’re so right that the point where that happens is different for everyone. I distinctly remember a point in my life about 15 years ago where I became so miserable that I decided that I would do ANYTHING to find out how I had created the mess I was in, so that I would never do it again. I can trace a miraculous transformation in my life to that moment.
Keep up the good work,
Wes