Looking back on anything tough that I’ve ever gone through, I’ve come to realize these four elements on the path.
Obviously, the first goal is to just survive. It’s getting out of bed in the morning when all you want to do is stay under the covers. It’s taking the tough stuff one day, one moment, one minute at a time and succeeding in just making it through another day.
The next step for me has always been connecting with someone who has traveled a similar path (I know, I’m deviating from the order of my title, but truthfully, this is the next step!) When you find that one person that just gets it, suddenly you don’t feel so alone in the world. You can commiserate together, ask all the questions about “how did you ever get through it,” and you start to find a peace that indeed things will at least in some fashion be okay. Thanks to social media, finding other people with similar struggles is much easier these days.
Once you have this connection and maybe even a little community, you’ll find yourself starting to thrive. Life feels a little more like life again. You feel much stronger than you did before and you may even develop a sense of pride, like “yeah, look at me, I can do hard things and I am still standing!” This is a good place to be, but you can find even better.
This is where you inspire. You become the person that someone calls when they just got that diagnosis or their husband just left them. Tell your story. Share your secrets of survival. Never find shame in the journey you’ve traveled because if you tell the story of the mountains you’ve climbed, your words could become a page in someone else’s survival guide.
Survive. Thrive. Connect. Inspire.
