Efrain Martinez @martefrain_: you said you hit rock bottom many times. Does it get easier? Do you stop worrying after a while?
ANSWER:
The first time I hit rock bottom I couldn’t believe it. I assumed that I was going to go broke and become homeless. That my wife and kids were going to move in with her mother. That nobody would ever talk to me again. That everyone would laugh at me and my failures. I was almost right on every count. Probably everybody did laugh at me. I would go to the ATM machine and have a full-scale panic attack when I saw how much was left. I would lose money in the stock market and cry. I would look at my kids and cry. I was scared to fucking death. I’m sorry for the language. There’s no other way to describe it.
It became a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more I assumed the worst, the more I pictured it day after day in my mind, the faster it careened towards me.
If human warmth could be measured in temperatures, I hit absolute zero. I was cold and hungry and scared and frozen. Nothing was good. Everything was shit. Everything was less than zero. Everything caused my body to wilt, my heart to break, my stomach to hurt, my mouth to lie and then puke.
And it wasn’t the first time. I’ve hit rock bottom a few times. And that’s the good news.
Because the last time I hit rock bottom I didn’t think about it. Everytime I got scared about the future I just said to myself, “that’s the future. It will take care of itself. And now this second I just need to do the right things. Right now is not so bad.” I also knew that, statistically, the worst would not happen to me. It never fully did. So I knew that my mind was creating more worries for me than were actually there. Ghosts in the closet.
“The future will take care of itself”. I knew this was true. I didn’t even need to think about it. So I didn’t. I enjoyed the Right Now. And I’m glad I did. The only thing I forced myself to do was to stay as healthy as possible across all four bodies: physical, emotional, mental, spiritual. That’s where the mind tries to sneak in and trip you up.
And you know what, it worked. It was like magic. As long as I took care of the “right now” then the future took care of itself magically. Things would happen. Money would show up. The people around me would make the right decisions. Opportunities were thrown my way because I wasn’t running scared from them. Anytime I got scared I would literally hit my chest, stiffen my back, stand up straight and say, “I am abundant!” And it was true. I already was abundant, whether my bank account reflected it or not.
This is a truism: when you jump, you don’t need to look down. The net is there even if you can’t see it. And the net will catch you. So what do you look at? You can look at the sky. The blueness of it. The birds. You can take a deep breath. You can enjoy the ride. And when you finally hit the net and bounce you can say “wheeee!” all the way back up, because you know the net will always be there, and you’ll always have fun enjoying the ride as long as you realize we live in one big amusement park.
I’m afraid of many things. But rock bottom isn’t one of them anymore. And as for the rest, who cares? I know that right now I’m having a lot of pleasure writing to you.