My dear Jack, don’t take your life. I know the economy is tough right now, that things are tough. But it doesn’t mean you should take your life. You were born to overcome. It will be a huge waste if you take your life. The present troubles pale in comparison to the potential of your life.
There’s hardly anyone who’s succeeded in life who hasn’t experienced moments of terrible discouragement. There are always those moments when you feel like packing it all up, when it seems the effort required to succeed cannot be summoned from inside of you.
But success is not TOTALLY dependent on our efforts, doesn’t totally boil down to it even though we play a big role in the outcome of our lives. There are opportunities that will come you know absolutely nothing about – what we call “lucky breaks”. But we don’t give up on our life because we can’t see the future. We don’t terminate our lives because the present is foggy. And you can’t see your future. No one can see his future. We can only approach the future in faith. It’s the only way to approach the future. It’s the future. We just believe. There’s something about faith that overpowers circumstances and does a corrective alignment of the trajectory of the future. It’s why when we arrive at our future we’re like those that dream. It’s incredible, unbelievable. You’ll wonder how it’s possible for you to become successful given the circumstances of your birth. That’s the work of faith. You’ve got to believe in the possibilities of your future.
Faith bends life to conform to our dreams. You just have to believe in your future, believe in the possibilities of your life. When you have succeeded and you look back, it will almost seem like you jumped a chasm. Your understanding will be unfruitful as to how it happened. You’ll just know you’re in the future. And so there’s all the hard work we need to do to arrive at success. But there’s also the work of providence. Opportunities will open up to you along the path of life. And you must be totally unmoved by the circumstances of your birth. If the circumstances of our birth totally determined our outcome, then those from humble backgrounds have no hope. But the facts of life do not support the notion we’re limited to the circumstance of our birth. The contrary tends to be truer. I’m just saying don’t flagellate yourself and crucify yourself because it SEEMS you won’t make it. It’s too early in life.
We tend to punish ourselves for fear of failure rather than actual failure. We must not rush to conclude on our lives. You’re wrong to imagine yourself a failure at such a young age. Your life is full of promises you can’t see. But then there’s also something called fear of success. It’s why God never shows us the full picture at the beginning. If he did we won’t undertake the journey. It will be too much for us. Life reveals itself to us in sentences and paragraphs rather than chapters. We only see so far. It’s what we can handle.
I wish someone had told me the things I’m sharing with you as I grew up. It’s why I’m encouraging you. I have seen life. My experience becomes your tuition. You CANNOT conclude on your life. That’s highly presumptuous of you. You soldier on no matter what. You don’t give up, you NEVER give up. When you have attained you’ll realise the journey of success is worth it. It’s why you need to despise the shame.
Success is a journey. It’s an obstacle course. As you overcome each obstacle you qualify yourself for next level of success. The more difficulties you face in life the greater your legend. There’s no success without discouragement, there’s no success without difficulty. And sometimes we expect too much from people, only to discover they won’t be there for us. Well, you have to chalk that up as yet another experience in the geography of success. You have to hang in there. There have been people who reached the end of themselves but just hung in there. And then the tide changed, suddenly!
Life sometimes insists on pushing us to our limits. That’s how we develop capacity to cope with the future. Success has its own challenges as you’ll soon discover. I’m begging you don’t end your life. The tide is going to turn. It always does. Life is made up of tides and seasons. When you end your life you snuff out the beauty we haven’t seen, the testimonials we haven’t heard, the accomplishments we haven’t discovered. They’re all in you.
We haven’t met you yet. We haven’t met the mature you. An eaglet is not the eagle. A cub is not the lion. You’re at the inchoate stage of your life. We haven’t met your conquests, we haven’t met your beautiful wife, we haven’t met your lovely kids, we haven’t seen your lovely home… No, you cannot deny us those anticipations by taking your life. There’s more to you than today. The future is locked up in the womb of your life. You will get there as time unfolds. Time is your most valuable resource. It cannot be replenished. But it can be redeemed. And so the time you feel you’ve wasted can be redeemed.
You cannot give up on your life. Things just LOOK insurmountable, life is not insurmountable. Generations have done it before you. Life is meant to be conquered. Think of how many people you can help when you finally attain. Stop thinking about your present limitations, see the possibilities. Imagine yourself telling your story to a group of young people in the future, people about your age now. There you are standing in front of them having overcome. You become a testimonial. You move from someone reading the success stories of others to one whose story is being read. Your struggles are the plot of that story. There will be several discouragements in the course of a life. But what that means is that there will be several victories too.
As it is the only thing stopping you from seeing that future we speak about is depression. You need to see your doctor about that. It’s an ailment. There’s nothing to be ashamed of if you suffer from depression. If you had a physical ailment you wouldn’t be ashamed. Depression is an ailment, like any other ailment. Go and see your doctor. Depression can be lethal. It can terminate a life. And we don’t want that. It’s why you need to see your doctor quickly. Your vision must not be terminated. The power of depression is that it hijacks the very instrument you need to apprehend and understand it. Depression hijacks the mind.
Depression depletes your energy so you don’t have enough energy to process stuff in your brain. That way you can’t understand what’s going on. That rapid, vapid and insipid energy drain may just be depression. Contact your doctor. He’ll refer you to a mental health practitioner, a specialist in ailments of the soul. Depression may be why you feel so tired at times, why you feel energy drain from you like a rapidly discharging inverter. It’s tough. Call your doctor and ask for a referral to a psychiatrist or psychologist. And do it fast.
Depression can be triggered by many things. Your doctor will educate you about it. He will help you. But we sometimes land in depression when we overstretch our willpower. Unfortunately willpower has an end. Hard to describe but willpower has an end. There’s a point beyond which we shouldn’t stretch our mind. We must learn to let go of things in life. We can’t fully resolve life in our strength. We don’t have the capacity. Pushed beyond a certain point the mind will break. We don’t want to get there.
When the pressure gets too much, let out steam. You do that by doing random – go visit someone, go to the movie, take a walk, go to the mall, buy yourself a present, enjoy popcorn, hug someone… Whatever! We must also not overthink life. That’s a lot of pressure. The brain will overload and eventually short-circuit. Do what you can. Leave the rest to God.
Ask for help if you need help. There’s nothing wrong with asking for help. We don’t ask for help enough. No man is self-sufficient. We all need emotional nutrition. It’s why love exists. Love is nutrition of the soul. Depression has symptoms. That irritability you have… That nervous itch in your body that makes you want to remove all your clothes, like your nerves are acting up… They may be symptomatic of depression. Talk to your doctor fast.
No matter what though, don’t take your life. You will overcome.
Your mentor, LA
© Leke Alder | talk2me@lekealder.com
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