My Lowest Point Was My Greatest Gift
I want to share with you one of my lowest points of my life. Even though I’ve had a few, the one I’m going to share with you is my favourite. It’s my favourite because it wasn’t a low point that didn’t go anywhere, it was my lowest point that lead me to my life as it is now.
When I was 17, I had just finished year 12. While it should have been a time of celebration and accomplishment, for me it was everything but. Finishing school I now had nowhere to go. My routine was lost, my sense of security and comfort of knowing what to do and where to go had finally ended.
Whilst all my friends were excitedly preparing to move away, begin university, get a job, travel, I was panicking inside, worrying what I was going to do with my life. Even though I had applied for university to business school, I knew deep down it wasn’t for me. But I had no other options.
So instead of going to university I decided to take a gap year . I thought the world would show me what to do, hand me opportunities, give me everything I needed. I thought it was going to be simple; Job, Career, Money, Happiness, Done.
Instead I was spending the year, lost, confused, and very much alone. I became acutely aware that without the routine of my friends and school, I had no idea who the hell I was. The presence of self doubt and fear and isolation meant I couldn’t find a job and when I did, I could never get past an interview.
I moved around to a few houses in Melbourne, trying to find my way, but each time I found myself around people who were also lost, confused and depressed and I felt myself being dragged under furthermore.
Having no stability, no security and too embarrassed to show my face to my friends, I realised I had to do something. So I thought maybe if I’m I another state, my problems would disappear, my life as it ‘should’ have been would unfold and present itself to me. Easy
So I moved up to Brisbane to stay with my father. But very quickly I was confronted with the same problems, plus I was now living with a controlling and disconnected father. After only 4 weeks I moved back to my Mother’s house in Victoria.
By this stage in the year I was approaching decision time as far as what I was going to do with my university placing. It was near on the end of my gap year and I felt like it was wasted. I had taken no opportunities. I had no exciting travel stories and I had absolutely nothing to show for it.
If this was one year out of school, what was the rest of my life going to be like?
I sat on my bed, alone, confused and even more terrified than I had been at the beginning of the year. I felt so overwhelmed, so the fearful that I was never going to get by in life. I had no-one to guide me, to tell me what to do with my life, or even show me how I was meant to do life. If opportunities, money, jobs, friends didn’t just come to me, how did it work? It was at this point, feeling the lowest I had ever felt, I really began to question if it was worth continuing on.
As I sat there with tears streaming down my face, sad, down and completely lost. I began to wonder, if life didn’t just happen, if it didn’t just come to me, maybe, just maybe it was up to me to go out and grab life myself. Maybe I had to make it happen. Maybe I had to create it for myself.
So that’s what I did.
In the moment of despair, in that moment when I could have given up on life, on myself, I began to create a vision, a clear image in my head of how I wanted my life to be in every single way I could imagine.
I dreamed of the husband I wanted, I imagined myself having further education. I imagined that I was a woman who had accomplished so much and had great friends to share my life with. I imagined everything down to my fantasises of beautiful shoes, clothes and gorgeous bags. I imagined that I was happy and in a place of peace and the demons of my past no longer taunted me.
The visions I had for my life changed everything from there on in. It was my visions that led me to my decisions. As I imagined my life in every way, the decisions for my life began to present themselves. The ‘how’ of getting to my ‘future’ life began to show up in the form of opportunities, insights, and next steps.
So when I look back at one of the lowest times of my life, when I could have given up on it all, I realise that it was at this time, that that my lowest point, became my greatest gift.
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