Rock Bottom: The Foundation Upon Which You Can Rebuild Your Life

Rock bottom can be the best thing that ever happened to you.

Sometimes you need to hit your emotional threshold before you are truly ready to change your life. Research shows that bottoming out as a result of job loss can be necessary before finding the radical solution that will lead to a new work identity.

Sometimes you need to know what it feels like to lose everything so that you can let go of what no longer serves you and start fresh.

In the words of Pattie Mallette, “When you hit rock bottom, there is nowhere to go but up.” Are you ready to learn why rock bottom can be the foundation upon which you rebuild your life?

Watch the video below, where I talk about 3 reasons why you aren't winning at life:

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Rock bottom isn't a place that anybody is proud of being in.

Let's face it… life can be a tough teacher and it doesn't always care about your master plan. Because of this, you need to adapt and be flexible. All of us fall down at some point in our lives. All that matters is how you respond and put the pieces in your life back together.

Have you ever hit rock bottom? Are you already there? Everyone has a different “bottom.” Maybe your relationship has fallen apart. Maybe your business has failed, or maybe you just aren't happy with your life. For whatever reason, sometimes you will find yourself in a place you could have never imagined.

However, nobody has to stay in a dark hole forever. Giving up is a choice, and it's one that you don't have to make.

I know what rock bottom feels like. When I hit it, it felt like a blow to my face. I was in my early 20's when I was at my lowest. I suffered crippling anxiety, extreme shyness, and depression. There is a stigma towards failing in life. It's considered a bad thing so nobody wants to talk about it, nor do they even know how to deal with it.

I soon realized that the only person that was going to save me was myself. It took me a while to accept this reality. For a while, I took zero action. I continued the repetitive cycle of self-sabotage because I believed that my failures were proof that there was no way out of my hole. I was wrong.

The one thing that kept me going was my willpower.

I was ready to try anything if it meant that it would get me one step closer to achieving my goals in life. The focus became approaching everything with an attitude of curiosity instead of self-judgment.

I realized that struggling in life is a choice. At any given moment, you have the power to change your life. One of my favorite rock bottom quotes is – “Once you hit rock bottom, that's where you perfectly stand; That's your chance of restarting, but restarting the right way.” – Justin Kanayurak

Life's greatest lessons afford you opportunities to grow, learn, and become more. You only improve when you encounter experiences that stretch you beyond your limits. That is exactly what rock bottom offers you the chance to do. The challenges that shake you to your very core are the ones that have the power to change your life for the better.

Here are 8 reasons why hitting rock bottom is the foundation upon which you can rebuild your life.

1. Your Disempowering Beliefs Become Apparent

Everyone struggles with limiting beliefs at some point in their lives. Your disempowering beliefs are there to keep you safe. They do this by keeping you locked inside your comfort zone. However, you only grow by finding your edge and risking everything.

When you hit rock bottom, your limiting beliefs come to the surface. If you don't face difficult emotions and decide to ignore them, you will only feel worse.

The only way that you can rise above your circumstances in life is by acknowledging the parts of yourself that you need to work on. This is when you start to become aware that you haven't been moving ahead in life because you've been repeating the same disempowering behaviors.

It’s not until you break the negative cycle and start the journey back to your authentic self that you start creating a new chapter in your life, one that is more empowering.

2. You Start To Question Everything

When your entire world is turned upside down you start to question anything and everything about your life as you've known it. This allows you to get a much more vivid image of the reality that you have been living.

What many people fail to recognize is that a lot of what we learn and do are based on others' assumptions about the world and how we should operate in it.

The reason why people choose to not question things is that they are afraid to hear the truth. They don't want to know what might come, so they stay in the dark and assume that they have all the answers. This repetitive pattern of thinking makes it difficult to cope when adversity strikes.

When you learn to embrace new ways of thinking, you stretch yourself. In doing so, you are ready for whatever life may throw your way. In the words of Bryant McGill, “Revolution starts in the mind. Question everything.” From this place, you are able to rebuild your life and start anew.

3. You Realize That Failure Isn't Fatal

One of the most difficult parts of hitting rock bottom isn't failing. Rather, it's finding the strength to pick yourself back off the floor and keep going.

Your mind is the most powerful asset that you will ever have. If you can change your perspective of what failure is, you will become empowered to get yourself out of the funk that you are in. When you take time to learn from your mistakes, you start to recognize that the bad times are designed to make you a stronger person.

There are countless stories of successful business leaders and sports stars who have hit rock bottom and climbed their way back to success again. It's how they chose to approach the darkest times in their lives that gave them the resilience to thrive through challenges instead of merely survive.

In the words of Stephanie Moir, licensed mental health counselor and self-care coach,“Use your fear to help you pursue your future and do not let it defeat you.” Fail your way towards success.

4. You Take Responsibility For Your Life 

Everything in life happens for a reason. If your life is falling apart, you've got to hold yourself accountable for why this is happening. When bad things happen it's easy to blame others or the world for your problems. You are where you are today because of the choices that you've made.

A lot of people struggle to accept this fact of life. However, when you hit rock bottom it forces you to accept full responsibility for everything that has happened in your life, to date.

In the book, Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life, Eric Greitens says, “The first step to building resilience is to take responsibility for who you are and for your life… the essence of responsibility is the acceptance of the consequences — good and bad — of your actions.”

You realize that making excuses doesn't get you anywhere in life so you become more focused on being a solution-focused thinker. Doing so puts you in the driver's seat of your life and gives you back a sense of control that allows you to get out of the hole that you dug for yourself.

5. You Let Go Of The Past

Have you ever held onto something in your life because you didn't think that life would ever be the same if you gave it up? When nothing is working there is no better time to let go of all of the things that make you feel heavy.

Letting go of disempowering things creates space for new opportunities, beliefs, and values from which you can build your life around.

Rock bottom offers you the chance to start fresh and create a new chapter in your life, on your terms. It allows you to refill your cup of life. As J.K Rowling once said, “Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.”

6. You Find Your Purpose 

Before you hit rock bottom you naturally assume that where you are is where you are supposed to be in life. However, once you lose everything you are faced with a new reality.

This moment provides you with a unique opportunity to go inward and discover what is most important to you. This is because your soul has been stripped bare. You become more vulnerable, which makes you more open to feeling and receiving.

You decide that you never again want to make regret part of your life, so you become more aware of what it is that makes you come alive inside and live from that place. As a result, you surrender to your higher self and live in alignment with your purpose in life.

7. You Become Insanely Grateful 

Difficult moments teach you to be grateful for what you already have, instead of dwelling on what you don't have. I am grateful for all of the challenges that I've gone through in my life. They have shaped me into the person that I am today.

Rock bottom was the place for which my life truly began. When you are in pain, the little things become big things. You start to notice places, people, or things that you didn't pay attention to before.

When you are at rock bottom, everything feels like it's moving slower. Sometimes that is exactly what you need in order to stay in the present moment and have gratitude for your life.

Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's COO and author of Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy, said about the sudden death of her husband, “It's very counterintuitive to try to recover from tragedy by thinking about an even worse tragedy, but it's a very powerful lesson because it gets us to gratitude for what is still good in our lives.”

8. You Learn The Art of Humility 

Sometimes it takes reaching rock-bottom to finally learn the true value of humility. Humility is about having an open mind and becoming a learner for life.

This is where people get into trouble. They assume that they've got it all figured out. However, when adversity strikes, they fall apart because nothing makes sense.

Humility can be an ego-killer, but it also makes you realize that life isn't black and white and nothing is really permanent. In the words of Marianne Williamson, “Something very beautiful happens to people when their world has fallen apart: a humility, a nobility, a higher intelligence emerges at just the point when our knees hit the floor.”

Life is so unpredictable. You don't know what could happen from one moment to the next. By constantly growing and learning, you will thrive through challenges.

If you hit rock bottom, the only way you should go is up.

Keep in mind that, how you deal with rock-bottom ends up determining how you live your life. You have two choices – you can either build a strong foundation from it or do nothing and dwell in self-pity.

Challenges are a guarantee in life so the best thing that you can do is embrace them. When you do, you become unbreakable.

As someone once said, “Sometimes it takes an overwhelming breakdown to have an undeniable breakthrough.” You are stronger than you think. Never forget it.

Are you ready to learn how you can start living every day with confidence, passion, and energy? CLICK HERE to join my Morning Ritual Mastery program!