Humble me...
I work with a nineteen year old kid that is absolutely headed down the wrong path. His 'friends' are taking advantage of him. The details I'll spare for expedience of the story. He's been late countless days with an array of obviously useless excuses. Plenty of people gave him shit all the time, but today was a pivotal moment in his employment security. Quite possibly his life as well. My advice to him was to keep his mouth shut, humble yourself and instead of letting other people be the ones that put you in a hole, do it yourself, then you be the one in control of how life is going to go. I can't quite write out how this goes in my head but I guess I'll try.
Military basic training is about breaking a person down to rock bottom, then building them up the right way. Aside from crooked drill instructors, the general idea is to trust the people that are tearing you down, because once you hit rock bottom, they'll be there to pick you back up and set you straight. In civilian life (otherwise known as real life by non military people), we don't all have those people to bring us back up when we hit the bottom. Some of us are lucky enough to, but many don't have that luxury. Once you've let the world bring you down, it's out of your control.
Part of humbling yourself has to do with realizing that you are initially insignificant. You are simply a person out of billions, on this earth, to do things for a minimum spectrum of purpose. Excuses and reasoning for why your life is happening the way it is, is a futile attempt to place blame for your circumstance. We are the ones in control of how others' actions affect us. We are also in control of what we do with our lives. Once you give in to temptation for too long, you've lost it and may never get it back. Until that point, we have a chance to regain the path that we need to be on.
Part of my personal rationalization as to why I'm in the situation I am, is because I needed to step back and put myself at the bottom to start again the right way. Anyone that isn't there for the ride is obviously nothing I need to concern myself with. I worked for years getting to the point of opening my own restaurant, having nice things, perfect credit and a general happiness about where my life was going. I was doing it for the wrong reasons. I was trying to live a life that would be impressive to someone else. I lost it all. I lost all motivation because it was for a false hope that I gave myself. My choice to sell the business, the car and the life was my choice, before something came in and did it for me, making it no longer my choice. I consider myself humbled. I can see my life with clarity through simplicity. I can try different scenarios as I go along right now without having to worry about much risk. As I rid myself of excess crap in my life, I'm leaving that much more room for something really great. Whether it be a career, a love or a family, I'm readying myself for it. I tried to relate this concept to the kid I work with, hoping he'd understand that it's perfectly ok to live a seemingly boring life for a while. You realize who your real friends are. You realize who you are as well. Forcing yourself into realization is best done when you have the least amount of crap going on in your life. Maybe if some of us don't know how to get out of a funk, we can take this as an idea. Take a few days to yourself. Put life on the back burner and focus on yourself every now and then. Good things will come. At least that's what I keep telling myself.