You survey your life:
Where you had meant there to be health and vitality, there was the cancer diagnosis, or the chronic disease, or the debilitating car accident.
Where you had meant there to be a steady amassing of wealth, there was the job loss, or the bankruptcy, or the business meltdown.
Where you had meant for your life to unfold as a steady, unwavering rise, your sword felling an ever-widening swath of enemies, you yourself took arrows, and spear thrusts, your chain mail slippery with your own blood.
In short, many of the preconditions you’ve thought essential to a successful life are glaringly absent.
And so you sag under the crushing belief that, with these holes blown through your life, all you’ve wished for is no longer possible.
You allow yourself to become so demoralized by your “deficiency” that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, just by taking you mentally-emotionally-spiritually out of play.
Realize this: everyone is operating in imperfect conditions.
Seen or unseen, we ALL have gaping holes in our lives… ALL have appalling deficiencies.
Your powers of creation–the ones you think apply chiefly to the CONTENT of your art and business–are just as vitally called into play when it comes to creating the FORMS…
…in devising the scaffolding that supports and permits your creative function… that makes a life of profound impact and income still possible, despite the fuckupery.
Whether your “deficiency” is depression or divorce or a physical disability, there is always a solution to be forged.
So stop whinging and solve.
Reorganize your life, in ways as small or as radical as necessary, to compensate for your great weakness.
Face with clear eyes the reality of your limitations, then build a bridge across the chasm. Lay planks to the life you want… a bridge that takes your deficiencies into account without permitting despondency.
Turn off the TV.
Get your ass off the couch.
Dust off the workbench or the computer or the writing pad or the trumpet or the studio gear or the Ruby handbook or the business plan and resume kicking ass.
It’s all still possible.
***
Bryan Ward is the founder of Third Way Man and author of the LIT Black Paper
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