When Life Gives You A Wake Up Call, Answer It

When life gives you a wake up call, answer it

 

Sometimes it feels like life is playing a nightmarish game and we’re the victims

 

You ever feel unhappy when you’re supposed to be happy?

 

I have. For a long time. I suppose you could say that from the outside I was what society would call successful. I had a nice car, a good job and I earned good money. On my CV I had a list of well known global organisations that I’d worked for that seemed to impress people. That’s what it means to be happy and successful right?

 

WRONG. I didn’t feel successful. Far from it. I felt like a failure. If that was society’s definition of happy and successful I didn’t want it. My job bored me to tears. I had to drag myself out of bed every day for a job I couldn’t stand to work with someone who to be honest was a bit of a dick.

 

I was secretly wishing for something else. Something more. I felt empty inside. I used to spend a lot of time thinking about the little girl I used to be. She had big dreams. She did what she wanted without caring about what anyone thought of her. She had confidence I would’ve killed for. What happened to her? Where did she go?

 

Life happened. The trauma of my abuse in my teens shattered my confidence and killed my dreams. I couldn’t wait to get out of school. I wanted to earn my own money. Most of it went on drink and drugs to fund my party lifestyle. I was a mess. I was numbing myself to the pain I was in.

 

I was going to a job every day that I didn’t want to pay for a house in an area I didn’t particularly want to live in. But you do what you have to do because that’s what we’re supposed to do. Go to work, come home, eat, go to bed. Work eat sleep work eat sleep. I’d settled into a way of life that wasn’t making me happy. We’re programmed to believe it’s that only way. That that’s all there is. I know now that it’s all a big fat lie.

 

Eventually the inevitable happened. I hit rock bottom. I got my wake up call. I couldn’t go on the way I was. I was dead inside. That’s what happens when you ignore your soul’s calling. I started listening to myself and what I really wanted. I wanted to live a life that inspired me. I wanted to be that confident girl again. I’d spent most of my life drifting with no direction. No idea where I was going. What a waste of a life. I might as well of been dead. Things had to change.

 

I’d spent so long beating myself up for not being where I ‘should’ be at my age. What I know now is that a lot of people feel exactly the same way as I did. For some of us it takes years to get to the point where we say enough’s enough and get clear on what it is we really want. Years of asking ‘is this all there is’ gets tiring. Feeling empty and like there’s something missing makes life meaningless.

 

I didn’t realise that everything I’d been feeling was because of my low self worth. I didn’t think I was capable of having or doing more because of how my childhood made me feel. I didn’t walk around thinking ‘damn I really need to have more self worth.’ But it was all there because of the way I’d been treated and the way I treated myself. I didn’t realise that’s what was holding me back and stopping me from achieving and doing what I wanted.

 

 

 

Success to me isn’t about what you have or what you do. It’s about living life as we really are. Our true selves. It’s about having the awareness to know what’s wrong in our lives and the desire to take steps to change it. It’s about not settling for comfortable. Second best.

 

If you're ignoring your dreams because you’re scared to do anything different, ask yourself if you’re ok with being unhappy for the rest of your life? Stop telling yourself you hope something good will happen. Make it happen.

 

And if you get a wake up call, don’t ignore it. It’s your soul giving you a nudge that something isn’t right. That you’re capable of more. It’s life telling you you’re meant for more. It’s up to you to change it. No-one else. Live your life for you, not what society or anyone else expects you to be or do.

 

Check out these posts to learn about living out your potential:

Can you hear your inner voice? 

How to tell if you're not living your true life purpose

3 Lies to eliminate to start living to your potential

5 Benefits of embracing who you really are