Sunday, September 6, 2009

The Art Of Comeback

The Art of Comeback

I have been preaching confidence, success and ideologies of “making it” in the world for almost a decade now. And needless to say I have based about 95% of these on my own personal experiences, all the way from my childhood to the point of my early adulthood now (I am entering my 30’s a different man as we speak!). And you know what? Finally I have had to face up to the music when my personal empire came crashing down. I lost my business, I lost my fiancee, I lost my income and I almost lost my mind (I am serious guys, I was on pill’s and stuff). Downtime as I would like to call it is not fun. It feels like I came to screeching halt from a top speed of 300 kilometers an hour, and the momentum just struck me like a derailed train at a thousand miles a second; trust me that is not a fun feeling!
So what do you do?
This is what I did, a simple 5 step recovery process.

Step 1
Take in a huge and deep breath. Do this a few times, do it. Am not kidding, the extra influx of oxygen to your brain will actually calm you down. Now that you are calmer, admit that you have failed. I am serious, and this is not as easy as it sounds, especially if you have been a high flyer. We are our biggest critics, and to go over the ego to admit that you have failed, phew that just requires an immense amount of gung-ho on our part.
So just say
“Damn it! I Fucked up! Now what?”
As soon as you have this out of the way, we can move on to step 2.

Step 2
Start accessing the level of damage that has been done, first financially, then emotionally and then mentally. Do this in the order written.

Why?

Because you don’t want to know that you are broke and depressed at the same time cause that will make you lose your mind. So access the financial loss. Calculate the total of your debts. Then contact the individual debtors and strike a deal with them to pay them back at your minimum best. They will come to terms with your suggestion, because it’s tough times for everyone. If you go down, they will to. So be nice, don’t dodge their calls and be honest about your current situation and explain your plan to them.

Good.

Finance’s sorted out.
The debts anyway. Now look for an immediate source of decent income. If you have lost your job, immediately sign up with head hunters and look for jobs. If you still have a job, congratulations. Do your best to keep it! For business people, well, just try to stay afloat till you reach the shores.
Now to sort out the emotional train wreck. This is as important if not more than the other 2 topics. Reason being, you have to figure out what is the lesson that is to be learned from this disaster, or it will keep repeating itself until you learn from it. There is an extremely simple way of sorting this out. Take a piece of paper or a notebook if you will, and write. Write to your heart’s content on how you feel, why you feel this way and who or what made you feel this.

Write it all out.
Trust me, it’s therapeutic. If you want to, write a blog.

Good, first exercise done. Let it sit in for a few days.

Now it’s time to make a new set of rules or modify the older set of rules. I call it a personal commandment. But when you make the rules, make sure you obey the rules and enforce it. A rule that is not enforced is just a word. Enforcing and obeying it, makes that word powerful. So make the rules, obey the rules and above all enforce it! Modify it only if needed, but if you were confident on making the rule, then modifying it is just an act of insecurity or fallacy.

Don’t lie to yourself.

Make it into a placard and view it every day,
once when you wake up and once before you go to sleep.

DO IT !

DO NOT PROCRASTINATE !


Next we move to the mind, or the mental part of this step. Your mind and body is connected via your spirit or your soul if you would like to call it that. If you belong to a religion, this is an excellent opportunity to know and understand what your holy books or book has been preaching.
Read it from an objective point of view. You will begin to see similarities in your life based on the adventures of the people in the book. But if you can pick up the sarcasm in my writing,then you are like me and most likely you believe in a supreme force in the universe and would rather follow you own doctrine.

Well that works too.

The key to this is meditation. Meditate frequently once or twice a day, for about 5 to 10 minutes. When I said meditate, I do not mean think through all that you have screwed up. Think of what you want now,
think of the peace and joy you want to attain,
the monetary success, the fame and the fortune.

Do this frequently for 7 days, then 14, then 21 days.

I can guarantee you; you will shift your mindset from one of misery to one of optimism, even if it is very light and minor.

Ok that’s it for part 1 of this lecture. I will be posting the other 3 parts, in a couple of days or so.

DO these exercises! I paid in many ways (body, mind, soul and material for these lessons)
I am doing this purely to do my part to help the world that I know, heal.

So heal.

Heal the world,
Make it a better place,
For you and for me,
And the entire human race – Michael Jackson