The Magic of Rock Bottom.

American retail businesswoman and TV Personality Martha Stewart was convicted of felony charges in relation to the ImClone stock trading case. She served five months in federal prison for fraud and was fined $30,000. As a result of the conviction, Martha resigned as the CEO of her company and also gave up her sear on the board. After her sentencing, She spoke to a crowd of reporters. Martha said she was sorry for what her actions caused others especially 200 employees of Martha Stewart Living, that lost their jobs. She said she felt sorry that it had to come to this, but she promised: “I will be back.” And come back, she did; Martha rejoined the board of directors of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia in 2011 and became the chairwoman of the Martha Stewart Company in 2012. The Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia brand was acquired by the Sequential Brands Group for $175 million with benchmarked additional payments.

“I will be back.”

Life is going to happen to us all at some point; the going is going to get tough. As the saying goes, tough times don’t last but tough people do. There is no testimony without a test and no message without a mess. We are all going to get tested with adversity, but like Martha said after her sentencing, “I Will Be Back”. Adversity introduces us to our real self; our true character pops up during trying times, and it is when the chips are down that the real self emerges. When you are at rock bottom, your so-called friends are going to desert you, you are going to be judged for making the mistake that put you in that position, and you will feel extremely lonely. But rock bottom is a great opportunity to introspect, reflect, transform and reinvent your life. Rock bottom is a tough place to be but you have got to realize that no one is coming to the rescue. Hence, you’ve got to look in the mirror at the one person who can change the situation, get to work and transform your life.

Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life. 1

In her 2008 Harvard Commencement speech, author of the Harry Porter series J.K. Rowling described how rock bottom was the foundation on which she rebuilt her life. She spoke of how her greatest failures prepared her for what was to come.

Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears that my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea then how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above the price of rubies.

The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more than any qualification I ever earned.

Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.

Rock Bottom ²

When we can no longer rely on our coping mechanisms to help distract us from the problems in our lives, it can feel as though we’ve hit rock bottom. The reality is that this sort of awakening is what happens when we finally come to terms with the problems that have existed for a long time. The breakdown is often just the tipping point that precedes the breakthrough, the moment a star implodes before it becomes a supernova.

Without breaks,faults, and gaps, nothing could grow and nothing would become.

Just as a mountain is formed when two sections of the ground are forced against one another, your mountain will arise out of coexisting but conflicting needs. Your mountain requires you to reconcile two parts of you: the conscious and the unconscious, the part of you that is aware of what you want and the part of you that is not aware of why you are still holding yourself back.

That’s the advantage of hitting rock bottom ³: you suddenly realize you have to change your outlook or you’ll be stuck looking straight at the dirt on the ground. But if you can find a way to shift your eyes upward, you can see the blue of the sky once again. If you can dream a new dream when you’re at your lowest, you will see there’s nowhere to go but up.

When life throws you challenges and obstacles, sometimes you can deflect them and keep moving forward. Sometimes a setback knocks you clear off your feet and you need to dust yourself off and bounce back. And sometimes you get hit so hard that it takes years before you can start to see your future clearly again.

You can’t start bouncing back until you realize you’re off track

Meditations

Daily Calm with Tamara Levitt – Timelessness

Time is a relative experience but no matter what is happening, we can always reconnect with the timelessness of the moment just as it is.

“In this moment, there is plenty of time. In this moment, you are precisely as you should be. In this moment, there is infinite possibility.” ― Victoria Moran, Younger by the Day: 365 Ways to Rejuvenate Your Body and Revitalize Your Spirit

Daily Jay with Jay Shetty – Comparative Suffering

When times get tough, it is hard not to get in comparison mode. When we process difficult emotions like fear, sadness, anger, grief, or loss, we often frame them in light of other people’s pain. Comparative Suffering occurs when we rank our struggles and then dismiss them because we don’t have it as bad as other people. We shame ourselves by making value judgments about what counts as true hardship.

We tell ourselves, I am a weak person for feeling down about my situation. No one wants to seem unaware or whining. We should be wary of any impulse to minimize our feelings, to say they aren’t valid or important. We should always attend to our challenging emotions. We should make sure to support and take care of ourselves.

Daily Trip with Jeff Warren – Body Scan

Learning to be comfortable with the various sensations teasing and bubbling up within our body.

Podcast