The last 15 years of my life were spend fighting through some of the hardest emotions, events, relationships and physical injuries of my life.  I work at a place that creates a bitterness and physical ailment within me that even still is hard to overcome. And that bitterness created a lifestyle that completely ran my life.  I was so mad at life and the world because, “Why can’t I have success?”, “Why does that guy get to have that house, that amazing career’?

It was so frustrating and on top of that I want, so bad, to be a good dad and a good husband.  But in reality I was going through a struggle that was literally tearing be apart!  I had all this stuff around me that was making me mad, jealous, insulted, and very depressed.  It made it really hard to see all the amazing things in my life.  We really do tend to focus on the shadows when we are stuck in a dark room with just a candle.  I think, by social design we tend to forget that the only reason there is shadows in the room is because there is light form the candle.

The dumb part is that I have and amazing wife and incredible kids.  So I have that on lock down but as great as that is, there is a catch… At least for me anyway, I wanted more than anything to be able to give to them a life that was comfortable.  And that created a weight that was probably the hardest to bare.

You see my kids whole life has been spend living in a basement apartment of my in-laws.  They don’t deserve that, I wanted something more for them! Not to mention getting my wife a place she could call her own.  Not spend the rest of her life living in her parents house. We are meant to create our own families and create our own adventures and lives together.  We are meant to be our own.  We do ok at that, but there is only so much that we can do when your whole life is involved with the rest of the family.

15 years ago, I was 15.  That’s when my wife and I had my first son.  And since then we have just been playing catch up.  I didn’t know what I was doing or where I was going.  I just knew that I did in fact love my sons mom, and that I had a responsibility now.  Since I didn’t know anything, I did what people said I should do.  I started working at my father in-laws company and just when through the motions from then on.

It was ok for a while, I finished high school at home and then eventually went to college.  But I went for the wrong reasons and ended up not going into the industry I went to school for.

After that is when things got really hard.  I started realized the world around me wasn’t going to wait for me.  My kids were growing up and we were still in the same situation that we were in the whole time.  This is when the weight of being able to take care of my family really started to take it’s toll.

The reason it was so hard is because I wanted so bad to be able to take good care of them.  And it was becoming very clear that I wasn’t going to be able to do that working at my in-laws.  But I had gotten so comfortable there.  Comfort is a killer of dreams and it will create a numbing that will allow you to stay unhappy and not do anything about it.

So I just kept going to work and building on my anger and disappointment about the world each day.  Don’t get me wrong my family was the thing that kept me together, they are amazing. They are why I kept going into work and feeling the physical and mental pain there.

Is was so hard because I wanted it so bad but there was a thing inside of me that I couldn’t understand.  I wanted to create a reliable stable life for my family but I just couldn’t pin down what it was that I wanted to do… What I was meant to do. This became the thing that ruled my mind for the last 5 years.  It was the source of severe depression and anxiety.  I was overwhelmed with this idea of getting a career to support my family but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I would just move into another job that made me unhappy.  I had a feeling that I wanted something different.

Finally, after lots and lots of prayer and pondering, I began doing something I never really did, let alone liked.  I started to learn, study and research. Meanwhile I had this urge towards running my own business, because after working for someone else for so long – especially from the age of 15- I realized that I hated the idea of working so hard to help someone else achieve their dreams.  Which is ok as long as you able to achieve yours as well.  But unfortunately that wasn’t the case in my situation.

Then I ran into some book that started to change my life.  These books were about business, marketing, the human condition, and designing your own life.  This lead me into a frenzy of reading, taking courses and studying every bit of stuff in these categories I could.  I’m still in the heap of it today.  I spend most my time studying now.

This has done more that just educate me.  It as created growth and progress in my life,  I no longer waste countess hours worrying and wondering what I’m going to do with my life in order to provide for my family and be happy at the same time.  Now it’s just a matter of acting.  Acting cures all anxiety and wonder!  Yeah, it’s hard, but only at first. It’s gets easier until it becomes a habit.  And if you have read any of my other articles then you know how awesome that is.

But there is still the problem with my current job situation.  It’s still the same old place with the same problems that try and reignite my negativity on a daily basis.  Through all that I have read and learned I eventually came to the conclusion that it’s up to me to decide how I let that stuff effect my life, my attitude, and my reality. Life has it’s thorns but we get to decided if we are going to bleed.

So I started changing my attitude and trying to stay as positive as I could – which is a whole course in itself.  This skyrocketed my mindset and made it so much easier to see opportunity in the world, the world that I was so mad at.  The world doesn’t pick on us, we just think is does.  But once I learned to stop thinking that way I could see that the world was actually waiting to give anything I wanted to me.

Still though I struggle with my current job situation because, ya know, I have a family to feed, and I can’t just bounce and start without some cushion, or a plan. Luckily as I grew I learned that life offers mentors in all sorts of situations, you just have to be looking.  I was very fortunate to find a great one and he told me something very simple yet profound.  It sounds very dumb and simple but he told me to look at my job as just another source of income.  As a high performing person I will have multiple sources of income.

That simple change in perception finally helped change my mindset so I could concentrate on my plan for success.  On top of that he helped me find ways to get better situated in my current work environment so that I could be doing the thing that make me happy at my job.  Which in turn became apart of my exit strategy.  I’m working myself out of the company all the while leaving it in better shape then before.  Always do you best at any job and if you leave you should provide value so much that the will miss you.  Integrity aside, that will create a reputation and a constant fallback.

So… stay positive, even when its hard. Realize that your main problem lies within you and your interpretation of the world around you.  If you are making a conscience effort to replace negative thoughts with positive one every time you have one, eventually you will do it automatically. Try and look at you current situation and necessary stepping stone to you final destination.  Open your heart and mind to the world and begin to see the opportunity.  Then succeed!!!! 

Nothing grows in ice