Thrive Global: Thriving Past the Suck. The Poetry of Belief

It is easy when the going is good or great to wax positive in poetry. When the ground beneath you is solid, those affirmations and manifestations work like a fucking charm and you think, “Man, everyone should step up to this plate because I am batting one hundred and they would too if they just had this same secret mantra, affirmation, or manifestation dialed in!”

But guess what! Sometimes you get down. Sometimes the shit fucking stinks and lifting your head up to the light and seeing your own potential and possibilities is fucking hard. It’s tough to see rainbows and puppies when you are in the depths of despair!

And when someone tells you to look up and affirm and manifest what you want, it’s tough to believe in those possibilities. It’s tough to smile and laugh your way through the self-doubt and negativity. Instead, you find yourself clinging to whatever life raft might be keeping you afloat.

I know, because this isn’t my first rodeo. I know because I’ve been a victim of my own making. I know because sometimes we’re up and sometimes there are months, weeks, and years where the sun doesn’t feel like it will ever shine on us again and everyone else looks luckier, their lives easier, and on and on . . .

But that’s bullshit too.

Everyone has shit. Everyone has their time. Each of us gets to live our own doomsday story: breakups, job loss, disease, bankruptcy, you name it. We will all experience some catastrophic moment that will bring us to our knees.

But how we work through it is the poetry. How we paddle the life raft in search of sovereignty, how we lean on our friends and loved ones and ask for help, how we offer ourselves as friends and family when we are down, how we nurture ourselves and our souls is fucking poetry.

The manifestation of this poetry is in the belief that we are safe and that we have the ability to truly care for ourselves and others. The stuff, the material stuff doesn’t mean squat if we don’t first find the love inside ourselves and our lives. It doesn’t promise riches, or vacations, or fancy houses, or fast cars. It promises a much richer, more abundant life when we see what really matters.

These affirmations and mantras guide our thoughts out of the storm and into that safe harbor where our spirits exist. There, our egos can relax and stop aching to control and protect us.

It’s here, in the meditation—the twenty minutes of purity during which we exist on oxygen and a clear mind—that the possibilities begin opening up for us.

It doesn’t happen overnight. There is no magic pill. The truth is always right there inside you. You are safe. You are loved. You will get through this and find another level of growth and a new storybook filled with remarkable, unimaginable possibilities.

Don’t shut down when it feels like the road is closing in on you, when you are tired and beat down and you can’t see the light. Keep looking up. Keep praying. Stay close to what you want. Feel your heart beating. You are here now. It’s only temporary.

You are safe. You are loved. You will get through this.

Say to yourself and for yourself, until you believe it!

I am Enough. 

I am LOVE. 

I am Safe.

I am supported. 

I am creative. 

I am strength. 

I am Joy. 

I am Divine.

I am the Universe and the Universe is me.

I am grounded and centered in LOVE.

I am safe and at home in the world when I am one with the Universe.

I am.

— Originally Published October 7, 2018 on Thrive Global