Getting Back Up, II: Luck, Rising and Falling

The biggest aspect of the answer really would start with, “I didn’t do anything to bring this about. It just happened. I count myself embarassingly lucky.”

There’s so much you can do to take care of your peace of mind. I’ve learned a lot of techniques, I have a lot of tools in my toolbox. But those tools, if you use them all, and use them well, will boost you perhaps 12% up the peace of mind scale. If the bottom of normal functioning is at 60% and you’re at 49%, doing it all will get you functional. If you’re at 12%, getting up to 24% won’t do a thing. And at 12% you won’t have the confidence, the focus, the energy, the resilience to even put in that 12%.

I was at 12% for much of the last 10 years. I went to classes, to therapy, to coaching sessions, to teach me the skills, to hammer them home. Those skills are great. Even more than boosting you up, a lot of such skills will teach you how to keep from spiraling down. But spiraling down isn’t the issue when you’re already near the bottom. Without a boost, I wasn’t going to be able to use them much, and they weren’t going to do much for me.

After a decade life finally brought me up to 49%. The Universe kicked me into gear—the same Universe that let me sit and stew for a decade. Both were necessary; both left me grateful. Though it took the decade to find gratitude for being left to stew.