Life Sucks. Make Yours The Exception.
What the real world teaches you, for better or worse.
April 2021. That was the month I graduated from college.
I had the perfect plan.
Everything was on track.
But two years later, here’s a fraction of what happened:
- I lost an unhealthy amount of weight (20 pounds in a week)
- I was assaulted and gaslit multiple times by the same coworker
- My drinking got so out of hand I wound up in the hospital
- I got laid off, making me lose my fifth job in two years
- I woke up every morning wondering if I had the money to pay my bills
Moral of the story?
Life sucked.
But fast forward to now, I told myself:
“If you know life will inevitably suck, doesn’t living it the way you want to make it more special?”
And I discovered three lessons about life that I now share with you:
Lesson #1: Life doesn’t get easier. You get tougher.
“Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men!”
-John F. Kennedy
If life taught me anything, it’s that it’s not gonna say:
“Oh, you need a breather? Why didn’t you just say so!”
I could wake up today and realize my current job is going under.
I could bump into that guy who assaulted me again.
I could have a health crisis. I could have a lot of stuff happen to me.
But because it’s happened before, I know better how to manage through them.
I know how to land a job interview.
I can stand my ground so much better now.
I have the financial skills to pay off medical bills as close to overnight as I can.
The point is, those things wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t go through my own shit storm after shit storm.
I know it’s not gonna be easy from here on out. But I do know that I’m not going to struggle the same way twice because of it.
Lesson #2: Honor the child.
“When we honor our inner child’s feelings, we release the emotional hurts that we’re still subconsciously carrying around.”
-Patricia Hope
When visiting him, my uncle who made a great name for himself in the entertainment industry gave me some interesting advice.
He worded it in a way that I think the algorithm gods would smite me for, so I’ll reword it: “Honor the child.”
As a therapist, I know how important it is to do what’s called Inner Child Work.
When I graduated college I said to myself:
“Okay, now it’s time to grow up and put those ideas aside.”
What happened when I did that?
I resented myself. Because I wasn’t the kind of adult that I thought I had to be to survive in the world.
I felt like I had to retire a part of me but because it wouldn’t go, and I was constantly fighting myself it felt like I was doing something wrong.
So, thanks to an accountability partner, I tried to take those ideas and play seriously.
Funny what happened after that…
I became so much happier.
Life seemed to have a lot more joy and excitement.
And all the ideas I thought would never happen started happening.
I even made a publication documenting them!
The point is when you take time to do something that means a lot to you and only you, life is so much more valuable because nobody can do the things you do as you can.
Lesson #3: Love Yourself, Find Yourself, Know Yourself
“Dare to love yourself as if you were a rainbow with gold at both ends.”
-Aberjhani
Life gets really hard when you don’t show up for you.
I didn’t think I was valuable enough to do that.
Partly because I didn’t know who I was. In many aspects, I still don’t!
When you know your worth, it becomes really easy and more important to defend yourself.
But you can’t know your worth until you go through the wringer.
So yes, life does suck. But the more you go through and get out, you’ll find out who you are, change the things you don’t like, and know what kind of path is right for you.
But you gotta get familiar with how life works first.
And remember… go easy on yourself.
When you do that, you give yourself room to breathe and grow instead of wishing things were different.
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