How I Stopped Living a Sad, Frustrating, Disappointing Life

"The only person who can pull me down is myself, and I’m not going to let myself pull me down anymore." - C. JoyBell C.

"There I was lying on my sister’s couch, which had doubled as my bed. I had hit my rock bottom. I felt depressed, anxious, and disappointed about my situation.

I couldn’t understand where it all went so wrong. How did I end up here?

I was thirty, single, and pretty much homeless. My life wasn’t supposed to end up here. By this age, I was supposed to be married with kids and have a successful career and a beautiful home. Well, that was the expectation anyway.

This is where I found myself at a crossroad. Either I continued to wallow in my self-pity and blame the world for my situation, or I made a commitment to myself and started the journey to change.

I started delving into my life—picking apart my upbringing, my platonic relationships, my failed romantic relationships, my lack of drive, and my social anxieties—and found that I was paralyzed by fear. The fear of failing, fear of being judged, and fear of not being accepted, which all culminated into a severe lack of self-belief and self-love.

Why was I so afraid to believe in myself, and why was so afraid to fail?

When I thought about these questions and reflected on the beginnings of my life, I realized that it had all started with belief and failures.

I didn’t just give up on my first attempt to walk; instead, I continued to fall until I took those first few steps. And I didn’t just give up when I couldn’t string a sentence together; gibberish continued to flow out until I made sense.

But why, as an adult, did I no longer have the ability to accept failure and believe in my ability to eventually succeed?

“I should do this,” “I might do that,” or “I’ll see how I feel”… I was never able give definite terms. It was always could, should, and maybes. I always left the door open, giving myself a way out for when the inevitable non-follow through would happen.

It wasn’t because I was just too lazy. No, it was giving myself an excuse so that if I did fail, it was because I hadn’t really tried, which made it less painful and less embarrassing.

Somewhere along the lines I molded the belief that failing was tied to shame. Something I wasn’t ready to bring upon myself. So I floated through life, barely graduating school and only doing so to please my parents, then finding a “temporary” job that lasted eight unfulfilling years, all the while staying in a relationship that had run its course years before it ended.

The common thread that ran through my life: I was comfortable, and so that’s where I stayed.

I had programmed myself to believe I wasn’t capable of succeeding, achieving a fulfilling life, or finding a happy relationship. So instead I stayed on the sideline. Because on the sideline I was safe and nowhere near any situation that could lead me to fail.

The more I reflected, the more my default behaviors became apparent, and so came my commitments to change my story.

If you’ve also paralyzed yourself in fear and struggled to believe in yourself, perhaps my lessons will be helpful to you" ... read more

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