This isn’t an easy blog post for me to write.
Why?
Because I like to be in control of my life.
I like to think that I have it all together.
I like to think that I’m strong enough in my life that I very rarely struggle in any kind of emotional way.
The truth of the matter is that I struggle far less on an emotional level than I ever used to.
With every passing year, as I seek to become a higher value man, I gain a much greater ability to deal with all kinds of negative emotions.
But sometimes, you just have those days when you get completely knocked down.
Maybe Your Dating Life Is Making You Feel Depressed
I’m sure that you’ve felt this way before.
- Maybe recently, you’ve had a day where you just felt hopeless.
- Maybe you’ve suffered a breakup.
- Maybe your partner cheated on you.
- Maybe the person you thought liked you ended up liking someone else more.
- Maybe your marriage is coming to an end.
- Or maybe you and your significant other got into a big fight, and now you’re not sure what to do about it.
Personally, for me, dating doesn’t tend to get me down as often as my business.
For Me, Business Is My Big Challenge In Life Right Now
See, it’s really important to me to be successful.
I haven’t yet gotten to the point where I’m earning six figures.
(This is as of November of 2021.)
Every every year I get closer.
I want it so bad that I can taste it.
I want to take my life and my businesses to the next level.
But the truth of the matter is that sometimes I face setbacks.
Sometimes I take a step or two in the right direction, then I get knocked back a step or two.
Sometimes it’s my fault because I miss-stepped somewhere.
And sometimes, it’s because of circumstances beyond my control.
But here’s the thing:
None Of Us Are Immune To Bad Days
None of us are going to live a perfect life.
No matter how good you get at dating. No matter how good you get at business. No matter how successful you become—you’re still gonna have those days when life just kicks the shit out of you.
You’re still gonna have those days where it just knocks you on the ground, and it doesn’t stop beating on you.
You’re gonna have days where you feel awful—where you want to give up.
You’re gonna have days where you’re tempted to throw in the towel and say:
“Fuck it. I give up. The shit isn’t worth it.”
But listen to me.
And I’m telling you this as much for me as I am for you.
In fact, maybe I need to hear this more than you do right now.
The truth of the matter is that even though life gets hard sometimes, we owe it to ourselves to keep working toward the things we care about.
We All Struggle In Life – But Our Struggles Aren’t The Be-All-End-All
If your dating life is struggling, it just means that you’re human.
Because almost every single person in the world goes through that struggle sometimes.
For me, dating is something that I’ve figured out for myself.
It very rarely gets me down these days, because I spent years working on perfecting that area of my life.
Is it perfect?
Absolutely not.
And it never will be.
But I’ve learned enough that I can pretty much keep myself out of trouble, and have whatever kind of dating life I want for myself.
But that wasn’t always the case. There was a good solid three to four years of my life when dating, for me, was an absolute nightmare. It was the absolute worst thing about my life.
It caused me more sadness, more depression, more anxiety, and more grief than anything else.
In those days, I would have traded anything to have a good dating life.
I was so frustrated by not understanding how to do it right.
But I put the work in, and I overcame it.
And you can do this as well.
- Right now, you might feel down.
- You may feel frustrated.
- You might feel like nobody’s ever going to love you or accept you for who you are.
- You may feel like you’ll never find a girlfriend or boyfriend.
- You may feel like romance isn’t something that you were meant to experience.
But these frustrations are not your identity.
The truth of the matter is that you just haven’t reached the point in life where you’ve gotten it figured out yet.
We Always Have Two Choices In How We Approach Problems
Now, here’s the important thing to understand.
When you’re facing a problem in life, you always have two choices.
You can either choose to let that problem become your master, which is the beta mentality.
Or, you can choose to put yourself in the driver’s seat and say:
“Fuck this. I’m done with losing. I’m going to learn how to win. I’m going to take full responsibility for my life, and I’m going to do whatever it takes to find success at the thing that I want to succeed at.”
This is called radical self-responsibility.
This is the alpha mentality.
This attitude of being willing to accept responsibility for your life and determine within yourself to do what it takes to fix it is how you truly make things better.
And I’ll be the first to tell you that it isn’t easy.
You may need to spend a day feeling depressed about it.
I’ve spent many days telling myself:
“Fuck it. I’m giving up.”
But I didn’t ever actually give up.
But there were still some days where I felt so bad that I still told myself that.
But see, this is the difference.
I would go to bed after telling myself that I was giving up. And then, after getting some sleep, I’d wake up, and then I would decide:
“No, fuck that. I’m not giving up. I’m not done yet. I’m not throwing in the towel. I gotta lot more fight left in me. I’m not giving up until they’re throwing dirt on my body.”
To me, this is the beginning of our hero’s arc.
The Hero’s Arc
This is where we encounter chaos and malevolence in our life, where we face challenges and mountains, and then we work and we persevere to overcome them.
This is your adventure.
This is your journey.
And the thing that you care about succeeding at is important to your journey.
Because it’s important to you.
See, we all get to write our own hero’s tale.
We all get to be the hero in our own adventure in life.
If life was always sunshine and roses, there’d be no adventure.
You can’t have adventure without conflict or adversity.
Now, I know that right now, conflict and adversity are the very things that are beating you up and making you feel bad.
This is true.
These things hurt. These things don’t feel good.
This is especially true on the occasions when we fail to overcome them.
When you try to climb a mountain, only to lose your grip and fall back down again—there’s just nothing that hurts more than that.
Not only did the fall beat you up, but now you have to look back up to where you were, and see all of that wasted time and effort.
And then you think to yourself:
“I’m so beyond done with this.”
It’s gonna make you mad. It’s gonna piss you off. And that’s okay. It’s gonna make you sad and depressed. You’re probably gonna cry. That’s okay too. You might have to sit on the ground and sulk for a bit. That’s okay too.
But here’s what I want to encourage us with today.
Every great success story worth telling involves the hero facing challenges, getting knocked down, and then picking themselves up to try again.
You Have What It Takes To Succeed – You Just Have To Do The Work And Not Give Up
It’s just that simple.
And once again, maybe this blog post is more about me than about you right now.
Maybe the reason that I’m writing this is because right now, this is what I need to hear.
But I’ll also tell you that if you and I both take this advice, and we choose to overcome the problems in our lives…
…If we choose to be the heroes in our adventure, the heroes who don’t give up…
Well, we’re gonna look back on this day in November of 2021 at some point in the future, after we’ve succeeded, and it’s gonna feel so good to know that we succeeded despite our problems… regardless of what your problem was, whether it was a dating problem, a business problem, a family problem, a friendship problem, a health problem, a legal problem, etc.
God knows life has no shortage of problems to throw at us.
But it’s also true that we’re not powerless.
You are a lot stronger than you think you are, even when you don’t feel like it.
In Conclusion – Here’s What We Have To Do
We have to accept our defeats, and take our losses like wise men and women.
We have to learn from them. We have to make every failure a lesson.
Then, maybe we rest a little bit. But pretty soon, it’ll be time to get back up and try again.
I promise that I’m going to continue to do this until the end of my days.
How about you?
I encourage you to do the same, because it’s worth it.
So get out there and win.
Don’t give up.
I believe in you.
But even more importantly, I want you to believe in yourself.
Go with grace, my friends. And never give up your power.
Until next time…
Joshua K. Sigafus