I failed, then I won.

"Winners have no fear of failing because they know success is made from a string of failures"
-John Chow

I think I just had a mild epiphany. No. I just had a major epiphany. Wow. I think I'm going to just sit here and enjoy how good I feel for a few moments.

...a few minutes later....

Wow. I can't explain how incredibly relieved I feel right now. I feel like someone just lifted a huge weight off my shoulders. Its so nice to know I'm not a failure. I have failed so many times. To a minor degree I have experienced failure in business. I think mostly due to a lack of consistent effort rather than straight up failing. Whatever.

Over the course of the last few weeks I have begun a journey that is both rewarding and extremely discouraging and frustrating. I have come to the awareness that I have built a life founded on the drive of dis-satisfaction. I tell myself that I will delay being satisfied today so that I will be satisfied by what I achieve tomorrow. The only issue is tomorrow never comes. Today is always today, and tomorrow is always tomorrow. Thus I have allowed myself to become a fractured man by trading the aspect of myself that would be satisfied, or "content" today, for the drive that dis-satisfaction creates in me to get back my... satisfaction. Its a
"sick cycle carousel". A catch 22, or something like that.

So it was a few weeks ago now that God made me aware through my best friend, that this was going on in my life. And at that moment God told me that it would be ok for me to stay the person I was, or allow him to change me. It was like I heard Him say "just a little bit further",
which to me made the option to change a bit more motivating since I have been going through a lot of change over the past couple of years, and have come to the conclusion that change is hard!

Suffice to say I chose once again to open my heart to God, and allow Him to begin the process of changing my heart. I knew it would be difficult and painful. But I also knew that at the "end" of the process I would be a whole man. Not a perfect man, but a man that is totally congruent, spirit, soul, and body.

So for me this is somewhat of a "last stage" of completion of the work that God has been doing on my heart to bring me to the place where I am a whole man. What this means to me is that I will
no longer have any part of me that is opposing another. Does that make sense? I'm not trying to say I will be a perfect man, but it just sucks to have habits built into my life that are self-destructive and keep me from walking in my true and God given potential. The way I've been living has kept me from truly walking in what my heart most deeply desires;

Authentic and genuine rest.

Its in this place and only in this place that I can look in my heart and see the path that I truly desire to take in life.

God has been asking me (and my friends) what it is that I want to do with my life. The first time one of my closest friends asked me "Levi, what do you want?", I think I replied "F-you". Thats how painful it was for me. The funny thing is is that although that was several months ago, I still don't know the answer to that question. But I am closer than I've ever been.

All of that to say, this week I have been struggling veheminantly with feelings of failure, discouragement, and thoughts of self criticism. Lots of them. And I only discovered this tonight.

Earlier this evening my grandfather said to me two things that made me aware of how much I was emotionally beating myself up. He said;

"Levi you criticize yourself to much" and

"Levi you are a good man"

I love my grandpa. He is amazing.

I've been job hunting for the last couple of weeks in order to give myself the emotional room to discover what I want to do with my life, and very little has materialized in the way of job interviews and ...well...actually getting a job. Sure some work has come in...side jobs and such that cater to my construction background. But no job. This reality has left me feeling like a failure because in my mind, if you haven't hired me then there must be something wrong with me...somehow I must have failed. In the emotional mire of these lies I also forgot that I'm a good man. Fortunitly for me God is amazing, and got the message over to me tonight that I am not a failure, I'm a winner. "O yea. sweet" I think to myself. Then I remembered that I'm a good man. "O yea! haha" I laugh to myself.

Then I saw this quote tonight and suddenly my world wasn't a mess anymore.

"Winners have no fear of failing because they know success is made from a string of failures"

I've "failed" a lot lately but I don't feel bad about it anymore because I'm about to succeed. Ha.