I sat in my office yesterday listening to a man who was feeling completely hopeless and lost. His heart sounded broken and wounded as he rehearsed to me the circumstances of a recent relapse to his addiction to pornography. “I can’t believe I have been sober for more than a year and still can’t get my act together, this sometimes seems too hard, even impossible. I am letting everybody down again, what will my wife say?”. I tried to conjure up something that would help him to turn his thinking back to the mindset of growth and learning rather than the finality of failure mindset that he was stuck in.
It brought to my mind a song that has helped me over the years when I have found myself in similar circumstances. Macklemore’s song Starting Over so eloquently speaks to what it is like to struggle to climb up after a relapse and ends with “if I can be an example of getting sober, I can be an example of starting over”.
We all find ourselves in the pit of despair and hopelessness from time to time because it is part of life. I believe a it is a necessary part of a HAPPY life. Our challenge is not in being perfect, but conquering the monsters inside our own heads that prevent us from being willing to learn and grow in all aspects of life, including our mistakes. I look around at the people in my life that I want to be like and I see people who have mastered the attitude that “I will do my best, I will probably fail sometimes, and I will learn from my failure.” I believe that when we can live our lives in this way it makes ALL of life more enjoyable. We experience deeper gratitude in the joyful moments and successes and less suffering in failure because it poses a chance to learn.
– Tyler Patrick, LMFT