I came across this quote and if you let it.
It might slap you across the face and give you a different way of looking at things…
“What a beautiful gift it is to hit rock bottom. To be stripped of any and all pride, ego and false responsibility. To be left with nothing but possibility. A chance to climb upwards and make anew what once seemed impossible. Every man, at one point in his life, could benefit from the raw, pure, and radically humbling experience of being left with nothing to realise that everything is possible.”
Beautiful gift.
That’s what they called losing everything. And here’s the twisted part…
They’re absolutely right.
Most people spend their entire lives avoiding rock bottom like it’s some kind of creative death sentence.
They cling to mediocre jobs, toxic relationships, and half ass dreams because the alternative, losing everything and starting over…
Feels like failure.
But if you think about it. What if it’s actually freedom?
If you look around and find your favourite artists, creators or even entrepreneurs you admire. You can almost guarantee they’ll have their version of a rock bottom story to tell.
There’s that little blip of a moment where they knew that everything was going to get stripped away which left them naked, terrified and without excuses.
And scarily enough that’s where the real work begins.
When you have nothing else left to lose. You can finally risk everything. When your ego gets demolished, you can finally create without worrying about looking stupid. When all your “safe” options disappear, you can finally chase the impossible dreams you’ve been too scared to pursue.
Rock bottom burns away everything that isn’t essential. All the bullshit personas you’ve been maintaining. All the “shoulds” and “supposed tos” that have been guiding your decisions. All the fear based choices disguised as practical ones.
What’s left is pure possibility.
I know creators who spent years playing it safe, making work that was “good enough” to keep the lights on but not brave enough to matter. Then life kicked them in the teeth.
Divorce, bankruptcy, career implosion, health scare and suddenly they had nothing left to protect.
That’s when they started making their best work.
Desperation is a helluva motivator.
When you’re truly fucked, you stop asking for permission. You stop waiting for the perfect moment. You stop caring about critics who’ve never risked anything themselves.
You just create. Raw, honest, desperate, beautiful work that comes from a place most people are too comfortable to access.
And as someone who has been at the bottom of multiple occasions. There is beauty in the rebirth.
It’s completely democratic. Gravity doesn’t care about your background, your education, or your previous success. Everyone gets equal access to the bottom floor.
And everyone gets equal opportunity to climb back up.
There’s always a catch though. People would call you crazy if you said to them that rock bottom is a gift. It’s punishment. Or some wild detour. The type of setback where you scramble to come back from it ASAP…
They miss the point entirely.
Rock bottom isn’t something to escape. It’s something to embrace. It’s where you learn what you’re actually made of when all the artificial supports get pulled away.
It’s where you discover that the person you thought you were was mostly costume and performance, and the person you actually are is much more interesting and capable than you ever imagined.
So if you’re there now. If everything’s fallen apart and you’re sitting in the wreckage wondering what the hell happens next?
Congratulations.
You’re exactly where you need to be to create something that actually matters. The climb up is going to suck. But the view from where you’re going will be worth every scraped knee and bloody knuckle along the way.
I’ve always found the best stories always start with “I lost everything and had to build it all back from nothing.”
It’s a new book or a chapter 1 moving on to chapter 2.
And if you want a quick way to help slap you out of that bottom funk. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho will quickly drop you into a beautiful perspective which will change the way you see the world.
Stephen Walker.