Trouble is a spiral - you have to unwind it.

January 2013, I woke up one morning and discovered that I had lost my job, had a house in negative equity that I could not live in, a divorce that was just completing, and was 300k in debt - and I was living in a country that I did not really want to be in anymore. That was when I learned about the spiral.

You see even though I woke up on that day and looked at my life, it took many months to get to the center of my spiral, in fact years. The thing is trouble is a spiral, I had my goals, I had my dreams, but I lost sight of them, I lost my hope, and I lost myself.

But I am here today - I have new dreams and I have more hope. The question is not why did I end up in that dark place but how did I get out of it.

You see the thing with trouble is that it is a bit sneaky, it comes in little bits, and you think you are in control all the way into the dark place.

You are just motoring along heading to somewhere, normally not very clear, or totally unrealistic, and you start to drift off course. You drifting becomes a free fall, and then you start going backwards, but it then turns and you start moving upwards again, and you kid yourself into thinking that you are back on track, but actually you are a whole level down, and start the cycle again.

It took me at least 10, maybe 15 years to get to the center of my spiral. It is now about 9 years later, and I am out of my spiral.

The thing I learned was this - to get out of the spiral, you need to unwind it, there are no easy paths, but you need to know what is the goal, what is the point you want to get to, and it is not some mega alternative project - it is very simple - define what makes you happy, what is the point you need to get to - to say you are satisfied with your life.

Define that and you get your goal - define that and you know where you have to head - then take a step. You have to clean up and sort out all the bits of your life that you need to get to to reach your goal, and trust me they are a drag on your life, but each step you take is a step that gets you towards your goals.

By defining your happy place, you can define the priority for your goals and the priority for cleaning up all the trouble that got you to where you ended up. But you cannot do it on your own, you need support, personal support from family and friends, but also support for all the stuff you just don’t understand, someone to help to define what it is that really is your goal, define what it is that you need to work on. What are the things that you need to do in order to reach your goal?

I did that, and I go to the outside of my spiral, and you know what - naturally there was a new goal, the next goal was not something that was something from out of this world, but instead the new goal was just and extension or a refinement of my previous goal, you see once you have defined what is happiness - a happy place that you really believe in - you no longer want to chase dreams, but instead pursue contentment, relaxation and that is a goal that too many people undervalue.

If you need help along the way, let me know, I have tamed my troubles, I can’t fix yours for you - but I can help guide you through the real dark places by working on your light.