Embracing My Mental and Spiritual Transformation

My Journey Towards Self-Discovery and Healing

Come Walk Down the Lonely Road to Self Love with Me.

WRITEntangled Note: In the spirit of Men's Mental Health Month, I'm dropping this classic tale of my Mental Health journey and how I am Embracing Transformation. It's a highlight of everything I had to endure, and in some ways still wrestle with as I re-calibrate myself moment to moment. It's my hope that this serves as an inspiration to those that are struggling similarly or struggling at all to take the steps needed to heal and get back on track. Let's get into the pit of who I am.

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Our lives are often defined by a series of events and circumstances that make or break us. Every step we take, we are met by various obstacles in the road, many twists and turns that etch us closer towards our destiny by way of fate. Whether or not we become our true form of self is dependent on how well we do taking care of ourselves. For me, this was no easy feat and I am still learning to this day. Today, I wish to share little bits about my journey of self discovery and love. My hope is that you can take inspiration from my story and remember the greatness you carry inside of you each and every day.

The Collapse led to Mental and Spiritual Transformation

Every superhero story, and many stories of villains, begins with a melancholy origin. For me, 2018-2020 was the defining moment that started me on my journey through trials and error.

During these years, I went through a complete breakdown of everything I held sacred: my home was foreclosed on, vehicles repossessed, owed over 250,000 in debt, credit destroyed, constant relocations, surviving the onslaught of a Category 4 Hurricane, narrowly avoiding two evictions, and my apartment building nearly burning to the ground the first week we moved in.

Yet, none of these would hit me harder than the periods of separation in my marriage. The separation I faced, combined with my ex moving on with other people dealt me a blow to the mind and heart that would have crippled me if I let it.

With an anxious attachment style, I learned to be a people-pleaser, which led to me sacrificing my voice and my well-being for other people. I wanted to see them happy, make sure they were pleased and got what they needed. I used to see this as charitable, just, full of goodness, which is what I was taught from my Mom and Christianity. I was vulnerable to seeking approval from women in hopes of being loved and never having to go through life alone.

There was once a time where I truly believed that my purpose in life was to make my mom proud, be married, have kids, have a well paying job, a home, a car, and be able to provide for them. I had it all! Then after I stepped away from my military service, piece by piece, that definition of happiness and success fell away. Come 2020, my marriage was showing signs of decay in the form of little to no intimacy.

I was desperate to get things back on track, but I continued to fail. The nail in the coffin was when she moved out and got really close with another guy. I felt stuck. I felt like a complete failure because I was well on my way to becoming a statistic. I saw it as, I gave so many years of effort and lost it all. She was happy and excited with another man and I was alone, my worst nightmare. But there was something in me that refused to completely break. I didn’t want to go about things in a desperate way to soften the blow of heartbreak, although I tried quite a few times to talk to someone new and that also didn’t work out well.

One day I decided enough was enough and I had to find a way to reduce or slow down my heartbreak. At my conscious level, I knew I was a damn good man, and I had the kids with me (she never abandoned the kids…she’s a damn good mother! She just had to find herself in her own individual way…something I had to slowly understand). But my inner critic took what happened and fueled me with limiting beliefs that I was the reason everything failed. Deep down I was fighting against that, or rather, questioning if that were indeed true. I wanted to build myself back up and not stay defeated for so long. My intuition led me to make some necessary changes, which served as the foundation to who I am now.

The Power of Content and Community 

I remember one of the first things I started to do was immerse myself in content that uplifted and emboldened my spirit. I started with some words from the Dali Lama talking about love and heartbreak. This would eventually get me to listen to Ralph Smart on his channel Infinite Waters, Diving Deep. I will admit, YouTube opened up the floodgates to me when it came to healing and raising my consciousness using things like affirmations, but it also had an opportunity to lead me astray by playing on my negative emotions as well. I had gotten in touch with my boy (what up Agent F) and it turned out we were going through similar situations, except he wasn’t married and his woman was still there, just NOT there mentally and spiritually.

He put me on to Red Pill and Masculinity content.  For awhile I bought in, taking guidance on the faults of women and how I needed to focus on myself and give up on love from women. No disrespect to any of the content creators in that space, but it all caused a conflict with the positive, spiritual, psychological, and philosophical content I consumed. My focus was bigger than treating women like trash and ignoring them. I wanted to be better and really maximize what I thought about myself and life. My viewing of content today consists mostly of Ted Talks, positive audio-books, quotes, and  Einzelganger, whom introduced me to Taoist and Stoic philosophy.

Discovering Philosophy 

Philosophy opened my eyes in a big way about how I lived my life before, and how I had to shift gears to live in a way that maximizes my focus while minimizing the effect of my struggles and shortfalls. Einzelganger videos on Stoicism, The Tao, and Buddhist teachings helped me perceive things through a different lens, which opened the door to me exploring other Stoic philosopher content such as powerful quotes. To this day, whenever I listen to or read a quote that is impactful, I’ll pull out my quote book and jot it down. Between Stoicism, Taoism, Buddhism, Ikigai (what is your divine purpose), and Wabi Sabi (finding and accepting the beauty in everything including things that are broken, aged, and impermanent)  I had a gateway to reflect and determine a few ways to make my life better. My growing love for philosophy and quotes would lead me to pick up another love I abandoned in the midst of life.

Reading, Journaling, and Reflection

I used to love reading as a kid, back when there were pictures and the stories were compelling. As I got older, reading became a chore with all the dreadful literature and history assignments. My philosophical exploration revived my love for reading, leading me to transformative books like Mark Manson’s "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck" and RZA's "The Tao of Wu." Journaling has been my go to decompression tool on a daily basis. A journal is one way I get to reflect on my life, a decision I made, an action I have to take, or an emotion that I’m feeling. Reflection comes in many forms and can happen at any time. For example, I can end up reflecting in the shower (my think tank) or walking and talking to myself, preferably when there's no one around of course. Sometimes I’ll even reflect while reading or hearing an impactful quote!

When it does happen, I am always grateful for it because it allows me to get my mind to creatively work, a gift of mine I have come to realize through my next venture.

Exploring Mysticism and Astrology to find more of me

Proud Libra over here! Balance, Harmony, Peace, Relationships, Style, Indecisiveness (Allegedly)…what else? Yeah I’m not just all those things. Fully looking at, and understanding your zodiac sign is a big task in itself, but my curiosity has led me to read up on it, examining my birth chart and all its parts.

The buck didn’t start there however. My boy put me on to Human Design as a way for us to get to the root of ourselves and follow our own unique blueprint to living in harmony with ourselves, following our authority to guide us through. It's a lot to digest, but if you take the time to, you will truly begin to understand more about who you are, as if you are reading a book written on you, identifying your defined and undefined gates and traits.

Gene Keys works similarly, creating a chart for you, but it focuses more on your Shadows (challenges you need to face in your life), Gifts (what you are here to offer the world once you are able to work with and through your shadows) and the Siddhi (the embodiment of the divine within your specified genes). 

There’s also Numerology, which I was able to identify other qualities that stand out and paint the picture of who I am and where I am supposed to be headed in life. If you are intrigued as much as I was, and you do want to learn more about yourself in a unique way, get your birth charts generated and explore the way I did: YouTube research, articles, and reading. 

Cultivating Gratitude

Last but not least, being grateful.

This was tough to break into because I always thought the universe wanted to see me fail.  I felt like I had done a cosmic injustice and now karma was coming back to bite me in the ass. I had to learn that I had to embrace and love fate (the Stoic phrase of Amor Fati).

If it were not for those challenges I would not have a better understanding of what led me here and where I need to go as a man, a father, a friend, a lover (allegedly lol…that's what my traits tell me anyway), and a creative writer working his way through his success story. If I didn’t suffer through those years I would never have started my journey in the first place. 

Maybe I would have taken a much more drastic path, one that would lead to more disappointment because I resisted the flow of nature rather than take effortless action (Wu-Wei). There's a saying ‘what we think about, we bring about’. Where our attention goes our energy flows. I was terrified of losing it all and I sure enough did. I stressed before it happened and then as I started to see that I could survive the hardships, the stress started to peel away.

Now six years later, I have a place to call home, my kids are well and my wife (legally, not romantically or as a couple) resides here and we've decided to just be cool. To take care of the kids and put our resources together for the common good. Old me would not have been able to do this. Old me would say the universe scorned me, but I have learned to smile and be thankful, because this is where I need to be right now in the present moment, enjoying it as much as I can knowing that change is inevitable at any time.   

Through sharing my story, I hope to offer insight into self-love and growth. We are more than our setbacks and failures. The journey to energize, know, love, and trust oneself is difficult but rewarding. I invite you to share in the comments what three things you do to show love to yourself daily. Perhaps, together, we can continue to learn and grow.

Until next time, let's stay #WRITEntangled