I want to share with you what these cycles – Self-Destruction and Self-Improvement – look like. You need to know there are normal and natural phases you will go through. You also need to be warned that you can get stuck in a phase and keep repeating the cycle of self-destruction unless you know how to move out of each phase. I will also tell you how to build a new cycle – the cycle of self-improvement. There is a specific progression that we take. I am going to share the secret of successfully overcoming any challenge life has thrown at you and avoiding the pitfalls so many get trapped in. I will share one phase per post over the coming weeks so you can identify where you are and find out how to move to the next level.

You see, it wasn’t until later that I realized that I had navigated through a journey – the same one that everyone else goes through when they overcome hardships. The beginning of that journey was “Shock.” Shock is the first place we land when something unexpected and painful occurs in our lives. Shock is the place where our minds are still trying to catch up to the reality of what has happened. Reality looks like a scene from a horror movie, and our minds reject that it is true. We struggle to function and struggle to process the events. We shut down. We do only what we need to do to survive another day.