Have you ever wondered if you have what it takes to make a difference? If you are like many of us, you have felt yourself average at best, outranked by so many others who seem to always have it together.
You may have come to the point in your life where it all seems truly hopeless, where you feel you have totally failed, letting everyone in your life down. What is the point in going on?
First, let me tell you a story of a man who came to the end of the road (or so he thought) and even considered ending his life… until a new realization hit him. His suffering, failure and 180 degree turn-around will help us perfectly illustrate and cover today’s topic - what to do when you reach the end of the road and see no point in living or continuing any further.
No Point in Living When…
Buckminster (“Bucky”) Fuller started out his life with severe disadvantages, being born functionally blind until four years old, when he began wearing specially-ordered spectacles. He was a mediocre student who lost his father at the age of 15.
Being born in the Boston area and having a few connections, he got into Harvard only to flunk out twice the same year. Bucky then enlisted in the Navy Reserve and married Anne Hewlett, squeezing it out on a meager salary.
His first child, Alexandra, died in his arms from complications with polio and spinal meningitis. Blaming himself for her death on their damp and drafty living conditions, he joined Stockade Building Systems to help people find adequate shelter.
At the age of 32, Bucky lost his job there without any savings to fall back upon. That year, he had another daughter, Allegra, without any means to support her. Bucky drank heavily and wandered around Chicago contemplating suicide.
He then decided to drown himself in the cold waters of Lake Michigan, thinking that his wife could then claim his life insurance, and turn to his relatives.
Deep Realization
All of a sudden, Bucky found himself suspended several feet off the ground enclosed in a “sparkling white sphere of light.” Time seemed to stop while he listened to a voice:
“From now on you need never await temporal attestation to your thought. You think the truth. You do not have the right to eliminate yourself. You do not belong to you. You belong to Universe…you are fulfilling your role if you apply yourself to converting your experiences to the highest advantage of others.”
Bucky was stunned. He strolled on home and immediately began a vow of silence that lasted an entire year. He communicated with his wife only through writing. During that period, Bucky re-evaluated everything.
Instead of ending his life wastefully, he decided to devote it to humanity, to each and every one of us, to help us all do more with less and realize a life of abundance, of more than enough to go around.
Bucky decided to call himself, “Guinea Pig B,” and to initiate an experiment that lasted over 50 years. He would abandon all pretense and give up all expectations. He would serve humanity in the way he knew best, by designing and creating useful things, starting with housing and transportation.
Feeling spectacularly ordinary, he vowed to serve everyone, including the least in society. He would give up all attachment to money and make do with whatever he had.
Turning Life Around With No Attachments
Bucky decided to leave his past behind and focus on his big dreams, which earlier seemed impossible to ponder or achieve.
Soon he created his revolutionary Dymaxion car, stopped drinking and smoking as an anniversary gift to his wife, and met up with Albert Einstein, who was deeply impressed with Bucky’s brilliance.
He went on to introduce the world to his Dymaxion Sky-Ocean World Map which projects the entire planet without any geographic distortions. In 1947, Bucky invented the Geodesic Dome, which he patented, beginning to make a million dollars a year, which he mostly funneled back in research.
In 1966, Bucky designed the USA Pavilion for the Montreal World’s Fair. In 1967, the Dome drew a record attendance of 5.3 million people, launching Bucky into global fame.
How a Perfectly Ordinary Man Changed the World
Bucky became one of the most celebrated Americans to ever live, and the first world citizen. In 1983, at the age of 88, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Ronald Reagan.
He authored 28 published books, receiving 47 honorary doctorates and was awarded 25 U.S. patents. His ecologically-designed buildings circle the Earth, and he pioneered a three-wheeler car in the 1930’s that could turn on a dime and carry eight people with 30 miles a gallon of gas. Most importantly, he inspired an entire generation of Americans to live consciously on “Space Station Earth.”
How You Can Make A Difference In Your Life Today
You may see yourself challenged to do anything even remotely resembling Bucky’s track record. You may have messed up somewhere along the road--education, marriage, career. You may be struggling with financial issues and have no time to even contemplate your navel!
It is all too tempting to claim that others have gifts and character traits that we lack, and, therefore, we can hardly be expected to make a difference.
It is easy to forget that a man who transformed the baby boomer’s thinking about what it means to be human had his first child die in his arms, and ended up flat broke with wife and child depending on him. You may have never gone to Harvard, but then, in all likelihood, you never flunked out twice in the same year.
It’s time to remove all illusionary walls…
When you reach the end of the road and come to the conclusion that something has to change dramatically for you to go on… the best approach is to first leave your past baggage behind.
Your past has nothing to do with your future. You have to let go of it. Also, let go of what others may think about your challenging past and their judgments. They do not matter. What matters is You. What matters is you taking charge in creating your own experience of life and owning it. Let it be failure or success…
We all have to go through a healthy amount of failure in order to achieve success. Be proud of it. It develops our inner power. Instead, we hide our failure as if it’s some major sin. But we learn way more from trying new things and failing, than immediate success.
Start fresh. It is never too late. People turn around their lives in their 40s, 50s and 60s. Age does not matter. You have become wiser with more experience behind your back, so take a moment to shut out all of the distractions around you and finally look within. In Bucky’s case, rather then talk, he wrote his ideas out in order to find his calling.
Your realization may show up differently. Take a look at this short video, where Jim Rohn talks about The Day That Turns Your Life Around.
Find what inspires you and go for it. You have nothing to lose. If your life is meaningless… do something for others and create a positive impact in their world.
The reason most of us don’t take on our bigger dreams is because we are afraid of failure. But when we have nothing to lose… the failure fades away and we can create with no fear, and with no attachment to the outcome… which opens our mind to creativity and infinite possibility.
What is most impressive about Bucky is that he never let his fame go to his head. The older he got, the harder he worked for the planet as a whole, helping NASA build space structures and visualizing entire cities floating in the ocean.
He adopted a naval metaphor, the trimtab, which is a little tab that turns the giant rudder of a massive oceanliner, like the Queen Mary. He couldn’t by any means turn the rudder on his own, but he could most definitely twist the little trimtab. That was all it would take to alter the destination of the mother ship.
Bucky taught us to reverence Universe, which he treated as God. He maintained that love is metaphysical gravity, impacting everyone and everything in its path.
Universe loves us and provides for us when we allow it. It is optimistic that we will wake up and embrace each other. We only need realize that we are all in it together on this gorgeous celestial ball. All we need do is consciously cooperate with Universe to have everything begin working out.
In his final days, Bucky challenged us:
“Whether it is to be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race right up to the final moment… Humanity is in “final Exam” as to whether or not it qualifies for continuance in Universe.”
If we, like him, go all out… we need not fear the outcome.
Feel free to share your story in the comments area below.
How To Turn Your Life Around – At Any Age appeared first on http://consciousowl.com.
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