I want to provide some helpful guidance to my friends who are experiencing huge life transitions. Some people are going through divorce (something I’ve experienced), some are undergoing cancer treatment (like I did many, many years ago), some are experiencing job loss.

Does it feel like your world is caving in?

In many cases you can feel like your world is caving in. You can feel like your life is over because of these huge transitions. I’m somebody who’s experienced many huge life transitions.

I had cancer when I was 18 and my friends stopped talking me. I felt like my life was over. When my ex-wife left me and my boys all those years ago, I felt like my life was over–that life was never going to be as good again.

When I found out I was likely going to be in a wheelchair at some point for the rest of my life, my response was, “Oh great! Now what? Why something else?”

So when life hits you like this. It’s easy to get sucked into the idea that your life is over. It’s never going to be the same. It’s never going to be as good.

Life Is NOT Over

But I want to challenge that. I challenge it because one of the reasons why we get stuck in that thinking is because we focus too much on the stuff that we’re going to lose.

I’m not going to have the same friends. I’m not going to be able to have as big a house.

What I found through all the huge transitions I’ve been through is what really helps you pull through those situations. It’s focusing on what it is you want to create in this world.

Your Gifts

Each one of us is gifted with skills, certain talents that no one else does quite the way we do.

When we spend our time accumulating, the bigger house, the higher fence or the faster car–those have nothing to do with what we’re creating in life. Those are spoils; they are ego status symbols. They don’t help anybody else. The fact that I’ve got a bigger, faster car doesn’t make anybody’s life better.

Sure, maybe the automakers. But in terms of the people who you serve, they’re not made better by your stuff. They’re made better by your contribution.

So What Do You Want To Create?

When you focus on what it is you want to create, suddenly you find that the meaning never went anywhere. In fact, your meaning is as strong as ever. Your sense of purpose is much more powerful and you’re also more focused.

Why? You’re not as concentrated on yourself or on what you’re losing. Not to say that these losses aren’t important, because you definitely need support through those difficult times.

But it’s easier to see that your place in the world hasn’t really changed when you focus more on everything you want to create. If you look around you, especially the media that’s trying to convince us the world is falling apart. That’s everybody’s rooting for destruction. Unfortunately, some people are.

But you don’t have to play that game. You don’t have to be part of that muck and mire and filth and negativity. You just need to focus on what you’re here to create.

So whatever you’re going through, I get it, I know how hard it can be.

But I also know about the light at the end of the tunnel. Even though it may seem a little dim, it’s still there. You’ve got to keep moving towards it until it’s right in your face and your passions are ignited fully again.

So keep moving forward, keep looking for opportunities to create, because they’re there. But you have to remember to be a creator; to be an artist. That’s what your life is about in the first place.