THREAD: You got screwed. You lost money. You lost your job. You lost an opportunity. You lost a loved one. You lost your season. You feel cheated. You feel lost. You feel ineffective. You feel angry. You feel bored. You feel anguish.

Now what? What do you do? How do you live?

I wanted to share some things that have helped me through this time that may help you too. If they don’t? Well screw it. Haha

I’ve had all of these emotions and feelings. Maybe not all at once, but throughout my life. We’ve all felt cheated. We’ve all lost loved ones. Some of us

Have lost jobs or some of us will at some point. I’ve had my season taken away from me...multiple times. I’ve felt like the rug was pulled from under me. I’ve felt like I’ve spent 10 hours building a lego castle and someone ran in the room and knocked it over.

So now what...

I learned a crucial lesson while I was playing at UAPB back in college for @uapbcjames. He used to tell us, “After your emotions then what?”

Here’s the deal...set backs are going to happen. It’s not “if” but “when”. And when you recover from the last one, just know another one

is coming. So this was the simple message I took from those words of Coach James. It’s natural to have emotions, it’s natural to feel some type of way when something you have passion for or something you’ve been working hard at has been taken from you. We need to remember passion

is an emotion too.

BUT

At some point the emotions will subside, the pain will subside. And as @Ericthomasbtc says, “something will take its place.” What do you want that something to be? Do you want it to be regret? Do you want it to be another set back? Or do you want it to be

something else?

Because you see, after your emotions subside there will still be something to do. And that “something” is a decision. After you get past and deal with your emotions you’re still going to have to make a decision? So what are you going to do? Are you going to

lay down? Are you going to quit? Are you going to pout? Are you going to adopt a victim mentality? Or are you going to realize that The Obstacle is the Way. You see, we try our hardest to avoid obstacles, we often think that once we get passed this “then we can start living.”

But as a good friend used to remind me, “The destination is the disease, the journey is the reward” @Evan_Wise. We can’t live our lives waiting for the obstacles and set backs to subside before we start enjoying our lives. Because if we do that...how much livin’ are we really

doing? The Obstacles ARE your journey. The Obstacles ARE the reward. They are the lessons, they are the sand paper that smooths our edges, the fire that pushes us to move forward.

So now what...

It’s time to make that decision. Everyone reading this has already made a decision.

Some of us just didn’t know we made one. Decisions are not always conscious, but our actions reflect our decisions. So if you’ve already made a decision, maybe one that you didn’t consciously make, I’m giving you permission to be a human being and change your mind.

You can make

a new decision today, right now. “After your emotions then what?” What are you going to be left with? What do you want to take it’s place? You have opportunities right now that you’ll never have again in your life. You have resources right now that you’ll never have again.

You have access to people that you may never have access to again. You can choose to look at everything you don’t have and everything that’s not going your way, or you can choose to be a steward of the blessings God has placed around and in front of you.

How you livin’?