Advantage

Your biggest disadvantage can be turned into your biggest advantage. 

I don’t blog much about what life with a chronic illness is like, but I want to share my biggest advantage with you. 

Everyday, I have to fight. I have to fight to feel “descent” or get to a ground zero space that most people wake up at. Most people wake up to some degree or another refreshed, rested and with their to-do list of productive effort clear in their mind. 

This is not the case for me at this time. I wake up to devastating pain that feels like someone tried to rip me limb from limb overnight. There’s a deep rooted nerve conversation happening that the moment I awake becomes many screaming voices rather than a civil conversation. 

I have learned to trap myself into success by systematizing the start and end of my days. For the first four hours of being awake, I’m compensating for and doing everything possible to sooth and quiet the pain. I used to think that I wake up “behind”. Behind as in the ground is moving underneath me and if I don’t hit it running, I’m falling behind. 

Now I think of it like this: I have to fight four times as hard to be in a physical space that most have the luxury of waking up to with no effort. By the time I’m able to be productive with anything outside of myself I have put in four hours of love, attention, inspiration, healing energy and kindness. 

I invest this time thinking of all the people who will be blessed by my situation in the future. I think about the places I want to go and the things I want to do. The music I want to make and songs I want to dance to. By the time I feel the way you do when you wake up, I’ve been dreaming and planning for four hours. I’ve been investing and soothing. I’ve been being kind to myself and believe I can do anything I set my mind to. So that by the time my body is ready to do what you pop out of bed able to do I have clarity of mind about where I’m going. 

So while others have 8-12 hours of productive energies everyday and get done whatever they get done, I’m focusing my two hours of productivity on doing exactly what I’ve set my mind to accomplish. Maybe others see this as a great disadvantage, but I’ve chosen to believe that I can accomplish with my two hours compounded over the next ten years what few will accomplish with their twelve over the next forty. 

You see, what was meant for me to be a road block keeping me in the head space of discouragement I have chosen to flip on its head. I’ve turned what would stop most people to a screeching hault into the very reason why I can accomplish so much. I hope this doesn’t come across as haughty - I believe everyone can capitalize on their biggest struggle to transform it into their unique advantage. 

Click here for the song.