Imagine with me for a minute that each one of us are given a candle burning bright the moment we are born.  This burning candle does not symbolize our life or being alive, rather, it symbolizes our strength, courage, certainty, our belonging, our inner knowing, our sense of self-confidence.  You could call it your “Inner guidance spark.”

There are multiple times in our life where we encounter challenges, stressors, frustrations where the odds are stacked against us and we feel overcome with loss, hopelessness, fear, anxiety, and grief, where we just want to throw in the towel and give up or quit.  It is those moments where the spark, or the light becomes extinguished, but life still goes on.  The sun still rises and sets.

For far too many, life goes on and their candle never gets re-lit.  There is nospark inside.  If that happens, one falls into becoming a victim, playing the blame game, blaming all outside circumstances as to why life just doesn’t go their way and it becomes normal to say, “That’s just the way life is and that is how it’s going to be.”  Control and power are outside of their reach and rather than strive for it, life becomes all about just surviving, keeping their head above water.  Struggling for security and contentment at best becomes the overriding far-fetched goal, forget about any form of success.  Luck maybe, success however, “Yeah, right.”  Any way to avoid future possibility of failure becomes the new goal.  It isn’t possible to dream anymore, it’s much easier to strive for and manage mediocrity at best.

Do you have a candle that’s been extinguished?  You see, once it’s been extinguished, it doesn’t mean it has no chance of being lit again.  “What’s the use,” you might wonder?  “Sure, I guess it could be lit again, but something is most likely going to come along and blow it out again, so what’s the point?”  “Why try, why bother?”

Let me tell you something you already know.  You’re right.  It probably will go out again, but you know what?  The ONE THING that separates SUCCESSin life from FAILURE and a life of mediocrity and just surviving at best, is a single decision:

When you get knocked down, you simply, just simply, GET BACK UP again.

You don’t have to have all the answers to get back up.  You don’t even have to get up with a smile on your face, or a forced, fake smile.  You just GET BACK UP.  It comes down to WILLINGNESS.

I don’t care where you are in your life.  I don’t care what list of excuses you have, how old or young you are, how much evidence of failure you have from your past.  What I do know, is you have a blank canvas waiting to be created for your future.  The fact is, if you have a pulse ~ you have a candle inside waiting, hoping, deep within the quiet recesses of your heart to be RE-IGNITED.

Here’s your recipe. Your action steps to reignite the light inside:

1. GET UP
2. LOOK UP, with your chin up
3. ASK FOR HELP
4. LISTEN for and expect ANSWERS to come your way
5. ACT ON AND APPLY THE ANSWERS YOU RECEIVE