When you hit rock-bottom, as we all will at various stages in our life cycle, you’ll be tempted to look down at your feet, to look around you at the emptiness. You’ll be tempted to obsess over who you were, what you had, everything you lost on the way down. But I encourage you not to get stuck in that mindset.

Consider this, rock-bottom can either be your grave, or it can be your ultimate liberation. Instead of looking back, looking down, looking around you and seeing nothing. Look forward. Look up. Look around you and see everything! There are countless ways and directions to move from where you’re standing. You can try anything without the fear of loss. Nothing to lose means nothing to hold you back from your dreams. It’s your chance to live wildly again. To dream again. It’s your chance to discover who you really are.

Don’t let anybody tell you what to do. Even me. Let your heart be your guide. You don’t have to climb their ladders, and crawl back into their boxes. Their elevated holes where dreams go to die. They’ll be calling out to you from their cages of contrived success. They won’t have the unique insight that you do. They’ll say whatever, do whatever they can to get you back in line. The back of the line, the bottom of the ladder, the endless cycle of rut.

Defy them. Defy gravity. Soar in every direction with glee. Without all that extra baggage, the expectations, the obligations, the militaristic definition of success, the two-dimensional concept of life, without all that useless, deadweight, and deadly baggage, you are light enough to sail in the breeze. Open your heart and dare to dream.

Remember, you hit rock-bottom for a reason. Something bigger than you threw you from your tangled, weighted ladder. From your box. Threw you from your ambitions, and catapulted you into a foreign land that feels like defeat. And it will always feel like defeat if you simply start back over, searching for the ladder you’ve already climbed and fallen from.

But if you dare to believe, to see, to let your dreams be the wind in your sails, then you won’t ever hit rock-bottom again. Because rock-bottom won’t exist for you anymore. Rock-bottom will just be another stop along the way of your living adventure. Another chance to do whatever you dream. The beginning of another beautiful day filled with endless possibilities.

Rock-bottom isn’t the end of one life. It’s the beginning of a better life. Make it count.