How To Move Forward When You Feel Your Life Is Over

“When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.” ~Franklin D. Roosevelt

At seventeen years old, baseball was my life. I played on the top summer Connecticut baseball teams, constantly practiced and trained, and dreamed of being a starter for the high school varsity team. Junior year I was on varsity but didn’t get any playing time, so I was putting all my hopes and dreams into spring of my senior year.

When I went to college showcases, I was one of the standout players and I received many letters in the mail from interested colleges who wanted me to go and play for them. I had scouts coming up to me saying, “Wow, you are an incredible hitter and ballplayer.”

Senior year, I did extremely well in tryouts. In live scrimmages against other teams, I was one of the only players on our team to consistently hit well.

In the last scrimmage of tryouts, I crushed a double against a Division I college-recruit athlete, one of the only players on my team to get a hit off of him. As a soon-to-be college athlete, I was one of the best players in the league.

When You Feel Like Your Life is Over

We all have things that we care passionately about, sometimes to an unreasonable and unhealthy extent. While our individual situations and circumstances are vastly different, feelings are what connect us and are universal. The feeling of devastating loss is the same.

When those things that you care about most dearly are taken from you for reasons beyond your control, you don’t need to go to the extreme like I did.

Through discussions with hundreds of people in travels around the world, extensive research, and my transformation over the last seven years from someone literally on the brink of suicide, I've discovered proven tips and insights you can apply to get through your dark night of the soul, that moment when you feel like your life is over.

Take it one breath at a time—literally.

Put down the million and one things from your past that you are upset about and the billion and one things in your future that you are anxious about and simplify life down to one moment, this moment.

Just before I was about to hang myself, I used individual breaths to take me out of my downward spiral of self-hatred.