The moment you stop waiting to be saved is the moment you begin to live with intent.
Every negative event carries within it the possibility of transformation. It rarely feels that way when you are in the middle of it. A failure at work, the end of a relationship, a health scare. These moments feel like endings, but if you stay with them long enough, they can open into something else — a new direction, a different way of living, an energy you didn’t know you had.
The Greek word crisis originally meant a point of decision. A turning. That is what the darker moments in life really are. Not final judgments but thresholds. The question is never whether they will happen — they always do — but whether you will be able to meet them with enough faith to step through to the other side.
Faith here doesn’t have to mean religion. It can mean trust in life itself. Trust that there are forces larger than your own limited perspective at work, shaping events in ways you can’t yet see. Without that kind of trust, life can feel brittle and hopeless. With it, even suffering takes on a kind of meaning.
Viktor Frankl, imprisoned in Auschwitz during the Second World War, gave one of the most striking examples of this. In Man’s Search for Meaning, he recalls a rumour spreading through the camp in 1944: the Allies would arrive to liberate them by Christmas. Prisoners pinned their hope on that promise. But Christmas came and went, and liberation was still months away. Frankl, who was forced to work as a camp doctor, recorded that more prisoners died between Christmas and New Year’s than at any other point. They had lost hope, and with it, the will to survive.
What this shows us is profound. By seeking external rescue, the prisoners left themselves exposed to despair when the promise was broken. Hope that depends only on outside forces is fragile. Frankl endured because he turned inward. He developed inner tools that allowed him to carry on regardless of what was happening outside the camp gates. He discovered that the only true freedom left to him was his choice of attitude.
This lesson matters today. When we rely on external validation, we set ourselves up for disappointment. The job title, the pay rise, the social approval, the imagined rescue — these can never be stable enough to carry us. Looking outside makes us dependent, and that dependency often slides into depression when the world does not deliver. The work is to build the inner posture: to cultivate confidence in our own thoughts, faith in our own process, energy drawn from within.
So the next time life turns against you, remember that the opportunity is hidden inside the negative. Looking outward for rescue will leave you empty. But working inward, and building faith in yourself, will give you strength not just to endure but to change the world around you.
Try this
Here’s a tool I’ve learned that can help transform low energy into forward momentum.
Begin by feeling the heavy, demoralised state that comes when you are depressed. Don’t run from it — focus on it. Then tell yourself you are going to change that feeling into something else. Above your head, imagine a powerful flow of energy, like a jet stream.
Now picture yourself taking a specific action that represents forward motion in your life. It could be a risk you’ve avoided, or a daily discipline — writing, exercising, meditating. Place this action in that jet stream above your head.
Now rise. Feel yourself fly straight up into that picture by sensing the act of doing it. Nothing else matters except taking this step. As you rise, let the world fall away. Enter the image. Once inside, tell yourself you have a purpose. Feel the surge of energy as determination takes root. This is what momentum feels like. This is what it feels like to move forward.
