Monday, 04/20/2026
Posts
How to Move Forward Once You’ve Hit Bottom
Update: 21/10/2016
I thought I would tell you this little story about\r\nNaropa University’s founder, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, and my very first\r\none-on-one interview with him. This interview occurred during the time when my\r\nlife was completely falling apart, and I went there because I wanted to talk\r\nabout the fact that I was feeling like such a failure and so raw.
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But when I sat down in front of him, he said, “How\r\nis your meditation?â€
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I said, “Fine.â€
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And then we just started talking, superficial\r\nchatter, until he stood up and said, “It was very nice to meet you,†and\r\nstarted walking me to the door. In other words, the interview was over.
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And so at that point, realizing the interview was\r\nover, I just blurted out my whole story:
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My life is over.
\r\n\r\nI have hit the bottom.
\r\n\r\nI don’t know what to do.
\r\n\r\nPlease help me.
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And here is the advice Trungpa Rinpoche gave me. He\r\nsaid, “Well, it’s a lot like walking into the ocean, and a big wave comes and\r\nknocks you over. And you find yourself lying on the bottom with sand in your\r\nnose and in your mouth. And you are lying there, and you have a choice. You can\r\neither lie there, or you can stand up and start to keep walking out to sea.â€
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So, basically, you stand up, because the “lying\r\nthere†choice equals dying.
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Metaphorically lying there is what a lot of us\r\nchoose to do at that point. But you can choose to stand up and start walking,\r\nand after a while another big wave comes and knocks you down.
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You find yourself at the bottom of the ocean with\r\nsand in your nose and sand in your mouth, and again you have the choice to lie\r\nthere or to stand up and start walking forward.
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“So the waves keep coming,†he said. “And you keep\r\ncultivating your courage and bravery and sense of humor to relate to this\r\nsituation of the waves, and you keep getting up and going forward.â€
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This was his advice to me.
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Trungpa then said, “After a while, it will begin to\r\nseem to you that the waves are getting smaller and smaller. And they won’t\r\nknock you over anymore.â€
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That is good life advice.
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It isn’t that the waves stop coming; it’s that\r\nbecause you train in holding the rawness of vulnerability in your heart, the\r\nwaves just appear to be getting smaller and smaller, and they don’t knock you\r\nover anymore.
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“Fail better†means you begin to have the ability to\r\nhold what I call “the rawness of vulnerability†in your heart.
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So what I’m saying is: fail. Then fail again, and\r\nthen maybe you start to work with some of the things I’m saying. And when it\r\nhappens again, when things don’t work out, you fail better. In other words, you\r\nare able to work with the feeling of failure instead of shoving it under the\r\nrug, blaming it on somebody else, coming up with a negative self-image—all of\r\nthose futile strategies.
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“Fail better†means you begin to have the ability to\r\nhold what I call “the rawness of vulnerability†in your heart, and see it as\r\nyour connection with other human beings and as a part of your humanness.\r\nFailing better means when these things happen in your life, they become a\r\nsource of growth, a source of forward, a source of, “out of that place of\r\nrawness you can really communicate genuinely with other people.â€
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Your best qualities come out of that place because\r\nit’s unguarded and you’re not shielding yourself. Failing better means that\r\nfailure becomes a rich and fertile ground instead of just another slap in the\r\nface. That’s why, in the Trungpa Rinpoche story that I shared, the waves that\r\nare knocking you down begin to appear smaller and have less and less of an\r\nability to knock you over. And actually maybe it is the same wave, maybe it’s\r\neven a bigger wave than the one that hit last year, but it appears to you smaller\r\nbecause of your ability to swim with it or ride the wave.
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And it isn’t that failure doesn’t still hurt. I\r\nmean, you lose people you love. All kinds of things happen that break your\r\nheart, but you can hold failure and loss as part of your human experience and\r\nthat which connects you with other people.
\r\n\r\nPema Chodron – Lion’s\r\nRoar