“There is a difference between giving up and knowing when you’ve had enough.” Unknown

Readers of this column will know that over the past year I have devoted a fair amount of space to encouraging people to be less resistant to change, more accepting of their circumstances and more open to the notion that they can find breathing space in a new environment.

Today I thought I would try to offer further encouragement to transform yourself by discussing what “the breaking point” actually is and providing a glimpse of the sort of life that awaits you when you finally do decide to allow your old ways to dissolve away.

The key thing to understand here is that the breaking point is not an impassible chasm or a black hole of despair – it is a test of faith.

In short, the breaking point is an imaginary place that we manifest inside ourselves to show us the point to which we have progressed in our personal journey to become wise, tolerant, and loving – and where there is still work to be done.

From this perspective, your work is defined as any negative aspect of yourself that you are still secretly clinging to in order to hold yourself back.

It might take the form of anger, greed, resentment, entitlement, indignation -or a whole host of others – but whatever form it takes, make no mistake it is just a ruse, a tool that we all use to mask a deep-seated fear of change.

Now here’s the good news: once you finally see your breaking point for what it is – a test of faith – not only will you no longer fear it, but you will also realise that you are more than capable of diffusing the crisis of the moment and moving permanently beyond it.

And the moment that you do you will suddenly start to view everything else in your life from a profoundly different perspective for, just beyond the breaking point, there is a new vision of everything – a mindset where you no longer evaluate situations from the point of view of whether they are “good” or “bad”, but for what they are trying to show us, what they are trying to teach us about ourselves and those around us. Equally, our progress here is measured not by the amount of power we possess or the materialistic things that we accumulate, but by the measure of joy that we experience in life.

In the context of wellness for example, a new understanding of illness, of self-care, and what it means to heal emerges.

And you begin to realise that disease (which is literally the state of dis-ease) arrives to show us where we have neglected our mental, emotional, or physical self-care – meaning that any form of illness is as much a cancer of the psyche as an infirmity of the body.

From this perspective, even with a correct diagnosis and course of medical treatment, the patient must focus repairing their thought processes, daily habits, and lifestyle in order to truly repair, or heal, their mind and body in unison and restore their joy in life.

Robin Trimingham is the chief operating officer of The Olderhood Group Ltd and a virtual presenter, journalist, podcaster and thought leader in the fields of life transition and change management. Connect with Robin at https://www.linkedin.com/in/olderhoodgroup1/ or robin@olderhood.com