How to Rebuild Yourself from Rock Bottom

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TLDR: Rebuilding yourself from rock bottom isn’t easy. It is definitely not fun. It hurts. But it is more than worth it.

Here I walk you through the exact seven steps I took to rebuild my life from Ground Zero when I had no place else to turn. I teach you how to rebuild yourself in a matter of months, not years like it took me. If you’re in, let’s go.

The Truth About Rock Bottom

Rock bottom. You will never understand what it’s truly like until you’ve hit it and have no choice other than to rebuild yourself from the ground up. 

My realization came five years ago when I sat outside of the hospital questioning if I should go in and risk losing my kids to get better, or risk going home and losing everything.

I did go home. Then left my kids dad. Then sank even deeper. Then met the therapist that changed my life. I took what she taught me and put every last ounce into action to rebuild my life from rock bottom and let me tell you. 

It has been excruciating hard. Exhaustingly hard. Some (most) days in the beginning, I didn’t think I could actually rebuild my life. 

But then one day, it happened. It’s true, one day you blink and realize you’ve made it. You’re here. You’re where you prayed to get to all those years ago. 

I don’t mean to scare you by that. That’s not my point. But I am here to be honest with you. Brutally honest is my vibe and it’s all you’ll get here, actually. 

It’s a long journey. It is. But it is worth every last bit of it. All of the hard days are worth it. I promise. 

And I’m going to teach you. 

I’m going to teach you how to rebuild your life brick by (boring) brick (I hope you get the reference). Hopefully in a hell of a lot less time because you will have a blueprint on how to do it.

You are going to leave this post with a master outline for what to do exactly to work toward becoming the dream version of your life. 

Who are they? What do they do? 

That’s where we will begin. 

Let’s drive in.

How to Rebuild Your Life from Rock Bottom

I’m giving you the master outline to rebuilding your life after disaster. Heartache. Attempt. Death. Children. Anything life altering where you ended up finding yourself gasping for air with the all encompassing feeling that this is it. You’re done. It’s time to change. 

1 | Plan Out Your Dream Life

I know, you can barely survive right now. 

But I’m going to force you to dream anyway. 

You have to have something in mind. 

You don’t want to feel like this, so what do you want to feel like?

Hmm?

In your wildest dreams, who are you? What do you do? What do you wear? What to you like? Who do you spend your time with? What makes you happy?

I don’t care if it’s five things. You’re going to start writing. 

Write them all down. Every last dream. They don’t have to feel attainable right now. In fact, I do not want them to feel attainable. I want them to feel insane right now. 

These are going to be your driving factors. 

Brain dump them all out in your new journal (yes, sorry, I’m going to force you to do that as well).

Check out some of my fave journals for getting started. They’re all blank. Perfect for rebuilding your life within the pages. I’ve also included some cute pens and stuff to make it a bit more fun.

2 | Create a Five Year Plan

Now comes putting those dreams into action.

When my therapist told me we were going to create a five year plan I called her insane. 

She laughed. 

I love her. 

I wanted nothing to do with it because I quite literally didn’t want to live another five years at the time. Morbid, sorry. But it’s the truth.

That’s why she thought it was so important.

She forced me to create a five year plan so that we could make action steps to build my dream life. 

Now, I’ll be honest, that five year plan didn’t really happen. I made some of it happen, but life also happened and some of the things got pushed out a few years.

But the point is, we need a starting point.

Write out 3-5 big life goals for the next five years on the next page in your new journal (you love me don’t you).

Here were mine:

• Buy a house (HAAAAA!)
• Start a podcast (one day)
• Get stable (I’ll teach you how I did this)
• Summit a mountain (happening soon!)

See, big dreams. 

In order to get to them, I had to become the best version of myself.

How? Ground zero. Learning to love myself.

3 | Learn to Love Yourself

The third step in learning how to rebuild your life from rock bottom is learning to love yourself.

And I don’t mean surface level love. 

I mean, no more negative self talk. Ever. 

Valuing yourself. Finding your worth and believing it exists.

Thinking highly of yourself. That you are smart, brave, courageous. All of the things.

I’ll be honest, I nearly made my therapist cry in our first meeting.

I opened up about everything. Every last detail. 

You know what she said?

First, she promised me that I didn’t deserve any of that. Though I felt in my core that I deserved every last bit.

Then she told me that before we could get anywhere, I’d need to learn how to love myself.

Now, that learning how to love myself has been a work in progress ever since, but ya know what?

I haven’t had a negative thought about myself in years.

I do think I’m worthy of a good life, happiness, and peace.

And I value myself enough to put my brain first in (most) everything I do in order to both become and be my best self.

Where did it all begin?

You’re going to hate me for this. But trust me. It WORKS!

You’re going to start daily journaling.

Yes. You are. If you want to get better, you are.

Daily journal prompts for growth:

• 3 things you are grateful for
• 3 things you like about yourself
• 3 affirmations for the day

Here is an example of what my journal looked like for the first couple of months implementing this journaling structure:

See? I made it cute and fun.

And the outcome was everything. 

Why?

Because you can’t hate yourself into building the life of your dreams. 

You have to learn to love yourself into the life of your dreams.

And you’ll get there.

If you need an accountability partner, I’m your girl. I’m not so active on Instagram anymore because, tbh, I hate the app. But I do respond to messages.

Send me your daily journal entries if you’d like. From someone who has been there, you’ll get no judgement from me. None whatsoever.

I’m here as your friend. Your supporter. Your lifeline.

Send a message to @lynneahmarie on instagram when you need to. I’ll cheer you on every step of the way!

If a stranger isn’t your vibe, I get it, talk to your friends!

Do what you need to do to make this happen. Stay on this step for a while. Honestly, a few months, before moving on.

You’ll know you’re ready to start on the next step of rebuilding your life from the ground up when you start to believe you are worthy of a good life. 

Which, you are btw. You are.

4 | Quit All Bad Habits

Once you get to a point where life is worth livingggggggg (had to), the real work begins. 

Let me tell you, this is the hardest step of them all. And it’ll come in multiple steps.

Bad habit time.

We all have them. I will never shame you for them and I don’t want you shaming yourself either.

Do not feel bad about doing what you needed to do to survive.

Ever.

But now?

You don’t need them anymore.

You learned how to cope with your habits, but now it’s time to learn how to cope in healthier ways.

One by one.

What are yours?

Me? I’ve been sober 3 years now. I quit drinking, smoking weed, and smoking cigarettes all at once. The cigarettes were the hardest. I relapsed a year ago but I’ve now been without them for six months. 

Remember, healing is not linear. Neither is recovery.

I am an addict. But I am a sober addict.

Then comes in the other bad habits. I’m also a binge eater. I quit that three years ago, but relapsed on that as well. I’m working on quitting that again right now.

I’m human. And I don’t want you thinking I’m not. It’s hard. It’s all hard.

But we are here to quit together.

One by one.

Pick one to start with. Or be crazy like me and quit everything at once (I do not recommend).

I cannot help you with quitting your bad habits. Everyone is different and what works for me probably won’t work for you.

But don’t let that stop you.

Spend some time on this step. Pick a habit to replace. For me, I replaced drinking with soda. Probably another bad habit, but hey, at least I’m not trying to black out all the time now and making terrible life choices. It is what it is.

I truly to believe, though, that the best way to rebuild your life and become your best self is to quit the habits.

Plus, you know how good it feels to say I’m 3 years sober? I think it’s so fucking cool. It feels powerful. You can do it too.

While you are working on that, let’s work on the next step.

5 | Create Routines

Your best self has a luxurious routine. I just know it. 

Me? I’m a simple gal.

 Solid morning and evening routine grounds me and keeps me whole.

To be frank, though, a good routine will make or break your mental well being which is the most important thing to take care of when learning how to rebuild your life.

So, routines.

I suggest doing some research and testing to find what works for you because when it comes to a good routine, it has to work inside of your own life to be sustainable.

And your routines should definitely be sustainable.

Here are some examples of what your routines could look like:

Start with one. I suggest starting with an evening routine because good sleep hygiene will change your life.

For me, I needed the night time routine because nights were hard after my breakup. Rebuilding myself meant healing myself at the same time.

If you’re here because you are rebuilding your life after a breakup, I see you. I’m six months out from the official breakup from the person I thought I’d spend my life with and I have many thoughts about where I’m at today. Actually, when I publish this I’ll probably be 8-9 months post breakup. 

Crazy.

This post isn’t becoming a sad breakup post so if you’d like details on that level of my life, join my weekly coffee chat. It’s a weekly email where I over share about my life because I think we need more brutal honesty in the world to feel less alone. That’s my goal anyway.

Anyway. Back to routines.

My rock star night routine looks like this:

• Outside time (walk or porch time)
• Prepping for tomorrow (setting up coffee, making morning electrolytes, getting clothes out, putting on real pjs, putting the house to sleep)
• Phone in another room charging (game changer for actual sleep that I was skeptical about but now love)
• Bed one hour before I actually need to fall asleep and read (helloooo my kindle friends)

That’s it. On a work night my routine starts about 8pm (when I can) and then I try to be asleep around 10pm because I know I need 8 hours of sleep and my goal is to wake up at 6am.

I talk all about building a rockstar night time routine in this post and explain how I came to building the best routine for myself and the actual why behind everything. It’s worth a read if you want to get better sleep for the sake of your mental health.

Now that’s night. Then comes morning. Then comes week. Then comes month. All in time. 

Take your time, bestie. Really. All of this stuff will change your life for the better but it won’t if you don’t take the time to actually let it all sink in.

Rebuilding your life takes time. You can’t rush it.

6 | Find Your Happy

Now that you’ve started learning to love yourself and have started showing up for them in the best kind of way, it’s time to find your happy.

This is my favorite step.

If you’ve felt lost and unsure, this is perfect for you.

I want you to get back to that journal of yours (hehe) and write out every single thing that makes you happy. Dig deep. 

Here is my original happy list to get you started:

See? Sooo many things! Get creative with your list. 

But how does a happy list relate to rebuilding your life?

Well, you want a happy life, don’t you?

Bingo.

Your task: do one of the things on your list every single day from now on.

I’m not kidding. You need to include yourself in your todo list. 

Every day.

It can be a grand adventure. It can also be scream singing your favorite song in the car to feel alive for a moment. 

My go to scream song: I’m Not Okay (find my elder emo mom playlist here).

To be happy, you have to create happiness. What better way than doing the things that make you happy?

Pair that with the gratitude you’ve been working on (you better have been working on it) and you have a rock solid start to creating the life of your dreams.

7 | Mix it All Together

Now is the time. 

We mix it all together. 

Piece by piece, we put everything into action.

We rebuild our lives.

We build happy lives.

We build peaceful lives. 

We build safe lives.

And it’s all within our grasp. Within your grasp.

Put these steps you’ve learned about how to rebuild your life from rock bottom into action and watch your life become exactly what you want it to be.

Okay, now it’s your turn.

You can read this and think “that’s nice” all day, but nothing’s going to change if you don’t start.

If you have been going through the motions, spiraling, or telling yourself you will “start Monday,” this is your sign.

The Girl, Get Up Challenge gives you one doable action a day so you can rebuild momentum without pressure. It counts even if your win is brushing your teeth.

Either way, I hope you gained some new perspective from this post.

Love the feel here? I would love to have coffee with you Sunday mornings. Join my email list for more of this no BS honesty every Sunday to read while you sip your (hopefully) peaceful cup of Sunday morning coffee.

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