Life has a way of flipping on its head when you least expect it. One day, you’re going through the motions of what you think is a predictable, stable existence, and the next day, you’re staring into the gaping maw of a dragon that seems ready to consume you whole. That’s what it feels like to lose everything: your job, your marriage, your sense of purpose. I should know. I lived through it. And let me tell you, the dragon didn’t start out small. It was monstrous. It was the embodiment of every failure, every fear, every doubt I ever had.
For months, I tried to fight it, to take it on in one fell swoop. I wanted to fix everything at once. But that dragon was just too big, too powerful, and every time I tried, it felt like it grew another head. In the end, I was the one who got burned. I realized that the only way to survive—and eventually conquer it—was to scale it back. To chip away at it until I could handle what was left.
The Dragon of Loss
When you lose your job, you lose more than just an income. You lose your identity, your routine, and your sense of worth. Society tells us that our job defines us. When people ask, “What do you do?” they don’t mean what brings you joy or how you contribute to the world. They mean what you do to earn a living, to sustain yourself. When that’s stripped away, you feel hollow, like a ghost of the man you once were.
Losing your marriage on top of that—it feels like the final blow. Suddenly, you’re alone in a way you’ve never been before. You sit in the silence, surrounded by memories, questioning everything: “What did I do wrong? What could I have done better? Was I ever enough?”
In those first few months, the dragon was enormous. It represented all of my failures, all of my shortcomings. It loomed large over me, and I couldn’t see any way around it. The more I tried to fix my life in one sweeping gesture, the more hopeless it felt. Every job interview that didn’t pan out, every empty evening in a quiet house—it all just added fuel to the fire. I was trying to slay a dragon that was too big for me to face head-on.
Step 1: Acknowledge the Beast
The first step in scaling back the dragon was simply acknowledging that it existed. I had to accept that my life had fallen apart. Denial wasn’t helping, and pretending like everything was okay was only making the dragon grow. I had to face the fact that I was at rock bottom—and that’s okay.
There’s a kind of strange freedom that comes with admitting you’ve lost it all. When you’re no longer trying to keep up appearances or pretend that things are going better than they are, you can finally start dealing with the reality of the situation. You can look the dragon in the eye and say, “You exist. You’re terrifying. But I’m still here, and I’m not running away.”
That’s where things started to change for me. The dragon didn’t shrink immediately, but it stopped getting bigger. It was no longer this invisible, unnamed thing that kept growing in my mind. It had form. It had limits. And once I could see it for what it was, I could start thinking about how to tackle it.
Step 2: Break the Dragon Into Pieces
Trying to tackle your life’s problems all at once is like trying to swallow an elephant. It’s too much, and it’s overwhelming. I had to learn to break the dragon into smaller, more manageable pieces.
For me, that meant focusing on one area of my life at a time. My first goal wasn’t to fix everything. It was simply to get out of bed every day and do one small thing that moved me forward. Some days, that was applying for a single job. Other days, it was just getting some exercise or cooking a meal.
It wasn’t about finding a new career or rebuilding my marriage all at once. It was about scaling things back to the point where they felt conquerable. Every time I faced a smaller version of the dragon, I gained a little more confidence. And slowly, those small wins started to add up.
I also had to remind myself that it was okay to take things one step at a time. We live in a world that glorifies speed, efficiency, and instant results. But healing, rebuilding, and conquering take time. It’s a process. It’s not something you can rush, no matter how much you want to.
Step 3: Find Your Allies
No one slays a dragon alone. In the stories, the hero always has allies, and I had to learn to let people in again. After my divorce, I isolated myself. I was embarrassed, ashamed, and convinced that no one would understand what I was going through. But isolation only made things worse.
Eventually, I started reaching out to friends and family. I started talking about what I was going through. And you know what? People were there for me. They didn’t have all the answers, but they listened. They reminded me that I wasn’t alone. They helped me carry the burden when it felt too heavy to bear on my own.
In time, I found a therapist who helped me work through the emotional wreckage I’d been carrying around. I joined a support group for men going through similar struggles, and for the first time, I felt a sense of connection and understanding. My dragon wasn’t unique. Others had faced it too, and they had survived.
Step 4: Rediscovering Purpose
Losing my job and my marriage stripped away the structures that had defined my life. But in that emptiness, I found space to rediscover who I was and what mattered to me. When I was no longer defined by my career or my relationship, I had to ask myself some hard questions: “What do I want? What gives my life meaning?”
It wasn’t easy to answer those questions. It took time, and I made plenty of mistakes along the way. But slowly, I started to find purpose in new places. I volunteered at a local charity, started learning a new skill, and rekindled hobbies I hadn’t touched in years.
Scaling back the dragon allowed me to see that while I had lost a lot, I hadn’t lost everything. There were still things in my life worth fighting for, still passions I could pursue, still connections to be made. I just had to shift my perspective and start rebuilding from the ground up.
Step 5: Celebrate Small Victories
In the end, conquering the dragon wasn’t about slaying it in one dramatic battle. It was about chipping away at it, day by day, and celebrating each small victory along the way. Every time I got through a tough day, every time I took a step toward rebuilding my life, I reminded myself that I was making progress.
The dragon still exists. It’s not gone. But it’s no longer the terrifying, uncontrollable force that it once was. I’ve scaled it back to a size that’s manageable, something I can face without feeling like it’s going to overwhelm me. And every day, I get a little bit stronger, a little bit more capable of handling whatever comes next.
Scaling back the dragon doesn’t mean giving up or settling for less. It means taking control of your life, one step at a time, until the challenges you face are no longer insurmountable. If you’re in that dark place, feeling like the dragon is too big to handle, take heart. You don’t have to defeat it all at once. Just scale it back, piece by piece, until it’s conquerable. You’re stronger than you think.
