Getting Out of My Own Way

When I wrote my first book, The Accident: How to Shake the Sh!t Out of Your Life I healed A LOT. It was eye opening and I shed, what felt like, a million tears. I let so much go. 

I let so much off of me. 

I became aware of so many things that I hadn’t previously been able to recognize. 

It was always there, I just couldn’t see it because I had been so lost in what I could see. 

I learned writing my first book that what I could see wasn’t helping me. 

In fact, it was doing the opposite. It was keeping me stuck. 

Stuck in my anger. Stuck in my victim mentality. Stuck in what has always been, as if it would always be. 

Writing The Accident showed me how to change it. How to search for the lessons. How to stop being stuck in what had been and start living in the right now. 

I thought I had it down. I was healed. 

I slowly started forgetting everything that I had learned. 

It was still there, but I wasn’t applying it. My emotions were taking the lead again. I found myself looking for what needed to change, instead of what lessons I could personally take away from what was happening. I was a victim again. I was hurt, sad, angry, frustrated- all of the things that kept me stuck before… were back. 

I was unhappy again. Everything felt harder than necessary and I was searching for something outside of myself as usual. 

I truly felt like if all of that didn’t fix me, nothing would. 

Everything fell apart again and I wound up all alone 1700 miles from home. 

The craziest part about it was that I wasn’t even a little bit afraid. 

It felt natural. It felt right. It gave me the space and the time to breathe, to hibernate, to truly care for myself. 

I did a lot of nothing at first. I laid around. Soaked up the silence and didn’t really want to think about any of it. 

I was just getting through the day and letting life show me my new reality. 

I missed everyone, but I knew I was right where I needed to be. 

After a chunk of time went by of doing absolutely nothing and I realized that didn’t feel right either. 

I didn’t do all of this to just sit here and waste away. It was time to turn my thoughts into action. I needed to shake my life up once again. 

I decided to set goals that would turn the life I had spent so long envisioning as my dream life into my real one. 

I got up earlier. 

My dog, Penny, and I went on a walk every morning. 

I did yoga. 

I wrote. 

I worked out. 

I ate well. 

I slowed down. 

I meditated, a lot. 

It worked. 

The biggest change that I noticed was that the more I took care of myself in this way, the more I was consistently checking in with myself throughout the day. 

This meant that I was catching my thoughts and becoming aware of what was running through my brain all day. 

I was shocked at how many negative thoughts I had throughout my day. How many times I caught my brain trying to talk myself out of these habits that I needed, that made me the best version of myself. How many times laziness or sad thoughts passed through. 

For the first time in my life, I didn’t beat myself up over any of it. 

I just sat with myself. 

I held my hand. 

I understood. 

I was exhausted from living a life in survival mode. 

I was completely burnt out from carrying all the heavy and hard things I had experienced. 

My thoughts and beliefs were set. 

Life is hard and it will always be hard. Another shoe will always drop. 

I must always be prepared for loss, for hardship, for mean, violent people. 

For everything that I had experienced. 

It made sense. 

Life had kicked my butt. 

It made me sad. 

I had so much grief trapped in my body. 

My normal day was harder than the majority. 

My experiences, devastating. 

Why did it have to be this way? 

I sat. 

I breathed. 

I held my hand. 

I didn’t know why it was this way, but I knew that I had made it through things that would have wrecked the majority. 

I knew that I had not only made it, but I found beauty in each and every hard story. 

I found lessons. 

I found life. 

I found more of myself each and every time I was tested. 

Why wasn’t my focus on that? 

Why was I so stuck on what I thought should have happened, vs what did? Why did I put so much energy into thinking about what others should have done differently, or trying to figure out why they chose to act as they did? Why did I wear myself out trying to find a way to “fix” the areas of the world that I saw were so clearly lacking? 

What I was doing wasn’t working. 

So what would? 

I understood why I felt the way I did, I just didn’t understand how to stop. 

With no idea how to move forward, I decided to treat myself like a client. Like a friend. Like a child. Like a parent. Like a daughter. I decided to stop treating myself like I was the enemy, like a failure with no future. 

I decided to just see what happened when I forgot about the world and just took care of myself. 

I got lost in it. 

I started spending time in the mirror being kind to myself, dancing around- moving and grooving and truly looking at who I am. I started finding things that I love and embracing them. I started moving more freely. I felt lighter. I felt more connected. I started having better conversations and being more honest and clear in my conversations. I stopped focusing on anything but myself. 

When someone tripped an emotion within me, I would stop everything and remove myself. I would sit and meditate on it thinking only about myself. 

Why was I choosing this reaction?
Why was I choosing to make this into something? 

Why was I allowing this to affect me so deeply? 

Where had I seen myself doing this same pattern before? 

How did my choices in this moment negatively impact me?

Does this choice positively impact myself or the situation at hand? 

How can I change my pattern?

How can I change my thoughts around this? 

How can I let this go instead of allowing it to stay on me? 

How can I care for myself here? 

Most of the time, sitting and breathing was all I needed. 

Most of the time it was just about being aware. 

My old pattern was recurring thoughts. Instead of being aware of them, I pretended I wasn’t bothered. I would tell myself to stop thinking about it- or start thinking about something else in denial that this same recurring thought was happening. If I said don’t think about it or if I thought about something else every time I noticed myself back here- it would just go away, right? 

Wrong. 

I was burying it- deeper and deeper into my unconscious. It was running in my sleep. It was running all the time unbeknownst to me, while I was over here telling myself that I was doing a kick ass job of getting over it. 

It wasn’t until I stopped pushing my thoughts aside and I started greeting them like a friend that I was able to start to flip them. 

At first, it was just about being aware. Letting the thoughts be. Letting myself be heard. 

I heard it loud and clear.

I understood. 

I empathized. 

I sympathized. 

I was there for me. 

After I got really good at hearing more of my thoughts, I started talking to myself. 

I started asking questions, I started being able to uncover the truth and weed out the fat that I was surrounding it with. I was able to work with myself to understand why these thoughts were stuck on repeat. I was able to find that they were keeping me stuck. I was able to find why there was so much emotion tied to this part of my life. 

Without all of the things that happened, I would be a completely different person. 

That was easy to romanticize. Obviously I would have been my dream person if XYZ hadn’t happened to me. It was so unfair. It was so unnecessary. It was a sad story. 

But that isn’t the truth. 

I don’t know who I would be without all of this, because that isn’t what happened. 

It did happen. 

All of it. 

I will live with the whole story for the rest of my time here. 

Grieving the loss of my hypothetical self didn’t help me. It kept me stuck grieving something that never was. 

It was time to do something with it. It was time to dive back into what I learned when I wrote The Accident. It was time to find the deep level lessons in this story. 

So I did. 

Some days it felt like all I was doing was checking in, rerouting my thoughts to gratitude, and breathing. 

Some days it felt natural- easy- effortless to be in that state. 

I found beauty in them all. 

I found gratitude every single day. 

The more I understood myself without judgement, the more I softly rerouted to gratitude, the more kindly I cared for myself- the more I was able to give everything around me. 

The more my life felt like mine. 

The more at ease I became. 

The less hard each and every day became. 

Now here I am, almost a year later, reflecting on how so much of my life feels like peace, and how thankful I am that I started and that I never quit. 

Building the life of my dreams was an inside job. 

There was no external source. 

There was no magic lamp or beans. 

It was all me. 

If I can do this, anyone can. We are all capable of building our dream life and it all starts with your choices. 

If your life doesn’t look like what you dreamed, look within. 

That ride- is worth every moment.