Sep 16, 20193 min read

When It Feels Like Your Past Left You Broken

Updated: Oct 15, 2019

I just started running again.

And it feels horrible.

I'd love to sugar coat it for you.

I'm starting by tackling the "Hill to Victory". This is my favorite place to run whenever I visit LA. And I know that the quickest way to get back in the groove is to incorporate some intervals to failure.

They kick. My. Butt.

But I'm carrying a little more weight now. Things hurt more. It feels like so much more work than it used to to lug myself up the hill to Victory. My legs cry and I just am not to that point where I can do it without being aware of Every. Single. Step.

But that's okay.

As I listen very carefully to my mind and my body, they are giving me every signal that they can that I'm going to die if I take one more step. Every impulse that I have tells me to walk and go home and go back to bed.

I've weighed this out well. I've tracked my adrenals, my weight, my calories, my resting heart rate, my reactions to sleep changes and I know that I am, in fact, not going to die, if I run all the way up that hill and back.

And so I run.

And if I am paying attention, I notice that each time I do, it gets a little easier to move and a little easier to keep going.

Sometimes we have things in our past that feel horrible.

And we may come to the conclusion that those things left us broken, scarred, changed.

Maybe it is a divorce. Or your autoimmune diagnosis or other chronic illness. Abuse, relationship issues, betrayal, trauma, choices that bring up guilt and regret.

Carrying on with life can feel heavy when we bring the idea that we are in some form, ruined or damaged by our past.

I'm going to offer that the past does not need to mean these things.

Whatever it is that happened can mean something that serves you to move forward unfettered. Free. Totally in control.

You can make it mean something else.

If this is your first time changing your thoughts about something major, you may be thinking that "making it mean something else" will mean lying to yourself.

The nature of the brain is to prove its own programming valid.

This is where you start creating new programming.

The fact is, that if you are already telling yourself that you are broken...you are telling yourself a story.

One that you will have gathered years of evidence to support.

And taken evidence from others who may have fed this story with their own stories too.

And if it is serving to keep you feeling as if you are broken then it is holding you back.

You can choose to make it mean something completely different.

What if you choose to belief that your challenges in life contribute to your growth? That you used them to become stronger? Better? More compassionate? More aware of others?

What if you believe that hard things don't happen to you...they happen FOR you?

(This will rub some of you wrong, I know.)

But can you believe in your ability to use every challenge, every hill in your route, to become a stronger, smarter, kinder person?

When I look back on my life I realize that the things that were the hardest for me, developed some of my best qualities.

And like running intervals, living life to failure creates amazing growth.

Will you take a moment today to examine your thoughts about your past without judgement, and find how they have benefited you in some way?

Be ready for the mind to rebel. It may refuse to consider evidence that refutes the long-held belief that the past was horrible or wrong. It may be giving you signals that looking at this in any other way means "death". It wants you to stay. Right where you are. Every impulse may tell you to leave that story alone.

But you have things to do.

Important things.

You are here to touch lives. To live. To grow. To love your life.

Without hauling those heavy stories around with you any longer.

You can take those things that happened in your past and make them YOUR

Hill to Victory.