E319: No one can stop you but you | CPTSD and Trauma Healing Coach

What's up, Unbroken Nation! Hope that you're doing well my friends. I'm gonna start today's episode with one of my favorite quotes and the reason why is because a really focusing on this idea about what it means to be on stoppable in your life, what it means to effectively show up every day and not let anyone change what you believe you're capable of doing, and that quote…

“Indeed no one can afford the purposes of your mind, for they can't be touched by fire, steel, tyranny, slander or anything.”  – Marcus Aurelius from meditation

I think about this a lot, I'm gonna read that again no one can afford the purposes of your mind where they can't be touched by fire, steel, tyranny, slander or anything.

What that means to me why I wanted to read that quote today is because you control everything. The power of your mind, the decisions that you make, the way that you decide to show up in the world cannot be affected by other people unless you allow it to be. And I know how difficult of a conversation that is because we weigh and we factor in all these experiences or our past, all these experiences of our childhood, we look at the understanding of who we are built and predicated and the truth that for many of us and assume especially if you're listening to this show, you've been through some dark shit and I resonate with that obviously and so many of the tens of thousands of people who listen these episodes every single day. But in that understanding one of the things that I want you to think about is, are you giving away your power to people? Especially when it comes to the power of your mind. It's so easy for us to step into victim and it's a dangerous place to be because it's a place where we tend to thrive unfortunately and devastating for lack better way to phrase it, you know you've heard me say before I think it's insane that people will say that they thrive in chaos, well why the fuck would you wanna do that? Why would you wanna thrive in chaos when you have the opportunity to thrive and love, compassion, hope and joy. But the reason why so many people thrive in chaos is because they've given their power away and you might be one of those people and it's okay because now you can acknowledge that and step one is always acknowledgement.

The first thing that we have to do in this journey is face the truth and say you know what because of the experiences of my past, I have made these decisions that put me in the position that I'm in today and that's not necessarily about blame, it's not about shame, it's not about guilt, it's about simply looking at the truth. But here's what's really interesting about when you face that truth, you recognize that the power of your mind, the power in your head, the ability that you have to create the world in the life that you want to live in is entirely possible but nobody's gonna do it for you. And so, when you think about what it means to not be forwarded, to be taken, to be beaten, to be out man, well if you don't allow that to happen it won't happen. The difficult part in not allowing that to happen is that for so many of us it's the first time we're stepping into it. You know I always coaching one of my clients and we had this fascinating conversation where they came to realize the truth; that they were torturing themselves every single day by running through life in a space in which the decisions that they made were effectively of resemblance of the same behaviors that their parents had and because of that what they had to discover and a hard part of this and it was one of my discoveries as well is that at some point the only person stopping you is you because like face the truth, you're not kidding anymore and no longer a child and that doesn't mean we don't carry that weight with us I've said it before or the sum total of all of our experiences.

And so, one of the things you have to do is you have to strengthen your mind, that's the one thing that you have the full control over and as you get deeper into strengthening your mind you will become stronger. And I apologize if you're watching on YouTube the camera just died, I have no idea why but we're not gonna stop.

So, in this process of strengthening your mind, in this process of growing, of healing, of changing, of stepping further and deeper into who it is that you are, the one thing that you have to continue to do is to ask yourself, can I show up today in a scope of kindness? You know recently ran this marathon and right now I'm in the process of another physical endeavor and over the years I've done different things like, Muay Thai and Jiu Jitsu and the list goes on and on and on but the reason why decided to do those things was to challenge my physical capacity, not in a way that was about hurting myself, right? Think about this for a second, for many trauma survivors the one thing that we know to be true about our bodies is that we've only ever been connected to them from pain, through suffering, through hurting, through feeling these unbelievable experiences of trauma. And for a long time, that's how I would treat my body in the gym, in intimacy, in a lot of different things where it was like on my day to day, I mean fuck think about smoking two packs a day, drinking myself to sleep all the time, being three hundred and fifty pounds. The only way I felt like, I could be seen was when I was hurting, when there was pain. I used to have to go to the doctor all the time as a kid and I was always sick and that was the only place that I ever felt safe, was in that moment of time when there was no pain from my parents or punishment or hitting or screaming like at this one little symbol of time is when my body was physically breaking down, I felt safe. Now there is some darkness in that like, if you really think about that for a second like, what does that actually mean? Well, what that actually means is that because of those experiences and because the way that I assessed love and compassion and care was with pain well, I continued to hurt my physical body, why? Again, this is causation and correlation, why would I do that? Why would you do that think about this? Especially if you're in this place in your life where you're starting the challenge yourself physically like are you doing it to the point that you hurt yourself because if you're doing it to the point that you hurt yourself you may want to make some meaning of why that is, causation and correlation.

Remember the anecdote here side story.

So, about five years ago, I was on a soft ball week, might have been four and a half somewhere around that, I was on a softball ball league and in that softball ball league the day before I had done this insane CrossFit workout and my legs were so tight, I could not physically walk like it was painful to move, if you've ever had one of those kinds of workouts. And I get to the softball ball diamond and one of those guys comes up to me goes, man, you don't look like you can move very well, are you okay? And I was like, you know my legs are so fucking tight, I could barely get out of bed today and he goes well, you know what, if why don't you just bat and we'll bring in a pinch runner for you so, I'll hit the ball and then somebody will come and run for me and I was like no, no, no, it's fine. And so hit the ball, smash this thing in the third and five steps in the first base from a answering partial tear, it was an entire tear but his partial tear and in that moment it hit me so hard because I was like fuck, I've hurt myself again well, now people pay attention to me and that literally went through my head, I don't know why that happened until I realized why it happened, right?

And so, I came to this understanding in this realization of a really empirical truth that one of the most important things that we can do is operate even with our physical body through a scope of kindness, right? And I'm getting to a point of making a full circle here about one this it plays in the mindset because if you've only ever been unkind to your body and like the experience I had in recognizing that kindness and paying attention to my body as well as everything else is the most important thing, then you come to realize that when it comes to challenging yourself, physically mentally, spiritually, emotionally, whatever that thing may be the way that you do that is through a scope of kindness and nobody can take that away from you, nobody can take away compassion or joy or hope or any emotion that is the opposite of hurt. And so, even now today right running marathon, challenge myself physically, to do what I you see, whatever it is. I will be the first one to quit a class if I do not feel in my physical body like it is the best thing for me in the moment. Now that's very different than quitting because like emotionally I can't handle it that day, those days I'll push through, I'll always push through those days and I'll always push through those days because I think that's one of the most for aspects of this healing journey is that level of awareness. But if I'm hurt, if I'm injured, if something's just off you know these CrossFit classes, people are always like, let's go, high fives, if fucking can do ten more, put more weight on the bar whatever, I've literally in these classes before looked at somebody I'm like no, I'm good, I trust myself because pushing yourself in that moment when you should not be is you relinquishing your control to someone else and if nobody can stop you but you, then why the fuck would you do that? Why would you ever give control over of your life to someone else? Why would you put yourself in a position in which you could potentially get hurt, injured, sick, worse? Why would you put yourself in a position of not showing up, not living life on your terms, not being the hero of your own story, not going deeper into education and learning and investing in yourself and trusting and yourself and building who you are? Why would you do that? What's wrong with you? We really ask you're like why and I'll tell you this because I think it's very, very important when I say, no one can stop you but you I literally mean it but you have to be willing to let go of other people's opinions of you, society's opinions of what is right or wrong, cultures opinions of what it means to be a man or a woman or whoever it is that you identify as? You gotta be willing to let go, you have to be willing to fucking let go.

What are you holding on so tightly for? What point is there in thinking that if you adopt these ideas and understanding of what other people believe that you should be that it's going to benefit you because I promise you it's not. And one of the greatest things that you can do in this journey is to change your alignment with the way that you think about yourself and the way that you build your identity because most people build their identity with the end in mind, they build their identity around this idea that when they cross the finish line things will be what they expect. But you've probably experienced us in your life, where you've crossed that finish line and nothing is different, sometimes it's worse because now you don't know what to do with yourself. And in those moments the thing that you have to do is actually start to adopt an understanding that the way that you should build your identity is in your actions on a daily basis, is in your decisions on a daily basis, is in the way that you move towards the goal but not the goal itself.

There's gonna be people who wanna stop you, they're gonna be people we're gonna point you out and say, you've changed, you're different. I see the way you operate in the gym; I see the way you operate in your relationship; I see how you start taking care of yourself, how you say node to nights out at the bar and the strip club and doing drugs and getting drunk and going to the game and all the things that don't bring you value, there's gonna be people who notice that. And then you're gonna have to make a fucking decision about who you are and what you want and who it is that you want to become because that sure a fucking sun will sunrise tomorrow, I can promise you that somebody wants you to stay the same and that can be society, could be your friends, it could be your fucking wife or your husband, your partner, a kid, it doesn't matter, somebody doesn't want you to change. But every day you make a decision not to change, not to remove the thing out of your life that you're torturing yourself with, not to operate through kindness for your physical, mental, emotional and spiritual self every day that you do that you're playing a victim and you're giving someone else your power and you have to make a fucking choice.

Indeed no one can afford the purposes of your mind for they can't be touched by fire, steel, tyranny slander or anything.

Do me a favor…

If this episode was meaningful for you, if you took any value out of it please go like, comment, share, pop on iTunes it takes like thirty seconds to leave a review for the show as you know there's no sponsors for this show everything about Think Unbroken, is about Think Unbroken in this community and I could bring on sponsors and I could charge them a lot of money and we could sell you juices and jellies and jams and all that shit but I don't want to. But this show can't grow without you, helping me make it grow.

And so, I'm gonna ask you to do me a favor and go and leave a review on iTunes, Spotify, wherever you listen and then share this episode with somebody in your life you think it's gonna be beneficial for them, if you think in any capacity it's gonna help them and their life do that.

And one last thing as of today, I decided that the eBook copy of Think Unbroken my first book is forever free.

So, if you go to book.thinkunbroken.com if you've never read think unbroken, if you wanna get the pdf eBook you can download it completely for free, you wanna buy the book you can buy it too that's up to you, Amazon and shit I can't make it free that's not up to me, I don't control that unfortunately but if you go to book.thinkunbroken.com you can download the pdf eBook of Think Unbroken for free today and then perpetuity I guess it wouldn't be in perpetuity lied in the future and you can share that with people in your life, share that with somebody who love, share that with somebody on this journey.

And Until Next Time.

My friends, Be Unbroken.

I'll see you.