#285: Shocking Revelation! Embracing Your Worst Days Will Lead to the Best Transformations

We're talking about the hard times in life, and that sometimes the best thing that you can do is to just embrace it.

Today is episode 285, my friend, let's embrace the suck.

What's up, my friend, and welcome to Grit, Grace, and Inspiration.

I am your host, Kevin Lowe. 20 years ago, I awoke from a life-saving surgery only to find that I was left completely blind.

And since that day, I've learned a lot about life, a lot about living, and a lot about myself.

And here on this podcast, I wanna share those insights with you.

Because friend, if you are still searching for your purpose, still trying to understand why, or still left searching for that next right path to take, well, consider this to be your stepping stone to get you from where you are to where you want to be.

Inside of our previous episode, I announced our prayer request for the week.

And that was from Debbie, who asked for us to join her in praying for her son, Shannon.

Shannon has had some really big medical issues. He just underwent a massive heart surgery.

And she would love it if we could all join her in praying for a complete healing, that God would make him well and make him whole and that he could get back his strength to regain his life again by getting past this big medical issue.

His name is Shannon, and it would be awesome if you could help me in praying for him today.

In relation to today's topic of this philosophy of embracing the suck, one thing that we don't have to embrace the suck on is shopping at MyPillow.

Thanks to our amazing sponsor, MyPillow, you can get up to 80% off when you use promo code Kevin.

Yes, you can go shopping today, use promo code Kevin, and you can get up to 80% off.

Now, here's what's extremely exciting right now is they have the $25 extravaganza.

Some of their very best products are literally only $25. It is insane.

Be sure to go shopping today at mypillow.com and use promo code Kevin.

That link is also inside of today's show notes if that makes life any easier for you.

I also want to remind you, if you would like to send in your own prayer request, please do so.

That's how this is going to be kept going is I want to do it as long as it's something that you, my listeners, want to participate in.

To send your prayer requests, I've made it super easy. You can text your prayer request to 877-749-8178.

Again, send your prayer request as a text message to 877-749-8178.

And with that, we are ready to dive into the meat and potatoes of today's episode, this idea of embracing the suck.

In the military, embracing the suck, it's more than just a catchphrase.

It's literally a means of survival.

It means leaning into the hard times, not giving up when you want to.

It means literally embracing the hardest moment that you're going through.

Because you know on the other side is victory.

How this relates to you is, well, today we're talking about what it means to lean in on the hard stuff that you're going through, what it means to embrace it, to understand it, to give it the attention it deserves so that you can emerge on the other side, a bigger and better version of you.

Embracing the suck, it's about you acknowledging that what I'm going through right now, yeah, it's hard.

It's difficult. It literally is about to break me, but I know that I will get through this.

I know that there is light on the other side of this darkness that I'm in.

Sometimes you just have to remind yourself to just embrace it, to understand it.

And like I said, to give it the attention it deserves.

Sometimes we just want to immediately start fighting, start struggling.

But sometimes we just need to relax.

Sometimes we need to lean in and we need to embrace the sucky moments in life.

I want you to think back to a point in your life when you were doing something.

Maybe you were out for a run and you were so tired. You were ready to just give up, and now it's the hardest part of the entire run.

You're going uphill, up the mountain, and you didn't give up. You didn't turn around.

Instead, you embraced it. You dug a little deeper, and you found a part of you that you didn't even know existed before, and you ran up that hill faster than you could have ever imagined.

You embraced the moment. it. Or maybe you were at work and the boss gave you a really big project, something totally overwhelming, something that you never thought you would be able to complete in the unrealistic time that the boss gave you.

And yet what happened?

You did it. You embraced the moment. You took ownership over what you were given and you did it.

You embraced the sucky moments and look what happened on the other side.

Why this matters is that when you think back to the stuff that you've already done, the really bad moments that you've already overcome, well, those are you just just reminding yourself of how incredible you really and truly are.

I think so many of us, we put ourselves down. We don't think that we can handle it.

We look at other people and we say to ourselves, wow, I could never do what they're doing.

But the fact is true is that, None of us think we can get through the hard times until we're in them.

And then at that moment, it's up to us to either embrace it and to get through it or to fight and to ruin our lives.

Today, it's about you looking at life in the hard times a little bit differently.

It's not about giving up. No, embracing the suck has nothing to do with giving up.

It's you literally embracing it. The whole reason why this topic is being discussed today is because of the guest in our previous episode.

If you listen to that, then you will know that our guest, he had the unimaginable happen to him.

He was sentenced at 19 years old to 12 years in prison.

Now, he could have chosen to let that ruin his life, but instead he embraced it. He embraced the sucky moment in life, and he turned his life around for the better.

That is what we're talking about when you embrace the suck, is you turn the negative into a positive.

You find the good in the midst of the bad, all because you chose to change your mindset, to change what actions you're taking by embracing the moment as it is.

Now, I understand that sometimes things are easier said than done.

So a few strategies to help you the next time that you're in a moment that is hard and you're wondering to yourself, how do I exactly embrace this horrible moment?

Depending upon the situation, I want you to first and foremost, just breathe.

Breathe, remind yourself to take a deep breath, to get present in the moment of recognizing how you feel, what your emotions are feeling, what your body's telling you.

But it all happens by you taking a moment to just sit still and breathe.

Big, deep breaths, it will do wonders for you.

You'll find that your mind gets a little bit clear year.

And maybe a lot of that stress, it starts to go away all by being purposeful with taking big, deep breaths and helping yourself to relax.

The other tactic is to prepare mentally for the hard times in life.

Maybe you're not in a hard time right now, which thank goodness, but if you know If you know how life is, then you know that there will be tough times to come.

Maybe you can go ahead and start trying to get yourself prepared mentally for when those times do come and start getting your own game plan together to how you're not going to fight through it. You're just going to embrace it.

And by embracing it, you will get out of it faster than if you fight and struggle, just like the example of the quicksand at the beginning of today's episode.

My other tactic for you, it goes back to what I spoke about earlier.

Is you looking back on your life and letting yourself realize all the stuff that you've already done, all the moments that you did embrace and you got through it and you came out a better person on the other end.

Sometimes we need to remind ourselves of how awesome we really are by looking at the stuff we've already done.

And my last little tactic is to start seeing challenges as opportunities.

Now, trust me, I know it sounds kind of stupid because nobody wants to go through the hard times in life.

And that's not what I'm suggesting.

What I'm saying, though, is the fact is true.

You, me, we will all go through hard times.

So what if we can figure out, though, how to use those challenges as opportunities?

That's what I'm talking about here. is for you starting to look at the hard times at a different angle and figuring out how you can harness them to propel you forward, turning the bad into good.

So with those tactics, with today's episode, I want you to now start to think about how this can apply to your life right now.

What is the stuff that you're going through? What is the stuff that maybe you've been struggling, fighting against, and you've gotten nowhere? where.

You're like a salmon trying to swim upstream.

You're swimming with all your might, yet you're not moving forward.

How can you now, knowing this philosophy, start to implement it in your life today?

What can you lean into? What can you embrace?

The stuff that you don't feel like you should be embracing, but you do because you know the sooner you can embrace it, the sooner The sooner you can give it the attention it deserves, the faster you'll get out on the other side.

I want you to remember this is the fact is true is that oftentimes the hardest things we go through lead to some of the most profound changes in our lives and changes for the better.

You're listening to a guy who went blind over 20 years ago.

And it took a long time, but I finally realized all the amazing blessings that have come out of what happened to me.

I'm only here doing this podcast because of what has happened to me, because I chose to lean in, to embrace the suckiness, and to figure out how can I make good out of the bad.

And I want the same for you.

I want to end by asking you, if you are experiencing a moment that you feel like, wow, okay, how do I really embrace it? How do I get through it?

And you would love for somebody to talk it out with, well, I'm going to leave a link in today's show notes where you can book a free call with me.

I would love to be able to help you to walk through it, to figure out what your game plan is, how you're going to get through it, how can you embrace it, yet still keep moving forward to get out of it.

Again, I'll leave that link inside of today's show notes.

I would be glad to be able to sit down and talk with you and see if we can't figure out a game plan for you to keep moving forward with that.

My name is Kevin Lowe. This is Great Grace and Inspiration.

And Hey, maybe it's time for you to embrace the suck.

Music.