#325: Become the Author of Your Story: Rewrite Your Current Chapter into a Tale of Inspiration

So with that, I hope you're ready for it. This is episode 325.

Yo, are you ready to flip the script on life? Because those bad days, they're just doors to better days.

And that's exactly what we do here at Grit, Grace, and Inspiration.

Your host, Kevin Lowe, he's been flipping the script on his own life, turning over 20 years of being completely blind into straight up inspiration, motivation, and encouragement just for you.

So kick back, relax, and let me introduce you to your host, Kevin Lowe.

Let me ask you this. Do you ever feel like life is a game of dodgeball?

Yeah, you're back in elementary school, and you're the only one who's being pelted by the ball.

Time after time, you have the dodgeball flying past your head, maybe every once in a while hitting you right in the face.

The hits, they just keep coming one after another. Feels like you can't even catch your breath. You can't even recover from one hit before another one smacks you in the other side.

Basically, you're doing nothing but dodging, blocking, trying to escape what life is throwing at you.

But here's what today is about. What if you switch things up?

What if you quit playing defense and switched over to offense?

What I'm talking about is what if you stop dodging those challenges and you step into them? You catch that ball and you catch it and you throw it back with even more force.

Because life, my friend, it's not about avoiding challenges.

No, it's about embracing them. It's about catching them and returning them with even more force, making it into your good.

The topic of today's episode was inspired by my interview with Alethea Felton, who I introduced you inside of our last episode.

That would have been episode 324. she is an incredible woman who's been through more than most people can imagine and honestly you could say that she was dealt a bad hand and yet if you heard her and heard her story and met her and heard her spirit coming through her voice you will know that aletheia felton when she looks at the glass she doesn't see it just as half full she sees that glass is overflowing flowing.

This mindset is powerful. It's pivotal.

And I want you to be able to start to look at life that way for yourself.

Now, I understand for some people, it comes easier than others.

I think it just comes down to our personality.

But today, I'm going to work with you. I'm going to coach you through it.

I'm going to have you ready to start looking at things from a different view.

Because this, my friend, is about a mindset that things are happening for you, not to you.

And when you can adopt this type of mindset shift, it changes everything.

I want you to think about life's challenges like weights in a gym.

At first, the first day in the gym, you know they're heavy. They feel almost impossible to lift.

You struggle just to lift even the littlest weight.

But But you know, the more you go, the more reps you put in, the stronger you get, the easier it is to pick them up.

And before you know it, you're lifting more and more weight than you ever thought possible.

It's not that the weights or in this regard, the challenges are any less.

No, you are just becoming stronger. You are becoming a person who's able to handle it a little bit more and a little bit more because you're becoming a bigger, better version of you.

Every obstacle is just another rep. It's not about the weight.

It's about the muscle you're building, the strength you're gaining, the person you're becoming.

And that, my friend, is how you grow. It's how you step into a new version of you.

It's how you get to show up as your best self.

The fact is true, I know it as well as you do, that we're all gonna get hit by things in life that we can't control.

It's part of life. It's part of growing.

But what I feel separates the people who thrive versus those who crumble in the face of challenges.

Is all on how they react to it.

Basically, when you walk outside and it's raining, do you get upset and do you get angry at the weather and think, oh my gosh?

Or do you say, screw it, let's dance in the rain.

You get to make the decision. It's like that with everything in life.

We can't control what happens. We can't control when it rains, but we can control how we view it. what a reaction is to it.

It's the same thing with the challenges you face, the struggles you go through, the hardships.

Now, I'm not saying that things are easy and I'm not trying to lighten what you're going through.

No, trust me when I say I understand that life can be very difficult.

Things can be really hard. And at times, life is just honestly totally unfair.

But what I'm telling you is that in the big picture of things, I'm trying to give you a tool today, a mindset shift that's going to help you get through it.

Because the faster you can overcome it, the faster you can get past that challenge, and basically turn it into a force of good for you, the quicker you're going to get back to a life that you love again.

And that's what I want for you. I want you to get past the challenges, overcome the hurdles, and get back to loving life.

To living life the way that you want to.

Alethea Felton, she didn't get to choose her health challenges, but she sure did choose how she shows up each and every day.

Her glass is overflowing because she chose that it would be.

She made that decision. She decided to show up every day to look at it from a different view, to see the good instead of the bad, to focus on the positives instead of the negatives.

She decided to see her glass not as just half full, but overflowing.

So, my friend, here's the application. Here's the challenge.

Is the next time that life throws something at you that you didn't expect.

That seems like it's screwing everything up. Maybe it's a setback, a catastrophe, something that's just ruined the day or maybe impacting your life.

I want you at some point to remember to stop, to breathe.

And I want you to remind yourself that I may not be able to control what just happened, but I do control me.

I control how I react to it. I control how I show up from this point forward.

When you decide to react with intention, with strength, with a mindset that no matter what, you're going to keep pushing through it.

That has you showing up. That has you leaving a legacy.

It has people looking at you in a way you never could have imagined before.

And again, it's possible for you.

Even if you're somebody who's viewed the glass as half empty, that's a choice.

You can choose to view it as half full or better yet, you can choose to view it as overflowing.

It doesn't mean that it's easy. It might take some work, but the more you put in the reps like you would at the gym, the stronger you're going to become, the better you're going to get at turning challenges into opportunities for finding the good and the bad.

Because remember, my friend, there's always a rainbow after the rain.

The powerful message here is that when you do this, when you flip the script on life, on life's challenges, you stop being a victim.

Instead, you get to become the author of your own story.

Let me repeat that. When you adopt this mindset, you stop being a victim of life circumstances, and you instead turn into the author of your own story.

You are in control of how you react to the things that happen.

So to end, I'm going to take it back full circle to where we began.

You're back in gym class. You're playing dodgeball. But this time, well, Well, it's as an adult and the dodgeballs are actually the challenges of life.

But this time, instead of ducking, instead of running away, instead of being scared, I want you to step into it. You don't let that ball hit you in the chest.

No, you catch it and you return it stronger and faster than it ever came at you.

That is what you are capable of. I believe in you.

I know you are able and deserving of doing this because, my friend, you deserve everything that you ever could want in this life.

Sometimes we just got to be brave enough, strong enough to grab the challenges like we're grabbing a bull by the horns and figure out how can we ride this thing for everything it's worth, turning it into something for my good.

And that, my friend, is today's episode.

Short, sweet, hopefully powerful, hopefully inspiring.

And if nothing else, I hope that maybe you were a little bit entertained today with all of my metaphors and examples.

But honestly, the hope is always that today's episode can mean something to you.

Making today a little bit better than yesterday.

And hopefully tomorrow, even better.

Music.