#398: How Do You Heal When You Still Hurt? 3 Keys to Healing After Trauma

Kevin Lowe: Well, my friend, if you're at a point in your story of life where you're tired of just merely surviving and you're ready to feel what it means to be thriving, to wake up excited about life again, well, today is for you.

Kevin Lowe: Because today I'm going to introduce you to three core pillars that I believe are necessary for any of us to achieve that growth on the other side of trauma.

Kevin Lowe: They call it post-traumatic growth, PTG.

Kevin Lowe: Today, I'm going to give you three pillars that have worked for me in my own life and that I hope can help you in yours.

Kevin Lowe: So my friend, it is episode 398 of Grit, Grace, and Inspiration.

Kevin Lowe: I'm, of course, your host, Kevin Lowe, and it is my pleasure to have you here with me today.

Kevin Lowe: So with that, my friend, let's go ahead and dive in. This is Grit, Grace, and Inspiration.

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Kevin Lowe: Episode, let's start by focusing on what it's going to take to move from merely surviving to ultimately thriving.

Kevin Lowe: But before we even do that, if there's anything in today's episode that resonates, that clicks with you, that you think, man, I think Kevin, he's talking directly to me.

Kevin Lowe: And maybe you have not been listening to this podcast before.

Kevin Lowe: Well, my friend, be sure that you are following the podcast in your favorite app. I know that many of you might just be listening on your computer.

Kevin Lowe: You're in your web browser. And hey, that's awesome.

Kevin Lowe: But did you know it's simple and easy to be sure that you get a new episode ready to go every week by following the podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts, you can find grit, grace, and inspiration.

Kevin Lowe: And when you do, just be sure that you hit the follow button up at the top of the page.

Kevin Lowe: That way, every Tuesday morning when a new episode is released, you have it ready to go.

Kevin Lowe: So with that said, what does thriving even mean?

Kevin Lowe: I believe that thriving, it's more than just feeling fine. It's more than just feeling good.

Kevin Lowe: It's you waking up with passion, with purpose, with you genuinely excited about life.

Kevin Lowe: Basically, it's you no longer just living to live. You're not just existing.

Kevin Lowe: But no, you're living for something greater. You're excited about life. You have hope.

Kevin Lowe: You have ambitions. You have dreams that you are actively pursuing.

Kevin Lowe: That, in my opinion, is thriving.

Kevin Lowe: And to be honest, I don't think that many of us are thriving.

Kevin Lowe: I think too many of us are merely surviving life.

Kevin Lowe: We just go through the motions day to day. There's nothing that we're excited about.

Kevin Lowe: There's nothing that we're actively doing to better ourselves, to better our life.

Kevin Lowe: And in that, I feel like we're missing out on a whole lot of life.

Kevin Lowe: So my friend, whether or not you've actually just recently gone through some type of traumatic event or not, I believe this pertains to you.

Kevin Lowe: Because if you've just been living, if you've just been going through the motions, well, I hope to change that because I want you to experience what it means to be thriving in life.

Kevin Lowe: Now, in focus on the specific application of this idea of thriving after adversity of post-traumatic growth.

Kevin Lowe: I want to be sure that you understand that I am somebody who believes strongly that we are each on our own path. You are you.

Kevin Lowe: I am me. And we each have our own way of dealing with stuff.

Kevin Lowe: Some people, they get through the hard stuff faster than others.

Kevin Lowe: Some people, they can just rebound. They keep moving. They keep pushing, grinding.

Kevin Lowe: Where others, maybe you just need to lie in bed for a while.

Kevin Lowe: You need to be able to have time to just cry it out and be sad.

Kevin Lowe: And there is a time and place for all of that.

Kevin Lowe: But what today is, is today is speaking to you when you're ready for more.

Kevin Lowe: When you're tired of feeling like nothing's working out.

Kevin Lowe: When you're tired of just surviving life and you're ready to thrive, but you don't know how.

Kevin Lowe: You don't know why you think maybe it's just not meant for you.

Kevin Lowe: That is what today is about. Today is your kickstart.

Kevin Lowe: This isn't a proven, say, roadmap or blueprint.

Kevin Lowe: No, because it's going to look different for everybody. But what I believe today is, is three core pillars that are going to get you started on the right foot of moving from merely surviving to ultimately thriving, no matter what the situation may be.

Kevin Lowe: Pillar number one, diving right in, is mindset.

Kevin Lowe: Your mindset, it's not just shaping your thoughts, it's shaping your reality.

Kevin Lowe: And one of the biggest shifts that you can make when things are going wrong is to shift out of this victim mindset, basically focusing on all the things that have gone wrong about life happening to you and instead beginning to shift your focus into how life is working for you.

Kevin Lowe: Yeah, there's some bad stuff that happens in life, no doubt.

Kevin Lowe: I became blind when I was 17 years old. And if anybody tried to dare tell me that it was for my good, that there was a positive side of it, I would not have taken that very well.

Kevin Lowe: So, again, there is a point in each of our stories when this is applicable, because I did finally come to a place many years later when I was finally ready to understand that what happened to me happened for a reason.

Kevin Lowe: And I believe a good reason. And I was able at that moment to begin to shift from surviving to thriving.

Kevin Lowe: That is what I want for you. When you are ready, I want you to begin to look at your situation from a different angle.

Kevin Lowe: Remove yourself from the day-to-day and look at it from the outside.

Kevin Lowe: And begin to look at the situation from all the different angles of why it happened. What happened?

Kevin Lowe: What have you learned? How have you grown?

Kevin Lowe: Who were you before? Who are you now? Who do you want to be?

Kevin Lowe: And eventually, the pain will always be there.

Kevin Lowe: But the purpose will begin to take over.

Kevin Lowe: So what I want you to do, if you're at a point where you're ready for it, I want you to begin small, softly, encouraging.

Kevin Lowe: Every morning when you wake up, I want you to adopt a new affirmation.

Kevin Lowe: Now, I get it. Affirmations sometimes seem a little bit corny, a little silly.

Kevin Lowe: I get it. But what I'm talking about here is mindset, a mindset shift.

Kevin Lowe: Maybe it's as simple as switching from an idea that life isn't against me.

Kevin Lowe: Instead, life is just helping me grow.

Kevin Lowe: The things I've been dealing with, that I've been struggling with, they're not out to get me.

Kevin Lowe: No, they're just making me who I am. They're building me into a bigger, better, stronger version of me.

Kevin Lowe: And you know what? It's up to me to flip the script on this whole story I've been living.

Kevin Lowe: And it's up to me to turn it into good. Because again, I said at the beginning of the episode, if you see the stories of others and think to yourself, wow, must be nice to be them.

Kevin Lowe: Well, my friend, you can be them. You can be you.

Kevin Lowe: And I promise when I tell you that this idea of growing, becoming bigger and better on the other side of trauma, it is for you.

Kevin Lowe: Once we have pillar number one nailed down, adopting this different mindset, a mindset shift, we can move to pillar two.

Kevin Lowe: And pillar two, my friend, it's taking action, but not just any action, certainly not big action.

Kevin Lowe: I'm talking about little action, little micro steps, micro wins throughout your day.

Kevin Lowe: What I mean is that so many times we want things and we want them now.

Kevin Lowe: I am certainly in that camp.

Kevin Lowe: If I want something, if I have a big goal, a dream, I want it now. I want it yesterday.

Kevin Lowe: But achieving big change in our lives, it doesn't come from taking one big action.

Kevin Lowe: Instead, it comes by taking consistent, tiny actions.

Kevin Lowe: The little wins. The seemingly nothings. The things that you think don't matter, they actually do matter.

Kevin Lowe: Because in life, we all know, it's the little things that mean the most.

Kevin Lowe: And in terms of this, they mean everything.

Kevin Lowe: When I became blind, everything was foreign.

Kevin Lowe: I was plunged into a world of darkness, of blackness. There were no shapes, no shadows, no light, no dark, just pure and utter blackness.

Kevin Lowe: I didn't even know my own home. I didn't know anything.

Kevin Lowe: And yet, how did it begin? By one little action at a time.

Kevin Lowe: It began by understanding that you could walk through your home by just running your finger along the wall. You could feel your way down the hallway.

Kevin Lowe: It began by getting my first cane, my first blind guy cane, and next step, well, learning how to use it and going to classes and having an instructor teach me how to use it.

Kevin Lowe: And then, of course, years would go by and, well, I'd learn how to use echolocation, something that completely transformed my life, something that completely transformed the way that I got around, the way that I do get around today.

Kevin Lowe: Little steps, little wins throughout your days are what are going to mean everything.

Kevin Lowe: For you today, I ask you, what is something little that you can start doing to start moving you forward personally, professionally, to get you moving out of this victim mindset and into one of victory, to go from surviving to thriving?

Kevin Lowe: Maybe it's as simple as beginning to reach out to people like your friends, to pick up the phone, to make a phone call.

Kevin Lowe: Or maybe it's more than just speaking with a friend.

Kevin Lowe: Maybe it's something that you're pursuing. You finally pick up the phone and you make a call to find out about if somewhere is hiring, to call the college to see when they're accepting applications for new students.

Kevin Lowe: Whatever it is, I just want you to begin to take action.

Kevin Lowe: Because the more that we stay stuck, the more that we don't move forward.

Kevin Lowe: And it's so easy to let every day pass without taking action.

Kevin Lowe: But every day that you let pass without taking an action is you just literally crossing that day off.

Kevin Lowe: My friend, I want you to start putting check boxes next to the date.

Kevin Lowe: I don't want to X mark. I want to see a check mark because I want to be sure that you are making the most of every day.

Kevin Lowe: Our time is limited. None of us know how long we're here.

Kevin Lowe: And I believe that while we are here, we need to be doing our darndest to be sure we're living it out fully.

Kevin Lowe: So my friend, I encourage you that once you start adopting the mindset, shifting your perspective, that you also begin to take action.

Kevin Lowe: And again, action doesn't have to be big.

Kevin Lowe: Little tiny actions, they will add up. They will mean something in the end.

Kevin Lowe: And maybe for you, it's as simple as you being sure that every morning you get up, you make your bed, you get dressed, you get out of your pajamas, and you just start living life again.

Kevin Lowe: Because my friend, again, the whole point here is that if you are struggling, if you're going through some stuff, I don't want you to have to stay there for long.

Kevin Lowe: Matter of fact, if you're listening to this episode, I think you've probably already been there long enough, and I want you to begin to get to experience what it means to be thriving in life.

Kevin Lowe: It is for you. This life was meant for you to thrive in, to not just survive.

Kevin Lowe: Today is your day. My third pillar in this concept of post-traumatic growth is the idea that community, it means everything.

Kevin Lowe: What I mean when I say community is it's your circle.

Kevin Lowe: It's the people who you lean on. It's the people who you do life with.

Kevin Lowe: But it's also people who maybe understand exactly what you're going through because they are there or they have been.

Kevin Lowe: When we stay isolated, trauma is magnified.

Kevin Lowe: But we get into a community, that's when we begin to amplify us.

Kevin Lowe: That's when we begin to move out of this trap that we've fallen into and we begin to live again.

Kevin Lowe: You were not meant to do this alone. We're not meant to do life alone.

Kevin Lowe: We're meant to do it with people, with people who we trust, who we love, who we can lean on, who support us as we support them.

Kevin Lowe: So for you, I encourage you to not only have your core people, your family members, the people who you lean on, but also to reach out to people who are in the same situation as you.

Kevin Lowe: An amazing way to do this is to go on Facebook and do a search for whatever it is that you're going through.

Kevin Lowe: Maybe it's divorce, job loss. Maybe you've recently had a medical diagnosis.

Kevin Lowe: You've been diagnosed with something tragic like cancer. Maybe you've recently had an accident.

Kevin Lowe: You had something happen, and maybe now you've been left blind.

Kevin Lowe: Maybe you have a friend, a family member who's struggling and you don't know how to be there for them.

Kevin Lowe: Whatever it is, go onto Facebook and do a search for it.

Kevin Lowe: And when you type in that search word, I want you to then click on the little button for groups because I want you to find a group.

Kevin Lowe: And that is the cool thing about Facebook is that there is a group for everything.

Kevin Lowe: I belong to multiple groups on Facebook for all the different things that I'm doing in life.

Kevin Lowe: From whether personal stuff to professional, I've got multiple podcasting groups I'm a part of.

Kevin Lowe: I have groups for public speakers, but I also have groups for people who are blind, visually impaired.

Kevin Lowe: There is a group for everything.

Kevin Lowe: And one of the best things about it, especially when finding groups with people who are going through the same stuff as you, is it makes you realize that you're not the only one.

Kevin Lowe: I've connected with people on the other side of the world through these Facebook groups who they have the same medical condition that I do.

Kevin Lowe: Not just being blind, but also having this condition where I have no pituitary gland.

Kevin Lowe: That was caused by the same brain tumor that caused me to go blind.

Kevin Lowe: It also killed off my pituitary, which that leads to a whole host of other medical issues.

Kevin Lowe: And going to doctor after doctor who tells me that I'm their most complicated patient, it makes you feel like you're the only one. Why me?

Kevin Lowe: And yet, when you get plugged into a group, you find, wow, I'm not the only one. That there's other people.

Kevin Lowe: And you can lean on them for support.

Kevin Lowe: So again, go to Facebook, type in that keyword that describes what you're going through, and find a group.

Kevin Lowe: It's the easiest way to get started by you getting plugged into a community of people who get exactly what you're going through.

Kevin Lowe: To wrap up today's episode, now that I've completed telling you about the three pillars that I believe are necessary for us to shift out of surviving and into thriving, to go from being a victim to a victor, I want to end by just leaving you with one last bit of inspiration, one little bit of hope, something that's going to remind you that, my friend, you got this.

Kevin Lowe: Trauma does not get the final word. You do.

Kevin Lowe: Your past, it may have shaped you, but it does not get to define you.

Kevin Lowe: Only you get to decide what happens from this point forward.

Kevin Lowe: My hope is that you take what you needed to hear today and you put it into action.

Kevin Lowe: What you didn't need, I hope you leave. Leave it for somebody else.

Kevin Lowe: Leave it for another day.

Kevin Lowe: I just want to be sure that you are leaving here a better version than when you came.

Kevin Lowe: That's why I'm here. That's why I do this podcast at now almost 400 episodes is I just want to be sure that I'm doing my part to help somebody else.

Kevin Lowe: And today, I hope that is you.

Kevin Lowe: My friend, my name is Kevin Lowe. If you ever want to talk, please reach out.

Kevin Lowe: My contact details are inside of every episode's show notes.

Kevin Lowe: You can also just simply head on over to the website, gritgraceinspiration.com.

Kevin Lowe: You can reach out to me through there.

Kevin Lowe: Whatever it is, I just want to be sure that I'm here for you.

Kevin Lowe: So if you need anything, if you need to just simply chat, Be sure to reach out.

Kevin Lowe: And with that, my friend, I'll see you next week.

Kevin Lowe: Remember, hit that follow button on Apple Podcasts, Spotify.

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Kevin Lowe: It helps the algorithm by showing that we got people interested, wanting to listen to the podcast every day.

Kevin Lowe: And I believe it helps you out by being sure that the newest episode is ready to go each and every week. So with that, my friend, again, I'm Kevin Lowe.

Kevin Lowe: And this, of course, was grit, grace, and inspiration.

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