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

And yet you hear their stories and you think, and yet look at them now.

Look at all that they've done with their life since that moment.

And you wonder, how?

Why can't I do that?

What's wrong with me?

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.

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.

They call it post-traumatic growth, PTG.

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.

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

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

So, with that, my friend, let's go ahead and dive in.

This is Grit Grace and Inspiration.

SPEAKER_02: I got grit, grace and inspiration on my mind.

Don't have a storm, I don't won't be left behind.

I'm stepping out of fake, because I'm perfectly designed.

I got grit, grace and inspiration on my mind.

SPEAKER_00: 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.

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

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.

You're in your web browser.

And hey, that's awesome.

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.

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

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

So with that said, what does thriving even mean?

I believe that thriving, it's more than just feeling fine.

It's more than just feeling good.

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

Basically, it's you no longer just living to live.

You're not just existing, but no, you're living for something greater.

You're excited about life.

You have hope.

You have ambitions, you have dreams that you are actively pursuing.

That, in my opinion, is thriving.

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

I think too many of us are merely surviving life.

We just go through the motions day to day.

There's nothing that we're excited about.

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

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

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.

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.

Now, in focus on the specific application of this idea of thriving after adversity, of post-traumatic growth, 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, I and me.

And we each have our own way of dealing with stuff.

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

Some people, they can just rebound, they keep moving, they keep pushing, grinding.

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

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

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

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

When you're tired of feeling like nothing's working out, when you're tired of just surviving life and you're ready to thrive, but you don't know how.

You don't know why.

You think maybe it's just not meant for you.

That is what today is about.

Today is your kickstart.

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

No, because it's gonna look different for everybody.

But what I believe today is, is three core pillars that are gonna get you started on the right foot, of moving from merely surviving to ultimately thriving, no matter what the situation may be.

Pillar number one, diving right in, is mindset.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

And I believe a good reason.

And I was able at that moment to begin to shift from surviving to thriving.

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.

Remove yourself from the day-to-day and look at it from the outside and begin to look at the situation from all the different angles of why it happened, what happened, what have you learned?

How have you grown?

Who were you before?

Who are you now?

Who do you want to be?

And eventually the pain will always be there.

But the purpose will begin to take over.

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.

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

Now I get it, affirmations sometimes seem a little bit corny, a little silly.

I get it.

But what I'm talking about here is mindset, a mindset shift.

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

Instead, life is just helping me grow.

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

No, they're just making me who I am.

They're building me into a bigger, better, stronger version of me.

And you know what?

It's up to me to flip the script on this whole story I've been living.

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, well, my friend, you can be them.

You can be you.

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.

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

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

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

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

I am certainly in that camp.

I if I want something, if I have a big goal, a dream, I want it now.

I want it yesterday.

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

Instead, it comes by taking consistent, tiny actions, the little wins, the seemingly nothings, the things that you think don't matter, they actually do matter.

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

And in terms of this, they mean everything.

When I became blind, everything was foreign.

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.

I didn't even know my own home.

I didn't know anything.

And yet, how did it begin?

By one little action at a time.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

My friend, I want you to start putting check boxes next to the day.

I don't want to X mark.

I want to say a check mark because I want to be sure that you are making the most of every day.

Our time is limited.

None of us know how long we're here.

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

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

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

Little, tiny actions, they will add up.

They will mean something in the end.

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.

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.

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.

It is for you.

This life was meant for you to thrive in, to not just survive.

Today is your day.

My third pillar in this concept of post-traumatic growth is the idea that community, it means everything.

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

It's the people who you lean on, it's the people who you do life with.

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

When we stay isolated, trauma is magnified.

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

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

You were not meant to do this alone.

We're not meant to do life alone.

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.

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.

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

Maybe it's divorce, job loss, maybe you've recently had a medical diagnosis, you've been diagnosed with something tragic like cancer.

Maybe you've recently had an accident, you had something happen, and maybe now you've been left blind.

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

Whatever it is, go on to Facebook and do a search for it.

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.

And that is the cool thing about Facebook, is that there is a group for everything.

I belong to multiple groups on Facebook for all the different things that I'm doing in life, from whether personal stuff to professional.

I've got multiple podcasting groups I'm a part of.

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

There is a group for everything.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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?

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

And you can lean on them for support.

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

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.

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.

Trauma does not get the final word.

You do.

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

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

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

What you didn't need, I hope you leave.

Leave it for somebody else.

Leave it for another day.

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

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.

And today, I hope that is you.

My friend, my name is Kevin Lowe.

If you ever want to talk, please reach out.

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

You can also just simply head on over to the website gritgraceinspiration.com.

You can reach out to me through there.

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

So if you need anything, if you need to just simply chat, be sure to reach out.

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

Remember, hit that follow button on Apple Podcasts, Spotify.

If you're on your computer, jump over to the app for a better listening experience and be sure that you're following the podcast.

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

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 Little, and this, of course, was great, Grace, and inspiration.

SPEAKER_01: Rising higher every day.