What I Learned on the Worst Day of 2016

Yesterday life beat me up.

From literal leg twitching, gut-wrenching pain to the cresting sadness of anger and disappointment – it didn’t let up all day.

To give you some perspective – a woman put 3/4 of her pinky finger into my nasal cavities and held there and that WASN’T EVEN CLOSE to the hard part.

The more I grow, the faster and more dramatically I swing between highs and lows.

The highs are getting really high for a long time. But the lows are getting really low – though luckily for a short time.

The irony of today was that the most challenging, painful parts were the moments I invested the most in myself:

– Excruciating pain of Rolfing is my gift to myself to release decades of tension.
– Tense lunchtime debate with a date is because I speak up for what I believe.
– Breath-taking (not in a good way) hill-heavy bike ride is my dedication to health and fitness.
– Heart-heavying hurt shows I value & love myself more than I was treated.

Sometimes pain is good. It proves you’ve changed or makes sure you do.

So many of us are willing to live in low-level misery. Numbing out our pain with food, drugs, and alcohol.

We just quietly try to die inside instead of choosing to live. Then we misinterpret the highs as life because that’s all we have room left to feel.

But there’s a difference between adrenalin-seeking spikes of pleasure and pain and the shortening wave span of growth.

In the former, you’re trapped in a cycle and trend towards the bottom.
In the latter, you steadily get higher longer and trend towards the top.

That’s why drugs can’t give you what meditation can.

That’s why a hobby can’t replace the desire to pursue your calling.

That’s why numbing out never leads to moving on.

Your stuck feeding on the bottom layer of your worst tendencies.

Growth still hurts, but the end result is better.

The end result is being who you always knew you could be.

It’s okay to stumble and make the same mistakes over and over. Keep going.

Put down the booze or the food or the drama you use to self-soothe and let yourself feel.

Then take action to fix what’s wrong.

It’s still going to hurt, but that’s the only way through it and out the other side.

Anything less is just robbing yourself of the chance to be fully alive – right here, right now.

Be free. Be brave. Be YOU!

Love,
Alexis