How to go from Broken to Breakthrough
This post will teach you how to move from a place of brokenness, build resilience, and move into a place of thriving.
Name your biggest struggles
I want you to take a second, and think about the hardest 3 things you’ve ever been through in your life. Now, name them:
___________
___________
___________
For me, mine would probably be:
Death of my brother (in a car train accident)
Battling my eating disorders and body struggles
Calling off a fully-paid for wedding
As I was thinking about them, I defaulted to these areas, but I've had a lot of newer areas of struggle that also felt very hard at the time, that may seem like a breeze to others. (Just a friendly reminder that our battles all look different).
Becoming a bonus mom
The entrepreneurial journey
Figuring out who the heck I was (and wasn’t)
The hardest things you’ve ever been through
That’s part of the point of this exercise. To get your brain thinking about the hardest things you’ve ever been through AND conquered (because you’re still here). Or, maybe you’re still in the thick of it, navigating your way to the other side. That’s okay too. Use it.
The point is to see who you became in the process. Initially, when you were first in the piece that was trying to break you, pause & think about that time, & then think about how you grew through it, and WHO you became on the other side.
That’s the breakthrough. That’s the energy we want to pull from that experience (and we’ll use this magical elixir later).
Now, I want you to think about how you grew (because of) the hardest thing. Think about the lessons you learned, the strength you gained that you didn’t know was inside of you, and the resilience that was earned.
Resilience is the unexpected gift that keeps on giving.
That gift, you can’t buy. That is priceless (when you choose to see it that way). That’s where I want you to start and where we’ll start from next.
Remember that magical elixir that I referenced? That is what we’re going to maximize to the fullest. That is the gift that money CANNOT buy.
How to build resilience
Yeah, that stuff is your RESILIENCE. And, that is what you’re going to use in a way to get you whatever result you want in your life.
What we’re not going to do is beat ourselves up for what happened or complain about how life isn’t fair (yeah, it may not always be fair, but we’re not going to stay in victimhood because that just keeps us stuck here in a place we don’t want to be longer).
Nothing productive comes from victimhood. Got it? Good.
Although I’m not discounting anything tragic or not fair that happened to you or me, I do want us to utilize it for the greater good. I want us to extract as many lessons, strengths, and wisdom that we can and channel that into our next goal that we want to obtain.
I want you to think about one of the three areas that were the hardest things that you’ve ever been through. If you hadn't gone through it, and someone asked if you thought you would have survived it, would you have said yes?
I know for me, with my brother’s passing due to a car/train accident, I would have said no way. That would have been too much for my heart, my family, and that grief would have taken me down down down. And, in many ways it did.
But, I also uncovered a deeper strength inside that I never knew I had. That is the resilience that I'm talking about that we want to celebrate and cultivate!
What did you learn?
How did you grow?
What inner strength did you develop?
How did it change the way you view the world?
Believe it or not, this can be the fuel you use for results that you want, but seem impossible.
When this resilience is leveraged for good, watch out.
Are you ready to use this resilience superpower? It sounds crazy, but this works!
It’s okay…you’re human
Okay, hear me out first. Our primal brains are used to protecting us and keeping us safe. So when we have big goals and dreams that we want to achieve, it’s like your brain comes up with 18987872398273 ways to tell you to calm your butt down. It shouts ‘Stay safe! Stay comfortable! It’s scary out there!’
Then, you take that info in after ‘attempting’ what you want to achieve, and then view yourself as a procrastinating failure when it doesn’t happen.
Guess what...you have a human brain. You’re just like the rest of us.
The only problem that occurs is when we give in and then shame ourselves for not working. We have to work against our brain's primal instinct to stay safe, and in order to do so, we must find evidence where we’ve done amazing things in our past.
But, in order to cultivate this superpower, I want you to make a list of all the areas in your life that you have faced, lived through, and conquered in ways that you never thought were originally possible. These can be the smallest things or the biggest things, don’t discount anything.
Live in Breakthrough
I call this list: “live in breakthrough.” To me, it’s a way of literally priming my brain to see all the ‘hard things’ it’s done, and to make me feel:
1) UNSTOPPABLE
2) RESILIENT
3) GRATITUDE
4) ‘LET’S DO THIS’ fearless energy
For me, it makes me less scared and more willing to go after the thing that seems impossible and more curious to see if I can make it possible. That resilience evidence will fuel you forward.
The more you practice it (I do this daily) and then do the hard thing, the less the hard thing is quite as hard.
For me, it also has a sense of safety and security (in myself since I’ve done hard things) as I get out there into the realm of all the unknowns.
If you’ve been handed a lot of hard things in your life, guess what, YOUR RESILIENCE is going to really aid you for this thing, this result, this life that you’re after. UTILIZE every single drop of it.
As a recap:
Make a list of your hard things that you’ve made breakthroughs in
Recognize your resilience
Take action (towards the result you want to achieve) from this place of UNSTOPPABLE POWER
Repeat, consistently each day
Remember, the biggest shift makers aren’t grand, complex formulas to success. It’s in the ‘little’ habits that create the shifts, daily, that if done consistently will transform your life.
Are you ready to thrive?
Are you ready? THIS is how I help you take the reins of your life back & learn how to have the most epic relationship with YOURSELF (which is the root foundation to all other relationships).
I help women create the relationship that they want, faster.
Let’s chat! Click to book a consult call now.
Meg Smithson, Life Coach
Meg coaches women by identifying areas of self sabotage, helping them break up with the shame that usually accompanies that, and then shows them how to set boundaries around the emerging 2.0 version they want to become, and live that life, unapologetically.
Click to schedule a life coaching consultation with Meg.
