Author: Nancy

Before you quit, read this!

| Nancy

Before you quit something that you have been working on with your heart and soul, read this blog.

Have you heard of a term, “second wind’?  If you have just read along.  If you have not, read along anyway.  You won’t regret it.

I ran cross country during high school.

My coach Vincent used to educate us, well beyond just coaching us to be faster and stronger. I used to love that. One of the things he used to talk to us about in his kind voice was about the “second wind.”  Second wind is when a runner is all tapped out of energy from the race, and often when he or she feels like they have nothing left in them, a surge of new energy emerges so that they could finish the race that they began.

I had forgotten about it until the other day when I was working out on my treadmill.  I had not slept very well for a few days due to stressful events, not to mention not having eaten too many calories.

At one point, I thought that I had no choice but to stop because I had nothing more left in my body to continue.  I just really wanted to stop.  It was becoming almost unbearable how tired, lack of fuel, and energy I had to keep moving forward.

I was going to stop, but then I saw the number on my distance gauge, and I decided to go till at least a two-mile mark.  

The funny thing is that before I reached the number, I got a surge of energy.  I felt complete restoration of my strength and stamina, and I was able to go another 4 miles completing my daily goal of 6.2 miles/10k.

I was so happy to reach my goal, but also it made me think about how life goals also work the same way.

Often when we are completely drained of efforts that we have put into what we are working on when we feel completely tapped out, it is those of us who continue moving forward that makes it to the end.

It is this aspect, the quitting when things look hard, the very thing that differentiates between the reaching of one’s goals and not reaching one’s goals.

Your choice when you are brave enough to go after a challenge, is only one, to keep going because to quit is not to live your full life. 

Reaching your potential is that important.

No one can know and no one can tell you if what you are trying to do will give you the fruit that you want.  You have just to keep moving toward it because you are the one that has been assigned this assignment, and you have to keep moving till you get there.

Of course, you can and must pivot, learn, and adapt along the way but all of those pivoting, learning, and adopting must be for moving your project to its end to the success of what you are accomplishing.  

In the end, it is the person who remains in the race that wins.

In life, you are in this race against yourself.  You win or you lose, it is up to you.

How to let go of the past

| Nancy

I used to, only a few years ago, be a person who did not know how to let go of my past, specifically, pains from my past.  I would think about them, ruminate about them and waste a lot of my emotional energy, not to mention, precious time dwelling and re-experiencing the bad moments.

I used to feel frustrated and angry with people who would listen to my complaints and say, “let it go.  You need to learn to let go.”  I felt it invalidated what happened to me and even if I wanted to just let it go, I just couldn’t figure out how.

Yesterday, I saw a woman that I admire post something on social media about the benefit of letting go, and the responses to her post were heartbreaking.  A response went up immediately that said, “how?”  and then other posts responding with, “yes, I want to know that too.”  I could feel the pain from them, their wish to feel better, to stop living in their painful past.

I will share with you in this blog the powerful and effective way that I let go and if you follow them, like me you will not only let go of your pain from your past but will live in your present moment that is far more powerful than you had even imagined that you ever could.

The following steps are how you let go in the most long-lasting and authentic way.

First, come to understand and know that the person who caused you pain did not know what they were doing.

The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote in his diary to himself, to remember every morning that people in his life will mass up, hurt him, backstab him, be jealous of him, to cheat him, all of it.  Then the next thing he tells himself is to remember that he is connected to every one of those people in the oneness of the human race.  He tells himself that all those who make those mistakes do not know what they are doing so what he has to do is to love them regardless.

If you think about the fact that this emperor, who could have just judged those people and punished them, instead he opted to think of them in ways that would allow him to love them instead and to realize that we are all part of one another.

Doing this will grow your heart and wisdom which means who you become a person that lets things go with ease more and more every day.

Next, meditating on what Marcus Aurelius said to himself, move beyond self-focus and focus on the bigger picture of the Universe.  Take the role of a problem solver and a creator, a participant in making our world work instead of being a victim in any and all circumstances.

When you practice this way of being, you began to grow and stretch in ways that you had never known that you could.

Next, create an environment that will nurture your letting go habit

  • Begin meditating at least once a day for 15 minutes
  • Mindfully take good and loving care of yourself daily
  • Do a gratitude list every day first thing in the morning and the last thing at night

Daily enjoy watching the powerful positive changes that begin to take place in your emotional life.

Enjoy the video below for more information: