Leap from SURVIVING to THRIVING

Happy second week of June! How are you all thriving thus far? This work week has been a mixture of rest, listening to my body, and doing work.

 As my extended family was traveling, I had the honor of  doggie sitting their dog; and whew! It’s a lot of work to be a pet owner! I know pets don’t need as much supervision as children but my schedule was dependent on her needs; therefore, when she got sent back, I needed to recharge from that! 

After I had my time back, it gave me lots of things to consider, shift my perspectives, appreciate and be grateful for what I have. We all have our hardships in life and I am choosing my hardship by forging my path in order to create the life that I want. 

However, after this weekend, I shifted my perspective and concluded that I’m not living a hard life, I am indeed thriving. My life is thriving because I chose this path and I’m getting the opportunity to create the life that I want. I get to wake up everyday doing what I truly want to do and that is to create, use my voice to empower others, and to show people what it means to OWN IT. 

For those readers who have been with me from the beginning, you all have read my thoughts, personal struggles, and wins. For the past year, I have had to really do my shadow work by confronting it. 

Last summer, I sought the expertise of a spiritual healer who revealed to me that I had a lot of hidden wounds that I needed to work on. When I first heard this, I was like “WHAT?! ME? NO WAY!” Nah-AH!!!” My sole purpose in seeing this guidance was to have guidance on my future plans. NOT to deal with my past. How classic, a Therapist denying that they needed to work on their unhealed wounds and traumas while helping other people to work on their unhealed wounds and trauma. 

It wasn’t until I came back from Bali that I felt this heaviness within me. The spiritual healer had forewarned me that “Bali will change my life.” At that time, I thought it was going to be something big and fantastic; like I was going to have all these positive and amazing things happen for me. 

In a way, all the amazing and positive things did happen for me, it forced me to confront all the shadows that I had hidden and the mask that I used to hide behind. I have always been an overthinker, stuck in my head, over analyzed situations, and yet, I never asked myself WHY I had these reactions. 

It came to me that I’ve been in survival mode all my life and because of always being in survival mode, I reacted instead of responding; and when I didn’t know how to respond, I hid in my shadows. OOF! 

I’ve never been taught to thrive; my whole life and lineage has been all about surviving and just hoping that once you’re old enough physically, your duty is to create the next generation so that your lineage can continue on. 

Survival was in my genes; it’s in the genes of those who have suffered tremendous trauma and it kept us trapped into always thinking of safety instead of emotional, psychological, and spiritual expansion. 

However, many of us worked tirelessly in financial expansion without realizing that because of our need to survive,  it fueled us to work non-stop in order to hide our wounds behind money and external success. 

When I decided to start to forge my own path three years ago, I knew that I was going to be the first in my family to break a lot of generational cycles and that included going from surviving to thriving. That meant venturing on a new path that included having faith, believing in one’s self and journey, being so damn delusional that you know that YOU WILL and CAN MAKE ANYTHING HAPPEN, not allowing logic to block me, and for the first time in my life, listen to my heart and follow my soul. 

When you are built to survive, LOGIC is everything; following your heart and listening to your soul? That’s just reckless and when you have been a survivor all your life, you’ve been told that being reckless is selfish, unreasonable, and self-centered. Surviving is just not about you, it’s about your immediate family, extended family, and your community. 

I wrote in another blog about how we revere struggle and how surviving is often a source of pride of strength; we especially pedestalized this in women! As a generational cycle breaker, I am going to break this cycle of surviving and start embracing a thriving, restful, and guilt-free life by enforcing my boundaries and saying NO. 

If you were built to survive, you were more than likely shaped by hardship, scarcity, or were in systems that demanded resilience over rest.  Sounds powerful right? But it’s not sustainable. 

The shift from surviving to thriving is not about rejecting your past, it's about rewiring and moving forward by giving yourself permission to no longer carry the generational guilt, wounds, and trauma. It’s time to break free from it!  Here are some ways to help you break free: 

• Honor the version of you that survived: Before you move forward, acknowledge what got you here. The hypervigilance, overworking, people-pleasing, and self-sacrificing. You did what you had to do during those times. Throughout all of this, you learned that survival is not weakness and it gave you wisdom so you can learn and move forward;  however, it was only meant to be temporary.
• 
  Understanding survival responses are patterns, not your personality: Being constantly “on guard” or “in control” is adaptive but it can become limiting. You might confuse urgency with importance. You might reject ease because it feels unsafe. You may overextend yourself just to feel valuable. When you’ve been taught to be “on” all your life, giving yourself “off” time, may not feel right because you’re constantly on guard, which creates hypervigilance. In order to discontinue this cycle of survival, allow yourself to be curious and let go of the critical. When you notice yourself getting stuck in the cycle again, ask yourself, “is this my truth or is this my trauma talking?”

• Redefine safety: 

In survival: 

safety = control.
In thriving, safety = trust.

 You must teach your nervous system that:

• Slowness isn’t laziness
  
  
• Rest isn’t weakness
  
  
• Joy isn’t a trap

Begin by starting small: take deep breaths before answering emails or phone calls, say no without explaining (remember NO is a complete sentence),  and sit in stillness without filling the space.

Let go of loyalty to suffering- Loyalty to suffering is often survival that stayed too damn long. You have been taught that this is acceptable but it is your responsibility to shift this narrative!

• Move from proving to being. In survival mode, everything is a performance and earning: You prove that you're worthy of love, space, or success. You become what others need to feel safe. You overachieve to stay ahead of rejection in order to be accepted. In all honesty, if I had started my journey earlier, I would have allowed my unhealed trauma to do all of the proving. I would have allowed myself to try to “show off” my success with external validation. Now, as I continue to do my shadow work and heal my wounds, I embrace being instead of proving. I no longer feel the  need to prove shit to anyone. It’s a liberating feeling! Remember, you belong to yourself first;  you exist as you are, not as what you think you should be.

• Build environments that support thriving: The matter of the truth is, you can't thrive in places that reward your survival mode.
  This includes:
• Workplaces that exploit you
  
  
• Relationships that drain you
  
  
• Internal narratives that keep you small
  
  

Protect your peace like it’s your paycheck by building rituals, rest, boundaries, and support systems into your life not as extras, but as foundations.

•  Allow softness: For those who follow social media, the phenomenon of the “soft life” has been ongoing for several years. Its foundation was originally built on thriving and not surviving. However, as with anything with social media, the soft life has been masked in consumerism consisting of luxury items and external validation. Allowing internal softness is about not needing to be strong all the time;  it's about telling your body and mind that you’re safe enough to soften. As always, if your soft life is about luxury items, that’s fine but you first need to work on the internal softness. Lastly,  softness is not surrender,  its sovereignty and this includes having deep self-trust, boundaries, and emotional intelligence; this kind of softness is a form of quiet and grounded power.

To all my survivors, if you were praised for enduring pain, you may have internalized that struggle to your worth and value. Now, you don’t need to be reminded or kept in that cycle.

 Instead, embrace thriving in choosing peace, even when the chaos is familiar.

Choose thriving in allowing joy, even when pain feels more comfortable and finally, ask yourself, “Do I think I have to keep suffering to earn what I want?”

The answer is NO. NO. YOU DON'T. You can let go of the suffering and allow yourself to succeed without burnout,  rest without guilt, and receive without proving. Darlings, now is the time to OWN AND LIVE YOUR THRIVING LIFE! 😘