Turn On 041- Mining the Past for Gold

I didn't want to share this. I didn't even want to bring any content I had from 2020 into 2021. Then I listened to the audio of mining the past for gold. Hah! I didn't want to drag in anything old and not serving me... meanwhile listening to my own words reminded me of all the gold sprinkled within chaos and hardship. We just have to go get it. 

How do you use your story?

I used to be so focused on the hardships in life that it almost kept me stuck in the muck. It wasn't until I started to change the inner dialog that I saw any significant change in my life. And let me state that it's not that life doesn't happen.... LIFE HAPPENS. But, how are we responding to it?? 

The only power we have is the power of our inner dialog. The internal focus. I must say that most people have given away their power to external circumstances. Sure, it's totally justifiable but it's only going to continue to create similar experiences in the future for said individual. Your choice. 

Below is the transcript from the episode. Enjoy the documentation.

"I've created this obsession with understanding personality and why we act the way we do. And this has stemmed from a space in me that I observed
years ago
when I used to play soccer in college. I was a great athlete, but I was really hard on myself. I was going through a bunch of stuff, just like anyone. But I really didn't know how to handle the emotional toll. At this point, I had a coach that was even harder on myself than I was on myself. And I just shut down. I shut down mentally, emotionally and I completely lost my game. Man, I couldn't even kick the same. It fucking sucked. And it felt so awful so I was even more hard on myself, and Oh, God, it was just a mess. At this time in life, I didn't know anything about alternative medicine. So I went to my trusted family doctor that I went to growing up and over a course of about three or four months, I ended up on like, five, six different medications. It was a shit show. I became really numb. Man oh man. It's crazy how things happen. But um, but the beautiful thing that came from this destructive time in my life, is that after I hit a pretty solid low, I got kicked while I was down and got kicked off the soccer team my senior year. It was actually the biggest blessing in disguise. What this did for me was that it opened up a space for me to find an identity that had nothing to do with soccer. And I felt stripped, I felt bare, felt naked. And and I went through a little mini death, I guess, is the best way to describe it.
A lot of things came into perspective from this death, because I didn't realize that, you know, my personality kind of had to die to the smallness in which it was in order for me to rise through the ashes, if you will, and realize that I had this whole new world to experience. Oh man, you know, this hurt so bad. I mean, there are so many things that are that are left unsaid, so many justifiable things I could point out to express to you why I was feeling so fucking low. But I guess that stuff, all those details don't really matter. I don't have to go into all of them. And the reason why I'm even bringing this up is because that time in my life was such a low that it catapulted me into this space of really wanting to figure out who I am. And I started asking questions like, what is this? There has to be more to this. What else is here for me? And everything changed after I started asking those questions. You know, I ended up moving all the way to the other side of the country, from Pennsylvania to California. And I kept those questions in mind. And since then, it's been about six years since I've lived in California now, and those questions I can still give them credit to creating this beautiful life. This beautiful way of experiencing life and seeing life. It seems like my perspective on life keeps getting broader and broader and broader. And more just delectable because I'm not as narrowly focused on pain. I still have the ability to do that, of course, and just feel everything so deeply. It's beautiful. It's a gift. But now I have to say that I have more space, more freedom to look at any type of tumultuous experience and see the gold in it. I could see it from a higher perspective, I can see it from a clearer perspective. You know, it's kind of like, for example, the perspective of me looking back at those times that are hurt really bad throughout college and whatnot, and I was really at just an ultimate low emotionally. I'm able to see that from a clearer perspective now. Okay, I'm able to look back, years back, and see that everything was happening for a reason. Well, that perspective is what I have now.
And whenever chaotic things happen, now, I still have that vision, that perception, available here and now. So it's like, I really don't have the option of playing victim for too long. For example, that time throughout college really dragged on a bit, like months and months. I ruined a relationship. Man, I ruined so many relationships, my significant other at the time, I just ran it into the ground. All of my friendships, just ran it right into the ground. There were a few new ones that started then that have been a huge pillar in my life. Thank you, you know who you are. And for everyone else, thank you. Because all of those hard times where I was pointing my finger at everyone, all of you guys, and feeling very victim-like it really has served a huge purpose. So I know, I wasn't the easiest thing to handle back in the day. But thank you for all of those souls who held space for me and quit on me and turned a cold shoulder to, you know, the relationships that we had. Because without that, I wouldn't have felt so low. And I really, really, really needed to go that low. I needed to go that low because I never asked the questions. And I believe that sometimes there are certain kinds of people that create pain for themselves, and I have always been one of them. What I've noticed is that I create it because I use it. I use it to jump forward in life. And I see that so clearly now that I'm actually trying to be more present in my life, in my decision making in my life, in my daily life so that I may kind of weave around these pain bodies. It doesn't have to be painful. We don't have to use pain as fuel. We can use something way more sustainable and way less aggravating. I'm slowly but surely dropping the fight. It seems like it's always accessible though. I have this fire and with this fire I'm down to throw down. Like I'm too down to throw down. That's why I've really had to look at my own personality and dig into a practice that allows myself to focus on the presence of creator, of source of God within me. To stop running my life by the personality because Jeez, oh man, anytime that girl, that version of me would get triggered by something emotional it would bring up some memory of the past and then I would paste that feeling all over my future. My now experience, and it would make it even that much more painful. Oh my gosh because I wouldn't work through emotional things as they happened, I would bury them. My personality would bury them and compartmentalize this pain. And then when something triggered in my present day life when something would trigger this emotion, the same kind of feeling oh my gosh, Pandora's box are would open. Yeah, all of these things explode and come out of the woodwork with these memories. "You did this on a Thursday at two in 2016 blah, blah". I mean, like we get Crazy. But you know, it's not you that is crazy. It's the aspect of us attaching ourselves to this little part of the personality and running with it as if we are not this larger, grander perspective. We play as if we are only this tiny aspect of the personality. When it is in any sort of fight or flight mode, it really feels like it has to protect it's life, it's down to fight, it's down to throw down. It's down to fuck everything up. At least in my perspective, my personality was just like a little Tasmanian devil thing. Oh man, just slowing down and getting to know all these different aspects of personality that I have access to playing with and expressing with has really given me this whole different way of living. And it's accessible. It's here, it's now. We just have to dance with it. We have to take that director's chair and own it rather than the victim seat and blow it. It's cool because it's always accessible. Either one. You can play whatever role you want to in your life. But just remember that you're playing a role. Don't get too attached to it there little Brookie Brooke"