The 3C’s

There are so many things that I’ve learned on this healing journey that has flowed into a beautiful social enterprise. And while there is so much to be said, I’ve some how managed to categorize those events as the 3C’s of survival.
I talk about these at length in my upcoming survivor book series, but today I felt like it was worth giving you a small insight into one of the C’s, in hopes that you gain a small piece of clarity on your journey.
I’ve learned that when you’re in a process of healing and surviving often times we want to look at everyone else’s journey before focusing on our own. I found this to be true both in business and in healing.
Comparison immediately sets in when you finally decide to move forward, bringing us to the first C. This is probably one of the biggest mistakes I made early on in my journey. No one ever talks about the pitfalls of starting down a path with your eyes focused solely on the end goal of success. When looking for mentors and success stories I was immediately drawn to the freedom that was so perfectly displayed before me. As a survivor that was always my goal. I managed to see everything that I wanted…I saw the happiness, I saw the peace, I saw the laughter, all wonderful things to see right? I came to find out quickly how wrong it was to fixate on those things in the beginning. If all you see is the end, how do you manage to climb over the boulders, or go around the potholes? What I didn’t see was the breaking point that got them to that level of success. I didn’t see the tears, the anxiety, or the sleeplessness nights. I saw the finished product. No one ever talks about the failures early on. Why is that? Why do we focus on the success first, before failure?
These are questions that I didn’t come to realize were necessary until I started my own journey. I failed so many times, and often times I wanted to give up. Having to confront the pain was harder than I thought. Having to ask the tough questions almost broke me. The key words that I want you to take from those last few statements are wanted and almost. Meaning, I survived those things too. Every time you shift your focus to comparing yourself to others, you rob yourself of your authentic experience which includes painstaking failures. But it’s in those failures that you find your successes. Sure they may not look like success at first, but when you make it down the road a little bit further, you’ll stumble over those initial failures less. You’ll look at that upcoming stumbling block and say, “oh, I’ve seen that before, let me go this way, because I know that if I go that way, there are added pitfalls that I simply don’t need on my journey”. However, you’d never know that if you didn’t first fail. Take it from me, failure although nerve wrecking and often times painful, it creates tenacity, it creates survival techniques, it creates a more authentic you. Learn to get comfortable with it, it is the only way that you will gain the level of success that you so desperately desire. 

with love, 

Sp -survivor