Hey, my friend, what is up? And welcome back to another episode of Do Life Big. I hope that you are doing fantastic. Today's episode, I hope is going to help you out. We're going to be talking all about how to be resilient in tough times. I feel like this is so relatable, because it's something that we all go through, and it's going to be a really valuable episode, because we all go through these tough times. No one is exempt from them, and understanding how to navigate through these tough times is really important for your personal growth and for your fulfillment and just your happiness and your general well-being while you're here on this earth.
This isn't going to be an episode where we try to actually fix your struggle that you're going through right now, or try to get you to just ignore your emotions and your feelings and pretend like it doesn't exist. But I'm hoping that what I'm going to share with you will give you a new perspective and give you hope for the future, and maybe it will help you start to see just a small glimmer of light in this time in your life, right now, where things may not seem very bright at all. You know this journey of life; it's filled with so many ups and downs and damn. Like when we are going through those up times, we feel awesome, like things are so great. Life is good, I'm good, you're good, we're all good. We feel like we're sitting on top of the world and we're untouchable, and we're just loving it. Things feel easy, things feel light, and we just feel happy, and it's easy to feel grateful when we're going through times when life is just kind of coasting by nice and smooth, and then the downs hit, and some downs hit much, much harder than others, right? And they're much harder to cope with. And you know, I won't Candy Coat it or tell you there's a way to escape going through that pain and that suffering, because there isn't we have to go through those hard times, every single one of us. But what I will say is, whatever it is that you're going through, you will get through whatever it is that's weighing on your heart now, or whatever it is that's causing you any kind of internal pain or suffering or stress, it will pass. It will, it always does, and you will come out on the other side stronger than you could have ever imagined because of it. And I know it might not seem like it if you're in the thick of it right now, it's really hard to listen to something like this and be like, Yeah, okay, easy for you to say this just happened, or, you know, this person just passed away, or I just lost my job, or, you know, I don't have a home to live in now, but it's always looking back in hindsight where you can see just how much you grew, just how much stronger you became because of that experience. And sometimes we try to go our whole entire lives, trying to avoid going through those downs, and we just can't. It's something that we all have to go through. I know it's the sucky part of life.
No one likes it, no one looks forward to it, and when you're in it, it's just like, Oh, God, this is so hard right now. Like, why is this happening? When is this going to pass? Like, I just want to feel good again. So I think that, keeping in mind that hard times are just part of the journey, you know, they're just part of the journey, it's they're going to happen. I talk about this a lot, even with my business and when I work with my students, where people get into business and they have this little preconceived notion that it's never going to be hard and there's never going to be bumps in the road, and they're never going to fail, and it's just going to be smooth sailing to the top six figures and beyond. Respond, and that is not the case, and then when those hard times come, it's much, much harder for them to handle, because they just didn't even put it in there as a reality that could possibly happen to them. So keeping in mind that hard times are just part of the journey, and accepting the uncertainty is really a good place, I think, to start, because learning to live with uncertainty is what will build mental strength and resilience in you. And when I think back to my life so far, I mean, there's been plenty of downs that I could talk about. You know, we all have them. We all have our stories. We all have our bag of shit that we've had to go through, right? You know what I'm talking about. And when I think back to, gosh, this was probably Jesus. Was, like, six years ago. Now, I really wanted to have a third baby, like, really bad. And in my little mind, well, actually, I really wanted to have four, four kids. That's this was in my little mind. I was like, I'm gonna have Landon and Kiersten. And Landon's 12 right now, Kiersten is going to be 11 on January 1. They're 18 months apart. So I was like, I'm gonna have two kids that are really close in age, and then I'm gonna give a bigger gap, and then I wanna have two more that are really close in age. So comes time, you know, I really want to have this third baby, like there's been this big gap.
Now it's time to have the baby. Let's get going. I ain't getting any younger, right? And miscarriage after miscarriage after miscarriage, four miscarriages in a one-year period, trying to have baby number three, and when you're going through it, I mean, if you've ever been and had a miscarriage, is the worst, because you're supposed to be so excited that, oh my gosh, like, yes, like, I'm pregnant. You know, you take the test, like, Yay, I'm so excited. Like, and you start, you know, you get the books, and you get the journals, and you get this, the app, and you're tracking how the baby is developing and growing over time. And, like, there's all these things that you want to look forward to and get excited about, but when you've had a miscarriage, you cannot even let yourself go there. You can't let yourself go there because you've already experienced the pain and the heartbreak of a previous miscarriage. You can no longer go to the bathroom without stress of wondering if there's going to be blood or something there because of the miscarriage that you went through. And so you're kind of like robbed of this really exciting time, one of the most exciting times in your life, because of a past experience with a miscarriage. And so I remember going through this literally four times in an entire year, and it after a while, you just kind of become numb. It's like, oh, I'm pregnant. Don't get too excited about it or anything like, I'm not going to think negative about it, but I'm also not going to get too high hopes about it, and then, oh, also too because I had a missed miscarriage for my very first pregnancy, which happened when I thought was, you know, I thought the baby was 14 weeks. I had had the ultrasound, heard the baby's heart, heart rate, really strong and good almost nine weeks. But then I had that missed miscarriage at 14 weeks now, going through this whole period of trying to conceive for baby number three, with four miscarriages every time I found out I was pregnant, it was like, don't tell anyone until you make it through the first trimester because of what happened the first time. And so you're keeping the secret with yourself, and you're just stressed and on edge the entire time. If you've gone through this, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
And it just sucks. Like, the whole thing just freaking sucks. And I remember going through it being like, oh my god, this is out of control. Like, why is this not sticking? Why is this not happening right now. And the one thing that going through that taught me was to never give up on what you really want. If you really want something to happen, like, if you really, like, I really wanted this third baby, and I was gonna get a third baby one way or the other, and I did praise the Lord I did, but going through that led me to really rely on my faith, you know, prayer, hope, and it really instilled in me this, you know, ability to, you know, persevere and Keep going and to never give up on what I really, really want to happen. And I think that it's really important to keep in mind that as you're going through these hard times, like I remember when I was going through that one specific time, people were like telling me, oh, you know, you should join all these different groups with people. Have been, you know, who have had miscarriages, and I don't want to be surrounded by more of that negativity and more of that sadness. I want to be around the people who went through what I went through, and now we're able to conceive and have a baby, right? And so it's very easy. What I'm trying to say right here is that when you're in the thick of whatever it is that you're going through and struggling with, you know, it's like they say misery loves company. It's really easy to find someone else that's going through a similar situation as you and kind of like, hunker down and be sad and depressed and hopeless together, and the whole world sucks. Nothing ever works for me. It's really easy to do that.
Now, what I'm challenging you to do is to make sure that you don't do that. I'm challenging you to make sure that you are around someone doesn't need to be a big group of people, someone who is going to be there to pick you back up when you fall on your ass. Who's going to encourage you to get out of bed and keep going? Who's going to encourage you to take one foot in front of the other one day at a time? Someone who's going to be that little light for you while you're going through this dark, tough time, because just having that one person makes all the difference. And so I'm sure that you can think of a time in your life where you felt like the world was freaking crashing down around you right like, maybe you're going through it right now, and maybe you're like, Kathi, just shut up. Maybe not, though. And that time where you feel like, oh my gosh, things are spiraling out of control. They're going things are going downhill. And you just could not believe that this was actually happening, right? We all have that time. We all have probably many times. But guess what? You did make it through that time, didn't you? You made it through that time? You're on the other side of that shit storm that tried to destroy you, that tried to take you down. You came out of that storm stronger than ever before. Which brings me to another point of my very first tattoo that I actually just got, and I don't think I shared this with you guys yet. I don't have any tattoos. I was very proud to say, by the way, that I was someone who didn't have any ink on my body. I was so pure.
But I finally decided, after thinking about it for a year, that I wanted to get a tattoo, but I wanted it to be something meaningful. And so, you know, my dad, when he was going through his cancer with his AML about five or six years ago, one of the things that he always said, and he still says it to this day, was, you know, the storm will try to take you down. It will try to consume your life. It'll try to take you down and take you out. But you have to be the storm. You are the storm. And so I'm had my dad ride out in his handwriting. I am the storm, and I got that tattooed on my forearm as a reminder. Which brings me back to what I was saying before, about how you made it through that storm, right, that hard time that tried to take you down, that tried to, like, destroy you. You made it through it, because guess what? You got to be the storm. You have to be the storm. And even though you may feel like you're weak right now, and I don't have the strength, I don't have the mental strength, I don't have the emotional strength. You do! You do! You are so much stronger than you think that you are, and you know, if you're in the middle of it right now, I do want to share just a couple suggestions that may help you move through whatever that you're going through just a tad bit easier, right? Because it's nice to have tools to work through the tough times in life. It's not going to make it go away. It's not a magic eraser, right? I wish, but we all need some tools and suggestions for how to cope when we go through these downs in life.
So the first thing I want to say is to let yourself feel your emotions. I know this may not be easy for you. It is still not easy for me. This is something that I personally am working through and working on, because I tend to be someone who just like doesn't want to feel the bad times, right? But I'm working on it. We all got things that we're working on. You don't want to shut it out, you don't want to close yourself off and pretend like nothing's going on and everything is perfect and wonderful. All of the time, you want to acknowledge your feelings and let yourself feel the feelings that you feel. Let yourself feel the anger. Get pissed off, right? Get sad, get upset, cry, get stressed out, get overwhelmed, get frustrated. Feel those feelings and work through them. That's the only way that you grow, is to work through them. All right? So that's my first little suggestion. Is to let yourself feel the emotions. It's okay. You just don't want to live there. That's all. You don't want these emotions, these negative emotions, to become a part of who you are, right.
The next thing is, and I mentioned this at the beginning, is to surround yourself with people who are going to support you. It's really easy when you're going through tough times, to be like, You know what? I don't think I want to go out today and do this. I don't think I'm gonna get up and do my walk, and I don't think I'm gonna go take a shower today, or, you know, I think maybe I'll take a nap instead. You know, I don't really feel like going out and, you know, meeting the girls for the monthly girls night out for dinner. You cannot isolate yourself away, because when you're going through the struggle, you need someone now more than ever before, who's going to be there to just be like it's going to be okay, like you're going to be okay, someone who you can rely on, someone positive, someone who's going to lift you up. So make sure that you have someone right, whether it's a family member, a friend, a colleague, it doesn't matter.
The next tip I want to give you is to practice just doing a few breathing exercises for just like a minute while you're sitting in the silence. And what I mean, in the silence, I mean, find a nice quiet spot somewhere. Could be outside in nature. It could be sitting in a rocking chair. Could be in your closet, like I am right now, and just make sure that there's no distractions and there's no sounds and it's as quiet as you can make it. And just sit there with your eyes closed and block your mind out. Just let yourself be, don't let your mind go anywhere else about oh, I really should be doing this, or I should be getting up and going here now, or shoot, I forgot to put the dishes into, you know, out of the sink, into the dishwasher, and the laundry still sitting in the into the washing machine and crap. I forgot to get the candy for Halloween. Just let yourself be and just practice keeping your eyes closed and just letting yourself take slow, deep breaths, in through the nose and out through the mouth just a couple times, just for like, a minute. This doesn't have to be like this long thing, but it will help bring you more peace a lot of times, especially when we're going through hard times, stressful times, our anxiety is up, which means our heart rate is up because of it, and we're not calm, and a lot of times we forget to even breathe. We're like holding our breath all the time, taking shallow breaths, so making that a part of your day-to-day routine will help.
The next tip is keeping some form of your healthy routine going in your life, and do it even if you don't feel like doing it, and it will help you feel like you have more control of your life in a time right now where things have happened out of your control. Control. What we can control, right? We can't control, you know, I couldn't control that. I was having miscarriage after miscarriage after miscarriage. I couldn't control that. There was nothing that I could do. But what I could control is making sure that I still got up every day, and I still moved my body, and I tried to drink a lot of water, and I tried to eat as many nutritious things, even though I was going in a downward spiral, and definitely had some more some more comfort meals, because I was feeling sad about what's happening, I tried to keep my routine as much as I could. And so, whatever you were doing, whether it was maybe you got up and you went for a morning walk, maybe you got up and you, you know, made a cup of tea and you listened to a podcast on the way to work, try to keep as much of it the same, and it will really help you. Those five things will help you kind of navigate through the downs of life just a little bit easier. We all have what works for us, right? We all have different things. Of course, I do other things where, you know, I love listening to music. I love listening to personal development for my mind, I love getting outside and just breathing in the fresh air that always helps center you and ground you and bring you peace. And just having that knowing honestly that you know I'm gonna be okay. This is going to be okay. It may not be what I wanted. I may have dreaded this, but I'm going to get through it, and you're going to get through it. And just like Nelson Mandela once said, do not judge me by my success, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again. And that's you do. So, things may be trying to knock you down, but you're always going to get back up. You're going to always get back up, and you're always going to take one foot in front of the next, and it might be messy, and it might be sloppy as shit, and you might not want to do it, but you're going to do it anyway, because you're stronger than that one thing that's trying to take you down, and you're going to come out even stronger because of it.
So that's all I got for you today. I hope that you enjoyed today's episode. If you thought this episode was helpful, please share it with a friend. I'd appreciate it, and thanks so much for being here. You know I love you. I think you're awesome, and I will see you the next time. Bye.
