A Genuine Pep Talk for When You Need to Reset Your Life

A pep talk to reset your life + a few of my recent thoughts. If you want to reset your life, be sure to listen to this first!

What is pain + why reset your life?

For those of you who don’t know, in 2019, I got an autoimmune disorder that flipped my life upside down. At this time, one of the best ways that I describe it is that it felt like I was falling apart like, I was one of those ceramic dolls that had been hit with a hammer and fell into dusty old pieces all around me. And at the center of this doll was the true being of the person that I am. It takes a while to find it, but after you start cleaning it up and going through all the pieces, you realize that there’s this beautiful thing at the center.

One of my favorite things that Glennon Doyle said in her book Untamed is that pain can be beautiful. But suffering is when you allow it to break you. So I started turning my suffering into pain. I started allowing myself to grow and learn from it.

Be intentional with your surroundings

In building myself up, realized that I didn’t need all of these pieces of the person that I had been that had fallen apart. So I started building myself up again only with the pieces that I really wanted in my life, like my values, my core values of honesty, authenticity, etc., and I got rid of the other ones.

I feel like that is what life is; we’re constantly surrounded by different people, different opinions, and different things. We learn from each of them and pick them apart for our own understanding. Some of them we use and grow from and some of them we don’t. In life, I’ve found that it’s being intentional about these things that can build you up stronger.

For example, let’s say you have a group of people surrounding you that are really negative. Eventually, you start getting used to those habits. And often, we start adopting those same negative habits into our own lives. Why? Because humans are social. We tend to become that of what we are surrounded by. So instead, being intentional about it. Recognize that, hey, this is something that is surrounding me but I am intentionally not going to choose to bring it into my own life.

We’re constantly surrounded by all new opinions and things, and we can’t bring every single one of them into our own lives. If you’re surrounded by negative people and become negative, then bringing in positivity from another group of people will be hard to do because they contradict each other.

So be intentional about what you choose to adopt into your own life.

Pain is an opportunity

It wasn’t until I started falling apart that I was able to actually rebuild myself again and reset my life. Why? Because I was forced to. I was forced to be the most vulnerable version of myself, to ask for help, and to say that I was not okay. And then I was forced to build myself up again.

I had two options either stay here and get worse or build myself back up again. I made the choice to not get better for a long time and it was miserable. And a few months in, I kinda slapped myself across the face and said, you know what, we’re gonna use this for the best and we’re gonna grow.

And guess what? I am so much happier now. I am the person that I am today because I fell apart and rebuilt myself.

Sometimes you have to break a little bit to see all of these pieces that are surrounding you and decide which ones you’re going to pick back up again and put into yourself.

Pain is an opportunity that you use to grow.

The never-ending cyle of resetting your life

This pattern of rebuilding yourself continues for your entire life. It’s like shedding your skin to make way for the new one. Recently, I did this myself.

When I was feeling really alone and vulnerable, I wanted to find communities and labels that fit me. For example, when I first started coming out and realizing that I was gay, I really wanted to have a label for it. I really wanted to make it a big part of the being that I am. There’s nothing wrong with that. It was a way for me to feel community and feel proud of who I am and it was incredible, but now it is something that does not serve me the same way anymore.

In fact, now it is something that I am actually learning to kind of switch around. I’m still learning and almost healing from it a little bit because I put myself into boxes so much. For a while, I actually forgot to embrace and value the full being of myself. I am not only gay, I am millions of other things too and all of those together built the person that I am.

I put myself under labels and into boxes, and then I stepped out of them and grew from them. There is nothing wrong with having labels for yourself, but I found that it is something that I personally don’t resonate with anymore. I used to, but I no longer do and that is okay because humans are constantly everchanging.

You are your foundation

External things like labels, places, people, etc. don’t bring you long-term peace because they change. They aren’t bad, but they shouldn’t be your foundation. You and your core beliefs (such as religion, values, the essence of your being, or whatever resonates with you best) should be your foundation. You where you are going to find peace in the long term.

Things change. People change. The things that are in your life, the things that help you change. And it’s embracing that change that is so beautiful. So now if I ever find myself in a box again, I leave that top open and I almost force myself to go into different situations with people that I don’t always agree with or people that are different than me because that’s how I grow from it. Being open to differences while also staying true to yourself is how you change and become the best version of yourself. Life is constantly learning, taking and choosing, and figuring out what resonates with you and what doesn’t.

Final thoughts to reset your life

You become the energy of what you were surrounded by. So pay attention to the energy that you are choosing to surround yourself with and your mindset about it. Are you staying open-minded by allowing yourself to look at new situations or are you staying closed off?

So if you’re wanting to reset your life a little, keep this in mind. Are you being conscious of your choices and the person that you are? Are you keeping the self-awareness of who you are at the center? I am still learning to do this and I constantly will be. So we’re doing it together. We’re on this journey together and I’m rooting for you.

For more on this topic, don’t forget to listen to the full podcast episode and let us know your thoughts in the comments! We love to hear from you!