My pain points were actually a map to the life I wanted.

 Last week I showed up at my gym for a 9:15 class and was confused – for a time that's usually packed, attendance was down by about two-thirds. Our trainer explained that people often avoid benchmark days when results are recorded for comparisons over time.

I get it. I've been going to this gym for nearly 9 years and at some point in the middle of that tenure this was me. Most of the time I avoided the class or if I was (accidentally) there I or would brush off the results and tell them not to bother writing it in my file. 

I behaved this way because I was intimidated by the data points. Instead of accepting my current fitness level, I was subconsciously holding myself to the standards of the collegiate athlete I used to be over a decade and a half prior. As a working professional striving for a full life, the expectation that I should still be training at an elite level was setting me up for constant disappointment.

To minimize the frustration and pain of not meeting my standards I avoided the numbers and detached myself from my performance. 

This pattern showed up in other areas of my life too. In fact, I recently shared a new episode on Instagram(Evidence of Manifesting series) about how I unintentionally manifested something I really didn't want – all because of avoidance and detachment.

My mic-drop moment I shared the other week illuminated to me just how much power I had and, while this was life-changing, it didn’t change my brain overnight. However, I started to see that the areas where I felt stuck were the places where my old programming was limiting me. 

I was bogging myself down with ways of seeing the world and myself that severely limited finding opportunities and creative solutions to move things forward. It's like these limiting beliefs actively shielded possibilities and progress away from my view.

Back then, despite landing my dream job, inside I felt like I was in an internal swamp of my own making, muddling through shadow after shadow. What kept me going was knowing what I was capable of when my mind was aligned and intentional.

In the months after that moment it dawned on me that I needed a new relationship with my shadows as it was clear that I wasn't getting through life without them. This intention led me to the profound insight that these pain points weren't bogging me down after all. In fact, they were guiding me, with giant arrows and flashing lights, towards the deep-seated beliefs that held me back. Diving into those pain points helped me heal and reprogram my mind with beliefs in service of what I did want. 

I realized then that when you see the world as your own experimental lab, there are no failures - all shortcomings and shortfalls become a map to the other side. This awareness gave me the power to build a mindset that actually moves me towards my goals.

If you have five minutes, reflect on where you might be on autopilot. Where can your current pain points illuminate the beliefs that need addressing to bring you closer to your vision?

To your future self showing up now,

Rosanna