You may find these questions strange, but here goes! What can sea turtles teach us about life? About success? About failure? As it turns out, quite a bit! For the newly hatched sea turtle to experience the blessing of life in the sea, it first has laboriously make its way through the deep sands of the beach. It has to struggle. In today’s episode, April reveals an intensely personal story that relates to the journey of the sea turtle. She endured a struggle that ultimately led to a major blessing in her life. In the process, she overcame a deeply held fear. As the struggle subsided and the blessing emerged, she got to know herself like never before. And she became her own best friend. This episode of the Winning Mindset Mastery Podcast will inspire you. It will make you think about your own life. It will help you powerfully reframe your current struggles. And it will remind you that things don’t happen to you, they happen for you. Listen now! Here’s to your success!
—
Listen to the podcast here
Don’t Understand Why You’re Struggling? THIS Is The Answer.
I was at a conference and I heard Lori Harder speak. If you don’t know who Lori is, she has created a really interesting life and business and has overcome a lot of hardship. She has a great podcast called Earn Your Happy, which has been around for quite some time. It’s highly rated and I know it’s been an inspiration to a lot of folks. She was definitely inspirational to me when she was speaking.
She said a lot of great things and a lot of things that resonated, but nothing as much as the story about the sea turtles. I live in South Florida. I’ve seen sea turtles hatch before. If you haven’t, you want to see that because it is an incredible experience. It’s tough to describe. It’s very moving. It will probably bring you to tears. It did to me. It’s something that you definitely want to put on your bucket list.
Lori had gone on a vacation and went to see sea turtles hatch with a bunch of people. These turtles hatch, and there are so many of them. They’re so incredibly tiny and you have no idea how they’re going to make it from the little nested area that they have way up on the beach all the way to the water, and then how are they going to swim in the ocean? They’re incredibly tiny, fragile-looking, and adorable. It’s unreal.
Lori had that same feeling of, “They’re so vulnerable and tiny. How are they going to make it through the sand and then into the ocean?” She said she was with a bunch of locals and a bunch of Americans. The Americans wanted to grab those turtles, help them, and take them to the ocean. She said, “I couldn’t have saved all the turtles, but I could save this turtle.” She almost went to do it. One of the locals was like, “Señora, no. They need the struggle to prepare them for the blessing.” That was so incredibly profound because in the case of sea turtles, if they can’t make it through the sand to get into the ocean and start their life, they won’t survive in the ocean. Some of those sea turtles don’t make it.
It’s incredible because how many times have you been in a huge struggle or something that’s so incredibly tough for you and thought, “I don’t want to be in this. I don’t want to be dealing with this. This is too much for me. This is too hard.” Maybe you tried to reframe it or you tried to tell yourself it was happening for you, not to you, yet in that moment, all you can focus on is how difficult it is. I want you to remember those sea turtles and that the struggle prepares you for the blessing.
The struggle prepares you for the blessing. Share on XWhen I was thinking of an example of this in my own life, I thought of business and educational examples and things from my childhood. I happened upon a fairly recent example that was more personal and it resonated as something to share because it was one of those examples that isn’t the easy one. You can’t see what it’s doing for you at that time and maybe not even shortly after.
In 2020, I had been in a relationship for a few years with someone that we had met through going on healing journeys for both of us. We’re healing from childhood trauma and the things that had happened to us throughout our lives that we felt like were limiting us from becoming the people we were meant to be. We’re almost battle buddies in this process. We started dating and were together for several years even though we didn’t live in the same state.
That was a difficult relationship in the sense that we were both doing some deep work on ourselves. It was also a struggle because, throughout the relationship, I felt that we were misaligned because I am so focused on growth and becoming the best version of myself. In a lot of relationships, I felt like I was pulling the other person along with me both to my detriment and also probably to their irritation. This relationship was certainly no different. There was a big struggle and a pull because he would say that his life was much better with me in it. I could even objectively see how I made his life better. At the same time, I had never spent any real time alone in my adult life.
I was from relationship to relationship. I don’t recommend it. You need to understand as a person, whether you do it at a young age or at the age you’re at right now. You need to understand if the person that you’re with adds to your happiness or takes away from it. If you’ve never taken the time to be alone and be happy on your own and be your own best friend, which I had not done, you don’t know.
Reframing Struggles: You need to understand if the person that you’re with adds to your happiness or takes away from it.
You know you don’t want to be alone. You know that you like this person and you want to make things work, but you don’t know if they are actually a gift to you or if they are just a placeholder. Not to make light of that person or what they were worth, but I wasn’t making the decision to be with them as much as I was making the decision to want to make things work because I liked them and I didn’t want to be alone but it was a different kind of choice.
That relationship and deciding to end it was a big struggle. It was tough for me to do. However, what it prepared me for was the time in 2020 when I was by myself, as we all were, and then taking time in 2021 and even 2022, I’m choosing actively to be by myself, be my own best friend, and understand what life would be like if it was just me. Would that be okay? Could I be happy?
Reframing Struggles: You can choose to actively be by yourself, be your own best friend, and understand what life would be like if it were just you.
By the way, what an incredible blessing because I don’t think that I would’ve had the courage to do that if I had not struggled so much in that relationship and had that contrast where I was so happy when I was by myself but I was very unhappy when he would come to visit. It wasn’t necessarily big, huge, dramatic things, but it was this constant reinforcement of you are choosing something that isn’t as good as choosing nothing.
The blessing was that was such a struggle. I could then dive into something that I was so afraid of, which was being completely by myself for quite a long period of time. I still am. It’s not that I’ll never have another relationship, but I am so enjoying what I am able to do being on my own. That might be why those sea turtles resonated with me so much because I would’ve said I didn’t want that struggle if you had asked me.
I was not able, in the moment, to reframe it for myself and tell myself why it was happening for me and not to me. I now know that that struggle prepared me for the blessing of getting to know myself and being my own best friend. That’s what I’d love for you. Whatever it is you’re experiencing or you’re going through, trust that struggle is leading you to a blessing that you cannot even imagine right now. Here’s to your success.
Reframing Struggles: Whatever it is you’re experiencing or going through, trust that the struggle is leading you to a blessing that you cannot even imagine right now.
