How Many Times Will You Test Yourself Before You Trust Yourself?

Do you know the feeling? You’ve worked so hard to get better, to heal old wounds—only to fall back into old patterns once you start feeling better. Unfortunately, healing isn’t a quick fix, no matter how much modern medicine tries to sell it that way. You can’t build a new life while the old one is still pulling the strings.

I recently heard that life isn’t a grocery store—it’s a stream. If you want to float, you need to let go of the baggage.

They say life tests you right before you break through. When I re-experienced trauma symptoms, it was only after neglecting myself for a long time because I hadn’t fully shed my old patterns. By the time it felt "too late," unresolved emotions triggered another layer of those same destructive cycles—old negative thought patterns that drag me down, sparking a cascade of catastrophic thinking.

Whenever shit hits the fan, I can see my thoughts slipping back into fear-based patterns: "I need to move, I need to fight, I need to lose myself tonight..." And then the inner critic chimes in: "Ah, you thought you were so smart—now look where you are. Nothing’s changed. You’ll stay broken forever."

I’d learned so much and understood what was happening, but that didn’t stop my monkey mind from kicking the can down the same old road. In those moments, "progress" can feel almost invisible. What matters are the small shifts—when you manage to step back, label your thoughts as just thoughts, and hop off the crazy train, lowering the emotional charge.

It’s only then that you realize how far you’ve come. Jocko Willink, a former Navy SEAL, described it as falling back to your default systems. Under stress, you revert to your most fundamental coping mechanisms. If yours are distraction and stimulation, that’s where you’ll go.

I relied on distraction and stimulation for far too long—until my soul refused to let me continue. It demanded an upgrade. I had to build a better baseline: learning to release thoughts through meditation, grounding myself with daily nature walks, and doing deep emotional work to unravel buried trauma.

Once you establish communication with a deeper part of yourself, you uncover a wisdom that’s always been there. You sense when people don’t belong in your life, when situations harm you—even if you once played along out of obligation. You even notice how certain words affect your nervous system.

Our bodies aren’t separate from our minds—or, I believe, from our souls. There’s a deep wisdom within us, older than reason, that already knows what’s right for you.

To live authentically means listening to that quiet voice, trusting it knows the way, and staying patient even when external reality feels like another setback.

You know this is true, even if part of you fights it. You know when you think, "Dang, I knew this would happen!" after ignoring your gut. You know when a hunch leads to serendipity.

You’re already on your path. The only question is: How many times will you need to prove to yourself that what got you here won’t get you where you want to go?

Before You Go...

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My mission is to empower people to discover their true selves by freeing them from the mental and social constraints that hold them back, and to assist them in becoming their best selves.

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