Winner Survivor/Warrior Lessons

Heavy lifting is with me this morning as I wake up to an overcast day. The grey skies outside my window reflect the density I feel inside myself.

Alongside this I am reminded of these words of Helen Keller --

“One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.”

In my density I am inching along. Yet I am a person who is never content to merely crawl through my life. I feel at my best when I feel as if I am aloft, like in a hot air balloon, soaring above tree tops and mountains and rivers; high, high up.

I feel myself struggling to raise myself up this morning, to free myself to be airborne, to take flight in spirit, at least, while I remain grounded here on earth, managing the demands and details of situations that seem beyond my limited powers.

The Winner Survivor Paradigm

As I step back from the struggle, I recognize this as the work of alchemy; the turning of the lead of me into the gold I can be.

I am striving for my own Olympic Gold medal for living my life at its best.

But how do I reach this pinnacle today? If I can get up high enough,I can see farther and wider than I am able to do now. 

Soaring as I yearn to do allows me to create visions in my mind that transcend petty grievances. But how am I to achieve this now? For myself? With others?

I feel bound, intermittently, by a compulsion to check email in hopes I will discover the ITAA Ethics Co-Chairs have concluded what I have been teaching for eons; lean in, lean in. 

This is the way up and beyond our trivialities.

So, what is mine to do here, I next ask myself?  If soaring is what I am after?

What is mine to do when it seems as if there is nothing for me to do here at all; here being the moving forward to the freedom of lifting the burden of an untold secret I have harbored for decades, by giving voice to the burden and telling my story.

I am after the Gold in this situation. But how do I get from here to there, I ask myself?

Reaching for wisdom beyond my own, my mind is soon drawn to the words of Viktor Frankl, noted psychiatrist and survivor of Holocaust death camps.

 “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” 

This notion gets something moving inside of me; with the ITAA Ethics Committee I am, apparently, unable to have any effect. My best intentionned words seem to fall on deaf ears.

So how exactly do I do this here; change me to achieve a positive outcome? 

Hallelujah! 

I’ve got it!

I remember my Winner Survivor’s Paradigm! 

There it is; my TripTik out of this heavy lifting to the lightening of my load!

Yeah! 

I will follow my own advice. Not be attached to outcomes.

Take a cue from my heroines, the athlete victim/survivors of Larry Nassar, do the right things for me to do as they have modeled. That's what it means to be a “Winner Survivor Warrior.” 

Yet, I must not go beyond what is not mine to do.

And, just as there is a discipline required of gymnasts for succeeding at their objectives that is essential, especially under pressure, I, too, have a discipline for my success objectives; focus is one of the main ways in either situation.

For my focus, I now turn to my Winner Survivor Paradigm for a map to help me move forward on this chapter of the life journey I am on. 

“Just for today,” as they say in AA, I will allow my Winner Survivor Paradigm to guide me on my way.

Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, what then?

I might know how to soar from lessons learned today. Or, I might not. Still I will have my map and know, once again, at least, how to start.