Last week a powerful hurricane, her name was Dorian, marched through, wreaking havoc from the Carribean, all the way up to Newfoundland, no one and nothing was immune to her furious winds, flooding rains, storm surges, and power outages. She was a storm and that is what storms do. And as the tens of thousands of people affected by this fierce storm, emerge to rebuild their homes, businesses, and lives, each and every one of them will be guided by the first and most important part of ” Be Stronger Than The Storm” and that is BELIEF. The people who have lost their homes and property and business, need to believe that they can rebuild their lives. Imagine if they stood surveying the mess, and thought ” I can’t do this”, how would their homes and lives be rebuilt?
The exact same things apply to us when a storm hits our lives. And by the way, our storms feel a lot like a hurricane, don’t they? Often, we are going along, pretty much minding our own business, that is to say, living our lives, when boom out of nowhere appears an accident, a scary health diagnosis, a marriage dissolved, a financial crisis, the death of a loved one, to name a few of the storms life can bring our way. Just like victims of hurricanes, we need to BELIEVE, that we will “Be Stronger Than The Storm”.
‘By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it.” Franz Kafka
Let me give you an example from my own life. Nearly, three years ago, my husband and I were traveling down the highway, at 110 kilometers an hour, happily chatting about the upcoming Canadian Thanksgiving weekend, in fact, the car was full of holiday goodies like turkey, pumpkins, and wine. My husband, who was driving, turned to me and said ” I don’t feel well” and fainted in my arms, while the car hurdled, swerved, rolled over completely and stopped right before hitting a concrete highway wall. My husband’s neck was broken at C2, a dangerous vertebrae to break and I was physically more or less OK but mentally and emotionally traumatized. Our experience was very much like rebuilding after a hurricane. Our lives had been quite literally turned upside down and we needed to rebuild! And so we did. It started with our belief that we would get through it, we did not know how, or when but could quite literally see ourselves, healed, running, skiing, playing and back to our lives. We believed.
The car that was crashed was our beloved 2005, Black Toyota RAV 4, Standard Transmission. We wanted to replace the car with the exact same model. It was now 2016. We looked and looked and looked. Everyone told us we were crazy, or too picky, that it was impossible. Lots of people chuckled, as though maybe the car accident had hurt us more than we thought, lol! We searched all over the US and Canada, and sadly did not find a match. One day we went yet again to the Toyota dealer, we explained that we wanted a Black 2005 Standard Transmission RAV4, he shook his head wearily and said, not possible and we left! The phone rang three minutes later, it was Dean, the car salesman from Toyota, his voice was shaking. A man named George from PEI just came in, said Dean, he brought in his 2005 Black Standard Transmission RAV4 55,000 Kilometers…… we believed.
Susy Giddy is a Resiliency Life Coach. One of her specialties is helping people recover and thrive from adversity! Individual Coaching helps us move through the pain, get a plan and get through the adversity as quickly and easily as possible. If you or someone you know is facing something hard, please know that I can help. Reach out to see how. I can be reached at susy@cabaretelifecoaching.com or
Susy Giddycalendly.com/coachsusy