TL;DR: The stories we tell ourselves define and limit us, but we have the power to change that story. First, you have to become aware of the stories you're telling yourself in your mind. Then there's some work to do. Today I'm sharing how to heal from your past wounds, emotional baggage, and limiting mindsets. Essentially: how to take back control of your story, write your new ending, and transform your life for the better. If you want to know all the steps, keep watching. Hi, my loves. Welcome back to Lavendaire. So good to see you. Today we're talking all about healing your past wounds. This is a workshop that I offered as a bonus in my Create Your Dream Life course that I came out with last year. So if you took that course, this is that workshop with a little bit of an update/tweak. Before I get into it, I just have to say that I am not an expert at any of this. I did not study psychology or whatever. I'm just a person that read a lot of self help books, spiritual books, and I went through my own journey of healing from different wounds in the past. And these steps that I'm sharing are just things that have helped me in my journey working through my issues. And it really has helped me heal and I've healed so much in the past eight years or so. The first thing I want to shine light on is the truth that nobody is perfect. Nobody lives a perfect life. Everybody has issues, everybody has problems. And I've grown to believe that you're meant to have problems in life. You're meant to struggle, because only through struggling through the obstacles and challenges and the really tough parts of life, do you actually grow and learn something, become a better, stronger version of yourself. So I do believe that life is not meant to be perfect. We're meant to struggle, but we're also meant to enjoy this experience of life. We're meant to see our struggles from a positive point of view. And that is where I'm coming at you with this workshop today. Here's a quote for you to think about: “The wound is where the light enters you.” When I first heard that quote, I was like, “Wow, that is so beautiful and so profound,” and it's something that you will understand more once you've experienced it. Once you've experienced some sort of healing, the wound is where the light enters you. Out of the darkness comes light. Out of the challenges – If you think of soil, it's dark, it's damp, and out of that is where the most beautiful things grow, you know, flowers grow, trees grow, plants grow, and that is how the world kind of works. There's this balance of: you need both the dark to have the light, because you need to have something to compare it to. There's a juxtaposition of it. If everything was light, that would just be normal. If everything was perfect, that would be your new normal. And you really do need to experience the dark in order to appreciate the light. Another thing I want to bring up is to not judge people for their struggles or challenges, to not say, “Oh, you shouldn't be complaining about your struggles or your traumas because they're not as bad as these other traumas.” Yes, there's a range of traumas and wounds out there, but we are not here to judge whose is better, whose is worse, because everybody has a different pain scale, a different pain tolerance. You just need to think of your own scale. It's all relative because how bad your pain feels depends on all of your life experience leading up to this point. So if you've had really mild privileged experiences, then something like getting fired or a breakup might really hurt you because that's the worst pain you felt up until this point. And if you've had like a lot of tough circumstances in life, if you've gone through more trauma, more things, then maybe that same exact event wouldn't impact you as greatly. So that is to say: Don't judge people for their pain or their problems. And the reason why this relative pain concept is important is because when we are young, when we are children, we don't have that much life experience leading up to that point. So anything that we experience, all the pain we experience in our childhood really hurts us. We really hold it, which is why a lot of psychological issues or personality traits stem from the things that happened to us when we were kids: things that we've held, stories that we've started telling ourselves from things that happened back then. So that is why it's important to go all the way back to your earliest childhood experiences to start to become aware of your story. All right, so let's move on to how to heal. First comes awareness and understanding, then compassion and forgiveness. Finally, learning and transformation. By the way, as I go through these six parts, I also made a workbook that you can download at the link below for you to fill out your answers and take notes along with me. So the first step to healing is awareness. This one is huge because not a lot of people are even aware of the emotional baggage that they need to heal. So ask yourself: “What childhood stories or traumas stick out in my memory?” And they might not seem like significant memories, but the truth is: If you remember it, it's significant. So jot down all of the events and stories that come to your mind when I ask you this question. For me, one of the big pains of my childhood was feeling unloved and unimportant. I felt like my parents didn't care about me. They kind of swept me off to the side. My mom was really busy working all the time. She was a single mom. My dad was busy working. He would fly back from China, back and forth. So I didn't really spend that much time with him. But at a certain point in elementary school, he left on a business trip and never came back, stopped calling. And there was no communication or explanation. I felt abandoned. I felt like he didn't care about us anymore and ultimately it left a deep scar. So with this first step, you really have to be honest and vulnerable with yourself. Give yourself some time, you know. It might start flowing out some more after you get started or just give it some space. But this step is really key to starting the whole healing process. The second part is understanding. So now that that event is in the past and you've had some space, some distance from it, how can you look at this situation from a more logical, unbiased point of view? And this is where you start to discover the new perspectives that you can look at your situation, because it's likely that after going through a traumatic experience, you thought of that experience in one way, in the same way your whole life up until now. And it's only when you start to see the new perspectives that you start to realize, “Oh, maybe what I thought wasn't true. Maybe it was just all in my mind.” Consider any assumptions that you might have been making this whole time: What was true, what do you know is true, and what else were just opinions or just assumptions that you've had. So considering the realities of that time, my dad came to the US for opportunity, met my mom, got married, had me, and then he was going back and forth between China and US for business. And at that time, you know, people were coming to the US because they thought there was more opportunity here, but then China started blowing up and becoming more economically prosperous. So that's why my dad went back over there and he just stayed there. And there was a point in the conversation of him wanting us to move to China and live there. But my mom's whole family is here. She's really wants to be in the US. I wanted to stay in America. I think going to school in the US was a better choice for us. And so that's one example of another perspective of why that happened. Also, Asian parents are horrible at communication. They think kids don't understand anything, so they don't say anything to the kids. Both of my parents are just really bad at communicating in general, so I can see how nothing was communicated, nothing was communicated to the kids and people just grew apart. And it's not because he didn't care about us per se, but there were a lot of other factors happening at the same time. Hopefully this exercise will help you understand your situation more clearly, be able to see new perspectives and to see all the possibilities of what could have been true, rather than just your one point of view or your one assumption. The next part is compassion. So let's start with self compassion. You have to be compassionate to yourself. What would you say to your younger self going through that thing? If you were to go back and look at your younger self with love and compassion, what would you say to her? Would you give her a hug? Of course you would give her a hug. You would tell her that she's beautiful, she's worthy, she can make it through this, no matter how hard it feels at that moment. Being able to see your younger self with love is a huge part in healing that inner child within. We all have an inner child within us that wants to be loved, that wants to feel important and worthy. And so what would you say to that person? What would you say to that younger version of yourself? That exercise in itself is so powerful for healing, to be able to look at yourself with love and compassion. The next part of this compassion part is having compassion for all others involved in your story. I don't know how many people are involved, but having compassion for each human being involved. This might be really hard for some of you because depending on your story, depending on how bad the trauma is, it might feel impossible to have compassion for this person. It just might not be doable. And that's okay, because maybe you just aren't ready right now, and maybe you'll be ready a few years down the line. It's a process, guys. So having compassion for the other people in your story is learning to put yourself in their shoes and asking yourself: “Why did they do what they did?” And maybe trying to empathize with them. Maybe they were going through a tough time because hurt people hurt people, right? There's a term for a generational wounding, like generations of people hurting each other, and hurting each other in this negative cycle. So you can start to empathize and then see if you have it in your heart to find love for that person. An example that I saw recently is: I don't know if you guys watch Queer Eye, but there's one episode with the guy in the wheelchair. He's so inspiring. Anyway, this guy was shot and he was able to confront the guy that shot him, six years later, after he's been paralyzed from the waist down. And the guy that was paralyzed spent years wondering, “Why did this guy shoot me? I don't know if I had any animosity with him. Why? Why did this happen to me?” And it's really frustrating to not know. So when he was finally able to confront the guy who shot him and get some clarity, he realized that that guy shot him because he was afraid of getting shot himself, because they were just in this situation where a lot of people had guns, and the guy just shot him out of self-defense just because he didn't want to get shot. And so hearing that, he didn't even need an apology. No one apologized to each other. The guy in the wheelchair ended up saying like, “You know what? I would've done the same thing if I was in your position. I understand and thank you. Thank you for what you did to me.” And that really showed how if you were to able to empathize and put yourself in another person's shoes, you might be able to understand why they did what they did, and you might not be so frustrated or hurt over it. The next part is huge and that is forgiveness. Forgiveness, let me put it in like big words here. Forgiveness is so important and that is something that I had to work on in my twenties, just learning to forgive my dad, learning to forgive anyone who has hurt me in the past, because I learned that forgiving others for hurting you is learning to forgive yourself. It's learning to release the burden that you've put on yourself all of these years, because when you are holding a grudge or when you feel pain over something, that weighs on you and it's hurting you more than it's hurting the person that did it to you, you know. Those people have probably moved on with their lives and if you're still carrying that pain with you, that is not helping anybody. Learning to forgive is a part of self love because if you love yourself, you don't want to hurt over the situation any longer. So simply learn to let it go. And that is through forgiveness. That being said, forgiveness is also a process and it is not always easy, but the fact of the matter is: whatever hurts you is in the past. You are living now in the present moment. So anything in your past, if it's not serving you, if it's not helping you, it's okay to drop it and let it go. Oprah has a quote: “Forgiveness is letting go of the hope that the past will be any different,” because the past is not going to be different. It's going to be the same. What you can change though, is your perspective on the past, how you respond to your past. Are you going to keep letting it hold you down or are you going to learn to let go and forgive? Find it in your heart, some love, some positivity, some way to forgive others who have hurt you, and then just move on with your life. Trust me, after learning to forgive, you will feel so free in life: no grudges, nothing holding you down, nothing holding you back. You can be your best self. All right, so the next part is learning. This is where we take everything that we just did, the awareness, the understanding, compassion, forgiveness, and then we start to see how all of this was put into our lives to help us learn a lesson. Maybe it's many lessons. What has this experience or these experiences taught you? What have you learned? What have you gained? How are you stronger and better because of this? We are strong, not despite our challenges and our pain, but because of our challenges and our pain. That is the key to life and so that's why it doesn't make sense for you to live life avoiding challenges, avoiding pain, although most of us do it. Most of us love to stay in our comfort zones. But you guys know, if you've been watching Lavendaire for long enough, growth happens outside of your comfort zone. And pain is uncomfortable. It is the worst of uncomfort, if there were some sort of scale. And the more painful or more uncomfortable an experience is, the more it has the power to change you. And I didn't say the “power to improve you” because that decision is left on you. You can choose to let a really painful experience change you for the worst, make you a sad, depressed, really angry person. Or you can choose to let it transform you into your stronger, wiser, more positive self, your highest self basically, because everything in life is here for us. It's happening for us, not to us. Does that make sense? It's simply a shift in perspective. Rather than complaining about all the problems that you have, understand that your problems are here for you, to help you, to make you better. This is the part of your healing where you're gaining all of these lessons, so don't let these lessons go to waste. Otherwise if you don't learn these lessons, you repeat the same problems. You repeat the same mistakes over and over again. And this is why some people relive their traumas, because psychologically that's what they've been through. It was so painful and yet that's what they're comfortable with. That's what they know. And so they go from abusive relationship to abusive relationship, and obviously there's more reasons and there's more to it. But yeah, don't get yourself in that position. Really be aware and learn from your pain. This is also around the point in your journey where you can start to have gratitude for your pain. So you start to feel grateful for what you've been through because it's shaped you into a better, stronger version of yourself. Gratitude is really a big part of this whole healing process. But I really think it happens each step along the way. But just putting it out there, because I don't think I mentioned it yet. Finally we've made it to the last part, which is the transformation. First, let's talk about rewriting your story through the eyes of love. So this was my second podcast episode ever where I talked about this topic. It's so important that I still like to bring it up because this is the point in your journey where you are to look at your story from a perspective of love, from a more holistic perspective, rather than the narrow-minded view that you might've had in the past. Rewrite your story. Write it in a way that serves you and helps you in your life. Ask yourself the question, “Where is the love in my story?” In my example, I can start to accept my parents as imperfect people, have compassion for their mistakes, understand that everyone makes mistakes and not hold that against them. I can see that in the past, I judged my parents for not being good parents, for not being the perfect family that I would watch on TV. And now I can see that they were doing the best that they could at that time with their resources. I can also see that there was a lot of love in my life that I wasn't focusing on back then, because I was focused on both of my parents not being around. My dad left us in China. My mom was always working. But my mom would always drop us off at my grandma's house where I had a lot of cousins, a lot of aunts and uncles always come in and out, and that was love. And I didn't realize that having a big family is something that I took for granted when I was younger, because I thought that everyone had a big family. I thought that everyone had over 20 cousins and 20 aunts and uncles. But no, it's actually quite rare. And now I really, really appreciate that. The next part of your transformation is rewriting your limiting beliefs. So ask yourself, “What limiting beliefs might I have from this experience?” You have to start to understand how those stories you've been telling yourself and the mindsets that came out of that experience and those stories might have been holding you back in different areas of your life. For example, me feeling like my parents didn't care about me, made me have low self worth and low self esteem. I was already a shy person, but the fact that you know, they were so busy with their own lives, I really felt invisible. And that in turn affected my social life, because I felt like other people didn't want to be friends with me. I felt insecure, I felt uncool. And I know a lot of us deal with similar issues like that. So it's a matter of understanding why you have certain fears, worries, or anxieties and how those things have been holding you back in your life. And this is where you can start rewriting those limiting beliefs, transforming the stories that you've held about yourself for so long, so that you can become a better person, a person that's not held back by those limiting thoughts. So after all of this inner work, and I know we went through a lot, but you can finally take back control over your life, over your stories that you've told yourself, and write a new ending for yourself. This is what Lavendaire is all about: really creating your dream life, writing the ending to your story. I mean, what's happened in the past is in the past, and we've done what we can to heal from what we can heal from and then let go of what we can let go of. And all you have left is the present moment. And to be able to ask yourself, “How do I want to live my life moving forward from here? What good will I take with me and what bad will I leave behind?” That is how we got to live our lives, you know, step-by-step day at a time taking the good, letting go of the bad, healing from what we can, learning from what we can. Like I said in the beginning, life is not perfect and it's not meant to be perfect. Nothing is meant to be great all the time. You're meant to have highs and lows. You're meant to experience pain and what defines you is what you do with that pain. It's how you let that pain transform you. Do you let it bring you down or do you let yourself rise up to an even more epic version of yourself? I don't know how else to put it, but I hope that I made it very, very clear that we are here to learn and grow. We are here to enjoy this experience of living life and it is very, very possible to heal from your past wounds and traumas. I hope that this little workshop helps you guys. Let me know your thoughts and comments down below. Let me know if you think I missed anything. I tried to be as comprehensive as I could without making it way too long. Love you guys so much, and I will see you in the next one. Bye!