Quitting, Rebeccah shares some valuable insights about this common experience

Have you ever wanted to quit? That is our topic today on the Tougher Together, Breakthrough podcast with me, your host, Rebeccah Silence. We’re going to talk about quitting. One of my favorite lines is it’s OK to want to quit. Just don’t. That’s a quote that I repeat to myself over and over and over again. It’s OK to want to quit. Just don’t. And I want us to all consider that we learned how to quit. You weren’t born knowing how to quit, you saw someone quit or you were told to stop trying. And then in a moment, your life changed forever because now the possibility of quitting was available to you. Before you learned quitting is an option it wasn’t an option. For me, I had a lot of judgment on my mother growing up. I think she’s one of the most brilliant people on the planet. My mom has two master’s degrees, one in math and one in computer science. And growing up, I watched her dumb it down. And to me, that’s a form of quitting now as the little girl I didn’t have the words for that, but I wanted so much for her. And I heard her say she would want things and then not get them. I saw her act confused, say she was confused when I knew she wasn’t.

My mom is so smart and so intuitive, and I was protected as a little girl through hearing words like it’s too hard, or don’t bother, or you’re not going to be able to do that, honey, it’s OK. Can you relate to this? What were the words that were spoken to you and who were the players that told you those things? And I just want you to consider right now, in this moment, that breakthrough is looking at what we have decided is the way in challenging it. And to me, thank God I learned about breakthrough before being pregnant with cancer because, man, did I want to quit every second. If the cancer wasn’t going to kill me, I was in so many moments having suicidal thoughts and it was terrifying. I wanted to die in so many moments because the pain was so unbelievable. The physical pain, the chemo that I was on had me in a severe reaction to the point where all of the nerves on the right side of my leg began to die and I had what was called drop foot. My right foot lost its arch and I was like a ballerina with my foot pointed and it just locked up. My first physical therapist looked at me and said, You’re like a kid with cerebral palsy. You’re not going to be able to heal this. And I fired that physical therapist said, thank you very much. You are not the person that I’m going to choose to work with. I’m going to heal this. Now, the doctors were telling me the drop foot was never going to heal. The physical therapist was telling me that the drop foot wasn’t ever going to heal. And my mind was telling me it’d be easier if you were just dead. This is brutal. It hurts so much. I couldn’t sleep. And I was stuck in bed and I couldn’t walk and I had just had a baby.

Months seven through nine of my pregnancy, we weren’t sure exactly what stage my cancer was at. Three weeks after she was born, after I had to have an emergency C-section at thirty-eight weeks pregnant so that she could be taken out as soon as possible to protect me but keep her in there as long as possible to protect her. Three weeks after she was born, I had my lymph nodes tested and I had cancer in a lymph node. The type of cancer that I had was melanoma. And I was so ignorant, I didn’t understand that skin cancer went deeper than the surface. But I want us to think about living in breakdown. And if you are suffering in any way, if you feel stuck in any way, what I am here to tell you is you’re listening to the Tougher Together, Breakthrough podcast with me, your host, Rebeccah Silence is that, you’re in breakdown, when it hurts you’re in breakdown. When you are wanting to force outcomes to be different than they are when you are in any type of attachment to how you think life should be you’re in breakdown. You know, when I worked with my very first coach, Carol Reynolds, she since passed, but, wow, did she teach me a lot. And thank God prior to cancer, I had the honor and privilege of working with her. But, you know, what she taught me is that the correction always goes here on me. She would say, Rebeccah, take your two fingers point them at yourself and you say out loud, the correction goes here. It’s never about life. It’s never about circumstance. It’s about what’s going on in you that needs to heal, grow, shift. And then you’re in breakthrough when you are willing to be responsible for the internal suffering and the work it takes to get all that gunk cleared out, you know, imagine that when we’re born, we’re like a glass of water, just pure and perfect, clear. And then life’s happening and we get our hearts broken and we get stuck and we see people we love suffering and stuck like me watching my mom growing up and wondering how come it’s not easier for her?  How come she’s not happy or how come she’s not getting what she’s saying she wants… in her relationships, with her body, with money, with career, how come she’s not getting what she wants? I made it up as a little girl like so many of us do as kids, we make it up that life is the problem, right?

The circumstance is the problem. And, you know, I want us to think about, you know, life like melanoma. It goes so much deeper than we even realize. I thought if they just cut the cancer out, I’ll be fine. But it had already permeated my body. It had already spread like wildfire. And I was the five percent that wasn’t going to be stage one melanoma. It had already spread. There was no stopping it, breakdown and suffering and stuck and the programing that’s been running you, that has you in whatever your own personal hell is. It’s already permeated your system but see the good news here today that I’m here to share, it’s OK to want to quit, just don’t. Take responsibility for the breakdowns. They don’t have to win. They’re not more powerful than you. And what kept me alive was staying committed to even in the moments where I thought, the pain is too great, I’d rather die than face this. I can’t do it. All those thoughts, all those thoughts were on repeat in my head every single day for the nine months that I was stuck in bed, 12 surgeries. Chemotherapy, drains coming out of my body, I am literally like a jack o’ lantern, I’ve been cut open so many times and I just knew. My soul is tougher than the circumstance. I’ve got the chops, I’ve got the skills, I’ve got the education. Now I just have to live it. And I kept also telling myself it’s OK to want to quit. Just don’t. You know, we’ve got to validate the pain if it’s ever going to shift and change and move. You know, if you’re trying to be positive, that’s lovely and I don’t think it’s going to help. You know, there’s a big difference between breakthrough and having access to possibility and trying to be positive. I’m not insulting those of you that are positive and look for the positive, but what I am telling you is it’s never going to be enough to heal you on an emotional level. Being positive, finding the positive; it’s not enough to get you to break through, you know, where you’re truly on the other side of it forever.

Breakthrough means life’s never going back to the way it was. Breakthrough means you’re on the other side of a stuck of a suffering. And you’re clear again, the water went from muddy to clear. And now you’re free of whatever that stuck programing was. I had a lot of programing that had me believing that women couldn’t stand on their own two feet. I don’t want to believe that anymore. I didn’t want to believe that my mom wasn’t capable. I wanted to believe that she was. That I am. And I have two daughters and I want them to see their mom. Living in breakthrough as much as possible while I’m still here, because here’s the truth, I live every single day with the understanding that cancer can come back, but I won’t let that possibility steal today. It might steal some moments, I’m human, we’re all human, that’s why I say we’ve got to validate the pain, we’ve got to acknowledge it. And what I like to do is play a game where I take the thought, I take the emotion, I take the experience of stuck or suffering that I’m in and I grab it and I catch it almost like a fly ball. And I look at it and then I, I ask, OK, what is this? What is this thought? What is this fear? What is this emotion? And then I asked myself, now what? Try on this process when you want to quit. Start by saying it’s OK to want to quit, just don’t. Next, I want you to ask yourself, what is this? I’m afraid I can’t do it. Now what? Boil it down, this isn’t easy, but in this breakthrough podcast, my goal is to help simplify what feels impossible because there is possibility on the other side and possibility is different than positivity. You know, we can be positive in an experience of breakthrough that’s genuine or we can try to put band aids on the breakdown. Do you get the difference? It’s not healing you to look for something positive in the midst of the breakdown if you’re still stuck struggling and suffering. I want the stuck and suffering and struggling to shift for real for you. And I know it can. I absolutely know it can. And what it starts with is acknowledging the pain. And then asking yourself, well, now what? And this isn’t about blaming where the beliefs came from, where the programing started, it’s just about education and awareness. We’ve all seen people quit. Which, if you think about it, gave us permission to quit. And it’s going to be up to you, back to what Carol Reynolds said to me, the correction always goes here. It’s never, it’s never the other person or the situation that’s causing your suffering.

You have heartbreak. You have been shut down, you have stuck emotion and you have self-doubt that is in you. Your body is storing it. That’s why you’re suffering. And then life is going to kick your ass and show you where you have emotional work to do. Until you do that work, you have to believe me, as my friend Eric Clattenburg likes to say. But check it out for yourself. What I’m saying, and I’m never here to tell you what to do; I’m here to be a voice of possibility for you. And I want you to know the difference between positivity, I want you to know the difference between positivity and possibility, because in those moments where you want to quit, what we need is access to possibility, not positivity. The positivity will come later because what it will be is you and breakthrough experiencing your life and yourself as free regardless of the circumstances, you’ll be able to see the person in front of you as a human being who is innocent and doing their best, just like you are. You know, the worst thing in the world that we can do is quit on relationships, you know, and we quit on relationships with other people because we’ve quit on our relationship with ourself. You would never quit on another person if you hadn’t already quit on you. I want you to really settle into that as a possibility for you to chew on, relationships can be reinvented, relationships can be repaired and healed, but you’ll never be able to reinvent and repair a relationship with another person more than you’ve already been able to repair and reinvent with yourself. For me, cancer was such a gift in that I really got to take a look at who I’d been versus who I wanted to be. I really got to invent the person that was going to be able to navigate that season of my life. And I knew I didn’t have control over whether or not I lived or died. I had control over who I was going to be knowing that I had multiple surgeries, a brand-new baby, a gorgeous husband, an older daughter, a community that I was serving, family that I loved and adored, friends that I loved and adored. I wasn’t done living yet. But I also knew that wasn’t actually up to me. I don’t think I caused the cancer. I certainly don’t believe that I healed it. I believe that I stayed in breakthrough. And that gave me a huge fighting chance and a huge level up when the moments of suffering and stuck and pain were the most severe. And I just decided cancer is going to be a seminar where I get to meet myself.

And, you know, it literally was a devastation of who I had been. I broke down and I don’t know what I really believe about; is breakdown a necessary prerequisite to break through or not? I don’t know. I just know that moments of breakdown, at least for me, are inevitable. I don’t pretend like, you know, I’m not going to have another breakdown because now I know how to access breakthrough. Like I don’t pretend like there’s a guarantee the cancer won’t come back. I know these possibilities exist, so I try to prepare for them, but not in a way where fear has taken over my life; in a way where I want to be educated and I want to be ahead of.

All right. So, if the cancer came back, what would I do? If another breakdown occurs what am I going to do? Who am I going to be? I think it’s in the moments of breakdown where, again, the rubber meets the road. We get to look at, OK, who am I going to be now and who you’ve been in moments of breakdown, we’ll get you the same results that you’ve always had. Not good, not bad, not right, not wrong. But if you want a next level of breakthrough, meaning you’re experiencing more life, you’re experiencing more joy, love, freedom, excitement, purpose. Then breakdowns aren’t that useful and we make breakdowns so important, we make breakdown so real and well, I want us to acknowledge the pain. I don’t want us to give it that much attention, it’s like with our kids when we’re parenting, reward the behavior you want. And your kid is going to thrive, reward the negative attention seeking behaviors, reward the behaviors that you don’t want, and you’re going to be in hell in that relationship with that kid. So, what if it’s OK to want to quit? Just don’t. What if the moments of pain and suffering are access to a whole new experience of you, which gives you a whole new experience of life. What if there’s no relationship that’s worth quitting on and then as we continue on the journey in the Tougher Together, Breakthrough podcast together, I’m going to talk about boundaries. I don’t want you taking shit. I just want you keeping your heart open. And when we quit on our capability, when we quit on how strong we actually are, when we quit on possibility our relationship with ourselves, our relationship with life, our relationship with others suffers because our heart shut down. What would it be like if the world had most of the people keeping their hearts open in the toughest times instead of shutting their hearts down and disconnecting from one another?

That’s the vision of the world I want for all of us. I think it’s great to know how to navigate breakdown and to experience breakthrough in even the most challenging times. I’m grateful for that skill set. But I don’t want it just for me, I want it for you, too. I want your family to have the same skills set. I want you at work to be experiencing a team in breakthrough, you in your community to be experiencing a community in breakthrough. You and your country to be experiencing breakthrough together because we are tougher together.

So, I have some homework for you. And it’s not going to be an easy assignment. And again, I’m not telling you the way. I want you to take what you want, to chew on it, leave the rest. But if you’re listening to this podcast and you get triggered or activated or upset in any way, that’s the gold. That’s what I want to invite you to lean into. That’s the energy that I want you to explore and investigate further. The icky, the heavy, we want to lean into it because it’s in you already, if when you’re triggered, you don’t lean into it and you shut your heart down or numb out or go distract yourself and get busy, whatever it is that you like to do instead of dealing with it. And by the way, we all do anything but deal with it, don’t we? Here’s what I want us to do instead, I want you to allow and recognize you don’t have to like it. You don’t have to welcome it. You don’t have to love it yet. But I just, when you’re triggered your homework is this, I want you to allow it, recognize it and track it. Allow, recognize and track your triggers.

Do me a favor. Buy yourself a brand-new notebook. And on the cover, I want you to write the words My Life in Breakthrough, because what you’re about to do is you’re about to create a guide for yourself that you can go back to in any moment to help you get from where you are to a new experience of breakthrough where life’s lighter, freer, more fun. If you’re not having fun, you’re not in breakthrough. If you’re not having fun, you’re in breakdown and it’s subtle sometimes. It doesn’t mean you’re a puddle on the floor. It could just mean there’s something off energetically. The work we’re doing in the Tougher Together, Breakthrough podcast is emotional. The work we’re doing isn’t easy. The work we’re doing requires more of you. And it’s worth it. And I’m honored to be your guide on this journey. Get your journal, track your triggers, you’re just going to notice them and you’re going to write them down. And that’s it, that’s where we start. There’s nothing more to do. Just be with it. And from there, you can start to be with the possibility that the trigger doesn’t need to win. You can win. The correction is on you to lead your life through that trigger, it’s not about getting other people to be different. Good luck with that. How much have we all tried to change the circumstance? Change, you know, the people around us, thinking they’re the problem and it doesn’t change anything. We’re going to start this day, this moment, this episode of the Tougher Together, Breakthrough podcast with me or host Rebeccah Silence, looking at what we do have control over because there’s so much of life, we don’t have any control over and we waste insane amounts of energy and effort and resources and emotion and what we don’t have control over. I’m here to say we can’t control diagnosis, circumstances, when our life ends. We can control how we’re living while we’re here. We can control this moment. It’s OK to want to quit, just don’t. Instead, let’s start to learn how to have a relationship with breakthrough.

Outro Please note that the content of this podcast is not meant to be therapeutic or to replace any personal growth work that you are already doing with a coach, therapist, or mentor. Take the content, have it inspire you, and then keep working with your support system. Breakthrough is your right. Breakthrough reminds us that we’re tougher together and that we’re connected to possibility even in the most challenging and possibly darkest times. I’m Rebeccah Silence, creator of Healing is Possible and proud host of the Tougher Together, Breakthrough podcast where we come together and we tell stories of real breakthrough that exist for you as well. Get ready to break through, get ready to live more free, and get ready to experience more breakthrough. Because that’s your right. Join us on the Life’s Tough Media website and stay tuned for more. If you want to get in touch with me visit rebeccahsilence.com. Your time is now. Your breakthrough begins now.