grateful soul

The following excerpt is written by my dear friend, Kaitlyn Uythoven. She never fails to amaze me with all of her incredible accomplishments, and I am grateful to have her in my life as one of my most genuine and supportive friends. I hope that her words will inspire you in the way that they have for me and provide a new voice, while conveying a similar message. The photos accompanying this post are also her own. Enjoy!

Over the last few months I’ve done a lot of running. I’ve run away from a lot and I have run towards a lot. I’ve become really good at clocking miles on barren roads that ramble through the tangles of my reality, my mind, and my heart. Life is like an ultra-marathon that you end up running without looking at the route beforehand. One moment you are hurdling down a descent with a wild, reckless spirit and the feeling that the future is full of endless possibility and unbounded room for growth. The next moment, that seemingly weightless sensation is tested and you find yourself drained on an ascent through adversity, doubt, broken trust, and all sorts of disillusioned expectations. Somewhere in the middle of the race, you learn to rely on your self-direction and to trust the process.

To bring this all into a more tangible thread of thought, the last few months have taught me that strength is about trusting when you have a reason not to. Strength is about loving people and situations even when you feel like your life has been blanketed in darkness. It’s about finding peace within yourself and embracing all of the minute complexities that make you inherently human.

For the bulk of my life, I have been a believer in the concept that if you fought for whatever you loved with enough ferocity, you could single-handedly control and guide your future with a little perseverance. While I still believe that this can be true and that John Wooden’s famous adage that luck is a residue of good design can still be valid, I have also learned that there are limitations to that belief. Holding onto something fleeting is futile; it inhibits the beauty of freedom and growth. Whereas, learning to let go, to thank those that hurt you and contributed the most to your own self-discovery, and embracing the fear of the unknown is extraordinarily powerful. Once one can do as such, they will often discover the next door to success, innovation, and greatness.

Running is similar to life in this regard. The author of Born to Run, Christopher McDouugall explains the connection the best by describing that when you start a new run on a new trail, “you never know how hard it will be or when it will end. You can’t control it, you can only adjust.” To embrace a challenge like that, you have to possess strength. But even more so, you have to carry gratitude, forgiveness, perspective, dedication, and patience.

There is something that is almost eerily beautiful and reassuring about the idea of fate and how it is inextricably connected to life and running. I believe that most events in peoples’ lives serve some kind of higher purpose and that fate brings those to the forefront. Recently, fate has guided me through life events and has introduced me to people that made me fall in love with running. Fate and running have given me a lot; I’ve found understanding, purpose, direction, and challenge. Somewhere along a run and along the way I discovered that light can be found even in the places that seem overpoweringly dark. So, at the end of the day, be fearless in your ability to trust others, even if they have hurt you. Life has a way of working itself out in the most unexpected of ways.

As we approach the end of the year we are given the opportunity to set behind us anything that no longer serves us and move forward with specific intentions. Setting New Year’s resolutions is a great practice, but it should not go without also reflecting on the past holistically, and surrendering anything that does not fill us with pure happiness and positivity. It is important that we take this new year as a fresh start and shed any emotional weight that the past year brought.

The first step to making the most of this clean slate that 2018 presents, is to recognize anything that does not fulfill us or elevate us to a higher self. We must acknowledge whatever obstacles or rough times we dealt with this past year and allow them to be, letting go of the baggage and moving forward in a more positive direction. We cannot always control the events that have happened, but we do have control over how much energy we expend on dwelling on what cannot be altered or put towards cultivating something that advances us towards more bliss. A great way to help surrender feelings and other things we wish to release, is to physically write each thing on its own individual piece of paper, and then either place the pieces of paper wrapped in foil within the freezer, burn them, or simply tuck them away during a full moon. This clears them from your mind and psyche, giving them the proper space to be, while also stripping them of the power to influence your energy field in a negative manner.

It is also crucial that we forgive ourselves for anything we feel is withholding us from our greater potential, along with keeping in mind that everything happens for a reason. As we reflect, we must remind ourselves that although we may not have made some of the same decisions or taken the same actions that we did, at the time they might have been the most appropriate decisions and actions, and therefore we cannot blame ourselves. Life is a continual process of learning and broadening our scope of the world, facing various twists and turns, but with each new bump or sticky situation, having a larger “tool belt” to approach things with.

There is so much in this life to be grateful for, and when we utilize our individual power to bring upon more positivity, then we are doing the best that we can. Being that we are all human, I am sure that at some point in the past twelve months we were all tested or found ourselves in a period that lacked optimal happiness. But with that comes the fact that we are all now at this current point in life, having grown stronger and wiser in this past year, and can now apply our experiences to the future. Allow things to be, accept them for what they are, acknowledge their effect on you, and then approach future moments with a fresh outlook. May this upcoming year be filled with more love, laughter, and joyous moments!

Running Towards Your Fate - A Guest Piece

Reflecting + Letting Go