A Message of Trust, LOVE and Faith in This New Year Time

That's it, it's January 1st and a new year begins, a new adventure begins and a new journey is taking shape on the horizon. Who says January 1st says resolutions, changes, wishes, etc. For me, that also means sharing and reflecting. As I did last year, I am going to let my mind flow around and if it can move a heart, change a mindset, or make a person feel that they are not alone, I will be more than delighted. Anyway, I probably do it just as much for myself!

2 years ago, I had no idea what to expect... I could never have believed that I would experience the illness for so long without anyone being able to tell me what I was going through. Finally, certain diagnoses and prognoses came out over the months (but I do not intend to share them because I try not to get attached to them and that is not the goal)

The last twenty months have been an experience that I never thought I would have.

At 20, especially when you are in top shape, you are naive enough to believe that health is given and that illness happens to others, or to old people.

At 20, living like a 70-year-old is relatively brutal on many levels.

At 20, when you only think about becoming a better athlete, when you think you control everything in your life and when you think you know exactly where you are going to be, with whom and under what conditions for the next 30 years of your life and you find yourself having to give yourself a motivational speech to get up in the morning and a prayer to simply eat a little during the day, it's fair to say, you lose your bearings.

At 20, I had a special experience; that of illness.

Those who know me, know that I tend to make the most of each experience and always try to change my perspective and my mindset to transform my reality. Well, this experience of illness quickly became a long journey within myself and in spirituality in addition to seeing itself as a huge playground for someone who only wanted to push their limits and take on new challenges. This path, paved with thousands of ups and downs, has been the most difficult experience and year of my life. On the other hand, it was also the years that gave me the chance to grow the most as a person. You know, we often try to protect those we love from suffering, but the reality is that I understand that through suffering there is an immense opportunity to evolve. It has nothing to do with the pain, but with what you do with it that is so transformative. Recently, life pushed me to accept a reality that was far from making sense now, but that was filled with gems that I didn't know existed.

Trust, acceptance… What a concept! It was the effort of the year because it's very nice to say to yourself: yes you have to accept, not to resist, I trust in life, blablabla, it's a whole other level when you no longer recognize your body because you are 50 pounds underweight, that you lose all your bearings, that all your plans, your dreams, your desires are put on hold and that a specialist tells you that your white blood cells are at the same level as someone who is doing chemotherapy while you are not. But, I didn't give up, each day became an opportunity to practice my acceptance, my presence, my resilience, my connection and love to myself and my unfailing faith.

Walk by faith not by sight

It became a mantra and as I delved into spirituality, meditated, changed my perspective, sat in nature for hours, invested in energy healing, coaching, psychology, and prayers, to listen to people who have had big, upsetting experiences and who have decided to leave it to those greater than themselves, to take action and take action in the present, I started developing a new way of living, a living more connected to myself and a higher-self. I began to have moments of peace with what I was experiencing, I started to love the part of me that was feeling anger, I faced hopelessness, I started to really accept sickness, etc. For example, the evening I was told that I would be hospitalized, I was walking in the fields near our house listening to inspiring music like I do every evening and I started to feel alive, and at peace, knowing that I didn't have to resist what I was experiencing, that I just had to live by keeping the faith that it was happening for my best. There were these moments of grace where I was no longer afraid and even in the moment where I was afraid, I was able to hold myself, to love myself, to accept my humanity and to choose to change my thoughts and align them with LOVE. It's difficult to put into words, it's as if anything could happen to me, I knew it was for my good, in fact, for something greater than me without knowing it was this good. I felt that I would be able to live with the illness, that I didn't need to change anything, that the experience I was having was mine and that it was happening for a reason without me knowing what that reason was. I was not trying to understand, I was no longer trying to understand. I didn't resist, I didn't resist anymore. I didn't question myself, I didn't question myself anymore.

In recent years, I have understood that as long as I live this experience, I might as well decide the meaning that I give to it and I might as well choose the angle of view from which I observe my situation so that it is never what it is. We live but how we react to what we experience is important. As Garain Jones says : change your mindset, change your life.

Well, that's what I decided to do.

In the absence of training, life has become my beautiful gym.

Failing to do squats, well, I had to put my knee on the ground, not as a sign of giving up, but as a sign of faith, as a sign of confidence that no matter what I'm going to experience, I know deep down that it is for me and I'll tell you, accepting and stopping resisting this experience was more difficult than any physical training I've ever faced and believe me, I had some hard shit workout.

In the absence of eating, I nourished my mind with meditation, silence, reading, listening to a mentor, etc.

Failing to do, I began to be more, to observe life and my mind and to listen to the deepest parts of myself that were just waiting to be revealed.

Failing to hide my body, which was thin and weakened by what I was going through, I decided to do my best to accept it, love it and take care of it.

The reality quickly became that even if I lost much on a certain level,(opportunity, weight, suffering, discomfort, etc.) I realized that I could gain enormously on a human level and in life experience.

After all, perhaps life is just that, a series of events and opportunities to evolve, to transcend our own limitations and to experience several poles of what the human experience truly is in order to increase our level of consciousness.

Moving from a more down-to-earth plane by strengthening like never before my resilience, patience, awareness, presence, ability to live in discomfort, compassion, listening to myself, kindness toward oneself, true self-confidence, gratitude for the little things in life like being able to eat a small meal or simply waking up with a little energy, to a much deeper plane of consciousness and spirituality by developing an unshakeable trust in life, an acceptance of what is, by working on non-resistance to what is, life has, in somehow, forced me to believe when I no longer had reason to believe, to see clearly above the circumstances that clouded my vision and to continue moving forward even if I felt like I was walking in a void.

Despite big moments of peace, grace and acceptance, I cried and I still cry, yes I felt like hitting and I hit (not anyone physically, more like my pillow) yes, sometimes, I felt like screaming and I screamed. Yes, I'm afraid of never getting back to my healthy weight, afraid of not making ''good'' decisions, etc. Yes, I'm afraid because I am also human, but I know deep within me that like a phoenix, life has set my wings on fire simply so that I can better rise from my ashes and become one with this fire.

Yes, despite my fairly intense optimism and my almost unshakeable confidence, there are days when I have had darker thoughts, but I believe that life takes us to the places necessary for our journey. I believe that there is not a test that it gives us that we are not capable of passing. Ultimately, I believe that every experience we have is a gift, but this is the story I decided to tell myself. This year, it's up to you to see what stories you attach to the circumstances that happen in your life.

In closing, Even if we are in a period of abundance, many are experiencing very difficult times and many, even if we resist it, will experience difficult times, but I know that we have the strength to get through anything. On this first day of January, I send you strength and lots of love. I know that in this new year, you will get through everything you have gone through and I want to wish us that in a year, we will meet up not necessarily to say that we lost the 20 lbs that we wanted to lose from January 1 to January 20 or that we were finally able to quit sugar or alcohol (although every resolution is magnificent) but to hug each other and say '' I am proud of myself, I am thankful toward life and I am blessed. Every day I tried to be one with life and others, every day I showed up and every day I did my best to honor the chance I have to be in life.'' There is a big part of me that would like to wish you health, but I prefer to wish you the experiences and circumstances that will make you a more complete, more fulfilled and more free human being. With all my love, I wish you to believe in your wildest dreams without getting attached to how they will come true. In short, Happy New Year, enough reading and cheers to this new endless adventure!

Bless you,

Mikaël Lavallée-Gravel,