A few weeks ago I helped a few people to craft their elevator speech; you know the drill. An elevator speech is a clear, brief message or “commercial” about you. It communicates who you are, what you're looking for and how you can benefit a company or organization. It's typically about 30 seconds, the time it takes people to ride from the top to the bottom of a building in an elevator. In the process, I was thinking about my elevator speech. One of the “exercises” I had for them was to name three things that make them unique. In my case I thought, one thing that makes me unique is that I am a brain tumor survivor.
Many of us cope with the trauma, with a loss, with any life-changing experience by finding meaning and purpose. But, have you ever noticed that many of us tend to identify ourselves by our wounds? Especially in the “cancer, brain tumor” community, as if the fact that we survived the tumor somehow it defines us.
As I wrote in a previous post, I feel blessed. I see the brain tumor I had as a gift, a gift that allowed me to transform my life. My crappy experience is now defined by the transformation I underwent; the person I am today wouldn’t exist without having survived the tumor. However, what it meant a long time ago is different from what it means today, and it may not be what it means a year from now, or 10. But here is the thing, it’s never too late to become someone other than a survivor. Picture the word survivor in your head, say it aloud, hear how static it sounds- Survivor.
I met a fellow “survivor” not long ago, and we were talking about our similarities. It was weird, because right away, she started telling me the story of her experience. And she was using words like suffering, hardship, struggle. And she finished her tale with, "I felt hopeless." She even started crying, and she was talking about something it happened years ago. I felt for her because she was still living the experience. I couldn’t help but think that we do this all the time, and we need to reinvent ourselves and let that suffering person step aside, so that a new self, a happier self, is born. Finding meaning and purpose from a crappy experience is dynamic and much more uplifting than reliving the trauma.
I found a few quotes from people that are “survivors.”, but would like to be known as something else. These quotes embody my thoughts.
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“I don’t like the term. “Survival” isn’t my goal in life. Thriving is my goal. Survival was tolerating what happened and continues to happen. Thriving is finding something to gain from the experience, paying it forward, and having no regrets.
“I don’t think of myself as a survivor, but I am a warrior”
So what about you? Have you found meaning in your crappy experience?
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