03/13/2024
Another morning conversation with Meagan….
Survivors and Thrivers
Which one are you. An easy way to tell is to ask yourself what you’re most comfortable with. It’s your default mode.
A survivor does what’s necessary to survive. A thriver is not comfortable with just surviving and will do whatever it takes to do, be, or have more. This distinction will show up in every area of your life so you can take stock of which one you are by being honest with yourself about where you default when things become challenging.
By way of example, are you an athlete who stopped working out consistently or a non-athlete who is working out consistently?
Are you a smoker who stopped smoking or a non-smoker who smokes?
Are you a wealthy person without the trappings of wealth or a poor person with all of the things suggestive of wealth?
Whoever you are is how you show up in every area of life no matter how much you try to pretend to be something else. What happens when you have a stressful day or week? When things don’t go as planned? Where you seek solace is either in surviving or thriving through it.
Many, if not most, humans are survivors. It’s part of the reason we are touched, moved and inspired by thrivers - those who do things we see as extraordinary. They inspire us and show us a possibility of a future we could create for ourselves.
Being a survivor now doesn’t mean that you can’t become a thriver- or vice versa. In fact, you absolutely can. If who you are is no longer workable for you, you can choose something else. The only requirement is to do hard things. Do them consistently and continuously until what is “hard” becomes where you’re comfortable.
The moment you decide that doing hard things is no longer of value, survival is where you will eventually return.
Thrivers don’t feel right walking over trash or leaving a mess, not getting up early, not working out, eating unhealthy foods, procrastinating, or doing anything that runs contrary to their word to themselves. The word of a thriver is what they live by - without excuses or reasons they create their lives only from their word.
It takes a little more effort, but it becomes what feels right for them. This doesn’t mean you perform perfectly in any of these things, it is simply an internal measure for who you are being.
This phenomenon doesn’t have anything to do with how you were raised, where you were raised, the experiences you have had or the things you were taught. It is your decision to be a survivor or thriver in spite of these things. It is the decision to live in a reality of surviving an ordeal or traumatic experience….or deciding to thrive in spite of it.
At its most basic level, survivors live somewhere on the spectrum between fear and courage but thrivers live their lives somewhere between courage and joy.
