Your ability to hold vision, hope, and belief is not just a mindset. It’s a nervous system state.
When your body is overwhelmed, depleted, or in pain, the part of your brain responsible for vision and forward-thinking struggles to stay online. You can journal, visualize, and set goals all you want but if your body feels unsafe, your mind will keep pulling you back.
And if you live with chronic illness, chronic pain, or burnout, this is not new information.
You’ve probably had moments where:
• You want to feel hopeful, but can’t access it
• You know what mindset would help, but it feels out of reach
• You try to think positively, but your body feels tense, guarded, or braced
That’s not failure. As if our bodies are just waiting for us to say the right affirmation in the right font.
That’s actually physiology.
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The Body Test: A Different Way to Measure Alignment
Here’s something simple but surprisingly powerful to try:
When you imagine the life you want. The healing, the work, the relationships, the version of yourself you’re moving toward,
Does your body soften… or does it brace?
That response is important information. That brace could be your body essentially replying: ‘Respectfully, no.’
Sometimes what we think we should want was actually handed to us by fear, pressure, or comparison. And chasing those things can give us the energy of pursuit but not the peace of arrival.
There’s a quieter, truer kind of vision.
One that comes from a regulated, grounded body.
And your body knows the difference.
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Why Mindset Feels So Hard with Chronic Conditions
Most of us were taught that results come first, and mindset follows.
“When I get healthier, then I’ll feel good.”
“When I have more energy, then I’ll be more positive.”
But if you’ve ever made progress on a health journey, you know the truth.
You had to start treating your body with care before it changed. You had to practice compassion before you believed it.
Mindset doesn’t come after results. It creates the conditions for them.
And when you’re living with chronic symptoms, this becomes even more important. Because your external results often change slowly. And beyond your control.
Big, dramatic efforts such as new routines, strict plans, sudden bursts of energy don’t sustain us. Sadly, healing is rarely impressed by one heroic Tuesday.
Especially not when our bodies are already working hard just to function.
What changes us is the steady trickle. Small, repeatable moments of regulation.
Tiny habits that teach the body. We are safe, we are supported, we can keep going.
Because in the end,
You don’t rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your habits.
But in creating a body that feels safe enough to hope again.
In choosing small, steady practices over dramatic change.
In building habits that nourish instead of deplete.
In letting your body have a vote in the life you’re creating.
Because when your body believes it’s possible your mind doesn’t have to work so hard to convince it.
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I taught piano lessons for years. I enjoyed working with kids. I enjoyed the lesson prep. I even enjoyed some of the music!
But in 2020 my body said, ‘no more.’ It could no longer do outward smiles and inward screams.
It said no to early mornings. And busy days. And constant focus. And sitting or standing. It said ‘stop!’
Eventually I chose to set aside my business. Then close it. I often consider, after having a couple of good days in a row, about teaching again.
Sometimes I start to think of how much I miss it and think perhaps I could just take a few students. I get excited thinking about it.
When I slow down my thinking enough to see how my body feels about this idea. It braces. It feels drained.
I see myself leaning forward over and over to show the place in the music I am referring to. The repetitive motion getting more and more painful.
I picture my fingers that can’t play more than a few minutes. And only simple songs. No reaching. No pressure. And how frustrating that can be when trying to demonstrate.
I think of the days I didn’t get any sleep and had to go to work anyway. And drag myself through the day. How can one person be so bad at both sleeping AND staying awake?
I have good days. That is true. But only because I’m not forcing my body and mind to work day in and day out in ways that do not support its healing.
I need time for exercise. And rest. And listening to my body. As hard as it is to listen to it at times. It really does know best.
i hope you know you aren't broken glass you are sea glass shaped by the tides softened by the waves that once felt like they'd shatter you what you've been through hasn't made you less it has made you rare and luminous
even the toughest waters can create something beautiful and that's what you are... a reminder that survival can turn into art
SUNBEAM ACRES 