Give Yourself Permission to Truly Live Despite It All (Radical Acceptance) | #160

The question isn't when are you going to die. The question is when are you going to let yourself truly live despite it all? In Daily Dose of Dawn #160, Dawn speaks directly to the people carrying heavy, lifelong stuff they didn't cause and can't fully fix. Drawing on her own experience with narcolepsy, nine diagnosed disorders, and a lifetime of trauma, she shares the mindset shifts and a powerful 30-day experiment that helped her stop leading with her limitations and start genuinely thriving — not someday, but now.

Watch the Video Here or Read the Script below

The question isn't when are you going to die. The question is when are you going to let yourself truly live despite it all.

This dose about resilience is for someone facing some truly difficult stuff. The stuff they've been dragging around with them forever. Stuff they didn't cause but had to deal with the aftermath of. Stuff that probably is not going to be fixed in this lifetime. It's hard. It's heavy. And there are plenty of days you wish you could just be free of it all, which sounds much more fatalist than it is.

If all that makes sense to you and you've finally come to accept that you're doing everything you currently can to improve your situation, you're at that place where this is the best you can get and you want to know — now what? You're finally ready for the path forward. You've done everything you can with your tired faulty meatsuit and now you're ready for some positive doing for your mind.

Okay, if you nodded along to all of that, welcome in to your daily dose of Dawn at Dawn — videos designed to expand your thinking.

Having lifelong narcolepsy and a group with over 2500 neeps — which are narcolepsy people — living with narcolepsy, I've had a lot of conversations about some truly difficult stuff.

The average time to diagnosis for someone with narcolepsy is still 7 to 10 years, which means they're walking around with all these symptoms, possibly even talking to doctors about them, and no one is handing them the answer. When they finally get diagnosed, they often feel vindicated. See, I told you there was something wrong with me.

Then it's easy to start lamenting all the years you missed because your doctor didn't catch it, how you're going to have to live with this for the rest of your life, and all the things you're going to miss out on because of that. It's very emotional. It's a lifelong issue as of now. Meds are hit or miss and it's very difficult.

Now, I'm telling you all that for one reason — to help you understand that I know suffering, that I know the loss of vitality. Add narcolepsy to probably 50 other things that are not easy to live with.

"I don't know how you do it," people have said to me.

What choice do I have? I mean really, going forward is the only choice I have. The key is deciding how am I going to go forward.

When we think about who we are, are we leading with our limitations or our joys?

I'm living a challenging life. That's radical acceptance.

One of the first things anyone who spends a lot of time around me notices is that I do a lot of little things to make my life easier. And that includes mental stuff.

Giving up complaining. That was huge. I mean, I have every reason in the world to complain, but I realized it's a net negative. And what does that mean? It means no conversation filled with complaining ends with you feeling better about yourself, your life, or the world.

Suffering. The list of all the ways I've suffered in this lifetime could rival a CVS receipt. Nine diagnosed disorders. A lifetime of trauma, neglect, abandonment. I'm like an afterschool special on steroids.

Wow, Dawn, you're sitting here telling people not to complain and then you're dropping that on them. What's up with that?

Okay, so let's clarify that the issue with complaining is that neither you nor the recipient feel good about it. Here, you probably laughed. Or at least you weren't filled with empathy anxiety. If I'm laughing, you can laugh too. And that eases the anxiety and it eases suffering. It's all about packaging your info.

So, my number one tip for overcoming not letting yourself live — for learning to let go of the abusive parents, the miserable childhood, the failed relationships, the health challenges — is an experiment that I did back in 2019.

I decided that for 30 days, I was not going to think about any of my suffering. Not from now or in the past. And if I did think about it, I was going to say, "Nope, we have a deal, brain. No thoughts of suffering for 30 days. You can pick them back up next month if you want to."

So, this isn't shoving down your suffering. Your mind can only pay attention to 17 things at once. So don't make suffering one of those 17 things for an entire month and just see what it does for your life.

If you want to try it and you need some guidance, I'll drop the links below — "You Have Every Reason to Complain" and "What Happens If I Don't Think About My Suffering" — the experiment results. And then you can see how much I've grown as a creator. The tips are good. Trust me. They got me here to thriving and loving my life no matter what.

Together, we all win.

🔗 Want to go deeper? Get Dawn's 14-Day Self-Love Boot Camp: How to Be on Your Own Side — and if you can't afford it, reach out. She means it.

👉 https://howtobeonyourownside.com

📲 Ready for 1-on-1 coaching? A weekend slot is open. Text or call Dawn directly: 805-870-9740