Reflecting on Our Past Brings Hope for Tomorrow: A Guest Post from Stephanie Wetzel

Today’s guest post is from Stephanie Wetzel, creator of Trading Pounds.  Stephanie is passionate about sharing her hope with other women, and helping them live a life of abundant health and authenticity.  Her story is amazing, and so inspiring. I am thrilled and honored to call her a new friend! Please make her welcome ~



The road ahead wasn’t going to be easy. Everything about my life was going to have to change. It was going to take both time and an ongoing commitment from me. I had to be patient. I had to learn to love the journey more than the destination. I had to give the seeds of change time to grow.

In my mind, it felt easier to stay stuck where I was. But in my heart, I knew I had to do this.

The 16 hour workdays, the dissolving relationships with friends and loved ones, the growing weight issues—it was all taking a toll and I was exhausted. There was no joy to be found here. I felt as though I was suffocating in my own life.

I didn’t know how to fix it, so I just kept doing what I had always done. Going through each day trying to find that small seed of hope that would assure me there was a chance to change all this. Little by little, tiny action by tiny action, that first seed started to sprout.

Learn from Yesterday

I started looking back over my early adulthood years to better understand where things started to spin out of control. What stuck out the most to me were all the compromises I had made along the way. I knew what I loved, what brought me joy, and the life I wanted to live. But traveling the path of jobs and promotions had me compromising those things in favor of chasing a “successful” career.

I spent so many years being who my bosses and co-workers wanted me to be that I had lost myself along the way. I didn’t know who I was anymore, and that lost identity needed to be rediscovered in order to make the changes I wanted for my life.

I started questioning everything. Every action, every belief, every thought that came into my mind. Where is this coming from? How do I feel about it? What does it mean to me? Slowly, I started peeling back all the layers to uncover the core of who I am.

Looking back, really questioning what we believe, it helps reveal our guiding compass and our direction becomes clear. In order to make big shifts in your life, that directional signal must be loud and strong.

Live for Today

I constantly worried about the future. Where was I going? What were my goals? Where would I be in five years? I concentrated on my past mistakes, allowing them to influence the present. On this journey, I came to understand that the greatest gift we can give ourselves is to release these worries of past and future and just be in the present moment. It is the only one that actually exists.

I started beginning my days with an affirmation that would keep me grounded—No matter what the day brings I will try my best, be true to myself, and show kindness to the world.

This simple thought has allowed me to stay focused on where I am and what needs to be done. What is past is gone, and tomorrow will come regardless of my worry, but today is my present and I must show appreciation for this gift.

Hope for Tomorrow

Hope can grow into a strong and mighty power within us. Having hope does not mean you worry your mind with what tomorrow will bring. It means trusting that tomorrow will be exactly what it was meant to be, and that you will be alright regardless of what may come.

In our goal-driven culture, it can be hard to release an idealized control over the future. But the truth is that we have no control, no foresight into what will come. Even the best laid plans can be undone in a single moment.

When we worry, we give away our days. But when we hope, we keep ourselves rooted in the joys of life. And that my friends, is when our garden truly blooms.

Stephanie Wetzel is a writer and entrepreneur on a mission to help women trade in their excess pounds and create the life they want to live. She has lost over 139 pounds by eating real food, changing her habits and blogging about it all on Trading Pounds. Download her free guide full of details on exactly how she did it. She’s also chatting away about change on Twitter and Facebook.