Britt’s Story

I sent this series out to my email list starting in 2021, after experiencing burnout, quitting social media, and taking a big step back from both work and working out. I spent a couple years taking a hard look at the choices I made that led me down a path I didn’t actually want to be on, and decided to embark on a new path, in search of meaning.

My hope is that by telling my story, you develop a better understanding of my views on health, fitness, and wellness — and that it makes you feel less alone in your own struggle.

Part 1: This Is Not Your Typical Transformation

Part 2: Sick On the Platform

Part 3: The Champion Mindset

Part 4: I Gotta Stop, Period

Part 5: My Body’s Breakdown

Part 6: Exchanging One Compulsion for Another

Part 7: Where It All Started

Part 8: A Life-Changing Decision

Part 9: Kettlebell Celebrity, Here I Come!

Part 10: Addiction Prediction

Part 11: The Instagram Idol

Part 12: Why I Dumped Instagram

Part 13: The Flood

Part 14: I Had A Dream

Part 15: The Truth Hurts

Part 16: Honesty is the Best Policy

Part 17: I Had to Try Something

Part 18: My Journey to Finding God

Part 19: Reigniting My Love for Kettlebells

Part 20: Befriending My Shadow Self

 This Is Not Your Typical Transformation

After a year of self-examination, contemplation, and transformation I’ve come to realize that what I have to offer the world is far more than being a 7X Master of Sport and World Champion kettlebell lifter.

I was completely lost for a large portion of the last year. I was confused about who I had become and who I wanted to be, and I had no clue what to do with my life. I had to face the discomfort and darkness of going into the wilderness of uncertainty to find my true North. While I know there is still more work to do, I feel that I have come out the other side with a much clearer picture of what I have to offer. 

My transformation is anything but “typical”. I was healthy and fit before I ever became a trainer or a Kettlebell Sport athlete. This is a transformation that required overcoming societal and familial expectations and my own limiting beliefs.

This story is about the trials and tribulations of becoming a 7X Master of Sport and World Champion, the damage I sustained physically and psychologically because of my desire to be the best, and the path I’ve traveled to heal myself and find balance.

I’ll tell you about the demons that drove my compulsion to exercise, what it was like to be a "kettlebell celebrity”, why I quit Instagram, why I don’t compete anymore, what I do now, and how I’ve changed my approach to coaching.

Scroll down for Part 2: Sick On the Platform.

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Sick On the Platform

I was standing on the platform, holding a 53 lb kettlebell over my head, and I felt worse than I had ever felt in my life. I felt feverish and depleted, with very little energy in the tank. 

I was ill and completely unfit to be lifting a kettlebell… but I had traveled all the way to Ireland for the World Championships, so there was no going back. 

I was on the platform competing against the best female kettlebell athlete in the world. She doubled my score that day. While it was far from my best performance, I hung on as long as I could to get within 10 reps of my personal best.

I left after my set to go crash at the hotel. I didn’t leave the room for the rest of the day. I was down for the count. 

I loved traveling to compete all over the world for Kettlebell Sport and I wouldn’t change my experience for anything. That being said, I trained myself to ignore the signals of my body in order to achieve the goals of my mind, when clearly my body was giving me distress signals over and over again, in different ways...

I let my mind and intellect be the drivers rather than my body and my intuition, and this bled into my career and personal life. Getting ill at this competition was my body's check engine light telling me how far off course I was — I was just too arrogant to listen.

I wanted what I wanted, and I thought that the choices I made for myself only affected me. I didn’t know how far from the truth that was. Every choice I made had a ripple effect outward into the world, whether through my attitude, my energy, or the sequence of events that happened as a result.

Scroll down to read Part 3: The Champion Mindset.

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The Champion Mindset

I was making history by competing in the most anticipated event of the World Championships. It was the first time ever that women were competing with 2 x 53 lbs kettlebells in the Long Cycle event. At one time, this was believed to be impossible. The pressure was on, to say the least.

There was a war being waged internally: the fatigue of my body versus the tenacity of my mind. I was standing on the platform in front of hundreds of people.  

The little devil sitting on my right shoulder whispered in my ear, “You’re getting tired. You should set the bells down now and give up.” 

The little angel on my left shoulder chimed in, “You can do it! You’ve trained too long and too hard for this to give up now.”

The little devil protested, “Why are you doing this? Your body is screaming for you to stop. You might even injure yourself.”

A Kettlebell Sport competition is 10 minutes of sheer, unadulterated hell. During that set of Long Cycle, I experienced my heart pounding in my throat, my lungs on fire and ready to burst, full body exhaustion, and an overwhelming urge to vomit or poop. 

In the end, the angel won, reminding me of my goals and aspirations, and how good it would feel to accomplish what I set out to do. The pain and discomfort I felt paled in comparison to my desire to win. You could say I have a true “champion mindset”, hence why that pesky little devil never won out. 

There are many benefits of having a “champion mindset”, such as mental tenacity and confidence in my physical abilities. I believe the tenacity I built through Kettlebell Sport helped me face the many challenges I struggled with over the past year. 

That being said, my “champion mindset” came from deep-rooted feelings of unworthiness and my desire for validation. Pushing my body to its breaking point and beyond shows how desperately I wanted those accolades and the social rewards that followed.

The mind is powerful; it can overcome the body. But just because it can, doesn’t mean that it should. When I think back to that little devil on my shoulder, who asked me “Why are you doing this?”, perhaps he wasn’t a “devil” at all, but rather a voice of reason.

I kept following the little “angel”, to the point that even after I had reached World Champion status, I pushed even harder and further, only to make matters worse for my body. 

We'll have to flash forward for you to understand what I mean. Scroll down to read more!

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I Gotta Stop, Period

Things started going haywire with my body when I began competing with 2x20kg and 2x24kg kettlebells. Haywire, you might ask? Fatigue, inability to recover, and constant stiffness and soreness, to name a few things. In spite of a healthy diet and increasing exercise, I was gaining weight. It was as if my body was creating a protective layer to handle the unreasonable amounts of work I was forcing it to do. In hindsight, it makes sense that my body was rebelling, as my hormones were out of whack and it had been six years since my last period.

While I wasn’t ready to fully acknowledge the severity of the situation, I knew I needed to at least make a concerted effort to get my period back. My research indicated that stopping exercise and eating more would bring me back into balance. Not wanting to hear this, I bumped up my calories while maintaining my training, but without success. Deep down, I knew what I had to do to rebalance my hormones and get my period back.

Looking at it now, it’s staggering to think it only took THREE WEEKS for my period to come back, and that it took me SIX YEARS to get to a place to allow that to happen. 

Clearly I still hadn’t learned my lesson, though. I went right back to training for my Master of Sport International Class (MSIC) as soon as I regained my period. My heavier body was a challenge to accept and clumsy to move. Yes, I was muscular, but I was holding onto excess water and fat and I felt and looked puffy. I was uncomfortable with the weight gain, and worried what people would think.

Maybe you remember me posting body positive messages on social media about accepting and loving yourself no matter what your body looks like. In part this was to help me do that very thing, the other part was that people loved the posts which made me feel better about myself. While I do believe in accepting your body no matter what, those posts were a cover up for the insecurities I felt. It was easier to feign acceptance of my larger body than it was to face the causes of my insecurities. 

In spite of feeling self-conscious about my body, I hit a new personal best of 51 reps in 2x24kg Long Cycle in November of 2017, which also made me feel better about myself (temporarily). In the process of training for it, however, I realized I no longer felt the same burning desire to achieve MSIC. Simply put, I was burnt out. 

I continued training for the next couple months anyway, compounding the issues. By January my body was saying “no more”… find out what finally made me stop competing altogether next time. 

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My Body’s Breakdown

I had been getting really fatigued every few months or so, where I wouldn’t be able to train for days or weeks because I was utterly exhausted. I would feel terribly depressed and down when it happened, but I brushed it off as a fluke and kept going. This was the first of many red flags, one which I ignored. 
 

After my 2x24kg Long Cycle set in November 2017, my motivation to achieve my goals in the sport had all but disappeared. By January, I was so tired that I couldn’t find the motivation to do anything, physical or otherwise. My body felt like lead. 
 

I dragged myself to work in the morning only to head back home at lunch time and crash on the couch for a few hours before dragging myself back to work again in the evening. I tried to continue doing my handstand training, but I couldn’t recover. 
 

That’s when things started getting really crazy. 
 

I got sick for a week, and no sooner had I recovered then I got sick again. I had rarely been sick with anything more than a mild cold once a year, so to recover from being sick only to relapse was a big red flag. 
 

The red flags continued. I began to break out in hives inexplicably on my stomach and thighs. I’m not allergic to anything, but I started having reactions to things that had never bothered me before, like eating ginger or other spicy food. Besides the hives, my digestion was not doing well either (I’ll spare you the details). 
 

I had been suffering from athlete’s foot for the last several months and that led to an infection on one of my feet. Later I learned that a fungal infection is one of the first signs of a compromised immune system.

I felt so out of control with what was happening in my body that I knew something was seriously wrong. My immune system was clearly depleted and not functioning. My body was swollen and inflamed, and I felt like complete shit, mentally and physically. Nothing that normally excited me about my life sounded even remotely interesting. Things had to change… 

I made the decision to stop competing in Kettlebell Sport. I knew it was enabling me to keep overtraining, and for what? Yes, my identity was tied to my status as a top level Kettlebell Sport athlete, and that was tough to let go of… but I didn’t feel the same drive that I once had, and it hadn’t felt great on my body in a long time. 

And so I embarked on a path to healing… or did I? Find out next time.

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Exchanging One Compulsion for Another

After my body’s breakdown, I knew it was time to stop competing. Each new goal or competition created an excuse for me to keep training and delay giving my body what it truly needed: REST. 
 

So I stopped training for a while… sort of. I would still do handstands and mobility work at home. I started feeling better after a couple weeks and I began doing gymnastic strength training at a new gym. It wasn’t long before I was full on training for all the gymnastic strength skills, sometimes 3 hours at a time, and practicing handstands daily to boot. 
 

I justified the new training routine by telling myself it was slower and less intensive than Kettlebell Sport, but the truth is it was still way too much exercise to be healthy. I still went through periods of time where I would feel exhausted and depressed for days, but I would bounce back and get right back to training. You might be wondering: why did I do this to myself? 
 

You see, training is what made me feel good about myself. When I was at the gym, I was able to be very present, and I felt happy, capable, and confident. Being an athlete and doing the impressive physical feats that I did had been tied into my identity for so long that I didn’t know who I was without it. 
 

I felt my worth was tied to my body looking the way it once had, and I struggled to accept and love myself. All the while I was avoiding the deeper issues and posting selfies with text about deeper issues, for the wrong reason. I believed the validation and attention I got from social media would make me feel worthy of love. 
 

Given the choice of overtraining and feeling good versus actually letting my body heal and feeling like an emotional disaster… well, I think you know which one I chose. 
 

To better understand the roots of my exercise and body image issues, we'll have to go back in time… all the way back to my college days.

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Where It All Started

When I first walked into the Ice Chamber, I had no idea what kettlebells were or what the gym was about, but I knew I wanted to work there. The stillness of the gym between classes was eclipsed by my awe of the kettlebell-studded floor and sheer magnitude of the space — which looked like a playground to me.

I was in search of an outlet for athletic expression. After a failed attempt at making the Track & Field team, I spent my first couple years of college exercising aimlessly. I had been a Track & Field athlete in high school, which was where my love for training began. Without being on a team, I felt lost and unmotivated. Finding the Ice Chamber was the catalyst to reignite my competitive drive. The strong women on the Ice Chamber Kettlebell Sport team served as my early role models, and it wasn’t long before I would join their ranks.  

I went from doing a few random workouts here and there to training more than I had in my entire life. It felt amazing to have a direction for training, and I could feel my body getting stronger and fitter. I loved how muscular my body became; I really looked the part of a trainer. I was leaner than I'd ever been, with more energy than I knew what to do with (it probably helped that I was 21!). 
 

>> Scroll down to see a typical day of exercise <<

The compliments came in from all angles, about how disciplined I was and how good my body looked. The ultimate validation came in the form of a photoshoot I was asked to be a part of where my washboard abs were on full display. 
 

I began working at the gym full-time after graduation, and while the community was wonderful, most of the trainers and members were older and busy. I spent my free time alone, doing some kind of physical activity. While it may have looked like a healthy outlet to others, the truth is I was using exercise to avoid dealing with unresolved emotions and the dissatisfaction I felt about my life.
 

Burnt out and unfulfilled, my job started to feel like the same thing day in and day out, and my social life was nonexistent. Despair and dissatisfaction reared their ugly heads more frequently, and I could no longer contain the deluge of emotions that were bubbling up to the surface. I was at a loss for what to do. 
 

Then, a life-changing opportunity was dropped into my lap… find out what it was next time!

A typical day of exercise, circa 2012-2013:

• Ride my bike to work 45 minutes at 4:45am

• Kettlebell Sport training 1.5 hours

• Bike 45 minutes back to school to go to class

• Bike 45 minutes back to work after class

• Take a 60 minute bootcamp class after work

• Bike 45 minutes back home at 7:30pm
  

= a whopping 5.5 hours of exercise a day!
(and that's without counting the hours I was coaching)

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A Life-Changing Decision

Mesmerized by the waves crashing on the sand, I marveled at the stunning blue color of the ocean. Instantly, I knew this was where I wanted to be.

I was awestruck by the beauty, enamored by the weather, intrigued by the fitness culture, and relieved by the relaxed pace of life. Thanks to my friends Renee & Rune, I got invited to come down to San Diego and was exposed to a totally different way of life. Upon return from my vacation, I gave notice to the Ice Chamber and made plans to head south. 

Without a clue about where I would work or live, and relatively few contacts in San Diego, I left my life for the adventure of moving to an entirely new place far away from home, which gave me a viable escape from the challenges of various familial relationships and temporarily relieved the feelings of loneliness and dissatisfaction I felt.

I knew my unique Kettlebell Sport knowledge was what I would use to make my mark in the fitness world and keep myself afloat in an unfamiliar city. Unsure of exactly how I was going to do that, I started my website and became increasingly more active on social media.

Surprisingly, it was easy to get jobs at various local gyms in San Diego. I ended up finding my home base at KOR Strength and Conditioning, a kettlebell gym where I would spend most of my time over the next few years. You could say I breathed, trained, ate, and slept all things Kettlebell Sport. Coaching and training were my life, and the social nature of my job made me feel less lonely than I had been up north.

Traveling from competition to competition with the team of Kettlebell Sport athletes I was coaching kept me busy and was exciting. My kettlebell skills, coaching videos, and fit body garnered all of the attention, clients, and opportunities I could handle — on and off of social media. 

Under the surface, the compulsive need to exercise and keep my body looking and performing exactly how I wanted it to drove me to push myself harder and harder. I carried a belief that what my body could do and how it looked was the source of credibility that gained me clients and teaching opportunities and the ability to make money. Underneath that, I used those things to define my value as a person and believed it was what made me likable and attractive to others. I constantly exercised and restricted my diet to keep my body in check, which gave me the illusion of being in control. 
 

The unhealthy rate and volume of exercise I was doing was fueled by the belief that my body and my skills gave me credibility and made me likable. Deep down inside, I knew that I couldn’t keep doing this to myself. 
 

Despite this inner knowing, I kept going, and eventually got what I wanted: I became a “kettlebell celebrity”. Find out more about that next time.

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Kettlebell Celebrity, Here I Come!

I was bursting with excitement as I stood in front of a group of Kettlebell Sport athletes and coaches. I couldn’t believe I was teaching alongside 8X World Champion and Master of Sport International Class, Denis Vasilev. On top of that, people were looking at me in awe as if I was as impressive as he was. Someone even asked me to sign their kettlebell. 
 

It was a symbol of my elevated status in the kettlebell world. I had gone from struggling to snatch a 10kg kettlebell to joining the ranks of an elite group of top level Kettlebell Sport athletes, in less than five years. I was attending competition after competition and setting records left and right, which led to getting paid to travel and teach workshops. And the strangest thing: people approached me at competitions to meet me and ask for a photo. My online presence was growing by the day, and as a result I got hired by a popular kettlebell company to create content for them.
 

I had the chance to be the best in the world, and I was very motivated to do so. Chasing the accolades and ranks had become my identity, a way to prove I was a success so that others would be impressed, praise me, and give me the attention and opportunities that I drew validation from.

I never stopped to ask myself why I was so driven to achieve and become famous… it just seemed like something anyone in my shoes would want. 
 

Posting my competition results online was a way for me to draw attention to my achievements. Social media is a great place to look for praise. With every new accomplishment, the likes went up and my following grew. That’s when the Instagram addiction really began to take hold… more on that next.

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Addiction Prediction

Resistance was futile. 

Despite my best efforts to avoid smartphone technology, I was eventually lured into acquiring an iPhone — against my better judgment. I had seen how smartphones stole people's focus and quickly addicted them to their devices. I wanted to believe that it wouldn't happen to me, but I knew that I would fall prey to addiction just the same. 
 

I was living in San Diego and had started building my online presence to help me drum up business, so I figured it was as good a time as any to finally bite the bullet, in the name of self-promotion. So I did, and lo and behold my addiction prediction came true. 
 

With my iPhone in hand and social media as my medium, I was creatively able to get my name out there to draw in opportunities I would have missed out on otherwise. In time, my social following built up — along with my ego. I found validation in other people’s approval of me, in the form of their likes and follows.
 

My ego told me that being a famous "somebody" would make me happy and fill the hole inside that I was so desperately running away from. I began posting more and more of my life online and getting rewarded for it with praise, attention, and opportunities. 
 

While Instagram was useful for proliferating information that helped people and helped me grow my mailing list. In retrospect, the way I was using the platform became painfully similar to every other fitspo out there: my body was my calling card and the party tricks got attention. 

But not without consequences…
 

Find out what those consequences were next time.

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The Instagram Idol

It was a natural progression to post more and more of the things that people responded to. 

Performing impressive physical feats while scantily clad racked up the likes on Instagram and steadily grew my following. My time in the gym became less about training and more about showing off and recording myself doing so, while wearing less clothing so that people could “see my muscles”. 
 

I denied that my identity was tied to how I portrayed myself online, but the truth is that Instagram started becoming my life. At one point, I even caught myself thinking, “What would I do if I wasn’t on Instagram?”. 
 

Unfortunately, I was basing my self-worth on my body and physical skills, which gave me the praise and attention I was in search of to feel good about myself. This further drove the compulsion to exercise because that's what kept my body and physical skills intact. 
 

Instagram, in addition to overexercising, was a great way to avoid myself. If I was feeling lonely, bored, or sad… I could flip open Instagram and have an instant distraction, not to mention an ego boost if I posted something. I could have a shallow conversation with someone or simply scroll for 30 minutes and be mind-numbed. 
 

When I look back, I can’t believe how much of my life I spent on IG and filming for it, thinking I would “miss” something otherwise. In reality, there’s many things I missed as a consequence of spending so much time staring at my phone. 
 

The excuse I told myself was that I was building my brand and becoming an influencer. While there was truth in that, the biggest reason I used Instagram was to validate my ego and avoid the emotional and spiritual distress roiling beneath the surface. 
 

So what finally drove me to quit Instagram? Find out next time.

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Why I Dumped Instagram

Stuck at home, I was lonelier than ever. 

When the pandemic struck, exercising and posting on Instagram became even more pervasive in my life. I was following an intensive gymnastic strength and mobility training program. Weighted pullups with a 36kg kettlebell, handstand pushups, overhead presses, middle splits, and more. I built a lot of muscle — and I got huge. My body was inflamed from overdoing my training, yet again. 
 

I was abusing my body, using training as an avoidance mechanism like I had for years, while still feeling unfulfilled and unhappy. This time, however... someone noticed, and asked: 
 

“Have you ever thought about why you push yourself so hard?” 
 

No one had ever asked me that before. That question changed (and perhaps even saved) my life. I started examining myself, being honest about my true feelings and motivations. I looked at my history, the way I was portraying myself in the world, and the manner in which I was relating with others. I was shocked, appalled, and heartbroken by what I found. I couldn't believe how far off course I had gotten. 
 

I had chased achievement my entire life because of the belief that success — as society portrays it — would bring me acceptance and accolades. I thought it would make me feel happy and loved. I was achieving one thing after another, each time hoping to feel worthy and like I was enough, and it never worked... 


Instead, I felt a greater compulsion to do the NEXT thing, each time thinking that thing would finally give me what I was looking for. The definition of insanity is to “do the same thing over and over again and expect different results”, which is exactly what I was doing... at the expense of my body’s health. It was a vicious cycle, one in which I hadn't even realized I was trapped. 


It took some time, but eventually I accepted the role Instagram had played in avoiding myself and perpetuating dysfunctional behaviors. After I made the decision to leave San Diego and focus on healing, I dumped Instagram.

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The Flood

Remember in Part 11: The Instagram Idol, when I said there was “emotional and spiritual distress roiling underneath the surface”? Well, it was only a matter of time before that distress became too much to bear. 
 

I have suppressed emotions for most of my life. As a child I often felt embarrassed about my emotions. I was shy, and didn’t like being vulnerable with anyone outside of my immediate family. As I became a young adult and my personal problems became more complicated, it seemed easier to avoid feeling “negative” emotions altogether — so I built a wall of protection around myself. Eventually I became so good at avoiding my emotions that I had convinced myself I was completely fine and didn’t have any problems. 
 

The coping mechanisms I adopted didn’t make the emotions go away. I simply built up a stockpile underneath the surface — like a swelling reservoir of water being held back by a dam, ready to burst. 
 

There were little cracks in the dam every now and then, where sadness, despair, and shame would leak through… however, it wasn’t until being asked that “life-changing question” that the dam finally burst, and the flood came.  
 

All of the emotion I held in for so long — from childhood traumas to my parents’ divorce to relationship regrets — came tumbling out, and I was surprised to realize I still felt hurt and ashamed about things that had happened decades earlier. With some encouragement from a trusted friend, I decided to lean into what I was feeling. 
 

I searched for the things inside of me that made me want to cry. I pushed myself towards the places in my mind that I didn’t want to go, towards things that I didn’t want to relive but felt I had to. I let myself feel what those things had done to me. I let myself be angry: at myself and everyone who had ever hurt me. I let myself wallow in the unjustness of it all. Then, I forgave myself, to the best of my ability. I forgave the people who hurt me, to the best of my ability. I wrote pages and pages in my journal: to myself, to other people, to God. 
 

I had massive realizations about myself, my family, and my relationships. I realized that the feelings I had bottled up inside of me had been affecting my actions my entire life. Here I thought that avoiding my emotions was the way to avoid being hurt, when in reality I was living in fear and preventing myself from healing past wounds because I hadn’t processed the emotions that came along with them. 
 

As you can imagine, feeling so much emotion after years of numbness was scary and overwhelming (to say the least). I felt confused about how to process all of the emotions and reconcile the person I was in the past with the person having these profound realizations. 

Combine that with being stuck inside and alienated from my friends, workplaces, and communities in San Diego due to the pandemic… I wasn’t sure how to move forward with anything, personally or professionally. 
 

Then one day, I had a dream…. But I’ll save that for next time. 

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I Had A Dream

I had a peculiar dream one day while taking a nap. Somewhere between crying and processing my emotions, I fell asleep on my bed in the middle of the day. 
 

I dreamed that my mom told me I should never have moved away from home to go to San Diego, and so my dream self decided to move back to the Bay Area, where I grew up. 
 

Upon waking from my nap, my immediate thought was “well that’s a funny dream, but I am NOT moving back home.” Moving back home was not something I had ever considered as an option — I liked being independent and living in a city far from home. Or that’s what I told myself. Looking back now, the more honest reason why I liked being in San Diego was that family drama and trauma are easier to avoid when you’re 500 miles away. 
 

I was riding a bike several hours later when it hit me: I had to move back home. Almost all of the emotions I had been processing were rooted in or revolved around my family and my parents. The obvious step forward on my healing journey was to return home and work on my familial relationships. The pandemic had afforded me much-needed time to work on myself, and now it was time to see whether that work would hold up in relationship — and what better way than with the people who trigger me the most?
 

Relocating to San Diego was a spontaneous move — an adventure in an unknown place, where I didn’t know what to expect. I was very much interested in developing my career and making things happen for myself. My trip back up to Northern California, however, was a leap of faith. The move didn’t make sense for practical reasons: my whole network in the fitness world was in San Diego, and it didn’t appeal to me to live in the Bay Area. Yet, there was a whisper inside my heart that said being closer to my family was necessary to become the person I wanted to be. 
 

A thought that bolstered my decision was, “It’s so common for people to prioritize their career and financial success over their relationships and emotional well-being. What if I try doing the exact opposite?”
 

I decided my #1 priority was to heal my heart, so I left San Diego and didn’t look back.

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The Truth Hurts

The luster of returning home to the Bay Area wore off after a few months, when reality set in: I was living at my mom’s house at 29 years old, during a global pandemic, and I felt completely lost. 
 

I had stripped away all of the distractions I used to avoid myself: I quit social media, left behind the shallow relationships that came with it, stopped working out, stepped back from work, and let go of obsessing over food and body image.
 

I was flooded with realizations about myself, my family, my relationships. Emotions and traumas that had been buried for years were surfacing as a result of my commitment to healing. I had made courageous steps toward finding my inner truth with the intention of becoming a better version of myself. The truth of who I really was, at my core, was peeking through a little more each day. Something to feel good about, right?
 

Honestly, it felt like shit. I often felt inconsolably sad and completely out of control; my emotions were like a torrential hurricane. Without “achieving”, without working out constantly, without using external validation to prop myself up, I was faced with uncomfortable realizations that highlighted pain and regrets from the past and caused doom spirals of anxiety and depression… I felt horrible, like a useless waste of space. Meaningless. Unmotivated. Purposeless. Sad, frustrated, confused, angry, ashamed, guilty. 
 

From a young age, I had fears and insecurities that caused me to believe I was lacking something that other people had, that shyness and introversion were huge flaws, that there was something unworthy and unlovable about me — and that I needed to change in order to be liked. 
 

I covered it all up by doing just that. I made it seem like I was confident. I was so convincing, I even believed it myself after a while. It wasn’t until I stripped away all the layers of pretending I used to make myself feel “worthy” that I came to the truth of how I badly I felt about myself, deep down inside. 
 

For most of my life, I didn’t believe in God. I never thought it was for me. But something happened in January 2020 that is the strongest evidence I have for God: my heart opened. I allowed myself to believe in a higher power, and let go of the notion that I have to do and fix everything on my own. 
 

I asked God to humble me, early on in my spiritual journey — I knew that arrogance stood in the way of my relationship with God. 
 

Humbling is exactly what I would call the last couple years. I’ve chosen to face the deep, dark parts of myself that I am terrified to look at, the parts that make it hard for me to accept, forgive, and love myself. Through the humility that comes from my own struggle, I see that others are wrestling with their dark side, too. Now I am able to feel empathy for other people’s inner battles, and I understand that we are all children of God, worthy of love and compassion. 
 

Sometimes I still feel incredibly lost and alone, and other times I have deeper realizations that put me at ease. My ability to see, feel, and recognize things in the people around me is growing as well. It’s much harder to live my life this way than in the pleasure-seeking, nothing-can-hurt-me, achievement-is-everything way that I was living before… but it’s worth it. It’s real. It’s honest. It’s the truth… and the truth sets us free.

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Honesty is the Best Policy

Do you ever struggle to be honest with yourself? 

I know I do. 

As I've shared in previous emails, there are many situations in which I struggled to be honest with myself. Being honest would have led to realizations that, at the time, seemed too uncomfortable to bear...

If I admitted that achievement wasn’t the path to fulfillment, I would have to admit that all the achievements I chased were in vain, and I had no clue how to find fulfillment.

If I admitted that exercising as much as I did was unhealthy, I would have to admit it was a coping mechanism for deeper issues, and question what those were.

If I admitted that I had moved to San Diego to avoid familial issues, I would have to admit that I needed to move back and face the turmoil of trying to resolve them.

If I admitted that my approach to relationships was shallow, I would have to admit I didn’t understand how to connect deeply and I was afraid of it.

If I admitted that atheism could be false, I would have to consider the possibility that God is real, and I had been living in a way that caused unnecessary suffering.

It took a long time for me to be willing to look at myself in the mirror. I didn’t do it alone, either. It took someone else mirroring my actions and choices back to me before I could see what was obvious, from the outside looking in. Often we can see what's going on with others with crystal clarity, yet we are blind when it comes to ourselves.

I’ve seen this over and over again in my life. I get irritated by the behaviors of others, ranting in what feels like justified indignation… only to realize I do the same thing, which is why it irritates me in the first place.

I condemn my parents’ actions, only to realize I have modeled their exact behaviors numerous times throughout my life.

I deny having ulterior motives for things that I ask or say… but when I sit with it, there are subtle, self-serving reasons why I ask or say them.

I have found the less I resist the lessons that come from being completely honest, the more fully I learn the lesson. It’s when I resist the truth that I suffer. 
 

It can be hard to be honest. Our ego protects us from looking at the darker parts of ourselves that we don’t like. We may think we are not hurting anyone but ourselves when we engage in self-deception. 

I used to believe that… 

Now I see that being truthful with myself affects everyone around me. When I am honest, it’s easier to discern what is true and what is not, and it guides me towards integrity.

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I Had to Try Something

One of the hardest parts of my personal journey has been not knowing, and not knowing how to get to a place of knowing. 

What’s the path to fulfillment? 

How do I figure out what to do?

What do I do when I don’t know? 

I used to base my answers on what I thought I was supposed to do, what others would expect me to do, or what would give me external validation. Now that I’m on a path of deciding what’s real and right for me — the me underneath all the conditioning — it can be much harder to figure out. 

There is no road map to my (or your) personal fulfillment. If someone says there is, they don’t know. “Those who know don’t say, and those who say don’t know.” - Lao Tzu

I’ve had to come to terms with my own victim mentality. Constantly saying “I don’t know” and trapping myself in misery around not knowing is a form of victimhood. As scary and overwhelming as it may feel… it’s my life, I have agency over it, and no one else can walk this path for me. 

Knowing that I have a tendency to fall into victimhood doesn’t necessarily stop it from happening, though. I was feeling very stuck and emotionally overwhelmed at the beginning of the year, mired in fear because I didn’t know where to go or what to do next. 

Sometimes, all it takes to get further is to take a step in a direction —any direction. My mom recommended I try a process painting workshop and I thought, “I’ve got nothing to lose and nothing to do today anyway”, so I jumped on the opportunity. Lo and behold, it was a very healing experience to place my emotions onto paper, and the artwork helped me move into a different state of mind.  

It took the willingness to try something — even though I had no idea if it would be helpful — that turned things around and got me beyond the storm of despair. From there, I was able to let go of fear and keep taking steps forward. 

Being the author of my own story is difficult, and I get stuck and fearful at times. However, I believe that if I’m committed to the process, and open-minded enough to keep taking steps, there is freedom on the other side. 

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My Journey to Finding God

I grew up atheist, and internalized the idea that “belief in God is bullshit”. In my family, intellect was prized above all. Believing in God was mostly seen as folly; an excuse to not work hard or think for yourself.


I never questioned whether my family’s beliefs were my own. I simply thought God was not for me. (Although when I look back at my childhood journals, I find that in desperate times I would write prayers to God: “If you are really there, God, please help me…”)


It wasn’t until I embarked on the search for meaning that I realized I was missing a large piece of the puzzle by closing myself to God. I met a Christian in 2020 who completely changed my perspective on God and Christianity; the type of person who emanates love and positive energy in a way that is palpable to anyone in their presence. I knew immediately that I wanted to embody what this person embodied; that I wanted to know what they knew, because I could tell they had answers to the questions in my heart.


I began to learn about God by reading the Bible and other books: Christian, Buddhist, and other spiritual works. I started watching The Chosen, a TV series about the life of Christ, and listening to worship music. I began to pray to God in earnest, for myself and my loved ones. I meditated, did breathwork, and practiced being as present as possible. I spent a lot of time pondering what it means to live life believing God exists, and how that changes my thoughts, intentions, and actions.


One of the reasons I felt unfulfilled was that I was always pushing so hard, trying to do everything myself, thinking I had to control my life. Opening myself up to the idea that nothing is in my control, that I could let things unfold naturally, and that there is a God guiding things in the direction they’re meant to go, was simultaneously scary and relieving. I also realized that at my core, I felt like I wasn’t worthy of God’s divine love. For that reason, the story of Jesus’ mercy and forgiveness spoke to me deeply.


I had several experiences over the past couple years where I was shown signs and given realizations with such divine timing, that I cannot explain them with anything other than God. I found I could experience a lot of gratitude, joy, and comfort by letting myself have faith… even if that faith was relentlessly questioned by the other part of me that still believes things need to be tangible to be true.


I’ve heard it said that only God can fulfill my needs and repair my wounds. That God’s love is the most wonderful love there is. That God will be there for me, carrying me through tough times. That God loves me unconditionally. That God is listening.


Sometimes those ideas upset me, because I don’t understand how to feel them or have complete faith in God. I haven’t figured out what it means to connect with God in a personal way, one that isn’t based on what external sources tell me it is (books, people, society, religion, etc). Sometimes the atheist ideas I grew up with come in and fight against the part of me that wants to believe.


“Was that God talking to me, or just my imagination? If God is all-powerful, why doesn’t he make things obvious? Is he even listening to me? Why doesn’t he just talk back?”


I have a hard time letting go of my expectations around what God should do for me and how it should feel to have a “real” relationship. I know those things stand in my way of experiencing the mystery of God, and it’s frustrating.


Someone recently told me to approach my relationship with God like I would any other relationship. Getting to know someone takes time. Relationships require effort on both sides, and each has to learn to understand the way the other communicates. Unrealistic expectations get in the way; it means I want to control how someone shows up for me, instead of letting them love me in the way that is true for them.


While I still struggle to understand or describe my relationship with God, my journey to discern more of the mystery continues. One of the most important things I’ve learned so far is that some things simply cannot be explained by thinking and rationalizing; they can only be felt and understood intuitively. I feel that I am called to walk a spiritual path, even if I can’t explain why or what I’ll get out of it.

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Reigniting My Love for Kettlebells

Sadly, kettlebell training completely and totally lost its appeal to me once I stopped competing. I was thoroughly burned out, and didn't do much with kettlebells for the next several years.

When I found Kettlebell Partner Passing (KPP), my love for kettlebell training was rekindled. The part of the practice that intrigued me most was the way it helped me grow beyond the physical by showing me deeper lessons about myself. I had no idea that I would be so profoundly affected by the gems of wisdom I got from KPP.

After I had passed kettlebells a handful of times, I suddenly found myself without a partner to pass with. That’s when I started doing Kettlebell Solo, the fitness program that lays the foundation for KPP. The program is unlike any other kettlebell program I’ve done, and it was this program that fully reignited my love for kettlebell training.

Kettlebell Solo taught me that my ability to relate with others depends on how well I am able to work through my own issues. Doing Kettlebell Solo work to become a better KPP partner correlates to doing the mental, emotional, and spiritual “solo” work that allows for more harmonious relating with the people in my life. 

In addition to the interpersonal benefits I experienced from the Kettlebell Solo program, I gained a level of strength, fitness, and body awareness I had never had before — and, get this — the heaviest kettlebell I used was 12kg (26 lbs). Having trained with double 24kg (53 lbs) kettlebells in the past, I was shocked (to say the least!).

The efficacy of Kettlebell Solo was further made evident at the beginning of this year when I passed the Hour Test with little preparation. At the end of the test, the other instructors and I were all blown away that the Kettlebell Solo program was enough to successfully bring me through the hour of passing.

This highlighted another valuable gem of wisdom for me: doing my solo work really and truly makes a difference when it comes to making it through difficult times in life and relationships. 

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Befriending My Shadow Self

Until I examined the painful wounds from my past, my decisions and reactions — and even my thoughts — were not my own. 

I moved back to the area I grew up to face the demons from my past. I knew they stood in the way of harmonious familial relationships, my personal growth, and my ability to raise healthy children in the future. 

I had become aware that the way I was operating in my life was based on a series of core beliefs that weren’t mine. I was behaving in ways that disrespected my divine birthright and lowered my self-worth — all because I had seen and modeled things as a child that I hadn’t left behind as an adult. 

By going through the process of examining my past, I realized I was not alone in acting from a place of trauma and resistance. I started to see that many of us operate from our dysfunctions. “Hurt people hurt people” rings true.When we are full of love and compassion for ourselves and others, there is no desire for cruelty, power, greed, or subjugation of our fellow human being. 

It required a lot of courage for me to look, because when I peeked behind the carefully curated mask I had created for myself, it felt like like I was stepping off the edge of a cliff, into a dark abyss. Traversing my shadow self was like treading murky water, scary and filled with imagined dangers. It was a dark place to go to, full of pain and trauma, and at times it felt unsafe to go there alone.  

True strength, as I’ve come to define it for myself, is being able to step into those murky waters and come out the other side more loving and kind to myself and those around me — even those who hurt me. And it’s not like confronting myself and my past is ever “finished”… it’s a lifelong process. But if I don’t do the deep, important work inside of me that only I can do to make my life better and the world a more peaceful place — who will?

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