by Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness
You Can Never Lose Anything Real
There will always be storms in life and they come in many different flavours and forms:
Breakups, illness, job loss, financial stress, unexpected change, etc. etc. etc. – they tend to show up when we least expect or want them to but they’re never mistakes…they’re just part of the unfolding design of our lives.
When they roll in, you can either see them as something that came to destroy you or things that came to wash away what’s not real.
And that’s exactly what they do if you let them: shake away and dissolve any unnecessary fragmentation that you’ve become attached to so that you can see clearly and become whole again.
What this means in short is that the storms never enter our lives to ‘punish’ us but to strip us back to the truth:
The truth of who we are, what we actually value, and what matters.
In other words, what’s REAL.
Let’s dig a little deeper:
What We’ll Cover In This Article
- You Can Never Lose Anything Real
- Storms Come. Storms Go.
- Realness is What Remains
- Trust is the Key to Surviving the Storm
- Whatever You Lose is Never What You Need
- Use the Storm to Grow Real (Don’t Fight It)
- It Is What It Is and You Are What You Are
Storms Come. Storms Go.
Everything in life has its season:
Some seasons bring sunshine, others bring the storm, but none of them last forever.
Time keeps ticking, life keeps moving, and you don’t get to control what season comes next – only how you meet it and choose to grow with it.
If you expect things to always go smoothly – if you think life should just be good vibes and good weather all the time – then the storm will knock your socks off because you’ll have an extra level of friction caused by having your expectations of life being shattered.
You’ll start asking the usual questions that people ask when they expect life to be something other than whatever it is (and it always is what it is):
Why me? What did I do to deserve this? What’s going wrong? How is this fair?
If, on the other hand, you can accept that the storm is just a very real part of life – that it’s not a breakdown or the end of the road but part of the journey – then something starts to shift:
You stop resisting and move into acceptance…and when you do that, the storm starts to work for you instead of against you.
It starts clearing the away the detritus and the debris – the old stories, attachments, and habits that aren’t serving you. It doesn’t always feel good but it starts to feel REAL.
And that’s really the whole point.
Realness is What Remains
The work I do with people is all about helping them come back to REALNESS.
That means getting real with your mind, your body, and your choices and letting go of the illusions and distortions we’ve picked up along the way to wherever we currently find ourselves.
“Illusions” in this context are just the beliefs that tell you that you have pretend, perform, or push just to be okay with yourself, the world, and life.
This is why the storm can actually help you: because it doesn’t care about your mask.
When the wind picks up and the ground starts shaking, anything unreal gets uprooted and exposed. and anything you’ve been holding onto that’s not built on a foundation of truth starts falling away.
This might SUCK in the short-term but it leads to freedom in the long-term:
You’re not losing anything real. You’re just losing what never was.
God (or life or reality — whatever word works for you) will sometimes shake us to see if there’s anything true in the foundations of our lives.
That’s what storms are for: to see whether we’re rooted in our realness or just in the ego.
Trust is the Key to Surviving the Storm
In every storm, you have two choices:
- You can try and cling to whatever unreal thing is being taken (which means that you’re clinging to old identities/ego).
- You can let go of what’s not meant to stay and make space for something real instead (which means you’re ready to grow through one version of yourself and into a more real one).
The first option leads to more suffering because it’s about resistance and force; the second leads to growth because it’s about acceptance and flow.
But to let go, you have to trust.
You have to trust that even if you don’t know what’s on the other side of this, you’ll land somewhere real.
You don’t have to figure it all out:
You just have to do your best and let go of the rest.
Trust yourself (“do your best”) and trust life (“let go of the rest”).
That’s trust.
Trusting in this way isn’t passive – it doesn’t mean you lie down and just let things fall apart.
It means you stay engaged without needing to control everything and that you take responsibility for what’s yours without trying to manage the whole universe (because you’re not omniscient or omnipotent so that’s not your job).
It means that you keep moving forward, despite the storm, from a place realness – not F.E.A.R (“False Evidence Appearing Real”).
Whatever You Lose is Never What You Need
A lot of people think losing something means they’ve ‘failed’ but loss is part of life (another it is what it is) – it’s how we shed our skin and keep making space.
The more you cling, the more painful it feels when something falls away but – if you can trust that the storm is only removing what’s not real (because what’s real is always real) – then you stop taking it personally and a lot of the unnecessary pain dissolves.
That relationship that ended? It may have been holding you back from being as real as you deserve to be.
That job that didn’t work out? Maybe it wasn’t aligned with who you’re becoming in your realness.
That belief that cracked under pressure? It might have been false all along and just something that the unreal ‘parts’ of you needed to keep their hold over you.
You can’t lose what’s real because what’s real is always real.
(Write that down and stick it on your fridge or something).
What’s real either sticks around or it comes back stronger in a more real form.
The only thing storms remove are the illusions we’ve mistaken for truth.
And that’s the point of them – they refine you and everything you think you ‘know’ about yourself, the world, and reality itself.
Use the Storm to Grow Real (Don’t Fight It)
So what do you do when you’re in the thick of the storm and all you can see is those dark clouds?
Here’s a simple, practical process you can come back to whenever life feels like it’s falling apart (because life is shaking you to see what’s real and what’s unreal):
1. AWARENESS: NAME IT
What’s really going on?
Where are you trying to control the uncontrollable?
What are you afraid of losing that’s either real (so you don’t need to worry) or unreal (so it doesn’t matter)?
When you get clear about what the storm is stirring up in you, you stop making it about punishment and start seeing it as an invitation to grow.
You shift from “Why is this happening to me?” to “What’s this showing me about me?”
In short, the storm will SHOW you and GROW you:
Ask yourself what it’s showing you and how it’s asking you to grow – this awareness will make it much easier to ride it out.
2. ACCEPTANCE: STOP RESISTING
Shout it for the people at the back (if they haven’t been blown away already):
“This is happening and I don’t need to ‘like’ it to accept it“.
That’s not giving up – it’s just stepping into the present moment and acknowledging that – when it comes to reality – it doesn’t matter what we ‘like’ or ‘dislike’…just that it is what it is.
When you stop resisting what is, you free up the energy to respond to it in a real way.
Ask yourself:
What do I need to let go of right now?
What is life asking me to release?
Sometimes it’s an old identity. Sometimes it’s an unrealistic expectation. Sometimes it’s just the idea that you should be somebody, something, or somewhere else.
Acceptance lets the storm do its job so you can do yours (grow real).
3. ACTION: MOVE FROM TRUST
Once you’ve stopped resisting, you can take real action.
Not from fear; not from panic. But from trust.
What’s the next obvious step to take that you maybe keep talking yourself out of?
What would the REAL you do if those Gremlins didn’t keep taking you off track?
Take that obvious step, then take the next one (when it appears – which it will).
You don’t need the whole plan. Just the next step.
Trust isn’t about having guarantees but about showing up anyway – open, grounded, and willing to stay real no matter what life throws your way.
It Is What It Is and You Are What You Are
Life will keep moving, the weather will keep turning, the seasons will keep changing, and the storms will keep coming.
That’s life.
But if you meet them with realness – if you let them strip back what’s false and bring you back to centre – you’ll come out stronger every time.
In short, you can’t avoid the storm but you can use it:
You can let it shake loose anything you’ve been carrying that doesn’t reflect the truth of who you are or what life is.
You can trust that what’s real will remain and that anything you lose was never yours to keep.
Stay real out there,
P.S. Want to go deeper? Read the Storm chapter in my new book Trust: A Manual for Becoming the Void, Building Flow, and Finding Peace – it’ll help you face anything life throws at you without losing who you are.
Book a free call with me now if you’re interested in coaching and want to start using the storms in your life to grow real.
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