Hi my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

Today's episode is all about healing your past. Our past is what made us into who we are today, but that doesn't

mean avoiding it is ever the proper solution. Healing past trauma can be extremely transformational for so many people and I invite you to give

yourself grace and find healing today. One thing I've learned in my research above all else is that in the absence of love and belonging there's always suffering.

For me, not making the drill team when I was, I think it was an eighth grade by itself is not a lot but how my family

responded to it. It was like when things changed for me and I didn't feel like I belong to my family anymore.

So I think that I still am trying to figure it out. I don't know I don't know I

don't know that I've interviewed anyone even spiritual leaders who have the belonging thing completely nailed because I don't think it is what we think it is.

You know, I don't think that it's having a big posse of friends or having a crew or rolling with a bunch of people. I think I'm still trying to

figure it out because I still feel lonely and alone and on the outside of things on a really regular basis.

What I've learned in doing the research on belonging

is that belonging is being a part of something bigger than yourself,

but it's also the courage to stand alone and to belong to yourself.

I belong to me.

So even when I feel alone and I wonder like who's my crew and who are my people,

I belong to me for sure, for the first time in my life maybe.

I was so shocked to learn in the research that the opposite of belonging is fitting in.

Because fitting in is assessing a group of people and thinking

who do I need to be what I need to say what I need to wear how do I need to act and

changing who you are and true belonging never asks us to change who we are. It demands that we be who we are.

Because if we if we if we fit in because how we've changed ourselves, that's

not belonging because you betrayed yourself for other

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