True Power Comes From Within: A Guide to Developing a Warrior Mentality When Facing Life's Greatest Obstacles

Written By: Juliane Volosky

Photography: Gavin Volosky, gwvproductions

Photo Taken by gwvproductions on top of Mt. Washington, New Hampshire

I have realized as a 33 year old there are so many days that my spirit feels tired, defeated, and overwhelmed. During our soul experience down here on earth living through the human vessel we face a lot of negative obstacles, feelings, and experiences.

When we have experiences that are good this creates feelings of gratitude and abundance, while the experiences that feel negative and hard- will challenge and teach you the most valuable lessons in life. The hard lessons and challenging experiences often create the biggest breakthroughs; instilling and teaching you about positive attributes like resilience, bravery, and courageousness.

No matter how prepared we think we are to handle life's obstacles, there are days where your life experiences and hurdles feel like an impossible mountain to climb, a raging rapid river to cross, or a cement barrier to break through. When these obstacles become so inevitably challenging, this is where you are broken down, stripped of all that you thought you knew, and forced to take on challenges that feel impossible to face head on. When you are up against a wall, with zero will to keep moving forward; this is when and HOW having a warrior mentality matters most.

What is A Warrior Mentality?

A warrior is defined by google as a brave and skilled fighter/individual who exhibits strength, courage, and resilience in the face of adversity.

You have one of two ways in which you can handle the obstacles and experiences that life will throw your way:

Through a Victim Mentality- You always find something to complain about with your experiences. You are constantly focusing on the negatives in situations, and often think things like "why me"

OR

With a Warrior Mentality- You are present in the moment and practice gratitude for all the abundant things in life. When an experience is challenging, you face your obstacles head on, and are constantly trying to rewire your negative thought patterns into more positive or transformative perspectives. Instead of saying things like “why me, poor me, only this would happen to me” you ask yourself critical questions like “what is this teaching me, what can I learn from this, and how will this experience help me grow?”

I used to live my life 90% of the time through a victim lens and mentality. Every time I had a bad experience I would say things like "just my luck," "why do my friends have it so much easier than me," "god is punishing me," or "life can never go right for me."

No matter how much I wanted or prayed for positive and abundant things to happen in my life, I was over-consumed by all the negative experiences that were going on around me. I found myself overstimulated and often times in high alert mode. I was always future focused, and thinking about all the bad things that could potentially go wrong. By constantly living life in fear, and in a high alert mode; I found my body in constant survival mode- many psychologists like to call this “fight or flight." This mode of living is not healthy to live in long term, and can cause feelings of depression, anxiety, anger, and self deprecation.

I spent a lot of my early to late 20s living in a constant state of fight or flight. I couldn't get present enough to enjoy the small amazing things going on in my life, like my morning cup of coffee, a 10 minute nature walk in the sun, or even spending quality time with my friends and family.

Instead- I was thinking about all the negative things throughout the day that happened to me, and also at the same time fearing all the situations that could go wrong in the future based off what routine and events I had planned throughout the day and in the near future.

I knew I needed to change my mindset surrounding my everyday life experiences, and develop a more positive and abundant mentality. I began calling the ideal mentality I wanted to develop a warrior mentality.

This mentality is abundant, adaptable, resilient, flexible, and requires grit and determination. Developing a warrior mentality navigating through my daily life experiences is not something I learned and developed overnight.

It has taken a lot of hard work to develop, and if I’m not careful and practicing awareness around how I view my life experiences; I find myself falling back into a victim mentality more times than I would like to admit.

That’s the thing about life, even warriors fall down at times. What matters is to fight tooth and nail, with resiliency, and with determination to get back into alignment with the best version of yourself. That’s what a warrior would do.

When you have a Warrior Mentality- you step into your true power. You have the power to recognize and have awareness when you are allowing your negative experiences to take over the present moment. The more often you can recognize you are losing sight of the present moment- the less and less often it will happen. Warriors can only manage what they monitor.

So today my fellow warriors- I am going to share with you a step by step guide to learn and foster a warrior mentality in your everyday life! I hope these tips and tricks help you as much as they have helped me. Living life through a positive lens by practicing a warrior mindset as often as I can- has allowed me to unlock my true inner power and practice a life filled with more peace, balance, and abundance. Here is to hoping it can do the same for you.

A Step by Step Guide to Live Life With a Warrior Mentality:

1. Be present. Forgive the past, stop fearing the future.

Be Present- If you practice presence you are living in the moment without letting your past experiences and fear of the future distract you. Being present should feel grounding, peaceful, and abundant; not distracted, anxious, and worrisome.

In Order to be present you have to:

Forgive the past- Forgive the old versions of yourself, and the negative habits and behaviors you practiced in the past. Let go and move on from individuals who don't want to see, recognize, or hold you accountable to the happiest and healthiest version of yourself.

I find a lot of people from my past remembering or reminding me of the old behaviors and habits I "used" to practice. The old me was very quick to temper, would never admit I was wrong, and would cope with trauma or emotions through drinking and other negative habits/behaviors. The new and improved me has fought to become an improved and better version of my old self. If you find individuals holding onto your previous shortcomings and past mistakes- learn to forgive them, but don’t be afraid to move on and let them go. Some people only want to remind you of where you’ve come from, and stop you from where it is you want to go.

In order to become the ideal version of who you want to be it’s important to surround yourself with people who motivate, and give you the assurance that it is okay to step into the healthiest and happiest version of yourself. It’s important to recognize the people constantly reminding you who you “used to be.” A warrior would let these types of people go.

Stop Fearing the Future- If you have experienced trauma through your childhood and adulthood; it's okay to acknowledge that this trauma has happened. It is also OK to feel it, honor it, and accept that this trauma has or may currently be holding you hostage to feeling in a bad place mentally, physically, and spiritually.

However, staying in a constant state of fight or flight because of fear of your past trauma happening again in the future, or losing sight of the present moment because you want to block out that this trauma happened in this first place- will prevent you from experiencing life in the present moment. Don’t allow fear of your previous experiences happening again, or anxiousness around what could happen in a future stop you from all the great things that are happening in the present moment. Warriors understand that life is short, storms will happen, and being present is where the magical feelings of peace, happiness, and abundance is unblocked . Be present- the future isn’t here yet, and if a lesson is repeated in life- maybe it’s for a reason- to help you learn and grow!

2. When you start feeling anger or resentment during an experience. Try to prevent yourself from looking at the experience through a pessimistic lens- flip the script-ask yourself what is this teaching me?

When we are going through an experience, and things do not pan out how we intended or how we thought they would, our brain immediately goes into overdrive and wants to start viewing this experience as a negative one. We begin feeling very pessimistic and have feelings of stress, anger, and deprivation.

We fall into a victim lens and start feeling sorry for ourselves. We think our experiences are “the worst” and these “challenges” are much worse than what anyone else is going through. It takes a lot in the moment to flip the script and narrative, and tell yourself that even though this is a challenging moment, it can teach you a lot about yourself. These obstacles and challenging times may not make sense in the moment, but may be a storm or experience that gives you the courage to face another battle head on later in life.

I am not sitting here and trying to describe toxic optimism either. I know a lot of people who are going through challenging hurdles and experiences in life and they are not allowing themselves to feel the emotions they need to feel. They are telling not only themselves but others that “everything is fine” when in all reality they are suppressing how they truly feel, and that the current situation they are in TRULY SUCKS.

In these situations a person going through a challenging obstacle in life would develop a warrior mentality by recognizing that this experience in life is currently uncomfortable, sucky, and not what they expected, but is teaching them to learn and value qualities like resilience, patience, and having faith over fear. Feel what you need to feel, but instead of falling into a “poor/why me” victim mentality- acknowledge this situation sucks- but what can it teach you?

3. Have grit, and understanding that most warriors see the value of delayed gratification

Warriors understand that great moments and experiences in life take a lot of time and hard work. If you want a life full of abundance, prosperity, and joy- you have to be willing to work for it. Our society as a whole has found a way to enable instant gratification; and disable reward for practicing delayed gratification.

Of course we are programmed to chase instant gratification for instant dopamine. Instant dopamine feels good. We go all in on fad diets to see instant weight loss results, scroll our phones for instant dopamine, or binge watch shows to avoid processing our emotions, trauma, and negative feelings of worth.

We refuse to accept and embrace delayed gratification because it takes time and hard work. We don’t buy into the process of delayed gratification.

Instead of making small, positive changes to our diet and exercise in a healthy way to lose weight slowly and maintainably, we resort to extreme fad diets. When we aren’t seeing results out the gait or in an extreme manner this means the weight loss is not fast enough or not working- which couldn’t be further from the truth!

Instead of dealing with stress by going for a walk, we endlessly scroll through our phones which causes more anxiety and havoc on our bodies long term. We don’t go for the walk because it’s frictional and doesn’t feel good in the moment like when we are watching tv or scrolling through our phones. Again- an example like above to falling victim to instant dopamine rather than doing what’s harder in the moment for more reward later on.

Instead of processing our emotions, we avoid and suppress them by binging episodes of a TV show or getting a buzz via a few alcoholic beverages. We do what we can to trigger that instant dopamine, instead of going to talk to someone about how we are feeling, and facing the problem head on. It’s so easy to fall victim to habits and behaviors that just numb our emotions, since it takes work and delayed gratification to process through them.

When you are a warrior you understand and start to live life through a lens of delayed gratification and with grit. You understand that good things in life take time, trusting the process, and buying into feeling ALL the emotions, even the negative ones.

Having grit and accepting delayed gratification isn’t a quality that’s just given to you at birth, it’s a learned skill and behavior.

When you start facing hard challenges with grit, and tell yourself that good things take time, you stop falling victim to activities and habits that you are doing just to feel good in the moment.

Sometimes an in the moment choice and decision may not feel good, but you know it aligns with your long term why, and down the road will give you more blessings and reward than something that just feels good in the moment.

Be a warrior and approach your life with grit and understanding that the best things in life take time and patience. You develop grit when you finally stop falling victim to the same instantly gratifying negative habits and behaviors, and finally start buying into the frictional habits and behaviors that make a positive impact on your overall wellbeing and life.

If you were to fly a helicopter vs climb to the top of a mountain peak- which view do you think you would enjoy more? The view where you put the work in through the climb or the helicopter view you were just dropped at?

Part of becoming a warrior is understanding that it takes grit and hard work to enjoy the abundant blessings and lessons that life will bring you.

So remember- having a warrior mentality is not going to be a constant. It takes time, practice,

awareness, and constant recognition when you are falling victim to seeing your experiences through a pessimistic lens.

Be present, feel all the feelings that god places in your heart, and have grit and belief that the good things take time. I hope I have given you some tools and resources to develop more of a warrior mentality!

Thanks for tuning in 💛

With love,

Jay