Field Time Target & Training

I have a paralyzing fear of guns.  Always have, my entire life. I’m not exactly sure why other than growing up I’d always heard guns kill!  When I became an adult I learned that, no in fact people are the ones who kill other people, and a gun is just one way to accomplish that.  However, I still had this fear of even looking at a gun.  I’d always felt… I don’t know, like just touching it, would make the world end. It’s hard to explain, even for me.

But I think there are a few other factors as well, one being this reoccurring nightmare I’ve had for most of my life.  In it, I’m face to face with a gun, looking down the wrong end of the barrel, trying to scream and nothing comes out. I’m frozen. Ever had that dream? You wake up shaking and sweating? Well I’ve had versions of it for as long as I can remember, and it’s always the same, I’m paralyzed in the moment, with utter terror.

The other factor is that as a single mom, I’ve had a fear of not being able to protect my kids should something bad happen.  That’s probably my greatest fear in life.  I feel helpless in that scenario, and that is terrifying.  Probably because, the second year that the kids and I were living on our own, we lived in a tiny little two bedroom apartment. I purposely chose the upstairs unit because it had only one entry point into the house.  One night around two in the morning I heard the couple in the apartment directly below me fighting.  The man went outside and continued yelling at his girlfriend, making a big enough scene that the neighbors and I woke up, told them to keep it down, or we’d call the cops.  He left, an hour or so later he came back and fired nine rounds into the apartment below us where she was apparently sleeping on the couch. He’d walked around to all the windows firing into her apartment. I heard all nine rounds and froze in my bed. My kids slept right through it.

The bedroom window directly below mine

Soooo….. for all those reasons and maybe even others I’ve not yet figured out, today was a big day for me.  I was in Los Angeles, CA for a work team meeting which was culminating with a team building activity, at the shooting range.  At first I didn’t think much of it, figured it might be kinda fun, I mean it looks that way on TV. I figured I’d be fine, no big deal.

Until I walked in the door and heard the gun shots, then saw all the guns.  My knees instantly got week and I wanted to vomit. It was a complete physical reaction, the likes of which I’ve never experienced and couldn’t control.  It was the exact helpless feeling I’ve always woken up with after my nightmare.  When the instructor began going through our orientation I got more and more nervous, litterly having my first ever full on panic attack. I felt sick to my stomach, like I couldn’t breath, or walk or stop shaking. It was embarrassing, but nothing I could control.  My reaction was shocking to ME.

…

Thank God my instructor was amazing and agreed to stay by my side, until I felt comfortable.  When we got into our cube and he held the loaded hand gun up, handed it to me and showed me how to aim and pull the trigger, I was shaking so violently I thought I’d drop it.  But what shocked me the most was when I fired that first shot; I instantly burst into tears. No lie. Uncontrollable sobbing.  I cried through all five first rounds. Harder with each pull of the trigger.  Shaking.  Like some out of body emotional reaction that I had nothing to do with, and didn’t know where it came from. I just looked at him and was like “man, I’m sorry, I don’t know what the hell is wrong with me”.

Today I faced my greatest fear dead on.  I think on some level it was like turning the gun on that intruder in my reoccurring nightmare. Like I was finally the one who said, “enough is enough.  You can’t terrify me any more.”  When my instructor pulled in my target sheet, I’d hit all five rounds directly in the heart.

Holy shit. 

I can’t explain why it felt liberating, but it did.  I feel like I could protect my family now if I had to and was ever in that situation. That I’d have a better idea of what to do, and as a single mom, and that feels good.  Facing fear and not living under it’s spell.

This densest mean I’d ever have a gun in my home, or ever take the step to “protect” us in that way. It does mean that for me, I feel like maybe, just maybe, if that horrible greatest of all fears looked me in the eye, I might not freeze I might have the courage do something, run/hide, whatever. Just not freeze.

Sometimes doing what we run from the most, and what terrifies us more than anything else, can actually set us free.

My first time holding or shooting a gun

First 5 rounds I’ve ever shot, hit the heart.

P.S. This does not mean that I am in favor of guns, to the contrary I support tougher gun control. I believe that though it’s true guns do not kill without the person behind them, they make it too easy to impose mass destruction and take innocent life.  I pray this issue is addressed quickly so people like me don’t have to live in fear.

Sarah Centrella is the author of the book Hustle Believe Receive which teaches you how to apply the #HBRMethod to change your life and live your dream.

Follow on social media: Instagram | Twitter | Snapchat | Pinterest | YouTube |Periscope @sarahcentrella

I had a bad day, today. Yup, one of those lay on the floor and fall apart kinda days. The kind when it feels like you just heard one to many “no’s” in a row. When the final one, simply made you snap and want to throw in the towel, quit. 

I’ve had a hard time the last few months, trying to fight the obvious truth which is that I’m not happy living in Seattle.  It’s been something I’ve been trying to talk myself into since the start but that has progressively taken it’s tole on my spirit.

So you might have noticed that I haven’t blogged that much lately, and only posted chapters from my memoir, because I was feeling very uninspired. I was keeping the faith and trying hard to stay in the right positive mindset, but what I really wanted to say, was this sucks! I want to move home, I want the sun, I miss my friends, and I am ready for the next phase to begin. I’m frustrated and tired of waiting. But it’s hard to come out and say that when people look to you to help them get out of the very same types of mental situations.  And maybe it was just that, which prompted me to have the courage to write my truth tonight.  An email from a women, who’d been having success with the Law of Attraction and then hit the down times that we all face, so she asked me how to get out of it. And asked me if I still ever go through that.  Of course I answered that yes I do.

And so, because I’ve made a promise to keep using this blog as my personal outlet, I will continue to show the bad days and the good. Because yes, I have the bad days too. The ones when I question everything, when I wonder if my dreams will come true, when I ask “there must be more to life than this”. Yep I have those too. I’ve been going through one the last few weeks.

1. You will have them, period. There will always be bad days, no matter how much success you achieve, or how happy you are or how much of your dreams you manifest. You will still have bad days.  You will still find yourself asking “is this my life?” You will, I promise.

2. It’s OK to have bad days.  It’s OK to cry.  To be frustrated, and even to feel defeated. It doesn’t mean that you’ve lost hope, or faith or that your not on the right path. I doesn’t mean that your dreams will never come true, or that having one will erase all the good work you’ve put in to change your mindset and your life.

3. It’s OK to have a pity party every once in a while. OK to wallow in disappointment when it’s punched you in the face.  It’s part of being human, and admitting that, and feeling that, doesn’t change where you are in your journey.  It just gives you the breathing time you need to soak it in and recover. It’s a necessary part of the process.

4. It doesn’t mean you’re week. Or that you don’t  have the power to change your mood, attitude and situation.

1. Recognize it.  I’ve known for the last few weeks that I was “in a funk” or unhappy or whatever you want to call it. I could immediately tell, because I try very hard to be present and in the moment of whatever I’m going through. So I knew. I also knew that on some level I didn’t want to fight it, I kinda wanted to be depressed about it and wallow. Today is when it hit the low point for me, and when I knew I needed to put an end to it. It was time to stop pouting, and being negative and snap out of it. When we recognize it, we immediately know we have that choice, to either feed the negativity and frustration or kill it. I admittedly had chosen to feed it, until I was very frustrated and defeated, and was forced to make the choice to kill it.

2. Snap out of it.  So today being my turning/low point day; I allowed myself to vent, cry, post my frustration, bitch to my girlfriends…. all the stuff you go through when you feel utterly defeated and down.  I love that my Facebook friends immediately gave me a cyber hug that I needed, so I didn’t feel so alone in that moment.  And then I went back to my own basics and made the choice to knock it off. 

• I started by cleaning the house as soon as I got home, spotless, which always makes me feel more in control.  A sparkling house makes me somehow feel better and more at peace.  While I did that I began to go through all the things I’m grateful for, as I went through each room.  So when I was done the house looked and smelled amazing, and I realized how truly grateful I actually was.
• While I cleaned I played my hip-hop motivation play list, which picked me up and helped me refocus my attention on what I want, not what I don’t.
• When the house was clean I put on spa music, lite some candles and made an organic pumpkin and yogurt face mask… took a moment to just breath and relax.
• Then I took some very important steps that will hopefully help change my situation and enable me to move back home.
•  And then I read all my favorite Napoleon Hill quotes, like this one: “One of the most common causes of failure is the habit of quitting when one is overtaken by temporary defeat.”
• I just spent the last hour on Pinterest pinning away my dream life, and a ton of motivational quotes.  And now I’m happy to report, I am starting to feel like my old self again. Back in control.

Happiness is a choice. It’s not an achievement.  It’s something that we wake up in the morning and say “I chose to be happy today”.  It’s not something that I’m going to search for my entire life, and wake up one day realizing that my life is over and I never chose to be happy while it was passing me by.  I’m not going to wait for it to come to me, I’m going to create it here, now.  It’s in my hands, and I chose to stop pouting and start working harder than ever to make my dreams come true, and to be happy in the moments, even the ones that I don’t necessarily like. This is better than the alternative which is letting the negative stuff engulf me, I’ve been there and I can report it’s less fun that just about anything you can imagine! So I’m all good on that.

I’ll keep pressing forward toward my dream because giving up is just ridiculous. I may want to at times, but I will never quit.

Sarah Centrella is the author of the book Hustle Believe Receive which teaches you how to apply the #HBRMethod to change your life and live your dream.

Follow on social media: Instagram | Twitter | Snapchat | Pinterest | YouTube |Periscope @sarahcentrella