🔥 How to Rise When Life Knocks You Down (Ep.28)

What do you do when life knocks you down?

Whether you're navigating illness, heartbreak, financial stress, or an unexpected setback… the real question isn’t why it happened—it’s how you rise.

In this deeply personal and empowering episode, Nicole Mixdorf shares her proven approach to recovering from life’s hardest moments and turning pain into power.

Drawing from her own journey through chronic illness, loss, and transformation, Nicole walks you through how to:

• Move through emotional pain (without spiritually bypassing)
• Shift from victim to empowered creator
• Release resistance and step into acceptance
• Identify the deeper soul lesson beneath your challenges
• Use gratitude and joy as tools for healing
• Rebuild yourself into a stronger, more aligned version of you

This episode is your reminder that:
✨ Nothing is happening to you — it’s happening for you
✨ Your breakdown is the doorway to your breakthrough
✨ You are capable of rising… no matter what

If you’re in a season of challenge right now, this episode will meet you exactly where you are—and guide you forward.

💜 Ready to go deeper? Nicole offers powerful Akashic Healing Journeys to help you uncover and release the root cause of what’s holding you back.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to Heal with Nicole Mixdorf. Let the journey begin.

SPEAKER_01 0:13

Welcome back, beautiful soul. I am your host, Nicole Mixdorf. I'm an Akashic Light Healer and intuitive guide. And I really want to talk to you today about recovery. How do you recover after a major setback in your life? How do you bounce back after dealing with something really difficult? Let's say it could be an injury, it could be an illness, it could be a financial setback, it could be the end of a relationship in your life, it could be any number of things. We all deal with challenges. How do we get over it? How do we move on? How do we take care of ourselves and elevate to become the next version of ourselves? How do we not get stuck in the hardship and move forward? That's really one of the things that I have mastered in this lifetime. And I'm excited to dive into this with you today. So, challenges. We all have them. Challenges are something that we cannot avoid. Life is going to throw curveballs our way at different times in our lives. We're going to deal with some kind of adversity. It's inevitable. The big question is: how are you going to handle it while you're in it? And how are you going to recover from it after you've navigated through it? Those are the two big things because we cannot control what happens in our life in a lot of ways. We can't control what other people do. We can't control when an illness shows up. We can't control so many things. The only thing that we can control is how we're going to react, how we're going to respond. That is our power. And one of the things that I have truly, truly learned how to do is alchemize, which is how do I turn something painful into something beautiful? How do I take something that's difficult and turn it into a blessing in my own life? And that is something that I really believe is possible for you, for everyone, because that's our choice. When the hardship shows up, we can allow it to suck us down into the depths of despair where we become a victim, or we can rise to the occasion and face it head on and become the victor of our own life by uncovering what gifts it has for us. Now, if you've been following me for any amount of time, you probably know that my personal journey has involved dealing with chronic illness for 15 years on and off, which was really freaking hard to go through. And I've dealt with a lot of loss in my life. I've dealt with a lot of pain in my life. I've dealt with a lot of physical challenges in this life. I've also dealt with financial setbacks. I've dealt with a lot of hard things. And through it all, I have maintained a positive attitude. I've bounced back stronger after every single setback that I've ever had. And a huge part of that is my mindset. I decide every day who I'm going to be. I decide every day how I'm going to feel. And I'm human just like everyone else. I give myself permission to feel the challenge, to feel the difficulty, to feel the pain, to have my moment of a pity party. But my pity party is only going to last for a day or two. No more than that. Because I don't want to wallow in that vibration. It doesn't feel good to me to wallow in that vibration. I have to give myself permission to feel it because otherwise I'm spiritually bypassing. And a lot of people do that. A lot of people say, I'm not going to let them bother me. Nope, nope, nope. Like they did this thing, they hurt me, they betrayed me. And now I'm just going to pretend like it doesn't bother me. It does, it didn't happen. Yeah, it did happen. And you can't just pretend that it didn't. You can't just say, oh no, I'm all love and light. I'm love and light. And that they don't bother me. Just because you're choosing not to feel it doesn't mean that those feelings aren't there. Doesn't mean that that wound isn't present for you because it is. It is still there. We have to give ourselves permission to feel all the feels because emotions are energy in motion. We're supposed to allow emotional experiences to flow through us, to let ourselves feel that disappointment, to let ourselves feel that pain, to let ourselves feel that sadness, to let ourselves feel that betrayal. We need to feel it. We need to allow ourselves to be in it, to really feel all of it. Cry it out, scream it out, whatever you need to do, you need to let it in. You need to feel it all and then get up and shake your body out when you're done. Physically move that energy out your body, because that's how we release it and let it go. Once you've had the emotional experience, now you can rise up. Now you can say, okay, I'm choosing to forgive that person because I don't want to hold that pain anymore. And the forgiveness isn't about them. It's not about whether or not they deserve to be forgiven. Because believe me, some of the most horrible things that people can do to each other, do they really deserve to be forgiven? I mean, they don't deserve to be let off the hook of their responsibility for creating harm. No. But guess what? They're creating their own karma. They're going to have to deal with that in their own way as well. And then, of course, if there's any legal ramifications, they need to deal with too. But the forgiveness is a gift you give to yourself. The forgiveness is a choice that you no longer have to suffer, that you no longer want to continue feeling that pain over and over, that you no longer are benefiting from holding that anger and that resentment and that frustration inside of you, because it is a pill of poison that is only going to hurt you. It is not going to benefit you in any way, shape, or form. So the forgiveness, when you choose to forgive them, when you choose to forgive the situation, when you choose to forgive yourself for the harm that you caused, for the role that you played, when you forgive yourself for holding on to the pain, for all of it, that's your choice to say, I'm done with this. And I'm going to put it down and I'm going to give myself the ability to rise up now free of this experience. And that's huge. So depending on what kind of challenge you're talking about in your life, there's going to be different ways that you can recover. There's going to be different ways that you can bounce back. And it really is going to vary. If you're dealing with an illness and you're in the thick of it right now, first of all, I want you to know I see you. I see you. I feel you. I've been you. Okay. And give yourself some grace. Love yourself anyway. I don't care what the situation is in your life, your marriage just fell apart, you hit financial rock bottom, your career is falling apart, things aren't working out for you in whatever way, shape, or form. Can you love and accept yourself anyway in this moment? Because that is going to set an enormous foundation for yourself, for your life to help you move forward. Can you accept it? Because when something bad happens and we don't like it, we're like, we go, oh, I don't like it. I don't like it. I hate this. I hate this. I hate this. We're in resistance. Okay. You're in a state of resistance when you are mentally fighting against the situation, when you are not accepting it for what it is. You are in resistance. You can only ever be in the energy of resistance or in the energy of allowing in your life. You cannot be in both. And when you are resisting something, that puts the energy of resistance over your whole life where everything gets harder, where everything takes longer, where everything is more difficult, where your manifestations are being blocked, where you're literally blocking yourself right and left because you are putting up a wall. You're not willing to accept reality that this is what I have to deal with. The way out of that is through true acceptance. Accepting that this is what I have to work with. Instead of fighting your own body, instead of fighting this situation, instead of not accepting that the marriage is falling apart or that you've hit financial rock bottom and hating it so much, can you instead in that moment surrender? Can you surrender to what is and accept the situation that this is what I have to work with right now? I may not like it, but this is this is my reality. The moment you accept that and you surrender to it is the moment you give yourself peace. That's the moment you set yourself free. And all that mental, that anguish that you had in fighting the challenge suddenly opens up. And now you are more open to receive greater inspiration, to receive creative solutions that are going to help propel your life forward. So as you're in the thick of it, can you accept that this is what it is? Can you accept that this is how your body is behaving right now, that you've got this challenge that you're dealing with? Can you just accept it? Stop fighting against it. Stop fighting against yourself. Especially when we're talking about illness in the body or an injury. That's part of you. The reason it's showing up is because it's showing you that there is something out of alignment. You're not living your authentic truth. And that's the case with any challenge showing up in your life. If the relationship is falling apart, it's because it was meant to. You reached the end of it. That soul contract is over. And it's time for something else. We spend so much time clinging to things that we're afraid to let go of, but it's time for us to move on. And I genuinely believe that change only leads us somewhere better. It always leads us somewhere better than where we were. So don't be afraid of change in your life. Understand that change is showing up to take you somewhere better than you were, to take you into a new relationship that's going to be more loving and more caring, to take you into a new iteration of health within your own body, to welcome in greater abundance into your life. Whatever the challenge is, the challenge itself is the breakdown before the breakthrough. Painful things come right before something magical is going to happen in your life. We just get so caught up in the difficulty, in the challenge of it, that we can't see our way through it. We don't realize that it's happening for us because there's something better waiting for us. It's time for us to rise into that 2.0 version of ourselves where we get to have more, where we get to be more. And when you can start looking at challenges as these opportunities to grow, you can stop being so afraid of them. You can stop being a victim and realizing that life isn't happening to you, it's happening for you. This is happening for you. If you ever want to welcome in something better, you have to be willing to let something go to receive it. You cannot rise into something new. If you have a goal, something that you're yearning for in your life, you cannot receive that without letting something go first. Whether it's a belief system, a way of being, habit, a routine, something, a way that you have been working and walking through life, you've got to let that go in order to welcome in the new thing, because the new thing is only going to be for a higher version of you. You have to be willing to change something about yourself in order to receive it. You have to change the way you're thinking, you have to change the way you're behaving, you have to change the way you're speaking, you have to change something in order to be the version of you that is a vibrational match for the thing that you desire in your life. And I'll tell you, because I've done so much inner healing work on myself, that every time I am wanting something for myself, I ask, what is blocking me from getting from here to here? There's a belief that I'm not worthy of it. Ooh, ooh, why do I not feel that I'm worthy of that? There might be a childhood wound I had where I believed that was possible. Or it may not even be from this lifetime. It may be something that my soul experienced and brought into this lifetime because it was unresolved, right? And it's like, that's getting in my way. It might be something I inherited through my family's lineage, a wound that doesn't even belong to me, something that happened to an ancestor that I inherited because I was the one that was meant to break the pattern. When I do the inner work to release that, to uncover and identify where's the original wound that created that belief system that I'm not worthy of this, and I clear it energetically when I work in my Akashic records. It is gone. And now I am set free because a new program is automatically in my brain. I don't have to say affirmations every day. It's just there because the block is gone. And now I know I'm worthy of it. And I don't have to be blocked from achieving it anymore. But here's the thing, my friend. When you go through something painful, you have to honor that experience. You have to grieve it, you have to feel it. And then ask yourself, what am I meant to learn from that? What's the message that I'm meant to receive right now? Why did this happen now? Because nothing is random. And things don't just show up at random times in our lives for nothing. They show up at just the right time. Because at that precise moment is when there's an opportunity for you to master a lesson that your soul signed up for. And then you get to learn, and then you get to grow, and then you get to evolve, and then you get to overcome. So a big part of recovering from difficulty, from pain, from loss in your life is number one, recognizing that every situation, every experience that you have is always meant to change. Nothing is ever meant to stay the same forever. We are naturally creatures of change. And the only thing that is constant is change. So when you can start to embrace the concept of change, and then even though what you lost may have been something so good that you loved so much, let's say an important person in your life that you lost, how do you carry yourself forward? How do you pick yourself back up from that loss? Well, if I lost someone important and I've gone through a lot of losses in my life, I think of that special person, how would they want me to live right now? Would they want me being sad? Would they want me being heartbroken and being a shell of myself where I'm lost in my life? Or would they want to see me rise? Would they want to see me joyful? Would they want to see me living my best life that I'm capable of? Of course they would. And I get to call out to their spirit because their spirit is still available to me. And I get to take them with me everywhere I go in my heart. I can still talk to them, I can still ask them for guidance. And then when I get quiet enough in my mind, drop into my heart, I can still hear it. I can still receive it. And I can move forward in a way that's gonna honor them, in a way that's gonna honor me. If you're in a financial struggle right now, recognize that it's temporary. This is not gonna last forever. But you have to ask yourself, what belief systems do you have that created this situation? Where are you feeling lack in your life? Where are you feeling drought? Can you let go of the energy of drought? Can you release the belief systems that you're not good enough? Can you release the belief systems that something bad is going to happen to you if you're holding on to money? I mean, when I do money clearing for people, that is the most layered topic because there's so many belief systems, and each one of those belief systems can have be connected into multiple things. But when we clear them and release them, oh man, it changes everything. It sets you free in so many ways. So a big part of navigating your way through challenges is a willingness to do the healing work as well. Because a major trauma that happened in our life, it has impact on us. There are pieces of ourself that gets lost in that situation, that gets stuck in that experience. Maybe I lost a little fragment of my soul in that experience. Maybe I lost my confidence. Maybe I lost my faith. And I need to reclaim those pieces. I need to reclaim those parts of myself. And through the work that I do, when we reclaim all those pieces, wow, now we feel whole again. Now we feel at peace. We can feel balanced again so that we can move forward in our life in a positive way. So there's deep healing work that I've done that has always helped me navigate my way through a challenge and always recognizing that there's something wonderful about to happen to me every single time that something difficult occurs. I look at that now. And as soon as the challenge shows up, I don't run away from it. I run directly into it. Why is this happening right now? What am I meant to learn from this? How am I meant to grow? What is the lesson? What is the gem of wisdom that I'm meant to receive right now? What is it that my soul is wanting to master? Because as soon as I find it, that's the gift. And then the rest of it starts to fall away. And now all of a sudden the solutions start to present itself and I'm able to move forward. But the key for me is what am I going to focus on? Because everything in your life sometimes, it's like when a challenge comes, you think everything is going wrong. And yet there's still so many things going right. We're just not paying attention to that. We're just not focusing on that. We think, oh my goodness, I'm in this hurricane and I lost this and this happened, and I'm dealing with this issue and this health problem, and I'm back pain, and all of these things. And it seems like your whole life is on fire. And it might be. But do your two feet still carry you through the day, or do your hands still able to grab things? Are you able to still open your eyes and see the world? Does your heart beat without you telling it to? And maybe some of those things you don't have. And that's okay too. But you may have some of the other ones. Are you able to breathe on your own? Whatever the challenges that you're dealing with, there's going to be things that are working for you.

unknown 21:59

So

SPEAKER_01 22:00

Focus on the good in your life. That is one of the greatest medicines that you can ever take is looking at what's positive. Because life is going to get difficult. Sometimes it's going to be hard. Sometimes it's going to be dark. But there's always light. There's always something that's good. So find that and focus on that. You still deal with whatever you need to deal with. Yes. But you don't have to be sucked into thinking that nothing good is happening. I don't care if the great thing that happened to you today is that you had a delicious sandwich for lunch. Maybe that is what you're focusing on today. How grateful you are that you get to eat. There's people around the world that don't have that. Every single thing that you have is something that someone would love to have. It's their prayer to receive it. So don't take anything for granted. Gratitude will absolutely alchemize your life. You can change everything by being grateful for what you have in your life every time. So as you navigate your way through, be grateful for the things that you do already have. If you don't have enough money to pay your bills, be grateful for whatever little money that you have. Be grateful for everything. Because the more you think of your blessings, the more you focus on your blessings, the more they multiply. If you focus on your problems, the more those multiply. Whatever you focus on is going to grow. It's just the way that it is. So if you struggle with that, then surround yourself with people that are going to inspire you and lift you up. Or listen to a positive podcast like this one, right? You're like, I need a little more Nicole Mickstorff in my life to lift me up, then listen to me. Find other people that inspire you and listen to them. You could go onto YouTube and type in motivational speech and have a million things that you could start your day listening to while you're in the shower that are just going to pump you up and motivate you. So if you don't have the people in your life, the friends, the connections that you can lean on, you can always listen to a recording of someone inspiring you to keep going. That's going to lift you up and elevate your vibration, elevate your mood. Because that's the first thing. You got to not be a victim of your life. If you think that life is happening to you, you're going to be stuck in the same patterns of difficulty and pain over and over and over again. The way you break out of it is recognizing that this is happening for you because there's a reason. You're meant to rise. You're meant to find your voice. You're meant to step into your power. You're meant to learn how to love yourself. There's a reason why it's showing up. You are the one that gets to figure it out. And the moment that you do, the challenge falls away and everything gets easier. And now life is going to present you more positive experiences that are going to match who you're becoming. So a big part of recovery is just honoring that and honoring what your body needs in any given moment. If you're going through a lot of hardship and pain, you need to balance that out with joy. I always tell people that the antidote to stress is joy. If you want to have two things in balance, in equilibrium, right? That means they're equal. If you have a lot of stressful moments in your day up here, the only way to create that balance is to give yourself enough nourishing self-care, joyful moments in your day to balance out the stress. So as you're going through something really hard, you need to double down on your self-care. You need to double down on fun because that's the only way you're going to get through it. So do something every day that makes you feel good. Do something every day that makes you smile. Do something every day that inspires you. Do something every day that feels nourishing. Make sure you're getting enough sleep. Our bodies heal as they sleep. So get rest, nourish yourself, eat good foods, take care of yourself in whatever way that looks like for you. Maybe it's going to the gym. Maybe it's taking a hot bath. Maybe it's listening to an inspiring podcast while you're cooking dinner. Maybe it's eating really good food. I don't care what it is. Just do something for yourself. Start a new hobby. Take up something new. Learn a new skill. Something that's going to elevate you and the way you feel, because that's going to help navigate you through the difficulty. That's going to be the thing that allows you to get through it in an easier way, because you're going to be a little bit more balanced. And that's really a big part of how we recover. We recover by taking care of ourselves, by prioritizing joy into our life. And if you can find things to be joyful about as you go through the hardest time in your life, you're going to navigate it with a lot more grace. It's going to be an easier experience for you. When you don't believe that you deserve happiness, when you don't believe that you've got time to take care of yourself, you are going to be down in the dumps. I'm telling you, I've seen it over again and again and again. When you take care of yourself, you're going to feel better. It's not a luxury, it's a foundational practice. It has to be a priority for you. And it will allow you to bounce back. And then every single challenge you have, I don't care if it's the ending of a relationship, whatever it is, you have a clean slate. You have a beautiful blank canvas in front of you, and you hold the paintbrush. You get to be the one that paints the masterpiece of your life. And you can start over anytime, any day. Every breath is an opportunity to start again. Every single breath is the opportunity to begin again and again and again. So seize the moment. Use this as your chance, as your time to start fresh. Because you are the one that lives your life. No one else lives it for you. You live your life. You get to decide how you're going to feel today. You get to decide what your life gets to be or what it doesn't get to be. You decide if you're going to allow the outside world and other people to dictate to you what's possible for you, or if you're going to rise up and take your life by the reins and decide for yourself what's possible for you. Because anything is possible for you. I get knocked down and I don't stay down. I will honor the experience and then I get right back up and I keep going and I keep going and I keep going and I keep going. And I find things to smile about every day. And guess what? I live a really freaking good life. I do. Even in the midst of painful experiences. The last six months of my life have been hard, really hard. I've had a lot of setbacks. I've dealt with a lot of health challenges. I've dealt with so much in the last six months. And yet, I still have a wonderful life because of what I choose to focus on. Because of the way that I get to look at life. I get to look at those challenges and go, ah, this is showing up because there's something within me that I need to heal. There's something within me that I need to release. Because the person that I'm becoming, I can't take this difficulty, this burden, this heaviness, this weight with me. I can't take it with me where I'm going. So I have to let it go. So life is presenting me the opportunity right now to see that there's a difficulty, to see that there's a challenge so that I can look within myself and identify what is incongruent, what is out of alignment, that I've been ignoring, that I'm ready to be done with. Maybe it's finding your voice. Maybe it's recognizing that you haven't been treating yourself well. Maybe it's pointing out that the routine that you're in, that the habits that you have aren't healthy for you and you need to change it. If you're willing to change yourself, the challenge turns into a blessing because it's showing you that there's something out of alignment in your life. And the moment you address the deeper issue and you heal it and you release it and you let it go and receive the wisdom from it, you're able to rise. You're able to move forward in a better way, to have a better life, to be better you. So I hope that this has inspired you today to recognize that the most painful experience that you're dealing with today, as hard as it is, you've got this. Keep going. But get curious about it. Ask yourself, what's underneath this? What, why did this show up in my life? What do I need to do in order to let this go so I can have something better? And if you need help with that, I'm here for you. That's literally the work that I do with people in their Akashic Records. We get to the root. Why is this here right now? What's the original wound? What is the message that my soul is wanting me to know? What's the lesson I'm supposed to master from this? And what can I release and be done with? It's like a shortcut to be able to help you accelerate your life and quantum leap really fast. But you have the ability to do this work on your own. You really do. And you are capable of it. You are. So recognize that the challenge in your life is in your life right now because there's something really important that you're supposed to learn. And something magic is almost here for you. As soon as you learn it and you get through it, your life is going to be so much better. So the challenge is presenting itself to you right now to show you that things are about to explode in the most powerful positive way in your life. If you choose to see it that way, it's there, it's a gift. You just have to look for the gift. It's waiting for you. You've got this. You can do this. You're capable of it. Nothing gets put on your path that you're not capable of overcoming. You can overcome this. There is something for you. And you just have to look for it. It's waiting for you, my friend. So I encourage you to look at your challenges as gifts, to find whatever it is that you're meant to find from it, to learn whatever you're meant to learn, and then elevate and rise up into a new version of you. Thank you so much for being here with me today. I appreciate you endlessly, and I'll look forward to seeing you next time.

SPEAKER_00 34:49

Thank you so much for joining me on Healed with Nicole Mixdorf. If today's episode inspired you, please take a moment to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who's on a healing journey too. And be sure to follow me on Instagram at Nicole Mixdorf for more inspiration, healing tools, and to find out about my program. Remember, you have the power within you to create a life of balance, vitality, and joy. Until next time, stay grounded, stay open, and stay chilled.