The Call: The Courage to Live Differently

In this powerful and deeply personal episode of The Courageous Survivor, Paula Walters reintroduces herself and shares why she uses the word courageous to describe her healing journey.

March is Brain Injury Awareness Month, and Paula opens up about the honest struggle of choosing discipline, structure, and faith in a culture that celebrates comfort and excuses. As a trauma survivor and brain injury advocate, she reflects on what it really means to live aligned instead of relatable — and why that choice often makes people uncomfortable.

From dopamine-driven scrolling and alcohol culture to stress, private integrity, and the fear of being judged, Paula shares her own recent wake-up call about wasted time, avoidance, and accountability. She challenges listeners to consider who they are becoming — and what their future 70- or 80-year-old self might wish they had started today.

April brings Stress Awareness Month, Alcohol Awareness Month, Move More Month, and World Health Day — making it the perfect time for a 30-day reset.

Paula invites you to join her beginning April 1st by choosing just ONE commitment for 30 days:
• Eliminate alcohol
• Give up social media
• Meal prep weekly
• Move daily
• Protect your sleep
• Prioritize prayer
• Or commit to any habit that strengthens your future self

This episode is a call to alignment, integrity, and courageous self-respect.

Excellence may feel lonely — but regret feels worse.

Are you ready to stop shrinking and start becoming?

https://thecourageoussurvivor.com/


Disclaimer:

The content shared on this podcast and YouTube channel is intended for informational and inspirational purposes only. I, Paula Walters, am not a licensed medical professional, and the information provided should not be construed as medical advice. I am sharing my personal journey of healing—physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual—based on my own experiences and the research I have found to be beneficial for me.

Please consult with a qualified healthcare provider before making any decisions regarding your health or treatment options. What works for me may not work for you, and it is important to find a path that is right for your unique needs and circumstances.

Transcript

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Courageous Survivor. My name is Paula Walters and we are in March, which is Brain Injury Awareness Month and I want to use this episode as a chance to reintroduce myself. My courageous journey and why I use the word courageous to describe myself and my journey. And it's because it is very, very difficult as a trauma survivor to be aligned and not relatable when you're on social media.

In choosing excellence in a culture of excuses. I live my life intentionally, and I and I live my life structured and in ways that doesn't align with most people, and I take a lot of heat from the people that are closest to me, that know the very difficult journey that I have been on. And when you open yourself up to being a public speaker, to being on social media and those types of things, you open yourself up to the opinions of others and it is very hard to protect yourself from what other people say.

And so I want to be honest for a moment and talk about like the honest struggle. And I'm going to talk about something that's, you know, really been heavy on my heart in, in truly y over the last few years, I have looked very chaotic. How why I come and go on social media and that type of stuff.

I'm still speaking. I, I doing my speaking, I'm doing my trainings, I'm doing those things. I just don't follow through per se, with with being on social media, with being present without, you know, with engagement and stuff like that. And it's because, like the life I want isn't the life that most people seem to want these days. I want discipline, I want clarity, I want brain health.

I want strength, I want faith that is deep and rooted. I want to care for my body like it matters. And that makes me stand out as a target. And in why I say that is when I go to my trainings and I talk about my journey in functional neurology, and I show people these exercises that not three exercises, but these test that they did.

So the three tests that function neurology did to basically like, hey, you have a brain injury and you don't have all this other stuff as a root cause of the way you're feeling. And when I do that stuff, some consistent things that I hear is like, I can't do that, and I don't even have a brain injury. And this is coming from people that I'm old enough to be their their mothers.

And, in just things like, well, it's, it's too expensive to eat that way. It's, it's excuse after excuse after excuse. And especially when it comes to the part of like. Seeing somebody, I can't imagine sitting in that training and watching someone who I, we know has a you know, a brain injury. We know like that. 52 I share my age, I share my journey, I share all this stuff.

And sitting there and just being like, yeah, that's too much work. Like, you know, I don't even have a brain injury and I'm half your age and can't do those things. And like going about my day and not like thinking to myself like, why can't it like, ooh, what am I going to look like when I'm hurried in those things?

And that's why I use the word courage, because I'm not living my life like I'm living my life. For the 52 year old me right now. But I look at my mom and I look at people, especially as a paramedic, and I see people and I go into these homes and I think, like, man, what is this 70 and 80 year old?

Them wish that they would have done when they were my age to change their the trajectory of their lives. And, you know, I, I guess it's because like we live in a culture that doesn't applaud excellence, it applauds comfort. It's normal to overeat, to drink regularly, to doom, scroll for hours, to stay up late, to complain about your body, to complain about your mental health, to complain about the stress, to complain about your exhaustion and your financial problems and all of these things.

To complain about the way today's food is. But the moment you stop participating in that complaining and you call people out and then fix it, what are you doing to change your life? Then grow your own garden, then stop watching the news. Any of that stuff. You were no longer relatable. You become a mirror and mirrors make people uncomfortable.

And let me tell you, living a healthy healing, accountable life isn't hard. It's uncomfortable. And we have made a society that people don't want to be uncomfortable. Here's the problem we live in a dopamine culture. We live in a quick dopamine world. We scroll, we get sugar, we drink alcohol, we shop on Amazon. You know, people complain that they can't get their item in, you know, next day or stuff like that.

Fast food validation, numbing. And then people wonder, like, why are anxiety is high, why our cortisol is high, why our sleep is off, why we feel brain fog, why our mood are unstable. Like why we really struggle. Why people struggle with mental health. And I'm learning that like our body is inflamed, people have chronic illness. This is this is at the root of that and is someone who understands trauma and brain injury.

I know this you cannot heal in a dish relay dysregulated nervous system while constantly feeding it chaos. You cannot want clarity while numbing every evening. You cannot pray for peace while feeding. Overstimulation. That's not a judgment. It's biology. So the rooms want us relatable. And here's something that I've realized. The room doesn't pressure you. I have not had anybody pressure me to save money, to lift weights, to go to bed early, to protect your peace, to deepen your faith, to bring your own food.

The room pressures you to live a little. Oh, one drink won't hurt. Don't be so structured. You're like old and boring. It's. It's not that serious. Social pressures almost always will pull you downward, not upward. And here's the uncomfortable truth. If I need the room's approval, I will always operate at the rooms level. I don't like.

The feeling that I get when from most of the people that I'm around, I don't. I have very few people that I would switch lives with and, I don't want to operate at the rooms level anymore. And when you start trying to go above that and stop blaming, there are a lot of people that will say things to me like, you know, well, you had a really, hard childhood or, or people that like, sit in their pity parties.

Well, my mom did this, my dad did that, blah, blah, blah in, but nobody wants to be like, but I'm doing but I'm doing this or I did that. I tell people all the time, you I guess I had a lot of bad things that happened to me. However, I did a lot of bad things to other people, and if I want people to forgive me, and I want people to look at me differently than I have to look at those people differently.

And here's the secret that a lot of people don't like to hear. The majority of abusers were first victims.

And that was a key to being able to forgive people who hurt me. I want to operate at my cost for my calling. You know, we need to start holding each other accountable. Like, why don't we ask things like, what are your goals, Paula? What does five years from now look like? As your friend? How can I support the version of you that you're becoming?

Or hey, I don't really have the time to meal prep because I got this going on, but we work together tomorrow. Could you bring me something or just, like, anything, anything, than to tear people down and I'll tell you standards become protection. Standards are my protection. Discipline is not punishment for me. It's protection. Bringing my own food, protect my brain.

Going to bed early protects my hormones. Not drinking protects my clarity. Lifting weight and in in working my body protects my longevity. Structured eating protects my moods. Prayer in my devotion time in my time with God protects my spirit and my soul. This isn't obsession, people. Oh, you're so health obsessed. No. It's stewardship. I know who I am, I know who I am, and if I want to look at my body, is it as a temple?

Then how I treat it matters. It says a lot about how I see myself. I have spent decades staying in and moving abusive relationship to abusive relationship to abusive relationship because I didn't know my worth, because I didn't feel like I deserve better. And in my healing, I have learned that I am amazing, that I am tenacious, that I am forgiving, that I am loved.

And that has given me the power to step into my courage to share my journey. This was a hard thing that I have really prayed about. For months about do I really get on social media and start being that person that sounds disciplined, that sounds rigid, that sounds boring. I don't care if I never get another follower. I'm not doing this for likes.I'm not doing this to make money. I'm not doing any of this. What I'm doing is that people like me, I follow very few people on social media, but I look at them with intention. Who are they? Who are they? What are they becoming? Are they living in excellence? And those are the people that I want to follow, not the people who these coaches that are not living what they are.

Who wants to buy a coaching session, a coaching program about weight loss from somebody that's extremely overweight? Would you want to buy?

A roof, have somebody have a have an organization. Have a construction company. Can put a roof on your house. When you started looking at all the other jobs that they've done and they they're horrible. We hear we look for good reviews. We look for excellence in their jobs, but we don't demand the same excellent on the people that we follow, the people that we buy from, the people that we subscribe to.

Let me tell you something that I have really fallen off on and being transparent, I before I started recording this podcast, I went and looked at my social media from yesterday. I am averaging about three hours between 2 and 3 hours a day on social media. And so I'm going to take just yesterday, but like I spent so yesterday was a day at home and I was cleaning and stuff.

But I spent 2.5 hours. I wasted 2.5 hours. I spent, an hour and a half about on TikTok and about 59 minutes on Facebook. I spent 48 minutes on productivity. So going through my emails, working on my calendar, doing some finances and stuff like that. And I only spent 14 minutes, reading in my in my Bible app and stuff.

Now with social media I in productivity, some of that is my journaling, but I picked up my phone 80 different times yesterday, so if you think about all that 2.5 hours, that's 2.5 hours I could have been working on, you know, report recording my podcast, recording videos on cooking myself food, cleaning my house, walking, working on brain exercises, getting in my sauna, so many other things.

But we get caught up. I am an addict. I will always be an addict in getting those little like pieces of, you know, 32nd nuggets on TikTok along with everybody else. It feeds the dopamine. It's right there. And, that's that's why so many people waste their time in, in, in that bothers me. And so when I started, when I saw that I limited, I actually tightened it down my social media more so that my apps turn off quicker.

Because I don't I don't want them to like, I don't want to be spending my time wasting my time when I have excellence, when I have goals that I am trying to reach, the 60 and 70 year old me needs me to take care of this body to really focus in on taking care of my brain, to working my proprioception and my visual system and my vestibular system, making sure that they're communicating well so that I'm not that person that's having to call for lift assist all the time down the road, because I can't get up because I don't have strength.

I need to start working on lean muscle mass. I'm strengthening and just all of that stuff. I wasted 2.5 hours yesterday. Think of how much I could have done with that. And I want to talk about like, you know, when we start talking about some of these things, when it comes to like, integrity.

We start talking about like, weight loss and eating healthy and those fat loss really is simple. Biologically. Healing is super simple. Structurally. But what we're what's rare is, private integrity, that integrity and commitment and true ness to yourself is hard. And in this is why I haven't put myself out on social media is because, like, who am I when no one's watching?

I protect that version of me because it's not what society wants people to be. Do I follow through? No, I haven't lately. I follow through with my eating. I follow through with those things. But I keep saying I'll share it. I keep telling people, I'll take you along on this courageous journey and I don't follow through with it.

Why do I not follow through? Because I'm afraid. I'm afraid of what people will say. And I don't care, I don't care, you know, people have come on my. Podcast in my videos before and talked about like my gray hair or why don't you wear makeup or, you know, things like that, like, what does that have to do with my message?

So strange. And so I have found I folded, I folded, and I, and I run, I talk my tail. And a lot of times that that's rooted in still being a trauma survivor.

We know that trauma survivors have patterns, and those patterns are emotional eating, overworking, scrolling to disassociate, drinking to numb, saying yes when we really mean no. Healing requires something different. It requires boring daily uncelebrated integrity. And that's what I've been doing in the quiet moments. But that's great for me. But what does that do for the other survivors?

And that's where I'm holding myself accountable. I'm going to hold myself accountable to sharing this. And I know 90, 90% of the people who will come along actually, probably, honestly, truly, 97% of the people who will follow this journey will that will see my videos of my brain rehab that will see me doing, you know, focusing on getting my three parts of the brain communicating well for the, you know, ten year version of myself being able to prioritize, you know, my muscle strength and lymphatic drainage and eating well and prioritizing protein and stuff like that.

Like people are going to want to do that because it it it's hard. That's what they'll say. But I'll tell you what's harder is the version of you that not doing those things, leads to. So I want to talk about this march is brain awareness month. So for the rest of March I'm going to step outside my comfort zone.

I invite you, if you're watching this, to hold me accountable, I am going to publicly show the daily things that I do to stay aligned. So my workouts, my meals, my boundaries, my bedtimes, my quiet times, my brain health habits, my nervous system work not to impress anyone, but to stay accountable because I'm done shrinking, to stay relatable.

Angry people live in angry bodies. I see a lot of angry people out there who blame the horrible things that happened in their life. And they're so angry in there, and they're biting at people and things and fighting for things that don't really matter. Unpack the trauma. There is an amazing life out there of peace and joy and like forgiveness.

When you have the courage. To take the first step of the journey of healing. I'm asking you for March to hold me accountable. But now I'm going to give you my call to action for you. April holds Stress Awareness Month, alcohol Awareness month, Move more month. And it also has World Health Day, which is April 7th. It feels like a perfect month to put a call to action for people to reset themselves.

So starting April 1st, I'm going to challenge you. I'm going to challenge my followers, and I'm going to challenge people.

Choose one thing, just one. This is part of why my journey has taken so long, and why I've been so quiet is because I have. I picked one thing at a time. So I'm asking you for just 30 days to pick one thing. So stop alcohol for 30 days. Give up social media for 30 days. Don't eat out.

For 30 days. Meal prep weekly. Move your body daily. Lift weights. Walk every morning. Go to bed on time or early. Protect your prayer time. Prioritize yourself without apologizing something. Pick something to better yourself for 30 days and see how you feel. This isn't about perfection, it's about winning. So let's make April the month that we stop apologizing for taking care of ourselves.

Let's all step into being a courageous survivor, but all step into walking the courageous journey. Let's start a movement that applauds self-care, structure, discipline, brain health, healing, sobriety, strength, faith, and personal integrity. No apologies, no shrinking, no negotiating with the versions of ourselves that we aren't called to become. So here's my invitation to you for the rest of the month.

Engage with me. Engage with me by email on my social medias. Comment. Message me. Tell me what you're committing to. What are you going to commit to on April 1st? What are you struggling with? What holds you back from healing? What keeps you from becoming the best version of yourself? What does the five year from now version of you need from you to do today?

So on April 1st, let's begin 30 days one commitment together because excellent might feel lonely, but guess what feels worse? Regret. I am choosing alignment. I'm choosing myself, and I'm choosing the version of me that I'll be tomorrow. And I hope you will too. I hope to see you on social media. I hope to hear the version of you that you're trying to become, and I hope that you will join me on this courageous journey in becoming the best version of ourselves, and being a courageous survivor too.