On Engagement and Resolve - Ep. 157

As a follow-up to the episodes about Perception, Ownership, and Wisdom, today Dr. Jade talks about Engagement and Resolve. When we decide to step out of our old self, or the base level human self, and we finally change our perception, take ownership of how we feel, and acquire wisdom to know how to act differently, it’s time to start engaging in new habits and having Resolve to keep moving forward.

It’s also important to accept that this entire process – the 6 powers process – is going to be very challenging because we eventually will be changing how we are, ever since we learned how to be. But, through these challenges and hard times and struggles, come the lessons and the insights we will use forever. At the end of our lives, we want – or at least should – to feel proud of our accomplishments. Tune in!

Related Links

On Perception

On Ownership

On Wisdom

Check out the Next Level Human sponsors!

• Visit www.drjade.com/levels to learn more and start to master your metabolic health!

• Visit https://paleovalley.com/nextlevel to learn more about the gut-friendly 100% grass fed beef sticks and save 15%!

Connect with Dr. Jade Teta

Website: www.jadeteta.com

Instagram: @jadeteta

TRANSCRIPTION:

Podcast Intro: [00:14] welcome to the Next Level Human Podcast. As a human, you have a job to do. In fact, you have four jobs; to earn and manage money, to attain and maintain health and fitness, to build and sustain personal relationships, to find meaning and make a difference. None of these jobs are taught in school and that is what this podcast is designed to do. To educate us all on living our most fulfilled lives through the mastery of these four jobs. I'm your host, Dr. Jade Teta and I believe we are here living this life for three reasons and three reasons only; to learn, to teach and to love. In this podcast, I will be learning, teaching, and loving right along with you. I'm grateful to have your company; here is to our next level.

Episode Intro: [01:18] Welcome to today's show, everyone, we're gonna get back to the next level human stuff. On this episode, where we left off was we were covering the six powers. And we were going through each one by one. And so I'm going to give you some episodes here so you can follow along in terms of where we are. And just give me a second here. So you can keep up I recommend you actually listen to these in order. It's not imperative, but you probably want to listen to these in order. So we started this particular series on episode 150 and this was on the perception aspect of the six powers. And if you remember, the six powers goes by the acronym POWERS. So POWERS, Episode 150, was on perception. And then episode 153 was on ownership and 154 was on wisdom and so that leaves us with engagement, resolve and sharing and so to get started with this episode, you may want to listen to 151 53 and 154. If you want to go in order, I've been starting each of these episodes with a brief review of the six powers, I'm going to do that again, although I'm going to make it shorter this time. And the reason I'm doing that is just because it's possible, some of you are going to only listen to this particular episode. And that is absolutely just fine. The whole idea behind the six powers is that each of us humans is unique; there has never been anyone like you on the planet ever in the history of humanity, nor will there ever be. Same goes for me. And the same goes for every other human on the planet. And so the theory here is the hypothesis is, is that we each because of our uniqueness have something unique to bring. And even if we're bringing to the world teaching the world the exact same thing as someone else, we bring a unique voice. And so the way I describe this is almost like a unique spiritual fingerprint. Now it does not matter what your belief system is, I myself am agnostic. So when I'm using the term spiritual, that's going to mean different things to different people. When I use the term spiritual, I'm not invoking religion, or God or anything like that. I'm more invoking this invisible aspect of ourselves, this energetic state of our humaneness that permeates everything that we do that taps into the things in the world that we are not consciously aware of the synchronicities and serendipities and repeated patterns that seem to have use for us and the recurrent obstacles that seem to teach us things and the stuck emotions that we're we seem to be meant to get past to learn. And in the next level human construct, we talk about the idea that there are only three things that we are meant to do on this planet, and that is to learn and to teach and to love, love being synonymous with sharing our creations. Oftentimes when I use the term love certainly you can speak about love in a romantic sense, but I don't mean love it as a romantic incantation in a sense. I mean love in the sense of sharing your creations with the world without need for acknowledgment and reciprocation. And isn't this what unconditional love is this idea of what the Greeks might call agape love, which is love of all things, love of all people love of your fellow human.

[05:19] This is what we're talking about here and so if you look at it this way, the hypothesis is that we're each unique. And we each of us humans, in our uniqueness have a purpose potential, a way that we can quintessentially impact the world, a purpose potential, a special cargo that we are meant to deliver. And this is a beautiful thought, whether or not you believe that we are spiritual beings, or whether you believe in God or whether you believe that when we die, it's just emptiness and darkness no matter what you believe. I really think the thought that we are each unique and can each bring something permanently positive to the world that can last long beyond ourselves, is a beautiful thought. And I also believe very strongly, obviously, otherwise, I would not be doing the next level human work that every single one of us we humans want to matter and make a difference above all else in the world. This is what we want. We want fulfillment. We want to get to our deathbeds and feel a sense of pride. Be proud of how we showed up in the world, how we loved how we lived, how we made a difference, not for ourselves necessarily not just for ourselves, but also for the world at large. This is what separates a next level human, from a base level human that's just all about self and wanting power, or a culture level human, it's all about team and chasing popularity, a next level human is all about purpose, and simultaneously integrating their own wants, needs, desires, with the wants, needs, desires of the world at large. And so they are simultaneously growing themselves while evolving the world. And in this spiritual fingerprint that is made up of what I call the five P's, the people that you've been exposed to the people that have hurt you and helped you throughout your life. These obviously influence who you are your unique personality. And inside that personality, there's a perspective that you bring to the world. So that would be your second P, your unique personality, the way that you approach the world, your passions, the things that you're interested in and drawn to, which guide you in the kind of work that you'll do and the kind of purpose you might bring to life and then of course, your powers, your superpowers. Some of these passions actually turn into talents, things that you're very, very good at, that other people might not be good at. And most importantly, last but not least is your pain. Pain formed some of the most important lessons that we humans have. So your uniqueness is made up of these five P's, your people, your passions, your superpowers, your personality, and your pain and those five things make you completely unique in the world. And when you are as a human as a next level human as an aspiring next level human, which we all are remember it's called next level human for a reason. It's not called higher level human or better level human, those will be things that a base level or cultural level human might say I'm better than you, or I'm in a higher position than you in the vertical hierarchy of life. And next level human is simply saying that I am trying to grow to my best potential. And I'm not holding anyone else down, I'm just trying to be the best that I can be and bring something of value to the world to learn to teach and to love. Now in that pursuit is where the sixth POWERS come into being the first thing that we must master if we're going to ever get to the point where we can deliver this special cargo that we are meant to leave here or that we can, I'm not going to say meant to but that we can choose to leave on the planet. In order to get there we have to go through certain stages what I might call the hero's journey or what not I would call but some would call the hero's journey. I call it the next level human journey. And it goes through stages. First is a change in perception. We must address the stuck stories the repeat the recurrent patterns, the stuck emotions, the obstacles that repeat themselves over and over again we must confront the filters by which we see the world? If you see life as a war, you will find battles everywhere. Isn't this true that we humans, and you know this from working with yourself and dealing with other people that we see the world through filters were domesticated in the sense we behave and act to a large degree based on how our parents behaved and act, how the people that we are exposed to or to behaved and act acted, and we tend to stay stuck in that way, and we can't stay stuck. If we are going to unload this special cargo and do our special work and realize our purpose potential on the planet, we must change our perception we must grow and change our belief systems. And most people resist this.

[10:50] So this journey, the next level human journey, going through the six powers is incredibly difficult. The vast majority of people never ever get past the stage of perception, because they are unwilling to change the stories that permeate their lives. And whether or not you are consciously aware of these stories is the problem. That is the whole thing. You need to become consciously aware of the stories you are living, so that you can change them, so that you can grow yourself and evolve the world and see the truth of who you currently are. So that you can realize the potential of who you could be and usually, perception gets broken wide open by things such as the midlife crisis, or by loss of a loved one and grief and heartbreak. Pain is part of the thing that makes us question the stories that we live from, especially when that pain is recurrent, and repeated and happens over and over again. So perception is the first piece now once our pain oftentimes cracks open a new perception, we then step into the stage of ownership, there's this period of time, where we have to say, I now am going to stop being a victim and living from these old stories. Instead of living from unconscious stories that were written for me, I am going to now step into radical responsibility and Extreme Ownership and write my own stories, choose my own way of attacking the world and being in the world and construct an honor code that defines for myself who I will be moving forward. And of course, we covered that in Episode 1 I think 53.

[17:06] And now let's go ahead and get back to the show. And then we move on to the idea of wisdom because as soon as you own who you want to be, we open up a gap, don't we because I might say to myself, hey, I want to start a new career, I want to be a new kind of person that doesn't lie, or I want a great relationship or I want to, you know, do this particular work in the world. Oftentimes, as soon as we own who we want to be, we realize that a gap opens up between who we currently are and the knowledge that we currently have, and who we want to be and the knowledge that must be accumulated to get there. And so wisdom is all about the accumulation of that knowledge and experience that allows us to step fully into and become an expert in our new story, what we're trying to open up. And that brings us to the next stage of this, which I'm going to combine in this episode, which is the stage of engagement and resolve. So the POW we've already covered perception, ownership and wisdom. And once you get there now all of a sudden, the journey really become cyclical in nature, in a sense, in order for us to learn what we need to learn and get the insights that we need to get as humans to become the human that we want to be. It happens slowly. It does not happen all at once. There is a story that must happen. And let's review really quickly the hero's journey because engagement and resolve and what happens with engagement resolve is really the most critical aspect of the hero's journey. A hero's journey almost always goes like this, we're going along in our lives, living in one particular state of being and then something happens, lightning strikes, so to speak, there's a death, there's a change, there's a heartbreak, our whole world gets shaken upside down and inside out. And we can see this almost as a spiritual awakening in a sense, rather than a crisis. And the awakening essentially says everything you thought you knew, all the ways that you have been living, have got to change because the world that you thought you were living on, is now on shaky ground. Right? And this is things like betrayal and divorce and death and loss of a job and illness and all these things that force us to take a look at who we have been and why things have gone, quote wrong when in reality. We could look at this as why things have gone right. It's almost like our spirit, right? Waking us up, shaking us tapping us on the shoulder and if we don't listen, then it smacks us across the face and if we don't listen, then it kicks us in the stomach. It's trying to get out our attention. And what happens is when this thing occurs, this lightning strike moment it throws us into turmoil, turmoil that can last months and years of trying to figure out what goes wrong. And the reason it can last so long and for some it lasts their entire life is because that pain and that turmoil and that lightning strike is meant to shake us out of our perceptions. And in order for it to end, we must step into ownership. And in order for us to get past ownership, we must learn the lessons and get the experience needed. To become who we want to become, we must go into wisdom and wisdom puts us into a cyclical relationship with engagement and resolve. In fact, when we engage with the world engagement, saying yes, doing the things taking massive actions in pursuit of who we want to be, we are going to face fear and failure and fall backs, fall downs, rather, and obstacles, and we're going to get our ass kicked, so to speak. And that's the resolve piece, we have to be resolved enough to get up to know that these setbacks and these failures and these difficulties, and these obstacles are there on purpose that they are not something bad, so to speak. They're not actually truly obstacles, but they are stepping stones to becoming who we want to be this idea of easy is earned so to speak, what I would call meritum securus. Easy is earned Latin for easy as earned as meritum securus, I actually have this tattooed on my left bicep as a reminder to me that when we go into wisdom, and when we are on this path, the next level human journey, we must attack life, we must realize that we have to engage, right, we have to engage with life, we have to take massive action. And in doing that, we're putting ourselves in a vulnerable position. We're risking ourselves, we're being different, we're putting ourselves in a sense, in harm's way we're getting out of our comfort zone. And in that we began to learn skills. What's really interesting about humans as we age is we stop learning new things as adults as children, we used to like that, right, we would try a thing and try it again. And engagement was fun. But now as adults, we don't want to fail at all. Whereas you as kids, we failed over and over and over again and almost saw it as fun it was almost play. Well as adults, we don't play anymore in this way. And we don't want to be bad at anything. And so we stopped trying anything. And this is a really, really big hurdle with engagement where people don't want to do something because they think I might look silly, or they may don't want to do something because they think they might get hurt, or they don't want to do something because they feel like it could be embarrassing. Children don't think like this, right? They just play and they enjoy the process. As adults, we need to get back to that.

[23:20] so engagement is all about taking action, stepping forward into this place. And realizing that yes, we are going to fail. And that is the point. Failing is the point. Easy is earned. We don't rise to the occasion, we rise to the level of our training, right? It's not a leap and the net will appear. It's leap and weave the net as you fall in the struggle comes the lessons and the insight and this is the way it has always worked in life. But as adults, we stop doing this, which is why all learning stops why life becomes boring. Why life becomes nothing but safety. And why we lament oftentimes mentioned this, many people look back and say the age between the ages of 15 and 30 years old of their life are the best times why? Because they're going to school, they're falling in love for the first time. They're getting a heartbroken for the first time. They're having successes with school. They're having failures at school. They're trying different things. Some things they are horrible at some things, they're good at some things they hate some things they love, they're jumping out of airplanes, they're climbing mountains, maybe they're traveling, maybe they're going to college, maybe they're getting a job, it's a time of change and love and maybe kids and maybe marriage and different careers and everything is changing. But then what happens is we settle in and we get comfort, comfortable, and we no longer set out to say yes to things and engage in life fully and try new things. Engagement is about trying new things, but in particular, it is about engaging with the thing sayings that will get us to where we want to be. So let me give you an example here about engagement. Let's say I wanted to become a chef, I wanted to, I found that my passions and my personalities and the people that I've been exposed to, and my unique pains, and my unique superpowers, all are pushing me towards the this idea that I want to become a cook and share that with the world. By the way, I can't cook at all. So this has nothing to do with me. But let's say I did well, in that in that ownership of saying, I am going to become this particular thing. I need to start gathering wisdom around what it means to be a chef, maybe I go to chef school, maybe I start learning new recipes. Maybe I interned with different people. Maybe I traveled to Japan to learn about Japanese cuisine in India to learn about Indian cuisine, and South America to learn about South American cuisine, etc. This is what engagement means, right? It's this idea that once I decide I want to do a thing, I engage fully in that thing I can tell you over and over again, I have so many people in my life friends, family members, acquaintances, and people I've worked with in mentoring, and life coaching, that really stop right here, they say, Okay, here's what I want to do, I'm going to own this. And then they stop, they don't want to engage fully, they don't want to spend the money, they don't want to do the schooling, they don't want to take the time they don't want to do the reps are required to become a true expert in this thing, partly because they're lazy, partly because they are scared, right? Partly because they are ignorant and don't want to, you know, show that to the world. But let's face it, one thing about us humans is we are all inherently lazy, ignorant, and fearful. The secret to success is being just a little less fearful, a little less lazy, and a little less ignorant. And engagement is what does that engagement is what builds your confidence. And so what I do then is I engage with food. People in true engagement are very attractive people, they are passionate people, they are succeeding and failing, constantly failing, usually more than they're succeeding, but they're learning and they are loving it. And so engagement is critical.

[27:23] Now with engagement and the reason we put resolve with it is that with engagement, the requirement is that when you engage all out, and when you quote, attack life, you are going to fail, it is just a reality of what happens and it's going to take time. And to get up after falling down takes resolve to face something that you're afraid of. And finish takes resolve. As an author, I write books. And one of the things that happens is, every time I'm in a project, writing a book, it stalls in some way shape, or form, I hit a roadblock writer's block or some kind of a block. And I have to finish, I know I have to finish because my brain is watching me all the time. And if I don't finish, it thinks I'm full of shit. And it goes, you're not really an author anymore Jade, you did not finish. If you're going to call yourself an author then engage in the way that an author would and finish the way an author would. And how often do we, ourselves and other humans that we are engaged with? Engaged, I'm using that word there but let's just say that we know other humans that we know how often are they not willing to do this kind of engagement and not willing to do this resilient resolve? Most of the time, they are timid in their engagement. And if they fail, they quit. Now look, it's not a judgment. Okay, I have done this myself. Again, and again. You have done this. We're all human.

[31:41] And now back to the show in this engagement and resolve phase, we can't, we can't, life will continue to call us up on it and will continue to try to challenge us and get us back to this attack. Otherwise, we will feel that dread, we will feel that defeat, we will feel that anxiety and we will feel that depression. A human who is engaged is not a human who is anxious or depressed. Let me say that again. In my mind, a human who is truly engaged in pursuit of their purpose potential, cannot be anxious or depressed. They're too busy living life is happening and they are responding. And when you are responding in this way to life, you cannot be anxious or depressed. This is what engagement is all about. And resolve requires that you finish things. Now let's talk here in a minute, towards the end of this podcast, how to do this. I just talked about this idea of being a chef. Now if I were to go and be a chef, this is going to require an awful lot of wisdom. I don't know anything about cooking, this is going to mean watching countless videos on YouTube. Let's say maybe that's how I start out. Or maybe I start out just trying a few recipes. And I perfect a few and I get good at a few. Okay, that is engagement, getting on looking at these videos, buying cookbooks, this is a form of engagement. Okay? Now resolve comes with finishing the book. Okay, and actually finishing the recipe. And what I mean by that is I don't mean like make the recipe once. But make it until it is good, right? Make the Chicken Cacciatore or the make it so that it is good, master it finish it in a sense. And then in that right in that engagement and in that finishing I know I build some confidence and I also get some insights around several things. Maybe I find I don't like Italian cooking, right? Maybe I find that I do love Italian cooking. And in that I can either go in one direction or another direction. Maybe I find I like baking better when I start going into making cupcakes and baking cakes. And I find that I'm really good at that. But maybe I also think you know, I want to, you know, be healthy and cook healthy. So maybe in that engagement and resolve journey and learning how to make these delicious cakes, and then realizing I really want to make healthy delicious cakes. Maybe next thing I know now I've slightly altered my trajectory. And now I'm in a zone where I'm a baker, but I am a low carb keto baker or something like that. And what I'm trying to illustrate here is that only through engagement and resolve does our path open up. This is critically important because what most people want to see when they're in when they're doing this is they go I want the path. How's it going to end where am I going to end up am I going to end up in this particular place or that particular place. And what is critically important for us to understand is that our purpose potential emerges. It's a choice. It's something we create. But it's something we create out of the wisdom that comes from engagement and resolve and the and the learning that happens, while we're on the path living this, saying yes, taking massive action falling on our face, getting back up learning the lesson, saying yes, taking massive actions falling down, getting back up learning the lessons, in that we are constantly adjusting. This is why I say it's not leap and the net will appear; it's leap, and weave the net as you fall. And what happens is through that trajectory of engagement, and resolve, and constantly taking action and learning and failing and learning and failing and learning and failing, we start to discover what we love, what we don't love what we're good at our unique voice. And we begin to build confidence around that and our path begins to open up. And it won't necessarily be a single path, oftentimes, it'll be three or four, out of a possibility of 100 paths that open up and then we choose which of those three to four that we take. And we cannot get to that place in life, until we have engagement and resolve this process of engagement, resolve, leading to wisdom, more engagement, where more resolve leading to more wisdom, more engagement, more mirrors all leading to more wisdom. So we get in this wisdom, engagement, resolve loop, wisdom, engagement, resolve, wisdom, engagement, resolve, and in that, in that loop of engaging, falling down, getting back up and learning and gaining more wisdom and then repeating it, we begin to be more fully the human that we set out to be when we were in the ownership phase, not to mention this action of engagement and resolve more completely changes our perception so that we in a sense, as we are engaging with life and falling down and getting back up, one of the things that's happening is we are killing our old self, which is to say we are killing our old stories, we are truly becoming the thing. Remember, I talked about this idea of be it until you see it, engagement and resolve is the being part, it's basically showing up and saying this is what I'm going to do. And I'm going to put myself on the front lines. And I'm going to take massive action in this direction, without considerations about how much it's going to cost, or whether it's going to be too hard or if I have enough time, or if it will be popular among my families and friends or if it's something that I can make a ton of money at. And when you know the lottery of base level humans and have power and money, it's something that we have to love that we go, I want to do this because I want to do this, I choose this because I choose this, I don't choose it because I'm going to be popular, and I'm gonna choose it for power. I choose it because I feel compelled to do it. For me, one of the things you all may not know is that for me writing books is not the main way I make money. Right now I don't write books necessarily to make money I write books, because I choose to write books, I feel compelled to write books. That is what it is about for me. And in doing that I am slowly but surely becoming a better writer, I'd better author and more fully stepping in to my zone of genius in this way, but easy was earned. I wasn't good at it in the beginning. I'm getting better at it as I go and I'm loving the entire process of it. And so this, to me is how this journey works. Engagement and resolve in my mind is the most critical aspect of the journey. And once you do that enough, you will arrive and what I mean by this is that yours, no place to arrive, you actually arrive when a rival is no longer the goal. In other words, you'll get to a point where you say I love what I do. And I would do it for free. And you continue to engage in this process reaching higher and higher levels of expertise. And eventually you get to the point where you want to teach this. And so we talked about the three imperatives in the next level human construct of learn, teach and love learning. It has a lot to do with this wisdom engagement resolve loop, obviously. But once you learn these lessons you can then become began to teach those lessons. And so oftentimes, you learn and you teach right after that and sometimes the best teachers are only a few steps ahead of their students. So learning and teaching are closely linked. And actually, when you learn something, and then you teach that thing, you actually understand it better, don't you. And so teaching really is a deeper form of learning. Likewise, all great teachers are also great students. But when we look at the three imperatives of learn, teach and love, love is the most important one because this is the one where we step into now sharing freely, without need for acknowledgement or reciprocation, our creations that come out of that learning, and that teaching and the wisdom engagement resolve loop, and that is the sharing piece. And that is the last power sharing, we humans can not feel completely fulfilled, until we begin to share our gifts freely with the world.

[40:53] And so, next podcast episode, I hope it will be the next one, we are going to wrap up the six powers by talking about sharing the principle that I call red link one or more, which means leave your love, love not being a romantic incantation in this phrase, but love meaning leave our creations, we love the world by leaving our creations that make the world better. That's the best way to love the world. And so that's what we'll talk about at the next episode as we wrap up this series on the six powers. Hope you guys enjoyed the podcast today. Please do me a favor send me a DM in the social medias, or send an email to support at Jay tita.com Let me know how you been enjoying this six powers series. Please consider leaving a review on Apple iTunes reviews are very, very helpful to letting people find the podcast, please pass the podcast on and please do your best if you're if you find any of the sponsors. The pet podcast useful to you we have a couple of new ones levels health, continuous glucose monitoring, evolve, telemed which I'm super excited about for all of you who asked about hormone replacement therapy and testosterone replacement therapy. We all now have an excellent resource for that and of course, element hydration, beverage and paleo Valley and Organi Phi. Please consider being someone who contributes to who buys these products as they contribute to the podcast and they also do great things for the world. I'm always trying to find amazing companies to sponsor the podcast. I really appreciate all of you. I appreciate you being interested in the podcast, and I couldn't think you more I'm just in gratitude for all of you. I will see you at the next podcast.