Turning Pain to Purpose – Ep. 187

Physical pain and emotional pain are two types of experiences that are very similar but are treated differently by humans. When we get hurt physically and we see our body suffering, we seek help, relieve symptoms, or get medical assistance. However, when we are emotionally hurt we tend to ignore it, avoid it until we stop thinking about it, or obsess about it until it consumes our life. Two very discrepant treatments, right?

In this episode of Next Level Human Podcast, Dr. Jade explains these ideas for us, trying to clarify why we come up with these two different approaches. Addressing emotional pain and trying to turn it into purpose is often the best way to deal with the pain in the first place. But, for this to happen, we need to learn from the experience, and hopefully, teach the lesson to others. This is one of the basic principles for a next-level human.

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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.

Jade 1:18 

Right what's going on everyone, welcome to today's show. Today, we're getting back to my favorite topic, personal development. And we're gonna do a podcast on pain and purpose. And so some of this will be a little bit of review for those of you who are veterans of the podcast. But it is a much needed review, I believe. And there's a lot to be added to this conversation about pain and purpose. And I'm actually doing this particular podcast because I recently did three different talks on this exact concept. And the feedback has been really, really well received. And a lot of people are asking about where they can get these lectures that they've seen snippets of on social media and on YouTube and in different places. And so I'm doing this particular podcast so that we have one place where all this exists, so that the people who miss those talks can get them. And so let's begin the way I began with the individuals that I gave these lectures to over the last month with a thought experiment. And this thought experiment is a thought experiment you may have done if you've ever been in a philosophy 101 class, it is a thought experiment that is often used in philosophy by many instructors. And it goes like this, if you were to be asked, What are you going to do? Or why are you here in whatever context and let's just use the concept of why you're listening to this podcast. Now, if I asked you why you're listening to this podcast you would have, what kind of reasons they would be reasons like, well, I'm listening to this podcast because I want to learn and or I want to be entertained, or because you know, I'm doing something else. And I want to, you know, sort of be distracted rather than focus on my, my work or whatever the reasons are. And then what I might do is, I might ask you, well, why are you, for example, wanting to learn? And your answer might be back to me, well, because I want to get better in my field, or I want to have better personal development, or whatever it is. And if I asked you why, again, you would probably say something along the lines of because I want to teach my children something or I want to be better at my job later on. And there would be reasons that you would be engaging with this. And you'd be answering this question from the concept or from the perspective rather, of time usually, you'd be thinking about I'm doing this for some future moment. Now if I asked you the following. Imagine that when you leave this podcast that this podcast ends, you're going to be dying, you're gonna walk across the street or a meteor is going to hit your house, I don't know something catastrophic is going to happen. And you're you have about three minutes, and then you're gonna die, you're going to suffer then you're going to die. Now, if I were a genie, and I can come to you in those three minutes, and ask you, I can give you one wish. I can't keep you from dying. And I can't keep you from suffering. But I can Then grant you one wish for your life? What would you say then? You would probably say what most people say, the answer is boiled down to sort of three different arenas.

Jade  5:15 

Some people might say, well, I want to have a beautiful experience. Maybe I want to be on a beautiful beach in Maui that I remember being on or I want to be watching a beautiful sunset, or something like that I want to be in the woods and have a particular experience in life. Or maybe I want to be at a comedy show or something like that experiences. Another wish falls into the category of loved ones, I want to be with my loved ones. And usually that takes on the character of I want to have the conversations, I want to hear what has never been told, I want to say what has never been said, I want to have the most important conversations with my loved ones, the things that need to be said. And the final thing that happens is in the category of help, I want to help I want to solve hunger, I want world peace, I want to cure a particular disease, I want to invent a particular thing that makes life better for others. And this thought experiment really drives home a big piece of self development and the whole point of what we are doing on the planet, when it really gets down to it. The big questions are, who am I? Why am I here? What am I doing? And this thought experiment helps drive you to understand the most important questions. Because if I ask you who you are, and why are you doing what you are doing, and you have time, you will almost always say Well, I'm doing this because of that in the future. However, if I only give you three minutes to live, and give you a wish, you'll see really quickly that the most important things in life are to have experiences, to be about around loved ones and talk to them and tell them things and learn things from them. And also to help. And this goes to what I often say. And you hear every single time you listen to this podcast that really, we humans are only here for three reasons. And this thought experiment immediately illuminates the these three reasons. We are here to learn, to teach and to love. Learning being synonymous with accumulating information, having the experiences gathering information, developing knowledge, and that comes through information plus experience. It's all about sort of wisdom, learning something. And then the next thing is teaching something we want to learn and or teach and this idea of I want a particular experience where I want to talk to my loved ones almost always comes from settling something it's about learning and or teaching when we are with our loved ones. And then the final thing is about creating or loving, making a difference for the world. And this is why I have come to this conclusion for myself that we are here to learn, to teach and to love. That's it. That's the reason that we are on the planet. And we lose sight of this as we go through life. And one of the major things that we have to confront that makes us lose sight of learning, teaching and loving is suffering. Now also, if you're listening to this podcast in the past, you know that I often talk about suffering as being perhaps the most important thing that we humans have to do in life, we must suffer. I oftentimes invoke the Buddha's saying life is dukkha or life is suffering.

Jade  9:05 

And from my perspective, suffering is an absolute requirement in order to fulfill the three imperatives of learning, teaching and loving. However, it is also the major thing that keeps us from learning and teaching and loving. So I just want to pause here for a minute and make sure you understand what I'm saying suffering, pain, hurt, discomfort, uncertainty. These things are both the whole reason that we are learning, teaching and loving or the cause of learning and teaching and loving, and they are also the cause of keeping us from learning and teaching and loving. And so you might say well, Jade, what's the difference? How, how can we use suffering to learn teach and love rather than us suffering too? Who block ourselves from learning, teaching and loving, because let's face it, things happen in life. And we all know this for ourselves and others. And some people are enhanced and grow from it and become magnificent, powerful versions of their former selves, through going through suffering, and others go through suffering and become degraded, destroyed, detrimental, ugly aspects of their former selves. So some people go through suffering and are enhanced, and other people go through suffering, and are degraded, the people who go through suffering and are enhanced, get to realize this mission of learn, teach and love. Those who go through suffering and are degraded are blocked from learning, teaching and loving. And as triggering as this is, this is a choice. And this is the part that can be extremely triggering. And I get it, it certainly was triggering for me when I first heard this, and first came to understand this, and it is likely to be triggering for you, especially if you have not yet heard this before, maybe a friend of yours has sent you this particular podcast, and you're listening to this because you're going through a very difficult time. And you don't feel like there is a choice around you're suffering. Well, this podcast is for you. And I want to hopefully show you how you can make the choice to use suffering to enhance you, rather than use suffering, to degrade you. Now to start this conversation, I want to do a thought experiment that I've become a little bit famous for that many of you have probably heard, but this is for those who haven't heard. And the idea here is, is that we need to handle emotional psychological suffering, in the same way that we handle physical suffering. If we could handle psycho emotional suffering, in the same way that we handle physical suffering, we will begin the first step to using suffering, to learn teach and love and to enhance ourselves and to have a fulfilled life. But many of us don't. And so here's the thought experiment, imagine you are in the kitchen, cutting vegetables, and your knife slips and cuts your thumb wide open. Now, when this happens, this physical injury, you are going to act almost completely by instinct, you're going to grab your thumb, and you're going to squeeze it and you're going to clench it, and you're going to immediately have your attention on it. And then you're going to tentatively look at it, you're going to expect it you're going to see how deep is this wound, what must I do to attend to this wound, then you're going to wash it and you're either going to bandage it, or you're going to go to the ER and you're going to get stitches, whatever you do, you are going to tend to it you are going to take care of this injury.

Jade  13:03 

Now, the next time you are in the kitchen cutting vegetables as a result of having this physical injury in the past, you are going to learn you're going to pay more attention, you're going to be more careful with your knife. Many of you will go on YouTube, or watch a cooking demonstration or take cooking lessons. So you can learn how to chop and the correct technique to actually chop vegetables so you avoid cutting your hand. Or maybe you'll buy some kind of protective chainmail glove or something like that, to keep you from cutting your hand, but you will learn from that lesson, you will adjust your behavior and you will begin to learn from it perhaps you'll even as a result of cutting your thumb, learn these new knife cutting techniques and teach someone else how to do the cutting technique so that they don't cut their hands. And so you see how it's very easy when we have physical injuries and we tend to them, we can easily learn teach. And even perhaps maybe as a result of this wound, you actually create your own cooking show and your own education books on learning how to cut vegetables better. So you learn teach and love love being synonymous with create something for the world. Out of this physical injury. You can see very clearly how this might happen. But at the very least you learn from it. Right? Now, this is not what we do when we deal with psychological wounds. So now take that same metaphor. And imagine this is your psychological thumb and you are betrayed or you lose a job or someone hurts you or you've had some kind of big T trauma in your life, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, psychological abuse, any kind of suffering or trauma bankruptcy See, so your emotional thumb has been cut. Now what do we do with this? Almost always what we're going to do is when we cut our thumb emotionally, psycho emotionally, we react in one of three ways. One way we might react is to jump up, run outside, find someone, anyone, oftentimes people that we know or who are around us, and we stick our thumb in their face and scream out. Wow. Ah screaming and yelling and whimpering and whining and blaming and complaining, sticking our thumb in their face, as if they are responsible as if they are the ones who are supposed to grab the thumb, cover the thumb and spec the thumb. Clean the thumb bandage the thumb put a you know, a stitches on the thumb. This is what we often will do, we will blame and complain shoving our thumb into someone else's face, screaming and yelling, doing this to as many people as we possibly can, wanting them to bow to our wounds. Now the other thing we might do is we might instead just there at our thumb, learned helplessness just look at it. Cry, watch it bleed all over the place, not cover it not bandage it, not clean it just sit there and cry and whimper and whine and let the thumb bleed all over the place while not tending to it. And the third thing we might do is go Oh, never mind. I didn't cut my thumb and we stick our thumb behind our back, we stick our hand behind our back, we pretend we didn't cut the thumb at all. In fact, we make a decision that you know what I don't need that thumb. I don't need that hand. As a matter of fact, I can get by in life with one arm, and I'm just going to pretend like this never happened. Meanwhile, we are bleeding out all over the place behind our back. This is the way most of us deal with psycho emotional suffering. We try to outsource it blame and complain. We whimper and whine or we distract and deny.

Jade  17:13 

And what happens when we do that? Now imagine us doing that with an actual really serious injury that when we cut ourselves what will happen to that injury. If we blame and complain, whimper and whine distract and deny and never tend to it, never cover it, never manage it and never clean it. It's going to fester, right, it's going to get infected, it's going to cause issues it may even kill us giving us sepsis causing us to die as a result of this wound. Now imagine this festering psycho emotional, mental, emotional wound that you are blaming and complaining, whimpering and whining, distracting and denying and what it's doing to your insides? Do you honestly believe that this is serving you. And in the most insidious way, when we handle psycho emotional pain this way, we block ourselves from fulfilment, we block ourselves from peace, we create greater suffering as a result of not dealing with our suffering in the correct way. Essentially what we do is we tell a story about our pain. And these stories become our identity. And once these stories become our identity, we as humans do not like anything that disrupts our identity. And we will defend that identity even if it's not serving us. So our stories about our suffering, often become our identity. And this identity often keeps us from growing, learning, teaching and loving. And we actually defend this to our death, not realizing that we're doing it. There's an old saying from a philosopher when I don't remember where I got this term from or where to give, you know, recognition for who coined this phrase. But it's a phrase I always remember from reading and it says if you see life as a battle, you will see conflict show up everywhere, whether they exist or not. In other words, if you have a psycho emotional wound, that you have internalized as a particular story about the world, that the world is unsafe, the world is evil, that world is out to get me people are bad, whatever it is, you're telling yourself and that becomes your identity, the world will begin to appear like that to you regardless of if that is reality or not. The stories then become buried in our unconscious. Many of them are never written by us in the first place because many of these wounds and stories occur when we are very young six years in younger when we are not completely conscious, and we don't have the maturity, the psycho emotional maturity to understand how to tend to our wounds.

Jade 22:40

And now back to the show. Regardless though, we are the ones that are responsible for this. Now, even if you're in the kitchen, and someone else who you know very well runs in and cuts your finger and gives you a deep gash in your thumb. You still cannot shove your thumb in their face and say out or stare at your thumb and whimper and whine or distract and deny. And the reason why you can't is because they may not give a shit. They may just simply say so they may not say they're sorry, they may not own up to it, they may not take responsibility, they may not care one way or the other, they may just leave you there and laugh at you. And think about what you are doing to yourself when you are waiting for somebody to apologize when you're waiting for someone to forgive when you're waiting for someone to take responsibility. Meanwhile, you're bleeding out and they may never take responsibility at all. And so, what ends up happening when we begin to write the stories of suffering is we began to adopt three different identities. And if you are a veteran to this podcast, you know what these identities are I talk about them all the time, there is the base level human, the culture level human and the next level human. Now let's stop here just for a moment and remind ourselves that the next level human is called next level human for a reason it is not better than human, it is not a higher level human and the reason why is because we all have base level in us we all have culture level in us and we all have next level in us. None of us are next level humans we are only hopefully next level humans in process. Now when we adopt the base level human behavior when that becomes our dominant operating system. What we do is we feel suffering and as a result of that suffering, we choose to chase power. The base level human is afraid of getting heard again, they have an awful lot of fear that becomes their dominant way of interacting with the world. And because they are afraid they crave certainty and stability, because certainty and stability will allay their fear. And they also create power structures, they want to become powerful and dominate. They want to dominate over people, they want to dominate over their environment. They like roles, they like laws, they like stability, they like to be in control and the most powerful person in the room because they believe that if they are the most powerful person in their environment, they cannot be hurt. And this is how they allay their fear. What they don't understand, though, is that when you take power struggles to the extreme, first of all, it's a struggle. What it means is that you are in a battle against the world. It is a mentality of me, against you, I for and I. So that's the first mistake here because as soon as you begin to take on the power struggle, what ends up happening to you is that you now will force yourself to be in a perpetual struggle. Secondly, if you are able to gain complete power over people and your environment, what happens is because everything is so certain, and everything is so stable, you destroy your ability to learn, learning only comes from instability, discomfort. And finally, when you have complete control and power over other people, you actually destroy yourself. And this is a little bit hard to understand here. But we humans do not exist unless we are in relation with other people. In other words, we like to think of ourselves as separate. But we ourselves are defined by the environment in which we are in we ourselves are defined by others, our relationship to others determine who we are, our place in the world determines who we are, we are in an ecosystem, not a hierarchy. And so by trying to create power, we actually destroy ourselves and keep us from learning, teaching and loving. This is the base level human and it does not serve. Now the culture level human instead of seeking power, what they do is they look for popularity, and pleasure. And so the base level human the power structure, they are more about sticking the thumb in other people's faces and saying owl right now, the culture level human, what they do is they instead want to whimper and whine or pretend like nothing is happening. And they want to pretend and put on a show. Because their major fear is lack of belonging. Their major emotional drive is acceptance. And they believe that if they are accepted, they will not be wounded again, and they won't have to suffer again. And so they do one of two things, they either distract and deny with pleasure, or they seek popularity, for acceptance. So think about that, if they can't get acceptance, they distract and deny and just go after pleasure, drugs, addictions, sex, these kinds of things, which can obviously be destructive, because they take over the personality, or they go for belonging and popularity, which also is destructive, because think about it. When your life is about being popular and seeking status, you lose your authenticity. So the base level human loses themselves because they tried to dominate over culture and over humans. And the culture level human loses themselves because they allow themselves to be dominated by culture, or pleasurable things. And so they never actually get to be authentic in their way. And so they also block themselves from learning, teaching and loving.

Jade  29:11 

And so obviously, what I'm getting at here is that the only way to truly get to this three imperatives of learning, teaching and loving and making your life matter and make a difference is the next level human way, which is a chase of purpose. And their major drive is not for safety and stability, or popularity and pleasure and belonging. Their major drive is for growth. They want to learn this is the major way they look at suffering and as a result of that, as a result of looking at their suffering as an opportunity to grow and learn and enhance themselves and to teach others those same lessons and or to create something that better As the world so others don't have to suffer in the same way, in this way they are able to transcend their suffering. So I want to stop here for just a minute to help understand, can the base level person who seeks power transcend suffering? No. What they do is they pass their suffering on instead of transcending suffering, they become their suffering. Now, can the culture level human transcend suffering? No. What they do is they deny their suffering, they try to distract themselves with suffering, they try to avoid it all together by seeking popularity and pleasure, and therefore, they don't get the lessons either. Only purpose, not popularity, and not power and not pleasure can help you transcend suffering. So the next level human is someone who begins to see suffering as a source of meaning, who begins seeing hurt as a way to help who begins to see pain as a path to purpose. Now, right now, I want to talk a little bit about purpose, because this is important to understand. And I've mentioned this before in many lectures, and many times on this podcast, passion is sometimes confused with purpose. Meaning is also sometimes confused with purpose, they are not the same thing in my mind. And I think we need to make a distinction here. Passions, and meaning and purpose are three different things. Now you can look at this as an evolutionary process. Certainly, when you fall in love with something and find joy from it, which would be a passion, a hobby and interest, things you enjoy things you love, things that you have found, that bring on the emotion of excitement, things like a new game, a new lover, a new interest, you know, it's sort of the way the world entertains you. When you have found these things. They can begin the process the purpose, but they're not. And they don't stick around. Oftentimes, they can be fleeting, fickle, and changeable, but they do start the process. And when a passion becomes a little bit deeper, when there's a person and experience places were things that you began to really love, and become so passionate over that they began to derive some sense of meaning in your life. This is when passion becomes meaning, when you want to keep them around when these things are things you revisit again and again. And they become part of your identity structure, they become meaning now meaning can be people, experiences, places your work things. But the problem with meaning. And the reason it's not the same as purpose is that it must be borrowed from the outside world, passions are found. They are something you engage with as they become deeper and internalized into your psyche, they become more meaning. But they still have to be something that you revisit again and again, they certainly can bring on emotions of happiness and contentment. You know, passion is more about fun and excitement. But as passions become deeper and become meaning, now they be can come happiness and contentment. But you can't feel happy and content always right. Because your spouse could die or leave you, your child graduates or could die, your family could leave you or die, your work can end experiences are fleeting. Meaning is what the world loans you. Meaning is the idea of getting something from the world that makes you feel good in the moment while you have it. But once it's gone, you no longer have meaning. Now, purpose is much different. Purpose is really about your signature strengths, your unique voice, it is something that you choose. It's something you create. It's something that is owned by you, that you decide you will give back to the world. And as opposed to fun and excitement that passion gives you or happiness and contentment. That meaning gives you purpose really delivers the emotion of fulfillment and joy, which is very different than happiness and contentment. Think about it. If your loved one dies, and you're grieving you cannot feel happy and content in those moments. However, you can still feel fulfillment and joy for life. Because fulfillment and joy is about something that you have achieved. You've set out to do something deeply internally with in you where you can feel sad and be grieving but still be in gratitude and have a sense of fulfillment that you did something in the world that matters. Can you see the difference? Meaning is something you get from the world passion is something that the something the world uses to entertain you. Purpose is something that you give to the world and is completely owned by you. It flows from you to the outside world. It is something that no one can take from you If your friends, family, spouse, love or kids work, everything was gone, and it was just you on the planet and no one you knew or loved, you could still have purpose, but you could not have meaning and passion. And this is why purpose is so important, because purpose is the thing that will allow you on your deathbed, when you have that three minutes left to live for you to understand who you are in the world, and come from a place of gratitude at that moment and say, the world is better. For me having been here base level humans really are all about fear, stability, certainty and power struggles, culture level, humans are really all about belonging and acceptance and popularity and pleasure. Next Level humans are all about purpose. Now, of course, meaning is still important. Passions are still important. We're not saying they're bad. We're just saying that yes, passion, yes, meaning, but let's make sure we have purpose. And that is something you choose and have to be aware of. So how do we do this? How do we use our pain to realize purpose? Well, we go back to the most difficult times of our lives, and we realize that we can no longer be sticking our thumbs, these old wounds in other people's faces that we have to re configure our identity. From a place of victim to a place of hero, we have to essentially take ourselves on a hero's journey. And the first step of a hero's journey is a trauma. Think about it, every good story you've ever watched, happens when the hero of the movie or the book encounters something that changes everything that takes them from one emotional place to another emotional place. A loss a difficulty of struggle ensues. Now what ends up happening almost always when you're in a hero's journey is you begin to have this first thing that kicks in is an unknown inability to accept refusal to change a tendency to blame, and complain, whimper and whine, deny and distract, right? Isn't this what happens at first, it's like resistance. We don't want to acknowledge it. Now, how do we know that we're doing this by the way, we know that we're doing this when we encounter repeated emotions, familiar patterns, recurrent obstacles, and the victim mindset essentially says that these repeated emotions, familiar patterns, and recurrent obstacles are someone else's fault. It continues to blame and complain and think the world out there is the problem instead of realizing that it is the perception, and the story that we told ourselves about our pain that is causing us to have repeated emotions, familiar patterns and recurrent obstacles. Think about how beautiful this is, the world is really beautiful the way it does this, it keeps reminding you and prodding you and telling you that you must take responsibility. In a sense, the universe is giving you these repeated emotions, these familiar patterns and these recurrent obstacles and poking you and prodding you and kicking you and smacking you and sometimes punching you in the stomach so hard to wake you up out of the victim mindset to change your perspective, perception to cause you to give up the old identity of the victim mindset. Once that happens, you have a realization and acceptance and ownership of what happened and an awareness of the stories that you told yourself. There's a term for this, there's popular books written on this Extreme Ownership, radical responsibility. This is the first perceptual shift of moving from victim to hero.

Jade  43:30 

let's get back to the show. It is a search for a new direction, it is the beginning of the growth mindset. And out of that, you begin to take ownership. And you begin to choose that I am going to make this mean something I'm going to do something with this. But once you have that recognition, you oftentimes realize that you don't have all of the knowledge, all of this experience, to grow and learn in the way that you need to. And so you decide to learn more and have more experiences. And this is where you start to gather wisdom, and this process of ownership. And then the development of wisdom leads you to have humility, it leads you to start saying I actually don't know, it leads you to start facing your fear and accepting failure and seeing that you're only human. And we're all just here to learn. And you start to align with choices and actions and you start living your way into the answer of why you are here. And during that process of living your way into the answer, an insight, a purpose, Insight begins to emerge. And at this point, you begin to understand have an inkling of why you are on the planet. And this is where you start to engage with life in a new way. You start to attack life. You start saying I am going to make something of this and you start feeling like life actually has some purpose. It's pushing me. It's prodding me It wants me to do Do something here, and you start to engage. And by the way, this doesn't take your pain and your suffering away. In fact, the pain and the suffering stays, why? Because it is the motivating force to get you to do the work necessary necessary to realize what you need to realize. And so this is where resolve comes in, the need to finish the knee to engage the knee to continue regardless of the pain. And when you do that, you finally begin to grow and develop gratitude, and really begin to have ownership and responsibility for your life, you start to live it Live a purpose driven life, you start to have a desire to create something for the world to better the world. And you start leaving behind the culture level need for reward acknowledgement or reciprocation, you just start doing the things for others because you can and this is the sharing this is the return home, this is the return to yourself. This is where you begin to create. And when I say learn, teach, and love love, to me is synonymous with creation. It's not a romantic incantation, incantation, it is a acknowledgment that I have a unique ability, there's never been anyone else like me on the face of the earth, I have the ability to make a difference in the world to do something that matters. And these recurrent patterns and stuck emotions and repeated obstacles are your reminders that you have to do this work, if they keep coming up again, and again, you know, you're not finished yet, it's very much like what I would call a Super Mario Universe. For those you don't know that, that, you know, game, that video game. It's a video game I played when I was a kid called Super Mario Brothers. And at the end of each level, you would confront some big boss. And you'd have to figure out how to beat this boss, you'd have to shoot a couple fireballs in a particular sequence, jump a couple times, do some sequence of events that you had to figure out to get past the big boss to get to the next level. And if you didn't figure out that sequence, that boss would kill you. And you'd have to start back over again. This is what the repeated emotions recurrent patterns and these stuck. Obstacles are teaching you. And once you get past level one or level two, guess what life does oftentimes, it gives you that same thing one more time, just to see if you figured it out. It's gonna give you another death in your life that you have to grieve another dysfunctional relationship that you have to get through another difficulty with finances, it almost always occurs in the four jobs right in health and fitness in finance, and personal rate relationships, or purpose and meaning. But what we're talking about here in this podcast is that purpose and meaning really is your shield. It's your thing that you bring to the video game, that is your superpower. It's like your ability to you know, in a video game, when you get this sort of cloak of invincibility for a little while when you have purpose. It allows you to have extra hit points extra life, do more in the game. And ultimately, it comes down to a choice really, and this is triggering. I know and I know it is triggering, and I know it's difficult.

Jade  48:27 

But right now, if you're listening to this, and you're thinking to yourself, I don't know who this guy is or what he's saying, but, you know, I'm hurt, I've been injured. He's trying to tell me to get over it. He's trying to tell me that, you know, I don't have the right to feel bad about it. And that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that you have a choice. Victims are people who have been injured, we should as good people come to their aid, we should allow them to blame and complain perhaps for a time we can understand that we understand. You know, we have empathy and compassion for people who distract and deny and whimper and whine and blame and complain. But we can only have that compassion and that empathy for a little bit of time. Because if we love them, and more importantly, if we love ourselves, we have to realize that why while everybody deserves to be should be a victim for a time after being wounded. This is the whole point. What do you think happens when you cut yourself and you cover the wound and you tend to it this is the victim state you did cut yourself you did get hurt, maybe someone else did cut you and there is a time to sit there and to pay attention and to allow other people to help you and to say hey, look, I'm hurt. I need help. But at some point, at some point we have to make a choice to move on from that. Everyone has the need and everyone has the right to be a VIP him for a time. But no one should live in victim. Emotions are meant to be felt not live when you choose to live in victim, day after day, month after month, year after year, you are creating an identity of a story of Whoa. And you are created a debt degraded spirit. And yes, at some point, it is your fault because it can't be anyone else's. And I know that's triggering. And I know it's difficult to come to that understanding for yourself. But if you do, once you make the choice to realize I can become something else I can become a hero. I can use my wounds and my pain to grow and enhance my spirit and more importantly to learn, teach and create for other people. If you want to know the first step to leaving the victim mindset and becoming the hero, find someone else who suffered your same pain and seek to allay their pain without any need for acknowledgement reciprocation or reward. That's the shortcut. That's the point of suffering in the first place. You are not helping yourself, nor can you help the world when you continue to blame, complain, whimper and whine, distract and deny.

Jade  51:21 

Pain is absolutely your path to purpose, but only if you leave the victim mentality behind. And here's what to understand. You are a unique spiritual fingerprint, you are a purpose potential. Why? Because there has never been any one like you in the history of humanity, nor will there ever be You are unique. And as a result of that recognition of your uniqueness, you have a responsibility to do something unique for the world. You at least have the potential to if you don't want to take on this responsibility. But that is where your fulfillment lies. When you do. When you do take on the responsibility. Your purpose lies in that. Now one of the things to understand about purpose is that it's made up of a unique conglomeration of things, the people who've helped and hurt you, your personality, which is all about your perspective, your perceptions, your genetics, your stories that you've been telling yourselves, your superpowers, talents, the things you're good at your passions, the things you're interested in the things that you'll get you excited to wake up and attack the world, and most importantly, what we've been talking about your pain, because in the end, you have to ask yourself, if you're on your deathbed, and you have three minutes left to live, why are you here, you are here to do something of value. For the world purpose is simply the humble recognition, which takes a lot of courage, that you are unique, that you have something positive to contribute to the world, and that you choose to do it without the need for acknowledgement reciprocation or reward. This is why you are here you are here to learn to teach and to love and only the next level human path can get you there only the acknowledgement that suffering is part of this process, you are never not going to suffer. And suffering is the very point. It is the thing that allows you to learn the lessons to teach the lessons to create the things to make the world a better place in the way that only you can. Now to end this podcast, I'm going to give you two exercises to begin this process. The first exercise is called a story edit. It's very simple. And it begins to rewrite the dynamics of your victim story. What you do is you pick your wound any wound and you write about it, write exactly what happened include everything and right up until the present day. This happened as a result of this, this that and this write it like you are a director or a producer in a movie. You're the director, the producer and the actor, right everything that has happened up until this point in detail and then from that point on right the future as a result of that trauma, that tribulation, that trial that wound that suffering that hurt that pain. What will you now do that will better the world? Write your story. This is the story edit, give it plot give it purpose finish the story. So now you have two stories that before wound story and the after your wound story and the after wounds story gives you the direction to know here is what I'm going to do with this. Now. That can be very difficult without the second activity that you need. to do, which is to write an honor code, because as you began to walk out into the world and live this new story, guess what's going to happen, you are going to encounter the same shitty people, you're going to encounter more suffering, more pain, more hurt, you're going to encounter financial difficulties, you're going to encounter a world that is difficult. And you're going to need to have an honor code, you're going to need to have a motivational force behind you, that you can tap into that says, This is why it's worth it. This is why I will continue. This is why I won't get up give up. This is why the world needs me. Your Honor Code does that. Now, there are several steps to coming up with your honor code. Step one. What I want you to do is think of the people you admire and respect most in the world. Now these can be living people, they can be deceased people, they can be family members. They can be historical figures, fictional people, or real people. Some of mine are Gandhi, Muhammad Ali Lee, Nelson Mandela, Frederick Douglass, Henry David Thoreau, Harry Potter.

Jade  56:11 

These are some of Bruce Lee, Martin Luther King, then I'm going to write down 10 to 20 words that embody them, I'm going to spend some time in my journal thinking about why these particular people, so for me, there's courage. There's people who did the right thing. And the hard thing, there's people who gave their lives for what they believed in, they were not culture level individuals, oftentimes, they were warriors who fought and said what they believe and stood up for something important, and made unique contributions to the world. In my mind, they were this this mix of warrior hero and teacher. And so I relate to them. And I can come up with the words for these things. And then my step two is to imagine myself dead. And imagine myself sitting in the back of the room, as a spirit at my eulogy, and watching and listening as friends and family and acquaintances, and peers, come up and speak about me. And then I write down the 10 to 20 words that I most would want them to say about me things like gratitude. He was always there for me, he taught me important lessons. He was self LIS, he wasn't self centered. He was generous, he was the most honest person I knew, right, he stood for something. Step three, imagine yourself on your deathbed. Now, which we just did at the beginning of this podcast, and you're getting ready to die, write down the words and the things that you would most want to have accomplished and be most proud of, and feel most fulfilled by remembered not meaning things, not things that, you know, are borrowed, but things that you gave to the world. And finally, the most important aspect of an honor code that everyone forgets to do. And this is your boundaries, because you're going to confront a world that is not happy about you changing your identity, and is not going to just greet you with open arms and say, Oh, you're great, because oftentimes the world is a place that doesn't care and is indifferent to what you are trying to do. And you need to create boundaries. Think about the things you will not tolerate in your life. Think about the things you wished you had stood up to think about the things your heroes fought for. These are going to be the things that are your boundaries and write these things down these lines in the sand. These are like your warrior words, right? The things that you will not tolerate. For me. I do not tolerate friends and have a very difficult time with my friends who are self centered and egotistical. I don't like that. I don't like people who are dishonest. And oftentimes they will they may be friends that seek cease to be my friends if I discover they're dishonest and egotistical and self centered. I don't deal with that. I don't deal with people who see me away I am not we're no longer wish to be I deal with people who our popularity. Purpose, not pot, not popularity people, not culture level people. I want people in my life, who are purpose oriented, who are doing something in the world, for the world, and are not the types that are saying look at me and look what I've done. These are the people that I want around. These are my lines in the sand. I will not tolerate dishonesty. I don't deal with people who lie. I don't deal with egotistical people, you need to decide what your boundaries are. And then you need to write all of this stuff down. And you can do it several ways. You can write it in narrative format in several different four to five paragraphs. You want to make this relatively short or perhaps a way that most people like your 10 commandments, the 10 commandments that you They'll live by that make you different and unique and will inspire you. Now I'll read mine to end the podcast now. And then we will end here. So my honor code has changed. This is an old one. But this is the one that came out of me doing this the very first time. I am a warrior. I hold it now for my friends, I keep my word to myself and I carry any pain without blame, complaint or self pity. I know I can generate happiness for myself in an instant through a warm gesture, a generous act or a forced but real laugh or smile. I'm honest, but never cruel. You can trust what I say. I will communicate clearly exactly how I feel you'll never have to guess. Kindness is my religion. Honesty will be my practice. Generosity is my action in the world. But I do have limits and strong boundaries. I will not associate with rude mean greedy or selfish people. I don't deal with bias and self righteousness, gossip, extremism dogma.

Jade  1:01:05 

The desire for fame as a sickness I have little tolerance for true beauty does not require attention. I avoid the emotionally selfish I give freely and never keep score. I call out racism if I see it. I do not tolerate lies by omission or otherwise and will walk away and never look back. If a friend insist on lying to me. I'm grateful for my struggles. I'm hopeful about my future and I'm willing to sacrifice everything. For those I love and the things I stand for and want to create. You owe me nothing True Love does not ask for reciprocation. And beneath that I wrote I am healer, I am teacher, I am philosopher. Now, one thing that I'll share here with you as we end, there's one aspect of this honor code that I've changed since I wrote it. And that's the statement. The desire for fame is a sickness I have little tolerance for because as a teacher, a healer and philosopher, I realized that if I want to do the best good in my world that that belief about fame is a feint is a belief that hinders me from doing my job. And so I've changed that. I've changed that. I've also written down 10 things as a 10 commandments that I'm not going to read here for you, but you can do it sort of yourself as you go through this. This to me is how we turn suffering into purpose, pain as a path to purpose. This is the journey we all must walk. And it is a difficult one, it is a solitary one. And it is not one that we can expect anyone else to show up and do and it is one that is easily very easily distracted from we will easily want to slip back into popularity and power and pleasure seeking and avoid this altogether. And when we do that, we do it at our detriment because we forget why we are on the planet and our lives will not mean what they are meant to mean. Otherwise. Thanks so much for hanging out on the show today and I will see you at the next episode.