Don't Go Through, Grow Through

We all have to go through trials and tribulations in life. If we must go through them, we should grow through them. Using them to become stronger and more capable gives the struggles meaning. Otherwise, we simply suffer and become bitter.

Transcript

Welcome to Life,

Lessons,

And Laughter with your host,

Glenn Ambrose.

Hello.

Welcome.

Welcome.

Welcome to the show.

Welcome to spring.

Spring has sprung.

I've got my Red Sox hat on.

I've got a new background.

I'm playing with the virtual backgrounds and the green screens.

How are you guys liking it?

Let me know.

This is actually the view from my backyard.

If I stand in my backyard and look out,

I'm going to get out of the way so you guys can see this.

That's what I see.

Not too shabby,

Huh,

For those of you that are on video.

For those of you that are on audio,

There's some beautiful mountains that I look at.

So,

Here we are.

Yeah,

We're going to see how this one goes.

It's a Sunday afternoon,

And I'm kind of really in this mellow,

Mellow mood,

But one,

To get a podcast together because I'm heading down to the beach area tomorrow.

So I didn't want to worry about getting back in time.

So here we are.

So what I'm talking about today is something that it's been coming up a lot,

Just like most of the podcasts that I have.

So in life,

We have to go through all kinds of things,

Periods of time where our mood is down,

Like negative.

We have to go through periods of grief.

We have to go through,

You know,

Some people,

The trials and tribulations of life are as many as there are people on earth,

You know.

So you know what I mean.

We all go through our stuff.

So if you got to go through your stuff like we're going through it,

There is no escaping.

We're going to go through our stuff in life.

So if we're going to go through it,

We might as well grow through it.

Like,

Why just go through it?

You know,

It's a lot of times I see evidence of this in lots of different ways,

Both negative and positive,

And I'll,

You know,

Try to show both sides of the coin so the message is clear.

But a lot of times,

You know,

I'll see people that are,

You know,

Like my age,

Like in their 50s or 60s or 40s,

Whatever.

And they're going through a difficult time and they're all off center.

You know,

It's just,

Oh,

My God.

Like,

They're taking it so seriously.

And I,

You know,

A lot of it is social conditioning,

In my opinion.

A lot.

It's also driven by fear,

You know,

Like when we get older,

We have bigger responsibilities.

So sometimes when we're going through difficult things,

It can be scary because we're like,

How am I going to,

You know,

Handle my responsibilities?

God knows I've been there,

You know,

As an adult,

As a parent,

You know,

Where you're like,

How am I going to take care of my kid?

I mean,

It can get scary when you're going through difficult times.

But my point here is if we're going to go through these difficult times,

We must make a point of growing through them.

Like,

Why go through something and suffer all the negative aspects of it,

All the difficulty,

All the trials and tribulations and struggles and not come out a better person,

Not come out with better.

Assets in our in our arsenal to handle life.

As it comes down the pike later,

You know,

And it seems like.

A lot of times.

You know,

People bond in society,

This is such a problem,

People bond for so many reasons,

We bond over in society,

Over misery,

Over over unhappiness,

Over negativity,

Because it's safe.

We don't have to worry about anybody thinking that we're better than them or something.

So people don't really.

Yeah,

You know,

Oh,

I'm not going to talk about how wonderful I'm going to I'm doing because it might make somebody else feel bad.

So the only thing that's comfortable to talk about is either something that is surfacy and has no depth to it like.

That you like the coffee at one place better than another place or the weather.

Or negativity,

You know,

You can be like,

Oh,

I'm going through a really rough time.

Oh,

I know how that is.

Yeah.

Oh,

My goodness.

Oh,

I go through difficult times,

Too.

And we bond over this negativity,

This victim like,

Oh,

I'm going through this difficult time.

Poor me type mentality.

Oh,

Yeah,

I know how it is.

I know how you feel.

Oh,

No.

And what it does is on an unconscious level,

It just reinforces the idea that it reinforces that you're doing something right,

Basically,

That it's not your fault,

That there's nothing you can do about it.

I guess that that's probably my my bigger concern or like the mentality that I'm trying to get across is that there's nothing you can do about it or something.

And it's like we have to go if we're going through this stuff,

Let's grow through it.

Let's come out better on the other end.

You know,

My son's in his early 20s,

And I just saw him do this.

In a positive way,

Like.

You know,

Which which is a beautiful moment as a parent,

Right,

But like,

You know,

He went through a situation and it knocked him around a little bit,

You know,

And and he eventually found his way out of it and he got into a better place and then he got knocked again,

Basically in the same way.

And he was fine the second time through,

You know,

I don't know if it was the second time through,

It might have been who knows,

Maybe the third or fourth time through whatever.

But but my point is,

Is like I saw him go through it and then I saw him go through it a few months later and the way he was dealing with it was dramatically different.

And I pointed it out to him and I was like,

Wow,

Like you really grew through that last experience.

You didn't just go through it.

You grew through it.

You became you gained confidence in yourself because basically the same situation happened.

But now you're confident in yourself and you know that you can handle it and it's not knocking you around like the last time.

And he was like,

Yeah,

He's like,

No,

You know,

I realized that I got this.

You know,

I can handle this.

It's going to be fine.

I'll work through it.

And I'm like,

Yes,

You know,

That's so beautiful.

This is what we need to do.

So,

You know,

If you're,

You know,

Going through life and you're in,

I mean,

It can happen in your 20s,

Like I just talked about,

But if you're in your it doesn't matter how old you are,

But your 20s,

30s,

40s,

50s,

60s,

70s,

80s and 90s,

If if you've experienced similar things in life and they haven't made you stronger,

Then you're missing the boat.

Because that's basically the point of it,

We're all going to go through things,

So we might as well grow through them and become stronger and more capable through the growth that we gain.

Otherwise,

What you know,

This I think that this this is one of the ways one of the ways that people turn bitter as they get older.

You know,

Because life is going to knock you around like it's going to happen,

You're going to go through stuff,

And if every time you go through stuff,

You don't grow through it,

You don't come out stronger and more capable on the other end,

Then the next time it hits,

You get your legs taken out again and then that sucks and then you go through it again.

And then guess what happens?

Your legs get taken out again and you go through it.

Yeah.

Like,

I mean,

If that's your life,

I'd probably be turning into a bitter old person,

Too,

You know.

But my point is,

Is it doesn't have to be your life like that's that's not the difficulties aren't there just to suffer through and hold your breath until you get onto the other side and then go,

Oh,

Thank God that's over and then just wait until it happens again because it's going to.

Like grow through it,

How,

You know,

Pay attention,

Take action,

Find healthy perspectives,

Find,

You know,

Like.

Learn,

Like there is no,

I got to be careful how I say this.

I guess,

Well,

I guess I'm just not going to harp on one particular example.

I'll keep it more general.

If you've gone through the same thing multiple times and you're not getting better at it.

Then you're missing the whole point.

Like and it's not going to end well for you,

Like it's.

If you're not getting better at handling adversity as you get older,

You are going to be one bitter,

Angry old person.

Hating life and your existence in it,

And that is no way for anybody to live.

This is what this is why I'm doing this podcast is.

You know,

Please don't.

Make that your lot in life when you're going through something,

Find ways,

Look for ways to deal with it.

It doesn't matter if if it's a if you're going through a grieving process or if you're going through job loss or if you're going through a divorce or if you're going through.

Custody issues with your children or if you're going,

You know,

Whatever the list goes on and goes on,

Goes on,

But it's,

You know,

One of the things we tend to do and I might do a podcast on this specifically is we we demonize the other side like,

You know,

I'm a,

You know,

I went through the divorce,

The years of family court,

The custody stuff,

And it was really difficult,

You know,

So I've,

You know,

I try to help other people with that and.

I see some of the a lot of the comments on on like if I go to a father's father's rights group or something and I start looking at the comments people are talking about,

They're just demonizing women and it's like you don't it's not going to make your life better by demonizing somebody that's hurting you.

It's not going to fix your problem.

It's just going to make you more angry and more bitter,

And that goes with everything.

I'm just using that as an example,

But like if you're having with your a problem with your with your child's teachers and you demonize all teachers,

It's like,

You know,

Or you have relationship problems.

So you demonize all men or all women like it's demonizing the other side isn't going to make like all it is is it's an ego stroke.

It makes you feel better momentarily because you're like that your ego doesn't care if you say I'm good or they're bad.

Your ego doesn't care.

It gets a stroke either way.

So saying they're bad implies that you're not them and you're good.

So you get an ego stroke,

But that's all it does is it doesn't change anything.

It doesn't actually help you deal with things better.

It actually makes you deal with them worse.

You know,

I've helped people through family court and stuff,

And it's never like I never allow people to fall into the victim mentality.

They did this to me like,

OK,

Well,

Let's figure out a way to set up a boundary so they don't do that to you.

But that's your job.

Now,

Sit there running around,

You know,

The it's this,

You know,

This narcissist that I think that's,

You know,

Manifest is the most popular word.

I think narcissist is the second most like we're running around pointing the finger at narcissists and other people and all their dysfunctions and how bad they are and what we have to watch out for.

It's a waste of time.

All of it.

It's a waste of time.

Because you have no control over what other people do.

So it doesn't matter.

All you have to do is work on yourself,

Learn how to set boundaries,

Learn how to love yourself,

Learn how to grow through your experiences to come out stronger and better.

And then you don't have to worry about this.

I have you know how much fear I have over being manipulated by a narcissist.

Zero.

Zero fear.

And you want to know why?

It's because one reason I trust myself,

That's why,

Because I've grown through my past experiences and I put the responsibility on me to grow through my past experiences.

I didn't sit there and go,

Oh,

Let me look at how bad they are,

Look what they did to me.

Look,

You know,

One time I've said this before,

One time I was explaining a scenario that I was trying to deal with just in factual words.

I wasn't complaining about it.

I was just trying to inform somebody so they understood the situation and why I was doing what I was doing or attempting to do what I was doing because they were going to help me.

And I explained some some facts about my situation and they were like,

Oh,

My goodness,

You have the right to be upset.

And I was like,

I have the right to be upset.

Could I?

And I started laughing like I just hadn't heard somebody say that to me in a long time and I just started laughing and I was like,

Well,

Could I forego that?

Right.

I don't want the right to be upset because all I get is upset.

I'm not their victim.

Just because they're doing stuff to me,

I need to find out a way that I can take responsibility for my life and grow through this and become somebody that they can't do things to.

That's my focus.

It's not them or whether like,

Oh,

You know,

Oh,

Glenn's going through a difficult time.

Oh.

So like everybody goes through difficult times,

What does that get me,

You know,

And this is another unconscious thing that we do in society is.

And it's really I believe it's birthed out of a good place,

We are the desire to be a good person is bubbling up within us,

It's part of the spiritual shift,

Believe it or not,

Everybody wants to be a good person like now more than ever.

It's very,

Very important to people to feel like they're a good person.

The problem is,

Is they don't know what that looks like because this is kind of a new bubbling up.

You know,

We've always had the theory,

But the push is much stronger now.

And we're just running around doing things that we think nice people do.

And most of the time they're self-deprecating and or just don't work and turn us into doormats so people can walk on us.

And then we complain,

Then we play the martyr and we go,

Oh,

My God,

Poor me.

I,

I was just trying to do the right thing.

And these people walked on me.

And all of society comes around us and goes,

Oh,

You poor thing.

You don't deserve that.

You deserve better.

And we think we're being nice.

And that is the most disempowering thing you can do to somebody.

Please,

If you actually love your family and your friends,

Please take a few moments to think about this,

Like really sit and think about it and internalize what I'm speaking about right now,

Because it's important.

Commiserating and telling people it's not their fault is the worst thing that you can do.

Not that everything that happens to us is necessarily our fault.

It's disempowering,

Though,

Because you're saying you're the victim and it shouldn't be happening to you and there's nothing you can do about it.

And there's nothing I mean,

Even if you're not saying that,

But that's the energy in it.

That's what you're implying.

Oh,

You poor thing.

Oh,

It's you know,

It's not your fault.

You poor thing,

Like how does that lift people up?

Oh,

Yeah,

It's yeah.

All that.

Thank you.

Like people like it because it's energy you're throwing at them.

You're literally giving them your energy.

You know,

All this talk about like empaths and energy vampires and all this stuff.

Most of the people with big hearts are running around.

They're not getting their energy sucked out by energy vampires.

They're walking around literally handing their energy over to people here.

Please take my energy.

Oh,

You poor thing.

Here's my energy.

I'm going to feel sorry for you and give you the sympathy energy here.

And then they wonder why they're drained.

That's why,

Because you're literally walking around handing your energy away over to people and disempowering them in the process.

By by implying that they're just a victim of circumstances and that there's nothing they can do.

You know,

This is this is why this is why my friends see my friends learn real quick.

When like.

How to interact with me,

Which.

All friends learn now with all people all the time,

Believe it or not,

People are paying attention and they interact differently with different people.

It just happens.

So we all do this.

So when somebody like most people don't complain around me a lot,

Because I'll let it go a little bit,

Because I know,

You know,

Not my clients.

But I mean,

Just general people,

Friends and general people,

You know,

That I meet out in public,

Like I'll let them go because I know it's part of society.

So I'm going to keep my mouth shut a lot of times in the beginning,

But I can't let it go that long,

Like just because I actually care about people.

And I don't want them thinking that they are a victim of life and that there's nothing that they can do.

How how is that loving?

Like,

I know that they're not victims of life and there are things that they can do.

So how is me.

Commiserating with them and and just basically setting them up for more misery in the future,

How is that me being a good person?

It's not it's not me being a good person and it's not me being a good friend,

So I don't do it very much and I don't do it very well.

You know,

If I don't know somebody,

I'll kind of try to.

Or if I do know somebody and they're going through a rough time and I think they just might need an ear.

You know,

Sometimes people just need to vent a little bit.

And.

I think.

I think that's all people do.

People just run around venting all the time and they go,

Well,

I just had to vent.

No,

Like how many times have you talked about this?

Thirty two thousand to everybody that will listen,

Then that's not venting.

That's just complaining and not doing anything to fix your situation.

You're not growing.

You're just buying time until you go through the next misery.

So.

I'll let people vent a little bit sometimes,

But like if you're people that are around me regularly,

They know that like they're just not going to be around me complaining all time because I'm not going to sit there listening to it because it's useless.

It doesn't serve any purpose.

It doesn't help them.

It doesn't make me feel better.

I feel miserable because I'm sitting here listening to this whining and complaining that's just bringing me down,

Draining my energy.

They're getting disempowered.

It's a lose lose situation,

And I don't live my life like that.

So after a little bit of vent or something,

You know,

It's it's like,

OK,

Well,

You know,

I try to talk about me.

You know,

I try to put it on me,

Not go.

You should.

You should.

I try to go,

OK,

Well,

When I'm going through a difficult time,

What I try to do is find another way to look at it that that actually empowers me.

Or,

You know,

When I was going through this in this case,

I looked at it like this and it was really helpful.

You know,

I try to give them some sort of helpful advice that might be able to help them grow through it.

Instead of go through it.

Let's grow,

Expand,

This is,

You know,

The universe is constantly expanding,

The world is constantly moving,

Everything is constantly growing and then dying off and then new come birth comes.

And,

You know,

We're in spring.

Everything's blossoming and a new life abounds.

And,

You know,

Here we are and we're people and we're just trying to stay exactly as we are.

No,

Grow,

Grow,

Expand,

Become a better version of yourself,

Just not.

And I mean,

It's not this big like,

Oh,

I have to work on myself all the time.

No,

It's just like if you're you're literally going through a difficult time.

Right.

So.

I'll try to see if I can.

Come up with like a specific.

Well,

A specific slash general comment,

So like if I take the 10,

12 years that I was or maybe 14,

Whatever,

That I was going through family court,

That was a difficult situation.

Right.

In all kinds of ways,

In all kinds of areas,

For all kinds of reasons.

So so it's specific yet general.

That's what I meant by that.

So some of the things that I learned was like I felt this feeling of hopelessness and helplessness that my son was in a situation that I didn't think was healthy for him.

And there was nothing I could do because I would go to the police.

I would go to the lawyers and all of them would tell me there's nothing you can do.

You don't have a light to stand on.

And I'm five minutes down the street and around the corner from where he is experiencing this suffering,

And I'm picking him up and he's crying and telling me about these difficult situations.

And I'm his father and I can't protect him.

And there's nothing that I can do.

And I felt helpless and I felt hopeless.

So what do I do with that?

Do I just sit there feeling helpless and hopeless,

Or do I try to find some way to grow through this?

So what I did in that particular aspect is I sat and I was like,

I got to figure out what to do with this because this is going to eat me alive.

Looking at it like this,

Feeling the way that I do is going to kill me.

So I need to find another way to look at this.

So I'm looking at it and I'm going,

OK,

Well,

You know,

I keep when I'm trying to find a perspective,

I keep taking giant steps backwards away from the problem and looking at them from a broader perspective to gain perspective.

You know,

It's a chaos theory.

Nothing makes sense when you're too close to it,

Especially especially difficulties.

So I take a step way back and I'm like,

OK,

You know,

What did I go through?

Well,

I went through my own personal difficulties growing up and all that stuff.

And then and then,

Oh,

I went through my difficulties.

OK,

Well,

Then what happened?

Well,

You know,

Once I used all the trials and tribulations that I went through my life,

Including 20 years of alcoholism to to grow,

As soon as I use them to grow from instead of just going through it,

Well,

Then I became a much better version of myself.

So I was like,

OK,

Well,

I'm on my journey and I'm a person and my son is a person.

So he's on his journey.

This is part of his journey.

If he's in this situation and there's no way I can get him out of this situation,

I will do everything I can try.

But if I can't.

Then I have faith in God,

I have faith in something,

Some sort of divine intelligence that makes things happen,

And I am not I don't believe this intelligent I believe this intelligence is based in love energy.

I don't think it's trying to hurt us.

So therefore,

If he is in a situation.

And I can't get him out,

Then he must have something to learn in that situation,

And if he learns it,

He's going if he grows through it,

He's going to become a stronger version of himself because of what he went through.

So that's what I had,

And it wasn't easy,

But that's how I made sense of it.

And,

You know,

And I had to constantly just feed that and talk myself down and make that my true belief system.

And I really did believe it.

And as he got older and he was able to understand things more in-depthly,

I explained it to him and I told him,

I says,

Listen,

You know,

I understand that you went through your stuff and it was real difficult stuff,

But like you are so strong now because of it.

You like you've handled and navigated so much that as you get older,

You're going to see other people your age and older going through things and they're not going to be able to handle it.

And you're going to be going,

Why are they not able to handle this?

And it's because they either didn't go through all the difficulties you went through as a child or they didn't grow through what they needed to,

You know.

So fast forward as he starts getting older and he's a young adult and he's interacting in life and he's seeing these people,

You know,

A lot of them were older than him and they were they go through that.

They'd handle things horribly,

You know,

And and he's like,

What,

You know,

It comes to me.

He's like,

What is wrong with people?

Like they can't handle anything.

Like they don't know.

They're older than me.

Shouldn't they know this stuff?

They can't handle their own lives.

They make horrible decisions.

They don't learn from anything that like was going on.

And I told him,

I'm like,

Remember when you were younger and I told you that you were going to be able to handle life so much better and you're going to be so much stronger because of what you went through?

He's like,

Yeah,

This is what I was talking about.

You can handle it,

You can handle a lot of things that other people just haven't learned how to handle because they didn't grow through their experiences or they didn't have as much difficulty when they were a kid.

You know.

And he was like,

I remember explaining to me when,

Oh,

Well,

You know,

The light bulb went off,

That's this is what you were talking about.

You know,

And all the pieces came together for him,

You know,

Which is so cool to see.

But,

You know,

So I'm using him as an example.

And,

You know,

Heck,

He's in his early 20s,

He's still got stuff to learn,

He's still got stuff to go through and grow through,

But at least he's in a pattern of growing through things and becoming stronger and better and more capable because of it.

So this is what we need to do,

You know,

This is a kind of I kind of get a little irritated with Covid,

You know,

My son was like Covid wasn't that big of a deal at my house,

You know,

Partially because,

You know,

We.

I mean,

I have my own business and it's just me and my son and he's got a lot of he was going to work every day and and we weren't living in fear,

We weren't worried about it.

So it was like,

Whatever,

We just kind of went about our lives for the most part.

So,

Yeah,

So so that's where I was trying to think whether he was in school or not.

So he was working at that time,

So he must have just graduated.

So I so he wasn't in school,

Which,

Of course,

Made things or at least this aspect of what I'm talking about a little bit easier.

But I saw all these people with kids that were in school and they were like,

Oh,

My poor kid.

Oh,

No,

My kid didn't get to experience their senior year or their senior prom.

Oh,

That's not fair for these kids.

Or,

You know,

And and that was probably some of the more extreme stuff I experienced in their senior year or their senior prom,

You know,

Because I mean,

Hey,

Let's be honest,

That sucks,

Right?

I mean,

It would have sucked if I went through it.

But what are we teaching our children?

Like we're.

We're parents,

We're supposed to be teaching.

At least our own children,

Guiding them to what to a life where they are a victim of things that happen all the time.

That like like I saw it as a learning opportunity,

I see everything as a learning opportunity,

There's a way to grow through absolutely anything,

Whenever this is the whole podcast is about this,

If you're going through something difficult,

Grow through it,

Don't just go through it,

Don't suffer through it,

Grow through it.

So I'm always looking for how it can be beneficial to me or others.

You know,

So it's so during covid,

In my opinion,

What we should have been doing as parents is going like,

OK,

Hey,

I know missing your senior prom or your senior year sucks.

It does.

I mean,

There's no two ways around it.

It just sucks.

I mean,

Unless you don't want to be in school,

You know,

But I'm talking about the kids that were affected negatively by it.

That sucks,

Right.

But this is a supposedly this was a global pandemic.

You know,

Like.

There's nothing you can do about it.

So teaching them to be a victim of life.

And that just this is unfair and it's not their fault and poor them.

Then whenever they face adversity in life,

That's what they're going to do.

Why?

Because that's what they were taught.

Like we as adults are literally teaching our children to be victims of life.

Instead of going,

OK,

Hey,

You know what?

I know this sucks.

I know it sucks that you're missing your senior prom.

But.

You know,

You got it.

You know,

I don't know.

Everybody has to put their own twist on it that makes sense to them.

So I can't come up with one way of looking at it that's going to work for everyone.

You got to come up with your own.

It's your job.

But some of the possibilities are like,

OK,

Now is a time where you need you need to get creative.

So what can you do online?

Like you guys have all this technology.

Can you do like an online Zoom thing?

And,

You know,

Maybe a dance is too hard to do.

Or maybe you can do a dance somehow through technology.

Um,

But maybe a dance is something that's too hard to do.

So what can you do?

What you know,

Like what what can you do and film it like,

You know,

Where everybody has their own filming at their house and but you get together virtually like,

You know,

What get creative with it,

You know,

Or or at least like,

Hey,

I know this sucks,

But it's not the end of the world.

I mean,

Sometimes things happen in life.

So practice acceptance.

You know,

It was a great opportunity to to teach children about acceptance.

You know,

All suffering is resistance to what is this is kind of actually this is good.

I'm probably going to kind of wrap up with this because it it comes right back to the spiritual principle,

Which I always like because it's just core truth,

In my opinion.

So all suffering is resistance to what is.

So what is is that in this situation,

Some kids missed a senior prom.

It is if you resist the fact it shouldn't be happening.

It's not fair that it's happening.

You are going to suffer.

It's not fair that it's happening.

What?

Why?

Like,

Did I didn't see your contract at birth.

It said that you get to experience senior prom in your life contract.

Could I see it in writing?

Because there's lots of people that go through high school that don't experience a.

Senior prom.

Some schools don't even have them.

Some kids don't even have a school to go to.

Like,

So put it into perspective.

You know,

And like I said,

I'm not I'm not taking away that that's something that was really looking forward to it.

It sucks.

OK,

I get it.

It sucks.

It's a letdown.

OK,

Well,

Let's learn how to deal with letdowns because this ain't going to be the last one that you're going to experience in life.

So it's a growing opportunity.

Let's grow through this.

Let's find a way to to to not resist the reality that you don't get to go to senior prom.

You don't get to go.

You don't accept it.

And instead of whining about the fact that you don't get to go work towards a solution,

What can you do?

Nothing.

OK,

Then just you might as well accept it then.

Because resisting it is just going to make you suffer.

It's going to make you experience more emotional pain.

For what?

It doesn't change anything.

It doesn't magically make a senior prom pop up.

You're just miserable and depressed for three weeks or six months.

Instead of actually doing something with your life.

Well,

That's helpful.

So then the next time adversity happens,

Guess what they do?

They drop right back into depression.

You know,

So if if we stop.

Resisting reality and learn to deal with it and learn to grow through it and learn to use it to find new opportunities,

Healthy ways to look at things,

Then we grow.

We become a better version of ourselves,

But,

You know,

More capable of handling adversity.

And really,

I think that's you know,

That's the point of life.

The universe is expanding,

We're expanding like.

I get more and more peaceful and happier the older I get,

You know,

Like it's and I had.

I mean,

My teen years and early 20s,

I had more fun than probably three quarters of the people on the planet.

I was a maniac.

I had no surface fears.

I ran around doing whatever the heck I wanted,

Whenever I wanted,

However I wanted,

Like a complete lunatic and had a blast doing it.

And I actually believed.

My own BS enough where it actually protected me a lot of times,

I used to do stuff that should have hurt me that didn't because I just believed.

I could get away with it.

I was delusional for Christ's sakes,

But I had my point is,

Is that I had a blast in those years.

And,

You know,

I went through my time,

My difficult times to don't get me wrong.

That was those years were the first years where I started finding out what depression was like and stuff like that.

So I went through that stuff too.

But my point is,

Is like I had a blast in my younger years.

I could write probably eight books on that alone and I do not want to go back there.

Like I'm much happier and much more peaceful now and I'm excited for the future because I see myself getting more and more peaceful and happier and capable and accomplishing even more.

Of course,

Like what,

What else are we here?

Biding time,

You know,

Waiting until the next tragedy strikes so we can just suffer through that one.

So since we are going to go through our ups and downs,

Our trials and tribulations,

Please take the time to learn,

To grow,

Grow through them,

Not just go through them,

You know,

And get some help if you need it.

I mean,

We're not supposed to do this alone.

And quite honestly,

You know,

If you look at the norm in society,

What's socially acceptable it's dysfunctional,

Man.

Like the,

The,

The ways we,

Most people interact with life is disempowering and dysfunctional.

That's why we have a 75% unhappiness rate on the planet.

You know,

Most people,

And this is another podcast I might do where we're desensitized to how unhappy we actually are.

We just keep lowering our standards to meet our circumstances.

Well,

This is life.

Well,

This is difficult and we don't grow through it from it.

So then we just lower our standards and we go,

Oh,

Well,

Well,

I guess this is just life.

This is why everybody's talking about adulting.

That's the other thing I can't go off on this too much,

But,

But like people,

The adults out there,

Can we stop running around complaining about being an adult?

If you don't like your life,

That's fine.

Either do something to fix it,

Or please just keep your mouth shut.

Because what we're doing is we're scaring the crap out of a whole nother generation.

You wonder why these kids don't want to grow up and get jobs and,

And like be a part of society.

It's because you made it look like crap your whole life.

I remember when my,

Oh,

Adulting sucks.

You know,

Like,

I remember when my son was young and I don't know if part,

He was,

He got a partially from society,

But I know he got it partially from me.

Sometimes I went through periods of my life,

Especially when as a single parent,

A truly single parent with no help that like,

I was trying to start my own business.

I was really busy.

And sometimes I would get overwhelmed and be working too much and stuff.

And,

You know,

There was times when he told me,

He's like,

I don't want to grow up.

I don't want to be an adult.

And I'm like,

Why?

And he's like,

Well,

It doesn't look like much fun.

And I'm like,

Oh my God,

I'm so sorry.

I'm so sorry that I gave you that impression.

Like being an adult is awesome.

I can do whatever I want.

Like,

Nobody can tell me what to do.

I can work.

I can pick whatever job I want.

I can,

If I want to pick up and travel somewhere or move somewhere,

Or if I want to buy a particular color car or style,

Like,

Like the whole world is my oyster.

I get to choose what I'm going to do and what I'm not going to do now.

Yeah.

I got to work towards some of this.

And we were broke at the time.

So it wasn't a matter of having a ton of money saying this,

But I wanted to give him the true healthy impression that being an adult should be an enjoyable thing to do.

If your life sucks,

Start doing things to change it.

Don't,

You know,

This is what I mean by desensitized.

We're just lowering our standards of happiness.

And we're like,

Oh,

I just have to go to work at a job that I hate every day and then come home and eat the same food that I hate every day and sit in traffic every day.

And my life sucks.

Well,

My God,

If that's your life,

Please,

Please start learning to grow.

Don't settle for that being your life.

Grow through stuff.

You know,

Find ways to grow.

So this is what I mean.

Like,

Socially,

That's acceptable.

Don't accept that,

Please.

That does not have to be your life.

If it is,

You're doing something wrong.

There's another way.

Please start looking for it because you will find it if you start looking.

So that's where I'm going to wrap it up.

So,

All right.

Thanks for listening,

Everybody.

Grow.

Don't just go.

It's just you're missing,

You know,

You're missing the point if you're just going through stuff.

So grow through it.

Become stronger and more capable.

Empower yourself to handle adversity better and to navigate it better next time by developing techniques and ways of looking at things and tools to navigate things that jet that where you end up is happier.

It's worth it.

You deserve it.

All right.

Peace,

Everybody.

Reviews

Loved this! This is a very practical way to consider how we view the ups and downs that every person must face. Thank you!