Latest / We! / I Want to Pursue My Passion, Though I Feel Trapped in a World That Wants Me to Live My Old Life — The Spiritual Discovery That Showed Me How to Break Free from Other People’s Expectations and Live Free

Transcript

I Want to Pursue My Passion, Though I Feel Trapped in a World That Wants Me to Live My Old Life — The Spiritual Discovery That Showed Me How to Break Free from Other People’s Expectations and Live Free · We!

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: If you felt lonely, isolated, disconnected, with an empty feeling inside and just yearning for more, knowing something is missing, then this podcast is for you.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: So here's your host, Joe Mitigan.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, and welcome to We.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever reached a point in your life when you knew you couldn't keep living the way you'd been living?
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Not because your life was bad, not because you weren't grateful for the people, relationships, and experiences that brought you here, but because somewhere deep inside of you, something had changed.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: And suddenly you realized this life just doesn't fit me anymore.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: I've experienced that feeling numerous times over the years.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: As I've healed emotionally and grown spiritually, I started seeing possibilities for my life that I couldn't see before.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: I've discovered new dreams.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: I discovered new passions.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: I started believing that maybe the rest of my life could look completely different than the life I'd already been living.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: And that's exciting.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: But you know what?
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: It can also be incredibly scary.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because I discovered something, quite honestly, I wasn't expecting.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: The people in my life still remembered the old Joe.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: My relationships had expectations of me.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: My work had expectations of me.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: My responsibilities had expectations of me.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: And the world had spent years teaching me what a successful life was supposed to look like.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: What I should do, who I should become, how I should live.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: And without realizing it, I had built much of my identity around the world's expectations.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's when something I used to call feeling stuck began to feel more like being trapped.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Feeling trapped isn't simply wanting something different.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Feeling trapped is being able to see another life for yourself, but believing you're not free to live it.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: And quite honestly, I think a lot of us experience this.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: We have passions we don't pursue, dreams we don't talk about, changes we know we need to make.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes it's not because we're afraid of failing.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we're afraid of what will happen if we actually succeed at becoming someone different.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: What will people think?
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Who will understand?
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: Who won't understand?
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Who might be disappointed?
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: What relationships might change?
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe the hardest question of all am I willing to disappoint someone else in order to stop disappointing myself?
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: My spiritual journey has forced me to wrestle with those questions.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: And through that process, I've discovered something incredibly important.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have to become the person the world expects me to be.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: I have to become the person my higher power is guiding me to become.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes becoming who we're created to be means outgrowing the identity that once made perfect sense.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes healing, realizing that the life we had built while we were hurting may not be the life we want after we heal.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes pursuing our passion means having enough faith to move forward towards something that other people just may not understand yet.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I've started to look at passion differently.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: What if passion, what if, what if passion isn't simply something we enjoy?
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: What if our passion is truly trying to tell us something about who we are becoming?
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: What if the voice inside of us saying, There has to be more to my life than this isn't selfishness?
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: What if it's awakening?
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: And what if it's our soul recognizing that we've outgrown the old version of ourselves?
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: And what if feeling trapped doesn't mean we're going in the wrong direction?
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: What if it means our internal world has outgrown beyond the external life we're still living?
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: And quite honestly, that realization changed the meaning of freedom for me.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: Freedom isn't abandoning the people we love, it isn't running away from our responsibilities, and it isn't doing whatever we want without considering anyone else.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: Freedom is reaching the point where other people's expectations no longer determine the direction of our lives.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: I can love you without becoming who you want me to be.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: I can respect your opinion without making it my identity.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: I can listen to your advice without surrendering my dreams.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I can be grateful for the life I've lived without believing I'm required to live that same life forever.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: Today we're going to talk about passion.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to talk about why we can feel trapped inside a life we've already outgrown.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to talk about the fear of disappointing other people and the courage required to change.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: And we're going to talk about the spiritual discovery that helped me understand I don't need the world's permission to become who my higher power is guiding me to become.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe my old life wasn't wrong.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it simply brought me as far as it could.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: I can honor it.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: I can learn from it.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't have to remain trapped inside of it.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: I am allowed to grow.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: I am allowed to change.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I am allowed to pursue my passion.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I am allowed to live free.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Joe Mittica, and this is We.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome everybody.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: It is a wonderful night here in Atlanta, Georgia, and I want to welcome people around the world to the We Podcast.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's been a very exciting time here for me and the Wii Podcast and all of the growth we're going through around the world.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's humbling, it's exciting, it's scary, it's all the above.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: I've shared some of the different crazy voices I have in my head sometime.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: And for everybody new, welcome.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I am just a guy and I'm a man with a microphone.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's kind of the message out there.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I say it all the time.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: If I can do it, you can do it.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: And we're going to get into that a lot here today because what's happening here at the Wii Podcast is truly a validation of the overarching principle that we as humanity are waking up.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: We are healing and waking up.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: We are embracing and growing into, as a human species, the feminine side of ourselves.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: And that feminine side consists of your emotional sense of self and your spiritual sense of self.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: And here at the We podcast, my desire is to basically just honor back both of those two concepts the emotional growth component.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's why, you know, I consider myself this podcast, an emotional growth podcast.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: It is.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: And if you can make it through one of these podcasts, you are a true spiritual warrior, that's for sure.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: Because I talk about tough stuff.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: I talk about real life stuff.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: I talk about the depths of pain, the angst, the grief, the rage.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: Had a conversation about what creates a pedophile.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: Had a conversation in the depths of my grief when I had to put to sleep one of my closest friends, my dog Zeus, of 12 years.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I make the commitment that I'm going to be as honest, as open, and as authentic as I can possibly be, because you're all my friends.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I genuinely mean that.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: I can feel your love, I can feel your support.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: And it is evidence, the evidence of that is in the expansion of this message.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I want everybody to understand what is it that we're really doing here?
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's kind of the basic principles of what the We podcast is, is kind of moving from a mindset, helping people understand, moving from the conscious mindset of a me to the conscious awakening of a we.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what we talk about all the time.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: We also talk about where emotional pain and how having the courage to truly heal and taking the action steps necessary to heal your emotional pain becomes a spiritual understanding on the other side.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of what I talk about here at the Wii Podcast, quite honestly, I challenge human norms.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: I challenge social norms.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: Is that a bad thing?
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's not at all.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'm not judging, I'm not making anybody right and wrong.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: I tell people all the time, if what you're doing's working, great.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: But the truth of the matter is, whatever you're doing from an emotional growth position, from a spiritual understanding position, obviously people are coming back, and I honor you.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm really excited that you're here.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: I want people to understand that spiritual growth and the awakening concept, why are we doing all of this?
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, quite honestly, we don't have a choice.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: If you're living and breathing and call yourself a human being, if you're on this podcast and literally tens of thousands of people, I can't say millions yet, but soon millions of people, it means you are opening up to a spiritual sense of yourself, whether you want to or not.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't have anything to do with you.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: I say that to people all the time.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: You are a spirit having a human experience.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: Hear me, you're a spirit having a human experience, not the other way around.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: And even though for millennia society has claimed the opposite, you're a human being and there's a God outside of yourself somewhere, that's simply not a true statement.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying God isn't outside.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, God is everywhere.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: And the importance is the position of communing and connecting with the God sense of you inside of you.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what the Wii Podcast is all about.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: I want to welcome people from around the globe.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: I love doing this.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: We have a brand new country that I now have see that is is watching and listening to the Wii podcast, and it's China.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome, everybody from China.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I am humbled.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: I am.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: Taiwan, Oman, Malaysia, South Korea.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: These are all amazing places around the globe that I'm just I'm floored, Canada, United Kingdom, Norway, Kenya.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I know I miss countries.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: Australia, South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: I need to write them down, but I'm just welcome, all of you, truly.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: I am I'm honored that you're here.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm honored that you're listening.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I hope on a weekly basis I can bring value to your world.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I'm here.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: I want to bring value to your world.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to say things here that you're going to challenge.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you're going to get off a podcast and say, that guy is completely nuts.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: I don't believe anything he says.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm never going back.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's fine.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: You can have all that anger if I push your buttons.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's fine.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: Just come back, anyways, please, and tell somebody else.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of you are going to hear things here that you don't hear other places.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you're probably not going to hear in your church that God is inside of you and that we are all have a connection because most of the traditional religions don't look at it that way.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: Does it make it wrong?
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: No, not at all.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: There is no such thing as wrong.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: It just makes everybody different.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: And since my path was more about the awakening process through my emotional growth, that's the only message I have to share here.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why I'm here, is to share my experience, strength, and hope.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Over time, I'm going to be interviewing people.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to hear their stories, and then I'm going to interpret their stories.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't decided yet if I'm going to actually have guests or not.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm definitely going to tell other people's stories.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: But I think, at least for now, there's a consistency of my interpretation of things, and people are accustomed to my voice and the style in which I communicate.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm not going to, I'm not going to shift that for a while, if I ever do.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: But I am going to start telling other people's stories because I've heard some amazing stories.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: And if I interpret it them, you know, I'm always just reach wanting to reach that one person that just needs to hear that one thing to make their Tuesday morning a little easier.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I say it all the time, you know, the Wii Podcast is creating a catalog, a library of messages that can help.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: So let my voice keep you company in your darker times.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: Let my voice keep you company in your confusing times.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: Let my hope keep you company if you're having a hard day.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: And let my voice be part of your celebration because a lot of you are in really great places.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: You are.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, so am I.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: I live in a very, very cool place.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things I'm most excited about is that I genuinely believe with all of my heart that we are the generation of change.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: And what that means is we are able to give to the generation younger than us emotional support in a way that our parents and the generation before us weren't able to give us.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that makes us the change.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: Anybody on this podcast that can is listening here, your availability to emotionally support the people around you is different than what you got when you were a kid.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: And why is that?
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because the consciousness of the day, 40, 50, 60 years ago, wasn't designed around emotional support.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: It just wasn't there yet.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now it is.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: And why is that so important?
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: Because for the humanity to heal, it means more and more people have to live connected to the truth of their oneness.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: And the way you truly become in communion with your oneness is you have to connect to it through your emotional sense of self.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: Hear what I said.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: The way you truly become one, a oneness with a power greater than yourself, you do that communion through your heart, through your emotional sense of self.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: And how do I know that for an absolute?
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: If you were to put one word on this concept called God or Jesus, our Buddha, our higher power, our divine light, our divinity, whatever you call the grandness of all that is, what would the one word be?
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: The one word would be love.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: That is the that is the synonym, that is the description that fits, it's all inclusive of God.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: Love.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what is love?
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: Love is an emotion.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: Where is your emotions?
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: In your heart.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: So if you want to commune, truly connect, literally live as one with a power greater than yourself, how do you do it?
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: You have to heal the reason you're not doing it now.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: What is that reason, Joe?
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: Suppressed emotion, truly.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's it.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: And people say, You so what you're telling me, Joe, is if I heal my wounds and get all the old stuff out of the way, that I can literally live one with God.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's exactly what I'm telling you.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: Because I do, literally.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I've got stories that I'm going to share.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: Does that make me special?
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: Are you freaking kidding me?
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: It just makes me.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now, just because you can live one with God doesn't mean you don't have a tough day.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: Doesn't mean you don't have emotions.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean you can't pay your car payment.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean you don't have challenge paying for your kids' college.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: You're still living life.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: But you're living life from a fullness versus an emptiness.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: You're living life from faith versus fear.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: You're living life from autonomy versus codependence.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: You're living life from overflow versus addiction satiation.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's what it means to live one with God.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: And how do I know it's possible?
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, because the man all time was created around, Jesus, BC before Christ, AD after death, our calendars, September the 15th, 2026, the calendar was created, started around one man's death, Jesus, literally said, in the last things before he ascended, I have to go sit by my father, so he, meaning God, can put the same spirit that guided me in all of you.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: In all of you.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I believe him.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: And that spirit is inside of you.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: How do I know?
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, because polling out there, random polling, and you can only imagine what the real number is.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know about you.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: I've never taken a poll my entire life.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: But there was some poll I saw, like a Gallup poll.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: I say Gallup, it's the only name I know, that like 67% of people here in the US consider themselves more spiritual than religious.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's just a fact of conscious shifting.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: Does it make the religious world wrong?
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: No, it makes them fabulous.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: Because the people that are guided in that world, they're guided to a communion with a power greater themselves in that traditional sense.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: Fabulous.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about the people who aren't guided that way.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that's Joe.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: Some of my closest friends are deeply Christian people, wonderful, loving people.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: Some of my closest family members, literally, some of the most spiritual people I've ever known, found their God connection in the pews of a Catholic church.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: I love them for that, but that's them, not Joe.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: Period.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't make anybody wrong, but I am going to honor the people out there who.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Believe and are sensing and are and are becoming more of a sense of a spiritual essence.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: And why is it happening?
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: Because humanity is waking up.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, taking that same pulse 40 years ago, the whole idea of spiritual awareness and spiritual awakening and conscious oneness, it didn't exist.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: A guy named Wayne Dyer was one of the first people that ever even talked about the higher power if you weren't in a program.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, today the whole concept is becoming more and more of a mainstream concept.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because humanity's waking up.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: And literally, for a man in a microphone, me doing this now, literally 10 months, to have hundreds of thousands of people around the globe listening, right?
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: What are they listening to?
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you're hearing my divinity speak into a mic, and your divinity is the one guiding you to the We podcast.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: And here we are, we're connecting.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I love it.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: I am just so happy that you're here.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, I want to talk about because there's a lot of confusion.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: I see it, I hear it, I see it online, I see all sorts of stuff.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: This whole delusional ridiculousness that spiritual oneness is always happy, go lucky, and wonderful and easy, and that's just BS.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: Anybody that lives that delusion doesn't know what the heck they're talking about, or they just making it up, or they read it in a freaking book somewhere.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because that is not the case.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, to be completely honest with you, living a place of overflow is a beautiful experience.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: And it also means that your availability of action steps relative to other people, it becomes much a much more narrow road to truly stay in a sense of overflow.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: You have to literally live from that place of overflow.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes doing that, you got to do things you wish you didn't have to.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I said it last time, the last episode, that a colleague of mine that I've been working with and interacting with for about, I don't know, six, eight months over this past month, something, somewhere, something I did.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not being oblivious, but I literally am not sure exactly.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: But I got a scathing email accusing me of stuff that I didn't do.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now, does that mean I didn't cause harm?
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: No, I did.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: Just because I don't know what I did, just because, and this particular person, her style of communication is don't text me, I'm not willing to talk about it, and goodbye.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, oh, okay.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: So you get to say I did all this stuff, you get to imply I did something out of integrity, which I didn't, and you're not gonna talk about it, and we're not gonna have communion.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: Basically, that's what this said.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Well, that's fine, you don't have to talk, but that doesn't mean I can't talk because I will.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: And did I do anything wrong?
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: Did I mean to hurt anybody?
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: Did I purposely cause somebody harm?
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: Do I owe amends?
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Joe, you just said you didn't do anything wrong.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: Different topic.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: Living from a place of oneness, folks, the whole concept of right or wrong, it doesn't exist.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's a human delusion.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's all part of humanity's separation style.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the old world, there's always a right and a wrong, a grander and a less, a strong and a weak, a control and a conqueror.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's yesterday's newspaper style of humanity.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's a fear-based domination.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: The strongest dominates to control.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's not love.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the facts.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: Regardless of what I know what I did, I, Joe, caused another human being harm.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: I did.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: How do I know that?
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: Because she said I did.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so I have to honor that my behaviors caused another person harm.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: Did I mean to?
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: Did I?
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: How do I know?
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: Because she said I did.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I said on my last podcast, pray for me.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: Wish me luck because I have to make amends.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I did.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: And what did I say?
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: Basically, what I said here.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure what I did.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter what I did.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: I acknowledge that consciously, unconsciously, whatever my behaviors are, I caused you harm.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I apologize.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now, folks, you have to understand.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: I get it.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: I am a big ass personality.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I bulldoze and don't even mean to bulldoze.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: I put, I just talk straight all the time.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I can have adjectives that to me sound perfectly normal, perfectly appropriate.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: But my adjectives to some people could be hurtful.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: They could be harmful, obviously, because it was the mannerism in which I communicated that I caused another person harm.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I made amends.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now, did she forgive me?
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: She hasn't replied, and she never will.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: She said she won't.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: This is a colleague.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: We don't really, you know, we're not friends, we're colleagues.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: And and but I felt better after.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: Do I like making those types of amends?
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: No, I don't.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: Amends are not easy.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: They're not, they're not easy when you know you did something wrong, let alone when somebody else said you hurt them.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: But that's all part of living from a place of overflow.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: I could sit there and act as if I didn't hurt somebody because I don't think I did.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: That isn't living in love.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: I could sit there and act as though I'm Mr.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: Righteous and Mr.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: Perfect and doesn't know that isn't love.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: If somebody says you harmed them, make amends.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to get into that a little bit more because it's all part of living the sense of oneness.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: The benefit of living your oneness is a really cool sense of okayness, a sense of fullness that you have in your heart, in your belly, in your consciousness, and you have to live from it to keep it, quite honestly.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to talk directly to couples right now.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know what, folks?
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: Start adding in, I'm sorry, more.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's it.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: You want your world between partnerships, man and wife, our significant others, our sister and sister, our brother and brother, our mom and dad, you want those worlds to feel better?
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: Start saying you're sorry.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because the only reason there's angst in your external world is because of the delusion of this right and wrong.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm right, you're wrong.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now, for the low self-esteem codependent, I'm wrong and I'm gonna blame you, but you can be hateful to me because I know I'm wrong, but then I'm just gonna control you and call it love.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, in relationship, the way that you really live from a place of overflow is you honor the other person wherever they are, not wherever you want them to be, wherever they are.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: And as you do that, as you literally are able to live from that more and more, you are going to step on people's buttons.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: You are going to do things you wished you hadn't.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: You are going to make mistakes that you literally know hurt other people.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: And the tenth step of every program says we make amends, truly.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: And those are hard enough.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: But when you're in an experience and your husband says, or your wife says, fellas, your behavior caused her pain.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of you going into your macho ass, I didn't do anything wrong, you're this and that and the other thing, and I'm perfect.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's exactly why you don't have that great a relationship with your wife.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because she wasn't asking for any of that.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: She's basically saying, My feelings were hurt by your behaviors.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: And if you truly care, say you're sorry.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's that simple.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have to understand?
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: And fellas, I'm here to tell you there are tremendous characteristics of your female partner you will never understand.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: Never.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: Because they are magnificent beings, and their style of looking at things and feeling things and interpreting things and sensing things are completely different than yours.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: You will never understand.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: Never most.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: Period.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: Can't maybe so.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: Because you know, part of the path of autonomy, part of the path of living autonomy, being trapped by the world's expectations is the opposite of living autonomously.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: Autonomy is the experience of all of my okayness is based on me.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: People can think what they want, people can act how they want, people can be how they want, and my okayness is based on me.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: I've got a couple stories at the end here that I'm going to share about that exact topic.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: And that is not an easy one, but we're going to get to it a little bit later.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: But this whole idea to where this being trapped by society's expectations of you, the opposite of that is autonomy.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: And what does that mean?
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: You gain your value from your perception of you.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: You gain your value by your perceptions of you.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what causes our own perceptions to be low?
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: Hurt little kid, wound.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: What persecutes us that makes our self-esteem and self-worth and personal integrity low?
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: The voices in our head.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: The hateful, hurtful, I'm not good enough, I'm too fat, I'm too skinny, I'm a loser, I'm a liar, I cheat.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: All of those voices, those voices are what cause your personal esteem to go low.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: Esteem how you see yourself.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now, again, if you see yourself as a liar, a cheater, a thief, a this, a that, then the more you see yourself that way, the more you're going to feel that way about yourself.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody has a high self-worth who believes they're a liar.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody believes or calls themselves a liar and have a high self-esteem.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody does.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: You can't.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: They're two different things.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, where does all of those old beliefs come from?
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: They come from a hurt little kid.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: How do we start healing that?
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: We have to write down those old beliefs.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: Here's how you'll know you have them.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: You're going to come into a situation, and if you are human, you are going to cross somebody's boundary.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's called being human.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: And when somebody says that they you caused them pain and they're hurt prior to saying you're sorry, listen to your own voices.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: Your voices are going to say, I didn't do that.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: What's she talking about?
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't say that.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't do that.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't, how do I know?
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's exactly why I got this particular email a week ago.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: I started listening for my own voices.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: I heard the same thing.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: I heard the same types of things.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_00: What is she talking about?
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't do that.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_00: Why does she think that?
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: I was I was honest the whole time.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: Those are my voices.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I write them down.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: I do.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: I had three or four.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: In the past, I'd had 500, literally.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then it was about three or four days in, I realized I caused another person harm, consciously or unconsciously.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: In this space, in this particular example, unconsciously, I caused her harm.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I had to say, I'm sorry.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I did.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I felt better because I said I was sorry.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you want to hear all your low self-esteem voices?
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: Listen to the voices in your own head that will battle against a simple I'm sorry.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: Listen to them and write them down.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: Because when you write those voices down, you get them out of your head.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: Tell them to somebody else, and then go say you're sorry.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: Why do we have to write them down?
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_00: Because if we don't write them down, we can say we're sorry on a Tuesday and then go right back out and do it again and cause the same harm on a Thursday.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I always had such a challenge with the confessional at my Catholic with my Catholic priest, Father Cam, man I love dearly and who loved me.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: I walked right in there and said, Father, I cannot say I'm sorry for something right now in front of you and lie to you and God.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: I know I'm leaving right now, meeting my buddies to go drink.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: This that was a story that happened when I was 26 years old.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this is the behavior patterns that you're doing that are causing other people harm.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: How do you know you're doing it?
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: Because people will tell you you're doing it.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_00: But you have to calm your own voices down long enough to be able to hear somebody else and then write your voices down.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Joe, why would I do that?
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: You want to do that because you write the voices down, you tell somebody else your voices, and if there's some hurt that needs to come up inside of you because of your old voices, then you will feel better about you as your external behaviors change.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: Hear me.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: What's in it for you by telling somebody else you're sorry?
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: You then start describing yourself as somebody who doesn't like to say it, but at least you're doing the best you can.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_00: You start describing yourself as somebody that is willing to look at your own stuff versus describing yourself as the arrogant, I'm always right, she's always wrong person.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because when you're in those absolute voices, your own esteem is low.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_00: The way you see yourself is low, your worth is low.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_00: If you hurt somebody and you're not willing to make amends or say you're sorry, there's no value.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_00: You can give yourself no value, personal value, hurting somebody and not making amends.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_00: But Joe, I didn't do it.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter what you did, it matters that the person sitting across from you said that your behavior caused them pain.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_00: The benefit, your benefit by making amends, is then you start seeing yourself as somebody willing to look at your side of the street.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: Before I got sober, every other human was always wrong.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_00: I was always right, and my esteem was zero.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_00: Period.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_00: It was.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's just what I thought.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: I shamed and blamed everybody.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: It was always everybody else's fault.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, as I got sober and eventually did the eighth and ninth step, and I had to write a list of everybody I harmed, that list, if you came within three feet of me, everybody except one human, that's my cousin Mike, every human being that came within three feet of me, my entire life, I used, abused, or neglected somehow, somehow.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_00: All of them.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, folks, I can pretty much guarantee if you've never done an eighth and ninth step, if you really get honest with yourself, you've probably done the same thing.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now, am I telling you you have to write a list?
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: No, that's not what this podcast is about.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_00: This podcast is about adding.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: You want to get free of living from the world's expectations, you have to gain a sense of autonomy.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_00: Autonomy is a self-guiding experience.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_00: Being trapped in the world's expectations, you're always pursuing everybody else's okayness, everybody else's acknowledgement, everybody else's validation, everybody else's desires, and you will constantly fail.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_00: Because it doesn't matter how people see you and how people think of you or how people validate you.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_00: It matters how you see yourself.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the ways you change your self-value today, tomorrow, start saying you're sorry.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not kidding.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not saying sorry out of victimhood.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm saying say you're sorry out of the desire to discover your side of the street.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_00: And again, if you're in a partnership that's supposed to work, then that person they won't know what the heck to do, especially if you've been an arrogant person like I was.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you can change your own self-esteem.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_00: As you start seeing yourself differently, as you start seeing yourself, describing yourself as someone willing to look at your side of the street, that's a self-esteem builder.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's a self-worth builder, that's a personal integrity builder.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: It is.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's a conscious awakening.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_00: You're living from a place of conscious healing by shifting from everybody else's wrong and I'm always right.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's the person that says that doesn't make amends, to the person that says they're sorry, and then go look for your side.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_00: Most people in the world can't.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody on the Sweet Podcast can hear their own thoughts.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_00: You can.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's and that's a conscious awakening.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's a type of awakening.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I want you to go back and remember when you heard your own first thoughts.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_00: I do.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_00: Because I want people to start becoming aware of how long you've been on a conscious path.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_00: 1990 was when I learned about my inner child.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_00: A couple years before that, I had my first conscious thoughts.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's why when I say I'm really practiced at this stuff, I'm practiced.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_00: I've been on a conscious path for almost 40 years.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_00: How long have you been on a conscious path?
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_00: How long?
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, time's gonna tell.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_00: But as you do it, as you become aware of your own conscious path, then you start seeing yourself a little differently.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_00: You start waking up to yourself a little differently.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_00: And as you wake up to yourself differently, you start describing yourself differently.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_00: You start describing yourself more grandly.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what is a self describ self description?
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_00: It raises your self esteem, it raises your self value, it raises how you see yourself.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: And all of those characteristics are needed to live life from an autonomous position.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: How do you get out of being trapped by the expectations of your world?
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_00: Is you gain a sense of esteem for yourself.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_00: Saying you're sorry is a great way to start.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_00: Identifying how long you've been on a conscious path is a great way to start.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: And as we continue to move in that direction, we start living it more and more.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, for myself, I didn't like it.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't comfortable for me to make amends for something I didn't think I did, but it felt good to do it because as I thought about it, I thought, I don't even know this person very well.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_00: And oh my gosh, she spent a time sending this email, and I caused a random human harm.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_00: That didn't feel good for me.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_00: Now, making amends, that's all I can do.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_00: I did feel better.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_00: I did.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't mean I'll ever talk to this person again, but I took care of my side of the street.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_00: I did.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes you got to change the street, folks.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're with somebody that you start making amends and they say F you anyways, you might have to change the street.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_00: You might have to.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_00: People are outgrowing relationships all the time.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_00: Different topic for a different podcast, but just understand that's all part of the path, too.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: For myself, as I came out of the depths of my darkness and the world I lived in, I wasn't pursuing this whole concept of a oneness and a God.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I wasn't pursuing any of it, literally zero of it.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_00: I was really just wanting to stop hurting.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_00: And it was as I pursued the path of healing my emotional sense of self through the inner child and dual handwriting, then I started remembering a communion in the very beginning for me.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to share kind of how that communion concept happened.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't sought after, it just happened different times.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_00: For those of you that don't know, and you're new here in the mid-90s, 1990, 1994, at a spiritual experience where my need for drugs and alcohol were removed.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_00: February the 20th, 1994, I stood up and I said, God, if I'm not supposed to drink or drug, I need your help.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_00: I feel a rush of energy through my body.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_00: I feel a tear down my left side and my compulsion for drugs and alcohol gone.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_00: Not removed, gone, finished.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_00: Spiritual awakening.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_00: The exact thing I say that God's not here to rescue because he's not.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_00: God's not codependent.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_00: Give you the strength and courage to walk out.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_00: My path, my drugs and alcohol were removed in a moment.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_00: February the 20th, 1994.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_00: 33 years in the program.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_00: I've never heard another person's story like that.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I tend to talk more about God giving us the strength and courage to heal what we need to feel what we need to heal, strength and courage, because that's where 99.9% of people are.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_00: Had memories of being sexually abused.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_00: Four or 53 some odd days later, the following seven years, I went into complete sacred silence.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_00: And when I mean sacred silence, I mean solitude, literally seven years.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_00: Lived on less than$3,000 a year, about$250 a month.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_00: And the way I was guided was because I had no money, had a car that barely worked, no phone, no TV, no beeper.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_00: This is pre-internet, you know, the 90s.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_00: The way I would guide is I would say I'd get to a stop sign, completely lost and confused.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_00: If I used to go right, I would turn left and just see where it would take me.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, eventually, I was guided to the woods.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_00: I was guided to Stone Mountain, a massive outcropping of granite here in Georgia.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_00: You ever visit the Southeast?
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_00: Go to Stone Mountain, an incredibly spiritual place.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I would go to Stone Mountain five, six days a week, spend five, six hours a day at a minimum.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'd go up there in the middle of the night.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'd go up there in rainstorms.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_00: I would walk down the side of the mountain in pitch dark.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_00: I was very in tune with the mountain, the spiritual nature of the mountain.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_00: So my whole God presence started more from a Native American position of spirit.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_00: I called it Great Spirit.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, you see the movies, and you see the Native American, Native American Indian world, and the Native cultures around the planet, from Australia to the United States to Mexico to Alaska, the cultures, Hawaii, the native cultures, the original indigenous people, they all had the same spiritual communion.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_00: They all did.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_00: Look at the histories.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's fabulous if you really see it.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's how I did it.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_00: Was I trying?
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_00: No, I wasn't.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_00: But different times in grieving, I would grieve so hard, I would have these visions.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I used to have a vision of a four, six foot five, six foot six inch, four hundred-pound Native American man.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I would envision this massive spiritual being hugging me.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a six-foot, 220-pound guy.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm in my mid-30s.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_00: I, and that's the only way I could comprehend something nurturing me was a Native American Indian in my spiritual sense.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_00: And it gave me comfort.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_00: Different times I would be in solitude and no talk for weeks.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_00: If I wasn't on the phone with my therapist, I would be in silence, literally.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_00: And late at night, middle of the day, whatever it was, I would be there, it'd be different times where I would find myself in like a daydream, if you will.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of times it would happen at dusk.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I would imagine myself participating in a Native American type spiritual circle.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_00: And that's all I can describe it as.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_00: Was it real or not real?
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_00: For me at the time, it was completely real.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's a spirit realm.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_00: It started me in the idea of connecting or understanding there's something beyond Joe's unconscious arrogance.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's all I was, completely unconscious.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I was waking up.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_00: This spiritual side of me is waking up if I wasn't grieving.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because I would grieve the deep depths of my emotional self, and then my spiritual sense would start waking up.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_00: Later on in that path, I would go out into the woods.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_00: And there were numerous times out in the woods where I'd go for two or three days.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_00: I would go as long, I would go out pretty far, however far I'd walk.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'd never get lost.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_00: But go out far enough, take a little bit of food, and I'd stay a couple, two or three days.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_00: There were numerous times I'd be out there where literally nothing except woods.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_00: The only thing you heard were animals around and a stream.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_00: I typically get close to a stream.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_00: And numerous times I could literally experience the veil between me and the trees be removed.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_00: It was me and the trees, as if we were one thing.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_00: The feeling was so beautiful, the sensation was so real.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_00: It was such a connection of oneness that if I didn't have such close relationships, family ties, traditional family ties, I would have hitched hike west and gone and got lost in 5,000 acres.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_00: I never did that, but I would be in those times, and then I'd go back into my life and I'd never forget that.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_00: But I wouldn't know how to reconnect to it.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'd go back into my, you know, cutting grass for five bucks an hour and misery and pain and silence and no food.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_00: And but I would never forget that.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_00: On one of those trips, I've read one book my entire life, and it's a book called Conversation with God, Neil Don, Neil Donald Walsh.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_00: Fabulous book.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_00: I just looked it up before I got on this podcast.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_00: It was published in 1995, which makes perfect sense.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_00: I started this whole path in 1994.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I read that book, 275 pages.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's the only book I've ever read my entire life, the whole thing, until later.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_00: I read one other book called Grandfather.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_00: And at the end of that book, I said, because his whole thing, Conversations with God, Neil Diamond, Neil Donald Walsh, channeled that book.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, two years into my process, I'd be battling with my higher power.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_00: So you're gonna write.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not writing.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna write, I'm not writing.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's me in a vague in a room with silence, no phone, no nothing, me, no TV, me in a room.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'd sit there days.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_00: And a book came through me.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_00: At the time it was called Your Inner Childhood's Rights Too.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's called Filling the Void.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_00: Visit my website, joemitica.com.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_00: You'll be able to download Filling the Void for free.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_00: Eventually it's going to be in audio form in every language in the world.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_00: So keep visiting joemitiga.com.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm new at all this.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_00: It takes a while to get all the technology stuff caught up.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_00: But go visit joemitiga.com.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_00: Get that book.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm giving it away for free.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_00: Because it was given to me for free.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_00: It was never mine.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_00: I it literally channeled through.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_00: I wrote as fast as I could write.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_00: And when I read that book, Neil Diamond Walsh, Neil Donald Walsh, and he said that the book channeled.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of that book, I'm like, oh my God, that's exactly what happened with my book.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember thinking, oh yeah, Joe, people are gonna believe you, you loser, you drug addict, you alcoholic, you rageful human that you that God actually channeled through you, Joe.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_00: My voices persecuted me.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_00: But that's what happened, literally.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now I get it.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_00: I've had five books channeled through me.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_00: That book now is called Filling the Void.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_00: I've got another book that will be coming out later called Why We Feel Alone.
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_00: I've got a third book that will be coming out later after that.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_00: I've got another book called Unequally Yoked.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_00: I've got another book called Greatness.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_00: They channel through me a lot.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know why me, but it just happens.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_00: Well, when all that happened, way back when, did I feel some communion and one with God?
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_00: No, I felt nuts.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_00: I literally just knew I was crazy.
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's all I felt.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, years later, that whole idea, the whole awakening process, eventually I stopped hurting all the time.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_00: Eventually, my emotional growth component of my path finished.
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_00: The intensity of seven years finished.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_00: I came back out into the world.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_00: Through that period of time, I got into the AA meetings and I learned that the 12 steps of all 12-step programs are ways to get their 12 steps to create a relationship with a power greater than yourself.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's what the 12 steps mean.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_00: Each step is an action step to get closer to a power greater than yourself.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_00: And through that whole concept, right, I started to realize I started to then have a structure to live this concept of a higher power, to live it.
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then one day, in the depths of my pain, it was easy for me to beg, dear God, please give me the strength and courage to feel what I need to heal.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_00: Dear God, give me the strength and courage to feel what I need to heal.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_00: Dear God, give me the strength and courage to feel what it over and over.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_00: Because I was in so much pain all the time.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's all that would come out.
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why I have such a passion for it now.
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_00: Did I ever get relief?
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_00: But did I make it?
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because God gave me the strength and courage.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's why, if you're in pain, pray, ask.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_00: Dear God, give me the strength and courage.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_00: Not this God get me out of my pain.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_00: People think there's no that was me.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I called myself an F you God guy.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_00: I said, if God loved me, I wouldn't be in all this pain.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_00: Years later, I heard a voice say, God didn't create your pain, Joe.
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_00: You did.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_00: Your behaviors caused your pain.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_00: Your unconscious environment caused your pain.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_00: God's going to give you the strength and courage, Joe, to walk out, and God did.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_00: Give Joe the strength and courage to walk out.
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_00: God didn't rescue, God empowered.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what empowerment is.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's what all part of autonomy is.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_00: And why is all that important?
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you want to live free of the world's expectations of you, you have to have an esteem and a worth and integrity that is generated you to you.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_00: And if you want to live it, you have to have the source, the resource of support from the inside out, not the outside in.
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you're seeking support and needing support from the outside in, then you are trapped by the exact world that you believe you're getting your support from.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why we feel trapped in our own world, literally.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_00: We're trapped because our codependent delusion, our codependent illusion is if the outside world helps me, then I'll be okay.
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_00: Falsehood.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_00: It can support you a little bit if you have a conscious person in it.
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_00: Most of us don't.
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like the title says, I showed how I broke free from other people's expectations.
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what does that mean?
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_00: When I didn't need other people's approval for Joe to be okay, then I also didn't need their okayness or their support or their anything for Joe to take action steps independent for Joe.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now that doesn't mean as I'm taking independent action steps, I was unkind to everybody.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, it was the opposite.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_00: The more I gave to myself, the more overflow I had, the more overflow I had, the more I gave to people.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_00: Literally, I still do it now.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'm doing on the We podcast, creating an environment where sharing my overflow with the globe, all of you.
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_00: And all of you are sharing it with other people.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_00: How do I know?
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_00: How else would the We podcast be in 30 countries in 10 months?
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's all of you that are spreading this around the globe.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why we're doing it together.
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_00: And how does it all, where does the benefit come?
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the benefit comes from as you create that sense of communion inside by breaking the old chains of external illusion.
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_00: Your answers are in you, your strength is in you, your ability to move forward comes from within you.
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_00: And is it always easy to live?
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's not.
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_00: One of the harder stories.
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_00: This is a harder one.
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_00: Way back, right before, probably I was now out of my silence a couple years.
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_00: I started dating a woman.
• 1:00:50
  SPEAKER_00: The first woman I dated was very cool.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_00: She was just sweet as pie.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_00: She took me to the Kroger for the first time for 10 years, and I hear a cow mooing.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean the Kroger that told completely changed.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_00: I hadn't been in a retail establishment in over 10 years, literally.
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_00: When I mean silence, I'm not kidding.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_00: It was solitude and silence.
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that relationship was more friend than anything, and she was just so sweet.
• 1:01:16
  SPEAKER_00: I connected with another woman, and we actually met through a business networking group, and then we would start going to church together.
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_00: So we had a pretty cool connect.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_00: And she was my best friend at the time.
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_00: She really was.
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_00: And she really got me, and I got her.
• 1:01:33
  SPEAKER_00: We had that entrepreneurial bigness.
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'll never forget.
• 1:01:38
  SPEAKER_00: The first date we ever went on.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_00: We go on a date, and I have no money.
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_00: I barely I had just started working.
• 1:01:45
  SPEAKER_00: I had no money.
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm trying to go out on a date, right?
• 1:01:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I have to pay.
• 1:01:52
  SPEAKER_00: And my my debit card didn't work.
• 1:01:55
  SPEAKER_00: She said, Your card doesn't work.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_00: I said, nope, I guess not.
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_00: I said, I don't have any money.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_00: I thought I had the money.
• 1:02:04
  SPEAKER_00: And now this is a woman that made probably, I don't know, half a million dollars a year.
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_00: She could not wrap her brain around somebody not having money.
• 1:02:13
  SPEAKER_00: She couldn't do it.
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_00: She didn't shame or blame me.
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_00: She pulled out her debit card and I paid her back, but she couldn't wrap her brain around it.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_00: She couldn't.
• 1:02:21
  SPEAKER_00: But she didn't make me wrong.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_00: She didn't shame.
• 1:02:23
  SPEAKER_00: She didn't anything.
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_00: She was kind.
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, later we go and we're at church together.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_00: We went to a unity church over on the other side of town.
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_00: And we would in this unity church, you'd have these different spiritual leaders, and we would listen to, and then we'd listen to different spiritual talk people.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_00: And we'd listen to Wayne Dyer.
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now, at this point, I'm probably 10 years sober, 11 years sober, and my entire spiritual awakening happened because of inner child work, deep emotional inner child work.
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's where John Bradshaw, a fabulous human being, passed away numerous years ago.
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_00: All everything I know about the inner child was sourced through him.
• 1:03:19
  SPEAKER_00: Whoever I learned it from, he was the grandfather of all of it.
• 1:03:23
  SPEAKER_00: John Bradshaw, fabulous human.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_00: So for Joe, if somebody spirit was talking spiritually, if they weren't talking from their heart, it didn't resonate with me.
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_00: Period.
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_00: It didn't.
• 1:03:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Mr.
• 1:03:39
  SPEAKER_00: Dyer at the time, Wayne Dyer, if you listen to Wayne Dyer's stuff, Wayne Dyer is a genius.
• 1:03:46
  SPEAKER_00: He's a doctor, literally, Dr.
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_00: Wayne Dyer, I think.
• 1:03:50
  SPEAKER_00: And he was a researcher.
• 1:03:52
  SPEAKER_00: He studied, he had a brain the size of Einstein, and he would paraphrase spiritual beliefs and all of that.
• 1:04:01
  SPEAKER_00: And he would quote people all the time.
• 1:04:05
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know the things that I heard.
• 1:04:08
  SPEAKER_00: Wayne Dyer never took ownership of most of his stuff.
• 1:04:13
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't.
• 1:04:14
  SPEAKER_00: He was humble and would quote, but for Joe, it didn't feel like he was talking from his heart.
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, that's just where I was at the time.
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I said that to my friend, and she laid into me.
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_00: And codependence says, I gotta I gotta change her mind.
• 1:04:38
  SPEAKER_00: Autonomy says she has the right to feel and think any way she wants about me.
• 1:04:45
  SPEAKER_00: Now, hear what I just said.
• 1:04:48
  SPEAKER_00: What is autonomy?
• 1:04:50
  SPEAKER_00: Autonomy is when we create an internal capacity, an internal availability to create all of our okayness from the inside out.
• 1:05:01
  SPEAKER_00: Others can support, they're not the source.
• 1:05:05
  SPEAKER_00: Autonomy.
• 1:05:06
  SPEAKER_00: You want to get untrapped from the world, create a sense of autonomy.
• 1:05:12
  SPEAKER_00: And does autonomy mean that you don't love and care?
• 1:05:15
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's the other way.
• 1:05:16
  SPEAKER_00: The more autonomous you are, the more availability you have, the more overflow you have, which I'm going to tell a great story about that here in a second, the overflow part.
• 1:05:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, in this particular case, she was not happy.
• 1:05:30
  SPEAKER_00: And the things she called me were not kind.
• 1:05:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I sat there and I listened.
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_00: And every part of me wanted to fight back.
• 1:05:39
  SPEAKER_00: Every part of me wanted to change her mind.
• 1:05:42
  SPEAKER_00: Every part of me wanted to convince her that I wasn't what she believed I was.
• 1:05:50
  SPEAKER_00: But you know what I did?
• 1:05:52
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't do any of that.
• 1:05:54
  SPEAKER_00: I sat there and I allowed her to have the belief.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_00: Beliefs about me that were hers, and they weren't kind and they weren't loving, and they weren't me, but they were hers, and that was not easy.
• 1:06:12
  SPEAKER_00: I remember two weeks after that, I processed hard.
• 1:06:16
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_00: It is not easy to be involved with somebody who doesn't have favorable things to think about you.
• 1:06:26
  SPEAKER_00: And in this particular case, it was just on this one topic.
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_00: And she had the right to think anything she wanted of me, and I did not have the right to try to change her mind.
• 1:06:39
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 1:06:40
  SPEAKER_00: Because that would be control freak.
• 1:06:42
  SPEAKER_00: If she has a belief about me and I have pain, the pain is mine, not sourced by her.
• 1:06:51
  SPEAKER_00: The pain is mine, literally.
• 1:06:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I can tell you that one took me a while.
• 1:06:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this is 20 years ago.
• 1:07:01
  SPEAKER_00: And that wasn't easy.
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_00: So, folks, I'm telling you, you're gonna walk out there in the world and people aren't gonna necessarily believe you.
• 1:07:08
  SPEAKER_00: People aren't gonna necessarily follow you, people aren't gonna necessarily agree with you, and that's fine.
• 1:07:14
  SPEAKER_00: They have the right not to agree with you, and you have the right to live your path and your purpose anyway.
• 1:07:24
  SPEAKER_00: Will it be painful if somebody that is important to you, a parent, a sister, a spouse, a sibling, doesn't believe in you and your spiritual path?
• 1:07:36
  SPEAKER_00: Will it be painful if they don't believe in you?
• 1:07:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:07:40
  SPEAKER_00: And guess whose pain that is?
• 1:07:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yours, not theirs.
• 1:07:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's your pain.
• 1:07:49
  SPEAKER_00: What do we do with that pain?
• 1:07:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you sit on your couch and you feel your pain, just like I did.
• 1:07:54
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 1:07:55
  SPEAKER_00: Because people have the right to see you any way they want, just like you have the right to see them any way you want.
• 1:08:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in this particular case, oh, I don't know, six, eight months later, she actually totally changed her view of me because, and she, if I'm not mistaken, she even said she was sorry.
• 1:08:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, maybe, I don't know.
• 1:08:16
  SPEAKER_00: But the point is, as you're living a spiritual path, as you're awakening inside of yourself, as you're following a passion, a purpose, an overflow, whatever you're calling it, is everybody around you gonna like it?
• 1:08:31
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 1:08:32
  SPEAKER_00: Is everybody around you gonna support it?
• 1:08:34
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 1:08:34
  SPEAKER_00: Is everybody around you gonna call you crazy?
• 1:08:37
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 1:08:38
  SPEAKER_00: Are some people?
• 1:08:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, especially traditionalists.
• 1:08:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now, do they have the right to think of you, believe in you any way they want?
• 1:08:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:08:51
  SPEAKER_00: And they are not responsible for the pain you feel because they have an unfavorable view of you.
• 1:08:59
  SPEAKER_00: That pain is yours, and in my world, that pain of my girlfriend at the time thinking not good things about me was my neglect.
• 1:09:09
  SPEAKER_00: It pushed a not good enough button in me.
• 1:09:11
  SPEAKER_00: It did.
• 1:09:12
  SPEAKER_00: And eventually I got with my little kid, and it was very painful for my adult to know I'm involved with somebody that I care about, and I knew she cared about me, but it was painful for me to be involved with somebody who had that type of unloving perspective of me on that particular topic.
• 1:09:29
  SPEAKER_00: That was painful.
• 1:09:30
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't painful enough to for us to end a relationship, but it was painful.
• 1:09:34
  SPEAKER_00: But the pain is mine, was mine, and the pain is yours.
• 1:09:39
  SPEAKER_00: And why do I keep saying it?
• 1:09:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because as you're shifting, as you're changing, as you're growing, as you're expanding, as you're communing with a power greater than yourself, relationships around you are gonna grow or they're gonna go.
• 1:09:53
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna have to change your side of the street, and sometimes you're gonna have to change the street completely.
• 1:09:59
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, you're gonna outgrow relationships of your yesterday because they're not going to understand the path you're on.
• 1:10:07
  SPEAKER_00: They're not.
• 1:10:08
  SPEAKER_00: I literally have an entire family around me now.
• 1:10:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I have great relationships with my family.
• 1:10:14
  SPEAKER_00: I've got three older sisters, two boys.
• 1:10:17
  SPEAKER_00: My boys actually listen to my podcast.
• 1:10:19
  SPEAKER_00: My sisters don't.
• 1:10:20
  SPEAKER_00: They don't know me as a global podcaster, they don't know me as all this, they know me as their little brother.
• 1:10:26
  SPEAKER_00: Do I expect them to listen to my podcast?
• 1:10:28
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 1:10:29
  SPEAKER_00: Podcast like the We Podcast is a podcast of attraction, truly.
• 1:10:34
  SPEAKER_00: Hence why it's expanding around the world.
• 1:10:36
  SPEAKER_00: Do I get my feelings hurt when they don't ask me about it?
• 1:10:39
  SPEAKER_00: No, not at all.
• 1:10:40
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 1:10:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'm sharing my flow.
• 1:10:45
  SPEAKER_00: And just like I said in my opening, the people of my past, my family, they know me as their little brother.
• 1:10:52
  SPEAKER_00: Not some guy on a global podcast.
• 1:10:55
  SPEAKER_00: They'll always know me as their little brother, and that's fine.
• 1:10:59
  SPEAKER_00: And buckle up, folks, because as you grow, you are going to outgrow people.
• 1:11:05
  SPEAKER_00: Now, that doesn't mean everybody has to agree with you.
• 1:11:10
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 1:11:11
  SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't mean everybody has to support you.
• 1:11:14
  SPEAKER_00: Just because somebody doesn't agree with you and somebody doesn't support you, it doesn't mean you don't love them and doesn't mean you can't have a connection with them.
• 1:11:20
  SPEAKER_00: You can.
• 1:11:21
  SPEAKER_00: But understand the way you break free of your codependence, your being trapped in the expectations of the world around you, you gain autonomy from the inside out.
• 1:11:36
  SPEAKER_00: And that autonomy will guide you.
• 1:11:40
  SPEAKER_00: To my next story, that guidance system.
• 1:11:44
  SPEAKER_00: For a lot of people on this podcast, you are givers.
• 1:11:47
  SPEAKER_00: You are.
• 1:11:48
  SPEAKER_00: And hear me when I say giving from overflow is love, giving from need and obligation and have to is codependence.
• 1:11:57
  SPEAKER_00: If giving to somebody else is hurting you, it's not love.
• 1:12:01
  SPEAKER_00: Period.
• 1:12:02
  SPEAKER_00: You codependents out there that think you can stop your drunk husband or drunk brother or drunk son from stopping, falsehood.
• 1:12:08
  SPEAKER_00: You can't.
• 1:12:09
  SPEAKER_00: Programs for you, truly.
• 1:12:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't care what the giving is, if you're giving from overflow, it will be an endless abundance.
• 1:12:20
  SPEAKER_00: It'll always be there, whatever the it is.
• 1:12:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to give you an exact example.
• 1:12:25
  SPEAKER_00: Literally, I'm in the center of it now, just coming out the other side.
• 1:12:28
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of you know I started a nonprofit called Project Smile after a TEDx I did in South Africa last May, a year ago, May.
• 1:12:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I now have two caregivers in Uganda, about 80 kids, 25 in one and about 50 in the other.
• 1:12:46
  SPEAKER_00: The one with 25, these are more 12 to 14-year-old kids, maybe nine or 10.
• 1:12:54
  SPEAKER_00: The other guy, these are little guys.
• 1:12:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean three years old.
• 1:12:58
  SPEAKER_00: Find me online, folks.
• 1:12:59
  SPEAKER_00: Look at Joe Mittigar or Project Smile, you'll see.
• 1:13:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, literally, I give all the time.
• 1:13:05
  SPEAKER_00: I give money.
• 1:13:06
  SPEAKER_00: I am the sole donor of Project Smile.
• 1:13:09
  SPEAKER_00: And you want to donate to Project Smile?
• 1:13:12
  SPEAKER_00: Find it.
• 1:13:12
  SPEAKER_00: ProjectSmile.world.
• 1:13:14
  SPEAKER_00: Also, I started a Nepal Nepal.world.
• 1:13:18
  SPEAKER_00: You want to donate?
• 1:13:19
  SPEAKER_00: Donate.
• 1:13:20
  SPEAKER_00: Fantastic.
• 1:13:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, anyways, I'm I just literally, one of my caregivers, this is our third garden.
• 1:13:29
  SPEAKER_00: So we literally to feed the kids, these 25 kids, we grow garden.
• 1:13:35
  SPEAKER_00: We grow a garden.
• 1:13:36
  SPEAKER_00: They don't have any money.
• 1:13:37
  SPEAKER_00: Half these kids don't have shoes.
• 1:13:39
  SPEAKER_00: I just got them shoes.
• 1:13:40
  SPEAKER_00: They have no water.
• 1:13:41
  SPEAKER_00: None.
• 1:13:42
  SPEAKER_00: No running water.
• 1:13:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now, because of my relationship with a guy named Farhan with Revo, this community is the community now that has a well.
• 1:13:51
  SPEAKER_00: They're not walking for water anymore, and they're building a school.
• 1:13:55
  SPEAKER_00: But that doesn't give them food.
• 1:13:57
  SPEAKER_00: They still have to take care of themselves.
• 1:13:59
  SPEAKER_00: That was for the whole community.
• 1:14:01
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I literally had just gave him money for seeds, money to have men help, and money for fertilizer.
• 1:14:11
  SPEAKER_00: And the very every time this caregiver attacks me, he's asking for more money.
• 1:14:16
  SPEAKER_00: Of course he is.
• 1:14:18
  SPEAKER_00: He's got 25 kids who have nothing.
• 1:14:22
  SPEAKER_00: So of course he's asking for money.
• 1:14:24
  SPEAKER_00: By just giving a hundred bucks for fertilizer, the very next text, can I have money for beans?
• 1:14:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I got mad.
• 1:14:34
  SPEAKER_00: I got angry.
• 1:14:36
  SPEAKER_00: And what were the voices saying?
• 1:14:37
  SPEAKER_00: I just gave not inside of me.
• 1:14:40
  SPEAKER_00: I just gave you money.
• 1:14:41
  SPEAKER_00: You should have told me before I gave you the money.
• 1:14:43
  SPEAKER_00: I give all the time.
• 1:14:45
  SPEAKER_00: What is wrong with you?
• 1:14:46
  SPEAKER_00: Those are all the voices.
• 1:14:47
  SPEAKER_00: So what did my voices tell me?
• 1:14:51
  SPEAKER_00: My voices told me that in that now moment it wasn't time for Joe to give the money for beans so that these 25 kids can eat something besides rice with their fingers.
• 1:15:09
  SPEAKER_00: Picture this.
• 1:15:10
  SPEAKER_00: There's 25 of them.
• 1:15:12
  SPEAKER_00: They eat rice only with their fingers.
• 1:15:15
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think none of them would know what silverware is.
• 1:15:19
  SPEAKER_00: Half of them don't have shoes.
• 1:15:21
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what is he asking me for?
• 1:15:25
  SPEAKER_00: Beans.
• 1:15:26
  SPEAKER_00: $40 worth of beans.
• 1:15:29
  SPEAKER_00: And what would that$40 do?
• 1:15:31
  SPEAKER_00: $40 worth of beans would give these 25 kids rice with beans, which is a little bit of protein, so they could eat for a month with beans.
• 1:15:41
  SPEAKER_00: He originally asked for$80, would be two months.
• 1:15:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, I didn't say no, but my inner gut said no.
• 1:15:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I didn't give it.
• 1:15:53
  SPEAKER_00: I let it go.
• 1:15:54
  SPEAKER_00: I processed.
• 1:15:56
  SPEAKER_00: I cannot fix these people, I can support them.
• 1:16:01
  SPEAKER_00: I have to live in my autonomy first, over and then give from overflow.
• 1:16:10
  SPEAKER_00: Or because if you give from overflow out of guilt, obligation, need, then resentment is the consequence, and it's not love.
• 1:16:21
  SPEAKER_00: Hear what I just said.
• 1:16:24
  SPEAKER_00: My gut, my emotional reaction was anger.
• 1:16:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I did not give.
• 1:16:31
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't.
• 1:16:32
  SPEAKER_00: What's the consequence of Joe not giving?
• 1:16:36
  SPEAKER_00: Twenty five little kids are eating rice with their fingers, nothing else.
• 1:16:43
  SPEAKER_00: Does that have anything to do with Joe?
• 1:16:45
  SPEAKER_00: No, do I have compassion for them?
• 1:16:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:16:47
  SPEAKER_00: Do I have empathy for them?
• 1:16:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:16:48
  SPEAKER_00: Did I give?
• 1:16:49
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 1:16:49
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 1:16:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because my gut, my internal me, the guidance system in me closed down.
• 1:16:58
  SPEAKER_00: If I would have given in that moment, I'd been giving out of guilt, anger, remorse, have to.
• 1:17:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that is not love.
• 1:17:07
  SPEAKER_00: That is not living from a communion of a power greater than yourself.
• 1:17:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm happy to say, because it's happened before, that I just need a couple, two or three days.
• 1:17:18
  SPEAKER_00: And literally, this particular man, he will communicate with me 10 or 12 times a day, trying to get conversation.
• 1:17:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's fine.
• 1:17:27
  SPEAKER_00: I get it.
• 1:17:28
  SPEAKER_00: He's trying to feed 25 little kids who have nothing.
• 1:17:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't blame him.
• 1:17:34
  SPEAKER_00: I never make him wrong, but I can't give until I'm in a place of overflow to give.
• 1:17:42
  SPEAKER_00: And folks, that's called autonomy.
• 1:17:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm happy to say, right before I got on this podcast, I could feel my heart opening up.
• 1:17:50
  SPEAKER_00: I can feel my overflow back.
• 1:17:52
  SPEAKER_00: When I'm done, I was going to do it before, but when I'm done here, I'll wire him money for a month or two of beans for these kids.
• 1:17:58
  SPEAKER_00: It had nothing to do with them, it had everything to do with me.
• 1:18:01
  SPEAKER_00: And why do I keep saying it?
• 1:18:03
  SPEAKER_00: How do we break free of the expectations of the world around us?
• 1:18:07
  SPEAKER_00: We gain a sense of autonomy.
• 1:18:09
  SPEAKER_00: What is autonomy?
• 1:18:11
  SPEAKER_00: Autonomy is when your okainess and your worth and your value and your esteem is self-contained.
• 1:18:18
  SPEAKER_00: You're doing it with you.
• 1:18:20
  SPEAKER_00: And in that, that's a perfect example of could I have given out of guilt?
• 1:18:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:18:25
  SPEAKER_00: Could I have given out of feeling sorry for these kids?
• 1:18:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:18:29
  SPEAKER_00: I could have.
• 1:18:30
  SPEAKER_00: But that's not love.
• 1:18:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's not.
• 1:18:33
  SPEAKER_00: When you give out of overflow, it's love.
• 1:18:36
  SPEAKER_00: Had a different experience with the podcast.
• 1:18:37
  SPEAKER_00: We were going to switch and we were going to switch carriers.
• 1:18:41
  SPEAKER_00: And right in the middle of it, my entire inside just cramped up.
• 1:18:46
  SPEAKER_00: It didn't feel right.
• 1:18:48
  SPEAKER_00: Something was going on in me.
• 1:18:50
  SPEAKER_00: I called my producer and I said, Wendy, you know, we can't do this.
• 1:18:55
  SPEAKER_00: She's like, Joe, I'm on it.
• 1:18:57
  SPEAKER_00: Boom, stop.
• 1:18:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I opened back up.
• 1:19:00
  SPEAKER_00: I did.
• 1:19:01
  SPEAKER_00: Autonomy is the answer to breaking free of society's expectation.
• 1:19:11
  SPEAKER_00: What is the gift?
• 1:19:13
  SPEAKER_00: The gift is the more you do it, the better you feel.
• 1:19:17
  SPEAKER_00: The better you feel, the more esteem grows.
• 1:19:21
  SPEAKER_00: Your value grows.
• 1:19:23
  SPEAKER_00: Is it easy?
• 1:19:24
  SPEAKER_00: No, not from the human side.
• 1:19:26
  SPEAKER_00: Was it easy when my friend years ago had unloving thoughts about me?
• 1:19:31
  SPEAKER_00: No, it was not.
• 1:19:33
  SPEAKER_00: It hurt.
• 1:19:33
  SPEAKER_00: It was hard to acknowledge that somebody who I cared about had lowest, low things to think about me.
• 1:19:44
  SPEAKER_00: It hurt.
• 1:19:45
  SPEAKER_00: How do we start the whole process?
• 1:19:49
  SPEAKER_00: Add I'm sorry into your conversation and then listen to all the voices that don't want you to say I'm sorry.
• 1:19:58
  SPEAKER_00: Listen to those voices.
• 1:20:01
  SPEAKER_00: Say you're sorry, anyways, every once in a while, but then listen to the voices and write them down.
• 1:20:07
  SPEAKER_00: The voices battling against saying I'm sorry are the voices that keep you trapped in the world's expectations.
• 1:20:21
  SPEAKER_00: Those are the voices.
• 1:20:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's where you're trapped.
• 1:20:24
  SPEAKER_00: The world is doing nothing to you.
• 1:20:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's your voices that are blaming the world for being trapped, but the world's doing nothing.
• 1:20:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's you and your voices.
• 1:20:36
  SPEAKER_00: How do you hear the voices?
• 1:20:38
  SPEAKER_00: Listen to the voices that will tell you not to say you're sorry.
• 1:20:42
  SPEAKER_00: Watch.
• 1:20:44
  SPEAKER_00: Just watch how every relationship you have, all of them, every human relationship you have.
• 1:20:53
  SPEAKER_00: If you say you're sorry every once in a while, because we're human, folks, we're human.
• 1:20:59
  SPEAKER_00: Say you're sorry every once in a while, you watch how those relationships grow.
• 1:21:03
  SPEAKER_00: You watch how that intimacy grows.
• 1:21:06
  SPEAKER_00: You watch how the safety grows.
• 1:21:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then you watch as you listen to your own voices, you'll see where those voices come from.
• 1:21:14
  SPEAKER_00: Heal the depths of yourself.
• 1:21:16
  SPEAKER_00: As you start identifying yourself as somebody willing to say, I'm sorry, and you start identifying yourself as somebody willing to look at your side of the street, both of those conscious perspectives of self are self-building concepts.
• 1:21:37
  SPEAKER_00: They're self-they bring value to yourself.
• 1:21:42
  SPEAKER_00: Truly, you want freedom, you want autonomy, you want to be able to pursue a passion that is limitless, you have to build your own esteem, you have to develop your own worth, and you have to create your own self-trust.
• 1:21:58
  SPEAKER_00: It all starts in the concept of, I'm sorry.
• 1:22:01
  SPEAKER_00: And from that place, you'll see, as more and more of us do it, more and more of us wake up.
• 1:22:08
  SPEAKER_00: As more and more of us wake up, more and more of us feel better about ourselves.
• 1:22:13
  SPEAKER_00: And the more and more of us feel better about ourselves in that natural state of feeling better, there's a more of a state of overflow.
• 1:22:21
  SPEAKER_00: And when the overflow is flowing, like it is for me and my orphans, I'll give them the money they need for their beans.
• 1:22:29
  SPEAKER_00: Did I dishonor myself when three days ago I was angry and I felt it close down?
• 1:22:37
  SPEAKER_00: No, I honored me and said no 72 hours ago.
• 1:22:43
  SPEAKER_00: And now I'm honoring me by giving them the money.
• 1:22:47
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 1:22:48
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'm over it.
• 1:22:50
  SPEAKER_00: So we follow that internal sense, and that's where esteem grows.
• 1:22:55
  SPEAKER_00: As you learn to trust it, that's where integrity grows.
• 1:22:59
  SPEAKER_00: And as you start identifying yourself as somebody humble enough to look at your side of the street, that's where self-esteem grows.
• 1:23:07
  SPEAKER_00: As that entire concept happens, more and more of us heal.
• 1:23:11
  SPEAKER_00: And as more and more of us heal, more and more of us live from the consciousness of the we.
• 1:23:17
  SPEAKER_00: And as we live from the consciousness of the we, then we start giving back from the consciousness of the we.
• 1:23:23
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how we heal humanity.
• 1:23:25
  SPEAKER_00: And folks, together we're doing it.
• 1:23:28
  SPEAKER_00: Together we're growing, together we're healing, together we're shifting, and together we're making a difference.
• 1:23:37
  SPEAKER_00: One smile at a time.
• 1:23:40
  SPEAKER_00: And from around the world, welcome to we.