Latest / Forged In The Dark / Facing Life's Challenges
Transcript
- Forged In The Dark: The other morning I woke up to my phone ringing, early, early morning phone call. The kind of early morning phone call where you know something is wrong before you even answer the phone. Now I was correct. And that phone call is what inspired this episode right here. So if you are at a phase in life where you are facing a lot of challenges, maybe they're unique challenges, maybe they're greater challenges, maybe you are even at that place where you are going through extended periods of peace, but then all of a sudden, thud, that other shoe comes down. You take the sucker punch to the gut. All of a sudden the wind's been knocked out of you. You have no idea even how to process what was just landed or what just landed in your lap. You have no idea how to process what just landed in your lap. The challenges, they seem to keep coming and coming. Well, that's what this episode is all about. The challenges that just keep coming. So if that's you, even if it's not you, please stick around. Welcome to Forged in the Dark. I'm your host, Jamie. Now there will be episodes that I tell stories. have a lot of fantastic stories. have funny stories. have miraculous stories. I have horrific stories. And today's a little combination of, of truth telling and storytelling because what my friend experienced the other day is very real. And I have a couple different explanations for it. Now there are two different ways I want to look at this today. ⁓ First being your belief system. This would be the of your brain. ⁓ 95 % of what you believe is determined by time you're around the age of seven. ⁓ 95 % of the choices you make every day on a subconscious automatic program in your brain. ⁓ So. If you believe that the other shoe is going to drop, inevitably that other shoe is going to drop. And it is an opportunity to look at your belief system, dive deep into your belief system, and not just stop there, but get busy reprogramming your belief system. Now, this is a short twice a week podcast, so I'm not telling you how to reprogram your belief system today. I am straight up telling you to get curious about your belief system. If you are in that cycle of problem problem, problem, problem, ⁓ can't catch a break. ⁓ It might be your belief system, but there's another angle I want to take with this today because when your calling is higher, you are going to face a different level of challenges. Whether you have acknowledged and accepted your higher calling or not, your challenges are going to be different. They are going to be designed to teach you. resilience and self-awareness and humility and discipline and surrender. And they're going to teach you how to trust the pressure, to not crumble under the pressure, but to rise when the pressure gets turned up. Because with a higher calling comes a greater responsibility. It requires you to grow and expand in ways. And I'll say it again, that require a different level of responsibility. So if you find yourself in a season of challenges, it could be one thing. It could be your belief system. It could be that your calling is higher and you're not answering, like you're not picking up the phone, or it could be a combination of the two. Now it was all the way back in 2018 when I would go into the most profound spiritual awakening that I had had to date back then. The problem was I didn't know what was happening. I had a 10 minute conversation with a stranger and we weren't talking about God. We weren't talking about the laws of the universe or spirituality or mindfulness. We were talking about washers and dryers and cars. It was just a normal conversation, but the presence. Was so great. I felt seen. I felt heard. I felt valued. And it was just that short 10 minute conversation that lit a fire in me. literally felt the energy start to build in my belly, like in the solar plexus area, right between your belly button and your sternum. I literally felt it. And over the next two weeks, the action that I that I took that I had been afraid to take for so long was absolutely amazing. But what happened next? I couldn't expect. I didn't understand. It was confusing. It was hard. And somehow I navigated it with more ease and grace than again, than I had dealt with anything up to that point. I used to tell people that there were tiny tornadoes ripping apart my life, every part of my life. And it would take me six months before I stumbled on some information about spiritual awakenings that really, really opened up my mind to exactly what had happened over that six month period. And ultimately I landed on everything that doesn't work has to go. God, universe, source, the divine, that which is greater has placed a higher calling in your heart has placed a higher calling on your life. And everything that doesn't match that calling must go. It has to go. And even if you resist, it will be forcefully removed from your life, or you will be stuck in a loop of repeating the same pattern over and over and over and over until you do something different enough to signal. that you are ready to step into your calling. Now this is where it gets a little tricky, because some people just think they're unlucky, but it has nothing to do with luck. It has everything to do with you. Opening up to your higher calling, facing the challenges. At this point in the conversation, let me sidestep a little bit back to that early morning phone call. Because as I got on the phone with my friend, I knew something was wrong. And as she told me what was going on, I immediately knew that this was not a problem that was going to be solved anytime soon. And it was not a problem that was going to be solved between the two of us. and I immediately knew that my job in that moment was to hold loving space for my friend who was in shock and reeling. But what they said towards the end of the conversation is really why I'm recording this episode this way today. Because they said, Jamie, I'm a good person. I have a good heart. Why do these horrible things keep happening to me? Jamie, this happened and this happened and this happened and this happened and this is all within seven days. I am a good person. I, I take care of people. What on earth is happening? Why are these things happening to me? And as the conversation continued, they said to me, please make this into a podcast because I'm not the only one going through this and I want the world to know that. So, so this is what I'll tell you. I'm not saying it's not you. It might be you. It might be your belief system. You may be accidentally self-sabotaging yourself, reliving the same pattern over and over and over, and I can tell you from experience, until you acknowledge the pattern and put your foot down and say no more, that pattern will continue. But I'm also saying that it's not your fault. Like it's totally your fault, but it's not your fault. And I know, I know that's confusing. And sometimes I feel like I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth because I am. Because there are parts of this that even if it's not your fault, as soon as you know it's there, it becomes your responsibility to do something different. It becomes your responsibility to do something different. This is where I love to quote Spider-Man, with great power comes great responsibility. If you don't know, it's not your fault, but once you do, it is. Now, that's more for the belief side of it. If you do not know that you are running an old program, well, today I am telling you, spend some time, dig into your belief system, And, and look, look, because I can tell you when you intentionally start digging in your belief system, when your intention is to find things you will, and it does become your responsibility to believe in a different outcome and take the action that matches where you're going. But when we're talking about that higher calling, whether you've accepted it or not, ⁓ the challenges. They're not there to break you. They're there to build you. They're there to refine you. They're there to teach you. They're there to show you. Show you what you're missing. Show you how you need to learn. Show you how you need to grow to become this version of yourself that is capable of handling all of these things. Because probably the hardest-hitting truth of this entire episode is as you grow, so will your challenges. Building resilience, self-awareness, humility, discipline, surrender, trust under pressure. It requires a delusional level of faith. Faith in what you're doing, faith in where you're going, faith in what you're building. Now I know sometimes it takes these tragic and traumatic experiences to wake us up, to shake us to our core, to make us sit down and have that reckoning with ourselves that makes us dive deep into our belief system and find the things that are stopping us, find the things that are slowing us, keeping us exactly where we are or not allowing us to grow fast enough. But you're here. So I believe that you do have a higher calling inside of you. And these challenges are not here to break you. They are here to teach you. Now with my friend, I know there are many lessons here that, that in the course of the hour we were on the phone, I was already making a mental list of things to come back to in another conversation. Now here's the thing. When something just happens, when it's just fresh, that is not the time to try to solve someone else's problems. It's not. They need to process. They need to sit with it. They need to understand how it feels in their body. And they need an opportunity to find the solutions themselves. But I'm just really good at helping people find solutions simply by asking the right questions. So whether you find yourself right now in the thick of this season or you've been there before, you know that as you're growing, this work is not for the faint of heart. And if you're not willing to be honest with yourself, you're not going to get anywhere. Now, my friend has lessons and everything that went down over the last week. ⁓ it's so... So heavy. It is so heavy that I'm actually surprised I'm not crying right now just thinking about it. These are real problems that she has to spend her time and her energy solving. But what if, what if the challenges are not here to break you? What if the challenges are here to mold you, to shape you, to refine you into the person you're becoming, to get you ready for your higher calling? Okay, I just looked up and I'm long again. ⁓ my goodness, So this is where I will leave you today. But please know that there is help and there's resources out there for you when you are doing the deep belief work. and I guess my final thought is... Let yourself pan out. Get that higher perspective. Think about it. If you're on the top of a skyscraper, the, like looking off of the observation tower, the observation deck, you can see the whole city. You might not be able to see every person. You may not be able to see every detail, but you can see from a higher vantage point. You can see more. than if you are behind an 18-wheeler on the highway. So let yourself rise up. Let yourself view that higher vantage point. All of these problems, all of these challenges, all of these obstacles, what if they are simply showing you what is not working in your life? Okay, that's it. Until next time, bye.