Latest / Forged In The Dark / The Dirty Work
Transcript
- Forged In The Dark: Now, I find myself in the most interesting place right now, where I have recorded and re-recorded this episode so many times that my head is literally spinning. The work that you are doing, it's not pretty, it's not perfect, it's actually pretty dirty. I think a lot of people enter the growth and development journey thinking it's going to be rainbows and sunshine. And believe me, the rainbows and sunshine are there, but it is not always there. And the only way we get better at anything in life is by putting in the reps. And that goes for anything you do, running, learning how to cook, creating a podcast. So thank you for being here. Welcome to Forged in the Dark. I'm your host, Jamie. Let's dig in. Now I called this work dirty work because it's rarely clean. It rarely follows a straight line and it's not perfect. And you must be willing to get your hands dirty. Think of the last time you did yard work or worked in your garden to plant those pretty flowers. You have to be willing to dig in the dirt and dirt is what? Dirt is dirty. This growth journey forces you to confront parts of yourself that were built in survival. Now, the brain's job is to keep you safe. It's not there to keep you happy. It's not there to keep you peaceful. It's not there to make you comfortable. And we can thank our ancestors, the cavemen. ⁓ I mean, They really were in danger. You never knew when a saber-toothed tiger was gonna mull your face off. But that's not the world we live in today. But our brain doesn't know the difference between a real threat and a perceived threat and what you have done the longest. And that's feelings too. You know, it's crazy because I have a mentor who I just respect. And appreciate so much. And there was a time, a pretty long time ago that it was suggested that I was playing small. And I really fought that. Like, I really, like, there was so much resistance there. Like, what do you mean I'm playing small? I'm doing this and I'm doing this and I'm doing this and I'm doing this. And it would be months later. watching a YouTube video of Jesse Itzler, ⁓ gosh, I wish I could remember. I will have to find the YouTube video and put it in the show notes. And I just remember being there in the kitchen and next thing I knew I was up off my feet. And it was this moment of such great clarity, but it was such a painful truth. OMG, I am playing small. OMG, I'm playing small. OMG, I've been playing small my entire life. It was this moment of realization. And I say I'm playing small, I I was still making moves. I was still making moves, but those moves were so far lower than what I was capable of. Overcoming your fears is a dirty job. Dismantling your defense mechanisms. ⁓ my gosh, recognizing your patterns, your coping strategies. ⁓ Acknowledging or accepting what behaviors ⁓ created from childhood patterns. What are you? avoiding in your life? Where are you betraying yourself? Where are you living in an identity or a story that only knows how to struggle, that only knows how to play small, that is so scared of discomfort that you are afraid to get your hands dirty? Now, seriously, people talk about ⁓ about growth, ⁓ growth, healing, ⁓ evolution, becoming, creating, ⁓ the next version of yourself, whatever words you want to use. ⁓ think a lot of these words are romanticized. ⁓ I think it's really important that you understand that when you are doing this work, you can expect to, to grieve. You can grieve a lot. ⁓ get to. grieve versions of yourself that no longer exist. You get to grieve versions of yourself that made choices that this version of you wouldn't have and you get to offer forgiveness there too. You get to grieve visions of a life that you thought you were going to live. And this is not all of it. Sometimes in here it gets lonely and isolating. I was, I was at an event the other day and I walked in and I was all excited and this space was beautiful and I adore the host. ⁓ she's just an incredible human, but it didn't take me long to realize how far out of alignment I was with a lot of the attendees. And I mean, I didn't care. I mean, I'm proud of myself. I know how far I've come, but it's still uncomfortable at times to look around a whole room of people and identify with just a couple. That's the dirty work. And another reason it feels dirty is because your nervous system interprets unfamiliarity or the unknown with danger, even when the change is healthy, even when it's change you've chosen. And the deeper truth here is personal growth threatens the ego. It asks you to surrender control to something bigger than yourself. And I haven't even gotten to the place where I'm talking about literally the dirty job of sitting on the bathroom floor, wiping your own tears. Not that all of you are doing that, but you know what I mean. You know what comes with it. It's easy to say you want change. It's harder to get up with the early morning alarm. You say you want to be healthier, but it's easier to drive through the fast food joint. You, you, you've spent your life abandoning yourself. You've spent your life or maybe, maybe, maybe all of this isn't relevant to all of you. Please, please. If something doesn't fit, don't make it fit. But if you're anything like me, you spent your entire life being in service to others. to one day wake up and be like, what? I'm sad, I'm sick, I'm stuck. And then you get so busy working on yourself. You get so busy working on yourself that you can actually get lost in the work too. But here I am spending an entire episode and I don't even know, I don't know that I answered anything that I posed at the beginning. I'm just gonna be really honest with you guys. Today, this may not be the best episode ever and I guarantee that if you're here, there's something in here that you needed, even if it's just the acknowledgement of my imperfection with this episode. I am so frustrated right now at the number of times I have messed this up. going to go ahead and wrap this episode with just a couple final thoughts because I have botched it enough. You see that I've been perfect. You see that I'm laughing at myself or maybe you can hear me laughing at myself. At least I'm laughing at myself. I think Tuesday's episode was so fantastic ⁓ that I put a lot of pressure on myself today to be just as good. So maybe that's what you needed to hear today. Maybe that's what you needed to see today. ⁓ just because I speak on stages, just because I have taught people, ⁓ really my entire life, it doesn't mean I'm perfect. I'm definitely not perfect and I'm in here with you. And yes, my good days are way more often than the days that I stumble. But here we are on a stumbling day, stumbling over my words. My thoughts are not clear. And here I am like wanting to run down a list of reasons why it doesn't matter. The why doesn't matter. Honor where you are. I'm going to honor where I am and not give myself a hard time. The only editing I'm going to do to this edit or to this podcast or to this episode is to cut out some of the the longer pauses where I was trying to create my thought. But I think at the end of the day, the dirtiest work, maybe the most uncomfortable work is the honesty that you need to have with yourself about where you are and the acceptance about where you are because every day is not going to be perfect. Every one of these episodes is not going to land like Woo, fanfare. But despite all of that, the people who commit to the work usually discover something powerful. The goal was never perfection. Becoming someone you've never been before. It's not just going to come. I mean, it's going to come with great challenges. Yes. But it is going to come with freedom. It's going to come with this feeling of, ⁓ I can breathe. that, ⁓ I can breathe. Because underneath all of the pattern, all of the patterns and all of the conditioning. is a soul that's beautiful. It's a soul that's just dying to shine. Okay. I'm wrapping this jumbled episode and I am just, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for being here in the mess with me today. This is the work. This is the work. I am not going to beat myself up. I'm not going to give myself a hard time. Every episode is not going to be Emmy or Oscar winning performances. So right I will leave you with just this one question. What do you have to lose by letting a bad run or a bad recording stop you from moving forward? Okay, I'm sending you so much love. Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. Whatever you get out of these episodes, please pay it forward because That's such a big part of this work that nobody is really talking about. As we learn and grow, the people around us will automatically grow with us most of the time, most of the time, but also share what you learn with the world. Okay, until next time, bye.