A speaker argues that pain is inevitable but suffering is optional. He lost his alcoholic father at 15, then reframed that trauma as a catalyst for purpose instead of staying stuck in victimhood. The shift happens when you rewrite the story you tell about what happened.
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Is your past holding you back from your true potential? When you think about your past, are you a victim or are you a victor? And let me explain what I mean by that. Most people, when they think about their past, sometimes they've had good past, sometimes they've had bad past. If you've had a bad past, are you still a victim of that past? Are you still a victim of that past? Or have you overcome that past and become the victor of it? Here's the thing. Most people like to play the victim card. They like to have a past. They don't like to. It just happens. And they stay with it forever. They stay with the victim mindset all their life. I'm going to tell you something though. If you have had a bad past, you're not a victim. You are a volunteer. And I understand some people that's really going to piss off. But let me explain what I mean by that. Your past happened to you. If it was painful, pain is inevitable. You're going to have some people are going to have painful past. You're going to have pain happen to you. You might be going through pain now, and you're probably going to go through pain in the future. Pain is inevitable. Suffering is not. You have to be a volunteer in order to suffer. Pain will happen to you. Suffering is not something that has to happen. So when I say you're a victim, that means that something could have happened to you in your past. But when I say that you are a volunteer, that means that you allow it to still hold you back. You allow it to still to still be painful today. Did it happen, whatever it was? Yeah, it did. But you don't have to allow that to hold you back anymore. You don't have to allow that to still take up time in space, mental capacity in your brain every single day. You are allowing it to happen. And I get it. I've been through painful stuff. You've been through painful stuff. But it doesn't have to hold you back anymore. It doesn't have to hold us back anymore. We're in this together, right? We're in this together. You don't have to suffer from what happened to you in your past anymore. I'm going to let a secret out to you, though. If you don't get rid of this suffering, it will hold you back forever. You get one, one life to live. Do you want something that happened to you in your past that you cannot change to hold you back for the rest of your life? You get one chance. Do you want this event that cannot be changed to hold you back. You can't change the event, can you? No. But what you can do is change the way that you view the event. Change the way that you think about what happened to you. Right. That's how you become a victor. For me personally, if you know my story, my father was an alcoholic and he passed away when I was 15 years old. Yeah, that could hold me back. I could allow that to hold me back. I could allow the pain that I went to through to still exist and to make me suffer for the rest of my life. But instead, what I decided to do. And please don't take this as me bragging. This is not me trying to act like I'm better than you or anybody else. I'm just giving you my example of what happened with my life. I took that, what was a terrible thing, and allowed it to be a great thing for me. One thing that's weird for people to hear is I always say this. The worst day of my life was when my father passed away. The best day of my life was when my father passed away. And it wasn't because he was out of my life anymore. It was because of the fact that I came to the realization that I get one chance to live on this planet. I'm gonna do everything that I possibly can. And I wake up with. With a hunger to do everything that I possibly can. Because I know that day is approaching, and it might be approaching quicker than I realize. So what did I do? I can't change the past, but I can change the story that I'm telling myself about that painful moment in the past. It happened. I can't change happened for you. Whatever it is, you can't change it. But what you can change is the story that you're telling yourself. If it happened in the past, you're not a victim of it. If you're still allowing it to hold you back, you're a volunteer because pain is inevitable. Suffering is not. The way that you change from a volunteer victim to a victor is you change the story that you're telling yourself about the event. Instead of that being something that holds you back, it can be something that pushes you forward. And so ask yourself, what's holding me back? What painful event is holding me back? What's the story that I'm telling myself about that painful event? And how can I change that event that's holding me back? The story that I'm telling myself about this event? How can I change that story into something that's going to empower me and something that's going to propel me forward. And that is how you switch from a volunteer victim into a Victor. So if you like this episode, please share it with someone that you know. If you know someone that would get something from it, please share it with them. Also, hit the subscribe button. And I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.
