Embracing the Journey: Finding Wealth in Imperfections and Life's Unpredictability

Let's take a voyage together, meander through the winding road we call life, and face head-on the realities of depression, anxiety, and loss. Buckle up because we're about to unearth how these experiences can color our journey, spark unexpected victories, and teach us to love with a depth only grief can inspire. And wealth? It's not about your bank balance but the treasures you hold in your heart.

Journey with us into the second half of our discussion and let's embrace our imperfections. We're all beautifully flawed beings with unique skills and weaknesses. By learning patience, understanding, and compassion, we can live life with an unhinged zest. Get ready to hear an unforgettable story from 2016 that encapsulates life's unpredictability and the essence of living each moment to its fullest. Let's shift our perspective and learn to relish the journey of life, with all its twists and turns.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Take a deep breath, another one, once more. If you just did that, that means you just filled yourself with life. If you're plagued by depression, anxiety, loss, just know that there's a point to it all. This is the journey, and the journey is not the destination. Your depression is your mind trying to sort it out, which means you're on your way.

Speaker 1: 0:52

Fear, anxiety, is a thing that you fear and you're trying to figure it out. The thing about fear is, once you confront it, it no longer becomes fear, because you know what it is. Fear is the unknown. Fear is the thing that has not happened. It is in your mind. Loss is simply victory in disguise, because we have lessons that we must learn in this life. We go through our day to day and bad things happen and maybe we think why does it always happen to us? But the fact of the matter is it doesn't only happen to us, it happens to everyone. We can either have that mindset that why me? Why does this only happen to me? We all have the same thing. We just have it in a different state or form, however you want to phrase it.

Speaker 1: 2:01

I came to the understanding that what I pray for, what I ask for, I don't really know what it is that I'm asking or praying for, because when I ask for strength, in my mind, I automatically envision that, oh my goodness, I just prayed for strength. That means I'm going to be able to lift more, I'm going to run faster, I can handle more stress. That's what I thought that I was really praying for, and those are results. Those are not the process. The process to become stronger, the thing that I prayed for I couldn't prepare for that the process that made me the person that I am right now. I had to live it, and when I lived it, it was horrible, it was agonizing, it was depression, it was anxiety and it was loss.

Speaker 1: 3:08

When I prayed for wealth, in my mind and in my heart I thought I was praying that my savings account would get bigger, my stock portfolio would just keep increasing. I thought that it meant that everything that I already had would simply just multiply into more. I didn't know that there was a price attached to the thing that I was asking for. They say faith without works. There was sacrifices that needed to be made that I didn't know at the time that I needed to do, because I felt that, oh, my sacrifice was simply just me putting money aside for my paycheck, or me using my birthday money to invest in something. I thought that was the sacrifice. I thought the sacrifice was me working longer hours. I thought that was sacrifice and I thought that was the thing that was going to lead me to being wealthy one day.

Speaker 1: 4:18

Boy, was I far, far far from the mark, which resulted in me having anxiety and learning what anxiety really was, because I didn't know what I was praying for, what it entailed, as I should say, because that was the process and not the result of what I was praying for. When I prayed that I wanted to be a person that loved unconditionally and a person that was patient, and a person that was understanding and a patient person that was kind. Never would I thought that I would be challenged. Where would I think that I would ever reach a point in which I could be so angry? I did not know that me asking to be more loving meant that I would be confronted with hateful situations or that I'd be confronted with loss and not wanting to love, because I was afraid that if I loved something, that I would lose it. That was, again, the process and not the destination. I learned that it's all a part of the process of this journey and I've learned to embrace it. You see, 2016 taught me all of these things and it's crazy to think that 2016 was on almost 10 years ago.

Speaker 1: 6:02

I remember it like it was any other day, but this day in particular was fresh in my mind and it was so perfect the perfect of all perfect days. I woke up, the weather was perfect in Florida, which it never is it's either humid or hot, or both. I remember driving and I let my windows down and I was just taking in the scenery of where I lived and I was driving by the lake and I thought to myself this is so beautiful. How amazing is it that I get to live in such a beautiful place surrounded by nature? I could be having the most stressful day, and there's about a mile stretch before I get home that once I hit that mile stretch, if it's night time, I can see the moon reflecting on the lake and it's so calming. And if I had a stressful day, by the time I get home, that stress melted away. If it's the daytime, just the breeze off of the lake and how calm the water is. It makes me feel centered, and this day was just that it was reverse. I started my day being centered.

Speaker 1: 7:43

My day started off being perfect, and I remember going to class and I remember it was about time for finals and I thought to myself I crushed everything today. I knew that I probably had perfect on every exam that I did. I felt it because I prepared for it, and whenever I prepared for something, it was almost as if there was a guarantee that the outcome would always be what I desired. And so I left school with this emotional high, just knowing that I did my best, I worked my butt off and now I can finally relax. And I decided to stop at Subway on my way home, and it was ironic that I ran to one of my really, really good friends at Subway, because I just didn't expect to see them, you know, at that particular Subway, because it was out of there, you know, their neck of the woods, and we talked and we were just saying, hey, you know what, you just finished your finals, I just finished my finals. Let's grab a drink tomorrow, you know, let's get something to eat, whatever. Let's just do something relaxing and fun, cigars, something. And I said, of course, let's do it. And that felt good. It felt like the perfect way to end a stressful day, with a calming conversation with a really, really amazing friend, amazing human being, and that was 2016.

Speaker 1: 10:00

I remember going home and everything felt amazing. You know, I was telling my wife that man I ran into my friend and we're going to go out tomorrow and whatnot, and she's excited because I hadn't been hanging out with people a whole lot and she was telling me that I needed to go hang out again and become more social. The very next day, I remembered that I left my laptop in the school library. So I go, I pick up my laptop and I remembered, you know, just, you know like my phone was vibrating but I didn't want to talk to anyone and it was just an absurd amount of phone calls and text messages. I finally decided to respond and everyone's asking me if I'm okay and I'm, like, okay about what? And it turns out my friend was murdered that same night and I remember feeling heavy. I remember wanting to cry and the tears wouldn't come out. I remember my heart just hurting and I remember holding my chest reading all those text messages and not knowing what to do other than just wanting to go home and close myself off from everyone and everything to just process what I had just heard.

Speaker 1: 11:59

That lost hit hard because prior to that I hadn't lost anyone in my life, you know, not since I was a child. So that pain felt so much, so much more deep, because it felt like the first loss that I ever had in my life. And that same day as I'm going home, and surrounding the election time as well, the drive was just so dreadful it felt like an eternity to get home For the first time. When I hit that mile stretch, the pain was still there, the sadness was still there, all the things that I was hoping that this mile stretch would give me the relief. It never came.

Speaker 1: 13:06

When I got home, I thought you know what? Let me check my portfolio. Just a little bit of good news. Everything. The growth would do something for me. Mentally I didn't lose something. I felt that would give me an emotional boost to see that at least something else was going right, and I started to count my blessings that I know I did well on my finals. I know I smashed it. I know financially I'm doing well, my portfolio is doing well the day before I have so much to be grateful for. And though this loss is devastating, I still have a lot to be thankful for.

Speaker 1: 13:54

When I looked at my portfolio, I saw that I had lost like $12,000. That was like a kick in the Cajones. It was like man, the thing that I was hoping that was going to give me a boost. Another thing that was going to give me a boost didn't give me that emotional boost that I was hoping for, and so I had to try to process it and still I didn't cry. I almost felt like I wasn't human because I didn't cry, and that made me frustrated as well, because I wanted to, but the tears wouldn't come. I remember the anger that I was holding onto in that moment and how powerless I felt, and I always told myself I'd never be that way. But it turns out I am that way because I'm human.

Speaker 1: 15:03

That same day, I was supposed to go to the doctor with my wife and we were going to see how our baby was progressing. She was pregnant at the time and when we went they could no longer hear a heartbeat and the doctor just trying to be optimistic and trying to be as positive as he can be and saying, hey, we'll try this and we'll try that. And these things happened and we'll try something else, until the final conclusion was that we had a miscarriage and that was it. That was the thing that really, really broke me that day. That day I lost a friend, I lost money and I continued losing money, and I didn't realize that throughout the day I was losing everything that I had built up in that same day, and then I lost what was supposed to be my first born child, and I remember thinking that, man, all the things that I was working towards, all the investments that I had made, were going to be for this child. This child was going to have more than enough. This child was going to not have to worry about so many things.

Speaker 1: 17:11

But, in the end, what I prayed for, what I thought that I was praying for, was just a part of the process, the process that teach me love, because I lost so much in one day and it took me a while to process all those emotions. If I could endure all of those things in one day. It taught me that nothing on this planet is impossible. It made me, it forced me to love deeply. It forced me to understand what wealth was, and that wealth isn't the money that's in your bank account. Life is what's in the heart, because a person that's wealthy, even if you took away every single thing that they had, they could do it all again and get it all back. And then some A rich person cannot do that. A wealthy person can do that over and over and over and over again, each time better, each time faster.

Speaker 1: 18:42

And so I no longer held on to money. I no longer had a fear of losing money because I lost it all, and when it came to understanding what love was, logically, it doesn't make sense that human beings grieve something that never came to be and think about it. I never spent time with this child, I never held this child, and yet it still broke my heart Because I projected a reality that didn't exist. I thought about the future, but I didn't enjoy the now. Sometimes we live so far into the future that we forget about the right now. Now I have to think about the right now. Now I don't have to worry about the fear of losing anything, because I have learned that I'm not in control of anything. I'm not in control of how much time I have on this earth. I'm not in control over how much money I have, because, at the end of the day, the economy can crash and I can lose it all. There are no guarantees except for death and taxes.

Speaker 1: 20:33

But I also learned the value of a true friend. I also learned the importance of being present with those you love. I learned to see the beauty in all things, in the simple things, in the conversations that I have day to day. I think there's this beauty in humanity that if we just looked into the eyes of another human being, we would see how vulnerable we all really are and that we all crave the same things, that we all want to be loved and that we all want to be happy. And we're all just figuring it out. We're all on this giant rock trying to figure it out and no one has all the answers. And each day we get closer and closer to the day that we are no more. And that's powerful. There's a strength in that as well.

Speaker 1: 22:01

Of course, we all want to be wealthy, we want to have nice things. We all want to know that the journey it's not going to be hard, but it is hard. We all want to know that we're going to have a billion dollars, but what are the odds of us having a billion dollars. We all want to say that we want love, but then when you get love, you forget that you have it Because love was just the journey and not the destination. Because once you have the thing that it is that you prayed for the thing that you longed for. It's just the thing that you check off on the list oh, I'm married, I have kids, that's it.

Speaker 1: 22:52

I work, and you forget to say that I love you, you forget to say the thank yous, you forget to just be, you forget to just take time to just talk, watch a TV show, go for a walk. And all of that gets lost in the grandiose-ness of our goals and what society tells us that we need to chase, and we get lost in keeping up with the Joneses that we forget to appreciate what we have. And then we say I want to love like that one, not realizing how much work it took to get that kind of love. Love is work. Love is never easy. Love is your greatest strength and your greatest weakness, but at the end of the day, only you can make this life truly virtuous, only you can make this life precious.

Speaker 1: 24:23

And we all have a choice to make at the end of the day, and that choice is are we going to be all that we can be? Are we going to learn from the pain? Are we going to choose to overcome? I want to leave you with this you are strong and if you've ever overcame depression, anxiety or loss, even if you had the most supportive people in your corner, you still had to make a choice to overcome those things. So pat yourself on the back. And even if you didn't have support in your corner and you still managed to overcome these things, pat yourself on the back because you made the choice to overcome. No one knows what another human being is going through. We don't. We think we do, but we don't.

Speaker 1: 25:27

And to my friends out there that are hurting, that are experiencing depression, that feel that they're alone and that they don't have anyone or that the world is against them you're still amazing, you're still great and you're just figuring it out. You are the best that you can be right now and you're still growing, and this is a part of the process, and the process is not the destination. So it's okay to not be the strongest person around right now. It's okay to not have the nicest things right now. It's okay that you let your beard grow out. It's okay that you're in the basement right now figuring it out, because it's exactly what it is you're figuring it out.

Speaker 1: 26:31

I once saw something that Jim Carrey said that I held on to, and he said depress simply means deep rest. Your mind is overloaded, overcrowded and it just needs some rest. And it's all just temporary and even if it takes you five years to overcome it, you still have your whole life ahead of you. So it's okay to not be okay and it's okay to take the time to be away from all the noise and all the naysayers. Be you and take the time to heal, because if you don't take the time to heal, you're going to take the time to hurt, and healing and hurting are two separate things. When you're hurting, you can sometimes hurt others in the process. When you're healing, you can touch others in the process.

Speaker 1: 27:48

Learn who you are and learn that who you are isn't perfect and nobody is, and anyone who says otherwise they're not being honest with themselves, because no one has it all together.

Speaker 1: 28:07

Some people may be good at giving advice, but they're not good at listening to their own advice. Some people may be great with finances, but they're bad with communication. So there is no perfect human being, and your journey right now, the thing that you're enduring, that's okay. It's okay. Today was one of those days where I saw so many people being unhappy and I could have an emotional reaction and be mean or crude, or I could just say that they're people just trying to figure it out too, and just like they seem angry on the outside, when I looked into their eyes, I could see the sadness behind their eyes and that alone told me that it's okay for them to be not okay, and it's also okay for me to be patient and be loving, because we only have this one life that we know of and all we have is each other. So thank you for tuning in and if you enjoyed this content, please like and subscribe for more.