June 3, 2025 • 22 mins
Episode 81: Reframing Life is not Fair
Embracing Life's Unfairness: An Inspirational Journey
In this episode of 'Conversations with Kimen,' host Kimen Petersen shares personal stories and reflections on the theme of life's inherent unfairness. Drawing from his own childhood experiences and life challenges, Kimen discusses how reframing the belief that 'life is not fair' can offer new perspectives and inspire personal growth. He emphasizes the advantages of being born in affluent countries, the unexpected benefits of life's struggles, and the importance of empathy and compassion. Join Kimen as he explores how shifting our focus can transform pain into strength and inspire us to help others. Follow and share this podcast to spread inspiration and insight.
00:00 Introduction to Conversations with Kimen
00:28 A Childhood Lesson on Fairness
02:00 Early Memories and Self-Perception
05:06 Growing Up Independent and Introverted
07:02 The Importance of Meaningful Relationships
08:50 Reframing Life's Unfairness
13:01 Finding Strength in Adversity
21:41 Conclusion and Call to Action
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
. Conversations with Kimen is aboutinspiration, life lessons, and wisdom.
Your host, Kimen Petersen shareshis stories to inspire you to live
a more soulful and illuminated life.
The topics covered in this podcastare as personal opinions inspired by
life, experience, and conversationsshared with amazing people.
Kimen hopes to encourage you tobe guided by life in the flow.
(00:23):
So the whole journey is moremanageable and joyful and fulfilling.
Reframing life is not fair.
I'll never forget this.
I was probably about five or six yearsold and my brothers are having a fight
(00:44):
and I'm trying to get them to stop 'causeI know we're gonna get sent to bed.
So of course I get this bright idea.
Well, I'm not involved in thisfight, so I'm gonna hustle upstairs.
I'm gonna go to the bathroom.
And then when dad comes down,comes down and yells at everybody
and sends him to bed, I can stayup because I'm not involved.
(01:06):
So my dad comes to the top ofthe stairs like, that's it.
Shut off the tv.
It's time for you to go to bed.
And I come outta the bathroom andhe is like, you too, you go to bed.
I'm like, but it's not fair.
And he's like, life's not fair.
Get used to it.
And it's like, oh, life is not fair.
And I spent this whole life.
(01:28):
Believing that life's not fair andthat that was a terrible thing.
You know, I'd go through problems,um, you know, go through some pretty
harsh things and life's not fairthat I should be hurt in this way.
(01:50):
And of course, everythingI went through also.
I created these beliefs about myself thatI didn't fit in and I wasn't good enough.
I mean, one of my first memories,that's interesting they say that, um,
sometimes your very first vivid memorycan have a lot, a really revealing
(02:13):
picture of your beliefin the world and like.
Like, it creates a big belief in yourlife, in your world, and in order to
deal with that belief about life and yourworld, you, you choose a compensation.
So now I'll explainhow that worked for me.
(02:34):
So I'm, I'm a toddler.
I don't know how old.
It's my first memory, probably inbetween a one and a half and two.
And I'm in a crib andit's a pretty dark room.
The TV's on in the corner and there'salso obviously blackout blinds.
Um, and there's a crack in the blind,so there's light coming through
(02:57):
and there's little dust particlessparkling through the air.
And my mom's sleeping on the couch,which I'm sure is because like.
I don't know.
She, if, if I was like one and a halfor or two, she's probably pregnant with
my little brother and she's got my olderbrother who's only a couple years older
(03:20):
than I am, so she's probably exhausted.
But that, you know, that kind ofcognition isn't in your head when
you're, when you're a toddler.
Her
and I really wanted attention,
yet something inside meunderstood that I ha it.
Is it like or believe that I wantit to be enough just as I am.
(03:45):
So I just wanted attention, but Ididn't want to have to cry for it.
'cause if you have to cry forit, then it's not, you're not
getting attention because youdeserve intention or attention.
You're getting attentionbecause you cried.
And something in mylittle mindset, I'm not.
(04:06):
Enough or I'm not good enough.
And so my compensationwould be, I'd be alone.
And it's kind of interesting, youknow, my mom used to tell me when
I was a, when I was a young child,she's like, you would never cry.
(04:27):
Not when you're hungry.
Not when you had to go to the bathroom.
Nothing.
You never cry.
She said, I could.
I would actually forget you were aroundbecause there wasn't a pee from you.
And I wonder if that was that kindof decision of that little child.
And she said, another interesting thingyou did is like when the light was
coming in through the window, you gointo the cupboard and you pull out a pot
(04:50):
and you reflect light, um, on the wall.
And I wonder if that was a reminder,
just, just a reminder of, youknow, the sparkles going through
the air of the dust in that room.
And I grew up to be, uh,very extremely independent.
(05:10):
Right?
And like, um, yeah, extremelyintroverted, not really needing,
needing people.
There were times in my life where I almosthad no one in my life and I used to spend
my time at my lunch break at at school.
(05:32):
Wandering by myself away fromas many people as I could,
and yet something in me believed thatI was supposed to be around people.
But when I, when I was aroundpeople, I, it just didn't feel right.
And it's fascinating as Igrew up and I got older, I.
(05:57):
I ended up with someamazing people in my life.
I've got, I got a friend who's been inmy life since probably I was 15 or 16,
and this was one of the, one of thepeople that, I think in my twenties,
I did everything to try to push thisperson away, and mainly because, you
know, my belief underneath, I'm alone.
(06:22):
Was, I'm not good enough, so I don'treally deserve to have people in my life.
Now, my compensation for being notgood enough would be I'd be alone.
But the funny thing is that littledynamic, what plays out is the more
you're alone, the more you feel not goodenough or not worthy, or not enough.
(06:42):
So the more I was alone, the worse I felt.
But I tried my hardestto push this person away.
They just wouldn't go.
And at some point in my existence,I gave up, I said, okay, the, the
sky is blue and this person ismy friend, and there is nothing I
will ever be able to do about that.
So I just surrendered to that.
And then I realized like, although,although I do really, uh, like
(07:11):
I'm introvert, I do not need.
Anyone in this life, like I would befine living, living as our hermit in the
deep in the forest right all by myself,
that there's certain people in this life
who there's something so special aboutthem and this, this friend is one of
(07:33):
those people that I will go beyond mynature to ensure they stay in my life.
And it was interesting, uh, I think Ihad this, uh, chat with my wife once.
It's like, and I told her, I just, Ihonestly, I don't really need people.
I don't need anyone in my life.
(07:54):
But you are somebody so special to methat I go beyond my nature to be alone
because I need to have you in my life.
It's like when I first met, met my wife,I was like, oh my God, this is somebody
I could spend the rest of my life with.
(08:16):
And then I found out she wasengaged at the time and something
in me just said, that's okay.
'cause at the time I was planningon becoming a Buddhist monk.
It's another story.
I think you can find that in my story.
One of the other episodes,
I'll just, I'll just lether determine what it means.
(08:36):
Like I, I'll let her determinehow she'll be in my life because I
need this human being in my life.
So I knew from the moment, like,it's funny and you can know.
So like I was saying,
life is not fair.
Now.
I wanna get really clear onall the ways that life is not
(08:59):
fair, plays to our advantage.
M the majority of the peoplelistening to this will, will have
been born in a country in the west,
like Canada.
Like it's not fair.
Um, because other, other countriesI was talking to an, uh, an app, a
(09:25):
really amazing female PhD studentthat I work with, and it was
like, you know, life isn't fair.
You know, 'cause like there's a lot ofthe world that women cannot get education
and they could actually get killed.
So it's like life's not fairfor them and it's not fair that
(09:48):
you should get that in a sense.
Like, don't get me wrong, that I don'tthink, I'm not saying we should take
that away, but the fact that life's notfair sometimes pays into our benefits.
Like we live in a country where we'rein the top 3% of wealth in the world,
and if life was fair, we'dbe down the chain about 50%.
(10:11):
Right.
And that's what I'm trying to say islike if life was fair across the board,
we would have the same challenges likefinancially, economically, education and
everything that the majority of the poor.
Poorer places have, and wewould be much closer to them.
(10:32):
And because life's not fair, we endedup coming on the good side of that.
So in a sense, life's not faircan put us on the good side.
You know, for instance, life's notfair that like I grew up with never
(10:54):
needing food, always having shelter.
Because not everybody does havethat, because if life was fair,
if it was balanced, it was normal.
I would've been like a lot of other people
that don't have three squaremeals a day, that don't have new
(11:14):
clothes, that don't have a roof.
You know,
if life was fair and balanced, I would've,I could've been born in a country
where I would've never been able to.
You know, get regular workand improve myself over time.
I may have been in a countrywhere you're just barely living to
(11:37):
just scraping by 'cause like yeah.
You know, I would've if, like, the truthis, the majority of the people on this
earth can't, can't stop what they'redoing at 40 and go back to school.
(11:57):
But once again, I landed on thegood side of life's not fair.
Like they can't, but I could becauseI, I live in this country where there's
opportunity, there's chances, there'sways we can make things work and yeah.
Did, did we create somedebt when we did that?
Taking a break?
Yeah.
Is it displaced?
Some stuff Sure.
(12:18):
But still, still so much better off,
you know.
You think is, has everybody on thisplanet gone through so, so many incredible
challenges that we're like, I looked at itfor so long that life's not fair, that I'm
so hard done by, and I've gotta go throughall this stuff and I've living a life of
(12:43):
depression and like, like self-loathing.
But,
but then not everybody gets.
Massive challenges which buildmassive empathy and compassion.
Right?
I've talked about this before, how there'sthis zen Buddhist, um, parable of how
(13:08):
do you make a fine, fine weapon and noteverybody gets to become a fine weapon.
Like some people have livesthat are, they're not as rocky.
And in a sense you could think, oh man,like life's not like life's not fair.
I gotta go through all this.
And they don't have to.
(13:31):
But if you think about the ZenBuddhist parable, about how you
create a fine weapon, so you takethis metal and you heat it up till
it's white hot and you bend it,you bend it together, and you have.
Pound it flat and you heat it and youbeat it, and you heat it and beat it.
And the more times you do this,the better the, the metal,
(13:52):
the better the substanceto create a fine tool.
So if, if life was fair right acrossthe board, I would've never had to, I
would've never gotten to go through allthese things and I would've never had the.
Ability and the access to likedifferent seminars and books and
(14:13):
like time, like actually just time
to work my way through thingsand like work with the number of
therapists that I've worked through.
If life was fair, I wouldn't get all thisand I wouldn't come out as this person who
has this deep compassion for other humanbeings and wants to change the world.
(14:35):
See, the only way I got here.
Was to go through hell
and then feel my way through it, andthen reframe a whole bunch of stuff.
Now, if I was born in a differentcountry, I would've never had the
(14:56):
time for this, nor would I had thenutrition, nor would I had the shelter.
So life isn't fair for themthat they don't get the chance.
It and because life isn't fairglobally, I got the opportunity.
You know, life isn't fair.
(15:17):
Doesn't always look like a detriment.
And that does not mean being like callousor braggart or, or like, or minimizing
what other human beings go through.
But the truth is life is not fairand sometimes it's a good thing if
(15:43):
you end up on the right side of that.
It's one of these reallyinteresting concepts.
Like everything I try to do, I try toreframe things so I can take a look like.
Like I said, so I'm dyslexic, so I seepatterns, so I see things differently
(16:05):
than other people, and I hope that thatis the gift that I can somehow articulate.
Like if,
if you could hear this messagethat like there's a, there's a
very great possibility that some ofthe things you have been through,
(16:25):
some of the toughest things you.
Been through.
If you can find a way to reframe them,yes, they were not fair for you at the
time, but the truth is, it's also, ifyou can find your way through that and
find the gift in it, then it's not fairthat you were able to develop yourself
in a way that you can help others.
(16:49):
See that's, that's one ofmy biggest messages is that
we need to try to reframe.
The way we look at things.
See, if you change the way you look atthings, the things you look at change.
If you're resisting the fact that there'sanything beautiful in your suffering,
(17:14):
then it will just stay like that.
It will just stay suffering.
It'll stay woe as me.
It will stay as pain.
And you'll never find the gold that'shidden in the box underneath that,
because trust me, there's so muchbeauty when you've come through it.
(17:35):
And it doesn't mean you pushby it and you ignore it.
Know you feel what you feel.
You, you gotta feel your way through it.
There's o there's no way, otherway, there's, you can't go over, you
can't go under, you can't go around.
The only path is through.
The only path is feeling yourway through the whole thing.
The only path is
(17:57):
finding a way to not take it sopersonal because a lot of it wasn't
personal and maybe some of it was.
And if you can look at things from adifferent angle, not as how it hurts you.
But how going through a struggle likethat made you understand what it feels
(18:20):
like to go through a struggle like that.
And that built somestrength and resilience.
You'd see that.
Oh wow.
So there is something in there like, Iam strong because of what I went through.
Not in spite of what, what I wentthrough, but because, and then if
you can take another look at it,like the thing that you went through.
(18:43):
Or the things that you wentthrough and you can see how,
you know how much it hurt, like,like pain right down to your soul.
And then you really got and understoodthat what it feels like to hurt that
deeply and rather than choosing tobecome better and angry at the world
(19:07):
that you took on a different path.
And you realize that, oh man, this lessonis a lesson that I can use to help the
world, and I can develop it into empathyand compassion for other human beings,
and then I can start giving my life
(19:29):
to helping others.
Not in spite of what you've been through,but because of what you've been through.
And I can use that to sit withsomebody in pain and make sure they
don't feel alone in their pain.
'cause I feel like that'sthe highest calling for me.
(19:50):
And maybe, maybe it's likethat's the way I look at things.
So what you focus on expands.
And that's for me, but likewhat about the strength?
Fighting through things created,creates strength over and over and over.
It's like the athlete I was talking aboutthere, like, you know, until it gets
hard, I can't give a hundred percent.
(20:12):
And that is indicating somebodywho's been through some stuff, right?
And rather than like life gettinghard, rather than using that as
an excuse to, to like give up orquit or not give a hundred percent.
They look at it totally different.
(20:32):
They like totally reframe itand they go, yeah, I'm gonna
push harder because it's hard.
I'm gonna come up against, I'm gonna meetthat resistance with resistance and I'm
gonna push harder because guess what?
I know what hard feels like, but I alsohave overcome it, overcome it so many
(20:52):
times that I can overcome it here to.
See,
life's not fair,
and it never was, and itprobably never will be.
(21:13):
And yes, there's a bad side of that,but open your eyes to the blessings
of being possibly born or arriving.
In a country with freedom,
a country with enough, more than enoughfood, a country with accessible shelter
(21:36):
like I'm in Canada, acountry with healthcare
I hope this can help you reframethe fact that life is not fair.
Thank you for listening to thisepisode of Conversations with Kimen.
Please remember to follow andlike this podcast on Instagram,
(21:57):
Spotify, apple Podcast, Pod Beanor wherever you find this episode.
Please share this podcast withanyone you feel would be inspired
and benefit from this content.
. Conversations with Kimen is aboutinspiration, life lessons, and wisdom.
Your host, Kimen Petersen shareshis stories to inspire you to live
a more soulful and illuminated life.
The topics covered in this podcastare as personal opinions inspired by
life, experience, and conversationsshared with amazing people.
Kimen hopes to encourage you tobe guided by life in the flow.
(00:23):
So the whole journey is moremanageable and joyful and fulfilling.
Reframing life is not fair.
I'll never forget this.
I was probably about five or six yearsold and my brothers are having a fight
(00:44):
and I'm trying to get them to stop 'causeI know we're gonna get sent to bed.
So of course I get this bright idea.
Well, I'm not involved in thisfight, so I'm gonna hustle upstairs.
I'm gonna go to the bathroom.
And then when dad comes down,comes down and yells at everybody
and sends him to bed, I can stayup because I'm not involved.
(01:06):
So my dad comes to the top ofthe stairs like, that's it.
Shut off the tv.
It's time for you to go to bed.
And I come outta the bathroom andhe is like, you too, you go to bed.
I'm like, but it's not fair.
And he's like, life's not fair.
Get used to it.
And it's like, oh, life is not fair.
And I spent this whole life.
(01:28):
Believing that life's not fair andthat that was a terrible thing.
You know, I'd go through problems,um, you know, go through some pretty
harsh things and life's not fairthat I should be hurt in this way.
(01:50):
And of course, everythingI went through also.
I created these beliefs about myself thatI didn't fit in and I wasn't good enough.
I mean, one of my first memories,that's interesting they say that, um,
sometimes your very first vivid memorycan have a lot, a really revealing
(02:13):
picture of your beliefin the world and like.
Like, it creates a big belief in yourlife, in your world, and in order to
deal with that belief about life and yourworld, you, you choose a compensation.
So now I'll explainhow that worked for me.
(02:34):
So I'm, I'm a toddler.
I don't know how old.
It's my first memory, probably inbetween a one and a half and two.
And I'm in a crib andit's a pretty dark room.
The TV's on in the corner and there'salso obviously blackout blinds.
Um, and there's a crack in the blind,so there's light coming through
(02:57):
and there's little dust particlessparkling through the air.
And my mom's sleeping on the couch,which I'm sure is because like.
I don't know.
She, if, if I was like one and a halfor or two, she's probably pregnant with
my little brother and she's got my olderbrother who's only a couple years older
(03:20):
than I am, so she's probably exhausted.
But that, you know, that kind ofcognition isn't in your head when
you're, when you're a toddler.
Her
and I really wanted attention,
yet something inside meunderstood that I ha it.
Is it like or believe that I wantit to be enough just as I am.
(03:45):
So I just wanted attention, but Ididn't want to have to cry for it.
'cause if you have to cry forit, then it's not, you're not
getting attention because youdeserve intention or attention.
You're getting attentionbecause you cried.
And something in mylittle mindset, I'm not.
(04:06):
Enough or I'm not good enough.
And so my compensationwould be, I'd be alone.
And it's kind of interesting, youknow, my mom used to tell me when
I was a, when I was a young child,she's like, you would never cry.
(04:27):
Not when you're hungry.
Not when you had to go to the bathroom.
Nothing.
You never cry.
She said, I could.
I would actually forget you were aroundbecause there wasn't a pee from you.
And I wonder if that was that kindof decision of that little child.
And she said, another interesting thingyou did is like when the light was
coming in through the window, you gointo the cupboard and you pull out a pot
(04:50):
and you reflect light, um, on the wall.
And I wonder if that was a reminder,
just, just a reminder of, youknow, the sparkles going through
the air of the dust in that room.
And I grew up to be, uh,very extremely independent.
(05:10):
Right?
And like, um, yeah, extremelyintroverted, not really needing,
needing people.
There were times in my life where I almosthad no one in my life and I used to spend
my time at my lunch break at at school.
(05:32):
Wandering by myself away fromas many people as I could,
and yet something in me believed thatI was supposed to be around people.
But when I, when I was aroundpeople, I, it just didn't feel right.
And it's fascinating as Igrew up and I got older, I.
(05:57):
I ended up with someamazing people in my life.
I've got, I got a friend who's been inmy life since probably I was 15 or 16,
and this was one of the, one of thepeople that, I think in my twenties,
I did everything to try to push thisperson away, and mainly because, you
know, my belief underneath, I'm alone.
(06:22):
Was, I'm not good enough, so I don'treally deserve to have people in my life.
Now, my compensation for being notgood enough would be I'd be alone.
But the funny thing is that littledynamic, what plays out is the more
you're alone, the more you feel not goodenough or not worthy, or not enough.
(06:42):
So the more I was alone, the worse I felt.
But I tried my hardestto push this person away.
They just wouldn't go.
And at some point in my existence,I gave up, I said, okay, the, the
sky is blue and this person ismy friend, and there is nothing I
will ever be able to do about that.
So I just surrendered to that.
And then I realized like, although,although I do really, uh, like
(07:11):
I'm introvert, I do not need.
Anyone in this life, like I would befine living, living as our hermit in the
deep in the forest right all by myself,
that there's certain people in this life
who there's something so special aboutthem and this, this friend is one of
(07:33):
those people that I will go beyond mynature to ensure they stay in my life.
And it was interesting, uh, I think Ihad this, uh, chat with my wife once.
It's like, and I told her, I just, Ihonestly, I don't really need people.
I don't need anyone in my life.
(07:54):
But you are somebody so special to methat I go beyond my nature to be alone
because I need to have you in my life.
It's like when I first met, met my wife,I was like, oh my God, this is somebody
I could spend the rest of my life with.
(08:16):
And then I found out she wasengaged at the time and something
in me just said, that's okay.
'cause at the time I was planningon becoming a Buddhist monk.
It's another story.
I think you can find that in my story.
One of the other episodes,
I'll just, I'll just lether determine what it means.
(08:36):
Like I, I'll let her determinehow she'll be in my life because I
need this human being in my life.
So I knew from the moment, like,it's funny and you can know.
So like I was saying,
life is not fair.
Now.
I wanna get really clear onall the ways that life is not
(08:59):
fair, plays to our advantage.
M the majority of the peoplelistening to this will, will have
been born in a country in the west,
like Canada.
Like it's not fair.
Um, because other, other countriesI was talking to an, uh, an app, a
(09:25):
really amazing female PhD studentthat I work with, and it was
like, you know, life isn't fair.
You know, 'cause like there's a lot ofthe world that women cannot get education
and they could actually get killed.
So it's like life's not fairfor them and it's not fair that
(09:48):
you should get that in a sense.
Like, don't get me wrong, that I don'tthink, I'm not saying we should take
that away, but the fact that life's notfair sometimes pays into our benefits.
Like we live in a country where we'rein the top 3% of wealth in the world,
and if life was fair, we'dbe down the chain about 50%.
(10:11):
Right.
And that's what I'm trying to say islike if life was fair across the board,
we would have the same challenges likefinancially, economically, education and
everything that the majority of the poor.
Poorer places have, and wewould be much closer to them.
(10:32):
And because life's not fair, we endedup coming on the good side of that.
So in a sense, life's not faircan put us on the good side.
You know, for instance, life's notfair that like I grew up with never
(10:54):
needing food, always having shelter.
Because not everybody does havethat, because if life was fair,
if it was balanced, it was normal.
I would've been like a lot of other people
that don't have three squaremeals a day, that don't have new
(11:14):
clothes, that don't have a roof.
You know,
if life was fair and balanced, I would've,I could've been born in a country
where I would've never been able to.
You know, get regular workand improve myself over time.
I may have been in a countrywhere you're just barely living to
(11:37):
just scraping by 'cause like yeah.
You know, I would've if, like, the truthis, the majority of the people on this
earth can't, can't stop what they'redoing at 40 and go back to school.
(11:57):
But once again, I landed on thegood side of life's not fair.
Like they can't, but I could becauseI, I live in this country where there's
opportunity, there's chances, there'sways we can make things work and yeah.
Did, did we create somedebt when we did that?
Taking a break?
Yeah.
Is it displaced?
Some stuff Sure.
(12:18):
But still, still so much better off,
you know.
You think is, has everybody on thisplanet gone through so, so many incredible
challenges that we're like, I looked at itfor so long that life's not fair, that I'm
so hard done by, and I've gotta go throughall this stuff and I've living a life of
(12:43):
depression and like, like self-loathing.
But,
but then not everybody gets.
Massive challenges which buildmassive empathy and compassion.
Right?
I've talked about this before, how there'sthis zen Buddhist, um, parable of how
(13:08):
do you make a fine, fine weapon and noteverybody gets to become a fine weapon.
Like some people have livesthat are, they're not as rocky.
And in a sense you could think, oh man,like life's not like life's not fair.
I gotta go through all this.
And they don't have to.
(13:31):
But if you think about the ZenBuddhist parable, about how you
create a fine weapon, so you takethis metal and you heat it up till
it's white hot and you bend it,you bend it together, and you have.
Pound it flat and you heat it and youbeat it, and you heat it and beat it.
And the more times you do this,the better the, the metal,
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the better the substanceto create a fine tool.
So if, if life was fair right acrossthe board, I would've never had to, I
would've never gotten to go through allthese things and I would've never had the.
Ability and the access to likedifferent seminars and books and
(14:13):
like time, like actually just time
to work my way through thingsand like work with the number of
therapists that I've worked through.
If life was fair, I wouldn't get all thisand I wouldn't come out as this person who
has this deep compassion for other humanbeings and wants to change the world.
(14:35):
See, the only way I got here.
Was to go through hell
and then feel my way through it, andthen reframe a whole bunch of stuff.
Now, if I was born in a differentcountry, I would've never had the
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time for this, nor would I had thenutrition, nor would I had the shelter.
So life isn't fair for themthat they don't get the chance.
It and because life isn't fairglobally, I got the opportunity.
You know, life isn't fair.
(15:17):
Doesn't always look like a detriment.
And that does not mean being like callousor braggart or, or like, or minimizing
what other human beings go through.
But the truth is life is not fairand sometimes it's a good thing if
(15:43):
you end up on the right side of that.
It's one of these reallyinteresting concepts.
Like everything I try to do, I try toreframe things so I can take a look like.
Like I said, so I'm dyslexic, so I seepatterns, so I see things differently
(16:05):
than other people, and I hope that thatis the gift that I can somehow articulate.
Like if,
if you could hear this messagethat like there's a, there's a
very great possibility that some ofthe things you have been through,
(16:25):
some of the toughest things you.
Been through.
If you can find a way to reframe them,yes, they were not fair for you at the
time, but the truth is, it's also, ifyou can find your way through that and
find the gift in it, then it's not fairthat you were able to develop yourself
in a way that you can help others.
(16:49):
See that's, that's one ofmy biggest messages is that
we need to try to reframe.
The way we look at things.
See, if you change the way you look atthings, the things you look at change.
If you're resisting the fact that there'sanything beautiful in your suffering,
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then it will just stay like that.
It will just stay suffering.
It'll stay woe as me.
It will stay as pain.
And you'll never find the gold that'shidden in the box underneath that,
because trust me, there's so muchbeauty when you've come through it.
(17:35):
And it doesn't mean you pushby it and you ignore it.
Know you feel what you feel.
You, you gotta feel your way through it.
There's o there's no way, otherway, there's, you can't go over, you
can't go under, you can't go around.
The only path is through.
The only path is feeling yourway through the whole thing.
The only path is
(17:57):
finding a way to not take it sopersonal because a lot of it wasn't
personal and maybe some of it was.
And if you can look at things from adifferent angle, not as how it hurts you.
But how going through a struggle likethat made you understand what it feels
(18:20):
like to go through a struggle like that.
And that built somestrength and resilience.
You'd see that.
Oh wow.
So there is something in there like, Iam strong because of what I went through.
Not in spite of what, what I wentthrough, but because, and then if
you can take another look at it,like the thing that you went through.
(18:43):
Or the things that you wentthrough and you can see how,
you know how much it hurt, like,like pain right down to your soul.
And then you really got and understoodthat what it feels like to hurt that
deeply and rather than choosing tobecome better and angry at the world
(19:07):
that you took on a different path.
And you realize that, oh man, this lessonis a lesson that I can use to help the
world, and I can develop it into empathyand compassion for other human beings,
and then I can start giving my life
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to helping others.
Not in spite of what you've been through,but because of what you've been through.
And I can use that to sit withsomebody in pain and make sure they
don't feel alone in their pain.
'cause I feel like that'sthe highest calling for me.
(19:50):
And maybe, maybe it's likethat's the way I look at things.
So what you focus on expands.
And that's for me, but likewhat about the strength?
Fighting through things created,creates strength over and over and over.
It's like the athlete I was talking aboutthere, like, you know, until it gets
hard, I can't give a hundred percent.
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And that is indicating somebodywho's been through some stuff, right?
And rather than like life gettinghard, rather than using that as
an excuse to, to like give up orquit or not give a hundred percent.
They look at it totally different.
(20:32):
They like totally reframe itand they go, yeah, I'm gonna
push harder because it's hard.
I'm gonna come up against, I'm gonna meetthat resistance with resistance and I'm
gonna push harder because guess what?
I know what hard feels like, but I alsohave overcome it, overcome it so many
(20:52):
times that I can overcome it here to.
See,
life's not fair,
and it never was, and itprobably never will be.
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And yes, there's a bad side of that,but open your eyes to the blessings
of being possibly born or arriving.
In a country with freedom,
a country with enough, more than enoughfood, a country with accessible shelter
(21:36):
like I'm in Canada, acountry with healthcare
I hope this can help you reframethe fact that life is not fair.
Thank you for listening to thisepisode of Conversations with Kimen.
Please remember to follow andlike this podcast on Instagram,
(21:57):
Spotify, apple Podcast, Pod Beanor wherever you find this episode.
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and benefit from this content.
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