August 19, 2025 • 27 mins
Episode 103: Practicing Alchemy: From Ashes to Inner Transformation
In this episode of "Your Inner Advocate," host Kimen Petersen explores the concept of alchemy—not as turning lead into gold, but as transforming life’s darkest moments into personal growth and wisdom. Drawing from his own experience of burnout and recovery, Kimen shares how hitting rock bottom can strip away illusions and reveal your true self.
He outlines four steps to transformation: acceptance of what is, shifting perspective to see challenges as lessons, building resilience by getting up one more time than you fall, and integrating these lessons to help yourself and others. The episode is filled with practical tools, including reframing failure as feedback, asking better questions, creating resilience rituals, and surrounding yourself with supportive people.
Podcast Episode Timeline:
- 0:00 — Introduction to "Your Inner Advocate" and host Kimen Petersen
- 0:43 — Episode theme: Alchemy as a metaphor for personal transformation
- 1:11 — The symbolism of ashes: Endings and new beginnings
- 2:06 — How life’s struggles can fuel transformation
- 2:30 — The necessity of struggle for growth (muscles, diamonds, seeds)
- 3:39 — Turning lemons into lemonade: Embracing and transforming bitterness
- 4:50 — Personal story: Burnout, loss, and hitting rock bottom
- 7:00 — Realization: Stripping away illusions and finding true self
- 8:41 — The process of alchemy: Turning pain into power, wounds into wisdom
- 9:32 — Four steps to transformation:
- Acceptance (9:32)
- Shifting perspective (10:29)
- Action through resilience (13:01)
- Integration (15:34)
- 16:10 — The importance of sharing your story and helping others
- 16:50 — Facing the bottom: Meeting your most honest self
- 18:03 — Rising from the bottom: Growth begins in the dirt
- 19:15 — Practical tools for transformation:
- Reframing failure as feedback (20:15)
- Asking better questions (23:36)
- Creating resilience rituals (24:54)
- Choosing your circle wisely (25:56)
- 26:21 — Final message: Your struggles are the path, not a detour
- 27:10 — Outro and call to action
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Welcome to Your Inner Advocate,a podcast by Kimen Petersen,
formerly Conversations with Kimen.
This podcast is a space forinspiration, soulful insights,
and meaningful life lessons.
Your host, Kimen Petersen drawsfrom personal stories and powerful
conversations with remarkablepeople to help illuminate your path.
These episodes reflect his livedexperiences and thoughtful perspectives,
(00:25):
all aimed at encouraging you to live lifewith greater authenticity, joy, and ease.
Your inner advocate is here tohelp you tune in, trust your inner
wisdom, and move through life withmore clarity, flow, and fulfillment.
Welcome back . Today I want totalk about alchemy, and most people
(00:50):
have heard of it back in the darkages when they were trying to
find a way to turn lead into gold.
And I think alchemy has a parallelin life and the idea of maybe in
our life taking ashes and turningthem into inner transformation.
(01:11):
Let's get started.
You know, there's something about ashes.
They're all this left when thefires burned everything away.
They're a symbol of endings,
but they're also materialfor new beginnings, and
(01:31):
sometimes life burns us down.
A dream falls apart, a relationship ends.
An injury stops us in our tracks
and we lose what we thoughtwe couldn't live without.
And in those moments, it's tempting tobelieve that the story is over, but I want
(01:53):
you to know that ashes are not the end.
They are the beginning of alchemy.
Today we're talking about how life'smessiest and darkest moments can
become fuel for our transformation.
(02:13):
Because if you can't meet yourselfat the bottom, you will never
get to meet yourself at the top.
And the truth is, the top doesn'tmean what you think it means.
We'll get there.
Struggle is not punishmentsof its preparation.
(02:33):
We live in a world that triesto avoid pain at all costs.
We reach for distractions.
We push away uncomfortable feelings.
We run from anythingthat looks like failure
or anything that's too hard.
But there's a paradox in this life thatwe're living, one that we don't think
of very often, but with no struggle.
(02:57):
There's no progress.
Think about your muscles.
They only build and grow after beingchallenged by resistance, by tearing,
just enough so they can build stronger.
Think about diamond.
(03:19):
A diamond is formed under unimaginablepressure over long periods of time.
And in the end you get one ofthe hardest substances on earth
and even think about a little tiny seed.
You ever heard the the saying thatif we had the faith of a mustard
(03:43):
seed, we could move mountains.
It's this little tiny seed thatmakes this incredibly large plant,
and you get this seed,it's buried in darkness.
You know, before it can breakfree and reach the light.
(04:04):
And I think we've all heard thephrase turning lemons into lemonade.
And yes, it's a cliche for sure,
but there's truth in it.
The important thing to remember islemonade doesn't happen instantly.
First, you have to holdthe sourness in your hands.
(04:26):
You have to taste it, and you haveto, you, you have to choose to
add something, new sugar, water,time to make it in something else.
And the same thing is true for struggle.
You can't skip the bitterness, butyou can choose what to do with it.
(04:50):
Let me share a personal story,and you probably heard this
before, when I was struggling,
I, I'd taken a job that was I toomuch, I wasn't prepared, I didn't
have enough experience, and yet Ithought it was the dream of my life.
(05:12):
I thought this was it.
This is what was gonna make me this.
I'd finally be important,I'd finally be worthy.
And the truth is, I thought it was aworthiness of the people outside looking
in, but I was, look, it was me tryingto find worth in myself externally,
(05:37):
and it was the hardest job.
I'd ever had, and the most stressful job
over time, I'd lost so muchweight that my clothes were
just barely hanging off my body.
I'd wake up at two or three in themorning and I couldn't get back to sleep.
So I'd just go back to work, to to work.
(05:59):
Uh, and I thought I was done.
I thought that was it.
'cause you know, I burned all theother bridges on my way up to this.
And I'd taken on something thatI should have never taken on.
You know, the thing I couldn't see isI was literally being stripped down
of parts of me that were not real.
(06:23):
Pieces of me were being burned away.
This thought process, like havingan incredible, like a high.
Profile job would mean I was importantor I would be happy, or I'd found joy
in making a certain amount of money.
Everything was being torn away.
(06:44):
My ego, my illusions of who Iwas, my false sense of control,
and then
I almost lost my health.
I ended up in the emergency wardthinking I was having a heart attack
(07:06):
and stripped down tothe bare basic nothing.
Knowing that I couldn'tcontinue in that place
and possibly confronting my ownmortality on that hospital bed,
I reached out to whateverunknowing, unseen force.
(07:28):
Was out there and said, Hey, getme through this and I promise
I'll figure out what I'm supposedto be doing in this life.
Because I knew deep down inside thatI wasn't doing what I was supposed to.
But I had all these illusions,all this stuff built up,
and I knew I should havebeen doing something else,
(07:49):
but I was afraid.
And when I was stripped downand burned away, everything.
And I was left with nothing.
That was the place Icreated everything from.
(08:09):
It's funny, like I've heard, it said thatyou cannot create something onto something
else In order to create something new,you need to come to a space of nothing.
And one of the only ways todo is burn away everything
until you're left with nothing.
(08:31):
And it's almost like I used to saywhen I got low enough, so low that
I was lying on my back in a ditch.
Looking up, I knew two things.
One, when you're deep in a ditch in thedarkness, you can only see the stars.
And two, when you're onyour back deep in a ditch,
(08:55):
any movement is improvement.
Anything you do moves you up.
So let's get back to alchemy, likethe process of alchemy is interesting.
Alchemy is an ancient idea.
(09:16):
It's turning base metals into gold.
And in our life, it's aboutturning pain into power wounds,
into wisdom, mess, and demeaning.
And here's some of thefour steps that I've found.
The step one of everything and when Iwas in the darkest place in my life is,
(09:37):
was you know, until you can accept what?
So just that as it is not your storyabout it, but what, so you're trapped.
And once you accept what'sso, then you have a chance.
So the first step is acceptance,and this is the hardest one
(09:59):
to accept, means to stop fightingthe fact that something happened.
It doesn't mean you like it, itdoesn't mean you're okay with it.
It just means you're o you'rejust willing to face it.
You are willing to feel it becauseyou know I say this often, you have to
(10:20):
feel what you feel when you're feelingit, and you have to feel your way all
the way through it, right to the end.
Step two,
the shift of perspective.
Once of the emotions have had a spaceto breathe, you can start asking,
(10:41):
what, what is this here to teach me?
Not like when you're coming from aplace of emotion and hurt and anger
or frustration, it's like, why is thishappening to the, why is life so unfair?
Why, why, why?
And when you come to a perspectiveshift, you can shift it to like,
what is this here to teach me?
(11:03):
And that's, that's what Iwas, I was starting to learn,
is that life was here toteach me that I was here for
something else, something bigger.
I wasn't here for acceptance of outside.
I was here to find acceptance inside.
I was, I already knew who I was,who I am, what the difference
(11:27):
I wanna make in this world.
I already knew all this,
and it was time to listento the inner wisdom.
You know, in life, depending onhow you look at it, pain can be
our teacher or our tormentor.
The difference is how we choose to see it.
(11:48):
What if instead of seeing somethingas it that happened to you,
what if you could shift it a littlebit and say it's happening for you?
Because the honest truth
is after I found my way through theeducation into the work I'm doing
now, um, I also got invited to teach acourse and I used to tell the students.
(12:15):
That, you know, I went througha lot to get here and it
was really tough in my life.
There were so many things I went to gethere and, but the one thing I realize now
is everything happened for me, in fact, tothe point of if I had to do it all again.
(12:38):
As long as I knew I was comingto the same outcome, I would go
through it five, 10 times harder.
As long as I knew I was coming tothis place, I could endure anything.
See all that stuff that lookedlike the worst things in my life,
it happened for me, not to me.
It was guiding me.
(13:01):
Step three, action through resilience.
And you gotta realize thatresilience isn't about never falling.
It's just about gettingup every single time.
And here's the secret, and I love this.
And what a reframe.
(13:23):
What a great way to focus.
You only have to get up onemore time, then you fall.
That's it.
Just one more time.
And some days getting upmight mean running a mile
and other days it just meansgetting outta bed and taking
(13:44):
a shower, and they both count.
You know, one of the secretsin life, I was taught this
in in grade 11 English class.
My teacher, Mrs. Samor, said.
There's a secret to happiness in life,and it's extremely simple, but people
(14:04):
don't get this very often, and shesaid, it doesn't matter if you're the
CEO of the biggest company in the,in the country or in North America,
or if you're sanitation worker.
This is the very simple secret tohappiness is you simply do your
very best every day according tothe day, which means you never.
(14:28):
Ever compared today's best to yesterday'sbest because today you may move mountains
and tomorrow it might be all you cando to just get outta bed and show up.
And both were your best.
I heard it, uh, explained incredibly well.
(14:51):
I saw this speaker and he was, hewas coming on to speak and his voice
was scratchy and gravelly, and hewas, he was like, Hey guys, you know?
I am committed in my life to alwaysgiving you a hundred percent,
and I'm gonna do that today.
But you gotta understand that likeI just got my voice back today, so
I'm literally running at about 30%.
(15:11):
But what you can counton me today for sure.
100%. I'll give 100% of that.
30%.
What a perspective.
A,
just give a hundred percentof what you have today.
That will bring joy into your life andyou'll always know you've done enough.
(15:33):
Step four integration, and thisis where the real transformation,
the real alchemy happens
when you carry that lessonforward into how you live, how
you love, and how you lead,
and the mess becomes a message.
(15:55):
The wound becomes wisdom
and you pass this on to someone else andthe ashes become soil where something
new can grow, not just for you, butfor other people and for the world.
That is my dream.
That is why.
That is why it says Sunday, my one dayoff a week and I'm gonna spend a bunch of
(16:19):
hours recording messages like this, and.
Refining my skill.
'cause I really want, I really want
my mess to become the message,my wound to become the wisdom.
I wanna pass it on to somebody else.
And I pray that the ashes of everythingthat's burnt away of my life becomes
(16:43):
soil where something incrediblecan grow and I will, I'm willing
to do the work over and over again.
And I'm willing to fall on my faceover and over again and get back
up over and over again becauseI'm here for something big.
I truly believe, and I honestly thinkpeople who embody this, athletes
who came back from devastatinginjuries, I know so many leaders
(17:06):
who've turned personal tragedy.
Into things that changed the life foreveryday people who took the hardest
chapter of their life and used it asa blueprint for someone else's hope.
That is alchemy.
There's no other definition for me.
So let's talk about the bottom though.
(17:27):
You, you know,
I mean, everybody fears the bottom.
No, we fear it, you know?
And we think if we ever hit rockbottom, we'll never recover.
But here's the truth,
(17:49):
and I know it lying in that bed,that hospital bed, Mars hooked up
to me thinking this is how it ends.
The bottom is where you meet themost honest version of yourself.
It's where your titles, your achievements,and your masks get stripped away.
(18:14):
It's where you discover the most importantthing in this life is what is left.
When you take all that other stuff away,
what is left when there's nothingelse, and what's left is enough.
Now, it's actually more than enough.
It's you.
I met myself at the bottom.
(18:37):
Raw, real untamed.
And once you've met thatversion of yourself, you're
no longer afraid of failing.
I am not, you know, I'vesaid this before to people.
I am not afraid of dying.
I don't want to, I don't wanna rush it
'cause my message not done.
(18:57):
In fact, I want to, I wannamake my life as long and as
ful like, and like learn and.
Refine my message over and over again, andI want the last thing I do on this planet
is to one, send out one more message.
(19:17):
But you know what?
When you've hit the very bottom,you're never ever gonna be afraid of
falling again because you know, oneimportant fact that you can rise.
You can rise again.
And we're gonna go backto the soil analogy.
The richest growth begins in the dirt.
(19:40):
If you can't meet yourself
at the top, or sorry, you can't meetyourself at the top without first
meeting yourself in the depths,
you can't meet yourself at the top.
Without first meetingyourself in the depth,
(20:03):
you can only go as high as you can go low.
You can only feel joy to the depth.
You can feel sorrow.
So how about some practical tools?
Tools for transformationsounds like a good idea.
Like, well, what can we do in real life?
(20:27):
You can take failure or not quiteaccomplishing the dream in the space
of time that you wish to do it.
You can reframe failure as feedback.
It's life saying, it'snot saying you failed.
(20:48):
You say it's learnedbecause if you can learn.
You know, if you think of it, you,you've got so many ways you can
approach things in life, right?
And you have to start somewhere,and you have to go down a path
and you have to try something.
(21:10):
And if it doesn't work, you cantake you, you can do one of two
things you can keep on cycling.
The definition of insanity istrying the same thing over and over
again, expecting a different result.
So you can keep on trying the thing.
And I know we've all has have an examplein the life of something we've done
cyclically over and over and over againtill we finally learned the, learned it.
(21:33):
Like literally that was the deal with me.
Like I kept on moving inthe same kind of direction.
Until I finally learn that that'snot what I'm supposed to be doing,
and I need to burn it down and I needto start from scratch, go back to
school, and come out with a real life.
(21:54):
So there's a finiteamount of things you like.
Failures before you hit success.
So you try something, it doesn't work.
You can either say, I failed or I learned.
I learned.
That's not something I'm gonna do.
I'm gonna cross that all.
I'm gonna try somethingelse that doesn't work.
I'm gonna try something else.
And you could spend a life of doing that.
You think about, I believe itwas Thomas Edison, like over 900.
(22:17):
Failed attempts at the light bulb beforehe actually created a working model.
And I believe one of his workingmodels is still burning today.
Like get that, like what a success, how,you know, think about a child, right?
Learning to walk and falls down andlike after 10 or 20 tries do, do they
(22:39):
go, well, I guess walking isn't for me,I'll just crawl the rest of my life.
Uh, no.
Like you need to havethe resilience of a baby.
Learning to walk in life.
Just keep on going.
Doesn't work.
Try again.
Doesn't work.
Try again.
Doesn't work.
Try again.
One more time
(23:00):
to really transform life.
Um, yeah.
It was like recently one ofmy patients was asking me.
Like, you know Kim, andyou're so happy all the time.
I'm like, well, no, I have my moments too.
I just don't live there very long.
And they're like, what do you like,what do you do when things go wrong?
Like, like, 'cause you knowwhen things are going wrong.
(23:23):
I'm like, why me?
And like, why do I haveto go through this again?
Oh, you know, why can't I get thisright and why this and why that?
And I was like, nah.
I used to ask questions like that too.
But what I learned a long time ago isI would ask myself, n now I ask myself,
(23:45):
what is this trying to teach me
or what's next I,
because.
Yeah.
Part of life is given by thequestions you ask yourself every day.
So if you want a better life, justask yourself better questions.
(24:07):
I went to, uh, Tony Robbins seminar downin LA and that's one of the things he
said is like, if you, the quality of yourlife is directly given by the quality of
the questions you ask yourself every day.
If you want to ask your, ifyou want a better life, ask
yourself better questions.
So like, I took it literally and I wrotedown 10 questions, and I wake up first
thing in the morning and I grab my pieceof paper and I ask 'em out loud like, how
(24:31):
can I, how can I be a better man today?
Who can I help today?
How can I make a differencein the world today?
What can I learn today?
You know, how can I be a better.
Like just incredible questions becausethe, the truth is the brain's gonna fill
you up with all these negative questionsunless you fill it up with positive.
(24:54):
Another tool, you couldcreate a resilience ritual.
You know, for some people maybeit's, um, it's journaling.
For some people it's runningconsistently day after day.
Working out.
Maybe it's a consistentmeditation practice.
(25:21):
Maybe it's walking in nature.
Maybe it's connecting with people.
Maybe like me, you decide that youwant to do an inspirational podcast
with the hopes of helping oneperson a day and the rest are gravy.
(25:42):
Yeah, I, I put out social media postsevery single day with a positive message.
It's part of my practice in life andthe, the practice of making a difference.
Another great tool for transformation isgoing to be choose your circle wisely.
(26:03):
Surround yourself with people
who actually see the gold in you.
Even when you're covered in ashes,
here's what I want you to remember.
(26:24):
Even write these down.
Your struggles are not detours.
They are the path,
the fire that feels like it's destroyingyou may actually be refining you.
You are not broken.
You are becoming.
(26:46):
Thank you for listening to this episodeof Your Inner Advocate, a podcast by
Kimen Petersen, formerly Conversationswith Kimen if you found value in
today's episode, please follow likeand share the podcast with someone
who you think may benefit from it.
You can listen on Apple Podcast.
Spotify, Podbean, and connect onInstagram @ your inner advocate.
(27:10):
Until next time, keep listening toand developing your inner advocate.
Welcome to Your Inner Advocate,a podcast by Kimen Petersen,
formerly Conversations with Kimen.
This podcast is a space forinspiration, soulful insights,
and meaningful life lessons.
Your host, Kimen Petersen drawsfrom personal stories and powerful
conversations with remarkablepeople to help illuminate your path.
These episodes reflect his livedexperiences and thoughtful perspectives,
(00:25):
all aimed at encouraging you to live lifewith greater authenticity, joy, and ease.
Your inner advocate is here tohelp you tune in, trust your inner
wisdom, and move through life withmore clarity, flow, and fulfillment.
Welcome back . Today I want totalk about alchemy, and most people
(00:50):
have heard of it back in the darkages when they were trying to
find a way to turn lead into gold.
And I think alchemy has a parallelin life and the idea of maybe in
our life taking ashes and turningthem into inner transformation.
(01:11):
Let's get started.
You know, there's something about ashes.
They're all this left when thefires burned everything away.
They're a symbol of endings,
but they're also materialfor new beginnings, and
(01:31):
sometimes life burns us down.
A dream falls apart, a relationship ends.
An injury stops us in our tracks
and we lose what we thoughtwe couldn't live without.
And in those moments, it's tempting tobelieve that the story is over, but I want
(01:53):
you to know that ashes are not the end.
They are the beginning of alchemy.
Today we're talking about how life'smessiest and darkest moments can
become fuel for our transformation.
(02:13):
Because if you can't meet yourselfat the bottom, you will never
get to meet yourself at the top.
And the truth is, the top doesn'tmean what you think it means.
We'll get there.
Struggle is not punishmentsof its preparation.
(02:33):
We live in a world that triesto avoid pain at all costs.
We reach for distractions.
We push away uncomfortable feelings.
We run from anythingthat looks like failure
or anything that's too hard.
But there's a paradox in this life thatwe're living, one that we don't think
of very often, but with no struggle.
(02:57):
There's no progress.
Think about your muscles.
They only build and grow after beingchallenged by resistance, by tearing,
just enough so they can build stronger.
Think about diamond.
(03:19):
A diamond is formed under unimaginablepressure over long periods of time.
And in the end you get one ofthe hardest substances on earth
and even think about a little tiny seed.
You ever heard the the saying thatif we had the faith of a mustard
(03:43):
seed, we could move mountains.
It's this little tiny seed thatmakes this incredibly large plant,
and you get this seed,it's buried in darkness.
You know, before it can breakfree and reach the light.
(04:04):
And I think we've all heard thephrase turning lemons into lemonade.
And yes, it's a cliche for sure,
but there's truth in it.
The important thing to remember islemonade doesn't happen instantly.
First, you have to holdthe sourness in your hands.
(04:26):
You have to taste it, and you haveto, you, you have to choose to
add something, new sugar, water,time to make it in something else.
And the same thing is true for struggle.
You can't skip the bitterness, butyou can choose what to do with it.
(04:50):
Let me share a personal story,and you probably heard this
before, when I was struggling,
I, I'd taken a job that was I toomuch, I wasn't prepared, I didn't
have enough experience, and yet Ithought it was the dream of my life.
(05:12):
I thought this was it.
This is what was gonna make me this.
I'd finally be important,I'd finally be worthy.
And the truth is, I thought it was aworthiness of the people outside looking
in, but I was, look, it was me tryingto find worth in myself externally,
(05:37):
and it was the hardest job.
I'd ever had, and the most stressful job
over time, I'd lost so muchweight that my clothes were
just barely hanging off my body.
I'd wake up at two or three in themorning and I couldn't get back to sleep.
So I'd just go back to work, to to work.
(05:59):
Uh, and I thought I was done.
I thought that was it.
'cause you know, I burned all theother bridges on my way up to this.
And I'd taken on something thatI should have never taken on.
You know, the thing I couldn't see isI was literally being stripped down
of parts of me that were not real.
(06:23):
Pieces of me were being burned away.
This thought process, like havingan incredible, like a high.
Profile job would mean I was importantor I would be happy, or I'd found joy
in making a certain amount of money.
Everything was being torn away.
(06:44):
My ego, my illusions of who Iwas, my false sense of control,
and then
I almost lost my health.
I ended up in the emergency wardthinking I was having a heart attack
(07:06):
and stripped down tothe bare basic nothing.
Knowing that I couldn'tcontinue in that place
and possibly confronting my ownmortality on that hospital bed,
I reached out to whateverunknowing, unseen force.
(07:28):
Was out there and said, Hey, getme through this and I promise
I'll figure out what I'm supposedto be doing in this life.
Because I knew deep down inside thatI wasn't doing what I was supposed to.
But I had all these illusions,all this stuff built up,
and I knew I should havebeen doing something else,
(07:49):
but I was afraid.
And when I was stripped downand burned away, everything.
And I was left with nothing.
That was the place Icreated everything from.
(08:09):
It's funny, like I've heard, it said thatyou cannot create something onto something
else In order to create something new,you need to come to a space of nothing.
And one of the only ways todo is burn away everything
until you're left with nothing.
(08:31):
And it's almost like I used to saywhen I got low enough, so low that
I was lying on my back in a ditch.
Looking up, I knew two things.
One, when you're deep in a ditch in thedarkness, you can only see the stars.
And two, when you're onyour back deep in a ditch,
(08:55):
any movement is improvement.
Anything you do moves you up.
So let's get back to alchemy, likethe process of alchemy is interesting.
Alchemy is an ancient idea.
(09:16):
It's turning base metals into gold.
And in our life, it's aboutturning pain into power wounds,
into wisdom, mess, and demeaning.
And here's some of thefour steps that I've found.
The step one of everything and when Iwas in the darkest place in my life is,
(09:37):
was you know, until you can accept what?
So just that as it is not your storyabout it, but what, so you're trapped.
And once you accept what'sso, then you have a chance.
So the first step is acceptance,and this is the hardest one
(09:59):
to accept, means to stop fightingthe fact that something happened.
It doesn't mean you like it, itdoesn't mean you're okay with it.
It just means you're o you'rejust willing to face it.
You are willing to feel it becauseyou know I say this often, you have to
(10:20):
feel what you feel when you're feelingit, and you have to feel your way all
the way through it, right to the end.
Step two,
the shift of perspective.
Once of the emotions have had a spaceto breathe, you can start asking,
(10:41):
what, what is this here to teach me?
Not like when you're coming from aplace of emotion and hurt and anger
or frustration, it's like, why is thishappening to the, why is life so unfair?
Why, why, why?
And when you come to a perspectiveshift, you can shift it to like,
what is this here to teach me?
(11:03):
And that's, that's what Iwas, I was starting to learn,
is that life was here toteach me that I was here for
something else, something bigger.
I wasn't here for acceptance of outside.
I was here to find acceptance inside.
I was, I already knew who I was,who I am, what the difference
(11:27):
I wanna make in this world.
I already knew all this,
and it was time to listento the inner wisdom.
You know, in life, depending onhow you look at it, pain can be
our teacher or our tormentor.
The difference is how we choose to see it.
(11:48):
What if instead of seeing somethingas it that happened to you,
what if you could shift it a littlebit and say it's happening for you?
Because the honest truth
is after I found my way through theeducation into the work I'm doing
now, um, I also got invited to teach acourse and I used to tell the students.
(12:15):
That, you know, I went througha lot to get here and it
was really tough in my life.
There were so many things I went to gethere and, but the one thing I realize now
is everything happened for me, in fact, tothe point of if I had to do it all again.
(12:38):
As long as I knew I was comingto the same outcome, I would go
through it five, 10 times harder.
As long as I knew I was coming tothis place, I could endure anything.
See all that stuff that lookedlike the worst things in my life,
it happened for me, not to me.
It was guiding me.
(13:01):
Step three, action through resilience.
And you gotta realize thatresilience isn't about never falling.
It's just about gettingup every single time.
And here's the secret, and I love this.
And what a reframe.
(13:23):
What a great way to focus.
You only have to get up onemore time, then you fall.
That's it.
Just one more time.
And some days getting upmight mean running a mile
and other days it just meansgetting outta bed and taking
(13:44):
a shower, and they both count.
You know, one of the secretsin life, I was taught this
in in grade 11 English class.
My teacher, Mrs. Samor, said.
There's a secret to happiness in life,and it's extremely simple, but people
(14:04):
don't get this very often, and shesaid, it doesn't matter if you're the
CEO of the biggest company in the,in the country or in North America,
or if you're sanitation worker.
This is the very simple secret tohappiness is you simply do your
very best every day according tothe day, which means you never.
(14:28):
Ever compared today's best to yesterday'sbest because today you may move mountains
and tomorrow it might be all you cando to just get outta bed and show up.
And both were your best.
I heard it, uh, explained incredibly well.
(14:51):
I saw this speaker and he was, hewas coming on to speak and his voice
was scratchy and gravelly, and hewas, he was like, Hey guys, you know?
I am committed in my life to alwaysgiving you a hundred percent,
and I'm gonna do that today.
But you gotta understand that likeI just got my voice back today, so
I'm literally running at about 30%.
(15:11):
But what you can counton me today for sure.
100%. I'll give 100% of that.
30%.
What a perspective.
A,
just give a hundred percentof what you have today.
That will bring joy into your life andyou'll always know you've done enough.
(15:33):
Step four integration, and thisis where the real transformation,
the real alchemy happens
when you carry that lessonforward into how you live, how
you love, and how you lead,
and the mess becomes a message.
(15:55):
The wound becomes wisdom
and you pass this on to someone else andthe ashes become soil where something
new can grow, not just for you, butfor other people and for the world.
That is my dream.
That is why.
That is why it says Sunday, my one dayoff a week and I'm gonna spend a bunch of
(16:19):
hours recording messages like this, and.
Refining my skill.
'cause I really want, I really want
my mess to become the message,my wound to become the wisdom.
I wanna pass it on to somebody else.
And I pray that the ashes of everythingthat's burnt away of my life becomes
(16:43):
soil where something incrediblecan grow and I will, I'm willing
to do the work over and over again.
And I'm willing to fall on my faceover and over again and get back
up over and over again becauseI'm here for something big.
I truly believe, and I honestly thinkpeople who embody this, athletes
who came back from devastatinginjuries, I know so many leaders
(17:06):
who've turned personal tragedy.
Into things that changed the life foreveryday people who took the hardest
chapter of their life and used it asa blueprint for someone else's hope.
That is alchemy.
There's no other definition for me.
So let's talk about the bottom though.
(17:27):
You, you know,
I mean, everybody fears the bottom.
No, we fear it, you know?
And we think if we ever hit rockbottom, we'll never recover.
But here's the truth,
(17:49):
and I know it lying in that bed,that hospital bed, Mars hooked up
to me thinking this is how it ends.
The bottom is where you meet themost honest version of yourself.
It's where your titles, your achievements,and your masks get stripped away.
(18:14):
It's where you discover the most importantthing in this life is what is left.
When you take all that other stuff away,
what is left when there's nothingelse, and what's left is enough.
Now, it's actually more than enough.
It's you.
I met myself at the bottom.
(18:37):
Raw, real untamed.
And once you've met thatversion of yourself, you're
no longer afraid of failing.
I am not, you know, I'vesaid this before to people.
I am not afraid of dying.
I don't want to, I don't wanna rush it
'cause my message not done.
(18:57):
In fact, I want to, I wannamake my life as long and as
ful like, and like learn and.
Refine my message over and over again, andI want the last thing I do on this planet
is to one, send out one more message.
(19:17):
But you know what?
When you've hit the very bottom,you're never ever gonna be afraid of
falling again because you know, oneimportant fact that you can rise.
You can rise again.
And we're gonna go backto the soil analogy.
The richest growth begins in the dirt.
(19:40):
If you can't meet yourself
at the top, or sorry, you can't meetyourself at the top without first
meeting yourself in the depths,
you can't meet yourself at the top.
Without first meetingyourself in the depth,
(20:03):
you can only go as high as you can go low.
You can only feel joy to the depth.
You can feel sorrow.
So how about some practical tools?
Tools for transformationsounds like a good idea.
Like, well, what can we do in real life?
(20:27):
You can take failure or not quiteaccomplishing the dream in the space
of time that you wish to do it.
You can reframe failure as feedback.
It's life saying, it'snot saying you failed.
(20:48):
You say it's learnedbecause if you can learn.
You know, if you think of it, you,you've got so many ways you can
approach things in life, right?
And you have to start somewhere,and you have to go down a path
and you have to try something.
(21:10):
And if it doesn't work, you cantake you, you can do one of two
things you can keep on cycling.
The definition of insanity istrying the same thing over and over
again, expecting a different result.
So you can keep on trying the thing.
And I know we've all has have an examplein the life of something we've done
cyclically over and over and over againtill we finally learned the, learned it.
(21:33):
Like literally that was the deal with me.
Like I kept on moving inthe same kind of direction.
Until I finally learn that that'snot what I'm supposed to be doing,
and I need to burn it down and I needto start from scratch, go back to
school, and come out with a real life.
(21:54):
So there's a finiteamount of things you like.
Failures before you hit success.
So you try something, it doesn't work.
You can either say, I failed or I learned.
I learned.
That's not something I'm gonna do.
I'm gonna cross that all.
I'm gonna try somethingelse that doesn't work.
I'm gonna try something else.
And you could spend a life of doing that.
You think about, I believe itwas Thomas Edison, like over 900.
(22:17):
Failed attempts at the light bulb beforehe actually created a working model.
And I believe one of his workingmodels is still burning today.
Like get that, like what a success, how,you know, think about a child, right?
Learning to walk and falls down andlike after 10 or 20 tries do, do they
(22:39):
go, well, I guess walking isn't for me,I'll just crawl the rest of my life.
Uh, no.
Like you need to havethe resilience of a baby.
Learning to walk in life.
Just keep on going.
Doesn't work.
Try again.
Doesn't work.
Try again.
Doesn't work.
Try again.
One more time
(23:00):
to really transform life.
Um, yeah.
It was like recently one ofmy patients was asking me.
Like, you know Kim, andyou're so happy all the time.
I'm like, well, no, I have my moments too.
I just don't live there very long.
And they're like, what do you like,what do you do when things go wrong?
Like, like, 'cause you knowwhen things are going wrong.
(23:23):
I'm like, why me?
And like, why do I haveto go through this again?
Oh, you know, why can't I get thisright and why this and why that?
And I was like, nah.
I used to ask questions like that too.
But what I learned a long time ago isI would ask myself, n now I ask myself,
(23:45):
what is this trying to teach me
or what's next I,
because.
Yeah.
Part of life is given by thequestions you ask yourself every day.
So if you want a better life, justask yourself better questions.
(24:07):
I went to, uh, Tony Robbins seminar downin LA and that's one of the things he
said is like, if you, the quality of yourlife is directly given by the quality of
the questions you ask yourself every day.
If you want to ask your, ifyou want a better life, ask
yourself better questions.
So like, I took it literally and I wrotedown 10 questions, and I wake up first
thing in the morning and I grab my pieceof paper and I ask 'em out loud like, how
(24:31):
can I, how can I be a better man today?
Who can I help today?
How can I make a differencein the world today?
What can I learn today?
You know, how can I be a better.
Like just incredible questions becausethe, the truth is the brain's gonna fill
you up with all these negative questionsunless you fill it up with positive.
(24:54):
Another tool, you couldcreate a resilience ritual.
You know, for some people maybeit's, um, it's journaling.
For some people it's runningconsistently day after day.
Working out.
Maybe it's a consistentmeditation practice.
(25:21):
Maybe it's walking in nature.
Maybe it's connecting with people.
Maybe like me, you decide that youwant to do an inspirational podcast
with the hopes of helping oneperson a day and the rest are gravy.
(25:42):
Yeah, I, I put out social media postsevery single day with a positive message.
It's part of my practice in life andthe, the practice of making a difference.
Another great tool for transformation isgoing to be choose your circle wisely.
(26:03):
Surround yourself with people
who actually see the gold in you.
Even when you're covered in ashes,
here's what I want you to remember.
(26:24):
Even write these down.
Your struggles are not detours.
They are the path,
the fire that feels like it's destroyingyou may actually be refining you.
You are not broken.
You are becoming.
(26:46):
Thank you for listening to this episodeof Your Inner Advocate, a podcast by
Kimen Petersen, formerly Conversationswith Kimen if you found value in
today's episode, please follow likeand share the podcast with someone
who you think may benefit from it.
You can listen on Apple Podcast.
Spotify, Podbean, and connect onInstagram @ your inner advocate.
(27:10):
Until next time, keep listening toand developing your inner advocate.
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