Join me this week as I share with you my answer to this question, why are we here? I’m also going to share some of my personal beliefs, where they come from, how I approach having beliefs that I can’t prove, and my greater life vision, which I hope to impart on you as well.
You’ll learn:
- My beliefs about why we’re here
- An amusement park analogy for life
- Why your idea matters more than you know (and how it can change someone’s life without you knowing)
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Let’s become a generation of creative women who are examples for the people in our lives of what it looks like to prioritize our work (AND recognize our impact).
x, Jen
Full episode transcript below:
Welcome to today's episode. Why are we here? Today, I'm going to share with you my answer to this question, why are we here? I'm also going to share some of my personal beliefs, where they come from, how I approach having beliefs that I can't prove, and my greater life vision, which I hope to impart on you as well. I hope that this episode inspires you to be more boldly YOU, more boldly yourself. And to boldly express your brilliant ideas. That's my goal. I believe that we are all given our unique point of view, and then a lot of the programming and conditioning that we need, in order to have this alchemical process to create us as a unique individual. And then have these ideas that come to us, and then our work is to express those ideas, to put them into the collective. And then other people get to respond to our ideas, to build on them, to have a reaction to them. And that changes their worldview. And then they put their work out into the world, and then other people engage with it. And it's this big network effect. It's a network effect because the definition of that is the more people use it and the more people are working within it, the more valuable it becomes. So the more that we all put our ideas out into the collective and share with each other and other people have reactions and then build on it, the more valuable that becomes, right. The more value we each get from it. I believe that we're here to share our ideas and unique point of view, and share them with the collective so that there's an infinite inputs that we all get to react to and learn from and digest, and then have responses within ourselves that then change the way we see things, and then we put different things out into the world. And I want to tell you how I came to believe this. When I went through my cancer journey 12 years ago, I became very clear that life had to have meaning for me. This is a belief I want to be very transparent that I choose to have. I don't, and can't, know for sure if that's true. I can't prove it. But as I've talked to my husband and close friends about this, I can willingly admit that I don't know this for sure. But I also choose to believe this. If it's all made up, you know, we can't prove anything really about our existence and why we're here, then I choose to believe that life has meaning and that we're here for a reason. It makes me feel good. It supports my life. It helps me be more of the person I want to be. And I'm good with choosing to believe that, rather than a more, I would say pessimistic, other people would use another word there, view that life is random, and we're just here to suffer through our lifetime, and everything we do is kind of for naught because we're all going to die some day. That has never felt good for me. I was raised in a religion where that was kind of what was taught to me from a very early age, and that never felt right to me. So when I went through having cancer and was, you know, very deeply physically suffering for several months, I spend a lot of time questioning. Why are we here? Why is this happening to me? What does this mean? I went through kind of creative renaissance at that same time too. I changed what I thought my life path would be. There was a lot going on. But I came to believe that I would choose to find meaning in life and what happens to me. And so far that has served me very well. And I continue to do that and I also am willing to be wrong. I'm willing to believe it and for it to be wrong, and I'm also willing to believe it until I see otherwise. I'm very content and dedicated to continuing to explore my beliefs, and adjusting them as I go along. But I will say that these beliefs I'm sharing with you today have only grown stronger for me over the past several years. But, I'm willing to change them at any point should I discover something that I don't currently know. So I just want to be transparent about that. I'm very careful about sharing these beliefs because I know that this is a tender subject for a lot of people, especially if you were raised in a religious way, like I was. And so I'm just very careful, and also want to be transparent with you. That I can't prove this, I don't know for sure, I can't know for sure. And I'm okay with continuing to believe that until I learn otherwise. So as I'm sharing this very transparently with you, I want to share my favorite quote with you, which goes like this, 'we are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience'. And that's by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Sorry if I butchered that. So again, I'm careful to share my spiritual beliefs, but I want to share this with you because to me, this is a huge part of the work that I do. And I know that you might, if you're listening to this have had a difficult experience with religion, and so spirituality might be kind of tender for you or complicated and that's totally fine, but I do want to share my opinions with you and you can like the point of this podcast- I want you to have a reaction to them. I want you to respond to them and build on it or change it or have what's true for you to this. Don't just take on my beliefs because I'm saying them. Take them, in filter them, see what works for you, leave the rest, have your own response. Build on it. And continue to build your belief system. So I believe that we are spiritual beings having a human experience. I believe that we are spirits in human bodies. And that we are here to learn and play and be challenged and grow and expand in ways that only humans can. I think of being a human living life as being in a big amusement park. We can go on rides that thrill us, rides that terrify us, rides that make us nauseous and want to puke. And we were like, why am I on this? I just want to get off this, like immediately. So, how does this relate to you? Well, while you're here alive on this planet, I think your job is to have your unique experience in the amusement park. No one knows what your amusement park experience is meant to be. And you can only figure it out by going from ride to ride, paying attention to the 'hmm that sounds fun to do next' messaging you got from your body. Learn your likes and dislikes, grow your capacity to feel intense feelings as amusement park rides generate an all of us, and share what's on your heart and what you feel called to do. I see it as a map that is unique to you. Right. No one person on this planet is meant to go on the same rides in the certain consecutive order and follow the path that's been carved for them. You are meant to uncover YOUR unique path on all the rides that you're meant to go on, by just following what sounds good to you in the moment, following the ideas you have, like 'hmm, if I do this one, I bet all learn this. Or if I do this one, I know even though it will be scary, I know that I'll learn how to feel some more intense feelings or something like that'. My vision is to show people that their ideas have value, especially women who tend to minimize their ideas. I believe that your ideas picked you to express them, and it's your job to become the person who has the capacity, skills, and belief to express them. And to keep going with this amusement park metaphor going on all those rides is helping you become the person, develop the capacity, be able to contain the big feelings to express your ideas. I think we're here to collaborate, express ideas that impact other people, that they may then have a reaction, idea, or response to, which generates in them to create their own work and put it out into the world and then more people are impacted by their expression and so on. And so on. That's that network effect I was talking about earlier. . This isn't just about getting your project done. It's about having the thrilling amusement park for your soul that is human life. I believe that's what you're here seeking. And I think that creative projects are just one of many ways to have that experience. I don't think that our creative pursuits are just so that we can get a gold star from society, and achieve in the ways that we've been conditioned to want to achieve, and the way that we 'should' do things. I think women especially have so many brilliant ideas, and I think we all came here for a reason and it's our job to express our ideas, and show our creative selves to the world. I think that is the ultimate act of service for humanity. To become ourselves, to share our ideas, to make our impact, to have an effect on other people that we could never possibly predict. On a soul level, it is thrilling, in and of itself to feel the whole spectrum of emotions. It definitely does not feel good to feel irritated or frustrated as a human. I think we can all agree on that. But I think on a soul level, it's all play and it's all fun. If you think about an enlightened being, I think we all have examples of that in society, maybe Thich Nhat Hanh, I can see that they might find amusement or interest or fascination with what it feels like to be irritated sitting in traffic, or waiting in line, or waiting for the muse to show up. When I'm feeling a negative emotion. I love to think about it this way, can I find some element of fascination with what it's like to be a human feeling this way? Love that question such a good one, can give us space in that moment, and also remind us that it can be fun to feel the whole spectrum of emotions, or maybe we can find an element or fun or an element of play, if we think, if you agree with me, I should say, and you don't have to, but if you agree with me that we're spiritual beings having a human experience and we're here to play. And part of playing is feeling all the feels. Okay, I'm going to start wrapping this up, but I also want to share a couple more things. When you ask yourself if your creative work, idea, or project really matters, I hear this a lot, like does this matter? It doesn't really matter. This is frivolous, et cetera. I want you to remember me saying this- I want you to hear it in your head, in my voice. Yes, it does more than you could ever know. You have absolutely no idea who might be impacted by it, and it could change their life. Your ideas are important. They matter and they're meant to be expressed. You did not choose this life 'ride' to come here and work on things that don't matter to you, or to fritter away your time doubting yourself, which by the way, when you're doing that, I see it as you putting off getting on the next amusement park ride. And therefore putting off the thrilling experience and everything you might learn from it. Right, you're just like avoiding going and getting in line to get on that next ride. I know what you might be thinking, I hear this a lot too. 'But I don't know if my idea will work. And therefore, I don't know if I'll be able to make a living at it'. And here's what I want to say to you. That may or may not be the point of this idea. I truly do not know. And that may not be the end all be all of this project. What if this project led you to the thing that does support your dreams, or vision? Or something even bigger and better than that? We don't know, and, you can't know until you try. Okay. Here's how I want to sum this up. I want you to repeat after me, you can do this in your head. I am here to have meaning. I'm here to express my ideas. I'm here to have a thrilling amusement park adventure. If you agree with me and you believe that you are here for a reason, you have your ideas for a reason, you're meant to express your ideas. Maybe you're working on believing that you are the perfect person to express those ideas. And you're here to have this human experience, which is like a series of amusement park rides. Then , if you're in that place of believing that, what do you want to work on? What are you meant to create? What should you do today to support that vision? I want you to be able to come back to that question. So if you need to maybe jot it down, I'll put it in the show notes too. Use that as a guidepost or a tenet that you come back to to make decisions. And if you ever feel off, or you can tell that you're mired in self-doubt, questioning, unsure of what to do next , just like, you know, in that space, here's a question you can ask yourself: do I feel like I'm at the amusement park for souls right now? Or have I taken myself out of line, and put myself into a little box that someone else created with a very limited idea of what's possible? Okay. That's what I have for you today. I am so glad that you are here and that we get to walk our paths together. See you next time. Same time, same place. Bye. For now.
