Purpose Through Pain

When you keep telling yourself the same story, nothing will change.

In this episode, Joseph James talks all about identity, and how most people prioritize the wrong thing. Changing your identity is something that many people struggle with for a whole lifetime.

If you want to change your identity, the vision of yourself must change.

How we feel about our own lives is so important. We create an identity for ourselves about how we talk, look, act, and even who we interact with so we can keep up a certain look or idea of ourselves

But when your profession becomes your identity, something certainly needs to change. Joseph experienced this first hand, and in this episode, tells the story of how he was able to change his mindset around this.

If your identity is work, and if your job changes, your job changes your life feels meaningless.

In this episode:

• Joseph shares how he had to change his identity twice. Once after a career change, and once after his wife passed away.
• The steps to take to change your identity.
• How to know when your identity is no longer working for you.

Key Takeaways:

1. If you want to change your identity, the vision of yourself must change.
2. Work should not be your identity.
3. Your identity can change, when you put effort into it.

Tweetable moments:

1. “Align your future with where you want your identity to be.”
2. “If I want a different future, I have to change how I think now.”
3. “Change your mindset, change your world.”

Connect with Joseph James:

Website: https://thealphaleadership.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/meetjosephjames/

We all face difficult times in our lives that can lead to stress. How do we deal with it, learn from it, and manage it? Tar'Lese is no stranger to dealing with stress; however, she is not confined by it either. Listen to how Tar'Lese takes you from dealing with parents who committed suicide, to life-threatening injuries to her body, to living a life on her own terms by using stress management tools.

In this episode:

• Tar’lese shares how she starts teaching people how to get rid of stress.

• Tar’lese and Joseph discuss the challenges they have overcome and how they surpassed them.

• Tar’lese talks about addressing and processing emotional pain, and focusing on identifying and acknowledging feelings rather than avoiding or suppressing them.

Key Takeaways:

• People only share their highlights and best moments on social media, so don't compare yourself to others.

• Taking the first step is to assess the situation.

• There is no right or wrong, nor good or bad, you have to release the emotions you've been bottling up and then address them.

Tweetable Moments:

1. "At the end of the day, when you're going through your own stuff, it feels like no one else understands."

2. "Vulnerability brings healing to us, but it's our transparency that brings healing to other people."

3. "Pushing through the pushing through is really pushing away."

Connect with Tar'lese Rideaux at:

Website: https://www.digitalrichesroadmap.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tarlese/

Connect with Joseph James:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/purthrpn

Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/252908273026721

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/meetjosephjames/

In this episode:

• Joseph will talk about Alpha Leadership part 2 and the acronym of ALPHA.
• Learn what flipping the script is.
• Joseph will share his journey and how he flipped the script in his life story.

Key Takeaways:

1. Your thoughts, good or bad, lead to emotions, emotions lead to choice, your choice leads to habits, and your habits lead to your character. Your character leads you into your destiny.
2. No matter where you're or what you believe, you have a way out of everything that has been said and spoken over you that's caused you to disbelieve in who you are and feel something other than genuine.
3. We can't get rid of things or conquer these negative thoughts, lies, or beliefs unless we confront them.

Tweetable Moments:

1. "When we verbalize things, two things can happen, it can lose its power, or it can gain power."

2. "Pain is life's greatest teacher. It's also life's biggest crutch."

Connect with Joseph James:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/meetjjames

Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/252908273026721

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/meetjosephjames/

In this episode, Joseph will talk about a title that is the creation of their leadership coaching and the launch of their book called Alpha Leadership. Joseph will tell us what Alpha is and is not and the acronym of ALPHA. Alpha leadership is based on Joseph's experiences as a young man who grew up in a very abusive home. He went through many different things in life, and because of those things, he learned.

We learn from the good experiences, we learn from the bad experiences, and we learn from the indifferent experiences. We can take those experiences and learn from them to create better opportunities. We have a choice to be a victim or a victor. It's up to us.

Key Takeaways:

• When walking through the fire, we have one of two choices: it can either destroy us or refine us. The choice is ours.
• When we are being authentic, it allows the true self to be what we have claimed we are.
• Your "I am" statement may push you to greatness and ignite a fire inside of you. It will teach you how to take your word and become a daily habit to create the alpha leader within yourself.

Tweetable Moments:

1. "We have a choice to be a victim or a victor. It's up to us."

2. "Pain can be the crutch that gets you stuck, or it could be the thing that launches you into your destiny."

3. "I am can recreate, reinvent, restructure your mindset to becoming who you called to be, and that is to be authentic."

Connect with Joseph James:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/meetjjames

Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/252908273026721

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/meetjosephjames/

Divorce can be painful, ugly, depressing, but you can be refined, and redefine yourself to live an extraordinary bonus life filled with peace, joy, gratitude, self-love and celebration. Listen as Kelli helps women going through any stages of separation and divorce go from fearful to fearlessly pursuing what sets their soul on fire.

On this episode:

• Joseph and Kelli will talk about trauma, the hurt, the pain, the guilt, everything that comes along with, or that can be attached to a divorce.

• The struggles that Kelli had to face during her relationship with her ex-husband and how she overcame them.

• Kelli’s transition from the divorce coaching to now the health and the wellness coach.

• How group counselling help people overcome challenges.

• Kelli shares her book and how it impacts to coach people.

Key Takeaways:

1. Every person that you have been with has a piece of you and you have a piece of them.

2. If hurt people can hurt people, healed people can also heal people.

3. We're all looking for unconditional love. The only place that we can get it is from God.

4. You are who you hang around.

5. The things that we do go through in life, prepare us for those times that are dark, for those times, that are uncertain for those times that you just I gotta find myself again.

Tweetable Moments:

1. “Love is not taught, it's caught.”

2. “Victim energy is actually equivalent to death.”

3. “You adjusting by teaching others and then teaching others, teach others.”

4. “What happens in the home is just magnified out in the workplace.”

Connect with Kelli Calabrese:

Website: https://www.intentionallyfabulous.com/?r_done=1

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellicalabrese/

Personal Website: https://kellicalabrese.com/

Connect with Joseph James:

Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/meetjoejames

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/meetjosephjames/

Lacey Pruitt is an IFBB Pro Female Bodybuilder who has survived cancer three times. In 2018, just 10 months after her 2nd cancer diagnosis, she began training hard and getting ready for competitions. Lacey says that her cancer was just part of her journey to get to the bigger stage in life. Lacey shares how she wrote her own story and didn’t let cancer become her whole identity. 

In this episode:

• How Lacey overcame cancer three times and became a professional female bodybuilder. 
• Lacey’s key mindset changes that took her from a cancer victim to a striving bodybuilder.
• Creating her own story and being more than just “Lacey the sick girl”
• How her support system got her through her cancer

Tweetable Quotes:

• “I wouldn’t change having cancer for a thing. It had made me who I am today. If I can help just one person, my life is fulfilled”
• “Most people in our lives are looking for an opportunity to serve other people”
• I didn’t view it as ‘I am a sick girl’. I didn’t allow that to happen. I wanted people to know me as Lacey, not the girl who has cancer. 
• “This does not control who I am, this is just part of the journey to get to the bigger stage in life”

Connect with Lacey:

Lacey's Facebook

Lacey's Instagram

Connect with Joseph James:

Facebook Page

Facebook Group

Instagram

Seth Morozowski is a former K9 Deputy and has started two companies. He was a devout atheist for many years but has seen a radical transformation over the past few months.

On this episode:

• Seth shares how he was never taught how to process his emotions.
• Hear how growing up in a difficult home environment helped direct Seth’s journey into law enforcement.
• Joseph and Seth discuss the hardships of the faith journey.
• Seth opens up about his struggles with alcoholism and the deep depression he found himself in.

Key Takeaways:

1. Sometimes you have to see the monster within to truly change.
2. Build a support system around yourself.
3. Christ forgives you, and you can forgive yourself - but don’t forget where you came from.

Connect with Joseph James:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/purthrpn

Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/252908273026721

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/meetjosephjames/

Christina Patterson Wood is a dance instructor and directs one of the studio outreach programs that work one on one with at-risk youth. She also does admin support for Lousiville, Kentucky ministry that helps incarcerated men transition out of prison and back into society. Christina has the heart to use the arts to help at-risk youth around the world. Christina is a long-time friend of mine whom I just reconnected with after she shared her story about sexual assault that happened in a past relationship. We talk about how she, and many women, suppress their sexual assault experiences for years until something happens that triggers the memories, and they are faced with confusion, denial, and ultimately the truth of what happened to them.

Christina was in denial of the fact she was sexually assaulted by her ex-fiance 20 years ago. In her mind, sexual assault only happened by strangers in an aggressive way and not in relationships, not by someone you are in a relationship with. This misconception in her mind suppressed her mind kept her questioning what really happened. In the dance industry, there are many women coming out years later and joining the #MeToo movement by talking about their instructors who abused them as students, children, and young adults.

Years later she was triggered. Seeing her well her husband treats her made her realize how badly she was treated in the past. She realized what happened to her years ago, and came out with her story publicly because she wants people to know that they deserve to be loved, not treated unwell.

On this episode:

• Christina shares her experience of realizing she was sexually assaulted.
• How she told her husband, and he showered her in love, care, and support.
• Why do many women keep quiet about their sexual assault.
• Why many women question if what happened was sexual assault.
• The Me Too Movement and how prominent it is in the dance community.
• Why Christina stayed quiet for so long, and her fear that if she told her story people would minimize it.
• Her work in the at-risk youth community.
• How she helps her ministry support men transition out of prison and back into the community.

Key Takeaways:

• You deserve to be loved, not treated unwell.
• How telling your story can help others tell theirs.
• Finding a purpose in your pain to help others.
• Why we say getting into a new relationship can help you heal from a past relationship.

Quotable Moments:

1. “The painful things we experience have a purpose, so changing the question of what was the purpose of that happening to me, to how do I find purpose through it changes the perspective a lot.”
2. “You deserved to be loved, you deserve to be loved well, and in the way that God loves you.”
3. “He was my fiance, he said he loved me, this is not the context of how sexual assault happens.”

Connect with Joseph James:

Facebook Page

Facebook Group

Instagram

You don’t have to have all the answers to make a difference. Kary Youman is a heart-centered facilitator and mindfulness coach dedicated to creating brave spaces for people to discuss and explore complex topics.

Facilitating change through workshops on diversity, equity, inclusion, communication, radical kindness, mental health, and mindfulness, he is helping shift the way organizations view their culture and team dynamics.

He is on a personal mission to empower and inspire others to live their best lives through the virtues of kindness and mindfulness, helping people from all walks of life overcome limiting beliefs that have led to transformational changes both personally and professionally.

Using the humility and perspective that his life experiences have given him, Kary helps his clients discover their purpose and create a more meaningful life. From toxic masculinity and alcoholism to spirituality and meditation, Kary is here to talk about these experiences and how they influenced the course of his life and led him to where he is today.

On This Episode:

• How growing up in a toxic environment changed the way Kary viewed his parents
• The consequences of growing up thinking that only women are allowed to share their emotions
• The surprising gut punch that changed Kary’s life
• The intensity of Kary’s twenties as a functional alcoholic
• How Kary’s spiritual quest led him to a silent ten-day meditation retreat
• The seemingly crazy marketing scam that turned out to be true
• The event that turned Kary into a mental health advocate
• Taking the mysticism out of meditation

Key Takeaways:

1. Judgment and animosity make breakthroughs and connections impossible.
2. There’s always more to the story.
3. When you’re in a dark place, there’s nothing wrong with asking for help, but only you can do the inner healing work.
4. Self-love goes a long way.

Tweetable Moments:

1. “Sometimes you can get drunk on the positivity because you’re not allowing yourself to experience what you’re experiencing.” - Kary Youman
2. “It’s important to bounce back and to have a positive outlook, but sometimes you just really gotta deal with some shit.” - Kary Youman
3. “Eventually, if you train yourself to walk through the dark, you start to recognize that you’re the light.” - Kary Youman

Connect with Kary:

Website: https://kyouman.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/karyyouman/

Connect with Joseph James:

Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/meetjoejames

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/meetjosephjames/

Relationships struggle simply because we try to control how the other person loves us or how we need them to love us. If we can understand or learn how our partner was influenced by love and what they learned, then we can see why they love us the way they do. Listen to this episode and learn how to get your spouse to love you the way you need to be loved.

Key Takeaways:

• Understanding love means knowing and understanding how your love or how you were influenced by love.

• You are who you hang around with, or you're the sum of the five people you hang around with.

• Control is a very toxic trait in anybody's life, no matter who you are or what you do.

• Leading your family will put you in direct alignment with the way, especially if you're doing it under the covenant of God.

Tweetable Moments:

1. “Love is caught not taught.”

2. “It's not the communication that we have, it's the communication we don't have.”

Connect with Joseph James:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/meetjjames

Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/252908273026721

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/meetjosephjames/