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You know, when life gets hard, maybe you lose loved ones, friends move away, or you start

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to wonder and worry about whether the life you're living is the one you've been called

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to live.

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How do you have joy in these moments?

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It's a hard question.

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And in this episode, I want to try to help you answer it.

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What's going on, guys?

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This is this episode of the Pursuit of Calling podcast.

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If you like this episode, give us a like, give us a follow, leave a comment on Spotify,

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you can, because we're on all the platforms, guys.

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And if you like it, you know, you can also share it out on your platforms as well.

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And then if you like this podcast, if you like it enough, you can also donate some little

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bit of money by going to buy me a coffee.

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The link is in the show notes of this episode and in the description of this podcast.

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And I really appreciate that if you're getting value from it, you want to say thank you,

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that'd be great when you do that.

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Even a dollar, that'd be awesome.

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And then finally, you can send me a message and do that via Instagram or via email, which

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is also again in the show notes.

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What's going on, guys?

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So in this episode, as you already know, we're talking about joy.

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You know how joy is greater than happiness.

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It's not the same thing.

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So I want to quickly start off with a definition of what joy is.

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It's choosing to respond to external circumstances with inner contentment and satisfaction.

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And as a Christian and for the Christians that are listening, we know that God will

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use these experiences to accomplish his work in and through our lives.

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Right?

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So that's where our peace comes from.

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That's where this contentment and satisfaction comes from.

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And whenever we're talking about this episode, as you already heard or have already read

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a few times probably that this episode is called Joy on the Journey or Staying Joyful

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on the Journey.

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And what I mean by that is how do you have that inner contentment, that inner peace,

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no matter the circumstances that you're going through, regardless of the circumstance, right?

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Regardless of whenever you maybe fail to meet your own expectations, maybe whenever you

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lose a loved one or life just keeps throwing these curveballs at you that you don't expect,

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how do you stay joyful in those moments?

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It's a hard question.

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So I want to keep diving into that.

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First though, one of the first things you want to think about right now is remembering

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what your calling is and why you're doing it.

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It can be frustrating when you have a calling and you know you're calling, but feel like

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life keeps getting in the way or maybe there's something devastating happens.

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And you're working towards it and life gets in the way and you don't know how to deal

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with it.

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However, there's a bigger purpose.

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I know that there's a bigger purpose on my life and that doesn't stop me because of my

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circumstances.

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I have muscular dystonia as you know, just like that definition said earlier, that joy

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is an internal response of how we choose to respond to external circumstances.

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The thing with my dystonia, I'm going to skip down my notes a little bit just because this

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is where my mind's going right now.

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My muscular dystonia, it's in my body, right?

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There's a lot, like you can have stress, you can have anxiety, you can have other external

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factors happening.

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The reason I say like my dystonia is external is because it's external to my mind.

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Like so many other circumstances are external to your mind, external to your heart where

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these, where this mind is where like this stress is being constructed, but it's also

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where this peace can be created.

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There's internal peace that comes from your soul, comes from your inner being, that of

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remembering like looking and remembering why you're doing it.

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I'm going to jump ahead now and saying like remembering why you're working towards something

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is like remembering like the vision is like looking towards the future.

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Like you have a reason, right?

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Why you're working towards, why you want to work, live in your calling.

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Why you want to work towards a particular goal.

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And now we've said before that your calling goes with you wherever you go.

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And that's a great, great to remember as well.

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And it gives you inner joy that wherever you go, you are representative for your calling.

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But whenever you know what your calling is, like, and you, you can apply it to a particular

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goal.

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You have something to work towards and you can remember it like you remember it.

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Like why am I, why am I doing this right now?

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Why am I so stressed out?

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Why am I, why am I, like, why am I doing this podcast personally?

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Like why am I doing this podcast?

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Well, like I'm going to be honest with you guys.

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Part of me did not want to sit down and record this episode today.

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I'm tired.

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I sat down and I'm recording it right now because I know that this is a part of my calling.

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This is part of me being able to have joy in the circumstance of being tired, of being

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in pain and remembering that this is going into your ears right now and hopefully giving

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you some, hopefully reminding you of that joy or giving you a look into what this joy

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is and helping you have joy on the journey of your calling.

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Like I want to be able to have that impact in people's lives.

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And this podcast for me is a piece of that.

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There's, so let me kind of put that in more of a practical sense.

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This is in my note, so bear with me.

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Whenever I'm sitting down to do this podcast, like I'll think about it like today when I

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didn't want to do it, I knew I was still going to.

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I knew because the reason I knew I was still going to, here we go, is you might have to

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go back and listen to this again.

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The reason I sat down and decided to record is because I have a forward focused vision

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on what I'm working towards.

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Like we said before, what am I working towards?

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I'm working towards being a life coach.

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I'm working on changing lives.

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And that brings me joy knowing that this podcast, me sitting down recording right now on August

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4th at 2.50 PM, it brings me joy knowing that this plays a part in my calling for a greater

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purpose for something that is greater than me.

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And that's another thing to remember that your purpose is greater than you, is more

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than you.

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It's greater than yourself.

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It's there for, it's not, this isn't to be daunting.

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This isn't to be scary.

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This reminds you that you can have joy knowing that this calling is good and holy calling

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that you have in your life.

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It's something that's on you in order to make other people's lives better, in order to love

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other people, in order to serve other people.

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Maybe some people don't understand how that you can find joy in that.

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How can you find joy in something that isn't for yourself?

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I would bear the question, how do you find joy in something that's only for you?

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And I know we're talking about these circumstances of like, I'm not just tired right now, man.

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I'm in pain.

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My shoulders hurt.

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My neck is all kinked up.

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I probably slept weird last night.

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Pardon me, I'd rather be taking a nap.

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I, and, but I know I want to get this recorded so that Ian hopefully has time to edit it

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and get it into your, so we can get it into your ear holes and so that you can then experience

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whatever you're going to experience whenever you listen to this episode.

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Okay, but let's move on.

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I'm happy I got to say that to you guys.

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So if you, if you, again, I'm going to stop real quick.

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If you want to let me know how this podcast is going, go ahead, put it in a comment and

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let me know.

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So another thing I do is I believe that like, no, I want you to think about it now.

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I want you to think about that now.

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Do you find joy in the calling that you believe you have in your life?

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If not, maybe it's time to reevaluate or maybe, or maybe it's time to ask a friend where you

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can improve.

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What do I mean by that?

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So let's go back to the first quest.

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First part is I asked, do you find joy in the calling that you have in, have on your

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life that you believe you have on your life?

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If you don't have, if you don't have see joy, maybe you don't know what your calling is.

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You're like, well, I don't, I can't have joy in something.

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I don't know what it is.

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I say, we've talked about it before, you can always go back to God.

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You can ask him, but you can always be like, you can always go back to him and be like,

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Hey God, like, I know you have a calling in my life, not just to serve others.

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That's your call is to serve others.

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And then you can figure out what that, what that way means for you.

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And then you can say, okay, like, how do we, we're going to talk about that in different

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episodes about like, how do you really like understand what your calling is?

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But we're going to, we're going to move on.

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There's a whole other episode.

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I'm going to record about all that.

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So but if you, yeah, maybe, but if it's time to reevaluate and maybe it's time to, like

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I said, go to, go to God, think about what you enjoy doing and we're going to talk about

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that in a future episode and maybe ask a friend though, where you can improve, ask your friend

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what you're good at.

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And maybe, maybe ask your friend, like maybe they, your friends see something on you that

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you don't see yourself.

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And they're a friend that's going to tell you the truth and tell you the truth and like,

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be like, Hey, like you're actually really, you're actually really great at speaking life

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into people or you're really great at, you're really great at tech.

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You're really great at tech or the way you work with, the way you are with kids is amazing.

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Or like, man, you just make delicious food.

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You're a great cook.

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Like man, like maybe that's not something you thought about before.

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And maybe that's, maybe these are the ways that you can provide joy to other people and

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have joy on this journey yourself.

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I want to move into a small, one other part real quick.

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When we're talking about when falling short of your own expectations.

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Now, you know, I just mentioned that you can ask a friend where you can improve.

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Now think about the times when you know, you didn't meet your own expectations that you've

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had on, that you've had of yourself.

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When didn't you meet, like you ask a friend where you can improve where you didn't meet

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a, maybe their expectations of you.

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But how about this?

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You think about, how about this?

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Like you think about when you had an expectation of yourself and you failed to meet that expectation.

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And maybe I shouldn't use the word failed, but we'll use it in this context.

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You know, that can be pretty discouraging in those instances.

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Whenever you feel like you should have done better, or you know you could have done better,

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but you didn't.

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Like it's good to remember that it's okay to fall short as long as you don't stay there

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and you don't keep falling short.

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It's like, I love the term failing forward, right?

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Like you, it's not really a failure.

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It's a learning experience.

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Like John Maxwell will say like, sometimes you win and sometimes you learn.

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So, or sometimes you win and sometimes you learn.

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I might have messed that up.

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And like Lee said in his episode, like you don't actually, like whenever he said his

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take on failure was like, you only fail when you don't start.

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If you've already started, you haven't failed.

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And so then whenever you fall short of an expectation that you had on yourself, or maybe

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you missed the mark on a certain, hitting a certain goal, well then you like, will you

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reevaluate?

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You see what you did, maybe you did wrong or could have done better.

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You ask a friend and you get going again.

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Like you get going again.

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Like you go back to what we were talking about before.

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You remember what you're doing and why you're doing it.

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And that can give you motivation as to like, I have to figure out like what you need, like

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what you need to do to improve.

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I talked in circles.

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We're going to keep going.

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Okay.

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And then, okay, this is one last thing I just want to say.

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If you haven't started yet, if you don't know what your calling is and you haven't been

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looking, well now's the time to start.

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You don't want to get to the end of your life and realize that you never pursued your calling.

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That's why I love this podcast.

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That's why I love doing it because, and I love the name because it's called the pursuit

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of calling.

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I think everybody in some sense tries to pursue that even if they don't know that they're

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doing it.

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And the reason so many people don't have true joy is because they never really understand

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what their calling is.

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And that hurts, like me internally.

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To think that some people just don't experience true joy because I believe the source of joy

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as a Christian, the source of joy I know comes from God, comes from Christ.

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And so many people don't know that.

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And I think, I feel like I've been leaning into my face more in this podcast, especially

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as I've been doing it on my own and like, I mean, Sean and I talked about it a lot,

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but I've been leaning into it a lot more personally.

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And like this, I'm leaning into that and maybe this is becoming an actual Christian podcast,

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but I'm really hoping there's people that listen to this that don't particularly have

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faith that still get a lot out of this, that still understand, hear what I'm saying and

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find joy in their calling or learn to have joy in their calling.

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Maybe it's something you didn't think about that, think that you had before.

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So just take a moment, think about your calling, like think about where you fall short in accordance

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to it.

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We all fall short of certain expectations, fall short of others' expectations and especially

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fall short of our own.

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Yeah, we especially fall short of our own expectations.

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I know I do all the time.

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So and that's not to be hard on yourself.

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It's just to have, it's good to have expectations of yourself.

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It's just like you think about that, you think about what you're doing and why you're doing

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it.

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If the why doesn't bring you joy, then you're doing the wrong thing.

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Where are you guys going?

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Oh, that was good.

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If your why, oops, sorry.

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If your why doesn't bring you joy, then you're doing the wrong thing and you're looking at

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the wrong place, you're getting in the wrong source.

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So just think about that and I will leave you right, I'll leave you there with that.

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I hope you guys have a great rest of your week and I'll see you next time.

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Peace.