Hey, pursuers. Welcome to the Pursuit of Calling podcast, where my goal and purpose is to provide
the strategies and tools needed to successfully discover and pursue your God-given calling.
I'm your host, Thomas Carney, and in this episode, I sat down with Jeff Dorena. Jeff
is an author, a speaker, a pastor, and we dive into his testimony about how he came
to Christ, and also he dives into why it's extremely important to share your testimony
with others. It's one of the most important things that you can do. So to hear more about
that, keep on listening for the episode. But real quick, I just want to say, if you liked
this episode, if you've been liking the podcast so far as you've been listening to the other
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at all. All right, guys, see you in the episode.
All right. Hey, guys. Welcome to the episode. And so I'm sitting here with Jeff Dorena,
and I said that right, right?
Absolutely. Great job, man. You did that great.
All right. And so I found Jeff through his podcast. I was doing some research on who
was out there talking about pursuing one's calling. And I found one of his episodes where
he was talking about really looking for your bent. I think that's how you phrased it. And
I found that pretty interesting. So let's do a couple of more of your episodes and decided
to reach out. And but I see Jeff though, he's also an author, a speaker, and he has his
own podcast called Men Unplugged. So that R obviously, I just mentioned that. But yeah,
it's been pretty cool. As you know, guys, I've been reaching out to a couple more people
to really get more of a kind of, you know, open up this platform to more people and help
others with who they're calling. So Jeff, why don't you give for those who don't know
you, because a lot of men just won't know who you are. Why don't you give a little bit
of background on who you are?
Well, first of all, thank you so much, Thomas, for having me as a guest on the show. This
is awesome. I'm looking forward to it. And for those of you here, the Pursuit of Calling
audience, I just want to say, hey, my name is Jeff Jarena, as Thomas said, and he said
it right. Great job. And so for me, if I hopefully I won't go too long on this answer here, but
the most important thing to know about me is that I'm a sinner saved by grace. It's
the most important thing. My life was radically transformed about 22, 23 years ago when I
placed my faith in Jesus Christ. And I grew up in church, Thomas. I grew up in church,
but I never heard the gospel. And I kind of grew up thinking it was this workspace mentality,
like if I did good, I was going to go to heaven. But if I did bad, and I've done a lot of bad
things, still do, right? Hopefully I'm not as stupid as I used to be though when I was
younger. But I used to think if I did bad things, I wasn't going to go to heaven. It
was this workspace mentality. And then somebody shared the gospel with me 23 years ago, and
I understood grace. And it was in that moment, understanding grace, I had a radical testimony.
I was severely depressed for four years, had suicide thoughts for four years in my life,
did not want to live. And it's one of the stories that I share and that I speak to audiences,
whether that's churches, whether that's organizations, whether that's schools or whatever, is really
to help people understand that if God loves you, then you know what? You can accept yourself
as you are. And it's really that going through that understanding that Jesus loves me, and
because of that I can accept myself. And so when I placed my faith in Christ 23 years
ago, what happened was I wasn't depressed anymore, suicide thoughts went away. It was
like this radical conversion. It was a miracle. It truly was a miracle. And I didn't need
any more OCD medications, didn't need any more antidepressant medications, none of that,
Thomas. Just Jesus Christ radically transformed my life. And when that happened, I started
running to God instead of running away. And since then, I've been blessed to speak to
a lot of different audiences, do a lot of group and individual coaching, write books,
have a lot of different online courses and the Mental Plug Show. But I think for me,
the biggest thing is I'm married. I've been married now coming up this year, 16 years,
have two children, a daughter and a son. And my daughter's older, okay? She's a teenager.
My son's a little bit younger, but he's the reason, he's seven years old, he's the reason
I've been drinking caffeine for seven years now. He's just like massive energy. And so,
I'm 53, so if you do the math, I got married very late in life. So if you do the math and
if I sound tired today, Thomas, it's because I am, because they keep me on my toes. But
you know, really just to round it out, when I came to know the Lord, that's when really
the Lord gave me my purpose and that was really what I do now, okay? And I'm sure we'll get
into that. But you know, I run a couple of businesses and I used to work, I was a CEO
at a nonprofit company and used to work as an executive at a Fortune 500 company. But
none of that compares to the relationship that I have with Christ and the calling that
He's given me now. And so, hopefully, that helps you and your audience to kind of understand
where I was and where I am now.
No, thank you for all of that. But I want to say, it's not gonna, like, you can, you
don't have to worry about being too long-winded. If I have to cut you off, that's very rare,
as most of my listeners know. So I think it'll, like, really, we're here to learn from you,
we're here to gauge whatever, gauge from your experiences, how we can apply them to our
lives. So I appreciate you giving all the details.
Thanks, brother.
For sure. So now that we know a little bit more who you are, and with this podcast being
The Precursive Calling, which you kind of touched a little bit on this, but let's talk
about your calling a little bit more in depth. How would you describe your calling? How would
you describe what your calling is?
Yeah, I love that question because, you know, as a guy, and I don't know if most of your
audience is men or men and women, but I can just speak here as a man that, you know, a
lot of times we place our identity on our calling and what our title is and things like
that. And what I had, what I realized was when I came to know the Lord 23 years ago,
that there's a bigger calling here and the biggest calling that we all have as born again
believers is to know God and to make him known. Okay? And I say that because part of my calling,
excuse me, kind of cough there, part of my calling here, I'll just tell you what my mission
is, okay? And then we'll kind of bracket out or kind of go down a little bit off of that.
But really my main goal or vision here is to help believers, help men and women and
youth strengthen, share and live out their faith. Okay? Now, the share part to me is
when I came to know the Lord, I had never heard the gospel. And when I did that, I was
like, whoa, I was so excited for what Jesus Christ literally did for me. He literally
saved my life physically and spiritually. And so when that happened, I was so zealous
to tell everybody about my testimony, about how Jesus Christ radically transformed my
life. But when I would go tell people what he did for me, my testimony, everybody, a
lot of people would say, well, how do I get this free gift of salvation? Here is the problem,
Thomas. I would say, I don't know, I guess you get severely depressed for four years,
you have suicide thoughts for four years and you have everything go bad in your life, you
lose all this money and you don't have a job, I guess that's what happens. And I was like,
no, that can't be the answer. That's not the answer, right? So I didn't know how to share
the gospel. So I asked a lot of pastors, I'm an ordained pastor, asked a lot of pastors,
asked a lot of individuals that had been Christians more than me. And you know what? Most of them
said they had never done it. Pastors, Thomas, pastors, this was troubling to me, didn't
even know how to share their faith. And I said, whoa, wait a second. So I went on this
two or three year mission, this quest to figure out how you share your faith, how do you share
it in a simple, natural way. And so from that, that's one of my books, the first book I wrote
about seven years ago, it's called Faith Without Fear, How to Share What You Believe with Confidence
and Power. So what that book does and that training that I learned, it teaches believers
a simple, natural way to share the gospel to anyone at any time, okay? Regardless of
how much they know, whether or not they think they have the skill set of evangelism, whether
or not they think they have a radical testimony or not, because it doesn't matter. And so
that really is, I would say, one of the key core components here of my mission is to help
believers share the gospel in a simple, natural way, okay? How do you do that? How can you
do that every time unapologetically, okay? How can you do that passionately? And so that's
what I teach individuals to do, in groups, churches, schools, whatever. So that's the
first part. The other part, strengthen their faith. I think for me, you know, I'm 53 years
old now, I got to get my faith strengthened all the time. And one of the ways that we
do that is through the Men Unplugged podcast, okay? So we have guys like Kevin Sorbo, Josh
McDowell, Gary Thomas, Brian Bosworth, big name guys that you would know come on the
show. We talk about stuff to help men and women, okay, from a biblical point of view.
And then I have a lot of the episodes of my own content, like I think you were talking
about the one about, I talked about how to determine your bent, right? And determining
your bent is really how God designed you. How has God wired you to live out this life,
your life, right here on earth, right? How does He design you to glorify Him and bring
others more closer to Him and live out your purpose? That's really what bent is. But the
strengthen your faith part, to me, is getting other people, like your show right here. This
is a great resource, Thomas, for people because you're bringing people on. You know, there's
a lot, the thing for me, you got me rambling here because you got me talking too much.
But here's the thing, I think a lot of us, most of us have something that's very valuable
to say. The unfortunate thing is with so much noise out there in the world, a lot of people
will never get heard. And so what I say is that your story is the most important thing
to share, your testimony. And that's one of the things I teach people how to do in that
book in the training, Faith Without Fear. Now we go back to the strengthen your faith,
I think a key component here is strengthen your faith is number one, you got to spend
that time with the Lord. And I'm always trying to do that. But in addition to that, what
I found when we originally started the Men Unplugged podcast, I think we started like
six or seven years ago, guys were telling me, Jeff, why don't you start a show for men?
And I said, well, guys are going to get tired of hearing me multiple times a week. Maybe
they can do it once a week, but multiple times a week, they're going to get tired of doing
that. So I realized the best way to do that was through an audience, a vocal majority,
so to speak, where I get other men talking about the same thing, maybe in a different
way from different experiences, wisdom, what they've learned, whatever. And this is kind
of what you're doing. So that's how the Men Unplugged show started. And the key component
there was to help men and women strengthen their faith. Okay? So the other one I said,
strengthen, share, live out their faith. I think when you get those two components right
there and you know how God has designed you, you're bent, you're calling, and both of all
these three things are working together, what's happening is you're living out your faith.
Does that make sense?
Yeah.
I hope it makes sense.
So what I'm gathering from that, at least, is like you said, you're helping people to
strengthen, live, and share out their faith, and how they can do that through their God-given
bent. It's not going to be the same way in everybody. Not everybody's going to do it
the exact same way. Like you said, you have other people on your podcast, other people
on your show that have different experiences. I like to use the phrase, we're all given
different tools in the toolbox.
Right, exactly. Well, there's something I can add here I think that maybe would help
your listeners in terms of calling. I can bring it up now or we can bring it up a little
bit later on.
Go for it.
This is something I had to learn early on. I don't think I caught this until I placed
my faith in Christ. And the reason why is before that, I was working at a Fortune 500
company. I got out, my undergraduate was in business. You'd have thought at the time,
and I was getting promoted very quick. I was making a lot of money, I was working telecommunications.
And you'd have thought though, that would have been the heyday of my life. That would
have been the glory days, so to speak. But what happened was I got in a severe car wreck,
I flipped my car, the whole left side of my body. What happened was the car flipped over,
other side window busted through. And this is a testimony that I have on my website at
jeffjarena.com. You go to jeffjarena.com, just go to about, you can watch part of my testimony,
this is part of what I share. But anyway, the whole, what happened was when it flipped
up in the air 10 feet, turned over, okay, because it hit a column underneath 635 in
the tollway in Dallas. I can show you to this day the mark on that column that it hit. It
hit that column, tilted over, and when it did that, it hit the ground. My left side's
now facing the road. The left side driver's side window busted through. That impact caused
my left hand to get off the wheel, off the steering wheel. The whole left side of my
body and my left hand drug about 100 feet on the asphalt. You can imagine. When I was
going like 30 miles an hour, okay? That hurt. Hurt very bad. But I got this scar, I don't
know if we're on video now, but I had this scar on my left hand. Okay, you can't see
it now. But what happened was the enemy used that, Thomas, to tell me I wasn't worthy enough.
I wasn't good enough. I was a black sheep of the family. I wasn't lovable. I could never
measure up. I wasn't good enough. Whatever you do isn't going to matter. Okay, so I was
buying all these lives from the enemy. Okay? So at that time, all that happened, I was
getting promoted. I was making more money. But what was happening was I was feeling miserable.
I had a lot of shame, a lot of body shame. And so I got depressed. That's when the depression
kicked in. Severe depression, suicide thoughts every day of my life, antidepressant medication,
all these different things. Nothing helped. And then I heard the gospel. Somebody shared
that with me. And it was in that moment that I finally realized my identity, my purpose
doesn't matter from this day forward if I make money or not. So I say all that to say
this. In that moment, and probably, I don't know, probably several months after that,
because I was out of work. I didn't say that part. I was out of work at that time. Actually,
after that wreck and then about three or four years later of that whole suicide, suicide
thoughts depression, after that four year period, right before I heard the gospel, I
had lost my job. This was back when 2001, the stock market was tanking, everybody was
laying people off, I couldn't find a job. And I had basically no money left. Whatever
left I had left in my bank account was almost done. And I basically was at the last thread
of the last rope of my life. That's when I heard the gospel. And I think Thomas, that's
when the Lord knew that was the only moment for me because I was so pigheaded and stubborn
and prideful that I could actually be paying attention and ready for it. Because there
was no other hope. That's all I knew. That was the only one left. So I heard the gospel
and it's when I finally realized that, hey, my identity is in Christ. And what I think
is very important and this is what I teach individuals, men and women, is that when it
comes to purpose, when it comes to calling, I want to get this very key point here, because
I don't ever hear this said. I think I may be the only one saying this. Your purpose
does not always equal profit. You got to remember that. Your purpose, your calling does not
always equal profit. Now, I kind of had to swallow that pill myself because the apostle
Paul talks about he had tent making so he could share the gospel, things like that.
I have two businesses that I run and one of them I've been running for about 23 plus years
now. But that in a way allows me to write books, do the courses, do speaking engagements,
do the podcasts, do these groups and have this membership site, do all these different
things because if I didn't have in that one business, we work two to three months a year.
That's all I do. In fact, we're about to kick it up right now. But if I didn't have that
business, I wouldn't have the flexibility, the time and the financial freedom to do the
stuff that I want to do, to glorify the Lord and actually to deepen my relationship with
Christ as well.
Wow. I really like that you said that because that purpose does not always equal profit.
I think you even display like they're not necessarily hand in hand regardless because
a lot of people will say, I've had a lot of people on the show who have talked about it,
like where your purpose, your calling goes with you wherever you go, no matter what you're
doing. You're calling, and you can tell me what your thoughts are on this, like your
calling isn't necessarily a thing that you're doing, but it's the lifestyle that you're
living.
Yeah, I like that. I do like that. Yeah. Well, again, I think our calling here, it says this
in scripture is to know God and to make Him known. I think as a believer in Christ, if
you can just do those two things, I think the other stuff is going to work itself out
because however God has designed you, you're bent. However, whatever skill sets He's given,
your past experiences, your innate abilities, whatever. And I actually have on the website,
the jeffterina.com, I have a specific page that you can go to to help find your purpose.
There's even a personal assessment that you do that identifies 41 unique traits about you
that will help you to be more centered towards your purpose. And then I have the spiritual
gifts test that I do and all this different coaching, but those things are on the website,
okay? You can go there. We can get into that more in a little bit. But what I found is
go back to that, the calling. It's to know God, to make Him known, but you live that
out. The way that God has us do this, each one of us, is how He specifically wired us,
those skill sets, those things that you love, that you're passionate about, that you love
to talk about, that you love to do, your innate abilities. Like, let me give an example. My
dad is a CPA. When I got out of high school, I was like, okay, I want to get a business
degree. So I went in, I was going to go do accounting. And I was doing really good in
the first couple of accounting classes. And then I got to cost accounting, and I'm like,
whoa, what is this stuff? This makes no sense to me. But my dad understands it like the
back of his hand, because he just loves numbers. And the way he looks at numbers are completely
different than the way that I do. So that cost accounting class was the class that got
me to go, you know what, I'm more of a management guy. I'm not an accounting guy. And so the
point is, if I would have gone that route and been an accountant, I would be miserable
because that's not my bent. You see what I'm getting at?
Okay.
Okay. But doing something like managing or speaking or coaching or teaching, that's more
my bent, but at the same time, you may have to do different things just to fulfill that
calling or that purpose that the Lord's given you. That's kind of what I'm saying.
No. Okay, good. Thank you for clarifying. I kind of want to go back to, you mentioned
like, you mentioned the car accident you had, and that's when the gospel was displayed to
you. And that's whenever you started to, I guess, in these terms, first taken with the
term bent, that's when you really started to understand what maybe was like the start
of that journey. So like, how did you get from like, how did you get from where you
were at that moment to not just where you are now? Like, how did you even start? How
did you maintain any resilience from that point?
Man, that's a big word, resilience, man. That is a virtue that I talk a lot about. And I'm
sure in your podcast here, you've got a lot of guys that are business owners, entrepreneurs,
and they will tell you right now that, and even freelancers, they will tell you right
now that if you don't have resilience or perseverance, you're not going to succeed. You've got to
have that.
So let me see if I can answer the question here, because when I placed my faith in Christ,
I was good with the salvation thing, okay? I remember the guy that shared the gospel
with me. He said, okay, I placed my faith in Christ, and then probably a couple weeks
later, he was a Christian counselor, okay? So a couple weeks later, I went back and he
said, okay, now what I want you to do is I want you to go share your story, your testimony
of how Jesus saved your life. I was like, no, I don't want to do that. I'm good with
the salvation thing. And the reason why is I did not share this part, but when I was
severely depressed and I told you about the scar on my hand, I wore long sleeve shirts
every single day, 365 days for four straight years. And I live in Texas. I'm talking about
even in the Texas heat, Thomas, I was wearing a long sleeve shirt. I would put a bandaid
on this scar. I would wrap the scar with the bandage. Why was I doing that? Some people
could say it was vanity. Well, no, it's a thing that I had at the time called body dysmorphic
disorder. And really what it is, is any little cut, scratch, whatever on your skin, on your
body, you think it's the worst thing ever. It looks like a mountain. It's the ugliest
thing to you, right? This is one of the things I speak about as well. And so a lot of people
call that the broken mirror because the mirror is your worst enemy because you will see every
flaw in yourself that other people are like, what are you talking about? There's no problem.
But to you, you see it as you're the ugliest person around. And that's not true. Okay?
So I had really bad road burn. And to me, the only fix for that was to get surgery,
to have this scar cut out. I went to five plastic surgeons and five of them said no.
Finally, one of them said, he said, I'm going to take care of it. It's going to be fine.
When he did that, it got worse. And the depression just, it kicked into maximum overdrive. Okay?
When you add all that together, now I'm going there. The counselor shares the gospel with
me. I've got no hope. I hear that. And then he said two weeks later, now I want you to
go and tell people your story. And he said, I want you to go to big groups. This is what
I want you to do. Not just one person, but I want you to go to this group. There's going
to be hundreds of people and I want you to get in front of them and tell them. I'm like,
no, I don't want to do that because I still had the bandage on. Right? You know, it says
in scripture, it says, although you're a new creation, Paul talks about you're a new creation
when you place your faith in Christ, you're a new creation. However, the old ways, your
flesh is still there and you've got to work through that, right? The process of sanctification.
You've got to battle through that. Your old mind, the old way of thinking, right? You've
got to take thoughts captive to Christ. Well, that sounds great, but you've got to get in
the habit of doing it every day because remember, for four years of my life, I was believing
one way and then even my life before that, I believed a certain way. So now I've got
to retrain my brain, think a different way and it doesn't just happen, you know, like
that overnight. You've got to continue to think that way and take those thoughts captive.
So I said, no way, I don't want to do that. And he said, okay. So I went in again for
the other visit a week later or maybe two weeks later and I said, okay, I guess I'll
do it. I'll give it a try. And he said, okay, here's where you go. And I went and that's
when I first started to share my testimony and I share my testimony and you know what
everybody said? Take the bandage off. Let's see it. I was like, what? You know, I usually
imagine how red I was in my face, you know, sweating. I'm like, no, I don't want to do
that. They said, no, we want to see. Took it off and they go, dude, we still love you
as a brother in Christ. That's right there. The more that I shared my testimony, the more
that I exposed the lies that I was believing from Satan, the more I realized God does love
me. Other people do accept me, accept me. And if that's the case, I can accept myself
right now, even though I may not agree with all of it. And so then that's how I started
speaking, teaching. And then years later, that's how I started the podcast, all these
things adding up. And then through that, learning how to share the gospel, teaching people how
to share the gospel, first writing the book. And then I'm realizing all through this time,
in 2020, you know, actually 2020, remember all that famous year, 2020, we had everything
get closed down. I realized there was so much noise, actually a year before that, there
was so much noise in the world, right? Distractions, hurry, busyness, information. I'm like, you
know, how do we break through that stuff? And so that just through speaking, through
running the podcast, just through my own life, my own stories, that's how the second book
came out, Cut Through the Noise, How to Remove Distractions and Connect with God. Okay, now
we've got a couple of books since then. But all this stuff here, anytime you write something,
and you'll probably know this, anytime you write something, there's always an element
of that in your own life. And you want to help others learn from that because your own
struggles. And that's really what I do in the books that I write. So, I'm hoping that
you can kind of understand how I got from point A to where I am right now.
Yeah, I think a lot of it definitely is from the people around you that God's around you
with to push you and to break you out of that shelter that you can then become the person
that He created you to be. I think that's like we talk again, like on this podcast,
community comes up a lot. I think that's probably what your counselor seemed to be pushing you
towards within just opening it up, but also entering into a community and being vulnerable,
being vulnerable with them so that, because he didn't know how they would respond, but
he had a pretty good idea knowing what kind of group he was sending you to.
Yeah, I think what's big on the community, I think that's missed a lot, is it's the component
of the acceptance part. It's realizing, okay, I'm not going to sit here and say that I have
his best buddies with everybody in that group and vice versa, but there were people that,
let me say it this way, everybody accepts you for who you are because they realize,
hey, they maybe had their own issues, although maybe different, they still can accept you
and then you accept them. I think that's a big component of community. It's not just
about finding your people or your peeps, what they say, but it's really about finding a
place where people accept you and don't judge you. I think that for me was massive when
I saw that.
That is really interesting. I want to thank you again. I keep saying thank you, but I
also want to thank you for coming here, sharing this story. I know you've probably shared
this story a bunch of times at this point, but I appreciate you sharing it with us. The
next thing I want to jump into is, so through your journey, you went from fighting 150 feet
in a car accident to now speaking, writing books, and all these things. Through all of
this, was there any point that you measured this personal progress or this personal development
as you were working towards living in your calling?
If that makes sense.
Let me see. I don't know if I'm understanding that question. You're saying that my measuring,
how far I've come in relation to calling, is that what you're saying? That's okay. I
think I know what you're saying. Are you saying that how far I've come, am I looking at that
saying okay, I'm actually living out my calling? Is that what you're getting at?
Yeah.
I think so. I think anybody that really wants to continue to improve, and I'm like that,
a lot of people say type A personality, I'm definitely that. I'd say I'm type AAA. The
Lord's wired me that way. I've always been somebody that wants to go out there and try
something first, not afraid. I do have fears. I will say that, but I'm not afraid to try
things new and to get out there and fail. That's what I've realized here when it comes
to pursuing your calling, your purpose, whatever you want to call it, that you can't be afraid
to stumble. You can't be afraid to fall short or you can't be afraid to fail because if
you do, you're never going to even take a step forward. You're never even going to attempt
to try to do something. I don't know if you can see this or not, but on the back here
is a picture of, I think it's a little picture, it's one of my favorite characters from the
Star Wars movie. It's Yoda. I do a Yoda impression. I'm not going to do it today, but I do a Yoda
impression. I love that little green guy. He's just so cool. Jedi Master Yoda. He has
this saying, he says, do or do not, there is no try. I love that because I know you
have to try, but if you're going out there with the mentality that I'm going to try and
if I fail, it's okay, then you're already losing. You've already lost. I have the mentality
of do or do not. I know that if I'm doing something, I have to be trying it. It's just
a different twist in mentality. With the do or do not mentality, I'm already in my brain
saying I'm going to succeed. If I don't, it's okay. I'm going to learn something from it.
As long as I learn something from it that will help me the next stage, step thing I
do, then okay. If I don't learn something from it, then I failed. That's what I tell
my kids all the time and I'm sure listeners here, if they have the kids, they're always
going to tell their son or their daughter, hey, when you fall down, what do you do? You
get back up. That's just what you do. When I look at it that way, are there things that
I wish I was doing that I'm not doing enough? 1000%, absolutely. Is that frustrating to
me? Yeah, it is frustrating, but I got to look at the other things and go, okay, I look
at where I'm at now and look at where I was 23 years ago. Then when I started the podcast
about seven years ago, I'm like, wow, I had no idea that I could be where I'm at now to
where I was then. Does that make any sense? When I look at it from that perspective, Thomas,
I'm realizing that I'm number one trying, I am doing my calling and yes, I always want
to do more because I don't ever want to get content. Because if I'm content, then I'm
never going to try to grow. I'm never going to try to help other people. I'm never going
to try to make an impact. I'm always asking this and maybe this is the wrong prayer or
maybe it's the wrong thing to ask, but when I came to know the Lord 23 years ago, I said,
put me where you want me to make the most impact. I don't care who it is. I don't care
who doesn't like me. I don't care what people say about me. I want to be able to make an
impact and make you known. I will tell you, a lot of times I wish I didn't pray that because
especially now in the cancel culture where we live today, man, I can tell you certain
places don't like me. YouTube doesn't like me. YouTube has taken down some of my shows
before because I talk about Jesus. But you know what? Here's the thing. If I'm not doing
that, if I'm not standing up for something, then I'm standing up for nothing. And I'd
rather stand up for Christ because he stood up for me. Okay? That's kind of where I'm
at. I was preaching there. I could tell. I'm going to calm down.
No, you're good. You're perfectly fine. I did like the one thing you said about failure
was essentially if you don't have it learned, if you try and you fail and then you learn
nothing from it, that's the true failure. And I think that's something I mentioned to
you before we started recording that I want to get my Maxwell leadership certifications.
I read a lot of his books and look into him a lot. But he has a book called Sometimes
You Win and Sometimes You Learn. And to me, I also had somebody else on this podcast previously,
a friend of mine, Lee Hanyo. And for him, the way he saw failure was the only time you
fail is when you don't actually start. So I feel like maybe two, four, where you don't
actually start and you don't actually learn something from what you did if you failed.
And so I think it's just a food for thought for the listeners to think about that. There's
always something to learn even if you feel like you didn't necessarily reach the market
you were aiming for. And then you can try again and try again, fail, possibly fail again,
but learn something new, keep going.
Exactly. Well, and you know what John's saying there is that when you fail, you can learn
more. The potential to learn more is greater. But I would kind of tweak that. I'm sure he's
talking about in his book, but I would tweak that. What he's saying is say that, you know,
even when you win, you're learning. I mean, you should be. You should be learning both
ways. But if you look at it, when you're winning something, you're doing it well and there's
a tendency to take it for granted. Okay. But we've all got to sit back and reflect. And
yeah, so who likes to fail? Nobody likes to fail. That's not fun. I mean, man, I can tell
you that I told you there's two businesses that I have. And one of those is a Christmas
lighting business. Paul talks about the thorn in his flesh. That is the thorn in my flesh.
And if my customers hear this, this is going to be bad news for me. But the reason why it's
the thorn in my flesh is, you know, it's a lot, it's, you know, two to three months a
year. It's a lot of work. But at the same time, it's a lot of work because that's my
harvest time. Okay. I look at those Christmas lights as crops. So every light we put up
is like a crop and we got to do that two to three months. And I'm getting probably about
four to five hours of sleep a night. Okay. But I'm working it. So I don't have to do
anything else the rest of the year for the most part. But at the same time, I've turned
that around. Now I had all these videos for almost 20 years that I finally put together
in a course about a year or two ago called Christmas sites for profit. And it teaches
people how to start a Christmas lighting business, do the installs, do the design, do the estimating,
do all that stuff. And I realized, Hey, I can turn in the experience I have with the
installations and how to start the business, how to run and how to hire guys and marketing
and all these different things. And now, and now use this as part of my calling. And that
is to coach, to train, to teach, to help others. Okay. And I, and here's the thing, Thomas,
that thing was sitting there. That course was sitting in my phone for over 15 years,
all the videos. And I finally realized, wait a second, what am I doing here? Part of my
purpose is to help people. Why can't I help them professionally and not just spiritually
and or personally? Why can't I just do all of it? And so that, I think this is a good
point here for the listeners is when it comes to calling, you got to look at it all from
different areas. Maybe part of your calling, a big part of it is professional. Another
big part of it is personal. And another big part of it is spiritual. I say, if you can
try every little avenue, maybe one component is a little bit more, but the more that you
try to hit every one of those little areas, the more fulfilling or fulfilled you're going
to be. Right? And so the other one that we do is we have a web design business and that
has been pretty cool. But I say, you got to make sure that whatever you're doing, the
calling, the bent, all that is, is pushed through. And I would add another one, your
passion. What is it that you love to do?
That's good. Yeah, no, that's some passion is huge. I think the, like, what do you love
to do? I like to think, what do you love to do? What are you good at? And then what is
the intersection between the two? And that's a lot of times whenever people are trying
to figure out what they're meant to be doing, that's a good intersection point to look
at. Absolutely. Absolutely. But the, I think that, I mean, that goes through everything
I personally had prepared, but there's just a couple final wrap up questions that I wanted
to ask you before we officially wrap up. When it comes to, let's say, discovering your
embed or personal growth, which is a lot of what this podcast is about, what kind of resources
would you or have you typically recommend to people?
That's a good question. To me, I think, you know, big part of that is you got to find
out your spiritual gifts. I think that's big, especially if you're a believer. You got to
know that because that kind of steers you in the right way. And the other thing is I
talked about passion. You know, what is it that you love to do? What is it that you find
yourself talking about the most? Okay. So one of those, I'll just say this, one of the
resources, if you go to my website, you go to jeffjarena.com, go to there, there's a
button, big button that says get started. You're going to look at training programs,
private coaching, books, public speaking, free newsletter. Then I have some other free
tools and resources. So if you kind of just go through that site, there's even a specific
site jeffjarena.com forward slash purpose. I'm pretty sure that's what it says, forward
slash purpose. But if you go there and it's J-E-F-F J-E-R-I-N-A.com. But if you go there
guys, you're going to look at some coaching. Also you can download, I've got a, it's a
very quick read. It's probably 40 pages, probably take you about 30, 40 minutes to read. It's
the first book that I wrote years ago and I kind of give that, well, I give it out when
you sign up to the newsletter, so to speak, but it's called 10 Steps to Power and Purpose.
And so with that, I kind of identified based on my own experience and through coaching
others, these 10 steps that really help you find and live out your true calling. And if
you go through there, those steps, and then it kind of will mention some other resources
in there, I would say that's the best thing to do. Okay? And that's on the books page
on the website. But then also for me, I will tell you in terms of scripture, one of my
favorite books of the Bible is Philippians. I love that. Book of Joshua, he's so big on
leadership and then obviously Proverbs, wisdom. Because I think to me, wisdom is the foundational
virtue that all the other virtues rely on. And I'm talking about perseverance, resilience,
integrity. What are some other ones? Courtesy, leadership, all the initiative, all these
different things you're going to need to help determine your calling, but it all leans on
wisdom. Okay? And then there's another book that I read that I don't want to say necessarily,
that helped me in terms of finding my calling, but it definitely helped me connect with the
Lord in that time, is there's a book called The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother
Lawrence. Take you about, I don't know, an hour to read. But that's one of my favorite
ones to read. So again, go to JeffTorino.com, you're going to see all the books, all the
resources that you got there. There's, what, I got to think there's three to five books
on that website that I've written, the training programs, the speaking stuff. And guys, some
of this, I have courses that you can actually take right there as well. And the purpose
stuff and then the coaching. So I hope I didn't mention that too much. I just, I've spent
a lot of time on this stuff and this is kind of what I do is help people find, discover
their bent and then live that out. That whether it's through the courses, the training and
or the specific one-on-one or group coaching. Yeah, no, for sure. And no, I would expect
nothing less from someone that has their own platform, have things to help people out.
I would definitely expect you to, you know, promote your own content so that more people,
that you can help more people out. Yeah. And then they can just, I would say when they
go to that site, they can register or subscribe to the Men on Plug podcast. And then I have
two YouTube channels, one's that's more personal, faith driven and one that's more business
oriented. So they can go there and yeah, I can't believe I'm promoting YouTube. Why
would I do that? But I do have the YouTube channels. And then as the, well, I actually
have two more questions there, but now you've been on the show though and you kind of understand,
get a little bit of an idea of what I'm about, what the show is about. Who would you recommend
as a guest for the show? Man, I'll tell you, that's a good question. I'll tell you, one
of my favorite ones was Josh McDowell when he came on the show. I don't know if you guys
know him or not. He wrote the Ford for my first book, great show. I think that was the
only show I ever did that was FaceTime. We have issues with technical stuff and you know
how sometimes you just got to work through it. And that was the only time I did one FaceTime.
It was one of the best ones. So I would definitely say Josh McDowell. And then obviously Kevin
Sorbaugh. I think he's a good guy. Now here's the thing. I can't give those info out. They
told me not to do that. So you got to research those for yourself. But Kevin's been a guest
on my show twice and he was really blessed to him, endorsed one of my other books. So
I would say those two guys, if you really want to get some fired up stuff that are guys
that are going to speak in to this stuff, I would say definitely those two guys.
Great. Thank you. And then how can people, if they want to maybe look into more of your
services, they can go to your website and is that the best way to contact you?
Yeah, just go to JeffJarena.com. There's a contact page there. There's the courses, the
books, all that stuff. Now I know a lot of the young guys now, they like the links page
or the bio links page. So I actually created one here. Now this is a stretch for me. I'm
53 years old. So I created this page. So if they want to go there, I don't want to give
them a different call to action, but if they do want to go there, go to JeffJarena.com
forward slash links. That's J E F F J E R I N A dot com forward slash L I N K S. You're
going to see all that stuff there. You'll probably see, I think I got a two book bundle
discount that guys they can get right there. And so yeah, so they can get that as a discount
here for you guys as a, as a, as a, your audience. So great. All right. Well, well, Jeff, thank
you for being on the, being on the show. Again, thank you for your yes. Really definitely
appreciated it. And thank you everyone for listening to this episode of the pursuit of
calling podcast. You can go ahead and share it out on Instagram, Facebook, and don't forget
to leave a five star review wherever you listen to your podcasts. All right. See you next
time.