What defines you will define them | FSTT018

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There are a lot of talks that are not easy to have. You got a lot going on. But it's time that you and I, we discuss the elephant in the room that's being kept under the carpet. It's time you stop sleepwalking around it and pretending it's not there. You need to know that what defines you will define them.

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But don't worry, I can support you on this. And that's up next. Are you ready? Let's go.

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Hey, you. Pull up a seat. Welcome back to From Surviving to Thriving for parents. This is Episode 18. I am Raymond Bourcier.

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And if you are a parent or a soon-to-be parent who wants to give your kids the best start in life that you can give them, then you're in the right place. This show, it's all about you. Because being the parent that they need you to be starts within you. And this show is about transformation and taking unwavering action so that you can give your best to yourself, to your loved ones, and to your dreams. Before we dive into our chat here today, I want to let you know that in life, I don't believe in coincidences. I believe in synchronicities.

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Nothing is truly random. Think about it. The scientific odds of being born you is 400 trillion to one. So how many things have had to happen in just the right way and just the right order for you to have been born? One small change and you likely would have never been you.

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One small change in your life and you may have never found yourself here with me today. One small change can have a world of an impact. So things happen for a reason that you may or may not yet see or understand. But that's not to say that all that happens is good nor bad. Bad things happen to good people

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that should never happen. But putting that aside for now, I believe things come to you when you need to hear it at the time you need to hear it. Our conversation today. It may be tough, but it's something that you need to hear from someone who's walked that road and truly cares about seeing you succeed. Seeing you moving from survival mode to thriving.

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What defines you will define them. What does this mean? And why is it vital that you know? It's so that you can finally break free from the cycle of generational trauma that has been holding you back. We've talked about how your subconscious is programmed and conditioned through the first seven years of life and beyond, which becomes how you view life. You didn't program the operating system that runs your life in the background, runs your life from the shadows.

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You never wrote the code of how you choose to live your life. That was written by others along your journey and put into your system. For me, my childhood experiences, it programmed and conditioned me with the beliefs that led me to have no self-confidence, no self-esteem, no self-worth, no self-love, no self-validation and limiting beliefs. Maybe you can relate? Maybe you had those experiences too? These experiences, they become how your brain gets wired and this wiring, it becomes the lenses and the filters that you live your life seeing through.

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All of this impacts how you've experienced life. And for me, I went decades never feeling enough. Never feeling any sense of control. Never feeling that I was wanted. Never feeling appreciated. Never feeling comfortable within myself and being around others. Never being able to just simply be and have fun. You've come a long way and you need to understand that it's not your fault, and you're not to blame. Now that you know, however, it is your responsibility to grow and overcome because these things that define you, it will define your children if you don't take unwavering action at

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unlearning the programming that was forced on you by others and replacing it with the programming that serves you best. Your parents, your family, they did the best that they could because if they could have done better, they would have. It doesn't let them off the hook. But the fact that you're here with me, it shows you that you will do better, and that you want to be better, and that you will become better. Because you need to. You need to do it for them. Because you're the current programmer who is stepping into their pristine ecosystem and teaching their subconscious how life should be lived.

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Raising conscious children and great children. It isn't on the child, it's on you. And I know that sounds like a lot of pressure, but what defines you will be passed down to them, just like it was passed down to you. So you need to be consciously aware. You need to be aware to break the cycle.

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And it requires you to take unwavering action at doing things differently. And it starts with overcoming what you struggle with. If there is one thing that I learned over my 20 plus years of struggling, it's that what you run from will continue to show up in your life until you stop, face it and tackle it. So to become the parent that they need you to be, that you want to be, it requires you to start from within. Because as above, so below. It requires you to understand and be open to letting your ego aside. Letting go of the woulda/shoulda/coulda from your past.

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You have to be open to yourself and embrace your struggles. Not with low energy emotions like disgust or disappointment or failure, but with higher level energy like understanding, and compassion, and empathy. You have to realize that the internal ecosystem that is you, it may not be in the healthiest of conditions right now. And more importantly, it's not a bad thing. Good and bad is the duality of our world. Only you can decide what is good and what is bad to you in your reality.

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Let's expand on that. Good or bad comes down to your reality in how you view life through your experiences and through your lenses and filters. You can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect the dots looking backwards. That's a quote from Steve Jobs.

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And he's right. We don't see the future and where things will fall into place and more importantly, the how. That's not for us to know. We only see how things have fallen into place from our rear view mirror. Not all bad things are inherently bad, but some things just are or even evil.

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But when you take a step back, those things are in the minority. What may not seem or feel good for you in the present moment might just become the thing that you need moving forward. And it may even become one of the things that you're most proud of. Example, through my childhood and through my teens and even my early twenties, I live through a lot of garbage that I wouldn't wish on anyone. There are people out there who had it far worse than me.

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But remember, in life, there's what we know, there's what we know that we don't know, and there's what we don't know that we don't know. I can only ever come from a point of view of my personal experience and journey. That was my reality for me. I would never want to go back and live through what I experienced. And for the longest time, I would associate those experiences with being negative. As I went through them they were painful, they were hurtful, and oftentimes they were abusive. But even in your lowest moments, you can still find some of your most significant accomplishments. You can still find some of your most significant wins. What I went through was exactly what I needed on my personal journey to get to this point where I am here supporting you along your journey. Without those negative experiences, I wouldn't be who I am here today.

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I wouldn't be doing my part to help transform the lives and impact the worlds of 11 million people. Many of my struggles with depression, anxiety, no self-esteem, no self-confidence, no self-love, always needing validation through others and constant limiting beliefs, my ego needed them because it was all I had ever known since I was five years old. Those were me and I was them. We were intertwined.

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Who I was, was the story of what I experienced through the actions and words of others. I became dependent on these as a kind of Stockholm Syndrome because I had never known a life outside of living in survival mode. Fear kept me holding on to the things that didn't serve me. Fear of the unknown. My ego was scared because if I let go to the only things that I had ever known in my life, who was I?

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If you think about it, it can almost be a form of an identity crisis. For most of my life, I let my surroundings, my experiences, and the events that I went through control me. I let them dictate my life. I let them control the narrative, and I let them define me. As a kid

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I swore to myself that I would never bring a child into this world, into the same sea of garbage that I experienced. The change, it didn't happen overnight. Maybe you, like me, struggled in those early years and were programmed and conditioned in a way that didn't serve you as well. This programming and conditioning didn't serve you back then when you couldn't have known any better. And it definitely isn't serving you right now.

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Now that you do know better, is it? At some point to go from point A to point B. To go from surviving to thriving. You have to give your ego, compassion, understanding, and empathy. And this is going to be hard for you. But you need to hear this. You have to let yourself off the hook for not knowing.

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You have to let yourself off the hook for not knowing any better at an early age because there's no way you could have known better. You have to start your healing journey to let that go in order to move forward, because you can't drive forward while constantly looking in the rearview mirror. You'll crash. What defined you back then should not define you right now. And I don't mean this in the sense that you should ignore or pretend what happened never happened.

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It's the opposite. Because what you went through defines the you that you want to be. When you take back of the one thing that you may have never had. Control. You choose what defines you. You choose your narrative.

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They say, this kid is stupid because he only ever skated by with a 50% grade average. I say, that's survival doing the bare minimum just to survive in an inhospitable environment. They say, that the kid is a troublemaker. I say, that the kid is crying for help in the only way that they know how, because no one is spending the time and effort to go deeper into what's really going on. They say, that the kid is a loser and will never amount to anything.

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I say, that the kid is finding their way to connect with others in a world that isn't allowing them to be their authentic selves. Everything I experienced in my past, I looked back on with gratitude, and the me from ten years ago would have never believed it. I would have laughed in your face if you told me. Now, I'm not grateful for what I had to go through. But I am grateful for having gone through them, for the lessons that I have learned and the narrative that I took away. And this is where taking back control of your life starts. No longer letting others define you.

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Choose your life, your way. Everything that I experienced, it made me a stronger person over time. It made me more resilient, even when I felt that I had nothing left to give. It made me learn who I want to be as a person and more importantly, who I didn't want to be.

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It made me learn the lessons that helped me push towards being world's best at what I do. World's best is not about ego. It's about giving your highest self to what matters most to you. No matter what you went through. No matter how much garbage that you had to swim through. No matter how many times you struggled in survival mode, barely holding on. You have a 100% success rate at making it through. When you take control of your narrative, your reality of what you experienced is determined by what you choose to take away from it.

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What you take away is what defines you, and what defines you will define your kids. Giving yourself your best. It teaches them that they do matter. That they also should give themselves their best, because that's how life should be lived. Reality is a personal journey and only you will ever live your life. Overcoming your struggles with self. Breaking the cycle of generational trauma. Giving your inner child the love, compassion, understanding, and most importantly, the gratitude that it needs to allow you to heal. You may not be able to see it, but understand from someone who has been walking that same road.

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Everything that you need to grow and overcome is all within you. It requires you to stop running from the struggles of self and become conscious of these things. And I know it's hard. It's hard for humans to bring to consciousness the things that we may not feel too proud of ourselves for struggling with. That's why it's important to understand.

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True consciousness is what you need to strive for as it allows you to finally get to that place and look at the things and acknowledge them. This is how you move forward, because it's even harder on you if you don't. You allow these things to live their lives rent free in the back of your head, and it impacts every aspect of your life. You have to turn and face things. You have to stand up to these things.

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There's a term out there that you may have heard before. Fake it until you make it. I don't believe in that term. I think it's hot garbage. You have to face it until you make it.

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Because the minute you stop running and start taking back the narrative, those struggles, they become a part of the old you. The past you. The moment you commit yourself to overcoming these struggles, they become part of the old you. The old you doesn't define who you are. What defines who you are is who you decide you are. The lessons of the past are merely lessons.

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They don't dictate your future. Your future is determined by what you control in this moment. Your future is determined by what you think, by how you act, by how you react and how you don't act. The you that you've always needed has always been inside of you. You just may not have been able to see it beyond the fog of survival mode.

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Like me, you may not have been ready to let go of some things that you've always known. But sometimes holding on to the things that hurt us most is simply harder than letting go. Becoming the parent that they need you to be starts with you taking back control of your narrative and choosing to become your higher self, your world's best version of you. Once you decide to do this, you close one chapter and you begin a whole new journey. And you're not alone on this journey. To go far, go together. That's where our world-class support comes in.

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If you want our help. Our support along your journey. Join our support tribe at empowerup.info/tribe and together you'll have the support that you maybe have always needed but have never had. And understand that your past doesn't need you. Your future does. Because your future is their future and what defines you will define them. I hope that you found this episode helpful.

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And if you did, or you found any other episode helpful, please consider leaving us a five star review on iTunes or a five star rating on Spotify as this will help us take one step closer to our goal of transforming the lives and impacting the worlds of 11 million people. And as a special thanks for those of you who do leave a review, we'll read it on air and give you a special shoutout at the end of an episode. That's it for today's show. Thank you for showing up for you. The best Investment you can ever make is in yourself.

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Time is the most valuable commodity In this world, and I hope that I was able to give you the value and impact that you need on your journey. I'll see you next week. Until then, you're just one unwavering action away from a completely different life. To the journey. Much love.