“The Power of Pain to Change Your Life” by Dr. Brad Miller

00:00:00 Dr Brad Miller

And hello again, good people and Welcome to Beyond Adversity With Doctor Brad Miller. In this podcast, we look to help you to navigate adverse life conditions and come to a place of peace and prosperity and purpose.

00:00:15 Dr Brad Miller

Thank you for the privilege of coming into your life through your ears today.

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Whatever you're doing, taking a walk, enjoying the family, exercising whatever you're doing, it's a privilege for me to be there as I come to you from the Home Loft studios just outside of Indianapolis, IN here to speak a good word into your life.

00:00:36 Dr Brad Miller

Have you ever been?

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I mean, truly and physically stuck in some predicament, or I mean, or physically in a place where you are stuck.

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It's not a good feeling.

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We're going to talk about being stuck here today on beyond adversity and the power of the pain of being stuck to achieve any goal.

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I heard. I know that you are aware that this is the third of a three-part series.

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Of messages that we've been having here about being stuck, we had a special guest with the Susie Hayes from susiehayesnow.com.

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She talked about her book, FREED from Stuck!: Dare to Cross the Bridge Beyond Grief, Trauma and Self-Sabotage to Discover.

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Lasting Change.

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Now in episodes 260 and 261, and she laid out her plan and her process to help you get freed from being stuck.

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And shall she got out of some really difficult circumstances herself and her.

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She wrote her book about help you to get freed from stuck to achieve things in life.

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And you got to do that.

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I believe that, however, we can use the pain of being stuck perhaps to.

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Encourage us in our life.

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I'll get into that in just a moment. They want, you know, you can always go to Doctor Brad miller.com for over 260 episodes of this podcast, which are designed specifically to help you grow through what you go through.

00:02:14 Dr Brad Miller

You can head over to drbradmiller.com/40dayway to get on our mailing list.

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To find out more about our programs and coaching that can be helpful to you.

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Stuck being stuck.

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I've had a couple of occasions when I felt physically stuck.

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And it wasn't good.

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It wasn't good.

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Now I'm kind of a big guy.

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I've always been heavy, but at certain times of my life, i've been a lot heavier than I am right now.

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At times in my life, i've tipped the scales over 300 pounds.

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One of those times when I was kind of on.

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The heavier side, to be sure, we took our family to an amusement park.

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Big, big, you know, theme Park near not too far from where we live called holiday World.

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And our kids are two youngest at that time.

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Our youngest is about 10, and our middle child, about 13 boys.

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And with the practice on certain rides we went on, you know that the kids, the boys would go.

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My wife and I, and usually the older one, would go with my sit with my wife and the younger one would sit with me.

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And as this kind of how we work things on certain rides that we want, we did a lot of rides together.

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And there was this usually is no big deal.

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It's not a problem.

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We wanted this one ride though.

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Called the scrambler.

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And you know.

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It just does a whipping.

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It's a a car that goes on a, you know, a vertical, not a vertical but a horizontal process whipping around, scrambling you up very, you know, in a high rate of speed.

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The centrifugal force whips you around.

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And my youngest son, about 10 years old.

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The time was in the little car with me.

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And to get into the little car we barely wedged in there, I barely wedged in there.

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I mean, he his little body barely wedged in next to mine.

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He was not comfortable and they put the bar, you know, the safety bar in front of us and they had to smoosh down on my gut to make it work.

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And they put us too snugly in there, too, snugly into this place.

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And the ride started and whipped us around and centrifugal force whipped us around in such a way that I was basically crushing my 10 year.

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Old son and he was not happy about it.

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I was uncomfortable.

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It was bad.

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And when the ride stopped, he was kind of mad at me and I was in pain and still stuck in.

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This little car.

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And he didn't know it.

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And he was, you know, a little upset about it.

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And my none of our family knew about it, but I found it humiliating that I found myself in that position that I was stuck in that position.

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Around that same time, my daughter, who was.

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Few years older than my two sons.

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She and I went to a park where there was a cave and I said, hey, let's go through this cave together, cause I'd gone through it as a kid.

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And what I didn't realize is that the last time I had gone through this cave was when I was about 12 years old, maybe 7.

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Grade and now I'm an adult and I'm a much bigger guy than I was when I was 12 years old.

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And she and I went through this cave, and there were parts of The Cave when you had to get down to your hands and knees and squeeze through these these tough passages in this cave to get through it.

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And I found myself literally, at one point wedged in an area.

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Where I was stuck for a few moments.

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And my daughter was upset and she was crying.

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Daddy, you're stuck, Daddy.

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You're stuck.

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And I managed to suck at my gut and get through the wedge of that cave.

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Get out to the other side and breathe a sigh of relief.

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But again, I was humiliated.

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What I'm sure with you those painful moments about being overweight is because.

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I'm that became an impetus.

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For me to take some dramatic action, not too long after that when I decided, OK, i've tried various things.

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I've had very little success, so I ended up having lost surgery and £100 a little over 10 months and it was probably one of the better.

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Things i've ever done.

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And uh, because it released me the pain of incidents like that of feeling physically stuck, let alone all the emotion on all the other nonsense that goes on when you're overweight, all the mental strain and all the humiliations. You know airplane seats are a challenge.

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All kinds of things become a challenge.

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They are not necessarily for other people challenge, but they work for.

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And that pain of doing that gave me the incentive to take action because I wanted to have then the pleasure, as it were, as it were, of having what it meant to be not.

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In that position to be able to go on a ride in amusement park with my son or anybody else and not feel self-conscious about crushing them or to go through a cave and feel OK about it or to, you know, in any number of circumstances about that.

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And that's what I wanted.

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Got and it also alleviates some physical health problems that were bogging me down at the time.

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Big, big decision, major action that I took as a weight loss surgery.

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And it was a good thing when why was it because of the pain that I felt?

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Now a lot of people think pain is a bad.

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It's certainly a pain is a sign of something's not right. But pain is also something that some people went then to submerge or to be in denial about.

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And I want to encourage you, my good people here on beyond adversity, that the adversity serves a purpose.

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And you can either be stuck in the malaise of mediocrity or you can.

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Name the adversity.

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Name the problem, name the pain, and then choose to navigate the wilderness to find a better place.

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I like to call it the place of peace and prosperity and purpose.

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You may recognize that kinda.

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That image of a good place to be is like the the promised life.

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I like to call it.

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It's kind of the promised land of the Bible, where Moses took the children of Israel out of slavery, pain through the wilderness to the land of milk and honey.

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But it took a long process.

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They had to experience the pain, and there was lots of other problems along the way, and there was denial.

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There was rejection.

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There was adversity to face.

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There was hunger.

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There was all kinds of things that they had to go through.

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You know, you think you, most of you know that I'm a retired pastor. And so these stories from the Bible and from people's faith Walk is an important one, that they help give us all some energy and sensibility.

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That pain is not always a bad thing.

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If we use it properly to motivate us to get out of the painful situation into something better.

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I know that Jesus did this when he was in the garden of Jessamine, a painful place to be, and he was going to be, you know, rich, arrested and taken away, to be crucified.

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And one of his best friends, his best followers, a guy named Peter.

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And to Jesus, Peter, you're going to deny ME3. And Jesus said to Peter, you're gonna deny me three times. Peter said no way that's going to happen. And yet.

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Those of us who know the story from John 18, Peter denied Jesus three times, pretend he didn't know Him three occasions after Jesus predicted it and Peter was humiliated and upset.

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And he ended up in despair.

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That's where you can go.

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If you choose to, you can go to spare.

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You can go to a sense of humiliation.

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Humiliation you.

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Can give up.

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You know the children of Israel could have given up in the wilderness. I could have given up and remained, you know, fat for a long, long time. But I chose to take dramatic action and lose 100 pounds. What are you?

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Going to do.

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Here's what happened with Moses.

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They got through the wilderness to the place of the promised land, the land of milk and honey.

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They got through it.

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Took a long time, took some effort.

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You know Peter, who was one to deny Jesus?

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He ended up.

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Being what is called the rock.

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The one who was the solid foundation was the church was built because after the resurrection he became the great leader of the church to build what we now know as the Christian Church.

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When he got through that terrible pain of denying Jesus, here's what I want to encourage you to do.

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Do not remain stuck in the malaise of your mediocrity.

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You don't have to.

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The temptation is there.

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The temptation is there to remain in mediocrity.

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The temptation is there to remain overnight.

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If that's the case, to be in a bad relationship.

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If that's the case, to be in a job that's unfulfilling, I want you to be fulfilled in your life and to take what you need to do to leverage the pain.

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You have and to do something with it.

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You know what?

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What is it that you know?

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Susie said.

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Get unstuck.

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Don't stay stuck.

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Because the worst thing that could happen for me is if we go back into that amusement park and getting that ride and be stuck again.

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And to be in that humiliating position, you got to take action.

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It's painful, it's difficult and it's ongoing.

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Oh, share with you.

00:12:00 Dr Brad Miller

Even right now this whole image about the losing weight came to be real for me again here recently.

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When you know i've over the years since I had that surgery, i've gained a little weight back.

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Not nearly as much as I used to weigh, but still, i've gained some weight back, so I'm overweight still and I'm going to have surgery in about a month for cancer.

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And my doc, actually two docs said to me, you know, you really need to lose weight before the surgery.

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And so I'm focused on.

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Doing that now.

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It's painful.

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It was painful to know about, you know, to get called out on this and then to understand that the pain of surgery will be dealt with will be.

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It if I go through the process of losing some weight.

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So I got to do that.

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So here's the idea here everybody to identify the adversity.

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And then choose to what I call the acts plan.

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So let's just say losing weight your adversity yet to choose the acts plan the A and the word acts is to take action.

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That's what Susie talked about her in her book, you know, to get unstuck, be freed, and she's got her process.

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Mine is the axe plan.

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The Isotech Act take action, so let's just say losing weight.

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You know what you got to do?

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You got to eat right?

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In my case, it's going to be intermittent fasting, keto and working on.

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A daily basis.

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That's that's what it's going to be, it's.

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Going to have to be, it's going.

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To be a discipline then, OK.

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The C in the word axis connect with a higher power.

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That's your spiritual life.

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And so for me, that's going to mean more focus on my prayer life and my journaling and things of that nature to connect it with a higher power and have a greater purpose.

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And that's one of the reasons I share these podcast episodes with you.

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To share them as well.

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And the TI mean the the the T in the word acts is to think with discipline that is what is your day by day process.

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How do you organize your life?

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It doesn't happen instantly just because you have pain.

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It's not.

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There's no magic pill here.

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You have to do what you have to do, and you have to have a process then.

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That think with discipline, what is your daily disciplines? In other words, I can't just diet and exercise one day and the weight comes off, you know the £15 I want to lose before.

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That's not going to happen with just doing it one day.

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You got to be an everyday to anything.

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It's going to be, you know, compiler one another the the the power of of, of the compensation that happens.

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So there, there's that.

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So in the extended to serve others, the word of acts is to serve others with love and that that means that your attitude have given something back.

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You know, I couldn't be a good dad to my kids.

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I couldn't really be a good husband to my wife.

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Couldn't do any of that stuff or contribute being make a contribution to my church or to you.

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Run the Beyond Adversity podcast.

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If I'm stuck, OK?

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The idea is to contribute by having a motivation, having a gratitude to give something back.

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That's what I want to encourage you to do, to have an attitude of taking whatever adversity you have and seeing this opportunity to do something good.

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You can do it.

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You people have adversity.

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They have depression in their life, they have physical disabilities.

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The debt you can turn all that around if you take that pain and leverage it towards something good.

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That's my encouragement to you and that's why I do the Beyond Diversity Podcast that tell you these stories about people have done just that.

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We have over 260 episodes now. I'd be at Doctor Brad miller.com, which are these great stories, stories and teaching that are gonna help to motivate you and get you in a place where you can identify your adversity.

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Navigate through the wilderness and come to your personal place of peace and prosperity and purpose. I'm here to help a doctor, Brad miller.com.

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And a doctor, Brad miller.com slash 40 day. Wait, get on our mailing list. Find out more about what we offer.

00:15:56 Dr Brad Miller

We can be helpful to you.

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We love you.

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We're with you and we look forward to seeing you next time here on the Beyond Diversity Podcast with Doctor Brad Miller.

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Until that time rolls around, remember, friends to always do all the good.

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That you can.