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Star Wars meets Personal Development
As my mentor Rod Hairston always says, “Change is inevitable. Growth is intentional.” At its core, that’s what this episode of Path of the Jedi is all about.
There is no “normal”. Even in the most peaceful and stable of times, change is constantly happening in the world around us. And whether we know it or not, we’re changing with it. It’s an adaptive mechanism that our species evolved with to help ensure survival.
There is another adaptive and almost contradictory mechanism that is resistant to change. Radical change means risk and risk means a decreased chance of survival.
This leads us to believe that it is safer not
to change even though change is undoubtedly happening albeit at an imperceptible rate. Because of this, making change always feels difficult, dangerous, if not outright impossible.
The truth is, it’s none of those things. You can make changes. You can use those same mechanisms to make intentional changes to yourself for the better, changes that will ensure that you prosper and fourth and not just survive.
In Season 7 Episodes 7 and 8 for the Clone Wars, the challenges Ahsoka faces teaches us these exact lessons, as do many of the story arcs in this series because it portrays characters fighting to survive in the face of abrupt and often violent change.
At this moment in history the reality is we’re not living in a world of stability. The change happening in the world right now is abrupt and disruptive. And if we don’t stay ahead of that change, we risk (if not on an individual level, as a species) best case scenario being made obsolete, worse case scenario becoming extinct.
Good thing we have the ability to be intention and stay ahead of change.
Give this episode a listen for more on this discussion.
Originally released November 10, 2021
(Intro soundbite) And the thing is, it’s not that failures or mistakes are necessarily bad things. It’s the judgments that we make about those things that really can hold us back from making progress.
(Intro music and main podcast)
All right! Welcome to Path of the Jedi, the podcast where Star Wars meets personal development. Bright suns, citizens! Today as I mentioned last week we have another shotgun episode. So let’s just get right into it. For today’s topic we are going to cover the theme of making personal changes, and I’ll be pulling from two separate Clone Wars fortune cookies.
Now, for those of you who are not familiar with these fortune cookies, they are quotes that come at the beginning of each episode of Star Wars: the Clone Wars – that’s an animated series that you can find on the Disney+ streaming service – and basically these quotes are thematic lessons that… they highlight or summarize what we can expect in each episode. And for me yet another reason to love Star Wars: the Clone Wars.
The first fortune cookie comes from season 7, episode 7 and is titled, “Dangerous Debt.” The quote is:
“Who you were does not have to define who you are.”
There are two angles that I want to explore with this particular quote. The first one we’ve touched on a little bit actually in past shows and that’s the fact that we’re not fixed, we don’t have to “be set in our ways.” We can change. And in fact we ARE changing whether we know it or not because our brains are wired to do this. As human beings our brains are wired to adapt.
So if we’re not growing and changing intentionally, our minds, our unconscious minds are picking up to cues and signals from our environment… things that we talked about in the past right – the environment, the conditioning, the significant emotional events – and they are creating new identities for us. They’re helping us adapt as we go through life.
So if we’re going to do it anyways, my point is we might as well do it intentionally so that we have the outcomes… or so that we can create the outcomes that we want in life. And like the quote says, “Who you were does not have to define who you are.”
The personal changes that we make in ourselves does not have to be defined nor limited by who we were in the past, by the things that we went through in the past, by who we were and the things that we did in the past. And that kind of leads me to: the second angle that I wanted to explore with this particular quote is that any time moving forward when we’re trying to make changes, we can often be very, very tough on ourselves. We can be pretty hard on ourselves and very judgmental.
We fall into this trap of judging our ability to make positive changes moving forward by looking at the things that we might see as shortcomings from the past, failures in the past, mistakes that we made in the past. Overtime this can be really detrimental to your self-worth and self-esteem. And the thing is it’s not that failures or mistakes are necessarily a bad thing. It’s the judgment that we make about those things that really can hold us back from making progress.
So if you want to make a change in your life you have to forgive yourself, give yourself some grace. If you made any mistakes in the past, see what lessons you can learn from them and move on. Because “who you were does not have to define who you are.”
Okay the next quote comes actually from the episode right after this one. That is Clone Wars Season 7 Episode 8. The episode title is, “Together Again” and the quote is: “You can change who you are, but you cannot run from yourself.”
On the surface these two quotes might appear to contradict themselves but allow me to explain. When we set off to make changes and improvements in our lives the tendency is to change the external things first thinking that changing those external things is what’s going to bring us more happiness and fulfillment. If I change how I look, maybe I’ll be happier. If I change my job, maybe I’ll be more fulfilled. If I make more money, maybe I’ll be more happy and fulfilled. Those things are all well and good but in my observation and experience they are never lasting.
Let’s take weight loss for example. In my career in health and wellness, over the years I’ve seen people have tremendous results in their weight loss journeys. However, since they approached it from changing the external first – changing the appearance and change the numbers on the scale – and not working to change their relationship with food and their identity around health and nutrition what inevitably ends up happening is they gain all the weight back. And sometimes even more.
Another example is with careers and even specifically with network marketing. When people feel like they’re not making any progress in their career or in their network marketing company, what they’ll do is they’ll jump and change network marketing companies or change careers thinking that’s in the new situation they’re going to get better results and more success.
Well guess what? When you move to a new job or you move to a new network marketing company, you’re taking you with you. And in the short term that change might have done you a little good, but in the long term what will end up happening is that you’re going to get the same results that you got in the previous situation.
I mean have you ever met anybody whose life was a little bit of a mess and they decide to relocate to get a fresh start? Initially the relocation is great and it does a lot of good. However, over time what you’ll end up finding is they’re back in the same mess all over again except this time it’s in a different place with different people… because when you move, you take your metaphorical baggage with you.
Really what this quote from Clone Wars is saying is: you can change who you are externally but you can’t run away from you are internally.
So can you make changes in your life? Can you make improvements in your situation? Can you get different results than what you have now?
ABSOLUTELY.
But if you want any of those changes to be lasting it has to come from the internal first, it has to come from you.
So forgive your past. Give yourself grace. And move forward knowing that who you become inside is what will determine what you’ll have and where you’ll be on the outside.
Well that’s going to do it for today’s episode. You know what, guys, as I was finishing this up I realized that this theme for today, the topic for today is very much the reason why I do this podcast in the first place – to help you, even to help myself grow and changed from the inside out versus outside in. So hopefully it’s helping, guys. Let me know what you guys think. Hit me up on Facebook or Instagram. It’s @podcast.
Here’s a question for you guys: what are some changes you’re trying to make in your life that either 1) you’re coming up against some roadblocks or 2)you’re springing back to where you started, like one of those one step forward two steps back kind of situations. Let us know. Perhaps we can help you get through any particular roadblock that you might be experiencing right now.
Again on Facebook and Twitter it’s @podcast and of course you can always send an email or an MP3 to info@pathofthejedi.com
Coming up in the next two episodes are so we’re finally going to be tackling the Jedi Code! And I can’t believe I haven’t thought of this sooner. How can I have a podcast called Path of the Jedi and not talk about the Jedi Code. So be expecting that in the next couple of episodes.
And then in December we’re going to be changing things up and do themes and lessons from Harry Potter! That’s right Harry Potter. My sister and I… I think we started last but… leading up to the holidays we do a Harry Potter marathon. There’s something for us very Christmasy about the Harry Potter movies so I figured why not take this opportunity to switch things up a little bit for the holidays and and do lessons and themes from the Harry Potter film franchise.
So expect that in December. And then after that we’ll take a holiday break and kick things off again with some more Star Wars in the new year. Which brings me to my final message today and that is the shout out! You guys didn’t think that I was going to forget the shout-out right?
This week shout-out goes to my nephew Jacob de Leon! That’s right Jacob DeLeon. I had the opportunity to spend some time with Jacob recently and I wanted to give him a shout out for a couple reasons. Number one I’m just super super proud of the young man he’s become. He’s developed a curiosity and inquisitiveness that has helped really expand his perspective and set him on his own personal growth journey. I love seeing this process happen especially in somebody as young as him.
And then number two, in our discussion he was asking me about my process here with this podcast at Path of the Jedi and in doing so he actually inspired me and gave me some great ideas for the new year in how I’m going to approach doing these episodes moving forward. So again, Jacob thank you, thank you so much! I really enjoyed getting the chance to spend time with you and I look forward to doing it again soon. In the meantime, this shout out goes to YOU.
All right well I got to run for now, guys. We will catch you next week with a new fresh episode. Until then be well, be safe and may the Force be with you!
