I Feel Frustrated and Exhausted Because I Spent Years Trying to Show the World I Was Enough — The Spiritual Awakening That Showed Me How to Stop Proving Myself and Live a Life of Peace and Inner Abundance

We!

Host Joe Mitiga explores the psychological and spiritual exhaustion caused by the constant need to prove one's worth through external achiev

Key takeaways

• The feeling of 'not being enough' often stems from an undeveloped emotional aspect of the self during childhood.
• External achievements like money, status, and even physical fitness can be used as masks for the fear of being unvalued.

Main topics

• Spiritual Awakening
• Inner Child Work

Notable quotes

I was asking the outside world to give me something that could only be discovered inside of me.

Conclusion

The episode serves as a guide for transitioning from a life of perform

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:01) If you felt lonely, isolated, disconnected, with an empty feeling inside and just yearning for more, knowing something is missing, then this podcast is for you. So here's your host, Joe Mitiga. Speaker 2 (0:27) Hello, and welcome to WE. Speaker 2 (0:32) Have you ever felt completely frustrated and exhausted from trying to prove to the world that you are enough? I certainly have. For years, I thought if I could just accomplish enough, earn enough, achieve enough, help enough people, or receive enough recognition, eventually, I would feel like I was enough. So you know what? I kept going. I kept pushing. I kept achieving. I kept trying to prove myself. And whenever I accomplished one thing, of course it felt good for a little while. But then I needed something else. Another accomplishment. Another person to approve of me. Another dream to chase. Another reason to believe that I mattered. And eventually, you know what? I began to truly wonder, and I finally started to understand why I was so exhausted. I was asking the outside world to give me something that could only be discovered inside of me. I thought I was pursuing success. But underneath so much of that pursuit, quite honestly, I found was fear. Fear that maybe I wasn't enough. Fear that if I stopped achieving, people wouldn't value me. Fear that if I stopped proving myself, I might finally have to sit quietly with myself and ask, who am I when I have nothing left to prove? That question, quite honestly, became part of my spiritual awakening. Because the deeper my relationship with my higher power became, the more I began to understand that perhaps my worth was never something I was supposed to earn. Maybe, just maybe, I already was enough. Not because of what I accomplished. Not because of how much money I made. Not because of how many people knew my name. Not because of what the world thought of me. But simply because I was created with value, purpose, and meaning. And when I began to understand that, my definition of abundance started to change. For most of my life, I thought abundance was something I had to acquire. Today, I'm beginning to understand that some of the greatest forms of abundance cannot be bought at all. Peace is abundance. Love is abundance. Purpose is abundance. Freedom is abundance. Gratitude is abundance. And maybe one of the greatest forms of abundance is finally being comfortable with the person I am becoming. That doesn't mean I stop dreaming. It doesn't mean I stop growing. And it certainly doesn't mean I stop pursuing the things my higher power has placed in my heart. It means I no longer have to pursue them to prove that I am enough. I can pursue them because I am alive, because I have purpose, because I have something to contribute. Because I believe my higher power is guiding me towards the person I was created to become. And that changes everything. Because when I stop needing the world to validate me, I stop giving the world control over my peace. And maybe that's where inner abundance truly begins. Not when the world finally gives us everything we think we need, but when we discover that what we've been searching for has been growing inside us all along. So today I want us to look at something together. I want to look at what our lives would look like if we stopped trying to prove that we are enough and started living from the belief that we already are. Speaker 2 (4:56) Maybe we'd stop chasing approval. Maybe we'd stop comparing ourselves to everyone else. Maybe we'd stop living in fear of what other people think. And maybe, just maybe, we could finally sit quiet enough to hear our higher power whisper, you don't have to prove who you are. You simply have to become who you were created to be. My name is Joe Mitiga, and this is we. Welcome, everybody. Welcome to the WE Podcast from around the world. It is great to be here with you tonight. It's one of the first days of fall here in Atlanta, and it's always a great time of year. You know, we have pretty brutal summers sometimes, and this summer towards the end got really hot, quite honestly. In the beginning, it wasn't too bad. I enjoy sitting outside, and, you know, I'm one of these that practices what I preach about. getting outside in the sun at least five minutes a day. And it was great the beginning of the summer, but boy, as the end of the summer came, it just, it was so stifling, could barely breathe. So happy to say that fall is here. We've had a couple of kind of rainy days, which are cool, the big storms and it's cooling off. And it's just a, it's a beautiful time of year here in Atlanta, Georgia. The trees start changing colors and it's kind of like the metaphor of what we're doing here at the We Podcast. The whole idea of change and transformation and growing and shifting and the seasons are a perfect example of that. They really are. And the fall season is truly when we kind of shed the skins of our yesterday and get ready for the growth of silence and hard telling what spring is going to bring to us. But I know it's going to be a wonderful thing. And I'm super excited to be here with you to share that. So I want to welcome everybody. You know, it is exciting. My book is just about done. Continue to visit JoeMittiga.com and pick it up for free, please. It's a free download. Digitally, click, click, click. You'll have the book. I'm going to start mentioning it more and more because I really want people to visit that website. And I want it to be my gift to you. Give it to everybody. Tell anybody you want. Pass it on. Take any part of it you want. Make it your own. It was given to me freely. By a power greater than myself, I share it all the time. That book was channeled through me well over 30 years ago now. And it's now time to give it out to the world like God gave it to me. And I'm going to talk about some of that process and what happened with that. This whole idea of not feeling enough, that is a challenging, challenging experience because we tend to live our lives. chasing things in our external world, not even knowing why we do it, because the world kind of celebrates success in a business or a relationship, our community, our family, and all of that. And those are all wonderful things, of course, to pursue, to accomplish, and to acquire. And it doesn't matter what you achieve in your outside world, that internal experience, that internal feeling. of not enough is a brutal one, especially if it's big for you. For some people, you live your whole life, you don't even know it's there. But for most of us, when we slow down enough, we can feel it. And that's really what this podcast is going to be about, kind of where it came from, how it acts in our world now, how it recreates itself in our head all the time, the spiritual belief systems that society has shared. I'm going to challenge a bunch of those today because the whole idea of enough, there's one thing to have a spiritual understanding of created in God's image and the true understanding that we already are. And that's very different than feeling like you are enough. And I'm going to separate those things today, kind of dissect them and talk about both of those concepts in length. For the new people, I welcome you. I always want to kind of give a little bit of a recap. We've got tens of thousands of people now joining us from around the world. The WE Podcast is ranked number one in how-to in Canada, Norway, United Kingdom. Thank you, all of you, and numerous other countries. We're in about 30 countries now. And I always like to share that because it gives me such a sense of grace. It gives me such a sense of gratitude. Speaker 2 (9:35) My path was so brutal for so many years that way back when I remember thinking if I can just help one person, it would really make my life make sense. And I had some pretty significant experiences around that over my journey. And now though, I'm literally living my personal belief that humanity is waking up. And I'm living it as we are the generation of change because one of the reasons this generation, me, you, everybody on this podcast, we are the foundation of changing humanity for generations to come. And technology is one of those reasons. And literally, I can share my experience, strength, and hope from my home office here in Atlanta, Georgia, and push a button. And people around the globe hear this message. And it's just an amazing thing. And I am in awe of the influencers and these amazing podcast hosts that have been doing it for many, many years, that when they started six, seven, eight, nine years ago, this whole world of self-discovery and spiritual warriors and people seeking, craving, wanting, needing more information to just make their day better, you know, 10 years ago, it was nothing like it is now. And I applaud those people because they are the ones that kind of forged the way through the jungle, if you will. And now the We Podcast is available and the Apple systems. I would imagine a lot of people on this podcast have heard the amazing woman named Mel Robbins. Now, this is just a fantastic person. She has a massive audience. You know, when she started her podcast, and I don't know the history of it four or five years ago, there wasn't near the audience that there is now. And I welcome all of you. You know, I really do. And I kind of, you know, typically I'm the guy out there always starting a new path. But to be completely honest with you, most people on this particular, on my podcast here, the We Podcast, you've been on other podcasts before. You have been. And it allows for my ultimate goal. of 100 million downloads a month to be a real life thing because there's hundreds of millions of people already on a spiritual path. There's hundreds of millions of people already listening to self-help, personal growth, spiritual types of messages out there from these amazing people. And, you know, that goes anywhere from the people that teach meditation to the people that teach positive affirmations to the PT. people that teach recovery to self-discovery to the how-to podcast to these amazing people out there that have this knowledge about health, the Gary Breckas of the world and others like him. We live in an amazing time. And I say that word over and over, I guess tonight I'm just in a place of gratitude because it's just really cool. And thank you all for your support. I like to keep everybody abreast of me and what goes on with me sometimes. I found my last, the podcast that was actually sent out today, and the podcast I'm doing now goes out in a couple days. It talked about how we really heal stuff. And that podcast, in that podcast, they talked about when you hear the great big voices, your reactionary voices, how do you stop? the pain, and how do you heal and change your external world? Well, when you hear reactionary voices, the big, the loud, the ugly, the disgusting, the hateful voices, instead of acting them out, write them down. And that whole process, people wonder why they keep living the same path over and over. Well, because they're following the same guidance system in their head over and over and over. One of the ways you change that guidance system is you look for your bigness. The reactionary bigness. Speaker 1 (13:44) I Speaker 2 (13:44) told the story a couple, two or three weeks ago. I had an interaction with a colleague, completely took me by surprise, blindsided. And I hurt her somehow. I still don't really know how. And eventually I got through the whole process and I made amends. Why? Because I don't need to know. I just need, if someone said that I caused them harm, I'm going to make amends. Not out of guilt. out of empathy never mean to cause anybody harm and i do practice what i preach i do as i was preparing notes and i finished my the first section of my 40 000 piece puzzle and i'm going to tell that story in a second but i'm cleaning up so i can move on and i found my old notes because in my silence i was writing notes and the old big ugly who do you think you are you blankety blank blank blank and cussing here and cussing there all at this person that a week later 10 days later i made amends to well how was i able to do that because i did not dismiss or dishonor the bigness of my big voices it caught me off guard it hurt my feelings i was angry and you know when i get angry i get indignant how do how dare you blank blank blank who do you think you are yeah now the great news all that was in my silence in my head so i write it down well i came across those notes if i wasn't really working hard not to cuss on this podcast you know for those of you have been around for a while i looked on apple podcast one day and i saw this little squiggly mark i didn't know what the heck it was Well, come to find out that I had cussed too much. And that squiggly mark rated my podcast explicit. I was like, what the heck? This is a spiritual podcast. And obviously I get ramped up and I cuss too much. So I am controlling that. And if I wasn't, I would read you what I wrote. And I'm telling you, there was a lot of cuss words in that particular message to myself in sacred silence. When you hear your bigness, honor it. Honor it. Don't act it out. Honor it by writing it down. Honor it by putting it out on paper, letting anything you need to say, whatever's going around in that head of yours, put it down on a piece of paper. And if you're new with it and it's bothersome for you, tell somebody else. We're going to talk about that concept that's called a first step about why we don't feel enough today. I'm going to get to that a little bit later. Back to my puzzle. I'm asking you, I do things. I believe that if I can do something, anybody can do something. I am not special. I tell people all the time, I am just like you. I'm practiced. My first conscious awareness was back in the late 80s. So I've had conscious awareness for a while. And I learned about the inner child February 16th, 1990. So I will say I am practiced. But special, different, unique? No. Human, just like you. I say it all the time. I'm the guy in the grocery store next to you in the aisle. I sit next to you in church. I'm that guy. If you're here in the Southeast at a baseball game the past four, five, six, seven years in the young youth age, you definitely saw me. You'll know my son Joseph's name. He'll be drafted here in three years. You'll hear the name Mitt again. You'll say, hey, I remember Mr. Joe on the WE Podcast told me about his son. He's going to have his first college game this Thursday, so I am super excited to go visit him and watch. Speaker 2 (17:30) I share that because I was guided into silence about, I don't know, a couple months ago. And I resisted because I equated silence with solitude. Well, basically all my higher power wanted me to do is take my headphones off and get in silence. And I say that, why is silence, a practice of silence, so important? Because as you sit there witnessing your big ego voices, your glass empty, glass not full voices, the hateful, hurtful, harmful voices, which most of us have. If you sit there long enough and witness, then you're going to hear a softer voice. You Speaker 1 (18:12) will. Speaker 2 (18:12) And you have to start somewhere. You know, a lot of people say, well, go sit in silence for 36 hours in meditation. And you can't make it 36 seconds. Well. You know, that's why I say to people all the time, start at any level, but then just stay consistent. Consistency over time is the key. My son Ryan, when he first got in front of the piano, he wasn't 10 years old. His feet could not hit the floor, but he had a gift. I saw his gift from God in that piano. So what did we do? Back then, it was five minutes a day, four days a week. Three minutes, four minutes. He was young. He was little. Now, if you hear him, he's going to be 15 here in a couple weeks. He's an absolute modern-day Mozart. Why? Because there's been a consistency over time. So if you haven't started your practice of silence, start tomorrow. Start tonight. And what does it mean? It doesn't mean no motion. It means no external stimulus. And start with five minutes. And then do the next day five minutes. And if you're like me, you might have to put it on your calendar. You might have to write yourself a note. When I first started doing the inner child work 25, 30 years ago, I had stick-em notes. You know, the little stick-em pads? And I'd place them everywhere. When I started doing inner child work, I was still drinking. I literally put a stick-em note on the top of my Jack Daniels bottle. Now, it didn't say don't open and don't drink. It said check in with your little kid. if in starting a new behavior you might have to write yourself notes definitely ask for the strength and courage connect ask your higher power for the strength and courage to start a new behavior especially a self-loving behavior like that The other things that we're going to talk more about the entire position of self-love, most because my expertise of experience is in the emotional sense of personal growth and the consequence of spiritual growth. But, you know, there are some simple things. I can't talk about nutrition. I can't talk about exercise. I'm not an expert in any of that. But I can tell you the little things. Everybody on the freaking planet says drink water. Well, do you drink enough water? If the answer is yes, great. For most of you, the answer is no. And I'm not going to tell you to just go drink water like everybody says to. What I'm going to tell you to do is put it on a list. And then when you go to drink it, listen to your voices. Listen to the voices that say something like, I don't like drinking water. I hate drinking water. I don't want to drink water. I don't want to take the time to drink water. I think drinking water is stupid. No one drinks water. Those voices. Why? Because the entire planet says drink water. It's good for you. Well, why don't you? It's not because you're weak. It's not because you're not motivated. It's not because you don't have the love for it. It's because the voices in your head that you don't even know are there are keeping you from drinking water, period. So what I'm suggesting is the next time you try to drink some water, listen to the voices. And if you do it the first day, no voice is great. But then listen on day three. Listen on day four. Listen on day