I Want to Pursue My Passion, Though I Feel Trapped in a World That Wants Me to Live My Old Life — The Spiritual Discovery That Showed Me How to Break Free from Other People’s Expectations and Live Free

We!

Joe Mitiga shares a deeply personal journey about outgrowing old identities, confronting societal expectations, and embracing spiritual auto

Key takeaways

• Growth often means outgrowing the identity shaped by past expectations.
• Freedom is not escaping responsibility but living according to internal truth rather than external approval.

Main topics

• Emotional and spiritual growth
• Breaking free from societal expectations

Notable quotes

I don't have to become the person the world expects me to be. I have to become the person my higher power is guiding me to become.

Feeling trapped doesn't mean we're going in the wrong direction—it means our internal world has outgrown the external life we're still living.

Conclusion

True freedom comes not from escaping life's responsibilities but from aligning with

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (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 1 (0:27) Hello, and welcome to WE. Have you ever reached a point in your life when you knew you couldn't keep living the way you'd been living? Not because your life was bad. Not because you weren't grateful for the people, relationships, and experiences that brought you here. But because somewhere deep inside of you, something had changed. And suddenly you realized, this life just doesn't fit me anymore. I've experienced that feeling numerous times over the years. As I've healed emotionally and grown spiritually, I started seeing possibilities for my life that I couldn't see before. I've discovered new dreams. I discovered new passions. I started believing that maybe the rest of my life could look completely different than the life I'd already been living. And that's exciting. But you know what? It can also be incredibly scary. Because I discovered something, quite honestly, I wasn't expecting. I changed before the world around me actually changed. The people in my life still remembered the old Joe. My relationships had expectations of me. My work had expectations of me. My responsibilities had expectations of me. And the world had spent years teaching me what a successful life was supposed to look like, what I should do, who I should become, how I should live. And without realizing it, I had built much of my identity around the world's expectations. That's when something I used to call feeling stuck began to feel more like being trapped. Feeling trapped isn't simply wanting something different. Feeling trapped is being able to see another life for yourself, but believing you're not free to live it. And quite honestly, I think a lot of us experience this. We have passions we don't pursue, dreams we don't talk about, changes we know we need to make, and sometimes it's not because we're afraid of failing. Sometimes we're afraid of what will happen if we actually succeed at becoming someone different. What will people think? Who will understand? Who won't understand? Who might be disappointed? What relationships might change? And maybe the hardest question of all, am I willing to disappoint someone else in order to stop disappointing myself? My spiritual journey has forced me to wrestle with those questions. And through that process, I've discovered something incredibly important. I don't have to become the person the world expects me to be. I have to become the person my higher power is guiding me to become. And those, quite honestly, folks, are not always the same person. Sometimes becoming who we're created to be means outgrowing the identity that once made perfect sense. Speaker 1 (4:29) Sometimes healing, realizing that the life we had built while we were hurting may not be the life we want after we heal. And sometimes pursuing our passion means having enough faith to move forward towards something that other people just may not understand yet. That's why I've started to look at passion differently. What if passion? What if? What if passion isn't simply something we enjoy? What if our passion is truly trying to tell us something about who we are becoming? What if the voice inside of us saying, there has to be more to my life than this, isn't selfishness? What if it's awakening? And what if it's our soul recognizing that we've outgrown the old version of ourselves? And what if feeling trapped doesn't mean we're going in the wrong direction? What if it means our internal world has outgrown beyond the external life we're still living? And quite honestly, that realization changed the meaning of freedom for me. Freedom isn't abandoning the people we love. It isn't running away from our responsibilities. And it isn't doing whatever we want without considering anyone else. Freedom is reaching the point where other people's expectations no longer determine the direction of our lives. I can love you without becoming who you want me to be. I can respect your opinion without making it my identity. I can listen to your advice without surrendering my dreams. And I can be grateful for the life I've lived without believing I'm required to live that same life forever. Speaker 1 (6:45) Today we're going to talk about passion. We're going to talk about why we can feel trapped inside a life we've already outgrown. We're going to talk about the fear of disappointing other people and the courage required to change. And we're going to talk about the spiritual discovery that helped me understand I don't need the world's permission to become who my higher power is guiding me to become. Maybe my old life wasn't wrong. Maybe it simply brought me as far as it could. I can honor it. I can learn from it. And I can be grateful for it. But I don't have to remain trapped inside of it. I am allowed to grow. I am allowed to change. And I am allowed to pursue my passion. And I am allowed to live free. My name is Joe Mitiga, and this is we. Speaker 1 (7:53) Welcome, everybody. It is a wonderful night here in Atlanta, Georgia, and I want to welcome people around the world to the WE Podcast. You know, it's been a very exciting time here for me and the WE Podcast and all of the growth we're going through around the world. It's humbling. It's exciting. It's scary. It's all the above. I've shared some of the different crazy voices I have in my head sometimes. And for everybody new, welcome. You know, I am just a guy and I'm a man with a microphone. That's kind of the message out there. And I say it all the time. If I can do it, you can do it. And we're going to get into that a lot here today because. What's happening here at the WE Podcast is truly a validation of the overarching principle that we as humanity are waking up. We are healing and waking up. We are embracing and growing into, as a human species, the feminine side of ourselves. And that feminine side consists of your emotional sense of self and your spiritual sense of self. And here at the We Podcast, my desire is to basically just honor back both of those two concepts. The emotional growth component. That's why, you know, I consider myself, this podcast, an emotional growth podcast. It is. And if you can make it through one of these podcasts, you are a true spiritual warrior. That's for sure. Because I talk about tough stuff. I talk about real life stuff. I talk about the depths of pain. The angst, the grief, the rage. Had a conversation about what creates a pedophile. Had a conversation in the depths of my grief when I had to put to sleep one of my closest friends, my dog Zeus of 12 years. And I make the commitment that I'm going to be as honest, as open, and as authentic as I can possibly be because you're all my friends. And I genuinely mean that. I can feel your love. I can feel your support. And it is evidence. The evidence of that is in the expansion of this message. Speaker 1 (10:17) I want everybody to understand what is it that we're really doing here. You know, it's kind of the basic principles of what the We Podcast is. It's kind of moving from a mindset, helping people understand, moving from the conscious mindset of a me to the conscious awakening of a we. Speaker 2 (10:39) And that's what we talk about all the time. We Speaker 1 (10:42) also talk about where emotional pain and how having the courage to truly heal and taking the action steps necessary to heal your emotional pain becomes a spiritual understanding on the other side. And a lot of what I talk about here at the We Podcast, quite honestly, I challenge human norms. I challenge social norms. Is that a bad thing? No, it's not at all. Why? Because I'm not judging. I'm not making anybody right and wrong. Speaker 1 (11:16) I tell people all the time, if what you're doing is working, great. But the truth of the matter is, whatever you're doing, from an emotional growth position, from a spiritual understanding position, obviously people are coming back, and I honor you, and I'm really excited that you're here. I want people to understand that spiritual growth and the awakening concept, why are we doing all of this? Well, quite honestly, we don't have a choice. If you're living and breathing and call yourself a human being, if you're on this podcast and literally tens of thousands of people, I can't say millions yet, but soon millions of people, it means you are opening up to a spiritual sense of yourself, whether you want to or not. It doesn't have anything to do with you. I say that to people all the time. You are a spirit having a human experience. Hear me. You're a spirit. having a human experience, not the other way around. And even though for millennia, society has claimed the opposite, you're a human being, and there's a God outside of yourself somewhere, that's simply not a true statement. I'm not saying God isn't outside. Yes, God is everywhere. And the importance is the position of communing and connecting with the God sense of you inside of you. And that's what the We Podcast is all about. I want to welcome people from around the globe. I love doing this. We have a brand new country that I now have seen that is watching and listening to the WE podcast, and it's China. Welcome, everybody from China. I mean, I am humbled. I am. Taiwan, Oman, Malaysia, South Korea. These are all amazing places around the globe that I'm just... I'm floored. Canada, United Kingdom, Norway, Kenya. And I know I miss countries. Australia, South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya. I need to write them down. But I'm just welcome, all of you, truly. I am honored that you're here. I'm honored that you're listening. And I hope on a weekly basis, I can bring value to your world. That's why I'm here. I want to bring value to your world. And I'm going to say things here that you're going to challenge. Sometimes you're going to get off a podcast and say, that guy is completely nuts. I don't believe anything he says. I'm never going back. Well, that's fine. You can have all that anger if I push your buttons. It's fine. Just come back anyways, please, and tell somebody else. And a lot of you are going to hear things here that you don't hear other places. You know, you're probably not going to hear. in your church that God is inside of you and that we all have a connection because most of the traditional religions don't look at it that way. Does it make it wrong? No. No, not at all. There is no such thing as wrong. It just makes everybody different. And since my path was more about the awakening process, Through my my emotional growth. That's the only message I have to share here. And that's why I'm here is to share my experience, strength and hope. Over time, I'm going to be interviewing people. I'm going to hear their stories and then I'm going to interpret their stories. I haven't decided yet if I'm going to actually have guests or not. I don't know. I'm definitely going to tell other people's stories. But I think at least for now, there's a consistency of. my interpretation of things and people are accustomed to my voice and the style in which I communicate. So I'm not going to shift that for a while if I ever do. But I am going to start telling other people's stories because I've heard some amazing stories. And if I interpret them, you know, I'm always just wanting to reach that one person that just needs to hear that one thing to make their Tuesday morning a little easier. And I say it all the time, you know, the We Podcast is creating a catalog, a library of messages that can help. So let my voice keep you company in your darker times. Let my voice keep you company in your confusing times. Let my hope keep you company if you're having a hard day. And let my voice be part of your celebration because a lot of you are in really great places. You are. And, you know, so am I. I live in a very, very cool place. One of the things I'm most excited about is that I genuinely believe with all of my heart that we are the generation of change. And what that means is we are able to give to the generation younger than us emotional support in a way that our parents and the generation before us weren't able to give us. And that makes us the change. Anybody on this podcast that is listening here, your availability to emotionally support the people around you is different than what you got when you were a kid. And why is that? Because the consciousness of the day 40, 50, 60 years ago wasn't designed around emotional support. It just wasn't there yet. Now it is. And why is that so important? Because for the humanity to heal, it means more and more people have to live connected to the truth of their oneness. And the way you truly become in communion with your oneness is you have to connect to it through your emotional sense of self. Hear what I said. The way you truly become one, a oneness. with a power greater than yourself you do that communion through your heart through your emotional sense of self and how do i know that for an absolute if you were to put one word on this concept called god or jesus or buddha or higher power our divine light our divinity whatever you call The grandness of all that is, what would the one word be? The one word would be love. That is the synonym, that is the description that fits. It's all inclusive of God, love. Well, what is love? Love is an emotion. Where is your emotions? In your heart. Yes. So, if you want to commune, Speaker 1 (18:21) truly connect, literally live as one with a power greater than yourself, how do you do it? You have to heal the reason you're not doing it now. What is that reason, Joe? Suppressed emotion. Truly, that's it. And people say, Joe, so what you're telling me, Joe, is if I heal my wounds and get all the old stuff out of the way that I can literally live one with God. Yes. Speaker 1 (18:51) Yes, that's exactly what I'm telling you. Why? Because I do. Speaker 1 (18:57) Literally. And I've got stories that I'm going to share. Does that make me special? Are you freaking kidding me? No. It just makes me. Now, just because you can live one with God doesn't mean you don't have a tough day. It doesn't mean you don't have emotions. It doesn't mean you can't pay your car payment. It doesn't mean you don't have challenge paying for your kid's college. You're still living life. But you're living life from a fullness versus an emptiness. You're living life from faith versus fear. You're living life from autonomy versus codependence. You're living life from overflow versus addiction satiation. That's what it means to live one with God. And how do I know it's possible? Well, because the man all time was created around Jesus. B.C., before Christ, A.D., after death. Our calendars, September the 15th, 2026, the calendar was created, started around one man's death. Jesus literally said in the last things before he ascended, I have to go sit by my father so he, meaning God, can put the same spirit that guided me in all of you. In all of you. Yeah, I believe them. And that spirit is inside of you. How do I know? Well, because polling out there, random polling. And you can only imagine what the real number is. I don't know about you. I've never taken a poll in my entire life. But there was some poll I saw, like a Gallup poll. I say Gallup. It's the only name I know. That like 67 % of people here in the U.S. consider themselves more spiritual than religious. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? No, it's just a fact. conscious shifting. Does it make the religious world wrong? No. It makes them fabulous. Why? Because the people that are guided in that world, they're guided to a communion with a power greater themselves in that traditional sense. Fabulous. Yes. I'm talking about the people who aren't guided that way. And that's Joe. Some of my closest friends are deeply Christian people, wonderful, loving people. Some of my closest family members, literally some of the most spiritual people I've ever known, found their God connection in the pews of a Catholic church. I love them for that. But that's them, not Joe. Period. So I don't make anybody wrong, but I am going to honor the people out there who believe and are sensing and are becoming more of a sense of a spiritual essence. And why is it happening? Because humanity is waking up. You know, taking that same pulse 40 years ago, the whole idea of spiritual awareness and spiritual awakening and conscious one, it didn't exist. A guy named Wayne Dyer was one of