 Hello there, my beautiful, lovely internet friends. Welcome back to my channel. I am Footless Joe because I'm missing a foot. We're gonna use this little chicken here as a nub and rest so I can get comfy and cozy as I share some wisdom with you. So when people see that I'm an amputee, they come to the logical conclusion that I must have seen some shit. You know, in my life, this is a significant thing to go through and I will often get asked the question, how do you go through difficult life change? Like how did you stay positive? How did you make it through something that is so life-changing? What piece of advice or wisdom do I have to share with them? And I would like to reveal my secrets here today. My lovely friends. And I feel like my views on this are very counter cultural so let me know if you agree or disagree in the comment section down below. Either way is fine. So in my short 31 years on the planet so far, I have indeed experienced some really difficult, painful times in my life. I've gone through a good deal of trauma, losing two houses to house fires, losing my leg, going through God knows how many surgeries at this point and most recently, in the last six months, I have gone through a divorce in the last year. I have lost three dogs very unexpectedly, which is still very hard to deal with. I've lost friendships. I had to move. My leg has gotten a lot worse. There's nothing that they can really do to fix it right now. I have been deeply not okay most of this year and I've been forced to kind of dig deep for what the hell is gonna keep me going on any given day because it's gotten dark sometimes. And so often when we express to people that we are struggling with a life change, a loss, grief, whatever it might be, the responses are like, you know, just keep going. You've got this or like, you know, just be grateful for what you still do have. Focus on those things. Focus on the positives. My personal arch nemesis, it could be worse. If I could personally burn that phrase at the stake, I would. Other people have a worse look on the bright side. You know what I'm talking about. And I have found that when I am in the midst of barely holding on, those things don't do anything for me. There has only ever been one thing that has actually helped me and that is accepting the fact that it is going to suck. It is gonna hurt. It is gonna take everything that you have and expecting it to be anything other than that causes so much pain and takes so much energy. I come from a background of evangelical Christianity, which is really big into kind of positive thinking and spinning things in a positive direction. I also come from being someone who used to really be into positive thinking and being happy all the time, which was very, very, very toxic for me. And I think a lot of people, and when I started actually bumping into difficult things in life, I felt like I was doing it all wrong because other people looked like they were fine when their house burnt down and I was sad. I was having a hard time with that. So what was wrong with me? What was broken with me? Why was I struggling and how do I fix that? I'm hurting, that doesn't feel right. How do I make myself happy or better in this moment? I'm gonna use a foot pun here, but I really shot myself in the foot with that way of thinking. Because I channeled so much, I don't even wanna say self-hatred, but just self-dislike and shame and judgment onto myself for not being able to go through things in a way that was pretty to other people. And I worked so hard to do it the right way, to make it look right, to feel the right things, whatever those right things were. I remember asking myself in so many situations, you know, what should I feel here rather than what do I feel here? And this year, as pretty much everything I knew about my life and relied on has been stripped away and changed, I realized quite instinctually that I did not have enough left in me to try to do it the right way, to try to look good through it, to try to force emotion or ask what I should be feeling because I was so overwhelmed. And after years of therapy, kind of leading me to the point of understanding that it's okay to have emotions and it's human and it's normal and it's okay. I remember I had a phone call one night with a friend and I was in tears because I had just lost some pretty significant relationships in my life due to kind of ending the marriage that I had. And I was really afraid that another one of my friends was also gonna decide that they couldn't be a part of my life. And I was telling my friend, that can't happen. I cannot lose anything more. You don't understand, like I can't do it. And he stopped me and he looked at me, you know, cause we were over a face time and said, Joe, this is gonna hurt and it's gonna hurt for a while. And there is so much of this that you cannot control. Don't try, don't waste your energy. It is going to suck and there is nothing you can really do to get out of that. And that really stopped me in my tracks because I had been working so hard to like go through the whole divorce process the right way. And that kind of pierced through so much of what I was thinking and feeling at the time. And it has been something that I've held on to closely for months. I think on the surface saying, it is going to suck. It is going to hurt. Doesn't sound like an encouraging statement. Like if I got up on a stage for a motivational speech, I was like, hey guys, it's gonna suck. You're welcome. Thank you very much. I probably wouldn't get paid, right? But I think it's one of the truest things that I have come to know about going through really awful things. We don't like pain. We don't like suffering. We don't like discomfort. It is our natural inclination to find a way out of that. And if you're anything like me, it's also your natural inclination to write off emotions that are uncomfortable that you don't like rage or anger, hatred, grief, shame, all of that, or think that you're wrong for having such a hard time. You're not. There are moments and things that happen in our lives that will take everything we have, that will take every piece of coping and dealing with life we've learned up to that point that will shatter everything we know. And there is no way that that is not gonna rip you apart. I have wasted so much energy in my lifetime trying to force my feelings, myself, or life around me into a certain mold because I feel like that's what it should look like. That's what's acceptable to other people. And I also don't like being in pain. And so I'm working so hard to push that off and to shove things into boxes and make it look good, make it feel okay. And in the moments that I've stopped doing that and just allowed myself to acknowledge the depth of hurt that I am in, the emotional agony of it, and removed judgment from that, stopped thinking of that as like a bad thing I needed to fix, but rather a consequence of living in the human world that we do and understanding that it's not always gonna be okay. That some days there really isn't a way to be okay and that even more than that, that is not required or even the best option. The more I live, the more I am convinced that falling the fuck apart is kind of necessary sometimes. I think the root of a lot of suffering that I have personally experienced has come from trying to be positive and trying to put a bright and shiny spin on things that are awful. Like I've said more than once in this video I have gone through a handful of very difficult things in my life. And one thing that I have never actually done is allow myself to feel the pain in whatever ways I could and fall the fuck apart. And I've realized over time how detrimental that has been to me because I have used so much emotional and physical resources to try to like keep it together because we're supposed to keep it together, right? Are we, are we really? Over the past six months, I just wanna come out and like say that I really have not handled things well. I have never intentionally hurt someone. I have not shot myself in the foot. Did I already use that pun in this video? I think I did. I'm not shot myself in the foot financially. I have fulfilled necessary obligations outside of that. I've kind of been a trash person in that I have been unreliable as hard as I've tried to be reliable because I just can't. Like I have been doing the bare minimum to exist. And I have had moments where I have completely fallen apart because I just couldn't do it anymore. And you know what? Those moments have allowed me to actually start to move forward. Like as a for instance, I am dealing with a lot of reduced mobility right now. Getting around has become exponentially more painful and difficult in the last like month or so due to issues that are going on with my leg. If I do the thing that I always used to do and go, you know what? It's frustrating, yes, but it's gonna be fine. I'm gonna be fine. I don't need to be upset about this because I can still do some things so on and so forth instead of, wow, that sucks. This sucks. I am genuinely upset about that. I feel powerless and angry and it hurts like emotionally and mentally and especially physically and just acknowledge the fact that I am hurting over that, that I am not super okay about that. Not only does that allow me to actually process that emotion and move through it, but also I spent so much energy again before trying to like sculpt and mold what I was feeling and that's just entirely unnecessary. Feel what you're gonna feel. Sometimes it's not good and that's okay. And if I come to peace with the fact that that is just how life is sometimes. God, I do so much better. I feel human and it has been a huge breath of fresh air to allow myself to feel the pain and realize that it is natural and normal and I cannot fix it. It's just gonna hurt until it doesn't. I'll take steps to work through it to make sure that I am in a healthy place, you know, mentally, emotionally, physically, all of that. Even as I am in the midst of falling apart, I'm realizing that I'm actually starting to feel connected to who I am again. And I feel like it's worth mentioning, of course, this ebbs and flows. I feel like this is something I'll always kind of struggle with the like, what should I feel? Versus just feeling things versus letting them hurt when they're hurting. I also think it's very much worth noting that when I say like, it's gonna suck, it's gonna hurt, contained within that is also the fact that you're probably gonna need support in those moments. So please seek that, please find that. I certainly have needed quite a bit of help and support in the last few months, which I have actually started learning how to really reach out for and doing it. I really wish someone would have told me years ago and maybe they did, they probably did and I just didn't hear them, that when your life breaks or you break or you lose something dear to you, don't try to make it not hurt. Just accept the reality that it is going to rip your heart open and there will be a way to sew that back up. You will not always feel this way, I promise you. But in the moments that it hurts and sucks, just let it be. Accept yourself, you're human, it's okay, you're okay. And that's something I still remind myself of quite often because I feel like it kind of goes against a lot of the messages we get in culture. So there's your super motivational piece of advice today. It is going to suck. I kind of want to put that on a T-shirt but that would probably not be good for a variety of reasons. If you made it this far in the video or honestly watched any part of it, thank you. I really appreciate you being here and hearing me out and like I said, I'm really interested to hear what you think about this, what your reaction to it is. Does it feel like it's authentic or real to you? Or do you think that this is just terrible advice and I should not give it to people? I would love to hear your feedback and leave me your top tip for going through difficult things because I'd love to learn something from you. A huge thank you to all of my patrons over on Patreon. Your continued generous support is the reason these videos get made and I truly appreciate it. And to you, lovely human watching this video right now. Thank you for spending a few minutes out of your day. Here with me today, you could be anywhere else in the world doing literally anything else and you chose to listen and hang out with me for a few minutes and I really appreciate that. I love you guys, I'm thinking about you and I will see you in the next video. Mwah, bye guys. Should I just like wave with my leg and not do this anymore? Because I feel like that's a unique skill that I have. It also weirds people out, so it's like a win-win.