In this Episode

• [02:56] – Jeffrey starts off the conversation by telling us a little bit about himself.
• [04:20] – Who are the people who have influenced Jeffrey the most as far as what he teaches today?
• [08:17] – Orion shares her story of wanting to be liked when she came to the United States after spending several years in Japan.
• [09:56] – Jeffrey ties what Orion has been saying into the concepts of magnetism and marketing.
• [15:32] — If we stay on the surface level of the drama of struggling against ourselves, we can stay stuck there for years, Jeffrey points out.
• [19:02] – All of our wounds have both an expiration date and a purpose, Jeffrey explains, and explores how he reacted to his own wounds.
• [22:12] – Jeffrey points out that there’s a void that occurs when something is painful and it doesn’t make sense.
• [24:23] – We learn more about how our wound-driven operating system works, and that it’s fueled by reactivity.
• [28:12] – Jeffrey explains what he meant by saying that what used to be purposeful can become poison.
• [31:16] – We hear about Jeffrey’s experience with his parents when he was young.
• [33:45] – How do you clean out your emotional wounds?
• [37:01] – Jeffrey talks about moving from a wound-driven operating system to a purpose-driven operating system.
• [40:44] – We hear about a few specific sessions and conversations that Jeffrey has had with clients.
• [42:56] – Orion talks about the shadow work that she does with her clients.
• [44:19] – What are Jeffrey’s three top tips for living a stellar life? #1. Grace, and remembering that there is a redemptive love in the world. #2. If you feel alone or like you don’t belong, recognize that you do have a tribe. #3. Realize that it’s not all work.
• [47:01] – Orion reveals that she just came back from Budapest, and points out that she has achieved a lot just because she took some time to have fun.
• [47:35] – Where can people find and connect with Jeffrey?

About Today’s Show

‏‏Hi and welcome to Stellar Life Podcast. This is your host, Orion. Super happy that you’re here to listen to my guest today, Mr. Jeffrey Van Dyk. He is an award-winning international speaker and trainer who has mentored and trained thousands of business leaders and entrepreneurs around the world. He is the founder of the Tribal Marketing Method—a revolutionary body of work that helps leaders hone in on precisely who they are meant to serve so they can bring their unique message to the people who need it the most. Today we’re going to talk about how to upgrade your operating system, how to move from a wound-driven operating system to a purpose-driven operating system, so you can get out of your way, and make a difference in the world. We’re going to focus on how to show your true colors and how to bring who you are into your work and into your life. Now, without further ado, onto the show. Hey, Jeffrey. Welcome to Stellar Life Podcast!

‏‏Hey, so glad to be here. Thank you so much.

‏‏Yeah. I’m excited to be talking to you. I love your teachings. I’ve attended one of your seminars and it was wonderful.

‏‏Awesome. Thank you.

‏‏Before we start, why don’t you just tell us a little bit about yourself?

‏‏I’ll start on the personal side. I live in Los Angeles, I live just underneath the Hollywood sign in Beachwood Canyon in the Hollywood Hills. Four years ago, I was guided to move to LA after 13 years in San Francisco. The thrust of it was my audience. The people I’m here to serve all have a message for the world, have a new way of seeing the world, change they want to see in the world, and are here to influence certain industries, certain groups of people, or what I call tribes. What I love about LA and why I think I was guided to move here is LA is the broadcast capital of the world. Different cities I think, broker different currencies. DC brokers political power, New York financial power but LA broker is the power of story. Story is how we create in the world. “In the beginning was the world, the world was made flesh.” We speak our world into existence, and if we want to change the world, it starts by speaking of a vision of the world we want to see. I love being here in the broadcast capital of the world and being here with you.

We speak our world into existence, and if we want to change the world, it starts by speaking of a vision of the world we want to see. Share on X

‏‏That’s wonderful. Who were the people that influenced you the most as far as your teachings, what you teach today?

‏‏Everything I do is about the relationship between spirituality and commerce. Business and answering your calling. Sharing humanity’s new story is the language I like to use. A lot of the foundation underneath that is about how our core wounds shape and develop us as humans, and what the interior journey is, and the leadership journey to really become what I call the living embodiment of your brand’s promise. Where you are the walking billboard of the change you’re here to see in the world. To become that person, I think we have to look at some of the deepest, most shadowy, murky parts of who we are, and find the love, and the grace inside of the aspects of ourselves that we so often fight against and like to judge and struggle with. As much as this is on some level of spiritual quest, it’s also a quest to find the deeper truth in our humanity. A lot of it was influenced by one of my dear friends and mentors, Tim Kelley, who’s an expert in life purpose. He and I ended up teaching his work around the world, we built a school in Israel together. He still does great work in the world. In that work, I really started to see the connection between our core wounds and our life purpose—that are wounds are actually a training program for our life’s purpose. That work really built the foundation of everything that I do. From the marketing side of things, of helping business leaders see how they viscerally connect with their audience based on core wounds, and how they translate that into effective positioning, messaging, and marketing, and in the leadership development. How do we navigate this journey of being a wayshower. My audience, the people I’m here to serve, we all of the belonging wound. We all, on some level, it’s like, “I don’t belong, I don’t fit in, it’s an outcast wound.” The challenge of feeling like you don’t belong is that in the first half of life, you fight and you work to make yourself acceptable, to make yourself presentable, to do whatever you can, say whatever you need to say, maybe dress the way you need to dress—whatever it is to have people welcome you. When it comes to leadership, that shoots us in the foot. Because we can’t seek to be liked and lead at the same time. Being liked is a great thing. I like being liked. When it comes to my friends, and my family, and my social networks, certainly. But when it comes to my work in the world, it’s really about laying claim to the message I’m here to bring and being willing to be highly polarizing, not from our artificial like, “Oh, marketers tell you that it’s really good to be polarizing.” But because you have a stake in the ground for what you’re here to do, the message you’re here to bring, and the change you’re here to see in the world. When you have that kind of stake in the ground, you aren’t going to be liked. You’re either going to be loved or people aren’t going to like you at all. That to me is leadership, where you’re putting a stake in the ground for something that other people can rally around because they are after the same thing. Hopefully, you’re maybe a few steps ahead of them in terms of the place you’re at in your journey.

‏‏I always wanted to be liked. Especially when I came to the US and I was very, very different. I came to the US after spending 3 ½ years in Japan. I dressed differently, I talked differently. Everything, mannerisms, way of thinking, everything was really different. I went to an acting school when I arrived here, and for two years there, I tried to be like everybody else. I took some diction classes so my accent will not sound like this, so heavy. All my cool Harajuku style clothes and Japanese style clothes, I just stuck them in the closet and start wearing more like black and simple.

‏‏LA chic.

‏‏Actually, it was New York.

‏‏Oh, okay.

‏‏But the more I tried, it never worked. I could never be like everybody else. I shared it here in the podcast before, I dimmed my light so much that I forgot who I was, and I forgot how to be myself more. I feel like in the last few years for me, it’s a quest to know myself more and to express myself just the way I am. Instead of being like everybody else so they will like me, I’m trying to be more me and then they come to me. I’m like, “This is my world. Welcome.” Instead of trying to fit everybody else’s world.

‏‏Absolutely. That is the heart of magnetism. In marketing, we talk a lot about people buy with emotion and justify with logic but they get attracted to us because of who we are. They get attracted to us because they see something genuine, they see your heart, they see your essence, your light. When you forget who you are, the light doesn’t shine so bright.

‏‏No. It seems to me like you had to do a lot of shadow work yourself to reveal that light and help so many people the way you do today.

‏‏Yeah. We talked about this interview particularly being about moving from a wound driven operating system to a purpose driven operating system in your psyche. The foundation of that, the beginnings of that whole journey—and I didn’t even know I was on the journey when I started. I don’t think any of us know what journey we’re on when we start, right? But I was working at Microsoft. I just recently quit and I started out as a coach. I had this client, this Russian psychic hedge fund manager.

‏‏Wow.

‏‏A super successful hedge funds manager who came to me saying basically like, “Yeah, I’m trained in finance. I have all the right degrees…” But she goes, “In reality all I do is I tune in to the grid of the ones and the zeroes and I just move things around and I make millions and millions of dollars.” The problem she was having is, she was like, “I don’t know why it matters. I have this parlor trick that makes a bunch of money but why? Why do I have it? Why does it matter?” I just recently trained with Tim in this life purpose methodology and I don’t know about you, but especially when I was younger, when I’d learn a new tool I think, “Oh man, this tool is everything.” I was like, “Oh, if we just help you find your purpose then it will make sense out of why you can do this and everything will be great. I’m going to help you solve this problem by helping you find your purpose.” The weirdest thing, I’ve never had this happen in now my 13-year career in this industry, she repeatedly, as we worked together, kept saying to me, “Hey, this might be weird.” She’s like, “I have these guides and they want to talk to you.” I’m like, “Okay?” She would basically “step aside” and they would coach me on how to coach her.

‏‏Oh my God.

‏‏I was living in San Francisco, a super expensive city, I’d quit my job at Microsoft, I was basically making no money when I started out. As that was happening, I’m like, “Okay wait, who’s coaching who? Who’s paying who here?” Had she not been a multimillionaire, I think I would’ve had a tougher time with it. But basically the message kept coming to me and it kept saying, “Jeffrey, stop trying to solve her problems. Just reveal more truth. There are no problems to be solved, there’s just truth to be revealed.” It was like taking my focus and shifting it 90 degrees or 180 degrees. It was like don’t look to the left, look to the right instead. Don’t look at the problem, look at the truth that wants to be revealed. The buried truth that’s underneath this problem. The image I kept getting was like a big white sandy beach with buried treasure. If you didn’t have a map or a marker for where the buried treasure was, cupid searched for years and never find it. Our buried treasure in us are like the lost pieces of ourselves, that essence part that we forget when we try to be like everybody else. Fortunately for us, there is a marker for what that treasure is, where the way back to our wholeness is. That flag, sitting right in the middle of the sandy beach, waving us over is our problems. It’s things we struggle with. The challenge so often with the things we struggle with is that we struggle with them, that we think that that’s the thing to focus on. “I just need to change this about myself. I just need to stop this thing. I need to stop thinking like this. I need to stop behaving like this. I hate this thing about myself.” Maybe it’s being super self-critical, maybe it’s always trying to fit in, maybe it’s trying to be super perfect and having that perfectionist streak. Whatever it is, that’s where we often have this inner fight–me against this part of me. You know what I’m saying?

‏‏Yeah.

‏‏That’s the flag, that’s the problem, that’s the drama. If we stay on the surface level of that drama, man, we can play out that drama for years or decades. Still struggling with the same thing year after year, maybe if we’re on a personal development journey, we go to workshop after workshop, and we hire coaches to try to help us win the battle. But all it does is it increases the fight we have with ourselves. That’s why people go to things then like, “This again? Really? I thought I dealt with this? Oh my gosh, I’m back here again.” I remember years ago, I was raised in super religious household in Holland, Michigan, in the Midwest. Everybody’s Dutch, as the name implies, Holland. My last name is Van Dyk, my neighbours were the Wierzemas and the van Keukens, and the Vandemares, and the Dijkstras–everybody’s Dutch. It was very homogeneous. I was always the kid that thought outside the box. I was always the one that people looked at me and instead of saying like, “What are you going to be when you grow up? A doctor? A lawyer? A fireman? A teacher?” Instead, they look at me and they’re like, “Huh, what are you going to be when you grow up?”

‏‏“You don’t fit our boxes so we just don’t know where to place you so you’re doomed.”

‏‏Right. Also, the outsider is often a threat.

‏‏Yes.

‏‏Whether that’s the outsider inside of a community like I was or an actual outsider that comes in from the outside. Heck, that’s what we’re dealing with in our nation right now with our dialogue around the immigrants. The conversation of the outsider is a threat. For me, especially when you’re an outsider from within the community, it says, “I don’t have a place here. I don’t have a home. There is no place for me to belong.” Then when I was in middle school and later in elementary we became Evangelical Christians which is about a damning God—going to hell for all of eternity. Do I belong? Will I fit in? Am I saved? When I was 13, I realized I was gay so that just added fuel to the fire. It’s just this big long life education which I now call a Life PhD in belongingness. Do I belong in that quest? Really understanding that quest of belonging deeply because it’s been the landscape I’ve journeyed on so much. I think for so many of us, that is the journey of, “Am I on the belonging journey,” which is the training program or, “Am I on the journey of sovereignty,” which is the leadership. Am I in the training program or am I in the leadership space where I’m really guiding the people I’m here to guide and lead and support. That shift from the training program, to the leadership can be a doozy. I feel like that’s where so many people are is the training program is done but we haven’t yet transitioned into our leadership.

‏‏Right.

‏‏One of the things I talk about is that all our wounds have an expiration date and wounds have a purpose. In response to my wounds, I became a performer. I put on a show for people. I couldn’t see how alone and how much despair I had inside myself for all those years. It was a necessary way to get by because they liked the show I put on. That fed a bit of that belonging need.

All our wounds have an expiration date and wounds have a purpose. Share on X

‏‏When you put on the show, you are vanilla. You don’t polarize, people accept you, and you’re safe.

‏‏Absolutely, absolutely. Likeable.

‏‏Likeable, yes.

‏‏Likeable. Look, it built a muscle. I’ve performed on stages all around the world, I’ve sung in the Carnegie Hall multiple times.

‏‏That’s beautiful.

‏‏That piece, that’s great training. However, I can’t lead my tribal still trying to be liked. Because if you’re trying to be liked, in reality you’re actually dismissible.

‏‏Yes, for sure.

‏‏Right. You don’t feel someone’s power, you don’t feel their gravitas, you don’t take them seriously, really. What happens when we reach the expiration date of the wound is that the old behaviour starts to become really painful. We really notice the problem, we start trying to address the problem, we try to fix it, and nothing really seems to work. See underneath it all, I believe that part of the wound driven operating system stems from the beliefs we develop in our wounding. If you think about it, when we’re kids, any wounding experience is something that is painful and doesn’t make sense. If something is painful and doesn’t make sense, it will be a wounding experience. The painful part is just one part, “Ooh, this hurts.” Trauma is painful too. I have a distinguishing bit between trauma and wounds. Trauma is just anything we can’t process in real time–it’s painful and it’s overwhelming. But if something painful and it doesn’t make sense, it leads to a wound because at the foundation of our wounding, I believe is a belief. That’s really [inaudible [00:20:57] of the wound. Identity-based belief—that we adopted for survival purposes—that it is whole level is fundamentally and true. That their I am statements, “I’m a worthless piece of crap. I’m a failure. I’m unlovable and unwanted. I’m not seen. I’m not heard. I’m damned.” Whatever it is, “I don’t have a place here, I don’t belong.” Those are all core wounds. If you hear them, they’re identity-based. “I am this thing. I’m worthless. I’m a failure. I’m stupid. I’m a piece of crap.” Whatever it is. The reason that happens is when something is painful and it doesn’t makes sense, there’s a void there. A void in. Why is this happening? Even if you grow up with a relatively healthy family. Because some people come to me like, “I don’t know if I have any big core wounds. I had a nice family. I had a nice childhood.” Something as simple as this can be wounding. Your parents really have a strong value around you getting straight As and being a good student. So you work your butt off. What are we always trying to do as we’re kids? We’re trying to please our parents so we get their love and affection and appreciation. You get your report card and it is straight As all across the board. You come home beaming, just waiting to burst through the door, and show them and get their love and their accolades. You walk through the door, you’re like, “Hi dad! Here’s my report card. I got all As!” They’re like, “That’s great. Go to your room.”

‏‏Yeah.

‏‏What you don’t know is that they just had a fight and were talking about potentially getting a divorce. You don’t know the backstory about why you’re dismissed when you walked through the doors expecting to be praised. All you know is for whatever reason—you worked and you worked and you worked—and you finally got the thing and instead of getting the praise you expected, you were dismissed. It hurts, it’s painful. “Why did that happen? I must not be good enough. I guess they don’t love me.” Whatever it is and we start to fill in the blanks. “Oh, this is happening to me because I’m X, because I’m Y, or Z.” We start to develop these beliefs about ourselves. Now, instead of being like a little baby with just as essence beaming and shining, they’re just basically one thing going on, essence beaming. There’s no two things going on. There’s our essence and then there’s a contra belief. “I’m a worthless piece of crap. I’m a failure. I’m worthless. I’m unlovable.” How are wound driven operating system works? The first half of our life is really built on a wound driven OS or operating system and that operating is filled by reactivity. Reactivity is what powers that operating system. If you think about a nuclear reactor, reactivity is a powerful energy. Hot potato. Can’t touch that. What we do around our wounds, around that belief is we try to do two basic things; we try to ignore it, brush it under the rugs so we don’t see it and nobody else sees it either, put it into the Siberia of our consciousness, and we try to prove it to be untrue.

‏‏Basically, what you’re saying is that we’re going into that beach with the flags and we do two things. We try to either say there are no flags and I’m going to totally ignore it or you see the flag and you just start to step on it and try to crush it not knowing that if you dig deeper, you’re going to reveal the treasure.

‏‏Yeah. At first, actually, think we don’t even know that there is a treasure there. When we first develop these wounds, we’re pretty unconscious to them. We bury the treasure and we walk away. It’s not like we’re consciously walking around saying, “Oh, I’m trying to prove that I’m not worthless. I’m trying to prove that I’m not a failure.” We aren’t aware that we’re doing that. It’s all happening unconsciously. The flag is invisible to us for the first part of life. Appropriately so because that’s a powerful motivation. When I work with type A, type AAA, one big part of my audience are women in their 50s, who are senior execs or founders of companies, who essentially have a spiritual wake up or spiritual calling of years before they meet me, that says, “You’re here to do something more.” Usually, when these women meet me, they either can just feel that that’s true and they don’t know what the heck the next thing is or they actually do have an understanding of what it is and it scares them, and they cannot see how to transition from what they have built into the next chapter of their lives. These women often have a failure wound or a worthlessness wound, but a failure wound drives someone to be a success. Right?

‏‏Yes.

‏‏“Darn it! I will not be a failure. I’m not going to be that thing. I’m going to fight against it. I’m going to prove it.” Sure enough, they get into the best universities, and they get their MBA from Harvard, and they build their company, or climb the corporate ladder or do whatever and it works–for the first part of life. They do, they build the thing, they build lots of skills and abilities in the process. If you were going to try to build your muscle going to the gym, you don’t just go once and lift the barbells and have amazing biceps. You have to go week after week, year after year, building the muscle. Tearing it down, building it back up. Tearing it down, building it back up. That’s part of the purpose of the wound driven operating system. Unconsciously, we’re going to the gym. We’re proving that we’re not a failure by building success, after success, after success. That’s really, really powerful and you build lots of acumen in the process. The problem is, when the expiration date hits, what used to be purposeful now becomes poison.

‏‏Explain.

‏‏I put power greens in my smoothie each morning; spinach, kales, Swiss chard. When I get them fresh, they’re really purposeful, they’re nutritious.

‏‏We need the recipe. 

‏‏I’ll share it with you. But if I let those sit in my refrigerator for 2-3 weeks, they would be green sludge. If I put that in my smoothie, it’s poison. There’s a point at which the muscle is built. I always said I want to be the best in the world at what I do. I never question that motivation, I never questioned that I wanted that. It was just my unconscious drive. About 2010, I lead a big event, and it was just magical. Massive transformation in the room. Financially, it was a huge success. On the last day of the even, I said to myself, “Alright, check, I’ve done it.” At the thing that I do, I’m the best in the world at that thing. Lots of stuff I’m not good at at all but at that thing, I’m the best in the world. I always had the belief that the skies would part, that the birds would sing. Oh my gosh, when that happens, life’s going to be amazing.

‏‏I’ll be there, I’ll be there.

‏‏It was a really big disappointment when the next day was just a Monday. No clouds parting. Nothing. It was just freaking Monday. I did some inner work and found this abandonment wound, found this little boy as I was digging in. Here’s the analogy, we asked about the flag. The flag was, it’s just a Monday. “Crap, that’s not what I wanted. This is a problem. I worked so many years, for so long, and so hard at becoming the best in the world at this thing. I’ve done it and life isn’t any different.” That’s a problem, that was my flag. I moved towards the flag. When I say there is no problems to be solved just more truth to be revealed, what we do in the response to the flag is we appreciate the flag. “Okay, thank you. I know you’re here to show the way to something, to point the way.” You the flag, I don’t need to walk up to you, and beat you. “Damn it, I hate this thing.” It’s like, “Okay, there is something here for me.” That was my flag. I did some inner work and I moved towards the void, the emptiness, the numbness that was there. I found this little boy inside of myself. This part of me that was just really sad and alone. When I was a kid, my mom did not have any support, and she had some hormonal issues—that I think now we addressed differently—but at that time she would just fly off the handle into massive fits of rage. My dad just was not around. He was building another home for us after work. He’d go to work all day and then he go to the site and build this house. A 4500 sq.ft home that he basically built by himself.

‏‏My God.

‏‏It took a few years. I found this little boy just cowering behind the couch asking, “Why isn’t he here? Why isn’t my dad here making me safe?” That’s the wound. That was part of the wound being experienced. Afterwards, I asked my own intuition, “How is it possible that I’ve built a whole body of work on core wounds and I’m just now becoming aware that there’s this big gaping abandonment wound?” I was aware the belonging one, I was aware of a wound around power, but the abandonment wound, I’d never seen. It was invisible to me. Like I said, at first our wounding, when it’s still doing its job, we don’t even see it. We’re just reacting to it. We don’t even know that we’re reacting to it. That’s when it’s actually really purposeful. Then it reaches its expiration date. For me, that expiration date for the abandonment wound was, “Check. Done. I’ve built the muscle of becoming the best in the world at what I do.” When I asked my intuition about this, the answer I got was, “Jeffrey, that abandonment wound drove you to want to be the best in the world at what you do. That was its holy purpose. Now that you’ve acknowledged to yourself that you are the best in the world at what you do, it has served its holy purpose. Therefore, it’s no longer needed. Expiration date has occurred.” When the expiration date occurs, suddenly it becomes highly painful and really present. Yeah, I had to go in and do a little cleaning out of the abandonment wound. If you think about a wound in your skin, you need to clean the debris out so it heals properly.

‏‏How do you clean it? A small question.

‏‏A small question. I’d say there’s lots of different ways but at the foundation of any way is appreciation, love and compassion. One of the things that my buddy Tim always says is that, “You cannot change that which you cannot love.”

‏‏Wow.

‏‏“You cannot change that which you cannot love.” The foundation of it is seeing the beauty of the wound. “This is what it built. To see the glory to exalt the wound and to see the beauty of what it’s built. Oh, it’s built this mastery in me. What a masterpiece.” I wouldn’t have been motivated. I wouldn’t have had a way to build that skill without this wound because for me, that abandonment wound was the unconscious belief that if I am the best in the world at what I do, of course people will want me and they won’t leave me.

‏‏I’ll be liked, I’ll be loved.

‏‏I’ll be liked, I’ll be loved.

‏‏Every person love me.

‏‏Exactly, exactly. That was the structure of that abandonment wound and the purpose of it was to build mastery. When I saw, “Oh wow.” This mastery is actually needed. I do need it for my life’s work. I just can’t be motivated by the same old wound. A lot of the work I do, healing of the wound is a lot of parts work, I’m trained in voice dialogue—which is a way to dialogue or talk with different parts of your personality like the part that was abandoned, the part of me that always felt right or the part of me that held the belief that, “I’m outcast or unwanted.” To really work with these parts of ourselves, to help not just us but even that with those parts of ourselves to see their higher purpose. Part of what I do in my trainings is give people tools to do that. But basically the foundation of it is really saying, “Why were you here? When did you come into my life and what was your purpose?” For the abandonment wound, it’s like, “Well, the mastery part came in to try to ensure that I was loved, essentially, and that people won’t leave me.” “How did that function? How did that build the mastery?” “I chartered these different parts, like the part that helped you become a really good performer. The part that helps you feel really comfortable on stage when other people are terrified by being on stage.” You start to see all the gifts of the wound the beauty of the wound, the value of the wound. To me, that allows you to start to appreciate the wound itself. If you can appreciate it and honor it, it’s not too long before you can love the different wounded parts of yourself, and that is the foundation of healing.

‏‏How do you relate this to the dismantle of our reactivity?

‏‏Let’s talk about moving from a wound driven operating system to a purpose driven operating system. Again, the wound driven operating system is, “I’m a failure. I’m unconsciously driven to be a success. I am worthless, I’m unconsciously driven to give value in the world.” By the way, it’s so funny, some of these wounds start to show up in certain industries. Like when I work with people in the financial industry, it’s not uncommon that they have a worthlessness wound and are driven to create value. When I work with type A executives, it’s not uncommon for them to have a failure wound. They congregate in certain industries even. But when we do this work of recognizing the wound and instead of staying in the hamster wheel of pushing and proving ourselves–and really, what we’re doing when we’re pushing and proving for success, is we’re pushing and proving to try to prove that this thing that we hold about ourselves is untrue. “If I’m enough of a success then I will prove to myself and everyone else that I’m actually not a failure.” Which is the belief I hold about myself and of course, it never works. No amount of external thing can prove that the belief you hold about yourself is untrue. Doesn’t work. When the expiration date occurs and that wound starts to surface, and become really painfully visible to us, and instead of turning away from it, and trying to prove it to be untrue, we start to to turn towards it and start to appreciate it, and see the value of it, and love it, and even embrace the parts of us that hold to the emotions. That’s really key to the dismantlement–is to hold in our hearts some of these really painful emotions. One of the processes I teach is something I call the “somatic presencing” where when we’re activated by one of our wounds, we can just take a moment and close our eyes, locate the emotion in our body, out our hand there and we just spend some time breathing into the motion, feeling it as deeply as possible while simultaneously noticing that we’re breathing and feeling the emotion and noticing that we’re breathing. When we do those two things at once it rewires the trauma around the emotion and basically tells the neural net, “Hey, this isn’t going to kill me.” Because that’s the fear–that if we actually feel these emotions, they’re going to decimate us. I had a client a few years ago who had a wound around being stupid. We actually spent some time in session feeling what it feels like to feel stupid, and having her dialogue with her stupid self, and seeing the value and beauty of her “stupidity”. She’s one of the smartest, fastest people I’ve ever met, mentally. I’m sure that that threatened her dad, who always called her, “You’re just a stupid little girl. You’re just stupid.” Of course, in order to survive there and not get hit by showing her intelligence, she took on the belief, “I’m stupid.” She was terrified to let people see her stupidity. But when she actually could feel the part of her that felt alone and sad connected to the stupid, eventually that part of her was no longer cast out. Instead, it was welcomed back in. She started saying things like, “Oh, I just feel so at home in myself. Like at home for the first time in my life.”

‏‏That’s beautiful.

‏‏I remember I had this woman years ago who was the top ranked female officer of Hitachi Global. She was in a session similar to this and she just looked at me with tears in her eyes and she was like, “I feel serenity for the first time in my life.” That’s when these lost parts of ourselves get welcomed back into the fold. We become more whole. There’s no longer something we’re pushing against. Simple example with the stupid wound, the same client, she didn’t have a lot success but that year, she’d only made $20,000 in the first 6 months of the year. It’s just awful. That’s the flag. She’d complained about trying to go to networking events and just getting so filled with anxiety that she wouldn’t even walk in the door. Sure enough, we found the “culprit,” the flag–stupid, and when we walked in that back in, she started showing up in the world. Sure enough, she goes to the networking events and people see her and they’re like, “You’re different,” and of course, they want some of that. So people start hiring her and a few months later she gets invited to be the speaker of the month, and by the end of that year, she made $120,000.

‏‏Wow, wonderful.

‏‏It wasn’t by pushing and proving, it was by showing up and sharing herself–along with all the skills that were built from her wounds. When we’re no longer driven to react, “I can’t be stupid. I can’t be worthless. I can’t be a failure.” When that’s neutralized, now, we’re free. Here is the thing, is the replacement feel to me is desire. If we’re free, if we’re not driven to react to that old thing, then the question becomes, ‘What do I want?” I get a soul level, “What do I want?” We’re motivated by soul’s desire rather than the reactivity to our wounds and that’s the change from a wound driven operating system to a purpose driven operating system.

‏‏That’s beautiful. When I work with my ladies I do a lot of what I call shadow work. Where it’s also using that fragmentation of our different parts and actually talking to those parts that we don’t like, that we don’t want to see, that we don’t want to embrace, and really change them to different processes. When one embraces those parts, it becomes a source of power rather than a source of pain.

‏‏Absolutely.

‏‏It’s beautiful just to see the transformation. It surprises me. I’m always surprised when I see the transformation. I don’t know why but it’s always like I expect it but I’m always like, “Wow.”

‏‏It’s kind of amazing.

‏‏Wow. This happened. That’s awesome!

‏‏Here’s the thing that always amazes me, Orion, it’s always the parts of us that we’re most sure we’re going to destroy our lives, or get in our way, or prevent our success are always the keys to the kingdom.

It’s always the parts of us that we’re most sure we’re going to destroy our lives, or get in our way, or prevent our success are always the keys to the kingdom. Share on X

‏‏So true.

‏‏That have the most hidden asset, the most hidden power that is absolutely needed for your life’s work.

‏‏Amazing. Yes. Yes. I can listen to you for another hour. I would love to have you back on the show.

‏‏That would be great.

‏‏But before we finish, what are your three top tips to living a stellar life?

‏‏We haven’t talked about this today but the number one ingredient in my life for living a stellar life is grace.

‏‏Yes.

‏‏It is remembering that there is this redemptive love available in this world that doesn’t care how much and push and prove or how much we fail–all it requires is an invitation. Please, I’m just going to invite grace into this area of my life. I’m going to invite grace into guiding me here. I’m going to invite grace to touch this wound. Having access to that kind of love is a game changer. That’s the first one. The second thing is to realize that if you feel alone or if you feel like you don’t belong, or if you struggle with that belonging wound at all, to recognize that you do have a tribe. Years ago I used to feel so alone and it was only when I really stepped into my work that I really started to look around me and see these amazing people in my life–these amazing reflections in my life. My inner guidance said about that, “Hey Jeffrey, until now, you’ve been hanging back on the wave.” This is a surfing analogy. “But only when you crested the wave and start riding the edge could you see your people because your people Jeffrey, are edge writers.” It’s the very thing that you’re most screed about, like really claiming your place in the world because you’re sure you’re absolutely will be alone then, is actually the place you find your tribe. That would be the second thing.

‏‏I love it.

‏‏And then the third thing is rather simple which is to realize that it’s not all the work. I really make a point of having a fun life. Actually, just last night, I got back from hiking in Zion and Bryce Canyon. One of my rules in my life is that I go to at least one live concert show each month because I love live music. I love great food and wine. I just have to keep the enjoyment of life alive as I stay on my path of living my purpose. Balance is a funny thing but there is this mixture of, “Yeah, I’m living my life stream and answering my calling and I have sweetness in my life.” I think that would be the third thing.

‏‏Yes, yes. Totally agree with you. I just came back from Budapest this weekend and I had lot of fun. It was awesome. Today, I achieved so much. Just because I had fun and I was not as stressed as I was before the trip. Today I was just like, “Okay, let’s do this, let’s do that.” And then one day I achieved what I did not achieved in the last two weeks. It was pretty cool.

‏‏Yeah. That’s awesome.

‏‏Awesome. Where can people find you, and connect with you, and attend your seminars, and your life cast, and everything that you do?

‏‏Yup. The hub of everything is just my main website, jeffreyvandyk.com. My last name does not have an e at the end. It’s jeffreyvandyk.com. To other places I’d send people, I do regular Facebook lives and longer format 90-minute online trainings and seminars that are all free for the community. For those, you can go to jeffreyvandyklive.com. Then lastly, the core of a lot of my trainings is in the place of marketing and finding your place in the market and really understanding who your tribe and what they need from you. If you’re interested in that kind working go to tribalmarketing.biz. Those would be the three main hubs to go check out.

‏‏Yeah. Definitely you got to check him out. This guy’s amazing. I bet you got it. You listened to him but he’s awesome. Thank you, Jeffrey. Thank you so much.

‏‏It’s been a delight. Thank you, I appreciate it.

✓ Be a living embodiment of your brand’s promise. Take note of the famous saying, “practice what you preach”.

✓ Breathe. When you’re feeling sad, angry or stressed, take a minute to breathe consciously and deeply. This will help you have more clarity.

✓ Be yourself and stop being too self-conscious. Don’t blend in so much that you forget who you really are.

✓ Be graceful in everything that you do. Tapping into that type of love is a game-changer in work and in life.

✓ Be compassionate and accepting of others’ differences. When you let others feel that they belong, they’re more likely to trust you.

✓ Treat your struggles as a pathway to your true purpose. You wouldn’t be where you are in life without your stories of survival.

✓ Take time to heal but don’t stay too long in a state of suffering. Take what you have left and use your voice to empower yourself and others.

✓ Reset and refocus as much as you need. Achieving goals is about balancing hard work and relaxation.

✓ Remember that you are not alone. You will always have a tribe out there who understands you and shares your passions.

✓ Have fun! Find something you love doing that doesn’t involve work. This will help you know yourself better.

Links and Resources:

• jeffreyvandyk.com
• jeffreyvandyklive.com
• tribalmarketing.biz
• Jeffrey Van Dyk on LinkedIn
• @jeffreyvandyk on Twitter