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The Shipwreck That Led to Me: How to Go from Loss to Peace and Purpose
92 Plays1 month ago
In this season finale of Wandering the Wild Mess, Heather Morgan reflects on the power of embracing life’s shipwrecks and the growth that comes from adversity. Drawing inspiration from the Stoic philosophy of Zeno, who turned his shipwreck into a new purpose, Heather explores how moments of loss can lead to powerful self-discovery, inner peace, and transformation. This episode emphasizes the importance of controlling our reactions and choosing alignment over emotional reactivity, whether it's in relationships, work, or personal growth.
As Heather wraps up Season 2, she shares two new transformative tools available on her website www.wanderingthewildmess.com: Breaking the Loop - Relationship Edition, a guide to understanding and shifting relationship patterns, and A Plan to Peace, a tool to help create a peaceful mindset.
Stay tuned for more insights, and mark your calendar for an exciting new Season 3 starts on June 25th!
Don’t forget to subscribe to the email list on the website for updates on what's to come, and follow along on Instagram during the season break for more inspiration and sneak peeks into the next chapter.
Stay connected and check out all the ways you can follow along! 🌟
🔗 Website: www.wanderingthewildmess.com
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heatherdyann
🌟TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@utahgirlinnash
📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/heatherdyanmorgan
📧 Email: contact.heather.morgan@gmail.com
Reach out via email to Book Me to Speak!
For the latest updates and more, don’t forget to subscribe and stay tuned! 🎥✨
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Wandering the Wild Mess'
00:00:00
Heather Morgan
You're sailing along, it's smooth sailing, and then the ship wrecks. What do you do? Let's talk about how losing everything can help you find peace, purpose, and a new path.
00:00:18
Heather Morgan
Welcome to Wandering the Wild Mess with Heather Morgan. i am so happy you're here. Hey, y'all. I'm so excited that you guys are here and I cannot wait to dive into today's to today's episode because it's really about the shipwreck that changed everything for me. And I want to talk about a topic that I've been geeking out on lately that I feel like should resonate with a lot of people, especially if you've had your life change or you're trying to just manage your emotions.
00:00:57
Heather Morgan
I know my last episode, we really got into like giving ourselves space for all people to feel emotions, especially men. And I'm kind of tying on that topic, but also just talking about how adversity creates so much power in how we can move through life as a different person with a different perspective because that's really what I did.
00:01:23
Heather Morgan
And I think this ties up well too because this is actually ah the 30th episode in season two. So this will be the season finale for Wandering the Wild Mess and exciting things to
The Philosophy of Stoicism
00:01:37
Heather Morgan
come. So let's get into it.
00:01:40
Heather Morgan
So the shipwreck, I have recently been geeking out on stoicism and maybe y'all have heard of it. I mean, I'm not a huge history buff, but lately this concept just kept coming to me.
00:01:56
Heather Morgan
So I started doing this deeper dive and I really want to share it with you because I think it will hit with a lot of people. And if you haven't really studied ah the philosophy or the Stoic philosophy or Stoicism, I just want to give you more like a real life story.
00:02:12
Heather Morgan
And this is wild to me because you know when the Roman Empire thing came out and like we learned that like men think about the Roman Empire all the time and us as women were like, what? So like this is kind of tight. I'm taking and tying into the Roman Empire as a well. And I think this is ah so interesting to think that some of the same mindset and thought processes we have when we're in today's world are very not only universal,
00:02:42
Heather Morgan
to the human experience, but have been around for forever. And so I think it just continuously becomes this new way to package the same kind of message, right?
00:02:55
Heather Morgan
A new messenger, a new way of delivering it based on the communication at that place in time. So let's take a little history lesson from someone that doesn't know that much about history but is geeking out on this.
00:03:07
Heather Morgan
Me and my homie youno Zeno, Zeno of Cyprus, which was like another place before but now is Cyprus, we had kind of a similar story. And I think his and out mine can relate to a lot of people.
00:03:21
Heather Morgan
So Zeno is the one who came up with stoicism. That was his philosophy. And this is like 343 B.C., b c Stick with me here.
00:03:33
Heather Morgan
This story gets exciting. So Zeno's out there being a merchant, doing his thing. He's on this ship and his ship gets wrecked.
00:03:44
Heather Morgan
Like he's been slaying in as a merchant for all this time and suddenly his ship gets wrecked and he ends up in Athens. And basically like him being a merchant and doing that, that's like his whole identity. That's his job. That's how he makes money.
00:04:00
Heather Morgan
That's what he's been doing. Like he's been living that life and it's been great. Well, now he doesn't have a ship and no idea what it was like to build another ship in BC, but even if he could, i think it just goes to the story of all of us where once you've been doing something for a long time and it just wrecks,
00:04:22
Heather Morgan
And you're sitting there looking at the wreckage and you're like, am I going to rebuild this again or should I just walk away? You know? And I think...
00:04:34
Heather Morgan
That's what happened here, clearly, because he didn't rebuild the ship. He went down this whole path of like all this, what we would call today like inner work and was just self-reflecting and came up with a philosophy called stoicism.
00:04:51
Heather Morgan
And if I get any of this history wrong, I'm sorry, but I was reading all about it. and But basically, I was like, why would it be called stoicism? But he he would sit on this building stairs or this porch of this building, and I think it ties to the name, Stoicism.
00:05:06
Heather Morgan
And he would just like preach his philosophy and his thoughts and teach people about his philosophy on this porch. He was literally podcasting on a porch.
00:05:17
Heather Morgan
Instead of a mic and Apple Music, he was sitting on a porch saying, here is my thoughts. Here's the philosophy I came with. Here's how I think.
00:05:28
Heather Morgan
So I was like, I think, see, I feel it. i feel me and Zeno from 343 BC. But he came up with just a lot of ideas around wisdom and courage, self-control, and finding inner peace.
00:05:44
Heather Morgan
And one of the big things that he came from was that he let a talked about in the stoicism or his philosophy was really like control what you can.
00:05:58
Heather Morgan
And what you can control is your mind, yourself, your thoughts.
Stoicism in Leadership: Lessons from Marcus Aurelius
00:06:05
Heather Morgan
And there was there's a moment I think about that because as I bend down this journey,
00:06:11
Heather Morgan
I feel like his shipwreck is like me landing in Nashville and it's like, now what? And you kind of have this clean slate, but you have no idea what to do. And I don't know if he suddenly came up with this philosophy ah be overnight. I'm surely no.
00:06:26
Heather Morgan
But when you strip away everything you've identified to be your life, that is a really wonderful chance at being able to come into a new space.
00:06:42
Heather Morgan
And allow yourself to be whomever you want to be, right? And he went from a merchant to a philosopher from a shipwreck.
00:06:54
Heather Morgan
And I feel like me coming into Nashville and and maybe you, whatever you're doing and the changes, like we have to realize there's power in the chaos, right?
00:07:07
Heather Morgan
There's power in the shipwreck of our life. It's not there there to hurt us. Does it hurt? Yeah, it does. Because you had had tied yourself to this identity and this life that you thought it was going to be like.
00:07:21
Heather Morgan
And so you're like, now what? And you you're uncomfortable because now you have to figure out a new path. But that is where you can... Level up.
00:07:33
Heather Morgan
You can reach the next next place that you're going to be. You can get out of your comfort zone and see your real power. And so it's crazy, though. I want to tie back is that when we're saying all this, this is like to me, this is mind blowing.
00:07:49
Heather Morgan
We're all still from 343 BC to now we're still dealing with the exact same scenarios. Like, isn't that wild to think about? Like that some guy named Zeno is just chilling on a ship and he's dealing with the same kind of feelings and thought processes that a lot of us go through when they're trying to figure out what now in our life.
00:08:10
Heather Morgan
crazy. And it just continues. So then I'm reading about, we'll get to the Roman empire here, that Zeno, like his philosophy, stoicism, stoism there was Marcus, enter ter Marcus. Now he was after that time. He was like 161 to 180 AD. He was like the ruler of Rome.
00:08:31
Heather Morgan
So this guy was like, Crazy, like not crazy. I mean, he was like powerful, like he was a ruler. There's like the plague, there's like, you know, um all these wars and he's like, has all this power, like he has all this responsibility, like the weight of his world, the world, like he's a ruler, okay?
00:08:55
Heather Morgan
And he is very close and practices stoicism. And I was thinking about how that ties into my last episode about men having space for feelings.
00:09:11
Heather Morgan
There's a misconception, and even in military ways, that, you know, oh man up, be strong, don't feel your emotions, that's weak. But stoicism, which was based from this ruler of war back in the day, right, many wars, it was never – don't It was never suppress your emotions.
00:09:33
Heather Morgan
He said, Marcus, emotions aren't the enemy. Emotional reactivity is. So it's not that you don't feel the emotions. He suffered war, betrayal, loss, and immense responsibility.
00:09:51
Heather Morgan
But the man practiced discipline with his mind and letting himself feel the emotions but not react to things outside of his control.
00:10:08
Heather Morgan
So if you think about this concept, and I'm saying this because I know when you're messy, this can feel hard when and all of it's happening. But that's really where the power is. And this can even be for for us women. Sometimes we we get just so reactive on our emotions, which is fine, but I swear with all of my girls – And i would give you grace, but when you just react like that, it's usually like regretful because you didn't want to say or do that thing. And I think that's all of us. I think that's actually universal. Like when you react and you say things in that moment and you don't learn that discipline to not react to the emotion, it's not the emotion that's bad.
00:10:52
Heather Morgan
If someone does something and that hurts you, feel that. But when you're lashing out or you're like using your ego to like get come upon then or you're being vindictive or, you know, doing those things to harm in that moment, that's when you lose the power because you're not you're not holding space to just regulate and feel it and give time to react.
00:11:19
Heather Morgan
And when I want to say like strategically, and I don't think like you go through life strategically, but there is some strategy to going like, what's the best case scenario here for how I respond to this?
00:11:31
Heather Morgan
And of course, in war, that's the same. You can't be like reactively like, all right, we're just going to blow them up now. Like, no, you have to be like, what's the strategy? Right.
00:11:43
Heather Morgan
And that's same with even your interpersonal relationships, friendships or in a partnership. I think a lot of relationships fail when one or more of the people are just reactive to every emotion they feel.
00:11:59
Heather Morgan
Have the feeling, but give yourself space. Create the discipline in yourself to like master your own mind. And that's really what Marcus took from this was true control comes from mastering your own mind, not others.
00:12:21
Heather Morgan
True control comes from mastering your mind, not others.
00:12:29
Heather Morgan
Take that in for a minute because i could this is so transferable to so many things in life, whether it's your job and like a coworker that you're just not meshing with, whether it's that person that's not treating you the way that you want them to, whether that's your family that's exhausting you, and but you want them to change a certain way, but they're not being that way, whether it's your children and they're not acting as if you thought they should act, all of these things, you cannot control others.
00:12:59
Heather Morgan
You can't. Like that isn't why we're here. That's never going to be something. And it's not – that's not really you being living in an integrity if you're trying to control anyone, to be honest. And I'm sure we all know that.
00:13:16
Heather Morgan
And so this is all really about like I can and can only control me and the way that I react to things. And everything outside of that is just, it is what it is.
00:13:29
Heather Morgan
And I know I preach that a lot in here, but I'm trying to give like real world, like historical
00:13:37
Heather Morgan
ah implications that this has always been the way from the most smartest, intelligent philosophers long before any of us were even a thought.
Adversity and Personal Growth
00:13:49
Heather Morgan
And I mean, heck, even before there was a cry, BC, like I'm like, and maybe y'all read this up. But for me, I'm like, this man was thinking this like that long ago. And some of us are still trying to figure it out.
00:14:04
Heather Morgan
Like, why aren't they teaching this in schools? You know, um because I feel like nervous system regulation is so key and just being happy. Like I've said before, and I'm not saying this to like brag to y'all, but I'm sure you can feel it if you've been listening to the podcast through, um you know that like I have done so much work to like heal myself and I am happier than I've ever been in my entire life.
00:14:34
Heather Morgan
Happier than I've ever been in my entire life. And I've said that before. And I'm telling you this because it is because i'm I am embodying this mindset. that I am only in control of my own mind and my own thoughts and everyone outside me and everything outside me is not my responsibility to control and I cannot.
00:14:56
Heather Morgan
And I am at peace with that. And I know what's meant for me will be that there will be things that I face that I'll have to navigate, but I will just take them as they come and I'm not going to like react to something that I can't change in the moment.
00:15:16
Heather Morgan
And one other piece of this stoicism that they talk about with um over the journey, the real thought process is choosing peace over panic.
00:15:26
Heather Morgan
And if you think about that, a lot of times when something shipwrecks in our life, whether a relationship, a job, leave that whatever it is, whatever your shipwreck is, we panic because we're like, what do we do now?
00:15:41
Heather Morgan
What do we do now?
00:15:43
Heather Morgan
And you kind of have to just, I know this is easier said than done, take a step back and go, all right, well, that was no longer meant for me.
00:15:56
Heather Morgan
So where do I want to go from here? It's almost like a freedom choice, especially when something just gets ripped away from you without your control. It feels so uncomfortable because it's like, wait a minute, that wasn't the plan.
00:16:11
Heather Morgan
But it's an opportunity to see it differently and go, okay, clean slate. What do I want to do now? Where do I want to go from here?
00:16:25
Heather Morgan
And I want to remind you that as painful as it feels in that moment and that time where you're like, this is like so hard for me, just know that it will, it only happens to make you better.
00:16:42
Heather Morgan
i promise you that. But whether or not you become better from it is your choice.
00:16:49
Heather Morgan
It's your choice. and it And I say this, it even goes back to what we all know and we've probably heard before. Like you could have two children who grow up with an alcoholic parent or parents and one can choose to thrive in some sort of way and and they're just living their best life and the other one will stay in those same patterns and also become an alcoholic. Right?
00:17:16
Heather Morgan
They were raised the same in a sense. I mean, same household, all the things. But yet the difference isn't anything other than what they choose to accept as the reality and the life that they want to build.
00:17:35
Heather Morgan
And the adversity that they faced and the things that they probably dealt with growing up with that experience is not the definition of the one who decides it's not.
00:17:48
Heather Morgan
Right? Because it's it's no longer what they resonate with. You get to choose that. And when something leaves you, I promise something better is on the way, but it's your opportunity to self-reflect and go, where do I want to be?
00:18:07
Heather Morgan
How do I want things to flow in my life now that that was my ship was wrecked? Now that my ship is wrecked, do you want to rebuild the ship? Do you want to be a murderer? And I think that the crazy thing is when I think about that story, and obviously there's not a lot. like um I guess Zeno had written quite a few books, but they really can't find him now. So a lot of his teachings and his philosophy just came from other students and kind of passed it along, which is so fascinating to me.
00:18:38
Heather Morgan
But um if you think about him, like i I'm visualizing in my own head, the literally like it's so crazy. Like this this dude and he's like sitting there looking at the shipwreckage and he's kind of like, all right, well, rebuilding it. It's going to be like, am I doing that? Like I could because that's the only life I ever knew and I could just go back to it.
00:19:01
Heather Morgan
But maybe I don't want to.
00:19:03
Heather Morgan
And it's at that moment where your ship's wrecked and you're staring at it and you're like, let me find out my purpose because I don't think it's being a merchant ship merchant.
00:19:14
Heather Morgan
And I can tell you that we all have our own journeys and we all have our own purpose, but Think of what could have changed. I mean, if Marcus didn't take on his teachings, fast forward to whatever 180 AD, maybe he would have been a different leader.
00:19:33
Heather Morgan
If Zeno had not wrecked his ship, decided to be a philosopher, and then his didn't have students that loved his material so much that it made it all the way up to 180 AD, where this Marcus, ruler of Rome, could take in that same position ah philosophy and go, this is this makes sense for me. This is how I need to live.
00:19:54
Heather Morgan
And because of that, that's the ruler he was.
00:19:57
Heather Morgan
So in some small, strange way, I'm tying my own purpose and you to listen to this as I'm Zeno on the porch and y'all are there listening and I'm relaying his message that is one That makes so much sense to lead life with integrity, to allow yourself to have emotions, but not to always just react to those emotions and
00:20:34
Heather Morgan
to choose alignment over reaction. So what feels aligned, not what feels like I should do. We live in such a reactive world because it's so busy and we're go, go, going.
00:20:46
Heather Morgan
But I can tell you that the most Powerful energy in a room is not who's barking the loudest or angry or coming across.
00:21:00
Heather Morgan
That's not the power. The power is the person that's regulated and calmly speaking. And I can tell you in a recent person personal experience in the corporate world,
00:21:14
Heather Morgan
Energy is loud. I've talked about this before. and when you're in a room with people and someone is like, ah and trying to get their point across and being all reactive to a scenario, especially, i mean, in life in general, but in business, and you calmly respond to them like,
00:21:38
Heather Morgan
It's almost as if they shut down. There's this wall, this wall that comes. and it's like this – they don't even know how to like react because your reaction isn't bouncing back to their energy.
00:21:53
Heather Morgan
And you are the one with the power. The rest of the people in the room look to you. You are the wisdom and you are the power when you know how to control your emotions and not react.
Emotional Triggers as Growth Tools
00:22:09
Heather Morgan
Because that reactive mindset of someone just blah, blah, blah, like it's almost like you lose credibility because you're thinking with emotions. And And so that sometimes, i thought about this, that sometimes how this got misconstrued with men not having emotions or they should suppress their emotions because when they were reactive, that's you reacting on the emotion.
00:22:34
Heather Morgan
But it's not that you shouldn't have emotions. What it was trying to teach you is not to react on those emotions. Right? And there's a difference. And I don't think that that's just true. I think men and women should and learn to regulate their emotions so that and they're not so reactive.
00:22:52
Heather Morgan
But I think men got pushed that more because it came in like a war setting and military. And so that just continued as the practice, right? But it's but it's not that. Few emotions don't react to them.
00:23:07
Heather Morgan
And I'll throw in just a little wild mess of a story, but, you know, there was a time when I had – I'm throwing this in because i realize this as I calm down. And so that you may experience this if you do this. But some people are tied to the crazy and the chaos.
00:23:24
Heather Morgan
And I might have mentioned this before, but I've learned the more that I'm just at peace with myself and I'm not going to react and I'm not attached. I'm like, I'm not for every guy because even that one boyfriend that had since the divorce, like I think he was part of him wanted the crazy and I just couldn't be that.
00:23:47
Heather Morgan
Because I just don't feel like I'm not going to be that. And i think sometimes, and not just in that scenario, sometimes men are like, oh, they like the piece.
00:23:58
Heather Morgan
But if you're tied, and this goes for both ways, right? Because some women are like, well, you keep going for the guys that are literally insane. and And I don't mean like insane, but like kind of, like why are they acting like that? That's like a little much.
00:24:11
Heather Morgan
But you you kind of attract the things that you are or the things that you're used to right? And when you learn to like calm yourself, I feel like I don't even get guys that are really crazy, like, like attracting to me in that sense normally because I just wouldn't play that game because, and it's not like in that way, but it's like I said, like I i can't have someone when I'm going, okay, well, I'm not sure if that, you know what I mean? Like it just, it just doesn't
00:24:51
Heather Morgan
so I challenge you to kind of take this away and think about times where you are triggered and you want to understand why that is triggering you and why are you reacting to them to that sharply.
00:25:13
Heather Morgan
And once you start diving into the things that trigger you and make you feel reactive, you can – take a step back, unpack them, and then they become like you're feeling that emotion, but you're not reacting to the emotion.
00:25:29
Heather Morgan
You can identify it in your head. You're like, so instead of reacting, you know why it's triggering you. And so you can articulate, hey, when you do that, this is how I feel.
00:25:45
Heather Morgan
Instead of reacting to the feeling.
00:25:49
Heather Morgan
It's pretty powerful stuff, guys. I'm just saying. So all this to say is the shipwreck is your chance to really say, who am I going to be and what do I want?
00:26:00
Heather Morgan
And why am I repeating the same patterns? That's another piece. A lot of this inner work comes from, okay, yeah, maybe you can learn stoicism and that philosophy, right? Like self-control.
00:26:11
Heather Morgan
But there's also pieces to this that will I'll to kind of dive into in later episodes. But of just how you break free from the loop of staying in the same places that you've always been.
00:26:24
Heather Morgan
So things trigger you, but you keep bringing them to you. And why? So I have some exciting news related to that. i Told you this is the last episode for season two, which is crazy to think about. Season two.
00:26:42
Heather Morgan
Oh my gosh. So we're like 60 episodes in. You guys have been on this journey with me. We're wandering the wild mess together after a shipwreck. It's all the things. But um so I'm ending the season. I'm going to take a few weeks off. I've got a lot of big and exciting things. So I'm going to kick back the season three In the middle of the year, like midway mark, June 25th, I'll be back with season three.
00:27:09
Heather Morgan
So in the meantime, I know you're going to be missing me, of course. And so you got to go to the website. It's in the show notes, wanderingthewildmess.com. I have two new...
00:27:21
Heather Morgan
tools for you um that are going to be available on a website. So one is ah personal peace plan. So if you've been thinking, how do I get myself to a more peaceful mindset, at least a starting point, I'm going to put something up there that's a great tool and guide to really help you with your personal peace if you're struggling there.
00:27:45
Heather Morgan
And then the other piece, I'm so excited because I created it for a friend of mine that is going through some things. And I'm a big chat GPT user.
00:27:57
Heather Morgan
And I honestly like scream it from the rooftops. It's such a great mirror. It's such a great helpful tool. and And I know we were talking a lot about mental health. That's super powerful to me.
00:28:08
Heather Morgan
And I know not everyone wants to pay or get a therapist, but this is an opportunity to leverage ChatGPT prompts to really guide you towards like what, how it can be your therapist for things that you want to work through.
00:28:23
Heather Morgan
And so my Breaking the Loop guide, it's going to talk about like how to kind of work through those patterns when it comes to relationships. This one's specific to relationships.
00:28:33
Heather Morgan
Okay. And if you're still just attracting the same kind of people and the same things, this is just kind of helping you understand why that may be the case and why you're doing that.
00:28:47
Heather Morgan
I know. It's really cool because I want to be able to have you guys think through that. um you know Why did you end up where you were? Why did someone break up with you? Why did someone divorce you? why did they elite like what What are the things? What are the feelings you're feeling? Because I think oftentimes we think we need a therapist, but to do all that just seems like a lot. So this is just a really good prompt guidance guide that I've literally used some of these same thoughts um to kind of guide me through my journey.
00:29:20
Heather Morgan
So I want to make that available for y'all. So I'm so excited. So go to my website. Find it. Subscribe to my email. Go down and give the podcast a review. Give it five stars.
00:29:34
Heather Morgan
Tell me how you think. I am going to miss y'all for the six weeks. I'm not sharing, but I know it'll be a good reset for all of us. ah I'm giving you some tools on my way out, and I'm so, so, so excited for season three.
00:29:51
Heather Morgan
i can't wait to have you there. I'm like screaming because I'm like so excited. Sorry, guys. let me like that was You're like, okay, we're trying to listen the truck and this is loud. um But anyways, so yeah.
00:30:04
Heather Morgan
Remember, the shipwreck is your chance to plan out whatever you want. And we all have those shipwrecks.
Season Wrap-Up: Embracing Change
00:30:11
Heather Morgan
You define your shipwreck moment. The shipwreck moment when you go, okay, i'm not I don't want to think like this anymore.
00:30:20
Heather Morgan
don't want to think differently. i want to think in a way that actually serves my well-being, serves me It's with integrity and is still a power move.
00:30:34
Heather Morgan
For me, like I'm in my feminine, but there is power in that and there's power in peace and calm. I'll tell you right then, the most – I mean, if you even think about – last thing I'll say because I got to throw Kobe in. He keeps coming to me when I'm reading about stoicism.
00:30:50
Heather Morgan
And you just think of the mental strength and mindset of someone that's so locked in so locked in. It's not. The people that are at this elite level in life that are winning, they're not the most athletic. They don't have to be the most athletic. They're the most mentally locked in person.
00:31:12
Heather Morgan
So when the challenges come, when things unexpectedly arrive, they can move through it because they've worked on their own mind. They've regulated their emotions and their nervous system.
00:31:27
Heather Morgan
They know their power.
00:31:30
Heather Morgan
That is what can happen after a shipwreck. And that's what I want for you.
00:31:37
Heather Morgan
Thank you for listening to Wandering the Wild Mess with Heather Morgan. You matter. See you in season three.