The Purpose in Pause: Igniting the Path Towards Healing

Discover how embracing the pause can ignite your path to deeper connection, growth, and alignment with your true self. In this conversation, Jojo explores the complexities of healing, emphasizing that it is a non-linear journey filled with challenges and self-discovery. She discusses the importance of pausing to create space for reflection, clarity, and healing, and discusses why the pause is not a sign of stagnation but a purposeful step forward. Jojo shares her own experiences with relationships and the necessity of building a toolkit for life that allows for emotional healing and alignment with one's true path. Ultimately, she advocates for a deeper understanding of oneself to foster healthier relationships and a fulfilling life. 

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Transcript

Jojo (00:07.158)
Welcome to the Inside Out Podcast. I'm your host JoJo and this is where we will navigate the mess together. That is mental, emotional and spiritual. Let's get into it.

Jojo (00:27.566)
Hi everyone, welcome back. Happy holidays, happy, I hope everyone's just happy because we are talking about healing today and healing, while it can be a very unhappy time, there's also glimpses of happiness that I think we can find in it. This past year for me has been a massive healing journey and the more people I talk to, the more that I realize this is a pretty evident

through line and theme that's happening all around us. Healing is not linear. We already know this. When we heal, it can feel like we're just stuck in the mud all the time or that nothing's progressing and that you're just feeling every ounce of everything. It's like the days are the slowest. Every situation just seems more drawn out.

because of the pain points that we're addressing and being challenged by. And I noticed that for me, at the beginning of this year, I went through a breakup. The first month was like every single day lasted a year. And it was just that grueling process of trying to understand and recoup and unpack that relationship and everything that had happened. And for me specifically, healing can

just feel like it takes eons. The more people I talk to about this specific topic, the more that I realize how rushed or unaddressed healing really is. And it's been coming up a lot in many different conversations that I've been having with people in my life. I've gained a lot of perspective with talking to friends and family about this specific aspect of life. It is just,

one of the most complex situations and pain points that I think we as human beings go through. Now, when this relationship of mine ended and everything just felt like it was dragging on, I mean, honestly, this entire year has just been one super, super long drawn out year for me. And while it's gone by so fast, it feels like

Jojo (02:52.566)
the breakup happened like three years ago, just because of how much I've uncovered and really dealt with it. I mean, not even just in that breakup, just healing different aspects of my life, different limiting beliefs, thought processes, patterns. I mean, everything that I've addressed in previous episodes. And if you haven't heard those episodes, feel free to go back and listen to them because there's some key points that I've talked about there.

that I don't wanna reiterate for those who've already listened to all the episodes, but there is a purpose in the fact that this is such a drawn out process, that healing does take a long time. And I really truly don't believe that I've ever given myself the space and the grace to heal. In the past, there's always been like a relationship after relationship and it might've been a couple of months, but they've more or less been back to back, which has not.

made it clear for me where I really need to do the transformation because most of those relationships are a different package with the exact same lesson or the exact same situation that I keep calling in because I haven't addressed it. And we keep doing that until we actually pause and uncover the crud that we are ignoring, that we're brushing under the rug that we're not processing through.

And I've said this before, but it's not about getting over something. It's about going through something. And I think in life, we're so ready to just get to the next place and what's the next thing and who's the next relationship and where's my soulmate and what direction am I going and where's my career path coming from? And we don't just stop, evaluate and more or less listen to check in with ourselves to really figure out like what

It is that I want that I'm looking for so that these scenarios and these patterns aren't on a loop for us. There is a purpose in the pause. That's what I want to address because we don't pause enough. We don't sit back and be like, ouch. We want to fill that lack with a glass of wine, with another person, with situation, with a vacation, with anything of instant gratification or the dopamine hit. What happens when you pause?

Jojo (05:19.202)
What happens when you sit in it? It hurts. It really, really hurts. And honestly, good. It should hurt. You should be uncovering why it hurts, how it hurts. Is this something that you've felt before? Is this something that you've been repeating that you keep calling back for yourself?

or in your life, we don't check in enough with ourselves. Again, we just want that quick fix. But when there's a scab and it's healing, how many times do we pick that scab? A lot of us will just keep picking at it and it will just reopen, takes longer, reopen, takes longer, starts bleeding, you need to let it heal again. And finally, you're just like, you know what, I'm gonna stop touching it because it's not gonna heal otherwise. It's kind of...

like a scab when we look at the patterns in our lives, the things that we need to heal. And let's say it's that relationship. Let's say it's that thing that keeps coming back to you in a different form, in a different person. Us picking the scab is us with the instant gratification, the instant dopamine hit, the looking for filling the void and prolonging the healing rather than just letting it do its thing and giving it what it needs.

So in relationships, in my past relationships, I haven't had the opportunity to just stop, tune in with myself and be like, well, what is it that I really need? What is it that I'm really calling in? What is it or who is it that will be a good partner? Because when we're hurting or when we've gone through a breakup, we've all heard that saying, to get over someone, you get under someone else. It's a horrible saying, I'll say.

because it's sort of true, but it doesn't actually work. It doesn't actually like help you heal because now you're just putting all your luck in someone else, hoping they'll fill that void. And when they leave, you're back in that perpetual cycle. So after my last relationship, I specifically stopped. I got real with myself and I was like, no more, I'm not doing this. I'm not continuing on this crazy train of the same endless thing.

Jojo (07:46.232)
that's not actually pushing me forward. And so I just was like, I'm gonna focus on me. I'm gonna heal. For once in my life, I'm gonna stop trying to fill a void, to fill a lack, and I'm just gonna pause. And that brings up every limiting belief and thought process of I'm gonna be alone forever and all of those crazy things that we, know, that voice in our head tells us because we're so used to doing something different or.

feeding those same patterns and when you do pause and you address those limiting beliefs and the things that are coming up for you, you really start to uncover more about yourself. Now I know this is not easy. Not everyone is like, yeah, I'm just gonna be in pain for a year and I'm gonna feel it all and then I'm gonna get on with my life. I get it. It's really challenging and to be completely honest, I cry probably every single day from all of the things that I'm just trying to transform and change and

the realizations that I'm having about why I've done certain things or how I've shown up in relationships or how I've shown up for people or how I've just kind of neglected myself and thought I wasn't enough unless someone else was giving me validation. How many of us are honest with ourselves about that? About that fact that we don't feel enough unless someone else likes us or is giving us attention?

I mean, I know I'm not alone in this and maybe you don't identify with that. And that's amazing because it really sucks to feel like, oh, I'm not enough unless someone likes me. But it's definitely been a narrative in my head since I was a teenager. The last 15 years of dating and being in that world has more or less reinforced or I've reinforced that by acting the same way. So again, this year has been

the year of pause, the year of, let me sit back and let me really uncover this and let me really change this. We look at relationships, whether it's on social media or in our everyday life and we're like, wow, they met and now they're together. But we don't see how they got from point A to point B. Typically, there's a lot of stuff that happens, but we're so used to, again, that instant outcome that we don't think about.

Jojo (10:11.276)
the actual process that it takes, the journey that it takes. And healing's very similar. But if we don't take that time and we don't pull our energy in and we don't address it, we're going to be doing the same exact things that we've always done. If you have a thought process, like mine for instance, of if I'm not getting attention from someone, then I'm not enough. In order to heal that,

you actually have to run away from it. Let's make it very simple. Let's say you're single, you meet someone, but you realize that when you don't hear from them or when they don't validate you in a way that you feel like you need validation or that you've always looked for validation, that's an area that you need to heal. And so my advice coming from the girl that's doing this right now is to run the complete opposite way, get away from it.

and give that validation to yourself and not look for it by having them fill that for you. And that's how you heal something. You actually do the complete opposite. Like the scab, when you heal a scab, you give it space. When you heal a thought pattern or a repetitive cycle in your life, you have to pull away. You have to like completely stop because let's say you got out of a relationship and you wanna start dating again, you're not gonna heal.

that area, the relational area of your life, if you just jump back into a relationship, there has to be that breath, that space, that time out where you're like really uncovering maybe your patterns, your behaviors, the things that you've done, the ways that you've thought about the relationship, how you showed up in the relationship.

because if you don't, this is just gonna be on repeat in your life forever, maybe, potentially, most likely. So I have this friend and I was talking to them recently and I'm gonna call them my analogy friend because we cannot go three sentences without talking in another analogy. And when we get on the phone or whatever it is, it's just these like.

Jojo (12:29.602)
hour long conversations of situations and life stuff that we're processing and going through. it's really beautiful because they brought something to my attention recently about healing and kind of that purpose and pause. But they were talking about how once you get out of a relationship and you really do just stop and really do figure out what your internal world is, you start to figure out

what it is that you want, who you are, what you bring to the table, what your life looks like, and you build out those aspects of your life, whether that's your career, your social circle, your hobbies, but you really build it out and then you start to hear your own voice and your own needs. And when you're on your path, typically that's when the right vibration will come towards you of that person rather than going out and seeking it.

to fill a hole. But so they said something that really caught my attention as they typically do about having the foundation and knowing exactly because of the purpose of pause, because that healing, because of pulling back and being like, no, I'm not gonna just jump into the next thing or try to pursue anything when I need to heal and I need to figure out me and where my life is going and what I need. And it's like building out that toolkit

So when life gets hard or when things hit the fan or when you're faced with things that you need to address, you actually can. And they said, I'm in a place in my life right now where I'm building out that toolkit, but it's like my hands are broken. So I can't use the tools. When we do take inventory of our lives and we stop and we pause and we see what we can bring to the table, rather than just

jumping to the next thing, we have more ability to actually manifest or bring about what we want in our lives. When you pause, when you heal, and you address what's in your toolkit, the things that you want in your life, where you wanna be, all the things that are important to you, then once you're healed and your hands aren't broken anymore, you can actually build out the life that you want rather than jumping ship

Jojo (14:54.196)
and just going on another journey only to be thrown overboard to start all over again. And for me personally, that's very much been my reality in the last six years, let's say, where I think I'm going down one stream and the next thing you know, I'm tossed overboard and it's like, I'm swimming to the next raft over instead of swimming to shore, pulling my boat in, fixing my boat.

rowing along by myself for a while, figuring out where I want to go, how I want my life to look. And then meeting someone who is parallel on my stream, going in the same direction that I'm going in, rather than trying to jump ship and just be in their little paddle boat. Because the minute you get tossed out of your boat and you just swim to someone else's, you're pulled completely off your path. And we've all done it. And that's okay. But it's establishing why we do it.

and also realizing that we do it. I think it's so hard just to honestly feel and be okay with the emotions that come up. We always wanna numb it. And there's a time and a place for that, if that's what you wanna do, of course. But if you really wanna make changes, it's mentally pausing. Really just being like, okay, I'm done. Stop emotionally going through the feelings.

and unpacking them and feeling all of them, which again, like I said, I cry every day and that's painful. It's also embarrassing to admit that this year has been so challenging for me in so many ways. And it's not just relationships, by the way, I'm just talking about relationships specifically for this conversation, but every aspect of my life, I'm in a healing phase from my body to my relationship with myself on a.

mental health standpoint to my heart and really healing relationship stuff to my career and figuring out the direction that I want to go in. But that's all come from addressing it in the mess. So let's get messy with this. Mentally, it's really just stopping. It's pausing. It's figuring out where those thought patterns are.

Jojo (17:12.108)
what you think, how you deal, what you run towards, what you run away from. For me, my way through this has been journaling and really just like unpacking like, wow, that's limiting belief, wow, that's a thought process. I thought this way about something, so I reacted and ran towards that rather than stopping and being like, wait a second.

This is not my journey anymore. This is not the cycle I wanna keep repeating. Emotionally feeling all of those things, which sucks so much, but I'm at a point in my life where if I don't address this now, I'm gonna keep bringing in the same type of relationships and the same exact story in the different package that I'm trying to step away from. And when we heal and we really identify emotionally what it is that we need in ourselves from a partner,

from our lives, that's where the spiritual evolution can really happen. Because spiritually, when we pause, when we identify our emotional stuff, and we get really clear on it, that's where the transformation happens. That's where the miracles start to come into our lives, and that's where patterns don't repeat. That's where cycles end. That's where we actually start to evolve and transform and build out the life that we were always meant to have.

the purpose that we were always supposed to be on. And when you're on your purpose and you're living for you and not living to fill a lack or to fill your time or to get that dopamine and you're on your course, you're on your stream, in your little boat, going your way, the people that are meant for you are automatically already gonna be on your stream, because they're heading in the same direction and you're not gonna veer off or get.

catapulted out of your boat anymore because you start to actually find people who are aligned with you. So there's so much that goes into healing and so many concepts that I just brought up. While healing can be so difficult, it really is necessary for the trajectory that we are on in our lives to really align ourselves on the path that we're meant to be on. So give yourself that year. And that sounds brutal. trust me, it is pretty brutal, but at the cost of what?

Jojo (19:29.174)
rest of my life being this kind of seesaw of up down, up down. No, I don't want the seesaw. I wanna get clear. I wanna understand and I wanna move through and I wanna make sure that I'm doing things that are good for me long term rather than the short term. Stepping away from the instant gratification, not jumping ship and getting into another relationship until I've really understood and decluttered what it is that I need. Then one day,

can find someone where we can both start in the same place, climb that mountain together, have the resources, the energy and the ability to do that without one of us plateauing and running off and jumping off again. And then the other one's just kind of like, okay, well, bye, but really building that love and growing that love together from a place of healing rather than a place of lack. So let's all heal so that we can find that person that we want to

Do this with, build a life with, climb Mount Everest with, so that we don't have to keep jumping off and building up the strength to do it again. And with that, I hope you guys have a great holiday season. Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, happy whatever you celebrate, happy new year. Make sure to do some reflecting on your healing journey, what you want to manifest for 2025. Write out those resolutions. And as always, please rate, review.

wherever you listen to your podcasts, share it with a friend, check out the show notes, check out the website, make sure you're staying up to date and I will see you all next year. Bye.