Take the Elevator
This podcast is purely about elevating people through individual life stories and experiences in the Elevator. In the Elevator, what's key is maybe changing your perspective; having self-actualization; embracing your purpose; and acting on it as we grow from one another. There is a whole different point of view when you look up to elevate.
Take the Elevator
365th Floor: How do you keep hopeful when things seem hopeless?
Something different awaits you in this raw, unscripted conversation about navigating life during turbulent times. When global headlines overwhelm and social media feeds fill with disturbing images, how do we maintain our humanity, hope, and sanity?
Diving deep into the emotional impact of current events, we share personal reflections on witnessing others' suffering and finding balance in our responses. The conversation explores how faith serves as an anchor during times of uncertainty, while acknowledging that everyone must discover their own path to inner peace. Rather than presenting definitive answers, we offer vulnerability, sharing our own struggles with maintaining perspective and the evolution of our thinking.
The heart of our message emerges in the power of human connection: those precious moments of authentic interaction that remind us we're not alone.
Consider this episode a gentle invitation to reflect on what grounds you during difficult times. Whether through prayer, meaningful conversation, or intentional presence with loved ones, we all need strategies to weather life's storms.
Look up, and let's elevate!
Hey, it's Jen the Builder and Corey, and hello everyone. This is a bit of a different type of episode, I feel today. This is a bit of a different type of episode, I feel today. Just wanted to connect with you all. I don't have any notes, corey, you don't have any notes.
Speaker 2:Nope.
Speaker 1:And man, there's just so much going on and we thought what is it that people need to hear, or what's going to bring them the best type of messaging that makes sense for all of us today?
Speaker 1:yeah and I think where it really lands is how do we find peace or how do we keep sane. However, you want to look at this during times of not just challenge, but hard times, difficult moments, and when you're getting, when you feel like, okay, I can absorb what's happening right now. Then there's another layer and another one and it just feels heavy, Right. I think that's what this is is how do you keep light when it's heavy? How do you keep hopeful when things seem hopeless?
Speaker 2:I guess that's a good one.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So, corey and I really wanted to just reach into our hearts and just speak to you people, to people, about how this looks, how we get through it. Um and so, corey, you had shared with me some really cool stuff, and I love how you just went back in time.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Can you let us in your world?
Speaker 2:Well, can we kind of lay, give a lay of the land a little bit so that you know we're not confused on what we're actually talking about. You know, there there's turmoil happening in front of us. There's this immigration thing going on that people can't explain or bring logic to, and it's on both ends. It's not just I'm not coming from a political point of view like a right or a left, it's just both sides have their way of seeing things and this is typically how it unfolds when you know you have people of different belief systems that really want what they really want yeah, and you know, I had the privilege of working with some people who really let me into their world regarding this.
Speaker 1:So I love what you said immigration thing, and that's such a broad topic but if we can just focus in a little bit, sure, there are people who are every day anticipating the worst or not knowing what's going to happen. What I mean by the worst is separation from family, not knowing what the future holds. Fear, right, torment the grief is enormous, right, so it's that kind of way.
Speaker 2:So, whereas, for the sake of a podcast, we generalize or broaden these topics, we're talking about human emotions, family relationships, friends, you know, and then there's, well, what's right, what's wrong and those kind of feelings and that kind of thought process, right, so yeah, you've got that which is so heavy right, yeah, and and then you have what just recently happened with the Iran, israel and the United States dropping bombs on a particular area in Iran, and people have different, mixed feelings on this as well, yeah, and so just even explaining it and trying to describe it is a little bit difficult, because I don't want to minimize or over exaggerate any topic or any issue in anyone's mind mind, and so I can only give my point of view and my perspective because I see things just a little bit different than most people typically do, and not because I'm special or because I'm, you know, so wise or so blind to what's happening.
Speaker 2:It's just I've learned to to figure this out in a different way. Some of this doesn't land for me at all because my belief system and, jen, I don't know any other way to say it other than you know I have a different belief system than, I'm sure, a lot of other people, and so when things of this nature come about, I'm real quick to start praying, I'm real quick to start relying on my spiritual and my faith, and it's not that I'm just doing it only then, it's because I'm always doing it Right, and so it doesn't change who I am at the core, and so it doesn't change who I am at the core.
Speaker 2:I've seen things in other aspects of life that I was very concerned about, but it didn't cause me to panic, because I just have a different way of dealing with it, and so I pose this question to anyone listening, and I'll start with you, jen. How do you begin to and I use this word a lot how do you begin to palletize these type of situations? Is faith a part of it, or is there another methodology that you lean into?
Speaker 1:Man, ultimately it is faith, right, and I'd love to go into that more and I want to explain my process.
Speaker 1:Very much a feeler, very much about people, and I've done the thing where I scroll through and I'm looking at different things. I'm seeing a dad in his apartment with his son and they are literally hearing bombs above them and you hear screams of women in the background and he's trying to keep his son and I mean his son is probably a year old, a year and a half, and his son has big, beautiful eyes, eyes and he's just kind of looking around like what's happening. And then the bombs become very intense and you just see fear in this little boy's eyes and he starts crying. And then I go into that. What does that gotta feel like as a parent who has no control in that situation, right, but just to be there with your child. And then you see his two daughters on the ground and their face is flat on the ground, like on their cheek, just you, and you can sense the holding of their breath to see if anything's going to happen to them you know that kind of way.
Speaker 1:So this is my process. I feel not exactly what they're feeling, but I imagine what that is, and I think to myself oh my God, this morning, when I saw this, my concern is what drink? Am I going to get? A coffee bean? You know what I mean, and it just puts things in a different perspective. You know what I mean, and it just puts things in a different perspective. And then it's no longer for me about the politics of what's right, who's right, what's wrong. We walk the same walk and talk the same talk.
Speaker 1:It's a different process though, yeah, but of course, ultimately, I realize I'm not in control of this, and I just, literally, will fall on my knees and just pray for the state of the world that we're in, and never when I pray do I blame God, because we're humans and we choose this right, and we just celebrated Juneteenth, and one of the things I loved what you shared on LinkedIn and I tried to mimic it on our Instagram I tried to mimic it on our Instagram but it's that we have the freedom and it's our God-given right, and with that freedom, we choose things. You see what I'm saying? So, yeah, it's faith, and then it's just recalling and remembering all the times where it felt like death was literally knocking at our door and then life appeared. You know what I mean, or?
Speaker 1:there was light in extreme darkness. And that's the hope, that's the prayer and, above all, just trusting in his will.
Speaker 2:You know and yeah um, can I jump in?
Speaker 1:Yeah, please.
Speaker 2:I'm glad and I'm so grateful that you shared your honest, pure heart, and that's what it really was. Can we acknowledge that there are bigger powers, and when I say bigger powers like World powers.
Speaker 1:is that what you mean?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, like world powers. Is that what you mean? Yeah, yeah, there are world powers that have been involved in this type of behavior, this type of uh, chaos and confusion for as long as we can remember, and I personally don't think it's fair to put that on the regular, normal people walking around in everyday life yeah, it's like the cost of the game that you all are playing amongst each other right and, and we really don't even have a clue as to where any of this began.
Speaker 2:We really don't understand the magnitude yeah that and, as you said, the game it's in to to some people this is a game because you know that you will never be hurt, harmed or in dangerous way yeah for what you're doing to the public, and so, again, that's why I have to move different, because I'm never going to point the finger at one individual that I can walk across, you know, come across in my lifetime and say it's your fault, you did this, you know. Again, I just don't think we have enough of the pieces of the puzzle on the table to figure this thing out.
Speaker 2:And that's the most harmful thing that you could ever do. Try to get people to solve a problem and you don't give them all the solutions that they have at their fingertips yes, yes.
Speaker 1:And to your point, cory, where people are playing and moving pieces and just kind of sitting back saying, well, I'm going to do this because I have an agenda, whatever that looks like. We have friends whose children and cousins, whose children are in the military, and they're, like, literally on standby and not given any much more information than that. So then we see that impact, you know. So, at the end of the day, corey, what we're saying here is what, when this is the world that we live in, how do we move forward?
Speaker 2:how do we, how do we breathe at times, well, you got to find your own peace and you got to find your way. You know, we mentioned our faith and and that's what we rely on um, you have to be able to find your own peace and find your way through this. Uh, the best way possible. I can't say what it is for the next person. Sure, I can't tell you who are listening to me this is what you do. I could tell you what I do, I could tell you how I get through things, but it may not solve your problem. It may not solve your issue.
Speaker 2:When I come to the realization that, 20 years from now, we're going to look back on this very moment in time and figure out so many things that we did were wrong and a few things we did that were right on both sides of the aisle, whether it be your political standing, your spiritual standing, your world standing we're just going to realize that we could have did this all so differently, and if we had to just expose the hands of some of the individuals that have the ability to pull the stuff off in the first place, we might have been in a better spot.
Speaker 2:I mean, let's think about it in these terms If we look back at the younger version of ourselves. How many things would we have just simply altered? Because we knew now the thing that was going to develop from doing that thing a long time ago. And so my prayer is, and hope is, that everyone can come to some kind of peaceful mind and be in peace, be lockstep with their belief system. Don't go against your gut, don't go against what you feel is the thing that you should be doing at the end of the day. Be able to sleep at night.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and another thing that I'd want to add to that is remember I had just mentioned that I worked with a group of people and they really allowed the space to talk about what exactly they were going through at this time.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And for me, I think that's another thing that helps during this time is our interaction with people you know and even strangers, like there's so much going on there and like, for example, correct the other day right, this guy was driving like a madman and wanted to stop right next to me and kind of stare us down in the car yeah, and I just thought and instead of like raising the hands or like you know what, what kind of thing it was, more like I have no idea what he's going through so, and that's interesting, I I experienced that I was sitting in the back seat and I opted not to say a whole lot at that very moment.
Speaker 2:But it's these typical moments in life that, because you don't have all the pieces of the puzzle, you don't understand what happened.
Speaker 1:You just give grace.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this guy thought you cut him off, but it wasn't that you cut him off. He was in a position and not ready to go, so you took the lead and then, apparently, yeah, he didn't like that very much.
Speaker 2:He went to the next level, and so you can imagine if you got two hot-headed people and I've heard stories about this and, as a matter of fact, I've seen a news story about this, where one guy felt like someone cut him off on the freeway. They both stopped the car. One had a, a knife, one had a gun. My goodness, they were shooting each other and stabbing each other and the police showed up and literally had to break them up from this fight. Neither one of them died, and this is what we've grown to, because we can't control our emotions.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, so be a peacemaker.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:In times like this, I think, intentionally being just peaceful and being that person that says okay, I see you and I don't know what's happening for you, but we're. We're bigger than this, like you know. This doesn't have to be that moment and I opt out of this yeah um, because I'm opting into you and I think that's the thing.
Speaker 1:And when you have moments of connection, cherish them, like get over the fact that things feel hurried, or get over the fact that you're late to something else or there's something else on your mind. When someone's coming to you and talking to you and wanting to connect, that's that is what they need, and it's funny how this happens, but it turns out that that's what you need too yeah, and I've just learned, jen, I'm going to be really transparent right now, because I don't.
Speaker 2:I used to be so extreme on everything, and I know you can attest to this. I was so extreme on my political stance, I was so extreme on my biblical stance that I had no wiggle room for anything or anybody, and I just had this mindset that if you did not believe like I do, then you're. We're just not going to be friends, we're not going to be able to have any common ground, and what I had to do was take a step back and realize how isolated I was by isolating myself. But not only that. I'm isolating everybody around me family members, friends, people that I grew up with, people that were close to me. And the thing is, taking that step back allowed me to see Corey, you're not 100% right on this. You're committing atrocities within yourself, isolating yourself from these people. How much more are other people doing, not only to themselves, but to other people as well? So I just want to put that out there. You know, we all have room to grow. We all have room to change and to elevate and evolve.
Speaker 1:Yes, so let's do that. I think that's beautiful advice during this time and you know, man, we care about you guys so much and, um, if at any point you just need someone to talk to you, I hope you know how to reach us, um, and I'm gonna put our website out there, because I think that's where we're trying to live in the future. So it's thegenkocom.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:T-H-E-G-E-N-K-O dot com and Corey is very disciplined about going in all these things that we've got to stay connected like every day. So please reach out and just know that we're praying for you and you matter and you're important and your situation is unique to you, and it's important Even if we stand on a different political front or different belief system.
Speaker 2:at the end of the day, this is about people yeah, um, and she's looking at me and I'm agreeing with her profusely, because we don't exist without each other. Right, we don't survive without each other yeah and when, when the chips are down and when true, uh, chaos breaks out, it's going to be the human spirit that decides who lives and who who survives. We, we got to get used to this thought process so that we don't go crazy on each other when things get really bad.
Speaker 1:Totally All right. Well, you know us at Take the Elevator, we say look up and let's elevate Every day, elevate Every day, elevate Every day.
