Episode 60: Turning Pain into Purpose with Carin Rockind
Brief summary of show:
There is never pain without some type of purpose. Yes. We all have hardships of different levels, and we all have pain in some shape or form.
Often, we don't know how to get past it, and sometimes we can't see the light at the end of that dark tunnel.
My guest today is Carin Rockind, Happiness Expert and creator of Purpose Girl. Carin has always wanted to play “big” her entire life, unfortunately, she let perfectionism, other people’s opinions, “shoulds”, practicality, and fear get in the way, and she lost herself.
Carin believes every single one of us is meant to shine. You have all you need. Every challenge has given you strengths. Every joy shows you what you want. Carin helps you discover your strengths, uncover your purpose, shift your negative thoughts, and take courageous action toward creating a life you love.
Listen in as we talk about:
[3:05] Post-traumatic growth
[6:40] What Carin created Women’s Happiness Day
[10:15] Carin’s favorite happiness and purpose tools
[14:00] Why we can’t dwell on things we cannot change
[22:30] The importance in focusing on the now in Positive Psychology
[24:30] How to turn a negative mindset around
Notes from Natalie:
Get 10% off Seeking Health supplements here: https://www.natalietysdal.com/favorites
Connect with Carin
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View Transcript for this Episode
[00:00:00] Natalie: Hi, everyone. It's Natalie ask my kids and they will tell you one of my favorite mantras is this. There is never pain without some type of purpose. Yes. We all have hardships different levels for all of us, but we all have pain that tenet times seem undeniably horrible. And we often don't know how to get past it. Sometimes we can't see the light at the end of that dark tunnel today. I want to go deeper into getting through hardships. My guest is an expert in this. Karen rockin is a happiness expert. She's the creator of purpose girl. It's a movement to empower purpose driven living.
[00:00:37] Carin's background started actually in the corporate world, but through hardship, she found a new. And a new passion. And you're going to learn about that today. We are going to talk about post-traumatic growth. Have you ever heard of that and how to use pain and what research says about pain, how to handle anger, how to rid your body of those very deep seated feelings.
[00:01:01] Sometimes they are of anger or of hurt being vulnerable. We're going to talk about that as well and why it matters, why you need to be vulnerable. And so much more if you haven't yet done. So would you please take just a minute, leave me a review and whatever app you are listening to this podcast on, and also be sure to subscribe to the podcast.
[00:01:22] So you will get a notification when new episodes come out before we get started today, I want to let you know that if you are going through something difficult, there is a way out. And I hope this episode helps you see that let's get started.
[00:01:35] Karen joins me now. And this topic, Karen, I think this applies to pretty much everyone in the world. I mean, some of us have deeper pain than others, but at some point we have to turn that pain into
[00:01:47] Carin: purpose. Absolutely. And especially after the last couple of years that we've been through. I think we're all sitting with some pain and we have this opportunity.
[00:01:57] Anytime we experienced trauma, whether it is the trauma of COVID in isolation or people being ill, or, you know, we know from the research that the bulk of people have experienced some sort of trauma in life, whether it is, as you said, a big P or T you know, like abuse or divorce or rape, I mean, horrible things or.
[00:02:19] The kids didn't pick you. You were in fifth grade and they didn't pick you to be on the soccer team or whatever. It might be me.
[00:02:25] Carin: We're all sitting with this and we all have heard of post traumatic stress disorder, right? When the pain takes us into depression, takes us into anxiety. And that is so valid and we have not as much heard of something called post-traumatic. I have not heard that.
[00:02:45] Natalie: Is it something that you came up with or is
[00:02:47] Carin: that real? Nope. These are two research, two researchers Calhoun into dashi and they started to really say. It's happening with people who take the biggest pain of their life. Someone like candy Lightner whose daughter died when a drunk driver killed her, when her daughter was only 13 and no one would've blamed candy for if she had just gone back to bed for the rest of her life and just drank a bunch of wine and, you know, gave up.
[00:03:16] But instead she created mothers against drunk driving. Oh, wow. Yeah. Right. Which, which is a name that we all know and has helped hundreds of thousands of people to not experience the same thing that she did. And so the question is people like that, what what's going on with them and what we know from research and it's so resonates with me because this has been my life story, which I'll share a little bit of that we have the opportunity we can say.
[00:03:44] What do I want to do with this? We don't get to choose when something really crappy happens to us, right? We don't get to choose the poop. I don't know if I can swear on your podcast. We don't get to choose the poop that happens in our life, but we can turn it into fertilizer and we can turn it into it being the greatest wisdom of our life.
[00:04:02] And I'll tell you, Natalie, I'm so obsessed with turning pain into purpose because it's really the only way I've ever been able to make sense of my own experience. You know, I'm sitting here 47 and you know, I have a one and a half year old, but before that I didn't even start trying to get pregnant until I was 40.
[00:04:21] And then I spent five years of infertility, two miscarriages, a year of IVF driving, all of that and the pain and the pain, the pain. And after the second miscarriage, I was already a happiness expert. I was already on Sirius XM radio. They called me their happiness guru on their morning show for women.
[00:04:40] Right. But when I was 43 and went through that second miscarriage, I was in so much pain. I said to my husband, I don't want to live anymore. Like I already have the career. I wanted empowering women to live their best lives and be happy and go after their dreams and their purpose. And so I did all the tools that I do crying, hitting pillows, meditating, being with friends, doing a lot around mindset.
[00:05:05] And I just, just kept saying. What else am I here to birth? Like, show me how to turn this, this pain into purpose. And I had a vision Natalie of women all over the world who were also in depression, who were also experiencing some sort of trauma or just feeling like crap, because we know that women are twice as likely to be depressed as men.
[00:05:29] And I had a vision of a globe with, you know, women in. Depression or just not, or just not feeling great. And I had a vision of women coming together in sisterhood because I had had so much sisterhood, so many women supporting me during that miscarriage that I saw groups of women coming together to learn happiness skills and to like support each other in it, and to like learn the positivity and all the things that you teach here.
[00:05:53] Carin: Like all the things that we do. And I said, I know what I have to do. And I created women's happiness day. Yeah, October 18th, which is the anniversary. Oh, that miscarriage. I launched an effort three, four years ago to have volunteers in different places, all over the world who would hold small groups of women.
[00:06:15] Some of them were five and some of them were 50 where they would get together. And I created a curriculum for women to be able to learn these different tools, to be able to share their biggest dreams, be able to turn their mindset, like all of it. And we had that first year 99 events. In on six continents, I think it was like 20 different countries.
[00:06:37] Wow. It's spread like wildfire, like wildfires. That's how much it's needed. Exactly. And it was like, you know, it, it didn't take away the pain of the miscarriage, but it was like, oh, so that's why I went through this. Right. It was to create something. And it didn't mean I gave up on my dreams to have a baby, because then I did what I always did do another aspect of pain to purpose.
[00:06:59] So one is, can we find, can we find the meaning in it? Is there something that it can teach us about. The wisdom that we have to share with the world and what we can bring uniquely to the world,
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[00:07:13] Natalie: Hey everyone. It's Natalie. I am excited to let you know that I'm opening up spaces for collaboration and advertising and sponsorship on this podcast. And on my YouTube channel, if you're a brand looking to grow in the wellness family or mindfulness spaces, I would love to collaborate with you. You can find the link to get in touch with me in the show notes, and you can always find out more about what I'm up to on Natalie tisdale.com.
[00:07:39]
[00:07:42] Carin:
[00:07:42] you know, and the other is I didn't let it get me down or deter me. I just said, well, what else is possible?
[00:07:48] And then I started researching all the different ways that I could have a baby, whether it was adoption or egg donor, or embryo donor. And ultimately I decided on an egg donor and now I have my. 20 months old baby. And I had him at 45. And so we always have this opportunity to take, it's like, we're all going to have pain.
[00:08:07] And it's really a matter of what do we do with that? Yeah.
[00:08:09] Natalie: Let me ask you this and taking one step back, because what I have found in interviewing people, thousands of people over the years about painful things and, you know, in the news business, those. Are people who have lost children and accidents and you know, this just deep trauma, I want to ask you about identifying that because I think for a lot of people.
[00:08:31] They've gotten really good at ignoring it,
[00:08:34] Carin: shoving it down,
[00:08:35] Natalie: ignoring it, myself included. Like I just don't know. I don't wanna deal with that. I'm just not gonna deal with it. And I know there's danger in that. So what would you say, is it easier to just ignore it until you're ready to deal with it? Is it identifying it, writing about it, journaling it like, I mean, I know from childhood and that people have pain, they're
[00:08:58] Carin: ignoring.
[00:08:59] Yes. Yeah. I mean, so something I always say to my clients is if you sweep shit under the rug long enough, eventually it's going to start to stink. If we ignore something, you think you put it on the shelf, but you don't because it will just come back in other ways, right? Like the trauma in our bodies and this for me too, you know I was just talking about this with my therapist yesterday, trauma for when I was a little girl coming back as blaming myself or thinking I'm not good enough.
[00:09:30] Right. So it comes back or taking it out on our partner to, I mean, it, it comes because it's, it stays in us.
[00:09:37] Carin: And so we think that it's best to ignore it. And one of my favorite, believe it or not happiness and purpose tools is to actually face it, head on through our body. So when we experienced something, like, let's just take the pandemic because we've all just been through this.
[00:09:54] Yeah. And it was isolating and it was frustrating. And people might've been like angry that their plans were canceled or that, you know, whatever the thing might be, what I actually teach all my clients to do is we're gonna get. Because we also have been told, don't get angry, don't get right. And it's like, if we just ignore it, it's going to come out.
[00:10:12] You get angry at yourself or you get angry at everybody around you or you all of it. We wrote, we we've come road Rangers or whatnot. And so what I actually teach us to do is like emotional release. So I will get my clients together and we will share all the things. That are, are causing us pain that are making us feel sad or angry.
[00:10:34] And then I will turn on the radius song and we will take pillows and we will take, and we will just like hit those pillows and we will get it out of our bodies and doing it together is not as some people might be like, that sounds way too scary, but it's not as scary because you're doing it together and you're releasing it from your body.
[00:10:52] And then once it's released people say, I mean, I'll just teach clients that I can a two-minute temper tantrum. You know, I have a little, I have a toddler. He has a lot of time. So our bodies, right, our bodies are designed that when we're, when we're