Goins, Writer

Have you ever had an experience where you tried to do something good for someone else but ended up feeling worse? Ever felt empathy towards someone in such a way that it hurt? Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

True compassion doesn’t leave you feeling warm and fuzzy. True compassion breaks your heart and leaves you feeling helpless. And the reason for this is because true compassion requires you to step outside of yourself.

This week, we return to Wrecked Sessions (a limited-time podcast I’m doing to continue conversation around my book, Wrecked). In this episode, we interview my friend and colleague Talia Bunting and talk about how messy helping others can be.

It’s natural to want to go on an adventure. To leave home for college. To move to a new city where no one knows your name. To take off and see the world.

But what happens when the adventure is over — when the vacation ends, when they hand you your diploma, when you finally decide to plant some roots — and the struggle of real life begins?

That is when we learn what we’re made of. And that is what my friend Matt Snyder learned after 11 months of touring the world and had to get an ordinary, boring job that taught him some unexpected lessons.

This week on the Wrecked Sessions, we hear from a world traveler who learned that sometimes the point of our restlessness is to learn how to stay put.

How do you take your ordinary talents and use them for extraordinary purposes? Is it possible to turn a normal life into an amazing story? Only if you’re willing to have your world completely turned upside down.

At least, that’s what Lynne Kurdziel discovered when her life began to change.