After almost suffering a widow maker heart attack at the relatively young age of 42, Jeff started seeking answers to Life’s Biggest Questions such as: who am I, why are we here, and what happens to us when we die?
His serious quest to discover solid and soul-satisfying answers to his questions led Jeff to the stories of over 2,500 NDE accounts which were synthesized into his enlightening new book that is titled 10 LIFE-CHANGING LESSONS FROM HEAVEN: Discover Who You Really Are, Why You’re Here, and How to Find and Fulfill Your Life’s Sacred Purpose.
IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL HEAR ABOUT THINGS LIKE:
- The life-changing lessons learned by Near Death Experiencers, and how they were transformed.
- What those who have already died wish for the rest of us who are still in our bodies.
- Many of our hardships are planned to help us learn specific lessons.
- We will reap the rewards of being a forgiving person in heaven.
SOME QUESTIONS IRENE ASKS JEFF:
- What is the difference between living in fear and living fearlessly?
- If Near Death Experiencers return to accepting others non-judgmentally and loving everyone, does this mean we are all supposed to excuse bad behavior?
- In what way is Earth considered a kind of school for the education of our evolving souls?
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Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
Jeff Janssen: Author And Educator Who Helps People Find Soul-Satisfying Answers To Life’s Biggest Questions
I’m delighted to have this opportunity to interview author and educator, Jeff Janssen, who will be speaking to us from Apex, North Carolina. After almost suffering a widowmaker heart attack at the relatively young age of 42, Jeff started seeking answers to life’s biggest questions, such as, “Who am I? Why are we here? What happens to us when we die?”
His serious quest to discover solid and soul-satisfying answers to his questions led Jeff to the stories of over 2,500 near-death experience accounts, which were synthesized into his enlightening new book that is titled 10 Life-Changing Lessons From Heaven: Discover Who You Are, Why You’re Here, And How To Find And Fulfill Your Life’s Sacred Purpose. I’ll soon be asking Jeff questions about some of the life-changing lessons from heaven detailed in his book and answers to the questions he initially posed to himself.
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Jeff, a warm welcome to the show.
I appreciate you having me on.
It’s such a pleasure. You’re an interesting guy. This is going to be a lot of fun. Let’s start our interview with this question. Please sum up your life in the sports world before your close brush with death. Tell us about your brush with death and share the five big questions within you that compelled you to research the stories of people who said they had died, visited heaven, and came back for a second chance at life after having a so-called near-death experience.
I’d be happy to. I’ve been fortunate. I spent 25 years in the sports world, teaching people how to be better leaders and build championship cultures, working with lots of college and high school teams, and enjoying that then. At the age of 42, I started to feel some stuff in my chest that I thought, “That’s just heartburn.” Probably over the course of maybe 2 weeks or so, I had 4 different bouts of this stuff. I’m thinking, “I probably should get this checked out.”
“I maybe should go to McDonald’s fewer times or something.”
I had a lot of that growing up. I started to feel this and I thought, “I better go and get this checked out.” A nurse practitioner said, “It’s probably nothing, but why don’t you go and let’s, on a precaution, get a stress test?” I ended up getting a stress test about an hour later, I start running on this treadmill. I’m feeling this crushing pain in my chest and pain radiating down my left arm.
Fortunately, an associate with the hospital was like, “Mr. Janssen, you’ve got to step off.” They gave me a nitroglycerin tablet and had me lie down. I knew something was seriously wrong. The doctor came in and said, “We’re going to probably have to prep you for open heart surgery this afternoon, or if the blockage is in a good spot, maybe we can get some stints in.”
I was blown away and called my wife. My kids were in school. I’m like, “Take them out of school and let’s go.” I ended up checking out a catheterization and found out that I had a 99% blockage in my widowmaker artery. Fortunately, they put two stints in. I didn’t have to have the full open heart surgery, but that heart-stopping news certainly gets you to start thinking very differently about life and started asking me, “What would’ve happened to me if I would’ve died?”
I had been raised Catholic. You start thinking, “Would I’ve gone to heaven or hell? What would’ve happened to my family?” All these different questions start swirling around your brain that you had never even thought of before, at this level of in-depthness. It sent me on this quest for what would’ve happened.
I read Raymond Moody’s book Life After Life and started looking more in-depth into near-death experiences. They started answering a lot of these questions for me because these people had basically died. They call them near-death experiences. The vast majority of them had died and then came back and had not only answers but insights and lessons.
All of these things resonated with me and answered all the questions that I had and then some. That was what started me on that journey and I’ve still been on that journey. It’s been quite a change, but certainly a welcomed one. It has made me hopefully a much broader, kinder, and more peaceful person than I probably was many years ago.
All that contributes to helping you not have any more of those heart attacks or anything like that too. You were young to go through that. After reading and listening to the over 2,500 near-death experience accounts of the afterlife and the life-changing lessons learned while there, you discovered striking similarities between the stories, numerous nuggets of undeniable truth, and profound wisdom. This brought you the realization that these people did indeed have an otherworldly experience and returned, totally transformed. In what ways have they transformed?
They were transformed in a lot of different ways. Certainly, they’re much more loving. One of the biggest things that they experience on the other side is that it’s almost for them indescribable or ineffable is often what they say, but this unconditional love.No matter what they had done in their lives, they could feel this love almost through every cell of their body.
Near Death Experience: No matter what they had done in their lives, they could feel this love almost through every cell of their body.
When they come back, it’s like, “I want to try to emulate that love. I want to try to be that love with other people.” They’re much more forgiving people. Whatever religion they have, they tend to be much more accepting and spiritual in what they do. A lot of them have relationship changes sometimes with the people who are in their lives because of who they are and how they change. They become different people.
Their professions often change, and a lot of them eat a lot better. Some of them go from eating meat to being vegetarian. There are a lot of emotional and psychological changes for them. That competitive dog-eat-dog world out there isn’t that big of a deal. They’re less materialistic. They become, usually a lot of times, more spiritually evolved people almost close to instantaneously with this experience, but it often takes them 7, 8, 9, or 10 years to figure out, “What happened to me? This world that I thought I knew is now way bigger than what I originally thought it was.”
It sounds like this love that they experience on the other side, not only are they more loving to other people, but they have more self-love also. They take better care of themselves.
It is something. It’s just a transformative thing both internally and externally.
According to Gallup polls, approximately 16 million to 19 million people or roughly 5% to 6% of the population in the United States have had a near-death experience. What are the most common elements experienced by near-death experiencers, regardless of a person’s race, religion, and gender? For instance, do they all travel through a tunnel to the other side?
Each experience is unique, but they tend to have similar elements to them. Jeff Long has written several books on the near-death experience and can give you percentages of how many have the tunnel, how many have a life review, and all that. I’ll go through some of the typical ones and then each experience is different, but certainly one of the things that a lot of them feel is this leaving and rising up out of their body.
Each near death experience is unique, but they tend to have similar elements to them. Click To Tweet
A lot of them are then watching the situation down below, whether it’s a hospital situation and the doctors are working on them, or certainly a car accident like your experience. A lot of times, it’s in a way that’s almost detached from it, and it’s like, “That’s interesting down there.” They’re watching this and they start to feel this unconditional love, peace, and joy, even though they might have been in an accident or had a heart attack. They’ve left that physical body and now, they’re starting to spiritually move away from it all.
Some may see a tunnel. They usually see a light. Some of them will see deceased relatives or spiritual figures. Some of them will have a life review, where they end up seeing their life from birth until death. Not only do they see their life, they re-experience it. They experience it from other people’s perspective. They have a bigger picture understanding of why people might hurt them or why they might hurt other people.
There are lots of different elements, but it’s often that they get to almost a border or a point of no return, and then they’re either given the choice, “Would you like to go back or go on?” Sometimes they’re told, “You still have a purpose to fulfill. We aren’t ready for you yet. You need to go back.” Most of them throw like toddler temper tantrums saying, “I want to stay here. It’s nice, beautiful, and loving. I don’t want to go back.” Especially if they had an accent or something with their heart.
They’re going back to a lot of pain.
They don’t want to go back to that broken body. Some of them choose to because they’ve got a relationship, “I need to be there for somebody,” or the Divine says, “You got more to do before we’re going to have you back here, but we’ll have you back here at some point. You just got a little more work to do down there.”
It takes away the fear of death for them also, I would imagine.
That’s one of the biggest things that I’ve had in doing this discussion group and things with people. A lot of them say, “I had a tremendous fear of death.” After hearing all these stories and these people saying a lot of times, “I rather stay there than come back,” a lot of people understand, “This death thing that I feared for most of my life, all these people are saying it’s amazing there.”
I can imagine for some of them who had a life review, they’re like, “I better revise the way I was living my life. I want the movie to be better the next time I get back there.”
I’m one of those people. As I looked at the first 42 years of my life, I don’t think I was an evil person, but certainly, I’m an impatient person. I’m somebody who’s a Type A kind of person and all that. I’ve certainly not totally improved, but hopefully, after the last years, the life review that I’m going to see is going to be better than it was the first 42 years.
It’s good to have that in mind, though. It’s a wonderful lesson to be mindful of that. You have a fascinating story that I loved about this woman who survived a plane crash. During her near-death experience was shown her future son named Nathaniel, who she had seven years later. Could you share that with us?
I’d be happy to. It comes from Ranelle Wallace. She’s got a great book called The Burning Within. She and her husband were in a small little plane. The plane had mechanical issues and ended up crashing into the side of a mountain, and somehow, miraculously both of them lived. It was in this remote mountain. She had burns all across her face. A good portion of her body was burned, but they were able to walk a few miles and get some help. During this experience, she had a near-death experience. She’s leaving her body and her grandmother appears to her and says, “When you go back,” and she was like, “I’m not going back. Look at me down there. My face is melted off. I can’t go back into that burned charred-up body.”
The Burning Within by Ranelle Wallace
All of a sudden, here comes a young boy walking and crying. Ranelle is like, “Who’s that, Grandma?” “That’s your son, Nathaniel. He’s going to be coming to you, but if you decide that you can’t go back, he’s not going to get his opportunity to come to Earth and learn his lessons. What would you like to do?” She’s looking at this kid who’s going to be her son and decides, even though she’s got to go back into this broken body that’s been burned, she’s going to go back and decide to be his mother and help him. Sure enough, seven years later, after this accident, she has a son. She names him Nathaniel. It’s quite a powerful story in terms of the things that we can experience and the purpose that we have in life.
What a validation that this is real also. Near-death experiences often meet loved ones who have passed on before them like you said. She saw her grandmother. What do those who have already died wish for the rest of us who are still in our bodies? In what way is Earth considered a school for the education of our evolving souls whose primary curriculum seems to revolve around love?
What they want us to know, is that this is an opportunity to learn how to love ourselves, how to better love other people, and receive love. They also talk about how important it is that we live fearlessly. There are lots of lessons that they want us to learn. It seems like each of us comes here with 1, 2, or 3 primary lessons that we’re supposed to learn.
This is an opportunity. It’s a school for us to evolve and develop our souls so that we can be more loving or live more fearlessly, or be more compassionate or more patient, in my case, whatever it may be. These are all things that they want us to learn and they tell us that from their perspective, which a lot of people say the other side is a timeless perspective.
It seems like we’re waiting here forever to be reunited with our loved ones. For them, it’s like, “We’re still with you. We still see what’s going on. We’re still a part of your life. From our perspective, you’re going to be here in a blink of an eye.” They’re excited to see us, but they know that we have a specific purpose down here, and they’re here cheering us on, supporting, guiding and hopefully, helping us from the other side.
It’s a funny visual to think that we leave home, which is heaven. We come here to school with an assignment. We have homework to do.
It’s like a boarding school for our souls. It’s what I tell people. We got to live here and have some fun stuff. We’re going to have also some challenges, but we all get to go back and we’ll all be back together again.
We’re talking about one of the lessons is to live fearlessly. For our readers, what’s the difference between living in fear and living fearlessly? You throw questions out the window. What is that difference?
Certainly, there are physical fears. Our body is designed with a flight or flight response. If there is something like a hot stove, a cliff coming up, or something like that, naturally, we need to have that self-preservation and fear. Most of the fears that we have are ones that we concoct in our own minds. We’re afraid of going after a career that we want to have that probably aligns with our life’s purpose. We’re afraid of asking a person out because we might be rejected by them. We’re afraid of a myriad of things. For many of us, that fear holds us hostage for most of our lives. We don’t try things and break out of our shells.
We look back at our life and we’re like, “I spent 40 years of my life afraid, and I found out at the end of life, there was nothing to be afraid of.” I end up limiting myself. One of the things that the near-death experiencers and I talk a lot about is living fearlessly. Some of your readers might be familiar with AnitaMoorjani. She talks much that she lived her whole life out of fear and ended up when her near-death experiences and realized, “Most of the fears I had were never even real.” She lives now much more fearlessly and encourages us to do the same thing.
Another lesson is to work purposely so that we’re all spiritual beings on a human mission with an assignment of love. Tell us about that.
It seems like every one of us has at least one, if not multiple purposes, during different phases of our lives. One of those purposes could be being a parent or helping a friend or a relative through a terminal illness. One of those purposes might be aligned with our career and what we’re supposed to do. It seems like the near-death experiencers tell us we have a purpose in the world to make it a better and more loving place.
Oftentimes, we also have an internal purpose that our soul wants to get better at something. We’re thrown a bunch of challenges and adversities. We’re asked to see if we can respond with love or with patience. We have not only an external purpose but also an internal purpose that we’re here. If we haven’t yet achieved that, sometimes we’re told, “We’ll accept you eventually, but you still have to do your work down there. You’ve got something to do. People are relying on you.”
That would seem to me to point to the fact that we each have a choice. When we have challenges that come along and things that happen, you can go the low road or the high road and you have a choice about how you handle different things.
That is one of the biggest things that near-death experiencers tell us is that life is choice after choice. 1) We have to recognize that choice. 2) We have to think, “Are we making a choice based out of love or fear?” Hopefully, as time goes on and we learn our lessons, we’re making many more choices based out of love than the ones based out of fear.
Life is choice after choice. Click To Tweet
You go back and you have to repeat some of your experiences.
Oftentimes. you do. We’re often taught that we get lessons presented to us. If we keep not getting that lesson, it’s going to come back and usually, a lot tougher as time goes on to try to get it through our head, “Let’s see if we can respond differently with this.”
Near Death Experience: We get lessons presented to us. If we keep not getting that lesson, it’s going to come back and usually, a lot tougher as time goes on.
One of my favorite things that I read in your book is that near-death experiences return, accepting others non-judgmentally, and loving everyone, which is a great lesson. Does this mean that we’re all supposed to excuse bad behavior? What’s the difference between judgment and discernment?
Dave Bennett, who’s a near-death experiencer has a book called Voyage Of Purpose. He said one of the things that he learned during his near-death experience was many of us judge people based on their looks, income, sexual orientation, and all these different things. What he learned on the other side is that we are all loved.
No matter who we are and no matter what we’ve done in life, there is no favorite group that, “Only this group is going to get to the other side. This group is not going to get to the other side.” What he said he learned is there are certain things or behaviors that may not be a fit for him, that may not work in his life, but I’m not going to put a label on it as bad, negative, evil, or anything like that. I’m going to say, “That’s not a fit for me. I choose not to spend my time with those people who want to do those things and support them financially.”
That is discernment.
You’re trying to say, “It’s a fit for me, or it’s not,” but it’s not good or not bad in one way.
That’s a great way to see that because we all have people in our lives that we judge as bad people. In my particular case, I’ll say, “I’m going detach from that person with love.” That’s a toxic person for me. But like the way you put it, that person or what they do is not a good fit for me.
It’s hard to do, but that’s what we’re challenged or asked to do during our time here in school. It’s like certain people you’re going to hang out with after class and you’re not going to shun other people, but you’re also not going to purposely put yourself in there in their orbit.
You learn that many hardships that arise may have been planned to teach us specific areas we want to improve. When are they planned and how do these challenges help us to improve?
This is certainly a controversial topic for some people sometimes. Before we come here, there may be some talk of, “If we’re trying to work on a certain lesson, are we going to meet certain hardships in life that are going to force us to act with the patience that we’re trying to work on or anything like that?” There are some people that may say, “In consultation with either the divine or if you believe that we have guides or guardian angels that are coming and guiding us down here, we may have certain challenges that we may be presented with.”
There’s one near-death experiencer who talks about life’s hardships as spiritual muscle builders. It’s almost like we go into the weight room. When you’re in there, you’re taxing and going through this grueling workout. It hurts physically and mentally. You don’t know if you’re going to get through that lift. It’s a lot of the same things in life with the grief that we experience. It’s emotionally draining, It’s physically draining. You don’t know if you can get through that. Oftentimes, it’s those things that help us find something in us that we wouldn’t have realized without that searing pain and grief.
There’s a great example of the lodgepole pine cone. The only way that this pine cone ever opens up is if it has this high searing heat of a forest fire. That’s the only way it’s ever going to open up and create new life. Sometimes, unfortunately, it’s the same thing for us. We have to face the searing heat of tragedy in life, but that’s the only way that we crack open to become a different person out of all of this. It hurts and sucks. It is as horrible as you’re going through it, but a lot of the moms that I’ve worked with, say, “In the end, I have become, with the help of my child or my loved one, a much better and totally different person that I never would’ve been had that not had happened.”
We have to face the searing heat of tragedy in life, but that's the only way we crack open to become a different person out of all this. Click To Tweet
In fact, in a way you could say that happened to you and it happened to me also because we both had searing experiences. We’ve lived that.
It hurts and you’re wondering, “Why does this have to be?” Sooner or later we do see amazing growth in ourselves, and hopefully then, it’s a lesson that we can help others grow as you’re doing with this show.
We pass it forward. This is also fascinating to me. Near-death experiencers, tell us, according to you, that we will reap the rewards of being a forgiving person in heaven. What does it mean to be the more spiritually evolved person to forgive? What rewards will that bring us in heaven? Do we get extra cookies or a glass of champagne?
it would be nice if I could guarantee you that but some of your people might be familiar with Dannion Brinkley. He’s probably one of the more famous NDers. He’s been on Oprah and The Tonight Show and has several books out. He has a movie about him as well. It’s called Saved By The Light. He said that his near-death experience was that forgiveness was probably the best sign of our spiritual development because, in essence, we’re asked to love unconditionally. People who hurt us, people who hurt us physically, financially, emotionally, spiritually, you name it, we’re asked to say, “I forgive you,” and that’s 1 of the toughest ones out of these 10 lessons that I learned.
Sometimes, it’s forgiving other people for the hurt they cause for us. One of the things that near-death Experiencers tell us is they get to see what the person’s intention was and what drove that behavior. Probably 99 times out of 100, that person had such a hurt inside of themselves that they didn’t know how to process, how to work through, and how to recover from. That hurt was easier to throw on somebody else, hurt them, and bring them down to the same miserable feeling they were feeling. They see and understand that in their life review. Somehow, they’re able to feel some understanding, empathy, and even forgiveness, because now they know it wasn’t a personal thing necessarily. They were so hurt themselves that the only way they could process that was to throw that on me.
For a lot of people, especially those who are grieving, forgive yourself. I’ve heard many moms a lot of times and dads who blame themselves when they have a child pass away, even if they had absolutely nothing to do with it whatsoever. That parental instinct kicks in and says, “I should have stopped them from getting in the car. I should have said a conversation with them. I should have whatever.” Many of them carry around this guilt, and they can’t forgive themselves because that haunts them for a long time.
A lot of times, we talk about the ability not just to forgive others but forgive yourself. What a lot of forgiveness is releasing the situation, not letting it haunt you. Not forgiving is like carrying a backpack of bricks around for the rest of your life. Sometimes I’ll even have people put a bunch of bricks in a backpack and carry it around for 24 or 48 hours and say, “It’s like you’re carrying that situation with you. Can we release it? It doesn’t mean that what that person did was right or wrong, but you need to forgive so that you can release it and not stay tied to that other person or that situation.”
You could detach and not be involved with that person. You can deal with it as best you can, but not let it consume you.
To forgive is to set a prisoner free and oftentimes, that prisoner is yourself, which is what Lewis Smedes once said.
You’ve shared the 10 Life-Changing Lessons with numerous groups, including parents who have had children pass away as part of Helping Parents Heal, formerly incarcerated women as part of A New Way of Life, members of the International Association for Near-Death Studies, and people from all religious backgrounds and faiths through your Soul Peeps Support Groups. A lot of people in our audience might want to join your Soul Peeps Support Groups. Could you tell us about that?
Near Death Experience: 10 Life-Changing Lessons From Heaven: Discover Who You Are, Why You’re Here, And How To Find And Fulfill Your Life’s Sacred Purpose by Jeff Jansen
I learned so much and it’s gratifying for me for people who go through this. A lot of times, they had a fear of death or certain things, that might have been haunting them. The opportunity to go through this in a systematic way is usually ten weeks or so. We take a chapter in the book that’s there. We have the 10 Life-Changing Lessons.
I will have a near-death experiencer usually join us. Jeff Olson has been a great one, and he’ll join us and share his story as well. We get a chance to read through the book, but then we discuss it. We talk about how this impact you and what stuff fits with maybe your religious upbringing. your spiritual path, or whatever it may be, and the support, honesty, and authenticity that’s there.
What’s always neat for me is most of the time when we start with these groups or anywhere from 10 to 15 people, almost everybody’s a complete stranger. I’m not sure what should I say. Should I be open? By the end, I’ve created another program called Living The 10 Lessons, because the people are like, “We don’t want this to stop. We’ve developed such a good bond with each other. These are things that we can’t talk about with our other friends or our relatives, but we can talk about these with each other.”
We then have not only our Soul Peeps Groups but then we have a Living The 10 Lessons one as well. We learn a ton about many different things and about each other. It’s a great bond. One of our groups ended up walking, in Spain, the Camino de Santiago. we’ve bonded in some ways that went way beyond our little ten weeks together.
Do you also do it online or it’s in person?
All of them are online. We’ve got people from all over the place, Canada, and all across the Coast. We’ve had some different people interested from other countries. It’s all online, especially with all the COVID stuff that’s been going on. I’ve met a lot of people all across the country over Zoom through our Soul Peeps Groups.
You’ve also talked about the dozens of beautiful and strong souls who have had children pass away that taught you three significant lessons. Would you like to share those three lessons with us?
The first one comes from one of our Soul Peeps. She said, “If your child went missing, wouldn’t you go look for him or her?” That’s in essence what happens when someone passes away. They go missing. You’re not sure where they went or what’s happened to them. Are they okay and safe? For a lot of people who are grieving, it sends them on this spiritual quest in this journey much like me for many years, “There’s probably heaven or something like that,” but now it’s like, “Where would I have gone?” Parents who lose kids or spouses who lose a spouse or whatever, you want to know what happened to them and where they went.
That’s one of the things that if you had had somebody go missing, you try to find out where they went. A lot of these parents end up going on a spiritual quest for it. That’s one that I’d learned for sure. The second one is that for a lot of people, this is for the end of years, their life is on a certain trajectory. This ND hits and it’s a reset button for them.
For a lot of them, what I found is that maybe they were on a trajectory that wasn’t leading toward their soul’s purpose and the purpose that they were supposed to share with the world. This NDE often serves as almost a reset button for them that changes their trajectory in life. What I found in talking with lots of grieving parents is that grief is often a reset button for people.
They now have become different people. They have become more spiritually deep people. All that trivial, superficial, materialistic stuff that maybe they were involved in before that, they know is not what it’s all about. Those are things that people end up changing in who they are. The third thing is when people experience grief, it shatters you as a person and your view of the world.
One of the best things, and I have this in the book, is the Japanese art of Kintsugi. When ceramic breaks, most people are thinking, “It’s destroyed. What’s going to happen?” There’s an art called Kintsugi in Japan where they take all these shards and Kintsugi means to join with gold. They take this golden glue and they put pieces back together.
One of the analogies of that is when you’re shattered and your life is shattered, you get to decide which pieces of your life are important ones that you’re going to piece back together again. You’re going to try to make that hole back together. You’re going to look at some other pieces that you’re like, “I don’t know if that’s going to fit for me moving forward with this.” That piece is not going to go.
When you're shattered and your life is shattered, you get to decide which pieces of your life are the important ones that you're going to piece back together again. Click To Tweet
They end up creating this, even though broken but now piece back together a beautiful piece of art that oftentimes is stronger, more beautiful, and more valuable than when it was all whole in the first place. That’s one thing that a lot of grieving people have taught me. When they have that grief, they get to decide which shards to piece back together as they move forward with their life.
I can totally relate to that because that happened to me too. What is your message about the importance of healing that you’d like to share with our audience?
My message about healing comes from a Dr. Seuss quote. He once said that when you have grief, tragedy, or adversity in your life, you have three ways that you can choose to handle it. One is to have it destroy you. I’ve talked with lots of parents and moms who feel that destroyed inside, that shattered that we were talking about. That phase can certainly last either from months to years to maybe the rest of their lives. That’s a choice. It’s a hard one not to make it first. You are going to have those days. If you get out of bed, that is somehow success that day. One way is, when adversity strikes, that you can be destroyed.
The second way that Dr. Seuss talks about is it can define you. A lot of people, “That’s the widow. That’s the widower. That’s the bereaved mom.” You end up being that in your social circles and everybody else is not sure how to talk to or deal with you. Some of them totally ignore you and drop out of your life because they’re uncomfortable with it. It ends up defining you for a long time. You see yourself as that person who had that adversity or that grieving person.
The third way and that’s what I hope that I’ve seen many beautiful moms and dads get to this level, is where it develops you. It ends up creating something more beautiful, stronger, and more compassionate than before. You end up being a much deeper, kinder, empathic, and empathetic person, and all these things. The message with healing is you’re probably going to go through all three of those stages, but you may not ever get to that developed one. Your message and my message is to get to that developed one when it’s right for you. You’re going to go through the destroyed stage. You’re going to be in that defined stage, but hopefully, at some point, you can also get to that developed stage.
One of the reasons that it’s worth healing is for all the people in your life to pass it forward.
What many people say is their loved one on the other side wants us to live our life, live fearlessly, live in their honor, and go for the goals that we have in life. They don’t always want us to spend our entire day crying in bed, mourning them, sitting at the grave site, or anything like that. They want us to go on and live when it’s right for us to do that, but they’re there cheering us on. “You got a purpose, mom, dad, brother, or whatever it is. Go do that. I’m right here. I’m cheering for you. I’ll see you eventually.” Go do what you need to do in your life. Don’t get stuck with that destroyed stage that I talked about.
Live your life, live fearlessly, live in their honor, and go for the goals that you have in life. Click To Tweet
Tell everyone the best ways to connect with you if they want to join your Soul Peeps, buy your book, and get on your site. Let it rip.
Certainly, they can go to LifeLessonsFromHeaven.com. We’ve got various resources there that people can get. I’m at Jeff@LifeLessonsFromHeaven.com as well. We also have a Facebook group, which is Life Lessons from Heaven. We put a bunch of different resources on near-death experiences, different videos, and various quotes and things there. Those are all ways that people can learn more and see if it’s a fit for where they are in their spiritual journey or grieving process as well.
Your tip for finding joy in life?
The tip is to find what your gifts are and what your purpose is in life, then live fearlessly and share it with the world to make the world a better place.
You and I would both agree that it seems to have worked for us.
You get a sense of joy and you create a ripple effect of hopefully having other people do that same thing with their gifts.
I wish that for everyone. Jeff, thank you so much from my heart, truly for this tremendously enlightening interview. Near-death experiences remind us that we are magnificent spiritual beings, having a human experience, not the other way around. Your profoundly wise book will surely help many to transform their lives as they incorporate the 10 Life-Changing Lessons From Heaven into their minds, hearts, and souls. Here’s a loving reminder, everyone. Make sure to follow us and like us on social at @IreneSWeinberg on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. To be continued, many blessings, and bye for now.
Guest Links:
- Jeff Jansen’s Website
- Jeff Janssen’s book: 10 Life-Changing Lessons From Heaven: Discover Who You Are, Why You’re Here, And How To Find And Fulfill Your Life’s Sacred Purpose
- Raymond Moody’s book: Life After Life
- Ranelle Wallace’s book: The Burning Within
- David Bennett’s book: Voyage Of Purpose
- Helping Parents Heal mentioned in this episode
- A New Way of Life mentioned in this episode
- International Association for Near-Death Studies mentioned in this episode
- Join the Soul Peeps Support Groups
- Email Jeff Janssen
- Connect with Life Lessons from Heaven on Facebook
Host Links:
- @IreneSWeinberg on Instagram
- Irene Weinberg on Facebook
- Irene Weinberg on Twitter
- Irene Weinberg – Gried, Rebirth + Healing Podcast on Yotube
