How to Turn Pain Into Purpose: Jessie Torres on Presence, Forgiveness & the 7-Day Fierce Grace Reset

We challenge the lie that achievement proves worth and show how presence, forgiveness, and gratitude rebuild a meaningful life. Jessie Torres shares raw stories and a practical seven-day reset to turn pain into purpose without bypassing the hard parts.

• Linking self-worth to achievement as a hidden block
• Early warning signs of burnout and disconnection
• Fierce independence versus true presence at home
• Humility and honesty as accelerators of change
• Forgiveness as releasing the hold of the past
• Finding the gift without denying pain
• Gratitude as a nervous system reset
• Mapping first memories of unsafety and armor
• Seven-day fierce grace micro actions for momentum

Connect with Jessie:

https://unshakeablelife.com/

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Five Questions Format
• 0:59 The Hidden Block: Worth Tied To Achievement
• 2:59 Burnout Warning Signs At Home And Work
• 5:23 Fierce Independence Versus Real Presence
• 9:08 Humility, Honesty, And True Forgiveness
• 13:14 Finding The Gift In Pain
• 16:19 First Steps: Gratitude As A Healer
• 19:05 Faith, Loss, And Reclaiming Spiritual Ground
• 21:05 The Seven-Day Fierce Grace Reset
• 25:33 Closing Reflections And Thanks

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:04

Welcome to the Five Questions Podcast. I am your host, Mario Lamar. Our guest on today's show is a wisdom guide, peak performance coach who has helped eye achievers dissolve inner blocks and create soul freedom so they can actually live the life they're building. She's the founder of Fierce Grace Transformation as coached thousands worldwide and blends mindset, somatic healing, and no fluff strategies to turn trauma into power and purpose. Welcome, Jesse Torres. Jesse, welcome to the show today.

SPEAKER_00: 0:41

Thank you so much. Excited to be here. Thank you for having me, Mario.

SPEAKER_01: 0:44

Jesse, the concept of the podcast is real simple. I ask five questions. Um in this case, we'll talk about business, what your business does, and we get straight to the point. You ready?

SPEAKER_00: 0:57

Got it.

SPEAKER_01: 0:58

Okay. First questions I ask I have for you is you talk about removing blocks and limitations so people can live their dreams. Uh, what's the most common hidden block you see in iPerformers? And maybe how do they spot uh how can they spot it themselves today?

SPEAKER_00: 1:22

Absolutely. Uh, one of the hidden blocks is that achievement will give them significance and worthiness. They don't realize it, right? They were built, maybe they had uh a life where they had a father that was very demanding, you know, or a mother that was only pleased if they brought home straight A's or if they got the job done. And so now they're in a space where they're it's amazing, they're great achievers, they built a good muscle, but what they don't realize is that they're actually chasing that I'm enough on the achievement. So it's never enough because you can't get the worthiness out of the achievement. You get significance, you feel good, yeah, but it doesn't fulfill the part of us that is in self-judgment. So what happens is you stack another achievement on there, and then you stack another one, and it's a cat chasing its tail, and it's the biggest cause of burnout. So in high achievers, the answer always is, I'll just do more. I'll just get another accolade, I'll just hit another milestone, and then I'll feel enough. And they don't realize that it's not the actual achievement they're chasing, they're chasing that self-worth on that achievement, and it's exhausting. It's a cat chasing its tail, it will never be enough.

SPEAKER_01: 2:34

So, what's the what's the the point where you you get that you can kind of see it on your on your own uh before you get too far into the burnout? How can you pinpoint that you know that that spot? I don't know the proper word to use, but before you get too far in, and then you're like, you know, you're you're practically close to burnout.

SPEAKER_00: 2:59

Well, I'll tell you a story of a past client. Um, she was a high-level achiever. She had hit her$5 million mark, and so she was super excited about that. But her husband was about to leave her. Um, on paper, on Facebook, she was physically fit, awesome body, awesome career, hit that milestone. She has two sons and a husband, and it showed the family pictures and all that stuff. But her husband was ready to leave her because she was at the soccer game, but she was on her phone the whole time. They were disconnected, they weren't having intimacy, and all she was concerned about was hitting that next milestone, or she was competing not only with other women, she was competing with a relative and she was competing with her version of herself last year. If she hit a specific milestone last year, she had to go above and beyond that. So she was at home taking pictures of the family, but she was not present. And so it created separation, and everything about her life was her work, not her family. So she was about to lose it all. And so for her, that was a moment of like, oh God, you know, like my husband, he's he's reached threshold. Now that's one way. Another way is massive exhaustion, where you're just literally you're on an airplane all the time, you're not connecting, your kids are growing without you. Um, you're like trying to juggle it all at once. You're trying to go to the next milestone, but you're trying to be at the soccer game. And so you can't be present for either because when you're at the soccer game, you're thinking, I should get this done, that done, right? Or when you're at work, you're thinking, man, I should be home with the kids, or I should be home with my husband. And so it's unfulfilling and it causes contraction, um, and you're living in a high cortisol level life. So either it'll show up in exhaustion or it'll show up in some sort of autoimmune or or some other coping mechanism.

SPEAKER_01: 4:55

So, yeah, always take the a little bit of time to self-analyze yourself um periodically to make sure that you're you're not doing too much or you're you're actually on track of your success life, not in success, when I say success, not in in achievements, but in uh you know being happy in your life. Yeah, very much. Second question I have for you. Uh, we're gonna talk about independence. Fierce independence can sometimes push love and support away. You mentioned a little bit in that story you just said. How can uh driven people stay powerful without armoring or locking their hearts?

SPEAKER_00: 5:43

Again, it's the belief that if I do more and we convince ourselves that it's for the family. I'm doing this for my family. If I just keep going and I just, you know, I'll buy my 16-year-old her own car, then that'll make me a great dad or a great mom, right? And so we have this belief like I gotta keep going. It's it's um that lone wolf feeling of like nobody gets me. I'm doing it for the family. This is for them. And what they don't realize is that what the family wants is their presence, right? We take it for granted. It's just like I'm present all day. I said we have breakfast together, and yeah, sometimes breakfast is kids eating whatever cereal and you're on your phone checking the news or you're reading the paper or whatever, and you think, oh, I spend breakfast with them every day. But you're not actually really there. How often do you get on their level? How often do you ask them what their day, what's the best part of their day, and let them express, right? That presence is everything, and we take it for granted. We think that just by physically being present, we're doing enough and we're not. And so our our family wants connection, our family wants to know that you care about the fact that you know what, I got an A on that exam that I studied for, you know, and those kind of things, and they're super, super important.

SPEAKER_01: 6:58

You know, it it's it's so true because just yesterday, I've been on the road for for a week and a half. I came back home and I said, uh, go for a walk with my fiance. And in my head, I said, I'm not gonna, you know, I'm gonna be present, we're gonna talk together, go for a walk. And and what happens? I picked up a phone call where I shouldn't have picked it up, I should have dedicated that time. And sometimes we have to make conscious decisions. And if if there is, uh, I would call it a test or you know, a phone call that came in, you I'm guilty of that too. But the right thing would have been do not answer and and really focus on uh the present, like you said, and for for you know to to to to give quality time to the people you love.

SPEAKER_00: 7:50

Well, and I think the misconception is this is an emergency, you know. If I don't answer it, something won't get resolved. And it's like, you know, what was it, a 30-minute walk, right? It could 20 minutes in in not answering the phone and being able to answer it when you can be fully present, because the bottom line is you weren't fully present for the call either, because you knew you were taking it while your fiance was there, right? So part of your presence was with her, right? So that's the thing that we have to get clear on. We think, no, I can handle both. You can't. You're your energy being pulled. So um, it's so important to look at it that way and really like if I'm gonna be with my wife for 30 minutes, I'm gonna be with my wife. Because if I take that phone call, now I'm splitting my time with her and I'm splitting my time with the call.

SPEAKER_01: 8:33

You're absolutely right. You know what happened is I she stopped at the light and I continued walking, and I had to turn around and see where she was. So you're absolutely right. I was, you know, and then and then I got confused, and then I'm the phone call. I was I started, you know, uh mumbling my words, and I'm like, I I was I got sturdled, right? Because I'm like, oh crap, she she's uh she's back there. I have to go back. So you're right. You're not fully present in either scenario, so it's not good. Yeah. Yeah. Third question I have for you. Uh you've coached thousands uh around the world, and over nearly two decades, what patterns separate those who transforms quickly from those who stay stuck uh even with the same tools that you give them?

SPEAKER_00: 9:27

I think it's it's humility and honesty, right? Like even on my website, I give you three reasons to not work with me. One is if you're not willing to let the past go, two, if you're stuck in the blame game, right? And three, if you're not willing to write a new story for your life, right? So sometimes we want the transformation. We think, okay, I'm gonna do this thing, but we're not willing to forgive somebody. And we don't realize the damage that unforgiveness does. We tell ourselves, no, it doesn't bother me, right? I coached a gentleman who was about 420 pounds. Okay, he needed one of those scooters to come to the seminar. And um, in a room full of people, he's like, I don't need to forgive. My mom lives two blocks down the street from me. I drive by her every day. I really don't care. I don't care. It doesn't bother me that she's there. I don't never go see her, whatever. And I had rapport, so I I said, Jay, with all due respect, you're wearing your unforgiveness. And he started bawling, right? Because again, that that feeling, because who we are is love innately. That's who we are. But we're we're taught to hate, we're born in love, right? So when we come to that place of anger or hurt, deep hurt, because that is the root of anger, we forget, we lose our way to come back to love. And forgiveness is not condoning, it's not accepting what happened, it's merely releasing the hold that it has on us. And we think that forgiveness is letting the other person off the hook. It's not anything to do with the other person, it's with our own well-being. I tell my mother this all the time, right? Because it's hard for her to believe that I forgave my father. And she wants me to be angry with him. Uh, she wants me to be angry about him with her, right? She's angry, so she's like, How could I not join her in her anger?

SPEAKER_01: 11:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 11:22

I'm like, no, because I've forgiven. And I said, and you don't do me any service. There's no nobility in you suffering and using me as your vehicle. Like, it doesn't make me happy to know that you're angry. It hurts me to know that you're holding on to that. And I would love for you to forgive, but don't use me as the tool to stay angry because it doesn't serve. Forgiveness is not condoning what happened. Forgiveness is for you to release the hold it has on you and what it's doing to your body and to your mindset.

SPEAKER_01: 11:49

So once you use humility, you used, like you said, true forgiveness, that's where you see the difference or the quick transformation between those who apply this and those who who get stuck. And and and and I I agree with you. I I saw some, even in myself, in some situations in the past, uh, when you do truly move on, uh, things happen very quick in your life, changes, whatever it is, if it's your in professional settings or personal settings. Um, I agree with that. It's you have to truly let go. And sometimes you said forgiveness, is it a superficial forgiveness or is it a deep forgiveness?

SPEAKER_00: 12:37

Well, I think the tipping point to answer that um is forgiveness, because some people say, no, I forgave a long time ago, da-da-da. But you can see it in their behavior that they are still contracted when talking about that person or they're still right. So I think true forgiveness comes when you're able to find the gift in what happened. Right. So if I say the abuse I had with my father, for me to truly forgive, I have to find the gift. What's the good in it? Why did this happen? Why did this behavior, why was that a part of my life? And maybe it was for me to understand shame at very profound levels because of what happened to me. I adopted that I was gross, filthy, and nobody would ever love me. That's what I, the meaning I gave what happened to me with my father. So I know the visceral effects of unworthiness. I know what it feels like to be in shame about who I am, so that I can help others transmute it. If I can come out of that to falling in love with not only myself, but with humanity, so can you. So the gift is I maybe my contract with God was that I was meant to go through it, not just read about it. Right? There's difference, there's a difference between climbing Mount Everest and reading about climbing Mount Everest, right? It's two very different things. So for me, I went through it and I told my mother this. I'm like, you know, and I told my father before he passed, you know, he said, I wish, you know, two weeks before he died, he had leukemia and bits of dementia. And he had a lucid moment when I was with him alone. And he said, You know, I wish I wish I could have been the father you deserve. And I said, Dad, you were perfect. You were exactly who I needed you to be, so I could be who I am today, and I'm good, you know. And so I don't know that I would change anything of my past because I couldn't be who I am, fully committed and convicted to helping humanity get out of suffering. Yeah. So you got to find the gift in order to truly forgive and let go.

SPEAKER_01: 14:34

That's guys, for for those who are listening to this podcast, what you just heard is very powerful. Uh, take a moment, uh, put it on pause and reflect on what was just said. Uh, once you can understand uh the meaning of what Jesse just said, uh you could transform and let go of the past if you're dealing with something. It's very powerful.

SPEAKER_00: 15:02

And I do want to say one more thing about that, Mario, because I know there's people out there that are like, well, you don't understand. You don't know what I've been through. You don't know how horrible it was. And you're right. I don't know what you've been through, but I know what it is to have sexual abuse. I know what it is to have a brother murdered, two brothers murdered, 30 years apart, and still find forgiveness. So you're right. I don't know your personal experience, but I but I do believe that God in the universe is for us, not against us. And if that's true, then there is something there. Maybe my brother's contract with God was that his death was more impactful, right, to me, to wake me up to be the person that serves the many. I don't know, but I do know that I had 29 glorious years with him, and that after that I get to choose what I do with the loss of him. I could be angry, I could be upset, and I was for a while, or I can find the beauty and I can find the gift, and I can find what it gave me to lose him and to still stand up and love him and miss him every single day, but to be able to help and serve others with grief.

SPEAKER_01: 16:05

That that is uh very powerful. Thank you for that, Jesse. Uh let's uh go to question number four. Uh, for someone carrying a painful story, we just talked about a bunch of different scenarios. What is the first practical step to uh alchemize the pain into purpose? What you just said. Let's go deeper into that uh that that question. And before um maybe hiring a coach or joining a program, what do someone needs to do before they make a decision to go work with someone with their their pro whatever their problem is?

SPEAKER_00: 16:46

I think that it's important when sometimes the pain is still so loud, right? It still feels so heavy and it it feels like there's no way out. I'll never let this go. I I don't want to get out of bed. Physically, I'm hurting. If you find five things to be grateful for. So sometimes we feel the only way out of our pain is to go directly into what happened. Sometimes that's too hard. I can't, I can't see it. It's still too painful. So it's we're gonna work on this, but without the ability to open our hearts just a little bit enough to find gratitude for the fact that we opened our eyes, for the fact that you know we have maybe a friend that loves us, for the fact that we have a comfortable bed, for the fact that you can hear the birds chirping, right? You start to open your heart in gratitude. Gratitude's a healer. And if you can just start to do that, journal five things a day, what you're grateful for, and you start to open your heart and soften the edges a little bit, then maybe you can take one portion of it and now start to look at it, right? But sometimes we feel it's too confronting to say somebody got you know gang raped, just like you want me to go in there and forgive. I hate those people, and God forbid you ended up pregnant. You know what I mean? It's just like it's it's hard to say, you know what, you just need to forgive, you know, everything has a purpose. It doesn't work that way. So sometimes we have to take those baby steps to open our hearts back up because if we don't look for the gift in our life, then all we see is the pain. And so if we can just create an opening that helps to take the steps.

SPEAKER_01: 18:26

I was just gonna say the the exact example of learning how to walk again or riding a bike again for the first time. Well, yeah, it being grateful, like you said, uh learning how to be grateful again, because that could be erased in a matter of seconds or minutes with the traumatic situation that someone goes through. Right. By you appreciating the small things, then you'll get some later on appreciate the bigger the bigger things.

SPEAKER_00: 19:02

Yes, and just to note, when my older brother was murdered 30 years ago, um I turned my back on God. You know, I was raised Catholic, I was then Christian at the time. Now I consider myself more spiritual than I do religious, but I honor everybody's journey. But at that time, I flipped God off. I was like, I don't even know if you exist. What if there's nothing? What if there's just worms crawling out of our eyes holes? We get buried six feet under. I don't freaking know. And if you do exist, God, I hate you for taking my brother. That was my perspective. So I get it, right? Faith is a tough one because it's etheric, it's a feeling, it's a knowing. And it's in my pain, I couldn't feel the presence of God or our creator or source. I couldn't feel it because my pain was so profound. And it was a moment where my brother showed himself to me, and all he did was gesture with his arms, and there was this white and it was beautiful, and and I it's like it wasn't like I can see clearly, but it was, I could tell there was other essences there. And all he did was point with his hands, and he says, Jess, everything is as it's supposed to be. And at the time I didn't know what it meant, but it brought me peace, and I knew he was okay. So pull on your faith, pull on knowing that God is a gracious God and that it is all in love and for you, even when the pain is so profound.

SPEAKER_01: 20:22

You know, again, I I connect with a lot of things that you say because uh that happened to me too, you know. A lot of people I feel associates religion with spirituality, and this is something that I'm still working on, to be uh perfectly honest. Uh we were I was brought in a certain religion that I associated, I associated, and I still sometimes associate God with that, and I can't move on from there, as if, oh well, if I'm gonna talk to God now, I I have to, that means I still believe in what I was was talking about yeah, the doctrine, which I don't want to. So it's very it's very tough for people to to bring God or spirituality back in their life without attaching it to their past experience because it doesn't have to be. It doesn't have to be, it doesn't mean like you said, now you consider yourself more spiritual than than religious. Uh and that and I guess that's uh something that's getting more common with people nowadays, but it's it's a transformation, you have to learn uh how to do it.

SPEAKER_00: 21:39

Yeah, and I just kind of see it as God. If we believe that God is the essence of everything, be pure and beautiful, the religion puts guidelines on them, or it puts bumper pads or rules. And I'm just like, I just I just go to the connection of what it is and what falls in line with that, with which is the essence of love, the essence of purity, which is the essence of magnificence, of everything glorious, right? And with those lenses, I behave within the guidelines that are written by man, right? So, and and there's different uh perspectives on that. Mine is just with one.

SPEAKER_01: 22:23

That's great. Final question for today, Jesse. Um, if we gave listeners a seven-day uh fierce grace reset, what would the daily micro actions uh to be to create a real momentum for for let's say the next week?

SPEAKER_00: 22:43

Absolutely. Well, again, I would start with gratitude. Um, and part of it is recognizing that this life is precious, right? We've had some recent tragedies here, and it's it's kind of awakening what is the wounding in every person, right? It's like when we're barking hatred, when we're barking things that are really dark, that you're just shocked that people are saying, I believe that it is a vehicle being used to wake up the pain that Allah already lives within, right? So we can shift and start to soften our hearts with that gratitude moment. Then we're going to start looking into ways to forgiveness. But we first have to understand our own sovereignty. Where did we lose safety? That's our first essence of a shake up, right? A little kid is loved by their parents in the purity of their home, goes to kindergarten or preschool, and another kid takes his lunchbox. In that moment, unsafety. Oh, why would somebody be mean? Why would somebody take my lunchbox? Why don't they like me? They ate my favorite snack, right? So hypervigilance begins. Now, next day he goes to school, he's gripping his lunch pail a little tighter. He's just like, I'm afraid now. So unsafety has rocked the world. So, where has unsafety began? And we take those baby steps of understanding that because the rest of our lives, that unsafety creates a piece of armor around our heart. Now we're protecting, right? And what happens is throughout our journey, that those pieces of armor get so thick that it moves us away from who we think we are. We are still that divinity, we are still that perfection, but now we have a hypervigilance wrapped around it so much that we develop an identity around our wounding versus an identity around the purity of who we are. So we have to get clear on those things because what we don't realize is that our limitation today, there's an invisible thread connected to a part in the past where unsafety was created. And so we have to unravel that, we have to heal that, we have to give the child what it needs. And so we take baby steps to do that. So you start to pull back your power and you start to see yourself through the lenses of divine perfection because that's what we are. If you look at an infant, there is no wrong, it's perfect. I was holding my uh friend six days old, six days, right? His name is Timothy, and he's got these beautiful little knuckles, and I'm looking at him and adoring in my mind. I said, divine perfection. And then I thought, what makes us any different? Absolutely nothing, only the belief. So if we can start to break down that armor, we can come back to the purity of our own essence. And it's the most beautiful thing to watch when people you see the softening on their cheeks, and you see that they come back to their own self-acceptance. It's it's just glorious. And from that point, there's nothing you can't do.

SPEAKER_01: 25:33

It was a true pleasure to talk with you today. Um, lots of deep conversations. I hope that our listeners uh will take a nugget of advice, of knowledge, of uh um even uh past experience and and use it on their journey to better themselves. Uh again, Jesse, thank you so much for taking the time to be with us on the Five Questions Podcast.

SPEAKER_00: 26:02

Absolutely. Thank you for having me, Mario.

SPEAKER_01: 26:05

Thank you. We'll talk soon. Okay.