Fate Versus Destiny

We may not choose what happens to us—but we can choose how deeply we meet it.

In this reflective walk, I explore the difference between fate and destiny—between the circumstances we’re born into and the meaning we make from them. Through stories of family, marriage, blame, spiritual DNA, and inherited patterns, I reflect on what it means to stop fighting what cannot be changed and begin living with more depth, flexibility, and personal authority. A thoughtful episode about surrender, accountability, and the possibility of transforming fate into destiny.

Walk with me.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Good morning. Welcome to Inbody. Coming to you live today in Florida. So today I was contemplating what to talk about. And what came to mind is a couple ideas around maybe not having what we want. So more recently, my perspective has, although let's say my perspective has always been that things are, not always been, not always, but as I've uh studied shamanism, other worldly uh phenomena, I've studied them more. I always ask myself these questions about fate versus destiny. And let's just say that it's not like I came to any conclusions. So, but if we were to talk about the definitions according to like how I would see it or where I'm coming from with this, is that fate would be these ideas, like the idea that like you're something's gonna happen, like you're gonna marry this person, you know. God, this is like a roomy, a roomy idea. God circled the space for you on the map, and it's right here, right now. So it's sort of like fate would be like you know, you you're just living your life, and if you're fated to do that, and there's no choices, not a lot of choice. So you're born at a certain day, a certain time, in a certain place, and that's what I've called before your spiritual DNA. So this would be looking at things from an astrological type of perspective. But even if we left, uh, you know, we could talk about it for a minute, but also that's the the vantage point I'm using. But the reality is uh we're sort of all philosophically living through this. We could define it however we want. But anyway, and and if you look at your astrological chart, or you have an astrological chart accessible to you, the strangeness of it, it's sort of it sort of shows you you you're gonna do what you're gonna do. You're gonna be who you're gonna be, and you're gonna do who you're gonna do what you're gonna do, and the people in your life and the difficulties in your life, and whoever those difficult people are gonna be, it's like predetermined. So when we have something we don't want when it's on this scale, and you know, I don't know, maybe you wanted to have curly hair, but you have straight hair, or maybe, but all those things, they're all you want to have a different kind of body type, whatever. All these things are they are you know kind of set in stone. There's only so much control you actually have over these things and over these life lessons. And so if you know, I'm talking to a bunch of people right now, a bunch of just happens to be that a fair amount of my patients, um the theme that has arisen has to do with like you know, very being being married to difficult people and either wanting to figure out how to figure how to work that out and stay in a marriage, or um people who you know they they they want it, they they need to leave the marriage. And and these are very, very intelligent, right now it's women, but it doesn't necessarily need to be women. Um these are very intelligent, very successful women, and they didn't get involved with difficult people because they're and I apologize for the wind, but you know what, this reminds me of I have to get if you can hear the wind. Um I need to get and I have to look into the new uh new headset. So I apologize if sometimes I go in and out. I'm working on the headset. So if this is true, and it's kind of like we're gonna do we're gonna do this because this is what it what we're all blind spots are in life. We're gonna marry a difficult person, we're gonna have a difficult child, we're gonna have um difficult family members. If that's how it is, that's how it's gonna be. I don't, and then and this is the thing about having what we want. It it doesn't turn out that way necessarily. Maybe some things we get we want, but then how in life do we cope with that? So here comes destiny. So destiny is when you take fate and you learn about it. So now what once became something that is like you can't change, it's gonna happen, it's gonna befall you, it's gonna befell you, it's gonna happen to you. Well, now you're in charge of that fate. So what are you gonna do with it? So here comes now rules, what you should do, what shouldn't have happened, how it should be. So if we're all coming here, here, yes, here to the earth, here to this planet, here to human existence, here, however you want to look at it. And we're not supposed to get what we want, and things aren't supposed to be a certain way. This has come up a lot in my office about like, you know, the American Puritan foundation and the idea that, you know, I don't know, like we're supposed to be happy, but meanwhile, life is hard, life's a struggle, even when life is easy. And what I mean by that is just because you're comfortable, just because you have means, just because you have resources, doesn't mean life is easy, and that's the funny part. Because if you're fighting all the time with what you don't get to have, because it's not meant for you to have it, and you don't focus on what you do have, now you're in that faded sort of suffering position. But if you perhaps look at it from the point of view I'm offering, even if it's a bit of a it's not even meant to be a rationalization, it's actually just a fact. It's just a fact, and yet we fight, we fight, we fight, and I think it's because of how we're indoctrinated to think that life is not hard. It's supposed to be hard because our lives, a lot of our lives, are at least that it's easy. It's easy in a sense that we're not like washing our clothes, you know, outside and hanging them out to dry, that we shove them in a machine and we go off and we do something else while we, you know, that's what I mean. There is a study done that I'll reference, that women referenced to me when I had little babies and felt guilty about working. And it was about the fact that I don't know, I think I think it was probably they were talking about before the Industrial Revolution, so that women had less time for their children then because of housework than they do if they work a full-time job now. Right? So uh it's about how we we think about what the rules are where we should, and then and then we self-flagellate, or we are mean to ourselves because we can't seem to get in the groove of doing the right thing. Like, so I I slid over a little bit. So it's like sort of like if you have a situation, like a difficult husband that you married in a faded way because you didn't know and you couldn't know, too young, too inexperienced, blind, doesn't matter. Because that's what was gonna happen. And then if you blame yourself for that happening, now we've just added insult to injury, now we've taken a fate and turned it into a miserable destiny. But if instead we go, okay, what do I want to do with this? What can I learn about it? Because then there's like guilt, there's guilt because the kids are now involved, you know, it's all of these different layers. Like, I shouldn't have done this to my children, um, I shouldn't have brought them into the or I didn't even know this would happen until we had the children. I mean, it's like endless. But if if we're if we how we answer that question is I should have known better, or it shouldn't be this way. What we're now doing is we're taking something that is already, already, already deeply upsetting, and now we're making it more upsetting. Now we have a narrative on what we can't control, and that narrative is I'm a piece of crap for not being able to have a different narrative. But if we go back to what I said earlier, you're born into the narrative. So what I'm thinking is if you use the serenity prayer to neutralize the fadedness of your circumstances, and you realize that you you you're not to blame, that no one is to blame. There doesn't have to be blame, and I've mentioned in a different podcast about the the blame situation. The blame situation is when you try to digest whatever it is that's happening to you and give your give it it and and tell it and say that it's because of this or because of this, but really it couldn't be changed. So you're gonna blame it. I was talking to a younger patient of mine about this because um, you know, his parents were upset with the idea of blame the parents, you know, and you know, people really don't, they don't think especially parents don't like that, but it's sort of like if everything is what it is, equal on its own merit. And a parent could just say, you know what? I I'm I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I hurt you. I didn't mean to. I'm sorry that that I nitpicked you, I didn't mean to. I'm sorry I couldn't see differently. But because of what we're talking about here, they they they hang up on they hang up the phone and they're like, I'm not to blame for your you're just gonna blame us for your problems. And I'm like, well, but fundamentally, it's not blame, but a parent does have a role, especially in programming a mind. Parents program our minds, but again, we're born on a certain day at a certain time, under certain, under certain um, you know, experience like, and that is what determines that, right? We're we're coming in, we're coming in, we're gonna have these experiences, and we're gonna feel the way we're gonna feel about them. And if we could just all know that, the healing could start there. Instead of it being all buried underneath this should be, should I should be a good mom? I should be a good dad. I am a good mom, and I can I'm a good mom or I'm a good dad because I did these five or six things. But who dictated what those five or six things were? Did you ask your kid what would be a good parent for them to have? No, no, we become this parent, like the parenting book says or the pediatrician says. But this is what like tortures people. They don't have a kid that listens to them and fits into what the instead they they they don't look at what works for them and and they don't become creative in their lives because we're so busy self-flagellating about the fact that, or blaming someone else for the fact of whatever it is we can't have, because we can't have it. And the smarter you are, like me, analyzing everything, now I'm in an then then you could be in an intellectual sort of uh debate or an intellectual uh arg you know, like argument with a rationalization, opposed to no, this feels shitty and it's mine, it's my life. So then what do you do with that? What do we do when we don't get what we want? What do we do when we come to terms with after many years of trying to navigate, after many, many years of trying to navigate a certain certain circumstances that in the and the surrender is you just gotta exit. That's the surrender. It's like I just gotta seal up my ears around these people, I gotta move away, I gotta not be around. I mean, it's it's okay. It's okay, that's that's that's one possibility, but in the end, if you say nothing or you do, if you're in charge of whatever it is you decide to do, I got, I'm telling you, I have everybody, every person in my practice needs to manage their difficulty in their own way. There is no one way, and then when people feel pressured to do it another way, like so let's say they do want to exit a circumstance they're in, but they don't have the money yet to do that, or they don't have the wherewithal within themselves because of these blind spots and these circumstances and not having what they want. Well, then we work with that, and you make the best life you can out of with that. Because saying things should be different, even if you do think they should be, doesn't change the actual circumstances that we're actually living in. So we must do what we think is best for us, and that doesn't mean it feels good, and it doesn't mean that. So when I said earlier, you know, we don't have a big manual labor type of life, and anyone listening to this has the luxury of, you know, they're eating, sleeping, you know, anything, most of their problems will be caused by things they're resisting psychologically, and I know how much pain that causes. I am not in a debate about that, but the best example I have of this because of circumstances I was in is that my father thought we had no money, but we did have money, so that's a delusion. And my mother thought that she was sick and she didn't get out of bed for years, and that's a delusion. See, that wasn't real, but if you ask her, she would say it was real to her. Now, the reason why I'm saying that this is different than being actually sick is that it wasn't necessary, and again, here we come with the fate. So let's say my mother understands that from her spiritual DNA, she is likely to be someone who would take to her bed because the nature of who she is, and that she has an understanding that if she takes to her bed, her young children would be very, very upset by that. Okay, but that's different than her thinking she's ill and not being able to get out of bed, and that's what happened. See, the fate versus the destiny, had she known that, now, how do you know that? That's probably some some things about luck and what you have accessible to you. But another thing is you pay attention. Now, maybe she couldn't pay attention, or I'm gonna say she couldn't, but if you're listening to me, maybe you can. Maybe you can, maybe you have access to that. And that's another thing. Not everyone has access to be able to pay attention to their own thoughts, or pay attention to their feelings, or pay attention to even these ideas, fate versus destiny. That it's not in them. They turn this on and they turn it off. They'd be like, oh, that's whatever, they dismiss it. And I I've dismissed it. I know that there have been times and places where my teachers, who are now, this is the epitome of what they've dismissed it at other times and places. Because first of all, it's freaky, and second of all, it's spooky, and third of all, it's it's it's a it's a very, very, very potent um uh necessity of life to see things from this perspective. It's very potent because it holds us accountable. So I mean I I don't know, some of these ideas, I guess they rotate, but you know, there there's an idea that in um you know, in about about uh being responsible and accountable to the nature of the very things we're talking about, because that's what keeps us in the karmic cycle of life and death. That's what keeps us in that cycle is the idea we're faded, we're not paying attention. And then we come back again and again to try to pop our head out of the sand and see things from this new perspective and understand the mysteries of being here, because then this is so-called a playground we don't have to come back to because we've broken the cycles of karma. And these types of things I'm talking about, they would be kar cyclic, they would be karmic cycles. So karmic cycles in family, karmic cycles heritage, karmic cycles with yourself. Because, in in my opinion, this isn't the first rodeo. We're doing this over and over and over again. So, but again, see, see, there's a whole underlying philosophy here that names you as accountable to the life you're living, but not blame. I like it more, and this is a new concept for me even thinking about it today. I like it more in the like, it just brings you into destiny, but you can't, if you want to look at it, if you even want to move around in this perspective, it's the God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. And everybody has things they cannot change, everybody has things they're faded into. Family members they're faded into, friends they're faded into, circumstances they're faded into. Because when you get here, you get here and you get what you get. You don't get upset, except a lot of people get upset, and then the psychological viewpoint the day we go is to then go, yup, it's it shouldn't have been this way. You should have raised me differently, should have programmed the computer differently, you should, but no, no, that that that's the only computer your mother had, meaning her emotional conditioning came from her mother and her mother before that, and you know, things started somewhere. All these things started in heritages somewhere, and so maybe things that looked delusional in one generation were real in another generation. But the beauty of that is if you understand that these are ideas that we have, we can change our ideas, and then maybe we won't feel great about what's happening to us, but we sure will look at it differently. But that doesn't necessarily change that you won't be hysterical, or you won't lose your mind, or you won't get angry, or you won't blow up, or you won't scream at your kids in a way you promise yourself you never would. It doesn't mean that, it means that you will have awareness when you do that. It means what came up in my research is really about depth. Depth. You'll have depth. So if you're willing to become more flexible about how you live and you're willing to not think that things should be any particular way except what they are, you now have a destined existence, which is much different than the faded one of having to just walk around in a fog with no with no observational ability. That's the that's ignorance. That's ignorance when people like talk about ignorant people who can't see, forgive them, they know not what they do. We've talked about that. Um the idea of they're blind but now they can see, all the Christ stuff. That's that that's this stuff. That's what this stuff is. It's all meta, you know, metaphors for and and think about all those stories. I mean, this is so funny, right? I'm glad this came up because I talked about this a lot here. Same windy spot, same windy spot, because don't tell anyone I had to avoid a very chatty. Neighbor. Such a nice guy though, but very chatty. And I don't think if I was like, hey, I'm doing a walk and a talk. Podcast. I gotta catch you later. I don't really think even get it. I like old school. Everyone used to sit and really look at you in the eye and have a really deep conversation. Here we go, deep, deep depth, deep conversation. So if we realize that the Bible is full of stories, they're not good stories. They're warnings, the mythologies, warnings, warnings about the difficulty in life. And if we were to read them in that way, understand them in that way, they are meant to help us live better because they're meant to give us these kinds of wise alternatives to difficulties that we encounter in our life. And when we hear them in the form of stories, like I'm known as a storyteller, like I'm always telling stories here, but my patients, I'm always telling stories about my own life. And and um, and although early in my career I worried that it was like a self-disclosure thing, because it's a big thing in psychology, just so you know this, any anybody, that uh therapists are not supposed to self-disclose. And the reason why for that is that you you don't want to make it about you, but it took me a long time to to understand that my stories were like biblical stories, they happen to me, but they happen to everyone, and that's the context they tell the stories in their metaphors. One time someone said like to me um something. I don't know, she that she got upset and she said something to me about my story. And I said, Well, you don't really know if they're real or not, do you? And she's like, What? And I said, Maybe they're just stories, and she didn't know what to do with that. Because she didn't know if that was right, because how could she know? Now, I'm very honest and I'm direct, so I would not do that, but the truth is that that's the truth. So, anyway, I use these stories. They're stories because they're they're not based in like me and what happened to me, they're based on what happens to us, which is the stories of the mythologies and the stories of the um Bible. They teach us about the nature of humanity, and the nature of humanity is you get what you get and you don't get upset, you know, like so, or or wait, you get what you get, you can get upset as you want, but it doesn't change anything. So I um I'm guess urging us all to you know, sometimes this is like considered optimism, looking on the bright side of things, equanimity, but this is like temperance. Temperance is like no fun. It's like you put all the good and all the bad, supposedly, and you mix it all up, and what do you get? You know, it's it's very be very patient to temper the good and the bad in your life and mix it all together and see where it ends up. And maybe that's what I'm talking about. It's a different level of healing, a different level of alchemy. And I know today maybe I haven't even offered anything practical in this regard. Today's maybe an idea day, but I don't know, really. It's the set goes back to the senses if you put music on. Yesterday, the moon, the moon changes its position every day in the zodiac, and yesterday it was in a position where it was about listening. Every day it changes, you know, changes, and there's a theme. There's a theme. I don't know if you knew that, but the moon as it moves along the zodiac, you know, in the moon cycle, approximately, as we know, 30-ish days. Um, and each day has a theme. They do. Each day has a theme. And the theme yesterday was about listening to your inner voice, quieting the distractions, listening for these truths, standing in your personal authority, the secrets we keep from ourselves. So I think what I'm what I'm urging you to do is not to listen to the noise and to listen to yourself, and that you can't do that if you're blaming someone else or yourself for something that was always going to be and that you couldn't change. So, um, anyway, so I what I was saying is if you appeal to your senses, like you put on music to change your perspective, you take a bath, you go for a walk, all the you know, your senses, you look around you, you breathe. These things are very difficult to do in those circumstances because I think we some of us we want to fight. We want to fight because because that's our personality style also, or we want to cry because that's our personality style. And we could do those things, but maybe also we could do some of these other things. Uh, art, creativity, put this out in the world like I'm doing. This is very healing for me to speak to you about these things. Um, and the minute I turn on the audio, it's like I know we're all into in it together. I know, you know, none of us are alone. We get to do this together, and that's a change in the death in destiny, our destinies, you know. So I hope this was helpful. I hope you'll walk with me again. Thanks always for being here. You know, I know, um I appreciate it. So walk with me again soon. Take care, have a good week.