Where Is The Value In That?

Kintsugi of the Soul: Turning Broken Moments into Golden Breakthroughs

Does a shattered favorite mug signal a tragedy or a transition? In this episode of Living Lucky®, Jason and Jana Banana explore Kintsugi—the Japanese art of repairing pottery with gold. We tackle the "sunk cost" fallacy and why we desperately try to fix things meant to be released.

Pivot from the "doom loop" of frustration to an upward success cycle. Learn to find the gold in your cracks and discover why letting go is the ultimate mindset shift for personal development.

In this episode, you will learn to:

• Apply Kintsugi Thinking: Why highlighting scars creates more value than hiding them.
• Beat the "Wasted Time" Trap: Stop clinging to the past out of guilt; value the lessons already won.
• The Monkey Bar Test: Why you must release the first rung to reach your next level of growth.

Nuggets:

• "For Me" vs. "To Me": Every "shattered" moment is part of your spiritual curriculum. (Believe in your circumstances).
• The Truth Audit: Voicing frustration aloud reveals the lies keeping you stuck. (Believe in yourself).
• Honorable Closure: Releasing a career or dream honors who you became while pursuing it. (Believe in the people around you).
• Space for Miracles: You can't grasp the new while clutching broken pieces. (Believe in a higher power).

Kintsugi, mindset shift, personal development, limiting beliefs, Mindset, Resilience, Letting Go, Growth, Perspective, Authenticity, Living Lucky

What is the lesson of Kintsugi for personal growth? Kintsugi teaches that repairs are part of your history, not defects. In self-help, this means viewing failures as "golden" lessons that make you stronger and more valuable.

How do I know when to let go or keep trying? Use the "Monkey Bar" test: If holding on stops your momentum and your tools feel "expired," release is the wiser choice. Ask: "How might this benefit me?"

Stop gluing the past together. Hit play to release what’s broken and start Living Lucky® today!

For mind-blowing inspirational content that we implement ourselves, join us by subscribing and connecting to our private community.

Thanks for joining us.
CONNECT with us in our PRIVATE COMMUNITY

*** The Living Lucky Community is experiencing what it feels like to create a life of inspiration where dreams come true. Check it out HERE *** or at https://www.startlivinglucky.com/sendusyourdreams

!!! SEND US A MESSAGE: Are you ready to unlock your path to a more inspired life where you're Living Lucky®? Email me directly and let's chart your course toward realizing your dreams and creating a life that fills you with daily inspiration.
Email Jason Shelfer HERE

The 4 pillars of Living Lucky
Believe in yourself
Believe in the people around you
Believe in your circumstances and
Believe that God is working through you, for you, and always conspiring in your favor.

*Previously Recorded

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Living Lucky Mindset
• 0:14 The Beloved Coffee Cup Story
• 2:33 Kintsugi And The Beauty Of Cracks
• 5:21 The Messy Attempt At Repair
• 7:18 Naming The Limiting Belief
• 8:25 Reframing, Release, And New Energy
• 13:10 Heart Vs Head And Life Patterns

Transcript

Jana Shelfer: 0:00

Are you ready to create a life you crave? Let's spin that doom loop of negativity into an upward success cycle and start Living Lucky®.

Jason Shelfer: 0:14

Good morning. I'm Jana. I'm Jason. And we are Living Lucky®. You are too.

Jana Shelfer: 0:19

I dropped my coffee cup this week.

Jason Shelfer: 0:22

Oh, your favorite coffee cup.

Jana Shelfer: 0:24

If you have been on the Jana and Jason bandwagon for the last five years, you know that I have my favorite cup coffee cup. It has gone all over the United States with me, all over the world.

Jason Shelfer: 0:37

It has gone all over the world. It was a custom cup made by Crazy Jugs. Yeah. Now in the hills. It was a gift back when we started having coffee chats on Facebook every morning. And it was the cups. I have a group of five or six faces that are cups, and you had your special roses, rainbows, and flowers that said Jana on it with a banana on it.

Jana Shelfer: 1:04

Yes, they had the letters Jana on it. I loved this cup so much. And this morning, Tater was nesting at right where my coffee cup was. On the pillows around. On my little couch. And anyway, next thing I know, boom, the coffee cup goes over.

Jason Shelfer: 1:22

It's the tile floor, coffee everywhere, ceramic everywhere.

Jana Shelfer: 1:25

And my yes, my cup goes in. I don't want to say a million pieces, but it felt like a million pieces. Right. Even though it was probably only 10.

Jason Shelfer: 1:36

Yeah. And then there were shards. There were a few shards.

Jana Shelfer: 1:39

Okay. So I, Jason cleans it up. He's so nice because I don't want to clean it up. If you don't know this about me, I'm in a wheelchair and sometimes I feel like any kind of glass or shards can pop a tire.

Jason Shelfer: 1:53

Plus, there wasn't any way for you to get out of that corner without tracking it everywhere.

Jana Shelfer: 1:57

That's true because there was coffee, and so to in order to transfer. Anyway, long story short, Jason cleans it up and he goes and throws everything away. Then later on, I'm doing some cleaning in the kitchen. This is later on in the morning, and I open the trash can and I see my coffee cup there.

Jason Shelfer: 2:16

And you had that feeling.

Jana Shelfer: 2:17

I have this, aha. I'm a puzzler.

Jason Shelfer: 2:21

I'm a master puzzler and crafter.

Jana Shelfer: 2:23

I'm gonna put it together. I'm gonna put it back together again. And you know what? It's even gonna be better because now I've got a story behind my coffee cup.

Jason Shelfer: 2:33

What's up with all the cracks? It's kind of like that old Japanese Kensuki.

Jana Shelfer: 2:37

Yes. So if you haven't, if you're not familiar with this Japanese art form, it's where they literally break Vosses purposely, and then they put them back together with gold in the cracks.

Jason Shelfer: 2:53

Yeah.

Jana Shelfer: 2:54

And the whole theory behind it is yeah, we all are broken in places, but when we highlight those imperfections, then that's what becomes the beauty life.

Jason Shelfer: 3:08

That's where the beauty lies, is in the cracks and in the imperfections. Because we all have it, but we all give it this bad name. We all have imperfections, and then we say, This is what's wrong with me. Instead of this is what I learned through this.

Jana Shelfer: 3:23

Yes.

Jason Shelfer: 3:24

And Kinsugi brings attention to the cracks and and provides not only attention, it actually highlights and brings and shows the beauty and the possibility there.

Jana Shelfer: 3:36

And it's crazy. And what's what's even more is that it's in those cracks where they put that gold that it even becomes stronger.

Jason Shelfer: 3:45

And more valuable.

Jana Shelfer: 3:46

More valuable and stronger. So it's almost like those challenges or those cracks uh become what it becomes our genius in the end, if that makes sense.

Jason Shelfer: 3:58

Yeah. And as a as a person, oftentimes what we like to try to do is we bring attention to those faults and those cracks and and those imperfections and say, this is what I'm trying to, this is what's wrong with me. You know what I'm saying?

Jana Shelfer: 4:13

Or we try to hide those, we consider them weaknesses in a way.

Jason Shelfer: 4:18

When we just have this awareness, we we create a new awareness around it. We can say, This is what this did for me. Exactly. When people tell me their stories, oftentimes it's a story of these are the things this is how I became who I am because these things happened to me. Instead of this is how I am, who I am, because this is what's happened for me and this is how I've grown through it.

Jana Shelfer: 4:40

Exactly. Okay, but that's not our lesson today. Right. We're gonna even keep going. So as I'm putting it together, I take the pieces back into my art room, I'm putting them together, I get out my tile adhesive that I had from doing an art piece a year ago.

Jason Shelfer: 4:59

Which everyone probably has a little tile adhesive somewhere.

Jana Shelfer: 5:01

Right. And as I'm taking it off, it's a little hard, so it's not at its prime. It's a little dried out, it's a little dried out, and so then I'm I'm kind of beating myself up. Like, why didn't I seal this better? And oh, this feels like I've wasted half of it. Like, I have all these thoughts going through my head. I start putting the coffee cup back together, and I quickly, not even quickly, after about 40 minutes of trying to spend to put this coffee cup back together, I have a mess on my hands. I've got this dried, cracked, half-working adhesive that is all over my fingers. I am making a total mess in my art room, and we have guests coming tonight, and so I know that it needs to my art room needs to be cleaned. I the pieces that I have put back together, I realize that there's some shards that are missing, and so liquid will, I don't think.

Jason Shelfer: 6:02

You'll never be able to do the coffee routine with that cup again.

Jana Shelfer: 6:06

Yes. I'm like, this is gonna have to be a coffee cup for my pens. And as I'm doing it, I'm getting just very, very frustrated. And I come to the conclusion, I'm just gonna throw this away. This was a waste of my time, my energy, and my effort. And I got to this place where I I literally take everything. I took the adhesive, I took the coffee cup, I took all the roll of paper towels that I had used, I took the the mat that I was putting it, that I was doing all this on in my arm, and I literally crumbled it all up and said, This is all I'm throwing all of this away.

Jason Shelfer: 6:53

Definitely.

Jana Shelfer: 6:54

This has bad mojo. Get it away from me. And then Jason comes in and is like, What are you doing? I'm like, I'm wasting my time. I'm I'm mad at myself that I even tried or that I have the audacity to think that I could pull this off. And that is where the limiting belief lies.

Jason Shelfer: 7:17

Well, and sometimes it you have to voice it to hear it and to put it all together. So just like the thoughts that were running through your head are all fragmented pieces, when you were able to voice it, I think it all came to you because then you kind of had this aha that am I really mad that I tried? Or am I am I upset that it didn't work? Yes. You know, because a lot of times we will get pissed off and we will get mad and we'll say, I've wasted all my time and effort. People do this with their careers all the time. Like they will they will spend 15 years in a career and then their soul says, I've got to make a change. I need to make a change. And then there's all these same thoughts and feelings of look at all the pieces that I have here. There's something missing. I don't want to waste everything behind me. I don't want to be pissed off about the last 15 years of my life that I've devoted to this company.

Jana Shelfer: 8:10

Because now I'm I'm 50 years old and everything's I can't I can't start again. I don't have time for that.

Jason Shelfer: 8:17

Every there's all these little things, and what they don't do is they don't voice it out loud. They don't, they don't hire a coach, they don't, they don't talk through what their soul is already telling them. So they can't really they don't see that way to put things together cohesively in the next chapter.

Jana Shelfer: 8:36

You know, it's so funny that we're talking about this because as I as I did get mad and angry and I voiced it, and of course I live with one of the best life coaches there is, so he's walking me through all this. I did quickly realize what was happening. I also reframed it very quickly. That's saying, masterpiece. What did I learn here? I learned that my adhesive is no longer any good. So next time that will save me for the next time that I want to use it or do a craft and have any left over or whatever, we know that there's a we need to find a different ceiling paper. It also helped me realize that you know what, maybe it's time to let this go.

Jason Shelfer: 9:22

How how how freeing is it to realize we can let something go?

Jana Shelfer: 9:26

And the minute that I said that, then there was this, oh, I'm I can always get new.

Jason Shelfer: 9:33

Like there's there is this there's so there's so much empowerment in voicing it, recognizing it, reframing it.

Jana Shelfer: 9:43

Yeah, because all of a sudden I had a new energy that it's I mean, yeah, I have so many memories with that coffee cup, don't get me wrong, right? Like it just has some great. However, I also know that I'm gonna have great memories with a new coffee cup.

Jason Shelfer: 10:02

Amen. Go on.

Jana Shelfer: 10:03

And it will be fun to even maybe shop around and find my my new coffee cup. Like there's energy and excitement in that.

Jason Shelfer: 10:13

And this is just a coffee cup in the grand scheme of life, it's such a small thing, but oftentimes it's all the small things that we just put these big meanings to, and then also just anything that comes next has this quote unquote story behind it and history behind it that we try that a lot of times people will hold on to. It was surprising, it wasn't surprising, but it was remarkable how quickly you kind of had all this aha. But I see you have these aha's all the time because you say I'm a great life coach, but you you are more powerful or greater than I am just in your imagination.

Jana Shelfer: 10:50

I feel like you articulate a little bit. I think that I I live it to give it. Yes. How I mean I do, I experience it. I really do. I mean, the reason the reason that I am so into personal development is because I have a lot of problems. I've dealt with a lot of stuff in my inside my soul, and I I'm like, I can't be the only one that's dealing with all of these thoughts and feelings. I'm I am an overthinker. That is something about me. And sometimes when I get in my head, uh Tony Robbins says, you get in your head, you're dead, right? Yeah, it's you gotta live from your heart.

Jason Shelfer: 11:29

That's what we're taught to do, is live in our head.

Jana Shelfer: 11:32

Exactly.

Jason Shelfer: 11:32

And that is that's what, a foot and a half from our our heart. But when we can just say, you know what, how do I mix these two together, or how do I hear my heart and then think?

Jana Shelfer: 11:44

But here's the thing is I heard my heart, like, oh, that's my cup, I want to save it. And so then I went through the action of actually putting it together and it didn't turn out.

Jason Shelfer: 11:58

Quite the way you planned.

Jana Shelfer: 12:00

Yes, which is often a storyline that is recurring throughout lives, especially mine. Yeah, I I find that that has been a story, and every time I learn, you know what? Sometimes if it doesn't work out the way I want it to, it actually ends up being better.

Jason Shelfer: 12:27

Better. And the question is, how might this work out to my benefit?

Jana Shelfer: 12:32

It's such a little stupid thing, and I'm I'm sorry that I'm making an entire podcast about it, but there was this whole process of oh, you know what, I'm gonna even make this better by repairing the cracks, and then I finally came to the conclusion, you know what, maybe it's time to let this go. And sometimes I I know, like with my dreams, my career, my clothes in my closet.

Jason Shelfer: 13:05

How many people have clothes in their closet that they're like, uh this will come back around, this will be my my go-to, or whatever.

Jana Shelfer: 13:13

We hold on because we have some sort of sentimental or uh I don't know, just uh sometimes we're maybe it's hope. I don't I don't know what it is. However, I know that you had a coach, a JIT, that once said, the quicker we realize uh what we can let go of that's not meant for us, the better off we'll be.

Jason Shelfer: 13:37

Yeah, the quicker we'll find those those things that are available for us and ready for us and and really aligned with us will come into our grasp. It's just you can't hold on to both things. Yeah, it's like monkey bars. You can't get to the next rung by keeping both hands clapped on the first one.

Jana Shelfer: 13:54

And there was also there was also a minute where I said, you know what, do I want to spend my time, energy, my money buying new adhesive to to fix a cup that has that literally probably most likely will not be able to hold liquid? Right.

Jason Shelfer: 14:11

Also, and that you've already gotten so much value out of. So it's it's already so if you're looking at it as a $35 coffee cup that we was gifted to us, yes, how much value have you gotten out of that over the last year? Oh, I've loved it.

Jana Shelfer: 14:25

I've loved it. So Crazy Jugs, if you're listening, I'm in the market for another one.

Jason Shelfer: 14:29

That's right, they're listening.

Jana Shelfer: 14:31

Thank you for listening.

Jason Shelfer: 14:33

Keep living luck.

Speaker 1: 14:34

Bye bye. If the idea of Living Lucky® appeals to you, visit us at LivingLucky.com.