Kay:

Hey-yo Questers welcome back. It’s Tuesday, June 1st which means the first day of the month.

Shi:

Yeah! Love June.

Kay:

Got to love that first day. Well, it’s your birth month.

Shi:

And my anniversary.

Kay:

Oh, come on. There’s a lot of celebrating for Shila this month, but we are celebrating this quote for you today that we have from the 2012 Disney Pixar film Brave and it’s said by Princess Merida, and if you are actually from Scotland, I just want to go ahead and apologize, but I’m definitely going to read this in my Merida accent. So, Merida tells us, “You control your destiny. You don’t need magic to do it and there are no magical shortcuts to solving your problems.”

Shi:

Bravo.

Kay:

I read many a Brave books at my house.

Shi:

Well, for those of you reading the transcript, I’ll just tell you it was incredible.

Kay:

Well, thank you. My Scottish impersonation, I work very hard.

Shi:

What else is incredible is this movie and this lesson. We love Princess Merida for a bunch of different reasons but one of them of course is the lesson that she learned in this movie. She sums it up here, and the basic message is that you have a lot more control and responsibility than you think and that there really aren’t any other shortcuts or aren’t any other ways to get exactly what it is that you’re after, especially with something like your destiny. Your destiny is a pretty big and heavy topic, and it’s not just flouncing around there waiting for a wish and a hope to bring it to you.

Kay:

So super, extremely long story short Merida does not want to get married. Her queen mom is saying, chick you’ve got to get married and she’s like: NO. So, Merida goes out in the forest and finds a witch who bakes a cake that she gives to her mom and it turns her mom into a bear. Then the mom is a bear for three days, but if she doesn’t turn back a new human, she’s a bear forever. So, Merida has to find out how to turn her mom out of being a bear. When she finally does, Mom almost gets killed and almost turns into being a bear forever, but then, in that all is lost moment, she becomes human again and we’re all good in the end. But Merida realizes that the shortcut of “taking care of her mother” and getting her mother out of her way, utilizing that magic cake did not bring about the destiny that she wanted. So yes, she controls her destiny, but she didn’t need the magic cake to turn her mom into a bear to get what she wanted.

Shi:

She’s faced with this situation where she feels like she doesn’t have any way out and so she searches for something and takes the bait of making the deal with the witch and then almost loses her mom. When we talk about something like destiny, we like to think about the fact that it does have to be pursued. It’s something that is big and it’s responsible and it’s deep and it has dimension, and it has a purpose. It’s not going to just come knock you upside of the head. It’s going to be something that you have to pursue, that you have to chisel out of the days of your life and make that sculpture something really beautiful that you’re proud of at the end, but that takes daily work. It takes dedication. It takes attention and it takes awareness.

Kay:

So, the cake of destiny might not be very magical, but the ingredients of it look like circumstance, resourcefulness, your past experiences, your actions that you take. So, destiny is not, like Shila said, some singular event. There’s not going to be the end on February 23rd. Something big can happen to you that catalyzes you in one direction, but February 24th still comes, and February 25th still comes and you’re still you, destiny be damned. So, what you do in and around and toward and for your destiny dictates how quickly it comes, how long it lasts and if it turns into something that’s constructive for you, or if maybe you try and take a shortcut like Merida did and end up with your mom as a bear.

Shi:

If you do pursue your destiny, then hopefully what you get to do is what most of us aspire to do and that is to leave a legacy – a legacy of something that you can be proud of, something that has a positive impact on humanity, but it takes that daily work. It takes that pursuit. It takes that awareness and sacrifice and dedication and resourcefulness. I just want you guys to know that half the time we’re doing a podcast to pump our own dang selves up. We need this advice and pep talk as much as we want to give it to you. It’s also helpful for us because our lives have a lot of balls in the air and things get frustrating sometimes. The pressure is hard, and we feel that destiny is in the making each day, and we make decisions to move in the direction of the destiny we want. But it’s still hard. It’s still a pursuit that can be tough and we face moments of frustration. In those moments of frustration, we look to a quest guide like Merida (as silly as it may seem!), and gain inspiration from a quote like that. So, I am not going to do it in the end.

Kay:

I don’t blame you.

Shi:

But I will tell you that Merida tells us, “You control your destiny. You don’t need magic to do it and there are no magical shortcuts to solving your problems.”

Kay:

Alrighty gang you’ve got a Destiny Quest today. Today we want you to take at least one action that will bring you closer to the destiny of your dreams. Take control, take accountability, and take at least one action today.

Shi:

Does that make this a Destiny Questiny?

Kay:

This is your Questiny. So, now we’ve got to say let’s questiny. Are you ready? Are you ready? You know the words.

Kay & Shi:

Let’s questiny!