Day 22: Peter Bedard

October 22, 2009 at 12:01 am, Category: Inspiration

“… but it’s that whole ancient philosophy when two or more are gathered together, you know?  That connection for me creates change … it’s the connection between two people being completely authentic and honest that creates the change.”

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Toni Reece: Peter, I want to thank you so much for agreeing to be interviewed for this project, and before we begin with the questions, can you please introduce yourself?

Peter Bedard: Sure, my name is Peter Bedard.  I am a web television producer and host.

Toni: Okay, thank you.  Well, with the work that you do or in your personal work, when you think about inspiration, Peter, who do you inspire and how do you do that?

Peter: Well, I really strive to inspire a large audience.  I want to inspire anybody who needs to take charge of their lives, specifically around the issue of health.  I’ve had to heal myself of lots of different things, and most everything that I had, the conventional medicine wasn’t able to do.  And so I healed myself through alternative therapies, and I strive to really inspire people to recognize that they have choices, that they need to take responsibility for their health and not hand their health over to a doctor, and you know, make choices for themselves based on what they want to do, how they want to heal, what they expect from life, and empower them with those choices.  That’s my big drive.

Toni: How do you work with someone to inspire them in a way that they know what to expect from their life without going in a conventional manner?

Peter: Well, that can be kind of tricky.  A lot of the work that I do is really centered on getting people in touch with what they want out of life and their life purpose, and once we can discover someone’s life purpose … which, by the way, I ran around for years asking myself what is my life’s purpose and it was right in front of me, it was the easiest thing.  It was just me needing to recognize that and being able to not only recognize it but then take charge of it.  And when you can get people to do that and to really go, “Okay, this is it, this is what I’m going to do,” and then step into that, everything else falls into place.

Toni: May I ask how you help others find their life purpose?

Peter: Sure!  I actually created a little process, a little three-step process.  My first question to somebody is “What pisses you off?”  It’s kind of funny, but what makes you the most angry?  And generally we start with that question and that answer and work our way through that answer and your life purpose.  I found through my experience and through lots of other people’s experiences is that their life purpose is generally tied into that.  Whether they’re angry because there’s teenage suicide still happening, or there is poverty in the world, or whatever it is to focus on that and to really look at what charges them, what gets them angry and frustrated to the point where they feel like it’s their responsibility or their job to do something about it.  And it could be as simple as my life purpose is to help children.  Okay, well then what does that mean to you, and then we go in and we start exploring that, and there’s a whole series of questions that we go into to actually find that answer.  But generally, your life purpose, from my experience, is all about what angers you the most in the world.

Toni: So your inspiration … basically how you inspire others is to kind of get them good and angry?

Peter: Well, to recognize that.  A lot of people are running around and saying they don’t know their life purpose.  There’s a lot of frustration, a lot of anger in being in that place, and when you can recognize it and look at it and do something with it, then you naturally start to follow that path and move into that direction.

Toni: When you are working with people and you are taking them through that process — which sounds fascinating — and you get them to that place where they recognize or start to recognize what that life purpose looks like, then how do you go about exploring the potential for them to get there?

Peter: Well see, that’s the fun part, and that’s also the time-consuming part.  It’s easy to be able to say, “Okay, this is what angers me.”  Then you have to figure out, what are you going to do about it?  And so, it’s an experimental process that we do over … it could be a few weeks; it could be a few months.  It could be even days for some people but it depends how fast things just line up for them.  But we explore.

If it’s somebody who is … let’s go back to my example of helping children.  Well, does helping children mean that you need to go into politics?  Is that what fires you up, because you need to carry legislation that’s going to protect and assist in taking care of children?  Or, if that really turns you off, then is it starting your own daycare?  And so we have to explore those different things.  Go volunteer at a politician’s office if you think that’s something that fires you up.  If not, what about getting a volunteer position at a daycare?  They would love … I’m sure there’s tons of daycare centers that would love to have somebody come in and volunteer just to be there with the kids.  What about working at a shelter?  There’s lots of different ways that you can now start exploring that concept.  And as that concept gets whittled down, I always work for a log line and that log line comes out of your purpose, such as my purpose is to … and then fill in the blank.

Toni: Okay, that’s very interesting.  So when you are working with others … and I see the direct line between how you inspire and then moving into exploring the potential.  When you look at that inward, what do you need to be inspired?

Peter: What do I need?  Well, I need a connection.  I do find inspiration from very popular sort of icons in our society.  I find Mother Theresa and Gandhi, and even Oprah — not that she’s on the same level as them — but I find those figures extremely inspiring.  But for me to really create change and have that inspiration really propel me, I have found that I need a direct contact with a person.  So my motivational inspiration I like to refer to it as … the inspiration that gets me off my butt is when I meet somebody who is doing what I want to do or who is creating what I want in my life.

Toni: Can you give me an example?

Peter: Yeah, absolutely.  Last night I went to a panel.  I’m also a hypnotherapist, but my main focus at this point in my life is producing.  And so I went to a panel late last night that was at the Screen Actors Guild and they were talking about producing content and producing your shows and creating your own content and stepping forward.   “You have an idea?  Great!  Stop waiting around for somebody else to make it, you go do it.”  And in the people that I met last night and being able to hear their stories and have a direct connection, I can be very tactile.  So just something like shaking somebody’s hand and hearing their story sort of ties it in for me, and that experience really is the inspiration that I need to step forward into what I want to create in the world.

Toni: So you gather by being around other people, like-minded people.  That direct contact almost creates that spark for you.

Peter: Absolutely.  You know, every now and then I’ve gotten inspiration that’s gotten me to do something or move forward on something that I’ve read in a book or I’ve heard a recording like this.  Every now and then that does go … I get a little “ah-ha!” moment and that’s like “Yes, that’s it!”  But the deepest form of inspiration that’s really gotten me to move is when I had a one-on-one with someone.

Toni: So Peter, has that … can you give me an example of how that might correlate back to when you’re helping others find their inspiration or to inspire them, and you were talking about healing yourself.  So was there a moment in time where you had a direct connect which moved you forward into that healing process?

Peter: Wow … pick one!  Yes, you know it’s one thing — as far as my personal healings — it’s one thing to read about, say, Byron Katie and read about her process in the book; it’s another thing to actually sit down and do it with somebody, and my experiences in healing are really … okay, I get the logical concept, but it’s that whole ancient philosophy when two or more are gathered together, you know?  That connection for me creates change, and when I’m working with individuals for their life purpose or other things, I believe it’s the connection with me, and it’s not about me but it’s the connection between two people being completely authentic and honest that creates the change.  Does that answer your question?

Toni: It did.  Let me just kind of throw this back at you for a bit here.   What I heard you say is that you are … the experience that you’ve had is having that connection that moved you into healing, so you needed that connection.  And when you had that connection with whatever that was in those experiences that you had, they drive you to help others to connect.  And it’s that connection with you because it becomes not self-serving to you, but for them, and that’s part of what you use for inspiration.  I also heard you say that as far as your needs go, that you need to connect, and that when you connect with others using the panel you used as an example, it wasn’t about you in that moment, but you learned from that connection which propelled you forward.  So there’s a direct correlation between the two.

Peter: Absolutely.  And again, it’s that personal contact.  It’s the whole thing … looking at somebody in the eyes, making that contact, two souls or groups of people that are connecting with each other that propels me into change.  And I find it’s what really … I know so many people who have read self-help books up the wazoo, but they don’t really change or make the change that they want to change.  And they recognize from reading those books until they really start connecting on that level with other people.  And it could be a friend, it could be a family member, it could be a complete stranger that somehow they tie in and it propels you.  But it’s about those connections.

Toni: Now when you are looking to explore, continue to explore, your own potential, what do you do?  What do you look for in addition to the connections?

Peter: Well I recognize that I kind of have a process, and I need to sort of digest information and let it sit with me for a while.  So whether it’s information that I’ve gotten from a singular person or reading a book or going to a website or listening to something, watching even a movie or something like that, it has to sort of bounce around in my subconscious for a while.  I don’t think this is true for everybody, but for me, I have a process that has to go through that includes time.  So I need to take that time to expose myself to something, let it sort of ingest in me, and then take that next step.  And generally what I need to do is get into a class, get into a workshop, get into a group setting of some sort, even if it’s a one-on-one thing; but it needs to be done with another person and that’s when I propel.

Toni: So you absolutely recognize what that process is.  You define the process for yourself and you have to walk that process?

Peter: Absolutely!  Because if I don’t, I just go into frustration.  If I don’t have that person or support to work with — because most of my work is singular; my jobs that I do, my career that I’ve created is a very singular career — and when I am the most successful at what I do, it’s always when I’ve partnered with someone else or another organization or something.  And it’s when it lights me up and I have the most fun.

Toni: There’s that spark again and fueling the fire, getting someone fired up and unraveling, and you’ve had the correlation all the way through that you explore other people’s potential by firing them up, by unraveling their options so that they can at least explore those options with their own potential.  And you use the same process with yourself, put the process in place, and then unravel it, and then look for the options and areas and direction that you want to go to.  That’s what I’ve heard you say as far as how those two connect.

Peter: Right.  That sounds good to me!

Toni: That’s pretty amazing!

Peter: And just back to that anger idea, a lot of people tend to — especially in Western culture — they tend to think that anger is wrong and bad and, you know, you can’t express it, you can’t be in it.  It’s one of those emotions that we want to suppress, and getting people to be in touch with that anger.  Yes, you don’t want to express anger in a way that is damaging to you or others, but so many times I meet people — and even I experience this with myself — that I don’t want to admit that something makes me angry.  And I know when I can just take a moment and say, “Okay, what is that about?”  It’s kind of like fear.  Fear is there for a reason, and generally I’ve discovered that fear is just my subconscious mind or my spirit, my higher self, whatever way of saying “Pay attention, this is important.  Pay attention.”  And I find anger is doing the same thing.  “Pay attention – this is important to you!  This means something.  Listen to it.  Don’t ignore it, don’t shut it down, don’t make it wrong, pay attention to it.”  And when you do, it takes away the negative aspect of it, and you can actually channel that energy into something productive.

Toni: Peter, your insight today and the words that you have chosen to share with people in this interview have been inspiring, and I really believe that people will learn and take away bits from this snapshot of time with you.  And I so appreciate you doing this and taking part in this project, and I can’t thank you enough.

Peter: Well thank you, I appreciate getting to know you and meet you.  I think it’s a very exciting thing that you’re creating, and I look forward to seeing how it evolves.

Toni: Well thank you for being a part of it, and I hope that we talk soon.

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For more information about Peter Bedard:  www.peterbedard.com

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