The Ryan Leak Podcast - Lifequakes

Episode Date: May 26, 2025

In this episode, Ryan shares the concept of a “lifequake” — those unexpected, seismic moments that shake your world and change everything. From his own story of childhood lifequake to the struggles many quietly carry today, this episode is full of empathy, hope, and real talk. Ryan unpacks two things every person needs when the ground gives way: an anchor for your soul and a friend who won’t run from your darkness. With a powerful illustration from Marvel’s Thunderbolts, this episode is for anyone going through a hard time — and anyone who loves someone who is.If you’re in the middle of a lifequake, you’re not alone. Ryan would love to pray for you.Text “prayer” and what’s going on to 469-809-1201.

Welcome to the Ryan League podcast, wherever you are, whatever it is that you are doing right in this very moment. I just wanted to say, I am so honored that you would spend a few minutes of your week, your day with me. This podcast is dedicated to providing short and sweet nuggets of inspiration that I believe can add value to your life. We're not going to keep you here all day. I'm going to just share a couple of thoughts that I think can really, really help you. I don't know if you've ever heard of this phrase. It's called life quake. A life quake.

It was actually popularized by Bruce Fieler in his book, Life is in the Transitions. He describes a life quake, as you can imagine, similar to an earthquake. He describes it as a massive, disruptive life event that shakes your world. Now, just a bump in the road, but a full-on earthquake that cracks the foundation of your life and demand a rebuild. I had my first lifequake when I was in the fifth grade. My dad suffered a stroke, and in an instant, our whole world changed. The way we lived, the way we prayed, the way we hoped.

The entire landscape of our family was never the same. I wonder what your lifequake has been. Or maybe what your lifequake is right now, perhaps it was a divorce that turned your home upside down. Maybe it was losing someone you thought you'd never have to live without. Maybe it was your child coming home, crying every day from school. maybe it was watching your son or daughter slip into anxiety or addiction maybe it was infertility or a job that gave you purpose and then it was taken away maybe your mental health unraveled and you found yourself in a darkness that you could not explain to another human being

maybe your faith was cracked in half maybe someone broke your trust maybe someone broke your heart the interesting thing about lifequakes is they don't announce themselves they don't they don't give a warning they just show up and suddenly everything that you thought was solid starts shaking And when that happens, in that moment, you often don't know where to turn. Today, I want to give you two things today, two things that I think can help you navigate a lifequake. Perhaps it's something in the past, perhaps it's something you're going through currently. The first thing that I would tell you, my friend, is this. You need an anchor for your soul.

you need an anchor for your soul because life is going to give you highs and life is going to give you lows there will be sunshine and storms there will be summer break and school bills there will be straight a's and failing grades there will be new jobs and there will be layoffs markets will rise and markets will fall tariffs will come and go i think i don't know to be honest about that i'm not a terrorist specialist but I need to read up on that. But the reality is, what I know to be true, is that you and I are going to have different seasons.

Yeah, seasons of applause and seasons where no one claps at all. There will be birthdays. There will be breakups. There will be babies. Sometimes there's bankruptcy. Life will test your footing. And in those moments, you have to ask yourself,

what's holding you together when everything else is falling apart? For me, it's Jesus Christ. My faith in him has been the steady hand on my back through it all. When I cannot stand on my own, he holds me up. When I lose hope, he reminds me who I am. When I experience any sort of life quake, I turn to Jesus Christ, who I believe is the son of the living God. My friend, at some point, I think you have to ask yourself what's going to be the anchor for your soul.

The second thing that I think is vitally important to have whenever you are trying to navigate a lifequake is secondly, I think you need someone who will sit with you in the dark. Yeah, I think you need someone. who will sit with you in the dark. I recently saw Thunderbolts, Marvel movie. Not sure if you're a super hero moviegoer. And if you haven't seen it yet, I am going to encourage you to go ahead and skip to the outro of this. Go directly to the last minute of this episode.

If you care about going to see Thunderbolts, because I am most definitely about to spoil. the movie. So here's the deal. There is a character in this movie named Century. It's a hero with godlike powers, but he is haunted by this alter ego known as the void. And he essentially struggles with mental health. And at some point of the movie, darkness takes over and it doesn't just begin to hurt him. It begins to consume him. And it actually becomes, a danger to everyone around him. And so he has this ability to send other people into their own darkness,

into the worst day of their life. He has the ability to take everyone back to that. And the entire city of like New York is being taken over by this darkness. There's this one character while everyone is running from the dark. She pauses and she's got a close relationship with Century. her name is Yelena. And Yelena does something in the movie that I thought was absolutely astounding. She doesn't run away from his darkness.

She steps into it. She moves toward him. While everyone else is backing away, she is the one stepping in. She puts herself at risk, not to fix him, not to defeat him. just to reach him, to remind him that he's not alone. And there is this moment where Century is fighting himself, and darkness is taking over, and the darkness keeps telling him,

you're always going to be alone. And Yelena, in the midst of this dark world that he's in, she just hugs him. And then a bunch of people come in and hug him and let him know that he's that he's not alone. And I'm not going to lie, I was in the theater, and I was getting teary down, sitting next to a bunch of dudes.

We're all just kind of, you know, kind of sniffling. Like, man, it's like, don't we all need a moment every now and then when we're facing our own darkness for somebody to just come and let us know, like, man, you're not alone. I mean, let's be honest, we all have a void. We all have days and months and even years when the darkness just feels louder than the light. And we all could use someone like Elena, someone who won't flinch at our worst, someone who says, I see you, and I'm not going anywhere.

Somebody who's willing to sit with us in the dark. And so today, my friend, I don't know where you are in your life right now. I don't know if you are going through a life quake. and everything around you is shaking. I'm going to ask you to do something today if that's you. Would you text me? Yeah, would you text me? I send out an encouraging text every single week to about 22,000 people as of today's recording.

And if you are going through a lifequake right now and you need somebody to pray for you, I got you. Would you just text me? Would you just text prayer and what's going on with your life to 469-809-1-201? Yeah, just text what's going on with you to 4-69-809-1-201. It's an app on my phone. I check it about once a week. It's a lot of messages in there. I can't promise you that I will respond to every single text message,

but I can promise you that when I go through those text messages, I will call out your name out loud to someone that I believe will run to you. And his name is Jesus. If you don't have anybody in your life that would pray for you, today's a little bit different. I would be honored to pray for you in that. And if there's someone you love that is going through a lifequake, I would encourage you don't fix them. Don't rush them.

I would encourage you to just be with them. Sit with them. Dare I say walk toward the darkness, not away from it. Be the steady until they can find their anger. Be that friend that shows up and says, hey, I'm willing to sit in the dark until you're ready to step into the light. My friends, thank you so much for listening. to the Ryan Link podcast. If today's episode inspired you, don't keep it to yourself.

If you have a friend that's going through something and you need to pass this on, I think this would be the perfect episode to do that. And hey, it would mean the world to me if you would take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe. And again, if you want to subscribe to some encouraging text messages, you can always text podcast to the number 469-809-1-201. and you will continue to get some nice friendly and encouraging text messages. Hey, thanks for being a part of the journey and we'll catch you next episode.