The Art of Being Purposeful Ft. Marina Suholutsky
Episode 108
In this crossover episode from The Integrative Entrepreneur Podcast, Dr. Nick interviews his friend and colleague, Marina Suholutsky. They discuss the art of being purposeful and how being purposeful differs from being motivated. Marina hosts a workshop on getting clarity around your purpose and sheds light on how blind spots combined with outside programming might get in your way. Interested in working with IWG? Book a complimentary consult call to learn more using this link: https://bit.ly/IWRcall2021
Topics: purpose, being, host, guest, marina, important, clear, purposeful
Key takeaways from this episode
- I love talking about it. **Host:** For sure. **Guest:** So the question is how do I get how does a person get clear on purpose? **Host:** Yep. **Guest:** The first thing that I would say is it's really important to understand how to define what purpose is.
- Nick and I am being joined today by one of my newer friends, Marina.
- Because what I've seen and what I find a lot is people think that purpose is this thing that you have to chase. **Host:** Right. **Guest:** It's somewhere outside of you.
- It's really it's like you have to get clear and on purpose, hence being congruent with what's most important to you, serving yourself, building yourself up, and being on purpose.
- And I am very delighted for her to be joining us today as we are going to be talking about purpose.
Pull quotes
**Host:** Imagine if medicine actually looked at you as a whole opposed to looking at you as a bunch of separate systems.
Nicole to learn more about the top trends in integrative medicine to learn about what the limitations are with testing and what you can do to start your health journey.
And I am very delighted for her to be joining us today as we are going to be talking about purpose.
Transcript
**Host:** Imagine if medicine actually looked at you as a whole opposed to looking at you as a bunch of separate systems. Dive into Integrated Wellness Radio with Dr. Nick and Dr. Nicole to learn more about the top trends in integrative medicine to learn about what the limitations are with testing and what you can do to start your health journey. Hello and welcome back to another podcast. Radio through the Integrated Growth Institute. I am Dr. Nick and I am being joined today by one of my newer friends, Marina. And I am very delighted for her to be joining us today as we are going to be talking about purpose. And when I wanted to talk about purpose, initially we were going to only be talking to it more into the eyes of entrepreneurs. As this is going to be on the Integrated Growth Podcast series, but I also probably be putting it onto just the Integrated Wellness podcast as well. As really when you look at purpose, it's it's what is fundamentally most important to us and what drives us every single day. So, you know, when we wake up and at the end of the day and we lay our head down on our bed, we are able to reflect back and see, did we take action that really served us today? Did it move the needle forward? Both personally as well as in business. As there should just be a reflection of serving what's most important to us. So, Marina owns a business called Purpose Built. So, she will be the master today and I'll be picking her brain. So, I'm going to lended it off and say, when looking at purpose fundamentally, how do you help somebody get clear on it? Deep question.
**Guest:** Getting clear on purpose. No problem.
**Host:** Yep.
**Guest:** Hey Nick. Good morning. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to actually be here. It's cool to uh uh to do purpose work in a professional setting with you.
**Host:** Oh yeah. We're not always professional together.
**Guest:** We're not always professional. Uh so so but honestly, thank you for having me. It's a super fun topic. I love talking about it.
**Host:** For sure.
**Guest:** So the question is how do I get how does a person get clear on purpose?
**Host:** Yep.
**Guest:** The first thing that I would say is it's really important to understand how to define what purpose is. Because what I've seen and what I find a lot is people think that purpose is this thing that you have to chase.
**Host:** Right.
**Guest:** It's somewhere outside of you. It's usually focused just from the perspective of work, right? What am I going to do with my life? What what am I not doing that I could be doing with my life? And for me, the way that I define purpose is a state of being. So rather than, you know, you've heard a lot sometimes we hear people say like we're we're human beings, we're not human doings.
**Host:** Right.
**Guest:** So it's sort of from that perspective, but the idea is if we are chasing something outside of ourselves, we're missing what already is. And you are living as a human being in your purpose in every single moment, you just have to know where to look.
**Host:** Yeah and and it's like we're always living and sometimes correct me if I'm wrong, but it's like the purpose that we're living may not be serving us as high as the possibilities. So it's really about being clear on that intention when we're setting, you know, pretty much you said that being. So when we look back fundamentally, there's the be do have principle. And so many of us really have been taught that it's the opposite. It's it's the they have do be, you know, soon as I have this or when I start doing this, I'll finally be content. I'll be happy with myself. I'll be fill in the blank. And it's really the opposite. It's really it's like you have to get clear and on purpose, hence being congruent with what's most important to you, serving yourself, building yourself up, and being on purpose. And from that being state, then we can do the activities that's going to be congruent with what's most important to us as well as, you know, taking action and finally having the the good life that we that we want to have and just chill.
**Guest:** Totally and so when you think about being in your state of being, right? So we're talking about purpose as in the present moment as now. What I like to do and I like to bring people into as quickly as possible is the feeling of alignment. So you can't have do be anything or be do have anything when you don't feel yourself. And and so when you actually it's a good moment um it's a good way to think about it is, you know, think about a a moment in your life where you've had no doubt. Absolutely no doubt. It's a visceral full body experience. So if you know what your favorite color is, right? You just know, you don't question. Now that may change just like your alignment alignment may change, our flow of our purpose may change. But to know when you're in alignment, when you're in your clarity of purpose, it's a full body visceral experience. there is no doubt in that. We also call that inspiration.
**Host:** Mhm.
**Guest:** At times.
**Host:** Get me started on the inspiration.
**Guest:** That was the lay up. You got to take the lay up.
**Host:** One of the things with uh inspiration is when when we look at so many people giving advice today, uh they're doing it in a way that's motivating people and we have to motivate someone when we're actually helping them serve things that really aren't that important to them. We all have a hierarchy of traits of what's most important to least important. And vice versa, things that are least important to most important. So as we started this conversation today, we talked about, you know, as you lay your head down at night, are you fulfilled? Are you the actions that you took in that day uh did it really bring out the best of you? And when we say no to that that, you know, we spend the majority of our day doing things that are not important to us. We're drained at the end of the day, we're fatigued. We have literally fill in the gap of every single aspect of pain points. Of really we need that though. We need a feedback mechanism to show us when we're quote unquote inspiring ourselves, or if we're doing something we need external motivation to help build us up.
**Guest:** Procrastination is a really good example of that. There's times where we procrastinate or we yawn throughout the day because we're just not feeling inspired because we're not living in our highest value set. So procrastination is a beautiful feedback mechanism. Doubt is a beautiful feedback mechanism. Those kinds of things point to, hey, there's something out of alignment here. So what is it about this that doesn't feel good to me? Let me take that in as data, evaluate it and get a little bit more clear.
**Host:** So do you say if, you know, if you listening to this and you're like, oh God, I procrastinate all the time, would you say that just fundamentally is because you're not on purpose?
**Guest:** It's not always the case, but there they're my what I've seen is that procrastination is a feedback mechanism that says, hey, who I am in this moment, how I'm showing up is not who I want to be or how I want to show up. It's usually tied to identity. And when our identity is threatened by things that we don't want to be doing, then we get tired and quote unquote lazy and quote unquote tired and we just sort of kind of don't do the things because we're actually you know this, right? We can't actually ever live outside of our truth. And so we slow ourselves down to give ourselves the information that we need to say, hey, this is not in our truth.
**Host:** Oh, 100%. And I love how you how you worded that. It's really when you look at procrastination, it's not always literally what you're doing, but how you're doing it in a way. So it's like, you know, you could do one thing and even you helped me out with this a couple months ago. Uh when I was stuck going through and I'm still doing the exact same thing. I'm just translated how I was doing it, how I was showing up going through the process. And now like there's no slowing down. There's no resentment, there's no frustration, there's no tension that's really holding me up because I'm showing up in a better position of who I am, hence being. And through that process, I'm more on purpose. So when we're on purpose, it's, you know, it's more of what that people are talking about that flow state now. Things are easy. Um there's no voids we're really feeling. We're just going to um more of just working through that inspiration.
**Guest:** Yeah, and I think you brought something up that's really that I hope is valuable for people, which is the idea of reframing. So sometimes it's just a one degree off switch, right? I think people or at least in my experience, people think that rewriting their belief systems is this big undertaking. Let's put everything else on pause. We're just going to bunker down, we're going to find all of our, you know, misalignments and we're just going to dig in. Sometimes it's a small reframe. So the idea of saying, okay, where is this challenge? Back to the point about procrastination, slowing myself down. What is challenging me? Where do I need to find either a different meaning or a different reframe so that I can feel more in alignment and then I can just keep right going.
**Host:** Does that make sense? Oh, 100%. And I think this is huge because most of society what I call like black and white thinking, you know, it's all or nothing. So it's like we're either on purpose or off purpose, which I think is totally bullshit. 100%. Because there's shades of being in alignment to yourself. It's it's never an all or nothing. But the constant goal is to better serve yourself more and more and more. So it's like that little shift that you brought to my attention, what made huge ripple effects in everything else I was doing in my life. But at the same time, it was just one little shift to bring up me and better alignment and being more in purpose. And the goal is to constantly really look out for those pain points of, you know, what's not serving me? What's what what activities, what decisions, what thought processes am I having that's not allowing me to be in purpose to the best ability that I do have. And then being able to use those literally judgments, self-judgments, or maybe external judgments that have that reflection within myself to be able to constantly see and then what you said, reframe really in a way to serve yourself.
**Guest:** Yeah, and it's a really nice way to think about, you know, where am I in my purpose journey. Let's call it, right? Not maybe not the best metaphor, but but so and what I mean by that is, you know, I love working with entrepreneurs who need just like a little tweak, right? That's just that's that's the part where we're all ready aligned, right? And we just need that like 2% to get to the next level, right? That's one phase of a purpose journey. Once you've gotten through what's important to me. Actually, maybe I can back up and say, hey, there's three questions I really like to ask people. Would that be useful?
**Host:** Get a pen and pencil.
**Guest:** Oh, cool. I'm going to Really important over here. No, so so it's really important to identify where a person is in their process. Right? So what you were talking about is I would say quite advanced. Right? So you know, um if I asked you what's important to you, you'd be able to answer that question, right? So for me, so when within purpose built, the big question that we ask and help people answer is what's next? You know, what am I what am I doing with my life? I've already made some money or, you know, I've sort of done the thing for a while. I've been in this role for a while, whatever it might be. And I want some meaning, right? I want a little bit more than just making money. So what's next, right? That's the big question. We break it down into three sub questions. What's important to me and what do I love? So that's what you and I were just talking about, values, purpose. What is standing in the way of me being in full alignment to what's important to me and what what I love to do? And then what impact do I want to make from a clean slate? When we've gotten those what I call thorns out of the way. Like you and I, right? We did a little bit of a oh, that was a reframe. We got a little thorn out of the way and now you're off to the races. And so that's the, you know, pretty simple. I think formula that that we use with purpose built. Yep. And sometimes it's really okay to say, I don't know what's important to me. It's just means you're an earlier stage in your journey. If you asked me five years ago, where do you want to be in five years, Marina? I'd look at you like I had broccoli coming out of my ears. And so it's totally, I think really important for people to understand, especially knowing that we're speaking to an audience that's entrepreneurial, but also broader than that, that sometimes it's really okay to just focus on the first question and get really clear. And then that is the identifying marker of the rest of your journey.
**Host:** Oh, and I mean, sometimes we do this unconsciously. We just get lucky in life. And that's why it's like, well, how life was so easy then. Why am I struggling now? And it's just it's really a lot of times I find working with people is we're we're transitioning through this next chapter. You know, you went through so many years serving what was most important to you. At a time, you didn't even have to think about it. You just kind of stepped into it naturally. But then sometimes we go through this unnatural process in life where if we don't have the right quality questions, we're going to continue doing the same thing that got us to where we're at, but it's not what's really going to take us to where we want to be in life. So being able to have a foundation of like you said, knowing where we're at, and we have to get clear on that to be able to build a build off of. You know, one of the things I say to entrepreneurs working with them is, you know, we all work our ass off and we know that you have to today to be able to really honestly just survive. But it's not about working your ass off. It's about, you know, working intelligently, working smarter, being able to have your work honestly compound and work for you so you don't have to work for your work. And a big part of that is having that foundation to build off of. And even if you're not an entrepreneur, it's like you may have really had family and your kids be the biggest focal point, but now kids left for college or, you know, your kids are moved away and they have families. And now we're like, well, what's my purpose now? I don't have a purpose because my purpose was raising kids and now I don't have kids to raise. Like, what am I supposed to be doing with my life?
**Guest:** Yeah, I've it brings to mind actually quite a few people that I've recently worked with, but I'll give you one example, where there's a person I worked with. He was in the building business for 20 years. So construction, right? So built this construction company, put his kids through college, did all of that. So, um, you know, allowed for all of the experiences his family had. And his kids are all off doing their own thing. They're entrepreneurs, all of them, right? It's fascinating. Or at least two out of three. And he kind of came to me and he was like, so I'm bored building because the motivation, the intrinsic motivation went away. Right. Right. The intrinsic driver to say, I'm putting my kids through this or I'm right. It was like, okay, I'm just kind of now it's me and my partner. And I'm the one doing the self work. And I'm really interested in looking deep more deeply to look at what's under the thing, under the thing, under the thing.
**Host:** Yep. What's the why?
**Guest:** What's the why, right? And and what was fascinating was when we did his purpose statement, it was still the idea of building, it just took a new form. So energy does not is not ever created or destroyed, changed into a new form. And it was really beautiful because we found the new form where he's now helping uh helping parents build futures and experiences with their children.
**Host:** I love it. So it's I mean, literally you look at what he used it for to fill himself up with. Now, he doesn't need that to fill himself up. So he can actually give that to everyone else.
**Guest:** Beautiful. It's so beautiful. We were crying. I have goosebumps every time I tell the story. It's it's really cool because I hope everybody can take something away from the story to say, look, what I was doing before, it's not throw away work. Right? It's not so we judge ourselves for, oh, I'm not where I'm supposed to be. I I'm not doing that thing. I've always supposed to, you know, should have been should have been doing injected value. And it's not the case. It was serving then. And the real question is, okay, do I want that same form to continue or do I want to take a minute and ask myself, okay, what is true to me now in this moment? Let's again get super clear. Let's feel ourselves. Let's find our alignment. And then ask, okay, what is the new form that this wants to take?
**Host:** Oh, and when you have tears, like what you and your guys are talking about, it's you know, you're inspired. You know, you hit the jackpot. But it's one of the things I want to come back to really quick is that all he did was change his outlook on what he was doing. He didn't have to go and get rid of his business partner. He didn't have to hire. He didn't have to purchase equipment. He didn't have to change anything he was doing, but his perception. And as soon as you helped him change his perception, he was back in purpose. And what that really shows us is that I would say the majority of everybody out there in the world is standing on a gold mine. Their past experiences because it's our past experiences that really make us up to who we are today, which is beautiful. I mean, we all of the pain, all of the pleasure that we've gone through make us up who we are today. And when we can figure out how to take that and be able to serve others with it, that's the gold mine. And he was he was working. He was doing his day in and day out job, but he wasn't fulfilled. He wasn't inspired. He wasn't on purpose. But as soon as you helped him see his past and be able to use that to serve himself. Now, he's he's honestly probably going to make more money than he ever did.
**Guest:** Well, totally. And so I say this to clients all the time, there isn't a single person that I've worked with who hasn't needed some kind of transition plan. Right. Right? And for him, it was actually really easy. His business is now fully self-running, right? We've talked about this a lot, Nick, right? How do you get the businesses to to fully support whatever you're on whatever the next thing is that you're on to. Right? So he's not just throwing his business away. That that would be not in support?
**Host:** That'd be silly. On so many different reasons, you break it down, that'd be silly.
**Guest:** That would be silly. Right. And so it's just finding a way for that to to truly light light the next fire, right? Let it be what supports you in this case, right? And and you're off doing the next thing because you've freed up your time. But it's not throwing the baby out with the bath water. I think that's a really important whether you're in a corporate career, whether you're in your own thing, it's really just how can this serve me. For me, when I left corporate, just uh because I haven't, you know, your audience probably doesn't know this, but I spent 12 years in corporate. And I was building products and brands and businesses for other people. And if I were to go back and say, oh, that was 12 years of throwing away, you know, just completely being out of purpose. That's completely inaccurate. The second that I had a team, I was living in my purpose. It was instant that I started building that team up, helping every single person that I was with live in their values, live in their purpose, live authentically, which is my purpose. Right. And so it was just knowing where to look. And then as I realized the thing that really truly lights me up was a transition plan. And here we are.
**Host:** And you wouldn't, I mean, and this is just looking back that you used every single thing and for the most part you had another company pay you to be able to learn all those things.
**Guest:** Ding, ding, ding.
**Host:** And that's that's the best part of life is an an intelligent entrepreneur's always trying to use somebody else's money uh to be able to grow themselves as so they can go out and grow their own business.
**Guest:** 100%.
**Host:** But it's you look at that, you know, most people say, well, that's that's a negative thing. But it's not it's not negative. It's it's not it's not what you do, but how you do it. It's like you you need to create a win-win uh relationship in all aspects of life, whether it's with you, your partner, you, the business. Um whether it's a business that you own or a business that you work for. The goal is to have that win-win because you don't have to be an entrepreneur to be on purpose. You can be on purpose and literally um be a part of a team, be a part of a corporation, whether that's small or large mom and popper, huge. It's it's if you are in a position where you're inspired, you're thriving yourself up and you're able to be able to do that with others, then it's a win-win situation. But if you're um back working in corporate and you were just taking all that, but not giving back to the corporation, just using that to be selfish. Well, there's a lot of things we could go on with that. But that would be a a win-loss. And then literally it's like we don't change the being. So you would have those same issues. You would attract those same type of clients, same type of employees into your own business because in all aspects of life, whether we're looking at a family or whether we're looking at a corporation, energy is above down. Uh so first and foremost, it's it's really looking at the hierarchy of how we show up into our lives. If we're on purpose because that's really the best thing we can give somebody is them to be able to shine their own light. And and in families, I see it all the time is where really it's like most of the time it's mother's, but more and more it's fathers now. Is that, you know, we're wanting to help our kids be to the best potential they can be. And it's like, we're overly strict trying to push them into all these different whether it's sports, whether it's music, whether it's different academics, to be the best they can be. But what's interesting when you look at nature versus nurture, what wins? Perception. Neither of them do. So it's always the individuals have they perceive what's going on is what's going to be the game changer and create those pain points or those pleasure points to be able for them to have the reactions to be going forward and, you know, trying to figure out what their purpose is in life. So it's one big crazy freaking cycle. Um I'm kind of obsessed with the beauty of it. But so once we find out, you know, clarity, like you said, going through the values, getting the foundation of what's most important, the purpose on somebody, how what's the next step? Where do you take them with that?
**Guest:** So again, everybody's different, but for the most part, what happens is so for us, we get a person to a purpose statement. So for me, I am here to help people live authentically. I am here. My my uh sort of task in life, right? Is to continue to grow into my most authentic self. So often what happens when a person person gets a purpose statement, is they're like they they have this beautiful moment of inspiration, as we talked about. And then the blind spots come in, right? And then all the little programming
**Host:** So I know what you mean by blind spots, but like somebody else that's like a blind spot. I don't
**Guest:** So it's all the societal programming, the family programming that gets in the way that says, well, that's lovely. I get to be myself I get to be myself in my downtime in my room, but can't live that way in the rest of the world. Can't make money that way in the rest of the world. Can't can't can't, can't, shouldn't, shouldn't. That's what we mean by blind spots. It's the places in ourselves that are speaking through someone else's voice.
**Host:** And I mean, I we both actually met uh for community. I met Marina going through some of the De Martini training, being a facilitator through his uh brilliant method. But then as both of us, uh we take his foundation, as well as our past and all the other learnings that we've had and kind of build and weave um our own techniques into that. So for you, what's I everybody's different. I work every single thing that we do with each individuals uh slightly different. But give us just like a little picture of, you know, how do you go through and help somebody even see blind spots?
**Guest:** Yeah, so we start usually just going through a conversation that says, okay, so you now you feel yourself potentially for the first time. What are your worries what are your fears? What are your can's that are likely going to stand in the way of you truly embodying you? So we have a conversation. We get a nice big list of can's and shouldn't, right? And then the ones that have the highest what we would call emotional charge, so something that, you know, you feel in the gut or in the pit of your stomach and you know logically that it's not rational, but you can't help feeling that way.
**Host:** And is that more like non-tangible things like, you know, just a lack of deserving, or is it more I physically don't have time?
**Guest:** It's more intangible for the most part. What I'm talking about are pretty um deep rooted subconscious beliefs. Um because, you know, it's funny we we talk about this, I say this at purpose built a lot. We know the difference between a a market opportunity and a mommy issue. Right? And so sometimes it's a marketing or a market issue. And sometimes you just need to have better time management. So we talk about atomic habits and we find all the different practical ways of of implementing.
**Host:** But this is why Marina is good because it was a really subtle up to see where she's at and able to help people because it's never a time thing. Time's always an effect. You know, it's like how you're serving yourself is dictating how you're using your time. If you're doing low productive actions, you don't have time for anything. But if you're doing high productive actions, if you're on purpose, you have all the time in the world to serve yourself and to serve others.
**Guest:** Yeah, I can't shut up about it. It can be 3:00 in the morning and I'll have this conversation with anybody who wants to listen, right? Because I'm living in my highest in my truth. Right. And so for the most part, that's sort of the we'll take care of that once we get to the root of what's actually going on. And so often it's, you know, uh, I don't matter or I'm not good enough, those kinds of things, but sometimes it's also more specific. It can be a really acute trauma point. So, um, a business partner relationship that went sideways. Right? I've gotten that quite a few times. And it's just this thing that's hanging in the back of of a person's mind and they are taking their they're making decisions and taking actions to avoid something that happened in the past in the future.
**Host:** Oh, big time. People I'm surprised. You know, honestly, like, you know, we have in my mind it's a very small company. There's 21 of us. And, you know, like working with these big time executives sometimes it's like you th I feel, not we feel feel, I feel. I'm like, what am I going to teach this person? And it's like people hate conflict. Like it's crazy how many people avoid the candid conversation. And you'd think like these big time executives that they would just it would be their day-to-day. That's just their constant. But in reality, it's like we all have been programmed to not like to have these hard candid conversations where you've been hurt, somebody else has been hurt, or screwed over. You fill in the blank what you want it to be. But it's if we can't use that to serve ourselves and get past it, then we're never going we're not allowing ourselves to be on purpose really.
**Guest:** And that's where people find themselves making money, losing money, making money, losing money, right? It's a pretty interesting cycle that happens quite often. And so finding that jokingly mommy issue, right? It's not always a mommy issue, but really looking at it and not um, you know, welcoming it in because there's a fear. There's a fear of failure. There's a fear of of of, you know, not living up to what the rest of your community is doing, which by the way, is not just for entrepreneurs. It's I see it a lot with moms. Happens a lot with moms. Right? And so Even athletics. You know, growing up as an athlete, I would see it and live it. You know, it's like always trying to we're always comparing ourselves to everyone else. Totally. And and so really just leaning into it and acknowledging, hey, this exists. And what I like to tell people it's it's tricky to describe um deep inner work in a way that is applicable to a large audience. But what I like to tell people is, look, there are times where we have been, let's just assume you're on a hike, right? And we've been just walking up the the hill and having a good time, seeing the scenery. And then all of a sudden, we look down and our pocket's really full. It's like, why is my pocket really full and kind of heavy. And you, you know, reach into your pocket and there's a rock. And all of a sudden, you're aware of this rock. Right? And then you're like, well, do I want this rock? How did I I forgot I picked it up somewhere along the trail. And now I'm in choice. That's what what belief work, deep inner work, personal development work is actually opening up for a person. It's true choice. It's finding awareness and bringing awareness to something we did not see before. And now we feel safe enough to look because we have a support system, or we've got, you know, a good foundation now. So now we feel safe enough to look and make a choice. Okay, I see the rock. Do I want to carry the rock or am I going to put it down? Right. And what I tell people in workshops a lot is, listen, you're here you're here for three hours. If you want to go back down the hill and pick the rock up again, put it in your in your pocket. Let it be heavy and keep walking, totally your choice. And now that we're in a safe space, let's actually look at it and decide what the new form will be, back to that conversation that we had before. That energy will transform into something powerful, beautiful, in service of you, if you allow it to. Or if you push it away and just keep it somewhere in the back pocket, it's still heavy. It's still super heavy and it's driving these decisions and driving these patterns. And so for anybody who's listening, who has found themselves repeating the same thing over and over again and you just don't know why, what I would highly encourage is to find a safe safe person, safe community, safe container to allow that that pattern to be observed and seen and witnessed so that you can transmute it.
**Host:** Oh, and I mean, I'm probably going to steal that story because it's very brilliant how it's, you know, we start off with our foundation, of getting being in purpose. Figuring out what's most important to us and then we go on the journey, the hike of on life. And as we go through, we have, you know, like you said, I don't know where I picked this rock up. And that's a blind spot. You know, you don't ever see the rock until either you take the time into reflect on on yourself or sometimes um this is why I worked with Marina a couple months ago, is because sometimes we just have the blinders on and we need somebody else to be able to see it. And when we have that opportunity, like you said, we gain awareness. And then the the amazing thing is is that initially you get pissed off at the rock. Um because it's been weighing you down for so long. But what we don't realize is that carrying that rock around has actually made us so much stronger. Is is we've physically become stronger. We've mentally become stronger. We've literally had the opportunity to strengthen so many aspects of our life. But now we're at a point where we've gained that conscious awareness that it's not really serving us to where we want to be. So we have a choice. And through that empowerment, we can be able to literally choose to see different, be different, have different. And when we transform that into really an act, a service, uh even a product in a way that actually is in alignment with our purpose, with our highest value, what's most important to us, then we can fill ourselves up, be inspired. And my most important thing is being able to always literally increase my resonance of my being so I can give more. It's you can't give something you don't have. So really it's about that ownership first, about building yourself up, being on purpose so that you can actually help others be on purpose and build themselves up as well.
**Guest:** Totally. There's there's a quote that I really like by Sam Harris. Do you know Sam Harris?
**Host:** Sounds familiar. I'm really bad at names though. Okay.
**Guest:** He's got a podcast called making sense. Slightly different podcast than what we're doing here. But um to the point about choice, which I think is I know is critical. Without an a conscious awareness
**Host:** All you have to do is say pandemic.
**Guest:** Yeah. Totally.
**Host:** A lot of us felt like we didn't have a choice.
**Guest:** Totally. Exactly. And so um, you know, I can pull up the quote, but I'm just going to paraphrase it. He basically says, you know, people who live meaningful, quote unquote, right? Meaningful lives are choosing to tell their story through a lens of the pains and pleasures they have experienced in support of who they are today. So they're telling a story that gives meaning to to the experiences that they've had, right? They're choosing to tell a version of the story that has been beneficial to where they're headed.
**Host:** Oh, and I'm and I love, I'm always searching for the balance as you know. And I'm always the geek that's like you say meaning and my mind goes straight into numbers and looking at it's like mathematics, it's the average. So it's like, but you said it perfectly. It's how, you know, they bring both the highs and the lows, the pleasures and the pains. But it's really right on the average, the meaning of that is what gives life the meaning. It's so brilliant. Um, so would you say so we have pretty much kind of taking uh a person through the process. We get the foundation. We get blind spots. We figure out how to transform that. Is it then you set them loose? Like what's the next steps of using purpose and making sure because we know that you're not, it's not a light switch. You're not on or you're not off. It's just a constant building upon.
**Guest:** That's my favorite part. Thanks for asking. So there's a few again, no, there is no one size fits all, but there are a couple of consistent tracks that I see. So we use a pretty uh common framework. It's called Ikigai. Have you ever heard of Ikigai?
**Host:** Mm-mm.
**Guest:** So it's a, you know, 5,000 year old Japanese framework. Ikigai means reason for being. Okay. Okay. And so once we have the foundation and the the things that light you up that just spark everything inside you, right? We we've cleared some of the stuff out of the way. We actually map what lights you up through the lens of passions, jobs, careers, missions. And so we actually say, okay, do is this something I actually feel so passionately about that it becomes my mission and my vision? And I can start to build that into either an existing organization, pivot it as needed. Yep. Or create something that new, right? Some things I I tell this joke a lot and maybe this is totally off color for this podcast. Well, I'm going to do it anyway. So I adore designer lipstick. Like I spend it's not what I thought was going to come out of your mouth. I know. We own all of our traits, right? I am a plethora of interesting things. But I I say this because it it kind of it hits home for people. So it it substitute lipstick for for cars, for whatever, right? There are certain things that I am deeply inspired by, even passionate about that I don't want to spend money on. I'm perfectly happy being a consumer. Right? And so it's actually really important to ask yourself those questions. Is this part of my mission and my vision for what I'm building, or is this just a passion that I have, right? And to to tease apart. So we use Ikigai to tease this apart and we say, okay, what do I want to get paid for? What do I love? What's just something I, you know, I'm passionate about, but what's my contribution to the world? Right? So I'll be very honest. I almost named Purpose Built the Impact Institute. Yeah. P S to come, right? That's coming. And I say that because the contribution, the asking outside of yourself is really important. So what is the impact that I want to make on the people who who work for me, the people who I want to serve, right? You start asking beyond yourself. There's a quote that I really love that says trauma makes us all narcissists. Hm. The idea being that when we are still in our stuff, right? We don't really look beyond ourselves. We focus from the perspective of I, it's ego. It's it's it's what I need. Yeah. And when you clear some of that out, you start going, okay, what does the world need? What do I want to contribute? And that makes sense.
**Host:** Oh, and oh, it makes complete sense. It's really it's like if you look at the laws of creation and the transcendent of filling yourself up so that you can fill others up. Uh it's like, you know, put the mask the oxygen mask on yourself so that you can actually put the oxygen mask on others. But it's really it's looking at uh and actually it was our mentor uh John D Martini. I remember him saying this is that if you if you want to change a family, you know, focus on the community. If you want to focus on a community, you know, look at your state. And if you want to you know, change your state, you have to change uh have your why big enough to change um a nation and then if you want to change your entire nation, you know, you really have to have a global vision. So it's in order to make a change, the vision, the connection has to be so much bigger than you. And that's honestly one of the things is getting down to like the why. We do it with entrepreneurs, but even, you know, through health, people think it's weird, but I get crazy clear on goals. And it's like being able to be specific of, you know, why do you want to get healthy? Because if you just want to get healthy for to be healthy, you don't have a big enough Why to actually ever achieve it. So it's always first and most important in my mind is the mind because that's what dictates every single thought, decision, action that we take in life. So being able to help somebody expand upon what their vision is right now. when we can grow that, then we can have that reflection and we can grow ourselves.
**Guest:** Totally. And to to bring this back to that feeling of alignment that we were talking about in the beginning. So for you know, people ask, well, why is the why important? Right. Hundreds of purpose coaches, hundreds of people talking about how why is really important. So I fully have experienced this myself. The why is important because it gets you to feel something. Right? It actually brings you into alignment with your own felt sense of where your where you are and where you're headed. And the bigger the impact, I mean, I get get, right? When we're doing these workshops with with entrepreneurs or or mostly with entrepreneurs, right? Two day workshops that are getting them to feel their impact, your whole being starts to vibrate. You you get goosebumps, right? And that's because the why is a full body felt sense experience. Like we were talking about in the beginning. And for anybody who's kind of going, well, I don't have that, then that's the feedback. That's that's the the the close loop circuit. Right.
**Host:** Yeah. If you're if and that's very beautiful and very easy to like, you know, if you're if you're vibrating, if you're just feeling intense gratitude for what you do, you know that you're your mission, your why, your purpose, uh you're in alignment. But we also, it's not to be mad or judged if we're not feeling that right now. Because like even said, you know, a couple months, I wasn't feeling that. I reached out, transitioned some blind spots. Now, I'm back into feeling that resonance. So it's not a not an on or off. It's just shades. Uh shades of light. Shades of alignment. Shades of alignment. Uh for sure. Book series coming 2021, 2022. I want to say shades of alignment, phase one. But really it's like that's that's pretty, pretty amazing. Um as we start to wrap up, is there any things also that you like to talk about uh purpose with people? Or is it pretty much that three kind of pillars of, you know, first we got to get clear um about what's most important to you, have that foundation of purpose. Then it's removing blind spots so that you know, it's pretty much taking your foot off the brake so that you can actually start moving forward uh and more alignment.
**Guest:** Throw that rock away.
**Host:** Right? Throw that rock away. Um transition it into a paper airplane or whatever it's going to serve you. Uh and then really getting crystal clear on that on that vision. What's your mission in life?
**Guest:** Yeah, you know, I'll build on something you said around gratitude because someone um described that feeling of purpose as a moment of self-love and gratitude and self-love are they're the same energetically to me and I think to you, right? Grace, gratitude, love, joy. Grace, gratitude, inspiration, all of those. And so you know, when you asked, is it is it just a time management issue? It's that's where we come back to there is an element of love, of self-love. And when you find the courage or are just in a place of readiness to ask that question, this is a journey of self-love. And that may be sounds a little bit It's it's the woo-woo, but that's part of life, you know. But it is. And and I, you know, what we see pretty consistently, it's it brings you into gratitude for who you are. It brings you gratitude for everything into gratitude for everything that you've experienced, right? That's that's to part and challenge and transmution. And it brings you into gratitude for what you can contribute. Right? Yep. And easier said than done. Definitely takes a place of of courage and readiness. But it is one of the most beautiful things that I've that I've experienced with people. It's it's such a phenomenal transformative journey when a person's ready for it.
**Host:** Yeah. So I mean, as we wrap up, we'll wrap up with woo-woo. And the matter of fact is that you can't give something that you don't have. So if you're not on purpose, if you don't have a mission to be able to serve yourself and to serve others, you're not loving yourself. So the woo-woo about it is the best thing we can actually give both ourselves and other people is love. And we can't do that if we're not on purpose. So, check out Marina's Purpose Built programs. If you are wanting to combine more of executive as well as um the integrative aspect of health, definitely go to our website integratedwellnessgroup.com or integratedgrowthinstitute.com and check us out. But we will be talking more on purpose and a different form coming up soon.
**Unknown:** We thank you for being a listener and subscriber to integrative wellness radio. If you're looking to learn more about integrative wellness group as well as Dr. Nick or Dr. Nicole, you can check out integratedwellnessgroup.com.
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About Integrative You Radio
Integrative You Radio is a root cause medicine and integrative medicine podcast hosted by Dr. Nicole Rivera and Dr. Nick Carruthers — two integrative doctors who build personalized wellness protocols from your DNA, minerals, hormones, gut, and nervous system rather than from a population template. Looking for an integrative doctor who reads your labs together instead of in isolation? This is the show.
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