Ep #23: The Art of Being Purposeful Ft. Marina Suholutsky

Dr. Nicole:

This is the Integrative Entrepreneur podcast, where it’s not what you do, but how you do it. This is a podcast for entrepreneurs, brought to you by entrepreneurs. We have been building a multi-million dollar healthcare business for over 10 years, and we have weaved together some of the best information for the people that are doing the best work in the business. This includes Dr. Demartini, who is a master in human behavior, to Verne Harnish, who has created the methodology of scaling up, that has scaled many, many of the best businesses that we all know of. We want you to not only have a business that you love, but also a life that you love.

Dr. Nick:

Hello and welcome back to another podcast radio through the Integrative Growth Institute. I am Dr. Nick and I am being joined today by one of my newer friends, Marina. I am very delighted for her to be joining us today, as we are going to be talking about purpose. 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 Integrative Growth podcast series, but I also will probably be putting it onto just the Integrative Wellness podcast as well.

                Really, when you look at purpose, it’s what is fundamentally most important to us and what drives us every single day. 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?” They should just be a reflection of serving what’s most important to us.

                Marina owns a business called Purpose Built, so she will be the master today and I will be picking her brain. I’m going to lend it off and say, “When looking at purpose, fundamentally, how do you help somebody get clear on it?” Deep question.

Marina:

Getting clear on purpose. No big deal.

Dr. Nick:

Yep.

Marina:

Hey, Nick. Good morning. Thank you for having me. I’m so excited to actually be here.

Dr. Nick:

Oh, yeah.

Marina:

It’s cool to do purpose work in a professional setting with you.

Dr. Nick:

We’re not always professional together.

Marina:

We’re not always professional. But honestly, thank you for having me. It’s a super fun topic. I love talking about it.

Dr. Nick:

For sure.

Marina:

The question is, “How does a person get clear on purpose?”

Dr. Nick:

Yep.

Marina:

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. It’s somewhere outside of you. It’s usually focused just from the perspective of work. What am I going to do with my life? What am I not doing, that I could be doing with my life?

                For me, the way that I define purpose is a state of being. Sometime we hear people say, “We’re human beings. We’re not human doings.” 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. You are living as a human being in your purpose in every single moment. You just have to know where to look.

Dr. Nick:

Yeah. We’re always living. Sometimes, and correct me if I’m wrong, the purpose that we’re living may not be serving us as high as the possibilities. It’s really about being clear on that intention we’re setting. Pretty much, you said, that being. When we look back fundamentally, there’s the be, do, have principle. So many of us really have been taught that it’s the opposite. It’s the have, do, be. 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.

                It’s really the opposite. 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. 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 taking action, and finally having the good life that we want to have, and just chill.

Marina:

Totally. It’s interesting. When we think about-

Dr. Nick:

Then can edit this.

Marina:

They can edit. Give me a minute. You were asking about … Hold on. I was going to say something about being. Okay.

                When you think about being in your state of being … Right? We’re talking about purposes 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. You can’t have, do, be anything, or be, do, have anything when you don’t feel yourself.

                A good way to think about it is, think about a moment in your life where you’ve had absolutely no doubt. It’s a visceral, full body experience. If you know what your favorite color is, you just know. You don’t question. Now, that may change, just like your alignment may change. Our flow of our purpose may change. 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 at times.

Dr. Nick:

Get me started on the inspiration.

Marina:

It was the lay up. You’ve got to take the lay up.

Dr. Nick:

One of the things with inspiration is, when we look at so many people giving advice today, they’re doing it in a way that’s motivating people. 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.

                As we started this conversation today, we talked about, as you lay your head down at night, are you fulfilled? Are the actions that you took in that day, did it really bring out the best of you? When we say no to that, that we spent the majority of our day serving things that are not important to us, we’re drained at the end of the day. We’re fatigued. Literally fill in the gap of every single aspect of pain points. We need that though. We need a feedback mechanism to show us when we’re “inspiring ourselves,” or if we’re doing something and we need external motivation to help build us up.

Marina:

Procrastination is a really good example of that. There’s time when 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. 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. 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.”

Dr. Nick:

If you’re listening to this and you’re like, “I procrastinate all the time,” would you say that just fundamentally is because you’re not on purpose?

Marina:

It’s not always the case, but 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. When our identity is threatened by things that we don’t want to be doing, then we get tired, and “lazy,” and “tired.” We just sort of don’t do the things, because we’re actually … You know this. Right. We can’t actually ever live outside of our truth. We slow ourselves down, to give ourselves the information that we need, to say, “Hey. This is not in our truth.”

Dr. Nick:

Oh, 100 percent. I love 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. You can do one thing … Even you helped me out with this a couple months ago, when I was stuck going through. I’m still doing the exact same thing, I just translated how I was doing it, how I was showing up, going through the process.

                Now, 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. Through that process, I’m more on purpose. When we’re on purpose, it’s more of what that … People are talking about that flow state now. Things are easy. There’s no voids we’re really filling. We’re just going to more of just working through that inspiration.

Marina:

Yeah. I think you brought something up that I hope is valuable for people, which is the idea of reframing. Sometimes it’s just a one degree off switch. At least in my experience, people think that rewriting their belief system is this big undertaking. Let’s put everything else on pause. We’re just going to hunker down. We’re going to find all of our misalignments, and we’re just going to dig in. Sometimes, it’s a small reframe.

                The idea of saying, “Okay. Where is this challenge?” Back to the point of 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? Does that make sense?

Dr. Nick:

Oh, 100 percent. I think this is huge, because most of society, what I call black and white thinking. It’s all or nothing.

Marina:

Totally.

Dr. Nick:

We’re either on purpose or we’re off purpose, which I think is totally bullshit.

Marina:

100 percent agree.

Dr. Nick:

There’s shades of being in alignment to yourself. It’s never an all or nothing, but the constant goal is to better serve yourself more, and more, and more. That little shift, that you brought to my attention, made huge ripple effects in everything else I was doing in my life. At the same time, it was just one little shift to bring up me in better alignment, being more in purpose.

                The goal is to constantly really look out for those pain points, of what’s not serving me. 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? Then, be able to use those self judgments, or maybe external judgments that have that reflection within myself, to be able to constantly see and then, like you said, reframe really in a way to serve yourself.

Marina:

Yeah. It’s a really nice way to think about, “Where am I in my purpose journey, let’s call it?” Not the best metaphor. What I mean by that is, I love working with entrepreneurs who need just a little tweak. That’s the part where we’re already aligned, and we just need that two percent to get to the next level. That’s one phase of a purpose journey, once you’ve gotten through, “What’s important to me?” Actually, maybe I can backup and say, “Hey. There’s three questions I really like to ask people.” Would that be useful?

Dr. Nick:

Get a pen and pencil.

Marina:

Cool.

Dr. Nick:

Write this down.

Marina:

Real important over here. It’s really important to identify where a person is in their process. What you were talking about is, I would say, quite advanced. If I asked you, “What’s important to you?,” you’d be able to answer that question. Right?

Dr. Nick:

Yep.

Marina:

Within Purpose Built, the big question that we ask and help people answer is, “What’s next?” What am I doing with my life? I’ve already made some money, or I’ve done the thing for a while. I’ve been in this role for a while. Whatever it might be. I want some meaning. I want a little bit more than just making money, so what’s next? That’s the big question.

                We break it down into three sub questions. What’s important to me and what do I love? 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 I love to do? 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? You did a little bit of, “Oh. That was a reframe. We got a little thorn out of the way, and now you’re off to the races.”

                That’s the pretty simple, I think, formula that we use with Purpose Built. Sometimes it’s really okay to say, “I don’t know what’s important to me.” This just means you’re at 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. 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. That is the identifying marker of the rest of your journey.

Dr. Nick:

Sometimes, we do this unconsciously. We just get lucky in life. That’s why it’s like, “Life was so easy then. Why am I struggling now?” It’s really, a lot of times I find, where people are transitioning through this next chapter. You went through so many years serving what was most important to you. At the time, you didn’t even have to think about it. You just 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.

                Be able to have a foundation of, like you said, knowing where we’re at. We have to get clear on that, to be able to build off of. One of the things I say to entrepreneurs, working with them is, “We all work our ass off. 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 working intelligently, working smarter, be able to have your work honestly compound and work for you, so you don’t have to work for your work.” A big part of that is, having that foundation to build off of.

                Even if you’re not an entrepreneur, you may have really had family and your kids be the biggest focal point, but now kids left for college, or your kids are moved away and they have families. Now, we’re like, “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. What am I supposed to be doing with my life?”

Marina:

Yeah. It brings to mind actually quite a few people that I’ve recently worked with, but I’ll give you one example. There was a person I worked with, he was in the building business for 20 years, so construction. Built this construction company, put his kids through college, did all of that.

Dr. Nick:

Move that microphone a little closer to you.

Marina:

This is so awkward. He had a building business, construction business. It’s what put his kids through college. It’s what allowed for all of the experiences his family had. His kids are all off, doing their own thing. They’re entrepreneurs, all of them. It’s fascinating. At least two out of three. He came to me and he was like, “I’m bored building,” because the intrinsic motivation went away. Right?

Dr. Nick:

Right.

Marina:

The intrinsic driver to say, “I’m putting my kids through this.” It was like, “Okay. Now it’s me and my partner, and I’m the one doing the self work. I’m really interested in looking more deeply, to look at what’s under the thing, under the thing, under the thing.”

Dr. Nick:

Yeah. What’s the why?

Marina:

What’s the why? Right? What was fascinating was, when we did his purpose statement, it was still the idea of building, it just took a new form. Energy is not ever created or destroyed, changes into a new form. It was really beautiful, because we found the new form, where he’s now helping parents build futures and experiences with their children.

Dr. Nick:

I love it. 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.

Marina:

It’s so beautiful. We were crying. I have goosebumps every time I tell the story. 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 throwaway work.” We judge ourselves for, “Oh. I’m not where I’m supposed to be. I’m not doing that thing I should’ve been doing.” Injected value.

                It’s not the case. It was serving then. 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?”

Dr. Nick:

When you have tears, like what you guys were talking about, you know you’re inspired. You know you hit the jackpot. 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 a 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. As soon as you helped him change his perception, he was back in purpose.

                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. It’s our past experiences that really make us up to who we are today, which is beautiful. All of the pain, all of the pleasure that we’ve gone through make us up who we are today. When we can figure out how to take that and be able to serve others with it, that’s the gold mine.

                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 soon as you helped him see his past, and be able to use that to serve himself, now he’s honestly probably going to make more money than he ever did.

Marina:

Well, totally. 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. For him, it was actually really easy. His business is now fully self running. We’ve talked about this a lot, Nick. How do you get the businesses to fully support whatever the next thing is that you’re on to? He’s not just throwing his business away. That would be not in support.

Dr. Nick:

That would be silly.

Marina:

That’d be silly.

Dr. Nick:

On so many different reasons. You break it down, that’d be silly.

Marina:

Right, and so it’s just finding a way for that to truly light the next fire. Let it be what supports you, in this case. You’re off doing the next thing, because you freed up your time. It’s not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. 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?”

                Your audience probably doesn’t know this, but I spent 12 years in corporate. I was building products, and brands, and business for other people. If I were to go back and say, “Oh. That was 12 years of 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. It was just knowing where to look. Then, as I realized the thing that really, truly lights me up, it was a transition plan. Here we are.

Dr. Nick:

This is just looking back, but you used every single thing, and for the most part, you had another company pay you to be able to learn all those things.

Marina:

Ding, ding, ding, ding.

Dr. Nick:

That’s the best part of life. An intelligent entrepreneur is always trying to use somebody else’s money to be able to grow themselves, so they can go out and grow their own business.

Marina:

100 percent.

Dr. Nick:

You look at that, most people would say that’s a negative thing, but it’s not. It’s not negative. It’s not what you do, but how you do it. You need to create a win-win relationship in all aspects of life, whether it’s with you, your partner, you, the business, 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 be a part of a team, be a part of a corporation, whether that’s small or large, mom and pop or huge. If you are in a position where you’re inspired, you’re serving yourself up, and you’re able to be able to do that with others, then it’s a win-win situation.

                If you were back working in corporate, and you were just taking all of that, but not giving back to the corporation, just using that to be selfish, well there’s a lot of things that we could go on with that, but that would be a win-loss. Literally, it’s like we don’t change the being. 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.

                First and foremost, 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. In families, I see it all the times. Really, most the time it’s mothers, but more and more it’s fathers now. We’re wanting to help our kids be to the best potential that they can be. 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 that they can be.

                What’s interesting, when you look at nature versus nurture, what wins? Perception. Neither of them do. It’s always the individuals. How they perceive what’s going on is 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 trying to figure out what their purpose is in life. It’s one big crazy freaking cycle. I’m kind of obsessed with the beauty of it.

                Once we find out clarity, like you said, going through the values, getting the foundation of what’s most important, the purpose on somebody, what’s the next step? Where do you take them with that?

Marina:

Again, everybody is different.

Dr. Nick:

Of course.

Marina:

But for the most part, what happens for us, we get a person to a purpose statement. For me, I am here to help people live authentically. My task in life is to continue to grow into my most authentic self. Often what happens, when a person gets a purpose statement, is they have this beautiful moment of inspiration, as we talked about. Then, the blind spots come in. All the little programming-

Dr. Nick:

I know what you mean by blind spots, but somebody else that’s like, “A blind spot? I don’t-

Marina:

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 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 voices.

Dr. Nick:

We both actually met for a community. I met Marina going through some of the Demartini trainings, being a facilitator through his brilliant method, but then as both of us, we take his foundation as well as our past, and all the other learnings that we’ve had, and build and interweave our own techniques into that. Everybody’s different at work. Every single thing that we do with each individual is slightly different, but give us just a little picture of, “How do you go through and help somebody even see blind spots?”

Marina:

We start, usually, just going through a conversation that says, “Okay. Now you feel yourself, potentially for the first time. What are your worries? What are your fears? What are your cants that are likely going to stand in the way of you truly embodying it?” We have a conversation. We get a nice big list of cants and shouldnts. Then, the ones that have the highest, what we would call emotional charge … Something that 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.

Dr. Nick:

Is that more non-tangible things, like just lack of deserving, or is it more, “I physically don’t have time?”

Marina:

It’s more intangible, for the most part. What I’m talking about are pretty deep rooted subconscious beliefs. It’s funny. I say this at Purpose Built a lot. We know the difference between a market opportunity and a mommy issue. Sometimes, it’s a market issue and sometimes you just need to have better time management. We talk about atomic habits, and we find all the different practical ways of implementing.

Dr. Nick:

This is why Marina is good, because I was really setting her up to see where she’s at and be able to help people, because it’s never a time thing. Time is always an effect. 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.

Marina:

Yeah. I can’t shut up about it. It can be three in the morning and I will have this conversation with anybody who wants to listen, because I’m living in my truth. For the most part, we’ll take care of that once we get to the root of what’s actually going on. Often it’s, “I don’t matter. I’m not good enough.” Those kinds of things, but sometimes it’s also more specific. It can be a really acute trauma point. A business partner relationship that went sideways. I’ve gotten that quite a few times. It’s just this thing that’s hanging in the back of a person’s mind. They are making decisions and taking actions to avoid something that happened in the past, in the future. Right?

Dr. Nick:

Oh, big time. I’m surprised. Honestly we have, in my mind, a very small company. There’s 21 of us. Working with these big time executives, sometimes I feel like, “What am I going to teach this person?” People hate conflict. It’s crazy how many people avoid the candid conversation. You’d think these big time executives, that it would be their day to day, that it’s just their constant. In reality, 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, and you fill in the blank what you want it to be. If we can’t use that to serve ourselves and get past it, then we’re not allowing ourselves to be on purpose really.

Marina:

That’s where people find themselves making money, losing money, making money, losing money. Right?

Dr. Nick:

Yep.

Marina:

It’s a pretty interesting cycle that happens quite often. Finding that, jokingly, mommy issue … Right? It’s not always a mommy issue, but really looking at it, and not welcoming it in, because there’s a fear. There is a fear of failure. There is a fear of not living up to what the rest of your community is doing, which by the way, is not just for entrepreneurs. I see it a lot with moms. It happens a lot with moms.

Dr. Nick:

Everybody. Even athletics. Growing up, as an athlete, I would see it and live it. We’re always comparing ourselves to everyone else.

Marina:

Totally. Really, just leaning into it and acknowledging, “Hey. This exists.” It’s tricky to describe 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 assume you’re on a hike and we’ve been walking up the hill and having a good time, seeing the scenery, and then all of a sudden, we look down and our pocket is really full. It’s like, “Why is my pocket really full and kind of heavy?” You reach into your pocket and there’s a rock. All of a sudden, you’re aware of this rock. Then you’re like, “Well do I want this rock? I forgot I picked it up somewhere along the trail and now I’m in choice.”

                That’s 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. Now we feel safe enough to look, because we have a support system or we’ve got a good foundation now. 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?”

                What I tell people in workshops a lot is, “Listen. You’re here for three hours. If you want to go back down the hill and pick the rock up again, put in your pocket, let it be heavy and keep walking, totally your choice. Now that we’re actually 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-

Dr. Nick:

It’s still heavy.

Marina:

It’s still super heavy and it’s driving these decisions and driving these patterns. 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 person, safe community, safe container to allow that pattern to be observed, and seen, and witnessed, so that you can transmute it.

Dr. Nick:

I’m probably going to steal that story, because it’s very brilliant how we start off with our foundation of being in purpose, figuring out what’s most important to us, and then we go on the journey, the hike of life. As we go through, we have, like you said, “I don’t know where I picked this rock up.” That’s a blind spot. You don’t ever see the rock until either you take the time to reflect on yourself, or sometimes … 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.

                When we have that opportunity, like you said, we gain awareness. The amazing thing is that, initially, you get pissed off at the rock, because it’s been weighing you down for so long. What we don’t realize is that carrying that rock around has actually made us so much stronger. 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 gain that conscious awareness that it’s not really serving us to where we want to be. We have a choice.

                Through that empowerment, we can be able to literally choose to see different, be different, have different. When we transform that into really an act, a service, 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. My most important thing is being able to always literally increase my resonance of my being, so I can give more. You can’t give something you don’t have. 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.

Marina:

Totally. There’s a quote that I really like by Sam Harris. Do you know Sam Harris?

Dr. Nick:

It sounds familiar. I’m really bad at names though.

Marina:

Okay. He’s got a podcast called Making Sense. Slightly different podcast than what we’re doing here. To the point about choice, which I know is critical, without a conscious awareness-

Dr. Nick:

All you have to do is say pandemic.

Marina:

Yeah. Totally.

Dr. Nick:

A lot of us felt like we didn’t have a choice.

Marina:

Totally. Exactly. I can pull up the quote, but I’m just going to paraphrase it. He basically says, “People who live ‘meaningful’ lives are choosing to tell their story through a lens of the pains and pleasure they have experienced, in support of who they are today.” They’re telling a story that gives meaning to the experiences that they’ve had. They’re choosing to tell a version of the story that has been beneficial to where they’re headed.

Dr. Nick:

I’m always searching for the balances. I’m always the geek that, you say meaning and my mind goes straight into numbers and looking at mathematics. It’s the average. You said it perfectly. It’s how 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.

Marina:

The meaning. I love that.

Dr. Nick:

It’s so brilliant. We have pretty much taken 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? What’s the next step, using purpose and making sure, because we know it’s not a light switch? You’re not on or you’re not off. It’s just a constant building upon.

Marina:

It’s my favorite part. Thank you for asking. Again, there is no one size fits all, but there are a couple of consistent tracks that I’ve seen. We use a pretty common framework. It’s called ikigai. Have you ever heard of ikigai?

Dr. Nick:

Mm-mmm (negative).

Marina:

It’s a 5,000 year old Japanese framework. Ikigai means reason for being.

Dr. Nick:

Okay.

Marina:

Once we have the foundation, and the things that light you up, that just spark everything inside you, 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. We actually say, “Okay. Is this something I actually feel so passionately about that it becomes my mission and my vision?” I can start to build that into either an existing organization, pivoted as needed, or create something new.

                I tell this joke a lot, and maybe this is totally off color for this podcast, but I’m going to do it anyway. I adore designer lipstick. I spend-

Dr. Nick:

That’s not what I thought was going to come out of your mouth.

Marina:

I know. We own all of our traits. I am a plethora of interesting things. I say this, because it hits home for people. Substitute lipstick for cars, for whatever. 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. 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?

                We use ikigai to tease this apart. We say, “Okay. What do I want to get paid for? What do I love? What’s something I’m passionate about? What’s my contribution to the world?” I’ll be very honest, I almost named Purpose Built the Impact Institute. P.S. to come. That’s coming.

                I say that because the contribution, the asking outside of yourself, is really important. What is the impact that I want to make on the people who work for me, the people who I want to serve? You start asking beyond yourself. There’s a quote that I really love that says, “Trauma makes us all narcissists.” The idea being that, when we are still in our stuff, we don’t really look beyond ourselves. We focus from the perspective of I. It’s ego. It’s what I need. When you clear some of that out, you start going, “Okay. What does the world need? What do I want to contribute?” Does that make sense?

Dr. Nick:

Oh, it make complete sense. Really it’s like, if you look at the laws of creation and the transcendent of filling yourself up, so you can fill others up. It’s like, put the oxygen mask on yourself, so that you can actually put the oxygen mask on others. Actually our mentor, John Demartini, I remember him saying this. If you want to change a family, focus on the community. If you want to focus on the community, look at your state. If you want to change your state, you have to have your why big enough to change a nation. Then if you want to change your entire nation, you really have to have a global vision.

                In order to make a change, the vision, the connection has to be so much bigger than you. That’s honestly one of the things, is getting down to the why. We do it with entrepreneurs, but even through health. People think it’s weird, but I get crazy clear on goals. Being able to be specific of, “Why do you want to get healthy?” Because if you just want to get healthy to be healthy, you don’t have a big enough why to actually ever achieve it.

                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. Being able to help somebody expand upon what their vision is right now, when we can grow that, then we can have that reflection that we can grow ourselves.

Marina:

Totally. To bring this back to that feeling of alignment, that we were talking about in the beginning. People ask, “Why is the why important?” Hundreds of purpose coaches, hundreds of people talking about how why is really important. I fully have experienced this myself. The why is important because it gets you to feel something. It actually brings you into alignment with your own felt sense of where you are and where you’re headed.

                When we’re doing these workshops with entrepreneurs, two day workshops that are getting them to feel their impact, your whole being starts to vibrate. You get goosebumps. That’s because the why is a full body felt sense experience, like we were talking about in the beginning. For anybody who is going, “Well, I don’t have that,” then that’s the feedback. That’s the closed loop circuit.

Dr. Nick:

That’s very beautiful and very easy. If you’re vibrating, if you’re just feeling intense gratitude for what you do, you know that your mission, your why, your purpose, your in alignment. It’s not to be mad or judged, if we’re not feeling that right now. Because like you said, a couple months, I wasn’t feeling that. I reached out. Transitioned some blind spots. Now, I’m back into feeling that resonance. It’s not an on or off. It’s just shades.

Marina:

Shades of alignment.

Dr. Nick:

Shades of life.

Marina:

Shades of alignment.

Dr. Nick:

Shades of alignment. For sure.

Marina:

Book series, coming 2022.

Dr. Nick:

Shades of alignment. Phase one. Really, that’s pretty amazing. As we start to wrap up, is there anything also that you like to talk about purpose with, with people? Or is it pretty much the three pillars of, first we’ve got to get clear about what’s most important to you, having that foundation of purpose? Then it’s removing blind spots, so that it’s pretty much taking your foot off the brake, so you can actually start moving forward in more alignment-

Marina:

Throw that rock away.

Dr. Nick:

Right. Throw that rock away. Transition it into a paper airplane or whatever is going to serve you. Then, really getting crystal clear on that vision. What’s your mission in life?

Marina:

Yeah. I’ll build on something you said around gratitude, because someone described that feeling of purpose as a moment of self love. Gratitude and self love, they’re the same energetically, to me, and I think to you. Right?

Dr. Nick:

Yep. Grace, gratitude, love, joy.

Marina:

Grace, gratitude, inspiration. All of those. When you asked, “Is it just a time management issue?,” that’s where we come back to, there is an element of self love. When you find the courage, or are just in a place of readiness to ask that question, this is a journey of self love. That maybe sounds a little bit cheesy.

Dr. Nick:

It’s the woo woo, but that’s part of life.

Marina:

But it is. What we see pretty consistently, it brings you into gratitude for who you are. It brings you into gratitude for everything that you’ve experienced. That’s that support, and challenge, and transmutation. It brings you into gratitude for what you can contribute. Easier said than done. Definitely takes a place of courage and readiness, but it is one of the most beautiful things that I’ve experienced with people. It’s such a phenomenal transformative journey, when a person is ready for it.

Dr. Nick:

Yeah. As we wrap up, we’ll wrap up with woo woo. The matter of fact is that, you can’t give something that you don’t have. If you’re not on purpose, if you don’t have a mission, to be able to serve yourself, to serve others, you’re not loving yourself. The woo woo about it is, the best thing we can actually give both ourselves and other people is love. We can’t do that if we’re not on purpose. Check out Marina’s Purpose Built programs. If you want to combine more of executive, as well as the integrative aspect of healthy, definitely go do our website, integrativewellnessgroup.com or integrativegrowthinstitute.com and check us out. We will be talking more on purpose in a different form coming up soon.

                You’ve reached the end of another episode of the Integrative Entrepreneur podcast. Connect with us at integrativegrowthinstitute.com. Don’t forget to sign up to our newsletter to receive our free materials. See you at the next episode.

Dr. Nicole:

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