Have you ever achieved what should have been a career milestone only to feel strangely empty inside? That’s exactly what happened to Rachel Spekman during her keynote speech in Stockholm. The moment should have been her professional pinnacle but instead became her wake-up call.
In this deeply resonant conversation, Rachel shares her transformation from corporate high-achiever to what she playfully calls a “career libido specialist” – helping women reconnect with their passion and purpose in their professional lives. With warmth and genuine insight, she unpacks the concept of “soul alignment” versus merely performing for others, offering practical strategies for women feeling trapped in careers that may look successful on paper but feel hollow in reality.
The discussion delves into the psychology of change through Rachel’s powerful visual model of comfort, stretch, and panic zones. Rather than overwhelming ourselves with radical transformations that quickly fizzle out, she advocates working at the edge of comfort and stretch, making small, consistent changes that gradually expand our capacity for growth. Drawing from James Clear’s “Atomic Habits,” Rachel emphasizes how two-minute daily practices can lead to remarkable transformations over time, whether writing one sentence of a novel each day or spending moments in reflection.
Perhaps most compelling is Rachel’s trapeze metaphor for career transitions – that terrifying moment when you must release your grip on security before grasping something new. This free-fall requires tremendous self-trust, something many women struggle with despite clearly seeing the limitations of their current path. Through personal anecdotes about her fertility journey, career change, and even a transformative moment watching Moana on a flight home, Rachel demonstrates how listening to your inner wisdom creates the courage needed for meaningful change.
The episode also explores how our connections with others uplift or constrain our growth, reminding us that “we are the combination of the five people we spend the most time with.” Rachel encourages building a tribe that supports your evolution while being willing to share your struggles, creating an interconnected circle of growth.
Does your career light you up or drain you? Are you ready to stop performing and start living your purpose? Listen now and discover how to realign with your soul’s calling. Your future self will thank you for it.
Transcript:
Speaker 1:
If you’ve ever struggled with fear, doubt or worry and wondering what your true purpose was all about, then this podcast is for you. In this show, your host, sylvia Worsham, will interview elite experts and ordinary people that have created extraordinary lives. So here’s your host, sylvia Worsham.
Speaker 2:
Hey Lightbringers, it’s Sylvia Worsham. Welcome to Released Out Reveal Purpose. And today is Rachel Speckman and we met on Podmatch, and I love Podmatch because I get to be exposed to amazing experts. She’s been a therapist, she’s been in marketing Across the board. You can sense reading her profile that she is someone that is highly invested in women and helping women high-performing women get out of jobs that really don’t fit who they were born to be. So, without further ado, rachel, thank you so much for joining us today on Released Out Reveal Purpose.
Speaker 3:
Thank you so much. I’m so happy to be here and to connect with you and your audience. Thank you again for having me.
Speaker 2:
And where do you hail from, Rachel? Where are you at?
Speaker 3:
I hail from Boston, massachusetts. It is June 2nd and I had to wear a hat and gloves on my bike ride this morning because if you don’t like the weather here, wait 10 minutes and it’ll be something else. But yes, I’ve lived in Boston for 20 years.
Speaker 2:
I love it. I actually love Boston. I’ve been there twice, yeah, but I’m in Austin, texas, and the heat down here is just like come 9 am, it’s already like 90. It’s bad. So we’re on opposite ends of what we feel when we step outside. But I know we have a wonderful story of transformation that I really want you to get into. Why do you work with these high-performing women?
Speaker 3:
Yeah, so I work with high-performing and I don’t even love the word high-performing, because I was on a call with someone this morning and she’s very high-performing and she said well, really am I high-performing? Yes, you’re high performing. So I want to even just even though that’s my word for who I work with I want us to even start with reframing the word performing. Who are we performing for and how are we performing and how do we think about performance? So I do work with women who are feeling stuck, not connected with their soul mission, to help them feel really re-energized in their careers. One of my friends called me a and I love this, I almost want to trademark it a career libido specialist.
Speaker 2:
All right, that’s amazing. That’s actually spot on, because why not right?
Speaker 3:
I mean, we do feel that high when we’re in the right space where our gifts are being utilized to the best of our ability yep, one of the things I talk a lot about with people and I’m a very somatic um, so I’m a therapist. Uh, by training I came to the work of being a therapist and now being a coach, through, of course, my own journey and essentially I was flying high in the corporate world and crushing it effectively, but internally, was going through a very challenging fertility journey and was just feeling very misaligned with sort of where my professional life was going versus where I wanted my personal life to go. And I was at a conference in Stockholm, sweden, I was a keynote speaker and I just realized this is not it. This should have been my penultimate moment of my career and it was not where I wanted to be going, and I always share that.
Speaker 3:
I watched Moana on the way home of all movies and I burst into tears and said if Moana can follow her dreams, I can start to follow my dreams.
Speaker 3:
And Disney is epic for a reason, right, it touches all of us, young and old, young and older. And with that information, that data, I really started listening to myself and realized that, personally, my fertility journey had taught me that I want to be doing deeper work with people. And what did that mean, how do I get paid honestly to do deeper connecting work with people? And that’s how I ended up actually transitioning to becoming a therapist and so I am a therapist. And then, because I made that transition, I had so many people reach out to me and say how did you do that? How did you kind of step out of your constraints and how did you face the demons of I can’t or I shouldn’t or what are people going to think? And that’s how I started coaching people and that’s the work that I’m doing today to really help people find, when they get quiet with themselves, what is working in their lives and what isn’t.
Speaker 2:
I love it. I can’t. As you were speaking and you said you were on stage in Stockholm, my mind directly went to being on stage in front of 300 of my peers at Pfizer because I hail from the corporate world as well and it should have been the pinnacle of my career and I sat there and I said is this? It this strive for happiness? This is what it looks like and feels like. This doesn’t feel right.
Speaker 3:
And that’s the name of my coaching. It’s called Made for More Coaching. Yes, identifying that. You know that you are made for more and a lot of us know that we’re made for more and we sit with that and we sit in discomfort or we sit in feeling stuck, and we do. You know, if we’re in that place, what I call Stockholm I don’t know what Pfizer was for you, but I call it my asymmetrical moment, where I presented a very certain way publicly, but internally I was feeling very differently. Internally I was feeling very differently, and you can run with that for a while. We have to pay our bills, we have to parent, we have to do the things that we have to do and at some point, if we’re called to do more, we have to figure out what that is, and I provide support every step of the way to do that.
Speaker 2:
I think, where most women, because I’ve heard them. When I had to interview quite a few from my book, One of the things that they kept mentioning was the fear of the unknown. They didn’t want to step in there. They like to be able to control their circumstances, and I think most of us and you’re a therapist and a coach, so you understand patterns of behavior and it being attached to a certain feeling of doubt. That’s why I say release doubt, reveal purpose, because when you release the doubt and you release the fear, you release yourself from the cage you put yourself in right.
Speaker 2:
You programmed your mind to stay stuck in these circumstances by behaving in a pattern that you’ve now formed a habit around, and so it’s easy and it’s controllable, and you don’t really have to do too much.
Speaker 3:
You can get on autopilot fairly quickly. And if I can, I will add I’m a visual learner, so I’d be happy to add a visual that I work with a lot of visuals with clients. There’s this beautiful visual of a circle within a circle within a circle and we have our comfort zone, our stretch zone and our panic zone. And I tell people I’m trying to, we do a whole bunch of exercises to identify what’s in the comfort zone that’s serving us versus holding us back, and often we want to make a change. We go to that panic zone very quickly. Well, I’m going to go to the gym a hundred times a week, okay. Or I’m going to do, you know, I’m going to get on stage, or I’m going to do something that’s really going to. I’m going to even go to a networking event and talk about myself. I tell people I want to work with them on the edge of comfort to stretch zone so that we can elongate that stretch zone.
Speaker 2:
Because you want to start with I was coaching a client yesterday and you want to start with goals that are going to stretch you but not be so insurmountable that you quit, because our minds, when change occurs, at the beginning we’re really excited. That’s why we go to that panic zone oh yes, I’m going to do it, I’m all gung ho about it, and then about two weeks, maybe a month, in your mind starts to tell you what were you thinking and your ego steps in and your old programming is starting to speak to you.
Speaker 2:
And unfortunately, a lot of people listen to that programming and step back, and so they go from panic back to comfort zone pretty quickly and then tend to stay there. They kind of go back and forth and it becomes this like horrible thing. So what I remember telling my coaching client was like let’s start with the goal that’s going to stretch your ability, but not to the point where it’s going to make you quit, and so let’s start with 10 minutes, because you wanted to start with 30 minutes of doing devotionals, like with a Bible app.
Speaker 2:
And I said, okay, 30 minutes for someone that always feels overwhelmed and is always like anxious and stuff maybe a little bit too much. Let’s start with 10 minutes, maybe five, and then work up and master and then, once you master it, then, yes, you can increase that number because you want to continue to self-motivate. Right, because when you reach goals it’s that high that dopamine, high the hit, and then you want to do more and you can see yourself doing more. So I totally agree with your diagram because I’m seeing it so many times.
Speaker 3:
And we have to set ourselves up for success. I say that all of the time. I mean I literally use it with. I do have two small children and I use it to say if we don’t bring snacks in the car, we are not setting ourselves up for success. It is the smallest things, from how we’re eating, to how we’re taking care of our bodies, to how we’re thinking, you know, specifically when we think about careers. I would even not 30 minutes a day, not 10 minutes. One of the books that actually transformed my life truly is Atomic Habits.
Speaker 2:
Oh, I love that book.
Speaker 3:
And his whole model is two minutes a day. What can you do for two minutes a day and I share this. I’ve been working on a novel for some time. You can write a sentence every day, two minutes. I’m on chapter 25. I mean, I never thought I would be, but it’s just been that two minute consistency.
Speaker 2:
And so, and picking the same time right, picking the same time, scheduling it on your calendar, right, and doing it whether you feel like it or not. Because I wrote, I’ve written books. So I remember the one strategy that my aunt who passed away, but she wrote like 25 books. She was a world-renowned psychologist out of Mexico City and she told me she’s like you want to publish a book, you got to sit down at the same hour every day, pick a spot in your home and just get in there and whether you feel like it or not, you’re going to write. And so, with your one sentence, that’s easy enough, right? And then you build, and build and build. By the time you turn around now you’re on chapter 25.
Speaker 3:
Yep, and I would encourage anybody who’s listening to be thinking about okay, if I’m stuck in my career or if I’m realizing that I’m made for more, what is something I can do that will give me just an ounce of joy and just tap into that, whether it’s you know, we do. One of the things I do very quickly with people is I do what’s called a current resume audit. In your day to day, what is filling your cup? It might be five minutes of your day. How do you make those five minutes, six minutes? I really love talking to this colleague, I really love this project that I’m on, but it’s such a small portion of my job or my portfolio. We’ll see if we can. How can we make it a little bit longer? How can we take that comfort and stretch that a little bit more? And so, again, we don’t have to quit, we don’t have to do anything radical. It’s just really starting to identify. Oh, my light feels brighter in this moment with this kind of task, with this kind of environment, with that kind of colleague. I want to do more of that.
Speaker 3:
One of my favorite ways of thinking about it is it actually comes from therapy, which is we want to feel like we’re lit up like a bright Christmas tree or a holiday bush, whatever you want to call it. And you know, when you drive by that house and you think, oh my gosh, I feel so energized seeing all the beautiful lights and the planning and the strategy and the execution that went into this, and so we want to think about ourselves as, okay, how can I make my light brighter? And just a little bit. And I would say something about you know what you said earlier.
Speaker 3:
The same time, I struggle with that, especially if you, you know anybody who has small children or has aging parents, or you know you have all these commitments. I kind of say, if I do it in the morning or if I do it the afternoon, it’s the same time, window time frame, because we can get very hard on ourselves if we slip. Oh, I said at eight o’clock every morning I would write, and it’s 8.15 and I haven’t. Nope, I said I would write in the mornings Okay, it’s still the morning. Or I said I would write today, it doesn’t matter, right? So so really giving ourselves grace as well.
Speaker 2:
No, absolutely, because we can give ourselves excuses for why we didn’t do it and then just stay there. So I totally get it. I, as you were talking, the one thing that kept popping up in my awareness was Julia Cameron’s the artist date and it’s taking yourself out on a date on purpose and I remember the first couple of times I did it. I felt so awkward because I wasn’t used to spending time with myself. I was used to being pulled in multiple directions and being okay with that.
Speaker 2:
But then you know we don’t we. What is it? We release cortisol, like when we’re so stressed out. It’s not the best thing for us and it’s contradictory to like the joy factor that we’re searching for and wanting to. I shouldn’t say the word achieve because that has such a negative connotation, but just to be joyful Embody to embody.
Speaker 2:
Embody it, and it’s really hard to do that when you’re checking off boxes and being pulled. So I’m totally, totally in alignment with what you’re saying of extending that period of time for something that does bring you joy, and it’s sitting down. I remember just sitting down making a list of what is it that brings me joy, what, what do I? I love writing, I love speaking, I love you know um, painting classes and things like that. So I was like when, when can I stretch that out? Because I’ve got to be able to have the self-care.
Speaker 2:
I can’t be there for my kids or my husband or my home or anybody if I’m not taking care of myself, and I’m sure that part of what you coach women on is that self-care piece. Can you share a little bit more light on that?
Speaker 3:
Yeah, I call it soul alignment actually in addition to self-care. Yeah, I call it soul alignment actually in addition to self-care because I think the self-care requires that ongoing soothing of here’s what’s coming up for me in. You could start with your marriage. You could start if you’re married. You could start with your relationships and really get clear with yourself. I’m at 30% enjoyment here. Okay, that is just data in itself. Most people I talk to when they kind of come to me for career coaching or career strategy work, they’re at like 10, 15% enjoyment. It’s a long day. I mean we have 24 hours in the day, right, or we have eight hours of the working day, or whatever we decide it is. And so really figuring out, okay, is 80%. People say that’s so high, that’s so unrealistic. Well, of course it is if you’re at 10%. But if you’re at 75% enjoyment, sure I can get to 80% or sure I can kind of tweak things a little bit. So a lot of it is perspective taking and understanding that it can get better. It will get better.
Speaker 3:
We need the right people and the right resources around us. We are the combination of the five people we spend the most time with. That’s at work, that’s at home, that’s, in our communities. You know our faith based organizations and so, thinking, are these people elevating me? And if they’re not, it’s not like you have to cut them off. But how do I? How do I kind of thoughtfully create some distance with them and gravitate towards people that are lighting me up? And if you can’t find them, then find the podcast and find the books, those kinds of things.
Speaker 3:
So, in terms of practical, I feel like I hope I’m answering your question around thinking practically it is. You know, we are a combination of how we spend our days. So, really being quiet with ourselves in those moments and saying what’s one thing that I could do right now that can get my soul back aligned a little bit more. And I’ll give myself as an example. I want to build women up, I want to build up coaching as a way to connect with people and as a way for people to feel inspired, and I want to do that in a way that lights with people and as a way for people to feel inspired, and I want to do that in a way that lights up my soul as well.
Speaker 3:
So you can do a million things, a million different ways, right? I mean, there are websites and there are resources for days. Podcasting, for example, is something I realized. I can feel like I’m having a conversation with you and know so many people are being influenced and connected to this in really positive ways. We hope. That to me feels very different than sort of a LinkedIn sales strategy or kind of a very quote corporate marketing strategy. That didn’t light me up in my soul as I was doing this work. So how am I going to help other people feel soul aligned, feel self-connected, if I’m not doing it myself in the ways that I want to connect with people?
Speaker 2:
and I find that it is so true what you’re saying. When your soul is involved in the soul and the ego are always kind of at battling it out a lot yeah our mind is always telling us no, you can’t do it, and our soul is saying but, but you can. You can, you’ve had the resources, you have the lessons learned. You have all the tools. Now it’s a matter of putting it together. So mind, please help me put these tools together so that we can start moving in the direction of our purpose which is where I think most women when you start reaching 40s you’re they start to want that more.
Speaker 2:
You know, 20s and 30s. We’re stuck right.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:
The expectation of our parents or all of that is kind of hovering at the beginning, and that’s why we land in some of these corporate jobs that we think are what’s going to give us the success according to what our society, our country states successes.
Speaker 3:
Right. Our society, our country states successes Right, and so a key factor I work on with everyone and I would encourage people to think about this now is I call it reverse engineering your career or your job strategy. What matters to me and how do I go find places, people, companies, opportunities that align with that, as opposed to checking job boards hey, I think I’m looking for this, I think I’m looking for this, I think I’m looking for this right. Then we’re kind of back to this old model of I want to do what everybody else thinks I should do, or what looks good, or what my parents think, or what my professor thinks, or what my grad school degree says I should do, right, as opposed to hold on. I’ve done a very thorough skills inventory for myself, and these are the ones that make me feel most engaged and most inspired.
Speaker 3:
I would never trade a day of doing therapy with the day of the corporate work that I was doing. I love my colleagues there, but I feel so alive when I’m doing this kind of work with people. I it’s my soul’s calling in that way, and we’re here for a reason. Whether it’s made for more, whatever that means to you, we are here for a reason. So it’s following that reason, tapping deep within ourselves and I think for the ego piece it is constantly a struggle and that’s where that self-trust really comes in.
Speaker 3:
So one practice I’ve been trying to do is, when I have a quiet moment, instead of just immediately pulling my phone out, for example, I will just pause and just say can I have 10 more seconds of silence right now? How am I feeling right now? What’s going on around me? Like that somatic work we call it in therapy. But how does your body feel in this moment? We’re so used to being on autopilot that, whether it’s, you know, physically on autopilot, like driving places, et cetera, et cetera, we got to go to the next thing, the next thing, and so it’s. It can be very uncomfortable. We can hit panic very quickly when we have to be quiet with ourselves.
Speaker 3:
It’s the doing versus the being.
Speaker 2:
Yes, the being is just being in nature, just listening, hearing, using all our senses getting back into the presence of our body and our soul and even our minds. It’s like the full alignment of like just not thinking.
Speaker 3:
And it’s that full alignment. So I say we have to, we have to go deep, to go wide. So we have to do this full alignment with ourselves before we can present ourselves to the job market. Before you know people. I use LinkedIn a lot Like that’s my example of, like it’s people’s like kind of professional website, for example, right, Like I don’t know what to put on there, I don’t know. Okay, well, let’s get quiet, let’s figure out with ourselves what do you want it to say, what matters to you?
Speaker 2:
What’s that voice telling you? It’s a whisper and people miss it because we’re so caught up with our electronics, there’s so much noise around.
Speaker 3:
Oh, there’s there’s so much noise, and then, you know, we kind of get addicted to the noise and I think, um, you know, and many people who work with me sort of are having like a dark night of the soul. Um, if you know, that terminology, which is sort of like a dark night of the soul, is like I was not meant to be in this marriage, I was not meant to be in this career, I was not meant to live in this city, right, like something is majorly out of alignment and I really need to figure out. As you kind of said, it generally happens when you turn 40, you have a health scare and you, you know, covid did that for a lot of people. I would say I saw a major increase in clientele at that time which is just I got one.
Speaker 2:
There’s like not, there’s not enough therapists, let’s put it that way. When they say oh, therapists, there’s, it’s, it’s saturated, I’m like no, no, no, not after COVID. After COVID, there was so many waiting lists. We were on wait lists time again, and kids particularly are very anxious right now. In fact yesterday at church our pastor was talking about it. He said you know the kids nowadays because they have access to these electronics and the news and their anxiety has climbed so dramatically and his 10 year old was asking for a phone.
Speaker 2:
My 10 year old has asked me for a phone. I’m like I love you. Year old was asking for a phone. My 10 year old has asked me for a phone. I’m like I love you too much to give you a phone.
Speaker 2:
Absolutely won’t do it and you can hate me right now and you can say I’m the most horrible parent, but later you’ll thank me Because I want you to just stay being a kid as long as you can. You don’t want to be old. You don’t want to be like older than you actually are. Right now, I want you to play on your scooter, I want you to go to the park, I want you to swim. I don’t need you to be on YouTube or TikTok, like she was like. Can I be on TikTok? Absolutely not. No.
Speaker 3:
I would say my number one job is to keep you safe and your number one job is to keep yourself safe, and that doesn’t mean we’re always going to be in alignment on what that is, but that’s really where the rubber hits the road Right and and that’s our jobs is to keep you know. I was thinking about recently, like the thing you know, if, if our kids, for example, had a teacher they didn’t like or was having a hard time in their classroom, or x, y and z, we would probably jump in so quickly and say how can I help you? Probably jump in so quickly and say how can I help you? But then we kind of get to a place in our careers where, well, I’m not that happy but this but that, and so then we can start, but I need this and of course, the economy is always changing and these are real fears and these are real noises and we have to think about, okay, and if I don’t prioritize myself, who’s going to? And we’re modeling that for our children as well.
Speaker 3:
That was a major moment for me in my kind of Stockholm dark night of the soul which is. It was modeled for me that work is a place you go, you don’t enjoy it, you have to make a paycheck and there’s no criticism in this. That was sort of just what was modeled for me from their upbringing and that’s okay. But that’s kind of an outdated model right now. Or it can be, if you are of a certain privilege and have certain opportunities afforded to you, to basically realize wow, just because I should be happy does not necessarily mean that I am happy.
Speaker 2:
And happiness comes from within girl.
Speaker 3:
You and.
Speaker 2:
I both know that We’ve already journeyed through this. Yes, it doesn’t come from the things you achieve or the material things that surround you, because that is not something that will fulfill you. The fulfillment comes from the alignment piece, the alignment of the soul and the mind, and the body and spirit all in one, basically working in communion with each other.
Speaker 3:
That’s one of my most fun assignments that I give people. I call it your internal resume, the things that nobody on the outside will ever see. But you’ll say I took a job where I had to figure out how to get to work in like a new way, or I had to commute with a I don’t know all these ways that you kind of figure out. Wow, I pushed myself in that role in ways that nobody would ever see. I got in front of that stage. On that stage I led that project. I finished that budget. Okay, maybe you put on your resume, but maybe you’re just really proud of yourself for that accomplishment, for that success. And that’s the internal we need, our that’s what it’s called the internal wins resume. What are your own internal wins?
Speaker 2:
I always look at the attaboy file. I had an attaboy file that I created when I was at Pfizer and I’d had all my achievements, but aside from that, it was deeper than that. It was. Look at what you’ve learned. Look how far you’ve come Like you’re not. You know how to solve problems. Why are you doubting yourself Like, especially when the doubt is heavy and it can get very heavy at times during major turning points.
Speaker 3:
Yes.
Speaker 2:
And start questioning a lot of your decision-making skills, or even as a parent, like did I make mistakes with my children? And the guilt that moms feel in particular and the shame because I am bad. You know, the I am bad and it’s just realizing when you can go back to that. And it’s just realizing when you can go back to that. I was actually creating the attaboy files for my two kids For them to go back and to kind of remind themselves that they are smart kids, that they are kids that when they put their minds to it and put their hearts into it, they achieve whatever they want to achieve.
Speaker 2:
And it’s not for the achievement piece, it’s for the journey piece, it’s for the piece that when you have a rough day, you can look back to and say this is why I’m doing what I’m doing, like I kept all my cards, I went and did this. I have the coaching tree that when I talk to coaching clients I kind of talk about how beliefs really drive.
Speaker 3:
Oh, it’s a major mindset, it’s a major mindset thing.
Speaker 2:
But I was talking to second graders. I had been invited by a good friend of mine who’s a teacher locally here in Round Rock, texas, and I went and I had my coaching tree and I basically stood in front of these second graders and said I want you to picture the most beautiful tree you’ve ever seen in your life and of course the tree is them right. So as I start guiding them, and after that the kids were really enthusiastic and she had them write letters to me and I’ve kept those letters and on days that are really dark for me, which come from time to time because I’m going through a major grief journey.
Speaker 2:
My father passed away last year and it just hits me at the most awkward times. I’ll always go back to that and say this is why you do what you do, Because look at the way you’re transforming little lives.
Speaker 2:
They can look at themselves in a way that is beautiful, and not where they’re calling themselves losers or that they can’t do it, or this is how you’re helping humanity. These are your gifts, and when you can see your gifts in full display, I think it’s the best thing you know, and and again, I would um so many things I could say.
Speaker 3:
One of the things is um, one of my nightly rituals with my children is tell me one thing you’re proud of for yourself today, so that they’re internalizing that voice. I also followed some advice from a friend, which I created an email address for them very early on in their lives and I will email them from time to time. Here are some of the things that I’ve seen you doing and I just want you to know. You know you went from crawling to walking. You went from graduating preschool to kindergarten. So we can do this for our kids and I hope we do and we have to do it for ourselves.
Speaker 3:
So one of the again back to kind of rituals is at the end of the day. I would just challenge everyone who’s listening walk back through your day. I like to do this while I’m stretching because I’m a very physical person. So you’re going through your day and you’re saying I did my best. I did my best when I was driving my kid to school, I did my best when I was sitting in that meeting. I did my best so that. And then you know, all day long we’re talking to ourselves even backwards as kindly as we can, and then you kind of close it out with, and I leave the rest.
Speaker 2:
That’s all I could do. That’s all I could do today. It is, it is, and I love that.
Speaker 1:
I love the visual.
Speaker 2:
I’m very visual too. I learn visually when I hear things. Great. But I also have ADD, so I have to see things and it connects better to me, so I can totally see when we talk to ourselves instead of listening to ourselves. I also think that’s a very key thing, because we can tell ourselves anything.
Speaker 3:
See, I was a teacher for seven years and so part of my coaching is I do so many different modes of coaching. So it’s what we say to ourselves, it’s the visuals around us, it’s what we’re hearing, it’s all about the five senses. I work with a lot of people with neurodiversity or ADD and ADHD and thinking, okay, this is the context in which we are making these changes and how do we use them as data and not excuses? But this is this is exactly who I am, this is how I move through the world and really that that what you just said the visualization. I am such a visual learner, I am such a connected learner, Like I’m a person who needs to repeat it for myself over. You know, the teaching method is I do, we do, you do, and I coach like that. Now I mean, I’m still teaching. Right, that’s what I’m doing.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, we’re teachers, we’re guiding. We’re guiding people to reach whatever their divine purpose is, and it’s not always very obvious, not even to them. To us as coaches, we can see it, but we can’t tell them right, because then that’s not truly coaching or being a therapist. So we have to allow them to become aware, and I think that piece, awareness, is where we actually there’s a connection between the soul and spirit and it’s guiding you towards your light, and I don’t know if you have anything to say on that comment.
Speaker 3:
I call it empowered awareness. So a lot of people say should I take this job, should I not? Should I go for this interview, should I not? And I will always say I have no idea if you should do that or not. I really don’t. What I do know is I can empower you to make the best decision for yourself and say a full. I can say a full yes or a full no, and here’s why. And so when you feel empowered about who you’re spending time with, what you’re spending your time on, what you’re saying no to, that is when you feel I am living closely to my purpose, I am living more fully. And actually that’s really when you start attracting the right opportunities too. I mean for me to take a leap of faith and leave the corporate world and become a therapist. People say that all the time on these. You know, I never thought I would do this, but I never. People have reached out to me for career coaching. You want me to coach your career? I’m just figuring it out myself, but I see something in you.
Speaker 2:
They see something, a light and a direction and a drive that they want. They crave that for themselves. I know and here’s here, go ahead.
Speaker 3:
Here’s a visualization that I like to use often, which is I’ve taken a few circus classes. My child was taking circus classes and I thought this is so fun, I want to do it myself. So I took a trapeze class. Well, in trapeze you can only be on one trapeze or the other, but there was a moment when you have to suspend and reach for the other one and you’re literally free falling until you grab the other one. It’s the scariest moment and you have to trust that you’re going to catch that. And so if you think about that moment of self-trust, of being in between things and you might actually hit it, I mean you might go for it and miss it, and then you hopefully land on the pad, and there’s a lot of metaphors here. But that is that supported thinking through. I’ve got to let go of one thing literally hang out in the air for a moment while I’m grabbing the next thing.
Speaker 3:
Mm-hmm, and let’s put a safety net underneath it, hang out in the air for a moment while I’m grabbing the next thing, and let’s put a safety net underneath it.
Speaker 2:
I’ve been there so many times and it is terrifying, but it is so freeing. I always, I always say on the faith side of things it’s you’re terrified one moment and then you surrender and you say okay, god, you know, let go and let god you let go completely and you surrender to him.
Speaker 2:
And then, all of a sudden, peace flashes over you and you know definitively, you’ve made the decision in alignment to your soul, the path of greater joy and alignment. It happened to me so many times. But that moment that you’re like releasing, like from the trapeze into the other one, that piece right there is where people are like I can’t do it and their minds will tell them, no Right. People are like I can’t do it and their minds will tell them no Right, they will not move as much as you, as much as they see everything in front of them and they’re totally aware of what is waiting for them on the other side. They won’t let go. And I find that that’s where most women come to me Well, how did you do it? And I said well, I trust it.
Speaker 3:
And I listened right you trusted and you listened, and no and then I acted.
Speaker 2:
Forget just. I mean, you can have the knowledge and be aware, but now, with this awareness, you’ve got to empower yourself to take that step yep, and, and I’ll say something about faith um.
Speaker 3:
So when I was um, on my fertility journey and pre all of this, um, I became much more faith oriented just because life was pulling me in that way and when I realized that I was feeling called to do something besides the corporate work that I was doing. I’m Jewish and I actually thought about becoming a rabbi at the time. Cool.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I know, that would have been awesome.
Speaker 3:
Actually that would have been awesome, and so I ended up. So this is kind of the free falling, like you know. Let me head towards this. What is it, that trapeze piece? So I realized that in order to there’s one this, this we can have a vision of ourselves. I’m going to be a rabbi, I’m going to be doing all these things, and then to even apply to become a rabbi, you had to have. You had 40 required texts that you had to read. You had to put a report together, which was great. I mean, you should have 40 required texts, but I realized I wanted to read like three of them, okay, or seven of them, and it was really good. I’m so. I will never regret that. I went to that info session and that I was telling you know just a few people, I think I’m going to become a rabbi, oh my gosh.
Speaker 3:
And then I thought, wait a sec, I want elements of that, but I don’t want all of it and that that is like a really big piece which is, like you know, you can and and, and I realized, well, what are the parts that I want? Well, what is actually? This is where I actually will say AI can really be your friend, like you can really put that into an algorithm and it’ll help you spit back out. Wow, these are the parts of that job description that light me up and these are the parts that don’t. And imagine if I had kind of headed in that direction, forced myself to do all of that reading, when really those seven books were all about therapy, all about spiritual healing, all about coaching. That’s spiritual healing, all about coaching. That’s the direction I ended up following.
Speaker 2:
And that’s awesome. In fact I was considering. I told my husband he’s at the stage where he wants to retire. And I’m at the stage where I want to become a licensed professional therapist or counselor but have a theology psychology master and he was like oh really you’re a lot of people just ask, ask.
Speaker 2:
And I said I’m really interested in the theology piece because when I coach I want to be able to understand all of it and not pieces of it. I’m very intellectual like that, I’m kind of a nerd, and psychology always came naturally to me, just from having a whole line of aunts and cousins that are in psychology, and so I always felt it was part of my calling. So I became a life coach instead, but my father was always like could be more.
Speaker 2:
You know and, and I don’t know why, you didn’t become more and I didn’t believe myself smart enough In those years. I’ve been bullied extensively in high school and it just really destroyed my confidence. Didn’t realize it till just a couple of months ago when I put myself in therapy to because it started to affect my parenting and I didn’t want to.
Speaker 2:
I didn’t want to, I didn’t want to bring in my own experience. I wanted it to inform me in a way that was enlightening but not detrimental to how I was guiding my 10-year-old girl. So I put myself through EMDR and it’s been interesting.
Speaker 3:
I can imagine and thank you for sharing that, and I think that the piece around saying this is not serving me as a parent, as an adult. I was literally on a coaching call this morning with someone and I said, when I went to a social work info night, when I was thinking about social work school, which is what I ended up doing to become a therapist I asked what’s the average age? And the person on the front of the room said well, the average age is whatever 30. I was, I was older than that at that point and she said but our oldest person ever was 84 years old, who came to social school. And the story and I love this story I never met this person, but they’ve inspired me right and, or at least their marketing’s pitched it.
Speaker 3:
I don’t know which is that person uh, was something else. And they said in my next life I’m going to be a therapist. And their spouse turned to them and said what about this life? And they went back to social work school. So I would tell you I know I’m not here to coach you, but you know.
Speaker 2:
Whatever the divine kind of guides, because he said well, why don’t you just ask God about it? You ask God about everything. Why don’t you just ask God about it. You ask God about everything. Why don’t you just ask him about this? I want to just make sure it’s not your mind telling you because of what your father expected you to do, and that’s fair. That’s fair Because my father was the striver and the achiever and the perfectionist.
Speaker 2:
And that was that modeling so it’s like be aware of that and truly ask yourself is this what you want of that, and truly ask yourself is this what you want? And I love coaching people and I love bringing joy and being able to help them out of their dark chapters, but I also know that I want to understand what I’m reading in the word and scripture and not. I feel like I’m behind and I don’t like that feeling. So I’m thinking maybe theology?
Speaker 3:
Yeah, I was thinking as a master’s of divinity programs, and actually there are some joint social work and master’s of divinity programs that might be interesting for you to at least see what the curriculum is. Again, kind of like the rabbi piece for me. Okay, but how?
Speaker 2:
long is this going to take me? And I actually interviewed a good buddy of mine. She started at 50. I’m 50. And take me and I actually interviewed a good buddy of mine. She started at 50, I’m 50 and she said, if you go full-time and you can do it, it’s just a lot of work. So yeah, it is. And you’re, you’re a mom and you’re a podcast host and you have your books and stuff. So just realize that something’s gonna give you know if you do well, I, I, I’m being mindful of our time.
Speaker 3:
I did an MBA part-time and it was fine at the time. It worked well. When I decided that I wanted to really make our time, I did an MBA part-time and it was fine at the time, it worked well. When I decided that I wanted to really make a major pivot, I decided to go full-time and I threw myself into it and I’ve never stopped throwing myself into it.
Speaker 2:
Two or three years, yeah, Two or three years you can knock it out. It’s what she told me. She’s like in two or three years you can knock it out easily. Uh, but you gotta throw yourself in it. You try to do it part-time, it’s gonna extend forever.
Speaker 3:
It’s the trapeze piece.
Speaker 2:
It’s the trapeze yeah, it’s just giving you the the excuse to not go fully in and I and I totally get that, believe me, I do but you can also take a class or two.
Speaker 3:
I took a class to sample it and realized okay, I love what I’m learning here. I feel like a kid in a candy shop. I want to be learning this all day long, you can always try it on.
Speaker 3:
I help people figure out if they want to make a small, medium or a large change. I call it the McDonald’s of career coaching or whatever. But it’s true because sometimes we think we’re so unhappy we have to make a large change. That’s not true. You can make small steps and then decide you’re going to make a large change. You don’t have to make a large change and then realize if it was the right thing. So there are a lot of ways to get at this.
Speaker 2:
Oh, I know, I know and I appreciate your time today. Just to kind of wrap things up a little bit. We know that your purpose is this because you’ve mentioned it over and over again, but you also mentioned something else when you, when you, scheduled the interview what is your other purpose that you wanted to discuss on the show?
Speaker 3:
My other purpose that I want to discuss on the show, beyond helping women find soul careers.
Speaker 2:
Yes, it was the interconnected piece that you shared. So it’s like having this interconnected piece with others and having those quality connections, I think, is what you called them.
Speaker 3:
Thank you. Thank you so much for reminding me of that. Okay, so, as I said earlier, we are the combination of the people we spend, the five people that we spend the most time with. A challenge that I have for your listeners is a lot of us myself sometimes included recoil when we think of the word networking or sales, or even I’m working on like repurposing it’s connection. We’re here to help each other. The more we can find people that are aligned with where we want to go next. You could think about it.
Speaker 3:
As you know, this part of my home is not working. This part of my life is not working. I need somebody to help me. This part of my home is not working. This part of my life is not working. I need somebody to help me with this part of my life. I need somebody who’s an expert in this, and so, the more that we can feel that interconnected energy because they’re helping you know they might be helping you you can help them in something as well, and so that’s really about what I call like the circle of the tribe that you have around you.
Speaker 3:
You know, I have a magnet on my fridge. Your vibe attracts your tribe, and so, thinking, what kind of vibe do you want to have out there, because that is going to attract that tribe and so that interconnected piece is really understanding that the more we allow ourselves. And that does require that vulnerability which is I’m struggling with this. I wish I weren’t but I am I’m struggling with grief and you have to calculate kind of the risk of sharing that kind of vulnerability and the platform. Even talking about my fertility journey, people said I grew up in a family. You don’t talk about any of that.
Speaker 2:
Trust me, I’m Mexican. You don’t talk about any of this.
Speaker 3:
I understand and that is fine if that served you. I cannot tell you the number of people who. It is for the fact that I’ve opened up to people and I’m not opening up that every single thing in every single moment. But the fact that it led me to where I am today is taking the taboo out of it and is normalizing it, and it’s saying this is a part of life, and so that is the interconnected piece of really making sure that we can thoughtfully rely on and support one another to achieve your dream, my dream, all of our dreams collectively.
Speaker 2:
I love that and that’s been my alignment piece and the reason why I do the purpose that I do is to share gifts, share your gifts on this stage, because, ultimately, we’re all interconnected, we’re all meant to help each other out and when we’re together, when we work together as women, as men and women, we’re unstoppable. We just tend to butt heads too much. We’re competing with each other. We’re it’s more about competing and and and less about collaboration, and we’re all here to collaborate because we all are unique in our gifting and I felt it today. I was like we were back and forth, but it was. There was no competition, there was total collaboration and total like shining lights on each other.
Speaker 3:
It’s yes, it’s the expansion piece and it’s also not judging what you’re going through, what I’m going through, you know.
Speaker 2:
Everybody’s journey is different and everybody’s intuition is different.
Speaker 3:
They’re going through all of their own individual journeys, and so how do we honor and respect that?
Speaker 2:
And help like, let’s help them out of whatever darkness they find themselves in. If there’s shame, let’s help them out of that, because we’ve been there, we know what that’s like Absolutely. My goodness, thank you so much for unpacking all of this for us Rachel. Thank you so much, it was so amazing and I know that the listeners of Released Out Reveal Purpose are going to be just thrilled to hear this interview. Any last minute comments before we sign off.
Speaker 3:
No, I, when I saw the title of your podcast released out reveal purpose, I mean let’s, let’s apply that we spend what collectively like so much of our time at work or thinking about work or thinking about kind of our career identities. It’s just that’s kind of a part of a big part of our, of our identity. And so I think really thinking how do we release doubt with who we want to be professionally and what we want to achieve? And I loved talking to you about it.
Speaker 2:
It was awesome. Thank you so much. And for the listeners of Release, doubt, reveal Purpose, remember Matthew 514, be the light. Have a wonderful week, stay safe. Love you all. Bye now.
Speaker 1:
So that’s it for today’s episode of Release Doubt Reveal Purpose. Head on over to iTunes or wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. One lucky listener every single week who posts a review on iTunes will win a chance in a grand prize drawing to win a $25,000 private VIP day with Sylvia Worsham herself. Be sure to head on over to sylviaworsham.com and pick up a free copy of Sylvia’s gift and join us on the next episode.