What if your body staged an intervention to save your life? That’s where Rachael’s story begins—on the floor of a glass-walled office—an unmistakable signal that the grind had swallowed the person.
We walk through the fear, the bruised ego, and the radical choice to trade status for alignment, not as a highlight reel but as a faithful record of how a whisper can outvote the loudest world.
Rachael discusses the difference between ego pressure and soul-led purpose, and how to bridge the two with real steps: training in a field that actually nourishes you, taking on part-time clients while still employed, and asking braver questions with mentors.
From there, we dig into mind hygiene—standing as a “bouncer” at the door of your thoughts, countering fear-laced comments with intentional inputs, and curating your digital environment. We explore purpose as a living contract that evolves, anchored in presence, service, and trust.
If you’re at a crossroads, you’ll leave with a humane toolkit: one bold boundary, one daily pause, and one honest conversation to start your pivot now.
If this resonated, follow and subscribe, share it with a friend who needs courage today, and leave a review to help more people find the show. Your story might be the nudge someone else is waiting for.
To connect with Rachael visit her at https://linktr.ee/RachaelEdmondsonClarke
To download a free chapter of host Sylvia Worsham’s bestselling book, In Faith, I Thrive: Finding Joy Through God’s Masterplan, purchase any of her products, or book a call with her, visit her website at www.sylviaworsham.com
Transcript:
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 Warsham, will interview elite experts and ordinary people that have created extraordinary lives. So here’s your host, Sylvia Warsham.
Hey Libringers, it’s Sylvia Warsham. Welcome to Release That Reveal Purpose. And today is Rick. Rachel Edmondson Clerk. That’s a mouthful to say, but she is in Nottingham. Remember uh Robin Hood and Prince of Thieves? That’s where she’s at. So she is about six hours away from Austin, Texas. And so it’s 10:47 my time. It’s almost four o’clock her time. And I’m just so excited to have her on my show. I read her um wonderful profile on podmatch.com. That’s been such a blessing for release at reveal purpose because I’ve met such amazing individuals through that site. And what I read really touched me. She talks a lot about burnout. I mean, how many women, and I say women because women give so much of themselves to others before they give to themselves that sometimes we go, go, go, go like the energizer bunny and don’t stop until our body collapses. And that’s what happened to Rachel. And that’s when she started to turn inward and started to understand what she needed to do to get her nervous system to calm down, to really start becoming in alignment with the true rhythm of life. That that’s a tough space to be in because our world teaches us that we must achieve, achieve, go, go, go, or we’re not going to be successful. And that is the subconscious programming that unfortunately we receive constantly through everywhere we um are. If we’re on social media, that’s the message that is coming to our children. If we allow them to be on social media, that they have to do instead of be, that they have to earn. And in our world and in how life is actually designed to be according to the divine order of things, we are just to be, to be in presence, to be in joy, to be um in purpose, uh, in our gifts. And that’s what Rachel and I are going to be discussing on this episode. So without further ado, thank you so much for joining us, Rachel, all the way from Nottingham.
Oh, Sylvia, it’s so wonderful to be here with you. And we were talking a little just before coming on to the show that there’s it’s rare that I meet a podcast host where I really feel that there is that that connection, the joy, the light that you bring. Um, just thank you. Thank you for all of that.
Oh my goodness, I just felt the Holy Spirit. Like, I’m like tingling from head to toe as you say that, because we all seek to have purpose in life, and that just continues it continually, continuously affirms my divine purpose as a podcast host. So thank you, Rachel. I do want to get into your story though of transformation. So can you honor us with how you landed in the space that you’re currently in?
Of course. I can remember vividly the moment that it happened. I was in my glass-fronted office, I was preparing to go into the boardroom, but instead of walking out of the door, I found myself on the floor staring up at the ceiling tiles. I heard a collapse. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t breathe in that moment, which was incredibly scary. I didn’t know what was happening to me. Um I remember sort of talking myself into, you know, gosh, just you know, just concentrate on your breath. And you you’ve got, you know, obviously you can’t breathe. It’s and and and eventually I was able to get up and off the floor. But what had led to that point was not months, but even years, I would say, of disrespecting uh my my body, of neglecting the most important relationship in my life. And um, you know, I I I was feeling, you know, an awful lot of guilt, of shame, of pressure. My response to my work and where I was at that point in time was literally my answer to it all was just work harder. If you can just get through this next project or to this next the weekend or to that next, you know, holiday, or through that next mound that I can see. You can just get the other side of that, everything will be okay. And um, you know, my body said as you know, as as I know yours has as well, it was time out, time out, and it just stopped me in my tracks that day, just completely wake up call time.
Oh my goodness, how terrifying for you, and but what a blessing for you as well, because when we hit a turning point, we have choices, don’t we? And we can choose to push further and harder, or we can shift our lens and and turn inward for those answers. And because there’s a voice longing to be heard from your soul identity, there’s like no question, and it’s in constant conflict with our ego identity, the ego that is like pulling, pulling, you gotta do this. This is what your flesh wants. Well, this is what your soul wants, and your soul is spirit-led, and it’s gonna lead you into your light, but we I don’t get why we keep doing that to ourselves.
And and just to bring uh, you know, just I suppose to to to color that in and to bring that maybe to life in terms of how I was experiencing that at this time. I can remember, I can remember sitting when I eventually got up off the floor, sitting on a chair in in my office and going, this has to stop, that enough is enough. I cannot go on. And what I knew that that meant was that I was going to need to step down in some way from the senior role and position that I’d worked my entire career to get to. And you know, you talk about that ego, and and and I had this glass fronted office that all the senior leaders did, but they were at the edge of a large open plan office. And the the what what then happened over, it didn’t happen straight away, of course, it was over a series of months and conversations. I restructured the team, uh, I helped to recruit somebody into uh the role that I was in, and I did take that step down. And over time I moved from that glass-fronted office into the open plan office as I became part of the team and a member of the team that I was once leading. And oh, all of the the like I say, the guilt, the shame, the the the the ego that you can imagine that probably felt really quite bruised with all of that. And I remember the the the the turning point of really, I mean, I was already listening to a degree, but the moment when I really tuned into that inner voice, I you know, I I had I was now in the open plan office doing that job, I was getting ready for work one day, I was in the shower, I was washing my hair, and it felt like there was a whisper on my heart, and it was the first time that I ever turned to this whisper and asked it what are you trying to say? Like, what is it that you want to tell me? And in the shower, in that moment, I I I asked it for the first time, this faint, faint, faint whisper. And it it returned back something along the lines of you are made for more, um this is not the work that you are meant to be doing, um, there is other work. And and I didn’t know the answer to what then I needed to do, but I can tell you with all certainty that the moment my foot hit the the fluffy bath mat as I got stepped out of the shower, I had made a decision, and that was that I no longer wanted a job or even a career, but I wanted a life’s mission and something that I knew that I could wake up to every day and be passionate about for the rest of my life, not just the rest of my working life, the rest of my life, because we are talking souls contract, life’s mission, and I didn’t know at that point what that was going to be. And I, you know, and I and I know in your story you’ve experienced this too. That but but I did make that commitment at that point to explore with excitement and possibility what that might be, and to follow my heart towards what lit me up and what I loved.
You know why that’s so important? I first I want to commend you for listening to the voice, for making a commitment to move forward, even though you couldn’t see your path. Most people don’t, they can’t even make that step. That’s step number one is to listen and to make a commitment because you’re now not just listening, you’re acting on that prompting, right? You’re you’re making a commitment that you’re gonna see this through. You don’t know how it’s gonna work out, but you’re having faith. That’s why the book, my book was titled In Faith I Thrive, because it’s in that moment that doors start to open because your heart now is open to receive, right? Before the armor is on, the old identity is in control.
Yes.
And until you make the decision that you’ve had enough, it you won’t move from those circumstances. You have got to be the one that moves forward in it. It’s not gonna magically happen or come to your doorstep. And a lot of people think that. A lot of people, oh, it’s gonna make its way. Well, it kind of did, right? But you had to, the commitment had to come from you to say, I’ve had enough. I’m stepping off this into this fluffy mat. And my commitment is to see this through that I this is what I desire. Now, desire is in my book. It’s one of the five cycles of transformation I talk about because you have the turning point first, which you had the collapsing on the floor, and then desire means from the father. You felt something from the spirit that said, enough, you this is not your life. And it’s so powerful to feel that. It is unlike anything, it’s nothing like the ego. The ego pushes you because you’re afraid, right? So fear has a lot of energy. We know that, right? And we’re used to fear because we just push, push, push. But the feeling you get from purpose-driven soul identity kind of power presence is very different. It feels more in alignment to your body. You’re there’s less resistance, right? There’s less fighting and conflict going on. Once you say yes to that desire, then you do step forward. But we know that the ego will come in. Did at any point did your mind try to convince you to go back to old ways?
Oh, yes. And there’s a good bit of the story to share there as well. So it wasn’t a straight line. Probably over the course of around three years or so, I explored and followed my heart and learned uh just I trained in health coaching initially because I wanted to learn more about my own body and how to better support that. And there was a lot of different things that I did during that time, and eventually um I ended up being fully booked on a part-time basis, so in the evenings outside of the full-time corporate job, coaching clients one-on-one from a health coaching perspective. And I thought this is what I want to do. And I had no idea how I was going to move from a corporate job with, you know, the salary, the, you know, all the all the the car, the insurance, the health, you know, every you know, all the perks.
All the perks, yeah.
All the perks moved from that into doing something that was my own business. But I knew it was what I wanted to do. And I remember speaking to a career coach and getting some support and help on this. And the first thing was I was terrified to tell her that this was what I wanted to do, and these were my dreams, and uh, but it was so affirming that she just didn’t laugh in my face, and she looked at me really seriously and was like, You will do this, and you can, and absolutely this makes perfect sense, and you’ve articulated it, you know, beautifully. And that affirmation and that uh reassurance was so wonderful to me at that time. But I do remember her saying to me, Rachel, do you think there would ever be a situation where you may be able to uh we call it here in the in the UK, we’d say get redundancy. So essentially the roles would have changed, my job gets laid off, but I get some sort of package of being able to leave. And I said, I don’t think that would ever happen. Not in our corner of the UK, we really struggle to get the kind of talent for the organization that I was working for. I just don’t think that it would happen. And then it’s almost like the the stars aligned, and a few weeks later, I’m called into um a very serious-looking meeting with my then director and uh representative from the HR team, looking very solemn, uh, to tell me that there is a reorganization and that there would be a role for me, but it would be it would look very different, and they would understand if I didn’t want that and if I wanted to leave, and there would be a package associated with that. I found it so hard at that point not to smile and like you know, just like I I went to the I went to the car in the car park, and I was talking to my husband, and I was telling him, and I like he almost had to try and contain me out of like from bursting out of the sunroof, like, this is it, this is the sign. I like I’m on the right path, I’m doing the right thing, it’s happening, it’s happening. And then and then the day before I was due to sign those papers, we found out that I was pregnant with our first child, and so it challenged everything.
Of course it did.
At that point, you’re kind of like, is this the time to have a baby and a business baby at the same time? And my husband was just wonderful in this moment, and he and he forever is just such a wonderful support in my life, and and he said to me, You’ve got to do this, you have to do this, and so um I left the business. Uh, just the way things worked out and notice periods and one thing or another. I ended up working there a little bit longer than anticipated, but um, I left the business and two weeks later I gave birth to our first son.
I love that. I love that, but you see how the mind does come in, right? Yeah, but then you found you had support system, which is so critical when we are faced with these decisions to make in these crossroads, right? We want people supporting that mission, that common goal that we have. That’s why we want our partners to be on the same page with us. Um, this is what we’re working towards, and then they can keep us accountable to that goal, right? And to in my case, to God’s will. Like Donnie always comes in, my second husband, and says, You have to move. If he prompted you, you need to do it. You know you need to do it. And and it’s that affirmation, that support that we need. He’s been part of my mission forever, um, in that he’s the breadwinner in our home. And that was so hard for someone like me. I was so type A, just like you. I I struggled with this piece so much, you know, and God was saying, but that’s not your life. That’s why I went and had that medical complication. It was God’s opportunity to say, it’s time for you to look for something more. So I love that despite the ego coming into doubt, you had your husband, your God sent, to like affirm and say, no, no, no, you need to do this. You need to take the severance package. Because it was like, there was no question that it was your blessing and your opportunity to move on, just like your business coach had discussed with you. I mean, how awesome. It was just like what, a week later? It sometimes the timing comes fast, sometimes it takes a couple months. But in that waiting, I find that the closer you are to your inner world and less to the outer world, the more the clear the answers will be. You’ll know where to move, as opposed to allowing all the outside noise to penetrate and and speak into your doubt, because that’s what it does. The outside world in its influences, we have to be very cautious, very um intentional of what avenues to allow our attention and energy to go to. And here’s why the subconscious mind is extremely powerful. You’re a coach, so you know this. There is no filter to it. So every influence that you are, every TV show, every social media set you’re on, every person you speak to, they’re speaking into you if you don’t have the conscious ability of your mind to reject it, right? The subconscious part, there’s no filter to it, so it just comes in. And it either aligns to the programming of your mind or disaligns to it, right? Um, so we were talking prior to the podcast interview why you stayed away from social media. Can you share with us why that is?
Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And and just to speak to what you’ve just said as well, um when I was pregnant with uh baby number one, I remember having to stand like a bouncer on the door of my mind. My father said something to me. So I really wanted a um a natural home birth, ideally, if I if I could. Um and was very much was very much in in the space of, you know, as women, we have been doing this forever. We are ultimately animals, like, you know, uh like that this this doesn’t need to be a uh you know a scary or a difficult thing. And I respect that everybody’s ever every every woman will have a different birthing story. Um but my my dad had said to me, um, and he’d done it from a good intention, he was he’d done it from his from his love and his his. care but he’d said to me Rachel you’ve got very narrow hips like that you you that like I’m not sure that you are built for giving birth and really I would want you to be in hospital so you and the baby have got you know all the the the things that you might need and oh gosh I remember it being so aware of him saying that to me and it’s seeping it was like it was a drop of poison just like a few words but because it had come from him it was seeping into me and I had to work really hard and very consciously to reprogram that and to keep that out um you know I I I had a I I had a picture on my bathroom mirror or with a beautiful affirmation it was a diagram of a woman with the baby in her belly um you know talking about how you know baby and and and mother work together and you know just the the beautiful affirmations about all of that I was filling my mind with women who and I you know I I this I didn’t even know this was a thing until I discovered it but women who are orgasming whilst you know giving birth which if you could you know write circumstances and everything that’s going sadly that didn’t happen to me but you know it was a very beautiful fun peaceful experience that did happen in hospital in the end for me um but it was I I believe because I stood at the door of of of my mind and protected it in that way which I guess brings us to what you’re asking about which is the social media thing and um so I used to be heavily involved in Facebook and Instagram and regularly posting I even had an inner circle Facebook group um which I loved and the people who were in there you know I I I I I still care about deeply and I’m connected to in other ways. But what I found with my own energy and my own peace is that social media doesn’t support that greatly there are some things that I do love on there but I have to be very intentional about how I access social media so I’ve removed all apps of social media apps from my phone um so I can access them through a browser if I want to but just having that extra step means that I don’t just end up you know kind of in the rabbit hole and um yeah and and I just I think there’s a lot of really good stuff there’s good stuff out there there’s good content out there but the world today is can be very noisy with lots of distractions and I think we have to be very intentional about the um the space that we allow ourselves but I think coming back to some simplicity is also really beneficial. I was with one of my coaching clients this morning and we were celebrating him talking about picking blackberries and he said there was such peace in just being out and such a almost a um yeah a meditation and a calm that was all I was doing I was just out in nature and I was picking blackberries and and I think there’s a simplification that we can sometimes forget in our busy lives. And so creating the space and the time you were saying you you wake regularly at four and have your coffee with God in the morning and you have that you have that time it’s yeah um in those spaces is um and in the pauses is where so much magic can happen.
It can and and I want to share one thing with you and with the audience as you were talking the blackberries I could actually picture them as you were speaking and there’s one moment over the weekend I went down to South Texas which is about a six hour drive because you know how Texas is huge. And I’m in Austin and my parents well my mother lives now in Brownsville I grew up there and right on the border with Mexico. And I we drove down my husband my daughter and I um it was her 85th birthday party. And so to celebrate it with my mother who’s my best friend is amazing. I mean she’s she’s a light in this world she’s someone that deserves to be celebrated every day really uh but the fact that it was her 85th on Friday exactly on October 24th was beautiful. So I was there because I was helping her organize the party. I was originally going to throw a secret birthday party for her but one time she called me and she said you know Sylvia I never spent money on myself and I really want to spend money on myself and I want to throw myself this big 85th birthday party and I didn’t want to ruin that for her. So I just stepped in and said well that okay that’s wonderful mom I’m I’m so glad you told me now and I didn’t go ahead and do your secret one that I’m already in talks with with one of your best friends. And she started laughing and I said so so let me do this for you as a gift. Let me take care of the flowers and the photographer and videographer and the cake and your favors and you can take care of the rest you know the food the wine the alcohol whatever the place the date the invitations all that is on you. And she was like I love that okay great so we were collaborating. But one of the moments that was so significant to me over the weekend was we took our daughter to the beach. It’s South Pyter Island beach it’s about 40 minutes from Brownsville and it was a beautiful afternoon. It was a little bit windy but it’s okay. And the seagulls were there was a couple that was feeding the seagulls and my daughter was busily playing with the seagulls. She’s 10 years old and my husband was videotaping her while my mother and I were sitting on chairs and we could hear the ocean and we were smelling the ocean and we thought the sky was a brilliant blue like as brilliant as my shirt it was gorgeous outside and I was holding my mother’s hand and in that moment I just the joy that I felt was so profound. I just I was so blessed and I looked up at the sky and you know I I think of my father often as he’s been gone a year and six months and it’s it’s been difficult because they were um they were soulmates. They had been together for 60 years. And so I know how hard that day was for mom without dad but I was just so blessed that I could just hold her hand and just say hey I’m here you know you’ve got she had all and all of us all the children there with her during her birthday which was such a blessing. It really was.
But you’re right those moments are so small and to some people they’re so insignificant because we’re so busy doing that we forget to be enjoy be in presence that’s where our bodies can relax into the flow of life stop and smell the roses in other words right like which is the famous you know English or American saying you know stop and smell the roses um so thank you for letting me share that moment because I just it was something the Holy Spirit kind of guided me to say so whoever’s listening can just reflect every day on those moments to have such gratitude in your heart is also a way to be authentic be in joy and continue flowing in life um kind of like you’re writing the waves of the ocean it’s so simple it’s so smooth there’s like no resistance when you are in full alignment to that beautiful purpose you were called to to step into and so speaking of purpose Rachel what what is your divine purpose how did you discover it um how did I discover it well I often describe that the purpose or uh I often say for me it’s a soul’s contract it is to be ever evolving to be true to my spirit to know that I am one with all that is and to trust in showing up in a way that allows the divine miracles for myself and for others. It’s um it’s just it it’s it it is ever evolving. And how did I you know it it’s a really good question. How did I come to that?
Um a great deal I think of of the inner reflection of the personal work of personal work of um and I’m still you know as we all are on that journey of becoming home let’s call it that and um and recognizing that with every challenge or opportunity there’s an opportunity to learn and to grow and to understand more about who we are and our next level of of growth I love that that’s so profound Rachel thank you for for being on my show I I can’t thank you enough you have shared with such vulnerability such authenticity just with such an open heart that like you said earlier there’s very few people that you meet although I’ve been blessed to meet some of you out there through this podcast and really connect I I do think you and I are connected beyond this interview beyond this connection there were things that as you were speaking my soul was being lifted like truly lifted in the moment and that’s how I know that we’re all interconnected through our spirits you know and how we will continue on we’ll likely see each other in heaven you know when we graduate there after this life uh this is very fleeting these moments are very fleeting and but I know that from this point on I will consider you a friend and a soul sister almost you know uh we’re very different. I mean you’re in England and I’m in Texas and I’m full-blooded Mexican I mean we’re like normally you’d see that and you’re like there’s no connection there but then you speak and it’s like you’re speaking to each other’s souls and it’s it’s wonderful. Any last words of encouragement you want to leave us with I think if you are at that crossroads um or at a at a at a point in life where maybe there is some decisions to make follow your heart and listen to that whisper within oh my god it’s beautiful it is beautiful you’re right that that voice is so powerful and it really wants to give us all the joy that we’ve been desiring and all the peace and the fulfillment that we’ve been desiring but all we have to do is tune in to it.
Beautiful thank you so much Rachel if I wanted to work with you how do I find you well actually I have a little gift that might be of value to your listeners. So um it’s it’s called the pause it’s a few simple questions but asked really intentionally just help provide that little bit of space and reflection so if that’s useful to anyone they can download that for free on my website which is elvar.co dotuk and that’s e-l-l e-v ar dotcouk and I would love to connect with people on LinkedIn albeit I know I’m not a big social media fan as I’ve said I am on LinkedIn and if there’s an extra initial to put in my name or an extra letter to put in my name put it in you know and you’ll find me there’s not many Rachel Edmondson Clarks out there. So thank you so much for having me on the show.
It has been such a blessing to have this conversation this this um this time and space that we’ve shared together and um to everyone that’s listening thank you for listening as well thank you so much for for coming on the show Rachel I appreciate and for the listeners of released out reveal purpose remember Matthew 514 to be the light be the light be this beautiful bright light that you’re meant to be in this world because we need you to shine very brightly have a wonderful week stay safe love y’all bye now 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 hosts a review on iTunes will win a chance the grand prize drawing to win a$25,000 private VIP day with Sylvia Worstham 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.