Latest / Limitless Living with Fredricka Davis / 071: How to Find Your Purpose When You Don’t Know What’s Next

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071: How to Find Your Purpose When You Don’t Know What’s Next · Limitless Living with Fredricka Davis

• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome back to the Saturday episode of Limitless Living.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the day that we get to talk about what it really takes to fully step into your identity and discover your passions and even reinvent when you need to.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: What's underneath all of those roles and responsibilities, all the expectations that we as women so often carry, and men too.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: So welcome, whether it's your first time or you are returning.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm really glad that you're here.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: And this week we are continuing our QA conversations.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: So the first question I'm going to answer today is Freddie, how did you get started with all of the things that you do?
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: You do so many different things.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: How did you get started in this business or doing this or doing that?
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: So it's always some version of that question.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I have done a lot of things in my lifetime.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: I have worked in sales and direct marketing and retail and restaurants and I've waitressed.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: I've been in corporate settings.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: I went to cosmetology school, electrolysis, aesthetics, medical aesthetics, massage therapy, nutrition, personal training, coaching, business, AI, anatomy and physiology, movement therapy, personal training.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: I was a therapeutic writing instructor for a number of years and worked with people with disabilities, special needs, brain injuries, and that kind of a thing.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I can tell you, this one might surprise you, I even drove a trash truck for one day.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: It was a 13-speed international uh dump truck, actually.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: I would love to tell you I discovered a hidden love of either trash or heavy machinery, but definitely not.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: I respect all those that do those jobs.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: So that was definitely not for me.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: But almost everything I've done, including the things I decided I did not want to continue doing, taught me something that I was later able to use.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I actually started working when I was extremely young because we didn't have much money after my dad died when I was young and we struggled a bit.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I had these big dreams and goals.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted a car.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: I, you know, I wasn't 16 yet, but at 13, I knew I wanted a car.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I knew we didn't have the money for it, and I would have to work for it.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I did.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: I worked.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: I started out actually uh cleaning apartments in the development that we lived in.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Then I took a full-time during the summer and part-time during the year job taking care of two brothers, one who was wheelchair bound.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I did bathroom breaks, I did the wheelchair transfers, I did the caretaking, the meals, everything, helping a single mom out during that stage of uh my teens.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I really started working very young.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I used to say I was a childcare technician.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I have to lay off my creativity there.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: But I did a lot of things and started very young.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: And the experiences taught me something really important.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes recognizing what you don't want actually helps you understand what matters to you most.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: So we have a tendency to look at jobs, relationships, or or any of our experiences that did not work out and decide that we wasted our time.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: We failed, we we wasted our time, you had the best years of my life, or whatever the case may be.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: I do not see it that way.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: Don't get me wrong, I've had moments where I saw it that way, but once I get through that point, I generally don't see things that way.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: Because even if something wasn't right that I tried, it gave me information.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: And even if I failed at it, it gave me information.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: It showed me maybe what drained me or what was just not a good fit, was too hard for me, or what I just really didn't like, what I was unwilling to do, or sacrifices that I was unwilling to make just to be successful in somebody else's version of success.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: And as I kind of moved through all my different educational pieces from one school, one education, one course, whatever it was, one certification, to the next, one thing led to another.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: Along the way, all of the uh aesthetics and the body work and massage therapy and nutrition and personal training, as I mentioned, and all the coaching and all those other things, they all came together.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: The therapeutic writing, all the extensive anatomy and physiology and movement therapies and things like that, all of it went together.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I just kept studying and I kept studying.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: And now each one of those alone looks like a separate career to many people.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: But when you start to list them and you start to look for the threads that connect them underneath everything, it really is a common thread that connects them.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: So what I was doing was I was learning how to help another person feel better, basically with almost all of those, regardless of the how.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes that meant helping someone feel better physically.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it meant I was helping someone look in the mirror and like what they actually see.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: And others, it might mean helping with the body to feel better, whether it was muscle pain or movement or nutrition, um, confidence.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: That was another area, communication or whatever it was that was happening in a person's life.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now, during my years in sales, I also had teams of people working with me.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: At AT ⁇ T, I had people who answered to me and I was responsible for training and motivating and helping them improve.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: That taught me how to explain things.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: It also taught me that people do not all respond to the same kind of encouragement.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: What inspires one person might actually make another person completely shut down.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't calling myself a coach at the time.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: I was training, teaching, leading, and helping my team, my clients, and even my friends solve their problems.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then looking back on this now, of course, I can see that the coaching piece was already there before I really realized that's what I was doing.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then I spent decades working one-on-one and in small groups with people in the spawn wellness settings.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: And when you work that closely with people for literally decades, you learn how to listen before you answer.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Someone may come in because their neck hurts.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: But as we begin talking, sometimes what actually reveals itself is that the person in front of me really just wants to feel at home in her body again.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: And a business owner, when I'm working with somebody who's, say, a business owner, might say to me, you know what, I just need a new strategy.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: What's what I'm doing is not working.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: But then once we kind of dig a little deeper and we get underneath that, we might discover that what has happened is that she's really just lost trust in her ability to make the right decisions because maybe there were a few failures and she didn't fully process through them and got stuck in them versus using them as simply information to move forward.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: Now, my role isn't to decide someone else's life.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: That is a fact.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's to listen carefully enough to help you hear for yourself and recognize what may be underneath the problem that is initially showing up.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: So over the years, I've just become really adept at taking something that's complicated, finding a way to break it down, and then helping you see and identify what's going on, why it's going on, but really most importantly, what the next step should actually be.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: So my work as a therapeutic riding instructor, that added a whole nother layer.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, working with horses and people with special needs or brain injuries taught me a tremendous amount about body communication, patience, and connection.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: You cannot assume that every person learns and processes information, moves, or or communicates in the same way as the next.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to really work with the person in front of you.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: Same thing with the horses.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes you just need to change the way you explain something.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's by slowing down or just paying attention or just finding some point of connection.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: I really have to say I loved that work.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely loved it so much.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: And at some point I will probably return to that because it was just simply so meaningful and rewarding, and I really did enjoy it.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: I also came into wellness through my own health experiences.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: And that was really where it started.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you may have heard bits and pieces if you've been listening to the show of that.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: But I was sick a great deal when I was younger and even spent time receiving homebound instruction for about four years because I was not well enough to attend a school normally.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: And back then they didn't have homeschooling like we have now.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I had injections, inhalers, and other prescription treatments, and constant, constant, constant doctors, but I just wasn't experiencing the kind of improvement that you would hope for.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I was young and in my late teens, I got introduced to a doctor who was more holistic in his approach.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this was my first real exposure.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: And back then, this was not normal.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: Anybody who did anything uh holistic was a quack.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: Anybody who even did chiropractic was a quack, right?
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: This is we're going back a number of years here.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: It was not the norm like we have in today's world.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: And that was actually my first real exposure to how nutrition, movement, mindset, stress, uh, environment, and the body can all affect each other and are all deeply connected.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: So that experience did not teach me that conventional medicine was bad necessarily either.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not against that.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: I say that all the time.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: There's a time and a place for it, but it really did show me that there are additional questions that we can ask and should ask, and additional ways that we can support our body and ways that we should turn to first, often, because that's how we correct the causes versus just treating the symptoms.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: So it started me down a path of learning that has continued throughout my entire life.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I know it will until the moment I am no longer here.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: When I look back at all of these things, the jobs, all the education, all my personal experiences, I definitely do not feel as if I simply fell into the work that I do today.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: I think I was drawn to it naturally.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: I also, if I'm being completely honest, I believe a big part of this was God's plan for my life.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: Every job taught me something.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: And every subject I studied just really gave me another tool.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: Some of the hardest experiences of my life gave me a level of empathy I could not have learned from a textbook.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: And all of that now, that's what comes together as I record this show and as I help people, as I coach, as I speak, as I lead, whatever the capacity is.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's how I kind of got to that.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: So hope that answered the question.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: Next question is how did you know this was what you were meant to do?
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: So this goes back to purpose.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: I have a lot of clients who I know and friends and people that I encounter that are feeling a little lost, like they just haven't figured out what their purpose is in life, or they get they they thought they knew, and then something happens and derails us, and then we just we get a little lost, you know, and that happens especially this point in time.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: So this is a good question.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: So for me, I don't think I had one enormous moment when the sky opened and a voice announced exactly what I was supposed to do.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: Wouldn't it be nice if that was how it was?
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: Oh.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: But instead, what happened was things became clearer and clearer and clearer over time.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: I have always been an avid reader.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: When I was a teenager, you know, of course, we did not, depending on your age, listening to that, we did not have internet.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: We did not have these resources we have today.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: We had books.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: And even when I was a preteen, I just was always reading.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I wanted to understand things.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: I had a curiousness to me.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: Thank God I have never lost the curiosity.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: If I could cultivate one thing in my daughter and one thing in everyone who's listening to this and encourage, it's curiosity.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: Learn, seek the information.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, I would find a book, I would take a class, I would talk to somebody who knew more than I did at the time and ask tons of questions.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: Probably drove my teachers crazy when I was in the schools because of the number of years I was actually in my homebound setting, which was four years, uh, reading also became the only way for me to continue learning.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I would get my assignments in that one hour of each of my four major subjects from my teachers each week.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I would have to read, I'd have to understand it, I'd have to answer the tests, answer the questions.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that was just how it was.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: So, because of that, it cultivated that for me, my ability to, my ability to self-learn and to become an insatiable learner.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: So some of that came from necessity, some of it was probably my natural personality, and some of it came from watching my mother.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: My mother was curious too, especially about health as she got older.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, being so much older than me, raising me, she was enormously worried about not being there long enough to raise me.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that was one of her motivating factors as well.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: But I remember her ordering those enormous health reference books that used to come from Prevention Magazine.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: Anybody remember those?
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: They would compile all the information, research from the magazine into these big books, and she would order these different volumes.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: I actually have a few of them still on my shelf.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's just uh me reminiscing that when I see them.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I grew up watching her search for answers all the time.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: And children really do learn and absorb what they live, not what we tell them, but what they see and what they live.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the personal development books that I first picked up when I was very young was called Creative Visualization by Shakti Gawim.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: And funny, I was talking about this book with a client a couple of weeks ago.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then I think a week later I walked into the bookstore, and there it was in a recently updated version, and I bought it again just for fun, because honestly, I thought that was interesting and I'm gonna read it again.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: It was one of the books that really opened up my eyes.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: And then over the years, I read people such as Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill, Zig Ziggler, Jim Rohn, Wayne Dyer, Stephen Covey, Tony Robbins.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: I still read all the time, or I listen to books.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: So now I have other favorite authors, Brene Brown, Mel Robbins, and I could go on and on.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of them.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I took courses, attended workshops even when I was younger, and studied wellness, self-improvement, business, mindset, behavior, communication, anything that was going to make me better at what I was doing, better in terms of whatever healing I needed to do, or more able to help others, or personal development, anything.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: I just kept taking and devouring anything I could find.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I also did a ton of work on myself through this.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: When I was younger, it was kind of the beginning of the big self-help movement.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I had a lot of traumas when I was younger and I had a lot of loss.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I needed to understand those patterns, how it manifested, why I did some of the things I did.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I just needed to get clearer about what mattered to me, what I wanted to hold on to, what I wanted to process and let go of.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I needed to figure out what I really wanted my life to stand for.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now, none of that happened all at once.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: It layered over many years and will probably layer until I die, quite frankly.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: I began, though, recognizing that I am naturally curious and that I love to learn.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: Then over time, I became really good at explaining what I've learned, what I've experienced in a way that other people can actually understand and then use.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I started to be able to really see connections in the people I was working with that they yet had not seen themselves.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: So the problem a person first describes is not always the real issue.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: You may have experienced this with yourself.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: If you've got headaches, yeah, that's a problem, but that's probably not the root problem.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: It could be because you're dehydrated.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: It could be because you're under too much stress, it could be because you're not moving enough, it could be because of positions all day, it could be because you're sleeping poorly.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of things that are underlying.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: So you get the picture.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: And it's the same thing with the way our lives unfold and the behaviors we have, the beliefs we have.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's all the same.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes we just really need to look beneath the behavior or the symptom.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: And as an example, I think that's exactly where our Western medical approach is lacking.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: And our approach sometimes to a lot of things is lacking because we're just looking at the behavior or the symptom, but we're really not looking for not just the cause and getting stuck there, but how the heck, how the heck to get past and beyond that and understand it.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: So, in my experience, there is likely an old story or a belief or a wound or a pattern of some kind that needs to be then understood and acknowledged before the surface problem that you started out with can actually begin to change.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: So once we understand it, we need to turn that understanding into something that's actionable, something that's doable, something that's not overwhelming and too big, but something that can actually be done to move past it.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: And that has become my thing.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: I look at you, at me, at each person as a whole person.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I spend time getting underneath what's happening, making the complicated parts a lot clearer, and then helping you find a realistic way forward.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: And also to answer this question, I have this page I kept from an old issue of oh, the Oprah magazine.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh, I think I've had it for like 30 years.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's still hanging in my bathroom today.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I tore it out when I was in my 20s, before I even had kids or anything.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's a picture of a little baby's face and a message that just resounded with me so deeply that I carried it from place to place about our purpose in life and making a difference in others' lives.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'll post the exact saying in the show notes if you want to look it up, just for curiosity.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll post it in the Limitless Living group if you're part of the group.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: If you're not, come join it so you can see what that is.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I'll post a picture of it there.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: I've had this literally hanging in my bathroom for years, and I don't know why.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: It just resonated with me, and I just keep it there.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: So when I first read this little page, I something inside me just really spoke to me like, yes, that's what I want to stand for.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I want to do, that's who I want to be, and that's what I've created.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't know what the work would actually eventually look like for me.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: I did not know I would eventually have this podcast.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: I had no clue.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, we didn't even have podcasts back then.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: I did not know that I would develop a method, the limitless reset method, or facilitate retreats yet.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: I did not know that I would coach women just yet, or bring all these different parts of my experience together.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: I simply knew at my core that I wanted people's lives to be better because our paths had crossed.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: So it genuinely lights me up when something I say helps you believe in yourself or recognize that you have more options than you thought you had.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: It lights me up when you feel better because of something I may have said or taught, or when something I wrote helps you understand maybe a part of yourself in a different way.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: I don't mean this in uh an ego.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: Kind of a driven way.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's much deeper than that for me.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's much more of a feeling that says to me that I'm living in alignment and that I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'm actually living in alignment with what God, Creator, has placed me here to do.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: I genuinely feel that as a purpose.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: And it's across everything I do.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's not any one thing, it's everything I do.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: I try anyway.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: And from what I've experienced, what I've seen with my clients, so many of us get confused sometimes because we expect our purpose to come with a job title or this big epiphany.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: But mine did not.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: At least not at first.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: And the same is really true for my clients.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: Mine came with a bunch of trial and error and information that came as a result of those, and things that spoke to me, like that magazine page I tore out, and things that just really resonated with me that I learned to listen to.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: And as I look back, I can see the same thread running through almost every single thing I've done.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: Even though each of the jobs looked completely different at the time, I was learning, teaching, encouraging, translating complicated information and helping someone take their next step.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: So the job titles changed along the way, but my underlying purpose did not.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: So the next question is: have you ever reached a point where you didn't know what was next for you?
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, more than once.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: Truth be told, I've always been a goal-oriented person.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: Usually I have an idea, a project, or I have something that I am working towards.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: But I've had periods when I just didn't know what came next.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: I've certainly had times when I felt like the world was a hundred percent against me.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: No matter what I did, it wasn't working.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: In those moments, I'd be working hard and making progress, and then something else would happen.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: And it just felt like I was taking two steps forward and three steps backward.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: I know that feeling very well.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: And after a while of that, it can become really incredibly defeating.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: I know some of you were sitting there thinking, oh, yeah, I can relate.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: I've had those moments.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: I've had moments when I wondered whether I should give up because what I was trying to create just simply did not seem to be working yet.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I've also had times when the future I believed I was actually creating and building fell apart or just disappeared.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: One of the clearest examples I can think of, uh looking back on that one, was an extremely painful breakup.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: I believed that I knew what my life was going to look like.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: I thought I was building this family and that I would spend the rest of my life loving this person and these children.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: And then suddenly I wasn't.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: He changed his mind.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: The breakup was not my choice.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I had to pick up the pieces of a life I had not expected to lose.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I just remember thinking then, what am I going to do now?
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: What do I even want to do?
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: How do I start over?
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I had to set new goals and eventually dream different dreams.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I will tell you, that did not happen right away.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: It did not begin with this big brand new giant plan or beautiful vision board at the time.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: It began with trying to put one foot in front of the other, to be honest with you, and get through the day and get out of bed and show up for work.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: It was just bit by bit and step by step, is how that began.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then honestly, before I could even think about reinventing my life, I needed time to grieve what happened and then get my feet back underneath me and feeling stable again.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: So that was really an absolutely unbelievably hard time for me.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I had to give myself permission not to have an immediate life plan in that moment.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: But eventually I started reconnecting again with myself and paying attention to the things that gave me even just a little bit more energy or relief and made me look forward versus backward.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, I thought about what had not worked in my life, what I had lost, and what I did not want to repeat for sure.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I began trying different things and allowing the next direction to start to reveal itself gradually.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: I also questioned whether I wanted to continue building what I had then, which was more of a traditional day spa and beauty kind of a center, because some parts of that industry really felt too superficial for the kind of work that I really was called and wanted to do.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I didn't want to focus only on how somebody looked, even though that's an important piece of how we feel often that some of us actually overlook, and it is an important piece of it.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: But I wanted to help with how a person felt, how a person lived, what a person believes in, and how all the parts of your life affect one another.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: So that questioning at the time helped me really move my business towards more of a wellness center and day spa, and more towards the wellness work that I've developed now into the whole person coaching, the teaching, speaking, retreats, and programs, all these other things.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't figure out the complete answer in one decision is the point here.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I experimented before deciding how I wanted it to all look moving forward and what I wanted to make permanent.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: So that brings me to the last question of the day.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think I know what I want anymore, and I'm not even sure where to start.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: How do I start?
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's part statement and question, but I think it's really important to cover.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: So that's why I included it today.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: First, I would tell you that nothing is wrong with you.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: Don't feel like you are fail, failing, or disconnected or behind, or any of those things, okay?
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: That we often feel like when we're in a moment like this.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: If you've spent years working and maybe raising kids and caring for others, your parents, other family members, whoever it is, or you've managed a home or you're building a business.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: Doesn't matter what it is.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're responding to whatever else needs, and you've just been doing that for so long, and you just haven't had much of a chance or made the time to seriously consider what you want.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: Don't beat yourself up for this.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: You may not know how to answer this question immediately.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: This does not mean, though, that you have no dreams or purpose.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: Your own voice may simply have been buried beneath a lot of responsibility, a lot of weight, a lot of noise.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: I would not start by pressuring yourself to identify an enormous passion or create a big giant plan right away, or for the rest of your life right off the get-go.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: What I would start doing first and recommending is that you start paying attention.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: Just paying attention, listening to your body, listening to what's going on around you, what goes on in your head, all of it.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: Notice what you're curious about.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: Notice what's giving you energy.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: Think about what you miss about yourself or what you've always wanted to learn, but you haven't yet.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: Those can be signs.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: And you can also pay attention to what really makes you a bit resentful because resentment can sometimes show us where we've repeatedly ignored a need that we have.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe we've been tolerating too much or abandoning some part of ourselves.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: I would also begin to recognize what comes next by first becoming honest with yourself about what no longer feels like it fits.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then allow yourself to experiment.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: Take a class, volunteer, uh, return to something that you used to love years ago, or talk to someone else who has interests and experience in some area that interests you.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: Try something without deciding it has to become your new career, your new next endeavor, or a whole brand new identity, and talk to them first.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: In this day and age, and as women, we often have this habit that we believe every interest must become productive, profitable, or permanent.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: And honestly, it just doesn't, it does not have to become that way.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: You're allowed to explore things just because you are curious for no other reason but that.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: You're also allowed to want something that serves you.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't always have to serve everybody else.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's okay to do that.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: We as women are often very comfortable choosing goals that will benefit other people, benefit other children, partners, clients, businesses, or communities.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's all true.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then when we want to choose something for us that might bring us some joy or freedom or peace or uh fulfillment or financial security, we start to feel a little selfish.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: You are a part of the life you are creating.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna say that one again.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: You are a part of the life you're creating.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: It cannot truly be your life if you are continually missing from it.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: And from what I've experienced and seen with clients, we often get confused because we expect our purpose to come with a job title or a big epiphany or whatever.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: Your purpose may be more like the thread running through many different jobs, many different relationships, interests, and chapters.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: But the titles can change, businesses can evolve, the tools and the way you express your work can change, but the same thread might still be there going through them.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now, as I look back, everything I was doing was me learning deeply, me learning to listen, learning to help others see beneath the obvious problem and find ways to make complicated information easier to understand, so that the right realistic next step could actually be taken.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: That has become my purpose.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: The form of that continues to evolve for me too.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: So if you don't know exactly what is next for you, you may not have lost your purpose at all.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: You might even have it and just not be realizing it yet.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: You may simply be at a point where it needs a new way to express itself.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: So here's a reflection question I'm going to leave you with this week.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: When you look back at the different chapters of your life, all the things you've gone through and the things you've done, are there common threads?
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: And if so, what are the common threads?
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: For this week's reset, I want you to choose three meaningful chapters of your life.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: They could be jobs, relationships, stages of motherhood, businesses, volunteer roles, uh, major personal experiences.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I want you to look at what each experience taught you coming out of that.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: Whether it was a good or a bad experience, don't get caught up in that.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: What did it teach you coming out of it?
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: What did you contribute?
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: And what mattered to you during that chapter?
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: Then notice what appears more than once.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: You don't need to force those observations into a beautifully worded, purposeful statement.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: And you do not need to force those observations into a beautifully worded personal statement.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just encouraging you to look for the thread.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: Your next chapter may not actually require you to become an entirely different person.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: You may just be finding a new way to express something that's already been part of what you've been doing all along.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: If this episode spoke to you, I would love it if you'd give us a review.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: That helps other people find the show.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: And if you know somebody who no longer knows exactly what she wants or wonders whether or not it's too late to begin again, please share this with her.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: You can learn more about my coaching speaking, upcoming events, and our free limitless living community for women at fredericadavis.com.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, be rooted, be resilient, and be limitless.