S2 EP156 – Hopelessly Devoted to…?

Episode Summary

What are you most devoted to in your life? What lights you up and gets you moving every day? Perhaps you don’t know the answer to this and this podcast can be of help to you in discovering what your passionate purpose is – lights up your heart and soul.

Transcript

Hi everyone. Dr. Margaret Paul and Dr. Erika Chopich here with the Inner Bonding podcast. Today we want to talk about a topic that comes up a lot with the people I work with, which is what is it that lights you up and brings you the most joy. What it is you are hopelessly devoted to. Erika came up with the topic and the title, and here is what she wants to share about it.

(Erika) I was in the car riding along listening to the radio when Olivia Newton John’s song, “Hopelessly Devoted to You” came on. I started thinking about the concept of being hopelessly devoted. I think hopelessly devoted is what motivates you. It’s the center of your purpose. It’s the one thing you will not quit on even when it seems impossible. You drag yourself out of bed to do whatever you’re hopelessly devoted to. It’s the core that lights you up. I started to ask myself, “What am I hopelessly devoted to?” and the first answer I heard in my head was that I’m hopelessly devoted to my growth, and to my spiritual connection, and to service. That has always been true for me. It is why I get up in the morning . It is what lights me up. It is my path.

But then I realized there’s also a more earthly devotion that many of us have. It’s our passion. It’s what puts wow in life. It’s also the reason you get up every morning, and I started to ask myself what would that be for me on this earthly plane? What am I hopelessly devoted to, and I realized that it’s not just the people around me and the people I love, but I’m hopelessly devoted to my horses and to my other animals. They dragged me out of bed every morning with a smile on my face no matter what challenges I have, no matter how difficult it can be. and no matter how foul the weather, I will be there. I will show up and I will care for them and be with them and love them.

Then I started thinking a little bit more about it and realized you can be hopelessly devoted to things that are not good for you – like bad foods, addictions, bad relationships, bad philosophies. There’s a lot you can be hopelessly devoted to that does not serve you well. So my question to you is: Is whatever you’re hopelessly devoted to enhancing you or holding you back? That’s the internal question you can look at. The things I am devoted to lift me beyond belief. They guide my way, my path, and I couldn’t be more excited. But if you have something you’re hopelessly devoted to like caretaking or being in a bad relationship, or lots of times I will hear women say I’m hopelessly devoted to my children, but when we look further it isn’t exactly a healthy devotion. That’s for you to discover. That’s part of your process and your journey – to find out what it is that absolutely drives you and lifts you every single day of your life.

I am extremely devoted to the services I provide as a chaplain. I love working with homeless people and the first responders but even more I love the magic and I’m completely devoted to the service and mentoring I provide to our barn team. Our barn team has a very large age spread and very diversified backgrounds. But it’s interesting to me that their goals and their issues are absolutely identical across the board. I don’t just mentor them with horse care and ranch work and how to do things and complete things it’s deeper than that. They will often ask me about what it’s like to age. Is it fun? Is it difficult? What are the potholes in the aging process and where is the joy in aging? They will ask me questions like, “Should my career path follow the money, or should it follow something else? and I give them the same answer every time: Do what you love, and the money will follow. Do not follow the money in your career. Follow your passion.

This leads to the obvious question of, “How do I know what my passion is?” It never ceases to amaze me that so many people walk along their path in life having no idea what their own passion is! How do you find your passion? You find your passion by being aware of the first positive thought you have every morning that brings a smile to your face. What lights you up, what excites you and drives you to read and learn and experience and know every single thing about it? That is your passion. That is what you are hopelessly devoted to. I have learned over the years that the more you follow what you’re hopelessly devoted to, the brighter your flame burns, the higher your flame burns, and the more meaning you have in your life that allows you to offer so very much more to others in love and in inspiration.

(Margaret) As I’ve often said, the underlying purpose that we all come here with is to evolve our soul in our ability to love and to manifest the gifts we are each given. This is what Erika was talking about when she said that her devotion is to her growth, and to her spiritual connection, and to service. When you open to that and get on the path of learning to evolve your soul in your ability to love, that leads you to how you want to express the gifts you’ve been given. It leads you to your passionate purpose, your true calling.

We are all born with a blueprint, which is in our true self – our soul essence. But one of the problems is that for many of us growing up, we didn’t get seen. We didn’t get reflected. Very few people who I’ve worked with had parents capable of seeing them on the soul level. My parents were not capable of looking inside and seeing and understanding their own souls, so they certainly couldn’t see who I really am.

So with many of us, our blueprint got buried under our ego wounded self, our false self, which is patterned after our parents and other caregivers. We had to create our wounded self as part of our survival to try to have control over getting love and avoiding pain and feeling safe. But the problem is, is that we start to identify with our wounded self as who we really are, but it is not who we are. Spirit created your soul, which is who you really are, but you created your ego wounded self to try to feel safe. But in creating your wounded self, you might have lost track of who you are in your true soul self, because you weren’t reflected by your parents regarding who you are in your soul. So you might have learned to identify yourself as your wounded self. Your wounded self does not have the blueprint for what you came here to do and for who you really are.

As long as you’re identified with the wounded self and you’re acting from your wounded self, you’re not going to discover what brings you joy. You might be doing something that you were told to do, or that people in your family have done, or that you thought was the right thing to do. But often doing that is not what’s truly fulfilling, not what truly brings you joy. What lights you up and brings you joy is found in your soul, your inner child, your true self. That blueprint is there, but it might be buried under all the false beliefs of the wounded self, and all the ways the wounded self tries to control and protect and avoid pain.

You can discover your true purpose by practicing Inner Bonding, developing your spiritually connected loving adult so you can learn to see and value who you are through the eyes of your higher guidance.

The loving adult is who you are when you’re open to learning and you’re connected to a higher source of truth and wisdom. As you practice Inner Bonding and learn to connect with your higher guidance, your guidance lets you in on who you really are, and as you learn to see and value your soul, your inner child will let you in on your blueprint. Once he or she trusts you, once he or she knows that you are going to show up as a loving adult, meaning that that you’re going to listen to your feelings and care about your feelings, and you’re going to take responsibility for your feelings, your inner child will let you in your passionate purpose. Your inner child needs to trust that you’re going to speak up for yourself and stand for yourself. Your inner child is not going to tell you what your deeper purpose is if he or she doesn’t trust that you’re going to listen and take action to manifest your purpose in the world.

One of the things that’s quite important in understanding your purpose is that it is what brings you joy. If you’re abandoning yourself by identifying with your wounded self and not listening to your feelings, your inner child, your soul, is not going to let you in on what brings you joy. In fact, that child doesn’t even know what brings you joy when the wounded self is in charge. We don’t feel joy when we’re abandoning ourselves. When we’re not loving ourselves and not connecting with a source of love and bringing that love down inside, we don’t feel much joy. So you might not even know what brings you joy.

As you learn and practice Inner Bonding and learn to love yourself, you start to tune into what brings you joy. But you might have some false beliefs about this. Your wounded self might say that your purpose has nothing to do with what brings you joy. Your wounded self might be telling you what you ‘should’ do or what you’re ‘supposed’ to do, rather than what you want to do. And if what you want to do and what brings you joy to do is what might come easy to you, you wounded self might say that it’s not your purpose – that your purpose is something that’s hard to do.

This doesn’t mean that because it might come easy to you, you don’t have to work hard at it. You might have to go to school and learn about it or put in a lot of practice. It’s not that you don’t have to put in effort, but the effort often feels like fun. It often doesn’t feel like work. Like what I do, I love what I do. When I first started my practice, I thought, oh my God, this is so much fun. I still feel that way after so many years. While the effort or the practice or learning might not be easy, if it feels exciting and joyful, then it’s a deep purpose for you. When it’s fun and it doesn’t feel like work, even though it might be hard work, and sometimes it’s really hard work to get where you want to go, and you need to be willing to put in the effort, but still, it brings you joy, then it’s your passionate purpose.

It doesn’t feel that hard when it’s what you came here to do, what your deeper purpose is on the planet, and what brings you joy. The wounded self might have false beliefs that it’s supposed to be really hard and that it has nothing to do with joy. According to the wounded self, it’s just what you’re supposed to do to earn money or what you’re supposed to do to look like a good person in the world. Sometimes false beliefs are in the way of you discovering what truly fulfills you and brings you joy.

I want to assure you that that blueprint is in every single one of us. There are a lot of children today born already knowing what their blueprint is. I’ve had clients whose young children knew at five or six or seven exactly what they wanted to do in life. These kids are often called Indigo Kids – kids who know their purpose. They know what they’re about. They know what they want to do. It’s really amazing to meet a child like that. It’s been gratifying to me when I’ve helped the parents understand how to foster that in their children. I advise them not to say something like, “How can you know at five years old what you want to do?”

They can know. I knew at five what I wanted to do. There was no doubt in my mind that I wanted to do what I’m doing now when I was five years old. So kids can know that – it’s in the soul. And I want to assure you that as you learn and practice inner Bonding, you will eventually discover your blueprint. It’s in every single one of us. We all came here not only to evolve in our ability to love, but we came here to manifest the gifts we were given.

The more you practice Inner Bonding and learn to connect with your spiritual guidance, the more you experience how incredible you are, how amazing you are. You’re a spark of the Divine. We all are. As you learn to see and value and love yourself – love your soul, your inner child starts to trust you. If you don’t already know your passionate purpose, it’s because your inner child hasn’t trusted you to tell you. And the reason he or she hasn’t trusted you is because you’ve been abandoning yourself with your judgments and your addictions, and by ignoring your feelings and by making other people responsible for your sense of worth and wellbeing. All those are forms of self-abandonment. Why would a child trust somebody who’s treating them that way?

Why would somebody trust an adult who’s judging them or ignoring them? They’re going to say, “I’m not going to tell you what’s important to me. I’m not going to tell you what I want to do. I’m not going to tell you what brings me joy until I can trust that you’re going to listen to me and hear me and see me and value me, and that you’re going to take action regarding being able to do what we really want to do.”

So while that blueprint is there, it may take time to uncover it. The people who I’ve worked with, and I’ve worked with people now for over 54 years, when they hang in there, when they do Inner Bonding, they eventually uncover their blueprint. And life changes significantly for them when they’re on the path of doing what they came here to do.

Not everybody is able to make a living at what they love, but very often if you start to do something you really love to do, that can evolve into a way to earn the money that you want to earn. I’ve seen that happen over and over again with people where they’ll have a hobby that they really love doing. And over time, that turns into a business, and it turns into a lucrative business. So you want to start to notice what brings you joy. Joy is a feeling that lets you know what you really want. You want to start to tune into what brings you joy, and also what makes you feel unhappy.

If something makes you feel unhappy, that is not your path. Your path is what excites you and brings you joy. But the wounded self might say, “No, no, no. It’s not about joy. It’s not even making a lot of money. It’s about doing what your parents think you should do. It’s about doing what society wants you to do. It’s about doing the right thing.”. Well, that’s a big false belief. It is about joy. It is about what’s fun for you.

I come from a family that always thought people should retire early. My dad retired when he was 56 years old. And my kids have asked me for years, “Mom, when are you going to retire?” And I finally realized, I never want to retire. Why would I want to retire? I love what I do. There’s no reason in the world why I would want to retire. That’s the kind of feeling you want to have. Not that you want to get working over with, but that you want to do it your whole life because it’s fun and it brings you joy to do it. And I recently learned that there is another good reason to say active your whole life.

I’m currently reading a very good book called Livewired by neuroscientist David Engleman. In it, he says something very interesting about retirement. They did a study with a lot of nuns who agreed to share their medical records and to donate their brains after death. What they found was extremely surprising to them. Their brains showed that on the physical level, many of them had Alzheimer’s, yet they showed no signs of Alzheimer’s. They stayed sharp in their minds their whole lives. And what they discovered was that the reason for this was that nuns stay very active their whole lives. They have a lot of responsibilities, and a lot of social interactions, and a lot of ways they help each other. And they play games with each other in the evenings. All this activity leads their brains to create new neural pathways so that they don’t succumb to the symptoms of Alzheimer’s. So why retire unless you’re going to be doing something else that’s very compelling to you and keeps your brain very active?

The book is about our brain’s neuroplasticity and how quickly the brain creates new neural pathways. And this is what happens when people consistently practice Inner Bonding. Their brains create the new neural pathways for the loving adult and the connection with your spiritual guidance, so that eventually your adult is in charge rather than your wounded self. And when this happens, your inner child learns to trust you and then lets you in on the blueprint of your purpose on the planet.

And of course, you need the health and vitality to pursue it so taking loving care of your body by eating well and getting enough exercise is part of taking loving care of yourself. It’s not enough to know what you want to do. You need to have the energy to be able to manifest your purpose. People often ask me how I have the energy to do all that I do at 83 years old. Well, some of it is how I eat. Some of it is my connection with spirit, which brings me a lot of energy. Some of it is that I practice Inner Bonding all the time, which is a huge help with stress. Some if it is that I exercise daily. And some of it is that I love my work.

After taking my Passionate Purpose, Vibrant Health 30-Day course, a participant asked me this question:

“My higher guidance is telling me to follow what comes naturally to me and start another creative business. I really love being creative and I have a great idea for a creative business, but I also feel great shame and not good enough because my wounded self says I should be doing a career which helps other people. People like nurses, social workers, therapists, even dentists and lawyers help people. I have a young son, so at the moment would be unable to volunteer somehow to help society alongside setting up a creative business as I can only work part-time as I want to have energy to be there for my son. What are your thoughts on this? I can’t tell if it’s my wounded self or higher guidance telling me I need to be doing things that help others.”

I told this woman that her higher guidance would never say that. It just isn’t the kind of thing that our higher guidance says. Our higher guidance supports us in what we want. I’ve never had the experience of my higher guidance telling me what I’m supposed to do or what I should do or anything like that. That that’s not what our guidance is about. Our guidance is about supporting us in what brings us joy. So if what she really wants to do is create another creative business, I hope she goes for it. That’s where her heart is. That’s where her soul is. Instead of listening to her wounded self, she needs ask her higher guidance, “What’s the first step? What can you tell me about how to go about this?”

One of my clients, Michelle, asked me the following question:

“I know I need to pay attention to my intuition when trying to find my true purpose. But when I feel excited about something, I push it away and go into my head to think more logically about it, usually taking myself out of it. How does one learn to trust their intuition?”

What I told her is that this can be a challenge because many people think their wounded self knows what it’s talking about. One of the things that you need to learn is that your wounded self knows nothing at all. It has absolutely no access to any source of truth. Everything is programmed. All the false beliefs are programmed. Everything the wounded self thinks it knows is programmed and has nothing whatsoever to do with truth.

But your intuition, which comes from your soul within and from your soul without – your higher self – comes from truth. It comes through connection with the universe that has a much broader perspective on what’s in your highest good. The only way you’re going to trust it, and this is what I had to do, is to test it. I didn’t grow up with any spiritual beliefs, so when I started to connect with my guidance, I had to test it, which meant sometimes listening to it and noticing what happened, and sometimes not listening to it and noticing what happened. Now, I completely trust my guidance and I know that my wounded self knows nothing, but it took time. So what I told Michelle is that because her intuition is always there and is always telling her things, do what I did. Sometimes listen to it, even in little everyday things, and do what it says and see what happens, and sometimes ignore it and see what happens. This is how you learn to trust it.

When you get excited about something, that’s your soul letting you know that this is something you really want to do. But then your wounded self takes over. You push it away. You go in your head, and you talk yourself out of it. That is what the wounded self does. And that’s very sad because it means that you’re ignoring what your soul – your inner child – really wants. And you’re listening to a part of you that knows nothing about what’s true for you.

Sometimes my clients have many things they are passionate about and they have a hard time knowing which one to pursue regarding their work.

My client, Joyce, said, “I really want to help women to heal similar to what you do. I also love to paint and sew and cook and dance.”

“So,” I said, “If you were to look at all of these wonderful gift and all the things that you love to do, which one do you think would be most helpful in terms of earning a living, which I’m sure you want to do, right?”

“Right,” she said. “I am starting a new job as a mail carrier next week. So I can definitely use some money from that job while I pursue something else. I know that I would love to start helping women heal, so I think I need to look into getting that training.”

“It sounds like you would love to do that and that it can bring you the income you want,” I said. “And your other passions – cooking and sewing and dancing and painting would be your hobbies, but that you feel they would not be bringing you the income that you want. I’m still a painter and a potter, but I love that I don’t have to earn money as an artist. I can just enjoy these gifts without any stress about earning money doing these things I love to do.”

Joyce did go on to get the training she needed. In fact, she became an Inner Bonding facilitator and loves her work.

I often tell my clients who are struggling with numerous passions to imagine that you’ve made one choice and see how it feels for a day. And then imagine the next day you’ve made another choice and see how it feels for that day. And then imagine another day you make another choice and see how it feels. And out of that that process, pick the one that feels the best. One of them is going to emerge, and then don’t listen to the voice of the wounded self that says, “Oh my God, I’ll make a mistake.”

Remember that your wounded self is always about the status quo, because it believes that’s what keeps you safe. So your wounded self is going to keep on saying, “Oh, no, no, no, don’t do it. You’re going to make a mistake. You’re going to fail.” You don’t need to listen to that voice. You need to listen to and learn to trust the voice of joy.

I invite you to join me for my 30-Day At-home experience, Passionate Purpose, Vibrant Health! Discover your passionate purpose, enhance creativity, and create a joyful, vibrantly healthy life!

You can learn so much about loving yourself and connecting with your inner and higher guidance from my recent books: