Ready for a change? From Doctor to Entrepreneur: My Pursuit of True Purpose

Are you feeling a pull to make a change in your work? Is that deep inner calling to find your true purpose growing louder? Have you been sacrificing fulfillment to achieve professional milestones that don’t bring the satisfaction you anticipated? What if instead, you could have a fulfilling business that aligns with your deepest desires? It’s possible, and easier than you think!

If you’re like most ambitious, Highly Sensitive People, you crave a deeper sense of purpose and meaning in your work and life. In today’s episode, I’m going to share my story about the many different career and business pivots in my work in my 25-year-and-counting career journey. And how achieving the title of doctor wasn’t the fulfilling achievement I thought it would be, which led me into a fulfilling whirlwind as an entrepreneur living her purpose over the last 6 years.

Whether you’ve been using the common excuse of needing a specific title or facing the issue of unfulfilled expectations post-achievement, you can break free from these constraints. Tune in to learn how to achieve the career goals you really want, while finding inspiration and purpose in every step of the journey. It’s time to pivot with purpose and create a life that aligns with your true calling.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:11

Hello and welcome to the Inner Purpose Podcast. I'm so happy that you're here with me today. I have been thinking about starting this podcast for a very long time now and I wasn't quite certain of exactly what I was going to name it or what exactly I was going to talk about. That's what kind of put me off actually starting this podcast. Since I started thinking about starting this podcast, many things have changed in my life, in my world, in my business. I've decided that these are the things that I'm going to talk to you about.

Speaker 1: 1:45

I have gone through many pivots in my business and in my work and I will tell you all the stories of all the different changes. I've gone from being a pre-med student, while also being a medical assistant in the military army reserves, to becoming extremely sick and having to let go of my dreams of going to medical school and doing medical research and starting a job in corporate world. While I was there, I found some answers for my health outside of the medical system, which was the thing that inspired me to go back to school, but this time to study to become a naturopathic doctor. After four years of study to become a naturopathic doctor, I started my own clinic and worked as a clinical naturopathic doctor in British Columbia, canada. There was a series of events that brought me back home to the east and living in Quebec. With all of those events, I spurred a major pivot in my own work from becoming a clinical naturopathic doctor to working online. Since that time, when I started working online around 2018, I have gone through a series of pivots in my business, with my niche, with my focus and how I'm working. That has brought me to where I am now, which is an intuitive business pivot mentor. So I've let go of my naturopathic license and I'm no longer practicing as a naturopathic doctor. This is what I do now.

Speaker 1: 3:12

In these podcasts, I'll tell you a lot more about all the different details of all of the different career pivots, and I'm also going to talk about inner purpose. What is that? One of the things that I recognized and realized as I was making all of these pivots and doing the deeper inner work, because there was a lot of stuff happening behind the scenes in my personal life that pushed me towards my own inner spiritual awakening, the most profound of which was the passing of my mother in 2016, which sent me into the worst endometriosis and autoimmune flare of my life, to the point where I was bedbound for months. This state of complete helplessness sent me into my third and most profound dark night of the soul, which changed everything for me, and it sent me on a journey of inner awakening that, once you see, you can't unsee. Once you understand this is my personal experience once I understood that all the things that I thought how life works is not actually the way it works, it changed my whole perspective about myself, about other people, about life and about my purpose.

Speaker 1: 4:33

One of the things that I did a few months ago was a reflection exercise where I decided to dig out some old journals from years ago that I had saved and I started going through them. Looking at journal no-transcript 15 years ago, a common theme kept coming up. I kept questioning what is my purpose? Even though I was a clinical naturopathic doctor making a difference in people's lives and their health, I knew there was something bigger that I was meant to be doing. Even though I was helping other people dramatically improve their lives, something was missing. I'm going to talk to that in this podcast through my own personal stories and through some examples from general themes that I see with my one-on-one clients in my mentorship, because what I do now is guide others that have gone through their own personal inner awakening and spiritual awakening journey and inner healing journey to now align their work to who they are now, aligned with their values, aligned with who they know they're here to be and what their inner soul, mission and purpose really is.

Speaker 1: 5:48

In our society we have been conditioned to believe that our purpose is what we do. What I've come to recognize and realize through my own research and my work and my reflections and all the different things that I'm doing to better understand myself, is that your purpose is not what you do. I believe that your purpose is who you are. The more and more connected that you become with yourself in your what I like to call your original state, the more you connect with your original state, who you were before society came and conditioned you away from believing your truth, the more you become connected with your original state and own your gifts and express your authentic truths and the values that you hold most true to you. That's where your purpose lies. That's when you will feel the most fulfilled and satisfied and lit up and passionate and energized. When you are operating from this place of deep, authentic connection, where you are living your life, lit up, shining your gifts, then this is when you can also make the deepest impact for the people that you know that you are here to contribute deep, meaningful interactions, connections, change and healing. Now that's going to be different for everybody. Each and every one of us is a unique individual with their own gifts, with their own inner power. We all have that within us. I know for myself.

Speaker 1: 7:27

I was conditioned to believe that my sensitivity and my depth were flaws. I'm a highly sensitive person with sensory processing sensitivity. I didn't understand or know what that meant until I was well late, into my late 30s. I had been led to believe that all of these things were things that I needed to change about myself, and I know that a lot of other fellow HSPs have said and experienced the same thing, and I will talk to that specifically in another episode, where we'll talk about the conditioning behind why. That is why so many people believe that that is a flaw that needs to be hidden or masked. Once I understood the gifts associated with my sensitivity and the gifts associated with being deep, I have a desire to get underneath the surface of everything, really understand the root of it all and see and identify patterns associated with that, and these were things that I had been conditioned to believe were weird. That's a common word that I hear in my world with clients who have not yet deconditioned from believing that their gifts are the things that are faults. The more you can see within yourself that these things are actually your greatest gifts. My sensitivity is one of my greatest gifts. My depth and ability to pick up on patterns are my greatest gifts in my work. These are the things that help my clients get these profound, life-changing transformations, beyond anything that I was able to help them with when I was a clinical naturopathic doctor, because back then I was still thinking my sensitivity was something that I needed to mask.

Speaker 1: 9:18

I will talk to many of these different topics. We'll talk about unmasking and why we tend to mask ourselves in the first place, especially if we're neurodivergent, highly sensitive, we will often hide or mask parts of ourselves to keep us safe, especially when we're surrounded by individuals who might not understand or who are not quite as sensitive as we are. But what helps us to survive is not the thing that helps us to thrive. You will hear me say this over and over and over again, because it's just that important. The things that we did to help us survive like masking, like people pleasing, like perfectionism all of these things helped us to survive, especially difficult situations or around dysregulated people and especially when we didn't understand who we were yet and they will help us get through these situations.

Speaker 1: 10:14

But they are not the behaviors, patterns and thoughts that will help us to truly thrive, and I believe that your deeper inner purpose has to do with you truly thriving, truly thriving, happens when you accept all parts of yourself, understand who you really are at the core of it all, and you own it and express it. You speak your truth and your authenticity and you act like a lighthouse, shining your light bright, and you're not doing this just for yourself. While this helps you to feel better, when you are grounded and centered and connected with you, you're going to feel so much better and you're also going to make that greater impact for other people, because they will see you as a leader, an exemplar, an example of what is possible when you are fully connected to yourself and expressing yourself fully, and instead of running around trying to chase a sense of fulfillment or satisfaction from the external world through things like titles and validation and certifications and acknowledgement, because I've been there. That will only take you so far. I had the title of doctor and I still was searching for that purpose.

Speaker 1: 11:35

It's this inner connection with yourself and owning it, owning who you are, is what sets you up to not only find that deep level of satisfaction within yourself, so that you no longer look outside of yourself for acknowledgement, for validation, because you have it within you and anything outside of you is just like icing on a cake. When you are fully connected to you and shining your light and becoming and you are that lighthouse for other people, they sense that, they feel that they see that and you will inspire other people to do the same for themselves. You can't force anybody else to make a change that they're not ready to do, but you can be that exemplar and you will inspire somebody just by being you. And when you do that, that feels authentic, that feels fulfilling and it feels easy. I'm not saying that it doesn't involve work, but when you find that flow within you, you're connected to something that's called effortless action. There's a name for that in ancient Chinese terms is Wu Wei. So when you are connected to that flow of yourself and of life and your truth. You will experience things in a way that feels easy, through effortless action.

Speaker 1: 12:56

The more you are connected to this flow, the more will flow through you, and I will talk about the four levels of consciousness as they relate to your business in another episode.

Speaker 1: 13:09

You'll understand better what I mean when I say that.

Speaker 1: 13:12

It will flow through you and eventually you will then create impact through your work and through you being you as you, I know some of these terms and maybe some of these concepts don't make complete sense quite yet, and maybe you're listening and this makes complete sense to you right away. Either way, you're welcome here. Know that I will go into deeper detail about all of these concepts and I will be sharing my own personal stories and examples, and I will be talking about different subjects that are important, specific and pertinent to what helped me and what I do to help my clients get their big transformations and breakthroughs and step into this deeper level of inner purpose, fulfillment and inner freedom that really grows, both the impact that they make in the world, the income that they make from the work that they do, while feeling truly lit up and energized and passionate about what you're doing. So I hope that you will stick with me. I look forward to speaking with you in another episode. If you like this, make sure to subscribe so that you don't miss an episode.