DTOP #49: Following Whispers Of The Soul

Hello, dearly beloveds, welcome back. Welcome, welcome, congratulations for being here, and congratulations to myself for pressing record. It’s been over a month since the last episode, so thank you for your patience.

And as Adrian from Yoga With Adrian would say, the hardest part is over, we are here now.

So welcome again to episode 49 of Doing Things On Purpose, the podcast that empowers women to take charge of their time, health, relationships, and money by doing things on purpose.

I am your host, Suri Stahel, a woman in midlife, mom, wife, a self-love and self-empowerment coach for women whose calling is to serve.

I’m really not sure if that is probably the last or second last time you’ll hear me say those words in exactly that way, because things have been shifting for me and I have been exploring Reiki, which I will talk more about later on.

Mom check-in

But before we get into it, let us start with the usual mom check in. How are you doing today, my loves? How is your mind?

How is your heart?

I have been loving this practice of just taking deep breaths in and long, slow breaths out, grounding in this moment, and then closing down any to-do lists, whatever you might have to fix from the past or that you’re planning to do later on in the day or the week. Just close those tabs down. Call your attention back to this moment, right here, right now.

And if you happen to be having your eyes closed and sitting down with your feet flat on the ground, you can even imagine your feet swelling, getting heavy, like heavy weights, anchoring you to the ground.

Just feel how your feet are connected to the floor, the ground and the earth that supports you. Hmm.

Okay. So as I mentioned, things have been moving. I’m not sure where this episode will go.

I have some notes here, and also it will be like a little chat. So since I made the last episode over a month ago, it was pre-autumn school holidays. My mom came over, so we had a few weeks of family time and traveling.

And then I began my Reiki journey, which was a course that I took over the weekend. And then after that, practicing 21 days of self-healing on myself to really anchor in that connection with the Reiki energy.

And then in this moment, I am preparing to save up for Reiki too. And that is where most practitioners begin when they start to really actively work with clients. They normally have done the course on to Reiki too.

Where you can also do distance healing. And so on Instagram, I shared about what happened to me in the last 21 days, because it’s kind of hard to know with these subtle energies.

I mean, I’m not somebody who ever was exposed to this line of work, except I realize now through meditation and yoga, there is a subtle energy shift that happens when I do those practices.

And that’s probably why I do them, because they help me ground, they help me stay centered in my day, and they help me feel like I am here. You know, I’m enjoying the present. I’m enjoying my circumstances.

I am the master of my destiny in some ways. And so, as I go down this path, I have been asking myself about the future of this podcast, the title Doing Things On Purpose. It is very apt.

It took me a really long time to come up with that and feel happy with it. And I have to say until now, until the 49th, almost 50th episode, I’m still happy with what that communicates.

And also how that supports me as a coach, knowing that my place is to help clients take those actions. And that they are doing things on purpose, following their inner compass.

And it’s funny because the combination of coaching and Reiki and all of the mindfulness practices that I’ve been doing all speak to the same thing. It is working with somebody, whether it’s a client or yourself.

And then the question that often comes up is, what do you really want, right? What do we really want? What is your purpose?

Or what you feel is calling to you? And we can come up with all kinds of lists, pros and cons. We can look at past experiences, past learnings that we’ve had.

And then we can come up with some logical pathways that we can follow moving forward. And then what I love about the coaching that I do is that we always ground back to the feelings. How do you feel about going down this pathway?

How did you feel about those things that you’ve learned in the past? And then noticing the sparks that happen in the other person’s face and in their voice. And those are clues that we can choose to follow if we have the space for it, to be honest.

Because if you happen to be a single parent and the sole breadwinner, it is unlikely that you can just follow your soul’s path without thinking about a stable job to put food on the table every month.

So I have to admit that there is a kind of flexibility that has to exist in someone’s life when their coaching goal is toward finding the right soul path for them or the right thing that they can almost ground into for the rest of their life and build around and deepen around. And I think that’s what a lot of people are craving.

You know, they learn some things, they got stuck in some jobs or made choices to be in some jobs that served them in some way, maybe gave them the independence to earn a living for themselves, how to work with other people.

Those are incredible skills.

But then at one point, when you notice yourself feeling discontent, you start to question what else is there, or how else can I shift things to make it feel like I’m not just doing rote things, things I have to do every day, but actually feel like

I’m growing, feels like I’m connecting even deeper, feels like I’m excited to wake up every day. And people are tired of just experimenting or playing with ideas in their heads.

First of all, if you’re just playing with these ideas in your head, then you’re not taking any action. You’re just like, oh, this sounds good. That also sounds good.

And then everything gets muddled up and then you don’t take any action.

And then there’s the other type of people who do take action. Like me, for instance, I would be learning about different things I’m interested in.

And what I’m finding for myself going down that path of just following your bliss is that I have limitations too. I have time limitations, you know, as a stay-at-home mom, my kids come home at a certain time.

When I work from home, I have cats here, which my family decided to have. And then certain times of the day, they’re going to make noise, they’re going to run around.

So that kind of limits the windows of work that I can do and how I can show up for people if I support them face to face.

And in terms of coaching in my season of life, I’ve noticed that it takes a lot of time, a lot more time than I expected to prepare for the clients because I love to be super prepared and supportive.

You know, knowing all the stories beforehand and coming up with the right questions and the right support for them. And then also grounding myself energetically to be present when they are there. So all of these things take time.

And I’m seeing that as a woman with a family, to make the amount of clients, let’s say, to support myself, I would either have to charge really, really high fees per client, or I would be performing subpar or the third choice, I would be burning myself out. And so I have been playing with how many clients is my maximum number that I’m holding, and then how does it feel as I prepare, and also noticing the outcome with clients.

And I still love the fact that coaching really supports people to take action, because I can 100% say that when you take action, you have a lot more information to work with instead of assumptions of how you will feel, how people will react, if something is doable to fit your lifestyle. You won’t know until you try it. And this is exactly what I have done in coaching. And it just so happens, one of the things I’ve been interested in is also the soul path.

We always talk about a heart led journey, or what is your soul purpose, and all of those questions. And then for a coach, we always ask back, how am I implementing that in my life? How am I embodying that?

Making space for what’s next

And how do I find that out? How do I listen to my own inner voice? I’m telling people to do that.

I’m asking them these questions, but how do I do it for myself? So being on that journey, I have asked these questions, and I have sat, I have journaled, and I have asked the bigger energies out there to guide me. And I’ve received some guidance.

And so the question after that is, do I follow that guidance, right?

If you ask anybody, a coach or the creator or the source or your spirit guides, whoever you believe in to help guide you to focus your attention, for instance, on one pathway that would be the most serving, that would be for the highest good.

First of all, just coming up with that question in the right wording is a skill in itself. So, you know, anything for the highest good, I think, feels really, really amazing. And then once you get that answer, how will you choose to explore it?

Right? So I’m almost like my own client. So for me, it has meant diving into Reiki or energy work and working with my hands.

And time wise, of course, logically, I think about how can this fit into my life better? What kinds of containers, what kinds of offerings would be doable to work with the life I have, as well as be most serving to others?

So that’s my kind of logical mind worrying behind. Yeah, so we will see where that goes. And this calling has been making me ask myself if Doing Things On Purpose needs to be something else.

I think I might be putting a pause on this podcast and opening another one while I explore energy work and maybe energy work in combination with coaching. We will see.

But there is something about “doing things on purpose” that connects my mind to problem solving, which I love. But I’m also trying to disconnect from my limited logical mind.

Because if you’ve ever read about the brain, you know that our consciousness, our conscious thoughts are only 10% of what’s happening. And then 90% of what’s happening is in the subconscious and unconscious.

So there’s a huge area there that can come forth if we stop relying 100% on logical thinking.

So for instance, energy work would not have been something on my radar at all if I hadn’t gotten an Akashic Records reading and asked that specific question, you know, asking my spirit guides to help focus my work in a way that would be the most serving and for the highest good. And so the answer came really clearly.

And that’s what I will be doing in the next few months, at least to really give myself that space to explore this and not sabotage it by keeping busy doing other work at the same time, because I know that that doesn’t work.

And since I happen to have the space and the privilege to take my time, that is what I will do.

So, to end, I would love to just share a definition of soul path, you know, because the title of this episode is probably going to be around following the whispers of the soul.

And the soul path is a connection to your individual purpose as a being in this collective world. As you are being gifted this human experience at this exact time, what are the lessons? What are the ways of expression?

What are the experiences or the ways of service that you are meant to call forth or you are invited to call forth? You always have self-determination, but what if your soul is wanting to evolve and it needs your help to do that?

So, I honestly don’t know where this will lead. Maybe I’m sounding like a crazy person, but I’m giving it my full attention consciously for the next few months. And I hope you’ll stay with me on this journey.

There are so many things that have opened up in my life.

If you care to read about how nature exists in a community, there is new science finding out that trees talk to each other, not in the human way, but in the way that mother trees know who their children trees are.

Like if you mix the seeds between the mother tree seeds and other seeds, the mother tree will recognize their babies and then give them more food. And then trees can also inform each other when there’s danger.

So all of these things are very exciting knowing that we are not alone, that there are support systems beyond what we currently are aware of, that we can learn from, lean into and get to know.

I am excited to see where this goes in the next few years. And even in Reiki work, there is a lot of clinical studies being conducted to prove its efficacy. And sometimes we know something works, but we don’t know how yet.

And that knowledge is for us to uncover in the future. Or we can also choose to trust. So I am closing this episode now.

I’m not sure if I will be doing an episode 50 just to give that round number.

But yeah, if you have any questions that you would love for me to answer in episode 50, there is one before I start thinking of opening a new podcast show, please write to me at suri@suristahel.com. And you can find all my links in the show notes.

I am wishing you a beautiful day. I hope you’re following your whispers of the heart and soul, or finding out how you can begin to listen to those whispers because they are very silent, but they’re there.

So, I’ll say bye-bye for now, and I will catch you again next time.