Identity Evolution: Lessons from the Masters - EP 045

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What if your next level of success isn’t about doing more, but becoming more of who you truly are?

In this episode of the Pleasure & Profits Podcast, I explore the concept of Identity Evolution—how evolving your identity is the key to creating a business and life that aligns with joy, impact, profit, and pleasure. I share some of the most powerful teachings that have shaped my journey, including Danielle LaPorte’s Desire Map, Gay Hendricks’ The Big Leap, and Dr. Joe Dispenza’s work on rewiring your reality. Together, we’ll unpack how success often brings unexpected emotional challenges, why your personality creates your personal reality, and how to align your actions with your highest self. If you’ve ever felt stuck at the edge of your growth, this episode offers insights to help you shift from self-sabotage to self-expansion. This is a conversation about self-leadership, clarity, and becoming magnetic to the life and business you desire.

Episode Takeaways:

• Impact, profit, and pleasure are interconnected—one can’t thrive without the others.
• You must become who you truly are to build sustainably.
• Feeling your desired state is more powerful than chasing external goals.
• Success can trigger fear and self-sabotage—awareness is key.
• Your personality creates your personal reality.
• Every choice is a vote for who you’re becoming.
• Don't wait—embody the identity that attracts your next level.

Key Insights:

“We all can become who we desire to be. We all have the ability to evolve our identity, to create the life that we wanna create, to create the impact that we wanna have, to become the people that we are truly meant to be, to lean into our gifts and to contribute at our highest capacity.”

“These ideas are not about becoming someone different. They're about becoming the best, most expansive version of yourself.”

Resources I Mention:

• The Desire Map by Danielle LaPorte
• The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks
• Atomic Habits by James Clear
• 10x Is Easier than 2x by Benjamin Hardy
• Becoming Supernatural by Dr. Joe Dispenza
• Dr. Joe Dispenza
• Episode 15: Lisa Nichols on Impact, Income, Learning & Legacy
• Episode 12: A New Definition of Millionaire with Giovanni Marsico
• Episode 40: Beyond 10x - The Exponential Power of Ease
  

Connect With Me:

• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: @RachelAnzalone
• Facebook: Rachel.Anzalone
• LinkedIn: RachelAnzalone

Question for Your Reflection:

What is the truest, most aligned, most expansive version of you that you can imagine? And what actions are you taking to bring that version of yourself into your reality?

Did this episode resonate with you? Share it with another visionary leader who needs to hear this message, and don't forget to subscribe and leave a review. Your support helps other impact-driven entrepreneurs find their way to our community.

Remember: Your pleasure is your power. 💫

Ready to step into the pleasure revolution and transform how you do business? Let's explore how to maximize impact, profit, and pleasure in alignment with the new paradigm. Schedule a time to connect with me right here >>>

(Affiliate Disclaimer: Some resources mentioned may have affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only share what I truly used and loved. Thank you for your support!)

Episode Transcript

“What I began to realize once I understood the difference between zone of excellence and zone of genius is that I was often just keeping myself stuck in my zone of excellence because that's what felt safe and comfortable and I knew people appreciated me for and I knew I could get paid for and I wasn't risking failure. And perhaps I didn't feel worthy of doing something outside of that zone of excellence.”

Welcome to Pleasure and Profits. I’m your host Rachel Anzalone. Last week in episode 44, I introduced the concept of Identity Alchemy, the transformative process of becoming the person that you need to be to build the business that you wanna have. In the episode, I shared some personal stories, including a pivotal insight that I had at a labyrinth in 2015 where I realized that joy must come before expansion, before opportunity, before abundance, and not afterwards, which is the complete opposite of the hustle first and joy later approach that so many of us have lived for most of our lives.

This insight was and is foundational to the satisfaction strategy framework, to understanding that impact, profit, and pleasure work together synergistically, that we can't focus on one and neglect the others, that they all have to be nurtured and fostered together in a cohesive way in order for us to build a soul-aligned and sustainable business.

I also shared some identity gaps that I believe limit business growth and a five-step process for identity transformation, as well as the oh-so-important message that this work is not about becoming someone that you're not, but rather about becoming more fully who you truly are.

In today's episode, we're going to talk about some specific philosophies and methodologies from teachers who have profoundly influenced my own identity evolution and my own work in the world. We'll get into how these approaches complement each other and how they can be integrated into the satisfaction strategy framework. 

Before we dive into the specific methodologies that have shaped my own approach to identity transformation, I want to acknowledge the groundbreaking work of Dr. Carol Dweck. Her research on fixed versus growth mindset has fundamentally changed how we understand identity and potential. While I haven't studied her work directly, her concepts have influenced many of the teachers we'll discuss today, creating a foundation for understanding how our beliefs about ourselves shape our capacity for change.

To kick us off, I'm gonna start with a teacher and specifically her process and her book that was pivotal in throttling me out of a version of myself and my life that was out of alignment, that was out of integrity, and frankly just had to go. That person is Danielle LaPorte and her book is called The Desire Map.

So let me tell you about my introduction to and my experience with The Desire Map. I was first introduced to Danielle Laporte at an event I attended in, I believe 2009, possibly 2010. It was a women's entrepreneurship event. I think there were about 150 people in the room. And Danielle spoke from the stage that day and shared her story. And she is a beautiful, eloquent speaker. She's a poet, and so gifted on the stage. In her presentation to us, she talked about this concept of the Desire Map and how transformative it was to her own life, and that this was now the work that she was doing in the world. 

And first of all, I was in complete awe and admiration of her and her skills from the stage. What she shared was so beautiful and so insightful, and it resonated so deeply with me. And at that particular moment in time, I was processing it all through my head. I was thinking about it. What did it mean? What did I know about it already? How did I understand it? Did I believe it? Did I not believe it? Did it seem like it was valuable or important to me? And I remember listening to her and thinking, yeah, yeah, yeah, I love this. I love this idea.  

The foundational idea behind The Desire Map is that so often we go about trying to accomplish things in life based on what we think we should be doing or what's expected of us or sort of these external goals that we set for ourselves, these objective outside things that we think are gonna bring us a sense of happiness, of satisfaction, of fulfillment.

This is something I talk about all the time, I'm sure you know. So Danielle's presentation was my first introduction to this idea of identifying how you want to feel first and then constructing your goals and your objectives and how you live your life around those feelings. And so it was a brand new concept to me. And it absolutely resonated and every fiber of my being was like, yes, yes, yes, yes. 

So fast forward a few years. This work had come back on my radar again and again in little snippets. And I had a story in my head like, yeah, yeah, I know that. I heard her talk about that. I learned that thing. And so whenever it would come up, I distinctly remember multiple times going, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that. I know that, right? But what I hadn't ever done is to actually go through her process.

And so it was a few years later when I found myself working with a business coach who, you know, I hired with the expectation that we were going to take this business that I had already built and grow it, and grow it quickly. Like I had a vision and I had a plan for how we were going to take it from what it was to sort of the next level, the next evolution of it. 

And I was sort of filled with this like charging desire, this burning desire to just go in, to get there fast, right? And so I hired this business coach thinking she was gonna help me get there. And in one of our first sessions together, she said, “I recommend that you read The Desire Map.” And I remember thinking, yeah, yeah, I know that, right? Again. And so we worked together for a couple of months and I didn't pick it up and I didn't pick it up and I didn't pick it up. And it got to be around Christmas and I decided with a friend that I was going to do The Desire Map end to end, read the book, do the whole workbook over the holidays. 

And when I started going through the process of the workbook itself of identifying what the experiences were that I wanted to be having and how I wanted to be feeling in the process of it, I realized very quickly that I had a whole story about who I was and what was important to me that I wasn't living, that wasn't reflected in my day-to-day life and my existence. And so that process of doing The Desire Map beginning to end really cracked me open and propelled me to make dramatic changes in my life, including selling my business, getting divorced, moving to a new city. Like, holy shit, right? That is not what I thought I was gonna do when I hired a business coach. That is not what I was planning at all. 

But it was so incredibly eye-opening that it really brought to my attention who it was that I believed myself to be and how I was actually showing up in the world and what the misalignment, the disconnect between those two was. And so over the course of the following few years, I would revisit The Desire Map every six months. I used to do it on my birthday in July, and then I would do it again around the new year and revisit it, beginning to end. How am I doing in each of these areas? In health and wellness, in personal relationships. And this idea of sort of looking at life in categories and assessing how we're doing in each of them is not new, right? Like that's a wellness wheel. Every life coach on the planet has seen that, touched that, worked with it, probably has their own version of it. 

What was different in this experience for me was that was focusing on the experience I wanted to be having and how that experience would feel. What were the feelings? What were the emotions? What were the sensations that I wanted to be having? And then when I focused on those feelings and bringing those feelings to life, then it became less about specific results that were being produced and more about how I was just experiencing my day-to-day life. And things transformed rapidly in my experience.

And it was through Danielle's work that I met someone who then introduced me to Qoya Inspired Movement, and then as you know, I became a teacher of Qoya Inspired Movement and has become foundational as well in my work in the world and my identity and who I am and the experience that I have in this lifetime.

And so both of these methodologies really are centered around feeling, around sensation, and transforming our identity and our experience from the inside out instead of from the outside in. Which if you have been following along, is really foundational to the satisfaction strategy framework and to how I approach business and life and sustainability for myself and for my clients.

It was through this work from the very beginning that I was able to identify what the experience was that I want to be having and mostly how I want to be feeling and then allow everything else to flow from there. What I realized for myself was that most of the outside objective things really weren't that important to me. And what really was important to me was that I was enjoying my life, that I was enjoying my relationships, that I felt good in my body, that I was able to have  experiences that were expansive and interesting to me, and that I was able to continue to grow and expand and enjoy my life. And most of those objective external things really didn't matter along the way, and they still don't.

And something that's become clearer and clearer to me over time, I haven't talked about this a lot yet on the podcast, but I will in coming episodes, is that as I've gotten to understand Human Design and my own Human Design in particular, as a Generator, I realized that focusing on feeling good is the way that I create opportunities and create abundance and create expansion for myself. It's not for me about going and chasing the thing. It's about cultivating and curating the experience of pleasure and satisfaction and joy. And when I do that, things just show up that I could not have planned or expected. And that has proven to be true again and again and again in my life.

The second teacher that I want to talk about is Gay Hendricks and his book, The Big Leap. Now this book is so foundational, so fundamental that it's sort of my assumption that everybody under the sun has read this. But in case you haven't, what Gay Hendricks talks about in The Big Leap is this concept of The Upper Limit Problem and how we self-sabotage ourselves when we exceed our comfort zone.

So this concept I was introduced to probably even earlier than The Desire Map. If I think back, it may have been as early as 2006. Yeah, probably even as early as 2006 that I first heard someone mention this Upper Limit Problem idea and describe this experience of having something really fantastic happening in their lives and being like on a roll and ready to go and just really like charged up and ready for what was coming next. And then bam, they got sick and it knocked them down and they couldn't do any of the things that they had planned. 

And they were talking about this in using the term Upper Limit Problem. And so I sort of gleaned from that, what it meant and started to examine where might there be instances of this happening in my own life. But I didn't really understand it. And I didn't really understand the author's framework around our zones of competence and excellence and genius at all at that point. But as I started to get to know the work and understand the work by reading it multiple times, I started to understand how I was limiting myself by keeping myself stuck in these places where maybe I was really only executing at my zone of competence, or more often, executing in something that maybe was my zone of excellence, things that I was really good at and appreciated for, and that I could do well and get paid well for, but that ultimately weren't satisfying. They weren't energizing. They weren't, they weren't soul-fulfilling. They were draining me in a lot of ways, and most of the time I just felt generally dissatisfied with the work that I was doing until I started to understand the difference between zone of excellence and zone of genius.

So simplest terms, if we consider all the activities that we participate in our day-to-day lives, there are things that we're incapable of doing, first of all. There are things that we are capable of doing, but that maybe we're not very good at, or that we really, really struggle with. There are things that we are competent at. We do it fine enough to get by. There are things that we excel at. And then there are things that truly are within our zone of genius that are the gifts that we have to give to the world when we're performing at our very highest level and contributing at our very highest level.

What I began to realize once I understood the difference between zone of excellence and zone of genius is that I was often just keeping myself stuck in my zone of excellence because that's what felt safe and comfortable and I knew people appreciated me for and I knew I could get paid for and I wasn't risking failure. And perhaps I didn't feel worthy of doing something outside of that zone of excellence.

And so Gay shares what he describes as the four hidden barriers that create Upper Limits. I'm gonna go through them here with you and share some of my own experiences with the ones that I've had the most intense experiences with. 

The first one is feeling fundamentally flawed. And Gay says that this barrier often stems from a deep-seated belief that something is inherently wrong with us and that it often derives from childhood experiences where we internalize criticism or experiences that maybe made us feel defective and that it manifests as the thought, “I don't deserve success because I'm not good enough.”

I feel like this is a tricky one for myself. It feels like what I consciously describe myself as feeling fundamentally flawed. No, certainly not. However, I do know that there is an underlying story that there are certain people who are exceptional at certain things and that maybe I'm not one of those people, right? And so for me, it often shows up as what feels like Imposter Syndrome. This idea that I'm faking it all the time and that somebody's going to find out that I have no idea what I'm doing. And one of the things that I love, I often listen to podcasts. I love to listen to interviews with really successful people and often very famous people that every single one of them has Imposter Syndrome almost without fail. The most successful people you know in the world have the same story in their head that they're an imposter and that everybody's going to figure out that they have no idea what they're doing and they're going get kicked out of the club, right? And so this is very human response. And where it can get in our way is when we allow it to prevent us from going after the things that we really want or showing up in ways where we can really use our gifts in meaningful ways. 

The second one is disloyalty and abandonment. And Gay says that this barrier emerges from the belief that succeeding means leaving behind people that you care about and that it's often tied to or stems from family of origin dynamics, where success is seen as a betrayal. I don't feel a strong resonance with this one myself. It's not something, certainly, that I'm consciously aware of. And even on deep reflection, this doesn't feel like it's truly like a trigger or a barrier for me, but I certainly know that it is for many, it can be incredibly detrimental to growth and opportunity if it's left unattended.

Okay, the third barrier is believing that more success brings bigger burdens. And Gay says that this barrier revolves around the belief that success creates overwhelming responsibility and the fear that we won't be able to handle that responsibility if we get it. And so, you know, maybe we keep ourselves small, we're chronically worrying about what might go wrong or what we might not be able to handle instead of trusting that we'll be able to handle the opportunity when it comes or we'll be able to figure it out because we have the skills to do that, even if we don't know exactly how we're gonna handle or do  the thing. 

And so this one I see a lot in entrepreneurs who are consciously trying to grow their business. And then I'll find myself in conversations with them where they're sort of fixated on fears or challenges that they perceive as coming down the road, like getting too many clients and what will they do and how will they handle it or a fear of over-comitting. And some of that's healthy, right? To a certain extent. But if you're deliberately limiting your growth because you're trying to stay in what you perceive as your manageable comfort zone, and that's contradicting the goals and the desires that you have for yourself, then that behavior is really creating a block for you and preventing you from getting where you wanna be.

And so I have actually had this experience for myself. And I'll say it's even something I'm working on currently, which is that there have been times in the past where maybe I just didn't have that maybe. Well, I'll own this. There have been times in the past where I didn't have great boundaries. And so I committed to things that should have been reasonable and manageable. And because I didn't have clear boundaries or didn't clearly communicate what I needed from those circumstances, I ended up feeling overwhelmed and burdened and sometimes burning out. And so on the flip side of that, after the recovery period, I definitely have felt at times sort of gun-shy about taking on too much and needing to be really, really extra mindful about not over committing to things. Sometimes to the extent of not committing enough or not being available enough. And then like all things, the pendulum swings and we have to find the balance, the place in the middle. So that is one that I continue to work on to this day.

And the fourth barrier that Gay identifies is the crime of outshining. So this is a big one for me, and I've talked about it on the podcast before. I have some very, very clear and distinct memories of being told to be quieter, being criticized for getting too many awards, for example, at my high school graduation, being told either directly or indirectly that I was taking up too much space or taking up attention that somebody else deserved or needed and that was not acceptable and that was not likable and that was not an okay way to be in the world. And so, you know, it's wild to go from having that experience frequently growing up to finding myself working in a world where everyone is a personality, everyone is a personal brand and sort of the loudest and brightest and shiniest often gets the most attention and helping people to do that and accomplish and succeed through that while feeling like that was not acceptable for myself at all.

Of these four barriers, I would say this is the biggest challenge for me and it continues to be, but I'm definitely making progress. And so as I've shared over these last few minutes, this is an ongoing process that I'm working on, and I think it is for most of us. One of the realizations that I've had over the years is that often what I perceived as my zone of excellence and what I thought was my zone of genius, within a few years, I identified that that in fact wasn't my zone of genius. It was another zone of excellence that maybe was a little easier, maybe was a little more enjoyable but wasn't my true zone of genius. And so that continues to evolve. 

And I don't know if Gay says this. I don't know if he would agree with this, but maybe that's the case for all of us. Like as we grow and as we evolve, those sort of levels of what's our zone of competence, our zone of excellence, our zone of genius can continue to evolve with us. I can look back over my years of working behind the scenes supporting people in business. And there was a time period where I would have said my zone of excellence was in execution. It was in managing campaigns, and that my desire or my goal to get into my zone of genius was to work more in a strategy capacity because that's what I thought my true gifts were. And now from where I'm sitting, I realized that all of that hands-on work, that is all zone of competence. Like, I'm okay at that stuff. I'm good at that stuff, but it's certainly not something that I would describe myself as excellent in. And it's not something I desire to be excellent in. 

And now I can look and see, oh this strategy piece, that is zone of excellence. When we're talking about  more tactical business-related strategy. But my zone of genius is, is the ability to see the big picture and how things integrate and how they work together and to be in relationship with people where I can see and feel and understand what it is that's going to help them to be most successful in their life. And that's an entirely different experience for me.

I had a call with a coaching client a week or two ago, and we got into some pretty involved stuff about what this person wants for their life and what that might mean in terms of their business and some really specific mindset things around entrepreneurship. And afterwards, they said to me, my gosh, oh thank you so much for that. I know that must have been a lot. That must be exhausting. I don't know how you do this all day. And I shared with them that, that actually is not exhausting to me. That's energizing. And I could have those conversations all day. What's draining that I would put in sort of those other categories that are not my zone of genius are some of the very tactical, you know, how do I do this? Tell me what to do. How do I fix that? How do I make this thing work? Those very tactical business things that I'm capable of and maybe even better than average at. However, they don't give me energy, they don't light me up. 

And so learning to identify what that zone of genius is and what barriers are that might be keeping you stuck in your zone of excellence or in your zone of competence is such a powerful process in evolving your identity into your truest, most aligned, most expansive version of yourself and doing so allows for expansion in all of the areas of the satisfaction strategy and impact and profit and in pleasure simultaneously.

Okay, the third teacher I want to share with you is Dr. Joe Dispenza. I was introduced to Joe Dispenza's work, gosh, probably in 2020, somewhere thereabouts, and it was first through somebody just sharing with me a couple of meditations. And what was going on. I didn't know the philosophy behind it. I didn't know his teachings. I just know that there are a couple of meditations of his that I would turn them on and I would just be on another planet. It was an other worldly experience and it was magical and I loved it. 

And so, when another friend started talking about Joe Dispenza and shared with me that they had gone on one of his retreats, that she had had this amazing experience and she was really, really on fire about his work. And she shared that with me, I decided to go deeper. And so I think the first thing that I did was look at the retreat schedule. I decided to sign up for a retreat. Gosh, as I'm saying that, it sounds completely insane that I just decided to go do a retreat without diving deeper into his work before then. But I think that's what happened. That's not normal behavior for me. I feel like it would be more typical for me to read books and study other things first, but I think I just went. I think maybe it was the season I was in that I was like, “Yes, sign me up. I'm going.” He was coming to Texas. I bought a ticket and I drove to Dallas five hours away and I went to this retreat and it was mind-blowing. It is an experience that's hard to explain. 

In fact, as I was working on this episode and what I wanted to share with you, one of the challenges that I had coming to talk about Dr. Joe is that I really can't explain his work. And the reason that I find it so challenging to explain is that it's very science-based and the science is complex and can't be explained, you know, in five minutes on a podcast. And so trying to explain it without the detail, it ends up sounding vague and fluffy and superfluous. And it's not that at all.

However, I do recall hearing Esther Hicks of Abraham Hicks talk about having had the experience of sitting on an airplane next to somebody who was a scientist, I believe. There's a part of me that's like, was she sitting next to Dr. Joe? Because I don't know. She's sitting next to somebody. I remember her telling this story that they were having a conversation and that this person was sort of explaining all of the things in science. And she was sort of explaining all of the same things in the like intuitive Abraham way of describing things and that they agreed that they were teaching the same stuff. They were just using different words. And so Esther is very modest and would say, I don't know anything about that. I just know that this is how it feels and this is what it works and this is the practical application. And that what I think is beautiful about Dr. Joe's work is that it does align directly with all of that law of attraction work, and it gives a strong science explanation and sort of some more concrete things to hold onto, to do that work, to bring that work to life in a way that I think is more tangible for a lot of people. And so it is the same, but it's different.

And so if you're not familiar with Dr. Joe's work, it's really focused on how we can literally change our brain through conscious effort. His book is called Supernatural. You can check that out or you can go to his website and see videos and online courses and in-person retreats, which I highly recommend. And what I don't recommend is just doing his meditations because there is technique behind it and understanding the technique and the intention is critical to the work.

And so what's interesting is that in those initial experiences where I just was doing a couple of meditations and they were, was sort of having these magical, mystical experiences, I was only scratching the surface because I didn't really understand what I was doing or why. And so if you really want to understand the work, I recommend that you immerse yourself in learning about it as you do it. 

Dr. Joe's core concept, is that your personality creates your personal reality. And so I’m gonna share a very simplified breakdown of what his process is is really about using neuroscience to change your brain.

Okay, so number one, your thoughts create your reality. Your habitual thoughts create neural pathways in your brain, and these pathways determine your automatic behaviors and emotional responses. Your behaviors and emotions create your life experiences, and these experiences reinforce the same neural pathways creating a loop. And so whatever our reality is, and therefore our habitual thoughts, we tend to live those over and over and over and over and over again.

Number two, breaking the cycle is an integral part of transforming your identity. Your brain doesn't know the difference between intensely imagined experiences and a real one. And there is all sorts of science to back this up. You can find a gazillion examples of this. Both imagined experiences and real ones create similar neurochemical responses and to form neural connections. So this means that you can create new neural pathways through focused mental rehearsal. So you can literally imagine yourself into a new reality. And so, like I said, this sounds a lot like visualizing your goal or what you desire and feeling in your body what that feels like. Very much the language of Abraham Hicks and Law of Attraction. 

Number three, the transformation process. So step one is becoming aware of your unconscious patterns, thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. So starting to identify what are the patterns that I'm living and experiencing that I'm not consciously choosing. Step two is to create a clear vision of who you want to become. Step three is to generate the emotions of your future self through meditation.

And so there it is, there's that imagining it, but not just imagining it in your mind, really feeling in your body what that future self is feeling. And so we go back to The Desire Map. I talked about identifying how we wanna feel and focusing on feeling that and then letting the other things sort of manifest around us.

And then step four is practicing embodying this new state until it becomes your default. I know I've had this experience myself of, know, we have sort of these moments of learning something new where it feels very new and it takes a little bit of effort, right? And then over time, it's a little bit less effort and a little bit less effort and a little bit less effort. And eventually you realize that that's just the way you operate. You don't even think about it anymore. And so, that's the practicing and practicing until it becomes your default.

And so why does this work? When you combine clear intention with elevated emotion, you create coherence in your energy field. Now that may sound really abstract, and this is one of the reasons that I struggle. I've tried to explain to my husband, and then I just end up tripping over my words, and I get nowhere, and he looks at me like I'm crazy, because he's studied physics and chemistry. He's an engineer, and he wants the detailed explanation and I can't deliver it, right? You gotta go listen to Dr. Joe for hours. I can't give you the five minute version. 

So when we talk about creating a clear intention, so that's that visualization with an elevated emotion, feeling what that feels like in your body, then you actually shift your energy field to magnetize those experiences that match that energy and consistently practicing this will literally change your brain structure. And as your brain changes, your perception changes, and so does your reality. And it can and does create an upward spiral where things just get better and better and better and better. And so the power of Dr. Joe's approach is that it combines this ancient wisdom of meditation and energy work with modern science, neuroplasticity, quantum physics, epigenetics to create a practical method for transformation that doesn't require external circumstances to change first. You just show up and do the work changes will start to happen.

Over these last five years since I've been introduced to Dr. Joe's work, like I said, I attended a retreat, then I attended a second retreat. There have been periods of time where I did these very extensive meditations day after day after day for months. My observation is that if I take the time or make the time to do even a short version of one of his meditations in the morning, I go into my day with a better energy where things just happen easier and things flow in an easier way.

I will share with you a couple of experiences that I've had that felt pretty magical. Beyond the physical sensations of being in the meditations and the energy flow, which is incredible and intense, I said I've been to two of Dr. Joe's retreats. The first one I went to, in a transition point in my business. I decided I was going to shift focus to working sort of more in mentoring capacity, taking on some private strategy intensive clients. And so I was just in this transition point and I went to that first retreat. And while I was there, I made a social media post and immediately enrolled a client in a private strategy intensive, a $10,000 package. Magic. Felt incredible.

The second, as I'm saying this, I know it sounds unbelievable, but I'll give you a little bit of context. The second Dr. Joe retreat that I went to was an advanced retreat. It was a little bit shorter, four days, again, up in Dallas and no joke, the same thing happened. Well not exactly the same, pretty close. I actually had spent a day with a business coach, I'll talk about in a second, where we talked a lot about this identity engineering, he calls it. And I also did a Dr. Joe retreat, like within a week of each other. And I came home to a check in the mail for $7,000 from a client that was just a, “I'm very happy. We had a great season. I wanted to say thank you. Here's a bonus of $7,000.”

Again, just like, holy shit. I know these stories sound like, maybe sound unbelievable or sound impossible. And it's easy to get hung up on like, well, how do I, you know, how do I do that? How do I make that happen? Well, here's what I know is that it doesn't just take going to like a doctor or to a retreat. It's not that. For me, it's a removal from day to day. It's a removal from, you know, the grind often. 

I've had the same experience happen when I just decided to, like, I was stressed out about something. I was trying to figure out where our next client was going to come from. This moment I remember years ago. And I just was like at my wits end. And decided I just had to walk away. And I went to the Botanical Gardens here in San Antonio and just was walking around, like looking at the flowers, appreciating everything and how beautiful it was. And in doing so, shifting my energy. And by the time I came home from that walk in the park, I had an email from somebody who had been referred to me and he was like ready to buy and wanted to know where to mail the check for a three month contract with me. 

And so that has been my experience is that when I shift my energy, my reality changes around me. And so we can use these principles to rewire our brains to create sustainable change, to create sustainable businesses that feel natural and nurturing rather than forced and effortful.

I want to share also a couple of recent influences that have been really powerful for me and just in the last six months. So first is James Clear and his book Atomic Habits. The key concept in Atomic Habits is every action you take is a vote for the type of person that you wish to become. There’s some really brilliant insights from this book that I wanna share with you.

First, he says, you do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems. He says, fall in love with the system, with the process, not the goal. So are you hearing how that reflects back to The Desire Map of like, falling in love with the day-to-day, the experience, how it feels, how you're going about it, and not being attached to the outcome. The outcome will come if the system is in place and you show up and you do the actions every day.

He says that behind every system of actions is a system of beliefs, that beliefs inform our behavior and that behavior that's incongruent with the self, with the set of beliefs, won't last under any circumstances. And so one of the things I think is really cool about this book is first that it's super, super, super tactical. It is very much a how-to manual with very specific steps. It's probably the reason that I resisted reading it. It was on my radar for a long time. And I had this sense that it was going to be very linear, very masculine. And I was like, I don't want to be forcing myself to do things. Like that was my assumption about it. But in reality, it shifted the way that I think about it and gave some very practical ways of changing my day-to-day habits and a number of areas.

So one of the examples that he gives in the book that I really love, and I'm going to paraphrase and elaborate on it myself from my own perspective, it's around smoking and identifying as a smoker or not identifying as a smoker.

And so he shares, if you identify as a smoker and you're trying to quit smoking, then when somebody offers you a cigarette and your response is, I'm trying to quit or no thank you, versus I'm not a smoker, right? So I am not a smoker. And so if somebody offered me a cigarette, I would say, I'm not a smoker or I don't smoke because I don't, right? And what's funny is that I used to smoke. I smoked for a bunch of years. It was the 2000s. I was working in restaurants. Taking a cigarette break was the thing to do. There were a bunch of years that I smoked. I never identified as a smoker. It was just like a thing I was doing. Like I'm having a cigarette now or I could have one later or I smoke at the bar or I smoke while I'm doing this or I smoke while I'm doing that. But I would never, ever, ever have identified myself as a smoker. And when I decided I was done, I was just done. I just stopped because I'm not a smoker. It was just a thing I did. But it's not who I am. I don't identify that way, right? 

And so this example that he gives of someone who is a smoker, identifies as a smoker and identifies as a smoker who's trying to quit smoking, there is in that question, do you want a cigarette? There is a battle, there is a decision to be made because if I am a smoker, then I'm either choosing to or not choosing to, and that is a difficult choice to make, right? But if I am not a smoker and I don't identify as a smoker, then the answer becomes easy. The answer is no, I'm not a smoker. And that might be hard to say the first time or even the 10th time, but if you keep saying it again and again, no, I'm not a smoker, you're gonna rewire your brain to believe that. And that becomes your new identity, instead of the belief that I am a smoker and I'm trying to do something, but the thing I'm trying to do is really hard. 

I just think it's a brilliant example that could be applied in so many different scenarios. If we think about it in terms of business, you know, I'm an entrepreneur versus I'm trying to be an entrepreneur, right? I am a six-figure business owner versus I'm trying to make six figures. I am a thought leader, a teacher, a speaker versus I'm trying to do something, right? These are all stories that we have in our head. They're beliefs, they're identities that we hold and we can choose a different identity and then adapt our behaviors to meet that.

And so the way that I feel like this work has really affected me and these many months since I read it, is that I find myself asking myself this question. Am I a person who? Am I a person who gets up on time or am I a person who sleeps in? Am I a person who overeats or am I a person who just says no to dessert because they're full? Am I a person who calls people back or am I a person who's hard to get a hold of? Am I a person who makes sure that my obligations are met or am I a person who avoids commitments, right? Am I a person who puts my health, my happiness, my wellbeing first? Or am I a person who self-sacrifices, makes everybody else's stuff a priority, and leaves myself to be neglected and taken care of last? These are all choices that we make every single day. And how we identify determines how we show up in each of those scenarios.

The 2nd book that I read recently, I did an episode on episode 40 of Beyond 10X. It is the book 10X is Easier Than 2X, which was written by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy. I want to read this little snippet for you. “Your identity is fundamentally two things. It's number one, the story or narrative that you have for yourself. And it's number two, the standards or commitments you hold yourself to. Put simply, your identity as a person is what you're most committed to. It's the story about yourself that you're committed to. And it's the personal standards that you're most committed to. Elevating and committing to specific standards is how you evolve your identity. Nothing happens until you commit.”

And so the question I would ask for you to reflect on is what are your standards and do they align with the person that you want to be with the identity that you want to have? And if not, then maybe it's time to change them.

In the book, Benjamin Hardy and Dan Sullivan talk about a shift in perspective from 2x thinking to 10x thinking. I believe that that aligns beautifully with this idea of an identity shift, because the neural pathways and the habits of a person who's trying to work really hard to increase their business incrementally or to 2x it is fundamentally different from those of a person who is looking to expand by 10x and has to look outside of the normal behaviors, outside of the normal expectations to find a way to do that.

Again, this is reminding me of a conversation I had earlier today for an upcoming episode where we talked about just asking the questions, just asking different questions and considering different possibilities is the doorway through which we create change for ourself and for others.

All of these teachers, authors, thought leaders that I've shared with you today are people whose work I've read, whose work I have implemented, who have been incredibly influential in my own personal growth, in my business growth, and how I do my work in the world,  and how I support my clients. They're fundamental to my philosophies of being and to creating the life that you want to create, in particular to creating a soul-aligned and sustainable business.

And I don't know any of them personally, but there are two teachers who I have shared with you in previous podcast episodes who I have learned from personally in this realm that I just want to mention here. So one of those individuals is Lisa Nichols. And Lisa was a guest on episode 15 of Pleasure and Profits. And I worked with Lisa for many years. And in our conversation in episode 15, she said something I wanna share with you here.

She said, “Your business will never outgrow your personal development. As a matter of fact, it'll get to the point and it'll sit there and it'll wait for you. You'll feel like you're hitting a ceiling, but you didn't hit a business ceiling. You hit a personal development ceiling.” And so Lisa says all the time, don't get ready, stay ready. She says that again and again and again. Don't get ready, stay ready. Don't get ready, be ready.

And so what she means by that is don't wait until the opportunity comes before you prepare to be ready for that opportunity or to become the person who can handle that opportunity or to become the person for whom that opportunity shows up for at all. Don't wait. You need to become the person. You need to do the work. You need to get yourself ready. And then the opportunity will come. And the opportunity will only show up when you're ready, when you're capable, when you've done the work to prepare, and when you're energetically aligned with it.

Another teacher that I have learned from over the years who was also on one of the first episodes of Pleasure and Profits is Giovanni Marsico. And he brings to the work this very dreamlike energy of imagining that anything is possible, this very creative, almost childlike energy of dreaming up your biggest dreams, whatever it is that you want, whatever it is, that it is possible. And all you have to do is dream it and then take these actions from all of these teachers, right? Do the things to shift your energy, to become the person, to change the way your brain works, to change your reality, and you can have any of that.

And with both of these teachers, being in shared space with them, in energetic exchange with them, in learning environments and being surrounded by other people who are learning and shifting and growing in the same ways with the same desires and the same beliefs, we all can become who we desire to be, that we all have the ability to evolve our identity, to create the life that we wanna create, to create the impact that we wanna have, to become the people that we are truly meant to be, to live into and lean into our gifts and to give at our highest capacity, to contribute at our highest capacity.

It cannot be overstated, the value of being in these types of relationships, of sitting across the table from, of being in the room with, of being in the conversations with, not only individuals like Gio and Lisa and some of these other teachers that I've shared with you, but of the people that they surround themselves with and the people who are drawn to this type of work. There is so much power and so much opportunity for our own personal growth to be in those types of communities, to be in those spaces, and to really benefit from the shift in the energy of the entire group in a way that's truly expansive and can be transformative for not only us, but then ripple out into the people that we have contact with as well, to the people that we're here to serve, to the people that we impact.

And so I invite you to consider who are the relationships, the teachers, who are you learning from that are bringing a different perspective to you, that are helping you to develop dimensions of yourself, different levels of expansion for yourself, to help you to see what's possible for you and to help you go about bringing those possibilities to life.

As we wrap up here, I want to bring us back to the beginning of this conversation where I mentioned that these ideas are not about becoming someone different. They're about becoming the best, most expansive version of yourself. And that this approach to personal growth directly influences your ability to grow your business in a way that is sustainable. And all of that happens from the inside out.

And so I leave you with this question. What is the truest, most aligned, most expansive version of you that you can imagine? And what actions are you taking to bring that version of yourself into your reality? Not just to benefit you, but to benefit the entire world through the impact that you'll create.

Thank you so much for listening. Until next time, remember, your pleasure is your power. Take care.