The Femme Cast | Unapologetic Power & Purpose for Soul-Led Women

Trying to Go Back to Normal Life After Transformation: Lessons from a Life Rewritten

• Maria Rei

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A sunrise above the clouds changed everything. Not because it was beautiful—though it was—but because, in that blinding light atop a Bali volcano, I realized that staying “safe” was costing me more than the unknown. That moment cracked open a life I’d been trying to hold together with logic, approval, and the illusion of security.

In this episode of The Femme Cast, I take you on the messy, luminous journey from a cushy, misaligned career and relationships to a soul-led life that feels fully, vibrantly aligned. You’ll hear the truth about burnout culture—the late-night emails, the praise of exhaustion, the quiet punishment for boundaries—and why logic often keeps us trapped long after our body says no. I share how I dismantled external expectations and internalized beliefs, confronted fear and uncertainty, and followed intuition over logic, even when it felt wildly nonsensical.

Along the way, I reveal:

🎤 The subtle signs of misalignment in work and life

🎤 How to release relationships, friendships, and beliefs that no longer serve you

🎤 Solo practices that rebuild self-trust and inner authority

🎤 My transformative Bali volcano sunrise—fear, sweat, and awe as a catalyst for rebirth

🎤 The exact moment I handed in my resignation and reclaimed my energy

🎤 Navigating the unknown after leaving security behind

🎤 How purpose shows up as breadcrumbs, not a five-year plan

🎤 Building a global, voice-led podcast from alignment, not obligation

If you’ve ever felt trapped by the life you built, suffocated by expectations, or caught between safety and soul, this episode is your roadmap to awakening. I show you how to honor that quiet, insistent voice inside you and take the next aligned step—even if it scares the hell out of you.

For anyone standing on their own ridge, ready to shed what no longer fits:

You are not failing. You are initiating. Every fear, doubt, and misstep is a breadcrumb toward the life that’s waiting for you. Step into the infinite possibility that begins the moment you choose yourself. Let this episode be the sign you’ve been waiting for—your soul is ready, and so are you.

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A transformative 3-part guided meditation experience for the woman who knows she’s meant for more.
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✦90-Minute Breakthrough Session — Power, Purpose, Impact
A deep-dive session to help ambitious, soul-led women break free from emotional blocks, heal old patterns, and fully reclaim their power, purpose, influence, and impact.
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SPEAKER_00:

Hey guys, what is up and welcome back to the show. I am so excited and grateful to have you here. Welcome if you're new. I so I wanted to kind of continue down this storytelling little rabbit hole of I guess what kind of you know led me to where I am today. Like when I think back, like so we talked about in the last episode, we talked about, you know, the moment I realized really that my life just was not aligned for me and how hard I was trying to hold on to all these different aspects of my life. And, you know, how I I actually find it started to really let go of all that and and really started to create a internally led or an internally guided life, one that actually resonated and made sense and felt aligned for me, which to me really talks about, you know, coming into alignment with who you're meant to be and how you who you're who you're meant to be and how you're meant to live in this life, right? It really is essentially, we're talking about, you know, purpose, soul path. Um, and that's nothing that will ever be figured out logically. It always it's it's a felt process, it's a powerful and scary and often wildly nonsensical felt process. Okay. Um I will give you an example. So um, you know, after you know, I talked about last week when I had that moment on the highway when I was like, oh my god, I just can't live this life anymore. And it's why I turn the car around and I don't want to go back to my normal life ever, ever, ever again. So after that day began what I said was a massive unfolding of my old life and almost like a death of the old me, like slowly over time. Um, where I started to let go a lot of the first externally, right? First it was letting go externally of the relationships of the who I was and who I was being in the world and the friendships and the and and and the intimate connections, and you know, there was a dismantling of all of that, and then there was an internal dismantling that happened of beliefs and systems and um fears and doubts and um patterns that I had been um, you know, kind of living with for so long. And so there was this when everything started to peak, right? And this was when I had walked away from most of my relationships. My I ended the the the I ended the misaligned relationship, the partner that I had been with for for many years. I ended a lot of my friendships, I'd walked away from all of that. I'd still kept the career. Don't ask me why. That was really hard for me to let go of because it was very, very, very cushy. And it was very, I mean, like, I mean, there was just, you know, it was it was the logical, it was the logical, what's it called? The carrot at the end of the time, like it was the carrot at the end. Like it was like, I worked so hard for this. I have put up with so much in this company that I've been working with for like, I don't know, I I think I'd been with them for like at least 10 years at this point. Um, it was a great company. The benefits were great, the growth potential was great. It was like literally the job a million girls would kill for, but not in fashion, that's the only thing. But it felt like it was a fashion show every day walking into work, let me just tell you. Um it was the job a million girls would kill for, and I had it. And it was, you know, it had so many bells and whistles attached to it at the cost of my peace and well-being and happiness. And so I was trading all that in for what felt like the opportunity of a lifetime like I'd be an idiot to leave this job, you know, an idiot. And so, long story short, I took myself on my very first, because you know, in doing this work and and making the moves and making the changes and going through the motions of, you know, rediscovering who I am, letting go of all the pieces, letting go of all the parts that were forced and inauthentic and didn't feel aligned, to now opening myself up to rediscovering, okay, well, who I who was I beyond all that that maybe I hadn't been paying attention to, or that, you know, maybe kind of got left by the wayside, right? So I started to go out and I started to do things and I started to do things that I'd wanted to do for so long that I'd never given myself permission to. Like I started to take dance lessons, I started to do things by myself, go to movies by myself, take myself out for nice dinners and take myself to like, you know, a park somewhere with a blanket and a notebook and a little picnic and just journal by a waterfall. Like this became like my MO. And, you know, and this was this was coming from someone who wouldn't even so much as go to a coffee shop by herself. Okay. Um, and now suddenly I was doing all these things, which I think for me was part of probably the biggest healing experience to be able to go out and do things on my own in my own company without needing somebody else there to hold my hand, to distract me from what I'm thinking or feeling, or to somehow make me feel validated and that I'm not alone in the world. I don't know, so many things. But anyway. So the first step was to go out and actually start doing things on my own. Then I actually took decided to take my first solo trip on my own. So I booked a 10-day trip to Bali and I was terrified because I'd never gone anywhere, and now I'm getting on a plane for like to go like to the other side of the world, literally from where I am. Um, so I'm in the west, Bali's in the east, I'm in the north, Bali's in the south. It's just good night. I was like literally going to the opposite corner of the earth. Um, and so I book this trip and I go, and the first few days that I'm there, you know, I'm kind of like, you know, just loafing by the pool and you know, ordering from the the the the home stays menu while I'm there, like basically not leaving the property for like the first two, three days. Um, and then finally, like, dude, you came all this way, fucking go, you know? Um, so I started to I started to book a whole bunch of excursions. A lot of them I did on my own. Some of them I did on my own, a lot of them I did with a guide. Um, but only because like I had no transportation, I was not getting on a scooter in Bali. That was not happening, at least not at this point. Um, and um, so started to do all these amazing things and started to go to like, you know, all the different places you want to go to. You know, when you're visiting Bali, I went to Semeniac, I went to Ubud, I went to like all the temples, I went to Tanalat, um, visited one of the other, like the smaller islands off Nusalembogen. So there was um it, it was, it was 10 days that was completely outside of my comfort zone and like stretched me in ways I didn't even think was possible. On the last couple of days that I was there, I finally did. I'd always wanted to, I'd seen this online so many times and I couldn't wait. And I kept setting the intention that if I ever go to Bali, I'm I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do the volcano climb. So you do this volcano climb where you start climbing in the middle of the night to get to the top to watch a sunset over the clouds on the top of a volcano. I did this. I thought I was gonna die. Like there were so many times, like walking up that volcano, like, I'm not gonna make it. I'm not gonna make it, I'm gonna die. And there's literally dudes like vomiting next to me, right? Probably because they were also very dehydrated and probably had a lot to drink the night before, which I did not. I was smart, I was rested, I was hydrated. I like I knew, even though I was in great shape at the time, I'm like, I need to be in tip top shape if I'm gonna be doing this. It's I think it's like 1700 meters above sea level, but you're not climbing like 70, 1700 meters because you really don't start climbing until maybe the last, I don't know, maybe 700 meters because you're already like well above sea level when you start actually climbing, right? Because it's in an elevated area. Anyway, I I digress. So, anyway, we're climbing up in the middle of the night. We stop for coffee in this little volcano village at the base, right before we go up. And then at some at I think it was like around 3 a.m., 4 a.m., 3 a.m., I think we start climbing to the top of this volcano. It was a three-hour, three or four-hour climb, if I'm not mistaken. Um, and so by the time like, you know, two hours in, I'm like ready to pass out. I'm like, I'm feeling nauseous also because of the, you know, working out, but also because of the altitude. It's still dark out. Um, so there's nothing to really like, there's nothing awe-inspiring about being up there. All I can see is darkness, right? And we've got these like little flashlights that are like guiding us up the side of this mountain, which thankfully was not like it wasn't like a vertical climb by any means. It was, it was just, if I had to describe it, it was just a very aggressive, very challenging hike with some steep spots, right? But nothing vertical or anything like that. It was, it was pretty, it was pretty modest as far as volcano climbs go. So by the time we got to the top, and I I I so many times I wanted to quit. And I remember my guide saying to me, Are you sure? You really want to miss a sunset from the top? Like, you're so close. And I'm like, no, I'm not gonna miss it. Nope, I'm going. So I go to the top, I get to the top of this volcano. And it was literally just as the sun was starting to like come up from beyond the cloud, from behind the clouds. And I'm I'm I'm I just I sit down and you know, over my panting, because I'm tired, I'm like, right, trying to catch my breath. But also like just kind of seeing the sun just slowly start to come up over like, and I'm actually that's that's so funny. I'm actually seeing the sign, the sun peak on my forehead right now. Um, seeing the sun come up from the like from above the clouds, and just taking that in. And I and I remember thinking, and I'm of here I am, I'm watching the sun come up. It's the brightest, biggest sun I've ever seen in my life. I right next to me, I have this passage right down to the center of the earth, and uh you know, I've got this sun right in front of me that's like I've never felt closer to God. I felt like I was like between worlds. I felt like it was literally like being being lodged between heaven and earth in that moment. And I remember thinking nothing else is ever gonna be the same again after this moment. Nothing. Nothing. My life will never be the same again. I will never be the same again after this moment. And I just remember just sitting there and taking it all in and not speaking a word to anybody. Um, and just feeling the closeness, feeling the closeness to God and feeling the closeness to Mother Earth, and just feeling this sense of peace and serenity that I had never experienced before. And suddenly feeling like this is the most aligned I have ever felt. 11-11 on the clock, as I say that. And so, you know, I stayed up there for as long as I could, and then, you know, we watched the sun come up, we had breakfast. Um we looked at the views, which were breathtaking, by the way. And it was like literally like a whole volcanic region. So there was another volcano just opposite us, and we were like looking at the lake and the towns in between, and it's just just the most magical experience to be able to see this and literally be standing about above cloud level, um, like was far beyond anything I ever experienced in the very flat, boring region of the world that I live in, right? Um, so you know, that was just so perspective changing in so many ways, I think, for me. And I think when I came back from that trip, you know, came home that night and I thought I was gonna be in pain. Mind you, the trip down the volcano was much scarier than the trip up because now the sun is up. I can see how high I am, and I'm like, you're crazy if you think I'm coming, climbing down the side of this mountain. Where's a helicopter? Is there a helicopter coming? Because I am not climbing down this motherfucker. There was no helicopter. So I literally had to like climb down this volcano. I think I probably scooched down on my ass more than I actually walked, but that's okay. Um, I eventually made it to the bottom. My guide was totally laughing at me. I did not give a shit. Um, and I got back home and I remember they had like this like special meal ready for me, and they were like, you know, looking at my pictures and asking questions, and they're like, and the next day I woke up and I just got up and started walking, and I went to the beach, and he's like, How are you? Like, are you not in pain? Like, you climbed a volcano yesterday. I'm like, honestly, I'm like, I've never felt better in my life, which was really bizarre to me because I would have thought I would have been in dying pain that day, but I wasn't. Um, it was actually the most euphoric feeling, and it took days for that. I took days for me to come down from that. And so that was like a couple days into like that was a couple days towards the end of my trip. And so I think two or three days later, I was on a flight and I was going home. And the next week I was at work and I was sitting in my desk in my cubicle, and I was looking at my boss who irritated the crap out of me. And she was, you know, yet terrorizing yet another poor soul, not me, thank goodness, but she was terrorizing yet another poor poor soul with her um very um authoritative embodied presence, um, and kind of you know, politely ripping them a new one is probably the best way to say it. Um, and just you know, thanking God it wasn't me. And, you know, looking around at the people like all around me, just seeing that look of of you know, just why am I here on their faces, right? And I'm suddenly starting to feel like, why am I here? Like, why? And everything's starting to feel hard, and everything is like sending an email, a simple email. And I used to write the most complex communications like that would go to the highest levels within the organization. And yet here I am trying to write a simple email, and it's taking me two hours, and it feels like I'm swimming through fucking quicksand, and I'm like, I just can't do this anymore. Like, I can't, like, I I've it literally felt like I was ready to crawl out of my own skin. That's how misaligned I felt in that moment. But everything logically was telling me, you're crazy. You're crazy. You can't leave this, you can't leave this job, you can't leave the security, you can't leave the benefits, you can't leave, you can't like you're crazy. What will again? There's that question, what will they think if you leave? Right? And so I put it out of sight, out of mind. Again, I ignored myself. Again, I ignored everything my intuition was trying to tell me, and I tried to sweep it under the rug, and I said, but this is great. This is like a million girls would kill for this job, right? Here we go back to the devil wears product quotes. A million girls would kill for this job, and I had it. And yet, every cell in my body was like, leave this motherfucking job, it's not for you. But I couldn't because logic was telling me, no, no, you need to stay. This is good. Benefits, good, retirement, good, um, all everything good, a possibility for promotion, good. Um, and when I tell you, like just, you know, and I had moved up pretty quick in that organization, but where I was at in that moment, right? Like I'd moved up very quickly through the organization and I had been promoted several times. And, you know, my managers always saw nothing but potential in me until this particular role. When this particular role fell into my lap, suddenly, just trying to get a meets expectations on my annual review felt like I needed to like, you know, jump through hoops of fire to get, you know, never mind a promotion, never mind getting a raise, just trying to get a meets expectations. I felt like I had to jump through hoops of fire to get it. Otherwise, I was like not meeting expectations, which was for me was like that never happened. And then, you know, when I think back to, well, um I, you know, I was working like probably like nine, 10-hour days on the regular emails being sent at 11 o'clock at night, you know, if I didn't take my laptop home or if I didn't respond to emails, I also had the BlackBerry with the emails attached to it, right? If I didn't like, if I if I didn't work more than 10 hours a day, like if I if I if I didn't show up to work at eight and leave later than seven, it was like, oh, that's so nice of you that you know you take your work-life balance so seriously. I'm like, work-life balance, work-life balance means I work like a seven and a half hour day and I take my lunch and then I go home. And then I don't check my email until the next day when I come back to work. Right? Like it was just so crazy. And I think around the same, around the same time, sorry, motorcycle going by. Um, I think around the same time they had passed a law that it was, I think it was around this time, they had passed a law in the GTA that it was illegal for workplaces to email you after working hours were done. Um I don't think anybody paid attention to that. But then nobody did anything about it either. Like it wasn't like anybody was gonna report their boss, right? So it's kind of like, oh yeah, thanks for the law, but could you do better? But anyway. Um, so yeah, it was like this, it was like this thing, like if you weren't like, you know, working past seven o'clock or if you weren't like checking your emails at 11 o'clock, you know, you were kind of seen as the non-committed, non-passionate, like you weren't the candidate for promotion. The candidate for promotion and for a raise was the person who clock talked to their emails as soon as they woke up at 6 a.m. was literally emailing people while they were getting ready and eating their Cheerios in the fucking morning. And then constantly, like on the go, go, go, go, go, no lunch. Why would you anybody take a lunch? You can eat your lunch while you go pee, right? Kind of mentality, or eat your lunch while you're in a meeting and then stay there until seven o'clock until the lights start to dim, and then you can finally go home, quickly have a bite, maybe take a five-minute breather before you get back on the emails again until 11 o'clock when you go to bed. That's the person who got promoted. I was not gonna be that person ever, right? Ever, it ever was I gonna be that person. First of all, I'm exhausted just saying it. Okay. Um and so, but logic was telling me that this is the way. This is the way you're supposed to be going. This is this is this is what makes sense. This is what's cushy, this is what's safe, this is security, this is longevity, right? You need to go this route when you know, behind the scenes, my soul was trying trying to tell me the whole time, babe, this is not for you. And that's why you're not happy, and that's why it feels again, forced like you're trying to hold on to something, to cling to something, to make it work. You're sacrificing all these like parts of yourself in order to meet the expectations of this one thing that you're trying to hold on to, and all the while there's a part of you that's hiding, that's dimming, that's dying in the process. And even though it makes no sense, you have to follow what that intuition is guiding you towards, even though, and you know what? I'm not telling everybody who's listening to please don't. This is not a call to go out and quit your job tomorrow. But this is a call to look at what parts again, what parts are you trying to hold on to that just aren't working for you? What parts of you are you are are you hiding that you want to bring some light to, that you want to follow through with, that you want to take some steps towards to see what might unfold. Do it gently. You don't have to like tear everything down and blow everything up in one week the way I did. Well, it wasn't a week, it was over time, but you know what I mean. It happened pretty quick. Um, and the whole thing with, you know, this was probably this was the spring before I left that job. The next few months were brutal because I I went to Bali, it was right after my birthday, because it was a birthday gift for me. So I think I went to Bali, I think I went to Bali in like May or June of that year. And so when I got back, um, from June till around January, February, those months were painful. Like they were so my soul was in pain. And then by February, I March, I think it was around that time, I had this massive falling out with my boss. And I finally said to her, I go, there's like I I remember she had gone on vacation, they had left us with a like this big assignment, the whole team had this massive assignment, each of us had a part to play in it. Um, and the way the instructions were kind of laid out, it didn't like there, there were some inconsistencies in some of the information that was being asked in terms of what she anyway. Long story short, I had to get clarification. So I did, um, I spoke to the other one of the other leads that was there, and and and and you know, we kind of brainstormed what we how we were going to move forward with it. So I went ahead with it. I did it. She looked at it, she'd like, yeah, great, perfect. My boss comes back. Basically, the whole thing was an epic fail. It was a complete disaster and nothing at all what she was looking for. Um, and you know, uh, it got to the point where it was like I was basically, you know, the the other, the other, my other boss who I had spoken, because I had two bosses at the time. This was great. The other boss that I had spoken to at the time that gave me the go-ahead to do it that way was not saying a word, basically threw me under the bus. And then so I was at this moment, and and these things will happen. They will happen to kind of like to shake you, right? They don't happen randomly, like it was such a freak incident where I was like, I literally thought I had done the best work, and I was like, so like um, what's it called? I was so proud of what I'd accomplished. And then here comes my boss, who's like basically ripping me as like what she loved to do with everybody. Now she's ripping me a new one. How could you have done this? This was not what we were looking for at all. This is a complete and epic fail. You told me you understood, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, I did, but I, you know, I just saw some clarification as I was moving through it. Like, there's one thing that we, you know, there's always that one, there's always it's always different when you're planning something versus when you actually go to execute. And questions came up during the execution that I did not anticipate when we were like talking about this. Was not hearing me, was not letting me speak, was not listening to reason, was not understanding. I'm like, you know what? Finally, I said, I go, there is no pleasing you. I am done. I'm simply done. Like, I'm done putting up with abuse from you. I am done being bullied by you. I am done being terrorized by you, and I'm done, you know, trying to force myself to, to, to, to, what's it called, um, to fit into what you what your expectations are of who you think, like, you know what I mean? Like it just it felt so wrong for me. It felt so forced for me. And, you know, yes, a lot of it had to do with her and how she treated people and how she treated relationships at work, but a lot of it had to do really with me and the choices I was making and who I was trying to be that was not in alignment with who I really was. And that's what was really coming to the surface in all of this is that I was trying to force myself to do something that for me brought me no real fulfillment, no real joy, was constantly draining me, was constantly stressing me, would constantly make me was constantly making me feel like I had to force being successful and being good at my job and force my my job to kind of be secure for me. And so, and and all of it required that I basically turn my back on who I was and what I really wanted for the sake of security and comfort and and you know, longevity. And so finally in that moment, I was like, I can't, like I'm I'm actually just I wasn't just done with her, I was done with just being miserable and being at a soul-sucking job where I felt like, you know, I really wasn't getting anything out of. Because I can tell you right now, when you're staying for, when you're staying at a job for the money, for the benefits, for the longevity, for the opportunities, you know, when those things get taken away, like, you know, you're not getting the promotions, you're not getting the raises, you're not getting the the recognitions or the alkalades, and now it's like, well, why am I here now? Not because I love what I'm doing, not because it's enjoyable for me. Certainly not because it, you know, inspires me or sets my soul on fire, right? Like, why am I here? Because I'm miserable. And so I sort of you start to realize that the cost of staying is so much more expensive than the cost of leaving, and so much scarier than the thought of leaving. And so finally, that moment, I'm like, you'll have my notice by the end of the day. And she came at me mockingly. She was like, okay, fine. She came at me mockingly at the end of the day. She goes, So, you have something for me? I'm like, Yep, here you go. Handed in my letter of resignation. She turned white in the face, she went crying to the to leadership about what had happened. And I was done. I said, I will gladly give you as much time as you need to find a replacement because I was handling a lot at the time. I was, you know, and I knew it would take them some time to find a you know, a suitable replacement and to trainer. Um, I said, I will stay as long as you need me to stay in order to find somebody suitable to replace me and to train them and to prepare them. I go, but then I'm I'm done. That's it. I'm I'm out. I'm out of here. Um and so in doing in making that one decision, the amount of energy that I got back almost immediately, because I had finally made a choice that was in alignment with what I actually wanted, which was to leave. I didn't know what the rest of my life was gonna look like. I didn't know what I was gonna do, I didn't know where I was moving forward, I didn't have a plan. This was completely illogical, and my soul had never been happier. Was it hard? Absolutely. Absolutely. There was I'm not gonna sugarcoat it. There was definitely some difficult moments in there where I was, you know, tested, where things got scary, where things got uncertain, where, you know, every every fiber in my body was screaming at me, telling me that, you know, did I make a mistake? Did I do the wrong thing? And I always, always, always, every time, no matter how uncomfortable it got, you did the right thing. You absolutely did the there was no doubt that I had done the right thing. Even when I had left that relationship, oh my god, oh my god, did I do the wrong thing? Am I gonna regret? Nope. Nope, you did not. You did not. When I let go of the friends, oh my god, did I do the wrong thing? Nope. You did not do the wrong thing. And my soul knew it. And I trusted that voice beyond any logic or reason. I trusted that voice beyond any logic or reason and finally started to let that be my guide instead of the logic or reason that I'd been making my decisions my entire life that got me to that misaligned place to begin with. I stopped listening to that. And in that process, discovered things about me and who I was and what I was what I was here to do in the world that I never ever would have figured out had I stayed where I was. Was everything that I had experienced up until that point useful? Yes. You would be shocked to realize how planned out your life actually is, even in the random decisions that you made along the way, thinking, well, yeah, sure, I'll give it a, I'll give it a go and see what happens. Everything that I had experienced up in my life up until that point was serving a greater purpose, and I didn't even see it. I had no freaking clue until I started to make those steps into the unknown and leaning into the things that were uncertain and unclear and that I weren't on my five-year plan, and that I didn't know how they were gonna work out or what was gonna show up and if I was gonna be okay. It wasn't until I started making those types of intuitive, soul-guided decisions that my path actually started to unfold for me. But it has to, it you have to be able to leave logic in the rear view. And that will only happen when you're ready. There's gonna there's gonna be a time if the if this is the path for you, and if you're on this path, and if you're wondering, and if it's scary, and if you're not sure, you'll know when the time is right, when the logical Thing because staying with the logical becomes scarier than going out into the uncertain and the unknown. And that's really where I knew because the resistance I felt to being where I was and being in the cushy job with the benefits and the growth, the five-year growth plan and all that jazz, suddenly that became way more uncomfortable than diving into the unknown. And I don't like it, it just sort of happened because I started making I started making internally guided choices. I started listening to myself more. I started letting go before with the relationships and the friendships and you know, going on this path of kind of rediscovering myself, right? And spending time on my own and doing the reflection work and starting, starting to ask myself who I was and what I wanted. And so, in doing so, what became what was unaligned for me became evidently clear, like crystal clear. And I was able to finally make the choices that I probably was dying to make for the longest time, but didn't have the courage or the wherewithal to. And now I was able to make them. Um, and and there's been many, many moments where it was like, oh my God, like what have I done? What have I done? I fucked up. I fucked it all up. Um, and there's many moments where I kind of felt like, you know, I it I saw everybody else moving, moving ahead, and I felt like I was in the standstill. But really, what was happening was I was it was like a reintegration that was happening. It was like a recalibration that was happening, where I was there was a cocooning. Like there, it was like a complete spiritual death and rebirth. And it needed its time, it needed to take place, it needed time to settle, to just state, it needed time for me to do my healing work, to evolve, to to grow as a spiritual being and to really step into um my voice and who I hear who I was here to to be and what I was here to create in the world. And so all that was a very slow unfolding. But, and no matter how scary it was, I was always supported along the way. And I leaned into that and I leaned into, and I still I continue to lean into it today. I continue to lean into it today because I'm still there's still changes happening, there's still, there's still like moments of uncertainty, there's still um times where I move through, I'm moving through one right now where it feels like you know the future's kind of unknown, and you kind of get caught up in the scarcity mindset, you get caught up in the limiting beliefs, and I always bring it back to I know that when I trust the guidance of my heart, when I let go of logic and reason and I trust my soul, I always know my soul is guiding me to my highest purpose. And I always know that when I'm following my highest purpose, I am always protected. I am divinely guided, divinely supported, and divinely protected. And I keep leaning into that. And every time the fear comes up, I lean into that again. And in doing so, I've been able to defy all the odds, right? Of building the business, of being unemployed for long periods of time and being fully taken care of and provided for along the way, of having the most incredible experiences while I'm doing all this and growing and learning and healing. That I would never in a million years, if I had gone back now, I would totally make the same decision again and do the exact same thing again that I did, knowing it would be challenging because I'd rather have this challenge than the challenge that I had there. Because the challenge I had there was misery, was unfulfillment, was burnout, was depression, was it just felt awful. Whereas this, the challenge here is yeah, I have to face some uncertainty, I have to face some doubt, I have to face some trials and challenges along the way, but I know that I'm aligned and I know that what I'm doing is lighting is is is lighting me up from the inside. And I I I'm I'm doing things that I would never get to do anyplace else. Like be here talking to you, creating this podcast, creating amazing content, having fun doing that, feeling inspired, feeling like I'm making a difference, feeling like my story means something to somebody. You know, like it could potentially help somebody. And that is so much more important than anything I was doing at that job. And that's what I focus on, that's what I keep refocusing on. So when you can focus on letting your your intuition, your soul, your your internally, your intent, your decisions and and and your actions and and your way forward to come from internally guided decisions versus logic, you open yourself up to possibilities that you didn't know were there. When I started doing this work, I started seeing I've told you this before on the podcast, I started seeing myself speaking into a microphone in front of the stage. Or sorry, and on a stage with lights like kind of like all around me, kind of pointing at me. So I was like on under a spotlight, but I couldn't see the faces in the audience. There was no faces, it was just dark, but I knew they were there. And it's because here I am today speaking to you on a podcast. And I'm speaking to people all over the world. We're top 10% worldwide. We this podcast is listened to in over a hundred countries and over a thousand cities all over the world, right? Who would have known 500 downloads minimum each month and slowly inching away up to a thousand, which would put me in the top five percent? Come on, guys, help me. Help me get there. Oh my God. I'm just trying to teach, I'm just trying to hit that top five. But honestly, like, how would I have known this? I wouldn't have because podcasting was barely a thing. Was barely a thing when I started this. It was a thing. And I actually Googled it. I'm like, when did podcasting start? Apparently it started in 2007, but it didn't really become popular, I think, until I can't remember if it was 2011. I'm I've got the dates mixed up now. But basically, it had just become popular, but it was something the kids were, I wasn't doing it. You know what I mean? I wasn't even listening to podcasts at the time. They were, they were they, I knew they were there and they were happening, but they they they weren't they weren't something that I was tuning into at the time, you know? Um, so to for me to imagine that one day I would have my own podcast and and my own mic and be talking to you guys like this on my fucking soapbox every freaking day or a couple times a week, I would have thought you're crazy. You have no idea how life is gonna unfold for you when you can put one foot in front of the other and let your soul guide your decisions instead of your logic. There is no plan. There is no five-year plan because you can't see it. You can only see one foot in front of the other. You can only see one breadcrumb of the trail at a time, and that's all you're intended to see. Because with every breadcrumb, with every choice, with every action, with every decision, there's a slight, it's almost like a um, not a not a course correct, but every decision will guide the next decision, will guide the next decision, will guide the next decision. So if I'm making a decision today, and I'm and I do this all the time, I shoot myself in the foot all the time with my podcast. I make a decision today, I'm gonna talk about this topic, and then I come up with a six-month plan of what it's gonna look like to talk about this topic and go in depth and talk about every angle and all the different things I'm gonna talk about. And then by the time I'm three weeks in, I'm like, yeah, I kind of want to talk about something else now. Like, you know, because it's an evolution. It's an evolution that happens over time. And with each step and each decision, each action that you take will lead you to more possibilities that you didn't see when you initially took the action. So now you've got more choices to choose from. So then you make the next choice. You lean into that a bit, you move forward, then you have more choices. So then you make the next, and that's how this unfolds. But you have to move away from logic and let your soul do the guiding. Let your soul make the decisions, let your soul speak louder than your logic and your fear ever could. And that is the only way that this gets to unfold in an aligned way. So let me know what you take away from this. Let me know what you're going to be doing differently going forward. And of course, until next time, you guys, massive love.

Head Shot

Maria

Host