BSB 120
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Speaker: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Bite-Sized Brilliance podcast. I'm your host, Dr. April Darley, and today's episode is going to somewhat be a follow-up to episode 117, which was all about how to find your life purpose. Now, if you go back to that episode, spoiler alert, you're going to find that, in my opinion, you're already doing your life purpose in some way, and that they tend to fall in themes.
This week, I had a few clients come in, and I saw this pattern throughout them. This happened as a physician as well. You would get some weeks where the patients would come in, and it was thyroid week or flu week, and it's just this weird thing that happens in the collective where everybody suddenly has the same problem all at once.
And it was significant enough for me to notice it and talk about it on today's episode. But my clients that came in, there were three of them. [00:01:00] Two of them were in healthcare and healing professions, and the third one wasn't, but they were all entrepreneurs, and they all have this passion and this purpose that they want to help someone.
Now, there is a very big difference on what makes sense logically and what you actually believe subconsciously, and this can be a challenging concept for people to truly understand. And I'm going to give you a ridiculous example of this.
But when I still had an office and I saw clients in person, I would often do a demonstration on the type of mind-body technique that I do, and that demonstration involved muscle testing. And one of the phrases that I would have people use is, _"I'm okay winning the lottery." _Because about 99.5% of people I would survey when I asked, "Are you [00:02:00] okay winning the lottery?"
They would say, "_Yes, absolutely."_ And they truly, logically believed that was true. But when I did this muscle test with them saying that phrase, "I'm okay winning the lottery," 99.3% of the time, they were not okay, because their subconscious was not okay winning the lottery. And they could not logically comprehend that, because they truly believed that was what they wanted But then when we started doing this unwinding process, they would come to learn, if they were really honest, winning the lottery scares them a little bit because they're worried about wasting the money, overspending it.
They're worried that someone might target them or steal the money, and they're worried that they would have to be the bad guy and say no to all these people begging them for money. And those reasons [00:03:00] create a subconscious belief that it's not okay to have a lot of money or to win the lottery, even though you consciously, logically want it.
And when it comes to life purpose that I saw this week among these clients that had this common thread or theme, is that subconsciously they believed they were here to help everyone. Consciously, when I asked them, " Are you here to help everyone? Does your business serve everyone?" They all said no, because they understand that logically.
But how you define your identity or your purpose subconsciously matters because there is the inner conflict. It does not matter how you logically or consciously define anything. What matters is the subconscious or unconscious, which are the survival and emotional beliefs you have created around that [00:04:00] purpose or content or goal.
Because that subconscious controls 97% of everything you do, not your logical brain. And so if you logically say, _"I know my business can't serve everyone. I know I can't help or heal everyone,"_ but you have created this identity or deep desire that that's what you think or feel you're supposed to do, or in the grandest, most idealistic version, that's what you want to do, then that empathy becomes destructive.
You have basically created a program that your mind, body, spirit, you cannot fulfill. So by having a purpose where you help everyone, you have built failure into the system. And what do I mean by that? If you have high levels of empathy, or you call yourself an empath, or you're very emotionally intelligent, [00:05:00] you do something that I call tuning into the collective.
It's a superpower of yours. But a superpower can turn against you if it doesn't have good guardrails or boundaries or restrictions. And I recently read a psychology report that said the people who have the most anxiety are those who focus the most on problems that they cannot solve. And that struck so deeply with me because I see that with my most empathic clients.
And in one breath, they're telling you, I completely understand. I can't help everyone. But in the next breath, if you listen long enough, they're telling you about how much it really bothers them to view the political climate or to view the wars or the suffering. And it makes them feel helpless because they can't do anything.
And that is [00:06:00] true. But that is also a huge signal that you may have the subconscious identity belief that you're supposed to. And that is where empathy begins to turn against you because it is one thing to have compassion and empathy. But if you take on the personal responsibility subconsciously, you will not do this logically.
But subconsciously, if you take on the responsibility of helping everyone, again, that is how you build failure and suffering into your system. And it is only through truly acknowledging that you cannot help everyone, truly working through that sense of misplaced responsibility. You are actually not put on this planet to help everyone.
And healers have ego. We all have ego. But healers, their ego doesn't tend to manifest in arrogant or jerky [00:07:00] ways. They manifest with over-responsibility and that internal subconscious belief that I'm here to help everyone. So they tend to view the world as a client or a patient. And when they can't help someone, they tend to take it on as a personal sense of failure.
And it's because those identity and subconscious beliefs baked failure into the program. And that is a very difficult thing to acknowledge that your ego may be the one that's informing your identity and making you feel like you have to serve everyone. But if you look at the quality of the people around you And if you look at how things are actually structured, and I'll take the US as an example of that.
But if you look at any given state in the US, you're going to find streets that come together to form neighborhoods, a collection of [00:08:00] neighborhoods that come together to form cities, a collection of cities that come together to form areas or metroplexes, and a collection of cities within a defined area that form a state, and a collection of states within a defined area that forms the US.
So what I tend to advise my clients who have high emotional intelligence, high empathy that is being used destructively because they are zooming out and focusing on problems they cannot solve nationally or globally, is to pull that sense of responsibility, narrow the focus, pull it into your local space, because I guarantee you that very similar problems that you are tuning into in the national or global area are playing out right in your local community.
Now, there may not be wars in [00:09:00] your local community, and that's fair, but there's absolutely suffering. There's absolutely people who are being abused or trafficked or taking advantage of, or who are hungry and need food, or who are down on their luck and could use some financial help. I guarantee you will find it.
And what people who have this healing desire or this helping desire, another thing they often experience in addition to the sense of helplessness over responsibility and empathy without boundaries, is that they forget that they're not the only one who has those feelings. Because that program, that identity program, your survival brain is very concerned with status and reputation, and being a leader increases your status and reputation to that brain, and that feeds and informs your identity which lives in the subconscious or [00:10:00] emotional brain.
So a piece of your identity was created around your strength of empathy, around leadership, around this quality of responsibility. It just went off the rails. And when you have that misplaced sense of responsibility, you tend to forget that you are not, in fact, responsible for everyone. It makes you overlook that we are, in fact Self responsible.
We are accountable for our own self and our own behavior, and we tend to overlook that. And you might try to help someone, but if you're not the right person for them, that's ego. You may not be the right person, but if you keep trying and keep trying, it's really your ego that is saying they're your assignment and you need to keep at it until they see the reason, see the light.
But in reality, you might [00:11:00] not be the right person to help them. They may not be ready for your help. That is a sign that you subconsciously have created that program, even though logically you might tell me, _"I'm not here to help everyone."_
But if you have guilt turning people away, if you have guilt around over-giving, if you have guilt around setting boundaries, if you have guilt around saying no even though someone is suffering, that is a mismatch in your subconscious identity versus what you logically know of_ I can't help everyone_. And it's so hard when you are a kind, loving, caring person.
But the truth is, we have to be responsible for ourselves. We can be charitable and giving to others, but not at the expense of ourselves, and we're not here to help everyone. We don't have the skills or the resources or the personal energy to do that, and if you truly can't [00:12:00] acknowledge that with every fiber of your mind, body, and spirit, then you're gonna butt up against some problems.
You're going to feel that guilt and shame when you have to say no. You're going to feel afraid that saying no makes you a bad person or that someone might reject or abandon you. You're going to feel helpless, and you're going to try to tune in to all these problems because you subconsciously feel it's your responsibility, but that is the wrong move, my friends.
Narrow your focus in. Get truly honest with yourself that you don't have the resources to help everyone. It's impossible, and you're going to do your part. That's what you can do. You can do your part, give what you can, honor yourself, your energy, your time, your resources, and trust that there are so many other people out there doing the same things.
It's like a network. Have that [00:13:00] faith that if you do your part in your area, others are doing the same in their area. And then it becomes like this beautiful quilt where everybody's got a square. And you're ultimately responsible for your area, your airspace, but you have to trust if something goes beyond your airspace, it's going to be taken care of by the person over here.
That is how you create a solid identity that lets you feel good about helping people, that lets you accept that you're not for everyone, and that if you have to leave people behind or if you're unable to help them, you're not the only one out there and someone will pick them up who does have the time, the resources, the energy.
Understanding this, if you feel like you have a powerful life purpose to create large positive impact for the world, please know that it starts small. It [00:14:00] starts in your local area until you've done what you can there, and then you can expand. But if you constantly try to take on the problems of the world, that will only hurt you.
The problems of the world exist on some scale right in your own backyard. And it's not about you needing to be the leader or are you failing if you can't help everyone. It's about working with other people to build this powerful collective who gets the work done. It's not about you, it's the work. And if you can truly keep these things in mind, you can update your subconscious beliefs and identity to get this guilt, this shame, this fear, this ego out.
You can let go of extreme empathy that becomes destructive and harmful for you, and really focus on powerfully serving the people [00:15:00] you are here to serve that are ready, willing, and able to take advantage of your services, to say yes, and to grow and benefit from them. And it's a hard lesson to know that's not going to be everyone.
That is us. That is our ego. That is something we need to work out in our own mind, body, spirit. And I hope this has helped you see things from a few different angles to where you might have increased anxiety because you're trying to solve problems that don't actually belong to you. You might have guilt or shame because you have to leave people behind and you can't help everyone.
You might have a sense of helplessness because you can't help everyone And it might be a reality check to start digging into ego. And we all have one. None of us are exempt from egos. We all want to be special. We all want to shine. And when we can't, we feel failure and frustration and anger [00:16:00] and like we're just not doing life right.
But sometimes our strengths, when they are abused or misused, become the very thing that is destructive and harms us the most. And the big takeaway I would love for you to have from this episode is empathy and emotional intelligence is so beautiful and it is needed in this world, but not at the expense of your health, happiness, or personal accountability.
And learning to balance and manage these things is one of my strengths, is to help my clients really dig into these subconscious beliefs and these thoughts that are so innate to you, you don't realize that they've turned destructive. Or you don't realize that it is a tiny update in that subconscious programming, tiny updates in your personality or your belief system that go on to unlock that next [00:17:00] level for you.
And this is where I can provide that one-to-one mentorship and guidance to take the time to really listen to what you're struggling with or what frustrates you and help you see it from all of these different perspectives and to create something that's new and healthy that makes you happy. And if that sounds like something good for you, then go to aprildarley.com and set up a complimentary consultation.
And very quickly, we'll get into the why of your problem or struggle and how my *3 Brain System*, my *Rapid Regulation Method*, and my *Figure It Out* *System* can help you find the source of this inner conflict and resolve it once and for all. So you go back to enjoying your strengths as strengths instead of secret saboteurs.
All right, my friends, I'm wishing you so much [00:18:00] love and success. Do your part in the world. Trust that the rest of us are out here doing ours as well, and we can make it a better place together. Until next week, my friends, goodbye.
