Some of us excel because of life lessons. Why is that? Well today our guest blogger, Life Coach Cordelia Gaffar, will mesmorize you her Gratitude laced walk to her purpose and passion. Cordelia is the radio host of Replenish Me on Life Coach Radio Network and founder of Workout Around My Day.
In the beginning, I wrote a book and contacted local mosques to set up workshops. I thought that I was going to market myself as a unique health and wellness coach. I thought that I could weave words and spin sentences to mesmerize the masses. I forgot that I wasn’t the only one. The more I tried to sound different the more I sounded the same. My books are clever but my marketing know how and the recommendations of my inner circle were not. That was just the first part of the unintuitive things I have learned about finding my purpose and passion.
You see my book was the result of 15 years of solid research and love of self-nurturing practices surrounding exercise, nutrition during pregnancy and postpartum, nutrition for breastfeeding and monthly periods and emotional management, time management, potty training, raising emotionally and intellectually aware individual and emotional intelligence to maintain a marriage. I knew others wanted to know because they asked me everyday at homeschooling field trips, grocery stores, family gatherings, etc. I knew they wanted to know because I had spent all of my 15 years, at that point, of parenting researching, implementing, practicing, applying over and over again. What I didn’t know was how to get them to care and to buy it from me.
The second part of my issue surrounding my message was cognitive dissidence. That means practicing and intuitively knowing differently than I was living. It also meant that my previous self-nurturing techniques were constantly upgrading to accommodate homeschooling, running a household while running an online international business. Who knew that I would have to take even better care of myself? Which of course made me feel that I was not living my message as it needed constant fine tuning. My lack of confidence and fear of failure was glaring.
I found myself back to second guessing myself in the entrepreneurial world as I had over a decade ago in my personal life. Now I sought to read every marketing book, watch every YouTube video, join every mastermind or seek every business coach and method out there. Only to find that when you are still, the wisdom will emerge and direct you straight to your support tribe, radiate out to your client tribe and walk in the vision without worrying about the how.
Finally, my dreams meeting the road were more than just a notion. The new levels of negotiation, coordination and planning required for me to travel, run a household, homeschool, parent and prop up a marriage were more than I had imagined. I forgot that life continues to happen when you are dreaming and you could end up running on empty in more than one way.
When I kept walking in my vision and planning accordingly, I scheduled two business altering trips back to back. First I attended the the Women’s Success Conference in Biloxi, MS and connected with the most amazing 1,000 women ever. Then, I chose a skill building trip to Bali for the Presenter’s Masterclass and experienced a stillness I hadn’t in 20 years. That’s where I discovered my true purpose and passion is best defined as a Body Soul Shift. That is what I named my daily practice of stopping to attend to the alert system of my body and replenish it with prayer, nourishing food and exercise du jour. I loved the spice of delivering different types of movement every day and not in any specific order. I loved how it made my body feel, lifted my mood and keep me in flow. I continue to love how it makes me radiate so that I can serve my tribe powerfully. Intuitively, I knew how to serve myself but how to make it relatable was the challenge.
So the unintuitive things I have learned about finding my purpose and passion are three:
My marketing know how is a long-term relationship building tool.
Cognitive dissidence is the norm. You will understand before your will live it.
Dreams meeting the road is about having structure and community.
For more information about how I help women with a Body Soul Shift, connect with me at http://workoutaroundmyday.com or cordelia@workoutaroundmyday.com
Coach Cai 