Your Purpose is Closer Than You Think

Fiona: 00:02

We often think of wellbeing as one-dimensional. What if we look at it from a different perspective?

Josephine: 00:08

The possibilities are endless. All we have to do is step outside the square.

Let's walk this walk together and hold on tight for the ride.

Fiona: 00:16

My name is Fiona. I'm a corporate wellness facilitator, body image and eating psychology coach and a lover of joyful experiences.

Josephine: 00:24

And I'm Josephine, a dietitian, somatic release therapist and a recovering people pleaser and perfectionist.

Fiona and Josephine: 00:30

Welcome to Outside the Square.

Fiona: 00:35

Hello!

Josephine: 00:37

We are back. Welcome back everyone. Season two, here we go.

Fiona: 00:43

Oh, we are so excited to be back. It's been great to have a little bit of a break, but I know we've both been so excited to come back and share more, to hear some of your feedback, those of you who are listening, and to answer more of your questions and give you lots more love.

Josephine: 01:01

And speaking about answering your questions, we have decided that this season we will be launching a group program. And that is for any of you who want to dive deeper with us, who need a bit more support, or you just know that you could go deeper.

Fiona: 01:19

Yeah, it's going to be working with us live. So rather than listening to us, you will get to see us and chat to us and it's going to be great. We're going to be launching in May, so we cannot wait to share more details with you over the coming weeks.

So if you are not already following Outside the Square in your podcast platform, go ahead and give us a follow and if you follow us on our Instagram page already @OutsideTheSquarePodcast on Instagram, all of our information will be dropping in there as well over the coming weeks.

So so excited to be moving from the podcast space to the live space with you all as well this year.

Josephine: 02:05

And it really will be live. We want to procreate this with you, so every time someone reaches out to us through our DMs on Instagram or through the podcast platform if you can do that, then we can use that to be something that we include in the group program if we think it will be valuable for you as a collective.

So please do connect with us at Outside the Square Instagram so that we can have that line of communication and co-create what is really needed.

Fiona: 02:38

Absolutely. And I think it's often the way, isn't it, that when you have a question, you often think you're the only one who has that question and it's not until you hear everybody else go, “oh, I was thinking exactly the same thing” that you realise that actually the things that you're curious about are things that are really valuable not just to you, but also to others and that you can then learn from each other's stories and each other's questions just as much as your own.

Josephine: 03:07

Absolutely. There is no shame in any question. There is no ‘too much information’, like we want to know, yeah you're most vulnerable areas of your life, where you actually need the support, where you need to be seen and held and given the next steps.

Fiona: 03:25

It's going to be great so follow along and we can't wait to share more with you.

Josephine: 03:32

Today is all about purpose isn’t it Fiona? Why not start off 2024 around purpose? I'm not a big fan of New Year's resolutions but I am a big fan of connecting in with your purpose and having an intention for the year.

Fiona: 03:45

It's interesting because I've had a lot of conversations over the last couple of weeks around that concept of New Year's resolutions, that sense of an idea of fresh energy, of “right I want to shake off where I've been and move into something new but I don't know what it is” or that sense of “I had some New Year's resolutions and I've already failed at them”.

You might be in that space if you, you know decided you wanted to start something and you haven't you know, maybe progress in the way that you thought, you know, end of January is actually often a time where we do start to actually feel like we're taking a few steps backwards or we get that little slump in energy because we've started the year thinking everything is going to be fresh and then maybe we haven't taken the steps that we wanted to to get there and so we're already starting to feel a little bit like maybe we're wasting time or that we've not achieved what we should have already.

So I think to come back and revisit that question of purpose and what that looks like for you as an individual, firstly you can do that at any time of year but I think this is a really potent time to do that.

Josephine: 04:57

There's so many people doing the same thing, yeah, and if you are one of those people that feels they've already failed in years resolution, I love you, because you know you're falling into the same trap that so many of us have, I have, know you have too Fiona, and there's only two reasons that happen.

And one is you set your expectations way too high that you're just not being kind enough to yourself, or two, you've set a resolution on something that's simply not a priority and I think today's episode will be really good for that when we're talking about actually what is my purpose? What is actually important to me? It's let’s not waste our time in setting, well resolutions in this case, around things that don't actually matter.

Fiona: 05:43

Yeah, it's absolutely true and I think there's one aspect which of course we dived into a little bit last season, and we will again is that perfectionism piece or that setting that bar too high or setting the expectation too high. But you're absolutely right in that “Did I set something that was really aligned with me? Did I actually write this goal or write this resolution or want this thing, because it It's actually a priority for me?” And I think that's where this conversation about purpose can come into play.

So when you think about the word purpose, Josephine, what comes to mind for you? Because for me, it's for a lot of people as well, I think, it feels like a really big concept that we have one big purpose for life. What comes to you when, you know, what does purpose mean to you or what does that word mean to you?

Josephine: 06:40

When I first sit down to think about my purpose, it usually makes me want to sweat a little bit, like there’s this pressure you know, heart rate picks up, I need to sweat and it feels overwhelming. So I reframe that for purpose to be something that's very fluid. I know that my purpose will evolve across my lifetime, that there'll be themes that always come up but by the end of my lifetime is when I'll best know what my purpose actually is.

And then it'll be so multifaceted depending what area of my life that we're looking at, but if I was to generalise and push through the nervous heart rate and sweats a little bit, my purpose is to know my emotions well enough that I can express my truth vulnerably and truthfully in any area of my life, whether that be in my relationships with my nearest and dearest, whether that's with my clients, whether that's on my social media, to have that ripple effect into the world, I want to express my truth so it's a little bit more safe for other women to do the same.

Because it is scary doing that. It takes so much courage and it takes me regulating my nervous system every single day to come back to stillness and quiet so that I can then express what is truly me for the world.

Fiona: 08:10

I love that, and I love that because it's weaving into all the aspects of your life and I think when we think about purpose, you're right. Even when I said it before, you know, it feels like this big thing, I was starting to, my heart rate started to go, even just talking about it feels like that word really encompasses, I think, something that feels really big and what you just expressed there was that that purpose was around yourself and how you show up in all the smaller areas of your life and I think that can be a way that we start to make that purpose or that big feeling of purpose, feel a bit more meaningful and a bit more tangible and a bit more accessible to us.

Josephine: 09:08

Yeah, and I think there's a purpose in itself of just wanting to know who you are more deeply and be more confident in that, if that's your purpose for 2024, I salute you and fully support you and I know for my clients for a lot of them it's the same, like what is better than connecting to that and sharing your unique gifts with the world. You might not know what they are yet, doesn't matter.

Just start.

Fiona: 09:35

That idea of purpose for 2024 or it might be for us before we start recording every episode, we have a quick chat, ‘What is our purpose for today's episode?’ You know ‘what is my purpose for this particular task or this particular job I'm doing?’ ‘What is my purpose in this yoga class that I'm going to go to today?’

We can actually bring that purpose word down into ‘what does that fit for the particular situation that I'm in?’ And I think that's something that we don't often think about when we hear that question, what is my purpose? How do I find my purpose? It is, that brings about that connotation of ‘I need to find that one thing that is the reason that I am here and is going to be that train and the one thing that I hold onto throughout my whole life.’ And I think that's where the overwhelm comes from because we feel like we have to find this elusive thing that we're then going to be able to hold onto, but as you say, that evolves and changes throughout our life and our priorities change, our values change, everything changes, and so trying to find this elusive purpose that is going to be the thing that I do forever, I think can feel overwhelming.

well ‘what's my purpose for: 2024

Josephine: 11:20

I love that fluidity and I know you said to me before Fiona, that purpose is what drops out the bottom of the funnel when you have lived life fully enough, you know, like made all your mistakes, realised what really is not your purpose and then all of a sudden just it drops out.

Fiona 11.38

Yeah, yeah, sort of we're looking for the one thing and sometimes how we do that is by trying things as you say, give it a go and realising, oh, that that doesn't quite fit or that wasn't quite feeling the way that I wanted it to and there's also learning and discovery in those aspects as well where we're sort of letting things go that we've realised and not in fact our purpose anymore.

Josephine: 12:06

So true. I think the way I got really clear on my purpose was living outside of my purpose for a good three-year period and that was awful and gruelling and a dark night of the soul to be not living in a way that I knew what my purpose was but on the other side there was all this clarity that came in.

Once I shut down, Nutrition and Life, my old business, which actually I shut down in December finally, properly, once that was shut down, my freedom of expression of my new purpose and my new business Authentically Josephine became so easy because the weight of the old identity, my past identity and the old had been shed and there was grief and it was hard, but that it's allowed space for this new purpose to crystallise for me.

Fiona: 12:55

I think that's a really important aspect to consider when we're thinking about that change or where we might realise that something that we're doing that maybe we thought was our purpose, we find in fact isn't or that we want to shed that is creating that space. So doing all the things to shut that down and actually letting go and that can be a really challenging thing to do because sometimes there's safety and security and what we're actually doing, we might know that it's not fully aligned but we might not be quite ready to step into what is going to be the next thing and so we kind of hold on to that a little bit and yet there's so much value in letting those things go in their entirety to create that space for something new to come in even if we don't know what it's going to be.

So, as you said, it's sort of, I might not know what that purpose is, I might not know what the next step is but I know that this thing isn’t right and if you know that aspect isn’t right, can you let it go without knowing what the next thing is, because I think sometimes we want that certainty.

Well, I'll let that go when I know what the next step's going to be or when I know what the next purpose is going to be and yet, we may not have created space to let that in or to be able to see what that is unless we actually shut off what we had before.

Josephine: 14:26

Yeah, absolutely, to feel like you are lost for a couple of months or a couple of years and just allow it to be full of confusion and doubt and that's such a scary place, but I so resonate with that in that, there was a few years where I just felt really, really lost.

Fiona: 14:44

Yeah, and I think we've all experienced that where something, we're not quite sure where we're going, we're not quite sure where we fit. I think it's a universal feeling at different times in our lives.

Josephine: 15:01

What's your purpose Fiona?

Fiona: 15:05

I would say, honestly, that I don't , I don’t fully know.

For me, I have gotten through a lot of things. I'm starting to understand much more about what lights me up, the things that I feel that I can contribute that make value for me and for others, but I wouldn't crystallise that into a big purpose yet. What I know in this space with you is that my purpose here in this podcast is to share the value that you and I have, to bring clear messages to you guys, our listeners, and to help you along with your journeys in some of this self-development space because, you know, Josephine, you and I are, maybe only one or two steps ahead in some of these things than some of our listeners, but what that means is that we've had some experience and we can help you to understand that there is, a step that you can take.

So that's really what I want to achieve in this space. So that's, that would be my purpose here.

Josephine: 16:21

I think you bring up a really good point there and something I wanted to share today, is that not everyone’s purpose is through their job or where you think it should be, you know, that actually, purpose is far more important in our relationships because when people are at our funeral, they're going to tell us about how we make them feel and that purpose sits only in relationships.

Not, I mean, it may sit in your colleagues, but a lot of the time it's not. It's the other relationships you had in your lifetime.

Fiona: 16:53

I think there's so much in that relationship with self as well, so what is the purpose in our relationship in self? And how does that help us fulfill our purpose in relation to others?

Josephine: 17:09

Yeah, I think a lot of us are asking that question, who am I? and that is a good purpose in itself, if you know that, then you can show up in the world in a way that you can help others do the same thing, just by having a chat with someone, you're going to start to help them reveal what's important to them by you standing fully in your power, or more so in your power of knowing what makes you happy and bringing that into your relationships.

Fiona: 17:39

So it was interesting, I had a chat with a group of people earlier this week and one of the ladies in the group said, ‘I really want to find out, I need to find my purpose.’ She's in her 60s and she was like, ‘I want some purpose, how do I find it?’ And so I think we might have some listeners who are resonating with what we're saying and some of the things that we're talking about.

What do you think is a great first step? So if I really want to start to understand my purpose in relationship with myself or my purpose in relationship with others, what's a great first step to take to help me discover that?

Josephine: 18:26

In that woman's situation, I think the first thing to do is to acknowledge that you do have a purpose, it's there, it's right there in front of you.

It's like part of your everyday, you are probably already living it in every single relationship. Cause I've had people say that to me and this one woman in particular, I just looked at her and thought, ‘you are so on purpose’, like the way she shows up for her kids and her husband, like she breathes purpose. Well, actually for anyone even in her small relationship with me, we’ve only known each other for a few weeks, she had said things to me that showed me who I truly was, like she did that for everyone around her, yet she couldn't name it as a purpose.

So I think the first thing is just trust that you probably found more on purpose than you even realise. And the next thing would probably be to ask those around you what they think your purpose is, like if they could name what you're really good at or when they see you light up and if they can share those little instances with you, you're going to get a really nice mirror back of actually what your purpose might be.

Fiona: 19:34

I love that. I love that. And it's so true that for a lot of us, we say, I want to find my purpose, I want to understand what it is or I want to discover it and yet as you say, they are aspects of our lives where we will already be living at, it's those things that light us up. It might not be the day-to-day feeling where, you know, we're in a routine and we're sort of stuck in that habit.

It's those moments where we really feel connected with what we're doing or who we're with or how we're in service to ourselves or to someone else, and that's already there. So acknowledging that you already living with purpose and that in fact it is probably already there for you so it's not necessarily something you have to find or something new or something that you have to bring in, because I think that can sometimes be a challenge where it's, oh there's something else I'm going to have to do because I need to find my purpose and then I need to bring that in, but actually it's so intrinsically connected to who we are and what we do that it's already there, so that acknowledgement piece to start with.

And then, yeah, I love that. Asking others. I know that when I've seen others in their element, when they are, you can tell that they are enjoying what they're doing or that they are really connected with what they're doing, you can see it physically on them in a way that sometimes we can't recognise in ourselves.

Josephine: 21:14

Yeah, it's going to come so easily to you that even if it hit you in the face you might not see it. Yeah, yeah. I love that, and it's going to make the other feel something, whether it makes the other feel grounded or feel inspired, that's quite a good question to ask is ‘How do I make you feel?’ That can also be really fruitful.

Fiona: 21:37

Yeah. So asking others, ‘how do I make you feel?’ And ‘when are the moments that you see me in joy?’

Josephine: 21:51

Absolutely and I think another thing that you can focus on is how much, what are my shutting myself, where are we and my shutting myself down because we can shut down that purpose as well. And I know for a lot of my clients and your clients, Fiona, what happens then, is we start to sabotage ourselves with food because we're actually shutting down such a huge part of our self-expression and of our being that we know something's off, we are shutting down that purpose, that natural life, what comes easy to us because we think we should be doing something else in the world or we've got some other belief that is making us small.

Fiona: 22:31

Yeah, absolutely and I think that's going to be a big flavour of season two in the podcast over the next few weeks is each of these big conversations that we're having, how is that connecting back to our relationship with food and with our body?

And you're absolutely right, I think, for those of us who have expression and have a lot of our emotions and the things that happen internally for us play out in our relationship with food and the way that we eat and our habits and those sorts of things, purpose is so intertwined into that, that you know, when we're denying that that's where we might see some of those behaviours in our eating or in our body image or that self-talk or even in in how we move our bodies and can come out.

Josephine: 23:25

Yeah, if we're feeling disconnected from our purpose, even if it's right there and we can't see it, then we're going to be disconnected with our own bodies as well.

Fiona: 23:38

Yeah, and I guess it's asking those questions of others, so those two questions around, you know, how do I make you feel and what do you see as my purpose or what moments do you see or feel the joy for me?

They're the two questions that you can ask others around your purpose and I think then looking internally, if you're noticing some of that behaviour or those patterns coming up with your relationship with food or your body or your feeling that disconnection, is getting curious about that as well and it might just be in those moments saying, what else is going on here? Is this way I'm eating or is this decision I'm making around what I'm choosing to eat or how I'm choosing to eat or where I'm going to go and do some exercise or the moment where I go ‘urgh I have to go to the gym but I don't want to do it.’ Just ask yourself, what else is going on here for me? and that's a starting point, you might not get an answer right away, but it's going to put you in that mindset of going, is this really connecting me to what I feel my purpose is? Am I going to get some joy from this? Am I going to feel connected? Here, and that's a really good first step for yourself as well.

So there's the, how do we connect? How do we ask others for some of that? And then that process in ourselves as well.

Josephine: 25:12

Yeah, I love that sort of visualising the little breadcrumbs that you follow to your purpose, like each time you feel that hit of joy or pleasure, you know it's something that might seem so small that it can't be your purpose. It doesn't matter. Follow the joy and the pleasure anyway and yeah, sooner or later, you or someone will be able to reflect back to you that there's actually something really significant that lights you up that they feel is connected to your purpose.

Fiona: 25:43

Love it. I feel like that's just been a really valuable conversation.

Josephine: 25:53

I sure hope so.

Fiona: 25:56

It is so great to be back and we are so excited over the coming weeks to be sharing much more with you. I would love to hear from you if you have questions about your purpose or if you know what your purpose is in a particular situation, come on over to our Instagram page at Outside The Square Podcast, and we're going to pop up a little post on the grid and 'd love you to pop on there and comment, let's get a conversation happening about purpose. Because hearing others' questions and hearing others' purposes can also help us around that breadcrumb piece as well and give us some insight as to what's happening. So we would love it if you would connect with us and tell us a bit more about your journey to find your purpose.

Josephine: 26:53

Yeah, sometimes it's only one conversation away from making that real connection to feeling you are on purpose. So ask away, and until next week, we hope you have a week.

Fiona 27: 06

Bye.

Josephine: 27:07

Before we finish up for today, we would like to acknowledge the original custodians of the lands on which our podcast is created, the Ngāi Tahu people of Aotearoa New Zealand,

Fiona: 27:16

and the Cammeraygal people of the Eora Nation Australia. We pay our respects to elders past, present and emerging and to all our listeners who identify as Aboriginal, Torres Straight Islander, or Maori.

Josephine: 27:29

We love connecting with you, our listeners and talking about the topics that mean the most to you. Reach out to us on Instagram at Outside the Square Podcast and let us know what you want to hear more of.

Fiona: 27:40

Until next week, keep stepping outside your square.

Josephine: 27:45

Smashed it

Fiona: 27:46

Look at us. We’re back. We’re back baby!

Josephine: 27:49

Hahaha, ah, cool.