Transcript

Brian
Hi, and welcome to this Somatic Coaching Academy podcast. Here we are for episode 113. How are you, Ani?

Ani
I’m really good. How are you? Doing great.

Is this our last episode of 2025?

Brian
It is our last episode of 2025.

Ani
Wow. Wow. How are you feeling about year end?

Brian
I’m feeling pretty good about year end. It feels like it’s been a really exciting year, many, many opportunities.

Ani
Wow, it has been a really exciting year.

Brian
That are launching and continuing in 2026.

Ani
You know, this is a nine year for people who are numerology enthusiasts. It’s a nine year, and next year’s a one year, which is kind of like this idea of this year’s wrapping up a bunch of stuff. Okay.

And next year starts off a whole new fresh chapter.

Brian
Well, that should be interesting then.

Ani
Yeah. Yeah. Well, actually, I think one of the reasons why this year has felt so challenging for a lot of people is because it’s a nine year, so it’s time to like wrap up all the old stuff.

Also, it was the year of the snake. Okay. The shadow serpent, I think it was, like from Chinese medicine perspective.

Yeah. And this idea of like shedding our old skin. Yeah.

Right. Okay. So, I mean, a few different ways to look at saying powerful year.

Brian
Yeah. So, I guess you have another week to let go of anything that you haven’t let go of yet in the last nine years. You have one more week to do it.

Ani
I’m just imagining people like throwing things out of their windows right now.

Brian
That’s right. So, yeah. So, you can let go of anything else.

You have one more week before the new stuff starts.

Ani
Well, part of the reason I asked how you’re doing is because I’m hearing from a lot of people that they’re really tired. So, you know, there’s like the tired because I didn’t sleep last night. And then there’s the tired because like, it’s a really long year kind of tired.

Like I’m hearing from a lot of people that holiday season, end of the year kind of time can be tiresome for people anyway and stressful for people anyway. But I’m hearing from folks that it’s like that kind of tired on top of, I was already tired before any of it started kind of tired and stressed. All right.

So, I’m glad you’re not feeling like that.

Brian
Yeah. That’s good. So, people are, well, next week is next year.

So, we don’t want to go to next week yet because we’re still in 2025. So, what are we talking about this week? This week, we’re talking about why do I question my purpose, Ani?

Ani
This comes up for a lot of people right around the beginning of the year. I think one of the reasons is because it’s a new year and it’s a new me. New year, new me.

That’s what they say on Instagram. No, like no.

Brian
They don’t say that? Right.

Ani
They do say that on Instagram. It’s just one more reason to feel bad about ourselves, right? So, you see online and stuff, new year, new me.

And you’re like, crap. What does that mean about me, right? And anyway, a lot of people question their purpose this time of year.

What is this year, this new year for me? How has it been going with my life? It’s a natural time of reflection.

Brian
And it’s funny. We say it’s the end of the year. It’s a calendar.

And isn’t it funny how it’s just a day. We flip the calendar from one week to another week, just like any other week of the year. But we make such a big deal about we’re flipping the calendar to a new…

It’s just one more reason to feel crappy about myself. It’s something that humans do. So, I think as humans, we put a lot of pressure on ourselves, is the point I’m making.

Because we can just say, hey, it’s just another Monday kind of thing. We’re just changing the day. But because as humans, we strive to create so much meaning, for better or for worse.

Yeah, for better and for worse. Oftentimes, we use meaning to create really amazing experiences that are uplifting and supporting. And sometimes, we create meaning that’s not so good.

But as humans, we create meaning. We’re kind of programmed, conditioned. We strive to do that all the time.

And so, we make all this meaning around, oh, so we have 12 months in the year and the 12 is going to end. We’re going to go back to a number one. And it’s a nine year, so that feels like a lot.

So, whether or not any of these things have any validity at all, I’m not saying they do or they don’t. I don’t know. But we make validity out of them.

And then we look and we add up, oh, yeah, it’s been a nine year for me. All these things feel like they’re coming to completion and that kind of stuff. And they might be, they may not be.

I don’t know. But we’re making it mean that way. We’re making it mean that, again, for better and for worse, which creates a lot of pressure in the system.

So, it does end up being that the December does end up being a reflective time of year, I think, to the point. Because then we look back at, hey, what were my intentions for this year? Did those intentions come to fruition?

Did they not? And then did I do this year what I wanted to do or did I not do? Did I have the experience that I wanted to do?

So, I think it does make sense that this time of year, particularly, we start to question a lot of things. And our purpose is one of those things that we tend to question deeply. Because, as humans, we want to make meaning of things.

And meaning and purpose kind of go deeply together. And this time of year, when it’s just dark all the time, there’s a lot of inner experience when it’s dark constantly.

Ani
Right. We’re in upstate New York in the US and I swear it’s been getting dark at three o’clock. It’s dark all the time.

It’s just, and it’s cloudy all the time. Like, oh, man.

Brian
Yeah.

Ani
So, there’s a lot of- Got to find the light inside.

Brian
There’s a lot of inner looking sort of thing. And so, a lot of questioning. And I think that’s a natural flow to that.

So, to your point, I think this is a time of year where we would naturally question a lot of things. And why not question the most deep things about ourself, like my purpose?

Ani
I do. I do think it’s kind of funny. Funny, not funny that it comes up for a lot of my clients around this time of year.

Because they’re so absolutely exhausted into the ground, run into the ground tired because of all of the compounding holidays with people who celebrate in the US for Thanksgiving. And then folks who celebrate Hanukkah and Christmas and stuff like that. And then the new year.

And then God forbid you’ve got birthdays in there. And they’re freaking just running to the ground tired. And then what comes up?

What is my purpose anyway?

Brian
What am I actually doing here? It’s kind of like once the dust settles, we’re like, what have I been doing for the last six weeks? And what’s my purpose in all of this?

Ani
The things I remind my clients is, hey, are you tired? You need a little nappy. Seriously, do you need some recuperation time?

Most of my clients are women. Women traditionally, societally kind of take on a lot of the responsibilities in terms of planning the holidays and doing the shopping and doing the cooking and making sure that everybody else has a fantastic holiday. When a lot of the people I talk to as women, I remember thinking this for myself.

All I want to do is run away or take a vacation by myself where no one can find me. That would be my perfect holiday. And so we’re tired.

And one of the things I think we can recognize when we question our deepest, most meaningful question we could ask ourselves, what is my purpose? Is to say, use your conscious mind for just a moment and say, hold on a second there, sweetie. Are you sleepy?

Are you tired? Do you need some TLC, some downtime, some rest, some rest? Because why don’t you get that, fill up your gas tank a little bit, and then ask that question.

Brian
Yeah. This is really interesting. I’m glad you’re bringing this up because all of life is really at its base fundamental core is energy management.

So many people that we work with, a lot of small business owners, entrepreneurs, coaching professionals who are running their business. And they ask this question a lot, like, what is my purpose? What’s my mission?

What am I supposed to be doing here? And sometimes you have to take it back and just say, what’s your energy management like right now? I’m really tired.

If you don’t have enough battery in the bank right now, then it’s going to be hard for you to do certain things. So let’s just go back to scratch here for a moment and work on energy management basically, which I think is what you’re saying.

Ani
Absolutely. Energy management, one of the best things you can do if you hear yourself asking or questioning your purpose is say, what’s my gas tank level right now? Where am I at?

Am I at half a gas tank? Am I at a quarter of a gas tank? Am I at a full gas tank?

And I would say if you’re not at least a half gas tank or three quarters of a gas tank, that is the first thing to do before you start asking yourself the what is my purpose question.

Brian
So what to do about that, somatic practices, go into the library and check out some of the core centering practices, those sorts of things that are specifically designed to help you fill up your gas tank. What I think is interesting to you, Ani, is that if someone is really sure about their purpose, even when their gas tank goes down, if they’re not asking that question, it’s not asking a question like, why do I keep forgetting my purpose? Or why do I keep questioning my purpose?

Is that you can actually use your purpose to fill up your gas tank.

Ani
You can.

Brian
If you know what it is.

Ani
But I would say not from a less than a quarter of a tank gas tank. That’s what I would say. I’ll tell you why.

Because our purpose is not all about feeling awesome all the time. And I think that is so, so important to remember. When we’re truly on purpose in life, it is this combination factor of feeling great and feeling like totally aligned and feeling challenged.

So I’ve been thinking about this a lot because as we’ve talked about before, I am training for a marathon. I’m running a lot. I’m going to talk about that in a second.

But we also hike a lot. So it’s kind of like this. Why do you hike?

Actually, let me ask you. Why do you hike?

Brian
I just, I love being outdoors. I love getting up high. I love, honestly, I love, well, you know, the kind of hiking I love to do, which you don’t necessarily like to do.

Well, I love scrambling on rock. I love rock climbing and scrambling because I love the exposure, actually. So that actually, that’s one of the reasons.

So for me, like just kind of hiking on pedestrian kind of pathways, I’ll do it and I’ll find reasons to like it. But if you actually ask me like, what would I love to go do in a hike? I would love to be scrambling over ice and rock, mountaineering, because I love the exposure.

Ani
Okay. So the thing that you love about hiking, that exposure totally freaks me out, as you know. And I wouldn’t go do a hike and be excited about it because I could feel that feeling, right?

I would not. I don’t do hard things on purpose. I’ve realized that about myself.

I do hard things by accident. I don’t hike because I want to feel exertion. I don’t hike because I want to feel exposure.

I don’t hike because I want to listen to the voices talk in my head like they do when I go for a really long hike. I don’t want to get blisters on my feet. I want to go hike because I want to get to the top of the mountain.

I want to get to the top of the mountain and I want to see that view. And all the tough stuff that goes along with hiking a mountain is worth it to me for getting the view. So for you, there’s tough stuff that goes into it for you too.

And it’s worth it for what you get to experience, right? That’s purpose. We’re fed this idea that our purpose is supposed to be something that it feels good all the time and it’s like being on the mountain all the time, on the top of the mountain.

Brian
Without having to exert yourself to get there.

Ani
But the thing is, if you were just like plopped on the top of the mountain from a helicopter, you get to see the view, but it really wouldn’t be as meaningful if you didn’t go through the stuff to hike the mountain.

Brian
Yeah. So I can tell you a funny story about that. So I was in Nepal and I’m trekking through Nepal and there’s this small, small 15,000 foot mountain in Nepal.

And so literally they’re tiny, like the 15,000 foot mountains, they’re like little foothills. But at the top of this 15,000 foot mountain was a beautiful hotel actually that had been built. There was like five star hotel that had been built there.

And so you could either walk to the top of mountain or take a helicopter to it.

Ani
There you go.

Brian
And so I of course walked to the top because I couldn’t afford a helicopter at the time. But I remember walking all the way up this mountain and into this beautiful hotel. And as I’m standing there, a helicopter lands on the helipad and people step out with these really expensive clothes on and people carrying their bags and all that kind of stuff.

And they’re just looking around like, oh my God, isn’t this beautiful? And isn’t it amazing? And then they just walked in the hotel.

The hotel was for them. And I’m sitting outside the hotel looking surrounded by the Himalayas and just feeling how gratifying it was to hike from the village way down below to the top of this mountain. But it was a stark contrast between other people landing on it and just being kind of disconnected from the experience of what it took to get there.

And I’m sitting there eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And it’s like the best PBG I’ve ever had in my entire life. I’m surrounded by the Himalayas.

It was pretty cool.

Ani
Such a different experience. You’ve probably had this experience too, where you’ve gone to hike a mountain where you can drive or hike. And then you get to the top and there’s people walking around with their Starbucks coffees.

And they’re just like, oh, look, hey, what are we doing later? Stop fighting with your brother or whatever. And when you hiked the mountain, you’re like, wow, I hiked this.

I did that. There’s really something to that. There’s probably something physiological to that.

I’m sure that you could tell us about.

Brian
Well, so I think one of the points you’re making here is that for purpose really to be whole, let’s just use that word because you’re saying that purpose doesn’t always feel good all the time.

Ani
Well, not just to be whole, to feel whole.

Brian
To feel whole, for purpose to be whole and to feel whole and for purpose to feel whole, there’s a balance of challenge and support. And I think a lot of stuff in life really boils down to this idea of challenge and support. I was actually just meeting with a client very recently, and he’s a CEO of a nonprofit.

And one of the things we were talking about was why do some people more quickly take accountability for mistakes that they make and then move to correct it compared to other people who blame other people for the mistakes? Like, it wasn’t my mistake. It was that person’s mistake.

And then other people who go, oh my God, it was all my mistake. I’m so sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. You’re taking my paycheck.

I should get fired. Let me go today. So there’s this whole range of things.

And we were talking really about people’s upbringing and is there a connection to the experience that they had in a balance between challenge and support? So when you’re growing up and you have a perception of a lot of support, support, support, support, support, you probably end up growing up in a way where you’re not fallible. You don’t make mistakes.

Everyone else does because you’re always amazing because you’re just over supported. So you never were taught that you were fallible and you weren’t challenged enough because you’re supportive. And then if you’re really hyper, hyper challenged growing up and there’s not a lot of support, then you’re the one that’s always broken or feel broken or dysfunctional.

So is there a magic mix of perfect balance and support? Well, I don’t know. There probably is some type of really ideal percentage.

But I think the idea is that the more polarized we are for either challenge or support, the more our perceptions for purpose are going to be skewed as we get older. So the more our balance and support, I’m sorry, the more our challenge support is balanced in our perceptual experience, the more likely we’re to experience purpose as being whole. And it links back to your autonomic nervous system actually.

So our sympathetic nervous system gets activated when we feel challenged and our parasympathetic nervous system gets activated when we experience or perceive support. And if you look in any disease up on the internet, like if you go to Wikipedia and look up any disease, every disease will address the sympathetic nervous system. And it’ll say either there’s too much sympathetic and not enough parasympathetic or too much parasympathetic and not enough sympathetic.

And they’re out of balance. And when you think about psycho kind of neurological situations that people grow up in, that’s all intertwined with our perceptions of challenge versus support. So when you start to think about even dis-ease states and how they’re linked in the autonomic nervous system and perceptual states, we’re really starting to talk about how the body-mind gets kind of linked together.

But bringing it back to purpose, I really, what my experience is in working with people and myself is that there’s something about having a experience of challenge and support in some level of balance that feeds in to understanding whether or not your purpose is whole or not.

Ani
I’m thinking about myself as a kid, I was very supported. And now as a grownup, like I said, I don’t do hard things on purpose. I do them by accident.

So I decided to run and learn how to run a marathon. And I did that specifically by tapping into my soul’s agenda, which is a proprietary process we use here for purpose. Tapped into my soul’s agenda and asked myself, what would be the next thing I can really do to live into my soul’s agenda?

And running a marathon is what came up. And I don’t love the process of doing the running and the training. I like how I feel like all the other time, but I’m not really into, I don’t hate the running because obviously I’m still doing it, but there’s times that I hate it.

Anyway, when I was reflecting on this, I was getting to the point where I was just about at the most miles I had ever run. And I was working up to that and getting to that point and recognizing I didn’t realize ahead of time that I had gotten myself in an endurance sport. And I’m not really much of an enduring kind of person.

And this idea that you’re talking about, about being challenged or supported as a kid, I was super supported. So when I said, I’m going to run a marathon, I kind of thought it was just going to be easy. I kind of, because it came from my purpose.

I tapped into my purpose. I was aligned and my purpose said, go run a marathon. I was like, well, it must just going to be easy for me.

It’s been challenging. And I think that speaks to your point. My perceptions are skewed around support and challenge.

And so one of the things that I’ve actually really been appreciating during my training is I know I made that decision from being on purpose. I know I was in alignment and part of my purpose is the feeling good because I ran. I feel good all day.

I feel fit. I feel healthy. I can even eat cookies and bread.

But there’s a lot of challenge that’s going into it and really starting to appreciate the challenge and know that it’s a part of the purpose and really becoming whole, you know, around that. And rather than being polarized or thinking that I’m not on purpose because sometimes it’s hard. Mm-hmm.

So I’m curious for you what your relationship has been in terms of knowing you’re on purpose. We had very different growing up kind of lives. So, you know, have you ever in your past questioned that you’re on purpose because things are too hard or have you questioned that you’re on purpose because things have been too easy?

Brian
Yeah. So that’s a really great question. So yeah.

So I grew up where there was more perceived challenge than support for sure. So I grew up on the other side of that teeter-totter than you did in that regard. And so for me, one of the things I’ve had to learn to do as time goes by is just to relax because I was always making things harder than they had to be.

I mean, constantly. I would always make things harder than they had to be. They weren’t valuable unless they were really, really hard, which leads back to some of my experience with like with time with mountaineering.

I would always take the hardest route I possibly could to the top of things. I mean, people were walking up. I used to have this funny friend that I worked with in Colorado and I’d say he had some cliffs behind his house and I said, hey, can I come and climb those cliffs?

And he said, you can walk to the top of those. I’d say, I know, but I want to climb them. And he’s like, why are you doing that?

You could just walk up. It’s not that hard. I was like, I know, but I want to make it harder.

I used to have a funny conversation about that all the time. So for me, I just had to learn how to actually relax. And for me, it was learning about being in flow because I didn’t want to completely let go of my actually enjoyment of efforting.

Like for me, climbing, I really enjoyed the effort of when I was doing a lot of hard climbing and mountaineering of efforting. And I’ve had to let, I’d have to kind of transition that into actually experiencing more as a flow. And so it took me a while to kind of work with that, but that’s been my kind of process.

So for me, like when would I question my purpose? For me, I think you’re right in some ways. Like when I feel like I don’t have enough, I’m just going to say on my plate.

Let me just put it that way. When I don’t feel like I have enough on my plate, then that’s when I start to languish a little bit and question like, what am I doing here? Like, what’s my purpose here?

When I have very clear challenges in front of me, I feel on purpose. Like I feel like I am like, I know why I’m here, what I’m supposed to be doing, how do I approach this? I use my purpose to answer all those questions, to overcome challenges, to meet difficulties, all those sorts of things.

So yeah, I would say for me, when I start to languish a bit or when I don’t have as much on my plate or clear, when I don’t have as many clear challenges in front of me, that’s when I start to question a little bit.

Ani
Climb this rock wall. Get from A to top.

Brian
Yeah. That’s like, whether it’s a work, you know, whether it’s a work thing, like we have very specific work tasks and projects, like bam, I am like right in there. But when it gets like, well, what are we doing now?

Are we doing this? I don’t know. What’s this happening?

It’s not happening. Oh gosh, there’s not enough happening. What do we do?

Like that kind of stuff is when I start to get a little wobbly with my purpose.

Ani
Yeah, that’s interesting. So if you question your purpose, I do hope this conversation has been helpful for you and just be aware as we come to the end of the year and the beginning of the next, that this is something that comes up for a lot of people. And I think two things to really think about kind of going from the back of what we’re talking about back to the front, this idea of the relationship between challenge and support in purpose.

And are you questioning your purpose because you feel like you’re in too much challenge? Are you questioning your purpose because you are in too much ease? You know, that’s a really like, take a step back from the question that your subconscious is asking and actually use your conscious mind to look at it.

And the other one that we started the conversation with is, hey, how’s your gas tank? And please care for that first. It’s part of the reason why in our programs, in our certification programs, we start with somatic practices.

You start from the foundations, start from the essentials right off the bat. So take good care of your gas tank. See where you’re at.

And if you’re questioning your purpose, it may not actually be that you are off purpose. It’s very likely not that you are off purpose. It’s that you need more gas in your gas tank.

And you’re the person who can do that for you.

Brian
Yeah. So I hope you have a really fantastic wrap to the rest of the calendar year and enjoy this time with your friends, your family, your loved ones, and those sorts of things as the darkness turns towards light.

Ani
Yeah.

Brian
Like, right. I mean, as, as we get to that solstice, it’s going to flip and it might not feel like it’s getting lighter, but it actually is. So we turn the corner on that.

Ani
It is. And we’ll see you in the new year.

Brian
All right. Have a great week, everybody. See you then.

Bye.