Current events have left many people wondering what is next? For most people, they look for signs and opportunities to guide them to next steps, but they end up procrastinating and feeling frustrated that nothing is changing.
In this episode, we will talk about how to consciously create your career path. This is for you if you are already successful but feel stuck in an unfulfilling career or job. Whether or not you know what you want or are afraid to really do what you love because you think you will fail at something new, this will inspire you to see opportunities and take bold action to go for an extraordinary career and life.
We will explain:
- Why most people settle for shadow careers that make them feel trapped in life.
- How to begin to discover what is your true career path that matches your true self.
- How life coach training can help you understand yourself and help others in a meaningful way and aligns with your passions and interests.
- Why NOW is the perfect time to reinvent yourself and your career to finally do something that fills your soul.
Jungian Life Coach Certification with CreativeMind offers an in-depth Jungian coaching model so you can enhance every part of your own life while helping others. Developed by a Ph.D and Master Life Coach, this 12-month online course is based in Jungian psychology, philosophy, and Eastern spirituality. Enrolling now for our next Life Coach Training Program. Click to Learn More.
Transcript for Episode 24: Consciously Creating Your Career Path
Debra Maldonado 00:03
Welcome to Soul Sessions, a podcast for personal growth based on the works of Carl Jung neuroscience and Eastern philosophies. We’re your hosts Debra Berndt Maldonado and Dr. Rob Maldonado, founders of CreativeMind Coaching. All right, everyone, welcome to our soul session today, which is called Consciously Creating Your Career Path.
Robert Maldonado 00:31
Is there any other way?
Debra Maldonado 00:33
Is there any other way? Where do we want to blindly just do our career like we’ve always done wait for opportunities, hope and pray that things will change. This specific episode, we’re going to inspire you to believe in what you’ve probably thought maybe before this, this lesson was impossible.
Robert Maldonado 00:57
No big no pressure.
Debra Maldonado 00:58
No pressure, no pressure. So we’re going to talk about why people are settled for the wrong career, where they feel stuck in their career, and why it’s so hard to change out of it. And we’re going to talk a little bit about life coaching, and maybe that is a possible career change for you. So whether you want to be a coach or get a coach, or learn more about young in psychology and coaching, we are here to answer all your questions. So we’re here on crowdcast. If you have a question, there’s a button on the bottom, you can press it so we can answer it at the end of our chat and say hello, would love to see you and welcome you to this live discussion.
Robert Maldonado 01:42
So can I start with the big picture?
Debra Maldonado 01:45
Why don’t we I was thinking of starting with just a meditation.
Robert Maldonado 01:48
Oh, that’d be great.
Debra Maldonado 01:49
Really? Okay. So I want everyone to if you’re not driving, if you’re listening, most people are home, close your eyes for a minute. And I want you to just imagine a beautiful light above your head. And imagine that light be just being warm, peaceful energy. And imagine that light moving down into your scalp and flowing all through your body and moving out your toes, just like a waterfall just as beautiful, calm, relaxing light. And as you’re holding your mind in that light, I want you to just be present to this moment. Imagine there’s no past, no tomorrow, just right now. And in this space of just this moment, be open to the idea that anything is possible. Just contemplate the idea. Anything is possible for me. Just notice how you relax just with that idea. You don’t have to figure out how to get anywhere or do anything, just be in that possibility. And I want you to bring that attitude back as you open your eyes back into what we’re about to share today that anything is possible.
Robert Maldonado 03:33
I Iike that.
Debra Maldonado 03:33
So big picture, Rob?
Robert Maldonado 03:36
Yeah, so I like the big picture. To me, it makes sense. That’s the way my brain works. So the big picture is this. We as human beings have to undergo three separate births, not just one birth. The first birth, of course, is we’re born as biological beings. As this body, we start off as little babies. And our primary mission then is to survive. And we’re good at it. We survived. We got here. Our second birth 3D begins in the process of entering the social world.
Debra Maldonado 04:21
Like a teenager?
Robert Maldonado 04:24
Yeah, it’s a process because it really begins when you first go to school when you realize there’s other people besides my family. Right. There’s a society. There’s social order, and you have to fit in somehow. And that birth is this psychological, emotional, social birth.
Debra Maldonado 04:47
So at first we’re just surviving. We’re learning how to like, make sure we’re fed and our diapers cleaned, and we’re learning to walk and how to speak and communicate. And then the second level is a social level that’s very interesting, that birth of your social life.
Robert Maldonado 05:03
That’s right. You don’t call it the persona. We create a persona to go out there and interact with the world. And then the third one, which very few of us really get to do is the spiritual birth. Now, it’s not religion. That’s part of the social part of the culture, part of socialization, but the religious one, I mean, the spiritual birth is really understanding who you are, what your higher purpose is.
Debra Maldonado 05:40
I love that. That is really puts everything in very easy perspective.
Robert Maldonado 05:45
Yeah. And if you don’t go through these cycles, these these kind of challenges that life sets up for us, you feel frustrated you feel out of sorts.
Debra Maldonado 05:59
Do you feel though, let me ask you a question. Does someone need to complete the cycle of social birth where they learn to socialize where they’re not? You know, they’re functioning socially, in order to get the spiritual birth Is that necessary? Because there’s some people that are antisocial and they’re like, kind of, they really can’t make friends, and they’re really just having a lot of issues around that.
Robert Maldonado 06:23
I would say you have to come to terms with it somehow.
Debra Maldonado 06:26
Okay.
Robert Maldonado 06:27
Yeah, you have to come to terms. You don’t have to do it, like most people are doing it or like anybody else says it has to be done. But you have to come to terms with it at some level.
Debra Maldonado 06:39
Okay. And so when we are talking about career, we were not thinking about a career when we were five years old, but when we start going to kindergarten
Robert Maldonado 06:49
I wanted to be a pilot.
Debra Maldonado 06:50
When I was like in kindergarten or preschool, we started thinking about, a lot of people ask you even as a little three or four year old adults always say, what do you want to be when you grow up? Jimmy, what do you want to be when you grow up? And for me, I wanted to be an actress. I wanted to be on movies and on television on videos, and I wanted to write books. And I even had a sign in my room that said, don’t touch me. I’m a star. And I would like, and I was always still have it and I started to put on shows. And I would be the one in charge of producing the shows for the kids that they would put on for the parents. And so it was always that kind of part of myself was there, and I always thought that was what I wanted to do. But then that didn’t happen. I ended up feeling kind of going into socially with the herd expected of you and the people around you. And I think it depends, the social part really depends on who you hang out with. What part of the, where you live, and who your friends are because you could be in the same community and you gravitate to certain people and their path to sense to match with yours. And then there are some people as you grow up where you kind of fall apart, you know. You go to college and then you don’t really keep in touch with people from high school, or you know, you get a job and then, you know, keep in touch with Jimmy the crazy partier in college. You’re kind of outgrown, and we kind of go through those phases. But you do have a lot of influence from the people around you and the culture in the society telling you what you should do for a career, what you should do for a living, what your aspirations should be. Your parents also, your family tells you what’s possible for you.
Robert Maldonado 08:36
Yeah, well, if you notice, it’s like a labyrinth. Like an obstacle course that we have to run. Even biological birth is difficult like it demands a lot.
Debra Maldonado 08:49
We come out crying.
Robert Maldonado 08:50
Yeah, it demands a lot of us. The mother, everyone kind of pulling together to give you a chance to come out and enjoy experiences, life. And it’s tough, you know. It requires everything you got, you know. Your immune system has to kick in. Your circulation has to come online as soon as you’re born so that you take your first breath. Yeah, it’s an incredible thing. Just like that challenge that’s presented to us biologically, socially, we go through the same kind of obstacle course. The same challenge.
Debra Maldonado 09:32
So kindergarten is really hard because then you start picking who you’re going to hang out with. And then, for me, I felt Junior High was the worst because you’re kind of not a kid anymore. And then the meanwhile I’m a girl so it was like we had to deal with the mean girls. The boys had to deal with the bullies, you know. That was eating up, like we were emotionally attacking each other where men, I think, physically attack each other. Junior High.
Robert Maldonado 09:37
I don’t know what’s easier.
Debra Maldonado 09:56
I don’t know. But the mean girls, it was all about what you look like, you know. You’re pretty and you’re ugly or, you know, nerdy. You’re not cool. And then you end up hanging out like the smart kids. You’re kind of gauged by how smart you are. And the cheerleaders gauge themselves on who’s the prettiest, who has the boyfriend. And it becomes this really, it’s a struggle of your defining yourself again basically compared to what everyone expects you to be. And we kind of get lost in not knowing who we are. And like you said the persona.
Robert Maldonado 10:31
Yeah, so the whole creation of the persona, and here’s the thing that we used to have, like in tribes and in kind of more traditional cultures, there were institutions that helped us navigate those challenges.
Debra Maldonado 10:45
They had like rituals that would take you through each step.
Robert Maldonado 10:48
That’s why very important rituals, the church, the schools, guilds and secret societies all were there to help us do those videos.
Debra Maldonado 11:00
Part of the secret society?
Robert Maldonado 11:01
I’m not going to say it’s got to be a secret.
Debra Maldonado 11:03
I had brownies.
Robert Maldonado 11:04
Right. But now those have fallen away, most of us would say that most people figure it out but by themselves, right? They find some way to challenge themselves. It’s either moving to another city and kind of testing out your wings and see how you do by yourself, joining the army, going off to college, joining a cult. You know, somehow, people find a way to test themselves socially, psychologically.
Debra Maldonado 11:38
And would you say that the goal of the social stage, the social birth, is to find where you belong?
Robert Maldonado 11:45
Yes.
Debra Maldonado 11:46
So you’re finding where you belong. And so that’s a real strong, like first phase is survival. Second stage is belonging and being accepted by a group. So that’s why groups and communities are very powerful to be a part of it but then to break away from that is the challenge. For the third stage, which is a spiritual stage, which Jung called leaving that herd mentality. The ego did such a great job of creating this persona. And now it has to abandon all that to become your true self. And it’s like, in Lord of the Rings, they, you know, they left the Shire, and they were going on this journey. And it’s, I remember that one thing he said, if I take one more step, this is the farthest I’ve been from the Shire, which means the farthest I’ve been out of my comfort zone. And then that’s the spiritual journey. That’s a spiritual birth. And it always, I feel like it always comes in the form of a turning point in our life. You know, where we’re feeling like we were talking about the content, consciously creating your career path, why people feel stuck is this point, right? It’s a choice point where if we don’t feel this whole thing that we built up is really what we want, we have this like deep feeling. It’s like your soul is saying, What are you doing? What about those big ideas you had when you were younger? What about your passions? And it’s like you’ve been suppressing them.
Robert Maldonado 13:14
So Jung says the unconscious is prompting us from the inside to become something else.
Debra Maldonado 13:24
Yes.
Robert Maldonado 13:25
Not to stay stuck in the social level.
Debra Maldonado 13:29
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Robert Maldonado 14:18
Now we don’t want to get rid of the social identity, and we don’t want to get rid of survival. It’s just that there’s a
Debra Maldonado 14:26
A higher level like you keep the two but then there’s another level.
Robert Maldonado 14:31
There’s another level and if you don’t do it, you’re always dissatisfied. That’s why people fall into addictions and kind of escape mechanisms right? Or they’re always looking to escape and even the spiritual stuff becomes a way of escaping instead of really using it as a birthing process, as a new level of being.
Debra Maldonado 14:56
You know, that’s a really good point. When I first moved to Colorado, I wanted to start over my life. I was in the wrong relationship. I was feeling, I wanted to do something else, but I didn’t know what it was. And I just said, I’m just gonna move to Colorado. My cousin lives there. I don’t know why, but I just felt like just wide open space. Get out in New York City. My cousin lived there. I adored him. We were like kind of brother and sister. And I remember meeting a lot of spiritual people. And I remember it was really everything I was learning was very all about escaping the past or getting rid of the past, you know, healing the wounds of the childhood and really rejecting everything that was built up to help me as a healthy person, as a healthy ego. But I still felt that there was, I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do. And I think what happens is that I ended up just settling again. I was 30-29 when I moved there, and I kept settling. And for five more years, I just went right back into marketing and working in the entertainment industry and advertising. And I just kept thinking, well, it’ll come sometime. And I think a lot of people do that. They just wait. They’re waiting for something external to tell them what to do next, like something’s going to happen externally. And meanwhile, inside, I felt this desire to write. I would write on weekends, but I never showed anyone my writing. It was just like it was there. The seeds were there, but I just didn’t have, it was almost, I didn’t even think it would be possible to make a change. So it’s like waiting for something to save me. Does that sound?
Robert Maldonado 16:44
Yeah, because if you think about the three stages, right? The survival is really kind of creating your ego, right? You’re defining yourself as I’m separate from the world, and I’m myself, and I’m going to survive as I. Then the at the social level, you have to consider what is my part? How do I contribute to the tribe group?
Debra Maldonado 17:10
And because you can’t survive on an island, you need other people. Money comes through other people, bosses, co-workers.
Robert Maldonado 17:17
And it forces you then to at least come to terms with the ego somehow. Then there are others to consider. And then if you fall in love, then you really have to deal with your ego because it’s not about just you surviving. Now it’s we are contributing. These aspirational, communal goals, and it gives people meaning. But they think a lot of people think that that’s it. That that’s all there is to find.
Debra Maldonado 17:49
If I’m in the right tribe, then I have meaning.
Robert Maldonado 17:53
Yeah, and that’s not the end of the story. You know, life continues and then there’s always more to grow and to know. And if people think that’s all there is, that’s when they get into trouble. Because that’s not where you’re supposed to stop.
Debra Maldonado 18:09
And so the spiritual level birth is a soul inside that internal, something’s not right here. Something is calling me to do something else. And I always felt that, like we always think, oh, I don’t like this kind of feeling of dissatisfaction or this feeling of frustration or this feeling. And we think it’s actually a good thing for you to feel dissatisfied because if we’re blindly satisfied, we are not really truly happy with it. And we’re always dissatisfied. We’re not truly happy either. But the dissatisfaction is a sign. And for me, it was you deserve more. There’s more to life to you. And so I believe that we all have something already in us that we’ve known from when we were little or a passion or a craft or a gift that we were born, our soul was born with to express and to experience. But the world most of the time isn’t set up for most people to express those gifts in the most positive, in the most expansive way. It’s more survival. So an artist may have this great art, but now he has to, you know, limit it to selling it and then creating commercial stuff. You see this with musicians. A lot of times they’re really talented, but then they put them in the pot box and they have to do their pop hits. And they’re really not satisfied. It’s that dissatisfaction and it’s the soul saying, there’s so much more to you. It’s an awakening. And I think that when you’re in that kind of 30s, that’s the spiritual awakening time. Jung says at the time of individuation is when we really get to feel that discomfort in a most intense way. It’s like the midlife crisis they call it a lot of times, but it really is the soul kind of saying, you know, I can’t play this game anymore. I can’t play this persona game anymore. It’s not working anymore. Like it worked for a while, but you just, the soul is kind of like come on already. You said you wanted to write a book. You said you wanted to help people. You said you wanted to do all these things. You say you want to sing. You say you want to draw. You say you want to do something big with your life. You want to have meaning. What are you waiting for? And it’s that kind of, we don’t listen to that voice because it’s a threat to our social survival. It’s a threat to that previous stage. It’s if I leave this tribe, and I go off and I fail, then I’m not gonna be able to go back to the tribe and then I’m gonna be really alone. And that’s really the fear I think most people have. It’s not that they’re going to be poor, you know, and not make money, but more it’s the shame of failure or the shame of not making it. And everyone else saying I told you so. You shouldn’t have left that cushy job you had. You should have just stayed where you were. Stay like us. And I think that’s really where the challenge is.
Robert Maldonado 21:17
Jung says this. Look, it’s a moral dilemma because of what you explained. That you belong to a tribe. And now you’re saying, you want to be something more than that. The rest of the tribe is going to say who the hell you think you are?
Debra Maldonado 21:36
You belong with us.
Robert Maldonado 21:37
Yeah, you belong here with us. You’re saying you have ideas. You want to do something different? That’s a betrayal to us. Right? That’s the way they read it emotionally. And so people back off and they say, I can’t do it, you know. I can’t betray my family, my tribe. They, you know, they’re the ones that sustain me, condition me, supported me through college and all this stuff. Now, I’m going to, you know, do something transcendent. But you have to do it. That’s part of the challenge here, just like we have to leave the womb initially in order to become somebody separate from our mother. And then psychologically, we have to leave our families to become somebody socially distinct from our families. Now, we have to become somebody distinct, spiritually. The self. Jung call that the true self.
Debra Maldonado 22:36
It’s almost like we’re anchored to the worlds in the biological and social part like the external world is kind of where we find our comfort. And we have to basically pivot our attention inward and find the bigger guy, the Divine Self, the true self within us, that unbreakable, unstoppable, unlimited self and find our industry, basically our connection to that. You could still have the spiritual world. You could still survive in your body. The Spirit wants to survive in the body. It doesn’t want you to die because that’s the vehicle you want to serve, you know, to express it. But it’s challenging, though, because a lot of people think I have to abandon the external in order to go to the spiritual and some people want to bypass it. They think, oh, I don’t want any money. Money’s evil, or I don’t want a relationship there. It’s too hard. I’m just going to have a relationship with God. I’m going to be a nun. And I’m just going to be a very spiritual person, and I’m calling off, and I’m keeping toxic people out of my life. And I’m just only going to surround myself with people who agree with me and are nice. And then we end up bypassing.
Robert Maldonado 23:46
That sounds good.
Debra Maldonado 23:49
But but we don’t understand that the people that we consider those distasteful people are really showing us something about ourselves.
Robert Maldonado 23:58
That’s part of how you prove you’re ready for the spiritual life, that you do your social life. Well that you are, like I said, that at least you come to terms with it. You’re not bypassing it. You’re not rejecting it because if you’re rejected, that’s just antisocial. Right? You’re saying to hell with everyone.
Debra Maldonado 24:20
Or I don’t want to deal with difficult people. I just want to, yeah, deal with people that agree with me, that aren’t aren’t difficult and you know.
Robert Maldonado 24:27
You have to get it. Jung says you have to get your hands dirty, meaning you have to do life.
Debra Maldonado 24:36
Yeah, you have to engage with life. It’s not escaping life. And I think when I was doing spiritual work, I felt like I wanted to just wall off myself from everyone and just be in my little apartment and put my music on and go to like my spiritual happy place and, you know, just spend the whole day with myself. But it was more like dilution of me escaping versus me really getting to know who I was and to know life.
Robert Maldonado 25:03
Yeah.
Debra Maldonado 25:04
And so, yeah, we’re born with these gifts that we want to express. For me, I always I felt like writing has always been one of my gifts. Just the way I can communicate. I have a lot of ideas. I have a lot of ideas. That creativity was something very natural for me.
Robert Maldonado 25:27
Got a million of them.
Debra Maldonado 25:28
Yeah, but the thing is, when I went into a career, I just wanted to get married. I ended up being a legal secretary, which is the least creative. It was more of this kind of just surviving, and I was just waiting for my husband to show up so I can quit my job and have babies like that was my plan. And then at 30, I said, okay, there’s no husband, and I did feel this like passion for writing. So I would just start writing. I wrote this whole book. I still haven’t published it, but I wrote this book, and I kept it for myself and it was like my little thing. I was afraid to put it out in the world. It was almost like, it was just like a little like a hobby. You know, it wasn’t really something I can express. I didn’t have in me that it was possible for me to have a better life for me to reach my dreams. No one around me told me, Debbie, you could go. You can be anything you want to be. Everyone told me, why don’t you just pick a nice husband, you know? I’m sticking. And so your social people around you if you’re around people that are up to something. And when I moved to Colorado, that was actually the one gift I had was I started meeting people who were entrepreneurial. And I was like, oh, they don’t have to work in an office like that’s possible. Like you could have a job outside of a cubicle and started to see that there’s so much more that could be possible. And and that’s where I think where the shift happens is when you start to believe that something else can change. But then my question to you is, how do we consciously create that then? How do we, first of all, we have to believe it’s possible. But then how do we create it?
Robert Maldonado 27:10
Yeah. We know that consciousness works on the principle of expectation. What we expect to see, we will see. It’s an incredible thing. It has to do with projection. It has to do with the way we experience the world.
Debra Maldonado 27:37
Cognitive distortions. Bias?
Robert Maldonado 27:39
In a sense. Our our biology is set up to construct our reality from the inside. We do take in information from the world. But the world the way we perceive it in the way we experience it, they call it quality. The quality of life is an internal process. It’s we’re experiencing our own mind our own creation of the world, which is an incredible thing if you think about it. We are the creators of our own world. And once you start to understand that principle then you start to say, okay if I am the creator of the world and then you reach that spiritual kind of borderline or, let’s say, the frontier of it.
Debra Maldonado 28:37
The edge of the end of the world.
Robert Maldonado 28:39
You know you want to go beyond your social persona self.
Debra Maldonado 28:45
The threshold.
Robert Maldonado 28:46
Yeah, the threshold. You want to go beyond. You know that something is calling you to do that. Then you you have to ask yourself, if I don’t have to be who my parents told me I should be, a new society told me I could be, then who am I? And that question is left totally up to us. We can create ourselves from our imagination, from our inspiration.
Debra Maldonado 29:17
And when you make a career change, for me, what happened is that I had to shift my self perception. First of all, initially, I was a secretary. So I was like this submissive, you know, low level job. And then I became a director of marketing and was a boss and had a team, and so I had to make that like kind of persona shift. And then the next level is I had to leave that identity as a marketing director and become the teacher, become someone who is a, you know, hypnotherapist at first, a coach. It’s completely and so I would run into my old friends and they’d be like, oh, look at Debbi she’s giving like, she wrote a book on love and she, you know, I know her single life. They see me as that old persona and to be willing to stand for who you’re becoming instead of who everyone expects you to be is individuation. And I remember at my book signing in New York City and my family came. And I was thinking they don’t think of me as Little Debbi and you know, just not, you know, doing anything great. And here I was, best selling book and published by a major publisher in New York City and Barnes and Noble, and hundreds of people there. And I had to, it was like, weird because it was like the people from my past, seeing me as this other person, you know? And I think that it is kind of bizarre, and I think it feels a little uncomfortable because you’re kind of being someone else. And I think our ego tends to want to be the person they want you to be because it’s part of being in that tribe as part of that agreement, right? Is that kind of why we want to stay back there because we feel we made an agreement with them. That this is who I am, and now I’m changing that agreement.
Robert Maldonado 31:12
Yeah, it’s like Maslow and Erickson say that you have to meet these challenges. That at each stage of the game, there are challenges that you have to resolve somehow. And if you don’t resolve them, there’s always a pull to want to go back and fix them or deal with them somehow, you know. But a lot of therapy is based on that idea that let’s look at your childhood and try to fix it somehow or get back to resolving it. But those events are gone. Essentially, they only exist in your mind.
Debra Maldonado 31:53
And how you remember them.
Robert Maldonado 31:54
And how you interpret that. And in the Eastern philosophy, it simply says that they don’t really exist at all. They’re simply thoughts, right?
Debra Maldonado 32:07
Stories.
Robert Maldonado 32:08
Stories that that your mind is holding on to. Now, they’re very powerful. They do admit that they’re very powerful because you’re giving them all the weight of your creative mind. And you’re saying, this is what’s real for me. And so we’re always bringing the past into the present.
Debra Maldonado 32:30
And so how do we know what, how can someone consciously create their career path?
Robert Maldonado 32:38
As you start to understand that these are just thoughts, that it is a narrative, it is an interpretation. You start to free yourself.
Debra Maldonado 32:48
You’re not pushing it away into the story anymore.
Robert Maldonado 32:51
Yeah. Because you don’t have to push it away. If you understand its nature, if you understand that, oh, it’s not real, it’s a way my mind creates meaning for me. And it’s a way it connects me to past experiences and people.
Debra Maldonado 33:08
But it’s not who I am. This story, this experience doesn’t define me.
Robert Maldonado 33:14
The experience, the past conditioning, the sum total of your past does not define you like Jung says.
Debra Maldonado 33:21
And anything in the future doesn’t define you. So if you create a business and it doesn’t work, that doesn’t define you. That doesn’t make you more or less worthy than anyone else. But we tend to, in our world, I think the social structure of that stage is all about achievement and being recognized for achievements like in school and society. If you get married at a certain time, you have children, you stay married. People don’t leave their husbands because the shame of divorce. People don’t leave their jobs because what if I leave and I fail and then I have to go find another job. What are people gonna think? So I think, you know, one is that we have to understand that our mind is always going to want to pull us back to what’s familiar with this previous stage. It wants you to stay in that previous stage. But we want to cross the threshold to have our spiritual birth, which is living our true purpose. And most of us find that purpose. Most of us don’t find that purpose when we’re 20 years old. We find it when we face our true self. We have to have that spiritual rebirth or third birth to really live our purpose. And we have to come to terms, I think, with the social part, why we created the ego we did. It’s not about jumping over the ego and getting rid of it. But it’s like saying, oh, I understand all the mechanisms and why it’s there, understanding my patterns but not buying into them.
Robert Maldonado 34:48
Yeah, you know, the way I see it is, it’s just like when we’re in the womb. We need the the environment of the womb to sustain us. It’s actually what nourishes us, right, and holds us in that space. Then in the social level, at the social level, we have the culture that holds us in that space, like it creates a bubble of reality.
Debra Maldonado 35:15
Almost like the umbilical cord. In early stages the mother and then the world becomes our mother. We have our umbilical cord to the world and the world is our sustenance or gives us our fuel for life.
Robert Maldonado 35:27
Yeah.
Debra Maldonado 35:28
And it’s very powerless to be in that stage. I mean, at first it, you know, works for us because we have to function in the world, but then it becomes inhibited.
Robert Maldonado 35:36
Yeah, it’s a necessary stage. We have to go there just like we can’t be born with a gestation.
Debra Maldonado 35:43
We don’t walk out, saying I can do anything I want.
Robert Maldonado 35:48
We don’t just appear. In other words, we go through a process that prepares us for life. So the culture essentially serves that purpose or is supposed to serve purpose to prepare us for our spiritual life.
Debra Maldonado 36:03
Yes.
Robert Maldonado 36:04
But again, the mechanisms have often been lost. Now, the knowledge is kind of distorted or not there at all. And so we have defined our own way through it. Jung’s work, the way he saw his work was that he was trying to create a psychology that actually provided some of those mechanisms for us.
Debra Maldonado 36:28
And so again, this isn’t about having like something’s wrong with you or that you have some wounds from the past that you have to come to terms with in order to have the things you want. If this is a natural process, the social building up of the persona is a necessary part of that process. And it’s a sign of a healthy mind having defenses and having our patterns are all part of a healthy mind. It’s just part like we needed the womb. Now we need the womb of the world and now we’re breaking free and becoming spiritual beings. Why is it, why now? What do you think? Because of this time in history, the challenges that humanity is facing right now, especially with a pandemic, why is it so important now that people need this kind of work, that need this transformation?
Robert Maldonado 37:19
Yeah, there’s always a clock ticking. And you know, I used to look at some of the old Renaissance paintings. There was these beautiful scenes, beautiful people, and beautiful clothes and art and beauty. But then off in the corner, there was a little skeleton with an hourglass to remind people we don’t have all the time in the world.
Debra Maldonado 37:44
And so really, this time is really I think a lot of people are asking themselves, what have I done with my life? For me, it’s brought up all the places I haven’t traveled yet, and now we can’t travel. There’s so many things I wanted to do, people I wanted to see, family members that have been putting off traveling to. And now I can’t, and it’s like, life was passing me by and what other things do I need to do with my life? And it does when you’re forced not to do the things all of a sudden you want them more. Right. And so I think now people are home. They’re more internal, I think, and they’re really ready for some change in their career.
Robert Maldonado 38:21
Yeah. The Upanishad’s Buddhist texts to always emphasize life is impermanent. Life is, you know, I think the the way it’s translated the life is suffering is not really the right way. What it means simply that life contains suffering. Right? That you’re going to suffer. You’re going to live. The experience of suffering is almost unavoidable. It is unavoidable. But having said that, there are ways to work with it. There’s a meaning to the suffering that it’s meant to wake you up. Yeah, it’s meant to give you a way to proceed.
Debra Maldonado 39:07
They’re catalysts for you. A calling. And a lot of people, you know, people talk about clearing blocks, like I gotta clear my blocks, and we don’t see them as blocks. When you’re not getting what you want, we see them. The block is a bridge. It’s the whatever’s stopping you or you feel there’s something in the way, it’s finding what that is as a bridge to your true self versus I need to get rid of this so I can have the material thing I wanted. It’s how do I use whatever is resistance is showing up as a bridge and a birthing as a part of our birth canal to our spiritual self? And so, you know, a lot of us, we talk about our life coach training, and I think that there’s a lot of misconceptions of what life coach training is. And I think, life coach training, I don’t think I know, life coach training is the ultimate thing you should do, especially Jungian life coach training, because it’s individuation. If you don’t know your purpose, or you’re not sure what you want to do, but you know that there’s more in you, it’s perfect for someone who is in that stage where what’s next in life. What is next? And so it helps you discover your purpose and see your potential. It’s changing the way you perceive the world and yourself, so you can create whatever you want. And so, you know, there’s misconceptions of that. A lot of people think life coaching is therapy, that you’re going to help people with their wounds and they’re healing their traumas and their childhood, and no life coach training is really forward focused. It’s about how do you bring a high functioning individual, not someone who needs therapy, there’s plenty of therapists out there. There’s nothing wrong with therapy, and there’s a place for therapy. But life coaching is about taking a functioning human being who just needs to understand their psyche, understand their patterns in a way that can be used to help them create the potential in their life, to live their potential.
Robert Maldonado 41:09
Have that third birth.
Debra Maldonado 41:11
Yeah, they’re ready for that third birth because they’re social. They don’t have social issues or dysfunctions in that way. They’re really, you know, they’re functioning, confident people successful in their careers and built up great lives, but they’re kind of dissatisfied, and they’re looking for that spiritual connection. Another misconception, a lot of people say, well, I have to work on myself first. I don’t feel like I can help anyone because I am confused. And the best way to be to help others is to teach others and so there’s always someone who knows less than you. There’s always someone who’s a little bit behind the process than you. So as you grow, there’s people that you can help that haven’t reached that stage yet. But you don’t have to be enlightened. I think a lot of people think they will have to be enlightened. I have to have all the answers. And if I don’t then, you know, why would people come to me? Or they don’t feel confident. And it’s going through the process of individuation helps you experience yourself. So then you’re clear that when someone’s stuck in their own stuff, you don’t have to know why the source of it or all those things and have them work through it. You have to say, well, here’s the potential. And you’re kind of moving them forward, and it’s understanding the mind. If you understand your mind, you understand others. You don’t have to diagnose them.
Robert Maldonado 42:32
No, on the contrary. Often the challenges that we have become our greatest strengths.
Debra Maldonado 42:38
Yes.
Robert Maldonado 42:40
And I love how you said that. The blocks are really the bridges.
Debra Maldonado 42:47
Yes. And so people that come to you aren’t looking to be fixed in our model. They’re coming to find the bridge, and the coaches are the bridge. The coach can show them, oh wait, you’re seeing this thing here and you’re seeing it as a whole. I’m making a bridge for you. I’m taking you and I’m showing you the way to go up versus how to get out of that hole. Like you’re already, you know, it’s not a hole. It’s a potential. And, you know, I see this all the time where people will coach people and they’ll be in this, you know, life transition, whether it’s job or career, relationship. And it’s in that wrestling with the conflict that’s happening is what gives them the fuel for their growth and for their enlightenment. And so you don’t have to fix their problems a lot. Another misconception is, oh, if I’m a life coach, everyone’s going to dump their problems on me, and that’s not your responsibility. You’re not taking on people’s problems. You’re giving them solutions. So if you want to listen to problems all day, maybe you should be a therapist. But if you want to help people reach their potential and get them out of this past and move them to the present seeing their potential, then you should look into coaching. Another misconception is that if you take life coach training, you have to be a life coach, that you just have to be a coach. Most people that take our training, actually, they don’t end up being coaches. They end up using the tools in their practice or their company. Some become leadership coaches, leadership people in their companies. Some people take their beautiful talents of music and art and use the tools as a way to express that in a different way, helping other artists become successful. But they’re not just life coaches, you know, they’re using it in a more creative way. And that’s really what I love. Some of our coaches that graduates are medical doctors are in the medical field and nurses and healers in that kind of traditional medical field, and they want to do something more spiritual and kind of working with consciousness and mind body. So they’re integrating the consciousness and the spiritual work into their work. And so Life Coaching can be a bridge, to bring in your gifts and talents that your soul wants, help you realize it through the process of becoming your true self, and then be able to fit it into something that feels right to you and fulfilling and meaningful.
Robert Maldonado 45:28
Yeah, I was talking to a student recently and she was telling me that how incredible it was that we were able to fit like a deep philosophy in a practical way. Right, that you can apply it where you’re at right now in whatever position or job you have. But you can also create a business for yourself, you know, if you choose to. You’re essentially working to free other people, to give other people the chance to be born at a higher level. And as well as developing yourself in the process. Yes. And if this is not for you, find your home. Find your spiritual path because it is the only world worthwhile thing that we do in life really, at the end of it all. It’s what will give you meaning, purpose, direction, everything. So thanks for the great questions, and we’ll see you next time.
Debra Maldonado 46:37
Yes, have a great rest of your day and we’ll talk soon. Take care. Are you looking for a satisfying career that has meaning and purpose? Are you seeking a path of growth and wish you can have it all in one program? Well our Jungian Life Coach Program does just that. It gives you a new career as a certified life coach, as well as take you through our Jungian methodology to help you become your true self and make amazing transformation in your life and the lives of others. Our next class begins soon. So visit jungianlifecoach.com. Click on Apply and speak with an enrollment coach so we can discuss your future and possibilities in becoming a certified life coach. That’s jungianlifecoach.com.
