Mid-Life Pause: Why You Stay Stuck

Episode Transcript

Debra Maldonado (00:00.556)
Hello everyone, welcome back to Jung on Purpose. I am Debra Moldonado.

Dr. Rob (00:05.459)
Doctor Rob, welcome to the show.

Debra Maldonado (00:08.216)
Today we’re continuing our series on midlife, that transition between your ego-conditioning self to your true self. And we’re specifically going to focus on that moment right before you make the decision to make a change. So that threshold moment. And we’re going to talk about why it’s so hard for people to break free and make that change in their life. And we’re going to start with this idea that millions of people, millions of people.

Have created a career that there are very successful in, but they feel psychologically disconnected to what there are doing. Now imagine waking up every day, going to work, you have a comfortable lifestyle, but dreading Mondays, dreading that going to work, coming home, feeling unfulfilled. And I think during COVID, people got a little break from that. They worked at home and they felt a little freer.

Dr. Rob (00:57.461)
yeah.

Debra Maldonado (01:07.98)
Now everyone’s back to the office and I feel like there’s a a resurgence of people wanting to have something different in their lives.

Dr. Rob (01:16.431)
absolutely. Especially now the pace of life’s so quick now. Everything changes from moment to moment. it’s an amazing situation. But of course there’s always opportunities in these kinds of situations where there’s there there are kind of transitional periods in history that we go through.

Debra Maldonado (01:38.305)
And we have a transitional period we’re going through, if this sounds like you, and you’re not alone. Sixty-four percent of people are actively or disengaged for what there are doing. They’re they don’t let, you know, they don’t feel like their work is fulfilling them. It’s almost like going through the motions or not, it doesn’t light them up anymore. And 16% of people are actively disengaged. So there are there are totally un unattached to what there are doing at work.

And and that doesn’t help anyone. That doesn’t help the company, you know, the people you’re working with, it doesn’t help you, it doesn’t help your family that you go home to at night and feel like you know, you’re not really fulfilling something that you’re meant to fulfill. And so why do people stay? We’re gonna talk about why people they know there are unhappy, what that is, and why they stay there for so long, like why it takes so long for them to do something about it.

Dr. Rob (02:24.117)
Right.

Dr. Rob (02:36.457)
Yeah, that’s an amazing statistic. So because if you look at the numbers, that means that only about 20% of workers worldwide, this is worldwide, not just the US, are only 20% are engaged, are actually doing some work. Everybody else is just phoning it in or actively resisting, like actively working against the job description that there are given. So

Debra Maldonado (02:54.242)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rob (03:05.993)
Financially that means like ten trillion dollars of productivity per year are lost. That’s amazing. So anyway

Debra Maldonado (03:17.558)
And then also too, wouldn’t you say that people calling on sick more, you know, it hurt the company, you know, companies should have engaged employees. but also, I also think if you’re taking up space in a corporate job, there’s someone else that would probably love that position. So you’re basically stealing from someone else who would probably love may that position, maybe someone earlier in their career, and you’re just taking up that space and not really being fulfilled. So you’re not only robbing yourself, but you’re robbing other people.

of fulfilling that. And there’s some people that love being in corporate and love the whole game of it. And you know, let them have that job and you move on to something great. But it’s so hard. It’s so hard to make that change. And so we call this the midlife challenge. And midlife can start at 30. It could start at 35. I know for me, I was 29. I was working in the entertainment industry and left New York, moved out to Colorado to find myself.

That’s how young I was. I was just wanting to do something different. But then as soon as I got here, got that steady job, that got that security and hung on to it. I did not change, really change my life for 10 years until I was 39. So it took 10 years for me to work through letting letting go. So those of you who are in that like a pause period where you you don’t you really aren’t happy where you are, but you don’t know where you want to go next, it could last years.

And that’s because the ego is designed to keep us safe, to want us to stay with the familiar, want us to not take risks. the ego cannot see the future, it cannot imagine anything new, it can only get its reference points from the past. So it’s always looking at, well, we didn’t try, you know, we haven’t tried that before. So let’s not make any crazy, crazy choices with our life.

So psychologically, what does that mean, Rob?

Dr. Rob (05:17.641)
Yeah, so we can frame it psychologically this way. Amidlife, there’s a natural pause that happens in life. Now, this is natural, meaning it’s meant to happen. It’s not a disorder, it’s not a crisis, it’s not your fault. But there are very few mechanisms, very few tools for people that are in that pause. In other words,

When they go to the medical model, the therapeutic model, it’s it’s framed as there’s something wrong with you. There’s some depression, some meaninglessness happening in your life, and therefore you need therapy or you need medication. Or it’s your fault. you should be engaged in your work when maybe it’s the work that’s meaningless in a in itself and and the kind of the whole process of the way it’s set up.

but regardless emotionally, it’s an opportunity for growth. But here here’s what happens that people begin to receive messages from professionals, and these are authority figures, that prompt them to think of this pause in their life as brokenness, woundedness. Yes.

Debra Maldonado (06:45.11)
A crisis, right?

Dr. Rob (06:47.803)
And that it goes back to perhaps childhood or perhaps to some kind of trauma that happened in your life, some crisis of meaning. Yes. Now it could be that. I I’m not saying that’s not that’s not within the realm of possibilities, but typically most of us we do na we don’t need therapy at this at this point. It’s it’s an opportunity to to transform ourselves.

Debra Maldonado (06:55.52)
It’s your mother wound or your father wound.

Dr. Rob (07:17.407)
But we need some structure and some community and some some kind of tool to help us understand our own mind at in this juncture and help us kind of transform ourselves.

Debra Maldonado (07:33.197)
And I think too, if say they do hire a coach or you hired hired a coach, people are looking for like a career coach, right? Or a purpose coach. And it’s really just working on the surface. It’s like you’re the same, same self trying to have a better life. And so it’s more about behavior change, maybe looking up things you enjoy about joy in life and finding, you know, things that light you up. And and those are all great and fine, but if you don’t change where you’re living from.

Dr. Rob (07:38.388)
Mm.

Debra Maldonado (08:02.56)
It’s going to just be another ego challenge. So someone who says, you know, I want to be a coach or I want to be an artist or do this thing, but you haven’t really like, you’re still acting from the ego that conditions safety. You’re going to use whatever purpose you pick or career you pick to reinforce some kind of safety. it’s not, you’re not going to be free. So we do want to not only address this from a

breaking free of like the past or or the the outer situation. But we have to look inward. We have to approach it in a different way. Because the first part of life, we’re living the egos in charge. This conscious, you know, on a conscious level, it it’s very rational. It’s very, let’s get things done and let’s not take risks and let’s be safe and secure and and also follow what the social

Expectations are you should have a steady job, you should stay in that marriage because divorce is bad. And put it, you know, for the kids, you should stay with this person, even if you’re unhappy. And so that it there’s a lot of pressure to stay the same. And when we make the change, we can’t just make the outer change. We have to make an inner change, a self image transition. And we talked about that in the last episode. But I also I really want to focus on

Why it is hard for us to do that? Why is it hard for us to change?

Dr. Rob (09:29.565)
Yeah.

Yeah, I’ve been most of us have been there, where the cubicle starts to feel claustrophobic. And we know

Debra Maldonado (09:40.738)
But also very comforting in the same way. Yeah.

Dr. Rob (09:44.743)
Well, yeah, I mean, the ego always seeks predictability, comfort. it’s designed for that. It keeps us safe, but it also keeps us stuck in the same place. So I I never blame people for staying in their cubicle for 25, 30 years. I mean, it’s it’s it’s a daunting task to break free, right? To realize

I need to escape the matrix somehow and set myself free and really live in the real world. But it it requires some understanding of how the mind works. Because otherwise the the senses tell you the risk is too big. Like you got a steady job, means you can predict where your income is going to be coming from.

And you know what’s gonna happen tomorrow, pretty much what happened to today. But we know that’s an illusion. Exactly. But we know, especially now with all this uncertainty breaking loose in the world, that that’s an illusion. You have to find your own center within and be able to base these.

Debra Maldonado (10:47.136)
It’s the devil you know versus the devil you don’t know, right?

Dr. Rob (11:08.97)
challenges that are coming up in the world.

Debra Maldonado (11:11.98)
And when you say center within, I do want to clarify that and add to that is that what does that mean? You know, is it inner peace? But there’s two parts of us. There’s the ego part, which is built on survival, it builds up our persona, it it helps us function in the world. And then there’s this this other part, which is our soul, which is this part of us that hasn’t been touched by the tragedies of life and has a kind of unlimited potential within us.

And the soul is constantly wanting to be expressed through us. So you have one foot on the gas with the soul saying, We want something different. And you have the ego putting on the brakes saying, Yeah, but that’s gonna be too scary. And so we have to shift from listening to the ego to listening to our soul. And the soul doesn’t speak in words, the soul speaks in a knowingness. And so

you know, this is why we love Jungian psychology, because it is about deconstructing the ego and having us know our own soul. I mean, in the coaching model that we teach. I don’t know about the the therapy model in Jungian, but the the coaching model is all about empowerment and helping people create something new. and I think that if we the ego will tell us that things are dangerous, that things are scary.

And they soul will just be this part of us that’s like willing to take a risk, that is excited about life and that has that potential. And it’s almost like we can go back to our childhood and think about how we felt sometimes when we were pretending. And we didn’t have that critical thinking of, this isn’t real. We were just in it and pretending and having fun with life. And that’s really the kind of sense that we want when we approach this midlife shift.

is like making an exciting adventure versus clinging to to the re familiar and and putting one toe in the water and then one toe on the ground and not really fully diving in.

Dr. Rob (13:18.1)
Yes. and I would like to translate soul for our scientifically minded audience as the self or pure consciousness. That there are deeper aspects of the psyche that speak to us through dreams, through intuition, through visualizations, through of our own understanding. Where does that arise from? This these deeper aspects of the psyche.

Debra Maldonado (13:30.19)
Hmm.

Dr. Rob (13:47.529)
Some of them which Jung called the collective unconscious, archetypes, etc. So it it is a daunting problem, but here’s the good news: we have everything we need to face the challenges. Everything. Because we created our world. no, no, you know, nobody else created it for us, especially the man-made world. It’s it’s our creation.

It like people talk about it as if it’s something that just was thrust upon us and we don’t have a say-so in it. It’s the contrary. You have everything to say about it, but you need to activate your your mind and to understand that that you’re the creator of your world. And this is borne up by neuroscience. This is not metaphysics. Your brain creates

Very actively your reality. It does re require input from the world. You have light and sound and and form, name and form. But to create something meaningful out of it, that requires your activation, your brain, your processing power, your imagination. So we can really say from the neuroscientific perspective.

That we are actively creating a hallucination that we call our life. But there’s nothing wrong with it. That’s that’s what we are and that’s who we are as human beings. So the question

Debra Maldonado (15:26.702)
It’s like a dream, like we’re it’s like a dream like state that we’re experiencing. And it’s not as solid and scary as we think it is.

Dr. Rob (15:31.754)
Very much so.

Dr. Rob (15:35.914)
Yes, very much so. But when we fall into fear, that’s when we stay in our limited position for years and years.

Debra Maldonado (15:47.011)
And if we trust that gut feeling, the gut feeling is typically from the ego that’s telling us to not take a risk. And and here’s what I think I see so much over my decades of working with people is that they confuse the soul’s message from the ego message. And the ego’s very clever, it loves your spiritual language, and it will make everything sound very spiritual of why you should wait. Well, it’s not my

timing yet. And you know, maybe the sun isn’t in Aquarius or something. And that’s why I need to wait. And it will use anything that you would love your spiritual path as an excuse. And it’ll it’ll it’ll sound so spiritual and so divine. Like one woman I years ago, I said, you know, she was ready to sign up for one of our programs. And she said, well, God told me that I shouldn’t do it. And I’m like, hmm, that’s interesting. And I

I didn’t get a chance to work with her, but it’s like sometimes people use God as the divine is is telling them no when it’s really just the ego in disguise. It’s like the the wizard of oz, you know, you know, and the man behind the egos behind the curtain pretending it’s all spiritual. And so how do we know if we’re listening to our ego or listening to that deep knowing within us? And I could tell you a very easy way to do that. If you

The decision you’re about to make is more the the answer you fear you’re getting leads you to more comfort, then you know you’re listening to your ego. If it leads you to do something scary and that terrifies you, you know that’s your soul. So it’s the opposite of what you think. We think like the soul is always leading us to be in alignment and in the flow, but actually that’s the ego. It wants us to.

swirl around and stay the same. And not because it’s a thing, but it’s a function of the mind that’s designed to keep us in the status quo for survival. The it doesn’t think about creating. And the soul is all about creating. It’s all about what can I do with this wonderful, amazing life that I have in this individual. And you think about that that you have a like a mission in life that wants to be fulfilled from a deepest part of you.

Debra Maldonado (18:09.994)
And when you follow that, it is scary. It’s scary, it’s risky, but it’s exciting. And I promise you, the the problem is I think most people listen to their ego, and that’s why they stay like I did for 10 years, stay in that, well, it’s not the right time, or I was thinking, well, let me get married first and have my kids and then I’ll pursue my purpose. You know, I like everything has to be in a certain order. And it was just the whole ego pulling me back.

Dr. Rob (18:38.421)
Yeah. And it it’s a powerful presentation that the the mind creates for us. But again, it’s it’s a type of dream, a type of illusory presentation that keeps us in that fear, in that kind of limited space that we feel powerless against. So the let’s say the challenge for us.

The midlife challenge, right? This pause that comes upon us around midlife is how can we see the potential in it? Because it’s not a curse and it’s not a punishment that life is giving us, it’s an opportunity. So think in terms of

when I feel this emptiness or this meaningless in my job or in my relationships, it’s an opportunity for me to transform my worldview, myself, first of all. And it’s and the answer is really within. It’s about listening to to your mind, to your psyche, to your like you say, your soul, which is that deeper awareness that resides and is the core of our being.

Debra Maldonado (20:00.876)
Like our deeper wisdom, if that feels better for you than a religious term like soul. I also want to say, you know, Einstein said that you can’t solve a problem in the same way you created it. And you think about the ego is a problem in our life. It it it it creates this persona, which is the normal part of our evolution. And and that the tools that we learned or like up until midlife to function in life aren’t the same tools we’re gonna use to create our purpose.

Dr. Rob (20:12.087)
Mm-hmm.

Debra Maldonado (20:29.496)
So this is very important. You can’t use those same tools. You have to cre find a way to use your mind in a different way. And what I see a lot is people saying, well, I’m just gonna hire a career coach and the crew I’m gonna pick the career that’s rational and then I’m gonna take some action and change the behavior. But again, you’re still using the old mind tool, the ego, ego mind tools to function in your life. And you have to come from a completely different place.

and use your mind in a very different way. Wouldn’t she say Bob?

Dr. Rob (21:02.172)
Yeah. Yeah, I like that quote you mentioned. I and I’ll raise you a quote. Victor Frankel said, When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.

Debra Maldonado (21:09.899)
Okay.

Dr. Rob (21:23.435)
Because that that’s essentially what we have to do. once we change ourselves, the situation then appears to us differently. It might be the same identical situation, but we’re looking at it and approaching it as a different being altogether. We’re no longer identifying as our conditioned ego self, what Young called the persona. We’re now identifying it as the self.

Debra Maldonado (21:53.987)
I think that I’ve se some people change careers and and find something they love to do, but there are still using the same kind of thinking that the ego set up. And so they never really break free, like they never really create the income they want or the success they want because there are still haven’t, you know, there are still operating from that same kind of old thinking, old way of thinking.

Dr. Rob (22:21.643)
Right.

Debra Maldonado (22:21.854)
And so that’s the opportunity. And you can’t like motivation, you can motivate yourself through thinking positive and I know I can do it and get your vision board out. But the motivation from a soul is much different. It it’s very different than the kind of bro mark motivation, you know, like go out there and crush it. It’s more the motivation comes from something much more wise, that’s

That’s almost like you have to do this. Like the it doesn’t matter what the risk is, you have to do this. It’s like listening to that deeper part of yourself for motivation versus the thoughts and try to think positive. I can do it. And yeah, Nike, you can do it. where does that motivation come from? It’s not ego motivation, it’s soul or wisdom motivation.

Dr. Rob (23:13.067)
I love that. Here’s a simple formula to consider if you’re in that space in that pause. most of us have heard of Maslow’s high hierarchy of needs. If you think about the first few rungs, i it’s basic survival, right? You need water, food, shelter, then you need safety and those kind of kind of personal.

safety structures. Those are all great. You need those. But when you’re at that stage, when you’re thinking in survival terms, you’re in survival mode, meaning you cannot be creative. That’s not the time to be creative. You need to focus on meeting those needs. Creativity only comes after you reach the social level where

Where you feel well established, you feel you have connections to people, you feel you have unconditional positive regard from others, that you’re loved and that you’re able to love others, then you start to be creative. And then even higher than that, you’re really kind of hitting all the the the check marks, right? And you’re up there, then you’re able to create amazing things.

Beyond the the typical normal stuff that people create. But that requires a mindset that is way beyond survival, way beyond fear and kind of feeling lack and brokenness and those kind of things. So that should be all our aim. our aim should always be: how can we reach these higher levels, these higher states of mind?

Where we can solve problems from a creative mind, not from a a deficit, not a from a wounded need basis, but from really helping the world like really solve big problems, come up with solutions that are good for us as well as others. So it’s more the collective.

Dr. Rob (25:37.985)
We’re at because we’re acting as self, then we’re interested in helping others more than just ourselves.

Debra Maldonado (25:47.119)
I think one misperception, another misperception is that once you find your purpose and you’re aligned with your soul, everything is smooth. Everything just flows, Rob. It it just flows and there’s no problems. Like we think that we once we find this spiritual enlightenment that we’re our life will be problem free. And you talk about creativity and the problems actually help you become more creative. And if we didn’t have those

Obstacles in our life. It helps us become who we are in a in a deeper way. And so it’s not about, this is going to be the easy life now. I’m going to quit my corporate job. I’m going to do what I love and then live the rest of my life in bliss. It’s like you’re going to quit your corporate job. You’re going to do what you love, maybe, and there’s going to be obstacles, but you’re going to have the mindset. You need the mindset and the self-awareness to.

really understand how to handle those obstacles and how to move through them with grace without losing yourself in them or without getting scared too and moving backwards. I remember when I first started, I had a a coach, I hired a coach right away when I first started my journey, because you need a coach. You can’t do this alone. Your ego is so powerful, it will talk you out of everything. So if you don’t have a coach and you’re trying to change your life, you are missing out. It’s worth every dollar you spend.

and I said, all these things were happening, like all these things were coming up and challenges I had to face. I didn’t have to face in a corporate job because I had my, you know, show up every day, nine to five, check out, you’re done. This, these were like different challenges. And I said, God, why is all this stuff happening? Like I was thinking something’s wrong. And she said, You’re up to something, of course. Your life is getting stirred up. That’s why you have these things. So it really changed my approach right from the beginning of.

The challenges are our friends, and everything in the way of what we want is actually the the solution is in that problem. And and and that’s the creative life. That’s the creative life. The creative life is not looking at things at face value, not judging things right away, and being open to what this can teach me and being that flexible having that flexibility. And that’s really where the bliss comes in, is that loving the challenge in itself.

Dr. Rob (27:44.352)
Mm.

Dr. Rob (28:12.949)
Yeah. another quote The least of things with a meaning is always worth more in life than the greatest of things without it. Carl Jung. Yeah, so even a little bit of meaning is worth a lot more than having everything, all the material wealth in life. Now we

We’re not saying we don’t need or want the the material things. They’re useful to us, of course. They’re part of our lives and being a social being. But there are not the primary things. The primary aim, once we start to, you know, come out of that pause, the aim is always creating meaning for ourselves. Meaning is real.

The real value in life, the real value of what our life is going to be worth for ourselves and for others as well, at the end of life. So we start to think in those terms, not so much of accumulation of kind of appearance of success, but real success in

in or after the pause, after midlife, begins to take on meaning as the primary objective.

Debra Maldonado (29:52.383)
And the meaning comes through going through challenges. Imagine, like we always say, you watch a movie and nothing happens. It’s so boring. Some movies are so boring, you’re like, wow, I don’t even know what happened in that movie. There wasn’t any tension. And the tension is what gives us meaning. It it challenges what we assume. It it we have to learn to love the challenges of life because there are going to be challenges. So if you aren’t only trying to cushion yourself from from not having challenges, from not being

anything disrupted, you’re gonna your life is gonna be very, very small. But if you it can embrace the challenges and say, let me, let me see what I’m made of, let me, let me roll my sleeves up, let me see and get excited about it, like a puzzle I’m trying to solve, that is what makes life really exciting and meaningful. And yeah, it it the road is not easy. If the easy road is to stay the same. and it’s actually the more painful road.

is to stay the same. Like what what happens to people that never make this change? They stay in that pause forever and there are that kind of they retire and you know maybe they find passion in golf or whatever, or join one of those retirement communities and, you know, play, you know, the games and there are they really, their dream never gets realized. Like you’ve worked in the hospitals, you know, what happens to people, what’s the price they pay for that comfort?

Dr. Rob (31:19.829)
Yeah, I mean it depends on the individual, of course, but if we’re talking in this a meaning sense, what happens is the opposite. It’s a life perhaps full of objects and abundance in material sense, but there’s no meaning. There’s a lack of meaning, right? There’s a lack of purpose, a lack of sense of what was all this about?

Why was I born? Why why all this work? Why all this drama? but no meaning, no real depth to it. So it’s very subtle, but it has to do with the nature of our being. Most of us believe in the physicality of our existence, of course, because we see it, but that’s just the surface. It’s just like the the surface of the ocean.

All the life, all the dreams, all the inspiration and emotion is really underneath. It’s underneath the surface. And that requires meaning, understanding, depth of soul. that just requires looking inward instead of always outward.

Debra Maldonado (32:39.446)
And not looking inward to find things that are wrong with you, which is what I did most of my early self-help career, not career, but my dabbling in personal growth is is always like looking for something, like you’re looking in there for something wrong to fix. So then you’ll be happy. And and that approach leads you to just finding what you’re looking for. You if you are approaching personal growth to find something wrong, guess what?

You’re going to find tons of things wrong with you. What if you were looking inside to find what’s right with you? What’s possible with you? What’s creative within you? What’s inspiring within you? That’s a completely different approach. And the medical model does not look at that. You get an x-ray, what do they look at? They look at where the problem is. They don’t look at, wow, look at her bones are really healthy. They’re like, but there’s a spot here on this liver. Let’s look at that.

we’re always the medical model is always about looking for the problem, fixing the symptom, and getting them to normal. And and that happens with that’s why a personal growth growth sometimes a lot of it is therapy based. And it’s great for people that have mental illness, but for the ordinary person, it can be keep people looking for problems and creating more problems in their life and more dissatisfaction with themselves, beating themselves up.

identifying at themselves as broken and then also blaming parents for their problems and breaking up families. And, you know, it it leads to more problems, is all I could say. And imagine that we’re not dispelling that we have tough things in our life. But I do think that if we look for problems, we will find them.

Dr. Rob (34:25.329)
Absolutely. I know you had a c you had yeah, you had a couple of questions.

Debra Maldonado (34:27.15)
So you get what you focus on. two questions. Those. Yeah. So here’s how we can end it today. I want you something to leave you with to think about. And the first question is, what is it you really want?

And you know, I think that question alone is very powerful because most people never stop to think of what they want. They think about again that deficit, what I don’t want. I don’t want to be in this marriage anymore. I don’t want to be in this job, but they never think, well, what do I want? And the second question is, what is holding you back from getting what you want? And then listen to the story, listen to that ego, tell you a little tale about why it’s impossible.

For what you want. And just if you could listen to it with this kind of witness mind of just watching your mind that you’re not your mind, but watching how your mind tells you that what you want is impossible. And then you’re really sitting with this is why I’m I’m here in this pause. This is it’s the story, not the things in the story that are keeping you stuck.

Dr. Rob (35:40.45)
Yeah. Yeah, there’s one lesson that we can take away from the study of the mind is that it it is a storytelling mechanism. It it creates a reality and makes a narrative out of it, a story. And according to that story, that’s how we experience our life.

So we if we never examine that story, if we never ask these questions and and listen to kind of what we’re telling ourselves as our self narrative, that becomes our reality. And that’s as far as we go. But once we start to question it and ask, Is that all this there is? Is that really who I am and and who I want to be? Like you, you know, these questions are asking.

like who are you or what do you want what do you really want in life and what’s stopping you? Just those two questions bring up a lot of that narrative.

Debra Maldonado (36:54.338)
You know what I just noticed? go ahead. that I have fireflies on my jacket. And indigenous cultures, many of them believe that the fireflies lift your prayers up to heaven. so your wishes to be fulfilled and and just to know that there’s a you’re not alone, like there’s this deeper wisdom that wants you to have what you want more than you even want it yourself.

Dr. Rob (36:54.497)
Then you Yeah, go ahead.

Debra Maldonado (37:21.844)
And and I I think sometimes people don’t trust themselves, but we shouldn’t trust the ego. We should trust in our deeper self and ha and have that as our foundation, as our safety, not the things out there and having a secure bank account or a steady job or whatever it is, a a relationship that keeps us secure, is to be secure in that this deeper s part of ourselves has our back and has our

You know, it won’t let us fall. You know, it’s it’s supporting us. And that is really a beautiful thing. Whatever that is spiritually to people is to knowing there’s we’re more than just this conscious ego.

Dr. Rob (38:01.867)
Yeah. The other two questions that then complete the the narrative is

Wha who do you need to be to receive the things that you want? And it requires you to change who you are. Because the narrative fits the hero.

In other words, the the the who yeah, the the self image of the person that is the center of the narrative.

Debra Maldonado (38:34.593)
Image, right? Yeah.

Dr. Rob (38:43.841)
So the changes have to be within the person, within the self, right? Who who do you need to become to create that life that you want to create now? And then the fourth question is: what is your life going to look like when you achieve those those things? In other words, what

Not only what are you going to change and how do you need to change, but what is the objective? Again, that we if it has meaning, it’s a powerful vision of your life, and you’re creating it. It’s coming from you. You’re not waiting for the external to fulfill all your wishes, you’re generating it.

by changing yourself. And that creates the meaning of your life.

Debra Maldonado (39:49.581)
I think about like who I was when I left, you know, I was in my thirties and trying to figure out my life and who I needed to become to have what we have now. And it’s like I look back and that part of me didn’t know what was really possible. I think I would have made the change quicker if I knew because the mind just keeps telling you that it’s not possible. Who do you think you are? And blah, blah, blah. And and distracts you and finds like shiny objects to get you distracted and

And yeah, like I I I those of you who feel like you don’t know what that looks like, just trust I I was there, Rob was there. Everyone we know that has gone through that realization ha was at that same point. So you being in that confusion state right now, or the pause or the not knowing does not necessarily mean that you’re doomed. It just means that’s where you are, and that’s not it’s it not a static state, you can actually shift that.

Dr. Rob (40:51.041)
Yeah. And I, you know, kind of following Jung’s lead, he always talked about how there’s a tension between the individual and the collective. That yeah, we’re individuals, of course, but we’re always working in this collective that we call humanity, the world, the universe. And that collective right now is in that transition phase. It’s almost like its own pause.

Where the questions are really important. What is it that we want? I mean, what is it that we want from nature? Yeah.

Debra Maldonado (41:28.782)
What as a species? Yeah. Do we want to continue to have tragedies like in Tibet, in Nepal? And you know, do we want to have a not drought have have a flowing rivers in abundance and balance in nature? Do we want to have a less wars? do we want to be kinder to children and families and and and and other people, you know, and be have your more humanity in the world and not hurt people.

You know, like just for the sake of cruelty, we want a better world. we can create that.

Dr. Rob (42:06.591)
Yes, and so

Debra Maldonado (42:07.01)
The more we wake up, it’s a it’s a sign of the world right now is a sign of people, everyone’s asleep in their egos on autopilot. And the more we light up the world with our own self-awareness, we contribute to a better world.

Dr. Rob (42:22.239)
Yes. So the the question then becomes what do we need to change in order to create that better world? And we start with ourselves. The the answer is always if you want to change the world, you have to change yourself. Because again

Debra Maldonado (42:32.94)
Yeah.

Debra Maldonado (42:43.872)
Isn’t Did Michael Jackson sing that? Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Rob (42:46.551)
A lot of people have said it in many different ways. It because it always comes back to you. Like if you try to change the world, but you yourself are feel broken and not enough. And you’re that’s what you’re bringing to the table, you’re not gonna get very far. You have to first work on yourself. I I don’t mean that you have to be perfect or be enlightened.

But you have to be clear that it begins with you. Yeah.

Debra Maldonado (43:21.494)
You’re working with your mind, like work with understand your mind and understand how your mind is misleading you and understand w what part of you are you listening to. very, very powerful. I do want to mention too before we go that we do have a new program coming up, a little plug. we we call this stage when you hit midlife that there’s a second horizon. The first part of life is birthing the ego, building up the ego, and the second part of life is like expressing.

your wisdom, your soul, your your who you’re meant to be. And we call that the second horizon. And we do have a new coaching program for people who don’t want to be coaches. They just want to look do the work with us that’s coming out in October. And we have a link in the show notes to check out, get on our waiting list for announcements for when we open doors to this incredible community that we’re going to create of people like you that want to make a difference in the world, want to get out of their rut.

so to speak, and discover the magic of who they are.

Dr. Rob (44:25.077)
Yeah, we hope you join us if it’s something that interests you. And meanwhile, consider these questions. these are important for your personal life as well as for the collective.

Debra Maldonado (44:28.344)
Yeah.

Debra Maldonado (44:41.582)
And you have everything is inside of you. You there’s nothing. if you know how to work with your mind and access your inner resources, nothing’s impossible. Create something amazing in the world and feel great. On your deathbed, you will say, What an amazing ride, versus what a what a waste of time, right? You we want to enjoy life, the ups and downs, and and enjoy the bit.

Sweet and bitter fruits, but also not get caught up in them.

All right, well we’ll see you next week on Young on Purpose. We hope you enjoyed today and we’ll see you soon.

Dr. Rob (45:24.119)
See you next time.

Debra Maldonado (45:25.337)
Bye bye.