Follow Your Heart and Reinvent Yourself

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Doctor Neha: If you’re a first-time viewer, welcome! Each week I bring a brave guest who’s willing to ask a question or have a dialogue with me so you can explore what it would be like behind the scenes in a coaching session. Thank you, Marissa, for volunteering and not knowing what’s coming but trusting yourself enough to be curious.

Marissa: Yes. Thank you for having me here.

Doctor Neha: Give me a little bit about you and what’s going on for you.

Marissa: This year has been very interesting. I’ve had things on my to-do list, important personal things, and I’ve checked most of them off, including having my two sons, one is 30 and the other is 22, off on their own doing great. I feel accomplished in that way and that I arrived at a point in my life where I can do anything I want to.

Doctor Neha: That’s beautiful.

Marissa: Internally, I’m tuned in with my emotional intuition, so I pay attention and I try to go with the flow, which means that now I’m making a huge decision in my long-term career. I’m leaving my previous job where I have been two and a half years, a management position at a firm.

Marissa: It has nothing to do with yoga, which I teach private classes. I haven’t taught too many because I have a full-time job.

Doctor Neha: The J-O-B gets in the way.

Marissa: Yes.

Doctor Neha: Some of you at home may notice that your J-O-B gets in the way of what your passion is.

Marissa: Correct. I’m not a spring chicken.

Doctor Neha: You look incredible.

Marissa: I’ve been thinking, If I’m going to invest all this energy to keep accomplishing things in the corporate world, wouldn’t I rather invest all this energy into my passion, my calling? So I’m taking that risk. I’m leaving my secure job to manifest a job that is more in tune with my inspiration and my values. I’m anxious and excited, but I don’t know if I’m the only one or a lot of people at my age are doing this now.

Doctor Neha: First of all, it takes so much bravery and courage. Listen, young, old are just words. To feel alive in your heart at any age is what you’re describing. There is a liveliness in you that doesn’t have a date stamp or an age stamp. As a physician, I would argue that something that would make you feel younger would be that vitality, that part of you that feels alive and healthy; not chronological age.

Marissa: Yes.

Doctor Neha: So tell me what your dream is that you’d like to create.

Marissa: I would love to find an opportunity where I can apply everything; my background is eclectic so I’ve worked in the TV industry, event management, and the arts, but I love connecting with my yoga students and creating space for them to connect [better to themselves]. I would love to volunteer and give my yoga classes for homeless kids in San Diego. That’s what I would love to do. But I don’t have the resources to give my skills for free because I need to eat.

I would love to be able to create something where I can provide the services and create a community of teachers that we would be able to reach out to the homeless kids and the orphans in San Diego by giving yoga, meditation, etc.

Doctor Neha: How would they benefit if they were able to have yoga and meditation? Orphans and the homeless, how would they benefit?

Marissa: It would enable them or allow them to realize that everything they need is in them, regardless of the lack of resources, emotional material or psychological. They’ve been through a lot. I come from a challenging childhood, and I went through that journey, which is why I’m inspired to guide people to realize that it’s all inside you. You don’t need the outside. You just need to align yourself and find that energy within you and the world will start responding to whatever it is that you have within you, your gift.

Doctor Neha: It sounds like hope. Hope is what you seem to want to give them. It’s what you seem to have needed when you were in a challenging place.

Marissa: Hope and certainly personal power.

Doctor Neha: On so many levels, it’s such a beautiful mission. Each one of us has that thing inside us that moves us. Just like you explained, something about the way you were raised and the difficulties you went through has inspired you to want to give what you’ve learned and experienced to others. And you made a very important comment, which was “I need to eat and take care of myself before I do that.” Your dream would be to give it to them for free. Right? I like your creativity of teaming up with some other yoga instructors to do this. One thing is for sure: We can’t give to other people until we are full and from that place, we’re giving without wanting anything back.

So the most important thing is how are you going to fill yourself up so you’re giving from an authentic place?

Then the second question is, when you were in their shoes or some version of their shoes, would you have been able to hear someone who wanted to have you do yoga?

Marissa: Oh yes.

Doctor Neha: You would have been able to hear that? What would have been the gateway in?

Marissa: I would have loved to have an adult who was able to create a trust relationship and communication, so that I could go along.

Doctor Neha: Like a role model?

Marissa: Yes. I didn’t have that. All the adults surrounding me were in their own crisis and in their own egos. So I had to break through and make my own way, but I would have loved to have an adult there to tell me, “You’re going to be fine. You’re going to be fine. Let’s do this!”

I want to tell them, “You’re going to be fine. Trust me.” And I want to listen to them. It’s really important to listen to young people, establishing rapport and trust first instead of jumping in and giving advice immediately without listening to them.

Doctor Neha: That’s beautiful. Tell me, how are you going to fill yourself so that when you are giving to them you’re doing it from an authentic place? What do you need?

Marissa: Material resources, for sure. How am I going to manifest them? I’m creating a plan. I’m establishing my yoga website again and developing some different trainings and workshops for income. I feel pretty full in terms of the emotional and spiritual. So I think [this dream] is going to happen. I feel that women my age—again going back to the age, but maybe it’s not the age but completing the circle of raising the boys and accomplishing things at the corporate world and now being at the point where I feel accomplished—want to give more in a different way. I’m going to take the risk of not pursuing a career in the corporate world because I really want to develop all this that I’ve been waiting for. It’s an interesting stage.

Doctor Neha: I would actually say to you to finish this statement: The reason right now is the perfect time for me is why?

Marissa: I feel ready.

Doctor Neha: Yes. You’ve probably enjoyed your boys and doing all that they needed you, so now is the right time. You’ve mentioned age a few times; do you notice how that keeps creeping up?

Marissa: Uh-hmm.

Doctor Neha: There’s something about thinking, Oh, I’m too old, but it’s not true. What is it that you need right now to take your next step?

Marissa: Just stay in the moment.

Doctor Neha: And trust.

Marissa: Yes. Stay in the moment and trust. I know it’s going to happen. I have this certainty. Uncertainty, though, always generates anxiety because the mind needs to know what’s going to happen. So, [I keep reminding myself], I’m going to stand by. I’ve planted my seats and now I’m holding the space for the harvest.

Doctor Neha: I love it.

Marissa: Throughout the year, many things have been happening [to confirm it], including the house where I’m living right now with an ocean view.

Doctor Neha: You’re seeing the signs?

Marissa: Yes, I feel great and I trust.

Doctor Neha: That’s so beautiful. One thing I say about anxiety is anxiety is an attempt to control the future. You start getting crazy thinking, What if, what if, what if, what if. Trust is how you turn that around.

Marissa: Yes.

Doctor Neha: I think you’re already doing that. Thank you so much for your honesty.

Marissa: No, thank you. Thank you for listening.

Doctor Neha: For any of you at home who know that there’s an excuse running in your head so you won’t reach your dreams—whether that you’re too young, you don’t have enough experience, you’re too old, you’re too strong, too weak, too thin, too fat—it’s not true. What I know is Marissa is going to do amazing things, and it’s because of that self-trust piece. Self-trust says, I might not know the answer, but I know the next step. So what’s your next step?

Thank you for joining us this week. Write your comments below, or drop me a tweet #AskDoctorNeha.

Awareness Prescription

1. Identify your dreams.
2. What are the excuse(s) that hold you back? What stories are you making up that keep you stuck?
3. What other times in your life were you able to muster the courage to take a bold step?
4. Ask yourself, “What would self-trust and courage do now?”
5. Take the next step!

Wishing you the courage to act on your dreams,