Coaching Through iPEC’s COR.E Dynamics: Spiritual Influencers

This episode includes our interpretations of copyrighted works done by the Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching or iPEC.

[INTRODUCTION]

Alex Cullimore: Welcome to Uncover the Human, where every conversation revolves around enhancing all the connections in our lives.

Cristina Amigoni: Whether that’s with our families, co-workers, or even ourselves.

Alex Cullimore: When we can be our authentic selves, magic happens.

Cristina Amigoni: This is Cristina Amigoni.

Alex Cullimore: And this is Alex Cullimore.

BOTH: Let's dive in.

Authenticity means freedom.

Authenticity means going with your gut.

Authenticity is bringing a 100% of yourself. Not just the parts you think people want to see, but all of you.

Being authentic means that you have integrity to yourself.

It's the way our intuition is whispering something deep-rooted and true.

Authenticity is when you truly know yourself. You remember and connect to who you were before others told you who you should be.

It's transparency, relatability, no frills, no makeup, just being.

[EPISODE]

Alex Cullimore: Hello, Cristina. Welcome back to our COR.E Dynamics episodes. We went through our intro episode last time and now we are diving right in. How are you feeling?

Cristina Amigoni: I'm feeling ready. Well, as we established in five minutes. I'm not ready, but we'll see how it goes. I keep saying I am and I'm like, “Well, no. Wait, no. Oh, one second.”

Alex Cullimore: After our traditional stutter start, we're here.

Cristina Amigoni: Indeed, indeed. Hey, if Conan can stutter start for 15 minutes on his podcast, I think we're good.

Alex Cullimore: There's a plug for Conan's podcast. Conan needs a friend. It is very funny.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, it is hysterical.

Alex Cullimore: All right. Well, today we wanted to dive into the influencers a little more deeply. We talked about the seven levels of energy. We talked about how there's influencers and we will go into some of the disciplines after we've covered some of the influencers. Just as a recap, influencers are the things that either add to, or detract from our levels of energy in life and it's put out to six categories. We'll be talking about, first off, the spiritual influencer. Spiritual influencer. I don't know if you want to go through the definition, or some of some thoughts on what the spiritual influencer is first?

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, let's do that. Spiritual influencer, as we talked about in our intro, it is very foundational. As we go through the other influencers, the rest will go back to the spiritual one, which is why it’s the first one. It is not about religion. It is about internal meaning, really. It's our connections with ourselves and with our place in our lives and our place in this world, in our lifetime.

Part of the things that get talked about and dug into reflected on in the spiritual influencers are things like, purpose and mission, our alignment with the vision of our life as we want to live it, our values, our goals in life, fulfillment of desires, what desires do we want to have at work, socially, in our personal life and the fulfillment of those. The ability to create a life balance. When we think about all the things that are happening, family, social, work, personal stuff, how does that life balance come to play, so that we can live a fulfilled, joyful and peaceful, really, I guess, life? Not swimming against the stream.

Also, having something to look forward to and how to make all of these work for us. Once we understand these and really dig deeper into them, how do we use them to raise our energy so that our performance and our outcomes are the result of that raised energy?

Alex Cullimore: That's a great description of it. It isn't about a religious version of spirituality, but it is still about that connection to something deeper. In this case, it's ourselves. Back to the idea of like, what is our actual individual purpose and mission? What do we value as an individual, not as a society, not as what we've been taught to do? What do we – the unique essence and being that we are, actually value? What is our purpose and what do we really drive energy from? It's an exploration of spiritual influencers as an exploration of all of those topics.

As it is an influencer, that can work in both directions. You can feel aligned with your purpose and that can give you a lot of energy. You can feel like you're moving towards things that are important to you and in alignment with your values and your goals. You have that balance in your life where you're moving and that can be very much an energy attractor, something that will fill your cup. Equally, you can fall into the opposite. You can fall into energy detractors on the spiritual influencer, where you are out of alignment with your purpose, where you feel like, what you're doing doesn't matter, either to you, or just in general. You feel like, they do want to have this connection. That'll be very much an energy drain and something that will stop you from being able to achieve that fulfillment that we're talking about when we talk about the deep portions of the spiritual influencer.

To Cristina's point, because it is such an individual thing, this is always ends up being, it's sometimes hard to differentiate some of the other influencers from what is more at the core spiritual influencer.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, indeed. In a coaching engagement, this would be several sessions to go through all the elements of the spiritual influencers and breaking all of them down and figuring out the answers and working through them. In this version of the coaching engagement, an idea ahead and we'll see how the execution goes and may change after this first one, is to just take a couple of the areas and the questions that will go into a normal, longer coaching engagement on figuring out the spiritual influencer and coach each other on those questions and see what comes up.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. Yeah. I think, a question like, what is your life purpose is very difficult to answer. There are great ways and these are all thought-provoking questions to help you understand your own personal spiritual influencer and what will be important to you. While we will answer these for ourselves and give some examples of some exploration of that, hopefully, it's also a good time to do some of that introspection for yourself and see what will be important if you were to answer these questions for you.

Cristina Amigoni: Indeed. All right. How do we start? Are you the client, or the coach first?

Alex Cullimore: I'll ask you some questions and we'll see where we go.

Cristina Amigoni: Okay, good. I'm the client. Great.

Alex Cullimore: You'd be excited. You threw out the option.

Cristina Amigoni: I was trying for a leading suggestion, but clearly, I led the wrong way.

Alex Cullimore: I'll have it to be client first, if you want to do it. I'll dive in. Just go be on myself through this.

Cristina Amigoni: I'm already in the mindset. I'm on the receiving end.

Alex Cullimore: All right. Let's talk about purpose then a little bit. A way to explore purpose is to think about, if you wanted to make a contribution and have people remember you for something that felt very important to you, what would that thing be?

Cristina Amigoni: You would think that I would be ready with an answer since I actually wrote the questions out. Yet not. I also do wonder, I actually went through this with Eamer in details. Our friend, Eamer, who's also a fantastic coach. I do wonder what my answer was when I went through this with her four years ago. I clearly didn't write it down, because yet, another piece that we can go back to. Right now, given where I am, this is where I usually go back to one of my favorite quotes, which is to be someone who makes everyone feel they’re somebody. That's where I would like to be remembered for.

To break that down, it really comes down to, have I created a space so that people feel welcome and they can feel like they can be themselves? They don't feel left out. They don't feel that they have to put their armor, or their masks on to and comply. If we think of Brené Brown's also, belonging versus fitting in, I would say, that's what I would want to be remembered by is the person that has created a lot of those spaces. It doesn't even have to be a number, but has created that space for many people to be able to feel like they fully belong and are accepted as themselves, as their true selves and not necessarily put energy into fitting in, or into figuring out what's the situation and what do I have to say, or who do I have to be in order for people to not exclude me?

Alex Cullimore: Especially on a number of really great aspects of belonging and the importance of you'd like to be able to create some of that belonging and space. Just to dive a little deeper on what belonging means to you, what would you say are aspects of belonging that are important and you define when you think of belonging?

Cristina Amigoni: When I think of belonging, I would say, it comes down to feeling accepted in situations, in any situation where you feel like you belong, but feeling like you can contribute. Where you're not second-guessing yourself, or you're not wondering, “Should I say this? Should I not say this? What are they going to think of me?” Power to cast a vision forward. The times where I felt I belonged, or the times where I felt very much at peace, spiritually at peace, where I felt seen and valued, but also the times where I don't go back. In the shower three days later, I feel bad, or have conflicting feelings about what I said, or how I showed up, or what I didn't say, or when I laughed. I guess, that's where I see belonging. The advantage of that, the reason why I find it very important, I would say, crucial is that it gives life meaning.

It ends up being one of those things, where you go to bed at night and you're like, “You know what? Today was a good day. Today, I was me and today my life had meaning. My life mattered.” Not to be overly morbid, but if it were to end, I'll be okay with that.

Alex Cullimore: That's really well said. That explains well, I think, what you're thinking of when you think of belonging. Interestingly, as we're talking about spiritual influencers, it sounds so much like, people experiencing belonging is them at some levels being in touch with that spiritual side, the spiritual influencer that they feel that somewhat of a very deep comfort in yourself, where you don't feel securities of how did I show up? You just know that this was you. You don't worry about what that impact was. You just know it was you and you're there and it was a full authentic expression.

That's a very, just genuinely generous goal and a wonderful idea of what purpose and legacy you'd like to leave and then have people feel that way. What are some instances where you feel you have lived in that purpose, lived in that creating belonging?

Cristina Amigoni: Well, I say, when we record our podcast. Let’s see, there's very few episodes where I didn't feel that, if any. I don't recall any episodes where I didn't feel that. Definitely that in the work we do and how we do it, or how we show up, I would say, a 100% is probably too generous and unrealistic. But I would say, good, high 90s, I think the times where I didn't feel that I belong, or I wasn’t fully aligned were very few and far between. Most of them were – there were some fixing of that, or coming back to that to make sure next time that doesn't happen.

Most of the times when I'm with my kids, and when I'm with my kids in the moment, you think the being in the moment is a big part of that. An example is, I think it was this weekend, the blip of the Labor Day weekend. At some point this weekend, we just got our pickleball brackets and balls, which we had never used. I told the kids, I'm like, “Let's go and just play here in the cul-a-sac, in the driveway.” Just being there doing that and not worrying about what the neighbors think, or the fact that we are not in a court, we don't have a net, or that we are letting the ball bounce 15,000 times and then kicking it with our – me and then dribbling and then hitting it again. That's not in the rules. Really, just being is where I see that manifesting those moments.

Alex Cullimore: What do you think are things that might pull away from that feeling of being in that present moment?

Cristina Amigoni: Societal expectations that I've internalized. I'm going to take responsibility for that, not just it's not everybody else, but the responsibility of this is what society says the norm is of things. I somehow make it a limiting belief, or an internalizing way of behaving, not having, not feeling the space and the energy with people that are really not interested in creating it. I'm sure we've all experienced that. You walk in a room and you just know, there's no way you're going to be able to be authentic because the people don't actually care. It's not because they're bad people, but because they have – there's another agenda, or there's other stuff happening in their lives and other things pulling that.

I would say that there may be a – almost a fake invitation to show up as yourself and then you get shut down when you do, and so you learn pretty quickly not to. Those are the tractors. You also learn pretty quickly which people create that type of space. Also, yeah, a lot of the external opinions, so anything from, especially in the work we do, which is very non-measurable and non-tangible is actually trying to find a way to comply to the need for metrics and data and tangibility. That would detract.

I think one of the things that we do very well is the fact that we don't let that be how we show up. I'm like, “Okay, sure. Everybody else out there says that we need to show data and metrics to be able to do this work. Until we're actually to the point that we can't do it without it, I'm still not going to comply. I don't believe that that's the way to do the work. I don't believe that that's the way to get trusted, that you can do this work and it's important. I don’t have to show that it's important. We know it's important.” Having that internal knowledge.

It's also one of the measures for the clients we work with. It's like, “If you want us to show you the data on why it's important, then we're not the right partner. We're not the right vendor.” The conversation is already over.

Alex Cullimore: That's a great way of describing it. Because it is so personal with the idea of belonging and the way you described it, belonging being this idea of something that is so personal to you and you being able to show up as yourself, and giving people the ability to have that. Every person has to be able to show up then incredibly uniquely as every person has an entirely different and unique way of plugging in, and so, giving that space.

The best metric I can possibly think to help people understand whether you've moved the needle on this is basically, the one to 10 sliding scale question. How close and belonging do you feel now? Then after whatever workshop session, or just – that's only in our work. But obviously, in life, you can feel these shifts. If there has been a shift, then what is the new number and what do you think has changed and helping reflect on that? Which brings us to an interesting question here.

There's something that goes on in COR.E Dynamics. In the program, they talk about the idea of a success formula. It's this thing you're building so you can understand how to put yourself into a good environment. If you're to think about your success formula as Cristina and building that longing and having those spaces where you can do and live in alignment with this purpose and around the right people, what elements go into that success formula for you, where you can boost your spiritual influence?

Cristina Amigoni: If only I had read the notes. If only I've only had taken notes from doing this four years ago and actually read them before this session. I would say, the success formula includes being very clear with the elements of the spiritual influencers’ characteristics, which are, what are my values? Being very clear with defining the values, changing them as they change and they vary. Even though I find the core values on necessarily change. Maybe the definition gets refined, but there's not a huge shift in change. But defining them, understanding what happens when they are being challenged and understanding what happens when they're not.

Defining vision and purpose, mission and goals. Some of those elements. Having those definitions being so clear that when life lives outside of those, I'm able to make a choice on whether it's a temporary acceptance of living outside of that that's necessary, or that will get me back on track. Or if it's something that needs to be left, that it's one of those moments of no, this is definitely going to cause internal lack of belonging and internal lack of spiritual alignment, which will detract from the energy.

Being very confident, I guess is the word I'm looking for, being very confident in living in those mission, purpose, vision, values and desires as much as possible and have the courage to walk away when the opposite is being presented and it's not just a stepping stone. It's more permanent situation.

Alex Cullimore: It has a great nuance to be looking at it of, “Hey, what is the – I'm out of it right now. Is this a temporary one that is getting me back into it? Is this is something that is not?” We can go deeper into that, but I want to try a quick couple of first thought, best thought, listicles of yourself to get even more in touch with some of the spiritual influencer here.

Cristina Amigoni: Is it listicle a word?

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. A list article, but they have just three things. It has been since BuzzFeed.

Cristina Amigoni: All right. I learn something new every day.

Alex Cullimore: This time, it's made-up words that get jammed together.

Cristina Amigoni: It sound like popsicle. It's listicle.

Alex Cullimore: All right. Rapid fire, first thought, best thought. What are three things that you want most out of life?

Cristina Amigoni: Belonging. Peace. Community.

Alex Cullimore: Excellent. What are three things that you believe make you unique?

Cristina Amigoni: Not knowing what listicle is. What are three? I know it's first thought, best thought. Three things that make me unique. Me. I don't know how else to answer that.

Alex Cullimore: That's a good one. I'm going to challenge just to probe just slightly deeper with you. Just random things that you appreciate about you that might seem separate, or unique, that you maybe don't see commonly. Maybe unique feels too harsh a bucket.

Cristina Amigoni: I would say, unique is tough, because then it's like, well, so many other people do this. But, oh, yes, fortune telling. Again, doesn't mean I'm the only one that can do that, but fortune telling. I do have, in many cases, a sense of what's going to happen way before it happens. I am pretty rarely wrong. I walk in a room, or I see a situation, or I connect the dots and something and I'm like, “I think this is where that's headed.” Then it does. Sometimes it's a long time to prove me right, but again, I'm rarely wrong. It's just a matter of time. Yeah, not three, but it's one.

Alex Cullimore: That's a great one. Strong intuition, strong ability to – It sounds like, an increasing ability to listen to that intuition and know when you're like, “Yeah, something seems off. I think this is where this is heading.” That's actually a great – we'll talk about that more when we talk about the mental influencer, because there's a lot about alertness, awareness and intuition in that one. That's a great answer. How are you feeling on being coached?

Cristina Amigoni: Good. I miss it. It's very humbling and necessary.

Alex Cullimore: Well, we keep, we have two options and we can go deeper into this one, or we can switch roles.

Cristina Amigoni: Let’s switch.

Alex Cullimore: Oh, it's great. I love it. But let's switch.

Cristina Amigoni: I know. I am done.

Alex Cullimore: It's so necessary. Get me off the hot seat. It's totally fine.

Cristina Amigoni: It’s getting hot in here. We can go deeper. It's up to you. You're the coach. You're doing the work.

Alex Cullimore: This is the fun part about coaching, because there's always something more that you can go deeper into. If I was going to go deeper, we'd probably go explore things like, what helps really solidify getting back into the spiritual influencers. We set up action plans about staying in those and think about, what are the ways you can remind yourself when you're out of alignment, or be more aware when you're out and make those choices? How do we get more specific on the criteria of when am I in a temporary misalignment and when am I in something that I just need to change? Those are angles that would certainly be interesting explorations, but I think in favor of time, let's swap here. I just want to give people an idea of where else you can go, because there's always awesome discoveries you can make while coaching and there's always deeper layers to get to.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, definitely. Right. Yeah, okay. See, we're switching.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. I will switch.

Cristina Amigoni: I even gave you the choice to continue. I'm influencing the spiritual influencer. All right, so as we switched roles, I am going to ask the same first question and then we'll see where we go. If you were going to make a contribution and have people remember you for something very important, what would that be?

Alex Cullimore: I've gone back and forth on this. I mean, we've talked about this on the show before. I have a very varied background on a number of things that I've pursued, done, and enjoyed doing. One thing that I thought about when I was reading this question, we were prepping for this was that something that's always come back and been important is this idea of creating clarity for people and that we get to do this so much in the work we do on small levels, on large levels. There's just something visually connecting for me about getting a chance to explore something complex and digest it and help people understand how life is working and how they might approach life differently and how – what kind of things they're going to run up against, which is why coaching is incredibly fun. Doing this podcast is incredibly fun. Getting to do the work we get to do with clients and groups is really fun.

Teaching people about the abstract layers of the human layers of leadership is really fun. All these connective tissues of some things – these large, abstract patterns that exist in life and helping people understand that and achieve clarity and getting the chance to explain those. I guess, really, a contribution I'd love to be able to make that would feel important to me is being known for a place that people can turn to to find clarity and ideas that might change how they look at life, but that feel accurate and that feel helpful, and that feel true. Maybe not in the capital T sense all the time, but it will be the ways that people can interact with this and understand their own lives better.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, it makes sense. I mean, that clarity is it's missing, I would say, probably. It seems to be missing a lot. It would definitely be a very big and significant contribution to be able to create that and enable that for others. Yeah, so when you think of clarity, and you think about your own life, where does clarity show up and where are the areas where it may not show up as much?

Alex Cullimore: I think part of the reason that clarity is important to me is that for a long time I lived in mental chaos and mental lack of clarity. In a lot of different aspects of life and especially in the last probably – a ton in the last year and a lot in the last three years, I've done a lot of work to create some better mental clarity for myself, and that has been things like, therapy, things like, going through the coaching program. Things like these. These are items where you can dig in and figure out what's going on inside your head, as well as what's happening in life in general and start to work with those patterns.

I'd say, that clarity is increasingly presence in my life and I'm getting there via ways of exploring and just continually reading and learning, journaling is a great way of just understanding patterns that I'm seeing in my own life, the things that might be important. Getting to write just for people, right? Write blogs, write books. Get into that kind of, this is how I understand it, so as to explain it and getting to teach is a huge moment of having to have enough clarity for yourself.

Currently, getting a lot more clarity on how to help people interact with the ideas that we put forth, getting to be more human, getting to be a more human-centric leader. There's a lot more clarity gaining there and there's a lot more clarity I'm gaining in my internal life. Lack of clarity, it doesn't show up as much. I think sometimes on larger life timelines. We've talked about this before. I don't love having – and we've talked about just we both similarly don't love having things like, five-year goals, 10-year goals. There's just so much that changes in life between all those and it's inevitably, it might be a decent thought experiment occasionally, but it's hard to fully commit to, or feel like you're not – you’re pouring cement around your feet unnecessarily and then coming up with some expectation that will later become a disappointment when things have changed that doesn't need to be a disappointment, because maybe you've – I think, clarity occasionally is elusive though, and I probably do a better job at creating some of those longer goals and understanding what it might take to get there.

Cristina Amigoni: That makes sense. The longer timelines can definitely get less clear in some cases, especially. But it sounds like, having the clarity, or having to work on the clarity, that's a lot of what seems to be the theme is. It doesn't just show up. It's not like, one day clarity knocks on your door and you’re like, “Clarity is here. Come on in.”

Alex Cullimore: I wish.

Cristina Amigoni: It's something to be worked on. It's a practice. It's a daily practice over and over and over, and then recognizing when that transformation, or that evolution is happening. Harness it to do even more, to even more practice and clarity. When you think about what you've gained with getting more clarity what comes to mind.

Alex Cullimore: Actually, I love the way you described it, how clarity doesn't arrive at the door. That you don't just suddenly have – which is interesting, because at the same time, we've talked about things like light bulb moments and epiphanies. There are moments where suddenly, it feels much more clear. It can feel like that just happened on a light switch and why can't I have discovered that before. Wow, this was really just so close and just sides, but I think there's so much work that goes into finding clarity. You have to play with ideas. You have to be wrong. You have to be willing to try things and you have to be willing to explore, be wrong in your own assumptions, be wrong in your own assessments of what's happening and be willing to rearrange your reality continually before you can find what starts to feel more clear. You can find what starts to feel like, works. Now, I've lost the question entirely, but that was meandering –

Cristina Amigoni: What have you gained?

Alex Cullimore: Ah, my gain.

Cristina Amigoni: By gaining clarity? What's clarity giving you?

Alex Cullimore: It's giving me a chance to explore and be more comfortable and continuing to explore that, in all those muddied waters and all the failed experiments and all the things that do work and don't work that end up being important parts of discovering that, you get to clarity, and that gives you permission to continually dive into that unknown, which is inherently part of life. That has created, this is why I started on this long tangent. The clarity has created the ability to walk into more ambiguous situations and it's created the mental levity to keep pushing forward, and to know there's more that can be done, there's always more that can be discovered and to feel like it's okay not to have the answers. Ironically, it allows for – growing clarity allows for sitting in more ambiguity.

Cristina Amigoni: I was just thinking that as you were describing it, how incredibly insightful and powerful it is to realize that it's not that with more clarity, everything becomes clear. It’s that with more clarity, you don't care as much. That’s not as paralyzing to be in an unclear situations and ambiguous situations.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah, and then it's not forever. That the ambiguity isn't necessary part of creating some of that mental clarity, and that there will always be more ambiguity. This is what gets to be so much fun in the work that we do and get to – when you get to do that coaching. People are all wandering through their own ambiguity and everything is changing all the time and everything is an external influence and an internal influence.

Getting comfortable with the idea that you're never going to be “comfortable” is a very powerful notion, and that continual pursuit of clarity isn't about reaching some enlightenment, absolute finish line clarity. It's just in trusting the process that you can gain more clarity and it only is going to come through sitting in the discomfort that life will inherently serve up to you over and over again.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. If we look at the spiritual influencers in general and not just the sense of clarity, what's part of your success formula in making them work for you?

Alex Cullimore: A huge part of clarity for me is continuing to go back to a journaling practice. Journaling for me is always this stream of conscious experience. It's for some reason, been easier for me to keep up than doing something like a more continual meditation practice. I do that occasionally. I do some mindfulness work. But journaling for me is a form of just mindfulness exercise and continually understanding, digesting and being aware of the thoughts that are happening. If I don't do that, I end up with a lot more mental clutter that pushes away from that. Continuing that practice and remembering it's important, even when stressed, or when there's deadlines, or whether there's other things that are happening that it will keep me clearer headed and able to move on things that feel large. That's a huge portion of the success formula.

The other portion of it is just to continually follow curiosity and just be willing to just learn something new. If something just stands out, and it could be a random headline on a topic, I've never considered once before, or wouldn't have – and may never consider again, but just being willing to follow that intuition and be like, “Yeah. No. I'm going to click this one and see what this is about and see if there's anything interesting here.”

Cristina Amigoni: Sounds like, some good practices can also happen on a daily basis, or at least frequently to keep that going and be connected to your spiritual influencer. How do you recognize? On the other side, how do you recognize what is, when your spiritual influencers are detracting your energy, or depleting your energy?

Alex Cullimore: It's interesting. I hadn’t ironically clarified this for myself up to this point. It's been a very clarifying conversation. But it is when I don't have that. When there's so much that I'm not processing and I'm not trying to just pick up and inspect a little bit and play with and understand better, that it starts to feel overwhelming. There's just too much mental clutter that becomes brain fog. It's times when I don't have a chance to sit with all of the things that are of interest in my mind. Just buzzing with a 1,000 to-do's and then things that aren't an exploration of how to help other people, and how to gain and form clarity on my own life, as well as how I could help other people gain that and there's – when there’s enough time spent outside of that, when it feels like brain fog and more chaos. The detractors are the thing that mostly really, self-driven moments where I don't carve out the time to keep myself connected to it.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, that makes sense. Brain fog. Too much ambiguity. It's like, that balance has shifted from the right balance of clarity within the ambiguity, to so much ambiguity and so much stuff, other stuff that it becomes fog. How does that impact your life? How does that impact your energy, or performance, your outcomes, your success?

Alex Cullimore: When I do things like – actually, an example of one thing that would be detracting is having to do the same type of task over and over again. Or, if you're on something, or it doesn't feel like it's moving the needle on helping create any kind of clarity, it's just essentially, busy work, or something like that that, obviously, there's an inherent portions of life that have to do – you have to do pieces of that. If that's what life becomes, that becomes very detracting. The impact then becomes – I start to feel more shut off. I started to feel more like, this is – I just have to either all – going back to the energy levels ideas, it can fall into a level one of like, all right, I just have to get – I don't know how to get through this. I'm just going to hunker down and wait till it's hopefully, over soon.

Or a level three of like, yeah, I just have to do this and I'll just figure out a way to move through this, but I'm losing energy the whole the whole time. Basically, bleeding energy as you're pushing through this. I think the impact ends up becoming either avoidance, or stepping even more away from. It becomes a vicious cycle. It can be something that feeds the continually stepping away from what was before.

Cristina Amigoni: Great insights of what happens there and yeah, how that becomes a vicious cycle. The more you step away and the more you're shut off, the harder it is to come back to clarity and not get overwhelmed by the fog. Because you're moving into the fog and sitting down, opening your beer, watching Netflix. The fog is that of in my cave, but still. Interesting. Okay, so to wrap up, first thought, best thought on list three things that you want most out of life.

Alex Cullimore: I feel like I took notes on this at some point. Oh, yes, I had some thoughts on this when I first went through some of these exercises and I'm curious to see if they still apply. What I'd written down originally was freedom, growth, and exploration. I think, those mostly still absolutely apply, although I think I would probably swap out freedom now, because exploration to me is there's an amount of freedom to that and that you get to explore the thing that then – that I'm uncovering. When I think about that, we're having this conversation, is that connection to others, so I don't know what I would call it, but the chance to help and educate and work with others to gain that clarity. I don't know a good one-word idea of that, but growth and exploration are always going to be there. The connection piece I think is what I would put as the third.

Cristina Amigoni: Excellent. Another first thought, best thought, rapid fire. Three things that you would like to experience in your lifetime are?

Alex Cullimore: Some of these I wrote down are – there's more specific and random life goal things. I would love to live on, or near a beach. I love the water. It's something that it's just enjoyable. That's one. I would like to experience a dedicated amount of time, very close to a large body of water. I want to publish, honestly, many books, but I would settle for publishing a book, just because I think it's interesting the process of writing and again, back to some of the purpose. Being able to create something that other people can read, hopefully relate to, get something out of that they can go pull back to their own lives and start to create their own changes and mental models that will help them.

I don't know about a third one. I think continuing to get to – I’ve done a lot of facilitation this year. It's a fun art to continually to get better at. Being able to something I already do experience, I guess, in my life then.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Yeah. Could be more experience of that, or different experience of that. Yeah. Excellent. All right. We are at the moment of choosing to dig deeper, or bid our goodbyes. Or let our listeners off the hook.

Alex Cullimore: Let's talk a minute, abstract, for anybody who's looking to do some of this work themselves. Let's talk about like, what are ways that they might notice that they're aligned, or unaligned in? A lot of those in my mind would be questions that we've asked here. How do you know when you're more in alignment with that, or less? But maybe be helpful to think about a little bit about what alignment feels like for us, and then help people reflect on what that might feel like for them.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, I would definitely agree. Alignment is a big – it's a big thing that comes through coaching. I think we've seen many clients go down that path, without knowing that that's really the destination, or the thread that brings them along. But the alignment gets clearer and clear. As you're clearer in the alignment, you're able to – we talked about clarity with you, but you're able to know to have the confidence to jump in the unknown, because you're very clear on your alignment to the spiritual influencers, to your mission, to the core values of those, to what matters, to feel like you lived.

Alex Cullimore: That's describing it that confidence and that comes – is twofold in, and you’re moving forward, as well as you're looking back. You're looking back and feeling confident, going like, “Yeah, I'm glad these are the things that I've done.” Feel that alignment and then you can look forward and be like, “I know this is where I want to be going.” Knowing that is that internal confidence. Because it is spiritual influencer, the individual spiritual influencer is so unique to everybody, it's something you have to have that confidence for that stands outside of what other people will be able to reason to.

You will inevitably, whenever you step more and more into some authentic self, have push back, or people who don't understand, or people who don't have the same alignment and they think that's not the right way to do things. They’ll tell you it's not the right way to do things and that confidence is knowing that no, this is what's right for me. I totally get that might be wrong for the vast majority of people, or for at least a few people out there, but I'm confident this is what's right for me and I'm willing to move on it.

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. That's a very big distinction. Getting to that point. You’re like, “Yeah.” You listen to opinions and you gather and you have the curiosity and what feels in alignment is still in alignment. That's still not compromised.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah.

Cristina Amigoni: Well, as we said at the beginning, this is usually a multi, multi-hour process. But unpacking the influencer’s – actually, has a lot of influence, shockingly enough.

Alex Cullimore: We may be able to do other – multiple influencers in future episodes, but I think it's worth spending the big chunk of time on the spiritual one, because like we said in the beginning, so much ends up going back to that, which makes sense when you think about it. It is your purpose, your values. No matter what you're doing and what other influencers there are, that is a core-core change that either you are in alignment with, or you're in alignment on other higher, more shallow areas of your life, but you might not be in alignment to the spiritual level. Usually, when we experience feelings of friction, it boils down to we're out of alignment with this deep spiritual need for purpose, mission, and our personal values.

Cristina Amigoni: Indeed. Yeah. Yeah. Some of the other ones are a little bit faster. More surface, but it all comes back to this. Thanks for listening.

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. Go forth and explore your own spiritual influencer.

Cristina Amigoni: Thank you for listening to Uncover the Human, a Siamo Podcast.

Alex Cullimore: Special thanks to our podcast operations wizard, Jake Laura, and our score creator, Rachel Sherwood.

Cristina Amigoni: If you have enjoyed this episode, please share, review and subscribe. You can find our episodes wherever you listen to podcasts.

Alex Cullimore: We would love to hear from you with feedback, topic ideas, or questions. You can reach us at podcast@wearesiamo.com, or on our website, wearesiamo.com, LinkedIn, Instagram or Facebook. WeAreSiamo is spelled W-E-A-R-E-S-I-A-M-O.

Cristina Amigoni: Until next time, listen to yourself, listen to others, and always uncover the human.

[END]