292. From Confused to Clarity: Finding Your True Calling Through Self-Discovery with Sandra Possing

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This is happiness solved with America's happiness coach, Sandee Sgarlata.

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Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining me today. I'm so happy you're here. I'm Sandee Sgarlata. I was born in Virginia beach and raised in the Baltimore Annapolis area and had very humble and tragic beginnings. And as a result, my life was a hot mess.

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Thankfully, 33 years ago, I got my act together and since that time, I have dedicated my life to serving others and raising awareness that no matter what you've been through, you can choose happiness and live the life of your dreams. Happiness solved is dedicated to giving you content that is empowering, motivational, inspirational, and of course, a dose of happiness. It's my way to give back to the world and share other people's stories. This thing called life can be challenging, and my guests share their amazing stories, wisdom and life lessons that demonstrate anyone can choose happiness. You see, happiness is a choice, and the choice is yours.

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Today's episode is amazing and I am so grateful for you. Thank you for listening. And don't forget to leave a review and follow me on social media at coach Sandra Alam. Enjoy the show.

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Sandra, so excited to finally be speaking with you today. How's everything going? It's going really well, and I'm just. As excited to be here with you. Same, same.

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Before we hit record, we were talking about our names because we're both Sandra's. I just go by Sandra and she refuses not to. And I refuse not to go by Sandra. We both have those stories which we don't need to go into, but it's really funny. Yeah, but ask me, too, do you prefer Sandra or Sandra?

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And I tell them, I literally can't even hear the difference. Just whatever rolls off your tongue. But I always get the question. I'm like, I don't know. I don't care.

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Just not Sandra. And I'm like, don't call me Sandra. It's so funny. But our names are who we identify by our names, and it's important. So I totally respect your decision not to go by Sandra because I think had I not been always called Sandra, as you Mature, sometimes it feels like.

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Almost a little too youthful or, you. Know, it is what it is. I was mostly Sandra growing up. And then when I got to college, I started introducing myself as Sandra because I thought it sounded more sophisticated. And then what I've learned over time is that no matter what I say, people will mostly still say what they're going to say anyway, which is why I like both.

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But it is funny because the identity piece is huge. And that's so connected to everything I do in my work, too, is identity work. So even something like a name, it really does has a difference. It has an energy to it. Awesome.

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All right, so for the audience, Sandra is a speaker, digital nomad, lifestyle entrepreneur based in San Francisco. Love that part of the world. And she was listed as a top ten industry leader in Apple News in 2023 and a top ten life coach to follow in 2021 on Yahoo. That's huge. And you specialize in supporting high achieving millennials.

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I can't wait to dive into all of that because my stepdaughters are considered millennials. So I love to hear a little bit more insight into that demographic. But before we go there, can you tell us your backstory and how you got to where you are today and. Why you do what you do? Yeah.

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So it's one of those things where. When you're in it, sometimes it seems. So random, and sometimes you feel like you're just bumbling around, bumping into walls, being like, what the heck do I want to do with my life? And then now looking back on it, it's like everything makes so much sense. And I can see the patterns and I can see how the dots connect, which is a really helpful thing I remind myself and clients of is when we're feeling a little less clear in the moment, to kind of zoom out and imagine that your future self sees the patterns.

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It sees why all of this happened. And I think we're always making meaning of things anyway, so we may as well create the narrative that's really empowering. So when I look back now, originally from Sweden, I have a danish mom and a swedish Dad. I was born there. And speaking of identity, that part of my stories has always been really important.

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My scandinavian roots kind of informed a lot of my journey. But then I also moved to California when I was five, and I grew. Up and did all my education here. From then on down in LA. And so I was living this not like a double life, but I was living a two parallel lives where growing up in California, I always felt not necessarily like an outsider, but I felt very european.

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And always when I've gone back to. Scandinavia, I feel very american. And so it's interesting. It's like these two different sides of myself. And then I feel different when I'm in each place.

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But I, over time, have come to really embrace all of those parts and embrace the parts know, make me different and make me an outsider. And then growing up in LA and. Then going know all the typical schooling and stuff. And I ended up at UCLA and. Was one of those people who was.

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Like an undeclared major, had no idea what I wanted to do, but I figured I had to pick something eventually. And the one thing I knew was that I love people. I love studying the study of humans. And I tried a couple different things. I was like, am I going to go into psychology and be a therapist?

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No, I don't think so. I'm too sensitive for that. I want to take on everyone's stuff that sounds too hard, and then eventually ended up in anthropology, which most anthropologists will often go into academia and lecture, or they'll go into archaeology and go do that whole thing, or they'll end up in evolutionary biology. Like there was all these branches of anthropology that just felt like definitely not me, but I ended up in sociocultural anthropology not because I wanted to go into academia or research or any of that, but just because I love people and I love the study of humans and how are we the same and how are we different? Which was one of the things I really appreciate about anthropology is it taught me to look at all of us through that lens and appreciate.

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You take the people you're most different from and you find the similarities, and then you take the people you're most similar to and you find the differences and just learning to see the beauty in how unique we all are and also how the same we all are in so many ways. And I eventually came up to San Francisco after college and did not know. What I wanted to be when I grew up. I was so lost and so confused. And I would look at my peers who were like jumping straight into the corporate world and climbing the ladder, or maybe they knew from day one they wanted to be a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer, and they're just like off and running.

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I went to very competitive high school, so it was easy to get caught up in the pre rat race, rat race of that. And I was just like, what? I don't know. And so I started essentially just trying things. I kind of went like, process of elimination.

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I was like, WHOOP, not finance, not this, definitely not that. But I did end up getting some. Clues along the way. And I think I gave myself a lot of credit because even though I was wildly confused, I was very curious and I was very open. So I was just like, well, I'm just going to try stuff.

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And then I was really observant about what I would learn from each thing. And I spent a lot of time. Working with startups, even though, I was like, I'm totally not a startup programmer type person, but in that world, I was like, there's something about being around people who are innovators. They're change makers, they're disruptors, they're really smart. They're willing to think outside the box.

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They're willing to go the unconventional route. But I was always, like, the support person. The analogy I like is it's like I was like a nanny taking care of other people's babies. And then I realized I wanted to have my own. And so eventually, now, once I eventually became an entrepreneur, I looked back at that and I was like, oh, that's why I liked being around them.

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And then I worked in fitness for a while, which was close, but not quite. I was like, it's not nutrition. It's not fitness. But I like this thing, this empowering kind of thing. I like the way that people walk out of a boot camp class six months or six weeks later, and it's.

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Like they look different, not just physically. They're carrying themselves differently. There's a confidence to them, there's an inner strength. And I was like, whatever that is, I want it. Mental note.

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Still had no idea what coaching was, but the clues were starting to kind of fall together. I had been reading self help books since I could read. I remember picking up the celestine prophecy. When I was a queen or something. And I was like, this whole mystical world of the unknown and mysterious and metaphysical.

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That was actually what kicked off this. Whole journey and all the chicken soup for the soul and all of that kind of so personal development junkie from day one. But I thought that was just, like, my hobby. I didn't know it was a career path. I knew there were, like, speakers, but my idea of speakers was, like, these cheesy 80s seminar rooms where it's like, some guy with slicked back hair and, like, a brochure.

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I was like, that's not me. So I bounced around and eventually through the fitness world, which I'm so grateful for because I love fitness, and just getting paid to work out did not suck. So that was nice. Yeah, right? And you're around people who care about their health, and you're outside in the fresh air, and we're, like, running around on the beach, crawling around in the sand and getting sand in our hair, and it was fun.

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I also met my now husband, who is my best friend in the world and soulmate. So that was really helpful to get that. But then also, that world was, like my introduction to the coaching world. I started meeting coaches because it's kind of an adjacent industry and I kept finding these coaches and being like, you seem to love what you do. You seem to be really fulfilled and you are in charge of your own schedule.

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What is that about? So I sat them down and interviewed them and interrogated them. I was like, tell me everything. And then eventually checked out a few different programs, ended up in the one that I went with, and then it was like I had come home. Yeah.

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Love it. What a great story. And thank you for sharing all of. That because I think it's so hard. For people, especially when they get out of college and they don't know what they want to do.

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And you're around so many people that have it all figured out, and the. Last thing you want is for anybody to make themselves wrong for that because it's okay. It's okay. I'm at the age where many of. My friends, we all have kids that are just graduating from college and many of them are going right into their fields.

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But there are know one of my best know her son has a job. He's working at Costco and he's just trying to figure it out. And I'm like, that's like, give him. Permission to take the time. He is working.

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He's not sitting in his bedroom playing video games. Give him that space to figure it out, and he will figure it out. But the last thing you want to do is pressure people into going into. An industry where they don't fit in. Because life is too short.

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And you all may be young now. But 20 years is going to go by like that. And you'll remember this conversation in 20 years. You're going to be like, oh, my God, she was so right. The last 20 years just flew by, and you want to find that place in the world.

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So good for you. Good for you for allowing yourself to. Have that space and figuring it out. Yeah, that's one of the things that. I now looking back on that seems really clear to me, too, that I learned along the way is that we're all different.

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We're wired differently, we respond differently to stimuli that are coming at us. And I've learned over time that I'm very sensitive and that I don't do well when I feel pressure or when I feel rushed, which took me a long time to figure out. But then once I figured that out and more and more, I started recognizing how much of the pressure was actually self imposed. It's societal conditioning. It's my own high expectations for myself.

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Because I must impress my parents, friends or keep up with whoever and just kind of classic modern society stuff. But once I started removing some of the pressure, which is a whole process. In and of itself, but the more I remove pressure, the more I can relax and get grounded. And then I can think more clearly, and then I can tune in to my heart and my soul and my true desires and start making decisions based on what is an integrity for me, what am I actually interested in versus what do I feel like I should do? What's everyone else doing?

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How do I not look like an idiot? And then the same thing with the rushing. I realized this is only a couple of years ago, I'm 43. I'm like, this was probably like two or three years ago that I realized I spent my whole life always rushing. Slightly, which I think comes from various.

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Different influences growing up, but especially living in a culture in California, down in LA, and then up in San Francisco, where everyone is in such a rush to succeed because worthiness in our culture is very tied to accomplishment. And so it's like we're all in this huge rush to prove ourselves to ourselves and to everyone else. And there's this rush to achieve, and there's this rush, like, you're supposed to be really fast at everything. And we live in this fast paced society with all these distractions and social media and stuff now, too. And I realize I'm like, some people are really fast.

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My husband is, like, one of the quickest people at everything that I know it's annoying, but also I look up to him, like, whatever that is, it's amazing, but it's not me. And I've had to learn. And my mom, too, was very fast moving person, and I think just society is. And so as someone who's just, I'm more like my dad. My dad moves so slowly.

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He's like, he kind of floats through the world, and he's a calm engineer type. And so I'm more like him, but I was trying to be more like everyone else. And I always felt like I was. Behind, like, literally, one of my biggest. Limiting beliefs I've identified is, and I would hear myself saying it to myself, you're taking too long.

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You're taking too long. And I realized it applied to every. Area of my life, like, every single one, in just day to day. And I still hear it and I have to pause and just take that part of my inner child and comfort her and be like, actually, you're not taking too long. You are going at the perfect pace for you, and that's okay.

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So now when I take pressure off and when I take the rushing down a notch and I actually allow myself. I give myself permission to slow down. Then I can speed up. And it's so cool because it's so counterintuitive because I'm trying to keep up, and I'm like, oh, no, wait. I actually get to breathe and slow down.

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I'm training myself to walk more slowly now because I realized I was rushing. Physically to go everywhere. And I'm like, now that I can just go at my own pace, I feel so much more grounded, more calm, more clear. I have time to actually make decisions that are coming from the right place. And then the results go faster.

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Like, progress goes quicker. All the things that I'm trying to hurry up and do naturally happen faster. When I slow down. Yeah, well, I've heard that saying many. Times, slow down to speed up, number one.

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But number two, what I'm hearing you say is that you learned about who you are at a very core level. And there's lots of different programs out there, like the one that kept coming to mind, and I don't know if you're familiar with it, is human design. I love human design. Right? And I was introduced to that, did the whole chart, took the classes and everything.

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And now I'm in another program, which.

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It'S called feel on purpose. It's a feel on purpose that I'm working with a coach who has the licensing rights to teach that program. And what it did for me was. Just understanding who I am in this. World, how I'm showing up.

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And it cemented my decision to quit. My corporate job that I did last. October and really dive into full time podcasting and everything else that I'm doing in my life. Because when you understand that, it validates. Your purpose, and you're like, okay, there's no second guessing, and then you're able.

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To just go full forward and really. Not only live on purpose, but everything you do is for a purpose, which is your purpose, if that's making any. Sense to you, 100%. And obviously, so much of everything about, let me look, well, the foundation of who I am and how I live my life just as a human, but then also everything that I teach and I work with my clients and any family, friends who will listen to anything I say. And on my podcast, to me, it's authenticity and alignment are like such core pieces of the puzzle.

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And authenticity is like, it's not like you just do some work and then you figure out who you are and then you know who you are. I think of it in three phases, actually. I was thinking about this the other day. It's like there's like the past, present, and future. And the past version, the work there is looking at it, not with, because we spend so much time looking at our past through the lens of shame and guilt and regret and judgment, and it's like we spent too much time in the past.

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That's where depression lives. That's where regret. And it's just not a great use of our energy. Whereas if we can look at the. Past with just neutral, being a neutral.

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Observer, like they teach in meditation, I'm just going to look at it and I'm just going to notice, I'm not going to judge it, I'm not going to beat myself up. I'm not going to blame my parents. I'm just going to notice it. And I'm going to honor the fact that all of my past stuff is part of my story. But it doesn't need to be who I am.

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It doesn't need to define my. It doesn't have to be my current identity. It's just part of my story. So then the work around authenticity, around the past is untangling. It's like noticing and then being like, okay, here's all these different layers to me.

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Which ones do I want to keep? Which ones do I want to lovingly thank and bless and then release? It's not like, kill them, destroy them. I'm like, forgive it and yourself and whoever was involved, and then let it go and learn from it. So it's like peeling back the layers of the past.

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And then when I think of the work that I do with clients around identity and authenticity of who they are now, it's kind of like stripping away the excess stuff that we don't need anymore, putting down the armor layers of conditioning and kind of getting to the core of like, but who are you really? What makes you tick? And I love doing work around core values and passions and purpose and that kind of stuff. So it's like, who are you at your most core? Essence.

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Like your true essence. But then also, let's not stop there. Like, who do you want to be? Who do you want to step into? And that's the most exciting part for me.

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I think it's helpful to get rid of some of the past stuff, lovingly release it, and then get clear on who you are now and at your core. But then, most excitingly to me is like, who do you want to step into what is the future most empowered, confident, healthy, happy, abundant, successful, stoked version of you and how do we collapse time to bring that version of you into who you are now and start stepping into that and then that. I don't even know where I was going with that, but that's such a foundational piece of how I live my life and how I want to show up in the world is the authenticity. I love that because I just wrote down neutrality because I wanted to circle. Back to it because I had not.

00:19:26
I mean, I've been, I've been on. My path for 34 years. I hit rock bottom in 1990. So I've been on this path a very long time. And it wasn't until the past two years that I worked with coaches that.

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Really talked about the childhood trauma and. Being able to look at it from a state of neutrality. And the work that I was doing was very high level, quantum field kind of work like that. Amazing. But on a basic level, what's some.

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Tips that you can give people that. When they have these triggers or traumas that come up from their childhood, what advice can you give to somebody where. When that comes up, how do they. Begin to look at it with neutrality. When there's shame and blame and there's a lot of emotion that's been there?

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I love the practical tips and tools and I think we are living in a time which is really exciting because there are so many tools and modalities and practices and people you can get support from who teach very specific kinds of modalities and things that are so helpful for trauma specifically. And I'm really grateful to some of the amazing, more somatic practitioners out there and things like EmDR and brain spotting and breath work and plant medicine and all the many things we can do to release trauma. I think when things from the past are coming up in the present moment, my go to that I think can be helpful, kind of, because there's so many different kinds of trauma and levels and intensity and everyone's going to respond differently to different things. But I think one thing that is helpful, probably for most of us, is to pause and breathe and think, how do I make my body feel safe in the moment? Because it's like we're not going to be able to access the parts of our brain that are going to be able to do any rational, real life adulting in the moment if we're in a stress response.

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So it's just like first things first, how do I feel safe? And I think short of going and. Doing any of these bigger modalities or going to see a somatic experiencing therapist on a regular basis or something like that. How do I just breathe right now and drive a little wedge between the stimulus and the response and just like. So that's the first step, I think.

00:21:47
In a lot of cases is just breathe, pause and feel safe. And then something that I love that. I think I love this because it's. Just accessible and fast. And that is, I'm huge on metaphor and reframing because I think when we get triggered and when we get caught up in especially old patterns of thinking that are so deeply ingrained, it's like the neural pathway is like, this is the only way.

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A to b, a to b, a to b. I've been down the skis 1 million times. I've literally never thought about it a different way. And maybe it's like, I don't know. Somebody that endured some sort of abuse.

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And they blame themselves and they feel shame and they're embarrassed to talk about it. And it's just like the only way they can see it is as a victim and through shame. And to me, if we can pause. Again and make our bodies feel safe. And then zoom out.

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In my mind, when I'm zooming out, I picture myself almost like on some big bubble where then I'm expanding up into this bubble. So now I'm looking down on the whole situation from a much higher perspective. Sometimes I think of it as like I look at the timeline of my life as like a six inch ruler or something, and I'm like, if I zoom way out, this thing that I'm fixating on is like the tiniest blip. And now from this higher perspective, or you can think of it as your. Higher self or your connection to the.

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Divine or your universal perspective, whatever it is, and you look down on it and it seems more manageable when you're zoomed out and you're looking at the full picture. And then I think about it, what's a way to look at this that is just more helpful, that is more empowering, that is more healthy, that is less like me as the victim and I'm giving my power away to this thing that happened or to some external circumstance, like there's this person that is. Just a thorn in my side, or. They'Re causing all these problems. So finding little metaphors, if it's, say, a past memory that somebody's feeling a lot of shame around, instead of trying to do the typical things we would do, which is ignore it, pretend it didn't happen.

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Drown it in drugs or alcohol or food or online shopping or name your vice or just distract ourselves instead of those things. How can I approach it in a way that feels different and that feels more neutral or that feels more helpful? And the thing that's coming to mind right now, I always just get like, I'm very visual, so I just get random pictures. So I'm picturing this path thing is like showing up, and I'm taking it, whatever it is, the memory or the. Idea, and I'm holding it tenderly and with care.

00:24:18
I'm not trying to destroy it. I'm not trying to murder it. I'm not trying to kill it. Even if it's something that holds a lot of anger or resentment. And I'm, like, taking it and just recognizing that hurt people.

00:24:28
Hurt people. That's right. If somebody did something to me or something happened and I want to blame them, it's like that person was doing the best they could with what they had in the moment, even if it was really shitty. And so it's like, can I forgive them? Can I forgive myself and take this thing, whatever it is, and put it in this?

00:24:47
You're at a river and you have a little basket, and maybe it's like an injured animal or something. And you think about it like this hurt little animal was trying to protect itself, and it ended up hurting me in the process. And can I forgive the whole situation? So I'm going to take this hurt little animal, put it in a little basket, and just gently float it downstream. So for me, tapping into visual ideas and metaphors and it's like telling a new story, but through a very visual painting of a picture.

00:25:16
And then I just reframe it and I think about it so differently that suddenly it loses its charge. Right? Yeah, I love that. Because at the end of the day, I'm just going to preface what I'm about to say because I don't want anybody to misinterpret what I'm about to. Say because I'm not minimizing anyone's pain.

00:25:37
Or experience that they had as a child or any time in their life, for that matter. But really, it really comes down to the stories that we're telling ourselves about it, right? And it's not that you're making up. A story because the pain is real and it happened, but when we're talking. About looking at it with neutrality, you.

00:26:01
Can attach a new story to it in that neutrality, just like you were just talking about. And I love that when my son was born, I started looking at the world in a completely different way because I would see somebody being a jerk. And I'd be like, wow, he was a baby. He was an innocent child. What must have happened to him that.

00:26:24
He'S behaving in such a nasty, icky. Way right now, right? And sometimes we just have to come. From a place of compassion and make up that story. Like, oh, my God, he was probably really abused as a child because we're never going to know, right?

00:26:40
So you can always just make up a story and be like, oh, my gosh. Poor guy. He must have really been hurt and. Damaged as a child for him to behave this way to another human being. Because we don't start out that way.

00:26:51
Right, when we're babies and words are so powerful. And most of us, until we have. The awareness to notice how we are framing something, how we're talking about it, like, what is the story that I'm telling here? What's the narrative? What am I making it mean?

00:27:07
And it's not your fault. You're just doing whatever you were doing by default. Most of us, our operating system is made of our past, our fears, our insecurities, our trauma, our conditioning. And it's just all on autopilot. So it's like we're seeing the world through this lens that is, like, really dirty.

00:27:23
And it's not as helpful as it could be. And then the words we use, it's. Like most of them are just coming from our parents or caregivers or the media or whatever the normal language that we've been surrounded by. And it's like once you can pause and pattern interrupt and actually hear the story you're telling yourself, which is mostly just autopilot. But if we can pattern interrupt and look at that, then we can see just how absurd some of these stories are and how disempowering they are.

00:27:50
And you pause the tape in your head and you're like, oh, my gosh. This is actually almost amusing how ridiculous it is. I would literally never say any of this out loud to another human being, even my worst enemy. And I'm saying it to myself all day long, or I'm making it mean this. And it's so disempowering.

00:28:06
So when we can pause and notice and then just start to again, like curious observer, neutral observer, not judge it, not shame ourselves, because it's not our fault. We didn't know any better until we know better. And then once we can start playing with the language and playing with framing. And metaphors and narratives, all while it's. Not just a mindset game, there's so much embodiment to it.

00:28:26
There's so much trauma and things that live in our bodies. We got to honor that, too, and do the work to make our bodies feel safe and regulate our nervous systems and all that, too. In my mind, it's always brain and body, brain and body. Not just one, but the reframing piece. Is, like, so powerful.

00:28:41
And then it starts to be really fun, too. Like, you start recognizing, not only can I change this total victim mentality that. I had about whatever it was, but. I can also make up a story because we're all just making it up all the time about anything anyway. So I'm like, what if I make up a really fun story?

00:28:56
What if I reframe this whole thing that I thought was just so hard and, like. And it's a struggle and it's a slog. What if I turn it into an interesting puzzle and I'm a detective? Or what if I turned it into this exhilarating adventure and I'm just like, I don't know, this explorer and we. Can pull out all these archetypes and.

00:29:13
Step into these different characters, and it's suddenly it's like main character energy where. You'Re like, I'm like the writer, the. Director, the producer, the main actor. I'm the supporting actor. I get to be all of the different parts of this movie that is my life.

00:29:29
And that's actually really empowering and really fun when we can see it that. Way and step into it. Oh, yeah, for sure. I love how you just said that. All right, so when you were first talking, you talked about your future self, and that's one of the things that I love to do.

00:29:46
I've launched an exclusive membership site with my podcast, and that's one of the things I'm getting ready to record and load up because I did it live. A friend of mine has a mastermind group, and she asked me to speak the other night, and I ended up doing a guided meditation with a group about the future self. So I love that. And I do this meditation with myself all the time because I'm now 58 years young. And it's great to think about it.

00:30:16
When you're younger, but when you get to my age and you've been around for almost six decades, you're like, okay, every day is for my future self because I really want to be here at least another 2030 years, God willing. Right? So I wrote that down early on in our conversation, but I wanted to. Talk about how you support high achieving millennials. So how can you tie in working with your future self with high achieving millennials?

00:30:45
It more and more has become one of my favorite. I think of it as a tool. It's a perspective, it's a way of. Looking at things, but really it's a tool. And I'm especially working with.

00:30:58
I love millennials. I work a lot of, it's like millennials and Gen X, probably because that's me. I'm technically an elder millennial, or I'm a zenial, because I'm like right at the. I'm in the middle of two different ones as well. It's a weird place to be because you don't know where you fit, but it doesn't matter.

00:31:13
Yeah. So that demographic works really well for me. I love millennials, especially because they tend to be so open and they've grown up as tech natives, a lot of them too. And so they're down for change and they're adaptable and they're open, so they tend to respond really well to this kind of work. I love working with high achievers because it's fun to move really quickly when someone is so motivated, so driven.

00:31:39
I especially love working with entrepreneurs who are, like, mission driven. They want to be successful and create an extraordinary life for themselves, but they also want to have an impact on the world. They want to do some work that's meaningful to them and also will change lives or whatever it is. So when someone is high achieving and they're really open, working with identity, it. Can shift things so quickly.

00:32:04
We can do a lot of goal setting, and I love the term lifestyle designs. I'm always helping people design their life to be in alignment with who they are. A lot of work around identity and authenticity. And then how do we have your external reality be an expression of that, especially with entrepreneurs, because our business gets to be just this expression of our work in the world and our life and our soul and our heart. Right?

00:32:25
But the identity piece is so great because with, let's say, traditional goal setting, I don't know, it could be something. As, like, I want to quit smoking. Or like, I want to start running marathons, or I want to be a successful entrepreneur. And you could do all the things. I think, in traditional goal setting and.

00:32:43
Just in normal society, we focus a lot on the action that we're taking. And you're like, well, if I'm going to run a marathon, I have to put in x number of miles per week, and I got to get outside and do the things. And if I want to quit smoking, I got to use the patch and the nicotine gum and not hang out at bars. And if I want to be successful, I got to grind and hustle and not sleep and just put in the 10,000 hours. And we focus on what we're doing, but we forget who we're being.

00:33:07
And if you are someone who, let's. Take the running example, you're like, I'm going to start running marathons. But you are surrounded by people who are not athletes. Your entire family hates exercise, and your identity is someone who's not an athlete and who hates exercise. And you're going to go run a.

00:33:23
Marathon, it's going to be a lot. Of work, it's going to be a lot of struggle, and you're probably going to hate the process. You might still do it. And people definitely do attain goals and create success and get places and achieve just through doing. But I'm like, it's so much harder that way.

00:33:41
Yeah. And it's just this external doing, whereas if we start with the being part of it and we start with identity. It'S like we can collapse time. And if I'm a person who. So sports and health and fitness and all of that has always come really easily to me, not because I'm the most gifted athlete in the world or anything like that.

00:33:59
It's simply because my identity is, I'm an athlete. So it would never occur to me to not exercise. Why would I not do that? Of course I'm going to do that. That's what athletes do.

00:34:09
Whereas if I was not identifying that way and I was trying to force myself to running a marathon, like, oh, my gosh. And so with the high achievers and. The millennials, they're kind of perfectly poised to do this work because they're very open to it. It's also just fun because they do their homework, they show up, and they're like, let's go. And then a lot of these entrepreneurs especially are so this is like they're healers.

00:34:31
They feel like they're here on a mission, and they're living their purpose through their work. And so the identity work, it can. Look like a lot of different things. Again, it's kind of that past, present, and future. So there's some untangling of the past, mostly just to put down the armor through our conditioning.

00:34:47
It's like we have all these protector parts that were helping us survive as little young kids, and then the more we put down the armor, just the lighter we are, and the more we can just be honest with ourselves and relax into. I love the chinese proverb. What is it? It is tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are.

00:35:07
I love it. Every time I hear that, I just feel my whole nervous system just like. So I remember that, and I'm like, if the key to this identity piece is really relaxing into who you are, first of all, we got to know who you are. So there's some work around the untangling and the figuring out. Like, what do I stand for?

00:35:23
What do I care about? What am I most lit up by? My favorite time management strategy is actually energy management, and it's do less of what drains you and do more of what lights you up. Yes, it is like plugging into a limitless energy source, and suddenly you're like, I have so much more energy to work with, and now I can go use time management techniques and apps and Pomodoro timers and all of that and calendaring. But anyway, so then we're getting really clear on who we are, and it's.

00:35:53
Just so much easier to make decisions in our day to day life, but. Also to go chase our goals and our dreams and to have an impact. In the world when we're coming from. A place of, like, this is me, this is authentic, this is in integrity. And then when you go to future self, suddenly you're like, okay, now I'm showing up and making places, making decisions not from the place I am now, which is, like, maybe further along than my past self that huddled my baggage from back then, but now I'm making decisions from a place that's more free.

00:36:19
And more light and has the wisdom. Of the version of me that's already on the other side of everything that I want. And that's where we go into manifestation, which is my favorite topic, other than money and manifesting money. But from the manifestation perspective, it's like, if I have this tool of future self, why would I make a decision from my current me when I can make a decision from the place of the wisdom of my future me, whether it's one 2510 years from now? She is way more bold, courageous, calm, confident, experienced, wise.

00:36:51
And I don't know exactly what she's like, but I have a pretty clear picture in my mind. And so my favorite part of the future self work is not just, like, getting really clear and writing lists and having these beautiful, rich visions of what does she like? What does she wear? How does she carry herself? What does she do with her day?

00:37:07
What is she like as a parent, a friend, a colleague, a wife, or whatever? And then, most importantly, is how does she feel in her body? Because that's the thing that I can do right now in this moment. I can think about, like, what is. She going to wear?

00:37:22
And I could do my best to. Dress that way now, but I maybe don't have quite the wardrobe that she has, and I don't have the resources yet that she has. So I'm not going to go out and spend the way she would spend, but energetically, mentally, emotionally, I can show up that way. And this is where someone like Marilyn Monroe is the classic example. Where.

00:37:39
What's the classic story? I think it was like she was with her photographer. I think it was a photographer. And she's like, walking down a busy street in. And, you know, it's New York, so.

00:37:48
You can be anonymous. And she's walking with this guy, and no one knows who she is. She's in normal clothes. Nobody notices her. And then she's like, do you want to see something?

00:37:57
Do you want to see me turn it on? And he's like, yeah. And she turns around, and she walks. The other way, but she turns on her magic. She turns on her magnetism.

00:38:06
She turns on her presence. She snaps into that energy, and suddenly everyone is, like, turning around and noticing her. And people are like, Marilyn. And he was like, what just happened? And that's what I'm talking about.

00:38:20
When I'm like, when we go into. Future self, we can tap into a level of presence, a level of magnetism that maybe our current self doesn't have yet, because we don't quite have the confidence of somebody who has already crushed all our goals or who is at the place or who is living the life that is full of our deepest desires. So the more clear we are on what we want and who we want to be as future self, the more we can practice being that now. And it's like it collapses time. It attracts the things that we're.

00:38:49
Instead of chasing after our goals and dreams and abundance and all that, it's like it magnetically starts attracting it to us. Plus, it's way more fun. Your impact is totally different. Oh, yeah. Oh, my God.

00:39:01
That was so incredible. I love that Marilyn Monroe story. What a great visual. Oh, my gosh, Sandra. We could talk for hours, but I.

00:39:12
Like to keep these episodes at a certain time so that we keep our listeners engaged. So is there anything else that you want to share I think you said you had like a gift for the audience as well. I do. So obviously, I love everything under the personal empowerment, personal development umbrella. I'm a junkie for sure.

00:39:32
I love this stuff. It's my whole path. However, out of all the things, I love the manifestation and especially abundance, and. Especially empowering women to attract more abundance. And up level financially, because I think.

00:39:49
In the collective, we have a little. Catching up to do. And I think that especially women entrepreneurs who are just out there doing their soul's work are going to change the world. And I want to empower as many women, like good hearted women who want to do amazing work in the world, to be well resourced and abundant and living rich lives, whatever that means to them as possible. So my free gift is you can find it@makingyoumagnetic.com.

00:40:13
I'm obviously obsessed with this whole magnetism thing. It's a three part pop up podcast. Just quick 20 minutes episodes. You go through it, and I go a little bit further into this whole idea of how do you turn off the dial on your magnetism? Why is it important?

00:40:27
Why does it help us attract abundance. And all the how to's around that? Oh, my gosh, I love it. That's amazing. Thank you so much for joining me today.

00:40:36
This has been such an enlightening conversation, and I know that so many people are going to benefit from it, and how can they get a hold of you? If somebody wants to reach out and say, I want to know more, how can you, Sandra? I'm very easy to find. I'm Sandrapossing.com. I'm at Sandrapossing on all the social medias.

00:40:54
All right, perfect. All right, Sandra, have a great rest of your day, and I just wish you continued success. And let's definitely keep in touch because I've been saying this more and more. My guests that have been coming on. I'm like, let's schedule another episode in.

00:41:09
Like, six months because we could just talk about this for so long, and it's such an important conversation. So thank you so much. It was such a pleasure. Thank you for having me. Thank you.

00:41:21
Lo.

00:41:31
I certainly hope that you enjoyed today's interview. Thank you so much for joining me. And as always, I hope that you. And your family are healthy and safe and that your lives are filled with peace, joy, and happiness. Take care, everyone.