What is Soulful Impact and How Do We Create It? (Part 1)
Introduction & Step 1: Adopt an Empowered Creator Mindset
Welcome to Soulful Impact, a newsletter exploring the territory of remembering our true nature and realizing our full potential.
This is Part 1 of a 5-part series introducing the concept and practice of Soulful Impact:
Introduction & Step 1: Adopt an Empowered Creator Mindset
Step 2: Turn Toward What You Are Running From (Embrace the Darkness)
As always, I’d love to hear what resonates and I welcome your comments and feedback. Thanks so much for being here!
What is Soulful Impact?
There comes a time when we consider the legacy of our lives.
What will I leave behind?
What will I be known for?
What will be the impact of my presence on Earth?
Many of us, myself included, hold a desire to make a positive difference. We want our presence to be meaningful, in a good way. We want to be of service. We want to realize our full potential.
Depending on the person, this desire might exist on an intimate scale (i.e. the impact I have on my loved ones and community) and/or a larger scale (i.e. I aspire to change the world, revolutionize an industry, or solve some major challenge facing humanity). It’s important to say up front that I don’t perceive any “scale” to be inherently better or worse — or even more or less impactful — than another. I’ll come back to that.
At its core, this drive toward service and impact is a beautiful thing. I’d call it one of humanity’s virtues. And to walk with integrity on this path — to actually fulfill the potential that lives in each of us — is easier said than done.
To realize our full potential, we must remember our true nature.
I believe remembering our true nature means transcending the ego. It means seeing through the illusion of the smaller, separate self and grounding ourselves in the greater truth of who we really are: an embodied manifestation of consciousness that is inherently connected and one with all of life, while at the same time holding a unique perspective and possibility in this three-dimensional realm.
When we’re unaware of the truth of who we really are, our genuine intentions get co-opted by the ego to serve its own agenda. We might think we’re serving the whole, but on a deeper and often unconscious level, we’re really serving ourselves — acting to address our ego’s needs and fears.
With sincere inquiry and self-awareness, you will notice this happens quite often. I’ve shared in depth about my own journey with this pattern here, and I continue to practice with it every day.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with ego-based motivation. It can be effective, and it’s familiar and natural for so many of us. It can even lead to great results and real positive impact. Some people get really good at achieving their goals in this way, which can seem to validate the strategy.
The trouble is that ego-based motivation also creates a sort of toxic, fear-based sludge. We might achieve our goals, but sooner or later it costs us in some other way. We celebrate a positive outcome only to later lament the side effects of our actions or the means by which we came to our results. We get what feels like a win, but only temporarily. At the end of the day, the underlying patterns we were trying to shift just keep recycling. Sound familiar?
If you feel like you keep fighting the same fight over and over again, that’s a sign that you are operating from fear and ego-based motivation.
Your mind will tell you that if you just fight a little harder, or use some new tactics, you’ll finally get the results you are looking for. But it’s not the case. Genuinely unlocking your full potential requires creating a shift at the level of your consciousness.
How do you do that? There are countless possible ways. My intention with this series is to summarize a path I’ve found works well for me, and that I use to guide others.
This journey has no ending — it’s an ongoing practice. When we commit to it, something magical enters our lives. We stop operating from a reactivity and threat, and start operating from openness, curiosity and trust. We let go of defining ourselves by external appearances or results, and follow what makes us come alive. We focus our attention on the way we are showing up in each moment — how we are being on the inside, and how we are relating to ourselves and the world.
Soulful Impact is what naturally emerges as a result of that shift.
It’s the beauty, love, creativity and grace that inevitably flows through when we train our egos to remember the truth of who we really are. It’s the authentic, regenerative contribution that we organically create when we travel through what depth psychologist and wilderness guide Bill Plotkin calls The Journey of Soul Initiation. It’s what happens when our egos learn to act in service of soul instead of themselves.
Soulful Impact appears in each moment we meet with an awakened consciousness. It isn’t measured by objective metrics or numbers. We can’t quantify its impact, because it’s much bigger than that.
It’s the passage of divine creativity and sacred intelligence that comes through when we ground ourselves in the deepest truth of our being and allow our actions to be guided from that place.
Soulful Impact is what happens when we remember our true nature.
It’s what it means to realize our full potential.
The Journey of Soulful Impact
A Cyclical Five Step Practice
I see myself as a beginner in the journey of Soulful Impact. What follows is a working model to summarize this practice to the best of my current understanding. This isn’t an original invention, but a repackaging of wisdom and tools I’ve learned from others. I find it useful to organize these ideas in this way, and I hope you do too.
This practice is cyclical, not linear. As far as I can tell, there is no limit to the number of times you can move through these steps.
It might take you half a lifetime or more to make it through your first cycle. Once you deepen in your practice, it becomes like driving a car. You might cycle through the steps in less than a few seconds and hardly be aware of it. That is until something particularly jarring happens and suddenly you’re navigating rough roads or burly weather. In those moments, you go back to the basics — paying close attention, breathing (it always helps) and lovingly guiding yourself through each step.
The layers continue to deepen as you voyage further into the boundless and magical expanse that is the realization of your full potential. The possibilities are literally endless. That’s why I consider this path to be the adventure of a lifetime.
This journey is like a wilderness expedition on steroids. It beckons us to explore the wild frontiers of our living and breathing home planet, the expanse of the cosmos, and the dark fertile depths of our souls.
Just like a physical expedition into the wilderness (at least the way I lead them), this work is for anyone who feels called. It’s not for everyone, and that’s ok. At the same time, there are no universal prerequisites or permanently disqualifying characteristics. It’s important to choose the right timing for you to embark on the journey, to know your own limits, and to prepare yourself. You get to be the master of your own experience.
These 5 steps are also a summary of the journey I guide groups through in the Soulful Impact Vision Quest. If you feel called to explore further, I encourage you to apply.
Step 1: Adopt an Empowered Creator Mindset
To begin, choose to experience yourself as the empowered creator of your life. This is simultaneously a choice to be empowered and a choice to trust life.
To be clear, this is not a criticism of people who are disempowered or the experience of being disempowered. There are real victims in the world and structural forces that create that reality. Rather, this is an invitation to recognize that while you can’t control the world around you, you can take the reins of your own consciousness. If you don’t feel an adequate level of psychological stability to start doing that, please care for yourself as best you can and seek support before embarking on this journey.
Being an empowered creator means taking 100% responsibility for your own experience of life and giving others the opportunity to do the same. It means letting go of blame and criticism, instead exploring with curiosity how you are creating your experience. It means letting go of being right about your stories and beliefs, recognizing righteousness as an ego defense strategy designed to separate you from the world and maintain its illusion of control. It means speaking your truth, cultivating self-love, honing your intuition, honoring your yes and no, taking care of your own needs, and remembering not to take yourself too seriously. 😉
For a deeper dive on the above concepts, check out The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership by Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman and Kaley Warner Klemp.
Being an empowered creator also means experiencing the world as an ally here for your learning and growth. It means taking the perspective that life happens for me, not to me. It means trusting the greater intelligence of life, experiencing whatever is happening as here for you to wake up.
For an in-depth example of what it looks like to shift from victim consciousness to empowered creator consciousness, see my previous post Becoming A Warrior For Love, where I share my own journey of creating that shift around my desire to make a positive impact.
Remember, you are life. You are consciousness. You are an expression of the creative intelligence itself. What follows is that you have unlimited power to create. I believe we all do.
But if that were true, you might ask, why would we be creating so much suffering in the world? It’s a good question — and I don’t pretend to know the answer for certain.
My best guess, and the perspective that has proven game-changing for me in my own experience, is that while our potential creator power is limitless, our present-moment creator power is determined by our own state of consciousness. The more we allow ourselves to wake up, the more creator power we unlock. So, perhaps we are manifesting exactly the experiences we need to wake ourselves up — individually and collectively.
Of course, this is not a declaration of truth. I have no idea if this perspective is right. But I do know that experimenting with it has been one of the most empowering experiences of my life. It has helped me get unstuck countless times, and enabled me learn and grow in ways that I never could have imagined beforehand. It’s helped me step out of victim consciousness and into creator consciousness. It’s helped me create an experience of being exquisitely supported by life.
The best way to see if this perspective works for you is to try it on. Do your best to bring an open mind and an open heart, and stay curious about your results. It’s ok to struggle — I most certainly have. I’ve also encountered what feels like magic, and found myself launched into the joyous exploration of discovering my inner truth and embodying my gift.
I’d love to hear how it works for you.
Ease Into It
I advise starting out by trying on an empowered creator mindset in areas of your life that feel like minor or moderate challenges, not major traumas. Those deeper wounds carry profound opportunity for transformation, but it’s best to take your time and only dive in deep when you are ready. It will help to first establish your practice, deepen your commitment and surround yourself with trustworthy and highly skilled support.
In my own path and as a guide for others, I’ve noticed that people tend to initially manifest their awakening by unconsciously creating enough suffering and dissatisfaction to overcome their innate resistance to change. This can be effective, yet taxing. Many of us (myself included) seem to need to make it hard on ourselves when we first get going on this path.
You do you, but also keep in mind that it can be easy. An alternative strategy for motivating change that I’ve come to appreciate is the combination of acceptance and vision. The practice goes like this:
First, do your very best to lovingly accept yourself for being exactly where you are. See if you would be willing, just for the now moment, to let go of the need to change or control your experience or the world around you.
Once you find yourself resting in that space, see if you can tap into a profoundly inspiring vision of what could be. It can be helpful to have the support of a guide.
Once you’re connected with your vision, pay attention to how that feels in your body. Let the experience sink in, all the way to your bones. Become the future you, at least for a few moments.
Let your vision be alive. Give it space to shape-shift and evolve. Stay rooted in the present. Take a collaborative posture, allowing the vision itself and the greater intelligence of life to show you what’s next. Let them help you be the being who can bring your vision to life.1
Step 2: Turn Toward What You Are Running From (Embrace the Darkness)
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Find the complete 5-part series here:
Introduction & Step 1: Adopt an Empowered Creator Mindset
Step 2: Turn Toward What You Are Running From (Embrace the Darkness)
These observations about motivating ourselves to change build on the change formula created by Richard Beckhard and David Gleicher, refined by Kathie Dannemiller and summarized in the closing pages of The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership. They are also inspired by the work of executive coach Dave Kashen.
Thank you so much, friends! I so deeply appreciate the support, and am excited to feel the resonance. I’ve been having fun with this one as it’s been emerging! 😊
Looking forward to the rest of this series! Appreciating so much how you’re articulating this beautiful journey.