Becoming an Enlightened Leader

We're peeling back the layers of what it means to be not just a business owner but becoming an enlightened leader in today's ever-evolving world. We're excited to map out the series ahead, exploring the psychology that drives entrepreneurial success and the spiritual growth that can coexist and thrive alongside it. 

Taking cues from both Maslow's hierarchy and Jung's theories, we'll dive into the importance of transcending the ego for self-actualization and touching upon those transcendental needs. In this episode, we discuss:

• Individuation and our purpose beyond survival
• Debra's entrepreneurial journey
• The four persona types most people fall into
• Transcendence and true success

•••

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Transcript

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INTRO  00:00

Welcome to CreativeMind Soul Sessions with Debra Berndt Maldonado and Dr. Rob Maldonado, founders of CreativeMind. Explore personal growth with us through Jungian psychology, Eastern spirituality, and social neuroscience in a deep, practical way. Let's begin. 

Debra Maldonado  00:24 

Hello, welcome to Soul Sessions. This is Debra Berndt Maldonado, here with Dr. Rob Maldonado. We are so excited to introduce our next season, season eight. It's so amazing that it’s season eight already. We have a really great topic for the next part of our series, the beginning part of the year. It's about entrepreneurship, leadership, and spiritual growth for an enlightened entrepreneur. Before we begin and dive into the first episode of the series, I do want to remind you to click the button here, if you're watching us on YouTube, to subscribe to our channel. If you're listening to us on Spotify, iTunes, or any of the podcast services, don’t forget to subscribe so you get every episode of this and the future series for this year, of season eight. Let's start out with why we’re doing this. Why are we doing this series?

Robert Maldonado  01:21

It’s one of my favorite topics, and one that is often misunderstood, not really discussed in polite circles. One that is really near and dear to our hearts because it's our personal journey. We're going to be talking about what it means for us to be entrepreneurs and how we incorporate our spirituality into it.

Debra Maldonado  01:48

Over the past 20 years, I've been an entrepreneur, you and I have been working together, starting this company ten years ago. We've trained hundreds and hundreds of coaches in our training, they become entrepreneurs. We started off teaching about love and relationships. As we started applying these principles and teaching them, we realized a lot of our clients were professionals, they were applying the same principles in business. We were applying on ourselves the CreativeMind Method, which we develop based on Jungian theory, Eastern philosophy, and neuroscience. It's a unique approach to Jungian psychology and Eastern philosophy in a coaching model. We use the work that we teach every single day in our business. We thought: Why don't we share some of our learnings, what we've experienced in being around other entrepreneurs and what we witnessed? What can go wrong if you don't do your own inner work? What can go right if you do?

Robert Maldonado  02:51

This is especially relevant for coaches, because as a coach, you have to think about business, you have to think about yourself as an entrepreneur. Even if it's a solopreneur, you're going at it yourself. Or you're a therapist, you've been a therapist or someone in the helping profession. That's a big part of it. Often, I come from that culture of clinical psychology. Often, money, success, business isn’t spoken about. It's a dirty word.

Debra Maldonado  03:25

It’s banned. When we first moved to New York, you were getting your post-doc, I went to Westchester County, they had a group for professionals that do helping professions. I sat next to this one man, he wasgiving me the rules. I said “How come no one's talking about rates or what they're charging?” He was like “We can't mention money.” I'm like ‘This is a business organized networking, why isn't anyone talking about money?” It's so profoundly throughout all the culture. If you're doing good work helping others, or as it's called in a lot of coaching circles, “soft services”, when you're really helping someone transform, it’s a soft service, you shouldn't do it for the money. Of course, we don't condone just doing things for the money, but you don't want to leave it out either, and have abundance.

Robert Maldonado  04:27

It's a difficult topic because of all those reasons. And because it hasn't been discussed enough, there's a lot of misconceptions as to what we’re talking about when we talk about entrepreneurship, success, business, building all these things. We wanted to clear the room in a sense and let's discuss what we mean by success, especially in coaching. What does it mean to be a successful entrepreneur? Is it the opposite of being a spiritual person? A lot of people believe that business is the counterpoint to spirituality. That's not really the way we see it.

Debra Maldonado  05:23

There's this idea that personal growth precedes business growth. We're also going to start opening the conversation. If you're new to our work, our approach to personal growth is a lot different than what's out there in the mainstream. We're going to expand and stretch what you think is personal growth and have you go to the next level. The great mindset that influenced our work is Carl Jung and individuation.

Robert Maldonado  05:52

In individuation, we learn about the persona and the ego and understand that's not who we are. Often, that's one of the key misperceptions or misconceptions about success. People talk about success from their ego persona experience. They are defining success as the success of the persona. That to us is not success. Because you're not the persona, it's a role that you're playing. If you're adding a success layer to that persona, it's simply a part of the role you're playing. It won’t hit that deeper level of the soul. Your business won’t be soul aligned, it’ll be ego aligned.

Debra Maldonado  06:51

For those of you who are new to us or new to these concepts, think about the ego as the first part of life. We’re building up this ego, which is a normal part of development, we look at how to survive in the world, how to socially survive. That’s really a big part of our becoming a human being. The things that happened to us early in life, the conditioning, the defenses, the survival strategies that we created, are all part of a healthy mind. Some of us had tougher times than others. But it doesn't mean that because you had a tougher time and maybe have more defenses, there's something wrong with you. It actually means your mind is working the way it should, it's developed to help you survive. What Jung did, he came with this idea that we're meant for more than just survive in this world, that there's this sole purpose, this meaning, this transcendent desire for human beings. You've all heard these terms before. But Jung doesn't get the credit he should get because he really developed the whole soul-connected personal growth. When we think about building our ego, we create these defenses. For example, you grew up in a very poor family, so you decide “I'm going to be a successful entrepreneur, because my family was poor, I never want to struggle again.” You became really successful, many people would think “They really transformed!” But what they did do is transform their outer world, but they're still operating from ego, because they're still rejecting that path and creating a business based on “I don't want to be this.” They're using the past to catapult them to the future. That's how a lot of people build businesses. But the problem is, it's not soul-aligned.

Robert Maldonado  08:53

Let's back up a little bit. Everyone has heard of Maslow's hierarchy of needs pyramid. It's very simple. If you don't know about it, he scales these needs in this way. First you have biological needs that must be fulfilled before you can move on to the next layer or the next level. After the biological needs are met, you have social needs. That self-esteem, that acceptance, that connecting to others that feed your sense of self in relationship to others. But he says that after that you have self actualization needs, which really start to hit upon this level, where you need meaningful work, you need meaning in your life beyond just your social status, beyond you being perceived as a successful person. It means you're really passionate about what you're doing. You feel you're doing meaningful work, what people call your higher purpose. A lot of people don't know this about Maslow: towards the end of his life he started thinking about transcendent needs. Beyond achieving, being self-actualized, there are transcendent needs that take you even beyond your personality, beyond who you are as an individual into connection with something bigger than yourself.

Debra Maldonado  10:52

That is a hard concept for people because they think their personality and their soul are one and the same. They think my soul is having this personality and it carries on, this personality is who I am. What we're saying and what Jung and Maslow say is that we have to transcend and become someone else, we have to become our true self. Because the personality we have was shaped by the world, in the world of egos, society culture is ego driven. It's all about survival, social needs, and ego needs, which is okay, we need to survive. But if we define ourselves just by that, we’re still in ego, it'll never be enough. We see people get burnt out, overworked. A lot of people within the corporate world quit the corporate world during COVID because there were like “Why am I commuting two hours a day each way and working all these crazy hours to have this big house?” We started to reevaluate what was meaningful, what we would need, there was a huge surge in people, especially in our business, seeking spiritual knowledge. They were like “What is life about? What is meaning?” We're on the cusp of this movement of people going “I don't want to do business the same way anymore. I don't want to do relationships the same way I wanted, it needs to be done in a different way.”

Robert Maldonado  12:24

I want to ask you a bit about your personal journey. But before that, let me finish up on this idea of what are the foundational roots of the ideas we're talking about. We have Maslow's ideas of the hierarchy of needs that take us into the idea that after we've done our homework, accomplished the basic tasks society and culture place upon us, there are higher needs of actualization and transcendence that need to be met as well. They're not luxuries. What he's saying is that they're not just something nice to have. They’re actual needs. Psychologically, emotionally, spiritually, we need these things to really fulfill the mission of our life. That's an important clue that he was looking at Jung, of course. Jung’s idea of individuation is this process of becoming your true self, which is, if you read it carefully and look at the body of his work, he's talking about reaching the self, which in Eastern philosophy is understood as pure awareness, as deeper soul in us that is the foundation of our life. In Eastern philosophy, artha is that the world of success, the world of business. It's also considered one of the primary human activities that needs to be fulfilled in your life.

Debra Maldonado  14:21

The others are love and relationships, pleasure, kama, then also dharma, which is living your purpose, having money, artha, and then the moksha, which is transcendence. You can't have transcendence, it's really hard to have that if you're not also successful. You could be a monk and be successful. Look at some of the monks out there. They're embracing success, so that they can reach more people. It's not that they're not being known. They're using their platform to further their life, so they're not rejecting money. It's interesting that when we talk about spirituality and money, everyone thinks Mother Teresa was this poor lady, helping the poor. No, she went out and asked for donations from very wealthy people, millions and millions of dollars went through her hands to help with her causes, those orphanages she had in India, she knows that it took money. It wasn't that she gave up money, she knew that money was a value. She used artha in a way to help the world. If we think that we don't need money, even Mother Teresa knew you need money. It's just the way we operate, the way we transfer energy, products, and services in the world. If you reject it, then you're out of that cycle.

Robert Maldonado  15:58

In the US, a lot of these ideas came through Swami Vivekananda, who in the early 1900s was already speaking about the mind and the power of the mind. A lot of the gurus of that time in the US, the motivational speakers and the coaches at that time learned from Vivekananda. There's this East-West connection that's been going on for a long time that has influenced our work.

Debra Maldonado  16:36

Even Yogananda talked about wealth and success, he had some books on that. We want to clear the air that it's okay to be successful and spiritual. Ramdas had a great quote that I love. He said “You can have money, you just can't let money have you.” That’s the key. You can use it to further your purpose but you can't make it about you. When you do make it about you, when you make it about your own self identity and frame yourself as “my company's success is my identity”, that's where you're off the rails, that's where it gets tricky. You're setting yourself up for unhappiness, it's not going to be fulfilling for you. It'll never be enough.

Robert Maldonado  17:23

Tell us about your 20 year journey of entrepreneurship.

Debra Maldonado  17:28

I started out, I had a comfortable salary. I wasn't making tons of money, but I had a comfortable salary, a brand new car, and a condo in Denver, overlooking the mountains. It was beautiful. I had a good life. But I was feeling so empty and looking at different ways to do something different in my life. I love personal growth, so I found hypnotherapy. I was like “One day I'm gonna go to hypnotherapy school.” When I got laid off, I was like “This is my chance.” I remember the thought I had was “I just want to see what I'm made of.” I have to do this. I wasn't thinking “I'm gonna create a multimillion dollar company.” I was thinking “I can cut back my lifestyle because I want to do what I love.” That was my priority. I wanted to do what I love. It wasn't about needing to have that fancy car again. Ultimately, within a year, I was making the same money I made in corporate, but I was doing what I loved. That's when I met you. You were just like “You're so happy.”

Robert Maldonado  18:30

Let me back up there. What did your parents say when you went about doing this kind of work, going off on your own, quitting the corporate position? What did your friends say?

Debra Maldonado  18:44

They all thought I was crazy. When I got back, I moved to Santa Fe for two months for the training. It was very intense, an intensive everyday training. I got back and I was so passionate about what I was doing, I'm going to be successful. I remember one of my friends was like “Yeah, Deb, we’ll see that.” Everyone told me how hard it is to get started, what are you going to do? My parents were worried about me, it was crazy how everyone around me was telling me it can't be done. Except when I was in school, I was surrounded by people who believed that. But you know what was the first thing I did? I hired a coach because I knew I couldn't do it on my own. As soon as I hired a coach, I had a plan. I had someone to work with me, all the stuff coming up when I was scared, when clients were triggering me, when I wasn’t keeping my boundaries with clients, challenging me. That really was the key, not trying to do it on my own and figure it out. It was the fastest path for me. Do you have another question?

Robert Maldonado  20:03

I just want to stay here for a little bit, because what we see here is something a lot of entrepreneurs — or maybe it's universal, everyone that is an entrepreneur has to go through this. They’re going to get resistance from their friends, family, society in general. Because from their perspective you have a good job. Why would you take a risk of going off on your own when there's a sure path for you? That's essentially what Jung is talking about. Our persona is the one that fits into society like a puzzle piece, you have a place, it's given to you as this is what you're going to do, this is how you're going to do it. For the individual, it gives them a way to proceed, a way to work, an identity. To step outside of that, he says, what the individual is doing there is leaving the herd mentality.

Debra Maldonado 21:15

What I loved about that, too, I'm so glad you brought that up, I started going to networking events. This is very different than my corporate friends. These people were starting businesses, they were excited about their dreams. It was so exciting to be one of them, being in this new crowd, leaving the old herd and elevating myself to be around people who were taking risks, who were doing what I was doing. I was so determined. I don't know if everyone has this, but some people do, some people have it and then lose it. I was so determined that I was going to make this work. I didn't let anything stop me. I was going to invest in it. I was going to do it. I hired a bookkeeper, when I first started, to help me with my accounting. I told her I'm gonna write a book, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that. Two or three years later, she goes “I remember when I first met you and you said you were gonna do all these things. Look at you now.” You have to have that vision, that unshakable faith, knowing that you're going to do this. It can't be “Maybe I'll try it and see what happens.” It has to be that full on. 

INTERMISSION 22:38 

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Robert Maldonado  23:33

The other piece, it hits upon the hero's journey, you found a mentor, a guide, which is the coach in this instance. Someone who’s going to validate your vision, your quest. That’s an important piece because if you don't have that, that's when people feel alone, feel isolated. Your family’s resisting it, your friends are resisting it, society’s resisting it. Therefore, you’re alone. You need to have somebody who validates your vision and says you can do this. This is an important piece of your life. Often it comes through a coach in modern society. The coach is able to guide you and say “You can do it, go for it.”

Debra Maldonado  24:35

It's not a weekend workshop where you do it once and you're done, your whole life changes. A coach is a consistent, customized personal growth system. If you have the right coach that can help you in long term in that it's not one session, everything changes. It's a commitment to yourself, commitment to keep moving. The coaches are walking next to you, they're not an authority figure psychoanalyzing you, they are saying “You can do this.” But also, in our Jungian coaching, we do work with the unconscious, it's a little deeper. But definitely just having a coach made such a huge difference in my life.

Robert Maldonado  25:14

In Star Wars, Luke has Yoda. He's the coach or the guide that instruct someone how to proceed, how to get through this challenge. So you went ahead and left the corporate world, you start on this great adventure of becoming an entrepreneur. What were some of the big challenges for you?

Debra Maldonado  25:45

There's a lot. I had to get over the challenge of receiving money for the service I gave, because a service is invisible. It's selling the invisible. How do you explain to someone that you're going to get this result? I was also hesitant what if they didn't get the results. There was a lot of inner conflicts I had to work through. Another thing too is this idea of the shadow work. When I first met you, I knew Jung, but I didn't really understand, I read The Red Book and about the shadow. It just didn't really connect in a deep way with me until I met you. I remember I came home, I had that issue with a client who was mad at me, I was all upset. You were telling me about the shadow. I won't go into the story because many have heard it before. But it was transformational. One of the things I see a lot when I'm in groups, entrepreneurs are always talking about these other people. They're out there, they're bad people, they are these toxic people or whatever, or the economy out there. They don't really see that your mind is actually reflective. There’s no out there and in here, it's one. For me, that was a turning point, when you showed me that diagram of how we project our own fears onto people around us. That is important. A part of Jung's work is about understanding when we're projecting, understanding our ego so that we can transcend it. If we don't, we're caught up in the ego and we can't transcend.

Robert Maldonado  27:32

This is another important piece that illustrates the archetypal nature of entrepreneurship. You only get this clarification when you venture out beyond the realm of the unknown, the comfort zone. You're pushing the boundaries, you're stepping outside your comfort zone. Then things begin to emerge that fit what you need to learn and know, on the way to becoming successful.

Debra Maldonado  28:11

What's interesting is that it’s what most people will shy back from. They’ll say this doesn't work, I can't do this. They don't embrace the challenges as part of the process. They think "I'm just gonna put myself out there, the money's gonna flow in, everything's gonna be easy.” The challenges are what sharpens us like diamonds, taking the rough off the diamond and shine it up. We need these challenges. If we don't, if things become easy, we have that one hit wonder where all of a sudden something went viral and we became well-known overnight, we haven't done our work. It's going to come after you, it's not going to be an easy task, because you're still going to have to do that inner work.

Robert Maldonado  28:59

What you're saying essentially is that you can do the journey from the persona level but it's not going to give you the inner transformation that doing it as an internal exercise does.

Debra Maldonado  29:15

If you think about balance, if you build something a lot out there in the external world, say, you triple your income, or quadruple your income, or ten times your income, but you don't ten times your growth, it's out of balance. The inner work has to match the outer growth. If it doesn't, you're really building from ego. What I see when people build businesses from ego is two things happen. One is they stay stuck. They're using their success as a way to define them. When I'm successful, then I'll be okay. They look at their bank account, they look at their accolades, the praise from their clients and think that defines me. When that defines you, you're still repeating, you're one step forward, two steps back, you're still in that conditioning. You’re gonna make the same amount of money as you always did, you're gonna have the same type of problems and relationships you've always had, because you haven't grown. You're maybe ignoring more, maybe brushing things aside, but it's still falling into the same traps. Then the other one is when you over identify with the ego.

Robert Maldonado  30:26

I wanted to ask you about the four persona types that most people fall into. That's an important clue for entrepreneurs to figure out what challenges they're going to face as they go through that journey of becoming an entrepreneur. The mother, the mystic, the warrior, and the lover.

Debra Maldonado  30:58

This is based on Toni Wolff's personality types, she said women fell into these categories, but we'll make it masculine and feminine for the men out there. These are the roles women culturally fit into, you either get married, you're the mother, the parent, or the father. Or you’re the lover, where you're the other woman, you're not committed to anything. Or you’re the professional where you’re a business person. Or you're the mystic, the woman that's out in the forest, running with wolves, a mystical person who's not in society. She said women have fallen into those categories, but I think all of us do. When we think about them, the mother or father archetype is the parent, someone who's responsible. They do everything to make sure everyone's happy, their own interests aren't as important as everyone else in the group. It's a great quality. The lover is someone who's like “I don't want any structure.” They don’t have to be the other woman or the other man, but it's this carefree artist type of creative person who doesn't like structure, doesn't like the traditional structures of society. They want to rebel a bit.

Robert Maldonado  32:25

I see all of these in you, so which one did you identify with as persona?

Debra Maldonado  32:34

When we think about it, they evolve. The mother is part of my personality, I was always the pleaser. The mystic, I was always very spiritual. And I was always one of those people that love to take a challenge. Then the lover, I didn't like committing too much in relationships, which is why I stayed single for so long. I saw myself in all these different places. We find that some people in love, in relationships can be a type, and then other people in business can be a certain type. I think I was the mother primarily. Even when I first started taking clients, I was always nurturing them. Sometimes I’d really want to be direct with this person because I could see what's stopping them, but I don't want to hurt their feelings and so I end up being more pleasing and nurturing than actually helping them. When I started being more direct and putting my ego at risk out there for them to not like me, they actually got better results.

Robert Maldonado  33:52

What are the challenges for the mother? Is it to embrace her professional?

Debra Maldonado  34:01

If you think about the opposite of the mother, it’d be the professional. The mother's all heart, she's loving, nurturing, emotional. A lot of people that are empaths fall into that category. The warrior, the professional shuts off the emotion. Think about a warrior going to war, they're not scared thinking “I'm going to die.” They're shutting that down and moving forward. It's all about conquering and action, very active and moving, not embracing the emotion. I see those two as opposites. The lover is someone who loves material things, they love sense pleasures, they love sexuality, the arts, everything physical in the material world, they just love it so much, all the pleasures of life. The mystic wants the opposite. They want to deny the sexuality, they want to deny money, the earthly things and want to escape to spirituality, not to have anything of the world, they reject those things.

Robert Maldonado  35:15

But it's more than embracing the opposites because that’d still be at the ego persona level.

Debra Maldonado  35:24

The goal is, I always say in my book, Like A Spark From Fire, that you start with which one you are predominantly right now. If you’re a nurturer, you want to shut off emotions. Are you the non-committal person? Are you the mystic that always wants to escape or wants a magical cure, the quick fix, or the magical manifestation type of person? Then say, “What's the opposite of that?” That’d be the shadow. What could be in the shadow of a person? For me, the shadow would be a cold, uncaring person, someone who isn’t nurturing, someone who abandons people when they need help. For the mother example, if you're in a service-based business, you’ll have this fear driving you of not being that person, you love that you're a nurturer, you identify with that, but the fear of letting someone down. A client says “I really need you, but I don't have any money.” You're like “Okay.” Or “I really need you”, but they don't show up for their sessions. There's something you need to keep a boundary with, but you do not want to be that cold, uncaring person, so you let them walk all over you. That’s where the problem is. That particular archetype, that persona is a lot of people in service industry. They're all heart, they have everything in the right place but they reject the business woman. Even in our trainings, we always see people who love coaching, but they don't like the business. They feel a conflict within them of having to set boundaries, to set rules. You have to have contracts, you have to help the client. You taught me this. If you don't keep boundaries with people, it hurts them. Because they use that to go through life. If you point it out to them and have not too rigid, but more of a structure, they actually benefit.

Robert Maldonado  37:31

What you're describing is the confrontation with the shadow. It's not that the shadow is the opposite of the persona, but that it's that fear of being perceived or being a certain way. For a motherly, nurturing type, of course, the fear would be “I might not be liked, I might not be perceived as someone who's caring, nurturing, and compassionate.” It's not so much that they need to be that way. But in losing the fear of that they're able to integrate or express those qualities in a measured way.

Debra Maldonado  38:24

You want it to be a choice, you want to want to help people, but not feel compelled to, and then if they love you or appreciate you, that fills your ego. It's you making another person a container for your own unmet personal needs. That's what happens a lot. Some people do that with their business, they make their business a container for their unmet personal needs. Then it becomes an identity we're trying to build to compensate for our conditioning.

Robert Maldonado  39:01

That takes us back to the idea of transcendence. How did you experience transcendence? Once you started to find your purpose and experienced success, not only financial freedom, but what was the feeling or what was the state of mind you’d describe as the transcendent need or fulfilling the transcendent need?

Debra Maldonado  39:35

What I learned is when we had that first shadow, I was the mother and this person was upset with me, it was really triggering me because I didn't want to be the cold, uncaring, terrible person. When I sat with it, I realized all the patterns in business that were actually hurting me financially. Again, letting clients cancel at the last minute and not charging them for the session, charging not enough for my services and giving people extreme discounts and bonuses so they’d like me. Then I looked at it from a business standpoint, it really was hurting me. A lot of service-based entrepreneurs hurt themselves financially because their ego is running their business, using that pleasing and needing to nurture as a way to build their ego and preserve it. To break out of that is so scary. It's not that you have to be ruthless, but you want to make it a choice. For me, when I stepped into it, I’d check in, I’d say “Is this me? Do I really want this?” I learned to start when I made decisions with “Do I really want to give this person a break or do I want to set a boundary?” You're making it a conscious choice, not as an old pattern that you're just compelled to do versus now you're bringing it to consciousness. What I noticed is that once I started doing that, I felt like I was in control of my life and the business, my little hypnotherapy practice, I was more in control of everything. But before that my clients had all the power, the people had all the power out there, the people in my networking group that I needed to impress had the power. It’s like reclaiming your power to choose your life. That’s really satisfying. You do feel this sense of connection to your soul doing the work. Your soul is the one who wants to help and make people happy and do this great work. It's not your ego going “You got to be liked. I do this work to be liked.” It's a much different approach. A lot of people have good intentions, but they're doing it to be liked, not because that's part of their soul’s journey and the gifts that they have.

Robert Maldonado  41:59

What you're describing is the empowerment model that comes through individuation. As soon as you say the power’s out there, someone’s stopping me, something outside of me is preventing me from fulfilling my dreams, you’re giving away your power, you're projecting it, you're saying they have the power, I can't do what my purpose requires me to do because of the obstacle. It's a misunderstanding because your mind is the one that's creating that scenario. As soon as you reclaim it, you lose your fear of it, you understand this is arising from my mind. If it's my mind, I can change it. That's empowerment.

Debra Maldonado  42:49

It's a great example. I see a lot of people I coach do their discovery calls with their clients. The clients are saying they're too expensive. What they do is they start cutting back their rates, it must be too expensive versus saying “That's what your mind is thinking, it's a reflective of your mind, not reality.” If you feel in your heart unconsciously, you might not even be conscious of it, that it's expensive, that’s what you're gonna get in feedback, people are gonna go “It's expensive”, then you're gonna pull back. That’s also part of business. Poor business decision is to not charge what you need to charge to keep your business going. We get personally involved, our ego gets involved in our business decisions, then it makes it all about us being liked and us doing the right thing or what reality is. When my clients that are coaches say “Everyone's saying I'm too expensive”, I'm like “You believe it. What does that mean for you? What's the feeling that you're overcharging? What kind of person overcharges?” That's where you're getting into the shadow work. That's the beauty of this work, you're not just letting the economy, or your clients, or the world tell you how good you are. You start to decide who you really are. That is the journey of individuation, as I’d see self-actualization. I'm not the person that I've been conditioned to be, I'm the person I was meant to become.

Robert Maldonado  44:33

That’s a spiritual task, because the essence of spirituality, all spiritual practices, is to find the cause of your life. What is the purpose? What are you doing here? This process you're describing of becoming an entrepreneur is essentially a way of peeling back the layers, errors, finding out what is the cause of my success, where's the source of it. You find it's your own mind, it's your own consciousness, it's not really out there in the circumstances. You use it as a journey towards the self.

Debra Maldonado  45:18

That's the reward. We’re very successful, we have great clients, we have a great team, we have a dream come true in our life, but it's not because of the money. It's because we love what we do every day, we’re aligned with it. Success or failure, good things, bad things, we still love our work, regardless of what the outcome is, what the bottom line looks like. We’re always in love with what we're doing and know inside that what we're doing is connected to our soul and aligns with us. If you're an entrepreneur, your business is gonna go up and down. You need something to equalize. The great equalizer is your true self, that's the equalizer, not “I feel good when there's money in the bank, when I made that sale, had a great launch, or this success can happen, or that great thing happened, that opportunity came in.” You'll be up and down your whole life, it's so stressful. You need an equalizer, you need a part of yourself that's unchanging. That's what they talk about in the Upanishads as the unchanging self that's not buoyed by success or failure. It’s true success when you can get there and feel that empowerment.

Robert Maldonado  46:43

That’s what we wanted to do to set the tone of this series. We're going to be talking more about what it means to be an entrepreneur, what it means to be successful in a true sense, beyond financial freedom? What is the psychology of a successful entrepreneur?

Debra Maldonado  47:11

Also, how do we grow spiritually? How do we enhance our own spiritual work? How do we use that in business instead of it being an escape from business? How do we integrate it into every part of our life? Every part of our cell, the business is infused with soul.

Robert Maldonado  47:32

It's relevant to everyone because we all have to deal with finances, whether we like it or not, whether it's part of our persona or not, it's something we have to deal with. Hopefully, these conversations will help everyone to understand how to use these tools of money and success in a way that liberates your mind instead of feeling it's a necessary evil you have to do. You can use it for your personal growth.

Debra Maldonado  48:12

We have a lot more to go with the series. We hope you join us next week for another episode. In the meantime, don't forget to subscribe to our channel, if you're watching us on YouTube right here in the corner. Or if you are listening to us on Spotify, iTunes, and all those wonderful podcast services, we'd love for you to subscribe, because this series is going to be chock-full of amazing tips and tools for you to transcend your ego and be successful. If you're not in your own business yet, but you know you have a purpose, listen because this is going to awaken maybe some dreams in you to start your own passion project that’ll help you be more aligned with your soul as well. Take care. Have a great rest of your day. We'll see you next week.

Robert Maldonado  49:03

See you next time.

Debra Maldonado  49:04

Bye bye. 

OUTRO  49:07 

Thank you for joining us. Don't forget to subscribe to CreativeMind Soul Sessions. Join us next week as we explore another deep topic where you can consciously create your life with CreativeMind Soul Session. See you next time.