Living Your Dream but Still Seeking Approval | Nyasha Ngwena on Identity, Self-Worth & Trusting Yourself

0:00And when you asked yourself that question, what were the answers you got? The first one that shocked me was, you're not doing it for them. You're not doing it to make their life better. You're doing it for them to see you in a better light. You're doing it for their approval. You're doing it for their validation. It's not really about their careers. It's how you want them to think about you in their minds about their careers. It wasn't about their success. It was how I look to them. And I'll say, so that is huge. That was hard. Not only is that huge, but that is very difficult thing to come to, your realization yourself,

0:45because every part of your ego will be resisting that, right? It will not want you to see that. So for you to see that truth and then accept it, like, that is what happened when you saw that. I'm getting shivers now. I think once when you saw that and what did you got? I cannot tolerate this anymore. I have to change. What did you do? Yes, those are one of the first truths of just saying, no, you're not doing this for, like you're not doing, this is not in service. It's not nothing beautiful like you want to paint in your head. It's a selfish thing. It's manipulation at best. And I was, oh, damn it. Okay, why am I doing it then? Is in why do I need them to approve? Like, why do I need that from them? Why can I not have it from me?

1:31Why do I need them to approve me? And then that's when I was like, okay, something has to change. Hi, I'm Debbie Thompson, and this is A Stone in My Shoe, the podcast where we explore how midlife can become the most true purposeful and fulfilling chapter yet, when we begin to listen to what's really there. And today's guest is Nyasha Ngwena, and she's from the UK. She's an entrepreneur, investor, and a founder of Allied Wealth and Kosher. Her work explores the intersection of identity, wealth, and human potential, helping people close the gap between the life they envision

2:17and the life they are currently living. Through her businesses, writing, and AI-powered ecosystems, Nyasha helps founders and creators build lives and ventures that are aligned with who they truly are. At the heart of her work is a very simple question. Why do some people fully step into the potential while others spend their lives sensing there is more within them waiting to be expressed? Welcome, Nyasha. Can I call you nigh? Yes, you can, dear. Thank you. Hello. Thank you for having me. Thank you so much for having me, and I loved that introduction. You actually pronounced my name perfectly as well.

3:03I'm so glad. And the interesting thing, Nyasha and I were talking earlier, and she came to the UK when she was 14 and lived in Zimbabwe, and I came to the UK when I was 15 and I lived in South Africa, so similar kind of emigration north. Yes, migrating north, and I loved that. I love that connection point as well. We are like neighbors. We're like neighbors. Yes, citizens of the world. Yes, exactly. So let's get to know you a little and just ground this with the woman who's listening in. As she hears your story today, what do you hope she begins to see or understand about herself?

3:49Oh, I pray that as I transmit and express myself, that she begins to feel and know that she is a limitless being, right? And that when she moves fully anchored in her essence, anything, literally anything is possible, but even greater still, that which she was designed for is possible. So that is what I pray I can transmit today. Possibility, infinite possibility. Infinite possibility. That sounds so all-encompassing, almost so amazing that it's like, how is that possible? I'm sure you're going to unpack because limitless potential.

4:35It just sounds wonderful. It sounds wonderful. Yeah, okay, good. So before we talk about the stone in the shoe because that's what you had to do today, who are you in the season of your life and what feels the most important to you right now? Oh, I love this question Debbie. Oh, thank you, thank you for this. Who am I in this season? So funny enough, I go through like over the last two years now, I do what I call seasonal intentions. I set an intention for a season to actualize a certain aspect of myself. And like I said, because I really now move anchored in the truth that I am connected to all and because I am all, all is possible.

5:21So I tend to reach for the next identity that life is asking me to stabilize. So currently I'm in the season where I'm stabilizing what I call the converter. I've been building and receiving transmissions on this new era of my business life, which is aligned well. But where I'm at in the season is stabilizing what I call the converter, the transmitter, someone who can take what she has built to market and convert it and make sure it translates well to the woman I'm supposed to serve. So it lands. It stops just being this beautiful idea and actually can become something that truly serves and brings transformation to people that is here to, is designed to serve.

6:06So the converter is who I am stabilizing right now, not just a builder anymore, I'm here to convert, to really take what builds to market. Yes. And I love the fact that you do the seasonal work and set these goals. And a season could be a literal season or a season could be a period of years. It doesn't have to just be defined by that because some seasons are longer than others and sometimes building might be different. So I guess what I'm trying to say is we don't have to be so rigid with ourselves and what season is and what we should have accomplished by now. But rather let it flow and open to all possibilities. Yes, yes, absolutely. And that's the thing. And I literally now see that the perfect design

6:52of life is cyclical. And I love that word rigid because I think for a lot of us, we can be so stuck in one way or form of being that we don't open ourselves up to the flow of life because life wants to flow through us. It wants to express through us. But if we're so hung up and this is who I am and you limit yourself to that definition, you can't be open enough to receive the next emergence and allow it to come through you. So that's why I really like to stay rooted in the cyclical nature of life and stay open to, okay, what else wants to express itself through me? Oh, now I'm supposed to be building fantastic. Let me focus and build. Oh, now I'm transmitting. Let me focus and transmit. Now I'm playing, I'll play and I'll play for sure.

7:38And I guess looking back because you're in your mid to late thirties now. 37, yes, 37. Looking amazing. And looking back over, there must be many seasons, many versions of yourself as you used to be able to go, that was me then, but this isn't now and it's okay to grow. You don't have to hold on rigidly to who you think you will because coming from Zimbabwe and then moving to England, there's so many cultural things, family things, ancestral things that make us think that's who we are. And there's so much more. Yet there is so much more, absolutely. And one of the things that I know some people struggle with, I always read, say on social media or in college, and people say, oh, she stayed the same

8:25and that's meant to be like an endearing thing or a good thing. And I'm always like, for me, I want you to say I've changed because I want to live out all potentials that exist in me. So I don't ever wanna be the same Nyasha that you imagined from 10 years ago. No, I want you to say, wow, what is this new version? Yes, because I'm constantly reaching for more, genuinely. So I enjoy the metamorphosis, if we can call it that, of life and living. And yeah, I always feel like you go through seasons of being, what is it? The caterpillar, then you become the cocoon, then you butterfly away and then you come back to a cocoon, the caterpillar. It's constantly like that. That's how it is. You're constantly evolving and it's cyclical also. And I love that image because I think so often

9:11we just want to be the butterfly. And sometimes we have to go back and being the cocoon and the period of perhaps, not contraction, because I don't really like that word, but a period of going inwards and searching and consolidating and whatever it is to then come out. And it's okay, all of those, the whole thing is it is a metamorphosis. And it's a constant, it's not just once. That's it, my wings. Oh, yeah. And if you've got the wrong wings, tough beans, right? Exactly, that's the thing. It's you're constantly going through it. And this is again, like why I'm saying, I love how nature has, or life itself is perfectly designed to teach us this fact. There are four seasons in a year and I like working with those seasons. So the Nyasha I am during winter, you cannot reach me.

9:58I'm in hibernation fully. I'm inward, I'm fully inward. But in summer, I'm like, yeah, let's go outside just do what outside wants. I'm more open, I'm more willing, not not willing, but I'm more open and I feel like my energy is more expansive and it has more capacity to engage with other energy. But in wintertime, I'm very much inward. I don't have, my battery is wanting to charge up from my solitude, that's how I am. And so I allow myself that to say, this is my rhythm, this is my life's rhythm and I have to honor it. I can't be on all the time. And that's what's so beautiful, what you just said is I honor my rhythms and I honor how I'm feeling because I think so many of us don't honor because sometimes we don't even see it or we're expected to push through

10:44or it's something that we think and we will talk about this is that that is what you do. You are constantly on, always achieving, always working because that's what life is. So that was, thank you for bringing that up. So let's talk about the stone in your shoe. Yes. And if you could name the stone, what would it be called and what would it be, what would it look like? Oh, let's see how to name it simply. My stone was, if I could say, neglecting and sacrificing Nyasha for her dreams. So who I was being in pursuit of my dreams was everything my dream needed,

11:31everything I had to be for it, but to the detriment of Nyasha. Nyasha was lost on the list to check into. I never checked into Nyasha. So I would literally, I think, yeah, so I was self-sacrificial. I was self-betraying all the time. My yeses were not in alignment with me. They were what I felt people needed from me to get ahead. So to get ahead, I was always happy to take more from Nyasha than I needed to. That was the biggest stone. So yeah, self-sacrificial, to a fault, to a fault. Wow, and that's really interesting because what you said there, which was for many people would be quite confusing, is self-sacrificing Nyasha in pursuit of her dreams,

12:18which is going to oxymoron because you're going for your dreams and yet you're self-sacrificing. So just tell me a bit more about that because that's kind of contradictory, doesn't it? I know. And this is the thing. This is why, for me, I think it took a long time. It took me, I think, almost 20 years because I was one of those young people that I was born knowing what I wanted to do with my life so clearly, but I lived in a culture, in a family. That dream just, what do you mean? We were supposed to become doctors, lawyers, engineers, accountants, something professional, right? And yet I had a passion for the arts. I had a passion for culture and identity from a very young age was something that just,

13:05I just had these questions about life, right? But that wasn't a viable career path at all. Then I always like to say then, thankfully, life said, she's going to relocate to the UK. And when I came to the UK, I saw that arts entertainment is a real business. And I was like, no, look, it's possible. So now, for me, my soul is going, definitely it's possible. But my environment is saying, still it's a no, still it's a no. So I've always felt like I was fighting, I was going against the grain, if I can call it that. And I was always fighting, fighting my family, fighting life, fighting everybody to have and be who I wanted to be. And I was a very expressive teenager. My hair was colorful, that sort of thing. But again, it, so I think a lot of my family,

13:53I was like a problem child. But in reality, I was just more in tune with me. So because for a very long time, I constantly felt like I was fighting, fighting. I think after a while, you start to dim that to say, okay, I want to get up. Because the core of me also is a connected being. I want to have connection. I want to have community around, you know, I want to be loved, absolutely. So there was a slow dimming of my light to stay in the fold, to stay in community with others. But at some point, I think my, the way things evolved in our family, I was able to pursue business and music. So I did a joint honors degree. So that was like our compromise as a family

14:39because I was a little bit of a terror. I did give them a little bit of a fight. Like I fought for my version of a career. And then that sent me, so after three years of my degree, I was able now to do what I wanted to do. I built a music label, I built a record label, I relocated to Zim. So I was technically in my dream. But my patterns of being were people pleasing, approval, desperate for validation. Cause that was the pattern I'd encoded for getting ahead. If I want to have it, I have to think, if this is what I want, but how can I have it with mom's approval? How can I make sure mom still core science or dad core science? So there was always a compromising me for the sake of getting it, but the way to get it was

15:26making it okay for them to say yes. That sort of thing. So... Oh, interesting. So interesting. So you were pursuing your dream, but there were caveats to it. Because you had to please your family. Again, because I come from a very similar family. But there were like five career options available. That was it. And if not, you were letting everybody down. And there's a part of you you want to belong. And so do you think the tree that you were climbing, your dreams, was the right tree? It's just that you were in all the wrong clothes, let that be all the things, wrong shoes. And so the climb was so hard

16:11and you kept falling and hurting yourself and neglecting yourself, kind of climbing the right tree. Would that be a right analogy? Yes, absolutely. I would definitely say that I was definitely on purpose, I could say, for that season. Because again, I think one of the hardest things for, like when I look back and say the curricula my signed up for as a soul was interesting for myself, I was never going to do something that my heart wasn't in. That it just was impossible for me. It was impossible for me. But I didn't co-did struggle as a compromise as and sacrifice as the price you pay to have your dream. So though I was definitely living on in my purpose I was building a career in the industry

16:57I wanted to work in. I was in the countries I wanted to be working from. I was like I was trailblazing in that way. And I felt this is where I'm supposed to be. But in my mind, yeah. So of course I had to struggle. Of course I had to literally I would get out like I would make money but I would, I was the last person to pay myself. Like I would keep reinvesting. I would deplete myself entirely for the thing to happen because in my coding it was, I think deep down it definitely was you matter last because the dream is bigger than you. I don't know. Weirdly. No, that makes perfect sense. And I think so many people believe that striving and achieving can only happen

17:43when you sacrifice by working hard, by giving up things. It's like you have to sacrifice to be successful. It has to be hard. It has to be hard work. So you're right, it's encoded in our DNA. And I don't know about you, but in my family that was definitely encoded in my parents DNA and their parents DNA. And I don't know further cause I don't really know but I'm sure it was encoded and it was just passed down. And I guess eventually you go, hang on, this is not my coding. I'm living someone else's coding. Yes, 100%. And for me, it's interesting because when I finally, what we can call the stone became too much to bear was, I remember just having 48 hours of crying nonstop.

18:29And I was like, okay, let's just look at this. We left the UK. We left our relationship because I was in a four year commitment relationship with someone and I said, you know, I need to pursue Nyasha and this is not long moving in alignment with where I want to go. So I thought, okay, I've left my relationship. I've left the family in the UK. I'm on my own here in this country and I'm breaking into a new, I was from Zimbabwe but I'd been living in the UK for the last 15 years. So it felt like I'm breaking the country again because I'm not trying to actually build a business. I'm around people I don't know who don't really care about me other than the money I bring to their table, literally. We're not friends. We're acquaintances brought together by business. I'm the main investor in this

19:15but really these people are not, they don't really have my interests at heart. So yeah, so I had this day, this weekend where I was just crying and it felt like every single year it's like a stop-start cycle and the common denominator is me. At the end of the day, people are coming in and I'm firing people, I'm firing talent, rebuilding my business from scratch. What is going on? What is going on? And yeah, I just had this coming, this just, we can't continue like this. If nothing changes, we're out. It was like, all of my being was just like, we are done. If nothing changes, we don't wanna continue because this is not what we signed up for. This is not the version of success or building or anything. This is not the vision. This is not the dream we have anymore. So this period where you would literally just cry,

20:01where your body was like, Nyasha, I have to tell you this is not working. We need to, looking back from that point, was your intuition telling you that? Was the stone trying to squeeze your foot to say, Nyasha, you need to change, you need to change? And if so, what did that look like and how long had that stone been hurting your foot, so to speak? Oh, that stone was hurting my foot since and it veered its head in interesting ways, but then I wasn't reading it clearly. I wasn't reading the pain or the signal clearly. Like when I think back to even negotiating with my parents about the career I wanted to do, that's those are the first points where I, so initially before I ended up doing the degree that I did,

20:49I said, okay, fine, I'll do the degree that you want. And then when I finished, I can then go back into doing what I wanna do. So for the first two years of my, once you call it undergrad year, I was doing a degree my parents had chosen and then I couldn't do it anymore. I just was so depressed. I was, and then I stopped going to uni and then I started working full-time. So I had moments where I would compromise entirely and then eventually, not to say burnout, but then you check out, you just check out. So I checked out back then, then when I was in a relationship with this guy, I checked out again. Cause I was like, no, this is not it. This is, I wanna do what I wanna do. Like how are we now trying to make it that I should compromise my whole career

21:35to make our relationship work cause he was presenting an ultimatum. And I was like, no, I'm not gonna do that. And then now I'm in Zimbabwe and every single year I'm almost coming to look ahead with people. So one of my biggest, if I could say shortcomings then was I wasn't always good at advocating for me and making it then negotiable. I was very good at pacifying and compromising. Okay, I can push this back for six months so I can do this and then earn my right to do that. Cause now you know that, oh, Nyasha is playing ball. So therefore let's support her in this way. And that's the thing. I was never good at saying, what are my boundaries? What are my yeses? What are my nos? And what am I willing to do? Even if it means I'm gonna do it myself.

22:20I was very scared of striking out on my own. I was very scared of standing completely in my own shoes. So a lot of the time that stone kept tipping, kept like literally turning on my soul and it kept pushing me to say, dude, who are you? Because each time you come up, you come against someone else, you go, okay, fine, okay, fine, we'll do it your way. And then we'll come back, we'll come back to this. Or okay, fine, we can forget it and then we'll do that instead. So this stone was there for a fair amount of time from your late teens through to a good 20 years when it was telling you, giving you some feedback. Sometimes I'm sure fairly sharp feedback. Oh, sharp. And good 10 years, yeah, from like, I would say 17 to 30 because 30 is when I was like, no, I'm done, I'm done.

23:08So what was the point that you were like, that's it, I'm done. Do you think it was a buildup or do you think it was a moment in time or what do you think happened? It was a buildup, but then the final turning point was this weekend where I was just, I did my whole being, I was just crying nonstop. I couldn't stop crying, I just couldn't stop crying. But the visual I had that day, that weekend was, I had booked out my artists on my label for a month. I'd paid all the expenses, we had booked out an apartment and I had put them in what we called a writing camp, a production camp. But it had taken, I literally had taken my last bit of savings to make this last effort of this lesson make this next project happen.

23:54But I had maybe not calculated things properly but now I was overrun, overspent, and people when it looked like to me, and that's why people were not moving at the pace I needed them to move at, because they don't have the pressure I have. They don't know the reality that I've taken all my life savings at this point to make this thing happen. They don't have that context. And one of my pain points is I'm one of those people who if I want things to get done, they need to get done now, not tomorrow, not next year, right now, speed is my M.O. And when everybody else is moving at, yeah, come buy us speed, whoo! That inferiority is free. So this weekend I just had the realizing that we were now on week three and I still didn't have any solid productions.

24:40And I was realizing that at the end of this week, at the end of the coming week, if we don't have anything concrete in Nyasha, we're not gonna make it to the end of the year and we won't be able to financially sustain what it is that we're running anymore. We're gonna have to close down. And I was thinking, I can't close down because that means I failed and it means I have to go back to the UK and I don't wanna go back to the UK. I don't wanna tell my parents, ah, because everyone is gonna say, we told you, we told you. So this is all culminating into what are you actually doing? And I- That is a lot of parts of Nyasha talking to you. The one that says you can't fail. The one that says I needed to please the person. The one that has said I needed to be good enough. The one that says I need to control everything. The one that says you need to be working hard

25:28to be successful. And all of these parts, getting a piece of you, no wonder you or your body just went, no. We're done. And yeah, and one of the questions at that point was, I looked around and all these people, because I was, everything was paid for and all they had to do was sing songs in a record studio. That's all they had to do in my mind. That's all you have to do. The last thing is just to sing songs. And I was like, Nyasha, these people, you can skin yourself and they'll say, oh, we need some, you can skin yourself to keep them warm. And they'll still say, that's not enough. We need your blood to crunch out thirst. And then you're gonna beat yourself dry. And then they're gonna say, oh, that's not enough. We need some, we need your bones now to make a fire. You literally, that's how visceral it was. I was like, literally. And then after you've given them everything,

26:15they'll be like, ah, there's nothing else to take. Let's go look for a new manager, literally. So what are you killing yourself for? So that was the biggest question that I had to face after to say, what are you doing all of this for? What are you trying to prove? Who are you trying to prove it to? Why are you killing yourself? And I never asked myself that question before. And when you asked yourself that question, what were the answers you got? Oh, the first one that shocked me was, you're not doing it for them. You're not doing it to make their life better. You're doing it for them to see you in a better light. You're doing it for their approval. You're doing it for their validation.

27:02It's not really about their careers. It's how you want them to think about you in their minds about their careers. It wasn't about their success. It was how I looked to them. And I was like, ah, so it's out. That is huge. Not only is that huge, but that is a very difficult thing to come to, your realization yourself, because every part of your ego will be resisting that, right? It will not want you to see that. So for you to see that truth and then accept it, that is what happened when you saw that. I'm getting shivers now. I think what happens when you saw that and what did you got? I cannot tolerate this anymore. I have to change. What did you do?

27:48Oh, yes. So those are one of the first truths of just saying, no, you're not doing this for, you're not doing, this is not in service. It's not nothing beautiful like you want to paint in your head. It's a selfish thing. It's manipulation at best. And I was like, oh, damn it, okay. Why am I doing it then? Because then why do I need them to approve? Like why do I need that from them? Why can I not have it from me? Why do I need them to approve me? And then that's when I was like, okay, something has to change because I know this is not it. I know this is not how my story ends. I'm not gonna accept this as the way Nyasha's story ends. And I was like, okay. Nyasha, can I just ask you a question then? When you said why, did an answer come to you

28:35or was this part of your journey to understand why you needed the validation from them? That was now part of the journey. So in that moment I didn't have the answer immediately but the truth landed cleanly to say, this is not about them. This is your desperation, your desperate need for this annulation. Whatever you're calling in, whatever you wanna package it, it's a you thing and they're just... So it would take maybe a year for me to officially start real conscious inner work, like inner reflective work where I was really doing inner engineering and going, reconstructing my stories to myself. But that was a turning point because I knew that, okay, I'm gonna get up from this weekend

29:22and everything is gonna change because I don't like the version of Nyasha that I am because at that point, I'd never had drunk before but I was now, I started drinking when I was 27 at that point because I was just struggling to cope with my realism. I was now smoking. So I didn't like that version of Nyasha. I was like, this is not me but I'm doing all of this as a way to cope with the stress that I'm manufacturing myself. What the heck is this? That sort of thing. So that was just this resolve to get back to center. I didn't have that language then but I just knew that, okay, I need to get in touch with Nyasha, to really know Nyasha. Why does she need that approval? Why? And that was a good question.

30:08Amazing. So did you then go back from Zim to the UK? Not immediately. So after that weekend, I just had the next six months, I was still in Zim and not just six months. So the next three months from that point, I was, I relocated from the apartment that I was living in the city to a detached property in the suburbs. So I just got a self-contained detached property and I was like, that felt again like an aligned choice. Now I can see that was a very aligned choice. So it allowed me more spaciousness and more time to myself. But then interestingly COVID also then began as soon as I moved into that property. So I was like, thank God for this because I needed a break. I might have never given myself a break.

30:54So COVID, I always say was a gift to me. I know a lot of people lost their lives during COVID and I know it disrupted a lot of things for others and other families. But for me, it was the gift I didn't even know I needed. And that was when I really started taking more time in my mornings to just tune into me because I had never done that since I was born. I'd never really taken time out and slowly things that happening. And then eventually in October, that's when I then moved to the UK and then I stayed in the UK up until now. I was just like, no, let me take this time. This is COVID. I can afford to stay here. I don't have to go back to Zim. My business can still run, but I don't have to physically be there. Let me be where I feel safer

31:40because this is where my family was, where I know I'm loved and I can process what's happening and really get back to myself again. Because yeah, I- No, it was a slow process. And what I'm hearing from you is one of the really key things was time and this time gift that you were given. So because I think so often we're so busy doing and often we do to numb the pain, right? So we stay busy to do it. But that was taken away. Number one, your stone was like, that's it. You have to do something like this. And then you started listening to yourself and it was rituals, time in the morning. Did you do any other more structured meditation or somatic healing or how did that just, yeah,

32:25just talk about all the localities that you used to get your, to get you so that you actually had time to go, who am I and where am I in this world and what is really important to me? Yes, thank you for that question. So my initial healing started when I was still in the Zoom. I was introduced to an African spiritual teacher. So one of the things also in my journey is I had unsubscribed, if I can call it that, from Christianity early on. So I was not a religious person but I had this question of identity and spirituality from a very young age. I just knew there was more to life than dogma and doctrine. I just, my spirit wasn't satisfied

33:11with religion at that time. So when I was in Zoom, one of the core explorations, I always was like, at some point I wanna get reconnected to my ancestors. I wanna get reconnected to my ancestors. I've always had that gnarling. And then all of a sudden in 2020, when I moved to my property, to this detached property, I was introduced again by alignment and chance to this African spiritual teacher and I started my journey with him for ancestral reconnection. And we did about maybe six sessions with him before I then left for the UK. And it took me into the most delicious encounters with my ancestral lineage. And that is for the first time where I realized in a full felt sense

33:56that I am more than a physical body. And that was a big turning point for my sense of identification. It was such a life-affirming, but also, my goodness, there's so much more that you're not tapping into. There's so much more of this existence that you've been closed up from. Now that you're opening up to it, my goodness, can you just imagine what's on the other side? So my appetite for really aligning with spirit was so great because of that ancestral reconnection. For the first time I felt loved, I felt supported powerfully, not just when people just say, oh, I love you, I felt supported powerfully. And then, and I felt God knew me by name.

34:42That was a massive feeling that I never had in my whole life. I was just like, wow. So when I came back to the UK in 2020, I was so resolute. I was like, and I'm again, maybe I'm a Capricorn, I'm a very structured person. The way I go at business is I was like, the way you went about business, we're gonna go about your soul. That's literally what I committed to myself, was like, we're gonna put us on a nice regimen daily. Where you were waking up and you were spending 10, 12 hours on people's business, we're gonna spend 10, 12 hours on our business and our sole business. So I, so I was, so one of the first teachers I came across was Abraham Hicks. I was obsessed with her work.

35:27And I would literally just binge listen. I would be going on walks or just working, listening to it. Then with Abraham Hicks, I purchased some of her books and, or some of their books. And I was reading that. And then I discovered Dr. Mausman Rowe, who is a big teacher on purpose and mission. Why are you here? Why are you here? Because the first question once, who am I? But my next bigger question was, why am I here? Okay, if I'm a spirit, if I'm a soul, why am I here? And through those two, because I think I studied them back to back daily for a year, but I was reading a lot of literature in between because I was now very in tune with spirit. I would sit in my meditation and say, okay spirit, what am I ready to know now? I'm open to receive and we're open to receive. And this was,

36:13when I say I was religious with it, I was. Every single morning I had my morning ritual and my evening, and I also had an evening ritual. And my eight hours in between when I'm alive and open to be with people, I was so disciplined about what I was doing and I was tracking what I was doing. And I was really like working through my habits because I was very determined to quit smoking, quit drinking, quit all those things. So yeah, it was a very structured program. So my modality is where meditation was non-negotiable for me and it's still non-negotiable for me because I feel like for the type of person I am, I just need to wake up centered. I need to move through the day anchored. And if I don't do that, say for four or five days in a row, I start to feel a bit wobbly. I'm like, I'm losing connection with soul.

36:59I'm losing connection with signal. Come on, we need to go back. Do you know what's so interesting what you're saying here is that when you, that you're not just a body, but you're a soul and you're connected to everything and now you've got your intuition to bring in, to play with you. And it's almost like a new muscle. It's like you're going to the gym, right? And you have got to get that intuition because you don't just, we're all intuitive. We're all children of God, we're all connected. But we have to get that muscle working. And it's like anything, if you go to the gym more and you exercise that muscle more, it's going to happen quicker. Or you stay in that, in that. You say they're longer and you stay more centered and then more synchronicities come.

37:44Whereas if you only do it every now, I'm going to meditate every five days. Yeah, you'll go in and out. It's like going to the gym. It's like anything. Your muscle will get as strong as you put in that. Not everyone has the amount of time or probably has the same curiosity but also has the same kind of work ethic as you. So even if you do a small amount, as long as it's consistent. Consistent, yes. That is the key is to know that it's a new muscle that you are working with. That's your training. Yes. And be kind to yourself because when you go to the gym, some days it works. And some days you're just exhausted and tired and whatever. So I think that's a really important thing is to be consistent, to set your goals, to know who you want to be, to read, to be curious.

38:29Because everybody's journey is slightly different in terms of what modality really speaks to you. Yes, yes, 100%. And that part, what you've just said about the consistency, I think that is what it's about. And I think now, more and more, I recognize that it's when you just decide who you are, like I think the biggest flip and flick in my mind was identifying first in spirit, then as a body. No, first in spirit then as a mind and then as a body. That was like my hierarchy of identification. And I would ask myself if as a body, I need to sleep and eat to function. What as a mind do I need to do for me to function at my best?

39:15And what as a spirit do I need to do to function at my best? So I then learned that spirit needs to, I need to breathe better. I need to just breathe better. I need to breathe more. I need to connect to source. And if I'm a mind, I need to read and expand it and imagine and stay curious. What do I need to do as a spirit first, everything? And I just decided that, yeah, breathing is part of the thing because it's expanding your vessel. Then there is connection to spirit, connection to source because that's where I get the directive. And I would always back then imagine that, okay, maybe I am the car, but the navigation is spirit. So when I know, when it gives me the coordinates, okay, we're going to Scotland and this is the route. The sat nav gives me the route.

40:01I'm not going to say, oh no, we shouldn't be turning left here. We should be turning right. No, I've already surrendered that spirit is navigating. But for me to know where it's navigating me to next, I need to keep tapping in. I need to keep coming back to the navigation tool. So that's a way that I trick my mind into this new way of being to say, yeah. And I think for me, the pain and the memory of the version of life outside of alignment to spirit was so vivid. I could feel it, if I close my eyes, I can taste how difficult life was. I can remember that 48 hour weekend where I was just done. I can remember the company I had at the time. I'm just like, no, I don't want to go there.

40:47So if this is me tracking the, in a new direction, I'm going to go all in on this. I'm going to go all in. I love the audience and I can see your deputy and all in person. So what I'm interested in is when you first came to us, I need this validation from other people. As you did all this work, I'm interested to see the parts of you that needed nourishing and nurturing to know that they were loved and okay, like the people pleasing why you were doing that, why you needed the validation. What, of all this work, what came out, what did you learn about yourself? That fundamentally my core wound was, I didn't believe I was good enough. That was the fundamental core wound. And once I remember the day that clarity was like,

41:34oh, it felt so liberating. Oh, this is what we've been doing. Girl, I've got you, you know, still like that. And I remember, so I knew that it was a self worth thing. There was a self esteem and not even self esteem, it was a self worth wound that I was working with. And again, because I'm such a structured person, once I am clear on what it is that I'm working with, I then can look for the right tools that will help rebuild something. Like to your point with the exercise, if you know I wanna get abs, you know what core exercises give you abs, you're not just gonna be doing cardio, you're gonna be doing your sit-ups. So now that I was clear on what I was working with, I was like, what is the best way to build self worth? And I was like, what is, if I was a financer

42:19and I was a banker and I had to build someone's net worth, their investment portfolio, how would I go about it? I wanna use the same principles to go about building my self worth. Literally, that's what I was doing. So yes, I said, definitely there was a program that I did called To Be Magnetic by Lacey Phillips. It was a 12 month program and she had inner child work in there and blocking your inner child and reconnecting with inner child work. She had, yeah, a lot of unblocking work and I self love peace, of course. And an authentic, connecting with your authentic code is what she would call it, your authentic self. And I was like, yeah, I don't really think I've ever moved authentically because I needed to please everybody else. So that's not authentic.

43:05So I was now very much aware of these things. But then the other bigger piece was, I started working out and my workouts were not even from I need to lose weight. That's not the thing that I received. It was just, I wanna make it more consistent. And for me, working out was a way to tell my body I loved her because I had been very rude to my body. I would just get her to do anything I had been very unloving to my body. I was very self-destructive for a three year period when I was in ZIM. So this was my way of saying I love you to her. And I was like, okay, we need to move because the body wants to be moved. The way my spirit now wants nourishment through exhale and through meditation, body wants to be moved. And I committed myself to a 10 minutes a day commitment. I was like, just 10 minutes, just 10 minutes.

43:50You can do yoga, you can do, you can walk, but 10 minutes is all we're asking. So when I first started doing that, I started cycling. And the thing about cycling, which I didn't realize was it feels powerful. When you're going up a hill, you're like having to work against resistance. It feels so powerful and so freeing at the same time. Cause especially when you're going down hill and just, oh my God, I'm out here in the open. So cycling, I started doing beyond 10 minutes. I started going for an hour sometimes, just out on the road. Sometimes I'll do an hour and a half. And now where I started just doing a mile, I was now doing 15 miles of just pure cycling. And that for me was the biggest transformative journey as far as self-worth was concerned. Because the mind had been saying, I'm not good enough, but now the mind started saying,

44:37I can do anything I put my mind to. And I was like, yeah. And then it started saying, I can do anything. I value and decide is worthy of me. And I was like, yeah. So now my body was in agreement. My mind was in agreement. So that idea of not good enough just evaporated. It just evaporated. Like literally, because I had real statistics to back up who I now was. I was a woman who could do anything. That's wonderful that you told that story because I think it is so important that we do have these three parts of ourselves. And our mind we think is in control, but our conscious mind has what? 95% of the real estate. 95% is in your subconscious, which is all these things buried in you,

45:24in your body and your feelings. And once you saw that call, when you knew what you were working with, you could go in and really focus in on that. And I think for so many women, the feeling of I'm not good enough is so common. It's just so common. I think our parents said once, a teacher said a friend, and then you start believing and then you start validating yourselves, correct? But I love the fact that you broke it into those little things. 10 minutes a day. It's not like I'm going to run a marathon. I'm telling you I love you. I'm doing 10 minutes. So 10 minutes of reading spiritual stuff or just meditating or just being in nature,

46:10it's just telling your spirit, I love you. And it's little things. This wasn't just a leap you woke up one day and went, oh, that's it. This was a journey. Gradual, yeah. Gradual and you layer upon layer and the onion was unpeeling and you saw parts of yourself. And as the onion's unpeeling and you're seeing all the parts that needed nourishment and love, the other things are building and your mind is building. So it's working in both ways. The roots are getting deeper and the tree is blossoming and it has to almost happen at the same time for sustainability. I love that. So now you've come, you've done this work. Where are you now? And how did it live differently now that all of this has been done?

46:57Oh, so one of the biggest things also was there's a book I read called The Anteidun Soul and that book spoke to me so deeply because I was at the earlier parts of my journey having this disconnection of who I had been and who I felt like I was being summoned to next. And I had this guilt of, oh, but I can't just leave this. So we sometimes when spirits start summoning you towards the next destination, I think a lot of us have that dissonance in us to say, how do I just let go of what I've built so far? How do I just switch almost like switch overnight and say, I'm no longer this person, I'm not that person. But that book really was liberating and freeing and empowering to me to say, that is the whole point. That is actually the whole point. I learned to be a free and tethered being

47:46because that's like I said earlier, that's how you stay open to the next iteration or to the next chapter that life wants to move with you into. So one of the biggest shifts I had done and I feel like this is probably how life works is you have to let go to receive the next thing. So I had archived my talent agency and then eventually I decided, I'm no longer a talent manager. So I just said, I'm no longer an entertainment executive. I no longer work with musicians in this way. So I completely closed that down. And then by then I kept my music distribution side because that's the catalog I'm happy to keep growing. And I officially closed down my physical operations in ZIM, so my home that I had there,

48:32I packed it up, I closed it down. And I was like, okay, I'm in an island situation right now, I wanna be open and I'm in transition. I don't know what's next. And so whenever people are like, so what do you do now? I'm like, I'm just open. I'm just open to life. I'm in transition. I don't know. There's nothing I'm doing right now. I'm just healing in my cave and listening to life. And it was very uncomfortable at first because there's a pressure that I think we sometimes have where you feel you need to be identified by what we do, not who we are, a lot of the time. And yeah, people were like, that doesn't make sense. You need to be doing something. I'm thinking, no, I know I might eventually something may come, but right now there's nothing. I'm run down and I'm allowing myself to rebuild and I'm okay with that.

49:17I'm at peace with that decision. But it wasn't until... So I was gonna say, that's incredibly profound because saying something like that society and people around you doesn't accept that easily but to be so aligned and so grounded that you could own it and say it and go, it's okay. I don't need to control where I'm going next. Let's see what unfolds. And that does come when you do the work. When you do the work. So that sense of peace and that sense of safety and belonging and the universe has got my back. I will be fine. I will be fine. Yes, 100%. So just before we finish off, for the message for the woman listening, you've told the story. You started off saying she could do anything.

50:03She's, I can't remember the words you use but you're capable of so much more than you ever imagined, you know, the universe. What would you like to leave her with? If she's in the same position as you, she's somethings off. I'm not listening to myself. I want to align myself, feel more spirit, not worry that I'm not following someone else's path. What would you say to her? Oh, like you've rightly noted for my journey, it wasn't a one day thing. It's a collection of seasons that brought me to this truth now. To just say you have to fully allow yourself

50:49the beautiful experience that is life when you move connected to all that you are, to all that you are. And yes, the programming is such that everybody else is tuned into limitation. But the infinite being that you are, the eternal being that you are, and that's why for me, who I am begins at spirit. It doesn't begin with Nyasha, the 3D black African girl. No, that's just the personality and the packaging I gave myself in this incarnation. I genuinely don't see myself as a 3D being. I am an infinite eternal being. And the more we allow ourselves to say, what if that is truly who I am? Just allow yourself that beautiful imagination.

51:35What if that is truly who I am? And then devote yourself to exploring that possibility and nourishing that possibility and almost like strengthening that reality because that is truly who you are. Everything else is we're here to play, but then the play can only become fun if you are moving from the truth of your being, not from the limited projection, but the truth of that being. I love that. What if, to ask that question, what if and get curious and be open and then nourish it? I love it, devotion, nourishment and strengthening. So first question would be, what if that was true?

52:24Give that some thought. I love that. Being curious to me, courageous and curious are two things I find such a companion to me as well. So anyway, we have a question that we ask all our guests. If today was your last day on earth, what would you do and why? Oh, let me imagine my last day. Hold on, why would I do and why? Oh, oh, huh.

53:09That's a beautiful question. I'm like, hold on a minute. Why would I date the day was my last day? I would probably, I would have woken up super early if I knew today was my last day. I'd have woken up super early. I'd have woken up at four and because that allows me the spaciousness to process myself and then write a beautiful letter to humanity and then another letter to my family, right? Just to make sure that it's not that what I honestly, because I want to make sure by the time I leave this earth that the transmission of radical alignment

53:54and infinite possibility is not lost on people, that they understand that this is what my life came to transmit. And yeah, just to remind them, just to leave a letter that reminds and leaves people and the beautiful knowledge of that. And then I'll probably go to the river, commune with my spirit guides. I would swim for a bit because I love the water so much and come back, shower and if possible, stay in my little cave for the rest of the day, honestly, because I'm not a big, I love solitude.

54:40So after transmitting, I'll just come in, tune in and rest and just allow life to take me to the next destination. I'm like, all right, I'm open, I'm ready, let's do this. I can just see how passionate you are about getting this idea of infinite possibility out to people. I can really feel it. And what you've given me in this conversation today is just what if to really ask those questions and to really tune into this infinite possibilities and this beautiful life and to ask those questions. So thank you so much for your time today. Thank you for being so honest. Thank you for your stories. Thank you for your vulnerability. Thank you so much, Debbie.

55:25And I pray that I was coherent enough and I didn't waffle too much. But then I feel like there's something I didn't quite land on because the question you asked about where my at in this chapter and I was tracking where I was then when I said I stopped everything. I untidied that from a lot. But then today aligned wealth is where I'm at. So it's this thing that I'm now beaming out, working with founders and working with women who are ready to live on purpose. And I love to say we are championing a new era of because in my first incarnation as a businesswoman I was working with musicians and monetizing art. And now I say I want to monetize essence. That's what I want to monetize

56:11and that's what I'm excited to transmit. So I want to work with women and I am working already with women who are devoted to taking the time to say who am I? Why am I here? And then when they have that clarity, let's build your engine around that and beam that to the world. So that's where I'm at today. Beautiful. Thank you for sharing in what we'll do is we'll have all your social links below. So anybody who's listening who wants to reach out to you all the links will be below the podcast. Thank you. You know, it was just such a pleasure having you on today. So for the person listening just notice what stayed with you today. Perhaps it was a part that felt familiar. Maybe there was something that was quite the uncomfortable and that's usually where the truth is sitting.

56:58So just get curious. Thanks for listening.