Ep. 01: Intro to the Podcast ‘From Trauma to Purpose’

Transcript:

Hey everyone. This is Christine Reffo. I’m your host today for the show From Trauma To Purpose. I am so excited you’re here. Thank you for tuning in for episode number one, the inauguration! Everything starts here.

The time with you today I want to use to set the scene so that you know, what to expect back from the conversations that are going to happen in this space. What’s in it for you, what you can learn and what you are genuinely curious about contributing to.

You know, I want this to be an interactive podcast. I love to hear from you, what you’ve taken away from this show, what you want to share with me. If you’ve had a similar experience, if you;ve had an aha moment, if something didn’t sit well with you, you can always, and I encourage you to reach out to me and become part of the conversation that is happening in this space.

It’s about, for me, creating a community with you and with everyone else who is interested in the same topics; is going through a similar experience. And so we can all support each other and learn together. So the email, you can always reach out to me with is podcast (at) christinereffo (dot) com and I encourage you to use it. I would love to read from you.

So today I am setting the scene, as I said, and I want to start with the title “From Trauma To Purpose”. Why is it the title of this podcast?

Well, first of all, for me, it’s about the journey. I see trauma to purpose as a journey that happens where, from where we start, you know, we have trauma. It’s in the human experience that things get difficult or rough, or don’t go as we expected them to go.

And you know, it’s kind of funny. We see life as children or even teenagers or young adults….we have this linear idea of how life is going to go, of – you know – you know, like, okay, then I go to school, maybe I go to university, then I get a job. And, you know, then I fall in love and et cetera, et cetera. And we just see this linearity of it, but something comes in and derails us, and we are surprised by it because we didn’t expect it. But the truth is that the human experience is full of these derailing moments and we need these, derailing moments to actually set us on our path. So what we may experience, and we do experience as trauma and traumatic events, you know, whether they are abrupt and immediate like loss or an accident or disease to, you know, more prolonged and enduring trauma like abuse, whether it’s, you know, in childhood or a relationship or, you know, um, even just the corporate work environment, when it doesn’t suit you or there’s a bullying, you know, this is like the more prolonged, traumatic stuff that can happen to us.

It hurts and it can change the course of our lives.

Now at first it may seem that it’s in a bad way, right? It’s a trauma, it’s bad. We feel all the bad feelings and it makes us really uncomfortable. But then through the healing of it, through finding our way through the darkness and coming out on the other side, we actually learn a lot about ourselves. We change who we are. We gain a deeper understanding of ourselves and of how life works in general. You know, this whole idea of know thyself, the deeper you go within yourself, the deeper you understand, not just yourself, but all of humanity, because we’re all the same and we’re all connected. So through this healing journey, you become someone that you weren’t before. Through the trauma, you gained skills, you gain insight, you gain wisdom.

When we heal trauma and we heal the emotions from the event, then we actually remain with the lesson and the wisdom that comes from that same event.  When we still have all the emotions around it, we are clouded by the fear, by the shame, by the guilt, by the anger. We are fully clouded and we can’t extract the golden nuggets from the events that we have gone through. And some will take years to go through and some will take, you know, days or weeks, but it remains that when we can heal it, there is a wisdom in it. And with that wisdom, we are also able to help other people. We also have certain convictions or values that come out of this period, which we then want to live. And we are less, you know, um, tolerant of a life that doesn’t align with who we are because we’ve come through so much stuff. And, you know, we are, you know, this new person emerging and we want a different life for ourselves than the one before the trauma.

And that happens to so many people, you know, we, we go through something, we hate, we heal it and then we realize that there was a meaning for it. And that’s when you’ve truly healed is when you know that there was a meaning to it. There was a reason why I went through that and now I can turn this seemingly horrible event or the seemingly horrible years that I went through. I can turn them to, towards something productive towards something, good, take the bad and turn it into something good. And then use everything that you’ve gone through to help others who are still going through maybe the same you are going through, or potentially it’s actually something entirely different, but it’s because you got more connected with yourself and who you truly are that you now know what it is you want to do to contribute in the world.

So that is kind of the arch, the journey that I have experienced myself and that I’ve seen in a lot of other people who have gone from trauma to then heal to then actually living in their purpose. And that is the title of this podcast. And as I said, in the introduction, it really is about success, meaning and healing.

So the healing we’ve discussed, the meaning is the meaning we actually draw from the trauma we’ve gone through and the highest, most beautiful way of drawing meaning from it is if we turn it towards something positive. And if it, if, um, we really understand that it happened for us, everything that happened to us wasn’t to us, it was for us, it was for our highest good.

It was this bootcamp for our soul to grow and qualify for the tasks that it still wanted to, you know, get done in this lifetime.

So that is, um, what I mentioned in the introduction and the other thing is success. And why do I put that in there? Well, first of all, for me, success is very personal. I used to hold this idea that success was only monetary success and career and status. And, um, it did lead me down the path of burnout. But with time I have been able to come away from that value or that only value to understand that success is really a lot of things. It’s a life lived on your terms, true to yourself, with happiness, with joy, with lightheartedness, and just living everything that, you know, you kind of feel like you came here to live and that you wanted to experience.

And for me, that also includes money because money allows me to do all of that. So success for me also comes in the form of entrepreneurship. And that’s why I will be speaking about this in this podcast as well, because, usually, not always, but usually, when you want to live your purpose and you want to create a certain impact, especially if it’s a big impact in the world, you have to go through intrepreneurship because of the unlimited impact you can create. There is the way that you can design your own lifestyle. If you just want to really live on your own terms and, you know, work remotely, work less in more flexibility, more in flow and in tune with your own nature.

And that just isn’t possible in the old ways. I call it the old ways, you know, the corporate ways, the nine to five, if you’re lucky, but you know, I used to also work and you probably do too if you’re in a consulting or investment banking, it actually ends up being like seven in the morning till midnight, most of the days. So those to me are the old structures that aren’t working anymore because they’re not allowing us to live our best life. They’re not making us happy. They’re not giving us the freedom to live, to live and enjoy life, essentially, you know, to focus on our relationships, to focus on our health, to focus on our spirituality, to focus on our bodies, to focus on, um, you know, any, any of the things that make life worth living, because it’s too much time at work for a capped income potential.

And with entrepreneurship, you can shape the way you work in a way that works for you. Plus you can create an income that probably on a monthly basis, maybe even on a daily basis is more than you would have made in a whole year at your previous job. That is the reality for a lot of people who are in it. And on top of that, you enjoy it. You actually love going to work because it’s your passion. It’s the same thing. And there’s none of that Sunday evening dread that I used to remember, even from school days, because it’s truly what you have created, like you love what you have created for yourself. So for me living your purpose and entrepreneurship comes so close together, which doesn’t mean that you have to be an entrepreneur. It also doesn’t mean that, you know, you maybe necessarily want to be an entrepreneur or that you want a massive impact.

I would say that a lot of the lessons, a lot of the learnings that we’re going to discuss will apply to you if you’re an employee, it will also apply to you if you are, for example, raising children at home or you’re traveling, and you’re not even considering whether you want to work. You’re just going to learn something that applies to life. It’s a conversation about life and how to live your best life, whatever that definition of success and your best life is for you.

So is this podcast for you?

Well, I hope from what I’ve just said, it is! You know, we’re going to talk about trauma, healing, your purpose, what you came here to do, what fills you with joy and then also how you’re going to monetize that and bring that into life in the form of mainly entrepreneurship.

And you know, who are you at this point?

Well, for me, when I thought about who could possibly want to listen to this, instead of just saying, okay, this is me, you know, five years. I also thought, you know, it’s essentially for you, if you are looking for more meaning, if you feel like this can’t be everything, this is not the life I thought this would be, it’s boring. It’s like ticking off boxes. It doesn’t feel alive. There’s something more, or you’re going through your spiritual awakening and you’re like full on purging all your stuff, you know, just more and more triggers, more and more stuff. And it’s so hard and you’re suffering. Then this is also for you. I want to give you the light at the end of the tunnel and also a whole lot of shortcuts and how you can go through that period of your spiritual awakening more efficiently and effectively. I feel you.

So this is also for you, if you are a budding healer coach, a lightworker, if you are in the alternative wellness space, you know, you’re like a feng shui or Ayurveda coach or, um, you’re a mindset coach, like all these cool topics that are related to healing, serving, supporting people.

You are my people!

Um, and you know, you’re maybe also exhausted from the traditional ways, you know, from the traditional medical field, from hearing that you cannot heal from dealing with, you know, a lot of problems. Maybe, you know, mentally or physically that are really keeping you stuck, or maybe you’re even stuck in a corporate job and you really want out, but you don’t know what you want.

And that is such a typical, a typical situation I was in. I’ve seen so many people be in, like, you just don’t know what you want. And so you, you can’t, you feel like you cannot get out of the corporate world because you, you literally would step into nothing. Cause you, you just don’t know what you want. You don’t know what lights you up. You don’t know what you could sell or what you could do to make money.

So this is also for you and you will hear me speak about spirituality and energy. Sometimes if this is not your thing, skip those episodes, or listen to them with an open mind, be willing to accept a new opinion or also to reject what doesn’t suit you. That is also very important. Everything that is being said, you know, take in what supports you and let everything else just, you know, just pass right by you.

Um, yeah.

So this is what we’re going to do together. And I’m really excited. I would dare say that you can consider this podcast, your gateway to really living your best, most authentic life being on purpose healing from what you said thought was maybe always going to be with you, but actually really healing from it, getting through it in a more effective and faster way. And then with what you’re finding on the other side, creating impact and income, and just having so much fun with it, you know, just really styling your life in a way that just feels so juicy.

Um, yeah, I’m, I’m just so pumped. I’m really excited for this and in the next episode, what I’m going to do, and I hope you enjoy this idea is, um, instead of just telling you who I am in this monologue and trying to sound all professional and hype myself off, which I’m not very good at, but I also just don’t enjoy that. It’s very artificial.

I found someone who is brave enough to interview me in a way that I in the future will interview other people who have gone through the same journey of trauma to purpose. Um, so I will subject myself to the same questions and feel like this is the coolest way to introduce myself to you. So you really understand, you know, what, I’ve gone through, what my beliefs are, what I have learned, what I would have wished I had done differently and all these kinds of things. So the next episode will be an interview with me as the interviewee and in the future, you will hear interviews with a similar set of questions with people who’ve gone through that journey and are now living their absolute best life. So excited and so glad that whatever happened to them did happen because it taught them what they really wanted to do in life and together.

We’re also going to dig into all these topics, like, you know, forgiveness, acceptance, why I need to do that and how I can heal faster and in entrepreneurship, you know, how does trauma like panic attacks, anxiety manifest when you actually want to put your face out there into the world and, you know, have an opinion, or why is it that it’s so difficult for you to ask for money or raise your prices? All of this has the root in essentially what comes from traumatic experiences and from, you know, your self-belief that is keeping you feeling like unworthy or not good enough and you know, imposter syndrome. So we will talk about all those things and I’m super excited.

So I hope you’re going to tune in again, especially for the next episode, which will be the interview where I will be introducing myself via a whole set of questions that will give you a pretty steep and deep insight into who I am and how I’ve come to this place here to be speaking to you through this podcast.

So thank you so much for being here with me. I’m very excited to meet you again in the next episode, and do use the email address podcast (at) christinereffo (dot) com to let me know what you think about this, what topics you would love to hear and talk about together. And then we’ll go from there, live with purpose you guys see you soon.