Show Notes:

In this episode we dive into the concept of life purpose, what that means, and how to uncover and pursue it with support from Nature and the flower essences.

We talk about the Japanese concept of Ikigai to look at the different pieces that come together to inform an overall sense of purpose, how to center ourselves, listen to our inner wisdom, and embody the guidance coming in from higher realms. We bring in essences to help with that, to give us the strength to forge ahead and permission to spark our creativity in this process.

Audio:

FEP69 Finding Your Purpose with Support from Nature

In this episode we dive into the concept of life purpose, what that means, and how to uncover and pursue it with support from Nature and the flower essences.

Video:

Flower Essences discussed during the show:

• Hornbeam – Bach
• Rosemary – FES
• Sapphire Ruby – Alaskan
• Blue Corydalis – Flora of Asia
• Wild Oat – Bach
• Buttercup – FES
• Shooting Star – FES
• Cerato – Bach
• Sage – FES
• Diamond – Alaskan 
• Iris – FES

Show Transcript

Rochana Felde: [00:00:40] Hi everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. Today, Kathleen and I are diving into the concept of life purpose, what that means, how to uncover it, and how to pursue it with support from nature, from our friends the flower essences. And I love this topic. It’s something that I think about all the time and I can’t wait to dive in.

But before we do that, I’d love to check in with you, Kathleen, and see what you’ve been up to and tell people what we’ve been up to at the School for Flower Essence Studies.

Kathleen Aspenns: [00:01:17] Yeah, I’m really delighted because this last month I really enjoyed being a guest on The Plant Spirit Podcast with Sara Artemisia, and I was sharing how flower essences help our animal companions. This is one of my favorite topics. You might even hear in the background, I have two new little birds in my office, and so they’re peep-peeping away. I love animals and love sharing my life with them, and I love helping people share more harmonious lives with their animals as well. So we’ve also put up a promotion on the Canine Care: Bach Flowers for Dogs course on Flower Essence Studies. 20% off with the code WOOF20 until September 1st. Check it out. I hope you enjoy it. It is a delight to share some really simple, easy ways to help your dog. And you, Ro, I know you’ve been very busy. We’ve both been busy getting ready for the Flower Essence Practitioner Training.

Rochana Felde: [00:02:17] Yeah, we are having another cohort this year. We had one earlier in January and February, and there is so much interest from people wanting to go through this program that we have added another one for 2024. And live sessions begin on September 13th, and there’s some self-study modules that will open in late August, so it’s coming up. We currently have an early bird discount, so we wanted to make sure that you knew about that because it ends on August 2nd. And if you register by then, you can save $300. So that’s a great discount. And it is a big program. It’s led by Ruth Toledo Altschuler, our partner at the school. And then Kathleen and I also are part of that. And it’s just such a rich program. So you check out. You can learn more about it on our website, floweressencestudies.com, and yeah, give it a whirl. Look at the information about it and see if that’s something that you might be interested in.

And that leads us to our topic today because is flower essence therapy something that you might want to pursue as a practice, as a vocation, as something that you might want to even just do for yourself and others? Is there a passion? If you’re listening to this podcast, you might have some passion around flower essences and learning more about them. And when I think about life purpose, this is one of the reasons it’s so interesting to me and my life is because I used to think, gosh, what’s wrong with me that I don’t know it? And what’s different about all these people who know from a young age that they want to grow up to be a doctor or a lawyer or a firefighter? And I just tried a lot of things, and that is a really good way to figure out what your purpose is. But what does that even mean? What is purpose? In the healing and spiritual and say new age or self-development community, I feel like there’s this idea that we have to find this higher calling, this altruistic calling, or we’re not good to do for our living or we’re not a good person, right? And so there’s this weird kind of pressure to find something that you can present that way. And I have learned and I fell into that trap for a while as well and felt like, well, maybe I’m not as good of a person since I don’t have that. And this journey that I’ve been on has led me through this garden of vocations and experiences and choices and knowledge that now I feel I have a lot of thoughts on it, and the term life purpose seems to even just fall short.

So I love the Japanese term, Ikigai and the whole concept of that because if you haven’t heard of it, it combines these terms, Iki, which means alive or life, and Gai, which means benefit or worth. And I even have an alternative. I look at it even a little bit different from what the diagrams show, but if you Google it, you’ll see the diagram. And the diagram is four circles overlapping, which take what you love, what you’re good at, what you can be paid for, and what the world needs. And in each of those, the center of that is supposedly your Ikigai, your purpose, your reason to get up in the morning, what your purpose for life is. And the intersection of what you love and what you’re good at is your passion. The intersection of what you’re good at and what you can be paid for is your vocation. The intersection of what you love and what the world needs is your mission. And what the world needs intersected with what you can be paid for is your vocation. I might have said one of those things wrong, so I’ll put the diagram and a link to it in the show notes.

But what does the world need? That’s a huge question, and I mean, what are we doing here? And I like to bring it down. And when I work with some of my business clients, I bring it down into, what does your client need? And that can help you develop your business offerings. But when you’re looking at your purpose, you can narrow that focus even more because what does your family need? What do you need? What do the people around you need? I like to bring it down into that focus and go from there. And that’s where we can start to use the flower essences to center yourself into identifying what’s inside of us that we can bring forward because of this life purpose, it’s not something out there in the ether that we have to go find. It’s within us already. And I feel like the whole journey of finding it is the journey of finding yourself. So that’s why it’s such a deep concept to me.

Kathleen Aspenns: [00:08:49] I’m listening and resonating with pieces of that. The one that I’m seeing the most because I’m looking at it more from the aspect of somebody coming to for flower essence assistance on this topic. And there can be a lot of reasons why we don’t have a connection to the purpose, like this sense of why I’m here, why am I even here? I get up in the morning and why am I even here, I did a little research because the Ikigai concept was not one that I have– I haven’t read a book on it or I don’t know much about it. So I was doing a little research ahead of time because I know you like to bring this in and just looking at one of the origins of the research was looking at these folks in Okinawa who have long lives, but they engage in their hobbies, they engage in the world, in their community for a very long, extended life. They don’t just retire and sit and watch TV.

And that concept of, what are you drawn to? It doesn’t even necessarily need to be something that is going to shake the world. It’s like, do you like knitting? That’s pretty great, and that can give you some joy. And that may or may not be what you do for a living. But the origin is of connecting to these parts and these places of your life that are bringing you some joy and some delight and some reason for living. So there’s a long path to go down, and not everybody’s path leads to this kind of imaginary dream job. Most people don’t have that imaginary dream job which all their needs are fulfilled and they live happily ever after. Most of the time we’re following these little tracks one footstep at a time. And for me, that’s the process of uncovering the purpose is to just follow that little breadcrumb trail of, I mean, this is your purpose is to get up this morning and reach out to do something that draws you, something that attracts you, something that brings you life and joy. Am I getting your concept as well?

Rochana Felde: [00:11:05] Yeah, I think that’s exactly it. I think that the idea is that it might not be your vocation, and that’s fine, but you do want to find what helps motivate you to get out of bed in the morning. I mean, that is the first step really. And once you get past that and you do want to embark on, say, a vocation or a profession or a business or a practice, what I see is, and this comes from having the sort of mindset of having a lot of good– I have a lot of good ideas for businesses. I could quickly go in a million different directions or think that something is what I should be doing because maybe I did it well or I was good at it. And so that is not necessarily true. Just because you’re good at something, it doesn’t mean that it’s what you should be doing. And conversely, some people think that if it’s a challenge for them, it’s something that they should do because there’s this sort of, oh, that means I’m here in this incarnation, in this lifetime to work on this because it’s awful for me, and that is not necessarily true either. But having something that drives you internally through the challenges, that’s it. That to me is that thing that keeps us going and that thing that is our purpose, that drives our mission, that we have enough passion to do the hard things that we don’t like because we love it, because we love the overall thing. I’ve heard the analogy of surfers who love surfing but swimming out there is a real drag. And so you have to love it more than the challenging part will stop you.
And I think that is a perfect analogy for being in your own business because there’s always going to be things, or even working for anyone else, I mean, there’s always going to be the parts of the job that you don’t love, and yet, there’s something about the rest of it, or there’s something about the mission of it, or there’s something about the way it helps other people that drives you and keeps you going. And so I think that’s a really interesting thing to keep in mind.

And I want to mention too, the other part about what you’re good at, you’re not going to be good at anything right away. So you have to try things. You have to get out there and just try things. And it takes a while. It takes a couple of years to get really good at something. You’re never going to start out that way even if you have– well, I mean, you might have natural talent, but to really become an expert, you still have to do it for a while. And that will tell you.

So how do we navigate this? Let’s say somebody is trying to go inside or connect to their higher purpose and what flower essences can help in that direction keeping in mind all of the context that we just talked about? You might have an experience where you do get direction from a higher consciousness. I mean, that could happen. But really, it’s about turning inside. So let’s talk about some essences for that, for getting grounded and just looking within.

Rochana Felde: [00:35:58] I love it so much because there is such a deeper aspect of it in helping us to become the creative act, so not just do something creative but become creativity and release that innate creativity that is within us because we grow up our entire lives blocking it. We are taught in this society, and I have so many examples. And one was even just being told, you can’t make a living with that, and even if you weren’t told that specifically, I remember my dad making not-so-subtle jibes about my mother who graduated with an art degree and look what good did that do basically was kind of the not-so-nice cut with that, but that really, it made such a big impact on my mind. And when I was quite young, I think I had a professional astrology reading, and I have all of these indicators in my chart about creativity and my sun being in that house and all of this. And I’ve been asked multiple times by different astrologers, why aren’t you creating art? This is really important for you, this is really important in your life, you need to be doing this. But then again, there is that need.

And what I learned by sitting with Iris is that it’s bringing creativity into every moment of your life, everything that you do. It’s not about creating a painting. It’s about tapping into creation. It’s difficult to articulate. But I felt such a strong depth to this plant, which I hadn’t before as a flower– I thought, oh, I’m just so creative, I don’t need Iris. I think that there’s little thought– when we learn about flower essences, there’s little thoughts like that that will pass through our minds, and I’ll admit that. And there’s things that we might overlook because the one- or two-sentence description of them doesn’t quite hit, or it’s more superficial than what it really is. And I really encourage anyone, everyone, to try Iris for a little while and see how that changes things in their life. It’s like, what did you do when you were cooking dinner? Did you throw an extra spice in there and see what that was like? I mean, creativity is part of our DNA, all of us as human beings, and we could do so well to explore that and bring it back into our lives. It doesn’t matter what you do and what you’re doing. You could be programming in code, and there’s still creativity. There’s still an element of creativity in there. You don’t have to relegate it to this left brain, right brain, artistic versus logical, whatever. Just try Iris and see where that brings you.

Kathleen Aspenns: [00:40:10] That’s a beautiful note. Thank you for sharing your story with Iris. I didn’t know that you had such a strong personal connection to that plant/essence.

So, dear listeners, what essences come to your mind for this topic? What essences have helped you connect to your life purpose? Where are you at in your process? We would really like to hear. Feel free to reach out to us in all the places. You can put comments on YouTube. You can write us hello at floweressencestudies.com. We really want to hear from you. We really enjoy sharing this time with us together that we all gather to share our love of flower essences and really appreciate your interaction and engagement. It’s really fun for us to know what you’re up to and where you’re at in the world of flower essence therapy. So hopefully, you’ll join us again soon. If you’re ever so kind, you’ll scroll to wherever you are in your podcast app and throw a few stars our way. A review would be super sweet, and then think about sending this podcast to somebody that you know who’s wrestling with their life purpose. We look forward to seeing you again really, really soon. Take good care.

Rochana Felde: [00:41:38] Bye-bye now.

Kathleen Aspenns: [00:41:44] This podcast is meant for educational and entertainment purposes only. We are not physicians and do not diagnose, prescribe, or treat medical conditions. Please consult with your own physician or healthcare practitioner regarding the suggestions and recommendations made by the hosts and guests of The Flower Essence Podcast.