471: How To Step Into Your Purpose Through Embracing Change with Jason Feifer

The point of it is not to go into something knowing what you're doing. The point of it is to go into it committed to figuring out what success looks like to your friend who not just to your friend, but to your friend as a stand in for everybody who feels that right? Imagine, just imagine how much better the thing that you're making will be after you rip it apart 5 to 10 times how much better it will be and therefore the better service that you're providing. All the people who are going to read this book, you don't want to give them your first draft. Why would you want to give people just the first thing that plopped out of your mouth? That's not good enough for people. You need to I think about this all the time, I and you, Sahara. We are asking for the most valuable resource that people have, which is not their money, it's their time. And we better make sure that if someone is going to give us some precious fraction of their lives, that we are investing our own time first in making sure that their time is well spent. And that means that we don't just blow through a thing and then put it out into the world because we don't want to do it again. We instead must step back and think, what do I owe to the people who are going to spend time with me? And what I owe them isn't perfection, because that's not possible. But it is the product of me being humble enough to know that the very first idea that I have for them cannot possibly be the best one.

Welcome back to the Highest Self Podcast. My name is Sahara Rose and this is a place where we discuss what makes you your soul's highest evolvement. If you don't know me yet, I am an author. I've been hosting this podcast for over five years now. And what I really love is to take spirituality and make it modern, fun, grounded, relatable, and actually serve the needs of today's people. Because I feel so often in spirituality we can completely bypass this reality. And the truth is, we are here in human form for a reason, and we are all creators and creatrixes here to live our purposes and raise the vibration of the planet through joy. So this conversation is such a beautiful one because I brought someone on the podcast who you normally would not hear on a spiritual podcast. And this is Jason Pfeiffer, the editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine. So we had some friends in common. And also I'm a founder of two businesses, Dharma Coaching Institute and Rose Gold Goddesses. So being an Entrepreneur has been a huge part of my spiritual journey as well. And what I found often missing in the spiritual conversation is just the amount of work and energy that it takes to take any vision off the ground. And I meet a lot of people with beautiful hearts and important messages and great ideas to share. But often what's missing is that action piece, that fire, that energy, and taking things off of the ground and into the world. So I recently read Jason's new book, Build for Tomorrow, and I loved the examples and the stories that he told about how throughout history, we have been so afraid of change. You know, we've been afraid of everything from the waltz. Yes, Literally, waltz dancing people used to think was like, dangerous and bad for your body. He's going to tell that story. We were afraid of novels, apparently. It was bad for women's health. We were afraid of riding bicycles, cars, radios, the list goes on. And it was a really healthy reminder, even for myself, because often, again, in the spiritual echo chamber, we regurgitate the same kinds of conversations. And while a lot of the fears can be based in emblems of truth. Right. There are shadow aspects of social media and technology, and we don't know everything. What we can see from looking at history is we've always been afraid of the unknown. And often that very thing that we were once so deeply afraid of, whether it was a radio or the waltz or a novel, ended up not being so bad. So in this conversation, Jason shares with us an array of different stories and examples throughout history of how change has actually been, what has opened us up for the reality that we're in right now, and how we can allow ourselves to also be open to the possibilities of new things. And I also asked him the question of the other side, because a lot of us are spiritual wayshowers here to build bridges from our unique demographic into a more high consciousness way of being. And so we're often the change that people are afraid of, you know, our families, friends, colleagues. There's a lot of resistance often when we start talking about spirituality. So I ask him, well, what do you do if you're on the end of the change that people are resistant towards you and what you have to share? And he answers that question as well. So this is a really great, refreshing conversation. He has such valuable insight and I know you're going to love it. So without further ado, let's welcome Jason Pfeiffer to the Highest Self podcast. Okay, if you come to my house, you're gonna do two things. One, you're gonna pet Chubby because he needs to say hi to every single person. And then two I'm gonna show you my cabinet of Anima Mundi herbals because I am proud of it. My mucuna, my rose, my golden chai. It is also beautiful and delicious and sacred. I am really obsessed with their products. They are on a mission to bring ancient remedies to the modern Founded by Costa Rican herbalist and dear friend of mine Adriana Ayales who has been on the podcast and taught in rose Gold goddesses before. They use eco friendly packaging in recyclable glass or biodegradable bags. It's all made in the US with certified organic herbs and wild and sustainably harvested plants in a vegan and gluten free kitchen. And most importantly their products contain zero fillers, binders and flow agents. These are pure botanical powders which honestly it's very hard to find on the market. So like I mentioned, some of my favorites are the mucuna and rose. They're also delicious. Whenever I'm buying a gift, this is what I get for people. And you can get it for 15% off by heading over to animamundiherbals.com and using coupon code Sahara15 for 15% off. Again, that's animamundiherbals dot com with code Sahara Sahara 15 for 15% off and you can find that link in the show notes. Happy drinking. Welcome Jason to the Highest Self podcast. It's so great to have you here.

It's so great to be here. Thanks.

The first question I would love to ask you is what makes you your highest self?

When I feel like I have little time to think and I need to act and I need to pull together everything that I have done and know and want to do, that is when I feel like I'm at my highest self, to be honest with you. Because I look back at those moments and I say I'm really proud of myself that I was able to navigate that and I learned something as a result of doing it and I'm going to be better the next time because I put myself in that situation. I long ago came to accept that I will always look back on what I do and think that I'm doing it better now than I did back then and that that isn't something to cringe at but rather something to celebr because it just means that I am improving and I have to tolerate the places where I'm not as good as I want to be because I feel like I'm Putting myself in a position to get there.

Totally. I mean, if you're not cringing at yourself three years ago, then you're not growing. You know, there isn't anything shifting. I go back, I listened to my first episodes of the podcast now almost six years ago, and I'm like, who is that person? But thank God, right? Because if I hadn't started then, I wouldn't be where I am now. And I'm sure I'll be re listening to this day. Like, what was I thinking?

Totally, totally. So I was interviewing Ryan Reynolds for the magazine, and he said, this thing I really love. So, you know, Ryan, actor, obviously, but then also owns this ad agency called Maximum Effort, and then Aviation Gin and Mint Mobile. And so we were talking about the transition into learning how to do those things, and he said, to be good at something, you have to be willing to be bad. And I really. I loved that because oftentimes we think, I better be good at this to start. I better feel competent. And I think people quit often because they are not living up to their own set of expectations for themselves. And what Ryan's point is a really powerful one, which is that, no, no, no. Actually, nobody's good at the beginning. So the thing that separates people isn't whether or not you're good at the start of something, but rather whether or not you are able to tolerate being bad for long enough to get to good, because most people can't. So simply being able to tolerate being bad is a kind of superpower. It's a weird way to think of it, but I try to hold onto that when I'm being bad totally.

Because so many of us, we hear ourselves singing or dancing or even writing or whatever else the thing is. And we're like, I suck at this. It must not be one of my natural gifts. And I think that that's one of the hard things, because, yes, we do have kind of natural predispositions towards some things, for sure, but that doesn't mean you're going to be great at it. You know, I'm sure Adele wasn't perfect the first time that she sang any of her songs, even though she has the gift of a voice. So I think that's one of the hard things. And even stepping into our purposes, we think, oh, well, it has to come so easily to me, otherwise it must not be related to my purpose. And that's not what your purpose is, otherwise you would have already figured it out by now. But it's rather like I have this curiosity towards something so you write so much about change, which I'm really excited to get into in your new book, Build for Tomorrow. But I want to specifically talk first about how allowing ourselves to become friends with change and not being afraid of what change represents can guide us towards our purpose. If you could share a little bit about that.

Yeah. I meet so many really fascinating people and they're building very complicated things and they're doing really hard things that they are not quite prepared for. And I hear from them often. They have thought about themselves in a way. They've come to understand themselves in a way that I think that they don't really even appreciate the depth of value of it. I'll give you an example. You know, Stacey London, what Not to Wear hosted this show on television for like 10 years. So Stacy's a friend and she has this really fascinating career where she started as a magazine editor in fashion and then she became a co host of this television show. It was like a makeover show. So Stacy ended up co host. Find this schlubby person with terrible hair, and then they make them all over and then everyone cries at the end. So Stacy did the show for, I can't remember, 10 seasons or something, and then went on to have a longer career in television and really came to understand herself as a television personality and as a fashion expert or style expert. And then she reached around 50 and television executives didn't want to put her on TV anymore. And that was not just a blow to Stacy's ego, but it was a blow to her identity because she understood herself to be a television personality. And if she is a television personality and she is not on television, then what is she? She's nothing. Around that same time, Stacy had become a beta tester for a company called State of Menopause. They make products that help women with menopausal symptoms. She was very enthusiastic about it. Then the parent company called her and said, hey, we're actually looking to offload this brand. Would you be interested in buying it and running it? And Stacy says, no, not interested in that because she's a TV personality. TV personalities don't buy like product companies and run them, which is not what she does. But then she forced herself to step back and she asked herself this question. This is her words. She said, what is my kernel of truth? And what she came to realize is, you know what? I am not a fashion or style expert. I am not a TV personality. I am a person who helps people with their self esteem and their sense of self. And once she realized that she unlocked all this growth and potential because she realized that she could do that in any number of ways. TV was just one. One way that she was doing it for a while, but now she could do it in this other way, too. And that's the transformation that I see people having gone through is that they can articulate in a very simple, small way, a sentence, a concept, an idea of who they are that is detached from the day to day things that they do. It's not tied to their tasks. It's not tied to their work. I pushed myself to come up with something for myself. I came up with this phrase, I tell stories in my own voice. And it's an important phrase to me because I could say, I mean, look, one of the primary things that I do is I am the editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine. I've spent the majority of my career in magazines. I could say I'm a magazine editor, but. Or I could say I tell magazine stories in my own voice. But I'll tell you what. Bill Shaw is the president of Entrepreneur. He is my boss. He could call me right now and fire me. He could interrupt our call right now and he could fire me. That would be distracting. But I don't want to if my identity is anchored to a magazine. I work at magazines. I'm a magazine editor. I tell magazine stories. Well, then one phone call disrupts my entire identity. That is a dangerous, dangerous place to be. I would much rather understand myself by the thing about me that does not change in times of change. I think the more that we can understand and define our mission in a very conscious way, the more we enable ourselves to understand the value that we can bring to others, regardless of circumstance. That, I think, is the thing that incredibly adaptive people have done for themselves, for their organizations, and it's what we all need to do.

I think that's such an important distinction because when I started my career, I identified as an author. I am a person who writes books, nonfiction books specifically. And then, you know, after doing that and starting this podcast, I started to realize I love speaking. And now I love speaking even more than I love writing. But then imagine if my entire identity was around just being a writer. So for me, it's more about sharing the message. And even my message has evolved over time as we go through different obstacles in life and learn lessons. And then after a period of sharing about that specific lesson for so long, there's other ones you're more excited about sharing. And then there's people who have just gone through that lesson and really want to talk about it. So it's like allowing yourself to evolve. And I feel like we continue to kind of like, unlock how tight and restricted our sense of purpose is. And that allows so much room for freedom that, you know, being on this podcast is part of both of our purposes. But then your purpose still looks so much different than mine, than someone else's. And every person who writes books and podcasts and creates social media content and what else? And it's that texture, you know, that you bring to everything that you do.

That's totally right. The thing you didn't explicitly say in that example, but that we should call out, is that you had this original idea of yourself as an author, but you did not. Because you had that idea. You did not turn down the opportunity to explore other avenues, because you easily could have. You could have said, I'm an author. Authors don't have pot. They don't speak. I write. I'm a beautiful writer. And speaking is a different skill. It's somebody else's skill. You could have said that. People say that a lot. And it reminds me of. I don't mean to be name droppy, but I get to talk to all these interesting people, and they say things to me that lodge in my brain. So I was interviewing Malcolm Gladwell, and I had asked him what a Malcolm Gladwell project is, because everything that he does is so distinctive. And he said, to the best of his ability, he tries never to think of himself as doing one thing or having any one kind of sensibility, because. And then he said these words that I wrote down and slapped on my wall. Because he said, self perceptions are powerfully limiting. That if you have too narrow a definition of yourself, then you will turn down all the other opportunities that do not meet that narrow definition. That is what you just described not doing right. Like you had an idea of yourself, but you were willing to explore. What else are you to expand your definition of self? You never want to be in a position where you feel so comfortable in one space that every other space becomes intolerably uncomfortable by comparison.

Absolutely. And it's that fear of change that you write about. Like, even when I started this podcast, the first couple episodes, I would write down what I was going to say because I couldn't trust my voice and was reading off of it. And I remember getting a review from someone being like, you know, I like this podcast, but it feels a bit scripted. I was like, shit. They know I'm reading off of something, you know, and that really challenged Me. Me to trust what was coming through enough to not feel like I needed to write it before. And now so much of what I do is helping people trust their own inner voice. So this concept of change, you've written a whole book about it. And I found this book because I'm kind of always navigating career changes, but navigating another one. And my friend Rosie, who's a mutual friend of ours, was like, you gotta read Jason's book. It's so good. And you speak about how, historically, we have been so afraid of change. Right. It's always been that thing that seems like a perceived loss. And you told a story about waltz dancing and how people used to be afraid of waltz dancing in the same way that they're currently afraid of twerking, which. It's so interesting that you said that, because twerking is one of those things I always talk about on this podcast of, like, actually you're shaking your body and releasing trauma from your hips. But we have this perception of it that, you know, it looks like this thing. So I was like, wow, I can't believe he's literally writing a story about this. So can you share a little bit about how we saw waltz dancing and how that same fear of a dance move has kind of followed us along through generations?

Yeah. I was so fascinated to learn this, and I spoke to a historian. The reason I love history, I'll tell you before I dive into this one, is because the story's been told, which is not the story's been told, like, everyone knows the story, but rather that, like, the decisions that people made at the time have played out. We know how the story ended, and therefore, we can look back and understand the ramifications of people's decisions and draw lessons from them in a way that's harder now because, you know, you and I and everyone listening, we're still living out our story. We don't know how it's going to end. We don't know how any single thing that we're doing is going to end. And so that means that we only have a vague understanding of the wisdom of our decisions. But if you look far enough back, you can see the complete story. And also what I've learned is that there's a historian who has studied literally every random thing in the world. So if you want to understand, like, why where the first scandalous dance came from, then, sure enough, you can find people who study the waltz. So, okay, so here's the thing. In the early 1800s, the waltz became the Kind of go to dance of young, wealthy European society. And it was very scandalous. Just remember what the, our kind of cultural alarmists of today were saying when Miley Cyrus twerked on whatever that was, the VMAs or something.

Yeah.

And then just like imagine the 1800s version of that. They were freaking out. And what was so interesting to me, by the way, what were they concerned about? They were concerned about all sorts of things. The amount of touching, the kind of. At the time, what was seen to be a sort of hypersexualization of this dance. It was just not what people were used to. What was so interesting to me about this moment was that the doctors of the time, they said that the waltz was damaging to health. And some of them had even very specific numbers of. Numbers of years of life that waltzing would take off. The thing is that throughout time you can find doctors talking about how some new innovation is dangerous to people's health, typically dangerous to women's health. So for example, you have the novel, which was believed to make women infertile, among other problems. The idea was that women have, unlike men who have a unlimited storage of energy or unlimited ability to produce energy, women have a kind of cold blooded style, limited reserve of energy. This was the belief at the time. We're talking again, sort of early mid-1800s. And so the idea was that the novel, because it engages your brain in such a deep way, it would draw down the amount of energy that women have inside of them. And that could lead to all sorts of health complications. So the bicycle, it was another thing, all sorts of health concerns there. They said it would give women bicycle face. That was one of the things that the strain of riding the bicycle would be permanently frozen on your face. So of course we know that those are ridiculous. But the thing is about the waltz is that the waltz was unhealthy. The thing is that it just wasn't unhealthy in the way that the doctors understood it. So doctors were seeing people who were waltzers also develop health issues. And they just, they diagnosed the problem incorrectly. They believed that the waltz itself, the dancing, the spinning, the movement, that that was the thing that was unhealthy. That wasn't true. Here's what was unhealthy. So first of all, we're in a time in which people don't really understand ventilation. So we're in closed spaces with no good ventilation. Then you don't have electric lighting, so you have gas. And so gas lighting is pouring noxious fumes into this unventilated closed space. Then you also have. They were dancing on. I think it was called a crash cloth or something like that. Anyway, it was like a rug, but a rug that would kick up all this dust and, you know, and dirt into the air as people danced on it. And then, of course, people are dressed in this incredibly restrictive clothing. So, yeah, you better believe that that combination of things was actually damaging to people's health. But you look back and you zoom out and you say, okay, we're misdiagnosing the problem. The problem isn't the waltz. The problem is everything around the waltz. And this, I think, is. I like to call this the 1% problem, right? Which is to say the waltz was like 99% or called the 99% problem. I forget what I called it. But anyway, the thing is, like, the waltz was 99% there. It was a good dance, it was engaging. There was nothing harmful about it at all. But the problem was the circumstances in which the waltz was performed. And this is something I think we need to apply to everything that we're reacting to today, where sometimes we say, ah, this terrible thing is happening, right? Like, ugh, social media is damaging everybody. Just this sheer interaction with it is. But no, no, no, why don't we start to pick it apart and understand what is good and what is bad and what. What can be fixed, what is inherently good and what is inherently bad, and how can we separate them out so that we don't start to react to every single new thing as if it is bad simply because it is imperfect? That's a damaging and dangerous way to look at new.

So in my own spiritual journey of really honoring the sacred feminine energy within me, I realized that we're not all the same, and we all have different pathways that we can take that I put together in creating five archetypes, which I call the Rose Gold Goddess archetypes. They are the Embodiment Queen, the Womb Whisperer, the Intuitive Oracle, the Expressionista, and the Joy Priestess. And I put together a free quiz so you can find out what your unique combination are. So the Embodiment Queen is the person who's always in her body, dancing, moving, very connected to her nervous system. The Womb Whisperer always knows where she's at in her menstrual cycle and probably has a yoni steamer in her bathroom. The Intuitive Oracle has three oracle card decks on them, a pendulum, and knows about their past lives. The Expressionista is creating art through every. Everything through singing, dancing, writing, poetry, everything for her is an opportunity to create Art. And then we've got the joy priestess who wants to laugh, dance, and not take herself super seriously. You can find her doing karaoke at an improv class or twerking it on the dance floor. You can guess which one I am. So you can head over to rggquiz.com to learn what your unique rose Gold goddess archetype is. Again, that's rggquiz.com and you can find that link in the show notes. And I've created custom graphics that you get in your results so you can share which rose gold goddess archetype you are. I'm super excited to see. That is such a great story to highlight the way that we throw the baby out with the bathwater. And, you know, people were getting sick because they were in close contact with no air ventilation, but they saw that they were waltzing, so it must be because of the waltz. And same thing with social media. Yes, there is a rise in anxiety and mental health, and people are on their phones more than ever. And there are some correlations. But could you say that's all because of social media? Like, what are they doing on social media? And even social media is just a reflection of human consciousness. So is bullying really new? No. Is comparison really new? No. Is jealousy really new? No. Is distraction really new? No. It's just taken on a new shape and form. And I love another story that you shared about how people were afraid of the radio when it first came out. So can you talk a little bit about that and our transition of music?

Oh, yeah, sure. So, Right. And before I do that, let me just pick up on that thing you just said that because it's really, really important. Right. So you made this really great point, which is like, bullying isn't new. We talk about bullying online and we blame that bullying on the way in which people connect online. Now, let's be clear. Bad things can happen online. Not dismissing any of that. People can have very negative experiences online. But if you want to solve a problem, you cannot simplify the problem. If you simplify a problem, you are inhibiting your ability to come up with meaningful solutions because you're not allowing yourself to understand the full complexity of a problem. So if you believe that bullying can be solved by getting people off of social media, well, then I will tell you what you're going to do. You're going to create problems and you're not going to solve the one that you set out to solve. Because bullying isn't a product of social media. Social media is simply an avenue through which people bully. So we have to dig deeper and understand a true root of the problem, which, yes, can include trying to understand how people can interact better with social media. But if you only focus on. If you said, if we could just throw Mark Zuckerberg in jail, then, like, bullying would go away. Well, you will never solve bullying. And this is. We all would like. We need to understand this for anything that we solve, that we oversimplify problems, and when we do that, we cannot start to conceive of real solutions. You asked about the radio, so here's the thing. The challenge that we have is that we equate change with loss. So something changes in your world, in your life, and the very first thing that you do is that you think of all the things that you're going to lose. And then, because you want to know what's going to come next, you start to extrapolate the loss. You start to say, well, if I lose this thing, I'm going to lose that thing. And if I lose that thing, I'm going to lose that other thing. And the more you start to do this, the more you start to feel a total panic and you. You block yourself from doing the thing that you need to be doing, which is to see gain, to see how the thing that is happening to you can lead to benefit. Because I'm telling you that even though change can create loss, it can not. Saying it doesn't, there is gain there, too. And a folly that we have is that we spend a lot of time and energy trying to debate whether or not a change should happen when it has already happened. I mean, just what is the point of it? Instead, what we need to do is we need to start to think, okay, this has happened, so what value can come from it? So the story that I like to tell is it was actually recorded music technology. So it eventually bled into radio, but record players came first. So Thomas Edison, I think the year was 1877, developed the first phonograph, first record player. It was originally a cylinder, then eventually became a kind of record as we know it now. At first, people found this very confusing because consider that for all of human history up until this moment, all of human history, the only way that you could listen to music is if someone was performing with an instrument in front of you, and then suddenly a machine could do it. It was wild. People didn't believe it. They had to be shown that there wasn't like a band behind a wall somewhere. And once they believed that this was real, they loved it. And they started to bring these things into their homes. And this was something that was very exciting to music lovers. It was very terrifying to music creators because musicians saw themselves being replaced by machines. The leader of the resistance was a guy who I just named a moment ago. His name is John Philip Sousa. Bonus points to anyone who recognized that name when I first said it. He is the composer of all the military marches that we still know today. Da da da da da da da da da da da That's John Philip Souza. It's the last time I'll sing for you, I promise. So John Philip Sousa saw this not just damaging to his profession, but damaging to the culture at large. And he became the champion against recorded music technology. And he wrote this piece. You should totally Google it. It's wonderful reading. It's called the menace of Mechanical Music. It ran in Appleton's Magazine in 1906. And it makes all these arguments against recorded music, by favorite of which goes like this. He says, if you bring recorded music into the home, it will replace all forms of live music. Because why would somebody perform live when there's now a machine that could do it for them? And because nobody is now performing any kind of live music at home. Mothers will not sing to their children because, again, why would they do that when a machine could do it for them? And because children grow up to imitate their mothers, the children will grow up to imitate the machines, and thus we will raise a generation of machine babies. This is his argument. Now, think back to what I just said a moment ago about extrapolating loss. Something changes, you equate it to loss, and then you extrapolate the loss. Because I lose this, I'm going to lose that. Because I lose that, I'm going to lose that other thing. That's what he's doing right there, there. And that sounds ridiculous, but the thing is, we all do a version of that.

IPad babies. It just made me think of that.

Totally. IPad babies. Oh, my God. Right? We're doing so many versions of this all the time. But we also do it in our own lives. I mean, draw that down to the most granular experience you've had. I'll give you an example. I show up at work, and my company has now changed the internal communication system or whatever, and it's like, oh, well, now I was in a group of people who chatted on this thing, and now I'm not going to have access to that group. And because I'm not going to have access to that group, I'm probably not going to get told the next time that they're working on something. And now I'm going to feel. And actually, maybe that's going to change my entire status in the company. And now actually, you know, now I'm going to get kicked out, I'm going to get fired. People do this all the time. I have done this so many times. And instead, what we need to do is we need to look at every new thing and ask ourselves really three questions. Number one, what new thing are we doing? Number two, what new habit or skills are we learning as a result? Number three, how can that be put to good use? Because when we start to do that, we just start to frame the thing that we're grappling with in terms of growth and we start to hypothesize. I am not here to tell you that you will know the great thing that will come out of some moment of disruption in your life. I don't know. I don't know when it'll come, but I'm here to tell you that it will. And so you better start hypothesizing now, because if you do, you can start to experiment, to explore. Oh, well, this thing has changed in my job. And I wonder if this gives me an opportunity to position myself as an expert in this or to be really useful to my boss's boss's boss right now. Because they're probably thinking about this and they need someone who understands this. And the more that you can think that way, the more you can start to put yourself in positions to grow. Because growth does not just. It's funny, it's like we think of change as a thing that happens to us. Oh, we're just the passive victims of change. And then we sit around and expect benefit to also just sort of passively float into our lives. And it doesn't. You have to actively pursue it. So when you start to frame your experiences in terms of what kind of growth will this create, what kind of new value can either this bring to me or this enable me to bring to others? That is when you start to move towards what I like to call a wouldn't go back moment where you have something so new and valuable you wouldn't want to go back to a time before it had it. But it requires being proactive. And the starting point of that is understanding that there can be some value in whatever is happening. Doesn't mean that the loss wasn't bad. It doesn't mean that there isn't sadness. But you have to move towards the benefit because there's Just literally no other option.

Absolutely. People often tell me, they're like, how did you grow your social media and your podcast and this and that? I'm like, well, I just started like, as soon as blogging was a thing, I started blogging. As soon as Instagram was a thing, I started being on Instagram. And they're like, oh, I want to do that all. But without being on social media, I'm like, I couldn't have. You need to see these new opportunities for what they are, a mixed bag that you can make the most out of. And it's not always going to be easy and it's not going to be perfect, but it's like, how are you going to reach all of these people and do it in your own way and never share anything online with the platforms available for us? So I think it's important for us to exactly realize, well, we want the benefits of change, but we need to change with it.

Right. And as people are trying to understand you, like, they look at your ecosystem that you've created, they need to remember, and this is not just about you, but this is about anybody successful that you look at, you try to sort of understand what they did. Is that what you are seeing is the result of a selection bias? Right. Which is to say, like, you built some things that are very successful that people engage with this podcast being one of them. But like, there's all. But then there are all the things that you did that weren't successful. There are a lot of them. I mean, you should name check some of them right now so people can appreciate it. Like, and that's.

Oh, rejected by 30 publishers. Like, tried starting YouTube projects multiple times, putting things on YouTube, nothing ever happening. I've written like three books that I've never done anything with. Like, the list goes on. Like, all these business ideas that I'm like, actually that's not gonna work for whatever reason. And who knows, like, maybe they could have been my most successful project or maybe I would have launched them and they would have failed. But yeah, what you see is like the result of what has created withstanding results after lots and changes, lots of pivoting.

Right, exactly. And that is so important for people to remember that. It's not just that, oh, you were very proactive and started to engage early on social media platforms. That was a really smart thing that you did. But it probably came on the backs of either missing a lot of other opportunities. Right. Or trying them out and just like not finding your footing on them. These things that you Just listed. That's all part of it, too.

RIP Clubhouse.

RIP Club. Oh, yeah, totally, totally. I know. God, the hours that I spent, like, building an audience, that doesn't matter at all. That's the price of admission. And we just have to consider that the price of admission for building something successful is wasting a lot of time on want unsuccessful things. And then very critically, knowing either when to walk away or at the very least, that you have to walk away. So sometimes people feel like, ah, well, I just got to stick with it. And, you know, sticking with it is great, but sometimes sticking with one thing is just robbing you of the time that you could devote to the thing that would work next. And we have to respect that longer journey if we want to build even a few things that are going to last.

I love that you named that because there's sort of this shared belief, or at least marketed belief online in the online business space of like, oh, just, you know, everything is going to be so easy. And you just like, quantum leap into this new reality with like, no work and, you know, and it's not true, like, how many hours we've all wasted on things that have never seen the day of light ever. And that's that cost that I think a lot of people, they're not willing to put in the time into something and it potentially not work. But, like, even writing a book, it's like, you probably write more pages in a book that are not ever published than the pages that are. But for example, a friend of mine, she's writing her first book right now, and she's like, zahra, something's wrong. They want me to, like, redo the whole draft. I'm like, of course it's your first draft. She's like, you mean I have to redo this? I'm like, probably 100 more times. And she's just like, what did I get myself into? And it's like, we see the shiny book at the end and we don't see the 100 books that went into that one book.

Totally. I do this for a living. I edit national magazines for a living. And I've been doing it for my career. And when I set out to write this book of mine, Build for Tomorrow, my editor, Penguin Random House, Matthew Benjamin, Shout out, he was like. He gave me a really great first project. He said, write the first four chapters and then send them to me. And so I did. And then he read them. And we got on the phone and he said. He was like, okay, good first try. But these are not really, book chapters, these are like kind of long, meandering magazine articles. So you need to learn how to write a book because you don't know how to do that. You know how to do another thing. And he was right. It required me to not just rip apart those four chapters, but really to rip apart my very concept of how I was going to approach this book. I restructured everything. I rethought how I was going to use the information that I had. I sent him another four chapters and then we got back on the phone and he was like, all right, well, that's better, but that's the way to do it. And I had to humble myself and say, look, even though I'm ahead of the game in many respects relative to people who are, who don't write for a living, which I do, I still don't know what I'm doing. And that's okay, because the point of it is not to go into something knowing what you're doing. The point of it is to go into it committed to figuring out what success looks like to your friend who not just to your friend, but to your friend as a stand in for everybody who feels that right. Imagine, just imagine how much better the thing that you're making will be after you rip it apart. 5 to 10 times how much better it will be and therefore the better service that you're providing all the people who are going to read this book. You don't want to give them your first draft. Why would you want to give people just the first thing that plopped out of your mouth that's not good enough for people? You need to. I think about this all the time, I and you, Sahara. We are asking for the most valuable resource that people have, which is not their money, it's their time. And we better make sure that if someone is going to give us some precious fraction of their lives, that we are investing our own time first in making sure that their time is well spent. And that means that we don't just blow through a thing and then put it out into the world because we don't want to do it again, we instead must step back and think, what do I owe the people who are going to spend time with me? And what I owe them isn't perfection, because that's not possible, but it is the product of me being humble enough to know that the very first idea that I have for them cannot possibly be the best one.

So have you been on your spiritual journey for a while, but to be honest, you don't resonate with a lot of the practices like hours of seated meditation or reading all these really heady spiritual books. But instead, you're craving something that invites the full you, that allows you to be radiant and beautiful and connecting with your intuition and womb wisdom. Well, I felt the exact same way on my spiritual journey. I went from spending hours doing really rigid ashes dhanga yoga every year, where I actually lost my period for over two years and even went into perimenopause in my early twenties, into connecting back with my sacred feminine energy. And this is exactly what I share in my new course, Divine feminine embodiment. So this is really about dropping out of the mind and into the body. Because the truth is, a lot of the spiritual practice that we hear about right now really, really were created by men for men. And our culture is very masculine as well. It's very focused on productivity and hustle. And if you're ready to go beyond that and reclaiming your ease, your joy, your bliss, your juiciness, your dance, then this course is for you. So I discussed the different art forms of divine feminine wisdom, such as the art of magnetism, the art of embodiment, the art of race, ritual, and so much more. So this is also a really powerful entry point into stepping into deeper sacred feminine work. I teach you my goddess embodiment practice, my goddess breath work practice, and much more. So if you're interested and curious to learn more about what's inside, head over to divine feminine course.com Again, that's divine femininecourse.com. you can find that link in the show description notes. This month, the course is over 50% off as our special introductory price. So I highly recommend diving into it right now and beginning your sacred feminine immersion. Yeah, and I think with writing a book too. It's in that rewriting and that rewriting that we simplify. I remember when I wrote my first version of. Well, it wasn't even called Discovery of your Darma. I had a totally different title and a totally different premise. But what eventually became about finding your purpose? My editor at the time, she kept being like, I don't know. I read this and I still don't know what my purpose is. And I would be so frustrated. Cause I would write all these poetic words that I'm channeling through. And she's just like, I still don't know. And that made me simplify it and create blueprints and three steps and tangible things that I would not have ever come up with just on my own because I needed to get that feedback of we needed a lot more distilled than this. And that's what created these tools that I'm now able to pass along to anyone and really trust can work. So had I not gone through that refining and questioning and redefining the book would simply not be this book.

Yeah, we're using our own examples here of books. And I appreciate that everyone listening is not working on their own book. Maybe some of them are, but this is for anything. Right? Because we all have to communicate. We are nothing if we cannot communicate our value to others. And also if we cannot teach others the things that we know. And to do that, you have to understand where your audience is. Where is the person right now who you are trying to talk to, whether that's any kind of relationship that you're trying to build personally or professionally. Where are they right now? You better go meet them where they are. I think that oftentimes people think it's simply a matter of you used. And you're right. You talked about simplifying it, and that's very true. It's not just a matter of simplifying, which is, I think, something that people misunderstand when they first try to get into any kind of communication. Right. Because simplifying is important. But it's not just about simplifying. To me, what it really is about is it's about creating on ramps, making sure that you're giving people a way into information and that you are not raising questions that you are not answering. Because if you raise questions that you are not answering, then people are lost. I think about my first national magazine job. I was at Boston Magazine. I moved to New York, and I got a job at Men's Health. And one of my tasks as a junior editor at Men's Health was to edit what was called the 15 Minute Workout. And the fitness editor, Adam Bornstein, would send me these exercise descriptions, whatever, get on the floor and do this and that. And at first I was very intimidated because he's the fitness editor. He knows this stuff. I don't. I don't know how to do anything at the gym. But then I started to read them, and I realized, you know what? My inexperience here, my lack of knowledge about this subject is an asset. And the reason it's an asset is because if I don't understand this, then nobody understands this. And Adam, because he understands it so well, lost track of what people do and do not already know. So if he's going to describe how to do a burpee, he's going to take for granted some parts of this information because it's just so natural to him. He just knows it, and he forgets that other people don't. And so I'm going to read this and I'm going to say, this is raising more questions than a text. What do you mean do that? I don't know how to do that. That raises questions that aren't answered. And so I would push back and I would get it to the point where he was answering all the questions. And I share this anecdote for two reasons. One, to sort of illustrate that point about how to communicate by not raising questions that you can't answer, but also to say, don't be afraid that your lack of knowledge about something could inhibit you from having a meaningful impact on something. It is actually often the opposite. That being the fresh eyes in the room is incredibly valuable because the people who are most experienced at something are also the people with the largest blind spots for what others may need because they've spent too much time in it. I was a great fitness editor because I didn't know jack about fitness. And you can be a great contributor to. To anything by not bringing expertise. So the expertise is great. Not knocking expertise, but rather by bringing fresh eyes and a willingness to make value out of everything that you're coming in contact with.

Absolutely. And that's why it's so important, too. Especially lots of people listening to this podcast. They love sharing about spirituality, and we think everyone knows the same jargon that we do, and it's so not true. And sometimes it's helpful to speak to people who aren't in this community and the questions that come up for them. And it's so helpful because it's like, oh, yeah, I can't just say, oh. Like, just tune into your past lives. Like, most people are gonna be like, what? Like, there's a lot there. So I think it's so helpful to go to people who don't speak your lingo, get them to be your editor, get them to go through your sales pages, get them to read your emails and see if it's landing.

Totally, totally. That's absolutely right. Like, because if you go around talking about how to connect with your past life, you've limited your audience to people who know what you're talking about. And there's some people who know you're talking about. I will admit I am not one of them. But if you want to reach, if you want to have a larger impact, then you need to bring in the outside perspective. It's so valuable to surround yourself. I mean, we talk about how to build great teams, surround ourselves with great ideas, and we talk about diversity and bringing people with different perspectives. But one of the things we may overlook is the ways in which people engage with material. It's the ways in which people engage with the thing that you're offering. The world of spirituality is not any different than any other world. There is something that you're doing for yourself, and then you're going to do it for others and connect with others in degrees. Maybe it's just a few close people with you. Maybe you want to build to and participate in a larger community. Maybe you want, like you Sahar, you want to have a much larger impact and reach a lot of people. And as you think about this and navigating through the world, you have to be really mindful of not closing yourself off to the multitude of ways in which people can understand you and what you're talking about. Because otherwise you get yourself in an echo chamber and you stop growing and you start calcifying. It's a thing I fear all the time, that I just start speaking just to one audience. I love that you invited me on here because this isn't a pure business show and I love that I want to make sure that I understand how to be valuable to so many different audiences, which means marching. Just before this, I had a call with a guy who his audience is people who build churches. I don't know anything about that, but I loved hearing the way in which he reacted to the things that I was talking about. It gave me an insight into how some of the ideas that I have can connect to people that I hadn't even thought about connecting with. If you're not putting yourself in those moments and not feeling comfortable that you have value, even though you may not know the language in which to communicate that value, then you're ultimately limiting the amount of growth that you have and the impact that your ideas can have.

Have. Yeah. A lot of people who listen to this podcast see themselves as a bridge between their community and demographic and career and what they've known into a higher consciousness way of being. So, like, really looking and having more awareness and a sense of purpose and joy, and they see themselves as that bridge in between. So often we are seen as the change that people are afraid of. So I know you write a lot in your book about, like, how we could not be be fearful of change. But what if people like in your family or in your job or your group of friends sees you as the scary change and say, well, I liked the former version of you, or I don't know who you're becoming and you feel lonely or maybe even gaslighting yourself.

Around this wonderful question. Okay, so I'm going to tell you another story from history, but first I'm going to point you to a product that I'm not here to sell. I don't have an affiliate deal with them, but there's this, this composting product called Lomi. It's basically like a big. It's like a giant white tub looks like. And you know, you do you compost is you. You throw your, your food waste in there and then it does some kind of process and it composts. It turns it into soil. Why am I telling you about this? Because if you go to their website, I just, I stumbled upon this and I was so fascinated that I, I got one of the founders on the phone. If you go to their website, you will never see the word compost. This is a composting product. You cannot find the word compost on there. Here's what it says. Lomi makes your family's food waste disappear at the push of a button. I don't hear compost odor free, pest free, mess free. This is your solution to your everyday food waste problem. So I got the guy on the phone, one of the founders, I said, why is the word compost not anywhere on your site you make a composter? And he said, because once we started understanding our target audience, we saw that the word compost immediately divided people. It's not like it's a controversial idea, but rather people just either felt like, oh, I am a composter or whatever. It's too complex, messy. I don't know what that is. And so just by introducing that word, you created friction. And he said, well, we wanted to just address a larger way in which people think about this product and about the way that it solves it. And you know what? Everybody knows everybody has food waste, that food waste stinks. Everybody has that right. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you've ever heard of composting or care about composting. Everybody's got stinky food waste. And so if we can talk to that and bring people along from where they are already, then we have a greater chance of reaching them. And that means that even though all the founders of Lomi are like composters, they believe in compost, they are not going to use the word compost. I have seen versions of that in businesses Today and throughout history. And it's the thing that I think the bridge builders that you're talking about, who you reach, who are listening right now, really need to keep in mind. The historical story that I wanted to tell you was that when the car was introduced, it was hated. 1800s, people called it the devil wagon. They threw rocks at it. If you drove down the street, they would yell, get a horse at the car. And now today, we tell the story, story of Henry Ford, who revolutionized manufacturing, made cars more accessible and affordable, and that's what drove the adoption of car. That's true, but actually, Henry Ford was the beneficiary of a change that had happened before him, and that was that the automobile manufacturers, and I heard this from a historian of this, the automobile manufacturers of the time were trying to figure out why people hated this thing. And they started to look at their advertisements and realized they were talking about the car. Car as a replacement to the horse. Get rid of dobbin, generic name for a horse. Get rid of dobbin and get this car much better than the stupid thing that you do with this horse. But you know what? People don't like that. You know why? Because people don't like new things. Here's what people like. They like better versions of old things. That's what they like. So what you need to do if you are a bridge builder is you better not not try to push them out of the thing that they know and into something that they don't know, but rather to understand where they already are and find an improvement to the thing that they are comfortable with, but would be happier if it was better. And this is what the folks who are manufacturing early cars did. They stop talking about the car as a replacement of the horse. They started talking about it as a better horse. Started naming cars after horses, something we still do today. Mustang, Bronco. They started popularizing terms like horsepower. Started putting mechanical horse heads on the front of cars. We don't do that today, but you get the idea. And this helped people start to feel like, I'm not being told to get rid of my horse. I love my horse. I love my horse. But this is an improvement on that. And it respects me. And I can see how it fits into my life. This is what we need to do. Like I said, I'm not of the world of spirituality, which is to say I sort of lack the vocabulary the sort of core listener of this podcast probably uses when talking within your community. I lack that vocabulary. So I will tell you that if you, if Somebody from within this community tries to tell me the benefits of something using your language. You have lost me. Because I don't know it. I don't understand it. It. But you know my language. You know it, right? What's my problem? I'm exhausted. I'm stretched thin. I don't take care of myself nearly as well as I should. Maybe I am searching for a greater purpose in my life, but I might not even think about it in terms of purpose. I might just think about it in terms of what makes me happy. The more that you can understand that language, you can start to introduce concepts that. That address what they're looking for without scaring them with words like compost. I understand that compost and spirituality are different things, but as a sort of symbol of it, right? The thing. Compost is not a dirty word. I compost. I love composting. But for a lot of people, compost just means mess. So if it's easier to talk to somebody about how to more responsibly get rid of their food waste and turn it into value instead of sitting in a landfill for a million years, this breaks down before a million years. But anyway, you get the idea then. If the sacrifice here is to not use the word compost, then that is a sacrifice worth making.

It reminds me of the word that I use a lot in my work, Dharma. So dharma is an ancient Sanskrit word that essentially means your unique purpose, your place in the universe, your jigsaw puzzle. Most people have never heard that word. So when they hear it, it's a word in another language. They don't get it, and it makes them shy away. Maybe they even think it has a religious context or something. So it scares people away. And I train coaches who are becoming Dharma coaches. And after the first round of running my school, which is called Dharma Coaching Institute, I realized calling yourself a purpose coach is just going to open you up to a lot more people. Because most people, they don't know what dharma is, let alone to hire a Dharma coach. But a sense of purpose, that's something that most people have at least heard that word before. Again, I don't think the average person is even hiring a purpose coach. And that's also okay. I think the other side of this conversation is, how broad do you want to go? Right? Because it's like there are some people who want to go super, super broad and be for everyone, but then you're going to have to speak in a lot more of a generic way. And then there are people who are a little bit More advanced in different pathways. Whether it's about Dharma or composting or whatever else. And that's okay too. We also need those people as well. So I found that a lot of my students as well now they're calling themselves purpose coaches or just spiritual life coaches or something else. Putting in their own vocabulary. So it can actually be a need that their demographic would want.

I love that. What you're doing is you're building a bridge of familiarity, right? You're starting with the thing that people are familiar with and you're starting with them. And then you're building a bridge that starts with them and goes to you instead of the other way around.

Exactly. Because then what's the point then if we're not able to help people? You know, put that little breadcrumbs that guides them towards wherever it is. And also, maybe it's never gonna. Where I'm at. Maybe they're gonna have a different understanding of the world with a different language and a different just worldview, as I do. But what does that person need right now? And I think that that's the hard thing. Sometimes our egos get in the way and we're like, no, my way and my vocabulary and my cultural context. And it's like, no. Ultimately, if you wanna help people, like, it's okay if it's not as high level as everything that you know. Because ultimately, if you're here to be of service you're gonna meet people where they're at.

This is. I mean, it's really kind of wonderful that this is where we've driven towards because it loops back really nicely to the thing that we were talking about at the very beginning which is that if you can understand your purpose and define it in a way in which it isn't anchored to a specific way of doing something then this is the kind of avenue that it opens up. I bet a lot of people anchor themselves or feel very protective of specific language or ways of talking about something because they feel like. Like, well, that's the way it has to be done. Or that's the pure way in which to communicate or engage in something. But if you've spent the time to be able to define yourself in a way in which it's a crystallized value and it's that single sentence. I tell stories in my own voice. Whatever it is for you, then you know that that's the thing that's most important and that you can deliver upon that promise no matter the language that you use. And so you might as well figure out what is simply the best way to be the most valuable to whoever it is you want to reach?

Absolutely. My version of that sentence would be, I raised the vibration of the planet. So it's like, how am I doing? So is it through writing? Maybe it's through DJing. Maybe it's through something else today. And it's all as long as it's raising the vibration. Vibration of the planet. It's alignment with my purpose.

Love it. We will always have a planet. Or at least I certainly hope so and so. Right. There's endless ways to fulfill that.

Yes. Well, thank you so much for sharing all of your wisdom and your stories today. Where can listeners connect with you and get your new book, Build for Tomorrow.

So thank you. This has been such a great conversation. I really appreciate you having me on the book. Right. Like you said, Build for Tomorrow available in every format except for Stone Tablet. We're working on that. So we've got ebook, audiobook, hardcover. You can find it wherever you find books. So Amazon, Barnes and Noble, your local bookstore at the airport, whatever. Again, it's called Build for Tomorrow and the subtitle is an action plan for embracing adapting fast and future proofing your career. But as you've heard through this conversation, the lessons and the frameworks are really designed to help anybody in any change, wherever they are. So, anyway, so I'd love for you to check out that book and then beyond that, reach out. You can basically find all the ways to reach me at my website, which is jason pfeiffer.com and also links to. I have a newsletter and all sorts of other fun ways to stay in touch.

Beautiful. Well, thank you so much for sharing today.

Thank you.

I absolutely love that conversation with Jason. I'm curious how it landed for you. Please share with me on my Instagram post sharing this conversation. It's I am Sahara Rose. I would love to know what your takeaways were, what you received from this conversation and leave a review. And as a free gift for leaving a review, I will share with you my womb meditation. And this is a meditation that allows you to connect with your womb's guidance so you can really hear the intuitive wisdom that is inside of you. So all you gotta do is head over to the iTunes store, write a review, take a screenshot, and send it over to me@saharaiamsaharose.com you can find that link in the show notes and I'm super excited to send you my womb meditation. I hope this episode reminded you of the importance of being that bridge and speaking to new demographics of people who don't know this lingo and this might be new for them so we can be of service and helping more people who aren't already in the spiritual community. So I know I feel even more awakened and energized to make my language even more accessible as well, while also holding space for all types of conversations that also pique my curiosity curiosity as well, because we can have that balance. So I'm curious to hear how it landed for you. Share with me in the comments Share with me on the iTunes reviews and I'll see you again in the next episode. Namaste. It.