Hey leader, welcome back to another episode. I'm so thrilled to be here. And I know I say that at the top of every time I come on here, but I am so excited because it's an opportunity to serve you. It's an opportunity to support you wherever you are on your journey. I am excited to be able to do this, to be able to share an idea, to help you implement it right away, to help you transform your life now, today, right this instant, because you have plenty of information. Information is not enough. Transformation is necessary to change your life. And I believe that We're out here searching for solutions to ending our pain and suffering. I believe that we also want to be better humans because we know we can be better for ourselves first and foremost, always ourselves. We come first and then to help others be better and then to be better for our families, for our constituents, for our community members, for our children. And it is always exciting to be here to share an exciting idea. All right, enough of the excitement. Let me get into the meat of things today because authentic mission is on my mind. Authentic mission. I talked about this on our last podcast episode. It was on belonging and connection. Connection. It's about belonging and leadership and why you feel so disconnected right now. And in that episode, I talked about authentic mission. And some of you reached out and said, what's that? What's an authentic mission? That's interesting. Tell me more. So I thought, oh, I'm going to come on here and explain, especially for those who reached out and for those who didn't, who are probably wondering, okay, you piqued my interest. Authentic mission. What does that mean? So I used it in the context of remembering why you were called to lead. why you had an impulse, an urge, a desire, an idea, an insight to raise your hand. Do you remember that moment in time when you witnessed something, maybe some injustice, maybe some unfairness, and you somehow thought and maybe felt something that you could do something, that you needed to do something. It was urgent. He said, I can do this. I can do this better. I can help my people better. I'm so connected to this group. I know exactly what it is they need, don't need, and I can help them. Not in a righteous way, but in a collective serving way. So authentic mission is going back and remembering that why you raised your hand to enter leadership, to enter the pipeline of leadership, to be the leader in your family, to be the leader in your nonprofit, your board, your community, whatever. The mission, authentic mission that only you were called to fulfill. Because my authentic mission is not yours. Yours is not his. His is not mine. We don't have the same authentic mission. So we want to go back to, well, how do we know that? How do we know that we have our own authentic individual mission? What are you getting at, Denise? And so some of you pose that question. Can you tell me more about that? Because that's interesting. Because I'm feeling a little nudge. I'm feeling like there's got to be something more. I am remembering why I was called into leadership and I have completely disconnected from this mission that you're talking about. What is it? How do I reclaim it? How do I go back to remembering what that mission is? And so I wanted to come on here to talk a little bit more about your authentic mission, why you were put on this earth, what your purpose is on this earth, what you were called to do. But we have disconnected from that mission because of our ego, perhaps. I know mine, it's a tiny ego, but it's loud. It wants to take over my heart. It wants to take over my compassion. That ego is so driven by protecting us that we get lost. We get lost in there and we forget why we were put on this earth. And so leadership does that to us because we are inundated with duties and responsibilities right it's it's a high pressure role it's a highly visible role it's a highly energetic role you have to constantly evolve you have to constantly learn and train which is why I am doing so well in my business because I train leaders and I help them evolve into the next best version of who they are and so it's a never evolving process and so the pressure that we are under to succeed, the pressure we are under to not fail our people, right? There's a lot of duties and responsibilities. There is great responsibility in leadership, which for some people equals great power. And so we get trapped in these identities and we, along our path, along our leadership path, we have forgotten why we even raised our hand to begin with. Why we even said I could do this, right? Why, why you even said, yeah, I'm, I'm capable. Let's go. And so this episode is to take us back, take us back to the moment where it was an urge, it was a desire, it was, I don't know, a calling, a pulling. More like a pulling, right? Something that was pulling you forward. I know that's what it feels like for me in my heart. It's like the string, somebody's pulling a string and who's pulling that string? And is it a string? What is it that's calling me, that's pulling me into leading my people? You know, when I was about twenty to twenty three, I had a conversation with my dad about running for office. I at that time wanted to run for mayor of my city. That's actually really big. And there was this pulling, a calling. that I wanted to come back and serve my people because I believed we deserved to be treated better. I believed that there was a lot of corruption, a lot of abuse of power, And at that time in my life, you know, I had a few leadership positions and, you know, graduated from college at that time and then entering a graduate program. And I was so assured I had so much confidence. I had so much certainty that I would be the one to change my community. And my dad, who's no longer with us, had great intentions, said a few things, a few things that stuck with me. One, about being a woman and being a woman with that much ambition is not a good look. I wouldn't be taken seriously. I would be too much for the community and they wouldn't understand. And he didn't want to see me go through the scrutiny of campaigning and debating and then getting into office. He knew I could get into office. He knew that much. I was quite articulate and influential even then. And I think he knew that I would be a success and I would be in there. And he was just so worried about me getting hurt and me getting scrutinized. um, said all the things he needed to say and he knew who he was talking to. So he knew my pain points. He knew my weaknesses and he like tapped into that so that I would never move into politics and it worked and it worked. And so I knew even then I had this pull, this call to serve others. Even before that, running my high school student store in the DECA club, my girlfriend and I, Gladys, got into DECA together and I loved everything about organizing, operating, leading. It was... It was as if I had answered my call because I was not a very scholastic, academically scholastic student. I flew under the radar. I didn't want to show anybody how smart I was. I didn't want to get any of that kind of attention. I was definitely not a sports person, not athletic. I am now, however, but then I just didn't want to tap into any of those skills because, yeah. didn't care and I didn't want the attention, frankly. But when I got into DECA, D-E-C-A is the acronym. And this is the club in high school that runs the student store. They're business oriented, they're worker oriented. One of the requirements to be in DECA is to have a job, a part-time job at sixteen. And so I did and I got a scholarship from DECA too as a senior. And that's when I realized, oh, I'm good at work. Oh, I'm so good at serving. Oh, I'm so good at human behavior. I was able to see patterns because I had a training ground in my childhood, watching my parents react the way they would to money, to other things, their arguments, their all of their interesting adult behaviors, I was onto them. And I was onto my sisters too. I was more of the watcher. I was observing behavior. And then I was registering them as patterns in my head. I remember thinking, oh, she's going to react this way because she just got yelled at and now here we go. And then, oh, mom and dad are fighting. Okay, here we go. Here's what dad's going to do after they stop arguing. Okay, I know when to ask mom for things, dad for things based on their patterns of behavior. So I was very good at that. And then I finally find myself in the DECA club and fell in love with work. Work ethic was strong, always on point. And then I started to sell and I started to influence and I started to realize, ooh, I've got a thing here. And You know, it's something I want to pursue. It's something I want to continue to do, which was so easy for me because then I go off to college, you know, two and a half hours away from home and go into Bath and Body Works at nineteen years old, a store manager at that time. And, you know, graduated and then did some other things and went to graduate school. But I was answering an urge. Answering a call. Do you remember that urge, that call, that desire for yourself? When was that? Let's look back as far as we can. For me, I only go as far as fifteen, sixteen years old with the DECA club. Before that, there was a lot of trauma and a lot of interesting things that I buried in my memory. And so what about for you, however? Do you remember? Now, a lot of us out here say, well, it's inherent. I think I was born to lead. Well, no, you weren't. No, you weren't. I don't care what studies have said about, oh, certain leaders have these traits and even biological traits. I'm like, no, get out of here. We're not doing that. All I care about is... When you remembered that you were answering an urge, a call, a desire, an idea, an insight, something sparked in your body, in your heart, in your nervous system, when was that? Because that is going to give us all the information that we need so that we can go back to and reclaim it so that we can move forward remembering, being reminded, being realigned to that authentic mission. Because again, my authentic mission is not yours. Yours is not his. His is not mine. We don't share the same mission. And so for me, it's very clear that Leadership has always been a calling for me, either in an organization, in an institution, or as a researcher, consultant, contractor, coach, all the things I'm doing now. I have always known that leadership, the discipline of leadership, the field of leadership, no matter what industry I was in, I was going to master it. Because I wanted to be better for them, first for myself, but for them, for the people I was serving. Again, it goes all the way back to when I was fifteen or sixteen years old. How about for you? What is that calling? Maybe it's not leadership. Maybe it's, I don't know, creating a product that is going to solve so many problems for your community, for your people. I have been entertaining this idea of creating rosaries. I'm a Catholic girl, born and raised. Most of you all know, went to private Catholic school and then even got a PhD at a Catholic university. So I am fantastic. I'm probably not a practicing one, according to Catholicism, because I'm more of the mystical Christian discipline that I love. But I've been entertaining this idea and it's coming to me as a nudge. It came to me probably about six months ago. And because I do a rosary once a day and it's to call Mother Mary into my space. It's to reconnect to the divine. It's to reconnect to my relationship to Christ. And so the rosary is something that's symbolic for me and obviously for many Catholics. But I was thinking of creating a rosary. Okay. I mean, do we need to reinvent this? No. Do I want to make it nicer and more spiritual? Yeah. So I've been getting this nudge and I'm already looking at suppliers for beads and for glass beads and for stones. And I've never created jewelry in my life, but I'm like, There's a nudge. There's like, wouldn't that be cool if I just produce a certain few a year and it's so exclusive and it's so incredible and it is going to elevate someone's spiritual practice and reconnection to the divine mother and the Holy Spirit and all these things. And I'm getting excited about it. I'm like, what is happening here? It's a nudge. It's an urge. So it's not leadership, but perhaps it could be leading my community with this symbol of divine love. And so I don't know. But how about for you? What if you are entertaining an idea that has nothing to do with the industry you're in right now? What if you're in tech, but you're looking at doing something in the beauty space? What if you are, you know, a VP or a senior executive in a medical, you know, hospital, you are, you know, an administrator there, but you're, you don't want to, um, fulfill anything further than where you are right now. Maybe you want to do something else in the nonprofit world. Maybe you are looking at serving on boards right now. Maybe you're looking at starting your own nonprofit, right? What is that for you? Where's that nudge? Where's that calling? Let's go back to it. And so pay attention. And so this is about us getting conscious because we've been asleep at the wheel. That's just our, that's neuroscience. That's something that we, um, we can help along because, you know, Dr. Joe Dispenza talks about, um, And so if we're doing the same thing every day with the same people every day, well, of course, we're going to go unconscious. Ninety five percent of our day. I mean, just think about how you got to work today. Unconsciously, probably you zoned out somewhere. There's times where I arrive to my client's office and I'm like, thank you, unconscious mind for getting me here. Wow. Because I zoned out on that podcast episode. Wow. I don't know how I dodged this crazy traffic, but thank you for getting me here because I was really dormant. And so I want us to get back online, plug that electrical cord in. I want for you to like wake up, wake up to that authentic mission. And that's going to require us going back to those moments in time when we initially raised our hand. When we were answering a call, answering an urge, a desire, somewhere along the way, we were being pulled into something. Mine is pretty clear. Although I've worked in various industries, but it was always in the capacity of a leader. And then my PhD is in leadership studies because I wanted to go even deeper into this field. And so it's been clear to me. But for some of us, it's not. For some of you, it's not very clear. And so this is why I'm doing this episode so that I can support you in helping you identify going back to that moment when you said, yeah, I'll do that. Or yeah, I want to do that now. And maybe it's going back in time and saying, well, you know, I actually wasn't a call, wasn't an urge. It was maybe my programming. Maybe it was the trauma. Maybe it was something that I was told to do. And I really have never enjoyed doing this. So what is it that I would want to do today? How do I tap into that authentic mission that Denise says I have? Yeah. Then let's explore that further so that we can now move in the direction of greater fulfillment. Because I believe that when you answer your authentic mission and you are living in purpose every single day to fulfill that mission, There's no fear. There's no ego. There's no disconnection. There is no envy. There is no competition. It is nothing but love. And it's divinely pulling you into fulfilling that mission that was only given to you to fulfill. So whether you believe in God like I do, or you believe in universal spirit, you believe in Mother Gaia, whatever you believe in, know that there is a purpose for you. And it may not be what you are fulfilling today, and that's okay. And so maybe it looks like exploring a little more, going back into those memory banks that we have, and maybe just tapping into possibilities. So this isn't a hard task. And I know so many people out here suffer from not knowing what their purpose is. I think that's like the number one question that's Googled is like, what's my purpose in this life? It's a very important question that many of us are asking at certain crossroads in our lives. For me, it's seasonal. I still have to ask myself, what is my mission? Why am I on this earth? What am I here to do? Who am I here to serve? There's moments where, ooh, I'm butting up some discomfort. I'm butting up some interesting limiting beliefs. And then I have to go back and question, okay, wait, hold on, ego, chill out. Let me put my heart back online. Let me get conscious again. Let me plug in this cord. Let me tap into my divine reason for being. What is my very specific authentic mission? Authentic mission. What does authenticity even mean? It means you coming full force with all of your beauty and all of your flaws and all of the trauma and all of the blessings. It's you coming whole and full and complete to serve yourself and your people. That's you showing up authentically. I mean, I've always believed authentic leadership is the most powerful form of leadership. Forget transformational leadership. Forget emotional intelligence. Forget all that other stuff. Listen, Bill George, who is the author of Authentic Leadership Theory, has done a great job in putting that online for us to remember. It's an old theory, and we get to reinvent it. We get to make it resonate with who we are. But today, right here, right now, this is what I'm basically talking about. Your authentic mission, showing up to fulfill this mission that is only for you to fulfill. Not for me. Because I have a unique mission. Authentic mission, just like you. I have a very specific way I was programmed and conditioned. I have very specific life circumstances that you'll never understand and I'll never understand yours, right? This is why this is so unique to us because I can't lead the way you lead. You can't lead the way I lead because of how we've been programmed and conditioned and our upbringing and our culture even, you know, all of that has so much influence in how we show up today. and fulfilling this very unique mission that was only given to you, to me, individually to fulfill. So that's the authentic mission of theory that we put into practice once we finally reclaim it. So we have to remember the moment. We have to remember those callings, those urges. And maybe it was a few years ago. Maybe it was something that happened a few years ago. It was a nudge, but then you suppressed it, you tempered it down and you closed it off and you never looked at it again. Well, maybe it's time now to look at it again. So let us remember what that was. What was that calling? What was that urge? What was that desire? So it's us going back to remember. And then once we remember and we brainstorm, we flesh it out, we get excited about it, we feel into it, we then reclaim it. Like, no, that's mine. That is mine. I'm reclaiming this because life has done a certain number on me. Because life has really put me through the ringer. Because all of those circumstances that were beyond my control steered me off the track. I've gotten off the road. So now I'm going to reclaim the road and I'm getting back on it. And that's you reclaiming what that mission is for you. so then we stay here and we reclaim it and then we tap into the possibilities of what it could look like what it could feel like what it could be like for us to reclaim that authentic mission and then we realign with it so that we can embed it in our nervous system because when we do that and we're conscious of it then we take action from those possibilities So we remember, we reclaim, and we realign. And we shift the way we make decisions. We shift the direction. We may have to take a left turn instead of going straight. We may have to get on a different highway and learn a brand new road, right? Maybe it's finding new possibilities to be able to fulfill that very specific, authentic mission. That's my hope for you. Because I believe that when we remember, we reclaim, and we realign to our authentic mission, this world will be a better place for us and our children to live in. I believe that when we are each fulfilling our authentic mission. There is no fear. There is no competition. There is no envy. There is no threat because we're living in the abundant of infinite possibilities because we're living in love and in inspiration. We are inspiring our teams, our communities, our children. We are creating a better world for us to co-create in. Now, if I'm using interesting language, it may be new to you right now, but I promise you, once you remember what that calling is, what that mission is, what your purpose is, this will all feel just right because that's it. I just want you to return to your baseline, which is your authentic mission. And when we return home, There's no denying, there's no denying the joy, the love, the inspiration that we were put on this earth to give and yes, to receive. So that is my hope for you. authentic mission. What is yours? Head over to Instagram where I'm having so much fun over there in stories. Listen, I was not a big Instagram person, definitely not even a Facebook person. I just wasn't a big social media person. But I'm really enjoying Instagram right now. It's quite fun. I'm discovering some very interesting people over there. And I want for you to head over to Dr. Denise Simpson on Instagram. And I want for you to DM me, direct message me, please, what your authentic mission is. And if you are wanting to go deeper into With this work, my goodness, let me invite you into Amplify Leadership. Hello, that is our membership. It is a brand new membership. It is a life and leadership membership for those of us who want to amplify our impact every day while leading authentically. Because I'm, I don't know about you, but I'm tired of baking it until I make it. I'm tired of, you know, fulfilling somebody else's beliefs about me instead of my own beliefs. I'm, I'm just, I'm tired of leading for them and not for myself. So you want to join me inside Amplify Leadership, head over to drdeniessimpson.com forward slash Amplify. Join me. Let's have some fun together, reclaiming, realigning, But first we got to remember our authentic mission. So join me inside Amplified Leadership. All right, leader, have a fantastic rest of your day. And I cannot wait to see you on our next episode. Take care. Bye.
