True Calling Project | Finding Purpose And Meaning In Life And Career

We’ve been on this journey together for a few weeks now. I am discovering a lot about what drives people, and I love having the opportunity to share those stories with all of you. Today I want to share my story.   I thought I knew what I wanted to do when I was very young, but I spent a long time searching before I found fulfillment. Before I could find it, I had to take a risk and step into the unknown. My first private practice was a side gig in a dirt cheap shared office. I didn’t get a phone call for six weeks, but eventually I was working an extra 10 hours a week as my own boss. It was difficult, but I was really happy.   But I still wasn’t fulfilled. I wanted more. I needed to step further into the unknown. I left my day job and went into private practice full-time, and things started to get really interesting really fast. The romance, excitement, momentum, and motivation that come with making a big change quickly fade when you come face-to-face with the realities of the venture.   In 2015, I had some o

How often are we in search of things? Happiness, meaning, the perfect job, the perfect relationship… we are constantly searching for the things that we think we should have, have a hard time attaining, and have a hard time sustaining. But trying to get “the thing” is an illusion. In this episode, I break down a few things that we can think about to help reshape our mindset… Expectations. We think that there is a right or wrong way to be, and there isn’t. Right or wrong is a flawed paradigm. Quitting. It’s okay to quit, because sometimes we aren’t actually quitting – we’re correcting course. Wipe the word quit off the table. Roles. What is your role when you retire? When you transition out of a role (soldier, policeman, doctor, etc.), it can be hard to adjust. But your role doesn’t make your identity; your identity makes you well-suited for a role. You can’t stop being who you are. Money. What is it? It’s not a commodity and it’s not “the thing.” It’s a resource. Money can provide us with a sense of security

Mark Zinno, sports talk radio host and Army veteran, recently launched the Hazard Ground podcast. America knows a select few war stories, usually because they are featured in movies. Mark wants to tell all the stories that weren’t made into movies; the stories that people don’t know. Mark is fortunate. He deployed twice and returned twice, mostly unharmed… but his comrades in arms weren’t all as fortunate. The podcast is his way of giving back.   “I want to tell soldiers’ stories. People like hearing other people’s stories, if it’s a good story to tell and the person telling it is a good storyteller.”   In Hazard Ground, Mark acts as a translator between military people and civilians. He allows veterans to tell stories in a way that makes sense to them, and he is able to help the audience understand those stories better. Mark learned to be a great storyteller as a radio host. He has over a decade of experience in the sports media world, which he is called to because it is the best combination of being an ath

You don’t have to follow a specific path in life. You definitely don’t have to follow a path that makes you unhappy. Matt Pascarella is working on second career goals, podcasting and mountain guiding. These are his goals for a simple reason: they make him happy. He believes the world will be a better place if we focus less on what we should and shouldn’t do, and focus more on what makes us and the people in our life happy. Matt’s new podcast, Hazard Ground, features veterans sharing inspirational and motivational stories about combat, service, and resiliency. He co-hosts the show with Mark Zinno, sports talk radio host and Army veteran. Matt’s soon-to-be new career, mountain guiding, is appealing because it allows him to share the happiness and goodness of nature with others. He is getting certified through the American Mountain Guides Association, while holding down a full-time job. Both ventures share a similar challenge: you have to get started. Sometimes you are more of an obstacle than the mountain. Ide

Let your mind work for you – have it be your ally and don’t let it keep you small. Our thoughts affect how we navigate everything in lives: our jobs, our relationships, our mood, and how we see the world. When we think in black and white terms, or our thinking is polarized, we limit ourselves. When we prejudge things, we can lie to ourselves. When we think we know something, we feel safe, important and informed. We’re naturally afraid of change so our mind draws on past experiences to give us an idea of what to expect… but using past experiences to predict outcomes will dictate your actions and close you off to anything new. We tend to look at everything in a right or wrong frame of reference… so we can always find excuses why we can’t. If we broaden our lens, then we can also find excuses why we can. We can end up tying our sense of success to results, but success is subjective. We don’t want to attach our decision making to the immediate results. When we try something new, we won’t always get the results w

Today’s guest, Jerry Howard, went on a long journey to find his true calling. He dropped out of undergraduate classes, worked in a call center, enlisted in the marines after 9/11, went back to business school, obtained a MBA with a specialization in marketing, left the marines, sold health insurance, was a stay-at-home dad, participated in a corporate leadership training program… and that’s not even everything! Now Jerry serves as the executive director and healthcare administrator for ortho, neuro and cardiac rehab centers. Jerry’s diverse experiences helped him focus on and reorder his top three priorities: Faith Family Finance “Faith, Family and Finances allows me to keep the external world secondary to my family and then my Family secondary to Faith. If you don’t have principles to live by then, when push comes to shove, even within your Family you can be swayed by the moment.” Prioritizing Faith, Family, and Finance helps Jerry keep love as his main motivator. Jerry was motivated by love to write a boo

Traci Ruble, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, is the co-creator of Sidewalk Talk. Sidewalk Talk fights stigma around therapy and mental health by bringing listening to the streets. The idea is simple: A volunteer sets two chairs out on the sidewalk. They listen to anyone who wants to talk. “I’m not in my therapist role when I’m out there listening. I show up as a human and I try to not think about all the different theoretical orientations and I don’t meet people with the idea that there’s something that needs to be fixed in them.“ The movement started in 2014. Traci was bewildered by the level of gun violence and she wanted to know: how can we be active in our community and actually listen to what’s going on, rather than interpreting and predicting it? How can we be part of the community? The first Sidewalk Talk event took place in San Francisco in 2015 – now there is a Sidewalk Talk going on, somewhere in the world, every week. An important aspect of the Sidewalk Talk dynamic is that the volunteers

Today, we’re exploring The Suffer Lab with Lt. Col. Phil Forbes. “You’re going to suffer to grow. Things aren’t always comfortable.” In episode 2, I talked to Phil about leadership. Phil has been affiliated with Special Operations for the majority of his career and has supported numerous contingencies worldwide. He has commanded at the detachment, squadron, and group level in garrison and in combat and has been awarded the Bronze Star on two occasions. He presently works in the Pentagon for a three-star General as an Executive Officer. We’re used to thinking that stress and suffering are bad, but they’re instructive. Experiencing stressful situations, physically or mentally, teaches you about how your body responds to stress. You have a choice about how you respond to suffering. If you make a conscious decision to frame the experience in a way that serves you, then you will develop better skills for adapting to greater suffering, in the future. The Suffer Lab is self-imposed suffering, with defined limits. In

Mercedes Samudio, LCSW runs a practice and brand called The Parenting Skill. Over time, Mercedes realized she wanted to coach and empower her parents – she didn’t necessarily want to do therapy with them. Parents really need to learn how to connect with their child and still be a full human, while making sure that their children are safe, growing and developing. She helps parents learn their own unique skills. An important tool for Mercedes is empathy. She understands that each person is different and each parent will parent differently. “You don’t have to wait until you’re an expert, because each and every single one of us is technically an expert in understanding our perspective and our philosophies.” Another important tool that Mercedes has embraced is live video. Live videos allow her to show off her passion and show up as her genuine self. Being genuine helps others do the same, and it brings the clinician and the client to the same human level. Many of the problems that parents experience can be traced

Either we’re asleep or we’re awake. Either we’re consciously aware of something or we’re not. But we don’t become awake from reading books or having conversations. We wake up when we experience things, and we experience things differently based on our mindset.   Mindset Shift #1 – Don’t Get Wrapped Up in the Things You Can’t Control. I don’t necessarily think politics is the problem, I just don’t think it’s the solution. Other individuals will not solve your problems or improve your life.   Mindset Shift #2 – Loving & Accepting Every Experience Accepting the fullness of an experience will allow you to see the good in the bad, and it will help you learn to love every present moment. When you’re doing things you don’t particularly like, you can learn to love them because you know those things serve your greater purpose. When we experience hard times, we tend to quickly judge those as bad experiences. When we make that snap judgement, we miss the bigger picture of what we’re experiencing.   Mindset Shift

Ernesto Segismundo, M.S., is a marriage and family therapist who mastered marketing skills to help him grow his private practice. He trains other therapists to do the same by promoting their practice through social media and video marketing at www.FYLMIT.com. Ernesto emphasizes how our origins and perception affect how we define what is possible and what is a success. When we achieve what we believe to be possible based on our origin, then we run into an upper limit problem. This upper limit problem can look and feel a lot like burnout, but it’s likely rooted in fear. Reaching your perceived upper limit can lead to losing focus and subconscious self-sabotage. You’re not failing – you just don’t know how to handle your success… yet. “You are successful, but you don’t know how to handle that type of success.” When we re-think burnout, we can stop blaming external factors and start taking personal responsibility. When you take personal responsibility, you can start actually addressing the problem. Sometimes the

Lanie Smith is the owner and founder of Integrative Art Therapy and Registered Art Therapist. She is on a mission to reduce the chronic burnout that is common for so many women, parents, helpers, and healers using the power of art, nature, and the creative process. You don’t have to be artistic or have any art experience to benefit from art therapy. Lanie didn’t discover art until she was 18-years-old. Everyone has a creative side, some of us just lose touch with that part of ourselves as we go through adolescence and become more self-conscious. “This isn’t about you being the best or the worst artist. We’re not judging it. We’re just using a non-verbal style of communication here. This is just another outlet for you to express yourself.” Embracing creativity can help change behaviors that are reinforced by ourselves and society, and these behaviors can cause us to push ourselves and burn out.   You can embrace creativity in any part of your life – it doesn’t have to involve putting pen to paper or paint to c

Dr. Lily Zehner, MFT-C, specializes in sex, intimacy and relationships. In this episode, we explore the journey that led her to developing her unique set of skills. “I often tell people that I have thick skin and a tender heart. It takes a tender heart to really work with the people I’m working with and to really understand what is going on and what is felt and what is needed, but thick skin because there is so much shame and so much judgement.” In the household that Lily grew up, sex was considered the devil, dirty and wrong – but she always had a curiosity about sex and sexual expression. She also grew up divided between different identities. She is a first-generation American She is hearing, but her parents’ are deaf She grew up in an upper-middle class neighborhood, but she grew up poor She is a person of color, but surrounded by white people “Understanding how these different parts of my identity intersect and how that impacts how I show up in the world and how I experience things – it really is a big

Fiachra O'Sullivan is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with a practice in in San Francisco. Couple’s counseling is tough – a lot of therapists shy away from it – but Fiachra loves it. Fiachra is also launching Empathi.com, a free tool for couples to learn about who they are, and who they are together, from an attachment perspective. Couples will receive daily reminders or prompts that will help them continue to tend to their love and relationships. “Love matters, and because it matters so much you’re going to feel threatened in moments where it looks like that love isn’t present.” He is using a digital platform to share this information for free because he doesn't believe people should have to spend hundreds of dollars if they want to work towards greater understanding and healthier relationships. As a couples therapist, Fiachra has to do all of the things an experiential therapist does, but he also has to match people’s energy and actively become a part of the session. “There is nothing I will be abl

Welcome back to the True Calling Project. Today’s guest is Nicole Gordon, licensed marriage and family therapist, and she has a very unique way to approach couples and family work. Nicole sees clients in both a private practice and in their homes. She practices experiential therapy that uses cooking as a tool. It’s basically a platform to help clients understand themselves in situ and relate their emotions or thoughts to what has come up in traditional talk therapy. “By going through the process themselves, they’re able to observe more about themselves.” What does cooking therapy look like? It starts with an introduction to talk about the clients’ backgrounds and goals with therapy The activity might involve a couple or family creating something together, creating something for each other or creating something without knowing what the ingredients are The activity is geared towards the clients’ goals During the activity, Nicole will ask questions to help clients process along the way “People love it because

Today’s guest, Jane Zarse, is the author of Love and Compassion Is My Religion: A Beginner's Book into Spirituality. The book is a guide to finding your spiritual self – no matter how much you've lost yourself. It's a guide on how to find your way back. “Spirituality saved me, so I felt compelled to pass that on.” Jane fought bulimia and drank to excess after graduating from Boston University, then worked first as an actress and later as a high-volume trader at Chicago's Options Exchange. She lacked compassion for others, but didn’t realize why until much later. Jane lacked compassion because she didn’t really love herself. Spirituality helped her embrace authentic self love – the desire to take care of yourself, even when it requires a tremendous amount of sacrifice. Jane was first introduced to spirituality in Alcoholics Anonymous, which was actually disconcerting at first. She didn’t know if it was religion or what was going on, but she knew she didn’t want to drink herself to death. She learned to tap int

Should you quit your job? Over the past few years, I have seen a lot of discussions and advertisements online encouraging people to leave their job, take risk, step into the unknown and really go for it. I want to offer another perspective. I did quit my job about two years ago, and it did open up new opportunities in my life that I would not have had otherwise – however, in hindsight, there are a few things I would have done differently. Eckhart Tolle suggests that there are three ways that we can improve a situation in which we are unhappy: Can you change your situation? Can you accept it? Should you leave it? Before you decide to leave a job, first consider what about the job is making you unhappy. Are you doing things you don’t like, or not doing enough of the things you enjoy? Improving that situation may be as simple as sitting down to talk with a supervisor. “Practicing acceptance within my line of work has really been focused on the fact that I need to be present with the people that I’m working wit

Welcome to the True Calling Project. I’m your host John Harrison, professional psychotherapist and coach, and today I’m talking to a long-time friend, Lt. Col. Phil Forbes. Phil has been affiliated with Special Operations for the majority of his career and has supported numerous contingencies worldwide. He has commanded at the detachment, squadron, and group level in garrison and in combat and has been awarded the Bronze Star on two occasions.  He presently works in the Pentagon for a three-star General as an Executive Officer. “On a very small scale, we can affect great change in our lives by being a little audacious.” Phil and I met as freshman at Virginia Tech and the Corps of Cadets, and like most of us he struggled with the regiment of military life.  At one point a few weeks after we started he actually considered quitting.  He was visited by Medal of Honor Recipient Col. Wesley L. Fox, who served as an assistant commandant, and was asked the fundamental question: What is your five year plan? “It was a

I’m your host John Harrison, professional psychotherapist and coach, and I’m getting the project started by talking to someone who has been a big inspiration to me. Melvin Varghese is a therapist and Founder of the podcast and blog Selling the Couch, which helps aspiring and current mental health private practitioners to become better business owners.   “If you want to get to a certain place, one of the best time and financial investments you can make is to invest in people that have already done it and have had success.”   Melvin and I talk about how he found himself in the mental health podcasting niche, the things that he learned about himself and his business by starting a podcast, and great tips for people looking to further their careers by starting a podcast. Melvin saw an opportunity to serve a larger population and develop alternative income streams by podcasting. It is a unique medium because podcast listeners are consuming episodes passively, while doing other things, and headphones allow podcast h

Welcome to the first episode of True Calling Project, a podcast dedicated to exploring the purpose and meaning in our lives and chosen professions, how we can achieve satisfaction and fulfilment, and live our life to our fullest potential. Do we all have a True Calling? I’m your host John Harrison, professional psychotherapist and coach.