E323: How to find your purpose and identity with Bryna Haynes | Trauma Healing Coach

Michael: Hey! Whats up, Unbroken Nation! Hope that you're doing well wherever you are in the world today. Very excited to be back with you with another episode with my friend Bryna Haynes who is the founder and CEO of world changer media. Bryna, my friend how are you today, what's happening in your world?

Bryna: I'm doing great and life is amazing. Thank you so much for the opportunity to have this conversation, I'm very excited to be here with you and just have an incredible discussion.

Michael: Yeah, as of mine and I appreciate you being here. As I know, the Unbroken Nation will as well. And for those of them who do not know you, tell us a little bit about your backstory and how you got to where you are today?

Bryna: Well, I was laughing because before we started the recording you had said, you know if you have a backstory like I was an astronaut when I was eight don't say that because you know who's gonna relate to that but I made me laugh because what I was a little kid my dream was to be a CIA agent and pre ballerina and I was gonna use the one as the cover for the other. So, fantasy has made my life rich since I can remember, I feel like I've lived like about four distinct lifetimes and you know, growing up as a very emotional, very sensitive kid, making a living as a musician playing in coffee shops in Atlanta for a while, starting a different career and eventually landing up the in the writing world and with every evolution and I think this happens to so many of us, we grown and we change and we think that we've left certain parts of ourselves behind like on the side of the road and they always come back around in the most unexpected ways, so, I was kind of just giggling about conversation are like oh, yeah, I was gonna be the six year old CIA agent.

Michael: Yeah, I actually relate to that a lot, I was obsessed with James Bond as a kid still slam full disclosure but you mind I think that like you I've lived many lives and I think probably and I could be wrong, I don't know everyone but I'd have to assume so many people have lived this multitude alive especially in the world that we live in and I think so many people are kind of in this place in which they're trying to search for purpose, they're trying to find out why they're here, they're trying all these things, I love what you said like these things of your past will come back around. Talk about purpose and specifically what more curious about is how can people find it because it's such a word thrown around so frequently in society right now always like find your purpose, find your purpose, I don't think anybody ever really tells us how, so, I'd love for you to dive into that a little bit?

Bryna: Well, you know this was such a loaded question for me for so many years because especially as a young person, coming up in the world trying to figure out what was gonna be my career choice, where was I gonna land in life? And it felt like if I didn't find purpose quote and unquote purpose that somehow, I was just taking up space or that I was wasting my time here on planet earth and it was felt like a lot of pressure. And I actually didn't learn a good way to define purpose for myself until very recently and this tidbit comes from actually a client of mine a leadership expert Tim Piper his name and he says that, purpose is perpetuating the things that you value, that's it. And that struck me so powerfully because if we can just lean into perpetuating the things that we value the whole search for purpose just becomes you just need to look inside and it's there, it's right there. So, if we value community then we do work that perpetuate community, if we value connection we do work that perpetuate connection, if we value ideas we do work that perpetuate the growth and dissemination of ideas and to me that's been the best way to explore this because there are a hundred million ways or more in which we can live our lives every single day and if we're searching for that needle in a haystack before we think we found purpose we're gonna waste a lot of time feeling purpose lists.

Michael: Yeah and I think a lot of people do feel purpose and part of that is maybe it's just a society we live in, where there's a measurement against material position and having this perfect life and things of that nature but I like the idea of that you shared in perpetuation of that and so much of that feels like a creation to me and what I mean by that is there it almost feels us for lack a better way to phrase it here you are with life and you have this play and you have to go in here and make it into the thing that you want to. And I wonder answer you're in this, why did that strike you so fondly because I have to imagine you've heard things about purpose before in your life but what about that felt so true for you because I'm just sitting in a listen and I'm like, yeah, I'd totally relate to this?

Bryna: Yeah, well. You know, I spent a lot of time in various spiritual practices, starting in my twenties and continuing through present day. And everybody has a different idea of purpose, so if you speak to you know people who are practicing paganism and earth religions they have one kind of view of purpose, that kind of permeate the practice and the same thing in the yoga community the same thing in the Zen Buddhism community and I kind of dip my toes lightly in all of these practices. And there seems to be this endless search that goes on for so many people who are on spiritual paths or not but that it's like landing on the thing that makes me. And what I discovered and what's made my life just a heck of a lot more comfortable and less anxiety provoking is the fact that there is no one thing that makes me, I am a collection of experiences and thoughts and feelings and decisions. When I think about purpose through the lens of values as I learned when I was taught that way, what it really empowers is that I can be purposeful in anything I do in every moment of my life, I can be purposeful with my kids because one of my biggest values is expanding world changing ideas like, I want to be working with an expanding and empowering the ideas that need to be seen in heard for the world to change in the way we needed to change for us to all survive and thrive. I can do that as a parent, I can do that as a business owner, I can do that as a friend, I can do that as a coach, I can do that anywhere anyway I could do it the grocery store you know, I could strike up a conversation with a random stranger about something and I can actually do that purposeful work and it's kind of an amazing place to be, it's that anywhere I go in anything I do, I don't have to be this one thing in order to be on purpose. And I think that that idea particularly as it's perpetuated among entrepreneurs can be actually really damaging and really limiting because there's the sphere that we can't move forward in our work until we land on the purpose, on the identity, the definition of us. When we get stuck in trying to define ourselves has the one thing or the one job or we're trying to figure out the one outcome that we produce as all of our marketing coaches tell us we need, right? There's so much of our beauty and complexity that just gets lost and so, it's a lot easier to just show up every day and say this is what I value, how can I make more of that.

Michael: And for people and I agree with this. I look at my life and I'm like author, speaker, coach, podcast host, business owner, entrepreneur, friend, brother, lover like all these things I sit here I go, I have always very much so pushed against any narrative in which I would be talkative into one idea of who it is that I may or may not be and I think maybe that's just part of me being incredibly stubborn and being like you can't label with me and I wonder for those listening who are like, I hear, I kinda resonated with it but I still feel so incredibly stuck about this idea, this is who I am what would you say those folks have that thought?

Bryna: I would say that this is who I am is an idea and you have permission to change your mind. And one of the really cool things about identity is that, it is a construct even though we feel very attached to certain portions of our identity it really is something that ultimately we get to choose and one of the most powerful exercises that I've ever done and this has worked immensely well for people in my world is to imagine every day that you had the chance to be the most amazing version of yourself and just start making statements and asking questions, today I will fill in the blank because I am a person who feeling the blank.

Your decision is what sets the parameters for your identity and you see this in people who have made radical transformations in their lives, people who have overcome addiction, people who have come out of really challenging circumstances, they made a decision that previous version of themselves was no longer who they are and once that decision is made it takes a little while for the neural pathways to catch up but the decision itself ships our identity. And so, if we're feeling stuck around for example what I hear a lot is like, I would love to do X, Y, Z in my business or I would love to do X, Y, Z in my life but I am insert perceived blah here, right? You know but I'm not organized, but I'm not motivated, but I'm not smart enough, but I'm not connected enough, those our beliefs about ourselves that we can change and we can actually gather evidence to prove that the new identity, the chosen identity is correct. And it's kind of an amazing thing because it really shows you would just how a subjective reality actually is but when you choose to be a new version of yourself your brain will actually start gathering information that proves that what you have decided is true is true and when that starts happening it's completely magical because you'll start to notice that you do have evidence that you're capable you do have evidence that you're connected you just weren't noticing it before because you had made a decision that it wasn't true. And so, leaning into your power to change how you feel about yourself, I think is one of the most radical and revolutionary things that we can do because you have the power to become anything that you decide you will become and if that is the case and what would be different if we could become anything that we decided could be true for us, what would we no longer have to worry about? What would we no longer have to limit ourselves by? And it takes time to lean into that truth but when we do we find your power.

Michael: Yeah, and I agree with that. I love what you use two words is that I use every single day in my life and that's choice and decision. And I think ultimately the only way you're ever going to truly be yourself is you have to decide that and I fear that people will hear this conversation and go okay, cool easier said than done all it sounds like is, I just need to be me. And honestly like no bullshit to some extent, I'm like yeah, that's literally how you do it, you know but I think that there's fear, there's spirit of judgment for your shame, fear of guilt like, I'm a proponent of the idea not necessarily in an exact sense but to some extent that we live in a matrix, that we live in a way in a world within a construct in which we have the ability to instead of us bending ourselves to the world instead of bend the world to us. And what I'm curious about so in laying in this foundation and thinking about the ability to choose and decide what's the level deeper of this in terms of creating yourself like, what does that really look like?

Bryna: Well to me, it looks like living according to a vision. And so, one of the things that I think we get a little backwards is that we think that the vision will come once we figure out who we are and it's actually the opposite is that we decide how we want our life to be, we decide who we want to be within that life and then the universe, the matrix, the quantum field shapes itself around that decision. And the other thing that we get backwards in this is that we have to know the how and so a lot of people who teach on station we'll talk about co procreating with the universe or co creating with God. And you know creating this vision that is then fulfilled in this pro creative process but what most people lean into is that their part is the how and the what and the why is up to the universe but that's actually backwards. So, when we're trying to create something new, when we're trying to become a new version of ourselves, what we need is the vision and the decision and we need the what and the why. I want to be this version of me because and then we have that that picture and then we say okay, this is what I have decided will be and then the universe portion of that is delivering the how; the how is none of our business, we do not get to micro manage the universe or our lives in pursuit of this creative process. And working in that way requires a huge amount of trust but there have been times I guarantee everyone listening to this podcast can come up with a time in their life where they made a decision, they didn't know how it was gonna happen, they didn't know when it was gonna happen but they decided that it would be so and it became so. Some of us do us through this subconsciously and some of us do this with things we don't want, which is also challenging we decide that something will be a particular way even though we don't want it but we've decided that it will be and then it comes true and we feel like you know, we've gotten confirmation that our fears are valid.

I also never want to discount the fact that many things in life are not in our control, we're bumping around up against other realities all the time and there's overlap, you know, we are not at least not in our human form completely sovereign over every single thing that happens in our lives. We are part of a matrix of a web, so there's a little bit of that going on too but that doesn't take away our power to create and our power to shake the web in a really positive way and create a ripple effect that extends far beyond us. This difference between being passive in that and just taking whatever comes and actually being the one to pluck the string, right?

Michael: Yeah, dive into that more because I think that in passing people will not hear that.

Bryna: Okay. So, I think one of the things that's really important to consider is how our viewpoint affects our daily reality, how all the lens that we put on ourselves and our lives actually has an effect. And one of the cool things that I learned when I was studying the sort of crossover between you know quantum realities and neuroscience and how our brains work and all of that. When I came across are two really key things that I think will help people get a little bit more out of this conversation.

One is that we have an internal filtration so stone just like the air filter in your house or the water filtration system in your city. And our internal filters are set by our beliefs and our priorities, what we decide is important is what is filtered and given to our brain as priority information, the filtration system is called the particular activating system and basically our filters are conscious, hey, you know, I want a new car, you know I'm looking for this car I think, I wanna buy a mini cooper and all of a sudden you see many cooper everywhere even though you haven't seen one in months before that, it wasn't that there weren't many cooper, you're just noticing them now because you told your brain it's a priority. When you decide that you know after being single for a while you wanna start dating all of a sudden everything around you, I mean let's not like go into algorithms and like you know who's watching us on Facebook but all of a sudden all of this information about relationships is coming your way and that's not because that information was not making its way into your reality before it's simply that you have decided as a priority. This also happens on a subconscious level so when we believe things about ourselves, one of the most challenging beliefs that I've been contending with my whole life and that I've been rooting out like string by string is this a belief that I don't matter and I think a lot of us carry that one and I think that's kind of you know needles us in our search for purpose. But if we have a belief that we don't matter we have a belief that you know that some sort of a belief that impacts our daily life whatever that might be; that is a filter for our brain as well. So, we get eight billion pieces of information coming at us every single day, sensory information, digital information, relationship information, energetic information, eight billion pieces a day but the only ones that we notice are the ones we have decided our priority. And so, knowing that we can actually switch the filters. So, if we decide that we wanna switch that identity from I don't matter too – I matter and we work on reiterating that this is like why affirmations actually can work when they're done appropriately, we reiterate, we reiterate, we reiterate, I matter, I matter, I matter and after about three days of consistent practice that's the current numbers like seventy two hours of consistent practice we begin to wear a new neural pathway and all of a sudden the universe will start presenting us with evidence that we matter, this evidence was there before we just didn't have the filter set so we could see it. So, when we're looking at changing our identities this is where the decision process is so vital because what we decide is important is what gets communicated to our conscious mind, all the other evidence is out there we just won't see it and so this is a really important evolutionary mechanism because otherwise if we didn't have that filter like the feeling of you know, this chair under my butt and like my headphones in my ears or air filter system coming on and blowing air on me would be just as important in my brain as the conversation that having. But because we have this ability to filter, we get to decide what's important, I'm not distracted by the chair unless I mentioned it and now, I'm like oh, this chair comfy, so there's this process that we can go through of identifying what we have decided it is important and what we can decide it needs to flip. And again, just like you said the decision is the key factor, I decide that I am going to receive more information about why I'm worthy, about why I matter, about why my work is important, about why the world needs me and it does take consistent practice but with practice the filter will change and you'll start to actually receive that feedback in information. So, this is really probably deeper than we intended to come Michael but this is I think it's important for people to realize like we have control over this stuff, this isn't something that just like we get programmed in one way by our childhood we have no choice for the rest of our lives, we have a choice about who to be, we have a choice about what the world reflects to us. Well, I was gonna see the other piece is actually about the questions we ask because our questions are feedback mechanism. I spent a good portion of my young adulthood asking questions like, why does anybody care? You know, I went through a very dark depression for several years and I was asking question like, why does anybody know I'm here? Why don't I matter? Why am I not receiving the love that I want, why is this happening to me? Again, another mental mechanism, if you ask your brain a question, your brain has to answer the question this is called instinct collaboration and it's a reflex just like when the doctor hits your knee with a little hammer thing, your knee goes, it's a reflex. You ask yourself a question, your brain has to answer. And so, what kind of questions are you asking yourself because the first place your brain goes for answers is your subconscious mind into that store house of eight billion pieces of information a day, that it has racked up over all these years and so, you're answering questions in the now moment based on past experience but not only that through your filtered interpretation of past experience, so, talk about confirmation bias, right? So, it's really incredible when you start observing the questions that you ask yourself, are these questions you really want answered? Are these questions that are helpful, that are going to move you forward, that are going to give you answers that are actionable? Me asking myself why don't I matter not actionable information simply confirmation for the emotion that I was feeling and it played over and over and over. And purposeful questions lead to actionable answers so instead of like, why do I feel this way the question might become how would I like to feel? Get those answers. The question isn't can I do this? Can I start this business? Can I start this relationship? Can I heal myself? Ask how… how can I start this business? How can I heal myself? How can I be an amazing partner? And the answer you get, if your brain has no backstory of information about those answers it will go out into the universe and bring them back for you.

Michael: Yeah, there's a lot of beauty in that and I think about this idea about being a solution oriented and how that really itself in the questions that I ask of myself because it's so easy. As you were speaking their thought has come to me that sits with me pretty much almost every single moment of every day is where attention goes energy follows and we spend so much time and negativity, searching for why things suck, why the world is terrible, why we can't be us, why we can't and it's like they're all these negative words carry so much weight and so much power. I remember a quick anecdote I was a young child; I was on a bowling league when I was eight years old, I fucking hated it and I kept growing the gun balls all the time, all the time, all the time. And my uncle came up to me one like throwing this tantrum because I just could not stand it and it's one of the most important moments that I remember in childhood he puts his hand on my shoulder, he kneels down, he looks at me because you need to stop crying and you have to take the word ‘can't’ out of your vocabulary and that has helped true in my entirety of my life since that moment and was really beautiful except there was a little bit of a disconnect because I didn't not realize can't doesn't mean like also go break the wall and be a terrible person burn it down, right? You gotta kinda get very pointed and focused about what you want and so, you know, part of what I've always come to or at least more recently I should say in the last decade or so is looking at the answer to the question always being, yes and then how and not limiting ourselves and not putting ourselves in this position because look, the next worst thing is coming like, whatever it is like, I promise you it's on its way it's probably here already and they just haven't written the headline yet but it's on its way and so you have to think about this idea with I phrase as being solution oriented knowing that if you put in the right effort on a long enough timeline the life that you want can be your life. But so many people are hearing this and they're going oh, you guys are just positive. First and foremost, I'll be very clear, I'm a real list, I am not optimistic by any scope of the imagination, am I simply a realist but I have always measured capability in the world by has someone else done this because if they have that means it's plausible. What I wanna dive into here and go a little bit deeper into and you know we talk about this role of our chosen them identity and creating our experiences through that but so many people I know they're listening this and they're like fuck you guys, I'm still stuck this isn't helpful. So, in practicality sense where do you start like what are the actionable things that people can do in real time, right now they're listening to this, they can go okay, I can go apply this to my life and start to watch these things that Bryna was talking about take shape in my life.

Bryna: Absolutely and I know that feeling of being stuck so well and that stuck feeling kept me in a lot of situations that were really unhealthy because I didn't know how to ask the right questions. You know, my first marriage was to someone, who you were an amazing person and also had some pretty serious addiction issues and know living in that and through that and with the blackouts and the violence and the things that happen in those situations, I didn't know even to ask is this normal is this okay, I didn't even know how to ask that. And so, I think the first thing we have to remember is that we have the power to ask different questions, is this really what I want for my life? And if the answer is no, then what do I want? What else is possible for me?

One of the best questions to add to your arsenal is what else is possible, because if you get stock in that negative feedback loop you can actually break it by asking yourself over and over and over what else is possible, what else is possible, what else is possible because it is entirely possible that the whole world is broken and everything sucks and you know the whole world's is going to shit, we have plenty of evidence prove that don't we and yet is that the reality that I want to continue to perpetuate because the more that we accept that something is unchangeable the more it becomes unchangeable and so just asking what else is possible? Is it possible that there's also really amazing things happening in the world? Is it possible that there is another option for me that I'm just not seeing right now? And that's okay, you don't have to see it, just recognize that it's possible that it's there. And so, leaning into you know there's something else here even if I can't see it yet.

The other thing is and this was really helpful for me and it may be helpful for some of you is to ask, how do I want to feel right now? Because there's the reality of how we feel and there's like how do I want to feel? And if you're feeling completely just stuck and frustrated and you'd like to feel creative for example, you know, we don't wanna try to jump from like rock bottom to leg, I dancing think on play nine because it just feels impossible and so it will be impossible. When something feels impossible, we'll make it impossible even if theoretically it is possible. So, like do I move a couple steps up the ladder? I feel stuck I'd like to feel creative okay, what makes me feel creative? And if you can answer that question and then follow through on the action this is the hardest part because then all of those limiting beliefs like, to sneak up like, yeah but it's not okay for me to stop hustling in my business and go take a break and take a walk and we make all of these reasons why it's not okay for us to have the thing that we want. and the first step to all of this is just to pay attention because was so much of the time would even know what's happening, we don't notice the inner dialogue that keeps us spinning in circles and so the first step just notices, notice what you're saying to yourself, do I like what I'm saying to myself? What else is possible, right? It's not a huge leap, it's not becoming the most positive person that you know and I'm with you Michael like, I tend to be a realist like my husband the happiest man on earth, the man never has a less than positive thought, he's like he's a unicorn, next to him I'm like Debbie Downer. And so there's this balance that we find of like, it's okay to feel all the feelings but we have some choice about whether we wanna feel those feelings all the time or if we wanna be with him until they pass and then choose a different root to ask a different question. I think if everybody just started there what else is possible? What else is possible? Answers that we get are gonna change the world.

Michael: And they will literally change your world and through that change, I mean you can impact the world, I think about even this podcast when I sat down four years ago when I was like, okay, I'm gonna go and make this thing it was like, this is the filling to me, it gives me opportunity to learn I kept asking myself well, how do you do this, what does it take, how do you show up, who do you get on. And at first at sucks like, I may even look back on this in fifteen years and like it still wasn't as good as it could have been yet, right? And I'm willing to face the resistance of myself of wanting to quit every day and that small voice in your head that pops up. And for me know it's smashed down it's almost fantastic my lot and so really, it's about okay, when I feel resistance, when I feel called to not want to do something I always think to myself well maybe this is how you get to where you want to go. I know that's something that you speak on as well and so, I'd love for you to break down why the things that we most often resist are also so like the keys of the castle and like what that really means?

Bryna: Yeah, well, especially those of us who have inherited or life experience-based programming that it's safer to stay small, it's safer to not be noticed, you know, we have to we have to keep ourselves in a box like whatever that box looks like, right? We will most often resist and I definitely raise my hand here, I still do this. We will most often resist the things that feel most authentic to us because they're also the things that make us the most vulnerable and so, being the truth of who we are is often gonna feel like the scariest awful oh, my god, there's a fucking way, I'm doing that kind of thing. And also, I firmly believe that we have the capacity to transform all of our life experience into fuel for positive change. So, I'm not gonna like go, oh everything happens for a reason because like, some shit is unreasonable and there's no justifying it but I truly believe that we have the capacity to take whatever has happened to us and around us and through us in our lives and turn it into fuel for positive change. And so, when we lean into that, a lot of times the things that we resist are going to be the things that we don't want to look at again and yet the things that we don't want to look at again or parts of ourselves that we've thought we'd left behind and sometimes this has really been benign, right? Like, I left my corporate job and I never wanna to be the person I was incorporated again and yet the person you were corporate has a skill set that can be massively impactful for the people you want to serve through perpetuating your values, through purpose driven work and so we resist like looking at the aspects of ourselves we thought we were done with but most of the time when we take all of who we have been and all the different lives we've lived in, all the lessons we've learned and all the experiences we've had and we fuse them into one lens through which we can view the work we wanna do in the world whatever that is, whether that's actual like running a business or being a parent or being in a relationship, whatever we views all of those beautiful gems that we've acquired into one lens, we feel like we've landed in something that literally no one else on the planet can do or replicate.

And so, the resistance for me has always come about bringing the things that I thought I was done with back. You know talking about the things that I thought I would never have to talk about again, looking at the dreams that I had that I left by the side of the road and thought I was done with, looking at the version of me that I thought I had outgrown and seeing that she still has wisdom to bring today even though I'm no longer that person. And so, the resistance isn't necessarily about resisting a thing or an event or a task or an action, it's really about resisting embracing ourselves and if we could find a way to do that even if it's just a tiny bit at a time, we will find more connection to our purpose, we will find more fulfillment, we will find more success because we'll be using all of our skill sets simultaneously which again is something that no one else can replicate only you have lived your life, only you have learned what you've learned, only you have fused that learning into this very unique lens. You know, when we can kind of get okay with that because a lot of times it doesn't feel okay, but when we can kind of get okay with that, that nothing about our lives has been wasted then we lean into something much greater, I think.

Michael: Yeah, and I would agree with you. One of the section titles of my first book is called ‘Create period. You period’ because that's so much of what it is and there's a word that came to mind, you're speaking here and it's arbiter and in real time, I don't think I've ever done this on the show before I looked at the definition because I was like I wanna be able to recite this exactly from the dictionary and just as an arbiter is one rounds the power of deciding or prescribing according to his or her own absolute pleasure and that's the truth about life, we have the ability till being of the exact person that we want to be and you just gotta be willing to step into it because you know, I've said it before there's no Disney moment, whatever you think is coming ain't, you're gonna have to put in a ton of work but on the backside of it you can have beauty, you can have this life, you can create the identity who you are today does not have to be who you are tomorrow, doesn't have to be you are in four minutes like it's crazy to me that it's when you make decisions how quickly your life changes and I love that use that word it's my favorite word of the English dictionary and then it really is probably one of the most powerful concepts that someone can wrap their head around. Bryna, my friend this conversation has been absolutely incredible before I ask you my last question, can you tell everyone where they can find you?

Bryna: Thank you so much. Yeah, you can all find me at worldchangers.media that's my publishing company and I have a link right on the homepage to book a call with me, I don't like do like lead magnets or downloads like, I love facetime so, there's anything you wanna chat with me about book related or not you can just book a call with me right on that website.

Michael: Brilliant. I love it and of course we'll put that link in the show notes as well as links to your social media, more people can also find you. My last question for you my friend, what does it mean to you to be unbroken?

Bryna: I think it means being all of who we are and allowing all of who we are and who we've been to inform the person we're becoming and not excluding any part of ourselves or any part of our experience and not cutting anything about ourselves off because it's uncomfortable just really leaning into who we are, who we are choosing to be and allowing that to come through as a gift.

Michael: Beautifully said my friend. Thank you so much for being here and sharing all of your wealth of knowledge with us.

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