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Getting fired means you are in good company. Mark Cuban was fired. Oprah Winfrey, fired. J.K. rowling, fired. Steve Jobs, fired. Heather Monahan, fired. You are rolling with the top. The best of the best. Choose to see this as your jump off point. Did you really love, Was it your purpose in life to be there? Probably not. Peel back that onion and say, wait a minute, I didn't even really like work here. Why am I sitting here crying? Wait a minute. I'm just afraid of the uncertainty. But here's the thing about uncertainty, guys. When everything is uncertain, anything is possible. Come on this journey with me each week when you join me, we are going to chase down our goals, overcome adversity and set you up for a better tomorrow. I'm ready for my close up. Tell me, have you been enjoying these new bonus Confidence classics episodes we've been dropping on you every week? We've literally hundreds of episodes for you to listen to. So these bonuses are a great way to help you find the ones you may have already missed. I hope you love this one as much as I do. Hi and welcome back. I'm so glad you're back here with me this week. I hope you are doing well. All right. I want to talk a little bit today about the importance of finding your purpose. And I know that sounds, gosh, that sounds so big, right? It sounds like such a big deal. And depending on where you are in your life, in your journey in it might sound overwhelming or crazy or maybe you've already found it and you're thinking, oh, yeah, it's so important to find your purpose. Okay, I'm going to give you a little background into how I found or how I'm finding mine, I guess is a better way to say it because it's always evolving in some ways. So for me, I remember I was back in corporate America, de, de, de, de, de, back in the day. And, and I was not very fulfilled. I don't know if you're very fulfilled at work. If you're not, just keep looking and open your eyes and pick your head up and start wondering. Start asking yourself questions. Right? I did that. You know, I wasn't very fulfilled. I picked my head up. I talked to people that I trusted and say, like, what am I missing? And I remember that led me to charity work, right? I wanted to do more giving back. I wanted to do more good. I just felt like for a long time my job was to make wealthy people wealthier, Right? My job was to drive shareholder price and drive the stock up. So I Did that. I did really well at it. It made a lot of rich people richer and it didn't feel so great, right. It just kind of felt empty. And so I would work so hard during the week, work hard to get time to spend with my son, do the things that I wanted to do. There was never enough time anyways. Bottom line is I started doing charity work. Cause I thought maybe if I can give back and impact more people in a positive way, I'll feel better. Check, check and check. It worked. But then there's less time, right? So it was a crazy time for me before I got fired because I was searching and I wasn't sure what I was searching for. I didn't even know what it looked like. And then I'll never forget, this is probably a year before I got fired. I was taking this huge stage out in Houston, Texas for National association of Broadcasters event. And I was one of the emcees. And you know, I spoke at events all the time. I did not know back then that people got paid for speaking. I didn't know it was a business. I didn't know it was ever anything I could actually do. I just looked at my life as so linear in that I was on this path. In corporate America, I was a chief revenue officer. The next move is CEO. Would I stay at the same company? Would I pitch myself to another company? Would I get investors and start my own company? I just. That was the only way I thought, oh gosh. Thinking in a linear way is totally self destructive, by the way. Do not think linear. Pick your head up, look around, talk to people outside your industry. Ask yourself questions. Okay, So I took the stage that night and it was just flipping magic. It was crazy. It was such an incredible. Well, for the most part. Then there was a really awful thing that happened after. I should tell you about that. That was terrible. I write about it actually. It's a chapter in my first book, Confidence Creator. Oh my gosh. It was not nice what happened after, but during the event was incredible. And I remember everyone was going crazy and I got off the stage and so many people rushed me and they were like, oh my gosh, you need your own show. You should be speaking all the time. Blah, blah, blah, whatever. And that night I remember saying, I feel like magic getting off that stage. It's incredible. Like, this is what I'm born to do. And then I laughed because I thought, too bad that you can't get paid to do this. Too bad this isn't a job. I need to go back to real life Monday morning and go back to my regular job. So here's my clue number one. If you ever get that feeling doing something and you're like, oh, my gosh, this is magic. This is incredible. Stop. Stop. Everything you're doing that is a sign from God, from the universe, however you choose to see it, that this is the path that you're destined for. I think so often we tune that out because we don't see the way. We don't see how it would happen. We don't see how it's possible. It's so outside of what. What we do see as possible that we shut down the possibility. I definitely did that, right? I didn't see. Okay. I feel like magic when I'm doing this thing, speaking on a stage. I feel like this is part of why I'm here, but I don't know how to make it work. Okay, forget about it. That's what I did, right? I just forgot about it. But I couldn't forget about it. I remember flying home. It's all I could think about. It was consuming me. Like, how could I? I want to feel like magic every day. I want to do good every day. I remember I came home, went back to work, went back to regular, linear life, right? Which I thought was the only path for me. P.S. whatever thought you have, like, that trash, it, it is not real. There are limitless paths available for you, right? So. So get rid of that crazy idea that I had. It's not true. So I came home, I'm back to work, and I couldn't shake the idea of the magic. It wouldn't go away, literally for a year. I think it just kept resurfacing, resurfacing. And that was a time that I started getting involved in charity work. And then, ironically enough, right, the more you go to do good and give back and give to others, goodness will come to you. It's just fact. It happens. Suddenly in the charity world, they started asking, hey, Heather, could you ever emcee this? Could you speak at this? Could you keynote this? Could you host this? And I started thinking, huh, that's funny, you know? Cause I had been speaking for 20 something years in corporate America. It was not. I didn't think it was a business. I didn't think it was a thing. I just thought it was part of my job. But I loved doing it. It was this magic in my life. So suddenly, all these opportunities started coming to me. I wasn't going looking for them, which is so crazy. But that all goes back to asking yourself the question around, wow, this magic thing. How could I get more of this in my life? What does this look like? What does this mean? Just keep asking yourself the questions around it. Like, keep thinking about it. If you sit in the question long enough, the answer will find you. So I sat in the question for a long time. I was speaking more and more, loving it more and more, yet becoming more and more unhappy at work during the day, still not having a clue what was about to transpire of my life. I had no idea. Although now that I look back, I think I manifested it all because I loathed working with this woman that I. That I worked with, that hated me anyhow. So I would complain about it all the time, say I couldn't take it anymore, and. And I guess ideally I was manifesting my way out of there. So what ends up happening? You already know the story. I get fired unexpectedly, Having no clue what I'm gonna do. I post online. I've just been fired. If I've ever helped you in any way, I need to hear from you now. As you know, that post went viral, got millions of views, and landed me on the Elvis Durant show. Halfway through that show, Elvis looked at me and said, well, Heather, obviously you're writing a book, but I wasn't writing a book, right? I was not a literary major. I was never anointed someone who should be an author. I didn't even understand if you could do. Could you anoint yourself an author? Like, could you just decide to do that? Do you need to take a course? Like, what does that look like? So I remember he spoke such a truth, passion, and a conviction into me, which I always want you to remember this. Your words matter. Your words are a wand that can literally imprint magic on someone else. And he did that to me in that moment, right? So don't hold back your beautiful words. When you have a truth to speak into someone, you might change the trajectory of their life, like Elvis Duran did for me that day. So I jumped on the plane, I googled how do you write a book? And it said, basically, you have to be disciplined and write. And I had just been fired, so I thought, okay, no problem. I've got some free time. Let's make the best of it and we'll write a book. And, you know, But I had to grapple with this story that I had hung onto for a long time in my life, which was that I was the quote unquote, social one and my sister was the quote unquote, smart one. She had a perfect score in her SATs. Obama was one of her professors at UChicago. She has a doctorate, Right. She's the smart one on paper. I'm the go make it happen person in real life. And so I had to decide that I was willing to drop those labels, drop that story and say, okay, I might not be deemed the smart one, but who says I can't be an author, right? Who says I can't blow up all the lanes out there and just live my life lanelessly being me and going where I want and trying different things? I had never thought that was a possibility for me before. And so I wrote that book, Confidence Creator, you already know, the first week it came out, it went to number one on Amazon, trumped Donald Trump's the Art of the Deal for number one on the business biography list and crushed it. Right? Book is fire. To this day. I love that book. Yes, it has three mistakes in it. And yes, I'm so proud. Done will always be better than perfect. So I had to Google, okay, how do you sell books? Because I had no idea, right? I've been in sales my whole life, but I didn't know how to sell books. There's always, you know, a strategy or some different ways that people would advise you want to learn from those that have done it before you. So I did some research and I saw that speaking was one of the ways that you could sell books. And I thought, oh my gosh, great. I'm a great speaker. I love speaking. I'll start cold calling companies and speaking for them if they buy my books. And that's what I did. Until one day I called a company and they said, what's your speaker fee? And I googled speaker fees. And I saw Gary Vaynerchuk was making 300k for a 60 minute keynote. I pumped the brakes and I said, I am moving into the speaking business stat. And I did. And my speaking business blew up. I gave my TEDx talk, I got promoted to TED. I interviewed Sarah Blakely live on stage in front of thousands of people. I was getting booked left and right. Boom, pandemic. You know the rest. Okay, so I'm sharing all this with you to show you, like, what a messy journey it was to get where I am today. I'm actually, I'm flying to Dallas this week to give a keynote for a company. And it's so funny when I stop and think how different my life is now. Not even. It hasn't even been five years yet since all this stuff happened. And it's been so incredibly messy, so many turns and challenges to really find out what I'm meant to be doing. I will say Today I have 100% clarity on my purpose in life and what I'm meant to be doing. And a lot of that, just so you know, comes from you. I hear from you, you send me DMs, you leave reviews on my podcast on this show right here. You leave reviews on my books, you give me feedback after my speeches. You know, and I. I get this affirmation that I'm exactly where I'm meant to be. I truly believe my purpose in life, my divine timing, is that I'm here to make the world a better place. I'm here to help people heal through their challenges and open their eyes to their possibility, to the greatness within you. Right. I truly believe that's my life's work now. Oh, my gosh. If five years ago, someone had told me that when I was still in corporate America, I would have fallen on the ground laughing because it sounds so beautiful, but it was so far from my reality. Right? So just wherever you are today, I hope this message finds you. If you're unhappy, if you're not fulfilled, that's okay. I've been there too, right? And I'm not saying it's just somebody magic easy way that you're going to fall into it, but maybe for you it will be right? We don't know that. I have no idea. That's, you know, turn that over to the higher power and let that way be shown. That isn't really the way I went about it at first. I definitely stumbled, made tons and tons of mistakes, but I kept listening to my intuition. I kept opening, opening my ideas to the possibility and allowing for things to rise up and show that reveal themselves to me. Right? And looking at things in a very different way. So wherever you are on your journey to find your purpose, to find your divine timing in life, just start asking yourself the questions. When you sit in that question long enough, that answer will find you. Don't get frustrated. It's annoying. By the way, I'm not a patient person at all, so I totally get it. It can be super frustrating and annoying, but. But I'm grateful that I didn't give up on it. Right. There were plenty of times over the last four years that I thought maybe I should just go back to corporate America. Especially during the pandemic, right? Like I was thinking, oh my gosh, this is. Who am I kidding? What am I doing? But I'm so grateful sitting here today that I didn't. Right? So everyone wants to give up sometimes. But as long as you're true with yourself, as long as you're being honest with yourself and that intention that you have is good, I believe those right doors are gonna open for you. You just have to keep believing. You have to have that faith. Faith over fear. And the funny thing is, like, anything, you can sit here, like let's use the example I just shared with you on day one of getting fired. I could have sat there for four years, sat every day just being scared and saying, this isn't gonna work. Or I could have stepped forward with faith and tried different things and put the post up and flew to New York and did the Elvis show and wrote the book, right? None of that stuff wasn't scary to me. But here's what I've learned, is that it's your choice. It's up to you if you choose to move forward with the faith or you choose to hold yourself back with the fear. And the more you hold yourself back, the more you limit yourself, right? And I always talk about fear is a green light, that means go. But I also want you to know it's sort of nonsensical, right? Like when we fill our heads with all this doubt. Here's what I mean by that. Had I just sat in doubt and done nothing, that would have been a self fulfilling prophecy, right? Nothing would have happened. But if I had had the faith and stepped forward with the possibility and positivity of what could come, that's when the doors start opening for you. So could it be just as likely that one thing could work out or not? Yeah, right. Like we can't see into the future. We're not clairvoyant. And if you are, please call me. Tell me about my future. Can't wait to hear. Because it's going to be big. I'm so excited. But when you think about that, you think about, okay, I'm sitting here fearful, I'm sitting here doubtful, and I'm projecting that onto my future. Hmm, doesn't sound like a good recipe for success. Or I'm gonna sit here with faith, I'm gonna sit here and think about other times in my life where things have gone well and worked out and I'm gonna move forward with that same energy and attitude into the possibility of what could be. Right? Like that other option is so much better. And really, why isn't it just as likely as things could go great as they could go terrible? Why isn't it just as likely as you could manifest a miracle. It is. You just have to start believing. You have to open your mind to that possibility. So I hope that you can do that. Today I was at church with my son and the message was so incredibly powerful. I'm big into believing in signs. I don't know if you are, but I ask God for signs all of the time. I always wanna know, am I on the right path? Right? And again I go back to you. When I get your feedback, when I get your reviews, when I get the notes from you, that steers me on the path. So thank you for that and please keep em coming. I love your reviews, I love your feedback. Means the world to me and it tells me to stay on the path that I'm on. So I keep looking for these signs everywhere. And I was given a huge sign at church day. It was so crazy. This is surreal, but I started thinking this week about a new book that I wanna write. And it's totally out of character for me. But I wrote down the title. Like anything you have to start somewhere, right? Like people think that you have this whole big plan and strategy. I don't have that. Like a little seed of a thought will come to me and then I'd plant it in the ground, pour water on it, pay attention to it and see what happens, right? So I was kind of doing that this week, writing some things down on paper and I wrote down the title of this book. Oh my gosh, this is so crazy. All I'm gonna tell you is when I got to church today, they had these cards they were passing out. It's like this new online journaling thing that they have for people who attend this chur. And the COVID art on the paper is the same name that I had written down for this book that came to me this week. If that isn't a flipping sign, it's crazy and it's completely out of character for me. And I walk into church and it's on a piece of paper. So to me, you know, look for those signs, be open to receiving those signs out there. And if you think I'm being woo woo, that's fine, but at least open your mind to it could be possible and start asking the question, right? Wouldn't you want that gift to be handed to you? Wouldn't you want that way to be shown? I'm so when I look back and reflect on my life when I was younger and I was living in this really linear, closed way, I didn't look for signs I didn't ask for signs. I didn't ask for what I wanted. Right. I didn't even know that was a thing. And I've spent the last few months like, this has been the most incredible year for me because I've really spent the last few months asking for what I want. I've been asking God, you know, for what I want, praying to God, maybe you're saying, heather, don't talk about God. This is not a religious show. Then for you, you could say, I'm going to ask the universe. I'm going to ask the higher good. I'm going to ask a higher power. Right? There's something obviously much greater than all of us out there. Whatever you want to label it, that's up to you. I'm not here to judge you condemn anyone. Right? I don't want to be judged. I don't want to be condemned. I just think that we all need to treat each other better and nicer and find commonalities instead of arguments. So to that point, start asking for what you want, start putting it out to the universe, be really mindful of your words and realize you're speaking things into existence. You truly are. I know I am. I wish you could see this card and then see it sitting next to the paper with what I wrote on it just days ago. It's incredible and I'm so excited. And it just shows me that God's working in my life. Something greater is working in my life and I'm on the right path. So I'm so grateful. Always get back to gratitude, right? That's such a great way to center yourself. Such a great way. And especially in this crazy time that we're living in. So many people fighting online right now and so much upset in the world. Any way that we can lead with gratitude, lead with joy, lead with kindness. Even in those difficult moments, or more importantly, definitely in those challenging moments, the more good we do in the world, the more good is going to come back to us. So that's what I'm wishing for you, is I'm wishing good and joy for. For you. And you know that's what life's all about, right? Finding joy in every day and finding your purpose and your passion, I believe is a big part of that because you're not going to really be fulfilled or allow your greatness to shine through if you haven't found that calling. So if you haven't found it, start seeking for it. If you found it. I'm so happy for you. Spend more time there. Seek those possibilities and find ways to do more good because it is so incredibly powerful. Meet a different guest each week.