Welcome to Visionary Pursuit, a podcast where we explore what it takes to turn your big, bold ideas into reality. I'm Carolina Zuleta. I'm a life and business coach and your host for this podcast. I'm thrilled to have you here.
Hi, and welcome back. This is episode 33 of the Visionaries Pursuit Podcast. As always, I'm so happy to be with all of you today, and just to give you a peek behind the scenes during the week when I'm working with my clients or when I'm reading things, I'm learning new stuff, I'm writing Post-Its or sending WhatsApp to Andrew, who's my husband, who's my partner in this business about ideas for podcasts. And today's episode is one that I've been thinking about for a while. I'm very excited to share it with all of you, and it all started because I'm currently part of a mastermind.
Where there are other coaches and we're all growing our businesses, building our businesses, and we share a lot in common, but we also support each other. We challenge each other. It's fantastic.
And one of the other coaches shared with our group this metaphor about what it takes to build a business and how it's similar to launching a rocket to space. And if you think about it, when we're launching a rocket to space, we need fuel. We need lots of fuel. We need consistent fuel. We need so much power because gravity is trying to hold us back.
So we need to overcome the powerful forces of gravity in order to make it to space. And and the same is true for all of us who are growing our businesses, who are creating something from nothing, who are maybe breaking glass ceilings or disrupting industries.
We are fighting against the status quo. We're fighting against all of our tendencies to look for the easier path, to not put effort, to not risk, failure to stay safe. So in order for us to really bring our visions into reality, we need fuel.
We need rocket fuel. But my question for all of you today is, what is your fuel made of? What type of fuel do you use? And to make a big generalization, I wanna talk that there's two types of fuel, the fuel that comes from fear and the feel that comes from desire or love from what we want.
And by fuel, I don't mean what do you want? I mean, why do you want what you want? So you can even want the same thing. You might say, I want a successful business, but why do you want it? Or I want a million dollars, but why do you want it? Maybe people say, I want a million dollars, because when I get a million dollars, then I will feel safe.
Usually when we think that getting something is gonna change our life. It's usually because we are scared that we don't have that right now, versus I want a million dollars because I love making money because I want to prove to myself, or I wanna see how much I can grow in order to make it, or because when I make it, I'm excited to share it or I'm excited to use it in this way or the other.
The reason why we want what we want is the fuel I'm talking about. So again, there's two types of fuel. One is when we're being driven by fear, and the other one is when we're being driven.
By desire. And in my clients who, like I've always shared, I respect them, I admire them so much. I see a combination of both, and I see a lot of people who are more driven by fear than some people who are more driven by desire. So this is a conversation that I have with many of them because what I have learned throughout the years is that being driven by fear alone doesn't create exactly the results that we want. Yes, we might be successful, yes, we might make the money that we wanna make, but there's always gonna be this emptiness in our heart, this lack of satisfaction.
Or even when we think that when we have all this money, we're gonna feel safe. We actually don't feel safe, the problem changes from can I make this money to what happens if I lose it All The fear stays with us. Versus when we are fueled by desire, what happens is that we create more and more desire and our energy grows and our impact grows and our capacity to do bigger things grows even more.
And then we can experience fulfillment and satisfaction when we realize how much we're growing and how much we've accomplished. But let's break it down a little bit more.
Let's look at what the fuel. A fear, where does it come from? What does it look like? So you can start identifying what type of fuel are you using? So I think there's five categories of fuel from fear. The first one is we're wanting to avoid pain.
So that might be that we start playing a smaller game, or we take what we perceive as the easier route. We try to think, how can I avoid failure? How can I avoid rejection? How can I not be judged? So avoiding pain is one of the ways fear motivates us.
The second one is because we have a need for control, so when we have a need for control, we want to micromanage. Others have power so we can have control over other people or circumstances.
So, you know, bottom line, I think we all need control because. We think that when we can control outer circumstances, then we can feel a certain way, then we can feel safe, or then we can feel good about ourselves.
So the third kind is scarcity. When we think there is not enough time or enough money or enough opportunities, so we go into fierce competition.
It doesn't matter who's around me, I still wanna beat them because there's not enough for all of us. Or we start hoarding information or hiding what we know. So we can be the first ones or the best ones, or the only ones. And we started being very guarded. I've also seen scarcity when some of my clients maybe had a childhood where they experienced poverty or, you know, lack of what they needed to live a good life as kids. So then they're trying to get more money and more things to try to find that safety.
The fourth category is external validation. It's when we're doing things so other people like us, approve of us, don't reject us or don't see us as wrong. Instead of we are doing things and looking at other people to tell us, you are okay.
You're good enough. You are safe. But as we explored in last week's episode. That is never enough. You still have to work on self-validating because this is an endless loop where you always want more and more approval and more people liking you, and that never ends up feeling that great inside of you.
And the last one is risk aversion, right? Like, we're so scared of taking risks. We're playing what we think. It's safer, even if it's not aligned with who we are, we wanna do, that's why a lot of people end up in jobs they hate, or, you know, working incredible crazy hours because they don't wanna lose their job.
Trying to find ways where they can avoid running risks.
When I talk with clients who are fueled by fear, I hear comments like, well, no, I want them to approve of me. Or, you know what? I need to make all this money because the economist go gonna go down. Or, what if people don't like it? What if I fail?
I can't change jobs. That's too much of a risk,
When we're being motivated by fear, we usually have a feeling of also urgency. There is a belief that we need to get there fast because where we are right now is not safe. Or we don't feel good. So we project that when we get that job, when we are successful in this way, when we make this money, when people recognize us in this other way, then we're gonna feel happy, then we're gonna feel valuable, then we're gonna feel fulfilled.
But as we know that it's all a trap.
So now let's break down the other side. What does desire fuel looks like?
And again, I have five categories. The first one, it looks like purpose. We have a mission or a calling. There is something we know we were born to do. So purpose propels us out into the world to have impact. It makes us be so resourceful. We all have seen stories of Mother Teresa or leaders in different communities that they had nothing. Maybe they didn't have the education, the financial resources, the physical resources, but they were so driven by their mission, their calling, their desire to make a difference in this planet, that they found a way.
The second type of desire, fuel is passion. We're genuinely excited to do what we love to do. I see this a lot in artists and even in entrepreneurs. I've met so many entrepreneurs that it's not about making a business make this amount of money or be successful or be recognized.
They love creating an idea, starting a business, figuring out the marketing, the sales, hiring a team, training a team. Passion is when we have so much desire for something that we wake up in the morning excited to follow that passion.
I think passion is something we experience when we wake up in the morning and we're intrinsically driven to go to the thing that we love so much that we care about so much that we enjoy so much.
A third way desire motivates us is through our vision when we have this idea of something we wanna see out in the world.
I have multiple clients who are in the film industry. And talking to them is so exciting for me because they share with me their visions. So I wanna create a movie and this is the story, and this is how I imagine the set, this is how I imagine the music sounding. Here's what I think audience are gonna experience when they watch this movie.
When we create a vision in our head and we're excited about that vision, that vision alone starts motivating us to take action, to overcome obstacles, to find the resources and the things that we need in order to make that vision a reality.
The fourth way that desire motivates us is because we have self-belief. You know, one of the questions I ask all my clients when they start coaching with me is, do you think you were born to do big things? And so far, every single person has answered that they believe they were born to do big things and not in an arrogant way.
But in a way that they believe in themselves, that they think they are here for a reason. That they believe they have talents and gifts and strengths that they wanna share with the world because they think they are capable of turning those visions into reality of breaking those glass ceilings are disrupting an industry or making lots of money.
And the last way that I would say desire fuels us is through our values. The things that matter the most to us. When we feel compelled that are alive is aligned with what we value the most.
And when I talk about these five categories, I don't mean that you only have one type of desire, fuel, probably you have a mix, and probably all of us have a mix of fear, fuel and desire fuel. But the question I want you to ask yourself.
Is, which of these two fuels do you use the most? Why are you doing the things that you're currently doing in your life? And the reason why I think this matters is because when we're only driven by fear fuel, we will experience things like burnout, dissatisfaction, depression. We might feel stuck. We might feel like we're never enough or there's never enough. We might be so busy that we're really missing out on everything else in our life. We might be overworking, escaping emotions that we don't wanna experience. We might just be in this robotic kind of way of living.
That is one thing after the other, after the other. I'm not gonna stop and pay attention to how I'm feeling or what's happening inside of me because this fear is so big that I'm just focused on getting to where I think I'm gonna be safe. I've met people who are very successful and who are miserable.
Who from the outside have everything. We all want status money. You know, they're recognized, they have a beautiful house. They may even have a beautiful family, but who inside feel so empty. And when we stop and look at why, why are you feeling so unfulfilled when everything around you seems so quote unquote perfect?
The reason is because they've allowed fear. To drive them. I listen to another podcast where they interview a lot of celebrities, and a common question that this host asks them is, okay, now that you've made it in Hollywood, now that you've made all this money, now that you have this many Oscars, or Grammys, or Emmys, do you feel how you thought you were going to feel? Do you feel as successful as you thought you were going to feel? Do you feel as safe or as valuable or with high self-esteem, you thought all the success and money would bring to you? And I would say 99% of them have said no. I don't.
In fact, many share that the experience of achieving all of their goals. And not feeling how they thought they were going to feel has been depressing and scary and has left them with a lot of questions because as I've shared in so many episodes of this podcast, changing the circumstances does not change the way we feel inside.
So I think Fear Fuel is trying to change what's outside of us, so we can create an inner experience that we want. Versus desire. Fuel is being so connected to ourselves, understanding that we're gonna have all the emotions that exist, and yet we wanna bring what's inside of us to the world.
In the same podcast, I've heard people saying that when they discovered that making a film was no longer about the box office or the awards. But it was about the process of making it about the people they were making it with. They started enjoying their careers a lot more. They started experiencing more fulfillment.
So why I think the type of fuel you use matters is because achievement is just one aspect of our lives. Fulfillment is another huge aspect of our lives and desire. Fuel is what takes us to fulfillment.
The more I coach people, I become more in love with the human experience. And I am fascinated, curious, and have so much compassion for how we all see life, how we all build our lives and what we create from them. And I have a client who for many years was driven by fear. And became very, very successful.
Made a lot of money, maybe not as much money as she would like to in that moment, but definitely a lot of money by anyone else's standards. And yet she had that emptiness. So we started cultivating her desire fuel. And one of the beautiful things I learned about doing this exercise with her is that she found what her true desires were.
By going back to her childhood, by remembering the things that she naturally liked when she was a little girl. And she started doing that in her life today as a grownup. And all of a sudden, miracles started happening. She started meeting people that were incredible. She started having opportunities that she could have never dreamed of.
And the most incredible thing is that by following her desire, she started becoming more successful in her job. She's starting creating money where she never thought she was gonna create money in her business because at the beginning she even said, well, why would I follow those desires? They don't make money.
They don't clean my house. We talked about it , no, you're gonna follow those desires because they bring you fulfillment, because they bring satisfaction to your life. But the beautiful thing is that they not only brought fulfillment and satisfaction, but they also brought achievement and money and success.
And the other person that helped me remember this is Shakira. So, you know, I'm from Columbia and when I was a little girl, Shakira was just starting her life as an artist, and my first concert ever was Shakira who played in our country club.
So it was a very small concert, but I've loved her and I followed her career always. And recently I went to her concert. And if you know anything about her, she's been very public in the last couple of years about her husband being unfaithful and breaking her marriage and, you know, breaking her family apart and how painful that has been for her.
So in the concert she said. That when she was on the floor in her house, right? Like, think about her. She's a well recognized artist with all the money, all the things that an artist would want, and yet she was so sad and so hurt by this divorce, but that when she was in the floor crying, she remembered, oh my God, I'm gonna get emotional.
She remembered the girl with black hair who started singing. Who started singing because that's what she loved who started singing because she had this strong desire of bringing Latin rhythms to the world because she had this strong desire of putting Colombia on the map, and I think that being a Colombian, that's true. Now people say like, your hips don't lie, or, oh, Columbia. And they talk about Shakira. When we've had a history of being recognized for many other awful things. And I was with my closest girlfriends in this concert, and we were talking about how true desire is what brought her to the stage again, to give us the gift of her music, of her creativity, of her show.
And I think that's the power of being driven by desire. By who we are, what we were born to do in this planet, what we love more than anything. And listen, we don't know what's gonna happen when we die, but what we know right now is that we have this life. So I live it just because we're afraid, just because we're scared of feeling something or losing something, or wanting others to approve us versus living it because we can connect to our heart and know what brings us alive.
What are those unique desires we have that we wanna explore in this one lifetime? Right, my friends. I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.
If you're currently pursuing a big, bold idea, we need to talk! In my coaching program, I'll teach you how to manage yourself, your own thoughts and emotions, as well as your team and your money, so you can turn your beautiful idea into a reality.
Go now to carozuleta. com slash consult, that is C A R O Z U L E T A dot com slash consult and complete the form to book a complimentary call with me. See you there!
