Every day is a chance for us to make conscious choices and to take action for our goals. Today, Erin Saxton catches up with bestselling author and publisher Kate Butler. They touch on Kate’s new book, Women Who Illuminate, how it is helping people reveal what is possible, and how to embrace life’s true purpose. Join Erin and Kate as they break down the acronym for DREAM and share insights on understanding your life purpose.

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Erin And Kate Talk About Life’s Purpose And Where To Begin

You are here for another episode of this show. I’m so glad you made a decision and came back. Thank you so much. Back again is Kate Butler. She’s a bestselling author. She’s a book publisher, she creates tons of bestselling authors. She has a new book out called Women Who Illuminate and they’re rocking it and climbing up and staying the bestseller status. She has a new book coming out, Women Who Rise and they’re working on that. You’re a mom, you’re an author and you’re a speaker. You’re a transcended soul from God himself or herself. Welcome, Kate.

I’m so happy to be back. Thank you for having me.

It’s a pleasure. One of the times when we were last together, I said the next time you’re on the show, I want to talk about purpose and it’s a big topic. I’m going to dedicate our whole time on this topic. We always talk about figuring out what you want to do in life. Are we on the wrong path? What should we do and this and that. Every once in a while you hear people say, “They don’t know what they’re supposed to be doing or their soul is unhappy. They haven’t had the right passion or purpose.” Walk me through all that.

It is a big topic and where I tell people to begin is to DREAM. I use the word DREAM as an acronym. The D begins with starting to dream again like you did when you were a child. It’s releasing anything that isn’t serving you. It’s embracing the dream once you can allow it to come in and you have the space for it. It’s taking action on what shows up for you. It’s creating a morning ritual to do it all again, all over each and every day. It’s a practice to follow your dream and to follow your purpose. That’s where I began with people from a high level. Breaking that down, it’s important to begin to identify what in life lights me up. What am I excited to do? What have I always wanted to do that I didn’t try? What am I innately good at? Everyone has what I call purpose, which is beautiful and most people can identify with that.

I look at it as everyone has a certain unique brilliance inside of them. It’s a unique brilliance that only they have. When we do not allow ourselves to show our brilliance or use our brilliance or tap into our brilliance, the world will never experience that type of brilliance in the world. It only exists with us and it will never exist again. That is where to begin by allowing yourself to own your brilliance and dream about what could this look like when all things were possible. This is where I began when I said I would begin to dream and then I would edit myself. I’d pull back, I’d say, “I want that but I don’t have the money to do that right now. I want to do that, but I have two brand new little kids. I have a toddler and an infant so that absolutely is impossible for me.” It’s good for you, but it’s not good for me. We started to edit our dreams in all these different needs.

If we pull back from it and that’s where part of the release comes in. None of that is serving you. None of those thoughts are serving you in your dreams. They’re not supporting you in getting further along in the path. We can say, “If all the money was possible, what would it look like?” Let’s play for a minute. I’m not asking you to buy a ticket to Fiji right now, but if you want to go to Fiji, can we talk about it? Can we play there for a little while? You don’t have to do anything yet but let’s play there. When all the resources are possible, when all the time is possible, when you have all of the support you need and all the logistical things are taken care of. Now let your dream, so when it’s all possible, what does it begin to look like? That’s the place to start. Can you begin to play there? It’s amazing what begins to show up when you allow yourself to go there.

Can we do it a little bit? Do you mind? I’m not sure if I know my purpose, which is funny because you would think I would. Not everybody has it all together and I am the walking billboard of proof of I don’t. I videotape life as I’m experiencing it. People reading will say, “I wonder what my purpose is?” Dreaming about what could be possible, is that an exercise? I have a pen and I have some paper. Do I need to write anything down? Walk me through at least the dreaming part of it. How do I begin to dream?

What did you always dream about when you were a child? Where did you dream of going? What did you dream of doing? What did you dream of becoming? Who did you dream of doing it with? What did that look like?

I want it to be a Barker’s Beauty or a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader. I wanted to be meeting a lot of the public. For what reason, I don’t know. I realized that, Bob Barker and I like cheeseburgers and those slinky dresses, so that wasn’t going to work. I need to release that. I’m positive now that I need to release that weight more so than any. As I grew up, I realized that wasn’t the best fit. Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader is lovely, but that’s where it was. I was always dreaming about that and then I grew into being a newscaster.

 

I’m going to challenge you a little bit about this. I’m not necessarily buying the fact that you didn’t know why you wanted to do that.

Saying you want to be famous, I don’t think is a good answer.

Was it because they sparkled? Was it because they had so much fun doing it. Was it because they could connect and make the audience happy?

For me, for Barker’s Beauties is they were always making somebody happy. They were revealing what could be possible. It was mostly kitchen appliances and new cars but at the point, those people you could tell needed that. They needed a new washer. I’m not saying they were poor, but you thought if they had all the money, that’s not how they were going to spend it. There was this Barker’s Beauty in this glittery, sparkly dress, which was great but revealing what could be possible.

I got truthbumps all over. It means the truth is coming through. That begins to give you an indication as to what you’re here to do, how you’re here to serve. Helping people reveal what is possible, which is absolutely what you are doing now. You can do that in so many different ways, but that’s the tip of the iceberg. For example, I always love to write. When I was younger, I would always like to write my journal. When I would meet someone, I wouldn’t be sure to get their address so we could be pen pals. I thought I would grow up and write cards for Hallmark because I love to make people feel joyful through the written word. It turns out that I am a publisher and I’m an author and I’m doing that in a very different way. It never looks exactly like we thought it would look.

If I trace this back, I can say, “I always did love to write.” The reason I love to write although I can communicate verbally with people, when I write to people, I know that I can directly connect with your heart. I’m very clear about that. I know how my words can inspire and impact other people. That was what lit me up is because I knew I was making a difference in people’s lives by what I was communicating to them through the written word. It translates into what I’m doing now if you trace it back. You can do that if you allow yourself to the first step is to dream again. What were those dreams and what are they now? They’re taking a different form, but you go through the same process when it’s all possible. If I could be showing people in the most magnificent way, what could be possible in their life? What would that look like when all things are supporting me? You start there.

What about the people that aren’t sure what they dreamed about when they were little? They’re closed off to it. How do you break through to them?

I would challenge you because that’s what I do.

There are naysayers at home. I hear them.

We have several life missions - soul missions - within our lifetime. Click To Tweet

I understand that not everyone is open to receiving that. First of all, getting to a place where you are at least at the awareness or the acceptance level that you were born with every answer you need for you. Everyone was born with their path. Everyone was born with all the answers. Allowing yourself to know that that’s possible for you is the first step. If you don’t believe that you will be guided in the right direction and you don’t believe that you can trust your intuition and trust yourself, it’s going to be difficult to tap into that dreaming place. The first step is getting to that stage and you can do this by playing. How we break that? Let’s play a little bit.

I always say start journaling for seven days and say, “If I had three wishes now and they were all going to come true, what would I wish for now?” You do this for seven days and you begin to unedit it, uncensoring which we do to ourselves so often. Just allow the words to flow through. If you love how you feel after you’re doing that, you renew it and then you re renew for another seven days. Slowly but surely now we’ve gotten through a month and now this will take you to a new level. You will surely have broken through the wall if you’ve committed to doing this exercise for seven days and then turning into 30.

Even for the people that are like, “I didn’t dream.” Everyone always asked, what do you want to be when you grow up?

What I originally asked was and you took it to what did I want to be because you did have a clear vision of that. I said, “Where did you want to go?” I always dreamed of going to California. It turned out that that was where I met my husband. It turned out that that was where I met the person who would be a pivotal piece in my coaching business, which would be my third career choice along the way. This was many years later, this person would show up for me again. All of these different beautiful seeds that were planted in California, that turned into such crucial pieces in my life never would have happened had I not followed that intuition and gone there. It’s where have you always wanted to go? What have you always wanted to try?

I always wanted to go to Florida and I did but I’m like, “What’s in Florida? I don’t know.” Had I gone, I would have known.

We don’t know what it holds for us. It’s never what we think it will look like. Think of what we have accomplished in our life. When we set out to do that, we had an idea in our minds of how we were going to accomplish it. It looked like this and this and then I was going to get that. Did it look like? Maybe a little bit along the way but generally speaking, we go like this and for those of you who can’t see me, I am taking a very winding path to get from point A to point B. We still get there but along the way we’re like, “I’m making a wrong turn over here up. Now, I’m back on the path and I’m taking another wrong turn and I’m back on the path.”

We take all these wrong turns along the way, not necessarily. If we still moving forward, if we’re still getting to point B, then we’re growing. We’re accomplishing. At the same time, it’s never what we think is going to look like. If we have that dream as our point B of where we want to go to and we have a clear vision of what that looks like, if we release the fact that we’re doing it incorrectly along the way and we continue to move forward and take action on those things, then we will eventually get there.

When we talked about daydream and I said to show people what’s possible, is that my life’s purpose?

I believe that we have several life missions, soul missions within our lifetime. Some people have one life purpose. This is what they’re here to do. That’s amazing when people know that. For example, these child prodigies pick up a violin and they’re two years old and they can play anything that would blow us away, any piece of music. It is going to be their life purpose and they know that innately from the time they were born. That was not my path. There were a lot of things that came up along the way and for me, it was stepping stones. There were stepping stones that felt that I wasn’t in the right place.

I had to redirect until I was stepping into a place that felt more aligned and it felt good to me. When I say things feel good because a lot of times people will challenge me on that and saying like, “I feel good when I party and I feel good when I do this or that.” That makes me feel good, but that’s not necessarily good for me and that’s the entire key. Things that make you feel good that are adding to your wellness and your benefit and your life. If it’s taking away from your life, then it’s something we want to do in moderation but that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about taking these steps in the right direction of our path.

What does it look like when you’re not in your life’s purpose?

That can look like a lot of different things. I think it can look like guilt. It can look like sadness and depression. That was both of those things for me. It can look like boredom. It can look like anger also and resentment. All those little vibe feelings that nobody wants to feel.

We go through the process, we release it. What’s E?

E is embracing it. When you are in a position where you’re feeling like I’m in the process of identifying my life purpose. Also, understanding that if it’s a mission, let’s talk about it in that way. Let’s chunk it down, if you will. If you have a mission, you’re starting to say, “I did dream about this one thing.” What is something I could do now to begin to fulfill that? If I wanted to be a writer for Hallmark, maybe I can start applying. That could be one thing I could do. I could also begin to get into the habit of sending cards to my friends again.

What are some things that you can do to begin to start to take some action on that dream? The releasing is allowing yourself to let go of the thoughts that are going to talk you out of it. What we want to do is stay comfortable. Following our dream is uncomfortable. If it was comfortable, we would have already done it. We want to stay where we are because we know this, it might not be happy. It might not be peaceful. It might not be fulfilling, but we know it. We’re good friends with it. We’ve sat with it for a long time now so at least I know what to expect. It’s like when you don’t want to break up with your boyfriend. You’re like, “He doesn’t treat me the best, but he’s good on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.” We stick with it because it’s what we know and we don’t know if there’s something better out there and it’s that risk.

I always say I’m comfortable being uncomfortable when I’m interviewing and I’m asking questions because I’ll ask questions. There’s that silence sometimes like, “We’re doing good.” There are some tough ones and it’s not because it was a bad question. It’s a tough one to answer. In that, I’m comfortable being uncomfortable, but in everything else, we don’t like to be uncomfortable. We try to do anything to divert it. As we talked about with the vibrational tone in our first episode. We talked about when we meditate, we’re trying to keep a higher vibration.

If there’s a disconnect, you might stop meditating just because you want to go back to like your comfy pair of jeans which of two sizes too big for you. The jeans that fit you are going to like cut you in on your side like the pants I’m wearing right now after a meal. You know you’re wearing those jeans. When you’re wearing your two sizes too big jeans, you could lounge around and go to sleep in them. They are that comfortable. You don’t want to settle into that kind of life because I don’t think you much get accomplished when you’re wearing jeans too big.

If everyone reading can fold their hands and that feels like we’ve done this a million times, we’re comfortable here. If you separate your hands and move one hand, one finger up. You’re now folding again. Put your one finger is up now, it feels so weird. It feels different. It’s a little odd. It’s not the worst thing we’ve ever done. We’re alive. We’re still living. It feels uncomfortable. It’s not what we would normally do but if we sit here for another couple of minutes, then this will start to become comfortable for us. We will forget that it’s weird and uncomfortable and it doesn’t feel normal because this will become our new norm. We can move it up another finger. That feels even a little bit stranger because I have two fingers down here that aren’t connected to anything now. They’re totally lonely.

Every single thing that we see was created twice; first in our mind, and then it became an action. Click To Tweet

If we sit here for another couple of minutes, this will become our new norm. We can keep growing. We can ease up one step at a time. Although it’s a little bit uncomfortable at first, we don’t have to take the leap from this mountain top to this mountain top. We don’t have to take this huge leap. We can move it one step at a time, be a little bit uncomfortable until that settles and then begin to gradually go from there. It’s releasing those things along the way that we were talking about that are pulling you down. Those anchors can be people. Those anchors can be your environment. Those anchors can be a job. Those anchors can be a lot of times what you’re telling yourself and that’s the most important thing.

Talk a little more about that.

We know our thoughts become things, period. It’s not what you say you want that happens. It’s what you focus on that shows up in your life. I can tell you that I’m going to get in shape, but what I am thinking about is that I don’t want to spend time going to Whole Foods. I don’t want to cook new recipes. I want things to be easy and simple right now. That’s not where my focus is. What is going to show up in my life is the fact that I am not following through on what I say I want.

You say one thing for your actions or stop saying something different.

I’m telling myself, you tried that diet last time and it didn’t work or you are not a runner, so don’t even try for a marathon or working out sucks. I’m telling myself all these contrary things to, “I want to get in shape.” I’m always making fun of myself with pretty much everything. In theory, I do want to be thinner. In theory, I absolutely want to be healthier. I have been making good strides with my health. I do now workout with a trainer four times a week. That’s good but I still like to joke about it.

That’s interesting. I’m glad you brought that up. It’s how you feel about your language when you’re saying it also. For example, over the summer I had sold my house at beginning of June and we didn’t move into our new house until August. Over the summer, I would joke with my community like, “We’re homeless, we’re spending the weekend in Aruba now and we’re spending the week in Florida and we’re beach hopping over here. We were going everywhere.” I was joking the whole time that we were homeless. One of my community members challenged me and said, “What you teach us is that your language will create your environment. What you are saying is that you’re homeless.” I said, “As much as I appreciate that, I’m saying it in jest and I feel so free about the fact that I’m homeless.” I’m joking when I say that, but I feel free about the fact that I can say it.

It’s also not the negative connotation or the struggle. You just didn’t have a home at that moment. I love where she was trying to go. Anybody who’s followed you, there’s been such joy and bliss about this whole process. On the day, you closed your house, it was fun too. Now you get to organize and decorate and have all that fun. This summer has been frolicking and light and fairy for you. You’re right because of how I say, I’m more openly joking about not liking to exercise because I’m exercising now. I’m in motion with it and my trainer absolutely laughs at me, but I’m there. Once I’m in the session, I’m not complaining anymore and I feel great after I’m done. It’s fun because I don’t like the whole, “I work out and I’m great.” It’s not me.

You’re in alignment with who you are and you feel good about what you’re saying.

We have to remember that everything that we see, everything in this world was created twice. This mug right here. Somebody thought to create a coffee mug and they thought about it in this shape and then they thought she put this amazing, That Girl from Jersey logo on here. We thought about it first and then it became a creation. Every single thing that we see was created twice first in our mind, and then it became an action and then it was created in reality. If we think about this in the power of it. Thinking something is to the first power, if you will. Writing it down and solidifying it as almost like a contract with the universe is to the second power.

 

Speaking it as to the third power. If you want to be released something and then intentionally invite something else in, this is the most powerful way to do it. Make sure that your thoughts are aligning with what you’re saying and that you’re also writing it down to you are then at that point thinking it and then seeing it and you’re touching it as well. When you’re speaking it, you’re hearing it. Now we are incorporating all of the senses also. That’s an effective way to get you onto the path of embracing your dream and then taking action.

I’m assuming you already do this with your girls.

Yes.

Do they already know what their dream is?

I have to be careful about what I say because my Bella will say, “Let’s do an exercise. Can you pick up your pen? Put your pen down and now try to pick up your pen.” It’s confusing because there’s no such thing as try. You either do or you don’t. Whenever I’d say it I’m like, “Mommy, can we go to the mall?” “I’m going to try.” “There’s no such thing as try.” I do this will my girls and it becomes interesting as a mom.

With my son, he’s fourteen, do I do the dream exercise with him now? His dreams are for the mission. Are they too young to do that or they’re never too young or it’s never too old to start or not?

It’s both. It’s absolutely both because most people feel like they have chosen one way and this is it for them. That’s great that you knew what you wanted to be and that you found your purpose early on and that you’ve accomplished all of these things but my ship has sailed. I’m a little bit too old now. My oldest author has been 76. My youngest author that I partnered with was my daughter Bella when we co-wrote a book together when she was five years old. At five years old, she became the number one bestselling author. She didn’t even know what was going on. All she knew is that she have this story and she shared it with me and I said, “That’s amazing. Can we use your idea in a book?”

We go and speak all over and we go to schools and do assemblies. You were at my event when she came up on stage and she took the microphone out of my hand. She was so excited. It’s to show that you are never too young and you’re never too old to start. We cannot live our life in what happened yesterday, who we were yesterday and the decisions that we made yesterday. We have to start right here right now and decide. Every day is a new opportunity to make a choice. Every day is an opportunity to create a new dream. Every day is a new opportunity to take a new action. Every day we begin right here with the power of that choice. That’s where our thoughts become so powerful.

It’s not what happens to us in our life because things will always be happening in life. The challenges will always be there. When the challenge has come, what am I deciding about that challenge? When we understand that our reaction to this situation is where my power lies, this is when life becomes magical, quite frankly because if I’m allowing life to happen to me and I’m just going with the flow, then I’m going to have good days and I’m going to have bad days. As events happen to me, if I say I’m going to choose how I react to this and then in turn change the outcome, now I’m starting to co-create with life. I have some control over these wonderful things that are creating opportunity for me.

It’s like we all get a fresh start.

Every day and within the day also. Don’t let an entire day go by if you have a bad morning by saying, “I’m having a bad day.”

We’re going to end on that because that’s powerful. I’ve never thought of that before. Thanks, Kate, for being here.

You’re welcome.

How can everyone get in touch with you and find you and maybe be one of your authors or come to one of your conferences?

It’s @KateButlerBooks on social media and KateButlerBooks.com on my website.

Remember, there’s no trying. You either do it or don’t talk about it. Thank you, everybody.

Important Links:

• Women Who Illuminate
• @KateButlerBooks – Twitter page
• KateButlerBooks.com

About Kate Butler

• Just released my 8th #1 International best-selling book.
• I’m the creator of the Inspired Impact Book Series which provides women an opportunity to share their stories to inspire others.
• Also have a new children’s book, Believe Big, coming out at the end of 2019.
• I teach the Miracle Methodology System to my clients and authors, as a way to approach and live a successful, fulfilling and thriving life.