
Soulfully You Podcast with Coach Chris Rodriguez
In this technological age, we are hyper-connected through social media, we have instant access to unlimited information, and at the press of a button, everything we need is at our doorstep. Yet, we are more isolated, anxious, and depressed than ever before.
I'm a mindset and movement coach, and I believe there is a deeper way of living, a more soulful way of being.
Join me, Coach Chris Rodriguez, every week for my conversations with coaches, artists, spiritual directors, and community leaders on how to put a little more soul into your work, relationships, and everyday life.
Learn more at coachchrisrodriguez.com or on Instagram @coach_chrisrodriguez.
Soulfully You Podcast with Coach Chris Rodriguez
What is Soul? How to Apply it to Your Life?
In this episode of the Soulfully You Podcast, Coach Chris Rodriguez delves into the concept of soulfulness—what it means and how it manifests in our lives.
Listen to How to be More Creative in Your Life
Listen to How to Rediscover Your Inner-Soul-Child
Click here to take your FREE Inner-Soul-Child Assessment.
For all episodes and info about my coaching program, visit me at www.coachchrisrodriguez.com.
Connect on Instagram at @coach_chrisrodriguez and on TikTok at @coach_chrisrodriguez.
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- 00:00 Welcome to the Soulfully You Podcast
- 00:44 A Personal Story of Reconnection
- 01:16 The Impact of Music on Relationships
- 03:14 Understanding Soul in Everyday Life
- 03:51 Defining Soul and Its Principles
- 05:57 Misconceptions About Soul
- 08:44 The Eight Principles of Soul
- 09:18 Soul is Deep
- 12:00 Soul is Vitality
- 14:50 Soul is Intuitive Wisdom
- 17:52 Soul is Authentic
- 18:51 Identifying Fake Precious Stones
- 19:55 The Importance of Authenticity
- 20:55 Embracing the Process
- 21:31 Soul as an Embodied Practice
- 24:25 The Artfulness of Soul
- 26:03 Integration and Interconnectedness
- 30:22 The Flow of Soul
- 34:48 Applying Soulful Principles to Life
- 38:28 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Hey friend. Welcome to the Soulfully You Podcast with Coach Chris Rodriguez. I'm a movement and mindset coach, and I believe in a deeper way of living, a more soulful way of being. Join me each week for conversations about how to put a little more soul. Into our work, our relationships in our everyday lives.
Samson Q2U Microphone:When I was younger, me and my dad, we didn't have the best relationship. I was mad and resented him because him and my mother split up and I acted out, got in a lot of fights, got suspended a lot from school and he was frustrated with me that I was putting my mother through so much grief as I got older in college. Me and my dad, we restored our relationship and we have a great relationship now. I just was like, I need this guy in my life. And he's like, yeah, I want a relationship with my son. But we didn't know how to really connect with each other because it's been so long. But my dad knew that I loved music. I was studying music in college. And my dad loved music too, but not as a musician. He was a fan of music. So what he started doing is every time I came home for a holiday break, he'd bring me to a concert and these were the artists of his generation. My dad's a Puerto Rican man who grew up in North Newark with Puerto Rican and black people. So he'd take me to see Anita Baker, Stephanie Mills, Blue Magic. And there's one concert in particular that he took me to that I'll never forget. It was to see the whispers. Now he told me, no jeans, no t shirts, no Tim's. You gotta wear a suit. You got a suit. Like, yeah, I got a suit. So. I wear one of my only suits. My dad always wore suits. And his suit matched his hat, and his hat matched his shoes. And this is just how he was. And at that moment, when I walked into the concert, I finally understood him. Because I'm the youngest person in the audience. And everybody in the crowd is dressed just like him. With the suits and the hats, with the matching shoes, all the ladies in their beautiful dresses. And when we sat down, he said, I know this isn't the type of music that you do, but you can learn something from them. Watch the way they perform. So I was sitting in the audience as a student. And from the moment they walked out on stage. The choreography started. The band in the horn section is doing the same steps and choreography as the lead singers. And they're all in these powder blue matching suits. And the concert was perfect. It was flawless. What my dad didn't know at that time was that he was giving me a piece of something that has become A core part of the work that I do with my clients, the work that I've done on myself and the message I want to share with the world. The question that this podcast is trying to answer is how can we live with more soul in every area of our lives? Soul music is one example of soulful expression, but when we see soul, So in a person. It's not just about music. It's not just about creativity. When somebody is truly living from their soul, it affects their relationships. It changes the perspective on the way they work. And ultimately it transforms them. Individually. And the way they show up in the world. In today's episode. I'm going to define what is soul. What's the opposite of soul? I'm going to share eight principles of soulfulness and some tangible steps, as always, that you can live from your soul. So what is soul? We have a definition of it in the dictionary and it's a helpful starting point. The spiritual or immaterial part of a human being or animal regarded as immortal definition tww emotional or intellectual energy or intensity, especially as revealed in a work of art or an artist or an artistic performance. I think this captures part of soul, but the problem with this definition is it's new. We start to see this word soul in the English language pretty late in our history, but we've seen expressions of this before we had a word for it. For me, when I talk about soul and the principles of soulful living that I try to share, I pull from four traditions or schools of thought.tradition number one are the traditions of indigeonous, african and aboriginal cultures the ways that they moved in tribe and in community, even before there was a language for it, even before there was a word for it, the ideas and really the groundwork for soul existed in these tribes. Number two, I pull from wisdom traditions. So the works of the desert mothers and fathers, the works of mindfulness teachers, sacred poets, a lot of the heart of what religion is supposed to be. Number three, I pull from the psychotherapy world, specifically the work of Carl Jung and everything that came from what he's done in learning and knowing the self, learning and knowing the persona and the different parts that live inside of you. And number four, What we probably associate soul most with black American culture, the food, the music, the style. For me, these four types of traditions give me a well rounded picture of soul.
Samson Q2U Microphone-1:Before I break down these eight qualities, here's some misconceptions that people think about soul. One, That if you're not an artist or creative, you don't have soul. Well that's just not true for two reasons. One, we just have the wrong picture of what art and creativity are. We think it is specifically the canvas, we think it's specifically the pen. But art and craft and creativity. This is something I talk a lot about in the podcast. You can go back and listen to my episode on creativity. I'll link that in the show notes. You can also listen to my episode on rediscovering the inner soul child, where I break down creativity in there, but creativity is something you practice, you learn, and it doesn't have to be in the context of. The stereotypical forms of art. And two, it's not true because if it existed in you at one point or another in your life, which if you were ever a kid, which we all were children, or if you ever had to imagine a solution to a problem that you couldn't see, or if you had to figure out some kind of puzzle. Whether that's a physical puzzle or some kind of mixing and matching things together to make it work. That stuff is still in you. Another misconception about soul is that if you are not from a certain culture, then you don't have soul. If you don't come from. the Caribbean or an island or a place with indigenous or tribal people. If you don't have those kinds of roots, then you don't have soul. And it's unfortunate because I think that that belief Is a direct result of racism, colonialism, imperialism,
Samson Q2U Microphone-2:The ugliest parts of capitalism and just this exploitation The way these belief systems have been the catalyst to make people think they are other opposite, so different from another culture. The invention of borders and the way these bad ideas exploited and extracted the parts of cultures that can be monetized and profited off of to this point that
Samson Q2U Microphone-3:When we see this expression of soulfulness coming from a culture that is not black culture or indigenous culture or Latin culture, we deem that person special, a unicorn, or we see them as an imitation of the real thing.
Samson Q2U Microphone-4:But before bodies and cultures were dehumanized and exploited, all cultures had rituals, had practices, had soulfulness.
Samson Q2U Microphone-5:With these ideas in mind, here are the eight principles of soul. Number one, soul is deep. Number two, soul is vitality. Number three, soul is intuitive wisdom. Number four, soul is authentic. Number five, soul is an embodied practice. Number six, soul is artful. Number seven, soul is integrated. And number eight, soul is flow. Let's break those all down.
Samson Q2U Microphone-6:Soul is deep in every tradition. When talking about soul, it refers to something below the surface. It refers to the essence. Another way to say the heart of the matter. You can say the soul of the matter. Soul is the interior of everything that lives that sometimes is hard to see. Because of all the masks and different ways we cover up the essence of ourselves. And different roles and different relationships to this point that sometimes we don't even know who we truly are. The soul is what some people refer to and wisdom traditions and psychotherapy as the true self. If soul is deep, the opposite of that is shallow. I think about a time when me and my wife, we took one of our first trips to Hawaii. And I am not a confident swimmer. I'm competent. I can survive in the ocean. I can survive in a pool. And for a long time, there was a phobia for me about getting in the water. When I was little, I almost drowned. I learned out of necessity. It was a requirement for me to graduate from my university, but I had to go through therapy. It was this whole thing. But even though I'm comfortable in the water, I still have a healthy fear. And We're in Maui and we're on the road to Hana, that beautiful scenic drive around the coast. And the point of the drive is to stop, take it in, and there's all these beautiful beaches along the way. And I live in California, so I've seen some waves, right? I'm from Jersey. I've seen the ocean, but I've never seen waves like this. And so I'm kind of on the sand, kind of in the shallow end and Molly's, my wife, she's saying, come in, come deeper. And I'm like, no, I'm good here. So then a wave would come crash down, crash down right in front of me, not on me, right in front of me. And I try to run away back to the shore, but that current would just pull me right back in. And I kept doing this and Molly's just saying, come deeper. And I'm like, terrified. I'm like, Nope, not coming deeper. And I do this about three or four times until finally I couldn't run away fast enough. The current was pulling me in. That wave crashed over me and flipped me upside down like three times. You see, I thought that I was safer in the shallow part of the water when actually. Molly being out in the water where the waves can't crash over her, where the current can't pull her in, was actually in the ideal position. And that's kind of sometimes how we think about, approaching our life in shallow ways. We think that shallowness, Protects us, but that's not always the case. So we want to embrace the depth of soul./ Soul is vitality. If you ever go to Peru and hike the Machu Picchu trail to get to Machu Picchu city, it is incredible. There's nothing like it. Many people only get to do that once in their life. I've had the privilege to do it with my family. And when you get to this city, they believe it to be a temple that the Spanish didn't feel the need to destroy when they were terrorizing and conquering land, because greater treasures and wonders and monuments in Cusco. When you get to the city, you'll see These little bowls and if you look from the bowl through the walls, you see these little carvings and many people believe that these were bowls of rituals for offering. Maybe it might be food that's put on there, but maybe it might be water put in there to reflect the sun. And I imagine this belief from seeing the growth that comes from the sun shining down on agriculture, the heat and the warmth that comes from the sun that That this early people believed Was worthy of worship and adoration. And they understood the importance of honoring sources of life and other early civilizations. The great religions, they didn't ascribe soul to things and objects like the sun. They ascribed it to a higher power, divine being creator, Christianity, Judaism, Islam. There's a God that is a giver of life. And I can imagine these early cultures, the first time they saw somebody lose their life, Feeling the cold on their bodies, looking at that body and saying, that's you, but that's not you. And understanding even more that the soul of this person is no longer here. In black American culture in the 60s and 70s, they talked about soul power It was the engine behind the music and the music was the soundtrack to movements to fight oppression. To boycott, to march, to picket, to speak to power. Soul is a driving force behind people, but it's also the driving force behind movements. There is a movement, there is a progression, there is an evolution that comes from soul. If soul is vitality, the opposite of that is stagnation. So soul power moves you to change, to speak up, to be active. But when we're stagnant, we're complacent. We don't speak up for ourselves. We don't speak up for the issues. When we're stagnant, there's no motion with soul, even slow motion is better than no motion. So we embrace the soul of vitality As our engine of change./ Soul is intuitive wisdom. I have this experience with my Jamaican mother and I've had the same experience with my Puerto Rican grandmother where I want to cook their traditional foods. So I go home, I visit and I eat something that they prepared. And I come back to try to make what they made, and it never tastes the same. Sometimes I'll even follow a recipe. One day I was trying to make, one of my mom's recipes, and I went and I sat with her, and she told me, Take a little bit of the spice. And for two seconds, just burn it on the bottom of the pan. And it's going to make the flavor pop. I've never seen that in a recipe book. That's something that she learned from her mother. That's something she learned from just doing it over the years. That is a cultural learning that is intuitive. And you can't find an instruction book for that. The same thing when I'm with my Puerto Rican grandmother, we have a special holiday drink, coquito, and I found the recipe and I made it and when Thanksgiving, I'm back home with her, her brother, my dad, all of our family, and we're like, Hey, let's make coquito and then I start putting ingredients in and she just starts asking me, well, where's your syrup? Where's this? Where's that? I'm like, what are you talking about? That's not in the recipe book. She's like, no. And then she showed me how she boils this syrup mixture as the base of her drink. And that's why mine never tasted like hers. That's why nobody's I've ever tasted tasted like hers. Her mother taught her how to do that. When I try to ask my grandmother for measurements, I had to figure out measurements because she doesn't have measurements. She doesn't have it written down anywhere. She just knows she's just been doing it. That's an example with food, but there's other practices in our life that are passed down culturally. They're passed down by grating up against and watching generation after generation, keep the tradition. And it's a type of teaching that happens. That's not do this, do that because it's prescriptive. It's a type of teaching that says, watch this, be with me, do this with me. Hey, can you pass me the salt? And over time, it becomes second nature. If soul is intuitive wisdom, the opposite of soul is foolish. A foolishness that comes from, I'm going to pioneer my own way. I'm going to figure this out on my own. I'm going to be my own man. I'm going to be my own woman. Self made. The myth of self made and I say this a lot, anybody that tells you they are self made, they're lying, and they're probably a fool because somebody gave them an opportunity at the least somebody taught them something in a classroom. Nobody gets anywhere in life on their own, but a foolish person will say, Yeah, that was all me. To embrace the intuitive wisdom of soul means we're going to tell the truth about how we got where we're going and we're going to pick up on the lessons that are taught that were never spoken./ Soul is authentic. Something that's kind of funny, but also sad is when you're watching a basketball game on TV and the mascot comes around with the diamond detector. It's a little handheld device, and you put it up against a precious stone and it gives you all these measurements and these readings to let you know if it's real or fake. So somebody has like a engagement ring on and then they bring it up to that person and they're sitting next to their partner and they find out that it's a fake diamond. And then they storm out and walk out and the cameras on them and everything. Obviously it's a gimmick. It's a joke. It's funny, but There's some things that happen that make that diamond reader work. Precious stones, diamonds and others like it. An expert can tell that it's been manufactured and they can tell because there's a level of uniformity that happens in the diamonds. Fake precious stones have a different type of uniformity than real precious stones. Another way that you can tell a fake stone from a real one is how strong they are. Diamonds being one of the strongest stones. When you have a cubic zirconium, It won't pass the hardness test of a diamond. Another aspect of Diamonds being formed and precious stones being formed. They're formed deep in the earth with a lot of pressure and a lot of heat. You can speed up that process by taking rock, taking coal and simulating a lot of pressure, simulating a lot of heat, heating the rock up till it has that clear color. But the simulation of heat and pressure with the sped up timeline could never replace the depth of heat and pressure over time that happens naturally. I look at this as a example of sometimes how we try to rush through the processes of our life. We try to get the outcomes in our relationships. We try to create depth within ourselves. We rush our process and we aren't as strong. We try to speed up the timeline and it's not as beautiful. If soul is authentic, the opposite is counterfeit. We hear that a lot in the idea of money and stones and possessions that are valuable. But when I say the word counterfeit in regards to people, in regards to relationships, in regards to someone's authenticity, You can probably imagine a person that's like, Oh man, it's just something that don't feel right. It's something that feels manufactured about you. And I don't ever want to feel like the way I'm showing up in life is manufactured. So we embrace the authenticity of soul by taking our time and whatever process we're in. And taking your time is uncomfortable. Taking your time might keep you in the fire longer than you want to be there. It might keep you in the cave. It might keep you feeling buried and suffocated in the places that you don't want to be anymore. But take your time. Embrace the process. And come out shining like a diamond, beautiful and precious and valuable./ Soul is an embodied practice. So when we talk about intuitive wisdom, and when we talk about authenticity and this thing that you can't manufacture, and it's just kind of passed down and it just comes from inside of you. Sometimes the misconception is that you can't learn it. As I mentioned earlier, soul is in all of us. Some people just forgot who we are and where we came from. Earlier I told you about this concert I went to with my father to see The Whispers and how they were just on point, on cue. They didn't miss a beat. There were no mistakes. More recently, I listened to an interview on the R& B Money podcast, where the whispers were on there just kind of talking about their journey. And there was one member who wasn't an original member, but he joined the band later. And he tells a story about how he was a part of the band. But they wouldn't let him perform on stage. He had to go on all the tours. He had to come to all the practices But he couldn't perform on stage for an entire year Because they said hey You can't just come up here and think because you're a singer because you've heard these songs Because you've learned these steps that you can do this. Nah, you got to watch us you have to be here and the practice isn't just the practices we do in the rehearsals. You need to sit. You need to watch. You need to learn. You can't get on that stage until you embody this practice, practice, practice until it's second nature. So one aspect of it is I watch, I witness the people who have practiced this until it was their second nature. One aspect of it is I don't rush the process. So it comes out authentically and it boils up under the pressure. Then you have to practice what you see. And then eventually. It'll be your time. For you to be called on. To show what you've learned. And you won't have to manufacture it, it'll just come out of you. If soul is an embodied practice, then the opposite of that is to be disembodied. This is the state that many of us walk around in. Our head is in a different place than our heart and our intentions. Our bodies are disconnected from an understanding of the way we feel. We move in ways with people and we don't understand and we can articulate what's going on inside of ourselves. Gaining muscle memory of the right qualities, watching and practicing. From the right people, getting ourself around people who embody soulfulness and determining that I'm gonna replicate what I see because it's beautiful. This is how we embrace the soul of embodied practice./ Soul is artful. In my opinion. Art is the combination of skill, pleasure, leisure, and beauty. Art isn't just the way someone approaches canvas or creates a song. But soulful people are beautiful in the way they speak to other people. They have beautiful conversations. When they look at their work, they view it not just as an Punching in, but they find a way to say, how can I be a craftsperson at what I do? They see themselves as a canvas. And they're always working on themselves, not from a place of judgment or critique, but from a place of wonder and joy. If soul is artful. Then the opposite of that is crass and chaotic and unintentional. It's the person that says I'm in a relationship with this person and I'm committed to them so I can just speak to them however I want because you know, I'm here already. It's when you can't find anything beautiful about your life. It's when you can't find anything beautiful to say about yourself and skill and pleasure and leisure and beauty. How can you put those four elements on every area of your life? When we embrace the artfulness of soul, that's our commitment to say, we're going to see Everybody and everything through the eyes of beauty and through the eyes of being a work in progress./ Soul is integrated. Someone who's influential to me and is formative to me in my, Spiritual life and my personal life and the way that I see the world and the way I interact with other people is Mindfulness teacher Thich Nhat Hanh He was friends with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. When Dr. King Visited him in Vietnam during his time of being exiled. He was influenced by the civil rights movement in the United States and the civil rights leaders watched him in his community and They learn principles of nonviolent activism. If you've been listening for a while, you also know that I love Bell Hooks. She's somebody who's influential to me. Well, this is her spiritual father. So, I'm laying all that down. If you don't know who Thich Nhat Hanh is, go read one of his books, The Art of Living. That's one that I love. And he has this term that he came up with called inner being. And I'm just going to read a quote from his book, how to fight. He says, inner being is the understanding that nothing exists separate from anything else. We are all interconnected. By taking care of another person, you take care of yourself. By taking care of yourself, you take care of the other person. Happiness and safety are not individual matters. If you suffer, I suffer. If you are not safe, I am not safe. There is no way for me to be truly happy if you are suffering. If you can smile, I can smile too. The understanding of inner being is very important. It helps us to remove the illusion of loneliness and transform the anger that comes from the feeling of separation. Sit with that. Feel those words. And now look at just kind of your world and what's offered to you on the table. It doesn't seem very interconnected. There's a broken relationship with the environment. There's an individualism that says, not only am I responsible for myself, But I am not responsible for you in any way. There's a level of ownership. There's a level of responsibility that we have to have for ourselves. But it has to be in the context of inner being. It has to be the context of I'm my brother's keeper. I share DNA with you and the human race. We all are human. hume means earth. We all come from the earth and we need to humble ourselves in love for one another. Disembodiment is also something that comes from this lack of understanding that we belong to each other. As Mother Teresa says, if we have no pieces, it's because we forgotten that That we belong to one another. If soul is integrated, then the opposite of that is isolation. It's separation and disconnection. It is incredible to me that we are more connected to the news, to the world. We can get places faster than we've ever gone before. We could even go up to the moon now and go up to space on like chartered flights and shuttles if you got enough money. I can reach somebody anywhere in the world with a text message, a DM, a phone call, a video call, more connected, more connected to information. More connected to what's going on in everybody's lives. Yet we are the loneliest society. And that speaks to not all connection is connecting. You can be in the room with a crowd of folks and still feel like you're by yourself. So the quality in which we connect with each other needs to change. When we embrace the soul of integration, we see that we're a part of something bigger than ourselves. We hold ourself in the right esteem, not higher or better than anybody else. but as a part of a web. If one part breaks off, then we're all falling./ And lastly, soul is flow. The best example of this that I see is the jazz improv. I'm a music student, not a jazz person. But when I talk to folks that play jazz, I remember one of my friends was saying that his professor told him what jazz is, is learning the rules well enough to know when to break them. So the jazz improv is the most important part of its music and saying we understand where this is supposed to go. but I know where to break the rules and we've been practicing this. And I know how to break the rules in an artful way that enhances it. I know how to extend the time. I know how to take my solo and kind of do my thing, but not lose the group. Still be a part of something bigger, but find ways to color outside the lines in a beautiful way. There's a quote that I love and this comes from Bruce Lee, another person that is super important to me. And it's be water, my friend. This is you put water in a cup, it becomes the cup. You put it in a bowl. It becomes a bowl. You put it in a teapot. It becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend. And that's it. This quality of being able to go with the flow when you need to, but also harden up and crash when you need to advocate, when you need to make decisions, being able to go in and out of these qualities is super important for human thriving. It's super important for you to embrace your soulfulness because every circumstance doesn't call for the same reactions, doesn't call for the same responses. Now, if I'm honest, I am a person that I could eat the same thing every day. I can do the same thing every day. I can go on the same vacation to the same place every year. my wife's like, well, you want to eat? And I'm like, well, I mean, I know this place is good. Or what do you want to eat on the menu? Well, I had this before. I know it's good. I like structure. I love, I thrive off of structure and sometimes it can hinder me. So I've had to learn to find ways to embrace structures that allow for some freedom and flexibility. And not marry myself to a structure because sometimes, circumstantially, things can change. If soul is flow, then the opposite is rigidity. I was talking to one of my friends about skyscrapers and how they don't break. And the reason they don't break at those heights with all that wind is they build them in a way that they wave with the wind. If you're in a tall skyscraper, it's subtle, but when the wind's blowing, you can feel that thing move. And that's by design. Bamboo is one of the strongest pieces of wood because They don't just break when the wind hits them, they bend, they wave. And so many times we hold on tightly, we tense up in our lives. We try to say, Hey, this is where I'm standing. And we plan our feed, we lock out our knees. And we say, I'm not moving from my belief. I'm not moving from my decision. And something happens that's strong enough to break us. We have to embrace flexibility, flow, improv when it's necessary. Life isn't all flow. Sometimes, I need to not go with the flow. I need to not let people just take me where they want to take me. I need to not let my mind just wander into the thing that I just want to do because I can also lean towards going with the flow too much and ending up somewhere that I had no intention on being. So we need intention married with flow. When we embrace the soul of flow, we open ourselves up to freedom. We open ourselves up to new ways of seeing and experiencing the world./ So now with these eight principles of soul. Soul is deep. Soul is vitality. Soul is intuitive wisdom. Soul is authentic. Soul is an embodied practice. Soul is artful. Soul is integrated. And soul is flow. You can take these and you can look at every major area of your life. This isn't every major area, but these are the ones I'm going to highlight. So, your needs is one area. Your desires is another area. Your pleasures, your relationships, your work life. Your ideas of success, your learning and education, your citizenship and politics, your self image, your spiritual practices, and your creative life. All right. So you're looking at all of these areas and I'm not gonna. Go into detail with all of them, but ask yourself, what is a soulful way that I can approach this versus a shallow way of approaching this? So what's the soulful way of approaching my needs versus a shallow way? Well, a shallow way would be, I don't care about my needs or I'm going to neglect my needs because I care more about being liked. I don't want to rock the boat. So I'll take care of my needs later. That's a shallow way to approach your needs. But a soulful way to saying, Hey, I understand my interconnectedness to you. So I need to take care of my needs so that I can better be there for you. Same thing with desires and pleasures, the things that I want, it's okay to want things, but a shallow way of approaching desires is saying, I want this and neglecting your needs, or I want this. But I don't have the resources to adequately enjoy this. A soulful way to approach desires. I want this, but I know soul is deep. And I know if I really want this deep in my heart, what is the process that I'm willing to walk through to have this thing that I desire? Another one that we neglect is pleasure. A lot of people don't know that it is okay to have pleasures in your life. There's this value judgment and we even say this word guilty pleasures, which is really weird and really backwards. Pleasure is good. A shallow way of approaching pleasure is to neglect that you have pleasure at all, or to please other people first. Another shallow way is to live your life only according to pleasure. Eating the junk food of life without the vegetables of life, right? A soulful way is to one, just acknowledge my pleasure. My pleasure is good. My pleasure is necessary. And there are some things that I need to do for myself to please myself. And there's some things that require the people in my life to help me find pleasure, whether that's romantically, whether that is just generally relationally, whether that's in your work life and saying like, Hey, I need some sort of pleasure in some of this stuff because I am disengaged. Those are a few examples, but looking at all these areas, how can you show up more soulful? How can you show up with more depth? And how can you show up as more of yourself?/
Thank you for listening to the Soulfully You Podcast with Coach Chris Rodriguez. If you like the show, help others find me by subscribing and leaving a review on your favorite podcast platform. And don't forget to connect with me on Instagram at Coach underscore Chris Rodriguez. For more episodes along with all of my coaching programs, visit me@www.coach chris rodriguez.com. Special thanks to my team behind the scenes music by Dan Smith. And remember, whatever you do, wherever you find yourself today, make sure you put some soul in it.