001 The Miracle Zone: Where Leadership Meets Love, Catarina's Story.

Welcome to The Miracle Zone!
In this very first episode, I'm opening my heart to share my personal journey of transformation - from working on multimillion-dollar global projects to finding myself crying on my bathroom floor, and ultimately discovering what I now call "The Miracle Zone." This is a story about reconnecting with the true essence of leadership and tapping into what I call the miracle frequency.

In This Episode, You'll Learn:

• How my early experiences between Mozambique and the US shaped my mission
• My journey from high-achieving changemaker and leader to complete burnout
• The profound shift from "I am failing" to "Only love matters"
• What true presence-based leadership looks like
• How connecting to the "miracle frequency" can transform your impact
  The difference between "doing" love and "being" love

Key Takeaways:

• Traditional models of leadership often lead to burnout, even when doing meaningful work
• True transformation begins when we shift from doing to being
• Presence is essential for accessing higher levels of leadership
• Operating from the "Miracle Zone" allows universal productivity to flow through us
• The most powerful leadership comes from being connected to source/love

What's Next: 

Join me in the next episode where I'll dive deeper into what the Miracle Zone is (and isn't), sharing practical insights from my decade of working with entrepreneurs, leaders and CEOs in accessing this transformative state of being.

Subscribe to The Miracle Zone: 

Don't miss an episode of this journey into evolutionary leadership! Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts to receive new episodes automatically.

I'm so grateful you're here with me at the beginning of this journey. Together, we'll explore how to lead from a place of love, presence, and unlimited possibility. 

Thank you for tuning in, and I will see you in the next episode.

• Join Catarina’s free upcoming live virtual event RESURRECTED :|: The Experience: https://www.catarinaandrade.com/resurrected
• Download your free Miracle Business Blueprint, a 7-part framework to create a thriving, scalable, and self-sustaining 7+ figure business that gives you more freedom, not less — plus a process to identify where to focus first to lead in your Miracle Zone today: https://www.catarinaandrade.com/blueprint/
• Youtube Channel: @catarinaandrade
• Instagram: @themiraclefrequency
• Website: https://www.catarinaandrade.com/
• The Miracle Frequency: Listen to Catarina’s music on your favorite platform: https://bit.ly/the-miracle-frequency-music

Chrysalis Codes Activation: A free light-encoded frequency track to support you in transformation: https://www.catarinaandrade.com/chrysalis-codes/

...

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome & My Deep Sense of Purpose
• 3:04 Early Beginnings: From Mozambique to America
• 4:39 The Path of Making a Difference
• 6:24 The Bathroom Floor Moment: When Success Feels Like Failure
• 8:26 The Revelation: "Only Love Matters"
• 9:50 Discovering a Different Kind of Leadership
• 18:35 Starting My Meditation Journey: One Minute at a Time
• 19:37 The Transformational Shift: A Divine Experience
• 21:54 Understanding True Love: From Verb to Noun
• 24:06 Living in The Miracle Zone: Real-Life Examples
• 27:04 Miracles in Action: Speaking, Music, and Beyond
• 29:47 The New Era of Leadership
• 31:43 What's Coming Next: A Preview

Transcript

[00:00:00] Catarina Andrade: I'm so excited to dive in with you today to share a little bit about my story, because if you're here, I know that like me, you have a deep sense of purpose and mission and feeling like there is a legacy that you're here to leave. That there is a vision on your heart that there is some way that you uniquely are supposed to contribute to leaving this earth and this collective better than you found it.

[00:00:40] Catarina Andrade: And for me, this really began at a really young age. So when I was six years old, my family moved from Mozambique to the United States and witnessing the disparity of these two worlds at a really young age. And the [00:01:00] injustice of it all really shook me. I didn't understand as a 6-year-old, I.

[00:01:09] Catarina Andrade: Even today sometimes how two worlds that are so different can coexist. How I could walk into a grocery store in the United States and there would be. 10 options of milk. When in Mozambique, which was recently war torn. My parents had to wait in line to get a ration of milk. How could both of these things coexist?

[00:01:47] Catarina Andrade: And so this really impacted me from a really, really young age. And growing up I remember thinking, I can't not make a difference. Like I am here to [00:02:00] make a change in some way, to contribute in some way in bridging these different realities. And I started really young even as a teenager involved in lots of causes in my free time.

[00:02:15] Catarina Andrade: It's what I love to do, volunteering and all of the things. And I used to travel back and forth quite a bit between being in the US and visiting Mozambique and other parts of the African continent. And by the age of 32. I was doing a great job of making a difference, right? I was overseeing multimillion dollar projects around the world, really focused on uplifting the wellbeing of women and children, which is.

[00:02:53] Catarina Andrade: Always been my passion and advising leaders of governments social [00:03:00] enterprises, nonprofits, international organizations fortune 500 private sector companies on. Really helping them amplify the impact of their projects in the world. All with this vision of how can I help to bridge this world of duality and injustice and of abundance here, and not abundance there and find a way forward.

[00:03:32] Catarina Andrade: And so by the age of 32, I was doing this work. I was doing it. I loved it. I was, very successful at it. I think for almost already 10 years I had been working in management roles building teams, all of the things. I had it all. I was making this big contribution. I also had a lovely husband.

[00:03:56] Catarina Andrade: I had a new baby and I even had two rescue cats [00:04:00] and I was like, yeah, this is living the dream. And so you can imagine my surprise when. I found myself on my bathroom floor one night, curled up in a fetal position, and I remember being there like curled up in a fetal position. I was snuggling this white bath mat that I used to have on the floor, and I was surrounded by tissues all over because I had been crying and sobbing, and I had these three words coming through my mind over and over.

[00:04:34] Catarina Andrade: And the words were, I am failing. I am failing. I'm failing at being a mother. I'm failing at being a wife. I'm failing at being a leader of my team. I'm failing at taking care of myself in all the ways. I was just feeling these deep, deep feelings of failure. I was also so ashamed of this. I didn't even tell my husband who was [00:05:00] asleep in the room next door, and I didn't tell anyone at the time because on the outside everything looked amazing.

[00:05:09] Catarina Andrade: And it's not like I was even working in corporate or something in some soul sucking job. I was making a big impact doing something that I really cared about. So it was really confusing. And so as I sat in this deep pit of failure. Crying by myself on my bathroom floor, and I've had other bathroom floor crying moments.

[00:05:34] Catarina Andrade: I assume you have two. You know these are the moments of transformation, right? As I sat there and I had this, I'm failing running through my head. All of a sudden, those three words were replaced by three new words, three new words, and those three. Those three new words were only love [00:06:00] matters.

[00:06:02] Catarina Andrade: Only love matters. Which sounds really nice, right? But in that moment I was pissed. I was like, give me something more than that. I'm loving my husband, I'm loving my kid. I'm loving all these causes, like I am giving love. What does this even mean? Give me something to work from here. I couldn't see what I was missing and I was also making a difference, but I was so exhausted I didn't have any energy.

[00:06:36] Catarina Andrade: I just felt so disconnected from what I was doing in the world and from the people that I was working with and from those who are supposed beneficiaries of the work I was doing in the world from, I was so disconnected. And I, all I knew was, I want to keep doing good work. I want to keep making a difference, [00:07:00] and this way can't be it.

[00:07:03] Catarina Andrade: Like whatever I've been doing today just isn't working. And starting from that point, I started getting really curious. I started paying more attention to those others around me who were leading and just noticing different types of leadership. At this point, I had been leading for almost a decade.

[00:07:26] Catarina Andrade: I was in, management meetings. I was advising all sorts of different people. Including, heads of state and so I had a lot of points of reference for leadership. And so this is what I got really ex really curious about. And I got really curious also about like, how can we stay sustainable in doing this work that is motivated.

[00:07:59] Catarina Andrade: [00:08:00] By our passion, by our vision, and we love it so much, but in a way that doesn't leave us crying on our bathroom floor because that's just not it. You are looking great on the outside and breaking down on the inside is just is not it. And so I also started noticing that this was an epidemic. I.

[00:08:16] Catarina Andrade: That there is a problem with this current model of leadership, with this current model of change making with this current model of whether it's business building or startups or whatever of bringing visions to life in this 3D world, that there was something off in this model that felt really.

[00:08:37] Catarina Andrade: Extractive of how we as leaders were doing it. And also the just was not, it was not it. And I noticed this again, just like I had a broad scope of leaders to, to look at. I also had a broad scope of burnout to look at because that's what I realized in [00:09:00] myself was I was feeling burnout. And I was depleted and exhausted and disconnected, and I started noticing, not only did I see this in people that I worked with directly, I started seeing this all over the place from these clinics in rural southern Africa where there were overworked, burned out healthcare workers to boardrooms.

[00:09:30] Catarina Andrade: And these really hip coworking spaces that were popping up in Southern California with a lot of new online business owners and also tech startups. I also saw burnout there, and it was so interesting. Really similar symptoms. In completely different environments. But again, the people that I was spending time with were super passionate about their visions, about what they were bringing to [00:10:00] life in the world.

[00:10:01] Catarina Andrade: But still, this burnout was happening. And so this is what I was witnessing. Same old story repeating over and over. I had experienced it myself. I also had good friends of mine. So one friend of mine was working for a leading humanitarian agency and she called me one day and she told me that she got voted or nominated employee of the year, and I was telling her, congratulations.

[00:10:29] Catarina Andrade: That's amazing. And she told me that she had been living off of three hours of sleep for the whole year and her body was breaking down and she was miserable. Miserable. And then I also had a lot of my entrepreneur friends that I spend time around again, hitting their big goals of multi six figure seven figure plus businesses with a side order of [00:11:00] autoimmune disease.

[00:11:01] Catarina Andrade: Again, really similar stories. I just kept getting more and more curious and I really kept thinking. 

[00:11:13] Catarina Andrade: What I was really feeling deeply was, this is not the leadership that we need in these times. We are here in transformational times to do big things, to shift the collective in a very practical way, and also the collective consciousness, right? And so this is the opposite of what we need.

[00:11:33] Catarina Andrade: We need people who are more creative, who are more compassionate, who are more tapped into their intuition, who are more full of energy. An inspiration for the visions that they're bringing to life, that they can build that vision and build teams around that, right? We needed more of those things. We needed more focus and ability to really [00:12:00] create.

[00:12:03] Catarina Andrade: Instead, we were seeing more and more depletion. 

[00:12:10] Catarina Andrade: The other thing that struck me is in these times, even back then where AI was more of a distant thought as opposed to today, where it's very much present I kept thinking. These are the things that set us apart from ai, from the machines, right? This, the, this compassion, this intuition, this creativity, right?

[00:12:31] Catarina Andrade: These are the human things that we bring to our creations, to the world. This is our innovation and this is where we need to strengthen. And more and more over time as machines start taking over, the other things that we can do, right? What will that leave us? As leaders, we need the opposite. And so again, I started getting really curious and looking around to leaders who are doing things differently, and I started [00:13:00] noticing non many right there.

[00:13:03] Catarina Andrade: Hard to find, but when you find them, they stand out like a sore thumb. The type of leader that walks into the room. And it's like they change the energy of the space. It's like their way of being is totally different. You don't get the sense of bottomless coffee wired feeling. It's present, it's grounded.

[00:13:35] Catarina Andrade: It doesn't seem like they're in a rush. And nevertheless, they're able to show up and do the things in a powerful way. They're able to speak and get others to listen and inspire, and they're able to create a whole world around their vision that they're here to deliver without all of the rushing [00:14:00] this and busyness. And nervous system dysregulation that we sense in most leaders, and I saw this. In a few places, just reflecting on leaders that I respected and looked up to both like really well-known popular figures. So growing up in Mozambique one of the people that I always really respected was Nelson Mandela Madiba, 

[00:14:31] Catarina Andrade: and one of the things that people who met him in real life would always say was they would just notice his presence. And that when you were with him, it's like you were the only person in the room and how he could maintain this openness to connecting with others in his presidency, for example, whether it was.

[00:14:53] Catarina Andrade: Another world leader or whether it was, a child in a rural village. It was [00:15:00] just this presence, this almost majesty, if you will, that he was able to cultivate through his leadership. I. And I noticed also, for example, in one of my yoga teachers at the time, I noticed that she also entered a room and it's like everything shifted around her and it was like, she almost didn't have to say that much, but it's like we would listen, we would be captivated and there was no rush there.

[00:15:23] Catarina Andrade: There was like a commanding of leadership and presence. And so I got really curious about this type of leadership. And one thing that I noticed when I started looking at different individuals who were leading in this very different way was that they all had a presence practice of some sort, which at the time I did not have.

[00:15:45] Catarina Andrade: And so I really noticed it, right? Whether it was Nelson Mandela going for his early morning walks every single morning. With his bodyguards that he was so well known for throughout his presidency [00:16:00] to my yoga teacher who would wake up every morning and do her sadana, her spiritual practice meditation, chanting mantra, right?

[00:16:11] Catarina Andrade: There was something to other leaders that I would hear speaking about meditation. A practice and I was like, oh, I don't have a practice. I'm doing all things. I don't have a practice. And so I decided, I called up my sister and I said, Hey, guess what? I'm gonna start meditating.

[00:16:29] Catarina Andrade: And she was like, oh, okay, cool. And I said, I'm gonna do it for one minute a day. I was like so proud of myself and she laughed at me, what difference will one minute a day make? But, I knew it's something that I could do. And it was the most painful minute of my life. It was so difficult.

[00:16:50] Catarina Andrade: So difficult to shut everything down and just focus internally for one minute. In my [00:17:00] internal space, I remember I was twitching. I was thinking about a million things. I kept thinking, oh, great, another thing I'm failing at, good, right? But I kept doing it 

[00:17:13] Catarina Andrade: one minute a day. And over time, the amount of time that I spent meditating grew and grew. And I also, as my child grew and grew, I started meditating more and more so that I wouldn't lose my marbles. And then one day, mid meditation, something shifted. Like somebody hit the pause button on life. Everything got really quiet and really still, and I felt this space of unconditional love inside me and. [00:18:00] Around me. It's like I felt embraced and embracing. I felt loved and loving, and there was very little separation between the two. I felt like my heart was blown open to this flow of love, and I was interconnected with all of life. And I felt the living ecstasy of the universe vibrating in every cell of my being.

[00:18:35] Catarina Andrade: Now, I don't know if I experienced this lovegasm for a millisecond or for a million years, but it changed everything for me. Some might call it an awakening or a spiritual experience, or the feeling of God. I had never [00:19:00] had that experience before of connecting with the all with source, with this expansiveness within me.

[00:19:13] Catarina Andrade: And I realized in that moment that when I first heard that term only love matters, when I was on my bathroom floor all those years ago that I did not get the memo, I did not get the memo 

[00:19:30] Catarina Andrade: because I think we're really confused about love.

[00:19:35] Catarina Andrade: There's love as a verb. We give it, we receive it. It's directional, it's transactional, and it's often conditional. Have I earned it? Do they deserve it? This is the doing of love. And then there's this capital L Love, love as a noun that's non-directional from [00:20:00] source. All embracing unconditional, which is a state of being.

[00:20:06] Catarina Andrade: It just is. It's like this ocean that we're swimming in and we. We just need to remember like a fish in water, that it's all around us, that we are in this ocean and of this ocean. And so my focus from that day onwards became on how can I live this capital L Love? Love is a noun. Not directing it out at people, not directing it out at causes or even inwards to myself as self-care.

[00:20:38] Catarina Andrade: But showing up in love as love for love, really living love and leading from this place sourced by this energy in the state. I. That I called being in lovened being tapped [00:21:00] into the miracle frequency, the frequency of love or above of being carried by the all connected to the all, and how this can ripple out and touch everyone in everything in my life from those that I am working with. In my leadership, the teams that I lead, the leaders that I work with, my family, my community, how do I bring this quality into my day-to-day leadership?

[00:21:42] Catarina Andrade: And when I started doing this, I started noticing how much more resourced I felt even in the difficult moments. So I'll give you an example because we all go through challenging times. We all experience grief. So [00:22:00] one of those challenging times that happened shortly after this awakening, if you will, was I was.

[00:22:09] Catarina Andrade: Going through a lot of challenge and internal grief because I really was wanting to conceive a second child and it was not working out. I was, it was just not working out. And yes, I felt lots of anger. Yes, I felt lots of sadness and grief and grieving this vision of these expectations that I had of what my family would look like.

[00:22:36] Catarina Andrade: But in this challenge, I no longer felt unsupported. I no longer felt like I was failing. I no, no longer felt like I was being swept up in this current of grief and loss like I had experienced in the past. The same thing happened again a few years later when I [00:23:00] actually uncoupled from my then husband.

[00:23:03] Catarina Andrade: We went through this divorce. Of course it was challenging, but still I managed to feel supported and connected to this force of love. I always say it was like the most beautiful divorce that ever was, right? Because there was so much love present there, and I began also applying this into my work and into how I was leading and into those leaders that I began to support.

[00:23:30] Catarina Andrade: How do we also incorporate this living connected to this miracle frequency, this other source that almost carries us and allows us to tap into this other level of creation. In the world that's more deeply resourced and rooted and what that makes possible. And instead of worrying about doing all the things and having enough energy for it all and being [00:24:00] productive, I found that when we were able to focus and I was able to focus more on being present and even leaning back sometimes and letting myself being carried by this. Ocean of support of the divine.

[00:24:17] Catarina Andrade: It's almost like I tapped into this universal productivity and everything shifted. I started experiencing miracles, like things that didn't make sense, right? I would find myself speaking on international stages in front of 800 people. And not really knowing how I got there, like there was no logical path that got me there.

[00:24:40] Catarina Andrade: It's like everything conspired to put me there in this moment with this audience to deliver this message. I found myself, also becoming a musician, even though I was never a musician before I became a recording artist in a crazy ridiculous kind of way. To my surprise, [00:25:00]and I'll share the link here to my music, if you're not familiar with my music.

[00:25:05] Catarina Andrade: Again, in a way that made no sense, but it was like the world conspired to bring this vision and aspect of my service to the world. And I saw this happening in all of my clients as well, is the more time we spent connecting to the miracle frequency and operating from what I call the miracle zone, which is tapped into this, fueled by this frequency, then things almost happen around us.

[00:25:32] Catarina Andrade: Synchronicities miracles, opportunities would come in, clients would come in all of these things with so much less effort because we were being supported by life, by love, by the force of creation itself. And it's a very fun place to play in. Because when you're living in this state, when you're living this in loving state, you're living [00:26:00] enlivened.

[00:26:01] Catarina Andrade: You're like a small child, you're exploring a garden for the first time, and you're just in awe and gratitude and wonder for what it's like you don't need to worry about doing anything. You're just taking it in and you're responding to life and it's almost unfolding before you. It's like when love is a canvas.

[00:26:21] Catarina Andrade: It doesn't actually matter what the paints are, what the colors are, even, what the brush strokes are. It's you're creating a legacy of love and you're making a difference no matter what. You can't not when you're in this state of leadership. In your life, in your 

[00:26:42] Catarina Andrade: business, and in bringing this vision to the world, and you're tapped into this bottomless source of energy now, this is why I'm so lit up. [00:27:00] About working with the miracle frequency, getting leaders in the miracle zone because of what's possible, like things that make no sense, things that leave us breathless when we stop. Thinking that we're the ones doing the things and we open up to creation to flow through us.

[00:27:23] Catarina Andrade: That is so much more magnificent, so much more grand and impactful. And abundant than what we can envision with our limited human brains. And I really think when it comes to leadership in this new age, in this new era for this new earth, we need to be leading more and more from this space. From this miracle zone, and that's what I'm so excited to explore more with you in this podcast, to speak to other leaders who are leading in their miracle zone and hearing their stories [00:28:00] of how these miracles are showing up for them and how they're cultivating space for this in their lives.

[00:28:06] Catarina Andrade: I'm really excited to also share the practical things that come up because for you to be in your miracle zone, that means you need space, justness. To be present, to connect, to tap in. And I know if you're listening to this, you know what happens, the magic that flows when you are tapped in and spiritually resourced, but there's still things that need to get done in the 3D space.

[00:28:32] Catarina Andrade: And so what does that mean for you as a leader, as someone who's building a team, as a business O owner, as somebody with more and more clients that you're serving, that's showing up more powerfully on stages, writing books, all of the things. What does that mean for you to be the doer but also not the doer?

[00:28:56] Catarina Andrade: What. Can you delegate? What do you need to [00:29:00] delegate that's outside of a miracle zone? Who are you delegating it to? Whether it's a team member, whether it's to the universe, to source to God, to great mother? What does it mean to lead from this space? 

[00:29:17] Catarina Andrade: I am so excited.

[00:29:19] Catarina Andrade: Thank you so much for being here with me today and listening to my story. And in the next episode, I'm going to dive more into what the Miracle Zone is and what it isn't. Based on my experience working with other leaders and CEOs and spiritual thought leaders, a lot of the stories that I shared today have happened over 10 years ago.

[00:29:44] Catarina Andrade: I've since been working so closely with leaders. In getting them more and more in their miracle zone, both through my mentorship and advisory services, as well as working behind the scenes on my management agency [00:30:00] in their businesses. So there is so much goodness here for you. I can't wait to share it with you.

[00:30:06] Catarina Andrade: I'll see you in the next episode.