Episode 2: 4 Essential Questions to Connect You to Your Purpose

Do you tackle your days with intentionality or is life simply happening to you?

Are you on track with your long-term goals or have you wandered so far off the beaten track you have no idea where you are in life?

To quote Elaine Stritch, "Are you having any fun?"

A sense of purpose is essential for mental and emotional well-being and can often be a powerful antidote to stress, anxiety and depression.

I'm diving into what it means to have purpose and how to reconnect with yours in this episode. If you'd like to experience more joy and less Groundhog Day, this is for you.

Episode highlights:

• Defining purpose; what is is and why it matters
• How purpose builds resilience (have a listen to the previous episode for more on resilience)
• The different life areas that'll give you a sense of purpose
• How purpose affects your mental health
• Why work without purpose leads to burnout
• The relationship between purpose and stress
• 4 powerful questions to ask yourself that'll help you reconnect with your purpose

I suggest jotting these questions down and spending some time working through them to access your own intuitive insights. I'd love to hear your takeaways - pop me a DM on Instagram and let me know - @emmaobriencoach

For folks who are ready to dive deeper into this work and start to create lasting change, I'm here to help. Book a complimentary strategy call with me here.

Are you fed-up of having your life ruled by stress? If what you need is more calm, better focus and improved productivity instead of constant frazzle and overwhelm, you'll love my brand new Stress Less PDF Guide.

Inside you'll find 21 practical, actionable stress reduction strategies to help you get your groove back. Buy the PDF guide here.

If you know you want more from your life or career but you're totally stuck about where to start, I invite you to book a complimentary strategy call with me here.

We'll uncover what's holding you back from the goals you want to achieve and you'll leave the call with actionable steps to get you moving in the right direction.

For the tea on me, how I work, who I coach and the packages I offer, please visit my website - www.emmaobriencoach.com

You can also connect with me on Instagram @emmaobriencoach where I share an abundance of tools, strategies and brilliant content, you might also see the occasional dog.

Check out two of my FREE online workshops:

My 7 Step Formula for Getting Unstuck

4 Ways to Stop Procrastination in its Tracks...

Transcript

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Emma O'Brien: Hi folks, a very warm welcome to season. 3. Episode, 2 of the lemons and pineapples podcast in today's episode, I am going to be talking to you about 4 essential questions. You can ask yourself to help connect you to your purpose.

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Emma O'Brien: 1st of all, I want to talk about what purpose is exactly. I think it's something that that gets talked about a lot. You know. You must be on purpose, live on purpose, work on purpose. But what is it? And, in my view.

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Emma O'Brien: having a sense of purpose is a feeling. It is a way you feel when you get up in the morning. It's a way you feel when you do something.

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Emma O'Brien: It is a way of being.

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Emma O'Brien: We talk about moving purposefully. We're doing it with intention, and we're doing it for a reason.

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Emma O'Brien: And I think you know, when you're living

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Emma O'Brien: on purpose or working on purpose, or have a sense of purpose, because intrinsically, you feel good

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Emma O'Brien: purpose feels good.

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Emma O'Brien: It's a big pillar

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Emma O'Brien: in mental health.

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Emma O'Brien: and one of the reasons that is cited by people who are suffering from depression and anxiety as to why they feel. The way they do is they lack a sense of purpose in life. There's no real reason to get up in the morning, and I think

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Emma O'Brien: we can relate if life feels like Groundhog day, and you're getting up and rinsing and repeating, coming home, going to bed, and getting up and doing the same thing over and over and over, and you've lost sight of why, and it doesn't feel good. You are not on purpose.

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Emma O'Brien: and

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Emma O'Brien: let's talk a little bit about why it actually matters, and what purpose does for us.

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Emma O'Brien: I think there can be multiple ways of having purpose.

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Emma O'Brien: It can be easy to be lulled into thinking that we have to have some grand career move. That is purposeful. You know. You could take someone who's a brain surgeon, for instance, they're doing big work. It's life changing work, really purposeful.

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Emma O'Brien: Do you have to be a brain surgeon to feel purposeful? Of course you don't. Being a parent can make you feel on purpose, it can. It can be hopefully. It feels good. Being a parent can be purposeful

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Emma O'Brien: having a

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Emma O'Brien: dog that you enjoy spending time with can give you a sense of purpose. A hobby can give you a sense of purpose. We can't always derive purpose from what we do for a living. I think that is the ideal, and that would be

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Emma O'Brien: the the aim for many of us, because we spend most of our lives working. But it's not always the reality. So there are multiple ways. You can find it and multiple places in life. You can find it. I'm going to share with you a few ways. You can start to introspect if you're feeling like life is like a groundhog day.

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Emma O'Brien: and you can use these questions to start to have a look at. Where can I reconnect with some purpose? So I can add some joy back into my life.

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Emma O'Brien: Purpose matters.

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Emma O'Brien: It gives us a sense of direction.

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Emma O'Brien: It helps us build resilience. I talked about resilience in the previous episode. So if you want to know more about that, go back and listen to episode one of the 3rd season

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Emma O'Brien: life can be hard. It's not always easy, and even if you're if you're living and working with purpose, there will always be moments where it's difficult

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Emma O'Brien: and having a sense of purpose. Having a why behind doing something can make it much easier to navigate through periods of short term stress. We shouldn't be having long term stress if you are, there are things that need to be adjusted in life. So I'm not suggesting that purpose helps you ride out chronic stress.

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Emma O'Brien: and there's something very wrong, even if you're feeling on purpose and you're chronically stressed, there's something out of kilter there. But when

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Emma O'Brien: you have a purpose, so let's say you have a goal in mind of

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Emma O'Brien: training to to do training for a marathon. Let's let's use that as a really good example.

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Emma O'Brien: It can be quite difficult to get up and push through the resistance of not wanting to train

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Emma O'Brien: to get through the recovery if you have an injury.

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Emma O'Brien: But the long term goal of I'm going to run a marathon is the thing that gives you the resilience to be able to take a time out and recover, or to get up and go. I know I don't want to get up and run 10 ks this morning, because it's raining and it's cold. But my long term goal is to to run this Marathon. So I'm going to push through that.

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Emma O'Brien: you know, intermediate stress in order to be able to get to that long term goal. So purpose helps us build resilience. It helps us push through difficult things because we've got a bigger reason for doing the short term uncomfortable things

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Emma O'Brien: it gives us. It gives us direction for for life. So

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Emma O'Brien: if we take work, for example, if you are sitting at the moment in a job that you don't really enjoy, but it's a means to an end to get you somewhere else. Whether that is, you have to kind of work through the level you're at to get a promotion that is a purpose gives you a why in mind.

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Emma O'Brien: if you're in a job. You're not really loving, but you know that it's enabling you to save the money to put your kids through private school. That is a sense of purpose you have with that.

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Emma O'Brien: and it allows you to keep that long term goal in mind. So you can get through the difficult stuff when there is no purpose, there is no long term goal, it becomes almost impossible to cope

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Emma O'Brien: through difficult circumstances.

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Emma O'Brien: It has been a very I'll use the word interesting. It's been interesting in my personal life. This year I have a husband who is

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Emma O'Brien: chronically burnt out.

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Emma O'Brien: He works in a family business. Anybody who works in one of those will know they can be quite toxic environments.

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Emma O'Brien: He works very long hours, and he has worked himself into burnout

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Emma O'Brien: because he's got into the habit of getting up, going to work. It's a struggle. He's tired. He's stressed. He's not sleeping. Well, we've got this whole cycle of stress happening, and he's lost sight of. Why, the hell he's doing it because he's worked so much. There's no time for anything outside of work. There's no time for fun and working with no end goal and working without a why is a 1 way street to Burnout? I have witnessed it.

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Emma O'Brien: It is 10 out of 10 don't recommend.

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Emma O'Brien: and we're in the process of working through. How do we?

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Emma O'Brien: How do we mend that? And how do we adjust things so he can feel better.

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Emma O'Brien: Burnout is. It's an invitation to change things. And it's not a sustainable way of being. It's very. It's a terrible way of being so. It's been very challenging

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Emma O'Brien: for us, and for, you know, personal life stuff for me. It's been very challenging going through that. But it's given me a lot of insight into this, and it's given me a big reminder again of why purpose is so so important.

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Emma O'Brien: So

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Emma O'Brien: let me share with you some questions. There are more than 4 enough to over deliver. That will help you really get in touch with your purpose, and you might want to to come back to this and jot these down.

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Emma O'Brien: And just to sit with a journal quietly and just work

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Emma O'Brien: through these questions. If you're feeling stuck, if you're feeling lost, these are questions that will elicit insights to

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Emma O'Brien: help you find a new direction and perhaps help you move forwards and help you make a change.

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Emma O'Brien: Remember, when we're stuck.

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Emma O'Brien: It's tiny incremental changes start to help you get out of

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Emma O'Brien: the stuck. I kind of see stuck, as you know. You fall down a big hole, and you can't quite see a way out, and it is about

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Emma O'Brien: creating the ladder steps to help you climb out of the hole, and it has to happen step by step. We can't get unstuck in 1 1 fail swoop. Unfortunately. So here are some questions, and you can jot these down and answer them. And as always, I would love to hear from you. When you've done this exercise of what's come out of it, and what your takeaways have been. You can pop me a DM. On Instagram. It's at Emma O'briencoach.

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Emma O'Brien: You can also send me a text message at the the link is in the top of the show notes here as well.

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Emma O'Brien: So here they are. What do I want?

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Emma O'Brien: It's a really simple question, but I don't think any of us ask ourselves this enough, we end up blindly, allowing life to happen.

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Emma O'Brien: and then we wake up one day and go. What the hell! Where is 10 years gone? I hate my life. I don't want this. How did this happen to me? So what do I want?

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Emma O'Brien: What do I want?

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Emma O'Brien: List out the things that you want. What do you want?

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Emma O'Brien: The other question we talked. I talked at the beginning, me and my me and my multiple personalities talked at the beginning about purpose being a feeling being a way of being

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Emma O'Brien: so. Another question is, how do I want to feel on a regular basis?

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Emma O'Brien: What state of being would I like to be walking through the world in.

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Emma O'Brien: And if you're not walking through the world in that state already, what do you need to change in order to achieve that, what needs to be adjusted?

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Emma O'Brien: Another question.

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Emma O'Brien: If I knew I couldn't fail, what bold move or big dream would I pursue?

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Emma O'Brien: And this is one of those things that sometimes our minds go. Yeah, but you know we have the reality of bills to pay, and this and the other just park that for a second, and ask yourself this question.

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Emma O'Brien: If I knew I couldn't fail, what? What would I pursue? What would I do?

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Emma O'Brien: And it might be that it's not practical to make a complete 180 in life and do something massively different. But if you have an idea of what big dreams or bold moves. There's a part of you that would like to make. You can start having baby steps towards that. So

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Emma O'Brien: maybe it's not possible to do a massive career change at the moment, even though that's what you want. But could you start to have a look at alternates.

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Emma O'Brien: routes of study you could take?

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Emma O'Brien: Is there a night class you can do? Is there an online course you could do? Is there somewhere you could volunteer? Is there something you could do, for, you know, an hour, a week that would start to put you on the path towards that different thing. Remember, change happens in small. It's a series of small incremental steps. And we just have to start taking those steps.

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Emma O'Brien: A 3rd question is, imagine

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Emma O'Brien: it's 2035,

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Emma O'Brien: 10 years, and 2 months from now. Yikes.

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Emma O'Brien: what would I regret not having done?

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Emma O'Brien: What would you regret not having done in 10 years time?

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Emma O'Brien: Write it down, have a look at it and then start to to do an overview of your life. And where? Where can I start making changes? So I don't have this regret in 10 years time.

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Emma O'Brien: And the last question

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Emma O'Brien: is, when in my life did I feel the most alive? And what was I doing?

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Emma O'Brien: Can you remember a time that you felt

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Emma O'Brien: really like you were living and working on purpose like you. You got out of bed and thought, I'm excited for this, because I know this is taking me here, or you know, I'm excited about about what I'm doing today.

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Emma O'Brien: or I'm excited because what I'm doing today is moving me towards a goal I've got that is going to come to fruition in a year's time.

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Emma O'Brien: Think about that.

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Emma O'Brien: I think it's it's often as I've touched on. We? We end up at a point in life where we're going. How the hell did I arrive here? Oh, I didn't want this. This isn't the life I envisaged, but it's happened, and

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Emma O'Brien: it's good to reflect back and start to have a look. At which point did the spark start to disappear for me?

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Emma O'Brien: What happened, and how can I reignite that? How can I make some changes? What do I need to change

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Emma O'Brien: in order to to, to reconnect with joy? Again.

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Emma O'Brien: I talk about this often on the podcast is I.

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Emma O'Brien: I don't think the purpose of being

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Emma O'Brien: here and being alive is to struggle and suffer through life until you die.

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Emma O'Brien: But yet that seems to be how so many people go through life.

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Emma O'Brien: I've been, you know, my husband and I. But there's been lots of conversations in this house of late, and

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Emma O'Brien: I think he's grown up with the the worldview of, you know. Live modestly, work really hard, and save as much as possible for retirement.

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Emma O'Brien: which is is great.

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Emma O'Brien: You want to be set up for for retirement. You don't want to be stuck in poverty when you finish work, or you, you know you lose your job, or whatever happens, but at the same time

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Emma O'Brien: you cannot put off

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Emma O'Brien: existing in a state of joy and abundance, and enjoying the experience of being now

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Emma O'Brien: with the assumption that you're going to get to it in 20 years time, because if you aren't able to be present and enjoy things that are happening in life. Now, why do you think it's going to be any different in 20 years time?

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Emma O'Brien: All that's going to happen is you're going to have a large pot of retirement savings.

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Emma O'Brien: and you're going to be so incapable of enjoying life because you've never experienced enjoying life.

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Emma O'Brien: You're just going to be unhappy with more money, and I don't really see the point of that at all. So there's a balance to be had there.

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Emma O'Brien: I'm going to be quiet now, so I will invite you to reflect back on the questions that I have shared. Take your time to answer them, and see how the answers you come up with.

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Emma O'Brien: Line up with your current reality.

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Emma O'Brien: and you can compare the 2 and start to have a look at? Where in my current reality, am I experiencing what I want to be experiencing? Because I bet somewhere in there you are. And if you are, how can I expand that? So I get more of that good feeling? And when in the areas that are lacking

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Emma O'Brien: purpose that are lacking joy that don't feel good. What needs to change so that you can

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Emma O'Brien: live in a more expansive way, and you can actually experience more happiness and

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Emma O'Brien: joy in your life.

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Emma O'Brien: Tiny steps.

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Emma O'Brien: Remember, you can have a look at this and start to have a look at what are the 1st small steps I could I can take to to instigate change.

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Emma O'Brien: This is exciting work. This is the kind of work I love doing with clients. I love supporting people through this. So if you've gone through this, and you've listened, and you thought this is really great, but I need some help. Pop me a message.

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Emma O'Brien: Be very happy to chat to you about how some one-on-one coaching could help to support you in

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Emma O'Brien: activating more joy, creating more expansiveness and getting you back on track with your purpose. So we have less groundhog day and

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Emma O'Brien: more joy.

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Emma O'Brien: Thank you for being with me today, folks, for this episode. I will see you same time next week

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Emma O'Brien: bye, for now.