Working Towards Our Purpose

Welcome to Working Towards Our Purpose, a podcast that

offers a different perspective on what a job can be. For everyone

out there that's heard that voice in the back of their head asking for something

more, it's time to listen to it. I'm your host, Gino,

and join me as I interview people who have decided to work in their own

purpose. Together, we will learn, become inspired,

and hopefully find our own path towards working in our purpose.

Joining me today on the podcast is Erica Cooney. Erica is a

licensed marriage and family therapist as well as a certified

integrative mental health professional. She's also a speaker,

teacher, podcaster, Ricky master, and meditation facilitator,

just to list some of the things that she does. She was also involved in

a pretty serious accident with a Mack truck that sent her on her path to

purpose. Erica, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today? Hi. Thank

you for having me. I'm glad to be here. Excited that you're here. So, yeah,

let's, let's just jump right into it. And can you tell us a little bit

about your story and, you know, what's led you on your path?

Yeah. I think you hit the main point right off the bat in

my intro there, and a Mack dump truck is the reason why I'm

here. So I'm gonna just start there. And then through our

conversation, I'm sure other stuff will come up too, you know, because everyone's

path is not, like, black and white. Right? There's so many moving

pieces and parts. And so in 2014, when I was driving to

work, I was hit by a Mack dump truck. It never saw me, and I

had nowhere to go. And I'm blessed to be here. I am blessed to be

alive. I had emergency surgery that day. I was in the hospital for

a week, 3 month recovery, learning how to walk again because I almost lost

my foot. And then over the next 14, 18 months, my life

completely fell apart as I knew it, Whether it was being fired

from my job, and I was never somebody to be fired, I was always promoted

or a trainer or a manager or some sort of leadership position.

Then a long term relationship ended, and that was all about

toxicity and understanding, you know, what kind of relationships

are really what I want and what kind of partner do I wanna be.

And then because I was not functioning the way that I was functioning before

the MacDumb truck, not to mention I was a therapist. And us therapists, we

don't make a lot of money. I don't know if you guys know that. We

barely make, like, $50,000, and I had a

lot of school loans and a lot of debt. And so when that long term

relationship ended, I really didn't have anywhere to go, so I went back home.

And here I am in my mid thirties. I'm sitting in my

bedroom in my parents' house. I got a bottle of wine, and I'm crying. I'm

like doing that ugly cry. Like, what the heck am I missing here? How did

I get here? How did I miss the signs? Right? And so

my dog and I, we've been on this journey together, learning how to

evolve, heal to where I am 8 years out now, 7 years

out, and it's been the best thing that's ever happened in my

life. Do I ever wanna go through that again? No. Thank you. I've had my

fill of that, but I also am very grateful for the experience and everything that

I've learned along this journey. So and here I am. Yeah.

Wow. That's a that's a very, you know, traumatic story even, but

seems like it it was the thing that kinda pushed you to to become the

person that you are today. And I think so often that's kind of the case

is there's some sort of, like, event similar with me. There was a an

event that kinda woke me up to being you know, to look at your current

life and then and try to make some changes to, to make it better. So

I've heard you talk a lot about burnout and overwhelm in the past and

how it can lead you to making decisions based out of fear. I was wondering

if you could talk a little bit about how calming your mind is an important

step when somebody is making a decision. Well, we have to

understand, you know, if we go to the neuroscience part of the brain and when

we're stressed out, the rational thinking that we have just goes right out the window.

Our that part of our brain literally goes offline, and we're not able

to access it. And when your nervous system is stressed out, you can call

it fight, flight, or freeze. Right? It's there's so many different ways people describe

it, and I'm just gonna say your nervous system is activated. You're going to do

things out of protection rather than connection. Right? Our brain

is no longer looking for ways to connect. Our brain is no longer

in the aerial view of 50,000 feet above looking at everything. It

is a very narrow view, and it's right in front of you. And how do

you protect yourself right then and there? And if you stay in that

state over prolonged periods of time, that becomes the chronic stress.

Right? And then with the chronic stress turns into the burnout, and then your nervous

system is beyond fried. And you become into this mode

of instead of looking for everything from protection and you're in

fight, flight, or freeze, then you go into this possum mode. Right? And you just

have nothing left to give. And so if you are able to

regulate your nervous system and regulate typically means with

your body, And it's usually the last thing is your mind

that comes online. So if you're physically active, if you're

finding movement in your day, that is the best way

for you to get your mind right. It's as cliche as it

sounds. Exercise, movement, yoga,

walking, like, move your body, dance it out sessions,

like, just get it out, and that way your brain

can calm down. And there's other things that go into this because, you

know, I am an you can list a lot of titles of what I do

at the beginning of this. Right? And the easiest way to sum it up is

I'm an integrative mental health therapist. And what that means is

you can call it holistic. You can call it integrative. I'd look at everything. Mind,

body, spirit. So you also have to take into consideration your gut. What

are you doing for food? How are you eating? How are you nourishing your body?

Because a lot of our processed foods today cause our brain to get on

fire, and that also causes our rational thinking to go offline. So

if you were like me, I went for cheese fries and red wine. That was

my go to mac and cheese. That's what I was eating all the time. I'm

Italian, so there was a lot of pasta in my life and not a lot

of veggies. I mean, I ate veggies, but not a lot to where I am

today. And so understanding your gut and understanding the food you're

implementing or eating, incorporating into your body is

also major, major, major, major. I can't stress that enough. Let me say major

one more time. Major component also to whether or not

you're going to be able to think clearly when you're working

and deciding what to do so you're not operating out of fear.

So to follow that up, after your accident, is this something that kind

of you were forced to look at as far as the mind, body, spirit sort

of holistic health aspect? Because I'm thinking of it from, like, a perspective of

somebody who, you know, like myself, was in, corporate 9 to 5

and kind of felt stuck and overwhelmed and lost. And

the first step, it sounds like you're saying, is you get these things

right so then you can think more clearly and become able to make

the decisions that, you know, benefit you. Right. In a

roundabout way, that is what I did because there was no road map

that I had when I was going through this. I did a lot of

I fell flat on my face quite often, to be quite honest, and, you

know, and that's what I do now. Now I provide the road map for others

so you don't have to go through all the struggles that I particularly had to

go through because I didn't have the information. Right? Everything I I do today is

because I learned the hard way. And, you know, maybe that's because I am Italian.

I got a hard head, you know, and it takes me a little while to

learn things. But other times, it could just be I just didn't have the information.

Right? And so the best thing that I can say

is, you know, for my journey, how it happened was I

was still working in an agency. I was working 80 hours a week because I

also had a private practice. Right? And so I was going full steam

ahead after that accident and after I got fired. And I got

promoted to a director position. Right? I, like, went even bigger. So I didn't

learn anything about sitting still for 3 months. I was like, no. I'm still gonna

go out there and go get it because I have to hustle and grind. Right?

And when I started to breathe, I took

simple breathing. Like, I wasn't doing breath work. I wasn't doing meditation.

I would just literally take 5 minutes out of my day and just

breathe normally and notice where my breath fell. And that is what

started to have me realize my body. And I started to

realize those things have to change. Didn't happen overnight. And

so through all of that, I went back to traditional talk therapy.

Didn't work. Really didn't work for me, you know, where you just sit and you

talk about your stressors all the time. And so I dove into the woo woo

side of wellness, and that's when I started to learn about meditation. I learned about

gut health, and I learned about community. And I learned

about not making everything so pathological the way that we do in our mental health

field as it is today. Mhmm. Definitely. Definitely. That's,

you know, definitely lots of lots of lessons learned, it seems.

So, yeah, you did you did mention the word hustle. I wanna touch on that

a little bit. I know, it's kind of a buzzword these days, and some people

look at it as, like, a positive thing and some people look at it as

a negative thing. Do you think the word hustle is a good thing or a

bad thing? So I think it depends on what you mean by the word

hustle. If you mean hustle and ignore everything else,

that's bad. But if you mean hard work, you get up and you show

up every single day and you keep putting effort in and you keep going for

it, that if you're saying that's hustle, then no. I don't

think that's bad. My idea of hustle before was

I ignored everything. I ignored me. I ignored what I needed. I ignored my sleep.

I ignored my, like, what I was eating, and I ignored exercise.

I ignored everything except the heart like, what I

thought hard work was. Right? And productivity really is

everything. The routines, the rituals, the, exercises

that we do that allow us to do the doing sustainably.

Right? So to me, I still hustle every day. It just looks

different. And does that mean I am constantly working on my

computer 247 the way I would have been, like, 5 years

ago? I mean, 8 years ago, really. No. I'm not doing it that way.

I'm making sure I have my morning routine, my evening routine so that

when I am I have that block where I have to work hard,

I'm going. Balls to the wall. I am going, and I am there.

I am full steam ahead and catch up. Let's go.

Mhmm. Yeah. No. I could definitely resonate with that. Even I think it's

been almost a year and a half since I left my corporate job. Just the

the trying to get out of the rituals, like you said, of feeling like

you have to do something, I I still struggle with with that for sure. What

what are some things that somebody can do to, like, overcome those, like,

ingrained ways of thinking or being? That's a really good

question. I think it's trial and error. I don't think there is a cookie

cutter way because every person's different, and, you know, reasons

why you think you have to do something stem from something inside of you.

Right? Was that the way you were raised? Right? What is your self talk? Like,

what's that little voice you hear inside your head? And f FYI, that little voice

you hear inside your head, that negative Nelly is not your voice. It's somebody

that was pretty influential in your growing up years

talking, and it just sounds like you now. It's not really

you. So if you can remember, if you do the exercising, you

eat healthy, you calm that brain down, you start to hear your voice.

Because when you hear that negative Nelly voice or the one that's like, you're not

doing enough, you're not good enough, that's really your

stress response. That's not who you are at your core.

So full circle, get back to learning how to regulate your nervous system

and you'll be able to start

Yeah. I think that's I think that's great advice. So switching

gears a little bit, you know, you you are, an entrepreneur. Do you consider

yourself an entrepreneur? Yeah. Heck, yeah. I do. Great. So

so what do you define as success for yourself? Because I know, like, you

know, speaking of, like, other people's voices and other people's definitions of

success, it can mean many different things, but like how do you define success

for yourself? Success to me now means that

I feel fulfilled, and I feel like I'm making a difference in this world.

And I'm not just doing what I think I need to be doing. I don't

need to have the money. I don't need to have the fame. Success is

impact when somebody says, what you said all those years

ago is still with me today. I mean, I succeeded. If I planted a

seed, I succeeded. That's very minute for me, but it's not

minute because it means a lot to me. Mhmm. Definitely.

That's that's wonderful. So would you have, any advice for

somebody who is trying to pursue a passion or, you know, leave a job that

they no longer care about? What what's something that you would tell them? This

is usually where people are like, you should get a side hustle,

start small, and then work your way out. I

don't think that, you know, I didn't do it that way. I was

somebody who I'm a firm believer. If you don't feel

aligned, why are you staying to suffer? Mhmm. Why?

And I I hear all the time before people come at me. I

hear it quite often because I have responsibilities. I have children to take care

of. I have this to take care of. Right? And I had I need health

insurance. Well, the other piece to all of this is I needed health insurance

because I have a lung disease. Right? I have a rare genetic lung disease

that's not curable. And, you know, I've already had lung surgery when I

was 17 to have part of my lung removed, and I get it. I

understand medical trauma. I understand feeling like you need things. But what I

can tell you is this, if you stay, when you feel that you have to

stay, you make yourself small or you make yourself miserable, and then

you don't feel happy. And then when you do go where you feel aligned

and you feel empowered, you feel inspired,

you take off like you wouldn't believe. And then

you realize you don't need things the way that you thought you needed things

before. Full disclosure, I went out without

health insurance for 3 years.

My doctors, when I tell them that now, they, like, flip out. Like,

how did you like, why would you do that? You know? Like, I didn't even

tell my family. Like, nobody knew. I kept it on the down low because I

was like, I'm not letting anybody get in my way of doing what I want

to do. So when you feel aligned, when you have a

regulated nervous system, when you're taking care of you, you

will be amazed at what you are capable of doing and

things that you never thought were possible become completely possible.

Because it's cliche as it sounds. If you have that dream,

that means you have the capability of dreaming it. If you could even think it

up, that means it's there. It's within your grasp. You may have to

you know, like, it's like cooking. You may have to start from scratch, get all

the ingredients together, then start to make it versus it handed it to you. Like,

here you go. It's all cooked and ready to go. You may have to build

it, but it's so possible. It is so possible.

Yeah. I definitely agree with that. And, yeah, I mean, I

I did start as, like, the side hustle thing, and I think one of the

negative things, because I agree with you, you kinda sit stagnant with with

the side thing because you can only put so much time to it. So you

end up missing opportunities that you may have, you know, may have

succeeded or may have benefited you in a certain way just because you're trying

to balance everything. Whereas if you're a 100% in on something, you're you're not

multitasking, you're not trying to do a 100 things at once, you're not overwhelmed, stressed,

burnt out, all that stuff. So, so, yeah, I I would agree with you on

that one. Mhmm. One thing, that you mentioned a little bit

ago was community and and how important that is to yourself.

And something that I've noticed recently is how important community can be, especially

when you're working, you know, for yourself and you don't have, you know, people you're

always talking to. How do you build community around yourself and and what does

that look like? Putting yourself out there. You know, I'm going back into time

and I'm thinking, you know, when I started my private practice as a

therapist, you know, that gets lonely. But being an entrepreneur, I don't

think it's very different in that respect, you know, because

therapists who start their own private practice are entrepreneurs too. It's just different.

It looks different peep they don't normally think of that, but they're entrepreneurs.

When I started this, what I learned was join masterminds.

It wasn't necessarily for what you were paying for. It was for the

networking. It was for the people that you can get connected to. If you can't

afford the mastermind, like, I'm gonna be straight up. I had low budget in the

very beginning. I couldn't afford a like, all these masterminds. I did one

mastermind and the connections I still have

today was 4 years ago. I still have them today and they're all over the

world. And, you know, you'll never know who you meet, and

you never know where they're going to end up on their journey. So it's about

networking. So if you can connect, not that you need to be like buddy buddy

with everybody, but just get in front of people and just be

yourself. And because as an entrepreneur, you're your own brand.

Right? Your smile is your brand. Right? As cliche as that

sounds. Right? So just get out there and network as best as you

can. Go to free events. Go meet people because literally, you

will never know who's going to be able to

help you further along your journey or you can help somebody else further

along in their journey, and you never know how long you'll know each other for.

The possibilities are endless. Definitely. Definitely.

Networking has certainly helped me a lot. And even as far as just, like, finding

inspiration through people who are doing things that are, you know, aspirational

or things that are you find really cool and interesting, like, it it helps in

that regard too instead of just kinda being stuck in your head the whole time.

So I I definitely support that. So what do you do to keep learning?

Do you, are you a reader? Do you listen to podcasts, support groups? I know

you mentioned, masterminds, but anything else? Well,

because of I still have my license, and I always wanna

keep up on current events because what I'm teaching is about mental health.

Right? And so for me, it's always doing my

CEUs, my continuing education credits that I have to do just to maintain

my license. I have that to do every year. But,

I'm going to be honest. A lot of it is more within. It's my

spiritual journey for me at the moment. Mhmm. And when I say

spiritual journey, spirituality is all about the art of connection. Right? It's

not what people always think it is. It's just how do you become the

best you so you can connect. Where do you connect? How do you connect with

you? How do you connect with mother nature? How do you connect with others? Right?

And so for me right now, that's part of where I'm at on this journey.

Now if you asked me 2 years ago, I was taking every

freaking course I could think of to try to learn more about the nervous system,

to learn more about trauma. And, you know, because even though

I've been in the field for 15 years as a therapist, it's always

evolving. You can always learn. And to be

honest, I can't read the way I used to read ever since my grad program

because in grad school, I read everything. Like, recommended,

suggested, like, what I needed to read. And then after that, I got

burnt up from reading, and I I'm not too good with reading. I can listen

to podcasts. I can listen to people talk, but reading is not my

jam anymore. Mhmm. I'm a little bit of the opposite where

I never used to like reading, and now I kinda like love reading and try

to read everything I can. So it's a it's a little bit of both, I

guess. So you yeah. You you mentioned spirituality. Can I ask you a little

bit about that? Absolutely. Recently, it's been something that, like, I've

gotten really into as well. And there was one book that kinda, like, changed my

mindset called The Self Esteem Prophecy about, like, what spirituality is because

I think I've always, like, never really understood it. I think a lot of people

don't really understand, like, what it is or what it's can be and that

sort of thing. So can you talk a little bit about, like, what it is

for you and how how you got involved in it and how you keep, nurturing

your your spiritual journey? So it started

when back after that Mac dump truck and everything was falling apart,

somebody said, are you breathing? And I'm like, yeah. I'm breathing. I'm alive. What

do you mean am I breathing? I'm like, no. Are you really breathing? Right? And

so I started to notice my breath. Right? And then

when I was doing that, I was talking with my mom about that one day,

and we were out to breakfast. And she said, well, I got invited to

go to this meditation class. Do you wanna come with me? Now if you understood

my family, that is like I've almost fell off the chair because, like, my mom's

not someone to meditate. We I'm a blue collar family girl. Like, we don't believe

in that kind of thing. And I was like, what? And she was like,

come meditate with me. And I was like, alright. I'll try it. I went

the environment that I was in was so

warm and inviting, and I felt at ease there. I can't

say calm, but I felt at ease. And then sitting there

was horrible. I couldn't sit still for an hour. Like, it

was, like, swirl moments every which way. However

Mhmm. I knew I wanted to feel that feeling again of being in that environment.

So I started to go back. They had drop in meditation classes for $5. And

I was like, I can afford that. Why not? Let's do this. And

through that healing center, they offered some other

stuff. Right? And I learned a little bit I I dabbled in

spirituality, like, really the deep woo woo side. Like, I tapped in my

intuition and see if I could really trust my intuition,

And that's what started it. Where I am today is more now, like,

I do yoga, and I'll spend time outside. You know?

No electronics and meditation and just

connecting, right, and going slower.

So it's every way that I can connect

to the I'm gonna call it the pace of life

because the way society lives is not the pace of life. We were

taught to think that, but that's not what really pace of life is.

So I I am a lot more

I don't take it for granted. I think that's the best way to say. So

I don't know if that really answered your question, but that's where I'm at

today. Yeah. No. Thanks thanks for that. One last

question. I I wanna give you a chance to, say what are the things that

you're working on next and and how if, you know, if people resonate with this,

how can they support you and what you do? So today, I

am an integrated mental health expert, a keynote speaker, and I'm a

social media creator. You can find me on Instagram, Facebook,

LinkedIn, Twitter, all at Erica Cooney. And not to

mention, I have a couple of big keynotes coming up. The one that I'm really

there's 2 that I'm really stoked about. One of them is in October,

and that is the Integrated Mental Health Summit. I'm a keynote speaker about

thriving after trauma and PTSD. And then in

January, I'll be a keynote speaker again at Sirius

Business Conference. It's their 25th anniversary, and Brene

Brown, Mel Robbins. I mean, some really big names have been on

that stage prior. So I'm really stoked that I was invited this year

to be there, and I'll be talking again all about the different ways that you

can naturally improve your mental health and thrive consciously.

Wow. That's awesome. Those are some sound like some good opportunities, and we'll, include the

links and and everything in the show notes, so people can check that

out. One other thing I forgot to mention was,

I have on my website, erica cooney.com, there's also this

thrive consciously group course coming up, or you can do

individual coaching with me as well. So these are all different ways. If

anything has resonated, come on. Join the community. Great. Great.

Thanks. So yeah. So thank thank you for being on the podcast today, and thank

you for, sharing all your experiences with us. And, I wish you the best in

the future. Thank you, Gino. I'm glad to be here.