The Soul Centered Founder with David Peralta

[00:00:00] Ali: Welcome back, folks. Today, I have a new friend, a guest, Mr. David Peralta, who I met through another friend named Hector. And we had a recent conversation a couple weeks ago. It was what I would consider quick alignment, David. Just lots of smiles, empathy, knowledge transfer. And that's not always the case.

So I'm grateful to have had a nice fluid conversation and I'm excited for today to learn more about your story, learn more about the work you're doing in the world, which sounds fascinating. And with that said, who is David Peralta?

[00:00:40] David: Uh, I always struggle with questions like that and I'll tell you why. When someone asks me, "how are you doing?" I am instantly filled with like the fullness of like the whole picture and I know most people are expecting a very Standard answer or a very standard story, right?

But if you ask me who I am Right. That is the entire process that I have been through. That's my story. It has been the process of discovering who I am, not even who is David Peralta. That's my personality, right? That's who I am in this world, but who I really am, that's been the process that I've been on the last 20 plus years.

And that's the journey that I now share with other people to help them discover who they are. And so , if I could put it in a nutshell, I'm here to help awaken others.

I've been on a process of awakening to my soul and now my journey is to help awaken others to their soul. And then to embody that so that that soul, that spark of who we are, that creative energy, the essence of who we are expresses itself authentically through every single particle of our being. Through every single aspect of our life and allows us to live a life of purpose, of meaning, and the life that we're meant to live.

[00:02:04] Ali: Wow, not the answer we've heard traditionally.

Beautifully embraced. I love how you just dropped into that. You didn't hold back. I sense that when we connected is that you show up in a very authentic fashion, which is something that I have a lot of appreciation for. It's part of how I want to be in the world right now.

You mentioned all these things. We could end there. There you go, guys and gals. That's what you need to know. But let's start with a powerful word you used around awakening. I understand you felt a sense of awakening at an early age and I would like you to expand upon that.

[00:02:49] David: Yeah, sure. So, awakening is a process.

Awakening from what we think we are, who we think we are. Right. And so that process started for me when I was 14 years old. And I say it was a process because it didn't happen in an instant. For some people it does, but for me it was a very gradual process and it took quite a while.

It started when I was 14. I was a freshman in high school and I had a profound experience of divine love emanating from everything and everybody. That was my first taste that there was something beyond what I had experienced before. Because day before that happened, I was just a normal high school student, right? With all my normal high school insecurities and struggles and everything.

And then on that day when it happened, I was shown that what I had been experiencing was only the surface. And that underneath there was a profundity that I had never seen before. I had never known before. I had hoped existed, but I had never had a direct experience of. And so once I had that direct experience, it still wasn't like I suddenly had the answers.

I don't know, probably within a few days or a few weeks, I went right back to being a high school student. Like I went right back into the insecurities and I never forgot about that experience. I never forgot what it felt like to feel that connected to everything around me and to feel that love for and from everything around me.

And it definitely impacted me, but I wasn't conscious of it. Yeah, but it was always kind of there, like something else is there. And so when I continued basically doing what I thought I was supposed to be doing, checking all the boxes, getting good grades, going through high school, doing good on the SAT, getting into a good school, a good university.

By the time I was 20 years old, by the time I was a sophomore in university, I realized that following that script was not working for me. In other words, following the expectations that were being put on me by society, by my parents, by myself. Right. This was not leading to any sort of fulfillment whatsoever.

In fact, it was leading to the opposite. It was leading to depression. It was leading to heavy usage of marijuana to numb and basically to have some experience outside of my normal kind of struggling state. And so it was clear, like, this is not working. This is not what I want, but I don't know what it is that I want.

Like nobody around me is talking about this. Nobody around me is having any answers, in terms of how I'm supposed to be. And so my friends and I decided, all right, let's just get out of here. Let's just take a road trip. Cause we all felt there were three of us and we all felt like something's off and we don't know what to do. So let's just try something different.

So we took this road trip and had an amazing time, visited national parks all across the U S and he was really just beautiful. So we go from California to New York. And in New York, one of my friends flies back home to California. The other friend stays in New York because that's where he's from.

And it leaves me completely by myself in New York at 20 years old to make the drive all the way back West to California. And this was a terrifying prospect to me. I was still pretty insecure and I didn't know what to do. And that feeling of, I don't know what to do. Right?

This feeling lost, right, that this moment embodied. That was how I felt all the time, but I was always distracted by life. I was always distracted by, okay, well, I don't know what to do, but I'm being told that I need to do this assignment. So I'm going to do this assignment. I don't know what I really want to be doing, but I'm told that there's a party tonight. So let's go smoke a lot of weed. Right? Like.

There's always this feeling of lostness, and now I couldn't escape from it because I had to find my way, literally and figuratively. And so, as I'm gonna start this journey back west, I have this insight that, number one, I don't have to follow a schedule.

Like I'm not on anybody's timeline here. And so why don't I just take it step by step and not even plan anything out? And so I start to do that and I start to visit some friends. And anyways, long story short, I'm starting to drive West and I'm in the green mountains of Vermont.

And when I'm there, there's this moment where all of the expectations start to weigh on me. Where all of the feelings of I have to go back to school. I have to finish university. I have to get a job. I have to do all these things and I'm supposed to be happy, right? Like that's also the expectation that somehow doing these things is supposed to lead to happiness and then as I'm driving I suddenly realized that I don't have to do anything.

I've never had to do anything. That I have and always have been completely free to make any decision that I've ever wanted to. And I had been deciding this whole time, I had just been deciding unconsciously. I had been deciding without awareness, and without even the awareness of choice.

And once I realized that, It was like a weight lifted. All these expectations got removed and suddenly I felt free. I felt light. And that's when I started to feel for the first time an inner voice, an inner sense, an inner guidance, an intuition. And I realized that that was going to be my guiding light, that if I learned how to follow that quiet feeling that was inside of me, that was going to be my compass for life.

That was going to be what would take me from one step to the next and lead me from where I was to where I wanted to go. Even if I consciously didn't know where that was, that intuition already knew. And I just had to trust it. And so that was another major moment in this process of awakening.

And later on, I came to recognize like, Oh, that was my soul. Yeah. That was my soul talking to me. When I'm finally in this place where I'm quiet, where I finally remove the burdens, where I finally remove enough of the shadows. Because this is still beginning stages of this process of awakening.

But once I remove enough of these mental blocks that had been keeping me from hearing that voice, it was there. And so I started listening to it. And I started letting it guide me. And I started following what do I actually feel like I want to do, not what do I think I want to do, right? What do I feel inspired to do? And what was clear is I actually don't feel like going back to school at all.

At least not right now. Eventually I did go back and finish, but what was clear to me in that moment is I wasn't doing that because I wanted to do it. I wasn't doing that because I felt guided to do it. I was doing it because I was expected to do it and because I didn't know what else I could do.

And so I made a conscious decision. I'm going to commit to following this feeling as best as I can. Following this intuition. And so it led me to a Zen Buddhist monastery. And I ended up living there for about six months. And then eventually, it led me to India. And there I discovered a teacher named Sri Kaleshwar.

And this teacher finally was a person that I had not known that I was looking for because I was never interested in having a guru. I was never interested in having a master, but I was always interested in finding somebody who was connected to the source that I had felt when I was 14. Who was not separate from that source and it could help me learn how to connect directly to that source.

And that's what I found in Sri Kaleshwar. And that was the catalyst that finally helped my soul to awaken and start still beginning middle stages of this process of awakening. Right. But to start to let my soul come up. And start to take the dominant position in my life as opposed to kind of passive and covered and in the background.

[00:11:39] Ali: Man, wow, so much to explore there.

The first thing I have to ask, which is rooted in curiosity. And I'm also just going to project that anyone listening to that with awareness and presence has to also be curious.

Can you give more of a description of what happened at 14, whatever you're comfortable with. And the reason I'm asking beyond my own curiosity is that I feel like these signs are what people need. Because they come, at least in my experience, David, they've presented themselves. And in retrospect now, same where I'm a bit more aware, I didn't see them all the time, but sometimes I did.

And I was like, what is this right now? Now I'm almost looking for them. I'm like, Ooh, how can I create more presence awareness so that if they just flow through me instead of.

So I'm going back to the question. Can you give more context to what happened at 14 or is that a personal moment?

[00:12:45] David: Oh, no, I can definitely give more context.

So I was sitting in my history class and my history teacher was a former police officer. And he was sharing a story with us about a time that he got a call for a hit and run. And he was the first responder on the scene. And it was a five year old girl who had been hit and she was lying on the ground.

And so he went to her and he picked her up and he realized that she wasn't going to make it. So he stayed there with her as she died in his arms. And then he had to be the one who then went to that girl's mother and told her what had happened and that her daughter had died.

And I don't know why, and I don't know exactly what it was that happened, but for some reason that story tore open my heart in a way that it had never been. And Suddenly I was experiencing that story I was sitting there in my class and suddenly I am reliving that experience... out of my control. I'm not choosing to do this. I'm suddenly reliving that experience from every single perspective.

So I'm reliving that experience from the girl's perspective. I've just been hit and I'm dying. And then here comes this complete stranger, but who in that moment is there to comfort me in my last moments before I transition and that feeling of love and connection that I felt for him. And then suddenly the perspective switches.

And I'm now the police officer holding this little girl in her final moments. And as tragic as it is also feeling this connection and this gratitude that at least somebody, I can be there for her in her final moments. And then experiencing from the mother's perspective, the devastation and the grief and the sorrow of learning that I had just lost my daughter and I felt it all first person as if it was happening to me.

And it was so overwhelming that tears just started flowing. The bell rang just in time, I thought, and I get out of class and the tears are just pouring down my face because I've never felt anything like this before.

And it's break time and so I go out into the quad and my friends see me just sobbing and one friend asks me, "what's wrong?" And in that moment when he asks me, I feel so much love from him, right? Just a normal friend. I never felt this before, but this concern that he had in this moment, I could feel the profundity of the love from his heart and his care for me.

And again, it was just so overwhelming that I knew like, okay, I'm useless right now. Like I cannot go to my next class. I can't just stand here crying. So I better go to the nurse's office. And so I went to the nurse's office and she saw the state that I was in. She's like, just go lie down on that couch.

So I lied down on the couch, I curled up into a ball and then that's when it really started. And then that's when I started to see and experience suffering on a global scale that I had never experienced before. I started to be taken through different experiences throughout history of intense suffering and experiencing all of it, like as if it happened to me firsthand.

And so I experienced suddenly being in the Holocaust and being put into a gas chamber with dozens of other people and the horror and the fear of what was happening as you know, we were collectively being killed. And then again, the perspective switches and I'm on the other side of the chamber and now I'm experiencing it as a Nazi officer.

And in that moment, what I realized was that it was the Nazi who was suffering more. Because he was inflicting suffering. So not only is he inflicting the suffering on another, but he's suffering so much and his heart is so closed that he's not able to feel his own suffering. This is what allows him to do something like that because there's no openness to feeling.

And the pain of that was so overwhelming and it just kept jumping from perspective to perspective to perspective to perspective. And I just felt suffering over and over and over and over and over again and I could not stop crying until at some point it just stopped.

I felt this suffering on a global scale and then there was only peace. Then there was only silence. And then there was only love. A profound love that infused all of that, that blanketed and embraced all of that.

And then that's when I got up and that's when I came out and the world was brighter than I'd ever seen it before. Just emanating light. And another friend came up to me and I could barely even speak to her because I could not believe how much love was coming from inside of her and how much love was coming from inside of me.

And so that level of oneness, that love, that was the experience that I had when I was 14.

[00:18:01] Ali: Holy moly. Yeah, as I was here with you, which you're a great storyteller by the way, I was thinking words of openness, oneness, human connection. Empathy on a level that I don't think many of us can describe or experience.

So that is profound. Holy cow.

The other thing that I kind of want to reflect back to you, David, is that I couldn't help but think death and rebirth at the beginning of your story and how much this continues to present itself in my world. That life is constant change and a lot of things are just a model of death and rebirth. Sometimes short lifespans, sometimes long lifespans, and that is essentially the cycle.

You just gave a beautiful overview of emotions and the pain, the suffering, and then underneath there, there's always that love. Which part of me wants to, I want to like see a visual now of like David stepping out of the nurse's office, like glowing and your friend coming up. I mean, that just, it's just sounds majestic.

But... does that land with you? Cause I want to transition a little bit into something else you've shared, which soul centered work. Like inspiring people to wake up and operate from that true self, that inner core, that a lot of what you described. And so take this where you want, but where my curiosity was going was, Oh, there's all this death and rebirth.

And there's just awareness around it.

[00:19:50] David: Yes. That's right. Life and death, life and death, life and death, death and life. Yeah. This is a cycle of everything. It's a cycle of creation. Every single thing in creation arises, it exists for a period of time, and then it decays and goes back to its source.

Right. And then when it goes back to its source, something new can be created. And this happens on every single scale imaginable, right? It happens on a cosmic scale in terms of galaxies. And it happens on a micro scale, you know, in terms of our individual lives. And then even within our individual lives, everything is a cycle of creation, operation and destruction.

Actually, generation, operation and destruction. This is one of the things that when my teacher in India, Sri Kaleshwar, he said, God, that's what it is. It is this cycle of generating, operating, and then destroying. Constantly happening inside of the creation. And so everything is an aspect of that, right?

Like every part of our life is constantly being generated. We experience it for some time and then it goes back to where it came from.

And there's two ways that we can experience this. One is unconsciously. And when it's unconscious, then we're completely at the mercy of the waves of creation. So, in other words, if we are experiencing a season of hardship and then we suffer because of it, right? Or we lose somebody or we lose something or our business is failing, right?

Or things just aren't working out in our life the way we thought it would. Or whatever it is, or we've experienced some kind of heartbreak. These are all these aspects of creation. It's all just a cycling of creation. But because we're unconscious, then we are suffering because we are very much attached to what it is that we feel that we are losing, what it is that is changing.

Everything changes. Everything is in a constant state of change. And when we're in, excuse me, when we're in it attachment to our expectations or how something appears in the moment instead of to the essence of what it actually is, we are going to suffer. So that's the unconscious way of experiencing it.

And then there's the conscious way of experiencing it. And the conscious way of experiencing it is the soul is at the center. The soul is awakened, our consciousness is awakened, and so we are able to experience the fullness of this cycle. We are a part of this cycle and we are an active participant in this cycle.

And so we can surrender to this cycle. We can surrender to the changes that are happening in our life because we are aware that this is the process of life. Like, we don't normally cry when a tree crashes, decomposes , and then a new tree emerges. That's just part of life. We're not attached to that happening, right?

But if we lose our house, if we're going through a foreclosure, and we lose something very dear to us, oh man, that's going to create a lot of suffering. But if we can open to the experience from our soul. What happens then? Then we are engaging with life. The entirety of life, not just the part that engages through our mind, the entirety, the holistic picture.

The whole of the process, we become a part of that. And when we learn to surrender to that, we are able to step into an incredible power. Because now as an active participant in that, not only are we a participant in this cycle of life and death, we're a participant in the cycle of creation.

We've always been a participant in what is being created, but when it's unconscious, we're not aware of what it is that is being created with us, through us, through our unconscious thoughts, blocks, patterns, traumas, whatever it is. Once that stuff starts to get cleared up and cleared out, then we can start to take a more conscious role.

And what it is that we're creating and what is our purpose? What is it that we are here to do? How do we engage in that? And that's living a soul centered life.

[00:24:25] Ali: Wow. You're saying all my favorite words, David. I wrote them down and if they come up, you beautifully blend them where you introduce and then expand and then let them flow.

Creation, awareness, surrender, attachment. This has become common vocabulary for me. And what I love about your message right now is that it's so simple. I think it's easy to start talking about this or get into deeper literature around consciousness.

And I picked up books where I'm like, this is way too complicated. It's no judgment or criticism. The author just chose to create very complex words and mental models. Whereas what you just said in 10 minutes or less was like, beautiful, simple separation of unconscious choice versus conscious choice, and then the involvement in, in everything. The cycle, the constant change, which I love.

What I want to do now is I want to map that to what I interpreted and did some basic research from your website on your five stage process.

At a high level I saw it as vision, step one. Soul's mission, step two. Unshakable focus, step three. Miraculous flow, step four. And then prioritize love, step five.

You've already talked a little bit about most of these, if not all of them. And I feel like this is going to answer a bunch of questions I would have. And also give, give you some freedom to be like, great, you've now we have this foundational unconscious versus conscious operating system, awareness, way of being in the world.

So give us a sense of how you use these five steps with the people that you do work with in the world.

[00:26:28] David: Sure. So that five step framework, that was just, that's, that is a way to simplify, right? And put into action like as much as I've learned about this process of, I don't know what you'd want to call it, co-creation.

You know, I don't love the term manifestation, even though it's accurate because I feel like it's kind of been co opted and a little bit misunderstood, but it is accurate. And so essentially, for us to live consciously, we, we have to make conscious choices, right? And so the first thing that we need to do is we need to have a clear vision in our life. We need to have a clear aim.

And most people are so wrapped up in the problems that are surrounding them that the moment they plug one hole and solve one problem, another one has popped up. Right. And so they're basically just constantly, and I should say we, cause I'm a part of this also.

And I was definitely a part of this before where I'm just struggling with what's around me. And this still happens. This is the nature of illusion. This is the nature of living in the world. There's constantly going to be things trying to grab our attention and keep us from awakening to the reality of who we are.

That is part of what it means to be alive as a human being. So most people are stuck at that level, right? Problem with kids, problems with health, problem with finances, right? You know, whatever it is. It's usually health, wealth, and relationships. Those are like the three main problems that people have. And then there's just a cycling through these things. And so we just stay stuck there.

A few people are able to see a little bit further than that. You know, serial entrepreneurs, right? People who create really successful companies, they're able to have a vision that goes outside. It steps outside of that immediate range of problems.

And once they start to create that vision, then they're able to follow up on that vision and they're able to create something pretty amazing.

What I'm encouraging people to do and what I help guide people to do is to take that vision as far as possible and as encompassing as possible. So not just a vision for your business. Not just a vision for your relationship, but a vision for your entire life and a vision for what is the mountaintop that you want to reach in this lifetime.

And so the first thing that I do is something called a deathbed meditation, where I guide people to a very relaxed state and imagine themselves that they're in the moments before death, before they transition.

And to imagine that they have achieved everything that they're here to achieve. They've become the highest version of themselves possible in every single area of their life. And when people do that, that's when they start to have incredible experiences.

Things become very self evident. If there's no limitation and you're able to reach, right? You don't need to worry about how you're going to get there right now. You just need to crystallize and create that vision of what is it that you want to create? What is it that you want to reach? What is that aim?

Then again in all areas of your life. So what is the highest in your relationship with your spouse with your kids. The level of love and open heartedness that you want to feel. What are the qualities that you want to embody? In your relationships with them and with the entire world.

What do you want your relationship to spirituality to be? To God, the divine, whatever you call it, the universe, right? The sense of oneness with everything.

Connection to everything. The sense of fulfillment that comes with that satisfaction and happiness that comes from that. And then what is the impact that you've made in the world?

It's not about what exactly did you do, but it's about at what level did you help uplift others? What impact did you make in the world? And the most important thing is not imagining how it looks and what actually happened. It is the inner feeling. It is the inner state of all of these things that people get in touch with.

And that's the aim, that becomes the destination. So the moment they have that already just with that all kinds of things in their life start to fall into place.

So that vision becomes the very first step. That vision is the guiding light. And that vision, basically when we create, inner visions, this is like the blueprint that we are asking life to create.

Most of us don't take the time to do this. Most none of it.

[00:31:11] Ali: Yeah, this is not to interrupt you, but I just want to please, please do any point. I want to support you that I love that you start there. I do a similar exercise around having your best friend give your eulogy, but you write it. And the idea is the exact same.

It's that if you don't have a vision for what you want to create and help co create, then how could you possibly be conscious in your choices? Exactly. So please keep going, as this perhaps connects to the soul's mission, I think you were starting to talk about.

[00:31:44] David: Yeah, exactly. So purpose, soul's purpose, soul's mission, this is something that a lot of people get hung up on.

What is my purpose in life? What am I supposed to be doing? Right? In the Eastern traditions, in India, there's this concept of Dharma. The Dharma is what you're here to do. And so people often get caught up on the externality of it.

Like, what am I supposed to be doing? What am I supposed to be creating? What kind of business am I supposed to be having? How am I supposed to be helping people?

But that's the expression of Dharma. That's the expression of purpose. In my experience, in my understanding, purpose is the same for every single soul on earth, and it is to become a vehicle for love.

Creative love. My experience is that love is what creates everything. And because of that, that is the oneness. And so when we have an experience of oneness, we feel it as what we call love. Right? When we love somebody else, we are experiencing oneness with them. And so we feel all of the emotions that come along with love, all the rewards, all the feelings, all the good, bubbly, everything, all the uplifting.

Because that's how we feel when we're in a state of oneness. That's our natural state. And our purpose on earth is to become a vehicle. Our soul is naturally all the time emanating love. And love is emanating from every single soul. And so our job is to live from that state where we are all the time loving everything, everything, right?

Everything. A to Z. Going back to that cycle of life and death, our job is to love the entire cycle. Our job is to be open to the love and the creative energy that is inside every single part of that cycle, including the loss, including the suffering, including the struggle and not just being open to the positive things.

And then to love others in this way. That's our purpose. When we do that, that is going to express itself in very unique ways for every single one of us. The goal is not to initially discover what that unique way is. The goal is to start to live in that state and that unique way is going to become clear.

[00:33:53] Ali: Dude. I love that because you just gave a really nice, and I'll go back to simple answer around realizing purpose, which is a question that it's haunted me in the past. I've had a lot more peace with it, similar variation of what you're describing today. But I have buddies and friends and peers that like that question is just weighing on them.

And I love that if you embrace love from source from yourself, like that's about as good as life can get. Or that's about as, as alive, as awake as we can become without this burden, this weight of being like, what's my purpose?

What was I meant to do? Cause I think that's how a lot of people go after it. Like, well, I got to find it. I got to figure out all these things, you know.

[00:34:44] David: That's right. And what that also does is that it limits purpose. Because then we limit it to what we're supposed to be doing as opposed to who we're supposed to be being.

Actually, not even who we're supposed to be being, it's who we are. And that expresses itself in every single moment. And so, that will express itself through everything that you need to do.

So this also, what often happens is that people create this conflict between what I'm supposed to be doing, what I think I'm supposed to be doing.

And what's in front of me right now. Because what's in front of me right now is not what I think I'm supposed to be doing. So now there's this conflict, right? Like, I'm right now I need to change these diapers or I need to go shopping. But this seems to be getting in the way of what I'm supposed to be doing.

But no, no, no. No, this is equally the purpose. What needs to be done now, what is being asked of you now and to be done with your whole heart and presence. That's as much as you can. Surrender. Exactly. Surrender to your circumstances. Surrender to what life is presenting to you at the moment. The surrender is the key because the surrender is the way to discover what you thought you were supposed to be doing.

But at that point, it doesn't come as a thought. It doesn't come as what I think I'm supposed to be doing. It's not from the outside. It emerges from the inside. It emerges as clarity. It emerges as inspiration, and it emerges as just such a strong sense of This is what I want to do, and this is how I want to do it.

And that's the third step, the unshakable focus. Because now what starts to develop is clarity and a clear sense of what it is that we are supposed to be focusing on. And what I often see happening for people who aren't necessarily partaking in this process.

Most people, when I start to work with them, they are pulled in a million different directions. There's so many things that they could be doing. And so there's so many things that they are doing that their energy is just scattered. And for men, especially, I work primarily with entrepreneurs, that shows up as like I'm doing a million things for my business and none of them is particularly working. And so I'm struggling.

Again, it's not about what you're supposed to be doing. It's not even about what you're doing. It's about alignment is what you're doing aligned with who you are? Is it aligned with your soul?

And it comes from the inside out? So eventually we get to the point where this is just clear, it emerges from us. But on the way there the way that we can recognize it is if we do this visioning exercise, then we have a felt sense of what our vision feels like. We have a felt sense of what it feels like to be in this highest version of ourselves.

We already start to feel it. We already start to live it. We actually start to vibrate from that place. That felt sense becomes our guide because then we can start to look at all the million different things that I could be doing. Let me look at them one by one. Let me imagine myself doing them. And how do I feel?

Most of them are going to make us feel drained and kind of shitty. Don't do that. Right. But some of them are going to fill us with that same sense of inspiration, that same sense of aliveness. And fullness that we have in that vision and bingo. That's the alignment. That's what we're supposed to be doing.

And now the miraculous flow, the fourth step.

What we do does not matter to an extent. What matters is living in that alignment and then taking action from that alignment. The moment we take action from that alignment, we are pouring energy into the creation that is in alignment, both with who we are and what that vision is.

And so that creative energy goes into the creation. We are pouring creative energy into the creation through our action and through our effort. And that is what creates. That is what creates our vision. It is not what we are doing. The doing is the vehicle for the energy. And the more aligned our action is, the more energy is pouring through. And going back to our purpose, our purpose is to be of service.

That love, that expansion of love is through service to other human beings. So whatever we're doing in our life, whether we have a business or we're part of a company, or whatever our job is, our job is to show up and uplift other people through our love and through engaging with the love that is emerging from them.

So when our effort is in alignment with who we are, it's in alignment with the vision that we've created, and it's in alignment with uplifting other people and helping them rise up, and awaken in whatever way. Just basically pouring that energy. That energy is going into the creation and then life, God, the divine can take all of that and create whatever it is that we're asking for in ways that we cannot imagine.

[00:40:16] Ali: And that's the last step. That's what prioritizes love.

[00:40:21] David: So the key to all of this, right? What wraps everything together is the prioritization of love, not business. This is the one of the biggest traps that people fall into is the thinking that I have to prioritize my business. I have to prioritize my work.

I'm under all this pressure and stress to provide. And so I have to work. I don't have time. You know, some people do it consciously. They're workaholics. Some people do it unconsciously. They feel like they don't have a choice. I don't have time for my family. I have to provide.

At some point when I reach a certain level, then I will be able to be there for my family. But guess what? That moment doesn't really come because exactly, exactly. That moment doesn't come because there's always something new, right? We reach a new level in our job. We reach a new position. We reach a new level of income and bam, we're hit with a new illusion that just sucks the money right back out again. And we're just stuck in this cycle.

But when we prioritize love and especially in our closest relationships, our spouses, our children, our family, and then our friends, and then our co workers. When we prioritize love, when we prioritize relationships, and when we prioritize connection about everything else, all these things open the door to our soul and to other people's soul.

And so more energy is able to pour through into the creation. And when we take that aligned action, more is able to be created with less effort.

So if we close all those doors and we close our heart, there's not a lot of energy coming in. So we're going to be spinning, spinning, spinning, spinning, spinning, struggling, and suffering, and seeing very little results.

And when we start to act in this aligned way, and the doors to our soul are open to the doors and other souls, and we take that aligned action, so much energy pours through. And when we do work that then uplifts others, the uplifting of those souls is now allowing even more energy to pour through them back to us.

And that expresses itself in our life as prosperity, abundance, happiness, fulfillment, connection, all these things. And so we're just able to , step by step, go even higher and higher and be shown the way the entire time because we are in partnership with life now. We are not struggling against life. We are working with life, with the creative force of the universe to be.

[00:42:55] Ali: So whoever's listening, just go do that. Go, go do it david just shared and then well, that's sarcasm, but there's a lot of truth in there. There's truth in there for me, David. So thank you for sharing that. I sense your passion. I sense your energy.

If nothing else, just to come back to your message, the key I think is actually the last step. Yeah. At awareness. Not that the other steps aren't important because I know you have a methodical way and how you've designed this and I'm sure it is impactful for the humans that you work with.

But a huge message that I'm taking from this conversation, you know, that's overarching is prioritizing love. That's right. Stepping out and you're stepping in however you want to design your framework for it and embracing it.

I mean, it's part of your story, obviously. As you were sharing miraculous flow and prioritizing love, David, I caught myself in moments of my entrepreneurial journey where I'm like, I was so out of alignment and I was not prioritizing love.

I was, you know, embracing the shoulds and just operating under stress. And so I think that there's so much power in that if you just really take that to heart. And remember it on a daily basis. Like, am I prioritizing love? That's a question I'm going to ask myself after this conversation

[00:44:28] David: I'd love to give a concrete example of this, to show what it looks like in action. Because I'll tell you what prioritizing love puts you in. It puts your mind in uncertainty. It puts your mind in a state of near constant uncertainty because the mind doesn't know how things are going to work out.

And the mind desperately wants to know that mind desperately wants to be in control all the time. And if we give control to the mind, the mind is not supposed to be the driver. The mind is supposed to be the car. Yeah. Yeah. The soul is supposed to be the driver. Our consciousness, our conscious choices are supposed to be the driver.

And then the mind is the implementer, takes us from A to B to C all the way to Z, right? And so the mind is going to be in a constant state of uncertainty. When we do this enough though, we are in a constant state of faith. I don't know how, but I have so much faith that things are going to work out as long as I keep doing this.

So concrete example, years ago, before I transitioned to coaching, we were in a financial struggle. I was in a job that was clearly not earning enough to provide for all the needs that we had. And I was working full time at that time, my wife had just given birth to our second child. The burden was falling on her to take care of both of our kids cause I was working, right.

And so when it became clear that this job is not going to cut it, and one thing led to another and I, and I left this company, I knew that the next step, number one, we need more income. We need a higher source of income. But the intention that I set, the desire that I had in my heart, again, it's coming from the inside.

I don't know how it's going to happen, but it was, I want to be able to earn enough to provide for my family without having to put the burden on my wife. Isn't it possible for me to do this in a part time job and earn as much as I was earning before or more so that I can be there for my wife? So that I can be there and be present for my children and be active at the stage of their life where it's the most formative and I can have the most relationship with them.

That was the intent. It wasn't just a selfish desire. Like I want to make more money in less time so I can go to the Bahamas. I mean, nothing wrong with that. But it was really prioritizing the relationship, prioritizing the needs of those around me and the love that I have in those relationships.

So one of the first things that I do when I have this intention is I go and I talk to a mentor, a very close friend of mine. And he says to me, well, David, you know, you're asking with your current skillset to be making two to three times more money in less time. Is that realistic?

And when I thought about it, I realized, no, this is not realistic at all. Because at my current skill set, I don't know what else I can be doing. I can go to another company. Maybe I can get a slight raise, but I'm not yet ready to jump to the next level. So I don't know, I guess it's not realistic. I don't know what I'm going to do. I just let it go.

I just let this desire go, but I'd already put it out there. I'd already set this intention for my heart, already given it over to life, already given it over to the divine. So I'm just like, well, I'll do whatever it takes. I'll do whatever I need to do to provide for my family. And even if it means that I can't earn that much money, I'm going to do what I can. I'm going to open whatever doors that I can.

So I started applying for jobs all over the place, full time jobs. Knowing that none of these are going to be able to meet that request that I had, but I'm doing it heartfully. I've surrendered to the circumstances. And I'm doing whatever I need to to provide.

And I applied to job after job and nobody bites. Like I get a call back or two, nothing is happening. And I'm now getting to the deadline where it's like, we're now going into debt. We're living off of zero interest credit cards. And this is not what I was hoping for.

And then on New Year's Eve, I get a call. So I was working as a content marketer, with a specialty in search engine optimization. That's what I did back then.

I got a call from a marketing agency and they said, we found your resume on LinkedIn. We're looking for people with your kind of experience to hire out to our clients. And I said, okay, great. Yeah. I'm not doing anything right now, so I'll take it. So it turns out that now I'm doing the same thing that I was doing before, but now instead of being in house, I'm now a consultant.

And because I'm a consultant, I am now making almost three times as much as I was before. And so that means that I can cut my hours in half. And so everything that I asked for, because I prioritized love and didn't stop making an effort towards providing for my family, but with that heartfelt intention.

It came into my life. It was given to me in a way. I said, again, I poured my energy into the creation and creation was able to take that energy and provide me with what I had asked for. It wasn't about what I was doing. It wasn't even about, you know, moving towards that goal consciously.

I set that intention. I poured the energy in and then the divine is able to take that and create what I asked for because of that alignment that it had. And yeah, I was able to triple my wage and it was such a profound experience of this process. That this is what eventually led me to discover like, ah, okay, these are the steps that I can help other people through how to set that vision, right?

How to discover what we're here to do. Like all these things, it came through these personal experiences that I had. And so that's why it's, it's such a joy for me to help other people through that as well now.

[00:50:14] Ali: Dude, totally. I love that. I love that example because it's so realistic. That can land with anyone. And one of the nuggets in there is patience. Is that when you send these signals out to the universe, it's not always instant. I just published this micro blog post this morning about speed, urgency and survival. And there's a relationship here that even though we want to go fast, we want things to happen. Boom, boom, boom.

To your point, to your story, sometimes you gotta wait and you have to have faith. You have to surrender, you know, however you want to look at it. I can tie this back to nature as well because that's my message is that doesn't just speed up and create things, but love will take its course. Love is folded right into nature.

All the life and death, all the beautiful things we've discussed today, man. This was a gift. I'm going to pause because otherwise this will be a four hour episode firing questions and you'll just keep sharing all this beautiful wisdom. But what I would love to do is wrap on a few rapid fire questions.

[00:51:26] David: Sure.

[00:51:27] Ali: Okay. The first, what is your favorite book?

[00:51:32] David: Ah so, I will share a book that I recently read. And it's a novel called The Art of Hearing Heartbeats. Ooh. And it's a profoundly beautiful novel about love and the depth of true love. That is one of the most heart touching books that I have read in a really long time.

[00:51:54] Ali: Number two, David, what animal would you be if not human?

[00:51:59] David: Oh, what animal would I be if not human? I mean, I have to go with my answer when I was a kid. I just loved chimpanzees. I just loved how they played around trees.

I loved how happy they could be. You know Maybe I would say a bonobo now that I'm older because apparently chimps can be pretty aggressive. Not apparently. They can be very aggressive and bonobos are much more peaceful and a lot more mellow and laid back, but they still have that playfulness. And so yeah a bonobo.

[00:52:26] Ali: Ah, it's a great animal.

Last question, David. What's one of your favorite childhood memories? And it cannot be your awakening at 14 years old.

[00:52:34] David: My favorite childhood memories. Um, gotta give me a moment to think about that. One of my favorite childhood memories was...

[00:52:44] Ali: This is usually the hardest question. Yeah. Especially when people give it space.

[00:52:50] David: Yeah, exactly. That's what I'm going to do right now.

What comes to me right now is this memory of being embraced by my father and just feeling his love. I don't remember what we were doing, but there was a moment where I was so close to him, and we had such a deep embrace that I felt such a warmth, and I felt such a love.

And, I know now that that love was trans, actually it wasn't transformational. It was essential. Feeling that love at that age, and I didn't always feel it, right? But that gave me the felt experience, right? It provided my entire being with the knowledge that that love, that underlying love, that's always there no matter what. And even if I forgot that later on, there was always that full bodied knowing on some level, on some cellular level that that love was always there.

[00:53:55] Ali: I fully believe that is part of your message, your presence, why you're here. It's embodies the whole prioritization of love. I think there's a beautiful message in there as well for fathers, because that's something that I've felt both ways, Dad and with my son, my daughter. There's a connection if we're open to it, that's very real and it's not something you can really explain.

So I felt what you just said as one father and son to another, and I really appreciate that. I feel like that'll land with a lot of parents.

[00:54:34] David: Oh, great.

[00:54:35] Ali: David, this is a gift.

[00:54:37] David: For me as well.

[00:54:38] Ali: I think it will be one of many future conversations. I don't foresee not talking to you again. So thank you for being here.

Thank you for being so open with your message and bringing such a profound but simple message that I will be very excited to share with the world.

[00:54:58] David: Thank you so much for the opportunity, Ali. I've really appreciated it.