Adam Tallamy gave up everything to find his purpose. Now he helps others find theirs. Part 1 of 2

(gentle music) Welcome to the Find Your Purpose Now podcast. We are delighted that you are here because this is for you. We do this to help you find and live your purpose, the good purpose that's uniquely yours. Because when you find it, everything starts to just fall into place. You're happier, you're more peaceful, you have better relationships with good people. It is remarkable. What happens when you are living in the sweet middle of your purpose, the purpose that you've been perfectly matched to live? The great news is you're in the right place to find it. So let's get started. All right, welcome back to the Find Your Purpose Now podcast. You know, the whole point is to live your purpose and love your life. It's the antidote to depression and despair and just being unhappy and miserable and irritable. So I'm so excited that today we have a guest who has made his whole life around purpose. Your purposeful life, Adam, let's jump in. So introduce yourself and tell our audience what you do. Thank you, Rhonda. And thanks for having me on the show. My name is Adam Tannami. I am a life purpose coach and teacher. I've been doing it for just over 10 years now, based in today, at least sunny London. Yeah, and I've been coaching people all of this time on how to find and then live their life purpose. And the finding bit I find is relatively easy. Can take a look a few months, but relatively easy it, but the living part is the challenge. And that's kind of where I kind of carry people through that experience. Ooh, OK, I want to hear about that because I think I probably spend a lot of time, maybe more time than I should talking about the clues that help people to find their purpose, to figure out where their expertise and education and experience and all that sort of intersects with the things that they're passionate about or the things that grieve their hearts. But actually helping people transition over into living that purpose and then continuing and making it a lifestyle and doing that to the exclusion of everything else. I probably haven't talked enough about that. So do you mind jumping into that today? Sure, yeah, we can do absolutely. We can do that. So yes, where do I start? So the living part is where it gets a little bit scary for most people. OK, you will know, finding your life purpose a lot of people have fear and resistance to that because it's like, how's this going to affect my life? Will I have to give up my job? Will it change everything? Will all my friends? Will all my wife think? Etc. Etc. Right. That you have to work through, first of all. And then how I operate is the life-- you can look at the Ike guy and the-- what are your passions and all that. That usually does inform it. But generally speaking, when I'm working with a client, the life purpose comes through in a meditation or when they're sitting on the bus, hopefully in front of me, which is really nice when that happens, but it doesn't have enough. And then when it comes through, their eyes light up and that's when that energy, that feeling of-- they just know that that's what they're meant to be doing. And then there are ways. But the fears and doubts that then come up are, OK, so how do I do that? Because I find, for me, any way, life purpose is being challenging. There are-- the universe kind of gives it to you. Oh, God gives it to you in a bite-sized amount. So it's not too big that you're never going to get started, OK? Because otherwise, we'd implode, right? We'd never get anything done at all. So it gives you something that it's a challenge. It's big enough for you to get your teeth into. And then you have to work towards that. And then, again, with the way that I work, clients, then when they can do and deliver that part of their life purpose, the next iteration comes in and it downloads again. And it builds on the first one. So then, and typically, for me, it takes between a year and two years to work through one. And then fears and doubts come up. And I'll give you an example, because it sounds probably a bit abstract, OK? So this is my own initial life purpose that came in. And I've been looking for it for a while. It eventually came in in the middle of a meditation, OK? And what the wording was, let me get exactly right. It's to stand tall and proud in your light and spread love around the world. And at the time, I was like, that's a little bit fluffy. I was expecting to save the galaxy, right? But thankfully, that wasn't that, because I probably would never have got started. So what I took from that pretty much straight away is I knew that I had to work on my public speaking, because I had a real fear and a phobia around getting up on stage and speaking. So it set me off on a journey of overcoming that fear. And I joined Toast Masters, which you may be familiar with. It's the international public speaking organisation. Very good. I highly recommend that for anyone who wants to work on their public speaking. And I just started showing up every week for about 18 months. And with the tools that I use, you can work through the fears and the emotions that come up. So I'd have resistance to go. I'd rock up about 10 minutes before. And it was above a pub in Greenwich, religion, London. And every time when I turned up there, I had to walk up these flights of stairs to go over the pub. And I felt like I was walking up to the gallows. I literally felt like I'm going to die. But I forced myself to do it. And I felt through it. And then I sat there. And you get the opportunity. Every Toast Masters meeting to speak for a minute or two. So I'd always push myself and do it. And then work through the fears before, during, and then the overwhelm after that. Thank God. But I'm still really like, this is white me out. You know? Wow. Yeah. And then once I kind of got much more comfortable public speaking, I got the intuition that's done now. You don't need to do anymore. You've done what you needed to. And then pretty much immediately after that, the next iteration of my life purpose dropped in. And what it was was it was to help a million people, OK? Which again, it's quite a big deal, right? So I was a little bit overwhelmed. And I sat down. I said, OK, so what does that mean? And for me, it meant you got to set up doing more social media. You've got to set up on all this platforms. You've got to start doing videos. You've got to start being on podcasts. You've got to put yourself out there in the world. How else would you reach a million people? And I started writing a book as well, which is still in process, but it's coming. Good for you. Yeah. And that's how it evolves for me anyway. OK. So it sounds like what you heard were sort of macro, in terms of moving forward. I mean, to have love everybody and affect a million people or whatever, you didn't get the-- OK, step one is the step two is that. I mean, maybe you did with the feeling like you needed to go into the context. I always check in with my intuition as one of the things I teach people out, how to do that. And the guidance is always there. So what do I need to do here? OK, you need to go and join toast masters. OK, you need to-- I don't know, practice, public speaking from the mirror, whatever it is. And then I do that. But typically, each one of those steps would bring up some resistance and some fear. And then you've got to work through that until you can actually do it. So it's not about pushing yourself really hard to go and do something anyway, which is how it was used to work. This is about know what you're going to do if there's resistance work through it. And then when it feels easy and it's like, yeah, I can do that, then you take the step. It's not a trend. So I'm curious to know. One of the things that I've heard from people since I started talking about purpose-- I mean, I made my first notes about the program that I created. It's called Find Your Purpose. The first thing that I started to hear was, oh, all right, well, that's great. I want to find my purpose. But how in the world do I make a living doing it? Because there's the mortgage. There are the bills. There's putting food on the table, basic stuff. And I think a lot of those early conversations that I had with people, they sort of had the sense of, OK, so purpose is synonymous with what I'm passionate about what I'm doing. passionate about is this hobby that I have and I can't imagine the scenario where I could actually get paid for doing this hobby that I love. And so I would get the sense that people felt defeated before they even got started. So I'm curious to know, how did you decide from you know the the place where you're you're feeling like you're getting these downloads and you're taking these steps. I mean when did it become I can do this for a living. I can make my life all about this. Yeah that's a great question. So I didn't know initially initially it was about public speaking so I was doing my day job at the same time and then probably when I got the iteration like helping a million people it became clear okay I need to be doing this and doing the coaching full-time and touching people's lives one by one. And so that that developed quite gradually and then I'm not going to lie I went through many years of real poverty but I was foolishly perhaps I was so determined that what I was here to do I was going to do so I had you know I kind of had to beg borrow and steal I had people who looked after me put a roof over my head at times mom helped out massively you know a couple of my really good friends and at times I didn't have many clients and it developed and got busier but look it was perfect and it always is perfect and I don't mean that in a clip sense I mean it in the sense of if you're really going to do something big in the world and you're going to change the world you have to you have to face your fears doubts and insecurities how else are you going to stand up and play a much big game you know so for me it was all about okay so if I'm going to be really successful it means I'm going to be making lots of money so what happens then again doing the sort of the work I do is the fears and the doubts and insecurities start to come up straight away so if you need to get money to have this big impact it's going to be oh I don't think I can do that how is this going to happen so what you just alluded to with your your clients is exactly what happens every time to everyone pretty much it's oh I don't think I can do it how would that work out the job of the coach or the person supporting or the support network is to help them work through those fears and doubts and then you'll get to a place where where you feel actually I feel like I can do it now and that that needn't take too long that could be half an hour of doing some into in a work you know or it could be a few weeks but you get there and then when you feel you can do it then you take the next step what's the next step okay so if it's you know your hobby is carpentry okay I'm going to go and buy a set of tools or whatever it is and that might bring up fears around I don't know if I'm going to spend that money it's quite a big commitment or I still don't know if I'm going to do it so you have to go through those fears then you have to you know get the money work through those fears talk to the wife or the wife or the husband and get their buy-in you know it's all of that kind of stuff that's the day-to-day experience of learning your purpose interesting okay so um if for me I'm a Christian and I know that when when I decided to leave my good job you know the one with a paycheck and the health insurance um because I know your your medicine in England is different than our medicine we need to have you know we we need to have health insurance and we need to pay for it and or our employer pays for it so when I was going to leave that um you know there was just absolutely nobody in my life who thought it was a great idea uh that I follow my uh what I felt was my purpose and would be my purpose for the rest of my life it turned out that there was another life assignment in there that God had for me but part of part of being a Christian for me is is really exercising faith it's it's not just check the box well okay I believe that Jesus is the son of God and and then let me go ahead about my uh live my life it meant I'm I'm going to follow what I think God wants me to do and then I'm gonna trust that God is somehow or other gonna lift me up and propel me into it and I'll do what I can and God will do the rest basically was my theory and and that's and it worked for me it did work out but there was that moment where okay I sold my furniture I sold my house I sold my furniture including my refrigerator which was not well thought out Adam that was not a guy I don't recommend that to anybody but I and so I bought a little bitty condo and I literally was I quit my job I sat on the floor of my condo and I made cold calls to private nonprofit Chowelfield organizations and that's I that I felt like that was God's call on my life to protect and defend the good people and organizations that take care of abuse kids so I'm making these cold calls I'm 27 years old you know my my every person I had in the United States who was a competitor was double my age I mean it just didn't look like I could ever be successful with that and two and a half years in I had 27% market penetration in the state of California and then I went national and there's just like logically it doesn't make any sense at all so I hear what you're saying and I love that you're that you look at your coaching work as as walking people through their fears I never really kind of thought of that because I just walk with Jesus but I always feel like that there's a test in there you know to see if we're gonna persevere because if if everybody's purpose you know involved some mysterious deposit into their bank account of all the money they would ever need to do their thing right wouldn't everybody do it right oh I'm gonna get three million dollars wired into my account tomorrow sign me up for that purpose deal you know and so no I know I kind of don't think that's how it works like for most people that I know there was a point there's a point in time where you have to say oh I'm gonna fly off the cliff here I'm in it I'm gonna see if I can fly yeah yeah yeah it's making that leap of faith the leap of faith it is huge so I'm curious to know about um you know maybe some of the people you've worked with who went ahead and took their leap of faith and now what are they doing and how is it working out and how is it working out for you I'm just I always love a good um you know hearing about the good outcomes oh yeah absolutely we need a bit of inspiration because it's a bit depressing for everyone to hear I was poor and poverty stricken for years and you are cold calling in your condo with no fridge I mean no one's gonna buy that ticket right oh nobody wants to get signed let me sell my furniture and sit on the floor and make calls to people who don't want you to call that you know right no we're I'm not a good advertisement probably I don't know about you but but are you glad that it wouldn't went that way that you did that looking back now oh what a great question thank you yes I I wouldn't I wouldn't change a thing mm-hmm same here and and I wouldn't wish it on anyone either but it was the best thing it could ever happen to me and I call my my life purpose method I call it the hero process because what it does is it it's like the hero's journey it it's um it's like in the Lord of the Rings when Frodo steps out of the shy out of his comfortable uh good job right he goes out and he's on on an adventure and he's terrifying he's scared and he doesn't know what's going to happen he has to conquer the dragons right the dragons are your fears your doubts your insecurities at the end of it there is a treasure and then what do you do you retire he returned to the shy as as do we feeling like we did really well we've grown we've overcome our fears we've come out the other end it's the hero process it's you know so that's the I mean I look at life purposes the carrot the carrot the universe dangles okay and it basically is saying if you want to become this person and you want your life purpose you've got to go through all of these blocks all of these challenges you've got to overcome your fears and doubts together and um it's a great carrot otherwise who on earth would want to face all of that stuff I know I wouldn't there has to be a um a payoff or a dividend at the end of it to to keep you going right because it's not always easy everyone a lot of people seem to think purposes. is a panacea is not, it's one of the hardest journeys and directions you can take, but it also feels great. It's a real kind of contradiction. - That's so interesting that you say that because I think I always make it sound like it is a panacea (laughs) because I'm like, okay, well, live your purpose and love your life and this is how you do it. I don't know how to do it any other way because moving into my purpose resulted, I can look back now, it's been many years, but I can totally connect the dots to, I begin to follow my purpose and then I begin to meet amazing people who, for me, some of the best people in the world and so healthy relationships with good people resulted. The chaos that was my life prior, I just was in a job where, I mean, it was an insurance job and a good insurance agency and so it was a nice job, it was an okay job, but I was a hamster in a wheel so there wasn't life-a-thing, it didn't make me feel good, it was very chaotic 'cause no matter how well you did last month, oh, reset button, now I have to work even harder next month than I did last month and it was a never-ending thing. So the chaos was replaced with peace. Happiness, which was superficial, I'd be happy and then I lose an account or I'd be happy and I didn't get the account I worked really hard on and now the happiness is gone. That was replaced with peace, a sense of wellness and contentiveness that I didn't have before. I felt good about myself 'cause I knew I was doing something good in the world and then the financial provision came as a result of the good work that I was doing. So that's how I measured, those are my five points of true prosperity. But yeah, it doesn't come overnight and I'm thinking about what you said about, it's a hard journey. Yeah, I mean, there's no guarantees that there aren't going to be hard times and obstacles. But we wouldn't have it any other way, right? Looking back now. Every obstacle is an opportunity to learn and grow. I've noticed for me anyway, I don't learn the really profound things of life on the good days or at the party. The really important lessons are learned, you know, when I'm on my knees on the floor, like what now, what's going on? You know, what the heck? So yeah. - And I totally agree with all of that. It's not that it's everything you said is right. Like you leave that, I mean, I couldn't even imagine going back to the day job now. I mean, that would blow my mind. And what I'm doing now is a million times better, so much more exciting. It brings you to life. It brings that zest back into your life, I would say. People's eyes are lit up, they're awake and they're on it, you know, and it gets you out of bed in the morning. All of that. And yet at the same time, if you're growing to do something even bigger each time, every month, then that's, you're going to live on the edge of your comfort zone. And that is scary, but also exhilarating. And there's a few speedmumps for sure, but if you've got the tools, you can just work through them pretty easily. A lot of my day is spent clearing the fears around doing the next thing. And if you've got tools to do that, then you can do bigger and bigger things, right? You can do a bigger podcast. You can, I don't know, go on stage in front of a thousand people instead of 10, for a ton. Right. Join us next week for part two of our interview with Adam Tellamy. I just thought about writing a book, but you just kind of don't know where to start, or maybe you don't have the time. If that's you, I have good news for you. 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There are 30 practical ways that you can bring love into your life. And when you do everything changes, I hope you'll get a copy of 30 days to love. If you're somebody who does not have the time or the desire to sit in a chair and hold a book in your hands and read, I got you. I'm turning all of my books into audiobooks unottable. So you can listen while you're driving. And when you go to the gym and while you're doing the laundry and whatever it is, you can multitask. And you can be improving your life. That's why I've written every single one of my books. I'm so excited to announce that succeed because of what you've been through is now on audio unottable. So is the prayer that covers it all. The keys to answered prayer. Those are super quick listens and powerful. They are power-packed. I want you to get those. All the rest are coming as well. Successful survivors, the eight character traits of survivors and how you can attain them. 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