It’s easy to fall into the trap of relentless productivity, to ride the waves of success, without ever pausing to savor the taste of triumph. But as we chase those fleeting moments of victory, do we ever question the ‘Now what?’
In this episode of Influence by Design, we feature the insightful Marie Elizabeth-Mali as she offers a profound exploration of life seasons, the rhythms of success, and the transformative power of desire.
The wisdom she imparts isn’t just for women but for everyone who seeks to live a life aligned with their purpose and desires. She invites us to align with the natural flow of life, allowing our creative energies to ebb and flow as nature intends.
Whether you’re at the pinnacle of success or grappling with the question ‘Now what?, Marie-Elizabeth’s wisdom will inspire you to embrace curiosity, to surrender, and to appreciate the gifts of the present moment. This episode speaks to anyone seeking a deeper understanding of life’s rhythms, and a more profound sense of purpose, so don’t skip this one.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL DISCOVER:
- What does unapologetic mean for Marie-Elizabeth? (00:45)
- The transformative journey that women go through during midlife (02:35)
- The difference between living from the “pretty body” and the “passion body” (05:46)
- The impact of aligning with the natural flow of the seasons (12:50)
- Why we must give ourselves permission to rest and go inward (22:50)
- How to tap into one’s passion and extend the peak of success and expansion (28:17)
- Identifying your primary archetype to unlock your gifts (37:47)
QUOTES:
- “The main thing to unhook from is this idea that we’re supposed to be productive all the time.” -Marie-Elizabeth Mali
- “Change doesn’t happen in an atmosphere of shame. Shame keeps us locked into our patterns.” -Marie-Elizabeth Mali
- “I think that it’s so important to go within, find what your passion is, and align with that because it can create some magic.” -Samantha Riley
- “You need to surrender for you to be able to go into that next level of expansion.” -Samantha Riley
RESOURCES
WHERE TO FIND MARIE-ELIZABETH MALI
- Website: https://marieelizabethmali.com
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/marieelizabethmali
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/marieelizabethmali
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/marieelizabethmali
- TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@marieelizabethmali
- YouTube: https://youtube.com/@MarieElizabethMali
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ABOUT MARIE-ELIZABETH MALI
Two-time TEDx speaker, Marie-Elizabeth Mali helps midlife women get clear on what they want next with her step-by-step PassionBody Activation System that rebirths their passion, purpose and joy. She has a Master’s degree in Traditional Chinese Medicine and has worked in the wellness space for over 30 years. Her work has been featured in Thrive Global, SWAAY, and Forbes.
TRANSCRIPTION
(This transcription is AI-generated and may contain inaccuracies.)
Marie-Elizabeth Mali 00:00
When the passion body is activated, we’re not doing things anymore, we are choosing to say no and setting boundaries around how much time we spend doing things that don’t fill us up. So that we have so much more bandwidth and energy and space to share what does light is out. And again, that’s what creates the magnetism in the sort of magic attraction that everybody talks about that nobody quite knows how to access.
Samantha Riley Intro (00:16):
Welcome to the Influence By Design Podcast. I’m Samantha Riley, authority positioning strategist for coaches and experts. If you’re ready to build a business that gives you more than just a caffeine addiction, and you dream of making more money, having more time, and having the freedom to be living your best life, then you’re in the right place, it’s time to level up.
Samantha Riley 00:54
So today’s guest is really, really interesting to me, because she works with passionate women having a now what moment who are ready to turn on their unapologetic power. And for someone that is talking all the time about being the unapologetic leader in your industry, this is going to be a powerful, powerful conversation. So welcome to the show. Marie Elizabeth, it’s great to have you joining me.
Marie-Elizabeth Mali 01:19
Thank you so much, Samantha, I’m so happy to be here.
Samantha Riley
Yeah, look, I have been nerding out on your website. And I don’t know where this interview is going to go. And there. There is magic in that because there are so many things that we could talk about. But I want to start off with asking what is unapologetic mean to you?
Marie-Elizabeth Mali
It means rested in yourself, that you’re not looking to the outside to validate or prove that who you are is okay. And what you are is enough that that knowledge is intrinsically inside.
Marie-Elizabeth Mali 02:01
And it’s funny because I think some people can balk at the unapologetic thing like what are you just a jerk? If you make a mistake, and you don’t apologize for me, it’s not an answer to that at all. Of course, if I make a mistake, I apologize. However, it’s not toning down my power to be acceptable.
Samantha Riley 02:25
I love that so freakin much so much. Because I’m a woman in midlife, I work with a lot of women in midlife. And it’s like we get to this point where it’s just like, You know what, we’ve been living our whole life, helping other people doing things for other people, we just get to this point where we’re like, it’s our time now. And we want to be unapologetic about owning what it is that we actually want to do. And as I’m saying this, I can just feel the passion coming out. Like it’s just this really different time in our lives where it’s almost like we’ve lived, let’s just go like 50 years of our life. And first we feel like we’re suddenly being born. Yeah, we feel like it’s all a starting, right. So the people that you work with, they’re having this now what moment? Where do people even start because we know that like, it’s our time, we’re here to do something big. But it can still be this energy of like, but I don’t know what it is.
Marie-Elizabeth Mali 03:32
Yes. This is I get super passionate excited about this moment myself. Because the arc, I’m going to describe the arc and why I talk about activating the passion body. When we’re starting. All of us we become conditioned, we’re taught who and how to be by our family culture, education, if we have a religious background, religion, society, all of it tells us who to be and how to be. And so the first part of life, we live, activated through what I call the pretty body. We are generally very concerned with how we look, we want to be attractive. We want to do things, right. We want to be good girls. All of that is at play. And then we hit this spot you’re talking about where it’s like, what about me? Totally. And then the very next question that I find tell me if you see this in your clients, because the next question is often wait a minute, but who is that? He if I’m not helping somebody? Like what about I don’t even know who I am, apart from the roles that I’ve played apart from the caring that I’ve done. And that’s when it becomes time to activate the passion body. And what I call this passion body sits very close to the soul. It’s our intrinsic lifeforce. It’s our inner compass. It’s this source of our desire. And what happens is we hit that spot, usually around 50 or four B’s, you know, in some very mature
Samantha Riley 05:10
Somewhere in there somewhere in there.
Marie-Elizabeth Mali 05:14
What happens is, our vitality goes, that’s often the first sign. We’re burned out. We’re bored. We’re drained. And then it’s like, Oh, what about me? Who I lie? What’s next? That’s aligned for me. So the first step, I always say, is to just own what’s happening. Stop trying to paper it over with bandaids. Acknowledge, Oh, this isn’t working anymore. The how I’ve been doing now nothing may need to change on the outside. You don’t even know yet. What has to change is an inner deepening first. So Conventional wisdom says, oh, midlife crisis, you go blow up your life. Right, maybe you blow up your marriage, you close your business, you do something dramatic. And I’m here to say don’t do that. Because you don’t know yet. If you’re just creating wreckage, or if it’s the right thing, because you haven’t done this yet you haven’t gotten in. So step one, acknowledge what’s happening. Step two, go inside.
Samantha Riley 06:25
I love that so much. Now I want to go back and touch on this, you know, moving from the pretty body to the passion body. Because I’m going to admit, when I first read this, I actually took almost a small amount of offense to this. I’m like, oh, like, in my head. I was like, I wasn’t just about the pretty body. But then as I sat with it, I realized, no, this is true, the way that we do things was different. And as I’ve gotten to this part of my life, I feel like in a lot of ways I’ve become invisible. So it did take me a little bit to sit into this. Can you tell us more about this transition from the pretty body to the passion body? Because I think that there’s this? Well, obviously there’s this swing, but it doesn’t just happen overnight. Like what is that within us?
Marie-Elizabeth Mali 07:21
Thank you so much for bringing that and for being transparent about how that landed because I love hearing how things land. And of course, we’re not just our appearance when we’re younger. It’s just that we’re we’re driven by that often in how we it’s the currency we trade off. And there comes a time in life where that currency no longer works, as well as it used to. And I’m so glad you brought up the word invisible because in that moment, we have a choice we can either and forgive me Madonna for using use an example that we can either Madonna ourselves and try to hold on to the past. Yeah, and hold on to that youthful look, to the point of grotesqueness or we can activate this inner light, I mean, as we get even older the next stage after the passion body I call the radiant body because this is like, as we get older, the thing that’s going to get attention, the thing that’s going to be magnetic, that’s going to bring the clients, it’s going to bring the lovers so it’s going to bring you know, the friends, whatever the book deals, all the things is our radiance is our light. And the thing that turns on that light, it’s always there. It’s like a little pilot light, always there. But when we learn to activate the passion body, we really become driven by our desire, by our purpose by what lights us up by what turns us on. That is the thing that turns heads. It doesn’t matter. The external anymore. And you see this in and these women are beautiful, at any age, but I’m going to just use some examples. You see this so clearly in Emma Thompson. Yeah, Helen Mirren, your Michelle Obama, Oprah any of these? It doesn’t matter if they’ve had surgery or not. I’m not I’m agnostic on surgery. But the thing I’m pointing at is women who are lit up by this inner fire versus staying focused on the outside as the currency.
Samantha Riley 09:35
Yes, that
Marie-Elizabeth Mali 09:36
makes sense. It
Samantha Riley 09:37
makes perfect sense. And as you’re explaining it, because Helen Mirren came straight to mind before you even because yeah, and it’s funny because we think of the traditional version of pretty, but I think these women and radiant is the perfect word, but they’re beautiful, because they radiate that from inside it reminds me of a row Dell quote, and I could get this wrong, but it’s something like, you know, it’s something about Moon sun beams coming from their face. And that’s what reminds me of like, they’ve just got this energy about them. Yeah. And that’s what I love.
Marie-Elizabeth Mali 10:14
And that didn’t happen by accident. I think these women have deliberately cultivated a relationship with themselves they themselves, they love themselves, they honor themselves. For example, Emma Thompson recently, one of actually my favorite films she’s ever done is called Good luck to you, Leo Grande.
Samantha Riley 10:36
I haven’t seen it yet. But I’ve been told that I have to see it, you
Marie-Elizabeth Mali 10:40
got to see it. And the backstory is she refused to use to lose, they tried to get her lose 20 pounds for the role isn’t and she refused to do it. She said, No, this person that I’m playing, she would weigh this much, she wouldn’t be 20 pounds lighter. So I refuse to lose the weight, I’m going to play it as is. And she did her first ever fold nude scene in her entire life, where she stands in front of her mirror looking at her body, and it’s so power, I get chills, I just got to get chills thinking about it. Because that is the kind of Reclamation and self ownership and self mastery that I’m talking about, basically, totally.
Samantha Riley 11:26
And that’s self mastery. When we get that as entrepreneurs, that’s what attracts other people to us. I’ve got another friend that calls it the wise years, you know, we’re coming into our worst years. And that’s definitely how I feel, especially as a six to generator, you know, it’s that I’m coming from a different place now. And it attracts people in a different way. And I believe that everyone is amazing in business, and I really do. But there’s something special about women coming into those wise years, and what we can share with the world and what we can teach. And I think that it’s so important to go within and really find what that passion is and really align with that. Because far out it can create some magic, it can really create some magic Oh, it’s
Marie-Elizabeth Mali 12:16
It really is the source of the magic. And when we tap into that, when we’re connected to that everything else flows so much more easily. And it becomes so much clearer what isn’t isn’t aligned, because we’re running all our decisions. I mean, I happen to be a sacral authority. So I mean, I tend to run my decisions by my gut anyway. But especially when the passion body is activated, we’re not doing things anymore, we are choosing to say no and setting boundaries around how much time we spend doing things that don’t fill us up so that we have so much more bandwidth and energy and space to share what does light is out. And again, that’s what creates the magnetism in the sort of magic attraction that everybody talks about. But nobody quite knows how to access, you know, until they learn holy,
Samantha Riley 13:11
yeah. So for people that are listening now, and they’re like, Oh, my goodness, I’m, I’ve got goosebumps, I’m being lit up, but they may be feeling bored, they may be feeling like they are lacking a little bit of energy may be feeling a little bit burnt out. They’re just not. They’re like, oh, there’s just something needed all missing. I know that you you and I had a really fabulous conversation before we hit record about using the seasons in and I’m not even going to go any further because there’s all sorts of things that you were talking about, really to tap into air flow, I’d love you to share a little bit about what you were talking about.
Marie-Elizabeth Mali 13:53
You bet. So I’ve developed this what I call the passion body alchemical wheel. And my background is traditional Chinese medicine. So I’ve been in live wellness and eventually coaching space for over 30 years. And my degree is in Chinese medicine, and I used to practice acupuncture. Although I left patient care 20 years ago and shifted to coaching.
The five elements and the seasonal understanding of life and the energetic, the bio-energetic kind of underpinnings of life are still how I live even though I don’t need people anymore. So I created this year-round wheel according to the five elements of Chinese medicine that maps the seasons of nature, with the five elements with the particular aspect of the Passion body that’s most accessible and alive and available to be worked with at that time.
So then each month of the wheel I teach in my community, I teach on the topic of the month, which is basically the verb or the theme of the month. In November, the theme is sustain. It’s all about how do we have healthy boundaries and sustaining our boundaries as we go into a season, a holiday season, where we’re going to be interacting with more people and, you know, perhaps seeing our family more if that’s part of the deal. And so how do we sustain our relationships by maintaining healthy boundaries and taking care of ourselves throughout this very busy season.
Each month has a theme like that. And the reason I found it so important to create this wheel was I saw in myself, as well as other entrepreneurs, this tendency to push, push, push all the time, like we need to be launching all the time, we need to be promoting creating new things, getting out there doing stuff all the time. And there’s no room to be like nature, which lies fallow for several months. Now I’m talking the northern hemisphere because that’s where I live. So obviously, I’m talking the winter months being what I’m going into now. Yeah, but you know, so I know it’s opposite for y’all, for y’all. But it’s, you know, in the winter, so that the winter is the season of the water element. It’s the relates to our kidneys to our fundamental battery pack of life.
The kidney energy is like our life force, our battery pack, and it gets depleted throughout life. And in the winter, it’s time to recharge those batteries because the kidney time is most active than and it’s a time to build vitality. And how do you build vitality with rest with going inward, and the winter season is, of course, you want to be inside more you want to be cocooned more, it’s the perfect time to go in and ask yourself, what do I want is what I’m doing still resonant? What do I see for the coming year? What how do I want to move forward? What are the self-care practices that feel good to me now it may be different than they were before. You might there might be some new self-care practice that wants to emerge that, you know, you hadn’t tried before. Who knows. But it’s a time to have extra sleep and extra rest and build that three months of that.
And then we get to the spring, April and May. And that’s the time that’s the wood element. And that’s the time to the wood, what is called typically the general it’s a very directive purpose-driven it has, it wants to go somewhere expediently and you see that in nature, bugs start growing then flowers emerge, nature is blooming, we are similar, it’s spring is a perfect time to take all that energy that you’ve cocooned and built and grown over the winter and begin to share it and it’s a time of pleasure.
The wood element actually governs arousal so is it a Beto is governed more in the kidneys so if you’re tapped out and exhausted, you probably don’t want sex, you need to build your vitality in the winter. And then the spring is when it’s a time of more pleasure and and you can imagine for me I’m from New York, originally. So the image that always comes to mind for me for spring is that first day in spring when I’m on the subway, and I see somebody in a tank top has got really hot arts. It’s like that weakening it by body because we’re starting to see skin again. You know that? Yes, right. That’s spring, that’s the energy of spring and you want to really draw on that and juice up your pleasure what I call your pleasure body.
Then the summer, June and July, that’s the fire element. And that is very much a time of fire element governs talking. Because it’s the heart it’s how we relate. And so summer you really want to work on communication, your relationships, often if you’re a parent, your kids are off from school, you’re going on vacation, you’re doing stuff with your family. So that’s really a time of have a nourishing your emotional body. How are you in the summer? We are often I mean, again, our summer is warm in June and July. So you know we’re outside more everything feels more open and full and it’s just a time to really have full expression.
And then late summer is the earth element which is the mental body and what happens what goes out of whack the most in the earth season is the mind the mind gets into over worry. It gets busy, it gets stopped it gets it gets these loops. And so I like to focusing in August and September, on really mental clarity and getting clear on the stories that were telling, dismantling those stories aligning with what’s actually true, etc, it’s a really good time to do bat work.
And also in the states anyway, it’s like when kids are starting go back to school, and it’s just, it’s a big, it’s a very busy time, and it’s tight, and you got to keep your head clear. And then the fall, so from October, November to December, that’s the metal element. And that’s really the metal element governs giving and receiving. And it’s also has a lot to do with our immune system, in terms of how we get colds and things like that it is our defense system against viruses and colds and things.
And so, but this in and out this giving, receiving, how we take in the world, how we give it back, it’s how we take in air with the lungs, and excrete waste to the large intestine. Those are the organs related to the metal element. And so in that season, we’re looking at the relational body. So how are we showing up in our relationships? This is why November is all about sustain, and sustaining boundaries. And focusing on boundaries. December is all about giving and receiving, how do we exchange energy with others in the form of gifts, but also, as we party and do stuff over the holidays? And things like that? How is that exchange working? Is it balanced? Are we taking too much are we giving too much, etc. So you can see a very natural flow and in terms of entrepreneur life, you know, you want to be maybe building if you’re creating something new winter or writing a book, winter is a great time to do that. And then you start coming out more maybe he launched in the spring where you, you know, you bring out some new initiatives in the spring and summer you’re riding it, you know, and it’s like, you can see how a business cycle could also work laid on top of the wheel.
Samantha Riley 22:00
Totally. And this is something I guess, probably over 10 years ago, I intuitively started to feeling to like I don’t generally do a lot of work over winter winters at time, I actually also don’t like winter, I’ve got a lot of Blaze energy in me for anyone that that knows wealth dynamics. I’m like full Blaze energy. So for me, as soon as the sun comes out and starts getting hot, like I’m on fire, literally like that’s when everything starts happening in Australia. And in our summer. That’s the like the Christmas New Year period. And it’s the time where everyone closes their business. And they all go on holidays. And I’m like, no, no, you can’t do that. I’m ready to go. Now. Let’s go. Let’s go. Exactly, exactly. So. So I’ve intuitively been been following the seasons or allowed my body to kind of follow these seasons for a while. But I guess what’s coming up as you were going through that is do people need to wait for a certain season to decide, I want to like, really go deep and explore who I am and what my business could sort of flow into or change or pivot or, you know, do I want to do this full change and birth something different? Or do we just kind of need to go with our feelings? Does that question makes sense? It
Marie-Elizabeth Mali 23:24
Makes total sense. And what I suggest is going with your feelings for me is always number one is and if what you discover that your feeling is uninspired, unclear, flat, like not creative. New ideas aren’t coming, then it’s time to look at okay, what is the season what is most active now maybe I’m responding to a seasonal influence energetically. And I’m trying to push something that’s not that my body is just a no to. So because that’s not to say if you feel super creative in the winter season in the right time, you know, and it gives you vitality to bring something new out, do it. But if you get to the winter and you’re tired rest, don’t push yourself. Don’t force yourself to do something because everybody says you have to launch something in January. This was bullshit. I just don’t think it’s true. Yeah.
And so I mean, for you it might be true, because it’s Blaze time. But but you know, in the northern hemisphere, if our bodies may not be too excited to do a launch in January, in which case honor that? Yeah, so I really believe the main thing to unhook from is this idea that we’re supposed to be productive all the time. There’s it, which for many of us, at least I was taught, and many people I talked to were taught To push ourselves to be productive, and without regard to the season to life season, not just external season, but internal season, for example, when my mother died, I felt plunged into this cave of it was very quiet. I mean, there was grief, it’s not that there wasn’t a grief, but there was just this quiet, dark place, and I could not I felt to push myself out of that prematurely would have been to do harm to myself.
And I paused any business building activities, all I fulfilled the minimum, I fulfilled on my existing client relationships. I didn’t, you know, abandon anything, I but I stopped building anything new. And I let myself sit in the dark, and it took about three months. And I then started to feel this upwelling of life again. And as that emerged, I caught it, you know, I went with it, and came out the gate roaring with so much energy and created, I had the best revenue year of my business a year after my mother died.
And, and it wasn’t, I don’t think it’s necessarily related. But if I know that, I know that a big part of it was I gave myself permission. And luckily, I was in a financial position that I could just fail and not have to get new clients at that time. But because I gave myself permission to be in this quiet dark cave, for as long as it took, and to allow myself to naturally come out, allowed me to have so much energy on the back end on the other side. Now, I know that not everybody has the financial freedom to be able to pare it down to pare back like that. And I think we can do it more than we imagine. Yes, friends could help, right, we could ask for help, we could move somewhere cheaper. I mean, there’s ways that we could facilitate allowing ourselves that space, like if you’re getting sucked into a dark cave, by your system, trust it.
Samantha Riley 27:29
I find it interesting that the way that you started talking about that is saying we don’t need to be productive all the time. But when you really lean into what you just said, By Us stepping back, or not stepping back, but really like sort of coming within that is being productive, because that’s what we need. So that’s like, it’s a real shift in thinking there. To understand that the traditional sense of being productive is just go Go, go, go go. But in actual sense, but in reality, being productive is whatever we need, at that time to be able to move forward. Ah,
Marie-Elizabeth Mali 28:14
do you love how you said that? Yes.
Samantha Riley 28:19
Ah, so good. So good. Now, there may be people listening, we’ve talked a lot about, you know, if maybe if you’re feeling bored, or if you’re feeling a lack of energy, like, these are the things you can do. But there may be people listening that are like, actually, like, my business is really successful at the moment. And I feel like things are going well. But they might just feel a little like, I just want to lean into that passion piece a little bit more. And what are some of the things some of the questions, some of the activities that we could do to really go within and find that next level of passion?
Marie-Elizabeth Mali 29:00
I love journaling as an activity and not just journaling, like, oh, yesterday, I had coffee with my friend. And then I did this and I walked by the beach, no journaling questions, and then answering your questions in the journal. And sometimes, I mean, for me like experiences that it’s like my higher self or my guides, I access communication with them. And that way, if it’s hard to access, like if you ask yourself a question, and nothing is coming, you could try switching the pen to your non dominant hand isn’t and if you do that, I suggest giving yourself permission to write reading really big because if you’re trying to write neatly with your non dominant hand, it’ll slow you down and you like it. It takes too much bandwidth out is listening inside. So sometimes your non dominant hand can answer questions quickly for you if you just allow it to be messy and big. So that’s one way you can access this deeper wisdom because all we’re talking about basically is bypassing our conscious or conditioned mind to try to access our more intuitive subconscious knowing deeper inside mind, which really lives in the body. And another way to do that would be if you love if there’s a practice that brings you into your body in a really beautiful way. So for some people, it might be dancing for another, it might be yoga. For me, it’s Chi Gong, look, I love doing Qi Gong because it really activates, like from the handstand, or you know, it just feel very embodied when I do Qi Gong. And so I think embodiment is a key part of it. So when things are going great. It’s like any peak, I want to say a word about learning to shift at the peak, because we don’t always navigate peaks well, isn’t what I mean by that is, things are going well, we’re riding on a high, everything’s looking good that day. And it’s like, we want to hang on to that state as long as possible. But as we all know, what goes up must come down. And at some point, we get here at the top of the roller coaster of shoes, let’s start going down. The thing is not first of all, not to fear that. So just because things are great now and knowing that, from one day to the next, or that may change, anything could happen, that would shift how you’re feeling, not to fear that and to trust, that that descent. First of all, that another ascent is on the other side of it, because it always comes back up. And, you know, if you don’t grip to the top, and you learn to shift, when things are good, you can actually extend the ride. So I feel like when you’re at the top when things feel great is exactly the time to begin asking yourself not in an obsessive, you know, worried anxious way. But in a curious way. Wow, this is so great. What’s my next expansion? Here? It’s a great question. You can journal journal on, like, all this feels so good. I’m loving this. In particular, this thing feels really good. What’s the next expansion over here that I could write so so you, you know, you recognize, oh, I’m at a peak. And then how do I not grip to the peak, but expand, continue to expand, which can allow that peak to keep going on, even as you don’t fear, the slowdown, because the slowdown will happen. And the more permission you have for the slowdown, the quicker you’ll come back up again.
Samantha Riley 32:51
Oh, my goodness, I love this so much. I think curiosity is the biggest expander of us as entrepreneurs, but in all areas of our life. And, and it’s funny that the way that you said that, because just this week, I was running a group coaching call with my clients. And I said, I had the biggest lesson of my life this year, like we’re in a seven year, you know, it’s all about personal growth. And I just took two weeks off and went completely on vacation completely switched off, I let my coaches completely take, you know, take over everything and like really did no delivery, it was fabulous. And the biggest lesson was surrender. And it just kept hitting me in the face over and over again, Sam, you have been holding on to things too much. You need to surrender. And you need to surrender for you to be able to go into that next, you know, that next level of expansion. And it’s so so what you just said to them, like really resonated, because this has been huge for me, just recently. And I think that you know, if I think back to I’ll put this in air quotes are pretty body years. Like there’s no surrender there. It’s like we’re just completely controlling everything. And I don’t mean controlling in a, in a traditional controlling way. But, you know, we feel like we have to hold on to everything and do it. This is the way that we’re going to force it to happen.
Marie-Elizabeth Mali 34:15
Right? I love that and use the word force because as we were talking the word willpower popped into my heart into my mind, and it’s like we’re willing things to happen and we’re making them happen and we’re thriving and we’re, it’s so oak will based and then we typically we hit the wall at some point and because willpower is a finite resource, yes a passion is an infinite resource desire is an infinite resource. And when I say desire because desire gets a bad rap you know when I say desire don’t mean hedonism let only willy nilly, you know drink all the drinks and eat all the chocolate out. I don’t mean that. What I mean is if you look around all of life is powered by desire we are born because our parents desired each other plants grow because they want to feel the sun. And then they respond by growing. You know, they exchange oxygen carbon monoxide, right? Like, it’s all design, everything exists because of desire. So if we can get our head out of the religious bullshit, excuse me if I can say that. Okay, I wasn’t sure if I’m allowed to cuss. If we get out of the sort of desires, the root of all evil thing that many of us were taught, and actually embrace, what’s a deeper truth, which is that everything is born out of desire, we wouldn’t have life if life didn’t want to be lifing. That is the infinite resource, not willpower. And so again, when we’re at a peak when everything’s going great, another question besides expansion can be, where am I efforting? And can I surrender here? Because I love that you brought in surrender? Can I kind of surrender that effort and find a deeper aligned way of flow? So instead of effort find flow? That would be another question. Because even at the peak, when everything’s going great, there’s still fine tuning that can be done. And so expansion is one, you brought up the perfect thing with the curiosity and staying curious and open. And then also, the gratitude piece. So the fan that extends our expansion and extends the peak, more and more is if we acknowledge and are grateful for the good, that is happening. Because many of us, I don’t know about you. But look, I’m a pretty driven human. And so anything good that happens, I barely often this was an old habit of secured this habit. But the old habit used to be, I would barely even acknowledge the whim before I’d be looking to the next mountain. I had declined, right? Like, what’s the next hurdle I have to get over? And but oh, this is really great. But I don’t have that, you know, the habit of the mind that we have to grow ourselves out old tidally. So that’s, I would say that’s another piece of head is expanding, asking ourselves questions, being curious, and being grateful for the amazingness that’s already here. And all of that allows things to keep growing. Yes.
Samantha Riley 37:43
Oh, my goodness, I’m loving this conversation so much. Now, you have a grown ass power quiz, which I think is such a cool name, where you talk about five primary archetypes, can you tell us a little bit about why we want to know what our primary archetype is, and how this can help us in our business.
Marie-Elizabeth Mali 38:06
So it’s helpful to look at archetypes because it can be hard to see ourselves clearly. When we just look inside, we have this mishmash of what happened to us when we weren’t kids, you know, there might be traumas still active, there might be shame present. And it’s hard to see ourselves, it’s hard to see our greatness sometimes. And so what an archetype helps us do is we can see ourselves in that mirror, it functions like a mirror of our strengths now because I do a lot of work with the shadow, a mirror as our strengths. And I’d also talk about what the shadow things are that can bite us in the ass right. So I think it’s important to acknowledge both, but without having so what I feel the archetypes help us do is it helps us see what our strengths are more clearly. So lean on them more strongly. And then be aware of our typical pitfalls like where we might typically run into troubles so we can keep an eye on that. And it helps to mitigate any shame that might be present. Because we are wired, how we are wired, like there’s nothing to be ashamed about and change. I always say this change doesn’t happen in an atmosphere of shame. Shame keeps us locked into our patterns. And so I created this quiz and created the archetypes as a means to help somebody step out of the shame saying for a minute, see their greatness, see their strengths in a new way. Recognize, okay, here are the pitfalls resonate that they know okay, that’s what I need to work on. But wow, I have this gift. Let me use this gift more. Let me bring this gift more out. And that’s how we can really activate our passion more fully. Would you like me to run down the archetypes real quick? Yeah, let’s do that. Definitely. So so the five archetypes that the grownups power quiz and point, you know, gives you the results for. And again, you’ll have one result, we all tend to have all of them. As Walt Whitman said, I am large, I contain multitudes. We are we are, we contain multitudes. And so we people often resonate with more than one. But there’s one that’s going to be primary. So you have to really go with your gut, your first thought best thought when you’re taking the quiz. But the first one, and these aren’t in a hierarchical order in any way, they’re just how they happen to occur in my brain. So the first is the mystic priestess, and she’s super connected to spirit, she has deep insight and intuitive brilliance, but her struggle is often it’s a little hard to manifest things in the 3d world, she might struggle a bit with money, she might fall in love with partners potential, instead of seeing who the person really is, you know, she has, she has such a depth of connection to the deeper energetic spiritual realms, that sometimes she might not feel like she totally fits in on the planet, you know, among the, the normies or the muggles. So you know, and the second one is the survivor savior. So she survived a really rough childhood, and it’s made her incredibly compassionate, and the Savior pieces because she’s gone through so much, she has the capacity to sit with other people going through hard things. So she will often choose to work with really homeless addicts, you know, difficult people populations who are truly suffering. And she added wisdom and compassion to be able to do that. And her downfall, however, is that she might still be sourcing her identity from her trauma. She herself might stay a bit stuck and be stuck in this survival role, because she can’t fully move on from her own history. Who would she be without? Yeah, right. So so that’s where the work lies for her is to do some work around her own trauma to get free so that she heard survivor Agnes. So she gets to have a great life to us and she doesn’t have to be suffering but helping other people while she has still in pain. The truth warrior has developed as a really strong eye, she in the image, she’s holding a sword because she has a she has a very sharp blade, she can cut through add to the truth, she has real insight. She has this capacity to see through people patterns, problems, things. And her difficulty is that she doesn’t always know when is the best time to tell that truth. So there can be such a you know, we so love, I’m a truth warrior. we so love how brilliant our insights are, that we sometimes share them without getting consent. And not everybody’s ready to hear that your cycle truth as to why they’re fucked up, you know, so unless they’ve paid you because that’s, they want that right. So, you know, the truth warrior needs to learn discernment, and she needs to learn to calibrate to situations more effectively and, and really pay attention to what level of listening is somebody able to, you know, meet what what level of communication is, so is somebody able to hear? The fourth is the dragon woman, a lot of entrepreneurs fall into this one. She’s excellent at what she does, she’s high powered, she’s perfectionistic. She’s usually the most competent one in the room. And the danger with her is that she’s learned to lean on her competence and achievement as her worthiness and as her love ability. And she sees vulnerability as weakness. And so for her the challenge she contended, cut people off. If they are imperfect, and they let her down. She can tend to go cold withdrawal, get superior, kind of like an ice queen. And her expansion is going to lie in allowing herself to be imperfect, allowing others to be imperfect and learning to soften and receive. And the last one is the heart Weaver. And we all know the heart weavers they’re like the moms who all the kids come to that house to get the cookies she bakes the cookie Yeah, you does you know the things for this school for the for the holidays. You know, she she really brings the community together and she has this embracing kind of Earth mama you know, very motherly, warm, inviting, whether or not she’s a physical Mother, you know, she has a warm, inviting kind of being that people love to come and rest into. She’s often the friend that all the other friends go to for help. Right. And it was her is that she’s so identified with giving, that she doesn’t ask for help herself when she was resentful and exhausted. And if her self worth is tied up in the giving, then she’s giving too much. So her learning is going to lie and how do I sit back? How do I receive? How do I ask for help myself, and allow others to give to me. And that can be revelatory for her to discover that she can be loved even when she’s not given.
Samantha Riley 45:36
I can really hear where the opportunity is here in understanding who you are, so that it’s easier to see into these little shadows, and to understand how to lean into the gifts more. So where can people go to, to do the quiz to find out this information for themselves,
Marie-Elizabeth Mali 45:58
go to your power quiz.com. And you can take the quiz there. And everything else will unfold. From there. I have also developed a five episode private podcast that goes more deeply into the archetypes more deeply into what turns them on the each episode is slightly different. And you’ll get information for that when you take the quiz. It’ll be in one of the follow up emails, you can also listen to the podcast and learn more. And there’s also a Facebook group you can join that has a lot more additional content. And so there’s lots of teaching available about these archetypes. And I’m really committed to redefining aging, for us as a time of potency and transformation, and the opportunity to rest into our wisdom and activate our brilliance even more than we already have. Because at this age, we are less about what everybody thinks, and it’s our time. And we just have so much to share, because we’ve lived so much already. And it’s just a question of how do we become more loving towards what I call our inconvenient bits, the bits that we wish were different that they are become more loving and inclusive and embracing of those. Because change doesn’t have to happen in an atmosphere of shame. So how do we love and embrace the parts of us that we, you know, are less enamored of? And how do we allow our brilliance to shine even more and step into this next phase of life? lit up and and aligned and connected and in flow? That’s what’s possible.
Samantha Riley 47:39
Laurie Elizabeth I have loved this conversation is so much I feel like we always need to to a follow up episode to this because I just feel like there is so much depth in this topic. And you know, it’s funny, just about everything I was going to ask you You already answered it. And the way that you tide this episode out with a beautiful little bow you just right there is the perfect way to end this conversation. So thank you so much for coming and sharing your wisdom, your heart, your passion. It was absolutely fabulous to chat with you.
Marie-Elizabeth Mali 48:15
I love chatting with you too. And I would love to come back on if you’d like to do a part two. It’s just so fun to talk with someone who you know we vibe.
Samantha Riley 48:26
That’s what it is. Thank you so much.
Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Influence By Design podcast. If you want more head over to influencebydesignpodcast.com for the show notes and links to today’s gifts and sponsors. And if you’re looking to connect with other experts who are growing and scaling their business to join us in the coaches, thought leaders, and changemakers community on Facebook, the links are waiting for you over at influencebydesignpodcast.com
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