What if clarity about your life's purpose was closer than you think?
In this episode, we’re talking about:
🌀 How Spiral Breathing calms your nervous system and opens space for clarity
🧭 The 3 stages most people move through when searching for their calling
🌿 How getting still and quiet can unlock emotional healing and self-awareness
Episode #64: Show Notes
I've been sharing about my 90-day experiment recently, and something happened on day 8 that was completely unexpected…and I want to share how that changed the course of my life.
I started the experiment, feeling confused, overwhelmed, and stressed out about trying to bring some income into my life. I didn't know what was going to happen, if it would even help, or what to expect. And then I quit it altogether on day 36 because I outgrew the criteria and motivation behind it. In those first 36 days I was able to quiet my mind, remove distractions, and get some much needed clarity– even though I didn't follow my own plan.
I shared the experiment details in episodes 57 and 58, but you don't need that context to dive in with me today. Let's just say that I was not my usual "good worker bee" during this experiment.
Removing some stuff from my to-do list gave me just enough quiet space to really think. And I ended up with extra space to think because I ignored nearly half the rules of my plan. Instead, I did a lot of journaling and worked closely with my mentors.
When Something Unexpected Shifts Everything
So, I was minding my own business, doing my normal daily stuff on day 8 of my experiment, And literally out of nowhere, something unexpected and life-changing happened — something that felt like a spiritual event of pure bliss. Super deep.
I'm not going to share the full details of what happened here, and I'm not sure I could put it into words if I tried. It felt kind of like melting into the universe, like all thoughts and body sensations dulled to the point of disappearing for maybe 40 minutes of pure bliss– that’s the simplest way I can describe it.
What I can tell you is how different I felt on the other side of it. Before that moment I was searching, striving, and second-guessing myself. Afterward, something just settled. The noise quieted. The urgency softened a bit. It felt less like figuring something out mentally and more like finally remembering and feeling into something I had always known. This event instantaneously updated my priorities!
What followed was three of the most unexpectedly rich weeks of my life as I jumped into spiritual work. I've spent years in deep spiritual studies, and I'm grateful for everything that foundation gave me. But this was different. All those concepts I had understood mentally for years, suddenly became firsthand experiences. And I wasn’t pushing and forcing them, they were just unfolding naturally like gifts from the universe. It's like the difference between reading about how to drive a car and getting in one and making it move through the parking lot for the first time in Driver’s Ed.
I wasn't planning to go on a deep spiritual journey during this time, but that's what happened… I think because I made space for it in my life. I was really focused and learning things extremely rapidly, with the help of my mentors.The learning wasn't just fast, it was like watching a time-lapse movie where everything is moving at ultra-speed, and somehow I was keeping up with all of it.
I also experienced tremendous emotional healing. And I didn't ask for any of it. It just appeared.
Discovering My Real Mission
I realized that my mission has more to do with my voice, my breath, and holding resonance than I ever understood. I always thought I was meant to be a healer and a teacher; it turns out the teacher part was correct, just not in the way I thought. I learned I wasn't just speaking, I was breathing a new field into being. Yeah, I know, that sounds wild. It sounded a bit out there to me, too until I experienced it.
There's a lot more I could say about this, but for this audience, I'm going to leave it at that. I don't want to overwhelm anyone with concepts they might not be open to hearing about or ready to receive just yet. But if you find yourself curious about these deeper topics, please reach out to me personally. I'm looking for a handful of people who want to explore these conversations further, and I'd love to hear from you.
I think sometimes we just need to get quiet and still enough to tone down the world around us for a little bit, and learn to tune into our own breath and truth.
Finding The Common Thread
The work I did with my mentors and breath during this time is what finally gave me the clarity I'd been seeking for a looooong time. I spent decades of my life trying to figure out my purpose. Why I'm here.
I suspected I was here to be a teacher or healer, but nothing quite landed the way I hoped it would. Then a few years ago, I came to the realization that the common thread in my natural behavior and things that arise from me on their own, is letting other people know they are seen, heard, and valuable. That boiled down to "make others feel worthy" because that's how it came to me in my head, word for word.
It's simple, non flashy, and it's been part of my intrinsic nature for my whole life. Sometimes changing the world happens by little things that we do every day, not something big and gigantic and earth shattering. The expanded version of my mission is: to guide people toward emotional wellness and joy with information, strategies, and support. This is why I'm here, investing my time, energy, and even my money on creating this podcast!
The guidelines I've set for how to live out my mission include:
Making others feel safe, worthy, seen, and heard
Freely offering helpful information for those who want it
Serving as a resource guide for emotional wellness
Providing compassionate encouragement tools and resources
Sending out high vibrations and infinite love
Learning, exploring and researching to continually uncover even more to share
I talked more about my mission waaaaay back in episode 1 if you're curious. So that's what I'm putting out into the world. What does your mission look like?
Loss Intertwined with Blessings
If you've been listening for a while, you know last Spring was incredibly heartbreaking for me. I lost my Mom, my best friend, and a job I loved in the span of a few days. The sting of losing those two treasured people at the same time was indescribable. Those are the two people I'd call with good news, or to help with bad news, those were the two people in my life who truly understood my woo-woo, esoteric spirituality, natural healer side, and embraced it.
And man, I loved that job! I loved my co-workers. I was really happy working with that team. But I also realize that getting laid off was truly a divine blessing. Really. I secretly hope my boss is listening, because I know it was so hard for her to lay off the team. I absolutely could not have planned my Mom's funeral and helped my family during that time with a full time job on top of it all. And jump through all the legal hoops I'm going to share with you in the next episode.
Time for a New Beginning
But after things started to settle down a bit, I found myself with unexpected free time. Time to actually think about what I wanted to do each day. Plenty of time to sit outside in the yard grounding my feet in the sunshine! And that's when I finally committed to starting this podcast– last summer.
And I thought, OK, I'm getting closer to my mission! And since then I've been chugging along, putting out episodes, and moving down that path.
Well, with the spiritual event that happened roughly a month ago, I feel like NOW my mission is even clearer. Like I was holding a beautiful crystal in my hand, but someone just polished it, and now it shines even brighter.
Something Was Slightly Off
For years I was building toward something I could feel but couldn't quite fully grasp what tangible form it would take. I earned many wellness and healing certifications, did an intense year-long mentorship experience with Jack Canfield, went on writing retreats, and poured enormous time, energy, and money into developing a course and eventual retreat concept I genuinely believed in. My testers loved it. Friends who got a peek at pieces of it found it helpful. But as a one-off course, it wasn't selling, and I couldn't figure out why.
Unfortunately, I had been following the "prove you're an expert" school of thought from the world of “bro marketing” and I did everything I was taught to do. What I didn't realize then was that I needed to stop trying to position myself above people and simply walk beside them instead. I now firmly believe this world doesn’t need more experts and gurus. It needs more people quietly leading by example, by just being their best selves.
Allowing My Voice and Breath to Lead
And I had questioned some of what I learned in formal training over the years, because some things didn’t feel true or complete. Once I finally acknowledged that, something shifted in me. My mentors helped me see how all the work I had done could naturally, easily morph into exactly what would be helpful for people. They reignited my interest for this project, and it felt like new life had literally been breathed into it.
And I believe it didn’t spread as far as I hoped when I first released it, because it wasn’t fully my voice and breath yet. It even had some of the 'rah rah' success hype baked in, what some people now call ‘toxic positivity,’ and that wasn't me either.
So that offering is gone. And instead, I've been working on something I’m really excited about.
Introducing Gently Untangled
It’s a calm space called Gently Untangled where we can do inner work together.The kind that helps us feel steadier, less reactive, and more at home in our own lives. Without pressure, noise, or urgency. There are no daily emails, no notifications, nothing pulling us away from life. Just a simple weekly rhythm built around journaling, gentle breathwork, EFT tapping, and genuine mutual support. It's a place to show up authentically as who we really are, underneath the masks we wear in public. And the door is open wide, for all of us.
3 Stages of Finding Your Life's Calling
Most people, I suspect, are still way earlier in the journey, still in the "why am I here? What is my calling? What am I meant to do?" phase. Or perhaps you're so busy with frazzled, busy daily life that you've never really had time to even THINK about what you'd really like to do, or what effect you'd like to have on this world.
Maybe I'm an outlier, but I've been thinking about why I'm here and what I'm called to do for as long as I can remember. With a knowing that there was something important to do, but fuzziness on what that means in real life.
Once you start wondering about your life's calling, I believe most people will go through three distinct stages… but the timing of each stage is different for each of us.
The searching stage:"Why am I here? What am I meant to do?"
The pattern recognition stage: where you get your first glimpse of the thread, you start to see a pattern in yourself, the thing that arises naturally in you.
The HOW stage, where things start to click into place — not just knowing your purpose, but finally understanding how you're meant to carry it out.
Getting Quiet Enough to Hear the Answer
If you're still in the "why am I here" phase, I want you to know I spent decades there. What helped me wasn't forcing an answer — it was getting quiet enough to notice what was already arising naturally in me. The thread was there the whole time. I just had to take my attention off the rush-rush of daily life long enough to see it.
And with what I know now, the "getting quiet" part is important, as well as not trying to mentally figure it out. It's about getting still, getting quiet, and listening to your breath.... When your breathing gets deep and calm, like a newborn baby's, you become more calm, less stressed, and for me old wounds and trauma started to heal and I got a ton of clarity. The physical, practical reality of what deep, calm breathing does is scientifically supported, universally experienced, and deeply accessible. Give this gift to yourself and try it!
The answer to 'what's my purpose' didn't come from thinking harder. It came from getting still, getting quiet, and paying attention to my breath. Not in a complicated way, but like the way a newborn breathes. Deep, slow, unguarded. When I started breathing like that, the stress started to lift, old things started to heal, and clarity came in ways I wasn't expecting.
The Practice That Made It Possible: Spiral Breathing
I'd like to formally introduce you to Spiral Breathing! It's what we've been doing with the grounding breaths in recent episodes, but I haven't explained it yet. This is the main practice my mentors shared with me that helped so much. And it seems too short and simple! But it has become a welcome addition to my daily self-care.
Spiral Breathing is a gentle way of using your breath to create balance and calm inside your body. Instead of breathing in straight lines, like in and out, imagine your breath moving in a spiral. Like a soft swirl of air that rises and falls.
When you breathe this way, it helps your mind and body feel more connected. It's like tuning a musical instrument so it plays in harmony. Spiral Breathing isn't about controlling or forcing your breath. Instead, it's about letting it flow in a natural, circular rhythm.
You can use Spiral Breathing anytime you feel stressed, scattered, angry, triggered, or just want to feel more present. It's extremely simple, but incredibly powerful.
The 3-3-3 Breath– the one I've been practicing with you– is the recommended way to get started. Only do what is comfortable for you, and if you find it difficult to take deep breaths, or to hold your breath, make adjustments to make this fully yours. It's so simple, it's silly! That was my reaction, anyway— I'm curious how you feel after trying this for a few days.
Here's how to do it:
inhale for 3 counts
hold the breath for 3 counts
exhale for 3 counts
When you do this on your own, you can repeat it for 3-4 cycles as a beginning practice, then return to your natural breath. You can find more info about this and other helpful resources at omwowpod.com/resources.
Your Invitation to Get Still
I wonder what you might discover about yourself and your life if YOU got a little more quiet and still for even a few days in a row– to think and journal?
Maybe try getting up a half hour earlier or going to bed a half hour later just to give yourself some alone, quiet time.
And don't tell me you don't have time– if you watch any TV at all, you've got some time you can trade for self care if you're really honest with yourself, right?!
Have a fabulous week, my friends.
Meet Our Host: Jennifer Robin O’Keefe
Jennifer Robin is always searching for the next thing that might help: the book, the practice, the reframe you didn't know existed but turns out to be exactly what you needed.
Through conversations with experts, authors, and everyday humans, along with personal reflection, Jennifer focuses on bridging the gap between "woo" and practical, accessible self-support. Her work is rooted in the belief that wellness is not about fixing yourself, but about remembering your worth and finding what genuinely works for you.
She has spent decades exploring personal growth, energy healing, and mind-body wellness. She's trained in EFT Tapping and coaching, tools she often references in her conversations. She's not positioning herself as an expert who has it all figured out. She approaches her work with humility, curiosity, and deep respect for individual experience.
Jennifer is a lifelong learner who cherishes books and notebooks. She loves diving into research and sharing what she learns in a way that feels relatable, compassionate, and pressure-free. These conversations are an invitation: to ask your own questions, gather perspectives that resonate, and build a life that actually feels good to you.