SDH226: Tapping Into Your Gifts and Living According to Your Purpose with Mary Shores

How did you figure out strengths in your personality? What were they? Did you begin to embrace them, and build them even more? Where did that take you in life? How did you grow?

Our guest today, Mary Shores, gets into that as we learn about her mission as a motivational speaker and a writer. Her first book, Conscious Communications, was born from her love of personal development, and she helps teach it from a place where science and spirituality meet. She believes that once you tap into your subconscious and harness your words, you have the ability to change your choices, behaviors and mind. From there, you will be able to bring areas of your life into alignment, begin to find yourself, and grow as an entrepreneur and a person. Her take on personal development really struck a chord with readers, and within six weeks of her book’s release, it became the number one Best Seller for Self Esteem, Communications, and Happiness on Amazon! 

Before she wrote her book, at 24 she became the youngest person to become a CEO in communication strategy in 1999. She also created her own strategy that’s been used in business, and the health care industry for over 10 years! She said ever since she was a little girl, she always had that entrepreneur bug. Instead of playing house, she played bank, and arranged tables in her garage, drew up her own money, and set up accounts for the neighborhood kids. She even had a drive thru so they could pull up in their tricycles to make deposits and withdrawals.  In middle school she also set up a beauty supply store in her Lutheran school’s bathroom, so she could buy a $55 swimsuit, but she was kicked out once school officials found out. 

Once her parents took note of her entrepreneurial drive, they allowed her to work at their collection agency when she was 13, and she got paid a dollar an hour to lick stamps, and envelopes. She eventually went on to work at a real bank, but was devastated when she was fired after her 90-day evaluation. She said it was the worst thing to happen to her in her young life, and it created a scar of unworthiness in her. She felt like she wasn’t good enough to get a job with anyone, so she thought the only way for her to make a living was if she started her own company. 

With a few clients from her mom, and her naivety and youthful confidence in tow, she opened the doors of her collection agency! She said she was willing to handle anything that came across her desk, and was determined to build a great reputation and prove to herself and others her potential. Once she accomplished becoming a successful entrepreneur, she became focused on spiritual growth and personal development. 

She went through an existential crisis because she wanted to reach concepts of enlightenment, and self actualization, but didn’t feel it fit into her career in debt collections. She said her profession wasn’t typically looked at as a positive thing, but she wanted people to look at paying off their debt as a release of a psychological burden. To her, it could become a foundation of shame and unworthiness, and keep people from starting their own businesses, applying for homes, or pursuing relationships. She wanted people to break down those barriers to live the life of their dreams, and have the freedom to tap into their authentic gifts to begin living according to their purposes.

She said to find those gifts, people can do simple things like taking the Myer Briggs personality test, or a Disc profile, so they can know their strongest traits and what their challenges may be. She suggests highlighting the positive traits, and begin actively applying them to your life. For her it was speaker and leader, and she started stepping heavily into those roles in her business and industry, and her mission of changing people’s viewpoint on debt expanded into changing the entire collections industry!

See how she did just that by listening to today’s episode!

In this episode you will…

Be able to find your authentic gifts

Know what your strongest personality traits are, and start applying them to your life

See how to inspire people within your industry to change their methods

Be able to change the public’s idea about your industry

Know how to create new neuropathways and understand your subconscious mind

Figure out the best mindset to approach self help events with

INSIGHTS

"Our mind is built up of all these neuro networks that drive our behaviors, choices, habits, fears. Everything is coming out of this subconscious, but the magic is it can be changed…the way you get from here to there, is you gotta get all these areas of your life in alignment, and moving in the direction that you want. If we can accept that infinite possibilities are available to us…[we begin to do] things we that will connect us more to the things that we want, and stop us from flowing in all the uncertainty, and negative circumstances that swallow us whole.” – Mary Shores

“I think we’re in this place where we love to get quick fixes. We love to go away to that weekend workshop that’s going to give us a transformation…What I’ve learned is that true transformation happens in small pivots over time…if I were to come to [an] event, I would pick out the things that I knew…and I would think, how can I apply these things to my life…At an event, you’re going to learn many concepts, and my goal is to come away with one…I don’t have this expectation hang-over anymore…[and] I’ve built myself into a lot of resiliency and strength, and the ability to even see how those concepts apply to my life.” -Mary Shores

“My mantra was, ‘I want to write a book, but I’m not a writer’. And the thing is words are like a mirror to your subconscious programming, and when I [said] the words, ‘I want to write a book’ it [was] like you were looking in and seeing it written on my soul like a purpose. But the problem is the words, ‘I’m not a writer’ are also a mirror to my subconscious and it’s revealing to me one of those blocks…and so what I needed to do to eliminate that was to invest in myself.” -Mary Shores

RESOURCES

Mary Shores Website

Mary Shores Guide Book

Mary Shores Facebook

Mary Shores Instagram

Mary Shores Twitter

Conscious Communications by Mary Shores

Start with Why by Simon Sinek Website