Ep. 35: Passion into Purpose - Meaningful Work Fuels Your So...

Lindsay  00:00

I'm Lindsay Mustain and this is the Career Design Podcast made for driven ambitious square pegs and round holes type professionals who see things differently and challenge the status quo. We obliterate obstacles and unlock hidden pathways to overcome and succeed where others have not stagnation feels like death. And we are unwilling to compromise our integrity and settle for being average in any way. We are the backbone of any successful business and those who overlook our potential are doomed to a slow demise. We do work that truly matters aligns with our purpose, and in turn, we make our lasting mark on the world. We are the dreamers, doers, legends, and visionaries who are called to make our most meaningful contribution and love what we do.

Lindsay  00:43

Welcome to the Career Design Podcast today I have a special guest for you and she's someone I've known for a number of years and she is just a remarkable human being with a huge heart and her name is Destani Davies. Now she actually is somebody I knew at the beginning of starting my business in career coaching, and she has since made a pivot, and not only that she is changing the world. So today, we're gonna be talking about turning passion and purpose, and how meaningful work really fuels your soul's mission. Destani, welcome to the Career Design Podcast.

Destani  01:15

Thank you very much for having me today, Lindsay, it's an honor to be on your show.

Lindsay  01:19

I'm so thrilled that you are here. So why don't you start by kind of paint the picture of what happened to you to get to this point, and then we'll dive into come to that point. Where do you really pivoted?

Destani  01:31

Yes, so I was actually thinking about this earlier. And I was like, Oh, my gosh, where do you start? I suppose for this one, I'm going to start right at the very beginning. So my parents and before they actually had me, my mother was 17. And my father was 20 at the time, and my mother had grown up. Her mum had passed away when she was 11 years old. She didn't know her father ended up growing up with her grandmother and my father. Hit his own adversities he had gone through as a young men. So by the time they felt pregnant with me, they didn't feel like they had a lot to offer me. So together, they made the decision to put me up for adoption. My mother met with prospective parents. And she found one, the couple that had been trying to you know, have a baby for over 10 years. And it was settled, they were going to be my parents when I was born. The Doctor who birthed me, you know, he was informed of the plane at the time. And basically, the plan was the moment I was born, he was to take me outside of the birthing suite doors, there was a nurse that was going to be waiting, and I would be handed over to my perspective parents. Of course, when I was born, the plan was not followed. Instead of following those steps, he plunked me on top of my mother, and she couldn't, she couldn't give me up. What also happened is she received a phone call from another family member who said, you need to keep that baby or keep her girl inside their family. So the plan had switched from, we're going to adopt her outside of the family to we're going to keep her inside the family a day or so later, my mother and father went to the market knowing there was this new plan forging ahead and they had somebody who was ready to take me, they had left me in the car and while they were at the markets back in the mid-80s, it was safe to do that just so everybody knows and when they came back to the vehicle, I've been kidnapped. After talking to a few people, they actually ended up finding out the person who had taken me was the next one who was supposed to be my mother. So of course, my mother was, you know, besides herself, she knew she couldn't give me up, there was no way she was going to be able to do that. But because my mother and father were prepared to give me up, they had absolutely nothing in place to take on a baby. So over the next few days, they left me with family so they could go and sort that out. Basically, Iby the time they had actually come back to get me, they ended up staying in a property that had rodents in it, it was dark, dingy, and probably not fit at all for a family. It was definitely not ideal, which is why they wanted to give me up. And I suppose I share all of that, because that is part of you know, resilience for me started from that very moment. I also think there's the reason why everything happens and at that time, the one thing they had agreed on is my name. My father had chosen the name Destani, and my mother had chosen the spelling D E S T A N and I knowing full well that she was going to give me out And the reason why she chose the spelling to be different was so she could recognize one day if I ever became somebody that I was her baby. And you know, I've always known the story. But as a mother of five children myself, I never really considered how they would have felt to be in that position or even to be able to think on those terms like, how am I going to find them later on, I find it, it's quite emotional for me now. But I mean, this is just one instance of, you know, the life that I had been bought into and now I'm very grateful for all of the things, you know, we ended up being around or as a child, heavily around domestic violence, I was brought up in a woman's refugees because of their boss sick here, as a child who went to over 40 primary schools in the process, I was also sexually abused, 40, four zero, yes, I used to be able to name them. But now, I think I'm too old, I can't remember, which is a good thing. As a child, I was sexually abused at the hands of multiple individuals, which started at the age of four, which really changed everything for me. And then as a teenager, was also raped more than once, as well. But I suppose all of these different things and crappy is probably an understatement, or like, not the right word to use. But looking back, I can now say that I'm grateful for those experiences and grateful I suppose, from what I can now take from that and help others in that space if that makes sense.

Lindsay  06:23

That is just beautiful. Well, tell me about what kind of happened in your career, because you have gone down this one path, and then you decided, Okay, you know what, this is not going to work for me. And you decided to go all-in on true, what do we call passion and purpose, the real foundations of true career power?

Destani  06:41

Yes. So this is where I got to meet Lindsay actually, so originally, I had started in the career space. And this is, I think it's a lot of it had to do with because of those 40 primary schools I had been to, I realized, there are so many transferable skills that I had, and side those times of adversity that I actually bought into my job searching, I've had over 60 roles, and you know, multiple corporates, totally different industries, probably 250 into views. And I'd like to think I learned things along the way that we're able to, you know, I was able to land jobs much quicker and help other people in that space. And I thought this is it. This is exactly what I can do. I'm great at doing jobs and recognizing as I said, the transferable skill set that people have in situations they may not recognize prior, and I suppose as a way to empower them in their journey going forward. So here, I was going in that space. And you know, things were kind of going well, but then it didn't. And it started to affect my relationships. And I think just pivoting from full-time work into you know, working in the corporate side to doing my own thing was a journey in itself. I am that, like I failed miserably throughout that process, and was really ashamed that, you know, it just didn't really take off. But now looking back, I can see, although I looked at it that time because I was learning as my first proper business venture, that it wasn't actually a failure at all, it was stepping stones into what I am now currently doing, which is very much aligned and still quite the same. I'm just not working in that career space anymore. So that journey happened, I ended up packing it because it did interfere. I shouldn't say interfere, but impact my relationship. So I thought, well, I, you know, family needs to come first, if I keep pursuing this, I'm basically going to lose my family. So I chose to let that go for a bit. 

Lindsay  08:37

I just wanna pause you there for just a minute because I want to say that just takes an extraordinary act of bravery. And for people that are listening right now, I think it's really important to know and we use the word failure. And I like that word. But that word is incredibly painful for people like we typically just want to be successful. But I want you to take a moment just to pause and look back, as Destani has and say, Wow, the things that were actually my failures. And I call this the scenic route, the scenic route prepared me to take and ascend to the next level, if it had just been easy to just come to me, we wouldn't have been able to become the person we are now to do the next thing, and then the other part I want to say is that there is a point we're all reaching our lives and I hope before you get to the point where you're hemorrhaging or where you know, you have to make this do or die decision that you choose to pivot at that point before it becomes so painful. Now I didn't have that I got to the point where I was basically felt like I was hemorrhaging. I was bleeding out. I was bleeding my purpos