(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)
Hello and welcome to the Inspired Woman podcast. My name is Sam Bell and I want to take some time just to explain to you in this first episode what this podcast is all about and how it came about really. So inspired is something, it's a feeling that I have and when I feel inspired everything just happens with so much ease and so much flow and so inspiration has been something that I've sought out in my healing journey and it comes in many different forms but one of those forms is other women who share their stories in an authentic way and inspire me with their achievements or just being in their presence and so it's such, it's so healing for me and such an amazing feeling for me.
I wanted to find a way that I could share this with other women and men and there may be some guys out there listening to this podcast so yeah, I want to share inspiration. So over, I don't know how long this podcast will run but I already have a number of episodes planned where I'm going to be speaking with some of the most inspirational people that I have met in my life and they may be people that you've heard of, they may be people that you've never heard of but they each share a story or a wisdom that is going to inspire you in your own journey. I also wanted to share with you a little bit about my business.
My business is called Sam Bell Inspired. Why that name? Well my maiden name is Sam Bell and my late dad was also called Sam Bell and he was one of the first people to ever inspire me. So it seemed a little bit of a tribute to call my business name is Sam Bell but to add that inspired because it's inspired by my dad Sam Bell.
So I wanted to share that with you but then the other little piece that I wanted to share with you is my tagline, my business tagline. I chose stop existing start living and that in itself is a hugely inspirational saying for me and it has great meaning because I realized by the time I was at about the age of 40 that I had really been existing in my life and this was something that a patient, for those of you that don't know, I am a registered nurse and also a midwife and when I was nursing back in the UK I remember being interviewed for a job in a hospice and I recall very clearly going into this hospice and I had never set foot in a hospice before and I expected this hospice to be somewhat probably quiet, sad. I don't know what I was really expecting but I certainly wasn't expecting what greeted me and what greeted me was so much joy and vibrancy and noise.
There were patients in the patient lounge and I remember looking down this long corridor towards where all this loud noise was coming from and it sounded like there was a party going on down there and it was no special time of year at all but I could hear a piano playing and I could hear people singing and I could hear people laughing and the receptionist said to me, feel free to go down, that's the patient's lounge. I'm like, okay. So I remember walking down this corridor and entering the patient lounge and looking and there was just so much activity, so many things going on there and this lady, she walked up to me and I now know that her name was Corridwen and she looked up one look at me and she said, you've got to be here for an interview and I was like, is it that obvious and she said, yeah there's a few of you that have walked in here and you all look the same, you all look shocked and I said that I suppose I am a little bit surprised to you know, see all of this fun and laughter going on down here and she said, what did you expect? Did you expect us all to be sitting here dying? I was like, oh I suppose I did and she said, well said, that's the thing she said, we're all dying.
She said that the greatest gift that I was ever given was being told approximately when I was going to die and I looked at her and sort of, this was a little bit crazy and a little bit confusing and she said, yeah, she said, because at that moment I stopped existing in my life and I started living it and that's what we're doing here, we are living our lives, living our best lives and that stayed with me but it didn't stay with me initially, not until much later when I ran into some problems in my life that made me stop in my tracks and realize, holy shit, I have been existing in my life and I have not been living my life and I remember at that point looking back and remembering Kiridwen and her words and realizing how much wisdom there was in those words and how amazing it would be if we actually did stop existing and start living our lives but before we're told that it's too late or before we're told that we are dying and we have an expiry date. So one of the reasons I'm recording this podcast is to share with you tips and methodology and research and people and situations, events, stories that will help you to live your life and stop existing within it. Sounds like a big thing, a big ask but it's something that is really, really important to me and I have Kiridwen to thank for that.
Now my own story, just like many other people, um they have, some people call it a spiritual awakening, some people say that it's a turning point in their lives but many of us have something happen to us, some people it might be a near death experience, for me it was the end of my 21 year marriage and but it was an event that occurred that made me stop in my tracks and realize that I needed to do something with my life and before it was too late and that is exactly what I did. I was 40, I'm now 57, so that was 17 years ago and my marriage came to an abrupt end and I thought that I could fix it, I thought I could fix my marriage, I thought that, you know, that I could fix anything really and the one thing I didn't look to fixing was myself and I realized that I needed to fix me and understand me and know me and so began my journey and it started with um a few years of counseling with a clinical psychologist and also the understanding that for many, many years I had buried things, um things that I didn't want to feel or I didn't want to look at head on and and I just buried them and so they ended up being underneath the surface and what I didn't realize at that time is that by burying those things, those feelings, those memories, I was actually causing more trauma to myself and so I started to what I call unravel, um I started to explore and face some of the things that had happened to me in my life head on and clear up all of the mess that was beneath the surface and one of the most important things for me was to actually learn who I truly was. What were my belief systems? What were my values? What were my true feelings? I realized that for 40 odd years I had lived my life trying to please other people, trying to live by their values that I had adopted as my own, trying to feel how I was supposed to feel in any given moment, what was expected of me, um I also realized that I'm an empath and although this has served me well in my nursing career, I realized that it was very, very easy for me to walk in my patient's shoes and as an empath I could take on another person's feelings, another person's pain but it would then become my own and that drained me and I didn't even know that that was happening at the time but that was why I operated from an obligation vibration, doing things that I thought that I should do to please other people and never doing things for myself to please me.
So there's a lot of things that I've learned in my own journey and with the help of many of these people that you're going to be hearing from over future episodes including Corridwen who is my inspiration and my dad Sam Bell who is also my inspiration. I'm going to be sharing these these pearls of wisdom so that you can be like me and stop existing in your life and start living it. It is a most amazing gift and I truly hope that through this podcast you will find something in here that will empower you to start living your life with passion, with purpose.
Who knows where your journey may go? You may even end up being a guest on this podcast, who knows? That is just a little bit about my why behind this podcast. In the next couple of episodes I'm going to explain a little bit more, go into a little bit more of my story before we start interviewing our guests. So this is Sam Bell Inspired signing off from this very first episode of The Inspired Woman.
This is a wonderful journey and I'm excited to have you along for the ride. Until next time.
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)
