Business & Spirituality

Thanks for having me. I'm very, very happy and pleased to be here and speaking with you today.

Who am I and what do I do? I love that you asked that question. I thought about it before, I like to ask that question as well. Because I think there are really two ways that you can answer it: on a professional level, putting some labels on me so that people can put me in a box, and then more of my true essence. So I will share both, because people connect with different things.

On a professional, boxy level: I am a strategy consultant and entrepreneur. I used to work for Deloitte in my corporate past, before I turned entrepreneur, and I still do some freelance consulting. And the other part, which is really what fulfills me, is my passion projects, whatever you want to call it: humanplus, a platform for all things conscious entrepreneurship and leadership, and my podcast, the in.sync podcast, where we focus on connecting spirituality with business. So that's my professional label set.

But then, really: who am I? First of all, I think that's a question we all ask ourselves, and I'm not sure we'll ever have an answer to it, except that we are all consciousness. But what makes me me in this lifetime?

I think I'm a very introverted person, but I like to connect deeply. I like to have very deep, meaningful conversations. I really suck at small talk. I'm not somebody who goes to parties and has small talk with 20 people or so. I'm not interested in that, it actually takes a lot of my energy. So I prefer to have a smaller circle of people that I'm very close to.

My top values are freedom and independence, and I think you can really see that in all aspects of my life. I need to know that I'm free, and then I will be close to people and to things and to situations.

What else? Right now I live in Ericeira, in Portugal, right by the beach. I meditate a lot, about two hours a day. So again, that's very inward. But when I do go out, I bring a lot of energy, and I love to do things. I am very active as well, I'm a runner. I'm many things for many people.

I think right now in the world, it's not very connected at all. There's a lot of unconsciousness everywhere in the world, but particularly in the business world.

The concept of work-life balance really underpins that, because it basically says that you have work and then you have life, and both of them are very separate. So you can do all of your spiritual stuff in your life, but you cannot really do it at work. There's a separation of who you are in those different environments. So right now, it is not very connected.

Of course, lots of people are into the world of spirituality and personal growth, but they can't really bring that authentically into the work environment. Which is exactly where I see such a big gap to be bridged. And that's what I'm hoping to close, or at least narrow a little bit, with the work that I do. As I said, humanplus is a platform, an ecosystem for conscious entrepreneurs and leaders, to help them remember who they are and help them find their way back to their purpose, so they can be more authentic at work, therefore closing the gap. Because if a leader is more authentic, that allows their people to be more authentic.

And similarly with my podcast, where I talk a lot about how people have used spirituality to build massive [businesses] in the real world, or share tools and techniques that can help people to work better, be more productive, be more peaceful, all of this. So to answer your question: right now it's not connected, and that's exactly what I'm trying to change.

Yeah. I think a lot of people are very taken aback by the world of spirituality, because they associate it with, I don't know, religion, or, I don't know the word, like a cult or so.

For me, spirituality is simply a way of living. It includes tools and techniques that let you experience higher levels of consciousness. For example, one tool could be meditation. I'm a very big meditation fan. That gets you onto a different level of consciousness. It literally changes the frequency in your brain and your vibration. Or breathwork has the same effect, or yoga: anything that gets you into an altered state of consciousness, and that transcends you from purely smelling, seeing, our five senses, I'm not going to call them all out now. Anything that lets you perceive more of the world that is not visible just with your eyes.

There's so much around you. We are just energy. We are energy in its heaviest, densest form. And people think: oh, I see my hand, so my hand must be real. I don't see anything else. But that doesn't mean that there is nothing around us. There are infinite possibilities, infinite information available in the quantum field that is everywhere. And spirituality, in my view, is just a tool to be able to access that. You could also call it consciousness work.

So for me, it doesn't have anything to do with religion. In fact, I come from a very anti-religious background. I was never planning on getting anywhere there anyway. So for me, it has nothing to do with religion.

Well, there's no short answer to that. Okay.

So essentially, I said it in my intro already: I used to be a management consultant. I was very conditioned, when I grew up, to follow a certain path. My parents were both in the corporate world. We always had enough money, but not crazy wealth. So it was always: okay, you get a good education. They wanted me to have a good education, which was very important to them. And then you go study, and then you find a job in the corporate world, and then you have your box, and that's it. That is where life ends. And then maybe you want to have children, maybe you want to get married. That's what my definition of success looked like. I didn't know anything else.

So that's the path that I went onto, and I followed it all very, very nicely, I would say. Although even in my teenage years I was a bit of a rebel, because I always felt like: okay, something doesn't really fit here. But I did it anyway.

And then, just before I landed my first job, I had this calling to start meditation. As I said, my parents are not in this world at all. This is not how I grew up. So it was fairly random to start meditation. And that's always how the universe works: you get an opportunity, but it's up to you to take it.

So there was somebody in my friend circle who said: I'm going to start Transcendental Meditation, why don't you come along? It was a course that cost 500 pounds. I was in London at that point, and I didn't have the money for it. My mom then said: okay, I'm going to pay for it. Not knowing what she was doing. And it was the best thing she could have done. Because 500 pounds was a lot of money for me back then, and it was enough money for me to stick it through. I didn't want to just do it and then leave it, so I was very committed from the first minute on.

Transcendental Meditation is a mantra-based technique that you do in the morning for 20 minutes, and in the evening. And little did I know what it would do to my consciousness. In the beginning, it was just helping me focus, stay more focused, have more energy, all of these benefits they try to sell you on the website, that get people hooked to try it out.

But very quickly I started feeling a sense of relief, that I had almost found home. Something felt very homey to me, something felt really right to me. And I was always questioning a lot of things: values, purpose, blah, blah, blah. Everyone around me always felt like: what's happening with this girl? Why is she thinking about this?

Basically, I think I started my awakening, my consciousness, the way I describe it, like this: it was like a dark house. There were lights in it, but all the windows were closed. And the minute that I started meditation, one window after the other went up, and later on doors opened, and then I walked outside. That's how it felt to me.

And I stayed in that consulting environment for almost five years. I was really good at my job as well, but removed from it in a way. I was doing the work, I was getting promoted, I was climbing the corporate ladder like everyone else. But I always thought: there's so much unhappiness, there's so much suffering going on here. Why are these people so ego-driven? Why are they so toxic? Why do they create all of this drama and stuff? But then I also didn't know what was happening at all. It was just my meditation bubble.

And then a few years later, somebody put The Power of Now on my desk, at an investment bank in the middle of London. This really doesn't happen very often. It was a colleague of mine who put it there and said: I think you need to read this book. And I read this book, and with everything that Eckhart Tolle said in that book: finally, life makes sense. Finally, there's somebody here who gets it.

And then I realized: okay, there seems to be a world out there. So I started really seeking, going on my spiritual journey, reading tons of books and understanding that there's a whole world out there. So I think that was another mini awakening, or a big awakening actually.

That eventually also gave me the courage to resign from Deloitte, because I felt like: I don't like this environment, I don't like the way people speak, and this cannot be it. This cannot be life. There needs to be something more, and I cannot have a big enough impact here. So I resigned.

But then what happened? I basically went from one trap into another trap. And mind you, the universe really does not give me a break. Everything happens for me very, very quickly. Other people maybe get a few weeks' break. For me, it's one thing after the other.

I thought: okay, I'm just going to be an entrepreneur, and that's going to solve all of my problems. And that's what I did. I co-founded a company in Singapore, an e-commerce company. And I very quickly realized, and this is when my intuition and my guides started very, very clearly communicating with me, I already knew where this was going. I already knew that it wasn't in alignment with my purpose. I had all of these answers already within me, but there was something that was preventing me from actually living it.

I thought, like you said earlier: how can you be a spiritual person and do consulting? This is how I saw myself. I can be spiritual, but I cannot do this work if I really am a spiritual person. This is so much in conflict. Later on I realized this is all just in my head, but anyway, I had this perception in my mind: okay, my spiritual side needs to stay my spiritual side, and my business side needs to be my business side. But I got very, very clear insights that that is not how it's supposed to be.

And at some point I wrote down in my journal: I need to be stopped. I need to be stopped from pursuing the wrong things. Shortly after, the company went down, and shortly after that, the Corona pandemic hit. So, words are powerful. And I was like: damn. I wrote this down. This is what I called in. This is the experience that I called in.

I say this now a little bit removed, because it's been some time and I needed to do a lot of work to release that. But it was very hard to face the fact that I had known all of these things inside, yet I wasn't acting in alignment with what I knew to be true and what I knew was my purpose.

But then finally I found the guts to do it, because the feeling now is so strong. I just know that if I don't bring this work into the world, according to my abilities in this lifetime, I will be in trouble on the other side. I'll come back, and I'll have to do it all over again. So that's when I really started creating my companies, humanplus and in.sync, and creating from the heart instead of with my mind.

A lot of self-doubt, a lot of fears, and simply thinking that it wouldn't be possible, because the world, as we know, operates more unconsciously than consciously. I just simply didn't think that my contribution could make a difference. Why did I think that? You're not good enough, all of this. All these crazy limiting beliefs that I carried from my childhood: things need to be a certain way, there is only one path to success.

I hadn't seen examples of people who had done it, because I was so on my little path. Every time I had a thought of: oh, I need to do this, my mind came in and said: nah, you're not good enough. No one's going to listen to you. This is not worthwhile. So that is why it took me such a long time. Well, actually not such a long time, but I feel like it was a long time.

Yes, absolutely. I think purpose always changes over your evolution, as you progress. My general purpose has to do with raising consciousness in people, right now specifically in the business world. Getting people to remember who they truly are, and getting people to remember their personal purpose.

Especially in the business world, we hear a lot of purpose talk, but that's usually a company purpose, or: we need to be sustainable, blah, blah, blah. What people forget is that purpose is actually threefold. It's the present purpose, your personal purpose and the company purpose. Ideally, those three things work in perfect harmony together, because that is when life is really easy and enjoyable. If they are misaligned, it doesn't [work].

But this is where I see my work right now: helping people remember who they are, and raising their consciousness. And I imagine that over the course of my life, that might take many different forms. Right now, it's manifesting through my projects, humanplus and in.sync. But I am really open to receive, and to let the universe guide me now, because when I do it with my mind, it's not happening clearly.

Yeah, of course. The personal purpose is essentially what your soul has come here, in its current incarnation, to help with in the world. And every soul has a purpose.

A lot of people are a little bit intimidated when they hear purpose, because they think: oh my God, I need to be the next Elon Musk and send people to Mars. But your purpose could be as simple as spreading joy in your family, or with your friends, or at work. It could be that simple. And everyone knows what their purpose is, if they start to tune in and start to listen. You just need to sit down, get into the state, and listen to what comes through and what feels natural to you, what you're passionate about, and what at the same time solves a problem in the world. And again, this could be as small as: I'm just a happy person and I'm spreading joy, right?

Your present purpose: what are you doing in this very moment that is in alignment with your personal purpose? For example, why am I doing this interview? Why am I sharing all of this? Because hopefully it will inspire somebody to go and seek their own personal purpose, right? Which is in alignment with my purpose. So I always ask myself: what is the purpose, or the intention, behind speaking with somebody? If I don't know what it is, then it's just a waste of time, because it's an activity of the ego, but it's not actually in alignment with [who I am].

And the company purpose is then what you create based on what you know about your present and your personal purpose. Not everyone wants to be an entrepreneur, and not everybody should be an entrepreneur either. So you don't have to think now: fuck, I need to create this company that solves this and that issue. No. You could also contribute to a company that does something that feels in alignment with you.

For example, when I worked at Deloitte: I don't even know what their company purpose is, and I also don't care. I never cared. But I knew why I was there, because I wanted to acquire some skills and some competencies and some credibility and all of that. So even in hindsight now, even though I didn't associate with the company purpose, it still served as a way for me to develop what I wanted to develop at that point. So you could also just join a company because you like the team, or because you acquire some skills.

And that is how I see that wheel of personal, present and company purpose. When they are perfectly aligned, that is when opportunities come up naturally. That's when you get excited, when you don't feel drained by your work, and that's when you just feel very content with everything that you do.

I think there were moments that were significant, but generally it was more of a transition for me.

There are also two ways of having an awakening. Either there is an event happening that really shakes you to your core, and you wake up and you just see the world with different [eyes]. That happens to a lot of people. There are even terms for those two scenarios, which I can't remember off the top of my head now. But the second one, and I think this is the one that happened to me, is more of a slow transition. And I'm still in that awakening process, like most people. The journey never ends, there are always new insights.

But of course there have been moments where I just knew: now I need to make a change. The first example actually is meditation. When I was called into meditation, I just knew in my heart: this is something I need to do. And although it didn't make sense, I just needed to do it, very strongly. That led me to my first bigger awakening.

Then there was a moment in my corporate career where I had a confrontation with somebody, and they said something that I perceived as disrespectful. And I just did not want to associate with this. A lot of people would then just complain about the situation. In that moment, I knew: this is my sign to get out. And so I resigned on the spot. I said: I need to call you back. And I resigned in that moment. So again, this was just a moment.

There was one funny moment, actually, I reflected on it the other day. When I was in Singapore, I was very deep in my spiritual journey, and I read tons of books during that time as well. And I had this moment where my mind said to me: you should stop reading so many spiritual books, and you should read something business related. And in that moment, I think my highest self spoke to me and said: no, no, no, no, no. Do not get on that track of "you need to read business books". You should continue on your path. I remember this so clearly. This was my intuition, my guide, speaking to me in such a clear voice. I didn't immediately act on it, but I remember it now as vividly as if it was yesterday. And this was another moment where that initiation took place: no, no, no. Stop running after what you should do. Stop doing what you're supposed to do.

And then of course when the pandemic hit, which was a self-fulfilling prophecy, it couldn't have happened any other way: I wrote down, I need to be stopped. So again, this was a moment of: now you do it now, or you do it never.

So for me, it's more of an ongoing transformation, with certain pressure points, I would say, that make me act.

Yeah. So with humanplus, I'm creating an ecosystem, a platform for all things conscious entrepreneurship and leadership.

How it started is: I wanted to put all of my knowledge about different altered states of consciousness, and how we can create these altered states of consciousness in order to find our way back to our truth, and a few tools and audits to identify your purpose, values, all of these things, into leadership programs that I do with small groups of leaders, and put them through an experience. This was the initial idea: to put that in a format that people can consume online, and also offline in person.

What happened then is that a sort of community is building around it, and you know it because you're in it. Initially the idea was only to set that up for people who go through the programs, to exchange knowledge and ideas and stuff. And I invited a few of my friends in who could give some input. But now I realize that people are actually seeking that connection with like-minded people, and people want to grow together.

So now that we have the community evolving around this as well, the beautiful thing is that there are so many amazing people in this community who have also created their own programs, their own methodologies, and we are now working on ways to co-create together. I really want to explore the concept of co-creation, because in the old world it's really all about competition: if I have this program, you cannot have it. Whereas I'm really challenging that paradigm and saying: okay, we can all win. So if you have something awesome to share, and I have the reach, I'm like: let's do something together. Let's create a leadership journey together that encompasses elements of your course, and then maybe of yours, and then blah, blah, blah. And everyone can win from this.

And it's a bit scary, because it's not that this has been done a million times before. So you're like: oh man, I need to think about what the business model is for a model like this, who earns from what, that sort of thing. But it is absolutely possible: mutually beneficial partnerships, and constantly pushing myself away from this competition thinking, because of course it's ingrained in my mind. It's beautiful, though, to see that we are now onboarding a number of co-creators in the next couple of weeks, and we have already started. Everyone's bringing in their own secret sauce and their network, and it's growing organically. So let's see what it evolves into, but eventually it is an ecosystem for all of those things.

And with the in.sync podcast, similarly: I have set an intention. I'm a real fan of setting intentions and letting the universe fill in the details, because I find my mind is very restricted. My mind always tries to figure things out, and my mind always thinks it knows everything and knows the best possible outcome for me, but it really doesn't.

So what I do now is share intentions: listen, I want to raise awareness for topics like spirituality and consciousness in the business world. What is the best way for me to do this? And I have been lucky enough to receive amazing interview requests from people who have built billion dollar companies, who are using tools like manifestation, visualization, like: I eat my peanut butter toast in the morning, the most normal thing. And so that's kind of evolving into a platform where I'm sharing those stories, which also gives people concrete ideas and tools to do this, and kind of removes the stigma that this does not belong in the work world. Because that's exactly where it belongs. So let's see where all of this is going to go. I don't know.

The paradigm of consciousness, or unconsciousness. That is what needs to be challenged.

I think positive change in everything only ever starts with the individual, right? If you operate from a confined level of consciousness, and that me-me thinking, which happens on lower levels of consciousness, you never even get to experience things like purpose. You never even get to think about how you can use technology for the better, what problems really need to be solved in the world.

There are many people who come into this world who already have that level of consciousness, and these are the ones who build the future, the future of technology, whatnot. They are challenging all of those paradigms, and that's amazing. But there is still a big population in this lifetime who have really untapped potential. They would see all of these things, and they would start thinking in that way, if their consciousness evolved a little bit away from that scarcity, me first: there's nothing other than the things that I see, I don't care what the planet looks like for future generations, that sort of thing.

So all of this really happens when people experience an increased level of consciousness. And that is the paradigm that I would like to challenge, especially in the business world, because that is where the money is. Money means power, and money means change, and money means a lot of good things. So this is the specific set of people that I feel called to work with right now: to help them, not that they wouldn't get there in their own time, but to accelerate them a little bit.

I definitely think that the pandemic is an acceleration of something that already started happening a few years ago. So we are now really at a turning point for humanity and for the world.

I think the people who say it's all going back to normal view life as a very short span of time. Whereas the world has been around for billions of years, and humans for a good time as well. So only because I, being in my thirties, cannot see what might happen in 200 or 300 years, doesn't mean that the change isn't happening right now.

So I definitely think that the pandemic is a bit of an accelerator. There might be a point where people go back a little bit, or don't move as fast as I would like them to move, or humanity to move. But there is no going back. We are always in constant evolution. I don't know why people even say: it's going back to normal. Humanity has been evolving for thousands of years, and now in 2020 we'll go back? I don't think so. We might not move as quickly, but we are moving. It has already started actually, I don't know the year, but a few years ago. The energy has been changing for some time. There are people who can talk about this in detail. I'm not the one.

Yeah, totally. Even with the type of work that I do right now, and you're doing it as well, I don't know how you feel about it, but the insight that I keep getting is that I'm kind of being prepared. Right now it's not my time yet. That's what I know. It's very soon. But even the type of work that I do: not everyone is ready for it yet. So everything that I do is kind of building up to the point where there's a big enough [audience] for it to be adopted.

So I notice that even for my own work. And I still keep going, because I know the process is initiated, and more and more people wake up. Now it's about reaching a critical mass. I do have influence on it with my work, but I cannot say when that's going to happen. Even I know that I'm still early on in the journey, and that this work is going to take off. And my prediction is, I keep getting the number 37: when I'm 37. So in six years or so. That's the timeframe I've been getting for many years already. So I think then there's going to be another big wave, and until then there will be smaller ones. But that's the timeline.

Yeah. It doesn't mean that it can't happen now, right? But there will be another very big push in a few years.

Yeah. And, as you said, most change is also happening gradually. You're changing right now, in this very moment. By listening to this conversation, a transformation process is being initiated in someone's mind, right?

People always think: I'm not changing, blah, blah, blah. Well, you're listening to this, and afterwards you might look up the new paradigm, or you might look up altered states of consciousness. And yes, you are developing every single second. And then at one point it clicks, and then it's visible. But that doesn't mean that we are not changing all the time. It's just that humans want to hold on to what they know. I have the same sometimes.

I hope that people will remember me as somebody who tried to live as authentically and honestly as I possibly can, in whatever form that will look like. And that people recognize the effort that I'm putting in, my intentions, to help advance humanity in my own little way, even if it's just one little person who was positively impacted by my work. So I just hope that's what people would recognize me for: my authentic self.

Thank you too. Thank you.