Doing Everything Right and Still Feeling Off - Alignment, Burnout and Slowing Down With Carmell Clark

Jennifer Norman:
What if the moment that breaks you is the moment that finally brings you home to yourself? For a long time, I lived life like a race to the finish line. Always moving, always producing, always pushing. From the outside, it looked like success. But on the inside, I was exhausted and depleted. Then came this breaking point. It wasn't a gentle awakening. It was really a full mental and emotional unraveling that made it impossible to keep living the way that I was. Slowing down wasn't a lifestyle choice.

Jennifer Norman:
It was actually, for me, it was survival. But in that pause, something unexpected happened. I started listening inward. I got to know myself, really know myself. And instead of living on autopilot, I began designing my life with intention, with agency, and with truth. Today, my life feels richer, more meaningful, and more special. Spacious. It's definitely not perfect, but it is deeply aligned.

Jennifer Norman:
And it's a change that I am so profoundly grateful for. Which is why today's conversation matters so much. Because my guest helps people make this exact shift from burnout to alignment, from striving to self trust. Carmell Clark is a master transformational coach, business strategist, and the founder of the center for Transformational Influence, a global hub for self actualized leadership, conscious influence and deeply fulfilling work and relationships. She works with entrepreneurs, executives and visionaries from launch to scale. She leads immersive group programs and international transformation experiences and creates space where people don't just feel inspired, they change. She's also an author with multiple books and progress and a speaker known for moving audiences into real embodied transformation. So in today's conversation, you'll hear us explore how slowing down and listening inward can radically transform how we lead and live.

Jennifer Norman:
What happens when we stop shrinking from our brilliance and claim our growth without apology. How alignment, not achievement, becomes the foundation for sustained, sustainable success. And why boundaries are the quiet architecture that protects our energy and deepens trust. This is a conversation for anyone who's done everything right and still knows that there's a more honest, spacious way forward. That shift from striving to self trust is exactly the terrain that today's conversation explores. I personally can't think of a better guide for this moment. So let's bring Carmell Clark in.

Jennifer Norman:
Hello Carmell. How are you today?

Carmell Clark:
Great, Jennifer. Thank you so much for having me. I am really delighted to be here. It's really an honor, especially considering where you are placed in this conversation and what you're bringing to people. I'm really, really delighted to be here with you.

Jennifer Norman:
Oh, this is exactly what The Human Beauty Movement is all about. Everything that you do, all of the things that you stand for, all of the work. And so I'm really, really excited to have this conversation. So before we go anywhere, when someone finishes listening to this conversation, what do you most want them to feel, understand, or do differently in their life or in the way that they lead?

Carmell Clark:
Oh, I think that there are a few things, one you already mentioned, which is alignment, not achievement, is our most fulfilling measure of our success in our lives. And then to add to that, I would say alignment we need to see as a journey and not as an arrival so we can come through these really transformational experiences. That breaking point, that bottom hitting rock bottom, and. And the transformation that that can bring about. And one of the things that I have learned is that awareness and transformation can go a long distance. And then we can find ourselves feeling adrift again because we don't stay the same. And we are always moving through that next doorway, that next threshold. And so what felt and worked really well with that alignment for maybe even a long time can suddenly not work anymore.

Carmell Clark:
So to see alignment as a journey that we're on and not an arrival, I think is very important. And then finally, I would say the last thing I would hope people would walk away with today is an idea of what it means to be able to be with myself. And that means creating a love affair, falling in love with myself, not in a narcissistic way, but in a deep, soulful ability to be with myself and love my own company and my life in the moments in between, my way, if that makes sense.

Jennifer Norman:
So, so important and so nuanced. And so I want to dive into this notion of alignment because I think a lot of people hear about it. A lot of people may think that they're on the right path, but how would one know if they are out of alignment? What are some of the things that might be showing up in their lives if they're not in alignment?

Carmell Clark:
One of the things that I think often comes up for us when we're not in alignment is not this, like, kind of deep resentment, resistance, or anger, right? Like, those things can be there and we can even not know that they're there. Like, we can maybe have lived with it and not listened to it for so long that it's just part of the landscape that we live with every day and don't pay attention to. Finally something happens or we decide to finally really get more invested and reflective within ourselves, we find, oh, wow, there's a lot down there that I haven't paid attention to that's been Trying to get my attention and work with me and teach me and guide me. So I think alignment, learning how to understand our alignment and how we can recognize when we're not, that would be an example. Another one would be just plain unhappiness. Unhappiness could be a factor of we're not on the path that really is our path for our lives, that that is aligned for us. Or it could be that we inside, we are not with us. I'm not with myself on that path.

Carmell Clark:
So I'm not in alignment inside, even though my path is correct.

Jennifer Norman:
Right.

Carmell Clark:
Like we can have different versions of that. Another would be, this happens often that a job or a relationship needs to transform or change whole scale for us to start to move into alignment. Because, you know, and you already shared this as the intro today, we. That alignment is that deep feeling of centeredness inside, like peace and not contentment in settling, but contentment in being able to be within ourselves in a moment and in a day, in a. In the months of our lives.

Jennifer Norman:
I love that you talked about it as a journey because I feel the same way. I feel like we all go through somewhat of a hero's journey back to self, hopefully back to self. And that would be the ideal goal, is to really make these discoveries of self. And I also like the acknowledgement that you do have phases in your life and what might be right for you as a youngster might not be the right things for you and may show you. Okay, now I'm no longer in alignment with where I want to be during this phase or this season of my life now that I've had a baby and I'm a mom, or now that I've retired, or now that I've lost a job, or now that I'm in a different kind of a relationship now that I'm a caretaker. There's so many different things that can be thrown to you in life which may ask something of you and to the point of getting to know yourself and knowing what. And we'll talk about boundaries in a moment.

Jennifer Norman:
What those magic guardrails are. Yeah, we could either give too much and then ultimately feel resentment, or we may feel that maybe we're living too much for a narcissistic point of view, which is not necessarily self love either. It's more of a showcasing of ego perhaps. And so yeah, there are so many nuances. And not that this one conversation will be absolutely the nail on the head for everybody, but I think that this causes us to all pause and reflect in our own lives, whatever stage that our listeners are in. Let's take this moment. You're listening to this podcast for a reason. You want to get some golden nuggets out of it.

Jennifer Norman:
Let this be your time to stop and pause and think, oh, is there something that just feels a little bit awry in my life or is there something that I was seeking that might not necessarily be what is going to lead to. To ultimate happiness? Maybe something else is the way forward to what that kind of success might be for me, which is this feeling of fulfillment and meaning and purpose in my life.

Carmell Clark:
Yeah, beautifully said. I think what I have found is that the more I have lived connected to my purpose and lived my purpose, and when I say purpose, I'm not talking like self help guru kind of purpose, I'm told, thinking about articulating to myself my reason for being on the planet. That's been there from the moment I was born. Right. And that's one of the things I help people get down to instead of this contrived like I've got to be able to define my purpose now and I'm here to change the world and do all these things. Well, that may be part of it, but. But it really is a purpose that is my private inner journey. Right.

Carmell Clark:
Like that's where purpose really lives, I believe. And I guess what I would say in that is that we, first of all, we tend to put, I think too much on that, but in terms of I've got to find it instead of coming inside and listening to it. But then as we're living it, being able to recognize that how we meet the self, how we come to know the self in that is also going to change again and again over time. Right. It's not going to stay the same. We have to be willing to meet the new versions of ourselves that are coming in. I tell people all the time is I've learned from women much different ages older than me that their way of being able to live fully has been reinvention, always coming to reinvention. And I think the core of that is this knowing the self or being able to come to know the self and recognize that knowing the self is again, like I said, not the one time deal, like it's going to change.

Carmell Clark:
So anyway, you are on another thought.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah, no, I think that's so beautiful. There was this workshop that I was hosting where there were these two young brothers and one brother was telling me we were talking about the influence of social media because let's face it, we are all bombarded with so many messages. And young people especially, they are so digital native. They're on all these apps and they've got messages, messages, messages, input media, all of this stuff coming at them. And how in the world are they supposed to navigate that? And it becomes difficult to say, well, who am I versus what am I trying to be based on all of these things, things and these influences that are out there. One brother said, you know, I look at all of that and it makes me feel so envious, so jealous and so bad about myself. I feel like, well, why are all these people having such a wonderful life and why am I, why is my life so boring? Why isn't it like that? The other brother said, I get so excited when I look at social media because I see inspiration, I see art, I see opportunities to meet people and network. And it's just so interesting how two brothers can have a very different perspective when absorbing information.

Jennifer Norman:
And you were very, very astute in saying, like, if you feel, if you're harboring anger or jealousy, resentment, like a lot of those things are messages that, oh, maybe this is an opportunity for us to cultivate more self love and self awareness and knowledge so that we can have a more positive perspective and look at things and reframe things so that we're not feeling like we are under the thumb all the time. How can we get to a place where we're okay with ourselves and then we're able to let things slide, other behaviors from other people and be like, ah. Instead of getting so combative about it, can we look at it as. I understand that person must be having a bad day or, or I kind of see through what this behavior is and being able to take it with more of an objective point of view rather than. So personally, can you talk a little bit more about what you see in the way that you coach and perhaps some of the folks that come to you for assistance and guidance there?

Carmell Clark:
I think you brought us into that really well, Jennifer, that we're going to encounter all kinds of behaviors in people and when we know ourselves better, we're able to see past the initial and recognize, oh, this person must be in a lot of pain or this person must have something going on and really credit people for the most part with just intending the best and trying their most people, I think are doing the best they can at any given moment, whatever it looks like. And that's not an original idea, of course, when I say that that's definitely been out there. I really love the work of Don Miguel Ruiz for that reason. Right. The Four Agreements that he wrote and The Fifth Agreement, really fantastic to have this idea that when we give people that same grace and compassion, because I. It's not, I don't even want to say the benefit of the doubt. It's not just giving people the benefit of the doubt, it's actually going further and giving them grace and compassion. One of the things about the difference between those two ideas as well is when we give people grace and compassion, we can also have healthy boundaries for ourselves.

Carmell Clark:
Whereas when we give people the benefit of the doubt, we could be overriding our own boundaries to allow behaviors that we need to have a boundary for. Right. Like, so I think it's important to distinguish between those two things. And I think that this, the idea of being able to know ourselves at a deeper level means that we're going to encounter, of course, our own shadow. We're going to look at the parts of ourselves that are uncomfortable. The better we know those parts, that the better or more clearly we see others around us and we can show up better to our relationships, we can show it better to our work environments. And that also means that we're able to see the things that don't fit or don't work.

Carmell Clark:
I just had a client session earlier today. She's in a situation where she's never had a close relationship with her mother and it's always been fraught. And she herself is a really fantastic coach. Right. She's very reflective and heart led and all of these things. Very wise. And in the conversation that we're talking about, I shared with her one of my favorite lines from an Italian film that came out years ago. It's called Bread and Tulips. And in the film, one person says to the other, she's lived this life of giving herself to everybody else and finally come to I need to give myself my life.

Carmell Clark:
Right. He said, it would seem to me that your husband is not a deep connoisseur of your soul. And I said to my client today, seem to me that your mother is not a deep connoisseur of your soul. And I love that idea that we can see that the person has their own path. Even in a close relationship like that, we can see that there are differences that really don't recognize who we are and that we know we have to be recognized for who we are. So maybe a relationship is not in alignment for us. Maybe a situation like our work situation is not in alignment. If we cannot feel being met authentically when we are coming from an authentic place.

Carmell Clark:
It's a really good indicator to challenge or find healthy boundaries with that situation, that person, that place that we're in.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah, I was just nodding so feverishly because I think that that is usually because we are such bundles of energy as human beings and coming into close proximity, sometimes people are very good mirrors for things that we can't see in ourselves. And sometimes we can't hear it because we're not in that space. That sense of spaciousness to be able to receive that feedback. And then sometimes people are so overwhelmed by their own need for healing and their own stuff that they'll project their issues onto you and trying to discern between the two at any given moment. I mean, that is what life is. It's, you know, navigating people and humans and getting along and seeing what this means for you. And a lot of times it is this beautiful tightrope balancing act that we are all doing to try to have this self care while also having enough to be able to give and to be our best selves so that we can show up beautifully for others rather than in the ravages of polarization as we sometimes see out in life.

Jennifer Norman:
And when it's somebody close to you, like a spouse or a mother or a brother, I mean, that's when it gets so difficult. It's not like you can just with a friend say, okay, I'm just not going to see you anymore. It becomes a little bit more challenging. And I know for a long time I myself, I had a very difficult upbringing with my mom. And I think that it was only after I was able to objectively look back and see all like, I was able to have the perspective of. She's gone through a lot in her life, you know, this war baby. She was torn from her parents and she was homesick and developed all of these emotional needs. And I didn't have that perspective being a child, being a teen that was trying to be rebellious.

Jennifer Norman:
And then it did allow me this sense and semblance of compassion and grace and that I only was able to see after a lot of reflection, of course, going through motherhood myself. And they always say that, just wait till you have kids. You'll see what I mean. And you're like, yeah, whatever. But yes, I think that saying they did the best that they had with the tools that they had at the time can definitely alleviate a lot of that sense of angst. And constriction that a lot of us feel when it comes to relationship butting heads and non alignment.

Carmell Clark:
Right?

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. Yeah.

Carmell Clark:
I think that in that. Right. You touched into many different things in that. Because we have to also give ourselves full range and full permission to be able to feel the things that we feel and that those can be valid and the person can be doing the best that they can do at the same time and love us. Right. Like those things can all be true at the same time. And then figuring out how to navigate that means that nobody's the bad guy necessarily. Right.

Carmell Clark:
How do we move through our healing process to get to the point where finally nobody's the bad guy anymore? Right. Like, I think that's part of what I hear when we come to that heart of forgiveness and that heart of understanding. And what you shared actually makes me think about to Thích Nhất Hạnh's work in The Heart of Understanding. Right. Which comes from The Upanishads and The Heart Sutra. Right. That we learn how to see our own hearts and our own selves more and more clearly. And in doing that, we are able to look into somebody else and see who they are and see their heart.

Carmell Clark:
Doesn't mean we don't have healthy boundaries. It means that we can have those and we don't close our hearts to somebody else on their path even as we have healthy boundaries. And I think that is a path of peace in life. That is a path that opens opportunities always. It's the path that also gives this grace to others that we would want to be able to give to ourselves and have others give to us. Right. That all figuring it out. We're all in this life showing up and trying things and failing and succeeding and.

Carmell Clark:
And I think when we have that perspective, we feel more aligned inside. We have more peace because our hearts are not in conflict with somebody else. I want to add into that I did a lot of deep research at a time when I had my whole life break apart and lost everything, lost the future that I had looked forward to for 20 years. And I was drawn to look at Nelson Mandela's autobiography and his life. And there are many autobiographies about him because he kept copious journals. And this one that I did read, it was very long. There was a whole section of chapters called The Dark Years. And I needed to understand how someone else who had been through even more than I was going through, but I was going through my dark years at the time.

Carmell Clark:
I needed to understand how he navigated that. How did he have an anchor point in the midst of everything, even his own identity having been broken apart by things that were outside of his control. And this does happen as human beings. The thing that really came to me as I looked at that is that he listened to where his heart led him. And I can't underscore that enough in everything that we do, that our heart will lead us truly always right, that he found that he could do nothing. He had no control over anything, being on Robben Island, in prison, in an 8 by 8 cell. But what he could do was show up every day to those around him and he could show up to himself in ways that he made the decision for his life. No matter what the external look like.

Carmell Clark:
He made the decision to be there. He made the decision to choose to be alive, to choose to do things better, to interact with people in ways that left them better than when he found them. Right? Like that was a choice he could make. He had control and power over that. And he ended up building relationships with the guards. He ended up being able to help the prisoners get sunglasses. They were working on rocks that were so bright white that they were blinding and would cause blindness. There were many different things that he was able to create change for and benefit others just by virtue of his refusing to.

Carmell Clark:
To give in to the circumstances he was in and actually come and build this relationship with himself inside and go and reach higher.

Jennifer Norman:
So what a beautiful example. He and Viktor Frankl and a lot of those that have just had these atrocities that have occurred and they've really risen above and been such examples of stoicism and just thinking about themselves as part of the bigger picture of a bigger meaning rather than just like their own suffering. It was always about something big, something greater. And speaking of which, I know that as we are talking about alignment and helping to understand ourselves, a big part of the way that I was able to quiet the noise was through meditation and through slowing down. And that was a big decision. And I know it is a very big decision for a lot of individuals who are used to just burning the midnight oil, just going at it from all ends, from all or nothing kind of mentality, hustle culture, getting ahead, all of these things which society tells us that we should be doing, because everything is moving at such an ever increasingly quick pace. I mean, you can do everything is about collapsing space and time. Yet here we are saying the best way to get to know yourself is to slow down.

Jennifer Norman:
And it seems like, well, good luck, because you're not going to be anywhere if you slow down. But why do you believe that that is really the answer?

Carmell Clark:
I guess I'll start from the inside and move out, if that's all right. I found on the cusp of some really big successes. I was sitting, I had had to reduce my life from what it had been before to a 440 square foot apartment in a new city where I wanted to live light enough to be very easily mobile, like easily flexible to everything. And that's when I started living half my time outside the US for years, every year. And what I found in the cusp of these huge successes, I was sitting there in this apartment made out of a 100-year-old polygamist mansion. It was a great experience. I'm sitting there looking at the wavy windows. They're the original windows, right? So over a hundred years, windows kind of start to slide.

Carmell Clark:
Looking out at the trees and the light and looking at the old moldings that I just found so charming and the original fir wood floors, all of that. And I realized that I didn't want to lose my appreciation of the simple and the beautiful in the simplicity by achieving these successes that I was on the cusp of. I wanted to always be able to see those moldings. I wanted to always be able to be in love with looking out those wavy windows, right? Like I wanted to always have my connection to the ground, to the simple, to the real. And that I think exists in all of us as human beings. It doesn't matter who we are, that our connection to whatever the real is for us, whatever that looks like, requires us to be able to have a real cultivated space of slowness inside, whatever that looks like. We may have lots of fast pace that we have to deal with here or there, or we may have some very heavy concerns with people in our lives that we show up for or take care of. There may be some really big things out there.

Carmell Clark:
And like you already said, Jennifer, that we can have this beautifully carefully curated and cultivated slowness inside and that informs everything else in our lives. Like, there's nothing that's not touched by that. How we go about that can be any number of things. Meditation. I agree. One of my top ways to achieve that. And it's a continual practice without judgment, right? Like it's always making sure how do I make time for myself? And that another one for me is I went back and redefined what wealth was for me. One of my definitions of wealth is unstructured time.

Carmell Clark:
Being able to unstructured time. Because I look at my life and I think at some point I'm going to die. I expect it will be after I'm 100 years old. That's what I plan on in a very healthy way. And when I do, nothing I have tangibly gotten will go with me. There's nothing tangible that I take with me. All that is left is my experiences and then what I left behind from my having been here on the planet. That's it.

Carmell Clark:
And what does that look like? What do I want that to be? And so as I look at that, I. My conclusion was that if I have missed the moments of my life because I'm so busy, because I packed it so full with so many things, packed my home full of things, packed my schedule full of things, packed my life full of relationships that I have to attend to all the time without having the ability to notice the wavy windows, right. To whatever those that represents, to be able to catch that I'm breathing the air around me and be in it, like really be in it, then it doesn't matter what I've accomplished by the time I walk off the planet, right? Like, I've missed it. I've missed the whole thing. If I can't be here for it right now, that's what I think it means to me.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah, you mentioned something so interesting in that when I decided to quit my traditional job, it's scary because you're so used to having structured time and a structured paycheck that's more reliable coming in. And so it did feel like a leap, but boy, did it also feel like freedom. So it's that trade off.

Carmell Clark:
You nailed it, people to realize that when I left the corporate world, it took me. I was in my late 20s and it took me a year of waking up terrified every day to finally adjust out of that. Even though I had a brick and mortar business that my former wife and I had started 10 years earlier that was paying the bills. So, like it was still that very thing you're talking about that I don't have my time structured, there's not somebody paying my paycheck. It's all on my shoulders.

Carmell Clark:
And then I was like, oh, the same thing. Wow, I'm free. I'm free. Love that.

Jennifer Norman:
Isn't that great. I want to talk about The Center for Transformational Influence because you work with leaders around the world. How do you think that influence changes when it's rooted in presence, integrity, self awareness, rather than this idea of control or charisma like a lot of leaders are pretty much traditionally taught to do?

Carmell Clark:
Yeah, it's an excellent question. Really excellent question. There are so many leaders that do have charisma, and charisma doesn't have to be at odds with having transformational types of influence with people. But understanding what is transformational versus what is coercive in some way, I think is a really key difference that leaders need to understand. You can have. You can see things getting done with the power and authority that you are exerting with others and justify how things are happening. But my question is, are people growing as a result of their time with you? This is a real difference. For influence that is not power focused, Right.

Carmell Clark:
Influence that is transformationally focused. When people are growing and developing and having the opportunities for that, when people are able to feel and understand and know their worth and value better, that is, for me, the mark of a true transformational leader. We want to be able to get the work done, and it's possible to do it either way. That's the challenge. So are leaders going to really take the path of learning to see themselves better and more deeply and make choices that may not serve their vanity or their ego or their. Even their desire to execute things in what they see as most, the most efficient way possible? Are they actually going to trust the more transformational way of approaching it and they find that they can arrive at the same results, but with more benefit overall for everyone? Right. That is, I think, a really big difference there.

Carmell Clark:
The Center for Transformational Influence for me was also really a. It emerged out of my journey to understand my purpose. So in this path of my own, evolving the life I had before everything falling apart, my having to go through two and a half years of no spark and living day to day with, okay, if this is it, I couldn't. I'm somebody who just drives. I have direction. I love that direction. Even if I'm spending time sitting on my meditation cushion, there's that deep feeling of being in me. And that was gone for this two and a half years.

Carmell Clark:
My muse was gone. I couldn't write. I turned to painting. At that time, there were so many things that happened. And then out of that started to emerge and evolve this new, like you've talked about your own experience, the newer version of me, the reinvented version, finding its way from the inside out instead of me creating it like I thought I should. And in that time, there was something inside that said there are some words to express why you're here, why you're in this life, this on the planet. You know, all of that. And I was pursuing, working to understand that.

Carmell Clark:
And Oprah Winfrey was interviewed at Stanford Business School. And in the process of that interview, I was watching it one day, something came out of her mouth and she full stopped. And I knew it when I heard it, that she had extemporaneously expressed her purpose. It came out of her mouth in these words from her soul and her heart. And she just stopped because she knew that that was profound for her and anybody else who was listening. And I stopped the recording at that point, and I backed it up and I wrote it down, because what she said not only hit the essence or the energy of what I felt inside for my purpose, but the words started to get closer to what I had been seeking. And I tell you this because it was probably within the year after that, suddenly one day, The Center for Transformational Influence came to my mind.

Carmell Clark:
And I felt this alignment that the work that I do and the work that I've built, there's a lot of it all works under that umbrella. It's not about Carmell Clark, right? Like, that's my name, but there's such a guru culture. And I knew from early on, like, that's not the path for me. That's not. And it's also not the path of greater possibility and freedom for other people to follow a guru. It's the greater path. And possibility is to learn from our teachers and learn from ourselves and learn from life and become more and more sovereign within ourselves and able to generate more out into the world as a result of that. We shouldn't always be following somebody. We should come to be our own authority eventually.

Carmell Clark:
And the sensational influence was really created to facilitate that path for people.

Jennifer Norman:
And speaking of the "you are your own guru" kind of approach, you talk about stopping people from shrinking from their own brilliance. Why do you think that so many capable and wise people still hesitate to fully own their experience and their genius?

Carmell Clark:
Because I believe that our genius is inextricably tied to our saboteur, like they are hand in hand. And to learn and build a friendship with our own inner saboteur, our own victim, you know, the inner, as Caroline Myss calls it, The Prostitute. The one who negotiates for trust and power in our lives to be able to build the friendship with those parts of ourselves in the context of the genius that lives in every single person is the way that we learn better how. How to live a more honest and authentic life there. This idea that we're going to just remove all limitations and it will suddenly get to this point where it's you know, a smooth glide, all green lights, everything flows for us. You know, it's a nice idea, but there's no growth. And when you look at the greatest art and the greatest inventions and the greatest things that have ever happened, they always arise out of challenge. They always arise out of limits that have either been put on them or are on, you know, somehow part of the process.

Carmell Clark:
And when we understand that, you know, our saboteur is there as part of the journey to help us stay honest with ourselves, to. To bring about whatever our genius will produce, we are, we're going to. We're going to create something greater. We're going to create more of what is really in us to be able to create and fulfill from our genius. I really do see that there's a great book about the habits of artists and inventors and, you know, musicians and philosophers and everything that a friend of mine or client of mine gave me years ago. And it was this research over like the last many hundreds of years, looking at all these different people that we know, their names and their works and looking at their daily habits. There was not any single consistent thing for any of them. They had the most diverse daily habits and daily practices out there.

Carmell Clark:
Some of them stayed up all night and didn't wake up until 12, maybe did something for an hour a day, and that was it. And others were very regimented and, you know, did everything by the clock and, you know, highly productive in these ways. And still what they brought into the world was profound and life changing, that we are still, you know, experiencing the results and effects of those things. And what it really said to me was that there isn't, there isn't a right way. There's the way that is in me to do it. So, you know, to be able to understand that our genius is connected to the parts of us that seem like they're sabotaging us. And to quit and instead learn from it and listen and ask questions, so much more becomes possible. There's a book by Sue Bender called Everyday Sacred, and in it...

Jennifer Norman:
You are so well read. Thank you for bringing all of these resources.

Carmell Clark:
I just, it bears on our conversation today. Wonderful story too, where a dear friend of hers had a son who was a potter in San Francisco. And that's how he made his living, was by throwing pots and throwing beautiful pottery. And he'd been doing it for years, successfully. And then all of a sudden he started to have pots break, whether it was in the kiln or he'd be walking across the studio holding one and it would fall out of his hands and shatter one pot after another, after another breaking. And he couldn't figure it out. And finally he. He sat down one day and he said, okay, because nothing he could do was changing it.

Carmell Clark:
And he just let go. And in that letting go and sitting with himself, something came through which was this voice that said, you have spent all of your time creating and no time destroying. Like, there. There's no balance here. We need balance in this creative process. And he looked at that and he thought, you're right to himself. So from that point on, he would carefully select the pots, he would break, put them in a towel, break them apart, reassemble them with kiln glue, and then go through process and once...

Jennifer Norman:
Reduce, reuse, recycle.

Carmell Clark:
Upcycle, upcycle! In doing that, Jennifer, he stopped breaking pots. They stopped breaking. Like, literally this part of himself was trying to get his attention for his genius to grow into its next part, you know, its next. And it really did, and they were hugely successful. And of course, it also took him in new directions. I just wanted to kind of really paint that picture that our part of our genius hit.

Jennifer Norman:
I find that really a compelling thought. I haven't. I hadn't really heard that statement before, and I'm gonna ruminate on it a little bit further because I, you know, contemplating genius and. And I've spent so much time being my own self saboteur. Like, I have no genius. I, you know, like, I'm always going to be mediocre at everything I do. Forget it. I quit. There's no point, you know.

Jennifer Norman:
I did, and I'd work myself to the bone on things that you didn't really, you know, like so much and, you know, thinking that that was just the way to be successful. So, yeah, I'm just so curious about how does somebody know what their genius is. Somebody, you know, some people might arrive at it at, like, torturing hard work and, you know, blood, sweat, tears, and, you know, become a master at something and then they're. They're a genius at it.

Jennifer Norman:
And others feel like, well, if it doesn't flow, then it's not worth doing. Like, it has to be ease. It has to be something that is natural for me in order to. To be able to. For me to proceed with it, because that is natural, natural genius, if it's easy for me. So what do you think?

Carmell Clark:
Um, I. Yes and no. And yes.

Jennifer Norman:
I was gonna say that too. It's like, maybe. Yes. Yeah. It just depends. I don't know.

Carmell Clark:
Because, I mean, I'm gonna say I think my perspective. One of your areas of genius is this ability to really look deeply inside something or someone. Like you have, as I listened to you, in the way that you were interacting even in this. In this cast today, you go deep into the ideas and into the anecdotes in the person, and there's so much like you're able to open up so much as you go deeply in. I think that is a form of genius. Absolutely. I think that it's there. You know, we all have our different areas of genius.

Carmell Clark:
And to answer your question, I think of Dale Chihuly, the artist, right? He does the glass works that are just unbelievable, right? They're these. And his work is all over the world. And he is extremely bipolar. And so sometimes he is on his meds and sometimes he is not. When he's not on his meds, that's when he produces his greatest work and also sabotages all the relationships around him and...

Jennifer Norman:
Can't have one without the other, I suppose.

Carmell Clark:
Right. Van Gogh. Yeah. With. With amazing, you know, immense mental health issues. Right. Or you look at Rembrandt, just a brilliant artist, you know, the father of light, you know, the master of light, I should say. And he couldn't sell his paintings to make money when he was alive, right? But shortly after his death, all of a sudden, they started to sell.

Carmell Clark:
Like. And it's so deeply unfair. But. But in that space of, you know, light and dark, for him, in his life emerged more and more and more of the art that we appreciate today. And I'm not saying art. I think artists should be paid for their work. I know, absolutely. But recognizing the challenges.

Carmell Clark:
You know, Nikola Tesla is another example, right, where he. He figured out AC DC current, you know, before it was just Edison had just DC current and no AC DC current. And Tesla got to that, and then he's like, but there's so much more that's possible. And so Edison ended up taking the credit for it, even though Tesla created it because he was too interested in continuing on to explore and develop and discover so many other things. And I just find it fascinating to look at the stories of people and their genius. This is a pursuit of mine all the time. I want to get into people's genius and to see the stories behind it or the stories inside of it. So I guess I go, I would ask you, what.

Carmell Clark:
What is some of the story inside your genius? Because you have, for sure. I mean, part of it seems. What, you know, where this podcast was born?

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. I think part of it earlier in my life was more about the hard work. It was about closing the door, working all through the night. It was really about, like, you know, head down, focus, grind, and then coming up for air. And that wasn't sustainable for me in terms of a full life and relationships and all of that. And so I had to, because of health reasons and, you know, sanity reasons, abandon that. And I've come and emerged into, you know, I had a chrysalis period where I, you know, went deep into spirituality. I kind of burned everything to ash and then rose out in this newfound freedom of allowing. And so I'm in this stage of my life, not that it's right for everyone, but I am in the stage of just being open and not necessarily so much planning, so much into the weeds, unless it's something that I find so joyfully fulfilling.

Jennifer Norman:
One way or another. I'm really finding that I really want to spend my days doing things that I love and working on projects that I love. And that's not to say that discomfort, frustrations, you know, disappointments don't come up, of course, certainly they do, but they're easier to swallow because they are just kind of enveloped in this, you know, agency that I've kind of built for my life at this moment. So I feel like I'm still. And this is the beauty of it, you know, being in midlife and being able to recreate yourself. I think that there's. And that's another point is like there's.

Jennifer Norman:
There's so many different phases of life, and sometimes we feel like, oh, it's too late. Let me just do what I've always been doing, because at least it's gotten me this far. And then it feels like this struggle rather than maybe stepping into something new or, you know, trying something new that might be better suited because we get wrapped up in identities, I think, and how things might have worked and, you know, if it's not broke, don't fix it, that. That sort of thing. But for me, it was. It broke. It was broken. It was unreparable, irreparable.

Jennifer Norman:
And so. And it was a thank you. It was like, thank you, universe. I needed that. I really feel like, to your point, nothing really good happens without the challenge. You've got to have that friction. You've got to have the grit to have the pearl. And that's that messy part that we all find so uncomfortable and we try to avoid or numb away from, or shy away from, or, you know, not look at the shadowy stuff.

Jennifer Norman:
But going into that and recognizing that, you know, when you do find that quietness, space, and you're able to say, that's not me talking. That either somebody else expecting me to be something that I'm not, or that I'm not appreciating or that I really don't want to be, or an ego saying that, well, this is where I should be at this point of my life and I'm not there. And that's why I'm so discontented and blahbidi, blahbidi, blah. So, yeah, yeah. And so that's where a lot of the misalignment tends to come from. And there's always this kind of, you know, the rudder. And without that and knowing, you know, okay, you know, what is that real inner voice, that deep self saying, what is my higher voice, you know, my higher self really wanting at this moment or of myself, you know, what is that calling and how can I achieve that?

Carmell Clark:
Beautiful. That's beautiful. I. I see when you talk about your path, one of the things that really stands out for me is the, the sense of you giving yourself credit finally, right? Like, instead of trying to seek that validation externally, it's bringing it back inside and saying, no matter what it looks like, I'm the one who gets to decide the credit that's given for this, and I give myself full credit, you know, no matter what it looks like, I'm always giving my best and learning how to give my best in a more balanced way, in a. In a way that serves me on all levels, not just the ones that I thought I be going after, right? Is. Is that big shift out of the. The coerciveness of kind of that mainstream. It's that difference between the two brothers, right? The one, you know, seeing things from this perspective, like, it's all great, it's inspirational and gives me ideas, and the other feeling like it's just dragging my energy down.

Carmell Clark:
And, you know, you finding your version of that in your life, which I think is a great example for all of us to be paying close attention to. You're not trying to teach it, you're living it. And by living it, that is the greatest teacher in it, right? From. From my perspective, you know, who. Who am I to be a guru for anybody else?

Carmell Clark:
And it is resonating, truthfully, and I know I can, in alignment with myself, live that. Then it does become more powerful and profound for other people on their path to learn. And, and so trust Themselves to find their own version of that. Right. That's what I hear in you as you talk about this.

Jennifer Norman:
Oh, thank you for receiving that. And seeing that. I. I feel like there. There has was a moment where I discovered the term radical responsibility. And for some reason, I've really kind of indoctrinated it. Like, it's nobody else's fault. A

Jennifer Norman:
nd maybe it's from, you know, like, I've just absorbed so much Abraham Hicks over the years. It's like, you know, it's like you design, you know, you manifest the life that you wish to create, and you're responsible, you know, for creating your own reality. And so rather than blaming all the forces outside, it's like, okay, it's on me. You know, if something happens, you know, what was my involvement? It's on me. If I wish for something good to happen, it's on me. Like, how can I make this relationship great? It's on me. You know, don't go expecting somebody else to do it. It's on me. And then all of those things, I think, helped me really feel that desire to perhaps discover myself a little bit more.

Jennifer Norman:
Like, well, what would my decision be in this situation? What does feel like a guardrail, which is more natural. And we'll talk about boundaries in a second. What does feel like? This isn't really serving me in my quest. It's a nice to have. I love volunteering and doing this and doing that, but am I spreading myself too thin? Maybe this is a boundary that I need to observe at this moment so that I can still have the freedom to pursue the things that I think are most important in my life. Yeah. So thank you for that. I so appreciate that.

Jennifer Norman:
And, you know, in speaking about boundaries, because I know for us former. Well, I'm a former people pleaser, still working on it. You know, the ones that want to do everything for everybody or control the situation and, you know, overextend. What do you think is. Is the thing that holds a back from really finding what those are more cemented rather than, oh, well, I'll just give a little bit here. Oh, I may as well go to this thing. Oh, it's a nice thing for me to be a nice person and do this for this other person. What is it that causes us to not be able to stick to these boundaries and these guardrails?

Carmell Clark:
I mean, that's a really excellent question. I think that there are probably a handful of. Of kind of common answers for all of us as human beings around that one of them being our desire to be liked by others, right? That people to feel the approval of other people or not to be a disappointment or let people down. I think that's a big one. And there's a, there's an important piece that's good in that, which is the social contract, right? We, we are able to get along better in our lives through connection, right? And connection really is a deep driver. But codependence and connection can turn into this people pleasing, right? This idea of, you know, not doing what's right for myself, radically responsible to myself first, right? Before I answer, the radical accountability I have with others or things that I've committed to when I teach this in my self awareness work, that's one of the distinctions I make is radical. Self responsibility is the first step. It is the very first thing that we do or we must do.

Carmell Clark:
What is the truth inside me? What is the right thing for me first? And once I'm clear about that, then I can look at my accountabilities and understand do I need to, you know, say I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to change what I committed to because my truth or my responsibility to myself has required me to do that, you know, and it's not breaking trust, it's being honest and integrous, right? When we're able to have that kind of presence within ourselves, our, our lives do become simpler and easier, right? I, I recognize this very well because I ended up, you know, after my 20 year marriage ended. I ended up, you know, for all intents and purposes alone for 15 years, even if I dated, I was with myself and learned, I had to learn how to fall in love with Carmell, with who I am, and to learn how to be with myself in this most beautiful possible way of living a fulfilling life. And in doing that, it also brought me to very clearly understand and move out of the codependent patterns I'd had before because I was no longer trying to get my needs met through external means. I had had to teach myself how to meet my needs myself. And that meant that I didn't need to. It wasn't that I couldn't, you know, lean on other people and rely on them. It was that I didn't need to do that. That, right, like I, I actually could recognize that sovereignty and autonomy in myself in a very powerful way and feel fulfilled in, in that.

Carmell Clark:
And so with boundaries, what I see happening is, you know, first of all, healthy boundaries are always going to be for ourselves and not against someone or something else, right? If some, when somebody says, well, I'm going to set a boundary here and their ego's involved, that's going to be pushing back against somebody else. And what I know is when we set a boundary against something, we start the process of drawing it into our lives repeatedly because we are in resistance. Right. But when we set a boundary for ourselves that says this is my healthy space or this is the thing that feels right or true for me, we don't engage this process of resistance that keeps bringing the same thing we don't want back into our lives again and again. Right. So learning that difference between boundaries is key and important. And then from that, you know, I would add that learning, you know, how to be with myself in such a way as I did meant that my relationships and all the things in my life had to start to work around me being radically self responsible, if that makes sense.

Carmell Clark:
Like I. It couldn't be, yeah. It couldn't be a codependent space anymore. And when I did find myself unexpectedly because, you know, it was not expected, I wasn't dating or anything at the time, found myself in a new relationship that what came in that was, you know, lots of new learning and growth for me. Right. As always will be relationships are our classrooms. And yet at the same time, this really clear awareness of the growth that I had gone through, where, you know, those codependent spaces are not part of the way that my life works anymore. Right. Like that just even in deep loving relationships we can have codependence.

Carmell Clark:
Right. So I guess that, I guess reflecting that back out, I would say that has meant, you know, boundaries, healthy boundaries in all the different parts of my life. Right. Like learning how to be with myself and take care of me and meet the needs that I have first before I rely on somebody else to, to do that has been really powerful. The other thing I would add into that is something I teach in radical self responsibility is that nobody owes me anything and I don't owe anybody anything. Right. That kind of, it just cuts everything else away and gets it right down to its barest, cleanest minimum part. Right.

Carmell Clark:
Because we are so tied into what we think we owe or are owed.

Jennifer Norman:
Keeping score. Yeah.

Carmell Clark:
Yes. And that is a form of emotional blackmail. It's obligation. Right.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah.

Carmell Clark:
And to cut that out altogether, to bring ourselves back to that what I call deep radical truth that nobody owes me anything and I don't owe anybody anything. Okay. As hard as it may be in the moment, it puts me back on solid ground with myself and I can move forward And I cannot hold somebody hostage or I cannot be held hostage by somebody else in a situation. And the boundaries become easier and clearer as a result of that.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah.

Carmell Clark:
I did years ago do what I called my own Bill of Rights because I'd grown up with so much emotional blindness, blackmail at fear, obligation, guilt, and shame. And I needed to be able to see it, to undo it. And so I wrote out my own Bill of Rights. And one of the things I wrote on that was, I have the right to disappoint other people. I have the right to even disappoint myself. I have the right to change my mind. I have the right to...

Jennifer Norman:
Oh, you need to share, this Bill of Rights needs to be posted on refrigerators around the world.

Carmell Clark:
Exercise to do right. Because that I have the right says that very thing. I don't owe anybody anything, they don't owe me. And I am radically responsible to inform myself in that right. So what that looks like in everyday life is I'm sincerely sorry, I'm gonna have to change my mind on this and I can't do this anymore. Right.

Jennifer Norman:
My goodness, Carmell, you are so, so capable in this field. Now, if somebody is really interested in getting in touch with you, working with you, having some coach, some guidance sessions with you, how can they do so?

Carmell Clark:
They can email me directly at carmell@carmellclark.com it's two L's, Carmell. Or they can direct message me on LinkedIn. It's under my name, my profile. Those are the fastest and best ways. And myself and my team are able to respond and people are able to set up a strategy discovery session that's complimentary and we can see what, what's possible from there.

Jennifer Norman:
Oh, my gosh, what juicy, juicy work this is. Thank you so much for everything that you do and for this conversation. The end out things. On my podcast, I always ask three constant questions of every guest. They are a reminder of what connects us. Beauty, humanity, and the truths that we live by. So, Carmell, my first question to you is, what makes you beautiful?

Carmell Clark:
I, you know, it's such an interesting way to ask that question, what makes me beautiful? I guess what I really feel to respond is that I am beautiful. And I know. And the beauty that I know that I am is never changing. Right. It's always there. And I see and believe that about every single person.

Jennifer Norman:
Probably the best answer I have received on this show. Thank you.

Carmell Clark:
Thank you.

Jennifer Norman:
Second question. What does it mean to be human?

Carmell Clark:
I think that it means to not take myself so damn seriously and to give myself a lot of grace and everyone else at the same time. And then I think what it also means to be human is to, to reach, to go after whatever is, you know, is in me to reach for. Those are the things I feel like not take myself down, slow down, seriously, give myself a lot of grace and compassion and everyone else in the process as well. And then to just reach and go after everything that's in me to do and go after.

Jennifer Norman:
Oh, I love that. Being able to laugh at yourself and just have a great sense of humor is so, it's so profound. It's so important. It really is. I was, I. I had heard somebody say, like, you know, if you're in a religion and nobody can laugh and nobody can smile, like, run away. Like, that's not what it's supposed to be about. Like spirituality is supposed to be like joyful.

Carmell Clark:
Run away. Yes.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah, run away. That's not where you need to be. And then my last question here is, what's one truth that you live by?

Carmell Clark:
Probably the most core and foundational truth that I live by is that there's nothing wrong with me. I am an acceptable and perfect inside exactly as I am. And I can work toward whatever I want to and achieve and refine and grow and all of those things, but none of that in any way means that there's something to fix. I am whole and perfect inside exactly as I am. And, and I see and believe that about every other person. And that's a huge bottom line component of everything I teach.

Jennifer Norman:
Oh my gosh. Yes. I am going to be snipping this part of the recording because it is so, so important. Definitely, definitely important. Thank you so much. Now, beautiful humans, as we come to a close, I want to invite you to return just briefly to yourself. Not to analyze this conversation, not to turn it into a to do list. Just notice what stayed with you.

Jennifer Norman:
What felt true, what softened, what quietly asked for your attention. If something in this conversation stirred you, that isn't a signal to do more. It's an invitation to listen more deeply. Because alignment doesn't arrive all at once. It reveals itself in these small, honest moments in boundaries that we finally honor, in choices that feel slower but more true. You don't have to have it all figured out. You don't need a perfect, perfect plan. Sometimes the most powerful act of leadership or self respect is choosing not to abandon yourself.

Jennifer Norman:
So as you move back into your day, carry this with you. What would it look like to move at the pace of your own truth. What are you ready to release? Not because you failed, but because you've grown. I want to thank you so much for spending time with us. Thank you for listening inward. Thank you Carmell for being my esteemed guest today. You are a beautiful human.

Carmell Clark:
Thank you so much, Jennifer. It is an absolute joy and privilege to be here with you and with your audience. Thank you so much for having me.

Jennifer Norman:
Thank you for listening to The Human Beauty Movement Podcast. Be sure to follow, rate and review us wherever you stream podcasts. The Human Beauty Movement is a community based platform that cultivates the beauty of humankind. Check out our workshops, find us on social media and share our inspiration with all the beautiful humans in your life. Learn more at thehumanbeautymovement.com. Thank you so much for being a beautiful human.