Paula Brown, self-proclaimed heartist and visual storyteller, joins Tonya Dawn Recla to discuss soulful innovation and entrepreneurship. Paula helps people understand their message through visual representation. For over 25 years, she has told stories and led new business teams in brand creation as the creative director in major ad agencies on both the East and West Coasts. Listen and she and Tonya discuss how to get in touch with your internal heartiest and share your own story with the world.

Hello everyone. This is Tonya Dawn Recla, your superpower expert. You all are in for a treat today. I know you can feel me glowing, and just the energy that’s coming off of this dialogue already, before we’ve even started is so powerful, because today’s guest is, she’s just this amazing blend of the artistic with the really rooted and grounded energies of creation, but also, this light.

She walks the world in a very different way than most people. She’s modeling that for other creative, artistic individuals, a step forward into their truth with this real, uncompromising, unwavering, solid antenna, if you will, this solid, kind of, rod in the middle that guides people to their own truth. It’s so needed right now and so welcome to really connect with people who can do that, who want to do that, are willing to be courageous enough to do that.

Paula Brown has a really extensive history in a lot of impressive arenas. Rather than be belaboring that, that will come through in our dialogue, but just know this, the image that I see of her is really of this amazing, light-filled being gliding through the world, but as others are able to gravitate into that space, take what they need and then move off to create their parallel universes. That work is essential. I know a lot of you resonate with that and see yourselves in that light.

So, kind of tuck in and settle back, because this is going to be a conversation specifically for you. Without further ado, please join me in welcoming Paula Brown to the show. Paula, welcome.

Hi, and thank you Tonya, for having the great experience to be part of your super power space.

Aw, thank you.

I just love the light that you give to all the world.

Aw, beautiful. Well, thank you for that affirmation, it’s a joint effort, right? It’s a very collaborative, like I was saying before we started the recording, it’s like its own living, breathing organism, and as it’s growing and blossoming, it’s like a … Feel like a proud parent watching it just evolve.

Let’s jump in and let the audience get to know you just a little bit better. What are your super powers?

I call myself a heartist.

That is a great question, because I love the plural of powers. I believe that I have many super powers. The core of my superpower is to find the extraordinary in the ordinary and that is finding purpose and showing purpose and showing heart essence, because, I call myself a heartist, and that includes many, many different levels of vibrations and solutions.

I have superpowers of telepathy, because I am also talking to nature, the heart of nature. I talk heart-to-heart to nature, and animals, and people. I draw out, literally and figuratively, the purpose and dreams and visions of people, corporations. I have this artistic talent of being able to draw out quickly, the essence and the core purpose of people. That’s my main superpower out there, is to help people show their superpowers. I’m an igniter of that.

I truly believe that the heart is the masterpiece of everybody’s story, so I’m a visual storyteller. It’s just been amazing to see aha moments out there. I’m also have the talents of teaching and communicating this to other people and using both mind and a little bit of alternative strategies to get people to their spaces and places. My super talents are many. I use many tools, as do most of us.

I really believe that showing the invisibles into visible for each person is quite important, and that’s the connections we all have with each other and all the nature around us. We are not separate, and that’s where the aha moments come from. It’s getting people to understand and to see that they are only responsible for what they are in their unique purpose, and it all is a contributor and connected to everything, and it’s just a beautiful thing. I’m having fun finding the beauty and the art of the heart in everything that I do.

Beautiful. Well, and I can absolutely attest to that. If you go to our article page for this episode, you’ll see the artwork that Paula did based off of one of my quotes. It’s absolutely perfect and I really adored it. It was such a beautiful gift. Thank you so much for that.

Yes, that’s one of my fun things that I do. I help people show who they are through this quick sketch approach to life. I’m always one of those people who is doodling, sketching, and creating the belief that everybody is a master doodler and everybody has the art inside of them. They just need to put it out there and communicate it. It’s just been so lovely being an artist for that. It’s just absolutely, it’s an aha moment for every single being that I help.

I’m also a purpose coach, so I use this as drawing out things that people say, and they don’t even realize they’re saying it. It’s just amazing. It’s like the ketchup in the refrigerator door, it’s there, you just don’t see it.

I love the analogy. That’s awesome. That’s one of the reasons why today we’re talking about soulful innovation and entrepreneurship, because, again, there’s kind of been this divide. You have artistry and creativity on one end. Then you have success and business on the other. As we’ve talked about many times on this show, we are the weavers. Right?

We’re creating the bridges. We’re interweaving all of that and there’s no roadmap for that. We have to have the courage, each of us, to craft our own pathway and to invite others to step on it when they feel drawn to step on it, but also encourage just to craft their own. It’s a far different process than what we’ve seen in the past. I, for one, love it. I’ve never been a big fan of following anyone else’s foot steps.

I tell people, in my own little, self-deprecating way, I should probably refrain this language, but I’m not the typical kind of personal development person. Right? I don’t, the conferences, and the workshops, and the following, and the this and that, that was never really my style. I came up in a very different way through academia, and corporate, and government, and military, and whatnot, and then moved into this space.

Because of that, I think I have a very different vantage point than a lot of folks, who a lot of thought leaders and folks who do this work, which is perfect, because I attract the people who are of the same ilk and who have the courage, or at least have the design to have the courage to really create new ways of doing things. I absolutely put you in that category.

How did you move into this space, where you have the courage to say things like, “I call myself a heartist, and I …” You kind of play in this space between those two worlds. What was that like for you?

It’s been a very interesting journey. Let’s put it that way, because, I also hail from the corporate world of big ad agencies and creative director for new business. I was always able and capable to find the essence and the core of a brand, and get new business in for that agency. Then, once they came in, they got scared, because they needed to be like their competitors.

It’s a scary thought to really express the essence of who you are. It’s scary in business and it seems to be scary in life. So, I took that and I made a real positive effort during my corporate years to make people feel comfortable with expressing their values in their brand. That’s where I was from. Big time, big, huge ad agencies, huge clients. We all seemed to have the same hesitancy to express who we really are. I’m one of those disruptors who just comes out and says it.

I was fine for new business and to speak to peoples’ aspirations, and was chugging along really fine with that and doing my art. Actually, to find my purpose and my path, my hear stopped. I actually had a death experience. I’m one of the 1% of the 1% that survived an aneurysm to the main artery and to my stomach. As I was going down that path of corporate, this situation with my health just stopped me. How it stopped me was being on an operating table and hearing the words code blue jetting off into seeing a lot of my relatives that have passed by off the tunnel.

My dad stepped in front of this light that I was heading toward, and it felt really good to head towards this light. He stopped, and he put his hands up and he said, “You must go back. You must find purpose, peoples’ purpose.”

So, I was slammed back, and for 10 years I investigated and I found out that I had more superpowers than just branding, and I became an animal communicator and all sorts of different things, working with the invisibles, because I understood them clearly. That started my artistic path of showing other people what their stories were like.

So, I know my purpose very strongly. It’s finding other peoples’ purposes and igniting that, and working with the people who can make a big difference to make the world a better place because of this. So, all of my quote unquote woo woo talents, are very scientifically explained to the materialistic world. So, I’m here to lend credence to the fact that these invisibles are real. It’s been a real interesting and lovely story to put that into my art and into the people that I help, and from the people that I help.

I’ve had quite a few life stories that have supported this. It’s just been a really great ride to be able to communicate this to other people in a clear and focused way. That’s what I’ve been working on.

Beautiful. What a great story.

Did you have choice in that?

My death was my wake-up call.

No. I had no choice in whether I wanted to come back or not. That was pretty much a slam dunk, I was back. I even grabbed the doctor’s gown, and said, “Why in the heck did you bring me back?”

Then, I was brought back. I started having a lot of experiences with my guides, my angelic realm. I have always been able to hear nature and always been able to do that and I think my death was really my wake-up call. I’m here to tell people you don’t need to die to find your purpose. I may have, but it’s not necessary. Let’s just draw it out, and let’s just all play with this and get clear on this. I just have so much fun, the choices I’ve had, or the way I’ve investigated it with Huna, the ancient philosophy of Hawaii way of life, the Hawaiian shaman.

I do a lot of alternative methods as well as strategic, materialistic-based, mind methods. It’s all about merging the heart, the mind, and the body. It’s a triangle. It’s so strong when you get to do that. It’s so strong when you can show other people. Other people in business, life, you can actually show it when drawing it out in pictures. There’s no question. There’s no mystery. It’s proof. It’s the universal language of pictures.

I’m here as an artist to help other artists do this, to show their truths, to stand in their truths and to have confidence that they have something to express that is real. Artists pick up all the invisibles around them. That’s what they express. The emotions in paintings and in art forms, for me, are just absolutely the way I communicate, so I do have a choice.

Beautiful.

Yeah.

I love that. We’re going to take a quick break. Before we do, where can we send people to find out more about you and I believe you had an offer for them.

Yes! You can find me at my wonderful company called Chilightful, it’s http://www.chilightful.com/Your5StepPurposeQuestMap. I do have a wonderful offer for people to start their journey diving into purpose. That is a nice PDF of a roadmap to, the five-step purpose quest map. You can get that from this podcast and just start diving in. Just connect up via my website. I’d love to talk to you.

Beautiful. Yeah, we’ll have the link on the article page for this episode, folks, where you can go and check that out. We’re talking to Paula Brown today about soulful innovation and entrepreneurship. When we come back, I really want to dive into why this is important and how people can start moving toward developing their soulful purpose, specifically within the business arena. So, stay with us, and we will be right back.