Enliven Your Life On Purpose With Dr. Alise Cortez

Join us in this inspiring episode as we delve into the journey of how to find your purpose with the remarkable Dr. Alise Cortez. Hosted by Dr. Darrin, this episode explores the profound impact of living a life filled with meaning and passion. Dr. Cortez, a renowned organizational psychologist and chief ignition officer at Gusto Now, shares her insights on igniting your inner potential and transforming your everyday existence. Get ready to discover actionable steps to awaken your true purpose and live a more fulfilling life. Don’t miss out on the energy and inspiration that Dr. Alise Cortez brings to the conversation!

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Enliven Your Life On Purpose With Dr. Alise Cortez

Our guest is a sparkplug of possibilities, Dr. Alise Cortez, the Chief Ignition Officer at Gusto, Now, a human and organizational transformation consultancy specializing in the activation of meaning and purpose to increase engagement, performance, innovation, retention, and thus profitability. She’s a logotherapist, an organizational psychologist, inspirational speaker, researcher, author, and host of the Working on Purpose Show. She is focused on helping companies, leaders, and individuals across the globe to live with Gusto and make the most of their one precious life. Dr. Alise ignites humans wherever she goes. Take a read and be ready for the lightning bolt of energy to go live your possible. Enjoy the show.

Dr. Alise, it’s great to see you and welcome to the show. How are you?

I’m doing great, Dr. Darrin. It’s great to be with you.

Nice to be your counter doctor there. It’s pretty funny, even though you’re the PhD, but it’s a pleasure to be here. We are very much like-minded. I enjoyed our episode on your show and I thought we had a good conversation. I’m excited to get this going here as well to continue our chat.

Likewise. I like to call you doctor because you feel like a doctor to me.

Thank you. I see so many similarities. One of the things we have in common is we love the word purpose and it gives us direction. I’d love for you to share with the audience, what is your purpose? Where does that come from?

My purpose is to awaken passion and purpose in individual organizations then encourage them to persevere and pursue that mightily to make a contribution worthy of their one precious life. That’s why I call myself Chief Ignition Officer. I light people up. A lot of people have forgotten that they can do these things. I understand or they didn’t know they could at all. Where it started for me is, let me back up and say, how do I do that in the world?

What I do is probably a lot like what you do in the world. That is helping to activate meaning and purpose in cultures and leadership inside organizations who want to be able to get the lift for their people that translates to higher engagement, more creativity, and retention, which as you know, goes straight to the bottom line. That’s how it shows up in the world. I love to speak about this stuff. I write books about this stuff. Nobody’s safe from talking about this with me.

You carry such a passion about it, too. You have four books out there. The one which I saw you recently in Barnes and Noble signing away. It’s getting great reviews. We’ll spend a little bit of time on that because I’d love to dive into that and talk about what’s showing up for you there. I know there’s a lot of good sources and a lot of good stories. As you said, the results are there.

I’m happy to talk about that. It’s always interesting. People always want to know. When I’m not speaking, it’s like I’m desperate. People are like, “How did you find your purpose? How did you discover it?” They want to figure it out for themselves. It’s a journey. It started for me quickly. The short version of the story is it started in my mid-twenties. It started to become awakened in my mid-twenties. I’d grown up in a small town in Northeastern Oregon. I was living in Portland, Oregon.

I was studying in college. I didn’t go to college. That was later in life. When I was living in Spain and Brazil for a total of three years, I had a boyfriend who had a big job. I didn’t have a visa so I spent my time traveling all over Western Europe and South America with him, learning Spanish and Portuguese, and studying to continue my college work.

I had a live-in maid, a chauffeur, and a gardener. An amazing life on the outset and it was. There were so many amazing things about it. Except there was one little incy-beency problem. I was miserable for a lot of that. What I discovered is we humans are not wired just to consume life. It’s beautiful and opulent as that life may be. What we need is to be of service to others. That is when we’re our most vital.

Unbeknownst to me, I had learned what an existential vacuum is, which is what we know about in the world of logotherapy, which I have a degree in that as well. That emptiness of being in the world without mattering and without serving is where this whole thing got kicked off. I knew then that I was going to ultimately get a PhD in Human Development with Fielding Graduate University, and I did pursue that. In my early 30s, that was the answer to the early midlife crisis when I came back to the States.

I was comfortable and had a good job. A nice car and all. Isn’t that all there is? The substance was missing. I didn’t have an affair. I didn’t buy a sports car. I got a PhD. Anyway, that’s where it started from. From there, I can tell you as we weave in some of these light-up moments how it got continued down the path but that’s where it got ignited. I knew I wanted to work and develop humans. The PhD was a start to that and that was back in the late 1990s.

I love the Chief Ignition Officer, too, lighting up. We got a lot of similarities there. I love it. Were there some examples that you recognize in yourself that you saw some different light-up moments? Maybe how you were interacting or how you were working with different people that you saw this connection.

First, in the late 1990s, I was in Seattle, Washington. At that time, every job was technology. I found myself as an Account Manager placing IT people. I was like, “This is great. My product is people. This is perfect.” That’s when I got into organizational development matters and learning and development, and employee engagement. It went on from there. Some of the light-up moments that allowed the path to further unfold, if you will. I like to think about it like this.

When you’re in touch with yourself and you’re listening to yourself. You can hear the voice in your head, heart, and soul that’s telling you where to put your next foot on the next lily pad, “It’s right there. Put it right there.” I started teaching on the side as an adjunct at the University of Phoenix. It was in 2011. As soon as I did that, it’s like, “I’m back in school. I love this. This is so great. I love academia. I love studying.” That totally told me, “Cortez, you got to go back and you got to revisit the dissertation research you did for your PhD, which was on meaning and work and identity. Now you can expand that.”

I interviewed 25 IT people for that PhD. I went crazy. I was so lit and on fire with this idea. I went out and interviewed 115 men and women across twenty different professions. I ended up finding these fifteen modes of engagement. Once that happened, then I was like, “I was on the meaning track.” I knew more about meaning than most people did because of the research and all of the analysis that I did for that.

That set me down a strong path to pursue the meaning stuff. That was 2014 when I was going to present at a conference in India and also get published. That one year, what happened is, here I am, I’ve discovered this stuff. You know that feeling when you know you’re stepping into your shine. This is where you’re supposed to be. This is life pulling you up and taking you along. It was like that. I already knew I was going to go to this conference in India to present my research at this business conference in December.

I had the opportunity to present the research at a new client in November of that year and they loved it. I’d done this. This was like my first real work where I presented my own ideas and my own research. They ate it up. I’m high as a kite driving home from this workshop and my phone rings. I kid you not, it’s Voice America. They’re calling saying, “We found you on LinkedIn. We went to your website. We see that you’re a consultant and a speaker. It usually makes for a good host. Would you like to host your own show?”

I held the phone away from my ear and I’m like, “This is all connected.” I said, “I’m going to say a hot yes to that.” I went off to India and had the three-week experience. The India experience that people have that was spiritually elevating and such. Now, I’m squarely on the meaning and purpose path, and that’s the beginning of 2015. Those are a couple things that were major light-up moments.

The last one I’ll say that made a big difference in all of this is when I got divorced in 2016, which wasn’t my idea. I can cover that for some of the learnings later, but it was a good idea. That gave me a clearing to go for it. There’s nobody, except for my daughter I was taking care of at the time. It’s like, “Go for it, Cortez. Take the band-aid off. Take the little training wheels off and go.”

Congratulations on all of that. Sometimes you got to go through some of those tough moments to set yourself free. I’m curious about the lily pad. It seems like it might have been insecure or unstable. How do you take those steps? How did you just get to that point where you could just say, “I see this so clearly,” and not have that level of limiting belief or doubt? How did you go for it?

In all the instances that I was telling you about so far, I couldn’t not do it. It was so compelling and grabbing for me that I couldn’t say no. I couldn’t deny it. Obviously, I am a single person now and I support myself. That’s a different manner altogether. There’s way more risk in this, as you know, when you’ve created your own products and services. Now you have to market them, sell and deliver them. There’s way more risk. I certainly have tempered some of that a little bit over time, but those ones that I told you about, it was such a loud screaming call. I could not answer it.

Discovering Meaning In Work

I could relate because I went halfway across the world to a happiness at work conference in Copenhagen. I was asking myself on the way there, “Should I be going here, leaving my family?” There were signs all along the way to your point, saying, “You’re where you need to be now.” It’s beautiful and having the courage to go through with it. You talk about meaning. Can you help our audience understand what that looks like? Maybe even what it looked like back in 2014 to now because things have evolved.

I’m going to give it to you from two different vantage points. From when I was doing the research, I was asking people, what did they find meaningful in their work? How did it relate to their sense of self? When I did the coding, people would tell me the things that they found meaningful. I would code them along Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs. When they said things like, “I love that I can provide a fantastic living for my family.” That’s a security thing.

I feel proud of what it is that I do. Proud of my ability. That’s an esteem level. When they say things like, “I get to live and work my values.” There’s a values level in there. Some people talked about purpose. I was able to start to code. What I discovered was that the higher in the hierarchy that they experienced at work, the way more meaningful it was, and the way more likely it was going to be important to their sense of identity and self, or it would be either inseparable or resonant.

The less it was, it would be detached or just expressing themselves. A fascinating relationship. I coded the meaning on that level. Later, when I became a logotherapist because of my degree in logophilosophy. We look at meaning from the vantage point of it being the chief concern that we humans have in life. It is also our chief source of energy, meaning as our chief source of energy. Also, according to logotherapy, we have three sources of meaning which are always registered along that which we value.

What you find meaningful there will be different from what I find meaningful because our values are different. The first source is creative and that’s what we give of ourselves to the world. That’s important to us. I call that passion. The second source is what experiences and encounters that we have in the world that are important to us. I call that inspiration. The third one is the attitudinal stance that we take when life throws at us whatever it is it’s going to throw at us. We have the ability to choose that and I call that mindset.

When you’re clear about, you know, that the more that you can activate those three sources on a regular moment-by-moment basis. Not occasionally, but every day and ideally, moment-by-moment. The more energized and vital you will be. That’s what people don’t understand about meaning. They don’t understand that it’s such a tremendous source of energy and motivation.

It’s energizing. To use the name of your book Revitalizing. It’s truly self-sufficient.

It’s intrinsic motivation. It’s that little engine that keeps going because of its internal combustion source.

That’s so cool. I love how you could build it on our basic needs. We need to have our needs in place and be able to know that we’re okay. We can persevere and push forward and do different things and challenge ourselves. I also know you talk about in different avenues about transcendence, which it gets to that point where we’re able to connect differently, spiritually and with different meaning.

I appreciate that you state our meanings are different based on our values. It’s so important that everybody needs to know that. That my meaning is different than your meaning. We get energized a bit differently, even though we have a lot of similarities and we’re in a similar space. We do this a little bit differently.

Both of us clearly value learning and education or else, we wouldn’t have each written our research and written our own books. Back on the self-transcendence idea, that is a logotherapy term. It speaks to what I was telling you about the Spain and Brazil story. Self means transcendent above the self. Whenever you are in service of other people, to other people, you’ve transcended yourself. You have the opportunity to feel that wonderful, elevating feeling of meaning because you’re mattering and everybody wants to matter.

They want to make an impact. As you know, this thing about purpose is so fascinating. People conflate meaning and purpose. They’re not the same thing. What you find meaningful can lead you to your purpose, but they’re not the same thing. For me, I always think about purpose as something that you’re always in service of someone else. It’s not about you. It’s about how you’re helping other people. Now, you might win secondarily by performing that, but it’s always about serving other people.

I don’t have it committed to memory, but Alicia Hare who’s been on my program has a beautiful way of describing purpose that it speaks to the fullness of our potential. When we guide it and give ourselves over to it, we can realize our full potential when we’re in service of that. That’s why, to me, identity and purpose are so intimately connected and why I believe I started studying identity, then I found myself at purpose later on.

Our identity is essentially to what we’re connected and what our actions are to what we’re following through on. If you’re saying the purpose is an extension of that, is that how you think about it?

Purpose is the most pure expression of your identity.

That’s well said. As far as purpose, when you’re out speaking, do you feel people have a purpose or are they looking at you like, “Don’t pick me.” Do you get a sense people out there understand what this means and people have it?

I do ask most of my audiences, how many people do you believe know your purpose? Invariably, it is about maybe 3% to 4% of the audience. Maybe 5%. People feel like they’re sheepish, or not ashamed but disappointed that they don’t know their purpose. I’m like, “Don’t do that to yourself. It is a process.” I can tell you, I remember years ago. I had Karen Hoyos on my program, and she’s a little firecracker.

She wrote a book. It’s called Purpose: The Ultimate Quest. We talked about it on there and she said, “Only 1% of the globe is fully living their purpose now. When we get to 3%, human consciousness will be raised such that peace is possible.” We will because people are working at it. People are now aware that they can get it. That’s worth getting up for and working toward. I talk a lot about purpose in my talks and people love it. They’re so inspired and encouraged by that. They want it for themselves and I see there’s a tremendous opportunity to help more people either discover that or get that presence for themselves.

You’re igniting people to see that in themselves and to get comfortable with what that purpose might be. Can you give a simple step or two for folks to think about how they can identify their purpose or maybe connect to something to practice with?

Nick Craig was on my program some years ago. He’s a purpose guy, too. He says, “Purpose has been leading you your whole life. You just didn’t know it and didn’t recognize it because it’s so natural, this water that you swim in.” A lot of people do have an idea of their purpose, but they don’t think of it as their purpose because they think it’s supposed to be this big on the mountaintop thing.

First, you can ask your friends or people that know you well, who am I being in the world? Read what that looks like. If they say, “You’re always the person that’s cheering people up. You’re always the person that’s lifting the crowd.” Maybe part of your purpose is that you are a lifter. Your job is to elevate in life. Maybe you’re the problem solver. Every time people have an issue and you’re like, “I know what to do about that.”

If you start looking at who am I naturally being in the world, you might glimpse that there is an element of purpose in that. You just didn’t see it that way. The other thing though about it is it should light you up. It should cause you to feel like you’re leaning to the end of your skis when you’re in the activity surrounding this. It shouldn’t make you feel dull like, “This is my job.” If it doesn’t lift you, then you’re not on the right track. Looking at the activities that give that to you is a second way. You can start on this stuff.

They’ll be in front of your skis. That’s a great visual. How about if I have limiting beliefs or maybe I have too much negative noise going on in my head?

I have it, too. I doubt myself on a fairly regular basis, like, whose idea was this anyway? Join the crowd. The opportunity though is, and I just had a great guest on my program talking about this, Maja Djikic. She wrote a book called The Possible Self, which I know you would love. Anyway, we all have limiting beliefs. Ruminative and negative beliefs that say we can’t, or we’re not good enough, and why would anybody want to do this with us. It’s just what it is to be human.

She taught me that we do need to intervene in those. We need to own them, get them on the table, and say, “I have that belief. It’s right there.” We have to redirect it in our heads but also our bodies. I learned so much from her about how to change the way that we think. We have to involve our emotions, our mind, and our body. It’s our wants, which is our motivation. It’s amazing, and it’s a pretty complex process. I don’t think that most of us are equipped to do this by ourselves. That’s why I believe in the power of coaching.

I also appreciate hearing you talk and reading your book and our last conversation. You have so many sources on the top of your mind. Everything you say with the suggestion and how we live life or how we can do something, it’s sourced and it’s real. It’s possible. I love that.

Some of my very best friends are sitting out there in my front living room. They’re disguised as this thing called books. It’s going to take over my whole house at some point.

I read your book. I have all these nice notes. I was reading that on the beach, and I was smiling throughout reading the book and how it could impact the world. As you talk about having purpose, not only for us individually but for our company. As we have this for a company, connecting the dots with the individuals, that can help us get to that 3%. I can only imagine. I’m super excited to talk about your book if you’d like to go there. It’s called The Great Revitalization.

I spent enough time researching and writing it. Sure, we can talk about it.

Writing “The Great Revitalization”

Speaking of research, the book is called The Great Revitalization. I’d love for you to talk about the two parts and how you felt about writing this. I’d love to jump right in there for a second and what you’re feeling about it now.

How I wrote it like my other book, Purpose Ignited, each week on the show, I read the book cover to cover in preparation for the show. I take about 25 pages of typewritten notes from the book, and that becomes my research funnel. As I kept percolating on the authors that I had on the last couple of years, I was like, “I feel like I need to write something that will help people understand how much the world and the workforce have radically changed largely since the pandemic.” Not just because of the pandemic, but largely in relation to the pandemic.

That was the impetus for writing it. I felt like I had learned so much. I was folding in these things in my own consulting as I was going and helping more companies to discover and articulate their purpose. We would thread it into their culture. It would fortify and enliven the operations. I was seeing this stuff work. I was like, “We got to share this with more people.”

I could tell the people leaders were frazzled and didn’t understand. They couldn’t figure out why people didn’t seem to want to come to work, didn’t want to give their best, and didn’t want to stay. They were trying the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. That’s why I wrote the book. The first part is the Gusto components, helping them get the lay of the land of what the workforce wants. I was like, “I don’t want to just leave them with that. How about if we then?”

I start to give them an idea of what they can do about that. Part two is three chapters that are organized around intellectual intelligence, emotional intelligence, and spiritual intelligence, believe it or not, that they can employ into their culture and their practices to start to create a place. Ideally, what I want them to do is to create a destination workplace. That’s why and how I wrote the book. I thought this is my template or my way to be able to start conversations with losing organizations to help them see where they’re missing the mark or where they can improve.

Add a hyphen in the middle and it is your website, too (https://gusto-now.com/). I love that connection.

I had so much fun with that. I’ve never done anything. I was inspired by my dear, I would call him a mentor and someone I at least know somewhat socially, Dr. Raj Sisodia. He does a lot of things with acronyms.

Part one is Gusto, the what, then part two is the how, which is the now, which is so fun because again, you’re showing people how to do this. You give them a lot of research and their resources. It’s a nice guide for folks that want to revitalize their organization, as you said in the subtitle, How activating meaning and purpose can radically enliven your business. I love that word enliven.

Thank you. I appreciate that you got this. My business is Gusto, Now. That’s what I call my business. The reason I call it that is that when I lived in Spain and Brazil and I learned those cultures and those languages, they became a part of me. I still speak Spanish and Portuguese comfortably. I love what those cultures taught me. They’ve lifted me. They’ve informed my sense of self and person. Gusto means pretty much the same thing in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. It has to do with oomph, energy, and zest. All those fun words that I love to help activate in people.

It sounds like you have a little bit of a dancing element to that, too. Is that part of what goes into your work?

I’ve been playing with the tango for a while. I saw that when I was in Argentina when I lived in Brazil until I broke my foot. I don’t know if you know that. I’ve been hobbling around on crutches in my little scooter. Before that happened, I was taking tango lessons. I am still taking improv classes. In fact, I have a performance with my class. I want to help more people dance and play with life and open up and shine.

Dancing through life is amazing. Even just that perspective. We’re all different at it. I know I look awful, yet I have a blast doing it. I’m not Elaine from Seinfeld, yet I have a lot of fun out there. We got to put ourselves out there. We got to try different things.

You’re reminding me, you say you look awful out there. I don’t know. I’m also taking singing lessons, by the way, because I am an ordained minister. I’m going to marry my niece in September. I’m going to sing for her and her fiancé a song. It’s going to be John Legend’s All of Me. I’m taking singing lessons, too. Years ago, before I got married, I loved to go out dancing with my girlfriend.

I was in Seattle dancing at this bar, having a great time. I walked off the dance floor toward the bar to leave, and this man stops me and grabs my arm. He says, “You were way off back there.” I was like, I thought, “Are you trying to get my phone number? Because if you are, it’s not working. I don’t care if I’m off. I was having a great time. Let go of my arm.”

We have to enjoy our space. We have to be silly, let our hair down, and enjoy the world. The beauty that’s out there. As you probably read in my book, I had over ten years of dancing and dance recitals with my daughter, but it was dancing dads. We had a blast doing it. It was quite the experience. The fact of getting out there to show the vulnerability, even just for my own daughter or for all of our daughters, sends such a message. But the power of what I love behind all of it is mostly the connection we had by doing something for somebody else.

That’s the self-transcendence again. It’s pretty yummy.

I opened up to your book in the O for ownership culture that unites all stakeholders through purpose. A word that I circled here, and I’d love to get your perspective on it, is regenerative fulfillment. Those two words and what your take is on that.

I’d love to share that. I thought you were going to say something else, which I’ll hit as well. Let me back up and say that by 2030, the majority of the workforce will be comprised of Gen Y, which are the Millennials, and Gen Z. They insist on having meaningful work and being part of an organization that they can feel proud of, that ideally aligns with their values. They’re not going to get a job just to make money. It’s not how they’re wired.

This is why I love doing the work that I do and helping organizations to articulate their purpose and thread it into their operations when everybody understands. It’s not something they read on the wall over on this purpose statement. Everybody knows, down to the last toenail, why this organization exists and why anybody should care. They know they’re part of it because they have that sense of belonging. They know that they’re making an impact. They know that their role and contribution matter. That’s that regenerative piece.

It’s that battery that keeps getting recharged because of the constant reinforcement and the constant juice of the meaningfulness piece of it. I’ve done this a few times at organizations in the last year and a half. When you watch organizations come alive and you can feel that limbic resonance of everyone inside, where their brains are connected and firing on the same level because they all feel connected, that is what I’m talking about. It’s fantastic.

Doubling Down On Humanity

It’s beautiful. Throughout your book, you talk about how we’re bringing back humanity into the workplace. If you could speak about that a little bit more because I know that feeds directly into that.

One of the things that I’ve done as I was updating my website is I say that what we’re doing at Gusto, Now is we’re doubling down on humanity. The reason why I say that is because we’ve become so uber-obsessed with AI and ChatGPT and all how technology is going to change things and take jobs. What I’m out to do with and through my work is to help it become more human. We help them understand and better assume all the fullness of that.

I mean that emotionally, relationally, and spiritually. That is how we distinguish ourselves from technology. The more we can do that, the more enriching and vital our existence is. Part of what I’m doing is through my program. My leadership program is Vitally Inspired. That’s for executives and culture, then managing through meetings for managers. It’s to teach some of that in the way alongside all the other practical skills they have to have. How do you communicate and give direction in a way that vitalizes people and doesn’t diminish them? That’s the opportunity. I’m huge in this idea of doubling down on humanity.

You thread this nicely throughout the book. I encourage folks to get the book because it’s a beautiful read. I’ve at least mentioned to you, I giggled throughout reading this book. It’s not a book full of jokes. It was just I get it. I’m connected with you so deeply that it’s powerful and it’s refreshing to see what you put out to the world. Thank you again for that.

Thank you, Darrin. I appreciate that.

The Role Of Happiness And Joy In The Workplace

There are words like possibilities, living with awe, seeing the beauty, and having people step in and have their fulfilled selves be enlightened and enlivened, as we mentioned. You talk about joy and happiness. I want to ask you, when we think about happiness, how do you see happiness in the workplace? What does that look like from what you’ve seen?

I was thinking about this because of my conversation that I had with my guest, Maja Djikic. She wrote The Possible Self. I like and align with how she distinguishes happiness and joy. For me, I want happiness in the workplace for sure. I also want joy, but happiness from both of our vantage points is, it’s a current moment. It’s a responsive emotion to something that is either good or heading you toward a goal of yours, or maybe it’s something that’s nice but not necessarily imperative.

There’s a nice lifting quality to it. For me, when I distinguish joy, it’s a much more profound emotion. It speaks to, and Dr. Meyers says the same thing, it’s connected to when you’re advancing along something that’s like a core potential for you. Something that is core and what you’re trying to do with yourself and your life.

When you feel like you’re on track for that and you’re being who you want to be in relation to that, then you can experience joy. That is this profound way of being in the world. I’m developing another course around some of these higher kinds of emotions like we’re talking about because I see how important it is. I want to see more happiness in the workplace. I hate it when I walk into an organization and I feel this awful deadness, this thud. You’re devoid of any energy. When I go in and I can feel that limbic resonance tracking the energy, it is vital, and people are laughing. You can feel the movement. That’s more of the joy part of it.

Future Of Work And Purpose

It’s possible when you start to see that. As you think about purpose, meaning, and the future of work tie in joy or any other element you think is relevant. How does that show up for you when you think about 10 to 15 years from now, what we’re trying to do? We’re trying to influence change today to help folks imagine what is possible in the future. What does that look like?

I am somewhat surprised that there aren’t more organizations that better even fully embrace what we’re talking about right here. Let’s call the meaning part being able to create a workplace. Forget it being a destination workplace. A workplace where people feel like they’re valued and they know that. They feel like they’re part of something important that matters to their sense of self. I want that to become more of a mainstay.

I am not going to quit shooting for this notion that we can reach for those higher stars of our humanity. What Maslow would call those higher attitude and OB values. He said there were things like compassion, unity, and such, but I’m adding things like gratitude, joy, wonder, and awe in there. I want that whole thing to be what the forward-reaching organizations and companies are doing to pull the rest of us along.

I want to work with those organizations. I don’t know a whole lot about Eileen Fisher, the women’s fashion clothier company. From what I do know is they’re way out there ahead in terms of their evolution, inner consciousness, and how they work with and teach their employees. I would love to do some work with them. They’re best in class in so many ways. Working with those organizations that are pulling the rest of us along is what I would hope to see.

You’re making that a reality. I think about self-actualization as you go up the hierarchy. It allows us to open the door. When I think about awe and wonder and being able to be courageous enough to look out and be expansive and create that space. To me, that is where that level of transcendence comes in. I don’t know if you have those experiences when you’re in India, but some of my learning as far as folks talking about when people even greet each other in India. It’s about seeing the light in each other and being able to see the beauty and seeing what is possible, not what gets in the way.

What’s so interesting, I was going to say easy. What I mean as interesting is, I’m a Gallup-certified strengths coach. I do a lot of strengths, team-building sessions and such. It’s fascinating. One of the 34 strengths is one called connectedness. It’s this ability to be able to see all the invisible threads. I’m big into this idea of interdependence and oneness. As part of my spiritual dimension and where I’m going in my consciousness.

The connectedness strength does speak to that. What’s fascinating is when I’m doing sessions, oftentimes, people of Indian descent end up with connectedness in their top five. Not so much we Americans, but Indians, yes. It’s a collectivist society. We’re individualistic. That already contributes to that. I learned about 25 words of Tamil when I was there because I was in the Southern part of India when my little scoop Pat and said, “How do you say, hello, goodbye, and thank you?” It’s so beautiful. You greet somebody with Namaste. In the South, Vanakkam. It’s this beautiful way of connecting and being with someone. It’s so beautiful. Language is so important.

It is important. We were recently in Hawaii and a language example is coming to mind. The spiritual connection of someone saying Aloha. Imagine if we started our speaking engagements with Aloha. People might look at us like, “What?” The point is, it’s about connecting as humans with love and spirituality. It’s a much deeper hello. It’s from the heart. It’s not just saying it to say it.

It stops the moment for a moment and requires you to be present.

That’s pretty cool. When I think about some of the things you’re doing, too, I have not read your other books but I did look at them. They looked pretty inspiring. One of the themes, I don’t know if this is true or not, I read components of it where it talks about how to overcome challenges or overcome pain. Almost like turning pain into a greater purpose. I don’t know if there’s a message or two that you’d want to share about those books that might pique the interest of some others. How do we take something, maybe it was painful or maybe we lack a level of worthiness or something to turn it maybe into something more positive or our purpose.

That’s what you’re talking about is this book. Its subtitle is How Loss Invites Us to Live More Vibrant Lives. This is a book that I wrote to capture and celebrate my experience of losing both of my parents 28 days apart in January 2019. The story itself is already relatable to people to help them already process and navigate their own pain. Part two of that book is The Seven Whispers of Wisdom that I got about living life from those losses.

It is heavily informed by being a logotherapist, as somebody who has studied logophilosophy. One of the reasons that I was attracted to the idea of logophilosophy is that it teaches. One, it’s an optimistic way of living and being in the world. It teaches that there are no negative or tragic circumstances that one experiences that can’t be transmuted into a positive accomplishment but for the stand we choose to take to them.

There’s so much empowerment in that. One thing that’s been so fascinating as I’ve been hobbling around on crutches and this little scooter is that I’m attracting people who have had injuries or they’ve had crutches or they’ve had a major accident. They’ve been telling me about these critical aspects or experiences in their lives. It opened something. I look at them, and I’ve been moved to tears several times as they talk to me.

I’m present to the indomitable aspect, the ferocity of the human spirit. There’s so much we can overcome. Part of the reason I love logotherapy is that what it’s doing is we’re helping people to activate meaning in their own life. We’re also teaching them how to reach into those natural spiritual resources that are available to us all, regardless of whether or not you are a believer in any religion or anything like that.

It’s not connected to religion or faith, but you have this capacity in you all the time to persevere through whatever life throws at you. In doing so, you exhibit a grace that inspires and lifts other people as well as yourself. That is incredible. I’m getting more of that. I might keep my scooter and my crutches after this is all healed up. I don’t know.

I appreciate you bringing it back so we have more control than we know. We’re empowering. You’re encouraging us to take the steps to put ourselves out there. We’re connecting with the world in different ways. We’re seeing it in ways that will truly light us up to go back to that. I appreciate you letting us know that. We all have the opportunity. We all can do this. We just got to put ourselves on that lily pad, that first step, then move from there.

That’s a big part of what I’m doing in my work. People need inspiration. They need encouragement. This is the world we live in. People need that. I’m very happy to supply that.

I, and the world, thank you. I had to ask you this question too because I’m impressed by how many books you’re reading and how you’re applying this thing that you do. You’re a dancer, even with a bad leg or a bad foot. You’re singing, which I won’t ask you to do because I know you have to properly prepare.

Thank you. We don’t want to scare people off.

What other fun things do you do in your day that keep energizing you? I know all that feeds your soul, like it sounds. Is there anything else that you’re doing to keep it going?

Before I broke my foot, I believed heavily that exercise is an important part of my life. Running and being at the gym is very important. Travel is huge for me. I love traveling and going to different cultures. It’s one of the best things that you can do to feel more connected to the world, learn from other cultures, and connect with other cultures.

I was just in Napa, California with my daughter a few weeks ago. I love wine. We stopped at several wineries. Another thing that also brings me a lot of happiness is my daughter. She’s 21, and I love that she wants to spend time with me. She chooses to spend time with me, and I’m so grateful for that. We have a lot of fun when we’re together. We travel together. I do not know what I ever did to deserve her, but I’m very grateful for her.

It sounds like you both make a great pair.

I’m going to renew the lease. I’m not going to give her back.

The Power Of Curiosity And Connection

When you’re traveling or you’re out doing these fun things, how do you slow down and enjoy what’s in front of you?

I have a knack for being able to stop and talk with people wherever I go. I don’t mean I’m just saying, “Hi, how’s your day?” It’s often an intimate discussion about their lives and who they’re being. The cool thing is sometimes if that’s broken English or in whatever their language might be that I can’t speak. I love connecting with people on that real level. What I’ve found is if you ask people something like, “What are you most proud of in your life?”

That’s a different conversation than “What do you do?” I ask, “What do you pour yourself into? Why is that important to you?” That’s a different question than “What do you do?” I like to have those kinds of questions. Everywhere I go, I have those kinds of conversations. I have them with the person that serves me at the restaurant.

I’ve given my business card to many people and many servers because I’ve got invested in their stories. I’m like, “I need to hear more about that.” That’s another thing that I teach in my programs. It’s amazing how far you can go with curiosity. To be genuinely curious about somebody else, their life, what they’ve navigated, and what they’ve learned from that is infinitely interesting to talk about.

I love the word curiosity, as you know. I love how you added genuinely in front of that intentionally. That’s purposeful, which is great. I also recall when I was on your show. Do I have this right that you would stop and say something to people that show that they’re in love too?

I told you the three sources of meaning. One of them is passion. What are you putting yourself into the world that matters to you? When I’m out in public, I love to stop a woman and tell her that she’s beautiful. Invariably, she’s very surprised by that. It has to be genuine and sincere. I go looking for someone to say something to. My daughter’s like, “Let’s get this done. Who’s it going to be?”

She knows. I also love going up to couples that I see connected. I love to come up and say, “I want you to know that I saw you from across the room. I can see your love radiating from across the room. It’s just beautiful. How long have you been together? Who picked up on who first? How did you get together?” They love it. Invariably, they’re waiting for the next interview question. “Go ahead. What’s the next thing?” I love to do that. Invariably, they feel more connected by someone having seen them. They feel like, “Maybe we do have something special here.” I’m trying to encourage that.

You’re lighting everybody up.

Going back to your other question about finding your purpose. That is part of my purpose. I am an encourager. I am an igniter.

I can imagine people’s eyes open up and their hearts open up. They’re like, “Who is this person? She’s amazing.”

I’ve had people ask me, “Who are you?” I did this at a beautiful restaurant before I took my daughter and her boyfriend to the symphony a few weeks ago. I saw these couples and one I came up to. I went to her first. I said, “What do you love about this man?” She said, “I can be who I am across my whole life in its entirety with him. It could be all of me.” I turn and look at him and I ask, “What do you love about this woman?” He was already moved to tears. I put my hand on his shoulder. I said, “What do you love about this woman?” He said, “I can’t imagine a day of my life without her.” Come on. Who’s up for a conversation like that? Let’s go.

My whole body’s tingling now. That’s pretty cool.

Isn’t it great? I do that all the time. This is the standard for me. I love this. This is what I mean by when you stoke your own meaning sources. Those three sources of meaning. This is what I’m teaching in my programs and beside companies. You live in that energizing buzz and it goes with you everywhere, then you infect other people with that. It what continues to carry me. The more I do those kinds of things, the more energy that I have for researching, writing, creating programs, and doing programs. It’s that ongoing revitalizing and rejuvenation energy source we were talking about.

I ask folks that are reading to try it out. Try something. Maybe not to the level Dr. Alise is doing. Maybe you’ll get there someday, but try one of these items out. You might be surprised at what happens. You might be amazed when people react in a different way than you’ve probably ever imagined and the impact that you could have. 

Dr. Alise, I’d like to ask you one last question. When you think about the line, live your possible. What does that mean to you? What are some final words you’d like to give our audience about how they too can live their possible?

What a great way to finish. First, I’m going to say that a lot of people struggle with the idea of living your possible. A lot of people are afraid of that. That feels big, overwhelming, and scary. It is because when you see your full potential and how beautiful and impactful you can be. It’s like, “That is amazing.” You do have to have help.

I had to have people illustrating my possible to me. I had a boss fire me because he said, “You can’t stay here. You can do so much more.” I was nineteen years old. I had no idea the things he said that I could do, and I did realize all of them, but I couldn’t see them without him telling me. Once he said them, I was like, “That’s interesting.” That’s why I believe so much in the power of work.

It’s the playground where we can realize our potential. Especially when we’re led by inspirational leaders who are looking. They’ve been taught how to teach and go looking for what’s amazing about their people, then to lead them to where they could be. Not where they could be tomorrow or today, but where are they going? Where could they go? Being led by someone like that is incredible.

To me, living your possible speaks to first honoring yourself. Loving yourself enough to give yourself over to those experiences, putting yourself into situations, places, experiences, and companies where you get more of the opportunity to be stirred like that by an inspirational leader who believes in you and who will give you challenges to be able to continue to grow.

Choose your association in your personal life very carefully too, so you’re not around people who say, “Why would you want to do that? Why would you want to work that hard? Why would you want to go do that? Why don’t you stay with me here on the sofa?” Unless the sofa is where you need to be for the moment. To me, there’s so much action in living you possible. It’s pulling. The more that you give yourself over to it, the more energized you are to keep going.

It’s expansive and it’s amazing.

It is expansive.

Dr. Alise, I’m honored to call you a friend, being on your show and have you join our show. I’m inspired by everything you do. You move me in the way you do it, how you align resources, and your thinking to living an amazing life. Encouraging other people to step in it with you and maybe even dance with you at times if people are ready for that. Thanks again for being on the show.

Thank you for having me, Darrin. It’s wonderful. I’m grateful to call you a friend as well.

Important Links

• Gusto, Now
• Working on Purpose Show
• Purpose: The Ultimate Quest
• The Possible Self
• The Great Revitalization
• Purpose Ignited
• Dr. Raj Sisodia
• https://www.LinkedIn.com/in/alisecortez/
• https://Gusto-Now.com/books/

About Dr. Alise Cortez

Dr. Alise Cortez is the Chief Ignition Officer at Gusto, Now!, a human and organizational transformation consultancy specializing in the activation of meaning and purpose to increase engagement, performance, innovation, retention, and thus profitability. She is an organizational psychologist and logotherapist, inspirational speaker, researcher, author, and host of the Working on Purpose podcast.