Episode 1: The Space Between Success and Alignment
Hello, and welcome to the first episode of The Soulful Success Podcast. My name is Kyle Diotte, and I will be your guide and mentor that is walking alongside you on this journey that we're going to embark upon together.
I want to let you know that this podcast is a bit of a different kind of space than maybe what you may be used to. It's a little different in the sense that I'm not going to be trying to overly teach or provide advice or that sort of thing. The core intention is really to help you resonate with the content and help you integrate, learn, and really start to take your personal growth and development to the next level. So while you're listening, you really don't need to do anything with it. You just need to listen to what resonates, what lands in your body. You don't need to take notes or anything of that nature. It's really about just allowing yourself to listen and key into the pieces that are true for you.
So this podcast is going to be here to help with naming those pieces, helping you identify what may be misaligned in your life currently, and where we may need to go to help you get into more Soulful Success — and what it is you truly want to be doing.
Now, the reason this podcast came to be is through my own life and even through other people's lives. I've been noticing that when we get to certain levels of financial success and freedom, there are still parts of us that feel like something is missing, or like there's still a hole that needs to be filled. And so that's really the problem with the story that many of us were told when we were young. Get a good job. Get a good career. Life's gonna be great. And I'm sure you're listening and saying — hey, that was the advice I had followed, and it didn't really get me to where I wanted to be. And that's okay. That's okay. That's why we're here. That's what we're doing this work for. That's why you've been looking into growing yourself and doing your own personal development. So this is really an opportunity — this podcast — to help integrate the different things you would have learned throughout your personal growth and development journey.
So this podcast is really for those individuals who have seen success, whether through their business, through their career, or maybe you're even looking to pivot, and you just want to make sure that you're aligned in that next direction properly. The core essence is really about being in alignment with yourself and your journey, and really integrating who you are as you grow and develop into this next level. So you could be at a few different stages — that's okay. The big thing is that you have already been working on yourself, understanding yourself a bit further. Because that's what we're going to do — work on realigning who you are.
Because what happens is when we get that external success, it feels good, but it's not sustaining. You get that external success and then it's like — okay, now what? It's not something that helps maintain over time. Looking at our bank account can only make us feel so good when the relationships in our lives aren't what we want, or when the conversation topics are things we don't actually want to be talking about. These things are not allowing us to thrive. In addition to that, there could be opportunities where you're editing yourself to fit into a social circle, not sharing what you feel you want to share for whatever reason. And so these are different areas of challenge that can come through when we actually focus on ourselves, focus on growing, and have the courage to act in those moments. Those small actions will inevitably lead us to where we need to be with our overall alignment.
Now there is also that feeling that there's something more. And that's really what we're here to explore — to figure out what that more is and how we really align with it. And this is where it comes back to — maybe we were following a life plan that was handed to us, and maybe what's missing is that we didn't foster the relationships, the hobbies, and the true things that bring us joy. So we can see the fruits of our labor in a great way, but not actually feel them in a meaningful way.
So there are a variety of different ways this can manifest for all of us, but it really comes down to that subtle feeling that something is either missing or there's more available. And this is why Soulful Success came to fruition — because this is a very common theme that I came through in my own life and that I've seen with many other successful individuals. The money isn't everything, and they're looking for more ways to be more authentic, more aligned, more congruent, and to be more confident and courageous in the way they express themselves and live their lives.
So it's really about taking your life back and realigning to what's proper for you. And in doing so, things are just going to move in a positive direction. It might even feel like a slingshot — where you're pulling yourself back to catapult yourself forward.
And that is really what happens when we learn to operate from our own design, make decisions in alignment with who we are, and live according to how we were meant to live. It is possible for all of us and it is achievable for all of us. We just need to make the conscious decision, and then the effort to follow our own path.
And so this is where traditional self-improvement can be challenging. Because with self-improvement, there's the pressure to improve, to optimize, to fix. I'm here to tell you that you don't need fixing. You don't need to improve yourself. You don't need to do any of that. These are all choices you can make if you choose to help yourself get into a different state of your life, to help your family — but these are all choices. So I want to start by saying — you are not broken. You don't need to be fixed. You are perfect as you are. If you want to experience more of life, then great — we can discuss that.
And so that's why, when you look at self-improvement and self-help, there is a constant pressure. Like — oh, you didn't do well today, do better tomorrow. That kind of pressure can be definitely overwhelming. And it can actually be a little bit counterproductive for some of us. If we are working on improving ourselves but we're not flowing through it the way we want to, that's going to impact how we look at ourselves. It's going to create more of a negative effect and can actually move us in the opposite direction.
And so that's just one angle of the challenge of the self-improvement industry as it stands. It's kind of like goal, goal, goal, goal — which isn't actually practical in the Soulful Success realm. Because you're not allowing yourself to actually sit with what you've done. You're not allowing yourself to integrate what you've done. You're just kind of continuing along with the hustle culture. And if you're listening to this, I'm going to assume that you probably don't agree with the hustle culture. And I definitely don't. From a Human Design perspective, I've learned I'm a Projector, and I just don't vibe with that. I'll get into that as we go as well, but I definitely encourage you to look into your Human Design if you haven't already. As we go through things it'll help you to integrate what we're discussing.
This is one thing I've seen with the self-improvement industry — that constant pressure to improve cannot be the right approach for everybody. When we go from goal to goal to goal and we don't acknowledge what we've built, we don't actually increase our own self-worth because we're not appreciating what we've created for ourselves. And we're creating more of that cycle of hustle, which is going to inevitably lead to burnout and less satisfaction in life — because we don't actually take the time to appreciate what we've done. It's goal, on to the next, on to the next, and we don't really take the time to reflect. That's completely normal in the society we've created, and I'm here to share with you that it doesn't have to be that way. You have permission to live life on your own terms, in the way that feels right and makes sense for you. And I hope that you start to embody that in whatever way makes sense for you.
As you're hearing this, you've probably already started to pick up that I have a different perspective on things. And that's exactly why I created Soulful Success. Because success is something that is lived — it's not something that's achieved. When we achieve something, we have that momentary or brief sense of satisfaction, and then it's on to the next. There's no sustainment in it. And that's why when people get caught up in the hustle culture — work, work, onto the next, onto the next — they're perpetuating themselves into burnout. They're not falling in line with who they are. They're losing themselves in the process because they're looking for the achievement. And that's completely understandable, because that is what our society and culture ingrained in us.
But if you're listening to this, I'm sure you've realized that that's not true for you. Success is what we do with our lives. It's how we live our lives. It's who you are. It's who you develop into. It's the character that you hold, the values you have, how you act when no one else is watching. And this is what creates more congruence with yourself, more alignment, more genuine confidence, self-worth, and self-efficacy as we live into who we are meant to be — not who we thought we were supposed to be, or who we were told we were supposed to be.
So taking this approach is really about having the capacity, the courage, and the honesty to express ourselves more in alignment with who we are, to be more honorable with ourselves and to express that. And I know there are going to be times where I share something that sounds easy, but in practicality it's not that easy. That's why I'm going to talk about integrating — and as we take actions, how we react and how we feel in those moments, and how we interpret and process our emotions, are all keys to helping us move through this phase of our growth journey.
And so as we go through this, I want you to really think about how it felt when you reached for those external goals and achieved them — versus what it's been like when you've done some internal growth work and had those internal experiences. Those are different. They're subtle, but they are definitely different.
Now as we go through this, as I mentioned, we're going to be sharing ideas, perspectives, reflections, and stories to help with understanding what may be going on and to share a different approach to how we could look at it. So it's not about step-by-step advice, hacks, or urgency — nothing like that. What we're going to get is reflection, perspective, clarity, and acknowledgment of what's really been going on beneath the surface that you've been feeling but just haven't been able to fully articulate yet.
So when you're listening to these episodes, I hope you're not sitting there taking notes — because that is not the intention of the podcast. The intention is that you are here to listen, reflect, and key into what holds true for you when you feel it in your body. When you have that moment of — oh, that makes sense. Or — oh, that's what's been going on. I didn't really have the words for it before. And so we want to acknowledge these moments and allow them to permeate our awareness. We don't need to act on them right away. That's the hustle personal development culture. We don't need that here. We need to let it sit. We need to let it integrate. We need to give it the time it's due, and you will know when it's time to act on it — and that will be something you feel in your body.
Something I say today may click for you a month from now. And that's okay. That's just the way it's supposed to happen for you. And that's completely fine.
Now as we go through things, I will share that I do follow Human Design quite regularly, and it's something I do integrate into my one-on-one mentorship. So you will hear me leveraging that as we go through this — it's really just to help with identifying different things and helping you key into what you might be seeing or how you might be feeling things. And I just want to be clear that when I share things like Human Design or embodiment work, these are all tools. I don't want you to box yourself into a specific identity when we're going through this. I'll bring up tools and different things to help along the way to help us get to where we need to be.
With all of that said, I thank you for being here, for taking the time to invest in yourself, to integrate what you've already learned, and to take yourself and your life to the next level — where you can have more success, more fulfillment, more joy, more ease, more aligned decision-making, more contentment, more happiness through your life, because you're living in alignment with who you are, and you know who you are, and you're unapologetic about it. And that's what I really want for you.
If you noticed something that resonated in this conversation, great — sit with it. No need to act on it right now. If you feel that this might be something someone else would benefit from, I welcome you to share it. But at this point, we don't need to do anything with it. I look forward to chatting with you next time. Bye for now.
If something in this episode landed and you've been sitting with your Human Design for a while but still find it hard to actually live it — a Human Design Integration Session might be the next right step. It's not another layer of learning. It's a conversation about how your design is already showing up in your life, and what's getting in the way of living from it. I hope you have an amazing day.