purpose do you ever feel like your life should have more meaning do you ever long for a deeper sense of purpose and fulfillment maybe you've worked really hard to achieve success in your career but you still feel like something is missing it's just not enough well today we'll be talking with a couple who literally walked away from paradise at the top of their game in hotel management to find their deeper purpose in life and they've never looked back that's daring to dream and if they can do it so can you stay tuned for as an inspiration on how you can dare to live the life of your dreams herbal medicine and holistic counseling in energy healing jamie and peter are proof that you can start over and find success doing work that features soul both had achieved success individually in the hotel industry peter as a chef at the four seasons in boston and jamie as director of convention services at the ritz carlton they took that success and landed a worrying situation managing a small resort in the british virgin islands but they listen to that little voice saying something was missing and they walked away from the good life and started over they were true to their hearts and have built successful practices helping others heal physically mentally emotionally and spiritually welcome jamie and peter thank you so much for joining us today and i'm really excited to have you guys on the show because i think that your story can reach people at a lot of different phases in their lives both people who are mid career and have as whatever level of success financially as sense of security but they feel like something's missing and they're not sure what to do and also people who are still trying to figure out you know what do they want to do with their lives and people who have built up a sense of security with their current position you know they should be doing something else but they're just too afraid to walk away from that security so i really want to give people a sense of your journey to where you are now and to give them a sense of the choices that you made that got you to where you are now so peter if we could start with you and talk about what led you to your first career in calling area arts sure i went to technical high school for conerly arts from my early part of high school and then i went to penn state to go to degree in vocational education to teach cohen area arts i thought i was going to be a schoolteacher originally now was this was this what you decided you wanted to do with your life i mean how do you how did you wind up in you followed exactly it was an opportunity that came to me and i i think that was one of the first times in my life or followed the voice inside that said here's an opportunity take it or not even though it wasn't what my mind told me was best for me or i and i took it and that led me for ten years down the path wow wow and jamie how can you i know you grew up in somerville so local all right and it ended up  why tell us about your journey and the choices that you made well after high school i had an opportunity to go to hawaii i had applied to different colleges in boston and i did go to one college here for a year but i had a friend who was going to the university of hawaii and i am a very much of a water person very much of a son or son person and it felt like a really big dream to go there and to go to school there allow i as a fluke i applied at the university of hawaii just to see i was already in college here and i got in and i decided to go it was really one of those things that just said you don't have a choice wow this as a brand i mean that's and that's a huge move wins and many people even if they had the opportunity and felt like oh this would be my dream still would be afraid to do it so you did take that step and say i'm going to do this you know i don't know exactly what made me do it except for the fact that it felt like it felt like something so huge that i always would have dreamed about it that i wanted and i just tried it and i think i was always an adventure or my parents would sort of let me do whatever i wanted and i didn't but so they were just from reno they said racing actually while as i was saying to you another time we had spoken in hawaii everyone is such an outdoor person rather you could become a tennis player volleyball player baseball and i just love the water so much that you could enter into intermural sports and it led to a really beautiful opportunity for me because it's from young people all the way to the you know grandparents could go out and canoe paddle but you could get very serious about it and race the yes it really was i it was again a beautiful opportunity in hawaii the thing that that is good for most people to go into is the hotel and travel industry because it's everywhere you look  though you know i was working my way through school by being a waitress a cocktail waitress but that was really fun to be in a store a famous hula show and to be really involved in the culture and learn the songs and learn the dances and  interesting because so but the you the hotel industry had a lot of opportunities for people especially i graduated from the university of hawaii so i was looked at as a prime candidate when i go into some of the young i was twenty one or twenty two twenty three so it's not like i was you know it was ok right that was ok i had a lot of experience in the different hotels so they weren't i wasn't mr looked at in a negative way well no i states at the hotel hershey hershey pennsylvania which was actually near my hometown and that's quite a you know itself i would say in a way it was a very small program part about eight or nine guys through to through almost a three year program so i finished as a professional chef and then i was offered an opportunity to go to hawaii and open the monologue a big hotel wow oh and i had a map then yes they'd start saying that and i believe you decided to move back to the boston area yes and what what brought about that decision because a lot of people you know would think wow where and why found my true love you know this could be a good place to spend the rest of our lives and that was there for yes and we had to make a choice that and i believe jamie chose to come back to the states with me yeah so you move back to boston and you know once again you both land pretty nice positions you know and i was at the four seasons open the four seasons hotel in the swiss hotel while in the pastry department i ended up as the assistant pastry chef when i left so that was kind of like the culmination of my calling or a career ladder for we took the position there to present virgin islands and jamie you started at the the ritz carlton well actually in hawaii i must say that i i actually had changed jobs to work for the sheraton properties oh that's right so after when peter and i started to date it was easier to not working exactly at the same property and i was offered another position as assistant manager of the sheraton where i work a low a ha so that was a beautiful opportunity to learn even more about the hotel business from the front of the house so when we decided to move back to boston i had already been in hawaii now ten years so it was in that natural opportunity and i'm the oldest of seven kids so i had been home for a while play and it was you know a disc good decision to come to boston and i asked the sheraton to help me with a transition so i did work told about the job at the ritz carlton so through word of mouth i was able to get that other out your ass so anyway that is the that's the track ok so so you're both in very nice nice to have the best hotels in boston so you know many people would think wow they made it yes right but i think that's when our dream started to kick in because the dream went from our individual careers to what could we do together  and how could we how could we have a life together and work together ok than just you go to work i go to work we see each other in the evening right and that may lead to this opportunity in the caribbean that has a tell us where we dreamed our dream was to own our own hotel actually in britain not so much even a bed and breakfast but a small hotel where there was a nice restaurant and and i have rooms because we knew we could handle that so we kind of had thought about it but i will say that in january of i think nineteen to correct my memory and nine hundred eighty six i can recall now i think i saw an ad in the boston globe and it was an ad for a hotel but what happened out of that was we saw what our dream would look like that oh this would be your dream running restaurant running a hotel i often would say there are still seventeen toilets there's still three boats or electricity or four ice machines or you know there's still beer to be ordered here and it became we saw what our dream would actually be and in my heart i started to question is this what i want to do for the rest of my life is how to want to spend the rest of my life with my wife and this is the kind of work i wanted to do but what came out of that was i realized i really liked working with people and helping people in fact even more helping the you enjoyed working with the staff more then then your customers might be ok well maybe i should be in more of a personnel managerial type role right right that would make table that made us question i think what we wanted to do it yeah yeah so year in year in the british virgin islands for how long just above five years five years now and what happens next well again as peter said i feel like i was drawn to it to learn more about what else is out in the world what what else i feel like i've always been a seeker questioner of reality somehow and through a very long series of events which is much too long just to share here with you i met a woman named barbara brennan and through meeting this woman i discovered that she had a school that she was  offering people to learn how to take your natural abilities natural healing abilities that she believes that all of us have and she was training people how to enhance those abilities through a very methodical steps through it aside almost  scientific study of helping people to open themselves up by working on themselves and learning how to run energy move energy see energy on a g and so on and i was really very drawn and i ended up getting to know her and she actually came and visited us down at this resort at the british virgin islands she met peter and we met her husband and then we learned much more about her that she actually had a four year school healing program which we thought well let's go and see what it's about so we threw her grace in this she invited us to come and see what her school was all about and we had a very very deep in moving experience there and that led us to do to the desire that this felt real it felt like we were already feeling this healing capacity inside ourselves anyway and that it kind of there was like a yes somehow inside and so what we actually did was ga we told the owners of the property that we would leave we would be leaving but we give them a year to find other people to replace us and that gave us a year to kind of explore and see what we were what we were about to do yeah so that was the transition that and at that point did you did you really have an idea of what you're going to do with that or will that more of feeling lead to follow up i have a feeling in general i think that what dad did for us or did for me anyway was it started a process of looking internally of what did i want to do with my life because my life wasn't part of my life was my marriage part of my life was what i did in the world how to make a living and the other part was with his way true vocation how can i bring who i am what human nature into my life and my work and how do i want to live how do i want to live the rest of my life so that school started this whole internal process  asking these deeper question ok i may just logistically offer as a transition just so that people understand that we had taken a year where we still ran the hotel but we flew back and forth to the school meetings so i was in a straight year program so we were able to kind of stand in both worlds for a little while to check it to check it out and is this really what we're what's going to happen is this right so you know and i think that's a really important point because often times people who want to make a transition you know they're they're afraid of taking that client and often they feel like it's you know an either or situation and you have to completely walk that's what we did and after that year we we did then kind of had to make that choice and it was one of those we had to i i had to make a choice even though it felt like jumping off an abyss and there were many many times when i felt like i had made the biggest mistake of my life really oh like you said we were and we were kind of at the top of our professions at that point i mean not at the top but we certainly are career proof our career is very well in front of us you know we could have continued on it and done very well but there was something inside that said you know we have to we have to change i have and you have so let's let's talk a moment about that about some of your fears and your doubts and how you live beyond those well for myself there was a practical decision and then the impractical the impractical was i'm leaving this profession that i've invested twelve or thirteen years on you know since i was a seventeen years old in high school through college through an apprenticeship through working at the four seasons you know through working in a hotel in the caribbean at all this investment in my profession and who i was professionally and externally in the world but the internal was like who am i really deep inside or i and that's what i crave that's what i wanted to do so by the impractical giving up my profession but it was more of an investment in i want to follow this this heart thread i want to follow this this thread that says there's something else for you and i and then i chose to go to acupuncture school as well as study healing as kind of a practical licensure rice self so for the next four years i went to acupuncture school funniest thing about it was i was very very connected with the people in the british virgin islands and i had made a decision to change my career but i forgot about momentarily i forgot about how painful it was going to be for me to leave so it was a very very difficult decision to have my doubts came more from what about the connections that i have now right you know already i'm healed i'm a healer in a killing capacity now  as a manager of this island we had twenty five staff you know they were they were our friends they were our you know so how was i going to do that that was that was the hardest thing for me because you know so i heard a line last night you don't really miss a place until you leave it exactly and so i feel like i started to really miss that although i will say i was very sure of myself i knew that i knew actually that both of us i had already seen in my mind like i had already fantasized that peter and i would be healers and this is such an interesting thing because one day i said i don't think we can just have a sign that says healing on it people aren't going to come right you can't just s right next place i think also coming back into the climate of new england was hard for me yet so it has more to do with those those things but i want to do that i knew that the healing path was absolutely correct yeah and i also felt that place where we couldn't put the sign out that said healing but i decided to pursue my counseling career because i feel like i had been a counsellor and in in the human resources department i had been a counsellor as  the oldest of seven i had the counsellor in my job in the british virgin islands so i was lucky to find a wonderful program at lesley college and did their whole counseling program there and which was really a great place for me as a risen adult learner returning to school later in life without though the pressures of feeling like i had to really push myself i could demick lee it was much more of a training in how to be a good listener how to be present for people so it felt like a nice bridge between healing in the county i felt natural right making it just all felt correct you know so and i have to ask once you do i think a lot of our friends were also equally kind of amazed that we have a more amazing we have the courage to do it now than the other half were i think just that we were crazy yeah i mean that's a good point though it does take a lot of courage to to take that step and really follow what you feel you're being intuitively led to do so i want to pick your brains and get some great advice for anyone who might be watching what suggestions do you have for anyone who may be feeling stuck in their current position or may not really know what their dream is but know that they're not there yet and what they're doing is not fulfilling them when you feisty you have this people i think the first thing i would say is you are where you are because something led you to that place and don't dismiss all that you've learned and all that you've been through that it's wrong you didn't you didn't choose wong lee but you're at a place now in your life where something is saying you need to reevaluate you need to look again so look on what you've done see it for the value that it's instilled in you like what you've gotten from it and then build on that and just see if there's another if there's another place your heart's leading because now that has been training for you  change honor that and then don't jump off a cliff right just start slowly searching inside look inside follow that questionnaire and that's wonderful advice jamie do you have anything you'd like to i guess i'd say yes i do if you have a fantasy about something let yourself fantasize and see what that might look like if you followed that fantasy because i i feel like i did have a fantasy to go to hawaii or did have a fantasy to go to the healing school or to move to the british virgin islands those were fantasies like i had the eye it came to me as a hint you know in other words a hint comes to you and then you let yourself it what would it look like if and sometimes you have to take the step to see how does it feel yeah sometimes you may get to the to the point of just even taking the step of applying for the job it might you might say no that's not right for me but i feel like if there's a movement from within yourself that follows the fantasy you're led step by step because i honestly don't think we know really anything we don't really know we can only take our selves moment to moment right and each moment sort of opens another door and that's what it is kind of how i see it so so what's next for you guys what's your next dream i think it's we've already started to manifest that in the sense that we've gone from i've gone from working individual with people in my practice to now starting to teach and teaching groups in general are doing that together we've gone from working with the individual energy field to the family energy field and working with people's family of origin and their ancestors and the relation to doing sisters and how we connected to something which warrior that's wonderful that's wonderful so if anyone would like more information on your individual practices or the workshops you do in the constellation approach they can visit your website healing arts of belmont dot com or the constellation approach dot com correct and appointment with both or either of you so thank you both so much for joining us today your story was so inspirational and i know that a lot of people are going to get  some inspiration and get a lot out of hearing hearing your story and your journey and we hope so yes yes thank you know if you or anyone you know has a story that would inspire others please let us know