Where Did Your Life Force Go?

A couple weeks ago, my agent asked me something I hadn't thought to ask myself.

De'Anna, is your heart in this? He meant the cruise ship shows.

When I paused, I couldn't say yes.

Not fully.

Let me clarify: my heart is always fully expressed when on a stage; that part never left me.

But what aligned ten years ago, or even one year ago, no longer aligned.

My heart had moved.

My heart was in the closer work, the intimate work, helping and supporting people one on one, and in workshops and in keynote presentations.

I'd find myself giving a performance with everything I had, so much love and purpose.

To me, the show has always been about activating your life force, not just comedy for comedy's sake.

But on a cruise ship, I felt like I was hosting a leadership retreat in the middle of a pool party.

I'd be preaching personal resilience and overcoming internal blocks while people are half drunk doing the Macarena.

Now, hear me, I love to have fun.

In fact, we all need to be having more fun.

And I am more determined than ever to find the stages that fit both fun and leadership growth.

I knew deep down it was time for a change. Not because something was wrong. We only get the time we get, and I wanted to spend mine more intentionally.

I've worked with some of the smartest, most emotionally intelligent people you could imagine. People who won't give up when life serves them unexpected situations, people who don't want a "good life", they want one they feel is next-level-amazing.

And here's what nearly three decades of sitting across from brilliant humans or being inside their minds has taught me:

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Nobody is exempt.

Nobody graduates out of the valleys and never has to revisit them again.

The smarter you get or the more money you make or the more self-aware you become, you still hit the stretch where your life force dims. That's why I'm such a huge advocate of self-leadership skills, the ability to notice the dip and actually do something about it instead of white-knuckling through. Because determination is the first thing to give out when it dims, and determination was never the source to begin with. It's just what your life force looks like in motion.

Neuroscientists have actually traced this. The drive to pursue, explore, and master something isn't a personality trait or a habit you either have or don't. It runs on dopamine, through the same ancient circuitry that lights up in every curious, striving creature, not just us. Which means when your fire dims, it's not a character flaw. It's a signal. Something upstream needs tending.

I've been there myself, more than once, and I've had to give myself emotional CPR. Mental CPR. A deliberate, hands-on-the-chest, breathe-into-it revival, not of willpower, but of the life force underneath it.

So if you've hit a valley on your way to your next peak, here are three ways back to your life force, and to the dopamine-driven determination that follows it.

Reviving it takes real commitment, the same kind you'd bring to reviving anything worth saving. Will you commit to this?

1. Go Big Outside Yourself

Pick something external that scares you a little. Something that forces you to show up and rise to meet it, whether that's a physical challenge, a public commitment, or a trip you book before you feel ready. The kind of goal that doesn't let you hide. When you put your body and your name on the line for something hard, your life force has no choice but to rise and meet it, and determination shows up right behind it.

This works for a reason, and it's not just grit. Psychologists call it a mastery experience, and it's the single most powerful way we build self-belief. Every time you do the hard, scary thing and come out the other side, your nervous system files it away as proof. Proof outlasts pep talks and becomes your "new normal."

2. Go Big Inside Yourself

Sit with questions you haven't asked yourself in a while. The ones I return to most are simple:

Who do I want to be in this stage of my life?

What turns me on the most and makes me feel most alive, most joyfully powerful?

Researchers who study goal pursuit have a name for this too. They call it self-concordance, how closely a goal matches your actual values and interests rather than someone else's expectations for you. Decades of their research land on the same finding again and again. Chase a goal that isn't really yours, and you can hit it and still walk away empty. Chase one that is yours and the pursuit itself starts to fill you back up.

3. Explore Within, Act Without

Use the inner work to point you toward the outer move. And while you're at it, let go completely. Let go of your age. Let go of what feels like a limitation, physical, financial, whatever seems like a barrier. Just say it out loud and do it unapologetically. Every moment you ask boldly and move toward it, you are guaranteed an experience. And an experience, any experience, is proof your life force is back online, and your determination with it.

Watch what you feed your algorithm

One of my favorite things to do is watch reels of people twenty and thirty years older than me doing wildly physical things. Yes, ninety-year-olds sprinting or one hundred-year-olds jumping out of a plane. It floors me every time. Not the feat itself, but what's underneath it. What's driving them, I wonder? What gets them to keep going when no one would blame them for slowing down? That's life force in its purest form.

Turns out my algorithm habit is backed by real psychology. One of the most well-documented ways we build belief in our own capability is simply watching someone similar to us do what we want to do. The logic your brain runs is disarmingly simple: if they can do it, I can too. And the flip side matters just as much. If you never see anyone who looks like you or lives at your stage of life doing the hard, vibrant thing, some part of you quietly concludes it isn't available to you. Which is exactly why I'm so deliberate about who shows up in my feed.

Here's the thing about algorithms. They will keep feeding you exactly what you show them you want. So be intentional. Feed your algorithm the people who are living. The people who are climbing, lifting, writing, advocating, or hiking for a purpose. Let your feed become a mirror of the life force you're trying to grow.

But here's what I really want you to sit with. Two algorithms are running on you, not one.

The first lives outside you, in your phone, curating your feed based on every scroll and every pause. The second lives inside you, and it's older and far more powerful. It's the algorithm of your own mind. Years of the same recycled thoughts, the same old stories about who you are and what you're capable of, looping on repeat until your brain treats them as truth simply because they're familiar. That inner algorithm was built the same way the outer one was, by what you kept feeding it, over and over, until it learned exactly what to serve you next.

This is the deeper work I do with clients in my Strength-Based Hypnosis (SBH) practice. Because you can curate your social feed all day long, but if the algorithm running your subconscious is still serving up the same old limiting content on loop, you'll keep landing back in the same valley. Change what plays on repeat inside your own mind, and the outer world starts to look different too.

Check Your Motive

Here's something I teach in my private practice, and something I make sure every client of mine gets clear on. Before you chase the goal, check your motive. Are you acting from wholeheartedness, from what I call miracle spirit, the life force that actually sets your heart ablaze? Or are you still running old programming, still trying to prove your worth, still trying to please a parent or a family member, still doing what's culturally acceptable in the space you grew up in or from the survival strength that worked for so long?

We spend a lifetime doing things to earn identities that were placed on us before we ever had a say. As a kid, you had no control over that. As an adult, you have complete control and choice.

Your motive matters because without a heart-aligned vision, your fuel will run out while you're visiting the valley.

My Purpose Is Simple

I love encouraging people, and I don't mean the soft, light version. I mean kick ass encouragement. I want you to live a fantastic, amazing life that stands out as yours. As Nike says, "Just do it." But I don't think that's good enough. Why you're doing it matters just as much as doing it. If it's not riding on a camel's back in Morocco kind of amazing, it's not for you.

Your life force didn't disappear. It's just waiting for you to CPR it back to life. And once it's back, your determination will follow, because it always does.

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Your life force may not be what you think it is; work with me to discover more!

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