I often get asked by people, “How did you end up doing psychedelic-assisted therapy, being your own boss, owning your own psychedelic business, and living on a Caribbean beach?” Even for me, sometimes it seems surreal. But when I really reflected on this, I realized that it was a series of steps and conscious choices that led me here, to this moment.
Keep reading to learn what those 10 major steps were that led me on a path of service and a life I only dreamed about in communist Hungary, where my story started. The first 5 steps are related more to personal development, while the second 5 steps are related more to professional development as a business owner in the healing field. However, I believe that they are intimately connected and equally important to have a successful career and meaningful life.
How to Move Towards Leading a Purposeful, Meaningful Life
STEP 1: Commit to Self-discovery
For me healing and self-discovery are the same thing. We all come into this world with a type of amnesia, if you will. Part of this experience is to remember our true nature, and who we really are. While most of us want to live a meaningful life and fulfill our purpose, how can you know what your purpose is if you don’t even know who you are?
Invest in your own personal healing. You can only take people as deep as you have gone, but more than that, your wounds are places of vulnerability and weakness. For this reason, any authentic healer will prioritize their own healing because they understand that healing is our best protection.
I have been plagued by this question since as early as I remember. The more I discover who I am, the more I find my place and purpose in my life. I remember a long time ago, my Mother asked, “Why are you always digging in the past?” And I didn’t have a good answer; I just had this unquenchable thirst to know. To figure out who I really am and what is this life about.
This drive, this deep urge, inspired me to follow the road of self-discovery and live an unconventional life. I think to guide others, you have to leave the beaten path because that’s where the magic is. That’s where your power is. And many times, that’s where your purpose is. At least, this worked for me.
STEP 2: Educate Yourself
Never stop reading, learning, experiencing, and widening your perspective. Life is a learning experience. In the psychedelic healing field, it is paramount that you have a wide range of tools, skills, and deep understanding that comes from professional training, practice, and personal experience.
For a long time, I was a ‘workshop junkie,’ meaning I was obsessed with trying and learning different healing tools, modalities, and approaches. Everything I heard about in the alternative healing field, I wanted to try, learn, and master. In retrospect, I think I was just always looking for something more, something better, until I found the plants. Sacred plants, especially the Mother Ayahuasca, took me to a whole other level. I started to understand how everything has its place in the tapestry of life. Everything is connected, and everything is important. But most of all, I started to learn how to access my power to create the change I desire, and this is what I do to help others through my program, Ayahuasca Assisted Therapy because I feel that this way, I can be in the greatest service.
STEP 3: Follow Your Heart (The Path Less Travelled)
This might sound cheesy, but I can say that this is the biggest lesson of my life. And it’s definitely easier said than done. Especially in a Western society where you are conditioned to follow science, logic, and reason above all. You know what? Only your heart remembers who you are. Your heart knows your purpose and direction. Only your heart values happiness more than the intellect. And only your heart knows what real success is. Inspiration flows through the heart, and you access your higher self through your heart. Therefore, to step onto your higher path and fulfill your destiny, you have to follow your heart.
This Is a Big One!
I am still learning how to maintain that in my everyday life. For me, it required great courage to leave the familiar life I have always known and to take a leap of faith and jump into the unknown. Fear can hold a lot of power. But I learned how to move beyond that fear, and every time I did that, something amazing happened. My life expanded in unexpected ways. And, my heart opened a bit more. My mind relaxed a little and started to quiet down.
And every time, I could hear more of the voice of my heart. My personal work with the Mother Ayahuasca was one of the most powerful tools that helped me open my heart. I know from my personal experience, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that when you follow your heart, you become more of who you are. More of yourself, more full-filled, more whole.
Your heart is light; it can’t hold pain, fear, or rancor. Through the heart, we access true joy. Following my heart led me to Mexico, led me to do something I love, and led me to surround myself with amazing people. But most of all I never regretted saying yes to my heart but there were many times I regretted saying yes to my mind.
STEP 4: Be of Service
I believe that when you follow your heart, you automatically step onto a path of service to others. This is because the heart knows that we are all one, and what you do to others, you do to yourself. When you are on a path of healing and awakening, you really feel for the suffering of others as you would feel your suffering, and your priority will be to ease that pain.
Compassion allows us to tap into this connectedness at any moment. When you are in service to others, you help to ease suffering in the world. You are in service to the greater good, and you are healing the world.
I always wanted to help others. You can say that I have a hint of a savior complex. But at the end of the day, I think I really wanted to save myself. The plants helped me realize that by saving myself, I am naturally saving others! What a twist of faith.
Whatever you achieve, whatever you accomplish, it means nothing if you don’t share it with others. Sharing is giving back so others can receive the same way as we have. As I walk my path, my personal accomplishments fill me with joy and pride, but I have to say what is even more fulfilling and satisfying is helping another to experience the same joy.
STEP 5: Do a Great Job
Work hard, be your best, and you will have great results. Even if you have a gift, a talent, a calling, and all that… Even if you have a wide range of education, deep understanding, and confidence… Authenticity only comes through experience. So, dedicate yourself to your purpose and take action every day toward that. Invest your time and energy to learn, practice, and master, and to support others to achieve great results.
In the end, you are as good as your results are or as satisfied as your clients are.
I am obsessed with healing and finding a way to liberate myself from suffering. This is my utmost priority. Therefore, I will spare no time and effort to learn more and experience more. To provide a better service, and to help people to succeed. I spend countless hours researching, going on retreats, participating in programs, collaborating, and creating a huge amount of free content and offerings to find effective solutions and connect with people who are looking for this type of support. From these efforts, I have significant results and amazing testimonials that are the result of all this dedicated work. Your reputation is the best marketing, and for a long time, I only worked through personal referrals.
I believe that being a therapist, a guide for others, is so much more than a job that you leave behind at the end of the day and go home to your private life. For me, it is a way of life, a commitment to healing and self-discovery, and the byproduct is my job as a guide.
If you follow these 5 guidelines mentioned above and are aligned with your heart’s path, you can definitely become an excellent guide for others and make a decent living while doing so.
The Life Of A Therapist
After more than 20 years working as a therapist, mostly in one-on-one settings, I started to feel that I was ready to expand onto my next level of service and teach others what I have come to know. You know the saying that it’s greater help to teach somebody fishing instead of just always giving them the fish.
This is how I feel, and I know that through teaching, I can make a bigger positive impact on more people’s lives. This makes me excited!
But suddenly, my little one-to-one therapy practice became a business that required a very different way of thinking.
Here is what I learned from growing my practice as a psychedelic integration guide, creating my signature program, Ayahuasca Assisted Therapy, and launching the first professional Training Program to train competent Ayahuasca integration guides!
How to Turn Your Psychedelic Therapy Practice Into a Conscious Psychedelic Business?
STEP 1: Put Yourself Out There and Build an Audience
If you want to make bigger waves in the psychedelic space and put your message out there for more people, you have to create authentic, professional, and attractive content to draw in the right people.
But first, you have to think about who those right people are. Who is your ideal listener, follower, and customer? Then, you have to be clear about what your message really is and find your authentic style. This may take a while.
For me, it took time and conscious effort to do all this. First, I only had a simple website that I created. It took years to write and publish my book, Heart Medicine, Ayahuasca Assisted Therapy and The Integration Process, where I share my experience and bring emphasis on the importance of integration in the psychedelic healing space.
Not much later, I launched my podcast about the same topic, providing a treasure trove of free content about working with Mother Ayahuasca. I have to say, it took some time to work through some fears of being seen in this way. Writing was always easier for me. I have had a blog for a long time, but nobody seems to read it nowadays. That’s why I chose to do the podcast. I also offer a free biweekly Ayahuasca integration room on Clubhouse, and I run a free monthly supervision group for plant medicine practitioners as well. Now, I do all this first and foremost because I am most passionate about what I do, and what I stand for, and I want to bring my message to more people in more effective ways as well.
STEP 2: Get Professional Support
To create authentic, professional, and attractive content, you may need help unless you are also a computer and social media wizard. No matter how good your content is, if it does not look great, then it will not grab the right people. I learned this from experience.
If you want to expand your practice, your psychedelic business, and your audience, you have to invest in professional help. I had a lot of resistance to this. I had to work through believing that marketing is evil manipulation. Meditating and visualizing what you want is not enough, and there are various other false beliefs. But the best thing that you can do is to create a good team and outsource the things that you are not an expert in! For example, I am a good writer and speaker, but I am not so good at editing and marketing. I can’t tell you how much easier my life has become when I let go of the idea that I must do it all alone.
Now I know that this all costs money. But if you want to manifest more abundance in your practice, you have to be willing to invest in it. I always say to my clients, you get out what you put in.
STEP 3: Heal Your Relationship with Money
We all have money wounds, and most people operate from a lack of consciousness. On top of that, healers and spiritual teachers especially have a lot of cognitive dissonance around money and charging for their services. This results in living always close to the survival level.
And guess what? You cannot grow and prosper if you are lacking and in survival mode. You can’t create financial abundance if you believe that money is evil and healing should be free.
I have to say I am still on this journey. Growing up in a communist country, well, you can imagine my relationship with money and my business skills. But I have made huge progress. I learned to receive, to be proud of what I give, and to understand that receiving is also giving. And, I realized that money is just an energy, neither good nor evil – we decide what we do with it. I recognized that the more I can receive, the more I can give and the bigger positive impact I can make. And, in the end, I decided that I prefer to be financially secure. So if you want to expand your psychedelic business, you have to work on your money mindset.
STEP 4: Have a Plan
To grow your private practice into a conscious psychedelic business, you have to make a plan. The time to wing it is over, and going with the flow won’t really work – I am telling you from experience!
Even when I work with individuals in my practice, we have a treatment plan. So it makes sense to have a business plan.
This doesn’t mean that things are written in stone and that there is no room for adjustments or flexibility. It simply makes logical sense to have an action plan with distinctive steps that you can follow, measure, and update when necessary.
Initially, for me, it was challenging to get into this business mindset. I had to work on bringing together my values and ethics with business decisions and interests. It took me a while to figure out how to stay true to myself and be successful as a psychedelic business. I am grateful for all the support and guidance I received and continue to get in this regard. It is a big learning experience, but I can say that I am happy with the results so far. Since I developed a solid plan, things started to happen very rapidly, leading to accelerated growth and unseen opportunities.
STEP 5: Surround Yourself with Successful People
You know that saying, ” Show me the five closest people around you, and I tell you who you are? ” I believe it is true. When you are in a poverty mindset, the people around you are most likely in the same state of being. That’s one of the reasons why it’s difficult to change.
In order to change your mind about money, abundance, and success, you need to have real examples to follow what you desire most.
This part definitely took some time to apply in my life. As a healer, I recognize I have a slight savior complex. For a long time, I would attract very broken people, similar to how some attract stray cats in need of care. One thing I learned is that you can only help others if they want to be helped. Otherwise, your help just becomes enabling. Sometimes I had to let people go so I could move on to serving those who were ready to make changes. This has nothing to do with love or judgment but with discernment.
When I started to surround myself with successful people, my view of what I thought was possible greatly expanded. I began to see more and more abundance, inspiration, and support.
And from this place of abundance, I have the capacity to share even more, like this article!
