Sofia Suardi: Purpose as Being, Depression as Seasons & Returning to the Natural Self
Your Purpose Isn’t a Job. It’s Being Alive.
What if the entire culture sold you the wrong idea of purpose?
What if purpose isn’t a career, a calling, a brand, or something you “figure out” by 30… but a state of being you either inhabit or avoid?
In this episode of Awaken Your Purpose, Zenka Caro sits down with Sofia Suardi for a raw, unsanitized conversation about purpose, depression, existential collapse, and the quiet rebellion of choosing to simply be.
This conversation lands as the final stretch of the 100-Person Purpose Research Project with the Holomovement. After dozens of interviews, one pattern keeps showing up: the people who feel most aligned didn’t optimize their lives. They stopped performing them.
Zenka also weaves in reflections on The Wave in Portugal, where artists, scientists, philosophers, musicians, and edge-walkers gather not to pitch themselves, but to sense what’s actually emerging. Portugal, often named as the birthplace of the Fifth Kingdom, becomes a backdrop for this episode’s deeper provocation: the next renaissance won’t be built by hustlers. It will be remembered by humans. holomovement.net/wave
Sofia shares what it was like to wake up existentially at sixteen and then spend years in what she calls a long internal winter. She speaks openly about numbness, depression, guilt for having “everything,” and the terror of not feeling anything at all. She talks about dance as a nervous-system reset, darkness retreats done alone in a bedroom, off-grid living, modern life as an evolutionary mismatch, and why letting yourself fully fall apart can be the thing that saves you.
00:00 Feeling Purpose as an Energy
02:04 Closing the 100-Person Purpose Research Project
03:07 The Wave in Portugal & the New Renaissance
04:10 Sofia’s Awakening at 16
05:10 “My Purpose Is to Be”
05:30 When Life Looks Perfect but Feels Empty
06:06 Reality, Belief & Perception
06:52 Letting Go of External Goals
07:43 Falling Into the Black Hole
08:52 Dance as Moving Meditation
10:02 Mind-Wandering & Presence
11:16 The Liminal State Before Sleep
12:14 Berlin, Flow & Connection
13:02 Purpose Alongside Depression
13:56 Five Years of Winter
15:13 Ego Death & Seeing the World Anew
16:17 Losing Interest in What Once Brought Joy
17:24 Guilt, Gifts & Numbness
19:06 Allowing the Depression Full
20:16 A Personal Darkness Retreat
21:16 Spring: The Slow Defrost
22:43 When Simple Things Feel Impossible
24:31 Creativity Returns
25:09 Sedona & Off-Grid Living
27:06 Modern Life & Modern Illness
29:25 Farming, Earthiness & Balance
31:12 You Already Are Your Purpose
32:00 Being Is Enough
33:57 Living Purpose Without Forcing It
36:09 Beingness Leads to Flow
37:26 Life Is Everything at Once
38:07 An Open Ending
Follow Sofias Work: https://www.instagram.com/sofiaaa.travel
Learn more about the Holomovement Purpose Lab: https://ourlightnet.org/purposemap
This collaboration is brought to you by stewards of the Holomovement and LightNet. Special thanks to our Broadcast Partners: Humanity’s Team, Unify, Good of the Whole and New Realities.
The Holomovement is a social movement that awakens us to our interconnectedness, igniting a critical mass of collaborative action serving the good of the whole. Learn more at http://www.holomovement.net
http://www.LightNet.org is a collective intelligence platform mapping how people do impossible things. We then use the data to make breakthroughs of our own in teams of 8-12 and continue to share the data for those to follow.
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