Ignite Your Purpose and Embrace Change With Madi Murphy

0:03Thank you for joining us for episode 551 of Live Happy Now. We're wrapping up 2025 and heading into a brand new year, so it's a great time to talk about what we want to do with it. I'm your host, Paula Felps, and this week I'm joined by Madi Murphy, author of In the Cosmic Zone and host of the chart-topping Cosmic Rx podcast, who's here to talk about how to ignite your purpose. Using a blend of astrology, neuroscience, spirituality, and practical tools, Maddie helps everyone from artists to CEOs discover how to identify their purpose and make the most of their lives. She's here today to talk about how we can use those practices to step into a brighter, better new year.

0:43Let's have a listen. Maddie, thank you so much for coming on the show. Paula, thank you for having me. This is a treat in the truest sense of the word. You are such a delight to talk to. And I thought, you know, as we're looking at the end of the year, we're wrapping it up. And this is a time when people get really reflective and they start resetting their goals or reevaluating what they want. So this seemed like just the perfect time to bring you on to talk about how we can get out of our comfort zone and find our purpose. But as you and I have talked about, it's called a comfort zone for a reason.

1:17So do we really have to leave it to find our purpose? So there is something about our comfort zone. And listen, I'm not saying don't get comfortable. I'm a cozy girl. I like my creature comforts. I like safety. I like security. That is something different. Comfort zone is where you feel yourself. Like you build up these walls, you stay somewhere, and the comfort starts to feel sticky. It actually starts to feel more like stuckness or stagnation. and your whole body and that part of your brain, that blessed be it, it is designed to protect you from like, do not try new things. Danger, Will Robinson.

1:53Do not go out. Do not pesco. Just stay here. All of that part of you will say, let's not do it. But there's a part of you. And if you're listening and this resonates, you know what it feels like. It's deeper, it's louder, and it is persistent. And that is the place of the soul, right? your heart and your soul are like, we need to go, we need to grow, we need to expand, and we need to like really discover like who we came here to be. As you're dealing with that, it can get very uncomfortable just that realization that you need to make a change or make a move. A hundred percent. Let's just say it doesn't always happen from like, oh, fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la.

2:37Oh, rainbows and unicorns arrived at my door and said, hello, here's a gift, a publisher's house clearing check of a new opportunity. It usually comes from a dark night of the soul, a cosmic plot twist you didn't expect, an ending, a beginning, a breakup, a breakdown always happens usually before the breakthrough. Yeah. And when you look back at your own life and you can see these moments that you thought were just horrible, like tragic, how am I ever going to get through this? And then it turns out to be like, oh, that opened a door that I never dreamed was possible. Yeah. And every time, I'm going to tell you, it doesn't happen just once.

3:17Because I think this happened for me in my late 20s. I ended up calling off my wedding about two weeks from the big day, like true movie kind of things. And I was like 27, 28. I was like, I did it. That was my big lesson. Yeah, honey. Like, that's cute. That's cute. You think you're going to do one of those ego deaths? Do you think you're going to do one of those big life transitions? And actually because of that, I got a tattoo on my wrist of the Roman numeral five because every time I've been called to let go of the good for the great, to leave the cozy, sticky trappings of the comfort zone for the cosmic zone, I am plagued by the number five, which is an angel number they say that has to do with change.

4:06Like it's time to change. You think about like one through 10, like five is the number where we're like, we're switching, right? And we're making that curve, but you're divinely directed and protected, but it's not going to feel good when you're in it. And I had to get it tattooed on myself because every time I'm like, no, I don't want to do it this time. Every time I'm like, and I have to literally have it on my wrist tattooed in permanent ink to be like, remember the last time you didn't want to do it? You thought you couldn't and you did. And on the other side of it, life was more beautiful, more brilliant, more you than you even could have imagined.

4:44Yeah, that's what's happening again, honey. That's amazing. That is amazing. And what I love about your approach, it's really, really fresh because you blend astrology with spirituality, science, and then you offer a lot of practical tools. So tell us how you began to explore what you call the cosmic zone. Yeah. So thank you for saying that. I am a born and raised New Yorker, a daughter of a long line of working class New Yorkers. My grandfather worked at the Fulton Fish Market. My dad's a taxi driver. So all I have to say is that I love spirituality. I love philosophy. I love self-development, but I'm like, it has to be rooted in the actionable, in the practical.

5:25I'm like, what are we doing? What are we doing here, people? right? I've always been spiritually curious, right? I always knew from a young age, there was something bigger out there. I grew up in a household that was equal parts. My dad was a big thinker, broad thinker, Catholic school boy, but encouraged us to read everything from like the Idiot's Guide to the Koran, the Torah, to like Eckhart Tolle to, you know, Wayne Dyer. And then my mom's a bit traditional, more with like her Bible. She had a little women's Bible study. And like I did my, you know, little Sunday school at home. We did like a whole thing.

6:00I had that connection, right? But I think life sort of either beat it out of me or I felt like it was silly or not to be taken seriously as I entered more like college and in the professional world in New York City. But as I got further from that, I got further from enjoying my life, feeling alive, feeling connected to, you know, curiosity, clarity, confidence. And then in my late 20s, the universe was like, okay, playing the plug on this, whatever this like fake life you created was, this ain't going to fly anymore, honey. Like shut down and my whole body shut down. I started getting signs from every place you could ever imagine.

6:40I felt like that's almost having like a psychosis for how much like my brain was being flooded with like new information and downloads and people interfering, intervening in my life. And that was my sign to call off this wedding, that I was going down a path. It wasn't a bad man. He's a very sweet man, but he was not my man. That was not my future. That was not my timeline. And I think from there, there's something about making a really public declaration that you're not going to live an inauthentic life. You're not going to make yourself small and fold yourself into something that's not true to you.

7:14You almost were like, well, I can't go back to doing anything inauthentic. I was like, I just made this like my whole, everyone in my life. I stood on this stage and was like, no, like I have to be true to myself. And then I was like, who am I? Who is myself? Who is she? Like, what is that version of her? So I just started devouring and returning to texts and principles and spiritual modalities and methodologies that I had been like lightly like playful with as a child, but then it became less like play, more like, oh no, this is my lifeline. Like this is keeping me alive. And it led me to, you know, meditation, numerology, energy work, Reiki, tarot, but astrology, I think it was that thing that like, it has a little bit, it's not a science.

8:04It was in certain times in history, but it is backed by so much data. It is like, I think people have called it the original data science because it's just collecting data since the beginning of time on the cycles that we go through with the planets, with the moon, the sun. And I started to understand myself and my cycles of life so much more. It helped me give a framework, a language to everything. But my favorite thing about it was like, oh, it really helped me organize. I'm in Virgo. So it helped me organize all this information I've been collecting about everything from mindset work to, again, like energy to rituals.

8:40And I was like, oh, this is just like a filing system from the universe. Oh, interesting. Oh, oh, oh, you're going through this right now? Oh, it's Sagittarius season right now at the time of this recording. All of us are having a check-in on our beliefs. All of us are being asked to expand. All of us are being asked to plug back into our vision, to do something new wherever you're at in life right now. It happens every year, like cosmic clockwork. So then I was like, oh, great. That's all that self-care that I've learned can fit under that season. And then I started sharing this with friends.

9:12We started doing circles. Then people started asking, working one-on-one. I was working, running businesses that had nothing to do with this. And my husband called it my cosmic side hustle. People were like coming to my juice shop, my coffee shop, ringing up their purchase and being like, hey, can you teach me how to do what you taught this person to do or you do about this living in alignment or trusting your intuition or learning about your purpose? And then I realized from helping other people, I was like, oh, this is not just working for me because again, I need data. I was like, now this is working for a dozen people, two dozen people, 100 people, 200 people, 300 people.

9:49And people started having this experience that we call living in the cosmic zone where you really know yourself authentically, where you're really embodying this new energy. You're not just reading about it, talking about it. You're living it. You're being it. You're breathing it. You're like magnetizing it towards you. And you're living in this place of flow that is like so cool, so freeing. Dare I say it's fun. And the universe starts having jokes with you like, oh my God, like signs, symbols, synchronicities are guiding your path. You're just trusting. You're in such acceptance because you know that when you're in the cosmic zone, you're too aligned to settle.

10:30You're too aligned to fail. So when something doesn't work out or you're being asked to make a big shift, you're like, great. And so we kind of coined that term, the cosmic zone, because so many of my clients would come to me of like, the craziest thing happened. We'd be like, that's life in the cosmic zone, baby. And that's what is so great about this book is it takes that woo-woo factor. It takes it like if someone's more comfortable saying it's a state of flow versus saying it's the cosmic zone. That's great. And you really break down the science. And I think that's where it's so much instruction in the past has lacked that.

11:06Like we don't understand. We're just supposed to like say, hey, let's believe this. And we haven't had that science that shows us why this works and how it affects us. It's flow state, baby. And everyone's been there. That's what's cool is sometimes people hear these words or concepts and it feels like something outside of them or like enlightenment or some guru has to take you there. You have to go on a retreat to like Bali or Costa Rica. Honey, no. Like, honey, you've all experienced flow state. It might be like just you're talking to your best friend. All of a sudden you're like, oh my God, that's that great idea, right?

11:40Or you're off, you know, doing laundry and you're like, all of a sudden you're like, oh my God, I had a ping of a creative download or you're just doing something you love and you're losing track of time. We've all tasted it for a minute. I just want to help you live there more, like more than not. Yeah. And your book, it is all about learning to live in better alignment with your purpose and then respond to the ideas or opportunities as they present themselves. But how do we miss those opportunities when we aren't in alignment with our purpose? Oh my God, such a good question. And this is what I'm so passionate about helping people for because I'm like, the opportunities, they're all around us.

12:19There's invitations, there's initiations, there's things opening to us all the time, but we can get so stuck. I actually use this analogy of I had a dream one time that I, right, as I was making one of my big changes in the five change, I had this dream or a vision, I don't know how to describe it, that I was in front of a New York City sidewalk and I was like a kind of like a five, six-year-old version of me. And I was like sticking, there was like a lollipop on the ground, the concrete, and it's like disgusting, right? Like covered in all the stuff you'd imagine in New York City sidewalk. But I'm like just trying to like make this thing work and get it up.

12:56And in this dream, you know, my grandparents, I don't know who they were, angels, guys, like a crew of people were like, honey, if you could just let go of that lollipop and trust us and turn around, there's a whole candy store here for you, like open. You get to go nuts, bananas, like just go nuts in this shop. But you're so stuck on this one weird kind of grody gritty thing that like you don't realize what's waiting for you here. And something about that vision, and now I have a toddler and I experience this all the time where I'm like, mommy's trying to help you, but you have to release. You have to surrender.

13:36And then I hear myself, I'm like, yup, that is what the universe is telling us all the time of like, there's so much that we get in our own way about whether that things have to be a certain way, it'd be a certain timeline. I have to have it all figured out. I overthink it. I'm not ready. I have to wait till I'm perfect till I'm ready to do this thing. That opportunity, that's not for me, that's for someone else who is more, whatever, qualified, smarter, younger, prettier, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Our mind is just constantly blocking us like that sticky lollipop. Like we're just clenching onto it.

14:10And there's so much waiting for us. And it really is a practice to be like, okay. And the first step is really knowing yourself actually. Like first step is knowing like, oh, because how are you going to trust yourself and trust the universe if you don't know yourself, your gifts, your strengths, your obstacles, your opportunities, your shadows within you. Like I know I'm a Virgo, like I said. So one of my ways I can get my own way is I can wait for things to be perfect. I can get in my head about it. I can be like, I have to have like the whole plan, the whiteboards, the spreadsheets, the perfect team, the perfect execution.

14:47And every time I do that, I never do the thing. So I've learned over and over time, the key in my book, Virgo is practice makes magic. Just start doing it. When I do that, the universe opens the candy store for me. So there's like so much about like, there's so much opportunity and invitations out there and there's so much that goes with it, like the magic that happens. But the first step is like understanding who you are, who you're here to be, and maybe most importantly, like how we can get in our own way a little bit sometimes. Well, because it does take us out of just getting in this trench that we're marching along.

15:26And it makes us start thinking about other things that we could be doing like that alternative life. Like I hear a lot of people talking about like, oh, if I were 10 years younger, I would do this or oh, if I would do that. And what I love about your approach too, is that you talk about purpose, not as something that we discover, but something that we activate. Exactly. So that's a big difference because a lot of people are trying to figure out, well, what is my purpose? So explain to me what that shift means and how someone can begin tapping into it so they can understand what their purpose is and how they activate it.

16:00Absolutely. So one thing that also I always understood as a young girl was something in me was like, I am here for some kind of purpose. I don't know what, I'm here for something. And I actually, looking around, I'm like, kind of everyone is here for something really cool. And there's something really important about everyone. But I didn't have, again, the language, the tools to articulate this and definitely not within me. And I am not a cookie cutter person. So I thought your purpose was like going to a career counselor, guidance counselor's office. And they're like, hello, you're a doctor. You're really good at this.

16:33So this is what you're going to do. Here you go. And you're just like, thank you, life. And you go off and you do it till you die and then you're like amazing. No. You know, like your purpose, it's less about what you do or one label you wear, more about how you are, who you are, right? How you show up for life. And in that, there's things that the universe is going to ask you to bring out in the world. And some of those things are going to be tangible, like art, a business, you know, teaching, healing, sharing messages, but equally important in that purpose of what is being asked to like, you're bringing something out into the world.

17:15That thing wants to bring something out within you as well. And finding your purpose isn't like a scavenger hunt, I need a label you put on the outside world. It's this beautiful, constant becoming. I mean, it's just, oh, I feel really clear on who I am, what my like superpowers, what my, I always say like my magic, I believe everyone has magic and medicine to share with the world. And that could just be in, oh, like my mom, she passed this winter. She had so many great things about her, but one of her things was, and it was in her birth chart, she really sees people. like she could see whether it's a cashier at the pharmacy or one of my best friends, she really slowed down and saw people like for who they are, something beautiful about them.

18:08I think I inherited it a little bit from her, but like watching her move through the world, she really saw people. And so not only was that a gift for other people, it also expands for us, Like you living in your purpose, Paula, like you are such a mystical messenger. You're such a communicator. You also bring such sparkle energy. Like you're just like human, you're champagne in human form to me. You're just like, there are those bubbles and, you know, even like sitting down talking with you, it's giving me like fresh air, fresh life. Right. And of course that can manifest through many roles that can manifest through even work or career.

18:47but like our purpose isn't just about work. It's about like, oh, I have this thing in me. And when I bring it out, I feel like more of me, I can show up more open-hearted, more loving, more connected, more clear. And I can bring that out in someone else and I can teach them about that. My mom taught me about the power of seeing people. You, when I'm sitting with you, I'm like, wow, like Paula, this teaches me about the purpose of like, yeah, lightness, right? And play and like this like witty, whimsical little like sparkle you have about you. I'm like, oh, like this is great. Like I can be that too.

19:22And that's what I also love about, you know, in the cosmic zone and astrology at large is that we each carry unique gifts. But when it comes to astrology, we all have the same science, the same planet. No one is born like missing something in their chart. We just might have more of it or less of it. And by learning, by being our purpose, we're kind of expanding the people's potential. And what I love about it is I am someone who gets bored very easily. So if someone did come to me and was like, hey, you need to be that cosmic career counselor. You're going to be a doctor or a lawyer. I know myself.

19:58I would have been like, okay, great. Done that for four years, moved on to something else. So I'm bored now. So the fact that like all of us, our purpose is a constant state of becoming, and it's going to meet us at different moments and ask of us to make art of it in different ways is really cool. I work with people who are 17. I work with people who are in their late seventies. I worked with, I think to date, one of my oldest clients I had was 84 going through her thing called the Uranus return, but she wanted to like return back to her art. She started a podcast, like, because we always have something to do.

20:36So there's never, especially in astrology, there's no such thing as too young, too old. There's just doing something with your purpose and understanding your divine timing in it. We'll be right back with more of Live Happy Now. If you've ever wished your brain had a switch you could flip to be more positive, we've got good news for you. It kind of does. Neuroscience tells us that you can actually train your brain to look for the good. And once you start practicing, it gets easier, faster, and a whole lot more fun. That's exactly why every Tuesday in our Live Happy Weekly Newsletter, we give you a quick little workout for your optimism muscles.

21:17The look for the good word search. It's a tiny puzzle with a big purpose. Every week, you hunt for words that spark gratitude, joy, resilience, all the good stuff your brain loves to build on. It takes just a couple of minutes, feels like a win, and gives your brain a gentle nudge toward noticing what's going right. Think of it as a microdose of positivity disguised as a game. So if you want to get better at seeing the bright spots, even on messy days, subscribe to our Live Happy weekly newsletter by visiting us at livehappy.com and play along with our Look for the Good Word search. Your brain will thank you.

21:59And now let's hear more from Maddie Murphy. What about someone who is just not sure what their purpose is? They've been maybe raising kids, got a career. It's like I think women in particular can struggle with this because we have to do so many different jobs. We have to do the child rearing. We have to do the house. We have to do our careers. Like we have all these things and we put ourselves dead last on that list. And when you ask someone, there's two questions they can't answer. What do you do for fun? Because it's like nothing. I sleep. Or what is your purpose? And they're like, I don't know.

22:40I'm so busy taking care of everybody else that I can't even find that. So how does someone start digging into that? Oh, this is exactly like the exact message that I just want to broadcast and shout for the mountaintops because I realized after living in it in my own life, especially women, especially caretakers, we are sort of trained, programmed, rewarded, or the only thing we can do is be in a response mechanism, responding to you. What do you need? What do you need? What do you need? out, out, out. And so in the moment that I was talking about calling off my wedding, that was the first moment that I was like, who am I?

23:21What do I want? I've literally been, I'm the oldest of four girls. Every job I ever had was like, yes, ma 'am, I'll get that right away for you. Put out that fire. Right? Oh, partner, you want this? You want to be like, I'll do that. Sure, sure, sure. And all of a sudden I was standing there like, burned down my whole life, blew up a bomb. And I was like, I don't even know what I want next? I don't even know what I want. I don't know who I am. And it was almost like dizzying. It was unnerving. The first step about understanding your purpose or what do you do for fun or any of this is literally just carving out some space to tune in back to you, to like looking at yourself, getting to know yourself, finding words for who you are, remembering that you are someone, not just someone who is, you know, the driver, the chauffeur, the cook, the cleaner, the emailer, the scheduler, like, oh, right.

24:18I have something in me. I have a spark. I was born with a light. I was born with, I have things that do light me up. I have things that scare me. I have things that I dream up. I have things that I desire and it's okay to take up space in that. But first I have to know what that is. We talk a lot in our society about love yourself, love yourself. Could you love someone? Could you fall in love with someone without knowing them, talking to them? No, it's kind of crucial to the process. It's kind of crucial, right? So we don't do that with ourselves. We're saying, oh, love yourself. Okay. When was the last time we talked to ourselves, got to know ourselves and really like studied ourself.

24:57And for me, as someone who is naturally, I am a naturally empathetic human. Like you walk in the room, you're tired. I'm like, I'm tired too. Like I just like, I sometimes I have a sponge. I'm a sponge. It is so hard for me to separate carving out space and stillness and then having something about like, oh, I am that way. And again, I like in my book, I wanted to write about these keys and these archetypes, but less in a way that's defining you. There's a reason why I didn't make my book super technical because I didn't want someone to pick it up and immediately be like, headache, putting this down, mumbo jumbo.

25:38Like literally everyone knows their sun sign, like what's your sign, baby? turn to that key every, you know, one zodiac sign equals one key equals one chapter. Just read, read that chapter, read a little bit about that, read about that energy, read about the gifts in that, the needs of that, like an understanding that like, oh, like that's part of you. And by even just meditating on that for one week and noticing how that comes up, right? Like for me, I said, the practice makes magic, the Virgo. I'm like, okay, like noticing where that comes up, noticing where I can embody that more, noticing where I can choose that key to unlock things when I feel stuck, it brings you back to yourself.