My Approach
The Five Pillars of Soulful Impact
The Five Pillars
An Ongoing Practice of Presence
I’ve found that success on this journey is achieved through the practice of these Five Pillars of Soulful Impact, which form a living cycle.
You begin wherever you are. Each pass deepens. The destination is being fully alive in the present moment while contributing what only you can contribute.
01 | Adopt an Empowered Creator Mindset
Consciousness comes first. Everything else is downstream.
Take radical responsibility for your own experience and results. Realize that life happens by you and for you, not to you.
The Practice of Pillar 1 Includes:
Intentional presence. Focus on how you want to feel and be. Get fully present and awake.
Realize that your state of consciousness precedes and creates your material reality, not the other way around.
Focus on how you are relating to what’s happening more than the specific details of what’s happening.
Choose radical responsibility, curiosity, and trust. Prioritize learning over being right. Let go of blame, shame, and threat.
Experience life as an ally conspiring to support you in learning, growing, and waking up.
Become the empowered creator of your life.
02 | Turn Toward What You Are Running From
Embrace the darkness. Plumb the depths.
Whatever you are avoiding is running you. The only way through is through. Stop letting discomfort steer, and realize the gold that is hiding underneath.
The Practice of Pillar 2 Includes:
Recognize that as a human with an ego, there are elements of your inner experience that you (consciously or unconsciously) avoid. It’s natural and normal.
See this pattern as one of the central ways that your ego perpetuates a distorted and limited idea of the truth of who you really are.
Open with love and wonder to whatever your ego resists. Feel the feelings. Face the darkness. Receive it as fertile soil. Integrate the wounded parts. Discover their gold.
Embrace intensity. Hold yourself with compassion. The work is not to eliminate discomfort but to stop letting it steer. Stay curious and breathe.
Make peace with uncertainty. Love the resistance.
03 | Wake Up to Wholeness
Remember who you really are.
You are not broken. You never were. This is about recovering who you have always been underneath the performance and the guilt.
The Practice of Pillar 3 Includes:
Open to the possibility that the truest version of you is far more expansive, mysterious, and magnificent than you realize.
Dedicate yourself to the lifelong practice of remembering who you are and why you are here.
Return to your essential nature: creative, resourceful, innocent, and whole.
Embody the version of yourself who knows they belong and are worthy of love. Speak authentically. Own your wants. Hold healthy boundaries. Play.
Bring your relationships into alignment — with yourself, your people, and the more-than-human world.
Explore peak transformational experiences that resonate for you. Prepare and integrate well. Experience wholeness directly.
04 | Discover, Cultivate, and Give Your Gift
Live and lead from your soul’s unique niche.
There is something only you can do. A way of being in the world that feeds life itself. This pillar is about apprenticing to that mystery and then giving it away.
The Practice of Pillar 4 Includes:
Learn to listen to, cultivate, and nourish your heart’s true longing.
Identify and inhabit your unique zone of genius. Follow your aliveness. Sing your song.
Allow something larger to flow through you. Let yourself be guided.
Prioritize grounding and support. The deeper the roots, the taller the tree.
Be patient. Less is more. Your greatest gift in any given moment may be the simple quality of your presence.
Do what lights you up, scares you, and serves a brighter future.
Make your Soulful Impact. Lead.
05 | Repeat
Embrace the never-ending spiral of evolution.
There is no arrival. There is only the next layer. Humble yourself to the present moment as your teacher. Begin again, and again, and again.
The Practice of Pillar 5 Includes:
Let go of finish lines. This work is never done.
Practice humility. Where we trip up is where the learning occurs. You’re not sliding backwards. You’re meeting the next layer of your unfolding.
Trust your process as you spiral into both higher heights and darker depths. The more advanced your practice, the more challenging and ecstatic material surfaces to be integrated.
Give and receive unconditional respect, freedom, joy, and love. It’s OK for life to be this good.
Develop, over time, your own unique flavor of practice. Make this work your own.
When you’re stuck, go back to basics. The depth of your practice in any pillar enables or limits your capacity in all of them.
“If your soul is calling and you want to align your life and work with your passion and purpose, I couldn't recommend working with Brooks more highly.”
— Ben Edgerton, Founder & Creative Director @ Empty Studio
I work with the Five Pillars in two ways.
Executive Coaching
Quests & Retreats
Explore More
Watch Brooks’ overview below or read the original 5-part series on Substack.
(This is framework is a living, breathing, evolving practice. What first emerged as the 5 Steps is now the 5 Pillars.)
