Change, Self-Discovery + Resiliency with Karrie Christen (Part 1)

Imagine stepping into a room that feels like a breath of fresh air, where every item sparks joy and serves a purpose. That's exactly what Pamela experienced when she took the brave step of hiring a professional organizer for her cluttered storage room. On Reignite Resilience, Natalie Davis and Pamela Cass, share their personal stories of transformation through the art of letting go and creating spaces that nurture our well-being. This episode also features the inspiring Karrie Christen, who uses her entrepreneurial spirit to teach us about embracing life's shifts with courage. Karrie's journey offers a reassuring reminder that feeling safe while navigating change can lead to incredible personal growth.

Embarking on a journey of self-discovery, we discuss the empowering nature of saying "yes" to new opportunities, inspired by Chandra Rimes' "Year of Yes." Through my own exploration of meditation, initially guided by Holosync audio technology, I reveal how this practice evolved into a profound tool for finding clarity and intention. We uncover how consistent meditation and journaling can unlock insights and foster a flow state that propels personal transformation. With heartfelt stories and practical wisdom, this episode promises to equip you with the tools to reignite your passion and enthusiasm, encouraging you to embrace change and unleash your true potential.

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Chapters

• 0:06 Reignite Resilience
• 14:06 Discovering Meditation and Self-Reflection

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:06

All of us reach a point in time where we are depleted and need to somehow find a way to reignite the fire within. But how do we spark that flame? Welcome to Reignite Resilience, where we will venture into the heart of the human spirit. Resilience where we will venture into the heart of the human spirit. We'll discuss the art of reigniting our passion and strategies to stoke our enthusiasm. And now here are your hosts, natalie Davis and Pamela Cass.

natalie davis: 0:41

Welcome back to another episode of Reignite Resilience. I am your co-host, natalie Davis, and I am so excited to be back with you all, and joining me is the fabulous Pam Cass. Hello, pam, how are you?

pamela cass: 0:54

I am fabulous. I shared with you before we started recording that I hired an organizer. This is huge. It's huge. It's for my storage room that has, I don't know. It's almost got like a life of its own, and when you're too afraid to enter it anymore, there comes a time when you need to probably get some help, and it's one of the things that I knew. It was like, yeah, I could do it, but it's not something I want to do and so I'm always about delegate it let somebody else.

pamela cass: 1:22

And the universe spoke. I had coffee with a client and she goes oh, I got to tell you about my organizer and I'm like what? And then there it is and she started today, and so I'm on my way to being able to step foot in my storage room. Do you feel lighter? I feel lighter, and she hasn't hardly even done anything, Just knowing that she's going to start helping me. Yes, talk about adversity when you have a storage room filled with like your parents stuff, your kids, stuff that have moved out and work stuff from when I moved out of my office you name it and I was like I need to purge and let go.

natalie davis: 1:58

I still have those things. I am in that same season. I haven't hired an organizer to help me do it, and maybe that'll be the next step, but I've definitely come to this chapter in life that if I make it through an entire season without using something, then I don't need it and it's gone. So I'm donating all of those things.

pamela cass: 2:15

I love it, and her philosophy is she goes, I will pull stuff out and she goes. I want you to look at it and if it doesn't bring you joy, we get rid of it, and that's her whole motto If it doesn't bring you joy, then let it go. That's what we're going to do. She'll have time for me to sit with her and go through stuff, and if it doesn't bring me joy, I'm just like see ya.

natalie davis: 2:35

Oh my gosh. Well, be prepared to be emotional, I'll bring the tissues. Well, we have a special guest joining us today, sort of a last minute addition to our guest lineup for our series of guests that we've had on the last couple of weeks, and I'm excited about it. A friend of mine who's coming on. She's got a fabulous story to share. She's lived life. Let me just say that we were out at a jewelry show yesterday and just happened to start talking about the podcast world and the podcast live and I said well, what are you doing tomorrow? Let's make this happen. She said yes, y'all, Whatever power I have. She said okay, and she's joining us. So today we have Keri Christen that is joining us and we are so excited to have you, Keri. Welcome, Welcome. We are so excited to have you, Carrie.

Karrie Christen: 3:23

Welcome, Welcome. Thank you, ladies. I'm excited to be here. This is awesome. It was a total surprise. I love that you're talking about organizing right now too, because that's kind of been my little thing I've been doing. You should see the stuff I've gotten rid of. I got rid of all of my dishes because I found pretty dishes.

Karrie Christen: 3:42

Good on you, I love that they're just meant for me to eat on. I don't eat a lot of food. There are these tiny little pretty dishes and I bought these beautiful pink ornate cups that go with them.

natalie davis: 3:54

I love that. We're just going to talk flatware here for a moment. The thing is, the big 10 and a half plates I think are massive and that's not necessarily what I love. And I've had in my basket smaller plates, not like dessert plates, they're just smaller plates and I keep thinking these are what I want. Like this is the size of a meal that I eat. I do girl dinner a lot and you don't need a lot of space for girl dinner. Good for you, carrie. Welcome to the show. I am actually gonna just toss it over to you. Why don't you share with our listeners a little bit about who you are and then we will start to dive in, because there are so many layers to your story and I want to give you an opportunity first to introduce yourself to our listeners.

Karrie Christen: 4:39

I love it. I'm going to kind of go through my bio, since my bio is so bad. It's not even bad, it's just specific to something that I'm working on. So my background is total entrepreneur. That's just who I am. I love to do things on my own. I never dreamt of having a job. To be honest, I never even dreamt of kids. Now I do have a son who's about to turn 21. So I did go that direction.

Karrie Christen: 5:04

But I've always kind of done my own thing and I've felt very comfortable when life throws me curve balls or adds extra things in, to just go with it. But my background hasn't necessarily created an opportunity for me to feel safe to really always. I think the biggest thing is to feel safe. So doing all different things and following the guidance that I get, that's a big deal to me, because in every time that I say yes to a pivot, I am saying that I don't need to be afraid, which is always a challenge to that younger version of me who grew up in a very violent home with divorce and a lot of domestic abuse, with my parents getting divorced and then my mom marrying another man who did not really want us there to escaping what I thought was my dream life after I met a boy and I dated him and got married after three months to find out that I was just basically marrying another opportunity to leave a very unhealthy relationship. In all of that the big thing was is that I really started a big part of my journey. I mean, it probably was back early on.

Karrie Christen: 6:18

But when I got divorced, oh man, I thought I was going to go crazy. To be very personal, right before this, I was taking pills so that I could go to sleep when my son went to school, and then I would have an alarm that went off and I would take pills to wake up. And then I would take happy pills or drink while he was there, and then I'd take pills to go to sleep at night and I'd get him to school and I'd take pills again. I realized in that moment that I was going to perpetuate an issue, another unhealthy human being if I didn't get it together. So I was blessed with a divorce. I can honestly say that my divorce was the best thing that ever happened to me, but so was being married to my ex-husband, because he really opened me up to see that I did not love myself enough to expect to be loved.

Karrie Christen: 7:12

Kind of crazy right In this journey. In order to be able to survive, make things work, I did whatever it took oh, my goodness, I don't even know if you know this, natalie, but to keep my house. Initially, I rented out every room in my house to single women, and so my son and I lived with all these different single women. That basically made it possible for me to start my first successful business. I had owned lots of other businesses, but they were all hobbies. But at this point I had to make enough money so that I could actually keep a roof over my head and not have five other women live with us forever.

Speaker 1: 7:54

What's so cool?

Karrie Christen: 7:55

this is one of the coolest things. I really started pushing mindfulness, meditation, manifestation techniques. I got to the point that I was meditating up to two hours a day, so I was able to stop the pill popping and the pill waking me up and I would pray. Then I would silence myself through meditation. In that I started.

Karrie Christen: 8:22

I don't know who this is that talks to me. I think it's a version of myself, that is my higher self. She started communicating with me and that was pretty eye-opening. I actually was able to see who I was. The voice came to me and the voice actually became masculine. In this moment Now, that's probably my own, whatever deciding that this voice was then masculine. But the voice actually presented himself as my creator. He asked me if I would ever do the things that I was doing to myself, to him, and I said no, I wouldn't. And I cried. I said why would I ever? Never? And he said let me show you who you are. And I saw him as, or her or whatever I'm going to go creator. And I saw him as, or her or whatever I'm going to go creator. I saw my creator of my soul suddenly go from light, because in these visions that I see, I see everybody as light. And this being went from light to manifesting hands, and the hands reached in to the light and pulled out a little ball of light and went like this and I became, and in that moment everything changed everything. Wow. Since then this, whatever the voice is or however it morphs into my life, I just listen to it and that voice has taken me into so many different paths, so many different journeys and just some really amazing opportunities in life.

Karrie Christen: 10:44

I have started many businesses. Since that first business that got me to keep my house, which I still live in to this day. I think it's 16 years later I still live in that same house. It is getting pretty close to being paid off at this point. Being from somebody who had to rent out rooms, it's pretty awesome. But I have started different businesses, including a software company. I partner with other small businesses all over the US. I own a portion of a dog kennel association. I own part of an association for the tactical industry. I also own a consulting company where we consult small businesses.

Karrie Christen: 11:28

And the coolest thing and the reason I'm here is because I've started this podcast which is all about my most recent fun little struggle, which is I just hit that other stage again and I've kind of decided this is never going to go away. You're going to feel lost at all different times in your life, because being lost is actually a sign that you need some change. It's your inner soul saying the experiences that we're having are not going to benefit us right now. It's time to change. The voice came to me and said you're not lost, but a lot of people think they're lost, so you're going to do this journey with other people and so, on top of all of the businesses, I am starting a podcast. We've gotten the website, all of that's ready to go, and you know what I feel like I've been talking forever, so I'm going to hand it back to you guys and let you guys ask me some questions. This is perfect.

natalie davis: 12:23

Keri, thank you for sharing that. I want to do a little bit of an asterisk and I'll turn it over to Pam, but I want to do a little bit of an asterisk because here's what I think oftentimes listeners, wherever you are I want to invite folks as you share your story, not to get caught up in the little voice that's going to pop up when Keri talks about creator. Insert that with whatever that means to you God, creator, source, whatever that means and feels like. Yes, he talks about higher self, spirit, guides, angels, higher self, whatever that means to you. Fill that in.

natalie davis: 12:54

I think that we have gone through and labeled things and compartmentalized things so well as humans that oftentimes we lose the true meaning behind the share because we can't get past the labeling that we've assigned things. So I just want to invite all of our listeners to go there as we dive into Carrie's story. But a huge thing that you said is knowing that when you started to feel that uncertainty, that you just basically do an about face to say I'm not afraid, I'm going to take this step. That is huge, yeah.

Karrie Christen: 13:25

I mean, don't get me wrong On some things, I will sink for a moment, but I don't allow the sink to happen very long, because once the sink gets a hold of me, it takes too long to get out. So I allow my pity party for whatever. That is disappointment, and then I actually have started to thank it. Thank you, thank you, thank you for this next opportunity that I'm going to have because of whatever, whatever I'm feeling, whatever happened, whatever change needs to come, whatever opportunity, whatever anything. Thank you, thank you for this opportunity.

pamela cass: 13:59

I love what you said about yes to the pivot.

Karrie Christen: 14:02

Yes to the pivot Heck yeah, yes to the pivot. Yes to the pivot Heck yeah yes to the pivot. That's it. I don't know what the book was that I read, but I read a book at some point. It was about somebody saying yes to everything for a full year.

natalie davis: 14:15

Chandra Rimes' Year of yes also changed my life.

Karrie Christen: 14:21

Oh, my gosh to that book. Yes, that's what got me okay with the pivots. Yes, because I'm like sweet opportunity. Let's see what happens.

pamela cass: 14:29

Why is this coming my way? It's that total mindset shift, looking at those, like you said, as an opportunity, not as something to be afraid of or that challenge. I love that. So tell me a little bit about the meditations. How did you get involved in meditating and how did you go to be able to do for two hours? That's something I struggle with. I can do it for my 10 minutes.

Karrie Christen: 14:52

Okay, so I'm going to be honest at this point. I do not meditate that long. Meditating that long when it was happening was out of pure desperation. It was the only peace at times that I had during the day. It was so ugly that to be able to go into that space and only hear my breathing or only hear water was all I could do, and that's the only reason it got so long.

Karrie Christen: 15:18

But how I got started? Because when you have got monkey mind happening, how do you slow it down for even a minute? I couldn't at all. So I actually initially started using something called Holosync the closest thing to it, I think. Right now Holosync still exists. I can't spell it. It's a certain type of different beats that go into your ears and change your meditative state. But because audio has come so far since 16 years ago, there are so many free options and, to be honest, all I did was the free version. Back then I got a little sample. Back then you had to actually have it mailed to you because what you could download was not high quality. Now, even YouTube is high enough quality and what you need is those stereo headphones where you can have the different beats going in each ear, and so what it's doing is it's actually forcing that back and forth in your brain.

Karrie Christen: 16:19

Some things that I learned during that process that also really helped me and this might help other people was I learned a lot about emotional freedom tapping, which was incredibly helpful for me, but in the meditation, it was those different alternating beats in my ears that was able to get me to calm my mind down initially, enough that after several months, it became something that I could actually do on my own.

Karrie Christen: 16:49

I'm not sure exactly how long it took me. One of the other types of meditation that I did was journaling. While meditating, I would ask a question and then, without even questioning anything, I would write everything that came down, and that was incredibly helpful, and I believe I read a book on that at some point too, about meditative journaling, and I thought, well, I'm gonna try it. It took me about 30 months before it was actually automatic where the things that were coming into my mind I knew were not me, or they were the me without the filter At the me, or they were the me without the filter. At the very least, they were the me without the filter, and so I could really gain a lot of clarity through that process and I think either one of those was phenomenal. I was doing them both at the same time. 30 weeks, months, I'm sorry, 30 days, 30 days.

pamela cass: 17:44

Oh okay.

natalie davis: 17:46

I was like 30 days.

Karrie Christen: 17:48

I had a pattern. I did the same things each time. I was specifically trying to create that muscle memory or the equivalent of. So I would light a candle, I would burn sage. I don't know if that did anything. I still don't know if it did anything, but what it did for me was set a pattern of getting into that state, same with my meditating. My pattern was always to pray, and really same thing that Natalie brought up. That doesn't need to be pray to God, pray to creator, pray to your higher self. It's just about setting intentions with whoever or whatever you can set intentions with for what you want to come forward in that and, to be honest, nothing came forward for a really long time.

natalie davis: 18:39

I think the commitment to the 30 days is what makes a big difference. I know the Artist's Way is a book. They also have journal prompts that will take you through. I think it's 30, maybe 45 days of writing and it's hard. Keri, congratulations to you. Because I believe the prompt in the Artist's Way is that you write three pages nonstop. You don't think about it, Don't get into your own way because we often do and it's like single line college rule paper that you're writing and you just set the timer and you write until you have three pages filled. It's inevitable that you're going to get into that flow state that you talk about. Yes, but you have to allow yourself time to get there.

Karrie Christen: 19:18

It's not a light switch, it's not going to happen and I was writing down the thoughts that I knew were filtered in mine. I still wrote, I did not wait, I just wrote and then, all of a sudden, this insane, amazing insight was coming in.

natalie davis: 19:34

Can you share with us some of the insight, do you recall? I mean, I know that going through this process, you're in that flow state. So it's not you, but I'm sure coming out of those you think, gosh, that's it, that's what I need to do, or I've missed the mark on this, or whatever that may be.

Karrie Christen: 19:51

Do you recall any of those? I think a good way to talk about it is very similar to what would come out in paper is what started coming to me as a voice that I did not believe was mine. I could ask a question. It was kind of talking out loud, so I'll talk out loud now at this point. I love to walk and talk. That's kind of my current meditation state is to walk and just talk and then I'm quiet. But I'm having these conversations. I'm sure I look like a lunatic and I'm fine with it. I think all of my neighbors know I'm crazy at this point, At least when it comes to walking and talking right.

natalie davis: 20:27

My neighbor probably thinks the same, because I go through the same thing. Like I light the incense, I sit in the same spot, I'm drinking the tea, I'm writing in the journal. I'm sure they're wondering like here she goes again. Another morning she's out here.

Karrie Christen: 20:39

I do it in my house even, like I have, where I can walk in a circle around the central wall. I find myself walking in a circle constantly and talking to myself yes, it's awesome, I love that. It's one of my favorite things in the world to do. But now so different types of meditation. There's that meditation where all you're doing is you are focusing on your breath or you're focusing on a sound. To me, I believe it's really important that you focus on something, because I don't like to leave my body. I don't want to leave my body when I meditate. I want to be attached and grounded to this life, this me, this moment, because that's what I'm looking for insight on. So I concentrate on breath. Now, as I progress through either the journaling or the meditation where I am communicating with myself, I will quiet my mind down and then, once I feel like my mind is quiet and I feel almost floaty in a way, that's where I can start asking questions.

Karrie Christen: 21:44

So, honestly, I think I was just venting when I heard the voice say you're not lost. I was just talking and saying I feel so lost. I am struggling to find my path again and I always don't get me wrong. It wasn't easy the last time. It seems like it's really difficult for a little while, like you're so in it. Does that make sense that you can't get out of it? And so I will talk about that. I am so in this. I feel so lost and the voice it felt like. The voice was like I didn't feel a tapping sensation, but the voice was like what? You're not lost, you're not lost. And it kept saying but you're not lost, but you're not lost, but you're not lost. Asking what do you mean? You just need to change. Lots of people need to change. Right now. You're hitting midlife. You need a change. It's time. And the voice told me you knew this was coming. You talked about it for the last year and a half. You knew this was coming. Here it's time.

natalie davis: 22:40

You're not lost this moment, carrie, are you? And again, because I know you so I'm gonna ask this question. It's kind of loaded. You're talking about every area of life professionally, personally, family, career, financial, health and wellness everything everything.

Karrie Christen: 22:57

It's a reset time for me. I love. I don't know if you guys have ever heard of human design, so, in case any listeners don't know, it's a type of, I would say, astrology combined with, almost like this, personality type of thing, and so I am hitting a major transit when it comes to what they believe in human design. And so it actually makes sense. And I knew it was coming up and I felt it like it was. Honestly, I'm going to say looking down the barrel of a gun, I knew it was coming and I knew it was going to hit hard. And, to be honest, I also know what I did to trigger it.

Karrie Christen: 23:33

To come on, I threw the grenade that blew up my life. I know I did. I ended a gosh. How long were we in a relationship? I ended a 10 and a half year long relationship. Gosh, how long were we in a relationship?

Karrie Christen: 23:44

I ended a 10 and a half year long relationship because I felt like I wanted to run away every day. I felt like I only worked to support this man and his kids. I felt like I had really switched a lot of things in my life around, like I had given up so many things to keep the situation I was in okay and I could see wow, my son. He had already turned 18. There was going to be a time I didn't have to be mom anymore. Once I threw that grenade, I didn't have to be a significant other anymore. I didn't have to be a step parent anymore. I have created a business for myself where I can be anywhere in the world, and I tried to do some little things in between and I realized that didn't make me happy either. What the heck I need to find this new path. But finding a new path and being lost are two different things.

natalie davis: 24:42

We hope that you've enjoyed part one of our two-part conversation with Keri Christen. What an amazing personal story and journey that she's been on. Also, the tool that she mentioned, holosync Meditation. If you've not referenced it before, go ahead and check it out. But you'll want to make sure that you come back and join us for part two, because we're going to dive back into Keri's personal story and how she's been able to find happiness in her life and, even greater than that, a sense of fulfillment. We'll see you all soon.

Speaker 1: 25:12

Thank you for joining us today on the Reignite Resilience podcast. We hope you had some aha moments and learned a few new real life ideas. To fuel the flames of passion, please subscribe on your favorite streaming platform, like or download your favorite episodes and, of course, share with your friends and family. We look forward to seeing you again next time on Reignite Resilience.