Make “Someday” Happen Today with Kristin Swanson

In this Episode

• [00:39]Stephan introduces Kristin Swanson, a breast cancer survivor and Coaches Institute trained coach who has helped Thought Leaders make their “Someday When” projects happen.
• [05:36]Kristin shares her Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) experience and what she loves about it.
• [10:48]Stephan shares tool number two from the book The Tools, which is to visualize in your mind’s eye a person you’re in conflict with and the relationship you want to heal, and how he healed a relationship with his aunt using this.
• [16:31]Kristin shares how being quiet can help you know your Someday When project and how speaking it out loud is the first step to making it happen.
• [20:58]Stephan and Kristin talk about how celebrating small wins can build momentum towards making your project happen.
• [27:15]You have to be ready to take the following steps when they’re being presented to you.
• [31:46]Kristin shares that her project was starting her business ten years ago during the recession.
• [35:22]Stephan shares his spiritual awakening where he saw the matrix after praying to God to give him a job.
• [40:03]Kristin shares how she heard a voice that told her cancer was the nudge she needed to take action with her project.
• [45:56]Everything is happening for you and by you. You have the power of co-creation, and your thoughts, words, and actions make a massive difference in what’s happening in your life.
• [48:36]Visit Kristin’s website and Instagram, and download the free Make It Happen planner to help you break down the actions towards your Someday When project.

Jump to Links and Resources

Kristin, it’s so great to have you on the show.

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

I want to start by talking a little bit about fear and how fear either hindered you or helped you in various ways through your journey, or maybe both?

I am no stranger to fear. I think that is something that I have really had to face a lot both personally and professionally. This could be fear of death, being a cancer survivor. My mom died of a very rare form of dementia early in life. I’ve got a 50% chance of also having the gene that says that I might get that. I have this acute sense of awareness of the fragility of life and how you never know if your someday is going to come.

I had to deal with the fear of death a lot.

I had to deal with the fear of death a lot, and that has helped me with fear in things like work stuff—showing up, being visible on social media, and things like that. I’ve had to learn that it’s actually the same thing. It’s an emotion, it’s fear. You can move through it and it passes. I think of it like grief. This wave comes over you and it does pass, but we have this fear that grief’s never going to go away. I’m just going to end up in a puddle on the floor crying forever. I don’t want to go there because I’m afraid that it will never end, but I know in my logical brain that that’s not really true. 

I’ve had to learn—both with grief and with fear—that you just have to ride the wave and let it pass. When I talk about the Someday When project, these are soul-led things that you really want to be doing someday and you actually know you’re going to do it someday. Someday, I’m going to start a podcast, create an online course, move into another line of business, or quit my job and start a business. There’s fear with all of that stuff, whether we know it’s present or not. I like to help people learn to move through it. There’s a lot of different ways to do that, but the first thing is just recognizing that it’s present.

I’d say that’s true in a lot of different things, not just with fear, but with any kind of challenge that you’re facing is to first identify the root cause. If it’s the fear, if it’s a traumatic event and anxiety that came from that, I might do a hypnotherapy session, for example, to get to the root cause of it. Then unlock and release all that pent-up energy that’s stuck in there.

Exactly. I think there’s power in just calling it what it is like naming it and shining a light on it because then it starts to dissipate. But then, like you say, when you do hypnotherapy or I’ve done a lot of EMDR, it really releases it. It opens it up for more good to flow in is the way I see it when you’re able to move through it.

EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization And Reprocessing. You just stare at a stick, a pendulum, or something. I guess it wouldn’t be a pendulum. It would be something that the therapist could move more easily and not have it swinging on something. I’ve had one session of it. It didn’t really do anything for me but I was curious about it. It’s been game-changing for many people. I’ve heard really great things about it. I’d love to hear your experience of what opened for you or released because of your EMDR experience.

I did it when I lost my mom and when my mom was sick. It was a process of grief, and back then I was in my 20s and going to therapy and talk therapy. I mean, it still isn’t my favorite thing to sit down and talk about. I’m wondering what I’m going to say and where do I start. What I love about EMDR is you just show up and you process. They just take you through it. When I was doing it in person, I would hold these two tapper things in each hand and they both make this little buzzing. It’s all about this bilateral movement, that was then.

Now when I do it, because I still do it now, it’s on Zoom because therapy is on Zoom in a lot of cases right now. It’s literally just tapping your legs with your hands. There’s something about the bilateral movement that helps you process faster. What I like about it is that you can just show up, you watch the trauma like it’s on a movie screen visually in your mind. You close your eyes, you visualize yourself, what you went through, and watch it like you’re watching a movie screen. What it does is it just helps you process so much faster.

What I liked about it was not a lot of talking. You visualize it, you stop, and talk about what you saw. But I used to go into those sessions and feel like wanting to talk about it in therapy today? I don’t know. I’m not really struggling with anyone or anything. I would sit down and hold those tappers and she would take me through the process. I’m not kidding, just tears streaming. I didn’t even know that I had that in me. That’s why it’s fascinating to me. I didn’t even know that I was struggling. It’s all under the surface and it just comes out. You’re just healing your neural pathways basically.

Something releases because when you’re recalling these things in your mind’s eye, your eyes are darting around from place to place, and you’re being led. My understanding from just the one session was the therapist will use a pointer and ask you to stare at the pointer, then he’ll move it or she will move it from side to side and different places, and will watch you move your eyes to follow that stick. Seems pretty straightforward to me, but there’s so much more to this. It remaps or rewires those neural pathways that rut in your memories.

You’re healing your neural pathways.

Another modality that does something similar but in a different way is tapping or EFT, emotional freedom techniques. Tapping, I had Fred Gallo on this podcast, an amazing expert at tapping. I experienced a big breakthrough with tapping in regards to releasing fear of water because I don’t know how to swim and fear of heights. Right after the session with him—just one session, 45 minutes—I was able to go in a microlight, which is a hang glider with a motor attached. There was a pilot. We flew into the mist of Victoria Falls in Zambia.

That’s amazing.

Which in no way I would have done without the tapping exercise for that.

I use tapping myself. To me, I have said the same thing that it’s kind of similar. It seems to move you through it. Just the nervous system is calmed, I want to say, in those specific instances.

You tap on acupressure points. You repeat a mantra back like, even though I’m terribly afraid of this water, I completely and fully love myself for whatever the pressure is.

I love and appreciate myself or something like that.

You just keep tapping and saying it at different tapping points. It’s very important that you playback or play forward the fear-inducing or anxiety-producing moment. If you’re afraid of getting in that microlight, that helicopter, or whatever, imagine being there. Get those emotions going. Because if you don’t have that and you’re just doing the tapping, without it, it’s not going to do anything.

Right. That’s amazing stuff.

Is that true also for EMDR that you really need to be playing that in your mind’s eye?

Exactly. Then it usually takes you to different moments that you really need to move through, and then you stop and talk about it here and there. But it’s really just like watching a movie screen. There’s usually grief that comes up, and so you’re processing and breathing through it. Then it just keeps going. It just clears it.

It’s so important to play stuff in your mind’s eye, positive as well. For example, I learned from the book The Tools, there are five tools in that book, an incredible book by the way. There is tool number two, which is to visualize in your mind’s eye a person you’re in conflict with that you want to heal. Imagine that person standing in front of you, and you are full of love and energy, just the light from the creator. If you’re not spiritual or whatever, just with love.

You visualize that love flowing from you to the person you’re in conflict with. You watch that happen in your mind’s eye, and you see them filling up with that love and light. Then you are not depleted because after that, you visualize yourself filling back up with love and light from the universe. That is a very powerful healing exercise and it shifts things. Instead of going back to the negative moment trying to scramble the signal and make it not as emotionally charged, which I’m not knocking at all, there’s a place for that for sure as we just talked about. This is a way to go to a very positive place.

First, to charge neutral instead of this really powerful negative charge and then go charge positive. After I did this exercise, I was able to heal a rift between an aunt and myself, we hadn’t spoken for many years, and then I called her up and we had a beautiful conversation. She’s been back in my life again since that point. 

I’m curious if you had any big turning points, epiphanies, or breakthroughs in that regard where it was somebody that you had a rift with or some sort of big conflict and you were able to heal it using some sort of tool or modality?

Well, not as much relationships but situations, and I think these two things go so well together. Moving things, like I’m saying, clearing this negative trauma while opening it up to the visualization of your future self or whatever you want to visualize yourself going through. I used a lot of visualization with my surgeries. I did a double mastectomy with cancer, and I believe there’s just a lot of fear around the surgery itself. It turns out that earlier in my life, I had done biofeedback years and years ago when I was in high school. Biofeedback for migraine headaches. 

It’s a powerful visualization.

Ever since then I’ve done things like meditation and visualization, imagery—that kind of stuff. That visualization, prior to the surgery, I just felt like it absolutely helped with the healing, helped with the fear, and really got me through that tough time. I think that they go well together because I feel like when you’re clearing the negative and you open it up for more of the positive to flow in, it’s a powerful visualization.

It sure is. To tie in this idea visualization with what you were talking about at the beginning of this episode around moving through the fear, the very first tool in that tools book—that was also very powerful for me and it’s somewhat similar to what you were describing moving through the fear, but with a visualization added to it. 

Move through the fear where you visualize the fear as being a black smoke sort of thing. It doesn’t really have any substance to it. You can see it but you can walk, even run right to it, and then through it and visualize yourself doing that and getting to the other side.

You see that fear, you see it as this cloud of smoke or particles, it doesn’t stop you. You just run right through it, you get through the other side, and visualize what that feels like to be through it and to do the thing that was holding you back or that you were terrified to do.

That’s so powerful. And really noticing when you’re not taking action on something, that could be because of fear because I think sometimes we don’t even acknowledge that it is fear. It just feels like I don’t have time. I don’t have the resources, all of these things. But really, if you dug down deep, you would know that it was fear and then you can apply these tools. I encourage people to do that. That’s amazing.

Let’s take this to the next step here. Let’s say that you have some calling, some soul-led project that’s just sitting there, you’re procrastinating—very possibly because of fear. You know you’re meant for more than just doing the grind, the daily stuff that you do, that there’s something more. First of all, how do you tap into what that something more is so you can define what that soul-led project is, to use your terminology? How do you make that a reality, setting aside whatever fears, anxieties, barriers, naysayers, et cetera that are in your way?

A lot of my clients, they know the thing. They know what it is that they are going to do someday. It’s just a matter of time. They’re not doing it yet for whatever reason. But if you really don’t know what your soul-led projects are or what your soul whispers are telling you, I say just get quiet. Not that you need to go on a meditation retreat forever or practice daily meditation, I definitely am a believer in meditation. I think that helps, but I also think it can come through with things like going on a walk frequently, being in nature, or whatever it is for you that is a little bit quieter than your normal daily, if you’re in that daily grind, so that you can hear what is trying to come through. That’s different for everyone. 

But let’s say you do know or it’s starting to come to you, the biggest thing is to speak it out loud. I find that a lot of people are even afraid to say it out loud what they really want to do. Because they don’t feel like they deserve it, they don’t feel like it’s possible, they think who am I to, or whatever it is. They don’t even say it out loud. There is so much power in simply speaking the words out loud. If you’re not ready to speak it out loud, then write in a journal as a first step.

I really encourage people to speak it out loud to the right people, trusted like-minded folks who are going to be supportive. Like you said, to avoid the naysayers. Someday, you will even speak it out loud to the naysayers, but start with the trusted ones. Talk it out. This is what I desire. You don’t have to claim it like you’re going to go do it tomorrow or anything, but just this is what I want to do someday. Saying the thing out loud.

Let me just interrupt for a second and share something that I think is very poignant and relevant. That is one of my guests from maybe a few months ago, it was Yuval Abramovitz and he wrote the book The List. Which originally was in Hebrew and a very popular bestseller in Israel, but then was translated into English and many other languages. The subtitle is, Shout Your Dreams Out Loud to Make Them Come True. Because we do the silly thing of wishing to ourselves without telling anybody, like for our birthday—blow out the candles and don’t tell anybody your wish or it won’t come true.

No, you got to shout your dreams out loud so that they do come true because not only are you manifesting that into reality by speaking it, you speak it into reality. But also other people can hear it and help you, assist you on that journey. They’ll have known people or they’ll have heard something that you need to hear. Everybody’s a messenger. That’s really important. Please proceed with your process.

Well, that’s perfect because that’s actually the next step. Once you say it out loud, you basically follow the breadcrumbs. Things are going to start coming to you once you’re starting to speak it into existence. Then you start to follow the breadcrumbs. You say it to somebody and then just in passing, you’re just going to get little hints here and there. Maybe you should listen to this podcast, somebody’s going to mention some course to you or something to listen to. Maybe you hear something on the radio. There are just little things, clues almost, and then once you start taking action on those, so follow those. I really believe in really following your intuition here.

You’re probably going to hear about a lot of podcasts to listen to and a lot of articles that you should read or whatever it is and really paying attention to what’s really resonating with you and your intuition and what to follow. Then start taking those actions, and then really just celebrating all of the tiniest little wins that you see along the way towards this soul-led goal that you’re stepping into. I mean just very, very small. Because I think what we do naturally and this is our brain at work is, but I could never do that. That would take too much time. I don’t have the money. I don’t have the resources. I’m not sure that’s possible.

We really pay attention to all that we can’t. But when we shift our attention to all of these little clues that we’re taking and celebrate all the tiniest of wins, then that builds momentum. It’s moving your attention to that, and that just compounds. Pretty soon you’re doing the thing.

Walk frequently.

One way I celebrate the tiny wins is I’ll document them in my gratitude journal. I have a reMarkable tablet because I’m a geek. I’m writing down in my reMarkable tablets, and then I also write down the challenges that I didn’t want and how I’m grateful for those too. That really moves the energy as well. It’s very powerful.

That’s perfect. Okay, I’m adding that.

That’s the thing too, when you start tuning in to the whispers, the intuition, and so forth, things just pop. As soon as you hear it, you see it on the screen, or you read it in a book, that’s important. I’m supposed to follow that. That’s part of the breadcrumbs or that’s a message. I just saw that happen for you.

Exactly. I do it. I have this app on my phone called WinStreak and it’s the same thing. I always write them down, and it’s what I’m grateful for and these little tiniest of wins. Then I just want to say I do believe, like you said, that everybody is sort of a divine messenger. You’ll just get little nuggets from different people. It’s not like somebody’s going to say exactly to you, exactly the thing you need to do. No, it’s more like you say something to me, then later today somebody else says something, then those two merge together, and then it leads me to the next step. I think it’s important to know that’s what we’re looking for.

Very, very important. I’m watching a show on Netflix, I don’t have time to watch much stuff on Netflix. There was one show that just spoke to me though. It’s all about following these intuitive breadcrumbs, psychic abilities, and things like that and it just really spoke to me. I’m like, okay, I’m going to watch it. It’s called Manifest.

Okay, I need to check it out.

It’s fun. There are all sorts of messages in there that I’m just, I like that, that popped for me, and so forth. There is one of the main characters, he’s hearing in his own voice, something that I didn’t understand the distinction about when you’re receiving messages. It’s usually in your own voice. It’s like I’m going to hear a booming voice of God or I’m going to hear some angel in some angelic voice. No, it’s actually your own voice. 

He’s hearing his own voice say, “It’s all connected.” For those of you who have seen the show, you know what I’m talking about. I hear that later on, the next day, or that next week, it just comes to me at an exact moment where I needed it. Think of the angels, your guides, your spiritual teachers as using the fodder, the raw material that you’ve already collected, somebody said something to you. Something like the shaman lifted this generational curse and ever since then all this amazing stuff, all this abundance has been happening. 

You hear that played back to you at exactly the right moment, that’s because it’s in the treasure chest of things that they can pull from. You get an image from your childhood. You even get an image from last week or whatever. It just pops for you. It just comes to your consciousness. They just use that as raw material. 

The more you keep your focus on the good stuff and you stay away from the negative news, you stay away from any porn, for example, which is really, really disastrous. In terms of blocking the messages and shutting off most of your brain except the pleasure center. It’s really, really bad. I’m curious to hear what your thoughts are on all that.

Well, it’s interesting you say that because it seems like that happened to me recently. I was thinking it was more like the EMDR and then things coming up. It was actually like a song that I was listening to that just hit. I could feel it viscerally. I almost wonder if people feel things differently, like a voice versus visceral feeling, knowing type of a thing. It was a little bit of a hint of something else to work through in the EMDR. That might be different but I think it’s all connected.

It is all connected, isn’t it? That is definitely something that was given to you. You’re getting guidance all day long. Whether you call them guardian angels or you refer to it as the Holy Spirit, it’s just heavenly help, divine assistance, and you’re being nudged in different directions. That was the direction you needed to be nudged in your EMDR session and that’s what you got.

Exactly. Right.

Really cool. I love what you said about following the breadcrumbs too. That it’s not enough to just say, I got a message. Anthony Capobianco who was on this podcast a couple of months ago, he and I stay in contact. He keeps sending me screenshots of 1111 and stuff. He’s getting all these angel numbers all the time. He loves it. I’m like, “Dude, it’s time to get past this and start getting full downloads, not just, ‘Hey, we’re here, we’re listening. Good job.’” It’s like, we got stuff we want to tell you or show you. 

You got to be so ready to take the next step. Follow those breadcrumbs, then follow those bread crumbs, and so forth and so on.

Then I think when you follow the breadcrumbs and you take the action, sometimes these actions are scary. Then the fear comes up. It’s all about the tools you’ve talked about already about moving through the fear. Then you also mentioned the naysayers, like what do you do about the naysayers? So many things you can do, but I think the biggest thing is to pay attention to the people that you’re really speaking to and that are like-minded, trusted people, and ignore the naysayers. 

I’ll see the naysayers, now that you’ve given me this tool to use, I would put them on that challenge list, give thanks for that, and move through those as well.

I might even take it to another level to say instead of ignoring the naysayers, love the naysayers. You don’t have to win them over. You don’t have to convince them of anything. Just know that they’re all being sent to you. The naysayers and the cheerleaders are all being sent to you. They all have the hand of God in them, and you’re going to get a gift from each of them in different ways. Maybe, it’s a gift to push through negative self-talk. Maybe it’s a gift to love unconditionally, whether or not they appreciate what you’re doing or what you have to say. Whatever that gift is but love them.

Seeing it as a clue that you’re headed in the right direction. You wouldn’t be hearing from the naysayers if you weren’t putting yourself out there and working towards that, which you really are called to do. It’s like a clue that you’re headed in the right direction too.

I’m curious what you think of this because I’ve shared this a few different times on this podcast. This is something that was very impactful for me. Bob Allen, a very famous New York Times bestselling author, co-authored The One Minute Millionaire, Cash in a Flash, and Multiple Streams of Income—a whole bunch of really great books, millions and millions of copies sold. 

He told me this one thing that was a game-changer, which is you’re not here for the frowny faces, the naysayers. You’re here for the smiley faces, and they’re for you. You’re there for them. They’re there for you. Don’t worry about the frowny faces therefore, you don’t have to convince them. That is another way of restating what you were talking about with regards to the naysayers. Know that it’s not relevant or important to win those people over, even if they’re in your own family.

Totally. Oftentimes, they are in your own family and they’re trying to keep you safe. I don’t know that they know they’re doing that. I think that’s subconscious. Because if you’re not speaking, it’s kind of like letting it fall away. You don’t have to convince them. It’s not like you’re turning them into your biggest fan. You’re just letting them fall away so that you can speak to more of the people that are the smiley faces.

If you don’t have a charge around, I really need to convince them, you have an attachment to winning them over. If you release that and you just exude unconditional love, not only are they going to be not your detractors anymore probably, but they could end up getting won over anyways or have something shift in their life. That person, even though I really didn’t like anything that he said or that she said, I really like the way that they responded to the criticism that I gave in the Q&A.

Something shifts. There’s the butterfly effect, chaos theory that one little ripple of something, a butterfly flapping its wings in Shanghai can change the weather half a world away to be a hurricane instead of just a regular storm or vice versa.

Tell me what are some of your big soul whispers that have been game-changers, destiny changers in your life?

My big one, sort of my Someday When Project that I was putting off for a long time was starting a business. I had started my business about 10 years ago, and then when there was the recession and then my husband and I were both self-employed, one of my clients turned to a part-time job. I was hearing the whispers for the eight years that I ignored the whispers, which is why I don’t want people to wait. But I waited until cancer kicked me in the butt and woke me up to I don’t know how long I have.

That is what my Someday When Project was, but what was whispering to me was this, “you want to go back to your coaching business.” That and I’m writing a book. Done with the book proposal now. That’s been something that has been whispering to me throughout that whole time too. The way that came about was I always knew that I wanted to write a book. This is what I mean by clues. I was driving and I saw a podcast. I felt like the podcast says, what one you might like. I felt like it was popping out of the screen at me.

I started listening and binge listening to this podcast, which is Heather Chauvin, she’s my mentor and I hired her as a coach. Her podcast is called Mom Is in Control. I just started really listening to every single one. This is an example of the breadcrumbs. I was talking to my husband about her and just telling him about these podcasts I was listening to. He said, “Well, what’s her story?” This is after cancer for me and that I was listening to these. I pulled up her website and started looking her up, saw that she’s a cancer survivor, and I just felt this connection.

I was like I needed to work with her. I started filling out these forms, just like the application. You just fill out an application to work with her. I hadn’t hired her yet and paid her $1, but that night, at four in the morning, I woke up with just clarity on what my book topic would be and stuff started to come to me. That’s an example of speaking it out loud and then things just start to come and start to flow. Working with her was instrumental in me leaving my job and re-launching my business. 

I think the other one is the soul whispers I heard on how to handle my cancer decisions. I was told that I could have just a lumpectomy, I could have a mastectomy, or I could have a double mastectomy. I just didn’t know what to do and was so torn up about the fact that I didn’t know what to do. Why don’t the doctors just tell me what to do? I thought that’s what they were for. Then I got really clear. It was like a soul whispered to me that I wanted to just be done with this and I knew exactly what I wanted to do. 

Then it turns out with the pathology later that I had made the right surgery choice. They would have been going back to do more surgery had I not followed that intuition and those soul whispers about how to handle the cancer treatment. Those are just some examples for me.

That’s so powerful. Thank you for sharing so openly, vulnerably, and bringing us into your trusted circle. When you were talking about your coach and how it just was very clear to you from the breadcrumbs that that was the coach to hire, I had a similar experience in that I had a big spiritual awakening happen earlier this year. The veils thinned and all that and I could see—I just talked about this in episode 300 about being able to see—the matrix after I prayed to God for him to give me a job and He answered. I was so excited. I get to see the matrix, my goodness.

I don’t want to be labeled a lunatic or whatever. I need some guidance on how to calibrate when to tell people what and in what way and so forth because I can see the matrix.

I love what you said about getting a sign that this is the coach for you. That’s how it works. It’s so cool. Then sharing what happened when you didn’t heed the whisper.

It keeps whispering. I mean that’s the thing, it never goes away. That whisper is not going to go away.

Well, here’s the paradigm that I learned at a Raul Villacis event about six years ago or something. It was called Next Level Experience. One of the speakers (I don’t remember who it was) said, first you get the feathers. The feather just gently lands on your shoulder. It’s just the slightest little nudge. It’s really easy to ignore. It’s really easy to just brush it off. It’s nothing. It just came to my mind or whatever. But you ignore the whispers and guess what, they start to show up as bricks.

When the bricks fall, that hurts. That really hurts. If you ignore the bricks long enough then the Mack truck comes and you definitely do not want the Mack truck. It’s not like you’re just going to get the whispers and then the whispers and then the whisper. No, the heat is going to get turned up on you. It’s like the myth of the frog and the hot water and you slowly turn up the heat and it doesn’t realize it and never jumps out. No, I don’t jump out. That’s a myth.

You’ll get the heat turned up on you until you finally jump out and make your move. It’s much better to just do it proactively.

Exactly. This reminds me of another big moment for me because I had the feathers for sure. The feathers to get back to doing your business, your coaching, your writing, and I was ignoring the feathers for real reasons. We felt with young kids and paying the bills—I mean, all the real reasons not to. But once I was diagnosed with cancer, there was this moment where I was searching for answers. What do I do next? What am I going to do?

I had decided that I was going to go to this local church. I’ve always, throughout my years, have been on a spiritual quest for what is exactly speaking to me. I was going to a church that day just by myself, left my family home, and went on this search. I’ll never forget. I was coming up the hill, the sun just shined in my eyes, and I felt like I heard a voice that you weren’t going to act. This cancer is the nudge that you needed, you weren’t going to take the steps. You weren’t going to do what I’ve been whispering at you to do.

It felt like a knowing. Again, for me, it’s like a visceral knowing that that’s the push I needed basically to make the changes I wanted to in my life.

Do you know who it was whispering that told you that that was the nudge that you needed, you wouldn’t have moved otherwise? Was that you by yourself? Was it angels? Was it a certain angel? Was it a combination of a bunch of spiritual teachers or a particular loved one?

Well, I call it God and it’s just the universe, God. It’s my higher power for me. I believe everybody has a different version of that. Whatever is true for you is true for you.

There’s a particular spiritual mystical book. It’s a very important book in Kabbalah. It’s called the Book of Formation or Book of Creation is another translation of it. God is described as this omnipotent, unknowable, ever-present force that acts through His agents. Whether it’s loved ones, ascended masters, angels, your guardian angel, archangels, Holy Spirit. 

You get messages and guidance through His support team. You certainly are encouraged to have a personal relationship with God, but when you are given a particular nudge if you think of it as it’s all God, but it’s also potentially your grandmother who’s saying go left today. Don’t go right.

Exactly.

What is maybe a message that didn’t make sense for a very long time and then in retrospect, that hindsight being 2020, you were able to look back on and say, that really was important or that was something that I didn’t get but now it makes total sense?

Well, I think cancer is one of them, for sure. It’s just something I had to go through to be who I am today, for sure. I believe there’s a golden thread throughout everyone’s life that when you look back, you can see it. For me, I mentioned back in high school when I got migraine headaches. I look back now, and it’s so weird because none of the meds were working, so the doctor sent me to do biofeedback. They hook you up to machines so you can learn the relaxation response, and so it’s stress.

To be able to calm your body down, it was like progressive relaxation and autogenic relaxation, which were on audio tapes at the time. I look back on that now, I think, who is stressed out as a teenager? I don’t know. I don’t get it, but I look back now and see that I learned that. It was almost like there was a reason, and then it morphed into meditation, visualization, imagery, and all these things throughout my life that now are tools that are part of me, if that makes sense.

I look back on those little life events as all being part of that golden thread. That all makes sense to me now. At one point, my mom was convinced that she was going to get breast cancer. She didn’t get breast cancer. Her mom died of breast cancer, my grandmother. She was convinced that she was going to get it. At one point, she said to me, “I think you’re learning this so that you can teach it to me someday when I have breast cancer.” She actually said that to me. 

I believe in really following your intuition.

When I was in the bathroom, at the diagnosis appointment getting this news from this nurse that I had breast cancer. My mom had since passed away from dementia. I felt like I heard her voice when I looked in the mirror at this appointment. I had to take a break from getting this news and I just looked in the mirror after washing my hands. I heard this voice say, “It wasn’t me, it was you that you were learning these tools for so that you can get through these tough times.” It all comes together. I think everybody has that in different ways if you really look at it.

Again, it’s a golden thread of everything is connected. It’s all connected. I bet if you look with fresh eyes at say maybe some of your clients’ wins from doing their someday soul-led projects and goals that there’s a connection there for you too. Like, wow, I didn’t see how that was connected. I just connected the dots just this morning on one of my clients, my daughter, and one of my writers. All three are connected in a way that I did not anticipate.

In a positive way, there’s going to be a benefit for my daughter from this interaction that happened. It’s beautiful, I don’t want to go into details here, but this idea of everything being connected and nothing being random is world-shaking.

Right. There’s some comfort in it. It helps me at least. I don’t know about you, but it helps me to feel safe and held knowing that.

It all comes together.

Everything is happening for you, not to you, and everything is happening by you. Even the stuff that you think you don’t have control over because we have the power of co-creation that was gifted to us by the creator. We’re not only special because we have free will, but we’re special because we have the power of co-creation. Your words make a huge difference. Your thoughts make a huge difference. Of course, your actions. 

That was a big epiphany for me this year seeing how important it is to be pure of thought, word, and deed, all simultaneously creating all these powerful positive angels from it. It’s a game-changer.

Good.

Do you have any thoughts of a particular client that has a someday project win that might have a connection to you or some sort of impact that goes beyond just their world and into yours?

Well, I can’t think of one specifically, but what I find as a coach is that it’s like they’re mirrors, it’s like children. I don’t know if you believe this but a lot of times, my kids will say something to me and it’s like they’re holding up a mirror and it’s something that I need to deal with. I find that often with clients. Just the things that they struggle with and the things that they’re needing to move through about, that is an area for me too. It’s something to look at, to be aware of, and work through myself. I don’t know if that’s what you mean, but I see that all the time.

It’s so true. Not only are we seeing the things that we need to work on in others, but when we do something outside our comfort zone for somebody, they’re the delivery agent of the thing that takes us to the next level, that next breadcrumb in the line. 

If you stretch and you do that thing, you say that thing that’s going to help, whether it’s your kid, your boss, your employee, your best friend, or a family member. You say that uncomfortable thing that’s coming from a place of unconditional love, something’s going to come back from that. It’s going to be beautiful, but that’s not why you should do it, just do it for the love. The law of cause and effect isn’t just to bite you in the butt when you do something bad. It’s to reward you for all the beautiful stuff you’re doing out there in the world.

Yes.

How do our listeners get in touch with you, work with you, learn from you, and grow with you?

You can find everything on my website kristinswansonconsulting.com. My Instagram is @kristin_swanson_, and all my links are on my website. I’ve got a free Make it Happen planner that you can download there. If you’re feeling that you might have some of those soul whisper projects out there that you’re putting off until someday when, if you download that planner, it will help you break it down into some actions that you can start taking to follow your breadcrumbs.

Awesome.  I’m excited for our listeners to report back. Please, listener, send me an email, a DM, a tweet, something that lets me know, or write a review on your favorite podcast platform. Let me know what you have done to see your soul whispers come into reality and manifest. We’ll catch on to the next episode. I’m your host, Stephan Spencer, signing off.

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