106. Self Belief in Midlife

Pascal to the show. Karen is a best selling author, speaker and founder of Karen pads, self evolution, youthful longevity, yoga training and retreats and the self evolution Education Foundation. That's a lot. Karen, I know that you have a great story for us. We are going to talk about the power of self belief, but tell us just a little bit more about yourself, Karen, before we get started. Well,

Any new listener would not know that I am, by nature, an introvert, and I hear people say this a lot of times, or I'm an introverted extrovert, but I literally used to just cling onto my mom's leg as a child, holding tight like a little monkey. I did not want to go to anyone else's house. No friends. Just always wanted to come home.

I was a home body, and it was beautiful in a way, but and it's great to be alone and be good with myself, but I realized at some point, especially midlife, when I really wanted to help inspire others and get messages out for other people's growth and happiness, staying small and really introverted wasn't going to serve that purpose. So I actually realized that I could make an internal change, even though I had been one way for so

long. I decided, What if I still can be happy alone, and I still have time to myself, but I open myself up to thinking bigger, to expanding, to helping more people, to making greater impact, and in doing so, I got more comfortable in my own skin, and that was about the time I met my husband, my second husband, who was my soul mate, who ended up passing away very

shortly after. We were only fully together for six years, but he was the epitome of extrovertedness and big thinking, and it really terrified me, but I knew it was someone I needed to be around for that example to like, set in

and positively influence me. So that's what I want to start out with, and people to know that I was not always this butterfly on podcast and speaking about my story everywhere, and able to move by myself from Detroit to Breckenridge, Colorado, in the middle of the mountains, knowing no one and making friends instantly. So you can change yourself if you want to, if it I say, suits your soul's desires, right? That's different than what we think we want sometimes, or even what we're comfortable

with. So I love talking about this with women and anyone in midlife, because sometimes as we get older, it's harder to change, but if we're open to it, and we have the right people around us and we know that, then we're gonna live more freedom, more freely, more fearlessly, more happily and abundantly, and we'll be able to contribute more. Then I think that. I hope this inspires you, that you actually can change yourself in a positive way, and it is possible no matter how old you are. I

make or break you. This belief is so strong, and when you see someone with that, and I saw it when I first met eyes with my husband, that's something to be around at first, you can't just all of a sudden believe in yourself. It's like a process, just like anything else, and a practice. And so the first step for me was being in proximity. That's what I want to say, with someone who has and it could be even someone that you don't know, like someone on a podcast

or a book, an author, right? So it doesn't need to actually be like I need to be next to this person, listen to that person, read that person's book, watch their podcast or movie, or take their program, whatever it is to just be in the proximity so that you can catch that energy and see that it's possible. So number one is to open up to be inspired by the power of self

belief in someone else. Once you see that and you're around it, it will open you up, and you've got to believe it's possible, even if you're not there yet, right? Because that's the first belief, wait, it's possible that I have a power inside of me that is all powerful, that is unstoppable, that is limitless potential, even if you don't know what that is, right, just that inquiry is number one, and so it is a lot of self reflection, I will have to say.

And that process might look like journaling for you, it might just be getting online inspirationally and and looking around for what attracts that self belief in someone else to you. So I think it's, it's not just, oh, today you can start believing in yourself. Like, do you think it's possible? And if you do, that's going to lead you to the next step of opening up to more people who have this

power of self belief. For you to be around that frequency, because really, it's a vibration, and once you're around it, you can lift yourself up. That person isn't responsible for lifting you up. There just being but then you can decide to catch that. It's really contagious. So I would say that's just like the first initial steps. And of course, if you really resonate to anything I'm saying, Get my book The

Power of self belief. I'm not here to really sell that, but it opens you up to understand what this is, how I got it, where I was inspired and then decided and made a choice. Okay, it's my time to really take this fully and believe and step into it fully and release my fears and

how I did that. So it's it shares a real story, but there's teachings along that will help you, that I actually learned before I believed in myself, I learned about, you know, the universal laws and the eternal values in life the way I learned, it was from yoga philosophy. So I started to put the two together, like, what if all this philosophy and these teachings and knowledge and wisdom was put together with this power of self belief, and then my whole life really exploded. So have that open

mind. What is this? Maybe look like? What is this? Ask questions, this power of self belief. And when you start to question, instead of seeking the answer, just being in the question, you will be open to the power of your receivership. That's what I'll say. It's beautiful. I love

and conditioning. And if anyone's into self development, personal development, you know this lingo, you know these languages and these patterns get so set in our mind that our body learns how to be chemically adjusted to what our thinking and our emotions are. And if we try to go any different, the body's like, Wait, we've lived for this way. You know, this way for so long. What are you doing?

This? Feels unsafe, and so I think people it's so hard to change later in life because of how strong those old patterns and paradigm is. So that old paradigm usually cannot be

deconstructed by yourself. It takes, let me just say, a village, and it takes time, but you are worth it, because once you break the older habits and you replace part of breaking them is replacing with with new patterns and habits, it takes a while, but when you become that new person, you're so grateful that you did put in the energy and time, because otherwise, the more time you spend in the old paradigm, every single day, it just gets a little bit harder to break, a little bit more harder,

and a little bit more stuck. And that's why, as I believe that is what accelerated aging is. That's why I got into longevity, because it's not about your skincare, and it's not even 100% about your nutrition. I mean, all of those things go into it, but it's really up here. It's the paradigm. If it's the old paradigm, you get older, and if it's the new younger, fresher paradigm, the new outlook on the future versus the past that's

old and dead. When we start to focus on what we can create and what's ahead of us, that's how we start to believe in ourselves. That's how we start to look younger, feel younger, all of these things. So I believe it's the old paradigm that's in the way, which includes a lot of limiting beliefs. I know so many people talk about this, but it's amazing how fixed we can be in our mindsets and our beliefs.

Yeah, that we don't even realize is holding us down and back from living really fully, and that greatest potential and for us to feel like life is actually getting better, we're actually improving. You know, instead of the other way around, where I feel like people are just really not even struggling suffering, right? Struggling as a part of growth, pain is actually a part of growth, but it's positive because it it isn't suffering.

That's very different when you're holding on to that older self, or even, I can say younger self, the past self, right? And we're not willing to shift forward, then it can be really heavy, draining, overwhelming, burnout, and that's when we tend to get very ill. Certain cancers

come along, certain diseases. I was right at the pinnacle of that, just so everyone knows I had all the symptoms, every I mean, anything you can think of, I pretty much had it, and I ended up in the hospital of pancreatitis because it was so inflamed. So that was my big wake up call. And after my husband died, I had to really choose for myself. Karen, like, if you want to get sick, then you can stay in this paradigm.

But if you want to get well, then we have to start thinking about not all that I lost, but everything that I gained, and be grateful for it. And what am I going to do with that now?

fall underneath. When I say self, I mean the capital S. I don't mean the little s. I don't mean all the material layers that change throughout your life. I mean the unchanging Self. I mean the energy that existed before your material body and presence came forth that was here before you that lives as the substratum of everything that's going on now, and even when your physical body

perishes, it's the spirit. It's the soul that lives on when you go beyond the material to the spiritual, that transcendental idea is unchanging, right? It that is the limitless potential within you that you recognize, even as my body changes, even as my life in each day changes, no matter how much time I have. Left this self with the capital S, this divine energy that never breaks, that never goes away, it only changes forms, that lives

on. When we start thinking of ourself like that, that's when we become very light in our living where living isn't heavy, it's it's light. That's when we can give more. That's when we receive more. Believing is receiving, believing in that bigger s, that bigger self. So I hope that helps to sort of break down the self esteem and the self confidence that sort of go with it, and that's very important part of it, but it's almost like going beyond those things to go to the bigger you,

the higher self. I'll say,

writer and speaker. He remembered everything at a photographic memory. He was brilliant, so he started not to be able to remember things he couldn't like text anymore. It was all coming out like a foreign language. And he got really depressed and and it, it was this moment, and he just said, I can't do anything. And that's, that's the moment in my book that I talk about. I realized it was time for me to fully believe in that higher self and for him and for me. And

I just said, Yes, you can. You wrote an entire book called can't doesn't exist, and you don't need to write it. You can have someone else write it. You have all the contents, you have the title. And at that very moment, he was inspired. He literally got out of bed, and he goes, I'm gonna call my trainer, Josh, and just ask him, because I think he's written a book, and he might know someone. Turns out the two of them co authored the book, and that was the end of my

husband's life. He had inspiration and purpose the last few weeks of his life, and he actually was able to get that book out there. So I share a lot of that story. But when he passed, I had recreated my business. He got to see that I was sitting there, and I just thought, How am I helping all these people? How did I recreate this business? And how am I overcoming grief and sharing his legacy and carrying it forward, and I just thought, Oh, my God, it's the power of self belief.

That's the title of my book. It just came to me like that. And I started writing, I just couldn't stop, and it was one of the most cathartic but beautiful processes for me. I didn't even know I had that many tears in me still to come, but it was a very tearful process, but it transformed me, and I really didn't care about publishing a book. I just knew I needed to write this book and share my story. So it really was the

pivotal part of my life. I do share how I came into it and my my past of yoga and self development, but it was I was missing the power of self belief, and I didn't even know it until I met him. So I share that in my book, and I really go into when he got sick, like we were at the height of our this power couple. He opened his own business. I opened my own business. We're just, you know, we don't want kids, and we're just this amazing couple, and

we're traveling. We got married in Italy, and had this incredible honeymoon, and then, boom, like, one year after our marriage, he falls to the floor of a seizure. He's only 30, no excuse me, 28 so 12 years younger than me, and I was just not expecting this, obviously at all, or prepared. I was slightly prepared in terms of how well I had taken care of myself, but I

never saw this coming. And I talk about what I went through, what we went through, and how I had to decide that I was going to focus on being of service to Him. And what does that mean when you let go of yourself in thinking about yourself, it's like, how do I take care of my husband, but also not lose myself in the process? Business, and I had to become completely selfless. And it was the

greatest gift of my life. I had to learn how to take care of somebody and be a caregiver, but also run my own business and also take care of my dogs in my home, etc, and then follow his dreams. He only had two years. We didn't know how long it was going to be. He wanted to travel the world. I didn't necessarily want to do that because it was terrifying while he was having seizures and sick. And I still did it anyways. And that was the

power of self belief. I just said, I don't know how I'm going to do this, but some way, somehow, I'm going to get through one step at a time. And we just did it up until his death. And I share going through his last breath and what that looked like, and how I got through I share all the ups and downs between the family dynamics. He had two families, and I added one. Everyone wants to be in our business. So there's a lot I believe that anyone can learn from what I

went through. I share really deep parts of it, but also the teachings that got me through those eternal values. They're called Power thoughts, and I also give power quotes that aren't even mine to share. Hey, there's all these other people who actually see this teaching, and here's how they state it and their words. So I think it's it has pictures too, of me and my husband throughout the journey, and that's also relatable, where someone can see the visual and be like, Oh my gosh, that's what

she's talking about, right? So there's a lot in the story, and what I hear, for most people, is once they start reading it, they just can't put it down, because they want to hear and read the whole story.