Infinite potential and manifesting big dreams is a passionate subject for our guest Lisa Kelly. In our time together she leads us through a mini-exercise to kickstart our own process of manifesting with big results. Her examples are beautiful stories about life transformations. Lisa shares with us how she stays happy, healthy, and sober as a single mom running her own business and juggling on the roles….great example of the power of infinite potential. Listen to the steps that she took to reprogram her mind and how we too can take a few purposeful steps toward positive changes.
Before we talk about today's topic, infinite, potential and manifesting, Lisa, please tell us a little bit about yourself.
● Hi, Dar... Thanks for having me here. A little bit about myself. Okay, well, I like to call myself a mentor in the art of living your dreams. What that equates to is basically a success coach. I like to help mission driven women with mindset and manifesting. And that covers many, many areas. But in the end, it empowers and helps with confidence.
Beautiful, the art of living your dreams. I just wanted to repeat that. So what was your turning point? Or the bottom line? That kind of led you to getting sober? And how did that help you get into the law of attraction and manifesting? How did it help you get that ball rolling?
● Okay, well, my son was two at the time, and I had bravely chosen to be a single mom by choice. And by chance it was by chance. So I decided I would be a single mom by choice. And by the time he was two. That's where the turning point was where I realized that I had a dependency on alcohol. And the whole time I was pregnant and breastfeeding, I was not drinking. But when he went weaned and was doing his own thing. I started getting a little bit more social and socializing and going to dinner parties again, and bringing him with me often. But I, I thought before when I got pregnant, I thought, Oh, this is great. I don't really have to drink anymore. I don't like to drink anymore. I'm on a new path. And when I started socializing, and seeing these old friends, good old, functioning, drinking friends, working professionals. So it's much easier to be in denial. I realized there was a bit of a slippery slope there. And because I was a single mother, I really wanted to be the best mom I could possibly be. And I don't know what it was about that one particular hangover. It was a Thursday morning, he had to go to daycare, I had to go to work. And I was just like, wow, I just can't do this anymore. I can't do this anymore. It was I had too much guilt, shame and remorse. And I was not drinking every day, but I was definitely indulging lots on the weekends. And that particular week, it was a weeknight with a girlfriend who came over when my son was, you know, already in bed sleeping. So I reached out to a friend who I knew had stopped drinking probably about a year or two before. And we ended up she while she didn't really convince me, I guess you could say I was desperate enough at that particular moment to take a chance on going to a 12-step program. And when I say 12 STEP program, I'm talking about AA, I didn't know a heck of a lot about that program. I dug my heels in at the idea of it. I felt terrified. But I also knew that nothing good was going to come from me continuing to drink in the way I was and I just didn't want my son to see me like that anymore. Because I actually grew up with a mom who drank. And that really was tough, especially in my teen years. So yeah, I kind of did what they told me to do. And I just embarked on my recovery journey and during that time it's pretty interesting how transformation happens from the inside out. When you do that serious work because, you know, years before I had gone to therapists and I had been saying why do I feel depressed? Or why do I have anger? Can you help me? And they would just write me a prescription for antidepressants. And it said right on the label, like don't mix with alcohol. So I was in a bit of a pickle there because I wanted to feel less depressed, but I still wanted to drink. So we weren't looking at the elephant in the room back then. So when you're in recovery, you are fully exposed, you have to get honest, you have to be willing to get honest with yourself more than anybody. And, during that, I was able to start to be open, just have an open mind open to any new ideas. And part of that was opening up to the idea that maybe there was some sort of higher power of my own understanding greater than myself. And that's where the whole mindset change for me happened. And that's when I really started. When I started feeling better, I started
becoming really fascinated with how the mind is just such a you know; it wants to keep us safe. But it also tells us lies. So most of the thoughts that we have are inaccurate. And when I delved more into that, with my spiritual growth, and with my exploration of lots of books and courses, and lots of things outside of the 12-step program, I started to get really into the energy of who we are and the energy of the universe and understanding that. And that's where the law of attraction started coming in. I started understanding like that, wow, my thoughts can create my reality. And so that whole concept of like energies attract, like energies and getting on that vibration, or that higher frequency to bring in good things. We're seeing it happen in my life, like, the happier I got, the better my life got. So that's kind of where that came in. And then I just kept following it, like with the very first movie about it that I saw “The Secret “was like, Oh, wow, okay. I'm in. Just kept going with it.
Yes, for the listeners who haven't seen the secret. I think there's even a new version on Netflix now or on Prime one of those. And I'd highly recommend it because as you're speaking, you've gone through some radical changes. And I've done some things that probably previously you were even too scared to attempt. Can you give some examples of those?
● Sure. Like one of the first things I did in my first year of sobriety was, I took a trip, I had saved all this money, surprisingly, not not really surprisingly. But I asked my sister if she’d watch my son for about 10 days, and I happen to have a friend living in Paris at the time. And so I took a trip to London. I had a friend in London as well, London and Paris for 10 days. And it was the first time I had traveled without, you know, some sort of I had social anxiety and I used to like traveling a lot on my own before I had my son but I would always end up you know, at the pubs or bars wherever they were all over the world and hanging out with travelers and not really even seeing the city a heck of a lot you know, I wasn't really doing the the normal tourist attraction type things. So that trip was a big deal for me going completely without my trusty sidekick, alcohol readily available. And I even went to some AA meetings there in Paris and London. And that was pretty radical for me, but I loved it because I felt that the great thing about it is you're welcome all over the world and you immediately feel like these are your friends. So that was pretty radical. And then, you know, the year after that I had already suddenly not so suddenly realized that the career that I had worked so hard to climb and kind of climb up the ladder wasn't fulfilling to me. at all, because that's what happens when you end up doing such transformational inner work. I didn't feel aligned anymore with my work. And I
took a leap of faith and without much of a safety net. I wanted to become a work from home mom. So I decided to start up my own small business, teaching yoga and art and meditation to children. So it was like an art and wellness school for kids after school and weekends. That was pretty radical. And you're right, I would never have done that. Prior to that big change.
Wow, those are two great examples of traveling and like you said that even going to the AA meetings when you were traveling. Big, that's big, big inner work stuff.
· Mm hmm.
And then what a great point about career change. I know so many women, and this is not to say men don't do it. But I know so many women that once they do this self-growth, once they do that inner work, then all of a sudden, they start to outgrow the career or the job they might have had and then change. I know that's happened to me, I've reinvented myself although I stayed in education, and I stayed in teaching for decades. But I changed in my part time job and who I tutored, instead of teaching, I formed a center to help students who were behind. So even though I stayed in the field of education, I also found that the more inner work I did, the more changes I made in my audience. And in my delivery, and to the point where now I'm online. So that's part of that change. So without, you know, without giving us a lot to start on, what would be three things that you would think that people could do to shift their mindset. If they wanted to just start today and start to just shift the way they think about things? What are some of the things you think they could start on?
● Well, I think that point about our thoughts are not accurate a lot of the time, like, one of the lines I love from a book that I'm reading by Pam Grout is she says, “our ego is not our amigo.” And that's something that I am constantly reminding myself of, because when I have thoughts that bring me into fear, and sometimes it's very covert, like fear can just disguise itself as just distractive behavior like doing things that aren't bringing you closer to your goal. So being distracted, procrastinating, getting off track by things that have no relationship to where you want to be, is just like a reminder to say, Okay, what's going on? Inside? Am I? Why am I afraid because there really is nothing to be afraid of, with, you know, working towards where we want to be in things that we want to manifest. So just self-awareness, and listening to those thoughts. And being aware that sometimes we're saying things to ourselves, subconsciously or unconsciously, that we wouldn't even say to a close friend, or a child, and the more we pay attention to the way we think, the more we will be able to stop ourselves from that sort of thing. So that's definitely one is just knowing that we don't have to take the bait on our thoughts. Another thing that I'm sure many of your listeners already do. But for me, gratitude is so important. Like I have a gratitude journal. I always journal at night. Although sometimes I do journal gratitude in the morning as part of my morning ritual, I like doing it at night. I have a journal in my bedside table and I always reflect on the day and recount the things that I'm grateful for that happens and I love it because You know, before I started doing that, and I've been doing it for years, I have stacks, and stacks of journals, you know, just go to bed and, okay, don't even reflect on the day sometimes. Whereas now it's like I'm finding all these amazing little nuggets of goodness. And it might just be, you know, passing that person on the street, we made eye contact and smile, there struck up a conversation or, you know, saw a fox run across the road, and I hadn't seen a fox in, in forever, or, you know, the leaves are turning here. So they can be just really simple things, but they also are very big things. And something else that I've learned just More more recently, in my current coaching business is to be grateful for the better at, instead of being like, Ah, this isn't working, or why why is why isn't this happening sooner? Or, you know, I'm starting to look at the challenge or the setback and say, something is to be learned from this. I wonder what goodness and what magic is going to come out of this. So also to be grateful for the challenges because there's growth happening with that. And then when you get to the other side of it, the hindsight allows you to connect the dots. So it's kind of like, oh, okay, I see why I needed to go through that. So yeah, gratitude and also gratitude for what's coming, like having the faith, knowing that I've got some really big dreams, I've got some desires, I want to be working on manifesting these things, and having the faith knowing that if we're planting those seeds, in a healthy environment, that we can just be grateful, knowing that they're on their way, it's always they're always on their way. If we believe that they're on their way, then that's really important to have that gratitude for things in the present, but also things that are happening as well. And then I've got so many, but I'd say what's sticking out for me right now is the third I would suggest is to surround your people, yourself with people that sort of light you up and bring you joy, there's that quote by Jim Rohm, that says “you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” So, you know, just again, being aware of who you are hanging out with? Are you gossiping? Are you talking about what's missing in your life, or you're around other people that are doing some amazing things and people that sort of help you lift yourself up? Because you, you know, feel excited for and foods for what they're doing and for how just being in that energy brings you closer to your goals as well.
Wow, they said those are beautiful, and and just, you know, worth getting started on and I love that “ego is not your Amigo?”
· Yeah, it's a good one.
Sure. So reminding us to be very aware of our self-talk. And I, I tell myself to flip the switch. You know, if my self-talk is negative, I try to catch it and flip the switch. And you can do that in seconds.
· Yeah.
It's really a great technique. And then of course, gratitude. You mentioned the gratitude journal. I vary the type of gratitude I do, just because I don't know if it's because I'm multi-passionate or because I like variety, crazy variety. But right now, I'm putting things on post notes and putting them in a gratitude jar.
· Yes.
So that for November for gratitude. And then when I feel a little bit down, I grab a handful of notes out of the jar. And then I recreate that feeling of excitement and gratitude for those things that have happened.
· I love that.
So I do that with all the big stuff. And then the smaller stuff, you know, I make sure that I do a list of 10 or more and in the morning and and at night also. I am grateful and I thoroughly recommend it because like you said, it just finishes off your day. And I do breathwork at that time too. I breathe in happiness and healthiness and peacefulness, that's the last thing I do before I fall asleep, is I swallow those, I actually breathe into the mouth and swallow those emotions that I want to feel when I wake up in the morning.
· Yes, I really concur with you on getting feeling really good right before we fall asleep to set us up for feeling good in the morning when we wake up.
Absolutely. And I'd like how you reminded us to be grateful for the setbacks. We don't always do that. And then look forward in faith grateful for things yet to come.
· Yeah.
And then surrounding yourself with like-minded and like hearted people, people that are going to lift you up. And just so people in the audience now that's actually how we met.
· Yes, yes. Right.
We met in a group, specifically for raising our vibration and meeting other people that are similar minded. And so that's actually how Lisa and I met. So I just wanted to share that.
· Yeah.
So let's talk about infinite potential and big dreams and ideas. And you mentioned a couple big dreams that manifested for you with the travel and the career change. But do you have some other examples you'd like to share?
● Sure, I, there's one that stands out to me that I do share, often, because it was such a massive thing that I couldn't ever have imagined. And this is what I like sharing with people when it comes to manifesting is, you know, a lot of times people have one, I'll allow their imagination to dream big, but then they immediately go into the, oh, I don't think I can do that. I don't know how that would happen. And so I like reminding people that you don't really have to need to know the how at all in fact, it's better not to try and figure it out. Because then we end up limiting ourselves with potential serendipitous synchronicities opportunities when we are only like tunnel vision on it has to happen this way. So one of the big things that happened for me was it was during a setback, it was during a challenge. And it was with my son and, and he wasn't feeling so great. He was nine and he wasn't feeling so great. Mentally, he was feeling disheartened with school, and he was leading me to raise some red flags. And so I, again, as a single mom, you didn't have a ton of male role models, but I jumped into like, okay, let's, we got to get you seeing a doctor for you know, he was depressed, and at nine, and that of that just was like, heartbreaking. But I did a lot of things to get moved into action, not knowing what anything where any of my actions would take me, I was just like, Okay, we're going to join big brothers. We're going to get you into Cub Scouts. We're going to help out with the neighbor's dog because he really wanted a pet but I didn't think that would be the right answer at that time. And it turned out he didn't really enjoy taking care of the dog after about a week. So it was a good choice. But I spoke to a lot of people. I just kept saying, you know, I'm concerned but I'm doing this. We saw a doctor for cognitive behavioral therapy work for him, which was really helpful. But I also was encouraged to check out this all boys, all boys private school, which I had never ever entertained the idea of putting my son in a private school. We walked or we were walking. He wasn't quite walking on his own yet to the school, close by to our house in our neighborhood. And we live in a very diverse neighborhood and I was happy that he was getting exposed to the melting pot and private schools in my mind were very, you know, kind of exclusive and perhaps maybe not as diverse. I had sort of a preconceived notion that they're very academic and institutional like and perhaps a bit archaic. But anyway, I decided to explore this one school upon recommendation of my cousin and she said that they offer scholarships and there's, you know, they want diversity, they want people from all over the map for their school. And so I looked into it, and I talked to my son about it. And he was very into sports, and they were big into sports there. And, you know, one thing led to another. And before you know it, we're getting an offer for acceptance with 100% financial support from anonymous benefactors until he graduates in grade 12. And what that added up to in a monetary way was over $250,000, and we accepted the offer, and he's been going there and thriving ever since. And I honestly would never have thought that would be the place for him or for us. But it's been the best thing. And he's now in grade 12. And he's made some major connections in school with both his teachers and friends. And he's really set up for you know, every parent wants to do the best by their child, but I feel like I, this windfall to me it felt like I'd won the lottery was like, wow, he said, he's really set that day that came in, I'll never forget, I was jumping around my living room for, for joy so that that not, I couldn't have figured it, when I let go into how I was that all I knew is I wanted my son to be happy, all I knew is that I was going to keep throwing darts at the dartboard to figure out what would work for him and, and bring him to a place where he felt happy and was doing well and thriving in school. And, and this was way far beyond my dream, my wildest dreams. And that's what I like encouraging people to do is dream big. But usually you will, you'll get that or something bigger. If you can hold the face, hold the faith on the face.
And I like saying that or something better?
· Yeah
In fact, when I'm asking for guidance, and I'm asking for something to come my way.
· Mm hmm.
Quite often, I try to remember to add the phrase, this or something better for my greatest good.
· Yes. Totally
Beautiful example. And what a great example that you told us that the bottom line was you just wanted them to be happy, you really weren't sure about what the How would be.
· Yeah.
Or the steps. So without us spending too much time on this, I really think it'd be fun, though, for you to lead our audience through just a mini exercise to get them going. And then I know you have some offers for them to continue. But what could you have them do like right now in this time in space? What do you want to lead them through?
● Well, I would say if you can just take a couple moments. If you're not driving, or perhaps walking, listen to this, if you could just stop and sit and if you're at home, if you've got some quiet, comfy place with a journal and ask yourself this. What would you be, do or have if you weren't afraid? So like taking a really nice deep breath in? And just sitting with that question, what would I be, do or have if I wasn't afraid? And this, just lets go of any of those limitations, which are just perceived limitations that we tend to put on ourselves. Either I'm too old or I don't have the skill set or I don't have the money. There's not enough time. I don't have the right hair, you know, like whatever. You know, again, the ego puts limitations on us. What would you be, do or have if you weren't afraid and just dump that onto the journal and recognize that if you have that desire, that means it's possible for you not everybody has the same desire as you? You are unique. We are all you know as unique as snowflakes. And I truly believe You know, we're all here to expand into the highest expression of ourselves. And because we are energy, and we're all part of the universe, does it make sense to squash down what the universe is actually trying to manifest through us? We're meant to grow. Now, it feels scary. Some of these things are, it feels like impossible goals or fantasy even. But if we have the desire, if it's in our heart, I truly believe we're meant to have it happen. And who are we to like, push it down, who are we to get in our own way of allowing that to come through. And once you've established that, it's, it's like, remember that it already exists in the form of potential, that thing that you're thinking about whether it's a material thing or something you want to do and experience you want to have over, it's just being something confident, generous, kind, more loving, that that is already exists, it already exists in the form of potential. So if, and if you've seen other people have some of these things, that means it's possible for you to so I like that exercise, because once you've put it down on paper, it's like, oh, wow, okay. That thing can actually happen. It will, if you allow it to, and, you know, just do a few things.
That's beautiful. Thank you so much. What would you be, do or have, if you weren't afraid, and the fact that it exists? I'm glad you kept saying that, because it exists. It is potential now, it is like the title of our epic episode. It has infinite potential. And it's tangible now, because you put it on paper.
· That's right, and you start seeing it in your mind.Often, if you allow yourself to visualize that, if you allow yourself to pretend in those mental pictures and putting yourself in there as the first person doing it or having it, it starts to seep into you. You're instilling beliefs. By doing that into your subconscious like this, your subconscious mind doesn't know the difference between what's imagined and what's real. So the more you get into that idea, and start believing it. And, you know, here's the tricky part, having that faith, and even when we can't see it, knowing that it can actually happen for us and just keep saying it's going to happen, I might have to do a few scary action steps. I may have some setbacks during it. I may have all the evidence around me showing that it's impossible. But too many people give up when they're really, you know, Three Feet From Gold, as they say,
Yes. And they don't know they're Three Feet From Gold.
· That's right. Sure.
Well, I am so grateful, Lisa, for our time together. And before we wrap up, though, I'd like to have you tell our listeners some of the exciting gifts you have for them that we'll have on the show notes page.
● Okay, cool. Well, one of the things that I love giving to anybody who's interested in visualization is free...I have a video on YouTube, it's a five-minute powerful, guided visualization. And because it's five minutes, I find a lot of people enjoy it. Because, you know, it's a guided meditation. And you know, you see those things that you want to be, do or have during the visualization. It's quite powerful. So there's that, that I love giving to people. And then I also Oh, especially around this time of year, like coming into the new year. I offer several at several different times, online digital vision board workshops. So you know, from the comfort of your own home, we get really deep. We do a lot of this type of work with worksheets, lots of reflection, lots of imagining big fantasy type things. And then we do a digital vision board together in the group and at the end of it's a three and a half hour. I call it a half day retreat. You leave with a vision board for the year or for, you know, it doesn't have to be for just a year it can be for even, you know, there's no time frame, it can be for a quarter or it can be for, you know, 10 years down the road. So I would love to offer that to all of your listeners, I have a promo code for 25% off of the full price of the retreat.
Yes, an we’ll have that promo code for the vision board. We'll have that on the show notes page and the guided five-minute meditation, we'll have that as well. And what great follow ups for them to continue on past our conversation today. So I just want to thank you one more time, Lisa, and just remind people of the infinite potential out there. And they can take those steps that you gave them today!
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