Ep #9: The Magical 90-Day Container For Healing And Creating
Welcome to the Make Money Living Your Purpose Podcast. I'm
Prosperity Coach Karen Powell and this is the podcast for
heart-centered leaders, innovators, and creatives who dream of leaving
their nine-to-five to pursue their passion project but don't know where to
start. I'm sharing my proven process that will help you heal your money
mindset and figure out your own unique purpose in life. Let's go!
Hey there, welcome back. It's so good to have you here. We are on
episode 9, and today we are going to talk about the 90-day container,
the magical 90-day container, as I like to call it. So this is a container of
time that supports personal transformation. That supports emotional
healing. That holds you and allows you to move through what's needed
for a substantial personal transformation.
Why is this important for you? Because if you're serious about making a
significant change in your life, you're going to need to heal and release
old beliefs, adopt new beliefs, and adjust to the new level that you're at
so you don't boomerang back to your old ways. I talked about that
boomerang effect in the last episode.
When you reach a new level in your life, a new elevation, it's going to
feel odd. It's going to feel foreign and your original comfort zone setting
will always try to bring you back to that old setting. If you don't give
yourself the full time and space that's needed to develop and adjust to
the new level, you will be going back to your old ways. And we don't
want that. So, if you want real transformation, and real healing, and the
strength to energetically stay where you've upleveled to, then consider
committing to a 90-day container.
I want to share a personal story with you about my own healing, my own
emotional healing. So I was in my mid thirties. I was working in corporate
America and I wasn't entirely happy with my life, even though it looked
great on paper. And on top of not feeling fulfilled, not loving what I was
doing, wanting a change, I was also at the same time suffering from
anxiety attacks.
And these anxiety attacks would come out of nowhere
with little to no warning where my whole body would just flood with, I
guess it was adrenaline or maybe it was cortisol. I'm not sure about all
the terms and whatnot, but I felt like, you know, the fight or flight
response, well, I felt like flight, like I needed to just get out.
I felt trapped in my body with all this stress and anxiety pumping through it, and it would take me a little while to calm down, and then I'd be fine until the next time it
popped up. Usually at very inopportune times, like at the grocery store, or out at a
restaurant, or in a meeting. Really embarrassing and really scary.
But I'd been actually suffering from anxiety attacks for decades already at that
point. It got worse and more frequent as I got older, but I had those same
symptoms in high school and at college and in my 20s. I never told anyone about it. Most of the time, I would somehow escape the situation before it was too obvious, but sometimes people would look at me and be like, Why are you turning all red? Are you okay? And I would just be like, Oh, I'm just really hot, or I'm not feeling well, or I'm
just feeling a little dizzy. I just need to go lay down.
I thought I was the only one this happened to. I was convinced of it. I
never heard anyone else talk about this. I never talked about it to anyone
else. I just thought there's something wrong with me. And I just suffered
in silence. It stopped me from doing things. It stopped me from putting
myself out there.
And I really began to feel like I was missing out on life. I kind of felt like I
was just watching other people be confident, doing stuff, being
themselves out in the world. And it kind of felt like I was just behind this
glass wall, watching other people living life, doing things they wanted to
do. And I couldn't.
And then at some point in my mid thirties, I remember thinking, This
can't be right. How I'm feeling in my body cannot be normal. It can't be
what I have to now live with for the rest of my life. I mean, it finally
dawned on me that I wanted to feel differently in my body, and maybe
that it was a possibility.
I'd been feeling like I didn't belong in my own body, and I thought, I'm
tired of this. This cannot be right. And then I remember making a very
intentional statement or decision in my mind that whatever was in my
body that didn't belong needed to be released. And I wanted it gone for
good. All that anxious energy that was bouncing around in my body.
I wanted it out. It felt like truly it's not mine. Whatever this is, I want it out
of my body.
And this intentionality, this put me on a journey of healing.
And I'm going to share more about the actual healing journey in future
episodes. But what I wanted to share with you today is specifically how
the 90-day container supported me through a very intense healing
journey.
Now, in the last episode, we talked about the three pillars you need to
have for creating your life of personal freedom. The life of freedom can
look like getting paid for doing what you love, living the kind of lifestyle
that suits you to a T, expressing your special brand of creativity,
whatever that is, whatever personal freedom means to you.
And those three pillars, building a strong foundation, connecting to a
powerful healing process, and connecting to a powerful creation
process, all work together within a container, and that is the 90-day
container.
So why 90 days? Why not 45 days? Why not 365 days? You might have
heard that it takes 21 days to form a new habit, or some people say 66
days. Different schools of thought. But we're not forming a new habit
here. We're actually creating a new lifestyle, a new inner world, by
healing and releasing an old operating system. And the way we're wired,
we're wired to fit in, stay safe, be part of the crowd, not stand out, not be
different, don't rock the boat.
So our default internal wiring will fight change. It'll fight anything that's
working to become something different. And this is why change is so
hard. Because it goes against our just-stay-surviving mechanism. But
the 90-day container can help you bypass that setting. It supports real
transformation and real change.
So shortly after I made that intention to heal whatever was causing my
anxiety attacks, my sister happened to mention the book, The Artist's
Way. A bunch of her friends were reading it, or should I say doing it. The
Artist's Way is a book by Julia Cameron, and it's about unblocking your
creativity. And I'll talk about this program in detail in later episodes.
It's an incredible program, an incredible process, and it changed my life.
And I've been facilitating groups through the process for over 20 years
now. But the part I kind of wanted to dissect for you today, is the 90-day
container part.
So the book is laid out in 12 chapters, plus an introduction chapter,
which you work through week by week, one chapter per week. So I
decide I'm going to read The Artist's Waybook. Actually, do The Artist's
Way book. It's not something you just read. You work through exercises
every day. And one of the exercises is called Morning Pages. And these
are every morning, you get up and you write three long-hand pages of
stream of consciousness.
Whatever's on your mind, you just purge it out onto the paper, you know,
like a printer size paper. And so I did this every day as I worked through
the program over the 12 weeks. And it's not easy to be honest. It's
confronting to sit with your thoughts and feelings every morning and
write them out.
But what it really was, was a process of release. I was releasing decades and decades of old emotions, old beliefs, limitations, old thoughts, stuff I no longer needed to be carrying around in my body and my mind. And by the end of the 90-day journey, let's call
it, I felt different inside. I felt lighter, clearer, more peaceful, and I stopped
having anxiety attacks and I haven't had one since.
So since then, I have facilitated hundreds and hundreds of people
through this 90-day process of The Artist's Way, and I've witnessed this,
the patterns that happen for everyone when they're engaged in a
dedicated, committed, focused 90-day process. There are specific
milestones you hit and specific setbacks that are pretty much
predictable.
After going through it myself and then watching hundreds of people also
go through it, I learned the patterns and got confirmation on the
importance of sticking through it for the full 90 days. And that's why my
Money on Purpose journey is 90 days. It's the amount of time that real
change, real healing, real transformation can happen.
It's kind of like that quintessential caterpillar-to-butterfly transformation
analogy. You hang out in the cocoon stage long enough for all the new
parts to develop. You go through the messy, confusing gooeyness of the
chrysalis stage. And then when you break out of it and open your wings,
you let them dry off a bit first before you try to take off and fly.
So I had a map made, actually drawn out of the 90-day journey in the
Money on Purpose program, so that you can actually see ahead of time
what's coming up, where you're going. Just seeing that it's part of the
journey that we all go through within a deep transformation helps to ease
some of the bumps.
And I think it helps to see that you're not alone and that everyone at
some point is going to have similar challenges and that there's nothing
wrong with you. You're just moving through a process. You're not failing.
You're just inside the cave of self doubt, for example. And when you
come out of the cave, there's the path again, and you can start taking
your steps again.
I want to point out two particular places on a 90-day journey that
really trips people up, myself included. These are the places where most
people will quit on themselves. And those are right around week four,
give or take, it's not exact, and then again around week 10, give or take.
I see this every time I'm facilitating a 90-day journey, whether it's The
Artist's Way or Money On Purpose or even in my one-to-one coaching
program, which is 90 days.
And that is, the beginning is always super exciting, lots of enthusiasm,
lots of resolve, lots of energy, ready to go. And in the beginning of a
journey, a lot can also happen, so that also fuels this feeling of I can do
this, I've got this, things are happening, things are moving.
And blocks start surfacing too, so that they can prepare to be healed.
And this can start to feel uncomfortable and challenging. So this is an
easy exit place right around the fourth week. I remember when I was in
week four of The Artist's Way, my lower back was hurting and my chest
felt tight. And I was finding it hard to take really full deep breaths. And a
friend of mine who had also just done The Artist's Way, and a lot of her
friends had also done it, she called me one day just to say hi.
And when she asked me how I was doing, all of a sudden I just kind of
fell apart a little bit. And I told her, I can't seem to get a full breath and
my chest feels tight and my back hurts and I'm feeling so emotional. And
she goes, Oh, I'm so sorry. Are you in week four? And I'm like, yes. And
then she said it was also a really tough week for her and her friends for
some reason.
I also see this unfold when I'm facilitating The Artist's Way and the
Money on Purpose journey. It's easy to bail when we're feeling this
uncomfortable, but when you're being supported by a group and a
community and someone who's experienced that, you can get through it.
And when you get through it, there is healing on the other side. And with
healing comes leveling up in your life, manifesting more, manifesting
bigger and bigger things.
Okay, so then the second place where it's really easy to bail on yourself,
where you'll really feel the pull to give up and to go back to life as you
knew it, is right around week 10, give or take. So I call this place the 70
Day Syndrome.
And this is where you'll experience what Julia Cameron calls escape
velocity. Now, escape velocity is a term used in physics, which is the
speed that an object needs to reach in order to escape the gravitational
pull of the Earth.
And in a transformational journey, it's the momentum you need to keep
going when your old life is calling you back, literally feeling like gravity is
pulling you back to earth, pulling you back to your old life, your old
patterns, your old limiting beliefs and trying to convince you it's a better
place to be. And if you don't have some momentum and a good
foundation working for you at that point, it's very easy to jump ship and
just go back to life as you knew it.
People who run marathons will also experience this phenomenon
towards the end of the marathon. They're, they've gone nearly the entire
distance, but then they hit what's called the wall. Where it feels like they
just can't go anymore, but they're almost at the end.
Another place this kind of thing happens is in natural childbirth. After lots of labor and just when the birth is imminent, the mother will say something like, I can't do
this. It's too hard. I want out. I personally remember experiencing this.
These are all examples of when deep transformation is just about to
happen. A goal is just about to be reached or a significant change is just
about to happen. There's this last place where it just feels impossible.
But if you get through that place, you will experience transformation.
You become someone different. Your identity changes. You become
someone who ran an entire marathon. You become a mother. You
become healed. Your identity shifts forever.
I remember when I was releasing all that bottled up emotion when I was working through The Artist's Way, and there were times when I honestly didn't think I could
keep going with it. It was so intense and so painful sometimes, because when you're
releasing that old energy, it's getting processed through your body, and
that's exhausting. You're actually using energy to do that.
But there was this momentum that was moving me. I was committed to the
transformation, and I was also seeing a coach at the time who was
supporting me through the peaks and the deep, deep valleys.
But the resistance and the urge to quit was very real and very strong.
And I see this with all of my clients, too. It's just part of the journey. And
when you know that, and you know that you're not doing anything wrong,
it's not you failing, it's actually you succeeding. It's you working through
your stuff. It's you releasing all that you no longer need. And that is not
easy, my friend. But it is so, so worth it.
So if you've tried in the past to make a change, but you didn't quite get
there, If you felt the pull to return to your old ways, your old life, even
though you were sure this would be the time you'd finally follow through,
I just want you to know that with the support and the structure of a
90-day container, you can do it.
You know when you're watching a race, like on a running track, and you
see a runner slowing down? just before the finish line. And you're like,
no, no, no, keep your speed, keep going. You got this. I mean, I do that. I
don't know if anybody else does that. Is that just me? I'm always like, just
pull through.
Think of the 90-day container as the finish line in that race. It gets you
over the finish line through to the full transformation just in time before
you want to give up and quit. And when I say the finish line, In personal
growth, there's always another race to run. There's always a new level to
go to, a deeper level to heal. There are always new dreams and goals
and growth and new creativity to discover.
So rest after the big race. Replenish your energy. Give yourself credit for
all you've accomplished. And then plug yourself into another magical 90-
day container.
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In the next episode, I'm going to teach you how to use 90-day containers
throughout the year to create massive productivity and achieve all of
your goals and dreams.
When you heal your money blocks and step into your life's purpose, you
become a force for good in the world. I'll see you next time.
If you're ready to start creating the lifestyle of your dreams, I want to
invite you to join GPS, my Gratitude Practice for Success Program,
where you'll learn my unique and proven manifesting process. It's
simple, it's powerful, and it's already helping hundreds of people go from
thinking their dreams were impossible,to making them happen quickly.
Whether you want to manifest your dream home, your soulmate, a brand
new career, living your life's purpose, or even financial freedom, it's
yours to claim now. Just head over to kcpowell.com/gps and I will show
you how.