C K Collins – Using the Swipe Right Effect to Get Unstuck

The term “swipe right” is synonymous with online dating. Swipe right to pick the man of your dreams and see what happens. On an elemental level, though, swipe right, can signify taking power into your hands. By swiping right, you are the one in control, you are the one making the choice you want.

     This was a revelation my guest, CK (Kelly) Collins had. In the wake of a painful divorce she sold her business and set out on a two-year journey of self-discovery. She reveals what she learned in her book The Swipe Right Effect – The Power to Get Unstuck. In this candid interview she tells us:

·      Why she felt the need to escape her surroundings

·      How she healed on her trek

·      How she changed her definition of herself

·      The surprising truth she discovered on her journey

·      How you can gain self confidence

·      What swiping right on yourself means for you

·      How to work through your pain

    C.K. Collins, aka Kelly, was an award-winning publisher and owner of a hyperlocal news publishing company in the Nashville, TN area. She sold her company and retired from the industry in 2021.
     Believing that travel feeds the soul and grows the heart and mind, Kelly embarked on a two-year travel sabbatical to write her book. Her travels included destinations such as Utah, Grand Canyon in Arizona, Buenos Aires, Patagonia, Portugal, Spain, Italy and a 30-day sailing rally from Los Angeles to La Paz, Mexico.   
     After experiencing a significant loss over five years ago, Kelly was searching for her new life, her new joy and a new love. She chose to do the hard work to heal and found a new path to empowerment. She chose to swipe right for herself (and she did some dating too). Website: https://www.ckcollins.co/

     Kelly says: I'll be giving away a white paper called 10 Ways to Get Unstuck. This has tips on how to get back to a happy life! I also have a landing page where I let readers have Chapter 1 for free.I will give away a signed copy of the book, shipped anywhere in the U.S.

Transcript

CK Collins Transcript

Hello, hello, hello and welcome to Dream Power Radio. I'm your host, certified dream life coach, Debbie Spector Weisman. This is a place where we talk about dreams, both daytime and nighttime dreams, and now you can use them to make the internal shift to a life you love and rediscover the truth of who you really are.

Many writers over the years have relayed their accounts of the power of nature to heal their souls. For instance, I think of Thoreau and how he came to a certain piece on Walden Pond in more recent years, Cheryl Strad and Aspen Mattis have written about how their conquests of the Pacific Crest Trail helped them to recover from traumas that had struck them to their core.

Something similar happened to my guest today, CK Collins, also known as Kelly. She embarked on a two-year travel sabbatical after a significant loss in her life, which included time hiking alone. This gave her the perspective to see what really mattered in her life, and the result of that adventure was the book, the Swipe Right Effect, the Power to Get Unstuck, in which she gathered wisdom from herself and others on ways how you can find yourself back to the happiness you deserve.

Kelly also now hosts the podcast also called This Swipe Bright Effect. Welcome to the Dream Power Radio, Kelly. Thank you, Debbie. I'm so glad to be here. Oh, I'm happy to have you here. Well, Kelly, , this current phase of your life actually started at when a painful part of your life ended your marriage.

So why did you feel that the way to cope with this loss was to travel?  There's some really practical things about just being, staying in that space and being in that same town, and there's all these reminders and so there's,  some escapism involved to go out and, and travel.

But when I first, when I did my first real solo hike, the Camino Des Santiago in 2018, there were so many. Benefit of just this healing that happened, and it came from meeting different people and living in different cultures and learning a new language. And this confidence started building and it was, it was also just this, on the Camino, there's just this sharing space.

People are all there to get an answer to a question.  Or to heal  and my question was how do I go forward? Who am I now? My 30-year marriage had ended, my children, my last one had just graduated college.  And I sold my business  , so it didn't get torn up in the divorce.

And so my identity. Was yet to be seen as who the new me was going to be and found it. It was really a time for you to reinvent yourself then. Yeah, and  I found the new me on that trail and it just created this desire to continue to find the new me, the realizing I didn't have to be defined. By one thing or another that I could continue to evolve and learn and grow and my heart could continue to heal.

 And then it, then it became like the healing is done and  the love is just becomes over,  overwhelming, you know, the happiness. So I guess  a short answer would've been seeking happiness, which, which we all do.  Had you ever been a hiker before this? You know,  I loved to run half marathons.

I had done nine half marathons. I didn't even start running till I'm in my forties. But I, I found, I loved the training aspect of it. The,  going out and doing it and adding a little more and adding a little more, and then having the finality, the big check market  on race day. And so I had to kind of give up running to train for hiking.

I did hike a lot, but not with a backpack. It was more just like day hikes and stuff, so, so that became the new way to train and I, I found much more solace and really just easier to have conversations and be with people. And the hiking community's just great. Everybody's an adventurer and  it's really fun .

To go out and have that with different people and  you can join hiking groups just like you can join running groups. So I enjoy it and my best friend's a big hiker. So we really had fun,  doing that. So what do you think was the most important thing that you learned about yourself,  in that time away from that previous world dude built for yourself?

That I was. Able, I was able to look back and see the accomplishments that I had created for myself,  the things that had been gifted to me, and that's kind of where the book came from, was all that advice that people had given to me. And  one of the ladies that I interview in the book says, I couldn't see myself.

The way others saw me, and I had to trust that I was who they told me I was, that I was strong, I was confident. And,  five years later I went through exactly what she'd been through, and I had to trust my friends that I was that strong person, loving person. And I just, I wanted, and then you have to see what you can do with that new vision of yourself \ you have to learn to dream and dream big. Not hold back and not, not let yourself be, hold back by the pain of the past. And, that book was a dream of mine and, and I wrote that and now  my dream is to help other people get through what I went through the mess of five years ago.

Absolutely. do you feel that you also gained,  a renewed self of confidence? In this time? Yeah, definitely. It took time. It took a few years. I'll be honest. It wasn't, it was not easy,  to get my confidence back because there was betrayal in my marriage. And so you just, it really messes with your head  but yeah, I feel very confident now and I enjoy.

 I've moved to a new town. I've always wanted to live by the ocean, and I believe in myself that I'm going to build a new business and write more books and live this new life that I'm creating for myself. So yeah, definitely renewed and actually even greater amount of confidence than I ever had before.

Yeah, that's wonderful. But I want you to speak for a moment about that. , importance of time, because very often, , people who are advice givers,  will give advice and it's all, it could all be very good advice, but it doesn't happen instantaneously. It's not like you just, click your fingers and it happens.

So you talk a little bit about that. Mm-hmm. Yeah, totally. Yeah. That's one of the things  my friend Allison says in the book.  She gives me a. Well, it's a story in the book. She said to me on my second Camino, I met her, Alison from Canada, and she said, what if all of this happened? You know, he made those choices and you had to go through all of that, but something bigger and better is waiting on the other side for you.

And when she said it, I just was like, Ugh. Like, that doesn't sound good. I don't want to hear that. And you know, after writing the book and people are reaching and , we published the book, people are reaching out to me and saying, I needed to hear this. I've been looking for something for two years, and this was the answer that I needed.

Thank you for writing this and being so honest.  And that's when it hit, that's when it really sunk in what Allison was saying, the fact that.  I could make something good happen out of my pain, and  so I think that took time.  I understood what she was saying, but I couldn't feel what she was saying till almost a year later and having walked through this journey of writing the book.

Because you do have to actually embody it. It's nothing to hear it, but your body has to really understand it and, take over from there. I winna get back to talking a little bit about the book,  because you had come from the publishing world and you were very successful in it, and yet when you decided you wanted to write the book, you actually had a crisis of confidence.

So why would somebody who has had so much experience and success in, , the publishing world feel like you weren't up to it. , and how did you get over that? I think it was, can I be honest enough to help somebody? I knew I couldn't do it and just stay on the surface. I knew I had to dig deep and talk about the pain,  or it wasn't really going to help anybody because you can't.

Identify with somebody who stays on the surface.  Not where I'm at, at this level in my life and spiritually, physically,  every, everything that I do now is to live a deeper, more meaningful, loving life. And if I didn't come from that point of view, then. I, that was, that's, that was my confidence.

Can I do, can I do it and be that honest and open, like basically just lay my life out, there for people to see. , and I think,  it was, I had to consider my three children and, you know, how it was going to feel for them.  And, and, and then there was also just this, is it going to read?

Well,  because  my publishing experience was news. And then news is very different. You have AP style, and these are the rules. And when you're writing a memoir, especially a creative memoir, interviews and all different kinds of things, it's a totally different animal. But once I started writing, I had a couple of beta readers and they were like, this is good, this is good this.

And my friend Karen was like, this is going to help people keep going. And I was like, okay. That's all I needed to hear. And the result is the book, the swipe write effect?  Well, you talk in the book about the importance of swiping right on ourselves. So what does it mean to swipe right on ourselves?

Yeah, I love that Play on words. The  dating apps. For those of you who don't know, you swipe right when you're choosing someone.  And you swipe left when you don't want to meet them. And it's just,  you're on your phone and you're just right, left, right, left. And  I want people to choose themselves before they start choosing others.

I hope that people will take the time to heal from, I mean, if you're single, then something's happened, right? Unless you just never got married, but you've had a breakup of some kind of relationship, or you've had the loss of,  a spouse, you know,  to death. So  there's healing that has to happen and that regaining of self-confidence, and I think you have to prepare yourself.

To be dateable, you have to prepare.  You want to be yourself, that you're reflecting what you want back, and if you're still in a place of pain and you're trying to go out there and meet people, you're probably going to attract people who are also still in pain. If you are happy and you've worked through your pain and you have found your new life purpose, you have found your mission in life.

Then that is going to be what you attract. And so swipe right for yourself first and you know, do the work. Talk to your friends, meditate, heal, have a self-love mantra. Do all of these things that are what you want to attract. Yeah, it's basically the law of attraction. Exactly, you're there, it goes.  But sometimes, when we swipe right,  it could turn out not to be the right decision.

 So how do you feel when you do that? How do you feel that you're not a failure and, and that keeps you from having the impetus to try again? So how do you get over that feeling? Yeah. That I have this. I don't know. I mean, I fell into this practice. It wasn't even anything that somebody told me to do. It was, it's just I, when I end a relationship or the other person ends a relationship, I take  a specific period of time, like at least , a month, and I reflect back on what I learned instead of what I lost and.

 And I, I don't look at it as a failure. I look at it as an opportunity to have learned something more about myself and what I do or don't want in a partner. And  sometimes  you meet people who are l like in the same frame of life, right? Like,  just retired. Loves to travel. And it seems like it's great, but then you, when you dig a little deeper, either somebody hasn't really finished healing or you know what you want to do going forward, and they don't, and there's, that's just a timing thing.

So I. What did I learn from that? That that's my, my practice, , is just to, to define that for myself, journal about it, and, and move on. Wonderful advice. And with that we're going to take a short break. Now we are speaking about swiping right in our lives with CK Kelly Collins, and we'll be right back.

Yes. Welcome back to Dream Power Radio. I'm your host, Debbie Spector Weissman, and we're talking about swiping right and getting unstuck in our life with Kelly Collins. Well, Kelly, the subtitle of your book is The Power to Get Unstuck. So, what are some suggestions you have when we find ourselves stuck, whether it's in the dating world or any other place in our lives?

Yeah, the first thing I say to anybody who approaches me about this book is you have to recognize where your power is. And if you're feeling lost and stuck and,  alone, then you have to, you are the only one who can choose to change that. Nobody can change it for you. Nobody can come alongside and go, okay, now you're going to be happy.

The power is in your choice, and that's how you get unstuck. So what do you choose to do? And if you choose to do nothing, that's still a choice. You're choosing to stay stuck. So, and I did that. So I know, like from personal experience, I really had a hard time getting unstuck and, and I still feel stuck sometimes, but now I know how.

to deal with that. You know, if something triggers me, I know how to recover and it's a much quicker process. But  I just, I think I want people to understand that they, the power is in the choice, and you have to choose to do something, even if it's just a tiny little baby step that first time.

You know, tell somebody, talk to somebody, whether that's a therapist or  a life coach, or  just your best friend.  Or you can do something, you can go for,  a trip, you know, so like  just go rent a cabin and sit and  learn to meditate, learn to have a self-love mantra.

 I recommend to a lot of people and they're like, where do I start? I'm like, look in the mirror and start saying, I love you three times a day. Look at yourself and say, I love you until you believe it.  I have a lot of exercises in the book, filling out a life purpose resume and, the  self-love mantra.

And there's just, there's a lot of things that you can do that are kind of practical that. A vision boards. You know, people think, ah, some people roll their eyes at a vision board. But my experience, and I used to be one of those people who rolled the eyes, and my experience has been, it's a very power  powerful, powerful thing to do because it, it helps you dream big for yourself, and that helps you take steps forward.

Oh,  it does. You know,  I used to be one of those people too, but it's, it's, that's also, it's actually combining two things. It's. Choosing, it's taking an action, choosing to do it, which is the process, like you say, like making a choice, doing something, and then put it, when you put a vision board together, you're visualizing what you want.

And sometimes it's the act of using that sense of sight to see this is it. . Yeah. And it, it does help create that space where I see it, I can believe it, I can make it happen. Yeah, and  I'm about to release a, a companion workbook to go. It'll be the Swiper Right Effect workbook, and it just kind of takes the empowerment practices that are in the book and kind of.

Blows them up and makes 'em, little more detail on how to do this and examples and things. But one of the things in the workbook that I explain is you don't have to  cut pictures out of a magazine and put it on a poster board. There's a lot where you need to tap into your own creative power, where when you are doing this one thing in your life, what is, and it makes you feel so good that there's your creative outlet,  whether it's photography or writing.

Or painting. and anything like I, my vision boards, I write a story almost like a fictional story of my future,  and when I've done that, I mean, at my, my vision board story from last year, everything except one, finding the love of my life has come true.  And, you know, love of my life is worth waiting for and I'll just keep writing about it.

But that was my creative outlet and it felt very powerful because I was tapping into my creativity and that. So just that example. And I have a friend who's a photographer and she shoot her own pictures. For her vision board, she still does the board and the visualization. And you can do them digitally now too, which is really cool.

I love that. There's a lot of apps that are even free that you can do your vision board, so you can even have it on  your home screen of your phone, so you're looking at it every day. And I love that. Yeah. I tell you, everything's digital now, but I'll tell you, I know, a couple people who did find the love of their lives from, being inspired by their vision board, so don't give up.

No, I'm not that way. I'm not giving up. I know it's coming. Although that is also, is also an important point not to give up because so many times, like getting into that time thing, it takes time for things to happen and a lot of people give up right before, you know, the end result. And those,  it helps it.

Not make the things that you want to happen when you give up too soon. Want to go back to the book again because,  you didn't write it alone. You actually sought out people to offer their wisdom and advice. So,  could you give me a couple of examples, , other than one you had before of people who helped you create this book?

Yeah, it's,  10 women, then they're from all over the world. South Africa, Sweden, Canada, a lot of people here in Tennessee, and Rhode Island where the two places I live. And , they were,  they were soccer moms. They were people I met on the Camino. They're, they're very interesting, diverse group of women and have different outlooks.

 One of them,  I'm trying to remember her name in the book, Tanya. Everybody has a country music star name in the book. So because I'm from Nashville and so everybody, I wanted everybody to have an alias. And so Tanya is Tanya Tucker. But  she had a loss, , her husband passed away and, and a very dramatic fashion with a motorcycle accident and, , died instantly.

So there was that, you know, didn't get to say goodbye. And then all of these things came out after his death that he had betrayed her  in a lot of ways. And so there was just this extra, grief on top of grief. On top of grief. And   what I learned from her is to really,  focus inward and, and go deeper into what you want instead of, I mean,  she says in the book it took her 10 years and she desperately wants other women to not waste 10 years of their life.

I mean, she had even remarried and,  was, was basically happy with her partner, but there was still this anger that she dealt with and so she would call me out like, I still see anger. And you've got to deal with your anger. And your anger is going to attract more anger. And that's not what I want for my beloved friend Kelly, you know?

And she would just say it like that to me, like, I see it, it's still there. And I would say, no, I'm fine. It just still hurts. And she's like, no, there's anger in there. And so I think it's, beautiful when friends can do that for each other in a loving way. And the loving way was, this is not what I want for you.

And now I'm on a mission.  I don't want women standing around and their anger. I want them to stand around in their power. And, their joy and their happiness, and realize how much they have to give to the world. Still,  you want to create momentum in your life. Momentum of happiness, not being driven from behind by anger into more pain.

 You want to have momentum walking forward yourself into joy and happiness, everything you deserve. We all deserve that, and  it's our choice to have it and to create it. But how do you get rid of an anger when, when it's that? So deep-seated practice, practice, practice, practice. I, read or listened to, oh, had a very long drive from Nashville to Boston and,  I stayed with a friend and she at the halfway point in Maryland and she asked me to listen to the Secret.

For the rest of the drive. And she said, you'll, it's six hours from here to Boston and you'll be done with the book by then. And I was like, okay. And  she had also said,  I still see your pain. And so I think when I heard the words in the chapter on forgiveness,  it was, I forgive you.

I release you. I want you to be happy. And I wasn't there but. The advice in the book was just keep saying it until you're there. Just keep saying it, practice it. And so I told my children, I told my best friends, , and I told my sisters, I said, I want to be held accountable. You know if you hear me in pain, remind me that you know, I'm committed.

Remind me of my own commitment that,  I want to live a life of forgiveness and kindness  and so that's when, if I have a trigger moment, that's where I go. I forgive you. I release you. I want you to be happy. And once I got there and I, and I was able to give that forgiveness,  I said it to him and then I realized there was still something going on and I was.

It turns out I was mad at myself for staying in a situation where I was unloved for staying and trying too hard, too long, and not protecting myself and taking care of myself. So I had to go through this whole other process of forgiving myself. Yeah, it, it's so amazing that when we think that we. Have that anger against somebody else.

There's really also a part of us that's angry at ourselves. And you're right, it's not only important to forgive the other person, but to forgive yourself. Yeah. , because the truth is that we're not all perfect. We do make mistakes, but that's okay. That's life. That's the journey we're on. And that power of forgiveness is just so, so strong.

So I'm really glad that you've included that. Kelly, you also started a podcast based on the book, so what do you hope your audience will get from it? Well, my word for this year is gather. So I've been doing all kinds of gatherings, , podcasts,  other people's podcasts, my, my podcast.

, but I've also been doing,  book signings and book club discussions, and I've, so the podcasts. Is important to me because I want, , people that have helped me. I want to bring them on and let's talk about how that, what they said to me and how that helped.  My first interview was with my own therapist and because when I was going to him, when everything came out and, you know, the betrayal came to light.

, he walked me through that path and then I haven't seen him in like three, four years. So, , he came on and we talked about dating, so it was just kind of a progression and he, you know, he really gave great advice on dating, and I'm not a dating expert, so I need to have dating experts on the podcast so I can learn.

 I talk about everything leading up to dating,  swipe right for yourself. And then, so that's kind of the things we're talking about.  My friend Karen, who's a minister, came on and, and we talked about like that walking through divorce and how you have to believe in yourself again.

And she did. She's created an amazing metaphor of a butterfly, like how the, the caterpillar goes into the cocoon and just becomes goo. And that's what you feel like after a divorce. You're just goo. And,  then that whole time you're transforming and you're healing. And you come out of that cocoon, and you have wings and I just loved that.

It was so powerful and that was. That episode has the most downloads  and listens because I really think that butterfly metaphor just really touched people. And  I do. I and I love that. Cause I feel like I have wings. what's that Elton John song? The Someone Saved My Life Tonight. You know, butterflies are free to Fly, fly Away.

Yes. Yes. Karen and I think know a lot, so. Oh, that is great. Well, Kelly, how can people find out more about you and your work? I have a website: ckcollins.co. And I, I've got a lot of information that's about to be released on there.  And then my book is  available on Amazon. The Swipe Right Effect - The Power to Get Unstuck.

The workbook is releasing in June and so I hope people will take advantage of that resource and,  my book also has a lot of resources, other books, and my website includes those on the reference page.  And then I'm starting a coaching business and I want to help people one-on-one,  that want to need help.

Walking that journey, maybe need an external source in their life that has been there, done that, and , happy to be an accountability partner for that. Mm-hmm. Oh, Kelly, thank you so much for being Andre Power Radio today. Thank you for having me. It's been great. Great questions. Thank you. We've been speaking with author and podcaster, CK Collins, who we've enjoyed today's program.

If so, please hit that subscribe button so you don't miss out on any future episodes. Until next time, this is Debbie Spector Weisman saying Sweet Dreams, everybody.