Starting Over Is A Power Move

Welcome to Break Free w/ Kristen Shea, a podcast for the ones who were never meant to play by the rules.

In this first episode, I share the journey that brought me to where I am today, starting with the moment I walked away from everything: my family, my career, and the version of myself that kept people comfortable - because staying silent was no longer an option. I didn’t have a plan. I just knew that staying was slowly killing me. 

I share how I began sharing my spiritual gifts, started my business, and discovered myself along the way. 

This isn’t a podcast about personal development. This is about soul liberation. About breaking free from the roles, expectations, and systems that never fit in the first place.

Learn more or work with me: https://bio.site/Kristenshea

Transcript

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I walked away from my family, my job, my identity, the entire life that I had built because I felt like my soul was just slowly dying and I didn't know where I was going. I only knew that I couldn't stay stuck anymore and I couldn't stay silent anymore. This is not going to be another self-help or personal development podcast. This is a sacred space for soul liberation. And I want to take you behind the scenes through my experience, through the guests that I'll have on and their experiences, bringing all of our spiritual gifts, our stories, and creating this powerful portal of potential so that you can liberate yourself on a soul level because this is so much deeper than identity work. This is so much deeper than just visibility. This is reclaiming ourselves, remembering who we are and unleashing ourselves to live a wildly aligned life. So today I want to share a little bit of my story and how I got to where I am today. So you can start to see my own process. And I want to start the moment that I walked away. So I had a really difficult time starting over because I was 37 years old. And I felt like at this point I should have it all figured out. I should know who I am. I should know what I'm doing. I should be on a path to much more of a secure future than I felt like. And at the time, everyone around me was either married, getting married, having kids, like they seemed like they had something figured out that I hadn't figured out yet. And for me, I was having like an identity crisis, spiritual awakening after spiritual awakening. I felt lost, stuck, confused. And I was back in a narcissistic dynamic that had been at play my entire life, but somehow I found my way back wrapped up in it, and I just felt stuck and suffocated. And in this moment, in this really uncomfortable moment, I decided to walk away. And I didn't just walk away, I lit a match and I burned it to the ground. And I started my life over with no backup plan, no financial safety net, and no idea where I was going. But it ended up being like the absolute most magical journey. So I want you to know that if there's any part of your life that feels out of alignment, if you feel like you are suffocating or slowly dying on a soul level, it is okay to start over because here's what happens: absolute magic and the timelines collapse, and you will get your time back. So I am now a year and a half later from that point living a life that I thought would take me 10, 15, 20 years to build, if it would even be possible for me in this lifetime. And it happened so fast because I surrendered, I let go of what wasn't in alignment, and I allowed myself to be guided towards what my soul wanted. So I'm gonna take you back to December 2022. I'm on my way to a sweat lodge with one of my girlfriends. I'm deep in my spiritual healing and spiritual awakening journey. I've been on this road for over 10 years at this point, and I'm going to the sweat lodge wanting to get this deeper connection, maybe release or purge anything that is, you know, blocking me so I can figure out who I am. I'm in this narcissistic dynamic. I found myself in this groundhogs day of a life just so suffocated and uncomfortable, but I can't find my way out of it. And I'm terrified to leave and I don't know what's waiting for me. And here's the thing: I had already reset my life before at 32 years old. I had found myself in this exact same spot five years earlier. And I hit the reset button. I left the career. I sold everything I owned. I packed myself and my dog up in the car, drove across the country like I had already hit the reset button. But at that time, I missed a really critical step. I didn't get to know myself. So what I did is I hit reset. I had this beautiful blank canvas that I was so excited to paint on. And instead of discovering who I was and creating life from that point of authenticity, of soul expression, I began to think like, who do I need to be? What would the world approve of? What are people looking for? What kind of life do I want to have? What do I want people to think or feel about me? Like I was essentially curating it. Like it was an Instagram feed from like 2020 when the influencers had just arrived and it was like this perfectly curated aesthetic. That's how I was approaching, like resetting my life. So I had done this before and found myself again here in the same spot. So I knew I had to do it differently this time, but again, I was still super lost. So I'm on my way to the sweat lodge and I say to my friend, I declare out loud to her, God, source, spirit, everyone who's listening, I did not come here to live a mediocre life. I came here to live an epic life, and I'm so sick of this endless cycle. Show me how to live an epic life. I'm ready, guide me, I surrender. And then later I said these very critical words make the path that is most aligned for me on a soul level crystal clear. Make it so easy for me to see I can't miss it. Make the paths that are not aligned for me so painfully clear and uncomfortable that I have no choice but to leave them. This is what set off it was a catalyst of events. So that's December 2022, a year, exactly a year before I actually leave this narcissistic dynamic, bird everything down and start over. And what happens is in this year is everything gets so painfully uncomfortable. Like the people, the narcissist that I'm in this chaotic repeated cycle with is getting worse and worse and worse. I'm getting more and more suffocated. The people that I'm around are getting more and more uncomfortable. I am so miserable. I am doing everything I can heal to heal. I am, um, I've been doing ayahuasca and combo, and I'm working with all these quantum healers. Like I'm doing this whole process, which I've been doing for years. This is not new. I've been doing this for years, and I still can't figure out how to break through. And I decide to book a trip to Mount Shasta on a whim because my guides are saying, hey, go to Mount Shasta. And at this point, my spiritual gifts are fully online, but I don't really understand them or have any proof of them. So my psychic abilities are coming in all the time during the day, but they're not intentional. They're just like popping in. I can see timelines again, not intentionally. I'm getting all of these channeled messages, but I don't know how to work with my gifts. I don't know how to hone them. And I certainly don't know if they're real because I haven't shared them. I haven't practiced them. There's no like validation that I'm not crazy. But I get this guidance that says, go to Mount Shasta. So I go and I go on a weekend by myself with the intent to just like figure out who I am, what is this next step? Like it is so uncomfortable. They have made the path so uncomfortable. I know I have to leave, but I desperately want to have a plan in place. I want to know where I'm going. I want to at least have a next step and I have nothing in mind and I just feel so blocked. So I go to Mount Shasta and I come across this healer in a very magical way. I will dive into the story a little bit deeper on another episode. But I meet this incredible healer and he does this soul retrieval and we reclaim all of these fragmented parts of my soul. And in this moment, as all of this collects back, I have this epiphany that is just you will not know where you are going, but trust that everything is okay. Trust that there is a plan. We just can't show it to you, but you've got to go. So I come back from Mount Shasta the very next day and I give notice to everyone in my life. So my family dynamic, the narcissism, the career, all of this is all intertwined together, right? So when I walk away, I have to walk away from everything. So I give notice like I'm done with this career, I'm leaving this company, I'm leaving this whole family dynamic. Like I'm I'm done. Super scary to do, but I did it. And now I'm in this in-between phase of, oh shit, I have to figure this out because I have to go. Like now I've said I'm going, I have to go. And now I really need to dig deep. And my guides are saying, do not worry about it. Just get out, get out, get out, get out, get out. So fast forward a couple months later, December is when I actually walk away. December 29th, 2023. Walk away. Go no contact with everybody and just focus on healing myself and figuring out these next steps. Now I'm also in a mode of panic because in walking away like this, I had no financial safety net. I had no plan B, no backup plan, no job secured, like nothing. Like I am completely in the void. I have walked out on the plank. I have walked off the plank, and I am just hoping and praying to God that the universe, God, Sword, Spirit catches me. And in this moment, my guides are saying, Rest, rest, rest, rest. Like you're coming out of this cycle. We just need you to rest. We're putting so much together for you. And I can't do that because I'm not in a place where I yet believe or have that relationship with God that I can be provided for without hustling and grinding and making things happen without earning my abundance, right? So I do compromise and I rest for like two weeks, but I have bills due and I have less than a couple of weeks to figure out how to have income coming in. So I rest for a couple of weeks, a little bit. I mean, I spent most of the time like hiking and reading and really just overthinking and trying to figure things out, but I was at least like physically laying down, resting. And then I start, I start saying to myself, okay, I'm gonna do the thing I know how to do best, which is PR. I was a publicist. That's part of what I had left behind. And I said, I'm gonna do PR. It's not my long game, but I just need to get a couple of clients so I can get by financially in this moment, and it will give me time to figure out who I am, what I'm here to do, why am I even on this planet, like what all of it, right? All the things that we think about. So in this, I know that I have to create a personal brand. As a publicist, I know I have to create a personal brand and like announce to the world I'm an independent publicist and come work with me. But here's the thing, I want to do it differently because I didn't like the experience I had in PR. It was very fake and curated. It was built on like instead of being who you are and sharing authentically or being of service, it was from a place of ego and validation and wanting to like control perception. And so I was really resistant to it. And so this time I was like, I'm gonna work with the healers and the change makers because I'm gonna help them. I have all this business experience of building businesses. I have this publicity experience. I can help them create like an incredible business. Now, do you see how that's a limiting thought? Like I could do that for other people, but I couldn't do it for myself. So I set out to do that and I set out to create a personal brand and do it in my own way. Because again, the personal branding exercises that I knew I didn't like, they weren't in alignment. They felt gross to me. So I start to do this my own way. And throughout this process, I'm also channeling with my guides on how to do this. And what they were taking me on was like this whole journey of self-discovery. And if you were to look back at the personal brand I created, it's literally the life I'm living today, just a little over a year later, which is so wild. But I couldn't see it, right? So I start taking some clients, I start getting some clients, and I'm just scraping by financially. I'm taking some business coaching clients, a couple for visibility, like, but just scraping by. And I keep getting this message post your channeled messages, post your channeled messages. You need to post your channel messages. And I was like, absolutely not. That's insane. Like, no. And then I see a video on Instagram and it says, if you could do anything to be of service to the world and you wouldn't get anything in return, what could you share? And the first thing that popped into my head was my channeled messages. But I was like, okay, I want to be of service. I do want to help, but like first I gotta get my life together. I gotta stabilize myself, and then I'll look at doing that. Then I promise I'll look at, you know, and think about sharing my channeled messages. But here's what happens I ignore the guidance, and a couple weeks later, all of a sudden, all of my clients are no longer paying their bills or invoices, and they're not responding to my emails. All of the leads I had have drop dried up. So essentially, all financial roads are blocked, and I feel in pure panic because it is March 27th, and my bills, a lot of my bills are due in just a couple of days, and I am terrified. And then I have more bills due after that. And I'm just like, what is going on? So I'm in a meditation, I'm just begging God, asking for help. Please help me, please guide me, show me the way. What am I missing? What's going on here? Why is this happening? And I get the message again: post your channeled messages on TikTok. And I'm like, that could not be less helpful right now. Like, that's not helpful to me. I need something that's gonna generate money right now. You want me to post on TikTok? Like, this is crazy. So I fight with it back and forth all day. Finally, I'm like, you know what? There's nothing else going on. I've been in the fetal position crying most of the day. At this point, I might as well just point post the message because I have nothing to lose. I'm already at rock bottom, right? Because being in this place has already started the crumbling destruction of my identity. And so I record my first message, you guys. It took me five hours to record a two-minute video. No less than 12,000 takes. And I didn't even edit. It took that long. It was such a painful experience. But I posted it. And within hours of posting that video, that channeled message, all of my clients paid their invoices. All of a sudden, everybody was like, oh, sorry, I've been out of town. Here's my, you know, responding to emails. The leads are coming back in, like things are flowing. And I'm like, oh, thank God. So now my guys are like, keep posting. So I'm like, I'll keep posting. You keep this money coming in. I will keep posting. I'll keep showing up this way. And I do, I keep doing it. And about a week later, I start getting the message of you need to start offering personal readings. Excuse me? Absolutely not. Respectfully, no, not doing that. Like, first of all, I don't even know if my gifts are real. I feel borderline crazy. I think people think I'm crazy. I'm also having this really difficult time of having been like this successful corporate executive and now like this woo-woo person. Like people probably think I'm having a mental breakdown because nobody understands, especially if you didn't know me or you didn't know, especially if you don't know a lot about narcissistic dynamics, like people don't always understand what that looks like when you leave. And so it probably looks like I'm having some type of a mental breakdown or a crisis on the outside, right? Like left her entire life behind, and now she's posting woo-woo messages on TikTok. So I was I was like mortified. But I was like, are you just trying to humble me and embarrass me more in this process? Like, what? And what I don't know how to do personal readings. I've never done those before. I had never practiced my gifts. I like tried once or twice on my best friend at the time, and I knew her whole life, so there was no way for me to know if what I was getting was real, right? And so I ignore the guidance. And again, what happens? A few a week before all my bills are due, again, everything dries up. People aren't paying their invoices, leads aren't getting back to me. Same repeat process. So this time I hear another message and it says, post your channeled message and offer personal readings for $44. My ego is not only terrified of doing that, but my ego is like, absolutely not. Am I going from being a successful corporate executive to a $44 freaking TikTok psychic? Do you see how much my identity was attached to this like successful corporate persona? So I'm having such a hard time with that. And I don't know if it's real. And I'm like, no one's gonna book with me. I had less than 100 followers. It's not like I had a following. Like none of this was making sense to me. So it's now April 27th. Again, I'm always waiting until the last minute at this time, and I am like, fine, I will post it. If you guys want to humble me in this way, I will. And I expect no one to book. So I just like throw up a Cash App link. I throw up a calendar link and I'm like, there, I did it. And I post a video that says, you know, $44 readings, whatever. Because I didn't think anyone's gonna book, I didn't put any boundaries on my calendar. I didn't set any system up so I would know whether or not people had paid. I like I had no process in place. And I was just like, I did it, let the money flow. And it did. Within a few hours, again, all of my clients paid their invoices. But this time, a few hours later, I got my first personal booking and then another one, and then another one, and then another one. And I am like, what the heck? And within 48 hours, I had 70 people book with me. That's wild. Like that is that it didn't make sense. I'm like, how? Who saw this? Like I didn't have, I wasn't getting these high views. I didn't have a following. Like it didn't make sense. And then I had to confront the fact that I actually had to give these personal readings when I had never done that before. And I was like so terrified of this whole process. Because again, what if I go to a personal reading and nothing comes through? What if I give the wrong information? What if what I say doesn't resonate? What if they think I'm a fraud? What if I am crazy? Like I'm still having all of these difficulties in walking through this initiation process. But I decide because I know what happens, if I don't follow the guidance and I don't follow what's going on, I know things will dry up on me again. So I know that I have to move forward. And this is my soul. Again, I asked for this. I asked for them to make it painfully clear for me when I was not on the right path. So this is, they're not using this as like a control or punishment tool. This is literally what I had asked them to do. So I show up to my first reading and I'm like five minutes before it terrified. And I was basically like, you know what? Worst case scenario, this doesn't work. And I refund people their money. I show up and the first reading goes amazing. Like everything is resonating. I'm getting very specific information. There's no way I could possibly know. I'm even getting names, like things are going incredibly well. And this was ended up being like a spiritual boot camp because I had 70 readings within the first week. And then I'm still getting more for the weeks following. Like it's just happening. And so again, I didn't put boundaries on my calendar. So it was a little bit crazy because I was working like 15 hour days because I was just like booked solid. Plus, I still had the PR and like business coaching stuff going on. And so I'm going nonstop, but I'm feeling good because now not only is money starting to flow, I'm starting to have like a little bit extra. Like I'm not just scraping by and I'm starting to see like, okay, I can catch my breath, although I didn't have time to catch my breath because of how I was working. And then my guides say to me, You need to start a group coaching program. Because I was thinking to myself one day, like, I'm giving all this guidance to people, right? Their guides are sharing all these messages. They don't know how to integrate them. They don't know what to do. So they're getting these readings, but they don't that they get the reading, they walk away and they just go back to life as if nothing is different. My guides are like, start a group coaching program. And I'm like, that's insane. Like, I don't even have my life together. Like, I'm still trying to figure all of this out. I'm just starting to use my spiritual gifts. I'm like a couple weeks into this journey. What are you talking about? Imposter syndrome coming up like crazy, as if I had to be a fully polished, figured out, healed version of myself to do this, right? You don't. Um, whoever you are meant to help will come through. Like you will always be aligned with the right people. You're here to help. We don't have to wait till we're like perfect. But at the time, ego's in a way, and I still think I do. And I'm also like, who's gonna do this? But here we go again. I know. I gotta do it. So I launch it. I send out the email to all the people who had had a reading, and I had 15 people sign up like right away. And this was such a game changer. It was this group was so much fun. I actually ran this group for like nine months. I continued to, it was so much fun. And then a couple weeks after that, I'm two weeks into the group coaching program, and my guides are like, okay, now you've got to let go of this PR visibility world. You knew that this was just like to get you by, you knew this wasn't anything that um was gonna be long term. And I'm like, absolutely not. That's like my stable income, right? That that's like it's just a different, it's a business model I was used to. I wasn't used to like low, like low sales, like less than $100 and the consumer market and all of these things I was used to, like B2B, big tickets, and like just a different, it's just a different market. But I'm like, no way, I'm not letting that go. And I ignore it. Okay, but this time I didn't ignore it long enough to like have have my finances cut off. I ignored it long enough to the point where my guides were like, listen, you need to move into this path. We've guided you here, we've done everything for you. Like the things that are happening are not making sense, and you know that. You know it doesn't make sense to get 70 bookings that quickly. You know it doesn't make sense to not have a following and be taking off and selling out these group coaching programs and launching all these courses, and you have all these ideas. We're giving you the all these, like none of this makes sense. So you know that there's something at play here. So I'm like, fine. So terrified, I give notice and I let it all go and I say, I am no longer in this industry. This is no longer me. Close that chapter and I fully step into my spiritual gifts and I fully step into my spiritual business. And now, fast forward a little over a year later, and I am living a life that I did not think was possible for me because in my mind, back when I was stuck on the cycle, back when I had just burned it to the ground, I still did not see that this was possible for me. I always saw myself in the background. I can build other people's businesses, I can bring other people's visions and dreams and help them come true. I can build anything for anybody else, but I can't do it for myself. Other people can be a healer and I can even help them start a business, but me having a healing business, that would take 10 years. Like I had all of these like false belief systems, programs, and just like fears that blocked me so many ways. However, in the initiation of showing up online, the visibility piece and the initiation of not just doing identity work, but going deep into me, into myself on a soul level, deep into me, deep into me, right? The I am presence, deep into what I'm here to do, and allowing myself to be guided by a God's source spirit, the divine, it unfolded a path, right? One that I could not imagine for myself. And things worked out in a way that can only be described as like miracle and magic. And that happens because we collapse timelines. When we leave the things that are not for us and we align to the things that are for us, we literally collapse timelines and we get our time back. So if we think it's gonna take 10 years, it could take 10 days, 10 weeks, 10 months, whatever it is, everyone's stuff is gonna be like a little bit different, right? And how much you lean in and fully surrender to the process. And in this path, everything has unfolded for me. Like this is such a divine co-creation. I have over 70,000 followers on all of my platforms. I have a beautiful business that supports me. I get to do the things that I love. I finally know who I am and feel like I'm living my own life and I'm still discovering who I am. Like you and I, as I'm recording right now, like we're discovering more about me in this moment. Like we're doing this together because it's an evolution, it's a journey. And the more I allow my soul to embody, the more light that shows up, the more guided I am, the more I get to know me. But I'm living a life that is authentic to me. And I'm showing up authentically online and I'm fully unleashing myself on the world. And I share this with you because if there is any part of your life that does not feel aligned, or there's a part of your soul that is dying and the experience that you're having right now, I want you to know it's possible to start over. And I want you to know that when you start over, it is not a failure, it is not a setback, it is a freaking power move. And when you do that and you align it to the divine, to the will of God, Source Spirit for your life, your purpose, your dharma, what your soul came here to do, everything will be done for you. And it doesn't have to be as hard as we think or as we're taught in this matrix program. But you will not believe that until you start to experience yourself. Because even I did it. And even now, as I say it, it's like, wow, I can't believe that happened. Of course I can because I lived it, right? I witnessed the becoming. But before that, that would have I believed in manifestation. I was super spiritual. I was on like a deeply healing journey and had been for a long time. I knew all of this was possible, but I didn't believe it was possible for me. I didn't think it could work that way. And so if you're in this place, you might feel that way too. Just know it does, but you'll never know until you experience it. And so you have to like somewhat let go, release, release, release control and let go for it to happen. So starting over is not a setback. It is not failure. Visibility is not your scary path, it's your initiation. And your spiritual gifts aren't meant to be proven, they're meant to be shared. And at any point in time, you can decide to live a different way. And you can start to recreate your experience and you can allow the divine to help you as much as you're willing to accept. But I share my story because I want you to see what's possible and I want you to understand a little bit about my journey. And I plan in the next episodes to really peel back the layers because I also want you to know, as much as there's been magic and miracles, there's also been a lot of dark nights of the soul in the last year. There's also been a lot more that I had to let go of that I didn't think I'd have to after I let go of everything the first time. I want you to know that I've hit the reset button on my life multiple times to get to where I am today. I want you to know that you're not doing life wrong, that we're all on our own path in our own divine timing, doing exactly what's right. I want you to know that if society is telling you that you should be something else or be at a different place than where you're at, that's just not true. And it kept me stuck, like I said, for a really long time of who I should be as a 37-year-old woman, right? That kept me stuck for a really long time. And now as I just release these identities, these belief programs, these conscious concepts and like the matrix programming overall, more and more is becoming obvious that like we get to, we get to have an amazing time here, but we have to allow it. So we have to like really slip out of that control level and into creator mode. Creating and controlling are two different things. So on my next episodes, I'm gonna peel back more of my journey. Like I said, I don't want to like ice coat this like it was just all rainbows and unicorns. It certainly wasn't. I was so divinely guided and things were incredibly beautiful, but I want to talk about more of how my spiritual gifts opened and how much doubt was there and what it took to walk through that process, what it takes to walk through each initiation within my business within visibility. I want to talk about how I've lost friendships, how things in my life that I thought would be on this journey forever are not. Like I want to talk about all of it and I want to bring you so deep into the journey of soul liberation because it's not just identity work, it's not just healing, it's not just these like more surface level aspects, not to say healing and identity or like surface level, but they can be. This is going so much deeper to liberate you on a soul level, like looking at the contracts you came into this lifetime to overcome, looking at the endless cycles that are at play in your life, um, understanding that you can leave the narcissistic dynamic, but not actually liberate yourself from it. There's so many different aspects. I want to peel the layers back on all of this. I want to give you a deep behind-the-scenes look. So whatever you're navigating, this can be a blueprint for you. I want to bring others and their experiences on. I want to highlight everybody who is liberating in some way so that we can see what's possible and we can see that there's a path ahead. So I hope this shines a light on whatever path that you're on right now. But I just want you to know what's possible for you. And with that, I'm gonna close up the episode. Thank you for sharing this experience with me. I'm so excited to share more of my journey. I'm excited to get to know more of you. I hope you'll share your journeys in the comments. I hope that you'll reach out and connect. I hope to see you in my workshops. I have a live weekly community call every Sunday. We hop on Zoom, we get to know each other, we do workshops, we practice our spiritual gifts. There's so many fun things we do. Um, and I also offer coaching and spiritual healing services. So if there's anything I can help you with, please reach out. But I hope to get to know you better. I hope to understand your stories, what you're struggling with. You can drop your questions in the comments so that I can come back and answer them. Um, but I'm excited to be on this journey with you and thank you for thanks for sharing your path with me. And as always, I'm gonna be sending you so much love.