Life coach Katie Richardson and I discuss how to face stress, frameworks that catalyze real personal growth, and the mindset shifts that pave the way.
When was the last time you felt stressed out? How about real inner ease? Katie Richardson joins me on Vitally You® to talk about how we can feel at ease in stressful situations. Today’s episode marks the beginning of Vitally You® conversations around building resilience, calm, and inner ease.
Stress isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is when allowed to stay past it’s welcome. Katie shares ways that she supports clients to reframe stress as a catalyst of growth and instead choose to confront it with her V.I.T.A.L. framework. Katie tells the story of how she took hold of her life and business piece by piece, learning to intentionally create herself. Her experiences in business, moving around the world, and as a busy mother have shown her that in order to move forward in our lives, we must establish the truth of our present reality. By walking toward what feels scary or sticky, we become someone stronger and changed in the process, and that’s where the real magic of growth lives!
If you are enjoying these conversations, please subscribe and spread the love by leaving a review and sharing it with your friends.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, TuneIn, or on your favorite podcast platform.
Topics Covered:
Resources Mentioned:
Connect with Katie Richardson:
Get in Touch:
Special offers:
Credit:
Dana Frost 00:07
Welcome to Vitally You®, a podcast created to introduce you to the tools that will be your roadmap for feeling younger while growing older. I'm your host Dana Frost, a wellness expert, life coach and energy medicine practitioner. Here's what you can expect conversations about vitality from the inside out with guest experts in the field of health, culture, and spirituality, and solo episodes along the way from me where I do deep dives into the topics of aging, heart intelligence, energy, medicine, and your innate capacity to heal. If you want to feel younger, while growing older, this is the place for you.
Dana Frost 00:52
Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining us this week for the Vitally You® podcast. Now I want to ask you a serious question. Is that okay? When was the last time you felt stressed out? Well, let's go with the opposite. When did you last feel in our ears? And do you believe it's possible to feel inner ease when confronted with a stressful situation? Now over the next few months, I hope to convince you that it is possible to feel enter ease in stressful situations.
Dana Frost 01:29
Today's episode starts conversations about building resilience, calm and inner ears. And I am so excited about the special guest today who's going to start this journey with us. A friend introduced me to today's guest, Katie Richardson. My friend Josh tap, and I will put a link to his podcast the lucky Titan. He hit the bull's eye in response to my request to be introduced to a woman who could speak into a conversation about stress. I had no idea and I just really was so delighted by this conversation that we're going to share with you today. Katie is no stranger to stress. She is younger than most of my guests, but her experience and wisdom reach way beyond her chronological years and I was thinking we need to add wisdom years to the biological age and the chronological age. I'm honored to share Katie's wisdom with our vitally you community. Katie is on a mission to create powerful leaders.
Dana Frost 02:33
With a background in design. Katie built a multimillion dollar international company with distribution to 2000 stores in the US and 26 countries. Her work has been featured on Ellen DeGeneres, the Today Show and Rachael Ray. She has also been featured on the cover of Entrepreneur Magazine. Today as an executive business coach, Katie is teaches founders and CEOs, the mindsets, skill sets and tool sets needed to operate powerfully in business and life. And you know why she does this. She does this so they can live with purpose, and do what they were born to do. Please join me in welcoming Katie. Katie, welcome to the money the podcast. I am so excited that you're here. Dana,
Katie Richardson 03:23
I'm super excited to be here. Really excited to have a conversation with you. I think we're going to uncover some really incredible things. Yeah, meet
Dana Frost 03:31
you, Katie, this conversation about stress, I've been wanting to talk about it. Because it seems like it's running in the water stress. It's just in the atmosphere. And people are really suffering anxiety is at an all time high. And there's this disruption and people's sense of inner peace. And I'm excited to talk to you because I know that I know, You've had a lot of situations in your life, you've done a lot of heavy lifting, you design products, you had a product line, you created something out of nothing, which is amazing.
Dana Frost 04:07
And you are married, you have a family, you've left your home country while you left the mainland for Puerto Rico with your family two and a half years ago, so and you sold your business. So I know that you have confronted a lot of challenging situations that could put some people under it could cripple some people, but you from what I can tell are thriving. And so I'm excited to hear from you what your take on stress is I like to like let's look at the positive energies. How do we foster in our ears? Katie, what do you think is I don't know if I want to use the word root cause. What do you think? Is the maybe just root cause but what do you think the root cause of stress is where does it stem from from your perspective?
Katie Richardson 05:00
So there's a couple of things to think about when it comes to stress. The first is like when we think of stress, generally most of us would put it in the, quote, bad category, right? It's bad. And I'm somebody who really values personal growth and development. And if I didn't have stressors in my life, you would be talking to the 17 year old version of me and a 43 year old woman's body. Right. And so stress isn't necessarily a bad thing. I think when we allow it to stay, that's when it starts to become counterproductive, I think. And there's a couple different things to think about. You know, I think a lot of people are experiencing stress right now.
Katie Richardson 05:40
Because there's a lot that is shifting in the world, our monetary system is very broken. So as our government, we're gonna have to get into politics. But I think it doesn't take a genius to see that we're being taken advantage of no matter what side it's from, right? There's some sort of collusion going on in the world. And it's not good. And it's quite mal intended, I believe. And so you take into consideration all of that is kind of outside of our control, and how it impacts us personally. And there's just a lot that feels like it's overwhelming, because it's so different than how things were just five years ago, right. So that change creates stress.
Katie Richardson 06:20
But here's something that I want to discuss. And this is something I've seen a lot in my life, Dana, there's a part of me that loves adventure, and stepping out into the unknown. And when I frame the things that are kind of stressing me when I frame them, right, when I view them, I use these a lot, actually, when I'm coaching people, when I view what I'm currently categorizing as stress and bad when I view it as this adventure, and who knows where this leads, and very likely, if I look at the experiences of my past, when I choose to walk in towards that thing that might be scaring me might feel unknown might feel stressful when I choose to walk into that, who I become in that process.
Katie Richardson 07:08
And what happens as a consequence, on the other side of that is something so valuable to me that it would never want to give up the stress. That was the catalyst to it all. So part of what is creating the kind of shadow of stress isn't the actual circumstances. It's how we're framing the circumstances that is creating the counter productive component of stress. But if you can see stress as a catalyst to growth, and choose to walk into it, you know, with faith and confidence, so you'll figure it out, which is difficult, right? Because it's unknown. It's undefined sometimes. But as I've done that, in my own personal life, I benefit tremendously on the other side of that.
Dana Frost 07:57
Yeah, I completely resonate with that, I think that there's something so powerful on the reframe, and we, you know, we tend to think it's stress is outside of our control. Yeah. And that's when when it's something that's external to us outside of our control coming at us, and we with a perception is we have no dominion or no agency. Yeah. And when you talk about the bigger things that are happening, it's would be very easy to feel that lack of agency, if that's what we're focused on, are the bigger the larger macro things that are happening in the world.
Dana Frost 08:33
And you can feel at the micro level that you have no agency, but both of us know that we do have agency. And I think you will, yeah, it's our it's our perception and the way that we think about the things that are happening to us. And I love that you, when you were talking about the things that you've gone through where there, you've had the heavy lifting, and they've been challenging, you wouldn't be who you are today, if you wouldn't go through those, which is very true for me, like the most difficult what felt like a Grand Canyon happening in my life, the earth below me opening and I felt like I was being swallowed.
Dana Frost 09:14
If I wouldn't have found my power in those situations, I wouldn't be tempted the woman that I am today. How does someone find the agency? Do you have a pathway like what's your process? When you're coaching practice with people when you know, when they're facing whatever the perceived stressor is, you know, where do you take them? Or where do you take yourself?
Katie Richardson 09:41
Yeah, so I actually have a framework that I teach people and you know, I can cover it really quickly. And if you want to go deeper, we can. Yeah, but it's actually called the vital framework. Interestingly enough, I love it. Yeah. And each of those, each of those letters stands for something. So the first says vision, we have to have made a decision on where it is that we want to go. And you know, that really speaks to the agency component that you're talking about, we can live kind of this default life where we're kind of a ping pong ball in the universe, that's gonna be pretty terrifying, right.
Katie Richardson 10:15
And if we're not making a decision on where we want to go, or not kind of owning our wanting, owning our desires and kind of making a commitment to God in the universe, that I'm committed to this thing, if we're not going to do that, then we're just kind of drifting. So it's the first piece, the vision system. The second is the instruct system. Once you have that clarity of vision on where you want to go, you know, if series gonna navigate me to a location, and I tell her where I want to go, she very quickly shows me three options.
Katie Richardson 10:44
There's like infinite number of more other options within that. And I've got to decide, you know, what freeways do? I want to take, am I wanting to drive past that place that has a special drink that I like, do I need to stop and get gas, right? There's, there's certain things that will determine what's kind of the quote, correct or right path for me. And so I need clear instruction on my values. And what matters most to me, which will then determine kind of that correct path. For me. The third component is T for team, I help entrepreneurs, right. And so sometimes we can kind of be a lone wolf.
Katie Richardson 11:20
And this is true, if you don't even have a business, if you're a lone wolf in life, you're missing out on really valuable rich relationships, whether that's a loving partner, or a deep relationship with a friend or a family member, or children or spouses, right. So having that those team members, people who believe in you who are connected to you who are rooting for you? And can we have some sort of an understanding or alignment as a quote team, right? The third component of the framework is aligning, the aligned system helps you identify where am I being in congruent with myself? Where am I betraying myself? Those are the immediate places where we disempower ourselves.
Katie Richardson 12:03
And we could spend hours just talking about this system, right? And, you know, we first have to understand how to create alignment with self. And once we've developed that capability, then we can start to really create alignment with spouses, friends, family members, team members, whatever your circumstance or situation is. And I love seeing you shaking your head, Dana, like I think you really understand this. I do. Yeah, it's alignment, like, you've probably had experiences where you are wanting and feeling and desiring one thing, but maybe for a host of reasons, right? Not giving yourself permission, or not knowing how to do it or knowing that if I do that, I'll upset somebody that I really care about. And then therefore, we don't speak up, or we don't take action on the thing, and we just do what we're supposed to do.
Katie Richardson 12:50
Right, you've probably felt that I know, I felt it and you who's listening to us right now, it's probably felt that and when we're in that place, we are literally in congruent with ourselves. And we're aligning with a lie, essentially, right. And so that incongruency, it drains us of our power, super destructive, and it can become really habitual, super habitual. So we have to understand how to pull out of that habitual, past former self. And like really be intentional about creating ourselves, I talked about how if I hadn't had all these stressors in my life, I'd be the same woman I was, you know, when I was 17. And I can be pretty stubborn.
Katie Richardson 13:30
So I know that that's very true for myself, right. And then the last one is to lead. And at some point in our life, we're going to learn and grow and expand and that that growth starts to plateau. And it's only once we pick up the stick of responsibility to lead, whether that is within your company, or your family, or even just your community. Can you be a leader? And do you know how to do that in a powerful way. And I will say that we have horrible examples around the world, like most people are showing us exactly what not to do. And too often people react against that. And then they they try and do the opposite, which isn't leadership.
Katie Richardson 14:15
And so we have to understand what it means to actually take up that responsibility to lead. And this is what my Lead System does for people and know how to truly be powerful leader to self, to the people around us. And so that is my process, the vital framework.
Dana Frost 14:32
I love that. I can see you can go very deep and every single one of those constructs.
Katie Richardson 14:39
Yeah, sometimes it's a little overwhelming when I first show it so I'm going to simplify it really quick, which is in order for Siri to navigate you to a certain destination. Yes, you need to know where you're going. Right? You need the final destination determined and you need the path forward. But there's some other key components that often we miss The third is you need your starting point.
Katie Richardson 15:03
And this is one that so many of us, Miss Dana, because I don't want to be where I'm at, I want to be there. I want to be at that place. I hate the circumstances of my current life, right? We've all been in those moments where it's like I would give anything to get away from this place. That's my reality, because it's that painful. But if we don't establish the truth of your reality, we'll never be able to move you forward. Never.
Dana Frost 15:29
Oh, yes. And I always say, You shall know the truth. And the truth shall set you free. If you are not able to look at your situation, your relationships, you know, all the different dynamics in your life. If you're not able to truthfully examine, and be able to sit in that, it's very hard, you can't really be free. It's the energetically, there are rumblings in the foundation in that you just you've got to be able to look at it, you have to know the truth.
Dana Frost 16:00
Once you know the truth, I'll tell a quick story that I think people can relate to. And I back in 2006, I was doing my life coach training. And are you familiar with Dr. Martha Beck by chance? I have heard her on a podcast before she has been in the coaching industry for many, many years. But I did my training with her. And I've ended up in coaching because we adopted two children while we were living in Brazil, and I needed I needed support, right? I mean, yeah, I'm a huge fan get help when you need help, because you have we all have blind spots. And it's just so helpful to have somebody else on our team who can guide us.
Dana Frost 16:37
So coaching was a new profession. I had a friend who would become a coach, and I'm like, let me let me try it. You know, why not? It was so powerful that fast forward, I did my life coach training. But in our training, we were talking about some challenging situation, a stressor. And I started talking about my relationship with my adopted daughter. And but I was sugarcoating it, because I had a belief that as the mother and she was a child, and she was abandoned. And so there were things that I did not give myself the flexibility and my thinking, or the freedom to say, what my body was thinking that she was a Hellraiser not fit in her essence, but she was wreaking havoc in our home. I wasn't admitting that. And when she pulled that forward from me, and through this specific process I won't get into right now. It was like, That's the truth.
Dana Frost 17:37
I've been telling myself a lie that it's only me. And if I could only do something, and well, that catapults us into a whole nother conversation. But are, we have to know what that was a painful truth as a mom, yeah, to say about a child. And sometimes we don't give ourselves the permission, because of our education, our faith the way that our culture is. And they're like, something for me, that was forbidden. And until that opened my vision to be able to look at things that might seem forbidden. Yes,
Katie Richardson 18:13
it's the very stuff that we need to look at. It's a very stuff. And I think, as a woman, of the 80s, my way of coping with my pain and experiences was to, you know, put on the rose colored glasses and just be this eternal optimist. And there was always something good about everything. And I do still believe that. But in doing that, I was disassociating from and not looking at the painful truth. And for years, Dana, I couldn't say things like, I'm sorry, I'm sad, I'm disappointed. Like, I couldn't acknowledge those things within.
18:52
And as someone who was in that space, I then was kind of limiting the range of who Katie is like, I couldn't actually experience the fullness of life. And so being able to tell the truth, it's such a key component. I'm helping a client right now. And he's very unhappy in his work relationships. And his proposed solution was get rid of that client and move on. And we're just starting to work together. And I was like, What do you think of that plan?
19:21
He was like, I think it's awesome. And I said, Well, the problem is, you're still in the situate, you'll recreate that with the next client. And he's like, what? So telling him the truth that like, you're actually a part of this. It's not all on their shoulders and takes two to tango. And, you know, what are you doing to contribute to that, that's what we need to look at. And so that's, it's a piece of so many people miss. And then the other two components of it, you also have to have to go back to the Syria analogy, right? You have the endpoint, the start point, the path but then you also need a vehicle, and you need the fuel in the vehicle, right. So those are those five components of the vital system. It's how we grow and expand,
Dana Frost 20:02
I love your system. That's awesome. Because there are so many, I mean, so many things that where we could dive into this, but if we don't have like, if you talk about fuel, and this is this gets back to it comes back to stress we have there, the body can be in stress and not properly fuel, we feel things in our body.
Dana Frost 20:25
And then this vehicle, ultimately the vehicle that we use in this world to get around is the body. And if the body isn't able to tell itself the truth, this is like the whole mind body system. And so you can put them all right in there. If we can't tell the mind body system, the truth, the vehicle isn't set. You know, it's not finely tuned, I like to think like every morning, I finely tuned, so I'll use I'll go with vehicle, I finely tuned my body every morning to be prepared for whatever, whatever the day brings. We don't know the day can bring a lot of different scenarios, and we want to be
Katie Richardson 21:07
ready. So good. Yeah, I mean, we've all been in a car that literally the alignment is off. And what does that have us do, we're having a really grip onto the steering wheel to adjust it, we're dragging our tires, we're wearing them down. And it just it wears the vehicle. And the same is true for us when we're out of alignment.
Dana Frost 21:26
Yeah, and I was just I was bring them bring your example of your client who said, Well, I can just do away with that person, I can remember in my own life, when I thought, this is the move that I'm going to make. And it's going to change a lot of dynamics that are going to end up being positive for people. I don't want to say exactly what the move was. But it was actually to take somebody where they are here and put them over here. And I thought that is how I'm going to restore peace.
Dana Frost 21:58
And thankfully, I had an insightful therapist who helped me to enlarge my vision, and to see, enlarge it, and also to bring it internally and and show me I needed to change as you said, Wherever you didn't say it exactly like this. But wherever you are, wherever you go, there you are. And the real when it comes to stress, perceived stressors, the real work is done. It's actually done internally, we think stress is something that happens to us, it's external. But truly the power is internal. And, you know, going internal and shifting whatever, as you said in the beginning, the framework, you know, the way that we look at stress that we call it bad. I had to really shift my mindset, and then move out of my head and my judgments into my heart.
Dana Frost 22:51
And then you can come from a completely different place when you're coming from your heart space, versus your headspace, which are thought you know, our heads were super powerful, we're bright and all those things. But we can soften I think, you know, we think about stress, there's that friction, but we really want to soften we know that solutions only come when we're softened. When you're a designer, you create thought you know you've created product. So you can speak to that, like, are you able to create from a space of like feeling frenetic energy? Or do you create when you're like in the Alpha state of home? Yeah, you
Katie Richardson 23:33
create better solutions when you're in a state of calm when you feel grounded, and you feel centered, and you feel safe to explore ideas and concepts, right? And to speak to that designer creation process that I have. It started to become the solution to a lot of my stress. And there was a time when, you know, for two years, I was living on food storage, grinding wheat, making four loaves of bread a week for family of five and little kids and chaotic and stressful to your point. And I just kept holding out hope that we just need to get to a million dollars.
24:09
Well, we got there, Dana and 12 months, it was crazy. And I thought all of my stress was going to disappear at a million dollars revenue and it did not. It increased and it was magnified. And I was terrified in that moment because I had put my head down and during the stress and the pain and the discomfort of it all just hoping there was relief at this finish line. And not only was there not relief, it was just even more it was magnified. And I was terrified. And at that point I had to like really take a hard look at my life and what was happening and I kind of projected myself continuing to walk down the same road. And I saw how that road if I continued on it.
24:53
There was so much tension in my marriage. I was so absent with my kids even when I was around just mentally not present with them. And there was just so much stress and chaos and overwhelm that I knew that was a life that I would regret someday, if I continue down that road. And yet, I felt called to build this business. So I was really torn and confused. And I'm talking to God in my head as I'm sweeping the kitchen floor, and the kids are asleep. And I'm just like, I don't see how this works. And I've, I've read the biographies, and I've read the articles in the entrepreneurial magazines. And I was like, I have a lot of proof and evidence that if I keep building this business to the size that it is, it will destroy my life.
25:36
And I'm not okay with that. And so I was really confused, because I did feel called to build this business. And in that moment, God helped me see something really incredible. This was when I first got this new frame for myself in my life. And, you know, I said, Katie, you're looking for the business model that makes this all work, but that you don't need that you don't need proof and evidence because you know, creation. So while you might not see the person, the woman capable of navigating this multi dimensional life, you can go create her.
26:07
And that was a moment, Dana, where I took my design and creation process, and I turned it on myself, we can create our selves. So you who's listening to us right now? Whatever is happening in your life, whatever circumstances that you're experiencing, whatever is creating stress for you. You can influence it, you can transform it, you can change it. And the answer is not to force the external circumstances, right, which is what my client was attempting to do. It's the counter to what you would think it is about transforming and changing yourself. And listen, most people don't want to, we don't want to look at ourselves, right? That's the scary thing that we don't want to look at.
Dana Frost 26:48
Amen. That's where I had to start. And it's it is it's super scary. It is super scary. So what do you say to Oh, what did you say to yourself? Like, what? What was the first Do you remember the first move? And now? Yeah, okay. Well, that first move.
Katie Richardson 27:03
in product design, it's very visual, you actually start putting together inspiration boards, and I was literally, this was like, 2009. And everybody was experiencing the financial impact of 2008. Right. And so we were that, but magnified because of how we'd been living. And I literally pulled out magazines, and I realized that the business woman that I needed to be was unlike any business woman I'd ever met.
27:35
And so I needed to understand almost like the Venn diagram of who this woman is. And I started cutting out pictures from magazines, and they were on the back of my bathroom mirror, and I would see them every day. And it was things like she's really present with her kids. And she's engaged with them. And she goes to their soccer games, and she makes cinnamon rolls with them on the weekend. And listen, there was a season when I was doing that.
Dana Frost 27:56
Oh, you're so I have to interject this cinnamon rolls are a huge part of our family. For that same growing up. Oh, me. Yeah, that's not for me growing up. But for me with my grandmother. Yes. But for my family, I created we Yeah, cinnamon rolls for Christmas and for birthdays. And yeah, so that's so funny. You say that? Yeah, I get that.
Katie Richardson 28:17
So I was going to be this woman whose lives that and she hops it in plane and she goes to New York, Chicago, San Francisco, LA and she sits across the buyer at Target. She sits across a potential investor. She's pitching to Golden seeds. And yeah, she wears incredible outfits that don't look like the outfits that she wears because she's making some. And that's okay, because she's a very large ranged individual, right, there's a spectrum of who this woman is.
28:47
And I'm not being pigeon holed into being the cinnamon rolls on the weekend mother, but it's both. And I had never seen this kind of woman, I didn't know that she could exist within me. And I was figuring out how to do that. And you know, it's interesting because you start to feel like you are abandoning your mom, your grandma, like those are the things I was feeling the women of my faith and religion. I'm very active in my church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, it means the world to me, and like, this woman wasn't necessarily being modeled to me in my church congregation. And so it was like, am I leaving my religion to do this?
29:24
And I started to really intentionally create myself and that's the, you know, that's the secret sauce, and things like stress. I have a great little story. My two year old would wake me up in the morning at 7:30am he would hit my forehead with his empty milk bottle. He'd gone to sleep with the milk the night before and more milk mommy and so I would slip out of bed I was kind of frustrated because now I'm in reaction mode. I would pour him his milk and I was like, do I go back to bed? I need to get up. The kids are up now. And like I had been, you know, up till two or 3am That's why I was still in bed. And yeah, I started to realize that I I need to create myself in the mornings.
30:03
And I developed this whole power creation formula for myself, then I started to build out these practices, you know, you can't do it all at once. But it was things like at first it started with a walk around the block. And then after a couple weeks it was to oxer. Block. And then I started to attempt to jog and then winter showed up. And I was like, I guess I'm getting a gym membership. I've not really done that before. And it was just about this process of creating myself creating
Dana Frost 30:32
energy, I love that the power of creation, I just am loving that. Because I can I can see it and feel it. That the power of creation where we do get to create ourselves, and all the little decisions that you can make, who do you want to be? So a lot of the audience members, a lot of them, and mostly women, a lot of them are on the other side of menopause, you know, when you you're not there yet, but when you go through menopause, I see it as this this invitation.
Dana Frost 31:08
If you haven't made peace with anything in your life, menopause, is that invitation make peace because you're at a crossroads. How do you want to go forward? So you know, you've made a lot of decisions about what your life looks like up to this point. Maybe you're an empty nester or, you know, maybe you've, you know, you're at the end of your career, and you're looking forward. And so much gets stirred up in that space. If they're transition spaces right at her, you know, when you become an adult, whatever, just the transition spaces. Yes.
Dana Frost 31:43
You know, the menopausal state is the invitation to make peace and decide how do I want to go forward. And that is so powerful, because then you can you can create anything you want to create, but it does take it takes purposed decision and action, right. And your system encapsulates all of that so beautifully. Awesome. Yeah. So you started taking action. And I I'm appreciating because I've worked with women in my coaching practice. I initially times have changed now.
Dana Frost 32:18
But I will tell you initially, I had a lot of pushback, that feels selfish, you know, these things that were coming up in the coaching process uncovering that, you know, self care and direction towards self actually will make you far more effective in all of the areas of your life. And, you know, there was this a little bit of pushback. And yet, what we can see is that when you start making, taking action for yourself, your whole system begins to relax. And people feel that the energy that is that positive energy, like taking a walk around the block, your children could feel that your spouse, can you you feel at first. Yeah,
Katie Richardson 33:07
I mean, what's so interesting is, as women, as mothers, as spouses, it's natural to take care of others. And it can be as you're describing difficult to pay attention to ourselves, because we think that to do one requires the exclusion of the other. And that's just simply not true. And what you're saying is we can if when we take care of ourselves, we're at a better capacity to then take care of everybody that we love, doesn't exclude the other. Now
Dana Frost 33:36
that I that is very true. And when we talk about energy, I think, you know, when we're in a transitional period, or we feel, you know, acute stress on the system, that tendency we either want to shut down, or it depends what our pattern is, we either want to shut down, or we want to go hyperspeed. So we'll have you know, the nervous system. It has its own pattern, it's individual for everyone. But typically, we see those two patterns.
Dana Frost 34:06
And if you're wanting to shut down, it takes energy to make energy. So as you explained, your two year old getting out of bed, and you're up all night for your work, and you're exhausted. And so it seems impossible to think that you can go take a walk, and that wouldn't make you more tired. But when we spend energy, we actually get more energy.
Katie Richardson 34:29
Yeah, something that has really served me and in that moment in particular, and like so many subsequent moments after is really assessing that when I believe that how do I feel? Well, I feel disempowered. I feel behind I feel like a victim. I feel like my life's out of control. Right? And so understanding how to shift our beliefs, you know, none of us are immune to resistance. None of us are right, we all experience stress for all of mortality, isn't it? Part of being a human.
35:01
And so the question is Where can you be empowered in that? Where can you put yourself in the driver's seat? And I have moments, Dana, where I get hijacked by my nervous system. And I'm like in this downward spiral, of course. And I had a moment just two weeks ago, where I was like, Oh, wow, this is interesting. I'm in quite a pit right now. I'm believing I'm worthless, that thing, and I'm like, isn't that interesting? And, and I had to really consciously ask myself, what would I need to believe to, like, start crawling out of this.
35:34
And I noticed the, you know, habitual stories that I created in my young ages that I was believing in those moments, and I had lots of evidence to support them. And I was like, when I believe that I feel totally worthless. And I want to hide from my spouse, I want to hide from my kids. And I don't want to do that anymore. And so I need to believe something different and new. And sometimes it's just that maybe I'm not worthless. Maybe that's all we can do in that moment to just start to step out of it. But recognizing that there's something I'm holding to be true. That's destroying me right now. I actually have control over that. Are you familiar
Dana Frost 36:12
with The Work of Byron Katie? Oh, yeah. Okay. That's the model that I go to. That's the words. Yeah, that's that work? Yes. Yeah, that's, it's so very powerful. I've talked about it a lot on the podcast, very, very powerful. Tell me this. So I have, I know like, in my process, I have to get in to my body, and I have a pacemaker. So I literally stress, literally burn the electrical conduction of my heart out. And even though the electrophysiologist say, oh, man, I don't really think so. It's just a worn out body part at age 45. I know, my experiences for the decade before that.
Dana Frost 36:53
And I know, there were times I literally felt like my heart was on fire. So I had to learn how do I come in to my body? How do I come into my heart, and really honor what's there. And then, from coming into the heart, we again, I said, we soften. And we you know, the heart is so intelligent, it has an intelligence that there are no stories to it. It's just pure love. And so in your process, Katie, I know you said you're a woman of faith, I'm sure that that factors into your process, is there anything you would, you know, could share about that aspect of otally dealing with stress and using the the heart for that? Yeah,
Katie Richardson 37:43
there's something that I can share with you and you who are listening, that is really profound, but it's so simple, that it's easy to dismiss it. When I am experiencing negative feelings and emotions, it's so overwhelming to me that I just shut down. And I mentioned earlier, I kind of disassociate and I bury my head in the sand, and I only look at the little things that I want to look at. But I can't I can't take action from a place of truth and be empowered if I do that.
38:16
And so those negative feelings that are overwhelming, they actually need to be defined. And so what I do in those moments is I get out a pencil and my journal. And I write down the things that I don't want anybody to see that I don't want anybody to know that I'm afraid to look at that I I'm scrolling or eating or watching Netflix as a way to numb myself from those things, right? And I'll ask questions like, what am i Believing right now? What do I not want to look at? What do I not want to face? Speaking of Christianity, there's an incredible story, the children of Israel being bent by fiery serpents and Moses goes to God, what do we do? People are dying.
39:02
And I actually have been bitten by a poisonous snake in my life and was hospitalized for three days. So this is a story that for years really bothered me because I know that pain, and I know how terrifying it is. And he was hit by a Copperhead snake was pretty much like a rattlesnake. Super poisonous. And the answer that came from God is what he tells Moses to create a brass serpent, put it on a stick and have everybody look at the very thing that's poisoning them and that they're terrified of. For years, Dean, I hated this story. I'm like, What, no, get that thing out of their life. Don't look at the snake. Right? Yeah, but through age and wisdom.
39:47
I have learned that when there is something that is poisoning me something that is stressing me something that is terrifying me, I need to turn and look and there's power and strength in confronting what is happening. And journaling is a powerful way to do this. I had somebody who was considering hiring me and intimidated the crap out of me. I'm so intimidated by this guy, that when I got on the phone with him, I just turned into a wet noodle. And like normally I would show up really powerfully with clients, and I'm not afraid to push back on them.
40:28
And I was just a yes, ma'am with him. And it was horrible. And he was in conversation with the Vice President of the United States. He had big celebrities that were his clients, and he had a lot of influence and power. And so and I let that intimidate me. And my husband pointed it out. He was in the studio with me after I'd had one of my calls with him. And he was like, What happened to powerful Katie? And I was like, Don't you tell me, I wanted to give him all my excuses. And when he pointed out to me, I was like, you know, my ego hated it.
40:57
But there was a part of me that was like, he's right. And so what did I do? I went and I journaled, and I said, What am I afraid of? And I wrote a sentence. And I was like, oh, yeah, I am afraid of that. And then I had to say anything else? Oh, yeah. Then there was another sentence, another sentence, another set, I filled up two pages, two pages. And it was what do you need to do in this, like, from looking at this previously, it was undefined. It was unknown, which makes it totally actionable.
41:24
So one 1%. Now that it was defined, I was like, we need to have powerful conversation. And my fear was, He's impossible to get on the phone with. I knelt down. I said a prayer. I told God, I need your help in this. My phone starts ringing Dana. And it's.
Dana Frost 41:45
Yeah, I mean, I believe her. Yeah, of course, that happened. Yeah, of course, that happened. Yeah. That is awesome. So
41:52
to answer your question, you know, when we have stressors, when we have fear, for me, the process that works for me is to get out of my head and actually write it. Now your brain is going to fight that and says, Well, what if my spouse sees this? Or what if so, what if someday my kids see this 20 years from now, right? Well, just set those aside for the time being, and just get out of your head. Because there's something magical that happens when you can see your fears from the outside. And they're not just attacking you in the darkness on the inside, when they're outside you, then you start to feel like you have actually influence.
Dana Frost 42:30
Yeah, and you know, what, Katie, what's striking me is that the writing, we started this part of the conversation with how do we get embodied? Well, the writing, it actually get you embody and very differently from working on your laptop, it's not the same. So that's the power of writing is you actually, that you're being embodied? When you take your pen and you use your body to get it out? And yeah, I mean, you getting it out of yourself is absolutely necessary. And I think that that's why the coaching model, I would say is so very powerful.
Dana Frost 43:07
Because, I mean, this has been true in my life, it's been really helpful to have someone else helped me get to what the truth is, it's less scary, when you will, if you're an effective coach, you're encouraging and you create a safe space. And so it's a safe space to tell yourself the truth and to, you know, to have space jointly shared with another person,
Katie Richardson 43:32
which is so key for the truth being able to reveal this right, you have to
Dana Frost 43:37
feel safe to feel safe. Yeah, very, I love that. Okay, we could go on and on and on and on and on and on. Yeah, I'm just really appreciating your perspective, your model. Everything that you have shared about stress. It's super powerful. And very effective. Yeah. So thank you. Okay, Katie, before we go, and maybe we can have another conversation in the future. But before we go, I asked all my guests this one question. What does feeling younger while growing older mean to you?
44:10
sauce makes me emotional. Yeah. I think so many women can relate to this. Growing up, I just was so uncomfortable in my own body. Right. I mentioned I'm a child of the 80s and 90s. It was the era of the supermodel and these long, lean beautiful bodies and I was muscular. I was a gymnast. I was an athlete. And I was kind of thick compared to what I was seeing on the magazines. And I just felt so much shame in my body. And Dana, I'm 43 and I'm the most comfortable I've ever been in my body. I actually also look the best you've ever looked in. I am like super athletic.
44:50
Something that I've been working on lately is my handstands. And I did a 22nd hand standing. Awesome, amazing, amazing such good balance and strength. inks and it's been, it's been a lot of work to strengthen my body. And you know, I've had four kids, many of them 10 pounds. And so I've got the stretch marks and signs of age, but I'm just more comfortable in my skin than I've ever been. And that to me has me feeling young as I grow old. ad that sells. But
Dana Frost 45:25
that is so beautiful. Thank you. And thank you so much. Yeah, I honor that. I see you. Thank you so much for sharing you.
Katie Richardson 45:33
Thank you. Yeah, this has been an incredible conversation. Yeah. I mean, if people want to hear more, I have a podcast called what's working now you can follow me on Instagram, Katie dot live send me a DM. I love getting DMS from listeners and I personally respond to those. So I would love to hear from you who are listening.
Dana Frost 45:53
Yeah, that is wonderful. We'll be sure to put your website and your all of your contacts in the show notes. We'll be sure that everybody has those easily accessible. So, Katie, thank you for being a guest this week on the Vitally You® podcast. Thank
Katie Richardson 46:07
you, Dana. This has been incredible.