Spring Re-Release: The Mindset Makeover - Healing for Happiness

We've reached the final month of our Season 1 Re-Release series! During the next four weeks, we're featuring conversations all about your possibility: who you're becoming, what your future self can look forward to, and how to prepare for what's ahead.

To kick things off, we're revisiting our very first conversation with Hero and Mindset Coach Katie Wee.

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Mindset coaching helps transform our thinking to serve our goals and aspirations better. It aims to align our thought patterns with the kind of life we desire, enabling us to achieve our highest potential. A good mindset is also crucial for achieving personal success and fulfillment. When you believe in yourself and your abilities, you are more likely to set and reach your goals. 

Hero and Mindset Coach Katie Wee shares how she helps women optimize their mindset so they can experience more happiness, fulfillment, and personal success. She shares her four pillars of happiness and why meeting your future self is so important in unlocking your happiness.

What You Will Learn

• [09:33] Why it's important to think about our mindset every day
• [14:18] How to raise your self-worth and start getting the things you deserve
• [19:30] The four pillars of happiness
• [19:39] #1 Learn from life
• [21:46] #2 Being your best friend 
• [27:20] #3 Taking responsibility for your happiness
• [29:42] #4 Taking intentional actions
• [35:11] Katie’s childhood trauma and the mindset shift she has had to have for healing
• [42:22] Her Happy Camp retreat and how it has helped women reconnect with themselves
• [45:04] What Katie has learned about people in her journey of helping others

Resources Mentioned

• The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level by Gay Hendricks

Let’s Connect!

Katie Wee

Website | Instagram

Chandler Stroud

Website | LinkedIn | Instagram

Happiness Academy is now Healing Heroines, a signature space for women who are ready to feel more grounded, more peaceful, and more aligned — inside and out. 

Download a complimentary Healing Roadmap to discover our Past, Present, and Possible framework.

Want personalized guidance for your healing journey? Book a call with Chandler!

Mixing and editing provided by Next Day Podcast.

Transcript

Hey guys, it's Chandler and welcome to The Healing Heroes. 

I promise you (music)

I'm Chandler Stroud, an executive wife and busy mom of two who after years of living with anxiety health struggles and an unshakeable feeling like I should be happier, made a profound discovery that changed everything. Join me on a journey where unexpected paths lead to healing and more happiness. On this show, we will explore unconventional ways to unlock more joy in your own life. With the help of my very own healers and trusted advisors, the healing Heroes. 

Hey everyone. There is so much to cover in today's episode and it is full of incredible insights from my friend and mindset Coach Katie, we today you'll learn how to put Katie's four pillars of happiness to work in your own life and why meeting your future self is so important in unlocking happiness. I'm going to be really honest with you guys for a minute. I was a bit skeptical at first about mindset coaching and how effective it would be for me personally, but I got curious enough to experiment through Teddy Mellon Camp's all in program, which if you're curious about all in and accountability coaching, I highly encourage you to go back earlier in the season and listen to Bonnie's episodes since we talk all things all in and accountability coaching. But Katie through all in offered group coaching sessions called Vibe Tribe. So it was sort of a low cost way for me to experiment with mindset coaching out of the gate. 

And when I tell you guys I joined that call thinking I was probably going to hop off the Zoom halfway through, it completely transformed this healing journey of mine and where I am today. I can tell you I was so moved by the exercise we did in the group session that evening. I got a bit emotional and ultimately ended up signing up for one-on-one mindset coaching sessions with Katie, which I've continued over the last several months and actually worth sharing with you guys. I found the time I spent with Katie so valuable that I recently returned from her happy Camp Wellness retreat in Mexico, and I even invited my husband down for his birthday and I think he was even surprised by how meaningful the experience was. I of course, shared his sentiments so much so that I booked Katie's next Happy Camp retreat in Sedona this September. 

So very excited to head there with her in the fall. With that and knowing we have a lot to cover today, let's dive in. First a little bit more about my friend Katie. Katie is a mindset coach, speaker, writer, actress, survivor, and the founder of Happy Camp. Her life has been a journey to empowerment and she therefore has a passion for helping others uncover their own greatness within. She believes wholeheartedly that life is meant to be enjoyed and helps high performing individuals learn to optimize their mindset for happiness, fulfillment, and personal success through her mindset coaching and speaking. You may have seen Katie on TV shows such as Modern Family, Hawaii, five oh New Girl or General Hospital, or have read her writing in Newsweek or the Huffington Post. She believes in the power of storytelling to connect one another and is committed to sharing her creative gifts to create positive change in the world at Happy Camp. She teaches others how to love themselves on the deepest level and to use manifestation to create what they want in their lives. So with that, Katie, welcome. I love having you here. I'm so excited to talk to you today. Thank you so much for being with us. 

Oh my goodness, thank you so much for having me. I am so happy to be here. This is already so fun. 

I am so excited to introduce you to listeners and I'm eager to get into your background and all of the great work you're doing, but let's start at the beginning just to set a baseline for everyone here today. Can you share a quick overview of what mindset coaching is and why someone would reach out to you for help? 

Like you said in my bio, I believe we are here to be happy to experience joy, to enjoy life, and so often our own way of thinking can keep us from feeling happy. So my job is to help my clients become aware of their subconscious belief patterns, what's running in the background, what's actually dictating their thoughts, their behaviors, what's actually creating their future so that they can actually look at those beliefs and go, okay, actually maybe I want to modify this belief. Maybe I don't believe this belief anymore. Maybe this is outdated. It used to serve me, it's not me anymore. I didn't even really realize it was still in my mind. I didn't know I was still feeling that way from that time in my life. It's helping unpack a little bit of the way that we've interpreted our past to look at how that's affecting our present, to understand how that's creating our future, because most people don't want their same life just on repeat. 

They want more for their future than what they have experienced in their past. They want to be able to step into that amazing relationship or start their company or make more money or find that perfect home or to just feel happier than they've been used to feeling or more fulfilled. And all of those things are so important and I love reaching goals like that for myself, and I love helping my clients reach those goals too. So mindset coaching is a way to modify our way of thinking for our own highest benefit so that the way we're thinking, which is very important, can actually serve us in creating the life we really want. 

I love that. That was such an articulate answer. Thank you for sharing that. Absolutely, and I think it really resonates because I have to say to your point, we think about what do we want in the future by way of where do I want to live? Do I want to be married? Do I want to have kids? What job do I want to have? I don't know that we go deeper than that and really think about what do I want to feel? What do I want my life to look like and really bring that vision to life for ourselves. And until you and I started working together, that's something that no one ever really encouraged me to do or think about, and it really was pretty transformational to start really putting together a clear visual of how I wanted to feel and what I want my life to look like. I think it's something we sometimes overlook because we're so stuck in what happened yesterday or what's happening today or even what you need to do tomorrow. I think it's hard for people to look that far ahead. 

I think you're so right and I think that most of us are just trying to get through the day to day. We're like, I'm trying to get through this hour or this day I don't have the bandwidth to think about my future. So many women especially are split in so many different directions of being pulled by their family, their work, trying to take care of themselves. This idea of creating a future sometimes can feel like a privilege they can't afford. But the thing is, we're all going to live in the future, but the question is what future? The future you want or the future you don't want. And I've found that what you're creating is completely tied to the way that you're thinking in the present. So the best way to take care of the future is to be really consciously inhabiting the present and aware of the way that you're choosing to think about things, the perspective that you're taking when you're thinking about the future and how you're utilizing what happened in your past to create that future rather than just harping on the past, living in the past, doing in the past. 

We're really looking at the past to understand how did I get the way I am? How did this being that is Katie right now, that is Chandler right now, come to think this way. And so we utilize the past and we honor the past to look at how that's created, the present, and then we look at how we can inhabit the present even more fully so that we can create the future that we're actually so excited to live in. Not the one where we're like, oh, here we are again. It's another summer where I haven't done the things I wanted to do. It's another New year's where I didn't achieve the goals I wanted to achieve. It's another year of me not really being who I want to be in life, but I think it's so important for each of us to be exactly who we came here to be, that unique signature. 

Each person's is different, and when we're all fully in who we're meant to be, we're happier. We're more lit up when we're excited about life and all the people around us are too. It makes the world around us better. So I believe that by living our best lives, we make the world better. It's not a selfish endeavor. It's actually quite beneficial for our families, our friends, for the people that get inspired by you to take their own journey and that when we're all happy we contribute to a world that's a lot more fun to live in. 

I totally agree with that, Katie, and I think it really jives with a lot of the other things we've talked about on the show thus far about how your energy really impacts those around you. And I think it's important for people to kind of start there and know that that is something that they can control and have power over in their day to day. 

Absolutely. 

You've done a great job of explaining what mindset coaching is and how it can really affect individuals. Can you take it a step further and tell us a little bit more about how in your experience mindset coaching has impacted those who have sought your advice and guidance? Why do you think it's so important to be thinking about our mindset every day? 

It has been so wonderful watching my clients change their lives. Through our time together, I've had clients manifest their dream relationship. A woman came to happy camp and wrote down everything she wanted in a partner down to he was going to have a lumberjack aesthetic. We all laughed like, okay, cool. He's going to be like a lumberjack. She's like, I dunno. I want this sexy woodsman lumberjack. I want to travel the world with him. A few months later, she sends me a picture of her traveling, doing a cross crunchy road trip with her now boyfriend who looks like a hot lumberjack. It was just magical. And then the client who just manifested her dream house, she really wanted to be able to find a home in a certain area and she wanted to be able to have that life feel happy and social, and she found this perfect home and this community that's very social, she's made all these new friends already. 

I have clients who have stepped into bigger roles, who have kind of owned who they really are, who've been able to realize that maybe they've been holding themselves back with their own lack of confidence, their own not believing in themselves fully, and they've stepped into bigger roles with title bumps and more money. I've had clients start their own business or podcast people jumping into this is my real passion and how can I figure out how to do this and how can I really do this in a way that will be fulfilling and satisfying to me? I've had clients change their bodies and their relationship to their bodies completely of just the thing that was really tripping them up and their daily unhappiness was just this constant critical nature with their body, this constant desire to lose weight or to be in a physique that's different from the physique they have now. 

And those clients, one of them said to me, I just got tired of all the drama of doing well on my diet and then blowing it and then doing well on my diet and then blowing it. I just got sick of my own drama because I started to see through that cycle, I started to become aware through the work we're doing of how I do that to myself. And I stopped wanting to do that to myself and instead of doing super diet and then super going crazy with my food, I just found that middle path and that middle of eating pretty well, eating the best I can has just naturally really worked for me. And now she's just dropping the weight naturally and she's in the body that she wanted to be in. But not through any method of self-loathing or self-criticism or degrading herself through the method of self-love of truly learning to show up for herself compassionately. 

And I think that that's the biggest thing that impacts my client's lives is that when you learn to really love yourself deeply and not just on the way of like, I'm going to give myself a bathtub and a face mask, that's great too. Of course, don't stop doing that, but really look at agreed, agreed, right? Keep doing that. Bring some chocolate covered strawberries. But really looking at the way that we're treating ourselves, what belief systems are we allowing ourselves to keep living by? And if there's a belief system in there of like, I'm not pretty enough, I'm not good enough as I am, then everything that we chase in order to fill that hole will contribute to non self-love. Every time we try to do something to feel like I am enough from the place of I'm trying to heal, feeling like I'm not enough, it won't work. 

We have to actually go in and heal the belief we have to go, you know what? Why are you enough? Give me evidence. Show me in your life all of the things that prove to us that you are enough. I think the biggest thing that my clients get is self-love. They start to learn how to love themselves for real in a way that's actionable, not just the fruity stuff on the surface, but the actual feeling of leveling up our belief system. Because if you have a belief, for example of I'm not successful, I'm not successful, which is one of my clients was in this place, I'm just not that smart or that successful, we had to actually go in and heal that belief instead of keep trying to take the action that goes like, oh, will this make me successful? Would this make me successful? Instead of chasing and trying to fill the void with external accomplishments, we're like, let's build that belief from the inside. So it's really healing our belief system and letting that trickle on outward. It's the most holistic self-love to go all the way to the nucleus of ourselves and start to work from that point rather than trying to change the external to start feeling different on the inside. I 

Love that. That's so well said. And I think what's really interesting, especially that I found in working with you is with respect to self-worth, I think one of the things that was so powerful about working with you is, and I've said this before on the show, I didn't realize that my self-worth was in the condition it was in when we started meeting. So what do you do with these clients who maybe on the surface look really confident and look comfortable in their own skin and would go into that meeting and have faith and trust in their ability to succeed in that environment but still have really low? What does that look like and how do you work through that with your clients? 

Absolutely. It's so interesting because the area where a client is having problems always leads me to the limiting belief that's plaguing their existence. And there's usually more than one, but the main one, and I think that when we work on one at a time, it's easier to kind of play. We're not like whack-a-mole like, okay, I'm going to work on this thing. It's not like this and this and this because all of us have self-worth issues, myself included. I have not met a single person who does not. I think it's just part of the human condition, and I love helping people empower themselves and get their self-worth up up so they can actually start attracting the things that they deserve, the people that are on their level, the opportunities that make them excited. That's what happens when we love all of our self-worth. There's just more good things on that level come to us. 

It's so cool to watch that happen. So if I look at the area where someone is saying, this is where I'm experiencing stress or anxiety or sadness or frustration or guilt or shame, we look at that and we say, okay, well what are you believing trying to get down to? What is that person believing? And once we uncover that limiting belief, it's really just about doing the work on it. It's starting with Byron Katie is an incredible teacher who has given us a framework of how to look at limiting beliefs, and I've adopted a lot of my work from her, but do you know this is true? Do you absolutely know this is true? And sometimes the first question is like, yeah, I think it's true. And then it's like, okay, do you absolutely know it's true? Would it hold up in court? 

I love that. Could you absolutely get everyone in your life to agree that this is true? And usually the answer then is like, no, I don't think it's totally true. I get it. It's not maybe in court going to hold up, okay, so I can understand that maybe it's not true, which is the first step. And then asking, what are you doing when you're believing this belief? What happens? And they're like, when I'm believing that I'm not enough, for example, if that's the limiting belief we're dealing with, they're like, oh my gosh, I'm scrolling on social media. I am eating. I am drinking too much. I am holed up in bed and I don't want to get out. I am canceling all my plans and just trying to stay inside and play small, whatever the thing is. And it's like, okay, interesting, interesting. Now we're getting somewhere. 

Usually some of those behaviors are part of what's contributing to the problem that they've talked about in the beginning. It's like those behaviors are making it challenging for them to walk the way they want to walk, for example, if they don't think they're enough, they're, when I'm in that meeting presenting, I'm terrified. I am shaking, I am sweating, I'm freaking out. I'm in my head going, oh, I can't do this. I can't do this. I'm not good enough at this. Somebody else should do this. And then we ask them from after what happens and you believe this belief, well, who would you be without this belief? Just who would that version of you be? And they're like, wait, what do you mean? If you just didn't have that belief, if it just wasn't in your head, who would you be? And they're like, oh, oh my gosh, I'd be happy. 

I'd be feeling empowered and confident at work. I would walk down the halls knowing that I deserve to take up space. I would be putting myself out there for opportunities. I might start my own business. They start thinking about who they would be with that giant block removed and then start asking, well, what's the opposite of that belief? And if it's I'm not enough, I am enough. Okay. And how would that version of you act? Well would be the actions that she takes. Walk me through a day in the life of her starting from wake up to go to bed every little moment. What's different? Does she actually take the time to curl her hair and get ready for work because she's excited to go? Or is she spending all that time doom scrolling, thinking about how poorly this presentation is going to go, walking out the door, 10 minutes late, feeling unprepared, asking just how does that version of you show up? 

And then we just start to create a plan from there. And between sessions, that's the action plan. Go do that, go be that. So it's helping people act as if, and the more we start to act that way, the more it starts to reprogram those beliefs because you can reprogram a belief by choosing a different action, and then you go, oh, well, I must be worthy of taking up space because look, here I am taking up space. Katie told me to do that thing. I'm doing it. And even though I don't fully believe that I deserve to take up space, here I am in this moment, taking up space, letting it happen, feeling good in it, and that starts to heal us. And when our life becomes about healing and in a fun, enjoyable way, it gets magnetic. We become magnetic to other people and ourselves to opportunities for ourselves that help lift us up even higher. 

I love that word, thinking about magnetic people. I think we all know them, right? Those people that you just want to be around all the time because they're so at peace and comfortable in their own skin. And you just sense that there is a deep rooted sense of self-worth there 

When we're around those people and they have enough self-worth to just sit there and be present and be themselves without this constant narrative in their head of hating themselves. We're like, how do you do that? I want to be around you. You doing it makes me feel like I can do it. 

Yeah, it's so true. It's so true. Thank you for sharing all of that, Katie. Of course. I am curious, since we started talking about some of the work you do with your clients, can you speak a little bit more about the four pillars of happiness that you teach your clients when you're working with them? 

So these are four of the strategies that have helped me so much in my life to become happier, and they're the four things that I teach my clients to really pay attention to. Number one, learn from life. Life is here for you. And I think that so often we think little challenges that come up are hindrances in our success path, but they are the success path. Dealing with that little problem, that hindrance, that little bit of resistance, that friction that thing in our life that we think is just a slowdown, looking at it and going, why is this showing up in my life and how could I relate to this differently? How could I relate to this situation differently? What am I believing about myself that makes this situation painful and frustrating? Is your sister-in-law texting you to be like, hi, I just want to make sure you're coming on Sunday. 

And you're like, oh, that's so annoying. What is that for you? What is that? It's like she's just checking in, but you don't like it when people think that you're not on top of your stuff. Well, that's a normal thing for her to check in. Maybe. Do you need to look at, do you think that you're someone who's not on top of your stuff? If you were, what would that mean about you? Oh, it would mean that I'm irresponsible. Do you think you're irresponsible? No. Do you really know that you're not irresponsible? Do you think on some level that you are and they're like, maybe on some level I do think I am a little bit irresponsible. Okay, well, let's look at that. Let's heal that. Let's heal your inner belief system rather than just trying to blame other people or blame other things in life for why we're unhappy. 

Let's look at how we can take that vertically rather than horizontally, which means we're battling it out on the horizontal plane with everybody else. How can we make that just our work? Every single situation in life that happens is grist for the mill, it's an opportunity for evolution. Good things, bad things, mediocre things, meh things. They're all opportunities for evolution. So taking everything that happens in life as an opportunity for us to learn more about our own perspective, more about where we sit in our own growth path and more about what we want. So just using that nonjudgmentally, just using it and learning from life because when we do life is just constantly presenting us with our perfect education for our own evolution and our own evolution equals our own happiness. The more you go, the better life gets. It's so cool. It's like the best reward system in the world. So learning from life is a way to get there. Number two, be your own best friend. Oh, this is so important. The longest relationship that we're ever going to have with anyone is the relationship we have with ourselves, right? 

So true, yes, forever. 

And we're talking to ourselves all day long, and so many of us are so mean. If you are listening to this and you have ever been mean to yourself in your head or you've been mean to yourself up until you listen to this right now, how about just take a moment and go, how is this serving me? How is this me being hard on myself mean to myself, punitive with myself? How is it serving me? It's actually contributing to my own unhappiness. It makes it feel heavy when I try to take action because I've been so mean to myself. It's now hard to make that step forward to actually do the things I need to do. And wouldn't it just be better if we could live inside our head with somebody nice? And that doesn't happen overnight. That negative voice inside our head formed over years, decades. 

But can we start just creating a kind voice? Can we start speaking to ourself like we're talking to our best friend or our daughter or our niece or somebody who loves us is talking to us? Maybe we have to replace that voice with our mom or somebody that if we're talking to ourselves, we want to make sure that that relationship is one where we have this desire to not hurt that other person. So I often think of my little niece's seven years old. I never want to do anything to hurt that little angel. So I start talking to myself as if I was my 7-year-old niece. Think of her. And when we do that, we make our whole experience with ourselves so much more frictionless. We don't have to be living in this dungeon of berating and self-loathing. We can be in this place of just like it's nice in here and it takes work to get there, but it's just being cognizant of those thought patterns, catching ourself when we're doing it and replacing those mean thoughts with supportive and kind thoughts instead. 

And I love that tangible exercise because I do think it's so much easier to be cruel to ourselves than to someone else we love. So I think that's a really good tool for people to use, women to use in thinking about how to be kinder to themselves in their own head, because sometimes it's hard to just say, be nice to yourself. It's like you're in this pattern of doing and seeing these things to yourself for so many years. It's really hard to snap out of it. So I love the example you gave about thinking about someone that you really care about and would never be mean to and pretend that you're that person. And I think that's a really accessible way for people to try this. 

Just try it on for a day. And you might forget, try it on for as many minutes per day as you can. But our relationship with ourself is so important, and the degree to which we're hurting ourselves is the degree to which we're manifesting pain problems and frustration in our life. They're not different. And so people often think that just being nice to yourself, it's like, well, who cares? It's just me. I don't need to be nice to myself. It's like, well, if you care about the future that you're creating and the life that you're living in and how happy you feel in the external circumstances, know that your external circumstances are a mirror of your internal world. So if you want different external circumstances, you got to start being kinder to yourself. And I think myself included, a lot of people do not start being nice to themself until they realize that there's something on the line. Like, oh, it's just your future on the line. And when I was in my life, single, unhappy, not fulfilled in my career, frustrated, I was like, okay, there's things I want. And once I realized I had to be kind to myself in order to get those things, I started being kind to myself. And then now I love my job. I have the best fiance in the world. I love my life, and I got there by loving myself. So be your own best friend is number two. 

I love that. Also, sidebar, Billy, your fiance is the best. Yes, he really is just the nicest guy. So I love that you manifested him and we'll have a whole nother episode on manifestation, guys. But I mean, Billy is just really great. And really quickly before we move on to number three, one thing you said that I loved and I just want to reinforce and make sure everyone heard, is that your external world is a mirror of your internal self. So that is so true. I cannot stamp that co-sign it enough. How you feel about yourself and what your world looks like internally will create your external circumstances. So I just think that's, if you take nothing else from today's conversation, guys, that is a really critical one. A really critical one. 

Totally. And a quick example of that, you might be like, what are you guys talking about? Is let's say somebody believes that they're not special. They always got picked over, passed over. They didn't get that reinforcement as a child. Their life didn't present them with opportunities to feel special. Then they date someone who also thinks that they're not special. And so then you're in this relationship with a guy who thinks you're whatever, and then maybe he plans guys' nights on your anniversary, he forgot it was your anniversary, and you're like, wow, no, I really don't feel special. Or maybe when you come home and you're really excited about something and you're like, I think I want to do this thing. I just realized this and I want to do this. He's like, cool, whatever. And your external world is now reinforcing your limiting belief system, and you chose that because subconsciously it was more comfortable to you how you feel about yourself, but it's not what you want. So it's comfortable but not desirable, and that's how we end up in lives where our external matches our internal. 

I love that. I thank you for bringing that to life for everybody. So it's less theoretical and something that people can really grasp and feels a lot more accessible. Okay, so be own best friend. And then what's the next one? The next 

One is take responsibility for your happiness. This one was big for me. When we are looking to other people to make us happy when we're like, my partner will be the one to make me happy, which is funny given the example I just gave. But yeah, your partner should be helping your happiness, but you're the one responsible for creating your happiness. When we think our partner, our family, our job, our weather in the city we live in, other things external from us are supposed to make us happy, then we're always relying on those things, those people to make us happy. We're not responsible for it ourselves. We're like somebody who can't drink water unless a restaurant is willing to fill up our water bottle for us. I hate asking for that when you're like, hi, excuse me, can I fill up my water bottle here? 

We're somebody that can't nourish ourselves When we choose to be responsible for our own happiness and go, okay, this is my task. I'm going to own this task. This is going to be all mine. We go, okay, now let's get busy creating it. And this is something we do at Happy Camp where we really look at what's your happiness prescription? What do you need in your life to feel happy? How do you create that for yourself? And looking at the way we're treating our bodies, the way we're treating our minds, the activities that we're doing, the people we're spending time with, the information we're consuming, the way we're distancing ourselves from our devices or not the things that make us happy and how often we're putting them into our week, our month, our year. If you have a desire, a passion for travel, but you're never traveling, well, you got to put that on the yearly goal. 

There's going to be one trip a year where you're going somewhere and exploring and letting that part of you light up. So it's going, what do I need to be happy? How do I create that for myself and then getting busy doing it, and I really help my clients create that plan. And if you're listening at home and you're like, how do I do that for myself? Make a little note in your phone. You could do it right now of all the things that make you happy. And it might be like this smoothie from this place, or watching Gilmore Girls with a Glass of Wine, that's one of my favorites. Or seeing these friends or listening to this podcast or taking a nap. What are the things that make you happy? And then how do you put those at least one thing per day into your day? 

That's just for joy. A bath at the end of the day, it's journaling. It's a communicative dinner with your partner where you don't have your devices out and you're just downloading your days with each other. How do you do those things on purpose? Take responsibility for your happiness. Huge one. And the last one is take intentional action. So once you understand what your limiting beliefs are, which you can get to the bottom of a happy camp or in coaching, you start to create a pattern for how are you going to act like the person a plan, act like the person who believes the opposite of that belief. How does the empowered version of you show up in your life, the version who knows that they're worthy of love, the version of you who knows that they're beautiful, the version of you who believes they can take up space, the version of you, who knows they deserve to be heard, the version of you who knows that they are good? How does that version of you show up in their life? And it's going to be in some ways opposite action of what you've been doing because you would've already been doing those things if you believed that. But in taking intentional action, we help create that feeling for ourself, that belief system gets reinforced by becoming that version. So that's how we change our lives. That's how we manifest our dream lives. It's very, very fun. I obviously get excited when I talk about it. 

You do, and I love it. You really light up. I mean, I'm sitting here, keep talking, keep talking. Just I could listen to you all day. I mean, you were in such a flow state whenever you start talking on this topic, and I love it. Thank you. But the other thing you said that I loved as you walked through the four components of happiness as you teach them is like it is healing, but you don't talk about it in a way that's negative. I really think healing is just getting curious about yourself and doing that audit in a way. How am I feeling? What do I believe? What do I want to believe? And it seems so simple, but it is really, really powerful. Really powerful. 

Yeah, I believe healing is fun and can be fun. There's parts of it that are heavy no matter what. There's parts of facing ourselves that are hard, especially when you go into those places where we haven't been able to have compassion for ourselves and we're able to start having compassion that can be really beautiful and tear filled. But what I love about healing is that I've always kind of been someone who's like, what's in it for me for better, for worse, 

Aren't we all Katie? 

Yeah. I think everyone's like, why would I do that? Why would I do healing? My life journey took me through healing and not exactly a way I expected or even wanted at the time, but what I realized is that the more I healed, the better my life got. I started looking more beautiful to myself in the mirror. I started having less wrinkles. I started having less health problems and feeling really good in my body. I organically, naturally reached the goal. Weight had been trying to reach my whole adult life. I had better relationships with my friends. I manifested my perfect partner, my perfect soulmate. I created a business in a really short amount of time that now has helped hundreds of people create happiness in their life. And that it just shows me that there's really no limit to what we can create and who we can become and what we can have if we're willing to do the hardest work, which is loving ourself. 

And most people think, well, I'll do the hard work of climbing a ladder at this job and raising three or four children and waking up at 4:00 AM to do my workout, and I will do that hard, but I won't do go inward hard. And it's like, oh, babe, you're missing all the good stuff. Because if you do the go inward hard, all of that other stuff will change in a really beautiful way in ways that you don't expect, but you just have to be willing to do the healing thing. But for me, the reason it's fun is because life getting better and better and better is fun. Stepping into more money, more freedom, more enjoyment, more happiness, more relaxation, more flow, more fulfillment for me has been fun. So I look at it like if you have goals and you're a goal getter and you love the feeling of improving, which I love that feeling, then healing is for you. And it doesn't have to be some sad thing where there's healing and ugh, it can be from the happy camp, you're going to hear Fleetwood Mac and nineties music and you're going to do yoga and have brunch and with your friends and drink wine under the stars and paint. It can also be joyful because the process of becoming who we truly are is, in my opinion, so joyful. 

I mean, I just want to stand up and slow clap that entire answer, Katie. We everybody. I mean, welcome to the Healing Heroes podcast. That is exactly what we are doing here. We are creating a happy space for you to heal. Healing can be fun. It can also be hard, but you do it because of what's on the other side. And getting curious about yourself can be a really fun and uplifting process that starts to shift not just what's within you, but everything in your external world. And that's exciting. You see those shifts not just in yourself, but in your kids, and even in your relationship with your friends and your husband and your community. And it's just like, yes, more of this, more of this. This is so great. So that was so articulate and beautifully said, Katie. Thank you for summarizing that for everybody. I want to make that a plaque and just put it on a wall. 

Let's do it. Let's do it. 

I know you've been on your own healing journey as you referenced in your answer specifically from childhood trauma, and I'm really curious how you were both impacted by that trauma, but more importantly, how the work you've done to shift your mindset and heal has made a difference in your life. 

So when I was a kid, I was obsessed with dance, and all I wanted to do was become a professional ballerina. So my parents were like, okay, let's hire a professional teacher for her. They hired a private teacher for me to have private ballet lessons so that I could get better. It was all about reaching my dream, and I was so excited. But unfortunately, by the time I was 12, he started sexually abusing me. And that went on until I was 16. And I just got really confused because I couldn't tell anyone. And he told me, don't tell anyone. I'll go to jail and you wouldn't want me to go to jail, and I love you and this is what love is, and no one else would understand, but weren't a relationship. And I was so confused and conflicted internally, and I knew none of it was right, but I also didn't want to make things awkward in my life by coming forward to my parents and ruining my chance at having this teacher help me achieve my dreams, and also having my parents feel guilty or being a pariah in my town, which gosh, I really think that would've been a horrible existence for me as a 12-year-old. 

But what happened was I just packaged it all down. I just pushed it all down, and I didn't deal with it at all. And I acted like it wasn't a thing that happened. I just put it in a locked door within myself. That didn't happen to you, just keep going. I felt like I needed to keep going. I still had all these dreams and these goals, and I couldn't accept the enormity of the pain I felt, which was, I felt very, I think taken advantage of and small and unimportant. And the beliefs I inherited at that time that I've really focused on were that I was a bad person. I felt like this happened to me because I was bad. I must have attracted the situation or made this happen because I'm inherently bad. And he could see that in me, and that's why this happened. 

And I also felt like I can't achieve my dreams because he was with his actions, making it clear that he didn't care about my dreams. Most of my sessions were not dedicated to him actually helping me get better. I was being abused. And it just made me feel like, oh, it's so pathetic that I even thought that you thought that I could be a star, that I could reach my full potential, that I could be a professional dancer. And then the third thing that really came up for me was I just felt unworthy of money because my parents are paying so much money for these expensive private ballet lessons, and I barely felt worthy of them when I was making the most of them, when I was trying so hard to get better at every minute of the session working my little butt off. And then once less than half of the sessions were being used for ballet, I felt like, oh, he's just wasting their money. 

He is just taking it. And I'm the one that's the problem here, which is a normal thing for children to blame themselves when it's not their fault. But I felt like I am so unworthy of all this money that's being poured into me. My family is probably not going on bigger vacations because of my dance program and my brother's programs. All the money's being poured into us. We're the next generation. Our parents are investing in us. So those limiting beliefs plagued me throughout my life. And I found myself because I thought I was a bad person just going so far above and beyond to try to people please all the time to try to be seeming perfect, doing perfect, doing the best to try to prove that I was good enough in every situation, exhausting. I'm sure a lot of women out there can relate, oh my God, we think we're bad. 

So we're like, let me be good. I'm so good. Look at me. I'm going to plan this baby shower and I'm going to show up here and I'm going to push myself farther than I need to just to be there for everyone else and to earn my worth. And that created a lot of unhappiness for me. And then I found myself in my acting career, doing great, booking lots of jobs, getting from guest stars to bigger guest stars, to series regular jobs, climbing the ladder, getting to be the main character on shows. But every time a big money opportunity came, I choked. I just blew it. The screen test. I would just like I am in the room with John Stamos reading with John Stamos. My childhood dreams are coming true, and I'm like, oh my God, I can get this part. I can do it. 

But there's something in me that's like, you can't do this. You're not the person who achieves their dreams. This is a no for you. This is the last you're going to get of this moment. That negative voice just kept me from ever being able to push into that next level of achievement, of being able to empower myself to achieve my dreams. I just held myself back over and over again. I didn't believe I was someone who could do that. And then with money, that's kind of one and the same. When big money opportunities came up, I just didn't feel worthy of them. And I had a hard time charging for things I was doing where I was offering my services for free and giving it away and not honoring my gifts or my talents. And now I've really stepped into honoring that the gifts I have are not from me. 

They come through me, they're not mine. And they're of high value and high caliber, and they've helped people in enormous ways in their lives and they've helped me. And to honor the value of that gift and really respect that gift and to give myself the life I know I deserve with my gifts and with my abilities and leveling up and allowing myself to do that, that's been huge for me. But it's been incredibly empowering and being able to kind of overcome those limiting beliefs in my adulthood is so healing to the little girl who didn't think she was good, who didn't think she was worthy of her dreams, which also I did become a professional ballerina, thank you very much. Did it for one season and then was like, I'm out, but I needed to prove it to myself. Amazing. I keep needing to prove it to myself, but now I'm the version of me who knows she's worthy of all the things she really desires, and it feels good to live in that place. 

I love that. Katie, thank you for sharing that. And I'm so sorry that happened to you, but I think you touched on what I think a lot of survivors go through in the aftermath of that, whether it be the hypervigilance, the people pleasing, the achieving to prove to yourself that you're good enough and that you're worthy. And I think it's so powerful when you can get curious about what's underneath and actually start to shift your mindset and make the changes you've been able to make and now helps so many other women make in their own lives. It's really incredible what you have been able to contribute and manifest and do with that pain. So thank you for everything. And again, I really appreciate you sharing that. Thank 

You. Exactly. It is like when we can transmute our pain and use it to help others, that is us stepping into our dharma, our soul's purpose. We can passion and the service of others, and I have a passion for helping people in this way because it's what helped me. I love doing it so much because I know the outcome. I know I feel confident in the results that are there for them. So doing this work, and that's been a beautiful thing for me to experience. Love 

That. Shifting gears a bit, I know your roots are grounded in dancing and yoga and of course acting, but now coupled with the mindset coaching, you've created a retreat program called Happy Camp, which I'm obviously a huge fan and advocate of. What is Happy Camp and how have you seen it help women reconnect with themselves? 

I love Happy Camp so much. Happy Camp is my baby. It is a wellness 

Retreat. Yes, it is. 

I hold it in gorgeous places like luxurious, gorgeous resorts and beautiful places that have a lot of natural beauty. And what it is is a chance for you to come back to yourself, to get away from the busyness of life, to leave your responsibilities for a few days, and to just pour love into yourself. And we get there via yoga, meditation, hiking, mindset coaching, beach time, pool time, great meals, painting, breathwork, sound healing, all of the offerings that can help you reconnect to you, and really get into a state of just feeling like you love yourself, which most people do not come by naturally. It's not a natural state. It's going to help you learn how to love yourself. It's going to help you understand the ways in which you're not loving yourself and how you can change those beliefs so that you can actually live within yourself and have it be a place that feels warm and snuggly and kind, that you love being you love being with you. 

You have a better relationship with yourself, and when you have a better relationship with yourself, you can manifest anything you want. So we also talk about what do you want? Okay, how are we going to get it? I teach people self-love and manifestation so that they can leave feeling like, okay, I understand what I want in my future. I'm clear on how I'm going to get there, and I'm aware of what I need to unsubscribe from, what thought patterns, what behaviors are just no longer helpful to me, things that might've been sort of running in the background for you, and you're like, I don't know if I should keep doing this, but I just seem to keep doing it. You get awareness over it. This is helping me. This is not, and everyone leaves with this plan of action, feeling so vibrant and full of their own highest vibrational energy and with new friends and having had so much fun. So that's what Happy Camp is in a nutshell. 

Oh, I love that. We are definitely going to talk more about Happy Camp and all of the different various components in our next episode, so I'm really excited to dive in there because to your point, it really is such a great fun forcing mechanism for you to truly love yourself in so many different ways all at once. And I think that can be so empowering, so empowering, and it's just, again, like you said, it's a luxurious resort and a beautiful part of the world, and it's just great. And you meet so many great people. I loved my time in Mexico, and I cannot wait to join you guys again in Arizona this September. 

I'm so excited. 

Oh, so excited. I'm so excited. It's the best. 

It's 

My favorite. Everyone come sign up. It's great. Everyone come. Katie, what has been the most surprising thing you've learned about people in your journey to heal others? 

That so many of us are comfortable being uncomfortable. That our state of being what we get used to, how we get used to feeling is often comprised of emotions that we don't like. That stress, anxiety, frustration, fear, worry, irritation, those kind of lower frequency energies that are not conducive to happiness. A lot of times we get comfortable in them because we're just used to having felt like that for 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, 40 years. And it becomes kind of our baseline state. And actually becoming happier can feel a little bit scary to the nervous system because our nervous system goes, Hey, I don't have a memorized feeling for this level of happiness, this level of success. I'm not used to this. My body is not safe in that reality. Our bodies feel safe where we're used to being, which might be in, I don't have what I want. 

I'm not enough, I'm unhappy, I'm stressed out. And though we don't want to be there anymore, we've set up camp. And so a lot of times when I'm helping people, it's helping them learn to move beyond their upper limit. And the upper limit problem is something that a psychologist, gay Hendricks has talked about in his book called The Big Leap, where that same phenomenon is discussed more extensively. We get uncomfortable going beyond our upper limit for happiness and success. And a huge part of my work is helping people push their upper limit. And what we need to do is be willing to think differently, act differently, but also soothe our nervous system along the way. We can't just be like, we're changing. Let's do it. We have to also take care of ourselves. We need to have practices to make the body feel safe, to make the body feel like this is okay, we can do this. 

And when we bring our nervous system organically along for the ride, we allow the whole human, the scared part of us and the excited part of us to come along to go, Hey, we could talk to that scared part like, I got you. It's going to be okay. We're going to be fine. And that's been a huge part of my healing as well, is being open to receiving new levels of wellbeing in my life, being able to step into that, being comfortable in that, and bringing every part along for the ride so that I can inhabit that fully without fear and anxiety. 

Thank you for breaking that down for us. There's so much I want to go into with the nervous system. I do think it plays such a role in this journey, so I love that you referenced the body in this as well, not just the mind. 

Totally. 

Any suggestions for how people can start shifting their mindset at home if they aren't ready to hire a coach for support? 

One little practice that has helped me so much in my day-to-day is to just ask myself, what's the story I'm telling myself right now? In any given moment, you can ask yourself, what's the story I'm telling myself right now? If you're waiting in line at the grocery store, is it like, oh, this day is not going my way? Of course there's a line, or are you like, you know what? I have eight minutes it seems like, so there's three people in front of me. At least eight minutes. I'm going to listen to that podcast and listen to eight minutes at my favorite podcast. Or I'm going to text back all the people in my phone who I haven't texted back yet, and use this as an intentional time for communication. Or I'm going to listen to music. I'm going to listen to three songs that I love. 

In this eight minutes, asking yourself, what's the story that you're telling? Because when that story's a negative story, you're living in a negative reality. When you're telling yourself a positive story, you're living in a positive reality. What you think impacts the emotions you feel and those emotions you feel are what you end up living in. So if you want to live in a reality that feels good, start telling yourself a better story. How are you spinning this moment to yourself? How are you spinning this win or this loss to yourself? Can you tell yourself a story that's kind to, can you tell yourself a story that's supportive? Be your own best friend in that moment, rather than being like, of course you didn't get that promotion, can you say, you know what? Better things must be all in the way for us. That's what your best friend would say. 

It wasn't the right thing. If it didn't work out, the right thing come so true. So just being aware of your thoughts. That's the number one thing, is noticing those thoughts and noticing when you're telling yourself a disempowering story. And number two, spending five minutes each morning before you start your day and before you look at your phone writing what you appreciate about your life and what you appreciate about yourself. Most importantly, have a little journal by your bedside. And while your brain is still really open because you just woke up and it's not trained on anything yet you're not into problem solving mode. I want you to just start the day with appreciating your life and yourself, because when you start the day with that frequency, you notice that all day long, not just in your life and other people, things you appreciate about other people, other circumstances, you see yourself in a more flattering light, and you have to start training the brain that way because most women been training our brain the other way for like 10, 20, 30 years. Marketing influences childhood. There's a lot of reasons why you don't feel good about yourself. Don't blame yourself. But you got to start training your brain in the opposite direction so that you can see how great you are and how much you have beauty and happiness and goodness in your life. And the more you're aware of what's already good, the more you'll be able to create even more. 

Thank you for that. Katie. I can't think of a better note to end on. I loved our conversation. As always. I'm so grateful for you and all of the time you and I have spent together, but also for today's conversation. Thank you so much for being here and sharing all of your wisdom and insights with everyone today. I know I took many new things away and hopefully our listeners did as well. So really appreciate you. Thank you for everything. 

Absolutely. My pleasure. It's honestly been such a treat, Chandler knowing you, working with you, doing this podcast, we're on this path together, and it's beautiful to be supporting each other and to be helping others uplift their reality because we've both experienced so much new joy and freedom and fulfillment, and I think that spreading that is, I can't think of anything better. 

Thank you for that. And to those tuning in, if you enjoyed today's conversation, please share it with friends and don't forget to subscribe. You can also visit healing heroes podcast.com to get resources, meet the heroes, and share your ideas for future episodes. Thanks for listening everyone, and until next time, remember, be curious, be courageous, and be kind to yourself. You've got this.