Breakthrough To Wellness & Abundance with Kathryn Ford

A Personal Note from Orion

Are you looking to improve your life? Maybe you want to fill your days with more love, abundance, or wellness. You are in charge of your destiny and if you put your mind to it, you can achieve beyond your wildest dreams.

My guest, had a severe diagnosis when she was just 26 years old. Today she teaches her clients the same process that helped her overcome this challenge and change her life forever. Kathryn is the CEO of Excellence Institute and an award-winning life coach, brilliant consultant, international speaker and an Amazon #1 bestselling author. She shared with me her 7 step process to getting what you want! Click below to listen to our interview.

In this Episode

[02:22] – Orion and Kathryn start things off by discussing when they originally met, and how their friendship developed.
[02:58] – Kathryn explains a bit of who she is and what she does in the world. She discusses how a health crisis of her own inspired her to become who she is today.
[06:37] – We all have an inner pharmacy, Kathryn explains. She relates this to the before/after pictures we see of every president at the end of each presidential terms.
[09:42] – Kathryn shares how the power of her mind helped her to maintain health despite taking injections that turned out to be harmful for over 16 years.
[10:22] – Orion recommends The Power of Your Subconscious Mind by Joseph Murphy, and discusses how it has impacted her life.
[11:41] – What did Kathryn do the very first day she received her painful news?
[13:29] – Kathryn points out that awareness is key, then describes how self-care can change your relationship with abundance.
[15:52] – What did Kathryn do to support her new belief system? One of her major breakthroughs, she explains, was realizing that she needed to release her addiction to struggle.
[18:06] – Orion shares a story of an event she attended recently, and how she encountered this addiction to struggle in a young girl there.
[20:48] – Kathryn offers advice on how to break through your own limiting beliefs. She shares how important perspective is in creating abundance in your life.
[23:49] – We learn about how Kathryn practices gratitude daily. She discusses the importance of automatically going into gratitude when something hard or hurtful occurs.
[25:25] – Kathryn discusses the seven steps she has just mentioned, pointing out that each one is a form of self-care.
[26:12] – The first of the seven steps, or “waves,” is setting up your personal passion prescription.
[27:45] – The second wave is getting clear on what self-care means and how to practice it.
[29:47] – How do you distinguish between what other people are thinking or feeling, and what is your own personal intuition?
[31:56] – Wave number three is gratitude, Kathryn explains. Orion then expands on how this can transform your life.
[33:37] – Kathryn points out that practicing gratitude reminds us that we’re connected to source (or spirit).
[34:11] – The fourth wave is peace and joy. Kathryn teaches her clients to find peace and calm no matter what storm is going on around them.
[35:36] – Orion explains that stress is responsible for 80-85% of all human illnesses.
[36:16] – The fifth wave revolves around self-worth (which, Kathryn points out, is not the same as net worth). Kathryn then explains how to reach this state of self-worth by uncovering and releasing limiting beliefs.
[39:23] – Orion describes an exercise that she does with her clients to help them get over their negative or limiting beliefs.
[40:25] – Grace, or forgiveness, is the sixth of the seven waves in Kathryn’s system.
[41:44] – The powerful seventh wave is joy.
[42:20] – Orion recaps the seven steps that Kathryn has described for us.
[42:46] – Kathryn offers listeners a beautiful gift: The Five Keys to Discovering Your Personal Expression of Self-Love. You can find that at this link!

About Today’s Show

‏‏Hey! How are you doing today? It’s Orion, and I’m so happy you are listening to this episode right now. Today, we’re gonna learn how to create more love, more abundance, and more wellness in our lives. My guest today is Kathryn Ford. She had a difficult condition that she overcame by declaring that she is going to be a medical miracle. Today she’s the CEO of Excellence Institute. She’s an award-winning Master Life coach, consultant, international speaker, and then Amazon No. 1 best-selling author. She was nominated 2016 Woman of the Year by the Los Angeles Business Journal, and she specializes in living a life filled with abundance of health, wealth, and love. I hope you will enjoy the show. Let me know if you do, and now, onto the show. Hey Kathryn! Welcome to Stellar Life Podcast!

‏‏Hi Orion. I’m excited to be here today.

‏‏I am so excited to be talking to you. You are so freaking awesome.

‏‏Thank you.

‏‏Yeah. We met – when did we meet?

‏‏I think it was last spring.

‏‏Wow. So long ago.

‏‏Yes.

‏‏We met in an event, and then we’re just saying, “Let’s keep in touch.” Then we went for coffee, and you blew my mind. I was like, “This woman is amazing!”

‏‏Thank you, Orion. I think you’re amazing, too.

‏‏I was late for the appointment. I’m really sorry. I hate to be late, but I don’t know what happened. Anyways, let’s start by you sharing with the listeners a little bit about yourself, who you are, and what do you do in the world?

‏‏Thank you. I really help people live with an abundance of health, wealth, and love in their life. It all started with my own life journey, particularly a health crisis that I experienced 28 years ago when I was 26 years old. I was busy climbing the corporate ladder. I was an HR executive, working about 60-70 hours a week. I was driving home one day from work, and I had this really bad headache, didn’t think about much of it, took a couple of Aspirin and went to bed, and would end up going blind in my left eye. You can imagine – yes, I was devastated. I was living in Minnesota at that time, so I thought I’ve gonna see the experts on this. I went to Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and they gave me the devastating diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. Yes, so at that point I thought, “Oh my gosh. All my hopes and dreams for my life have just been shattered.” While I was still there, the nurses and doctors were preparing me for all these really horrible things that were going to be happening to me, but I said to myself, “You know? I’m gonna be in this tiny percent of people who do really, really well. I am going to be a medical miracle, and no one is going to be able to explain how I did it.” That’s what I set out to do, and oh, has that served me over my life. I began from that point on of doing all these research. What could help me? I was looking at different systems that were being used all over the world – complementary holistic medicine – how to tap into the power that we all have within us. I just continued on with my life practicing things, figuring out what works, what didn’t work. Twenty-two (22) years later, fast forward, I found out I had been misdiagnosed, so another zinger flown in my way. I was like, “Oh my gosh. What? Almost my entire adult life, I had aligned myself with having this dis-ease,” so I went down back to Mayo Clinic. Now there’s an expert in the world, who practices on this very rare condition that I have. Unfortunately, I was misdiagnosed, and the new diagnosis is actually considered to be far more serious than MS. I went back down to Mayo Clinic, and I was waiting in the exam room for the doctor. He walked in with this very puzzled look on his face, and he said, “Are you Kathryn Ford?” And I said, “Yes.” He said, “Oh my gosh! You don’t even look like someone who’s had MS for 22 years, let alone this worst condition. It’s called Neuromyelitis optica. What are you doing besides the medication you’re on?” I said, “Well, first of all, Doctor, I’m gonna take that as a compliment because I haven’t been hearing very good news lately.” He said, “No, you should take it as a compliment, and I wanna know exactly what you’re doing.” So I began to tell him what I was practicing based on this research I had done now for the past 22 years, and he said, “You really need to get this out into the world.” We had this amazing conversation on how everyone has some form of a dis-ease, mine just happens to be with my health. Other people – it’s not being able to find the love of their life, or they have a series of toxic relationships. And other people just can’t seem to make ends meet. They can’t find their passion, or they’re just not able to achieve the wealth and success that they would love. What I was telling him was it’s all about living a life of full-spectrum wealth. Having an abundance of health, wealth, and love in our lives really affects the bottom line with our health and our ability to maintain youthfulness because we all have this inner pharmacy. When we are stressed or filled with anxiety, we just are ticking out all kinds of cortisol that actually is very aging to every cell in our body versus when we’re happy and we’re living our best life, our inner pharmacy is absolutely… I like to say we all have an inner pharmacy, and that inner pharmacy is releasing all kinds of chemicals based on our feelings and emotions. If we’re feeling stressed or filled with anxiety, our inner pharmacy is releasing all kinds of toxic chemicals – way too much cortisol, all of that. If on the other hand, we’re feeling like we’re living our best life and we’re thriving, and we have all this joy in our life, our inner pharmacy is releasing beautiful, sparkling chemicals that every cell in our body is being bathed in. The beauty of this is – it actually has everything to do with maintaining youthfulness as well. The way I like to demonstrate this is if we take a look at the president of the United States. When he’s getting ready to leave office, the media will show his picture on the first day and then again on the last day, right Orion? He’s always considerably aged during that 4 or 8-year term. The reason for that is he has not been able to mitigate the high stress in that position, so this is what I help people do.

Having an abundance of health, wealth, and love in our lives really affects the bottom line with our health and our ability to maintain youthfulness because we all have this inner pharmacy. Click To Tweet

‏‏Also we are talking about 8 years.

‏‏Yes, it is. But you can see a tremendous amount of aging that’s happened.

‏‏That’s right. Yeah, I noticed that.

‏‏Back onto the Mayo Clinic, where I was. The doctor was like, “You’ve gotta get this out into the world because everyone has some sort of a dis-ease, and this can help really so many people.” I was getting ready to leave, and he said, “You know, one more thing Kathryn. I really don’t even wanna share this with you, but I have to. When is your next injection?” At that point, I had been on an injection of a chemotherapy-type drug for MS for 16-and-a-half years. I told him, “My next injection is this evening,” and he said, “No, you have to stop that immediately. That drug is harmful to people with your condition.”

‏‏How many years did you inject that?

‏‏16-and-a-half years, at least. I basically felt like I had the flu. I felt like he punched me in the stomach when he said that to me. I was like, “Oh my gosh.” I had a flood of emotion – everything from – I was so upset to anger and resentment. Now all of a sudden, it hit me, and I looked at him. I said, “You know what, Doctor, I have a very powerful mind. In fact, I have been developing that power for the last 22 years, and I believed that those injections were helping me, so I know that they didn’t hurt me.” He said, “Oh my gosh. We’re sticking with that,” and I said, “Yes, we are, because if I contain all this toxicity right now that I’m feeling and all these emotions, the only person that it’s gonna hurt is me.”

‏‏So you went and you took another injection?

‏‏No. I stopped immediately.

‏‏You stopped, but you had the belief, and you gave your body the command, “Whatever the doctor said, it was good for us.”

‏‏Exactly. I commanded my whole body through my belief system. I told him – I said, “I know it didn’t hurt me because I believed it was going to help me.” In fact, Dr. Bernie Siegel wrote the foreword to my book, which is Be Well, a 7-step system for radical healing. It’s an Amazon number 1 bestseller. He is one of the world’s authorities on the mind-body connection. It’s so amazing how much power we have within us. But the doctor at Mayo Clinic said, “This is exactly why you need to get out there in the world and help other people because that is really powerful – that you had something working against you for 16-and-a-half years, and look at how amazing you look.”

‏‏The mind – one book that I read when I was very young. My mom gave it to me when I was 19. It’s called The Power of Your Subconscious Mind by Joseph Murphy. That was for me the guide for life. I did so many things with the power of my mind. I went to Japan with absolutely almost no money, just knowing and visualizing and knowing that I’m going to be okay. I was okay. I found work. I found love. I ended up staying for 3-and-a-half years. It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. People like Louise Hay as well – they speak about the power of your subconscious mind and how through affirmations you change your state. Tony Robbins calls it “incantation,” meaning that you have to really infuse the emotional state into the affirmation in order for it to work. You can’t just say, “I’m happy, I’m happy, I’m happy, I’m happy, I’m happy.” It’s the energy behind the words. What were the techniques that you used, before you did all your research? First time you heard this painful news, what did you do that day, that evening? What did you do?

‏‏The very first thing that I did that has served me very well was I stated and claimed for myself and set the intention that I was going to do very, very well with this – that I was going to be a medical miracle. I claimed that for myself, which was so powerful, and then the next pieces that came to me were really all about self-care. I believe the largest component of self-care is self-love. Actually, I like to say, self-care is the new healthcare. It truly is.

‏‏I love it. I love it.

‏‏Everything in our life unconsciously is what we believe we deserve. So many studies have proven that. Even a lack of time or money, anything like that – those are just symptoms. Underneath, there’s a scarcity. My body was just really expressing this dis-ease that I was actually experiencing in my primary relationship. That had a lot to do with it. I chose to ignore some of the things that I really should have focused on and faced. It got expressed through my body. I believe sometimes we get a little tap on the shoulder and then a nudge, and if we continue to ignore messages from our body, finally it just sometimes has to get expressed, like mine did, in a dis-ease.

‏‏Yes. It’s like the feather, the tap, and the Mack Truck.

‏‏Exactly. And I got the Mack Truck.

‏‏If you don’t listen to the feathers. If you’re not aware in the moment for the little messages and you ignore them, you ignore red flags – then it’s gonna hate you. Awareness is key.

‏‏Awareness is very much the key. When we really get serious about self-care, your relationship with abundance is actually very easy. A lot of times people will come to me with a diagnosis, but other times they come to me – they want to take a quantum leap in their business, or they want to find out what they’re passionate about. Or they’re interested in finding love in their life, and they just never have really been able to do that. All kinds of ways that they come to me, but the bottom line is really through this relationship with ourselves, getting on, what I call, the easy-breezy channel to allow everything in our life that we would love.

‏‏You made that decision to create the change, and then did you take any action steps to support that decision? You just say, “I’m gonna be a medical miracle,” which reminds me of Dr. Demartini from The Secret was one of my guests here on the show. Dr. Demartini when he was 18 – when he was young, people told him he cannot read, write, and communicate. Then when he was 18, he found a mentor who told him to say, “I am a genius.” He started saying, “I am a genius. I am a genius.” I think he read over 30,000 books by now and wrote very complex articles. He is literally a genius. He is so smart. Just by infusing that idea into his mind, it created such an incredible breakthrough. Now he teaches seminars all over the world. He is like probably one of the smartest people I know. He went and he read books, and he started – I know that he used to sit every day and learn new words from the dictionary. What did you do to support your belief system, your new belief system?

‏‏I began all this research and then tried it. I was like the guinea pig for this. I just would try things on myself. One of the things that came up very early on was that I needed to release my addiction to struggle. That was huge for me.

‏‏Huge.

‏‏Yes. I knew I wanted to get on this easy, graceful wavelength and release the addiction to struggle.When I was a little girl, my parents always told me that I could be, do, and have whatever I wanted, which was wonderful. On the flip side, based their own upbringing, they told me, “But it’s gonna be very, very hard. You’re gonna have to work all the time, etcetera, etcetera.” I began to really get on this channel of struggle and became addicted to it. I was extremely successful, had what I wanted materially in my life, and all of that, but it came with a lot of struggle, including a diagnosis. I began to first of all practice affirmations, and then I began to do more research on what was working. What’s working all over the world? How are people thriving? What are they doing? I discovered, it really has to do with the fact that everything in their life is lined up and beautiful. When we can do that – and again, this is where the self-care and self-love comes in – we absolutely will be thriving. When we’re living our best life, we are automatically thriving. I began practicing things like affirmations. I began seeing the whole picture of what self-care means. What does it mean? In the moment, it’s about saying yes when I mean yes, and no when I mean no – all the way to pampering my body, having the massages, doing the things that I love to do, caring for myself, going on a wonderful vacation that’s rejuvenating for me, but bringing it back to the daily practice – in the moment, making the choices that align with Kathryn Ford.

‏‏I love it. When it comes to limiting beliefs, we are so stuck on ideas. This weekend my friend did – she did an open house, where she brought crystals that were blessed in the Casa of John of God in Brazil.

‏‏Beautiful.

‏‏Yeah, she was selling the crystals. They were from little skull crystals to big crystals, and we were just gathering there. The energy was so strong in that room because of the crystals. They vibrate really high. I almost got a little dizzy, when I entered the room, until my nervous system was adjusting. Then this mom entered with her two kids, a 7-year-old boy and a 9-year-old girl. I was holding this little skull crystal. I don’t know what the stone was, but it was this aqua blue, really pretty. As soon as I saw the little girl, I was like, “Hey look, what do you think about that?” She’s like, “Oh my god. This is so pretty. I love this color. It’s so beautiful, but I don’t have the money to get it.” I was like, “Oh, okay. Is there another way that you can get it without having money?” She was like, “No, no. I don’t have the money to get it.” I was like, “Okay. What are your hobbies?” She said, “I really like swimming. I’m really good at art. Anything art – I’m really good at.” I was like, “What about if you draw me a picture – if you draw me a painting, I will buy this for you.” She was like, “What? Really?” I was like, “Yes.” She said, “Well, you have to get – my mom need to get your phone number.” I was like, “No, I don’t think so. I think you should get my phone number.” She was like, “I don’t have a pen and paper.” I was like, “Okay. If you’re going to go and get a pen and paper, and write it down, we can make the deal.” She said, “I don’t like the way I write. My handwriting is not very good.” I was like, “Well, you have to do it, if you want the crystal,” so she went. She got the pen and paper. She wrote with beautiful handwriting her name and number, and my name and my number. We had this exchange. Then we high-fived the deal, and I gave her a big hug. It’s so interesting. From a very young age, we are infused by so many limiting beliefs. If I don’t have the money, I can’t get it, or somebody else needs to do it for me. I’m not good enough to do it by myself, or I’m not even good enough at writing to make the deal. There’s so many limiting beliefs, and for me, it was such a joy to give her that lesson and have that interaction. What do you do? What do you teach your clients to do to break through their own limiting beliefs?

‏‏First off, it’s about noticing what you are noticing. That’s the number one life mastery skill. When we notice, “Oh, I see that my thinking is limiting right now. I see that I’m choosing to be on this struggle channel. I’m seeing that I’m not getting the results in this certain area of my life, or I’m noticing that the thoughts that I have are not adding up to abundance. They’re adding up to struggle, lack, and pain,” just like the little girl. “I’m not good enough at this. I’m not good enough at that.” When we can monitor our thoughts, it’s amazing. Because then we have the ability to push the internal imaginary pause button in our mind and center ourselves back and say, “Wait a second, I can choose again. I can choose differently right now. I’m going to choose to think this – what I would love to create and feel it in my body. Really feel as if I already have it, versus choosing to think about all these lack that I’m experiencing.” Our thoughts are energy. Our feelings are energy. It’s been proven scientifically, we get more of what we think about. That’s huge, right? One big, big thing with my clients is we practice a tremendous amount of gratitude because what you appreciate, appreciates. If you are struggling with the number that you see in your bank account, by simply switching the way you look at it and appreciating what you do have, it will expand. But if we continue to look at it from a place of lack, we will continue to get more lack. I love Wallace Wattles. In fact, I am going to just pull up a quote from him out of his book, The Science of Getting Rich. He says, “The whole process of mental adjustment and atonement can be summed up in one word, gratitude. Gratitude alone can keep you looking toward the infinite and prevent you from falling into the air of thinking that the supply of riches is limited, and to think that, would be fatal to your hopes.” It’s so, so, so true. It’s all about how we look at things. Wayne Dyer used to say, “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” It is so true. It really is. Practicing a tremendous amount of gratitude has been life changing for me. Sometimes, people will even say, when I’m speaking – they’ll say, “What’s your secret sauce for maintaining youthfulness?” I’ll say, “Gratitude.” Because again, it’s changing the chemistry in my inner world. My inner pharmacy is producing sparkling, beautiful chemicals. I have just really gotten to the point in my life, where I practice continual gratitude.

‏‏Everyday, all day? Or in the morning? Do you structure it?

‏‏Every day, all day. I do a morning exercise then an evening exercise. I am practicing it all throughout the day, even when challenges are facing me.

‏‏Especially when challenges are facing you.

‏‏Exactly. When we can be into the habit, so to speak, of when something – when a zinger gets blown our way, that we just automatically go into gratitude and know that so much good is gonna come out of this. I’ll take my own health and the diagnosis, and the misdiagnosis and all of that – I would never say, “I wanna go through all that again.” No, I would never sign up for that. I would never wish that upon anyone. That whole experience really brought me to my knees, but I’ll have to tell you, Orion, that really I am so grateful for it because I would not be the person I am today, had I not experienced all of that.

‏‏For sure.

‏‏I would not know how to tap into my power and to really be able to have everything and anything I would love in my life, had I not been through that. Now, I know that it’s my life purpose and why I’m on the planet at this time because I get to help other people do this. It’s so amazing when I can just show them my 7-step system. It’s easily duplicatable. They too can live the life of their dreams. It’s so rewarding, and I’m so grateful to be able to experience all of this and have had those experiences that I did.

‏‏Are you willing to go over those 7 steps?

‏‏Oh, absolutely.

‏‏Let’s do it. Let’s do it. Let’s share the wealth.

‏‏You will see, too, that each one of these steps is a form of self-care. Most people don’t know really what self-care means. They have a general overview, and it seems like, “Okay, I get that. It’s kind of fluffy or whatever.” I’ve even spoken to large healthcare organizations, doctors and nurses, and healthcare practitioners who are like, “Yeah. We tell our patients to do this, but we don’t really even know – what does it actually mean?” Actually, I’m gonna be mentioning in a little bit, a free gift that I have for your listeners that will help them discover some things, just take a deeper dive with this. We go really deep with this, so that we get results from it. The first – and I call everything a wave. Each one of these steps is a wave.

‏‏I like it. You live by the ocean. You are so influenced by the waves. Everything is in wave. Our vibration is wavy. Everything is wavy. Okay, what’s number one?

‏‏Number one is you’re setting up your personal passion prescription. It’s beautiful. We take a look at what you would love your life to look like in one year from today. We reverse engineer it, and we develop it for your health and wellbeing in maintaining youthfulness. We take a look at your relationships. Number one question is “What would you love?” Then we take a look at your time and money freedom, and your wealth and success, and what would you love? Not, “What would you be okay with?” or “What would you like?” But “What would you love?” We want to stretch into this beautiful dream that you have. Then basically, over the next 6 months I work with my clients on how to make this happen and how to make it happen in an easy, breezy way? Remember, we don’t want to be on that struggle channel. This is a beautiful piece of self-care, and it’s actually how we get to living this life of our dreams. It’s different for everyone. What I am creating in my life right now is different from you, Orion, and what my fiancé would love. It’s different for all of us. This is a very individualized document, but the practices and how to create what you would love are the same for all of us. That’s number one. The second deep-dive we take is self-care. We really get clear on what that means and how to practice it. Again, that is an individualized thing, too. For me, my self-care involves everything from taking my little dog, Teddy, for a walk in the morning. We love to get in tune with nature, listen to the doves cooing, and sometimes the dolphins will –

You’re setting up your personal passion prescription. It’s beautiful. Click To Tweet

‏‏I want to meet your dog.

‏‏Teddy is so adorable.

‏‏You have to meet my cat, Hazel. She’s so cute. I don’t know if they’ll get along, but…

‏‏I think they might actually.

‏‏She does well with the neighbor’s dog.

‏‏I think they’ll get along. It’s beautiful. Everything from that to – my favorite resort spa location is The Sanctuary on Camelback Mountain in Arizona.

‏‏I have never been to Arizona. By the way, my mentor, the crystal open house, she did that to sell her crystals because she just felt a calling to go to Arizona. She wanted to connect to the vortexes in Arizona. She doesn’t really know many people there. She just was like, “I got inspired. I’m going.”

‏‏Fantastic! I love that.

‏‏Really in tune with her intuition.

‏‏She did. Our intuition will never stir us wrong, which is also something that I work with my clients on – “Is that my intuition speaking? Or is that just something that I really want? Or my ego?”

‏‏Or are we connected to the – it’s almost like a global subconscious. Sometimes, we get ideas that are not ours. Sometimes – like Abraham Hicks says, “You can go on a highway and all of a sudden, you get fear of having an accident. It’s not actually your fear; you’re just tuning in into the total subconscious of other people around you.” How do you do that distinction between what other people are thinking and what is your true intuition? How do you tune in and know exactly that this is your exact intuitive message?

‏‏That’s a great question, Orion, because everybody’s intuition speaks to them in a different way. Some people hear it. Some people feel it – all those kinds of things. I like to have my clients practice in simple ways with it. Just every day – maybe it’s even like a parking space, or when is the light gonna turn green – all that kind of stuff, where it does not matter.

‏‏I play with it all the time.

‏‏Me too. It’s so much fun. When we can play with the little things like that, when it doesn’t really matter and get really good at tuning in – again, it’s going within and listening to our higher self and really getting to know when it’s speaking to us. We can play with that, with the simple things in life. Even when you feel like, “Oh, I’ve been thinking about Orion,” and all of a sudden, the phone rings and it’s Orion. Right?

‏‏You’ve been thinking about me.

‏‏Yeah, of course. But it’s so much fun when you do that. We just keep building on that, and as you get good at the little things, then you start adding on more and more. Pretty soon you’re very aware. But again – how does my intuition? Awareness is key, absolutely key. Again, remember that noticing what you’re noticing is so important. Most people in the world just run on patterns and are on autopilot. That’s why most people live the same year 90 times. But in order to take a quantum leap in our life, we need to do things differently. We need to think differently, or else we’re just gonna keep getting the same results.

‏‏I love what you said about most people are living the same year 90 times. That’s horrible. I would never – every year of my year is very, totally different. I can’t stay still. As human beings, this is our nature to expand and grow and step out of our comfort zone. We come here on this planet with so many gifts and talents and infinite opportunities. It’s up to us to step outside of that comfort zone and expand and live more of our true passion and take care of ourselves. So, what’s number three?

‏‏Number three is gratitude. We take a deep-dive into gratitude. It really is the open door to abundance. We can make that shift in our lives and have it just be a great habit of even when something is coming to us, and as you said, most importantly when something is coming to us that doesn’t feel good. We can switch immediately into gratitude. It will change everything. You can feel it in your body even. When you’re feeling tense and tight – and just constriction from something, if you just gently switch over to practicing gratitude and ask yourself that question, “Gee, what can I be grateful for in this moment?” Sometimes it’s just, “Wow. I had a wonderful bed to sleep in last night. I woke up this morning because a lot of people on the planet didn’t.” All those little things even – it’s amazing. You’ll feel the softening happen in your body, and then you can move on. We source solutions best when we are in that state, rather than in sort of that – sometimes we can be in a fight-or-flight state. Sometimes no solutions come from that. When we can switch over to practicing gratitude – make it just a habit of doing it…

‏‏Because you can’t be in a place of fear and in a place of love and gratitude at the same time. You are either in fear and depression, feeling like a victim, feeling powerless, or you’re in a place of gratitude. When you are in a place of gratitude, you are empowered because you know that the higher power is guiding your way. You are so blessed. You have so many gifts in your life. By doing that shift, your energy will flow more towards abundance, love, greatness, passion.

‏‏Definitely. We remember too, when we’re practicing gratitude that we’re connected to source. Sometimes, as humans, we feel like, “Where I work is my source, or this is my source. Or that is my source for love.” No, our source is spirit. When we can remember that and just know how much power that we all have within us because of that – the power within us is far greater than any circumstance we can be facing. The first step is to remember that, in the midst of a circumstance.

‏‏That’s amazing. Kathryn, what’s number four?

‏‏Number four is peace and joy.

‏‏Yay!

‏‏Yeah. This is another very underrated – oh my goodness – vibration. I teach my clients specific ways to achieve peace, no matter what storm is going on around them, to be able to find that place that eye-of-the-storm within them, where there is peace and calm. Because we must remember that our peace is way more important than anything else – even other people’s drama. Our peace, because it affects our inner pharmacy, is very, very important. I teach a lot of different techniques on that. Of course, joy, too. That is highly underrated. We are meant to be experiencing joy every single day, and it’s actually my key to working harder – excuse me, smarter rather than harder. I’ll teach and work with my clients on, “Let’s infuse more joy in our day.” In fact, for me, at about [3:00] every day, I check in with myself, “Have I experienced enough joy today?” because if I haven’t, I still have time to make that happen. I can go on another walk with Teddy. I can do other things that really fill me up with joy. It’s about nourishing our mind, body, and spirit, and when we do that, we are on this channel of abundance in the universe. Things just come to us in a much more easy manner, and again it’s all about ease and grace. It doesn’t have to be hard. We can create whatever we –

‏‏Yeah, because stress is responsible for 80 or 85% of all human illnesses.

‏‏Yeah. Exactly.

‏‏Without peace, there is stress. When you’re in a place of stress, when you are not peaceful or joyful, then you’re just a disease waiting to be happen.

‏‏Exactly. I love – Eleanor Roosevelt has a beautiful quote. This is not getting it exact, but she says, “All the water in the world can’t drown you, unless you let it get inside of you.” I love that. We really do have the power to keep things at bay and not let it affect our energy field.

We really do have the power to keep things at bay and not let it affect our energy field.

‏‏Perfect. Number five.

‏‏Number five is self-worth. This is huge. Oh my gosh! This is huge. We spend a lot of time on this one because for financial reasons, our net worth is equal to our self-worth.

‏‏That’s a big problem especially when everybody is bragging. Especially, I see coaches and gurus, and they’re like, “I just manifested my Lamborghini, and look at my house. Look at that, and this is the ideal of happiness. If I have the big house, if I have the big car, then look at me. Look at me; I’m successful. Follow me because I have X and Y and Z.” We do live in a very materialistic society. This is also a part of why a lot of people get really depressed because if their expectations of where life should be, do not match where they are right now – there is that gap, and there is almost like a void. So how do you bridge that gap between not having enough money or material things or the big mansion or even a house, to self-worth and happiness?

‏‏First of all, what we do is we’re looking at your whole life, so yes, whatever you would love in your physical world is important to you. We take a look at how we can bring that in, but we’re also looking at the love in your life. It definitely has to do – self-worth has to do with that as well. Who are you attracting into your life based on your self-worth? Because there’s a million different vibrations and frequencies out there, just like our television, and if you are watching CNN – what I like to call Constantly Negative News, and you’d rather be watching the Travel Channel, you have to turn and change the channel, before you’ll ever get to that Travel Channel. It’s just the same way in life. If we are on a vibration and we continue to match up with people, that were just not who we would love, we’ve got to change our inner vibration to get on that next channel. That has to do with our self-worth. Who do we believe we are? Then of course, even with our health – same thing. We get at it by number one, noticing what you are noticing and uncovering some of those paradigms that we have. Our limiting beliefs – sometimes they go all the way, oftentimes, back to childhood. A teacher said something or someone else said something to us, and we just take that on and believe that. We begin to receive the results based on our belief. We uncover those limiting beliefs. We allow them to come up. We re-pattern them, and then we release them. It’s amazing to see the results. It’s kind of like we all have this thermostat inside of us – this inner thermostat that’s set at a certain rate, just like the one in your home. Maybe it’s at 72 degrees. If we want to dial up the heat on that thermostat, we need to actually take the knob and change that, and that’s what we’re doing with our self-worth. Otherwise, we just go through our life, and we continue to get 72 degrees, 72 degrees, even if we’d like 80.

‏‏One exercise I do with my clients, in order to improve their self-worth and get over those negative beliefs, is to look back and journal all the times in their lives, where they achieved the impossible – all the times in their lives where they conquer their fears and did something they didn’t believe they were able to do or achieve. Then you stock those events, and you keep – like you said – it’s almost like focusing on gratitude. You focus on what’s good. You focus on your capabilities, and that will increase self-confidence. That will increase self-worth.

‏‏Definitely. I love that exercise. Maxwell Maltz has an amazing book out there, too, that has lots of really good ways of getting at our self-worth and dialing it up. It’s so important that we focus on what’s going right.

It’s so important that we focus on what’s going right. Click To Tweet

‏‏What’s the name of the book?

‏‏ It is The Magic Power of Self-image Psychology.

‏‏Okay. Number six?

‏‏Number six is grace. That is my word for forgiveness. We do a beautiful forgiveness and grace-filled ceremony. For clients here in the Los Angeles area, we do it right here at the beach in Sta. Monica. It’s a release ceremony.

‏‏Wow!

‏‏I have clients who fly in from all over the world to do this. It’s so powerful. Yes, it was actually inspired when I was in Concord, Massachusetts. I was walking around Walden Pond with a friend, and I just had this feeling come up in me that, “Gosh, something needs to come out of me.” I didn’t even know what it was. I asked if she had some paper with her because she had a backpack on and a pen. She said, “Yes.” She took it out. I said, “I don’t know what’s happening, but something needs to come out of me,” and I just started writing. It was the most amazing experience ever. It was being channeled through me, and it was just a beautiful, beautiful poem that I created and used now in this release ceremony. It’s beautiful. We knew for sure that it was channeled through me because we had to read it three times for it to make sense, because there weren’t any commas in there. Once we figured out what it said, we were like, “Oh, what a treasure.” So, we use that in the release ceremony.

‏‏What’s number seven?

‏‏Actually, I went through – peace and joy are two separate ones.

‏‏Wonderful. I’m just gonna recap what you were saying about the 7 steps. If you guys wanna know more about those 7 steps, then you can get your book – Be Well, was it?

‏‏Yes. Be Well: A 7-Step System for Radical Healing. They can just click – go right out to my website, kathrynford.com, and there’s a link right there to Amazon, to go right straight to the book.

‏‏The seven steps are: Personal Passion Prescription, then there is the Self-care, then there is Gratitude, Peace, Self-worth, Grace, Forgiveness, and then Joy. That’s beautiful. I also know that – you are already a gift. This conversation was a big gift for us, and still I know you have an extra gift for our listeners.

‏‏I do. This is a beautiful gift. It is called the 5 Keys to Discovering Your Personal Expression of Self-Love.

‏‏Where can they find it?

‏‏They can find it at freewellnessgift.com.

‏‏Freewellnessgift.com.

‏‏Yes.

‏‏Kathryn Ford, thank you so much for being with us and sharing all these beautiful knowledge.

‏‏Oh, Orion, it was a pleasure to be with you. Thank you so much. I just wish you and all your listeners a life of excellence.

‏‏Thank you very much.

‏‏You’re welcome.

Your Checklist Actions to Take

✓ Your body has an “inner pharmacy” that releases all kinds of chemicals based on your mindset and emotions. If good things are brewing inside, you bring goodness outside.

✓ Understand the connection of your mind and body in a deeper sense. Your thoughts have the power to command your body to be better and stronger.

✓ Practice daily affirmations and make sure to not just say these words out loud but really internalize them enough for you to truly believe in them.

✓ Set a stepping stone in reaching your goal by finding out what you love and where you want to be a year from now. This can determine daily activities that can help you reach your desired destination.

✓ Find out what self-care means to you by listing down the things you love to do by yourself and for yourself. Do at least one self-care activity per day.

✓ Express your gratitude daily to develop a mindset of abundance instead of lack to free yourself from a state of struggling.

✓ Always listen to what your body is telling you. Awareness is key and a lot of preventions happen when you pay attention to your health and wellbeing.

✓ Always find peace no matter what storm is going on around you. It’s important to be at peace with yourself and with your surroundings for you to keep moving forward.

✓ Determine what your self-worth is by saying yes when you mean yes and no when you mean no. Live in the moment and always choose the things that align with your personal values and goals.

✓ Live a life filled with joy. Find it in the little things or give it to those who least expect it. All this positivity has the power to bring more love, abundance and wellness.

Links and Resources:

About Kathryn Ford

She is an award winning master life coach, consultant, international speaker, and author specializing in health and well-being, maintaining youthfulness, and living a life of excellence.