Karen Allen With 100% Human

Intro: [00:00:02] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Coach the Coach radio brought to you by the Business RadioX Ambassador Program, the no cost business development strategy for coaches who want to spend more time serving local business clients and less time selling them. Go to Brxambassador to learn more. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:33] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Coach the Coach Radio, and this is going to be a fun one today on the show, we have Karen Allen with one hundred percent human. Welcome, Karen.

Karen Allen: [00:00:43] Hi Lee, how are you? Thanks for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:45] Well, I am doing well and I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about one hundred percent human. How are you serving, folks?

Karen Allen: [00:00:52] Yes. Well, I recognize that we all go through the human experience, but we don’t really like to talk about it too much. And it really it boils down to the fact that life is messy. It is. It just we all go through our ups and downs. But what matters most is making life beautiful in the mess. And so I have my own story that has brought me to this level of awareness. But because of the folks who I serve, I recognize that I wanted to create a community, a movement of good people who are just on this journey of personal growth because they recognize that when they become better, they help others become better. So that’s what we’re doing over in one hundred percent human.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:30] Well, it’s interesting. You use the word mess. I use the word chaos that we’re always there’s always chaos. And it’s just a matter of dealing with kind of one crisis at a time and not get overwhelmed by the chaos. But how did you come about the phrase the word mess? Like, why did you gravitate to that word to describe how people are feeling at any given moment?

Karen Allen: [00:01:50] Yeah. Well, again, it came from my own personal experience. When I was 29 years old, I went through an unthinkable tragedy that is just hard to even imagine that this is my story if I’m being honest. So I became a widow at twenty nine when my husband was teaching his CrossFit class and someone came in and shot him. And in that moment, you know, life all of a sudden was about the end of life instead of the be the beginnings of life, right? We just bought a house a year before our son was two. We were, you know, kind of doing everything. I’m using air quotes here, normal and then suddenly life changed and we could not have seen that coming. And so I think about that and I’m like, you know, this is kind of what we’re living in right now where we checked all the boxes we’re doing, all the things we’re going about life and then things suddenly change. So while for me, it was becoming a widow at a young age for the world, it’s going through this global pandemic. For listeners, it could be something completely different. It could be losing your job or moving to a new state or becoming an empty nester. And all of these changes, these ebbs and flows. If we are not careful or as I like to say, mindful about how we’re navigating those things, it can become overwhelming. So yes, we’ll things kind of be out of whack. And do we feel like it’s a little messy because we’ve tried to make it perfect? Yes, that is life. It will be messy, but it is up to us on how we respond to that mess. And that’s why the second part is so key we just make life beautiful in the mess.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:35] Now, one of my favorite books is a book called The Obstacle is the Way, and that helped me reframe a lot of this too, in terms of thinking that, Oh, here’s this thing in front of me. Oh, that’s life sabotaging me. It’s like all these things are collaborating to, you know, you know, mess with my life. But if you look at it as well, the obstacles just part of the journey and part of the journey is just dealing with whatever that obstacle might be. So then you’ve got to figure out a way to get over it, around it, under it. Through it, however, you’re going to deal with it. But the obstacle isn’t something that’s just been there to to mess you up. It’s there because it’s just part of life. Like, life has a bunch of obstacles through it. It’s it’s like an obstacle course, and part of life is figuring out how to deal with them.

Karen Allen: [00:04:21] Right, right. It’s not there to be a barrier to hold you back. It actually helps you grow. And it’s sometimes that’s hard to accept, depending on what you’re going through. But it’s always true. If you use it wisely, it will help you grow.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:35] So now when that tragedy happened to you and you’re like kind of punched in the face with that kind of you can’t even fathom how this could possibly happen, and you go through maybe some of the why me? How did this happen? How did you kind of work your way through that? Like, what were the tools you use to kind of manage that pain and manage that challenge?

Karen Allen: [00:04:57] Interestingly enough, everything that I did at that time, it wasn’t because I learned it from a book or somebody told me it was a lot of intuitive learning. So meaning I had these moments where and this was actually one of the pivotal moments, I had a moment to see that I had a choice right in the midst of grief. It’s very hard. I would describe it as drowning. Some people may describe it as like being in a fog, but it’s all consuming. And so when you get these glimmers, you have to pay attention to them. One of my favorite books is The Alchemist, and they talk about the positive. Of omens, and so sometimes we’re so entrenched in our mess. We miss them. This one time in particular, it was so clear and it really set the stage for how I chose to move forward and my son again. He was two at the time. He walked in and he said, Mommy, I was laying in bed. He said, Mommy, are you going to get up today? Are you going to eat? And I recognize that I could either give up or get up, and either way, it was going to be a choice. So I had to choose, was I going to heal or was I going to sit in misery? Now that initial shift in my mindset, it was fleeting, but it was something that I actually anchored myself to year over year, and I didn’t recognize that it was.

Karen Allen: [00:06:17] It was rooted in mindfulness and positive psychology and neuroscience, and by me, just acknowledging that, yes, this hurts. Yes, this is heavy. Yes, this is overwhelming. But how am I going to respond to this moment? There is so much power there, and every time I would align myself with just core values of who did I want to be? And for me, it was quite simple. I wanted to be a happy, healthy, whole mom. And even if I didn’t feel like it in the moment, I was going to consciously choose some level of healthy action that would help to pull me back to that center because I knew that’s what I needed to do to be there for my son. And so that just started other small micro habits. I was shifting my mindset. I was being mindful about what I was eating, what I was watching, that I wasn’t consuming news. I created healthy boundaries. It started to turn into a lifestyle change, honestly, and all of those things helped me to cultivate a strong mindset. So I was very clear and intentional about the choices that I was making.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:20] Now, do you find that in order to deal with kind of a big mess like the one you were going through that you need to have kind of an anchor or a true north and in your case, maybe was your child this bigger y that I’m doing this? It’s hard. I don’t feel like doing it, but because of my child, I’m going to do this because, you know, he’s kind of along for the ride here, and I have to step up because, yeah, yeah.

Karen Allen: [00:07:49] Well, for him, I was like, He doesn’t deserve for that to be his story, that he loses both parents because his mom decided to give up. That’s that’s what I recognized in my mind. But I do think that it helps when you can anchor yourself to the bigger picture. And maybe it’s not, you know, if you’re not a parent, maybe it’s not your child. But there’s always something inside of us. And what I’ve recognized, at least through my studies and also just through prayer and meditation, is that we are all connected. And sometimes it’s not that you are just doing it for another person, but you are fighting the good fight because, you know, and you have hope that when you when you can become your best self, you can help to make this world a better place. And that doesn’t mean the entire world. That means your corner of the world. When we take responsibility for our actions and when we decide to get up every time we’re knocked down, that makes a ripple effect. It makes a ripple effect that impacts the lives of those around you. So even if you just anchor yourself to that, that I’m going to become better because not only is it good for me, but it’s going to serve those around me. It absolutely gives you something to fight for.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:56] Now, how do you kind of marry that holistic concept of, you know, we’re all in this hive together and we’re all kind of have our own community that we can serve and we can do all this kind of work and. Doing just a little bit counts, even though I’m not seeing kind of the ripple of that little bit, but knowing in your heart that doing a little bit every day is going to compound and and build momentum and build a ripple that matters.

Karen Allen: [00:09:26] Hmm. You know, sometimes and this is this was definitely a learning curve for me. Sometimes when you are looking for the bigger picture, it can feel daunting and then it could make you feel hopeless and that leads to inaction. What I recognize is that even the small actions make a positive ripple effect. And here’s a really quick story. It’s a silly story, but it’s true if you’re a parent, you’ve definitely lived through this. But I, for I was getting ready for work. My son was getting ready for school and he was playing around and he wasn’t doing what he was supposed to be supposed to brush his teeth. But he was sword fighting the water with his toothbrush. So I had asked him a couple of times. I was trying to urge him along. And then there came this moment. It was like the third time I was asking him, Hey, hurry up, come on, Caleb, we got to go. And right before I started speaking, I was screaming like, Caleb, hurry up. I told you, you have to go. And in that moment, I recognize that if I started yelling at my son, I was able to catch those thoughts because I’d been training my brain for a while.

Karen Allen: [00:10:27] At that point, but I was able to catch those thoughts before it made a negative ripple effect in his day, in just his day. So that’s a small example. But when you take that and you then multiply it by the interactions that you have every single day and how you are showing up for these people. If you’re a leader, if you’re a coach, if you’re a neighbor, every single one of those interactions, they matter and whether you’re making a positive impact or a negative impact, either way, it leaves an imprint. So the question becomes how are you impacting other people’s lives and even the smallest way? And for me, it helped to see that if I can just do, if I can be more mindful in my interactions, if I could be more thoughtful about how I’m taking care of myself and how I’m serving others, even though I can’t see the end result, I can walk away from that interaction knowing that I showed up as my best. And for me, that’s what I anchor myself to now.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:24] Do you find that people have that kind of self-awareness that they can take that moment to breathe and see the world kind of in an empathetic way so they can see themselves in in the in the moment rather than just kind of reacting to it? There is something that somebody told me that I think it’s pretty funny. And if if if you met a jerk today, then you met a jerk today. But if you meet a jerk every day, then you might be the jerk. You know, like, so you know how some people are always finding drama and they’re always finding these people that are out to get them when in actuality, it might be them self-sabotaging themselves. How many people do you run across that have that self-awareness to kind of say, Hey, it could be me? What can I do to change? What can I do to be self-aware in order to, you know, have a better life?

Karen Allen: [00:12:20] Well, of the two groups that you just mentioned, that’s my that’s my client, right? Is to say, Hey, I’m self-aware enough to know that I want to create better habits or I want to become a more effective leader or I want to develop a growth mindset so they recognize they’re aware they’re at that starting point. And that’s what it is. So you may come across individuals who will bump up against this idea, and that’s because they don’t have that level of self-awareness. But once you become aware of your actions and how your actions impact others, if you have a clean heart and you do want to make a positive impact on the world, you start to take ownership for your strengths and your challenges and then you decide, How do I want to make room for these things? What do I need to cut out? What do I want to amplify? But any change? It doesn’t matter what change it is, you could want to change your diet. You may want to lose weight, you may want to change jobs, you might want to change partners. Any change starts with some level of self-awareness because you have to be aware of who you are. And then you also have to be clear on who you want to be. And then the real work is done in between there, right? Knowing this is who I am today. These are things that are not serving me. These are bad habits that are getting in the way. Barriers that are blocking me. Habits that I’ve been holding on to. Excuses that I’ve been holding on to. And that’s who I want to be. So what do I need to let go of? What do I need to replace? What do I need to build on to be that person? And if you’re aware of who you are and who you want to be, then the the possibilities are endless. The opportunities are out there. You just have to put in the work, right?

Lee Kantor: [00:14:02] And that’s a key component to this, because with this, self-awareness becomes the realization that you’re in control of a lot more things. And you think you are? And that that means that you have to now do some work that you can no longer blame everybody else or blame the circumstance or blame your boss or blame whoever this is now you have choices and you have control, and now it’s a matter of exercising some of that.

Karen Allen: [00:14:27] Exactly. I mean, I remember when I was thinking about the man who killed my husband. It’s been several years now, and it’s still an open world cold case now, but it’s still unsolved. And I recognized very early on that I couldn’t wait for closure in his case to start healing, that I had to take responsibility for my healing because what if we never found that person? Does that mean that I would never heal? And that sounded absurd. So that was my first realization that I have to take responsibility for my well-being, for my mindset, for my healing. And then you want to learn once you realize that you want to learn. But change comes when you apply the things that you’re learning.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:12] So now how did you make the transition from this person that’s going through a trauma that’s kind of having some self-growth to saying, OK, now I am going to share what I’m learning about myself and how to manage my situation. I’m going to help others.

Karen Allen: [00:15:28] I couldn’t help but to not share because I really, you know, early on, I never I just didn’t think that I would be a healthy, happy whole mom because I was so consumed with grief. And when I started to notice those changes in myself, I felt like if there’s hope for me in this terrible situation, I have to tell other people about what’s working for me, because that means that there’s hope for them as well. But with that said, I didn’t just start telling everybody because I was a little nervous that what worked for me wouldn’t work for you. So that’s when I started to explore more and to learn more about neuroscience. I wanted to understand the patterns and the behaviors of the brain. I wanted to learn how our thoughts control our brain, not our brain controlling our thoughts. You know, I studied a lot of great work of Dr. Carol Dweck and also Caroline Leaf. It’s like there’s so much information out there that helped me to gain the confidence to teach people what I was doing, how I was doing it, and to reassure them that science was on their side. That’s a big thing, right? You may hear somebody else’s story and you’re quick to dismiss it and say, Oh, well, they can do it, but I can’t because of or they don’t know my situation. And so when I was able to pair up my personal experience with the science and the research that’s out there, that’s when I started to shout it from the rooftops.

Karen Allen: [00:16:50] And I actually, to be quite honest with you, Lee, I was a little hesitant to coach individuals. I felt like it was easier to speak it from a stage and just leave any expectations out there. But when I was working with people one on one, I’m an empath and I get very invested in their journey. So it was also very I had to get clear on the type of individuals that I would be able to work with and that I was open to working with. And I couldn’t say yes to everyone because as you mentioned earlier, there are some people who are just completely against this. Not that they’re against it, but they don’t believe in it. So if you don’t believe you can change your mindset, you won’t. If you don’t believe you can’t change your life, you won’t. So I found that the best candidates and clients who I work with, they already know that they have the power within them to change. They know that there’s greater fulfillment out there. They know that they can take responsibility for themselves. They’re just looking for some action steps. And I love to give very quick bite size implementation that helps you to just move forward and its micro habits write little things every day they add up to really big results.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:59] Now, can you share a little, maybe one of them, this mental strength training, the stop and shift method that you’ve developed?

Karen Allen: [00:18:07] Yes. Yes, this is. This was the one where I was like, Oh, I have to tell people about this, but it took me a while, so it was a moment where I was. I was lying down and I remember I was thinking about the man who shot my husband, and I just kept thinking about this monster. I was envisioning this horrible person, and of course, my heart rate is spiking. I’m feeling the pain in my body and I just feel terrible. I’m completely overwhelmed with toxic emotions. And then I remember in that moment shifting my thoughts, my focus to my son and realizing like, I have to do better, I have to be there. I have to be whole. He is not going to feel the struggle of a single parent home like, no, I’m going to try to do my best and I notice my energy changed. It was almost like I could see myself lighting up. So I stayed there for a little bit. I was focusing on the man who killed my husband, and I would shift my thoughts to my son. I didn’t know this at the time, but I was using. Stop and shift, because I was stopping a negative thought cycle and I was shifting to a more productive and positive direction. And so once I picked up on that, I started utilizing it a lot and I do mean a lot. Any time I was feeling sorry for myself or I was feeling lazy or discouraged, I would stop. I would notice that thought I would sit with it for a little bit to kind of understand where it was coming from, and then I would pull myself out of it and shift into a positive direction.

Karen Allen: [00:19:38] Sometimes it was taking action like physically getting up and moving. Other times it was just a matter of meditating on a more positive thought or grounding myself in gratitude, things like that. And so as I started to practice this again, I was doing it constantly for about four years. I think it was before I shared it with someone. And then as I started to share it with people, they were using it in every part of their life. And it’s funny because now I hear stories up. I was in traffic and I was going to go off with this person who cut me off, but I stopped and shifted, or I was having a really bad day at work and on my way home, I stopped and I shifted, so I didn’t take that energy back into my home. So all of these different great examples of how when we’re more mindful of our thoughts, we can pay attention to if those thoughts are wearing us down. Are those the things that we are repeating in our mind that are making us feel mentally exhausted, that are holding us stuck in this place in life? And if you notice that they are, the power is yours to shift to take ownership of your thoughts, to take responsibility for what you are holding on to what is actually keeping you stuck, and even more so to take responsibility to take a positive step forward. So stop and shift is an exercise that it’s my signature key note. I have a new book coming out about it. It is absolutely a great way to build awareness and also start to build your mental strength.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:00] Now, mental health has been in the news a lot, especially through the Olympics, as really brought a lot of attention to it. A lot of athletes are sharing their struggles and how they’re dealing with the pressure of being a professional athlete. How do you see kind of coaching fit into helping folks in this area? And also, where does the line kind of drawn when it comes to mental health therapy coaching like it seems like you’re we’re in a gray area here?

Karen Allen: [00:21:31] Yeah, that’s a great question, because you’re right, it is a gray area and it’s also a new area for people to start talking about because there is so much of a stigma around this. We weren’t as open to have this discussion. So first, I think of mental health under an umbrella of mental wellness, and I think that’s the bigger conversation that we need to have. A lot of times people will just write off mental health because they think, Oh, well, I haven’t been clinically diagnosed or I don’t need medication. And so while those illnesses and disorders, they are one aspect of mental health, again, it’s not the whole picture. So when I think of mental wellness, I think it’s three pillars. Mental health is one, mental strength is another and mental performance is the third. Now, mental performance is actually something elite athletes are very familiar with. You know, they have mental performance consultants and coaches, and basically these professionals are teaching the athletes how they can get in the best state of mind when it’s time to show up, how can they bring their best self to the table? I don’t know about you, but I don’t think that Michael Phelps or LeBron James or Serena Williams should be the only people who have access to this right. These are conversations that we should all be having. How can we perform at our best when the pressure is on? Mental strength is about building your resilience, knowing how to get through those stressful moments and not let them cripple you in the moment. And then when you come to mental health again, yes, one part of that is definitely illnesses and disorders.

Karen Allen: [00:23:01] And there are people who are born with the chemical imbalance in their brain. And that’s why they have to go down this route of exploration with therapists to find out what’s going on chemically in their brain, but also under mental health. You know, I wasn’t born with any illnesses or disorders, but the trauma impacted my brain and learning about that was eye opening for me. Also, part of mental health is like just getting enough sleep, drinking water, the natural brain health conversations. And so I think when we start to talk about it from that umbrella of mental wellness, that gives us more room and it gives people different entry points for them to explore. How do I take care of my mental wellbeing? And it’s the same way education around our physical wellness started to amp up and people start to take it more seriously with What are we eating? What diet should we follow? Are we working out? You don’t have to do a rigorous exercise, but if you get some sort of movement, it’s really good for you. You know, we have all of the tools out there for our physical health, but the same is needed for our mental wellbeing. So I’m just hoping to elevate the conversation so that everyone can recognize that there are again, some just very easy. Rules that are available to you that you don’t have to change your entire life, but small changes in your lifestyle will make a huge impact on your mental health.

Lee Kantor: [00:24:19] Good stuff. Well, Karen, if somebody wants to learn more about your work, whether it’s to hire you as a speaker or to talk to their team or an individual who’s looking for coaching that is highly motivated and wants to raise their hand and to raise their game, what is the website? What’s the best way to connect with you?

Karen Allen: [00:24:40] The best way they can reach me is, Hey, beautiful human made it really easy. You can’t forget that hey, beautiful human, you can head on over. You can connect with me directly. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. I’m very active over there, but I love to continue the conversation. If there’s any way that I can serve you, I am absolutely open to exploring that.

Lee Kantor: [00:24:57] Well, thank you so much for sharing your story. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Karen Allen: [00:25:02] Thank you for having me, Lee.

Lee Kantor: [00:25:03] All right, this is Lee Kantor. We’ll see, y’all next time on Coach the Coach radio.