Every single person has their own truth. What is truth for you might look a little different from other people’s truths. On today’s show, Christin Collins chats with Heather Christie about how shifting our mindset will help us realize that there are many different ways to go about things. When we are willing to look at new options, try new things, and hear from other people about their perspectives, we leave that openness for creativity and innovation. Heather is a global award-winning Master Coach and Trainer, a certified Executive and Leadership Coach, a Founding Member of the John Maxwell Coaching team, and a bestselling author dedicated to developing leaders. She combines her legal, lobbying, business, and leadership coaching background to help emerging leaders improve corporate and personal performance.

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Listen to the podcast here

Shifting Your Mindset: Opening Yourself Up For Creativity And Innovation With Heather Christie

I’m incredibly excited to finally get this podcast launched and to help all of us find that spark within. I am beyond excited to express my gratitude, love, and admiration for my beautiful friend, Heather Christie. Heather, welcome, and thank you.

Thank you, Christin, and right back at you. I share so much admiration for you and I am so ridiculously excited about your new podcasts because people need to hear your voice.

Thank you and thank you for helping me find my voice. Our conversation is going to be a great catch-up for you and me because it’s been too long, but it’s meaningful to me that you will be my first official guest on this podcast series called Find the Spark Within Very Intentionally as you have stirred and sparked all kinds of awareness and awakening in me. May I start by saying thank you for your beautiful influence and inspiration on my life?

I am so happy to be part of your journey. The amount that I have seen you grow is so amazing, Christin because when I first met you, you were working in marketing for Norman Love. I remember you showing up on the scene and it was through the Chamber of Commerce that we first met. I remember when I first met you because you were so dynamic and you’re such a great connector. I thought, “I’m going to watch this girl because she’s going places,” and look at you now. You’re a published author with an amazing book with your own company. I’m thrilled. I’m so excited to be working with you.

Thank you. It has been quite a journey together. It’s well over a decade. It’s funny as people are starting to immerse in the content of Her Phoenix Rising, I’ve had about ten people want to audition, to play the role of Christin in a New York TV movie and being with someone that has taught me what it means to hold space and the vitality of a friendship, a mentorship, a coaching relationship. I knew that you were taking companies and executives and people to different heights. Many years ago, when I was blessed to take a John Maxwell course with you and that was my first real Heather Christie experience.

As I reflected on the first several years of life, how you kept bubbling up at those critical moments, my goal today is not only to express gratitude but also to help anyone who’s attracted to this content, hear from my experts some of those lessons. If I may, I would love to start with that fateful day that I was driving across Alligator Alley, heading over to a couple of days to experience Leadership Florida.

If you don’t have the clarity you need, you just haven’t asked yourself enough questions or the right questions.

You having a lobbyist background, understanding politics and walking with me as I was exploring the potential of volunteering to serve in that capacity, you knew how I was not literally excited about it. You question me then as to why I was putting myself out there to be open to it. I expressed, “If it’s meant to be, it’ll be.” You shifted me to better understand that it’s not about being laissez-faire if you’re going to put yourself out there. Can you share a little bit about that experience and the lessening that you were blessing me with?

I would be happy to. I remember that conversation so well, Christin. I do remember that one of the things that I admire so much about you is you are much about going with the flow. You’re much about allowing the universe to guide you and direct you. One of the things that I was asking you about during that conversation was about your level of interest and desire because one of the things that we know is that, yes, the universe brings us whatever it is that we desire and we get focused on.

When we get real specificity and clarity about what we want and we have to marry it with a heightened level of emotion, excitement and desire, Napoleon Hill calls it the Burning Desire. If you don’t have those two things present, you’re sending mixed messages out there. The universe can’t deliver you if you’re not as specific with that elevated emotion. I wanted to check in with you about what your level of desire is because you were more about, “Whatever happens, happens.” I thought, “Why? Do you want this? Do you not want this?”

I remembered challenging you and asking you to make a declaration one way or the other. As a coach, every single one of us has all of our answers within. I was trying so hard not to give you my advice or my thoughts because that would have been a completely different conversation. To stay neutral, in an area where I know it was a big deal for you, but to find out from you, what is that declaration that you’re ready to make? Is it, “Yes, I’m in. I don’t care for this?” You know why that was so important. What did that mean for you to be put on the spot like that and asked to make that kind of declaration?

It was one of the most pivotal lessons of my life and there were five things about that conversation developing together so beautifully and being laid back, being temperate to an opportunity was the way I lived. From connecting with you, I learned that you go for it 100%. You go for it with vigor if you’re choosing to go for it but then the laid-back part is unattached to the outcome.

You got that part right.

That part you held space in you taught me. Never mind the, “You have to find it within.” That’s the subtitle of my company, find it within yourself because you’ve helped me do that. The answer was within what you shared with me when we were connecting. You said, “Maybe the universe is providing you a different way to impact the optimal well-being of your community outside of the way you’ve been doing it. Have you thought of that?” I was like, “I hadn’t thought of that.” As I digested your grace and your brilliance, I thought, “She’s right. This may be a way I’ve never thought of.” With that, the way you bring it out to help people find it within is key. Talk to me a little bit about that and about what it’s like to guide and coach from that place of not telling someone what to do.

Honestly, Christin, that part is something that can be helpful for a lot of people out there, whether you’re in a leadership position or whether you’re a parent, trying to be a great influence on your kids or maybe a husband or wife with your spouse, that’s always helpful, too. It’s not as easy as it appears. It’s not as easy as it seems. What I have to do as a coach is to remove myself completely from any desired outcome that I might have even subconsciously. If it should go a certain way, I can coach into that way like that. I’ve got to remove that. I coach leaders all the time on how to be better coaching leaders and how to make a bigger impact with their employees by being a great coach.

As I do that, one of the first things I do is tell them, “When it’s coaching time, I have to think about putting my coaching hat on.” What that means is, at that moment, it is no longer about my opinion, my thoughts with anything that I see. It is 100% my curiosity in pulling from you what you know inside because chances are good if you don’t have the clarity you need, you haven’t asked yourself maybe enough questions or maybe the right questions.

My game truly is what do I need to ask you to come up with what’s inside of you? A lot of times, there will be some basic questions open-ended to start that I might drill down. Ultimately, I’m looking for you to go within and figure out the why behind whatever decision is in front of you because that’s what matters to you. I’m sure you get annoyed with me at times because I don’t stop at surface level. I keep poking at, “Why does that matter? What’s the impact if you do? What’s the impact if you don’t?” Those are powerful coaching questions that you can ask of someone who’s not sure. The minute I start saying to you, “Christin, what’s the impact if you put yourself out there, and you go all-in?” I remember that being scary. Do you?

I do. There are so many things I remember. I have chills all over me right now but that was another conversation, which is a little bit of a sidebar but super impactful. You walked me through, what’s the worst thing that can happen? What’s the worst-case scenario? Let’s go there. Many of us ruminate about, “What if?” How bad is what if? I’ve taken that practice when I’m trying to support someone else in their awakening or them finding it within themselves and say, “Let’s go there.” What is the worst thing you can think of? 99% of the time, it’s not bad. It’s survivable and the positive outcomes are so much greater.

This concept, which wasn’t necessarily literal that afternoon in my car ride, but one that now is completely embedded in every breath that I take is, there was a major shift. I would see something so clearly and I would get excited about it, as you know because you’re the one that taught me how high I was on the DiSC chart. I’m like, “Now, I understand why things work out the way they do.” It was always, “Everyone, listen to me. Come with me. This is awesome.”

I was getting frustrated in my professional life because everybody didn’t want to come along. They didn’t want to look at well-being from a lens of prevention or what is optimal wellbeing, not just being without disease right after you get it and you repair it. A huge lesson is, and I’d like you to touch in on this, the concept of finding it within yourself being who you are but not expecting everyone else to be in alignment with you? What are your thoughts?

That’s such a great concept in general. How often do we feel let down because? When you think about it, we have these expectations of what other people are going to do or not do. That’s a way to set yourself up for some disappointment, for sure because people surprise us all the time. The better you know someone, the more you might be able to guess but still, how you frame your expectations of others is critical because you think about it.

What is one of the biggest disappointments that we face throughout the day every day? It’s when we expect something and something else happens. Something different from what we expected. What we were talking about a little bit was how you frame this. It’s great to get excited about something. For anyone who knows Christin well, you know that when she gets excited about something or gets behind something, you won’t miss it and there will be this wave of energy of excitement around her. It’s hard not to get sucked in. Even if you don’t want to be, you’re going to go with Christin.

What happens if that energy is not picked upon and someone around you does not want to jump on that bandwagon? That’s truly setting yourself up for a letdown. It goes in part to not being attached to the outcome that once you get excited about something and you’re and you’re ready to go after it becomes up to us to figure out how do we influence others to see our point of view? How do we make this happen? That’s when you can start thinking about all the different strategies but the one thing to keep yourself grounded is not being attached to what someone else is going to do or not do or say or not say.

That was another gigantic lesson in the past couple of years. I can be excited about and show up energetically passionate about whatever it is the flavor of the hour but it’s not about me convincing others that they need to see it the way that I do. None of us like to be told how we should do things or how we should perceive things. That’s the turn-off. For me, I get excited about when I self-discover something that I’m interested in stepping forward with, which brings me to another life lesson that the Heather Christie goddess helped me learn.

Go within and figure out the why behind whatever decision is in front of you, because that’s what really matters.

That fast forwards a little bit later in our shared walk with you helping me understand that everybody sees the same truth either a tiny bit different or magnificently different based on certain factors. I’m not going to say that you saved my marriage because I don’t know that my marriage is in trouble but I promise you, you’ve beautifully enhanced it since that night. I came home and my husband’s like, “You can go out with Heather Christie any time.” I’m not sure what she did. Walk us through some of your thoughts when it comes to mindset and all of the different opportunities to see that same exact truth.

This revelation for me has happened over so many years. I keep learning this in different ways but it wasn’t until I took a course in neuro-linguistic programming and I took it from an instructor on Udemy and he was so good. I’ve bought every class that he teaches but it wasn’t until he shared it in a certain way that I saw it for the first time and that’s what I shared with you about the dots. Do you remember the dots? I should have studied up because I probably would butcher the numbers if I tried to repeat them off the top of my head but I’m going to give you the theory anyway. I have done a lot of study over the years on neuroscience.

Why is that my thing? I do not know because I am not a researcher, generally. Paul can’t get me to watch a documentary with him. It’s not my thing, usually. When I find an area of study that can connect and have me understand a little bit more about what makes people successful, I dive into it. Neuroscience for me has been big. What I learned in neuroscience that is what you’re asking about and that is so impactful is that when you start to understand the different components of your brain, we have a conscious brain, which is in the prefrontal cortex. That’s what makes us unique and human beings. We can make decisions. We have this thinking brain. We have our unconscious brain.

Our unconscious brain is our powerhouse. Our unconscious brain does everything from the beating of our heart to breathing, to split our blood cells, regulate hormones, you name it. It’s doing everything that to keep us alive without us even knowing about that. This concept has to do with the distinction between the conscious mind and the unconscious mind. If you and I are having a conversation about any given topic, we are bringing our whole perception, each of us, our different perspectives to that conversation to that topic. We will see it differently because of the filter that we have, which is our unconscious part of our brain.

Here’s the craziest thing. We don’t even know we’re doing this, but we’re filtering everything. Our unconscious brain is deleting, distorting and generalizing every bit of information that comes at us because we can’t consciously handle all the information that’s out there. You think of the tens of thousands of bits of information that are coming to us every single second of every day. We’ve got to be able to sift through it. We don’t realize we’re doing it, but our unconscious mind is looking for something familiar that can relate to us so we can have an understanding. We might miss a whole lot of other components.

Essentially, the dots conversation is this idea that if you have tens of thousands of bits of information, our conscious brain can only handle 134 of those bits of information. This is what Matthew Barnett taught me. Imagine you’re looking at a painting. You’ve seen those paintings before. They’re made up of all the different dots and shading. If it’s done well, it’s amazing to look at. Of the 60,000, 70,000, or whatever the number is, imagine you take all but 134 away, what picture do you see now?

The answer is whatever your dots are, you are going to be completely different from my dots. We might have a couple of the same, but we’re going to see it differently because we’ve filtered it differently. Quite honestly, that’s why we’re seeing as much divide as we’re seeing. This is why human beings are struggling with each other a little bit and we don’t understand this. One of the things that we got to talk about is that when you have somebody who sees something completely different from you, you can react however you choose to. Most people react without thinking it through but if you want to respond to that person who sees something completely different from you, the appropriate response might be to value the fact that they’ve got a different 134 dots.

If they see it differently, filtered it differently and they’ve grabbed different information, it doesn’t make them bad or wrong. It makes them unique. It makes them individuals. That has helped me tremendously as we’ve gone, especially through this whole pandemic, politics and all of that to be able to know that even when people get fired up and maybe they even get nasty, I know that’s the 134 dots. That’s all.

That’s all was life-changing and freeing. There are a couple of different things going on in my head that I want to ask as a follow-up to that. The positive that came out of that was to be able to go home. The next night or whenever, I reconnected with David, and we were back at discussing whatever that hot topic was. We had 134 different thoughts and how I used to manage conflict, which was I didn’t manage it. I would shut down and put my sneakers on and remove them. I needed to be safe.

I sat in that discomfort and I was trying to be intentional to take deep breaths. I asked a question and I pondered the answer and we hung in there. I hope that this helps spark something within anyone who’s crossing with this content because with the opportunity to breathe, be, ponder and ask a follow-up question, “I’m freaking out. I’m running away. You’re a jerk.” I ended up unfolding a completely different experience from his side.

You were interested and curious. You wanted to find out how he came up with his dots.

It was cute because at first, he’s dipping his toe in and I’m dipping my toe in. This is a different dance than we’ve had in years. I completely understood how he came to what his 134 dots in utter sense. I was like, “I completely see why that’s your truth. That’s what you thought. If I can, I’m going to quickly walk you through what I was thinking, what I saw, or what I felt and this is why this is my truth.” Heather, we didn’t come to resolve and have some new strategy in particular. We were both so happy that we agreed that we both saw it differently.

That was inspiring so I hope this information can help others know that with mindfulness and being present and cutting people a break because they do have a different default that you can find that freedom. I do want to walk a little bit deeper because someone I’ve had this conversation with, a great friend of mine, and I were talking about this concept and he got sad and he goes, “What is truth?” I was like, “Woah.” What is truth?

What a great question. It goes back to the comment about going within that every single person has their own truth. The truth for you might look a little different from the truth for me. What’s interesting is you can’t even necessarily point to the scientific truth of things. For any given study that’s out there, you’ve got to find out who funded the study to figure out how that science might be biased. I learned this back in my lobbying days, where you would see scientific studies that made no sense based on the science that we’ve already studied. It’s because you can always find a scientific study on one side or the other. It goes back to what is true for you. Why does it matter?

If I see something different from how you see something, like with David, you guys didn’t necessarily come to some agreement and have a new strategy at that moment but it’s in that awareness that I validate you as a human being. I respect your views, your opinions and I can allow you to be right where you are with your truth and not have it impact me because I have a different truth. That’s beautiful. That’s amazing. How do we do that in business? What’s right and wrong? We’ve been in business for over sixteen years and working with all different sized companies.

Other than having a moral compass and direction that your organization is committed to and staying aligned with that, there is no right and no wrong in terms of strategy. There’s a lot of different ways to go about things. To leave that openness, for creativity, for innovation, we’ve got to be willing to look at new options, try new things and hear from other people about their perspectives because it can look different. Here’s one part that’s fun. You could ask two different people what strategy we should take in business. Let’s say that one person is the type of person who is data-oriented, research-based, let’s look at what the studies and documents with the information tell us. You might have someone else who’s much more intuitive, who’s much more street smart versus book smart and they come up with a completely different way of looking at things, which one of those two is right.

How we frame our expectations of others is critical.

Having spent about five years in Corporate America, where I was trying hard to be driven by the metrics, the data, the ROI, and all this, especially in a topic like well-being which is hard to track and to your point about data. I was thinking, when I was taking a shower, David had whatever NPR something on I don’t know what it was and I heard in my head, “Remember when you took that course in college on how to lie with statistics?” You can prove anything based on how you present the information or how you position it to your point.

68.7% of all statistics are made up by the way.

Can you say that stat that’s made up again?

That’s 72.4%.

Whatever you put out is my gospel truth.

That’s the funny thing about it because they are researched by people who have 134 dots that they’re putting into the research. We can find studies on anything.

Getting that back, I remember before I was trying to be corporatized that I made my decisions based on what I would hear myself say when someone would ask, “How did you make that decision? Why did you choose that?” I would think about it and I said, “I don’t know. My gut told me and that served me for many years and I heard myself saying that within a management role in a hospital,” and I sounded ridiculous. I’m like, “My gut told me.”

I worked hard to try to make my lens, my 134 dots, much more based on different things. Heather, letting go of that, getting back in touch with the feminine energy of intuition, and letting my knowings, nudges, or stirrings be intuitive, and having the freedom. I’m so lucky that I can do this. It’s important for all of us. There’s been a couple of times in the development of this company that I surrounded myself with experts, people that are great at their job, way smarter than me, and have lots of experience in paying them.

For three different times, I chose not to move forward in the direction that was advised and it was such an exercise and intuition and trusting that what was right for me might not be what was right for others or whatever. Talk to me a little bit about that when you’re in a scenario where your inner knowing, your intuition is going against the tide of what is around or what’s popular or what’s being advised.

It goes back to that huge distinction between data research and information intuition. When I said, “Which one is right of those two people?” The answer is you’re going to see which one is right based on your learning. We have different meanings. We value different things. Some people value the acquisition of knowledge, which is research-based. Some people value the application of knowledge, which is more of intuition and past experience-based, so we know which way you lean. How do you know? Christin, I’m with you when it comes to being intuitive.

Everyone is intuitive. Everyone has access to their intuition and yet, many people have not developed that gift because maybe they don’t trust in it or maybe they don’t believe in it. I’ve learned the hard way myself. I’ve done a couple of things, made some big business decisions, investment decisions, where my gut was screaming at me not to do it and I did it anyway. I was in a hurry and I thought, “I’ll do this.” I made a commitment to myself.

After the last time that happened, I knew it so strongly that I would never ever do it again. I’ve passed up on some major opportunities in business because my gut said no where people are like, “Are you kidding me? You didn’t jump on that partnership?” I’m like, “No. I didn’t.” Speaking to all of you reading, you know when you know our instinct is telling you no. My feeling is you pay attention to that even if it is in direct contradiction with what other people say, remember, you know your truth within. Trust it. It’s okay.

If you struggle and you’re still in that place where you’re like, “My gut is telling me one thing, but that doesn’t make logical sense,” that’s okay, too. Go through and do what Christin and I did together. What’s the worst-case scenario? What’s the worst thing that could happen? What’s the impact if you move forward? What’s the impact if you don’t? Work yourself through that because I believe your intuition will keep guiding you and taking you down the right path.

Walk us through, especially with all the experience you have with incredible executives and people. There’s a lot on the line. It’s not like, “I’m not in touch with my intuition. Should I buy the shoes or not?” You’ve worked with some people and I have thoughts but I would love to hear your thoughts on when you’re at a crossroads and you can’t tell, “Is this my intuition or is this a divot from a bias or from my lens?” How do you help people when they don’t know if it’s their intuition or not? Are they confused and don’t know what to do?

What I’ve learned over the years is about asking more questions. Use inquiry because you may have some gut instinct about some aspect but you don’t have the clarity yet. Don’t try to do it on your own, is my first recommendation. Get somebody who is unbiased, which means they’re willing to be unbiased, at least in the conversation with you, or pull in a coach who is completely unbiased. Get somebody to ask you the tough questions, sit with it and go through it. Even though it feels like there are some people who are like, “I don’t have time for that. How big is the decision?” If you’ve got a big decision, and there’s a lot riding on it, I would not consider making a big decision without going to a coach and/or advisor and looking at all the different angles. Guaranteed, I have not looked at all the angles. I go too quickly.

I need people to sometimes pull me back and ask me those questions. I would go through and again and I would ask the question, why more than once more than twice. If you’re struggling with something and you’re feeling that there’s something holding you back from moving forward on an important decision, I want to look at everything around it. Is it the decision itself? Is it some aspect of the decision? Is it something about the timing of the decision? Is it a financial piece? Break it apart into tiny little pieces and start examining those little pieces because what you’re going to find when you take something big and you break it into smaller components, you can figure out, “Am I on the right page with this? Yes or no?” That’s okay, “What about this part?” That one’s okay, “What about this?” This is what’s not working.

Do you see how that can unfold? How do you take this decision and break it down into smaller pieces and check in with those different pieces? When you do find the one where you’re like, “This doesn’t feel right.” Why doesn’t it feel right? Go deeper and you’re going to give me the answer and I’m going to say to him, “Why did you say that?” That’s why having that dialogue is hard to do by yourself. You certainly can, especially if you had questions that were drafted in front of you and you kept asking using that why question and keep asking until there’s nowhere else to go. It’s a lot easier when you have someone else who can be dynamic in the questions that they asked because depending on where you take them, there’s a different question that’s coming.

The one thing to keep yourself grounded is not being attached to what someone else is going to do or not do or say or not say.

One of the learnings in this reflection of writing was there are certain questions you bring home and you’ve met with your trusted partner or whatnot, but there’s a lot that they’re going to be biased. They care about you, protect you, help you, save you or whatever it is. I was a little bit worried because I didn’t want to bring up all of my questions into my marriage. I had lost my trusted partner at work, where unbeknownst to me, I had spent five years in this amazing, safe space. Scott has an undergrad in psych, so note to self.

I was growing like weed because I was able to self-discover in that container for a long time. When I lost it was when this deep introspection happened. My approach continues to find a couple of different avenues where you can find space that is safe and held for you that you could get outside your own head. If someone came to me and said, “Can I pick your brain?” “Can I ask you for your advice,” or whatever and we were together for an hour. I’ll spend 55 minutes of the 60 minutes telling that person what I thought they should do. That’s what I thought was helpful and I couldn’t understand why six months later they come back and I’m like, “Didn’t we already talk about this? What’s your gig?”

I realized that I didn’t do anything for them. They barely absorbed anything I said. They weren’t ready for that, they’re not there or that’s not their thing. This shift now to be able to help someone self-discover and as I was writing for Phoenix Rising, and people were like, “What’s it about?” I’m like, “I don’t know. I’m not sure. I’m committing to downloading whatever stories come up.” As I looked back, and I looked at the thread, it was this self-discovery of finding it within yourself for that unique makeup of your true why, your purpose, and being comfortable in that space, unapologetically and not ferociously or aggressively. I’m enjoying the word courage and I’d love your insights on the word courage or the philosophy of courage before I reflect on what my new awareness of courage is. What are your thoughts on what is courage?

I’m going to pull a definition of courage that I heard years and years ago back in 2001, in one of the coaching programs that I went through. For me, courage is acting in the face of fear.

When you’re acting, what does it look and feel like?

Taking action in the face of fear. When I say acting, it’s going for it even though you’re scared by it. A lot of people think about courage as someone who’s never scared. People who are courageous, acknowledge that fear and go for it anyway. They’re thoughtful about where they’re headed but they don’t allow that fear to stop them. If you think about it, we human beings have this crazy thing we do, which is called self-preservation where when something is scary out there, we have mechanisms in our brain that will hijack us to stop us from moving, the amygdala.

When you get into a stressful situation and it’s so scary out there, you will move into survival mode and you will be acting on the hormones of stress, adrenaline, cortisol, all that all the nasty things that help us to move forward with a huge amount of energy in a short and focused period of time. At the same time, if we’re experiencing this fear and this stress chronically, which is what most human beings do. Seventy percent of most Americans throughout the day are in a state of stress, which means we’re in heightened emotion and stress hormones.

We can’t do that. We’re not built for that. We can’t survive it. That’s what creates disease in our world. When you look out at something, you see fear, just recognize that it’s a human thing that we do. We look at worst-case scenarios to protect ourselves. That’s part of our neurological makeup. I’m going to give you the best example I can come up with right now. I remember the first, the last and the only time that I jumped out of an airplane. That was in Australia and my girlfriend, Rachel tricked me into it because I was not interested but somehow, I find myself up in this airplane looking down at blue and green.

Because it’s Australia and they don’t have personal injury laws like we do, we go through a brief instructional video and conversation about, “Put your hands here. I’ll go 1, 2, 3 and you’re going to jump out of this perfectly good airplane.” At that moment, looking down, and I’ve got this big Australian guy strapped to my back, which is, thank goodness for that, and he’s doing the 1, 2, 3, and I break into a Tourette’s outbreak saying all sorts of bad words. I was scared to death. I’m looking out and I remember thinking that I have never known fear, until that moment. All the other things that I used to think would scare me and hold me back from doing something that’s not even fear. Have you done that before?

No.

Do that. Everybody should experience this at some point in your life because once you’ve done something like that and you’ve faced literally the fear of jumping out of an airplane and potentially dying because of what goes through your head, “My chute is not going to open.” “The big Australian guy is going to pop off my back somehow or his chute is not going to open. Maybe he’ll pass out, maybe I’ll pass out.” All this stuff is going through your head because you don’t want to jump out of that plane. The greatest thing about it is that once you survive that, you say, “I’ve got a new level of fear now. What I was thinking was fearful before, that’s not fearful. That’s nothing.” Do you know what I mean? It’s all relative.

I do and it brought me back to when you helped me go for an unattached outcome. When you can live a life that you’re moving towards that fearful thing, as I put myself out there wholly as an offering to take this county commission seat, I was scared to death. People are going to hate me or people are going to have this to say. The funny part is that I was never meant to have that role, in hindsight. That was me jumping out of the plane. I had the opportunity to alter my truth, so I could get an appointment. Instead, I sat in the discomfort of the fear of the authentic truth. That was the experience. Jumping out of the plane for me was me putting myself out there. I’m not going to lie about this. Somebody else might like me. This is what happened. This is the truth.

For those of us who aren’t going to go to Australia, with the big burly guy and jump out of a plane, we can face our biggest fears in other ways and it does define who you show up to be. There’s not enough time on any day. While I get to connect with you 3 or 4 times a year if I’m lucky and our schedules are so crazy, I’m so thankful every time I connect with you. I can wait another year to do it again because I’m so satiated. If folks also want to be around your messaging and bask in your thoughts, which is something that I want to ingest, are there ways that folks can plug into your work?

Probably the two best ways would be either through LinkedIn. It is my social network of choice when it comes to my professional world. I’m always happy to have connections there and the other thing is my YouTube channel. We have a number of different videos on there and I know that I have a video on there about the 134 dots that has a little bit better information for you. If you want to go deeper in that, you can search and find that as well.

This will be on YouTube as well if people want to reference it. As we, unfortunately, land this plane without jumping out of it here and I do hope that we can do this again in the near future, tell me what’s next on the horizon or next in the visioning for Heather Christie?

For me, the biggest thing is my own introspection and I have been studying a lot in the neuroscience world, quantum physics, neuroplasticity, and stuff that I could barely pronounce. I’m taken with it. I’m learning as much as I can for me. Ultimately having the kinds of experiences that I’m hoping I generate, I can find a way to be of higher-level service to others. I’ve got to learn enough the how-to. I’m such a practical person when it comes to working with my clients. As I learn, grow, and find technology that is going to be helpful in helping people to either create their vision for what success looks like for them or the how-to get there.

In general, the goal is to be happy for all of us, and I want to help people live a less stressful and more happy existence, and if that means that I work with them through their organization in executive coaching, that’s awesome. Otherwise, connecting it with people in general. I’m on an inward journey, that’s been incredible. My mentor is Dr. Joe Dispenza and I’ve been to a handful of different workshops with him. That technology is mind-blowing. That’s where I am and hopefully, you will join me along those lines as well, Christin.

I’m not surprised. I’m always a little puppy dog behind you marveling at my passion as I’ve completed this cycle of deep introspection. As I articulate it to help it come out of my own body, my own head, and self-discover through connecting, I get curious about quantum physics and metaphysics. We had Deepak Chopra to town a few years ago and his book was Metahuman. About 1,800 of us came and listened. I wasn’t ready for that yet. When I head out of town, I’m going to bring that book. If you have to follow up on this with any connections, with a YouTube video, book, or a course that you recommend, I would love to not only know that for myself but I’d be happy to share that with others. That’s the natural next step after the introspection piece.

Every single person has their own truth. The truth for you might look a little different from the other person’s truth.

I’m happy to send you my favorites and what’s interesting about Deepak’s book. I feel like it’s probably within reaching distance in my library right next to me here. Christin, when you first brought him to town and we got his book, I remember thinking that his message was probably over a lot of our heads. I’ve been studying that for years and it was still stretching and challenging me and I thought, “Me five years ago, wouldn’t have I would not have followed this so much.” I started reading his book back then.

It will be two years in October 2021.

I started reading his book back then and I wasn’t ready for it either. I picked it up and reread that first chapter. I was like, “This is everything I’ve been studying.” It’s right there but it’s an evolution and we’re all on this journey and you’re ready for it exactly when you’re ready for it. It doesn’t mean that we can’t be consuming that information now before we feel we’re ready because you’ll still get something but this is something that I encourage all of us to do and remember to do myself especially. It’s to go back and reread some of those books or watch some of those videos from before after you’ve done some real study. What’s so interesting as you go back and you reread it, and it reads a completely different book because of where you are. It was always there, but you’ve rearranged your dots. You can take it in a different way.

Heather, thank you for being such a beautiful bright light in my world and in the world. Keep shining. Thank you for your time and your inspiration. I love you to death.

Thank you, Christin. Right back at you and I’m so excited for you. I’m so excited for this show and I’m so grateful to have been chosen as your first real guest back and forth. I can’t wait to plug this in my podcast app and I hope for all of you to subscribe to this show because Christin is going to have some amazing guests coming forward. I love learning from you. I love watching your journey and I love your commitment to your own personal and professional growth. You’re an inspiration. Thank you for doing what you’re doing.

Namaste. Thank you.

You, too. Love you.

Love you. Bye.

Bye.

Important Links:

• Heather Christie
• Her Phoenix Rising
• LinkedIn – Heather Christie
• YouTube – Heather Christie
• 134 dots
• YouTube – Christin Collins
• Dr. Joe Dispenza
• Metahuman

About Heather Christie

Heather Christie has been recognized as the #1 Executive Coach in the world out of over 1,000 coaches in her former coaching franchise, which she founded in 2005. As Owner of Evolve Global, she works primarily with Senior Leaders, High Potentials and Teams on: Leadership Development & Team Building. Heather is a Professional Member of the National Speakers Association and is Immediate Past-Chair of the Chapter Leadership Committee. She is also Past-President for the Florida Speakers Association. Heather is a “recovering attorney”.

She was a Partner in a prestigious 100 Attorney Chicago law firm where she practiced as a State, Federal and International lobbyist. Heather was fortunate to work with some of the most influential people in business and politics – from Fortune 100 clients to the top elected officials. Using her expertise in behavioral analysis and executive alignment, Heather helps leaders to grow their Influence by coaching and developing others. As a professional speaker, she has mastered a practical and entertaining delivery methodology – all of her program material is designed to inspire and motivate change. She gives each audience practical and actionable steps to apply each concept that she shares.

Heather’s guiding principle is to increase employee engagement and bottom line results through coaching and leadership development. She works with her clients to build their self-leadership; anticipate and embrace change; and to understand and adapt their behavioral style to improve communications and influence others to increase results. As a Master Executive Coach, Heather was responsible for training other coaches entering the coaching profession. She has applied this skillset to her clients by developing her proprietary “7 Steps to Powerful Coaching™”. This System helps executives gain clarity on the distinction of coaching and become powerful coaching leaders. Heather is also a Certified Speaking Professional (CSP™). The CSP™ designation is the highest earned specification that can be achieved by a member of the National Speakers Association or Global Speakers Federation Member Associations.