Kamini Wood is a Certified Life Coach who is the creator of AuthenticMe® and the CEO of her coaching company Live Joy Your Way, which specializes in helping high performers and overachievers navigate past traumas and toxic relationships, empowering them to live with impressive self-acceptance, self-confidence, and self-leadership. In addition to her training in internal family systems and cognitive behavioral-based coaching, Kamini holds certifications in various modalities, including life, wellness, high-performance coaching, teen life, conscious uncoupling, calling in the one, new money story, breath work, meditation and diversity, equity inclusion, and belonging. She is also trained in conscious parenting and coaching for children.

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL HEAR ABOUT THINGS LIKE:

• The difference between internal and external perfectionism.
• When should a person hire a coach instead of a therapist?
• The holistic approach Kamini uses to help her clients learn how to reduce stress and anxiety and work through trauma.
• What is conscious parenting, and how Kamini coaches children.

SOME QUESTIONS IRENE ASKS KAMINI:

• What is imposter syndrome?
• How does setting healthy boundaries help a person to become more authentic?
• What does a bad relationship with money look like, and how do you help a person form a healthier relationship with money?

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Watch the episode here

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Kamini Wood: A Dynamic Coach Who Empowers High Performers And Overachievers To Successfully Navigate Their Relationships To Money, To Boundaries, To Their Authentic Selves And More, To Live Flourishing, Fulfilling Lives!

I’m delighted to have this opportunity to interview, Kamini Wood. She’s a certified life coach whose mission is to help high achievers heal their relationships with themselves by motivating and supporting them as they take courageous steps to identify their limiting beliefs, uncover the reasons for their stagnation, and overcome their self-doubt in order to live more fulfilling professional and personal lives.  

Kamini is from Cary, North Carolina. Kamini is the Creator of AuthenticMe and CEO of her coaching company, Live Joy Your Way, which specializes in helping high performers and overachievers navigate past traumas and toxic relationships. Empowering them to live with impressive self-acceptance, self-confidence, and self-leadership. In other words, Kamini helps her clients to heal and transform their lives, which beautifully resonates with the mission of this show.

In addition to her training, internal family systems, and cognitive behavioral-based coaching, Kamini holds certifications in various modalities including life, wellness, high-performance coaching, teen life, conscious uncoupling, calling in the one, new money story, breathwork, meditation, diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. She is also trained in conscious parenting and coaching for children.

I’m looking forward to talking with Kamini, who calls herself a recovering perfectionist, about the difference between coaching and therapy, how she helps her clients to heal their relationships with themselves so that they can recognize their true value and self-worth, and the ways a person can form a healthier relationship with money, which is so important. Her tips for healthy boundaries are another important subject, and more for what will surely be a very insightful and powerful interview. Kamini, a sincere warm welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me.

My pleasure. Let’s help everybody get to know you and where you started from. Would you like to tell us about your early years? Why did you never feel good enough? Explain why you now call yourself a recovering perfectionist.

I grew up in a small town in Connecticut. It was predominantly White. My parents were both immigrants. My mom came to the States when she was probably 13 or 14, and my dad was about 19 or 20. My sister and I were these little Indian girls in a predominantly White town. My parents worked hard trying their best to provide for my sister and me.

During that time period, as I was going through elementary school, one thing that was very apparent to me as a little girl was that I was different. The color of my skin was darker than most other children. My name was different. There was a lot of that internalization at the time of trying to figure out how I belonged and be accepted among this peer group that was not the same as me. I was a different person.

At the same time, my parents were working hard and I do not fault them at all. One of the things that I started to do as a little girl though was wanting to ensure that I wasn’t a problem or a burden to them because they were working so hard. You have this little girl who’s 5 or 6 years old going to elementary school trying to figure out how she belongs in this group of peers, and then also trying not to cause problems or be a burden for her parents. I’m a very highly sensitive person and I’ve been that way my whole life. That’s where it all started. It was, “How do I fit in? How do I belong?” Perfectionism and the people pleasing started there. I know this now as an adult and as I look back, but at the time, I didn’t.

I was this little girl trying to figure out how to create friendships and community. If people are happy with me and I do what they want, then they’re going to accept me. If I am this high achiever and perfectionist that don’t fail, I’m not going to be a burden to my parents because they don’t have to worry about me. That snowballs in and of itself. That’s where it began. I carried that through my adulthood. It’s an interesting thing because I didn’t know it at the time. I learned and realized it was happening when I was a mom. I recognized those attributes and personalities as they start to show up in my own kids.

That’s interesting because they were mimicking you. It wasn’t necessarily something that they genetically inherited. They were subconsciously mimicking you.

They were mirroring my behavior in how I was showing up and my personality trait because kids are sponges. I could see how it was starting to inhibit my children. That’s my catalyst moment where I realized, “This is coming from me.” I went through my own self-transformation. It happened at the time when I was also in my work life, helping others figure out what their paths were, and how to grow and expand.

You have this professional trajectory that was happening, as well as this personal transformation. When those two things collided, that’s truly when I realized, “This is my calling to take this experience that I had.” It’s not a good enough story that I personally had. Now that I understand it on a deeper level, I take my professional experience, bring those things together, and get trained. You mentioned my training. I’m a self-proclaimed nerd. You have to bring all those things together. That’s what my calling is. It’s to help other people recognize what’s holding them back in order to move forward.

I’m very curious about your sister. Was she that way also? Are you the older one or the younger one?

I’m the younger one.

Did she react in a different way?

She handled it a different way. She is a little more extroverted than I am. I’m more introverted. We handled it differently. That’s why people need to take the time to recognize their story and their narrative because if we don’t take the time to recognize that for ourselves, we can’t move forward. We’re still living somebody else’s story.

People need to take the time to recognize their story and their narrative. Because if we don't take the time to recognize that for ourselves, we can't move forward. Click To Tweet

That’s true. I don’t know when you had time for this, and it’s not my business, but you have five kids also with everything else you’ve done. You’re a mom to five kids. Two of whom are high-performing young adults like their mom. How did they inspire your mission? Did they inspire you because you saw that they were taking on your traits?

Yes. My oldest is a ballerina and my second oldest is a Division 1 athlete. They had these aspirations. I could see within them how their perfectionism was starting to hold them back. There was a lot that I was recognizing of my personality traits that they were emulating. It’s recognizing that you don’t have to give those things up. You can still be a high achiever. It’s just we can do it with respect to what else we want to achieve. We don’t have to cut ourselves down in order to be high achievers. We don’t have to put ourselves in this place of, “If I don’t do X, then I must be a failure.” It’s about recognizing what is that inner dialogue about.

Truthfully, it was my own children that inspired my work with teenagers. As I said, my story started when I was 5 or 6 years old. If we can start working with our young adults from an earlier age, we can help them recognize what those limiting beliefs are from that earlier stage, so they can start working through them. They don’t get to their 30s, 40s, and 50s when they’re trying to figure out, “What in the world is going on for me? Why can’t I move forward?”

When a person is a perfectionist. How does that color their effectiveness in the world? Is it that they have such a high standard for themselves that there’s no give? Tell me how you lighten that burden that you’d put on yourself or your children would put on themselves. How do you mindset it for them to say, “You don’t have to be perfect in everything that you do. It’s okay.”

There are different shades of perfectionism too. There’s the internalized perfectionism where I’m holding myself to this high standard and I have to do it perfectly. What ends up happening is a lot of times those types of perfectionists will not show up and move forward because they end up becoming so afraid of failing that they don’t move forward.

You have that externalized perfectionism where you have such high standards that you hold other people to those high standards too. If they don’t meet them, then that starts to affect your relationships with other people. For instance, I have worked with clients who have that external perfectionism and they’re holding their children to this high standard, and it’s detrimentally affecting their relationship with their children. It is a mindset shift.

For me, it was an internalized perfectionism. For instance, there were times when I would be afraid to try something because I was afraid I couldn’t do it perfectly. With my children, that was one of the things that we worked through. It’s recognizing that there is no perfect way to do something. There is just your way to do it. If you continue to grow and evolve from every instance that you have, you continue to move forward.

Both of my two older kids still have to go through it to this day because they want so much to get it right, and they still have to do that mindset work that recognizes, “I’m still growing and evolving,” and that’s what matters because if we get it perfectly, there’s nowhere else to go or expand to. In that realm of recognizing that, as humans, we’re constantly growing, evolving, and learning, we can release this need to get it perfect.

That lets you off the hook. Not only that but it also releases people from very high judgment of others that they don’t meet their standards. When you talk about a kid, that’s a hard thing for a child to live with if the parent has such high standards for them. It sets up all kinds of things. They then need to go to therapy or coaching. What’s the difference? Why should a person hire a coach instead of a therapist?

I’m going to give you my version and the way that I describe the difference. The distinction I’ll use is diagnosis versus the decision. Therapy is more of a diagnosis of a root cause or problem, and then together with the therapist’s help, you’ll psychoanalyze that problem and try to fix it. Coaching takes the perspective of decision, “I recognize this is where I am now and I’m deciding that I want to move forward.” With a coach as your collaborator, you’re working towards how to take the committed actions to move forward.

In the work that I do, we do look in the past for patterns and to understand what certain belief systems and narratives are in order to bring those up to awareness. Sometimes, they’re in the subconscious. We have to bring them up to the awareness that now we can take a committed action because we’ve brought the subconscious to the conscious.

The best metaphor that I can use is that of a flower. When you have a flower and you recognize that certain petals are not blooming with your coach, essentially both of you are going into the soil together figuring out what serves that flower versus what doesn’t. Together, we’re putting efforts into setting goals and aspirations around the things that would serve the flower, and watching those petals bloom and grow. Versus a bud, where the therapist is going into the roots of the actual flower to try to figure out what’s going on.

The way that I describe in terms of what would lead somebody to work with a coach is about somebody who’s deciding that this is where they are and they’re ready to move forward. They want somebody to walk with them to help set those goals, help them with accountability, and be that sounding board to move forward versus a therapist going to help with the diagnosis and work through those diagnoses. A coach is not meant to diagnose you.

Maybe someone goes to therapy if they’ve been tremendously wounded to find the root cause of what’s going on, and then they would continue with the coach to take action after they understand that.

I’ve had several clients who’ve done that in the past when they have gone through therapy. I wholeheartedly believe in therapy. First of all, people should pick exactly what’s right for them. However, I have had clients who have gone through therapy, done that work with their therapist, and now they’re ready to work with a coach to continue moving forward.

That makes a lot of sense to make. You help your clients learn how to reduce stress and anxiety and work through trauma. You use a holistic approach for that. What do you do? How do you bring down those stress levels and help them to work through that trauma?

The way that I work with my clients is not just cognitively. We also use somatic approaches. Our body is so intelligent and it holds so much information. When we do go through a trauma, our body is holding onto it. When we’re stressed, over-anxious, and overwhelmed, our body is having a reaction. Through my coaching and that holistic approach, we’re paying attention to how our body is and what we’re feeling within our body as a key indicator to let us know, “We’re overwhelmed.”

For instance, when I am feeling very anxious, I will feel this tightness in the pit of my stomach. Working with my clients, we help recognize the different signs and symptoms, and then we can work through it from a cognitive level. There’s this bottom-up approach. We’re connecting the whole body and mind together because we are one being. If we try to do it from the mind, we can have 1,000 thoughts a day. It’s how we are integrating it within ourselves as well.

You probably have clients who are first discovering that, “My body responds to all this stuff going on up here. They’re not even aware.”

It’s interesting that you say that because I’ve had clients who I will slow down and say, “Where did you feel that in your body?” They’re telling me about a specific event where they felt extraordinarily stressed out and anxious. They will look at me strangely, “What do you mean?” We have to go through it together, slow down to go back to that moment, and then they’re like, “Oh, my gosh.” The work is to recognize, “My body tells me that. It’s like the first moment, and if I pay attention to that, I can catch it before I spiral,” which is huge.

The other thing I’m thinking is that would be particularly huge when you’re working with children because they spiral very easily. With your emotions, it helps you to make them aware to bring them down into their bodies and make them aware of what’s going on before they react.

It helps. The other thing that I do with the children that I work with is make their feelings valid. One of the things that we forget is that all feelings are 100% valid, but not all behaviors are. If I can create this safe space for my clients, whatever their age is to say, “Whatever you’re feeling is 100% okay. ” As I say to my clients all the time and they start to laugh because I’ll constantly say, “It’s a data packet.” I’m saying there is it’s communicating, illuminating, and motivating us. It’s communicating what’s happening for us. It’s illuminating what we might need or what values are not being met. It’s going to motivate us to take action to move towards that.

Especially with my younger clients, I hone in on this idea that all emotions are valid because so often, there are these messages of, “Don’t cry. Be brave. We don’t have time for you to yell and scream. We don’t need everybody to hear us.” Emotions are valid but not all behaviors are. If you’re feeling angry, it’s not to say anger is bad, it’s just we can’t go into a rage and start punching a wall. That behavior is not okay, but anger itself is here to tell us something. It’s like grief. It’s here to tell us what we need or what value is not being met. On the other side of love is pain. Why do they go hand in hand? It’s because without pain, you don’t love. The pain is showing that we loved someone or something deeply. You can’t have one without the other.

That’s so wise. There are so many people whose children are exhibiting behaviors and they don’t know what to do. I would think you’d be a wonderful resource for that. Do you work with kids online also?

I do. My whole practice is virtual. I work with kids. Generally, the youngest that I work with on Zoom is about nine years old because anything younger, Zoom doesn’t work as well. We vary the times. When I’m working with somebody who’s nine, it’s going to not be as long of a session because of their attention span. We don’t want them to be stuck to a computer screen for a long time.

In that sense, that was a blessing. It was part of COVID that taught us that we can do this online. We don’t have to only be in person with each other. The rapport that I’m building with my clients, whatever their age, allows them to know that the space that we’re creating is 100% safe for them to experience what they need to.

You’re changing their process. When they go into something, you’re getting them to slow down and face it a different way. The parents must be very grateful. Tell us about imposter syndrome. You help your clients to overcome this imposter syndrome so they can rediscover what you call their authentic me.

The imposter syndrome is a misfire in our brain. Because something is new, it’s not in our comfort zone and it’s in our growth zone. There’s that misfire in our brain that says, “I can’t do that. I’m a fake. I’m a fraud. I’m going to be figured out.” All that self-doubt comes creeping in that says, “I can’t do this.” A lot of high achievers have this. It’s interesting because people are like, “How can they have imposter syndrome?” I work with executives who are constantly thinking to themselves, “They’re going to find me out. They’re going to think I’m a fraud.” That’s because as a high achiever, you’re constantly edging, going above, and pushing that outside of the comfort zone or the next level, and then imposter syndrome comes in to say, “You can’t do that.” It’s all that self-doubt.

As a high achiever, you’re constantly edging, going above, and pushing that outside of the comfort zone or the next level, and then imposter syndrome comes in to say, “You can’t do that.” It’s all that self-doubt. Click To Tweet

What I’m working on with my clients is recognizing where that narrative is coming from. Most often it’s a narrative that was probably assimilated between the ages of 0 to 7 because that’s where most of these things are imprinted. It’s probably a narrative of, “I’m not good enough. I’m not smart enough.” Whatever that little narrative, limiting belief, or false belief was, it’s imprinted and has been carried through. I refer to it as the refrigerator hum or the noise that is coming from it. You don’t know that it’s there, but it’s operating underneath all this time. What we’re doing together is bringing it up to awareness because if we know it’s there, we can now do something about it.

What do you do about that? If someone is having a huge corporation, taking on a new endeavor, or whatever it is in their lives and they say, “I’m supposed to know everything but I don’t. I don’t want these people around me to know that I don’t.” How do you change that mindset?

One of the things that we talk about is, “Do you have to know everything?” That’s a false belief that you have to know everything. The truth is none of us know everything. We figured it out on the way and we learn how to self-trust that, “If I don’t know this answer, I’m going to go figure it out.” It’s rebuilding that ability or self-trust that you’re going to be able to go do that. That’s part of it.

The other part of it is to challenge it. How many times have you had success, or you didn’t know something and you then figured it out? I’m working with a woman who is completely climbing up that corporate ladder and I’m so excited for her. She has another iteration of a potential promotion for her. She had this moment of, “I don’t know if I can do this.”

We talked through it and said, “How many other times that question came up of ‘I don’t know that I can do this?’ What did you do? What were the steps? What were the strengths you leaned into?” As her co-collaborator, we unpacked that together. She suddenly sees, “I took this step and this step.” We start breaking that down because imposter syndrome is a false belief that, “I’m not going to be able to figure it out or I’m not smart enough.”

“I’m surrounded by other people who maybe have that as their expertise. I don’t have to be perfect. They have all the answers.”

“I can lean on people and go search out answers.”

What are some of the modalities that you utilize to help your clients quiet their inner critic, overcome self-judgment, and own their stories? Are there specific modalities besides talking that you do?

I utilize internal family systems as a major part of the coaching that I do, as well as acceptance-commitment-based coaching, and CBT. I have made the Kamini version of that where I’ve taken the pieces that resonate. By being trained in each of those modalities, I feel that I can meet the client with whatever they assimilate to. Some clients will do better with CBT-based coaching.

CBT is Cognitive Behavior Therapy.

That’s different than maybe the internal family systems where that’s based in parts. It’s understanding that there are these parts of us. I resonate with that idea, “This is part of me that is beating myself up right now. What is she trying to accomplish?” Most often for me, the part that is critical and judgmental is trying to keep me safe. It’s trying to keep me from potentially hearing that from somebody else. That part of me tries to tell me first that if somebody else judges me, it doesn’t hurt as much. I work with clients on whatever resonates with them best. I’ve utilized different aspects of it for different people, but the other one that I do utilize a lot too is values-based coaching.

Let’s get to your core values as an individual because many of us, especially adults, don’t know what our core values are. They were brought up in a family system and the values that were the family system carried them through. They haven’t slowed down to ask, “Are those my core values at this point in life?” That’s a lot of it too because if we can use our values as where we’re going and using that as our ground zero, it can help move us forward.

You’re helping people to separate from their stories and discover themselves. When you’re separating from your story, it’s very important to establish a healthy boundary system. That’s hard for everyone or most people. Would you like to share some of your best tips for setting healthy boundaries? How does that helps a person become more authentic? It’s hard to set a healthy boundary because I overheard also that you’re highly sensitive as am I. Highly sensitive people fear setting boundaries because we’re going to lose people in our lives and they’re going to get mad at us. Tell us about boundaries.

Many things come all full circle back to boundaries. Boundaries are important. There are different types of boundaries. You’ve got your rigid boundaries, which I equate to setting up a wall, “I’m here and you’re there.” There’s this big wall in between us. You’ve got your poorest boundaries which is I’m going to try to say, “I don’t like this and this is not okay,” but the moment somebody pushes on that, the boundary goes away and there’s no boundary at all.

You’ve got your healthy boundaries. A metaphor for that is a fence. With a fence, there is this line where I’m on this side and you’re on that side. With the fence, you also have a gate so you can open and let people in. You can close the gate and not let people in. There’s this ability to still see people, talk to people, and hear people because you can do all of that with a fence. By the way, fences can be moved, which means if it’s healthy, we can set a boundary here and maybe we need to move it in the future, and that’s okay too.

When we’re talking about boundaries, the people who will have the most negative reaction to the boundaries we have set are the people who have benefited from us not having any boundaries in the first place. It’s important that people hear that because it’s very scary to set boundaries when you haven’t set them before. The fear is, “I’m going to lose people.”

Here’s the truth. The people who are meant to be in your life are going to respect your boundaries. The people who choose never to respect your boundaries are the ones who are benefiting from you not having them, and are not necessarily showing up in a respectful way. If you’re communicating to somebody, “This is okay and this is not okay.” They’re not willing to work with you on that. You have to start taking a look at that relationship. That’s important to pay attention to. There is no reason why we should not be able to communicate with other people if something is not okay for us versus if something is okay.

The other important thing is recognizing that setting boundaries for ourselves is important. For instance, I’m going to say yes to this versus I’m going to say no to that. That’s an internal boundary. For me, that was getting rid of the people pleaser. If I say yes to this, I’m choosing to do it versus allowing myself to recognize I don’t have the capacity to say yes to this. That’s me setting a boundary for myself so that I don’t have to say yes to every single thing.

That’s about self-respect. Some people don’t learn to love themselves or have self-respect.

Part of it is self-respect and it’s also in reference to people pleasing. For me, it was a lot of making sure that I didn’t offend people because as a highly sensitive person, I did not want to hurt anyone’s feelings. I had to start setting a boundary for myself and recognized that I’m not responsible for other people’s feelings. That’s a big one. A lot of us take on other people’s feelings as we need to fix them. If they’re upset or get upset with us, we have to take a look at how we communicate.

If we communicate it in a loving compassionate way, and we were communicating our thoughts and our ideas and somebody got upset, there has to be a line where we allow their autonomy to deal with that feeling themselves. We’re not trying to fix it for them. As a people pleaser or a highly sensitive, that can be difficult. That’s what I meant by setting a boundary where it’s like, “They’re upset. I can have empathy that they’re upset, but I don’t have to take it on as mine to fix.”

That’s what high sensitives do all the time. We take it on as ours. We say to someone, “Your behavior towards me is not okay.” They say, “That’s the way I am.” You don’t know that you have a choice as to whether you’re going to keep that person in your life, establish distance, or whatever because whether that bothers them, it bothers you. It’s about being sensitive to your own needs and respecting them.

That ties back into your question. How does that relate to the authentic me? The authentic me is what are my needs, my desires, or my wants. It’s recognizing that it’s okay to name them, know them, and communicate them. When we’re able to show up as that person and we’re communicating our needs, now we’re our real person or our authentic selves versus trying to fit in or trying to be a version of ourselves that makes other people happy.

A healthy relationship with someone is someone who respects your feelings and your boundaries. Even though maybe it doesn’t resonate with who they are, they know that’s who you are. Speaking of boundaries, let’s go to another one. A person’s relationship with money. Let’s talk about what a bad relationship with money looks like and how you help a person form a healthier relationship with money.

This is interesting because what I’ve learned working with individuals, especially when they have money stories, is it goes back to the limiting beliefs or the narrative that started in our younger years. When we’re talking about the relationship with money, it’s not just budgeting. That’s part of being financially aware, but that’s not the work that I do with my clients. It’s recognizing what those old stories or old beliefs are. A lot of times, people don’t have this belief that they don’t deserve it. “I don’t deserve to have money. I don’t deserve to have abundance,” and what not.

It comes from messages that they received when they were younger. That’s not big trauma. I call them the little-t traumas because they are just messages or experiences that they had. They internalized them, made them mean something, and carried them through into their adulthood. The work that we’re doing with these money stories is understanding, recognizing, and owning that old story, and then it’s about rewriting it. “Now, that I’m an adult and where I am right now, what’s true for me? What do I want for myself? What actions am I going to take to commit to and move forward?” That’s where that whole decision part of coaching comes in. What are my committed actions? How am I going to hold myself accountable?

A lot of times, people don't have this belief that they don't deserve it. “I don't deserve to have money,” “I don't deserve to have abundance,” and whatnot. It comes from messages that they received when they were younger. Click To Tweet

That makes tremendous sense. I’m wondering also if they grow up in a monetarily deprived situation, sometimes people grow up thinking, “This is the way I grew up. This is my lot. I’m going to be poor in my life.” You are changing that mindset and giving them permission to have affluence in the world. If your family doesn’t have affluence, they could resent you or there are all kinds of dynamics about that. It would hold you back, “I’ll lose love. I won’t fit in anymore,” or all of that. You’re giving them permission to change that mindset.

That’s part of it. Sometimes it’s also more on the subconscious level, where it was maybe the family didn’t have a whole lot growing up, or the message was that you have to work hard, and the people who have a lot of money don’t care or they’re not kind people. If that’s playing in the subconscious, then there might be this subconscious humming of the refrigerator operating where, “If I have a lot of money, I’m going to become an unkind person.”

We keep ourselves held back from being able to move forward because subconsciously, there’s this idea that if I have affluence, I might not be a good person. We’re bringing that up to the awareness. What are those stories and narratives? We can then challenge them. We can say, “Just because you have affluence, that doesn’t suddenly make you lose all of your values.” Your values are still here. Does affluence change the fact that these are still your values? We work through that.

As a grandmother to three boys, I cannot resist having you tell us what is conscious parenting. I love that you coach children.

Conscious parenting is referring to the fact that as parents, we need to recognize that many times, we are coming from a place of our own projections. It’s what I was talking about earlier. I recognize that I was coming from this place of showing up as a people pleaser and a perfectionist. I was then projecting some of my fears and own anxiety onto my children as I was raising them, communicating with them, and how I react to different situations.

With conscious parenting, what we’re recognizing is as parents, we have to do our own work so that we recognize if we are potentially projecting our own stories and fears onto our children as we’re raising them. This happens a lot and I see it, especially if we look at middle schoolers and high schoolers. When things start to get more complicated, a lot of parents are starting to work out their own stories of what happened to them perhaps when they were teenagers. As they’re showing up, they’re communicating with their children without totally working out their own stuff. To be a conscious parent means, “I’m going to work on my stuff so I don’t project that onto my children.”

Being a conscious parent is, “I’m going to stop that legacy. I’m recognizing that something happened to me that wasn’t necessarily the most wonderful thing, and I’m passing that along. I’m going to stop that legacy and figure it out for myself so my kid will not continue that unhealthy behavior.” That’s so important. You got so much going on. You got one-on-one coaching. You have stress and overwhelm online course. You have the RiseUp online course. You have an offer for our audience. You’re terrific. Tell us about all you do.

The stress and the RiseUp course are the beginnings if somebody was interested in working with me, but they didn’t necessarily have the ability in terms of time or investment to work on that one-to-one with me. The stress and the RiseUp course start to give you a taste of what we’re working on, specifically what it means to be stressed and overwhelmed, and what tools we can use in order to bring down that stress. Chronic stress leads to not just physical ailments but also emotional ailments. That’s where we see a lot of anxiety issues, as well as depressive issues popping up.

Not only that but there’s also high blood pressure.

The RiseUp program is the beginning of recognizing the elements of what I do, which is a lot of recognition of where stories are coming from, doing that inner work, and becoming self-aware. I’ll give you some elements to put into practice, unlearning those old stories and programming them. It’s a taste of what we could do on a deeper level if we worked one-to-one. It allows people the ability to get started on their own.

The one-to-one program is working with me either on a 6-month or 12-month basis. We are going deep diving in and moving you forward from where you are now to where you want to be. I do have an offer for your audience. If they go to my website, they can download an eBook on limiting beliefs and it’s free. All you have to do is put in your email address and you’ll have the PDF emailed over to you.

I would do that. Tell me why it’s important for people to heal their relationship with themselves.

I truly believe that the most important relationship we have is the one with ourselves. From there, that’s where we’re building all of the other relationships we have. It’s recognizing how we see and talk to ourselves. It’s understanding that we can get to a place of true self-acceptance. Lots of people talk about self-love, self-esteem, and self-confidence, but I believe that all-encompassing is self-acceptance. It’s recognizing that we will accept all parts of ourselves, all imperfections, as well as perfections, the good with the bad, or the shadow with the light. When we get to that place and solidify that foundation, that’s how we can move forward professionally and personally. That’s the foundation for it all.

We’re going to let ourselves off the hook and accept ourselves. You’re getting a relationship with yourself and basically role modeling for many other people. What is the Kamini tip for finding joy in life?

The Kamini tip is the tip that I use for myself, which is when we’re up against a challenging moment or something that is frustrating us, the question I go back to is, “How is this happening for me?” When we can recognize that each and everything that we’re enduring, even if it is challenging, stressful, or saddening, we can come back to those basic questions of, “What can I take from this? How is this happening to me?” It allows us to find the one nugget which is how we truly live in joy. What’s the one right thing?

That’s beautiful. Thank you, Kamini. You’re an admirable role model and guide, working with and empowering high-performing adults and young adults to heal their relationship with themselves in order to become highly resilient self-leaders. I want to thank you from my heart for this insightful and powerful interview that will surely inspire many of our audience to heal their relationship with themselves and live more fulfilling professional and personal lives. Some of them may be reaching out to you to even achieve more.

What a great idea. Here’s a loving reminder that you can see all the episodes of the show on IreneWeinberg.com. Make sure to follow and like us on social at @IreneSWeinberg on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. As I like to say, to be continued, many blessings, and bye for now. Thank you so much, Kamini, from my heart.

Guest Links:

• Visit Kamini’s website
• RiseUp Online Course
• Find all of Kamini’s books at her online store
• RiseUp – Live Joy Your Way – Podcast
• AuthenticMe – Facebook
• AuthenticMe – Instagram

Host Links:

• IreneWeinberg.com
• @IreneSWeinberg – Instagram
• Facebook – Irene Weinberg
• Twitter – Irene Weinberg