Salome Schillack (00:00):

Hello, and welcome to episode number 95 of the Shine Show. Today we're going to talk about how to calm mental noise using meditation and mindfulness. My guest is Katie Krimitsos, and I'm going to tell about Katie. But before I do that, I want to share a free resource with you. If this iOS change has got you scratching your head and you're not quite sure what to do inside your ad account to prepare for it or to get ready to run list building, webinar, or launch ads, then I have got your back. You already have access to episode number 88 where I break down exactly why this is happening and how this is going to impact us. But now that we're a few weeks into the change, we now know exactly what we need to do right now to make sure our ads can run uninterrupted.

What I've done to make it super easy for you is I've gone old school, I have created a blog post. Yes, can you believe it? Old school blog post where you can go and read this over and over again, and you can read it because I know sometimes you have to read something a few times before you make sense of it. But I've also created a free resource that shows you step by step exactly how to verify your domain and how to create your eight events that you are going to need moving forward. So you have access to the episode in episode number 88 where I talk you through it, you now have access to the blog post where you can read about it, and there's a free resource for you where I show you step by step exactly how to verify your domain and how to create your eight events.

Once you have downloaded that, once you've read the blog post, you are going to feel very calm and be ready to go into mindfulness and meditation. Now, go to shineandsucceed.com/ios if you want to read the blog, and then you can grab the download right there as well. Now I want to tell you about Katie. I want to read you a little bit of her bio, because I thought it was so cute the way that she wrote this, and I think it just helps us get to know her on such a personal level. So here it goes. "What do you get when a raise a girl in the Arizona desert with five siblings, a strong matriarchal mom, a soft-spoken feminist dad, and an innate desire to live big? You get Katie Krimitsos, an ever-curious woman who continues her evolution as a loving being of light, who's having fun being a mom, a wife, a creator and a friend in this life."

"Whose softness and wisdom has often come as a result of painful experiences, whose ego is always trying to get the best of her, who's deeply in love with a Greek man she's definitely known in another life, who's lived through 12 step programs, athletics, and half a dozen businesses, who creates meditations for women as songs to light their souls and wants to save all the animals in the world. She believes life keeps on getting better the older she gets, and so far, she is right." With that, I will have you listen to my interview with Katie on how to calm mental noise using meditation and mindfulness.

Giving up your time and freedom to make money is so 2009. Hi, I'm your host, Salome Schillack, and I help online course creators launch, grow, and scale their businesses with Facebook and Instagram ads, so that they can make more money and have an even bigger impact in the world. If you're ready to be inspired, to dream bigger, launch sooner, and grow your online business faster, then tune in, because you are ready to shine and this is The Shine Show. Katie, thank you so much for being here. I'm very excited to have a chat with you today.

Katie Krimitsos (04:17):

I'm so grateful to be here right now. It is so nice. I always love when I get introduced to somebody by somebody I really love and respect. I'm like, "I already know that person's going to be a greater person." That's how I felt about you being introduced by our mutual friend, Adam.

Salome Schillack (04:33):

Adam, I call him Mr. Butter Voice, because he's got this deep podcasting voice. He's coming on the podcast, and it's just like he just speaks and I can just listen to him speak.

Katie Krimitsos (04:43):

Yeah, you're like, "Just read the tax law if you want to, I don't care. Just keep talking."

Salome Schillack (04:48):

Just keep talking. It's so soothing. Yeah. Well, I am absolutely so happy that he did introduce us because I'm so glad I found you. I've been digging around in your digital world for a while. I'll tell you, I have been a user of Insight Timer, the meditation app, for many years, and I somehow never crossed paths with you there. But then when Adam introduced us, I was like, "What? She's on Insight Timer." Now I am there, I am following you there, and I've listened to-

Katie Krimitsos (04:48):

Yay.

Salome Schillack (05:22):

... some of your podcast and your meditations. Girl, we got a few things to cover today.

Katie Krimitsos (05:29):

Let's do it. Let's do it.

Salome Schillack (05:31):

All right. First tell me how ... You have an entrepreneurship background and you're a mom. How did all of this come to where you're at now doing meditation and having a meditation podcast?

Katie Krimitsos (05:45):

The complete opposite way that you would ever think in a very totally ... the way an entrepreneurship life or really any life goes, which is not straight and 20,000 twists and turns. I'll try to sum it up. I have been an entrepreneur since 2009. At that time, I had a mid-step into entrepreneur. I have always been a writer, and so I wrote a book about how to find your true love and published it digitally and was flexing my muscle at marketing to sell this digital book. In the meantime, I met my now husband and he was running a local entrepreneur's association. Short story, I ended up going, and he and I basically built that business together. I said goodbye to my little short stint of my solo thing, but he and I for probably nine or 10 really built that business. I cut my teeth on entrepreneurship very hard there. It was a very intense business. If you imagine a chamber of commerce or a big business association with three or 400 members, and we're running-

Salome Schillack (06:56):

Wow.

Katie Krimitsos (06:56):

... 10-15 events a month, tons of stuff, right?

Salome Schillack (06:59):

Yeah.

Katie Krimitsos (07:01):

In 2014, I started a podcast called Biz Women Rock!

Salome Schillack (07:01):

Yes.

Katie Krimitsos (07:07):

It was really just to have a space to talk about these two things that I loved, business, because at that time I was eating, living, breathing entrepreneurship, and women. I've always had a passion for women. I grew up a feminist father, very matriarchal mother, it's just been in me. I've always wanted to make some sort of an impact with women at large. I started Biz Women Rock!, and over the course of the, I don't know, five or six years that that existed, that basically grew into a very success, very stable coaching business basically. It was a very similar model as to what you see now. I used my podcast as this giant marketing tool to bring people into my sphere who wanted to work with me as a business strategist.

I helped women grow their businesses from wherever they were now to wherever they really intentionally wanted them to be, not necessarily where they thought success was. I did that. I had masterminds, membership. I had online courses. I mean, you name it, I had it, live events. That was going great. In 2017, I just hit my first banner year of six figures, which felt really good. Beginning of 2018, I'm sitting down making my annual plan that very realistically would have tripled businesses. By April, it's all coming to fruition, feeling really good. I'm loving it, I'm loving what I'm doing, loving the work that I'm doing, and I get pregnant with my second daughter.

Salome Schillack (08:38):

Yay!

Katie Krimitsos (08:40):

It's not that it was unplanned, but it was definitely a giant ... It was like one of those, "Oh! Oh, this changes the plan that I had for the year." To make a very long story short, I went silent for probably about seven or eight weeks, and did the bare minimum that I needed to do, which is terrifying for anyone who runs an online business, right? Very terrifying. But I did the bare ... I serviced my clients and my mastermind members, and I just did as little as I could and then just sat in the silence, got real quiet about what I should do. One day I'd be like, "I'm done, I'm giving it all up. I'm going to be a full-time mom," and then the next day I'd be like, "No, I could do. There are plenty of other women who do this." After about seven or eight weeks ... Not even that long. I was going on walks with my husband every day, and at about a month into it, he says, "Well, what about that meditation idea?"

So rewind, earlier that year when I was making this beautiful plan, one of the many ideas that I had was to create a meditation podcast for women. The backstory there is ever since I was 18, 19 years old I've meditated in some way. Sometimes it's been in and out, seasonal. It's never perfect. It's never completely structured, but I've just always been interested in it. I felt the benefits from day one. Over all these years, we're talking ... I don't even know how many years that is. It's been a while. I'm 42 now, do the math. I just love meditation, and over the past couple of years, I've gotten a lot more serious about it. I had this idea of, "I would love to do a meditation podcast for women." Now here we are in May of 2018, everything that was going well, that seemed really awesome, and was planned out well, all of the sudden has totally unraveled, and here's my husband going, "What about that meditation idea?"

Salome Schillack (10:34):

I love it.

Katie Krimitsos (10:34):

What that allowed me to do was just play with some possibilities. Without needing to decide what my Biz Women Rock! business was going to be, let me just play with what could be. What came out of that was the Women's Meditation Network.

Salome Schillack (10:51):

I love it.

Katie Krimitsos (10:52):

As an entrepreneur, just like you said, I'm a fast implementer. I got the idea, let's go. Within weeks I had my first podcast up. I think it was July 2018, I had the Meditation for Women podcast up with a big vision to have a network. However many months later, I had my second baby, and for about a year and a half managed all, two kids, two businesses, still every step of the way trying to figure out what I was doing. Then fast forward where we are right now, it's been about a year and a half, I think, ago that I let Biz Women Rock! completely go. A very successful business, didn't sell it, didn't do anything, literally just walked away because I was like, "It's not serving me. Done. The season's done."

Salome Schillack (11:36):

Done. Yeah, it's done, I love that.

Katie Krimitsos (11:38):

Then I went full tilt with the Women's Meditation Network. As we stand now, I have three podcasts, the Meditation for Women podcast, the Sleep Meditation for Women podcast, and the Morning Meditation for Women podcast, that combined, I produce about a little over 30 original meditations every single month.

Salome Schillack (11:59):

Wow.

Katie Krimitsos (12:00):

Yeah, over all of these years and between those three podcasts. The last two were relatively new. The sleep podcast is seven to eight months old. The Morning Meditation podcast is not even two months old. But between the three of them, there's about five million network downloads at this point, and they're growing pretty fast.

Salome Schillack (12:20):

That is phenomenal. That is just phenomenal. Congratulations.

Katie Krimitsos (12:25):

Thank you. Thank you.

Salome Schillack (12:26):

That is just amazing. There's so much I want to unpack in what you just said, but I do want to point one thing out. There's one thing that I am lucky to have in my life that somebody else that interviewed recently pointed out that she has in her life and that you've just pointed out, and it's these men who say to us, "What about that creative thing?" And then creates this space for us to turn those creative passions into businesses. I've been lucky enough that my husband did for me, created that space and said, "Well, you figure it out. And while you figure it out, I will provide for the family and take your space to figure it out," and he did, and it took three years before I figured it out.

When I interviewed one of my clients, Anne Lafollette, the other day who got laid off from her job late in her life and didn't know what to do, and then her husband said, "What about the painting that you've always wanted to do? You've always wanted to paint." There's just something for me in these incredible men that just step up and say to us creative entrepreneur females, "Well, here, why don't pursue that?" There's something very beautiful. When I said that, I was like, "Yeah, there's another one of those dudes."

Katie Krimitsos (13:48):

Yeah, I am very lucky. He has been an entrepreneur since he was in diapers, so between the two of us, I tend to be more of the formal, risk-adverse ... Relatively speaking to him. He's definitely an amazing creative and an incredible marketer. In our relationship, there's never been a you can't follow your dreams because of these boundaries or limits or perceived ... the money, the time, the whatever. That's not part of our lives. Yeah, I have the same story. As I was starting up and then eventually letting go of this moneymaker business that I had had that was significant part of our household income, I remember I came to him one day and I was like ... We had agreed that he would pay the bills, right?

Salome Schillack (13:48):

Yeah.

Katie Krimitsos (14:36):

Like, "Hey, this money is coming to an end and now ... " and he's like, "I got it. I'll take care of it. Don't worry, we'll figure it out." Which is amazing, right?

Salome Schillack (14:44):

Yeah.

Katie Krimitsos (14:45):

I remember it was the very first month of my entire adult life that I did not pay a single cent for myself or my family. I mean literally the first month. I remember going to him, and I was like, "I'm having an identity crisis. I don't know." He's like, "Okay." He's like, "If your identity needs to bring in money, go get more clients, that's fine. But I don't think that's what you really want to do. Why don't you do what you really want to do and everything's going to work out?" Yes, I'm super luckily.

Salome Schillack (15:17):

That's just incredible. Yes. No, that's amazing. You get to pass that on to your girls as well. I have two girls too, and for me, I had to learn the whole where am I going to find time? Where am I going to find money? How do I juggle this? I had to learn to be an entrepreneur, because I wasn't raised in that environment, and neither is my husband, and-

Katie Krimitsos (15:17):

Me neither.

Salome Schillack (15:39):

... he still looks at some of the financial decisions. He looks at how much I spend on online education, and he's like, "That's an MBA," and I go-

Katie Krimitsos (15:47):

You're like, "Yes, it is." [crosstalk 00:15:48] "Yes, it is an MBA."

Salome Schillack (15:50):

And I'm making money with it. How many MBAs are making money because of their MBAs out there?

Katie Krimitsos (15:54):

Thank you. Exactly. Exactly.

Salome Schillack (15:57):

Yeah, we're very lucky to have these men in our lives.

Katie Krimitsos (16:01):

[crosstalk 00:16:01]

Salome Schillack (16:01):

You started the Women's Meditation Network, why women and meditation? What's different with women who meditate than with men who meditate, or with humans who meditate? What's different?

Katie Krimitsos (16:14):

Nothing. I chose women for two reasons. One, because I just have always had a desire to work in the space of women, to impact women, and so it's a personal passion fulfillment for me. But the second is is I'm an entrepreneur, I understand niches. When I was looking around, guess what? There were no podcasts in the space of meditation for women. There was one other one that was specifically for transcendental meditation for women. But as a business owner, I was looking at this space going, "I can't believe this space is not taken yet. I'll own that space."

Okay. It was just a very obvious business niche move for me, which it turns out and the numbers shows this way in my podcasts, Meditation for Women, that original podcast, is about two and a half years old. Yes, that's taken up that space, which is good. But the more I niche down even with women, sleep, morning, pregnancy, all these other niche type of things, those numbers absolutely go off the charts the more I niche down. So really it was a combination of a business decision and my personal space to play in.

Salome Schillack (17:30):

That's awesome. Do you see more podcasts growing out of ... I'm like, "There's a whole media empire here," women's meditation podcasts with [crosstalk 00:17:43]

Katie Krimitsos (17:43):

I mean, that's what I'm building right now. That's what I'm building. I was pretty clear, and it's cool watching it come to fruition. I was pretty clear from the beginning I'm building a publishing house. I'm building-

Salome Schillack (17:53):

Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm saying.

Katie Krimitsos (17:55):

Women's Meditation Network is this massive branding for the publishing house, but I want to be the massive Amazon store for anything revolving around women and meditation, and anything-

Salome Schillack (17:55):

I love it.

Katie Krimitsos (18:07):

... they could want. [crosstalk 00:18:09] Yeah, I have every intention of just really owning that space.

Salome Schillack (18:13):

I love that. Before we started recording, I told you about my idea, and you can run with this, I will give this to you, is a podcast for meditation for a woman who just wants to get shit done.

Katie Krimitsos (18:27):

That would fit very beautifully on a nice piece of graphic art, right?

Salome Schillack (18:31):

I would be the first person to sign up for that, because I will tell you, I bought into the value of meditation six years ago. I'm sold on the idea. I have been trying to meditate for six years, and I can see the benefit ... I'll tell you something that happened yesterday that I literally went, "I know that it is because I was mindful of being mindful and present in that moment that I did not make a car accident." I'll tell you that in a second. But it's this I have not yet reached a point in meditation where I go, "Yeah, I'm doing it right," and I have not yet reached the point where I get up off of the cushion and I go, "Wow, that was a great meditation."

Katie Krimitsos (19:17):

Usually, a lot of them end by, "Oh my God, my mind is still spinning. Did I even breathe during that time?" Or a total frustration because you didn't "do it right." I guess this is becoming one of my big things I want to give to the world through my podcast, which is there's no such thing as a perfect meditation, there's no such thing as doing it right. There are guidelines, there are so many suggestions on how to do things, but there's no such thing as doing it right. I remember somebody reflected back to me when I first launched the podcast. My early episodes would start with a line that was like, "Get into a comfortable position, sitting or lying down."

She was like, "I can lay down when I meditate?" I was like, "Girl, however you're comfortable. You do not need to be sitting in lotus position with your back erect, fingers like this, incense burning, on your meditation pillow. That's not what meditation needs to look like." I really believe that most of us are taught or at least we infer by what we see out there that doing it right is supposed to mean that your mind is completely calm and clear for the duration of your meditation, which is-

Salome Schillack (20:29):

No, I have my best business decisions in the middle of meditations.

Katie Krimitsos (20:32):

Totally, yeah. It's total BS. Your mind's job is to create thoughts. Meditation just gives us a tool to manage those, to be aware of them as separate from ourselves and to be able to practice, that's the key word, practice letting them go. Just, "I'm not going to attach to that one. Just let me let them go." I always envision this beautiful river and you're sitting on a riverbank and if your thoughts were coming down the rivers. In our normal state of being, we want to jump onto that thought, just like it's a float in the river. But you don't have to. You don't have to sit on that thought. You can stand back and you could see it as a thought, you get that it's separate from you, and you start watching it float down the river. The beauty of that is that it becomes incredibly empowering because then you realize, "Oh, I am not my thoughts. That means I can actually choose which thoughts I get to really cling onto, and I get to choose with thoughts I don't want to hang on to," and that's incredibly empowering.

Salome Schillack (21:35):

Wow, I love that you said that. I have for a long time known, internalized the idea that I am not my thoughts, I am the thinker of my thoughts. But I have never put the two together in the context of meditation. Thank you for that, because you're right, it's the most empowering thing when you learn to separate who are and your worth, which we're going to touch on as well, and your worthiness from the thoughts that pop up in your head. Because oftentimes, the thought pops up in our heads [inaudible 00:22:14] they're not great thoughts.

Katie Krimitsos (22:17):

They're not pretty.

Salome Schillack (22:18):

We can on a day to day level learn to separate ourselves from our thoughts. But what you said, with meditation, that just takes it to a whole new level where you go, "Oh, yeah, now I am just literally sitting and watching the thoughts being separate from me." I love that. That's amazing.

Katie Krimitsos (22:37):

In your example of almost getting into a car accident, the practice of meditation allows you to just strengthen that muscle of mindfulness.

Salome Schillack (22:46):

Yes.

Katie Krimitsos (22:46):

And therefore here when that inner voice says, "Hey, be aware right now." Or, "Hey, stop getting lost in thought. Be here." I think it's incredibly powerful.

Salome Schillack (22:59):

Yeah. What happened yesterday, it was so funny, and this is where afterwards I was so proud of myself because I felt like I had really had the opportunity to have my feelings completely spin out of control into anxiety, which could have led to a disaster, and instead I chose to just breathe and go through it. I had three kids in my car. Two are my kids and one is a friend's kid. We had to get to ballet at quarter past four, and my husband asked me to drop something off for him somewhere where neither of us had ever been to. I've got the kids in the car in what I thought was plenty of time. Got the kids in the car and I also promised my daughter that we'll be early for ballet so I can take her to the shop to get new shoes.

Now we're in car, I'm in the car with the three kids and we're driving, and I'm not finding this place where I'm supposed to drop the stuff off. I'm not finding it. I'm not finding it. I'm not finding it, and then I have to go around the block again, and it gets to a point where finally I'm near it but I don't see it anywhere. So I pull into a car park and I call them. As I call them, the voicemail says, "Our work hours are between 9:00 AM and 4:00 PM," and I look at the watch and it is exactly 4:00 PM, and I go, "I've just spent this 20, 25 minutes trying to find this place only to get there after they've closed, and now I'm going to have to tell my daughter we can't get her ballet shoes because now we have to drive across town to the ballet, and we're probably going to be late for ballet."

I'm telling my kid, who has a little bit of anxiety and does not deal with change very well, I'm telling her that her expectation will not be met. I'm in my head going, "My husband's going to be disappointed because I didn't do the thing that I said I would do, and had I left a little bit earlier, I would have been able to ... " All that voices start running in my head, and I've got the GPS going, and the three kids are in the car, and they're fighting or something and one of them is kicking my chair and the other one is playing music. I'm just at this moment. I'm just like, "Breathe. You cannot change the fact that this place was closed. You cannot change the fact that you're going to be late for dancing. You have been a good mother trying to get there on time, but unfortunately sometimes things ... "

I'm having this conversation, calming myself down, reminding myself to be mindful, reminding myself that there's no point in getting into any negative emotion over how things have unfolded, not going into any unworthiness talk, not bad mother, bad wife, bad all the things, and the next moment, I'm on the freeway, the car in front of me crashes into the car in front of him or her, which crashed in front of the car in front of that car. As I literally just see it happening and I slow down and I look and I turn and I get out of that lane and I go around it, and I see that five cars crashed into each other right in front of me. I literally just saw it in time, slowed down, got into the other lane, got back in and left.

Katie Krimitsos (26:25):

Oh my God.

Salome Schillack (26:26):

I was like, that moment to me was the you were awake. You were paying attention. You were dealing with negative emotion. You were controlling. In that moment I went, "If six years of trying to meditate just saved me from crashing into a car in front of me with three kids in my car, then it's been six years well spent. The meditation works."

Katie Krimitsos (26:52):

Oh my God. In my humble opinion, I think that one of the biggest values of meditation is the practice of presence. I know that sounds bland, but we're in a world that doesn't really lend itself to us being present.

Salome Schillack (27:11):

No.

Katie Krimitsos (27:11):

I know you are very outspoken about very intentional living, building your business and your family very intentionally, and I am 100% in that boat with you. One of the biggest benefits I've seen of meditation and just living a life of mindfulness is intense presence with my girls, with my husband, with myself, with all that is, no matter how ugly it may be at the time or how challenging or how joyful, just really deep presence, and that's beautiful. That's what enables you to be aware to not have been looking at your phone or not be lost in your thoughts and be able to make that split second decision that enables you to get out of the way of what could have been a really bad situation.

Salome Schillack (27:58):

Yeah. I think that that presence is the thing that pulls us entrepreneurs out of hustle mode and out of saying yes to things we should say no to-

Katie Krimitsos (27:58):

Yes.

Salome Schillack (28:10):

... and out of just quickly fixing the thing that we should actually delegate and gets us into a place where we are in control of our time. We are in control. We create quality over quantity, and I feel like that is the best way to grow a business as well.

Katie Krimitsos (28:27):

1000%. I think if you were to ask me if I could distill the heart of meditation for me and what I try to infuse into every single meditation that I write and speak is the idea of really getting to know and getting one with self. When you do that and when you practice that, because it's never perfect, but when you practice that, and presence is a massive piece of that, but when you practice and use the tool of meditation to get to know yourself, you can truly navigate every single day or the ark of your story of life. I mean, you literally are in the driver's seat of your life incredibly intentionally. In the beginning, I explained this, what sounded like a very pretty beautiful business transition into where I am now. It was not pretty.

Salome Schillack (29:20):

It was not, yeah.

Katie Krimitsos (29:20):

There were so many horrific on the floor ugly crying moments, but knowing myself and continuing to use meditation, to use journaling, to use all of these beautiful tools that helped me get to know myself has allowed me, continues to allow me to understand when to click a little to the right or say no to that thing. There are so many ways I could have and still could build this business that I'm building, and I have to make sure to stay in tune with myself every step of the way because in like that first year, when I was so frustrated with not making money, because here I am going from a $20,000 annual private coaching program to I'm selling $7 products online. It was a complete business model shift and it was very uncomfortable.

I remember there were so many things I could have done, but I was so like, "I don't want to have to be live." That was my whole business model before, and it was great for what it was. But here I am with a newborn and a toddler, and I don't want to have to show up at a time at all. If I show up, I want it to be like I've chosen to do that. I don't want to have to show up for a Facebook Live, I don't want to have to show up for that class, I don't want to have to show up for a client. This entire business has been a really great practice of me listening to my intuition, listening to my true self, is like, "What lifestyle do I actually want?" And letting that guide my decision-making every step of the way.

Salome Schillack (30:54):

I love that. I love that. You said that meditation is a connection to your true self. Talk to me a little bit about that true self, because we've said your thoughts are not who you are. When we're talking about true self, we're not talking about our thoughts. Are we talking about our connection the universe, are we talking about how ... Because one of the things that is important for me, when I sit down to meditate, I go, I visualize myself floating above the earth and looking at the earth and going, "I am one with this whole planet. I am part of this whole planet," and I'm like it's probably a prayer. I'm saying, "I just want the love that is in the planet to flow through me and back to the planet." That picture has worked really well for me. When you say we sit down to meditate, we connect to our truth selves, what is our true self and how do we connect to that?

Katie Krimitsos (31:55):

It's that little girl who just ran barefoot in the backyard, played with mud and yelled and screamed at the top of her lungs because she just saw a butterfly. That's it. This isn't good or bad. It just is. Just over the course of our lives, the older we get, there are scripts that are given to us or that we have taken on that have a lot of should. Sometimes those can layer and all of a sudden we find ourselves in a job after 10, 15 years feeling completely empty and we don't know why. That's not always true for all of us, but the point is that anyone right now could say, "I know this to be true about me," right? Maybe that's the only thing you know to be true about you, but it's something.

Going back to the visualization that I talked about before, about you're sitting on the banks of a river, you're seeing these thoughts, and the practice of meditation allows you to practice seeing that separation. Right? When you start seeing that, when you start experiencing that, the question then obviously becomes then, well, then who am I? If I'm not that thought over there that says, "I need to be X, Y, or Z," or, "I'm not good enough," then who am I? Who I am or what I call your inner voice or your true voice tends to be more of a whisper. I like to really have this distinction, the more mindful you become, the more in touch with self that you become, the more you're able to see the distinction between the noise and the voice.

Salome Schillack (33:35):

I love that.

Katie Krimitsos (33:36):

The noise is all of ... That's a loud screaming person saying, "Oh my God, I never should've done that, and my husband's going to be so mad at me," and it tends to just scream at you, right?

Salome Schillack (33:48):

Right now it's saying, you have to be on clubhouse and you've got to be [crosstalk 00:33:51]

Katie Krimitsos (33:51):

All of that. Yeah. It's the internal reaction that you have when you see somebody on social media.

Salome Schillack (33:58):

Yes.

Katie Krimitsos (33:59):

I mean, it's all of the stuff that comes up that we think is us, but it's not us. It's the noise. The voice tends to whisper, and if you listen ... Which is why is just such a powerful tool. It's not the only tool. I've talked about walking in nature, being one with nature, petting an animal, journaling. There's just so many tools. Meditation is one of the many powerful ones that you could just practice being quiet with yourself and learning to listen to that whisper. Oftentimes, that whisper's the one saying, "Don't do that," or, "No, go pick up your kid. You don't need to do another email. No, I really need to spend extra quality time with my husband tonight instead of doing all the things." It's that voice that is just guiding you. She knows what's best.

That voice gets that connection, that universal connection that you're talking about. She gets I am the universe and I'm part of the universe and we're all connected. The powerful thing ... I think that this is really my big print on the world that I want to make. The more often that I can have a woman get that and experience that, the less often she's going to spew hate, the less often she's going to yell or to make someone else wrong, the more often she's going to choose love, the more often she's going to give others and herself grace, the better she's going to feel about herself, and therefore the better she's going to feel about other people.

If you have ever had somebody not like you or ever had an incident where you're so angry at somebody or you just can't see their point of view. I mean, if you want to rewind a couple of months ago to the US presidential election, there's so much ego-triggering happening and it's the noise. It's not the voice. The more you're in touch with the voice, the more you could see like, "Oh, that was my reaction. Why am I getting triggered by that? That person is a fellow human being. They're also getting triggered too." It just begins to build these bridges of compassion that I feel is incredibly transformative for our entire world.

When we talk about what is that inner voice? Who are you really? You just have to do the work to be quiet and get out of the noise, get out of the running around, listen to that. It's a practice too. It's a muscle, right? It's like, "In 2018, I could make a decision." How old was I? I was 39 at the time. I could make that decision to completely start a brand new business and then shut one down. Those are big life decisions because that voice was guiding me. But it's only because I've had decades of practice hearing the whisper and acting on it to give me confidence that, "Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's what I should have done." Right? It's just a practice, and the more grace we give ourselves to listen, to act, to listen, to act, to listen, to act, the stronger. I don't want to say the louder that voice becomes, but the more obvious it is when she starts talking.

Salome Schillack (37:04):

We start tuning in our ears to hear it. I love this so much. I want to add to that. I believe that we all have gifts and we all have talents, and we all have something inside us that we are able to share with the world, and then we learn to be entrepreneurs and that is a learning. That is a ... Oh, okay, you use a webinar to sell this thing, or you have to build a social media following to do this thing. That's noise. It's all noise. I do believe that building businesses and online businesses specifically where we're building audiences on social media gets easier when we learn to better differentiate between noise and voice.

It can feel counter-intuitive, but I think we build better businesses, we make a bigger impact when we learn to tune into that voice instead of just focusing on the noise. It's like you're saying, it builds a confidence, but that confidence is not an ego confidence. It's more a resilience. It's more like, "Yeah, I got this. Even if this goes South, I got this. I know"

Katie Krimitsos (38:20):

Yeah. It's a knowing, you're in shakable. That's it. I'm a shakable. I got this and I really believe that this next step is the right one. I've described it before as just make the next best decision. What's the next best thing? That's it. I think it becomes less overwhelming that way. You don't have to figure it all out. Just figure out the next best step according to what's right for you right now, what feels the best, all that stuff. Yes.

Salome Schillack (38:49):

Yeah. You've touched a little bit on the whole when we learn to tap into that and live from that place, then we become less competitive and more loving and compassionate and lift each other up more. Can we talk for a moment about worthiness and about not-enoughness? Because I have said on the podcast before that I know when I learned the three universal fears, not being laughed, not fitting in and not being good enough, and I was able to identify that, oh, the one of those three that's the most prominent for me is the I'm not good enough, and it is part of my personality, I'm driven by recognition and driven by all ... It's entrepreneurial stuff.

Then layer on to that the whole idea that it's a zero sum game and there's not enough money to go around and there's not enough of everyone for everything. What I then see pop up so much is just, yeah, that women putting women down, women not supporting women, so much of that. I just want to cry because I want to go, "No, we are all doing our own thing. We are also worthy," but I also know that it's an issue for me. How do you deal with worthiness issues with feeling not good enough? Because I think as a mother, as a business owner, as someone with a public profile, surely that's something that you have to deal with as well.

Katie Krimitsos (40:21):

Absolutely. That would be my core issue too. Thankfully, awareness of it is a massive step. I grew up one of six kids. I needed to stand out somehow, and my way of doing that was be the star athlete, be the star academic, be the overachiever, get attention that way because it's never enough, Right? There's never enough attention, there's never enough love. I'm not good enough. I have been battling that my ... I shouldn't say battling, I've been unlayering that for [crosstalk 00:40:48]

Salome Schillack (40:47):

Unlayering. I love that. Unlayering.

Katie Krimitsos (40:49):

I would like to tell you that I'm like in the best place I've ever been with it, and it's still here and it still pops up.

Salome Schillack (40:58):

Yeah. It always will be there. I think that's the other thing. You'll have to make peace with it being our passenger.

Katie Krimitsos (41:05):

Yeah. I've come to really understand that when I start feeling those feelings, when I start thinking those thoughts, it's covering up something else that's there, and it's usually fear. It's usually a fear. Yeah. It's actually become quite a cool tool to be like, "Okay, what fear is there? Let's start dealing with that. Let's start unrooting that," but how to deal with this. So number one, just really using the tools ... Again, meditation. Journaling is a huge one for me. I mean, just really journaling out ideas and thoughts that are coming out. Journaling to manifest, journaling to write into the future, journaling to just dump out thoughts, all of the types of journaling. Right? Being in nature, all of these things, they using these tools to really identify it as fast as possible, because the way it usually shows up is through your actions, right?

Salome Schillack (41:59):

Yeah, yeah.

Katie Krimitsos (41:59):

Your [crosstalk 00:42:01]

Salome Schillack (42:00):

By the time the words coming out of your mouth, you're like, "Oh, being a little bit of a bitch today."

Katie Krimitsos (42:05):

Yeah. Or it's like you deliberately aren't doing something that could take you "to the next level." [inaudible 00:42:12] there's some stuff going on that says [crosstalk 00:42:15] I'm not good enough to be there. Right?

Salome Schillack (42:17):

Oh yes. Yes, yes, yes.

Katie Krimitsos (42:18):

It's a lot of self-sabotage stuff. Literally, I'm going through this right now. I choose a word every single year that might be cheesy to some people, but I love it. This year, my word is up-level, and girl, is the universe just slamming in my face, every single new devil that I need to deal with in order to up-level? All my meditations, I batch all my meditations. So I'm doing a month at a time, and so in any given two week period, I'm really writing and recording all the meditations for ... Right now, I'm working on April. This past month I was just feeling completely overwhelmed, completely like this is too much, I feel like a content machine, I took on too much with this other podcast, and it was really getting in my way.

I really sat down, and what I started uncovering ... Because was coming up was, "I'm not good enough to handle this. I'm going to run out of content. People aren't going to like it." What really was coming up was this massive fear of getting bigger because the podcast is getting bigger and bigger. The network, all three shows are getting bigger and bigger, and therefore more visibility, more fear of being unsafe or all of the negative crap that can come with visibility, and the I'm not good enough stuff is just the trigger, the light going, there's something deeper here. How to deal with it, it's just a recognition of it, a recognition that it's not you.

It is part of your thoughts, it is your ego talking and working through it, and as much as you can't talking it out with other people, getting inspired, dragging yourself through that by really inspirational people, other people who can model what it looks like to be where you want to go or to be where you want to be, and literally just continuing to practice an enormous amount of self-love, an enormous amount of grace in however that looks for you. Just literally like, "I'm amazing. I'm amazing. I'm amazing. I rock," and then continuing to just work through it. I think that the more and more we get to that core of that inner voice of our true selves, the more and more there's this easiness about who you are that isn't good or bad. It just is.

It's undeniable. All of a sudden, you're like, "I don't need to apologize for being this way. It's just who I am," and it's not even confident. You just are. You've ever seen those people walk in the room who just light up the room and they just are? They are cemented in who they are. You see it. Right?

Salome Schillack (42:18):

Yeah.

Katie Krimitsos (45:04):

It's that, and it's not ego, it's not anything than ... The more you connect with that, the more that sense of unworthiness or not-enoughness starts to dissolve. While it's always there, it starts to actually work for you as a tool to start digging out some of those bigger fears and leading you to where it is you really want to go.

Salome Schillack (45:27):

I love that. I love that so much. It's looking for the deeper fear and then knowing that it's not us, and digging deep to find the self-love. I love that. You say your word is up-level. My phrase for 2021 is radical self-love. [crosstalk 00:45:49]

Katie Krimitsos (45:48):

Love it.

Salome Schillack (45:49):

[crosstalk 00:45:49] Yes, radical self-love.

Katie Krimitsos (45:51):

You just gave me goosebumps.

Salome Schillack (45:52):

Yes. [crosstalk 00:45:53]

Katie Krimitsos (45:52):

What does that look like for you right now?

Salome Schillack (45:55):

It looks like different things. It looks like doctor's appointments that I've been putting off, it looks like ... Well, I'm 40 now. I'm like, okay, "Now there's some bloods that need to be taken and boobs that need to be mammogramed," and all the things. It looks like regular exercise, seriously regular exercise. It looks like [crosstalk 00:46:18]

Katie Krimitsos (46:18):

From a space of self-love and [crosstalk 00:46:20]

Salome Schillack (46:20):

From a space of self-love. Yes.

Katie Krimitsos (46:20):

Yes.

Salome Schillack (46:20):

Absolutely from a space of self-love.

Katie Krimitsos (46:20):

It's a whole different experience.

Salome Schillack (46:26):

Completely. The purpose is to grow old gracefully, to be strong and healthy. I've learned the value of having a clear brain. Just like I am falling in love with my brain as I'm on this process. For me, it's less drinking alcohol. Some days it is having a drink.

Katie Krimitsos (46:45):

Yep. Yeah.

Salome Schillack (46:47):

The radical self-love for me comes back to being really ridiculously honest with myself over my intentions and [crosstalk 00:46:57]

Katie Krimitsos (46:57):

Beautifully put. I love that.

Salome Schillack (46:58):

Yeah, doing anything because I'm trying to compensate for a feeling I don't want to feel, or a feeling I don't want to face or a feeling I don't want to lean into. Yeah. I mean, there's layers to it. I'm exploring it. I will report the back-

Katie Krimitsos (47:12):

[inaudible 00:47:12].

Salome Schillack (47:12):

... on it.

Katie Krimitsos (47:13):

I love that. I love that.

Salome Schillack (47:15):

Yeah. It's a journey. It's a good journey. One of the effects of it is what I'm starting to learn is radical self-love is choosing joy in everything, which I think is just what life is about. Yeah.

Katie Krimitsos (47:29):

Yeah, which is really hard to do in some of those most anxiety prone moments or crap I totally screwed up moments, or totally sad moments, but it's ... I explain it sometimes like the natural ego's way of making those thoughts, right? It's like this wheel that's constantly turning in this one direction, and consciously choosing intention is like stopping the motion of that wheel, and then reversing it. It's a test.

Salome Schillack (48:03):

Even just stopping it is hard, because it's easier to just let it spin. It's easier. I never had anxiety until 2020, and I found myself at one point where I was just checking the news five times a day because that makes that bike spin, and the faster it can spin, the more I can feed this ego that tells me there's so much to be afraid of right now. Anyway, Katie, just to wrap up, just share with us the one thing that you would say that anyone who wants to experience the benefits of meditation and mindfulness, where do we start? How do we make it easier? How do we build that habit?

Katie Krimitsos (48:54):

I know your audience is entrepreneurs, and they're here, they're listening because they get that a successful business is an external manifestation of their internal world. You've gotten that at some point. No matter how far, beginning or far you are in that journey, you get it. You've heard the term that a business is the best personal development course you can take, that's it. Right?

Salome Schillack (49:18):

Yeah.

Katie Krimitsos (49:19):

Speaking directly to you, the entrepreneur, meditation ... You might even be sold on the benefits of meditation. You may have tiptoed into the benefits of meditation. You may have experienced them head on, but the massive benefits that are there for not only you and your internal life, but also that business that you love so much and you really want to build it with intention is massive. The best ways to start are with what I call mini moments of mindfulness. There's two things, right? Number one is make it easy and drop all of the expectation of what it needs to look like. Just let it go.

Salome Schillack (49:19):

Yes.

Katie Krimitsos (50:03):

It doesn't need to look like anything other than what it is. When you sit down or lay down or walk in nature, that's your meditation, right?

Salome Schillack (50:10):

Yes.

Katie Krimitsos (50:11):

The mini moments of mindfulness are just ways that you can stop, breathe. Connecting with your breath is the most basic and easiest way to get to presence, to get to mindfulness, to get into the space of the tool of meditation. When you're in your car and you've driven home, stop, and before you walk out of that car and go into your home, stop and take 10 deep breaths. That's it. You'd be surprised actually how hard that is because your brain starts working at breath number five, but take 10 deep breaths. When you're in the shower, instead of your mind going 1,000 miles a minute, thinking about what you have to do, and do I have time to shave my legs? I don't know, stop and just think about the water that's coming out of the faucet.

Feel it hitting your back, feel the enormous amount of gratitude for the fact that you have running water on demand, that's probably warm and start feeling the gratitude and rootedness that comes with that mindful moment. When you're sitting down and eating, instead of at your computer, which please know I'm not perfect at this. Instead of being at your computer, shoving food down your throat, trying to get more work done, just stop and take five minutes to actually enjoy every bite, feel gratitude for the fact that you have probably a fridge full of food to choose from and not everyone does.

These mini moments of mindfulness that you ... The implementer that you can use is just a deep breath. Start with a deep breath, and that immediately brings everything in and just take notice of that moment. I promise you, you do that and you start doing more and more of that, A, you're meditating, but B, you start feeling ... Gratitude and fear can not live in the same moment. Gratitude and anger cannot live in the same moment. Gratitude and frustration can not live in the same moment. The more you really opt into these moments, mini moments of mindfulness, the more grateful you feel, the more connected you feel, the less anxiety, stress, all of those other things, the less of that you feel. I promise you, it will invade your life exponentially.

Salome Schillack (52:34):

I love it. Let it invade our lives exponentially. May it be so. Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and your experience with us. I really appreciate it. I can't wait to hear all the feedback from today's episode. Can you tell everyone where they can go and listen to your amazing podcasts and join your network and come into your world, please?

Katie Krimitsos (53:04):

Well, thank you so much. It has been truly my pleasure and an honor to be here. Yes. The website is womensmeditationnetwork.com. But you're here listening to this podcast, so whatever podcast player you're listening to, go search for Meditation for Women, and all three of the shows will come up. If you need sleep meditations, go subscribe to that one. If you like morning meditations to get you started, go subscribe to that, and definitely subscribe to the main show, the Meditation for Women's show. It's a library of free meditations. I mean, at this point, hundreds and hundreds of meditation. Literally just go find what you're in the mood for and let it speak to you. That's the other thing I was going to say with how easy you can make meditation. Just go press play, and sit and listen. That's it. That's how easy it could be.

Salome Schillack (53:50):

That is how easy it is, and that's exactly how I use it, like a library. What am I in the mood for? Because there's so many of them, you can just go, "What am I in the mood for?" You choose one and it might just be exactly what you need that day.

Katie Krimitsos (54:03):

It usually is.

Salome Schillack (54:05):

It usually is. Thank you so much. I appreciate you. I'll talk to you soon.

Katie Krimitsos (54:10):

Thank you so much, girl. I really, really am so grateful that you had me on.

Salome Schillack (54:14):

I just enjoyed talking to Katie so much. She really is a wonderful woman. Go to a womenmeditationnetwork.com and check out Katie, or listen to one of her podcasts. Or if like me you like using Insight Timer for your meditation, then you can find her there as well. Don't forget about the iOS resource that I created for you as well. You can get the full blog post that breaks down exactly why this iOS thing is happening and how it's happening and what we need to do with that download that you can get that shows you step-by-step how to verify your domains and how to create your eight conversion events. You can get that by going to shineandsucceed.com/ios. All right, my friends, you all have a wonderful, wonderful week, and I will talk to you again next week. Bye. Thank you so much for listening. If you had fun, please come back next week and remember to hit that subscribe button so you never miss a thing.