IAM2341 – Personal Transformation Consultant Helps Leaders in their Personal and Professional Growth

Title: Transcript - Fri, 03 Jan 2025 14:43:14 GMT

Date: Fri, 03 Jan 2025 14:43:14 GMT, Duration: [00:16:52.22]

[00:00:00.64] - Stephanie McAuliffe

And one of my gifts is to help people get to the source and the root of what is really in the way and then clear the energy. So the work that I do with clients is both practical because that is the awareness piece, and then looking at the connections and then how is it affecting us now?

[00:00:23.35] - Intro

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and level up your business from all some CEOs, entrepreneurs and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I Am CEO Podcast.

[00:00:50.71] - Gresham Harkless

Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh from the I Am CEO Podcast and I have an awesome guest back on the show today, Stephanie McAuliffe. Stephanie, excited to have you back on.

[00:00:59.35] - Stephanie McAuliffe

It's so good to be back here with you, Gresh. Thank you.

[00:01:02.49] - Gresham Harkless

Yes, absolutely. I'm super excited to have Stephanie back on the show. And of course, before we jump into having a phenomenal conversation, I want to read a little bit more about Stephanie so you can hear about some of those awesome things she's been working on. And as a personal transformation guide and energy healer, Stephanie's passion is to help leaders heal trauma through boundaries, to live life free of the constructs that have held them back. After 27 years on wall Street, Stephanie speaks, writes and leads workshops on our human condition and what it truly means to he heal and break intergenerational cycles. She's the author of two international best selling books, the Impact of Self Mastery Practices for Women and the Message in the Finding Hope and Peace Amidst the Chaos of Living with an Alcoholic. And Stephanie was on episode number 666 of the IMCO podcast and 1455 of our IMCO podcast. And I love having her back on the show because I'm a big believer in the journey of entrepreneurship and frankly the journey of life. And I feel like Stephanie is that as well too because she always gives us a phenomenal update about what she's going on, what's happening, what's coming up for her. And I feel like it parallels everything that we need in business and frankly in life as well. And she has a phenomenal course that she's been working on that I'm super excited to talk about a little bit more today too. So Stephanie, excited to have you back on. Are you ready to speak to the IMCO community?

[00:02:20.09] - Stephanie McAuliffe

I am very ready, thank you.

[00:02:22.28] - Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Let's get it started then. So to kind of Kick everything off. Let's rewind the clock. Hear a little bit more on what you've been working on, what I call your seal store.

[00:02:29.15] - Stephanie McAuliffe

My goodness. So we last spoke in August of 22 and I was in the middle of healing breast cancer. And that was a three year journey that took me through, you know, how do I really want to be? How do I really want to show up? What is it that I want to offer? And there was a lot of introspection. It was also a time where it brought me even deeper into the boundaries work that I do and the energy healing work that I do. And you know, very few of us were raised with, with boundaries or how to create them. Most of it was rules and rules are not boundaries. So this was as hard. I wouldn't wish cancer on anyone. And yet there are many beautiful things that came out of that journey, including my second book was published during that time. And a lot of deep learning and healing for myself. And I think this is when, you know, when I worked on Wall street, the idea was, you know, the masculine push. And this is nothing to do about male, female. This is of I need to just push through and not pay attention to what's coming up for me and, and to really just. I'm going to push my emotions aside and just fix it. When we allow ourselves to explore and experiment with what's really here for me, what is part of this lesson? This is when we can have incredible, incredible healing. And a little over a year ago, I was declared clear by three different, unrelated doctors. Nice.

[00:04:20.92] - Gresham Harkless

Congrats.

[00:04:21.38] - Stephanie McAuliffe

And I knew, and I had been living in Utah during that. I moved there right before the pandemic. So here I was. I had plans to speak and travel around the world and do all kinds of things. And I, like many people, had been asking the universe for more time. And that is exactly what I, and many of us received. And I chose to really sink into it. But then when I was declared clear, it's like I knew I wanted to leave Utah and I didn't know where I wanted to go. And my dad's wife passed away in August of 2023 and I came down to Texas for speaking engagement. And I walked into the house and I was just hit with this deep, raw emotion of no one should have to live like this. And if I were to describe his house as, as like goats and dust bunnies, people understand it. It's a lot of the furniture was gone. He had gotten rid of it. His wife and partner of 27 years was no longer there to care for him. And so on New Year's Eve day last year, I moved to Texas to care for him and moved in with a man I hadn't lived with since I was five. Spirit is always giving us opportunities for healing and growth. And I was his primary caretaker until he passed on. 9, 11 a little over two months ago.

[00:05:55.93] - Gresham Harkless

Wow. Well, I'm definitely, you know, sorry to hear that. So is this a lot of, like, what you have, have and do as far as, like, conversations that you're having with your. The clients and people that you work with around, like, understanding, like the. The whole web of, you know, connections, but probably the web on life as well too, and how those things are so interconnected?

[00:06:16.60] - Stephanie McAuliffe

It is. And sometimes we can be so close to a situation that we can't see beyond our own nose. And one of my gifts is to help people get to the source and the root of what is really in the way and then clear the energy. So the work that I do with clients is both practical, because that is the awareness piece, and then looking at the connections and then how is it affecting us now? Because I'll give an example. There was a woman that I worked with on Wall street who used to write very, very long emails about why she needed to do what she needed to do and why she thought the way she did. And. And people would really kind of shudder at the thought of receiving one of her emails because they knew it was going to be a semi dissertation novel. And yet if. And I've since realized that if she did not feel heard as a child, she's still energetically trying to be heard now. And yet her actions are turning people off from hearing her, just like she may not have felt heard in her youth. And so that's an example of, you know, that it's like we're fighting an invisible fight that we took on before we were 8 years old, because up until that age, our brain waves are such that we are like a sponge. We are taking on the energy of everything and everyone around us. And I write about this in my second book, the Impact of Silence. And so when we're able to understand where that comes from, clear those energies, and then transform the story so that people can stand in the truth of who they are in their own power, in whatever way is right for them. So, yes, that is a lot of the work that I do. It's both the practical and the metaphysical, because it is the clearing of the energies that have held us, in many ways, stuck in an old pattern that we don't even realize that we're in.

[00:08:31.12] - Gresham Harkless

Yeah. And then that makes so much sense. And I love that you, you know, you shared upon your superpower, your secret sauce, the thing that you feel kind of sets you apart. And would you consider that to be what I would like to call a CEO hack? It could be like an Apple book or even a habit that you, that you might have something you lean on to make you more effective and efficient. Is it, you know, as we're pushing, pushing, pushing, trying to get to the next thing, the thing after that, and the thing after that, being able to kind of pause and to sit with things and do you feel like that's part of maybe your CEO hack?

[00:09:00.25] - Stephanie McAuliffe

Absolutely. Because rather than pushing something aside or trying to push through something and listen, there are times where we need to get things done. And yet truly it is when something feels uncomfortable, sit with it. The other thing as well is get a piece of paper and journal, do stream of consciousness writing for 10 or 15 minutes and allow whatever wants to flow through you to flow onto the piece of paper. Because a lot of times there are little nuggets in there of, oh, this is where this is coming from. And then in another, you know, time when you have more time, you can explore that more deeply to look at your spider web. But journaling, writing is a somatic experience and that we're moving energy through our, our hand and our arm onto the paper. We're getting those thoughts that will swirl around in the brain out, and it allows us to think more clearly. So rather than reacting from an internalized emotion, take the 10 or 15 minutes journal, take a few deep breaths, and then act. There's a very big difference between reacting and acting. And you then act from a much clearer space.

[00:10:15.40] - Gresham Harkless

Absolutely.

[00:10:16.41] - Stephanie McAuliffe

But when we're in the center space, which is the core of who we are, we get to act from a different place of standing in our own power. Like, what do I really want? Not what does this person want from me? It's very powerful work. And we can, you can go very, very deep with it.

[00:10:36.12] - Gresham Harkless

To be able to kind of understand that in order for you to make the impact that you want to make, you have to put your oxygen mask on first. You have to ask yourself, what do I want? To be able to help somebody, help, you know, what this other person wants. And I think to understand that ends up being very powerful when you are asking that question. I think that also shines a light on us as individuals. And again, that appreciation of self and what we see, why we see it, things like that, it really brings out, I think a lot of that because we all want to be appreciated, we all want to be seen and heard and valued. And I think by being able to kind of be in that play, it doesn't create these rules as we talked about before, that it has to be this or it has to be that. And I feel like as we kind of mature through our lives, if that's the right word, we kind of let go of a lot of those things. And I think that's to the detriment of ourselves, but also to the world we live in, potentially.

[00:11:28.37] - Stephanie McAuliffe

Yeah. And, and one of the things I have my clients do a lot is, you know what, imagine yourself at a younger age and take them out for a walk in the woods or a picnic. Like what do they want to eat? How do they want to play? Like who cares if it's a bologna and cheese sandwich on, on, you know, completely non nutritious white bread with mayonnaise. Right. And you know, whatever kind of chips and orange soda and you know, chocolate chocolate chip cookies or ding dongs or you know, whatever. I mean I grew up on really bad snack cakes and you know, it's, it's like go out and go wander and go play and like have a date with your younger self. Ask him or her what they want. What do they want to say to you? Like maybe they just want to go sit out in a field and look up at the clouds and eat a bad bologna and cheese sandwich. But to your five or six year old, it may have been everything. Right. And reconnect with aspects of your younger self that may have been left behind in the push to create and be something in society's expectations where we, we've lost that connection. So it's really important to go back and you know, acknowledge ourselves at those younger ages.

[00:12:57.00] - Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely.

[00:12:58.19] - Stephanie McAuliffe

And bring that play and that fun back. You know, I have a lot of friends who I met at many music festivals and you know, there's, there's play and there's singing and there's dancing. There's a reason why people love going to music festivals and concerts. Besides the fact that you're meeting like, like minded people. It is play and music is healing. There are scientific studies behind it. And when we get to smile and laugh and be like, there's no judgment. We get to be free.

[00:13:31.20] - Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. And so I want to ask you now one of my absolute favorite questions with which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. Our goal is to have different quote unquote CEOs on this show. So Stephanie, which is being a CEO mean to you?

[00:13:42.47] - Stephanie McAuliffe

Being a CEO is being true to yourself.

[00:13:44.98] - Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. And that ends up being so powerful when you can kind of, you know, go through kind of like the journey that we talked about and be aware of that, you know, very much in tune with that five, four or ten year old self, whatever that was, and be in alignment with that and things that we're doing on a, on a daily, if not, you know, weekly basis at the very least.

[00:14:04.02] - Stephanie McAuliffe

Yeah, it's when we're true to ourselves, the things that don't matter fall away. The things that do appear in our life, our partnerships, our clients, our projects, and we step away from the push. It doesn't mean we don't work hard. We still work hard because we're bringing ourselves and our creations to the world. It's from a very, very different perspective.

[00:14:27.89] - Gresham Harkless

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, Stephanie, truly appreciate that definition. Of course I appreciate your time as well. So what I want to do now is patch you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know and of course how best we can get a hold of you about the course, your books, all the awesome things that you're working on.

[00:14:44.35] - Stephanie McAuliffe

So the best way to reach me is my website which is Way of the Diamond Warrior. And from there there's information on how to work with me and my books and speaking and workshops and whatnot. And for the listeners of I am CEO, I am offering a 20% discount to the Protect yout Energy course which is a self paced. And so when we know how to clear ourselves of the energy that people project onto us and have our energy be balanced and when we are energetically clear, we are able to step more into the space of acting and making the choices and the decisions that empower us. And the discount code will be in the show notes. It is Gresham and it's a really powerful and yet simple tools and techniques and you don't ever have have had to work with energy before in order to step into this.

[00:15:51.37] - Gresham Harkless

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, thank you so much again, Stephanie. Of course we're going to have the links and information to show notes as well too, as well as that code which is gresh Gresh on that we'll have there as well. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of day.

[00:16:03.19] - Stephanie McAuliffe

Thank you. I always love our conversations and thank you for having me on for a third time, which is awesome.

[00:16:11.91] - Intro

Thank you for listening to The I Am CEO podcast powered by CB Nation and Blue16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at Imceo. Co. I am CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts and everywhere you listen to podcasts. Subscribe and leave us a five star rating. This has been the I Am CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless jr. Thank you for listening.