The School of Greatness - Why Healing Your Past Won't Change Your Life

Episode Date: January 26, 2026

Katherine Woodward Thomas reveals why decades of therapy and personal development work can still leave you stuck in the same patterns.She exposes the 22 core beliefs that act as invisible glass ceilings on your potential, with "I'm not good enough" and "I'm alone" leading the pack.But here's what most people miss: healing your past will save your life, but it won't change it. The real breakthrough comes when you stop analyzing why you are the way you are and start living from the future you're meant to create.Whether you're struggling in relationships, feeling like an imposter in your career, or exhausted from overcompensating, Katherine shows you how to break free from the identity that's been running your life since childhood and step into the truth of who you really are.The Greatness Playbook: Identity Healing EditionKatherine’s books:Conscious UncouplingCalling in "The One": 7 Weeks to Attract the Love of Your LifeWhat's True About You: 7 Steps to Move Beyond Your Painful Past and Manifest Your Brightest FutureIn this episode you will:Identify the source fracture story that's been sabotaging your relationships, career, and self-worth since childhoodBreak free from victimization without dismissing your pain so you can finally access your creative powerDistinguish between trauma and truth so you stop letting a wounded 5-year-old drive your adult decisionsShift from healing mode to transformation mode by claiming a positive possible future that pulls you forwardOvercome imposter syndrome by recognizing where you're centered at the level of identity and consciously choosing your true selfFor more information go to https://lewishowes.com/1881For more Greatness text PODCAST to [phone]More SOG episodes we think you’ll love:Lewis Howes [SOLO]Jim CurtisGabor Maté Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy!Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The thing about the I'm not good enough, and that is the most pervasive one, although the second runner-up is I'm alone. Everything that is not working, if I'm not getting fed properly, people are ignoring my needs, if I'm aware that my mother didn't want to be pregnant with me, I might form a self-sense of I'm not wanted. Wow, whether she said it or not. Absolutely, and it happens in the womb. She is a licensed marriage and family therapist, a New York Times best-selling author, and an internationally recognized teacher of personal transformation.

Catherine Woodward Thomas. You actually cannot progress in your life when you are making a home of victimization. What if all these bad things happened to us? We were traumatized, someone hurt us, they abused us, they abandoned us. Shouldn't we feel victimized?

So you want to look at how is I the source of it. Who was I being that allowed that to happen? Now, you have to kind of put your big girl, big boy panties on and really show up for yourself. It's hard to create from a victim. You can't create a victim. The first entry to creativity is giving up victimization. Welcome back, everyone, at the School of Greatness.

I'm very excited about our guests. We have the inspiring Catherine Woodward Thomas in the house. She is a licensed marriage and family therapist, a New York Times bestselling author, and an internationally recognized teacher of personal transformation. She spent decades helping people clear emotional blocks, align their inner world, and consciously create the life and relationships they, desire. And I'm excited that you're here because the last time you're on was over a decade ago. And it was such a powerful conversation to help people heal. And you have a new book out called

What's True About You, Seven Steps to Move Beyond Your Painful Past and Manifest Your Brightest Future. And the first thing I want to ask you, Catherine, is about why so many people don't feel like they are enough. Oh. You have these different core beliefs that you talk about in your book that block people from manifesting their greatest future and from feeling enough. Why do you think one of the biggest core blocks that holds people back is I am not good enough? Where does that come from? And how can we start to overcome that? Well, when we're young, our task is to form a sense of self and to understand who we are for others and where we fit into this world.

And so when you're young and you can't do things for yourself and you have parents who are trying their best or, you know, overburdened or whatever. And so there may be older siblings who can do things that you cannot do. There's a lot of ways that we would get the message. It's somehow I'm small. Somehow I don't have the power that I need to do the things that I would need to do. I can't get what I want. Also, children take on the emotional troubles of their parents. So if their parents are depressed and they can't fix their parent or their parent is an alcoholic, they can't fix that.

They don't internalize it. They don't have the cognitive. or we didn't have the cognitive capacity to recognize the situation with any kind of complexity or holistic understanding that, oh, my mother needs A, or my parents are having money problems, it became who I am. That somehow I am inadequate here.

I cannot help this situation. I cannot do anything in this situation. I am too small. I am too insignificant. But there are also, so these are what I call relational woundings. The I'm not good enough is in relationship to someone. That's interesting. So you have to feel I'm not good enough based on what someone else thinks of you or says about you or your interpretation of what they think or say about you.

Your interpretation of what they must feel about you. All beliefs have three components to that. Okay, what are they? We're a little unsophisticated. We'll say, okay, I think I'm not enough. But what that means really is that when I'm, with others, what I'm projecting onto others is that others are better than me or that others don't value me. And then also, there's a projection onto life that somehow I'm insignificant, that no matter

what I do, I cannot get ahead. I have to do twice as much for half the reward. So there's a whole worldview that's centered on who I am, what is or is not possible for me, how other people are going to treat me or how other people will feel about me. The thing about the I'm not good enough, and that is the most pervasive one, although the second runner-up is I'm alone, particularly in America, where we, you know, kind of live with rugged individualism, and we're also separate and we're on our little devices, which is only increasing that. But there are actually, you know, 22 of them, which I've determined are the most common ones.

22 core beliefs? poor beliefs at the level of identity that will actually serve as the inner glass ceilings on our potentials. Now, why they get perpetuated is what's interesting to me, right? So that's where they come from. We're forming identity before we have the cognitive capacity to understand the complexities of what's happening around us. So everything that is not working, if I'm not getting fed properly, people are ignoring

my needs. if I'm, you know, aware that my mother didn't want to be pregnant with me. I might form a self-sense if I'm not wanted. Wow. Whether she said it or not. Maybe she said something about it or maybe she just gave energy that she's frustrated with you and you think, oh, she really didn't want me. Absolutely.

It could be any interpretation, right? And it happens in the womb. Oh, man. There's scientific evidence. And I cite the evidence in the book. There's scientific evidence about how consciousness, at the level of, of identity is often imprinted in the womb. Based on the mother's identity?

Based on the mother's feeling towards the fetus. Oh, my goodness. So there's one study that, one story that I put in the book about this baby that was born that would not take her mother's breast when she was born. She refused the mother's breast. Of course, the doctors are crazy and they're trying to figure out what's going on because the mother has milk, but the baby won't drink the milk. they bring her to another mother who has milk and the baby drinks that milk.

Come on, really? So the doctor comes to her and says, wait a minute, what's going on? What really is happening? And the mother finally admitted, well, I didn't want her. I only had her because my husband wanted her and I really want nothing to do with the baby. Oh, my gosh. Because a baby knew that as a new one. The immune system or the nervous system felt like rejected almost probably or something.

Absolutely. Wow. Right. So, but the danger is, and what we are all struggling, because we're all like, you know, this is interesting. Like how did these beliefs form? Where do they come from? What I'm interested in as a person who is committed to helping people to actualize their potentials, become the highest and best, most authentic version of themselves, live out loud, be like a shining star shooting through the sky in this lifetime. Like, you know, really, that's why we all came here. So what I'm interested in is why does that pattern keep showing up over and over and over again? And that's what the book is deconstructed. Well, yes, I guess one is identifying, you know, you might be living with one of these beliefs, which is I am alone, I am bad, I don't belong, I'm a burden, I'm crazy, I am damaged goods, I'm different, I'm disgusting, I'm not enough, I'm a failure, I'm not important, I'm invisible,

all these things. Yeah. I feel like I felt all those. some point in my life, right? It's like every one of those I could identify with a time where I'm stupid. I'm not safe. I'm powerless. I don't matter. I am too much. I'm unworthy. I'm not valuable. I'm not wanted. I am wrong. I can relate to all those at some point in my life. And I can think back to when I was a child or my teens or 20, even a few years ago and say, oh, there's a point of this where, yeah, I can relate to that. Maybe I don't live into those

anymore, but I can definitely relate to feeling that and not knowing how to break free from those feelings. Exactly. Like, first you have to identify, okay, I'm saying over and over again that no one loves me, that I'm always left behind or I'm not enough or I don't matter or whatever one of these beliefs is, I'm a burden, I'm bad, I'm wrong, all these things. First of what I'm hearing you say is like learning to identify of what's, you know, keeping us playing small from these feelings and then figuring out how do we break free of each one that we identify

with, which is really hard if you don't have the tools. Well, and I think people have been trying to do it for years. I mean, I became a psychotherapist kind of from the inside out only because I was so committed to breaking free of my own unconscious false beliefs. I actually call them source fracture stories, the original break in belonging, right, the original wounding. and that I went to therapy for years. And yes, it helped. Oh my gosh. It saved my life, actually, really,

because I was a compulsive overeater. I had an addiction that was severe. I was non-functional. So therapy really helped. Over-eater, is that what you said? Yeah, overeater. I was a binge eater when I was in my teens and early 20s. It was out of control.

Like, I was even unemployable. So it kind of was a great thing, really, because it forced me to do my own work. couldn't progress in life unless I handled that. So I went to therapy. I went to 12-step programs. I did all sorts of things to try and heal it. Now, it helps to go back. You've got to grieve. You've got to see what happened. You have to understand it. But after that, if you just stay stuck in analyzing why you are the way you are, which I did for years, because that was all that was really available, you kind of solidify the self of that story.

Yeah, you stay stuck in the past as your identity, right? It's like you're staying in it rather than integrating the healing and transforming beyond it and creating a new story. Well, what we focus on grows. Yes. So if you're constantly, oh, there it is again. I'm not, oh, it's because my father and oh, it's because my mother. Actually, it is because your father. It is because of what happened and how you interpreted that.

And then it's how you started to show up. This is another piece of it. how we are the source of our own experience. So in the I'm not good enough, what we tend to do is we over function, we over give, we do, do, do, do. That was me for a long time. Which then...

Achieve, accomplish, or whatever it is, yeah. Well, and you start overfunctioning with other people so that they start underfunctioning. Yes. So in a way you're training people that your time is not as valuable as theirs. You're not really as good as them. you're more subservient to them.

This is how we then enroll a relational field that validates that story. Yes. Because self is not a solo phenomenon. Self is relational. Yeah. And so what's happening for most of us is that we're working on our issues, but we keep going back to the past. And what happens where we get stuck is that we get victimized by our own imprinting now.

Right now my father was this way and now this is how I am and I can't get out of it. And we get mad at ourselves and we don't know how to figure out to reprogram ourselves. So we keep going backwards to do it. I did this for well over a decade until I finally figured out when I was like around 40. And I'd been working on myself since my early 20s. It was a long time to be swimming in animals. analyzing why I am the way that I am and then going to school to help other people analyze why they are the way they are. It's the future that actually pulls us forward.

So understanding the past is a good thing, but staying there is not, is what I'm hearing you say. That is true. It will save your life that aren't changing life. Interesting. So we can't just bypass the past and just say, oh, I'm not going to think about it. I'm just going to only focus on the future. It's almost like we need to heal the memories of the past. make sense and meaning of them, but then say, okay, that is a different chapter of my life, and I'm creating a new chapter with a new vision, and I don't have to be stuck in that belief anymore. But I will tell you, I have a new form of psychotherapy that I've developed, and I have a group of therapists we've been working on this together.

You can actually bring a positive possible future into your preliminary work on healing the past. Right. So in other words, it's like, I know you have a big destiny. And I know that your life has been really handicapped by this, you know, history that you have with trauma. The commitment is the context of our work is within two years, you're going to be standing on that stage or you're going to be in that happy relationship. Let's get to work and clear that now. So that the context is still the future. Because the future, what you need, initiate with the future is development. Who will I need to be in order to manifest and sustain that future? You don't necessarily initiate development in just healing the past. You look at it, you feel it, you grieve it, you know, you learn how to regulate yourself. It's not necessarily developmental in, you know, and most of us can't actualize our potential yet because in being stuck in past trauma, we were actually missing certain skills and capacities that would allow us to create something other than the patterns we feel stuck in.

It's probably hard to think of a beautiful possible future if we're stuck in past trauma as well. It's probably hard to step into it. If we're always have something kind of dragging us back or weighing us down emotionally, it's, you know, I don't know. It's going to be like in fight or flight. trying to accomplish it? Well, you're in non-possibility. And by that time, living in the story of I'm invisible because you had a narcissistic parent who punished you every time you, you know, dared speak your truth or shamed you, you know, inside of the I'm invisible, what's underdeveloped

is the capacity to even recognize your own feelings or your own needs and then to be able to bring that forth to others and negotiate those needs with the assumption that other people might actually care about those needs if you brought them forward. That's like a whole new concept to someone with invisibility because the invisibility projection onto others is that other people

don't really care about my feelings and needs so why would I have to tell me? Yeah, because every time I try to talk, they shut me down or they don't pay attention or it's the interpretation of what happens in relationship to others, right? Yes, and then there's a deeper level of complexity and I'm going to bring it all in

because you have such a great audience who's following you and knows all this stuff already. But if you're in and now I'm invisible and you know that you need to speak up and tell your truth, what you might not know is that you're speaking through the filter of other people don't really care about me and other people are selfish. If you ask somebody for what you need

through the filter of other people don't care about me, it's going to come out like, well, I want a glass of water too, you know, as opposed to, hey, honey, would you get me a glass of water? Right, right, right. Which then makes people defensive and we'll get your own, right? Which, that's how we're generating our own experience

through the consciousness that we're centered in. Yeah, and you used a word earlier about enrolling people. We're enrolling people in our relationship on how we show up and how we communicate based on an interpretation of our past and based on our beliefs. Yeah, globalizing that. This happens a lot with, I'm not safe. People feel I'm not safe.

You know, so they're going into their close relationships like this. Okay, prove yourself. Right, right. Because the projection onto others from the, I'm not safe, is others have ill intent, others are going to hurt me. So this is where you get love avoidant behavior, people crazy making, destabilizing, in, out, push, pull, long distance, you know, all that stuff, trying to manage how you can have love, but not have commitment, not have anybody too close to you because people will. hurt you. So in order to really evolve beyond something like love addiction or love avoidance, you really have to get to the root of it, which is this is the core belief. How old is that part of me? You have to differentiate your wise self from your wounded self. Usually when we get

triggered, the wound itself is in charge and running the shelf. Right. So we have to learn how to hold and contain our own younger selves that were wounded with deep compassion, presence, love, but get that little baby buckled up in the back seat of the car and not driving the car. That's got to be so hard. I mean, it was so hard for me for so many years to figure out, how do I have a wise self in me when my wounds are running my life? Yeah. And it's so hard to like, when you feel like you're suffocating because one of these,

beliefs is just feels so true to you. I'm not enough. People don't listen to me. I'm wrong. I'm whatever it is. If you're just like, this is true to my core.

Your wounds are running your life, not the wise version of yourself. Not like this, you know, 10 year in the future version of you that's had all the experience. It's so hard for, it was so hard for me. And it's so hard for,

I think a lot of people to breathe and not feel some type of tension in their nervous system or clenching in their throat or pain in their stomach or fear or anxiety around how is someone going to respond to me or react to me if I don't do X, Y, or Z. Yeah. It's such a fear if you haven't grown up with the experience of having a safe environment emotionally, I guess.

So what's the process from identifying, okay, I know something is off in my life and I feel anxious sometimes. I feel avoidant. I have these patterns and relationships. Once someone is able to identify that and they know they want a greater future, they want to be able to create something more beautiful in their life, what is the process afterwards to start healing and start leading with their wise self rather than the wounded self? Yeah, beautiful question.

Okay. So in the seven steps of moving beyond your painful past, Where we begin is with a positive possible future. Now, I'm not talking about a goal because goals are kind of like, to me, and this is my definition, so, you know, people could argue with me. But to me, a goal is like the best possible situation that you could imagine given who you are and your resources. Yes. Like what's the best outcome that could possibly be predicted here? Okay.

When I talk about intention, I'm talking about, let's get right to the gold. Let's get outside of your current identity. Because the I'm not good enough is not going to think big enough. And the truth is that what's coded in our souls is so much grander. I mean, this is what you're waking up in people. It's why people love you. School of greatness, school of greatness. School of average.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Or school the best you could think you could be. Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah. No, it's school of greatness. what is that seed of greatness, even if you have no evidence? What did you come here to create? What were you born for?

Let's go. And yeah, let's go. So somebody's hungry for love. I don't want you just dating better people. I want you to go for the gold, even though you've always had a crappy relationship. Go for the highest and the best. Go for like a Lewis and Martha situation.

You know what I'm saying? Or with finances. So whatever it is, your career, your self-expression, your artistry, your music, whatever it is that you have in you. Now, what I have found is when I sit with people and I can see that with them as the practitioners, why I'm creating this new form of therapy

and I have a coach training too, but because the practitioner sponsors that dream. Most of us were not sponsored in our dreams. And as a matter of fact, if you kind of bring in the element of fairy tales, most of us were kind of cursed. Who do you think you are to do that? Oh, don't you do big for your britches?

sit down, quiet, you know, you're causing too much trouble. So a lot of us were kind of fell under the spell of that curse. So we really begin with a positive possible future. There was studies, there was a study done by two women in 1986, Paulineurius and Hazel Marcus, and they wrote an academic paper on it about positive possible cells. And what they saw, now positive possible cells, it's like the best case in an Olympic gold medal winner, or, you know, the actor standing on stage receding an Oscar, right. Or it could be, you know, a negative possible self, which many of us have and I'm trying desperately to believe.

I want to be dead or go to jail or whatever it is. Yeah, homeless or whatever it is, right? But the future that we're living into, what they found is the future that we're living into actually determines our current motivation and actions even more than the past does. the future we're living into or dreaming about has more impact than what would say it again?

Than the past. Wow. So here we are doing our work on personal development looking at the past, the past, the past, the past, the past, the past, the past, as though there's some kind of mystery like if I get to the bottom of all of it, then I'll finally be free.

But it's actually the future that holds the key. So claim a positive possible future. Even if it just seems like the craziest idea, think about it. especially if it's the crazy. And claim it. How do we claim it? Is it a way of writing it down?

It's an intention. It's a existing. Is it thinking about it? It's an intention. It's a visioning practice. Like, what does it feel like? You know, we bring the future into the present. We're all starting to get hip to this mental rehearsal.

Seeing yourself, obviously, athletes and musicians have been doing this for years. So you bring the future into the present, and it is a, I mean, for some people who live in a very small identity, I'm not good enough. I'm not worthy is a big one. I'm not worthy. Just the idea, like just trying to get the idea of I have a million dollars just sitting in my bank account that I don't even need. For somebody who hasn't, I'm not worthy. You feel like your identity is stretched on a rack, right? So we sit with that.

We open ourselves up to it. We open our receptivity. And then we bring it in like our imagination. What does it look like, feel like, fact. like, taste like, who am I here? How are others relating to me? What's the intention that I could set that would initiate what I call a future pull? I think that was a Wayne Dyer originally created.

A future pull that begins to inform my development in the direction of that dream. Yeah, in my decision making today. Yes. Because in order for that to be plausible, I have to start doing things differently, differently, acting differently, different routines, different habits, right? It's like you can't be living based on the past story anymore. It's towards a possible future. Yes.

You're living into the self of your future. I mean, this is the practical way that this looks like. So back in my 30s when I first started to discover this, I was so shy, I could not look people in the eye. I was painfully shy. Obviously I had problems making friends. You know, I couldn't really get work that I wanted. I mean, life was not working for me.

I'd been like kind of screwing up for many years, trying to figure myself out. I really hadn't had any successes. But I started to have this, what I thought at the time was this bizarre sixth sense. And I remember even telling my mother at one point, I think I'm going to be talking to thousands of people one day. This is even before the Internet. Right. Right? Like, how is that going to happen? Like, you never know the how to. You can't get stopped by the how to. So I didn't know how to create something like that. I wasn't even sure I wanted something like that. That was just my sense. Like, that's the future that's calling me. We have to tune into that. And instead of dismissing it, I took it seriously. And the only thing I could think to do was to start articulating, you know, who I was in that future. I am a world-class, leader of love. I'm a world impacting, you know, hundreds of thousands of people to awaken and

to expand their hearts to love. That was what I did at the time. And then I'd practice walking down the street from that center. And I remember going into Starbucks. Now, my usual way of ordering my morning coffee was, I'll have a latte, please, you know, my little shy way. walk in. I'll have a grande latte, please. Just try on a new way of being. Yeah. Right? Because so much of it is like where we're centered at the level of identity is informing who we're being. So that's how I started to discover that that's how you begin to find your way to that future.

And then what's that going to require of me? Well, at the time I made a very good decision. Thank goodness. I thought, well, I don't know how I would even begin on that. but I do know that if I'm going to be speaking to thousands of people, I better make sure I have something to say. Yeah, of course. Right? So then wisdom became my North Star.

Like, okay. Get some wisdom. Yeah, exactly. Let's get some wisdom here. But the first step is not thinking about the past, is actually claiming a positive possible future. Yes. And the second step is to name your source fracture story.

Is that essentially the first time you felt wounded that caused the belief for you? So in every area. of life, we tend to have one specific source fracture story that's really holding us back. One moment, one instance, not like someone might have a lot of things that happened to them, but you're saying one kind of core. I am. I am not good enough to do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That becomes the core identity in that area. I know mine, yeah. Being sexually abused when I was five. Because that was like the first memory that I have. And then it was just like, oh, I'm not lovable, I'm not enough, I'm abusable, all these things, right? It's like, and then it was almost like I've emotionally found that in every other area of my life until I was about 30, until I was like, oh, I'm living in this kind of what you call source fracture story wound still. and I'm driven to kind of overcome that wound, but I haven't healed it yet.

I'm driven to try to like feel enough to feel worthy by accomplishing and getting bigger and stronger and all these different things. Right. Well, the overcompensating is a big deal, driven to overcompensate. Driven to overreven.

But it still didn't feel enough. It doesn't do it. So it was like, what am I, you know, and it was like, why don't I still feel enough when I'm accomplishing all these things? It's like I had a big future, but I wasn't able to heal the past still. Right.

So it's kind of masking the way. Well, I think that's where people are. That's why people are frustrated. Yeah. Exhausted too. Yeah, yeah, and exhausted. Because you can't work hard enough to get over that. No, no.

You can't analyze it enough to get over it. You can't outrun your past. You can't. But what you can do is you can isolate it with the simple question, how old are you, sweetheart? You, the adult who has wisdom and depth and capacity can turn to your, yourself and say, sweetheart, how old are you? And where are you in my body? Now there's two of you in the breath. Right. And what we want to make sure is that you're not taking action from the wounded self because you'll only create more evidence. Yeah. And learning how to then begin to

mentor that younger self. And the first way you do it is to say, I'm sorry for not loving, I'm sorry for not loving you in the way you need to be loved. You repair that within yourself because the source fact your story gets played out in the relationship with the self. I'm sorry, sweetheart for abusing you. Some men are uncomfortable with sweetheart. Right, right. Little Lou or whatever. What do you, buddy or son, son.

Let me just tell you, if people can't locate their adult self, think about who you are for a friend and need. you are that person already for other people. Yes. Think about the parent you are. Think about the leader that you are at work. Yeah, great way of, I mean, for people that are coming for the first time, it might sound weird that you're thinking there's two people in the room, but I've talked about this a lot in terms of like people understand internal family systems

and it's like the different parts of you and we've had these types of conversations, similar types of conversations. So hopefully my core audience would understand this concept. But if someone's coming for the first time, they're thinking, what are they talking about? There's two parts of you and one person. You know, we have these wounded parts of us from childhood, the psychological memory within our body,

that when I get triggered from something based on a wound, and if I'm not aware of it, catch myself, I'll react based on the wound versus respond based on the wisdom, like you said, that wiser part of me. And so it's just learning how to respond to things, that might trigger us from the wisest version of us, from the higher version of us, rather than from the wounded version of us is what I'm hearing you say. And that's what, you know, Catherine's talking about here is when you're coaching a friend

who maybe is going through a bad dating experience and let's just say the guy is not, whatever, being attentive or not being kind or cheating on your girlfriend or whatever might be, and you give that person advice and say, you're better than this. You deserve more. You know, create a boundary, leave this guy, whatever it might be. But sometimes we don't know how to do that for ourselves, but we can coach someone else. And so what I'm hearing you say is learning how to coach the wounded version of us inside of us and how to calm down and how to say, hey, I've got you.

I'm here for you. You're safe. I'm parenting you essentially. I'm coaching you. I'm mentoring you. And let's make a better decision together from a safer space. That's what I'm hearing you say. Beautiful.

Beautiful. It's hard for people to understand that. Like if you told me this when I was 25, you'd be like, you're crazy, what is this? Like, just tell me how to make money. You know, just tell me how to like, get the girl, tell me how to do something else. Because I'd be too afraid to address the parts of me

that didn't feel enough. And I'd be too afraid to even speak them out loud that people thought I had a weakness. And I think there's a lot of, specifically men in the world that are afraid to even speak out loud that they have one of these beliefs that I'm bad, I don't belong, I'm a burden, I'm crazy, I'm damaged goods, whatever it might be.

And I think the faster we can name our source fracture story and go through these seven steps you talk about, the better our life will be in manifesting faster anything we want. Well, wherever we're centered at the level of identities we're generating our whole lives from, there's a lot at stake here. Say that one more time? Wherever we're centered at the level of identity is where we're generating our lives from.

So there's a lot of stick. I can tell you a story. Sometimes stories help to integrate the concepts, right? So these ideas have really been informed by my privilege of teaching tens of thousands of people in live interactive classes since 2007. I don't think there's many people who can say I've had the opportunity to teach. 60, 70,000 people in live classes where there's interactive coaching and people writing it and stuff. So it's been a, I'm a clinician, right? It's on the court. And I'm a transformational teacher.

I didn't do that as a psychotherapist. I did it as a teacher. But these ideas are big ideas. And they could actually turn psychotherapy into a new direction for those who are ready to move into a future forward focus and start to really take these ideas and work with them. and see how quickly the work goes when you have the context of a positive possible future, and when you're willing to help your client to understand themselves as the source of the patterns and get off of the victimization, like take a zero tolerance for victimization, which doesn't mean they weren't victimized. Right, right. Okay, it's just the most powerful place to be standing in life for those of us who were

fierce about getting over this, right? So, yes, you were victimized and let's not make a home of it. Right. Okay. What happens if we make a home of being a victim to things we are victimized by? You just don't progress. You actually cannot progress in your life when you are making a home of victimization. What if something really bad happened to us?

We were traumatized. Someone hurt us. They abused us. They abandoned us. They left us. They were dead. They stole from us. They robbed from us.

What if all these bad things happened to us? Yeah. Shouldn't we feel victimized and pity and have everyone help us? It's not in either or. Yes, you were completely victimized. But victimization has two parts to it. One is, who was I being, you know, that allowed that to happen? Now, that's canceled in any childhood situation.

Right. Okay. Cancel, cancel. You were never, ever, ever responsible for anything when you were a kid. But, you know, who was I being on, you know, in that relationship that this person and became so, you know, ended up cheating on me. As an adult, as an adult. Yeah, yeah, as an adult.

That's a smart question to ask yourself. Okay, so what might my three percent be? Yeah, yeah, yeah. In conscious of a couple of people are so angry when they're getting, you know, separated. So much the other person's fault. They just say 97% them, what's your three percent? Yeah, yeah, right.

Okay, so you wanna look at how is the source of it. But. And even if you were a kid and you were victimized and abandoned and abused and it wasn't your fault, why is it not worth it staying in victimhood as an adult? Well, the second part is who will I be in the face of it? Okay, that's the second part of none. It's just the refusal to be in reaction to life

because we really want to be creators of life. And most of us are stuck in the being in reaction to life, which means we're not going to be able to generate the miracles that we came here for. Yes. Okay, so that's why. So you have to kind of, you know, put your big girl, big boy panties on and really show up for yourself. Because it's hard to create from a victimhood is what I'm hearing you say.

You can't create from victimhood. The first entry to creativity is giving up victimization. And you're not free if you're a victim. You're never free. The other person is bigger than you. They have the power over you. Or just the interpretation of the moment or whatever happened, you felt abandoned or abused or neglected or whatever might be, right? Yeah.

And those feelings are valid. Of course. Okay, so that's where we, you have to, you have to hold the complexity. Yeah, it's like with yourself. And how long do you stay in victimhood? You know, it's like when you've been traumatized. You know, whenever it comes up, it comes up. And you have to just turn towards yourself and you say, yeah, that hurt.

Yeah, that was really crappy. And if I want to have a positive possible future, I can't stay in that. Yeah. Right. It's like, yes, that happened. Well, the context is. So the context of a positive possible future will give you a way to hold a, your challenges now in a way that's noble, that makes them bearable.

Because, you know, the whole thing about a positive possible future, also you want to have a meaningful why in your positive possible future. If you're just in it for yourself, it's okay. But if you see that you're modeling for your kids, or you care about the next generation on the planet. Service to others is everything. So then you're going to go farther, you know, inside of your resolve. Okay, well, I'm going to see this. This is what we're all learning now, how to be stronger, how to be wiser. This is my teacher of love. You know, some of us have very dark gurus in our lives.

People who really betrayed us, really hurt us. And, you know, on some level, you think about, okay, they woke me up. I will never give my power away to another narcissist. That won't happen again. Painful, though, you know? Ooh, yeah, life lessons, man. So we got to name your source fracture story. Would that be like me naming the time I was sexually abused and be able to be able to,

like, okay, naming this or? What the I am. So you're not going back into the trauma. It's looking for the identity you form. One of those 22. Yeah, I'm not loved. Yeah, I'm not a love. I'm not lovable.

I'm not lovable. Other people don't love me. And life is pretty barren when you're not loved. I mean, it's just kind of, you can't really expect much out of life. That's true. Yeah. So it's naming your source for action story and then waking up. And then mentoring that part.

Okay. Having a relationship with yourself. Step three then is then from the wise self, you actually tell the truth because what we distinguish, you've got to distinguish trauma from truth. And you were talking about when it happens, it feels true. So the first thing you say to yourself is sweetheart, that's not true. That's trauma. I'm so sorry you were wounded like that. Wow, yeah. But that's not true about you.

How do you believe something is not true about you when it feels so true? Well, you have to really kind of, you know, look for the evidence of it. There are parts of us that know that the story isn't true. And it can be, you know, look, psychedelics are all about this, right, trying to wake people up out of the trance of the identity. And it can be big and lofty and it can certainly be, you know, you can go off into spirituality. We're all children of God or whatever. But it has to be related to the actual story that was created by that younger part of the self.

You can't just split off and just have a new identity over here. This part of you needs rescuing, truthfully. There was no adult there, Lewis, who was able to sit with you within 24 hours and say, honey, I'm so sorry that happened. You are so loved. You are safe now. We've got you.

You're okay. Even with that, you might still be traumatized You might still. And still need to be reminded over and over and have a healing journey. Right. So what happens. So what happens. Yeah.

Absolutely. And what happens is when we get triggered, our own adult goes out the window. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And there's still no adult presence to wake us up. So it's almost like you've got to be your own fairy godparent and come down. You look Glenda the witch or whoever the warlock. You got to come down with love.

And you got to find. Now, I'll tell you with another story. It showed me how easy this could be, actually. So I was sitting in my 20s, and I was a wannabe actor in New York, you know. And obviously nothing really worked for my life, so I had a lot of rejection, a lot of failure. And I was waiting tables, and I had this great group of people I was waiting tables with. A couple of them are still my friends today. And one of them was named Billy.

And I had a really bad audition that day, and I'm sitting there complaining and crying and, you know, crying over my wine. It was after the shift, it was over old drinking wine. and I'm crying. Nothing's ever going to happen from life. I'm never going to make anything of my life. It's over. You know, I was crappy again today. And Billy reaches across the table.

He takes my hand and he says, I'm so glad you're facing it now, Catherine. And I grabbed my hand away. I said, how dare you say that to me? He said, thank you. What was the part of me? It was like, how dare you say that to me? That was the wiser self.

That was the part that just knew. This is a story I've ever, right? So all of us know. There is a part of all of us that do. We know that that's not true. We're just so captivated by the emotions because the false centers have an emotion to them. Of course.

So we have to train ourselves to step outside, to witness, to mentor, to find the part of us that actually knows a different story. And to begin to work with that sound. And that's where we come up with power statements. Power statements deconstruct. What's an example of a power statement? I'm alone. I didn't come here to be alone. I was born to love and be loved. I have the power

to grow my relationships, healthy, strong, vibrant, and long-lasting. Right. There's an assertion. There's a ferocity to it. It breaks up the I'm alone. It wakes you up out of the trance. Yeah. So you almost have to coach yourself in that and using those statements. Yes. That's good. Yeah. Because you talk about the next step is seeing yourself as source. What is that mean when you've been a victim or had bad breaks most of your life. This is one of the most important things that we can ever do is to see yourself a source.

Very few of us are trained in how to do it. Most of us when we go to say, well, you know, what's my part that 3% will drop into shame. See, I'm just too stupid. I have bad karma. I'm too screwed up for my parents, for my parents screwed me up too badly. me up too badly. You know, I'm just not good enough. We'll go back into the source for actual story. So one of the things you have to learn is how to objectively notice your own choices and behaviors without dropping into shame. The other thing that we will do is we will, then, how am I

the source of this? We'll go back into our psychology. Well, my sister always, you know, competed with me and so blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that's why I am the way that I am. No power in that story. Interesting story. You know, good to know. Right, right. There's no power for a greater future. No power to generate a greater future. So what we're looking for is what's your access to power? So this skill of being able to really own your choices. So an example from my life, when I was looking at my patterns in love, right, but as I was first writing, crawling in the one, you know, 20 years ago. and I saw, you know, my pattern was unavailability and married men. So from psychological perspective, you know, one married guy after another, it was really horrible.

I was horrible. So to even do that. But that's what I was doing. From a psychological perspective, it's just kind of like, you know, ABC, because my father left when I was young, married a woman who didn't want anything to do with me, wasn't allowed in their home, condition of their marriage, that it wasn't part of their family. So he used to sneak out and see me so I'm the other. woman by the age of eight.

Oh my gosh. Okay. So you kind of get it. I mean, it's very traumatic. Oh my gosh. So, you know, you were the other mistress by the age of age of age of age. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, not a big mystery why I'm dating married men, okay?

Because I'm finally getting my dad to choose differently, which never actually worked. But so that was one way of seeing it, which gave me no access to power. The other way of seeing it when I looked for myself, how am I the source of this, is that I realize that insolize that insomely. side of this deep, I am alone story, I had a corresponding belief that no one will ever really be there for me. So when I would date people from that perspective, it didn't occur to me that I needed a man who would actually be able to show up for me.

Yeah, emotionally available. Yeah. Not in a relationship already. I'm looking at chemistry. How cool is he? You know, like what car is he driving? I don't know what I was looking at, but it wasn't that. I wasn't looking at this character.

Yeah. None of the things that actually matter. So in owning that and seeing that clearly like, wow, I wasn't looking at the right things. There's no shame in that. And actually it was off my radar. Mm-hmm. Right. So there's no shame in it.

But that was key to recreating my criteria for the man that I was looking for. Yeah. Right? And then I was able to find a man and get married and have a great relationship. And, you know, so that changed my life with seeing how I was the source of it. Because once you identify the old way of relating

how you were generating that story, you can just flip it to what's the new way of being. Okay, here's my new list. This is what I'm looking for. I mean, it's, I know it's, it sounds easy to say, okay, once you're aware of the old way of being that you've been for so long, we can flip it into the new way of being.

But we've lived an identity of that old way for 20, 30, 40, 50, whatever, how many years of that way of being. Yeah. How do you grieve and kill off an old identity, essentially? Maybe you're not killing off, but it's like you're shifting an entire lifetime of being and all of a sudden saying, I'm just going to be different today. And I'm going to think different and I'm never going to go back to this old past and it's all going to be easy. like it's hard sometimes for people to transform into a brand new person, a new identity they've never stepped into consistently and letting go of a familiar comfort zone, even though they might have been living in pain and suffering, it's familiar pain and suffering of an identity, right?

Yeah. And even if you step into a more powerful identity, people just don't know how to do it. Yeah. It's unfamiliar. Even if it's better for you. You're absolutely right. That's exactly where people go. Even if it's better, it's unfamiliar.

Right. So now you're in step six and seventh. Okay. So we're at step five first. So five is new ways of relating. Identify new ways of relay. Identify new ways of her lady. Which you will not know how to do.

You don't know how to do. You're like, I've never done this before. I don't know how to have boundaries. No. I don't know how to have courageous conversations. I don't know how to say. I don't know how to have faith in the goodness of life. Yeah.

I don't know to trust people. Yeah. Whatever. You do not know how. So it's really important that we take the how-to out of it. Okay. Okay. And just say, well, that's a new way of being because step six is to embrace a growth mindset.

Yes. Okay. And that's when I was talking about before about when you have a positive possible future, it will initiate growth in the direction of that dream. Yeah. You are not yet the person you will need to be to manifest and sustain that future. If you think back to when you first saw the vision of what you have today, Lewis, you were not the man that you needed to be for that future to happen.

No, but the future excited me though. And I was like, I was hungry to learn and grow and develop. And, you know, it's in two weeks, it'll be of recording this. It'll be 13 years since I launched the show. And I remember before launching the show like a year before and I was kind of in this transition phase. and I was like, gosh, you know, I've done a lot of things. I've made money. I've gotten out of like being broke.

I've like figured this out, but I'm still not fulfilled. I didn't have like this big future beyond just not be broke and make more money. That was like, it was like, get off my sister's couch, make money. But then once I got there, I was like, I'm not fulfilled. And my relationships are falling apart. Like there's something missing. And I just kept thinking about, God, all I want to do is just sit in front of really. inspiring people, learn how to be better myself, and then share that with others. And that has been

every single week for 13 years showing up and doing that, doing it not perfect all the time and, you know, go back to my old self at times, all these type of things, but it's like, I'm constantly showing up. But I remember having that vision of like, this is what I want to do. And I just want to inspire people through interviewing and learning as well and sharing my story of what I'm learning. And it's just, I'm constantly doing that. And you're still growing. Still doing it. You're learning all the time.

100%. Yeah. So when you have the courage to set a bold future that's outside of who you currently know yourself to be, you can expect a jolt in the direction of growth. Yes. Which by the way, isn't always pleasant. You know, usually the first act of creation is destruction. So things start falling apart.

because you've got to get rid of the structures that have been locking your own identity. Or relationships that have been... Yeah, relationships and or things start blowing up, you get fired from your job. Like all sorts of shenanigans happen. Like, that future is not kidding. That future wants you, right?

But it is to recognize. But if you know that boundaries are the key to your new life, there's a lot of books on boundaries. There's a lot of weekend workshops on boundaries. I would rather, somebody put their efforts in personal development, personal growth, transformation, and healing into that development rather than go back for the 18th time and talk about what your father did when you were for. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. That's where the real gold is. So we have to recognize that this is a developmental journey. When you got stuck in trauma, there were skills and capacities that were missing. when you were alone in life because you were a latchkey kid or you were neglected, you know, you were left alone for hours at a time, you didn't learn how to be vulnerable, you didn't learn how to engage conflict in a successful way, you didn't learn how to reciprocity or mutuality in relationships, you only learn self-sufficiency. Or how to receive and relate, you know, it's like, yeah, all the things. If you don't feel worthy, how are you going to feel like you can receive something. That's right. You know, you're going to say no, thank you, but no, whether it's a

gift or someone buying you lunch or love. You're going to always kind of be emotionally, psychologically, or physically rejecting love if you don't believe you're worthy of receiving it, right, in some way. We're feeling guilty by receiving it or whatever, right? But there is a part of the person who's worthy. That's a very hard one to overcome. And you're basically living as a servant to others when you don't have an I'm not worthy. You know, you're showing up kind of subservient everywhere. Well, that's one of the ways of being that that could generate. But there is a part of you that knows it's a wound and not your destiny and not your

truth. So that's what we're looking for. It's a, you know, and the book is very, it takes people very, very step by step. Yeah. Yeah, and the growth mindset is the embracing the growth mindset of steps. six, stuff seven is making those new choices and taking new actions. Which is, correct me if I'm wrong, how we integrate the new identity. It's like by making new choices, taking new actions, you're stepping into something you've

never done. You've had 10, 20, 30, 40 years of an old identity. Now you're doing new actions, new choices. And it takes time to kind of integrate saying, I'm safe in this new identity. Is that correct? Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's actually where the rubber meets the road.

Yeah. And here's the thing. Things can change so quickly. Once you understand how you're creating evidence for the old story and you make a different choice. And it can be very, very subtle. A lot of these things are very subtle. Yes. When I was, when I divorced my husband, which was the foundation of conscious I'm coupling,

I found myself back out on the dating pool, right, which was kind of, of weird because now I'd written calling in the one. It's a weird experience there. People say, well, I'm not the next one or whatever. It was an awkward situation for sure. But I remember one of the things that happened is that I started automatically recreating the old pattern of unavailability. Really? Yeah. Like that pattern is just sitting there, you know, right in the past. You came out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, you actually have to generate your life. Yes. You have to create a different future.

If you don't create something consciously, your past will determine your future. That's just what so. That's true. So I noticed that that was happening. And so I went in and I did some work on it. One of my false centers, my source structure stories, and by the way, there's not only just one for every area. Sometimes they're intertwined. They're intertwined a little bit.

You work with the one that has the most energy in that moment. Okay. So the one that had the most energy in that moment. moment for me was I'm not wanted. And one of the ways being in the I'm not wanted is overgiving your energy. You're kind of anticipating people who are going to reject you. You've got to be kind of a salesperson, right? You've got to be like in their face a little bit and tap dancing and you know, don't, don't reject me. So, but what happens is, of course, it makes people back up. Yeah. Again, how are the same? Needy clingy energy. Yeah. And then people back up.

They're like, see, they don't want me. Exactly, that's it, that's it. So I realized that sometimes with men, if I liked them, that I would come on too strong. That that was like a nervous thing that I did. So with my beautiful partner, Michael, now, on our very first date, I knew this about myself.

So the new way of being was to hold my energy in, to just bring my energy in, to kind of hold myself. be more self-contained. Yeah. So that when I walked in the room, I was self-contained. I wasn't over-giving my energy. You were like a golden retriever like, ah, love me.

Exactly. Ah, yeah. Which gave him a chance to get to know me. Of course, yeah. And he actually fell in love with me that night. So, you know, it doesn't have to be, it can be very quick how life changes. It can be. You know, so a lot of it is just.

All based on your way of being. Absolutely. And being self-aware and self-aware. and self-responsible. What would you say then is the difference between healing yourself and transforming yourself? Well, healing, I say, is the domain of the past, but transformation is the domain of the future.

So healing, again, is about regulating yourself, facing the truth, understanding what happened, recognizing that you are not that, learning to regulate yourself, all of these beautiful things. And so, you know, there's a piece of healing you just have to be witnessed and held with love. but there are parts of us that will always be healing.

Of course. It's a journey. It will, you know, every New Year's Eve, I might feel sad because someone died on that day. And so a lot of it's about just some of these pieces of ourselves. We just need to learn how to hold them when they come up with love. We don't have to get to the bottom of them before we can have what it is that we want. And that's the message that I'm really excited to be delivering to people. Yeah.

Yeah. So there's healing, which is the domain of the past, transformation, which is the domain of the future. Yeah. And it sounds like identity is the domain of like the present almost where it's like our way of being is our identity or our belief is our identity. That's the true you. Oh, yeah. That's the true you. That's the true you. Because the true you is in the now.

Okay. Who am I really? Is it true that I'm not? not good enough. Oh, I was going to tell you, do we have time for one more story? Yeah. Okay, okay. So I was going to tell you this story about the, um, the, uh, so here I am with these big ideas. I've got all these big ideas and I don't feel good enough to be the one to deliver them. I'm not, you know, I'm not, I'm not at that level. Right. You know, so, so, so who am I to bring this forward? And I'm struggling and I'm struggling, but they so want to be born that I'm

struggling with the book proposal. I think I struggled for like three years in that, trying to write this book proposal. I got frustrated and I finally just sent it to my agent. Like my, you know, okay, this is what I have, you know. And she read it and she said, I don't get it, right? Mirroring. Hearing, yeah, I'm not good enough. She rejected it. Wow. And I was crushed. I was heartbroken. But this is what I realized out of it. Oh, here I am writing this book about way. waking up from the trance of your source fracture story to be able to create the life that you came here to live. I'm writing it from the source fracture story.

You can't create the future from the self of the past. You actually have to go into the future and begin to source yourself from there. So I asked myself, what's really true about this idea you're not good enough? Well, you know, all of us are imperfect and all of us are doing the best that we can. And life seems to have given this teaching to me.

So I guess if life thinks I'm good enough, it's just mine to do. Like, I don't need to get into that business about who, I don't need to compete with anybody. I'm just me, right? So I woke myself up from the trance. A few months later, I called my agent because she's my friend and I needed advice. And I believe that people can say no to you and you can still love them. They get to have boundaries. Right.

They can have their perspective and their feedback. They can disappoint you and you don't withhold your love. But I called her because she's smart. I wanted her opinion. By the end of that conversation, she said, I need to revisit this book. That was because who I was being. It was different. It was different. Different energy. A whole different energy. She got the book. She ended up shaping the book. She got me an amazing book deal. The book is integral to her. So that's what I mean like we're sourcing ourselves and our lives from the identity we're centered in. But the true you is actually a flexible you.

If I say, okay, I'm not a perfect person, and I'm open to learning and growing and becoming who I'd need to be to create that book, now I'm a fluid self. The old font centers are a fixed identity. They never change. They never change. There's no fluidity, and they're shame-based.

So if you collapse into a shame-based identity, you'll stop growing. From the true you, you're open to feedback, you can learn. Setbacks don't crush you. They disappoint you, but they don't crush you. You keep going. You grow from the experience,

and you can stay on track. Yeah. To actualize the future you're committed to. When you mentioned kind of how you had this, I guess, lack of self-belief or maybe, I don't know if it's a... Insecurity. Security.

Imposter syndrome is what I was thinking of. Imposter syndrome. So you're saying, oh, I'm not Brunei or I'm not this, right? I haven't done this yet. I'm sure there's a lot of people listening or watching that have this kind of imposter syndrome. Yeah. How do we overcome that when we're trying to create a bigger, powerful future that we've never done before?

Well, I think the imposter syndrome is reflective of where am I centered at the level of identity. So you look at what it is that you're committed to creating. And then you, I mean, the actual practices to first connect with the part of you that can be a witness. to your own experience, you know, that has some wisdom. You're not going to collapse into getting blended with that younger part of you. And then you think about the pattern. What usually happens in this area, right? So I want to be, you know, I want to be a successful actor.

What usually happens is I get rejected at every thing I do. And, you know, then I get bad reviews when I get cast. That's the pattern. Right. So then you say, well, how does it feel in my body when that pattern happens? You just imagine the patterns happening now. When I get rejected or something? Yeah, when I get rejected.

How do I feel in my body? Where do I feel it? And then you say, what's the I am in the center of that feeling? Right? I'm not smart enough. I'm not lovable. I'm not whatever it is. Yeah.

That's how you find the source fracture story in that particular area. Uh-huh. And then you identify. Well, I guess then you wake up to the true you, see yourself as source, identify new ways of relating, et cetera. et cetera, yeah, yeah, and go through the process. Yes. But, I mean, you say that transformation lives in the future.

And I know I've heard Dr. Jodis Spencer say to remember the future. And I like to ask questions on here, like if your 10-year self in the future was giving you advice now, what would that wiser version of you be saying to yourself right now when you feel stuck? So how do people in this process, when they're feeling stuck, what is the process you really like to tap into that, I guess, wiser future self,

to overcome the imposter syndrome, to overcome the I'm Not Enoughness, to overcome all these feelings so that you can actually feel good again as opposed to feeling bad. Yeah, yeah. Well, I think what you're talking about is how do I shift centers

when I'm really captivated emotionally by the story? Of the past, yeah, the wounded self. The wound itself. Yes. It does feel very, it is very pervasive. And that's sometimes why it's very hard to language. Yes.

I think one of the ways that I have found helpful is to name it accurately, to really name it and to give it the age. Because once you give it that age, if you can't get outside of it, then what I sometimes do with people is I have them imagine then like a four-year-old sitting in front of them. who just had a trauma and has collapsed into this meaning. And they are coming as, you know, the light. And what might they say about this conclusion? We're talking about the conclusions we came to that limit our lives.

Yes. Right? So what might they say? And usually people have enough compassion if they can externalize that younger self to be able to speak to that younger self in a way that brings some light and some hope. But you're right. Before you talked about, many of us are kind of rusty in that area. We're not used to that dialogue. But it is one of the most important things that we'll ever learn how to do. It is the thing that actually allows us to really transform beyond the pain of the past. I mean, they talk about this in the sports world is like this self-talk, something that I learned all the time when I had insecurity or fear before games. It was like a self-talk or before a big moment if I'm shooting a free throw. the game was on the line.

It was like, how I spoke to myself would typically determine the results. Wow. You know, it would influence the results. If I'm like, I'm going to be a fool, I'm going to,

don't mess up. It's like if I'm thinking about the negative, I'm probably going to react from pain or a wound or a fear rather than seeing a bigger possible future. Of you've got this or stay present or be in the moment or you can do anything like speaking into a bigger future. Yeah. And it's a practice.

It really did. And it could be a moment by moment thing that we need to be doing to remind ourselves, these mantras, this self-talk, and finding tools that we can master to overcome whatever life is throwing on our way. Yeah. And, you know, speaking of tools to master, you've been doing this for many decades, right? And you've mastered certain levels and gone higher and higher or deeper, deeper in mastery beyond being a therapist, right?

and learning about transformation and bigger ways to transform and heal at the same time. And you were telling me beforehand, but before, when you sold the book deal, you also got the call that you had cancer around the same time or that same week. Two days later. Two days later. Two days later. And so when you feel like you've mastered these tools, right, for so long and you've overcome all these challenges and created a beautiful new relationship and you have this wisdom

to share with the world, but then you get some news like this with a new challenge or potential obstacle in your way. Yeah. How did you not fall back into old patterns of wounds or whatever that could have shown up? And how did you stay focused on the future and not living in the past or fear? Well, fortunately, you're right. I did have decades of experience of this way of being. So it's actually organic to me.

to know live from the truths of who I am. And when I collapse into a story, which I do, because that's human, very important people know that this doesn't really go away. You have to learn how to work with it. I don't tend to stay there for very long, thank goodness. Yeah, that was a really wild ride. Right on a Wednesday, you get this major book deal. Six houses were bidding on it.

We went with the one we loved. We're so happy with Penguin Life. two days later cancer. And the book was due the exact same time that the cancer treatment was scheduled to be over. So I wrote the book when I was in cancer treatment.

But the truth is that that helped a great deal. Because it was so joyful to write this book. It was so uplifting and to finally be at a place. I mean, it's taken really decades to put this all together. Right? So this is, out of all the work I've done,

calling in the one conscious uncoupling, this is my true purpose for being born. And it actually is the teachings underlying both of the other books and why they work. But it lifted me every day. So I just, you know, you just decide who am I going to be in the face of this. And the context of the future that I was living into,

which is really the big future I'm living into, is that this book recontextualizes how we engage our personal development work. You know, I've pioneered two other things into the world that I'm very proud of, calling in the one, even though everybody's now aware of law of attraction and your beliefs and your manifesting love.

It was actually the first conversation in 2004. Nobody else was talking. I almost didn't get a book deal because the editors would come back and say, well, she's saying something nobody else is saying. And I remember saying my agent at the time, I think that's a good thing. But I mean, I don't want to brag, but this is the reality of, like, who I get to be

is that I pioneer new things into the world, which I feel, you know, so grateful, grateful, grateful for. And then Conscious Uncoupling kind of, you know, broke the glass ceiling on how we do divorce, and now there's a lot of different books on it and teachings. But it is, so there's a way that I'm given that privilege. And so I see this book as the privilege that it is. So that future of repositioning how we all engage personal development work to turbocharge our capacity to outgrow the imprinting of our past and create the lives that we want to be living. And ultimately, Lewis, the world that we want to be living in. This is what we need to learn how to do for ourselves so we can bring it into the world.

That future just carried me and is carrying me today. Like, I'm still in treatment, right? So it got better, and, you know, all the tumors went way and they shrunk, and now some of them are back. And, you know, so you're on a journey when you're dancing with atypical cells. But you see, like, truthfully, I'm just, you know, this is life. And we all go through hardships. So when you have a context of the future that you're living into, it repositions the challenges that we're in. And you can live your life not from where you're.

you are trying to get to that future, but from that future, which then informs who do I need to be today. Yes. Right? So it has really only truthfully increased my strength and increased my capacity to stand in that positive possible future. I vision every day a future where my body is healthy. I thank God every day for healing my body.

And at the same time, I'm aware that we're all only here for a minute. And we better as well, you know, we might as well do what God put us on this earth to do or what we feel in our souls were put here for and get busy living into that future. Because time is finite on this level. And so I accept that. I'm 68. And, you know, we're lucky to be living this long, really, because 100 years ago, people were out by 40. So, you know, I'm grateful for my life every day.

and I'm really committed to the privilege of being able to birth these ideas into the world. Wow, that's beautiful. Beautiful wisdom. If you could, I'm going to turn 43 soon. I never really celebrated my birthday, but that's my birthday's coming up in the next couple of months. 43, and I just had twins, which you're aware of, and my audience is aware of, twin girls, if you could give me one piece of advice on how to best, approach fatherhood for two girls. Yeah. In the world that they're entering in right now,

and the life that we have right now and what's happening in the world and the culture and everything, you know, I'm sure everyone's got a piece of advice on how to be a conscious parent. But if you could just give one piece of advice to myself or any new parent on how you would approach fatherhood or motherhood at this season, what would you say with your infinite wisdom? Such a sweet, sweet question. I mean, the first thing that comes to me, I know you're already doing, which is to sponsor their potential greatness. Oh, 100%. 100%.

Speaking into it. Yeah. Creating it with your words. Speaking into it. Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. But the other thing, and once this book is out, we're going to be looking at doing a parenting book. Children do a little meaning-making machines and making meaning out of everything, you know.

You could probably have the best of intentions, and they could interpret it. And maybe not the best of ways sometimes, right? It's like maybe, who knows? So it's to pay attention to the meaning that they're making at the level of identity. I saw this with my daughter when she was six years old. My daughter has autism and she was having a hard time socially connecting. And it was something that happened at school with the kids and they kind of, you know, weren't nice to her or something.

And she immediately, I could just see the collapse in her. The shrinking. It's not like they come to you and say, I have a belief now that I'm not good enough. The energy shifts. The energy shifts. They come back and they're like just quieter, more in their room or whatever. Yeah, they're not as free.

Yeah, they're not as, she wasn't as free. She wasn't as happy. And I caught it. And I was able to sit with her and intercept it. And I was able to language it. I think what you're making it mean is that, honey, what it really means is this. And who you are is this. And I did see a shift.

back when I was able to catch that and do that for her. So I think there's a lot to be explored there because I haven't done a lot of research yet in that area. But that's what I would, you know, encourage you to do. Yeah, it's probably catching the, when they make a weird face or their energy shifts, it's like catching it and communicating with love on, you know, what they're trying to make meaning of, I guess, and trying to shift it. Well, you know, children don't have the cognitive capacity to hold complexity until

that they're about seven. So they, they, they, that's why if you look at the, that Santa Claus was real, you know, it's like until a certain age, you're like, well, it's not real, you know, it's like, you can't see the complexities of life. Everything is very black and light. Everything's black and white. So, so, so, you know, you have to be careful with, you know, with, with, what, how they're interpreting their experience.

So to just be the, pay attention to it. Yeah, pay attention to be the one who helps. them too. This is powerful. I want everyone to go get this book. What's true about you, seven steps to move beyond your painful past and manifest your brightest future.

If you feel stuck or if you feel like you haven't been fully living your truest gifts or you have something you want to bring into the world, but for whatever reason, it's not manifesting yet. Make sure you go through this book. Because when you break free from your past and you embrace the true you,

you unleash your brightest future. And that's what everyone deserves to be living. if they're willing to do the work. They can get the book anywhere. Again, what's true about you? Get it for a friend. They can check you out on your website, catherinewoodwoodthomas.com,

the same thing on social media. And I hope everyone gets this book and shares this interview with a friend as a starting point as well. I've got a couple final questions for you. Okay. I think I might have asked this to you 11 years ago when you were on the show.

Oh my goodness. But I'm not sure if I started asking these questions back then. So I'd have to actually go back and reflect and see if that was the case. But I started at some point asking people a question at the very end of the episodes called The Three Truths. And maybe I did this with you. I think you did. Maybe I did. So I can't remember if I did it in my first six months. You did. You did. I have no idea what I said. Yeah. All right. So we'll see where you're at now. 11 years later. And we'll reflect back on what you said then. So imagine you get to live as long as you want in this life. Amen.

And you get to create everything you want from the most powerful future version of you. Wow. Wow. And it all comes to life. But at the end of the day, when you pass away, many years away, you have to take all of your work with you. All of your messages, all of your books, all your conversations, they're gone. Hypothetical scenario. Okay. But you get to leave a final message with the world, your final three lessons.

I call it the three truths. What would those three truths that you would leave behind be? You are the creator of your life. The purpose of life is to create heaven on earth. And the essence of who you are is love. Yeah. Yes, it is. Before I ask the final question, Catherine,

I want to acknowledge you for your constant journey of transformation for your personal life and for bringing your message to so many people one-on-one group settings and even more so with your content and your books and your programs that you have online as well. you know, the fact that you live a life of service to help people heal and transform into their greatest self, I don't know a better way to live. So I want to acknowledge you for the constant journey, even through the challenges you keep facing. And it's a beautiful thing to witness how you approach life with everything you've been through

and everything you're going through right now. So I want to acknowledge you for the love you bring to so many people. It's really beautiful. Thank you. Of course. My final question is, what is your definition of greatness? it's to live in the most expansive calling on your life for who you came here to be for the world and the gifts that you, the golden gifts that only you can deliver in just the way that you can.

We're all needing to do that now. You know, as the world escalates and tensions and conflict and negativity, it's pushing on all of us to step into that yes to greatness, that call to greatness. So I'm glad we're all in it together. Amen. Kevin, thanks for being here. Appreciate it to you. Thank you.

Thank you. I have a brand new book called Make Money Easy. And if you're looking to create more financial freedom in your life, you want abundance in your life, and you want to stop making money hard in your life, but you want to make it easier. want to make it flow, you want to feel abundant, then make sure to go to make moneyeasybook.com right now and get yourself a copy. I really think this is going to help you transform your relationship with money this moment moving forward. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness.

Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episode, with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our greatness plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you if no one has told you

lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.