The Marblehead Reporter: Spring from Within By Charlene Peters /[email protected] CNC Marblehead Reporter.
Spring into Healthy Living with Kathryn McKinnon, Time Management Speaker and Executive Coach, who helps people focus on the moment. “What you do in each moment is extremely important,” says the time management executive coach who plans to help women gain clarity of thought during the Jewish Community Center’s ‘Healthy Living’ series of workshops.
Spring is the time to shed our winter-worn spirit and welcome in vitamin D, fresh air and a new perspective in life. The problem in the process is that many find the prospect of holistic spring-cleaning too overwhelming. Sure, you can start walking more, sign up for an exercise class or two, enroll in a weight-control-management program — but what about the direction your life is headed, and more importantly, how you handle stress?
While efforts over the past year have been to stay afloat in the downward spiral of the economy, many mindsets have struggled alongside our financials. Instead of thinking positive thoughts, we continue to struggle to get out of a rut, perhaps prompted by the pit in our stomachs when we’re paying bills — or worse yet, ignoring bills. The good news is that help is available.
On Monday, April 26, Kathryn McKinnon will be offering a workshop at the Jewish Community Center titled, “Are Your Habits Keeping You from Living a Healthier Life?”
The one-hour workshop is part two of a three-part series on “Healthy Living,” offered by McKinnon, who is a time management executive coach and a resident of Marblehead. With over 30 years of business experience as an accomplished entrepreneur, business owner, jewelry designer, artist and singer, she’s got her left and right brain functioning at optimal capacity. And she’s got positive energy. In fact, for the past decade, she has incorporated her experience as a Reiki Master into her work.
Fortunately for the community, McKinnon is willing to share some of her tips. Unfortunately for men, these workshops are specifically geared toward the female gender, one that McKinnon says generally gives more than it receives. During our telephone interview, the first question she asked me was, “How can I best make use of your time?”
Immediately, the essence of her business was easy to understand. She has a great respect for others, but more importantly, she has self-respect. “The worst thing to do is to focus on everyone else and not yourself,” she says. What gets in the way is our lack of worthiness to receive abundance. “Abundance is our God-given right,” states McKinnon. “We are born to have everything we could possibly want.”
Out of 70,000 thoughts a day, many women spend all day worrying, and many worries revolve around not being able to pay bills. Stress leads to disease, and the top stressors include: death of a spouse, divorce, marital separation, jail-time, personal injury or illness, marriage, a change in financial status, vacation and Christmas.
A session with McKinnon will put a stop to negative thinking, because if that’s the thought pattern, then your worst fear is exactly what’s going to happen. “If you spend your day appreciating what you have and are grateful for the things you have, you’ll find ways to solve problems, make more money, save, consolidate debt, work with banks so they’ll help you make that mortgage payment,” says McKinnon, who advocates being proactive instead of “paralyzed.”
McKinnon’s job is to help get her clients in touch with their inner guidance, which she says we all have but lose touch with over time. Trusting your intuition is a first step to empowerment. Beliefs are a monumental aspect to how you’ll handle stress, money and other issues throughout life. Says McKinnon, “One woman was afraid to look at her taxes, and what she was going to owe. I told her, if you don’t look at your relationship with money, if you ignore it, you won’t have it. Your money won’t stick around.”
The key, she says, is to be respectful of money, because if you’re not, money is not going to stick around. And it’s all about your relationship with money. She’ll ask you what you believe about rich people. Is money evil? Must one be corrupt to be rich? “These thoughts get in the way of experiencing abundance and are not healthy,” cautions McKinnon. Instead, she says, “Think ‘I deserve this, I can create this, and it’s what I was born to do.’”
When you change your thoughts about how you view money and how your behaviors were passed on about money — from school, your parents, teachers, church and the government — McKinnon can then pinpoint your beliefs and offer tools and techniques to refocus and realign your thinking. During her first workshop, held this past Monday and titled “Are Your Thoughts Making You Sick?” McKinnon focused on stress: what creates it, how to recognize it and how it shows up in your body. Ultimately, she shows you what you can do to transform it, using breathing techniques and visualization.
The Reiki comes through her voice. Positive energy is emitted through the workshop, with the goal of every woman in attendance leaving with thoughts of gratitude and self-empowerment. “When you’re working on a higher level,” says McKinnon, “you look brighter, happier.” Whatever vibration you operate with is contagious, she explains. “If you walk around feeling sad or you complain about aches and pains, or dwell on things that happened 20 years ago, your energy level will be lower and the vibration you carry will be lower,” she says.
People with overwhelming ailments such as backaches, headaches, arthritis and emotional problems have accumulated stress that McKinnon says many times disappear after one session of working with her. “They don’t understand why they feel better, less worried,” she says. But they do. How quickly the effect takes place depends solely on how willing and committed you are to changing your way of thinking. “If you want to stay stuck, then you’ll stay stuck,” states McKinnon. “This program is for people who are committed to making a change.”
Control and Manifestation
By consciously going forward, you can choose to be a victim, or you can choose to take action, rise above your fears and worries and look for the opportunities to be the great person you were created to be. “Habits sabotage,” says McKinnon, who explains how they’re created over time.
For example, the weight issue for one of her clients was based on a long-ago event when her mother was ill in the hospital and she was left alone with a nanny. The nanny fed her constantly for three weeks, and during that time she developed a habit of eating food as a replacement for her mother’s love. Once the situation surfaced, next came empowerment, which McKinnon guides her clients to straight away. “I don’t want to be a person you see each week,” she states. “I want to teach techniques for you to find your own purpose. To go out and do it, not to be my client forever.”
Her job is to help cut through the “clutter” and get down to the root of the issue — and then help her client to discover it for herself so that she can stop focusing on the problem. “Focus on what you really want,” advises McKinnon, who says, “Focus on making money, not the fact that you don’t have money, or you don’t have enough. The positive thought process will shift everything.”
“Healthy Living,” as the series is titled, does not mean working out and then rewarding yourself with a doughnut. “That’s self-sabotage,” she warns. “It’s the ‘stay-where-you-are’ issue.” Intention is a great way to pave new roads to positive behavior and thinking. McKinnon explains a recent incident when she wanted flowers to have on her dining table for Easter. She put out the intention of receiving flowers, and without asking, the flowers came in abundance from every one of her guests. “I don’t believe in coincidences anymore,” she explains. “there have been far too many times when I’ve created something with intention, and what I wanted showed up.”
Whatever the need, McKinnon’s job is to help clients focus on what is needed for positive change and empowering action, whether career, health, better relationships, purpose in life or incorporating a greater sense of balance — and it almost always has to do with energy work. Says McKinnon, “In the last 21 years of doing this as an executive coach, I have learned that a great deal of our lives is self-created, starting with our thoughts.”
OK, so thinking leads to emotions, and those feelings lead to words, which lead to actions and results. When people are under stress, they feel the need to control the entire world, and they worry about what goes on around them. The first lesson, says McKinnon, is that you have very little control over anything. “You have control over your words, emotions and feelings,” she says. “And you have control over your actions. What you do essentially creates your life.”
Once you learn what you really have control over, the rest of your worries will fall by the wayside. Just remember, you can’t control what other people think, say or do, but you can influence people and situations, she says. To focus on what can be controlled, and what you want, opens a new door to take positive action, and ultimate achievement of your goals.
All Rights Reserved, McKinnon & Company, 21 Robert Rd., Marblehead, MA 01945 [email protected]
time management executive coach, time management speaker