DH: Hey guys, welcome to Keep On Pushing radio. I am your host, Devon Harris. Yeah, man, you know how we do here. We like to share ideas and insights that are going to challenge you and inspire you to keep on pushing and live your absolute best life. So look, are you interested in that? Even a little bit? Well, if you are, you know you’re in the right place. So again, welcome to Keep On Pushing radio. Our guest today has been in the conference, meeting, planning and incentive travel industry for more than 25 years and runs a really successful company, Global Planning Source. She was a member of a number of professional organizations, including Site Canada, CanSPEP, Aurora Chamber of Commerce, as well as, the Business Women Network of the New York region. Continuing on the lines of her event and conference planning business, she also recently started a second business, Path Inspire. As a mindset and results coach her mission is to help people see their own full potential and to start living that potential and to embrace and discover their true authentic self. In short, she wants to help you to become unstuck. And so, she engages with one-on-one coaching, group workshops, but also she works in a corporate environment as well. What she has found is that the practices and the lessons that she teaches have significantly impacted her life and so she wants to share that with the world. And that’s why I’m so excited to welcome Karen Fiorini to our show today. Karen, welcome to Keep On Pushing.
KF: Thank you, Devon. That is, wow. That’s a great introduction and I want to first start off with gratitude. Thank you very much. I’m very grateful for our connection. I am extremely grateful for the opportunity of today and having or sharing in the insight with your community and your listeners and your viewers and our passion. You’ve obviously had an amazing career with truly living your passion and now you’re bringing that into Keep on Pushing and that is just such a statement, a very strong statement and if we could just take those three words every day, keep on pushing. So, thank you again and I’m looking forward to this interview.
DH: Yeah, man. Thank you, Karen. You know, one of the reasons why I was excited about having you on the show is because your story as well, although, you never went to the Olympics as a Jamaican bobsledder, not many of us have. But your story, I think epitomizes the Keep On Pushing philosophy. So thank you for those kind words and I appreciate you being on our show today. So, over 25 years in the meeting and planning industry. What would you say Karen, inspired you to make that shift and become a mindset and results coach?
KF: Well, being in a travel business itself in the space of visiting different locations, visiting different countries, being in hotel spaces, being in venue spaces, convention centers, all of that, well, travel to begin with was just something that I was always very intrigued with and thought, you know, what? Like, discovering the world is amazing. And I have been very fortunate in discovering the world through my work and in working with corporate organizations in handling their conferences. And it’s not just a matter of booking hotels and conference space and convention centers and setting up meeting rooms and audio visuals and banquets and things. It’s really aligning with that client and being in their space and being in their energy and being able to execute what their vision is, what they see as a launch of a business product or a board of directors meeting, a high level, board of directors of very high-end corporate companies where people are attending these, their spouses are invited. Just the whole experience around it, getting into incentive travel programming, which is something where you’re working with a sales force and they’ve worked so hard in achieving their sales. So achievement is there and that desire to get that achievement and just the reward in that and how inspirational that can be to an individual, they’ve worked so hard and the vehicle for that is a trip. So, it could be a trip to the lovely island of Jamaica. It could be to a lot of the Caribbean islands, Mexico, tapping into European travel, South Africa, I mean, the world as we know is so big and just the experience of that, it really made me feel very, very grateful for the opportunity.
And about two years ago I was being in the business for 25 years, obviously very established in the business in my community. And I was looking for that something else and that something next. And you know, when you’re in a career for so long you tend to, not to say you get in your comfort zone, you become very placid. I have such a desire more in me to fulfill and I felt that for so long and I thought, okay, well, what is that? What is that? And I was searching for it. And you know, when you search for something you search so hard that you can’t find it. Then when you sit back and you let it happen and you let the universe and the spirit come to you and almost in a guidance format give you that answer. And it got to me and I was fortunate enough to be part of a mastermind group and there was a guest speaker at the mastermind group that I was part of and she did a presentation on this very study that I’m doing and mindset coaching. And I thought, wow, that, that is it. That’s my next thing. And so I got very involved with it. I actually went down to Los Angeles, California and I participated in a conference. And you know, being in the conference space for so many years, I was in such a different space there to the point Devon, where I got off the flight, I got to the hotel and I actually asked the agent, the front desk agent at this hotel to take a picture of me checking in. And I mean for somebody that has traveled the world, checked into thousands of hotels, and here I am in this space asking her to take a picture of me and she was like, absolutely. So I was very, very excited.
DH: Because you were on a new journey.
KF: I was absolutely on a new journey and the expectation was there Devon, but it wasn’t there. And so I got there and the name of the conference was the Art of Goal Creativity. So I knew that I had something and the word “goal” and the word “creativity” really created some synergy for me. And that was my intention of going down there. So I got down there and I was in this space of wow….. thousands of people, well, I would say maybe 2000 people in this room. And Bob Proctor, who is a pioneer in his day, is a Canadian himself and he is the epitome of discovering your human potential and really getting deep into who you are as a person and allowing yourself to discover who you really are. And I got engaged with it and it really resonated with me so, I traveled back. I even shared with my family as I was on the treadmill in the gym thinking, what a transition? I have found my next thing. And when you find that, there is nothing, there’s nothing unturned in you. The energies are there, the desire is there, the faith is there, the commitment is there, and it just all aligns in a frequency that is… When you experience it, you know, you’re there and I was there.
DH: So, obviously you know how to deliver results, right? That’s why you have been so successful in business for so long, over 25 years. One of the things we speak about here at Keep On Pushing Karen is learning how to use your existing skills and experience and knowledge and apply it to a new environment, a dynamic environment in which we live in order to create and sometimes take advantage of new opportunities that may arise. What would you say are some of the experiences and insights that you have been able to take away from your time in the meeting and conference planning space to apply to this new role as a mindset and results coach?
KF: I think a lot of it is certainly discovering people, discovering who individuals are. And as I said, I’ve traveled so much and I’ve been engaged with people who are in their roles as an employer, as an employee and just in talking to them. Here’s an example, you’re in a hotel and you’re doing a function, you’re doing a large gala and the server that is clearing your dishes or the bellman that’s helping you with your luggage or the maid that’s cleaning your guest room. And you look at all of these individuals and they all have a role in their working environment but what are they outside of that? And it was more getting into, I know their role and I knew my role and we worked together very well, but it was really discovering who are you? Like, who are you as a person? And so we would get onto great conversations about their families, about where they live, about their hobbies, everything outside of the space of their working environment and it was fascinating. And it just automatically allowed me to, you know what, I just kind of came into the role of seeing like, I see in people what they don’t see in themselves. And it was just a natural gravitation to the work that I’m doing now.
DH: Yeah, that’s interesting because as I travel around the world as well, I will look at someone, I’m in an airport or in a hotel lobby or a restaurant or whatever and I’m always looking at people trying to figure out what their lives are like. Who is that person behind that face that I’m seeing or as you rightly said, as you interact with the server in the restaurant or the maid who was cleaning your guest room, trying to figure out who is that person beyond this task that they’re doing? And so, I think that makes people, human, makes them more endearing to us and gives us a good insight into who people are and hence, how we can help them so, congrats on that.
KF: Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, it’s inspiring.
DH: So you mentioned that you were searching, you were searching for something, you eventually found it and there are lots of people I think around the world who are searching for something else. Many of them have found it, I can relate to that because two lives ago, three lives ago, I was searching as well. And you said something important that you were really searching hard and you kind of had to…. you didn’t give up on the search, but you relaxed. You took a deep breath and allowed that which you were seeking to find you. And the first thing about that Karen to me is a lot of people, they start searching and the answer doesn’t come and they’ll stop. And I always remind them that the good book says “seek and ye shall find.” It didn’t say, look just once, like, the way we have that habit of looking in the cupboard once or the drawer once for something and we don’t see it and we give up on it. Seek and ye shall find. Those people who seek and they just don’t find that, do you think there’s something particular about their way of thinking leaves them in this predicament?
KF: Absolutely, absolutely. There are two thoughts here, when I work with clients, I ask them a very, very simple question. I say, what do you really want? And they look at you or their expression is that, wow, like I’ve never thought of it that way. And it’s not until you ask that simple question that you start to realize that there is other stuff. There are other wants in my life that I’m not even tapping into or I’m not even aware of. And then the next thing that rolls into their mind is how, how am I going to do that? So they talk about it. They talk about like you’re a perfect example, Devon. There are probably young boys and girls that we know that are either baseball players, either hockey players, whatever their sport is. Whatever their sport is they see, wow, I want to be on the stage. I want to be that. How am I ever going to get that? And then they lose sight of it because people either influence their decisions or they get deterred into doing something else and they take another stream. But ultimately, when so much of this is our programming and it comes from such an early age, and when you and I connected, I put out there the stick person. And in my world that I coach in, I always relate back to the stick person. So, what is the stick person?
When we were little children, we were getting to school and the teacher would say, okay, well draw your mom and dad, draw your brothers and sisters and what would you do? You’d draw a circle, you’d draw the body as sticks, the arms and the legs and that would be the mom with a little bit of hair and dad or whatever else. So if you scale back, the stick person and the stick person to me, and actually I have a pin right here, I don’t know if you can see it very well, but the stick person you can visualize it as a circle being the larger part and the body and then being the smaller part because we’re an instrument, our body is an instrument of the mind. And how the mind works is we have our conscious mind and our subconscious mind. So when I look at you I see the conscious mind and I see the subconscious mind and the conscious mind is the educated mind. It’s the part of your mind that all of your readings, all of your teachings, all of your, everything that gets told to you as a young child, all of your programming is put into your conscious mind and that’s how you live your life. And you live it through this way of habits. When you get up in the morning you automatically grab that cup of coffee or that Coke out of the fridge or you need to have that cream or you need to get to the gym or you need to get to the gym, but you’re not getting there and you’re not getting the results you want and so much of it is what goes on in your mind, how you think. And then when you impress what’s on your conscious mind, to your subconscious mind, that’s where the feeling starts. And you get a feeling in yourself and with that feeling, you get emotion and the emotion gives that action and the action gives that results. And so if we look at our results of where we are today, we can trail that right back. And we as humans…
DH: Right back in your thinking. I want to dive into the stick person for a second but let me ask you this then,…..so, you mentioned that when you ask your clients, “what do you want?”, most cases they don’t have a clue. What I’ve found with people, I don’t know if you find this to be true, is that more people are more acutely aware of what it is that they don’t want as opposed to what it is that they want. How do you think, again, the subconscious mind and our programming impact our propensity to always think about what it is that we don’t want versus what it is that we do want?
KF: Well, it’s so easy to go there, like when you’re buying a car, you know that you want this, but you know, you don’t want this and it’s like you’re ordering. You know, you won’t want butter on your sandwich, but you don’t want it cut. And again, it’s the way of thinking and it’s bringing into allowing yourself to change your habits. Because we get into you know, habits and it’s not just behavioral habits. These are things that you really need to instill in yourself and we automatically go to, well, I don’t want that and when you say, well, what do you want? People can’t even go there because they can’t imagine having it and you’re going into the higher faculties. We have our senses, we have our hearing, smell, taste and touch but, it’s our higher faculties. It’s the imagination. It’s the perception. It’s the memory, the will, the desire. Those are, I call them the mental muscles and those are the ones that we to tap into. So when you’re wanting to do that, whatever it is, if it’s, I want to start my own business, I have no idea how to do it. I don’t have any money to do it. But if you have that burning desire and it starts with a committed decision. So you’ll look at that and you start to travel yourself through the imagination of that in instilling and having the will, the will to do it and what your perception of it is. And you’re going to have naysayers all through your life that are going to bring you down and are going to say you’re not qualified. You can’t get there. And so you hear that. And when you hear that, you automatically think, well, I guess I can’t do it. I guess I can’t graduate. I guess I can’t be a lawyer. I guess I can’t be an Olympic athlete, you know? But it’s a very small percentage that gets pass all of those barriers. And when they do, when those barriers go down and they just get out of their comfort zone because they want to do, success is what failures don’t want to do.
DH: Yeah. So you’re saying Karen, if I’m hearing you right, basically it comes down to the habits, not just the physical habits, but your habit of thinking, so to speak that gets us into the rut. So how do you get out of the rut? How do you get moving? Not just to take what I’m going to call the next logical step but one of the things that you’re trying to achieve with your clients, which is for them to take that quantum leap. What are the steps you need to take maybe upstairs here in your conscious and subconscious mind to be able to take that giant leap?
KF: 22:33 Yeah. Well, let’s scale back to, you know, the question of goals. We have goals in our minds. We have goals at the end of the day that we want to accomplish. We have goals that we want. New Year’s resolutions are a perfect example. You know, we’re coming into 2020, and what are those goals? And understanding what goals are and realizing that a goal is something that if you map out, you have that, you can figure it all out. But then there’s those, what I reference as C type goals, and it’s looking at that goal and always keeping, always keeping the goal right there, focused, laser-focused on that goal and every action and every step that you take, look at your goal. And so, what you start to do is you look at action items to get to your goal and you can do…
DH: Well first of all, how do you “look on your goal”? Are you talking about writing it down and sticking that on a wall, putting up a picture that represents your goal, or is it just in your mind, mentally visualizing your goal? How are you looking at your goal?
KF: You know, what Devon? It’s all of it. Like, you’ve heard about vision boards. People have vision boards and they’ve got all of the pictures that they’ve cut out on that vision board because that’s what they see. That’s what they visualize. That’s what they imagine. And an activity that I do with my clients is I have a goal card and the goal has to be very crystal clear because people will waiver on their goals, but your goal will change. But ultimately, what I study and what I work with is getting that crystal clear goal and writing it down. I am so happy and grateful. And then when you’re writing it down, Devon, you are in that, you are living that. So I am so happy and grateful today that I am a well-achieved athlete. I have accomplished what I want to do or if it’s the amount of money, whatever that goal is, you write it down and you visualize it, you see it, you’re in. It’s always there. And when you get into bad spaces, because we do, we get into bad spaces where you go, well, no, forget it. That’s not my goal….. it’s programming. It’s a programming that’s in your mind and there are good habits and there are bad habits. And when you get resistance on not keeping with your goal, that paradigm comes in and it’s like the little guy that sits on your shoulder and says, don’t do that. You’re never going to do that. You’re never going to accomplish that. And then you say to it, you know what? No, I am accomplishing it. And I do action items and a very simple action item, if I can explain it, is writing down your results as you want to see them. And you get a piece of paper out and you write “R” on the top and you write, positive and negative and you look at it as in where are your results right now, right today? And if you’re not happy with your results, you write down all of your results and you take the opposite of that. And a lot of this is so many laws of the universe, right? There’s cause and effect.
DH: So, what you’re saying, Karen, is that ….we are at the end of the year now, in fact, by the time this airs we’ll be at the start of 2020. So, you’re saying we should basically take a timeout and look at our lives in terms of where we are now. The positive results that we have created throughout the year and the negative results that we have created throughout the year. Am I hearing you correctly?
KF: That’s exactly right. And always keeping it aligned, Devon, with your goal when you’re writing this out and yeah, you can take a year or you can take where you are right now. And a very perfect example is where am I today? It is the end of the year as you referenced, where have I been? What have I done this year or what have I done this last quarter? If you’re looking at it in quarters from a sales standpoint. Your revenues aren’t there. Well, why aren’t they there? What can I do to change it? So, again, it’s that thinking. So if you’re thinking negative thoughts, you’re going to be in a negative space. It’s how it works. It’s the law. It’s the laws of the universe.
DH: So we write down those results, we write down our goals, we have our vision boards, we write down the results, the positive ones, the negative ones. How are we flipping that switch in our minds, so to speak? What steps do we need to take to flip the switch from creating negative results to creating more positive results?
KF: Well, one thing which is very simple and it’s symbolizing it is when you write it down, you take those negative, all that negative stuff and you burn it. You literally put a match to it and you burn it. And so it’s a little, you know, maybe a little crazy, but it symbolizes that it’s gone. And then when, when you’re dealing with it like the paper’s gone now and that does something significant in your mind when you take action steps and if you’re struggling, you’ve got to get back on board with what’s the positive of this? My sales aren’t here. You know what? It’s January 30th and I still don’t have any clients. You know what? It’s January 30th and I have an abundance amount of clients. And when you get into that space of positivity and acting and being in that, acting as if, and when you get in there, it’s amazing. When I listened to people, they say, well, I’ve had such a crappy weekend and it’s Monday and I’m still behind and I have so much Christmas shopping to do, I’m not getting anything done. So you look at that scenario and you say, you know what? I’ve got all my Christmas shopping done and I’m ready for Christmas and it’s going to be a great day. And you automatically verbally say those words and you get those things. You get that out of you because our mind plays tricks on us so much. It’s a very, very strong muscle and it can deteriorate you. You’ve got to always try to be positive. And if you can’t be positive then take acceptance. I accept that I’m in this space right now, but tomorrow is going to be a new day, right? And the other thing that I live in is I live in today. Like, take today. What can I do to change today when I get up in the morning?
DH: I was recently speaking about acceptance and whenever I speak about acceptance…..hey, take a look at where you are now and accept your circumstances, I’m always careful to explain to people that acceptance doesn’t mean resignation. It doesn’t mean that you’re giving up on this crappy environment, this crappy situation that you are in. You’re simply acknowledging that this is what it is. It is what it is but in so doing, you’re empowering yourself. You’re giving yourself permission now to take the actions that need to be taken, which probably means going back and changing the thinking, changing the mindset that brought you into this situation.
KF: And another exercise is affirmations, you know, writing out an affirmation and then giving yourself a command and doing it.
DH: Right. So, so you’re talking about affirmations which help to change your mindset, writing down your results. So you kind of get to the point where you’re evaluating how things are. Writing down your positive, your negative results and burning the negative stuff. Throwing it out, symbolically. How does this all fit in, you think with the stick concept? As you are thinking about your goals, you mentioned earlier, and it’s true that we all become programmed when we’re really young and we’ve kind of lived with that program because what we take in through our conscious mind, we send to our subconscious mind and it now becomes our command. So when you wake up and you are thinking, man, it’s January 1st and I don’t have any clients scheduled for the next month or two months. How do you start to work on your conscious mind, Karen, to influence your subconscious mind, which then sort of influence the actions that you take?
KF: Well, a lot of it is study because the conscious mind is your educated mind. It’s what you’re reading, writing, what you’re studying and when you’re taking a pen, the action of taking a pen, not a phone, not a computer, not a keyboard, but the action of taking a pen and physically writing down on a piece of paper, it’s a release. These are small action steps that you can take. We can think all day long about how we want to change something but if I write down right now that my sales are going to increase exponentially by the end of 2020. And then when you’re looking at that and when you’re reading that and when you’re computing that and I’m saying into your conscious mind and then when you suppress that into your subconscious mind, it’s action. It’s that emotion that you feel around and it’s say a positive emotion and we can get so caught up in our day-to-day negative space and so much of it is study, too like, we just can’t wake up one day and say we’re going to change. I’m going to change today. I’m going to be a new person today because that’s, that’s behavior. And what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to get into concrete programming that you have had since you were born. I mean that’s why we were so much like our relatives. That’s why we eat very similar to what mum put on the table that we’re still leading as adults. And it’s these realizations. And awareness, Devon, is huge. When you can become aware of what you’re feeling, what you’re thinking, that’s what instills the emotion and gives you that action and that’s what gives you your results.
DH: 34:02 Important point because a lot of us….we don’t spend enough time really getting in tune with who we are. I’m not just talking about physical in terms of what your body is doing on a daily basis, are you feeling healthy, are you feeling like you’re filled with vitality? All of that is important, but I think just becoming more aware, more in tune with who you are, what you want, what your potential is, is key. I think you made a really good point earlier as well about using the pen because we live in such a technologically-advanced world. We’re so accustomed to doing this with our thumbs or getting on a computer but there is a kind of mind-body connection that you get from using a pen to write things down that you just don’t get when they use your phone or your computer. So, really good advice in writing down, as in using a pen and a piece of paper to write down your goals, write down your aspirations, write down your vision, really connects with you in a mind-body way that using technology doesn’t do either.
So, yes, Karen, you spend time really working with people to help them to recognize their potential and towards living that potential. As I mentioned earlier, you work one-on-one, do one-on-one coaching, you do group workshops and you also work within the corporate environment. How do we find you if we want to get help from you to improve our results?
KF: Well, thank you. Thanks, Devon. Yeah, just to explain a little bit, I do one-on-one coaching. I also do group coaching. I work with corporate organizations as a team because there’s a lot of work that can be done within an organization on a team, on camaraderie, on collaborating. And again, it’s all of those same concepts that can be done as a team. So, the individual is there, the team approach is there, I do speaking engagements as well. And my company name is called Path Inspire and I can share my phone number as well. If anybody does want to just reach out to me, it’s area code (416) 333-1149. So that’s (416) 333-1149 and I’d be happy to if they outreach, I mean, there’s LinkedIn. My name is Karen Fiorini, so that’s F like Frank, I, O, R, I N, like Nancy, I. Look me up on LinkedIn. That’s my full name, Karen Fiorini. The company, you can go onto the internet. I have a website, www.pathinspire.ca. And I also have an email as well, karen@pathinspire.ca. So I would be happy to, as I call a disco call, get a discovery call, working, it can be 15 minutes to half an hour and just find out where you’re at and I am more than happy to talk to people through it, talk about the program that I offer and get you in moving in the right direction because you are one step away from making a change.
DH: Indeed. So, folks, if you, if you want to transform your dreams into reality, if you want to really be able to discover your true, authentic self and really have a chance to push yourself to the next level, live your full potential make sure you connect with Karen Fiorini. She just shared all her contact info and I think you will be better for it. Karen, you are an inspiration. Thank you so much for taking the time to share with us. As I said earlier, you epitomize the Keep on Pushing philosophy. You went from working in an industry for 25 years but recognized that there was something else that you wanted. You wanted more out of life, you wanted a little bit more fulfillment and here you are, still working with people, but in a very different capacity and making a difference in your life, yes, but definitely making a difference in theirs and that’s what life’s all about. So thank you so much for the work that you do and choosing to spend some time with us.
KF: Well, thank you, Devon. It’s been an absolute pleasure and as I said, I’m grateful for the opportunity. Thank you.