Flow isn’t an accident—it’s a practice you can choose every day. In this powerful conversation, New York Times bestselling author and transformational leader Christy Whitman shares insights from her book The Flow Factor, revealing how to shift from lack to abundance, neutralize negative energy, and consciously create the life you desire. Through practical tools like self-compassion, positive self-talk, and visualization, she shows how emotions can pass in 90 seconds and how our words, beliefs, and actions shape our reality. Christy also explores the hidden cost of “fawning” and offers inspiring stories of healing and vitality that come from living deliberately in the flow.

The information presented in Fully Alive is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or treatment and before making changes to your health regimen. Guests’ opinions are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the podcast host, production team, or sponsors.

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The Flow Factor: Choosing Your Energy, Creating Your Life With Christy Whitman

Introduction

In this episode, we’re joined by someone who has been helping people transform their lives for decades. New York Times bestselling author, transformational leader, and Founder of the Quantum Success Coaching Academy, Christy Whitman, is with us. Christy’s latest book, The Flow Factor: How to Master Your Energy and Enter a State of Flow, invites us to move beyond stress, resistance, and overwhelm into a place of alignment, purpose, and ease.

Through her own journey of overcoming personal challenges, Christy has shown that flow isn’t something that happens by accident. It’s something we can consciously choose and cultivate every day in our lives. In our conversation, we’ll explore what flow is, how to move into it even during life’s toughest moments, and the practical tools you can use to master your energy, unlock an abundance of passion and purpose, and create the life you truly want. Let’s tune in with Christy Whitman.

 

 

Christy, thank you so much for being on our show. It’s a privilege and an honor to have you here. I’ve been looking forward to it. I’ve been reading your book and learning from you. I’m excited for our readers to learn from your expertise, your experience, your wisdom, and your knowledge. Thank you so much for being here and sharing that with us.

Thank you for having me. I’ve been looking forward to our conversation as well. I know that when we first met, we started running in our conversation, so I thought this was going to be a great interview. I’m excited.

The Genesis Of “The Flow Factor”: Christy’s Inspiration And Backstory

You have a brand new book coming out, The Flow Factor. I’d love to get into your backstory and what led you here. That’s always interesting to know, like where people’s passions came from and how they got to where they are. What inspired you to write this book, The Flow Factor, at this point in your journey? Can you share a little bit of how you got here?

This is my seventh book. I had a university in Europe come to me a few years ago, saying that they would like to give me a PhD in public works. I thought, “That’s great.” It was interesting because after my last book, The Desire Factor, I thought, “That’s probably my last book,” but never say never. They came to me and said, “What have you not said yet?”

All my books have been on universal laws, manifesting, and how to heal. I started thinking, “What’s the flowthrough? What’s the thread going through each of my books? What’s that next level of conversation?” It was to understand that we as humans, each one of us, no matter who we are, will always have some kind of contrast in our lives. It is something that brings up discontent or even a longing for something more. That was the piece that most people don’t talk about. For me, that’s the beginning of manifesting. That’s the beginning of having a desire, having a goal, or having an intention. That’s an important part. It tells us where we’re not, and then that informs us of where we want to be.

Contrast is inevitable. What I mean by contrast is what we don’t want. Contrast happens, but it’s our own resistance to the contrast that gets us out of flow. When we can recognize something doesn’t feel good, doesn’t look good, or isn’t the way we want it to be, we can then ask ourselves several questions, which is, “What do I want? Why do I want it? How do I want to feel?” We can go deeper into all that. What happened was, in staying with the flow, it was about how we master our energy and get into the state of flow.

As I started going for my PhD and going back to a university and college, which was all online, it was all about frameworks and formatting. It wasn’t what I love to do. It didn’t feel like flow to me. I was like, “This is daunting.” I got this download, “What if you write a book? What if this becomes your next book instead of your thesis to get a PhD?” The flow factor was born. That’s the reason for this particular book.

The way I got into this is that after I graduated from college and I moved from Arizona to Chicago to start my career, I knew I always wanted to do something that was sales marketing, and I wanted it to be something that was not selling cars or TVs, but that was consumable. I wanted to do consumable products. I found myself in this great job in Chicago, Illinois, selling liquor. I had a blast selling liquor all over the city of Chicago and the suburbs. I quickly got promoted from the liquor sales rep to a wine sales rep. I got to go into these great hotels and restaurants. I quickly got promoted to take care of the entire Midwest for our distributors. I had money.

I had great career success. I was engaged to be married. I had health in my body, money in the bank, and friends around. Still, I was like, “Something is missing.” I thought that if I checked the box on getting a degree, getting a high-paying job, getting money, having health, and finding love, then I would be happy, but something inside of me was still longing for something more. I know many of your readers, probably at some point in their lives, felt that, like, “Is this it? Is this what life’s all about?” It became a hunger for me to figure out, “What is this? Is this all there is?” It led me to break off the engagement and move from Chicago with the same company to California.

Once I was in California, I was getting my hair cut. The lady who was styling my hair had this energy about her. I didn’t have this language back then. She had this way about her that she was unlike anybody I had ever met before. I’m talking to her and observing her. She’s telling me about her life. She’s a homeowner in San Ramon, is married, has a dog, and is a hairdresser. I’m like, “What do you do?” She finally said, “I meditate.”

This is in the mid-’90s. This is pre-Internet. This is pre-all that. I had no frame of reference for anybody who meditated other than some guru guy with long, white hair and a beard, Om-ing in a yogi style, and sitting on top of a cave or in a cave. I don’t know where I got that impression, but that’s who meditated. This was a paradigm shift for me.

She said, “I feel so joyful when I do it. I feel so connected. I feel so alive.” She was describing all the things that I was looking for that were missing in my life. Even with all the outer accomplishments that I achieved, I didn’t have all of that, and that’s what I wanted. I was like, “Can I have your meditation teacher’s number?” Do you remember those big old phones that were huge, back in the ‘90s?

Yeah.

I’m dialing it as I’m leaving the salon. I got to my meditation teacher’s house. It was very New Age. There was clinky-clanky music, candles, angel statues, and all this stuff. I sit down, and she doesn’t say a word. She’s just staring into my soul. She said, “You create your own reality.” Something in me went, “This is true. I know this to be true,” even though I never heard that. I was like, “This is true,” but then my mind kicked in and said, “How?” She started with, “By your thoughts. You’re either repelling things from you or attracting things to you based on the way you think.”

She could see it was one of those huge paradigm shifts again. She was like, “We’ve got to start here,” because I was like, “I thought my thoughts were me. I thought every thought that I thought was real and true. I didn’t have control of my thoughts. They were thoughts. My thoughts ran me. I didn’t run my thoughts.” She could see I was a little tweaked about that. She goes, “Go home for a week. I want you to pay attention to your thoughts,” and I did. I couldn’t believe how critical, how judgmental, and how mean I was, not only to myself, but in my mind, I was also judging and criticizing other people.

My girlfriend, Dawn, whom I’ve known since seventh grade, I remember giving her a call. I’m like, “I am so negative.” She goes, “What are you talking about? You’re one of the most bubbly, outgoing, positive people that I know.” I’m thinking, “There’s a disconnect between the head, the mouth, and what I present to the world because inside of me right now, it’s hell inside. I am constantly berating myself.”

That became the thing that was not only my quest in my own personal life, but then later became when I taught others. I learned this from my meditation teacher and other teachers from whom I gathered information. There is a huge difference between a lack mentality, which always feels bad, and an abundant mentality, which always feels good.

There is a difference between a lack mentality, which always feels bad, and an abundant mentality, which always feels good. Share on X

I was so mired in this lack mentality. Meaning, no matter what I achieved, it was not going to be enough. No matter how much I earned, it wasn’t going to be enough. No matter how my body looked or how much health I had in my body, it wasn’t going to be enough. No matter how much my partner gave me, it wasn’t ever going to be enough.

If you are in a place of lack, you feel bad. You’re stuck in what I like to call in the book, The Flow Factor, the lack triangle, which comes from the drama triangle. When you’re in there, it’s like the Bermuda Triangle. It’s impossible to get out, at least it seems like it is. I started to learn what all the different aspects were, what were all the different ways of behaviors, thoughts, and ways of being that were in lack of, and how I could transform that into abundance. That’s what all of my work has been.

After five years of working on myself and changing myself, and doing all this work, I found myself married, living in a house that I owned with him. I had a great-paying job. I had no debt. I had my ideal body. I was creating and deliberately attracting what I wanted to. That night, about five years in, all of a sudden, my very first book, Perfect Pictures, came through. I started automatic writing.

I got the book published. I went and started speaking to people in bookstores, and they started asking me if I could coach them. We were in the ‘90s. I didn’t know about life coaching. I was like, “People do that? They have that?” My frame of reference was a cheerleading coach, a football coach, or an athletic coach. I was like, “There’s a life coach thing?”

I would have people call me on the phone, and I would help them shift their perspective, their energy, and their mindset from lack to abundance. They would email or call me back, going, “I got the promotion. I got the job. I found the person.” They were receiving all of these different manifestations, and it was amazing. I love the process of being able to hold space for someone, help them transform from what didn’t feel good to what did feel good, and then have their outer reality reflect it. I went back to school and became a certified coach. I’m now a Master Certified Law of Attraction Coach and have been for 25 years. That’s my story.

The Journey To Passion And Purpose: 25 Years Of Transformation

That’s amazing. For 25 years, you’ve been helping people transform their lives through this story. It’s probably super fun to wake up every day and be excited about what you are going to do. It’s obvious that you’re living in your purpose and passion.

I love it. Do you know what’s interesting? The whole point of The Flow Factor is that I didn’t have passion and purpose. I was in a place where I was a pharmaceutical sales rep. Let’s talk about that for a minute. I am the kind of person who, if I get a headache, I’ll take peppermint oil and I’ll put it on me to release the headache. I’ll do energy work before I go and take Tylenol, an Advil, or any drugs of any kind.

Here I was, making great money. I have money in the bank. I don’t have a debt. I’ve got all of these things going on. Yet, I feel like what’s missing is passion and purpose. What I know and what I was teaching was that if someone is longing for something or they have some kind of discontent in their lives, as I did, it’s like, “What is it that I want? I want a career where I’m excited to get out of bed, where I believe in what I’m doing, where I could do it all day, every day if I needed to and wanted to. I want to own my own calendar. I want to have so much passion and feel so on purpose for what I do.”

What I did was start cultivating and connecting to the energy of what passion and purpose would feel like. I didn’t know what the form would be. I didn’t know if that would change how I felt. It did in my career as a pharmaceutical rep. I cultivated that passion and that purpose in meditation. I imagined as if I already had passion and purpose. I imagined as if I was on purpose and I was purposeful, even going in and talking to the doctors and doing my sales pitch on certain medications. I would cultivate that.

A month later, when I started to cultivate that, that’s when my new book came through me. That’s when I started coaching. It isn’t like, “Look at her. She’s so lucky. She has passion and purpose.” I cultivated that. That’s the whole purpose of The Flow Factor. Whatever you feel that you are missing in your life, that’s a perspective, but it’s also an opportunity.

We live in a quantum field. Everything is energy. If there’s something missing, it first starts with energy. If you’re feeling like you don’t have enough success, love, abundance, well-being, vitality, or whatever it may be, that’s first in energy. Our minds are magic makers. Our minds can either pull us down and make us sick. Our minds can bring us to this incredible imagination and visualization of what we would love in our lives, and then help create it.

The whole thing of what you want is you’re moving towards a way off of what you don’t want. When we’re focused on what we don’t want, we’re in lack. That always feels bad. If you were to focus on, “I don’t want this. I don’t want that,” and most people are, we don’t feel good. Our mind is connected to our emotions super quickly. The minute you’re focusing on what you don’t want, you’re feeling bad.

On the other opposite end of that, if you’re focusing on what you do want, that shifts the mindset. You then ask yourself, “Why do I want it?” That shifts your emotions. You got 2 of your 4 bodies. We have four bodies. We’re not one physical body. We have a mental body, an emotional body, a physical body, and an energy body, which is our entire energy field or our spirit body.

When our minds focus on what we want, and then we start thinking about why we want it, which is 2 out of the 4, that then affects the physical body. When you’re already feeling good, your physical body biochemically or biologically will start mimicking those good feelings. What do you want? Why do you want it? How do you want to feel?

When you can identify how you want to feel, as I did in my career, which I did not have the time for, I came to, “I want passion and purpose in my career.” Here’s the thing. Every single vibration, whether it’s success, abundance, freedom, love, or joy, exists, but we think, “I’ll have joy when. I’ll feel connected when. I’ll feel powerful when I make more money. I’ll feel secure when I get that promotion.”

We keep trying to chase a feeling, an essence, or a vibration, and then we get there, it’s like, “That didn’t do it. Maybe I need to make more money. Maybe I need to have another kid. Maybe it’s not this partner. Maybe it’s another partner. Maybe it’s another job.” We have this discontent because we keep searching for something that’s out of ourselves while we’re empty. We’re in lack, thinking that this thing will bring us fulfillment, but if we’re coming from lack, we’re vibrating in lack. We can’t attract abundance from a place of lack. It defies universal law.

We have this discontent because we're always searching for something outside of ourselves. Share on X

I like to think of it as a piano. You got a piano. It doesn’t matter who you are. Pianos have the same number of keys. They have low notes to high notes. Those keys have the potential to play any song in the universe. Chopsticks all the way to Chopin. It’s anything in between. It’s the piano player, us, who chooses those keys and those notes.

We have the potential to choose to feel joy, feel happy, feel alive, and feel healthy and vibrant. When we start to choose it, invite it in, and imagine it, we’re feeling it. It doesn’t mean that we don’t need or want the things that we thought we wanted or why we wanted them, but we draw them to us quicker because we’re in the fulfillment of it, not in the lack of it.

Mastering Your Thoughts: The Internal Shift

I love that. It’s very fascinating. You mentioned the thoughts that you had before you started on this journey and how critical you were of yourself. There’s something about separating our thoughts from ourselves. You’ve mentioned those thoughts of, “It’s hell in here,” even though everything on the outside looks good.

 

 

It’s about what’s happening internally. It’s all available to us. It’s within us. The spiritual teachers teach that. Jesus teaches that the kingdom is within us. Also, within the teachings of Jesus, it’s about how you have to die to be reborn. There’s this death and then resurrection of the deeper self or the new self. I’m curious. After 25 years of practicing this, what are your thoughts?

It would be completely unrealistic if I said to you, “You can eliminate all of your negative thoughts.” We’re human beings. Contrast comes up, something happens, and we go, “Oh, no.” We can worry about that. We can have doubts about it. We can have fear about it. What’s beautiful is when you start to master your own energy, you can recognize, “My mind initially went into the ‘uh-oh.’ My mind went into what I don’t want. I’m going to pause and give myself compassion.”

I talk a lot about compassion because compassion is a neutralizer. When we can bring ourselves compassion for having a thought that doesn’t feel good, then we can choose a different one. We could choose a better-feeling thought. No matter who we are, we all have this mind. Our minds will focus on the past, the present, and the future. It cycles all the time between the three states of being, which are past, present, and future. If something comes up, what do we do as humans? We reference, “Do I know about this? Did this happen before? That happened before. I need to worry about that.” When my negative thoughts come up, I pause. I give myself some compassion, and then I change it.

Compassion is a neutralizer. When we bring ourselves compassion for having a thought that doesn't feel good, we can choose a different one. Share on X

Let’s talk about compassion because it’s ideal. Compassion feels soothing. Do you remember how we talked about lack? I say there are 3 different spectrums of being or 3 different states of being. The first one is lack, which doesn’t feel good. The second one between lack and abundance is neutrality or satisfaction. The third is abundance. Lack always feels bad. The minute you’re out of lack and you’re in compassion, you feel, “I’m okay. I’m not over the moon excited and whipping it up as I would be in abundance over here, but I’m okay. I’m neutral.”

Compassion, for me, and what I teach is that it happens in three different ways. First of all, invite in the energy of compassion. That might be prayer. It might be, “Please, God, take this and surrender this thought from me. Help dissolve this thought. Help me shift my perspective on this.” It might be an intention. It might be thinking about a wave of beautiful golden energy coming through you.

There are lots of ways that we can do that from a non-physical or prayer-like spiritual connection, knowing that there’s something bigger than us. This is where faith comes in. The part that is greater than us and that we have access to is here for us. It might be feeling yourself being surrounded by the hug of an angel or even Jesus. Invite that energy of Christ in. That’s the first.

The second is to do something physical for yourself. Give yourself a hug. To everybody who’s reading, give yourself a moment to give yourself a hug. Breathe into that hug. It takes about 90 seconds. As you’re doing this, you’re bringing all of your focus and attention into yourself. It calms the nervous system. The limbic system relaxes, which is where the fight, flight, freeze, and all that survival instinct comes in. You breathe in. Feel how calming that is. You’ve got you. It’s very calming and soothing.

The third piece is to tell yourself something positive, like, “I’m okay. You’re going to get through this. It’s all right.” Breathe in, and breathe out. That’s compassion. From there, you have access to higher vibrations. You can start to feel passion, purpose, joy, love, and freedom. That’s where affirmations come in. If you start trying to use affirmations when you’re in survival mode, fight mode, freeze mode, or flee mode, they don’t go in. It’s like trying to plant flowers in a garden where you toss the flowers on the soil instead of putting them deep into the surface.

You’ve invited a higher power. You’ve invited a higher frequency than you’re in. You’ve hugged yourself. You’ve done something somatic. It could be putting your hand on your heart. It could be rubbing your shoulder. It’s doing physical touch to yourself, where you are calming and soothing yourself, and then saying the affirmation, “I am enough. I am okay. All is well.”

You then take the mind and use it to imagine as if that’s already true. You use your mind to see yourself being well. You use your mind to see yourself being successful, having that abundance, having that relationship, and having that peace and harmony in your family and home. That soothes you. That feels good. That feels expansive. That’s where you’re back into flow. It’s called the flow factor, right?

Yeah.

I’m talking about the flow factor. The minute you are bringing in that compassion, you’re back in flow.

What Is Flow? Beyond The “Zone”

I love that. Thank you for walking us through that actual practice. I love that in the book, you lay out a number of practices, especially in the appendices, that we can utilize to get ourselves back into that flow state. Can we talk a little bit about what exactly the flow is? We, at some point in our lives, have probably experienced being in the flow state or in the zone as an athlete or doing something that we love.

Time passes by, and we don’t even realize. You talk about how it’s more than that, though. It’s a state of being that can be consciously accessed. We can move ourselves back into that state as we go through our day and our lives. Can you share a little bit about how it’s different from what most people think?

Absolutely. Flow feels good. It’s a state of being where, when you are feeling good, you are in flow. The thing is, that energy, flow, or flow factor is available to us. It’s that higher energy. Being in faith, for example, feels like flow. Having positive expectations feels like flow. It feels good. The energy of flow and energy of all that we want, whether it’s passion, purpose, joy, freedom, excitement, or success, like those keys on the piano, already exists.

If that already exists, then the factor is us. We are the ones with our free will and choice. When we are focused on the flow or what feels good, that’s when we get back into that flow. When we’re in lack, we’re focusing on what we don’t want. When we’re in survival mode or when our fight, flight, freeze, or fawn instincts kick in, we’re not in flow.

In our survival instincts of fight, flight, freeze, and fawn, when we’re in that mode, we can deliberately choose to release those states of being and then focus back on flow. That will get us out of survival mode and out of lack and bring us to the point where we’re like, “I’m all right. It’s okay. All is well. Things are going to work out for me. Something’s looking out for me. God’s got me. Jesus has got me. Christ is with me. Whatever is with me, I am being guided.” We’re back in flow.

It’s us. We all have free will and choice. As I said with the piano, we’re the piano players. Nothing can be asserted on us. God made man in the image of Himself and gave each of us free will and choice. It says in the Bible that in the beginning, there was the Word, and the Word was with God. Meaning, the Word was positive and creative. There are so many words and phrases that we say as human beings that pull us out of that flow and pull us into survival mode.

As a matter of fact, I’m going to give everybody an invitation. You can go to WatchYourWords.com. The reason I’m giving this invitation is that it’s a free video program where every day, you get a video of 2 to 3 minutes in length that tells you what not to say, why, and what to say instead. Those are the words. Thinking of yourself as the creator of your life, which you are, when you say a word, that sparks the creation. We create from our consciousness.

What’s our consciousness? Let’s break that down. It’s the words that we say. Those words will lead to the thoughts that we think. Those thoughts that we think over and over again lead to the beliefs or the images that we hold in our minds. We got words, thoughts, beliefs, or perspectives. That’s all mental. That’s the mental body. We are the only ones. No one can put a thought in our heads. No one can speak for us. Free will and choice are happening inside of us.

Words, thoughts, and beliefs are three things that create a momentum of emotions or feelings. We either process those emotions or we let them stay stuck. We may try to escape, suppress them, or use vices. There are emotions, and emotions are our guidance. It tells you whether we are in lack or whether we are in abundance. Are we moving towards what we want and having faith in what we want, or are we afraid, in fear, or worrying and doubting about what we want?

Our emotions are our guidance, but for most of us, at least people in my generation, we were told, “Don’t feel that way. Stop. Girls don’t cry. Boys don’t cry. You’re not supposed to feel angry. You’re not allowed to be angry. Don’t be disappointed.” Those are emotions that we need to be able to feel the experiences. If we don’t feel those experiences, they get imprinted in us, and then we start attracting other things. It’s like, “I’m not supposed to be disappointed, so I’m not going to feel my disappointment.” Ask me how I know. This has been a lifelong journey of that.

Our emotions are our guidance. Share on X

I have to tell a story. When I was in 7th and 8th grade, I wanted to belong to a club. I wanted to be a cheerleader. As I was leaving the house, my mother would say, “Don’t be disappointed if you don’t make it.” That was my Go Get Them speech right before I left the house. When I would come back and say, “I didn’t make it,” she’ll say, “Life is full of disappointments.” That is a horrible message to say, “Don’t be disappointed,” but life’s full of disappointments. That’s crazy-making. What am I supposed to do with that?

I was so determined. I was like, “I’m going to go try out for the tennis team.” I didn’t make that, but as I walked out the door, it was like, “Don’t be disappointed if you don’t make it. Life’s full of disappointments.” I tried out for basketball. I’m five-foot-nothing. I tried out for track. I can’t stand running. I tried out for baseball and softball. I tried out for everything to belong to a team, and it was a constant, “Don’t be disappointed if you don’t get it. Life’s full of disappointments.” I learned not to feel disappointed.

When I was going for something that I wanted, I would get so excited, but what would happen is that the energy of disappointment would pull me back. It’s like a vortex. It’s an imprint that happens. We attract things to us in our lives from that place. If we’re not processing our emotions, it takes 90 seconds to have a wave of emotion fully process and leave our body.

That’s why I said to hug yourself for 90 seconds. Whatever you’re feeling, that’s going to process out of you, as long as you don’t keep your head involved in the story. Feel the emotions and let them release from you. Words, thoughts, beliefs, perspectives, emotions, and actions. All of that inner stuff, the mental and the emotional, is what leads to the actions. All of this relates to the results we get in our lives. We’re creating our reality by how we think, what we say, what we feel or don’t feel, and then what actions we take or don’t.

Emotions: The 90-Second Wave Of Release

Another one of my guests shared the idea that an emotion’s lifespan is only 90 seconds. It was very surprising for me to learn that that’s how long it lasts, because it can feel like it lasts much longer. It lasts days, weeks, or even months.

It’s lifetimes.

It’s lifetimes of disappointment. To make it an important distinction, it’s not that we’re trying to eliminate all pain. There’s going to be contrast in life. There are going to be challenges that come. There are going to be things that are very difficult, sad, or whatever we’re going to go through. I love that you share about those things and your own personal journey in the book as well. It’s a matter of how we cope with those. Do we resist them? Do we allow them to come in and then release them? We can still remain in a state of flow. We can still remain in this relationship with God, or however it’s helpful to describe that to people. It allows us to stay in that even when hard things are happening and difficult challenges are coming our way.

As human beings, when we love someone or something and they pass or transition, it doesn’t matter if we’re a good person or a bad person. We’re all going to have that experience. Most of us will have a pet if. We typically live past the pet’s life. I’m looking at my dog, who’s a Labradoodle. We all love him so much. He’s already six years old. I’m realistic about it. There is going to be a day that he will pass unless we all pass before him.

If I love my children, my husband, my parents, and my best friends, that level of love creates a beautiful life experience. On the other end of it, though, if one of them should transition, there’s going to be grief. My sister, when I was in my late 20s, was in her late 30s. She took her own life. That was probably one of the most traumatic experiences I have ever had.

I did know this then, though. I made a decision that she chose what she chose. I was like, “I don’t want to make her choice be the reason that I’m miserable and unhappy. I’m going to heal from this. I’m going to let myself cry.” Even crying is flow. I was like, “I’m going to let myself process the grief. When I feel angry at her, I’m going to process that anger. When I feel sad, I’m going to process that sadness. It’s whatever comes up in those moments.” I gave myself that promise, and I have stuck to it.

I surprise myself sometimes. It has been 27 years. At Christmas time, there’s always an ornament that has her name on it. I don’t know if you remember that in the ‘70s, we used to have those brass ornaments, and they would get our names engraved on them. Hers was an angel who had her name, Terry. I found that one year and said, “This is going to be a tradition for me. This is always going to be my last ornament that I put on the tree,” and I did.

A couple of years ago, it was this overwhelming feeling of sadness. I could sit there and go, “Come on. Get over yourself. It’s been 27 years. Why are you feeling this way?” I was trying to talk myself out of it. I put the ornament on the tree, excused myself, went into my bedroom, and cried. I let myself do that because that’s flow.

Once I cried or once I let myself have that emotion, I wiped my tears. I didn’t melt. I’m not made of sugar. I let myself feel the experience, and then I was back out five minutes later. I was back into the festivities and the joy of putting the Christmas tree together with my family. It’s those moments that we have to honor ourselves when emotions come up, especially when we’re going through difficult times.

My son, Maxim, is turning fifteen. When he was two months of age, he was rushed to the hospital. He had to have open heart surgery because he had a transposition of the great arteries. He was a miracle because at two months of age, there had never been a baby on record that lasted that long. If it’s not caught within the first week of life, they usually die. They usually have surgery or they pass. They were like, “It has never been done.”

He had a hole between his valves. The valve that’s supposed to close when a baby takes their first breath or two didn’t close. That was keeping him alive, those two points of holes. I think about that. Those holes were his life. That’s what allowed him to live, but those malfunctions allowed him to stay alive. When we look at contrast in our lives, those are the things that grow us, develop us, and help us appreciate those people that we do love. When we’ve had deep grief and loss, we can then experience the opposite of that, which is love. The fact that we are grieving the loss of someone, as I did with my sister, is because I loved her so much. That’s the human experience.

When I was going through it with Maxim, he was in the hospital for a whole month. He had many procedures and surgeries. I could have easily gotten mad, like, “Who’s to blame? Why didn’t they catch this?” I turned to my husband when we got the news and said, “We’re going to focus on what our vision is. What do we want? Why do we want it? How do we want to feel?”

He and I start talking about, “When Maxim’s old enough, he’s going to play a sport. We’re going to go to Disneyland. We’re going to go camping,” although we never have because I don’t like camping. All the things that we said we’re going to do together. Seeing him wrestle around with his older brother, all of those visions have come true. It’s important that we know how powerful we are and how much our energy matters. When we can master it, we deliberately create our lives.

 

 

Fight, Flight, Freeze, Or Fawn: Understanding Survival Modes

Thank you for sharing those real-life examples and how to get through them. We’re shifting gears. In the book, there was something new that I learned that I’d never heard before, which was flight, flight freeze, or fawn. You mentioned that a moment ago. The fight or flight is the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems. Flight, fight, or freeze is more common, but then you’ve added fawn. Can you share a little bit about that? That struck me, too. I’ve never thought of that. I think I’m someone who probably does that when I get into those situations. How do we describe that and overcome those things?

In the drama triangle, you have three different roles. It’s a closed system. You have someone who plays a victim. You have another one that plays the persecutor. You have another person who plays a rescuer. The rescuer looks like the good guy because they’re always trying to help everybody and make everybody okay, even at the demise of their own time, attention, and their own yeses or noes.

If something goes wrong or there’s someone who wants to be the peacemaker who wants to make everybody okay if there’s tension or something going on, they’re the ones who are fawning all over everybody. They’re like, “You could do this. You can do that. Let me fix this. Let me fix that.” They spend most of their time, and they can get stuck in fawning.

Here is an example I can give that’s an extreme example. For me, I’ve had to understand this. My mom and dad were married for 67 years before my dad passed. They had a very tumultuous relationship. We used to call them The Bickersons because they didn’t have a conversation. They would bicker at each other. It would get elevated, and they would yell and scream. Sometimes, there was emotional and mental abuse. A couple of times, there was some physical abuse.

This one time, my dad had my mom’s arm behind her back and was threatening to break her arm. He left the house. I was about eight at the time. My sister and I were talking to my mom. I said to her, “Why don’t you leave him?” It wasn’t like, “I’m Catholic. I can’t get a divorce.” She was like, “What am I supposed to do about money?” She was so terrified that he was the breadwinner. She didn’t know how to make money. It was her own survival. He comes back to the house, and she’s fawning all over him. She was like, “I’m so sorry. I’ll be better. I won’t upset you so much.”

A lot of times, for women who are abused, we could look at them and go, “Why are you putting up with that? Why don’t you leave them?” They’re so in survival mode, and they don’t know how. They don’t know how to take care of themselves, whether it’s financially or who’s going to take care of them and the kids. They’re afraid to be alone. They’re like, “What if I never find another person? He tells me that I’m the only one who will ever love me. Maybe it’s true. Maybe it’s right. Maybe I’ll be alone the rest of my life, so it’s better to be with him and put up with this.”

It’s this fawning on the person that has been abused in a sense of, “I love you. You’re good. We’re okay.” I would see my mom do that. That was her survival mode to keep him calm so he wouldn’t blow up again and hurt her. Everybody, breathe. It’s part of being human. There are contrasting things that are very traumatic. I talk in The Flow Factor about big T traumas all the way to small T traumas.

We have these natural animalistic brains. Whether it’s a turtle, a bunny, or a human being, we’re all wired the same way. When we have a threat, when we have to get in, or when we feel we’re scared and we feel we have to be in survival mode, these are the options we have. A lot of times, it doesn’t feel like an option. We go into automatic mode.

Once you’re aware of this and you’re aware that you’re doing it, and then you also have a choice to get back into flow, that’s when life becomes so empowering. We can’t fight against our brains. We can’t go, “Be in the moment.” Have you ever tried to forever be in the moment? It’s a great concept. It’s wonderful because when you’re fully in the moment and you’re having these present moment experiences, they’re phenomenal, but our brains don’t do that.

Our brains cycle from the past into the future. It could be about food. You could be thinking, “What did I eat for breakfast? Am I hungry right now? What am I going to have for lunch?” Your brain is doing this all the time. It’s part of the back part of our brain. It’s part of that amygdala. It’s part of the entire limbic system where we go into this, like, “Let me make sure everybody else is okay.” That’s the least of the survival mode. You’re looking like the good guy, but still, many times, we do the demise of taking care of ourselves.

Daily Practices For Flow: Choosing Your Energy

Thank you for sharing that and sharing personally about your own personal experience there, too. Towards the appendices, you give us a lot of practical ways to release, let go, and move away from those triggers or those things that come up and back into the state of flow. You walked us through one. Giving yourself 90 seconds of compassion and even hugging yourself physically, touching yourself, rubbing your heart, or whatever it is, helps you.

You give some other examples. I thought there was one that was interesting, too. You take a dozen eggs into the woods, let that anger go into the egg, and then throw it. You can throw as many as you need to. What are the practical tips, tactics, and tools that you most often use in your day-to-day life out of that list?

The first one is the minute I am aware that I am awake, I declare how I want to feel for the day. I choose the energy. I’m pushing that key on the piano, right? It’s like, “Today, I want to feel joy no matter what.” I’m choosing the vibration. I’m choosing my mindset. I’m also choosing to say those things, like, “I am joy. I am fun. I am playful. I am good.” I’m making sure that I am amping up and soaking in the energy for the day. That’s one of the biggest ones.

Meditation is always great to feel that connection to your source and feel that you are surrounded by and with our higher power in whatever anybody believes and chooses. That is so essential. In energy mastery, where we’re mastering our own energy like that, we will go about our day. It’s not like one time a day, we drink water, or go to the bathroom, or eat something. We’re doing these activities all day long.

I wake up in the morning, choose how I want to feel, and let myself feel that energy. I might be going along the day and then go, “It’s time to amp that up again. It’s time to tune into that frequency again. It’s time to choose that feeling of success again.” I would maybe even say to myself, “I am successful,” and then take a moment to imagine how I want the rest of the segment of my time or how I want the afternoon to go.

These are things I do throughout the day. Our energy is as important as brushing our teeth, taking a shower, or drinking water. We’re more energy than anything. Everything is energy. Our cells are energy. You break open a cell, and beyond molecules and atoms is energy. When we can resonate with the energy of our choosing, because we have free will and choice, that energy or that flow is available to us. It’s pure, positive energy that’s available to us. As we go, “I want it to be successful,” that success becomes a vibration and then becomes a state of being within us. As we can tune into that all day long, that’s our day.

It’s a good way to spend the day. We’re getting towards the end of our time, but I’m curious. You’ve mentioned those five different factors. Our thoughts lead to beliefs and actions. Emotions were in there, too. I skipped over something there.

Words, thoughts, beliefs, emotions, and actions.

Mind-Body Connection: How Thoughts Shape Physiology

Thank you. How does it affect our physiology as well? We talk on this show a lot about extending our health span and how we live our healthiest, best lives, and optimize our health. This is at the core of a lot of that. I’m curious. In all of your 25 years of doing this, have you ever seen some of the data, like, “Let’s test your blood biomarkers, do these practices for three months, and then come back and test.” Do you have anything like that that shows how our physiology follows these patterns?

We have top universities and research institutions that show that our mind and our emotions affect our body, and that someone who has a lot of anger could lead to cancer. There’s different research like this. Personally, in my own business, and when I’ve worked with clients, there was a man. His name is Marty. He was in his late 60s. He was taking all sorts of medication for blood pressure, cholesterol, and all these different things.

Our mind and emotions affect our body. Share on X

He came into my community and started meditating with us and doing energy work and things like that. He went back to his doctor, and the doctor was like, “All your levels are great. We could start weaning you off some of these medications, or at least start lowering the milligrams,” and he did. A few months later, he went back, and the doctor was like, “We can get you off these medications. I don’t know what you’re doing, but keep doing it.” That was Marty.

I’ve got Sandra. She was a 54-year-old woman. She was supposed to go in for a full hip replacement at 54. That’s my age. That’s young. I’m young at 54. My kids like to tell me I’m old, but I’m like, “I’m young.” She did an energy healing. She had all of her emotions in her hips because she was in a situation where she was holding her baby, her husband was screaming and yelling at her, and she was trying to protect her child. She was clamping down on the child, but also her emotions. We cleared those emotions. A week later, she went back for a pre-op appointment. The doctor checked her out and said, “I don’t know what you did, but you’re no longer a candidate for a hip replacement.” That was a couple of years ago.

I have story after story, even personally. I had a woman who was going blind. She was a young girl, 32. She was going blind in her left eye. She came to me. We were doing energy work. I said, “What happened around the time when you started losing your sight?” Her best friend had committed suicide. She didn’t want to see it. She didn’t want to hear about it. She completely closed down. The minute she finally started to grieve it and let herself process the emotions, her eyesight came back. She’s no longer going blind or blind.

There’s story after story. For me, it was a mantra that I would say all the time to myself, which was, “I’m tired. I’m so exhausted.” What that led to was, “I need coffee. I need to go drink more coffee.” I was very addicted to coffee. There is nothing wrong with coffee. I’m not going to try to take anybody’s coffee away. I want to say that because some people are like, “Don’t take my coffee away.” I’m not interested in taking anything away from you. For me, it was a spike. I would feel good, and then I’d be down. The whole thing was, “I’m tired, so now I need to go get a coffee.” I’ll then feel good, energized, adrenalized, and all that kind of stuff. I’ll be tired and I’d be like, “I need another coffee.”

I remember walking into this grocery store where I would go to get these amazing Amp Me Up coffees. I heard myself say, “I’m so tired.” When I heard this, I stopped myself. Instead of going into the grocery store to get another coffee, I went back into my car. I let myself feel the energy of what it feels like to be naturally energized, to feel my vitality, to feel good, and to tell myself, “I’m good. All is well. I have plenty of energy for the rest of my afternoon.” I turned the car around and went home. I haven’t had a coffee ever since. That was years ago.

That’s amazing. There you go.

It’s what we tell ourselves. I thought I needed this thing because somewhere inside of me kept saying, “I’m so tired. I’m so exhausted.” P.S., I am more vibrant and healthier. I’ve lost weight since then. I am in better shape than I was back then. That one change of thought, one change of perspective, and holding onto that new perspective is amazing. I didn’t need the outer advice anymore. I feel great.

It was all within. Thank you so much for sharing those stories. It’s very inspiring and encouraging. It’s fun to see how science is backing all of this up with data. Everything is energy. Protons, neutrons, electrons, atoms, and even quantum energy below that. It is all working together. Thank you for the amazing work that you’ve done personally to become the person that you are. I know that takes a lot of intentionality, effort, and work over 25 years, day in and day out. Also, thank you for the work that you’re doing to share this message and help others transform their lives in significant ways. It’s inspiring.

Thank you. Thank you for what you do to have this show to be able to have these conversations and let your audience read these kinds of conversations, so that they’re grabbing nuggets and pieces of information. They, too, can change their lives. Thank you for creating this platform.

The new book is called The Flow Factor: How to Master Your Energy and Enter a State of Flow. Is that out? I know as we’re recording this, it’s out. People can get it easily everywhere.

Yes, it is.

That’s great. Thank you so much for the great work you’re doing. Thanks for being here. I hope that you have an amazing rest of the day.

Thank you. You, too. Thanks, everyone, for tuning in.

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What a fascinating conversation with author Christy Whitman. She has been doing this work for a long time, over 25 years. I’ve appreciated the experiences and the practical tips and tools that she shared with us, and even walked us through as well, so that we can implement some of these things in our lives. Some of the things that we covered that stuck out to me were that your words lead to your thoughts, beliefs, emotions, and actions. All of that together creates the reality that we interact with every day in every moment.

One of the things she mentioned was to pause, give yourself compassion, and then change that thought. When these negative thoughts or these challenging things come into our minds, pause, give yourself compassion for 90 seconds, and maybe even do one of those practices. You can then shift that thought and change it to something more positive. That can help us let go and return to this flow state in the midst of challenging things and hard times that come along throughout our lives.

We talked at the end about some actual real-life stories of how people have had some ailments and a potential broken hip that can be shifted through some of these practices in our lives. Everything in the entire universe is made of energy. This is super important to our overall health and well-being. I hope that you enjoyed it and maybe took away a few nuggets as I did. Thanks for tuning in. We will see you here next time.

 

 

Important Links

• Quantum Success Coaching Academy
• The Flow Factor: How to Master Your Energy and Enter a State of Flow
• The Desire Factor
• Perfect Pictures
• Manifest | Christy Whitman – Watch Your Words