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Kathi Burns: [00:00:00] Hi there. I'm board certified professional organizer Kathi Burns. I'm really glad you're here. This podcast is designed for busy entrepreneurs just like you, who want to take better control of your business and move forward with less stress and more success. If this is your first time listening, then thanks for coming. The Organized Energized Podcast is produced for your enjoyment and show notes are found at thepodcast.organizedandenergized.com. You can also follow me on Twitter at Organized Energy and Facebook. All links are in the show notes. Now let's get into the show.

Hi everyone, this is Kathi. Thanks for joining me again, and I hope you're having a fabulous week. This week is an awesome week to get things done, and today we're going to talk about the benefits of organizing your energy. Have you ever thought about organizing your energy? I know I have a lot, and I'm talking with Stephanie McAuliff, who is an excerpt at this, and Stephanie speaks right and teaches on the human condition and the impact of our internalized energetic patterns, right? So we're going to talk about energy our patterns, what we can do to get them organized in alignment with ourselves. Now, Steph's passionate about how we heal individually and together, and she teaches via her own living life experience just like we all do, right? And she shares through stories as a way for others to find their connections and voice. You're going to hear some really good stories. After a 27 year career on Wall Street, Stephanie's the founder of The Way of the Diamond Warrior. She's the author of two international bestselling books and also is an avid cyclist, nature enthusiasts, and lover of art and live music. I love my live music. Anyhow, let's talk to Stephanie. You're going to learn a lot, so buckle up your seatbelt and join me.

Hi everyone. I'm back and I'm with Stephanie McAuliff and we're going to talk about energy. Yes. The benefits of organizing your energy. Have you ever thought about that? We're gonna jump into it. Hi Stephanie. Thanks for joining.

Stephanie McAuliff:[00:02:17] Hi, Kathi. It is great to be here. Thank you.

Kathi Burns:[00:02:20] So let's talk about your background. You are from a completely different background than the energy stuff that you're doing right now. So talk to me about a little bit about your path and how you got to where you are.

Stephanie McAuliff:[00:02:34] I am an ex Wall Street executive, 27 years. I started out as a cobalt programmer. And worked my way up through project and program management. And my last role was managing an 85 million global tax transformation program. And one of the things, the connection between what I did then and what I do now, it's still all putting together the pieces of the puzzle. And so that served me for a long time until it didn't within a year of each other, my 10 year marriage and my 27 year career ended and I was left with a lot of space. And it was a, what the f do I do with myself now? And.

Kathi Burns:[00:03:28] That sounds so familiar to me because a similar thing happened to me, but what is global tax transformation? Is that what you said? What is, what does that mean?

Stephanie McAuliff:[00:03:36] It is, so I worked for a large insurance company. And the way that they processed their tax information for this international firm was not current state. We'll put it that way. And there was a big, there was a larger finance transformation initiative happening as well. So all of the different departments within the company were going through putting in workflow and process and simplification. Sometimes it complicated things as well. And my area was the tax department.

Kathi Burns:[00:04:19] Okay. That's interesting. I've never really heard that phrase, so thanks for clarifying. So when Winnie hit the fan, so to speak what was the impetus? Had you been doing a lot of inner work and then things just happened? Or how did it transpire that, lost the career, lost the guy? How did that work?

Stephanie McAuliff:[00:04:42] The work really started, I would say 11 years ago or so. My second husband had a, is an alcoholic. Our first five years of our marriage were great, and then he lost his job on Wall Street. He spiraled and it really came to, I need to either, save him or save myself. And that continued for another couple of years. So I was starting to do a lot of my own inner work. And then finally I just said, you know what? It's gonna kill you or it's gonna kill me, and I need to save myself.And so at least at that point, I had the safety quote unquote, safety of my career. And then a year later, the program was complete. And the, a lot of the work was complete within finance across the organization. And I was looking for another role within the organization and nothing was coming in. And so I went into my boss's office one day and said, you know what? If it helps you make your numbers, because we knew Rifs were coming. I said, give me a package. I'm done. And that gave me a lot of space. And then there was the, holy crap what am I gonna do with myself? So sometimes we make a decision and we don't really realize what it is we're opening up for ourselves. And yet it's all been perfect.

Kathi Burns:[00:06:30] That's great. So when I had the space of a year off for the first time in my life, it took me three months to settle into not being busy. How did that work for you?

Stephanie McAuliff:[00:06:42] It took me a little longer because I still hadn't gone through the grief of the end of my marriage.

Kathi Burns:[00:06:51] Oh, yeah, you had that too.

Stephanie McAuliff:[00:06:55] So there was that to process as well as what do I want to do when I grow up? So I took a little bit more time. I did a consulting gig for about six months, and then the space really opened up.

Kathi Burns: [00:07:10] Wow, that's pretty amazing. Yeah. In my first three months, my husband said, you know what, if you're not going to take the time off, you get a job working for you. Take a job working from the man, and I'll take the time off. And finally able to settle into it. But it's funny how we got caught up in being busy, right?

Stephanie McAuliff:[00:07:30] Doing the Doing. Doing. And I find that's typically a trauma response. Because when we're busy and when we're doing things, we don't have to pay attention to the things that we haven't wanted to look at. And that's part of managing our energy. And so then the universe gives us space. And we can either look in the mirror or look and look within. Or fill up our time. And I, like you filled up my time for a while.

Kathi Burns:[00:08:06] I hadn't thought about the trauma. The repercussions of trauma is that you do just stay busy so you don't have to look at where you are. Interesting. Okay, so you finally settled into it and then what happened? How did you find your way to your work? You decided you were going to write the book about right, helping.

Stephanie McAuliff:[00:08:33] I did. So I wrote the message in the bottle and I worked for a while with spouses of alcoholics. And it's interesting because I had gone to Al-Anon, I had gone to therapy. And then I started entering into energy work. And more of it was experiencing it. And then I decided to take Reiki one. Because I figured I can do some self-healing. And then Reiki two and all the way up through, I'm a Holy Fire three Corona reiki master. And I like to say that energy work completed the sentence.

Kathi Burns:[00:09:16] I was gonna say, I just love the title of your book Message in the Bottle. I think that's brilliant.

Stephanie McAuliff:[00:09:21] Yeah. And the fact that energy, where completed the sentence is meant to be a metaphor because a lot of the people that I work with are, they've done all this work and they've gotten to a point like I had of, I felt like I was running into a wall. Why can't I move past this? And so even for those of us who have grown up around alcoholism, the and or heavy drinking, you could call it functional alcoholism, whatever you want. People drink because they're numbing their pain. So really it's always a question of what's underneath, because what's really driving the decisions that we're making? What's really driving the people that are around me, what's driving my choices. And so the work that I do now is really helping people uncover that because I don't want anyone, first of all, to ever feel as alone as I did. Because when you get to a certain level within your career, there's less spaces where it feels safe to share? What's really going on? Family wants you to stay where you are because it gives them a level of comfort and safety. The people at work well, especially for women on Wall Street or in upper management, there's less and less spaces for them. And a lot of my friends didn't really understand. They're like you've got this house, you've got your husband, you've got your career. You're making money. What's wrong? And so to help people discover what's really been in the way is why I do the work that I do.

Kathi Burns:[00:11:24] And that is why you call it organizing your energy pattern. Talk about how does the process work? So I want to, first off, I've had an aha moment that, I didn't realize that, because I, we had lost our company after 9/11 and it was traumatic. And I didn't even, I didn't even put it together, that I experienced trauma from that. I'm just like, okay, companies go. And I had never really thought about it as traumatic, even though it really was, but I didn't consider that. So thank you for that, that gave me some insight. So how does the clearing and the organizing of the energy process work with you?

Stephanie McAuliff:[00:12:04] So for instance, when a client comes to me it's, what's your biggest challenge right now? What do you think is in the way and where do you want to be? And it's really exploring those three questions. And one of my gifts is to very quickly bring people to the awareness of what's really in the way. And then I also get insights. So part of it is what's the story behind it? And connecting what I call the pieces and parts of our spider web. Because people will do things or things will happen that 95% of it really has nothing to do with us, and yet it deeply affects us. And when we don't have an opportunity to give a voice to things that have happened, especially as young children, we internalize that energy. It's like swallowing a bubble. And then when the bubble pops, all the energy that created it is left to stick within us. And so it is the process and the journey of connecting with what's really in the way and then layering the energies that sometimes are past life, this life, a combination. And people project things all the time that we take on. And so it's really this full cycle of the awareness. Looking at the spider web and what I call going into the deep blue ocean and seeing our part in it as well. Burning away the energies, which creates space then for us to be able to step into the next level of ourselves, which is really a remembering of who we truly are out from underneath those stories we've carried.

Kathi Burns:[00:14:04] Yes. Back to that. Back to the I am. So tell me a story about one of your clients. I know you were just speaking at the top before we started recording about a energy session that you had this morning or tell us any story of what has happened with one of your clients.

Stephanie McAuliff:[00:14:19] So there is, I'm going to go back to a client I worked with a few years ago who is a trained hypnotist. And she has done a lot of energy work on her own and she had an energetic connection with her mother that she thought she was going to have to live with for the rest of her life. And we did a session and an energy cord cutting. And I had the vision because a lot of times I'll see what the situation is that needs to be cleared or worked on. And I saw her in her mother's womb. And when we're in the womb, a lot of times we're head down and our feet are up. And I saw dark energy being passed from her mother's heart into my client's feet and into her body. And we cleared those energies and she is now free. So we don't, I like to say there's no story that can't be healed. I've worked with other clients who took on a lot of really negative messages from their parents when they were young. And so we've worked through those stories and cleared those energies.

Kathi Burns:[00:15:38] No, we all have a negative story from our parents that we love too.

Stephanie McAuliff:[00:15:47] We do. And sometimes it's really just them that there's no ill will. And yet we can go back to it. It goes further than the generation that fought World War I. And they're called the silent generation. They went to war under the guise of creating freedom for the world and saw atrocities that they couldn't speak about when they came back. And it has continued through World War II and McCarthyism, and Korea and Vietnam, and I put those out of order. It's okay. It's the generational silencing of the trauma that we've experienced that continues to be passed down from generation to generation, and this is part of epigenetics.

Kathi Burns:[00:16:36] Yeah, and I always feel everyone is doing the best that they can with the tools that they have. They're doing the best that they can with the tools that they have. But I think it's remarkable that masters, hire Masters, so the fact that your client was a really good hypnotist and stellar in her field, still calls on help from a reiki master from other people, that's what we do. And for those of you who are listening out there, if you feel like there's just some kind of block in any area of your life, reach out to someone who's masterful in whatever, organizing space, organizing your workspace, organizing your resume. Whatever. Just you can't do it all on your own. And that's what you know. I'm a firm believer, master always hire masters. The most successful people in the world will hire those who cannot do, what they cannot do. Who can do what they cannot do, because that's how you grow.

Stephanie McAuliff:[00:17:39] Absolutely. And we can't do everything. I have a coach I work with other energy healers, I've worked with healers and masters around the world. And I continue to learn. I continue to be a sponge because that helps me. And as much as society would like us to think that we need to be lone wolves and do everything on our own and not ask for help, we're not, to your point, we are not meant to do it all alone, nor could we.

Kathi Burns:[00:18:15] Nor should we even want to. I've always been a soloist, but I know that it takes a tribe, it takes other people to help me. And I think we all have coaches for that at least if. If you're listening out there and you don't have a coach for something, find a coach for anything and you'll end up growing and moving. And even if it's not the perfect coach at the time to help you transform, you will be led to the person that will help you transform in whatever area you need to transform in. Answer me this, Stephanie. If you had to tell your teenage self a tip or give her some advice, what would you say now to that little girl?

Stephanie McAuliff:[00:18:59] Don't take it personally.

Kathi Burns:[00:19:01] I love that. It's never, I was just writing that. I was just writing that to somebody today. That is never about you. It's always about them.

Stephanie McAuliff:[00:19:12] It rarely is, although we're catalysts for each other. So I can say something that triggers someone else and sometimes if they're aware and conscious, they may look at it and say, oh, I'm triggered what is here for me? People who aren't a lot of times will project back. The person who projects back is acting out of their own internalized energy. And like I said before, it may affect us, it's not about us. So yes, don't take it personally.

Kathi Burns:[00:19:50] Don't take it personally. Absolutely. So you've accomplished a lot, and you obviously came from an analytical background as well as having now the metaphysical background. What do you use now to keep yourself organized?

Stephanie McAuliff:[00:20:07] I have a lot of things. I have a morning practice where I give gratitude for the day. And that helps to clear my mind. I journal in the morning or sometimes in the afternoon, and that helps to clear a lot, especially if I want to meditate. I'll journal beforehand because that clears my mind.

Kathi Burns:[00:20:31] Oh, that's interesting.

Stephanie McAuliff:[00:20:32] Yes. I have a lot of people I talk with, like they try to meditate. Have you thought about journaling for five minutes beforehand? Doing a brain dump. I have an evening practice where I give gratitude for the day and I will clear my energy from other people and call mine back. I have a, I love lists. I have Excel spreadsheets with project plans. I also look around and if I find a pile that I don't wanna deal with, I asked the question of what's really underneath this? Why don't I wanna deal with it? And that helps me to organize my own energy because that's the question of what's underneath this. It's not just a pile, right? Do I not wanna deal with a project? And I still struggle with email. I'm a work in progress. I think we all are, and yet lists and journaling and clearing my energy, I would say, are the three biggest things I do to organize my life.

Kathi Burns:[00:21:45] And that's how you organize your energy. Yeah. I love that. A pile is a symbol of things left undone. Indecision, procrastination, avoidance getting to the bottom of why it's sitting there, I think is profound of course. And it will help you either except that you're not going to deal with it, but know why. Or generally it makes you just deal with it.

Stephanie McAuliff:[00:22:11] It does. And I'll put things into three categories. Either do it now, throw it away. Swipe left, however you wanna call it. It's, I'm not gonna do it and admit that I'm not gonna do it and it's okay. Or it, it may be a work on it later because we can't, this goes back to doing, we can't do everything all at once.

Kathi Burns:[00:22:35] And I think organizing your energy is more about being and once you can be a being, this is my path and my journey to become more of a being than a doing. Then you're able to get more done, which is ironic, isn't it?

Stephanie McAuliff:[00:22:51] Absolutely. And I use the analogy of doing is like trying to balance a coin or a teeter totter, and eventually it's going to fall one way or the other, and all of the energy that we expend to try to keep something centered. Work-life balance is a fallacy. I would rather step into harmony and nature is always harmonious. When something gets out of balance, the pendulum will swing to bring it back. So I feel like that there's a harmony in being.

Kathi Burns:[00:23:35] That's beautiful. That's beautiful. I'm with you on that. Yeah, absolutely. I like look at let's exchange work-life balance for harmony. I'll embrace that. Absolutely.

Stephanie McAuliff:[00:23:50] Because I, I think of my Wall Street days of work-life balance as I was working 12 or 14 hours a day and then I was trying to step into wife or cook or whatever and there was no balance. I was just exchanging one for the other and then trying to, no harmony.

Kathi Burns:[00:24:14] I love that. When you experiencing success what do you do to celebrate?

Stephanie McAuliff:[00:24:25] I have the gratitude practice at night. I will sometimes take myself out to dinner. Or buy a nice bottle of wine and have a glass of it. Get together with friends. I'll go out on a hike in nature. Nature is amazing. And, or like I have a cherry tree that's in bloom right outside of my deck and I'll go and it's just starting to smell amazing and I'll go sit out there and be.

Kathi Burns:[00:25:00] And I see you like live music too, which kind of spur me. I'm always trying to find live music. It's really interesting how it's somehow, I'm sometimes difficult to find, even here in San Diego that I think I might start incorporating that into my celebratory moments. I'm gonna go find a band. I don't care who it is, just gimme a guy with an acoustic guitar and any kind of live music is just a phenomenal thing. So that kind of tipped my brain when I was reading your bio about that.

Stephanie McAuliff:[00:25:32] I love that. And there's a harmony in music as well, and it helps to realign our ourselves.

Kathi Burns:[00:25:39] Yeah, absolutely. Good celebration. Okay, so I know that you have something to offer the people listening. What is it that they can download or get or receive from you?

Stephanie McAuliff:[00:25:54] On my website, which is way of the diamond Warrior, there is an energy leaks assessment that people can go and take it's five questions that relate to five life areas, and they receive a report and some follow up emails as well that go a little bit deeper into each of the questions. And it, it helps. Energy leaks means we're leaking our power in some way, and sometimes we don't realize where or how it might be. So just like you had the awareness in and around your business in 9/11, sometimes it's what someone I used to study with calls a cleat on, it's a word or a sign on a billboard or something that sparks a remembrance. And then once we have that awareness, it's like the door cracking open, then we can go deeper.

Kathi Burns:[00:26:57] That's fantastic. And even if we don't feel like we have energy, least we do somewhere or another. So I think the assessment would be good for anybody listening, anybody and everybody listening, just to get a little clue into yourself and into your soul, and into your energy on what's really happening. I know that we like to put a lot of masks up within ourselves. It's I gotta look at that part. So I think that's a really valuable resource. Now, is there anything that I should have asked you or anything that was burning on your mind at the top of this podcast that you wanted to talk about that we haven't discussed?

Stephanie McAuliff:[00:27:37] Allow yourself the space to trust the nudges. Because that is spirit, the universe, consciousness, whatever you wanna call it, cracking open a window for you. And like you just said, sometimes we resist and we don't want to look, but we actually spend a lot more time and energy resisting what we don't want to see. Then sometimes it's rarely as big as we think it is. And it's like the person I worked with this morning told me about her dream that she had and she was making the this big thing. And I said, but if you look underneath what you saw in your dream, it was really that this person was trying to invade your energetic space. She's oh. So even giving it a voice and in a couple of minutes. She let go of this story that she was creating that didn't need to be created.

Kathi Burns:[00:28:47] We make things so larger than life sometimes, don't we? We love the drama of it all. It's oh, let's just relive this and then let's make it bigger. Then let's relive it again, and then let's put another spin on it just in case that first spin wasn't harmful enough.

Stephanie McAuliff:[00:29:04] And that's why it's so important to manage our energy. It's part of the human condition. And this is where we get to laugh. Really it just, some of the things that we've told ourself.

Kathi Burns:[00:29:23] Yeah, the recurring theme. The recurring theme that we keep saying over and over to ourselves, it's not even true. Probably most of the time.

Stephanie McAuliff:[00:29:32] It isn't. Then sometimes it's the energy that wants to be cleared. It's like me marrying two alcoholics and I grew up around them, as did multiple generations of women before me. So part of it as well is an opportunity to break a cycle. And then it's, you're clearing not only yourself, you're clearing the generations before and after you. And what a gift that is.

Kathi Burns:[00:29:53] That's a huge gift. Huge gift. Yeah. This has been impactful and I always love speaking with you. Love, love your energy of course. And if you guys are listening but you're not seeing, go to YouTube and watch this because you'll be able to see you'll be able to see the radiance that's happening here and check it out on YouTube on the channel. And if you like this interview, go ahead and subscribe. Go ahead and give us a review and comment, please. I very much appreciate it. Just celebrated my 75th podcast and I just love having you on Stephanie, so thank you so much for your time and thanks you guys for listening. I will see you again of course, next week, same time, same bat channel. We'll see you there.

Stephanie McAuliff:[00:30:44] Thank you.

Kathi Burns:[00:30:45] Thanks Steph.

Hey, thanks for listening to this podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode, and if you want to hear more, feel free to subscribe on the platform of your choice. Also, if you feel so inclined, I would truly appreciate a good rating from you to me. Have a stellar day.