Navigating Storms: Finding Calm Amidst Turmoil with Zak Lioutas

Hello everyone, this is Kathleen Flanagan.

Today I wanted to talk about how we're going to keep moving forward and remain calm when we are in the middle of a storm.

I do have a guest, Zak Lioutas, who is coming in. She is in the middle of a storm, actually, a real storm. She should be here probably within the next five to ten minutes.

I wanted to talk about this because I've been in this situation for the last week. I had it. Then I got rid of it and it came back again with the full vengeance this morning. I know that I'm on the verge of something really huge manifesting. I'm putting a lot of energy towards my dreams and moving into a different direction.

When that happens a lot of times our stuff starts coming up and we start feeling this angst. We feel emotional. If that's going on, you feel frustrated, you're angry, whatever it is.

What I had to do like last week I was in it and and I know a lot of other people are in this as well.  I'm not the only one that's feeling a lot of this so there could be a lot of universal energy shifting going on for all I know. I was talking to my mastermind friend last week and she was in a very similar situation as I'm in about somebody that is a key player in one of her organizations. 

He’s refusing to call her and talk to her. It's been going on for a month. She's frustrated and doesn't know what to do. I'm feeling the same way myself and I told her, you need to realign with you and focus. A dear friend of mine called last week and at this time, she had watched the show and was telling me all these good things about it and it made me feel good.

The one thing she did ask do you know what is your purpose and what is it that you hope to gain out of this? I told her and as she knows me, this is a mission, this is very much a mission for me. I had to dial in on the reason why I'm doing certain things that I'm doing and focus in. I also know that this is an opportunity for me.

There's something inside of me that needs to grow, something that needs to change. I'm not sure what that is. I keep looking. I keep asking. As I was talking to my friend about different ways to approach this, spirit was coming in and were sharing things with me as far as when we get into this turmoil in the middle of a storm when things are moving and we're feeling overwhelmed or we're feeling

frustrated or feeling angry, a lot of times what people do is they take their emotions and they run and say I'm not going to deal with it and they stop all forward movement.

When you stop your forward movement and take that break, you’re telling yourself that you don't believe in your dream, you don't believe everything’s going to work out, you don't believe that you're actually a spiritual being and everything is working and conspiring in your favor.

You're taking all of that negativity and you're saying I'm not worthy, I’m not deserving, God doesn't love me. Whatever the mind talk is that you're saying to yourself, that’s what you’re picking up on. That is the furthest from the truth. What's really going on is this is an opportunity for you to look further inside. The only reason something is going on is because there's something for you to look at.

When I was talking to her about it, I said, when we stop, we allow that frustration to take over or that anger or whatever it is. What we do is we go back three steps and we never gain that forward momentum back to the degree that you were at, at the time the storm began.

As I'm moving through this and going through and reconnecting with why, I'm doing the things that I'm doing, what I hope to gain out of doing what I'm doing and seeing the end result and the future me and all the things that I'm doing because that really keeps the faith going.

That's what you need is you need to keep that faith going when things don’t look like anything's moving. The one thing that I've learned to say is this is what it looks like when it's all coming together. We don't know what's happening out into the ethers.

We don't know how much is going out there and coming back We don't know where we are in the middle of it. The one thing that we always, always, always have control over is how do you feel?

What are your emotions? Are you going to let your emotions take over your forward progress or are you going to be in control of your thoughts and emotions and keep moving forward?

That's the one thing that I have come to realize is that's the only thing I can control is my attitude. How I look at things, how I feel about things. Yes, if I'm feeling frustrated, well, I'm frustrated.

Okay, big deal. Is that going to stop me and have a bad day? No, I'm not going to have a bad day because of that. I'm going to keep moving forward in that direction. I'm reading the book, The Optimus Creed. This is very, very, very profound book.

It's deeper than I think that I even know, but I understand it so I can get through the book. There are tools that they give you in this book. I try them out. Even if I don't think I understand what they're saying, I do understand what they’re saying. They take whatever I had and then take that one step further.

Last night I was reading the book and it was talking about this. You don't want to stop. Keep having that faith, keep believing, keep moving in that direction because I can’t tell you many times I have been in storms and the feeling of overwhelm and finding a way to get through the overwhelm. I don't feel overwhelmed. It's a new feeling.

What was really interesting today when I was talking to Zak for a brief moment when she was telling me she's going to run late is that I was dealing with a couple of things that I've been avoiding for a while for many reasons. 

Today I decided I was going to deal with it. I was talking to this person who's helping me on the rebranding of Awakening Spirit.

There was a moment where things were going on and it was as clear as day I stepped into my future self. I was there, I was successful and I was having to learn how to manage people. I had this whole team of people that I was working with.

I realized at that moment that what I'm dealing with right now is learning how to manage. How am I going to play as a boss, as an employer, as somebody who is the leader of an organization?

I really dialed in on that because sometimes we don't think about that. We're tunnel visioned on where we're going that we don't look at there's a bigger picture that there's going to be players that are coming in that are going to be people you're going to be working with.

If you're going to grow your organization then that means people are coming in to work with you. They’re going to work for you but they're also going to work with you and you as a leader how are you going to handle that?nYou can't go around it if you're in a nasty place then you need to keep moving in that direction.

Zak is here and she will be on momentarily.

This was the opportunity that I was understanding. How am I going to be? How am I going to show up in the world when things are going good? Am I going to be one of those nasty bosses that I worked with most of my life that I didn’t like that were mean, nasty, rude, inconsiderate and thought that they were the only ones that mattered on the planet? Or am I going to be something better than that? 

That's the goal that I'm having is wanting to be a better person. I'm learning how to trust people to a degree. You set out what you want them to do, ask them to do it and sit back. Let them show you how they're going to play out to develop that trust. Part of being in this world, we have to learn how to trust people especially if we're going to build an organization. That was a huge to do. I was excited when I actually saw that.

We’ve got Zak Lioutas in the room. We're going to get her to come back in andour continue our conversation about being in a storm.

Kathleen: Hey Zak

Zak: Hello. I'm here finally.

Kathleen: Yeah. I was telling everyone about the storm that you were in. I told them where I've been in the last week and a little bit of our conversation we had earlier. We'll let you go on about the storm you're in the middle of right now both figuratively and realistically.

Zak: Right. Yeah it's a beautiful storm. I actually love storms. I learned to appreciate them to be honest with you because after the storm, to me a storm is a time of realization, a time of reflection, a time of moving things out of the way and a time of being in your place.

Today while I'm juggling something that I'm doing part time, my clients and then trying to get on the show and stuff like that, I was surrender. If I'm 5 minutes late, if I can't be there on time then I'm going to call Kathleen let her know but I can't control certain situations in life right now.

At the end of the day, if I don't have control of it, the only thing I have control of my emotions and I'm not going to get all up in a roar with my emotions at the end of the day because it really is that time of breathing. I find that if I'm in the storm like I was, I've never seen the traffic that we had just now.

It was bumper to bumper. I felt like I was in California 10 minutes ago and the only thing I kept on saying to myself, if you get all rouled up, you're going to get pissed off and you're going to start causing angstiness and you're going to start causing anger and then they're going to start causing frustration and all that. You could get into an accident. You could be 5 minutes late or you could not show up.

You choose what you want to do. That was a storm that I was in and I laughed through it. I was,  all right well, I got here, I'm here and I heard 4:17. I was going to be on the call and it was 4:17 when I dialed in. I knew that it was going to happen. However, I had to have control my emotions because when I talked to you last on the phone, I was about 45 minutes from where I am right now but if I look at the GPS right now, it’s about an hour and a half from where I was.

That's the thing. I was like, okay, clear the way, clear the way, clear the way, okay, drivers. A lot of people driving in the fast lane, they don't realize everyone knows the fastest, it turns into slow lane.

I go into the slow lane like reverse psychology and it goes faster. I'll create my own lane sometimes but there was no way of creating your own lane today because there was so many cars on the road and plus it's raining here in Toronto as well.

The storm right now is about, I wish that was me previously too and I was going through storm and I was going through storms before. I was angry, I would be cussing, I would be yelling, I would be freaking out. I would be taking it out on other people and it was like, well, well, well, well, what are you doing?

But the more you go through the storms I find, the more you find that peace within yourself, the more you're, why can't control this?

The only thing I could control are my emotions but I know once I overcome what I'm going through on the other side, it's rainbows, unicorns and sunshine. I'm sitting here with the roses and thorns. So yeah, that's exactly what I was going through. It does now.

Kathleen: I was talking about that because I'm reading the book The Optimus Creed and it talks about that too. Don’t let your emotions take over because that's the only thing you can control.

Realize that you're still a child of God and you're moving in that direction and if we could see the bigger picture we would see it. Being worried about things is ridiculous. There's no time, there's no space on the other side and we have all the time in the world.

We put these constraints on ourselves. When I started realizing that I didn't have to put those kind of constraints on and I can stay happy even if everything looks like it's falling apart, I found out over the years that nothing's falling apart.

It's actually perfect because of the timing of things, even though I may not see what it is, it's there. When you sit back and you take that time to breathe and to look and reflect, then you go, well, that was the best thing that could have happened to me even though you were, "Ahh, I'm a crazy lady." I didn't have to be crazy, so why be crazy anymore? I don't like being crazy. 

Zak: What I found out too? Going through the storms and stuff like that and shifting my life to where I am today, I don't want a lot of things bothering me. I find when we're going through these storms and we start losing our lugein, like we're lost and we're screaming and freaking out and stuff like that, I find that also blocks our manifestation as well.

You can have a choice, you could freak out today, but now you're blocking your manifestation to what you want to create for yourself. What is more important to me right now? Is it that I sit back, reflect and breathe through this process or that I lose what I really want to create in the long run?

I got my eye on that prize. I can't do it between now and that prize that I want to get to. I'm going to use the show for an example, because that was what I was going through today. Between now and being on that show, if I lose it, all these other obstacles come in the way, which will block the manifestation of me wanting to be on the show or even making it on the show. We're fizzling now. The more I started to lean back and reflect and just the process and know that nothing is really falling apart.

It's all really coming together and the storm is there because it's something that's unfamiliar of what's happening or something that's really removing the trauma, the pain, the suffering, whatever is all all these emotional beliefs that we have going on.

That's what's coming up and that's what's causing all this emotional mayhem, I would say. In that emotional mayhem that's going on inside of us, other things start rolling because now we're in that vibrational frequency.

I got into a parking lot at four o’clock. I got to get this. I got to go, go, go, go, go. Eventually it's going to land. It's going to land better than I could ever imagine it to land.

It knows funny because while it was on the road, I was, well, it's funny here. We're talking about a storm right now. First and foremost, it's raining. Second, I've never seen this kind of traffic.

Third, I'm going to be cutting it short. Three different obstacles were in the way. The only thing I kept on saying was, it'll happen when it happens. It's all in divine time It's all divine purpose. It's all divine. It's all divine.

I could hear the spirits laughing in my ear. I was talking to them They're, she's not even bothered by this. I'm like, no, no I'm not bothered by it because I can't allow myself to get bothered by it because I know that I'm going to get to where I'm going to get to and do what I got to do, but it may be a little off.

People don't understand. OK, I understand. You might not understand that. At the end of the day, you're going to give yourself that opportunity to really reflect if people don't understand it.

Maybe they have to go through their own journey. My famous line that got me through a lot of these storms was, that's a you problem, not a me problem. That solved a lot of my problems at the end of the day because I was always trying to, I used to be that people pleaser and it took me years to get over it. In the last couple of years, especially during that 2020 upgrade that we had.

I don't want to give it any energy. I learned to deal with my own situation. As someone was coming at me or they didn't like what I was saying, I'd be, slow down homey. That is a you problem, not a me problem. This is what's coming out of me.

If you're taking that personal, the storm that's really rumbling inside of you is something that you got to look towards. It has nothing to do with me. Just like life in general, we're always going to be throwing these obstacles in life.

At the end of the day, it's how are we going to handle these obstacles? The more that we start looking at life differently, the more that we start to grow and evolve. Things change naturally.

Like I thought I was going to be in the office five minutes early, but then when I got on that road, it was, oh, there's stuff brewing up here.

People were getting out of the way, but then people were getting it in the way. I was, I'm not even a father with this. I'm going to continue staying focused on what I got to do. I find when you stay focused and the end result that you want to create, there is whatever comes in your way, people, obstacles, people pleasing, all that stuff becomes obsolete That is my understanding and knowingness because when I've been through it, that's exactly what happened to me.

Kathleen: I agree with that. I said all of this when we were waiting for you to show up. We talked about all of this. It's really interesting because we hadn't had that conversation.

You didn't hear what I was saying, but we did have that little bit of a conversation beforehand. That's what I find that to be very true as well. It's time to breathe. I think when I stop to do that, that's when I establish those boundaries. That's when I could say this is a you and not a me.

That was real key too, because being that people pleaser plays a role in wanting you to like me or whatever. I'm sitting here. I have no boundaries whatsoever. And then it's like, is it me? Is it you?

That head trash that made me crazy. I finally stopped that because when I settled down and said, no, this is about who am I? What am I willing to put up with? What am I willing to take on for myself or not? Does this fit with this new image that I see for myself?

There's this self image. There's this future self that I have that I want to be. The only way to get there is to behave, so to speak, as I'm going there. That's controlling my emotions. That feeling being empowered in a quiet subtle way. I've always wanted that quiet power, internal power, instead of voicing it and being loud like a lot of people are.

I wanted to be able to stand still in my power and people knew. That's who I want to be. That's who I'm becoming. The best way to do that is to control my emotions. Life is just life. Life isn't doing this to me. It's just life. It's my response is how if I want to respond that life is doing this to me, then I'm always going to remain a victim. I will never have what I want because I'm a victim.

Zak: Yes. If I'm a victim, you're never going to get it because that's not how spirit works. Spirit works with you in cooperation. If they're seeing that Zak is sitting here having her little crazy storm going on in the car, and they're laughing at her because she got it.

How many times have spirit laughed at me when it's she finally got it. It’s, Jesus lady, when are you going to stop the drama and just get it? Normal. Define normal please. Normal is better than being a drama queen because there was always so much drama around everything that I did.

Oh my God, I got so tired of the drama. When I stopped the drama, I watched the drama around me. I have to get out of the way of drama and get rid of drama and leave it on a stage where it belongs or at a movie theater. It doesn't belong in my life.

When I did that, everything started to change in a monumental accelerated rate. I was taking control of my thoughts. It's incredibly simple and it's incredibly hard at the same time when you're first starting out.  Yes, complicated too, right? Because they're like, what is my daughter? I love it.

I keep on hearing this thing in my head saying stay present, stay present, stay present, stay present because when we're going through these storms or this chaos in our life, we're going back to that. I haven't even been before. I've never known this before. I've never known this before. I've never known this.

Oh my God, you're going to drive yourself nuts. You are driving yourself nuts, like going through that. If you're not staying present, you're looking at the future self. It's a matter of saying, okay, now I'm looking at something that I really don't have control of tomorrow. I learned from yesterday.

The only place I could be is in the now. If I could be in this now, right now, how am I going to react to everything I'm going through right now? Yesterday was the lesson that I learned that I shouldn't be acting like a fool today. I really can't control tomorrow. I can control it now to make tomorrow better place through whatever I'm trying to learn, or grow from, or understand.

I found this dude, especially the last six months, I've been on this even deeper. Remember when you told me to open up my heart I've been opening up my heart that much more. It was like this whole aha moment came to me. In that aha moment, I tried not to be reactive.

I'm pretty successful 99  or I'll give myself 98% of the time. I'll give 2% to be reactive. But it rarely happens now. When you have control of the inner chaos and rather than the chaos having control of you, you start to think differently, move differently, act differently, speak differently, become differently.

That's how you're saying that future self. It's that future self. I don't even look at the future. I gotta look at the next hour. I still got things to do in the next hour. I can't think of what's happening in the future, right? That's why my whole thing is to stay as present as possible. And to be in that present space is not always easy, because your mind wants to play these tricks on you.

But when you control your mind and not your mind controlling you, it's a whole different monopoly game here now. It's, oh, okay, mind. You really have nothing on me anymore. I am now controlling you. I am working with you rather than you working on me. That's what I found.

The more that I did that, the less the chaos became in my life. Even after this weekend, I've been working seven days on Saturday, Sunday. I had two events going on. I had my side business that I had to do. I was crunching on time so bad on Sunday.

And this was something I feel like I have to say this because it's coming so strong inside of me. I kept on saying, God, I don't know how I'm going to get to this event on Sunday at two o’clock. That's not going to work out. I'm going to be about an hour late.

Well, how interesting that the event coordinator goes  the event starts at three tomorrow just to give everyone a heads up. I'm, oh, thank you. Jesus for that one. I would have not been able to make it at two. I had other commitments that I had to complete before I went to that.

It was in my mind, how am I going to do this? How am I going to get to that point? You know what? I surrender. I'm going to leave it to destiny and see where it's going to take me. If I'm there late again, I'm going to be late.

However, I was not late. I was actually on time. I was, I find the more that I surrender to what should be and allow what is, everything falls into place so much more beautifully than me doing it in that storm. Imagine me coming in here and being 

[GASPS]

You know what I mean? You're hyperventilating at that time. That's what happened to me on Saturday. After doing over 30 intuitive readings on Saturday and Sunday, I would have been a mess because I would have been able to tap into people's energies to help them out, to do that work. When I said, I surrender, I don't know how I'm going to get here at two o’clock. It won't work for me.

I got there at exactly at a perfect time for the event to start. That really is something that I surrender. I don't know how it's going to happen, but I'm going to allow for the flow to happen naturally. It always works for us. If it doesn't work for us, I find it's not meant to be.

Kathleen: I agree wholeheartedly with that. I totally agree with that because as a society, we feel like we have to control everything in our lives  because we feel powerless. We have no control at all because we're not controlling our minds. We feel that hopelessness and everything that goes along with not controlling your thoughts.

I remember-- and I still to this day, I go, OK, I remember when I came back from Chicago, and I found this townhome that I wanted to rent. It was everything. Everything was there.

I was all set to sign the lease, the whole bit. They called and said, well, we're going to put it up for sale instead. We decided that. What was the thing that came out of my mouth? If for some reason the sale doesn't go through, give me a call because  I'll be here.

Do you know that they called me? They sale fell through. They called me and I rented the place. I knew because you're so dialed into that feeling and that sense of surrender and trusting that you just know.

The main thing that I was trying to get across when I was talking about getting that town home was the sense of feeling that I knew it was mine regardless if it was up for sale.

There was that knowingness, that it was mine. I knew and I let it go. I never thought again about it and then I get the call and I move in. Sometimes I sit here and go, "How did you just know that?” It was profound to me that I knew and I lived there for five years until I bought my house.

That's the cool thing that when you start gaining that control and because I was holding myself accountable, I was working with my mind. I was taking control of my thoughts.

I was doing a lot of things to be a better person. That it was Spirit's way of saying, "Well, we're going to reward you because you're doing such a good job at this.” Having that openness with Spirit, I love being that connected to Spirit.

It makes me warm and fuzzy on the inside and I miss it. I still hear from them. but something like that is the warm and fuzzy that I don't always have anymore in my life to that degree because I'm moving. We're working as a cooperative instead of me doing it alone. I do ask for a lot of help sometimes when I'm in my little storm of show me what it is?

I'm open. I'm willing to look at whatever the ugly is, just show me. I'm open to it. I have to. It's always sit and be. Keep focused, keep moving and then the answer shows. It always works like that for me.

Zak: We're in that quantum field, keep on hearing that because you're in that quantum energy where things always have to work out for you too.

When we're in that quantum energy, we're not holding on to the self-doubt, we're not holding on to any fears, we're not holding on to any mind manipulation that we may give ourselves or what I call spells.

Spells are the words that we're constantly repeating within ourselves that could either make us or break us, right? I call that a spell, being who I am and the energy work that I do, right? At the end of the day, when we don't add those spells onto our path, we start to get into that quantum energy, that quantum field and whatever we're looking for is right in there exactly looking for us.

That's the beautiful thing. A lot of things happen like that with me as well when I'm, "Oh, I'm never going to get this.” All of a sudden it's, "Yeah, yeah. Why would I say I'm not going to get this?

I could feel it in my bones. I could feel it in my being, I could feel it in my soul.” I'm, "Okay, I surrender this. I give this to God and let him deal with it because he knows I want it."

The whole drive on my drive to him, like, "Because we have a long weekend here. I know you guys had the July 4th week in the States. We have July 1st in Canada.” The whole weekend, I'm, "Okay, God. You know where I want to be this week.” "You know what I want to do this week. You know where I want to be, who I want to be with, what I want to do.” I said, "That's all I want to do.

That's the only thing I want to do right now. Regardless of what's going to happen, I don't know what's going to happen. I'm going to wait for this to unfold, but this is exactly what I want to do.” And it's not only that.

We have to also learn patience in that too, right? That's really important because you could be so impatient, especially if it comes to waiting for someone else to work that plan with you. If you don't have that patience, and you're so impatient, and you pick up your phone, you're showing all your anger because you're like, "I want answers.

The answer is going to come, but you really have to stay within yourself and be in that place of calmness.” I find that in that place of calmness is not only are you going to get what you want at the end, but you're also going to receive so many more messages.

Like, today when I was driving, I was driving for about four hours. I was, "Okay, God, this is what I truly want.” I don't know how it's going to work out. I don't know what I'm going to do.

I put the seed in the soil. I'm watering it through you right now because there's no other way for me to water the seed right now. In that, is there going to be chaos? Probably because my mind's already going, "I'm going to happen.

I'm going to happen. I'm going to happen.” I'm, "Forget about when it's going to happen.” You have until Friday for this to happen. Be calm, cool, and collective, and visualize what you want to create and what you want to do and where you want to go and who you want to be with.

If it doesn't work out the way you wanted to, 99.9% of the time I find, it works out better than you could imagine it to be. That's the whole thing. I'm saying this, "Reholes, rears."

I'm like, "Okay, this is what I want to do. This is what I want to do. This is what I want to be.” At the point, I'm, "Okay, like, seriously, stop putting it out there.” Like, now it's about believing it. "Did you believe this is going to happen?” I'm like, "Oh, yeah, I believe it.

I believe it.” Because I know where the conversation's going. I know this. I know that. You can put yourself in a storm even trying to get that manifestation to happen because then the chaos starts happening.

The old memories, the old traumas, the old beliefs, the old patterns start coming back. I'm laughing through it now. It's, "It is what it is. If it doesn't happen, I got plan B happening. I got plan C. Plan A is going to happen because that's what I was told is going to happen.

I believe plan A is going to happen better than I could imagine it's going to happen. We'll see what happens about that. I'm not going to put myself in that storm, in that chaos, in those spell moments. I'm not going to allow myself to get in that place.

That's what I feel that when we're talking about storms and stuff like that, you've got to take yourself out of that place and say, “I am literally the jackpot at the end of this rainbow. I am exactly where I need to be because I am that pot of gold. I am that jackpot. I am that prize path.” I'm going to keep myself in that quantum field.

Regardless of what's going on around me in this now present moment, does not affect what’s going to happen to me in three, four or five days. Unless I allow it to affect me. That's exactly what it is. I keep on laughing about this whole weekend. I'm, "Oh, this is a mystery. This is a mystery.” It's about bringing out that inner child.

When the child says, "Mom, I want a bike or that I want a bike," it says it once, it says it twice, and then it drops it because it finds something else to play with. A week or two weeks later, mom and dad come in with his bike and we've surprised Johnny with a bike.

Well, no, you're not surprising Johnny with a bike. You've already manifested that bike. He's saying to himself, "I know what I want. I don't know when it's going to come, but I'm going to play with the wagon until my bike shows up.” That's what I start doing. As I start going more into my inner child, what would my inner child do?

What would my inner child do? They're, "My inner child will put it out into the universe and drop it.” That's what I learned. When I put it out to the universe, I laugh about it, I visualize it, I feel it, I dance with it, I ebb and flow with it, and then I drop it.

What happens happens. I don't have control of the end result, but I have control of getting there. Especially, you don't have control of an end result when you're bringing another party into the situation.

But when you're doing it on your own, you have control, because you’re focusing on your goal. However, when we have another party that we're bringing in, you don't know what's going on in their mind, their emotions, their thoughts, their feelings.

So, a matter of trusting the whole process and saying, "It is what it is, and I'm just going to allow and trust.” If it doesn't work out the way I wanted to work out, then something else will show better than I ever thought it was supposed to work out.

Kathleen: Yeah. It's the dance of life. That's how I looked at it. When I went to Chicago, before I went I learned a lot about how to dance with life.

I had a ballroom dancer. My instructor was 24 years old, it was like we fell in love with each other. We had such an amazing connection.

I went through so much growth during that, and I was in a storm like you wouldn't believe. That storm lasted three years between being there, Chicago, and coming back. It was a three year intense journey, but it was what I wanted. I wanted to be out of where I was. I wanted to be someplace else. I wanted to be a different person.

That meant all that stuff, all that chaos, all that drama, all that head trash had to come up and be released. What I found when I was dancing with him, this is the dance of life. It's one thing to dance alone. That's easy.

Dancing with a partner, that is hard friggin' work. It's not just your energy, it's their energy, and then you're creating this energy around you. Because that's what it is. That's what the marriage means. It's you, it's your partner, and then it's the relationship. It works in that order at all time, always. You are always number one in that relationship.

If you're not right, then he's not going to be right, and your relationship won't be right. That was one of the most amazing things that I experienced was really understanding the dance of life with a partner. My feeling is if you can't dance in real life with a partner, you're never going to make your marriage or your relationship work because it is a dance.

The gentleman I was with at the time when I was in dance school, we tried to dance together, and he was so controlling that I couldn't handle it. Everybody loved dancing with them, except for me. I couldn't do it. It was, you're a control freak. Leave me alone.

Go dance with somebody else. Leave me alone. Part of it was me and part of it was him. I realized a lot of things about myself during that period of time because it was my head trash. It was my stuff that was preventing things from coming in at that time.

It was my chaos that I was creating and didn't know it. Did I have spirit talking to me a hundred miles an hour? It was, they were a nonstop for three years, nonstop.

Yes. I hated it at the same time and everyone's, you got to slow down, you got to calm down. I'm trying, but I can’t. I was being pushed and pushed and pushed because this is what I wanted so badly. I finally made the decision that it was spirit, divine providence, whatever came in, okay, we're going for a ride, honey, hang on to your hat.

That's exactly what I was doing was hanging on to my hat. I laughed, I cried a lot, but I laughed so much because it was comical to watch myself be like this little child to myself about me.

It was, stop it. Grow up already, little girl.

That was part of what you do when you start growing is you look at that little child that you are because that's who you are.

You're this little kid that was told that this is who you are and how you're supposed to be and you have no power control over any of that.

Then you decide, one day you're going to wake up and realize, oh, yes, I am. I am somebody and I do have something to say.

I do have power and control over my thoughts and over what comes out of my mouth and how I look and how I present myself to the world. Everything else, nothing I can do about it, but anything pertaining to me is what I can control.

Once I realized how much power I had within my own self. Game changer, huge game changer. That's why all of that chaos at that point was there because there was so much negative self talk that I had for so many years and so many bad paradigms and you're not worthy and you don't deserve and why are you here and you take up space and all of that.

It was, no, I am a valuable person on this planet. I am a cog in the wheel like everybody else and we're all here to work with each other to help elevate.

When I started to see the bigger picture of me is when a lot of that changed. So yeah, the storms that I'm in, this is nothing compared to what I've been in.

Do I like it? No, but it's what it is. I'm still in control. I'm still moving forward and I'm still happy. I'm not a crazy lady. I'm still happy.

That's all that matter. Nothing's going to stop my happiness. That's how I look at it. Now nobody's going to take that away for me.

Zak: It's so interesting to say that because you're talking about a three year storm. I went through a nine year storm. It was hell. No. I think I was in hell for nine years, but I learned so much about myself in that nine years. That storm didn't slow down.

There was no light. There was little bits and pieces of sunshine in that storm for nine years. It was hell. In that hell, I found strength. I found my voice.

Like I told you before, because we were not always talking, when I turned 50, I had to turn 50 to be, screw this. If I didn't learn anything in the last 49 years, there's no way that I'm going tomove forward. So it's interesting. I say, I leave the 49 years behind me and my 50s and above.

I will not be who I was at 49, 48 and previous to that because 50. I am enjoying my happiness. I'm enjoying my joy. If it's bothering you, guess what? The door is out of the air.And has nothing to do with me. I'm going to enjoy myself. If people walk out of my life, people walk out of my life, people walk out of my life, people walk out of my life. I'm like that revolving door.

Kathleen: I am being joined by Zak Lioutas. What I'd like to mention now of what we talked about briefly when we were in commercial break is how magical life is.

When you go through the storm and you take control of your thoughts and your actions and how you want to be and how you want to show up in the world, life becomes magical on levels that you would never ever, ever imagine how magical life becomes.

That's probably one of the greatest gifts that I got to discover is how magical life is and trusting and knowing that it's going to work out. I don't know what it looks like. I don't know how or when or why.

It will work out the way it will, but it will work out and it will be magical. That's the biggest thing that I'm taking away from all of my storms and I’m so grateful that I got to realize that life really is magical.

Zak: That is so true. I'm telling you, I've been 50 for the last three months now. It's so funny because I use that as a marker. I don't remember days of my money thing. However, at 50, it's, you've learned you've grown like I said, but all the sudden life became so magical like this film came off of my eyes.

This heart opening started happening. And if anyone knows how closed my heart was, Kathleen, you knew how close my heart was because you guys opened up your heart, opened up your heart, opened up your heart. It was, okay, I got to do this.

Now that I've opened up my heart and I'm taking it away six to eight weeks to open up my heart. Now that I'm doing this, the things that I'm seeing around me, the way people look at you, the way people come toward you, the way people speak to you, the things that show up for you.

It is so magical. That's why I always say to myself that, I don't know what universe God grace is doing, but whatever it is, I know it's better than my little pea brain could ever imagine. Because we think so small compared to how big, fast and abundant God the world is, whatever you want to call it.

When I look at that, and I think, wow, my life did a 360 ever since April. April was that big time I celebrated with the least people that I thought I was going to celebrate my birthday with, but they were the key people in my life. I noticed that celebrating with those little amount of people that I had, my cousins and my friends from my 50th, we had a great time.

Then right after that, all this magical things started happening. A lot of things started forming for me and a lot of things started happening better than I could imagine. I think it happened because I surrendered.

The more that I surrendered, the more that I believed, the more that I trusted,  it was like the owls were coming out during the day howling and the birds were coming out. Yesterday I saw blue hair fly right in front of me and I was driving and I was, what was that?

When do you see a blue hair and out of nowhere? I was freaking out. I said, I got to look at the media of spiritual media that and I still didn't look at it. I told you for about about it. hat's the thought that came to me right now. Was that blue hair and that came? I was, wow, that's magical.

I find that when we let go of all the burdens and the way we think things should be, it's that we're communicating with everything out there.  We are nature. We are the birds. We are the flies. We are this. We are that.

Even this morning, when I was talking to my client, I had my door open when I saw two flies come into the house. They're literally dancing with one another. Like doing this, I'm, I wonder if that board text is still there because they haven’t left that circle.

They've been there for an hour and they're chasing after each other. I thought, that's interesting. I'm having a conversation with my client, but I'm watching these two flies in my house. I'm, that is so magical. Like once chasing the other and they start chasing each other.

I was, wow, that's interesting. I'm talking to them. I'm, get out of the house, or you going to die? It was in that thought process of watching these flies, watching the air and it was everything that was coming to me. I thought, that's because I've opened up my heart. I trust. I surrender. I know what I want. I think that's the most important thing is a lot of people don't know what they want.

They don't know what makes them happy. It's not like, oh, my kids make me happy. My grandchildren make, okay, they're going to go away. They're going to become older.

Then what's going to make you happy? You're going to be stuck there by yourself wondering, is it going to get better? Yeah, it's going to get better when you figure out what makes you happy. I find that the more I tap into happy, what makes you happy, what makes you happy, what makes you happy.

I find that from that point on, it goes from happy to magical, happy to joyful to magical, happy to abundant to manifestation to everything else after that. That magic is always there because we are magical beings.

If you think of the process of evolution with how we've come to this world, we are magic. We forgot our magic in that time because we were taught not to believe in that magic. We believe in the tooth fairy. We believe in Santa Claus. We believe Peter Planck of Fly Across with his little carpet. It was at Peter Panellata and I should say. 

We believe the knowledge as children, but as we grew as adults or teens or so like that, that was all stripped away from us and robbed from us. I like to bring myself back there and be, okay, so Santa Claus was real when I was a kid. I mean, I believe in Santa Claus until I was 14 1/2, half. It was that. But still, it worked because I got gifts. Even if I didn't believe in that. I got gifts because I believe Santa Claus was alive till a, yet older age.

I was, oh yeah, what about Santa's going to get me this year? My brother and sister are like, looking at me like, is she for real? Does she really think Santa Claus is bringing her gifts?

That's the whole thing when it comes down to it. When we look at how magical we are and how we came into this earth, then we realize that there's no other way around this, but through this.

Through that chaos, comes happiness, comes joy, comes magic. I'm totally rid of that now. Well, I've always been that. But they robbed it for me. Now I've become again.

Embrace my inner child and she's wild, she's funny. She could be a rough that times. She could be all sorts of things. But I still love her because she is true to who she is. She's authentic. She really doesn't care what anyone thinks about her. That's how I want to live my life. I don't care what you think.

If you don't like me, there's the door. I didn't invite you in You want to be here and you want to participate and have some fun, fine. But if you want to be that nasty, controlling kind of person, just leave. I don't want that in my life anymore. I choose the kind of people that I want in my life from here on out.

I want to thank you, Zak, for coming on the show. If you want to tell everybody a little bit where they can find you or reach out to you, if they want to talk to you.

Zak: Sure. Thank you for having me. You can reach me on Instagram @spiritualhustler. The name is just below. It’s HS-TLR. So spiritual HS-TLR. That's on Instagram. I'm there all the time. That's where I do most of my stuff. Facebook, exactly.

I'm there once in a while. Just reach me down on Instagram just at the name below. I want to thank everybody for joining us today.