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Kori Gouge

Core Connection Visibility Coach

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Stories (Blog)

Reimagining and Redesigning Your Life

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The quiet in the morning is almost eerie. The morning rush of traffic is gone. It feels like you are in one of those small towns where all the main street shops have for sale signs in the windows and the life has all but bled out of what used to be the bustling, beating heart of town.

When you have passed through these types of towns from adventures past, you often wondered what happened? Where did all the people go? Why did they leave? And what about the ones who stayed? Do they not miss how alive main street used to be? 

Now it isn’t about people fleeing small towns to find work in the city. It’s people sheltering at home, doing what they can to stop the spread of this deadly virus. It feels like a scene from a post-apocalyptic movie. No sophisticated weapons of war needed here  – a cough or a sneeze is all it takes to potentially take you out. 

The streets are quiet. Downtowns are like ghost towns.

And now, without having to drive to and from work, to social gatherings, kids activities and events, or going on mini-adventures, that aching of your soul that you had gotten so good at running from by maintaining a too full schedule is screaming at you to pay attention. 

Now, it says, now. 

Now we have the time. You don’t have to keep running from me. You’ll never be able to outrun me anyway. 

Listen. Listen to me. Let’s do this. 

Let’s use this time to get to know each other. I know you want more yet I can tell you’re not sure what that is or what it looks like or what it will require of you. Let’s use this time to explore that, bring it to the light. We can then decide what to do and how. I must tell you, the more that is calling you won’t go back to sleep after this. You are done sleeping. The desire for more is done being dismissed and discounted. It wants to be realized and you are the only one who can do that. 

Now that the pace has slowed, you can’t run from the calling of your soul anymore. There aren’t enough distractions now and time is no longer an excuse. 

You get to decide who you are going to emerge as on the other side of this pandemic.

You know you want more. 

It’s now a matter of vision, desire, determination, and a clear actionable plan. You need part practical action, part creative dreaming and imagination, and 100% love.

You want to redesign your life but don’t know how.

You are being nudged with this feeling – I have this opportunity to recreate myself but what direction do I want to go in? I don’t want to do it alone because I know it will take too long and I would love to have a guide to help me see the way.

Introducing Your Desire Emergence Roadmap – an intimate four week group experience

During the four weeks: 

  • You will get clear on who you’re going to be and how you’re going to create that and design the plan for actualizing it.
  • You will learn tools to keep you in alignment with your desires and forward momentum.
  • You will create practices to transform limiting beliefs and stay focused on where you are going, what you are creating, and who you are becoming.
  • Together, we will clarify and define your greatest vision and desire for your life and create a clear roadmap for going in that direction and bringing it into realization. 

*If you prefer to do this with one on one support that would take you through the implementation and execution of the plan, you can enroll in my one on one mentorship AND be a part of the group as a bonus for additional resources, support, and to be part of a like-minded and like-spirited community to boot!

Stop saying I want… and instead, be living and doing it.

Why now? 

Seeing hundreds of people die in one day is a real wake up call. Life can be gone in the blink of an eye and you don’t want to wait anymore. You know, now more than ever, there are no guarantees and you don’t want to die with dreams still unrealized inside of you. 

You’re tired of the excuses, tired of numbing out, going through the motions, seeking whatever distraction and dismissing your desires. You want to be awake, alive, and know that you are doing what is in tune with your values, beliefs, personality, how you work best, and what is the expression of your unique gifts. 

You want to master your emotional and energetic state and your physical, mental, and financial well being – to stop feeling like you’re caught in a pinball machine being knocked around by the various challenges of life. 

You want to feel secure in who you are even when it seems like the world is turned upside down. You want to know you have the tools and internal resolve and resources to weather any storm. 

You want to become who you meant to be, who your soul is calling you to be, and who your children, partner, family, community, and world need you to be. 

Learn more and enroll here: bit.ly/Rise_Align_Thrive

How Shifting Your Money Story Creates Security

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We are in unprecedented times. The stock market looks like a roller coaster ride. Businesses are being forced to close. Many people are looking at unemployment. Insecurity is rampant as is anxiety.

Why? Many people place their sense of security on money. Yet security can only come from within.

In 2017,  I was offering and conducting training and workshops on improving your relationship with money. I loved it and was passionate about it. I knew first hand how easily our relationship with money could be distorted.

I wanted to play a role in changing that and bringing more freedom and empowerment to people around money. 

Around that same time, I heard two people on two different occasions talking about people who helped people with their money and they commented that these individuals were driving basic cars. I could sense the judgment in their tone of voice – like who are you to tell us about money – you drive a Toyota! As if the type of car you drive determines your net worth. 

I started to second-guess myself. Well, I drive a basic car so does that mean I shouldn’t be helping people with money? What a silly question and even sillier that I entertained it.

There are a lot of vanity measures of worth – the type of car you drive, the size of your house, the brand name of your clothes. You can have all that and not be wealthy and instead be deep in debt. You can also have all that, not be in debt, and still feel poor.

The truth is your worth does not, and never has, come from your material possessions or financial status. That is the outside in approach that leaves many people chasing a certain financial status only to reach it and still feel empty inside. And others to lose it all and feel worthless without it.

It needs to be flipped. Start on the inside.

Create your own sense of worth and value from within – a worth and value that is not dependent on outside circumstances – and you will never feel poor, no matter what’s happening around you. When you create prosperity and wealth on the inside, it can’t help but be expressed on the outside. The same way a caterpillar cannot but become a butterfly. 

I never had money issues. I started earning money as an adolescent by offering my services as a babysitter and house cleaner. I got a job when I was 15 by walking to every business in my neighborhood to ask if they were hiring. None of them hired me but when I was sharing my search for work with a friend in math class, she suggested I apply at the dry cleaners where she worked.

I went in to apply, got a work permit, and was hired within the week. I loved it. These were pre-cell phone and mass credit card use days. Most people paid cash and we had to do the math in our heads to give the right change. I soon was closing the stores, tracking the money in, and depositing the money in the safe before I left. I felt so empowered!

In college, when I got my first credit cards, I always paid them off in full each month. I invested. I saved. I bought my own home when I was in my 30’s with no financial support from anyone but me. I had money to complete home repairs and to contract out work beyond my expertise. I felt free.

Then I got into coaching. I started investing 4 and 5 figures in other coaches and started buying into the rhetoric of the self-help and coaching world. All of a sudden I discovered I had money blocks. I learned it must be from my grandparents and parents or it was a fear of success or outshining your family.

The truth is I didn’t have any money blocks. You don’t either.

Believing this keeps you investing in getting help to overcome them though. This begins a vicious cycle of I must be broken so I need to invest in help. Yet when that support doesn’t help, you convince yourself you must be more broken than you thought. This keeps you in a cycle of debt, doubt, and an income that doesn’t meet your needs and desires.

Before all this, I had always been able to support myself well with plenty left over to invest in travel, my future, house projects, clothes, and fun. Now all of a sudden, I have money issues? 

Instead of looking at the evidence that I managed my money well and had always been a smart consumer and wise steward of money, I bought into the victim mentality. It’s your imprinting, they said. 

No, it’s not. It’s what you are choosing to believe which is what influences your decisions and actions which is what creates your outcomes.

When you accept full responsibility for your financial, physical, and mental well-being, there is no room for excuses or playing the victim. Talk about being empowered and free!

When you choose to invest from a place of fear, it is easy to convince yourself that if you invest more, you would be more motivated to do the work and whatever it took to get a return on your investment.

It doesn’t work.

Punishing yourself, by investing beyond your means, never equates to growth. Bullying yourself often turns into the MO and even though you have plenty of proof it doesn’t work, you keep at it.

What does it take to break free?

What it often does: hitting rock bottom. 

Seeing your debt increasing while your income isn’t. Struggling to pay the bills each month. Feeling anxiety around money in ways you had not experienced before.

You are not alone in this.

You can come back to seeing money as a tool that empowers you to live as you desire. This is what you need to live, so cool, what can you do to create that?

You can bring money back to neutral, like math. This is how it works – it doesn’t play favorites and it can’t be distorted. It simply is what it is. Numbers.

Now I am coming back to where I started.  You can too.

You are not broken. Whatever beliefs you may have picked up from your family are not a life sentence or curse. You get to create your own beliefs – beliefs that don’t take you down the rabbit hole of psychobabble money drama – that money is energy, pure and simple.

Join me in doing what it takes to get out of debt, stay out of debt, and increase your income to more than support you, your family, and the lifestyle you desire. Learn to be wise in your investments and smart about your future, which means having the proper life insurance and estate plan and building your savings and retirement fund. And, yes, maybe even driving a used car.

Now is the perfect time to create and build your sense of empowerment and freedom around money. The world will always be an insecure place and the future always uncertain.

You are the one who can create certainty and stability in not only owning your true worth and value but also in taking full responsibility for your financial, mental, and physical state of being. It’s all connected and it can all be transformed – one thought, belief, decision, and action at a time. 

Now is the Perfect Time to Get Right with Your Money

Mastering your energetic, emotional, financial, and physical state in times of uncertainty is my specialty – book your call with me to learn how we can work together so that you create a life that exceeds your greatest desires no matter what’s happening around you. 

Invest in yourself by working with a coach who sees you beyond whatever challenge you’re currently facing rather than one who defines you by your challenge.

http://bit.ly/Activate_You

Healing Humanity Begins Within

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The world is turned upside down. The things we feared – terrorism, nuclear bombs, guns – are not the things that are wreaking havoc around the globe.

What can we do in the face of such great uncertainty? When everything we thought we knew about the world is called into question? 

First, it is important to acknowledge the fear and anxiety you are feeling – not run from it, seek to numb it out, put your head in the sand and ignore it, nor dismiss it. 

It is a valid and understandable response. Can you allow yourself to sit with it with compassion instead of criticism?

This doesn’t mean you are feeding into it more. When we bring our fears out into the open, they lose some of their power over us. When can recognize how these fears make us feel and their impact on our state of being. In that place, we can then choose if we want to continue feeling that way or if we’d like to entertain other states of being.

We can have a conversation with the part of ourselves that is scared:

This is really unnerving. I can see why I would feel scared and anxious. That is a normal response to what’s happening, It’s ok. As I allow this to pass through me, I’d now like to experience feeling ok.

I’d like to open myself to feeling hopeful, to put my energy into seeing beyond this. I can look outside and see the sun warming the earth, I can hear the birds still singing, I can see the grass starting to grow again, the irises beginning to bloom. This reminds me that nature is in a constant state of regeneration and renewal. This helps me see that humanity is too.

That feels a little better. I’d like to feel more of that throughout the day. I know the more I can cultivate those feelings, the more positively I impact my mental and physical health, and the more positively I influence others. 

I appreciate the power I have to control and direct my mind to global healing and economic recovery. As I stay focused on this desire, I know I will be led to take specific actions that contribute to that outcome. 

This is a time for creativity, innovation, and a whole new level of connection – true connection to spirit, God, the universe, each other and your infinite inner power. 

To make changes on the physical plane, we must connect with the spiritual plane. This doesn’t mean we sit back and pray and meditate. Yes, prayers and meditation are powerful, yet without action, they are meaningless. We need both – a connection to spirit that drives action. 

We must tune into our intuition as we tune out from all the negativity. We must take action from a place of love and faith instead of fear and doubt.

We are all incredibly resourceful and resilient. Tune into that.

Where are you being called to take action? Who are you being called to be? Answer the call.

As you rise, you lift up all of humanity with you. 

#riseup #elevateconsciousness #globalhealing #innerpower #appliedfaith #intentionalaction #seebeyond #coreconnection

Using Curiosity to Release Distraction

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What are your default self-soothing activities?

Do they support you holistically?

I used to love nothing more than having a glass of wine at the end of a long day. It felt like a special treat. It allowed me to take the edge off of my day. 

As I increased my commitment to myself, I began to ask, what is it about my day that makes me feel on edge at the end of it?

I discovered the work I was doing was not aligned with my soul and that internal conflict was creating stress and anxiety. Instead of addressing the cause, I dealt with the symptom and numbed myself out with alcohol. It doesn’t work long term. 

The ache in your soul for you to be living and expressing your greatest desires and life purpose cannot be tamed by cheap substitutes.

Yes, it is scary to go after your desires but isn’t it scarier to live a life that is leading you on a path to self-destruction? 

I put away the bottle and when the unease and discomfort visited me, I sat with them. I committed to being curious instead of critical of those feelings. I asked what I really needed because I knew alcohol wasn’t going to cut it. I discovered that what I was craving was my own attention, my own love and care. 

Discomfort is a sign of disconnection. It is a call to come back to you, not run even further away from you. When you are willing to connect deeply with yourself, you notice your higher power is right there and has been all along. It is guiding you to your true desires, not your momentary distractions disguised as desires. 

We are truly incredible beings and we have the power to heal ourselves from our misguided beliefs and misaligned actions. We must return to ourselves to do so. We must trust we have what we need to support ourselves well and sustainably. We must trust our feelings are valid and allow them to be expressed without self-criticism. We can explore the beliefs we are holding that are leading to those unpleasant feelings and choose to create new beliefs. With those new beliefs, we can take new actions.

Actions that support our growth, the realization of our desires, and the expression of our life purpose. 

We can then create healthy ways to support ourselves through that growth as undesirable emotions surface to challenge our commitment. 

We get to choose differently which reinforces our new beliefs which then creates new feelings. 

We get to do this without the ill effects often caused by drinking – feeling hungover and foggy-headed, feeling remorseful for having said something that didn’t need to be said or having done something we regret. We can choose to make decisions with a clear head, an open heart, and take actions that demonstrate our integrity with ourselves instead of actions that demonstrate our inner conflict. 

I am choosing to be more awake and aware which means alcohol no longer plays a major role in my life. I value feeling clear and energetic and alcohol often takes that away from me. 

I still have a lot to learn and alcohol is just one of the many distractions used to escape ourselves. The more we commit to connecting deeply with ourselves, no matter how we feel, the more those other distractions will also begin to lose their appeal. 

It comes down to asking yourself, how do you most want to experience this one life of yours?

What allows you to feel more awake, aware, and alive? Are these activities and experiences a part of your day every day?

What would it take to shift more towards connection and distance yourself more from distraction?

What would that feel like?

What would that make available to you?

How would that change your life?

Book your call with me and find out.

Redefine Security to Experience True Freedom

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The world is an insecure place. It makes sense we, as humans, would grapple with our own insecurities. 

Yet we must challenge our conception of security. Security is not controlling everything, analyzing everything, or strategizing everything. Security is not perfection. 

Security, to me, is being free from worry about the future, anxiety about the present, and regret about the past. For me, security must come from within. It is cultivating inner trust, a strong faith, and knowing that you will be ok with you no matter what happens. 

Security is freedom from external measures of success, validation, approval, and acceptance and giving those things to you now, not when or if your conditions are met. 

Security is being calm in uncertainty, choosing to stay in the moment, and mastering your emotional and energetic state. 

Security comes from forgiving ourselves and choosing to love yourself despite your misguided decisions and misaligned choices. 

Security is being honest with yourself about where you are, what you want, and what you are and are not willing to do to get there. 

Security is being all of who you are wherever you are and whoever you are with.

Security is having the courage to share the truth of who you are, right where you are, no matter how messy that might be. 

What that mess has looked like in my life is wrestling with self-loathing and self-sabotage. I am learning to forgive, love, and accept myself. I am letting go of all the self-judgment and self-criticism and making amends to myself. There are moments when I feel freer than I have ever felt, joyful for no reason, and experience a deep connection with spirit. I am choosing to deliberately create more of those moments to replace the periods of doubt and depression. The more I realize that spirit is within me and working through me, the more I connect to my divine inner nature where worry, lack, and limitation don’t exist. There I see that my challenges have already been solved. There I see that my challenges chose me in order to grow me so that I could guide others through their challenges to their own liberation. There I see that everything is, indeed, always working out for me, even when I slip back into insecurity. I can now see that insecurity was calling me to wake up and come back to me – the divine, confident, courageous, imperfect me.

What does security look and feel like for you?

From shy insecure girl to confident bold woman performing on stage

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I used to be shy. I was the type of person who preferred being behind the scenes to center stage.

My stepdad nicknamed me ‘mouse’ because I was so quiet and always seemed to be hiding. 

I struggled with low self-esteem and confidence. I was self-conscious and worried about what others thought of me.

At various periods throughout my life, I have thought I was fat, ugly, stupid, and overall not good enough. 

Instead of buying into these lies, I did the work to uncover the truth.

It wasn’t easy. It was often uncomfortable and many times I wanted to throw in the towel and go back to my old ways. Yet, I knew there had to be something greater than living in such a state of insecurity. I knew I wanted to be free to be all of me no matter who I was around, what I was wearing, what I looked like, or what I was doing. 

I didn’t want to live constantly comparing myself to others, criticizing myself, holding myself back, and feeling down about myself and my life.

I knew, somewhere deep inside, that if I had created all this struggle, I had to be able to create its opposite – a feeling of freedom, security, and ease. 

Step by step, day by day, I did the work to shift my beliefs, thoughts, and actions.

I went on to overcome a decade-long battle with eating disorders, earn my Master’s degree, live and work outside the US for several years, travel abroad solo for multiple months, perform as a burlesque dancer, improv actor, and spoken word poet, become a university professor, community trainer and workshop facilitator, and communication and self-expression coach.

Being center stage no longer scares me. What people think of me no longer has power over me. 

I have learned that what matters is what I think of me and how I treat me. I get to choose my state of being in every moment – it no longer fluctuates based on the situation or the people I’m around. This also means I choose situations and people who elevate me both by challenging me to think differently and by loving me and all my imperfections without the need to change me. 

This is huge. It has given me a freedom like no other and a new kind of security. It has given me me back.

If this is speaking to you, I invite you to schedule a call with me.If you are tired of the comparison game, done going through the motions, and over being so hard on yourself, join me to learn a new way to be which will set you absolutely free.