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Kori Gouge

Core Connection Visibility Coach

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Stories (Blog)

Using Sugar to Disconnect and True, Authentic Sweetness to Heal

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I opened the freezer door in the teacher’s lounge, looked around to make sure no one could see me and then cut a piece of the ice cream cake. I ate it surreptitiously, barely even tasting it. 

I wanted it but didn’t want anyone to know I did so I couldn’t even enjoy this thing that I wanted. Yet, I felt compelled to eat it. I desperately longed for some semblance of pleasure in what felt like my depressed and chaotic world. 

This incident took me back 15 years when I would eat candy while hiding in the closet in my room.

I made sugar a god.

It could take away my anxiety. It could soothe me.

It did momentarily but then afterward, the anxiety was still there and was now compounded with more anxiety about the fact that I had eaten so much sugar.

Other times, I would eat a whole pint of Ben and Jerry’s Chocolate Brownie ice cream because I didn’t want that moment to end. Once I stopped eating the ice cream, I would have to face my unsettled life again. Yet, consuming such a large quantity of ice cream made me feel sick and disgusting and I would then sneak to the bathroom to purge it up.

I hadn’t learned how to handle anxiety so this was my attempt to ease the battle raging inside of me. It didn’t work. It made me feel worse, increased my anxiety, and made me doubt my ability to support myself in difficult times.

I was so afraid to face the inner demons that I did everything I could to keep them at bay. No matter what I did, though, they always came back, often even more ferociously. 

It took a deep desire to learn a different way, a way that truly supported me in both good times and bad, that compelled me to begin the process of healing.

I craved freedom from this compulsion, freedom from what felt like insanity, freedom to meet my needs with love and compassion instead of fear and self-abuse. Freedom to eat what my body wanted and needed without anxiety, fear, or shame. Freedom to feed myself well in every area of my life instead of starving or stuffing myself. 

The path was winding and involved books, support groups, and mentors, but more than all those things, what it required, truly, was me connecting to me, fully, completely, and authentically. It required sitting with the fear, anxiety, discomfort, and pain instead of fleeing from it, dismissing it, stuffing it down, or numbing it with large doses of sugary novocaine.

It wasn’t easy. I was learning how to be comfortable in my own skin, something I had lost long ago when I traded my sense of self for the approval of others.

What I discovered there was a scared, neglected, and abandoned little girl who was desperate to be seen, heard, acknowledged, and loved. She wanted to know her feelings, good and bad, were valid. Her desires and dreams real. Her fear and anger understandable. She wanted to be safe, secure, and accepted from within.

The thing she most wanted she could only give to herself,

This requires forgiveness, compassion, and radical self-acceptance and love.

It isn’t an easy road as the path to healing seldom is. What you discover, however, on this path is freedom, unlike anything you have ever experienced. A sense of connection that is hard to describe. A state of being that exudes peace, appreciation, and joy, which is what you had been searching for all along, albeit in all the wrong places.

The you you are meant to be is calling to be unleashed, begging you to pay attention, pleading with you to stop dismissing it and numbing it out. Its treasures far exceed the momentary pleasures of your distraction of choice.

And these treasures are not fleeting. They are who you truly are. 

You. Elevated.

http://bit.ly/Upleveled_Life –Heightened states of being, operating and interacting – you upgraded.

Significant Lasting Change: an Inner Body Experience

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The sun seemed to permeate my body, warming my solar plexus and the warmth spiraling out to every limb and hair follicle, eyelash, and fingernail.  I let out a huge sigh of relief. Feeling this warmth after days of below-freezing temperatures and gray and snowy days felt like a gift from above. I felt like I could breathe, I didn’t have to constrict myself to stay warm, brace against the cold. I could let go. I felt light, spacious, and energetic.

Would I be able to fully embrace and appreciate this experience if I hadn’t first experienced its opposite? Would it be as exquisite in and of it itself?

I don’t think so. 

So it made me contemplate what true change feels like when you are on the other side of it. 

Here is my attempt at describing a sliver of what the experience of true, significant change feels like:

It’s like a warm and sunny 70-degree day after weeks of freezing cold, gray skies, and unending snow. It’s like a day to play without a worry in the world, when all decisions are made based on pleasure, delight, and love after months or years of living in lack, scarcity, and limitation, always cutting back, always questioning if you had enough to cover your expenses, always looking for ways to restrict and constrict your desires so that it felt hard to relax, breathe, and trust it was all going to be ok. It is like going on a week’s vacation to the most gorgeous places with all of your favorite activities after not traveling for years. It’s like eating at a  fine-dining farm to table restaurant with all your favorite fresh vegetables, farm raised meats, grass-fed butter, and warm homemade bread after eating the same meals over and over again for months. It’s like otherworldly passionate, earth-shattering sex after years of little to no sex. It’s like the joy of seeing one of your favorite bands at one of your favorite concert venues long after the band is no longer a band and you had lost any hope of ever seeing them perform live. It’s like running on the trails through the forest as if you’re floating when you haven’t run for months. It is a joy that is hard to describe, an appreciation with no end, a love without limits.

It is an awakening. An awakening of the senses, the spirit, the soul, the heart, and the imagination. A call to dream bigger, to own who you truly are. It is an invitation to accept that all of this, all that you desire, is already yours. It always has been. It is waiting for you to claim it. 

This is possible when you stop battling yourself – assailing yourself with self-doubt, distrust, and discouragement and instead, reclaim and own how truly powerful you are. Stress and anxiety melt away like the snow under the sun’s rays. The energy within you is just as transformative as the sun. It ignites you and powers you to be the catalyst of change in every area of your life. 

So you soften, relax, trust, and appreciate all the tempests along the way to this unbelievable oasis – a place that is even better than you imagined. But, more than the place, it’s you you notice. There’s something different about you. An inner power. A sense of security. Irresistible confidence. Ease. Peace. Poise. Stature. Magnetism. You can’t take your eyes off of you. You’re amazing, You’ve come so far from those days of self-doubt, constant criticism, negativity, playing small, settling, frustration, anger, and disappointment. You hardly recognize you. Although you look mostly the same, there’s something within you – a fire – that is both powerful and inviting at the same time. 

The ascent from madness to brilliance has left you shining, vibrant, and divine. You have been alchemized – all the impurities burned away so that all that is left is the true, magnificent you.

Shine on, you crazy diamond, shine on. 

Let’s activate your transformation.

Cultivate Altered States to Create a New Reality

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What you are doing is not what matters. 

What matters is who you are being as you are doing all the things you are doing. 

You can be hustling in your career, working hard at the gym, doing all you do to improve your romantic relationship, but if you are doing all these things from a place of doubt, fear, and scarcity, you will not see the changes you desire.

I have experienced this in my life.

I used to be a total gym rat. Up at 5:30, at the gym by 6am. I watched what I ate. And yet, I was not in the shape I wanted to be. I was operating from a place of shame – I had to work harder, eat less, beat myself up more. There was a lack of trust in myself and in my body to know what was best for me.

This also happened in my career. I was doing all the things – going to networking events, hosting training, putting myself out there – and yet my business was not seeing the success I desired. Why? I was operating from a place of fear, distrust, and worry. I wasn’t connected to how I wanted to run my business and what the best way for me to do that was.

I was working hard at all these things yet I was going against me at every turn because I had lost my connection to me, my intuition, and my soul. 

It appears to the world and to the intellectual part of you that you are taking all the right actions. The perception is positive. People see you hustling and think things must be good. The issue is your internal perception of you is off. 

You have lost your connection to you. 

You don’t trust you and when you are running on doubt, there will never be enough right actions to take.

A woman in my networking group shared how this had impacted her real estate business. She said she was hosting a ton of showings but not getting any interest or sales. She was taking the right actions but who she was being was blocking her success. Once she took responsibility for her negative state of being, she could change it. She built practices to keep her in the right state of mind so she was serving with a full heart, full faith, and full trust in herself and her ability to sell. 

For me, I have since turned all that around. 

Connecting back to me allowed me to not only experience a new level of success, it also allowed me to do so with a lot more fun and a lot less stress. 

It is that simple yet it isn’t always easy. Often, you are going against years, if not lifetimes, of scarcity and fear programming. It takes vigilance and determination to reverse it. It is not only possible, it is absolutely necessary if you desire to not only have success in every area of your life, but also to feel a deep sense of meaning, satisfaction, and fulfillment.

As Tony Robbins has said, success without fulfillment is the true failure. 

If you are tired of doing “all the things” and are ready to shift your state of being so you can create significant, meaningful, and lasting change in your life, let’s talk. It’s time to design your unique style of operating for genuine, authentic success. 

High-level Living Requires a High-Level You

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Follow your heart and let go of the ‘right’ way.

The only ‘right’ way is the way that lifts you up, gives you energy, and brings you joy.

And this way often won’t be socially acceptable and may look crazy to many people. Lean into you. Trust your heart more than your head. Steel your faith. 

When you commit to altering your way of being to resonate at a higher frequency, you will naturally attract your true desires. In this state, you are connected to your higher self vs the wounded self.

The wounded self desires to stay small, safe, play the victim, want to be rescued, check out, numb out, settle for quiet desperation, low-grade depression, live below their true potential, and let their dreams die inside them. This makes them less than the person they desire to be. Their relationship with themselves turns abusive and distrustful. They hold back in their relationships, afraid of intimacy because if people saw who they really were and how screwed up they are, they would leave them. They settle for work that doesn’t fill their soul or bank account well which keeps them in a constant state of struggle and striving. They isolate out of shame and embarrassment. 

When the wounded self is running the show, it is quite literally, a shit show. That isn’t who you are meant to be.

You are powerful beyond belief. You aren’t a victim. You don’t need to play it safe or play small. You don’t need rescuing. You are pure source energy. The energy that creates and transforms worlds.

That energy begins within. That is where it is shaped and molded by your thoughts and beliefs. 

When you think high-level thoughts, and hold high-level beliefs, you naturally take high-level actions. You raise your standards for how you treat yourself and how you let others treat you. You create and cultivate high-level relationships. You operate at a high-level, love at a high-level, and live at a high-level. Your body, mind, soul, and life evolve as a natural reflection of your own high-level evolution.

High-level living. High-level you.

Body Mind Soul Evolution: Three Proven Tools to Increase Intuition, Boost Confidence, Elevate Your Energy, and Uplevel Your Life

http://bit.ly/Upleveled_Life


Wrestling the Inner Bully Requires Elevation

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The problem is that you feel like you’re almost always at odds with you. 

You don’t feel comfortable in your own skin. You come across as confident but you don’t feel it as true for you. You want to crawl outside of yourself. You feel like a fraud. There are all these people doing great things you think, and you, you’re just going through the motions, not engaging wholly or fully in much of anything. It’s like you don’t even know why you’re here sometimes. 

What is the point of it all anyway? Follow the yellow brick road only to find it led you to disappointment and a sense of emptiness, which you then try to fill with alcohol, food, or nice things. That all just makes you feel even emptier. If all these things – money, travel, a newer car, clothes, social affairs, a nice home – don’t do it, what, then, will? 

Is there no end to this longing for something more? Will you ever feel a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment, meaning and purpose? Will it always remain elusive? 

It makes you tired and bored.

You want to feel excitement, passion, and joy for what you do, who you are, how you live, and the legacy you are creating. 

You want to be remembered for having contributed something grand to the world, not just having gone through the motions without so much as leaving a mark. What kind of life is that anyway?

You want to live a grand life – to feel a deep sense of soul connection to your work, to engage in and cultivate rich and rewarding relationships, to have energy and enthusiasm for the activities you love, and to feel vibrant, alive, and on fire for the life you created. You want people to see you, feel your energy light up the room, and think, what do they have, what is it about them that is so magnetic? 

You want to know the answer is – what I got is me – the high level, powerful, confident, and courageous me. 

You will then have tapped into your own pure source energy at all levels and there will be no stopping you. 

It’s going to be a helluva ride. 

Are you ready to live an upleveled life? To create lasting change and live at the highest level of being, thinking, and operating? Evolve your mind, body, and soul to create a life you truly love that is the purest expression of you?

Schedule your call with me and let’s begin. http://bit.ly/Activate_You

Grab a copy of Three Powerful Tools to Create Lasting Change and Live at a Higher Level (with more freedom and fun!).

http://bit.ly/Upleveled_Life

The Power of Connecting to the True You

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What happens when you meet your true needs authentically, when you listen deeply and give yourself what you really want instead of what you think you want?

No more stress eating, overindulging, drinking one too many, bingeing on social media or Netflix, clicking BuyNow one too many times on Amazon, numbing out with any number of distractions and then feeling like crap when the buzz wears off.

When you listen deep down to the true need, you can then fill it well, which supports your growth and expansion. Instead of feeding the surface need to alleviate the discomfort, using any number of distractions yet afterward finding the need is still there, you give yourself love, support, attention, validation, and acknowledgment. You can’t get that from chocolate, alcohol, social media, or tv. It can only come from within.

When you demonstrate to yourself that you can be trusted to meet your true needs, the distractions lose their allure and you can then enjoy them for what they are – a nice pleasure that can enhance your experience instead of being used to numb yourself out. 

Then what happens is you notice that the discomfort no longer scares you. The challenging emotions and situations can now be approached with curiosity and compassion and allow you to discover the true need beneath the discomfort. You see you are equipped to meet that need well which then allows even more desires to come to you because now you trust you to support you. 

You see you won’t dismiss or discount your desires. You won’t abandon yourself when things get tough. You’ll show up even stronger for yourself and you’ll start to feel safe in expanding, progressing and succeeding in all you desire without holding back, or feeling guilty, selfish, or arrogant. 

You’ll see that being the highest level of you requires the highest levels of awareness, attention, appreciation, and care for your core self. 

In that divine environment, you reach new heights and go beyond what you dreamed possible. You experience a deep sense of purpose, inner power and security, humility, joy, and grace. 

You have found what you were truly searching for.

Learn how – http://bit.ly/Activate_You

#truedesire #trustyou #sharpenintuition #elevateyourlife #coreconnection