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Megan Mary: Welcome. So Karen Chasten is our special guest today. In July 2011, Karen’s life changed forever when her 27 year old son Dan suddenly and unexpectedly passed away at her back door.

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Megan Mary: Within 15 months she chose redundancy, laid off from her much loved CFO role and began a personal, professional, and spiritual journey, culminating in becoming a beyond loss expert.

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Megan Mary: international, bestselling, author, international speaker, and co-founding the Chaston Centre.

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Megan Mary: Thank you for joining us today, Karen.

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Karen Chaston: Thank you, Megan. It’s so good to be here exciting. Yes.

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Megan Mary: You are doing so many wonderful things, helping women and everyone with loss. And I want to talk to you today about that as well as about your own personal journey. So my first question is, what does enlightenment mean to you?

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Karen Chaston: To be aware to know who you are, inside and out. I don’t think you can have enlightenment without doing that deep dive within yourself

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Karen Chaston: to truly know who you are. We all wear so many masks, you know we we so many hats, and until we know who we are truly know who we are, we can’t become enlightened.

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Megan Mary: Yes, I couldn’t agree more. It’s that connecting with your your true purpose, your higher self understanding what you really put here to do throughout through all the trials and tribulations that you might encounter, and finding finding the meaning in those moments of your life

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Karen Chaston: totally, which is why you know the Chaston Centre is all about meaningful living.

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Karen Chaston: and it’s it’s, you know, you can expand on even further than what you’ve said, which is so beautiful is it’s like you’re connecting your 3 brains like your mind, your heart, and your gut.

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Karen Chaston: And when we listen to all 3 of them, that’s how we leave that more meaningful life. Hmm, yes.

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Megan Mary: so I know you had a pivotal moment, and I I touched on that in your introduction. But please tell us the story about your pivotal moment and your enlightenment journey that brought you to where you are today.

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Karen Chaston: Yeah, thank you. He took me 15 months to even realize that possibly it was a pivotal moment to be so. What happened was my 27 year old son Dan, who is a twin. He has a twin brother, Josh and an older brother Ben, and an older sister Kim.

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Karen Chaston: and he went out. We thought a healthy 27 year old had gone out the night before, and Unfortunately he came home, and for some reason he’d left his key at home, and he’d rung his girlfriend. He had gone out separately.

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Karen Chaston: and she said, I’ll leave the key out for you, and then he bent down to pick it up, and everything shook up when he fell over, and it wasn’t he had drunk way too much, but it wasn’t that that killed him. It was actually his lungs that failed him.

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Karen Chaston: When he fell over. He went to catch his breath, and he couldn’t, and unfortunately passed, when we found him.

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Karen Chaston: probably around 4 hours later.

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Karen Chaston: We thought he was still alive because he was in the fetal position, with saliva coming out of his mouth. But unfortunately, when the paramedics arrived very quickly after, they said, he’s been dead for several hours.

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Karen Chaston: So yeah.

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Megan Mary: That is such a horrible story.

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Karen Chaston: especially. I guess it highlights, you know, to me I follow the age old advice, you know. Keep busy. Give it time everything will be all right, and that’s exactly what I did. So I this is how how

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Karen Chaston: I like to say ignorant when it comes to loss, and I actually now call it most of us have a lack of lost intelligence, and I was very ignorant in knowing what to do. I literally he passed on the Sunday morning and On Tuesday morning I decided to go into work just to tidy things up, because I wasn’t going to be in for the rest of the week.

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Karen Chaston: But I can remember consciously thinking, just go into work and just get everyone commenting over, and then they don’t have to say it again, which is so ridiculous.

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Karen Chaston: you know I just wanted everyone to say, Oh, sorry for your loss which I used to say before, but I never say that now it’s such a tick the box response. You know you watch any show where you know the police have to go, and you know, inform someone on some sort of loss. And and they they just say it. And they just say it like it’s on remote or something. It’s it’s just like, sorry for your loss. And you just think, Oh, it’s such a horrible thing to say

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Karen Chaston: so. Yeah, it’s you know. I didn’t know what to do. And so I followed that. And I found myself, you know, eating too much, drinking too much, definitely working too much, not wanting to go home, you know, because Dan and his girlfriend, you know, lived with us at that stage. They’d been with us for 2 years They’d been ready to move out

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Karen Chaston: when that happened, and his girlfriend ended up staying with us for another year.

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Karen Chaston: which was good because the 3 of us were grieving together, and the 3 of us, you know, saw his body, you know there and no one no one else saw, and it in our family, so it It was good to be together, even though we all grieved very, very differently.

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Karen Chaston: which in itself is okay. But most people don’t think that they think no, no, this is the line you got to follow, and if you’re not following it, what’s wrong with you? And it’s not the case at all.

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Megan Mary: And and there’s so so many different kinds of loss too that that you have come to help people with. And I think that even ones that we might not consider losses.

Karen Chaston: Yeah, there are over 40 different loss events, and when you, when you look at the list that you know you’ll put up now it’s you know the main ones are the death of a left one, a divorce, the separation, your job loss, your health, your wealth, your pets.

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Karen Chaston: but if you look back over the last few years that we’ve all lived in worldwide. A lot of the minor ones came to the forefront. Loss of freedom, choice, status, identity, changing work conditions, recreational and social activities, and see most of them because we don’t see them as loss. We don’t see them as a grief causing situation.

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Karen Chaston: So when they come into our lives.

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Karen Chaston: and we can’t pick ourselves up as quickly as what we expect ourselves and our friends expect us ourselves to pick ourselves up. We start to think there’s something wrong with this. We start to go. I just don’t. I can’t get over this.

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Karen Chaston: It’s because you’re not doing the great process, or whatever that loss was, and it could be a person, a place, or a thing. And when you honor yourself and you honor the the person, place, or thing that you’ve lost. That’s when you go through that process and you come out the other end. You’re going to be completely different. But that’s okay. That’s why that loss came to me like I am completely different

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Karen Chaston: to who I was before Dan passed, and then, when I chose redundancy from my much love CFO role. You know. I looked at myself, and I just thought I didn’t even like you like who you’ve become.

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Karen Chaston: I truly had lost my identity. And it’s funny. Loss of identity comes up every single time I work with someone. They might come to me for something else, but that will always come up in the process, and when you think about it, we do slowly lose who we are, just through growing up.

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Karen Chaston: and then through a workplace, or from a marriage or a any situation where we’re not being with authentically ourselves. We lose a little bit of ourselves along the way.

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Megan Mary: Yes, and I think the identity piece

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is really key there, because women in particular go through so many transitions regardless of job changes just

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Megan Mary: with our bodies changing and things that happen to every woman that happen, regardless of our other situations, with our relationships or our career, or

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Megan Mary: anything like that. And to think of menopause as a loss is, is really

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Megan Mary: a profound thing, because we often think of only death as being lost as qualifying that that category. But we very much do transition to a new identity when we start to go through changes that women start to go through, and that can be as early as mid thirties and and go for the rest of your life, really, because

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Megan Mary: there are so many things that happen, and society just doesn’t really acknowledge that as a as a loss, or as the significance of that transition as they do other transitions that are more.

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Karen Chaston: you know. supported. Yeah. So right. And isn’t it funny that you know women’s I guess things that happen with our fertility is the words actually start with men like menstrual cycle, menopause. And you just sort of think it. It’s interesting that they were named that. But when you think well, you know, menopause so, men on pause.

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Karen Chaston: and we sort of go. Yes, but more importantly, it’s you’re putting the men on pause so that you can actually start to find you.

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Karen Chaston: you know, and more more than likely at a similar time. You’re also becoming an empty nester, which is another grief, causing situation and other major loss of it. That isn’t as recognized as it could be. You probably have aging parents that you’re dealing with. So you have all of these things coming to you as well as you know all these changes in your body happening, and

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Karen Chaston: the thing that I really do love about, you know my daughter is about to turn 50 at the end of this year, and I’m pretty sure you’re a similar age from our talk.

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Karen Chaston: and you know I’ve been saying to her probably for about 10 years. I can’t wait to you to get to 50, and she’s like, stop aging me, I’m like, no, no, no, you don’t understand. It’s about who we become when we become 50 or around that age.

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Karen Chaston: we really do start to come into our essence. Our wisdom is is so amazing that we start to not worry about what other people think of us we start to more or less declare to the world. This is me. Love me or hate me. I don’t mind, but this is me, and it’s a pity that we can’t do that around 25 or 30. But

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Karen Chaston: at 50. It’s really is a great age for us to be able to do that. And it really is. Not only is it so

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Karen Chaston: Just so relaxing, and so like, I’ve just lifted the world or the the weight out of my body by saying, declaring, This is it. And and we live in a world of duality. So we’ve, you know, when we realize that 50% of the world are not gonna really find us their cup of tea, but the other 50% will. So it’s like, I’m finding my tribe. And that’s where I’m going?

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Megan Mary: Absolutely. Yes. And and I think that that’s that’s exactly when I when I talk about the 4 stages of women’s lives.

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Megan Mary: we we traditionally are just given the 3, you know. Yeah, yeah. And and it’s skipping this one which which I call the seeker, which is really that period where we start saying, you know, I really kind of do have an idea about who I really am. And now I’m starting to feel like I’m running out of time.

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Megan Mary: and it’s time for me to really connect with that and push away all of those other things that I’ve been carrying with me that They told me that you can’t do that, or you shouldn’t do that.

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Megan Mary: And I think I I call that the the crossroads, and I find that as we, as we stand at the crossroads. Whatever brings us there.

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Megan Mary: it’s it’s a pivotal time in our lives to examine what it really is that we feel we’re here to do. And I’ve I’ve found in in my own work that our dreams try to tell us that our subconscious really knows already, and it’s trying to tell us in stories what it is that we’re here to do, and when we can connect with our higher self.

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Megan Mary: using whatever modality works for you, but dreams is one and a very powerful one. Then we’re able to step into that new identity and embrace it

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Megan Mary: and begin on our new path.

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Karen Chaston: I totally agree. I totally agree, and it’s it’s normally some sort of loss that will stop us in our tracks, because

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Karen Chaston: I like to say that you know, we’re all on an infinite journey, where we go from from love to loss, and then back up to love, and then we continue on that journey. Unfortunately, most people or many people get stuck in that loss in the down, you know they become depressed. They, the the weight to the world is is there, and they, you know, a great way to describe it is

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Karen Chaston: you’re on the floor, and you don’t know how to get back up.

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Karen Chaston: And but when you start to deep dive into that loss, and you start to do the opposite, you know, in my 5 step program, which I called the Gift of Loss. Now, I just want to make it clear for everyone. The gift does not come in the loss of that. But there was no gift in Dan passing. I would love to have him here But the gift comes down the road in who you become.

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Karen Chaston: if you choose to do the more loving way to find what that loss was all about, you know, and you have to stop. You can’t be busy. You have to stop. It’s in the stillness, it’s in the stopping where you do go within. When you do start to ask yourself those very important questions, and I found that the quality of your life will always relate back to the quality of your questions.

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Karen Chaston: because the that’s where your answers come from, and then when you get your answers, then you get your action steps, and that’s when you start to move into becoming that person and having that spiritual understanding, that spiritual, higher self that

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Karen Chaston: we are all spiritual being here on an earthly experiences to experience the world to experiencing these challenges, and we all fight them. And we we don’t understand that they’re a gift

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Karen Chaston: because they are guiding you to say, Hey, come on! You played too long in this sort of line. It’s time to Get on to the pathway where you’re meant to be. Come down here to to experience.

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Karen Chaston: And you know, so this is gonna we’re gonna throw this at you. And you know. So you know, Dan passed, and 15 months later I lost my job, which was my choice, but because they were gonna put me into a lower job. And I was like, no, I can’t do that. So it was.

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Karen Chaston: you know. I just knew that if I had stayed there I would’ve got some sort of illness. You know my parents between them they had heart attack, strokes, type 2 diabetes. So you know. And that’s all very stress related.

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Karen Chaston: And this my job was very, very stressful. Not that I realized it at the time. Most people, don’t, you know, remember people saying to me, How do you cope with stress? And I’m like. I don’t get stressed. I’m just always the same, you know, on the same level, and the thing with what my my misunderstanding or my my misdiagnosis, I guess is that I was always in that heightened state. I never came down.

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Karen Chaston: so I never appeared to be up and down, which isn’t good, and then I’m like, no wonder I was always angry, I was always full of adrenaline. And

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Karen Chaston: so yeah, it’s really important for us to understand who we are, what a woman’s body is, how different a woman’s body is to a man’s body, especially when it comes to adrenaline and cortisol on what it actually does in our body.

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Karen Chaston: It’s so important for us to understand that I was in my fifties, when I understood that, I was like why didn’t I know this when I was younger.

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Megan Mary: yes. And the estrogen of course, which is

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Megan Mary: a a key thing for women and plays, such a role in in everything, I like what you said about pausing and needing to be still needing to be quiet in order to hear that. And I’ve

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Megan Mary: I’ve found that meditation is and journaling are fantastic ways to create that stillness, to allow that that inner voice to come through. What what practices do you utilize in your work, or personally, that you find help with creating that

Karen Chaston: I’ve got so many spiritual practices, and I love them, and a lot of people misunderstand spiritual practices. They think it

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has to be meditation, or you know, journaling or things like that. But it it could be just walking in nature.

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Karen Chaston: It could be grounding yourself, you know. I love to ground myself, and I’m so grateful that I live, you know, in Australia and the area called the Gold Coast, where we have these amazing beaches. And and you know if you can put your feet into an ocean or into a lake, or into something with the intention of just having the stress, the negativity release from your body. It’s amazing how

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Karen Chaston: grounding it is, but it’s like you’re connecting your heaven and in your earth sort of thing. So you grounding your feet down into Mother Gaia, and then you bring in. You know the sun God and everything into your body which is so amazing. so yeah, I love grounding. I love meditation. I love, you know, journaling, and I even created you know my gratitude Journals, the elements collection

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gratitude journals where there is, you know water, air, fire, and earth.

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Karen Chaston: and the and they’re beautiful like they have 99 photos that I took personally. Except for the fire ones.

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I took all of the other ones personally, and for the earth ones. I went out to a place in Australia which is Uluru where we have this amazing rock in the center of Australia. And it’s so spiritual. It’s where our aboriginals, you know they are. They own that area. And they maintain it. And it’s so beautiful, it’s so spiritual. You feel so connected to the earth.

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Karen Chaston: But you also feel connected to your higher self. So yeah, reading, I read, I love reading. I’ve only read non-fictio I read so many spiritual books. but just enlighten me even more so. There’s so many different ways that you can connect to yourself, just breathing

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Karen Chaston: breathing in, I called a conscious, loving breath, you know, breathing deep down into your belly where they the the V, the nerve endings of the vagus nervous if you breathe into that, and it comes all the way up into your hypothalamus.

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Karen Chaston: the command center of your brain. And you just you’re connecting at all. So you breathing in past your heart into your gut. And then you’ve connected to your brain and you just get get that cycle happening you. It’s really amazing how differently you think. Another great ways is I drink green juice every day I find that is an amazing way to connect yourself, you know, giving yourself a healthy.

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vibrant foods to awaken you as well.

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Megan Mary: Yes, I couldn’t. I so agree with that. I love green juice, and that that’s part of the reason that I studied plant based nutrition was just because I felt so

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Megan Mary: attached to the feeling that you get when you you fuel your body with the the foods it needs. It’s yeah. Yeah.

Karen Chaston:When you put when you put a live foods into your body, it’s amazing. And so she was conscious, and you had that secret ingredient. You know that four letter word love. When you add that into everything that you put into you make for your body. It really is amazing how different

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you you feel. How more alive you feel.

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Karen Chaston: So what makes your approach unique? when you where you work in the Chaston Centre. Tell me about that, how you came to establish it, and what’s unique about what you do there.

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Karen Chaston: So, after leaving my corporate life, and I I just knew I wasn’t going to be an accountant anymore, had no idea what I was going to do. And then life sort of took me a little bit on a journey where I became a life coach, originally thinking I was going to be working with women, helping them to remain feminine in that corporate environment like the opposite of what I did. I became very masculine, very angry, as I said earlier.

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Karen Chaston: but then it just didn’t go the way it did, and I and then I started to deep dive into loss. I’d been told very early on. That’s what I was gonna do, but it was too close to Dan’s passing, and I didn’t understand. Loss like I do now, and I thought, no, these people are all sad like. I’m not all sad like. Sure I missed Dan, and I have sad moments, but my general persona is, I’m very positive.

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Karen Chaston: So when I deep dived into loss and realized the expanse of it, and how, you know, most people have no idea what to do. As I said, I call it, that lack of loss intelligence.

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Karen Chaston: The more I deep dived into it, and the more I started to develop and work with different people. You know, I have this so many amazing trainers who or you know, advisors that came in at the right moment and gave me a little piece of this puzzle, and then another little piece which I brought all together, and then mixed my essence to it. And that’s when I came out with my gift of loss program. And that’s a 5 step process.

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Karen Chaston: And the first step, as I said. is to stop

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Karen Chaston: right? Complete opposite, because you stop because you need to stop so that you can figure out what does this mean for me

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Karen Chaston: like now? What does it mean for me? Moving forward? The second step is to accept, like my life is going to be different. I’m not going to be that person who I was before this happened, and as soon as you can accept that you can then more easily go. Okay.

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Karen Chaston: I’m here to live my life right. And the thing that came to me as I was putting that together probably a little bit before was.

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Karen Chaston: you are the only person

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Karen Chaston: you are going to spend your entire life with, no one else Do you spend 24 h every single week of your life?

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Karen Chaston: So why are you putting yourself last and giving up on your hopes, dreams, and aspirations?

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Karen Chaston: Because you’ve come in here alone and you’re gonna leave alone. So why is it that you’re not living to your full potential?

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Karen Chaston: And when they hit me, I was like, Wow you. So right. I did like when I was in my corporate life.

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Karen Chaston: I was in my professional life, and that but I spent probably about 85% of my time in that role. You know, I didn’t look after myself, physically and mentally or emotionally or spiritually.

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I always had a spiritual side to me, but not like now

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Karen Chaston: and then I thought, yeah, so what? And we all do it, women especially. But when we start to realize, no, I matter, and the more I look after me the more topped up I’ll be, and the more I can actually give. But you give it from a place of essence, not from a place of have to.

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Karen Chaston: Now I have to do this. Now I’ve got to do this. What about me? You know you’re always screaming. What about me? What about me? So when you come into that acceptance, and you go right.

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Karen Chaston: It’s time for me to look after me in a loving way. So how can I best do that? And that’s when you move on to the third step, which is to identify. So you start to identify the things about the relationship that you lost the things that you’d like to apologize for, the things that you’d like to forgive, and the things that you’d like to acknowledge.

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Karen Chaston: You also are going to deep dive into what your hope dreams and aspirations were regarding that relationship. And you got a deep dive into that as well, because you can go. Okay. I can still have this. And sure it will be different. But I don’t need to just throw that dream all that hope out the window just because of this loss. And and that’s the issue with a lot of people is they think all this is over. I can’t do this anymore.

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Karen Chaston: So they’re throwing away their hopes and their dreams and their aspirations. So once you identify all of that, then you move on to the stage where you complete the relationship.

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Karen Chaston: What we mean by complete is that in every aspect of a relationship there’s 3 aspects. So the first is the physical. That’s the things you do. You think you say the things you don’t do, things you don’t say the way to hang out together, the way you touch each other.

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Karen Chaston: Then we move on to the emotional, which is all encompassing of the good, the bad, the glad, and the sad.

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Karen Chaston: And then we have the third aspect, which is the spiritual. Now we know that we’re connected to this person place something, but we just don’t know why we’re so connected to them.

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Karen Chaston: So when a relationship ends, the only thing that ends is the physical relationship.

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Karen Chaston: the emotional and the spiritual will live on forever.

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Karen Chaston: And it’s the emotional relationship that causes us all this pain related to the physical. Why did I say this? Why didn’t I do this? Why did I do this? All these sort of things? So we haven’t completed it. So when we complete that physical part of the relationship, we won’t have the grief and the suffering

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Karen Chaston: because we’re not beating ourselves up. More importantly, we’ve dived into the emotions. Now, emotions, are you best friend? And I know it was gonna go, what do you mean? My emotions on my best friend? So they’re actually guiding you to a place that needs to be healed a place that needs to be completed.

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Karen Chaston: and depending on where they come into your body, they relate to a chakra as well. So it’s it’s not an easy emotion important for you to dive into, but also where it’s located in your body is also an area for you to heal. That’s why I say your your emotions are your best friend, and I even created a course called your Emotional best friend.

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Karen Chaston: which is an amazing program that helps you to dive into different emotions. But all more importantly, it gives you 3 ways to it, also dives into the chakras with. Then it gives you 3 ways to move this emotion out of your body, even through writing that through speaking it or through moving it.

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Karen Chaston: And that’s another great spiritual practice is dance. Oh, my God! Especially when you’re getting that tribal movement of knowing how to truly move, and dance and grabbing that emotion and bringing it out of your body. And then so first of all, you got to identify it, then you’ve got to break it up because it’ll be one big mess, and then you release it.

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Karen Chaston: then you restore it, and then you rejoice. So when you restore it, you bring in a higher vibrating emotion, which is an amazing exercise in itself. And then from there you move on to the pivotal

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Karen Chaston: the pivotal part, which is the fifth step of the gift of loss where you do deep dive into all areas of your life so that you can say, Okay, this is where I am now, this is where I want to be. How do I close that gap and close that gap. Not just over all in every single areas of your life, because the more you concentrate on all areas of your life, the more that you are going to

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Karen Chaston: live and love your life because you’re rolling along. If you think of your wellness wheel as a wheel on the car, if it’s not rolling along nicely, you’re gonna have a really hard road. Most people’s wellness is not smooth running. It’s very lumpy. And bumpy and that’s what the issue is so once you smooth out, the ride, you have a really good life.

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Megan Mary: yeah, it sounds like an amazing program. And I think, I think all of the steps there, you know, are are crucial to

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Megan Mary: recovering from any sort of

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Megan Mary: transition or or loss. But also just the integration that you’re talking about is is is really important because you want to figure out what it is that you’ve lost, or what you what what there is to gain, and how you can transform this situation to your advantage, and I think that

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Megan Mary: it. It also is very much reflected in in I I the dreams I was thinking about the whole time you were talking, because I all of those things. Reflect in your dreams as well, and being being ready to figure out those steps and take the deep dives which sometimes are.

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Megan Mary: of course, not easy to do. That’s why we have recurring dreams. That’s why we have nightmares. That’s why we have distressing dreams, and in the phrase that emotions are Your friend is is very important when you’re considering those, because

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Megan Mary: when we dream, all our logical brain is turned off, but our emotional brain is turned on, and that’s why, when they can be so emotional and they can really feel so real. And the emotions are actually the key to figuring out the meaning.

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Megan Mary: And that’s that’s part of my method is identifying. Okay, how did I feel when this happened in the dream? And then how did I feel when I woke up and and really owning those emotions, because that’s where the true meaning lies.

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Karen Chaston: Yeah, you are so right, it really is. And most people can’t even name their emotions. You know, when I ground you to study, I mean about 16 17 years ago now, and she dived into people identified, and they came up with 3 happy mad sad.

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Karen Chaston: and you just sort of go, that’s all they could come up with. And you think, no, it’s so important to dive into. Get and get the true meaning of you know. What? What am I feeling at this time? So you can name it, and at the moment My grandson, my 4 year old grandson. He’s mother boarding this like placemat, and at least 16 different emotions, you know, with a lot of the middle emoji with them, and it’s so good because we’re going through it with him. Going you know. What’s that emotion? What does that mean? And so he can understand at four

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Karen Chaston: to be able to grasp the emotion because it is I learnt this really great acronym, which which is nurse, and excuse me, and it said, the first one is to name the emotion.

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Karen Chaston: So you’ve got a name. Your emotion, the second one for you is to understand it like, why are you feeling this? What does this relate to the R is to respect it

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Karen Chaston: and to because a lot of time, when we we berate ourselves for having that emotion, but no respect it, and take responsibility for it, the S Is for silence and for support.

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Karen Chaston: So you know, what what sort of support do you need while you are having this emotion? And then the E is to have empathy for yourself. So it’s a really great acronym is to remember, nurse, and whether it’s for yourself.

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Karen Chaston: or when you are speaking to someone else, is to get them to name their emotions. You know, after I created the gift of loss program. And I started working with so many people. I really started to get this inside of me. Aw imagine if I understand people the way I understood profits in my corporate life. Like how different would have I been! How different would the workplace have been.

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Karen Chaston: you know, as being like a very senior manager in the organization. You know, we can obviously direct the way things happen. And I was like, Oh, wish I could understand that. That’s when I created my people profits connection programs to take it into the workplace so that people can start to really connect to their people, to value them as their greatest asset.

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Karen Chaston: and, more importantly, to create that team dynamic workplace. And when people do understand their emotions, they not only do when they understand themselves, but they understand other people. They will have those conversations, you know, so often we’re scared to have conversations. Well, they might get angry at me, or they might cry like, what am I going to do with that sort of thing? But when you know who you are, you know how to

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Karen Chaston: to comfort yourself and to be there for yourself, so you can then be there for others, and you’re willing to have that conversation. Someone gets angry. You know the best advice is for you, not take it personally. Do not tell them to calm down, because that will only just make them even more so. But you see, you start speaking really quietly to them and say, what is this about?

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Karen Chaston: Let’s discuss it. I’m here for you, but you know we just become really calm with them and say, I’d like to understand why you are so angry. Please tell me, and then they’ll talk, and then you say, Is there anything else, and they’ll keep talking, and then you keep asking these or anything else until they say No, there’s nothing else. And then, because you’ve been listening to them and not interrupting them. You can, really. They? They will start to come down and they’ll start to go. Oh, wow!

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Karen Chaston: You actually do care about. Cause a lot of time in a lot of workplaces. Most people don’t think they manages or leaders do care about them. So when you start to show that you do care for them, and you can reiterate back to them. Okay, this is what I heard. Is this correct?

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Karen Chaston: And then I’ll say yes or no, and then you’ll work through it. And then eventually you will come to a stage where you can say, Okay, let’s create a plan together on how we can resolve all of this? And isn’t that so much better than just 2 people, screaming at each other and then walking away with a huff.

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Megan Mary: I, I think it’s great that you translated that approach into both the personal and the career arena because obviously there’s value in both and I think that. That’s

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Megan Mary: we spent so much of our time doing work for others that to maintain that meaningfulness

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Karen Chaston: in in both arenas of your life really brings that full circle. Yeah, to be quite honest we should be exactly the same people in all areas of our life, you know. So often we put on a professional persona, and we completely different. And you like, sure, you can where different clothes like I’m not telling you wear the same clothes, but I am, you know, be the same person, and that’s when you always authentic. And it’s amazing how everything seems to just flow so much more easier

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Karen Chaston: when you become that true person. So what’s next for you in this journey? What’s next for the Chaston Centre? Or, yeah? Well, we’re always creating progress. But what I found which I really love is, I’m really starting to get into so many more collaborations with people.

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Karen Chaston: and you know I thought about it a few years ago, but I think I was still a little bit too much in my ego. But now I’m really where it’s the last 3 years that we’ve all been through what it is. I really love

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Karen Chaston: working with other people like creating things together where it’s a true collaboration. It’s 50/50, you know, we’ve been creating workshops. I’ve been creating retreats live and online with with so many amazing different people. And I’ve got so many in the works. And I really love it, because

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Karen Chaston: being in business by yourself is lonely, it’s hard, and it’s it’s you need someone to, you know. Be there with you and to when you’re up, you know. They may be down, and you know how to, you know. Help you trouble with all that sort of stuff, and you just don’t go into overwhelm as much, and when you’re in overwhlem you end up doing nothing.

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so I really do appreciate it. But I look back, and I sort of go. Hmm! I could have made myself my journey a lot easier, but there’s always lessons, and it’s always amazing to find lessons. You know. I started breaking down words. I don’t know how this happened, you know. I love my numbers, of course, but I started breaking down the words early on, and lesson is a really great word to break down.

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Karen Chaston: because what I’ve found is when you dive into anything that is happening in your life, and look for that lesson, it’s less on you. So the words telling you just find that lesson, and then your life will have less crap.

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Megan Mary: Oh, that’s that’s a great insight.

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Megan Mary: Yeah, I I think I think that might be the one that we leave with our listeners, because I think it’s very, very that one that there’s another one to love to share. Okay, and most people go into blame when loss comes in. For some reason, whatever the blame is, you know, it’s a divorce. How often do you here.

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Karen Chaston: either party blaming the other, whereas it’s really important for everyone to understand that in any relationship we all do and say things that are ideal, and we all do inside things that are not ideal. And it may not have been you that that did whatever was that broke the marriage. But there were things along the road which caused whatever to happen. So when we take responsibility for ourselves, we’re not in blame.

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Karen Chaston: but when we are in blame and let’s break down that word, there’s blah.

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Karen Chaston: and there’s me, most people in blame are in the blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. and they’ve forgotten about me. So they’re not taking responsibility.

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Karen Chaston: So if you find yourself blaming anyone for anything, just stop

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Karen Chaston: and go. What about me? What did I do?

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Karen Chaston: And it’s not easy. It’s confronting. It’s horrible, because we all like to think we’re perfect, especially if they were the ones that ended the marriage through whatever you need to sit back, and you need to find out about you, because if you don’t, you’re going to continually repeat this scenario with someone in a different body, because the lesson was there for you to learn.

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Karen Chaston: So get out of blame and start to really learn that lesson. So I’ve connected them both for you. Megan Mary: Okay, yes, that’s that’s excellent, and that’s really good food for thought. There. Well, let ours listeners know how they can find you. I I am going to put your links in the show notes, but if they want to

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Megan Mary: find you online.

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Karen Chaston: I guess the best place I’m on on Linkedin. I’ve got a great name. It’s very unusual, so it’s Karen Chaston And that’s easy to find the thechastoncentre.com is there but it’s spelt the English way centre not er

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Karen Chaston: which is always very interesting. The English versus the American spelling of English. But yeah, so yeah, thechastoncentre.com. You can copy my name because it’s an unusual name. It comes up quite easily, anyway, in my searches, and I’m in all the usual places so great.

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Karen Chaston: Well, thank you so much, Karen Chaston, for being here today. I really appreciate all of your insights. And it it was wonderful speaking with you today.

Megan Mary: And likewise, and good luck with your series. It’s going to be so amazing. Thank you so much.

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Megan Mary: Thank you.