Life can be too much that if we don’t keep ourselves in check, we can easily become drained and eventually break down. Inspiring you and many other women to recharge your life is Kate Butler, a #1 bestselling and award-winning author who just released her eighth book. Pouring from a full cup, she shares to us the ways she has provided women with opportunities to inspire others through her Inspired Impact Book Series. She also lets us in on her new book called Women Who Rise and gives us a look on how it connects women all over the globe to rise. On a more personal note, Kate also takes us into how she has kept herself well-balanced through meditation.

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Erin is Feeling Those High Vibrations with NYT Bestseller Kate Butler

We’ve got Kate Butler here. I can’t even begin to tell you and tell it properly the number of accomplishments this woman has done, but I’m going to make a stab at it and we’ll go from there. She’s a bestselling author. She’s a book publisher. She has published 168 bestsellers out there. She’s a public speaker. She’s an old soul. She’s a mom and she’s my friend. Kate, welcome to the show.

Thank you.

Thanks for being here. This is a huge day for you. Normally, I talk in evergreen style but for the sake of this accomplishment, why don’t you tell everybody about this day?

It’s fun to be here on this day to have a place to ground in the celebration also. This day is the book launch for our fifth book in the Inspired Impact book series, Women Who Illuminate. It was number two, which was absolutely amazing because our authors are from all around the world. We continued to climb in all different categories. When all was said and done, we were number one across at least ten categories and also a number one internationally as well. It was neat.

I’m going to ask you a few questions because with my background in marketing, I do know some of these answers but how does that happen?

The way that it happens in this particular series is that in the Inspired Impact book series, we take 30 authors per book to share their stories in the way of a chapter. When you have 30 authors per book, each person along with their story is doing this because they have the intention of inspiring and helping other people in some way, whatever their core brilliance is. They want to bring that story in that brilliance onto the world in a specific way to help their audience. They’re tapping into their audience and saying, “I want to share this with you. I want you to be a part of my world in this way. Would you be willing to share this with me on launch day?” In essence, we have marketing partners. For our launch day, so it’s not just me marketing the book on launch day or even our 30 authors marketing it. It’s all of us marketing it and plus all of our partners plus all of their communities. That’s how we go viral.

We know each other. We have a lot of mutual friends. I’ve spoken at your conference, Dare to Dream, which was amazing. It was wonderful. I felt welcomed and loved. One of the messages at other conferences that I’ve talked about under similar genres is that I always say authors shortchange themselves. In other words, if your book has fifteen chapters in it, a lot of people say, “Here’s my book.” They throw against the wall, the proverbial wall, and see what sticks. I had been for years, fifteen chapters, fifteen marketing tactics and fifteen ways to communicate out. You have twelve chapters, twelve ways, eighteen chapters.

The only reason we feel bad and disappointed about anything in life is when we compare it to something we prefer to do or have. Click To Tweet

Essentially, I love this because you’ve validated that you are taking 30 authors so 30 chapters, if you think about it that way. You have 30 different marketing plans, 30 different routes, 30 different mentors and associates, 30 different families, 30 different groups of friends and 30 different walks of life and tribes and community. That’s an awesome job to the women, but still I have to take it back to you because you must sprinkle magic in the air to get number one across. This isn’t your first dance. You’ve done this for 167 other times. That’s the same formula of marketing. It’s that step and repeat process. That’s brilliant.

It sounds like we’ve been saying the same thing in a slightly different way. What I promise the people who are buying the book and the audience that has followed us since book once, since women who ignite, which was the first book in the series, is we say this will be a book that will help and inspire you. This will be a book that will leave you with hope and leave you motivated to be the best version of yourself, but it’s also willing to be a resource for you. It’s a very specific promise that we make to every single person who reads and buys our book. We say, “If you are inspired, you’ll also know what to do next. You’ll also have your plan. You’ll also have your route,” all of the things that you said. That’s a promise that we make to our audience. That’s something that we’ve been saying all along as well. I’m completely aligned with you on that.

You support your authors. I know what we’re saying sounds easy like 30 different marketing plans, but you work with them. You have a support team that supports them and they’re on group calls. They don’t have to wake up and know how to be a book author. They don’t need to know that. You’re there to help them.

That’s the beauty of what we do. I have found that as I have gone through going after these different dreams in my life, it’s more fun when I do it with someone. First of all, everyone has a story, but not everyone knows how to write their story. Many people want to share their stories because they believe that they have not gone through this in vain. They want to share it so that they can help someone else, even if it’s one person out there that may need what they have gone through and can help them through it a little bit quicker, faster and help them ease a little bit to know that they’re not alone. There was a group of women who said, “I want to share my story. I have had a dream of becoming an author and of writing a book, but I don’t know where to begin. I don’t want to become a publisher. I don’t want to get into editing. I don’t want to figure out the logistics of how to put it together. What do we do?” I said, “Let’s do it together. Have fun with it.” That’s where that came from. I can help through the logistical pieces of it that I enjoy doing and my team enjoys doing. They get to show up and share their stories from their hearts. With that, the stories become genuine and authentic because they’re sharing from their heart and directly connecting with the hearts of their audience. I believe that’s why this series has been so successful.

Name the books in the series. The first group that you are made in the voyage of this, what book was that?

It’s Women Who Ignite. It went to Women Who Inspire, Women Who Influence, Women Who Impact and Women Who Illuminate, which launched now. I remember when you showed up to Dare to Dream, you’re like, “What’s with all the I’s? What’s happening?”

You have name tags and underneath your name, they’d say, “I inspire,” and they’d have all these things. I did my research on you. They didn’t link it together that it was 30 authors and short series and a set. I was like, “I ignite. Do I get an I word?” You have tons of authors. You have such a community. Where you always close in working with women. How did this all start for you?

 

It started when I published my first book, which was a children’s book. My first children’s book was called More Than Mud. I was working in Corporate America and I was not having so much fun anymore in Corporate America. I don’t have any idea why that would be. Pushing the papers were so good for so long, but it became not my thing anymore. I said to my husband, “I want to open up my own company. I don’t want to do this anymore. I will take everything I’ve learned from corporate and I’ll work from home.” This was right around the time that I had my first daughter. I’m getting transparent here. I said, “I want to empty out my 401(k) account and start my own company.” He was like, “Is that what you want to do?”

There are people at home that go, “I love that she even had a 401(k) but fair enough.”

It was super scary. We were new first-time parents at the time. We had bought a new house, our first house. It was a very uncertain time. I had to do it. There was something inside me that said, “I cannot work for anyone else any longer,” and the things that I wanted to teach my daughter, I wasn’t living. That is where it turned for me. I started my own company, which was in staffing and recruiting because that’s what I had done in corporate. I built that company and I worked in that company for about three years. It was great and it was successful, but I was bored out of my mind. I had to check-in and say, “What is going on here? Where am I doing all the things that I feel like I should be doing?”

That was when I said, “I’m going to figure out what I am doing here.” It brought me to want to share the way that I viewed the world with my children. I took all of these ideas, principles and perspectives of how I saw the world, which was always quite different than the way other people saw the world. I translated into a language that children can understand, which became the first book, More Than Mud. It’s all about looking at things from a positive perspective. Who buys children’s books? Moms. Moms were saying, “My kids love this book and they love finding the hidden ladybug, but I feel like I’m getting like life lessons when I read this at bedtime. Do you have anything for adults?”

It’s like Shrek. Shrek was a comedy for adults. He was there because they knew we were going to have to watch it 100 times. We’d get all those inside jokes. The kids were like, “He’s green.”

Here I’m just changing their life. I started coaching when people kept asking. I started hosting women’s retreats. It was bringing women together in a safe, supported, empowering environment that began my tribe. The people who began attending those retreats six years ago were in that room at Dare To Dream that you saw. They’d been to twenty of my events. They don’t miss a single one. It grows every time. Every time they come, they bring five more people. That is how it started.

They’re so devout. If you saw Kate at the conference, all day, all night I saw you were always with somebody from the group, not just your inner circle. No one knew who I was before and I was riding in the elevator. They were euphoric that they were going to be there. It was real love. They were like, “I haven’t seen you in so long.” These weren’t rah-rah girls. I like women but not all women. With a lot of these like women’s groups, you think like, “Go women.” To me, I’m like, “I want to be like go everybody.” There’s going to be groups of guys, girls and everybody, but collectively. It always worries me when I see a company headed in one direction because I always feel bad for the people that are left out. There are tons of great women’s groups that are there for women because we need to stick together. I’m a little too faced with the whole concept quite frankly.

By recharging your battery life, you are beginning to trust yourself. Click To Tweet

I’ve spoken out a lot of different groups. I should shut up because everybody’s been lovely. Your group, I don’t know if it’s because it’s New Jersey. Kate is a Jersey girl. In this area, we had Philly, New Jersey and Delaware. I even met somebody with your mom, Eileen, who was there. I said my name. She said where she lived and I said, “My family is from there.” It turns out that her husband, God rest his soul and my father went to college together. She knew my dad and Lord knows what they did. That’s why I love a good women’s conference because the pretense by that point is you’re just chatting.

When you can get into the real conversation. It’s not rah-rah. We’re not playing up here on the surface level. We’re there to connect, to have real conversations and to get to the meat of everything. That’s what you did with Eileen and with so many other people there.

You said should have I stopped shooting myself. It’s not a term that is widely known, but it’s such a pun and it’s fun. How can we tell if you’re doing that to yourself? There are people out there that they’ll laugh and they’ll think that’s funny. Let’s give some advice out there. How can people identify whether they should have, would have, could have themselves?

I can say the first few things that I began doing right when I started to recognize that something isn’t right here in my life, everything looks great on the outside, but inside it’s a big old hot mess. What can I do to fix this? I at that point now had two little girls that were looking up to me and I couldn’t be a hot mess for them. If I wasn’t going to do it for myself, I was at least going to do it for them. That’s where it began. I started to allow my emotions to become my indicator. If I was feeling complete off and completely bad hanging around certain people, I needed to make a change in that regard. If I was feeling bad going down this road or doing these activities or working in this job, I needed to start to say what could be another option for me.

The only reason we ever feel bad about anything in our life where we feel disappointed or we feel like something could be better is that there is a reference point of something that we would prefer. If we start to follow those emotions and allow ourselves to ease into what we would prefer, that can be our first avenue into what could be possible for us and we could be next. The second thing I did, which I attribute so much of my coming into my life purpose, if I’m being frank with you is beginning to reflect every day. I meditate. I grew up praying. I still do both. For me, praying is asking, talking, communicating and meditation is receiving, being silent and allowing your inner guidance to show up if we are quiet enough to listen.

We will never forget to recharge our phone. If we forget to charge our phone at night, we’re having a bad morning the next morning. We don’t forget to do that. We don’t forget to charge our computers. We don’t forget to charge our electronics, but how often do we recharge ourselves? I began to follow my emotion to guide me to what I would prefer and I would spend each day allowing myself to recharge and fill up so that I was so full that I could be overflowing and give out to others. That was how I began to stop shitting on myself.

Thank you for being so honest. On the East coast, yoga is now coming in but we have so many friends on the West Coast that they’ve been meditating and their great-grandmothers have been meditating. Bless their hearts, they make own dog biscuits and granola, which is awesome. On the East Coast, it’s a different vibe here as you know. If you’re from New Jersey, you’re going to have an interesting answer. What did your parents say when they knew you started to meditate?

 

Let’s start with my husband. He’s like “What’s happening with your life right now?”

I’m from New Jersey. People from New Jersey, we don’t talk this way. What did he say to you?

He was like, “You baited and switched. I don’t know who you are. You are one and now you’re another. What’s happening?” I said, “We can always go back to the way that we were. I can always go back to who I was. I am going to try this for 30 days because everyone is saying that 30 days is the turning point and you will begin to see transformational life shifts. I’m willing to give that a shot.” It’s also to develop any positive habit or any yucky habit for that matter.

You’ve tried it for 30 days?

Within that 30 days, I noticed an internal shift before the 30 days but that wasn’t anything tangible that my engineer husband could sink his teeth into by saying I felt inner peace for the first time, which I absolutely did. I didn’t know it was possible to feel happiness not being connected with something external. When my husband would come home and he had a good day, I had a good day. If he had a bad day, all of a sudden my good day went down here. The same thing with my kids, everything was fine as long as they were fine. If they weren’t fine, I was having a tough day.

As moms, as wives, as girlfriends, I feel like we’re in an ebb and a flow. We’re filling in the gray void to make it whole. If they’re coming home with a bad day, I’m like a chameleon. Maybe I’m such an empath. If I’m being frank with you, it’s like I can feel what you’re feeling right now. I’m a good read. It’s great for interviewing or sales or whatever. As a mom, as a girlfriend, when I know they’re hurting, it’s hard to still be like, “I’m good,” and still able to be there mentally and emotionally for them. That you’re standing in your, “I’m good.”

There are a couple of things there. As humans, our human nature is that we want to be in compliance or in alignment with our partner, the people that we are closest to in our lives. From a vibrational and energetic standpoint, whether you believe in it or not, everything is energy. Our being wants to be in harmony with the people that we are closest with. Generally, those are the people that we live with. If our partner’s energy drops and we’ve meditated and our energy is higher. That’s what happens when you are charging yourself, as we talked about earlier. If you aren’t aware of that, what will happen when someone in your house has a bad day is automatically human nature is to be in harmony with the vibration that they’re at.

Praying is asking, talking, and communicating while meditation is receiving, being silent and allowing your inner guidance to show up. Click To Tweet

You will lower your vibration to match them because that feels better for you to be comfortable than to be out of harmony with your partner. When you’re aware of that happening, you can do certain things in meditation or reflection or journaling or those things to remain in high vibration and be aware that you’re making a conscious, intentional decision to stay at a higher vibration regardless of where anyone else in the household is. That’s one of the first things that you can do. Speaking of awareness on this topic, that’s the biggest thing because that’s where everything shifted for me when I said, “I want to write a children’s book to so that my children can understand the way that I look at life.”

It was because I realized upon going down these roads that weren’t extremely terrible, but they weren’t my soul’s mission. I wasn’t here to be a recruiter. I wasn’t here to open up that company and others were stepping stones for me to get here where I should be. It wasn’t that they were done and they were the wrong path per se, but everything leads to something. It led me to here, but when I got to a place where I said, “I’m unhappy,” it was because I was a chameleon showing up big for my job, showing up big for my kid, showing up big for my husband, showing up as a daughter, a mom and a colleague. There was nowhere in my life where I was showing up for myself.

I can identify with that. I sit in that all the time. We all do more than we realize we do. That’s why I’m so glad we’re talking about this because I don’t know what everybody’s first step is or second step or third step to getting on this journey. I would love everybody, East Coast or not, to be on this journey. If you keep a high vibrational tone, that doesn’t mean we should identify this because now we’ll have some people in both our communities that are like, “That’s it, I am meditating.” All of a sudden, they drive everyone in their family crazy. If the family members do come home from a bad day, that does not mean you have to then recruit and cheer them up all the time. They’re allowed to have own vibrational tone. You’re now not the new recruit or poster child for high vibrations. Let’s talk about that a little bit. How often is somebody who’s staying in a low vibration? After a while, there is something that needs to be done because you’re constantly going to be a disconnect. Eventually do the low vibrational people come around?

Generally speaking, yes, because it’s natural in a human state to want to be in harmony with your partner. If you remain high like we’re talking about for long enough, your partner will rise up to meet you. It will take some time. They will start to say, “This pattern isn’t working anymore. Every time I go this way, I’m hitting a wall,” because you’re no longer there to meet them. They start to say, “What could be different here so I can get in harmony? Maybe I can go this way and we’ll try different things.” They’ll begin to raise up to meet you. That’s generally what will happen. Does it happen every single time? Probably not. If you’re in a healthy relationship where you want to be connecting with your partner, yes, that’s what will happen.

What are some quick ways people can start to meditate? If you don’t want to say meditation, that’s fine. You can call it a journal, diary, post-it-notes, we don’t care. Start becoming aware of what your body is telling you internally. If you’re not listening, it’ll start telling you physically. What are some quick and easy ways that people can do? Are there certain apps you love? Maybe we’ll get new sponsors for your book in my show. Are there things that you automatically do? Who taught you how to meditate?

I believe the first book I ever read on it was called Madly Chasing Peace by Dina Proctor. She teaches short meditations throughout the day. Anybody can sit for five minutes. I believe that she teaches what’s called a three by three. It’s three minutes, three times a day. Why that works for me was, first of all, you can do anything for three minutes as hard as that. When you meditate, the point is that you were born with everything you needed to know for your own life. I don’t know what’s best for you. I don’t know what your steps are for everybody out there. That’s absolutely true. Neither do I, but everyone else does know for themselves.

When you can begin to tap in, you access the internal guidance that everyone has, that’s simply guiding you to your best next step, what’s for the highest and best for you? That’s all it’s about. There’s no pressure. There’s no right or wrong way. It’s tapping into that inner guidance for what is best for your life. The three by three could be a great way and right when you’re about to say, “I’m feeling like those old thoughts are creeping in again, those negative thoughts, it’s time for another three minutes.” You get back on track with positive thoughts again. You’ve released the negative thoughts. You call in what you want and release what you don’t. Right when they creep back in again, it’s another time to have a three-minute meditation. That can be a very helpful process for people to begin to reset. You can reset your brain waves by doing that.

I also do that in making any big decisions. It’s all intuitive for me now. I’ll get a stomach egg if I know it’s bad. It’s all like a little bit of a thing. In the beginning when I didn’t know what my heart or my soul was trying to tell me, I found myself saying, “Wait, give me a second.” That’s us saying that we need to listen. In that peace and quiet are answers in theory. It’s happy thoughts, yes, but also let’s think about this instead of making a decision because all the other moms are doing it or because your husband wants you to do it, or your mom wants you to do it. That’s a big one in my life. I know of a lot of moms that are still forced here on the East coast. I need to do a whole segment on that.

It’s figuring it out through meditation or pausing. You go, “Is this what I want to do or is this what they want me to do? Is this what my kid wants me to do?” Is it in my highest and best good? In theory, if we’re doing great, then we’ll be great for everybody else. If we’re broken or our cell phone’s only on 3% battery, I don’t think I’m going to start a long text. I’m not going to start this big decision. I’m certainly not going on Amazon and buying something. Things are going to break down unless we’re full. With your charging your battery life, you’re beginning to trust yourself and that is what is creating those new neuropathways in your brain, which we’re referring to. That is what transformational change in your life becomes.

There are different ways of meditating. Sitting and meditating in traditional mindfulness meditation is one way you can do guided meditations. I have a SoundCloud account where people can access a ton of pre-recorded meditations. You mentioned journaling. That’s a great way to connect with yourself by allowing whatever shows up to show up. You can write whatever you think about without any planning, without any editing, but just allowing yourself to be with yourself and write whatever shows up. Running and exercising is a great way to meditate as well. For some people it’s running and it’s exercise. It can be great to allow your body to be engaging in autopilot activities. It gives your brain a rest from having to think about something because your body knows how to run without telling it to run. It frees your brain up to begin to get into that reflection or that meditative state. Walks in nature, hiking, like any of those things can also be great ways to reconnect with yourself.

That counts. It doesn’t have to be all airy-fairy cupcakes and unicorns. Settle your soul and settle your mind and you’re meditating. I’d love for you to tell everybody watching about your next book. We know we made all the bestseller lists. We’re number one and we’re all across the country and world. You’re looking for authors for a new book. Tell us what that book is called and the vibe about that book in case somebody’s interested.

Thank you for that. The series began with that moment that we’re talking about where people have made a stand in their life to say, “I was going this way and I’m going to choose to go in a new direction. With that, I’m reigniting my life and my passion for life.” That was our first book, Women Who Ignite. It was all about that moment where they began to make that shift. Women Who Inspire was about people living that life and inspiring others to do the same. It’s not just having that moment, but acting on it and living it. Women Who Influence was now influencing other people to come along with them on the journey. Women Who Impact was now that you have influence over people, what impact are you making on the world? Illuminate is taking that impact and shining that light for all the step into their light and into their power. Now that we are here shining this light upon the world, now it’s Women Who Rise. We’re looking to rise up together in the community that we’ve spoken about and connecting women all over the globe to rise.

What stories do you think you’ll find there?

We’re looking for stories of people who feel like they have overcome something in their life and they have chosen to not allow that to keep them down, but they have chosen to rise above circumstances. They have chosen to make a choice to rise above a challenge, rise above the different things that have come that have been unexpected. We’re also looking for people who are leading communities that are rising up. Any of these things would be an opportunity for a great conversation.

If people want to get in touch with you or become an author or they’re now fans and they love you like love you and they want to come to one of our seminars or conferences and listen to dorky people like me speak, where can people find you? Tell everybody how they can connect with you.

It’s Kate Butler Books all over social media. I’m on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, @KateButlerBooks and then KateButlerBooks.com for my website. Any of those places are awesome places to connect.

Thank you so much for being here. Thank you all for joining us and hanging in with some topics that might not be so familiar in the land of New Jersey, but it is. I don’t think we give ourselves enough credit. We’re more evolved than the world gives us credit for. Thank you very much.

Important Links:

• Inspired Impact
• Women Who Illuminate
• Dare to Dream
• Women Who Inspire
• Women Who Influence
• Women Who Impact
• More Than Mud
• Madly Chasing Peace
• Facebook – Kate Butler Books
• Instagram – Kate Butler Books
• @KateButlerBooks on Twitter
• KateButlerBooks.com

About Kate Butler