What got us here isn’t what’s necessarily going to get us there. This year may not have been the best, but 2020 does have its blessing for us – a learning experience that sets us up for greater heights in 2021. In this episode, Lisa Pezik is joined by Certified Reiki Master, Dorothy Knight, who shares the four steps to get grounded to fly high in 2021. It’s an action plan to: acknowledge the trauma of 2020 and put the pieces back together in a different way; stop and ask, “How do I feel about this? Do I want this?” on a cellular level; set boundaries in your business and re-write you story; and create magic every day that starts with structure.
---
Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
Finding The Blessing Within The Lesson Of 2020 With Dorothy Knight
I’m excited about this episode coming out right before we wrap, break, and do our thing with the Christmas holidays and time with family. I’m coming out with this episode to shake you up a little bit and to help you get grounded so you can fly high in 2021. I didn't make that up. I have my beautiful friend Dorothy Knight with me. Dorothy, welcome. Thank you for being on the show with me.
Thank you for having me. I'm happy to wrap up this memorable 2020 with a big beautiful bow with all of you guys because that's what we're going to do. We want to end on that high note so we can fly high into the new year.
Wrapping it up with a bow sometimes comes with talking about digging in the hard stuff, how we can restructure, and think bigger than we've maybe never thought before or those things that you know you could be doing but you haven't, now is the time to dig deep with that. Before we get in there, let me tell you about Dorothy. She is a certified Reiki Master Teacher Practitioner in Usui Method of Natural Healing and a certified Yoga Teacher, YTT 500. She's grateful to share the gift of healing arts to help others connect towards self-awareness and guide them to find and fulfill their own purpose with curiosity and joy. Her sole mission is healing humanity from within and her own healing process led her to release the thoughts, patterns, and habits that kept her feeling forever stuck to embrace intentional living and self-mastery. She is a sought-after speaker and energy teacher. She helps lead the way and guide the way to finding true alignment with Reiki, energy healing, ascension process, quantum healing, meditation, and yoga. Where did this thought come up for you about getting grounded to fly high in 2021?
I've essentially always been a grounded person like more so down to earth than anything, but I've been afraid to fly high. It was the opposite case. I know some people want to fly high but they don't have the structure to do it and vice versa so it can be either situation for you. A lot of it has to do with seeing how I was stuck. That's a feeling, energy, or a vibe we're feeling right now. It’s not necessarily by choice. It's been put upon us. Maybe you had things going for you back in 2019 or at the start of 2020 and the chord was pulled out. We suddenly lost complete traction and momentum. Many of you have thrown out your 2020 planner and wondered like, “What the heck am I going to do with the rest of this year? Why did I buy one?”
Do not afraid, that's okay. It's time to set a new foundation and a parameter to work within. I always like to see the blessing within the lesson. We have to learn the lesson first. In my case, this is the stuff that is tied to the emotion of fear. To explain quickly how energy works, you're either in a state of expansion. When you feel good, you guys know how you feel and you're in it, you want to give, put yourself out there, take risks, and expand in every possible way. That is your natural state of being. Fear is the trucker that will pull you out of that. That's when we are out of alignment with our true resonance and way of being.
We are triggered, this could be stuff from your past and also things that are related to your belief systems. This is a trauma we're experiencing in 2020. On some level, you are experiencing a form of trauma, you acknowledge that because it's how we're going to recover from this. We're doing this individually and collectively. It may feel like, “It's all me.” We are all in this together. It’s a very important perspective to have on this. Fear is the state of contraction. It's like hibernation mode. You want to go back to your cave, play small, go back to whatever was familiar, and whatever was comfortable. It's okay to do that initially. It is a flight or fight response. Sometimes we need that moment to go back in the womb. That's where we rebirth ourselves and get brand new ideas and inspiration.
Be okay with that low point. Sometimes you’ve got to hit rock bottom. Think of yourself as an entrepreneur, you probably had a rock bottom moment that lit you up and made you come back better and strong. It's not the setback. It's the comeback. That's been the story of my life. There are plenty of setbacks, but I'm always like, “What did I learn? You pick yourself up, you cry it out, and do what you need to do.” You need your process but you can’t unpack and stay there. You don't want to live there. You're better than that. It's a disservice to humanity when we stay and play small. We pick up the pieces, sometimes new pieces come together and it's a whole different picture, roll with it, and then you come back into a state of expansion.
Be kind and be patient with yourself. Allow yourself to sort things through because if anything has brought you into yourself, you've probably learned more things about yourself than you ever did. You learn what your boundaries are, what you value, what was working, what wasn't working, relationships, family dynamics, and all of that has come to light for good reason because it was either we're going to stay with what's working and what's not has got to go. Whatever is not serving you, you cannot bring that into the new year. You've got to leave it behind. It's the hardest part of this process, but it's dead weight, and you can't fly with extra cargo.
It’s a disservice to humanity for us to play small.
As you said, acknowledge it and be aware. That's the first step to be able to make that decision of, “What do I want to do with this? Do I want to continue to carry this? Do I want to drop it?” How do you know that it's the dead weight? What are some of the signs or feelings? How do you know when it's time to go? Is it a uniquely individual experience?
It's all of the above. First, you have to feel into it, not what you think about it because your brain will tell you the opposite sometimes. We want to be rational about things, protect other people's feelings, or be the bigger person. That's not serving you. It's what do you feel about it? What do you feel about the situation, person, relationship, and partnership? Is it serving you? Are you lit up? Are you expanding within this connection, relationship, or partnership? Is it stifling to you? These are real, raw and honest questions we have to ask ourselves. It's not easy to let go and close up on certain things but if you close one chapter, you get to start a new one.
It is an individual process. We like to think in a linear fashion. Time doesn't work that way but start that way and start with the one that feels the heaviest. You'll feel it in your heart and gut. It's almost like that boulder sitting in your stomach or that pressure on your chest. If that situation, person, thing makes you feel that, it's not helping you, not serving you, and not a good vibration to have within you. You have to practice discernment and decide like, “Am I keeping this? Is it even mine? Do I want this?” That's the question that's based on this. What do you want? Not what someone else, your family, and not your partner want for you.
I completely experienced everything that you said. I’m an old school pen and paper planner. That's how I roll. I would open up my planner, look at the meetings and the things that I had during the week scheduled, and I would feel this knot in my gut whether it was with certain clients or people. Initially, the knot was always there in my gut and I ignored it. For all of the above, I don't want to upset somebody but you feel all these things. Your brain wants to rationalize, make it right, and make it all okay whereas your gut tells the truth.
If you can, get a Post-it note, stick this on your laptop, “2021, stop saying yes to crap you hate.” That way, you will not over-schedule yourself for all of these things you don't want to do or places you don't want to be. You're going to create a whole bunch of time to do this stuff you want to do and that's empowering.
Stop and think. That was what I had to give myself the gift of stopping and thinking saying, “Let me get back to you. I can't make a decision about that right now. Let me check and see what I’ve got going on. I might have a few more questions for you that I need to know a little bit more information.” They're like, “I can do that,” “That sounds good,” or “Sure, let's do that.” We were so reactive with the yes sometimes.
No was the new yes sometimes.
No is a complete sentence. It’s like, “No, but I'm sorry. I know that might hurt your feelings.” You don't need to explain. That leads to my next question about boundaries. I had to learn the method of communication. We help a lot of clients. I would have people on Instagram messaging, texting, email, and LinkedIn messaging me every five minutes. I can't keep up. I need an email or a seamless way to communicate with you. I had to tell them that. Don't ding me because the work that I do is not like 911 where someone's going to die if we don't get this up and out. I know that you want to message me twelve times in one day but that doesn't mean that I may get back to you any quicker.
I used to have this whole thing about if I have a client, they're paying me, they're giving me their dream and their baby, and it’s like, “I’ve got to get back to them right away. I'm responsible.” I realized that all I was doing was running myself into the ground with this reactivity and fear like, “Are they going to get mad at me? Are they going to lose trust in me? Are they going to cancel the job?” All these things are completely BS and not true but it was my monkey brain going crazy. That’s why I learned how to set a boundary like, “Here's how I communicate. Here are the expectations. It was all fine and great.” People let that monkey brain the worst-case scenario. If we carry that to 2021, it’s no good. Why is it hard to set boundaries? How do we help people do that?
We learned the boundaries that we were raised in. That's where it starts. If you want to understand why you respond to things the way you do, it's good to take a little trip to your childhood and see where the boundaries were or lack thereof when you were growing up. The good news is, with awareness, you can rewrite this story. It is not an easy thing to do right away because it's all stemmed from the beautiful vast array of emotions like guilt, shame, fear of rejection and missing out, and all those little triggers that come up which are still all fundamentally built upon. The lowest of the lowest vibes of their fear or love, there's no other. Everything in the middle is great. It's always going to gravitate to either side of the polarity here.
Those are the two strongest emotions that we all intrinsically feel as human beings. Let's say you had not the greatest boundaries as a kid or not very clear boundaries as well, you're not going to have a great structure to operate in. Those are the people who do become doormats. Sadly, they are yes people and taken advantage of. This is the season to dramatically level up your journey. We want to step into our power and you're going to annoy people. People aren't going to understand you and respect those boundaries but you have to be firm. You’ve got to be set in the boundaries you set out for yourself. Set the boundaries out for yourself first.
What do you need to thrive? What do you need to feel balanced? What do you need to have harmony and flexibility in your schedule and have time to do what you need and want to do? This is hard for women entrepreneurs. If you have kids, you’ve got to get organized and clear. Clarity is your saving grace. Number one is you have to get clear on what it is that you want and what it is that you're setting out for yourself to do. Write it down. It’s very powerful when we put pen to paper. You have to see it to believe in it. What we believe, we conceive. You need a plan and figure out how you're going to stick to those boundaries. It might be a schedule of some sort that works for you. We all want to fly but we need the container. You always want to have a base to come back because life can get hectic, fast, and unpredictable. You need that landing strip to always land back on where you have a sense of stability, grounding, and some sense of stability, predictability, and routine. One of my favorite teachers said, “You have to know the rules to break the rules.” You need structure before you can play, expand that box, and see how far you can take it.
I remember when I studied with Brendon Burchard, he would say, “If I ask you to take a look at your planner and what you have in it, I'll find out the priorities and what's important to you in your life.” If it's in your planner, it's important. A boundary for me was I don't do anything before 10:00 AM. I don't take calls. I don't do any client work. My morning routine is to meditate, exercise, journal, connect, and have breakfast with my family. My little guy is virtual schooling from home and he starts at 9:00 AM so I’m making sure he’s set up, he's clear to fly high, and run free. I'm getting coordinated with Eric to make sure our days are good. I don't want to get up in that reactivity mode. I need that morning for me. That was a boundary that I had to set. Some people were like, “I can only meet with you at 9:00 AM.” I'm like, “We need to find another time because I cannot meet with you at 9:00 AM. I don't do that.”
You're checking off your boxes so that you have your structure in place for the day. I call these non-negotiables. You’ve got to have them. People will always try to interfere with them and this is where you stand firm.
When you negotiate on your non-negotiables, that's where the frustration, overwhelm, and all the uncomfortable feelings. These feelings are keys. They're telling us something like, “You crossed the boundary and you betrayed yourself.” That doesn't feel good.
You are an infinite being that comes with infinite potential.
You're going to have a day where the non-negotiable happens like when someone has to go to the doctor or something. You have to correct afterward like, “It's okay. Life happens.”
You were saying time, change, leveling up, and all of that is not linear. Talk to me about that.
We are multidimensional beings so you can be all things at all places at all times. This is what we're tapping and going into the future. If you are on a specific spiritual path, this language will make sense to you. You're this physical being on this planet, you're in this vessel known as your body where it's your container and home so take good care of it, it's the only one you've got. Some of us have that notion that we're having this experience, this thing called life and we can limit ourselves with that way of thinking because we think it's whatever it is we are experiencing. That is not true. It’s our permit. This beautiful quote says, “You are a spirit having a human experience.”
You are this grand, magnificent, and infinite being, with that comes infinite potential. It's all around and surrounds you. It's drawing in that infinite potential into the physical body which isn't very easy. That's called enlightenment when we do it all but you don't have to be enlightened to have this multidimensional experience. Back in the day or your parents' generation, life was very linear. You did the thing, went to school, got the diploma, the degree, and you got the job, it was all lined up for you. You likely stayed in that one job until you've retired. Those days are such a memory like that's a history book. That is non-existent. For people who were in the crosshairs of that generation, this is where you feel shaken up. That might be your situation.
You were in a company for a long time and then you lost your job because of this pandemic. You're left with like, “What is this reality?” It's because you're here to create a new one. This is where a lot of people are in that reactive mode. It's either anger because they've lost things or fear because the future is unknown. The future is always unknown to you but why are you worrying about the future, that makes you anxious. You should be in the present. There's a lot of bitterness and resentment. These negative emotions are all rooted in fear of the unknown. We don't want to operate in that space. We want to grab onto something a little bit bigger. There can be fear and awareness in itself because it means you may have to step a little bit further out of your box, or you might have to do things a little bit differently than you were used to. You already did it this whole year.
You found a whole new way of doing life. There may be some things that were even better than the way you did life before. Why not celebrate those things and figure out how you can build on them and expand them to even serve you better. You don't have to go back. We cannot go back to the way the world was. Why not start thinking ahead, be a chess player, and like, “What are my moves? What are the potentials and possibilities out there?” Life is a game, and the universe wants to play with you. It's whatever you want it to be. You can have a full-time income doing something that pays your bills. This is your chance to dabble into a passion project or the passion project becomes the main gig. This is happening for a lot of people and a lot of beautiful new earth businesses are being born. I'm excited about that because it's giving money back to the people that deserve it. It's not these huge corporations that are running the show anymore.
The year 2020 is when you thought it couldn't be done that way or that wasn't possible. We have shown that it is possible. Businesses have been born. Side hustles and side gigs have become full-time profitable gigs. Even companies are saying their employees can't work from home. If you're not an entrepreneur and realized that you weren't as productive, it might be the opposite. You might be way more productive at home than you ever were in an office.
There's no more commute time. There's a lot of pros to this. Make a pro and con list to see what worked for you and what you can do to build upon that and thrive. If anything, 2020 was a glimpse into what we thought was never imaginable or the possibility of something different. This is what happens to me. I wrote a post about this inner knowing or understanding. A true story in 2019, I had a meditation. I was visited by my higher self. It is the highest possible aspect of you. It's the inner voice and intuition inside of you that sometimes we discount and don't listen to at all but it had an important message for me. I kid you not, it was loud and clear. It was like, “You've got to close your practice and move everything online.” I was like, “What? Did I say that to myself? Why?” My business was doing fine. I had a nice brick and mortar practice. It was beautiful, nice location, serving my local community, it was good, and I was comfortable but it was such a powerful message. It was like, “Don't you dare question that.” I'm like, “When do I do this?” It was like, “Right now.” I feel it, I don't know it, I'm not going to be rational, and I'm not thinking this through. I know that this is what I have to do even though I didn't know how it was all going to play out later, but intuitively, I knew that was the course to take.
I submitted my termination of the lease that very day. I'm like, “Where am I going with my business? I'm going home.” It's not my story that is super remarkable, it's just I was in-tune with my higher knowing and higher self. I was ahead of the curve because I followed my intuition and it saved my business. I was three months pre-pandemic. I already had things in place. I didn't have to pivot anything. I was prepared. If I would suggest anything to you guys, it's 2020, let's go to the future one year ahead. What would the 2021 version of you tell yourself? This is where it's fun to be visionary. What does the future look like for you? What does your business look like? How are we doing business? How do you see your life? How are we interacting? What does the culture look like? It's all going to change. There's a lot of power. Anything that exists on this planet stems from imagination. Imagination is everything like Albert Einstein.
I did a post too about how you don't find those answers until there’s the traditional-ish way of meditation, journaling, and yoga. For me, it's rearranging the furniture in my house, decorating for Christmas, doing something that stimulates my brain or gets me out of the box of sitting in this Zoom screen, and gets me out in nature when I’m walking. That's when I find the answers come to me. If you're one of those people that are like, “I can't meditate, answers don't come to me, I can't sit still, or I've got too much to do.” Answers can’t come then but sometimes ask the question when you're taking a walk, doing a yoga class, or you're decorating for the holidays. Those hits will come to you when you give yourself that space to be able to do that. We were set up completely online. It was a blessing to have done all that work to be established because, by the time the pandemic hit, we got busier. Not a whole heck of a lot changed in terms of operations. People thought they had this vision of themselves to go online or to do this in 2025.
The future is now, my friend.
Let's talk about that, “The future is now,” because we were chatting about I start in September 2020 and you were saying, “You start now.” Should they wait until January 2021 to set those new years, new you, and all that bias that comes out. When should they start exploring the baggage they're going to drop? How do they feel about it? What boundaries are they going to set? Asking them those questions about that structure and everything we talked about. When do they start that?
After this show, I want you to start if you haven't already. It starts with the question of like, “Am I happy or not?” Are you happy? Are you pumped up? Are you fired up with life? This life and this whole situation have turned you off. I don't want that for anybody. That is not our way of being. Don't buy into the crap that it is. The media will distract you from stepping into your true potential and your power because they want you in the box. They want corporations to keep doing their thing. We know better. You intrinsically and inside of you feel you have so much to offer. You have your own set of unique traits, skills, and talents.
You want to find your icky guy. It's like a little Venn diagram. You can look this up and you want to find your sweet spot in the middle. Whatever you love to do, there's a need for in the world, and whatever is your passion like. If you can make money doing that, you will truly never work a day in your life. Work becomes fun. You want to show up that way for your calling or whatever it is that you're doing. Every morning I wake up, I'm like, “What am I going to create? Who am I going to chat with?” What magic are we going to make? We've lost touch with the magic. You have so much magic within you. It's not pulling rabbits out of a hat unless you want it to be. It's getting the ingredients that make you, you. Putting them together like you are all alchemists. We're all here to make alchemy. We have all these elements to work with. Life is amazing if you allow it to be.
Every day, tell yourself what magic am I going to create? Even if it's one thing, but it's one thing you feel good about and you went all-in, you showed up with your most authentic self. You can check off that box every day with a sense of pride and fulfillment. Instead of feeling like, “The 25 other things I didn't do, put my laundry away or I didn't do this and this.” That is so diminishing and depleting. Even if it's one thing that makes you feel good at the end of the day and accomplished, I want you to do that. Start with the one thing. You don't have to rewrite your whole life, but start making positive changes because your habits become your lifestyle. Your lifestyle becomes your mindset and your way of being that you don't even realize you have to make yourself do those things. You become the way of being and doing those things. Your reality will change before you even realize it.
Life is amazing if you allow it to be so every day.
It's like the very first personal development book I ever read was Darren Hardy's, The Compound Effect. Do one thing every day and before you know it, that all compounds into this beautiful life. You didn't change it completely 360 in one day. It's all these little things that you were doing right.
I used to be obese when I was younger and I hated exercise but I reached such a point where I'm like, “I am unhealthy. This is not good for me. I can't continue this way.” I had a Cosmo Magazine and had some homework out thing and I’m like, “It’s a model with her abs. When will I ever have abs like that?” I got those abs later on. I'm like, “I'm going to try this workout.” I thought I was going to die. I couldn't even get through ten sit-ups. I didn't like the other option. It's either you're going to become more obese and unhealthy or consciously decide and want to shift.
You have to consciously decide because that's what's going to create that momentum to show up and do the thing every single day to create that compounding, inertia, and energy right to expand and stay in movement. Energy is always moving. If it's not moving, it’s stagnant. If it's stagnant, you're dying. You don't want that. The next day, I did 11 pushups, then I did 12 and 100. The weight came off in the process. Allow yourself to enjoy the process. The process is sexy in itself. We're results-oriented. We're hell-bent on the destination like, “I’m finally going to get there. I'll be happy when I'll be successful.” It's the opposite. You've got to reverse engineer it. You have to be the thing you want to be before you are the thing.
It's not writing down a vision for yourself and walking away. You have to embody the feeling, your body, your mindset, the cells in your body, and your DNA are all electrical little things. They're fired up with the neurons and the belief systems that you feed yourself in the habits that you play out every day. You will create a new way of being and believing. Those habits and daily little things that we do will create a whole different operating system within ourselves. That's powerful. Don't make it a big thing like mission and vision are so far away. You need to see the little stuff in between and celebrate the little victories along the way.
If you don't celebrate, it all feels mundane. Someone said to me, “You’ve got to listen to Joe Dispenza.” I'm like, “Joe, the who with the what?” That is all about what you were talking about. It's walking now like it is your future. That's exactly what you said. It’s echoing exactly what he said, “Your body doesn't know what time is now and what time is the future.” If you start acting like the future, you want to lose twenty pounds, you start walking, eating, moving, and speaking like you're that person that already lost those twenty pounds. Your body lives into that vision that you have set for yourself when you're carrying it out every day. I'm fired up after having this conversation with you. I need to go back, start writing and planning.
No one plans to fail, we fail to plan. That's a very true quote.
If you haven't started already, this is the time, and use this show. Dorothy laid out in a step-by-step guide to how you should go about restructuring, vision, and dreaming again whether you were plunked in this situation and you can't go back to the way things were before or things changed for you and you realized what you were doing before didn't work. You don't want to go back to the way things were before. 2020 showed us that anything is possible. How do they get in contact with you best if they want to chat with you about this or talk to you about what you do and how they can work with you?
There's telepathic if that's what your skillset is. That will be the way of the future. Can you imagine we'll be doing this show through our minds? That's one way and I'm not joking. The other ways are through traditional mainstream media. You can go to my website, which is DorothyKnightReiki.ca to learn all about energy healing, self-healing, designing your destiny, and embracing self-mastery. Amazing energy tools are there for you. When I put this stuff online, I was like, “Is this okay? When I studied this, you have to memorize all these binders in these sacred scribes and you couldn't talk about it. Energy healing was so elitist thing.” That intuition said, “People need this stuff now more than ever, it should be available for everybody because we are all designed to self-heal.”
You are your pharmacist. You don't need medication, you can at least start to wean off that stuff or find other complementary ways that are natural and harmonious with your body. Other ways to get a hold of me is on my amazing and fun Instagram account. There are lots happening there all the time. That handle is @DorothyKnight_Reiki. My Facebook is @DorothyKnightReiki. My page is Dorothy Knight. There are LinkedIn and Twitter. Mainly Instagram I would say is it's all happening.
I can attest I was on Dorothy's show on Instagram that she runs. There are always exciting and fun conversations happening there. I highly recommend that you tune.
We have a great episode you can catch there too with the power of marketing and strategy. Combine the two and you're well on your way for 2021.
You’ve got to listen to that. You’ve got a game plan for 2021. Dorothy, thank you so much for being here with me.
Thank you for having me guys. I love what I do so much. The best part for me is when I'm working with somebody. Even online, the experience is very powerful. We're working in the quantum field and this is all stemmed from that multidimensional way of being which you can learn more about on all my social media stuff. I can feel when the energy shifts in somebody. It's such a remarkable moment when that spark comes on in someone's eyes. Their soul lights up even if it's for a brief moment. For a second, they remembered who they are. That is beautiful and profound. When we can keep sparking up that feeling, we embody that, which we wish to become and who we were meant to be all along.
I want you to remember who you are. I want you to live passionately and joyfully. Live on purpose and get off the autopilot. This is not what it's about. You are here to share your gifts and do incredible things. Not everyone needs to be a massive influencer. Get over the numbers and do things that make you happy. That will always serve your good. In the end, you're serving everybody else. It's a whole different way of living intentionally. When you show up for people from a higher place, you'll see the universe is going to match that. How could it not? These are the laws of the universe, “Whatever you put out, you're going to get back in.” I'll leave it on that for 2021.
Thank you for being here, Dorothy. Readers, thank you so much. Go out, read this blog, take notes, plan, show up with your highest self, and we'll see you again next time.
Thanks, Lisa.
Important Links:
- The Compound Effect
- DorothyKnightReiki.ca
- @DorothyKnight_Reiki - Instagram
- @DorothyKnightReiki - Facebook page
- LinkedIn – Dorothy Knight
- Twitter – Dorothy Knight
About Dorothy Knight
Dorothy Knight is a certified Reiki Master Teacher Practitioner in the Usui Method of Natural Healing and a certified Yoga Instructor, YTT 500. She is grateful to share the gift of the healing arts to help others connect towards self-awareness and help guide them to find and fulfill their own purpose with curiosity and joy.
Her soul mission is healing humanity from within. Dorothy's own healing process led her to release the thoughts, patterns and habits that kept her feeling forever stuck to embracing intentional living and self-mastery. Today, she is a sought-after speaker and energy teacher; guiding the way to finding our true alignment. www.dorothyknightreiki.ca Areas of Expertise: Reiki, energy therapy, ascension process, quantum healing, meditation, yoga
