Unlock Your Dreams: The Power Of Strong Self-Leadership With Dr. Kamin Samuel

Do you long for a life filled with purpose and fulfillment? The answer lies within you, waiting to be unlocked through the power of Strong Self-Leadership. Dr. Kamin Samuel, the inspiring coach in this episode, believes strong self-leadership is the key to achieving your dreams. It’s not about external validation or striving for someone else’s definition of success but a journey of self-discovery and empowerment. Discover how to cultivate unshakeable self-belief, tap into your inner compass, own your narrative, transform your limiting beliefs, and become your biggest cheerleader today. Learn the art of strong self-leadership and unlock the power within when you tune in to this episode with Kamin Samuel.

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Unlock Your Dreams: The Power Of Strong Self-Leadership With Dr. Kamin Samuel

Welcome to the show. I decided to bring in a fellow colleague. We have some similarities or at least parts in our lifetime which we’ll get to in a second. She has made the transition from California to Florida. I know what you’re thinking. You’re like, “California to Florida. There’s a change.” We’ll get time in this episode to explore and drill down that rabbit hole about the changes that you experienced from California to Florida. I’m glad she’s over on the East Coast. I only have a 1-hour difference with her instead of the 3 hours from that perspective.

Her name is Kamin Samuel PhD. Let me read her bio as I typically do. I don’t bring in guests whose bios are two sentences. That’s not the kind of caliber of people that we bring in. We bring in the people that have been successful in life. We want to understand how it is they were able to get to that point. Bear with me. It’s not too long, but pull out a pencil and a piece of paper and check things off as we go along because there is a bunch of stuff in here.

Kamin Samuel is an international Rapid Transformation business coach and a sought-after expert by executives and other coaches, a coach’s coach. Her unique expertise is to help her clients clear hidden barriers to achieving greater success and fulfillment in their businesses as well as all areas of their lives. You’ve probably read that on this show since that’s what I do as well.

Kamin is also a keynote speaker, conducts workshops on various leadership topics for corporations and the Military, and is a frequent podcast show guest. Kamin has the distinction of being the US Navy’s first female African-American helicopter pilot. There are so many questions that I want to ask on that one, but we only have a certain amount of time.

Having served as global VP of website operations at a billion-dollar company, she has a background in IT, web development, online merchandising, and a PhD in Positive Neuropsychology. Remember that. That’s another one to write down and check the box. Kamin is an award-winning and best-selling author of several books. Her newest books are The Conscious Luck Workbook which she co-authored with Dr. Gay Hendricks and Carol Kline, New York Times best-selling authors, and Wealth Creation for Coaches, co-written with Steven Chandler.

 

 

We’re going to get into this in the latter stages of our conversation. She is a filmmaker. She moved from California to Florida and is a filmmaker. It makes you go, “Hmm.” Her documentary film, Courage to Thrive, which is a working title, will be completed this 2024. Kamin serves on the board of EduCare Foundation, a large afterschool program provider in Los Angeles, as well as the President’s Advisory Board of the USS Iowa. That being said, Kamin, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me here.

I have so many questions. I’m targeting 45 minutes. I don’t know how far down my list I’m going to get. As I usually like to do with my guests, pick a spot on your timeline of your life and start there. Fill in the holes for us. What has your journey been like to get to where you are? Don’t leave out any details about being a helicopter pilot in the US Navy.

In The Navy

I’ll probably start around there because that’s where so many pivotal parts of my life really happened. I went into the Navy. I applied in the second semester of senior year of college. I didn’t think I would go aviation. It hadn’t even crossed my mind. I wanted to see the world. I also had a hunger to own a business to build something.

One of the things that occurred was when I took my exam, they came in. I must have done well enough. They had told me to study. The first time I took the test, I didn’t study and almost pretty much failed. When I learned I could study, I did. When they offered it to me, I turned it down. I looked at it for a couple of weeks. They said you had to run 1 mile and a half for 1 day and swim 1 mile a day. I tried that and was like, “Let’s go back to Supply Corps.”

About a few months later, I was on a senior trip walking along the beach and a formation of Marine helicopters flew overhead. I was like, “Really, God?” I asked my recruiters, “What are the chances of moving my package to aviation?” They said, “We’ll call you back in twenty minutes.” They moved it I didn’t know that they moved it. I’m like, “No.” They’re like, “Your flight physical is in. Your reporting date is here.”

When I got to Pensacola, I was not an athlete, so I really struggled to get my commission. I was good at the studying part but not at the running, jumping, and all of the obstacle courses. Swimming was okay, not stepping off of a tower into the water. When I was finishing up getting my commission, it was towards the bottom of the rankings of people getting their commission. I made a decision there that I would never be at the bottom again.

When I went to flight school, I decided I wanted to be number one. They said, “If you’re number one, you get to have the squadron of your choice.” I said, “That’s great.” Fast forward, I went through flight school and flew T-34. The only aircraft that women could fly that was not combat at the time but combat-rated was helicopter, so I chose the CH-46. When the rankings came out, I was number one by a significant number. When the orders came out, I requested San Diego. I was ready to go to San Diego. They gave me Norfolk.

It all depends on where the needs of the Navy are. You’re at their beck and call.

That’s the phrase I heard. I’m really grateful for Norfolk. Norfolk was an amazing opportunity for me. I got to go to the Mediterranean twice for six months and fly at sea. I’m so grateful for the squadrons that I had. I went on to postgraduate school in Monterey and then was a flight instructor down in San Diego. I did get a stent down there and then got out because I always wanted to own my own business, so when I had that opportunity, I left the Navy early.

I owed them money. What I didn’t know when I went in to get my final check was they were going to take all the money that I was expecting. I needed that money. About eighteen months later, I ended up in bankruptcy and foreclosure of two homes. I really didn’t think I wanted to survive. That was the most devastating part of my life. I had to choose, “Do I live through this? Do I clean this up? Do I move forward in my life?”

These thoughts of not being here, committing suicide, and looking at knives in the kitchen woke me up also to the fact that I had created my financial demise inside of me. With what I was rehearsing, when I didn’t get that check when I left the Military, I kept repeating inside of me, “I’m going to have to file bankruptcy.” Fourteen months later, I did.

A few months later, all of the other stuff came in. That taught me there that I create my own reality. I have to watch what I say and think, and that words both inside and what I’m saying to myself outside and what I speak aloud transform my life. They have their own life. I wanted to heal and make money. I, through a course of action, got another job. I got a web developer job because I love computers. I then grew my corporate career and moved to another company. All along, I loved helping people. When I had the opportunity to leave corporate, I did to be a full-time coach.

We create our own reality. Click To Tweet

I want to focus on those words you were saying to yourself in a minute, but I want to go back a little bit to the Navy days. You wanted to go to the Navy because it was a sense of adventure. Your thought process was, “Whatever they give me, I’ll go do it.” It wasn’t until the group of Marine helicopters flew over that you gave it serious thought. This is one of the connection points for you and me.

My best friend at Georgia Tech was a Navy ROTC. He went down and got aviation. He had to be a certain raking within ROTC in order to get an aviation slot. He went down to Pensacola for flight training. He didn’t have the eyesight to be a pilot, so a Naval Flight Officer track. I got the opportunity to go visit him. I’ve always been fascinated with aviation and model airplanes as a little kid. I was always fascinated with the thought of flight. It was when Top Gun came out.

Between seeing the environment in Pensacola, Top Gun, and everything, I made that decision of, “This is what I want to go do.” Unfortunately, I had some issues and problems in my life. You had your bankruptcy and thought of suicide. For me, it was a self-esteem issue. It took me a little bit longer to get my degree at Georgia Tech.

The Navy, particularly with the demand they were having because of Top Gun, had only certain numbers of slots. I couldn’t get my degree in time to go down for AOCS and have to do that mile and a half. That was my worrying point too. I was not the best in shape. I knew I was very strong in my head, but the physicality of it I really wondered about, particularly as someone who suffered from asthma as a young kid.

Long story short, they were going to have to put me through the whole process again and I was already of an age. It took me a year and a half to get to that point with them. I was like, “I can’t do this.” I was fortunate. I had a 22-year career with Boeing, so I still had a lot of aviation in my life. The universe was looking out for me from that perspective.

I had a backseat slot in an F-14 in the Reserves. The Navy was going to take me through all the training to get fully qualified on the aircraft and be a reservist out of NAS Dallas. That’s what I gave up. It’s because of things that were being said inside of me that I wasn’t able to accomplish it, but I still have a love for the Navy, the aircraft, the mission, and so forth.

That’s a long-winded way of saying you and I have a connection from that perspective. They’re slightly different paths, but we were going through somewhat similar battles, if you will, in that journey. You had to go on a financial journey and figure out what your why was in life to take ownership and a self-leadership perspective, right?

Yeah. The self-esteem aspect of it when you go through AOCS, they break you. Their job is to break you down so that they can build you into what they need you to be. Some of the challenges that I had with self-esteem and getting into the finances were because I didn’t even know my own voice. I was so used to taking orders.

In the plane, you’re thinking for yourself, but because I only did nine years, I hadn’t switched to my own thought process. I was still used to people more senior to me telling me what to do and having the Military take care of me. It was a huge shift coming out of the service into self-leadership. I wasn’t prepared for that when I came out of the service. Many people are coming out of the Military struggle. You’re taught to lead within the context of the Military, not necessarily lead in terms of the context of yourself. Does that make sense?

Getting Out

Yeah. The Navy doesn’t really tell you about self-leadership from the standpoint of relationships with others that are non-Military. It’s not part of the Navy’s mission, so they’re not going to be teaching any kind of those aspects. That’s a particular struggle point for an individual. You did nine years. What was pulling you to get out?

This idea of really working for myself. I remember being in operations one day. I was having a conversation with two gentlemen. They were like, “If I couldn’t fly, I don’t think I could breathe.” I’m thinking, “There are about 1,000 other things I could do. This isn’t the end-all and be-all of what I want to do.” I was looking at coming up on ten years. I figured if I go across 10, I’m in for 20.

The other thing was it was so much my whole world. I didn’t want to get to 20 or 30 years and then have to retire from my family that I had spent that much time with. I really wanted to create something for myself. I created the wrong thing. I didn’t take a lot of the guidance that I was offered at the time. I thought I knew better.

Let’s get into this aspect. You were sitting there in bankruptcy moments. What kind of internal self-dialogue was going on at that time?

When I left to go work for myself at that moment and I didn’t have that cushion that I had planned for, I was like, “If I don’t make a sale today, I’m going to have to file bankruptcy. If I don’t make a call today, I’m going to have to file for bankruptcy. If I don’t do this, I’m going to have to file bankruptcy.” That was the predominant thought until I had to file. It was devastating. I didn’t tell my family. Only 1 or 2 people knew how bad it was. I internalized this because I had been at the height of my life and career. I had been a naval aviator. This was not supposed to happen. I had the self abuse during that of, “How could I have let this happen?”

I could have gotten a job pretty much at any department store at that time and corrected it. The two homes were the biggest challenge for me, but they weren’t huge mortgages. I could have done something, but there was so much shame and embarrassment that I felt like if someone from the Navy saw me at a department store, then what? That shame kept me paralyzed from making the calls, sales, or whatever I was going to do. It paralyzed me to the point that I had no other choice but to file bankruptcy.

Rewriting The Script

If you could go back, rewind the tapes, and say, “This is how I had hoped I had been talking to myself,” per se, and the change about how you talk to yourself doesn’t change, at least immediately, what’s going on with you financially, how would you rewrite the scripts?

Do you know those who choose your path of adventure? If I went back, would I have stayed in and done twenty? That’s one path. I was facing ship time having to be an assistant navigator, and I was like, “I don’t want to go to sea anymore.” I most likely would’ve had more cushion. I wouldn’t have over-extended myself so much if I would rewrite the story. If I were simply dealing with my mindset and what I would tell myself, what I ended up doing, especially with the thoughts of suicide, was I made a decision that I can’t stop the thought from coming in, but I’m not going to entertain it.

 

You were not going to take ownership of it, if you will.

That’s right. The bankruptcy thought had a life of its own. It had a momentum until I felt like I couldn’t make another choice. If I had to do it over again, I would encourage myself differently. It wasn’t that I wasn’t encouraging myself. One of the things I also learned is the idea of my vision to own a business was solid, but that particular strategy was not. That wasn’t in alignment with who I was or what I wanted to do.

I would’ve probably called that strategy sooner as like, “This business isn’t it, it. Let’s choose something else. Let’s not go down with the ship on this one. Let’s really think about it,” but I couldn’t get enough altitude above it to think clearly enough. One is to tell myself a better story. Two is to realize the limitations of that particular strategy and choose again. One of the things that I’ve adopted is an experimentation orientation to life. I see that as an experiment, not as a foregone one-way-only, right or wrong, pass or fail, or good or bad decision.

I’m going back. I’ve been at this for four years, being a coach. I was like you, coming after 22 years with the corporate world and a nice paycheck which allowed me to do certain things. All of a sudden, I was diving into being a coach. I did it five months before the pandemic hit and was self-funded. All of a sudden, I found myself six months into the pandemic going, “Crap.” Those were things that were out of your control like the Navy taking the money now instead of letting you pay it back later was out of your control.

I was sitting there and not being in the best of financial positions as I used to when I had a nice, fat paycheck from the Boeing Company. I can appreciate those dialogues that are going on inside your head when you’re living your dream and trying to build your business and you’ve got things outside of your control that are affecting it. Are you going to take ownership of those things?

It hearkens me back to my twenties with my self-esteem issues. That was foremost the relationship with my father as a child and some things he did in my life that were from the goodness of his heart, but the way that I received them didn’t feel that way. I took ownership of how that felt to me to start building tapes in my head that I was saying to myself about self-worth.

I could have easily fallen into that trap in the middle of the pandemic by not getting the financial results I was hoping for as a part of my business plan when I started five months before the pandemic hit. I could have taken ownership of that and changed the thoughts in my head, but I didn’t because of the lessons that I learned when I was doing it.

Through therapy and so forth, I learned that I shouldn’t take ownership of what was happening outside me, the behaviors, words, or actions of my father. It’s because of having that back in my 20s that here I am in my 50s facing this. Learning and integrating those lessons back then helped me to get through this process and say, “You got an external thing that’s hitting you here, but it’s not because of anything that you did. It’s outside of your control, so don’t change the tapes that are in your head. Use your intellect to figure out ways to pivot and do some other things to help you out. In the meantime, change marketing strategies and all that kind of thing to deal with it.”

That’s what gets lost in all the noise in this issue that you and I are trying to address in our coaching. It’s that ownership. You own your life to include the voices inside your head which can be changed, but you have to take a moment to say, “They’re not serving me. They’re not serving my higher good. Therefore, I need to do work to change the mindset and the tapes in my head with comments and words which are choices that do serve my higher good.” At that point, that’s your anchor point, so to speak, and you can then begin a self-leadership journey to get you to where you want to be.

You couldn’t start your business right away. You went through a strategy to deal with the fact that you didn’t get the bucket of money from the Navy you were hoping for. Your dream didn’t go away. It got put on a shelf. You led yourself through working through jobs that build up skills, talents, and eventually, a bucket of money that could launch you into what you do. Did I get that right?

Yes. Going back, I had a chance. There was a chance a few years later after I was in corporate where I was thinking of leaving again. The company was in a drawdown. They were laying off people left and right, and I was praying to be laid off. I had about four months, and I knew I’d get four months of funds if I were laid off. I was praying every day.

In one of the final layoffs, I was in the room with a whole group of people. The boss I had at the time who rarely talked to me and only talked to the people he had brought in, laid off his number one person. It felt like I was in a movie. I was like, “Take me,” like from The Last of the Mohicans. I was like, “Why are you taking him? You don’t talk to me.”

I remember going after that meeting sitting in my cubicle and I had tears in my eyes. One of my people came out. I knew I was also losing one of my people, but I had prepared them to go on. They came to me and I put up my hand and stopped them. I ran to the restroom. As tears started to fall, I started laughing hysterically because it was like, “I have been praying to be laid off and I’m not. Let’s put this into perspective.” I really wanted to go start my coaching career then.

The next morning in my prayer time, inside of me came up, “You weren’t laid off because your roots are not deep enough.” I wasn’t prepared like I was in the Military. It took another about four years before I really made sure that I had the emergency fund. I had about ten months then of an executive salary at that point. I even got promoted soon after that. I then left and got another job. I had an opportunity to rewrite the old story then.

We have the opportunity to rewrite our old stories. Click To Tweet

When I came out to be a full-time coach, I gave three months’ notice so that I would have time mentally. There were still other things that I had to prepare myself for, but still, that mental preparation of ownership and then leadership of, “What next?” and setting out a plan that I could fulfill was what I focused on.

I had a moment like that too because Boeing tried to lay me off two years before the actual layoff. After traveling to Moscow, Russia, and kicking off a project, a week later, they tried to lay me off. Fortunately, the Boeing Russia President called up the head of my division, shrugging his shoulders and going, “What are you doing to him?” They decided to keep me on for that six-month project. In those six months, restructuring happened. The person that became in charge of our business, I had done some things with. She knew my value and capabilities and said, “We’re keeping you.”

That kept me on for a couple of years until things were so out of control. Somebody higher above me couldn’t save me. It was too big of an issue within the company. Off I went. That was the moment where I thought I was going. I called up HR right before Christmas going, “Who am I turning my computer into?” and so forth. HR went, “Don’t turn it in. I can’t tell you anything, but don’t turn it in.”

I went through my Christmas break going, “What does this mean for me? What is this all about? I’d already mentally prepared that I was leaving. What am I going to do with my life?” and so forth and so on,” and went, “Not time.” Is that the universe saying, “You got to continue building your roots Because what we got planned for you in the future, you’re not ready for. You’re almost there, but you’re not ready.” I don’t know. Maybe one day, I’ll find out the full story.

The Film

Let’s talk about your film. I’m really curious about this because you’ve been in coaching for a while. I have to imagine all the conversations you’ve had and the things you’ve seen in coaching that people have had to deal with. I’d have to imagine that your film is about this thread of an issue, related issues, or something that you’re seeing that human beings and people are dealing with in leadership and so forth. You feel like you want to go tell that story in this documentary. Is that a good synopsis or am I way off base here?

Having worked with people as a full-time coach for almost twelve years, especially working with them on their money issues, working with them on what they believe about themselves, and working with them on designing a life, a business, or a career that allows them to thrive, we clear the limiting beliefs. We clear some of the younger self stuff that is going on. Sometimes, because I’m a clinical hypnotherapist as well, I can work with people in that realm if it’s really deep work that needs to be done. I want people to have the freedom to hear themselves and tune into what wants to come through them and what the work is that is theirs to do.

In my last book, Wealth Creation for Coaches, it was really this path of taking someone through this arc of the excavation of their limiting beliefs, designing their life, creating a practice, whether they are new or they are seasoned but they’ve hit a plateau, and then teaching them the spiraling up. What I realized then was there are only so many people who get to work with me as a coach primarily because my practice is mostly full and I don’t do a lot of group coaching, but there are times when I do.

I wanted to make sure that, “What about everybody else? Do they have limiting beliefs? Do they have challenges with money? Do they get worth and value mixed up? Do they have the value of their skills and abilities mixed up? Do they design their life? Do they get to the end of their life and they’ve been underearning or they haven’t fulfilled the dreams that they’ve had?” The documentary came from this idea of my story of the courage to thrive in that bankruptcy situation. It’s not a one-time event. We have the courage to thrive in so many different times in our lives.

It tells the story of three amazing women. I chose to tell the story through the lens of women of color, African Americans, Native Americans, and Hispanic Americans. It’s because, in those three communities, they don’t always get all of the information that everyone else gets on how to make money, how to think about money, how to build assets, and how to even promote themselves or get promotions. I wanted an opportunity to take what I know in my regular practice, shift that to the screen, and be able to teach through coaching them both live and Zoom in ways that they could start to see their life differently.

The Latina that is in the film is an amazing woman who is a 22-year Army veteran. I had the opportunity to meet her when I was teaching a transition course for Army veterans getting out in 2020, and she was there. She told a story of her commanding officer telling her, “You’ll never get hired. You’ll never get a job when you leave the Military.” His motive was to keep her in, but for family reasons, there was a challenge.

She was a finance soldier, so she knows budgeting, spreadsheets, and all of that. She’s being told she’s not going to get a job. I’m like, “Time out. Let’s cancel that thought.” I used to have to fight for veterans to get hired because they didn’t know how to talk about their skills in a way that had them even at a higher level than the average person because they were going to show up differently. They’re going to be extraordinary workers.

There’s Enough Abundance For Everyone

The young African-American woman got her Master’s and got promoted. She’s gotten another promotion. For the Native American, we filmed that. She is the daughter of tribal leaders. She is really working to help her people thrive in a new way. To tell these backstories and then be able to coach them and help them see their lives differently, to me, is the greatest thing that I could do in my service to helping women, helping women of color, and helping everyone. Another component of this is how do we teach the next generation to see life differently that they can thrive and that there’s enough abundance in this world for everyone? It doesn’t need to be limited in any way.

I have so many thoughts. That’s the beauty, and I have to imagine it’s the same for you, of what I do. It is that the issues and the problems that we help or the limitations that we help our clients with are not limited to a certain percentage of the population. It is almost every single human on the face of the earth to some degree. For some, it’s way on the heavy side of the spectrum, and for others, it may be on the lighter side, but we’re all still grappling with the same issues.

Many of those issues are not enoughness. We come in knowing we’re enough, and then somewhere along our childhood, we’re not enough. We’re rejected. We don’t fit in. What I want is not available to me that’s available to everyone else. I see that across the board in men and women, so race-agnostic. It’s this ability for all of us to see our enoughness. I have people write on their mirrors in a whiteboard marker or lipstick, “I am enough,” to put that in front of them because, from that enoughness, they can make different choices. They can move on with their dreams in a completely different way.

In that time period when I was struggling with my self-esteem issues and I was trying to get into the Navy and was struggling with that process, I typed out on a piece of paper probably 25 affirmations about those issues. It was about, I am enough,” and so forth in an effort to get the tapes that were in my head to change.

I taped that on the mirror of my bathroom which I knew I was going to be in every single day, in particular the beginning part of the day. As I’m brushing my teeth and doing other things, I’m reading these affirmations and getting to change those tapes in my head. I had reached a stage where I had taken ownership of my self-esteem issues. I was doing self-leadership things to change the tapes in my head in order to change the thoughts to say, “I am of worth. I do have value. I have an abundant life ahead of me.”

At the moment, I wanted to take a strategy of trying to get into the Navy and go do something that I know I really want to enjoy. Even though I didn’t pilot an aircraft for a second of my life, I knew that’s where my passion was. I wanted to get in an airplane and go serve the country. I had to go through that process of what you’re talking about here of taking ownership, changing the tapes in my head, feeling and owning and having that essence inside myself of this abundance.

Ownership

We are inherently abundant. There is so much abundance in nature. That’s really one of the things that was pivotal for me back when I was coming out of bankruptcy. It was seeing that abundance in nature and seeing that everything was working out for me. For me, ownership is the ability to realize that there isn’t anything outside of us. It’s a mirror. The outside is a mirror to what is on the inside.

Ownership is the ability to realize that there isn’t anything outside of us. It’s a mirror. The outside is a mirror to what is on the inside. Click To Tweet

I have a Master’s in Spiritual Psychology. One of the things that we heard over and over again is this inside-out approach of there isn’t an outside. It’s all inside. We are spiritual beings having and using this human experience. How do we then flip that, transform that, and rewrite the messages in our heads and tell a different story?

From a positive neuropsychology perspective, we’re creating new neural pathways. We want to create new neural pathways that are positive and that our brains can learn. We’ve measured up until the age of 97. It was only up to then because the pool beyond 97 might be smaller. The brain can rewire and re-learn. We have to move from the thought of not enough and replace it with, “We can’t be not enough.” We have to replace it with something.

This ability to start to redesign what it is we want to create and then give ourselves the messages that we can with self-leadership, it is then, “What’s the first step? What’s the smallest step I can take to really help people? Whether I’m working with my coaches, executives, or whatever, what’s the smallest step?” I was working with someone who was like, “I want to do this.” I was like, “Let’s make that a project that moves it from a wish and an idea into coming back with a project plan.

We’re like, “Here are the things. We’re going to give it a timeline. What’s the timeline that you want to do it?” That then moves people into action in their lives. We then set up the behaviors that support that and recognize that we’re going to misstep much along the way. How can we encourage ourselves and say nice things to ourselves along the way to keep us moving forward?

One of the things I work with people the most is, “How can you be nicer to yourself? You wouldn’t say that to anybody else.” I was the most brutal person on the planet to myself. One of my books is called Successful Life Transformation Journal. At night, I would write down what are the successful things I did that day and then the gratitudes. It was then, “What would I like to create tomorrow?” and live into that. I wake up to, “This is the day I created.”

I want to hit on this point. We as human beings have this ability or skill that gets us in trouble. Men may be a little bit more susceptible to this than women. That’s compartmentalizing things. If we were to take your example, you went into the Navy and became a helicopter pilot. I’d have to imagine in your pathway or your career, you eventually made left seat and were the head of command, if you will, of that ship and so forth.

You’re executing on these things. You’re being a leader. You’re still alive, so that means that you successfully took the helicopter up, did your mission, and came back on a multitude of times. You’re a flight instructor. They thought enough of you that you can go out and teach other people how to fly a helicopter and everything.

If you look at that on the surface, if you were to compartmentalize those things and the doing, if you will, of being a helicopter pilot, people would think you’re wildly successful. If you open up the hood, how much you were beating yourself up to get through doing this, and then having the perception out in the world of your success as the first woman African-American helicopter pilot in the United States Navy, no other person gets that honor. That’s the rest of your life. People would look at that success and have this perception.

This is not a judgment, but an evaluation of you. They don’t bother to sit down, buy you a glass of wine, and go, “Let’s open that up a little bit. Let’s open up that onion. What were you saying to yourself? How much were you beating yourself up and everything to be able to get through that doing this that puts that out into the world?”

People evaluate you because they don’t sit down with you and take the time to understand what the trials, tribulations, work, and beating up of yourself, so to speak, with your words to get you through doing this that doesn’t allow you to really thrive. What is that definition of thriving? People would say, “You’re thriving. You’re out there, the first woman African-American helicopter pilot. You have a Navy career and an IT career. Now, you’re coaching other people.”

Those are achievements. Those are career things. All that being said, we as human beings are much deeper than our doing or our actions. When you’re present at the moment, are you being present and being empathetic to understand the life for the other person isn’t exactly everything that you see or the doingness of their life?

I want to add that when you were talking about being the first, I had so much fear. The fear at the time was like, “If I make a mistake, then I make a mistake for all Black females. I make a mistake for all Blacks. This is on me.” With the self-esteem issues I had and then that on the surface, I got all my quals. I was maintenance, NATOPS, and everything so that I looked shiny on the outside, but the fear was, “Am I going to make a mistake?” I come out of the service and I make the most epic mistake ever, which is to file bankruptcy. I put my entire Military career in a box.

You Can Thrive

For the film, they wanted some of the Military memorabilia. They were in boxes everywhere. Thank God that I still had it, but it was never displayed both internally or externally that I had done that. I had put it separately. That’s the thing I see with a lot of my female leaders. They put their accomplishments away when they move to something else.

I’ve been working with people to bring the cumulative effect. I’ve had to do that for myself on the inside-out of owning what I’ve done, owning my accomplishments, being able to speak from and being comfortable with it, and being able to help others see similar on the film we’re doing, “You’re not this. Look at all that you’ve accomplished. Look at all that you’ve survived. Look at how you can thrive from here.”

 

When we say life is a journey or even if you go on a travel journey, you’re going outside the country for the first time and you’re going to go visit Rome, Italy for a week. We can talk about your doingness of that. What were your logistics? They’re like, “I had to get a taxi cab ride to the airport and then get checked in, and then the actual flight for nine hours to get to Rome.” We can sit here and talk about the doingness of your travel, leaving it to the physical things and the logistical things that you did. We leave the whole emotional part out, right?

Yeah.

It’s like, “I was in such a chaotic state when I was packing. The first time I packed for a long trip and I couldn’t even think about, “I can go get a weather report, but should I pack this dress, this blouse, this pair of pants, or these shoes?” All that chaos of trying to figure out that perfect and exact bag to take along with it, we don’t talk about that. We don’t talk about, “It’s my first long flight and I might have a little bit of fear flying. What should I do to deal with those emotions?” We leave all of that out even though it’s an essential and impactful part of our journey and our story.

If you sit down with a friend for an hour or an hour and a half over dinner to talk about that, do you only talk about that doinness or do you bring the emotional journey in with you journey? Which one do you think is going to have the more satisfying experience with your friend in a year in that hour-and-a-half dinner?

Many times, I didn’t say anything. I remember having a meeting with one of my dear friends at the time. She was a hypnotherapist. We were at breakfast. I was like, “Can I stop by later?” We were talking. She was like, “Come on over.” As soon as I walked into her office and closed the door, I burst into tears because that whole morning, I was like, “Everything is great.” She was like, “People are asking me how your business is and everything,” and I was like, “Everything is wonderful.” I got in there and I had to tell her the truth, which is I’m a hot mess.

Most of us wear this weight on the inside and don’t acknowledge ourselves for what we are doing right. I want people to see that we can use those things of success to create a new momentum in our lives versus what we are beating ourselves up and what we are rehearsing in our minds so that we can move to a thriving place. It’s not surviving, but what does thriving look like?

If you design life’s success and not what the world tells you about success, what would be successful for you? What would light you up? In one of the books, The Conscious Luck Workbook, what we talked about is the luck of finding a goal. Is it meaningful? Does it light you up? Does it benefit others? When we have that trifecta, that can transform any goal. That brings that emotionality and our connectedness to what we want to create in the world.

I dare to say that’s what the universe is looking for from us.

Alignment

That’s where we are in alignment. When we are in alignment, there is speed. I’m mentalizing and creating from my head versus my heart and my being. The beingness is what is wanting to come through me as a part of my mission or a part of my calling. This ability for us to be so connected and listen from within, not from what we should do, what somebody else said we should do, or who we should be, that’s when we have speed. Magic and miracles happen. A path unfolds. I always remind people, “Don’t take a step too far in advance,” or, “Don’t think too far in advance because the juices in that journey,”

When we are in alignment, there is speed. Click To Tweet

When you asked about what path I would do differently, honestly, there are a lot of things I could do differently back then coming out of the Military, but I wouldn’t be who I am. I really appreciate who I am and what I’ve created, what I’ve overcome, and what I survived. I’m grateful that I didn’t take my life because what I get to do matters. I mattered then, and I matter now. That’s one of the core things when I’m doing hypnotherapy. It is reminding people that 1) They are enough and 2) They matter. Their presence matters. We need everyone for this world to thrive at a new level.

I use a lot of business language in my coaching to help people to get to understand we work too much at the tactical layer. When we talk about the higher self, I try to get people to picture at the bottom ranks is all of our doing, the tactical side. In business, tactics are a lot of the doing. It’s where the interface for the customer is. There’s a lot of day-to-day, a lot of legwork, and a lot of logistical work. That’s a lot of the doing.

You start moving up the ranks of the business, so to speak, and get into the emotional side of it. You’re still a business. You’re still a human being. You’re dealing with the emotional sides. How much are you bringing into the experience of your life and the experience of a business? People working in a business, sitting together at the lunch table, talking about the business and how they’re feeling, and sharing emotions about what’s going on with the company and things like that, you’re sharing and connecting at the emotional level. You’re a little bit higher up. When the aviation turns, we’d say you’re at a higher altitude.

You don’t realize it, but you’re also a spiritual being. You’re getting into the strategies of human life. What are you doing from a self-leadership perspective to move from the tactics of being an emotional being at a higher altitude to a spiritual being and getting into the strategy of life? From there is the connectedness to other businesses and industries in the world and so forth where the connectivity between you, me, and other human beings occurs. Are you thinking that way? Are you looking at life that way?

The Soul Line Vs The Goal Line

From my spiritual psychology degree, they refer to this as the soul line versus the goal line or the being line versus the doing line. The more we elevate within ourselves into that high self, we have a different vantage point. We have a greater connectivity and a greater ability to hear what’s next. We can do that at any time. We continue to grow and shift up inside of ourselves into this knowing.

I’ve had amazing opportunities to feel that connection, take action from that listening place, and be ahead of somebody. It may be somebody who wanted a promotion and I’ve already got their paperwork prepared since I was listening in to myself and what was coming through. That’s what everyone can really do if we start to get quiet enough. It is the self-leadership, the spiritual preparation, and the inner guidance system to be able to take steps that are coming from within them, not from a mental perspective.

It’s something that our friend and colleague, Dr. Jerry Falwell, really helped me with. The model that I use is this business strategy tactics model. We talk a lot about and beat up on middle management, but middle management is where strategy gets translated into tactics. To me, intuition is our middle manager. It’s a whisper, so we’ve got to be quiet in order to get that alignment that you talk about. That then allows the abundance, thriving, and everything else to be achieved. If we’re so busy down at the bottom level where they’re doing this that we don’t allow that quiet, that walking in nature, or whatever it may be that happens that you can listen to the intuition and get the alignment, it is going to be hard to find that thriving in your life.

Our Greatness Is Within Us

It’s this inside-out approach to life. It’s all within us. Our greatness is within us. Our ability to see our path ahead to create it and co-create it. What is it that wants to come through us, and what is it that we want to experience? It is then allowing the steps to unfold and allowing ourselves to show up as what we want to create and design. We keep ourselves on the path through self-leadership and our ability to see, “I can do that,” to champion ourselves and be our greatest champion of what it is that we want to experience and take and take that daily step.

 

That’s probably a good point to stop. I can’t thank you enough for coming onto the show and sharing your wisdom and your story, particularly.

Thank you for having me.

One thing that our audience takes away is the power of storytelling. Think about the times you go in and see that one movie, whatever genre it is, that moves you. It almost moves you to tears because of the storytelling that’s occurring in the movie and how it moved things, energy, emotion, or whatever for you. It’s the experience that you got out of that.

Take that notion and apply it to yourself, the power of storytelling that can go on inside of your head and how it can move mountains for you like that two-hour movie that moved you spiritually and emotionally in that story. That’s the power that storytelling can do for you. If you get alignment, write that story for yourself, and tell yourself that story every single day in your mind and in your heart, that’s powerful stuff. What’s the best place that people could reach out and connect with you either as a client or to learn more about your documentary or all the great things that you have going on?

They can go to KaminSamuel.com and learn more. There’s a lot of free information on the website, like free audio and videos, because I want people to have access to everything that I can to move their lives forward.

I warned you in the green room. Here’s the last question. Those who tune in regularly know what’s coming. The question is, what do the words generate your value mean to you?

I really love that phrase and that your website is named that because it goes so well with this inside-out approach. For me, we get to generate our value. There are a lot of people who come to me and they all say, “I want to be paid what I’m worth.” I’m like, “You don’t want to be paid what you’re worth. You’re priceless. You could own that pricelessness. You can own the enoughness that you matter already. That is a given. You want to be paid what your skills are worth.”

It is this ability for them to start to shift that and generate their value, who they are, and the cumulative nature of all that they’ve accomplished in their life. I put my stuff away, all of the things that I had accomplished. To generate your value is the world will see what we believe about ourselves and reflect back to us. It is our ability to own who we are. We own our gifts, abilities, and strengths.

The world will see what we believe about ourselves and reflect back to us. Click To Tweet

To own our strengths as superpowers is one of the things I also work with people on. When they can generate their enoughness, self-esteem, and high positive regard, that gets met by the universe and is reflected back to them. There’s magic. There are miracles. There are opportunities that flow to them. The abundance of life is there.

I have been on over 60 podcasts as a guest. One of the things I really love to talk about is the fact that value gets shown up in many different shapes, sizes, colors, and so forth in the world. The value that you generate could be from a physical standpoint, a logistical standpoint, and a doingness standpoint, but there’s emotional value and spiritual value. We could have a 60-minute conversation on how value shows up in the world.

Are you paying attention to the fact that you understand that? The value that you generate out into the world shows up in your relationships. It shows up in your doingness of your 24-hour day and so forth. Are you approaching the strategy, if you will, of your life from that aspect that you know that you can generate value in so many different shapes, sizes, and colors in the world? The universe will meet you there.

Whatever you want to create, truly. That part is a partnership. If we own our value and generate it, focus on it, create it, amp it, celebrate ourselves, and see our strengths, not the weaknesses, which I love to live from strengthening our strengths, and this ability, if we see that, we can do so much. I always tell my clients, “I have no limiting beliefs about what anybody could do.” From that place, they can generate jobs, money, or whatever the external is, but it has to start from the inside. It’s more fulfilling if it starts from the inside. I’ll say it that way.

I say in our canned intro for this show that it is success as you define it for yourself. It may be lots of money. It may not be any money. It may be living a rich emotional life. You may be a creative and you could care less about money, but you want that emotional kind of experience through art, photography, or whatever. It doesn’t matter. How do you define it for yourself? Do you live an abundant life that allows that to show up in your life?

Abundance is everything. It is relationships, health, money, and friendships. It can be the personal abundance of your relationship. The ability for us to see that gets reflected back to us based on how whole and complete we feel inside is magic.

For the audience, we can’t thank you enough for joining in on Kamin and I’s conversation. We talk about golden nuggets on this show. Hopefully, our audience takes the golden nuggets of my conversation with one or more people and integrates them into their life, business, or whatever it may be such that abundance, joy, happiness, and success as they define it for themselves show up. The only way you didn’t get a golden nugget out of this conversation was if you closed your eyes. It was full of golden nuggets out of our conversation.

We’re here every Tuesday. I hope you’ll hit that subscribe button and come back and visit us with another great guest of the caliber of Dr. Kamin to get some more golden nuggets. Keep adding. Keep integrating. Keep living. Get out of the doing. Get into the being. Get into the spirituality. Get in alignment and let the universe beat you there so that all this stuff shows up in your life.

Thank you for having me.

It’s been an amazing conversation. Thank you for taking that valuable resource and you have time to come share your life story, those golden nuggets, and wisdom you have to share with the world.

Thank you.

That being said, have a great day. Have a great week. We’ll see you here with another great episode of the show. Take care.

 

Important Links

• Kamin Samuel
• The Conscious Luck Workbook
• Wealth Creation for Coaches
• Successful Life Transformation Journal

 

About Kamin Samuel

Kamin Samuel, PhD, is an international Rapid Transformation Business Coach, a sought-out expert by executives and other coaches, a Coaches Coach. Her unique expertise is to help her clients clear hidden barriers to achieving greater success and fulfillment in their businesses, as well as all areas of their life. Kamin is also a keynote speaker and conducts workshops on various leadership topics for corporate and military, and is a frequent podcast show guest.

Kamin has the distinction of being the U.S. Navy’s first female African-American helicopter pilot. Having served as Global VP of Website Operations at a billion dollar company, she has a background in information technology, web development, online merchandising, and PhD. in positive neuropsychology. Kamin is an award-winning and bestselling author of several books, her most recent books are the “Conscious Luck Workbook” she co-authored with Dr. Gay Hendricks and Carol Kline, New York Times bestselling authors and “Wealth Creation for Coaches,” co-written with Steve Chandler.

Kamin is now a filmmaker. Her documentary film, Courage to Thrive (working title) will be completed in 2024. Kamin serves on the board of EduCare Foundation, a large after school program provider in Los Angeles, as well as on the President’s Advisory Board of the USS Iowa.