Meet Chrissy Smith

We were lucky to catch up with Chrissy Smith recently and have shared our conversation below.

Chrissy , so good to have you with us today. We’ve always been impressed with folks who have a very clear sense of purpose and so maybe we can jump right in and talk about how you found your purpose?

Many people go through life wondering at times if they are living their life with purpose. To me living with purpose means you wake up everyday with excitement in your heart for learning, sharing or experiecing a passion of yours. For many of us this is a hobby, and for others this passion aligns with a successful career.

I used to think I lived my life with purpose as a fitness trainer and gym enthusiast. This former overweight child in the 80s and 90s, who couldn’t feel the beat of the music and got picked on for most of her public education experience, grew into a professional health educator, national fitness competitor, personal trainer, and multi-faceted group fitness instructor. I honestly held every job imaginable in the health and fitness industry (except for having my own gym), because I truly found passion in so many facets, that I wanted to experience it all.

During the lockdowns of 2020, the gym industry suffered a loss that forever changed how we exercised and viewed physical activity. For me, I suffered a loss that was not only my paycheck, but my identity as a person. The next 2 years were obviously challenging financially; and physically, I saw myself reach my highest weight as I bought a pair of double digit pants, due to prolonged inactivity, emotional eating, and alcohol abuse.

Luckily, in 2022, I decided to take my fiery and passionate spirit as a fitness leader and run for the State House of Representatives and I thought this was where I was supposed to go next. I will always say through saving America, I was able to save myself. Not only did this opportunity help motivate me to get back into shape, but I found a way to put my energies toward something of value and I felt I was living with purpose. However, after this short lived and life changing experience I was left once again with the question what was my purpose – now that I lost my identity and I lost the election?

The collapse of my identity and everything I once loved caused me to look deeper into who I was as a person. I desperately wanted my spark back and a reason to get out of bed in the morning with excitement. I no longer identified with the gym anymore, and although I tried my best to find the old me, my creative energy and joy for the fitness industry never truly returned.

I have always been fascinated by holistic medicine and the mystic arts because of how these healing practices helped me through a prior tower moment earlier in my life when I lost my husband in my early 30’s. But unfortunately, my addictive behaviors, emotional trauma, mental instability and extreme imbalance, caused me to miss the opportunity at the time to truly heal myself and develop my own skill set in the healing arts industry.

Forward 16 years, I found myself in another uncomfortable place again, and I returned to the modalities which helped me before and gravitated toward the self study of astrology. The information I found, not only helped me learn a lot of myself, but it allowed me to heal parts of myself I never knew existed. I was able to see others through a different lens and it helped me to love the people in my life more unconditionally. But above all, astrology showed me how far off course I was from my soul’s purpose, and it explained why I felt so lost for so long. And it further confirmed why everything I once identified with had fallen away.

I never realized until I started studying astrology how much I was living a life others expected of me; and how much I didn’t honor nor love myself with certain life choices I had made in order to live up to the expectations of others. Although the hero’s journey is not easy, it has brought me to such a state of awareness, mental clarity, emotional stability and spiritual connectedness that it has totally transformed my life from the inside out. Astrology was the vehicle I took for the journey back to self and it has been the most rewarding experience of my life.

I am so passionate about astrology because of how it has changed my life that I have spent the last 2.5 years learning as much as I can about this spiritual knowledge and re-inventing myself to become an astrologer. The ability to read for people and study astrological patterns fills my spirit with passion, purpose and hope. I am now able to help people on a much larger scale than I ever did before as a fitness educator. By teaching astrology to others, I can help people understand how to interpret their own unique birth signature, so they too can discover their own soul’s destined path.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

Currently, I am a full-time professor at a community college and I have worked in this academic setting for over 14 years. In my free time I study astrology, participate in holistic practices and make content for my social media platforms.

Recently, I have been working on establishing the foundations of a business, which allows me to bridge my knowledge and almost 30 years of experience in the health and fitness industry with my new found gifts and abilities in astrology. I have been doing astrology workshops as well as personal chart readings within my community for the last 6 months. And, I share my knowledge of health and the stars as an astrological health coach called 9 Lives Energy on the platforms of YouTube, Instagram and TikTok.

My new found love of astrology has given me a lot of inspiration, many ideas and has opened a number of creative doors for me. Managing my thought process around what I wish to do next has been my biggest challenge; because like my former passion and love for fitness, I want to do it all.

My goal is to slowly transition away from my full-time professor position, to my forever career as a full-time astrologer. I would like to not only provide personalized readings and astrological health coaching, but I see my abilities branching out into creating online workshops, organizing outdoor events, and coordinating retreats in order to help people find their own journey back to self.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

The 3 things that helped me the most during this time of transformation and going through the hero’s journey back to self, is solitude, gratitude and surrender.

In order for someone to know who he/she is at the core, it takes solitude with one’s own energy to understand this answer. We are conditioned to think we are powerless and we need others to make us whole or to give us the answers we so desperately seek. When in reality, each of us has these innate abilities within our own beingness. But often we are too distracted by the outside world to listen to our own intuition about what is correct for us personally. When we turn off the “chatter” we can hear more clearly what it is our soul is trying to tell us.

Life isn’t about doing all you can with unlimited resources. It’s about creating magic and finding a way when your means are few. I found when I practiced gratitude for the small things I had in my life each day, then I was rewarded with more abundance to be grateful for.

Letting go of what no longer serves, or releasing the hold of an experience which is trying to leave your life, can be an overwhelming challenge for most people because our ego wants to keep us in an unevolved state of being. When we surrender to what no longer is, then we can be open to receive what is trying to come in, which could be something we didn’t know we wanted or needed in order to be more fulfilled. Surrendering to the divine, allows us to be in more alignment with our purpose, as we learn the lessons we came here to master in this physical expression of our soul called the human experience.

What is the number one obstacle or challenge you are currently facing and what are you doing to try to resolve or overcome this challenge?

The one challenge I am experiencing the most, is creating a personal business. Having an idea for a business in which most people in your family or close circle do not resonate, has been difficult. I have found myself over the last 2 years in holding patterns, where I impatiently made decisions about who I was going to be next, or what was I going to do in order to attract the most people.

I found when I sat in these pause-like stages for any length of time, I realized I wasn’t being my most authentic self and I wasn’t motivated or consistent in what I was putting energy towards. However, when I energetically connected and authentically aligned with my true message, not only did it feel in more alignment, but ai attracted more opportunities than I did when I was trying to hide behind something else.

Recently, I have found a like-minded soul in my community who has helped me develop a weekly calendar of social media posts. This has been extremely helpful, because it allowed me to have direction with all of my ideas. This will also help me be more consistent with the “behind the scenes” work, in order to build upon these foundations later.

I am hoping to launch these in the next few months and see how this shift will help me develop a more secure strategy to help build my business model and brand.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: 9 Lives Energy
• Youtube: 9 Lives Energy
• Other: TikTok – 9 Lives Energy

Image Credits

Dan Ray- Muscular Development (competition photos)