Meet Karen Astromsky

 

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Karen Astromsky a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Karen, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?

Resilience comes from having weathered tough times, and I can say that is something that I have done since childhood. We all have. For me, I am one of five kids in a family that moved several times during my growing up years. It was a big adjustment to say the least, and I started realizing what an asset those skills were when I began interviewing for jobs in my 20s. I often mentioned my ability to “get along” which is a huge soft skill in the workplace. As I got older, I had even more experiences that challenged me and my sense of purpose. One of my daughters was born with a heart defect that was corrected with open heart surgery at 4 months of age. That was something in itself. Subsequently, she was diagnosed with life threatening blood cancer (AML) at 6 months of age. That diagnosis and all that came with it changed the course of my life, hers, her sister’s and her father’s. While Natalie was cured of her cancer, the healing that is required is something else entirely. We are still working towards our healing from that traumatic experience, and Natalie is 23. This is another reminder to me that life experiences, no matter how they come to you, are yours for complex reasons that you may never fully understand. It’s not enough to suffer them, endure them, survive them. It is important to thrive from them, and that became the theme of my book about change and transformation, and that is a thread in my public speaking and life coaching practice.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

What I feel most excited about is helping people change their lives. I do this on stage through motivational speaking, on zoom with life coaching, and on the mat in yoga and qi gong and meditation classes. I always come back to what is called the “Three Treasures” in Qi Gong. This is ancient Chinese wisdom pertaining to your heart, mind and body. Creating alignment in those Treasures brings happiness. Because we live in the technology age, and too much information is coming at us, it can be challenging to focus on what really matters. When people come back to what is inside them, with them at all times, they can refocus on what will actually bring more joy, purpose, happiness. When my clients come to me, they are out of alignment with their personal or professional lives, and they are looking to rebalance what matters to them as they have grown and changed. I help them navigate that journey and find their way back to what is important through their Three Treasures. One of my favorite questions I ask all the time–what do you want? It can really be that simple.

Wherever I go, I am coaching. I can’t help myself. I love boosting people up and reminding them of the fact that they are enough, as they exist in this moment, AND they can also want more for themselves. I am presently working on a TEDx talk about metamorphosis. I also coach individuals and groups on a 3-6-9-12 month basis.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

I think one of the most important skills anyone can have in life is their ability to change. Whether that means direction in life, jobs, houses, partners, having the ability to make a change is incredibly important. That is step 1, however. While it can be courageous to make a change in the first place, that is usually not enough unless we are talking about changing clothes. Anything bigger takes more.

Transformation, the ability to take the change that you have made, and alchemize it, massage it, create something altogether different is the ultimate power move. I got divorced. I changed. That wasn’t enough. I had to transform all those years of a miserable marriage into a past that stayed in the past–a past that was an important part of my life–and integrate that into the story of my life that is coherent and makes sense. I had to be ok with how I ended up there and let it go and move forward, renewed. In short, I had to do the work. I couldn’t stop at change. I had to graduate to transformation.

The third quality I have to mention is integrity, being true to your values, your purpose. Being who you are when you having nothing to gain and no one is looking. Who is that person? Standing in your integrity creates a “through line” to your life’s purpose. It advertises to the world who you are and what you stand for. It is courageous to stand in your integrity, to stand up for your beliefs. Without integrity it’s hard to live an authentic, happy, healthy life.

I encourage everyone to look back at their life’s experiences and notice which ones matter to you the most. Whether it was a positive or negative experience. What are those memories and/or traumas that you still carry with you today. Then go back to those times/places/people with fresh and forgiving eyes. For yourself. Forgive yourself for not knowing then what you know now. And open yourself up to letting go what you don’t need to carry forward. This is a transformative experience that helps your life story make sense. Then, choose to live in the present moment, knowing with full confidence that your Three Treasures, heart, mind and body are intact.

Is there a particular challenge you are currently facing?

The number one challenge I am currently facing is creating my dream–which is to be on a TEDx stage, bringing my motivational and inspirational message of change and transformation to a much larger and broader audience. I say it is a challenge, because actually being selected to be on a TEDx stage is a months-long process. On average 86 applications to various stages have to be submitted before you finally get selected. All this before the speech is even completely written!

The work it takes to keep going, getting virtually no feedback from anyone, is a challenge, not dissimilar from the work my clients do in getting whatever it is they want. Therefore, I take my own advice that I share so freely with others. Shift your mindset! That means reconnecting to what matters. In this case what matters to me is my dream of being on a TEDx stage. It doesn’t stop being important to me just because there is time, effort and energy in the way. The bigger the dream, the more it usually takes to achieve it.

Other things that help along the way include investing in coaches (coaches hire coaches) who know more about this than I do. I trust them to guide me through this process. I also talk with other people who are in the same boat–other speakers who are working towards their TEDx moment. Sharing the challenges and being seen and understood by others is important. We are all in this “game of life” together, and connecting with each other makes the journey so much more enjoyable.

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