Finding Your Path: Personal Growth and Transformation

Welcome to the Rise, Shine and Redefine podcast where we explore personal growth, relationships and transformative mindsets. I'm Karen Meininger, your guide and ally on this journey. Imagine a space where your true beauty shines, where every challenge is a step toward your best self, and where family and personal development intertwine. As your BFF for mindset mastery, I'm here to share insight and laughter to guide you through the highs and lows, and to celebrate your journey towards authenticity and fulfillment. Join us as we redefine what it means to live beautifully, love our journey, and embrace our true selves. Let's rise, Shine and redefine together. Hi and welcome to the first episode of the Rise, Shine and Redefine podcast. I'm Karen Meininger and I am so excited to be here and start sharing lots of good nuggets on personal transformation, elevating your life and just making you feel better. And be the best version of yourself and be the best version for your children and to help create thriving families. With that said, I was in a 20 year job, a family business which was selling fabric. And as much as I loved being a business owner, I did not feel the vibe and the love in the fabric business. It wasn't lighting me up and I felt I couldn't really share my true gifts with the world and, you know, give the advice and listen and show up for people in the way that I wanted to. I did the best I could, but just with the company culture and the way I perceive life and the potential of what things could be, it just wasn't fulfilling for me. And I felt really trapped being there nine to five and not being able to see my son. And I really wanted to spend time with him and be able to watch him grow and be there as he rises and as he thrives and be able to teach and train and role model for him in ways that I wouldn't be able to do if I wasn't able to be home more. And I just felt I couldn't really give him my full self. So here we are with this new podcast and I'm just really, really excited and I'm just excited for you guys to be on this journey with me and it's all about growth and you know, I just, there's, there's all these different needs that we have and I feel like they go through different phases and for me it's growth and partly significance because a lot of my life I felt were really insignificant and I just needed to find my way and to find my path. So I am on my way to building the growth and sharing this journey with you. So this is my day one and I am just super excited. So today I want to talk about really getting present because in today's world we are so distracted with mostly technology. I don't know if you guys do this, but I'll be scrolling social media seeing my cousin's baby born and before I know it, I'm redecorating my house. So I am really focused on teaching my son about present. So one thing that we do is we go on morning walks. Not all the time, right now it's a little bit colder. But when we go, I like to do a present exercise where we pick a color. It could be any color. And the idea is as you're walking to see and find anything that has that color and it just really brings you to the here and the now. So one day my son picked yellow and we walked outside and this was before we moved. So we currently now live in St. Augustine, but we are originally lived in Miami. And we walked outside and he picked yellow and we looked at the tree with flowers on it right outside of our house. And I had never ever noticed that we had yellow flowers on our front yard. And I was just blown away how easy it is for us to be distracted and not even see what is right in front of us. So creating this awareness and feeling really in tune and being observant will just really help you become more grounded. And as we become more grounded, we can be more resilient. And so now my son loves to play the color game and we play, we actually play I Spy a lot, which is a little bit different than being fully present. But it does really help him recognize all the different colors and all the different surroundings because we can have so much tunnel vision all the time. And it makes it really, really challenging to bring in other perspectives to see what else is going on in the world. And we're just so self involved to so when we can get outside, number one, being in nature and having the fresh air, looking at colors, being observant, being present, we just create this really beautiful harmony and a family dynamic of connection. So all of these things matter and just that it doesn't have to be a lot, it can be very simple. You can even do it inside your house. You can wake up and be like, hey, what color do you want to find today? And you'd be amazed how many times you have missed those things and just really getting present with yourself. And I'm loving being able to share this kind of awareness with my son. Another little trick that I love to do with my son and myself of getting present is when I take a breath is just on the inhale saying here and on the exhale saying now. So sometimes we're just so overwhelmed with so many different things, and if we can just stop and breathe and go with a deep breath in, thinking to yourself here. And it just really, really helps you calm the nervous system down and really take into account before there's any kind of explosions or frustrations that could cause a huge ripple effect in your life. So these are just kind of a couple little tricks and tools that I like to use to get present, and that's picture walking with my son, picking colors and finding those colors. I'm sorry, not a picture walk, a color walk. And then also breathing with here and now. And with my son, we usually will pick something a little bit more fun. So for Christmas, well, you might do like a Santa breath and take a deep breath in. And when we breathe out, we just say, ho, ho, ho. And it just really gets the kids or my son to get really grounded and present. And those are kind of my takeaways for the day. Please subscribe. Let me know what you think. This is obviously my very first podcast. I'm still learning and trying to. To know what you guys want and what you need from me, and I'm just here to share with you and get feedback and learn and grow and just conquer the world together with you. Thank you so much.