Author Archives: Karin Volo

What’s Your Word for 2018?

Do you think of a theme or a word for each year? It’s a great exercise someone recently mentioned to me. I’ve decided that this year’s theme for me is evolution. It’s one of my core words anyway and it feels appropriate for this year as well.

One of my favorite sayings is “Life is change. Change is constant. Growth is optional.” I’ve lived by this for many years now. I believe that life happens FOR us not TO us. When we can make this mental shift, we drop the victim mentality and start to think that the Universe has our back, even through the challenges and tough times, which if you are breathing, you WILL have! It’s a part of the human experience.

It is often through the toughest times that we can grow and evolve the most. It somehow forces us to dig deep inside and find what we need to make it through the challenges. At least that has been my experience.

So choosing growth, choosing to evolve, and leaning into trust that things are going to work out for you in the long run, makes it possible to be strong and resilient through whatever life may throw your way. We ALL have an inner core strength of courage and those difficult times helps you to grow.

Growth of course can happen in good times as well. It seems like when you are reaching for goals, dreams, and desires that are outside of your comfort zone, you learn to expand your comfort zone to make it bigger. And guess, what? It stays there!

Two years ago when I released my personal story, 1,352 Days, I ended up all over the media in Sweden. I was on radio and TV shows, even LIVE TV, doing interviews in Swedish (holy cow!! that was a HUGE stretch for me!). For most of the interviews, I was pretty calm inside and the reason is because I was (and still am) very purpose driven. I knew that I had a message to share and get out into the world and if I could use my personal story of immense challenges to inspire others, and to share that no matter what happens, choose love over fear, then I was willing to expand my comfort zone as far as I needed. That was a year of huge evolution to me.

I believe that our world is going through a HUGE evolution right now as well. It seems like so many people I know are having to deal with their emotional baggage, issues that they might not have dealt with or wanted to deal with. But now is the time for each of us to do the internal clearing and healing. Watching what has happened with the #MeToo movement all over the world is both bringing up issues and (hopefully) healing for those who have experienced any sort of harassment.

It is time for us to embrace the changes, to consciously create the world we want to live in, and to take our power back—both individually and collectively. Together we are stronger. We have the opportunity to step into our best selves and we are evolving.

So what is your word for 2018?

The Power of Practicing Peace

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We are in some crazy times and if you watch anything on the news or TV, you’d think the world might be coming to an end.

Let me tell you that this is not true.

According to research by Peter Diamandis, best selling author of Abundance, and many others, we are living in the most abundant and peaceful times right now.

However, that is not what mainstream media wants you to believe. It is a machine that churns out negative news to keep us in fear.

Yes, there are atrocities still happening in the world and I am not denying that. Yes, there are still horrible incidents occurring that should not be. No human being should be losing their life in violence and we definitely should not be killing each other—ever!

But what we are seeing is the revealing of old systems that are dying right now. We are bringing out dated belief systems to light so that we can understand that it is time to move on. These old ways of thinking no longer serve us! And it’s time to transmute them by consciously choosing to think, feel, and believe something else.

Humanity is waking up and choosing love over fear. It is a joy to see this!

The reality is that peace starts inside, with each and everyone one of us. When you can keep the calm during the chaos, you influence the situation around you by modeling something positive.

This was a lesson I learned all too well sitting wrongly accused in a high security holding facility for almost four years. It is possible to practice peace, to choose love over fear, and to positively impact those around you by doing this.

So when you start to feel overwhelmed by the circumstances around you…look closely around you and know that you are a powerful being who can influence the world. You can choose to have thoughts of love, compassion, forgiveness, healing, and peace, and send that out into the world instead.

I had a clear vision once where I saw how polluted the world really was by all of our emotional baggage and drama. I saw the earth from space covered with a thick grey smog or clouds and the war zones were black clouds. But there were beams of light shooting out through those clouds. Those beams of light were people who were practicing peace, love, and joy.

OK, now you might think that sounds hokey. But those beams of light are powerful. And they do break up the collective emotional pollution. The more people that can practice peace in their own lives, the sooner we will all have peace.

The key is to know that it all starts inside of us.

We are each more powerful than we’ve ever been led to believe or understand.

So what can you do now in the midst of all this turmoil?

Turn off the TV. Stop reading the news, or read it in limited quantities. Research shows that five minutes of negative news in the morning has a negative impact for up to eight hours the rest of the day!

Trust me, you’ll still hear about the important things you need to know about anyway. And choose to find the joy in your life. Appreciate all the good things that are happening. And find peace in knowing that we are in the middle of the greatest transformative times in our lives. Be a part of the solution…not a part of the problem.

Help make the world a better place for everyone. The time is now.

Start practicing peace daily.

Appreciation—A Key to Transforming Your Life

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Appreciation is a way of giving thanks to the things we are glad about in our lives. It is one of the major keys to living a joyful life. According to the dictionary it is “thankful recognition.” It’s a way that can lift your spirits quickly when you start to focus on all that you are grateful for in your life.

I’ve met hundreds if not thousands of people from all walks of life and have learned that everything is relative. In Sweden, we talk about “luxproblem” or luxury problems when someone’s phone isn’t working or they are bored with their work/school. If you just only compare your life to someone who has it worse, very quickly you can find so much to be grateful for in your own life. Basically if you have eyes to read this and are breathing, guess what? You can be grateful!

Gratitude and appreciation are so important because no matter what the circumstances are, you can always find some little thing to be thankful for which will help you to get to a higher energy level to be able to attract good things into your life.

Appreciation is also the key to having good relationships. When you can focus on the good parts of a relationship or person, you are seeing the person with love. This will cause even more good energy to flow between you and that person. When you first fall in love, all you can see is the goodness of that person. With time, the “honeymoon phase” will end, and those little things can start to get on your nerves. If you allow those things to bother you and continue to focus on them, it’s only going to get worse. But when you can focus on the good things—which appreciation does for you—then you will only see more of that.

I’ve always love Thanksgiving because it is a holiday that helps people to remember what they are thankful for. One of the best ways to get into the appreciation mode is to think of ten things that you are grateful for every night before you fall asleep and in the morning when you wake up. When you do this as you are going to sleep, you’ll put yourself into a positive state that will carry you through the night. When you do this in the morning, it helps start your day in a positive light. This is one of the keys to living a joyful life.

No matter how dire the situation may seem, find those ten things to be grateful for…they may be minuscule but it will help. You will start to condition your mind to look for the good in life. Our brains are like a muscle and what we focus on is what will create our reality. So use appreciation and gratitude as a tool to creating a very joyful life.

Is Our World Going Crazy?

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Our world is incredibly tumultuous right now. Between the wacky weather, fires, earthquakes, floods to the upheaval in politics, governments, and so much negativity coming to light, it’s quite easy to feel we ARE going crazy.

So many people are afraid of what is going to happen, saddened by the anger, frustrated by the ineffectiveness of our leaders, disgusted with behavior. Just recently the hashtag #MeToo went viral as women open up about sexual harassment and violations they’ve experienced in their lives.

All of these things ARE horrible. They are scary. They are disheartening. And…we must remember that in order to heal so many things, we must bring it to light first. We must acknowledge that it does exist and then find ways to move forward, working with forgiveness and compassion. And this can be very hard if you’re a victim of circumstances; especially with all the “natural” disasters we’ve been experiencing.

As I see it, our earth is also going through a major shift, which could be contributing to some of the weather extremes. The earth is a living organism and unfortunately, our human race has become a bit of a plague to her, not the caretakers of Gaia as the native indigenous populations looked at their role.

All this craziness, this continuous stream of chaos; I believe it is serving the purpose of waking up humanity on some level. It’s making us take action and refuse to tolerate certain behaviors or actions. It’s causing us to come together to realize that no, we do NOT want _____ (fill in the blank: war, hatred, divisiveness, arrogance, non-accountability, etc). This is actually a good thing!

When two ducks fight, they make a lot of noise and then they separate and shake it off. So do dogs. And then they get on with their day-to-day lives. We are in the process of shaking things off ourselves. It’s time for humanity to come together, to learn to respect each other, to have compassion, to forgive, and to acknowledge that yes, we’ve created some horrible systems and that we are now ready to fix things—TOGETHER!

So all this craziness and chaos, I see the good in it because in the end, we will come together and start to build the world we would all like to see. I truly believe that in my heart. It’s a matter of leaning into trust, bringing to light the darkness in order to heal from it, and to know that we are all one. When we can collectively hold the vision for the future we want to have filled with love, peace, joy and abundance, then we will realize that no, we are not crazy at all. We are in a paradigm shift and heading to a world that is not only sane but in fact, truly amazing!

Why is Knowing Your Purpose So Important?

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The two most important days in your life are the day you were born…and the day you find out why. ~Mark Twain

It is essential to know why you do what you do. This is your purpose. And when the purpose is clear and communicated to everyone in a way that is understood, everyone is on the same boat, so to speak and can move forward in the right direction.

Like building a house and putting down a strong foundation, this is the first foundation block to creating an Amazing Company.

A company is a system, just as an individual, a family, and even the Universe. When you know how to optimize the system, you bring the best into your world. A big part of this is in knowing why you exist. In the business world, it is the reason why the company exists.

Here are a few examples of great purposes from our model companies that we feature in our book, Engage!:

– TOMS Shoes—it is a “One For One” movement; not a shoe.

– MindValley—it is about “Pushing Humanity Forward” and optimizing human potential through personal development products and education.

– HCL Technologies—putting “Employees First, Customers Second” has taken this global technology company to $4 billion in revenues in 3 years—and the primary focus has shifted to their people.

– Southwest—giving their customers the “Freedom to Fly” drives their business forward and give clarity to all business decisions.

– Achievers—they are “Changing The Way The World Works” through recognition.

The clear purpose is one of the key foundational elements that you can build your company on… and your life too. When a company is not in touch with its purpose, it will be lost.

Why do you do what you do? Let’s say you’re an executive of a company. You want to make a good living.

Why is that? Because you want to live a good life and take care of your family.
Why is that? Because you want to make them happy.
Why is that? Because it’ll make you feel good.

Why is that? Because you want to be happy too.

When anyone does this exercise on a personal level, eventually we end up with just a few core reasons: love, happiness, and peace.

It’s a simple exercise and it shows that even though we all come from different walks of life, we all have the same core desires within us…which doesn’t make us so different from each other after all.

A purpose statement is like a compass—guiding you on the path to reach your destination. A company may have a purpose well defined, but the important question to ask is this:

Is it a purpose that will inspire others to take action?

If not, it is probably not the bigger purpose. We can lift a company’s purpose to a much higher level just by asking “and why do we do that?” several times until you discover that higher purpose for being. Knowing the purpose then becomes the guiding light for smooth sailing. The same is true on a personal level.

After going through so many difficult years, I now know my purpose is “Bringing Joy To The World” by teaching all that I have learned along the way through my books, courses, programs, etc. Even Jim Carrey, one of the funniest people alive, has his own personal purpose defined very clearly—“Free People From Concern”.

A clearly defined purpose statement is the foundation to building a purpose driven life and a purpose driven company.