LIFEBOATS
On this episode of The Karen Kenney Show, I dive into a powerful parable about “lifeboats” and how we often miss the help that’s right in front of us.
I share an old story about a guy who refuses to be rescued during a flood, because he keeps waiting for God to save him.
Only to later discover that help came to him multiple times in multiple forms, but he simply refused to see it or accept it.
The big lessons here?
Sometimes we get so stuck in our own ways of thinking - that we miss incredible opportunities for growth, change and support.
I talk about how we limit ourselves by expecting help and helpers to look a certain way - whether that's from a specific type of person, professional, program, or process.
We can block our own healing by being stubborn and narrow-minded and insisting that things look a certain way.
I explain how my approach as a Spiritual Mentor isn't about "fixing" people (cause’ they’re not broken) - but rather that I integrate tools and techniques that support your Mind, Body, and Spirit to create real, sustainable transformations.
My bottom line: Stay curious and open. The universe sends help in wild and unexpected ways - through a random text, a book that falls off a shelf, or a conversation with someone you'd least expect.
We don't want to get so caught up in our own stories that we miss our rescue boat.
Sometimes the lifeboat is right in front of you, and all you need to do is climb aboard!
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
• Help can come in unexpected forms.
• Be open to receiving it differently than you imagined.
• Internal wisdom is just as important as external guidance.
• Getting stuck in old patterns and beliefs.
• Spiritual Mentorship is not about “fixing” you.
• Providing new tools and shifting perspectives.
• You’ve gotta’ be “Open for Business”.
• Healing is holistic – physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.
• We’re all potential “lifeboats” for each other.
• The Nest - Group Mentoring Program
BIO:
Karen Kenney is a certified Spiritual Mentor, Writer, Integrative Change Worker, Coach and Hypnotist. She’s known for her dynamic storytelling, her sense of humor, her Boston accent, and her no-BS, down-to-earth approach to Spirituality and transformational work.
KK is a wicked curious human being, a life-long learner, and has been an entrepreneur for over 20 years! She’s also a yoga teacher of 24+ years, a Certified Gateless Writing Instructor, and an author, speaker, retreat leader, and the host of The Karen Kenney Show podcast.
She coaches both the conscious + unconscious mind using practical Neuroscience, Subconscious Reprogramming, Integrative Hypnosis/Change Work, and Spiritual Mentorship. These tools help clients to regulate their nervous systems, remove blocks, rewrite stories, rewire beliefs, and reimagine what’s possible in their lives and business!
Karen encourages people to deepen their connection to Self, Source and Spirit in down-to-earth and actionable ways and wants them to have their own lived experience with spirituality and to not just “take her word for it”.
She helps people to shift their minds from fear to Love - using compassion, storytelling and humor. Her work is effective, efficient, memorable, and fun!
KK’s been a student of A Course in Miracles for close to 30 years, has been vegan for over 20 years, and believes that a little kindness can make a big difference.
KK WEBSITE: www.karenkenney.com
Transcript
Hey you guys, welcome to the Karen Kenney show. I'm super duper excited to be here with you, and I think I'm just going to dive right into this sucker. This
Karen Kenney:one might be short and sweet. It's just a little parable. It's a little story, something that I've been thinking about. And I know some of you, or most of you, have
Karen Kenney:probably heard this example before, but some of you might not have so let's just dive right into this. I think I'm going to call this suck a lifeboats. Life. Lifeboats. Oh,
Karen Kenney:my God. Some days I feel like I could use a lifeboat double A man hands, if you know what I'm talking about. Okay, so I was talking to somebody, I was talking to
Karen Kenney:somebody the other day, and we were just talking about a particular situation that was happening in their life, and one of the things that I said to them, and some of you
Karen Kenney:might be able to relate to this, if you have ever been in a relationship with somebody who was hell bent On getting in their own way, causing their own suffering, being
Karen Kenney:there a cock blocking themselves from happiness. You know what I mean? Oh, my God. And one of the things that I said is, look, we cannot save people from themselves, like
Karen Kenney:some people insist on doing it their way or the hard way or whatever, and they're not really interested in being helped, or at least they're not interested in being helped
Karen Kenney:in the way that it's being offered. So let me just tell you a little story. So you guys, I'm sure some of you have heard this before. I'm not saying this is original, but
Karen Kenney:I always love this little, this little, I don't know, what is it? A parable, an allegory, a metaphor, I don't know. No, it's not a metaphor. But so there's a, there's a
Karen Kenney:little town, right? There's a flood that we know that the forecast has said, hey, the levee is going to break, the water's going to rise like, you know, do your best, like,
Karen Kenney:get out of town, or whatever. You know, how some people out there stubborn, and they stick around a little too long. So there's this one guy, and he's got, like, a house,
Karen Kenney:it's got, like, a couple of levels, right? Like a first floor, second floor, whatever. And the water starts, you know, starts to come, starting to spread around town. And so
Karen Kenney:his neighbors, like, are going to get out of dodge. And the neighbor like, comes by, and he's got his car packed, and he's like, Hey buddy, like, come in. Like, we gotta get out
Karen Kenney:of town. We gotta evacuate. And the guy says, Oh no, don't worry about it. God's gonna save me. The guy's like, okay, like, you did his best. Drove off. The guy stays.
Karen Kenney:Now the water starts to rise and it comes up to, like, over his first floor. His whole first floor is flooded. So he goes up to the second floor and floor, and he's in the
Karen Kenney:second floor now, and these guys come by and, you know, the little rescue boats are in their little like, paddle boat, canoe thing, and he's got his head hanging out,
Karen Kenney:like the second floor window. And they're like, Come on, sir. Like, get in the boat. Like, we're here to help you. And he's like, no, no, no. God's gonna save me. Don't worry
Karen Kenney:about it, whatever. I'll be fine. God's gonna help me, whatever. Okay, then the water comes up to the second floor. He crawls out. Now he's sitting on his roof,
Karen Kenney:right? And the the rescue people now are out in the helicopters, and the helicopter comes by and they like, drop the ladder. And they're like, dude, let's go, like, get up
Karen Kenney:in the, you know, the thing you know, we'll send somebody down. We're going to hook you up. And he's like, no, no, no. Like, God's going to save me. Whatever. You know, where
Karen Kenney:this story is going, right? The water comes up too high. The guy drowns. He dies. He goes up. Least he was up in heaven. Good enough guy, right? Quote, unquote, good
Karen Kenney:enough guy to go up to heaven in this story. So he's at the pearly gates, and he's talking to, you know, he sees guys talking to God, as if God could be a body. But you
Karen Kenney:know what I'm saying, roll with me. And he says, you know, he's like, God, like, How could you let me drown? Like I believed in you and I prayed to you and I tried to be a
Karen Kenney:good person. He's like, how could you How could you let me drown? He's like, What are you talking about? He's like, I did. He's like, why do you know the guy's like, why
Karen Kenney:didn't you help me? And God's like, What are you talking about? I had the neighbor come by with the car, I sent the guys in the boat, and then I sent the helicopter.
Karen Kenney:And here's what I want to say you guys, if you're going through a time, if you're going through a rough patch, if you are questioning some things, it's really easy to
Karen Kenney:get stuck in our patterns and our identities and our beliefs and our structures that we were conditioned by our families and our younger years, or whatever. You know, we get
Karen Kenney:so hung up on our own preferences and our own expectations and our own wants and desires and how we think the help is going to come to us. And a lot of times right the
Karen Kenney:answers, or. Help or the solutions do not come in the forms that we expect. And if we insist on assuming that the answer is going to come from this person or this book or
Karen Kenney:that thing, or whatever, this institution, this doctor, this therapist, this whatever, if we insist that there's only one right, acceptable way that answers can come to us.
Karen Kenney:If we're going to be we're going to be missing out on a lot of opportunities to learn, to heal, to get better. Because even though, like, sometimes even let's just
Karen Kenney:forget external things, like sometimes the greatest answer lies within us, but we don't even think it doesn't even occur to us to look inside for our own wisdom, for our own
Karen Kenney:internal teacher. But sometimes a book's going to fall off a shelf, or somebody's going to step in front of you and you're going to go like, Oh, they can't possibly
Karen Kenney:know what I'm going through. They can't possibly know the answer. And it's not true, right? Sometimes we expect or want or insist the help to look a particular way. You know,
Karen Kenney:and I know like, there are some people who, like, won't take, won't take help from women. They don't think women are good coaches or whatever, right? Or they won't
Karen Kenney:take help from somebody who's a different race or somebody who's gay, or somebody who's this or this or this, or they don't think that this person could possibly
Karen Kenney:understand them, because they're too old or they're too young or whatever. And we get really hung up in these very narrow, narrow like perceptions, and they keep us, they
Karen Kenney:keep us from getting help, and they keep us from healing, and they keep us from discovering some gems. You know what I'm saying? And I was just thinking about this.
Karen Kenney:You know, sometimes you just can't help people if they're not willing to be helped, and they're not willing to be open minded enough, open sighted enough, open, had it
Karen Kenney:enough to maybe discover a solution or a something, a system or a tool or a new way of being or thinking, because they really are just hung up on, you know, they're in
Karen Kenney:that like, I know, right? Like, I know it's supposed to come from this. It's like, yeah, no, but sometimes the divine, I always say Holy Spirit's going to use, like, whoever
Karen Kenney:and whatever they can. And whether that's showing you a license plate, whether that's a song coming on the radio, whether it's you seeing the spine of a book in a bookstore,
Karen Kenney:you sitting in a waiting room somewhere, and all of a sudden that exact article that you needed to read, or your friend sends you a funny text, or you bump into somebody random
Karen Kenney:when you go to get a coffee, or whatever. I really do think that, you know, call it your spiritual team, call it your divine helpers. Call it whatever you want to call it. I do
Karen Kenney:think that there is a force of love that is often trying to help us, but we have to be, as I always say, we have to be open for business. And I come at this too from and
Karen Kenney:I've talked about this before in other ways, how a lot of times people have tried, like, every other thing, like they're suffering, and so they're like, Oh, I'll go to therapy,
Karen Kenney:or oh, I'll go to yoga, or oh, I'll invest in this business coach, or oh, I'll do this thing, or I'll do that thing. And one of the last things that they consider is working
Karen Kenney:with a spiritual mentor. And I'm not a typical quote, unquote, spiritual mentor. And in fact, when I like Google, when I google spiritual mentor. I kind of cringe a
Karen Kenney:little bit because it's often associated, like, with religion and churches. And not that there's anything wrong with that, but I think that those words have been kind of
Karen Kenney:pigeon holed, like spiritual advisor. And I'm kind of like, I don't know, a spiritual coach. Call it a spiritual mentor, whatever. It's not that. But even that word spiritual
Karen Kenney:has been co opted, and a lot of times, people don't think that the solution can be in the spiritual realm. But I'm not just, I'm not like a typical spiritual mentor. I
Karen Kenney:also bring in all these other tools and all these other points of views, everything from being a yoga student and a passage meditator, and you know, a yoga teacher for
Karen Kenney:like, 25 years, and somebody who comes from a background of Reiki and Thai Yoga massage, and I'm a writer and I'm a storyteller, and I know the power of of narrative and telling
Karen Kenney:your story, and the power of having a DSP and being a hypnotist and knowing, like, the power of coaching the unconscious mind and tapping into conversational hypnosis. And
Karen Kenney:there's a lot that kind of comes into this work. And I'm not trying to, like, just do I'm not like, he had to, like, do a. An advertisement, like a marketing like promo
Karen Kenney:for myself, although it's my podcast, I could do that if I want to, but there's a point, a bigger point that I'm trying to make, is that a lot of times when they're
Karen Kenney:suffering or there's a problem, people know that they're having symptoms, whether it's an unhappy marriage or they can't get out of their own way, or they're an entrepreneur,
Karen Kenney:but they're too afraid to put themselves out there, or they're trying to, like, you know, deal with their anxiety and work their way through some some stuff that's gone down in
Karen Kenney:their life, and figure themselves out and figure out, like, why do I do this? Why do I have this lack of self love, and why don't I keep my word to myself, and like all these
Karen Kenney:things that come with the human experience, and yet, sometimes a spiritual mentor will be the last place that they would look for help or look for the solution. And I'm just
Karen Kenney:here to tell you know, if you've come across me in your social media feed, or you've been listening to this show for a long time, and you've tried a lot of other things and
Karen Kenney:things weren't working. Why not? Why not give it a shot? Why not come and join the nest for one month, 50 bucks, see how it feels to be a part of a community that maybe
Karen Kenney:does things a little bit differently. Maybe you want to try working with me one to one for four months and see what kind of progress you're making. Because I can tell
Karen Kenney:you that the people that I have worked with and do work with, they do experience great change, and it's change over time. You know, a friend the other day was saying, you know,
Karen Kenney:the work that that I do is really deeply sustainable, and that's the thing is, I'm not here to fix you or to huh, you're not fucking broken. That's why I don't want to
Karen Kenney:fix you. It is, however, about giving ourselves new tools and new perspectives and new ways of being like new transformational ways of thinking, tools that can literally
Karen Kenney:shift your mind from a place of fear to a place of love that can help your nervous system regulate, to shift out of that sympathetic that fight and flight, and learn
Karen Kenney:how to enter into the relaxation response in a non jarring way. You know what I mean? So in your life. You know, maybe you've missed some of those car rides, maybe you've missed
Karen Kenney:some of those boats, maybe you've missed the helicopter. But it doesn't end there. There are people like me out in the world. I mean, there's many, there's a gazillion of us,
Karen Kenney:right? But you're listening to this show, and if you can hear my the sound of my voice, then maybe this is exactly where you were meant to be. You know, I drew this
Karen Kenney:little picture the other day. I had my sweetie write the words, because his handwriting is a lot neater than mine. So if you're listening to this and not watching
Karen Kenney:this, I'm just going to hold this up so you can see it. And I was talking about, like, these are the elements of the stuff that I do. So what you basically have is, at the
Karen Kenney:center of this picture is a hat, a red hat that says Love in the middle of it. And around that hat is a triangle, and the words around that hat say mind, body, spirit. And
Karen Kenney:then around the triangle there's a box. There's a square, and the four edges of that square say, physical, emotional, emotional, spiritual, mental, and this is the way that
Karen Kenney:I help. I bring all of these aspects together, right? I always say it's the somatic, the body, it's the spiritual, it's the subconscious reprogramming, it's the
Karen Kenney:neuroscience of the mind and the brain. So all of these areas get addressed. And so that's all I'm going to say for today. Thank you for listening. If you're still
Karen Kenney:listening, I want to just say like this work right here is the most important work that we do in our lives, working on ourselves, coming to understand ourselves, knowing why
Karen Kenney:we do what we do, think, what we think, believe, what we believe, say what we say, the behaviors and the choices that we make. And if you're like, what like, if you're
Karen Kenney:just like, ready to try something new,
Karen Kenney:I hope you reach out to me, because I would love to hear from you. And I, you know, like to think like, I like to be kind of like a little life raft in a lifeboat for other
Karen Kenney:people. You know, when somebody's just been like out in the water, dog paddling for so long, and they just need a little buoyancy. They just need to be held a little bit, who
Karen Kenney:knows, so they can gain their strength back, so they can catch their breath, so they can get their mind right, so they can get back in the games, they can get back to the
Karen Kenney:business of love, right? It's like spiritual mentoring in the nest. It's like a little sanctuary. It's like a little cocoon where transformation can happen. When you think
Karen Kenney:about like the little caterpillar turning into the butterfly, it needs a place where it can be like in a safe. Haba, you know what I mean. So this is how I kind of think
Karen Kenney:about it. So I'm sending the car, I'm sending the boat, I'm sending the helicopter, and I'm sending you this message, and it lands for you. I hope to
Karen Kenney:hear from you. And look, if you're out in the world, maybe you can be a lifeboat for somebody else too. And we all need each other. We're better together, and there are
Karen Kenney:powers that be would try to divide us and make us think and forget about our unity, but it is in our strength, it's in our togetherness that we're going to find our
Karen Kenney:strength. So just thank you for listening, and I appreciate you. And wherever you go, may you leave yourself and the animals and the other people and the places and the
Karen Kenney:environment better than how you found it. Wherever you go, may you and your love and your energy and your presence be not only a lifeboat, but a blessing. Bye, bye.
