Ep#086 Why Living Consciously Is Key To Our Wellbeing – With Possibility Mindset Coach, Ken Hannaman

0 (1s):
Welcome to the soul science nutrition podcast, where you’ll discover that when it comes to your health, you are so much more powerful than you’ve been led to believe. And now your host, she’s a holistic nutrition and lifestyle coach, chef author, and Yogi, Christine Okezie.

Christine Okezie (22s):
Hello, and welcome to the Soul Science Nutrition podcast. I’m Christine Okezie. Thanks so much for tuning in one of my favorite quotes is by the novelist Pablo Cuehlo and he writes “You are what you believe yourself to be”. Well, this week’s episode is a heart-centered conversation about how our level of consciousness, that is our sense of who and what we are and what we believe shapes our health and happiness in life. Today’s guest is Ken Hannaman, a thought leader in the personal transformation space, who is inspiring folks to shift from living life on autopilot to an ungraduated way of living. Ken’s experience from high school dropout, to minimum wage employee, to corporate executive, now responsible for over 700 restaurants, opened up his perspective to the importance of mindset and belief systems.

Christine Okezie (1m 15s):
When it comes to our life’s potential through his inspirational podcast: “Ungraduated Living and Learning”, his growing online communit, and soon to be published book, Ken is a new and powerful voice in the consciousness space, inviting folks to live a more soul directed truth seeking path so they can receive greater wellbeing in the parts of their lives that matter most. I can’t wait for you to listen to this inspiring and insightful conversation. And if you do like it, I’d be grateful. If you could leave a rating and review on Apple Podcast. And if you haven’t already please hit the subscribe button, it helps people find the podcast easier.

Christine Okezie (1m 55s):
Thanks so much for listening and enjoy the episode and hello, Ken, welcome to the podcast. Thanks much for being here.

Ken Hannaman (2m 3s):
Pleasure is mine Christine excited to be here and have a purposeful conversation with you wherever the rabbits rails take us so pleased to be here with you.

Christine Okezie (2m 11s):
Thank you. So I would love maybe if you could just start, your journey has been so inspiring. What puts you on the path, you know, to share that you, our message of personal transformation and empowerment.

Ken Hannaman (2m 24s):
Yeah. It’s an interesting long story that I’ll try to give the cliff notes too, because I’m an interesting introspective big question. Kind of thinker always have been all of my life. And I tell people that I was never someone who resonated very well when people would explain things and I would ask questions. And when they would say, well, it’s just the way that it is or because I said so, and I’ve never been somebody that kind of conform to that thought process. So as I began my career and got past, I’d say my mid twenties and into my late twenties and began to hit some goals, I became self observant and started to see how my life was progressing.

Ken Hannaman (3m 4s):
And I would know people around me and would wonder why they weren’t attaining what they had set out to attain. So I started to do some internalization around mindset and fixed mindset versus growth mindset, and really looking at life as more of an internal point of view. I started to shift, I used to think that life was very external focused that everything happened randomly. And until I rewired my mindset to saying, I wonder if this law of attraction stuff works and I started to hear about the secret, then I started to understand and just ask more questions and I could not stop asking. And as I began to realize that, you know, inside of our heads here, we have this radio tower, that’s always beaming out intentions and thought I began to kind of tie everything together and seeing how my life was very much driven by that same perspective.

Ken Hannaman (3m 57s):
So I caught the itch. I could not stop. And I kept reading, reading, reading, and developing more and more. And then at some point decided to take action. So that’s where I’m at in my life now, but it’s definitely been a journey from where I’ve been at in the restaurant business, all my life. And now today taking on some entrepreneurial ventures and trying to really spread my wings to become the best human being, an example that I can for others who were on similar paths, who like me didn’t have it all figured out. And I do not have it all figured out now, but I’m still searching for more and trying to take anybody who has similar interests into how to live a more inspiring, empowered life on their terms, help them see what I’ve seen and hope that the sparks that I give them might lead them down.

Ken Hannaman (4m 44s):
Similar paths of enlightenment. So that’s a little bit of the cliff notes, I guess,

Christine Okezie (4m 49s):
Oh, you got the bug. And I think that’s really the first kind of inkling there is we all have, and some of us can come through through adversity, you know, and some of us can come through just pure curiosity and inspiration and, you know, and I think it sounds like from a very young age, you had just a unique predisposition, you know, you had a mindset that was open and, and beautifully. So you kept it open your tagline, your, your body of work that you’re building here comes under the guise of an graduated living and learning, learning, and really, really powerful title, you know, to the work that you’re doing. Can you walk us through, what do you mean by an graduated living and learning?

Ken Hannaman (5m 31s):
Yeah. No, thank you for that question. And thank you for the comments around it. First things first, ironically enough, that name came to me. You can call it out of left field or from the universe, or just a flash of spark. I was downstairs in my basement gym working out one morning and was thinking about my life and what could come next. And the term that one made up word hit me and graduated. And I asked my wife, I said, Hey, do you think this would fit my M O and what I’m trying to do? So how it really began was I have a similar story to many people in the world of not having a whole lot and having very little and having to work very hard to get where I’m at and having nothing ever really being given to me.

Ken Hannaman (6m 17s):
And along that journey, things got very difficult for me to where I almost became what they call a statistic because I dropped out of high school and having always been somebody who was good in school, got good grades, but got caught up in some challenges and some environments that were not very good outside of my hometown in Pittsburgh, PA I made a decision to leave that environment. It was the one time in my life that I feel like I kind of ran away from something, but I don’t regret that because it was the right decision to make looking back at it. Now it’s helped define who I’ve become. So upon those life events occurring for me, I kept getting labeled from everybody.

Ken Hannaman (6m 58s):
Well, good luck flipping burgers in the restaurant business, good luck being a, a failure in society and probably living off of the government and all these things that unfortunately get labeled and placed on people that don’t finish their high school education. So long story short, I ended up getting my GED before I left and applied myself, working very hard in the restaurant business. But as I rewired my mindset and did a lot of my understanding and learning of life, I started to see that very much, everything that I was defining was on my terms. And I had to more or less deprogram myself and graduate myself from the societal programming, the societal upbringing, whether it’s religion, government, friends, family, education, not all of that stuffs, you know, ill intended, but we take it all in and we allow it to define who we are and what we should be in life versus living on our terms.

Ken Hannaman (7m 54s):
So this idea of becoming an graduated, it’s not to say that everything that we’ve learned is a bad thing. It’s to look at everything through your own, in your own inner lens and understand that it’s not the same for everybody. There’s not a one size fits all approach to, to what success looks like. It doesn’t have to be graduate high school, go to college, get married, have kids buy a home or somewhere close to that order. It definitely has not been that way for me. And as I expand more at the age of 40, now, I’m looking at how do I define my brand and help people see that there’s a different way to do this.

Ken Hannaman (8m 34s):
It does apply some effort and some learning and some taking action, but the success factor that you can have of living life empower through your own lenses versus following the path of others or the, or how society deems necessary. It’s just not the way it’s been scripted for me. It doesn’t have to be for everybody else. So that’s really how the birth of an graduated living and learning began.

Christine Okezie (8m 58s):
Beautiful. Thank you. Thank you so much of learning and growing is really unlearning, you know, and deprogramming is the message here, right? I mean, it’s sort of, I call it sort of, if we leave the body-mind into the default settings, right. It can kind of lead to sort of mediocrity or, you know, kind of, I think subpar living, particularly if you’re looking for more, you know, and that’s the idea,

Ken Hannaman (9m 23s):
And I think that real truth and learning comes through your own personal experiences. You know, I, as you’re just sitting there saying learning is unlearning, I think in my lifetime as one very simple relatable example, the planet Pluto was a planet. It was taught to me in school as a planet, then it wasn’t, and now it is a planet. Again, it’s like we, as a society tend to at very high levels, say, this is the way that it should be. And then if we, if we choose to allow our learning to stop, well, then that’s kind of on us. And I don’t think we have to work very hard every day at reading books, upon books, upon books. But if we just approach life from more of an intuitive inquisitive, I, we can be led through our lives as where to put focus.

Ken Hannaman (10m 10s):
And I think it starts with your passions and what you want to learn about, and you can define your life and your success and your learning on those terms. I just don’t like making myself always be told or hearing from a higher level and then just accepting it. So that’s another big piece. And I love what you said about unlearning is also a part of learning because that’s how we grow. It’s how we get better.

Christine Okezie (10m 32s):
That’s right. That’s right. And I think, you know, you’re in the consciousness space, you know, that we are living in an age, you know, from my yoga background, it’s the Aquarian age and the Aquarian age, we make a distinction, you know, it’s not about, you know, so much believing in something outside of ourselves, but having an experience of what is here right now. So a lot of what you just said, the hierarchical sort of institutional top down way of living that we’ve evolved up until a certain point is really not working so well anymore. You know, collectively and, and, you know, for, for many, many individuals on the path like this, right. That it just doesn’t resonate anymore. So we got to go out and we got to find our truth.

Christine Okezie (11m 14s):
We have to experience it, you know, and it doesn’t even, like you said, and I see all the books behind you, you know, I’m an avid reader, myself, I eat books, right. But there’s only a certain level of, of shift and, and evolution that can come from just information and knowledge gathering. Right. Which we love, you know, but at the same time, I think what you talk about is that’s why it’s an graduated living and learning. It’s embodiment, it’s experiential, right? It’s what is your, what is true for you?

Ken Hannaman (11m 46s):
Right. That’s exactly right. It is just not the same for everyone. And I’ve been as I, as I’ve gone through 2020 and 2020, and I do think what you said, it’s, it’s so, so true is that we are going through, I believe a very major shift that will affect society in general, how we think, how we live. And if you’re not prepared for this shift, you’re gonna find yourself waking up one day, very confused or perplexed. And right now there’s already a lot of confused. Professor’s

Christine Okezie (12m 13s):
Going to say, I think a lot of folks are there

Ken Hannaman (12m 16s):
And maybe maybe 20, 30, 40 years from now or sooner, we’ll see how this all made sense. But that’s what growth is. Growth is meant to be uncomfortable. And as I believe, human tines consciousness evolves and gets to a place of realizing that we’re not individualistic. We’re actually connected. And there’s a lot more going on in the world. Energetically, that science is proving as well too. We would be, we would be remissed to not pay attention to this. And I love, I want people to pay more attention and do their own research. Because if you do your own research, you’ll see that there’s evidence there. And then when you apply it, the experiences that you have happened become your truths.

Ken Hannaman (12m 56s):
You can listen to anybody out there, but until you’ve experienced it, it can not be your truth. It’s just word of mouth, hearsay. My sound good. So I have lived a life where I’ve experienced these things, which I know have become my truth, but that truth is, does not have to be the same for every one. However, we can figure it out. There’s no one size fits all. And I love that part about this as well, too. So many people want to say, here’s how you do it. And this is why it’s right. And because we allow that ego to come into play where we need to remove that ego, not completely because it’s there for a reason, but just identify that my way does not need to be the other person’s way. They may have a different way to figure it out. And as long as they’re getting to the same from point a to point B, how they get there in terms of their truth is up to them.

Ken Hannaman (13m 41s):
That’s the individual life journey and path that we’re all walking. And that’s the beauty of it.

Christine Okezie (13m 46s):
Absolutely. That is the beauty of it. That’s the gift in it. Can you share, well, let me hold, let me back it up. Let’s talk about self-limiting beliefs. Okay. In your own words, you know, what are they, where do they come from and how do they keep us from living happy, purposeful lives?

Ken Hannaman (14m 2s):
Yes. I, I love that question. And I always, really nowadays think to two words I am and the self-talk that we put in our heads, or when we even introduce ourselves, I am X, Y, Z profession. I am XYZ age. I have XYZ status. That’s just in the normal physical, you know, everyday life aspect. But how much of the stuff have we carried around with us from the time that we were really coherently aware of who we were as individuals, we had teachers telling us we had education systems. We have parents, we had brothers, sisters, governments, religions, all saying that this is what you are.

Ken Hannaman (14m 47s):
You’re classified into this status, strip classified into that status. And we begin to believe these things, right? And I know it’s hard for some people to step back and say, I am not these things. I am the consciousness that embodies this physical vessel that gets to choose what I want to be. And we live in a society that’s been set up higher height from a hierarchy standpoint. That’s just very much about here’s your title, here’s your label. And we’ve allowed ourselves to just kind of get sucked into that. So that’s one aspect of it, but then our experiences that are meant to be growth aspects in life, good or bad, because there’s never going to always just be toss, highs or constant lows, I believe.

Ken Hannaman (15m 32s):
And I called them the seven principles of universal law that are more hermeticism or hermetic base goes back. Thousands of years in terms of relive in a physical world is going to always be on the principle of polarity. And we’re going to have highs and lows, and we have to be able to step back and see those highs and lows for what they are and learn from them. So the experiences that, that are more negative, we can sometimes allow those to define us. And too often, when we get through that, through those experiences, we allow ourselves to be limited belief wise off of what happened in that one moment.

Ken Hannaman (16m 13s):
And that one moment may have been a learning moment, but then we bring that moment into the present tense. And we constantly tell ourselves from the past what happened and the universe and the energy that’s within it, that we interact with is very literal. It is a whatever you put out, you do get back or whatever you choose to see, you will see, and then you’ll miss the other things that you’re not seeing. So you can look at it from energy and what you put off the back, or you can just, Hey, I’m, I’m a negative person. So I see negativity versus I’m a positive person. So I see positivity. So the limiting belief aspect to tie this all together comes back to the self-talk that we’ve, that we’ve begun to believe we are.

Ken Hannaman (16m 56s):
It also comes from the experiences of truth that we’ve been raised up to believe. The difference is recognizing the fact that we are not these things. And we have as human beings, I believe very innate power within us that we have not tapped into. And that we do not realize that we are our own creators tied to a creator. In my opinion, my belief is that there is a lot more happening out in the universe from a conscious energy standpoint, but we are a piece of that just in a physical vessel, we can change, but because things don’t happen instantaneously and we are a society that wants instant gratification. What we don’t realize is we’re always creating our future self through every present moment, choice and decision.

Ken Hannaman (17m 42s):
And that’s the difference. The awakening, if you will, from an undergraduation aspect is to say, I do control these things. I have to rewire my negative. Self-talk my limiting beliefs, the labels that I’ve been given by society, and that I’ve perhaps given myself and that isn’t to say, you walk around as, hi, I’m a human being. I have no name. I have no, I’m not saying to try and do those things. We have to still function. You just don’t have to completely identify with those things. And that’s a very freeing, empowering way to live, but it does require some work, some internalization of where my out of my life, because we’re all on different paths and different parts of our journey.

Ken Hannaman (18m 24s):
And where does my work need to begin? And if you care about life and want to become your best self and help, help others also be the most successful, happy money, whatever you want to call it, you need to do this kind of work. If you do this kind of work, you’ll find yourself vastly rewarded for it. In my opinion,

Christine Okezie (18m 43s):
A hundred percent. Couldn’t agree with that more. I mean, I don’t think there’s any other way really. I mean, not, not that I have found to be certainly in my own experience and in the work that I do is, you know, it’s, it’s an inside job as the cliche goes, in terms of, you know, stepping into what you’re have, you know, what you’re talking about, which is our, our greatest, most authentic, most empowered self. And it’s a journey. It’s an evolution, you know, it’s not like, yay, I’ve arrived. You know, I’ve always found there’s always more and there’s something very empowering, but also human humbling in really understanding how magnificent this whole thing we call, whatever life is, you know, so it is, but it is a very, just from the energy of we’re talking, you can feel that this is an active it’s dynamic engagement that we want to be in with, again, this thing called life and limiting beliefs.

Christine Okezie (19m 42s):
I love the way that you kind of weaved all that together. It limits the sense of who we are, the sense of what we perceive to be possible for us. Right. So it truly is, you know, kind of the place to work, to break free from that you’ve mentioned already that you’ve been able to break free and rewire in your journey. I was wondering if you’d maybe share one or two limiting beliefs that, you know, you were able to break free of and rewire and, and how that’s changed you.

Ken Hannaman (20m 13s):
Yeah, sure. I’d be happy to. There’s probably many I could point to, but a couple that float at the top of my list for a long time in my life, as a younger child and adolescent, I was pretty thin and I allowed myself through a lot of limiting life beliefs and negative self-talk to go from probably which believe me. I know when we’re all younger, right? We have higher metabolism. It’s just a natural occurrence in life that we can balloon. If we’re not careful, cause our, our metabolism will slow down as we age. But I allowed myself to think that because I’m aging and now that I’m 40 old, I’m going to just naturally gain weight because that’s the way it happens. You know, everybody sees it and everybody expects it.

Ken Hannaman (20m 55s):
And again, this isn’t just a simple, I’m going to think it’s the albeit it’s the starting point when you think it and you begin to embody it. Let’s just use weight as the example. So I got up to about 250 pounds at the end of the summer of 2019, I had been promoted a few times in my corporate responsibilities was traveling around a lot, eating later dinners, enjoying that lifestyle quite a bit, but then not working out, not making the best decisions while I was eating and drinking. And that paid a toll. And I started to just accept, well, this is going to be my lifestyle. Well, I knew better having done a study and done the work that it did not need to be that way. So come Christmas time of 2019.

Ken Hannaman (21m 37s):
And I got on the scale and saw a number that reflected back at me that I had never seen before in my life could not believe that I got to that point instantly in that moment, I knew I had to rewire and reprogram that thinking. I was telling myself or the vast majority of the recent years leading up to it that I’m not happy with my weight. I’m fat. I am not healthy. And that reaffirmed decisions on a daily basis to not work out because guess what? Unhealthy overweight people don’t work out. It also allowed me to be able to make poor decisions when it comes to eating late at night or snacking too often. And it just didn’t really align with who I knew I was so starting the 26th of December of 2019 leading into COVID whenever there was an even bigger reason to, to not work out.

Ken Hannaman (22m 28s):
As the shutdowns occurred, I lost two pounds a week healthily to two pounds a week from January till June of 2020 and got down to 190 pounds, which is right where I sit right about. Now. I’ve been maintaining that for, for over a year now, but it required the reprogramming of my own belief of what I called myself and how I started to do that. This is a big difference for people is they all hear about positive affirmations, positive affirmations are great, but they’re often done incorrectly. They’re done in a future tense. We don’t really believe them. And it’s not easy to look at yourself in a mirror, whether it’s about finances or personal weight or health or whatever, and say I am, and then you insert X for what you want to be.

Ken Hannaman (23m 12s):
But I had to do, I chose to say, I am healthy. I am vibrant. I am abundance. And I made that affirmative in the present moment, I looked at myself in the mirror and said, I love this body. I think, I think the world, I thank God. I thank the universe for having this physical existence. I’m going to make this better. So it began with that intention and just over a six month period. And it, you know, seeing the two pounds a week was very reaffirming. If this is melting away, that helps people see the, instead of having that one major goal of 50 pounds, that, that people can’t see happening in a month, nor should it happen.

Ken Hannaman (23m 54s):
It’s the little incremental steps that reaffirmed that the rewiring and decision-making has occurred with the success on the scale. So that’s one example that I always point to, and it’s never about boasting. It’s about, Hey, this can be done for anybody. I’m not the only one. There are many, many others.

Christine Okezie (24m 12s):
He was your mindset. That was huge. I mean, I got chills. I see you in the mirror and you’re actually affirming again, out loud to the universe, right? To the quantum field and to every cell in your body, by the way, you know, is now communicating a very different set of instructions, right. Which affects biology. And as you pointed out before,

Ken Hannaman (24m 36s):
And, and what you’re just pointing to, you know, this well, epigenetics is a real thing. Okay. If anyone hasn’t heard of the term, check out Dr. Bruce Lipton, he’s probably one of the most leading edge scientists who’s come out and there’s been many lightly, but Bruce Lipton’s one, man. Yeah. I love him and love listening to him, reading his documentaries, all the things that he’s done around how the thought sends the signal through the cells. So that’s a massive piece that people don’t realize we’ve been taught and taught that we’re born with the genes that we have. Meanwhile, it’s the RNA copying of those genes that really goes off and affects who we become.

Ken Hannaman (25m 16s):
And it starts up here and in the heart, I think to the hearts, part of it, that connection and helps makes, helps make that magic work. And that’s, again, parts of my earlier point. I don’t think we’ve realized as humankind as a species yet just how powerful we are. We have to realize the internalization. So I think that’s one really good example. A real quick one I’ll say was around my education because I dropped out of high school. I had been telling myself for a long time that I’m not deserving. I, people like me don’t do things like this. And I had some, some challenges with mathematics and things that, you know, some of my weaker subjects, I always loved science, always loved history, never liked math.

Ken Hannaman (26m 1s):
And you think science, you know, math kind of goes with science, but I’ve never been a big math person. And I would tell myself, I suck at math. I stink at math. I had to quit those words. And those are probably the first two times I’ve said that in the same sentence out loud, because I don’t allow myself to believe that anymore. So I started to do a little bit of learning and some practicing and telling myself I am great at math. I am great at memorization. I am great at whatever it was that I thought was needed to change that mindset to a point where am I a physicist? Can I split Adams? Do I know quantum mechanics and the, you know, no I don’t, but I am a lot better today as I have aged.

Ken Hannaman (26m 42s):
And those of things by just beginning with the intention and believing in the present moment that I am affirming, whatever it is that you have to affirm. So those are two real time life examples that I can point to. Wow.

Christine Okezie (26m 56s):
Thank you. Thank you so much for that. I think everybody can relate to both of those, if not at least one of them, I mean, right. Health and prosperity. I mean, these are sort of on the top of our list, these, you know, for sure. Yeah. Okay. What are some common misunderstandings I’d love for you, you know, as you move and groove in this space, what are some common misunderstandings that you see in the personal growth? You know, transformational space that you work hard to?

Ken Hannaman (27m 25s):
Yeah. I think one of the biggest misconceptions, this, for me, it was, was the idea of what enlightenment is. And I’ll start with that because when I began doing this internalization and this, this work around finding truth in my life, I was led down the path of Buddhism things, places I have never been, you know, I was born and raised Catholic in this country. My mother took me through different churches and different backgrounds, which also helped kind of spark the question for me of why was I born in this? But now that’s not right. So now it’s Presbyterian or now it’s seven day Adventists, or now it’s a Pisco. Paleon so going through all this religious stuff in my head, and then upon my own discovery and looking at things from my own belief system, I aligned very, very well with Buddhism as well as Hinduism.

Ken Hannaman (28m 15s):
So as I’m studying this though, my first initial perceptions was enlightenment. Is this amazing euphoric place where no matter what happens around us, we just smile. Let life be, let it all move around you. There’s no need to worry. And while some of that is very true enlightenment, in my opinion is just a self awakening to realize that material positions, sorry, possessions do not matter in life. We’re all raised in this society to think that that’s how we define ourselves. Our success is defined by how much materialistic gains we have. Now. Money is important because it helps create an avenue through which we can make more impact.

Ken Hannaman (28m 56s):
Money can be great. Money can be bad. It’s, it’s up to the user of it to define what they will do with it. Sure. But enlightenment is not this euphoric place where you have a smile on your face and you meditate eight hours a day. There are people, you know, monks who live that lifestyle, but for us as modern everyday humans, that’s not what it is. And I think whenever I talk and try to spell these kinds of beliefs, it’s, that’s not what I’m after. I’m not telling people to put their head in the sand and let the world that’s moving by becoming ignored. I think we’ve become way better as a society. When we do this kind of work and we self awakened.

Ken Hannaman (29m 38s):
When we become enlightened through personal developments and lifelong learning, then individually we’ll be better. And collectively humankind becomes better as well too. And then guess what? The other things that we may not like about life from the elitists, if you want to call them that, call them the controllers of the world, whatever you want to say, that that things are shifting from we’re beginning to realize. I think that we can live a better life in a different way. That’s not set up on the old system, but we don’t believe. I think a lot of times people tell me, do you really think mankind or humankind is really that good? Or we can be don’t you think that it’s set up chaotically and that we just are what we are?

Ken Hannaman (30m 21s):
No, I don’t believe that for one second. I think that we can be a very prosperous society species if we collectively do the work, but it does take action. And that’s the last part that I’ll touch on is that we can meditate for eight hours a day. We can read all the books in the world until we apply this and share some learnings. I know not everybody will be ready to hear it, and that’s okay too. But it comes down to taking the steps. I think taking action helps reaffirm to the universe that the information you’re being given, you’re taking seriously. And then as you aligned your mindset and you become self aware of what life’s putting in front of you, it’s magical.

Ken Hannaman (31m 4s):
You can see your life unfolding for what it’s meant to and where you’re being guided. And it’s just such a, an awe inspiring thing for me because I’ve witnessed this. So enlightenment is not some euphoric place where you smile 24 7 and you know, life is just rainbows and puppies. It is not that, but it can be so much better heaven on earth. If you want to call it that to where, when you, when you have this realization, you can step back, become the observer, make judgements, decide where to take action. You know where to pivot. If you need to be the watcher of, of the pendulum swinging, don’t be the pendulum that’s constantly swinging. And that’s some of the beauty of this kind of work and how it can really improve your life.

Christine Okezie (31m 48s):
Love it, love it. Love it. Thank you for all of that. That’s wonderful. So I would love to know, you know, what’s your favorite way of connecting with your higher self, doing the internal work? Do you have a daily practice? Do you have things that just light you up that you make sure you make time for?

Ken Hannaman (32m 7s):
Yes I do. And when I began this work, it was the attempt at, let me meditate a half an hour every morning and every night. And I’m S I’m an example of somebody who started doing that made a lot of progress. I still do meditate, probably not every single day, sitting quietly to myself. I do walking meditations. I’m a big believer of what’s called habit stacking. So from the book atomic habits, that there’s so much goodness inside of that book. One of the things that I teach is habit stacking. So you go out for a walk, you can do a walking meditation, you can go for a jog and you know, if you like being outdoors, like I do, I don’t care what time of the year it is, I’m outside.

Ken Hannaman (32m 48s):
And I find connection in nature. I find myself reflecting more when I’m outside in nature, but I have a stack every morning. I, I do not miss a day. If I am going to get up. The first thing that I’m going to do is give gratitude, give thanks, and then go work out. Whether I’m on the road, traveling, I find a gym. I may go outside for a run. I may go downstairs in my home gym and work out there. But that’s where I usually just take a moment. And in quiet, as I begin to work out and put out the intention and the meditation of bringing in front of me today, what I need to see it. Yes. And that, that starts with a little bit of you.

Ken Hannaman (33m 28s):
Can’t always just begin that way. You got to do some clearing of the monkey mind as they say, which we’ll never fully start have the right kind of heart connection. So to get at this space, I did start a, a daily meditation that got my heart and mind, correct. And I call it the heart-brain connection, where you’re, you’re working on feeling the energy in your heart, not always being reactionary from the head. And there’s some meditations that you can do that connects the heart, the mind to the spirit and in doing so, always having a loving, gracious, harmonization, you know, gratitude aspect for life and for the humans of this planet, for the planet itself.

Ken Hannaman (34m 13s):
And really putting out that truth of intention that you care about those things. And you want to be guided towards being better and synergistically working along with all of these things to, to improve yourself, but also those around you. So when you get your head mind, right, no matter what’s happening in life, I like to do walking and running meditations. And while, while I work out, do a lot of those so that I can get my health, right, but also tap in to what the quantum fields giving me for that day. And then end my day with some more gratitude in silence before bed thanking for one more day of learning, one more day of impact. And one more day of just being alive on this planet with this opportunity in front of us, I’d say I’m not super regimented in, in a daily ritual of meditation, but I do it through my own way.

Ken Hannaman (35m 4s):
That works for me. And the last thing I’ll say about it, what’s amazing is when you get tapped into this, the signs that I see on a daily, weekly basis of whatever I’m working on, whatever problem, issue, that, that, that I need an answer on things come in front of me, whether it’s just the clearing of the space or being able to have that intention put out there and then receiving it. And for me, it’s different for everyone. For me, it comes in signs, whether it’s people that I meet, whether it’s reaffirming of books, that I should read movies to watch, sometimes numerical values come up very, very often over and over and over. You’ll just know that the best way I can say it is you just know it’s a guts, intuitive heart feels very high in your body of this is right versus feeling very low in your body of almost density and stay away from that.

Ken Hannaman (35m 57s):
It’s dragging me down. I can’t, I don’t want to get into that. So w when you’re aligned, you can feel these things sometimes too.

Christine Okezie (36m 5s):
Thank you. Yeah. It’s, it’s again, becoming a real, you know, finding appreciation for the sensory being that we really are, you know, as opposed to, you know, the thinking, thinking, thinking, being, which is useful, but only to a certain extent. Right. Right. I love that. Okay. Wow. How do you continue to sort of self-educate these days book podcasts, you know, that you’d help people who are trying to go deeper into this self-realization and inner work?

Ken Hannaman (36m 38s):
Well, I have so many, I’ll give you guys all this listening. Some of the highlights here, one of my absolute favorite authors is Michael Singer. I think his book of “Untethered Soul” and “The Surrender Experiment”, both were so powerful in my life. And I read them after Eckert Tolle’s his “Power of Now”, I think that power of now book accurate totally his work in the present moment space, along with the ego and the quieting of the mind that book propelled me, because whenever I was able to do that work, I started to see other things happen in my life. And as I was being guided to learn different channels in different aspects.

Ken Hannaman (37m 18s):
So I love Michael singer. I love ACRA. Totally. And I’ll give one more, Dr. David Hawkins, he’s not with us in the physical anymore, but his book power versus force lives on. And that is all about the human scale of consciousness and where your mindset is and what you attract into yourself, power, or really looking at it from a forceful intent. If you want change in your life, there’s a lot to be said on forcing change, you know, change has to happen internally, and that’s the power aspect of it. But when you read his his work, it’s all about moving yourself up the human levels of consciousness towards a point that many of us as humans may not get towards absolute, you know, Christ consciousness or the different, highest spiritual leaders of, of all past time may have been at that point.

Ken Hannaman (38m 8s):
Many of us may not get there, but it’s about moving up to the point of love. Once you can understand what self-love is and what love for everything else is everything gets even better. And love is like somewhere, maybe like two thirds up. It’s just whenever you get to that point. So I love those Bill’s books, those authors, whenever I am trying to learn it’s podcasts, I have a podcast, of course, graduated living and learning. I love your podcast as well, too, that I’ve been listening to. I think you’re doing great work in this space. And, you know, really, I would say again, come back to that habit stacking aspect. I travel a lot for work. I, I exercise whenever I’m done with my daily rituals.

Ken Hannaman (38m 50s):
If I’m driving, I’m a podcast guy, I do not listen to music. I like music there’s moments for like onset and I need some music, but usually it’s just passively consuming information unconsciously. Sometimes even whenever I’m not paying as much attention, but just listening to the things that I know that my mind needs to continue to grow. So take advantage of technology, whether it’s podcasts, audio books, documentaries, the guy in network has tons of good information on it that I have on my phone that I can watch for documentaries. I love that kind of stuff. And if you want to learn, there is no excuse out there in my opinion, because you have to one, one, it badly enough and then find out what works for you.

Ken Hannaman (39m 32s):
Whether you’re a reader, a podcast person, and more of an auditory learner, you want to combine them lots of good stuff out there in daily practices that can help you become your best self one day at a time. Okay,

Christine Okezie (39m 44s):
Amazing. Right. And that’s the beauty I think, of the age we’re living in is that, like you said, when we can make technology actually, you know, help us evolve as opposed to devolve, you know, stress and chaos, it can actually be a powerful tool. And I think that’s part of the acceleration of, you know, higher consciousness these days is because we really are experiencing, I mean, like look at the whole notion of the worldwide web, right. I mean, who mind blowing. Right. But that’s actually the physical manifestation of what we want to say reality is, is, you know what I mean? It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s here right now in this, in this physical or in this earthly form. So it’s actually quite, it’s quite beautiful in terms of the gifts that it provides, you know?

Christine Okezie (40m 27s):
I agree. Yeah. That’s awesome. So definitely wanna, you know, share all those wonderful resources and the link to your podcast, which is phenomenal mix of solo shows and some great guests, inspirational guests as well. You know, I want to talk you to mention your book. Yay. Coming out on 2 22, 22 and the book on graduated, living and learning, do you want to kind of tell us a little bit about that? You know, what do you, what’s the message there what’s, you know, I know you’re doing an online community and just so many good things going on right now, so please. Yeah.

Ken Hannaman (41m 2s):
Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity. Everything is kind of getting, going for me. So I do have a website which is on graduated.com where a lot of the stuff will be live, living and housed, but the bulk will hit Amazon. If all goes, according to plan here to 22, 22, and it, it is titled and graduated finding your why while dropping, limiting life beliefs. So that will be the official working title. So it’s going to be about that whole dropping out of the limiting life aspect belief system. And it it’s meant to kind of start from level one and go to level 12, which really level one I call it, it just, the graduation process is the truth.

Ken Hannaman (41m 42s):
And seeing from my own experience, my own truth, my own life, that there’s so much more work. And behind the scenes as energy happening all around us, it’s what we attuned to the book starts off with just seeing things that are unseen, right? That, that with our own two eyes we’ve not been told really are there, but absolutely scientifically are there. So once you know that and can wrap your mind around it kind of walks through the unprogrammed thing of labels, whether it’s political, governmental, religious, not saying all of those are bad. I know this is how society functions, just not allowing yourself to be defined by those things. So it’s the freeing aspect.

Ken Hannaman (42m 23s):
Once you know the truth that is seeing yourself removed from the labels and then getting into the empowering aspect of now, what do you do with this? What’s your purpose? What’s your mission? How are you going to go live your life? Who do you want to go impact? So it really is about a self-improvement aspect to walk yourself down, all those channels of self-discovery and then into more empowerment into what matters for you. Cause it’s not always about money for everybody, but success is defined differently in most cases for every one. So the book’s purpose is meant to take people who were like me, who just had a spark in their twenties of needing to know more. And what else can I go and how it’s going to go find out more.

Ken Hannaman (43m 5s):
It’s been my, to this point, lifelong learning, try to skim down into one place. So yes, that will happen on 2 22, 22. And yeah, for more information, check out the podcast or the website, that’s where I intend to have this entire hub that I’m trying to build of. Self-growth for anybody who wants to come do that work along with us.

Christine Okezie (43m 25s):
I love it. I love it. And that’s really something that’s beautiful that you’re really got, let momentum here is building this, this soul tribe, this online community, you know, and, and because I think more than ever, I’m getting the sense like you as well, is that we’re all looking to connect, you know, and reconnect and have meaningful, you know, kind of inspired conversation, you know? And, and there’s nothing more powerful than that. I think going on in the world right now and the need for that is so is so important.

Ken Hannaman (43m 57s):
I can do stuff like this all day long every day. This is what gets me fired up and out of bed every day. So yes, for anybody who’s interested come through it along with me and Christine, you know, this is great stuff. Your life can not be worse because of it. It can only get better.

Christine Okezie (44m 14s):
That’s awesome. Well, thank you so much, Ken, this has been wonderful. I’ll be sure to include all those resources and for our listeners and thank you for the work that you do in the world. Thank you for being the, the way show or that you have been and hope to see you again soon.

Ken Hannaman (44m 30s):
Thank you, Christine, for the opportunity reaching out and I will be connecting and watching your journey and supporting you along the way too. So thank you for all that you do and your purposeful work and intense as well too. It’s been an honor. Thank you, Ken.