From exhaustion to full blown burnout, Dorrit Karlsen Heart Guide ended up in a hospital bed in fetal position crying for two weeks. Dorrit was so ill she couldn’t work for 7 years; she was merely existing. Finding just the right resources, Dorrit was able to turn her health and emotional state around. Dorrit learned ‘me first’ the hard way and now enjoys helping others improve their lives. Have a listen as I chat with Dorrit about her transformation from feeling unworthy to ‘I deserve to come first’.

𝗗𝗶𝗻𝗼 𝗖𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗮: “Be love means being free to be who you are. For this reason, you also allow others to be who they are. So ‘be love’ is about acceptance. It's allowing everybody to express and feel the way they feel, and do whatever they have to do. It's a much happier life.

Being connected with the whole and being happy… I experienced that freedom the moment I exhausted all my illusions. I was totally connected with everything and yet no one was really connecting with me.

Nobody recognized me anymore, so they struggled to reconnect.

For a couple of years after that, I felt I had lost the plot.”

If you are feeling out of alignment, you won't want to miss this conversation with my guest Dino Carella.

Find out how following your heart opens up a whole new world of possibilities.

𝗗𝗶𝗻𝗼 𝗖𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗮: “Unconsciously or not… everybody wants to land on that feeling of love… especially self-love. We are out of alignment when we aren't aware of our self-love. The moment we clear out all the noise, all the things we believe about ourselves, all the nonsense… having an opinion about everything and everybody… we step into acceptance from a place of love. And we see what we did to ourselves and others.

When this happens, we are liberated from any concept or belief system, and we are no longer the ‘fix it’ guy.

People are fragile. So it is the denial of that reality that makes us muscle up and say, “Look at what a strong person I am”.

Trust is something I found later in life because initially, I wasn't trusting at all. I came from a background where a guy needed to prove how good he was. I ended up mistrusting everybody. I wouldn’t open up with anyone. I kept everything inside, because the moment I would open up, it felt like I was giving someone the power to use my vulnerability against me. So I was really not trusting anybody, because I wasn't trusting myself.

When we accept who we are, there is no drama. You go through stuff and do the best you can.

Whatever flows through you and whatever comes to you, you are there to respond in the best way you can and however you can. You will be learning and also helping somebody watching you to grow.”

If you are feeling out of alignment, you won't want to miss this conversation with my guest Dino Carella.

Find out how following your heart opens up a whole new world of possibilities.

𝗗𝗶𝗻𝗼 𝗖𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗮: “When you accept yourself, you feel free to express yourself. Keeping yourself curious brings about the beautiful discovery of you. Understand that whatever is flowing from you, that's your nature. Express it, be yourself. Free expression comes when you stop putting ideas on what you should express to the world. Otherwise, you're gonna trap yourself again into something that you created artificially in order to be liked.

You might be making money or becoming a successful person in a corporation, if you don’t express who you really are, you will feel conflicted inside, which is not full expression.”

If you are feeling out of alignment, you won't want to miss this conversation with my guest Dino Carella.

Find out how following your heart opens up a whole new world of possibilities.

𝗗𝗶𝗻𝗼 𝗖𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗮: “I grew up along the sea in Rome. There were plenty of boys playing in the streets. We enjoyed football. Fights were part of the adventure as well. I loved hanging out at the boat landing and I started working as a boatman when I was a young teen.

School was frustrating for me because the things I was being taught didn’t feel like they really applied. I felt misplaced. In Italy, there is the obligation to do military service after high school so I did my military service as a policeman. As soon as I finished the police work, I went to London to seek out a music career and stayed there for two years.

When I was younger, I had this vision of a red skin running on a red road in front of the sun. I didn't know anything about Indians in terms of their ritual or the meaning of the red road. I started to play a song and the lyrics were of this guy that was running saying, "Don't give up, keep on running, don't give up". My mother heard the song, she doesn't speak English, and I was singing it in English. She said, "What are you singing about? It's nice music. When I explained it to her she said, "Oh, your grandfather was breast fed by an Indian. So, I longed to go to America and visit the Indian reservations. I was so curious about that connection.

I never did have a music career. I spent 30 years in corporations and I had my share of success. When I lost my six figure job, I was offered other six figure jobs and you know what? I gratefully declined all offers. I decided that I wasn’t going to sacrifice my peace of mind for another job that didn’t allow me to do what I feel aligned to do. I decided to leave Italy and travel through the Indian reservations of Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, and South Dakota.

In my book, “The Way of the Wind”, which somewhat mirrors my life and midlife crisis. A corporate manager named Ostro finds himself on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He loses his job and embarks on the journey of a lifetime, crossing the Indian Reservations of America, his mother's homeland, hoping to find the connection with the spirit of his ancestors who had spoken to him as a boy. With the help of an Indian spiritual guide and a clairvoyant, he experiences the human dimension that transcends the visible and binds him to infinity."

If you are feeling out of alignment, you won't want to miss this conversation with my guest Dino Carella.

Find out how following your heart opens up a whole world of possibilities.

𝗗𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗲 𝗥𝗼𝘀𝗲-𝗠𝗰𝗦𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘆: “We enter this world because people cared enough to be together to create us. Caring is what gives us an environment of safety and trust for exploration. I show my children that I care about their thoughts and feelings. That I care about them just being here. This has given them a sense of safety and an environment in which to flourish. I love watching them evolve and grow through challenges. I learn so much by watching them and having the freedom to muddle through.

Leading by example is a really big value of mine. We are our children's first teachers and they observe everything we do. So it's not just the words that we use or choose to use, they pick up on our energy and how we interact with them, ourselves, and others. That puts a huge pressure on parents. I believe we put too much pressure on ourselves to be these amazing parents. We come into this role without having a lot of training.

My children keep me honest and they keep me on my toes. I am blessed to have two boys, twelve and fourteen, who still want to share and interact in conversations with me. They come to me about the thoughts that they've gotten from interacting with the world.

My wish for the world is for people to see that each person is a human, not a race, culture, or gender.”

𝗗𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗲 𝗥𝗼𝘀𝗲-𝗠𝗰𝗦𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘆: “Gratitude gets me through everything. I've gone through some pretty tough times in my life. I know we all have our own backstories. Finding things that I'm grateful for helps to strengthen my resilience. It doesn't take away the problems. We will always face challenges, problems, losses, and heartaches. All of those things are part of being human.

Gratitude strengthens my resilience. It's part of my mental fitness and allows me to lean into whatever is happening. The ‘leaning’ takes longer with bigger events. But with persistence, it actually pays off. It always ends and I always feel I come through it a bit mentally stronger, which means I am becoming more resilient.

We go through stages as we face a hurdle in life. You could probably list at least ten stages. They go along a dotted line. Our slumps go down below the line and gratitude brings us above the line. As we build our resistance through gratitude, slumps aren't as low. We start to go through those stages with greater speed and more peace.

Gratitude is accessible for anyone. You may need guidance to learn how to start practicing it.

You can use that toolset for the rest of your life.”

𝗗𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗲 𝗥𝗼𝘀𝗲-𝗠𝗰𝗦𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘆: “For me, respect comes from respecting each other. A person doesn't need to think the same way that I do. I don't even need to necessarily understand someone else's thought pattern or where they are coming from. If I acknowledge the fact that it is real for them, then I am showing respect. I've always had an interest in understanding how humanity works. We've got a really evolved complex brain that can achieve so much.

We tend to be so rough on ourselves.

We  are our worst critics and pious judges.

Knowing that 'I am okay the way I am’ is a very important fact to believe and comprehend.”

𝗗𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗲 𝗥𝗼𝘀𝗲-𝗠𝗰𝗦𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘆: "I've been undertaking personal development and exploration for as long as I can remember. I felt a bit isolated, lonely, and misunderstood as I was growing up finding my place in the world. I also went through some experiences where I felt a bit letdown by the people around me. I decided to only trust in myself. Looking back, I can understand the decisions my younger self made like too much drinking in my twenties.

Over the years, I started to grow in understanding and I realized that bringing trust back into my life would be valuable. In order to do that I needed to learn to forgive others and myself.

My identical twin and I were compared all of our lives, and we are both very independent people.

We grew up in a very caring and loving family. My twin and I are the youngest of five children. When it came to ballet, we were compared to our eldest sister who did well in ballet. Once we were old enough to enroll, the teacher skipped us a year ahead, just because our sister was so good. Crazy little things like that kept adding up. One day a relative told me that I had gotten the brains and my sister had gotten the looks. That was the tipping point for me. Even though it was said from a place of love, it solidified how I was feeling about being so socially awkward at school and feeling like I didn't fit in.  I felt as though I wasn’t being seen.

I definitely used it as a lesson when I became a mother. My boys are very independent and have very different personalities. When I see my youngest with comparisons about his abilities to his oldest brother, I help him to focus on the things where they actually have different strengths or are equally as good as each other.

I started off as a dental assistant and I did that for a number of years, then realized there weren't advancement opportunities. I couldn't see myself being that role for the rest of my life. So, I left and eventually found my way into a corporate banking career. I faced some real interesting challenges against really strong personalities and at the same time, I had a huge amount of support from others. I've had more support than challenges.

In that role, I had been known as a guru as an expert. People reached out to me, I had all this history and its knowledge. I was there to help solve complex problems. Now, I wasn't in that environment. I was out on my own. So who was Dalice? That was a really interesting experience to go through where I had to grieve, what I thought I was losing. At the end of that, I realized I actually wasn't losing anything. I was that person today as well. I didn't need to be in that environment to have those skills. I just wasn't using the skills that had shown up in that environment, due to the nature of the roles I was doing. So yeah, that was a really interesting awakening process I went through over a few months.

I am now an Ambassador of Gratitude and I lead people through Gratitude challenges and workshops.”

Alex Panayotou: “We are born to share. Community is something we yearn for, yet some communities might not be very nurturing. Whatever we are living, everything becomes more precious when we share. It enriches our lives, amplifies our joy, and lightens our load. When we are tired we need our quiet time with a few people or no people. We need a quiet setting to recover. Sharing doesn’t have to be with everybody all the time. There can be intimate sharing as well. It’s important to share with the right people.

Even though I had a solo long distance running career, the most impactful moments of my life were the hugs and tears of ‘we’ve done it’, rather than ‘I’ve done it!’. 

We all want to be brought into the fold. Everyone wants to be seen and heard, even the most difficult among us, especially the most difficult among us.”

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Have a listen as I interview my special guest Alex Panayotou. 

Find out how to grab life and “live it” no matter what’s going on around you.