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This week I speak with Christy Renee Steehle who is an author, speaker and abundance life coach. 

From sick and overweight to traveling to over 30 total, she’s lived many chapters in her 31 years. Christy now travels the world full-time teaching overachieving nomads how to find their brains’ off switch, love who they see in the mirror, and attract powerful freedom.

Listen on to find out how to become a nomadic abundance coach. 

 

Listen Below:

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Show Notes:

Debbie:   

Hey everyone, thank you so much for joining us for this interview. I’m here with Christy. Hey Christy, how are you?

Christy:    

Hey, I’m doing great. Thank you.

Debbie:  

Thank you for joining me here today. Can you tell us a little bit more about you and why you live in offbeat life?

Christy:  

Of course, I’d be happy to. I think that that describes me very well. I’m not, I’m not sure if any of the chapters that I’ve had in my life so far, it could really be classified as maybe normal. Though I really tried for a long time to fit in. I just never really felt like that was for me. You know, I’m originally from the southern U.S.

And I tried to fit in for a while and do the American dream and have the mortgage, have the house. And I even had a boyfriend, high school sweetheart for 14 years and um, went to Georgia southern university, got a degree in architecture and design. And when I graduated it was the height of the economic recession.

And at that point it just seemed very, very clear that I was not destined to have a nine to five, I believe in the powers of the universe. And in so many ways it was encouraging me to do something more than that and kind of fulfill this dream that I had always had to one day see the world.

I’m sure a lot of people listening probably have that kind of burning fire inside to see more and do more. And for a long time I just didn’t act on it. And then in 2016, I woke up one morning and I was in the midst of opening or beginning to open an organic juice bar and cafe in a city in Florida that really didn’t care about organic juices at all. But I tried so hard to fix the city and to make it what I wanted. And really I was just ignoring the fact that where I was wasn’t fitting me.

So in kind of a crazy burst of courage. I looked at my partner at the time and we were just kind of like, what if we just go. He had the idea first and all the logic started to come into my head like how we couldn’t, and I mean, we had a mortgage, we had two dogs, we had two cars, we had a four bedroom house just stuffed to the brim with stuff. It’s incredible how much stuff we accumulate. Right?

I was like, how can we do this? And you know, that’s one of the first lessons I learned on this path. It’s that there’s always a way, there’s always a way to make your dreams come true. And my dream was to travel, so we put the steps in motion and it was scary and it didn’t seem possible.

But through some of the tricks that I now teach, we just kept going, kept moving forward. And by February of 2016, we left with a one-way ticket to Portugal. We had four bags between us and my parents were gracious enough to watch the dogs in their big country house in Georgia and we ended up doing 20 countries that year within 11 months.

Debbie:   

That is a lot!

Christy: 

Especially from two kids who a few months prior were just about to be stuck, literally building a brick and mortar in the downtown of the city to put in a business that we would have been married to.

Debbie:   

That would’ve been a huge commitment for you and it would have been harder to actually leave and do the other things that you wanted to do. So let’s go back to when your partner at the time and you decided to take the steps. What were the first things that you did in order to take all of your stuff, sell it and start living on the road?

Christy: 

I think that for us, one of the biggest things was that we had this mortgage and that was one of the things that stressed me out the most. I was thinking, how are we going to get tenants? How does this even begin? And that was for me the biggest, kind of limiter at the time. And so I just got on Google and did a Google search and started looking for property management companies in the area.

I got in touch with somebody who I trusted right away. They sounded great and it was really a lot of trust that we had to do at that point because they said that they would start leasing the house about a month before the trip before we wanted to rent it. And so at the time trust was something that it took me years to develop, trust and letting go. I think those were my two biggest feats to overcome.

And I’m just really trusting that this would happen even though I didn’t have a guarantee, I didn’t have that certainty. And then that’s when we began to sell all of our stuff and just kind of go forward with it. But the actual tactical process of it was fairly methodical.

I actually have a seven day be a money magnet challenge coming out and it really talks about exactly this, how when you’re trying to call more abundance into your life, it’s so beneficial to go through your house and declutter everything.

So that’s what I did at the time I went through and decluttered my environmental space. So that meant cabinets, closets, and I think that that is such a big factor when it comes to mental state is the amount of clutter that we accumulate everywhere.

So once we started to get rid of that, I found myself to be really inspired, really excited and it kind of snowballed from there. So once the clutter started to go away, then I started to do the same with my digital space. I started to unsubscribe the emails.

Debbie:  

It’s kind of like doing the Marie Kondo thing that’s really popular right now for everybody.

Christy:   

Have you ever done that yourself?

Debbie: 

Well, I don’t have a lot of stuff, so it would be like emptying everything out. I mean, now that I’m leaving New York, it’s going to be a lot less for me.

Oh, I wish I could say the same. I’ve been accumulating stuff no matter how much I desire to be a minimalist so much. Actually, on Saturday I’m going to the orphanage with two of my girlfriends here in Bali and we’re donating all of this stuff that we’ve accumulated.

I have two suitcases, I have a carry on suitcase and all of this stuff that won’t fit. So, I guess that’s a hack that will follow me around the world and I find it to be very helpful because it really kind of just gets the ball rolling.

The more space that I found that I had, the more mental space I felt that I had, the more power I felt that I had. I was living in the United States. So garage sales were a great way to earn extra income and get rid of my stuff. They were really instrumental.

Debbie:  

There’s also a lot of apps now that you could use, up here in the east coast garage sales are only available to you during the summertime so it’s a lot harder to do that.

Apps like Poshmark and even Ebay could be really helpful for that as well.

Christy: 

Yeah, I mean I love the availability that the digital age has given us. I mean there’s no excuse for holding on to stuff anymore. I feel like there’s always an option and I think letting go of physical possessions is kind of symbolic when it comes to letting go of a life.

We get attached to identities that we have and maybe it’s not even an identity that we want anymore, but we create attachment to it. Can you relate to that in any way? Like we feel like, oh, well I was going to open this juice bar and cafe and even though I really didn’t want it, I was attached to that outcome, attached to that identity.

And so by letting go of so many of my possessions, things that I cared about, but really at the end of the day, they were just, possessions really kind of made me less possessive. Less attached to this identity. And it made open-ended travel, a lot more peaceful.

Debbie:  

And I think because when you’re living here in the United States specifically, there is that mentality of the American dream where you have to make more, you have to do more, and you need a specific thing in order to feel like you are fulfilled in some way.

And it’s a cookie cutter thing, but it’s so different now and you have so many different options that you can let go of those expectations that others do give you and also yourself, you create those expectations for yourself. That’s a really great way of thinking about it.

Now, Christy, you mentioned that you had a longterm partner. How were you able to let go of that relationship and how did you know that it was the right step for you, especially since you were together for a really long time and you were going into this new lifestyle with him as well?

Christy: 

Oh, okay. Let’s get vulnerable here. This is one of the things that I help women on, so thank you for making sure I stand in integrity on it.

So I had already mentioned, for everybody listening that letting go, while I find it is one of the best hacks I’ve ever found for making magic in the universe for getting everything that we want and attracting financial freedom and just having all of the things I can say, it is not my strong suit. And it certainly wasn’t at the time when it became time for me to let go of this relationship.

I was in the habit of forcing and fixing everything in my life and I was an overachieving perfectionist who refuses to believe she was a control freak. And I thought that I could fix this relationship as well. So I kind of held onto it with this white knuckle grip.

And even though I was really unhappy for a long time, I thought it was something that was wrong with me because we had traveled to 20 countries in 2016 and 2017 we moved abroad. We were living in Barcelona. We actually brought the two dogs over on the planes on our laps.

We had this life. And we went to Mind Valley University, which Mind Valley is a spiritual develop or a personal development, spiritual entrepreneur business. Really, really great company. And they do a rotating campus every summer. And we were there in Tallinn, Estonia and on the first night he saw me dancing with a new friend, nothing romantic.

And he actually came up to me and I will be forever grateful for this because I would not have done it. And he said, I haven’t seen you that happy in years. We shouldn’t be together. So you would think that I would have said, okay, you’re right. I said, no, you’re wrong. I can fix this. We can fix this. We’ve been together for so many years. Think about all of the memories and everything else.

And really it was perhaps immature way of looking at things. I’m not very conscious that I would look at things any longer. But, you know, we grow and we evolve. And at the time I was only thinking that letting go would mean that I was losing everything and I didn’t want to lose everything. You know, I didn’t have a lot in my life. I felt isolated a lot of the time I felt alone. I didn’t feel connected. I desperately craved a community, which can be hard as a traveler sometimes to have.

And I thought that if I didn’t have him, I would have nothing.

So, that feeling that you get in your stomach. I had that and I knew that, that this is what I had to do. And so once I let go, the most amazing thing happened and it was the first time before I went traveling, when I let go of all of my stuff and I started to feel expansive and free.

The same thing happened when I let go of this relationship and I didn’t want to, it was so hard to admit that I couldn’t just fix something and I always had to be right. That perfectionist in me wanted to be right so bad, but I had to let go and it made all of this space. I started to call in everything that I wanted, this tribe, this community, all of this love, all of this friendship.

And as much as I resisted it, I am so, so grateful that that was the end of a chapter. And you know, the night that we really said goodbye and kind of closed everything, like I had mentioned in Estonia and the summers there are just gorgeous.

I actually have met quite a few people from Estonia, which is kind of odd whenever I tell them that I’ve been there twice, they’re always taken aback like what? Nobody ever goes to Estonia. And most people don’t even know where that is. So for everybody listening, first please don’t go ruin it. And everybody go!

It is such a charming city, in the summer you have twilight until maybe about 12:31 AM, mid-summer you have it all night. The sun doesn’t even set. And so on this night that we said goodbye, we end up walking through the park and we find ourselves sitting down in front of a little play set and there’s a miniature house and the sun is setting and it’s like we’re reminiscing about everything. Cause we were 16 when we got together. We went to high school prom together, both of them homecoming, now we are these 31-year-old adults.

Who by staying together, we had never grown into adults. And I think that that was the biggest thing. And I’m not saying that it’s not possible yet. It wasn’t working for us. We were immature and still coming into the relationship, filling each other’s internal holes inside instead of being these expansive beings of love that we’re coming together to share love.

And so as we sat there under the twilight, it was like the sun was literally setting on our childhood and it was a beautiful way to end the very long chapter. And I think that in so many ways the traveling that we did was a way to run from maybe what we needed to look at within ourselves and within our relationship.

So as much as I really value the countries that I went to that year in 2016 in so many ways, I kind of reflect now and really just kind of encourage a lot of the women that I abundance coach and that I deal with and that really want to be traveling to get in touch with the why and really know why you want to be traveling and do this.

Because for me now, it’s totally different. Now I love traveling for new experiences, but at the time I didn’t want to see that I was kind of running, I was kind of avoiding.

Debbie: 

And I think a lot of people do tend to use travel to escape because they’re running away from something that is at home that they don’t want to deal with. And then traveling just becomes an excuse. But then you realize even when you’re on the road, that unhappiness really follows you. And then you don’t know why you’re still so unhappy, even though you’re doing something that you thought would be making you happy, but it’s not.

But it was really brave for both of you to realize this and to let go of a relationship that didn’t fulfill you in the way that they used to anymore. Because that could be the hardest thing. And I also think that’s a real way for you to realize that you’re growing up is making these adult decisions to let go of something that doesn’t give you purpose anymore.

So that was a really good revelation for the both of you there, Christy.

Christy:   

Thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah. In so many ways it seemed like it would have been more difficult than when we first left the states to begin with. You know, we had so many joint accounts.

We had a business together, joint finances, 14 years of being together. I mean, the entanglement was huge. We use the same kind of breakdown, I guess is when we did, when we let go of the house and started traveling.

And in so many ways I think that travel and leaving the American dream life and being a full-time traveler is an incredibly empowering thing because it teaches you the skill set that you can take anywhere. Once you do that, what can’t you do?

Debbie:  

Yeah, absolutely. And when you’re placed in all of these different types of situations, when you’re traveling, there’s no sense of comfort anymore. You’re just pushed into something completely different and it makes you grow up and it allows you to make these decisions that you wouldn’t have had before.

Christy:  

I completely agree. I completely agree. It’s about finding the balance because I think that if you’re open to it, travel will push you and show you and hold the mirror to what you need to see in yourself in order to grow.

Debbie:  

If you’re doing it the right way, as long as you’re willing to face yourself in the mirror and be honest with yourself it definitely will do that. But if you’re just running away from something and you don’t want to see it, you’re just going to keep going into this cycle.

Just blindly going into this and still continuing to be unhappy. And I think that happens to a lot of us when we’re first starting out and then we don’t realize it until later on, which is part of the journey I think. I think we all have to realize that in our own time.

Cristy, let’s talk about what you do right now because you left the States, you’ve been traveling for a while and now you’re in Bali. Can you tell us a little bit more about what you do to create income as a digital nomad?

Christy: 

Yeah, I would be happy to. You know, if we just keep running, we’ll just end up having happiness still allude us. And so that’s one of the things that I found when I was living in Barcelona, right? This idea of why am I still not happy? What’s wrong with me?

And so from everything that I’ve been through, I don’t regret any of it because now I’m able to use my experiences, my pain, my suffering, and connect with women and share my journey and what I’ve been through in the tools that I’ve learned to help them build goals that create long lasting pride. You know, so many of the women that I work with want to create more financial freedom and travel full time.

And so with working with them, I really help them get clear on how they can have both of those goals, but in a way that fulfills them for a long time instead of ending up in the road that I did where neither of those things made me happy.

So more specifically, I help overachieving females, which I know very, very well, kind of find the off switch in their brain, get peace from that overthinking, overanalyzing that keeps them held in place. And build a framework for leaving a life that you feel stuck in.

I’ve left two first the American dream and then my relationship. I totally felt stuck in there. And if somebody had given me a framework to see, I don’t say that I regretted or things would be different, however, I would have a lot less suffering at the time.

I could have connected to joy and freedom and purpose so much sooner. So it’s just so important to me to help women do the same. And then finally I teach how to become a money magnet because money is just energy.

And the beautiful thing that I’ve learned is that once we really hone in on our purpose and why you do the things that you do, you can attract anything that you want like that and money’s no different. So it’s a great tool. It’s a great resource. And I love connecting women to that inner freedom of a life of travel and financial freedom and purpose.

Bali is a fantastic place to do that, it’s an amazing place to run a business.

Debbie: 

And it’s gorgeous and it’s so beautiful there. So I’m sure you’re always inspired. Now can you tell us a little bit more about some money magnet tips that you would teach or share with us for people who are also digital nomads and want to keep their lifestyle more sustainable?

Christy:  

Of course. Yeah. And for anybody who’s listening, I’m sure Debbie, you can link it in the show notes, but I have a seven day be a money magnet challenge, which goes way more into depth on this than I’m sure that we’ll have time for today. For anybody who is really wanting to be a money magnet. Definitely be sure to check that out.

There are two main things that I always like to start with when we’re talking about this. And the first is how do you value yourself? So the first thing that I encourage people who want to be a money magnet to do is get out a journal, pause this episode and write down where do you get your worth from.

Because our worth really defines how much we’re able to earn. Because if you think about it, there’s likely somebody out there that has the exact same job that you do, who is likely less dedicated, less talented, less of a bad ass, and yet are probably making more than you are. Why? Because they likely find their worth differently. So this question can be so helpful in figuring out, do you think you’re worth it?

And a lot of the times in the society that we’re conditioned in, it’s become cool or more socially acceptable to put ourselves down. And so if we don’t even realize, it will quite often be cutting against our worth. And that really, really affects how much money we’re able to have come to us.

So there are a couple of things that we can talk about if we have time, we can kind of go back into that. And if you find that maybe your worth isn’t as high as you want it to be, there are some things, some tricks, and hacks that you can do for that.

And then the second thing that I always like to start with is that it’s so fascinating to me that people who are trying to be frugal and attract more money, have this habit of studying and practicing poverty instead of wealth. And now what I mean by this is that I caught myself at a time when I really wanted more money.

Again, this was in Barcelona and I was focusing on everything that left my hand, every penny I spent, I was checking my budget. And if anybody has studied personal or spiritual development, you know, that money’s just an energy or even more specifically that our thoughts have power.

We know that where our attention goes or where our focus goes, attention flows. So I was focusing on absolutely everything that was leaving my account yet I wanted more.

And so this was one of the biggest paradigm shifts that I ever had. I started thinking, what if I focused on everything that was coming in? So I think that it’s really important to know where our money goes. If we’re spending very frivolously, or if we have, I haven’t lived in the states in a long time, so I’m really going to have a hard time coming up with things to suggest.

But the first thing that comes to mind, are Amazon prime, Netflix, Hulu, I don’t even know if people have that anymore, but all of these different subscription services that we get in the habit of just having, because everyone else around us around us has them, is such a good way to spend money that we don’t need.

And so it’s really good to focus on that. But then once you know it, let it go and then focus on what’s coming in. So for instance, if you were to go out with a friend and say that they’re in the business of consulting with their abundance coach or whatever their expertise may be, and say they charge $500 an hour for their time on their business. Say you talk about business for 30 minutes over the course of the lunch, well that’s $250 that you’ve just attracted to you

Living in Bali, it is so inexpensive. Yet, I was living in California right before this, so not inexpensive. So sometimes if I’m doing my abundance tracking, which is essentially what I’m describing right now, and I’m having a hard time coming up with things for the day, I’ll say, well, if I were to order this food in San Diego, this would cost me $20 yet I’m in Bali and it’s just cost me eight. So that’s $12 of abundance that I’ve saved.

And so by tracking all of these little things that come to me daily, I find, and my clients find that we’re focusing on money coming in. So we’re already feeling abundant. And then wild things start to happen.

You know, one of my clients ended up, she was doing this practice for maybe only four or five days. She ended up getting a 14% raise completely out of the blue. She got a $3,000 refund from her landlord. She ended up getting $600 voucher for window repairs.

All of this stuff started coming to her just because I was having her track the abundance that was already coming and so you can do that anywhere. You can have a nine to five, you can be on the road, you can be traveling, whatever, wherever this works.

Debbie:   

That’s a really great exercise to practice every single day, even with just these two tips that you gave us. I will give a link out to Christy’s money magnet course on our website, so make sure to look out for that because that’s really exciting. I’m going to start doing that too, Christy.

Christy:    

You know what, for anybody who signs up for the challenge, it’s also free and it’s a lot of the tools that I abundance coach in my program. So assign a value to that, stick it on, and hey, you’ve just attracted that for abundance today too.

Debbie:  

Now Christie, let’s fast forward to 30 years from now and you’re looking back at your life. What legacy would you like to leave and what do you want to be remembered for?

Christy: 

For me, I was so disconnected from myself for so many years. I don’t always really like to share this or admit it, yet it’s the truth. So I will, I hated being alone with myself and it’s because I let fear run the show. And for a long time I blamed myself for this.

What I started to discover throughout my journey is that there are so many reasons modern society disconnects us from our intuitive knowledge. You know, we are all intuitive beings, yet we’re so disconnected and so many of us let fear run the show.

And I think that that’s why I had such a hard time and that’s why so many people have such a hard time letting go because we don’t trust, we don’t want to surrender, because we’re in this place of fear.

And so I have a book published on Amazon and I’m in there. I go really, really deep into this topic. I go really, really deep into all of the ways that we have physical interference in our body. You know, things for instance, like when we get stuck in our heads and we can’t stop overthinking, there’s a good chance we might have a bunch of inflammation in our body.

And what causes inflammation in the body, right? Acidic foods, coffee, chocolate, sugar, spicy foods, wheat. And specifically nonorganic wheat that has been sprayed with glyphosate to harvest uniformly.

But food is a huge thing and you know, this idea that we always have to be happy and that we’re not allowed to have other emotions. Just this blanket be happy, don’t feel the range of emotions. It’s so many things that modern society disconnects us. And so 30 years from now, I’m looking back on my life and I have this massive impact where people would say, because I met her, my life was better.

I realized that life didn’t have to be so scary. I figured out how to love myself and love being by myself, even when the system and society and everything else conditioned me in a way that I thought I would never ever connect to that.

People would say I thought that happiness was just for other people, not for me. That’s actually something that I’ve said a few years ago, I really held this belief that maybe just happiness was for some people and not others. And once I started to systematically remove every little thing that disconnected me, I realized just how untrue, how sad and untrue that was.

I don’t think we went into it earlier, but I, I was 25 pounds overweight pretty much my whole life. Just a couple of years ago, I, I lost that weight and I finally stopped carrying around that heavy feeling. And I was always dieting. I was always trying to lose weight and still, I was always heavy.

I had panic attacks and anxiety and depression. I had a gut failure. I had a gluten intolerance, a lactose allergy. I tried Vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free. Nothing made me feel better. My hair was falling out. I had horrible adult acne. I actually had to get a breast lump removed. This was just the year before I started traveling. So when I say to you, there’s always a way, there is always a way.

I was suffering from panic attacks so badly that I had agoraphobia. Like I had such a hard time leaving the house. I actually feared it. And what I know now is that because I’ve suffered from all of those things. I know how possible it is for anyone to come back from anything.

And so 30 years from now, I have told my story, I’ve spent years on stage. I would be a number one New York Times bestselling author and the reach and the impact I would have sharing my story and the tools that I’ve learned and impacting lives and connecting people to each other and to themselves just with the power of storytelling.

Would be the legacy that I would want to leave. That would be a very, very happy 61-year-old lady.

Debbie:    

Well, it’s already a legacy you’re starting to do. So that is a great way to already get started.And we’re also going to be talking more about why thinking positively all the time can be the biggest way to self sabotage on our extended interview with Christy. So make sure you listen to that.

Christy, if our listeners want to know more about you, where can they find you?

Christy:    

Well, I’d like to say the best way would be Facebook and Instagram. Right now you can find me Instagram at as_Christy_sees_it, and Facebook, Christie Renee Stehle. I’m sure you’ll link both of those. My last name can be very hard to spell. It’s a German surname. There is an h in there, throws people off all the time. So if you could link that, that would be great.

Then I also have my, a website where you can contact me, find more information about my abundance coach program, the seven day challenge, and just read some testimonials, see how abundance is already working for people, see how they’re already building this framework for their dream life, which quite often includes travel. And that’s ChristyRenee.co

Debbie:

Perfect. Thank you so much, Christy for joining us today. I really appreciate it.

Christy: 

Thank you for having me. This was great.

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Listen to Christy’s extended interview where she shares how positive thinking can lead to self-sabotage.

Listen Below:

What you’ll find:

How thinking positively can be a trap. 

• Instead of positive thinking do positive self-talk to help change your mindset. 

How to overcome overthinking and the fears you may face in your life. 

• we have a compulsion to know everything before we start. 
• We have to accept that we do not always see what is ahead of us. 
• It is only by taking the first step that we can see the next step, even when we do not know where it will lead us. 

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