JC: Today we are talking about how to take radical responsibility for your unwanted manifestations. I know for some of you guys this might be a little triggering. This is going to flip the script on you a little bit, but I am so incredibly honored and excited to be joined by my friend and the amazing coach, Kiki Ura.

You’ve got this amazing story and that’s really what we’re going to talk about today because when you shared it with me in person I was like, “Wait, what?!” When you when you were growing up, like many of us, you had some challenges that you were facing and ended up in a place in your early 20s that was rough. I would love for you to share a little bit about what that was like and how you started attracting all the things that you didn’t want before you were a conscious creator.

KU: Through my work of self love, and personal growth, and development, I have come to absolutely love the person that I am today. I always call myself the story of the ugly duckling. When I was a kid, I had that ugly mushroom bowl cut. I am a product of the late 80s, early 90s. I grew up in a really great community and did not have it hard by any means financially. I went to a great school. I grew up in a well-to-do neighborhood that had a lot of (maybe not present?) parents who displayed certain things that obviously transitioned into their children. I grew up with a lot of not nice kids, so I was really picked on as a child.

If we’re gonna go into this, we’re gonna go real deep.

At the age of 13 I tried to take my own life and it was a really big thing for me because my parents didn’t know. No one knew. I didn’t even know what I was doing. I took a handful of pills and woke up the next morning and then never thought about doing it again. When my parents found out that I had tried to do this, they sent me to therapy. I think I went to about three sessions, but I hated the woman. Her and I did not vibe at all. 

JC: How did they find out? Did you come forward and tell them? 

KU: There was a conversation one day. My mom had said something like, “You’d never try to do that,” and I was like, “Oh, really?”

So there was an attempted suicide. There was self harming. I used to cut it. I used to do all of these things to just try to numb and avoid my pain, which I didn’t realize I was doing at the time, but then as I grew older I realized. It was just one of these things that layered on top of each other.

Then when I got into my teenage years, it was any guy who would give me attention. My first kiss and the first guy that I slept with was this really big loser. He was dating all of these other girls and I thought he was the sh*t when we first met. He was my friend’s older brother and it was really passé for me to be dating a guy in high school when I was in eighth grade. I would just take attention from anyone who would give it to me. As I got older, I got into binge eating in university, then drugs and alcohol, and it finally culminated with a cancer diagnosis.

At that time, it was the brick wall that I needed to hit because I was doing really irresponsible and stupid stuff.  What I didn’t realize at the time was that was exactly what I needed in order to take a step back and ask, “Is this the life that I want to continue to lead?”

I was drinking three to five times a week. I worked in the service industry and in downtown Toronto, if you’re in the service industry, you’re working in the right bars and you know all of the people who do all of the bad things. I say now that nothing good happens after 2:00 AM, but back then, nothing exciting would ever happen before 2:00 AM. 

JC: So you would get off of your shift and then go and party all through the early morning hours? 

KU: All through the night and early morning. Sometimes, I wasn’t getting home until you would see runners out on the street. It just made me feel so gross, but I would continue to do it anyway. Again, it was that low sense of self-worth. I was meeting celebrities. I was rubbing shoulders with people. I felt so COOL for the first time in my life.

At the age of 19, I actually toured with The Rolling Stones. I went on tour with them and I sold their merchandise. It’s all through nepotism. My dad’s friend was a promoter for them for like 30 years and offered me a job, and of course I said yes. It was my first time leaving North America and it was a great opportunity, but it also widened my eyes to this idea of what I could do in this industry. It was actually the starting point of what led me to where I am today. When I was out of that and then got back into it in my bartending days, it kind of brought me back to that familiarity and that excitement that I had been missing. 

JC: So then all of this is leading up to a cancer diagnosis. Take us back maybe a few weeks before that. You had shared with me that you just had a belief that you were going to get cancer, even though no one in your family had this type of cancer or even had cancer at all. I find it so interesting because a lot of people will say, “Well it HAD to have been genetic,” even though they were speaking it into existence, but for you… there was no genetic link.  

KU: I knew that I was heading in a direction that I didn’t want to be going in and I had started taking control of my life. I started exercising more. I started eating better and taking control of my health in that regard.

There was always this weird inkling in the back of my mind. I’m like, “I stopped working out for four years. I eat like crap. I do drugs. I drink a lot. I’m going to end up with cancer.”

It used to be my biggest fear, and that is something that I want your audience to really know – whatever shakes you to your core, in terms of fears, find the opposite of it. Start focusing on that.

For me, I would think about it multiple times a week. I would think just how scared I was of cancer and how of all people for it to happen to, it would happen to me.

It was a BELIEF that I held in myself.

I went to the doctor and had my neck checked and she found two lumps on either side. She said, “I’m just gonna send you for an ultrasound. I’m sure it’s nothing, but just to be safe.” Something I also forgot to mention was that I was already in the process of putting myself into my own personal form of rehab. I knew that I needed to leave Toronto. I knew that it was something that was swallowing me whole. I actually got hired by Carnival Cruise Line and went to go work for them.

I was in the process of all of this, making this massive transition and shift in my life, and then I get sent to have an ultrasound. The woman who’s scanning my neck literally gasped and I looked at her and said, “I’m sorry, what?? Like what do you see??” And she goes, “Oh, I can’t tell you that. The doctor has to.”

I knew in that moment that it wasn’t going to be good news, so when I was diagnosed with cancer I actually wasn’t even surprised. 

JC: …Because it was already inevitable. It was already a done deal for you in your mind. 

KU: Yeah. Of course it’s scary, but it wasn’t this earth shattering news to me. 

JC: Interesting. At that point, were you aware of manifestation?

There’s an amazing documentary that speaks to this and has different doctors, experts, and studies around the way our thoughts and the things that we speak aloud and things that we think in our minds impacts the cells in our body and how our cells literally respond to what we are saying. It doesn’t have to be something on the extreme end of cancer. It could just be, “My body holds onto fat. I can never lose the weight.” Your cells are like, “Got it!” 

KU: Absolutely. That was something that I was totally unaware of at the time. I had watched The Secret when I was probably 22 or 23 and I got the diagnosis just after I turned 28. I never really put two and two together. I had seen it and I thought it was cool and then it kind of went into the back of my head, never to be thought of again.

I was actually very lucky. I had my thyroid removed and had to do one round of a mild radiation and that was it. No chemo, no hair loss, no bedridden days or anything like that, so I’m insanely grateful. The funny thing about where my cancer manifested was that it’s in the throat chakra. Your thyroid is part of your throat chakra, which is linked to communication, not speaking your truth, and holding on to past traumas that had happened and never healed them, never spoke about and them, and never dealt with them.

I used to lose my voice once every three months. They couldn’t tell what was wrong with me. No explanation whatsoever. I used to lose my voice almost every three to four months and now, not a thing. I’m a loud person. I like to talk. I’m boisterous. I’m extroverted. I thought that it was just related to who I was as a person and after doing this work and realizing the energetics of everything, it all kind of culminated and I was like, “I haven’t lost my voice since I had my surgery!” 

JC: So post surgery, you were already kind of leaning into that recovery and putting yourself in a cruise line version of rehab. How did you get to that place where you started learning about personal development, spirituality, energy, metaphysics, and all of this good stuff? 

KU: This is where our paths cross again, in that I joined this network marketing company and they preach the power of personal development. Beach Body was how I came across Jen, so I’ve been following your journey for years. I only started in 2016.

When I moved across the country out of Toronto, I moved to the middle of nowhere in northern British Columbia to be with a guy that I had met that I actually manifested into my life. This was before I was conscious of manifestation. When I moved out there, I was on the health kick. I wanted to keep myself healthy and fit, but there was no access to classes. I was so spoiled living in Toronto and I didn’t have any access to that. Their idea of hot yoga was literally turning the radiator up in the Rec Center!

That was a reallyyyy interesting experience.

My girlfriend reached out to me and she goes, “Listen, I’m doing this challenge group. Do you want to be part of it?” I said yes and the next month I signed up to be a coach. That’s when I discovered personal development and in the first two months I was like, “Pshh, I don’t need this. I’m too good for. I’ve got my sh*t figured out. I’m fine.”

I read You Are A Badass. I HATED reading and it took me a YEAR to read, but I loved it, so I kept going back month after month to try to get through it. 

JC: That’s so funny. So that was your first introduction to manifestation? 

KU: Yeah. I watched The Secret again and I came across Katherine (Manifestation Babe) and really went into that. I bought her book and I realized that maybe that this stuff actually works.

I manifested 22,000 dollars in two months going through her book!

I realized at that point that I had actually manifested Josh into my life because I wrote this list a month before I went out to B.C. to visit some friends before going on the cruise ship. I met him, got on the ship, and three months into my contract I thought to myself, “The list!” He checked off every single thing that I had written down. 

JC: Wow. That’s really freaking cool. I think what’s so awesome to hear about your story is that it can happen overnight and it can happen quickly, and then it can also happen incrementally, and for you it really was that compound effect. That compounding of one piece of knowledge and one positive action step on top of itself. In our online marketing world where everything is instant gratification, I think you modeling consistency and just showing up for it really is the fastest way to get there. 

KU: I started with podcasts, I incorporated books, and then I started meditating. When I was in my 9-5, that was about all that I could handle. I could handle my workout, my daily non-negotiable, and meditation because I really started to notice the effect that it had on my life. I am so much more calm.

I am three days away from a hundred days of meditation in a row. Before I started this challenge, the most I had ever done was 30 something, so I am deep in it right now and I am obsessed with it. 

JC: I find this so amazing. What are some things that you’ve seen shift? 

KU: I will tell you the exact moment I realize that meditation works and it is the most ridiculous story!

I always joke that I am not meant to be a Canadian. I am not meant to live in the snow. When I moved across the country, I moved to a town called Kitimat that I did not know at that time, literally from the first nation’s language, directly translates to ‘people of the snow’. I left Canada to not experience winter, meet a guy, and moved to winter central. When I moved there, I had to obviously shovel. I remember even as a kid growing up, my mom would make me go out and shovel the driveway and I would come back in tears because I hated shoveling the snow so damn much.

So then I moved to Kitimat and my driveway is like a front lot. This was the year that I started meditating. When I would go out and shovel the snow, I would lean into it with my stomach, I would give myself the Heimlich with the shovel handle, and I would always slip and fall no matter what. That was something that I spoke into my existence.

The year that I started meditating, shoveling snow was peaceful and it was calming. I did not recognize myself in my own body when I this stark realization. So that was one of the things, but I am able to handle things so much more calmly now and I approach things with a non-reactionary approach.

So many people are so reactive in today’s day and age. I’m someone who will take a step back, take a breath, try to see all sides of the equation, and then give my response. 

JC: When I met you in person, I totally got that very grounded sense from you, but you also very much live in your feminine energy, especially in your work. You do have that really beautiful balance of both. 

KU: Thank you. I appreciate that. It has not been something that I have always lived with and that’s why I think everyone should meditate. It’s such an important aspect of living a blissed out life. 

JC: Amen to that. How do you define manifestation? 

KU: So manifestation is pretty much energy. The way that I like to describe it is that you are the owner of your thoughts.

You control your thoughts. They’re not just random things that get plopped into your brain. You are the owner of your thought patterns.

Your thoughts then affect how you feel.

It is miserable here today in Toronto and I woke up in such a grateful state,  which doesn’t happen all the time because on rainy days it never happens. I woke up in such a great state of mind, but that was because I had positive thoughts going on before I went to bed last night.

Your thoughts create your feelings and your feelings are going to determine how you act.

If you don’t have great thoughts, you’re not going to have good feelings and you’re not going to have the motivation or the initiation to go and do what it is that you have to do, which then leads to your results.

YOU are the owner and you are the creator for everything in your life and you have to show up and take radical responsibility for your life circumstances. 

JC: Yes. People will celebrate the positive things that they’ve manifested and the things that they desire or think they want. And then the things that they don’t want in their life, it’s like, “Well, how did I get this parking ticket?” How do you help somebody get over that gap of owning all of the things they’re manifesting? 

KU: It took me a really long time to realize that I attracted cancer into my life.

Personal development helped me to really hone in on what it is that I had gone through in my life and helped me to heal my past. I think that if we don’t do that deep inner work, you’re not going to be able to move yourself forward in life.

That is a hurdle that a lot of people don’t really realize when it comes to manifestation. For example, I used to drive myself home after a night of partying from downtown Toronto to where I lived. That is not a long drive, but it is definitely one that is on the highway and I was putting not only myself, but others in danger. Thank God nothing ever happened, but now as a ‘woke’ person, when I first started personal development I used to get such a pit in my stomach. I used to feel so much shame, guilt, and remorse for the actions that I took when I didn’t realize why I was doing them. There was just something that would come over me. I would never consciously drink and drive, right?

There was this part of me that really had to heal that past and the piece that had to be healed was forgiving myself. So many people have such difficulty when it comes to you holding onto feelings of guilt, shame, and remorse because they think that they have to berate themselves for the actions that they’ve taken. They think that it’s part of their story so they have to hold onto it, and when you do that, you are keeping yourself in the past and you’re not allowing yourself to heal and move forward.

That is such an important piece to the manifestation.