Why Your Next Level Requires You to Let Go with Keren Eldad

What's the difference between guilt free and living guilt free is I actually believe

that guilt G U I L T is a very proactive, productive feeling. It's an emotion that keeps us in check, that makes many of us make moral decisions, make ethical decisions, stay in line with our societies. That is not a bad thing. That is a good thing. To a certain extent. Guilt, however, G I L T is not a good word and guilded is not a good word. Gilded means covered with a thin sheen of fake gold. It looks fabulous, but if you scratch it a little bit, you notice that it's phony baloney and it's actually just pewter or metal covered in gold. It's trying to look impressive when it is not actually impressive. To live guilt free is to live without the performances, the faces that we put on in our lives. To look impressive, to look amazing, to look like we've got it together, when in fact we are actually crumbling on the inside. I want you to be. I want everybody to live just unapologetically as who they are. Genuine, authentic, vulnerable, up, down, never mind where you are in life. Still really proud of who they are and still really ready to do what they came to do here.

Hey there. Thank you so much for tuning in to the Amberly Lago show. I have a real treat for you today. I have the author of the new new book Guilt Free. It just hit bestseller, just made the Forbes list. Coach Karen Eldat is with us, y'. All. She coaches Olympic, Olympic athletes, entrepreneurs, companies, and has had such an impact on so many people, including my life. I'm so excited to have you here, Karen. Thank you so much.

Emberly, I fell in love with you the day I met you, the day you came on my podcast. And this is just such a treat.

Well, thank you. You know, last night we had your amazing book launch at the Park House here in Dallas, which was so much fun. What a great turnout. And it's just been amazing to read your first book and now this one. But I'm just curious as to. Your first book was already amazing, so impactful, perfection. What inspired you to write Guilt Free?

Well, thank you so much for saying that. It came about the same way most of my SQL programs come about in coaching, which was I did believe that the work was complete. I wouldn't have published Gilded had I not believed that this work was going to take you from A to Z. If you are stuck, if you're feeling aimless, if you feel like you've done everything right and you've Crossed all the T's and you dotted all the I's. But you're still not landing the results that you want in your life. Then this is going to take you from where you are, show you what's stuck, unstick it, and get you to your goal. But then I started to go back to the work right after the book starts to get published, and I see my clients essentially get stuck again. And this made me think, all right, what happens? Why do we regress? Why do the patterns keep nagging at us? Why do we end up stuck again? Why do so many of us experience a breakthrough only to hit another wall, another further down the line on the other side? And like you said, I coached superstars. And so when you see a superstar hitting another wall, it actually becomes much more deceptive, too, because they really do look like they're flying. They took their company once to $1 million and the second time to $10 million, and they're still finding themselves in the same patterns of aimlessness and of worry and of worrying that the other shoe's gonna drop again. So I thought, all right, what's going on here? And this is what made me think, okay, I think we need to write a second book and, and take that work to the next edge.

Yeah. Well, I love your. The kind of. The play on words of guilt free. Like, how do you. What's the difference between guilt free and living guilt free?

Yes. Oh, man, I love that question. And, you know, I haven't been asked it yet, so I was quite disappointed. Guilt free is clearly a play on words. It sounds like G, U, I L T free, as in free of the guilt that I have grown up with, having a mother all of my life, or, you know, having a religion all of my life, et cetera, et cetera. I do not mean guilt free. And the reason is, even though many people find that very attractive and would love to live without Jewish guilt, Catholic guilt, whatever you grew up with, is. I actually believe that guilt, G U I L T is a very proactive, productive feeling. It's an emotion that keeps us in check, that makes many of us make moral decisions, make ethical decisions, stay in line with our societies. That is not a bad thing. That is a good thing to a certain extent. Gilt, However, G I L T is not a good word and gilded is not a good word. Gilded means covered with a thin sheen of fake gold. It looks fabulous, but if you scratch it a little bit, you notice that it's phony baloney and it's actually just pewter or metal covered in gold. It's trying to look impressive when it is not actually impressive.

That's.

So to live guilt free is to live without the performance performances, the faces that we put on in our lives. To look impressive, to look amazing, to look like we've got it together, when in fact we are actually crumbling on the inside. I want you to be. I want everybody to live just unapologetically as who they are. Genuine, authentic, vulnerable, up, down, never mind where you are in life. Still really proud of who they are and still really ready to do what they came to do here.

Well, what is the first step in that? Because I feel like there's a lot of pressure and I feel. I heard somebody say the other day they were living a millionaire lifestyle, but through a credit card or something, I forgot how they worded it. But it's like with social media, there's so much pressure to look a certain way and appear a certain way. And I know a lot of my friends and even clients that, that feel that pressure. It's just constant pressure of they have to be a certain way, they have to perform. How can they start to shift that and. And have their outside match their insides, like their outside success match their. They want to feel good on the inside as well.

Well, let's begin by covering the first two steps. The first two steps is. The first step is the same as Alcoholics Anonymous. Admit that you have a problem and admit that it's not actually working. And this is the hardest thing for all overachievers to admit because many of us, when we have the trappings of the beautiful life, we don't like to admit that it actually doesn't feel as good on the inside as it looks on the outside. Take my example. When I was in my early 30s, I was married to a tall man, which, as we all know, is the holy hi kahuna of all people's achievements. I'm joking, of course. I had fancy degrees. I lived in a very, very stunning apartment. I had not one, but two cats. And my job was I was an executive already. A C suite executive at a billion dollar corporation. So on Instagram, my life looks fantastic. And let's say my outfits were also on point. And I hadn't eaten since the 90s, so I was thin too. So basically everything looked really, really good for me. But I had to admit that actually on the inside, things are not what they look like on the outside. That the marriage was abusive and that I was miserable in it, that I was trapped in that house. Most of the time that I wasn't allowed to sleep with my cats because he hated them. That that job was actually a very nice job, but didn't light me up, wasn't what God called me to do on this planet, didn't wake me up, eager for the day, that basically my internal congruence was nothing like what it looked like on the outside. The first step is admit that you are in a pattern that has gotten out of control and something is not mathing here that you're scrolling seven hours a day on Instagram to escape from Void even though it looks super shiny. The second thing to do is even harder because the second thing you're going to have to do and all addicts of all kind know what this is is give up the substance that's trapping you. In my case, it's give up the trappings of success. Give up all the things that make you look impressive and important. Give up the name dropping, give up the product, give up the hey, it's a multi 7 fig business and it's amazing and look at me and don't you want to be like me? This dies real hard. But the first half of Guilt Free, I started to realize that it's not just gilded. In the first book, I talk generally about the illusions that trap most of our lives. The worldview being screwy. Scarcity versus abundance. If you're listening to the Amber Lago Show, I'm assuming you are well familiar with the overall broad strokes of our industry, right? Think from abundance, do not think from lack, etc. Etc. In guilt Free, I wanted to get much more specific. Specific and say, yeah, but you, you still haven't given up your obsession with looking impressive. Yeah, you still haven't given up your obsession with fomo, the fear of missing out. You still are comparing yourself to everyone around you. And so if you really want to walk the walk, you're gonna have to put your money where your mouth is and you're gonna have to start really being okay with being not impressive, with not needing to be impressive, with being totally cool, with missing a party every now and again. And that's when we really can start to move you into the second half of the book, which is just into a new state of success that is sustainable forever. I hope that was a good enough answer.

Well, you know what? It made me feel better because when I was doing your introduction, I got. I messed up and I was like fumbling over my words and didn't say anything that I had planned on saying. And now I'M like, oh, well, I'm human. Oh, yeah, I'm human. And so. Yeah, well, I always feel better. Anytime I ever get to spend with you, I always feel better. And I loved when I got to be on your podcast. And so, yeah, you have something, a framework that you talk about in guilt free called gold. Can you go over that gold framework a little bit? And, I mean, I want people to buy your book so they can really go in deep with it, but would you touch on it a little bit?

I'd love to. Before I do, I want to acknowledge that I didn't even notice that you fumbled your words or did anything wrong. Oh, well, thank you. And that's to say that everybody out there who is a perfectionist.

Yeah.

You're noticing your fumbles way more than we are.

Yeah, I notice.

Brave than you think it is. And if you're afraid of stepping into visibility or into your calling or into the next step of your life, just know that the fumbles are actually part of what make you human and what make you attractive to other humans. I don't. I stopped editing out coughing from my podcast. I don't care too much about the angle anymore, even though I definitely have a bad side. You're looking at it right now. And I took the likes off of my Instagram when I started to walk this walk. This is the beginning of what I mean by put your money where your mouth is. Let go of that nonsense, because it's gonna weigh you down. And if you want to fly, as Toni Morrison famously said, you're gonna have to give up the S that weighs you down first. And so that's the first part of this book. And that is so essential, because even before you approach the gold framework, which will literally guaranteed, allow you to manifest exactly what you want, it's my personal framework. G O L D Four steps to getting everything you want. You have to do this work first, because otherwise you're dragging that S in with the framework and you're only going to get a semblance of success that looks more impressive but is not actually free. I want you to live authentic and free, not looking free or it's not the same thing. Yeah. I hope that's landing with people.

Yeah. And I love also that you took your likes down that you don't have that count. And I've told so many people when I started my podcast, they're like, how many downloads do you have? I'm like, actually, I don't know. I didn't like, how many book sells do you have actually, I don't know, I haven't looked because I know that a lot of people get. It's easy to get caught up nowadays with the likes and the comments. And even my husband, who is not on social media posting anyway, was like, oh my gosh. I did a post yesterday that went like, it has like over 600 comments. And he's like, wow. I'm like, you are really noticing like the likes and the comments, honey. You know? Yes. God bless him. But I love that you did that because you can focus on the work you can focus on instead of that. Yeah.

Because it becomes another cage. And that's why I really want people to understand that I don't want you to have fake success. I didn't start this business to create for myself a shinier cage.

Yeah.

I created this business to be free. And if I want to create this business to be free, then I cannot pay attention to the comments both vile and flattering. I can only do my job, which is to spread this message of freedom for other people who want to really reach their potential and keep their potential. And that brings me the gold to gold is a four step framework for thinking. I always say this, coaches do not fix your problems. We fix your thinking. Your thinking, it's what's creating your problems. When you think from lack, from fear, from your impulses that are reactive, you create inadvertent chaos in your life. If your belief underneath love is that love always goes away and that you need to be adored and you need to be saved, then I don't care if you end up marrying Chris Hemsworth, who I hope to marry one day, no disrespect to my husband, you will still mess it up. But if your belief is that love is kind and love is giving and love is unconditional, then it does not matter who you marry. Even if it isn't Chris Hemsworth, you will feel like it is. And so the thinking is what needs to get put on straight. And so I've created these four general rules and underneath them, sets of anti rules or behavioral and decision maneuvers that will give you much better results than you've ever had before that will actually land your manifestations. G is good enough. The presumption that we are good enough. Believe it or not, most of us are operating from a low level background feeling of I am not good enough. I will not pull this off. Here's how things are going to go wrong with me or go wrong for me and other people are lucky and I actually can't get ahead. If you just change that dynamic, your next steps, your next moves will be better. The second is openness. A lot of people think they're open. God bless their hearts. I love it so much. It's really cute. They are not open. Most people, when they're calculating their prospects of solving a problem or getting what they want, are usually hedging on the side of, I won't get what I want. Here's what's going to go wrong.

Yeah.

If you're first and foremost thinking about what's going to go wrong, then I promise you that's likely to happen. Like my mother. Yeah, but if you're like me and you already assume that we're going to have a really good time and it's probably going to be great and people are going to like you, your outcome is going to be different. The third is lit up and I think that's the one that everybody in our times is really looking for. I want you to systemically know how to get to a state of being eager for the day and filled with purpose and keep that aliveness dynamic for yourself. And that's where those rules are aiming. And finally, to me, the ultimate state, the final state, is devoted. D Devoted is the state of real success. And that's not where ambition dies. And all you are here to do is be in deep reverence for life and just hope things work out. It refines your ambition. It tethers your ambition to service. I've learned that ambition for myself will always get me back into a shiny cage. But ambition for service and for the universe and for in my case, God is always going to feel wonderful and sustains itself. I hope people use the system because it's going to get them what they want, but also make them feel good.

Yeah, for sure. And I think, you know, when I've. I think when it go. When you start asking more and more questions. For me anyway, it all came down to not enough or not good enough every single time. Went back into that. And it's hard sometimes because you can be aware of it. But things keep popping up for me and I have to go back and nip it in the bud. Does it get easier as you become aware if you're triggered or things come up to go back and go, wait a minute, I need to go to the gold, use this framework so I can get back on track?

Yes, it does. Many people ask if to be enlightened like us means to never experience stress ever again. Does it just go away? No, I think that never Experiencing stress ever again means you're dead. Congratulations. Yeah, have a good ride. But to really be enlightened or awake just means to be aware of your patterns, which means you will more readily catch them, which means you will more readily know what to do. And Gold offers you. And that's why it's an advanced book rather than a preliminary book. It's not just about the awareness. It's now you know what to do.

Yeah.

And it works every time I use it on myself. I shared that yesterday. Because every time I find myself moving back into Cage Karen or Monica from Friends Karen, I love that you say yes, busy body Karen. Hustling Karen, really afraid to lose what she has. Karen. Then I start to understand that I've basically just. I've gone back to the patterns. I can see the patterns. And then I know what to do. And I know that the way out is always in what's going on? Why am I scared? What's coming up again? What do I need to let go of? What do I need to give up again? Because it's just a test. It's a test every time it happens.

I was just telling a client yesterday about. Because she's, you know, obsessed with AI and social media and this and that.

And I said, love those people.

Yeah. I said. I said, can I suggest you just take a break.

Yeah.

For just a week. Just a break. And don't look at any of that and just go within. I told her, go within. I said, do some writing, spark some curiosity and some joy. Because everything is moving so fast right now. There's things, all these things. And I love that you talk about lit up like there. I know there's some days that I wake up and I'm like, oh, it's. It feels like a hard day. And I have to check myself and go, okay, I get to do these things. But are these things that I really want to do? That's right. And then how does someone who is sitting there right now going, I do not feel lit up. I'm tired. I don't like my life. I've got that 9 to 5 job that I don't want to go to. How do they start to shift that and get lit up?

Unfortunately, they will have to start from the first step. Good enough. The first wonky element is not in the purpose or the endeavor. It's in the presence within yourself, your sense of your own worth. You are feeling so unworthy that you have made choices that are incongruent with what your soul truly desires. And you can't fix the thing and hope that you will actually come to wholeness. You have to come to wholeness with yourself first. You have to get good enough. And that means self compassion work, self will of work, inner hype work. And that's the first step that I take you through. But I also say, I mean like that's what enormous bodies of work are for. Brene Brown's entire repertoire is dedicated to wholeness, to self compassion. So is Dr. Kristin Neffs. Great Texans, by the way, like us. The second thing to do is openness, is to recognize that what's happened that's gotten you pigeonholed in this box 9 to 5 is you've actually not calculated the totality of possibilities that are available to you. You basically probably thought that life is linear and this is the best I can get, or this is the best husband I can get, or this is the best prospect I can get. That means that you're in a state of myopia. So the second step will also be really helpful to you. How do we start opening up our horizons and start scanning the room for more possibilities out of this than just try to fill it up in this one rinky dink job. And then by the time you get to L, you already have riskiness, you already have some options. People who have options are usually much more likely to find their path to lit up than people who think, I gotta find lit up here with this loser.

Well, with this loser. Well, I would love for you to tell the story. You told the story about how you were living in New York last night. This is the best story you were living in. You were living in New York and you had a big rent to pay and did not have the money. Can you tell that story?

I love that story because it's a really tiny story that illustrates how starting to learn how to do the opposite, which is what this framework is showing you literally lands you better results and it scans you for it shows you how the process works seamlessly. So this is the first time that I learned on my own flesh that these ideas that I was learning from other people were not just woo, they were law. And I had been living against, against the law of the universe. I had been trying too hard to make things happen for myself instead of allowing the universe to help me to get what I want. And so, yeah, I learned this in the best way.

It feels like either you're fighting something or you. I feel like you're in flow.

Yes, that's right.

Yeah.

And so money is the best Place to start. Because most of us, where are we exerting the most effort? It's in getting money. So God sent me a perfect test. I am about to pay my rent, which was $4,400, which actually is not high in New York, but was exorbitant for me because at the time, I did not have $4,400. I, as usual for that time, on account of magnificent spending habits, amberly had only $37 and a ton of credit card debt. So I could not cover this rent. And it's due in a few days. Now my usual my former self would panic, A, and then would move into hustle mode. Figure it out. Do everything.

Work harder. Grind hard.

Yeah, grind hard. Call everyone you know, Annoy the pants out of everyone. Figure it out. Get more into debt. But this time, because I've already been, at this point, coached within an inch of my life, I already knew that I could not, A, panic and B, move into effort. I knew that those two moves alone were wrong. So I had to reverse those two in order to see if I got to a new L and a new D, a new lit up, a new devoted way through this problem. So the first thing I did was not panic. I chilled out. I actually almost made fun of the situation. I thought to myself, what if I can just chill out, look for money in my seat cushions and in my pockets and try to figure out how to be broke and have fun with it a little bit? And that's when an idea came to me. Since I had so much credit card debt, that meant I had a lot of credit card miles. And the credit card miles could buy me a ticket to Miami. And that's when I thought, why be broke in New York when you can be broke in Miami? Being broke in Miami is way more fun.

Yeah.

And so I figured out that I was going to use all of those credit card miles to get myself a first class ticket to Miami. And that means I start to already move into a completely new state of mind. Right. I've done the opposite of what my parents and what society have conditioned me to do, which was freak out, have absolutely no fun, because you don't deserve any fun. I thought, I deserve a lot of fun, and I'm going to have that fun. And that fun is probably going to lead me to the next step, which actually did. So I feel good enough. I get on that plane, I go to Miami. Would you believe it? I'm sitting on the plane next to Latin American superstar Lilia Stefan. She remembered me. She had met me before. She's huge. She's Gloria Estefan's niece. She's on Univision. She's a very, very big TV personality. We had a great time, we had wine. We ended up being stuck for three hours because of the delay. She made tons and tons of videos. Then O is reached open. I start realizing I've got much more possibilities now. I have actually way more possibilities to manifest this money because Lilia Stefan has literally blown up my Instagram overnight.

You're kidding.

Not kidding at all. True story. And by the way, she posted those videos, so there is evidence. And so after that, I start getting contracts that I had been waiting on. I sold a bunch of stuff because I had so much more attention. Many people were eager to help me out that weekend. As I said famously last night, I made $7,000 that weekend from a beach chair in Miami. And when I tell you, that's what got me lit up because I got really excited about a new prospect, a new lease on life that I had. From there I started to really get move forward with bigger ideas and bigger creations that I'd ever created before. This is when I start writing Live with Enthusiasm, my original program dotting United States devotion and my career and making this a service to other people. And my career was born. Not only did I solve my money problem forever, but became the conduit or the avenue for my life's work. It's a great story and it's a really good illustration of how not following your reactive fearful impulse pulses your small self, lets you just unleash and just try something different. And if you fail, it's fine. But at least you tried.

Yeah, at least you tried. And that's the. I want to talk about the difference in your man. Like a lot of people talk about manifesting.

Yeah.

And I think they sit back and just say I wish, I wish, I wish. Or they put everything up on a vision board and. And you're. You talk about it a little bit differently and I think the way that you talk about it really makes much more sense and it really works.

I don't care about the wishing. A lot of people wish for things and yearn for things. I want you to get to a state of knowing. To me, manifestation is the natural law based result of not wishing and hoping for things, but knowing clearly. Yeah, we talked about that.

Battling weaving started recording. Yeah, you said, well, we were talking about something that doing changes in my business. And you said, well, I hope you know that. And I was like, yeah, I do know It, I decided it. And you're like, well, get ready, get ready.

Because if, if it's, there's a huge difference. And that's why my nuanced approach to manifestation is a little Tony Robbins y. There is a really big difference between hoping for the thing, thinking about the thing, laying out the thing, preparing for the thing, and making a decision and moving once you make a decision. And again, I'm going to use the phrase put your money where your mouth is. The universe understands that this person is literally this person means business. I always say that the number one rule in the law of attraction is not like attracts like. It's the universe hears what you mean, not what you say. The universe does not respond to I can and I will. And then you're not going to back it up with any action. It knows when you're, you're BSing it. Yeah, the universe knows this person means business. This person is taking action like they mean business. I tell you something and I know you feel the same way. Nothing breaks my heart more than somebody who is called to book a consultation with me for free. And they really, they finally do it. They go all in. They found the best teacher. They're ready to go all in on themselves. And then they say, but I can't afford you. That just breaks my heart. That means you've literally said to the universe right now, I don't mean it. And that doesn't mean work with me. It means you go all in on your dream. You find a way to go all in on your dream. Everything that has worked out in my life life has been because I decided not to stop at. Yeah, I just went, this is my decision. No matter what happens, I'm getting from A to B. And every decision I will make from here, I will sustain the cost of because I know that ultimately I'm going to get what I want. That is manifestation.

Yes. And you know it it. I, I, I've heard that before when I get on a consultation call with someone. Yeah, yeah, I've heard that. And you know, I just, we were talking about I'm doing a retreat and I found the house in the beach on in Jacksonville. It sleeps 16 people and I found it. And just like that, I paid for the whole thing. Oh yeah, Retreat.

Not knowing who's going to book it.

I have no idea who all's going to be there, but I just know I'm going to have enough, you know, I'm going to have people there and even more we talk about, I might even have more I might have to stay at a hotel, you know, but it's just that knowing instead of wishing for it, I just know, you know, what do you think?

And the universe responds in kind. I want people to really hear this because they think this is actually incorrect.

It is.

I pay in full for all of my retreats six months before we release them. And by the way, retreats are tens of thousands of dollars if you're doing them frugally.

Yeah.

And when you understand that you are about to put something of value into the universe that is truly magnificent, then it really is. I'm sorry to make yet another 80s reference because you heard so many of mine yesterday. It's like in Field of Dreams, if you build it, they will come. It is law. It's just that most people don't play that way. They hedge their bets and then they don't put down a deposit. And then they wonder why no one is coming to their door. Because you don't mean business. That's it. It's a vibrational thing. And that vibration has to be at certainty, beyond reason.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I just. I love your first book. So excited. Congratulations with this book. So, first of all, you said free consultation. How can people find you, coach with you, get on a call and not say, oh, but I can't afford you, but say, I can afford you, and we are doing this together. How can they do that?

None of my business what people can afford, but my generosity is really there. And you will actually meet me on the other side. Not one. A salesperson. It's calendly.com karenldad you can book. You're amazing. And I'm always really, really happy to do it. It's a joy to talk to people.

Yeah. And you know what? You are such a gifted. Like, every time I'm with you, I'm like, coach me. Coach me. Last night, after your time, we went to dinner and you're like, ask me some questions. I'm like, it is a treat to get to be around. Ask me.