Karen Kenney: Hi, welcome to the Karen Kenney show. I'm so happy
that you're here, and thank you for being here and spending a
little time with me. So I think I'm going to call this sucka.
Don't be a parrot. Like, don't be a parrot. Like, first of all,
I love parrots. I love the birds, right? But we're gonna
dive into what I mean when I say, don't be a parrot. And like
so many of my other shows, these ideas that I get like or when
something pops up into my consciousness, or it's on my
mind and in my heart, and I want to talk about it a lot of times,
it's inspiration from a couple of different places. As you all
know, I'm a wicked, big animal lover, and throughout my life, I
have had exposure to actually, different kinds of parrots, like
actual physical parrots. You know, I had parakeets when I was
a little kid, my aunt and uncle, who my sister and I went to go
live with after my mother was killed. They had a cockatiel
named Bird. Bird, so original, right? So and bird would like,
sing and cat call and whistle at you and repeat little things. My
best friend KT, has two beautiful little parrots, and my
sweeties, um, stepdad, who he kind of considers his dad, also
has a beautiful parrot. And those parrots, like, can last
for like you can live for like up to like 70 years. It's
incredible. And one of the things I noticed, though about
birds and parrots, that while they do make their own unique
sounds, they have their own unique voice. When it comes to
like speaking or saying phrases or whatever, what they're really
just doing is they're parroting. They're repeating, right?
They're just repeating things that they heard in their
environment, or they're repeating phrases and and songs
or whatever sounds that people in their environment are
teaching them. So it's not like it's a unique thing. They're
just kind of, again, using that phrase, parroting back what has
been told to them. And the reason why this is on my mind,
I'm going to come at this from a couple of different angles, but
so often what I see is that people will people will just
regurgitate and repeat shit that they hear in their environment,
rather than finding their own voice. Now, one of the things
where this can get a little tricky, and I see it a lot, and
I've experienced this throughout my lifetime, is dealing with or
talking with or trying to have relationships with, people who
all they're doing is regurgitating from their own
childhood. They're regurgitating what their parents told them,
what school told them, what the teachers told them, what the
priest told them, what whatever told them. And they never got
curious enough to find out for themselves what they think about
what they were told, what they believe about the things they
were told how they feel about the things they were told. A lot
of times we just end up taking on, you know, the the stories,
the beliefs, the identities, the whatever from our childhood, and
then you don't question it. And I see so many people, you know,
I've, I've had these conversations, you know, one in
one in particular, with a with a guy I dated. I remember the
story, and I'm like, you don't even know what you believe faith
wise and religion wise. You just basically drank the Kool Aid of
your parents, and now you're just regurgitating it. But if I
ask you to explain to me what that even means, you can't tell
me. And so often people are just parroting, like I said, Back
shit that's on the news, shit that's on, you know, something
that they saw online, saw on social media, some quote or
whatever, and they haven't found out for themselves what they
think about it, what they feel about it, what their unique
perspective or spin might be on that thing because they've spent
a little time thinking about it, right, and being with it and
sitting with it and going like, hey, yeah. Like, I know. I know
my grandparents always said this money doesn't grow on trees,
right? But how do I feel about these things? And we have to be
paying close enough attention to catch ourselves when we're just
kind of regurgitating and parroting shit from again,
whether it's our childhood, our parents, our churches, our
school teachers, right, our siblings, whatever, it's really
important that we take time in this lifetime to figure out what
the Fuck we think, what we feel, what we believe, what we know to
be true, right for us. And I want to talk about this in a
particular way too, because when we end up just kind of
parroting, the world misses out. And I've told this story before,
but I'm just going to tell it really quick. I'm. There was a
period of time you all know, well, you all know, I don't
know. Some of you might not know, but if you've been around
for a while, you know that I lived and worked with Marianne
Williamson. You know, the writer the spiritual right. She wrote a
return to love, 1000 other you know, she was written so many
books, New York Times, best selling books. She's a spiritual
thought leader. She's a teacher. She's a lecturer. She ran for
president a couple of times. Okay, so I used to live and work
with Mary Ann in California. And at the time, like I was in my
20s, I was so impressionable. I was so like, oh my god, like she
was, she was a mentor of mine. She was a teacher of mine. She
was a woman, you know, an older woman that I, that I looked up
to, and, you know, read all her books, etc, and during my time
of working with her, I went to go see, you know, a woman who
did, she was an intuitive. She did readings, tarot readings.
She like, you know, would basically just, you know, do it
like a reading for you. And I remember going in, and I sat
down, and I was all like, you know, just like, if you can't
see me, I have my hands in my face now. I'm all just, like,
wide eyed, and I was just like, Oh, I was so excited to be
there. I had heard wonderful things about this woman, just
how like, spot on she was, and just how caring and kind she
was. So I was kind of like an open book, you know, like, I
just, like, sat down in her room at her house, and so she
obviously knew my name, and she's like, so, you know, tell
me about yourself. And I'm like, I'm Karen Kenney and blah, blah,
blah, blah. And she's like, so tell me. She's like, you know,
who are you? Like, what do you want to do? And, you know, to
kind of, like, kick off the session. And I said to her, I
want to be the next Marianne Williamson. And I was so
sincere, I was so earnest, like I really meant it, and not that
I wanted to be Marianne. Like, looking back, I can look and see
I understood now, like what I really meant. But she said the
most profound and powerful thing to me and I and she looked me
right in the eyes, and she said to me, why don't you try being
the first. Karen Kenney, and she knew something then that my
brain had not like realized yet, right? Like my lived experience
had not caught up to yet, which is this, like I needed to be the
first. KK, because the world doesn't need another copy of
somebody else. What the world needs is you, and the world
needs your particular take, your particular voice, your
particular point of view, your lived experience, your own
unique and creative and brilliant and wonderful and
whatever you know point of view. The world just doesn't need us.
You know, remember how, like, when you would like, I don't
know if you ever worked at a place where there was a copy
machines, like nowadays we all have, a lot of us have copies at
home built into our printers. But back in the day, when you
worked at a place and there was, like, a Xerox machine, right?
And you would just get up to all kinds of shenanigans, as you can
imagine, right? I'm just having some memories flash through my
head here.
But if you take a carbon copy, if you take a copy of something,
even if you did carbon copies, remember back in the days with
the credit card things, and you'd have to go, chunk chunk,
right? I'm just sliding my hand back and forth like chunk chunk,
to get an impression. This is the thing. When we're making a
copy, we're only getting an impression of something, but
we're not getting to the root source of where that impulse,
that creative energy, and that creative impulse, comes from.
And if you just make a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy, it
gets it gets weaker, it gets lighter, it gets blander, you
can't even read it. It's like, where did this even come from?
And so I'm really a champion of people owning their own unique
experience and their perspectives and their stories
and their special, you know, characteristics that that,
because when you show up in the world and you're like, hey,
here's what I think about this, you now give all of us a new,
unique point of view, and it might be a way of looking at a
thing, or thinking about a thing or experiencing a thing that
we've never had before. And so if we're just so concerned about
sounding like everybody else, looking like everybody else,
being like everybody else, regurgitating what's already out
there, then we kind of like Rob ourselves, the experience of
really coming to know ourselves. And I think of it like the
Divine is expressing itself through us. We've all been given
in A Course in Miracles. It says like our own individual
assignment. You have your own individual curriculum, your own
divine assignment, and so only you came here to express through
you in your own unique way. So why do we want to just repeat
what we hear other people saying and doing and being like the joy
and the thrill of this is figuring out, what do I think?
What do I believe? Or why do I think that? Do I believe it? And
a lot of times, we can trace the breadcrumbs right back. We can
trace that thread back to something from our past,
something that was said to us in childhood, and in the work that
I do as a spiritual mentor and a coach, and, you know, as a
hypnotist, and all the ways that you know, you know that I work
with people, one of the things that I often see is that people
are repeating stories. That's why, you know my work, I talk
about your story to your glory. And so often I'm tracing this
thread, this belief that people have this thing where they're
getting in their own way of not believing that they're lovable,
or not believing that they're good enough or smart enough, or
they're too much, or whatever the thing is, I'm too dumb, I'm
too lazy, I'm too this, I'm not good with money. A lot of times,
there are these beliefs that are like, put in place. And when we
trace the thread back, when we trace the trail of bread crumbs
back, it's something that was said when they were a little
kid, you know, they had a teacher that, with their red
pen, like, you know, mark their paper, and they thought they
were stupid, because maybe their spelling wasn't that great, you
know. And there's a great thing that I, you know, I was just
listening on the radio the other day, and somebody used this
phrase, and I wish I could remember what it was, but it was
something about, like, the way that I reiterated it in my head
is that story of, like, don't judge a fish by its ability to
climb a tree. We all have our own unique gifts and talents,
and I'm not going to expect a fish to be able to climb a tree,
right, but that fish can swim like a mofo, like in the ocean,
like, you know what I'm saying. So it's like, I want to, I want
to, like, hear and see where people are shining a light on
their own brilliance. And that's another thing. Like, we're often
really willing to talk about our traumas, our dramas, our
bullshit, the places where, like, Oh, you don't know how
bad, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, Yeah, okay, we gotta own
that stuff too. But let, like, let's also own our brilliance in
the places where you're wicked smart, or you get you're really
creative, or you have a really unique perspective in your art
or your podcast, or the way that you create meals, or, like,
whatever the thing is, and I don't want to get robbed of not
seeing your beauty and your creativity in your genius
because you're so worried about looking or sounding like
everybody else and just wanting to fit in. And I understand that
we are pack creatures, you know? I understand that we feel safety
in groups because it's easier to survive when we're like, pad up
and stuff like that, you know. But the people who have really
changed the world are the ones who are willing to, like, go
outside the framework and do something totally new, and not
just take the well worn path, right? It's to do something
different. So I just want to encourage you, like, if you find
yourself, like, just kind of, you know, repeating shit that
other people have already done or already said, or, like,
whatever, like, you know, some people will say there's no
unique ideas out there. Like, all the songs are just kind of
using the same chords. All the stories have been told, all the
songs have been written, and it's like, I understand where
they're coming from, but nobody is you, even if you're an
identical twin, your identical twin is not having the same
exact experience as you are. And there is something right. I
believe, again, I believe that it. Call it. You can call it
whatever word you want to call it. You can call it God, you can
call it source. You can call it creative intelligence. You can
call it the universe. You can call whatever you want to call
it. But I believe that there is something really, really
powerful, call it love, that is trying to move through you and
express itself in its own way. And this is another reason why,
like, I think like, I'm going to shift gears now a little bit
like about not just parroting what you hear out there what you
see out there. Right now. It's a very, very, very, very dangerous
time to just be repeating stuff and not getting your sources in
check, not knowing what the true meaning of a thing is not
knowing if it's actually true what you're sharing or saying.
So you know how I told you I worked with Mary Ann when I
worked in live with her, one of the things that I did, because
she has this famous quote, right? Most people know it. A
lot of people know it. You know it's, it's, in her book, a
return to love. I you know, it begins like, Our deepest fear is
not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are
powerful beyond measure. We ask ourselves, like, who am I to be?
Brilliant, talented, gorgeous, blah, blah, okay, that quote
back in the day, right? So this, this was in, let's see, this is
in the 90s, so, like, probably, like, around 9697
and the. That quote was getting attributed to, like a Fauci
like, mostly Nelson Mandela, also to coach kada in the movie.
But then people were also like sharing it and not giving credit
or attribution. So one of the things that I did in my work and
my job is I would find this, I would find where it was being
misattributed or whatever, and then I would send an email or
write a note, or I'd make a correction, and I'd say, Hey,
this is actually from, you know, Marion Williamson's book, a
return to love, like on page 90 and 91 whatever. And I would
like tell people, and I'd make the correction. And that that
doing that again and again and again is probably also part of
what, why giving credit is, like, so important to me, like,
why I'm like, please don't steal other people's shit. Please
don't plagiarize. Please have a fucking original thought in your
own head and and if you are going to take take something
that somebody else taught you, or that you read or you heard or
you learned right like, Please give credit or attribution, but
even take it one step father, one step further, because
there's another thing that I see happening a lot, and it happens
like, again, I tend to catch it with things that I have spent a
lot of time with, right? Like, there's a quote from A Course in
Miracles that basically says, Your task is not to seek for
love. Your task is to seek and to find the barriers that you
have built against your own awareness of love's presence or
whatever, right? I cannot tell you how many people attribute
that to Rumi, and I just like want to bang my face off the
desk, and I'm not being mean about those people, but what it
tells me is they saw it somewhere else, and then they
just attributed it to Rumi, but they didn't do their homework.
They didn't bother to see if it was true. And in this day and
age of everybody screaming like fake news and, oh, you're just
saying that. And this one's that I'm always like, hey, check your
facts, check your sources, check your resources, check the
studies, check the science, check where you're getting this
thing from. If you're please don't be lazy. Please don't be a
lazy parrot and just regurgitate something when you don't know if
it's true at all. I see people, especially as a vegan, too.
Again, I can only speak on the areas that I've spent a lot of
time in, right learning, studying, living in my own
evidence, living it. And people just say the most ridiculous
shit, the most ridiculous propaganda about like, Oh, it's
so hard to grow muscles on a vegan diet. Oh, being plant
based, you need to eat animals. No, you don't. No, you don't.
No, you don't. I cannot stress this enough. Read some fucking
books. Do some do just do the math. Read some books, find some
studies, you will find out it's all a lie. It's all propaganda.
Oh, my God, but we see this happening a lot, especially in
politics, and it's so dangerous and so like, if you're going to,
like, please just don't regurgitate shit you hear on Fox
News or, like, any news outlet, like, do your homework. You
know, there's a woman named Heather, Heather Richardson Cox,
and why I like to read what she has to say. First of all, she's
a historian. She's a professor. I don't care what kind of like,
I mean, whatever side of the aisle, you know, but she kind of
looks at things from a historical perspective. But you
know what she does when she writes a piece at the bottom.
She cites like any, like everything that she talks about,
whether she's mentioning a social media post, whether she's
mentioning like something from history, she will cite exactly
where the with a link, where you can see it for yourself, where
you can go read it and think for yourself where you can go find
out for yourself, like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So she's
not just regurgitating stuff. She's basically taking these
things in watching what's going on in the world, talking about
it from her perspective, and then backing it up with like
facts and science and like links and stuff like that. And these
days, you just have so many people who were just chugging
the Kool Aid and regurgitating stuff and parroting stuff, and
they're not checking things out. So I'm looking at this from two
perspectives. I'm looking at it from what you're putting out
into the world, right? Do your homework if you're going to
quote something, do a little digging before you give
attribution to somebody, because it's probably it might not be
them, because the frigging internet is like the wild wild
west, and nobody's really checking. You know what I'm
saying, any idiot can say anything at any time, and people
just go like, Oh, well, so and so said it on his blog, and
we're back. I'm just taking him. I'm rubbing my eyes like, Holy
Jesus on a crack up. Okay? But mostly, what I wanted to say is
this, I'm not trying to, like, wag my finger at you, like,
don't be a parrot. Because, like, I'm saying it because the
world needs you. It doesn't need you being a cat, like a. Cheap
copy of somebody else, right? So again, find out for yourself, do
your research. Read, gather your own experience, gather your own
empirical evidence, and then make your report to the world,
right? Then go out and make your report. And you know, I read
this book once. It was called stay and fight by Madeline
Fitch. It's a fantastic book. Book. It was a novel. And there
was a character in this book named Pearlie, and he was the
son of these two women who lived in the Appalachians and life was
hard. They had to stay and fight right? They had to stay and
fight for their life. And I, I'm paraphrasing, but the kid was
taught by his mothers, and he would say, like, to be
steadfast, to be resolute, and to make his report right. And so
I started saying that like to my friends, like, Hey, be
steadfast, be resolute. And then then go out, go out and
experience things, and then come back and make your full report.
And I'd be like, come tell me your stories. Come tell me what
you learned. Come like, using your own voice, break it down
for me, so I can see how you process things, so I can see the
world through your eyes. Because that's what makes it all a
kaleidoscope, having all these kind of different voices and
points of view. And, you know, I remember there was a period of
time like in the in the 90s, maybe the early 2000s and it
just sounded like there were all these bands. They weren't really
rock bands. They were weren't really grungy, they were like,
whatever this new kind of like thing was. And I remember I
would flip through the stations on the radio and I'd be like, I
can't fucking tell these guys, one from another, they all sound
the same. And I'm like, I don't know if they're trying to sound
the same. I don't know if one just thought, Oh, this is how
you like, you know, sell records is like, you copy the other guy.
And there was also this thing that was happening in country
music where they had basically gotten this formula. And, I
mean, you can look it up, you can Google it, right. There was
like, this formula where it was like, insert this here. Insert
this here. Do this, do this. And all the country songs. And I'm
not a country fan, in fairness, in fairness, not a fan. But a
lot of, a lot of the songs were just like, red truck, red solo
cup, Red Dog, red something, right? I was just like, what?
Like, what is happening right now? And I was like, please, for
the love of God, can people get original? Can you stop going for
the cheap and the easy sell? Can you stop going for the click
bait? Can you stop trying to just like, repeat and
regurgitate and parrot the crap that's already out there? And I
think this is part of the assignment right for us to go
out there and for us to not be parrots, to not be parakeets,
right to be persons, to be people with your your own unique
voice, your own unique point of view, your own unique
experience, and your own unique stories, and to question the
ones that were given to you, those identities, those stories,
all those things that you were told about yourself as a kid.
Keep the ones that are good and loving. Keep the ones that are
good and true. Question all the other shit question, don't
parrot. Don't parrot these stories. You know, from what
your, what your, your your maybe your emotionally unintelligent
parents may be said to you right their own scarcity and fear and
lack of knowing that generational trauma that just
kind of like rolled downhill and like landed on you. We gotta, we
gotta. We gotta, like, I'm brushing my body right now. We
gotta, like, dust ourselves off and brush ourselves off and
shake off the cobwebs and shake off the dust and shake off those
old stories and really step into the glory of who you really are,
because the world doesn't need another watered down version of
a bunch of other people. What the world needs is you.
Okay, that's what I had to say. That was what was on my heart,
in my mind. I hope it was helpful to you in some way, and
just know that I celebrate you. I can't always see you right,
because I you know I'm the one on the video, but when I say I
see you and I hear you, what I mean is like I understand,
right? I my compassion and my empathy, like I understand that
we're all out here, and we're we're hopefully doing our best,
and we're trying to learn, and we're trying to grow, and we're
trying to, you know, just kind of shed, shed the old skins,
shed the old shed, the old feathers, the things that you
know aren't helping us to fly anymore. And just know that I
that I do see you, I do hear you, especially when you write
to me. And I appreciate you, and I have a lot of gratitude for
you for being here in my world, listening to the show. So just
thank you so so so much. You know the drill. If you ever want
to work with me, if you ever want to join the nest or do one
to one mentoring, join a yoga class, whatever, you can just
find me. I'm easy to find online. Just spell my last name
right, and I'm pretty easy to find. It's k, e, n, n, e, y.
Karen Kenney. Kenney, go to Karen. Kenney.com, Vaness, the
quest all that stuff is there. Thank you so much wherever you
go. May you leave yourself and leave the animals and leave the
environment and the other people in the planet better than how
you first found it. Wherever you go, may you and your love and
your presence and your energy and your unique point of view
your Eunice, right? May your Eunice be a blessing. Bye. You.