Cycling Towards Clarity: Karen Bonnett Natraj's Path to Self-Awareness and Fulfillment | EP094

Hello everybody. My name is Shannan Mondor, and welcome to my podcast, fulfillment in faith today. My guest is Karen Bonnett Natraj, and I did have difficulty saying her name prior to this, so I did do a couple practices. But I absolutely love your name. I think it's absolutely beautiful. Thank you. You're welcome. And now that you're here and I've introduced you, Karen, I want you to tell all of the audience members a little bit about yourself, where you're from, and then from there, if you just want to get into your story and just just go right ahead.

Karen Bonnett Natraj: Thank you, Shannan, I appreciate it, and I appreciate being here. This is a quite a gift and an honor. I'm very grateful. So currently I'm in Auburn, California and but I haven't been here my whole life. And you know, like all of us, we all have a story. We have a journey that brought us to where we are today. And I really believe everything I've done has brought me to where I am today, and where did that journey start? Briefly. I grew up in Covina. I grew up in LA, or Covina is just east of LA, but I grew up in Saratoga and came from a very toxic, toxic family life, very abusive, emotionally, physically and all that. And so when we as children are exposed to stuff like that, we kind of acted out in our life. And I did the same thing. I got myself in a very toxic relationship, and one day I woke up thinking, This isn't right. I had three children, and it's not right to raise them like this. And why was I giving all of me to somebody else trying to fix them, and why didn't I work on me? And that's when I was in a very scared place. I had three kids, and the decision was going to be life changing, and I have no I had no idea at the time where that was going to lead me, and so sometimes when we make those big decisions in life, we don't know, but we've actually go down a path of where opportunities are waiting for us, and the opportunities were there for me. So I, I left, and the kids and I were living in Arizona. We moved back to California, and that's when I I dove hard. I dove really hard into my own self care, my own self journey, my own self empowering and finding out really who I am, and that it takes a bit, it's a process. So I read a lot of books. The one book that really turned my life around was leaving the enchanted forest, and that's just that book. I don't know. There was something in that book that was just all about me, and the gift was me, learning about me, learning out about who I am and who I am not and I am not a person to be, you know, succumb to other people and not be myself. And so I've been on this journey for 30 years now, and it took me to divorcing, leaving, finding a new job, ready finish raising three children, to where I discovered a life that I never knew I had, and that was me becoming an ultra distance athlete. I knew I discovered that I really loved riding a bike, and that was a new avenue for me. And in that discovery, my brothers and I did a bike ride in support of the MS Society because our mother died of ALS, and that's where I fell in love with the bike. We did 150 mile bike ride. It was me, my oldest son at the time, was 13, and my brothers, we rode from Phoenix to Parker. And that, that trajectory of that was the beginning of my long distance cycling,

I got a question, did you train for that prior? Oh, a little bit, my son, you didn't just hop on that bike and do 150 miles? Did you or did you? And they

Karen Bonnett Natraj: so the MS Society sets up the whole thing. And so they have a little aid stations. They have a place for us to stay in the middle of the night. So my son and I did. We were living in Kingman, and we would get up in the early morning and we would ride on Route 66 out towards, I don't know what direction that is, maybe north towards the Peach Springs. And ride back he and I. He rode my mountain bike, and I rode a different bike. I bought myself an old Terry bike. And so he and I did train. We did go out there and do some rides together. And then the MS Society, they do a great job, because they're out there supporting you. They give you aid stations. They set you up for the sleep for the night, so you're only doing half of the ride. And then the second half the next day. Oh, that sounds like fun. It was a blast. Yeah, it was really a blast. Oh, wow, good

for you. Yeah. You. So that was the beginning of your journey to discovering how much you love biking.

Karen Bonnett Natraj: So it's also the beginning of the awareness of sometimes we don't know what our potential is until we step out of our comfort zones. Exactly yes. And so yeah, that was the adventure my, my journey of cycling and and then I the kids, and I moved back to the Sacramento area, and I got into bike clubs, and I started doing, I wanted to do 100 mile bike ride, so I trained for that. And it was in the Davis area called the foxy fall, and I was so stoked I could do 100 miles. And then, then, then the 200 miles came on. And then people are talking about the Triple Crown, and there's these 200 mile bike rides everywhere. And then people are talking about 1200 Ks in the Bravais. So I've done, I've done the Triple Crown and won that. I've done 10 200 mile bike rides in a year. I've done 312 100 Ks. But in doing those 1200 Ks, you had to qualify. So there was a 200 300 406 100 kilometer distant organized rides that qualified you because you had a time frame to do them. In very generous time frame, 90 hours to do 1200 kilometers. So I did the gold rush here in Davis to the Oregon border and back. And the biggest one was Paris, breast Paris that took us from just out of, out of outside of Paris. So the Olympics had one of the events there in Versailles. And I remember writing through that town, and that was one of our control stops that was hilarious. And then we rode all the way out to the coast, which is breast and back in 82 hours. We did that, 82

hours. Wow, that's spectacular. So when you went to Paris, do you? You took you? You had to take your bike apart, pack it up, and then take it to Paris. Yep. Wow. Good for you. Yeah, well, and you know what I love about your story is because I'm all about networking and meeting new people. Look at all the people that you have met along your journey, exactly. That's the wonderful thing. Look at all you've learned from them and they've learned from you, right?

Karen Bonnett Natraj: So that's the other thing. Is, besides not knowing what our what our passions are, what are what, what drives us inside, what's our potential is, what, what do we value? And when I realized what strong values, what's really matters to me, one is connection, just like what you said, yeah, yeah. One is connection. And I love meeting people. And like you said, I met, I met this guy. So Paris press. Paris is an international ride, and I remember riding out in the morning. We have a we have a motorcycle that's leading us out of town, so we're all right together. And there was this gentleman next to me who didn't speak English. So everybody's International, and we communicated by our body language or by and so we rode out of town together with the funny thing is, is we're doing 12 100k and when I came back to that same is it out and back, when I came back to about that same place, there he was again. And I met this gentleman. And I, I do not remember where he where he was from, but he wasn't speaking English, and we can still communicate, right?

I know that's so beautiful. That's so beautiful. Wow. So as you're going through your journey, you know, and you're, you know, you're starting to unravel of who you are and and, you know, like all these different experiences, and you know, meeting new people, and you know, just loving life at this point in time, what do you find was your biggest pivotal moment that you learned the most.

Karen Bonnett Natraj: The biggest pivotal moment was when I left my husband was making that decision for me and not being there at the cost of my own well, being My safety, because he was very abusive and making that decision that I can take care of me, I can do my life my way, yeah, but that's not that's not pushing people away, but that's owning the fact Oh, so as a child, the turmoil I went through created me to have a life where I created my own happiness. So what I truly believed was that we all have the right to be happy. Yeah, oh, absolutely, yeah. And we have that. We have that right to be happy, and we all deserve to be happy. Happiness comes in the inner being of ourselves, on knowing who we are, being in peace in ourselves, and living in our ability to be really who we are.

I got a question for you regarding happiness, because when I had my pivotal moment, right, I didn't know what happiness was, right. And it's so funny, because I look back now to the different time frames within my life where I did think I was happy, but I was so from it, right? How did you adjust to how did you adjust to that? Because you know exactly what I'm talking about when I now, I know what true happiness really is, but that's because I have nothing to fear anymore, because I've shed I've been so vulnerable, and the more that I've, you know, released things from my life, whether it's people, places, circumstances, whatever, then my joy and happiness started to come forth within me. And it's so funny, because I want to bring up another point from earlier on, when you had talked about, when you when you were reading, and then, you know, you could see yourself in these books. That's one of the biggest things with me when I did start to heal, and I did start to come into my finding my happiness and joy was through reading. Because as I'm reading these books, I'm like, Wow, that sounds like me. I had a comparison. And if I and if I wasn't quite sure whether or not that was me, I could actually go back a chapter and read that chapter over, and then it would be like, yeah, that is me. And I think reading for me was just as much as reading was as important as reading for you, right? And it was through those times where it was like, then I could start to unravel and be like, Yeah, you know what I've I don't really know what true happiness and what true joy is, right? And that's really sad. Once I looked at my life through that perspective, and it was just like, wow, how do I go about finding my joy, and how do I go about finding my happiness? For me, it was getting completely vulnerable to you. What was it with you?

Karen Bonnett Natraj: So you write, I qualify this with how I saw my mom, who was a very angry, angry woman, and she would put on this face of happiness when someone showed up. So she's really pissed off at us kids. I mean, really, really got, just got through yelling at us, but then her Her face was, oh, I'm happy. But then have, and I realized as a child that the happiness isn't how we have on our face. It's not that outside of us. It's in our heart, it's in our body. It's in the energy that we hold inside of us. And so it used to make me very angry that she was acting that way, because it was false. At, you know, eight years old, I realized that she isn't being herself. And what eight year old can figure that out? Yeah, and so sad.

But what's so sad, Karen, is, that's what the majority of us, people do, right? Exactly and Exactly, yeah, and now that we know that it's so annoying, right? Yeah, it's, it's, I'm not going to say it's annoying. It's so sad, it's

Karen Bonnett Natraj: sad. It's sad that, yeah, it's very sad that people do that, and it's very sad that they don't change it, because we all have the right to be happy, but we are emotional beings. That's the whole point of us being human. The beautiful part of us is that we have emotions, and emotions are great to have, but happiness comes with the peace in our heart, the ability to step out of judgment of ourselves, of others in circumstances, to realize really how our mental faculties, our mental fitness, our mental mind is sabotaging our own well being and knowing How to be in a place of empathy and curiosity and being innovated with, you know, looking at who am I and loving who I am is the peace that comes within My heart, and then when I can be in love with me, then it all naturally goes to everybody else, because we cannot love deeply another person unless we can truly love ourselves. Yeah, and that's what was in that relationship, is I couldn't love myself because I. Not going to, I was going to go fix him. He was going to be like me, because I obviously had it right. But is that true? Yeah,

yeah. And that's so true. Like I was the same way. I was the exact same way, like I didn't like myself for years. You know? What do I do? I attract all these people in that treat me exactly the way I'm treating myself Exactly. I'm not eating that. I'm not seeing how I treat myself. All you see is how they're treating me, right? And like you said, we are emotional and vibrational beings. So you are what you attract, right? So I was attracting all these people that I thought loved me, but they didn't love me because I didn't love myself Exactly. Now, that's really what people need to understand. They really need to understand Look around. Look at look the people, at the people around you. You are who you attract, right? Oh, if, if they are loving you and you know being amazing to you and treating you with love and respect and all of that, then you know that that's how you feel about yourself. Exactly. That was a huge eye opener for me.

Karen Bonnett Natraj: Yeah, that's powerful, and it is and and energy, energy attracts energy, right? Like energy attracts like energy. And so when we're obviously, I was attracting these type of people because I was raised that way, and that was the energy frequency I was at which was dark, yeah. And so now today, you know, the energy is open and curious and caring and connecting, and you know, being that frequency that is going to attract the people that see it in me, but who also have it in themselves,

and what you're talking about when I came to the realize, realization of that the frequency I was on, what I was attracting in, blah, blah, blah, that was when I was like, number one, I could take ownership of my life, because I'm like, Well, I brought these people in, so I have to take ownership for that. Then I had the awareness as well too. And it was like, okay, you know, what? If I want my life to be different, I have to change my frequency, which is on the inside, to attract different people into my life. That was when I really started to dig deep into my personal development work.

Karen Bonnett Natraj: Yeah, and we don't. I try to with my clients. I do try to give analogies of energy. Because the thing with human beings is we have to see something concrete. You know, we have to see the phone. We have to in order to know the phones are. We have to see at the computer. We have to touch it, feel it. But what we don't see is energy, right? And I wasn't I was on the self development world, but I wasn't right. Where I'm at today in the mental fitness and performance coach that I am, but I remember walking into my first job here in the in West sack, and it was with the city government, and I remember in the interview when fabulous they hired me. I walk in the first day, I could feel the negative energy in that office, and it hit me at the door. And so people don't pay attention to that, right? But we are energy beings, and what we think and what we're feeling, we emanate that out. And it's not because you can see it and touch it. It's just, it just is, yeah, and that's what that's what the universe is about. That's what the trees put out there. It's a butterflies put out there. Okay,

when, whenever situations like that happen to me. Karen, I think to myself, Okay, I attracted this in my thoughts. So what is it within me that I have to change so this doesn't happen again? When? Because you So, what did you do with that job then?

Karen Bonnett Natraj: So I was in a great I was I was in a better you know, this whole thing's been a journey, and we're never ending our journey. Until we end it, that's the last day. And so I the boss loved me, but he stopped loving me as an employee as the year went on because, actually, I had the accounting background and he did not, also he didn't understand spreadsheets, and I did, and I intimidated him. You're a higher frequency, that's why, yeah, and so I knew that I was there to learn something, but my reviews kept going down and down and down and down and down, and I didn't care, because I still knew who I was and what I was about, what I could do, and so I didn't care the gift was that, and it's a sad gift that's not really a gift. But he quit, he got and he had an anger, anger about him, so he threw his coffee cup one day, walked out and quit. I. Well, I want to tell people, stress will kill you, and in five years, he did die. Wow, because he was an angry man for a long time. Well, that turned around. I had a boss who who did not take somebody else's opinion and created her own opinion. And I had that job for 25 years, and it turned around. So whenever you know, we don't have to believe what other people say about us, we can only we get the opportunity to believe what we know about us, right?

Yeah, Yep, absolutely. Oh, that was a good story. That was a really good story. And that's how I relate with everybody, too, as I go through my my own experiences. But you know, you had mentioned about your clients there when, or to anybody that's listening. You know, what is the biggest through your we talked about what your learning lesson was through your journey, for anybody that's going through, any experience that you've gone through, what is it that you would say to them, what is the number and one advice that you would give to them? Well, one,

Karen Bonnett Natraj: I did it. Anybody can do it. We're the only ones that hold ourselves back. And we hold ourselves back from fear based upon fears of the unknown, and no matter what the universe has our back, and it will always support us. There's never there's never rights or wrong. It's just experiences. And a lot of people that quite a few of my clients, have come from a place of being high anxious, high anxiety, high anxiety, to where they make themselves so sick. And the program that I have is through Positive Intelligence and mental fitness, that they learn how to shift that in the moment. And the one one of my clients is a is an athlete. She's a runner, and she's a really good runner, but her running was crying and, you know, going downhill. And then she took the program with me, and she stayed with it almost a year afterwards, still doing the tools that it offers, simple, simple tools. And she set a she did a 24 hour race and set the the course record, as well as winning the whole race, totally in ease and flow to where two years ago, she would have been just ripping herself a part of high anxiety. And it's just, it's just, it will. It made her, it made her completely sick. To where the doctors were going to prescribe drugs for her, Mm, hmm, to where we had that. We had the power to heal ourselves. We have the power within ourselves to heal ourselves. Yeah,

for sure, I totally agree on that 100% and I myself, you know, have healed myself from many, many things as well, too. And yeah, that's, you know, you talk about your clients, and that's what I want to get into more now, because, you know, you've got your own business and everything too. So this is where I ask the question, Where are you now? So I want you to go more into depth about what is it that you actually do your courses and all of that. So anybody that's resonating with you, how do they get a hold of you? You know, just everything that Karen is going to say is going to be in the podcast notes, but I want you to get more descriptive.

Karen Bonnett Natraj: Well, thank you. I appreciate that. And I want to qualify this that is this has been honing into really what I want to help people, because I help myself through this, and it brought me to where I am today. And so where I am today is totally believing in this program I have. I've been through the program all the way up through mastery. It's Positive Intelligence, and I offer a six, seven week boot camp, which is powerful in the essence that we learn about ourself. One we learn how that judge, that inner critic, is running our life. And then we learn about nine saboteurs that really show up in the energies that we exhume all day long. So like that perfectionist part of me, so the judges that inner critics like, Oh my God, how could you be such a mess? And then let's make this perfect toward the point where it was destroying relationships, is destroying my happiness and destroying relationships. And then four weeks of learning how we shift into what I want to call the sage brain and the. Powerful thing as it is proven on MRIs is proven and how we can shift our brain through the neuroplasticity of being totally fear based, hijacked by our amygdala, to where we can create that positive strand and always fall into that ease and flow in our life. And I, I, I offer a seven week program where everybody you know is within a group, and then I coach weekly with them, and then I offer I have a nine month program that takes them even deeper, because I get into deeper into each of the elements of the program, as well as offering my certification through the happiness studies, and what that's all about, as well as performance, and how we perform in life and how we show up in life.

One thing I love about the longer programs is people really need to understand that if you take a program, you're going to get more benefit from the longer programs, right same way, because when, when you're in the process of transforming, transforming is not done overnight. You grow into that individual that you see in your mind's eye of who you want to become. And that's a process, you know, and and it is hard work, but through that whole journey, it is the most beautiful thing that you can ever do for yourself.

Karen Bonnett Natraj: But and then with that Shannan is you have an accountability person. You have someone who's going to be there with you, who's going to hold your hand, who's going to help you through the the times that you believe you're stuck, yeah. And the thing is, that, just like we want to get fit, so you want to go to the gym and you want to start working out because you want to feel better, you do that for six weeks, and you say, Okay, I'm done. I'm good for the rest of my life. That's not true. Not true. And so the same thing for our mental muscles. And so the other thing we don't realize is that how much our mental muscle, our mental brain runs the chauffeurs each day and how we can be mentally fit as long as well as physically fit. Yeah,

and I coaching, to me is so, so important for the fact that, like I know, no matter what level I'm at, I will always have a coach. Right? Almost always have a coach, right? Because, number one, when you have a coach, they see things that you don't right, and there are things that you don't know, that you think you know, but you don't know it, and they they can always point it out to you,

Karen Bonnett Natraj: right? I do have a couple coaches. And the other thing too, I want to add to what you're saying, which I believe in too, is I keep learning. I'm going to keep learning more and more and more and offer information. So my my book started off at at first grade. Now I'm up at the PhD level. Just, you know, because I'm going to be whatever it is, I want to be 123, or four steps above my clients. Not that I'm judging them, but I want to be able to offer them the best that I can offer them absolutely and be the best support. And I'm always, always available. Yeah, always available, yeah. And because I don't need this to be just for me, I I believe the whole world needs it. And I believe we all have as much fear as goes on in this world, that if we just change one person at a time, one day at a time, that exponentially will change the world.

And you know what is so important to me, Karen is, do not let your own experiences go to waste, right? The reason why you're having those experiences, so share them with the world and talk about them. Yes, because by doing that, you are helping somebody. Yes, you may not even know it, right?

Karen Bonnett Natraj: That's a true statement. How many people have I inspired to so I'm an ultra runner as well, and I how many people believe they can't? Yeah, how many people believe that they I mean, in anywhere I couldn't do that. And I look at my life thinking, who would have figured who would have ever figured out I could be doing all this stuff? I didn't know it. We don't know what our potential is.

No well. And you know what? I had a realization here about a month ago, I got up one morning and I can't remember it was I was going through something in my life, and the first thoughts that were coming into my mind were, I can't do this. It automatically went to my limiting beliefs, and I and then I just frozen my. Works. And I was like, why is it I always go to my limiting beliefs that I can't do it right? And I was actually mad at myself. I'm bad at myself, because I came into that awareness of like, wow. You know, here I am. I'm coaching people. I'm doing this, I'm doing that, you know what I mean, and here I am. I'm telling myself, me that I can't do it. I'm like, I really have to change my my thinking right here and now. But I'm so glad that I came to that awareness, because it really tipped me off right now, when I do go to that I'm human, when I do go to that, that's an easy place to fall into. That's a totally easy place to follow, is the negativity, right? But that's also the society that we're brought up in. You know, caught up with these limiting beliefs, and I'm like, No way. I I'm I'm shifting. I I'm not going to be thinking like that, and if I do, I'm going to pick up on it right away. And I have ever since then, because I got pissed off at myself enough that, know what I mean. Yeah, we're the only ones that stop ourselves from doing unbelievable things,

Karen Bonnett Natraj: exactly, exactly, exactly. Mm, hmm, but, but so I kind of want to offer that first off, have the celebration that you became aware of it. Yes, and that's huge. When we create that awareness, there's so much more we discover about ourselves, because then it starts opening up, because we are aware, we are awake for it. I've had clients who go through the program and they're like, how come this judge is coming up so much is because now you open the door to have the awareness, yeah? And when you open the door to have that awareness, that gives you the opportunity to now shift,

yeah, yeah, for sure, yeah, because now, now you're at that crossroads, right, right, continue what you're doing, or you can make changes. Exactly,

Karen Bonnett Natraj: absolutely beautiful. You have a choice. Choices.

Yeah, we've got choices. Oh, you know what, Karen, this was an absolutely beautiful interview. I'm so glad that you came on, Karen, and I actually met through another gentleman that does a podcast. And then we, we were on, on this networking call or whatever. And I, that was when I got the opportunity to connect with Karen. And that's like I said, that's the more you put yourself out there, the more you want to connect with people, the more yourself you put yourself environments. This is how you connect with people. And I'm so blessed. I'm so blessed to have you on my journey. I'm so blessed because I've learned from you, you've learned from me. We've got this connection now, and you know, just by you sharing everything with us, let's see how other people you can help other people. So that's where I want to get into now, how can people connect with you? Yes, it's going to be in the notes. But are you on social media? Like, how, how does someone connect with you?

Karen Bonnett Natraj: So, LinkedIn, so, uh, Karen Bonnett Natraj, Facebook, um, the same. Karen Bonnett Natraj, I do have a private group which is calling all athletes, and so they can invite themselves in there, and I'll approve them. The other way is my email. It's the it's the mindful athlete coach@gmail.com and then same as my website. Okay,

okay, that was my next question. You have a website? So no, that's perfect. So like I said, everything is going to be in the notes. I'm absolutely so thankful that you came on my podcast. Thank you. Thank you for being on my journey so thank you so much. Thank

Karen Bonnett Natraj: you for being on my journey as well.

This was wonderful. Thank you.

Karen Bonnett Natraj: Thank you.