Creative Women Speak on Womanhood: An Interview with Kelley Green

For Women’s History Month, Carla Thomas is here with us to highlight women who inspire her. Working in creative fields, these women hold valuable insights into what it takes to make it, and the unique challenges they’ve overcome in their careers. In this interview, Carla caught up with Certified Mindset Coach Kelley Green to discuss these challenges and how to work through them by removing mental blockages and cultivating joy.

I recently met a beautiful man while dining outdoors. We ended up exchanging social media information and I thought nothing of it. A few hours later, I get an Instagram message from him saying, “It was really great meeting you.” I was like, “word?” He is fine. I responded with a very chill but “I’m interested” message back. I then started doubting my attractiveness to this stranger.

And I have a healthy self-esteem! I teeter between two thoughts: “Be so popping that you’re humble” or “You’ve been humble for too long, start wilin’.” There’s really no in-between for me. But limiting beliefs can show up in even the healthiest person. I had to turn on 3X Grammy Award winner, Megan Thee Stallion’s “Savage Remix” with 28x Grammy Award winner Beyoncé. I needed all the Black girl magic to hype myself and to reaffirm that I am still that bitch. I get men. Even in a pandemic.

I have done way too much healing to doubt myself and I wasn’t going to self-sabotage. Hence, why I got a gym date out of our IG exchange.

Kelley Green is a Certified Mindset Coach who helps women heal limiting beliefs and manifest the life they want. We talked about the limiting beliefs that most women face and how to remove the blockage that is stopping them from living their best life.

What are the challenges that you see with women in manifesting a life that they desire? What is the blockage for them, or for yourself?

I fortunately don't have too many. I don't really have blockages now, in terms of manifesting- I've done the mindset work on that, but the most common phrase I hear is women not feeling worthy of receiving what it is they want. They can know all the steps and have done research in terms of knowing how to manifest and creating a clear space and finding clarity and specificity of what they need. But without that feeling of worthiness, feeling like they actually deserve what it is they want, they automatically create that blockage between them and the universe and what would help them receive it. So a lot of my work stems around releasing those blockages, whether they feel like they will never have the relationship of their dreams, or they think, "all the good guys have been taken."

What does it look like for them to feel that sense of worthiness? To feel worthy of, you know, being in spaces, especially as a woman of color amongst other non people of color colleagues. It's like, “How do I get to feel worthy in these rooms?” “How do I feel like I can be deserving of a promotion?” “I know I'm doing the work. I'm working three times harder than my counterparts, but why do I not feel like I deserve it?”

Those thoughts would, of course, create automatic blockages because in order to manifest, you have to be open to receiving. You have to be open to receiving not just by saying, “I receive that,” but “I'm open to it.” But you have to really feel that and believe that in order for it to be manifested as true.

How are you helping women to see that they are worthy?

Every woman is different and they come to me at different parts of their journeys. Some of them have already gone to therapy. Some of them are familiar with what affirmations are and meditation and have done some sort of practice around it, and others are completely new to it. They've heard of it, perhaps, but never actually initiated taking action on it.

So for me, it's about figuring out where they are. I ask questions to really get deep because that’s the whole point of it, especially with mindset work- which is a little different from therapy and journaling and gratitude, which are all great, and I subscribe to and I encourage that as well. But a lot of it, those blockages all are in the subconscious mind. So on a conscious level, we think of these negative thoughts, but they really are trapped in the subconscious, and we need to release them.

What I do is I help them discover what the root cause of those negative emotions are. Those negative emotions of fear and sadness, anger, guilt, shame, hurt, those limiting decisions that they've made up about themselves. They can never make the amount of money they want as an entrepreneur, or that they don't love their body, or they don't think they're smart enough. All these decisions and beliefs that they made about themselves generally stem from trauma and pain from them being younger, adolescent childhood, or even before birth.

We really dig deep into discovering those negative emotions and those limiting beliefs that actually took place, like when they were formed when they decided that. Then we work through doing different Neuro-Linguistic Programming techniques to release it because I am certified in Neuro-Linguistic Programming- that's basically like the language of the mind. So it's really exciting to actually have the tools and techniques to speak to that subconscious and literally release those limiting and negative emotions and thoughts that are holding people back for decades.

And what about having the awareness to step out of social media?

Depending on the client or if I'm speaking at a panel or workshop, I ask people to do a detox of their social media. Because a lot of time we're following people we don't need to be following, they bring up negative emotions and trigger us, and you know, things like that.

I also encourage people to really monitor what they're watching too. Even the news, because when you're internalizing so much negativity and pain, you begin to vibrate at the level of emotions that you're experiencing. And like attracts like - the premise of the law of attraction. So when you vibrate at this low frequency, you're going to attract other things and other opportunities at this low frequency. You want to always make sure you're in a heightened emotion or heightened state where you feel happy and grateful and excited. That way you continue to attract more opportunities and people that match that frequency with you.

When we aren't self aware, that's when we begin to allow those images and those videos and other people's expressions and opinions to really internalize in our mind, because we think on that and we harp on that. The subconscious mind doesn't really understand the difference between what's real and what's imagined.

That's why I like doing visualization activities, it's like, “Oh, we already have this. This is already ours,” as we imagine and as you create your vision boards and things like that. But the same thing happens for the negative, when you're like, “Oh my gosh, this person's alone and they're single,” or you're gossiping about people. You're just living in such a low vibration. The subconscious mind is like, “Okay, hey, universe, we're working on a low vibration today, so let's continue to bring that in.” That's what this person wants. So that's why we want to just be really mindful about where we're focusing our thoughts.

How does one make joy a priority?

I say it's as easy as making brushing your teeth a priority every day. It’s just you deciding, “I'm going to choose myself,” whether it's every day for two minutes, 20 minutes, or two hours. Then you take the time to design the type of life you want to live, the type of self care practices you want to implement, and the type of self love you want to show yourself.

It could be waking up and immediately drinking water first- eight ounces of water before you touch your coffee pot or before you drink your tea. It's waking up in bed and taking some intentional breaths, like breathing with intention and you can meditate with that. You can keep a gratitude journal. You can make sure the joy comes from you getting a great night's sleep. I'm not for the team, “no sleep culture.” I think it's very detrimental to one's health. We need sleep.

Work on finding opportunities where you can bring your vibration higher and just really feel those positive emotions. From dancing in your room, chatting with friends, watching something funny or doing EFT tapping, which is an emotional freedom technique to just really free yourself from the negative emotions and replace them with the positive. Create ways to cultivate joy, because we have an opportunity to experience joy every second.

We as Black women have a lot of unlearning to do. We limit our worth with our thoughts which stem from systematic oppression.

It's awful. And it's like, you know what? We all need to decide collectively, we're not going to subscribe to that anymore. People who don't understand us, are threatened by us, and see us as risks so they don't invest in us. They don't want us to be in these powerful positions when really, they're doing themselves a huge disservice because we're the bomb dot com. We’re completely capable of creating better opportunities for those around us. You know? It's really unfortunate, but that's why it's important to really just do the mindset work to be very self aware of what's serving you, what's not, and knowing when to release and what needs to be let go.

Article header image created by illustrator Nicole Medina.