The Glory of Reinvention: Kathie Donovan’s Story

Meet Kathie Donovan. Bubbly, warm, positive and inspirational, I’m incredibly proud to call her a friend. Today, Kathie will be taking over Style Domination and sharing her story of reinvention.

********

There’s no doubt disruption is tough, like being pushed through a keyhole. That’s how I describe what it felt like when I left my job as a television producer and host after 24 years.  I had what I considered to be the best tv job in Canada: co-hosting and co-producing CTV Ottawa’s Regional Contact with the amazing Joel Haslam. What on earth was I thinking? Well, it was not what I was thinking – it was what I was feeling that propelled me forward. I had been working on nurturing another passion: to share the message that everyone deserves to be happy. Not in an airy fairy way or a superficial manner but an inner knowing and joy that nobody or no situation can take away.

I realized that I had been a science project all of my life, researching how I could feel good. Having grown up in a dysfunctional family where shame and fear were the stars, I wanted peace and joy to light my path and I was on a personal mission to figure out how to make that happen.

I joke that I often felt like I was reaching into an overstuffed purse to find happiness and pulled out all sorts of things, some of which provided temporary good feelings; none of which provided the answer I was searching for.

Then I learned about the law of attraction, described as a secondary universal law that states: what you think about and focus your attention on is what grows and expands in your life. I learned from the greatest teachers through history about how our thoughts create things and I learned that we humans are pretty good at coming up with what we want but….we’re not always available to receive what we want; I needed to understand why.

What I learned is that our thoughts and feelings, like everything else on this earthly plane are energy and it is our feelings that work with the power greater than ourselves to produce the results we see in our lives. So we can say one thing and feel another; it’s the feelings that produce not the words. I also learned that our thoughts should be our loyal servant instead of our master.

I started a development group to research how we can shift our energy to make ourselves more available to receive what it is we say we want. I introduced and we worked with what are now the eight principles in my first book. After just shy of two years, I had what I needed.

They say timing is everything and while I could never have predicted that I would leave my full time job to be a writer/speaker/trainer and coach, that’s exactly what happened in 2012. In 2013, I released my first book Inspiration in Action: A Woman’s Guide Happiness, called a woman’s guide because it has been my guide to more joy, more positivity and more kind in my life. I started teaching the content in a weekend session called The Course in Happiness and a one day Courage workshop and have never looked back.

Today, I do training for corporate groups, retail organizations, government departments and associations, helping them with communication, awareness and development of healthier workplaces. I coach people who take my two day workshop and my second book, focusing on helping people to expand what’s possible in their lives is called Unconform: Harnessing the Radical Power of Courage and will be released in October 2016. I can’t wait to see what’s coming next. Please visit www.kathiedonovan.com for course schedule and book information.

Kathie Donovan is broadcasting royalty in her adopted hometown of Ottawa, Ontario. In the span of 35 years behind the microphone, both on radio and in front of the camera on television, Kathie has shared inspiring stories about people who have made a difference by bringing their dreams to life. Whether it’s Celine Dion, a young Ryan Gosling, dedicated craftspeople and artists or the everyday heroes who work the land, the stories Kathie is known for are all ultimately about the beauty and strength of the human spirit. In the latest chapter of her career, Kathie is using her gifts and combining two of her favourite subjects: human behaviour and spirituality.