Today I want to share the story of what led to that spiritual awakening, why I am the way I am, and what drives me.

Let me begin by painting the picture for you:

I am sitting in my mom's room. The shades are drawn even though it's the middle of the day, and only the soft light from the hallway illuminates her silhouette in the bed. Yesterday I finally had that breakthrough conversation with her where I said all the things I've been wanting to say and she received them exactly how I wanted her to. I felt like we finally had that connection that I’d been longing for. I tell her, “Mom, I really appreciated our conversation yesterday.” 

She stares at me blankly for a moment and then she asks, “What did we talk about?” 

My heart sank.

Before I can answer, her eyelids heavy shut and she rolls over. As I sat there watching her sleep I made a promise to myself - and it is a promise that I have kept to this day. 

But before I tell you about that promise, I need to back it up a bit.

When I was 12 years old, I was angry at the world. I went through trauma that severely impacted my life for a great many years. After surviving 4 years of sexual abuse at the hands of a family member, that truth got out to my large extended family. I had a tight-knit family that was this loud Italian family that did everything together, even sang anytime we were around each other. Well when that big family found out what happened, the family split down the middle.

Family members whom I had been previously close with told me they no longer loved me and I wasn't their family anymore. Holidays became divided. The family of my abuser would take the mornings and we would take the afternoons. I was no longer permitted to see two of my cousins who had been my best friends. One day we were inseparable and the next day they were like ghosts. I have no idea what they were told about what happened.

I was left with PTSD, a horrible self-image, lots of negative emotions like guilt and anger that I didn't know how to cope with, and self-harming behaviors. I turned to drugs. I turned to cutting. I turned to anything to numb the pain.

My Spiritual Awakening 

Those of us who have had a spiritual awakening often describe it as a defining moment in our life. It's like someone took a sharpie and drew this vertical line down our timeline, delineating two separate sides: who we were before the awakening and who we became after.

For me that moment happened in 2002, when I was handed a book that completely changed how I thought about the world. It changed my way of thinking, my way of being, my way of understanding and moving through life. And as I turned the pages, it hit me so hard that what was written inside of it felt like the truth. And like a sleeper agent, something inside of me woke up. When I finished it, I started reaching for more. I became insatiable.

I started devouring every metaphysical, spiritual, new age, and personal development book I could get my hands on. I watched documentaries and attended seminars, workshops, and retreats. I dove in head first to all of the teachings I could find. I became obsessed with metaphysics, quantum physics, reincarnation, yoga, meditation, the law of attraction, the ancient astronaut theory, sacred geometry, biohacking, functional medicine, and different healing modalities. I couldn't get enough. Every book was like this new door opening in this unending hallway. I wanted more. I needed more. I was hooked. 

My life became one big quest to learn, grow, heal, and expand every aspect of myself. It became my life's mission, a purpose that drove me onward.

But…

As I began to change my mind and get better. My mother began to get worse. Her family had been ripped down the seams and she started to get physically sick with both serious illnesses and strange afflictions that we had never even heard of before and doctors could barely explain. Doctors gave her pills to try to help her. And then they gave her pills for the side effects of those pills. And then they just threw everything at the wall, hoping that something would stick.

My mom slept. A lot. At the height of it, she was on a fentanyl patch, taking about eleven different pills every day, and sleeping for all but a few hours of daylight. She fell down all the time. She nodded off at the dinner table. She forgot conversations we'd had the day prior. This lasted almost 15 years while I lived with unbelievable guilt that I had destroyed my family and broken my mother.

In the end, though, it was my mother who inadvertently became my biggest teacher. For every step she took deeper into depression and illness, I climbed hand over hand in the other direction, out of that proverbial tunnel. I saw firsthand what happens to a human body and spirit when they go down that path. And then I saw what happened to my body and spirit as I decided to change my mind about life and the nature of reality. 

My Promise To Myself

And I made that promise to myself: That I would do everything I could to heal physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, and that I would always prioritize my health in those categories.

To this day, you'll still find me reading every book, trying every modality, and attending every workshop I possibly can, because I believe that healing, learning, and growth should never be over. I love finding stuff that blows my mind wide open and sends my thoughts expanding into directions that I never knew existed. I love trying out new exercises, healing modalities, and programs to improve even further.

Personal growth and development are such important aspects of life because if we're not constantly growing and striving to learn new things, then we become stagnant, bored, stuck, and we lose passion and purpose.

Tony Robbins says that there are Six Human Needs that all of us have. What differentiates us is how we prioritize and meet those needs. If you want a little bit more in-depth, I also have a podcast, blog, and video blog on the Six Human Needs that you can listen to, read, and watch. 

Four of the needs are physical needs, but the last two are spiritual needs. The two spiritual needs are growth and contribution.

I've already told you how important spiritual growth is to me, but contribution is the cherry on top of the sundae. Because what good is all of that growth and knowledge if you don't share it, pay it back, and use it to help other people? 

As they say, rising tides lift all ships.

We are all connected in this world. Our inner world creates our outer world. And though people appear to be separate from us, everyone you meet is a reflection of you. And we all come from the same thing. We're all pieces of the same whole. Spiritual teachers and mystics have been saying this for eons and modern-day quantum physics backs this up.

Every single person you meet has a purpose here. Everyone has something they can teach you. And you have gifts that you're here to share with humanity, too. 

The way this manifested in my own life is I left my cushy job in tech because I didn't feel like I was living my life's purpose and I didn't feel like I was adequately being of service to others.

I took a leap of faith and I left my job in 2021 to launch my own yoga company called Unite by Yoga. And last year I launched a coaching company called Change Your Mind with Kris. And now I get to teach others what I spent two decades studying, practicing, and obsessing about. My goal now is to help millions of people around the world. The first step of that was writing my new book, Change Your Mind To Change Your Reality, which you can pre-order on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.