S2.E14: Success Stories
Have you heard? Kayla is a 2022 GOLD Signal Award winner, and she has a new home! This episode is both success stories and is proof that not only do dreams come true, but things are always working out for us.
I am just the girl next door who believes that the purpose of life is to enjoy, create, and have fun. I believe that as humans, we can have anything we want and things are always working out for us. Experience has taught me that the path to getting everything you want begins with ease. If you believe in miracles and happily ever after, or even if you just want to, then this is the podcast for you.
Hi there. I'm your host, Kayla Rain, and welcome back to Attract It With Ease. I am so overwhelmed today and excited to record this podcast episode because I just have so much gratitude filling my heart today. And as usual, I'd like to start with my gratitude. And the first thing that I'm grateful for today is, if you haven't heard already, I was selected as a 2022 Signal award winner.
Guys. I won gold. That's first place in my category of religion and spirituality, and I am just so incredibly humbled, so overwhelmed, and so excited. If you've listened to the last few podcasts, you know that there was Voting for Listener's Choice. I did Not Win Listener's Choice. That is a completely separate award than what I won. There were four different awards. One was Listener's Choice, which was voting by the public. And I'm sorry to say, my podcast doesn't have as many listeners as some of the others that were nominated.
And so I did not win that award this year. But the Gold, silver, and Bronze Awards were given out by judges who listened to various episodes from the podcast of those that were nominated, and they selected first, second, and third place winners for each category. And I am the gold winner for religion and spirituality, and I can hardly believe it. I am still pinching myself. So that is the first thing that I'm grateful for today, and I'm gonna talk about that a little bit more in this episode and how that really kind of came about for me.
The second thing that I'm grateful for today is my new home. Oh my gosh, you guys, I cannot wait to tell you about it. We have not purchased a home. We do not own property, but my husband Daniel and I decided that we were going to rent a home while we were kind of in transition, and I'm gonna talk about that a little bit more today as well. But I am so, so grateful for our beautiful new home, and we are so happy here.
And the third thing that I'm grateful for today is actually seeing my desires actualize. Those of you that have been listening throughout season one and season two, you know a lot about me. I share a lot on this podcast and I share the things that I'm working on and and working to manifest in my own life. And having a home moving out of our tiny house and having this successful podcast are two things I've really been working towards. And I just cannot tell you how touched and inspired and just grateful I am to see some of the things that I've been working for actually actualized right in front of my face.
And today I'm gonna talk about how easily they happened and kind of talk about how I made them happen and how you can use the things that I've learned through my experiences to actually make some things manifest in your own life. So I wanna talk a little bit about the 2022 Signal Award. So to become a Signal Award winner, first of all, this is the inaugural year, meaning it's the very first year of this award, but it has already quickly become the largest award in podcasting because prior to the Signal Awards, there actually wasn't an award that was given specifically just to podcasters.
There are other awards out there that include podcasting in them, but the Signal Awards was created because there really wasn't something to recognize the quality and amount of podcasts that are actually out in the community. And so this award just was created in the year 2022 to be able to become nominated. You actually nominated yourself, and I guess someone else could have nominated you, but I'm pretty sure that all of the podcasts just saw advertising and advertised or nominated themselves, I should say, for the recognition.
And the advertising that I saw happened back in, I don't know, maybe May or June of 2022, right around the time that I was starting up season two, I know that I had recorded maybe not even released some of the episodes that I was putting out for season 2022 when I saw the advertising for the Signal Awards. And I have to tell you, at the time, the thoughts going through my head were, oh my gosh, I'm such a new podcast.
I don't release consistently. I don't have a very, a very big following. Is it even worth putting myself out there and nominating? And it's funny because I've talked a lot about inspiration on this podcast, and I really kept seeing the ads. I kept feeling inspired to nominate my podcast. And in the beginning, every time I saw the ad and had that thought, I really just kind of talked myself out of it because I kept thinking, I'm not big enough, I'm not good enough.
I'm not backed by anyone. I'm an indie podcaster. I don't have professional music. Well, my intro is pretty professional, and if you don't know, that was created by my husband's son, who's now my stepson. So that was created by him. But yeah, I just, I don't have a lot of editing experience and acoustics and sounds, and of course, no advertisements. All of that are reasons that I felt like maybe I wasn't a top-notch podcast to be able to receive this award.
Long story short, after seeing that over and over again and feeling the inspiration to nominate myself, I finally decided, what do I stand to lose? Because there's probably only going to be a few winners out of all the people who submit a nomination. And so what does that hurt for me to put myself out there? And honestly, even though I know I'm not big podcast, and I know I don't have the backing and the funding of so many others, I also know that I'm passionate when I speak and my content is of good quality.
Long story short, I decided yes, I would go in ahead and submit a nomination. And when I did that, I was asked to submit a cover photo, a little bit of a bio, and links to two of my best pieces of work, two of my episodes. And so I released those. And I don't honestly remember what episodes I sent them. I do know one of the two episodes is the one from season two called Five Years to Live. And if you have not listened to that episode, I have to tell you, I do feel like that is one of the most powerful episodes that I have released to date.
And it is an emotional episode for me. But I have had multiple people give me feedback about how it has touched their lives. And so I recommend listening to that episode. If you haven't yet. Again, it's called Five Years to Live. But in any case, I submitted it back in, I don't know, like June or July of 2022. And the judging didn't actually begin until the fall. So all of these months went by where honestly, I kind of forgot about it for a while, but then I started receiving these email updates about it, about how the judging had begun.
And at that time, I started kind of having some negative thoughts like, Ugh, maybe I shouldn't have even submitted it. Maybe it's gonna be embarrassing compared to the other nominations. And I just, I don't know why. Why do our, why do our thoughts always just tend to go to the negative? Why is it that we are raised in a society to not have pride in ourselves? Like we just are trained to have these negative thoughts? And I'll be honest, I did, I kept thinking kind of regret things negatively about, Ugh, what are these judges gonna think when they listen to my podcast?
And so I started feeling like, Ugh, maybe that was a waste of time and energy to to submit it. And then as we got later into the judging, I kept receiving more and more emails to the point where I was getting an excessive amount of emails, and I kept thinking, Ugh, I wish I had not submitted my podcast. Like this is kind of annoying that I get so many updates about, because the emails were almost exactly the same, and I kept getting them over and over and over again.
And then you guys, something magical happened in December of 2022, right at the beginning of December, or maybe it was the last week of November, I'm not sure. But in any case, I got notification that I was selected as a finalist in the 2022 Signal Awards. And that's when everything changed for me, because I realized that all of the negative self-talk I'd been having about myself and the fact that I didn't have backing or, or big funding, and that this is a one woman show and just, you know that my podcast is not the size of so many others.
When I realized that I was nominated and there were only four nominations in my category, religion and spirituality, I was like, oh my gosh, I am getting the recognition for the work I've put in. I don't have to be anybody else. I don't have to be as big as someone else. I don't have to do what anyone else is doing. I have spent two years of my life dedicated to trying to inspire others to sharing the secrets of the universe that I have discovered and figured out through my own research and personal experience, and that means something to somebody.
And so my entire thought process towards the Signal Awards and towards my podcast shifted because I thought, okay, there are three different awards from the judges, gold, silver, bronze, and there are four finalists. So there is a high probability that I will win something. So at that point, the, and this is the point I'm trying to get to in this whole story, is when my mind shifted, I started saying to myself, I am a 2022 Signal Award winner.
I am a 2022 Signal Award winner. I started saying that to myself over and over again a couple of times. I probably said it out loud, but mostly I said it to myself in my mind. And I got in the habit of saying that to myself probably almost every morning on my drive to work. And the first few times I said it, I said to myself, I am a Gold Signal Award winner. I am a 2022 Gold Signal Award winner. I am a Gold Signal award winner.
And I said gold multiple times in the beginning. But as the judging continued, and they started the Voting for Listener's choice, if you followed along or if you voted for listener's choice, you probably saw that when you placed a vote online, that it actually would show you the percentages of each person and how they were placing in the ranking. So the voting went for about three weeks, and the first probably 10 days, I came out with a strong lead.
I talked to everyone I knew and I was like, please vote for my podcast. Please vote for me. I blasted it on social media. Some of my friends and family put it on their social media, and I got all of these votes. And right out of the gate, I had a very strong lead to win the listener's choice. And at that time, I was feeling so good about myself, and that was when I was saying, I am gonna win gold. I am a 2022 Gold Signal Award winner. Well, as the voting went on for listeners' choice, it got to a point where the other podcasts in my category started getting some traction and their votes were blowing me away.
I went from having about a 60% lead in my category to ending the voting at something like 16 or 17% of the votes. So it was a huge shift, and the shift affected my emotions. I never stopped saying that I was a 2022 Signal award winner, but I stopped saying I was gold. And that's just me being completely honest with you that so many times outside influences can affect us, can affect our thinking, can make us feel differently about ourselves.
And so I started thinking, maybe I'm not gonna be gold. You know what? I would just be happy to win anything. I don't need to get first place. I'm an itty bitty little podcast. I can get any award and I will be grateful. But I'd never stopped saying, I am a 2022 Signal award winner. And then guess what? On January 10th of this year, 2023, the announcement came out of the winners.
And I knew that I had not won listener's choice because I had seen how those voting voting results were going, and I was nowhere in the running when that voting ended. But I went to the website before I even got an email the morning of the 10th to check the winners. And I saw that I was gold and you guys, my heart almost burst out of my chest for about three days straight. I could not stop crying because I was just so overwhelmed with emotion and gratitude and just disbelief.
And funny enough, I didn't know that this was going to happen, but it turned out that every single finalist, I'm pretty sure in every single category, and there were dozens of categories, ended up receiving some type of a placement. So some categories had more than one gold winner. Some categories had more than one silver winner, and some categories had more than one bronze winner. And some of the bigger categories like Best host or best podcast to fall asleep to, I don't know, I can't remember all the CA categories, they had more than four finalists.
My category is smaller. There were only four of us. And so there were two category or two finalists in my category that won silver. I was the only gold. And so to see that some of the categories had multiple gold winners, and not only did I play gold, but I was the only gold in my category. That just really touched me because I don't know who my judges were specifically. There was a panel of judges and they were each assigned to different categories. So I don't know which ones listened to my podcast, but I know that from the judges that did listen to my podcast, they compared my content to the others in my category and said, she is producing content above what the others are producing.
And I have to tell you guys, these other three podcasts, they are good, their content is good, and they're recording on a regular basis, and they have a giant following, and they're these big, big podcasts. And I'm just honored to even be recognized among them. But to be able to have multiple people listen to this podcast and say, Kayla, we think you're amazing. We think you are gold guys, I just can't even tell you how incredible that feels.
So going back to the conversations I was having with myself when I won gold, the very first thought that went into my head was my words warped. I said it. I said that I was going to be a 2022 signal award winner. And in the beginning for probably 10 days, I kept saying, I am a gold 2022 signal award winner.
I said I was gold. And even when I removed the word gold, I never even questioned whether or not I was going to win. I just kept saying, I'm gonna win. I'm gonna win, I'm gonna win. And guys, I won and I won first place. And I've sat and pondered about it a number of times, and I've thought to myself, maybe the reason that I won gold is because I said I was going to. And it made me think about the conversations that the other finalists were having with themselves.
What was their inner conversation? Were they questioning themselves? Were they listening to the other podcasts and saying, I don't know if I can compete? Were they questioning themselves when they submitted their work and when they found out they were a finalist, were they telling themselves, I am a gold winner, I'm going to win gold. I have to believe that they weren't. As I've been thinking about my conversations with myself recently, something that really kind of hit me the other day is one of the affirmations I say to myself all the time, just literally all the time, not daily, this one, I don't say daily, but I probably say it multiple times a week.
I tell myself, I am a money magnet. Everything I touch turns to gold. I am a money magnet. Everything I touch turns to gold. I say that all the time. And then I had this awareness this week about the fact that I was saying everything I touched turns to gold and how ironic it is that I've been saying this affirmation in relation to manifesting money, manifesting abundance, right?
But I've been using the word gold in my life over and over and over again as I have been repeating this affirmation. And I just had this epiphany that that again was reaffirming my gold win. Everything I touched turns to gold. And guys, I'm a gold winner. It's incredible. It's funny because I do believe that I'm a money magnet, and I do believe that everything I touch turns to gold. And I do believe that things are always working out for me.
And I do believe in following your inspiration. And there will be so many times where you are guided to do something that you question. And I just wanna share that with you because we all receive, inspiration is coming to us constantly, and it's definitely coming to us if we're asking for it. But whether or not you're asking for it, the universe is trying to communicate with you. It's trying to give you guidance. It's trying to hand you the best life that you can possibly imagine.
It's a matter of paying attention. It's a matter of when you see things over and over again, stopping and saying, wow, that's weird. It must mean something. What can that mean? And asking yourself, is this inspiration and am I supposed to be acting? And so often we have a tendency to just stop and question it and lack the confidence in moving forward. We may not understand it, but that doesn't mean it's not the right step. And it's that leap of faith that will take us towards our dreams.
And this signal award is something that it took seven or eight months to come about. And for me to actually see the actualization of the inspiration, I acted on the inspiration. And it took seven or eight months to actually see that come to pass into understanding why the universe kept telling me, you should submit yourself. You should nominate yourself for this award.
I just want the same thing for you. I want you to listen to inspiration. So I'm gonna shift gears a little bit, and I'm going to talk to you about this amazing house that my husband and I moved into yesterday was two weeks that we've been in the house. So this is brand new for us. And those of you that have listened to the podcast or know me personally, know that for over three years, my husband and I have been living in a tiny house. It is a house built on the back of an a military truck, and our house is named Hank.
And we've been living in approximately 160 square feet, the two of us for three years. And don't get me wrong, I loved Hank. I loved that lifestyle, but I have been working to manifest our own land, our own space, our own place that we could park Hank. Ideally, at some point we will Airbnb Hank and have that as an additional income source for us. But after three years of living in our tiny house, there were some creature comforts that we were missing that we wanted back, such as we had to go to the laundromat to do our dirty clothes.
And so we wanted a place with a washer and dryer. We have had no dishwasher. So we've been hand washing all of our dishes. And the only kitchen appliances we've had are an instant pot and an air fryer. So no oven, no real cooktop. We did have an induction burner, a single one. But imagine trying to cook a Thanksgiving dinner in a tiny house when all you have is a tiny little air fryer in an instant pot. And imagine trying to do dishes when you're trying to wash an instant pot and all of the other knives and silverware and and cookware and all of that.
It's, it's been a lot. We've had a composting toilet. We were looking for forward to a flushing toilet. We have been showering outside in the outdoor shower during the warmer months and in the colder months, we've been showering at the gym or at Dan's work. And so we were just after three years ready to get back to what others would consider civilized living. And so we have been talking and talking and talking about buying a house, and we have been looking at buying a house.
And we have seriously considered a couple of houses here in the area that we live, but I'm not certain if I've shared this on the podcast yet, but I am currently in the senior manager training program at my work, which means that within the next probably six to 12 months, I will be promoted to a senior manager, which is basically a much higher position than the management position that I'm in. With that I have to be willing to relocate.
Now, I have been putting it out there that I won't have to relocate that we'll be able to stay in the area that we're living right now, and we'll see how that works out. I'm open to what the universe brings to me. But that being said, the timing hasn't really been right for us to purchase a property because we don't know for sure where we are going to end up long term. And so it doesn't really make sense to buy a property with the idea that in six to 12 months we could potentially be relocating.
All of that being said, we're hopeful that we'll be able to stay here. And so we kind of tried to come up with a compromise. We're ready for more space, we're ready for a house. We want somewhere to park Hank, but we're not ready to purchase. And we came to the conclusion that renting was probably a good idea for us. Now, we had considered renting about six or seven months ago. And when we looked, the market was ridiculous, because if you are familiar with the real estate market at all right now, all of the pricing has gone up in so many cities and states in the US and the average house price in the area that we live, which is the Reno, Nevada area, I would say the average house price is five to 600,000.
And now the housing market, the interest rates are ridiculous. So you know, they're not the interest rates that you were looking at five years ago or even two years ago in buying a home. And so the idea of even buying a home is just unreachable for so many people right now, which has caused a boom in the rental market. So six months ago when we started the idea of we're going to rent a place, we were specifically looking for rentals that had RV parking.
So we had a place to park our tiny house, and we viewed a few houses. We submitted an application on a couple of houses, and each time found out that there were five, sometimes six other offers besides ours or applicants. And so it was just like the bidding wars you saw in the housing market just a while ago where you couldn't even get someone to look at your offer because the time you submitted your offer, there were already multiple offers in, and then it became this bidding war.
So it was the same thing for the rental market, not so much a bidding war, but of course they're taking the people with the highest income and the best credit and no animals and no children and all of these things. And in every case, we were never the best candidate. And so it quickly became exhausting and felt defeating six or seven months ago when we looked at renting, well, recently we decided to try again. We're now in the winter. It's not really the season that people want to move.
And our move was definitely a rain and snow day. So I understand why people don't generally move in this season, but when we decided that we were gonna look at renting again, we only looked at a couple properties we fell in love with. Two of them were looking at moving forward with both of them. And it turned out in both cases, we were the very first people to apply. So we essentially had our choice. Now, the house that we ended up in this particular house, when we told the realtor that we wanted to submit an application, she said, okay, well, we have it listed for sale and for rent, and the owners are going to move forward with whichever comes through first.
And so as we told her that we wanted to submit an application at that time, she said, well, hang on a minute because we, I don't want you to spend the money on the application. I heard we're getting an offer and we would really like to look at that first. So we waited a couple of days hoping we could submit an application, kind of keeping our eye on the second property. And it turned out they did not accept the offer and did decide to go ahead and rent the place to us. So now we're in it is the most amazing space.
Not only does it have RV parking for our tiny house, Hank, but it's on a half acre. It has a covered deck and an uncovered patio, a huge, beautiful entertaining space. The main living area, the living room and kitchen is kind of an open floor plan and has these gigantic, almost floor to ceiling windows on two full walls. So there's just tons of natural light, these, these big, huge beautiful windows that overlook the city.
So we have these mountains, this view of the mountain straight across from us. And in the morning, as the sun rises, the sun just lights up the mountains with this glow and we see the pink in the skies. And then in the evening, as it gets dark, we see all of the city lights and it is just phenomenal. On top of that, we have a real wood burning fireplace, which we love, and it just is the perfect home for us.
I'm right now sitting in my brand new office, which is my new podcast studio, and I cannot wait to listen to this recording to see what the sound sounds like. But it has just been the most amazing experience. And the reason that I'm telling you all of this is, again, we followed the inspiration to apply for something to rent rather than looking to buy. But I want to tell you, and I've said this before on prior episodes, that when you ask for something and the universe brings it to you, it's never something that you should question.
It's never a, I don't know, I'm not sure what I should do. I can't really decide. It should feel so effortless and so easy and feel like it fell out of the sky. And it's not a question of yes or no. It's not a question of yes, it should feel like a hell yes. And that was how it felt with this property. Even when we were deciding between the two, this one was less expensive than the other one by quite a bit, and it had the most amazing views, and it just happened for us so effortlessly.
It just felt like this. Hell yes. And I have to say, if you are asking for something and it doesn't feel like that, if you get an opportunity and it falls in your lap and you are not sure what to do and you can't make a decision, I have to tell you that is not the universe bringing you an answer to your request. It's something completely unrelated. Now, does it mean that you should say no? Not necessarily. Do what makes you feel good?
Follow your heart. If you can make a decision, go after it. There's no right or wrong answer in life, but that means the universe has something else in store, something better in store. And what I mean is what I said just a few minutes ago, when the universe brings you an answer to your request, it will feel effortless. It will feel easy. It will feel like it fell out of the sky, and it won't be a no or a yes. It will be a hell yes.
No questions about it. I want that. Let's do this. It has been amazing and incredible to see how effortly and easily we've been able to receive, and we've been able to fulfill our dreams of being in a home and having a place to park Hank and having more space and having some of the creature comforts that we've been missing. So I just wanna wrap up this conversation and kind of bring it into one thought.
And that thought is, dreams really do come true. We do get the things that we ask for. Things are always working out for us. We just have to believe. We just have to stay vigilant. We just just have to speak positively, but we can have everything our heart desires. And that leads me into today's action item. I know without a doubt that there are multiple things in your life that you have manifested whether or not you have taken the time to acknowledge it.
There are things that you have brought about that one day you were asking for. So your action item this week is to come up with something that you have manifested. What is something you asked for at some point that you now have? Is it the car you're driving? Is it the house you're living in? Is it the job you are doing? There are things we have manifested and dreams really do come true. And by taking the time to focus on, I did this, I received this, things are working out for me.
Things have worked out for me. And just giving validation to the work that you're putting in that will help you manifest other things that you're trying to attract because it puts you in a state of gratitude. But it also tells you that you can believe that things are working out for you, that you can see that you have brought things about. Sometimes when you're in the middle of it, when you're wanting something so desperately, it's so hard to trust and it's so hard to believe, and it's so easy to get into the negative self-talk and talk yourself out of it and start questioning whether or not you can manifest whether or not things are happening for you.
And that thinking does nothing for you. It actually creates stumbling blocks, roadblocks for you. So if you can just take a few minutes and think of one thing that you used to desire that you now have and focus on that and take some time to express gratitude for receiving that. Even if it was something that you received a long time ago, focus on that thought. And I promise you, you will see how dreams come true and that things are always working out for you.
Now, I do have a winner of one of my manifestation journals this week. This person left a review on Pod Chaser several months ago, and for some reason I'm just now seeing it. So the winner this week is Lily j White. And Lily says, I am so happy that season two has begun. I need this in my life. Thank you, Kayla, for teaching us and giving us the tools to stay balanced, grateful, and to manifest our own goals and desires, and to bring happiness to ourselves.
So Lilly j White, you are a winner of a manifestation journal. Send me an email at hello attracted with ease.com and just send me your name and your address, and I will mail you one of my custom manifestation journals And listeners, if you have no idea what I'm talking about, that means you haven't listened to many episodes because season two, I am doing a giveaway on each episode.
Every review that someone leaves for my podcast, every written review on any platform is entered into a drawing for a manifestation journal. These are custom made. They're one of a kind. You cannot get them anywhere else. They're designed by me, and you can see copies of them on my website attracted with ease.com. But each episode, I will select one winner from those that have left reviews, and I will send you one of my manifestation journals for free just for the feedback.
So thank you. Thank you for the review, Lily J White, but also listeners, if you got anything out of this episode, I would love to hear from you. I'd love to hear how your manifestation efforts are going, and if you're enjoying this podcast, that's it for this week. I look forward to talking with you soon. Bye-bye.
