Creating Massive Impact and Abundant Mindset
She’s the Founder and CEO of Freedom Designers, as well as a Spiritual Leadership Coach and Prosperity mentor for high achieving individuals, Intuitive, Counselor. Speaker and Podcast host. With a Masters Degree in Clinical Psychology, a thesis on happiness, if there’s one thing Carissa knows, it’s the ability to tap into her gifts as an intuitive and build a life filled with full-body f*ck-YES energy. Her journey was not necessarily linear, as is nobody’s entrepreneurial path. Hers led her deep into healing which uncovered her truth, divine gifts and purpose in the world. Today, she is a testament of her work. A fully embodied teacher, successful mentor, Author of multiple best-selling books to come, and the list goes on…
Tell our readers a bit more about yourself, especially the parts not known on social media.
I’ve been a coach now for almost seven years and I’ve been in the online space for four, and for nearly ten years, I’ve been sharing my journey through overcoming anxiety and mental health challenges, quitting my corporate job, and going through health issues. But at the same time, something that I don’t think is very public is my philosophy around prosperity. Since my background is in clinical psychology — I have a master’s degree — I have a different lens and perspective as it relates to prosperity. In my own experience, I both believed and have coached women who have believed that in order to be successful you have to sacrifice your well-being. My journey has been filled with sacrificing my mental health in order to achieve a certain monetary goal, but I believe this is an old paradigm of what it means to be successful. This is why I use the word prosperity over success. I believe I am here to teach others that being prosperous is about being, doing and having it all, without sacrificing your mental health.
For me, prosperity is a state of consciousness. As you continue to heal and transform your physical being, your mind, body, and spirit, you’re able to hold the frequency of prosperity– you attract vs force. So prosperity could mean career success but it also means happiness, health, love, with more ease and connection to Source/God. What people may not know about me is that my lens on prosperity is beyond just success and wealth. It also includes mental health, which is a major pillar of the Freedom Designers Brand– we stand for mental, emotional, physical and financial freedom. Another thing that people may not know about me is that I have a very silly side that I don’t often show online. A lot of my work has been very professional and very put together, so when people see this side they are a bit surprised. But I love to talk in accents, I love to play tricks on people and make people laugh. I genuinely believe that laughter is the best medicine.
Walk us through your journey into this space.
When I was six years old, I was diagnosed with anxiety and depression. I grew up with this label that kept me stuck and hindered me from believing that I could be successful and that I could be the person that I wanted to be. I always felt a lot of energy and growing up I thought this was anxiety. I would go into rooms and feel like something was wrong with me.
It was around 2015, I was 25 years old when I started a business. And very quickly, I achieved a lot. I had a full client load. I got a lot of speaking engagements, but what I didn’t realize was that as a business owner, especially at the beginning, you wear the hat of the salesperson, the coach, the marketer, and the copywriter. I quickly realized I couldn’t hold it all and that I was feeling incredibly anxious all of the time, so I took a step back to do deeper healing work. I came back to my business in 2018. I didn’t want to relive the pain of “failure” so I thought to myself, “Okay, I just need to push harder, I just need to move through this.” I worked very hard and I, again, achieved a lot of success. I was making multiple five-figure months in cash. I had sold out private coaching and waitlists. But at the same time, I was also working 70 hours a week with a constant underlying feeling of uneasiness. The saddest part was that I had just moved to California and I was incredibly overwhelmed– not feeling like I could manage my energy. I was forcing, yet nothing was working and it was only through everything falling apart that I realized that busyness was a trauma-based response to unhealed wounds around not being enough. This spiraled me into a state of burn out and led me to a spiritual awakening right at the end of 2019. It led me to another healing journey and to more transformation around this idea that I can work, I can show up, and I can make big things happen — but not at the sacrifice of my mental health — and underneath that, remembering to come from a place of “I am enough and I can do this.” This was a major turning point in my life.
Once I began to heal these wounds, I realized that my anxiety was actually my ability to feel energy from others. my intuitive abilities came online more strongly and I was able to tap into my spiritual gifts with more ease and clarity. I then used my clear connection to my body and God as a way to make decisions and tune into what I needed rather than what I thought I should be doing. Once I tapped into this and I got back to work, I realized how big of a role energy plays, and not just will — because I have a very strong will. I concluded that energetics are the way to success, wealth, prosperity, and happiness. And now, taking care of and utilizing my energy in my business is one of the core principles and foundations of what I think has helped me amplify my impact and income as well as maintain my mental health and support women in doing the same.
What advice would you give to your younger self?
The thing that you are struggling with is the thing that you’re becoming a master of. Something that I dealt with was trusting myself, my voice, my truth, my alignment, and trusting my intuition overall. I’ve made a lot of decisions in my last seven years of being a coach and four years of being in this business, especially as it relates to growth, expression, and money. Sometimes I think you have to learn what it feels like to not trust yourself and notice what feelings come up so that you can be more attuned next time. My younger self would have benefitted from hearing that throughout the process I was developing an invaluable skill and not failing.
What rituals or routines would you say you implement daily in order to stay in ease and flow?
To live in a state of ease and flow, I love to write down affirmations or things that are already indicative of the life that I want. I love vision scripting. Right now I’m writing a book, so what I would write out is, “My book is a New York Times bestseller.” “I live right on the oceanfront with the man of my dreams.” I’m writing out my life as if it’s already happened.
One of my daily practices is also grounding — putting my feet on the earth and imagining my feet turning into roots and going into the core of Mother Earth so that I’m connected to the frequency of the earth. This can help regulate your nervous system. I also have some energetic practices such as Qigong, breathwork, and energy healing modalities that I’ve been trained in to get my body into a state of harmony.
What kind of courses do you have for women who want to join your space?
Right now I have private coaching immersions, a masterminds, my signature leadership program– Untamed–, courses on feminine magic, and I have a Podcast called Freedom Designers. Private coaching has a waitlist but people come in and out as we go to completion. My mastermind opens once a year. Untamed opens for enrollment 3 times a year and I have some online digital evergreen courses and masterclasses on money and power.
When it comes to manifesting, what is your vision for the future?
Right now for me, it’s about reaching a million people. I’m really tuning into, “What does it feel like to have Oprah Impact? What does it feel to have dozens of life-changing New York Times bestsellers? What does it feel like to host a show and interview world renowned transformational thought leaders? What does it feel like to lead leaders and what is the ripple effect of that?” I live in a state of expecting to become a multimillionaire with multiple homes all over the world as well etc. So, I’m playing around with how expansive it feels for my work to have the greatest impact. This feels like it’s going to radically impact humanity.
What philanthropic causes are dear to your heart?
I’m currently the Vice President of The Hands-off Foundation, which is a foundation that’s dedicated to helping women (and their children) who have been survivors of domestic violence and assault. I also host donation-based masterclasses, so people who want to show up to my masterclass can join at rates that are accessible and I donate the proceeds to local organizations that are doing good work in the world. In addition to that, I also give out some scholarships for some of my programs to support underserved communities like the LGBTQ community, BIPOC community, and people who I think are underrepresented in our coaching space.
Finish this sentence : “My gifts to the world are…”
My heart, my authenticity, my truth, my expression and my power and as I share these, I give other women permission to feel that it’s safe to do the same.
When we learn how to show up authentically, trust ourselves, and believe in our abilities, miraculous things will happen.