Cristina Calero

Christina Calero started a business called Focus Mind Plus Body, which creates diaries and journals with poetry as the inspiration. She believes in the power of words and creativity to bring alignment and beauty into everyday life. Christina emphasizes the importance of resilience in overcoming challenges and finding success. She also discusses the need for more peace and non-violence in the world. Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Infuse Your Future podcast, where we bring together people and ideas that make the world a better place. I'm your host, Dr. C, and today we have Christina Calero with us. And she is very creative. She has a lot of creative ideas and has some amazing stuff to talk to us about today. So I would like to introduce her. Hi, Christina. Hello, Carla. Thank you so much for having me on your show. I'm really excited to be here. Yeah, thanks for being on the show. Yes, thank you. So why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do in the world? Okay. So at the moment, what I'm doing is I started a business, basically, in 2020, called Focuses Mind Plus Body. And I wanted to put something out into the world that was a little bit different, and I had other personal things in my life, which impacted me greatly. And I needed something to bring me into alignment with what is beautiful in the world. And poetry is something that has always been very close to my heart. Words are powerful, so powerful, no matter which language you use. And so I created diaries and journals with poetry as the inspiration for the creativity that would follow in an everyday life as well. So there's the practicality of the diary and the week to view, and there's the creativity and the inspiration that comes from the poetry. So that, basically, in a nutshell, is my business. And then looking down the track to how to harness creativity and help people with their creative output, especially as a result of going to Greece and having PTSD, and how to navigate that as well, and how creativity, for me, has been the turning point in my life. Yeah, I mean, I have to second that. You know, I have complex PTSD as well, and art therapy has been amazing for me. I'm an art therapist, and it's just magical. You know, it's a more creative type of therapy. For sure, yeah. And, you know, I mean, we can only speak from our own perspectives, and I'm very aware of the fact that I'm speaking from my perspective. And where I was in 2020 with the things that I was living through, the usual outlets of my creativity weren't helping. In fact, to pick up my guitar and start singing and writing a song just turned, just made me spiral further. So I needed another avenue. And thankfully, I found it with still writing, because writing will be part of who I am, but as a form going back to what I did as a child, which was writing poetry and songwriting, in a way, a poem set to music. You know, you can set poems to music. They're not always the same structure, but there is that element. So I was sort of still doing a bit of who I was, but recreating myself as well, because I really had to. Yeah, and I've seen the diary of yours that's coming out in 2024, and it's just beautiful. Oh, thank you. It's beautiful too. I look forward to reading all the poetry in it. Yes, yes. Oh, you have to let me know as soon as your copy arrives. Yeah, yeah. I'll probably, you know, devour it. I love, I love having that kind of a thing to plan my weeks. And I always have a very colorful one. You know, a lot of artwork and creativity. So I love the marriage. Well, I don't know if I should say marriage, but I love the interaction of the creativity and the productivity. Like you said, it's useful and creative at the same time. Yeah, I think so. You know, I mean, this is a funny thing, because I'm not from a corporate world at all. I've worked in business, you know, doing marketing and doing software integration, which is sort of the main thing that I used to do. But I've always worked with creatives. You know, I've always worked with businesses who the head of the business was the out there creative type, you know, and I thought, well, that's why I resonate, you know, because I can be very practical and pragmatic, but I can capture those creative elements and channel them into something. And when I was sort of discussing this with a girlfriend of mine who's a teacher, and she said, that's why all my teacher friends love your diaries, because they have to be that as well. They have to be creative. You know, but they also have to know what's happening from every half hour to every half hour. And it's a very interesting little thing that I think I've kind of hit on, which is, we aren't one or the other. You know, I think most of us have the mix, the yin and the yang with the practical and the creative, and to get the mix right, hallelujah, here we come, we can, you know, take on the world. So I think if I can keep fine tuning that, I think I've got something really beautiful to offer, and the feedback so far has been very positive. So that's why I did another year. The first year I thought, oh, I don't know, I'll just do it for me. I wanted something, because I went to the shop, bought a very practical diary, totally uninspiring, and I thought, I can't look at this, I'm in such a turmoil, I need something beautiful, I need beauty. So the first one I created for myself, and then other people went, that's beautiful, you need to print those. So that's what I did. Well, thanks for doing that. Oh, thank you. We need more beautiful things in the world. Yeah, the world is, it's so, it is so beautiful. We are so blessed, and it's unfortunate that there aren't, how do I say this, it's unfortunate that there seems to be such a focus on what's not right, and who's not right, and where it's not right, and that division. I constantly scratch my head and think, 2,000 years of civilisation, and we're still going over these same things, gender equality, wars, apparently there are 14 wars happening on our planet at the moment. Wow, that's just awful. Awful. Unbelievable. It's sad. It's absolutely sad. One of the other guests that I interviewed, she's actually creating a movement called Let's Be Peace Movement, and I just hope it goes viral. Anybody that's working for peace in the world, I just hope it goes viral, you know, peace and non-violence, there's really no need for it, it's not healthy, it doesn't create things, we don't need it, like you said, in a civilised society, you know, we don't need all that stuff. Right. I'm curious, your business name is Focus Mind Plus Body, so how do you come up with that name, and is there a meaning behind it? Yes, okay, so I kept seeing the word focus at a time when I was very unfocused, so I had been through quite a bit of trauma, and had been diagnosed with CTSC, and I could not, I kept coming up with things, and I would do this and do that, and you know, chase the shiny, the shiny lovely new thing, and not really getting anywhere, and feeling like quite a failure in my life, and I didn't like that feeling, and I kept trying to sort of find a way out, and that word just kept appearing, and then one day I woke up and went, well are you going to pay attention? That's the word, so focus, you know, focus your mind, focus your body, and that will get things in balance, and that's exactly what I did. So instead of being fragmented mentally and emotionally, I brought things back into, alright, what is working, what can I control, because it was mostly about control, the things that were happening in my world were so out of my control, and I was so aware of it, and I knew that what I needed as a human being, and again this is from my perspective, I needed control, I needed to have some control over something, so two things I could control, my mind and my body, and I brought it back down to the most simplified element of what that meant to me at the time. Cool. I know when we were talking earlier, you mentioned resilience, and how you'd really like to talk about resilience and focus and how those are related to the creativity. Is that something you'd like to speak on? Yeah, sure, I mean, I think resilience is probably the most important element in being a successful human being, and feeling that you are successful, because I know the opposite, which is complete, you are flat on the ground with nowhere to go, and feeling that you have nowhere to go is probably, in all of, when we thought of, I don't know if you do this or you're listening, might tune into this, but there have been moments in my life where I have thought, what is this feeling? How do I define this feeling? Okay, can I give this feeling a name and move it to somewhere, to again have control of the feeling, and when I found the feeling of powerlessness, that feeling was the most destructive feeling that I have felt of myself, to feel that I had no power in this world, and no power over anything that was going on, which was not true, it was just the story, and it was just the wave, it was facing wave after wave after wave after wave of unfortunate events, and at one point I knew I was bouncing back, and then another thing would happen, and I'd bounce back, and I got to the point where I couldn't bounce back. So resilience has to happen in order to carry on with life, or you end up in the gutter, looking at the stars, you know. Yeah. Yeah, so it's one of my favourite, favourite, oh, I just gave myself goosebumps, that line. Can you say the line again? Some of us, we're all of us in the gutter, some of us are looking at the stars, and the pretenders took it and used it in one of their most amazing songs, so it's an incredible line, but yeah, you know, resilience, you have to find a way, and again, for me, the word was the stimulus, focus, and focus gave me a way to build my resilience, because I think resilience is something that you build, you know, something happens, a challenge happens, and you go, ooh, alright, well that kind of knocked me sideways, so where do I go from here? Alright, you know, you find your way, and that gives you, oh, got through that one, okay, well next time that happens, I think I know what to do, you know. So, the other part of, and we thought I hadn't touched on it, and maybe, and maybe this is an age thing, because I'm 57 next week. Oh, happy birthday. Yeah, thank you. I think, you know, as a single woman in her 50s, part of the resilience thing was, you know what, there ain't no knight in shining armour, and you're going to have to rescue yourself, cheeky babe, and you're going to have to be your own best friend, because you're kind of a little bit of an island at the moment, you know, and I think there is an element, a strong element in our world at the moment of, I would say women in particular who find themselves in that situation of being quite alone, and quite aware of being alone, because we're constantly reminded. The media has a fantastic way of reminding us, you know, and not that it's bad, and not that, you know, like Seinfeld, not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's how you deal with it, you know, and when the poo hits the fan, and there's no one there, no shoulder to cry on, you've got to make your own shoulder. Yeah, yeah. And at least for me, being alone and being lonely are not synonymous. You know, I mean, many times for me... One is bliss, one is hell. What's that? One is bliss, one is hell. That is true. Like right now, to me, being alone is pure bliss. Pure bliss. Yeah. Because I happen to have a chaotic life right now, you know. Yeah. But when, I guess, everything is about balance, right? You don't want to be alone too long, because then you may get lonely. But you do need to be alone sometimes, otherwise you get too... What's the word? You just don't know yourself. You don't find yourself. You get too overwhelmed. Yeah, and I think it's also the personality part. I love people, and I don't need people around to help me. Oh, yeah, yeah. I've got that.