The Soulful Leader Podcast
The Soulful Leader Podcast
Heavy, Tired, and Stuck? It’s Not What You Think
If you’ve ever felt like you’re carrying a big sack of potatoes wondering why you feel tired and heavy and you can't sleep, this podcast is for you.
Today, Maren & Stephanie dive into the Shadow, what it is, why it matters and how to use it to lighten your load and lead a more joyful and fulfilled life.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” ~ Carl Jung
When you don’t address your shadow, you not only miss out on gifts and opportunities, you actually create illness in yourself and out in the world. If you don't digest it, you can’t get the benefits AND you pass it on.
In exploring this subject, they share their own personal stories, give clear examples and most importantly, they provide hands-on, practical Shadow work questions and exercises. They share ways to really work with yourself and get the transformation that is yours for the taking.
Applying this one concept will not only transform you personally, but it will radically change your business, your family and how you experience all those around you.
“If we just cleaned up our own thoughts, we clean up the majority of the planet.” ~ Grace Spotted Eagle
- 0:31 The hidden gifts of the Shadow
- 3:31 Maren’s story
- 8:34 Stephanie’s story
- 12:42 Personal transformation
- 17:54 Healing more than yourself
- 22:45 How to work with the shadow in your life
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Watch the podcasts on our YouTube Channel: @Soulful Leaders
In a world where we have everything and it's still not enough, we're often left wondering, is this really it? Deep inside you know there's more to life. You're ready to leave behind the old push your way through and claim the deeper, more meaningful life that's calling you. That's what we invite you to explore with us. We're your hosts, Stephanie Allen and Maren Oslac, and this is The Soulful Leader Podcast. Yay. Hey, welcome to The Soulful Leader Podcast. We've got a good topic today. The shadow. Ooh, the dark shadow and the golden shadow. You might go, what the heck is that? Right? Tell me what the shadow is. It's like the boogeymans that are in the in the underneath your bed and in the closet that we just don't want to come out. But what they do is they wreak havoc in our life anyway. It's like carrying a big sack of potatoes around with you all the time and wondering why you feel tired and heavy and you can't sleep, or that things just aren't working out. Like every time you go to succeed, or you go to, you know, make a change in your life, and you just keep stumbling like it's so hard, like it's so hard. Why is it so hard? Right? And we keep looking for all the the answers out there, if I just fix this one more thing and fix this other thing, and technically, our shadow is anything that we have shoved and ignored, Exactly, anything that we... and that could be good things too. Like, sometimes you're really shining in an area in your life, and people just tell you to settle down or don't, you know, don't make other people feel bad about, you know, because you're so good at this, or you're so beautiful, or you're, you know, you're so talented that you don't want to, you don't want to outshine someone else. That's called a golden shadow, and so we hide those gifts. Yeah, you know, I had a little boy that I was working with the other day, and he was being bullied, just a little fella, and he was just a sweetheart. And, you know we were kind of talking about, you know, the bullying. And I said, you know, I said, do you know you have a superpower? And he goes, What do you mean? I said, we all have a superpower. Every single one of us has a superpower, but a lot of times we don't know it. And so sometimes when we're bullied, it's because they see our superpower and they haven't found theirs yet. And so we were kind of looking inside of it, like, what would be that superpower? Like, you know, what do you naturally gifted with? Like, you know, maybe something comes natural to you,or maybe you're constantly getting kind of, you know, like, shamed or, you know, reprimanded about something. And that can actually also be your gift, too, that somebody else, like I said, like this little this bully was bullying, you know, this little boy because they were jealous, and he was making his good traits wrong, and trying to hide them. And this happens to all of us. Every single one of us have done that to ourselves or had that done to us, absolutely, where we've taken a gift and tucked it away and said, no, you're not going to be able to touch that, because it means too much to me. You know? Yeah, and I know you've got stories like that of yours. I think we all do. I know, you have a story, though, of where you've tucked away your gifts and shame, and maybe you might want to tell those who are listening about that story. So when I was younger, very young. I was, I think it was around 10, and there was a... I was a really good swimmer, and there was an Olympic coach that was scouting me, and he invited me to come and swim with him and work with him. And my parents said, no, they wouldn't let me because they wanted me to be normal, to have a normal life, to not... I mean, an Olympian, any Olympian, they don't have a normal life, right? What we would consider normal life. It's very different from what is normal anyway, right? Yeah. And so that, and then about a... when I was going into middle school, I was invited to a school for gifted kids. And again, my parents said, No. And same reason, we just want you to have a normal life. That's going to be a lot of extra work and this and that. And so I tucked the gift of extraordinary away, and I know some people would have gone into rebellion about that. So when we tuck something away, we either rebel against it or we resign to it. Yeah, tell more. Tell more about like that. When we rebel against it, you know, we act out. We act out. And oftentimes the people who rebel against it say, you know, F you, I'm going to do it anyway. And they go for their... you know, so for me, in that, I do want to say that it doesn't have to be an either or......a lot of times, it is a both and, isn't it? It's a combination of the two of them. Sometimes, sometimes we're in rebellion against it. We want to fight the world. And sometimes we're just like, Oh, my God, I have no I can't do it. I just, oh, it's too much right? For me in this particular instance, there has been a lot of fighting it, and it became a glass ceiling for me. And every time I would hit a level of excellence, I would bump my head up against that ceiling and be like, nope, can't. It wasn't conscious, right? It's subconscious of...you can't do that. You were told you can't show your excellence. You need to back off. You need to back down. You need to be normal, and not make other people feel uncomfortable, like you said. Yeah, this has been a theme that I've worked with throughout my life, and it's challenging, and it's also one of the biggest gifts I've ever had. Well, I want to hear about that gift, but I just want to unpack what you just said too, because, you know you have this incredible opportunity, and your parents say, hey, we just want you to be normal. We just want you to be a normal kid. Have a normal life. Like ultimately, they were trying to protect you from whatever their fear was. And I'm unpacking this this way, because why I'm saying is that the shadow that which we do not heal within ourselves, we actually put out onto those we love, and we don't mean to. It's not like we're trying to, like, be manipulative or controlling. We're actually... we actually think we're coming from a place of love and kindness, when actually we're just projecting our shadow onto someone else. And so you know here your parents are saying... no, we just want you to have that, that normal life, because we're trying to protect you from something, whatever that might be. And what's interesting is that when we learn those from especially from our parents or people that we really deeply respect, we internalize it and then they go away. They might only have ever done it once in our lifetime, really. They might have only ever done it once, right, but we repeat it again and again and again until it literally hard wires in our brain, so that when we want to say yes to something in our life extraordinary, we go, no, can't have that. And we totally do it to ourselves. Right. It's not, it's only subconscious, until you start looking at it, and then it becomes conscious, and then you have you're back in choice. So exactly right. And and there are gifts, because I want to get to your gifts here in a second, because I think we... I want to tell a little, a little story of mine too, because I have had a lifetime of experience, of codependency, like, I swear it's been a genetic... there's my there's the genetic line, cockapoopooness, I call it. I would think mine was also genetic. That's part of the gift I want to talk about. Right. Because it's like, you know, I grew up in a family where you literally sacrifice everything for your loved ones, period. Amen, you did not matter. Like how you mattered was to sacrifice, to be the martyr, and that's how you earned love. That's how you felt needed. So in my life, you know, I have been searching outside of myself, and I remember the time, you know, I went through a real rough breakup, and I ended up out west, and this flyer came to my door. And so I'm 1000s of miles away from home. I basically ran away. Talk about rebellion. That was my rebellion. I ran away. I ran away. And a flyer showed up the door said, oh, be a massage therapist. I'm like, my god, I should take this class, because maybe I could, I could rub someone the right way, and they'd actually stay with me, like I could give more and give more and give more. And what's interesting is that was, like, 30 plus years ago. It has been the greatest gift of me, of finding that flyer. And yes, I'm still single, so it's like, hilarious, like, I lost the guy, but I gained a life, a life vocation. I love it. So some of the people listening might not realize that that's what you've done for the last 30 years. I have done that for the last 30 years. Now. What's funny is that you know about 15 years ago, I guess 15 years ago, yeah, I fell in love again, and this time this, man was an acupuncturist, but he wasn't quite finished his diploma and his degree. And things like that. So he suggested, hey, let's go to China. We'll go and learn acupuncture so I can immigrate to Canada and fully set up practice. So I went to China with him. I'm like, well, if I'm going to go to China, I might as well take a class. I had no intention, no intention of ever becoming an acupuncturist. Well, you know, we went to China, came back, totally broke up. It didn't work out. And my clients were like, are you gonna do acupuncture on this? No, I'm not gonna do acupuncture on you. I was just taking it for fun. I was just taking it because I was going with him. And they're like, but Steph, you did take acupuncture, right? I'm like, I did. And it's also that divine. So here's that divine gift. It's like the very things, massage and acupuncture, which I have now done for decades. You know, it's actually been the most nourishing, wonderful thing that I've ever done. And I feel like not only has it taken care of me, but it's taking care of initially it was kind of disgusting for you. those that I take care of too. So it's a win win, but it was, it was essentially out of rebellion or out of resignation in that way, in the way of a codependency in the initial....in the initial, not now. Oh, yeah. Like, it like, when that flyer showed up and I said to myself, I'll be a massage therapist. I wasn't thinking it as a career. Are you kidding me? No way was I touching stinky feet and hairy back. That was 30 plus years ago. I've done it ever since. I love it. I don't even care. It's like, it's so amazing. And I'm like, isn't that funny? I always say, God has a sense of humor. It's like, okay. It's like, you know, here's your carrot, here's your carrot. Stephanie here chase that carrot. Okay, I'll chase that carrot, and then you land in the pot of gold. But it's not the pot of gold you think you were going to land in. And if you're not doing the inner work, yes, you keep chasing the carrot, and you miss the pot of gold completely. Exactly, exactly. So you have a gift as well. And both you and I have been doing shadow work for many, many years. And so what did you get from that whole experience of reaching, you know that just almost to the state of excellence and then sabotaging it? What was the gift that? What did you learn by doing all the shadow work? I know I'm calling you out on it. I know... you know, it's very different. First of all, I'm still in process of this, and one of the things that I started to realize is how much shadow is passed on. So if our parents didn't do their shadow work, which, how many of us have parents who are that aware, right? That means that they passed their shadow on to us. And so that was one of the things that I have looked at a lot in the, you know, we talked about the genetic line thing is the martyr and the the poor me, oh, poor me. I'm not good enough, and that's directly related to 'we just want you to be normal'. Don't go don't make waves. Hide your light under a barrel. Nobody's... that's what my grandmother told my mother, to hide her light under a barrel, because if she was shining too bright, she wouldn't find a husband. Yeah there is alot of shame... a lot of shame, isn't there is a lot of shame on who others think we should be, and that is Shadow, is what we're saying. What would it be like to be able to to transcend and not be so like, those things are going to happen anyway, but not be so affected by it. To have more of some space to really look at that doesn't mean that you're not going to be reacted to it, or that it doesn't hurt, or any of those things, or that you don't have a broken heart. It's you go through things differently. With shadow work, there's a there's a soft place to also like land and and observe something and find that gift. So I think for me, one of the gifts is I was a very angry teenager, young adult, and there's still undercurrents of anger that I work with. It just is different. And the reason that it's different is because I realize kind of what you were saying at the beginning is that my mom did her best. Her mom did her best. They didn't know any better, so we.... it was very easy for me to be angry and blame. They did this to me, and when I stopped blaming and being angry, I started to see the beauty in how things divinely unfold, and that it was absolutely perfect for that rug to be pulled out from underneath me when I was younger, so that I could do the things that I'm doing now, and have an understanding. I wanted to... it's so important for us to come from an understanding if we're going to be in service to somebody, it's really hard to be in service to a person that you don't have any kind of relationship with or understanding or background. And so the people with whom I work, I really have an alignment with them, and I can understand them, I can guide and it's made all the difference. I think that we're... we think that our lives are just supposed to be perfect, and they are perfect in that the whole it just is that we are meant to have challenges, because that's how we grow. Yeah. It's like that old saying, like that, that which doesn't kill you makes you stronger, but without shadow work, then what? What doesn't kill you makes you stronger comes from a place of rebellion or resignation, right? And it makes you harder. Instead of coming to a whole new place of having a more space in your heart to understand and to also navigate and not react, to actually learn to respond and respond with your heart open. I think, I think the hardest thing is like being vulnerable, which is really being open and corage, it's courageous, but it's like I was saying this today about surrender. We tend to think of surrendering as giving up and giving in, but the act of surrender is such a high act of being vulnerable and courageous and trusting the unknown. And if we haven't gone through things and landed on our feet again, like it's like or work through our shadow, work to know that, hey, you know we're purifying something, and not only for ourselves, perhaps for our genetic line, perhaps for neighbors down the street, who knows, perhaps, somewhere in the world, that we are actually, we're actually purifying it, meaning we're cleaning it out. We're like the spiritual house cleaners, you know, we're spring cleaning inside our hearts and our minds and our souls. What if there was another way that I didn't have to fight like, you know, fighting, it doesn't mean that you you don't hold an intention, meaning you don't stay present to it, but that you don't have to exert so much striving energy and fight against something. You're standing for something, and that's that's for yourself, for the truth of who you are and why you're here. You know, it's when we're saying about the fact that, you know, we pass it on. If we don't digest it, we pass it on. If we don't work with it, we pass it on. I just, oh, somebody shared a quote with me from a Native American elder. I'm gonna look for it real quickly while we're talking, because it was, it's so powerful when we... when we can clear our stuff, and it's from Grace Spotted Eagle, if we just cleaned up our own thoughts, we clean up the majority of the planet. Yeah, isn't that powerful. If we just cleaned up our own thoughts, we'd clean up the majority of the planet, meaning the pollution, both internal and external, all the hate and the anger. Because what we don't realize is that, yes, it's on a personal level, we're experiencing anger, and I'm not addressing my anger and working experiencing it ourselves, and we're also when we shove something, the energy has to go somewhere, and so it goes out into the world, yeah... with it, then I'm adding to the anger that's in the world. And we know there's a lot of that right now. Yeah, so stinking thinking, stinking thinking, we call it. It's like, you know, if you've... who doesn't have stinking thinking? We all do. So it's like, I guess, my question to all listening is, you know, what do you do with that stinking thinking? Like, are you someone that just pushes it aside and ignores it, or distracts yourself by doing something else to avoid exploring? Or do you beat yourself up with it? Do you go into it and or try to wrestle it to the ground and pin it and, you know, or, or, can you give it some space and go, oh, that's really interesting. I'm actually giving you a practice here right now. That's really interesting. I wonder what it is needing, you know, what, where is this coming from? Or what is this needing as an observer, rather than letting it attack you, or you attack it. So if somebody is kind of going, well, what does that mean? I don't understand because I tackle it, or I run to Netflix, or I run to the refrigerator, yeah, I eat it, yeah. Like, how many of us say, people say, oh, talk to the hand. Talk to the hand. I just, that's what I say to it. I'm like, yeah but when you when you do that, it just puts on another face and, or puts on another way of coming around and speaking to you or being with you, or you project it out. And you get, you know, you leave a husband, and then you get another husband who's not the same, doesn't looks the same, different name, but Mother of God, you're still irritated thesame way, or does the same things, and you're like, what? Like, you know, what, WTF, right? And it's like, this is what. This is what I mean. Like, when you don't look at it, we keep putting it out there, and we keep attracting it until we do. And so not to look at it from a place of shame and blame, like you were talking earlier, but from a place of curiosity and wonder. Can I be curious of like, okay, what might this be teaching me? I have to say this, when something is irritating me, so we can use, you know, my massage stuff, you know, I'm like, oh, you know, I'm curious, you know, I really, I really wanted to have a boyfriend, and so I ended up as a massage therapist. That's funny, you know, that's funny. And I look at it and of saying, well, what was I really searching for? You know, did I want to feel like I mattered? Did I want to feel like I belonged? Did I want to feel like I was making a difference, that my life had purpose? Absolutely, and I was told that in order to have those things, you had to be married and have children. And so the more I chased the outer- I always find, you know, spirit is good, God is good. You know, they'll give you other gifts and other ways. Like I said, all roads lead home. They all lead home. So you might take a different path. It doesn't really matter. It's going to lead home too. But it's like, how you walk that path, how you move on to it? Is it anger and frustration, or is it, oh, why bother? I give up. Yeah. And so to be able to then reflect and renew yourself from that place, to me, that is such the glorious of shadow work. Let's use another example. Someone irritates you, you're driving and they cut you off. That's a simple one who doesn't do that, right? And the first thing you want to do is what? Depends on the person, but most people, at least for me, you know me who has the anger issues, right? Right? Yeah, you know, a few fingers come flying up, maybe the horn, or yell, and then you're just pissed off for the next 20 minutes. I mean, they've long gone, but it's like that to me, that's shadow. So there's so much energy. So there's your rebellion. You know, and that as you're stewing in this, as you're driving, I you know, you're probably not even knowing that you're actually cutting other people off, yeah, or maybe you're cutting yourself off. So this is how I would look at it. It's like I actually had this happen. So in other times, I'm like, okay, wow, I got really angry right there. What was it that tipped me over? You know, doing my feeling I'm not seen, did I feel disrespected? Did I feel unheard? Did I like all these different things? And I could go, yeah, yeah, yeah, those are true. And then I would stop and say, Okay, where am I myself? Me, myself and I? Where am I doing that to myself? Where am I cutting myself off? Where am I not listening or seeing myself and to me there, there's a pot of gold in that. That's where your that's where your treasure lies, is being able, not from shame, not from blame, shame, all that stuff, but from curiosity and wonder, going, Yeah, I wonder where I'm doing that. Or, you know, is it calling from me even another thing of another place of saying, you know, maybe that anger and that frustration is calling me up to embody another way of being in relationship with my world. How do I want to be in this world? And I have to say, and this is, goes back to what I said earlier is I'm still in process of this is, it's not a one and done. It gets more and more subtle and refined, and so do the gifts. One of the biggest gifts for me is the peace that I've found inside, the living life in a joyful manner instead of an angry manner, and it's from a really solid foundation of peace, not a put on a happy face, because I'm supposed to, which I've also done. Right, so that next, that taking it as a process of I will find a nugget, and then guess what? I'm gonna find another one and another one and another one. And if I do look at it as from the And that's shadow doing shadow work. perspective of I have to fix myself, it becomes hard work. It's essentially, it will get me, I mean, it is, and there's a more joyful, more skillful way to do it, which is coming from that place of huh? Like curiosity and wonder. Okay, so where are you gonna... it's kind of a it's a playful game for me now, like, where are you gonna pop up next, right? Yeah, you know, like, you know, one of our teachers always says, fascinating creation. Like, I wonder what this is going to, what treasure I'm going to find from this. And so when I, when I embody that kind of perspective, it totally lifts me. and I can let things go a little bit easier, not always, all right, like I said, I'm a work in progress, trust me, I'm a big work in progress. But it's like, you know, it's actually, I, honestly, those who have a lot of shadow have a lot of light hidden in their bushell. It's hidden. So congratulations for those who are going, oh my god, I have so much shadow. Congratulations. How about, how about having some curiosity, I wonder, and look inside, because you are going to be amazed with the amount of treasure that is buried within. Yeah you get energy back. You get there's so much. Yeah, it's amazing. Excellent. Well, all that information is on our website www.tslp.life and get on our email list and get our blogs and share us with a friend, and we will see you all next podcast on TheSoulfulLeaderPodcast. And that wraps up another episode of The Soulful Leader Podcast with your hosts, Stephanie Allen and Maren Oslac. Thank you for listening. If you'd like to dive deeper, head over to our website, www.thesoulfulleaderpodcast.com. Until next time...