Shauna Brittenham - Emotional Intelligence Expert | How to Transform Fear Into Your Greatest Business Advantage

I start from a place of passion and interest, and then generally speaking success follows. It's most fun in life to do the things you love because they end up being a service to others. She's not just a powerhouse in venture capital. She's the quiet force shaping the future of tech and innovation. Shawna Brittnum brings a unique blend of strategy, heart, and grit, helping founders not just raise money but build companies that actually last. If we're not giving ourselves permission to feel anxious, to feel trouble, to feel down, then we can't fully experience the flip side of that. Joy, emotional freedom, relief. They go hand in hand. If we use our worst moments to our advantage, they're always a blessing. You have more authentic relationships with people when you're authentically creating your boundaries. Protract record, backed industry shaping startups, advised on billion-dollar growth and always shows up with clarity and conviction. She's proof that you don't need to be loud to be powerful. You just need to know your worth and help others realize theirs. So much of anxiety is our imagination. It's our imagination playing a mean game and thinking about the worst possible case scenario. That's what creates anxiety. Anything that feels hard will one day feel easier. I really believe that. If you're going to have to describe what you do for a living, how would you describe your work? Human, the umbrella is human. The umbrella is human. I'm in the wellness space in multiple capacities with an emphasis in creativity. Where did, okay, so if we talk about the businesses you've built, even some of the work that you do now, what would be a major inflection point, something that pushed you into wellness and serving humans? Well, I have had a lot of autoimmune issues since I was young and I've worked tirelessly to support my body and so my company, Lyonachials, was born out of the desire in many ways to help myself and then to give other people the tools to help them themselves physically. And when you started this, what was sort of the gap in health and wellness? I mean, you said people to trust, quality, cleanliness, for myself, not necessarily feeling like I was getting the results I wanted in terms of energy and just feeling fully alive. No, I think that if I look at all the different things that you've done, what I love about most entrepreneurs, but I think I really see this with you is you've solved your own problems, and then you've made those solutions sort of available to the world. And I think it's most fun in life to do the things you love because they end up being a service to others. Versus thinking about how you can serve others and then reverse engineering it, I start from a place of passion and interest and then generally speaking success follows, right? So I'm never pursuing success. When you think about sort of your journey, even from a young age, so at a young age, when you were 19, you ended up in a psychiatric ward. So all of these things, and I want you to tell that story and sort of what it taught you and what happened there, but all of these things impact how you operate today. Even before we press record, we're talking about a lot of what drives people our events that have been early childhood. I mean, 19 is not so young, but that informs the work you do, how you operate, how you function, the tasks you take on. So what happened at 19? At 19, a lot of repressed trauma surfaced from childhood. From childhood. And I think that all of us have incredible coping mechanisms to get us through life. And I was an overachiever, I started college at 15, I graduated college at 19, moved to Boston, got my first job, was working at 19. And at a certain point, we all crash and burn when we have an address, the deeper layers that are fueling us. And in many times, you know, are fueling our achievements, even. So sometimes we present positively, and you know, the way in which the world receives us is with a lot of admiration and sort of with open arms based on what we've accomplished, but beneath all of those achievements, what's fueling us is something so much deeper. And it's not always positive, you know. And so in my case, if you were to look at my life on paper, you know, I was, I graduated from college, magna cum laude, and I was, you know, working and living this really sort of robust, you know, rich life, spiritually rich life. But there was a lot under the surface that hadn't been addressed. And so it took a very long time for me, both to sort of accept the nature of what I had been through and then to piece together a way to heal. And healing isn't linear the way creating a career isn't linear. Like we were just talking about how there are so many different unique paths to get to where we are. And every single thing we do informs that that has been true for me in terms of psychological mental, you know, emotional facets of what was required for me to get to where I am today, to a place where I integrated it, you know, in all in all capacities, yeah, have a thriving family. Beautiful. You know, fun to business, all of it. You know, but it took, I will say, it took a lot of time and a lot of very sort of creative approaches. What are the personality traits that would lead you down this path to have to go into the situation that were also the same personality traits that allowed you to be successful that I think that there's an over achievement perspective. There's a, I don't know if you've ever thought about this, but I feel like they're not such different traits. I think that somebody who has all these neurodivergent, quote unquote, not normal traits, they can use it for good, or it can be self-destructive to them if they're not careful. That was a percent. I mean, I think for better or for worse, I'm a very authentic person. And so that level of authenticity that occurred when I was 19 was not something I would have necessarily consciously chosen. And like I said, I've never, since that moment in time, I have never been so honest in my entire life. Explain that though, just, sorry, explain that. So it was, it was that you felt like you weren't being honest that led you down this path or in terms of, yeah, in a sense, because when you're not fully embodied and fully consciously integrating trauma, in a way you're living not a line necessarily, but sort of like an almost partially true version of your life, right? Like there was this huge part of my story that I didn't even have access to because I wasn't willing to fully commit to and connect with it. And so to allow that to surface in a really radical sort of overwhelming way that maybe was difficult to metabolize for other people is something that occurred despite me. But it is my reference point now in the sense that I think many of us are still striving to be palatable to society, to our friends, to our partners, to our colleagues, to our customers. We want to be accepted. We want to be liked. We don't want to be rejected. It's a very natural survival based sort of human instinct. And it can prevent us from behaving and relating in a way that's fully authentic. So you stated that becoming the quote-unquote boss of you, I guess ownership of your own life, it starts with confronting trauma. I believe that we all have experienced certain levels of trauma. And in my personal opinion, we don't have to relativize our trauma. It's okay to just look at your life and say, hey, I had a pretty wonderful life. I had great grounding parents. But I'm prone to depression. Or an incident occurred where someone made fun of me when I was a little kid. And it really affected my self-esteem. And because of that, I've never been able to step into a leadership role. That could be considered a form of trauma for a small child. Or I had a dad who was always comparing me to my older brother. Never said I was good enough. You know, always made me feel like the underdog, like all of these things inform how we approach the rest of our lives to some capacity, unless we're awake and able to see it clearly. But so how do you, how do you recommend people, that's where they start. Everyone has trauma to a degree. Where do they start looking? And what is even relation, what do you meant? You mentioned relationizing. Well, we all tend to relativize our experiences, right? Like you and I were talking before this about how what I've been going through with someone else, it may not be as bad as what someone else has gone through. We don't need to compare our lives and our life story to anyone else's. What you've been through is what has shaped who you are. And in many ways has created the fabric of your being that has influenced your decisions and how far you've allowed yourself to go in your life. A lot of people even keep themselves from achieving because deep down inside, they believe they're not worthy of great things. And so for me, it began with actually really listening to my body. So in conversations and alone, really beginning to sense when I'm anxious or when I'm feeling down, or when I'm lackluster or uninspired, and starting to understand the signals and messages of my body, because the body is always communicating with us all the time. You know, it's going like, this is safe. This is not safe. This is comfortable. This is not comfortable. And we have to, in many cases, distinguish between fear that has served a purpose at one stage of our lives, but is no longer truly relevant. And a true or system of knowing, a true sort of intuitive knowing that is informing us from a highly intelligent place. So that's a whole other, and I talk a lot about this in my book. You are the boss of you. It's distinguishing between our true knowing, the deeper, higher guidance, you know, within our own minds, and fear. Because as you may know, they're not the same. And oftentimes we get confused and we confuse ourselves because we can't distinguish between the two. So there's going to be two conflicting ideas here. So one, you want to make sure that you're not too selfish, and you serve other people in everything that you do. But on the flip side, you also have to serve yourself to a degree. So how do you balance that as you go through life? How do you balance that successfully? How do you balance the concept of, I want to be a good person and serve the world, but I also have to take care of myself in my business relationships and my personal relationships, because sometimes those two things people find themselves at odd, right? Well, I guess I've been very lucky in the sense that everything I pursue ultimately is in service to others, and I happen to love it. So I write music and I sing. Other people hear my stories through song and feel connected to their own experiences and emotions. They feel freed in some way. We're not alone. You know, with Eli and naturals, I created nutrients that I myself needed for my body to thrive and created a service to others. So I don't think they're mutually exclusive. That's sweet. Is a success story partner. Now business is brutal right now. Terrifs are crushing margins. Supply chains are breaking and cash flow. It is strangling companies every single day. 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Indeed dot com slash clary terms and conditions apply if you're hiring indeed is all you need. When you when you started, um, ally and actuals was that was that the first thing that you tried to build and it was successful or did you sort of apply this framework to your own life? You tried multiple things. Nothing really worked out. My initial idea because I was breastfeeding my second child at the time and I was in early stages of mommy mode was I actually wanted the nutrition line to be for pregnant and postpartum. I guess solving your own problem. Solving my own problem. I felt like my second kid just took everything out of me. My kids are 24 months apart and I just felt like I didn't have the capacity to live life on my own terms. And then, you know, I had a very poignant conversation with my husband and he said, you know, Shauna, you're so passion driven. I'm worried that in a few months or years, you're going to outgrow this phase and you may or may not be as passionate about it. So why not create something that has more longevity? And what I've always struggled with my whole life is this host of autoimmune, you know, issues that in many ways have served the purpose of creating mindfulness and forcing me to be in a rhythm that works in my body. Your body physically reacts. I am not a person who can get away with things. So to speak, I crash if I'm not taking care of myself. The whole system crashes. It's like, you know, the train comes to a very abrupt halt. Your worst moments, I think, are actually blessings in disguise. And that may be true for most of us. I think if we use our worst moments to our advantage, they are always a blessing. And nothing, no circumstance is empirically, well, that's not necessarily true. This is what I'll say. We all go through very hard things. A lot of certain not most, but many circumstances are not empirically good or bad. The meaning we assign to them dictate and influence our experience of the world around us and of ourselves. So if I look at an experience and say, wow, there are all these powerful tools I've learned from this, or I'm creatively inspired by this now, or I have the ability to empathize with people on a significantly deeper level because of what I've been through. Now this has become an advantage. Now this has become a beautiful part of my life. I could also choose to view it as what a step back. Like nothing's getting done, nothing's happening. I'm, you know, this was so hard. Or I can say, yeah, because this was so hard, I'm now in a position to help other people more impactfully. Listen, it takes a lot of maturity to look at life that way. Yeah, because I know what you've been through even recently now. And to look at, to look at some of these step backs as a, as a, you know, glass half full silver lining moment, that's, that's difficult. It's a choice. We always have the choice about how we perceive things, right? Perspective is always in our control. Circumstances out of our control. How other people react completely out of our control. There's environmental factors. There's political factors, societal, familial. There's so many factors that are out of our control, but we can always choose how we react to them, how we respond to them, with intuition, with compassion for ourselves and for others, with empathy, and with a sense of resilience that allows us to move forward with positivity. That doesn't mean that we don't feel really crappy sometimes. Like, I'm a, I'm an entire chapter in my book about feeling your feelings. I am a person who cries. I love to be in the, the deepest part of my being. I want to feel things, because I know that when I do, and I know this a lot based on my experience in 19, I know that when I, when I feel things in my guts and my soul, I then move forward and powered. I then move forward stronger and more. It's not a weakness to feel things and to be emotional and to be sensitive. It's a superpower. When we come from that place of vulnerability, we can move forward with our whole selves, with our full being, and activate everything else that needs to be on board to have a successful life. I feel like, I feel like, especially with this audience and people that listen to this show, I think sometimes we just turn off the emotion and focus on outcome. Why I think that's a huge mistake is that our emotion can very successfully drive us. Even in terms of our decision making, because think about how intuition plays a role in who you choose to have on your team, who you choose to do your deals with, who you trust, who you don't, if you're not fully accessing that deeper part of you, you're also disconnecting from the intuition that can drive you to make very good decisions. I agree. I think that one thing, so there's a couple, you mentioned a couple strategies. First of all, just having the awareness that you should be into your internal dialogue, especially as a high performing individual, because it actually will help drive outcomes, be mentioned something else about creating space or gap in your life, so that you are not constantly doing, and you have a chance to be alone with your thoughts and think, and just, I don't know, just have a finger on the pulse of your own internal dialogue, and the only way to do that is to not always be on this hamster wheel. It's also just to be in touch with your rhythm as it unfolds from day to day, because your needs today, Scott, may be very different from your needs yesterday, they're different from your needs tomorrow. So we can't apply a formula to this, we can't codify it. This is an organic day. I'm not very different. You see how I think, right? But let me explain one thing. Yes. So, and right, because formulas and calculations and data, you know, analysis and pulling and, you know, analytics, like all of these are great strategies. Okay, and I want to present an alternative reality, which is that I wrote four books in four years. My first book is coming out February 4th. You are the boss of you. I did not follow any of the guidelines I was given by writers to sit down every day at a certain time and write whatever comes out and then stop when you stop, but, you know, make sure you write a certain number of pages every day. I collected all of this wisdom from friends. I watched some master classes online about, you know, tools and tips and strategies for writing. Guess what? None of them applied to me. The basic human experiences are the same for many of us. A lot of us have similar needs, but we're all wired completely differently. So, what works for me may not work for you. You need to establish your own rhythm. You need to figure out what works for you. What works for me is listening to my body day to day. There were days I didn't write at all. There were days that because I allowed myself to putter for 45 minutes in a kitchen drawer, I had an idea that then fueled 45 pages of my book. Sometimes for me, at least many of my most poignant, brilliant, imperative, impactful seeds that create momentum and inform what I'm doing next come from moments of silence of what would look to any outsider as playing, as puttering, as being sort of unencumbered in a sense. And because I'm giving myself space to be creative, I then apply that creativity in a strategic way that's impactful, right? So then I go write the book. I don't have the idea because I'm wandering through my garden and then just keep the idea bottled up inside. I then sit down at my computer and write and write and write. And then at the end of that, I edit. And then I have to, you know, do all these things to publicize the book, right? So there are action steps that require a certain formula and strategy, but the meat of it, like the heart of what I wrote, it came from a place that was completely uninformed by strategy. Like it was all inspired in moments that would look completely ridiculous to an outsider. Why do you think, because even just listening to myself, I'm realizing that I'm the case study for somebody that overindexes on formula and strategy all the time, because it's comfortable and it feels safe, right? So I'm actually curious why you think that we default to that. I think we don't trust ourselves. We don't trust in our ability to do things organically. When I say organically, what I mean is to tune into what's happening in the moment in real time and respond to it accordingly, when really that's the most brilliant solution anyway, right? Any problem is to deal with what's actually happening versus trying to troubleshoot and foreshadow. We can't control circumstances. You know, obviously, there's a place for predictions. I go to the weather channel. I want to see what the forecast is, right? But if I go outside and the weather forecaster didn't predict rain and it's raining, I don't knock at my umbrella. I go, I respond to what's happening in real time, right? But if we don't trust ourselves, because we've been conditioned by society and our parents and all of the adults, it all comes, well, a lot of it comes back to the fact that when we were very young, we were told not to trust ourselves. I'm cold. You're not cold. It's hot outside. I'm tired. I want to go to sleep. Now, you got to get up. It's time to go to school. So over and over again, we're taught in these insidious, microscopic ways, not to trust ourselves that become paramount when we're adults, because then we're adults who are relying on structures. We're relying on the outside world to tell us what's right and wrong, what we feel and what we don't feel. We don't even trust how we feel. We're asking someone else, do I have a right to feel sad about this? Of course, you have a right to feel sad about it, because there are industries that are built on us, not trusting how we feel. Exactly. And in this moment in time, if there's no other takeaway, it's you will be significantly less reliant on structures and outside data information. If you begin to cultivate a relationship of trust within yourself, and step one is the internal dialogue, starting to question yourself, wow, okay, I don't feel safe in this situation. Do I, you know, why? What's going on here? Where am I feeling it? It's in my shoulders. Okay. Where is this coming from? You know, right today, I don't want to record a podcast. I want to do this and then where is that coming from? What's driving that? And really to be in conversation with yourself. And then all of those other things become tools, but they're not a crutch, right? It doesn't mean you're not pulling. It is one of the most important and imperative aspects of my business is pulling my customers. I want to know what they want. I want feedback. What's working? What's not? These are very real calculations. These are numbers. But at the end of the day, they don't detract from my own intuition. And there are pieces of the business that are driven entirely by that. I know that health and nutrition has impacted your journey and how you sort of healed yourself with a lot of mental work that you've done as well. And there's a lot of different frameworks in the book. These speak about that are healing frameworks. So maybe speak about some of the more successful ones. The ones that have had the biggest impact on you. Things in defining boundaries, first of all, learning how to define boundaries, because that not only informs who you work with in business, but who you let into your life in general, being able to say no without feeling like you need to justify it. No is just no sometimes. I am not available for that commitment. I'm not available for that networking event. I'm not going to show up at this party. I don't need to explain why. I might choose my whole life. Absolutely. I really struggled with that. But being able to trust that my inner guidance and communication is true for me, not be true for you. It's true for me and run my life based on what feels right in my body is absolutely paramount. Sleep. I wrote an entire chapter on sleep. I think sleep is huge. And I think part of this kind of overworking mentality of if we work longer hours and if we got in grind through it, it's like you know, for me, that isn't how I'm most productive. I am most productive when I sleep eight hours. And then I wake up energized and I actually have the capacity to recognize where my energy should go and where it should energy allocation in general is a huge conversation. Where are you channeling your energy? Where are you investing your emotions, your ideas, your time? These are huge. And sometimes we can't accurately navigate the answers to those questions if we're tired. We're coming from a place of deficit. So that is huge. Learning how to self-soothe. I talk a lot about this. It sounds like a babyish thing. And it is. As adults, many of us are children walking around in adult bodies. And so we're having tantrums. We're feeling unwanted. We're feeling of we're not feeling as successful as the other person in the room. You could be a self-made good-jillionaire with the most successful company in your city or town. And then you go to an event and you're on a panel with four other people who have accomplished more in quotes, you know, so to speak. And then suddenly feel like a loser. And it's like we're terrible sometimes to ourselves. Part of how I learned to soothe myself was by talking to my children. You're okay. Or I can see you're having a really hard time right now. That feels really tough. Are you sad? Is what you're feeling sad? You seem really angry. Like we sometimes help you. How does that help you? It seems like you're being a great parent and you're after that it's your kid. Because this is how I've learned to speak to myself. When I'm in a room full of very successful people who are expecting a lot of me, how I sometimes talk to myself is the way I would talk to my child in the simplest most efficient and not not convoluted terms. Which is like you're okay. You've got this. You're you're feeling scared. And wow, like all you need to do is show up and be yourself. I mean the things I tell my kids, they apply to us as it doesn't matter how much money you make. It doesn't matter how six of like we all need to be talking to ourselves this way, right? It's the simplest thing sometimes in terms of communication. I think that so true. Well, I think that sometimes we just overcomplicate lessons and ideas that we already knew we already knew. I see a lot of I see a lot of that. I feel like we're always right now I feel like everybody is always seeking new ideas and new wisdom to help improve their life, help improve their relationships, whatever. But at the end of the day, I think we all know what we have to do. We almost look, we almost accumulate information as a crutch to not actually do the work that should be so much over research. So much. Yeah. And what I'll say is like there's a perfectionistic sort of thing that can like and I have an entire book on softening perfectionism because I'm a perfectionist. And perfection isn't a real thing. It doesn't exist. It's created by us to make ourselves not feel worthy and valuable. There is no perfect thing or perfect person out there. It's not real. So what we can do is our best at any given moment in time with the information we have. And then as you begin to move into the reality of what you're trying and what you're experimenting with and what you're discovering, you adapt, you amend, you reformulate, you rethink, right? So you need to sometimes take action to even know what the problems are that you need to solve for yourself and your customers. If you're, you could do all the research in the world. And then you jump in there and the real life way that this plays out is so different from the theoretical thing that you envisioned, right? Or you're, you have new data, right? So you're constantly having to recalibrate what's, you know, what your approach is based on what's happening in a real time. And you just have to get your hands dirty. And to do that, you need to give yourself permission to make mistakes and to fail. Because that's just information. Like to me failing doesn't even exist. It's just more information about what's working and what's not so you can recalibrate. Sometimes I have a lot of friends in different businesses, very, very successful businesses and businesses that have been incredibly unsuccessful in the ways that we tend to measure success in a quantifiable, you know, way. And by the way, some of my friends who had the businesses that flopped because they flopped had the idea to do the next great thing or learn something that was like the pivotal key in how they now live their entire lives. But, you know, if we're not willing to get in there and figure it out in a way that feels really messy, like we probably won't get as far as we could. You might get very far, but you might not get as far as you would. And I think we were talking about this earlier, Scott, before you press record. But trusting in your resilience and trusting that your identity, who you are fundamentally in your being, your value, your worth, it has nothing to do with the outcome of your business or of your success. Like those are two completely separate independent things. You're 100% worthy and valuable because you're a human who exists period. The moment you were born, you had 100% of your value. You can't add to that. You can't subtract from it. The rest is icing on the cake. The rest are just the ways in which we're playing on a line. You know, you know, it's easy to say, but you know, how hard it is for especially for an entrepreneur, somebody to remove their self worth from the business and understand that if they're business doesn't succeed, it's not a hit on their self worth as a human being. That is such an incredibly hard concept. It's not a hard concept to understand. It's a hard concept to live. But the word concept is also cerebral and it's also left hemisphere. It's not even a concept. It's it's an internalization. It's an emotional scaffolding and construct that our worth is contingent on what we produce and how people perceive us and the levels of success that we define based on these really arbitrary standards. Like I don't care how much money you make Scott. Like I don't care how many from father yet. Like it's amazing. I'm connecting with you as a human. I think you're an amazing priceless individual who has a lot to offer in your being as a human as a soul. And what motivates us to create I believe ideally would be just desire to do something like completely wonderful and amazing. And as a consequence of that other people benefit. Success sometimes happens because our motivation isn't to prove that we're enough or that we're worthy. It's to just create from a very pure place for the love of creating. I think that there's an idea that I love and it's sort of very simple idea but whatever it is that you're trying to build. Give it minimum 10 years of your life. And the reason why I like that idea first of all because it increases the chances of success significantly. But second of all if you can commit 10 years of your life to something not only will you most likely be financially successful by some quantifiable metric and how we how we interpret and define success as society to some degree. But also when you can commit to something that long it just means that you're in it for reasons outside of money which ironically will end up leading to money. That's the thing. I can't not write books right? Like no period. Like no one maybe no one will read them. That's okay with me. It's not going to keep me from writing exactly. I sing to myself. No one is listening to me at this point. I used to be on a stage. I had a band. I recorded music. People came. I had there was an audience. No one is hearing me in the shower and I will never stop singing because it lights up my soul. I'm not doing it for anyone else. Because what? Because I'm singing for the love of it in my house. My daughter has absorbed my music and now she's a singer herself. I love that. It's amazing how when we're energized by what we love we set the people around us on fire. Yeah, and you can tell too. You can tell when somebody is actually living the life that they want to live. It's an inspiration. We all want to feel good. That's a thing. Like what you're looking for isn't really success. It's a feeling. It's an experience, right? So like if you can identify what that is your one step closer I think to living a meaningful and purposeful life. I think so too. I want to feel authentically expressed. I want to feel a creative freedom and passion. Like there are these things I want to feel and as a consequence of that I create and I continue to broaden the base of what I'm doing and what I'm pursuing professionally and entrepreneurially but it's really motivated by this deeper place. I've thought about this a lot even with the podcast because this has probably been the quote unquote hardest thing that I've ever built in terms of revenue. It's much easier. I could go and launch a new product tomorrow and spin up a Shopify store or I could partner with a developer and spin up an app and I like I know how to build a business from scratch. So I could make a lot more money doing that in the first six months than I probably done with the podcast but the podcast I really enjoy because for me I get to meet some of the coolest people in the world who get to have great conversations and it's much more fulfilling than watching numbers in a stripe account. Right. I don't give you love doing it. People are listening exactly and don't get me wrong. Like there's some podcasts that have hundred million dollar Spotify contracts and there's like there's money in this game too but for me I rather make money and spend a little bit more time building something that I actually enjoy doing then just doing something just from now. I get that that's a a place of privilege that I come from and that's that's something that not everybody can afford. So people have to worry about rent next month and food to like this afternoon but I'm just saying that there's ways to structure your life that if you play this long game with something that you enjoy and it doesn't doesn't mean you're quitting your job. It doesn't mean you're putting your life at risk. It doesn't mean you're putting your your livelihood at risk but if you can find a way to work your nine to five and to build something on the side even for the couple hours if you put enough time and energy into that thing over a period of time and if you love it enough you'll find a way to become successful. If you love it enough you can't not do it and that's kind of how you know I think if something is your calling or one of your callings because many of us have many callings. Yeah. There are different stages of our lives. If you can't let it go if you're relentless about it you're probably meant to do it. It may just not be the right time. Yeah. At timing is everything. I mean when when I when I when I was starting to write by the way I didn't have any time. I had when I wrote my first book I my son was four months old. This was a book that I didn't even include in the other books because no one will I hope it never sees the light of time. It was a passive project for sure. But I was literally writing while I was cooking dinner while I was holding him and he was taking a two-hour nap in my arms I was doing little voice memos into my phone. I was accessing I was I was touching the dream right like in these my new small ways at the time maybe felt insignificant but five months later I had a novel and I didn't I never sat at that time I did not have the luxury of sitting down and just writing okay so like people with full-time jobs have to pay the bills where can you touch the other dream in what capacity can you make contact with it doesn't have to be every day if that if that's not within grasp don't wait until you can do it every day if people are saying well you need this many hours a day and there's much time like then don't don't make that you know a requirement just but begin to think about where in your life can you take advantage of and seize opportunities to connect with that bigger dream and that bigger purpose it doesn't have to look perfect you don't have to have a room with a view it can be very scrappy and very resourceful and and and very organic we're talking about a lot of a lot of mindset and a lot of things that can heal you and heal your mind and some sort of more I guess that's a great word I was I'm curious because I'm sure that you have opinion on this because you're so into like physical health and wellness and the products you consume and the environment you interact with so maybe just give people some some insight as to you know what you put into your body on your body surround yourself with how does that impact your health your wellness your wellness your mind any of that yeah I mean I do try to eat organically I drink a ton of water I take my supplements I mean I have a supplement company I I create what I want to take for myself and I think movements really important I think movements also very important for creativity in the mind I don't have a set exercise routine I don't go to a gym I'm not super and just wet and steel I think if you watch the blue zone documentary on Netflix it's so fascinating there's only one left now I think because I'm not mistaken that's really sad and there's only one yeah I said blue zone actually I meant to say blue zones but maybe like intuitively I was tapping the fact yeah no I'm not I think it's in California I think there's one left in the world oh yes it's a religious right environment right it's interesting um what they find or what they found with the blue zones is that the areas of the world where people live the longest they're moving quite a bit throughout the day right they're not as stationary as we tend to be in our society and it's a problem for people sitting at desks all day and not moving and also like a lot of my best ideas come when I'm not at my computer so I'll be writing or working I'll step away from my computer to peel an apple and it's like boom there's the answer right and it's not that I'm not working on finding a solution to the problem it's just that I find that when I stop overthinking it usually the answers come to me I just want to take a second and thank cornbread ham for supporting today's episode now cornbread ham CBD gummies have been this really nice addition to my wellness toolkit I don't use them every day just when I want to win wine after those extra busy weeks but they're perfect for those moments when you want to take the edge off and just find your balance really just shut off from work and what makes them special is how cornbread ham props them they only use a flower of USDA organic hamplants that's the best part for the purest most potent experience no fillers no artificial fluff just clean full spectrum goodness and delicious watermelon berry and peach flavor I keep them in my night stand for those moments when I just need a little extra help relaxing and I love how transparent they are too every batch is third party lab tests it's you know exactly what you're getting and they put together a special offer for all success story podcast listeners all listeners can save 30% off their first order just head to cornbread ham dot com slash success and use code success at checkout that's cornbread ham dot com slash success code success for 30% off your first order of these amazing dummies the house podcast network is a success story partner now if you like success story you're going to love other podcasts in the hub spot podcast network one of my personal favorites is i digress hosted by my boy Troy sandwich each show is under 30 minutes i digress helps eliminate complexity complications of confusion in your business with frameworks and strategies to achieve true scalable and sustainable success if you're an entrepreneur building anything you need to listen to i digress this is one of the most useful business podcast trust me go do yourself a favor and listen to i digress wherever you get your podcasts i want to i want to talk a little bit about your family motherhood because you bring that up a little bit in the book as well as how that's impacted you and it's influenced your approach to healing but speak to me about i mean you just you had a daughter i say just you look you look 35 i said you had a daughter at 35 you look younger than that but you had a daughter at 35 and some trauma memory surfaced when you had your daughter at 35 so speak to me about that part of your life why that even happened because that if that happens to someone else who's listening that could be like why are these memories from my past coming up when i'm having a kid what do i do with this feeling of this emotion but yeah i just want to understand how that particular moment shaped your approach to healing how motherhood shaped your approach to healing what it forced you to to understand about yourself all of it right well i think you know patterns can be intergenerational so if we're not aware of how we're living our lives or why we're making certain decisions we pass that ignorance down to our children right like everything we do they're watching so i could say to my child you're safe you know everything's fine and then if i'm in a chronic state of anxiety or highly overwhelmed all the time and she sees that i'm unsettled and that i don't have the ability to calm myself down doesn't really matter what i tell her she's not going to believe me because she's she is absorbing the message that fundamentally she's unsafe because she can see that i don't feel unsafe even if i'm telling her words that should on some level inform herself sense of safety and i hate to say it but when you have kids a lot of your unprocessed trauma even things that you thought you had worked through surfaces because i believe because you see how vulnerable they are and the most vulnerable parts of you surface so the times in your life where you felt the most helpless and out of control and powerless tend to rise to consciousness and it could be something as simple as and this it's not simple and i i don't like that i use that word but it could be something as uh you know as every day as a mother who when you were crying said you know you're fine get over it right because like that informs how you parent yourself you then grow up to be a person who isn't feeling fine and says i'm fine i'm fine i'm fine until you're not fine and that's what happened to me in nineteen right like i was fine yeah because i was telling her when i was fine until i wasn't fine right so i i feel like the vulnerability of our children in many ways is an access point almost like a portal in a sense and can take us back in time to the parts of our lives or we felt the most out of control and that's what happened with you and it's about happened with me and it's as my children continue to grow and evolved i am learning all of these other access points right like so for instance my son who is so massively creative and just he's like an absolute genius in a lot of ways but very honest in how he presents so he doesn't care what people think of him he's it's the idea it's the movement it's the energy he's just out there with everything with his feelings with his thoughts his ideas his creativity and there's some piece there's still some unhealed piece of me that for all the work i've done with honesty is like oh you shouldn't say that in front of that person or oh i don't like that they're seeing you have this tantrum right like it's embarrassing to me that's how i feel and i i don't like that i don't like that i'm looking at my son have a danger in going like oh goodness what will people think right because what i want more than anything is to is for him to have access to the freedom that comes with that level of honesty that we suffocate as we get older and learn to cope and learn to behave and and present um but you know at different ages you realize where you still have some areas uh where growth is definitely possible one idea that i really want to unpack is you've spoken a lot about setting boundaries which is very important and even setting boundaries and miss something your own family to a degree because that's also important but with anybody your family your business partners you still have to have an authentic relationship with them so how do you manage setting boundaries plus still building a deep oh i think i think actually you've juxtaposed things that are on the same team on the same side explain you have more authentic relationships with people when you're authentically creating your boundaries so when i'm honest about my needs and trust that you can receive them not personalize them and implement them in a way that's healthy for both of us everyone wins right and there's reciprocity there so if you create your boundary with first of all i trust if you're a person who's creating boundaries and in the habit and routine of creating boundaries i trust that you mean what you say when i trust that you mean what you say and believe you there's freedom for both of us right i'm not guessing i'm not walking on eggshells i'm not tiptoeing i'm not having to ask you three times i understand that you're a person who is speaking and communicating your truth based on your real-time needs and desires so first and foremost there's that then there's this thing of how do we fully connect with others when we're not being honest we can't right so i will say to my husband often i am afraid of disappointing you right now i know that so first i just kind of name the thing that i'm afraid of because that helps me clear the air for myself more than him even i say i want to be the fun wife right now and i want to go out and party with you and go to the hot new restaurant and do the thing and feel alive and be the way we were you know when we were dating and right now i can't do that and here's why what i need is to be in bed watching alian make the alian's at eight p.m. so that i can wake up and feel okay tomorrow right and because i've like named my fear and i'm also like aware of his expectations and desires and i'm not like not even interested in them i'm i'm deeply aware of them but also able to state what i really need were then in conversation and working as a team to first meet our own needs and then meet the needs of the other person right and there is a certain level as we know of compromise and sacrifice in any relationship right like if i want to stay in bed every single night which i do same same same maybe at some point i will have to surrender to going out on a night where i don't feel like you know that's the thing that i would love most to do but it's not every night and most of the time i'm taking care of myself you know and then when we do go out and have that intimate quality time it's really meaningful and i'm really present so the thing about not creating boundaries is that when you show up because you feel like you have to or you're obligated to or you're afraid of disappointing or angering someone else or you fear the reaction you're not even showing up as the version of yourself they want you to be so nobody would they're ironic isn't that right like when i show up because i'm excited to be there i'm a lot more fun when we do go on dates like i'm a riot you know like you want to be pleasurable to be around you're not you're not you haven't built up all this resentment and your actions and i'm not exhausted and feeling like i'm doing this for you and i never take care of myself and where am i in the equation right like like i said in any relationship they're going to be like i'm a mother of two children i spend a lot of time doing things i don't want to do so again like this isn't a surgery i'm not creating a boundary that says i will not slice your apple or take you to school right there's a lot of rinse and repeat to life that is just kind of outside of the bounds of choice in family but there's a lot that actually is a choice like for instance you know me coming here today i have my in-laws watching my daughter she wanted me to take her out and i said you know mommy has this really exciting opportunity and i explained what i was doing and what's so interesting is that she was disappointed at first that i wasn't going to be with her and then she got really excited for me and now i get to go home and tell her about this incredible experience i had with you scott so in a way it's like other people ultimately benefit when we're living our best lives as well and so creating that boundary in the short term while it might feel uncomfortable also inspires everyone around us to live their best lives what do you think causes people pleasing is it fear i think it's fear of being rejected not accepted or having people withdraw love attention support material resources i mean think about how the exchanges go as children i do x i get z i do you well on the test i get an a i drop my ice cream mommy yells you know we have in so many ways internalized you know action and reward speech and reward speech and punishment you know if i say this i'll get in trouble but if i say that i won't and there's safety associated you know with all of this so the thing that i ask myself when i'm afraid of creating a boundary is what am i afraid of losing and often it's respect it's if people thinking that i'm x y or z thing i want them to think of me and i frankly am wanting to control how other people perceive me so if i if i'm in the space of wanting to control what other people think i'm not making an authentic decision for myself right i'm a prisoner to this paradigm of trying to please but it starts very young like if i do x y or z i'll get in trouble and then attention is withdrawn love is withdrawn admiration is withdrawn right so even again as an adult talking to myself the way i would a child wow i i really don't want my sister to think i'm x y or z if i do say this or don't do that and then comforting myself but i know that i'm lovable likeable and worthy of attention and good things even if i don't make other people happy or even if they think whatever thing they're going to think that's outside of my control and it all is anyway it's all an illusion that we can control what other people think anyway right so it's it's really i think very primal when you boil it all down those initial roots that grow into us and and plant you know are planted at such a young age and grow into these trees of like if we say the right things and do the right things will be safe because we can guarantee that the people around us will behave this way they'll be nice to the like us they'll give us stuff they'll invite us to the party it's so young you know it's so primal but listen if if you can if you can sort of reconcile all these thoughts that first of all you are enough and the worst case scenario that you envision happening will most likely not even happen and it's very freeing because then you don't you don't operate you don't operate with fear going through life you can take control of of what you actually want to achieve so much of anxiety is our imagination it's our imagination playing a mean game and thinking about the worst possible case scenario that's what creates anxiety right it's wanting to control the unknown and feeling like if we can micromanage everything will stay safe in the opposite is true what gives us access to emotional freedom and peace is letting go of trying to control and micromanage anything and everyone around us and just trusting that if even the worst case scenario happens let's say it does yeah you're still lovable you'll be okay you know you you will be able to give yourself the nourishment internally and the guidance you need and require to pick yourself up and move on what would be we spoke about a lot of different ideas and be your embossing just in your life as well what would be an idea that we haven't gone into or a question that I should have asked that I didn't well you've asked a lot of questions um I think the question that a lot of people have is fundamentally like am I okay and it's the simplest question like we're wandering around at the end of the day just wanting to know we're going to be okay right so I think that when push comes to shove I provide all of these tools I there are so many practical strategies in my book and I have an entire workbook on my personal site hello shana.com that will give you more application than you ever would want possible and at the end of the day we all just want to hear that we're okay and the truth is we are we don't have to be perfect moving into anything we don't have to have the right answers most of the time we don't have the right answers so the question you can ask me is how do we know that we're okay and how we know is that we believe that we are 100% valuable at birth as I said before and nothing can add to or subtract from our value if we really not just know that in our conscious minds but feel it in our bodies it's okay to fail it's okay in business for things not to go your way you will make another way there will be a brand new light an idea something will come into mind someone will approach you right and also just kind of making ourselves available for opportunity is something else that I would love to pass along to your listeners I was here in Miami because I was displaced from my home by the fire and had this opportunity to meet you because of that right and I was available for that opportunity and you so generously it is crazy how it's all came together it is and it really the root of this was a catastrophe an actual crisis and and and there's this little piece of gold in it right like this beautiful conversation well now now I would I made a connection that I would have never made before yes and I'm here to help you with your and I appreciate and your life for suit I mean it is it is wild sometimes how how life works out it's I mean I have no idea now I'm going to meet your husband and you'll meet not my network and and I'll meet your network you're going to come over for dinner and life is strange life is very strange how how it all works out and it's so important to be open yes to opportunity some of the most pivotal conversations I've ever had in my life where people who don't even know they've changed my life it happened in a taxi once this guy changed my life like indefinitely right this this taxi driver in New York City and guess what like I was there in that moment in time this is the one you're talking about before you no that was the Uber driver who took me here to see you today oh today yeah no this was years ago years ago I had gone through this breakup that felt like the end of my life because I was in my 20s I was super alive this guy and and I was I got into a car sniveling you know drenched with my own tears and completely inconsolable just gushing in the backseat of this of this taxi driver and kind of was like tentatively peeking at me through the mirror really not knowing how to respond and he goes are you okay I was like yes but I want to do this you know breakup and I'm just now I don't know if I'll ever meet someone I love as much again and he goes oh he let you go it was liberation you were liberated and I just stopped in my track and said what he goes this was liberation he let you go he doesn't deserve you and I thought to myself oh my goodness I was thinking of this as even though I did the breaking up you know I convinced myself that ultimately I broke up with him because of this is you know because of his rejecting me in this other way and whatever point is he reframed it for me same situation a breakup felt catastrophic suddenly I went from being rejected to being liberated and this was actually a very powerful day guess what six weeks later I met my husband okay I would not have met my husband I don't think if it were not for that taxi driver because I was very close to going back and just making it all work again like had I not gotten into that cab I don't think I would have met my husband so we never know where sources of inspiration will come from I wish I had this man's name I want so badly to tell him how the story ended but just being available in life for people to support you influence you give you the right listening to yeah you know next introduction or idea it's invaluable I love it if you wanted to actually I'll ask you this first and then we can then I'll ask a couple last questions to close it out but where do you want people to go you mentioned the website other social that you want to send people to so the book you are the boss of you can be found on amazon.com and I've created this workbook that's my gift to you at my website my personal website hello shana h-e-l-l-o-s-h-a-u-n-a dot com hello shana i'll put that in the shana yes thank you I spelling this faulty even with my own name apparently it's lunchtime there's a caloric deficit my brain is dwindling rapidly and my personal instagram is at shana britain ham writer and my business insta is at alaya dot naturals perfect okay so put that on the show notes if you wanted to if you know you mentioned I guess the the one question that I didn't ask you was you know am I am I enough and but would be a one last bit of wisdom that you want to leave the audience with I want the audience to know that anything that feels hard will one day feel easier I really believe that I believe deeply that we can be on a path to experiencing a level of emotional freedom that even when hard things come up in life make life feel really exciting and really joyful and really abundant and really inspired and so if you're devastated because your startup didn't work out and maybe you invested all your funds in this one way or your team got dismantled or you don't even know what you want to pursue next and you're feeling like what's wrong with me that I don't know we even what I want to do in my life like all of that's okay it's all human it's all natural and there is a way forward and there are tools that can help and support you and life will get better and better and better I do deeply believe that in my heart and that's a huge part of why I wrote this book is because my life has continued to evolve as I've worked the tools that I share as I've questioned myself like if I'm having a moment of self doubt just questioning that like every thought I think isn't necessarily true right it's real but it may not be true like these small ways of sort of finessing and maneuvering our mindset and our mind fam they can impact our lives substantially and wherever you are today in your life emotionally fiscally you know mentally I know in my heart that you will be at an even better place in five years from now if you just continue to give yourself permission to access your feelings come for yourself in moments where you feel like you're not enough and be ignited by passion out of all the things that you've learned in your life and all the different things you've accomplished say you could only pass on one lesson to your kids the most important lesson what would that lesson be be gentle with yourself be kind with yourself you know forgive yourself quickly don't dwell on mistakes things you should have said should have known could have done better that compassion that we have for ourselves drives our ability to support and hold space for other people and their vulnerability and their humanity and how raw and weird it is to be on this planet it's very hard to be human or doesn't you know regardless of your circumstances it's just we're all really fumbling and trying to figure it out day by day and so what I would want most deeply for my children and what I try to instill them now is just a sense of self love and self care which is like it's okay to be human it's okay to be messy you get to be raw be kind to yourself