How to Sh8peshift Through Life Embracing Your Contradictions As Your Super Power

Feeling stuck in the grind? It’s time to flip the script. This episode uncovers how to  break free from overwhelm and step into ease by aligning your life with your zone of genius and values. Say goodbye to overwhelm and hello to thriving on your own terms.

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Chapters

• 0:00 The Illusion of the American Dream
• 5:50 The Birth of the Inner Shapeshifter
• 10:19 Embracing Authenticity and Creativity
• 17:02 Navigating Life's Changes and Challenges
• 23:25 The Importance of Unique Gifts
• 30:50 Shapeshifting Through Life's Journey

Transcript

Welcome back, shapeshifters. Say goodbye to overwhelm and hello to thriving on your own terms. So I was raised to believe that if I checked off the proper boxes in life, then that life would equal a life of peace, success, and fulfillment. I went to college, I got a degree, I went back for an advanced degree. Did not finish that one, did two years of law school.

Ended up moving back to my childhood home of Oakland, California, where I found a partnership that eventually became a marriage. had a child. We bought our first home. I was living what many people would think was the American dream. I had a successful marriage and family and job. And I kind of checked off all the boxes in life and

I found myself completely miserable. There was this person inside of me that I could see in my daydreams, I could see in my night dreams, and she was vibrant and she was living this purpose-driven life and she had more artistic talents that she shared with the world and more creativity. I would even see people who I felt like they seemed more free, they seemed like they are able to create their life rather than kind of being caught up in this linear nine to five. And even though I had achieved what many of my parents, my family and friends thought was success, I was unfulfilled. I wanted to be that person who I saw in my daydreams and my night dreams And it's something that I took into my individual prayers and my own growth process. And I prayed that God would grant me a life that truly represented the inside of who I was on the outside. Even my dressing, I wanted to be more bold. And I just, I didn't know where to begin. And they often say, be careful what you ask for because you just might get it. And it seemed like in the blink of an eye, every aspect of my life turned upside down. I lost funding for my organization. This was in the middle of a big economic recession.

And because of that, I lost my job, but I also had to lay off an amazing group of young people who were working in the community for my nonprofit. My marriage was starting to be strained and the magic, the spark, if you will, just was kind of starting to dwindle and we were at a crossroads if we were even going to be together.

It was even more compounded in my relationship because my relationship, I also worked with my partner. I was in a musical group with my partner. So it also meant that my creative project was now in question. And so that was shifting. And part of that recession ended up in us being victims of the foreclosure crisis. This is like 2008, 2009. So lost our home, which we had spent all of our life savings into. And just to put the cherry on top, because you know how the universe works, it's just like, I'm going to give it all to you. We were sharing a vehicle, my ex-husband and I, and whoever had the child had the vehicle. And so I started biking around town, had no health insurance, ended up having a bike accident which scarred me in the middle of my face, right under my nose. I have a permanent scar for the rest of my life just to remind myself of that time, which at the time completely traumatized me. Not only was I left with a $10,000 emergency room bill and they literally just gave me like Tylenol, I also then had to confront this idea of beauty, who I was, what I looked like, know, who am I with this scar on my face. And it just wasn't one of those like simple scars. This was a scar that when they looked at it in the emergency room, they were like, yeah.

We don't really want to give you stitches. This just kind of has to heal on its own. So you can imagine if you've ever had a deep scar, deep wounds, that it goes through phases, right? It doesn't just start scabbing. It might get a little pussy. It's inflamed. You my whole lip was inflamed. It was in such a prominent place that even putting a band-aid or a bandage over it just looked crazy because I now have a bandage in the middle of my face and they were like, you don't want to put a bandage on your face. You want to give it air and put the proper ointments on. So I just had to surrender and I just had to walk around in this whole completely new reality of even who I was and what I looked like. And every time I looked in the mirror, I was reminded about that. And it's at that time when I say my inner shapeshifter was born, where I had to rely on something that I could not physically hold onto, something that was beyond the physical realm. Because every part of my identity as a mother, as a homeowner, as a married woman, as an entrepreneur, as an artist, even my ideas of beauty were shaken. They were literally turned upside down. And I had to find who I was when all of those things are no longer holding you up. Who are you? And I always say that water became my greatest teacher. Water, as we know, makes up the majority of the planet. Water makes up the majority of our bodies. And that is where this idea, this moniker, this mantra, this North Star, if you will, of shape-shifting came through. Where I decided that I was no longer going to compartmentalize all of my gifts. I was going to embrace my contradictions. I was going to allow all of my different interests and gifts to come forward, to share them. That the person that cared about God and had a spiritual practice was going to show up in the workplace. It didn't mean I was trying to convert people, but if I'm saying, I'm praying or I'm going on this retreat, I'm not hiding it, right? The person that was on stage and performing in front of masses of people also got to show up as a mother, got to show up as a businesswoman. That my motherhood journey didn't mean that I stopped my creative journey. That on the contrary, my daughter was at every rehearsal, she was in the studio, she's been to multiple shows, she got to see that this is what her mom is on. And I just decided that I was going to be my full authentic self. I even sent an email at one point to my whole, I just exported my Gmail account, which at the time had my creative friends and it had people who were more on, I had spiritual connections with and work colleagues that, you know, I didn't work directly with all the time. So kind of knew me from afar. And I just even sent them like, Hey, I'm reintroducing myself to you all. I'm letting you know what I'm on and what I'm about. And, you know, if they didn't like it, they could unsubscribe. But I was like, proclaiming this new identity to the world. I literally went into my closet at the time, and with my laptop and a cheap mic, I recorded my first album, Adventures of a Shapeshifter. And that whole album really is about my journey into my authenticity. And right along the same time of that, my music career started. I ended up getting a phone call from a corporation who said, hey, look, we've seen your community work. My organization was the first to throw the first solar powered hip hop concert in the Bay Area. They said, we love this environmental sustainability work that you're doing. We're actually launching a sustainability campaign on historically black colleges and universities. And we want you and your business partner to be part of it, who was a good sister friend of mine at the time. So I literally had to run out. We had to run out to create an LLC just to get our first contract because the contract came knocking at our door. that contract they gave, was Toyota was the company and they ended up giving me a free vehicle. Hello. I had a free vehicle and that contract was for six years. So for six years. I had a brand new Prius that I could trade in and out every time. I ended up founding a beautiful co-working community in Oakland and that led me to found another nonprofit, a tech-focused nonprofit. My consulting business really took off. My spirituality, I really was able to kind of bring that in. That's when I really started deepening my relationship with IFA. I was performing as a successful artist. had a band. you know, years later, I was able to see that all of those parts of myself had to die, those old parts of myself, so this new person could be here. And that is really what prompted me to write my book, The Creative Entrepreneur's Guide to Self-Love, Self-Mastery, and Fearless Self-Expression, where I really go deeper into my story and talk about the tools that

I pretty much am now sharing on this podcast of how I was able to design that life, the life of my dreams. And even though we're taught that we have to fit ourselves in a box, our identity in a box, you know, I think it's beautiful that people have new language around how they express themselves, their gender expression, their relationship expression. But at the same time, I think it's important that we don't get pigeon-holed into that, that we don't kind of present our box before we present ourselves and that we embrace the fact that our boxes change. You might be married and then you may be divorced. I've been in relationships with women. I've been in relationships with men. I've had times where, you know, I've been a vegan and I've been at times where I'm eating meat. Like, I'm not just one thing. And the more that I've been able to tap into one thing has not really been an opportunity for me to step into my own authenticity. It's also been an opportunity to give me a life vest during this changing time, during this changing economy. Because when one of my positions or one job or one project falls, and this really happened during COVID, I had two others, right? So it didn't matter if one thing started sun setting because there's always something else that's coming up.

Also, I've been able to be a successful entrepreneur. I've been able to constantly have new contracts, do amazing projects, amazing work. 95 % of the time, I haven't even applied for these things. They literally come to my door. I get an email, I get a referral. Hey, we think you'd be a good fit for this or a friend. Someone in my social network refers me to a friend of a friend. Or I have people who, because they trust my work, they trust who I am.

They will refer people to me and those people want to hire me. It's even become the foundation of my coaching practice because my coaching practice sits at the intersection of spirituality, creativity and business. I feel like there's so many people in places who will coach you in your business that they won't bring in a spiritual component in. They will coach you spiritually and don't know the first thing about business. They're so business and linear, they can't step into a creative mindset.

So all of those so-called contradictions when people, including my own family members, right, questioned me, why are you doing all these different types of jobs? You haven't stayed in a position long enough. know, many of the jobs that I've had, I've created. I am a, you know, constant founder. And, you know, there's beauty in being a founder because you get to find a lot of things, but, you know, it doesn't always come with a 401k. Some businesses are successful, some aren't.

Right? And so it means that when people are looking for that kind of traditional track record and even family members, it can feel like you're unstable. People can look at you and question, okay, what exactly are you doing? Let alone when I decided that I was going to pick up and leave the country, right? And I moved to Mexico City. It seemed like it wasn't stable. Well, wait, you're supposed to have this one job and you're supposed to you know, almost buy a home and you don't have real estate and you don't have assets, you don't have this level of retirement that you should have. But when I look around at so many of my peers and my quality of life, my peace of mind, my level of purpose, the work that I get to wake up every day and do, my health, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, it is at the highest level that it's ever been.

And it's at that level because I have not been willing to compartmentalize and cut off critical parts of who I am in order to monetize them in society. And so that also means part of being a shapeshifter is that we can't always think that something is not valuable because we can't monetize it.

You know, there were times where I was working a full-time job, a side hustle, and I was doing my music. And believe me, even though I have paid music gigs, music was not the biggest revenue stream, right? It was the smallest. But it still fueled my passion. It fueled my creative mindset. It allowed me to bring a nuance into the business world and into the work world.

It allowed me to fuse those communities. It allowed me to bring a new perspective and fresh ideas. And the same thing goes for the work that I do in business, because I'm a creative. All of those things feed each other. And now it's to the point where my social network is so unique and complex that it becomes an asset when I am working with clients, because I can bring in all of these different worlds of mind and they can become bridges to new opportunities for understanding. As we know in permaculture, we're taught that the edges are these beautiful and biodiverse spaces where the river meets the ocean. The two different types of spaces come together, they create their own unique biodiversity. And you are no different, Shapeshifter. When you bring all of your gifts to the world, whether you're able to monetize them or not. And it doesn't mean that you're doing everything at the same time, right? That is where phasing working in seasons, there might be times that are more high impact for work and less impact for business or more high impact for family or more low impacts for family or vice versa. Whatever it is in between, it doesn't mean that everything is at a 10 all year.

Some projects might be on the back burner. Some projects might be, I'm keeping them warm. Some things are hot, hot, hot. And I'm constantly doing that dance, doing that dance like water, because we know that water can take the shape of any form. And by taking the shape of any form, it creates its own momentum. And it's that momentum that I've now seeded in the universal soil of the universe for two decades that has literally got me to where I am now where I get to wake up every day and do the work that I love. So don't ever let anybody tell you that you have to fit into a box. Don't strip yourself of your unique gifts in order to achieve this thing, because sometimes it's that unique gift that maybe will allow you to achieve it faster, that maybe will allow you to feel more peace and enjoy it. Because at the end of the day, your peace is priceless.

And I can't tell you of all the people that who chase the dollar and end up sick, end up with a family crisis, relationship crisis, put all their eggs into this one identity of who they think they are and they can't reinvent themselves. At this point in my life, and I'm over 40 but not 50 yet, I literally have probably had at least three to four lives. And I'm not afraid to start my life all over. And the more that I'm willing to allow a part of me to die and a new part of me to emerge, and I'm able to rebuild and build up my foundation even bigger than it was before, gives me a level of confidence, gives me a level of resilience that it really doesn't matter at this point what situation that you put me in, I know I'm gonna thrive.

Even when I decided to leave America and start a completely new life in another country and people thought I was crazy. And what I realized is my life is even better now than it was before. But if I hadn't been willing to take the leap, if I wasn't willing to trust my own intuition, if I didn't understand that within me was the uniqueness that wherever I landed, I was going to be okay. And here's the key. You're not going to get to see the full plan.

A lot of times we don't move forward in light is because we want to see the bank account look a certain way. I'm not saying don't look at the bank account, but I'm saying don't necessarily rely on that. We want to have a guarantee. We want to know, okay, this is guaranteed, that is guaranteed, this is guaranteed. And what I've found in life is my life has been successful by following the breadcrumbs. That when I have a level of self-awareness to hear spirit talk to me and tell me, you know what, you need to do this. Okay, let me do this. I don't know where this is going to lead, but I'm going to just be obedient and do that. Then when I get to that place, it's like a new portal opens and it's like, you should do this. And I do it. And then they're like, you align, you meet a new person who has another opportunity, right? So it's the breadcrumbs that have allowed me to navigate.

Another analogy you could think about is if you've ever driven on a country road that does not have streetlights and you have your high beams on and you know that really all you can see is what's in front of you. You can't really see to the left. You can't see to the right. It's pitch black. You've just got to trust that, I can see this far ahead. I know the road is clear for this particular portion. I don't know what's down the road, but I'm trusting this process and I know when I get there, if there's something in the road, I can move around it, I can turn around, I can navigate, right? And so we have to be willing to take risks. We have to be willing to trust our own uniqueness. As I said before, we come from heaven, but earth is the marketplace. And earth is the marketplace because you have your own unique gifts to bring to the world.

And this is the detriment that we do with our children. And this is what happened to all of us is that we deny people's unique gifts. We throw them into boxes. Even when you think about a school, when you think about a classroom, when you think about a desk, and you think about a row, it's like box, box, box, right? We give you a little freedom in kindergarten, maybe first grade, but after that, boom, you're in the row, you're in the box. And you then are handed a list saying, doctor, lawyer, engineer, da, da, da, da, da, da, one.

And then that's it. And we know with us exactly the opposite of what Indigenous communities did. That when a mother became pregnant in the village, one of the first things that they would do is they would bring the medicine men and women together and they would do a divination over that child while it was still in the womb of the mother. And they would talk to that child because they understood that that child, one, was an ancestor returned, and two, had its own uniqueness.

They did not take for granted the beauty that that child added to the community because you can imagine when you're living in times that are more hunter-gatherer society or survival of the fittest, your village's ability to procreate literally is life and death. So they did not take a new child, a new pregnancy in the community lightly. And they would ask that child, what gifts have you come to share with us?

They would speak to that child directly. And so that mother would know even while that child was growing in its womb that this child has unique gifts and they would know what those unique gifts were. And then assuming that the mother was able to give birth successfully because we also know that there are spirits who come but don't make it earthbound, right? But if you made it earthbound, wow, you survived for nine months in the belly.

You survive the rites of passage of going down the birth canal and you're here. Wow, big success. And they would bring together the shamans again and they welcome this child and they say, who are you? What are your special gifts? We're here to remind you of them. And they would divine and receive the messages of what those special gifts were. And everything from that moment would be to remind that child of its uniqueness even down to its name. And this is why it is so powerful that we understand that words have power because our ancestors reminded us that words have power. They didn't give themselves random names. They gave their children names to remember what their purpose was. When you call me Zakiya you are calling me intelligent because Zakiya is a Swahili word that means intelligent. When you call me my Ifa name, Oya Dolu, you are saying Oya the one who became the head, that my destiny is to become the head. And we know that what we're taught is that life through the passage of getting through the birth canal, you forget your purpose. Through walking around in life and navigating the marketplace as you get older, you forget your purpose. But every time someone calls my name, it's a reminder, you are intelligent. You are here to become the head. So everything from the names that we name our children to they would also take that child and depending on the child's special gift, that child would apprentice with a family. So if you came to be artistic, you're gonna go live with artists in the village. If you are here to be a sports player or a wrestler or you're a builder or an architect or you're good with food or you're good with medicine, we're not just sitting on that. We know that you're already born with it.

So the purpose of education isn't to talk you out of who you are. The purpose of education is to refine and strengthen that uniqueness that you were born with. It's the opposite. We don't have to put education in you. We have to get it to come out. We have to get you to express it by giving you new language, by giving you new experiences, by giving you more exposure.

And for those of you who are in a young person's life, whether you're a parent or not, and we're going to do a whole episode on conscious parenting, the best thing that you can give your child is exposure. That I didn't have a child to say, me throw you in a box. I listened to what they gravitated towards. I watched the things that lift them up. I watched the things that they were just really, really good at. And here's the reality. The likelihood of you being mediocre at something and getting to excellence is very low. The likelihood that something that you are good at and passionate about, you can become excellent in is very high. And the problem is because we have linearly checked a box out of our own power, we're spending more time trying to get good at something we don't like we don't have a passion for, and we don't have a natural ability to do, rather than spending more of our effort on the things that we already are passionate and good at and allowing ourselves to up-level to excellence. So you literally have to expand less energy when you spend your time focused on where there is momentum. So we want to be in a place of creating momentum, of recognizing momentum.

Now does that mean they're not times I've had to take jobs or do positions or do things that I don't like? If food, clothing, and shelter is something that you are struggling with, I would say don't listen to any of this advice. This advice is for people who have basic food, clothing, and shelter taken care of. Then you can have that conversation. If you're on survival mode, you got to do what you got to do to reach a level of homeostasis And there is no judgment there.

But for those of you who already have those basic things established and you are living in a place of thinking that at this date or when this plan or when all comes together or when this amount of money is in my bank account or when this partner or when this child or in this relationship, right, some external factor is going to magically come together for you to take that leap. I promise you it's not going to happen.

That what we have to learn how to do is get into the game. And get into the game means you got to get in the field. You got to get in the market. And once you get out there, you're going to meet new people. You're going to learn new experiences. You're going to have contrast of what works and what doesn't work. You're going to gain more confidence. You're going to sharpen more skills. And part of what robs us of that is the distractions of society, the media social media that distracts us so much that we rather look and live vicariously through other people in the game and judge them, by the way, rather than doing it ourselves. Because it's a lot more easier to tell somebody what they should be doing from the sidelines than the person that's actually on the field living it. And so that level of paralysis literally is destroying us because everyone on the planet is here to fulfill their destiny. Everyone is here to fulfill their destiny. Everyone is here with their own divine assignment, with their own divine purpose. And yes, you will struggle, you will fall, but you will rise. You will stand, you will run, you will be victorious. But it's only in the act, only in the work, only going through the cycle. That you get to that victory. If you've ever run a marathon, if you've ever played a game or competed in a sport, it's not just winning that makes you feel so sweet. It's you know the level of sacrifice, all the practices that you had to go to, the rehearsals that you had to go to, the things you had to give up, the things you had to say no, that when you get to the top, you're able to reach that place of peace and in that place of confidence. So it's in the doing. And it's in the doing that we embrace our contradictions. And this is not just spiritual information that I'm giving you right now. This is literally part of the future of work, particularly of those of you who are young people or work with young people or have a young person in your life. You know, we're living in a time now where the CEO of LinkedIn said that a nine to five is going to be obsolete by like the 2040s or something, a nine to five will be obsolete, that all of us now are going to work multiple projects, people are not doing one linear thing anymore, they're gonna be working multiple projects, and we now have to compete in a global marketplace. You're not just competing against the person in your town or in your city, and most certainly in your country. People can hire talent from anywhere in the world.

And if you only focus on one thing, you're not going to be as competitive. If that one thing doesn't last, you're going to be locked out of the market. And it's that unique special sauce that is going to make you stand out in the crowd in having a track record of work and projects that you completed. As I say to those of you who have children, your children should have a portfolio of work.

And oftentimes people say, well, I don't know what I want to do. I don't know what I want to be. I don't know. I don't know. One, I would say turn off the TV, get off the social media, sit down, sit down and be still. If you don't know, it's because you can't hear. it's because if you can't hear, it's because you're too distracted. That's number one. Number two, stop thinking you have to figure out the end all be all of your whole entire life and say, What can I commit the next six to nine to 12 months to? 12 months, that's it. This year I'm working on this. That's the breadcrumbs. And allow at the end of that year, you discipline yourself, you focus in, you go hard, and allow the learning and the teaching and the next step to be revealed once that is done. And that's enough. And I promise you, I promise you, Shapeshifters, that is a foolproof way of continuing to stay aligned in what makes you come alive. So that is how to shape-shift through life, embrace your contradictions, allow all of those unique gifts that you bring to the world, whether you're monetizing them or not, bring them forward, be bold. This is the time where your medicine is critical in supporting the stewardship of the new earth. All of us have a piece of medicine.

Just like the Haitian Revolution, we brought our individual pieces. You had tribes of Congo and Dahomey meeting with Taino people, and they all came together. We're all coming together in this divine stew, in this divine spell, and we're all adding our magic. And your magic is more important now than ever. So don't give up, It's bigger than you. It's your mission. It's your purpose. It's your ministry and it's time to bring it forward. Okay, that's what I have for you today, shapeshifters. Thanks so much for listening. Until next time, keep shifting. Bye.

Supreme gratitude for tuning in today, Shapeshifters. Your presence is a gift and I truly appreciate you. If you're feeling like it's time for an energetic reset, I got you. Download my free chakra tune-up, a transformative seven-day guide to realign your energy, harmonize with nature's rhythms, and recharge your spirit. Head on over to shapeshiftyourlife.com. That's one word, S-H, the number eight, P-E-S.

ShiftYourLife.com and grab your copy today.

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