Sh8peshift Your Life

Cool, Calm & Calculated: Building Your Own Cheat Codes in a Noisy World

• Zakiya Harris aka Sh8peshifter • Season 2 • Episode 1

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In a world designed to keep us reactive, overstimulated, and distracted, cool becomes a strategy—not a personality trait. In this episode, we explore omi tútù, the Yoruba principle of cool water and neutrality, and how being the observer helps us reclaim our power. I share reflections from my recent digital detox, unpack how what we ingest shapes our spirit, and why quieting the noise is essential for clarity. We close with what it means to move calculated—working with the seasons, your personal numerology, and the Universal Year 1 energy to create your own algorithms. Think of this as a cheat code for moving with intention, protecting your focus, and building a future that’s aligned—not rushed.


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Welcome back, welcome back, shapeshifters, to season two of the Shape Shift Your Life podcast. As one of my girlfriends says, it is a new cycle of the Gregorian calendar. So happy new Gregory. I affirm that you had a restful holiday season, a beautiful time to tap into the slowness of winter.

which we are still very much in. As you can see, I've got a new look, a new vibe this year, and I'm just really excited to come to you all with another season of exciting episodes. So today's episode is all about cool, calm, and calculated. Every year, I create a new mantra for myself every Gregory year.

I say I create a new mantra for myself. And as I was thinking about what I really wanted this year to be about, this concept of cool, calm, and calculated came and I wanted to share it with you all and hopefully it will inspire you to create your own mantras, your own Norths. I feel that this concept of cool, calm, and calculated can support all of us in finding our own sheet code in this noisy, noisy world.

So I encourage you all to sit back, relax, and enjoy the show. So when we think of this idea of cool, cool is not disengagement. Cool is actually mastery. Cool is something that many of your grandparents or many of your parents might have said, you know what, man, be cool. You're doing too much, right? Be cool. This concept of omitutu in the Yoruba tradition reminds us

to put some cool water on our orrie if you have.

ever been around me and you saw me pray, you know that that's one of the first things that I pray for. Cool water to come and to cool my head. We know that water makes up the majority of our planet. We know that water makes up the majority of our bodies. We know that water is feminine in nature. Water is always taking the shape of any form. As Fela Kuti reminds us, water make no enemy. Water always knows how to find momentum. And so the ancients knew that.

When we think about this from a quantum physics or a metaphysical approach, it is connected to the frequency of neutrality. And so we know that there are multiple frequencies. Frequencies is just like a radio dial that can measure energy. And we know that the higher the frequency is, the more that it is connected to certain emotions like peace and joy and prosperity and abundance and love. And we know that the lower

the frequency that we are connected to lower vibrations such as fear, such as hopelessness, scarcity and lack. And so obviously we want to attune ourselves to the highest frequency possible. So Omitutu gives us the invitation to step into a place of neutrality, to remind ourselves that every day when we touch the

crown of our heads, when we touch the God within us, then we are cooling ourselves so that when we go out into the world, we don't allow the emotions of the world to interfere with the frequency that we have made a commitment to broadcasting. Because we know metaphysically, like attracts light.

And so if we want to attract love, if we want to attract abundance, if we want to attract joy and peace, we have to be the vibrational equivalent of that. And we also know that part of the imprints of white psychosis, of colonization, of...

having you forget your names, forget your native tongues and turn your head against your native gods is about lowering the frequency so that you are not able to tap into your own emotional and physical liberation. So this is an invitation for us this year to just stay cool, to

Be the observer when you hear someone saying something that you don't agree with. To be the observer when you find somebody that you work with just acting all out of pocket and you just feel some type of way. To embrace the coolness when you're watching.

the news or you're hearing about the new distraction of the day. How can we move into this place of neutrality? How can we move into this place of being observer? If you have watched one of my prior episodes on the concept of the chakras, we talk about how neutrality is a very, very high frequency and often it gets overshadowed because we want to be.

bliss and we want to be peace and we want to have ecstasy. But truly just to be neutral every day is a lot more harder than we may give ourselves credit for. Being cool allows us to be an observer, not reactive, not numbing ourselves out, but to be steady enough to see clearly.

When we don't immediately respond, we reclaim our agency. Neutrality doesn't become passiveness. It actually becomes a strategy. It becomes a way of not bypassing, but to take a step back. And so one of the reflections that we can do is to ask ourselves, where am I leaking energy by reacting?

Instead of observing where am I giving my power away because I feel like I have to respond when we look at society today and we look at social media and the news cycle and how quick everything is as our attention spans get shorter and shorter

our response times get shorter and shorter. And so it's almost like if there's a new distraction of the day and you haven't posted about it, you haven't talked about it, you haven't spoken about it, that somehow you're out of the loop or you're missing things. We live in a culture that is so quick to go to war, that is so quick to cancel, that is so quick to reject, that is so quick to other. And so part of our own liberation practice

is stepping into this idea of coolness, moving through the discernment that our orree, our first mind, our God heads, and listening to that inner voice to respond in a way that feels resonant for us, to respond in a way that honors our own physical body, to say that maybe I need some water right now, maybe I need to take a breath, maybe I need to take a step back.

but I don't have to move and react so quickly. So that's the first invitation, Shapeshifters, is to play with this idea of coolness. The second part of the mantra is this idea of calm. And I think that often we think calm means we can't react, that we can't necessarily be passionate. But when I'm talking about, I'm really talking about a sense of deep, deep.

As you know, we rounded out last year, last new Gregory, talking about technology and the impact that it is having on our nervous systems. And many of us went through the digital detox on the last seven days of the year. Shout out to everybody that participated. And when we finished, we came together in a short integration call.

to really just talk about what came up for us. And if I were to summarize some of the themes that came up for many of the folks that participated in the digital detox was this idea of quieting the noise. That one of the things that technology does is it becomes this static in our brains, static in our nervous system, in our bodies. It's kind of like falling asleep with the TV on or the radio on. Noise that's always in the back.

of our minds, but that's very, very present and that'll create a certain level of anxiety because it's almost like there's construction going on outside and you're trying to meditate. And so you keep trying to focus yourself to the meditation, but you can't release that this noise that's going on. And one of the things that I recognize within my own self was by being intentional and pulling myself out of social media for those seven days that

calm returned to my body, returned to my mind. There was this silence, a stillness that I had forgotten about because I had been so interconnected with these devices. But the moment that it left, I was able to sit with that resonance and it was just this precious sense of peace. And so what are the types of things that we have to do every day to secure our calm?

Coolness becomes a choice to be the observer, but we then have to move into the practice of how to maintain the calm. Auditing what we ingest, auditing what we allow to enter into our cipher, our home, our mind, our personal space. What I realized when I did enter back on social media was, you know, and here's the thing.

I use social media. Social media is a huge tool for my business. It helps me get clients. It helps me talk about the work that I'm doing. It helps me promote this podcast. So it really was a lesson again of being in this world, but not of it. But I wanted to return to it with a new level of intentionality. And more importantly, I didn't want to give up the piece that I had worked so hard for those last seven days of the year. And so one of the realizations that came to me was I need to get in and get

out with technology. Post and get out. Read my messages and get out. Check up on an address for a new restaurant or location or nail shop that I want to go to and get out. As soon as I start scrolling and moving my finger in that direction to ingest the feed, that's where I get wrong. Even to be able to be super intentional before I even open up the application. Okay.

Why are you going online right now? Why are you opening up that app? I'm opening that app for this. I even had to tell myself and still have to tell myself that because we all have been there. You open up the app, you don't even remember what you opened it up for. Now you're down a whole rabbit hole that you didn't even plan to attend to and you literally forgot what your original intention was. So knowing my intention before I open up the app.

getting in and getting out to engage, to send a message, to respond to folks that have engaged with my work. All of that is very important to me, but it's not very important to me to scroll through a feed unless I'm giving myself intentional space to do that, right? And I've done that too. Okay, I'm going to give myself X amount of time just to see what comes up. But the point here is that I'm directing it versus reacting. I'm creating my own momentum and that creates

level of calm for me. Another piece that I learned during my digital detox was really being more intentional about how I'm curating what it is I'm ingesting while I'm online. To unfollow those pages that I scroll past anyway. And here's the thing with social media, it's so diabolical.

How many of us has found ourselves following stuff and you know you did not subscribe to that. It's like, I don't even follow this shit. I'm not even just talking about like ads. I'm talking about actual people and platforms that I do not follow and now they're saying I followed them. It's like some ghost is going through following things that I haven't even followed before. So it's important to take the time to unfollow those things.

to really make sure that I'm curating my online experience in a way that really allows me to stay calm. And that means unsubscribing from some of the news, some of the things that are going on in the world. Because even when I was offline, the things that were going on in the world, people came back and told me about them anyway. Did you hear about Venezuela? Did you hear that we bombed Nigeria? Even without...

going online, I still was confronted with these current events. So curating your social media, creating intentionality about really what is the purpose, utilizing it as a tool, and ensuring that nothing gets to take your calm away, nothing gets to steal away your peace. And that allowed me to recognize that noise isn't just sound, it's actual information and it's information overload and that

Comparison and urgency culture and other people's projections just doesn't allow me to maintain my own calm. Calm required a level of boundaries. And as I used this word before, calm requires discernment. And so one of the things that I really had to sit with is what deserves access to my spirit. My spirit is currency. My spirit is sacred. And what I allow to enter into it

has to be sacred and it has to match my energy and it has to support me in the elevation or at least the maintenance of that frequency. I don't want it to dumb me down. And so it doesn't just become part of your tech hygiene. Maintaining a spirit of calmness becomes part of your spiritual hygiene. It becomes part of your spiritual practice to really clear the clutter, clear the noise.

so that we can focus on the things that we're really here to do, to live the purpose-driven life, to fulfill our destinies, to focus on the goal, to focus on the people and the things that we love, and to be able to give them our full attention, not just this multitask half-mind. We know that statistics are telling us that multitasking does not work. All multitasking does is drains our energy, and so being able to be fully present

allows you to build your own energy and allows a level of presence that allows a level of calm, that allows a level of intentionality towards what we are here to do in the world. So the last piece I want to share is this idea of calculated. When I think of calculated, I think of strategy, think of intentionality. know, 2026, as we've talked a lot about, resents this universal energy of one.

One representing initiation of sovereignty, of new cycles, of planting clean seeds. It's a time of the spark. It's a time of the catalyst. And so being able to be calculated, to work with the seasons, we're still in the season of darkness. We're still in winter. We don't have to feel a sense of urgency right now to do anything because this is the divine time that the earth

is given us to seed the soil of what it is that we want to grow. And many of you know that I actually operate my business from this perspective. I don't launch a bunch of new stuff in January because I know that energetically that's not where it's at. I actually want to receive a boost from the universe. I know that when I align myself with the cycles of nature because I am nature in action.

then I'm able to accelerate the work. I can work smarter, not harder. And so the same thing goes for you as you think about your personal goals, as you think about your professional goals, your relationship goals for yourself. How can you step into that place of being calculated? Calculated requires preparation. Calculation requires research. Calculation requires

discipline. It's like playing chess rather than playing checkers. You have a strategy. You understand where it is you're moving on the board, where it is that you're moving forward in life. Because again, the Yoruba tradition teaches us that you're either moving forward or you're just not moving at all. You're just stagnant.

And we know that we are here to move forward towards the purpose that we are here to do. And so the ability to lean back, when I think of strategy, I think of the Orisha Ogun. Ogun, I'm practicing my tonal language when I talk about the Orisha's Ogun. Being the hunter. When we think about a hunter, hunters are those who get up early in the morning, right?

Sometimes before the sun even rises, they leave the village and they go off to the forest where their prey is. They have to set up shop. They have to get there in anticipation of when that buffalo or that elephant, that bird, that deer that they're trying to hunt, they have to get there before it arrives. They have to move themselves.

in a intentional way, just in terms of the way that they walk through the forest. They don't walk hard. If you're a dancer, you know that when we dance, we don't stomp our feet on the ground. We move lightly. We move with intention. That they have everything in their bag, their pouch that is going to aid them and the tools that they need in order to obtain their prey.

that they have to position themselves in the right place. But even to know where to position themselves, they have to observe. They have to spend.

countless hours moving and navigating through the forest in order to know, well, if I go to that hill or if I climb this tree or I sit myself behind this bush, they have to have already done that work before they even get there on that day. And they have to place themselves in position. And there are times that they place themselves in position and they're wrong and they don't get anything that day. And they have to try again and tweak their approach. They have to be patient.

They have to sit there and they have to wait. They might come home one day and other hunters were able to capture prey and they end up empty handed. They can't look at what the other hunter did and say, well, there's nothing out there for me. They know they have to go back out into the forest yet again the next day and the next day. And then one day everything aligns for them and they're able to capture prey. And that

they're able to bring back to the village and that prey they're able to share and every single part of that animal is used not only for physical nourishment, for spiritual needs, we're taking the hides of the skin and we're making clothing and we're creating things for our home and then they have to go out and do it again.

That's what it means to be calculated in your steps. So how do you apply that idea to yourself? Again, Ogun being the hunter, also Ochozi, another hunter, also Sagittarius. I'm a Sagittarius. That focus of the bull's eye. They're extremely focused. There's a level of precision, a sharpness. And that is the invitation of how you need to work this year to be prepared.

to the research, to observe and understand where are you placing yourself this year? Are you just running out to every invite that you get? Are you running out to the desert where the prey that you need is in the rainforest? Are you out in the rainforest when what you're looking for is in the ocean? We gotta get clear on what it is that we're trying to do, what it is that we're trying to obtain.

What meat and prey is good for you? You might be gluten free. You might be vegan. What everybody else is eating might not be what your family is eating. So you have to understand what is for you. And you have to create an algorithm that is going to allow you to move forward in fulfilling your goal. Calculation, not just being all over the place, wasting your energy, giving your energy up.

giving your energetic currency up to distractions, fighting other people's battles, showing up to help other people who never show up to help you, and then wondering why you haven't reached that goal. Having the physical discipline of patience. There are times when a hunter has to sit and wait and is hungry. And I'm not talking about the

Physical hunger walk with me in the metaphysical realm of where you may be famished There might be something that you want to nurture your soul and you haven't gotten there yet But you're not gonna go to McDonald's while you wait. I mean you could you could just say you know what fuck it I'm gonna just eat this fast food or I could wait for that nourishing fill in the blank that's gonna feed my soul and feed my village and

the next generation of my lineage. That's the invitation that Spirit wants you to move into this year. To have a level of calculation, to do the numbers, to scrutinize things. If you're trying to build wealth this year, you need to be looking at your bank account every day. You need to understand where your money is going. If you have a health goal, you need to scrutinize what's in your cabinets, what's in your refrigerator.

the food that you're buying, the food that you ingest into your body. If you're calling in new partnership, you need to scrutinize yourself to see, I the vibrational match of what it is that I say that I want? People have this whole list. I was talking about this to a friend today of the type of partner that they want. You don't match up to that.

You can't even make your bed in the morning, but you want a partner who has a seven figure income and has this wonderful career. You want somebody that's fit and you don't even exercise. Make that make sense. It doesn't. And the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over again and expecting different results, expecting different results from the government, expecting different results from America. And America has shown you exactly who she's been.

since her moment of independence. So intentional movement, that's another way we can think about this idea of being calculated. Intentional movement. It's like if the hunter knows that what it is seeking doesn't come out in certain types of weather, it's staying home that day. Sometimes we need to just sit our asses down and stay home until the weather gets right, until the season gets right.

to know that what is for you is for you. And so you don't have to compete and compare and move in a place of scarcity in order to get what's yours. And that calculation is something that we could learn from colonization because baby, they're calculating for the next three, five, seven generations. The world that we're living in right now under the Western paradigm, which is shifting.

But regardless of what you think about it, what you can't deny about it, it is a result of their intentional movement. It is a result of work that has been going on for generations and generations and generations in order to get us where we are today. They're all taking a long view and they keep us in a sense of distraction and constant reaction. So as soon as we feel like we're getting our footing,

Here's another distraction knocking us off of our course. So our movements become sporadic while their movements become intentional. So we need to shift that paradigm and not reject hustle culture, reject, I'll, you know, I'll sleep when I'm dead, hustle now, hustle hard. While we neglect our peace, neglect our bodies, neglect our nervous systems, neglect our spiritual work.

neglect our children, somehow thinking that because you've amassed money, but you've passed on generations of trauma in your bloodline, that that somehow will save you. The Bible tells us the sins of the father are inherited by the sons. The work that you don't choose to do, you don't get to bypass. It comes back to you in this next life and it will visit your children. And how many of us are sitting here today having to break cycles and

break cycles of trauma and karmic debts from our parents and our grandparents, our great grandparents that had nothing to do with us. That imposter syndrome has nothing to do with you, but maybe three generations back, somebody had to deal with it. That lack of emotional intelligence that you've had to work through and you're like, why do I have this? Well, maybe somebody else a few generations back.

didn't do that work. So we want to break cycles. We know that by bringing together these ideas of coolness, staying cool, being the observer, being in neutrality, taking a step back, moving slow and coupling that with the level of calmness to audit who has access to our energy. And through that,

allowing us to be the hunter in our own lives, to be calculated in our steps, to embrace the seasons, to embrace the sacred codes, and that then becomes the cheat code. That becomes your cheat code, shape-shifters. While everybody else is caught up in the distraction and the death, doom, and gloom, you aren't engaged in it. So continue to bask in the beauty of this beautiful winter season.

Basking it all season long. We're riding this all the way to March 21st when we celebrate the spring to know that what is for you is for you. The sun will rise in the morning, but this is the time of divine darkness. And so we honor those times. Remember everything that is created in the light begins in the dark.

This is a powerful, powerful time of manifestation for those of us with eyes to see and ears to hear and the discernment to manifest. So I affirm that you will continue to create your own momentum in this Gregory New Year rather than being in a place of reaction. And I will see you next time. Until then, 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, shift your life.

and grab your copy today.

Keep shifting

Welcome to the house of Khalil Anthony Peebles, Khalil Anthony's Bazaar. Literati, revistas, artwork, cuerpo, la maison, la baine, black tea series, podcasts, urban folk music. Come hang out with me at my bazaar. Check out some of my works at the house of Khalil Anthony Peebles.


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Zakiya aka Sh8peshifter

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