00:00:21
Good day out there. To all of my listeners, I like to welcome you to is your way, in your way podcast. And I'm your host, Cassandra Crawley Mayo. And for those new listeners that do not have any idea what this podcast is about, let me share. It's about individuals who are ready to move forward in their lives, overcome obstacles, overcome those limiting beliefs, those self imposed barriers that's preventing you from living your best life on your terms.
00:00:54
We talk about topics related to business and personal development and even self improvement. And today we're going to talk about evaluate your life to elevate your life. And who better to talk about? That is Stacie Shifflet and I'm going to bring Stacie on board with us and introduce her to you. Hi, Stacie.
00:01:16
Hi, Cassandra. Good to see you. Good to see you, too. Good to see you. I'm so glad that you agreed to be on this podcast today.
00:01:25
Thank you for having me. Yeah. Now, for my listeners, I'm going to read Stacie's bio just so you get to know her a little bit about her background. Just a bit. And so she is a three time international bestselling author, successful entrepreneur, and the founder and CEO of modern Consciousness.
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She has the solutions you've been seeking. She is a speaker, writer and proficient student of life. Blessed with the gifts of insight, grit and optimism. She has spent the last decade of her life understanding the human condition and what influences our ability to find happiness and peace of mind. I think that's great.
00:02:15
Happiness and peace of mind is priceless. Her theory of modern consciousness defines four states of being that can be applied to individuals, businesses, institutions, and even our social constructs. She believes in living on purpose and believes we can all reclaim our power through conscious, intentional living. Stacie, I'd like for you to share your backstory up until you became the CEO and founder of modern consciousness. Tell us a little bit about your backstory.
00:02:52
Oh, gosh. Some people call me the queen of reinvention. I have reinvented myself so many times, it just kind of came naturally to me. I have been in a number of different industries. I was in the hospitality industry for, I don't know, over a decade when in my youth I actually quit college because I was making, you know, good money cocktail waitressing and tinning bar.
00:03:24
Hospitality industry was a nice way to saying I was a waitress waitress. So it wasn't as expected of an endeavor as it is today. Right? It just wasn't back in the yes, I went from there when I got married. I'm divorced now.
00:03:45
When I got married, I decided to look for an office job, and with my mom's help and a very kind lady from church who took me on, right. To do some, because I didn't have any skills. Right. To do some bookkeeping. I mean, I knew how to type, so bookkeeping and know word processing and stuff.
00:04:03
Well, she was a small, woman owned contractor, federal government contractor in the Washington, DC area, which is where you're from. And, yeah, as she lost staff, I just stepped into roles. And within about a year, I actually installed. I'm going to date myself, but I installed the first IBM PC desktops in the entire department of Health and Human services. I did all of the training for all of the applications.
00:04:33
I did all of the application support. So you really can do anything you put your mind to. Wow. That's significant. Yeah.
00:04:42
Then I moved on to. I became a subject matter expert in federal government procurement, and I actually culminated that career with doing an acquisition of a $50 million software company without investing a penny. Wow. Mindset matters, and belief in yourself matters. They didn't quite know what to do with me.
00:05:11
They called me a cashless investor, and the CEO that the investors brought in actually left me off of the chart in one of our first meetings, saying, I don't know what to do with you. Right. You don't have a college education. You don't have whatever. I remember looking at him and I said, well, I know exactly what you're going to do with me because I have an employment contract, and that's where I'm supposed to be.
00:05:36
Okay. And I walked out of the room. Right? Yeah, I got my position. I was under contract with that position.
00:05:43
I told him, you wouldn't be here if it wasn't for me. This was. Wow. Certain. Yeah.
00:05:50
Stand up for yourself. And then I had a construction company and built four and five story apartment buildings. When they flipped the tech company, I took my money and got out and started a construction company. And, yeah, through that time of owning that company, I went through divorce, 28 years of marriage. It was.
00:06:14
Wow. It was devastating. So that is really what propelled me and thrust me 110% into the world of personal development, to try to understand myself, to try to understand the human condition in general. Right. They don't teach us this stuff, how our beliefs work and how we sabotage ourselves and that kind of thing.
00:06:42
Here I am now on a mission to elevate people's lives through living consciously in a modern world. And here we are. That's right. Okay, that sounds great. You've done a lot of things that you said the invention queen, right?
00:06:59
Yeah. Oh, I had a llama farm in there, too. I raised award winning llamas and traveled all over the country with them for over a decade as well. Wow. I only know one other person that raised llamas.
00:07:10
That's why I know all about them.
00:07:14
I've done a lot of things. Yeah, I see you have. I want to talk about the title for a minute. We talk about evaluate your life to elevate your life. Take me through that process of, how does one go about evaluating your life?
00:07:34
I have found that we routinely evaluate so many things in our lives. We take the car in for regular service, we go in for our annual exams. We monitor the balance of our checkbooks, the performances of our businesses, all of these things. But we do them independently of each other. Yes.
00:07:56
So I have a program called elevate your life. Right. Evaluate your life to elevate your life. And that is the first step. And I find it really important to do a full life review, because what's showing up for you in one area of your life is probably showing up in another area.
00:08:21
It's just disguised as something different. We don't aim to put the two together. And during that process, we always tend to focus on what's wrong in our lives or what's causing us anxiety or the pain points. I also really like to go in with my clients and discuss what's right, what really is right in your life. I like to get people reacquainted with their values.
00:08:51
We kind of lose track of our values. So there's an assessment that sort of does that. I have an assessment that I leverage from the positive psychology world, actually, that also highlights our character strengths for us. And it's very important to get back to what we are all about, because we lose that just by nature of. We become creatures of habit.
00:09:21
Okay. Right. That's true. I liked it when you said that let's focus on the good. And by doing that initially, that kind of elevates an individual, because when you focus on the bad, it's a weight.
00:09:40
And as you indicated, initially, people, that's the first thing they talk about, what's not going well rather than what is going well. So I like that strategy that you have now. You said that you had a divorce. And one other thing that I found out is that you lost your first son. I did, yes.
00:10:03
And I'm so sorry. And my listeners, when I talked about overcome obstacles, we have many life interruptions, and by having those, it keeps us, some people stagnant they get kind of stuck, and they mull in it, and everybody grieves differently. And I even say, when you're divorced, you grieve losing a child, a loved one, you grieve, and Shelvan listens. How did you overcome that or get closure, or have you not overcome it or not had closure, something you never have closure on or that you don't overcome, you just deal with it?
00:10:46
I overcame it. It is the single most worst experience I've ever had in my life, and it was very difficult. Of course, I was married at the time, and it was very difficult to understand. My son never made it home from the hospital. He lived in the hospital for 30 days, and he died in open heart surgery.
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In the hospital, they were hoping he would get a little bit better. My pregnancy was fine until it wasn't seven weeks early. All of a sudden, it just wasn't okay. So we were thrust into a different hospital. I was too high risk.
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Baby had all these issues, but they always said, oh, he'll be fine, he'll be fine. Well, he wasn't, and they never prepared me that that could be a possibility. And actually, I never thought it would be a possibility. Right. I thought that he would be fine.
00:11:56
It's the worst experience I think, a parent ever has. And they say losing a child is. Is the worst, and then, yes, they do. Sibling is the second worst, I think. But for myself, getting back out of the house and going back to work and all of that, it was a very difficult time.
00:12:17
My doctor suggested that I go to a group counseling session, which I went to one. Okay.
00:12:27
Yeah. I was sitting there, and it was men and women that had lost children of different ages and for different reasons. And there was a gentleman that was talking of his wife, and it had been five years since their child died, and his wife was still unable to leave the house, to even go to the grocery store. And that impacted me profoundly. I thought, gosh, I mean, I understood it.
00:12:59
I was living it. I didn't want to leave the house either, but I did not want to put my life on hold forever and stay stuck, for lack of a better word, in grief and feel victimized and never live my life again. I could understand it, but I didn't want to be that person. Okay. And through the support of my family and through the support of my ex husband, just gently started getting back out into the world.
00:13:33
And it was very difficult. People say things, and, oh, my God, they mean so well. Right. It's just very hard to handle. So that experience I turned around and got pregnant again, I think, 1011 months later.
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I have an adult son today. Just love and adore him. Right. And, yeah, I wasn't really willing to sacrifice the rest of my life to stay in that mindset. And I had help, and I sought other help and overcame it.
00:14:10
Okay, that's great, because it's all about the mindset, and you had the initiative. You were already the invention queen. You've done a lot of things.
00:14:24
I'm always reluctant in bringing things up such as that, because I imagine my pain. I know what my pain was like when I lost a loved one, but my listeners have lost loved ones as well, and I just wanted them to hear a different perspective. And I loved it when you said, it's either get busy living or get busy dying, and that's figuratively right. And then it can also be literally. And you just made that decision, and I just applaud you for that, but.
00:14:57
Which you indicated it wasn't easy, but you had just made up your mind, and then the support that you had from others was also great. So that's how you overcame that as well. That's wonderful. And I wonder, when you have your clients and it's time, they're like, I want to evaluate my life and elevate my life. What triggers bring them into you?
00:15:30
What is it that triggers them to say, you know what, I need help in regards to the modern consciousness that you do. So what triggers? Is it word of mouth? Do people hear about you, word of mouth, or how does that work for you? Well, I think when people will generalize it is to when people seek help.
00:15:56
I advertise probably through many of the social channels and networking and things similar that you do. But my theory of modern consciousness, the first level of that, and that's the foundation from which everything expands. And I call that the automaton 2.0. Okay.
00:16:19
And we tend to run on autopilot there, and it's natural. Right. Because we're helpless. All we know is what our family teaches us. We're thrown into institutions, we decide on careers, get married, have children, all of these things.
00:16:41
And what I find with people is that we're still executing against a set of beliefs and a set of decisions that we made years, potentially even decades ago. Right. And there's a lot of societal expectation and societal beliefs, and I find that people are either on two ends of the spectrum when they're in automaton, they're either sort of stuck in that everything's happening to me, right. That victim sort of mentality, and they get tired of that or they get tired of their own bs. And the other end of that spectrum, really, is that the momentum of their lives is driven by the activities, their schedules.
00:17:25
Right. They're just trying to keep up. Yes. And there's a little voice that starts telling them there should be more. There should be more.
00:17:34
They may have the house and the car, and they have all of the things that they were told would make them happy, but they're still not happy. And so I like to bring people around. A lot of times a crisis, as in my case with my divorce, propelled me to relook at my life. And I don't think we have to have a crisis. I think that our spirit gives us a lot of clues along the way that we might want to look into our lives a little bit more.
00:18:09
And then from there, I call that walking into the awakening soul, which is the next aspect of modern consciousness. Okay, where did the term modern consciousness come from? Well, this entire concept came to me through meditation. Okay. Yeah.
00:18:28
And I resisted it for a couple of years. The aspects of modern consciousness. I had so much information come through and I captured it all. And then I resisted. I was like, no, I don't want to do this.
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I was 65 years old. I don't want to start another business. I should be retiring. The shoulds right again. The beliefs.
00:18:53
That's right. And it was such a profound idea, and it just would not leave me alone. So I finally surrendered to it and the way that that happened and these things happen for all of us. We have the potential for these things to happen for all of us. I finally meditating one day, I said, fine, I surrender.
00:19:12
What do you want me to do? I'll do it. And I got the word to write. Okay, well, you haven't. It's not the first time I heard that word, but I surrender and I will do it.
00:19:24
And within 2 hours, I had a text message from a friend of mine and said, hey, my friend is a publisher, a book publisher in Canada. She has a project with Les Brown for a compilation book. She has a chapter open. Would you like for me to connect you with her to see if you would like to pick up that chapter in the book? Wow.
00:19:44
At which, know, my mouth dropped open, my eyes went to the sky, and. I'm like, there it. Yes. I had to say yes, right? Sometimes we have to say yes.
00:19:57
And that is when I fully stepped into this business. Well, good for you. That's right. Because sometimes we'll say no, because we're avoiding it or for fear or whatever. But as you indicated, you had just said, whatever you want me to do, that's what I'm going to do.
00:20:13
And then right after that, you got your calling, and then after that, you're like, okay, I will do that. You mentioned in your bio as I was reading about you, and I think, I don't know if it's your mission or your goal is to create a better world one person at a time through a series of what you call divine guidance and modern consciousness and heal one person at a time. So, you know, so is that your mission? Is that what you'd like to do? Create a better world one person at a time?
00:20:59
I really would. I think that we have to heal ourselves and fix ourselves first, right? Nobody's responsible for us but us, right? And I really believe, and I've seen it. I have seen it in my own life.
00:21:18
I have seen it in the lives of other people, so many other people. And especially because I've been in personal development so deeply now for over a decade. When we heal ourselves and when we elevate our individual lives, it elevates the lives of others around us within our sphere. And as we get better, for lack of a better word, right. As we get more intentional, that spreads from within us to our families, to our businesses.
00:21:54
Right. Because we can consciously and intentionally run our businesses as well, right. That stays aligned and in tuned with our values and I think in our communities. So it really expands from the individual outward. It's energy.
00:22:14
It's all energy. And as our energetic field touches others, the more of us that are on this mission, the more impact that we will have in this world. And that really is the other side. I do one on one coaching right now, and that is the other side of my business that I am figuring out at this point as to how to broaden that. Right.
00:22:41
Because I also have a desire to not provide a platform just for myself, but provide a platform for others in the personal development space. The more we spread the word, the more we elevate the energy of the entire world. The frequency. Right, right. Yeah.
00:23:06
I hear a lot about energy, and many people are a little confused. And I say that because I will be around certain people and I'm like, wow, I love their energy. And people are like, what does that mean? Or either I enjoy being around them or there's something about them that sparks me. And then there are individuals that I'm around that don't spark me.
00:23:36
They kind of drain me. Could you explain what energy is for my listeners.
00:23:45
I think I can very simply. So if we pretend. Let's just say, okay, we're just going to pretend that we're sad. We're sad and we're upset, and the body just. We contract.
00:24:01
Right. And we feel heavy. And that is a lower frequency where if you. I've got goosebumps just telling you this. If you sit up and you emote and you feel joy, your body feels lighter, your spirit feels lighter.
00:24:22
Yeah. And I think we've all experienced that we may not be consciously aware of. That's what's happening. Right. We might call one sad and one excited.
00:24:33
Yes. But that's it in an essence. So the higher frequency emotions of joy and happiness and glee and all of that leave us with that light feeling. The lower frequency emotions such as grief and sadness and disgust and those kinds of emotions are very low, vibrating emotions. They're very low frequency.
00:25:01
Right. Who doesn't want to feel good all the time? It doesn't mean we don't have problems. We do, but we handle them in a different way. Yes, exactly.
00:25:13
So how would people like you indicated? You can't be up every day. I mean, if I met somebody up every day, I'd be wondering, like, oh, my God, what's wrong with them? What are they on? But is there a way that you found where you can sustain it a majority of the time?
00:25:32
I think people really get disappointed. Wow. It's kind of like when I wrote my book, I was so excited, and then over time, I wasn't as excited as I was then, so I had to. Number one, as you mentioned initially, is think about what good I've done. What have I accomplished that will kind of help me.
00:26:02
What am I grateful for? There's certain things that kind of bring me back, and then there's some things that don't bring me back. So I was curious to how do you even help your coaching clients kind of maintain that pinnacle? Well, it's through practice. Okay.
00:26:25
We do it through practice. And there's some energetic techniques with tapping. Energetic. Emotional freedom tapping. Or there's some other things, but it's really beginning to be aware of how you feel and what your thoughts are, how you're reacting to things around you at all times.
00:26:53
So the first thing is sort of to cultivate that habit, and it's an amazing process, because in order to achieve what we want to achieve, and by that, I don't mean buy the new car or the next. I think that peace of mind is our greatest asset. Yeah. And the prerequisite to get there is knowledge, and knowledge is useless unless we apply that knowledge in our lives and make put forth the effort, the intentional effort to start to shift those things. And it can be gradual, and that's fine.
00:27:34
And then one day you go, oh, my gosh, I didn't react to that. It's the new me, and it's an amazing feeling. Yeah. And I think it's also very important for us to honor what we are feeling. We don't want to push it aside.
00:27:50
We don't want to stuff it. Yeah. Let's feel it. Let's process it through our bodies and through our psyches. Right.
00:28:01
Because there are feelings. Our trauma is our trauma. It's only defined by us, and we have to embrace it and then get to understand. That sounds like coyotes, doesn't it? Sounds like our friend that we know so well.
00:28:27
Yes. Not again. He wants his mama. Yeah. I live on a barrier island here in Florida, and there's a pack of coyotes that will be across the canal.
00:28:39
This is the time of season. They breed and they make a noise, but they're being quiet. Right? Yes. Yes.
00:28:47
So, basically, we have to honor our feelings, and then we have to understand why we feel that way. A lot of times, what we think is not really what it is. Right. I was very angry and resentful for a couple of years after my divorce, and it really was grief. There's a spectrum of emotions, and we're really only taught to recognize a few of them.
00:29:11
So knowledge is power. Implement that knowledge into your life. Find someone that can help you do that, and, yeah, it gets better and better. Yeah. That's great advice.
00:29:24
That's great advice. There's one thing about. You talked about the treasure map to finding joy. Are they, like, certain steps that you. I call our emotional triggers a treasure map to joy.
00:29:40
So if we can calm our emotional triggers, we calm our life. And those are things. It's our reactions. Yeah. So it's like, what are you reacting to and to understand it?
00:29:56
Because, again, it's not always what we think. Right. We're getting in our way. Right. We're getting in our way.
00:30:02
You're in your way. Because we think, oh, it's this, and it's really not that. Right. So to come to an understanding of what it really is, to think back on, gosh, where do I think that originated from? When does this happen?
00:30:19
Am I in a particular state of mind? Is it just a particular person? Is there a belief associated with it? Those sorts. Right.
00:30:28
Well, I'd like for you to talk to my listeners in regard to how can they begin transforming their lives. Now, many of my listeners are, as I indicated, the name of my book is titled is your way in your way? And I talk about limiting beliefs, self imposed barriers, obstacles. There are just certain things, like you indicated, you know, that you should do something, but because of those limiting beliefs, I'm doubting myself. I don't think I'm good enough.
00:31:05
I'm too old, I'm too young. There are always reasons, but yet they're not in a good place. They're unhappy, and they know there's something inside that they should be doing, but they're really struggling with that. What would you tell my listeners that are dealing with that right now? Well, I started learning.
00:31:30
Right. That's what I did. I started reading. I can tell you a great first book to read. Okay.
00:31:38
Is the four agreements. Yes. And if you can apply those four agreements in your life, it makes a big difference. The first two that I applied in my life was not to make assumptions, and I practiced that. Still, it's just part of me.
00:31:58
Now if I catch myself making an assumption because it's human nature to do so, I correct myself because we're probably wrong anyway. Right. I'm like, I made an assumption there. The truth is I really have no idea. Right.
00:32:11
But that helps us start to realize what's driving us to make those assumptions. The other one is to notice what offends you. If you're offended. It's reflecting something within side of you. Yes.
00:32:27
So I think starting to get educated and attending some seminars, reading some books. And then I think for me and for most of the people I know actually, that are in this space, we have coaches. We started working with another person whose journey was further ahead than our journey, someone who we looked up to. Right. So often we look for advice from our same circle of friends and family.
00:33:08
It's like that circular reference in an excel spreadsheet. It's just going around and around. Exactly. If they're not exhibiting what you want to create in your life, then they're not really capable of teaching you how to find it. So you find someone that you resonate with and you work with them.
00:33:28
Exactly. Yeah. Don't have any biases. Yeah. Because a lot of people do talk to their friends, and I agree.
00:33:38
A coach. I always suggest a coach or a mentor. It depends on. Unless there's something psychological, then I may say a therapist. It just depends if you just can't get out of the rut and I love the four agreements.
00:33:57
That book has been around forever, and it will still be around. So that was great advice for them to get the book. And it's a small book, tiny book. It's so profound. And it's just a little bitty book.
00:34:12
I think it might be like four x six. Yeah, it is. It really is. And also get to help because we can't do anything by ourselves. We don't want to feel like we're super women and we can handle this because we can't.
00:34:29
We weren't created to be alone anyway. So I love that advice that you provided, and I love the work that you're doing in regards to modern consciousness, to kind of get inside of an individual internally to kind of see what's really going on there. And I love it how you start off with the positive, the accomplishments. And I think that is just so phenomenal. Thank you.
00:34:59
I really think we have the answers. I didn't mean to interrupt you. I really think we have the answers inside of us. I think that we just need someone to help us realize that.
00:35:16
Exactly. Well, I have really enjoyed this interview, and I know my listeners have. And my listeners I want to share with you. As you know, I'm on every Wednesday, live at 01:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.
00:35:37
And if you found this podcast of value, please share it. It's going to be on my social media platforms in addition to all the podcast platforms. And I think it's definitely worth relistening and sharing. That's what I think. And I'm not biased.
00:35:59
I just know because I wrote the book is your way in your way, because I was in my way for years. So that qualifies me to kind of talk about it because now I still sometimes get in my way, but I'm not in my way as much as I used to, so I progressed. And, Stacie, you've progressed as well, based on life interruptions that have occurred. Any last words of wisdom that you'd like to share before we end this conversation? I will share that.
00:36:34
I have a free resource on my website that's called getting acquainted with your triggers. And it's a little workbook. So if your listeners are interested in downloading that, it's available at my website, which I'm sure you'll have listed. And yeah, it's a great way to start to explore your subconscious, which is really what it is, making the subconscious conscious right now. Stacie, could you share and go ahead.
00:37:02
Your website and your social media platforms, could you give us the handles for those? Sure. Facebook and Instagram. It's modern consciousness. Okay.
00:37:13
And the website is okay. Okay. Well, thank you so much for spending time with us. And I never say bye. I always say bye.
00:37:28
For now. And may God continue to bless you. And thanks again, Stacie, for being with us. Thank you so very much, Cassandra.
