This week on the podcast Bre is chatting about all things shadow work – the most transformational element inside the first round of The Mind School Method.
Tune in to hear her chat about:
⚫ What actually IS shadow work
⚫ What is shadow work perfect for?
⚫ The 2 sides of personal development
⚫ How to recognize your blind spots
This episode is low key mind blowing. Shadow work is life changing in so many ways. It’s like developing self-awareness, but on steroids.
If you’re noticing perfectionism, people pleasing and burn out cycles then this episode is for you.
As always – tell us your thoughts about this episode by sharing your top takeaways to stories and tagging @iambreannamay.
The Mind School Method Term 2 is opening for enrollment THIS MONTH. Make sure you’re on the waitlist to be the first to hear all the juicy details because places are strictly limited. Join waitlist HERE.
This week on the podcast Bre is chatting about all things shadow work – the most transformational element inside the first round of The Mind School Method.
Tune in to hear her chat about:
⚫ What actually IS shadow work
⚫ What is shadow work perfect for?
⚫ The 2 sides of personal development
⚫ How to recognize your blind spots
This episode is low key mind blowing. Shadow work is life changing in so many ways. It’s like developing self-awareness, but on steroids.
If you’re noticing perfectionism, people pleasing and burn out cycles then this episode is for you.
As always – tell us your thoughts about this episode by sharing your top takeaways to stories and tagging @iambreannamay.
The Mind School Method Term 2 is opening for enrollment THIS MONTH. Make sure you’re on the waitlist to be the first to hear all the juicy details because places are strictly limited. Join waitlist HERE.
Hello, welcome back to another episode. I wanted to start by saying thank you. Thank you so much. If you were somebody who was listening last week, I received so many messages and shares and tags and so much beautiful, just so much beautiful stuff from you, the listener. And I really, really, really appreciate it. Last week I shared my dreams and goals for this podcast and I just received so many beautiful, encouraging messages that I really appreciate. And so if you haven't listened to last week's episode, go back and have a listen. It was really me sharing what I do when I have a goal that feels really out of reach or really far from where I currently am or just really outside of my control, which was two things like being the Stephen Bartlett of the podcasting world for females and also of having a baby. Those were my two goals that I was just walking through the process. So thank you for your messages. Thank you for sharing the podcast. And if you listened to the episode last week, you would have heard me having a little bit of a laugh at myself. And I guess saying out loud, when I said out loud, how shit I am as a wife. And I don't obviously mean this, I'm a great. And I have to say, I didn't even realize that this had happened, but I just had the most wholesome weekend and I cooked a roast. I invited the boys over. We had a roast. We watched documentaries and then I organized the pantry and I went and got all like matching glassware so that pantry looks nice. And I've organized label makers so that it looks just like a vibe and it feels really good. I went through my wardrobe and did like four big bags to take to St. Vinnie's. And I was sharing it on my stories today and somebody said, oh, it's almost like last week, last week's podcast you gave yourself a bit of a talking to. Cause honestly, this weekend, I actually was such a stepford housewife. I cooked and cleaned. I felt really organized. I did the pantry and it was just actually so wholesome and I had such a nice weekend. So that's my little update. Another exciting thing that happened today which is probably why I'm extremely excited is we just locked in a venue for the Mind School Method which is coming to Queensland. That's been locked in officially, which is just so exciting and that is my certification for coaches and business owners and leaders and teachers and educators and really humans who are interested in personal development or working alongside and with other humans. That is my certification which does mindset and NLP and shadow work which is what I'm going to be talking about today. So shadow work was literally the most transformational and the most common feedback I received from the founding members after they finished the Mind School Method. Everybody kept saying, oh my God, I came here because I thought I wanted to learn NLP and mindset and I was excited for that. but actually the real MVP was the Shadow Work and the modality I guess that just had the most impact was Shadow Work and I'm not surprised. I was so excited for Shadow Work days and I love the way the curriculum is designed because I kind of lube you right up for Shadow Work and I get you really prepared over the first three days and then we dive into Shadow Work and it's always the most transformational and like I said, I'm not surprised because Shadow Work was just life-changing for me and I actually don't know how I functioned my business, how I did relationships, like I don't really know how I lived without it although what I found with my Shadow Work journey and the more I studied and certified and all of those things, I've probably been doing Shadow Work for a long, long, long time but I didn't have the language or the articulation for it. Now it's actually so nice to articulate and to put into a framework to help people to do their own Shadow Work and so what I wanted to do today because so many people are like, but what actually is it? I'm going to do a bit of like a simplified, easy to understand 101, like Shadow Work 101 for people who have never heard of it or haven't really been interested in it or are interested in it but don't really understand what it is and I'm gonna break it down into a really, really simplified version and what I wanna say is that Shadow Work has no end, once you're in that world, it's almost like it has phases and stages and it evolves as you evolve but I'm gonna start today with like I said, 101 and this is the most, what I have found, Shadow Work is like the most transformational modality especially if you are somebody who notices you have a lot of self -sabotage playing out and it might be things like perfectionism, it could be procrastination. If you are somebody who... people pleases a lot. If you are somebody who finds it really, really hard to say no, if you're somebody who finds it really hard to hold a boundary, if you have a lot of relational issues and you find that your emotional outbursts sort of, you feel like they control you, like you have these outbursts or you feel like sometimes you don't quite have control over your reactions to things and you can be really reactive and irrational, that is where shadow work is like the fucking goat. And once you really understand the concepts within shadow work and you've built yourself a bit of a framework, which is what we do inside the mind school, but once you know the framework for starting to see the world through this lens and see yourself through this lens and uncover your shadows and all of that, honestly, you will see yourself differently. You will see your life differently. Your relationships will fucking translate. I'm actually going to be interviewing a few people on this podcast because what we saw inside the Mind School Method was like generation changing and relationship changing. And obviously I'll never speak for clients on their behalf, but there'll be people coming on just to share how transformational it can be for marriages, for relationships with kids, with husbands, with your clients. It's honestly like self -awareness and self-responsibility, but on crack. And it makes you such a compassionate person, a well -rounded person, a grounded person, a safe person. And I so believe that coaches really need to have an understanding of shadow work because until you understand ego and shadow and all of those things, you will be coaching clients and even running your business probably through the lens of your shadows and your ego. And that's often if you're somebody who is building a business or even if it's not in your business, just in your everyday life, if you are noticing lots of avoidant behavior, lots of people pleasing, if you're noticing burnout cycles, emotional fatigue, if you're noticing crippling perfectionism and all of that kind of stuff, it's usually because there's shadows running the show essentially. And so like I said, shadow work is the goat and I'm about to explain what it is in a really simplified way. And so first I want to give a little bit of context. And if you've listened to this podcast before, you obviously understand the personal development space, your interpersonal development. You probably like if you've, if you're an OG and you've been here since the beginning, you will know that my business was first under the name Miss Mindset. You've probably listened to lots of mindset podcasts. You love doing mindset work and, and you're probably all across that. And that's amazing. We love mindset work. And what that comes under is almost like there's, it's, there's two sides to the personal development sort of space. And the way I break this down or the language. that might help to articulate this is think of one side of the personal development space or pole as like the masculine and doing energy. It's very much where mindset work comes in. It's very much where NLP or neuro -linguistic programming comes in. It's very much the action, the goal setting, taking action towards your goals, finding your mindset blocks and changing it. It's all for improvement and it's very much a doing energy. It's about action. It's about change. It's about fixing things or improving things. Whereas the other side of the spectrum or the pole is that more sort of feminine approach and that would be more of where the healing is. And there's healing that has to happen for the mindset work to even work really. And you need to both, you need both of these sides of the pole, which is why I've created the mind school method to have both sides and both modalities. But if we stay with this side of the pole and that's that real. Feminine approach, that's more of the healing. And it's less about doing, because what did I say about the masculine approach, the mindset, the goal setting, the action taking, that's a real doing energy. This healing or feminine part of the pole is receiving energy. So you might be receiving a modality to help you heal your nervous system. You might be receiving kinesiology. You might be receiving Reiki. You might be receiving acupuncture. You might be healing your nervous system. You might be processing your emotions. And that would be not about doing, but more about feeling, more about receiving. And that's why I always put emotional embodiment on this side of the spectrum. I also would put shadow work more in this side of the spectrum. It is not about doing, it is more about observing. And it is actually the complete opposite of the personal development and mindset world, where it's all about changing and taking action and doing things differently and fixing parts of yourself and finding blocks and releasing the blocks and all of that. Shadow work is the opposite. And so you almost need to throw out everything that you've learned in the personal development space. And that doesn't mean that it's not relevant. And what you will learn as I keep moving on in this podcast is that you need to be a person who can accept contradiction and accept the idea that two seemingly oppositional constructs or concepts or two things that don't seem to match together actually can coexist beautifully. And so it's not about saying that the mindset, the NLP and that masculine approach is wrong. It's just about understanding that there is a time to pick up a particular tool. And there is a time where that tool then becomes a weapon and you actually need to pick up another one. And so in shadow work, it's not about changing things and all of that. It's the complete opposite. So what action? is shadow work. So it's actually a modality or a philosophy that is a form of psychotherapy, which was born from Carl Jung. Carl Jung is like a forefather and a real pioneer inside psychology and the psychotherapy space. And he really was the guy who created the concept of the shadow. And what it is, is it's actually about bringing the unconscious parts of yourself into your conscious awareness, AKA seeing your blind spots. You might've heard that language used. And that sounds very contradictory because it's like, well, how do you see your blind spots if they're blind? And it actually is a little bit of a head fuck to start with because what you will notice as you start implementing shadow work into your life is that there are so many new opportunities to see parts of yourself that you hadn't seen before and that you... This is what I, my true sense about shadow work is like, you thought you were self -aware and then you started this work and now your self -awareness is on a whole new level. Like you thought you knew a lot about yourself. You thought you were a self -aware human and you were a conscious human and then you did shadow work and you were like, holy fuck, that's what it really feels like. So essentially you're bringing unconscious parts of yourself to your conscious awareness. So that is really facing the parts of yourself that you don't think exist. You don't like about yourself. Maybe the parts of yourself that you've repressed for a long, long time or you're embarrassed of. Maybe you're just purely ignorant to parts of yourself and that's good and bad parts of yourself, the good and bad. And what it is doing is calling back all parts of you. It's calling back all the pieces of you because the main intention of shadow work is to come back to wholeness. And the idea is that we were all created whole and whole means everything, not just certain parts. So let me put this into an example. We all came into the world with the ability and capacity to be extremely nasty, to be extremely greedy, to be extremely mean. And it's not that it had necessarily bad intention. When you say kids, you can say toddlers just go and bop their sister over the head with a toy. It's like, we all have the capacity just to be mean. We have the capacity to be good. We have the capacity to be selfish, to be selfless. We have the capacity to be cruel. We have the capacity to be kind. Wholeness is acknowledging that all parts exist within us and all parts must exist for the other to occur. You can't be selfless until you have first been selfish. You cannot do something completely good without it also having a bad aspect to it. too. What this is, is really understanding duality. And duality is that for one thing to occur, the other must also occur. It's almost like that yin yang, there's in every good, there's bad, in every bad, there's good. Wholeness is we are all of it. And when we do shadow work, we are integrating and calling back all parts of ourselves and dismantling this idea that we are not certain things. Because what we have done throughout our lives is created an ego or a concept or an idea of ourselves, which is largely built off. What we have learned is the accepted or more likable or more palatable or more liked parts of ourselves. And so we overcook, overexpress those really liked parts of ourselves. And what we also do is shun, deny, repress or completely ignore. other parts of ourselves and we create this whole reality where we're not that thing. Oh my gosh, no, I am not that thing. I could never be that thing. And what I'm encouraging you to do as I explain this is even start to think about what are the character traits or the attributes where you're like, I am not that. Like I am not and it actually pulls like an emotional string inside of you. It feels emotionally charged and it feels like the worst thing that somebody could say about you. What that tells us in shadow work is probably where a lot of your repression is, where a lot of your shame is and where you've become possibly even blind to yourself. And so what we're doing in shadow work is we're trying to call back all parts and just acknowledge that actually we are all of it and there's nothing you can do to get rid of it. So in the personal development space, the mindset space, we should do more, change more, be more, be grateful, be high vibe, be more organized, be all of these things. But in shadow work, it's like, can you also accept and acknowledge that there is duality in everything and on days that you are high vibe, there is also going to be a neutrality that exists which means you have to have low vibe that comes with that and there is nothing wrong and there is nothing for you to fix. And for you to be a selfless person, you also need to be really fucking selfish sometimes so that you've got more to give and accepting and acknowledging that, that that exists. In shadow work, there is nothing for you to change, there is nothing for you to fix because all parts of you are actually what makes you whole. And so it's this beautiful modality which creates acceptance and which really unravels shame for the parts of us that we've thought weren't acceptable or lovable or made us bad, made us not good. And it's having the courage to go, actually, do you know what? Sometimes I'm a fucking hot mess and I'm productive and I'm a boss. It's kind of... acknowledging that your good side also has a bad side, but we love that part. It's acknowledging that your kind side also can be mean. You have a mean part, but that's okay and we're not going to shun or repress it. It's actually going, there's a space for you at the table. I can see my little mean girl right now playing out and rather than shun her and force her back into the shadows and shame parts of yourself, which then perpetuates really unhelpful behaviours, it's just acknowledging that they exist. It's acknowledging that, for example, I see myself as a really, I see myself as a powerful human. I see myself as a resilient human. I see myself as a really confident person. I see myself as all of these things, but I'm also not blind to the fact that I can be a hot mess. I'm also not blind to the fact that even though I'm a mindset coach and I'm extremely strong in the mind, I'm also very okay with the days where I'm not okay. because I acknowledge and accept that for me to be strong, I must also be able to show weakness and have softness and all of those things that actually are not contradictory but are complimentary because I understand that one always co-exists with the other and I don't shun that part of myself. What that does is also allows me to show up as I am, to show up without a mask, to show up with all parts of me and also notice which parts of me I really don't want to admit are still present or still there. That's where the work is to do, where I'm like, ooh, I don't wanna admit that. I don't wanna admit that I lie or I cheat or I steal or whatever. If there was something that I was like, oh God, I really wouldn't want people to see that part, that would be my work to do. That would be where the shame lies, the repression lies, where I've become blind to myself, where the shadow is actually winning and the shadow is controlling me. And when you don't do this work, when you still got this mask and you're presenting yourself to the world a certain way, and can you imagine if I had to present myself this way where I could only show up when all my shit was together, when I had to wear a mask because there was parts of myself I didn't want the world to see because I hadn't made peace with it and I thought it was an unlovable part of myself and I couldn't accept that part of myself. So how could the rest of the world, then how tiring and draining does it feel to show up in your life wearing these masks? And it's almost like you're trying to keep the world away from your shadows. That is why people start to create soothing mechanisms and self -sabotaging patterns and relationship patterns where maybe you can't really get deep and intimate and vulnerable with people because you're so scared of what they might see. This is why people act out of character when they're drunk or when they're tired. All of your out of character moments are your character. Those moments where you are quote out of character or oops, I was just drunk, oops, I was just tired. That is not an out of character moment. That is your character that has been repressed. That is your character that has been. kept at bay you've been trying to hide it from the world but when you have you know no sleep or you're inebriated or you're really high or whatever it is that's the shadow that's actually coming out that hasn't been integrated and as soon as your defenses are down your defenses and your logical thinking mind as soon as your defenses defenses are down if you start acting a certain way that's because you don't have the consciousness or the energy to keep everything at bay to manipulate the way the world sees you and so that's why there's people who you know they're like oh i'm only like that when i'm drunk it's so funny actually we had a bit of a joke when we did shadow work inside the mind school i said to everyone let's get drunk together let's just see our shadows and it's so funny to think about oh which part of me comes out when i'm drunk that is probably a part of you that is dying to be expressed or has been repressed and that can be a really interesting thing just to think about And so, there is a lot inside of this. Shadow work is a big topic. And honestly, I would be doing it a disservice if I really tried to break down every single concept inside of a little podcast episode, because it is a big, big topic. But what it is, is a whole new level of self -awareness and it is acknowledging all parts of yourself without trying to fix it, without trying to change it. Like I said, in the one side of the spectrum, in the mindset world, in the personal development world, in that masculine doing, it's fixing, it's changing. It's like all of that. And in this side of the space, in the shadow space, it's there's nothing to change. There's nothing to get rid of because you can't get rid of a part of you. You can't get rid of a part of you if that part of you is what makes up the whole. And the whole is all of it. And yes, you can choose not to express parts, but if it's coming from a frequency of shame and shunning it, then it's going to win in other ways. If you are repressing and shaming and making parts of yourself wrong, and you don't want the world to see it because you believe it's unlovable, that shadow will always play out in your life. The shadow will always win, the shadow will always play out. The shadow will always control you until you take control of it. And when you do, when you do take control of it or start to work with your parts, work with your shadows, when you start to do this work, what can happen is it's almost like you've got this lighter energy because as you can imagine, trying to keep these shadows hidden or trying to, it's almost like if you can imagine lots of beach balls and you're trying to keep them under, you're trying to keep them under the water. And that takes a lot of energy to just hold these buoyant balls underwater takes a lot of energy. Cause anytime one pops up, you're like, oh shit, no one, put it back down, push it back down, push it back down, push it back down, push it back down. That takes a lot of energy. But when you just go, here's my beach balls. It's like this exhale and you have so much more energy and you are so much more authentic funnily enough. And that's a word that everybody loves. We love to be authentic, but usually until we do shadow work, we're showing parts of ourselves, denying others. And we're not really seeing ourselves for who we are. We're not seeing the world as it is. We're seeing it as we are. We're seeing the world through the lens of our shadows. We're seeing the world through the lens of our ego. And this work is so fucking transformational. I can't even begin to explain. And like I said, this is a very simplified version. I would not be doing it justice. And I also would be irresponsible to go through the complete nitty -gritties of shadow work in a podcast episode. It does require a safe space. It requires time. It requires that you understand the frameworks because it is working oftentimes with shame. We can be working with the nervous system. We can be working with our inner child. We can be working with trauma. A lot of different things can come up. And like I said, it would be irresponsible for me to go into all of that in a quick podcast episode. But I hope that this gives you something to think about or a little bit more understanding, or maybe it's even just that awareness that you've found like, oh, I actually wanna do this work. This sounds so interesting. Or maybe you're noticing the relief that you feel of knowing there's another way or a complimentary opposite side to the personal development mindset poll that doesn't need you to do anything. You don't need to change. You don't need to fix anything. You don't need to do anything, but actually just acknowledge you as you are in your full wholeness. And that can be a hot mess and powerful as fuck. That can be really confident and still having insecurities. That can be somebody who loves collaboration, but also you notice a jealous part of you that sees competition and not trying to make yourself wrong, not shaming yourself, but actually just being like, okay, there's a part of myself here that I'm just going to acknowledge and accept. And so, like I said, the personal development world I see has two poles and you need to, if you're in the personal development space, if you work in this space, if you're a teacher or a leader or a coach, or you work with other humans, or you're just into personal development, you really want to be utilizing both sides. Both sides of the pole is where you create wholeness. You can't just do mindset work, NLP work. You can't just do the action and the doing without doing the stopping and the healing and the receiving. the emotional work, the emotional embodiment work. And so we want to always be knowing that there's two sort of sides of the pole. And when we use them both together and we know which tool to use at the right time and when a tool actually becomes a little bit of a weapon, then we can pick them up accordingly and our personal development journey, our growth, our evolution, all of that, honestly, it goes gangbusters. Like it really fucking does. And knowing shadow work on top of mindset and NLP makes you just such a well -rounded, safe human and so self -aware, like I said, there are so many benefits to this work. And if I can leave you with something to contemplate, I'm going to remind you of a few questions. I posed earlier in this episode and that could just be starting with what would it be that I would be absolutely ashamed or humiliated or embarrassed or mortified for people to say about me or for them to see in me or a part of myself that I absolutely do not want the world to see. What is that part? That's something to start with. Start there. That tells us a lot about where your work begins. The other thing, a little bit of a more lighthearted thing or approach or question is who are you or if you're not a huge drinker anymore and you used to be, who were you or are you when you were drunk? And if you're not a drinker, who are you when you're extremely tired and you're like, oh, that's not me. I was just tired. That's not me. I was just drunk. Who are you? What parts come out to play? Because that tells us that it's still there. It's not a part of you that doesn't exist. It's where our work begins. So those are two prompts that I want to leave you with. And if you are feeling extremely stimulated by this conversation and you want more on shadow work, honestly, jump into my DMS on Instagram. I would be so happy to hear from you and to know what else you want me to answer. It's a huge topic and it's half of the curriculum inside of the mind school method. And if you're interested in doing the mind school method and you want to learn both sides of the coaching poles, you want to learn shadow work, mindset, NLP, emotional and somatic embodiment, all of the things to make you a very well -rounded and highly skilled coach or mentor or teacher, whichever you are, if you're somebody that works with humans or you just fully want to transform your own life, highly recommend you jump on the waitlist to the mind school method. We will be opening for enrollment in June and we are doing term two in both Queensland and Perth, which is so, so, so exciting. But like I said, jump into my DMS, give me any questions, share this on your stories, tag me so I can see that you loved it. And I'll be back here with another episode next week.