Sense of Soul - Just BE

Episode Date: July 28, 2023

Today on Sense of Soul podcast we have Danielle Sunberg is a wellness entrepreneur, transformational coach, international keynote speaker, author and mother. She’s joining us today to tell us about her book, Atlas of Being: From Briefcase to Backpack, One Former Lawyer's Exploration of the Human Way. As a former Big Law attorney, Danielle worked as a corporate litigator at an award-winning law firm in Washington D.C. After successfully defending her client against a $6 billion judgment, Danielle was diagnosed with depression. She left the firm to travel the world to discover what truly inspired her, training with some of the most preeminent mentors in conscious living and studying as a Reiki Master. In 2019, Danielle founded a cannabis wellness brand dedicated to connecting people to their innate wellness. As a coach to elite entrepreneurs and leaders, Danielle guides people who have achieved success yet yearn for something more out of life. She guides those who dare to live extraordinary lives, drawing out their greatest strengths and turning impossibilities into reality, creating fulfillment from the inside out. Learn more about how you can work with Danielle and pick up a copy of her new book, Atlas of Being at her website: https://daniellesunberg.com Follow her journey: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielle-sunberg https://youtube.com/@daniellesunberg Learn more about Sense of Soul Podcast: https://www.senseofsoulpodcast.com Check out the NEW affiliate deals! https://www.mysenseofsoul.com/sense-of-soul-affiliates-page  Check out the Ethereal Network! https://www.mysenseofsoul.com/ethereal-network Follow Sense of Soul on Patreon, and join to get ad free episodes, circles, mini series and more! https://www.patreon.com/senseofsoul Follow Sense of Soul on Social Media! https://www.mysenseofsoul.com/sos-links

Hello, my soul-seeking friends. It's Shanna. Thank you so much for listening to Sense of Soul podcast. Enlightening conversations with like-minded souls from around the world, sharing their journey of finding their light within, turning pain into purpose, and awakening to their true sense of soul. If you like what you hear, show me some love and rate, like, and subscribe. And consider becoming a Sense of Soul Patreon member, where you will get ad-free episodes, monthly circles, and much more. Now go grab your coffee, open your mind, heart, and soul. It's time to awaken. Today on Sense of Soul, we have Danielle Sundberg. She is a wellness entrepreneur, a transformational coach, international keynote speaker, author, and mother. She's joining us

today to tell us about her new book, Atlas of Being, From Briefcase to Backpack, One Former Lawyer's Exploration of the Human Way. Danielle has been Sons of Soul before, and I can't wait to hear what Danielle has been up to since the last time we spoke to her. So welcome, Danielle. How are you? What have you been up to? I'm doing great. I was actually just listening to the episode with Neil Donald Walsh because I mean, how could I miss? Oh my God, you're so amazing. Yeah. So what do you have new going on? I think the last time we chatted, I was working on the book. You're so amazing. Yeah. So what do you have new going on? I think the last time we chatted, I was working on the book. So now the book is out. That's so exciting. I'm right. I'm working on a book, but it's still not done. Oh, cool. What's your book? It's called desperately

seeking Sophia. It's about the Gnostic gospels and how I came into discovering what Sophia was. Wow. Just too busy. Don't have time. I hope that you finish it and publish it. I want to read it. Yeah. So I have a girlfriend who about maybe two years ago changed her name to Sophia. I mean, she's like a former engineer scientist now angelic channel for global initiatives. Yeah. That's so cool. You know know what I just yesterday had a Reiki student here with me all day and that's she is still an engineer but she's being called to be a healer I would say I'm surprised but like at this point you know it's like right of course you are I mean you used to be a lawyer do you still do that on the side or not?

I mean, I would say, you know, you can take the girl out of the law, but you can't take the law out of the girl. And so much of how I understand my life and the world and like map out my spiritual journey is through these tenants of what lawyers still use, like understanding internal agreements that I make with myself and how I function as an integrated person who operates based off a set of beliefs. And those beliefs are really agreements that I make with myself about what's true. This is the same thing as a contract. Like you decide what you want to be real and true between the parties. And then that's what you operate.

That's the foundation of the entire relationship that you build off of. And then when someone is out of integrity with their agreement, what do you do? You point to the agreement. And so like, that's what I do with myself too. It's like all day long. So yeah, I mean, I'm not a lawyer in the traditional way, but like, I'm still very much attuned to like what's going on in the lens of having been a lawyer. I know you're watching or listening to the Neil Donald episode. He says something in the episode. He says something that we do in every area, you know, whether it is law or in the science, curiosity, questions. I love that piece. It's so real. And that's exactly what I feel like my book is. It's a civil rights movement for the soul because it's me like asking the questions of all the things that I was taught to believe in about who I should show up as and what does success mean? And saying, wait, but is that true? And is that mine? And what else is out there? And what's possible? And who am I really? Yeah. It's so true. And for so long, we've been kept so small and outside of that seeking. And I think that it's primal in us to be curious. You know,

it's funny because it's one of the things that I've always really held dear about growing up Jewish is it is a religion in which we are encouraged to ask questions. Yes. You know, the word drashing to drash. No. Yeah. The rabbi taught it to me and I'm like, I love it. I'm like, I am a drasher. Is that someone who asks questions? Yes. It's a person who will actually ask questions and look at things from different perspectives as things evolve. Like what does this mean for today? What could this mean? And like, really analyze it. And I love that because when you're evolving, so is everything around us should evolve like the systems, right? They need to evolve with us. I can meet us where we are. We can't live like we were, you know, back when they were created. Well, don't tell rest in peace Anton Scalia that, but yeah.

Maybe that word drash comes from Midrash. It does. Yeah. Okay. So there's a book that you, maybe you're familiar with now called the Talmud. Yes. It's essentially the Jewish book of commentary on the Bible. And so what it is, is actually rabbis and highly intellectual Jewish clergy people, not necessarily all rabbis, who talk about their interpretation of the Torah, of what something means. And then the next page, you'll flip the page in the Talmud, and it's another rabbi from 300 years later commenting on that rabbi's interpretation and saying, yeah, but, and what if, so this, and it's that, and like, it's this beautiful universe, this container of a living dynamic conversation of evolution, of what something means and how we can use it in our lives that in today's world, like, I feel like that's what we do just through, you know, text message and WhatsApp and whatever.

We're like constantly iterating and evolving on conversation of what something is and how we can use it in our life that this Talmud is like this 2000 year old version of. I freaking love that. And, you know, oftentimes we've Christians forget that Jesus was Jewish. He was doing the same thing. That's exactly what he was doing. He was trashing. Yes. Absolutely was trashing in the Gnostic Gospels. I can tell you that much. I don't know anything about them. Yeah. They were only found in the 1950s and really because of the age of technology, can we actually access them? You know? So it's interesting. And actually there's more in the Gnostic gospels from his other disciples that didn't make the cut, right? Thomas and Mary Magdalene, her book, and they're untouched, right? By hierarchy, by popes, by, you know, they've only been translated by scholars and stuff. So you have more of a raw idea of who Jesus is. And he was a Zen master,

in my opinion, he was, you know, talking in riddles and allegorical stories. And yeah, it's pretty interesting. And it's all about unification. It's all about seeking within and without. And the kingdom is inside of you and outside of you. And when you come to know yourself, you've come to be known. There's lots of unearthed texts that seem like they were way more evolved than we were. Like what we're just awakening to now. And I'm like, what happened in between? Oh, we've been asleep until. Okay. Have you read this book? Wild Mercy? No. No, but I have heard of her. You'll love this book. Everything that you're saying is like, so it's, it's called Wild Mercy living the fierce and tender wisdom of the Women Mystics. And so this author, Mirabai Starr, she grew up in the 60s in the very like hippie commune kind of way with mixes of religions and traditions and had, you know, like Ram Dass coming through all the time and folks like that kind of to learn from. And so she studied like mystic traditions, the more feminine traditions of religions and traditions that had been suppressed over the last hundreds and hundreds of years

and brings to life their stories and how their lens essentially from Catholicism to Kabbalah to Native American traditions and the lessons that we can learn about how to create more like vibrancy in our spirituality through what they spoke about as their relationship to God. In my journey, it was just like one after another, God is coming through, wanting to be heard. My last one was Lilith, which you probably have heard of her. She was a baby stealing witch hag or whatever. You know, wonder if we would have told

a different narrative of her, that she was a feminist, that she didn't want to be treated less than, she wanted to be treated equal. You know, maybe she is a sign of liberation and equality and maybe was the first woman, you know, that could have been a sign of that. But, you know, it does have been a sign of that. But, you know,

it does seem like the divine feminine is rising and we have powerful women like you, you know, who say, Oh, you know what? I get to choose what I want to do in my life. Or people like you were talking about your friend or the student I had yesterday, who it's not about the title, right? It's not about the material wealth and all the things. It's what are you contributing to the world? As much as the world seems like we are in freaking chaos, you know, meeting, you know, so many people like you and just, it's, I think it's far more powerful, that power of love and compassion and the desire to, you know, see other people live their truth. Yeah. Beautifully said. And you know, the funny thing is like going back to what you said about what is it called? The Gnostic gospel. Yeah. And how ultimately it's about knowing yourself.

I'm sure you find this too. The more that you take the time to self-reflect and know who you are, the more connected you feel to everyone around you. So true. Because ultimately, right, we come back to these essences that we then see mirrored in each other. Absolutely. And there's so much less pointing at blame and shame and all that. You take, you know, all the responsibility for knowing who you are and how you create your life. And so men have always been able to, and like, where's the sisterhood, you know, with all of the suppression also was lost, you know, that, and you're right. Women became like catty against each other and competitive and jealous and,

you know, all the things. And yeah, when you are more comfortable with yourself and you know yourself, yeah, you are just wanting to embrace your sisters around you and love them for their strengths because we're all so different and unique. Yeah. I think that women are finally unraveling ourselves from this double bind that we've been put in and put ourselves in where we felt like, okay, it's time for us to go be in the workforce, go be successful, go create our own, you know, financial currency or

circuit of energy in the world that we deserve it. And so we did it in the way that we saw emulated, which was the very masculine way, right? Like I'm not saying anything new in that part right and so now we vilify people like Hillary Clinton who did it so well that she disconnected at least publicly from her femininity in a way that you know that's the double bind is she created the success but she you know lost that sense of authenticity of showing up successfully. That's what we're looking for is, okay, now we know how to do it successfully by imitating other people. Now, how do we show up in the world and be successful? Whatever success means to you in a way that feels authentic. What are our terms for success? How can I really be me? No matter what I call myself, whatever gender I label,

I put on myself, whatever, like, what does it look like to really know myself, draw that out so that I can use it to create a life that really reflects me and is in service of me and my deep, deep, innate yearnings and desires and values and my purpose, my why, all of that. I so agree. You know how transition is so weird. I see it with the younger generations, you know, kind of like, I see that they're so strong in their voice and in the fact that they have way less conditions than we do to shed. And yet they're not yet structured or, you know, they don't have like a solid foundation because they're like the first to be able to, to do the things or not do the things that they, you know, that the world wants them to do. And I feel like that with women

as well. It's like, we had to jump in, but we did, we jumped, they jumped in so very masculine, you know, they had to be, it's like, I'm going to be like you, man, the male. So that way we can be treated equally, but they abandoned, you know, their feminine energy, which I've really looked at that lately. I mean, like, why can't we be powerful in our compassion? Why can't we become, you know, very powerful in our nurturing self? That is a creator. We are creators, which are more powerful than the freaking creator. We have a womb. No, right. Right. Whether or not you decide to have children or not, that is a powerful part of us and a warrior goddess energy. We can still be in without it being masculine, you know,

that driven, the competitive, that my bomb was bigger than your bomb. Oh, really? Right. Proof to me. And you know that it's not explicit in my book, but what another through line or a lens to view it through is exactly that story. Like it starts with me leaving the corporate world. I leave my job at my law firm as an attorney where I had mastered success in this way of being super masculine and competitive and aggressive and essentially lost myself in the process. Like when I looked at my eyes in the mirror and my reflection, they were completely empty. And then throughout the story as I'm trying. So what I did was I traveled across six continents exploring what does it mean to be me? How do I wake up feeling inspired to live my life?

And what does that look like? And what potential can I tap up feeling inspired to live my life? And what does that look like? And what potential can I tap into when I actually like my life? Like what else is possible? And it's also in that lens, a story of reclaiming, you know, authenticity, but in that piece of authenticity, it's femininity and reclaiming the power of love and compassion and surrender and trust and asking for help. And, um, in this way of, you know, actually, so this isn't in the book because this happened after I wrote it, but I was pregnant with my son. Um, who's about 16 months now. I was going to say, I think you were pregnant the last time we had you on. Yeah.

With my daughter, I think. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. You have, oh my gosh. I've been a while. So I was pregnant with my son. So this didn't happen when I was pregnant with my daughter.

I had an experience that I felt so angry. I was so, so angry and it felt like more anger than if could have possibly just be mine. Wow. And it was, you know, I had done a lot of this kind of soul searching spiritual work by then. And so I had unraveled a lot of the kind of entanglement where we identify our self-worth with our profession. And so like, I knew, you know, I had this whole book behind me. Like I knew that who I was was way bigger than that and, um, undefinable in that way. And yet this anger persisted. And what I traced it to was my, uh, feeling of still trying to prove my worth as a pregnant about to be stay at home mom for a little while and still realizing that there was this conditioning right the societal story of

who we are being wrapped up in in what we do quote unquote and that being a mother is so invisible from that space. And I knew that that was not true, right? Yet I felt it. And so I felt this anger, which really was about the dissonance in my knowing that's not true. And yet still feeling bombarded with that information that I'm not visible, that I'm not worthy. And closing the gap there was about a year. I mean, it's still, let's say I'm not done, maybe never be done, who knows, but about a surprised when it happened. Fear of what it would look like to actually step into that power that you were just describing, the power of fully owning motherhood and the power of being a woman, the power of compassion and, and nurturing and surrender and all of these amazing qualities that we kind of push down there say they only belong in certain spaces in our life. So each day is an opportunity where I step more fully into the power of that. Because that is just a piece of me. And so I want to own more fully who I am.

One of the things I love the most about rabbi and why I've had him on twice and why I just talk about him all the time too, is because, so he wrote a book about the Kabbalah and, but it's about it's embodied Kabbalah and it's spiritual groundedness. It's being spiritual in your life. Like, and I even so ignorant to his religion was like, can I have Shabbat like every day? Cause like he was describing Shabbat and I was like, well, I feel like I need moments of Shabbat every day. Like, can I have that and live? Like, can we be spiritual and, and be in our power and all these things and still be grounded mothers, right. And still running around being a mom is busy. I remember when, you know, my older kids were younger. I mean, it was run, run, run, run, run. And actually I still have to

run with my younger because now she wants to be active in things too, but yet I'm more present in it where before I was running, running, running, running. I don't even, I don't even, I mean, at the end of the day, I'm like, God, what did we do? Yeah, exactly. There's so much busyness in our lives, whether we're mothers or whatever we're doing, we're always in hustle culture. We're running from one thing to the next thing that you're like hit nail on the head. I think that presence, even though it's a simple concept, it's like be in the moment. Okay, great. Like I get it. But then we always go, okay, what's next? Like, right. And so we don't actually practice and embody this beautiful gift of presence. And we're not taught why it's important either. Like, why should we bother? And so I feel like when you actually experience how valuable presence is, you know, it might take

time and multiple experiences of it, but eventually you start to embody it more and it goes from your brain into your veins and you just live from a place of more elevated presence. And that's when these things happen where we're like, oh yeah, life is so much easier and more joyful, less stressful, less frustrated. You know, just like you can show up in a situation without it needing to look a certain way and know that it's going to go exactly right. And that I think is the real gift of leaning into presence, which is God so damn hard when we know we need to get the laundry done, tuck the kids in bed, finish the presentation, and how it's slowing down and being present.

Can I get those things done? And only when those things are done, am I going to just relax and be present, right? Like that is how my mind works at least. And so it is like a constant communication between those parts of me saying, is that true? Is that what I need to do first? What would happen? That's what happened. Three minutes. Yes. Let's see. That's what I was thinking. That's what happens is that when you are present, say you're present, I have a busy day today. So as soon as you say what we had next, my brain went, shit, you have a lot going on today after you actually have a

healing session. And then after that, I have a doctor appointment, but I'm being present with you. So like all that was like, not even there until you said something about what you have next. And that popped in my head. But then I was like thinking to myself, a lot of times, if you're present with the things that you're doing, you may say, you know what, maybe this isn't a priority for me to be doing today. You know, you kind of, or more, you prioritize things a little bit differently. Like what, how much energy do I want to give to this day? And where do I want to put it? What's the most important things that I want to do? So I'm able to do them in a present way.

Yeah, exactly. So what happens, I think when you're present is you come back to your natural state, just calm and clear. And we all experience that after we do something that slows us down, right? Your yoga, your, you know, gardening, taking a nice bubble bath. And you have this like exhale where we go, right. And what's actually happening is we're reconnecting with ourselves. We're going here I am. And from this space of calm clarity, we're not operating out of that murky chaos of, you know, just running from one thing

to the next. And we give ourselves this expanded awareness to notice so much more about what's going on both in the moment and within ourselves. And that's when we have our aha moments, our ideas, our insights, our creative solutions, right? Like that's why we say you get your best idea in the shower and not when you're banging your head against your laptop at 11 PM, a cup of coffee, like it just doesn't work that way. And so that's when you get these aha moments where we then actually can accelerate our efficiency of getting the things on our list done. Right. It's like when I remember, oh, I have to go to the grocery store later and get milk. And while I'm there, I just remembered, I have to pick up a prescription. Maybe I would have totally forgotten the prescription and then would have had to go twice. Right. So it's just like little things I can make. Yeah, exactly.

Right. Like, oh no, I forgot to cheat. Like whatever the thing is, or I'm having a dinner party tomorrow and I forgot to get the salad. Like you just remember things like they come to us and then it makes our life that much easier. You know, and how good are you taking care of yourself when you're that busy? Are you stopping to actually have a nice healthy lunch? No, you're stopping by McDonald's on the way home. You know, are you drinking water throughout your day? Water?

Oops. I'm so dehydrated. You know, didn't have water. I mean, it's very dangerous. What do you mean by dangerous? It's dangerous because we're not conscious. We're not pleasant. We're not conscious to what we're doing.

You're just going through the motions you know and and how much can you do in one day what do you want an award for all that i remember you know i felt like by the end of the day like i won i was like oh my god i hit all my checkpoints what do i win nothing you're freaking exhausted hopefully you can get a good night's rest without worrying at three o'clock in the morning about what you're going to do the next day. Yeah. Look, we've been trained to get our dopamine hits from checking things off our to-do list. And that's, that's fine. And like, to me, when I hear you say our busyness is dangerous, I totally understand that. And on one level, you know, I agree because if I hadn't listened to myself back when I was an attorney and

I was diagnosed with anxiety and depression, and I had kept going down that route, it would have been dangerous to my mental health, my emotional health, and probably eventually my physical health. But I feel like, you know, I want to just say from my perspective, it's not about saying, oh, I'm too busy and I need to put things down and not have so much to do because I don't want to add another level of guilt and shame to the way we live our lives. And so to me, what's been really beautiful is focusing more around the mindset of what we're doing and giving awareness to each thing. So you can have 18 things on your list to do and just be present in each of them. And so if you're going to go run through McDonald's to get your hamburger, because you have no time to go and make lunch,

like, cool, that's great that we have this modern convenience that can offer that to us and that you can go have an actually a McDonald's hamburger is pretty good on its macros. I got to tell you, it's not bad. Um, and you know, you eat it with a sense of gratitude and grace and compassion. It's going to be way better for your system and your digestion than if you're feeling bad about yourself eating it. Um, and maybe even if you're hating eating a salad and you're just like, you know, like there's, you know, in Ayurveda, which I don't know enough about except to be super dangerous and even human design, there's so much about like the way that you consume is more important than what you consume. So it's not about like being, being upset with yourself or binging Netflix or eating the

hamburger where, you know, I ate like an entire family size bag of popcorn, like three days ago after bed. And it's like less about, you know, waking up the next day and being mad at myself for it and more about feeling like, wow, I really enjoyed that. And I'm so glad I gave myself a moment to enjoy what I was eating. And I found that that actually has been really helpful and I've noticed it on the scale. Hey listeners, sorry for the interruption. I wanted to share with you that Sensual Soul Podcast is a part of the Ethereal network a group of spiritual podcasts that share the same passion and one of these amazing podcasts is the skeptic metaphysicians podcast will and karen's amazing weekly podcast is full of fun exploration of metaphysics, spiritual awakenings, healing modalities, and they too

host amazing guests from around the world. Some have even been guests on Sense of Soul podcast. So if you like this podcast, then you will love the Skeptic Metaphysicians podcast. So check it out. You can listen on your favorite podcast listening app. Now back to our amazing guest. Do you wake up and do some sort of like, what do you do when you first wake up? Cause I know a lot of people, you know, they wake up and they grab their phone and start scrolling or something like that. I still do get up. And after I get everybody taken care of, then I find a space, even if it's just five minutes sitting outside with the bird, I love the birds and the trees and just have just a mindful moment. If I can't have a meditation, but I used to do the opposite. I used to get up a little bit earlier

and have that first and then care for everybody else. And I feel like that's kind of been a shift in me. That's really, I, which I think I'm suffering from because I went back to my old ways of putting everybody else's needs first and then mine. Ah, this is a huge realization right now. I didn't even realize this happened. I just thought it was a schedule change, but now I'm seeing that actually fall that I fell back into kind of my old ways. Well, there you go. I just answered my own question. I need to do that. I need to figure out, not figure out. I just need to set my alarm. Just even if it's just 10 minutes earlier. Yeah. And you know that that works for you, then, you know, that's like, that's your

important boundary to protect. Right. Some people it's at night. I mean, I have little kids. Nighttime was my time. I got to, I put everyone to bed and I'm like, oh, I can breathe. I just need 10 minutes by myself. Yeah. Yeah. That's what it's like for me because I have a one-year-old and a three-year-old.

So as soon as that's very sacred time. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, I don't, I don't have a sort of like morning ritual or even an evening ritual right now. I've never been a person who subscribes to a certain way of things. I've kind of cycled through a lot of different modalities, let's say, or like, you know, I really, so one thing I do always come back to is writing, which is no surprise since I wrote a book, like journaling writing to me is like a very soulful expression that helps me digest information. But even the

way I do it changes. I used to take a few minutes in the morning and write whatever came up. Fine, easy. Then I got bored of that and I took be here now. And every day I would pick a page since they all, you know, sort of live independently of each other. I'd just take a page of be here Now. And every day I would pick a page since they all, you know, sort of live independently of each other. I'd just take a page of Be Here Now and I would read it. And then I would reflect on it for five minutes, kind of making my own Talmud of Be Here Now, like what's going on for me and that experience of what I'm reading on that page. Then I did, you know, like pulling tarot cards for a little bit and then journaling a bit on the card that I would pull. Sometimes I wouldn't write at all and I didn't do anything or like what I always do, though, because no matter what happens is I have coffee.

So every morning, no matter what, I make a cup of coffee that I know will happen. And so what I've done is sort of anchor making a cup of coffee to a presencing ritual. I know you do too. Yes. That's my, yeah. My cup of coffee outside with birds and the sun coming out. I would love to, I, one day when I have more time back in the morning, I'm going to do that for sure. I used to do that before I had kids right now. It's literally just the minute that I make a cup of coffee because I'm in the flow. Like I pick a mug that feels like my vibe that day. I pick the coffee flavor, the pod that feels,

you know, and it's just this like, okay, who am I this morning? What do I feel? What's going to help energize me? How do I feel like centered and grounded in this moment to set myself up for success for the rest of my day? And it's just one minute. That's what I do. I love that. I love, I love that you said even being mindful about picking out which mug you're going to use. I'm so like that. Sometimes I like this mug. Sometimes I feel more spicy and I'm going to go with this mug, you know, but if you are present with it, what are you drinking out of? You know, are you drinking out of some, you know, random logo from like IBM from like, never. I collect mugs. That's like one of the things that I love doing is collecting coffee mugs everywhere that I travel. And I traveled over six continents during the, you know, after I left my law firm and in this book, so there's coffee mugs from all over the

world that I use. And today is actually from my law school because yours is way cooler than mine today. Mine's from my law school. And I use this mug when I feel like I just need to be so intellectually laser focused. And I'm working on a talk right now that I'm doing next week at a conference. So I just really want to be in the zone with it. And so I chose this mug. It just helps me zero in. So your mug, your listeners couldn't see, had an alien.

It actually was from a prior guest who sent it to me. And yeah, and I really, you know, it's so funny because yes, I believe in aliens. But my mother thinks I have like a fascination with them. And so she buys me alien everything. She has these stickers. I think she bought me an alien keychain at first I didn't get it my question I know this alien stuff and I asked my kids and they're like we were shopping with her and they said oh she would love this because she loves aliens that's so funny I feel like that's such a classic story of someone who like every year for their

birthday gets you know right kind of an elephant and so it's like you become the person who loves elephants because that's just what you get you're like okay well and my theory is is that angels are aliens so yeah it's kind of funny but yes I, I love that. It's like, you can truly have a shift in perception about probably most of the things that you decide to do every day, you know, all your, your choices that you make and, you know, to be present with them, you may find, you know, oh my gosh, you know, why did I pick out, you know, to wear this today? Or why did I pick these glasses? Or why did I pick this way to go to the bank? You know, a lot of times, you know, we're just so unconscious. And then maybe when you start to be more present, I don't know, have you ever like gone a little bit longer

because there's a really good song on the radio? Oh yeah. Like Stevie Nicks middle of like, you know, leather and lace. I'm going to go this way so I can get home a little bit longer so I can end perfect timing before I get home. I love that. Yeah. Look, I, I love that too. And I think that there's always that we are leaning into that like inner voice that's telling us these kinds of things. And we're not aware of it. We're not conscious of it. Um, and I think a lot of us are just craving consciousness of how connected we are to that energy. We want our minds to catch up to the rest of our human operating system and like be part of the party. That's right. Cause you know, I feel like

this like is a journey, right? You know, where the explorers in my Sophia journey, which is why I'm writing it. There were so much signs and synchronicities. It was insane. They're there for everybody. I know I'm not just unique in it. They're divine. They're unexplainable. They're not just by coincidence, but yeah, I would have never saw them if I was just going around, you know, unconsciously busy, crazy, not being mindful. And so it's almost like I wanted to stay in that state of mind so I could continue exploring And it just kept leading me. And so then like you were saying earlier, when you're feeling into like what you're doing every day,

you start to feel like, oh my God, this is who I am. In that space, this is your authentic self. You're aligned with the universe and it's showing you that, oh, hey, look, this is here. This is here. These is here. There's their nuggets. You need to go this way. Presence is the key to that work of aligning conscious mind to everything else that's going on energetically with the rest of our bodies and noticing these signs and, and however they come in for us. Because the thing is we're responding to them,

whether we realize it or not, unless our mind gets in the way, what presence allows us to do is get our mind out of the way and actually then, you know, shift our mind from being the master to the servant. Right. And, and using our minds to then notice signs and accelerate our path towards them, towards wherever they're taking it. That's success. There's success at the end of that. Every time I'm not kidding is so crazy. Like if I'm like sitting here trying to strategically make something happen,

there's resistance and it's so difficult to get there. Or if I put a goal in like a finish line right here and I don't get there, I feel like a failure. But yet if I am just surrendering and just following the lead of my sense of soul, things are right there to lead you exactly where you need to go towards your success. Surrender is so important. Oh my gosh. I feel like we could, I could, maybe my next book will be about surrender. Yes. Paradox of surrender and control is so interesting to me. It is. Because then, you know, let's say a listener is hearing this and they're saying, yeah, I want to tap more into that surrender space because I think that it will bring me, you know, more of what I want in this world and I can get

out of my own way about it. So great. How can I surrender? Well, guess what? Just in that question, it's control because you want to control your surrender, right? And I'm not saying that's bad at all. They go together, the two sides of the same coin. And it's just this amazing curiosity that I have an awareness of tapping into, am I trying to control my surrender so much that I have such a tight grip on it that I'm squeezing the life out of surrender? Here to let go. The other way too, right?

Surrender is such a fun place to live. And again, I think one of the access points to it is through presence. Presence is, I mean, one of my favorite words, one of my favorite things. And the awareness and then the trust. Like when I, so when I talk to groups, I go, I take them on this path towards a more authentically successful

and fulfilling life. And the path is P-A-T-H. Presence, awareness, which we've already talked about. So stopping, slowing down, being with ourselves, and then the awareness of noticing what comes up in that space, being open to the aha moments, the insights, the signs, the feelings, the thoughts, then the tea is trusting them. Because so often what happens is we bottleneck our path because we don't trust what comes up. We don't trust that wisdom because we've been taught to do what, right? Like imitate, emulate, follow the breadcrumbs that are left to us by the

world that has decided who we should be. Right. And so we stuff it down, we deny it, we suppress it. And so self-trust is this muscle that we're born with as babies that we forget how to use, you know, like my son who's just learned to walk. He's just a little older than one. All he had was self-trust, right? Like he didn't read a set of instructions. I certainly didn't teach him anything. He didn't watch a TikTok video. All he had was this innate propelling forward and self-trust of doing it. And so when we reconnect to that space of self-trust and honor what shows up for us, even though it can be really scary and I don't want to ignore that piece of it, it can be really scary. We can feel like we to ignore that piece of it. It can be really

scary. We can feel like we're standing on the edge of a cliff and don't know if anything's going to catch us. And just over time of practicing it, you learn to trust that. Yes, there is always something that's going to catch you. And where that takes us is home, the H on our path and home is that place where we show up as who we are, really who we are in our natural state, our essence, no matter where we are. Home follows us, right? Like, so I traveled these six continents over two years, always staying on someone else's couch or an Airbnb or a hotel room, never somewhere very long. And what you learn to do is establish home in your being. Because if I just went around thinking, oh, I can't wait to go home,

oh, I can't wait to go home, then I'm creating this space of suffering. But when I establish home in me, then I know that I get to show up fully as myself no matter where in the world I am which means that translating this to living authentically when we know who we are and we know how to show up as who we are anywhere in any circumstance of life we know how to make the next step the next choice for us no matter the circumstance so presence presence, awareness, trust, home. It's amazing. And in just going through the experience with my body, I mean, my body is my home too. So am I going to keep it clean? Right. Am I going to make sure that it's tended to? And I just, yeah, I love that path. That's great. It's what I do with clients and in talks. Yeah. I love that. All those things

are only found within everything, all that you can't find any of that outside of you. None of it. I mean, you can find a home outside of it physically. Yeah. Right. But to feel safe and secure because it's the fear that holds you back. Yeah. You can feel safe inside, inside your home. Gosh, like I feel like we've talked about COVID so much that I'm like almost sick of saying the word, but it has offered us as a human species, this really cool curriculum and creating safety from the inside first, because we've learned that any curve ball could come any day and whatever safety we perceive that we built from the outside isn't, it's not non-conditional, right? Yeah. And so learning how to create that sense of home and safety within ourselves first is such important work. Right. So I remember years ago, my therapist

used to ask me the same, like few questions every time I went. One of them was, what did you do for yourself this week? And I was like, I'm here. And the other one was, so who is Shanna? Like, how would you describe yourself? And I was like, well, I'm a mom. I'm a good friend. I am. I'm a good daughter. I was all these things for everybody else. Literally, there was no me. And I do remember even saying many times, like I grew up believing like faith, family, friends, there's no you in that. Are you the identity of what the world wants you to be? Is that who you are? Are you truly who you're destined to be? That's chapter one of my book right there. And one of the reflection questions at the end,

at the end of every chapter, there's a set of reflection questions because I have these aha moments that drop in for me, but they're in no way prescriptive. And so the idea is for the reader to use my aha moments, my adventure as your fuel to then go and do your own introspection work with it. And so one of the questions that, I mean, I don't remember verbatim, but it's essentially looking at, you know, all the labels that you would use to describe yourself and, you know, getting them out. It's kind of like that verbal vomit experience of once you get that all out there, what's left, then who are you underneath? Because we will say all of our labels and our roles first. And then we kind of don't know who we are anymore underneath of that. And

what that experience, that phenomenon really is how we've come to identify with our persona, the way that we show up in the world and who we want people to think of us as, which is this incredible experience that we do. So when I used to be this attorney, I needed the world to think of me as intelligent, competent, reliable, thoughtful. And so when I would go and meet someone new, I would shake their hand and say, hi, I'm Danielle. And what we're really doing is forming this implicit agreement with each other where I'm saying, hi, I'm Danielle. I'll agree to believe that you are who you say you are.

If you agree to believe that I am who I say I am. And so I needed you to believe that I was this thoughtful, intelligent, competent person. And once we're on the same page there, cool. Now we can go forward in our relationship. But the conflict arises when, you know, there's dissonance there. If someone was like, no, I don't think she's that smart. I'd be like, cool. Well, we're not going to be friends then because then clearly we're like, we're not going to get along. Or, you know, going back to something earlier, we were talking about really like when we have an aha moment and we trust it and it takes us somewhere beyond that persona. So we no longer show up in the world that way anymore.

So when I left my firm, decided to travel the world, become a Reiki master, study consciousness and energy, not have a goal in mind, stop making money, all of these things, all the people in my life went, wait, what? And it can feel like I violated the agreement that I made with them about who I was supposed to be. And I'll either, they were like, Sia didn't want to be part of my life anymore, or they were interested because I was itching at something for myself that they wanted to also kind of peek into. It goes back to the mirroring of each other as well. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. When I learned to detach my identity from that persona of who I needed the world to think of me as all of those, you know, adjectives and qualities.

That was when I really gave myself the space to explore who am I underneath and guess what? I had no idea. And that's totally okay. That can feel really scary and it can stop us from doing the entire exercise, but we don't have to know the answer. It's really the journey, right? The process to asking the questions and staying with it. That's important because any answer that we come up with is still a story that lives in our minds. Because the truth is we're all of those things and none of those things. And it depends on the day and how we feel and our mood. And like, if we ate a good dinner last night and if we exercised or if we're making a lot of money and so we're feeling safe or if we just left our job and so we're feeling scared. All of their situation affects the story we tell ourselves about who we are.

So the anger, did it come after when you figured out where you're like, oh my God, I don't know who I am? Was it in that stage? What was the stage of the anger? The anger came years later. That's why it surprised me so much. It came when I was pregnant with my son, which was about five years after all of this, after I'd like done the whole journey, traveled the world, I'd had my daughter already experienced motherhood.

And so all of a sudden when I was angry about, you know, F the patriarchy kind of stuff, I was like, I feel like this should have come around already. Like, did I miss the boat the first time? Anger always comes right before a huge breakthrough. Yeah. People have to get fired up sometimes, you know, to let things go or, you know, it's just, we're human.

Yeah. I mean, it's funny. I actually just watched Inside Out. I remembered how much I love it. And the whole journey is joy is in control of the girl, the main character. And she has to learn that actually sadness has a really important part to play in being human and that it's just as important as joy. And feeling all the human emotions is, is part of what moves

us through life and processes our lives. So yeah, I totally agree with that. My God, that's so true. So who are you today? So today, so I'll say this. One of the things that I do every morning is I look in the mirror and I look in my eyes. You too? Yes. Because I said earlier, you know, when I was depressed and I looked in the mirror and I was at my law firm, I was nowhere to be found. There was no one home. And so now I look in the mirror because I say, hi, here I am. I am here. And it doesn't matter anything else after that. It doesn't matter if I'm wearing a milk stained sweatshirt or I'm wearing a really nice blouse because I'm about to go speak somewhere, whatever. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if I feel like I know what I'm going to do today and I'm excited about it, or I have no idea and

I feel lost or chaotic. It does not matter because here I am and I am engaged fully with my life. It is mine. And that to me is the most amount of gratitude that I can have. So who I am today is someone who's really engaged in life. I mean, that's the most fundamental way I can put that still it's still, it is a story, but it feels the closest to truth that I can say with words as I'm really engaged in someone who's really engaged in my life. I think that is the most authentic thing that anyone can do for themselves is look at themselves and just start their day. That's who they are. I am here. Here I am.

That's my answer when you asked me before about what I do in the morning. Yeah, they are. I am here. Here I am. That should have been my answer when you asked me before about what I do in the morning. Yeah. That's what I was thinking. I was like, that is huge. Yeah. You know, it's not even about the affirmation. Affirmation is almost like sometimes I feel it's an expectation. You know, I've got to be this every day, right? I am beautiful. I got to be beautiful every day. I am smart. I have to be smart every day. No, I am just here. That's it. I know we get so like wrapped up in the, how life is complicated and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. But when we come back to the simplicity of it, it's overwhelmingly true. And it doesn't mean you can't have the things, right? This isn't about like going to be a monk on a mountain and saying, you know, I eschew

materialism because I'm not about that. I like nice things. I want to take my family on great vacations. I want a comfortable car. I like having, you know, the tushy toaster in my car. I like those things too. Yeah. The like seat warmer thing. Like picturing toast pop up. No, I called the tushy toaster. I love it. Yeah. Yeah. And it's just about looking at different direction, shifting our focus inward instead of outward and trusting, like talk about surrender, trusting that all of that stuff will follow. And it actually follows so much more efficiently than if we were pointing outward. And there is success. You actually are being led towards

the success of your soul rather than the success of the systems. Yeah. Ah, all right. Well done. I think we just figured out everything. Get off the struggle bus and just be here and just be home within yourself. Yeah. Tell everybody where they can get your book and where they can find you though. So you can find everything, my book, me, how to work with me on my website, which is my name, danielle sunberg.com. And my book is called Atlas of being from briefcase to backpack, one former lawyer's exploration of the human way. I actually, I really want your book. Cause I really want to ask myself those questions that you're talking about. And yeah, I, you know, those are affecting questions. I think that we should always come back to, you know, to like,

who am I right now? Cause we're, we're, we're shifting throughout our life. I'm totally different than the last time, you know, somebody asked me that. Oh yeah, totally. Right. Very cool. Thank you so much for trashing with me. Yeah, it's so much fun. I love that I get to use that word now. Yeah, please do. It's the new thing. Thanks for listening to Sense of Soul Podcast. And thanks to our special guests for joining me.

If you want more of Sense of Soul, check out my website at www.mysenseofsoul.com where you can work with me one-on-one or help support sense of soul podcast by donating to my coffee fund. Thanks for listening.