Soul Boom - Shadow Work: An Idiot's Guide (w/ Keila Shaheen)

Episode Date: December 24, 2024

Let's explore the transformative power of shadow work! Rainn Wilson sits down with Keila Shaheen, the bestselling author of "The Shadow Work Journal." Keila shares her journey from a mental health crisis to creating a viral movement that has helped millions heal through journaling and self-reflection. Together, they dive into topics like generational trauma, the role of dreams in personal growth, and the intersection of mental health and spirituality. Keila Shaheen is an entrepreneur, mental health advocate, and bestselling author of The Shadow Work Journal, which went viral on TikTok, selling over a million copies. She is also the founder of Zenfulnote, a mindfulness app, and a NAMI ambassador dedicated to promoting mental wellness and self-discovery. Thank you to our sponsors! Masterclass (up to 50% OFF!): https://MasterClass.com/SoulBoom Fetzer Institute: https://fetzer.org/ MERCH OUT NOW! https://soulboomstore.myshopify.com/ God-Shaped Hole Mug: https://bit.ly/GodShapedHoleMug Sign up for our newsletter! https://soulboom.substack.com SUBSCRIBE to Soul Boom!! https://bit.ly/Subscribe2SoulBoom Watch our Clips: https://bit.ly/SoulBoomCLIPS Watch WISDOM DUMP: https://bit.ly/WISDOMDUMP Follow us! Instagram: http://instagram.com/soulboom TikTok: http://tiktok.com/@soulboom Sponsor Soul Boom: [e-mail] Work with Soul Boom: [e-mail] Send Fan Creations, Questions, Comments: [e-mail] Produced by: Kartik Chainani Executive Produced by: Ford Bowers, Samah Tokmachi Companion Arts Production Supervisor: Mike O'Brien Voicing Change Media Theme Music by: Marcos Moscat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to soul. We're looking for things beyond yoga and meditation. We're seeking a deeper understanding of our personalities of ourselves. And shadow work allows for that deeper exploration. It's been incredible to see this younger generation be so curious and involved in these conversations. Mental health is such a huge issue, especially in the United States. To me, I see it as like we're puppets and we're being pulled by. these different strings, there's so much to us that is automatic. We don't really think about how we

function, how we even think, or how we build our values and our belief systems. And so much of that is influenced by the unconscious. Hey there, it's me, Rain Wilson. And I want to dig into the human experience. I want to have conversations about a spiritual revolution. Let's get deep with our favorite thinkers, friends, and entertainers about life, meaning, and idiocy. Welcome to the Soul Boom podcast. Hela, I don't normally start with guests this way, but I want to know a little bit more about you.

What's your story? My story. So I'm 25 years old. You win the youngest guest award. Congratulations. Wow. Yeah. Is there a trophy for that?

There will be. Awesome. Get her a trophy. I have an older brother. he's amazing. He's always been like my best friend throughout school. And yeah, I've always been. So you had a close tight-knit family. Yeah, close tight-knit family. And we always had open conversations, you know, talking about spirituality as we grew older and throughout childhood. And so really looking at God and how God is present in our lives was the central focus of our family. And,

it was really inspiring to see both of my parents to live that out. Did that go through a specific faith tradition? Yes, Catholicism. Okay, great. Your dad's last name is Delgado. Is that your maiden name is Delgado? Delgado, yes. Yeah, is that Mexican or is that what kind of heritage is that?

Puerto Rican. Puerto Rican, okay. Yeah, so I went to college, graduated during the pandemic. What did you study in college? I studied marketing and psychology. And so, and then I also minored in creative studies, which was really fun. I still felt lost. I felt like I didn't find what I came here to do right off the bat after college just

being thrown into the real world. And I had sort of a dark night of the soul moment where I had to evaluate exactly what I should do with my life. And I ended up working for a tech company. and, you know, doing some consulting here and there on more of the creative aspects of content creation, video creation, tapping into my creativity while also exploring, you know, the side of a more organized business. But I still felt lost. And I struggled a lot with my mental health. I was dealing with things like anxiety and depression.

And at one point, I didn't feel like I was myself. I lost myself in the midst of all of that chaos, in the midst of that trying to find where I fit in, trying to find what role I should play. Nothing felt right. Nothing felt like myself. So, yeah, I've always grown up being very introspective and just a huge observer of the world.

And so looking at things from the outside, trying to fit into the inside was always a challenge for me. But yeah, once I came across these concepts like shadow work, inner work, and learning more about myself, my personality, how I function, how other people function, and how with that knowledge, you can find your path and find your role without compromising your true self. So tell me everything we need to know about shadow work. Give us the rundown. An idiot's guide to shadow work. Idiot's Guide to Shadow Work. Okay. Before going into the shadow work, I think it's important to know what the shadow self means.

And so the term shadow self was coined by a renowned Swiss psychologist, Carl Young. And he laid a lot of the principal foundations for analytical psychologists. and he used the term shadow self to describe the unknown, the repressed parts of our minds, the repressed parts of our psyches that we have hidden in order to fit the mold of society or due to past experiences that causes us to suppress those aspects of our minds, of our personalities. So that's the shadow self. All of the hidden you is what resides in there. And so... The hidden you.

Yeah. What's some examples of the hidden you that would be? Yeah. So any fears that you have, looking at the roots of why you're afraid of those things, your shadow selves can live in there, looking at your doubts, your anxieties, your sadness. But a lot of good can reside in the repressed parts as well. A lot of people think shadow, they think.

dark, they think negative, and that is a part of it. But looking at the shadow self is also looking at your hidden talents and maybe your abandoned aspirations in life. So that can also be repressed in order to fit the mold as you grow. So shadow work is really trying to dig into that shadow self and pull those hidden nuggets of truth up into the surface. So then you can see all of the scattered pieces of yourself and slowly start to put them back together to achieve a greater state of wholeness. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think that word wholeness is very apt. I know that one time I heard Jordan Peterson, who I'm mixed on, say, I'd rather be whole than good. And I thought that was a great sentence. I'd rather be whole than good. And how does looking at the shadow make one whole? So there's a lot of guilt and shame associated with our shadow parts, the good and the seemingly bad parts.

And that guilt and shame will stop you from expressing yourself fully. And so looking at the parts of yourself that, are hidden, maybe it's because it's painful to look at or maybe because you have that shame associated. Or you just don't like those aspects of yourself. You just, you know, you lose your temper, let's say, or you have road rage and you don't like that part so you don't want to look at it. Yeah. These aspects of yourself are living in your unconscious. And that means that they are influencing your behaviors throughout the day. And so why wouldn't you want to look at the strings of what's pulling the puppet of you and find out, you know, what is causing you to act out out of the

norm? And that's a great example, like road rage. You start to act like someone else. That, that anger, that rage is coming from the shadow parts of your presence. You're personality. So when you understand that, just having that level of understanding can help you make a conscious decision before acting out and, you know, responding with anger or, you know, with responses that could hurt the people around you. You read articles all the time about road rage and the most normal people who have, you know, they've got a wife and kid and a couple of dogs or whatever and they get into a thing on the freeway and then all of a sudden they're pulling out a gun and firing it and like people are getting

hurt or shot or worse and uh you're like how does that happen but just the other day i was i was in fact it was very close to here over by the air one and i went it was a guy who was driving very slow so i went around him but there were two lanes there was no no harm no foul i didn't cut anyone off or anything like that just went around him to get on the freeway and then he just came barreling down behind me and then like went like almost into the median on the freeway on ramp like like around me and I was in I was a little incensed I was like fuck you man what the fuck like and I was ready to like oh yeah I'll show him I'm gonna go even faster and then he's in that lane I'm gonna cut in front of him and I'm gonna like it got my you know it got my goat a little bit got my blood boiling a

little bit exactly and then and then but thank god i've done enough of this kind of work and i'm i'm a little long in the tooth as well so i was able to just kind of go rain don't be silly this is ridiculous you know and and just take a deep breath and and see how you know what was threatened by him you know was that it was he like a bully those guys that used to bully me in junior high school you know that you know belittled and demeaned my masculine Do I think like less of myself or something like that? Like what what exactly is going on? So it's this kind of deep unpacking.

Yeah. It's crazy to see human behavior, especially like on the road driving cars or on the plane. Like it picks your ego. Like yeah. So I had a lot of anxiety driving. And I would try to follow where. this fear came from. There's a quote by Carl Young. It's where your fear is, there is your task. And so looking at me 22 years old, I still was really afraid to drive and I had this overwhelming

anxiety and panic attacks in the car. And I didn't know where that came from. Maybe it was a lack of practice, but it felt deeper than that. And so digging deeper, answering prompts, starting to talk with my parents about it. I found out that my mom went through a really traumatizing car accident when she was younger. And she internalized a lot of that trauma inside of her. And other people and her family also lost their lives in car accidents. So that was a trauma that was living inside of me that I was containing. And it was a generational wound that was passed down. And I started to put the pieces together.

And I realized that I was internalizing the fear that my mother had because of those experiences. And yeah, it took some time to come to that point. But I realized that that's where that root cause was coming from. So, yeah, shadow work is also about. looking at your family lineage and seeing where the ancestral trauma is residing as well and taking the steps to unpack that and heal those generational wounds. Yeah.

Yeah, I've, for me personally, I've always had this deep curiosity about myself. Like, why am I the way I am? Why do I behave the way that I do? Why do I keep doing these certain behaviors that are really not helping me or hurting me? and why do I get stuck here? And it's a deep hunger and curiosity that kind of drives me crazy when I meet people that don't have it.

I don't understand that way of living in the world. And I'm not saying you have to take yourself super seriously or you have to be in Freudian analysis three days a week or anything like that, but just the basics of, you know, what makes me happy, what makes me unhappy? Why am I stuck in this way? am I unwilling to get out of it? You know, my therapist, Bruce always says, like, what's getting in your way?

Like, you know, it will talk about something and keep coming back to it. It's like, what's getting in your way of dealing with that or what's getting in your way of doing X, Y, and Z? What's the blockage? And then, yeah, and then looking, that's kind of a shadow, you know, whatever, whatever that is, the resistance is an interesting thing to uncover. Are you finding that Gen Z kids are a little bit? more interested and intrigued with with diving into that stuff.

I definitely think so. I definitely think so. I think that at this point, we're looking for things beyond yoga and meditation and we're seeking a deeper understanding of our personalities of ourselves and shadow work allows for that deeper exploration. Yeah, it's been incredible to see this younger generation be so curious and involved in these conversations. Mental health is such a huge issue, especially in the United States. And a million copies plus that you've sold of this thing are just a testament to that hunger, to that desire. Yeah, people are hungry.

And I imagine that most everyone is under 30 that bought the book. Yeah, I mean, yeah, people of all ages and genders and backgrounds and socioeconomic statuses. have resonated with this, which is amazing to see. And it's a universal concept. It can touch any kinds of souls. How do dreams relate to shadow work? Well, dreams, there's so many symbols and hidden meanings in our dreams. So doing dream work is a huge part of shadow work. And some people find it difficult to remember their dreams. But, you know, when you bring that awareness, when you start to dream journal, then these kinds of symbols will make sense. And symbols are the way that our unconscious communicates with our conscious. So you need to learn kind of the language there and

see what it translates to. And all of this was kind of unearthed by Freud and a little bit by Jung and Adler and a few others, but this idea of like the subconscious. What can you tell me about the subconscious. I know you're not a, you're not a trained psychologist, but from your study and your work in this field, what have you learned about the subconscious? Because I think a lot of people struggle with that idea. People like to think of themselves as being fully, you know, conscious and logical and reasonable, like we're a bunch of Spockes who have a little bit of emotion, but we're, we're in charge of all the choices that we're making and we're consciously living one moment at a time. And the idea that there's a subconscious, that there's a, you know, a whole, that we're just the tip of the iceberg and that there's 90% of us as this subconscious part is kind of, it's kind of foreign.

Jonathan Haidt talks about the rider and the elephant, you know, really consciousness is a rider on an elephant. The elephant is desires, fears, phobias, you know, sexuality and urges and shadows. and our consciousness is the little guy on top by the ears kind of with the reins, but is he really in control? Right. And you put it so well with that analogy. And to me, I see it as like we're puppets and we're being pulled by these different strings

and what is in the backstage, what contains, you know, those strings in their hands is the unconscious, the subconscious. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But yeah, there's there's so much to us that is automatic.

We don't really think about how we function and how we even think or how we build our values and our belief systems. And so much of that is influenced by the unconscious. One of the very, I won't say popular topics, but one of our points of focus is the mental health epidemic. Yes. How it connects to spirituality. That's one of the many reasons I wanted to talk to you. Did COVID hit when you were in college? Yes.

COVID hit at the final year of my college. Okay. Okay. So because my son hit him like sophomore year of college, freshman or sophomore year of high school. And that has its own challenges. Absolutely. I mean, looking back, it was such a confusing time.

time for everyone, especially the younger generations, we're still trying to figure out the path that was laid out before us while the path was changing and shifting and evolving because of all of the societal changes due to COVID. So personally, I was still studying. I was trying to keep the normal things normal. But yeah, I mean, once I started dealing with heavy anxiety and depression to the point where I didn't want to wake up in the morning. I was struggling to continue to be inspired to have that energy and that aliveness inside of me. I started looking for a therapist to help me. And it took me a very long time to get to the point to admit to myself, like I should start looking for someone to help me. And that's one of one of the huge struggles

is like that putting aside the pride and saying, okay, let me take the first step and look for someone. And because of everything that was going on, that was also a difficult journey, trying to find the right person. And I remember scheduling a call with someone. I thought it was going to be such a great fit. And in between sessions, I was hopping onto the Zoom call and it was 10 minutes late. And I received an email from her and she was very different. disheartened and I think she was taken back by me not joining on time and felt disrespected. And it was just such a shock to feel, you know, not open in a space where I should feel

vulnerable. So navigating trying to find the right person. And by the way, remotely was a challenge. I think there's something a lot of people don't understand about therapy. They'll be like, well, I tried it. I tried it and I didn't like it. I was like, well, what did you mean to try out? Well, I once saw a therapist.

Well, you know, a therapist is like a barber like this. You know, you're not going to find necessarily the right hair stylist on the first try. You've got to find someone that you jibe with. It's like anything else, a family doctor, any other kind of specialist. And it's super important to. And it was, I imagine, really hard to find a therapist at that time too, right? Yeah, it wasn't normal to have virtual meetings and Zoom calls. And now it's a lot more normalized.

But back then, I mean, it wasn't common. Yeah, and, but it sounds like you had a pretty solid family background, you know, a lot of love, you know, a lot of kind of spiritual purpose and whatnot, and you still found yourself in anguish, despair, fear, anxiety. Yeah. Do you have any kind of sense of what's going on with your generation with this stuff? Like we've had, you know, we had Jonathan Haidt and his new book, The Anxious Generation. I don't know if you've had a chance to check that out.

I'm a good of it, yeah. Yeah. But, you know, really pointing the finger at social media and that the big eruption was around 2011 after, you know, Instagram came out and all of a sudden you had 13-year-old girls comparing themselves to thousands of other people on Instagram and how debilitating that was. Do you have a sense of, like, what's going on? Again, I'm just trying to, I'm trying to fish into Gen Z through using. you as a as bait i mean we have witnessed so many technological changes in our lifetime as we're evolving

so evolving with that evolution of technology is it's different we're like the beta testers of the beta products so then we become like part of the the experiment almost and social media is really interesting. I mean, it's a huge part of our lives and we can't just get rid of it. It would be naive to think that it can just disappear in our world will be better. But I think that social media and like algorithms can reflect our consciousness in a really unique way. So looking at social media and all of what's present on there is a really unique insight into the collective conscious of society. And you can either, you know, focus your energy and consciously engage with content so that, you know, you can foster more positive things in

yourself, or you can focus on the negative and get caught up in, you know, the numbers and the validation and everything that comes along with trying to have a presence on social media. But what about just the nonstop distraction of it? What about the fact that the algorithms hook you and you find yourself doing like this, you know, for hours instead of? It's not healthy. I mean, I am just a girl trying to balance my screen time with, you know, trying to find my presence and meditating and living in the real world. So it is a, it's a huge struggle, especially for Gen Z like myself, because this is the norm. You know, you go to a college classroom.

You go to a coffee shop and everyone's heads are just bowed down, you know, worshiping the content that's in front of them. And then when you look up and lift your head outside of that water for a breath of fresh air, no one else is there with you. So it's like, where is everyone? It's attention. It's an attention. I mean, our attention is what they're fishing.

for. So, you know, we can decide and regulate ourselves. I think that there needs to be more of that regulation. So, yeah, I think that we should develop a lot more practices and habits and tools even on our digital devices that help us not be sucked in so much. Do you feel like social media played a part in what you were going through? Or do you have a hard time kind of connecting that. Social media played a huge part in my life. But do you feel like it was connected to the anxiety and despair that you were feeling? Or I don't want to put words in your mouth because you also chose that as kind of a career

going into marketing. Yeah. No, I don't, I think it actually helped alleviate some of it for me because I found a safe space for me to express myself and to put, you know, these self-help concepts that resonated with me out there into the online world. So you feel that in some ways social media was a help to you when you were floundering because you were able to find some answers and some hope on it? I was able to find community, which I lacked at that hard time in my life because of COVID,

because of the isolation. So it was in a physical space, but it was a digital space that I could express myself. and be vulnerable and share what inspired me at the time when I had no one else around me to share that with. So I think it's a beautiful, it can be a very beautiful place, you know, as a human, as an artist of life, you know, to put yourself out there and whoever resonates can come with you and come witness you in that element. So for me, it was, it was an outlet.

And yeah, that that's what I used to start Zenful Note, which began as an Instagram account. And it's evolved so much over time. And I'd post poems and quotes and tips and insights that I would start learning. And based on the responses that I got in the comments, I started thinking, you know, I want to put these concepts in a journal. And journaling helped me so much at the time. It was such a great way to pour everything that was stuck inside onto physical paper and see it separated in front of me and, you know, use the insights that came out of that as a tool for growth. You started therapy.

What was that process like for you? You had studied some psychology in college. What was that journey? What was your therapeutic journey? Yeah, my therapeutic journey. So I spent almost six months in therapy and it was a beautiful time. It helped me overcome a lot of those challenges that I was facing. And therapy combined with putting myself out there and expressing myself and starting to open up again was very healing.

What was healing about it specifically? Just the level of awareness that you can bring into your daily life, you know, versus just reacting to your life. Bringing that level of awareness to bring more intention into my life at that time was necessary. Or else, you know, you can go on and be in survivor mode. And I think our internal worlds, you can live outside of your soul. and go with the flow of life. And when you come back home, when you come back to yourself and to isolation, you might feel misplaced.

You might not feel comfortable with what's inside. And it's important to cultivate the right mental tools to build a sanctuary inside of yourself so that you feel safe when you have those moments of deep isolation and sadness and pain. And so that's what it allowed me to do was use those tools and build the foundation for the home of my soul inside of myself. Wow. Yeah. Sounds like you had a great therapist that would encourage that.

That's very like, that's beautiful, advanced stuff. A lot of therapists I find just is kind of a weekly reportage, you know, and then I did this and so-and-so was a dick to me. And I felt scared and I went here. And then I did this. and maybe the therapist has two or three things to say. And then I'll see you next week. But it sounds like you were working towards something much more specific. And putting in the work like outside of that setting.

Did you get assignments then from your therapist? Yeah. Yeah, I would. But I'd also just do a lot of research and look into other therapeutic practices myself too, which is how I came across shadow work. So how did you come across that, tell me? I was browsing online and I've always been really fast. fascinated with personality types and the Myers-Briggs types and Carl Young, we can thank

for that as well, terms like introversion, extroversion, synchronicity. And so when I came across the shadow self, I was like, oh, this is a shadowed part of psychology. Like, why isn't anyone bringing this concept into the light? So yeah, I just kept digging. and digging and following and my intuition and incorporating those prompts and practices into my journaling for my mental health really started in college. Okay. Yeah. Did you ever do the artist's way?

Yes. Yeah, I started it. I need to pick it back up again. Things got busy. But yeah, I love it's Julia Cameron. Yeah. She's amazing. Amazing stuff.

Kind of the grandmother of journaling the subconscious. finding the artist in each of us. And yours is about finding the shadow. So this is all kind of dovetailing. You have a mental health crisis. You've always journaled. You're online a lot. Kind of researching answers, solutions, things that work for you, things that inspire you.

And this starts to move together. You create this account, Zenful note, telling me more about that. And that's now an app. Yes. Yeah. So at that point, I, you know, everything that that was culminating inside of me really manifested into Zenful Note and the Shadow Work Journal. And so when I started putting my work out there, you know, getting a lot of feedback and responses, I just really honed in on this on Zenful Note, growing the channel, growing the page, engaging with our community and seeing what come out of that. How would you engage with the community there?

I mean, posting content, commenting, responding, DMing people, answering questions, and just having conversations with people. This was mostly on TikTok? Mostly on TikTok, yeah. And we had Instagram as well, but it wasn't as like active and passionate as our responses on TikTok. Yeah. I remember at one point I was just extremely inspired to come out of that dark night moment of the soul. And I was just overflowing with inspiration and love and ideas. And with this journal, I remember waking up at 4 a.m. in the morning specifically because it felt like the quietest, most in long pause in the world.

And I would listen to the Beatles and music that would inspire me and just get into this space. And what came out of it, I was, you know, scrapbooking parts of my own personal journals, like just reviewing everything and seeing what narratives I would write about in those darker reflections. And, you know, using those for some of the exercises, like the fill in the blank prompts are so popular. It's like a madlib style where there's a couple sentences. It's a narrative. And then there's some blanks and you fill it in. And yeah, so I would get creative and use alternative thinking to look at my journey in my journals and see how I could use some of the resources, the prompts, the insights that I came across and put them into an interactive format, which you can see is the journal today. But yeah, it came from a place of pure inspiration and hope and a vision for this helping people.

Because I saw how profound and transformative this method was for me. And, you know, just hearing how intrigued other people were about shadow work, how could we not, you know, put more resources for them on this? And there weren't other journals on shadow work before. There wasn't anything as interactive. There wasn't really a library of prompts anywhere. So I felt really called to create that space, that ecosystem. So tell me about the Shadow Work Journal.

There's prompts. Are there particular people or situations that trigger feeling of jealousy for you? Who are your closest friends growing up? And then you have like, here's a quote by Carl Jung. I am not what happened to me. I am what I choose to become. Is that where the shadow work takes oneself? So we're less of a puppet.

We're like Pinocchio, cutting the strings, and Geppetto's love makes us a real human boy. Yeah. So this journal has a couple of different parts. The first section is more educational. And you can learn more about the foundations of shadow work in it. The second section is filled with interactive exercises. There's shadow work,

Madlibs, there are meditations, there's QR codes that you can scan and it links out to, you know, visualizing your shadow self meditation or a shadow dialogue meditation. And the third section to it is a prompt section. So that's where you can do all of the journaling and answering those prompts. But yeah, it's a little bit of everything. And yeah, I tell people there's no one way to use it. You don't go page by page one, two, three. You just kind of flip through and see if any questions or any exercises or quote stand out to you and start there.

Yeah. But yeah, it's such a great way that people have been able to initiate their healing journeys. I think the starting place is always the hardest. And that's how I felt when it was for me. And having a safe, friendly, guided space to do that in the comfort of. of your own home is very powerful. A lot of it syncs up with Joseph Campbell and mythology. You know, dreams are our own kind of personal mythology.

And we kind of also have collective dreams. Sometimes I think about great movies as being like the collective dream of the culture of that time. And I remember of Empire Strikes Back where Luke has the dream that he's going down in the cave. There's some other things that happen. There's voices. There's masks or something. And then he comes face to face with Darth Vader. And this was part of the Joseph Campbell instructions to George Lucas about the hero's journey.

That part of the hero's journey is the facing of the fears. And what was your quote then about the fears again? Where your fear is. There is your task. There's your task. And Luke had that fear of facing Darth Vader. Spoiler alert, Darth Vader's actually his father. And, but he needed, he realizes he needs to face, and guess what, he does face Darth Vader in the next film.

And that's part of our own personal journey as well. Exactly. I mean, we're living a story here. And if we don't embrace the ups and the downs, then, I mean, what are we really doing? So, yeah, I mean, it's been incredible to see. see people embracing and the human experience. I mean, it's not perfect. Yeah.

But this is the reality of what we're living. So it's beautiful to dig deep and find yourself. I have here, I'm one of these mad libs. It's a fill in the blank. I haven't read this at all. You can pick the fill in the blank. Here's some fill in the blank sections right around here early on in the book. Read one to me and I'm going to answer, right?

First thing off the top of my head, okay? Go ahead and find one. I have not read those. Okay, here we go. Fill in the blank. Okay. As a child, I was told not to. Make a mess.

This made me very. Anxious. I feel like things would be different if. I could dance more. I wish I could tell my child's self. You're going to be okay, buddy. I'm so grateful for. hummingbirds

But wish my guardians would have Taking me out into nature more Beautiful Is that it? Yeah, how'd I do? Great. What grade would you give me? A plus.

I got an A plus? Yes. Wow. Yeah, and this is This is all about tapping into the stream of consciousness And not waiting too long Or analyzing our thoughts before answering and you answer very quickly.

Yeah, and I think that's part of the journaling work. And I think it goes, I've done a lot as well of journaling. And, you know, everyone loves the artist's way book by Julia Cameron. It's classic. And my wife, Holiday, teaches creative writing. And she does these free writing exercises where the command is like, let the pen be a runaway freight train. There's also something very powerful about this as opposed to this.

which is very analytic, but this taps into something deeper. It's more artistic. Like you can do so much with a pencil. And, you know, you can find your personality even in the way that you write things. So, yeah, it's a beautiful way of alchemizing the inner world outside. And I've had so many random realizations and insights that came out of writing where I didn't recognize that I would write that. But reading back, it's like, wow, this is part of me. And so you can remind yourself of a lot.

And that goes to what my wife would teach when she does these free writing. And I've done them and I've assisted her a ton of times. And when you let your pen be a runaway freight train, if you have a prompt, let's say, for creative writing, all kinds of stuff and all kinds of voices start to come out of you. And you're like, holy shit, where the fuck did that come from? Like, whose voice is that? What characters are these? And stories come out. People that think that they're not artists, all of a sudden become artists by doing this work.

Yeah. I don't know that that applies to the shadow work, but there's something so powerful about journaling. Yeah. Perhaps it is like the subconscious needs a hand and a pencil. Right. In order to come out in order to emerge. Yeah, absolutely. I think shadow work is kind of like the art of you like putting yourself together

because we're seeing all the colors and all the stories and memories that live inside of us and putting it all out to form something, to embody something, to take shape. And doing this work is like being your own artist and finding who you are. And if that doesn't feel safe, if that doesn't live up to where your dreams are, where your ambitions are, then you can always change the narrative. So at least it gives you that picture to work with. And, yeah, using pen, pencil, paper is incredibly therapeutic. How has it changed you? How are you different now than you when you started this work?

I feel a lot more comfortable with myself. I grew up very introverted, very closed off and contained, but I had such an imaginative, lively internal world. And I feel like at this stage of my life, I can embody that me without suppressing myself. So it's allowed me to be more creative, to be more bubbly and expressive and not hold back. because of the people around me or because I feel like I have to be a certain way.

So it's, yeah, it's definitely allowed me to come out of my shell and do things like this. So I first became acquainted with your work in the journal through this New York Times article. How's that been since the New York Times article? It's been really busy. I didn't know how many people read the New York Times. Yeah. Yeah. I read it every day.

I still think it's a trusted source of news. And by the way, it's doing very well financially. Not much failing going on at the New York Times. But one of the things that drew me to your story, and I was so inspired to hear and so glad to hear, is you hacked the publishing industry. You really became a publishing juggernaut, sidestepped the traditional way that books get out there.

You self-published the first version. version of this book and started selling it on TikTok. And you promoted it. You got other influencers to promote it. You sold it in your TikTok shop. You sold 700,000 copies without even a publisher being involved. Now you have a three book deal. You're working with Simon & Schuster.

Is that right? Talk about the fact that this has like rocked the publishing industry. And I love. And by the way, it's an industry that needs a lot of rocking. So good for you. Thank you. Tell me about that story. Yeah.

So flashback to last summer, I was juggling a lot. I was juggling everything. Packing items, shipping them, handling customer service. And at that point, I was mostly selling on our Zenful Note website and Amazon. And it was all self-published. So I put everything together and published it myself, bought ISBNs. and put it all together. And yeah, and then I came across TikTok shop,

which was a very new feature in the TikTok platform and saw how they were starting to expand as an e-commerce platform. And I had been on TikTok for years before that, just for fun posting. So it made sense to list the Shadow Work Journal on TikTok. And nothing really happened the first month. I just had the listing there. and like zero activity.

And then once one of the influencers posted about the journal and video went viral and we got an influx of orders. And that's when I, it sparked. And I saw that there was, there was something there. And I mean, I was ordering maybe like 300 books at a time. And it wasn't a high volume until. So you'd have to order them from your self-publishing company. and it would get shipped to you like in your garage.

And then you'd have to individually ship them out to the people that ordered them. Yes. That's a lot of work. It was very labor intensive. Were you selling any kind of either, oh, you can't do an audio book, but I guess you can't even really do an ebook either, can you? Because with the journaling, that would be tricky. At that point, yeah, I didn't have an ebook either.

But the volume of orders kept going up once I started posting more about the journals and other creators. started using it and sharing their experiences. And even accounts who weren't creators started seeing other people talk about the journal and using it. And then those TikTok like viewers started becoming TikTok creators and sharing their stories. So it just became like this snowball effect of people opening up and sharing their stories and what's going on inside of them.

And it really pulled on the heartstrings and reminded each. other that we're all human, we're all going through things. We all need help. We can all also help ourselves and inspire others to do the same. And so the orders kept coming and we started ordering like 3,000 books at a time. And at that point, it started becoming unmanageable, like six hours day packing, waking up at 6 a.m. And like, yeah, we were going on scavenger hunts for bubble mailers. And it's actually surprising how hard it is to find bubble mailers out there. But yeah, it was very labor-intensive. Maybe that's your next entrepreneurial effort is more bubble mailers.

Yeah, Zemful Note bubble mailers. But yeah, and then we realized we need a 3PL, a 3-PL that could also print books. What is that? What did you say? A 3-PL, a third-party, like, logistics handling, you know, to pack things and ship things out. Right. We need to helpers, basically, because I couldn't handle it all myself.

So we found a 3PL, and they also printed books, so it worked out for a bit. But they were limited to 500 books a day. So we, you know. That's crazy. Yeah, things. A lot of people publish books. They never sell 500. Yeah.

It's crazy to think about this story. But, yeah, we would set things in stock in the morning. and then by the end of the day, like 9, 10 p.m., we would go out of stock. And then that happened day after day for over a month. And more and more people wanted it. And everyone was like, when is it going to be back in stock? Like, why is it out of stock? Please, like, do something about it.

I need this. Yeah. So then we expanded. We started contacting like 10 other book printers and manufacturers. and at our peak we were selling like 10,000 books a day. Oh my gosh. I mean, that number takes you back. Yeah.

It does. Yeah. But it was really exciting and overwhelming and also intense. At that point when we were selling so much, I had to drain my bank account in order to buy more inventory and keep up with the demand. So literally went to zero. And with everything that was happening, all the labor, you know, having to make these big decisions during that chaotic period of time was also very challenging. So what is your report from the front lines of hacking the publishing industry?

What have you learned? Did you get resentment and pushback from the big publishers? Did they start contacting you wanting to sign you immediately to a contract? Do they try and hurt you and sabotage what you were doing in some ways? Like, tell me a little, give us a little inside baseball into the publishing industry. I'm getting there. So as everything was ramping up, because of all of the attention on TikTok, the Shadowwork Journal became the number one bestselling book on Amazon four times outselling Oprah Winfrey and Elon Musk's books when they released their books at that same month as me. And this was the splash.

I mean, this was the wave and it got a lot of publishers' attentions. And so I remember getting an email from one of them, like the first big publishing company that emailed me. And I was freaking out and like, you know, so wide-eyed and excited and flattered. And we got to talking to them. And I mean, typically they'll give you an advance and then like a 7% royalty. but it just didn't make sense that I had already put in all of this work and I had already spent years building this thing and putting it together and making it a success. And, you know, at that point, like, e-commerce was on lockdown. And I didn't need a lot of help outside of what I was doing other than the hands on.

And also getting into retail was a struggle too. That's very gatecapped for self-publishers. Getting it into Barnes & Noble and Say. Yeah, or Hudson News. Yeah, but I had some initial conversations with publishers, but it just didn't make sense. Like, they gave very lowball offers, and I knew the value that I created, and I didn't want to give that up right away. So, yeah, I just kept doing what I was doing. And then my now agents had reached out to me, and they're amazing.

So they helped iron out, you know, all of the details on how we could possibly make this work with a publisher in order to keep the mission growing and drive the vision of Zenful Note in the Shadow Work Journal. Because, I mean, this isn't just a book. It's a movement. And so. That's beautiful. I'm trying to start a spiritual revolution over here. Let's do it together. Yeah, let's come on.

Let's do it. Okay. you know, as an addict and someone engaged in the 12 steps, which, by the way, 12 steps, very influenced by Carl Jung. Yes. And he had a dialogue with Bill W., who founded AA very early on in that process. But I do feel like the 12-step program of recovery in a way as a kind of a shadow work. So you do resentment inventories, right?

You do your sex inventories. you share them with someone else, like you, you know, at meetings or with your sponsor or in your journaling or in your stepwork or in your prayer and meditation, you're sharing the darkest parts of yourself. You get to know your addict in a way, and the addict is the ultimate shadow, really.

And it becomes something that for people deep in recovery, they become grateful for because their addict has sent them on a journey of self-discovery to a level and a depth that other people don't even get to scratch the surface of. And you get to live one day at a time with this like crazy, scary drug addict or alcoholic or porn addict or sex addict or gambling addict or shopping or food addict that's there that kind of wants to destroy you. And it's part of yourself.

And how do you bring that addict into the light? How do you love it? notice it, oh, there you are, you know, and accept it, not, you know, ignore it, not shove it under the carpet or put it in the back of the closet in the shadows, but bring it up into the light and you go to any 12-step meeting and it's all about bringing the shadows into the light because an addict can't live with secrets and lies and those forces driving them. It's, you know, it's always imperfect and addicts and alcoholics are crazy as fuck. But nonetheless, it is one big shadow work jamboree over at 12-step mania.

Yeah, wow. Yeah, a big part is admitting being able to put yourself aside, your pride aside, and admit that there is this other part of you. and then the next part is befriending that shadow and not seeing it as an enemy as a force against you but seeing it as part of your wounded self, your child's self and treating it with that compassion and love that you would share to a child self with understanding and patience. So when we approach that other side of ourselves with that kind of of love and that kind of compassion, that can mend so much within us.

That is a huge step of the 12 steps. Yeah. So I just want to, that's beautiful. I just want to end with talking a little bit about spirituality, as I like to touch in from a soul boom standpoint. what do you see as the kind of spiritual connection to shadow work and the work that you're doing? How is this work a path toward kind of spiritual wholeness as well as psychological wholeness? Yeah, it's really interesting to see how Carl Young fused psychology and spirituality.

And we have our mind, we have our body, so we have our mental health. we have our physical health, but we have our spirit as well. And our spirit is so overshadowed right now. We don't really tend to the spirit. We don't, you know, and that's a generalization, but there just aren't a lot of accessible ways to cultivate your spirit. And so when we do this kind of work and go into the self-help practices and fuse that with our spirituality,

whatever that spirituality is for you, that can increase the profoundness of the realizations that you come across. And I mean, we are animated beings. We have so much aliveness within us. We are expressions of the divine. So when we explore those aspects of ourselves and see the perfection, as well as the imperfection, it gives you a greater appreciation of who you are and the people around you. We're not just robots here living in an automatic mode. We're living beings going through the human experience. And yeah, there's a lot that we can do to bring that aliveness, bring that passion back into ourselves. You know, to cultivate a greater society, to cultivate a more loving whole society.

And I think that that's extremely important right now is to focus on that mind, body, but also spirit, which you're doing so amazingly with this initiative with soul boom. Yeah. Oh, thanks. And there is a collective shadow, too, that Young writes about. Yes. So we have an individual shadow and we have our cultural shadow. And there's this amazing documentary on Netflix about Hitler, the rise of Hitler and Nazism and evil.

And my wife and I have been binge watching it. It's really, it's harrowing and it's also very revelatory of what's going on today. And you see the collective shadow of the, German people reflected in the final solution and in the militarism and nationalism. As Germans had an insane kind of nationalistic pride coupled with militarism. And then the Nazi party, of course, took control and kind of obliterated democracy. And before they know it, they're in the process of exterminating Jews and gays and gypsies and trying to conquer the totality of Europe.

And it's like this, it's like an, it is literally a nightmare of a people. It is, it is the darkest shadow of the German people at that time. And the German people are so different now. And really, it's like they've woken up from that nightmare. Do you have any thoughts on collective shadows and where we are right now in contemporary America with America 2024's shadow side?

Oh, yeah. I mean, the collective shadow. That's something that I'm actually going to dive into in the book of shadow work. And so one of the chapters is on the collective shadow and seeing the shadow in different aspects of our society and in our culture, politics, media. So, I mean, we have these collective shadows

and the overcast on our society. And I mean, it's not a perfect world that we're living in, but we can take the right steps individually to then create the domino effect of peace and sharing that with each other. So, yeah, I'm excited to talk more about it in the Book of Shadowwork. Wonderful. That's great. Thanks so much, Kayla, for being on the soul boom. Thank you for having me.

This was such a pleasure. It was such a pleasure. You too. Thank you. Thank you. The Soul Boom Podcast. Subscribe now on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever else you get your stupid podcasts.