Shannon Kaiser shares her story of overcoming hardship to find her true purpose. She shares tips on how to improve the quality of your own life and love every moment.
The Awakened & Aligned Podcast with Shannon Kaiser
Find Your Happy Mini Lecture
(audience applause) - Hello, welcome. I am so excited to be here. I wanted to say thank you to you guys for coming and taking time out of your day to sit and talk and come together to find our happiness, find your happiness. As you know, I am an author and an inspirational travel writer. I live coach and it's been a journey for me to get here. I started with a dream. A dream to make a difference. A dream to follow my heart. And a dream to really be authentic to who I am and stop forcing myself to be someone that I'm not. And it has been a journey, but that's what they say, right? Life is a journey and it's not a destination. And that's exactly what the problem was for me. I was always trying to get to that destination, always. I was in a position. You may have been following me. You may know from playwiththeworld.com, my website or you may have attended another workshop or you might have seen somewhere, my journey that I struggled. I was in advertising, pursuit of career and advertising in marketing and it was very much out of alignment with who I am as a person. It forced me to try to be someone I wasn't. I went into advertising, it's funny enough, to make a difference, literally. Bright-eyed, ready to go, right out of grad school. I said, I'm doing this because I wanna make other people's lives better. I don't know if you've ever seen an advertisement where you get off the couch and you're like, gosh, my life is, I am more fulfilled after watching that thing, right? 30-second spots aren't going to make your life better. In fact, most of the time, we're teavowing past them or we're just so annoyed because they rub us the wrong way. And I quickly learned very fast into the industry that this isn't going to be the best opportunity for me to fully live my potential because basically, I was just making money for the man. I was making money for the people, the clients. I was selling potato chips and soft drinks and alcohol and things that was really hard for me to believe in and get behind because of a lot of different reasons. Now, by no means am I saying having a day job or going to work and sitting at a desk is a bad thing or anybody who's in advertising, amazing. You guys do amazing work. I know I've been in it, but what I'm saying is it just wasn't in alignment with me and who I am. And I spent a long time fighting that because I was afraid to recognize that this is really how I feel. So what happens when people deny themselves their feelings or they're afraid to look at their feelings? Because that's really what I was doing. I had these emotions, but I was absolutely refusing to look at them or feel them. So I guess like a lot of other humans, I turned to some things that weren't so good. So I went through a lot of the different addictions over a span of seven or eight years. I started to get into kind of the wrong scene and I went into drugs, pretty hardcore drugs. Luckily, I realized there was a better way because these things, these drugs, they take over here, they're addicting. Whether it was alcohol or drugs or food, I went through food addictions in the process of running for my feelings. No matter what it was, I was doing something to avoid it. I was working over it, working 70 hour weeks. I was working out, then I went through a phase where I totally thought that working out is going to be the best thing and I was working out four or five hours a day and competing in massive events, like hardcore half Ironman triathlons and Sentry bike rides, which is 100 miles of a bike ride every single weekend, killing my body, you know? And just attracting people to me, I was dating the wrong people, people who were in fear too. And that's really what it comes down to. I was afraid. I was afraid that if I did listen to my own voice, I would fail and took me a long time to realize this because I would work and I would come home and I would do things to cover up these feelings. So I never really realized that I was doing what I was doing except for I knew that something wasn't right. I was crying all the time. I was miserable. In fact, my tears carried over into the workplace. I actually started crying at work. I would have to go to the bathroom and when someone came in, I'd have to like flush a toilet or something to make it sound like I wasn't in there stopping to death. And that's how it was. And then it just got so bad. It got so bad one day I was crying on the floor and I was shaking and I was thinking, this is what hell feels like. This is absolutely, I had just thrown up my dinner, right? And I had just completely like worked my fourth 15 hour day in a row and I was lost. I was so lost and I didn't know what to do. So all I could do was literally pray. Now I grew up believing in God and I surely thought praying is what you do. But this time it was somehow different. This time I asked for help. Instead of saying, oh, this is so bad, whatever the prayers were, it was actually me saying out loud, I need help. This is not me. This is not who I want to be. I didn't sign on to be this Shannon, please help me. And then literally within a second, the tears dried up and I felt this tingle come over my body and all of my feelings and worries and fear they went away because the only thing that was surrounding me and inside of me and all around was love. It was the most compassionate moment of my life. And I realized I have a choice. I have a choice in life. I can choose to be a victim of my own reality. I can choose to blame the whole entire world for my problems. I can choose to say that my boss sucks and that there's always a reason why I'm not going to be good or I'm not as good as that person or whatever it is or I can choose to be the master of my life. I can choose to navigate my ship into safety, into love, into happiness. I have the power to follow my heart. And that is the voice actually that came to me when I said, I need help, please help me. The only voice that came to me was my voice in my head and it said, Shannon, follow your heart. So I immediately stood up and I splashed water my face and I took my red lipstick and I wrote on my mirror. I wrote mini manifestos. I said, I want these three things because I thought those three things were going to help me get closer to happiness. At the time, it had been a while since I got a raise and I was due because I was performing at a level that was in the next bracket. So I said, I want a $10,000 raise or to work at another job with this amount of income. I want this. I want to live in Portland, Oregon, so I'm close to my family and loved ones because I miss the West Coast. And the third one, I want to be happy. And I wrote this all on this mirror and I said, I want this all by March 11th. At the time, it was like January 4th or January 5th. Actually, it was probably like January 20th. So I did this and I said, OK. I'm going to move towards my goal. What does that mean? It means saving more money because if I want to move to Oregon, I need to stop spending my money so I can have a plan. What does that mean? That means I need to actively start applying for other jobs. Who cares if I have a job? I don't like I can take control here. So that's what I did. I started to do that. And it was actually only two weeks, 14 days, five, let's see, 10 working days. I went into my job and they called me into the office with my boss and the lady who signed my hiring paperwork. And they said, I'm sorry, but we need to let you go. And it was at that moment that I realized miracles happen. Now, in a world and a state of affairs where there's over 14 million people who are unemployed right now and it keeps growing, it fluctuates. But here in Oregon, just alone, it's 9% that is so high, fear is everywhere. People are like, you can't get jobs. You can't get jobs. Oh my god, the world is-- there's so much going on out there. But instead of going there, instead of worrying about that, I focused on what I wanted. And I realized that this opportunity of being laid off from a job I didn't even like, a job that didn't even allow me to be and do what I had to offer. It didn't give me the-- it didn't share. It wasn't in line with what I really wanted out of my life. I stayed there because it was safe. I stayed there because I was comfortable and I was trained. I knew how to do it. But I was working from here. I was working from the head. Obviously, I know how to do graphic design and I was very skilled at it. But it wasn't coming from here, which is the heart. And that is where the shift happened. When I was in a position to say, I have a power, I can choose, all of a sudden, everything around me worked towards that goal. The people at work started to see that I was smiling and they were totally-- they were blown away. They were like, why is she so happy that she's laid off? I don't understand. I had to actually hide how happy I was because I didn't want them to think it had anything to do with them, because really, it was just about me getting one step closer to my goals. And when they did lay me off, they gave me a $10,000 signing. I got to leave now. Thank you for working for us, but you've got to get out of here. Obviously, with taxes and stuff, it doesn't work that much. And my point in sharing this is that I had actually wrote in that figure down. I said exactly $10,000. Now, it didn't actually look like how I thought it was going to look like. You know, I said on my little board, on my mirror, when I wrote in the red lipstick, I said, I want $10,000 more. Well, that brings me to the point, this is what happens. When you put a clear intention out into the universe, write it down. This is a step. This is what I did. And this is how you can help get your goals happening faster. Be clear and write it down. But let go of the expectation. If it doesn't happen how you want it to, or how you think it should, or even when you think it should, don't worry about it. Just know that it is on its way to you. And it is always going to work out in your favor. Because as I was growing up, my mom would always say, it's this or something better. So the fact that I wasn't at that job anymore, I was on my way to something better. It was so clear to me at that point, when I had this check of $10,000, how energetically this all works, how it all comes together, how the universe wants to support us in our goals, how we can make our dreams become a reality just by focusing on certain intent. Sorry, my text messages going off here. This should be turned off. The bottom line is in life. We're always going to have situations that we're not going to like. But the trick is to let those situations be. And instead of resisting them to actually recognize them and accept them. Because as soon as we accept the things that we don't like, we can start from a place and really work towards changing it. But if we're continuing to say, I don't like this, I don't want this, I don't want this in my world, and I don't like this boss, I don't like this boyfriend, and this, whatever it is, all we're doing is focusing on what we don't like. It's almost like complaining, whether you're complaining to yourself or complaining to your friends or complaining period, it's not solving the problem. So in order to solve the problem and to get towards what you want, you have to actually just take a moment and reflect see where you are, understand what's not working, and then change it. That's it. I mean, you really have three choices. You can accept it. You can complain about it, which we know doesn't work. Because look, it didn't help me for the longest time I was stuck in a depression because I was complaining about it, or you can accept it and let it be. And that really is the key step, accepting it, and letting it be the way it is. So to really get there, as far as accepting it, it's a matter of understanding that it's not really going to make that big of a difference. This was hard for me to understand. But if you think about it, whatever the situation is that's really bothering you, go ahead and pick something that's really bothering you in your life right now. Something you really want, maybe, but you don't have because of what you're focusing on. So an example, I have a really good friend who has been trying to lose weight for quite a few years. But she's always, always, dogging herself. She is picking on herself in her head. She's like, oh my god, I'm a fat cow. I look like a blue guy today. Oh my god, I'm muffin top central, whatever it is. But she's going to the gym. She's doing Weight Watchers. She's doing all of the things, the outward reflections. But what's happening is her internal mind, the things she's telling herself. It is constantly belittling her. It is saying you're not good enough. You're not going to do this. You're too fat. That kid from third grade keeps picking on you. Whatever it is. So that's contradicting her actions. And our minds are stronger than any action we will ever do. I will repeat that because this is key. And anything that you want in your whole entire life. You can get it by shifting your mind because our minds are so important in helping us get what we want. Our minds are the key more than any action we will ever do. If you don't believe me, or if this seems a little woo woo, or if you're like, what the heck is she talking about? Think about it. Think about something you really want. And think about why you don't have it yet. So whatever came up in your mind just now-- my boss just doesn't see that I'm good enough. Or say, I want to raise. Oh, my boss doesn't like me. Or, oh, I want to meet my soulmate. But then you're like, oh, but all the guys here, the good guys are taken or gay. Whatever it is, whatever you want, there was some dialogue that came up in your head. And that dialogue that you said is what we're going to look at. Because that dialogue is the thing that's keeping you playing small. And is the thing that is keeping you from being what you truly want to be. So you think about your dream. The only reason we don't have our dreams is because we haven't caught up to our dream. I could have been a full-time travel writer way back then if I caught up to it. But there was a lot of things I needed to do, a lot of people I needed to meet in order to train myself, in order to get to where I needed to be, in order to be able to write and not fall on my face. We all have dreams, and they may seem really unattainable. So we just keep them as dreams. A lot of the times, dreams are just dreams. Oh, yeah, they're dreams. Wouldn't that be nice if? But that's not the type of dreams that I teach. That's not the type of dreams that I share, because in my world, dreams are life. Dreams are miracles that happen every day. You set your mind to something, and you work towards it. It comes true. You trust that it's going to happen. It comes true. There is no excuse for our dreams not to come true in this life, except for our own selves. And when you really understand that we are the masters of our own ship, and we really can make a difference in our world by following our heart and turning that dialogue in our head down, then your whole world will open up. Absolutely your whole world will shift. So what I do now is every morning I wake up, and I say, what steps can I take today to achieve these goals? Every step I take a mini, mini movement forward. When we feel like we're off track, it gets a little bit overwhelming, and we just give up. We throw our hands in the air. I can't do it. I don't want to be part of that. But think about something you do want. And after we learn to recognize the negative tunage and turn down that frequency, we can take steps daily. And this is what happened. Two and a half years ago is when I declared I want to be a travel rider. My story, my secret love affair that's featured in Chicken Soup for the Soul, Find Your Happiness, is really the turning point for not only my career, but also the shift inside of me that said, I am doing this. I am following my heart. It's about my struggles through advertising and how I was secretly cheating on advertising to write. And I would call in sick so I could write all day. And if you're doing stuff like that, then you should ask yourself, you know, if it's a chore to go to work, if it hurts every bone in your body to get up in the morning and try to process your day, then you have to ask yourself, what will make me happy? What's not working here? Why am I so miserable? You know, life is pretty short. And we should never do anything that we don't want to do. We should never be with anyone that we feel hurts us or makes us feel less than we are. And the same goes for your workplace. If the work you're doing hurts you because it's out of alignment with who you really are, you have gifts. You have beautiful things you can bring to this world. And you know that you make a difference. You know it in your heart. You do matter. You owe it to yourself. You owe it to the world to make a difference, to be true to you. Because if you're not true to you, then you're not serving anyone. If you're not true to you, then what are you doing? How can we go through life being someone we're not? We do this. We do this all the time. Whether we're trying to please our significant others, our family members, our bosses, our best friends. We constantly-- we mute our own voice because we're afraid of something, of being left out. We're afraid of being alone. We're afraid of being true to who we really are. Because if we really are who we are, what would happen? Imagine if you did follow your heart. And you did go after that goal, that dream. What would happen? It's pretty scary, huh? It's pretty scary to think that if you want to quit your job and join the Peace Corps, who's going to support you? Or if you want to write your first book, but you have no idea where to start, and what if it is a bestseller? What if it's a New York Times bestseller and you get sent all around the world? That's pretty scary. Because right now you sit at a job doing accounting for a boss who thinks that your name is Sarah and it's really Samantha, right? It's pretty scary when we think about our dreams coming true. So a lot of times we listen to that fear voice, that voice in our head that says, you know what? I like it right here. This is pretty cozy. I'm going to stay right here because you know that we're pretty cushioned. We got some money coming in. We got security. We absolutely know what's going to happen tomorrow. But that's what's going on. Our security blankets are being wiped out from us. There is no such thing as job security anymore. There's no such thing as a secure relationship, you know, with divorce-- divorces as high as they are. There is no such thing as security. But what happens when we really do follow our hearts? What happens when we really do go after the things we want and get them? That's security. That is what brings comfort to the soul. That's what we all want. We all want to feel safe. We all want to feel loved. I mean, every one of us wants to be part of something bigger than ourselves. So how in the world can we sit here and say, we won't go after our dreams because we're scared? But when the very thing that we want to do is go after our dreams because it will make us and give us and provide for us everything that we truly do want. Because you know what? When you do follow your heart, when you are living from a place of passion, of compassion, of kindness and love, not of ritual and technique and analytical mind driven, but coming from your heart, the world will respond. The world will-- you will have possibilities that you never even thought possible. You will meet people you never, ever imagined. All of a sudden, your world opens up. This is what happened to me about two years ago. I was in a state of just frustration. And I declared, I'm going to be a traveler. I'm going to be a writer. I actually am going to be a writer. I'm going to do this. I'll travel. I'm going to share my experiences. And that's where my heart is. I need to be able to talk to people on a mass level and inspire them to help make their lives better. And I went through what I went through. And I realized I do have the choice I have the power to make a difference. So I started writing on the side. And I started to just believe in my dream. And when you believe in your dream that things that happen are quite outstanding. You know, little things started happening. Picked up a book on the bookshelf. I was frustrated. And I went to the bookstore. Literally, it almost fell off into my hands. It's a little bit book called "Add More Into Your Life." It was by Gabriel Bernstein. I was like, this chick is rad. She's on the cover and she's in an angel wing outfit. And she's on a skateboard. And I related to her because she was about my age. And I like angel wings. In fact, that was an angel for Halloween. I was like, this chick's pretty cool. She's got a book. OK, I'm going to get this. "Add More Into Your Life, A Hip Guide to Happiness." I couldn't put the book down. I emailed her afterwards. And I said, oh my gosh, thank you. Thank you. Your book came at the right time. And I was hoping that I could somehow get and cannot do it with her. But it, obviously, she's this author. And she's like, oh, thanks. Thanks, fan mail. This is great. Thank you. And I was like, OK, well, at least I got to talk to her. It wasn't until nine months later, literally. I ordered some of her books for gifts for my friends for Christmas. Now, I loved her book so much that I thought this would be a really nice gift to give. Well, the books didn't come in time for the actual Christmas party. So I had emailed her, not just kind of inquired where they were. And she went back personally. And she said, oh my gosh. And she obviously didn't know it was me. She gets fan mail all the time. So she was just like, oh my gosh, from a customer standpoint, customer service standpoint. She said, I'm really sorry. Please let me know what I can do to make it up. I understand how important it is for gifts. And I'm sorry I didn't get there when they do come. Let me know. And I said, actually, a coaching session would be really great, just 20 minutes, right? She's like, absolutely. I put it out there. So I said, this is what I want. That was my heart talking. And I really just wanted to talk to her since she was an author, about author, being an author. I wanted to get some insights. Goop. Well, the 20 minute conversation turned into this rewarding relationship. After that conversation, she said, oh my gosh, not only am I going to be your writing mentor, your writing coach, but you are so fabulous at graphic design. I want you to be my full time designer. I have been looking for you. I've been looking for someone to design for you. So for the following year, we grew this relationship so close and so deep in understanding. I have never met her in person, but the amount of respect and love we have for each other, it's beautiful. And that all happened by me setting an intention if I want to be a writer. And now all of a sudden, these best-selling authors are my best friends. That's what happens. The universe will work with you to help you get what you want, but you have to declare what you want and you have to believe in your dream. And just by starting there, things will happen for you. Things will become true, things you never thought possible. Now all of a sudden, her literary agent wants to sign me for my book. It's amazing how these things work out. And it all started with me having an inkling. Well, when I first wrote her nine months prior, I wasn't ready. If I were to just throw up my hands in the air and be like, gosh, I reached out to an author and she just rejected me. Oh my gosh, this is horrible, I'm not one of my doing. This is out of, screw this dream. You can't give up on your dream. If it's really in your heart, you'll believe in it so much that giving up isn't even an option. You're on a mission to be happy. And that is what Find Your Happy is all about and Find Your Happiness. You cannot give up on your dream. Did you know that the author of The Help? You know that famous book out right now? It's actually a movie right now. And it is so incredibly popular. It's winning awards, what's the true story about the girl who lived in the South? She wrote this book about her experiences with Southern women. And her name is Catherine Stockett. Have you read The Help? Yeah, you guys have heard of it, right? Yes, so she had positioned that book. I actually listened to this. Before the book even came out, she was talking to her neighbor and she had the manuscript typed up and she shared it with her neighbor. And her neighbor wanted to be a Hollywood producer. That was his goal. But at the time, he was like in college. He didn't know about his dream, but it was his dream. So he knew he was going to work towards it. He read her manuscript. He said, this is the best book I've ever read in my life. She's like, really? He said, yes. She said, thank you. And he said, how about we make a deal? I want to produce your movie. This, I want to produce this as a movie. And she kind of laughed. She's like, oh, yeah, sure, whatever, right? And I need to get a book deal first. And he's like, no, no, no, here, sign this paper. And they made kind of a sacred agreement right there to exchange a little money and stuff. And then he went on to pursue his dreams. And she went on and pursued her dream by trying to get this book published. She went to not one, not two, not 10, not 20, not 50, but 60 literary agents until finally someone said, yes, I will take this. I will sell this to a publisher for you. 60, can you imagine if she gave up at 59? Well, what happened is she obviously sold the book and the book flew off the shelves. And then all of a sudden, they want to make a movie out of it. And she said, I need to go with this movie producer. By now, the movie producer is super well known in the industry. So it was very apparent that it was all getting set up early on. It was all getting in the works. And it is all about timing. So if your dreams doesn't seem to be coming true, you're focusing on what you want, focusing in your life, getting really frustrated because it's not coming true and you're doing all this action, you're getting up every day, focusing on it, it's not coming true, you have to be patient, you have to let it flow. You cannot give up on your dream. I mean, that's really what it comes down to. You have to just know that it's going to work out. I held on to my dream. My dream is still here. Every day, I'm so excited. My mantra that I tell myself is the world is my office and I play with it daily. I grow on travel riding jobs and I get to play in my office and share my experiences with you guys. I get to sit here and talk to you guys. This is my dream. So thank you for letting me be part of it. Thank you. The world is all of our playgrounds. All of us have the opportunity to go out and follow our hearts and live our dreams. We have to make a choice. We have to put ourselves in the equation and we have to say no more misery. We don't have to focus on the things we don't want. That's it. That's all it is. Yes. Okay, so, okay, it looks like we're out of time but I want to thank you guys for coming today and please go to playwiththeworld.com. Look and you can find me on Play With The World or you can email me at Shannon at playwiththeworld.com. I love, love, love to tweet. Please Twitter me @shannenlkizer or definitely find me on Facebook @shannenkizer writes. There's gonna be a lot more of these coming but thank you guys. I really appreciate your time and we can do some questions. If you would like over, I'm gonna step off off stage. (audience applauds) (audience applauds) (audience applauding)