#06: There are facets of my life I decide in advance to fail at. Bathroom etiquette is one. Making ‘hot toddies’ is another. Because it’s abundance, not shame, that’s found in Just Being Seen as Imperfect.
#06: There are facets of my life I decide in advance to fail at. Bathroom etiquette is one.
Making ‘hot toddies’ is another. Because it’s abundance, not shame, that’s found in Just Being Seen as Imperfect. Know what else you’ll find there? The key to freeing yourself from the ‘self-help spiral’ and the answer to one of Law of Attraction’s biggest questions: What do you do when no matter what you do, you just can’t change that one area of your life or business you’re trying so hard to fix? Let’s talk about it in this episode of Just Being Seen as Imperfect.
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Shauna VanBogart 0:00
Hi. I'm Shauna VanBogart. And this is just being seen. My husband and I have a running joke about my bathroom etiquette, because I'm gonna be real with you folks. It's not that great. It's a thing. It's just a thing, and I own it fully.
Shauna VanBogart 0:24
Now, part of the reason for this is I don't have a sense of smell. So you can understand a person who's born without a sense of smell, there are just certain things that you can't grasp. Like, I cannot grasp fully the concept of smell in a bathroom. So one of the things that I am absolutely terrible at is putting the fan on. Because why would a person who can't smell put a fan on in the bathroom? Like it doesn't matter if I do or not? Right? Well, if you live with other people, then yeah, there's a reason you need to do that. But that was not something that registered with me if I'm being honest, until I was like an adult. And someone pointed that out. In fact, it was probably J like, after we got married, it was like you need to turn the fan on when you go in the bathroom.
The second part of my not so great bathroom etiquette is like for whatever reason, it might be some form of inner rebellion or something I oftentimes forget to flush. This is obviously not an intentional thing, I just, I'm in my head. And I'm usually like rushing to the bathroom in between, like work stuff. And I'm thinking or I'm in creative mode, and I go to the bathroom, and I just like get up and I'm back on the move, and I forget to flush. So I'm really sorry if I've ever been to a friend's house, or if I've ever been to your house and you're listening, and I've come out of your bathroom and forgotten to flush or leave the fan on.
The third thing is, I definitely have a rebellious streak to cleaning my bathroom. I freaking hate it. I know where it comes from. It comes actually from being little and that was always my big brother's chore. And so when he went off to college that was passed down to me. And I just I hate it. I freaking hate it. And I think I was just bitter that he left and he left me alone and I missed my brother. And so it's like manifested as this weird quirk as an adult where I just don't like to clean my bathroom. Now the reason I'm bringing this up, is I have chosen specifically not to really fix this about myself, I am not going to dig my heels in, in any sort of stubborn way to not turn the fan on. But if I forget, I'm going to laugh. And I'm going to say it is what it is. This is a facet of my life that I am choosing to fail at.
Shauna VanBogart 2:41
In the book, 4000 weeks by Oliver Berkman, he talks about choosing what you're going to fail at in advance. One particular line and question that is prompted in it is, in what ways have you yet to accept the fact that you are who you are not the person you thought you ought to be. And I'm kind of taking it to a different level. But I love what he's saying there. Because what he's saying is when you decide in advance what you're willing to do less well at, when you decide in advance what you're failing at, you can move your focus to more important things while limiting disappointment. And for me as a recovering perfectionist, when everything was about needing to be perfect and improving and constantly in problem solving mode. Having that level of acceptance within myself to let this just be one of the areas that is dysfunctional, and really gross has brought me more abundance in my life, then trying to be perfect in every bucket.
We've heard from several people now about the importance of going inward to do the work. I've dedicated most of my adult life to going inward to do the work myself, I help people help themselves do the inner work doing it has had so many profound impacts on my life in the most positive ways. And while it's uncomfortable at times, not all the time, like it used to be, but certainly at times, it doesn't carry the same kind of punch like it used to because it's just a way of life now. And I know it so well that I know when it becomes dysfunctional. I know when it becomes its own form of perfectionism, which if you have a tendency to be that way, in the first place nod to the previous episode, you have to recognize that it's entirely possible you take that tendency with you into your own healing efforts.
When I was early in my self discovery journey, which you heard about in season one, I sought help because I saw problems and if they weren't going to be resolved, I was going to lose things or I was going to lose people. I talked about my jealousy manifesting in ways that were dysfunctional. After getting a taste of the benefits of working on myself. After the hard uncomfortable fear of vulnerability aspect was moved through. I realized hey, this works, what other problems can I solve in my life? Many years later, it became about money. I was doing all the things and it wasn't working. So it must be a mindset block. So I started doing a lot of the inner work around my relationship with money. Because again, if I didn't fix my attitude, I was going to stay struggling financially.
Listen, the way I went about this got me things, going deep to do the self help work moved the needle forward, not in massive ways, but noticeable ways that did make a difference. You heard about them. If you did listen to season one, it's the same thing that happened with the tactical achievement, the tactical achievement, and the tactical doing was getting me results until it wasn't. And then I moved to mindset and mindset was getting me results until it wasn't. It was this habit of thinking that if I just healed a little bit more, if I just worked a little bit more on my mindset blocks, then all would be good. I touched on this in the very last episode of season one to directly quote from that episode, I say, “Yes, viewing troubling circumstances as learning opportunities is a necessary part of the process, you guys. But that is simply a phase, a tool you use when you're learning to take charge of your life. It's like training wheels. And you must discern when you don't need that tool anymore. It's a necessary part of the process to becoming someone who can simply be in pure acceptance of all that comes”.
Shauna VanBogart 6:30
Being able to take witness of what's happening and ask yourself, How is this happening for me, is a really empowering practice, to get you to a place of realizing you do have self agency, you have it in you to pull from a variety of choices in any circumstances and choose a response that feels the best for you in the moment, it's a way to tap into your power, not so much because you're actually fixing anything, but because you have a fuller more expanded perspective to see things clearly. I see a lot of people taking the principles of law of attraction and manifestation and working really hard to shift the realities. And I see a lot of well-intended people taking responsibility for circumstances that have occurred and internalizing them as something they have caused by being misaligned or not energetically matched enough.
Anytime you're witnessing a dynamic in yourself or a pattern playing out, we'd call this being conscious, right? Being able to observe what's happening within you. And if from that perspective, as the observer you are saying to the you that's in that dysfunctional pattern, Hey, I just need to fix you. Or if you're pointing at it saying, this is happening, because I'm not aligned enough, it's a cue that your consciousness needs to evolve yet again. First of all, being able to take a conscious approach to your life, where you can effectively rise to another level of perspective to watch and observe what's happening in your thoughts. And your body is massive. Like, it's massive, we need more of that in the world, people who can effectively witness their thoughts, get out of the circumstance to watch what's happening within them as they're reacting to that circumstance. That's massive. But my friends, the work doesn't stop there. Because that observer can also get a little high and mighty, like its own power trip of sorts, that observer can unknowingly fall into its own doing trap, where you built the habit of seeking more problems to fix as a result of your heightened sense of awareness.
My dear colleague, Michael West, and you'll hear from him in a later episode says, don't be too busy becoming that you fail to just be the problem with this dynamic is that if you're constantly fixing yourself, you're sucked into a self help spiral, as I've called it, you never know when you've made it. And you're constantly reinforcing the narrative that you're broken, and that your results are dependent on you being a broken person. Because if you've said in the past, I've gotten results from healing, let's say, my mindset blocks, then what you're saying is I get results from healing something that's broken in me, I get results from healing, something that is a block within me. So what needs to be present for you to get results, things that are broken, and blocks.
I see it happen with money all the time, when business owners have been working so hard on solving the problem of revenue in their business, they don't quite see clearly when it's actually being made. It's like revenue is increasing, their financial position is changing, but they're stuck in this orientation of not enoughness because they personally are stuck in an orientation of not enoughness provoked by the very industry, the self help industry who's supposed to resolve this problem of feeling not enough. Put another way. It's like some people are doing mindset work from a being who is still telling them that they're are broken. It's doing the meditation. But the being who's telling you to do the meditation is someone who's shaming you into doing it, and telling you, you need to do this to unlock your money problems.
Shauna VanBogart 10:14
If you just meditate more, you'll unlock your money problems. It's not the mindset work that fixes you. It's the relationship you have with you doing the mindset work that achieves the results you're looking for. Hint, the results you're looking for are to feel truth, that truth being that you're worthy period. At this point, you have to recognize that you have to release the formula that you've created, which says that more results is predicated on you being broken. This is why at a certain level of yourself work, it is really important that you find mentors and practitioners who know how to hold space from a place of unconditional compassion and love, who understand the importance of allowing pain to come up and out, while maintaining and holding the truth of who that person really is. Despite all that, until they can hold it for themselves.
One of the participants in my mynd over matter program shared a really vulnerable post about her fear of being seen. And the very justified reasons, painful things from her childhood that were behind these fears. It was this beautiful, well written post and very, very clear that she was determined to figure this out. So determined to figure this out that it was costing her her joy. And it's interesting, right? The conditioning that sets certain unhelpful dynamics into play, steals our joy. But if we're not careful, or if we're not well supported, our own efforts to heal ourselves can also steal our joy. So I said to her, and some of you may need to hear this as well. You've neglected your joy amidst addressing your pain, because that's the kind of person you are, a fiercely freaking amazing human being who wanted to be the very best role model for the people around you, who wanted to change generational patterns and become the very best version of yourself. Of course, you saw you needed healing, and fiercely committed to getting healed, because that's how good of a person you are. But that's no longer you anymore. A wanter someone wanting to have big impact in this world, someone wanting to overcome challenges with being seen, someone wanting to be the best version of herself.
You became her already, you overcame it. It happened, you are her, you did it. There's no wanting just being, just because the results aren't there that you think will be the evidence to prove you're healed. Like when we say I know, I figured it out because the money will be flowing or the relationship will be loving, doesn't take away from the truth of who you really are. Others may insist that the planet is flat, but it doesn't make it any less true that it is in fact round. And the best metaphor, even when it's raining and cloudy, the sun is always there shining, even when you can't see it. How would you show up? If you started believing you were whole? How would you show up if you started trusting you were healed? Worthy right now as you are, even with that cloud cover, even when it's raining, even when you feel bad, even when you feel like there are ugly parts of you coming on the line and reacting? What if you knew underneath all of that, what if you started believing that you were whole, that you were worthy in full acceptance of your flaws, triggers trauma, conditioning, all of it.
Shauna VanBogart 13:51
An internal conflict I see a lot of my clients bumping up against when we're talking about changing their internal state of mind and being is an insistent Thought Cycle usually along the lines of: but there is always something wrong, but there is always something bad happening. There is always something that happens after something good happens. There is always something disappointing. They're working so hard to change their realities with thoughts, create things, principles, and as much as they try, bad things still keep happening. Inevitably they find themselves of course asking so how am I supposed to shift this when it's true? I'm trying to be open minded and I'm trusting but my reality keeps reflecting more of the same no matter how many times I keep resetting. And to that I say you're right. Take a break from figuring it out. It is the way it is right now. It exists. What you're seeing is real. This is what it is right now. Accept it that is the only path forward to shift and undesired pattern in your life. You're hyper aware of it If it's not shifting, let's say your financial situation or making more money, and you're applying all this mindset work to it, it's because the very necessary step of acceptance has been passed over. What's actually happening is that you're not trying to change your reality, you're unknowingly focused on trying to change an outcome that can't be changed because the circumstance, the outcome, has already happened.
It's super nuanced. But you know, you're not in a state of acceptance when you're still taking action from a reactive place, ie fixing a problem. For example, let's say you've had a series of mediocre business launches in the past, and you keep going deeper into yourself to glean the wisdom of every failure. And you genuinely feel like you reset yourself with a forward facing attitude toward the future. And then you get another disappointing outcome. After the reactive frustration and annoyance you may have. And because you're a determined person who won't give up, likely, the next place you'll go is okay, I will figure this out, I have the power within me to fix this. So I will do whatever I can to get clarity on what is in my way, what is preventing me from having the launch of my dreams, right? This is all very admirable. But at this level you're playing at, with these concepts of consciousness and spirituality, that approach won't work with this dynamic. Because the very nature of saying I will fix this, I will pursue in figuring this out is reinforcing that there's a problem that needs fixed. The focus is on the problem, which is actually just an outcome that you judged as wrong. And then you personalized it. And then you've made yourself wrong. And you've told yourself that this has happened because I'm still broken, and I need fixing.
And there's the formula again, that okay, this launch failed or was disappointing, because I still have blocks in my way, because I still have something that needs to be fixed within myself, because I'm still not in alignment, right? To say it a different way, what you are putting out into the universe is essentially the signal that in order for me to get results, I have to heal myself. So if you're a fully healed person, yet, you still have this rule of how you get results. How do you get results, if you're a fully healed person, there has to be something wrong for you to heal to get more. So you can reset yourself all you want. But this approach is likely one that I would call hyper vigilant to solve this ongoing dynamic. And this hyper vigilance around solving it gets stronger every time the outcome is undesired. And that moves you into a territory of obsession, you take yourself even further away from the outcome you actually want and you siphon precious energy away from the things that are working, that are getting you actual results. It's not that you need to keep working on being better per se.
Shauna VanBogart 18:02
You have to understand that taking mindfulness this far becomes a control thing, it becomes a perfectionistic thing. You're trying to bend something that's not in your control. And that's the lesson for you. That is the next level of evolution of your spiritual of your mindfulness journey. You don't have to like it. I'm not saying force yourself into a positive attitude about a launch that didn't go the way that you want it. Actually, that's the exact opposite of what I'm saying. I'm saying you shouldn't force yourself to like things you genuinely don't like. But there is a way to also accept it for what it is. Let me put it another way, likely there were adverse experiences in your past, typically your upbringing that you did not have control over, real victimization occurred, the cards were dealt, and you had to make the best of what you had. And somewhere along the lines in your adulthood, you discovered that you did have the power to pick your cards versus react to what still. So you went deep in that, you started reconnecting with your empowered self, you started moving out of your victimhood, you started getting into your mindfulness practice, and it's produced really favorable outcomes for you, except in this one area of your life that you just can't seem to shift. No matter what mindfulness practice you seem to throw at it.
That evidence of all of the other areas of your life that you seem to regain power over. That drives this incessant need to figure out why you can't seem to shift this one thing that has always lagged or always felt stuck. Subconsciously, it sounds like this. I'm too smart, too powerful, too resourceful to not have this figured out. I made it work over here. Why won't it budge over here?
Areas of our life that remain stuck after successfully shifting others through self development and spiritual principles are there for a reason. They are there to remind you that not everything is in your personal control. They are golden nuggets, a very necessary balance that is required for you to cultivate inner peace and true abundance. This dynamic is there to remind you that more trust is needed. And what takes the place of control, once you release it is trust. Trust is a necessary component to staying in the flow of effortless abundance in life and business. Trust and acceptance go hand in hand. Because trust without acceptance is denial. I'm going to say that when again, trust, without acceptance is denial.
When the failed launch happens, or when the launch happens, and it's disappointing, it did not meet the intentions or the goals that you've set. And you go into a place of, well, I can just fix myself or heal my money blocks, or let me go in internally and see what was in my way, maybe I wasn't in alignment enough. When you come at it from a being whose automatic reaction to that is, “Oh, I must still be broken. And that's why it didn't get the results that I want”. You are not in a place of acceptance, you are in a place of problem solving. And so if you say to yourself, the next time I trust it's going to happen I trust it's going to happen but you're still in a being who's constantly fixated on solving the problem. You are in denial and trust without acceptance is denial. And that is a hard place to manifest from.
Shauna VanBogart 21:46
My girlfriend and her daughters came over to the house for girls night's sleep over in December, we made it a Christmas themed weekend and we made a whole day and night out of it. After dinner, I said I was going to make us the adults a couple of hot toddies. I hate to admit this out loud, but I don't really know how to mix drinks well and make them taste good. I've waitressed but I've never bartended and trust me, you don't want me mixing your cocktails. So I go to find an unopened bottle of dark liquor from our bar because I knew J had bought me a bottle specifically for that night to make hot toddies. And I open it and I pour some drinks. Well, I noticed my girlfriend is not drinking hers. And I also noticed that mine does not taste that great surprise, surprise. And so I finally say to her if you don't like it, it's totally okay. Because I'm not loving how I mixed this up. J normally makes it and they’re a lot more tasty. And she goes, Yeah, I actually poured mine down the drain. And I said, Well, I'm gonna pour mine down the drain too, because I don't like it. So there it goes.
Well, my husband comes in later. And I'm like, hey, I need you to mix us some hot toddies because I clearly don't know what I'm doing. And we just poured the ones that we made down the drain. They tasted so bad. And he sees the bottle I had opened on the shelf and he says is this what you were using? And I said, Yeah. And he said, Shauna, this is $120 bottle of scotch and you're pouring it down the drain. I didn't know what I was doing. I just grabbed the first unopened bottle that I saw of dark liquor. Now, this was a moment that we could all laugh at. Because something that was nice, something that was to be reserved for a special occasion or a special moment, something we had an expectation of that should look a certain way, was being used for quite literally the exact opposite reason it was being poured down the drain, and no one was mad about it.
It reminded me of the time that I realized something for sure had transformed in me in regard to my ability to accept and to flow with life and to flow with things that went wrong without internalizing them. And that was when I had just gotten my BMW many years ago. This was after driving beater cars around and Jeeps that we would buy off Craigslist for cash when we didn't have a ton of money and just to buy things that could get us from point A to point B. So it was a big deal. This BMW was not new, but it was exactly what I wanted. And I loved it. And it was a big deal financially to us at the time to get it. It was not an easy decision because we were used to buying just like cheap, crappy cars that got us through. And so buying something that we loved was kind of a departure from our habits. So after a week of owning it, I had driven into the store and when I walked out of the store, I realized the front end is all beat up, like dented, scratched, someone had hit it pulling out of the parking lot. And my first reaction after waiting years, years to have this car was “Oh man, that sucks. Guess I'll just have to get it fixed”. And right after that, I realized it wasn't my car. It was the exact same car down to the rims, parked two spots over from where I was really parked. And it was their car that had been hit.
“It is what it is” was the feeling. I mean it was disappointment. It was like, oh, man, I just got this car. But no shaming over what had happened occurred? No, oh my gosh, what do I have to contribute for why this happened? I didn't internalize it. And I certainly didn't go into why did I manifest this? Why did I create this in my reality? What am I supposed to learn from this. And that was the moment of realization for me that something had shifted internally in me, because that was not where I was most of my life. Most of my life, I was all up in my circumstances, as if I had so much power to influence every little thing that was happening in my life around me, creating all kinds of causes and effects that certainly were not true. I was linking all kinds of stuff together. And it was being done as a way to make sense of something. It was a form of control. It was a form of perfectionism. It's a form of hyper vigilance over my own inner state that I needed to be hyper vigilant about, where I was and in alignment in integrity. And if anything bad happened, it was a result of something wrong with me. But none of that was actually leading to any real sense of control. It was like if something good happened, I was just waiting for something bad to happen. Does that sound familiar to anyone? Where it doesn't feel like you can ever relax when the good does start happening, because you're too jaded by the past.
Shauna VanBogart 26:17
So you stay on hyper alert. It's like signing that big client and then being hit by an unexpected car expense. I gave my high mynds community a really beautiful metaphor of this with a roller coaster and a carousel. I said to them, a rollercoaster is created. When you tie events together. When you sequence them, as in something good happens, I go up, and then something bad happens, I go down. So we know the next time you go up, it's going to come down like a roller coaster, and ironic that the thrill on a coaster is falling, by the way. But what if it's a carousel, one inner ring, when something good happens, just cycling one good thing after another good thing, just cycling over and over all good things. And then there's an outer ring that's happening, when what we label as bad, just cycling one bad thing after another bad thing, both cycles, both rings happening at the same time, not linked, but perpetually and always happening simultaneously in the same direction, which I would call growth.
And so this is the simple truth of it all, at any given time, a bad thing. And a good thing is happening at the exact same time. It is our perspective that creates a divide or counts things like a sequence like a linear, a good thing, next a bad thing. Next a good thing. But it's not a then it's not a this than that. It's bad, and good, bad and good. At the same time. It's holding two perspectives at one time, knowing two realities can exist at the same time. And choosing to be with either by focusing on the one of your choice or a little of both at the same time. It's not about denying any reality exists. It's focusing on another reality, despite what's also going on. It's about realizing it's not about ending the roller coaster. It's about realizing it's not a roller coaster at all. It's a carousel, it's deciding that on that carousel, you're going to throw weight in the direction of happiness, joy, peace, in the midst of all of the possibilities that are there rotating and cycling through our life. It's knowing, it's completely up to you. No one can do it for you to lean in the direction of life to choose to thrive merely just survive.
But you have to decide it before you choose it. And to decide it is to say and think of what you actually desire. And then to choose it means to actually embody it. And you have to choose it consistently. And so many of you have decided I want to thrive financially, or I want to be satisfied in my relationships, but you're not choosing it consistently. Because choosing it is about embodying it. It means knowing it at your core, it means being able to say “But look at all the good in the world”, when you may otherwise want to instead embody “Why is this happening to me?” Both exist? It's not a choice as to what's real. Both are real. What's happening to you is real, accept that it's not asking why this and not that. It's always this and that. It's a choice of what you want to wear. What do you want to identify with?
Shauna VanBogart 29:43
What do you want to orient toward? It's not about denying what happened to you. It's not about denying the launch didn't go the way that you wanted. It's accepting this is what it is and I throw my weight in this direction. Acceptance, this is the next level of being. Because being in an accepting place means being a receiver. Think of that motion of acceptance. When you accept something from someone, you're taking it in willingly, you're receiving it. And when you are in an accepting position within yourself and in your circumstances, you are in a position of clarity. Because all acceptance is, is the act of moving yourself to an empowered state, where you can see yourself and what's happening around you from a place of empowerment and allowance.
It doesn't mean you like everything you see, it doesn't mean you tolerate everything that you see, it doesn't mean you don't have emotions, it doesn't mean you don't feel frustrated, it means you still like who you are. When you see something you don't like. It means you're okay in the discomfort of life and in the discomfort of others. So what does this all have to do with just being seen? Well, the more that you accept yourself, or put another way, the more you receive all of yourself, the more that you see all of your parts, and you accept all of your parts, even your perfectionism, even your people pleasing even your highly sensitive trait, the more whole that you will feel internally, the more you will identify with the concept of being whole. And when we're anchored into that wholeness, because we're allowing all of our parts to be seen. And we accept that all of our parts get to exist, then we carry this certain sturdiness about ourselves, that makes showing up 10 times easier. How do we do that? What is the process for actually seeing our parts and accepting them next time on just being seen.
Shauna VanBogart 31:53
Shauna here, hoping that you’re coming off this episode of Just Being Seen feeling inspired and challenged to see how good it can get for you in your journey to showing up and being seen in your gifts. If you want the crash course to deepening into the truth of who you are, you’ll want to get on the waitlist for the next round of Mynd Over Matter. Head on over to ShaunaVanBogart.com/MOMWaitlist to put your name down.
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Just Being is produced by Jeremy Enns and the team at Counterweight Creative. Special thanks to the variety of people who had their hands on some aspect of this creative piece, including my featured guests. And to the right-hand women I am honored to call my team, Kelly Elizabeth and Jess Butler, I see you, I appreciate you, and know that your support in this work is changing the lives of women around the world