Keila Shaheen on How to Heal the Self Through Shadow Work | EP 634

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Coming up next on Passion Struck.

And if we can allow ourselves to sit with the question marks and sit in the open-ended answers and come up with our truths and hear our narratives.

There's so much healing that can happen throughout that process.

And it's simply by drawing your attention back to yourself because a lot of things are rooted in the self and there's so much potential for change when we are able to channel our willpower and go through that process one-on-one with the self.

Welcome to Passion Struck.

Hi, I'm your host, John R.

Miles, and on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you.

Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself.

If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays.

We have long-form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes.

Now, let's go out there and become passion struck.

Welcome to Passion Struck episode 634.

I'm your host, John Miles, and this is the podcast where intention meets impact, where we ignite change from the inside out so that you can live with greater purpose, deeper meaning, and a life that's truly passionstruck.

This month, we've launched a brand new series, series, The Power to Change, a collection of conversations exploring what it really takes to evolve, not just in your habits or routines, but in your identity, your beliefs, and the invisible narratives that shape who you are becoming.

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And in episode 631, Dr.

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Because sometimes the smallest shifts unlock the deepest change.

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Whether you're here to evolve your mindset, deepen your purpose, or build emotional mastery, there's a playlist to help you get started.

Now, in today's episode, we go even further inward.

My guest is Kayla Shaheen, best-selling author of the Shadow Work Journal, founder of the ZenfilNote app, and a trailblazer in emotional healing and spiritual integration for the digital generation.

At just 24, Kayla's work has resonated with over a million people.

But what's more compelling than the numbers is the story behind them.

A journey from personal crisis to public healing.

She didn't wait to be perfect.

She chose to be present.

Because that's the truth about change.

It doesn't begin with clarity.

It begins with courage.

In today's episode, we explore what shadow work really is and how your darkest emotions hold your greatest gifts.

The neuroscience behind glimmers and how micro-moments of joy can rewire your nervous system.

How Kayla built a healing movement by embracing vulnerability in the digital age.

and how technology can become a tool for presence, not just distraction.

Whether you're navigating heartbreak burnout or just the quiet ache of living misaligned, this conversation is a map for coming home to yourself.

So let's dive in.

Here's my conversation with Kayla Shaheen.

Thank you for choosing Passion Struck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life.

Now, let that journey begin.

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I am so excited today to have Kayla Shaheen show me on Passion Struck.

Welcome, Kayla.

How are you today?

Hi, John.

Thanks for having me.

I'm doing great.

You and I were just chatting about Austin, one of my favorite cities.

And I understand you used to live in Bee Caves, and that's where I lived.

And my sister lived there, too.

A great area.

And one of my favorite things to do there, in addition to going around Town Lake, where there's so many hiking trails off the beaten track that if you get to know where they are, it makes for some amazing canvases around the mountainside, or I should say hillsides there.

Have you discovered many of those?

Yes, that was one of the reasons I moved out into the hills.

It's so walkable and filled with forest and nature.

And that was always an important part of my process to get through

thinking and pondering.

And it's beautiful what nature can do when it's integrated into your life.

So I spent a little bit over a year in Bee Cave and now I moved to a different kind of forest in Elgin.

So just hopping the trees out here.

I'll tell you, one of the things I know I would tell people who are not from Austin and they couldn't believe it is where I lived.

I was maybe seven, eight miles from downtown.

And I would tell them we had lots of wildlife in addition to raccoons and stuff like that.

We had like mountain lions and bunnies everywhere, deer everywhere.

It felt like I was out in nature, even being that close.

I think that's something people don't understand about Austin, but many people just experience the downtown area and don't get to travel a little bit beyond it.

That's one of the big reasons why a lot of people move out here is that you do have that balance of the city life and activities and music and everything and entertainment, but you can also balance that out with the nature that the Austin scenery provides.

It's truly beautiful.

Well, the reason I'm bringing all this up is for me, going out into nature is a way for me to practice mindfulness.

And I know for anyone, being outdoors is one of the best ways that we can experience the sensation of awe.

And I know a lot of people use these outside journeys as a way to then go back and whether they use a diary or a journal.

use that as a way to document their feelings.

And I'm opening this up because you are the author of the Shadow Work Journal, a guide to integrate and transcend your shadows.

Congratulations on writing that.

Thank you.

I was prepping for this and I listened to the episode that you did with Ryan Holliday, who has been a guest on my show.

And I was listening to how he opened your...

interview up because he was talking about platinum records and he said a platinum record basically means you sell a million copies of a record.

and i think we all know for an author hitting a million books sold is extremely rare and i think much harder than probably selling a million album covers but in your case you self-published this journal and

similar to another person who's been on the podcast joseph when

it suddenly took off and sold over a million copies, which is just unbelievable.

What do you credit that massive spike to?

Is it the content of the book?

Is it the way that you marketed it on social media?

How did it find its way into so many people's hands?

So if we backtrack a couple of years ago, I created the Shadow Work Journal out of a profound personal crisis.

I was just graduating college during the midst of COVID and questioning who I was in the world and my identity and the values that I bring into society and trying to find my purpose and my voice.

And a year after I graduated, I still hadn't truly found my path, but I knew that there was something

deeply

personal,

like an inner flame inside of me that needed to be tended.

So I started journaling and it became my outlet and that's how I found my inner compass, the the compass that I was trying to make mold of for so long

and through journaling I was led to this concept of shadow work

and shadow work is the process of becoming aware of the parts of yourself that are suppressed or that you deny or that you choose to ignore often because it was too painful or too uncomfortable to face or socially acceptable.

So as I journaled and as I became aware of these parts of myself that were important to cultivate and to find the direction of my purpose in this life, I started writing out prompts for myself and going through different themes and starting to do shadow work without knowing exactly what it was.

I started making sense of it as I learned and as I wrote and journaled.

After that whole inner exploration, I

started at nine to five.

I found my footing and continued writing.

And at one point, I looked back at all of my journal entries and I saw how much it helped me shape and craft who I was and make sense of the pain and the confusion that I was feeling during those times.

And

I saw how it could turn into a workbook.

So that's what I started doing.

I woke up 5 a.m.

in the mornings before work and I started incorporating prompts and organizing everything, all the practices that I did personally into a guided workbook.

And then I started sharing it online and I've always been a creator at heart, an artist at heart and making videos was something I was also passionate about and lost track of time doing.

So there's a lot of factors that allowed the Shadow Work Journal to resonate and reach so many people.

One being social media.

Social media is how we reach aligned audiences.

And when I started, it was more of my personal playground.

So one of the things that I wanted to incorporate more in my life was creation, artistry, and self-expression.

And I started the ZenfulNote account on social media to do just that.

And through the account, I started sharing my work and pages of the journal.

And over time, it picked up and at one point i guess right place right time one of my videos did very well and started reaching new audiences and from there it snowballed it wasn't even from my personal account but from other creator accounts that saw my video and they got curious and they were like can i try this journal i want to talk about it i want to see what my experience is

So a lot of the common things people would say is 20 pages in and I'm already tearing up.

And I went through this journal, and it's helped me break through so many truths, and it's helped me in ways that 20 years of therapy hasn't been able to help me.

So it was, it provided this alternative route and alternative practice for people to take into their personal lives, into their private lives, to set up a space for themselves and a guided process to really pull from within and be brutally compassionately honest with themselves.

And that allowed an incredible amount of people to awaken to their shadow selves.

And when you are able to confront those hidden aspects of yourself, you are then able to accept and integrate them into your life and that can create a whole new sense of freedom and direction in your life which i personally experienced from doing that inner work and journaling and shadow work.

There were so many factors and one of them is luck.

I wasn't really

strategizing for the success to happen.

I was really following my heart and sharing my voice and truth.

And the right people heard and responded in their own ways.

So it was a very beautiful journey.

I first heard of shadow work through studying Carl Ung.

I know when he was talking about it, he really referred to this concept of the shadow self.

And you expressed it correctly.

It's the unconscious parts of ourselves we repress like you were talking about or disown.

How did his work influence your own discovery of shadow work?

Is that how you came across it?

So I was studying psychology and I grew up in a very spiritual household.

So naturally I was drawn to Carl Jung's works and his ideologies of how psychology intersects with the spirit and your personality and

how we make sense of our purpose and our soul in this world.

So I really appreciated the overlap perspective that he offered that in traditional education we don't often learn about or explore.

So that's why I was very drawn to his work.

And yeah,

I think a lot of people, a lot of people resonate with that because we're spiritual beings and there's the whole other side of ourselves that's not tangible.

For those

who don't understand

what this concept is, can you explain exactly what is shadow work

and how someone...

beyond what we gave a high-level overview of, what it helps someone to do when they embrace it?

So as I mentioned, shadow work is the process of becoming aware of the parts of yourself that you hide or deny or repress for many different reasons.

And this kind of work matters because these unacknowledged parts still operate behind the scenes and beneath the surface.

And they shape our patterns, they shape and affect our relationships and they influence our self-image, how we perceive ourselves.

So, when we bring light to our shadow self, we can create the sense of freedom.

We can create more room for choice versus control.

Those shadow aspects can have that control.

And then, by accepting and integrating your shadows, you can achieve the sense of wholeness in who you are because you're able to see the full spectrum of your being.

And when you have that level of awareness of yourself,

you can move through the world and show up and speak from the truest parts of who you are, not from the masks that you wear in society.

So it's very beautiful work.

It's a lot of it is digging deep and understanding your wounds and the reasons for your behaviors in life.

looking at different cycles and patterns that continue to show up in your life and really taking a pause and questioning.

A big part of this practice

that started for me personally was the questions.

You know, if we can allow ourselves to sit with the question marks and sit in the open-ended answers and come up with our truths and hear our narratives, there's so much healing that can happen throughout that process.

And it's simply by drawing your attention back to yourself because a lot of things are rooted in the self and there's so much potential for change when we are able to channel our willpower and go through that process one-on-one with the self

as i was preparing for this i've heard you tell a personal story that you share of discovering this new part of your life.

And I think we all have defining moments that shape who we become.

But it was the way you describe it is you went from looking at the outside into your life to beginning

to understand your true inner awareness and having this kind of reawakening to your true authenticity.

I hope I'm getting that correctly, but I was hoping you might share this because I think there are a lot of young people like yourself.

And I've got two kids who are 21 and 27 who are going through this themselves that are going out in the world and they're feeling like they're being conformed to someone that they're not, which is what you were talking about with wearing the mask and then learning how to remove that and becoming who you're supposed to be.

Yeah.

It's a lifelong journey.

It doesn't happen overnight or throughout one season of life.

I think it's important for anyone in any stage of life, whether they're young or midlife or older in age, to have those introspective periods and re-evaluate and shift where needed.

And

for me, it made sense after college.

That's naturally the path.

You have to create it for yourself.

It's the first time you've spat out into the world and now you have to make sense of it.

But for me personally, I came from a place of confusion on what are my strengths?

Where does my personality fit in?

Does it fit into the corporate world?

Do I need to do more independent work?

And a lot of those truths were I'm a creative.

I work well independently.

I value finding meaning and making meaning of things and having space and time.

to reflect and write and read and internalize, but also

to help people through my work and my creations, whether it's through writing or technology or art.

So those were all things that I pinpointed and identified for myself.

And that can look different for so many people.

It's a great exercise to

understand

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So one of the things Carl Jung believed is that the shadow wasn't just negative, that it actually held hidden gifts.

Do you find that people that you've interacted with who've used your journal are often surprised by what's in their shadow?

Yes, and that's a great point.

There's a term, Dr.

Connie, she mentors me, and we write together, and she uses the term shadow gold.

So, a lot of the things that we repress in ourselves could be hidden talents, they could be strengths, they could be attributes in our personality that we were told to shut out or quiet down.

You could be a talented musician, and over time, you were told that you need to be in a career that

was more acceptable in society and that could help you sustain a more

balanced, stable lifestyle.

But in that, following the societal mold, you lost or abandoned your musical side.

So there's, you can reclaim so many aspects of yourself that are considered gold and that make you truly unique.

I completely agree.

agree with that.

And I think sometimes we tend to run away from those things that make us unique because oftentimes it makes us feel different from the people that we're used to surrounding ourselves with.

Did you ever find that yourself?

That some of those things that brought out your most unique nature were different than the people you were with.

So you weren't exposing them as much?

Or was that not something you went through?

Yes, definitely.

I played the flute in middle school and high school and then a little bit in college.

And it was a very big part of my heart

and a big part of who I was and in my voice.

So after I graduated that was buried into my shadow and I ignored it.

And every time I would listen to classical music I'd flinch a little bit and get that yearning in my heart of, oh, I wish that I was still playing and performing.

And I went through that process of coming face to face with my flute and opening the case after years and years of avoiding it because of maybe judgment and shame that I had for not pursuing that passion.

And I started playing it during another period of healing and shadow work, and it was one of the ways that I would learn to express and feel through the music.

Yeah, there's definitely aspects of all of us that we can chip away, but it's important not to forget and know that it never truly goes away.

It's just faded and you can put a magnifying glass there and recover those aspects of who you are.

One of the things I talk about the most on this podcast, and I've recently written a couple books about it, is

our fundamental need to matter.

And I think

we have these epidemics that are occurring around the world of loneliness, hopelessness, more people burned out.

facing depression, burnout

than we ever had before.

And when I started to look at it, I realized that, in my opinion, they're not unrelated.

I think they're interrelated and they're all a crisis of invisibility that so many people are feeling.

Do you see that to yourself?

Absolutely.

I think one of why do people wake up every day?

It's because they want to live for something and we are here

to create meaning for our lives and to bring meaning into other people's lives.

Sometimes a lot of people can feel lost and alone and unseen

and it's a very relevant issue in our society and I think everyone is on that personal journey of finding what matters to them and bringing that matter and meaning to the people around them.

Community is a huge aspect in that.

Without community, we wouldn't be able to share and amplify what matters to us.

And that's important to focus on community as well when you're thinking about what matters to you.

Because at the end of the day, if you figure things out for yourself, but you are still stuck in a room and showing up for you, that can be fulfilling, but it can...

There's room for expansion in that connection and being able to share your purpose and the things that matter to you with other people.

It's just like fire and light.

You can share it with other people.

And in sharing, you can enlighten others and

create more visibility to experience the world around you and to shape it as well.

I have to ask, Kayla, are you a Swifty?

Taylor Swift?

Yeah.

I used to be.

Like when I was little, I would sing her songs and burst out out all the lyrics.

Yeah, she's an incredible artist.

Her albums are so potent and full of symbolism.

The reason I brought her up is I'm releasing a solo episode tomorrow about Taylor Swift.

And I'm doing a series this month that I called The Connected Life.

And really, it's all about the art of communication.

But I'm trying to lean in on some examples of people who connect with others in a profound way.

And And to me, Taylor Swift does this

almost better than anyone because beyond her lyrics, there's

an element of her

where whether it's through the 22 hat moments or how she brings people into her home to listen to new songs she's starting to pilot or how she reaches out to people who are suffering through an illness or helps people go to college or other things, there's such such a connection that she has with other people that I think is a masterclass in

intentional leadership that she does.

But the reason I bring her up is I also think through her lyrics, it's almost like she's journaling her thoughts.

And over the course of her career, we've seen her mature.

from the young teenager writing her initial songs to the more deeply self-aware songs that she does now.

Do you see that too when you look at her?

Absolutely.

It's beautiful to see the evolution of someone else's inner world and development through music and through lyrics.

And essentially it is documentation.

You're documenting your feelings.

and creating myths and stories out of personal parts of your life in order to connect with others.

And she's done a beautiful job of storytelling through her lyrics, through the way that she composes her albums and shares her story and her heart with other people.

And it just shows how something deeply personal

and intimate in your own worlds can

resonate with an entire world.

So

the individual

experiences we have can be truly universal when we share them.

I brought her up because a lot of people talk about journaling and I know some people see the power in it.

Other people it doesn't impact them that way.

But since what we're really talking about today is a journal, why do you think journaling has such a power to unlock the parts of ourselves we tend to avoid or suppress over other mechanisms that people might use.

Journaling has been one of the most powerful ways that I've processed my own shadows and created clarity in my life.

And I think it's because the act of physically writing allows you to slow down and to pause and to witness yourself, witness parts of yourself that feel unseen or unheard.

And it creates distance between you and the story that you're living.

And when you're witnessing yourself, you can be completely open and honest with yourself, with compassion.

I think that's a very important part of this process of shadow work.

And honesty is regardless of what comes out, having compassion and grace to observe, to become your own observer.

So for me, journaling became a mirror of sorts where I could see what was really there, what was trying to bubble up, and to not judge, but to try to understand those aspects of myself.

And

some people

love the physical nature of paper and pen.

It's been with us for so long, and there's something somatic about that experience.

It's an exercise.

And

we grow up school taking notes, taking tests,

doing everything for the mind but having that practice to develop and exercise our hearts is important too

but yeah journaling is an incredible and accessible practice that anyone can incorporate into their lives and

if if it's

not as accessible i know some people are like i'm not a journaler i don't like carrying books around there are digital tools for journaling too and so i created the zenful note app is because i saw a need for a digital space to document and do that in a reflection.

So that's another option too.

You can

even speak and voice record your thoughts out loud and that's also a form of journaling.

So journaling can go beyond pen and paper.

It can look like so many different things.

And I want to talk more about the app here in a second.

I just wanted to stick.

on this journaling thought just for one more second.

And I think you brought up a good thing is, is there different ways to do it?

But

do you think there's a difference between the traditional ways we think of journaling and what I would describe as

the way you recommend, which is intentional healing, shadow journaling?

Is there a difference there?

Definitely.

You can have open-ended journaling.

So just channeling that stream of consciousness and using a blank page.

And

I have different journals for different kinds of journaling.

So

for example,

this one is my just open-ended stream of consciousness journal.

There's no guide or anything.

It's just a blank slate and I could write about what I'm experiencing, what I'm sensing.

It's just a brain dump.

And then there's the more intentional

healing journaling where it's more geared towards the self and helping process or overcome certain aspects of life that are weighing down on us and that's where the shadow work journaling comes in and then there's also more of the planner journaling where we want to plan our day and accomplish our goals and clarify and chase our dreams so there's also that aspect of journaling where it's more future oriented.

So I would say those are the three main pillars of journaling that I've explored personally.

There's a myriad of other kinds.

I've been wanting to get into dream journaling recently, so that's another form.

One of the things that Journal does is it gives readers a number of prompts that are rooted in therapeutic techniques.

And I wanted to ask, how did you curate and test which exercises to include?

And

how did you discover if they would work in this expanded edition that you've done?

So, there's three different parts in the shadow work journal.

There's the part one, which is more educational and more of a read into the background of shadow work and what you're really getting into.

And then, part two are exercises.

And there's mirror work, there's fill-in-the-blank prompts, there are

simple somatic exercises where you use your your breath or your body.

And so there's a variety of different ways that you can do shadow work, even outside of the journal and just using the journal as a guide.

And then the third part is the prompt section, and that's more of the journal aspect of the journal.

And there you're answering questions based on different themes, whether it's your inner child, your inner teen, exploring the self, exploring your personality, your purpose, your dreams, your shadow gold.

So I

started pulling, like I mentioned before, from my personal journaling writing and laid it all out like they were scrapbooks and started putting together in a linear fashion, in a workbook fashion, a format that felt clear and effective.

And there's no

one right way to use the shadow work journal.

Just hold on to it when you feel like you need to create a space for yourself to process something heavy or to bring something to light that you're curious about you could do that by starting with a prompt or an exercise or just simply reading the introductory section and starting to create that intention of self-exploration but i also worked with some therapists as guides to further refine the prompts and the messaging and add self-care tips to the second version of the Shadow Work Journal.

So yeah, there's a lot of expanded parts from the original self-published one that you can find in the Shadow Work Journal.

Let's now switch to ZenfulNote.

And

one of the things that I've covered with a lot of experts on this show is how social media can clash with our nervous system.

How do you envision ZenfulNote functioning differently from traditional wellness apps that might help people deal with that clash with their nervous system?

Social media is basically designed to hijack our attention and spike our dopamine and keep you consuming.

So it's like we are feeding our minds junk food every time we open up a social media app, depending on where your attention goes on the apps.

And over time, that dysregulates the nervous system and we become overstimulated and disconnected from ourselves from our present awareness and from meaning

because we're overwhelmed with so many personalities and other people making meaning of this and that and sharing so much it's a dump a waterfall of just information and

it bounces off of us.

It's like we consume it and we flood ourselves with it, but it sticks around and it lives in in our psyches and we don't even know.

So, with ZenfulNote, my entire journey as a writer and as a founder has been about creating spaces and resources where people can safely meet their inner world and connect with themselves and come back to their own present awareness and take back their control as humans.

We often feel so out of control, but we do have the capability to reclaim that agency that we have in our lives.

So after the success of the shadow work journal, I started getting comments and DMs, people asking for a digital version for a PDF.

And I didn't necessarily want to create a PDF because there were so many fakes coming out and a lot of people,

just a lot of copyright issues that I was facing, but there was still a big need for this to be integrated into our technology, into the digital world, and for community.

So that's when I started building out the Zenfilno app a little bit over a year ago.

And

it

has,

it's grown immensely.

We haven't been marketing as much, but over the past year, we've garnered over 140,000 users in the app.

And a lot of people use the app in tandem with the journal if they need to check in their emotions and track things digitally it has a lot more resources.

Amazing.

Thanks.

So one of the things I heard while researching you was this term digital mindfulness, which is something we don't often hear.

How do you define it and why is it so urgent right now?

So mindful technology, I think we speak about technology and how

it hijacks our nervous system, our attention.

And I think we resort to solutions like separating ourselves from our phones and just eliminating technology from our lives.

But I think at this point, it's not realistic to do that.

Our worlds are so interconnected with technology.

So we have to learn how to work with the monster that we created here.

And Mindful Tech isn't about abandoning technology, but changing the way that we engage with technology.

So with the Zenfilno app that helps people pause and reflect and regulate and check in with their emotions inside the same device, that often can overwhelm them.

So

the way anything affects us in life can come down to the relationship that we decide to shape with it.

So my hope is to pave the way for people to learn how to reshape their relationship with their devices so that it feeds their souls and not their egos and their addictions and dopamine.

It can feed your meaning and your purpose and be a resource in your personal life versus something that's going to constantly distract you.

One of the things that a lot of people do is they end up focusing on triggers.

And one of the things you focus on is glimmers.

So how can people identify and track their glimmers and maybe you should explain what they are

and not just focus on the triggers that they have in their lives?

Part of doing shadow work is paying attention, noting down those very powerful moments that overwhelm you, which those are triggers, the heavy emotions, the spikes in our nervous system.

And glimmers are the opposite of triggers dysregulate our nervous system and glimmers regulate them.

So by tracking both we can begin to map our inner emotional landscape and see what activates us, what spikes us, but also what soothes us, what calms us, what brings us back into the present moment.

So glimmer tracking and trigger tracking are tools in the ZenfulNote app, which I personally love to use.

And I see glimmer tracking as a different take on a gratitude practice.

Sitting down and writing out 10 things you're grateful for is a beautiful way to look at the bright side and build more gratitude in your life.

But sometimes it can be overwhelming during a period of crisis or during a dark night of the soul.

So glimmers are very somatic, I feel like.

They could be as simple as noting down the way you feel in the morning when it's raining to

interacting with a stranger in the streets and having a meaningful conversation that was unexpected or unplanned, they're very simple

moments in our lives that calm and ground us and bring us back to the present.

So, I love offering glimmer tracking as a new perspective to creating more abundance in your life in a way that's very simple and not too much of a stretch.

One of the things I think so many of us do is we

end up judging ourselves so much that we

cause ourselves to not take action on the very things that would help us improve so many areas of our lives.

What practices do you help people take to observe without judgment and to help them reinforce that mindset in every day of their life?

That's a very important

aspect to integrate into this work.

So much

of this work is learning how to go from judgment and shame to observation and grace and to watch your emotions rise and fall without immediately labeling them as good or bad.

And

one way as part of the practice that this can be done is to identify those shadow selves and give them a character.

So knowing who those shadow characters are and seeing them as part of you and engaging in dialogue with them.

So a lot of the times there's an inner critic.

And so when we identify a wound or a trigger and we start doing the shadow work, we'll start criticizing ourselves or that inner judge will come up.

So knowing that there's this inner critic side to you that's starting to speak and facing that aspect of your shadow as well and meeting that with compassion and trying to understand even the judgment voice, the critic voice is part of doing this work.

It's really interesting how one path in our healing can lead to many other paths.

We tend to create our own blockages a lot of the times, but it's...

it all comes down to that awareness and openness to dialogue and understand even the inner critic or the inner judge.

You have joined a small group of authors who have had books that have sold a million copies.

Ryan Holliday,

Adam Grant, Susan Kane,

Malcolm Gladwell, like I mentioned, Joseph Wynn,

Mark Manson.

are the people that come to mind when I think about this.

And I wanted to ask,

who are one or two of your favorite authors that you love to read that have influenced you

Joseph Campbell the power of myth yes

it's beautiful there's one more

the artist's way

Julia Cameron

I have not read that one but I'll have to check it out It's a great workbook.

It definitely inspired me in terms of formatting and putting thought into practice.

Julia Cameron is great and obviously Carl Jung as well.

I wanted to close with this question.

If someone's just beginning their journey of journaling, what's one thing you hope that they'll take away from your work?

I always say shadow work isn't about fixing yourself.

It's about finally seeing yourself fully.

And that's where the real healing starts is when we

stop chipping away and trying to sculpt a different picture of ourselves and pick up the pieces that fell and put it back together.

So I hope through journaling and through this practice of self-reflection, people don't feel the need to pull away but to come back into themselves and reclaim every aspect of who they are.

with compassion and lead a fuller life filled with purpose based on that newfound sense of self.

It's beautiful work, it's potent work, it's hard work, but it's very rewarding.

Yeah.

And Kayla, if people wanted to learn more about you and your work, where's the best place to direct them to go?

You can find my website, kaylashaheen.com.

I'm also on Instagram and TikTok.

You can find a lot of educational videos that I create on ZenfulNote, but I also post my personal work and writing on my Kayla Shaheen handle as well.

And I also, for a deeper dive into the topic of shadow work,

have a sub-stack where I explore shadow work and different themes and areas of life and engage in these dialogues and write about them with Dr.

Connie Zweig.

So it's a great space if you want to just dive deeper and learn more about this subject.

And you can also download the ZenfulNote app.

It's in the App Store and I'd love to share a link with you if you have a caption that you want to share it in.

We could offer a couple months free for your viewers.

We'd love to give that to the listeners here as a token of appreciation.

Those are all the channels that I'm on and I'm pretty active on social media.

So you can find me there.

We'll make sure we put all those in the show notes.

Kayla, thank you so much for joining us and congratulations again on all your success.

I appreciate it.

Thanks for the conversation.

That was Kayla Shaheen.

And what a powerful reminder that the most meaningful change doesn't happen when we fix ourselves.

It happens when we finally face ourselves.

Here's what I hope you carry with you.

The parts you've hidden aren't your flaws.

They're your invitations.

Growth doesn't mean becoming someone else.

It means returning to who you were before the world told you to shrink.

And healing doesn't begin with the answers.

It begins with better questions.

If today's episode spoke to you, I'd be honored if you leave a five-star review or share it with someone on their own healing journey.

Your voice helps new listeners find this movement and it means more than you know.

To explore Kayla's work, including the Shadow Work Journal, her substack with Dr.

Connie's Wig, and the Zenful Note app, visit kaylashaheen.com or all links are in today's show notes at passionstruck.com.

Don't forget this month's Power to Change series continues over at theignitedlife.net, where I'm sharing journaling tools, identity shift frameworks, and emotional mastery guides based on these episodes.

And next on Passion Struck, I sit down with Christopher Connors, best-selling author and leadership coach, to discuss how emotional intelligence fuels transformation and why it's the number one skill for building a life of integrity, resilience, and inner strength.

I define self-awareness really as knowing the content of your character.

And you start to shift from there to recognizing and perceiving how others see you and then processing and reflecting on those thoughts.

But no question about it.

Really, in the end, where you come full circle is being able to get feedback from people that you trust.

And the key word there being trust.

It's not always going to be the people that you like.

It might sometimes come from people that you may not yet have a relationship with.

But if you truly know that they're going to shoot you straight.

Until then, don't just know your truth.

live it.

Because transformation isn't something you wait for, it's something you choose.

Live life passion-struck.