Susie Draper: Recent Episodes
Susie Draper
I've always been curious about why we do what we do, why we feel the way we feel, why we are who we are. Why some people SHINE brightly and others dull their sparkle. Why we judge. Why we admire. Why we SEEK. Why we gossip. How we connect. Why we hold ourselves back. How we set ourselves free. I wanted to start the SHINE & SEEK podcast so I could talk about what I think about. So I could share the journey I'm on to hide less and shine more. So I could grow and seek out in the open. To me, there is great freedom in simply doing that. So, as I continue to question and discover my hope is that sharing the lessons I learn along the way might help someone else. Someone who might need a reminder that, sometimes, all it takes to find the answers you're looking for and remember how to SHINE is the willingness to ask the questions, be still, listen, and trust what your intuition is trying to tell you.
A big part of my journey has been about learning how to heal the fear that was holding me back from finding and using my voice. The fear that made me feel like I couldn’t put myself out there. The fear that made me shrink from wanting to be seen or heard.
To quote Jay-Z, "You can't heal what you never reveal." I believe that deeply, so I felt like it was time to share about something that I've been grappling with silently for awhile. And also tell you how I'm shifting the way I'm thinking about it, and how we can all stop telling ourselves, "I'll be happy when x, y, or z happens."But before I do let me say a few things...
Can you remember the last time you did something creative just for fun? Can you remember the last time you learned something new? I couldn’t think of the last time I’d done anything artistic a few years ago, but…
I was listening to a women's empowerment type podcast recently and the interviewee was talking about something she’d been trying to figure out when she said some of the words I most hate to hear crossing women's lips.
I came across this quote the other day and couldn't believe how perfectly it described something I'd been trying to put into words. "Be patient with yourself. Nothing in nature blooms all year."
I don’t know about you, but there are times when I can find myself feeling stuck, blah or just a little blue. But the difference between a few years ago and now is that I know how to move through those feelings and bounce back by using all the tools I’ve learned.
During what felt like a particularly messy time of personal & spiritual growth for me a few years ago I kept wondering why it felt like things were just getting worse, instead of better.
If you've ever experienced the mind-numbing frustration of self-sabotage and not known how to stop it you're in the right place. For me, self-sabotage usually rears its head when I'm trying to make a change in my life.
Stress and chaos seem to be the common speed for so many of us these days with every moment filled with something "to-do," always pushing forward and rarely taking a moment or two to pause and just be where we are.
I've always loved coffee. Like really, really, really loved it. But I finally hit a point where I was doing so many things to relieve the stress in my life and boost my energy that it started to irritate me that I couldn’t kick my coffee habit to the curb.
I didn’t write or talk about it at first because I didn’t want it to be happening to me. I didn’t want to admit that I couldn’t “do it all” and was worried what people would think. I was ashamed I couldn’t just suck it up and push through like so many other people seemed to do.
This list is a product of all the influences I’ve had throughout my life from childhood until now, but really came in to form when I discovered the work of teachers like Brené Brown and Gabby Bernstein a couple years ago.
Their teachings are the thread through this list for sure, but overall, it is my interpretation of the messages found in their work and the things I've learned from friends, family, and strangers alike who have touched my life. It is my expression of the lessons I’ve seen to be true in my own life and the ones I am still learning more about every day.
What do you think of when I say, "be the light?" Do you think that sounds like a nice idea that people talk about, but don’t really do? I mean, how can a person actually BE the light, right? What about the times we feel like we're living more in the dark than the light? And what does it say about us when we admire or despise certain qualities in other people? Check out my blog post on this topic at shineandseek.com/blog for more!
If you listened to your thoughts for even 5 minutes you’d likely see that you’re bringing a whole lot of the past and the future into your present. The idea of being "more present" is easy to talk about, but it can be a challenge to put it into practice, right?
People have many different ways of trying to be more present, but understanding why I was bringing the past and future into today is something that has helped me to actually be more in each moment as it's happening.
You might think this idea sounds nuts, but I'm finding that really examining what we feel guilty about and choosing to look at those moments through a non-judgmental lens can help us much more than we realize. To break this down I think it’s important to look at what “guilt” actually means. Guilt, as the Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines it, is: "a bad feeling caused by knowing or thinking that you have done something bad or wrong." Sounds like a good gut check moment when you think about it in those terms, but we often don't see if that way because instead of getting curious and looking at it we let judgement and blame run the show. Read more at bit.ly/shineandseekblog
I'm on day 12 of a 40-day judgement detox and at this point I'm really starting to not just put the steps into practice on a daily basis, but to also reflect on how judgement plays a role in friendship. It also happens to be one year to the day since I had the most transformational week of my life.
One of the major things I've learned is that focusing on cultivating the peace in your inner life is what will create that sense of peace and balance in your entire life. So, if that's something you're looking for I'd like to suggest trying three simple things: quieting your mind, getting your thoughts out of your head, and letting yourself off the hook. I know these things work because they have worked for me, and the good news is you can do them in as little as 15 minutes a day. Check out an overview of the steps at shineandseek.com.
Do you ever find yourself falling back into old habits and not even really realizing it? One of mine is frantically polling everyone around me and asking them what they think I should do.
And the crazy thing is I know when I'm doing it that what I'm really doing is looking for external validation to either affirm or contradict what I maybe kind-of sorta think I should do. But the thing about searching outside yourself for the answer is...it doesn't work.
In this week's episode I dive into a topic we can all relate to: Fear. I talk about the secret to clearing it from your life and how Gabby Bernstein's best-selling book, May Cause Miracles, helped me bust through my fear and can help you do the same. For more information about anything I mentioned in the podcast please visit my blog at shineandseek.com.
Have you ever been in a situation where you're totally stumped about what to do? Same here! In this episode, I talk about the best ways I've learned to let the answers you're looking for come through.
Messages I need to hear have a way of showing up. And showing up. And showing up some more, until I pause long enough to actually hear them. Do you know what I mean? After I posted the video I made about working to overcome my fear of public speaking on Facebook, something unexpected happened.
The experience I had at Gabby Bernstein’s Spirit Junkie Masterclass training, just a little over a year ago, is almost indescribable and no words can really do it justice, but giving you a snapshot of what it was like for me is something I felt like I needed to share. Here is a snapshot of what the opening night of that weekend was like for me...
In my experience, being indecisive is not about putting off choosing because you just don’t feel like doing it. It’s not about being lazy or unmotivated. It’s not about being selfish or inconsiderate. You may feel vulnerable and exposed when you put an idea out there that you think other people might think is stupid. But the alternative—staying small and quiet and never making a decision about anything with conviction—does not keep you safe. All it will do is keep you stuck.
Public speaking has been one of my biggest fears for as long as I can remember. Just the thought of it has always made my mind go blank, heart race, and mouth run dry. So, one night when I was thinking about all of this, I chose to stop listening to that fearful voice in my head, and tuned in to something else. Before I knew it, I was actually letting the deep full body feeling of that fear wash over me. I didn't try and numb it or push it away. I let myself surrender to it and really feel it. And then something I never expected happened.
How we choose to perceive a situation or a person's behavior is totally up to us. You might be thinking, "Sure, that sounds good and everything, but all the people I have to deal with on a daily basis are super annoying!" That may be your experience, but it doesn't have to be. Every relationship and interaction is there to teach us something. When you can look at your daily annoyances or frustrations with that in mind it's much easier to let things go and keep your cool.
It's pretty much a given that there will be moments where you feel stressed out, overwhelmed, or frustrated. The thing is, it's completely up to you how you deal with those feelings and moments. It a nutshell, you can snap and react or pause and respond. I am far from perfect in this area, believe me, it can be super easy (and tempting!) to get caught up in the drama and feed the beast by throwing up your hands and believing that's just the way it is. But there is another way.
I never had the privilege of meeting Dr. Wayne Dyer in person, but his impact on my life was great nonetheless. It was through his teachings that I began to shift my perception about forgiveness, and take my willingness to want to forgive and transform it into something I could actually apply in my life. While listening to one of Dr. Dyer’s lectures I heard him tell the story of how he forgave his father years after his death and it resonated with me deeply.
Over the past year, the intentional practice of kindness has been a part of the teachings in many of the books I've read and taken to heart, two of the main ones being; The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin and May Cause Miracles by Gabrielle Bernstein. So, sometimes I play a game with myself to see how kind I can be to everyone I meet in a day. And by kind I don't mean just to be nice or polite. I mean real, honest to goodness kindness.
Sometimes I think what we forget is that words have the power and meaning WE give to them; when we speak them aloud, and maybe even more importantly, when we repeat them in the inner dialogue we have with ourselves all day long, we are in a constant state of deciding, no, choosing, what we think they mean and how they make us feel.
Like peanut butter and jelly or paint and canvas, some things just go together. For me, perfectionism and procrastination have been like two P's in a pod; they've just always gone together. The two P’s and I have been well acquainted for quite some time. They became coping mechanisms I used while trying to prove to the outside world that I was "good enough," and seemed like a way to avoid judgment and rejection which, it turns out, could not be farther from the truth.
On August 20, 2014 I made a seemingly small decision that changed my life in a major way. I said, YES. Up until that day I'd always liked the sound of being "spiritual," but I have to admit that the word didn’t actually hold much of a deep personal meaning for me. That is, until I saw Gabrielle Bernstein speak live for the first time. I had discovered Gabby on YouTube at the beginning of the summer, and the way she broke down the spiritual principles she was teaching really resonated with me.
