From Shadow Work to Light Work: How to Actually Heal | Keila Shaheen - EP 754

0:00After I transitioned from the military, I joined the CIA. Now I conduct strategic operations and intelligence activities globally as a Directorate of Operations Officer. Keep serving our nation. Visit cia.gov slash careers to apply. Coming up next on PassionStruck. Becoming aware of the inner voices within you and what they're doing and what function they have in yourself. And then striving for wholeness, which is found in the present moment. If you're aware of all your senses here and now, then you can show up more presently and consciously versus if you're not feeling your senses and your mind is somewhere else and you're striving for perfection, then that really takes you outside and into a liminal place that doesn't exist, but we're creating in our minds.

0:52Welcome to Passion Struck. I'm your host, John Miles. This is the show where we explore the art of human flourishing and what it truly means to live like it matters. Each week, I sit down with changemakers, creators, scientists, and everyday heroes to decode the human experience and uncover the tools that help us lead with meaning, heal what hurts, and pursue the fullest expression of who we're capable of becoming. Whether you're designing your future, developing as a leader, or seeking deeper alignment in your life, this show is your invitation to grow with purpose and act with intention. Because the secret to a life of deep purpose, connection, and impact is choosing to live like you matter.

1:40Hey friends, and welcome back to episode 754 of Passion Struck. Over the past few weeks, we've been building something intentionally together in this April series, Purpose by Design. We began with Arthur Brooks, exploring the growing crisis of meaning. Then with Corinne Lowe, we looked at how the systems around us quietly shape our lives. Last week with Claude Steele, we examined how identity and perception influence how we show up. And in our last episode with Angela Myers, we went even deeper to the fundamental human need to feel like we matter. But today, we turn inward. Because if you don't feel like you matter, there's often a deeper reason why.

2:21And that reason isn't always visible on the surface. It lives in the parts of you that you've ignored, suppressed, or never fully understood. The parts of you that were shaped long before you had a choice. And that's where today's guest comes in. My guest, who's returning for the second time, is Kayla Shaheen, creator of the best-selling Shadow Work Journal and her latest work, The Light Work Journal. In this conversation, we explore something essential, the relationship between your shadow and your light. Because so many people today are doing the inner work, but they get stuck there. They analyze their past, they process their pain, they revisit their wounds, but they never fully step into who they're becoming.

3:04And what Kayla introduces is a powerful reframe that growth isn't just about confronting your shadow. It's about learning how to express your light. In today's conversation, we explore the difference between shadow work and light work. Why so many people get stuck in self-analysis instead of transformation. Kayla discusses how early experiences shape the identity that you carry into adulthood and how to begin showing up as your most authentic, energized self. At its core, this episode is about a powerful truth that becoming who you are isn't about fixing yourself. It's about integrating yourself.

3:37Before we dive in, one quick note. If you want to go deeper into this Purpose by Design series, I'm sharing companion reflections and tools at theignitedlife.net to help you not just understand these ideas, but actually live them. Now, let's dive into my conversation with Kayla Shaheen. Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life that matters. Now, let that journey began. I made the transition out of the military, but I didn't want to stop pushing my limits or protecting the nation. So I joined the CIA. Now I conduct strategic operations and intelligence activities globally.

4:15It's a career that draws on my significant military and leadership experience. Keep serving our nation's interests. Join the CIA's Directorate of Operations. Visit cia.gov slash careers to learn more and apply.

4:36I am absolutely thrilled today to welcome back my friend Kayla Shaheen on PassionStruck. Kayla, it's great to see you again. Hi, everyone. Great to see you too, John. Thanks for having me. First time you were on the show, we discussed your incredible first book, The Shadow Work Journal, which if anyone is not familiar with this, which I'd be surprised, This book has sold more than a million copies, and it's an amazing story because you truly show the incredible journey of self-publishing and having a book that just went completely viral to now you work with major publishers. But it's just such a tremendous success story.

5:16But now you have this other book in addition to the other four or five that you've written in between called The Lightwork Journal that we're going to be talking about today, A Guide to Illuminating Your Strengths and Living Your Purpose. I think where I'd want to start, Kayla, is for millions of people out there who understand what shadow work is, what's the difference between shadow work and light work? Shadow work is all about turning towards what's uncomfortable or unseen within you. So that could be your wounds, your patterns, your triggers, your projections, your past, your pains, your inner child.

5:55So all of this kind of revolves around the practice of shadow work. It's about trying to understand dialogue and integrate your hidden self, the one that's hiding or the one that you've never cared to see or look at. and it's so full circle you mentioned the beginning of my journey writing the shadow work journal self-published then I got taken by publishers that I work with today my last book that I've written with the publishers is called the light work journal and light work is this missing component to shadow work it's what you do with the wisdom that you've gained from that encounter with your inner self from your hidden self.

6:44Light work isn't pretending everything is positive and love and light and bubbly rainbows. It's about showing up integrated. And with my work in shadow work, one of the big questions that I was asked was what does integration mean? And that word can sound a bit obscure and not like fully present to the mind when you're first encountering like integration. And what light work does is it helps make integration a way of being, of showing up in the world. And yeah, so light work is about leaning into your gifts, your strengths, learning how to rebuild your sense of self after you've done the deep digging and inner work that can often like shake us, fragment us and question who we are.

7:38So it's a very important grounding practice to rebuild your sense of self, learn what your values are, if they've changed throughout the process, throughout your life experiences, and live out and share the wisdom that you've gained after doing the deep inner work. After going through a period of going to therapy, there comes a time when it's okay, hey, I'm ready to be on the other side of this. And this is what the Lightwork practice enables people to do. Thank you for sharing that. And when I opened up the journal, you open it up with asking the reader to make a vow. And it would be, I, John, vow today to honor the light with me.

8:27I recognize that I'm a human being with depth, complexity, and the capacity to grow. and I commit myself to embracing my full self, both light and shadow, and it continues to go on. But why did you decide to start it with an intention? When I first wrote the Shadow Work Journal, I started it the same way. And it concretes things. It makes things real. When you write something down, it solidifies the intention. So I wanted to lay out this intention for others to take as their own and imprint it on their world, on their life journey. Yeah, I think it's pretty powerful. One of the things I do every single morning is I go on a very early 5 a.m.

9:15walk. And the first thing that I do every day is I do an intention for how I want to live the day, what matters to me, what I prioritize. eyes. And I've been doing this now for probably seven years. I was having a conversation with Robin Sharma and he was the one who said, John, start doing this. And a year from now, tell me how much your life has changed. And it was incredible. And I say the same intention every single day, practically. I mix it up a little bit, but he was right. A year later, my life had shifted so much. And what I realized is I was so much more intentional about where I wanted to shine my light, so to speak.

10:01And I had really gotten out of many of the shadows in my own life that had been burying me. And it allowed me to really seek some help that I had been putting on the wayside. Have you heard other readers of your work tell you stories like this? Absolutely. There's so many. And when I think about putting down daily intentions, I think about the 369 journal, which is another book that I've released. And this has been a daily ritual for me for years and years. So it looks like this and you basically write your intention three, six, and nine times. And then you also write down the inspired actions that you're going to take throughout the day to honor that intention.

10:49I think the way we want to show up during the day is productive and optimized, but there's other ways to show up too. Like being inspired, fulfilling what matters to you that day. So it's all great examples. One of the things I want to talk about is you mentioned Robert Bly in the book, and he wrote about shadow and light this way. When we were young, we had a 360 degree personality, energy rated out from all parts of us like a living glow of energy. But one day we noticed that our parents didn't like certain parts of that ball. And they said, can't you be still? The reason I bring this up is, I just wrote a children's book, and this poem by Robert Bly really sits at the heart of it.

11:41I think, and the statistics are alarming, so many of us, when we're children, lose our sense of mattering through small statements like that that our parents make. And I think sometimes our parents don't even realize the implications because most of them don't understand the fact of neuroscience and that our sense of worth is formed by the adults and the projection that they mirror onto us. So what do you think about this invisible bag that so many of us carry? Is that what you mean when you talk about the shadow in our life? Absolutely. And that's a great example. So much of shadow work is looking at your past and doing innards work.

12:26And when we are small and children, something seemingly minuscule might happen, whether it's a parent telling you to put your pen and colors away or being quiet. That all gets stuffed in the shadow. and even though it seemed like a small event the feelings there were very big for the child and those feelings we carry throughout our lives and they get stuffed in this bag baggage and that becomes the weight that we sometimes feel and can't explain so it's really part of this investigation pinpointing where does this come from it's a good example and i'm just going to hit on Bly again, because you do as well.

13:16And later on, you say he wrote, we spent our life until we're 20 deciding what parts of ourselves to put in the bag. And we spend the rest of our lives trying to get them out again. And I think what he says is really profound here, because I've experienced this myself. I had a number of things that happened to me when I was young. Listeners are probably sick and tired of me talking about them. But those things when I was young and feeling like I was never enough and feeling invisible carried into my adult life, like they do for so many people. And then we wonder why we end up living the life we feel we should be living instead of living the one we could be living.

13:54And it's because we have put on these masks because we end up trying to be someone we're not. And to the point, we don't even realize who we are anymore. And then we find ourselves miserable. Right. And I cannot tell you how many people I talk to who, some of them realize it, but some of them I find who are still not there yet. And you discovered this earlier than a lot of people did. What allowed you to have that insight, to have the self-awareness to learn it when you did? I think we're taught what we should be before we're able to discover who we really are. And going to your question, I've always been a very introspective person, and that's been part of my personal journey is to get out of my shell.

14:50But also to honor this introspection and to do something beautiful with it, which is what I hope to do through my writing. But what was your question? Let me think about it. Well, my question was that for a lot of people, they feel stuck in their life and they blame it on work or they blame it on this or they blame it on that, but they never do the inner work to really figure out what's causing it. And I was one of them. So I lived through that for a very long time. And when I talk to people, well, I can see it in their answers for those who haven't figured it out yet. But you were much younger when you figured it out than most.

15:33How did you develop that self-awareness to figure out yourself that you were living in that state and the need to pull yourself out of it? So it was very important for me, especially in college and then graduating college, those big years where you're taking actions that are defining the rest of your life. So it was a big goal for me to understand if what I was doing at the time was feeding my soul, feeding this like inner fire in me, because I knew what that felt like. Or it was draining me and making me feel like a mummy. So I think just really understanding how things felt in my body from a young age and that process of trying to figure things out, that's really where my self-discovery journey began.

16:26And then I started asking the questions, why does this feel so unaligned with who I am? Why do I show up so unauthentically in this setting versus so naturally and organically in this other setting? And then from there, I'd understand like what parts of myself and what parts of life I value most that are allowing me to be cultivated in certain settings or work positions or being around certain people. So that kind of led my navigation. And I think it'd be helpful for anyone that's out there who may be feeling drained or uninspired or unsure of how they want to show up into the world. It's always a good sign to pay attention to your body.

17:17You can feel the aliveness, the sparks, the inner fire when you're following the right path of growth and becoming. So yeah, I think that's an important aspect. So something in the journal that caught my eye was you described consciousness is not about harnessing control in your life, but about surrendering into awareness, which you were in part just discussing. But when I started to think more deeply about this and this concept, because of my first book, Passion Struck, I have a chapter about becoming a conscious engager. What I was really trying to talk about without making it too sciency is this whole concept.

18:01Psychologists have been talking about this since William James. And I look at the work of Nobel Laureate, Danny Kahneman, when he wrote the book, Thinking Fast and Slow. And when I think about system one, that's what I think is the state that people find themselves in about 90 to 95 % of the time. It's when we're in this unconsciousness type of living. I describe it like we're living like a pinball. And to me, consciousness, which is really about being meta aware is really how do you hone in on that system too? Like, how do you get better at that crystalline like clarity that moves you from disorientation to direction?

18:43Do you see it the same way looking at it from that type of lens? Yeah, absolutely. And I don't think it's possible to be aware of everything all at once but internally having that awareness first before diving into reactivity is a very important aspect of building your increasing your state of consciousness in the moment and our conscious awareness is composed of our ego and our persona which aren't necessarily bad so it's also being becoming aware of the inner voices within you and what they're doing you know what function they have in yourself and then striving for wholeness which is found in the present moment if you're aware of all your senses here and now, then you can show up more presently and consciously versus if you're not feeling your senses and your mind is somewhere else and you're striving for perfection, then that really takes you outside and into a liminal place that doesn't exist, but we're creating in our minds.

20:11You frame, as we've been talking, that light work is tending to that part of us that's meeting the world that we live in. Yes. For someone who's listening to this, how is that different than self-improvement or personal development that a lot of people hear? Because I think there's a deeper state. Lightwork, it's practical. It's also spiritual. It can be if you allow it to be. And I like to use the analogy of your light is your energy. It's what you show up to the world with. It could be seen as like the clothes and the shoes that you put on and step out into the world in. And if we don't have that, then we can show up vulnerably and raw and unprotected.

21:01And in those states, we can go into fear and start to grasp onto external things. Maybe someone else's persona or ego and you embody that, but it's not yours. And so it's really important to create your own source of light so that you don't become porous and soak in this essential energy from things that are temporary and outside of you. Because when those things disappear, then you're left empty handed and confused and drained. So this practice is really about cultivating your inner resilience, your strength, your self-concept. And it goes hand in hand with personal development. There's just the spiritual layer of trust and understanding of the shadow and light and how we can balance these polar energies within ourselves.

22:07Before we continue, I want to pause for a moment because if there's one thread connecting everything we've been talking about in this series, it's this. Your sense of mattering is shaped from the inside out. And what Kayla is describing in this episode, this idea of shadow work and light work is deeply connected to something I've been researching for years. Why so many people lose their sense of mattering in the first place. Because often it doesn't happen all at once. It happens gradually through experience where you felt unseen, misunderstood, or like you had to become someone else to be accepted.

22:38And over time, you start to disconnect from who you really are. That's what my new book, The Mattering Effect, is all about. Understanding how that disconnection happens and more importantly, how to reclaim it. If today's episode resonates with you, you can pre-order The Mattering Effect now, available October 6th. And now a quick break for our sponsors. Thank you for supporting those who support the show.

23:04you're listening to passion struck right here on the passion struck network. Now let's return to the conversation with Kayla Shaheen. When I think about this, sometimes I wonder is light work more about becoming who you truly are, or do you think it's more about expressing who you've always been?

23:28becoming who you truly are or expressing how you've always been it's is it becoming who you truly are or is it more you're discovering or expressing who you've always been under the shadow that you've been hiding for so long i think it's expressing who you truly are in the moment so a combination of those there's the expression which is an important part of light work it's the doing it's the being it's the actions that cultivates and then who you truly are because we are constantly evolving so who you were in the past may not necessarily be who you truly are today and you can tap into who you truly are in the present moment.

24:23So I think that is what feels most right for me at least. Kayla, one of the things I know about myself is I'm very introspective and I tend to like ponder things a lot, especially if I find something that's bothering me about myself. And oftentimes what that has caused in the past is I spend too much time spending thoughts in the shadow work. What happens when a listener, let's say, stays too long in the shadow work? And what I mean by this is they're constantly analyzing, processing, and revisiting their pain instead of doing those intentional moves into their light. That's a great question. And I had to learn this the hard way through my own experiences, especially because a lot of my work does center around the shadow archetype.

25:21And I spent years and years studying the shadow, writing about it, diving into my own shadows. And there are some risks of diving too deeply into this work and staying there. looking within yourself is so important and beautiful and it's such a hard step to take and because you can find so much truth there you'll want to continue digging and searching but that can easily turn into self-absorption and you can endlessly circle your pains and your wounds and because of that you'll miss opportunities where you can show up and shine your life and your wisdom. So I think there's no end to healing. It's an ongoing process.

26:13Shadow work is an ongoing process. And cultivating ongoing shadow awareness is important throughout all of life. But we need to balance this awareness and this practice and work with the light, which is the other side of the coin. To continue evolving and showing up as a more expanded version of yourself and really being embodied versus just staying internal. Shadow work definitely humbles you. And at the same time, it can be draining for people. And that's why grounding is such an important part of doing the inner work. And then light work comes in to mobilize you to help you build again once you've deconstructed and picked things apart.

27:03And it also helps you energize yourself where shadow work can drain, light work can energize. And that's really important for us to continue moving, to continue inspiring those around us, to continue becoming a beacon of light, especially when maybe you're in your light embodiment and someone next to you is going through the shadow work. Witnessing you in that state is inspiring. It's motivating and it helps others see the light at the end of their own tunnels.

27:41Kayla, I remember when I was at Lowe's, I was part of this really phenomenal team of leaders. It was amazing what five of us were able to get done. But I remember our boss, who was the chief information officer, was getting more and more frustrated with us. And one time we're in the middle of a staff meeting and he goes, you know what is killing you guys? It's three letters. And he slams his fist on the ground. He says, it's E-G-O. You all have such big egos that it's killing how you guys are working together and you need to eliminate it. So I bring this example up because you challenge in the book the idea that the ego is something we need to eliminate.

28:24What does a healthy, aligned ego actually look like in someone's life? There's a visual. So right now I'm getting my master's at Pacifica Graduate Institute. And this reminded me during one of the residentials, one of the first classes in person that we took together. The professor drew a circle and she drew a straw going through the circle. And then she drew little tiny holes in the straw. Everything that was in the circle represents the unconscious. The straw represents the ego. And what happens when the straw is raptured or ripped or broken, it becomes overwhelming for the psyche to contain all that resides in the ego.

29:33So that's why I emphasize that the ego has a purpose. And the goal of inner work is not to eliminate the ego. That can be self-destructive. But to allow the ego to contain in a healthy way all that resides in the unconscious. is. If you don't, then it'll just completely corrupt this stability there and the purpose of the ego. So if you're a listener, I mean, imagine you're staring at a target to shoot bone arrow at and in the bullseye is the self and radiating from that is light. And then around that self as your ego. And on either side of it is your persona, which I'll let you discuss, or your shadow, and then consciousness or unconsciousness in this ecosystem.

30:35So how do the persona and shadow work with each other or against each other? The persona is like the ego's helper. The persona helps shape the mask, the roles that we show up in society as. So the persona and the ego go very hand in hand. And the shadow is everything that we're not aware of. So part of light work is understanding these aspects of the psyche and realigning them so that they represent your whole truth. and they're not representing external things or influences, things that are not aligned with who you are and what you value. I think you have a quote in here that kind of does a good job expressing this.