132. Your Shadows Are Blocking You (What No One Talks About)
In this powerful masterclass-style episode, we’re diving deep into the link between shadow work and money. What it means, why it matters and how it directly impacts your ability to hold more success, money and recognition.
Shadow work is the gateway to showing up fully expressed, confident and magnetic in your business and life. If you’ve ever felt like you’re hiding behind a façade or playing small because of subconscious fears, doubts, or past experiences, this episode is for you.
Psst...! Be sure to subscribe to hear The Shadow Work Queen herself come on the podcast soon!
We'll be chatting all thing:
How your subconscious fears, doubts, and repressed desires might be holding you back
The connection between shadow work and your ability to receive wealth and success
Why taking money off a pedestal is crucial for financial expansion
The role of the ego in revealing your shadows
How to recognize and integrate the hidden parts of yourself
A powerful practice that will transform your ability to receive more (starting today!)
Shadow work is about healing, not shame. It allows you to integrate every part of yourself so you can show up authentically.
Every new level of success requires an expansion of your energetic capacity.
Repressed parts of yourself, whether labelled “bad” or even “good” can block your ability to receive more.
Your ability to accept a compliment directly correlates with your ability to receive money, support, and abundance.
The intention behind what you do and say holds more weight than the words themselves and so much more!
Watch the full episode below:
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📍 Welcome back to the Money Mindset Hub podcast. I'm your host, Carla Townsend, and I'm a Money Mindset and Success Coach for purpose driven entrepreneurs that are ready to dissolve the money blocks and charge premium prices. Now this is a little short and sweet lesson that I actually taught in a program a couple of years ago.
So bear with me because the audio quality is not that great as it was recorded straight through my computer a couple of years back, but still the fundamentals in here, the things that you're going to learn are so priceless and I know that you're going to get something from it and it's going to bring up a lot within you.
And to really show you where exactly you've been blocking yourself and maybe you're not even consciously aware of it. And these are some of the things that nobody talks about. And there's definitely questions in here for deep contemplation. So be prepared to reflect after the episode, or maybe pause and answer the questions that I'm asking you throughout this episode to just go super deep.
Now really quickly. I have to let you know that I have one of the most incredible guests coming onto the podcast soon. So be sure to subscribe if you haven't already, because you are not going to want to miss this conversation that I'm having with the shadow work queen herself.
So stay tuned and let's dive into the episode.
Welcome to this shadow work masterclass. I suppose you would call it. This idea honestly come to me when I realized that a lot of the times we are hiding behind a facade. We are hiding behind who we think we should be in order to be successful and build a business, but it doesn't have to be like that.
And so in this conversation today, I really want you to notice what is coming up. Notice what I might say that potentially might invoke an emotion in you, or a memory, or an experience. And I want you to explore it deeper. I'm obviously going to give you tools to be able to do that. But right now, I wanted to explain my interpretation of what shadow work means.
Because essentially at the end of the day, we know you want to become the woman who can hold it all the fame, the recognition, the success, the wealth, the accolades, whatever it is that your version of success is, you want to be able to hold it all. Now with every new level, there's going to be an expansion.
So I'm going to talk a little bit about what I mean by passive monthly revenue, which is the amount of expansion that is required of you. And the way I like to look at it is like, it's your energetic capacity that you are expanding. So obviously with my clients, I speak to them in particular around the amount of money that they are calling in.
So just today, I was talking to a client around how, when she hit the 10, 000 in Monthly revenue. She noticed like she still had a week left and she could see it coming when she started to feel really dysregulated. So that's when we're talking about, taking that money off of a pedestal can then make it feel like it's more achievable.
Money is supposed to be fun. It is not supposed to be something that we hold up so high and put on a pedestal because then it feels like it's disconnected to us. And the law of oneness means like we are all connected. We are all one. And money is simply energy. I want to explain. What is shadow. And it's not something to be scared off. Like the shadow sides of yourself are not something to be scared of because if you want to live authentically and you want to create a business and a life of your dreams that you are so obsessed with that you never want to escape, you need to be able to feel safe in who you are right now.
All right, let's get straight into it because I could go on and on and on. All right. So there are parts of you, the shadows are parts of yourself, like the fears, the doubts, the desires that you repress so that the parts where you feel shame or guilt or even embarrassment, because somewhere along the line, you believe that it was undesirable or unlovable to have those kinds of traits.
So this could be certain events in your life where, and I'll give you some examples shortly, but it could be certain events in your life where you were made to feel a certain way when you expressed a part of you, or when you acted in a certain way, or you displayed a certain personality a certain characteristic of your personality.
And the feedback that you received was not in the way that you had expected and it made you feel not enough, not good enough, lack, fear, doubt, scarcity, embarrassment, shame, guilt, all those feelings that we naturally tend to add a negative connotation towards. So shadow work in itself is not about continuing this perpetuating cycle of shame or guilt, but it's about healing those parts of you and integrating who you really are to your core into your work, into your life so that you don't actually feel like you need to wear a mask or hide behind a facade.
You feel like you can actually express yourself. I'm sure all of us at some point or another would get to this point. I know I haven't. I don't. All of my clients have to, but I've got to this point where they felt like, is this who I am? You know, I don't even know who I really am. I don't know what I want.
I know what I think I should want. And key word there is should. We know what we think we should want. We know that maybe you were brought up like me and there was a particular way in which you thought that you would be successful. Go to school, get good grades, go to uni, get a degree, get a great job, clock a hundred K you made it.
That's success. And that's what I grew up seeing.. But somewhere along the line, I realized that wasn't the case for me. I didn't want that. That is not the version of success that I desired to have. And so I started to dive into myself and who am I and what do I really want? And let me tell you the lack of clarity that I had about who I really am and what I really want was profound, but that's what happens when we live in the darkness.
Like that's what happens when we live behind a facade of all the things that we should. Be this is who we should be. This is what society likes. This is what is accepted in my circle. It's okay to be different. It's okay to want more. And it's okay to be the one that goes first, because you are the one that will show other people what is possible for you and how do we do that fully express and own who you are.
Who are you? So the more that you uncover about your shadows too, the less energy that it actually takes for you because you're not hiding anything. You're not feeling like you're hiding certain parts or you're having to sort of be like a bit of a chameleon in certain situations. You're acting this way.
And then in other situations, you're like this, because you feel like you can't fully be you, you know, when you're around certain people and it takes no energy. It just feels easy. It feels good. That is what you want to feel all the time in your business. You don't wanna show up and second guess what it is that you are doing.
You wanna show up for who you are, say the things you wanna say. Obviously, when we always have good intentions, it's always about your intentions behind what you're doing, not what you're actually doing. Same thing when it comes to what you're saying, it's the intention behind what you are saying, not the words that you are actually saying.
It's always that energy in which it is felt. It is the energy and the perceptions as well. If you're also not responsible about how somebody will perceive your message and how someone will interpret that information because it's all got to go through their lens. So the shadow parts of your personality are things that you don't really want to see.
They make you feel difficult feelings and often they come from being a child. You know, for example, if you were told that you're being a show off and that was considered a bad thing, that would make you inadvertently keep yourself small because you don't want to be classed as a show off because it was bad when you were seven years old.
So anything that you were told that is wrong or not acceptable, or it was criticized in some way, regardless of whether it's directly to you or something you observed, you would naturally Repress or hide those parts of yourself so that you didn't receive criticism, judgment, backlash. You weren't treated differently.
It's honestly just like this internal battle between yourself and your ego. Now, remembering that your ego is two parts to that. I didn't know this for most of my life. I didn't know that there was an ego and it was in two parts. It was not just the superior ego. So, you've probably heard this saying, Oh, they've got a really big ego, but the ego always seemed to be sort of discussed in a way that it was someone always thought that they were better than someone else.
That's literally my only definition of what I thought ego was. I thought ego was someone thinks they're better than somebody else, but that is just the superior ego. There's two sides to the coin here, superior ego when people do feel better than others and inferior ego. When you feel less than others, there are two sides of the coin when it comes to your ego and your ego is a channel into your shadows.
So when you feel superior and when you feel inferior, they are linking to shadow parts of yourself, explore them. Don't make yourself be bad or wrong or anything like that for who you are and what might be triggering you. Because here's the thing when it comes to shadow work. Now, this is something that you might never have heard before, But, because I sure didn't.
I didn't know this was a thing. When I heard of the concept of shadows many, many years ago, I just thought it was the bad things. It was the negative things. It was the things that we've classed as not good, unlovable, however, good qualities. Things that we would naturally, as a society, class as a good quality, a positive quality to have.
You can also put into your shadow, depending on how you interpreted certain situations in your life. So, even good things can be put into your shadow. Like not being able to accept a compliment. This was one of the biggest ones for me.
Not only is this a quality that I repressed and I put into my shadows, but it's also a receivership quality that I had to overcome. And you must overcome if you want to receive anything, if you want to receive wealth. Which I'm sure you do. If you want to receive money, if you're here to make more money and you're here to make a big impact and a big legacy, you need to learn how to receive.
This is one aspect, one practice that you can take from here. If there is nothing else that you take from this whole training, please take this. Can you accept a compliment? And I mean, don't brush it off. Don't brush off a compliment. Take it, accept it, hold it, own it. Just say thank you and see how that feels in your body.
Practice and practice and practice until it gets to this complete neutral feeling in your body. When someone gives you a compliment, you own that. Thank you so much. That was so kind of you. Own it. And it makes you feel good. It makes you feel at peace. I know for me for the longest time, I couldn't accept a compliment.
I would always say, Oh, thank you, but, or no, no, no, that's, you know, such and such. I would just brush it off. I would push it away. And guess what? I also struggled to earn money outside of my job. I also struggled to accept support in my life. I struggled to do so many things that was a way of me receiving.
So practice that if anything else, practice that, practice accepting a compliment, practice accepting support, practice accepting from other people without brushing it off or following it up with a but.
Look, and maybe there was a time when you accepted a compliment, this is, I believe for myself, this is where it came from. There was once a time when I accepted a compliment and then someone behind my back said that I was full of myself for saying thank you. So then that led to guilt and shame around, Oh, I can't say thank you anymore.
I can't accept compliments because then other people talk behind my back. Therefore, it's easy to put that into your shadow because you don't want to, you know, you don't want to be classed as someone who's full of himself because depending on your emotional attachment to that. So I want to give you an example of a few more shadows because I know this is going to be really helpful for you to be able to identify maybe these patterns of behaviors that are, that are playing out in your reality.
Is there something that you are insecure of? Maybe you play the victim at times. Maybe there are times where you blame others rather than taking complete responsibility. Are you easily triggered
by maybe things that people say or things that people do? Are you judgmental?
Are you triggered by opinions? If someone doesn't agree with you, do you feel shame or embarrassment around the past or the present? Anything that happened in the past or the present.
Are there any moments where you don't feel capable of being able to resolve conflict?
Is there a part of you that feels the need to be a keyboard warrior or tear others down? Maybe it's even just discounting their success.
Do you have trust issues?
Do you attach wealth and your image to materialistic items? Do you experience sibling rivalry? Are you in complete denial about something that happened or a part of your life or a person?
Do you feel like when you earn a certain amount of money, then you will be happy, then you will be successful.
Do you feel like if you dress a certain way, you will be judged or rude words will be said about you?
Do you feel this constant need to prove to others that you are worthy and that you can do it? This need to just prove.
So when we continue to put certain parts of ourself into our shadows, it's when we actually end up creating a persona and that then becomes our personality, which you could definitely change. Okay. So when it comes to your personality, it's not just like it's your innate personality. The way that your personality is will always be that way.
That's not true. You can change the parts of your personality. You can evolve, you can grow, you can strengthen parts of you. The more that you are willing to peel back the layers, On yourself, the more that you will uncover yourself, become your true personality or become the person that you desire to be.
Maybe there's someone really successful that you see in life and business. Maybe there's celebrity, that you desire to be more like. What is it about them that you admire? What is it about their personality, their tenacity, their audacity, their resilience? What is it? What are the personality traits that you would like to strengthen in yourself? Now, if you've looked through your archetypes and you've had a look at the pages in the document that I gave you in the previous module, you will see that there are strengths and there are challenges for your archetypes.
What's stood out to you now, just because something is a challenge doesn't mean that it's always going to be a challenge. If you say something is a challenge and you choose, I don't want that to be that. I don't want that to be a challenge anymore. I desire to strengthen that part of me just because this archetype says that this is a challenge for me.
I'm challenging that I am deciding to change that. I believe that you can, because I was not this way. I wasn't confident. I wasn't full of self belief or self esteem or anything. I never thought I'd amount up to be anything. I thought that the only way that I would be classed as successful is literally go to uni, get a good job, crack a hundred K, get married, have kids.
I always had big dreams as a kid, but I guess slowly as I got older, they kind of got crushed. You know, when you just. You go about your normal day today until you get to the point where that inner voice just gets louder and louder and louder and you can't ignore it anymore. That's when I realized I do want to be confident.
I didn't feel confident. I didn't feel confident speaking to people, being seen, being heard, being recognized. I didn't, that didn't make me comfortable at all, but they were parts of my personality that I saw in others. Remember success leaves clues. Success always leaves clues. So when you are looking at someone that you admire and you believe are successful, there are certain traits of their personality that you would like to have, and you can choose them.
This is about building your alter ego. You can become whoever it is you want to become. It's you that gets to choose.
So when you are not hiding anymore, and you become your true authentic self, and you choose to strengthen the parts of you that you strengthen just because you desire to, And we can always do better and be better and become more. And, but there are certain parts of us that we know if we want to reach our full potential that we need to strengthen certain parts of us.
And you can absolutely do that, but will it be easy? No,
it won't be easy. It is not easy to change yourself, especially after so many years of habitually going about life.
Carl Jung, who is the one that coined the term shadow, he told us that the shadow is the source of our creative and our destructive energies. So the more that we clear the shadows, the more that it holds no energetic weight.
I hope this is all resonating. I'm sure it is. So to kind of wrap this all up for you before you dive into the next module, we might take it a little bit deeper and I'll talk about money a bit more and the energetics of money.
And I know you're going to love it. It's going to add to this a lot. It's more than what I thought I was going to put in here, but Hey, it's worth it. I love to over deliver. And it just felt like this was necessary to put it here. Okay. I want you to own the things that you aren't great at the things that you feel insecure at take away the energetic charge that it has cut the cord.
Integrating your shadows will make you so successful because it will feel different in your body. It is all about how we feel.
The whole point. Of when our mind naturally like unconsciously or consciously puts things into our shadows is because it's, it's trying to keep us safe, but when we want to get to a certain level in our life and in our business, particularly in business, when you want to create something that you have never seen created, when you want to be the expander for others, lead the way, when you want to do something different.
We need to pull it out. We need to unlock it. We need to integrate it because that goal at the end of the day is to always find that inner peace and that inner calm.
So you need to unattach yourself from the shoulds. From what you believe you should do, from what you believe you should think, should say, should act,
become the observer of you. Bring neutrality to everything in your life, especially money. Money should make you feel neutral. That is when you reach true consciousness. Pure consciousness is being able to be the neutral observer.
Now, remembering emotions is still part of the human experience, so that's okay. We're always going to feel a range of emotions, but you get to decide whether you stay there or whether you continue to keep moving forward.
Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. I really hope that you enjoyed it and be sure to subscribe so that you don't miss any of the incredible future episodes and guests that we have coming up for you. And if you haven't already subscribed to our email list, be sure to do so because we have some pretty epic things coming this year, as well as a mini magazine that will be sent to our subscribers every single month to help you with all things, money and mindset, personal development, and entrepreneurship to help support you on your journey.
So until next time, the world needs more kindhearted women like you with deep pockets. So keep moving forward and never give up. I'll catch you in the next episode.