What “living the life you’ve always wanted” really means

I say that I’m about helping people to live the life they’ve always wanted, the life that they were taught they couldn’t have or didn’t deserve.

Let’s talk about what that means. And what it doesn’t.

It doesn’t mean that all your wishes will come true or that your guides operate as genies or that your life will magically become easy, and you’ll never want for anything again.

Here’s the thing—well, three things—which I’ll be talking about again:

1.       We don’t create our lives in a vacuum.

2.       Everyone does not have equal access and resources.

3.       Guides are not a quick fix.

 

We don’t create our lives in a vacuum

Despite what many Law of Attraction teachers say, manifestation doesn’t occur solely because you really want something and visualize it and think happy thoughts about it all the time. And not having what you desire doesn’t mean that it’s your fault and you just didn’t want it badly enough.

The truth is that we co-create this physical world. And we have free will. And all choices come with consequences, some of which are pleasant and some of which are unpleasantly unpleasant. Further, some of those consequences can last for generations or centuries. We live, to some degree or another, with the consequences not only of our own choices but also the choices of others.

And that leads me to…

 

Everyone does not have equal access and resources

Everyone has access to guides and their resources, yes. Not everyone is comfortable with that, for any number of reasons. But I’m talking specifically about access to and resources for the life you’ve always wanted but were taught you couldn’t have or didn’t deserve.

You can have some form of the life you’ve always wanted. And you do deserve it, simply for existing in the world. But how you get there may be easier or more difficult than it is for others, depending on what obstacles are in your way. What obstacles, you ask? Those same obstacles that are the consequences of others’ free will choices, which includes (but is not limited to) racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, inequalities in employment, housing, education, medicine, and law, food insecurity, and disability.

If you face one or more of these obstacles, it does not mean you can’t have the life you’ve always wanted. It does not mean there’s no point in trying. It means that it might not look like others’ lives, it might not even look like how you think it should look, but it will give you the experiences you want in your life. And your guides can help you.

Which brings me to…

 

Guides are not a quick fix

Quick fixes are popular. What’s not to like? Do something that requires minimal effort, minimal time, preferably minimal cost, and get what you want. Sounds awesome, right? Whether it’s in the form of something you ingest, something you apply, something you wear, something you keep nearby, or something you use in another way, these quick fixes can make our lives easier, more comfortable, more convenient. But they don’t always (or even often) create lasting, permanent change.

Some people do teach connection with guidance as a quick fix. They have you listen to a meditation, meet your guides, and then—voila!—you can ask them anything you want and get answers. I saw one promotion for an inexpensive, self-guided, online class where you’d allegedly learn to connect with your guides and then life would become easy. Rainbows and unicorns.

Guides do not dispense vending machine advice. What they offer is a partnership with you. What they offer is a relationship. And that takes some time and effort.

 

What “living the life you’ve always wanted” really means

Living the life you've longed for means learning to trust yourself and your guidance to discern what is for you to do yourself, what is for you to do in community, and what is for others to do (or stop doing). It means learning that you are not broken or unlovable, that there is nothing wrong with you, and that you have permission to have the life you’ve always wanted. It means asking for help and support. It means showing up and taking action to make that life a physical reality.

It is not our guides' job to intervene to make life more fair, or to even the playing field, or even to ensure that all human beings are treated with dignity. It's not their job to intervene in our free will at all.

What they can do is remind us of the truth of our divine essence, help us experience what we came here to the planet to experience, and guide us to truly know authentic, messy, tear-stained love of self and others along the way.

Set in Motion

SET IN MOTION

This is how everything changed.

This is how a life was saved.

This is my story.

Trigger warning for a brief mention of past suicidal intention.

Also, bonus content in the last minute.

https://youtu.be/MGMtIuwkXU0

Soul Guides: What I Do . . . For You

Can you guess which of the following paid occupations I've NOT had?

1. Law clerk

2. Mental health counselor

3. Journalist

4. Researcher

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That was...a trick question. I've had all of them. But I want to talk a bit about my work as a mental health counselor.

In the early 1990s, I was hired by a residential addiction treatment facility for women who were pregnant or had children under age three. My job was initially to create a relapse prevention program that offered additional resources and tools to residents who were survivors of trauma (most notably child and domestic abuse). I then began counseling these women, as an adjunct to other required therapy, on how they could cope with their manifestations of trauma instead of self-medicating.

In this facility, we focused on those who self-medicated with drugs or alcohol, but there are many more who self-medicate with shopping, gaming, gambling, sex, relationships, self-harm, food, exercise, and on and on. It was the beginning of trauma-informed addiction recovery there.

Fast-forward thirty years and I’ve healed decades of abuse I endured. I've raised two children to healthy, well-balanced adulthood. I've been through my own intense trauma treatment with EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) and Somatic Experiencing®. I live a trauma-informed life.

I am not a mental health counselor anymore. I’m not licensed and I don’t practice therapy. I also don’t consider myself a healer. I do, however, offer coaching.

What’s the difference?

Here's my take:

A therapist helps a person heal their present by addressing what led them to this point (e.g.: trauma, core beliefs, emotional avoidance, etc.). Especially in clinical settings, it requires a "problem/ solution with measurable progress" paradigm. It is the surgery of the psyche, going after the root of the issue.

A coach helps a person change their present by addressing their thoughts, beliefs, and actions in the present moment and moving forward. It can operate as both problem/solution and also support/ celebration/accountability. This is the physical therapy of the psyche.

A healer helps a person change their present by addressing their energetic and physical health in the moment and moving forward. This is the medicine of the psyche.

While there are some overlaps, they largely have their own areas of focus.

When I’m coaching, we honor the past and acknowledge that it has an impact, sometimes profound. But we don’t go digging for it. We don’t go back to the past to try to heal it. That’s for therapy, which I usually recommend be trauma-informed.

Instead, we focus on the now. And that’s where intuition and soul guides—mine and yours—come in. Because guides can see patterns and what can happen if you continue to engage in the same patterns of thought, belief, and behavior. (Some humans, including me, can do that too. Guides are better at it.) 

If you’ll pardon a food metaphor, you’ve been picking at a plate of rubber chicken, cold lima beans, and undercooked Brussels sprouts for a lot of your life, because that’s what other people told you that you were supposed to want. That’s the life that would please others. It doesn’t please you.

You want a plate of, well, your ideal meal. Food that makes your taste buds come alive and your brain sing with dopamine. Some people—and sometimes society in general—have told you that you can’t have that ideal meal because of who you are, or because of your race, your income, your religion, your sexuality, your gender, your job, your weight, your intelligence, your mental or physical health, or something else. 

Working with your guides and/or your intuition is the fork or spoon (no sporks here) that is going to get that ideal meal to your mouth, bite by divine bite. (Usually not all at once; divine stomachaches are not a walk in the park.)

And I offer more than one-on-one coaching, because not everyone is into that. I’ve been writing articles for years on these topics, and I have a new book coming out later this year: 10 Things Your Soul Guides Want You to Know: Especially if You Have Anxiety, Depression, Chronic Pain, or PTSD*   *With arguments and questions from a human with all four 

If you’re at all interested in any of this, sign up for my weekly email list, with informative articles, resources, book updates, fun with guides, and more: https://bit.ly/SheynaGalyanNews

For more information: https://linktr.ee/sheynagalyan

One Year Ago Today

One year ago today was the last time I gathered with people who were not my household family members or medical personnel for required medical appointments. 

One year ago today was the last time I hugged a friend.

One year ago today was the last time I ate in a restaurant. 

One year ago today was the last time I left the house without a mask.

In the past year, I have permanently lost friends, some to COVID-19, some to conspiracy theories. Both have hurt deeply.

In the past year, I have also been witness to incredible resiliency, patience, courage, determination, and authenticity, some of it my own.

In the past year, I simultaneously felt like I lost faith in humanity and renewed my faith in humanity.

In the past year, I have become even more conscious of what's truly important to me, of where I need to grow, where I need more compassion, and where I can stop holding back out of fear. 

One year ago today, everything changed.

The Journey to Love: Healing Birthday Trauma

Photo by Tore F on Unsplash

As I write this, it’s my birthday.

Like many trauma survivors, my birthday has never really been a day of celebration and joy. Rather, it’s been a collection of traumas big and small, a message layered year after year that I’m not worth celebrating.

Until this year. Because this year, with a lot of help, I processed the trauma around my birthday.

I see now how I was taking other people’s words and actions (or lack thereof) and making it about me. That’s easy to do, and a normal part of child development. And as happens with trauma, we can get stuck with unprocessed trauma, in the same stage of development we were in when it happened. So the child who blames themself for being unlovable, as children do when they are rejected, overlooked, ignored, punished unfairly, and so on, becomes the adult who blames themself for being unlovable. And every time those old wounds get triggered by current words or actions (or lack thereof), it’s taken as proof that the old wound’s message was right: I am unlovable.

When we process the trauma, we can separate ourselves from it, create a more empowering belief from it, and place it appropriately into the narrative of our lives that makes us who we are today.

But it must be processed. And to process it, we have to be honest about how we feel, be willing to feel the emotions, accept that the emotions are a natural and necessary part of who we are as human beings, express those emotions in a way that does not cause harm to ourselves or others, and love ourselves on the other side.

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The day before my birthday, I sobbed. I grieved for the child who so often was rejected or ignored. I grieved for the child who believed that a pleasant birthday experience had to be earned. I grieved for the child who never wanted to have another birthday because it was only a reminder of being unloved.

I had a call with my coach that day. Knowing she’s a safe person, and our calls are sacred space where I can freely be my full self, I sobbed in front of her. She saw my tears, witnessed my grief, and heard my pain. And when I had shared enough for her to understand why birthdays were so painful, she gently reminded me that what others say or do (or don’t say or do) does not diminish my worth one iota.

An image from my three years of EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) trauma therapy came up. In the image, I was standing on a crowded beach, in pain. Everyone around me was wearing sunglasses, but as I looked more closely, I realized that some of these glasses didn’t just block the sun. They also blocked the ability to see others, or others’ pain, or only certain people.

It wasn’t that they didn’t care. It was that they couldn’t see me. It’s no one’s fault, including mine, and it also doesn’t change who I am. How others see me (if they do), has everything to do with their perspective (glasses) and nothing to do with who I am.

I am neither diminished nor elevated based on how others perceive me, including if they don’t perceive me at all.

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On the morning of my birthday, I woke with a physical feeling in my body that what others say or do is not about me. And making it about me is what I as a child did because that was developmentally appropriate for a child. I don’t need to do that anymore.

I felt a complete separation between what others say or do and who I am. I felt in touch with the truth of who I am as a spirit being of love. I felt joyous. I felt loved by the universe. I loved myself.

At 11:56 p.m. the night of my birthday, I saw the clock and that internal, critical voice noted, “Only four more minutes of my birthday, and then it’s over.”

“No,” I said aloud, shaking my head. Because every day is a day to celebrate the truth of who I am, to love myself, and feel loved by the universe. Every day can feel like my birthday, and I can celebrate everyone who comes into my life and invite them to celebrate love with me.

Every day is another opportunity to experience life from a place of love. Every day is an opportunity to truly know that we matter.

Stay In Your Lane

I spent several weeks in June helping my oldest son get all the practice he needed to take his driver’s license road test. And he discovered, as all of us who learn to drive do, that when driving on the highway, even small movements at the wheel can significantly change the trajectory of the vehicle when you’re traveling at 60 miles per hour.

The refrain he most often heard from me during those highway trips was, “Stay in your lane.”

So imagine the surprise and a certain amount of frustration when that became the refrain from my guides to me.

It went like this.

I was scrolling through Facebook, as one does, finding myself getting sucked into reading arguments about Covid-19, about masks, about the USPS, about racism, about the upcoming election, and about politics in general. People were doubling down on conspiracy theories, supplementing them with QAnon talking points. And my energy went from open and peaceful to fear and anger.

“You need to get off of Facebook,” Dresden, my primary guide, cautioned me.

“How are people believing some of this?” I asked. “Have you seen this?”

“What I’m seeing is you not getting off of Facebook.”

“This is just wrong!” I continued. “This isn’t true at all. Science debunked this years ago.”

“Don’t go there.”

“Here, look. Someone else posted a well-written rebuttal from a verified source. I should copy this source for use in the future.”

“Sheyna,” Dresden said in a tone I hadn’t heard in a while. “Stay in your lane.”

“What? I’m not driving.”

“You’re heading in a direction that will not take you where you want to go,” Dresden said. “Remind me what you uncovered as your mission.”

I remembered a kind of psychic download that I’d just recently received. “I connect you to your true self and your own kick-ass team of guides, who are ready to help you live a powerful life of love, joy, and freedom.”

“And what did you then discern was your mission on social media?” Dresden asked.

“I share what I've learned and experienced — both pleasant and unpleasant — in my journey to that powerful life of love, joy, and freedom.”

“And how is this,” Dresden waved toward my phone, “helping you stay true to your mission?”

“Um…”

“You think you’re just browsing posts,” Dresden said, “but is it taking you anywhere close to love, joy, or freedom?”

“I need to know where people are, where they’re coming from,” I argued, knowing already it wasn’t helpful.

“How is allowing yourself to get mired in anger and fear going to help you experience love, joy, or freedom, or for that matter, helping anyone else experience that?”

“It isn’t.”

“And what will?” Dresden prodded.

“The things I’m drawn to: meditation, time in nature, talking with you, laughter.”

“So…?”

“So, I don’t need that rebuttal? Or any other evidence that would support where I stand on these issues?”

“That isn’t your mission,” Dresden said. “Not this time.”

“I need to be very mindful of what I consume on social media,” I said. “Stay true to my mission. Stay in my lane.”

  

On Confession, Denial, and White Privilege

Image by Betty Martin

I’m white. I’m Jewish. I’m an abuse survivor. And I’m a former mental health counselor and current soul guides coach with a specialty in adult survivors of trauma. This collection of experiences and perspectives comes together and leads me to invite my fellow white people to be with me here in the pain and grief and rage and powerlessness in this week following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police.

I invite you, fellow white people, to be here with me and to consider another perspective.

We Jews don’t do individual confession the way Catholics (and perhaps other Christians) do. On Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, we recite—five times—the Viddui, a prayer for the confession of sins. And what makes this different and unique is that we recite it communally. We all confess to the same failures, whether we know we are guilty of them or not. We do this for a few reasons:

1. As a communal people, a tribe, what one of us does, it affects our entire community;
2. We are creating a sacred space for those who know they need to confess, but don’t want to admit it;
3. We are acknowledging that even if we don’t think we’ve failed in this particular way, we know we could have unknowingly, and that we have the capacity to do so.

In the Viddui, we confess to failures such as being self-destructive, betraying ourselves and our families, stealing from others (including time, energy, attention), being impulsive, stubborn, ignorant, and this one, especially now: we have diminished the importance of others.

We Jews have historically always been on the side of the underdog. We’ve been the underdog. In some places in the world, we still are. And we are all, Jewish or not, much better at empathizing with the victim than the perpetrator. We can’t help but imagine what Mr. Floyd’s last few agonizing minutes were like, we see the injustices and feel angry and called to protest them in some form, and we place our solidarity with those who have been wronged.

Most, if not all of us, know what it feels like to not be able to breathe.

My invitation for you today is to step away from that perspective for a few minutes. Make sure you’re in a safe space, as you do this, and if you also have trauma in your background, that you have support people nearby, physically or virtually. Begin to take deep, easy, rhythmic breaths. Any distracting thoughts can be let go for now. They’ll return when you need them. Feel the support beneath your body and allow your muscles to relax. Then, focus on your heart, on the love you have for others, the love you have for yourself, the love others have for you.

Remember that we as human beings are all connected energetically. On one level, we are all George Floyd. And that means we are also, on one level, all Derek Chauvin.

Saying that we are all George Floyd gives us a sense of righteous fury, of fighting for equality and justice. And for all of us who are white, it means being less likely to be shot down (literally or figuratively) for that. Because like it or not, believe it or not, the reality is that we have white privilege.

Saying that we are all Derek Chauvin? That has an entirely different feeling to it. And I would submit to you that almost no one wants to say that and mean it. But that’s precisely what I’m asking you to do right now for this exercise.

In the same way that we confess in the Viddui that we have caused pain to others, say silently or aloud, “We are all Derek Chauvin.”

What feelings come up? Denial? Anger? Disgust that I’d even suggest this? For many, the immediate reaction is, “No way, I am nothing like him.” But that’s not the point. The point is not whether you, an individual, have acted (or even thought) like another individual. The point is that we are part of a community that has, and that continues to, treat Black, indigenous, and other people of color as less-than. We are part of a community that has discriminated in housing, employment, social services, policing, law, and education, among others.

That’s the discomfort I invite you to be with. The discomfort of knowing that we are part of a community that has caused pain, betrayal, that has stolen futures and lives.

Am I suggesting that you are equally guilty of murder? As an individual, no. As a community, yes, we are. And here’s why: The people we vote for, the people we trust, the people we defend, the people we elect to lead us, the people we give our money to—these are the people who have written the laws and policies and contracts and rules that have led to where we are today.

When we as white people elect a racist person to lead any part of our community because that racist person values businesses and profit and property over the quality of life—and the lives themselves—of Black, indigenous, and other people of color, then we are part of the problem. When we as white people make excuses for police brutality because “the people they arrested shouldn’t have done what they did,” we are part of the problem. When we as white people use racist language and excuse it by saying we mean it as a joke, we are part of the problem. When we give money—in donations or by using our purchasing power—to racist and white supremacist business owners, we are part of the problem.

In myriad ways, we are part of the problem that has led to where we are today. And we are part of the solution. But we can only be a part of the solution by acknowledging and owning our collective responsibility, our communal sin, and how the decisions we and those who came before us made, how the way we have bought into even subtle systemic racism, have created the Derek Chauvins of this world.

Be with the discomfort, the anger, the denial, the disgust. And recognize that those feelings are there to point you in a direction toward healing. None of us want to be Derek Chauvin. So, what are you going to do to atone for our communal responsibility? Whose voices will you amplify? Who will you invite to speak at your organization? Who will you vote for? What petitions will you sign? Where will you donate? What will you repost? What words will you choose? How will you show up in your life, in your family, in the world?

Our communal responsibility is not a sentence of punishment. It’s an opportunity to do better, to be better. Will you take it?