Ep #14: How to Define Our Shadow Gifts

The Uncorked Conversation Podcast with Allyson Scammell Episode #14: All About Our Shadow Gifts

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You are listening to the Uncorked Conversation podcast with Allyson Scammell. Episode number 14.

Hello and welcome to the Uncorked Conversation, a podcast for soul guided passion filled women entrepreneurs who want to uncork big magic in life and business without burning out. We’ll get to the truth of how to uncork our core gifts, the ones we keep hidden inside, and how to infuse those gifts into our personal and professional life in a way that feels like magic.

Will also uncover how to truly experience the joy of the journey, smart time management and planning. I’m your host Allyson Scammell. Let’s uncork.

Shantipax Nation How are you? We continue our deep dive of core gifs in this episode. Last week for episode number 13 we explore what core gifts are how we can identify when they’ve shown up in our lives and how we can use that information to define them. If you haven’t yet, I encourage you to go back and listen to episode number 13 before this one, as it will help you in the exploration and discussion of shadow gifts

And today we’re talking all about shadow gifts. Shadow gifts, to me, is a fascinating topic because they’re so darn useful. Because of the way we’ve been taught, it’s easy to view our shadow as the bad part of us the weak part of us the part we should hide away.

And I want to offer you a different perspective on shadow gift. On this episode. We’ll talk about what shadow gifts are. How you can identify when you’re taking action from your shadow and how you can use shadow gifts to your advantage.

Let’s start with what are shadow gifs. Shadow gifts are the dark to our light. They are the contrast to our core gifts.

They are the flip side of the coin shadow gifts are what appears when our core gifts go unexpressed. They appear when we cork up and put a lid on our gifts.

They appear when we are feeling separate, out of alignment and constricted. You’ve heard me say that all truth is a paradox. Core and shadow gifts are a great example and that our greatest superpower is also our greatest weakness.

Many of us find ourselves early in our lives to be actually living our shadow career a shadow career is a career where you are mostly taking action from your shadow gifts. These are often careers you dreamed about as a child. But then five to 10 years into it you realized it wasn’t actually what you wanted the career can offer you components and aspects of what you’re truly yearning for. But it misses the mark.

You’ve heard me offer this example in past episodes but I’m going to use it again. One of my core gifts is bold action. I have the ability to adapt and be resilient in taking big action on my quest for truth and supporting others to do the same. In my previous career working in humanitarian aid and development, the bold action I took was to war zones.

And although I got a certain adrenaline rush from these experiences I was using bold action to escape the problems and painful emotions in my life. I’m what Martha Beck calls a fire fleer. I have a tendency to flee painful situations and emotions.

This fleeing was my shadow gifs showing up because I wasn’t expressing my core gifts. I wasn’t in a happy place when I finally left that career and started taking bold action in the form of writing, coaching, and podcasting about this very topic.

I shifted into alignment of my core gifts. I left the darkness and stepped into the light. Now as I speak about this topic I’m in alignment to my core gifts and I’m using the podcast to express them. The action is bold because there’s not a lot written on this topic.

If you google core gifts and shadow gifts you won’t find much. So I’m on the cutting edge of creativity and that’s uncomfortable but it’s uncomfortable in an invigorating way.

It’s where you want to be taking action in alignment to your core gifts on the cutting edge of creativity and pushing the outer edges of your comfort zone. When you take action in that way you are squarely in your zone of genius.

Another way to look at it is shadow gifs produce low vibrational energy and block our growth core gifts on the other hand produce high vibrational feelings of joy and creativity and enable us to grow and expand.

So how can you identify when you’re taking action from your shadow. I certainly didn’t realize I was living my shadow career while I was living it. All I knew was that I was unhappy and was left with that feeling that I had chosen the wrong profession.

And I knew that there was a natural genius inside me that was yearning to get out and fully express itself.

You know you’re taking action from shadow if it feels bad you feel constricted. Or as Martha Beck says you feel shackles on. If you feel like there’s something inside of you begging to get out but you can’t express that thing because it’s corked up inside you, you’re likely in your shadow.

You’re in your shadow and you’re not being true to your authentic self and you’re doing what other people or society expects of you. Other ways you’re taking action from shadow are avoiding difficult feelings or circumstances.

Like I tend to do, being hard or overly critical on others and yourself. Hiding your true authenticity. And last but not least being really, really great at helping others to achieve something that you don’t do for yourself.

If you notice that your actions are coming from shadow or you’re in your shadow career it’s not. And let me repeat not an opportunity to beat yourself up. It’s a glorious invitation to ask what’s not right here.

So how can we use shadow gifts to our advantage. When we use shadow gifts to our advantage, we can really start to see how useful they really are which strips away any labels of them being bad.

First, shadow gifts help us to clarify our core gifts. Whenever I go through the core gift process for the client I pay special attention to trying to identify their shadow gifts. When we do that it leads us much faster to the core gifts.

Sometimes it’s as easy as asking what’s the opposite of that shadow tendency. Second when we live and take action from our shadow we are often overcoming a challenge and we then employ our core gifts to overcome that challenge which makes our core gifts all the stronger.

Let me give you an example of what I mean by that. In episode number 13, I gave an example of a client of mine whose core gift is being the most genuine version of herself and by doing so she inspires her people to be their most authentic selves. Her shadow gift is simply not showing up as her most genuine self in hiding that away.

Now we all suffer from this on some level. In the modern world because we are socially conditioned to hide away our true nature in order to fit in and be accepted. But when she does it she is affected at a stronger level. She suffers.

She is in her shadow and because most of us need help being our genuine selves we need teachers like her with her core gifts to show us the way. So when she overcomes her fear and learns how to always show up as the most genuine version of herself. She can teach and inspire others to do the same.

And by doing that and by overcoming those challenges her core gifts only get stronger. Isn’t that so cool.

Lastly, our shadow gifts are great guides when we learn to recognize when we’re taking action from our shadow. It can serve as an invitation to check in what’s going on. What are we avoiding what should we be doing differently.

So now if I take a bold action that didn’t feel expansive it didn’t feel like I was growing. It felt sort of constricting. Then I know I likely took the action from my shadow. So I stop and say what painful emotion or difficult circumstance am I trying to avoid?

And then the next step is to face that emotion or circumstance or fear. And normally in doing that the shadow is just automatically released and when the shadow is released there’s nothing that remains. But your light.

You naturally go to your natural place, which is your genius, your light, your core gifts. So it’s really as simple as that in the first step is really to be aware of our shadow tendencies and the next step is really to say how can I shift back into my light and how can I take action from my light from my core gifts?

We really have our shadow gifts to thank us for serving as that red flag and to getting our attention. So to recap, shadow gifts are what remains when you cork up your core gifts. They are the dark contrast to armed light.

They appear when we are corking up our core gifts and corking up our true authenticity. We can use shadow gift to our advantage when we use them to help more clearly define our core gifts, explore deeper into our core gifts and use them as a guide to when we need to shift out of shadow and back in to light.

So that’s all I have on shadow gifts. Thank you so much for listening. The action I challenge you to take is to take a crack at defining your core gifts and your core gifts shadow. If you’ve already done this before then get out what you’ve written in the past and tweak and refine it and see if it needs any changes.

And if you’re completely new Listen to Episode number 13. Use the process that I outlined there and then define your core gifts and define its shadow. Having this awareness is really the first step in the very powerful amazing process of spending the majority of your day living and creating and being inside of your zone of genius, which is really the best best place we can be.

And I know you hear this all the time and I’m sure it begins to sound like a broken record but I am so grateful to you. If you’re feeling at all called to this content to give it a rating and review and to please share it with a friend or two or post it on social media.

Getting referrals from people is the biggest way that people like me grow and reach new audiences. So I really really would be so grateful if you took a minute of your time to share this episode and again with so much gratitude. And of course until next time. Stay uncorked.

Looking for a tribe to call your own then join us at the Uncorked Cabal. We’re a band of rebels dreamers and schemers finding new ways to infuse our core gifts into life and business. Find a link to join my Web site shantipax dot com. That s-h-a-n-t-i-p-a-x dot com.