What story do you want your life to tell? With guest Shana Francesca

Our guest today is Shana Francesca, an interior designer, and a life designer. She's full of helpful information for just about everyone. We cover a lot in this episode, but most importantly, We talk about getting crystal clear on the story you want your life to tell.

Shana  is a  speaker, writer and entrepreneur.  As the Founder and Lead Designer at Concinnate, a multi-discipline interior design and life design firm working with clients around the world.  Shana believes our present and future are transformed when we infuse our lives with intention, we design our lives and accept our role as the author of our story.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Matt: Hello, welcome to the second mix podcast. Our guest today is Shana Francesca, an interior designer, and a life designer. She's full of helpful information for just about everyone. We cover a lot in this episode, but most importantly, We talk about getting crystal clear on the story you want your life to tell. 

[00:00:18] Matt: Stick around. We started in 5, 4, 3. Two. One. 

[00:00:00] Matt: What is it that you do?

[00:00:01] Shana: I am an interior designer and a life designer, and people are always like, what is life design? And it's really about getting clear on the story that you want your life to tell.

[00:00:12] Shana: And then aligning your actions, choosing understanding that every single choice we make needs to align with that getting really intentional. And it's not about doing more because a lot of times people like I'm already doing so much, but when we get clear on the story, we want our life to tell and we align our actions with our are intentional about our actions.

[00:00:30] Shana: Really what we see, what I start to see happen is actually a falling away of that, which no longer belongs. So we actually clear space in our life and make a room for the story, for the story we actually want our life to tell, as opposed to this kind of like neutral kind of just going through life.

[00:00:48] Shana: That seems to happen for so many of us, cuz we're bombarded by so much information throughout our day and throughout our life. 

[00:00:53] Matt: Do you think that there are, I guess in most lives, there are gonna be times where you just are in neutral. And there are gonna be times where you're not.

[00:01:05] Matt: Yeah. 

[00:01:06] Shana: I, yeah, absolutely. I think each one of us, especially when we get overwhelmed we go into neutral. We like, we go into like auto, automated mode in our lives. You know what I mean? 

[00:01:15] Matt: Yes. Yes. And then the other. A really interesting thing that you've said is talking about clearing space and it's not about doing more.

[00:01:21] Matt: Can we get a little bit deeper into that? I What do you have any examples? 

[00:01:25] Shana: Yeah, so I, so for me, what I started to recognize is, especially as a woman and I'm talk about this from my perspective, cause obviously I've never been a man. So I don't really understand that perspective. So I recognize that this would be different for men, but for me, as a woman we're taught, we're supposed to be polite and kind to everyone, and we're not supposed to lose friends.

[00:01:45] Shana: We're supposed to like if we don't maintain friendships, if we part ways with a friendship it's we did something bad. It's wrong, we weren't kind enough or nice enough. It's how come you're not friends with that person anymore. And what I came to understand is that there are people who are meant to be part of our life for part of our story.

[00:02:02] Shana: And as we grow and change, friendships are meant to move and roll with us, right? So when we try to hold onto friendships and people in our life who no longer align with who we are now, it becomes. We're keeping these tangential relationships, that start to weigh us down. Because we're trying to hold onto them because we feel obligated to hold onto them, but they're just not meant to be part of our life anymore. And it's okay to let them go. And so when we let them go, we make space to deepen relationships with who actually sees us for who we are now and can challenge us where perhaps help us to grow.

[00:02:35] Shana: We're just to experience who we are meant to be in this. Okay. Like we make more space when we let go of that, which no longer belongs to us. 

[00:02:45] Matt: That's really good. . Like bringing it into an actual method of doing something like that. If you're looking at your friend's list and you're like, is it.

[00:02:54] Matt: The guilt that you feel for not getting in touch with this person for a long time. And you have all these past friends, maybe that you're like, it's like a big weight on you because you feel like you are responsible to keep all of these relationships up. Exactly. 

[00:03:08] Shana: Yes. Yeah. 

[00:03:10] Matt: Okay. Okay. Good. Good to know. So you were saying it is okay.

[00:03:14] Matt: To just let them go. Let some of those 

[00:03:16] Shana: go. It doesn't mean you have to call them up and be like, we're not friends anymore. It might be necessary in some relationships, if they're toxic where they're people who are like energy vampire off of us, like they're people that come into our life drop a bomb and then walk away.

[00:03:29] Shana: Those relationships, it might be necessary to actively say. Hey, I need to put boundaries up in this relationship because it's taking from me. It's not giving me anything. And I am choosing to honor myself in this moment. And that's something that, especially as women, we're not told we're allowed to take up space.

[00:03:45] Shana: We're not told that we're allowed to honor ourselves. We're supposed to sacrifice ourselves for the greater good. And when we do. We slowly kill ourselves. Like spiritually, emotionally, we start, we, we stop being able to actually take care of others if we do not take care of ourselves. And so yeah, sometimes you might have to be like, Hey, I don't wanna be friends anymore.

[00:04:05] Shana: But in most cases you can just let those friendships drift to the outer circle of your life and not weigh yourself down with shame or guilt. 

[00:04:15] Matt: Okay, so just let it go. Just let it 

[00:04:17] Shana: go. Just let it go. It's okay. Let it 

[00:04:19] Matt: go. I love it. That is beautiful. When you are a life designer as you are.

[00:04:26] Matt: I don't wanna say career or job, cuz I really don't like those words, but you're your impact? What you do. What does that look like? Do you coach, do you speak publicly? How do you yeah, 

[00:04:36] Shana: yeah, I speak publicly. I'm a writer and a speaker and also I also am an interior designer, so a lot of times these conversations come up when I work with people as interior designers.

[00:04:45] Shana: So that's where kind of the more coaching aspect comes in partnering with my clients to get like before I can design your home, I have to know. Who it is that you wanna be, it's not about a, like making your house. I don't have a particular style, a design style, and that's because your home has nothing to do with me.

[00:05:01] Shana: So why would I choose a style and impose that on my clients? Because that would be simply, that would be simply it would be coming from a place of ego. And trying to force my will on other people's lives. Instead I sit back and I get to know my clients and I understand their hopes and their dreams, what they want for their life now and what they want individually and together, over the next couple of years.

[00:05:24] Shana: And it becomes this interesting. Exercise watching married couples actually express things out loud that perhaps they've never expressed out loud to one another they'll express out loud while I'm there. Because I ask questions that perhaps they've never asked of one another and perhaps they've taken for granted.

[00:05:42] Shana: And so we are, we're diving into this what is your collective story or your individual story and collective story look like moving forward and then how to create space that reflects each one of. That is part of this couple or part of this family in a way that dovetails together and allows you to create your home as the stage from which you tell your, the collective story of your life.

[00:06:04] Matt: . That is one of the most unique things that I've ever heard on this podcast in all of my interviews. that is you are a interior designer and a life designer at the same time. Yes. That's not two separate jobs. And. That is fantastic. I love that. I, I've thought about being a coach.

[00:06:22] Matt: I don't think I'd really ever had done that path, but it is because in the interactions in my business and what I do, I end up coaching a lot of people and helping them helping them with their lives and their path and their decisions and their goals. And so it did it's, it is like in conjunction and I did have the thought, like if these two could ever mash up, it would be perfect.

[00:06:43] Matt: I don't really wanna go around calling myself a coach cuz I don't call myself 

[00:06:47] Shana: a coach because it's and that's perfect. Yeah. Because that's not really what I do. I think there's an aspect to what I do. That's about connection and really, I just embrace that and I think the word coach is just so overused and so many people call themselves a coach and it's I, the word is just, I'm like, that's really not what I do because I don't bring on clients typically.

[00:07:10] Shana: Just to not at least at this moment I mentor people and so on, but I haven't brought on anybody simply for the aspect of coaching. I usually connect people who really just want one-on-one coaching with executive coaches that I partner with. Okay. Who have the same belief system as I do. And they take that aspect on because everything else that I'm doing.

[00:07:32] Shana: Taking on one clients that's hours and hours of time each week that I don't have. So I really wanna make sure they're best served. So we have these initial conversations and I have partnerships with psychologists and executive coaches that I can then refer people to if they want. To sit down and just have a, 90 minutes an hour or something with a coach that has been doing it for 30 years, right?

[00:07:53] Shana: Or somebody who's a trained psychologist. Who's who, there's somebody I work with who Dr. Natalie, who teaches at Harvard med school. And, these are incredible human beings and they take that. Labor and they take that on for the short term or the long term. So yeah, I'm really just working in the home and in the media.

[00:08:11] Shana: And then I'm bringing in other experts to partner with me who share the same ideas, who can then support my clients in a way. So we work as a team, not just as like me pretending I know everything cause I don't. 

[00:08:23] Matt: excellent. One of the things that I wanted to talk to you about for certain, I am a big believer in disciplines and affirmations and motivating things that you do every day. And in your bio, it said that you had a spiritual practice built into your daily life.

[00:08:38] Matt: Yeah. What does that look 

[00:08:40] Shana: like? That looks like meditation. What I came to understand when I stepped away from Christianity, is that the voice I had been hearing all these times when I was praying was actually my voice it was my inner knowing that was coming up. And, deep wisdom that was rooted in the foundation of who I am and that connects us all is what was coming up.

[00:09:05] Shana: And as I started diving into, it's now been two years of meditating on a daily basis to the point where now I meditate somewhere around 10 to 15 minutes a day, which is a lot when you, when I recognize that like just two years ago, I couldn't meditate for more than a minute without being like, this is weird.

[00:09:22] Shana: And I also have ADHD and complex, and they're very much intertwined. Medicine and science is showing us that they happen in tandem when young people, whose brains are not fully formed. Experience excessive amounts of trauma that creates PTSD. It inhibits your frontal your brain growth and inhibits your frontal lobe and creates ADHD.

[00:09:43] Shana: At least that's where the hypothesis is at this moment. Okay. My, my body is in constant fight or flight mode, right? So all this goes back to why is it important for me to meditate? Because my body and my mind is in constant fight, fight mode. And when I can get quiet and I. Just take some intentional breaths, like actively just listen to my breath, go in and out of my body and recognize and just let myself know that I'm safe with me.

[00:10:11] Shana: In the past in Christianity, it told me that I should not trust myself. I should only trust this external puppet master in the sky that I had no right to govern myself or to know myself that only God could truly know me. I came to recognize that none of that is true, that I do know me and I am safe with me and I can trust my intuition and I can trust my inner knowing.

[00:10:31] Shana: And then I'm safe inside my own. And doing that has transformed so many aspects of my life that I was actually able to go off my ADHD medicine that I've been on since I was five. Wow. By working through my by working through my PTSD. And part of that was reading books. Like the body keeps the score so I could understand my PTSD and my ADHD understand the role that meditation and some other modalities have in remapping.

[00:10:56] Shana: So PTSD actually rewires your. It's stored, it's physically stored within your body. It's a body thing, not a mind thing. And that is a very important distinction. So for anybody who struggles with, has ADHD, who struggles with PTSD, I highly recommend the book. I also recommend that you get support while you read it a therapist or something, is it by itself can be very triggering.

[00:11:17] Shana: It shows you what needs to heal inside of you. But going through that process has allowed me to see where I can reap my heart rate because your variable heart rate changes because of PTSD. There are so many physical changes. Wow. And once I was able to dive into that, I started this is why I say everything is connected.

[00:11:36] Shana: Everything is connected. We compartmentalize things such that we have lost the recognition that everything is connected. And once we start leaning into that, it changes everything. So my spiritual practices. A consistent learning, a consistent, meditation practice consistently listening to myself and Ooh, why does this keep coming up?

[00:11:57] Shana: Why does this keep happening? What's going on here? Can I dive in and understand the systems in place and dive into all different aspects of medicine, science technology that helps me see myself through a new. And to be able to heal those things that allows me to then like, so it's a spiritual practice, but it's all encompassing for me.

[00:12:17] Shana: A spiritual practice is not just spirit. It's physical, it's mental, it's emotional. It's all the things I like that walking is a huge part of my spiritual practice. 

[00:12:30] Matt: Yeah, I like that. That is part of mine too. I've got woods out back and I have a three quarter of mile trail carved into the woods and I'll go four or five miles some days.

[00:12:39] Matt: Just I use half to listen to a book and then the other half, just turn it off and just turn off. Just walk I'm with you. 

[00:12:45] Shana: Yeah, absolutely. I just started reading the book of the will to change. It's about it's about patriarchy, about masculinity. It's written by bell hook. And the entire book is about patriarchy and how it's fed and upheld by both men and women and in which way it manifests itself and how we can work together to end it.

[00:13:02] Shana: So I, I did the same thing as I told you, my face was so red when we started, because I just came in from 90 degree weather. But I spent the first half listening to a book and then I spend the second half either just listening to quiet meditative music or nothing at all. And sometimes I'll pick flowers and sometimes I'll watch the.

[00:13:17] Shana: Bugs are fascinating. And just like my daughter would agree. Yeah. Bugs are fascinating. Or I might like just hug a tree or stand there and touch a tree. People think I'm crazy. I might reach out and give up TRIA high five. Because trees also talk to one another they're exceptionally wise beings.

[00:13:33] Shana: They talk to one another through my SI. If anybody's watched fantastic fun. Trees are fascinating and they help one another and they're community. And yeah I absolutely talk to trees and watch bugs. do all the things and helps me to recognize that we are all together. We're all in this together.

[00:13:48] Matt: And you consider that all a part of your spiritual practice that you have built into your life. And I really like that. I have, I've came to the con, like I've tried to. And I've asked for advice on meditation and I've really sat there for an hour and cleared my head. And the only thing that I could not get past once I, it was over, once I've hit the 20 minutes or the 30, or yeah.

[00:14:13] Matt: Whatever I was just like, I don't feel like it did anything for me and I, but 

[00:14:19] Shana: maybe it's because your expectation. And I'm, I could be right or wrong. I'm not saying I'm not 

[00:14:24] Matt: This is good. Hey, I'll tell you this. I'll tell you this first, before you have to answer any more questions for me.

[00:14:29] Matt: I love being coached. I love being coached on this show. I'm not embarrassed. I'm not ashamed. So if you're gonna tell me that, if you're gonna tell me that I'm doing something wrong, I've got no problem 

[00:14:38] Shana: with that. It's not about right or wrong. I've gotten to the place where I recognize that things aren't right or wrong, perhaps it's our.

[00:14:43] Shana: And I think when I struggled with the same thing, when I first started meditating, so I'm just coming from a place that perhaps reviewing it the way that I viewed it. And it is that, something miraculous was supposed to happen or, that I was supposed to be able to clear my mind and not think of anything for certain periods of time that, What I came to recognize is there's so much simplicity in it.

[00:15:05] Shana: And I also read the book become water, my friend, it's by what's his name's daughter. Shannon Lee it's. She wrote it all about her B about her father. Okay. But it's also about his About her and his practice, their spiritual practice. And I love how simple she made it. She just talked about the fact that it's just, it's so simple.

[00:15:24] Shana: And sometimes we make it complicated because people in the spiritual world, this is something that I've connected to. A lot of spiritual creators about is that spirituality in many aspects actually mirrors and is a template of Christianity. Of evangelical Christianity, right? Talking about the divine masculine and divine feminine.

[00:15:43] Shana: And we must embrace our gender roles. It's a repackaging of patriarchy and of capitalism and of this really dog. It's just new language for the same old shit. And so we have to be really careful that we aren't viewing. Spirituality that way. Like it's not just repackaged Christianity and repackaged patriarchy.

[00:16:06] Shana: And so I think when we get really simple and really quiet and just recognize think about water. It's peaceful and yet it's ever moving, right? Like the top may look calm, but underneath all this life is happening. And so that's like our mind it, we may be sitting there, but that doesn't mean we stop being human and we stop being alive.

[00:16:25] Shana: And perhaps Pema children said the Buddhist nun, she said, when thoughts. You just label it thinking, and you just let the thoughts come in and you let them go and you don't label them as good or bad, and you don't label yourself as good or bad. You just let them come up and you let them go.

[00:16:42] Shana: And you shelf them for whenever you're done. And just, I think the importance for me is just sitting still and being quiet. Doing my best to remember, to think about my breathing in and out, to be present to my breathing. And if I can, in the 15 minutes that I'm sitting there spend like a full minute and a half, like actually just focused on my breathing.

[00:17:06] Shana: That's like a flip, an amazing accomplishment because 90% of the time is spent being like, oh my gosh, another thought, oh, okay. Let's. Fuck go. And let's think about breathing again, right? Sometimes a full 3, 4, 5 minutes will go by and I've thought about a whole bunch of stuff for the last five minutes.

[00:17:22] Shana: And I'm like, oh you're supposed to meditating. It's not about perfection and that's not about right or wrong. It's just about being as intentional with those 15 minutes as we can. And just getting quiet with ourselves and just letting what happened, happens and not judging it. If those 10 minutes go by and we've let them go by without judging ourselves, that's an accomplishment all by itself, okay. Yes. Not supposed to be some mystical experience. Could it be sure? Is it supposed to. No, what it is what you decide it is. And no one else has any say in that. No one. So I think sometimes it's the voice of judgment that comes in our head that makes meditation feel like it's not applicable for us, but it's typically because there's something that we are using externally to judge ourselves in that moment with.

[00:18:13] Shana: That's my 2 cents. Take it or read it. Okay. That's my 2 

[00:18:16] Matt: cents. I might actually read a little bit more about it and start attempting or I don't like that word. I'll just start doing it again. 

[00:18:23] Shana: Yeah. But also walking, you can meditate while walking. Sometimes that's a better way to start is just by walking and turning off your music and.

[00:18:31] Shana: Looking at the trees and focusing on your breathing. Sometimes that's a good way to get into a meditation practice. Nobody says you have to be sitting anybody who does anybody who tells you what you're supposed to do with your life and pretends, like they know it all is full of shit. Just let me reassure 

[00:18:46] Matt: you that. Amen. I do like that. I do like that. So there, there are a couple things that I definitely want to get to before we close up. So you've talked about changing your physical surroundings to when, in, when something terrible happens to you in yes. In the light of any trauma that has hit you change your physical surroundings helps.

[00:19:10] Matt: I wanna hear about that and the question that I'm gonna ask you right after you talk about it. Is this thing like. If something happens bad right now. And I go out in the woods, that's changing my physical surroundings. Or are you talking about moving to a different state? 

[00:19:23] Shana: No. So I think it could be any of those things, if something really shitty has happened, maybe sometimes the first thing you wanna do is go run like for women. A lot of times you wanna scrub a dish or fold laundry, very angrily or go for a walk or we want, we wanna do something physical. Anger manifests itself, physically for us too.

[00:19:42] Shana: A lot of times men think that it doesn't for us, but it absolutely does. And we absolutely feel the need to punch something sometimes. So we angrily scrub a dish instead. Or go for a walk or my younger self did put a hole through the wall with my fist. And at 12, I realized I was gonna have to keep punching these holes, but patching these holes.

[00:19:59] Shana: So it was probably better to find another way but I think it's important to just take a minute and recognize, okay, this moment what's surrounded all this energy came out of me, right? All this energy came out me and whoever I was interacting with, and we need to let that energy outta this room.

[00:20:16] Shana: We need. Let it go. We need to move it around. We need to move ourselves around because we were literally all made of energy and energy enters the room when we do. And if we expel all that energy and start bashing each other with it, we've gotta reset. And that could mean maybe straightening up the room or reorganizing the furniture.

[00:20:34] Shana: It could mean just going for a walk and changing your physical surroundings for that moment. It could mean, opening up a window and letting some fresh air ends. You can change the spell in the room. Spell is our strongest connection to memory and emotion. So if there's a particular smell like, okay, for.

[00:20:53] Shana: When I say to people, think about your grandmother's house or your favorite aunt. There's an Ima, there's an immediate smell memory that comes up typically, right? It's like that. So we can recall specific emotions or we can call up or change the emotional space of a room with changing the scent of a room.

[00:21:11] Shana: So we might, after a big fight, we. Light a candle. But the key is that the scent that we bring into the space now must be one that's already associated with joy and happiness. It's nearly impossible to overwrite a scent memory. That means if you associate Clementine with being bullied and having them thrown at you, but as a kid, at your head.

[00:21:33] Shana: You cannot use Clementine in as a scent that brings you joy. It's going to be merely impossible to change that scent memory. However, if lavender is something you associate with spa and relaxation, that might be something that you light in the room, given a minute, open the windows, let the scent of all that.

[00:21:51] Shana: Hormonal stuff that just got exchanged out. Light candle changed the scent of the room, resets the stage. Wow. It could mean moving. It could mean moving because perhaps you don't have control of the space you live in. Perhaps you are living with a partner who is very controlling and doesn't allow you to be reflected in that space and you need to get away from them.

[00:22:10] Shana: Or a family member or a friend, perhaps you need to reset that stage only you can decide what that looks like, but no matter what we do, we have to recognize that we can't run away from reality. But. If we allow ourselves to move through it, sometimes changing that dynamic is necessary.

[00:22:27] Shana: Sometimes you need to get away from abusive family members and friends, and that's the way that you're gonna be able to actually craft the story of your life. But I also recognize that there are economic and social limitations on many people's ability to actually get away from their current situation, which is why I say a really simple way to do that.

[00:22:45] Shana: Might. To get in an expensive candle with a scent that you love and lock your bedroom door your room door and light a candle and create that as a safe space for yourself. That's what I did. That's what I 

[00:22:57] Matt: did. Okay. All right. Yeah. That's that is great. And there are a couple of things. I think that's brilliant advice for people.

[00:23:04] Matt: You were talking about everything being connected and just. If you're having a mental and spiritual bad energy, negative energy, it might has have to be a, the physical, that changes. It's almost like if the physical's doing bad in your life, you need to change your mind. 

[00:23:23] Shana: It's a reflection. So our physical space is a reflection of our beliefs about ourself.

[00:23:27] Shana: Now that doesn't mean that because your space is perfectly tidy and clean, that there isn't a lot of shit going on . Because perfectionism. Can be a, is a dis it can be dysfunctional. It is dysfunctional behavior, right? I don't wanna say dysfunctional, but it is like dysfunctional thought process, right?

[00:23:43] Shana: Like it's us perfection doesn't exist. That's why it's a dysfunctional thought process. It doesn't exist just unachievable. So we're creating this unachievable thing for ourselves and trying to match our physical surrounding with it, which is in fact not healthy. Yeah, our physical surroundings are a reflection of our beliefs about ourselves in a multitude of ways.

[00:24:01] Shana: And so when we are kind to ourselves and kind about our physical surroundings, they might be clean and tidy, but not perfect. And then we can know that we're at peace with ourselves. And. and also the way that we take up space also is a reflection. If we're constantly walking, like if there's a piece of furniture in our life that we're constantly having to walk around or we bump into, we've literally created that as a physical barrier as if we aren't allowed to take up that space.

[00:24:27] Shana: And so then typically there's some kind of association with us not being allowed to take up space in the. It's also living in our brain. Not always, I'm not a psychologist either. But this is the reality that I've come to recognize in patterns of behavior in my clients of, why do you keep that there?

[00:24:45] Shana: And you keep walking into it and you've got like a permanent bruise. Why can't we move it? And then all these weird things start coming up. It's justifications. And I'm like, oh, there its 

[00:24:54] Matt: right. Okay. 

[00:24:56] Shana: And that's when I bring in the psychologist.

[00:25:01] Matt: fair enough. That's perfect. Yes. Wow. So yeah, I want to talk about the scent thing. It's really interesting. I don't know this isn't anything that I connect with my past, but the soap, the foaming soaps, that smell really good. Yeah. If I'm stressed out or. I go wash my face in my hand, I wash my face.

[00:25:22] Matt: I wash my hands in there. Yes. And I actually. Just breathe it in from my hands. And I never thought about that as any kind of a spiritual practice or anything, but yep. It truly does calm me down and it, it gets me right where I need to go. In fact, one of the most, I've had a pretty easy life but a really traumatic thing that happened to me recently.

[00:25:42] Matt: I got COVID. And I lost my smell and taste. 

[00:25:46] Shana: Oh yes. Because they're together. If you lose your sense of smell, you lose your sense of taste. Okay. So that's the other reason why smell is so important is because it is the only scent that is directly connected to the function of another scent to another 

[00:25:58] Matt: sense.

[00:25:59] Matt: Okay. Interesting. But I I couldn't do that. I didn't have it. And I was, that was the trauma. It wasn't like, I was like, I'll never be able to like, smell my daughter's hair again. When I heard her goodnight that didn't come up. The only thing, but it would eventually, if it kept going, the only thing was like, I can't smell the soap in my hand.

[00:26:16] Matt: So that was uh, there's a 

[00:26:17] Shana: whole, there's a whole book. If you wanna dive into scent and why it's so important, there's a whole, a book. There's very few books written about the psychology of. But I've read one about scent itself and then one about the psychology of scent. I'm in the middle of reading right now.

[00:26:29] Shana: Looking right at it, it's called the SC of desire. Okay. And it's really important. It talks about how we can lose just about any other SC sense. And it takes us like six months to adjust. And we might suffer severe your depression at first, but we do figure out how to adjust, but the sense of smell at first, we don't miss.

[00:26:48] Shana: And then about after about six months, it becomes we hit depression and it can cause without intervention from medical professionals can cause people a, an immense amount of depression to the point of it. Wanting them to unlive themselves, right? It is way more critical than we recognize it to be.

[00:27:10] Shana: And it is the way that we connect to one another. So sex and physical attraction happens because we actually scent receptors smell the other person's PHN, and their chemical reactions. So if we don't have a sense of smell, we don't have a desire for sex. And we aren't experiencing.

[00:27:27] Shana: Sex and that, that chemical interaction with other people anymore. Wow. That's a massive part of the way that we connect with one another as human beings. So once you start to dive into the sense of smell, you recognize just how vital it is to our everyday life and how little we think about it until it's gone.

[00:27:45] Shana: And so I love that you brought up that like when I start talking about this with people, they start to recognize holy shit, I. Can I say bad words yes, 

[00:27:52] Matt: yes. 

[00:27:52] Shana: You can. Oh holy shit. I didn't recognize how important it was. People start talking about it and then they say things like, you just did I'll go and watch my hands in my face and bring in this beautiful smell.

[00:28:02] Shana: Then they start to recognize it and we start to realize how much scent is really a part of our everyday life. But we do not actively think about it, but if we did, we could actually change so much about our daily interaction with. 

[00:28:16] Matt: Wow. Yeah. I'm thinking it's all coming to me now. Like thinking about walking through the woods and how I just love the smell of the mud and the, yeah.

[00:28:25] Matt: The trees and everything. It's amazing. Was there a point you were talking about the trauma in your past life, this life, but as a kid, yeah. Was there a point. That you discovered how to deal with it? Was there a, like a mentor or a book or a single? No. Okay. 

[00:28:44] Shana: I came to the realization probably somewhere around the age of 12 or 13.

[00:28:49] Shana: I became, I started dealing with suicidal ideation and just recognizing that I was tired of life sucking and I read the I read the book tribal leadership, and this is actually. Became clear to me, like so much happens in language and we recognize how much we've changed in our lives. When we see our language change for me growing up, my dad's favorite saying was life sucks.

[00:29:12] Shana: And then you deal with it. Now, the really key and important part that I learned from reading tribal leadership is that the idea that life sucks, implies that everyone's life sucks and there's no way out. That shittiness is pervasive which isn't true. Doesn't need to be patriarchy and white supremacy created that way, but it doesn't have to be that way.

[00:29:31] Shana: When we get clear that it's actually my life, that sucks when we can make the delineation between life sucks and my life sucks. It is a massive change in language and change of perspective. Because then we get to recognize that actually change is possible because other people's lives don't suck, which means mine doesn't have to, which means that there are things that I can do or some change that could happen that could alter my reality entirely.

[00:30:01] Shana: And then I started reading a hell of a lot. Obviously I read three or four books typically at a time. And typically about three to four books a month. And I started to recognize and started to put sayings from some of these authors that I loved on index cards and tape them all over my walls.

[00:30:18] Shana: And then I would rip pages out of magazines and I started creating the wall of my bedroom as a massive vision board as a way of recalibrating myself and creating mentors in my head and envisioning a different life. And it helped to center me to recognize no, I don't have anybody in my immediate life whose life I.

[00:30:41] Shana: There are people in the world who have different lives than I do. And I do want more than the life I have here. And I don't know that anybody's life has, is perfectly blissful, but their lives are better than mine. They're not being beaten or abused or, intimidated by their parents every single day of their life.

[00:30:57] Shana: And that was really key for me, guests. My life didn't change. It stayed really shitty for a really long time. I didn't move outta my parents' house until I was 24, because that's when my father finally moved out and I no longer felt the need to protect my siblings and my mom from him.

[00:31:11] Shana: But until that day, that vision board was became this. They, it was the mentors in my head, the books I read, they were the mentors. And each one led me further into curiosity. And curiosity is what saved my life, knowing that some other reality existed and that some other reality could exist. And I could be a part of creating, helping to create a different reality, not just for myself, but for other.

[00:31:38] Shana: And that is ultimately what led me to become an interior designer and then to become a life designer is that, that is what shifted my own reality. And I knew that it could do that for other people and it has, and it does. Awesome. So that was a very long answer to your question. 

[00:31:54] Matt: So Shayna, if you had the entire world on the phone for 43 seconds, what would you tell them? 

[00:32:01] Shana: Curiosity could save all of our lives. It would help us to deepen into connection with ourselves, with one another and lead us to joy in a way that perhaps we're afraid of at this moment. But it will change all of our lives.

[00:32:17] Shana: None of us knows what the hell we're doing here. And if we can just get curious, we could change the world. 

[00:32:23] Matt: . Excellent words. Excellent advice. So if. If, how do, if people wanna get ahold of you? How would you like them to get ahold of you and in what capacity? 

[00:32:35] Shana: Yeah, there's lots of ways to get connected with me, but the easiest way that you can find a plethora of information about me, things that I've written talks that I've given is on my website and that's concinnate.world and it houses both my interior design practice and that.

[00:32:50] Shana: And that company, and then also life design. There's a whole page on me alone as a speaker and a writer. Cetera. So Concinnate is C O N C I N N A T E dot world. And it has everything on there. It is this seamless dovetailing of everything that I do and all that I am, that will be in the description. . 

[00:33:09] Matt: Thank you so much for being a guest today. This has been a great talk, a great conversation, and yeah, I've actually learned quite a few things that I'm gonna start paying a lot more attention to. I hope that my listeners are gonna do the same. Yeah.

[00:33:22] Matt: So I'm gonna, I appreciate your time.