Conscious Communications with Mary Shores

A Personal Note from Orion

Do you feel like you have lost control over the choices in your life? Is your life stuck or stagnant? While there may be times where we feel less than empowered and like we have no control, we can change our thoughts to overcome these freak outs and create our dream life. No matter how many directions you’re pulled in or how stagnant you feel, you can transform the experience and move on to a vibration of pure empowerment.

Mary Shores, a leader of innovative thought with a powerful roadmap for change, is my amazing guest this week. She’ll share how you can transform feelings of unworthiness and improve communication so you can make stronger personal connections. You’ll discover the magic of affirmations and how to define your “core four”, along with lots of other juicy and incredible tips. No matter what is blocking you from living your ideal life, you can overcome it and change everything after listening to this incredible interview.

In this Episode

[04:43] – Mary introduces herself, talking about starting her first company as well as a tragic personal loss.
[06:34] – How did Mary deal with everything, and shift from loss and trauma into building her own business?
[10:05] – The starting point to change the feeling of unworthiness is to think about empowerment, Mary explains.
[13:58] – Orion reiterates and expands on what Mary has been explaining about needing to actually do the work. She then talks about an exercise she does involving her chakras.
[17:36] – What are Mary’s rituals? She answers, then takes a moment to dig into the neuroscience of gratitude.
[22:00] – Mary talks about her daily desires at the moment. Orion then shares her own current desires.
[24:19] – We go deeper into the topic of affirmations, with Mary talking about the importance of creating affirmations that resonate with you.
[29:31] – From Mary’s perspective, it doesn’t matter whether someone takes a scientific path or a spiritual path. She then discusses the placebo effect.
[31:42] – What is the “core four,” and how can we implement that? Mary answers, then shares her own “core four” with listeners.
[35:23] – Mary talks about what she has learned through healing, and points out that you cannot protect your heart and be emotionally available at the same time.
[39:49] – We learn about the difference between a “core four” and a goal.
[44:00] – How does Mary turn an emotion that might get into the way into something cleansing?
[48:39] – Mary shares her thoughts on communication and connecting better with other people.
[52:13] – What are Mary’s three top tips to living a stellar life? #1. Always shed the layers of who you are and uncover the person who you are meant to be. #2. Pay attention to your emotions. #3. Focus on what you want instead of what you don’t want.
[53:44] – Mary lists some places to find and connect with her. She also offers listeners a free gift!

About Today’s Show

‏‏Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to Stellar Life Podcast. This is Orion. Before I’m going to talk about today’s awesome guest in this awesome episode and how great it’s going to be for you to listen, I am going to share a surprise that I got. I got two awesome reviews, five-star reviews for Stellar Life Podcast. One is saying, “Amazing,” by [Expain [00:00:29] from New Zealand. I don’t know if I’m pronouncing your name right but thank you. It says, “Stella, you are wonderful to listen to. Your topic are very important and are perfect for where I am in my life now. Thank you.” Thank you very much. My name is Orion but it doesn’t matter. If you want to review my show and call me Stella, that’s okay. Please review, it helps me a lot. I got another awesome review by [00:01:01] Sammy Lady] from the US. It says, “Straight to the heart, I love it. Straight to the heart. Always excited for the next episode of Stellar Life. Orion brings a wide array of topics and great speakers to her listeners. She’s very funny and upbeat…” Woohoo. “I can’t help but smiling most of the time I’m listening to the podcast. She’s very giving and open in all of her conversations. She’s relatable, and compassionate, and I feel like she gets me.” Oh, girl. I do get you. “At time, it’s like she hold up a mirror. Some of the topics challenge me to take a closer look at what I’m doing and thinking–not always fun. Growing isn’t always easy. I highly recommend this podcast. At the very least, Orion will bring a ray of sunshine and a smile to your day.” Aww, thank you. You just brought a smile to my day. Thank you so much. A great review is that a friend of mine just sent me a message telling me, “Yo, Stellar Life is on new and noteworthy and that’s pretty impressive.” Out of 550,000 podcasts in 2018 so I am humbled and I feel very blessed. I’m really grateful for you guys–ladies, guys–whoever you are. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being here. I’m pumped. I’m going to do my best to give you the best. Today’s guest is going to teach you how to connect to true happiness that is coming from the inside, how to have conscious communication, and how to listen to your body, and how your thoughts, your words affect your reality. Her name is Mary Shores. Her life began with abandonment at a young age and tragically losing her first child but she was able to overcome her tragedies to triumph by building an 8-figure business empire at age 23. She’s a wonderful spiritual teacher and Hay House author. Her book is called Conscious Communication and it’s a really great book. You should totally get it. I’m just going to let you listen to her wisdom and stop talking. Okay. You ready? Without any further ado, onto the show.

Hey, Mary. Welcome to Stellar Life Podcast.

‏‏Hey, Orion. I’m so excited to be here, to finally meet you, and get to chat.

‏‏Yeah, me too. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself?

‏‏Sure. Well, my name is Mary Shores. When I was 24 years old, I started my first company which is pretty cool and nice, but people seemed to get pretty fascinated at the fact that only a few years earlier, I was dealing with the very tragic birth and death of my first child. It was really bad. She had a tremendous amount of brain damage that left her blind and deaf—she was unable to swallow so she had to have a tube inserted into her stomach. For those young years when I was 19 and 20, I was taking care of her and really living in and out of children’s hospitals. Even like peeling back a little bit further than that, I’d actually been on my own at 16. It seems like that my life should’ve turned out more like a statistic of perhaps, alcoholism or drug abuse, but instead I went this complete other direction and started a business that became pretty successful. Then from there, really got into the personal development world and have wanted to do everything I can to make an impact in letting people know that they have control over their choices in life. They have control over what they do and do not become.

They have control over their choices in life. They have control over what they do and do not become. Share on X

‏‏Wow. Just getting over something like that in your early years, I bet back then you weren’t that aware of self-development and this whole movement. How did you deal with everything? How did you shift from the loss and the trauma into building your own business?

‏‏I think I wasn’t very conscious of it at that time, but that I was really in the midst of suffering with post-traumatic stress and that looked for me kind of being in survival mode. I think a lot people ask me about my ambitions in starting a business. The truth is that I didn’t start this business from a place of ultimate confidence, it really was the opposite. I felt like quite a failure and I felt like starting a business was going to be my only way because I had such deep unworthiness traumas that I honestly didn’t feel like I could get hired at a job that would pay me any amount of money that I could live on.

‏‏Wow, I feel like so many people, including myself, sometimes deal with this unworthiness. Like, “I’m not worthy of that. Why would they like me?” or “Why would this happen to me? Why me?” But not in a good way. “Why do I deserve it?” How do you come across many people that deal with this?

‏‏I feel like it is a product of the times that we live in because everything over the past 20-30 years has gotten so competitive and such a sort of masculine paradigm of achievement is what equals your value. We’re now only looking at trying to peel back the layers of the belief systems that has created that. It does not surprise me that women, especially, would look at themselves as unworthy or whatever word. It’s the self-judgment that makes an impact on the way that we see, feel, and think about ourselves.

It’s the self-judgment that makes an impact on the way that we see, feel, and think about ourselves.

‏‏This self-judgment comes from childhood, it comes from trauma, it comes from loss, it comes from failure, what will be a good advice to somebody listening right now and they don’t feel that hot and they want to feel more worthy?

‏‏In addition to what you just said, Orion, I would also say that the self-judgment comes from trying to live up to the expectations that are imposed by our families and our culture. Your question, I want to read just a short excerpt out of the book, Conscious Communications. This is on page 158. There is a chapter in the book called Becoming Who You Really Are. It just fits perfectly with what you’ve just asked me. It says, “I know it’s easier said than done, but what if, as an experiment, you tried to be happy just by becoming who you really are? Just living it and stepping into it? To get to who you really are, you have to shed layer after layer of who you have been pretending to be; layers of the person that you know, deep down, you are not. You are shedding layers of your problems, layers of self-judgment, layers of how others have judged you. Shedding layers of unworthiness, fear, worry, and unnecessary responsibilities, and layers of beliefs and challenges around what other people think you are, or even worse, think you should be.” I think that the starting point to start to change that feeling or that vibration of unworthiness is to think about empowerment—what true empowerment is. It’s become this trendy word lately like #empowerment. But really, empowerment is this place of knowing from the inside out where you portray this power because you understand that you have the power of infinite consciousness at your grasp. When you know what the next steps are in life and when you can have the clarity of what it is that you’re wanting to do. I think a starting place is to look at also the word “alignment.” It’s another word that we talk about and we sort of throw that word around, but what does it mean and how can we achieve it? If I think about alignment as in getting my thoughts, my words, my beliefs, my actions, and my choices all pointing in the same direction as to what I want. That’s how I’m getting alignment, that’s how I’m tapping into my true power, into my empowerment, into that power of the infinite consciousness that is my being. When you begin to get some of these parts of your life, or your thoughts, or your belief systems, into alignment then the unworthiness can just start to melt away. You know, Orion, I know you’ll understand this because I know a little bit about you. I used to be this person who was like this weekend workshop warrior. Like, “Go to this event and have a transformation in a weekend.” Do you know what I mean? You’re always going to the next thing that’s going to transform your life, but at the end of these events, I would look around at the people and everybody would be all juiced up—they’re juiced on this energy. I’d be looking around thinking I’m still the same person. I would feel this letdown like I failed my date with destiny. But here’s the thing, a month later, you’ll look at those same people on Facebook or wherever, and you realize that nothing has really changed. They’re still swirling in all the same chaos and uncertainty. The difference between me and them is that they’re riding high on the energy of the event. That’s like a certain momentum that feels great. If you don’t go home and integrate the things that you’ve just learned, then you’re really no better off. The lesson that I learned the hard way is that true transformation happens in the smallest pivots over a long period of time, that’s why we call it a journey. I know that through every decade of life, I’m building a character of this person who is nothing like that 19-year-old girl. There’s nothing hardly left of her except for maybe her inner bounce back factor and her ability to have courage and resilience. But everything else just comes from this wisdom. The reason I’m saying this is because as you are stepping in to who you are, and it is recognizing all of the things that you’re tearing yourself up for, like the thoughts in your head. If you almost looked at the thoughts as if they’re your best friend, it’s not a friend you would keep around very long. Do you know what I mean? If your friend in your head is just constantly telling you how terrible you are and that was a real person, how long would you keep them in your life? By the way, I love going to workshops. I have not stopped doing that, but my expectations have changed. Instead of looking at this like this is going to change my life, I just know this is going to help me grow.

‏‏Yeah, definitely. It’s all about learning and growing. You see, people look for the external. They want somebody else to come and change them. Yes, you can ride the wave of those events, and it’s nice, but like you said, if you don’t go home and do the work, then you know what? I think the most powerful work that you can do are those few minutes when you’re in the shower, in the morning, and you kind of balancing yourself, doing your chakras, and meditating. Those beautiful moments of enlightenment that happens just with you and yourself when nobody else is there. You just connect to that higher power. You connect to your heart. Those are the moments where you feel the most aligned like you said.

‏‏Yeah, that’s so beautiful. What a wonderful way to start your day. I think we spend plenty of time—that paying attention to the persistent negative messages that we repeat in our mind. To take that time out to have that mental check-in process while you’re in the shower, that’s going to leave you in this place of empowerment versus starting the day off from a place of disempowerment.

Take that time out to have that mental check-in process while you’re in the shower, that’s going to leave you in this place of empowerment versus starting the day off from a place of disempowerment. Share on X

‏‏One thing that I do, I did this this morning, is I go through my chakras and I kind of imagine the color of the chakra and kind of put my hand on my aura. Not directly on the skin, but close. In my mind’s eye, I think about the colors of my chakra. I can almost see it. Every chakra represents something else. My base chakra which is the red chakra. I can kind of feel the energy, it’s flowing or it’s stuck. I can see it in my mind’s eye, I can see if the color is dark, muddy, brown, or beautiful bright red which is the color of the chakra and if I see that there is some work that needed to be done, then, I kind of imagine beautiful red bright light filling this chakra—this area. I don’t move to the next chakra until I really feel it. I feel it’s changing. If I feel like there’s something to release, I imagine it releasing with the water going into the core of the earth, transforming into white light and go through those chakras. Sometimes I think about events—events come to mind. One needs to be released, one needs to be let go. What do I need to regain? Then I have to remind myself it’s not me that is doing it, but I’m also calling in some angels and guidance to help me release, to help me empower, and I do it through that. This is one of my exercise that I do. What’s your rituals?

‏‏First of all, I’m blown away by yours because that makes me think of this really good friend of mine that I know, and I call her a magical reiki goddess. She’s so all about that. She’s so tapped in and tuned in to that other realm, that support, that exists. One of the things that when I’m with her and we’re in that space, that’s very much like what you just described. She always reminds me that I have nothing to be afraid of. I think that my approach is a little less mystical and very easy practical steps. One of the things that I love to do as a daily practice and I change mine up all the time. For example, last year I was writing a page of affirmations everyday and that was a miraculous game changer for me because even though it seems simple, what I was doing was like almost do a process of self-hypnosis. I was planting seeds of new neural pathways into my subconscious. Right now, currently, I am doing what I call the daily desires diary. It’s so much fun and it’s going to really connect you with great possibilities in life. What it is, is I take three things every single day that I’m grateful for which by the way, I’ve been doing that since January 27, 2015. I remember the exact day that I started that ritual and I share my gratitude with three other women. We text each other everyday. It’s kind of like an accountability group. It’s really been transformative for all three of us. We’re all from different parts of the world. We didn’t know each other prior to that experience, which is actually a good thing because then you don’t worry what you’re saying to this other person. Since that time we’ve become extremely close. We’ve gone to events and we’ve all met each other. It’s been incredible. Also, the power of gratitude is something that we understand it as a spiritual practice. We understand it as a religious ritual, but let’s take a second to understand the neuroscience about it. When you are taking a moment to be grateful everyday for something in your life, what you’re really doing is you’re strengthening a certain neural pathway in your subconscious mind that helps you to be able to see the things clearly in your life that you should be grateful for. We all know the difference between looking at something with rose-colored glasses versus looking at something with smudged colored glasses. It’s like creating this practice in your subconscious that you have the ability to look for things that are good in your life and then what happens next is you begin to become aware of opportunities all around you. I think these opportunities were there all along. It’s just that you’re tuned into them in a deeper way. The second part of that daily ritual or daily practice for daily desires is you’re going to take the time everyday to acknowledge three moments in a day that you’re proud of. I feel like especially as women, we’ve not been taught how to be proud of ourselves, that it’s almost unladylike and we should be humbled. It does not affect that I know of. It does not disconnect us from our femininity, to be proud of ourselves for something in the day. I like people to name three things that they want to brag about every single day because this also stimulates a certain part of your brain that will help you continue to come up with new ideas in your life. It’s a really strong connector to your highest potential. It helps you to slow down that negative strain of thoughts in your mind. Lastly, it is stating three things that you desire. You want to just connect yourself by focusing on what you want and taking a moment to say, “Here are three things that I’m putting out into the universe that I want to manifest.”

‏‏I love the word desire. It’s such a sweet word. I love that word. It is so juicy. What’s your desires? For today.

‏‏That’s a great question. My desires right now are that I’m really doing a lot to reconnect myself with my teenage my boys because my boys are 16 and 17. That’s an age where they’re getting into gaining more independence. I deeply desire to have a strong connection with them while we are exploring the freedoms that they need in order for them to grow for their highest potential. I also desire a trip to the Amazon. There’s a person that I’ve connected with that is leading a retreat there. I deeply desire to make this trip to the Amazon and to make further trips to the Amazon, as well, to connect with some of the indigenous tribes there. I think my third desire is to really get clarity on what direction I want to go. You know how that feeling is sometimes when you’re trying to choose between two things and the best thing you can do is get absolute clarity. Thanks for asking me that. It’s really sweet.

‏‏Of course.

‏‏What do you desire?

‏‏What do I desire? I desire to get back in shape because I’m in Israel right now, hanging out with my family and friends for a few months. I’ve been eating a lot of bread, pastries, and good food. I desire to go back in shape and I desire to do a local workshop here that I teach maybe a day, maybe two days. I just desire to be happy. I love dancing, I love self-expression, I love knowing myself more and more as a woman. This is what I teach women to do, but I just want to go deeper. I just want to go juicier. I just want to go more, I just want to have more fun everyday.

‏‏I love that.

‏‏Yeah, that’s what I want to do. But if this is about you, not about me, and I do want you to ask you about affirmations. I love affirmations. I believe in affirmations, they’re amazing. Can you explain a little bit about it? A lot of people know what affirmations are, but maybe you can take us deeper.

‏‏A few years ago, I remember this as clear as day that I was taking a bath in the morning and I waswatching YouTube and this video came on. It was from Louise Hay and it was called You Can Heal Your Life. It was this documentary about Louise Hay and her life. Believe it or not, up until that moment, I had actually never even heard of Louise Hay. I know it’s shocking, but I watched the whole video and within the opening scene, it’s this woman. She’s just tearing herself up. She’s saying, “I’m so stupid.” She’s just negative in her thought process. Within the opening scene, I just was crying from every orifice of my body. It was like this rainforest of tears that was just pouring out of me because I realized just how mean I am to myself, in that moment. I watched the entire documentary and I literally leapt out of that bathtub with the water ice-cold by now because it could been 90 minutes. I just screamed out to the universe that Louise Hay was going to publish my book. At that time, I didn’t really understand very much about affirmations or anything like that. But what I’ve come to understand since that time, I’ll be honest, a lot of it felt a little silly to me. I didn’t understand the powerful change it could make. More as like an experiment, I thought, I need to create this system of affirmations and that’s exactly what I did. One of the first things for me was I needed them to be honest. I’m not a person that can say, “Oh, I’m making $1,000,000 today.” If that’s not true. It feels like a lie to me. What studies are now showing is there are certain segment of the population that they really need their affirmations to be rooted in truth or else it actually creates more negativity in the mind. Everyone is different. It doesn’t mean that just because I’m that way that every person’s that way. The way that you check in to know what is right for you is to say, “Does this affirmation feel good?” I’ll give you an example. I was teaching a retreat and a woman came up to me and she said, “I want you to help me write an affirmation.” I said, “Okay. What do you do?” She said, “I’m a fashion designer. But I always feel bad saying I’m a fashion designer because I don’t have a degree in fashion design.” I said, “Okay, tell me a little bit more.” She said, “I design clothing for pregnant women that makes them feel feminine and beautiful.” I said, “Well, your affirmations is ‘my clothing designs make pregnant women feel feminine and beautiful’. It was so simple, right?” Her face just lit up. When your face lights up or when you feel good about the affirmation then that’s one that you’ll stick with. What I did was I wrote a page of affirmations everyday for a year. When it started of, it was very practical things. Then, I really got into it and the result is I have thousands and thousands of affirmations, but I also have this understanding of the process of creating affirmations. Like, I wrote a blog called Three Steps to Creating Rocking Affirmations or something like that. What you want to do is you really want to create affirmations that make you feel good and then you want to repeat that process as often as possible because every time you do that, you are actually creating––you’re planting a new seed in your subconscious mind that is going to help you connect to those things in your life. As you’re strengthening that seed, then what’s happening is you’re building this muscle that will create those things to be true. Whether we look at this say from, a Law of Attraction aspect or whether we look at it from a neuroscientific aspect or a spiritual one, it’s still the same thing. A lot of what I teach and believe and write about in my book is how that science and spirituality are really talking about the same things, but they’re using two different languages.

When your face lights up or when you feel good about the affirmation then that’s one that you’ll stick with.

‏‏When I saw the movie with a What the Bleep Do We Know!? They shot that quantum physics––lots of spiritual beliefs. It’s interesting that science is catching up to what’s been taught for thousands and thousands of years.

‏‏Yes, it’s a beautiful thing. It doesn’t matter. From my perspective, it doesn’t matter whether someone takes a spiritual path or a scientific path or whatever. Whatever they choose to believe is not the point. What is the point is how are they in control of their choices to create the life they want.

‏‏Yes and also I think beliefs are important because the placebo effect is so strong. Some people take a sugar pill, they believe it will help then and it helps them.

‏‏That’s true. What I meant was belief in a certain dogma—whether they believe in God, whether they believe in the universe, or chakras, or whether they’re an atheist. To me, that kind of level of belief doesn’t matter, but you’re right. I’m so glad you said that because I think it’s important to separate the two types of things because the type of belief systems you’re talking about are the belief systems that drive our body to create the patterns and choices in our life that it does. The reason that the placebo effect is so strong is because when you do something and you believed that it works then you’re making a command to the inner self to go and heal that part of your body. If you scratch your arm right now, then you know that it’s going to heal. You don’t know, unless your a doctor, you know that the blood vessels are going to start to clot and that your body is going to produce the chemicals that it needs to keep that cut safe. Well, I think what we’re finding with the placebo effect is that that ability for our body to heal itself is stronger than what we have been led to believe. Some of you listeners might think I’m crazy, but I really believe that if we were just taught that from a child, if we were taught from the time we were born that our bodies will heal themselves, then I think our bodies will heal themselves.

‏‏I believe so, too. I’m crazy as well. What is The Core 4 and how can we implement that?

‏‏The Core 4 came to me at the beginning of this year. Have you ever been in a time period in your life? Maybe you’re in there now. If not you, I’m sure your listeners will understand this. Have you ever been in a time when you just felt pulled in so many different directions that it was to the point of overwhelm?

‏‏Yes, a few times. Maybe more than a few times.

‏‏Maybe right now. The thing is, that can keep you stuck. When you feel that way, you might even procrastinate a little bit because it’s so overwhelming. I don’t like it when I go to a restaurant and they have a 25-page menu. It’s just too much for me.

‏‏The paradox of choice.

‏‏At the beginning of this year, I was in one of these moments where I was chasing so many different doors of opportunities. It was like I was standing in the center of a room that had 17 doors and I was trying to go through every single one of them at the same time. It was all leading me to nowhere. I just felt like I was going down one rabbit hole after another that was leading me to nowhere. What I did was I stepped back and I said, “Wait a second. Where do I want to be in two years from now?” I answered that question and then I said, “What are the four most important aspects that I need to focus on in order to get there?” The Core 4 is really where you choose four areas to focus on. I’ll share with you mine. My Core 4 for my life, I actually made one set for my life and one for my business. For my life, I chose healing. One of the core four is just the word “heal.” That means a lot of different things to me because it doesn’t just mean like a physical illness or ailment, it’s just like it’s a whole encompassing heal. Heal traumas, heal my heart, heal my spiritual body, heal my energetic body, heal my relationships—just everything with this word heal. Another one was my business that I own because that’s where my bread and butter comes from so I need to be focused on that. One is my children. Like I said before, I have two teenage them and one of them is on the spectrum by the way. He’s 18 and he’s transitioning from a senior to a freshman in college. There are certain challenges that you go through when you’re the mom of a special needs child. I just really want to focus on my children in making their transition to college smooth. My last area of focus is my brand. I have a brand-new book out with Hay House. I really want to have absolute clarity about what is it the impact that I’m wanting to make in the world with my book. What I did was I wrote those things down as a focus and anything in my life has to match up with any choice that I make. It has to match up with one of those four things or else I just say no to it.

‏‏That’s powerful.

‏‏If something, if a choice, if an opportunity comes my way, and it doesn’t support either my healing, my business, my brand, or my children, then I just say no. Notice, Orion, I didn’t say a relationship with a man. That means right now I’m not currently dating. That’s okay. It’s just not what is in my focus right now.

‏‏Unless a relationship will help you heal which will help you with your business, which will help you with your children, and automatically influence your brand.

‏‏I think that by healing in a certain way, I think that I’ve called in into my life a lot of relationships. It’s interesting because I know that you study the masculine and the feminine, I think we have a lot of people we follow in common. Maybe David Deida and Michaela Boehm, these people that are brilliant, amazing teachers. One of the things that I learned was that, I don’t think I’m the only woman who’s ever felt this way, but I believe that I was attracting into my life unavailable men. The thing about that is that we know that we attract what we are, but I was having a hard time accepting that I was unavailable. It always seemed to me like the man who was the one who is unavailable. What I learned was that because I had certain traumas in my past, I had created a posture of kyphosis. Kyphosis means when women sort of have that rolled shoulders forward like they’re protecting their heart. This posture is like an energetic vibration or signature that people can just intuitively pick up about you. The thing that I realized is you cannot both protect your heart and be emotionally available at the same time. This is partly to do with my healing. I feel like, by the way, this Core 4, they’ll change. Once I heal that part of my life, then the next like when I rewrite the Core 4 or when I’ve accomplished that healing and I’m ready then I think I can change that to say, like calling in a romantic partnership. I have a feeling that if I were to do that too soon then I would just repeat my same pattern of the past.

You cannot both protect your heart and be emotionally available at the same time. Share on X

‏‏It’s so beautiful that you take the time to. You know, I coach women and I coach them on how to connect to self-love and how to attract their soulmate. But from my method—Orion’s method—with many women, actually with all of them, the first step is healing. Without healing, without taking the time, I never start with, “Okay, go on and fill out that profile online. This is where you go, this is how you dress, this is what you do.” No, no, no. I start with the heart because when the heart is full, when the heart is healed, then everything else falls into place. What happens is when people are not healed, when they don’t take the time to take care of themselves, they go into the relationship and they expect somebody to fulfill them. They expect somebody to fill that void, to heal that for them. But when they come and they already took care of themselves, they did that deep work, and then they go out to the world to attract their soulmate, then the relationship is different. They find the man that they really long for and wish for. I totally respect your choices. These are beautiful choices and they are right for you right now. I love that you’re sharing them so openly because everybody should choose the four that is right for them. Not the shoulds, but like the affirmation. You choose the four words and do I resonate with this word? What does it makes me feel? Is it a should? I guess my explanation is that if you choose a word that is based on a should, like let’s say you chose to work on your business and now it’s not the right time then you will say the word and you will feel different. You will feel like it’s not authentic, right?

‏‏Yes, it’s so true. I appreciate your words, what you said to me because I feel emotional even just talking about that or putting it out there into the universe that this is how I feel. But I also believe that by even doing that like I am promoting my own healing. What I want to say is whether whatever you choose as one of your Core 4, you are like from, let’s say, a Law of Attraction aspect, the difference between a Core 4 and a goal is that this is what you’re focused on. We all know that in order to attract what you want, you need to be focused on what you want and stop focusing on so much of what you don’t want. That’s why my focus is I want to heal. Whether my focus is I want to heal or I want to start a business or I want to lose weight or I want to travel the world or buy a home, sell a home, it doesn’t matter. What matters is it’s your power of focus in how tapping into that power puts you in this place of empowerment because everything that you create like you were just describing what the women that you work with. Everything that you create from a place of empowerment––empowerment as a state of being is going to manifest stronger, faster, better, longer-lasting, and more impactful. If I can put myself from a place of healing or if I can empower myself with healing with self-love because if I can imagine that I’m only capable of loving another person to the level that I love myself then that is a pretty easy check-in to say what needs to happen. What I picture it as, Orion, is like my heart, and I’ve shared with you about my daughter, but there’s so much more than that. When I got divorced and I talked about this in my, book but when I got divorced it nearly ended me as a human. I was so checked out for two years. My heart was like, can you picture one of those crystals balls in a disco room? It’s like one of those balls that had been smashed on the ground.

‏‏I get goosebumps just feeling you.

‏‏Yeah, all these shards and shattered glass all over the place. My healing has been much about putting all of these pieces back into place. The beautiful part about this is to understand that if you have a broken glass or a broken mirror and you put that back together, it has now a billion or a million more facets of light because before where it was one piece, but now it’s been put back together. Its ability to shine more light has just grown. I know that my healed heart is going to be so much more powerful than being at this place than if I were to attract because I know what the pattern is and I’m so awake to that. It’s the same thing in your career, in your finances, in your relationship with your children, your relationships with your friends, your mother, and your relationship with money. It’s all the same thing. Once you can really understand the focus of what needs to happen in order to get you where you need to be and you start making that your north star where all of your choices, in the book, Chapter Five is called To Cleanse or To Clog, that is the question. I love to say that everything you say, everything you do, every word that comes out from your mouth, every choice you make, every action you take, and the thinnest slice moments of life is either creating a deeper connection to what you want or it’s driving a disconnection. It makes it really simple to just ask yourself, “Is this choice that I’m making right now is cleansing me? Or is it clogging me?”

‏‏You sound like a super focused person.

‏‏It’s true.

‏‏When you get emotional, how do you deal with your emotions? How do you go out of any sort of emotion that can be in the way into this question of cleansing or clogging?

‏‏I can look at exploring emotions as a total cleanse, almost like a detoxification. Friday night, I was definitely going through like a dark night of the soul and I was crying on my couch. It was fine because I felt like as I was crying and I was feeling into what was wrong. Number one, just the fact that being aware that something is wrong is leading me to a greater sense of clarity because we’re built to have these emotions. Our emotions are communicating things to us, don’t you think?

‏‏Oh, yeah. For sure.

‏‏I think that for a long time especially maybe in my 20s, every decade of life I feel like it’s this different evolution to this new person that I become. I think that in my 20s that’s not even a language that I would’ve understood. In fact, I might have even felt like emotions were weak but now that I’m in my 40s, I’m a Scorpio. Still waters run deep. I’m a very deeply emotional person. When I am feeling, especially, let’s just say a darker emotion, I think it’s so important to let it out, let it be, let it happen. If I do, like I did Friday, then by the time Sunday comes around I feel so much more clarity to my situation.

‏‏I love your authenticity. I love how genuine you are and how open you are. It’s so beautiful and it’s so inspiring. It is just so beautiful.

‏‏It’s so sweet, thank you.

‏‏Yeah. I mean it. With the emotion and embracing your emotion when somebody tells me, “Oh, you’re so emotional. I say, thank you. I’m a woman.” As a woman I have heightened senses and I feel emotions and I feel them strongly. When you embrace those emotions, when you embrace the anger, the disgust, the sadness, as well as all the good ones. But let’s talk about the “bad ones.” Nothing is bad, it’s just something that needs to go through your body so you can see something so you can release something, so you can see the contrast to what is true. Like you said, we focus on where you want to go.

‏‏I’m so happy and glad that you are willing to have those sometimes uncomfortable conversations about the darker side of emotions because I feel like we’re in this middle of this positive psychology movement that almost is a form of spiritual bullying. There’s a certain sector of people that especially like they call Law of Attraction, but if something bad happens to you they’ll say you attracted that because you had a negative thought. I’m all about controlling your reality so that you have more control of your thoughts. But your body, every cell in your body has been created in order to communicate with you and we are not built to ignore those deeper darker emotions. I completely agree with you. This human experience is not about happy or sad or bad or good—it’s experience. It’s all equally relevant. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against positive psychology, but there’s an aspect to it that’s gone to such extreme that it doesn’t allow us an avenue to process our emotions when the shit hits the fan. Let’s face it, the shit is going to hit the fan.

‏‏Yeah. It bothers me sometimes that people come and they use quotes as a weapon. I don’t hear that right now.

‏‏You can’t solve the world problems with a one-liner. Even if that one-liner is from Buddha, Dalai Lama, or Confucius. What you need is to be validated. What we need is to connect with the human being on a level of this person heard me. This person heard me. Rarely can just plain words make a situation better. What makes a situation better is connection.

‏‏That’s so beautiful.

‏‏Thank you.

‏‏What are some of your thoughts about communication and connecting better with other people?

‏‏It’s interesting that you asked me that. I teach communication workshops that are very business focused. It’s actually focused on customer service because I feel like in the business world, it’s so frustrating to call customer service. I don’t like it. Here’s the thing about communication. We were just talking about validation and I’ve got these three rules and three steps. It’s like in our brain, in order for us to move on to the solution part of the situation, we first need to feel heard. Once we feel heard then we can feel connected and we’re building trust and rapport with the other person. Once we have created that connection, I think then it’s okay to go ahead and plant that seed of happiness. Say for example, you and I are best friends and we’re having coffee on a Sunday morning. I’m saying to you, “I can’t believe this. I screwed up on my taxes again. I’m so stupid. How could I make this mistake? I don’t know what I’m going to do,” In my own head, I’m sitting there and I’m beating myself up. I’m being that psycho inner self that’s like, “You’re so stupid. You’re worthless.” But you as my friend, you’re going to be want me to feel better. In order to make me feel better, the first thing you’re probably going to do is be like, “Oh my gosh. I totally understand how you feel.” Once I can feel that connection with you then it’s okay to move on to the better feeling spot, which is that, “I think that it’s going to be okay and here’s something you can do to make this situation better like, call this person,” or whatever. This is kind of a silly example, but I think that once we get tapped into communicating consciously with our own inner self, then creating those outer relationships become more meaningful. Because we can let go of the more superficial relationships in our life. We have certain relationships that those people judge us just as much as we judge ourselves.

‏‏Yes, we do.

‏‏Sorry, that wasn’t exactly about communication. Communication is really a style. I think that if we think of the overall goal as a means of connection then––authenticity. We’re not being authentic if we’re just telling the person what they want to hear. Also, I was just having this conversation with one of my co-workers because we were talking about maybe an uncomfortable conversation that needs to happen. I said, “Why do you think the conversation hasn’t happened?” She said, “Well, I’m afraid…” I said, “Okay, right there. That is the disempowerment.” Whenever we’re responding to something out of a place of fear, it is disempowerment. Anything you do out of that place of disempowerment is going to be very weak. When you are feeling that disempowerment, the thing to do is to step back and have that moment of self-care. Have that like, “Okay, I don’t want to create anything from a place of disempowerment, so I’m going to holdback. I’m going to chill.”

‏‏So smart.

‏‏So smart, yes.

‏‏That’s good advice. What are your three top tips to live in stellar life?

‏‏I think that in order to live a stellar life, you should be always shedding the layers of who you are and uncovering the person who you are meant to be—who you really are. There is a quote from the lost Gospels of Thomas that were discovered in the Dead Sea scrolls. I hope I get this quote correctly, “When you bring forth what is inside you, what is inside you will save you. When you do not bring forth what is inside you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”

‏‏I love it! Wow.

‏‏I know. That Thomas guy, he was a smart one. My tip number one is to always bring forth what is inside you. Tip number two, we’ve been talking about this a lot. Pay attention to your emotions. Your emotions are communicating something strong and important to you. If you want to live a stellar life, pay attention to your emotions—good, bad, euphoria––all of them are equally relevant. Tip number three, is always, always focus on what you want instead of what you don’t want.

‏‏Beautiful tips. Thank you so much for being here. I know that we have something to offer the listeners. But for the people that are listening right now, where can they find you and how can they connect with you?

‏‏If you want to connect with me, probably the best place is in my Facebook group. It’s called Fearless Ambition. Of course, you can find me all over social media whether it’s Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, under the name Mary Shores. The website is like you said, linked, but it’s maryshores.com. I’m very excited about the free gift because we were talking about the ritual earlier and I told you mine is the daily desires diary. The free download is the journal for the daily desires dairy along with a free chapter of my book. I’m very excited for all of you listeners to check that out.

‏‏Wow, that’s a beautiful gift. Thank you so much.

‏‏Yeah, my pleasure.

‏‏Thank you for the gift of you. Thank you for being here.

‏‏I had a great time.

Your Checklist of Actions to Take

✓ Be happy with yourself and all that you are. When you’re filled with positivity inside, everything in your life will be in line with that energy.

✓ Shed your layers and stop pretending to be someone you are not. Life is too short to play someone else’s role.

✓ Discover what true empowerment is by constantly searching for what makes you feel fulfilled, revitalized and included.

✓ Carefully select the words that you say to yourself. Make sure they are kind, encouraging and forgiving.

✓ Attend workshops to improve your self-development and to meet people with similar passions and advocacies.

✓ Create a daily routine that helps your subconscious connect with your positive energy. You can use affirmations, yoga, meditation, and more.

✓ Pay attention to your emotions, both good and bad. Learn how to deal with them and find ways to turn them around whenever you’re feeling imbalanced.

✓ Always focus on the things you love rather than focusing on the things you dislike.

✓ Get Mary Shores’ exclusive gift to Stellar Life podcast listeners. Grab the free download to the Daily Desires Diary and a free chapter of her book, Conscious Communications.

✓ Grab a copy of Mary Shores’ book, Conscious Communications: Your Step-by-Step Guide to Harnessing the Power of Your Words to Change Your Mind, Your Choices, and Your Life.

Links and Resources:

About Mary Shores

Mary Shores is the author of Conscious Communications: A Step-by-Step Guide to Harnessing the Power of Your Words to Change Your Mind, Your Choices, and Your Life. Recognized as a leader of innovative thought, she has spent over a decade teaching businesses and individuals how to identify their goals, create new ways of thinking, and take action to create meaningful results. Mary travels across the nation giving lectures and teaching courses, and has been featured on local and national radio and television shows, podcasts, and blogs.