Enthusiastically Spiritual

Embracing The Gift of Shift with Ann Papayoti

April 26, 2022 Season 2 Episode 33
Enthusiastically Spiritual
Embracing The Gift of Shift with Ann Papayoti
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Show Notes Transcript

Moving through life has its ups and downs. 

As our souls strive to embrace an enthusiastic life, the reality is that there are loads of times when we aren’t feeling very enthusiastic. 

It is during those challenges that offer us the greatest opportunities to step into deeper healing and shifting ourselves to embrace what my guest today calls The Gift of Shift.

Her name is Ann Papayoti and she has endured some of life’s most brutal blows—her college best friend deliberately stealing her high school boyfriend; the loss of an infant child just shortly after he was thought to be out of danger, a belligerent and abusive husband, a child born with epilepsy and other neurological disorders, a family suicide, being bitten by a poisonous snake that resulted in months of chronic illness before being diagnosed, relinquishing a cherished foster teen whose actions threatened Ann’s family, and much more... 

And despite them all, Ann found the gift hidden within each of these experiences. The gift of choice in how to respond to the challenge. 

Ann is an international life, leadership and relationship coach. She is an International Coach Federation Accredited Professional Certified Coach, and a member of the Association of Integrative Psychology. Dedicated to waking people up to living their best life by helping them untangle from their past, Ann further helps them align with their values and connect to their higher purpose. Ann inspires people by sharing her personal experiences of loss, transition and triumph. Ann is especially known for the personal and compassionate way she guides people to their own insights and growth.
 
Insights to add to your spiritual toolbox from this episode:

1. Making it through life's hard knocks

2. Co-creating with others

3. The Gift of Shift book

4. Having choices in one's life

5. Soul CPR

6. Honoring what you have been through

7. Growing up in the deep South

8. Synchronicities in life

9. Working with energy in the body

10. Your soul's journey

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Enjoy the first chapter of The Soul Quake Survival Guide here!

Click here for info on ReAwaken series free short videos and booklet "You, Your Purpose, and Your Intuition." 

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Hi! I’m Teresa. I have created this podcast to support "unseen" aspects of your life. You can call this the spiritual side. The podcast offers interviews of authors, healers, and thought leaders, for a positive higher spiritual perspective. Including ourselves! Our mission is to stimulate your inner wisdom, meaning, and enthusiasm for your unique journey.

My husband Tom and I are also certified Spiritual Educators, and Consultants, who help make spirituality practical. We work spiritual awareness and sensitivity in all areas of our life for positive living. Through TNT ( Teresa n' Tom :) SpiritWorks, we can help you tap into your own Inner Guidance system on a daily basis, create a healthy balance between Thought and Feeling, and discover a stronger connection between you and your personal Spirit Guides through your Inner and Outer communication system: your Four Spiritual Gifts.

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ups and downs, as our souls strive to embrace an enthusiastic life. The reality is that there are loads of times we aren't feeling very enthusiastic. It is during those challenges that offer us the greatest opportunities to step into deeper healing and shifting ourselves to embrace what my guest today calls the gift of shift. Her name is Ann Papayoti and she has endured some of life's most brutal blows. Her college best friend deliberately stealing her high school boyfriend, the loss of an infant child just shortly after he was thought to be out of danger, a belligerent and abusive husband, a child born with epilepsy and other neurological disorders, a family suicide, being bitten by a poisonous snake that resulted in months of chronic illness before being diagnosed, relinquishing a child a cherished foster teen whose actions threatened and family and much more and despite them all, and found the gift hidden within each of these experiences, the gift of choice in how to respond to the challenge and is an international life leadership and relationship coach. She is an International Coach Federation accredited, professional certified coach and a member of the association of integrative psychology dedicated to waking people up to living their best life by helping them untangle from their past and further helps them align with their values and connect to their higher purpose and inspires people by sharing her personal experiences of loss transition and triumph and is especially known for the personal and compassionate way she guides people to their own insights and growth. I am honored to have her here today to share with us ways to see the gift hidden within each challenge that life offers. Welcome Ann. Thank you Teresa. I am just delighted to be here with you today and I'm I think I'm exceptionally enthusiastic today. I'm so glad about that. You know I find that people show up at the right time and just the other day I was digging in deep with some healing work around you know I live in an enthusiastic life but there are times when I'm not enthusiastic and having to grab a hold of you know how to move through that how to work and get out of that and a lot of it is around the challenges that we all go through. Because you have been through some challenges that is for sure. Yes, I think we all do we all have and I just have a specific laundry list that seems to always get longer but I think that's probably true for most of us. Yeah, I do agree and it's really finding those the inspiration and I feel like you know walking through our talk like you have to kind of go through things to then be able to support and to be able to work with people on a whole different level because you've been through a lot of things. So I'd love to talk about your book the Gift of Shift Discover the Key Within to Unlock Your Best Life, which was written with fellow life coach Tracy McDonald, so you did it as a team, is that correct? It is we did we met at a coach training event actually, and just gravitated to one another and became steadfast friends and and recognized we shared some of the same passions and just we're just we're engrossed in this whole power of perspective. And we started collaborating on content for workshops, actually, originally, and we had created one by the title, the gift of shift. And I eventually was just pushing Tracy to write a book. Let's write a book. But that was my dream and not hers. But a few a few years into it. She finally said yes to me. She literally felt like she received that message while she was meditating. And the timing was amazing. We started in January of 2020 pre pandemic and we're still writing as the pandemic began. And, and one of my chapters you know, was was my most difficult chapter because of that. However, we got the book done and I think as you say, timing, divine timing, and the way we meet people and make connections and being willing to be open to opportunities is why we have this book. Beautiful. And I love the beginning of the book where you have the visual of opening the beautifully wrapped box, and inside lies a golden key of choice and that the greatest gift of being a human being is we all have a choice. And I think that's really an area I wanted to talk about because a lot of people don't feel they have a choice and they don't understand how we do have that freedom to you know, go left, go right go straight and so can you share your definition of having choices as a soul and what that means to you? Oh, absolutely. Thank you for asking that question. It begins with first of all awareness that there is choice, but we don't see it when we're in it, when we're in one of those devastating challenges or maybe it's not even devastating but it's just difficult challenges. We don't see the options because we get stuck in what I call a negative energetic way of thinking and therefore feeling and therefore being how we show up in life. But when we are willing to stop and I like to use the word float, because I talked about in the book that my dad taught me to swim in a lake back home in Alabama, but he insisted I learned how to float first, and I had no idea how important that lesson would be throughout my life and to my life's work, but when we stop and we revisit and we reflect and we reconnect to who we are, and that starts to me with breath. Three sets starts with the breath to connect back to our souls purpose and our souls true nature. And when you're floating in water, you know your ears are underwater, you hear yourself breathe, and you can hear your heartbeat, you can find it again. And then you see the whole sky above you so your perspective is really, you know, bright and wide. Then you can start aligning and remembering who you were before the pain or the difficult moment, what is true for you, and to recognize that your soul is on a journey and this is just part of it. But to then recover, reconnect and say where do I want to go now I have options. Like you said left right center. Which way do I want to start swimming? Because I find so many people do what I did, which was find themselves sort of thrashing in the water so to speak, and maybe even juggling while treading water. But then just keep swimming until they're worn out. And they start sinking into some darkness and then you can't find up down which way to go. Then when you come back up as I did I serve this. But I just started swimming again. I didn't take the time to reflect and understand how I got to where I was. What is the pain and emotion honor and validate it so that I could release it and I think the lessons always in letting go so that I can then choose a path forward. I just swam to the first boat felt like a rescue. And that set me up for a series of more difficult and devastating times. Until I really got to that point where I said I've lost myself I've lost my soul in this journey. Let me revive it. Let me recover it. In fact, I call it soul CPR. Oh, I love that soul CPR. Yeah, that's what I learned. I had to do for myself, and that it's all about connecting the dots, understanding how you got to where you're going. The PII is pinpointing that pain. So you can release it, honor it, you may have to grieve it there may still be some time involved in this part and then recover that your truth and your true nature so you can show up next in life with that new perspective. And when Tracy and I speak about the gift of shift, the shift is that perspective change, finding that option, a different way to think about it. So you come out of that powerless place and into a powerful place, a way of thinking and feeling and therefore being and it's sometimes doesn't have to be a big shift. You don't have to suddenly be forgiving people or excusing circumstances or denying that they ever happened. It's really about honoring it. And then taking that responsibility to find that new perspective that you have to be able to look up from the darkness to see the light and then follow it. I think it's important part about you know, honoring where you've been and what you've been through and I know that for myself, like you mentioned that puzzle pieces I've often it wasn't until I was going through an event I look back and go wow, there were signs or the intuition was there and and I really was able to put more together but honoring that the journey and also where as a soul we've been because I noticed I mean for myself as well as other people were so hard on ourselves it's like there's not sometimes it's that love and that you know compassion for ourselves and the things we've been through because even reading you know through your bio and your The Beginning Center things you've been through I mean those are some big Those are some big GM components of life challenges. There's no question. Yes, absolutely. And when I when we talk about looking back and to honor it to understand it, I talked about it's like connecting the dots on a child's menu in a restaurant, you know, to get the little picture. It's often not what you expected. And I think sometimes we get caught in that life's not unfolding as I expected it, but when we kind of release, you know, experienced and release an embrace and look for that meaning and purpose will be connected to their soul and that intuition that you're mentioning. I was so out of touch with that for so long. I didn't trust myself. Why? Because like you said, I devalued myself. So why would I trust myself even when my that instinct and that intuition and that gut was telling me this is the wrong relationship? This there's it's time to get out now. It's all these things. I said, Oh, but why trust me? I'm the one who said yes to this and I'm though so that's that devaluing and that self deprecating and ultimately for me, I can truly what I call self betrayal. I really betrayed myself. The part of it trace I think is like I I grew up in Alabama in the Bible Belt. And religion was a big part of my upbringing. My mom was the church pianist and organist. I was there turning the pages and I'm waver there most every Sunday, especially when she was in that role that I started hiding from God. And I used the religion context that I grew up with the fundamental interpretation I had of it, to keep me down because I felt ashamed. Therefore, I judged myself unworthy and the more that I hid from that the less I could connect to my true nature, to my higher consciousness, to my intuition and trust anything I just hid. Kind of like, you know, even behind a fig leaf for a while but you don't hiding in plain sight. And I kept kept going forward. I kept living my life, but I was had the self betrayal habits I had developed and they were you know, over eating over drinking, underachieving, underperforming and that was not who I was. But it took me reconnecting and doing that soul CPR work that I mentioned, to really come out from hiding and to reconnect with the true nature that I believe God has, as well as my true nature. So that I could align that connected higher power, higher consciousness and guidance and start making clear decisions. Once you want you to this. It's amazing. The Oh being open, what you'll receive and the discernment and the guidance that will come streaming in for you like at Netflix, Harry, if you'll allow it, and then you can look back and you understand, okay, this is why that I went through that it got me to here, and this is where I'm at now. And this is what I'm gonna do with that, to turn some kind of meaning and purpose into it that is aligned with my true nature. And sometimes those that intuition or insights can be so subtle, and then sometimes it can be so profound like hitting like being hit with a block like oh, my gosh, why didn't I see that? Because I too have missed cues. I mean, like when guys one time was telling me, you know, tell my daughter to go put on a helmet before she had an accident. It was running in my head and and I, I just couldn't grab a hold of it because I was doing all kinds of other things. So it's those types of awakenings. Really, when I might look back at and go, Oh, my gosh, I mean, she may still have had an accident, but it may not have been as traumatic or whatever. And I know throughout your book, you do talk about synchronicities, and intuition so and how it showed up kind of through different stories. Would you care to share a story that's in your book about it? Oh, absolutely. Tracy opens our book with the gift of insync, not the band. And the whole idea and why we wanted to start with this was to get people to pay attention to how they think about life and to notice life. Do you sort of coincidence, or is that a synchronicity? And when you start understanding your thoughts about that, and you start opening your mindset about it, perhaps you can start then connecting the dots faster and more clearer and get that picture. So you understand where to go from here. And what Tracy and I both believe, are that that there are no mistakes and we believe that there are no coincidences. We truly believe that there are synchronicities and just you Teresa having that experience and having that, you know that streaming that thought to go have your daughter put on a helmet. We get these messages all the time. It might be you know, hearing that thought it might be seeing something it might be thinking of someone and feeling like you need to reach out to them. All of these things, if we recognize them if we notice life, and I think that's what we all get busy. Like you said, you're busy when this message came in to you and you just didn't follow up on it. But if we really get in touch and pay attention, I tell people it doesn't always have to be big. It could be you know what, I should take St. Charles today to work instead of St. John. But you don't do it yet. And you take st John you get stuck in traffic. And then you find out you know from someone else the St. Charles Boulevard was clear all the way down to pure form. Where are you saloon and and those kind of little messages and what I encourage people to do is just notice pay attention, keep a little journal even of those thoughts, and then see how they turned out when you did listen versus when you didn't? What were those results but I've those synchronicities and which I believe are little breadcrumbs for us to in life to you know, to follow into to pick up on and to learn to interpret. And Teresa I took a class I remember called getting in touch with your intuition. And when I got to the class, the teacher said I was going to name this getting in touch with your psychic abilities, but the the host organization wouldn't allow me to call it that. And I thought oh, wow. But I that's when I learned and like you I had no idea. Some of the messages I was receiving at one time I thought I was having symptoms of a female heart attack, because my left hand would just get so much energy in it that was electrical and numbing sometimes and even painful. Turned out when I started paying attention and noticing. It was always when I was connecting to someone or thinking in terms of spirit. And I learned that it was actually assurances and all of these things and and I learned how to use that now. For for good for the higher good for myself and for my clients. I will even do maybe spirit guide card readings because my hand will pick up on the card that is the message for them today if I've grounded myself previously. So we all have this ability, when we can be open but when we're in it, like we said when I was in some of these very difficult times in my life when my son died, I wasn't picking up on intuition. I was I was in pain. I was in darkness. I was in the grief cycle that I described like the the spin cycle no washing machine is slung to this side swung to the other speed up slow down. You think it's you're coming out of it the door opens and but you're stuck like a sock in the casket. Somebody shuts it and it starts back over. We have to cooperate with time. When I say that, you know people say you know does time help. Yes time helps if you cooperate with it. And that's what I've learned to do with grieving each of my significant losses in life and that honoring that crave. But knowing and this is having that like think that spiritual connection. I think there's a spiritual deficit right now in the world but for those who are awakening and connecting, having that is a knowing that you will get through this, not over it through it, and there will be something good come from it. And I was in an awakening at this time when my son passed. I was still in an abusive marriage that I was starting to believe myself more than I believed him. I was starting to try to overcome the change that I felt like my religious background had me in, in my thoughts about I'm supposed to stay for better or worse. This is what I got. I started literally, as I felt open I would hear things I heard I remember hearing the song. God is watching us just playing in my head. I was like okay, and it was so comforting and peaceful. And it was while I was observing another couple and the gentleman I won't call him and gentlemen, the man treating the woman in the way that I knew I was treated. But seeing it for someone else evoke that compassion that you mentioned is so difficult to extend ourselves sometimes. And then I heard this song that synchronicity coincidence, maybe depending on your belief system for me synchronicity to say yes and you just seemed that wrong. It's wrong for you to and I'm with you. And that's how I felt spirit was supporting me as I started moving forward and out of the marriage after the death of my son, finding meaning and purpose and moving on into unlocking my life to live fully. So was there a specific event or a timeframe that when you really got what your intuition was was trying to convey to you through whatever it means, you know, clairaudient clairsentient however it came through to you it's been both clairaudient clearsentient, it was I this awakening started in my 30s But it wasn't until my early 40s that I truly started understanding it. And Teresa like you I know that you in the work you did you were picking up on energies and you know it affected you. I started realizing that was happening to me because I'd lead support groups for decades for separation divorce. I, you know, had people coming to me I wasn't an official coach yet but people always wanted one on one time and more guidance, and I did not know what to do with that. Energy and I had to learn that for myself. And as I got clearer, more in tune with my intuition and more clear and more open to messaging, the more I understood energy, and that's what I love about the way I coach now. And some of the tools I use, it's about leading your life with your energy rather than being led through your life by your energy. And I think once we can understand connect with our energy, we can recognize that our our thoughts are so powerful our thoughts are so powerful, and they're energetic, but like all energy, they can be changed. They can't be destroyed, as we learned from Einstein, but they can be changed. So knowing that and recognizing that and saying okay, what am I thinking that's creating this pain for me emotionally that's now manifesting in my body and showing up in these other ways. And then affecting how I literally show up in life for myself into others. Let me go back and shift this energy. What do I need to do with this thought, and sometimes it's harder to intercept the thought than it is to recognize the pain but wherever we notice it, start there, work backwards, whatever we need to do, and that's why some people start with their behaviors or their habits. They'll try to start changing that what they actually do, like you know, make the bed to make yourself feel like you've achieved something then go back and tell yourself, so go backwards to that thought, you know, do the thing to create the feeling to change the thought. So whatever way works for someone based on what they're going through. It's so powerful and it's your energy so it's in us, but that it's also up to us. And I think it's all about taking responsibility and saying I will no longer be victimized by this or in conflict with it. I will create meaning and purpose from it. I will find love instead of fear about this situation, whatever it is. Well, look I'm filled with chills. He said all that I'm dealing with that and I'm dealing with that I know you are Oh my goodness. And um things that are coming in my mind when you're talking is that I believe that's why we're going through all these things that we're going to currently is for people to really wake up in whatever realm that is for each person because I do believe that everyone's on there's different levels of consciousness. Here. And what one person is going through another person's not and it's okay, we're all you know, we're all going no one's in a in really danger. We're all souls. We're all here just to explore and to move through this, this planet Earth and this dimension, but it's figuring out how to do it for what you need. So I guess what I want to say is about the part that each person like you mentioned, how someone might come at things different ways. And I think it's okay, like any way I'm talking to the listeners, of course, any way they want to come at anything. It's okay. It's just taking that first step or finding a beautiful support like your beautiful book, and how it has I love the way it has all these gifts. How each chapter is a gift, the Gift of Bandaid, the Gift of Charlie Brown, the Gift of Grits when I was in Tallahassee, Florida for almost 25 years. So I know about grits and I know about the South because that's basically like Southern Georgia. So yeah, actually come in a little bit and I said that I was there a long time but and that's such a beautiful thing about having you on today and sharing your beautiful book with everyone and is because this is another avenue another way that people can access, understanding about your intuition, understanding how to move through these challenges, whatever it looks like for each person. And so I also want to talk about your coaching I love it's called Sky View coaching. And so tell me a little bit about how you got that name. Um, I could imagine you were you were a floating and you saw the sky view that's brilliant that popped into my mind. That's exactly it. That's my intuition was on. Your intuition was spot on. That's exactly right. And yours previously, prior to my starting the coaching business, my husband and I started Skyview consulting. And again, so I just I said, you know, it's still my thing. It's Skyview. It's looking up, it's having perspective. And it's what I learned from learning how to float before I learned how to swim and wear myself out and in swim without purpose. You weren't when you're swimming, you're just in what's right in front of you right. And that when you're floating you get this vast expansion so it really was it is meaningful for the name based on your intuition. Thought Yeah, I love that I love when that thing when things come together like that because that's first thing I thought about when you're mentioning floating. I'm like, I bet that's where her coaching came from. That's it. That's it. That is awesome. So talk I'd like you to talk a little bit about the book and about how each chapter cuz I know you've got some different things in the chapters that people can help work with for where that where they're at. Wonderful. The book is written in a way that it's it's short, personal, sometimes intimate stories. So you know, if you've had a start do read the introduction first because if you experience a certain trauma I want you to be prepared to hear a story related to that, but they're not all about trauma, by any means. Tracy and I take you through a journey alternating sharing these personal stories, short stories, so they're easy to read, as far as time and investment in that way. And the goal of the book is to allow you to or the reader to see their themselves in the story in the theme of the story, the theme. So while your stories individually will be different than mine and Tracey's we've all experienced betrayal on some level, we've all had to find courage to do something that we knew we needed to do. We've all held on to hope about something at some point. We've all had to deal with our inner critic voice or choosing forgiveness or learning to be true to ourselves. So those are some of the common things in the book. And each story then is followed by five Coaching Questions for the reader to now float to self reflect on that theme in their life and to recognize how they have gotten through that thing. What was it about them? What was the character trait? What is the strength that they could maybe say I could use that now for this other challenge? I did that because we forget our successes. Teresa, we focus on what's not right for ourselves and if, if they're still stuck in the story, or the pain or emotion of a certain story that will also be revealed as they answer these questions and take that floatation time to reflect and then there's space for them to write their own story after just like tracing I did about taking this and going from you know that powerless place to a powerful place by choosing that golden key of choice and shifting the perspective the gift is in the shift when you find a new perspective. There's peace, there's clarity, there's purpose, there's guidance, and there's ease and the next thing that crosses your path. When you can stay aligned. You're like okay, when reconnect to that breath and that heartbeat and my soul and let unlike me, I can face the next thing because there's always a next thing you know, that's what I keep telling people it's like until my dying breath was like my last dying breath. I mean, I'm going to be experiencing all that life has to offer the ups and downs and in betweens and and it's just finding the support that I need and that resonates with me on each way and each you know path and that's why these, your book is so beautiful and so really timely at a beautiful time and space where people need, you know, this type of support for worth what they're going through and I just really like the way that you have all kinds of different aspects and then stories. So like you said, people can tap into this story or that story and really kind of, um, unweave and unwrap kind of where they're at and how to gather that support for themselves. So it's a beautiful, beautiful gift to the world. The Gift of Shifts. Thank you, Teresa. Absolutely. I think I one thing that I've heard from my clients through the years is that they find a lot of self help books to academic over their heads. They get started and then they give up and they never finished it and they're not really sure how to apply it to their life and I think that's one of the things that's so powerful about sharing personal stories and thank you for the work that you do and bringing on the guests that you feature because I think often we hear our truth in someone else's story. And then we're inspired to share our own and that's really the basis of that whole me to movement right when people share so there's so much power here and collective. I think healing when we can identify with people and then turn around so I tell me I'm like the flashlight on their path right so and the highlighter in the self help books for them. And so that's what we do and every one everyone as you heal from something, you will be in a situation to help somebody else. And if you haven't found the purpose yet, you will when that moment in time comes and it will come assure you that and you will continue to help yourself even in a more greater, expansive way. When you serve others. I know that you have a thing where you said you're not a spiritual scholar, but you've just had amazing awakening experience that led to your own personal awakening and and I really resonate with that too. And because I will one thing I didn't go to college I went into the military went into massage therapy school later in life. I was a mom for years and years. But I had all these experiences and and I agree with you also with there's so much spirituality and spiritual books out there that are very intellectual. So to find a book like yours, that's really I feel from the heart and just sharing what you've been through and what Tracy has been through and having that I mean I got chills I'm saying this just that that love vibration of you know, hey, this might support you on your journey if you choose to, to you know, to access it and, and I love that and I love that I love No I'm short. I'm very compact. I'm not a big like, you know, hey, let me have a 5050 pages of one chapter. I'm like, Ah, how about, you know, mini morsels. So I love that aspect of your book also thank you so much. And that is really it really is from the heart. I thank you for picking up on that. And Tracy and I just simply wanted to have a way to reach more people in a faster way than we could you know, in our individual coaching practices. And we recognize not everybody's ready you know, to work with someone one on one or to commit to that. But they're if they're ready to do something, and like you said earlier is taking that first step there's an action. It might be starting with something like this book, which offers you a guided journal, because a lot of people journaling is very popular and I love it as a tool as I mentioned earlier, you know, journaling, your intuitive hits, so you can start figuring that out for yourself. But some people struggle with that. So having these questions to prompt you to reflect is is I found invaluable for many readers as well. Well, and it has been such a pleasure having you on today. And I want to make sure that like all my listeners know that in the show notes. I will have how to get a hold of you. I'll have your Sky Coaching, your website. I'll have the link to your beautiful book. And it has been such a pleasure. Thank you so much. Oh, thank you, Teresa. It's mutual. I've really enjoyed being with you. I was looking forward to today in our conversation. So thank you for that.