Adventures for Your Soul: 21 Ways to Transform Your Habits and Reach Your Full Potential

PRAISE FOR

Adventures for Your Soul

Shannon offers easy-to-absorb advice to help you become your happiest, most loved, highest-potential self—and best of all she makes it a fun process—my kind of gal.

—Karen Salmansohn, bestselling author of How to Be Happy, Dammit: A Cynic’s Guide to Spiritual Happiness

[A] profound book and a must-read for anyone that prioritizes happiness . . . This is the playbook for making small changes and shifts that will yield you large results in your happiness.

—Kristine Carlson, New York Times bestselling author of Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff for Women and Moms

Shannon Kaiser is an incredible woman on a mission to help people find peace, happiness and fulfillment in their lives. Her desire to serve others shines through all of her work.

—Gabrielle Bernstein, New York Times bestselling author of May Cause Miracles

"Shannon shares her story of vulnerability and victory and emerges as a radiant example of what is possible with a mental makeover. Adventures for Your Soul gives you an easy-to-follow roadmap to lasting happiness, joy, and inner transformation. People say happiness is an inside job—this is the ultimate how-to manual."

—Amy Leigh Mercree, author of The Spiritual Girl’s Guide to Dating

For many of us, feeling excited and fulfilled on a day-to-day basis can seem impossible. If you are in search of lasting happiness, then let this truly remarkable woman guide you. She reminds us all that life is supposed to be exciting, fun, and fulfilling.

—IDEAL Magazine

She not only believes in the message of happiness, she lives it and breathes it. Every time I talk to Shannon, happiness finds a way in. Pick up this book and breathe in some happiness into your heart and mind.

—Christine Arylo, self-love author of Madly in Love with ME, the Daring Adventure of Becoming Your Own Best Friend

"Shannon shines a fresh light and adds much needed beauty to us all. Her positivity is infectious and Adventures for Your Soul helps readers banish the Big Fat Lies of their Inner Critic and Inner Mean Girl and turn towards the truth of their Inner Wisdom. I highly recommend it for anyone who is ready to experience more happiness and everyday joy."

—Amy Ahlers, bestselling author of Big Fat Lies Women Tell Themselves

"Adventures for Your Soul is a breakthrough guide to help you release negative thought patterns and live a life you are in love with."

—Christine Hassler, author of Expectation Hangover, life coach and speaker

Shannon is a modern thought leader on the rise!

—CaféTruth

Shannon Kaiser is the real deal. Her unique message hits to the core of the human spirit.

—Healing Lifestyles & Spas magazine

Through her candid sharing of personal experiences and depth of understanding, Shannon is able to bring forth universal wisdom and truths in a fresh, lively voice.

—Organic Spa magazine

Shannon knows happiness! She not only shares the steps she took to leave depression behind, but she makes finding lasting happiness joyful. She will help you uncover your self-sabotaging habits so you break free from fear, self doubt, and lack. This guide in your hands is the key to your happy life.

—Linda Joy, publisher of Aspire magazine

Shannon Kaiser, the happiness guru, writes bestselling books and wildly popular blogs about happiness, inspiring people around the world to ditch what doesn’t serve them and follow their paths to true joy and satisfaction.

—MindBodyGreen

I’ve worked in the wellness industry for decades, and I’ve read a lot of great inspirational books. This stands out for its simple, easy-to-implement principles and honest perspective. Shannon’s book is an adventure for your soul, and it will transform the way you see yourself and the world. Get ready to fall in love with your entire life!

—Robyn Lawrence, author of The Wabi-Sabi House: The Japanese Art of Imperfect Beauty

An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

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This book is an original publication of Penguin Random House LLC.

Copyright © 2015 by Shannon Kaiser.

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eBook ISBN: 978-0-698-18322-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kaiser, Shannon.

Adventures for your soul : 21 ways to transform your habits and reach your full potential / Shannon Kaiser.

p. cm.

ISBN 978‐0‐425‐27823‐9

1. Self-realization. 2. Change (Psychology) 3. Conduct of life. I. Title.

BF637.S4K3135 2015

158.1—dc23

2015011927

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Berkley trade paperback edition / August 2015

While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the author nor the publisher is responsible for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Version_1

To the best dad in the world, Mike Kaiser.

You raised me to always follow my heart and stay true to myself.

Thank you for your unconditional love, unyielding support, and wise guidance.

I love you.

Contents

PRAISE FOR ADVENTURES FOR YOUR SOUL

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT

DEDICATION

FOREWORD BY KRISTINE CARLSON

INTRODUCTION

ONE: Press the Reset Button

HABIT HINDERING HAPPINESS:

We settle because we think it’s the best we can get.

JOY ROUTE: Press the reset button of your life.

TWO: Break Up with Your Issues

HABIT HINDERING HAPPINESS:

We stay victims to the harassment of our life.

JOY ROUTE: Break up with your issues.

THREE: Free Your Feelings

HABIT HINDERING HAPPINESS:

We trust advice from our head, not our heart.

JOY ROUTE: Free your feelings.

FOUR: Play Truth or Dare with Your Inner Child

HABIT HINDERING HAPPINESS:

Our dreams don’t intimidate us.

JOY ROUTE: Play truth or dare with your inner child.

FIVE: Allow Awareness

HABIT HINDERING HAPPINESS:

We get comfortable being uncomfortable.

JOY ROUTE: Allow awareness.

SIX: Me Matters

HABIT HINDERING HAPPINESS:

We think self-love is selfish.

JOY ROUTE: Me matters.

SEVEN: Just Do You

HABIT HINDERING HAPPINESS:

We let comparison kidnap our joy.

JOY ROUTE: Just do you.

EIGHT: Lean into Love

HABIT HINDERING HAPPINESS:

We cling to our choices thinking they are permanent.

JOY ROUTE: Lean into love.

NINE: Study the Blessing in the Lesson

HABIT HINDERING HAPPINESS:

We cheat on our future with our past.

JOY ROUTE: Study the blessing in the lesson.

TEN: Follow Your Joy Route

HABIT HINDERING HAPPINESS:

We fixate on our flaws.

JOY ROUTE: Follow your joy route.

ELEVEN: Nourish the Nudge

HABIT HINDERING HAPPINESS:

Anxiety creeps in and destroys our inspiration.

JOY ROUTE: Nourish the nudge.

TWELVE: Fear Detox

HABIT HINDERING HAPPINESS:

We allow our fears to decide our fate.

JOY ROUTE: Fear detox.

THIRTEEN: Go on an Abundance Adventure

HABIT HINDERING HAPPINESS:

We should all over ourselves.

JOY ROUTE: Go on an abundance adventure.

FOURTEEN: Rock the Reflection

HABIT HINDERING HAPPINESS:

We take it personally.

JOY ROUTE: Rock the reflection.

FIFTEEN: Find Your Purpose and Passion

HABIT HINDERING HAPPINESS:

We feel like something is missing.

JOY ROUTE: Find your purpose and passion.

SIXTEEN: Be a Goal Digger

HABIT HINDERING HAPPINESS:

We focus on what we don’t want.

JOY ROUTE: Be a goal digger.

SEVENTEEN: Illustrate Your Illusion

HABIT HINDERING HAPPINESS:

We resist change.

JOY ROUTE: Illustrate your illusion.

EIGHTEEN: Sweet Surrender

HABIT HINDERING HAPPINESS:

Destination disaster, we think our life is off track.

JOY ROUTE: Sweet surrender.

NINETEEN: Laser Your Inner Light

HABIT HINDERING HAPPINESS:

We think unsupportive people don’t care about our goals.

JOY ROUTE: Laser your inner light.

TWENTY: Let Go

HABIT HINDERING HAPPINESS:

We are addicted to stress.

JOY ROUTE: Let go.

TWENTY-ONE: Play with the World

HABIT HINDERING HAPPINESS:

We think happiness is outside ourselves.

JOY ROUTE: Play with the world.

THE END

AFTERWORD

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Foreword

by Kristine Carlson

Have you ever felt like you were just simply going to combust from the internal pressure that’s been building inside you for a long time as you fill with anxiety and fear of not being able to have what you most deeply desire? Maybe you don’t even know what you desire. Maybe you are so caught up in your head you can’t even hear your heart. Well, no worries, there’s more than hope for you here. Adventures for Your Soul is the book that will be your road map for change.

Scrolling through the Table of Contents of Adventures for Your Soul, I found myself smiling because Shannon Kaiser nailed it! You are about to embark on the adventure of your life! Shannon is one of the happiest people I know, and she will be guiding you on this journey, showing you a lighted path that will change your life.

One important thing to consider is this: We are thinking creatures, and our thinking is as automated as the breaths we take. We do it thousands of times all day long—and it’s just about as invisible to us as our breathing unless we wake up and become conscious and aware of our thinking. Shannon gives you the tools you need to become aware of mental tapes that play over and over in your head and offers a solution by providing a mental makeover to help you change your habits and put you firmly on the road to happiness.

Be aware that happiness is not a pursuit, although it’s tempting to think so. It appears that all of our gratification in life comes from our accolades, the way we look, and all the stuff we acquire. But no, happiness is none of these things in and of themselves. Happiness is the journey. And Shannon provides a joy route that changes the mental dynamics holding you back—not from achieving all these things but actually from receiving the JOY when you do achieve. With minds-run-wild, we are subject to being slave to habitual ways of thinking that become unconscious—meaning you might as well be sleepwalking through your life. The only way to be free of the shackles of limitation in this dreamlike state is to liberate repetitive thought patterns that undeniably self-sabotage and suffocate dreams. Muddled by too much thinking, we can easily lose a sense of the natural communication that happens between our hearts and our heads when our minds are clear. Adventures for Your Soul enables us to reopen that pathway and find true happiness.

I once knew a college student named Amy who was very negative and played the victim at every turn. From the outside looking in, Amy had everything. She was smart, attractive, and likable. She had a good family, and she was responsible and caring. What she lacked is the awareness that 100 percent of her anxiety and unhappiness came from inside her mind as she constantly looked for what was wrong with her life instead of focusing on the good stuff happening. Setting too high of expectations for herself and others, she lived with the resentment that follows when all things fall short of those expectations. She sometimes acted out due to the depression that followed, often pushing away the people who cared for her most. She didn’t know that all of this was coming from her lack of awareness of some simple principles to happiness—the primary one being that thought precedes feelings and the emotional reactions we have to what’s going on in our lives.

THERE ARE THREE THINGS YOU WILL LEARN FROM ADVENTURES FOR YOUR SOUL:

1. You don’t have to be stuck in your fears and anxiety any longer.

2. You can recognize and reverse the habits that hinder your ability to hear the language of your heart.

3. The route you can take into your own mind to get back on the journey of joy can be a fun adventure!

Change happens from the inside out, and while many people say it, what Shannon is really pointing to is this: If you want your golden ticket onto the happiness train, you had better first understand the train of thought that you engage with may actually be taking you in the opposite direction of where you really want to go. And, well, that’s like being on a train without a conductor.

What I love so much about this book is the way Shannon shows that self-awareness is the key to success in all areas of your life, whether it be your personal relationships, your career, or your optimal physical health. Shannon’s inquiry of body health and its relationship to our happiness is critical to shape-shifting into the person you were born to be versus the unconscious being that is driven by invisible habits without an internal compass directing the way. Adventures for Your Soul will help you develop your internal compass. It points to the value of aligning mind, body, and heart to be the receiver of happiness that comes through having a joy-filled mind-set that expands our heart’s deepest desire, which is to live the best life we can with maximum fulfillment.

This is precisely why Adventures for Your Soul is such a profound book and a must-read for anyone who prioritizes happiness as the reason why we do all things in life for others and ourselves. This is the playbook for making small changes and shifts that will yield you large results. The principles in this book will help light the path and teach you the tools for a mental makeover that will turn your scary roller-coaster ride into an adventure and joyride as you find your way back to your natural state of being—happy.

Treasure the gifts of life and love,

KRISTINE CARLSON

coauthor of the Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff wisdom book series

Introduction

Today, I consider myself an extremely happy person, but it hasn’t always been that way. The truth is that I’ve made HUGE strides to be where I am today. I had to dig deep inside myself to access authentic joy, the kind that cannot be manufactured by false promises and one-night-stand mantras spit out by pop psychologists. I used to cry myself to sleep every night. I walked around the cold Chicago city feeling lifeless, numb, and bored with life. At night the tears would always creep aggressively back in and rock me to sleep. I would obsess over my day, and feel tremendous guilt and anxiety tied to my eating disorders, drug addictions, poor choices in men, and staying in a job I hated. These bad feelings would just push me back to my bad behaviors. I would do whatever I could to avoid the sinking feeling that I hated my life and myself, so I tried to numb myself with food, drugs, codependent relationships, etc. It was a vicious cycle.

Realizing something was wrong, I went to my doctor. She diagnosed me with clinical depression and wrote me a prescription. As I opened the door to the pharmacy, an invisible wall literally pushed me back. It was as if a force field had sprung up in front of me, preventing me from getting the prescription filled. As I looked at the scribbled piece of paper, I had an awakening. Although I knew depression is a real, serious mood disorder that requires treatment, and that for many, antidepressant drugs are necessary, my inner voice said, This is not you; you don’t need drugs to feel better. Just follow your heart. I’m not quite sure where that conviction came from. Although I believe that we all have that inner knowing of who we are and what we need, that voice had been muffled so long, drowned out with the thoughts of self-hatred that tormented me. That moment was the turning point of my life. As I ripped up the prescription, I made a promise to myself to always follow my heart and to stop making excuses for being unhappy. I realized, in that moment, that I couldn’t control the world around me but I could learn how to control my own role in my life. I could continue to allow the world to happen to me, or I could happen to the world, meaning I could make a difference by becoming healthy and happy. If I could turn my pain into purpose, then perhaps this depression and these dark days could be worth it. I had a choice: I could continue to go down a path that hurt my soul, or I could clean up my life, my thoughts, and my situations. I set out on a mission to heal myself. My thought was that if one less person in the world was hurting, then that is making a difference and helping the world. So I chose to take responsibility for me. No one else, just me. And the most glorious thing happened; I became happy. I found myself. I fell in love with life.

I will be honest: It wasn’t a miraculous healing or anything that happened overnight, but rather a consistent focus on showing up and taking responsibly for myself and my own life.

Over time things really fell into place. I used the tools I share in this book to help me reach a peaceful state. Finding hope and inner peace and reaching happiness is a process. But when we show up for the process, we are doing our part and that is enough. Just showing up is the largest part of the battle. And I continued to show up for myself by taking small steps to happiness. I adopted a dog (who is still my adventure buddy), who brought me immense joy through fleeting moments of pain. I moved back to the city I grew up in, Portland, Oregon, to be closer to my family; I left my job in advertising to find work that was more fulfilling, which led me to everything I do today. It was lots of small steps that led to the large transformation in my life.

Until that point of my life, fear had been controlling my every action. Fears like I am not worthy of love, I don’t matter, I don’t make a difference, kept me playing safe. These fears were subconscious but ruling my choices in life. For example, by believing I was not worthy of love, I picked emotionally troubled men, who were controlling or drug addicts. They too supported my belief that I didn’t matter. But once I saw how fear was running the show, I saw how my life had played out. I was miserable. I thought to myself, Instead of ignoring or running from my fears, what if I dove into them? The depression, drugs, and eating disorders were all masks keeping me from accessing my true self. Once I acknowledged my fears directly, I could see they were not real and I was able to change things. I immediately broke off my bad romance. I took the steps necessary to free me from addictions and my eating disorders. I joined support groups and twelve-step meetings and found teachers, books, and spiritual guidance to help heal these areas of my life. The right teachers and books came to me, and I was able to free myself from the troubling past. Again, it wasn’t an overnight fix. I say this because a lot of the time when we get onto a self-development path, we expect instant results. And when we don’t see changes, we get angry, feel guilty, or get mad at ourselves. In my own journey, I chose to take the expectations out of my healing and instead turned to trusting that each action I took would indeed help me feel happier and healthier. By being in the journey of my own life I was able to go deeper into the healing and allow the process to unfold. This meant I released all self-inflected guilt or stress, which in turn allowed me to heal faster and make smarter choices for myself.

I left my fancy corporate job in advertising to move back to the West Coast to be closer to my family. Even though I had quit my job and my romance and separated myself from the distractions of addiction and eating disorders, the journey to wellness had only just begun.

I started to trust the guidance within myself. When I first left corporate, I didn’t know what I wanted to do, I just knew what I was doing was not working. I began to focus on what I wanted instead of what I didn’t want. Even though I didn’t know what I wanted in the grand scheme of my life, I knew that I wanted to be happy in the moment. So I focused on things, activities, and people that made me happy. I opened myself to life’s opportunities and I started to sense a shift in my perspective. I began to see all things in a new light. There was richness to my life that I was previously blocked from experiencing because of my fear and depression. Small, simple things, like watching the leaves on tress blow in the wind, listening to birds sing, or turning my face to the sun to see the magnificent clouds all became incredibly joyful. I was alive. I began to celebrate the simple pleasures in life and be thankful for my own existence. I started to hear my heart again.

Each adventure I took became a spiritual awakening and a metaphor of my own existence. For example, as I pulled out my magic list (bucket list) I started to check off things like skydiving, and that became a metaphor for working through fear to reach freedom. As I started to live my life more consciously, I began to write. When I wrote about my experiences, something happened to me. I was overwhelmed with love, joy, and true peace. Writing became my sanctuary. I started to document my healing journey in articles for the local newspaper and on my blog. I wrote about overcoming fear in relation to my adventures playing with the world, like bungee jumping or skydiving. As I shared stories, readers reached out to me to say how much they enjoyed my stories. My heart felt incredibly fulfilled with each new message and story I wrote. I sent one story to Chicken Soup for the Soul on a whim. Not thinking much about my submission several months later, I received an acceptance letter, which read, "Congratulations. You’ve been selected as a feature author for our upcoming book, Chicken Soup for the Soul: Think Positive." I fell to the floor with excitement, and for the first time in several years, tears of happiness came flooding through. I discovered I am a writer. My greatest joy is sharing my experiences with others. Being a writer was a dream tucked in my heart since I was a little girl. I used to go outside on recess and while other kids were running around and swinging on the swing set, I was sitting in the grass with my journal, writing poetry about animals and the beautiful earth. After the fear and all the layers of pain subsided, I could return to my true self, the younger me that was always there, but just needed to be re-realized.

I began to understand that there were dreams and goals that sat quietly inside my heart, but I had been too distracted to hear them or too afraid to acknowledge and pursue them. When I was depressed, these secret dreams lay dormant and happiness evaded me. As I began to awaken to my heart’s true desires and dared to pursue them, a miraculous thing happened: I felt happier and my life felt fuller. But it wasn’t the achievement of these goals and dreams that led to these feelings; it was simply the journey of joy toward them. What was keeping me from pursuing my dreams, what was keeping me from moving forward in my life, what was keeping me from happiness, were my own negative thoughts. It was only when I dared to push past these thoughts and banish these beliefs that I was able to move forward on the road to fulfillment.

At our core, all of us want the same thing—to be happy and to live a truly wonderful life—though how we meet this need differs from person to person. I started to see that we could all be happier if we knew what was keeping us from happiness. Limiting beliefs and fear can stop us from moving forward in life. In many cases, we have daily habits that have become patterns which hinder our happiness. Once we know our patterns, we can break up with them if we are willing. We can understand and overcome our addiction to the suffering our self-sabotaging habits have created. These were my aha moments, and they came to me through following my joy route. The joy route is an adventure for your soul and the path to freedom, an emotional journey that we take to explore our heart’s deepest desires.

Through the process of discovering my true self, I started to live my dream life. I stepped away from my life in advertising and became a travel writer, life coach, teacher, speaker, and an author. Once I tapped into the secret of the joy route, settling became impossible. My standards were raised and my dreams were being actualized.

I was on a travel writing assignment and lecturing to a group in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, when it hit me that my next opportunity was to write about and share the process I went through to heal myself from such a dark place. Thus Adventures for Your Soul was born. This method is the guide I used to teach others and what I had used myself to leave a life of sadness, regret, depression, and fear behind, that had allowed me to live my dreams and travel the world sharing my message. I had already started using my life as an example to my coaching clients and