“Chaos is a breakdown, but after the breakdown, there is a renewal.” - Susan Burrell
As humans, we are designed with the ability to determine and create what we want in life. But this power is sometimes taken away, not by others, but by ourselves. This week, Shirley and Susan Burell share how you can take power over yourself and regain control of your life. They discuss what empowerment really is and how appreciating where you are in life and tapping into it, can help you live an empowered life. Listen in as these two powerful women share their secrets to empowerment!
Highlights:
02:20 Beautiful Chaos
09:11 Mind Mapping
16:21 Live An Empowered Life
23:02 Guided Meditation
30:11 How to be Empowered
35:45 Which to Let Go
Resources:
Tweets:
Are you getting tired of all the chaos in our world? Do you feel like your power is slowly burning out? Tune in as @SfbaldwinOwens and Susan Burrell shares how to live an empowered life!
getwhatyouwant#empowerment#beautifulchaos#mindmapping#meditation#acceptance
Quotes:
02:51 “Being empowered is a place of a deep spiritual connection within… taking action as you move in your life.” - Susan Burrell
08:24 “Chaos is a breakdown, but after the breakdown, there is a renewal.” - Susan Burrell
13:48 “Normal isn't actually real...our new normal will never be the same.” - Shirley Owens
26:17 “Meditation can be however you want… It's about connecting within your heart to that inner wisdom, inner love that is always there.” - Susan Burrell
30:37 “Empowerment is just being aligned and one with our soul.” - Shirley Owens
33:23“Wisdom resides in the heart.” - Susan Burrell
Connect With Susan:
Susan Burrell is the author of Live An Empowered Life! A 30-Day Journey Book. She has a thought-provoking podcast called Empowering Chats with Susan Burrell that can be found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, and other popular platforms. Her guided meditations are accessible through the Insight Timer app. Susan is a feisty Scorpio and was even born with the red hair to back it up, who has navigated life by learning how to listen within to the divine urge that keeps pointing her in the direction of life's purpose even when she can't see the road. She is an Intuitive Healer and a Spiritual Guide in the crossroads of life. With a Masters Degree in Consciousness, Susan has been counseling and supporting people in transforming from the inside out for over 25 years. Her methods are proven because she has lived this journey to empowerment.
Watch it Live!
Transcriptions
Shirley Owens: My guest today is Susan Burrell. Susan is the author of Live An Empowered Life! A 30-Day Journey Book. She has a thought provoking podcast called Empowering Chats with Susan Burrell that can be found on Apple podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio and other popular platforms. Her guided meditations are accessible through the Insight Timer app. Susan is a feisty Scorpio, was even born with the red hair to back it up who has navigated life by learning how to listen within to the divine urge that keeps pointing her in the direction of life's purpose even when she can't see the road. She is an intuitive healer, a spiritual guide in the crossroads of life. With a Masters Degree in Consciousness, Susan, has been counseling and supporting people in transforming from the inside out for over 25 years. Her methods are proven because she has lived this journey to empowerment.
Welcome Susan.
Susan Burrell: Thanks for having me.
Shirley Owens: I am so excited for you to be here today.
Susan Burrell: I'm interested to hear what our conversation is actually going to end up being.
Shirley Owens: I never planned this because I feel like a lot of times, when I first started, I used to have conversations with people before I did my podcasts, and I learned so many cool things about them and then realized that I lost the offer the second time that we talked. So I'm excited. I didn't read anything about you. I know a little bit about you, but I didn't really get in deep because I really wanted to learn with you, with my guests, with you. So anyway, I would love it for you to just tell me a little bit about yourself. I know that your podcast is, what is it?
Susan Burrell: My podcast is Empowering Chats with Susan Burrell.
Shirley Owens: That's exciting.
Susan Burrell: It's all about empowerment for me. I had a broadcast radio show for a few years called Living Your Inspired Life. And I went into a divorce and had to reconfigure myself from the inside out and realize what I wanted was to feel empowered. Not so much inspired, but I wanted to feel empowered. And to me, being empowered is a place of a deep spiritual connection within, but it's also a place of action. Taking action as you move in your life.
“Being empowered is a place of a deep spiritual connection within… taking action as you move in your life.” - Susan Burrell
Shirley Owens: I love that. And I feel empowerment's a huge word right now. And a lot of people use it and we all want to feel empowered. We all want to know what the word empowerment means. And you just explained what it means to you. And to me, I feel the same. I feel that there's like the sense of happiness and euphoria that comes with that, and a feeling that you can just walk through and do anything that you want. And I think empowerment for people who have been through a ton of stuff is just being able to know that you got through it and came out to the other side. And so speaking to that a little bit, there are so many people out there, especially right now, people have lost their jobs, they have fear, they've lost family members, there's just so much in the media. I just feel like we're just in the midst of so much chaos and it would be awesome today if you and I could bring some words of encouragement, inspiring, and empowerment to everyone, men and women.
Susan Burrell: So I'm going to tap on that word chaos first, because when I talk about this often, chaos is a necessary factor when systems are deteriorating and collapsing, it looks and feels like chaos. But in the world of nature and biology, things have to fall apart for new things to emerge. new systems, biological systems. And that's kind of what's happening right now. It's kind of what's happening? What's happening? That's why it feels like chaos. That's why it feels like everything's falling apart. That's why we're also now seeing, not just people losing jobs, and death and dying, and economies maybe collapsing, and governments having, whatever. We're also seeing people coming out into the streets and protesting. Behavioral systems that used to be not necessarily okay, but it's just the way that system was, that paradigm is collapsing, and people are waking up more within not just for the Me Too movement, but also what the Black Lives Matter. All of that is a conscious awakening or eruption. Then to speak about empowerment, like I said at the beginning, empowerment to me means a place where you can take action from, and it's not always comfortable, and it's not a normal thing. Everybody is saying, I can't wait until we can get back to normal. There's no normal. I just had a session before our time together, Shirley, with a client, she's been working with me for a long time. And she says: "You know that I always talk about how I'm happy in my life and I feel empowered, but then you start talking about days where you don't feel good about yourself." I'm like, yeah, because--
“Chaos is a breakdown, but after the breakdown, there is a renewal.” - Susan Burrell
Shirley Owens: I'm human.
Susan Burrell: Yeah. There are still days where you don't feel that power and that's important because we know we have to dig deeper, right?
Shirley Owens: Right. You're explaining this to me, what's coming up for me is a forest fire. I've thought about this in the past too. But I think about, like, it must seem like chaos to us, for the animals, for the trees, everything's just like burning and they're running around. And at the same time, the word harmony comes to me because I feel like everything in nature works together during that chaotic time. And you see, the animals aren't attacking each other, they're not gathering prey, they're running together, they're working together, they're trying to survive together, and I always think of harmony. I just feel like it's such a, like you say, it's like breaking down humanity. When there's a fire, it's a breaking down of the forest. It's a breaking down for these ecosystems and it's needed to rebuild and start from the ground up. And I've personally witnessed that several times in my own life of a complete breakdown of whatever I know and have built it up to be something amazing again, and then have had another breakdown of that, and then, you know, it's like this continuous cycle of almost cocooning and butterflying over and over again. And I think it's beautiful. And it's hard to say that, it might be like a super controversial word to use right now, but I do kind of see it as beautiful chaos.
Susan Burrell: Oh, I love that phrase. Ooh, I got chills. Beautiful chaos. Oh, yeah, yeah. And the sooner we can embrace that beauty within the chaos, because here's the other thing about chaos, it starts destructive, years ago they saw this in space I think, where something starts to shift, and it looks chaotic. And then eventually it comes back in on itself until it begins to present a structure. And a lot of people think that chaos, like you just said, is a breakdown, but what they don't get is after the breakdown, there is a renewal. Just your forest fire analogy, because I live in California, we've gone through three massive Southern California, massive, massive fires over the last four years, and it looks like death and dying. It looks horrible right after. Then come spring, it is green again.
Shirley Owens: All flowers are blooming.
Susan Burrell: Exactly. And whatever trees died, there's new growth. There's always new growth. So out of chaos, out of that seeming breakdown, there is a beauty that happens because it was necessary. The forest fire, the Thomas Fire, I lived right where the Thomas Fire is. And eventually, the firefighters said: "We have to just let this tape run its course through all of these national forests right here." And what's happening now is this renewal of nature is astounding.
Shirley Owens: I think sometimes, of course, we want to stop the fire, we want to intervene, the firemen come in and they're doing their best to save as much, we don't want houses to burn down or people to get injured. But sometimes, it gets to a point where it has to run its course and that's scary because when something's running its course, especially, like a fire, or what's going on right now, we really don't know what the end it's going to be. There's been lots of riots and protests. We haven't had a virus like this, so we don't really know what the end is. And I think that that just breeds so much fear into people. And it's really hard to be empowered and inspired in a time where there's just so much unknown and fear. So speak on that, as you know it, how do people find a way to be lifted and empowered during this time when there's just always that lingering fear in the background.
Susan Burrell: I appreciate you asking that question because I've had to deal with, if I go out to go to the grocery store and I have to put on a FN mask, which I resent and resist, but I see and can feel being intuitive and empathic everybody's fear. And I come home and I have to like do an energy bath to get that off of me because all of a sudden I am being amped up into fear because everybody's afraid. So all I can speak about, Shirley, is my spiritual practice, and that is part of what's in my book too, Live An Empowered Life!. Because for me, journaling is a big deal. So if I'm feeling fearful, I do journaling to get that garbage out of my head to go, okay, so now I'm feeling afraid. Why am I feeling afraid? Is this my fear or someone else's fear? Is it a family member's fear? I also do a really great job. I love this practice, it's called 'mind mapping'. I don't know, are you familiar with mind mapping?
Shirley Owens: I am, yes.
Susan Burrell: So mind mapping, for the listeners, is really awesome because it's a nonlinear. Sometimes when we're journaling, we want to tell the story, you know, today, it started this way and here's my story until we run to the end. But mind mapping is good because it pulls out those other beliefs or systems that we're operating under that we don't even know. You can just write this down, like a stream of consciousness, and begin to find what it is that the fear is pricking within you. What it is that that fear might be activating. And then for me, I look at that, whatever it is. So for me, recently, it brought up behaviors and systems I was raised under that have to do with uncovering my age, my mom was a narcissist and raised me to then be attracted, I mean, not on purpose, but that was my model behavior at home was this narcissistic thing. And so then it made sense that when I went out into the world, I got involved with men that were narcissists. And this is new just coming up because of these pricks of fear, it's like I had to follow that. What does that really attach to, or pricks of low self esteem? Here I am living an empowered life, very happy life actually. But my esteem gets deemed constantly, and I had to follow it down that rabbit hole of WHY. What is dinging my self esteem that I worked very hard to rebuild after my divorce?
Shirley Owens: All of that.
Susan Burrell: Yeah.
Shirley Owens: There's a bunch of different things that you said in there. One is normal. I laugh at the word normal because I think that everyone's trying to be something that's not really actually there. I, for sure, I'm not normal. And I don't even know what that is. I think we're all here trying to survive, and thrive, and become something, and so-and-so's trying to become someone else, trying to become someone else, and we're all just trying to figure it out together. And I think that's such a huge thing for people to recognize that normal isn't actually real. And if we want to call it normal, that's okay. Our new normal will never be the same, not after this. So to be able to open and embrace that new normal, the other thing that you said was journaling. I have journaled most of my life and I realized that I've always had a rough time sleeping. You know, like that's my thinking time. And someone had mentioned to me years ago that when I wake up with all these thoughts, just to write them down. And it's interesting how many times it's almost like a dream where I would forget the thoughts that I had in the night. And a lot of my creativity, and my dreaming and all of that came from that space in the night when I was wide awake, but I couldn't go back to sleep because my mind was just racing. And I used to try to fight that. So I learned years ago to start writing down whatever my thoughts were in the night, I would keep a notebook by me, back before we had all this technology, to be able to speak into something. And then later I realized through a couple bad marriages that all of my journals, when I look back, are my negativity. So the times when I was really feeling negative, I would just write that down in a journal. And I kept thinking like, this is horrible, where are all my good memories? But at the same time, I'm grateful that I had a space to put all of that because I was able to pull it up, work through it, get it out of me so that I didn't carry it around everywhere. And I think that's where I was able to just continue to progress, and progress, and progress. I think a lot of times, we get stuck because we have these same things and they just keep, they're not really our past when we file them to the future. So we continue to file, and file, and file to the future. And so they just pop up everywhere, not to say that I don't have a few things that do that once in a while, but I feel that I was able through journaling to do that. So during this COVID time, I have 10 people in my house and--
“Normal isn't actually real...our new normal will never be the same.” - Shirley Owens
Susan Burrell: Oh, my gosh.
Shirley Owens: Yeah. So we have four kids that live with us, and then my oldest daughter and her husband, and two grandbabies, they moved in right before the stay at home order came in because they're building a house and it wasn't ready. And that's just what we do. And then all of a sudden this came and we're like, Oh, no. How are we going to do this? And it has been, I mean, that's where beautiful chaos comes up in my mind. It has been the most beautiful, I have been so grateful for this experience. And in times of fear, or uncertainty, or unrest with what's been going on, I started a gratitude journal. And I always have my clients write down gratitude, like all the time. I think that's just the way to increase positivity. And so I started doing it myself. I'm like, Oh, maybe I should do this. So I've been keeping this gratitude journal through COVID, and that's been super helpful. So I love that you're all about journaling, and I love the mind mapping too. I just think that all of those are very good skills to learn. So I want to know more about your book, and what led you to write that, and maybe tell me a little bit of the journey that you went through writing it. Because I know through my book, I went through my own. Like you think you're just going to be amazing and write this book and it's just gonna come out exactly how you think it is. And then you start writing and it's just like, Oh, my gosh, it's not anything that I thought was going to come out. So tell me a little bit about that. And just from author to author, what was your experience? Why did you decide to write it? And then what changed from the beginning to the other side of it?
Susan Burrell: So I've been a spiritual teacher and leader for, close to 20 years. I have my own practice, spiritual practice that I do myself. And when I went through divorce, when I entered into divorce, it was so heart shattering that I was completely deconstructed and I had to rebuild myself. And so I pulled out every spiritual tool I knew, like journaling, and mind mapping, and guided meditations. If I ran into a wall, I would sit down like an energetic wall, everybody. I would sit down with myself and do a guided meditation for myself to pull me out of whatever that stuckness was. I mean, one day I remember I felt like I was cresting into, okay, I'm good, I'm good, I'm good. And then I was walking around the house that I lived in with my ex husband. And suddenly I felt like somebody was grabbing my ankles, this is weird. Somebody was grabbing my ankles and I was like, what is that? And I just stood still, and I got very clear that it was my ex husband. We were still in divorce and he didn't want to let go of me. And so I felt shackled. I felt completely shackled. And I had to do energy work around that to get those shackles off me because I knew coming out of divorce I wanted to be happy, I wanted to be free, and I wanted to love myself more than ever before. So when the idea of this particular book, Live An Empowered Life! A 30-Day Journey, came up, it's a workbook. I didn't realize it at the time when I started it was going to be a workbook. But I was with a couple of girlfriends, and going through another lawyer thing with my ex, getting triggered, one of my friends said: "Why don't you write a book about being empowered?" I was like: "What are you talking about?" Because at that time, here I was sobbing on the couch with my two good friends, snotty nose, Kleenex box full of, and she's saying: "Write a book about what you went through in terms of becoming empowered." I was like, huh? She said, actually, and she's an ex student of mine. She said: "It's all in your computer." So I went home, opened up my computer, took a little while, because I wasn't sure I was ready to face this kind of experience of offering a book.
Shirley Owens: I get that.
Susan Burrell: It's a little daunting. Especially, who am I to tell everybody about being empowered when I was a mess? But sure enough, I opened up my computer and it was all there, everything. And so it took me like six hours to pull out the -- that I wanted for the book. And then it took about nine months of formatting it and doing some extra writing and rewriting. And so it's definitely a journey, it's crafted, you can work at 30 days, or you can work at 40 days, but I built it the way I teach classes to lead you into an experience, and then there's a diving deep, and then you get a gentle ride again, and then there's a deep dive. So the book is full of affirmations that I wrote myself, that I worked myself while I was going through divorce and get me out of it. It's full of inspiring quotes of people that I love to read like Wayne Dyer, and Nelson Mandela, and Brené Brown, those kinds of people. But then there's also activities, so it interacts with my website. The very first thing is to tell your story in the book, to journal it out, to get all the story out, so you're not constantly rewinding to the story. Right?
Shirley Owens: Yeah. That's how mine too.
Susan Burrell: Yeah. And so then it interacts with videos on my website that I did and guided meditations. There's a few guided meditation that I asked the people to listen to and then journal about that. So it's definitely a workbook. And if I could say, Shirley, I'm getting feedback for some people. I wrote it for somebody like myself who was disempowered going through divorce or in a marriage, and how they could come out being happier and healthier. But I also have people that don't feel disempowered, even though they've gone through a divorce that are doing the book and they're finding gems and nuggets within themselves that they didn't even realize from, like dreams of when they were kid, I'm going to be this when I grow up and they're like, Oh, my goodness, I forgot that. And then they get to see how that childhood dream is either really wanting to be explored now or it informs everything they did through their life. So it's interesting to see how everybody's using it.
Shirley Owens: That is really cool. Yeah, that sounds amazing. I'd love for you to talk a little bit about meditation. So I totally believe in meditation, and for me, it's a bunch of different things in different practices. But I think to our society, I think we're still a little bit slow growing into meditation. And a lot of people think it's woo-woo, but can you talk about different ways? I know that you're on your site, you have some meditation walkthroughs, and talk a little bit about that. What is it to you? And how it really can help people tap into their own souls?
Susan Burrell: Okay. So it's interesting having been doing this kind of work for over 20 years and meditating for longer than that, and my meditation practice has shifted and changed. So there's many different forms of meditation, [inaudible] who is a big, big Buddhist living in France, he talks about a walking meditation. A lot of Buddhists do a walking meditation where you're mindful of where you're placing your foot, and mindful of the story you're running, and you just quiet the mind. There's other people that are all about sitting and being quiet for 10 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour. I'm kind of like a combo pack. There's days where I go for a walk, but it is to calm my mind, open my heart. There's days where all turn on the insight timer and just listen to all, you know, for like 30 minutes that helps the dissonance in my brain shift. There's days where I listened to guided meditation. Some people feel more comfortable being directed, I want to say threatening. Certain religions teach that if you quiet your mind, the devil is going to go in there, which is like, that's just crazy to me. But I was asked to go to a weekend retreat for children who have terminal cancer in their families. And the woman that asked me to go, she said: "Could you meet some meditation?" But where the retreat was at a retreat center that was very Christian based. And when they heard that I was going to be leading meditations they said: "No, no, no, she can't. She can't do that. She can't come. She can't be on the grounds." And so we had to, this is so silly, we had to reinvent what it was. Rename it, and I forget what we renamed it, but the parents that came to have a break and to let go, like I said earlier, the dissonance when they listened to some of the guided meditations that I was leading, you could just feel their energy drop into the ground. It was like, I don't have to carry this anymore. Oh, thank God. And so they could have time for themselves listening to a guided meditation and feel more free. So they could then pick up their burden and go and deal with their child. and be in that. So the truth about meditation is it can be whatever, you can make it up however you want, but the biggest thing is about connecting, is my truth at least, Shirley. It's about connecting within your heart to that inner wisdom, and that inner love that is always there. And the more I sit in silence, or in my own app or whatever, the more clear I can become in terms of the wisdom that resides within me that helps me make better choices in my life. So that's one of my main reasons for meditation.
“Meditation can be however you want… It's about connecting within your heart to that inner wisdom, inner love that is always there.” - Susan Burrell
Shirley Owens: Yeah. That's beautiful. I love that you say that because, like for me, sometimes it's listening to music in my AirPods while I'm laying out in the sun, and it's often laying out in the sun. Sometimes in quiet, sometimes with noise around me. And I'm not really listening to the music, it's just, sometimes the noise will drown out the noise of the world. And then sometimes it's just being with myself quietly. And I think in today's world with podcasts, and radio, and all of our electronics, our phone constantly going off, there's not time for quiet, and there's not time for boredom, and there's not time for all these things that actually help us to stay in touch with ourselves. And so we get caught up in all these distractions of the world, and we just go with that all the time. And life just keeps happening every day to us. The sun comes up, sun goes down, comes up, goes down. We never have time to, or we don't take that time that we do actually have to listen to ourselves, and to be with ourselves, and to really like, our knowingness knows what we need, but we often don't tap into that. So I love that you explain it as whatever it is. You can put a different name to it if you don't like meditation, you can put something else to it. Some people call it prayer, because when I pray, I also feel like I'm meditating. And I think that it's just different for everybody, but really it's just sit with yourself and listen to what your soul wants, and listen to the world a little bit.
Susan Burrell: Right. Which is interesting during this time of quarantine, and then it gets extended, the quarantine. Everything outside got silent. So that all of a sudden I could hear different birds coming in my yard that I hadn't heard before because of the cars zipping by, and the airplanes going over, and the gardeners coming. It's just been such a lovely time of slowing down and just being with what is, which is your family or your dog, I have two dogs, just being with what is.
Shirley Owens: I think that presence, and awareness, and all these words that we talk about, maybe there hasn't been as much understanding of has become something that people are understanding right now.
Susan Burrell: Yeah. And it's interesting when we go for walks, we walk our dogs in our neighborhood. And it's interesting that the people that are still in their old, and earbuds in, looking at the ground, my God! Get out of the house. Don't you want to see your neighbors, or make new friends across the street kind of thing, as you're waving and talking to other dog owners. But it's interesting, noticing the people that are still doing the same EMO of let me just plug in something to keep me so I can go for a walk instead of looking around and noticing the other people and recognizing them. It's fascinating to me, the people that choose not to connect,
Shirley Owens: It's kind of funny because I feel like I live my world mostly in meditation then out. Like for me, I love to just be in whatever I'm in. And there are times when I get distracted, but I think more than not, I live in that world of sitting with myself, always thinking about what's going around, and what I could be do to be contributing to that, and how I'm being in all my relationships in my life, in the world around me, all of that. And so it just came to me that that is empowerment, for me.
Susan Burrell: Yes, yes.
Shirley Owens: Yeah. So I think we can pull all of this together and talk about empowerment as just really being aligned and one with our soul.
Empowerment is just being aligned and one with our soul.” - Shirley Owens
Susan Burrell: Yes. Yes.
Shirley Owens: And I see you being that also. So for our listeners today, what is something that they could do today to start living a more empowered life?
Susan Burrell: Oh, I just got chills when you asked that question, why is that? So there's something that wants to be said here that's more than what we talked about. So the most important thing on any journey, and my book is about taking a deep dive into your soul and coming out on purpose, figuring out your purpose. So to me, any journey, you've got to start right where you are, right? So the first thing, this is what needs to be got more chills. The first thing that needs to happen for anyone that wants to begin to develop a spiritual path or go deeper within themselves is to sit with yourself and look at where you are, where are you right now? Not in a physical place, not in quarantine, but where are you within your heart space? And where are you in your belief systems? And once you begin to discern what that is, then you get to become more at choice. Do I really want to keep that belief system that's been running my life? Or is that a benefit to me? Those kinds of things. But you start right where you are, you don't have to be different, make yourself different, just start and drop in. And I know to be true if you drop into your heart space. That's where the wisdom, that's where spirit resides, that's where that drop of light is that we all are, that divine light is in our heart, not our head. And when you're trying to figure something out, that is another red flag of, wow, I need to sit down. Of course, I have to go the whole gamut of figuring it out and then realize what I just figured out isn't going to work. But sit down when you're starting to try and figure something out, and drop into your heart, and ask your soul, ask your higher self, what is it I need to know? Because the head isn't going to tell you anything, it just runs rampant because we don't put boundaries on, no, you can't talk to me right now. I'm just gonna listen to my heart, kind of thing. And that's where intuition resides within the heart, not necessarily a third eye. Third eye, a lot of guru meditators find access into wisdom there. But I think for those of us that are not guru's sitting in a cave, owning themselves to bliss, those of us that are in the world and of the world, wisdom resides in the heart.
“Wisdom resides in the heart.” - Susan Burrell
Shirley Owens: Love that. Yeah. And I agree with you. And I think too, what you're saying is acceptance. So acceptance of where you're at and then going from that place. I do hear a lot of people say, when I get this, I'll be happy. Or when I get to that point, then I'll start. Or when Monday comes, I'll start the diet.or when next week comes, or when I get that next paycheck, or when I get this, and I love how you say, 'tap into where you are right now and start from there.' Because when we want to start from somewhere else, we're not all the way ready to start. And so we get to that somewhere else, then it's like, Oh, but then I need this, and this, and this. And I think that, yeah, just start, just sit with yourself. I love that advice, that's such good advice. Accept where you are, sit with yourself, and then I would even go one more as to say, then figure out what is it where you want to be.
Susan Burrell: Yep, yep. Yep.
Shirley Owens: And then take your journey, read your book, take your journey.
Susan Burrell: Yup. It's interesting that you say that because I'm starting another book study of the book, I'm going to lead a group to do, work the book together. Because what I also find is, sometimes we need other people to be with us while we go on this deeper journey. I definitely, when I started divorce and I went to the lawyer's office, dressed in my target's special outfit, because that's what I thought I could have, you know, I can afford, a friend said: "I'm going to come with you because you're not going to hear half of what he says." And boy, she's right. And she came with me and just listened, and then afterwards she made me go for a walk to integrate what was said, and she discussed it with me so that I wasn't by myself figuring this out. And so any kind of life journey, you often need just one person in your corner, right?
Shirley Owens: I agree.
Susan Burrell: That's why I have all the videos on the website and you interact with those videos while you're doing the book, because I didn't want people to work in the book by themselves and feeling that they were alone doing it by themselves.
Shirley Owens: I love that. So one question that I always ask my guests is, is there anything in your life that you would do differently or that you regret?
Susan Burrell: Oh, my God, that's a big one. Anything I regret? Well, you know, it's so fascinating how hindsight works, right? Would I not have married my ex husband? There's a small part of me that goes, yeah, that, that, that one, that's what I regret. But yet, now that I've survived what I thought was going to kill me, the whole horrible disengaging from a narcissist, and divorced and everything, I'm a better person because of having gone through all those things. I kind of don't have any regrets. I mean, some days it's like, wow, I wish I had known that sooner, or I wish I'd acted on that sooner, I regret that I didn't. But really mostly, at least in my experience, Shirley, once I faced myself and looked at the actual choices I had made that were not to my benefit, I was able to let those things go and change from within myself, and I am living a happier, healthier life because of it.
Shirley Owens: That's perfect. So I just really loved spending time with you today, and visiting, and talking about empowerment, and the things that we need right now to get through this beautiful chaos that we're in. And I know that there are others that would like to learn more about you. So can you tell me how we can get in touch with you?
Susan Burrell: Absolutely. Go to my website, that's the best thing. And you can investigate what I do, and learn more about the book, watch a video or two, whatever. And it's Susan Burrell, B-U-R-R-E-L-L.C-O-M, susanburrell.com. And I have a gift I'd love to give your listeners, which is a guided meditation, and it's called Out Of the Box Thinking. And it's a pretty awesome meditation, if I do say so myself. So if you're interested in getting that guided meditation, you go to susanburrell.com/free-gift-meditation, or free-meditation-gift, Oh, good grief.
Shirley Owens: I will have that link on my website and on our show notes so no worries If you can't find it, just go to my website and show notes and it'll be right there. Thank you so much for giving us that gift and for giving me the gift of your presence today. And I'm just super grateful for having you here.
Susan Burrell: Thank you. It's been an honor, thank you.
Shirley Owens: Thank you.
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