Shiraz Baboo is an Award-Winning Author, International Speaker, and Reality Shifting Specialist who supports coaches and Healers that want to rewrite their business stories, and in turn, their reality.  Without understanding the impact, most people are unknowingly addicted to stories of adversity and struggle in their lives, leaving them stuck with a lack of success, confidence, and freedom.

In this episode we discuss:

• How Shiraz came to recognize the impact his story had on his own life
• Why it’s impossible to enjoy success while still feeding on struggles of the past
• Being addicted to being right
• That changing your story is a lot like playing Jenga
• 2 important questions that can help release the grip of a tenacious story

Connect with Shiraz online to learn more about upcoming events and programs:

https://shirazshifts.com

https://energeticmagic.com

Susi Vine: Welcome back. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Happified .We are in the podatorium of pod of Palooza. So this is a short and sweet conversation with Shiraz and he is here to join me today and share a little bit about his insights and experience. Shiraz is an award-winning. International speaker and reality, shifting specialist, coaches and healers hire Shiraz to rewrite their business stories and with them their reality, because most people are unknowingly addicted to stories of adversity and struggle and left with a lack of success, confidence and freedom Shiraz helps you.

Terminate and annihilate your unconscious addiction to these stories in order to ignite a stream of high paying clients while fueling an abundance of free time, money and energy Shiraz. Thanks for joining me and bringing your message. 

Shiraz Baboo: Thanks for having me. This is going to be 

Susi Vine: fun. Yes, I’m so glad we connected.

And again, this is a little short sweet conversation. Usually I run a little bit longer, so. I’d love to hear a little bit about why we just dive into the middle of the conversation, but please feel free to work in a little bit about your short story and experience while we’re sharing. Why do you think we get so hung up on these stories of why, why, why life is hard, why it’s unfair, why we’re stuck, where we are, and we’re not making change happen 

Shiraz Baboo: because we enjoy telling the stories and we enjoy the feedback.

Susi Vine: Misery loves company. It does, 

Shiraz Baboo: but it’s amazing how much it affects you. I used to get stopped crossing borders all the time, whether I was flying on the train and my car, and they would ask me all sorts of extra questions. They would search my luggage. Sometimes they switch my vehicle. One time I got strip searched and that was actually one of the most more pleasant experiences.

Ironically. Because I was in Spain, they had, they had had a whole bunch of us and it was, it was all racist thing was because I’m black. And I know that after nine 11, I’ve got a Muslim name, so even more stuff, but they had actually pulled 10 black guys off the street and throwing them in jail in Madrid, Spain, and.

And then they were doing the strip search, but I was in really good shape at the time. And just nearby within viewing distance worse was the holding cage with the ladies of the night. And when my clothes came off, I heard woo baby. Yeah. All right. None of the other guys got that. So I’m like, you know, this is not so bad.

Susi Vine: So we to find a positive moment in the middle of an experience that everybody else would chalk up to. 

Shiraz Baboo: But this, this was my existence since I was like 19 years. And eventually I was talking to one of my coaches about it and he said, are you ready to step out of that? And I looked at him. I said, racism is not a story.

It’s a thing. He goes, yes. But the way racism is affecting you is your story. It’s all about border crossings. You don’t talk about, you know, getting stopped for just driving. Like, that’s the common story you hear? It’s like, yours is all border crossings. And I thought about it. And then I realized, yeah, because every time I’m telling the story to say.

I’m looking at their reactions and I’m feeding off it. Right. I, and he says, you light up every time you told that story, every single. So you’ve got to keep creating the story over and over so that you can light up so you can get that sympathy or that reaction or that shock. And that perpetuated, needing time you’re causing all this extra work for yourself.

You’re limiting what you can do in the world. And, and you’re, you’re just not in a place of happiness. You could. And in that moment, I said, you know what I’m done. I’m done with that story. And I haven’t been stopped since at any border. All right. And the other thing is I realized, you know, there are nonwhite customs agents because I was unconsciously lining myself up with the racist customer.

I didn’t even realize I was doing it. And now I joke with them. I talk with them. I don’t have any problems. And it’s because I’ve given up. 

Susi Vine: Hmm, that’s really profound. Yeah. 

Shiraz Baboo: And this thing I’ve seen with people in business clients that I work with, my story is different. You don’t know the struggle I have to go through.

I have to sacrifice, and you can see them light up telling their stories of struggle and what you’re not going to great. The success. If you’re feeding off the struggle.

Susi Vine: Really interesting. And yeah, I live in San Diego near the border. And so I have walked across enough times to recognize that, you know, it, isn’t all Caucasian border guards you know, agents at the terminals. But it’s true. It’s so true. Although not easy to accept because it’s certainly in the last year and a half, we have been confronted with issues that are, that are.

Like you said after nine 11 things changed significantly. But even before that, and, and for generations, we have some really deep stories of what race means. Yes. And so to your point to be told that and say racism is not a story. Absolutely true. It is history that people can choose to acknowledge or not.

But how so? It’s interesting to hear you say that with that moment. And I do believe there are light bulb moments. Not that change is. We’ve made a new change in direction, and this is the way that we’re going. We slip back and there are patterns in there. You know, we, we move kind of in concentric circles.

But to have that kind of light bulb moment and say, ah, that’s not what I want to light me up anymore. So how did you then kind of embrace that or stay on track as you were moving forward? Or did you get any resistance if you had other people who were, you know, knew you then and knew that energy that you had.

When they didn’t see you holding that identity or representing that as much anymore, the struggles that you had faced 

Shiraz Baboo: and no one’s ever asked me that there was no resistance. It just stopped existing in my world. It’s really neat. And I’ve noticed there’s differences with how people do it. Sometimes there is that shift and it’s like a miracle.

Everything just changes. But other times it is a struggle and it’s either a slow change or you keep trying and trying and trying and not getting there. And then finally, there’s this and you get over, but it’s, it’s going to be different for each person. I think I’ve learned is you have to be willing to have the miracles and you have to be willing to have the year-long struggles and everything in between.

Because if all you want is the miracles. You’re not going to get the changes you want. 

Susi Vine: Ooh, thank you for that. I think that’s really important, everybody to take a minute. That’s it. We’re all looking for that paved path to success, the goal, the yellow brick road, right? Like there’s, there’s some little issues that come up, but we want to see the palace we’re headed towards.

We want to never go through the forest and get lost in the trees. We want to know we’re making progress and Yeah, I think that’s really interesting and so helpful too, that you’ve seen now through your work, that people kind of take different paths with it. Either they can embrace that and step forward and release that weight or the lesson keeps coming up.

Shiraz Baboo: And the, the issue here is number one, you’re actually addicted to the current situation and people don’t realize that. And it’s like, it’s a physical addiction because every time your story happens, you get to be right. And people love. Being, right. So they’ll, they choose being right over, being happy over being rich, over, being healthy, over having wonderful relationships.

And I throw it out there. What if being wrong was a wonderful thing and you don’t have to be wrong all the time, but I didn’t think I’d make a million dollars this year. Oh, I was wrong. I didn’t think I’d find the love of my life. Oh man. I was wrong. Like being wrong could be amazing, but you have to get out of that ego of needing to be.

Susi Vine: Thank you for that big ego trip. Right. And I see it a lot to, to the point at which I must be right there for anyone who doesn’t agree with me as wrong. Well, that’s a pretty lonely place to be sitting in. And I like to come back to that science, true science, the science that grows and evolves with us is open to being.

Yeah, we’re always questioning what we know is right, because growth happens in proving or failing to disprove where we are. Right. So once we’ve filled in a blank and we’ve got an answer, that’s not, when we get to sit back and be comfortable, the real growth, I think in progress to your point happens when we keep challenging that I.

What if they could be right. What if we both could be right? There’s something in the middle that we’re missing. I think that’s really interesting. And it is, it is a certain kind of energy that people thrive on. I am from the Midwest and I spent some time in Chicago before I left the Heartland. And Chicago is, are very passionate about their city.

They love Chicago, the very proud to be from there. And I think it comes from a feeling of overcoming, overcoming. The fact that the weather there is really miserable. It’s frigid in the winter, it’s hot and sticky in the summer. There’s only six weeks of good weather and they’re not consecutive everyone.

There is like, I’m from Chicago. Like they’ve stuck it out. They’ve won. Right. So, so even if you don’t have a story, as difficult as the one that Shiraz has moved through, maybe you can resonate with that. Like there are those little victories, that little badge of honor, we like to wear like. I did that. And how often do those stories come up?

How often? Just like you said, oh, there they’re 

Shiraz Baboo: constantly running. They’re running in the background and think about it every time. You get a hit of dopamine from your brain and that’s your chemical addiction to the story. And you can get that hit of dopamine when you’re right about a positive story, but your brain doesn’t want to let go of the current addiction.

And second of all, you’ve got a cluster of neurons, which are the memories of that story in your. And the more, the story happens, the bigger that cluster gets, which defines how you’re going to act. So when you want to change it, you’ve got to reduce that cluster and grow a new cluster of a different belief and just sort of switch the nerves over until that becomes the normal way you think.

And when you don’t do it, I mean, you’re not practicing on a regular basis. It doesn’t work. So have you ever played Jenga. Okay. So I look at every story as a Jenga tower. There’s all these blocks that are the memories that are the reactions, everything you’ve been told. And when you start to work on yourself, you’re pulling out the Jenga blocks.

Right? And so for something like me crossing the border, I happened to fill out that one Jenga block near the bottom that caused the whole tower to fall. So I didn’t have to worry about it ever again, but most of the time you’re pulling Jenga bucks from different. And if you don’t continue to pull out the blocks until the tower falls, then you start putting those blocks back in after a while.

And it becomes solid again. And this is why you can go to have you ever gone to like a retreat or a big workshop and you come out and you’re like, oh my God, I learned so much. My life is going to be completely different. But then a few weeks or few months, you’re back where you started. You’re like, oh my wait, where’d it go?

It’s because you pulled out a bunch of blocks. It changed your life, but then you slowly put those blocks back. And now it’s back to where. 

Susi Vine: Hmm. I love that, that visual and I hope that helps people understand, because I know it can be frustrating in this, you know, process of trying to grow and evolve. When we look at this lesson that were served up and we’re like, I just did this.

Like I was here two years ago, five years ago. Why do I keep doing this? Well, Because where there are those holes, we, we tend to want to fortify that shore, that backup, we feel more comfortable with that. Right. So getting uncomfortable with the process might be necessary in order to actually move out of where.

Shiraz Baboo: Yeah. And none of it might be usually is 

Susi Vine: fair, absolutely fair. We do have to get comfortable with change. A lot of people, just as much as they resist being wrong, they resist change. It’s a way in which we have to, I think have control or try. Demonstrate we might have control. How can people connect with you and learn more about what you’re sharing and get more of these nuggets of wisdom?

Because in just a little bit of time, we’ve dropped a lot. So this is definitely an episode worth reviewing. Thanks for jumping on air with me. 

Shiraz Baboo: Oh, thank you for having me here. You can get in touch with me at energetic magic. That’s like here’s my interject com or a Shiraz shifts.com as in trash shifts.

Your reality. 

Susi Vine: Awesome. Terrific. And do you have a little bit of advice? What would be something if something stands out, if somebody says, okay, me. Maybe the story. That is the reason that my life has been hard. Maybe the story that the reason I can’t catch the breaks, I can’t make the progress that I want.

There’s something there that I could find a way to let go of. How would you suggest people keep pulling out those blocks and growing? 

Shiraz Baboo: There’s two big questions. Ask people when they’re stuck in a certain story is what’s the benefit of this. Right. And there’s always going to be one. You may not think they’re always going to benefit.

And can you just, can you live without that benefit in exchange for that story? Change it. Right? Cause most of the time it’s, it’s ego based. So it’s but the other thing is what horrible thing do you think is going to happen? If you let go of that story? And it’s surprising what comes up because some like one of the most common stories that I never have enough money, I keep struggling, but I can never earn them in an amount of money I worked, I want.

And when I asked them what happens if you were to make that money, they, they go into first. Oh, it’s going to be great. I could buy what I want. I could travel. But then when we keep looking at it, Oh, my family is going to start asking me for money. I don’t want to have those conversations. So your brain is like, well, if we don’t make the money, we don’t have to cut for the conversations.

Problem 

Susi Vine: solved.

Our, our unconscious can be a powerful problem solver candidate. Let’s just take that off the table. I love it. Thank you. I think that’s really helpful asking ourselves those kinds of questions and, and just being present to what, what if, and, and it’s a great point that you make there too, because the first answer was like, no, I don’t have a problem with that.

But if you keep asking why or if then, or so what, then we start getting to the truth of the matter. So that’s a really helpful self discovery that we can. 

Shiraz Baboo: Oh, yes. Yeah. And you know, I’ve done a lot of self discovery myself using that technique, but I see it in other people and it’s really hard to see it in yourself.

That’s why you got to go to someone else because your ego gets in the way and like there’s nothing wrong. It’s all good. I want that now. Right? 

Susi Vine: Right. I did a really good job. Getting here. Look at everything. I’ve survived. Not, not that you’re wrong, you’re not wrong, but why stop the story there? Why not let that story continue to unfold and write some new chapters for yourself and see just how far it could take you.

Exactly. Yeah. Marvelous. Beautiful. Thank you for jumping on air with me. Shareaza has been a treat. Great to connect with you. Thank you for the work that you do. Take care of.