#171 Exploring Sovereignty with Dr. Shideh Shafie

Hey, this is Melissa Parsons, and you are listening to the Your Favorite You Podcast. I'm a certified life coach with an advanced certification in deep dive coaching. The purpose of this podcast is to help brilliant women like you with beautiful brains create the life you've been dreaming of with intentions. My goal is to help you find your favorite version of you by teaching you how to treat yourself as your own best friend.

If this sounds incredible to you and you want practical tips on changing up how you treat yourself, then you're in the right place. Just so you know, I'm a huge fan of using all of the words available to me in the English language, so please proceed with caution if young ears are around.

Melissa Parsons

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Your Favorite You. You are in for a treat because you are going to meet one of my friends and one of the women that I admire so much. She is a fellow physician coach and more importantly, she's one of my dear friends, the one and the only Shideh Shafie. I'm so excited for our conversation and I'm really hopeful that it will be enlightening and helpful to all of the loyal listeners of Your Favorite You. So sweet Shideh, as a way of introducing yourself to the vast Your Favorite You audience, please tell us about your current favorite version of yourself.

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Shideh Shafie

My current favorite version of myself is the life I'm living now as a budding tennis player, budding pro tennis player, which is maybe an exaggeration, but I play a lot of tennis, love it and my sweet nine-year-old twins soon to be 10. We're hitting double digits. Practicing physician in the community. A really fun wife. I'm like an excellent wife. I don't know if my husband would agree about my definition of how good wives can be. I rock as a wife.

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Melissa Parsons

Oh yeah, a million out of 10.

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Shideh Shafie

Yeah, I think he would. I mean, he definitely should. And if he doesn't, he needs to re-examine his thoughts.

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Melissa Parsons

Get in line.

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Shideh Shafie

And yes, so the pricing position and a performance coach. So I've got my hands and I also run a pretty big real estate investing situation. Yeah, which is lovely and fun. And I love the variety. And it really speaks to that part of me that I'm an ER doctor by training. I love variety. I love the feeling of growth. And that's feeling and being stretched. I really enjoy that. So I think my favorite version of me is doing that in a way that's sustainable and makes sense that doesn't take away.

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Melissa Parsons

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Make you burnt to a crisp at the end of the day or the week or the year or whatever.

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Shideh Shafie

And has enough flexibility that like I can turn something down to when something else needs my attention. And like with kids, I think that is actually a really important thing for a parent that wants to be there for certain parts of parenting, which you don't have to be either, like I'm not, I don't know that everybody wants to do all the certain things. But like, you spent like three hours solving a mystery with my son yesterday, which I like really enjoyed and had the patience and time to do, you know, and that's fun when you when you have the patience and time to do it. But when you don't, you're just like, Oh, my God, kid, I don't want to play.

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Melissa Parsons

Yes, oh my goodness, that's amazing. So Shideh and I were riffing about what we wanted to talk about on the podcast, and we could talk for days about probably just about any topic. But we landed on sovereignty because Shideh is someone who has been practicing sovereignty and meditating about sovereignty and that type of thing. So when we talk about sovereignty as women, Shideh, what does that actually mean to you? Like, how do you define it for yourself?

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Shideh Shafie

It's similar to freedom. I think about when we think about freedom, people sometimes say like, oh my God, I just want to throw everything away and be free, right? Like I want to throw away my kids, my husband, my job, maybe my parents, my aging parents, whatever it is, they just want to be free. And I think freedom is really enticing when you're like very tired and maybe a little bit overcommitted or burnt out. Sovereignty is a little bit different. It's choosing where, because when you think about freedom, it's just being untethered, being completely untethered. And untethered is very appealing to men. Like when you think about like the Buddhist literature or some more Eastern philosophy is this concept of being unattached to anything, which is okay. And it's not bad or good, but I actually think sometimes we want to be attached to things, but we want to choose very consciously where that is. And that's what I think sovereignty is. Sovereignty is like having choice about where we choose to have attachment. So we're not free, right? But we could be if we wanted, well, we could be and there's consequences to that freedom of emotions and whatever else that you might have to go through, but actually choosing to make certain parts of your life, maybe a little harder or a little more attached than you might, but doing that might otherwise, but doing that sort of from a face of consciousness and knowing. And so in the way that you think of like a nation might be sovereign in that they are able to do whatever they want to do, but they might make certain choices that benefit them in certain ways, but it's not completely untethered, right? Like, and you can float between things at different times too, right? Like there's times in your life where we are more wanting to be untethered. Like when you go on vacation and you're just like forget about everything and put everything inside, it's fun to be untethered for two, three, four days. Untethered for a long time can sometimes make us, it can be hard to choose what our meaning is in that space. So I think about really being clear about where we choose tethering. And like in my life, I choose tethering. One place I think about is like my parents are getting older, they have to make some transitions in their lives. And like, I actually like really want to be part of that process. I don't have to be like we could, like I could choose to hire some of that out or whatnot, or like whatever, they could choose to hire it out. But like, I actually want to do the hard work of figuring that out and it's hard. And it's like, none of this is really tiring, but it's a choice rather than a, like this is what I have to do.

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Melissa Parsons

Thank you for your participation.

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Shideh Shafie

Yeah. Yeah. So that's the story we tell ourselves about our attachment to things. And also and in uncovering that some things you are going to untether from you're like, I actually don't need this anymore.

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Melissa Parsons

Right, yeah. And I think you made a good point about it changes over time. Like there are some things that are very important to you that you are very attached to at certain stages of your life. And then as life goes on and life changes, you know, those things can change and they're probably supposed to.

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Shideh Shafie

Yeah, I mean, your mental space changes like I remember when we were in medical school, we went out Thursday, Thursday, fun Friday, silly Saturday, and Sunday, we like did things like we studied whatever, but every we went out.

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Melissa Parsons

Obviously smarter than me because all those nights I was at home studying like the nerd that I am.

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Shideh Shafie

I went out every Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and third and fourth year. Um, and we went out with, of course we did. I went out with the exact same people and we went to the same places too. Yeah. We would spend a lot of time thinking about what going out tops we were going to wear on those days and how we could like rotate them and not repeat like so much brain space that could have been like memorizing like what mitochondria do or I don't know what else they could be doing. The Krebs cycle. Anything better than that. But like, but like the idea of thinking for long and hard about what I'm going to wear on a thirsty, first of all, I don't go to thirsty Thursday anymore, sadly, but, um, but like every week spending my brain with that, it's just like, it's not interesting to me now, but it was fun. And it was like, what, like it was fun to do. And there's nothing wrong with that. Like in that stage in that series of time, you may want to do that, but I think sometimes, um, we end up accruing a lot of things to care about that we may no longer want to care about or like other people around us care about. And it's okay for them to care about it and not us like trunk or treat. Trunk or treat is like a real one for me. Like it really stresses out my children, my husband, I like do not care about the theme for trunk or treat. Like I get it. Like a lot of people put a lot of effort and I appreciate them for doing that on their trunk or treats, but I'm just going to always take the box of random Halloween decorations and you guys can do whatever you want with those. And that's like extra like, it's okay. Like I don't want to spend my brain cells on that. Like, then it's not bad or good. Everyone's is different.

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Melissa Parsons

Yeah, I think we get into trouble thinking that we should share the things that we care about with the people that we care about. It's not always going to be that way. Okay, well, because I am a nerd, I went to Miriam Webster to look up the definition. And the definition that I most resonated with was, quote, having independent authority and the right to govern itself. And then there was an archaic definition that I found interesting. And it said, quote, having generalized curative powers, I'm like, what does that mean? I don't know. I mean, I guess what I think it means in the context of the conversation that you and I are talking about is not making yourself so sick by caring about all the things that you can't possibly care about and attaching to all the things that you can't possibly be attached to and still live a life that has any white space or freedom or autonomy or any of the other synonyms of sovereign attached to it.

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Shideh Shafie

Yeah. Well, and I would also add this like second layer of this concept of differentiation of understanding that like, you know, in coaching, like what's the model CTF AR, right? There's circumstance, you have a thought to feeling actions, and then your results is always the actions of your thoughts, and you are responsible for the results. Now, I love Brooke, and I think she probably hasn't like, maybe she could expand on that, because sometimes people hear that basically, like all results in my life belong to me, that's actually not totally true, right? Like, right, many results in our life, don't actually belong to us, they belong to a group, and you and I both physicians, right? Like, when you think about like a patient care outcome, I'm an emergency room doctor, right? So in the emergency room, the there are like, for let's say, like, let's say I miss a case, or like I get an appendix ruptures while I'm trying to diagnose it, and I get the patient to the OR, there are so many people that are involved in that result. One is when did the patient come in, maybe the patient came in at the point where they're about to break. So there's one part of the result is due to the patient being sort of like, come in in a timely way or whatnot. Usually, that's actually not a problem in the system. But let's say then there's like cat scan waiting times, if the cat scan machine broken, did the nurse was in our stable to get an IV, maybe the patient's veins are really hard and we couldn't get an IV, then there's like, was the OR available? Was the surgeon available? Because the anesthesia I mean, there's so and then there's me. But often what we do is we like, let's say that appendix perfs and this kid or adult has like a sort of delayed outcome, it's not great, whatever it is, like, we take all of that on. And there's some, like, I think when we think about life, when we think about results belonging to us, what that means is like part of the part of the result that belongs to you. Now, if instead of going seeing the patient, I like go out and pick out thirsty Thursday tops and like delay seeing the patient and don't call a cat scan, like, well, then I could own that piece of it, right? Like I was part of the delay. But sometimes in life, when we think about results, the part about being the part of that means about sovereignty is like understanding what parts you can attach to and what you can't. So you can attach to being the best possible doctor you can be and like really advocating for your patients. And it's just I'm like, if the cat scanners broken, like, maybe I have to call a hospital and get the patient transferred or whatever it is I need to do, right? But understanding that you are also limited in what you can attach to in results, too, I think is a really important part of sovereignty is that, like, you know, like I'm doing all this stuff with my parents, I love my parents are so funny, but they like, you know, like, sometimes I'm like, Mom, I think you should not do this thing because it will have this result and she'll, she'll like take that and think about it and then come back to me.

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Shideh Shafie

And if I'm like a mean to her, and my response like that, I can own like, if I'm mean to her and look harsh with her, it's gonna be really hard for her to listen to me, right? But if I can be patient with her, if I can like take care of myself and be patient with her, she still may not listen to me. But I have held my part of the line fairly, like I've done my best to get her to do what I think is in her best interest. But you actually don't have control, right? Like in these conversations, but you do have control over like, presenting the material or like speaking in a way that makes it most likely that person is going to want to do the work with you. And that's a really important part of sovereignty is like, you can be attached to trying to do the best thing, but maybe not the outcome. And that's an important part when you're differentiating between what am I actually attaching to, and then realizing that some things are just going to not attach to like, I'm going to be like the result, actually, I'm going to be unattached to, I'm going to be attached to how I have these conversations with my aging parents.

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Melissa Parsons

Mm-hmm. How you said it.

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Shideh Shafie

Parenting certainly that comes up a lot right like we want our children to do well. We want them to be happy. We want them to be well-adjusted, yet that results... It's not a hundred percent in our hands. There's so many other variables that come along the way. But what we can be responsible a hundred percent for is I want to show up with compassion and kindness for both my child and myself, and try to like model that to them and hopefully some of it sticks and if it doesn't that's also like not totally in my control.

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Melissa Parsons

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think as parents, for sure, we can create a safe environment for them to live in. We can provide them with, you know, food that is nourishing to their bodies. You know, we can provide them and try to be, like you said, patient and present and loving and all of those things. And yet, like, still, sometimes they're not gonna turn out, quote, unquote, the way that we have planned for them. Yeah, probably ever.

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Shideh Shafie

Yeah, right. And they're gonna have lots of exposures. Like, I have this list of the five sort of givens. And one of the things that is that things don't always go as planned. Like, that's one of the givens of life is that like, like, it's not, you can't control all of it. And that I also like your children will be harmed, and they will cause harm. Like, that is just part of life that we have to accept by someone, and they will harm somebody else. And when I say harm, I'm not talking about like catastrophic harm, but like, they're going to get really hurt by somebody. And the exercise there is not to, and they're going to hurt somebody else too. And like, emotionally and in so many ways, and like, how we are here to support them as they learn how to do that. And we actually can't control for that never happening. And I think it's a it's a very nuanced space.

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Melissa Parsons

Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, as much as we want to like bulldoze and make the path so easy for them so that they never experience pain or cause anybody else pain, it's impossible to do. So giving up on that as a possible outcome. Well, we'll save you a lot of pain, I think, right? Yeah.

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Shideh Shafie

So you did something wrong in that that's like, like your kids are gonna go through breakups. It's gonna happen in life. Right? Like, when I went through break up, I was like, no, I don't want to be sad. I'm like, I just have to be sad. It's just like, what has to happen? And then I'm being myself, I made like a 28 point list of like what I was looking for. And my next mate, that was going to be my husband, and I had like a list of timeline of when I was going to get married also, because I want control. And my current husband does mean almost all the things except he does not know how to play the cello, which is on that list. But it was like...

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Melissa Parsons

I'm surprised you haven't signed him up for lessons.

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Shideh Shafie

I don't think he has the talent, he just doesn't have a musical brain.

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Melissa Parsons

Oh my God. Atish, your current husband. That's hilarious.

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Shideh Shafie

I mean, I think he's going to be my forever husband. I'm pretty sure.

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Melissa Parsons

I'm pretty sure.

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Shideh Shafie

There's this podcast. He might not be. We'll see.

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Melissa Parsons

Seriously, we might have to hide it from him. Okay, so many brilliant women, high achievers, like the people on this call, have at one point or another probably lost their sense of sovereignty along the way. How do you think that happens? What are some of the things that may happen in life that would cause you to lose some sovereignty or give some of it up, I guess?

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Shideh Shafie

I mean, number one, go to medical school. Medical school is a great sovereignty loser. Excellent place to lose money. I'm only kidding when I say that, but not totally. I mean, we get a lot of influence and data in the world. I mean, certainly our jobs is one place, right? We spend a lot of times at our jobs, and every job has a culture. This is the way that things are done. This is how you fit in, and fitting in, the fear of abandonment is one of the fears that we're innately born with. There are very few fears we're innately born with. One of them is the fear of abandonment, and a way that fear of abandonment can show up in these spaces as feeling ostracized or left out from a group. Medicine has a very tight culture of how you're supposed to be in that space. I think very early on in medicine, certainly, we get a lot of education. You do everything for your patients. If the nurse forgets to draw a lab, it's your fault because you didn't follow up on that or whatever. You take on a lot of responsibility, and you're taught that your role as a doctor supersedes every other role that you have in your life. That's definitely done in residency, in terms of thinking about training. It's going to be done. That's what training is all about, and it kind of continues. Then, if you want to change it, you sort of feel like, sometimes I hear as nurse managers at one of my jobs, what do you say to the nurses when they need to go home and they want to stay over? I'm just like, well, you're going to let down your team. I mean, those are hard cultures, right? If you're letting down your team, am I singularly letting down this whole team by not overworking and going home to this other responsibility that I have, as often as children and whatnot? Those cultures are hard. Then, you start being like, well, my duty is actually to stay longer at work, even though my kids are... You get stuck between these two duties, and you're just like, ah, your brain gets a little fried in that space that there's these two programmings that I want to take care of my kids. Also, you're on social, and in life, you're like, motherhood's so important, and kids get fucked up if they don't hang, oh, am I always working on this podcast? Fuck you, Sheena. You know you are. Fuckin' great. They're like, your kids are going to be screwed up if they don't have enough time with their mom and bonding and attachment there and all that stuff, so there's that. You're stuck in these two places, and so it's like, any of those models could be true, but you get to decide, and you get to decide for yourself what feels right and good for me, but it does take a little slowing down. One place is certainly in the workplace. You definitely get a lot of it fed to you just from culture of society and what should be important. I think a lot about... One of my superpowers is being an immigrant. One of the best things about being an immigrant is you've never totally... Your parents were weird. They did weird shit compared to other people. I totally remember we had this international food fair, and I felt so bad for this little Korean girl, because we were little.

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Shideh Shafie

We were in third grade, and my parents brought beef patties, which I looked normal. Our parents brought little fried goldfish, actual goldfish, not the crackers.  My parents knew enough to not bring things that American people would think are weird to eat, but you just get used to being people not really understanding. You're floating between two systems, so it allows you to be aware that these two systems exist, where sometimes when you're... Native to a space or like whatever you want to call that like you are from that space from that culture. Like you don't take the time to examine it because you don't know any other. And so then I know it's a place like coaching where they're like examining their thoughts. Like one of my favorite coaching questions that coaches asked me and I asked my clients a lot is like when did you first like take that on? Or like when did you first hear that? Like that's how you're a good doctor? Yeah, and like you go back and then you know, it's such a and people realize, Oh, this is like- I wasn't born thinking that like working 80 hours a week as normal It was something I picked up along the way or like another one that's really great being again being on immigrant like our parents don't go to things Like they don't go to like all the sports practices and all the things. We're just like, oh, we're not with your we're paying for you to go there we'll come for like one or two games, especially if you're getting good, but like that's on you but like I see a lot of people feel a lot of pressure to like go to every single thing. And I was like practice and game tournament and these are all cultural things and one of the best things about living in the United States. It's like you do live around it is a multicultural on that like there is no like one culture especially like a bigger cities and places where it's not as sort of like homogenous the beauty of diversity is like you see different ways that people like and then like you can borrow from different people's ways which I love. I worked in an Orthodox Jewish hospital for a really long time. I love the concept of Shabbat. Like I love like Friday night no like devices I mean, I don't turn off lights and stuff, but I like I like put away my cell phone. We have dinner as a family. It's like not a night where we go out we can go together as a family someone else's house for dinner or something like that or they can come over, but like it's sort of like a time to like hang, watch a movie, play games, but it's not like that's not like native to my culture I was like this. I love this. I'm picking this.

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Melissa Parsons

That's great. Yeah, that's so cool.

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Shideh Shafie

And to cool down our family because we always have a million things going on.

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Melissa Parsons

Yeah, it brings up the idea that you said earlier of, you know, I think so many of my clients come to me and they've never slowed down enough to actually start to question these things. They've always just been going, going, going and doing, you know, what they see other people doing or what they were brought up to do and that type of thing. And I think the idea of slowing down for certain people can be scary because they're worried about what they may find if they start to examine their thoughts and their beliefs and that type of thing. And who are they going to have to, you know, diverge from or let go of or, you know, that type of thing. So, you know, I think that it's one of those things that can be a little bit honestly scary when you first start getting coaching or just first start slowing down enough to examine your life to figure out like, okay, what does sovereignty and being unattached to the things that no longer matter and intentionally attaching to the things that I really do care about. And, you know, of course, we see that end game and, you know, we know that everything ends up being just fine, you know, for most people and they end up, you know, loving their life way more than they thought was possible, you know, after taking the time to examine it. But I think it's worth acknowledging that it can be scary.

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Shideh Shafie

It's definitely can be scary. I think in the beginning, it's really scary. Because you also feel a little bit like, Oh my god, what am I doing? Have I gone crazy? Is anybody else doing this? Like, yeah, you know, so that there's like a loneliness in it. And I think we feel safe when we're doing things that other people are doing. Like, I had a really funny talk with my client today. We're talking about like, I was like, Oh, and then you'll feel so normal. But like, you don't want to be normal. Like, you're not interested in being the average human. The average human in the United States has like a lot of issues going on. And if that's not what you're interested in doing, like, it's gonna feel a little lonely. So like, there's that loneliness factor of it, like where it feels like, have I lost my mind? But once you get to the other side, what's really fun is that you can also attach to things that are hard, or challenging, I would say you are attached to like learning how to run a business really well, and like do this process, right? Like, so am I.

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Melissa Parsons

Mm hmm.

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Shideh Shafie

And it's not easy, but it can be done with ease and joy and fun as long as there's room for it. Like, because you're actively choosing that. You're like, or like for me, like tennis, like I'm not that good, but I like, am I going to try my hardest? I want to feel pushed and like, I'm trying my hardest in this space. It's not easy, but I do it. It's joyful. It's like really fun because I have enough room for it in my life. I'm not choosing this thing that's like, because it's conscious, where I was like, I think sometimes when you're just committed to a million things, like none of it is fun anymore either. And that's, it's also, it's like, sucks the joy out of things that you might've even enjoyed in the past and the shifts don't have to be massive. Like, you know, I don't think you have to examine every piece of your life at once, but just like a little pieces just start like looking at them. I'm thinking of like, I remember a few years ago and I was working in academia and my friend called me, she's like, how did you only have to do two days of resident interviews when they, like, how did you, I have seven days. I'm like, those are seven non-paid days. And if you're an ER doctor, a paid day is between two or $300 an hour is like the rate and it's an eight-hour day, which you do not get paid for at all. So like seven days is quite a lot of money if you think about it, if I'm not doing the math really well, but it's like, let's just say, it's definitely a vacation. It's definitely a big amount. And she was like, how did you get only two days? And I was like, I only gave them two days of my availability. And she's like, wait, what? And they just asked me, when are you available? She had just like given her every day off that she had like no doctor's appointments or anything. So I was like, you can't do that. It's like, because then they will take the whole thing and it's sort of like the following year. She was like, so like, even something like that, like examining, like when I, when am I available? Like do I want to open my whole calendar to a system that's not for bad or good? They just need to plug the hole. So like, if this person available for seven days, of course, I want to take all seven. Right. What am I losing on the other end? I'm losing time freedom. I'm losing money. If you were to pick up overtime, which I don't like, not necessarily what she was going to do, but like, you kind of get tired and we're down. So really offering, offering what you want to get to is another sort of way to examine how much attached we want to be to this.

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Melissa Parsons

So good. So, so good. All right. You know, I think we talked a little bit about this just in this last little bit of our conversation, but, you know, I think that we're conditioned from a young age as women to prioritize others and to not take up too much space. And I think that that really conflicts with sovereignty, if we're being honest.

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Shideh Shafie

Totally. Because you're not looking at what you want. Like your first thought of like your job is to make sure everybody else is okay first. And then and only then if there's some room you can think about what you want. And so maybe it works when you are a single woman, or maybe you were like newly married and you have a lovey-dovey husband who like might also feel so but then adding some kids, a job. There's no room on that schedule for you, right?

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Melissa Parsons

And a dog. Don't forget...

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Shideh Shafie

Oh, yeah. My dog is the most needy of all of the people in my household. So that's fair enough. But like, yeah, so then you fall off of that list completely. And I know you don't have to be the top of that list. Like, you do, but you do need to be on the list somewhere, right? Like, I would say my kids are probably like my kids' needs do supersede my own, right? Like, I'm not really that excited about like, cooking something for them, or like going and wrapping a million presents in the night for a thing for Christmas or whatever. But like, I do it because it matters for me that they have this outcome. But like, I have to be somewhere on that list. And such an important thing, especially for our children to see, because it is really what is caught, not what's taught. Like you would tell your kids like, take care of your body exercise. But if you ain't doing it, they're not gonna like they don't pick it up in that same way.

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Melissa Parsons

I love that. I've never heard that before, caught but not taught. I've said it in a different way, but I love that little phrasing, so good.

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Shideh Shafie

It is really fun. Brilliant. But I like it. It wasn't mine. I don't know who to accredit it to, but someone else said it and I liked it and I said it again.

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Melissa Parsons

Some other brilliant person, yeah, I love it. So, yeah, I mean, I think I would argue as you as your kiddos get older and they need less of your attention and presence and, you know, at a certain age, they want less of your attention and presence which your kids aren't there yet. But, you know, you can like start moving yourself up the list and, you know, of course, you know, if something happens and they need me. I'm going to be there for them for sure, too, no matter what age they are. But, but yeah, just, I think you said it, and I wanted to interject but like, kind of not being realistic about because you don't want to have a normal life like not being realistic about your goals or not being realistic about what you want and that type of thing like, be unrealistic and shoot for something unrealistic and then if you end up in realistic territory, that's okay.

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Shideh Shafie

Yeah, and it also can be different than what other people want like the thing is like something, you know, I live in Rhode Island now.

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Melissa Parsons

I can't believe it's taken us this long to get to that in this podcast, people. This is a, this is a miracle.

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Shideh Shafie

I am obsessed with my home state. It is the best. You should all visit, but don't move here because we don't need more people. That's very dense. But I think there's like, um, you know, when we were thinking about where our son, our kids to school, there's a school that's very close to us and like everybody in the school, like your parents are in finance or medicine or lawyers, which is what we are. Basically that's what we are. And we ended up not going there. We went to go to a different school because there was like lots of different models of success. And I think sometimes when we live in places where like the model of success looks like, I don't know, like going on the Disney trip with all the bands and like staying at the wherever and doing this and that. Like that's fine. Like if that is actually what makes you happy, but I think sometimes people shoot for things because they think that's what's supposed to make them happy and then they get there and they don't like it. And then so it's really useful to understand what is it that makes you happy, right?

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Melissa Parsons

Like, well, they get there and they don't like it and they think something is wrong with them. Yes. Exactly.

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Shideh Shafie

It's not, everyone has different tastes and likes. Like, actually, I went walking with my friend this morning and I love a sound bath. I love a sound bath. I even have sound bowls. And she, like, a sound bath is like her idea of death. She's like, it sounds like chocolate nails. I hate it so much. It's like the worst thing ever. And I had a sound bath this weekend. I was like, would you like to not come to this with me? I got everyone at my house. And it was like so funny. It's like, just know anything. Like, and it also like means nothing about us as friends either. Like, we have like very opposite tastes in many things. This is like a dear friend of mine. I spent a lot of time with her, but she's like, I would rather like pull my eyeballs out than do this thing with you. And I was like, I know. I'm just inviting you just to let you know that I'm doing it. Cause I know you don't want to go. Like, I often tell her about these. I'm like, I'm inviting a bunch of friends to do this, but not you, because it's okay. And like, there's other things, like she like wants like, she's like me to get like repairing sweaters and knitting. And I'm like, that like, to me, like, not for me, nothing wrong with that. It's just like not what I want to spend my time doing. And understanding that like, it also doesn't, that's the other thing is like often, we want someone else to validate that this is like a good thing for you to like, or something like that. I can love her and she can love, actually, she once told me she would never play tennis with me cause I'm not good enough to play with her. Which is not wrong. Like she's all much better than like, but I understand that. Like that doesn't mean that someone doesn't like you or that like you are broken. Like just like people have different things that they're interested. Once you allow that for yourself, you allow that for other people. It's like the world just becomes a lot sweeter because you don't need someone else to validate that. Like what you're doing is right. You know, that's like one of the things I see a lot in the physician online groups with like physician moms will be like, I'm going to make this decision in my life. Let's vote 20,000 of you. Is this the right decision? Like these people don't know you. They don't know your values. They don't know anything about you. Only, you know, if that's the right decision for you and, and every decision, it has to be in context in the sense of who you are. I also feel that way about like financial stuff, like a lot of like the financial coaching world, like people want to cookie cut her way. Like you've got to talk to people like, what are your goals? What are your financial goals? Where, what is your, where do you start off from? Where are you trying to go? What is your plan for retirement? Like what do you want your things to look like? Those have got to be nuanced conversations, personal view. There is no cookie cutter right answer in life on what you should be doing.

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Melissa Parsons

I mean, it would be so much easier and so much more boring. Yeah.

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Shideh Shafie

Like a lot easier though and be like this is how you do it. But the truth is I'm sure this is true almost all your clients, it's definitely true of my clients, is like they've already gotten all the check marks of like the things that make their life right. They have nice car, they have the kids, they have the dog, they go on vacation, and yet there's some more stuff in there right like they've already done the checklist stuff right like most of them.

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Melissa Parsons

Yeah. Yeah. And they can't figure out why since they have checked all the boxes, they're happy.

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Shideh Shafie

Because they're not playing tennis and they've never visited Rhode Island, that's probably the underlying cause. We don't know. No, I'm only kidding. No, it's because you fix it out. What is it that I want? You have this one precious, beautiful life and you can do with it whatever you want, right? And it doesn't... And like, whatever you want is okay, right? Some people... I'm a massive extrovert. I love being out, like send me to a gala. I don't have to know a single person there, put me in a pretty dress and like send me out on the town. I'm in. Like, I'm the one person in that room. I'll make fun of it. If you asked me to like knit in a room for two days by myself, I'll die. Yeah, I need human interaction, like a cozy fireplace and like delicious fondue. I'll get bored like I don't I that's not how my but like I have my friend Christine would love that like to like sit and knit in a cozy fireplace read a book have like delicious fondue she'd love that.

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Melissa Parsons

Everything but the knitting sounds amazing to me in that just because I don't know how to knit. Yeah, I don't want to learn. Too funny.

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Shideh Shafie

I'd rather be at a gala and that's okay. Like there's not bad or good. It's just like, and also I can't forever be a gala. So I do need like a few days where I'm like, you know, I need to be by myself. I need time to rest, but you get to decide that. And no one else knows the right balance for you.

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Melissa Parsons

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think going back to what we were saying about loneliness, I think once you kind of figure this stuff out, when you are alone, it doesn't feel like loneliness anymore. It's more like I'm enjoying my own company, I'm enjoying my solitude, and I'm enjoying this time to recharge so that I can, for me at least, and I know for you too, so I can go out and do the next amazing extroverted thing. But yeah, needing to have that balance. And it might be different for everybody who's listening. And like you were saying, having only one life that we know of, right? And knowing that it's wild and precious and that I think the biggest gift that you can give yourself is getting to know yourself on such a deep level that you figure out, oh, this is like what I love about me. This is what I love about my life. And I want to have more of this and less of that other stuff that other people told me was important or society purported to be important.

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Shideh Shafie

Totally. And I, you know, like, even these conversations, I have these conversations a lot with men too. It's really interesting. Sometimes they'll be like, Oh, this is like not going the way it should be going. I was like, especially some what? And he was like, you know, like, I wasn't that nice to my child because of this. And I was like, well, let's, let's like dig into that. Like, why were you not nice to your child? And I went, well, I thought it's like more important that he honors this commitment rather than like, whatever. And I was like, Oh, please. So like, what is the lesson? And like, then he's like, Oh, wait, yeah, you're right. I like stuck to my own values there. And it's like, it's really important. I think for your listeners, like to think about like, you don't have to go all in right away. But what you could do is like, the next time you feel like a little dread is something you have to do. Just like notice and what, who told me I had to do it? Where am I having to do it? Or do I want to do it? Right? Or is this something that like is hard to do, but I really want to do, like, or it's really important for me that I do it. Like, my son had a bunch of surgeries in his first year of life. It was really hard. But I wanted to go to every appointment. I wanted to be part of it. And it had it did it needed to be done. But it wasn't like I, like, I could have had just my husband go. I could have had my mom and my husband go. I could have had a nanny until ago. But like, no, I was I didn't want to miss a single appointment, even though it was hard. It was arduous. It was like heartbreaking at times. It was important for me to be there because I it was a value and a lot and knowing that this is like a very important concept that I teach a lot is like value and stress are like tightly interlinked. Our stress comes from places where we have a value placed on the outcome and whatever. And so like for my son, obviously with this health, that was it was stressful, but I wanted to be there. And so even just changing the story. But then, you know, in COVID, we had that whole break where suddenly everything was taken away. And so then we got to reexamine like, do I want to reengage with this thing? Or do I not want to but you get to ask yourself that the next thing I feel like dread about doing something like do I have to do this? To do this? Is there part of it that I can let go? Right? And how can I do it different? Is there a way that I can alleviate this from my to do list?

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Melissa Parsons

Yeah, let's not need to have another pandemic for you to pair things out of your life that no longer makes sense.

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Shideh Shafie

And just pray around with it, it's so fun. And sometimes you take things out and you're like, oh no, I want this back. But cooking for me was something like that. Like when I started my business, I hired out all the cooking and I hated it. Not because the food was bad, the food was great, but it was like, I miss cooking, I like the process of like chopping vegetables is like a very processing thing for me, I love it. So I got that back and I was like, oh no, I think three nights in the week, I definitely wanna cook, maybe four, we'll do one night where somebody else cuts.

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Melissa Parsons

Mm-hmm. Well, and I think what people don't realize is it took you making the decision to have somebody else cook for you for you to come to that conclusion. Like you might have never had that opportunity to make that decision and you could still be resenting cooking for your family three nights of the week or however many nights you said, I forgot. But like, you know, it's, it's like, Oh, no, wait, I don't want to resent this because it's actually something that I really enjoy doing.

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Shideh Shafie

Yeah. And I'll never do Instacart because I love the grocery store. Like I know that about myself. I love all the people in the grocery store. I love touching the things. I love the grocery store.

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Melissa Parsons

Well, I was going to say, we went to visit Shideh this summer in Rhode Island and she's right. It's an amazing place. I agree with her about it. And she took us to her favorite Whole Foods and introduced us to her favorite cashier. And it was amazing. And you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So good. So good.

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Shideh Shafie

All right, is there a grad around it? We're gonna be fun about it, but you really do have to examine it to know what your feelings are.

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Melissa Parsons

Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. And trust yourself. Like if you're feeling a little bit of like niggle of like this isn't it, like trust that and listen to it and then try something different, play around with it like you say and then we can come to different conclusions.

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Shideh Shafie

And don't be a rush to get to the end. The end is death. Like, that's a very important part of life to remember. I sometimes work to be like, we're gonna be done. We're gonna be done raising these kids. I'm gonna be done having to do all this. Like, the end one is death, my friends. So, like, have some fun along the way. Like, play with it, experiment with it, do it different. And you're never gonna be done, right? Like, once you've set up your parents and they're fine now, and once you've set up your kids, something else will come along. Like, life is not smooth. It is all the bumpy roads, and you gotta ride those bumps with joy. Otherwise, they will take you out.

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Melissa Parsons

Yeah, for sure. For sure. For sure. That's such a good point. Yeah, death is the only time it is what it is. This is going to be part of my upcoming TED talk. So I'm so glad that you brought it up.

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Shideh Shafie

I can't wait.

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Melissa Parsons

Me neither

Shideh Shafie

We’ve already picked out your dress.

Melissa Parsons

Yes, we have, I haven't purchased it yet but I showed it to Jon the other day and he said it's nice. So we'll see I might have to go get it.

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Shideh Shafie

I’ll go touch the fabric to see if it’s good.

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Melissa Parsons

Make sure it's good enough for my TED talk. All right, lady, is there anything that we haven't talked about that you think we really need to touch on on sovereignty before we wrap this up?

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Shideh Shafie

I just remind people that like, you know, we don't totally want to be untethered. I think we sometimes think like, Oh my, we're going to go to the end and then I'm going to be free. And what I would remind people is remember, like, if you were on a beach for two weeks, you think like it would be really fun, but at some point, you probably would be missing some pieces of your life notice what those pieces are, and recognize that that may be places where you want attachment where but you want it in a specific way. So sovereignty is the concept of being very aware of where you want to put your focus and where you want to put your attachments, and that you may not want complete freedom. Yeah, aware of that.

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Melissa Parsons

Yeah, so good. And then I think to add to that, like, when you're coming back from vacation, like notice the things that you really are dreading and figure out how you can do less of those. So, so good, sister. All right. Well, if people want to hear more about you, if they want to follow you, how do they do that, sweet Shideh?

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Shideh Shafie

And they can go to my website, which is my name, www.shidehshafie.com, which will probably be in the show notes. Or they can also be in the show notes as well. I'm on Instagram doing all kinds of crazy things. Or LinkedIn. Same thing.

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Melissa Parsons

Okay. Thank you so much for coming on and for sharing your bright light and your craziness with my listeners. I think that they're going to love you and I just love you for coming and I love you everything about you. Bye listeners. Come back next week for another episode. See ya.

Hey - It’s still me. Since you are listening to this podcast, you very likely have followed all the rules and ticked off all the boxes but you still feel like something's missing! If you're ready to learn the skills and gain the tools you need to tiptoe into putting yourself first and treating yourself as you would your own best friend, I'm here to support you. As a general life coach for women, I provide a safe space, compassionate guidance, and practical tools to help you navigate life's challenges as you start to get to know and embrace your authentic self.

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