WoC Summit Podcast: Shirin Eskandani on How Dreaming Is Essential to Creating the Unimaginable
Welcome to Season 1 of the Womxn of Color Summit Podcast!
The Womxn of Color Summit podcast came from a desire to learn from WOC about how they are stepping into their power and embodying their life purpose while dismantling oppressive systems.
Join your hosts Harpinder Mann and Irene Lo as they support BI&WOC on their journey of self-love and soul-care by highlighting speakers who can speak to creative living. We are inherently creative beings with unlimited potential but we can forget the spark within ourselves. Creativity is an act of bravery and our hope with the podcast is to inspire BI&WOC to own their power and pursue their liberation.
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https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/womxn-of-color-summit-podcast/id1531995133
In this episode, we cover:
Expanding our definition of creativity beyond visual art & writing
Proving our worth as BIPOC through hard work and perfectionism just to be accepted in spaces we aren’t seen
How to begin to dream and find your true sense of self-worth again
Work and living, for BIWoC, can come with ease and joy
Transcript
Irene: [00:00:10] Hi, everyone, I'm Irene.
Harpinder: [00:00:13] Hi, my name is Harpender, and we are so happy to welcome Shirin Eskandani as today's speaker for the art of Creative Living: Womxn of Color Summit. Before we get started, please let everyone know who you are and what you do.
Shirin: [00:00:28] Hi, everyone, so thank you so much for having me. I'm really honored to be here. So I'm Shirin! I am a transformational coach, life coach, and the work that I do is what I call Inner Compass Work.
I think that within all of us is a perfect compass and that when we're using a compass where we are our own North Star, we create lives that feel really aligned, lives that are no longer grounded in shoulds, the supposed to’s, judgment fear, but really lives that are the fullest expression of what we want to be doing in the world. And I find that with the incredible women that I work with, the compass that most of us are using is one that's really navigated by fear.
A lot of fear, a lot of limiting beliefs, conditioned beliefs, inherited beliefs, and that when we do that, we can create lives that really look fulfilling on the outside, look great from the outside, but aren't really a reflection of who we are and don't feel fulfilling to us. So the work is really about letting go of that compass, realigning it so that we become our own north stars again. So that's a very short, succinct way of saying the work that I do.
Harpinder: [00:01:48] That's so powerful. I think that sometimes we do start living our lives according to others’ beliefs, through society's beliefs, and you kind of forget what's in true alignment for ourselves. So I think the work that you do is just so powerful, and I'm just a huge fan of yours. So thank you for being on this. And before we jump into the meat of this, how are you doing today?
Shirin: [00:02:17] I'm doing well. You know, it's been very weird with COVID, right? If you work from home, if you have your own business already, the line between your sacred space, which is your home, your workspace and the space that you and your partner share and all the things have become really kind of enmeshed and entangled. And so for me right now, I think I'm doing a way better job at it because I'm feeling very alive and a line today, is that last week I really kind of was like, “all right, I need to create boundaries.” Whether it's physical boundaries, time boundaries when it comes to my work, my free time, the time I spend with my partner. Because y'all, my gym, my office, and where me and my husband eat are like, in the same space! This is not healthy.
So that's what I think has been a big thing for me of being like, All right, girl. Like, You need to figure this out. So that's been making a huge difference.
Irene: [00:03:18] Yeah, yeah, I totally relate. My living room, my kitchen, is all one room and it's like, I have to kick out my partner! [Laughs] He's on the deck right now for us to do.
So I'm really glad to hear that you're feeling aligned today. And we're asking all of our speakers this: what does it mean to be creative to you?
Expanding our definition of creativity
Shirin: [00:03:47] I love this question so much, because for 10+ years of my life, since I was six years old, I wanted to be an opera singer. And so for 10+ years, my professional— my job, my career— where I made my income was from being a singer. And it wasn't until about five years ago that I switched over to coaching, and I've had my coaching business now for.. I just celebrated my third year anniversary.
And so I think our definition of creativity is really… really kind of, what's the word I'm looking for? It's so specific, it's so tight, like we think creativity is drawing and singing and writing. And I remember when I switched over to coaching, I was really, really worried and a lot of people were like, “Well, you're creative? How are you going to be creative running this business?” And I've really discovered through the course of creating my business that there is so much creativity in everything we do and especially as a business owner, just having your business as a creator because creativity to me is really you being in touch with your intuition, with your highest self, with your innate wisdom and doing things that feel really good to you. Doing it intentionally, doing it, deliberately. Doing it in the way that is your highest sense of self expression, right? So I think that I love this question because I have this very myopic view of what creativity is, but we are all creative beings. We’re always creating, whether that creation is our lunch, whether that creation is a launch we’re doing for our business. I like how I just put that into words!
Honestly, like all of those things are creative, and I just think in general, we have very restrictive definitions of these really beautiful things like creativity, purpose. Like all of these things, it's just so strict and it makes it feel like, if we're not, you know, Michelangelo or Toni Morrison, then we're not being creative beings. And I just don't see that. And so it's really for us to reclaim what creativity means to us, and that truly is for me, you listening to what feels best and doing things in a way that is you expressing yourself.
Harpinder: [00:06:15] You know, I feel like that's one reason me and Irene kind of came together on the summit, because, for us, like a true expression of creativity is when it's coming from the spirit. When we're really listening to our highest self and we're like, this is what I want to create, and just that process of the idea to whatever the product is like, whether that's a business or a poem or a drawing. If you think about creative creativity in that sense, it's just so powerful to actually see that end result.
Irene: [00:06:48] Yeah. And so often we do downplay our creative impulse and we think it's not good enough or it's somehow unattainable. Like, unless we are Michelangelo, we can't call ourselves a drawer. Or if I'm just a business woman, I'm not a creative person. And that is a common theme that a lot of the speakers have touched on, which is that we need to expand our definition of creativity.
Shirin: [00:07:21] One hundred percent, one hundred percent. Because really, I think creativity, you know, there's a quote I'm going to butcher and even know who says it, but it's that “As a human, our purpose is to create,” right? And I think we all intrinsically know this, but if our definition of creation is something that's so restrictive, then we feel like we're not living in alignment. But really all of us are from the moment we wake up, we're being creative. And so I love that everyone is kind of really talking on this point of creativity is expansive. It's big, and we need to really change that definition we have for ourselves.
Harpinder: [00:08:00] From your work and working with your clients, what have you seen? Say, particularly for women of color, what holds us back from pursuing our dreams and— it’s a two-part question— and what do you think we can do to start trusting ourselves again?
Shirin: [00:08:17] Oh, this is such a great question! I mean, this is kind of the crux and the base of the work that I do because I think that as womxn of color, I think BIPOC, we have some circumstances. They're all different, right? But there is this shared thing of trauma, right? And there is this beautiful quote by Adrian Ray Brown that I quote often in the work that I do, which is, “Losing our imagination is a symptom of trauma.”
And for me, imagination is the starting point to possibility imagination as a start point of creativity. You know, a lot of the work I do is allowing my clients, the people I get to work with to feel comfortable with dreaming again. Because dreaming is an essential component to creating the unimaginable, right. And that's what I think, you know.
I think a lot of us as women of color, we're living lives that were imagined for us by like our parents, you know. Like in my culture, become an engineer, a doctor or like,get your MBA. Like, that's the craziest one. Like what? And also, as you know, we have the trauma that we have experienced, our lived trauma, but we also have the trauma that has been passed down to us that we've inherited from generation to generation, right? So I think inherently, it's hard for us to feel safe with dreaming, with hoping, you know, doing things that are different, and if we're not allowing ourselves to do that, I just feel like we're really cutting off a really important part of just being a human. Because we're all born with these things that we want to create, that we want to bring forth into the world. And if we allow the trauma, if we allow the limited beliefs to dictate what we do in our lives, we're always going to feel like we're seventy five percent of who we could be.
And seventy five is a very generous percentage I'm giving there, you know?
Proving our worth through hard work as BIPOC, immigrants, and children of immigrants
And so that's what I found with a lot of my BIPOC clients, is that one thing with BIPOC clients hard working as fuck people, right? Because we have learned from a very young age, whether it's because of that kind of guilt, whether it was sad or not sad of our parents immigrating or coming to another country, of trying to be this kid who is doing it all because of that guilt from our parents. But also going into spaces where we aren't seen at all, and so we find our worth, our acceptance in being incredibly hard workers, people pleaser, perfectionist, high achievers, right?
So I was— and this was my story as well, I knew how to get shit done, but I wasn't getting the shit done that I wanted to get done and I was doing it in a way that was so unkind to myself that when I finally got the thing done, I was burnt out. I was exhausted. I was miserable. I mean, that's one of the reasons why I left my singing career, was that while I was living the quote unquote dream, I was doing it in such a way that it may be burned out and I started to really resent singing and so the work for me, especially with BIPOC clients, is to show you that work does not have to be hard. That ease and joy is part of the process.
We do not trust ease, we do not trust joy. I think as humans, but certainly as BIPOC, because we've lived in environments where when things got easy, then something happened and we were like, “Oh shit, I should have been aware of that. I should have known,” right? And so, it's all these things that come together where it's like, you know, when we talk about— I feel like I'm talking about so many things. But you know, when we talk about manifesting shit, we can manifest. Like BIPOC damn, we manifest a lot of shit, but it's often not the shit we want.
We will our way into lives that we don't want to be living. And we do it in a way that is really unhealthy, unsustainable and we can't— like we're strong. But the resilience, the sustainability, the thriving, all that's gone right? And so it's these are all learned patterns we've learned in seeing our parents, our mothers, our aunts, our grandmothers, right?
Oh my gosh. Sorry, there's thunder here. There was literally a bolt of thunder.
Irene: [00:12:57] I heard that!
Shirin: [00:13:00] That was like the ancestors being like, Yes!
So yeah, it's really taking like again, we have all of these beautiful ingredients to creating so much beauty in the world, but it's kind of using a little less hard work, a little more imagination, a little more joy and ease to create the things that we want to create.
So it's a very long answer.
Irene: [00:13:20]Yeah, I love that.
Shirin: [00:13:25] Yeah, but the second part, right, the second part, which is how can we kind of let go of those? I mean, that's a really deep question. But for me, a lot of it comes to what are the beliefs that I'm holding on to, right, what are the beliefs I have in my life? And what are the ones I no longer want to hand down, right?
If we're talking about epigenetics and beliefs that we have, it's about letting go of those things. And so that's where, like, the work that we're all doing, I think, as healers, as self-wor, and self-growth is really about changing those beliefs. Because beliefs really create and dictate the trajectory of our lives. So I mean, there's a lot of things I could say here. I could, but I think when it really comes down to it, it's the beliefs that we really have to untangle and see which ones we want to hold on to, which ones we want to shift and which ones you like need to shed and let go of.
Irene: [00:14:28] And once you have this realization of, “Ok, these beliefs no longer serve me,” what do you, where do you go from there? Like, when you've stifled your creativity so long, how do you even begin to to dream?
How to begin to dream and find your true sense of self-worth again
Shirin: [00:14:50] So for me, one thing that I work on, one thing that I do with all my clients is— I love affirmations, or mantras, or whatever you want to call them. But you know, in the world of self-growth, there are a lot of affirmations that people are throwing around that are really hard to believe. Right. So things like, you know, you'll see it on Instagram, like, “You are worthy, you are enough, you're beautiful, you are loved.” And while all of these are incredible, if you have had 30, 40, 20 + years of saying, “I'm not worthy, I'm not enough. I have to work hardm My worth is contingent on how well I do things.” You can't just throw those things out overnight.
And so for me, with beliefs is, I call those like Mount Everest beliefs, which are beliefs we work to. But we first have to get to the basecamp. So it's about picking a better feeling thought, which is a thought that makes you feel better, but that you can believe in this moment. So for instance, let's say you want to believe that “I am enough,” but right now you're thinking “I'm not enough. I have to people-please in order to be enough.” Maybe the thought is, “I accept that it's hard for me to feel like I'm enough, but every day I'm committed to finding my worth to finding my value.”
Things like that make such a huge shift, right, when we can start saying things to ourselves that make us feel a little bit better, that take us towards the thoughts we want to be thinking. That's actually like, you know, when I say mindset work, that's what mindset work is, right? It's changing the script. But we can't change the script overnight. And I think that's one of the really hard things that I kind of have a lot of issue with in the world of coaching and the world of self growth and development, which are these really, you know, like mantras are very powerful, right? And we just don't, I don’t think we fully understand the power that's in words and that words do not change overnight. We really have to work towards them.
Irene: [00:17:01] It's so true, it's so true. And when you were talking, I was just thinking, it's almost like when you first start doing yoga and everyone wants to do a headstand, but it's like, you don't start from there. You build your way up to get to balancing on your head.
Shirin: [00:17:24] Exactly.
Irene: [00:17:25] And yeah. And like, it's true. Like, when you say, “I'm worthy, I'm loved,” it almost does become meaningless for people, like for myself. I would struggle with that. Even for me, I can't even— I'm so skeptical of that saying. But what you say, it's so much more approachable and it's so much more loving and caring of where we are.
Shirin: [00:17:48] Yeah, I've been working a lot with clients around acceptance thoughts, which are like, “I accept it's hard for me to acknowledge I'm worthy,” or “I accept it's hard for me to see my worth, and/but…” And those things, I feel, are so powerful because we're not denying or negating a part of us, right? We can't, you know, you're never going to get rid of that negative voice in your head. You're never going to get rid of fear. You're never going to get rid of doubt and insecurity. But we cannot ignore it. You know, awareness is so incredibly powerful, and I see this a lot with clients with like, “I don't want awareness, like, I want to just get rid of it!” And we can never get rid of it, but we can learn how to navigate when it pops up. And I think that's what these things help us do is like, how do I want to change the script, but how can I change the script today that's actually going to resonate with me, and that's when we actually start to change, right? So. Because when you said, “I am worthy, I am loved,” like I've done so much work that I can say that in certain areas of my life and believe it. One hundred percent. But on day one, like, what girl? What are you talking about? Like, that's just bullshit!
[Everyone laughs]
Harpinder: [00:19:08] Yeah, you know, I even feel like sometimes, when people say follow your dreams or follow your passions, there’s just this immediate, just like, “Yeah, maybe for you, but that's not possible for me.” And I like what you're saying where it is this gradual process. You start taking baby steps where you first say, OK, I accept that I don't think that I can follow my dreams. That's where that baby step towards finally, maybe three years down the line, you're like, I can follow my dreams. But it is a process because I think some of these thoughts, like you're saying, and the negative thoughts are so ingrained that it's not going to be this overnight process of, I wake up and I'm like, Oh my God, I'm the best person in the world. I love myself. Yes, it is such a process.
Shirin: [00:20:01] It's a process. And I think another thing that I would add to that too, so if this is something that really is resonating with someone who's watching this right and you're like, OK, cool, like I got this this worth or this enough ness or beauty or love. The next step is to look for proof of it. And I remember the very first coach I worked with was a relationship and love coach because I was like a Hot Mess McGee when it came to relationships. And one of our first assignments was, you know, my belief around men was— because I'm hetero, I'm cis— and it was there are no good men out there. And so, you know, your mind is super smart and it doesn't want you to feel disconnected from what you're thinking. So your mind is going to look for proof of whatever you're thinking. Whatever you're thinking, you know, it's like when you hear a new— you learn a new word and you see it everywhere? That's the same thing we do with our beliefs, right? Your mind is looking for it. And so one of the most powerful things we did because you can change how your mind starts to look for things, is to literally say, she said, “For the next 30 days, you're going to look for five to 10 instances of proof that there are, that there's love out there, that there's good men out there, that there's loving relationships out there.”
And at first, I remember... I live in New York City, you know, and there's so many people here. I might be on the subway and I was like, All right, I'm going to look for this. And it was literally like, Where's Waldo? Like, I could not find Waldo for the life of me, right? I was like, I can't find it, but like, I was so committed to this. And then by the end of 30 days, I was seeing proof of good men, love, loving relationships like all around me, and so I would really encourage that to if there is something you really want to believe. Start looking for what I call proof-of-concept. Start. Whether it's people you know personally or situations you know, or whether it's fictional, whether it's a magazine like, I always look, I don't know Chrissy Teigen and John Legend?
Irene & Harpinder: [00:22:04] Yeah!
Shirin: [00:22:07] But I'm like, #relationship goals! You know what I'm saying? That is great. So honestly, look for proof of concept. Look for the proof of what you desire. Yeah.
Harpinder: [00:22:16] The videos or the Instagram Story that is of your husband are hilarious. I absolutely love them. There was something last week where your hair was a certain way, and he just shows you this like picture, and I don't know who that was, and it was just the whole interaction. I was like, This is just such a loving, like, hilarious relationship. So I think it's like the proof of it right there!
Shirin: [00:22:44] I seriously manifested that man, though, because of all of that work I did, I really like... Our relationship is not like, you know, some people are like, is that real? Like, our relationship is real. It's just beyond what I could have imagined. And that's because of all of this work I did. I didn't settle. I didn't compromise. And now we have this beautiful relationship. So yeah. Thank you so much for saying that. Thank you.
Harpinder: [00:23:11] Yeah. No, it's... I love it. Thank you for sharing that. It's just such, so great just, to see examples of loving relationships like that. So that's really great. Another question that I had was: for BIWOC, anyone doing this inner work on this path, how can a transformational coach help them with the process?
Shirin: [00:23:39] So what I love about transformational coaching is that while coaching is very goal oriented, inherently, it's very kind of that masculine energy of like, let's do something! Transformational coaching has that kind of feminine side to it, which is, I always describe it as in this way, which is there's three versions of you in a room. There's a version of you that you are today on this side of the room, and across the room is the version of you that you desire to be. Whether that's a person who has certain things, or whether it's a person who thinks a certain way or feels a certain way. And in the middle of the room, the third person is the version of you that always gets in the way.
And so in transformational coaching, the idea is that we really can't get across the room or we can't do it in a healthy way if we're not really addressing what's going on with that third person in the middle, right? And that third person is usually fear, doubt, insecurity, those parts of you that just hold you back from doing the things that you really want to do. And so, we do this beautiful work where we honor the past, but we don't stay in the past. We acknowledge that's what happened. We honor that's what happened. But we create tools in the present for you to get to where you want to be in the future. So that's what I really love about transformational coaching, because coaching to me sometimes is a little too goal oriented and it's just like, “Well, just do the thing!” And I'm like, “Well, I know how to do the thing.” Obviously, I'm like a first generation immigrant kid, like, I was born to do things. But how do I do it in a way where it doesn't feel difficult? It just feels like this beautiful process. When I get to the end, I can acknowledge how great things are. So that for me is the beauty of transformational coaching.
Working and living, for BIWoC, can come with ease & joy
Irene: [00:25:26] I really love what you say about working with ease and working with joy because I feel that, yeah, like you say, like a lot of us can do the thing, but how can we do it with the right mindset, where we don't feel like we're struggling, we’re fighting against ourselves?
Shirin: [00:25:44] Yeah, I think that's a big part of the work that I had to do with myself. And now the work that I do with clients is ease and joy are what make this sustainable. Right now, I think with the incredible movements that are happening in the United States and globally, I see a lot of us putting in the work right? Hopefully! But if we're not doing it with that sense of ease and joy, we cannot be resilient. And what we're being called to do right now, whether it's within our communities or just in our personal lives, are things that are not just like a one month to month thing like these are long term endeavors that we are really going into. And so ease and joy have to be part of that because we cannot be resilient, like there's just no way to be resilient without that.
And I always think of, you know, nature to me again, Adrian Marie Brown, her book Emergent Strategy, Pleasure Activism, they’re just bibles for me. She talks a lot about looking to nature as an example of just creation and how to live. And you think about these huge migrations that birds and butterflies make like my husband and I were watching this butterfly documentary where these butterflies fly from Mexico to Canada, like, holy crap, right? But they talk so much about how they create ease in that migration, where they like, they flap their wings and they find like the nice current and they they float on it for a little bit and they slap it again. And I just feel like sometimes we're just always flapping our goddamn wings, and we cannot go those distances if we're constantly doing that. And so we have to learn, and it has to be a learned behavior because we have not seen it exemplified for so many of us as BIPOC, right?
So these are things that we have to learn how to do and trust as well. Again, like we talked about before, ease and joy aren't things we fully trust. And so how to reframe our relationship with those two things?
Harpinder: [00:27:56] That really resonates with me. My mom has plantar fasciitis on the bottom of her feet. Just happened two weeks ago, and I went home to go visit her. She was like, So what can I do? How do I make this go away? And I was like, So you rest. I was like, you sit down on the couch and she's like, No, that's not possible. She's like, I have this to do, and that's to do. I need to do work and like, how will I get money? I was just like...Whoa. And I was like, I've learned a lot of the way that I move through life from you! Where, if I'm not hustling and continually flapping my wings, I will never get there. And that's the belief that I hold in watching her. I was like, OK, mom, sit down. We're about to, we're about to have a conversation about a different way for you to heal right now.
But it is interesting, for myself, to finally like in that moment, there's a little bit of recognition, but I had it a few years ago in the way that I work, where I was like, I am just flapping my wings until little bits are just like falling off and I'm just going to deteriorate if I continue in this way. So that really resonates with me and I think also amongst my network of BIWOC, where that's just the way that we operate. We feel like if we're not continually hustling, then we're not going to get what we want. Yeah.
Shirin: [00:29:20] And I think it's again, it's learned behavior. It's also the behavior we've seen, right? And I don't think it's like, I'm not going to sit here and say hey.. as a BIWOC, that's a silly thing to believe. Like, No, we've lived it. We've experienced it, whether it's in our workplaces, whether it's at school, wherever, that is right. But if we're going to take those beliefs and apply them to then how we create, it's not sustainable. So I love the work that I do in the spiritual context, but I love applying science to what I already know to be true or spiritually. So when it comes to, for instance, one big thing around enjoying is celebrating. Acknowledging, savoring, celebrating the things that we're doing. And what I found across the board, what I know to be true, even for myself, is that we do not celebrate or acknowledge our accomplishments and we're accomplishing things every day, right?
We're waiting for like, really big things to celebrate or we're just overlooking all the other things. And we do that because of a myriad of reasons, right? Like, we think we should have done it earlier. We have all these other things we need to do or we think we got it because out of sheer luck, like it's just so many things, right. We talk ourselves out of our accomplishments. But so what ends up happening, so when you achieve something through hard work and then you celebrate your body releases dopamine, the feel good chemicals. And so it starts equating hard work with feeling really good at the end.
But when we don't acknowledge and we don't celebrate, right, we don't get that beautiful dopamine rush, and our bodies start equating hard work with nothing. And so that's when burnout happens because the body literally is like, what is the point of all of this work and stress, because there's no payoff in the end. Right? It's like, it's literally we know this on a spiritual level, but really, when you look at it on a physical, scientific, chemical level, your body is, of course, like I think the body manifests. It tells us it has so much wisdom, but it's also like… I need to know that there is some sort of benefit to me at the end of this, and so we have to make celebration a part of our day to day. And I always tell clients celebration doesn't have to be big. It can literally be like, I'll finish something like today. Actually, finished something and I got up and I just said, I'm so proud of you. You did that. That's it! It can literally be as small as that. Or like, put on some music and dance or tell your partner. But we have to start doing that more and more. Or else we're just going to be going through a cycle of high productivity and then burnout and just on repeat. Yeah.
Irene: [00:32:16] Just letting that sink in right now,
Shirin: [00:32:22] It's it's really, really hard with enjoying, I just think It's hard for us to acknowledge how well we're doing because again, we've been taught to motivate ourselves through self-criticism, right, as opposed to self kindness and compassion. And so it's totally reframing how we do everything, but it's so worth the work and it's so worth the investment when we can do that.
Irene: [00:32:51] Yeah, and your life story is definitely an example of creative living and being brave and trusting yourself, so thank you so much for sharing all your wonderful tips. I just want to ask you, how can people connect with you?
Shirin: [00:33:13] So they can find my work on my web page, which is wholehearted-coaching.com, and also on Instagram @wholeheartedcoaching. And I also have a podcast: Wholehearted Coaching The Podcast.
Irene: [00:33:30] Thanks so much again for this great interview. We know everyone that tunes then is going to find this super enlightening and super inspirational. Thanks so much, Sharon, and thanks to everyone for tuning in.
Shirin: [00:33:44] Thank you so much for having me, ladies.
Harpinder: [00:33:47] So wonderful. Thank you. Take care!