Living with Intention with Shanna Kelty

Welcome to the Wellness Sherpa Podcast where we engage with passionate leaders, holistic thinkers and disruptors who courageously share their personal journey, mission and wisdom with you. Together we create a safe space to empower you to live your best, most vital life. Thanks for being here. All right, well, I am so thrilled to have the lovely Shanna Kelty here today. I found Jana just happenstance through social media and I actually really liked a lot of the things you were posting and really how you try to educate people. And so I'm so excited to have you here today. Thank you, Jen.

I'm super honored to be here. Thank you.

Yeah, thanks. Thanks so much. So, I mean, you were a nurse.

I was, yeah.

And so tell, you know, tell the audience like what happened and how did you end up making such a big shift in your career? Because this is something that comes up with a lot of people and especially during COVID I think I read a study that had 33% of people left their jobs and either started their own company, their own business, et cetera. So tell us a little bit about, about your journey.

Yeah, so it was kind of a slow process. I've been in. Well, I was a registered nurse for over 20 years and I think my one foot out started. My oldest son just turned 13 and so it started with his birth. It was kind of a nightmare and it was, I was just a good, very obedience nurse and I just believed everything I was told at that time. Never had any reason to question, you know, the medical system or, or any of my practices until I had him. And I won't go into that whole story, but he was born at 29 weeks and the whole journey was just one eye opening thing after the other with the medical system. And, and probably the biggest piece of that was he was in the NICU for two months and when he was discharged, they said, oh, we need to give him the Hep B vaccine. And I worked in adult critical care and emergency medicine. I, I was not familiar with the vaccine schedule at all. Never had any reason to question it. Didn't know that anybody ever questioned it or that not vaccinating was even a thing. Um, but just as a nurse and as a, I like to say a thinking person, it didn't make sense, you know, this little tiny, like two pound baby. You're gonna what? And so I'm like, why, why on earth would he need a hep B shot?

And so, and hep typically is transmitted through needle or through sexually transmitted transmission. Right. Sex.

That. That's right. And so as a nurse, I had been given, you know, a hep B vaccine, and I took it willingly because I, you know, I was considered high risk, but I didn't think he was high risk. And so that started my just going down that rabbit hole, which is another story. But the more I went down it, the more. The more I started to question and the more I saw conflicts of interest and you follow the money trail and. And so just over time, became more and more not fully in alignment with my job. And then like so many people with COVID that was very eye opening in a deeper way. And so. But I'm a nurse, right. It's hard. Like, that's your job. What are you gonna do? You just gonna quit? And so I was kind of forced out. I would have loved to have left earlier, but I didn't really feel like I had another option. I had looked for other things, but nothing really. Nothing really panned out. But I'm in Oregon, and they mandated the vaccine, and I just wasn't willing to participate.

Amazing. So your journey actually started long before the pandemic, where you started researching and reading and really recognized you had a disconnect between what you were doing in your career and what you started to believe. So you started shifting your belief system.

I did, yeah. That was 2011. And, you know, the more I. The more I dug in, like, the greater that gap was and the harder it was to show up at work.

Yeah. So you. You were invited to leave your job.

Yes. Nice way to say it.

Nice way to say it. Because, you know, I mean, you know, and this again, I mentioned this to you. A lot of people were struggling with the same thing because at some point, they congruent with how they were showing up in their job and what they really started to believe. I was in banking for 29 years. I had the same, you know, same epiphany of, okay, what is going on here? And really started to question, you know, why was I doing it? But you're right. The paycheck kind of keeps you stuck.

It does. And so many people felt back in a corner and like they didn't have a choice. And maybe they. I mean, that's a personal decision, but right for me, I just. I just felt so strongly that we don't know what it is. There's not enough research on it. I need my paycheck. But I also have one body. I have this one body, so I can't risk it. I. I trust that I'm smart enough to go figure it out and get another job. Yeah.

So you, you left and, and so what are you up to now?

Yeah. So as far as work.

Yeah. Just in. Yeah. In general with, you know, your decisions and where, you know, how you're leading through your life now.

Yeah. So I, I completely walked away and it was such a blessing in disguise because I feel like I'm in such alignment with just my passion and like my true north and I'm where I'm supposed to be. I wake up excited to work and I, I leverage social media. I, you know, I have a platform there, like how we connected and to me it's just, it's not forcing my opinion on people. That's not my goal. It's just to, it's to educate and to inspire and empower others to, you know, we're all on this journey. Right. Like, we're all trying to figure it out and, and I learn every day and I'm always trying to do better and hopefully I'm a little bit better today than yesterday. And I know something I didn't know. And so that's my goal is to just inspire other people to, you know, don't, don't do this or that because I tell you to, but also don't do it because the guy in the white lab coat said to.

Right.

Do your own research. Empower yourself, trust yourself, Trust your gut.

Yeah, that's where I wanted to go is what are the lessons that you've taken with you that have changed your life as a result of that shift? Because 20 years is a long time to be in a role and I mean you are vital and vibrant and I mean you can just see that you're happy and you exude joy. So what are the lessons? What, what life changing pieces of information have you taken with you? And I think you've shared some of them, but would just love for you to share a few more.

Oh, goodness. I think it's just trusting, trusting your intuition and it doesn't mean that everybody can go and quit their job. Right. Like, we need nurses, we need, we need all the different profess. But I think we so often tend to want to play it safe. And so I like taking risk and trusting your path and trusting that like you're created for more. And I mean for me, I, I do miss a lot of nursing, but I also feel like I'm helping people in ways I was never able to as a nurse without the restraints. I had.

Reach a lot more people, you know, over social media. Right. And you do spend a lot of time Educating with a lot of things, which I love about that, especially around children. You're the mom of three children, so how did your, how did your family take the shift? Because my guess is they get to see you more. Yeah, yeah.

It's been a huge blessing for my family. I mean, I don't miss anything with my kids. I get to be the room mom for my first grader at school this year. You know, they're, I'm able to put them in private school now. Couldn't afford that as a nurse. So it's been a, it's been a huge blessing. And they don't fully get it. You know, I don't think they realize when they were little, I remember them tugging and, like, crying, and when they would see me put my scrubs on and they would, they knew that that represented my absence. Right. They knew when they saw me get ready, I was going to be gone for 13 hours. But now it's been a while, and I don't even think they remember. You know, it's just, it's just their norm. I'm just home.

Yeah. So how do you inspire others? Where do you get your own inspiration and how do you inspire others?

I mean, I like to just lead by example, and I hope that that's inspiring and just being true to yourself. And I try to lead that way. And I, I can't even remember what book it was. I read a lot, but I remember reading this was a big moment, a big shift for me, and a statistic that I read, I don't remember that the exact number, but it, it was something like, on average, less than 10 people are going to cry at your funeral. And, and then the number one, like, predicting factor of whether or not the people at your funeral go graveside to see you become one with the earth was the weather. So this rain going. And so I just thought, gosh, we make so many decisions based on, like, expectations and, like, how we're raised. And I was raised very much like, you know, you work hard, trade time for money, you play it safe. And I'm not saying there's necessarily anything wrong with that, but just bigger thinking and like, maybe there's something else out there. And, and so I just decided to, to, to go for things. When I read that, I was like, gosh, like, nobody's coming to save me. Life is hard, right? Like, but we can choose our hard.

Yeah. And I, I, I'm not even sure I buy into the fact that life is hard. I mean, I think we've been programmed into a lot of belief systems that the biggest thing is we are all just masterful creators of our lives. And it's all choices. Right. And playing it safe is a choice, and taking risks is a choice. And we often will stay in the familiar because it feels safe. Right. But we're not going to grow and change staying in the safe, and we're not going to light up the world staying in the safe.

So talk to me about that.

Okay.

Because I 100% agree with that. Yes, We. We stay safe. Even we don't want discomfort. And so even if our. Even we might be comfortable in, like, a mess because we're familiar with it.

Right? Yep. I call that sitting in the dirty diaper. Sometimes we have to sit in a dirty diaper uncomfortable, but it's going to bring us into something new, and most likely something that's going to light us up and light up the people around us.

And that's another discomfort. And a lot of people won't step into that because it's scary. And the brain wants to keep you safe. Right, Right. Brain doesn't necessarily want growth. It wants to keep you away from that scary tiger. Right. It doesn't necessarily know the difference of, like, I'm on the edge of a cliff and I'm going to fall to my death, and I'm on the edge and I'm about to, like, change my whole effing life. And so it just keeps people, like, I'm just gonna stay in my little comfort zone where there's zero growth.

Right. And I think to that analogy, you're standing on the cliff. You can either fall and die or you can fly. Yeah. Right. And, you know, seeing. Seeing you like, say, okay, no, I'm going to do something different. I've been researching, studying. I'm stepping away from this. And it's changed your life for the better.

It has. Yeah. And I love my life. I love it.

Yeah. How long did it take you to make that shift from when you left nursing into what you're doing today? Was it three months, six months? How long did it take?

It was pretty immediate for me, just in the. In the field that I'm in, because I was already dabbling, you know, when I was a nurse, I was already doing this a little bit, but I. Maybe I was still scared, you know, And I. I was. It was hard to go all in, but I had friends doing what I currently do, and I'm trying to think of a better way to say it than, like, they were doing really well and they were Living their life really big and they weren't special. And so it was just like that. It just clicked. Like, gosh, they're not special, so if they can do it, I can do it. And. And it was just the push. It was, it was for me. I mean, it's different for everybody, but it was. I saw the writing on the wall, I knew the mandates were coming and I was like, I know what I have my hands on. I just have to go all in here. And I just, I wasn't willing.

Yeah, yeah. Because, you know, that is one of the biggest questions I get is how did you get out of banking and go into healing? I mean, those are pretty drastic changes. Because I have a healing practice here in North Carolina. I also run a plant stem cell company called Nature Provides. And, you know, it was gradual for me. You know, I was still working in banking and I went to a four year healing school and then I studied two years with the 13 indigenous grandmothers. Right. So I started doing all these things on vacation, in the evenings and everything else. So mine was a much longer transition. But it doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to be a long transition. But for me, I'm seeing a lot of these bridges between where people are because they're not happy in what they're doing, they're not happy in playing small, and they, they know that there's another option. It's just being willing to take that risk. It's being willing to see yourself in a different way. Right. And to know what's possible. I think that's a big one. Don't know how to get out of their own way still.

Yeah. Get out of your own way.

It's fear.

And I think it's. I think people want like a sure thing. And I, I feel like sometimes, and this is what I did, it's, we want to step out in faith and we want to know it's gonna work out. And I think sometimes it's like, maybe we gotta step out in doubt. Like maybe we don't have all the answers, but we just feel willing to do it.

Just have to be willing to do it.

You just gotta be willing to do it.

Yeah.

Like I was just gonna do it. I was just, I was just going to figure it out and I didn't care. I didn't care about the rejection. I didn't care about the fear. Was it kind of scary? Yeah, like, did I. And I do, I still love. I mean, like, this is super uncomfortable. I do uncomfortable things. I, you know, I remember when I first started sharing on Instagram, I didn't have an Instagram account and I created it and, like, taking selfies now, it's reals, but then it was selfies, and I was like, this is super weird, but you did it, but you do it anyway, right? Like, what I wanted for my family and my kids and my future and my legacy was greater than the fear of rejection, the fear of judgment.

So you're in the health and wellness space today. That's how I would, you know, how I would describe you. And yet your posts are often about, you know, like I said, about your children, about healthy eating, about ingredients in food, in vaccines, etc, what, what inspires you every day. So when you're putting a post together, what inspires you that day? Do you read something and then post or tell me a little bit about your process of inspiration?

Sometimes it's things that I read, but it's, it's. What am I consuming? And this is what I teach my team, too. It's being authentic to you.

Like, what.

If Instagram didn't exist? What am I consuming and thinking about and worrying about and trying to educate myself on? Anyway, that's what I share about. I'm always trying to do better. I'm far, far, far from perfect. Like, my kids love Chick Fil A. Like, it's a fight to get them to eat their vegetables. So I'm just. I'm just in the space of trying to do better, but without driving myself crazy with it, if that makes sense. Without perfection and giving myself grace. Like, you know, I'm a busy mom and we're just trying to do better.

So what would you say to somebody who was in your shoes from four years ago, who was looking at shifting? What would you. What would be your words of wisdom to them? I think you, you know, you've said a lot in multiple places, but if you can consolidate it, just.

Just be open to the possibility that maybe there's another path. Be open to learning. And also unlearning. I'm always unlearning things that I thought were true and, and maybe they're not true.

I think that's a really important piece. You know, trusting yourself, going ahead and being uncomfortable, taking the risk if something, you know is drawing you or pulling you. And I, I totally agree with you, Shanna. That unraveling, I, you know, you said unlearning. I call it the great unraveling is we've all, again, grown up with these beliefs and programming about, you know, this is good this is bad. You should. You know, the doctors are always right, the teacher is always right. And I think we're in a time of that not serving humanity anymore, that it's really about critical thinking. I do a lot of teaching and education, but I always tell people, do your own research. This is my research and this is what I'm offering. But take this and go make it better. Go do your own research and add to it, or come back and say, wait a minute, I found this, and that contradicts that so that we can have a conversation. And, you know, always trying to find the truth. And I think that's a big piece for you is trying to find the truth and unlearning that you can get to that.

Yeah, I love that because we are seeking the truth and uncovering things. And like, there's so many things that I thought were true. Even last year, and now I'm like, oh, shoot. You know, and so figuring it out, being open, being open to what you thought is not the way it is.

Right. Yeah. And I think that's been a big uncovering over the last four years is things are not as they seem.

They're not. Yes.

And that it's important to be curious and have critical thinking. So important.

Being curious. I'm curious about your stem cells. I worked in stem cell research.

Yeah. Well, these come from baby plants.

I love that.

They do all the same miraculous things, but they're really known as detoxifiers. So they clean up the cells, tissue, and organ in the body. And it's shocking to me because I am in the healthcare space as well, that 93% of Americans have poor metabolic health, which means we're on the way to heart issues, cancer, diabetes, some pretty major chronic issue. And that's a staggering number. I mean, we are not a third world country, and we have a lot of money as a country, and yet our health is one of the poorest in the world. In the world. And so, you know, it's time to bring that to light. And, you know, I was reading a statistic that 50% of our children have a chronic disease. 50%. It was. It was 1% 50 years ago. So how did we get here? Right. How did we get here? With our food and our water and our air. I mean, we just. We're living in toxic soup. So that's what super passionate about, is helping people clean up their bodies and, you know, get back to a state of health. Because when we're healthy, that's when we're most vibrant, and that's when we're, you know, living our best life and living our purpose and all of that, it's when we don't feel well, that, you know, that's when we stay small and we stay in that safety place. Right.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And our bodies have the ability to heal themselves. It's just. Yeah, we are in a toxic soup. How do we get out of it?

Yeah. I share people with people all the time. If your body can create it, it can uncreate it. You know, I agree. It's all possible. And again, it. It's beliefs. It's. It's a lot of the beliefs that we're told, you know, oh, you have a. You know, I remember being told by. By a doctor that I had a 5% chance of living in five years if I didn't do radiation. And my body was like, absolutely not. Doesn't resonate. It's radiation. We know that's a whole nother conversation, but we know radiation causes cancer and it's not good for us. And, you know, unfortunately, I see that a lot, and, you know, that's. That's a belief that doesn't serve anybody. So I always tell people, unpluck that seed, put it aside, and, you know, what do you believe? And let them come into their own belief and. And their health changes very quickly. Very quickly.

Right. And that is. Maybe I shouldn't go down this one, because that maybe is for another day. But when. When they get to the point of like, oh, you. You need radiation. And I think. I think that still goes back to fear. Well, I don't think that's the best choice, but that's what the doctors say. And I don't trust myself because I haven't done the research, and I don't know what my options are.

Yes. Yeah. So, you know, to summarize, do your research, trust yourself, play big. Even if there's fear, step through the fear, because there's always something better, you know, And I think the trusting, the intuition piece is really, really big because we all have it. We all have intuition. And it's really just a matter of taking time to tap into it. You know, we live in a busy society, so we're always going, going, going. And it's like, okay, if you slow down for five minutes and you close your eyes, you can see yourself in a different light. You can feel yourself in a different light, but it's taking time to do that or having the opportunity, like leaving a job where, you know, hey, there's something better waiting for me. Yeah, I love that.

On the other side of fear.

Yeah. So where do you go from here? So you're in this new, new role, and you've got a team working for you, and so what's next for you?

I'm just looking for who I can take with me. Just more, More, More growth and. And trying to get a little bit better every day. Working on personal, Personal things and. And just healing and therapy and just.

Well, there's a really.

How can I be better?

Just, how can you be better? So just continual improvement. Yeah. There's a really great book. I don't know if you've read it by Anita Moorjani called Dying to Be Me. No, but I put that on your list. It really, really changed my life many years ago. And she, the author, did a phenomenal job of really shifting out of a fear and out of an old life into, you know, being on TED Talks and everything else. She's a lovely, lovely human being. And really, she said, we're all deciding to be ourselves. We just got uncovered with all this stuff by teachers and parents and everything else, and it's really kind of coming out of that shame.

And I was just listening to another podcast about shame, but we. We don't even realize we have it, and we label it things, and so we can peel that back and release.

Let it go. Yeah. And release it. Yeah. A lot of people don't realize 95% of our lives is unconscious, Meaning it's in the subconscious. It's a program in the background, you know, that we're not. We most likely are not aware of. And the analogy I use is when you learn to drive when you're 16, you know, you're 10 and 2 and you're checking your mirror and you're really conscious of everything you're doing. And then a year later, you drive to your friend's house and you're like, wow, I don't even remember driving. Right. Because it's. It just goes into the subconscious and you don't have to think about it anymore. And so, so much of our life is not thinking. And so, you know, I know for me personally that 5% of being conscious, I'm really tapping into my superconscious and saying, okay, I want to put more of my time and resources into being aware and awake with, you know, an intentional about the things that I participate in, the things I read and consume, etc.

I love that I'm doing the same thing. Just trying to be intentional, just deliberate. Yeah, deliberate with where I spend my time and my energy and my money. It all matters.

Yeah. Well, do you have any final words that you'd like to share with the audience? And then I'd like people to know how to find you and start following you. Yeah. Final words.

Gosh, I don't know. But you can find me on Instagram. I'm at that woke nurse and yeah, just thanks for listening. Thanks for having me.

So that woke nurse. Yep. And Instagram, are you also anywhere else or just on Instagram?

I'm primarily on Instagram. Yeah, I, I dabble on other platforms but consistently Instagram.

Okay, awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here with us today and sharing your wisdom and your inspiration and everybody, please follow Shanna. We'll have it in the show notes to be able to connect with her and do follow her. She posts some great posts and really helps educate and teach you how to shift your life.

Thanks, Jen.

Thank you.