AUG17/24 - I wanted to be this person, and it didn't work out in the end. Destiny's Calling 2025

Changing. Those words are so scary and so invigorating at the same time. I live in this place. My name is Shawna Lynn. This is Level Up with Shawna. I live in this place of the middle. There is a constant pull to all the things that I do wrong and have gone through over my life, the past, all those experiences. And then there's this beautiful, bright, incredible future. Those 2 exist at the same time consistently. Throughout 30 years, I've worked on the therapy pieces of healing and letting go and changing my perspective and rebuilding the brain. Without all the limiting beliefs and things that I had over time. I recreated who I wanted to be in my future self, letting go of the pieces that I didn't like from my past and keeping the things that made me feel good. That has been a 10-year journey of finding those pieces. And I am here to share what leveling up feels like, looks like. What it could sound like, what it could do for you. For the last 30 years, the experiences that I have moved through are just beyond wild, and I look back and can't figure out how I continue to stand in this place of okay. I really do want to fall and be a victim and just let it all go. I'm Exhausted, but I'm inspired to use all this knowledge and energy to help more people. And in between, I finally accepted my neurodiversity, which definitely gets in the way of all of the conservative views and thoughts. But I am here sharing my journey of leveling up and how I Go through self-awareness, self-care, self-maintenance. Look at my relationships and the emotional load that I carry. Those are my mental wellness check-ins consistently every week with somebody to make sure that I am on the right track and creating the path of my life of where I want it to go. That is what Five Flow is. You can join in the community and start learning and building with us as I build up all of the pieces from the last 30 years. We're gonna build it together, test it out, see what it feels like. There's some workbooks coming. There are pieces of this Level Up 5 Flow reframe that are really starting to make sense now after writing the curriculum for the training of psychotherapists. All of that knowledge so informs what our society needs, is looking for. So 2 and a half years of writing the curriculum, creating that program, the 6 years of creating the CRAMP program and building programming around individual needs whose needs are not being met by our education systems or any transition piece between high school and adulthood. When a child turns 18 and they are not focused on their own life, it is really hard for parents to direct. So there's a piece there, and then there's the disability piece. If they don't have the ability but they kind of think they do, again, dangerous. And the next steps— where in our society are they inviting in people who are not going through the regular typical? There's need for A lot of apprenticeships, a lot of the trades. But our system is failing the transition to trades. We are failing in every system. We know that. So there's a place where we can ask more questions, be more curious, try new things, network differently, that we could actually help create more connections. Over COVID, a lot of things retracted and rebuilt. Places lost money. A lot of things changed. We have not had the chance as a community to rebuild. That is what Five Flow Reframe is. That is what Level Up is and what Meet College will be. I love community, and I feel like I am alone. There are lots of people doing lots of things for many organizations and wonderfulness. But the cross-contaminate— cross-contamination— the cross-movement of both of those is just not working. There is a group of people looking for people to hire, and I know a group of people who have people that want to be hired. Where are those 2 connecting? Because I've been watching this now on social media probably for 5 weeks. And I could definitely go in and help, but that would take so much of my time, and that's not the time I have right now to give when I'm balancing all my time for the things I want to do, and there's still not enough time. Taking things off the plate, making sure that you do not feel the negative emotions when you choose not to do everything that needs to be done all the time. We put too many things on our plates. Our expectations of ourselves are way higher. And then there's that place when you don't meet your own needs that you just decide, I'm just going to give up, or I'm going to let it go or put it down. Either way, when you feel that negativity seeping in, if you're not doing something, there's that place where you just stop. And sometimes with intention, we need to stop. But what if we had that extra bit of help to push through so that you, every time you got a little bit stuck, someone kind of just like gave you a nudge so that you kept moving, you kept moving forward? Because every time you have that little trip, you step back a little bit, the burden in front of you is bigger. And every time our response is based on our emotional being, and sometimes we're low, so our response will be big. That's the place where we need a reminder that it's okay. You're fine. Push through the rest of the week. You know, this is a problem. Let's deal with it on Saturday. What are you going to do? Are you going to talk about it with a friend? Are you going to confront the person? You're going to deal with a therapist? Or work through it on your own. Here is the piece. I'm going to park it over here and visit it when I have time. I will give myself 2, 3 hours to go through all the reasons that I acted so differently than I want to act. I will stop and think about why every day I want to do something and I don't do it. It will give you that tiny little space once in a while to just be like, Okay. I have been doing the same thing over and over. I really want to change it. Here is a plan to put in change over the next 3 weeks. That space where you stop and choose a challenge for change, and you set intention to the plan and the action with a support system. And a plan B if it fails. When you are ready to do all those steps, well, then change can definitely happen, and anything is possible after that. But it takes all those pieces. If you choose to skip one of those pieces or retract, then the process doesn't work, and failure is imminent. Because we need all those things. We need people. Doing it alone never works. There's going to be at least one mistake in there that's going to throw you off track, that you're going to want to quit and cry. But what do you do when you want to quit and cry? Who's the person that says, stand up, do it again, you can do it, don't let this go? Because our nature is to just give up. It's easier. You need one person that keeps your momentum going. Who's that person? When it is time to give up, if it doesn't work, can you let it go? Do you know the grief cycles that you will go through when you give up an idea? It is a baby. It is a passion. It hurts. I wanted to build a practice, and to do that, I have to hire a person. which I have to pay for, so I have to borrow money from myself to invest in my business. I, I— it's not a risk I can take. It's not something I'm comfortable with. Letting go of the idea that I'm going to build my practice the way I wanted to, or that I could, that because I can't manage it, so— and it's not really mine anyways. That's not a dream that's sustainable. Let it go. Hurts. I'm sad, but I've lost people before. This is just the same grief process. It might take a year, it might take a month. It's a grief process. Yes, I'm disappointed. Yes, I'm going to be angry. I'm going to blame somebody. Then I'm going to be accepting. All of those pieces. Of course, everything we go through that doesn't go our way is grief. When you lose an animal, it is grief. Yeah. Things change in your life. We know this. So 5 flow reframe helps us be able to say, okay, I'm miserable right now, and I'm still going to go out and have a good time. No grief is going to hold me back in guilt and shame. I can pick up that grief and bring it back anytime. I can take that victim and put it right back inside me and hop into it at any time. There's also a role of confident, a role of Curiosity, a role of anything. You can be all those roles. Learn the role play. Yes, there's masking, of course. But know when you're masking. We used to just mask because we tried to fit in. Now I understand that at certain parts of the day, in certain ways, there are a set of rules that make people more comfortable. If I follow them. It is very hard for me to do that. I find it a struggle, but it is a sign of respect for others. So it is something I am trying to do. If I know that I have to sit in a meeting for 2 hours and pay attention and really use my brain in really good ways, then I have built a process to do that. What the morning looks like and what my evening looks like. I have the plan to let go of the energy at the end of the day. I know not to plan anything that would take any energy from me at the end of the day. I will have nothing left to give, and I might even be a bitch, and I don't want to bring that energy and have to feel sorry for that. I just want to be empty at the end of the day. And maybe reset with a meditation, a bath, a book, maybe a creative workshop to build. Whatever it would be, it's mine, and I know that I need that to reset from the needing to mask in a meeting so that my brain and my ideas come out clearly. That is part of building a business and being an entrepreneur and sitting at the table. With other people, I'm learning. I'm growing. It's pretty awesome. Five Flow is all about learning and growing growth mindset. What can you do? How can you be? I'm always so curious when people are like, "I can't." Like really? I don't know. Have you really thought about all the ideas? Have you taken like every idea and explored it, dreamed, put some hope and belief? And responses are often, no, I guess not. Like, okay, let's go. Let's brainstorm. Which direction do you want to go in? Tell me your, like, wildest dreams. Like, okay, maybe that one's not obtainable, but can we bring it down? Can we balance? Can we find— is there an opportunity? What would you need to? Is it a possibility? It's so fun to be able to do that. In psychotherapy, under the controlled act of CRPO, that is not something that I do in my psychotherapy sessions as much as I do those in my coaching sessions, where you can hop in and just go through an idea. I'll push your limits. I'll push some buttons. I'll ask some questions that probably will be very uncomfortable. And that's usually the place where you're like, oh, oh, I get it, right? There's always this one place, this one little line that we can't cross over that holds us hostage. So for me in Five Flow, that self-awareness piece was that people were really always cheering for me and happy for me. I came from a place where I can't believe the things that I got to accomplish and how they all worked out. I seriously have no idea, but they're not happy for me now, and I don't understand why. Like, I just don't see it. I could see how I disappointed people, but I don't see how they can't be happy for me. That's that self-awareness. So I learned now that there's this place of Inspiration and intimidation. So if you are intimidated by the things I do, it means that you maybe don't understand or respect the things I've done. I'm not even sure how, but I'm going to keep doing it for as long as I can, in whatever way I can. My intuition and my well-being say that it's working. My self-care. I have fallen off a wagon of self-care when I left my matrimonial home and all of the safety of that beautiful house that kept me sane. It had efficiency routines. It was packed. It was like remodeled for my ADHD, the cupboard, the bathroom, everything. I had redone everything in the 20 years we were there to work with the big life that we had. And then for the last 10 years, I've been moving From place to place and having partners, sleeping at their houses, sharing different spaces with different people at different times, traveling. And for 10 years, I have lost the ability to have a routine. I was so angry at the routine that I lost. I didn't know how to bring it back. I was mad at myself and wanted to, like, not have the routine and just be, like, flighty. I really just wanted to be different. Oh, I was awful without a routine. It did not work. I double booked people. I did way too much. I overloaded my system. Totally, 100% burnt out. Burnt out. COVID killer. I like changed careers. It just that self-care place. So now I'm back at trying to eat well and snack for myself. You can look at like all my food is in containers. My cupboards are open so I can visually see what I need. I've got a great routine of brushing my teeth and exercising, and I have a lot of visuals around so that I can— under the Wonder Woman, I have visuals around to track everything I'm doing so that I don't go into imposter syndrome and say like, oh, you didn't do that. Or yeah, lie to myself and say you did work out. So I track everything. I write everything all over. My different whiteboards. I clean up the condo every single day at the end of the night. Self-maintenance takes about 15 minutes, but at the end of every night, everything is away so that I can have all the things that I like. And I also have a really good routine now of shopping and what I need. So I'm working on that piece as well. That's self-care, self-awareness, self-maintenance. The emotional load. I know what I have here. I am taking things off from my businesses and passing them on to others. I am trying to find a balance of all the pieces until the next chapter of my life. I'm at a standstill, which is really hard. So I'm holding all the pieces that I need to close down, but I can't close them down until the college opens. I can't stop working until the college opens. And once the college opens, I don't know how all of those pieces are going to work. It is a little anxiety-ridden, but I have all the plans. I have all the people. Everyone says it's okay. My belief just has to be. And then there's relationships. I've built this amazing relationship with myself. It's quite wild. I didn't really understand who I was and what I really wanted and needed. And how much I liked being by myself. So I've been testing out this sitting in silence and just not moving. So meditation for me brings in a lot of thoughts and movement. I wanted to do more of like just the sitting still. So one of the things I've been working on is actually just sitting still, and meditation does start to happen, but it's the sitting still piece and breathing. With a regular deep breath to really cleanse my chakras and let everything out. So for 10 minutes every day, I sit quietly and just breathe and just let these emotions— there's so many of them that just float in and out, and they can all be attached to thoughts, but I just feel them. I just sit. In the feeling of them. Sometimes they're so uncomfortable. And uncomfortable is one of those feelings I'm working on integrating back into my system. For a long time, I retracted from anything that made me uncomfortable. But it is my responsibility now to start to teach myself to go back into uncomfortable positions and be okay. Another journey you would like to come on with me. This is not going to be easy. It is keeping my energy in check, keeping my straight face, watching the words that come out of my mouth, which are respect and responsibility of society. We've lost that, right? There's so much rudeness out there. So this is something I think is important to work on and model and talk about. Outside, around with people. I'm picking Shawna Lynne. I stopped being Shawna Posluns at 23 when I got married, and until I was 51, I've been Ackerman, which is my married name. And when I think of Shawna Ackerman, I think of the Teacher who lived in suburbia, was married, mom of 2 deaf kids, advocate and fighter. I was like spunky. I was a people pleaser fanatic, and I just challenged everything and everybody in a kind way, but also very strongly. That's who I was. And here I am now turning 52, and so many things make sense to me in a different way now. I didn't want to go back to being Shawna Poslins. I really don't know who she is. I don't want to learn her again because Shawna Ackerman was a huge part of who I am. So now I'm moving forward as Shawna Lynn. That is just my name. It does not belong to anyone else. It is mine alone. And I could be the human that I really thought I was meant to be at 22. But I took one direction, and here I am now. I am going to set a little more intention to this direction. I am going to pay more attention. I am doing a lot of hard work on my healing and limiting beliefs and what is left in there. I have stepped up into confidence. I can look in the mirror and see that I'm an attractive, smart human, and that is true, and that I have a really good physique that I take care of. It has changed over the years, but so have I. It still brings me joy in others. That is just important to know. It is part of who I am. I'm leaving the thoughts behind that say that's not true because it's not true. I know I'm attractive. I know I'm pretty now. I feel good in what I'm doing. My brain is on fire. I feel really proud of who I am and being a woman and feeling proud and being confident and finding humble and walking away from ego. There's all these pieces in there that I'm going to explore, and I really hope that the haters just go Go away. This isn't about comparing, being, doing. I'm just trying to build a friggin dream, honestly. So far, I've like tried a few things. They're not making me feel as great as I want. I want something more. I want to spend the next 20, 30 years of my life passionately doing what I love. And so far, I don't feel that I'm great at everything I do because I'm just a great person at doing things because of my neurodiversity. That is one of my superpowers. I am really skilled at everything I try except for physics and math. But everything else I do well. So I pick things and I do them well. And I hope they bring me the joy in working as they do, and they bring me a lot. But I'm still feeling like there's something more, so I'm going after it. And I really hope that everyone out there who's been in my life for the last 30 years will come back and send me an email and join the community and be part of my newsletters in the next stage of building and really come on this absolute amazing journey with me. 'Cause can you believe, like, A college. How did I? How did I get here? It's pretty wild, and in order to be here and stay healthy, in order to be a dean and run a college and be a leader and model, there are still a lot more lessons I need to learn, and I'm happy to learn them from people who give. who share their lessons with me with joy and kindness, not shaming or a lecture. I've had enough of those. I know who I am. I get it. I need a little tweaking. I'm happy, happy to be part of conversations where you help me understand where I can tweak it just the way so that it works with me and it works in a room with respect and responsibility. I'm going to work through the 5 Flow as often as I can and put it on my social media as often as I can. And let's build out. And then I'm going to be in person, and I want people to come and talk and have these conversations with me. I want to sit in a room and have some conversations about what does the world look like from our perspective? What are things that are true now and what aren't? Can people stay partnered and married? Is it a possibility to repair? How do we raise our kids and keep our relationships healthy? It is really, really difficult. What kind of support systems are out there to seriously actually stay committed to health and nutrition plan that works for you? Like, is there a way to do it? Can we really finally find the way that People have accountability. How do we figure those pieces out? That's the stuff I want to talk about and see if we can come up with things. So I'm excited for all of this. Excited for Five Flow. I'm excited to create the whole system where I can share all my questioning and ideas with you. I'm excited to step in to level up with Shawna Lynn. I'm excited to see where this college comes in. I'm so excited to watch my children learn and grow. They're just freaking like, oh my God, blowing my mind right now. So excited where my relationship with my wonderful partner Sean goes. We've had so many interesting pieces of triggers and Just so many past pieces that come into play, and disappointment and reality. But communication is really amazing, and authenticity too. Setting boundaries—some really big pieces of this relationship that we are learning how to be healthy and happy together. It's pretty awesome. Yeah, so this journey is going to be just spectacular, and it's all coming together September 17th at Speaker Slam. I'm really excited to give my 5-minute speech on the power of yes. How do I tell this whole story in 5 minutes? Right now I'm at like hours, so over the time I'm going to be nurturing it And I want to figure out how to bring that comedian back and ask you to join me instead of telling you what I'm doing. You know, I've been very self-centered for a decade trying to heal from all of this. I'm going to turn it around now and invite you to join me and come on this journey and share your thoughts. And let's put all our wonderful big communities together, right? Like girl power. Can we have an in-person huge women's empowered we got this at Budweiser stage when there's no concerts? Wow, that's a new dream. I can't— that's not one anyone can take it over, but that will not be mine. But here it is. What if we invite 1,400 women to celebrate each other, right? To have conversations, a whole huge networking. We can figure out different areas with different groups, and you can get 1,400 empowered women in a group together. Imagine the vibration of that. That's like Oprah level. So let's see if we can make that happen. That's my next big dream. And maybe from there we can change the education system and take over the government. Just saying. Five flow reframe, allowing you to believe and dream. Those are dreams and beliefs I think can happen. Will they? I don't know. I I have lots of them not doing them on my own. So if people come in and want to do them, I'm a happy helper. But right now, I'm sticking in my path, sticking to healing and building the best routine of efficiency to balance all the pieces of my life right now. For the next endeavor. Come on this journey with me. Level Up with Shawna Lynne.