Living In Containers: How Spirit Helped Me Stop Shrinking And Step Into My Full Light

For most of Jenny's life she kept herself in three containers.

A corporate container. A personal container. And a spiritual container.

And I never let them overlap.

In this episode Jenny gets personal about what it actually cost her to keep those containers separate for years. The intuitive hit in a boardroom that was dismissed and proved right within six months. The doctor who asked about mediumship at work and the full day of avoidance that followed. And what Spirit had to do with the whole thing finally coming down.

Plus the story of a client who spent over twenty years building businesses for everyone but herself. And what her parents in Spirit said that finally gave her permission to build her own.

Free Resource

Want to start developing your own connection with Spirit but not sure where to begin?

Jenny put together a free guide outlining five ways to develop your intuition. Because the stronger your intuition the clearer the line to Spirit becomes.

Grab it at jennyshanks.com/five

Learn to Connect with Spirit 

Ready to go deeper and build your own connection with Spirit? Awakening Your Path is a self paced program designed specifically to help you develop your own language with Spirit and start receiving clearly on your own.

www.jennyshanks.com/ayp

Connect With Jenny

Website: jennyshanks.com 

Instagram: @spiritual_medium_jenny 

Book a Reading: jennyshanks.com/services

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Seriously Dead. I'm Jenny Shanks, a spiritual medium, and I talk to dead people for a living. This podcast is your beyond the grave look at what your loved ones in spirit actually want you to know. And spoiler alert, after 10 years of doing this work, here's the truth. Your spirit family wants you to know they're okay and you are too. How do I know? Because the dead are a lot of things, but one thing they're not is quiet. So get comfortable before you press play because we're getting seriously dead with your loved ones in spirit right now. For most of my 20s and 30s, I kept my life in three containers: a corporate container, a personal container, and a spiritual container. And I never let them overlap. Today we're going to talk about that. I'm unpacking the containers I lived in, how Spirit helped me stop shrinking and step into my full light, and how the version that many of you all see today is really the authentic Jenny. At work, I was professional, polished, focused, completely committed to representing the company well and building their business. I hid my opinions, I hid my beliefs, I hid my spiritual practice. And every time I got an intuitive hit, I learned very quickly to keep it to myself. At home, I was just me, well, kind of me, the version of me that fit into the space I was in. Again, my whole life I didn't want to offend anyone. But then there was the other Jenny, the one who talked to the dead, the one who talked to spirit, and the one who sat with people in some of their hardest moments of their lives and helped them feel less alone. The one who knew things that she couldn't explain. That jenny stayed hidden for years, and I mean years, until one day a doctor I worked for asked me about my Instagram profile, and I froze. I remember slowly looking at him with my eyes, as probably as big as they could get. And I said yes, and I told him we would talk later. He had a patient that he had to get to, and it gave me the perfect opportunity to avoid him the rest of the day. That moment right there, that freeze, that yes, followed by a full day of avoiding, that is what it looks like when someone's been living in containers for so long that even the smallest crack in the walls feels terrifying. Today we're gonna unpack it all. I'm sharing with you what happened after that crack and what Spirit had to do with it all. Let me tell you what corporate container actually looked like from the inside. Professional, polished, focused entirely on the company and how I represented them. I was good at it, and I really mean I was good at it. I had a knack for being able to represent companies and build their businesses in a way that was at times shocking to me. I built businesses for other people for years. I knew how to walk into a room, I knew how to command that room, I knew how to read a situation and respond strategically. I knew how to show up and deliver, representing whoever I was working for. And I kept everything else out of that room. My opinions stayed in the car, my beliefs stayed at home, my spiritual practice was something that happened before work or after work, but never during because that was a container, and that container had rules. But here's the thing about intuition it could care less about your containers. I remember sitting in an interview with a member of our management team and we were interviewing someone. And on paper, this candidate was exceptional. Chucked every box, every answer was polished, the team was excited, but I was not because I had a feeling, not a thought, but a feeling that something was off. So when this candidate left, we all talked about it and I shared that something felt off. Couldn't quite explain what, but I knew it didn't feel good. And one of my managers told me immediately, Jenny, you have to quit judging people. She's excellent. You're overthinking it. So I let it go because that was a container. Intuition didn't belong in the boardroom. Data belonged in the boardroom. Resumes belonged in the boardroom. A feeling that something was off belonged to nowhere near a hiring decision. They went on to hire her, and within six months, they discovered she was stealing money from the business. When I got that news, I sat with it. I'm not gonna lie, part of me wanted to go, told you so, but I took the higher out. I took the spiritual light and I sat with it. I sat with this quiet feeling that I needed to recognize the thing I'd been shutting down for so long. The container for that room that was not welcomed there had actually been right all along. This wasn't the first time. This is just one of many examples in which for years I was told not to feel what I was feeling because logic was safe, intuition was not. The day the doctor asked me about my Instagram profile, I freaked out. The doctor asked me about mediumship on that random day at work, and just like that, out of nowhere, a genuine question, probably from someone who was curious what he had just come across. I froze. Something in me went completely still because nobody asked about that at work. That was in the other container, the one that I kept locked up so tight, just to make sure I wouldn't make anyone else uncomfortable. I looked at him and said, yeah, we can talk about it later. You've got a patient, I've got a meeting, I'll see you later today. And then I avoided him the rest of the day. I want to sit with that for a moment because I think it's really important, not the avoidance itself, but what was underneath it all. Fear, not of him, not of the conversation, but of being seen as my authentic self and fear of being judged by that. Because being seen in a container that was supposed to stay hidden meant the walls between those containers were not as solid as I thought they were. It meant someone had looked at the professional polished corporate Jenny and somehow seen the other one underneath it all. The one who talked to the dead, the one who knew things that she couldn't explain. And quite honestly, that felt enormous. Even though it was just a question, even though the doctor was kind and genuinely curious, that felt so uncomfortable. That container had been my protection for so long that even a little crack in it felt like exposure. But here is what I know now that I didn't know standing in that hallway avoiding that conversation. That crack was not a threat. The crack was an invitation. Spirit was already working, already creating the conditions for these containers to start coming down. And that doctor on that day asking that question was not a coincidence. It was just the beginning. I want to tell you about a client who lived in a container for over 20 years. She was a VP in corporate, brilliant, accomplished, someone who had spent decades and decades walking into companies and building them from the inside out. She knew how to create systems, develop teams, drive results. She had done it over and over again for other people. And that corporate container was her safe space. It wasn't suffocating, it wasn't miserable, it was safe, respected, and known. But underneath that safety, something had been asking for more space for a long time. She came to me for a reading, and one of her parents came through. And what her parents said to her was not dramatic. It was not a big spiritual declaration. It was something much more specific and much more personal than that. Her parent told her they believed in her. They described what they saw when they looked at her life, the businesses she had built for other people, the skills she had developed, the knowledge she had accumulated across decades and decades of doing this work for everyone but herself. And then they said the things she needed to hear. You already have everything you need. Now it's time to build it for yourself. She sat with that in the reading, and I watched something in her shift right there before me. The way something shifts when a truth you already know gets said out loud by somebody who is no longer here to have any reason to say it except that it is true. She left that reading and she made the leap. She walked away from her VP title, from the salary, from the container that had been safe for over 20 years, and she started building something on her own. And here's the update. Multiple pieces of social content have gone viral. A TEDx talk invitation has arrived. The woman who has spent decades building other people's visions finally built her own. And what she built was bigger than anything the corporate container could have ever done. That is what happens when Spirit gives you permission and you are finally ready to receive it. That is what happens when you stop building for everyone else and start building for yourself. And that is what happens when you step outside of that container. I want to tell you what happened after my containers came down, not the inspirational version, the real version, and what it feels like when relief comes in. That is the word that keeps coming back to me when I think about it. Relief. Because when you're living in containers, you are constantly managing, managing the different containers, managing the different profiles, managing the expectations of others. You're constantly tracking which version of yourself is appropriate for which room, constantly making small adjustments to make sure the wrong container doesn't bleed into the right one. The management is exhausting in a way you don't fully realize until all of a sudden it stops. When I finally stepped into my full light, all of it, the corporate genny and the personal genny and the spiritual medium jenny, I stopped having to put a mask on depending on who I was talking to. I became one person. And one person is so much easier to be than three. However, I want to be really clear about something. Becoming one person didn't mean everyone was comfortable with that person. Some people were not. Some people preferred the version of me that stayed in her lane and kept the spiritual stuff in the other container. And losing those people or watching them become uncomfortable with the full version of me was part of that process. I talked about this in the last episode. The people who pull away when you start to grow, the ones who are comfortable with the container versions because the container versions didn't ask them to expand, that loss is real. And it is worth it. Because the people who show up for the full version of you, the one who is completely just Jenny, who also happens to talk to the dead for a living, who when you say what you do are curious or excited or don't really care because they still love that version of you. Those people are worth everything the containers cost you. I don't manage anymore. I don't track which version of myself belongs in what room. I just show up. And that's the most liberating thing I've ever done. Here's what I want to say to tie all of this together before we end this episode. The containers are not just about hiding parts of myself from the world. The containers were about hiding my intuition from myself. Every time I shut down an intuitive hit in the boardroom, I was teaching myself not to trust. Every time I kept the spiritual containers locked up tight, I was reinforcing the belief that what I knew and felt and sensed was not appropriate for the real world, not professional enough, not explainable enough, not safe enough to say out loud. And my intuition was right about that employee who stole that money. My intuition was right about the career that no longer fit. My intuition was right about the life that was waiting on the other side of these containers. My intuition has never been wrong, and guess what? Neither has yours. The work of stepping outside of the containers is really the work of learning to trust yourself, to stop silencing the quiet knowing because it does not fit in the room you're standing in. To stop shrinking for people who are not comfortable with your full light. Because your intuition is not a liability. Your intuition is the portal spirit uses to communicate. And every time you shut it down, you are not just managing your containers, you are closing the line to something that has been trying to reach you your entire life. The containers kept you safe, but they also kept you really small. You don't have to choose to be small anymore. If you walk away from this episode with one thing, let it be this: you are not too much. You are not inappropriate, you are not unprofessional or unhinged or difficult for having a spiritual practice and an intuition and a part of yourself that doesn't fit neatly into the container everyone around you is comfortable with. You are whole. And the whole version of you is the one that was meant to show up. Stop managing containers. Stop shrinking for people who you are not for. Stop shutting down the intuitive hits because the room you are standing in has not given you permission to trust them. Spirit has been trying to reach you through that intuition your entire life. And when you finally learn to trust it, everything changes. If you're curious about how to develop your intuitions, I've put together a little guide, completely free. And guess what? No email required to download. You can find this at jennyshanks.com/slash five F I V E. And if you're ready to go a little deeper to understand your intuition and connect with spirit, awakening your path is exactly what you need. This program is self-paced and it is all about learning how your intuition comes in and then how to connect with spirit. It's a completely personal practice. It is not built to make you a medium, it's built to get you to fully step into your own light. You can find that at jenyshanks.com slash AYP for awakening your path. If this one landed for you, let's not keep it in the spirit vault. Share it with someone who has maybe been living in containers and is desperately ready to step into their full light. I love hearing from you. Make sure to tag me over on Instagram at spiritual underscore medium underscore Jenny, or leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. I would be honored. I'll be back next week with another episode of Seriously Dead. Until then, stay open, stay curious, and remember, the dead are not quiet. You just have to learn to listen.