If you’ve ever wondered how to grow your spiritual business without sacrificing your soul or burning yourself out, this conversation will feel like a breath of fresh air. In this episode, I sit down with Shilpa Lewis, AI strategist and host of the Omni Mindfulness podcast, to talk about how we can align our purpose with technology to amplify our message authentically. We dive deep into practical ways to use AI tools that enhance rather than replace your authentic voice. You’ll learn how to create a symbiotic relationship with AI, training it to truly understand and reflect your essence.
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Show Notes | Transcript“We each have something so special – not just one thing, multiple things – and it’s just often dormant for various reasons.” – Shilpa Lewis
As women over 50, we often feel conflicted about embracing technology while staying true to our spiritual essence. Shilpa shares her journey from corporate AI expert to spiritual entrepreneur, revealing how she harmoniously marries tech savvy with soul wisdom.
We explore:
- What it means to be visible without being “on” all the time time
- How to honor your energy while sharing your gifts
- Why your lived experience is your most powerful marketing strategy
Shilpa also shares her Omni Method, a beautifully grounded approach to staying aligned while you grow. It’s a conversation about purpose, pivots, and the quiet courage it takes to keep evolving. If your soul’s been whispering that there’s a gentler way to share your light, this episode is your invitation to listen.
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Podcast: Omni Mindfulness
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TRANSCRIPT
Introduction: Amplifying Your Authentic Message Without Burnout
GLORIA GRACE RAND: Namaste. Would you like to know that you could actually grow your spiritual business online without sacrificing your soul or burning yourself up in the process? Well, stay tuned because that’s what we’re going to be talking about today, because my guest has a revolutionary approach for using AI and social media tools to amplify your authentic message while also staying completely aligned with your purpose, which is what I’m all about. So I love this, and I’m so excited to have her.
But first, I do want to welcome you to Live Love Engage, especially if this is your first time joining us. I am Gloria Grace, founder of Align to Shine Academy, and I empower women over 50 to overcome life’s challenges so they can embrace who they are, lead boldly, and shine their light in the world.
And joining me today is a wonderful woman that I’ve known for a little while now. Her name is Shilpa Lewis, and she is known as your Go to Streamlining with System Sage. She’s an AI and social media strategist meets spiritual strategist, and she helps soulful solopreneurs amplify their presence without burning burnout. As I mentioned, she’s also a podcast host like I am. Her show is called the Omni Mindfulness Podcast, and she’s creator of the Amplify Authentically series, which blends mindful tech with grounded, soulful strategy. And see, that’s what being authentic is about, is, you know, making mistakes sometimes. So without further ado, I’m going to bring Shilpa up here and welcome you officially to Live Love Engage.
SHILPA LEWIS: Well, namaste, Gloria, and thank you so much for this sweet, lovely, thoughtful introduction. And I’m so grateful to be here.
What Does It Mean to Amplify Authentically?
GLORIA: Oh, well, I’m really, you know, we’ve known each other for a little while, and actually, I was wonderfully invited me onto your podcast, and I appreciate that as well. So thank you for that. And I, you know, we’re aligned in a lot of respects because we’re, you know, we have this spiritual and then we have the practical side, but we’ll kind of get into that a little bit more. But I do want to figure we just jump right in and talk about what does it mean to have amplify authentically. Now I can say it in a world where, you know, everyone’s telling us to be louder or post more often. In fact, I know I wonderful, wonderful person that I follow is like, yeah, you can go ahead, post, post all the time if you want. Now it’s like, oh, my goodness. So, yeah, what do you think about all of that?
SHILPA: Absolutely. What a lovely question. I believe that Amplify Authentically really talks to the heart of what a lot of us feel when we want to step into the space that can be very intimidating, which is social media, and utilizing it to further our business. And we might be soulful solopreneurs, where being so present on camera and being so present in social media all the time can feel a little bit jarring, intimidating. And quite frankly, if you’re spiritual, you find it energetically draining. So I always say you don’t have to be louder to be present and allow people to know the value you provide so you can amplify those natural gifts and you can do it with authenticity.
GLORIA: Sorry, I didn’t mean to put that bug in your hand.
Finding Your Authentic Voice in Business
SHILPA: Certainly I’m yawning. Also, I feel like—and I always speak from the heart—is that many of us, as we become a little more jaded in the world of, say, corporate. I come from corporate, is that you start censoring everything you say and the pauses, the giggles, the stumbles on the words. And as I started to establish my business and establish my podcast, I had that little voice in my head and I had to, like, learn to tame it down and say, just be yourself. Because at the end, what marketing teaches you is that you want to attract what they call your ideal client avatar, and you probably don’t want somebody who’s always looking overly polished and has it all supposedly figured out. So one day I just had this, like, what you call it? Download. Why don’t you call it Amplify Authentically? Which is essentially the way in which I’m delivering my service now within the umbrella of Omni Mindfulness. Omni Mindfulness is the podcast and business name. But what it is that I do, where I combine the tech with the spirituality, it comes through through Amplify Authentically.
Why Your Soul Has a Strategy
GLORIA: I love that. I want to ask you about how you actually decided to kind of put that together, but even before that, I think I’d about because there’s some people out there who might be listening to this or watching us on YouTube who maybe have never really thought about bringing business and spirituality together. And you talk about, you know, that our soul has a strategy. So can you help someone out and maybe even just explain to them maybe why it’s a good idea?
SHILPA: Yeah. Let me put it this way. I feel like the reason why we do what we do at the end of the day is because we are on our spiritual journey to grow and get connected to whatever you want to call it, the universe or God. And when we lose ourselves, whether it’s in our 9 to 5 job or in building a business, and trust me, I have—it is very easy to slip. But when we lose ourselves in that, we have lost our sight of the North Star. Why we’re doing what we’re doing, what is our purpose? What is our ultimate why? Maybe the smaller why is I want work-life balance. I want a job where I get to call the shots or do things on my own term. But maybe it’s even slightly higher. I want to be more present for my family, my son. It could be even higher. I want to be the kind of soul who feels at the end of her life, she’s truly put all of her energy into realizing who she really is and her connection to the universe.
GLORIA: Yeah, I like that. That resonates with me a lot. And so I think that’s so helpful.
Shilpa’s Journey: From Corporate to Spiritual Entrepreneur
The Path from Computer Science to Spiritual Strategy
GLORIA: Yeah, we’re going to have you go through the Omni method, but let’s keep talking a little bit about you. So I want to focus on you because, again, how did you—you mentioned that you come from a corporate background. So how did you wind up deciding to marry spirituality with sort of practical social media marketing?
SHILPA: Yeah. To get a little bit boohoo, I also believe that we all have a soul strategy. You mentioned that just moments ago. Like an imprint, like we sort of have a calling and we are given the tools to be on that path. And in my case, I was born in a very traditional Hindu family where spirituality and meditation rituals were just part of what I was around all the time. So that was just an imprint in me. Whether or not as a young adult I was embracing it as effectively is another thing. You know, because I was born and raised in the States. I then lived in India during my very formative years as a teenager and then returned and immediately dropped straight into the very cerebral part of the brain. I joined a very challenging computer science program and had it set in my head. I will go off and get my PhD, which I went and got my master’s, left without the PhD but it was a super driven and ambitious.
And in those days computer science was like kind of like the new thing. Not a lot of women in particular were studying it. And I ended up focusing on AI well before it was trendy and ended up combining that with software engineering and design. Practiced something very different than AI, but came full circle in the last few years, realizing that it’s something now that’s becoming more utilized to streamline your efforts. And that was intersecting with when I was developing my own entrepreneurial business. So just the timing of everything.
Pivoting and Reinventing Yourself at Any Age
And in between in this long story, I slowly transitioned, or what I call pivoted out of corporate. And I never say that I don’t use what I practiced or learned. We all are constantly reinventing ourselves but adopting or pulling in things we’ve already done from our previous parts of our life. So everything I did has helped me do what I’m doing now. And along the way I revisited my roots. So I became a meditation life coach during COVID and I went through this state of epiphanies along the way. Like one day I’m like, you know what? I’m going to buy omnimindfulness.com. My son’s name is Omni, and I’m going to dedicate some part of my life to this. And whatever that this was, I didn’t know what it was yet. It’s sort of organically evolved and still is evolving.
GLORIA: I love that and that it’s so cool that there’s so much good lessons here that I want people to be able to take away. Especially the fact that yeah, everything that you’ve done in the past or you know, your background, you know, even from family to a corporate situation that yeah, that you can revisit it and you can still pull some of those skills out. I mean I’m like the same way. I mean I actually started in television, in television production and am working for a business news program when I didn’t, when I’d already changed majors away from business. And so it was like, ah, I was doing terrible in all those courses and so wound up doing mass communications and then, you know, years later wind up starting my own business. So it’s like—and now I’m doing a podcast and it’s video as well. So all of those things come back and now I even know how to edit again because it’s like, oh yeah, I remember doing this. Mostly we had editors who would do it, but I knew that you know, in just watching them how to do stuff. So don’t think that you have to throw out everything. Yeah. And I love how you came up with the name of this too. That’s so cool that you named your son. That’s lovely.
SHILPA: Thank you, Gloria. And yeah, to reinforce that, but you were just saying that when you were editing in other parts of your life with media, each of those lessons are with you, the good and bad, right?
GLORIA: Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yes, yes. I’ve burned the candle at both ends in the past in a different evening video job that I was in. And so it’s like, yeah, I know the importance of also striving for more of a work-life balance too.
The Omni Method: A Framework for Soulful Business Growth
Streamlining Your Business Without Overwhelm
GLORIA: So I know you mentioned AI and we’re gonna get to that in a minute, but I want to—before we get to that part, I would love for you to start walking us through the Omni Method that you came up with. So what are some of the maybe key pillars and how does it help even solopreneurs, in particular, who you like to work with, keep them from being, you know, overwhelmed and scattered?
SHILPA: Yeah, absolutely. Love to share. Even before the Omni Method was something that I truly fine tuned to—step back a little bit. What I’ve created for my business, which is called Omni mindfulness, is a set of frameworks. And I like to use the metaphor that, let’s say there’s energy in the form of water and we’re all energy and it’s flowing, but it’s all scattered everywhere. And it’s hard to gain clarity with that scattered energy. So over time, I recognize that I need to start naming the things that I’m doing repetitively as patterns that are working. And so those are the frameworks. And think of them as the river banks so that now there’s flow and you can recognize the flow because the frameworks are there. So when I started—do you get it right?
GLORIA: Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. That makes so much sense. I love metaphors anyway, so it’s good.
The Omni Pivot Method: Unveil, Craft, and Elevate
SHILPA: Yeah, I’m a big metaphor girl. And so stepping back even higher level, when I started making my what I call micro pivots or bigger pivots in life. And as you and I both agree, these pivots are never like a complete digression from where you were. You are along a journey with stepping stones and you’re taking these lessons with you in the next chapter. I developed what I call the Omni pivot method, which is basically three steps, and it summarizes how I feel I make pivots. And sometimes you could be within one pivot and transitioning within another part of that pivot framework, which there are three parts. I call it unveil, craft, and elevate.
And I started to recognize that these three things repeat. So unveil means you’re just doing some soul searching. It could be on a personal level, on some personal decisions, or it could be on a very professional level, like, what should I call my business? What does it stand for? Why am I doing what I’m doing? That’s the unveil. Or in other words, you could call it audit. The second part is crafting. Think of that as like, if you’re really in the trenches of creating your new business, it could be about branding it. So crafting is really could be—I’m branding the voice of who I am. That goes back to authenticity. And then the last part of it is to elevate, which is really amplifying. How do I do this? How do I make my presence known so people are aware that Gloria is out there doing this awesome work, and she’s got a voice, a platform, and how do we advertise that or promote that?
Breaking Down the OMNI Acronym
Then when you go deeper, as I mentioned, the voice, authentic voice, that’s where the Omni method came in. And I started to really think about how do you align your message with your voice and your why, which is really, really important to a lot of us. So I thought, well, why not come up with something that matches Omni? And again, it goes back to branding. It’s crafting. So the letter O really means own your why and really own it. Like, don’t feel ashamed that—well, I had a friend recently make a comment, and I always think these little anecdotal stories shine a light on where you’re at in life. I reconnected with her on again, off again, a childhood friend, and she goes, well, I thought by now you would have been a doctor. What happened to you?
And I honestly, in my head, thought, I’m glad I didn’t become a doctor. So own your why. It’s, you know, my why was a very deeply spiritual thing. And I can’t always articulate it for others, but I surely need to articulate for myself and hopefully with those that are aligned with me, like my friend Gloria, because I think she gets it. And so O is own your Y, M is map your journey and so that is a little more of back to the soul searching. Like, where do I want to go? And then maybe work a little bit backwards. It’s a journey. I always have to remind myself, anybody that’s listening, I don’t have it all figured out. I’m constantly looking at things going, oh, my gosh, where am I? Why am I doing this? Am I there yet? And then I’m like, that’s not the right question.
GLORIA: I know. We never get there. Do we get there?
SHILPA: And that’s part of the reason why we have to kind of bring ourselves back to our soul mission. We have to be present, right?
GLORIA: Yeah.
SHILPA: And the N stands for name the shift, articulate the transformation, or pivot. That helps spark something in you, and what new state of being, a result will guide you towards that shift. And so for me, the shifts are sometimes always deeply spiritual. I mean, yeah, it would be great if suddenly I can say, you know, I launched this new bonus podcast, and the shift needs to be 20,000 downloads. But I know that’s the not so accurate authentic shift that I need, but I need to name that shift, so at least I have a goal. And then I stands for infuse your voice. And this goes back to being authentic.
GLORIA: I love that. That’s a really powerful acronym. I like it. So I’m trying to say so. And there’s all these wonderful steps. So I’m gonna have to go back in and write these down. So I hope whoever is listening to this, you know, you can go ahead and replay this and write them down, because those were good.
Practical Steps to Overcome Overwhelm
The Power of Morning Meditation and Grounding Practices
GLORIA: So for someone who’s maybe just feeling like overwhelmed with all that’s going on in, you know, even in their business or even in the world right now, what would be a first practical step that someone can take to start, you know, streamlining things?
SHILPA: Yeah, the first step, I believe it really actually goes back to the pivot method is, you know, I talked about, you want to really audit what’s going on. And it’s like an assessment, and it could be an assessment of whether it’s a personal or professional. And sometimes really, when you’re aligned, your personal and professional start becoming very much aligned as well. So, like, where do I want to spend my morning and why? And for me, and as just to give you some context, getting grounded really sets the tone for the day. So it doesn’t—I mean, there are deviations to this because I’m human, but most mornings are non negotiable meditation. And that includes not just a meditation technique, but it also includes an extension to that. Practicing gratitude, doing prayer. And I get geeky and scientific about these things as well because of just the way my brain works. Like there’s like the woohoo spiritual side, right?
GLORIA: Yeah.
SHILPA: But then the other side is like, well, there’s this doctor who had done experiments on hooking up people’s brains to talk about how the frontal cortex is activated after 12 minutes, decreasing PTSD. So when I meditate, I set the timer on my clock saying minimum 12 minutes, because the skeptic in me will come out often, especially when I’m fatigued, and start telling me, why are you doing what you’re doing? This is all woohoo. You don’t even know what’s happening. And then the scientific part of me is like, well, they’ve already done these studies. At least 12 minutes of practice will help you. There have been studies that gratitude does shift the energy and attracts them.
Brain Science Meets Spiritual Practice
GLORIA: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 100%. Yeah. I mean it’s—meditation is good for your, not only your emotional well being, but your physical well being. I mean, there have been studies that have shown this now and so it’s not just woo woo anymore. And it’s probably why, you know, people have been doing it for thousands of years because they just knew intuitively that it was good for them. And you know, Western society is slow to catch up sometimes, but we’re getting there.
SHILPA: Yeah. So yeah, absolutely. And we know now that new neural pathways are created.
GLORIA: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Which is good to know because we used to think that whatever brain cells we had, that was it. And you know, and yeah, I was listening to something the other day where they were talking about, remember, I know for me, like when I was a kid, they warned about the dangers of alcohol because you’re going to kill off your brain cells. It’s like, well, yes, but you know, you can still heal and it’s okay.
Neuroplasticity and Women Over 50
SHILPA: But I love the fact that you mentioned that, because women sometimes we like I get this, we are over 40 or over 50 and there’s certain kind of judgments that are made about because we have this thing called menopause and there’s other conditions that occur and to accentuate that experience, or not accentuated but exasperated, it could be fatigue of the brain. And what I want to remind people is that it’s not set in stone. There is signs that you can improve your cognition and your health. And like, I had this one guy come up to me in a yoga studio and I don’t think he realized I’m a lot older than I look. And he started saying things like, well, you know, women after this and, or people after a certain age, they’re just, they’re not very cognitively sharp anymore. And I just thought, well, wait a minute, that’s old science or old data, right?
GLORIA: Absolutely, yes. Because we can continue to keep learning. And in fact, you know, they encourage you to do this as you get older now because it does help even keep things like dementia away. So, you know, and that’s why I’m endeavoring to learn Hungarian. So I have like a 1900 day streak on Duolingo. Thank you very much. I give myself at least a few minutes every day. It’s a slow process. But, you know, that’s one way that I use to be able to do this. And I love that you mentioned the non negotiables because I’m the same way because I think it is so important to have those, whatever you want that practice to be, but to be able to give yourself that gift of spending some time, whether it is prayer, whether meditation. But we both highly recommend meditation. So do something, even if it is for 12 minutes, you know, you can manage, you can carve 12 minutes out of your day for sure.
The Importance of Consistency and Context
SHILPA: And Gloria, you mentioned something interesting there, that in learning that language, you have made a streak and consistency. And what’s interesting, all the things that you and I talk about, whether it’s spirituality or technology or learning a new language, which is essentially like learning how to use certain kind of technology like AI or all the apps you and I use. That’s how Gloria and I met is we were using an AI app together and we were the mastermind. Is that this stuff, when you put it in context, like the language, you know, they say if you go now and speak that language among those people who speak it, it’s a different experience.
GLORIA: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. In fact, a friend of mine who does speak Hungarian was saying, if you ever want to practice, I’m like, yeah, I know. I’m still not very comfortable at the speaking part of it. It’s like I can recognize words and you know, but yeah, that part is difficult.
Using AI to Enhance Your Authentic Voice
How to Approach AI Without Losing Yourself
GLORIA: But all right, we’re digressing here. I’m going to get back on track here because I want to talk about AI because this is something that has just really, you know, the last few years, it’s just everywhere now. And I know that some people, definitely women, and I think even women over a certain age are a little conflicted about it, a little nervous about it. So how do you recommend that we can approach AI tools in a way that can enhance rather than replace your authentic voice? Because I know that’s what a lot of people are like, oh, it’s going to be—well, especially because I started in my business as a copywriter and there’s like, oh, it’s going to put copywriters out of business, yada, yada. So yeah, how do we do this to use AI authentically and still be able to speak?
Training AI to Sound Like You
SHILPA: Yeah, this is something that was truly important to me as well as I started to explore the capabilities of tools that are in the caliber or category of copy writing, copy editing. AI is pervasive and there’s different types of AI technologies, so to speak, but the ones that are more mainstream that things that you hear people talking about, such as ChatGPT or Claude, those are language models that allow you to, on a very basic level, produce copy. And the challenge in that level becomes to many people that, well, does it still sound like me? And if you were to just ask AI without any training, so to speak, let’s say you went first time ever, you opened up Chat GPT and just said, help me write my bio. And you gave it very little information. It will sound very generic and it may even sound a little bit artificial because it doesn’t know you.
It’s like an intern standing over your shoulder and you’re like, oh, it’s first day out of college, now go write my company bio. And that is very similar to what would happen with AI. What you want to do is create a what I call the symbiotic relationship, a relationship where that entity, so to speak, gets to know you and gets to know your personality. That’s—I’ve created this simple word doc that you can download later and it’s basically allows you to create your authentic voice profile. And this is agnostic to any AI. I want people to go back to unveiling their true voice. Step number one in Pivot. Because quite frankly, when I started to really utilize AI in a more aggressive way to really write, I realized, well, you know what, I may have a style of writing, but I’m not aware of what that style of writing is. I’ve typically been very critical of my own speaking and writing. So should I be more academic? Should I be more casual? Should I sound like I would sound like with a friend?
The Power of Self-Reflection Before Technology
So these are the kind of things that you need to introspect on and unveil and audit. And maybe the way you sound and write does need to be a little more professionally toned for copy that appears on your website. But if you’re writing an email to a friend, it may be very different. So this level of introspection needs to occur. That’s where I encourage people to go through this. I think it’s five to seven steps document I put together where you think about different scenarios and you just write. So that’s your opportunity to know your authentic voice.
GLORIA: Yeah. And I think that is so important for people to remember because even though you can train the AI to really sound like you and even the tool that we met through has come up with some really good things that it really does. It does sound like me a lot. And yet there’s still some times where it just comes up and does things the same old way. And it’s like, I’m not going to do it that way. I’m going to start this newsletter a different way. But, you know, the bulk of it is still pretty good. Okay, but I can shift it.
AI as a Creative Partner
But I will tell you, it is amazing because when you do take that time, as you’re talking about, of really training the AI to know you, and that requires you doing the introspective work first and getting you getting clear on that, it’s amazing what it can come up with. In fact, I did a podcast episode about this a while back where it came up with—it came up with a framework for me and an acronym. And I was like, wow, this is pretty good. So I went and I searched. I was like, okay, I want to make sure nobody else has done this, because I don’t want to be infringing and everybody’s, you know, I don’t want to do copyright infringement. Nobody had. And so I asked, I said, okay, how’d you come up with this? Because I like this. It’s pretty good. I made a little couple tweaks to it. And I said, well, because I know you, because I know the type of content that you’ve been doing, and this is where you like to position yourself. And I was like, okay, so it can be quite amazing. And of course, now it gave me a framework, but now I get to put my secret sauce into it. My background, my stuff. So have you found anything like that in your experience?
Creating Your Brand Guide for AI
SHILPA: Absolutely. And you know, because that type of AI that we use, the model, it’s a learning model. It’s learning from you, it’s learning with you, and it’s learning at a very exponential rate. So two years ago, when I started to utilize AI, my training of it was probably more like depending—I was depending on it to learn slowly. But then I became a little more savvy, and in the back end of these technologies, you can give it guidance, so to speak. So my authentic voice guide eventually became my more evolved brand guide. And what it was is after reflecting and introspecting, I then mapped it to the brand. And so when I’m writing now, like you said, it’s evolving with you. So let’s say you have a framework, but it’s evolving just like we all are, then it’s actually understanding that you’re evolving. It sometimes will remind you of those things.
And if it’s a new conversation, think of it as somebody who’s just a new intern and they need to get up to speed. What I do is there’s a symbol called at something, something you can invoke, so to speak, the knowledge. I mean, trying to keep this very simple terms, you can invoke the knowledge of your brand guide to come in and say, hey, remind me of all of these frameworks and my ideal client and the key terms that I use when I’m talking about my products. It’ll list it for you, and then you can say, okay, thank you, you can leave the room now, you can turn it off. And then you start doing what you want to do. Maybe it’s a new service that you’re creating, but now it’s like the intern is now up to speed, right?
GLORIA: Yeah. Oh, that’s so cool. Okay, I’m going to have to try that out. I like that idea a lot. Oh, gosh. There’s like so much. And I almost feel like, you know, we might even have to have you back another time, because there’s so many things I want to talk about.
Creating Soulful Content That Connects
Strategic Posting vs. Being a Slave to Social Media
GLORIA: Can you maybe share an example of what soulful content creation looks like versus just posting for the sake of getting something out there?
SHILPA: Ah, I love that question. Okay, so I think if it is twofold, one is what let’s say you’re posting something and Gloria and I met through a mastermind where we were using a certain technology to produce content, whether that content is post production for a podcast and all the snippets and information that is associated with the podcast, or it could be to promote your product, podcast or some service and that goes into social media as a newsletter or a social post posting. I observed, I know that Gloria and I have had this conversation, can become something that you become a slave of. Like you—it’s the very sense of why you don’t want to be on social media at times, because posting for the sake of posting and you know, and I don’t want to be an influencer because my God, it seems like their soul is taken, you know.
But if you’re strategic, that’s why I use the word strategic. If you’re strategic about it, you’re like, well, let me take a step back. I know that like for instance, I just launched a new bonus series yesterday on my podcast and I knew it was coming. So I designed the social media content weeks, if not months ago, knowing that by June it will launch. And by June I may not know exactly all the details, but I’ll be talking about X, Y and Z. So let me design the posts to map to that. Let me design the posts for that map to the human psychology of when somebody sees something they don’t want to be sold to, they probably don’t even know you. And if they know you, they probably just are there to—maybe if they’re reading your posts, they’re engaged. But usually when somebody reads your post, it’s for education, entertainment, or engagement of some type. It’s one of those three categories.
Respecting Your Audience’s Journey
So you want to be aware where the person who’s reading it, where they may be coming from, and then become aware of what your intention is. So that’s where the soulful part comes out. Like, am I being intentional and am I being respectful? Because you don’t want to feed them stuff. And then people are like, you know what? Shilpa’s just always posting about wanting to sell something. I’m going to turn her off.
GLORIA: Yeah, we don’t want that for sure. So cool.
SHILPA: Does that answer your question?
GLORIA: Yeah, I think so. I think that’s helpful.
One Simple Practice for More Mindful Business
Bringing Intention Into Everything You Do
GLORIA: Let me see here. I’m trying to think what else I want to ask you because like I said, there’s so many things. What’s one simple practice that someone listening to this today could start to bring more mindfulness into their business so that they really can start, you know, lean into being a more soulful solopreneur, let’s put it that way.
SHILPA: Yeah, I’m just kind of coming up with a quick way to summarize one approach. I think that the biggest challenge is being in alignment. And I don’t think this is something that’s taught to us in school. I didn’t go to business school. I do talk about the science or the spiritual science of business. I do believe that’s something that will evolve in our new generation because I think we need it. And as we work on content, work on strategy, work on whatever it is that we’re trying to do as a service, I believe that being intentional is a value. So just like when you start your day, maybe your intention is today I seek clarity and I summon clarity from the universe and I want that clarity come through also in my business. So start with intention. And ideally, this is what I’ve mentioned earlier to you is that intention is the same intention you have for your personal life. Because I am so done with people living their lives. Are they saying, that’s the professional me, that’s the personal me. Maybe we need to just be holistically embodied in both.
The Importance of Authentic Integration
GLORIA: Yeah, yeah, I think that makes sense. Because, I mean, yes, there’s certain things that you want to be able to keep separate, but you also, if you are showing up as yourself in your personal life, you want to be able to show up as yourself and your business as well. Because, and I know I’ve talked about this in the past, that if when you’re trying to be like somebody else, maybe you’re following some other mentors way of saying, oh, we need to do it this way. And then you start maybe sharing information on social media in that realm, or you start doing emails that way. But then when you start working with clients and maybe you’re doing like one on one work or something, and then you’re talking in a different way, there’s going to be a disconnect and people are going to be like, well, which one of you is the real you? Because I was attracted to you because you were this but now you’re doing this and it can just, if you’re just being you, it’s a lot easier. So you don’t have to think about, okay, what’s my professional hat and what’s my personal hat?
SHILPA: Right, yeah, absolutely. And it does help because otherwise we get this inner conflict for ourselves. And that’s not to say you mentioned it. I say this in my writing, and when I speak that, it’s a tug of war. I mean, you can’t just immediately just say, I know this part of me shouldn’t say this. Sometimes we’re human, we’ll just say it. Right?
GLORIA: Yeah.
SHILPA: But you probably don’t want to. When I say authentic, I’m not saying divulge and show and, you know, advertise everything because…
GLORIA: Right.
SHILPA: You probably don’t want to, because we’re all growing, and sometimes it’s not necessary to add to that information, whatever it is that we’re sharing.
GLORIA: Right.
SHILPA: But if you just sometimes mention something, that’s okay. I’m just saying maybe be more forgiving to yourself also.
Vulnerability as a Strength, Not a Weakness
GLORIA: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I think part of it is, you know, being willing to be vulnerable and do share some things, you know, like even, you know, messing up the word at the beginning, like I did on the podcast today. But it didn’t make a big deal of it. You know, we just let it go. And that makes you more relatable so that people say, okay, well, this person can flub up. I guess I can flub up too. But you don’t, you know, projectile everything, you know, that’s going out in your life. You still want to, you know, kind of pick and choose the things you share.
SHILPA: Absolutely.
Final Wisdom: Stay Curious About Who You’re Becoming
GLORIA: Yeah. Let’s see. Okay, I’m going to ask you this because, like I said, I know we didn’t even get to touch on a couple other things, but if you wanted to be able to share, like, one really important concept for today to leave our audience with, or if there was something I didn’t ask you about, there was, like, why didn’t you ask me about that? Go ahead. Your floor is yours for a bit.
The Evolution of Self
SHILPA: You know, I really encourage curiosity, and that goes hand in hand with vulnerability and courage. I feel like we each have something so special. Not just one thing, multiple things, and it’s just often dormant for various reasons. We think, this is me. I put myself in a little box. There’s a label on the box. Like, I can now leave the box and pivot. Right. Or micro pivot. And I’m not—and what I’m trying to say is I encourage you to stay curious about who you think you are, but who are you becoming? What are you evolving to?
GLORIA: I like that. Yeah. And that’s so funny, because usually one last question that I do like to ask my guest is, what are you curious about? So what are you curious about?
Navigating the Dark Nights of the Soul
SHILPA: I’m personally curious about the evolution of who I’m becoming on a more spiritual level, because there are times where I go through the darkest of dark times in trying to really grow. And maybe it’s because I’m more introspective and I’m sometimes I’m harder on myself. I just feel like, how can I come out of this and be the person I want to be? And sometimes you think, am I getting there? And I recently had somebody tell me, oh, just from two years ago, I see a shift. Sometimes we don’t see it, and sometimes it comes through.
GLORIA: That’s true. Yeah. Yeah, it’s amazing. Yeah, I know I’ve done that. I had one time where I was—had gone through a program, and then someone saw me, like, I don’t know, a couple months later, and they’re like, wow, you look so much lighter. You know, it was just my energy was better and I didn’t fully appreciate it. And I was like, oh, well, that’s nice that they saw that. So, yeah, yeah, I like that.
Where to Find Shilpa and Her Resources
GLORIA: I’m sure there are tons of people out there who are going to be like, okay, I want to know more about this wonderful lady and maybe also listen to their podcast and get the freebies that you were talking about that download. So where can people contact you?
Omni Mindfulness and Amplify Authentically
SHILPA: Okay, so I have—and I’ll provide the links so that you have all of them. I have a main website, omnimindfulness.com but I also have all of my freebies and other things that are evolving in through my new initiative called Amplify Authentically, which just was launched recently. And that is a bonus track where I offer digital courses, meaning what I call like the Quick bite audio podcast. 10 to 20 minutes. You can listen to it wherever you go. It’s all based on this concept of lean learning and learning technology, but without feeling like it’s overwhelming you. Because we talked about overwhelm.
GLORIA: Right?
Free Resources and Course Offerings
SHILPA: Amplify Authentically is a store that I created where you can download my more spiritual free tool, which is to be victorious in life. It is a guided reflection tool. And I’m creating your authentic voice guide, which is sort of in between mindfulness and stepping towards technology. It’s AI agnostic because I want people to first get over the intimidation of AI and then I have a few other free tools there. Then I have my coursework, membership, and other things. And then I encourage you to check out my Omni mindfulness podcast, which is free. And the Amplify Authentically bonus track, the month of June, you can get tested out because it’s all free for the first month. Then after that, there’ll be a nominal fee.
GLORIA: Okay, well, spoiler alert, folks, that you’re listening to this. It’s after June, so I’m sorry you’re gonna have to pay now. But I’m really blown away by how much you have accomplished, actually, you know, because I’ve known you for a while, and I love all of these different things that you’re doing. And so I think it’s going to be wonderful resources for folks. And I know I’m going to take advantage of it, too.
Closing: Soul Sisters in Business
SHILPA: Gloria, I am so honored to be here. And, you know, often when you post things, it always resonates with my heart, and that’s why I wanted to have you on my show. I’m like, the social posts you make are so in sync with my spiritual perspective.
GLORIA: Yeah, yeah. Yes. You know, we know soul sisters when we come across them, so it’s great. And I definitely consider you that. So thank you so much for joining us today, and I really—yeah, I know our audience got a lot of value out of it today.
SHILPA: Well, thank you, Gloria, and I would love to have you back in the future.
GLORIA: All right, excellent. We’ll make plans for sure. And I do want to thank all of you for listening and watching today. And I hope that if you’re not subscribed already, that you are subscribed on your favorite podcast platform, whatever that is. And of course, you can always go to my website to access the podcast and also subscribe on YouTube, where that way you get to see as well as hear us. And I think that’s gonna do it for this time around. And so until next time, I encourage you to go out and live fully, love deeply, and engage authentically.
