Aim for Healing, Not a Cure, After a Crucible: Sharon Land

Warwick Fairfax:
Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I’m Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond the Crucible.

Sharon Land:
That was when I realized that I was in a very, very unhealthy relationship. Lost everything and left with just basically whatever I could fit in my car, and drove 1,000 miles away. And that’s when I said, “I never want to be in this position again, and I’m willing to understand how I got there and how I can never be there again.”

Gary Schneeberger:
Her life in complete upheaval, her future uncertain, but her mind made up. Our guest this week, Sharon Land recounts how this relationship crucible, plus the health crisis of suffering a stroke in her 30s, led her to pursue true wellness, first for herself and then for others as a licensed holistic therapist, high-performance mentor, and transformational guide.

Warwick Fairfax:
Well, Sharon, thank you so much for being here. Really looking forward to our discussion. I love learning a bit about you. You’re a licensed holistic therapist. I like how in the material you describe yourself as a guide, a spiritual Sherpa. For those who haven’t climbed Mount Everest or gone to Nepal recently-

Gary Schneeberger:
Me.

Warwick Fairfax:
… the Sherpas are those guides that help you up impossible mountains. Without the Sherpa, you’re in trouble. So it’s a wonderful metaphor. And you have a book, The Healer’s Journey: Discover the Healer Within You. It’s a great phrase. You’ve got the Prismatic program, which we’ll hear about, the Transformational journey, the Live Your Legacy Retreat. Love that. Living your legacy, talk quite a bit about that.
So just before we get into what you do now, tell us a bit about the backstory and a young Sharon growing up, because very often we find the seeds of our purpose can be in just some of the stories and our life experiences. So what was life like for a young Sharon?

Sharon Land:
Yeah, and thank you for having me, and so good to meet both of you. Life for Sharon, I grew up on the East Coast in the US and two parent household, and really was born into kind of a spectrum of gifts. And did not know and wasn’t guided and wasn’t mentored that they were okay and how to work within them. So many people spend their lives seeking the opportunity to be able to see, to tap into their gifts of who they are and how they can show up in the world. And I was born into this big, loud spectrum of that. And so it was an interesting beginning.
And by all practices, I think my parents did the best that they could and they did all of the right things based upon whatever wisdom and guidance were provided at the time when I was born. But people who were born in the late ’60s and ’70s, I think most of us would say that we were quite feral and raised in a way that’s a little bit different than how we know that perhaps we can be raised in a different way. So I don’t fault my parents for being just very much like many other parents, just doing their best.
But one of the things that was resounding throughout my lifespan was that there was always some sort of a conflict, and that conflict started to show up in the physical disease. So I suffered very, very early on with debilitating migraines. And as I continued to progress throughout my life, it turned into lots of different things. So always with the best of intentions, the outcome wasn’t the best for me. So it really just taught me to continue to conform, to mask, to pretend, to work harder, to work with the mental aspect of maybe it’s just changing your perspective and maybe it’s just realizing that there’s something wrong with you and you just need to adhere to the way that everybody else is. And that led to a deeper conflict inside of me.
And I believe that a lot of people, especially high performers, all have this experience in their life where they didn’t feel like they were really quite aligned. And maybe there’s some sort of a major issue or maybe there’s just a lot of chronic issues along the way and circumstances along the way that inform them that they have to perform in order to be seen, they have to perform in order to be loved, they have to perform in order to be worthy of space, literally taking up space in this world. And I was one of those.
So I spent a long time trying to outperform my past and find out who I was. And by the structures that we had set, I was doing all of the right things, but my body and my mind and my heart and my spirit all told me that I wasn’t. So the big catalyst for me, one of the catalysts for me was I had a stroke and I was in my 30s, which was kind of unheard of at that time to be so young. And that was a big wake up call for me because, again, I was the one who was a perfectionist. I did everything right and wasn’t perfect, but there was always the moving goalpost of trying to chase perfection.
So that allowed me to really take a look at my life. And I changed my life in many, many ways at that time. But it wasn’t until much later that I had my crucible moment. And that was when I realized that I was in a very, very unhealthy relationship and lost everything and left with just basically whatever I could fit in my car, and drove 1,000 miles away. And that’s when I said, “I never want to be in this position again. And I’m willing to understand how I got there and how I can never be there again, for myself, but also for my children.”

Warwick Fairfax:
So it’s probably unknowable, is your sense that some of the illnesses, the migraines, do you feel as you look back, that might have been related to just feeling like in almost like a psychological straitjacket, that you were trying to conform and that caused physical challenges? As you look back, do you see a connection between the way you thought you had to live and the physical illnesses?

Sharon Land:
100%. And now what I know is that I was living a life of survival, and we have this beautiful spiritual intersect within our physical bodies called our nervous systems that are wired for truth and wired for our basic needs and wired for safety. So as much as we might be programmed to believe that we’re getting what we need or that there’s something about you that needs to change or whatever, our nervous systems will always let us know. And the longer we live within that conflict, the more it’s going to show up in our physical bodies. And that’s by divine design, and that’s a sign of health.
So it started with migraines and unfixable things. At one point I was diagnosed with lupus. But the interesting thing is that there are two different forms of activation within our nervous systems. We have the high end of activation, which is what we know most about, and then we have the low end of activation. So high end is irritability, superhuman capacity to be able to leap tall buildings with a single bound if we need to, get people out of a burning building. That’s the sympathetic nervous system, and that’s designed to help to keep us safe, right? But we also have something that when the thing that is creating the activation for us isn’t addressed, then we go to another state within that survival mechanism, which is the dorsal vagal nervous system response, which puts us into a position of paralysis, disassociation, de-realization from our lives, de-realization and de-personalization from who we are. And in that survival, we fawn, we people please, we placate, we in many times get into a situation where we feel very hopeless.
So what I learned not just was that the physical aspects we’re a result of not being honored, what I learned is there’s a bio-scientific aspect to our survival that we live within that is going to affect if we constantly stay in our high-end or sympathetic nervous system response, it will affect kind of the brain, the brain stem, and then also our entire spine. So in all of the people who I’ve worked with, which are many, first responders all typically have some sort of spinal injury, police officers, firefighters, military and nurses, people who are first responders. And the majority of women speaking, just kind of acculturation, the majority of women all have autoimmune issues. 80% or more than 80% of people who are diagnosed with autoimmune issues and diseases are women. And the structures that we live within create a situation where there’s kind of an unsolvable unfixable, unresolvable, repairable circumstance.
So that places us many times into the dorsal vagal, which the dorsal vagal affects things like our throat. Thyroid disease is one of the number one treated diseases within women. And that’s all falls into the autoimmune, right? That’s here. Digestive, IBS, our intestinal tract, reproductive. There is a warehouse now of fertility clinics across the world, but the majority here in the United States. All of that affects women. So there’s a correlation to it’s not just the family systems that we grew up in, but it’s literally societal systems, it’s structures, it’s grid work that are creating a natural conflict that we live within. So I think that the root of it is very interesting and it’s also very complex, and the solution can be very beautiful and liberating, and not just for yourself, but also for the collective, which is why we’re here, right?

Warwick Fairfax:
Yeah, and we’ll get to this, I know one of the things you talk about is doctors, as good as they can be, seek to try to cure, and I love the phrase you use, rather than to heal. Very often for me, if I get stressed, it will sometimes often go to my stomach. That’s sort of common. So yes, I could take all sorts of acid-reducing things, which in moderation is okay, you don’t want to overdo it because that causes other things. But okay, so what’s causing this stress? Let’s see if we can reduce it. And then, hey, presto, my stomach feels better. I mean, that’s a common thing that many people go through.
But so you had challenges growing up and have to try to fit in and maybe fulfill all the people’s expectations and your own, but then the stroke and then just the breakup of your relationship with kids, I mean, that must have A, been devastating, but it would tend to lead to all sorts of other physical manifestations. I mean, obviously the stroke is a physical manifestation itself, but the breakup of a relationship, and when you feel like you lose everything relationally and financially, did it lead to some challenging physical characteristics?

Sharon Land:
Interestingly enough, there was definitely a stress response, so in the moment while I was going through it, high levels of cortisol in my body, so there was a lot of inflammation, but I was far enough along in my healing journey, I was armed and I had a lot of great protective factors within the practices, so spiritual practices, physical practices. So I was kind of like Forrest Gump. So I just ran, and that was how I just metabolized. So I just kept running and running and running. And then one day I was like, “Well, I’m done running,” metaphorically and physically.
It was the first time in my life that I ever lived alone. And I was in my late 40s. I had never in my life ever lived alone. Both of my children were out of the house and so it was just me. And I lived in something called my launch pad. I called it my little launch pad. And in the beginning, I didn’t even want to have furniture in it because it was so liberating to literally empty, internally and externally, every single thing that I had been carrying around. So interestingly enough, I became healthier and healthier with every day and every minute that I spent.
And always, there’s these beautiful universal coincidences, right? So I met incredible healers along the way throughout my life that made such beautiful impact for me and helped me to catalyze my experience and alchemize my experience from it being the greatest wounding that I ever, ever could have experienced, to finally listening to the nudges all of my life, to honor who I truly am and to step into who I am here to be and serve in the ways that I am meant to be and stop hiding. So it was the womb that birthed me into my greatest, greatest, greatest expression. And so for that, I am so grateful.

Warwick Fairfax:
One of the things we say at Beyond the Crucible, and we’ve had people with every crucible you can imagine, whether it’s financial loss, victims of abuse, people who’ve made just terrible life decisions, losing loved ones, children, and this phrase has come up, “It didn’t happen to you, it for you,” and that sounds hard to understand, but pretty much every guest we’ve had who obviously people we’ve had on the show have moved to more of a life-affirming vision, they say, “It was terrible, but I learned some things,” in many cases, I remember a woman by the name of Stacey Copas, she was a teenager in the suburb of Sydney. She dove into an above ground pool, which of course her parents said, “Don’t do that, Stacey,” but you know, kids ignore their parents, and she became diagnosed as a quadriplegic. Obviously she went through, as you would imagine, suicidal ideation and substance abuse.
But subsequently, as she moved forward, she said, “What I went through, I’m grateful for because the person I am now who’s a strong person, dedicated to helping others and coaching and speaking,” so it’s hard to wrap your arms around that. How in the world could that be positive? So it seems like in your case you did too. You might’ve been in this small place with no furniture, but you found a way to turn it into a positive, as you put it, your mission was birthed out of that horrendous experience. So it’s an amazing… I mean, you’ve got to reframe what happened, because we often say you have a choice.
You could have been angry and bitter and say, “That person, I didn’t deserve that. I can’t believe that,” and just go the cycle of anger, bitterness, which is understandable. Oe you could say, “Okay, it wasn’t right, it wasn’t fair, but I need to find a way to move on, forgive, but not condone.” And so you must have gone through that, that must have been… All those emotions there that you made a choice you would not be defined by this experience. You would not be in this victim mode and be angry and bitter for the rest of your life. You made a choice, right?

Sharon Land:
Yeah, it was 100% a choice. And also to your point, I’m so mindful when I’m working with people to not say, “This is probably going to be the best thing that’s ever happened to you,” because there’s so much complexity that goes into it. We have to take into acculturation, we have to take into realistic things that are going on in the world where we are literally oppressed. So I do believe that we don’t need to experience such tragic experiences in order to be able to alchemize and become who we are. And I have zero regrets. Zero regrets.
But the thing that really motivated me was that I raised my head above the rubble of my experiences in my life. And I knew that I had to take personal responsibility for who I am and who I was when I showed up in my relationships. So I never wanted to be the hero, I never wanted to be the victim, and I never wanted to be the villain. And actually, when I was working with somebody, they said, “You were a victim.” And I said, “I will not wear that T-shirt. I won’t ever wear that T-shirt.”
And the thing that was the subtext for me was that for whatever reason, not saying that it wasn’t intended or ever tried or whatever, there were places and spaces inside of me and inside of my life that I didn’t experience love. And I vowed that every place that I allowed my metaphorical footsteps to be, that it would be with love and that I would no longer allow myself to hate or anger or self-betray or self-destruct because of an outward experience or an inward experience.
And it sounds so simple, but greeting yourself in all of those moments, you realize how, regardless as to where it came from, it’s yours to hold, it’s yours to honor, it’s yours to live and embody. So love is what we’re all here for. But the only way we can experience the true bounty of love is to live the experiences of our life and allow it to live through us. And that creates the wisdom. Wisdom isn’t kept up here in our head. That’s just information, right?

Warwick Fairfax:
Wisdom tends to come through life experience. Do you feel like, and I want to get to what you do now, but do you feel like since you’ve had that mentality that yes, there’s physical benefits, but that you approach life differently, relationships are different, I don’t know, when you’re in a better space, if you attract, I don’t want to say better relationships, better environments, that somehow… Do you feel like those things changed a bit as you became more who were intended to be and were straitjacketed less by expectations or bitterness, that it changed the way you relate to the world and the way the world related to you, if that makes any degree of sense?

Sharon Land:
It makes complete sense. So what shapes us in the beginning is how we’re responded to in our lives. So when we’re super little infants before in the womb, whatever. And so the way that we relate to ourselves, the way that we relate to the world and the way that the world interacts with us is shaped based upon that frequency. So the undoing of the misinformation will allow you to be able to show up differently.
But the interesting thing for me in my own experience, what I’m here for, is not just to be off on my own slaying dragons. Part of what I realized is that it’s easy to heal in a vacuum. It’s easy to say that you’ve done all of the things and do it all on your own and live in a bubble, in a glass house. But I think it was Ram Dass who said, “If you think you’re enlightened, go and spend a week with your family.” It’s kind of the same thing, right? It’s not easy because we are here for connection. We’re wired for connection. We’re here to work as a union, in union with another. So it’s not until you can join safely, openly, abundantly with fullness of who you are, that you really can, in my opinion, say that you can serve well.

Warwick Fairfax:
I want to make sure we get to what you do now, because I think a lot of what you talk about is you’re not against Western medicine. It can be helpful, but so often in the West, doctors seek to cure. They want to give you a tablet for everything, and it’s like, but what’s the underlying cause of it? It might be lifestyle, psychological, eating habits. And it’s like back to the stomach ache thing, which I don’t get that often, but you sort of read some holistic books on that and it’s like, okay, don’t eat as many tomatoes and don’t eat… I don’t know, there’s a series of things you shouldn’t eat because that tends to activate your stomach. Okay, well I can do that. It’s not a magic cure, but it helps. Well, a doctor isn’t going to say, “So how many tomatoes did you eat this week? You eat lots of ketchup?” I mean, they’re not going to ask that question. That’s just one sliver. It’s like, “Well, here’s an anti acid reduction.” “Okay, that’s great.”
So just talk about your perspective on, again, you’re not against medicine, but just healing as opposed to curing. And it seems like in our Western medical culture, it does seem to be changing a bit. There are some enlightened doctors that are beginning to talk about this. As you would know better than me, there are doctors who talk about holistic medicine, and they’re licensed doctors, but they also talk about other things. Not many, but some. Just talk about how you view that, the curing versus healing and how you work with people that you work with.

Sharon Land:
So first interesting to note on my roster all of the time, I have at least one doctor, one nurse, one practitioner, one PA, and they come to me because they’re living in conflict. There’s something that’s showing up in their lives and they can’t figure out what’s going on. So we go through the process of their own healing journey and becoming more of who they are and understanding who they are and why they are where they are, which is fascinating and beautiful. We walk the line, we walk the line of the esoteric and however much they embrace. And then it’s so fun to see the progress of, “Okay, well I know that this is this, but I’m still going to go to the doctor because my cholesterol is high.” And the doctor will say, “Okay, well you need to go on a statin,” right? And they’ll say, “Well, I don’t want to go on a statin, but I can’t tell them it’s because I’m working with my inner child right now and I really think that I’ll be able to reduce my cholesterol by whatever.”
So they figure out a way to walk the line of the healing work and live authentically to who they are, and also not cause any harm to how they’re showing up currently where their feet are planted right now in their professions. So we have context which is very important to our healing, which I think is a big part of it. So Western medicine is designed, especially here in the US, as emergency medicine. So it makes complete sense that when somebody shows up to the emergency room, to the doctor’s office, to the clinic, to the whatever, things have gotten to a point of it’s critical. There’s some sort of critical piece. So I would never say, we don’t need a doctor to help with a broken bone or to help with a heart attack when it’s happening or whatever.
Now, what caused the heart attack? That’s a whole different story. How we can never get there again, that’s a whole different story. So for instance, we’re still so misinformed, even through our traditional training and teaching for doctors, for instance, women in menopause, one of the number one risk factors of women in menopause is not them losing their minds because their hormones are dropping, it’s heart disease, it’s cardiac disease. And because they’ve gone untreated for as long as they’ve gone, they’re at a much higher risk. And also there is a prevalence of heart attacks or heart arrhythmia or issues within the heart. So when I say root cause, I’m not always just saying trauma. I’m saying what is it the root of what your needs are?

Warwick Fairfax:
And that could be physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual. It could be all sorts of different roots. And so how do you explore those? So talk a bit about holistic healing. And there’s different spiritual practices that you obviously have to tailor to whoever’s with you. If you have some corporate executive, there’s probably going to be some Eastern traditions they’re really not too open to or any. So it depends on the person, but you probably have a whole bunch of tools that you can find, I’m guessing, one that will fit for them. “Okay, you don’t like this? That’s fine, how about this other one?”

Sharon Land:
Right.

Warwick Fairfax:
So talk about how that works as you’re dealing with folks. What does holistic healing look like? It’s not in conflict with Western medicine, but it’s different. So what do you try to do with somebody that says, “Hey, Sharon, I kind of need help,” what does that look like, holistic healing?

Sharon Land:
So it’s very much of how you’ve just introduced it, so it’s meeting the person where they are. One of the skills that I would say that I’m very strong with is I’m very intuitive and I’m able to read people pretty quickly, and from the most purest of lenses. So not in a critical, “There’s something wrong with you,” or whatever, but just like, “Okay, where are you?” I ask myself that question when I’m talking to somebody, “Where are you?” I ask, “Where is this person? Where are the pressures?” Many, many times I’ve worked with people who work on Wall Street, and a very typical secret that they hide for a long time are panic attacks. They’re having panic attacks, anxiety, literally. Some where they’re hiding from their partners. They’ll go and hide in an office room where they know that people don’t normally go and they’ll lay on the floor because they’re having a panic attack.
So I might see that, I might know that, but asking the direct question, “Are you having a panic attack?” Or, “Are you doing whatever” would be very, very unsafe? And make them put their walls of protection up more. So to navigate and find our way into what feels right for them in that moment to help to address things, I feel is an art. And it’s very, very important because my dedication to myself when I was going through the last pieces of my healing is I do not want any place that my metaphorical feet go or physical feet go, that aren’t with love and acceptance. And I feel the same way with all of the people that I’m blessed to be able to work with. Every single place we go has to come from a place of, “I’m ready.” And that readiness takes as long as it takes.

Warwick Fairfax:
Probably this sort of intuitive dance. I can think of obviously there are differences between men and women in our society, certainly Western society, men are taught to sort of buckle up, be strong, don’t admit weakness, don’t be vulnerable, and certainly a lot of male anyway, Wall Street executives to admit they have panic attacks, that’s admitting they’re weak, which they’re taught is you never, ever do. You just say, “Oh, things are good, I’m fine.” But that could be perfectionism. It’s like, “Gosh, the market’s down. My whole sense of self is defined by the stock market. If it’s up, I’m a good person. If it’s down, I’m a bad person.” So obviously try to disconnect that. But obviously with some male Wall Street executives, it’s got to be challenging. But over time you build up a relationship and they trust you and sort of lock by block, drip by drip, the truth, their truth comes out. So you’re probably very good at what you do that once trust is built, one way or another, they’ll let you know what the problem is, right? It’ll come out.

Sharon Land:
Yes. And I really believe that it’s never about what’s right and wrong, although there are very few things that I’ll be like, “That’s right and wrong.” But it’s really about understanding the organic essence of who you are and why you’re here and looking at what you’re surrounded with to see what is not in alignment with that. So I give an example, and I say this many times, because then I have people who are the opposite, where they read all of the books and they see all the memes and they’re on social media and they’re just like, “I have CPTSD,” and, “I have this,” and, “I was traumatized and I’m abused and I want to fix it all now. I just want to fix it now.” And I’m like, “All right, pump the brakes and we’re going to again come with our agreement, which is no more suffering.”
That’s one of the first things that I have every single client come to an agreement with me and some put it up on their computers, no more suffering so that they can remind themselves every single day that suffering is a choice. Pain is going to happen regardless, but suffering is a choice. So I give this example of a city block, so let’s just say we’re on a city block and somebody plants a tree next to a fire hydrant and it’s a sapling and there’s plenty of space for the two of them to coexist. But 100 years later, that tree has continued to grow and it’s now grown around the fire hydrant.
So I can walk by and say, “That fire hydrant’s not supposed to be there,” or, “That tree’s not supposed to be there. So we got to fix it.” If I were to go in and try and eradicate that fire hydrant from the tree and we’ll just benefit the tree over the fire hydrant because the tree is living and the fire hydrant is not. So what would happen to the tree if I removed that fire hydrant in completion? It would probably die because for 100 years it has accommodated and it is coexisted with, even though it’s not in alignment, it’s not supposed to be there, you can see in the leaves and in the branches the reflection of the fire hydrant and the impact and the impression that made on it.
So bit by bit you work with, you sit, you rest, you digest, you observe, you allow the healthy aspects of self to come through and do its magic, and then you go back in again and you allow yourself to be guided. And that’s the beautiful thing of the work with me is that it’s not in a can, it’s not a program where I walk people through paces and whatever. It’s a dance of just that, where we’re guided. And in the beginning it doesn’t feel very organic. But in the end, one of the reflections that I get from everyone that I work with is like, “Wow, I came in asking for tools,” and I’ll look at them and I’ll joke and I’ll say, “You need another tool like you need another window on your house. You don’t need another tool. You’ve got a whole extra garage and shed just to hold all of the tools that you have just to be able to exist in your life. What you need is to be able to show up and organically be you and trust yourself.”

Warwick Fairfax:
A different perspective. That’s really interesting the metaphor of the tree and the fire hydrant. Some things will heal and maybe some things, to a degree, won’t exactly heal, but you learn to live with them and they become part of your new you and your new purpose. And obviously, there’s extreme example of people with physical challenges, there are some wounds that it’s not possible to physically heal, but you learn to become the new you. Somehow you weave it into your purpose and helping people understand patience. And I imagine you give people skills so that when they’re not with you in a session, they’re able to self-diagnose, help.
By nature, I’m a very reflective person, that has its pluses and minuses, but usually, if something’s wrong, I want to know why and where. I don’t brush over it. I’m just not wired that way. So I’d love just as we kind of begin to close, I mean you’ve got so many great things, you’ve got the Prismatic program. I love this whole Live Your Legacy. We don’t often think enough about legacy and purpose. And I’m guessing in what you do… Or maybe I should ask a question, this is maybe an obvious question, but to what degree does it help somebody to have purpose and feeling like life is not just about them, it’s both and yes, it’s about being the best person you can be, but it’s also about making a contribution in the world, whatever that means to you? Do you feel like that has a place in healing and moving forward when you see your purpose in the world and there’s some other centered nature to it?

Sharon Land:
Yeah. And some would argue that we have multiple purposes, right? And I believe that too. So for me, it comes down to personal responsibility. And so we’re responsible for the energy that we bring to every single situation. So I’m responsible to the energy that I’m bringing here and with whether it’s going to the store, getting a coffee, meeting with the clients, [inaudible 00:40:51] with my partner, with my children. So to me, your legacy has a lot to do with the essence of who you are. And that’s beautiful. It’s like a fingerprint. It’s all very different, some similarities between others, but the essence of who you are is that feeling that you’re left with after you’re gone, and that’s spirit also.
So living your legacy isn’t always necessarily about the job that you do, but really getting to know the essence of who you are so that everywhere you go it’s purpose-filled and you don’t need a tangible, binary transactional proof of that. And to live, to me, it’s so beautiful to be able to live in a way that you know that whether things go the way that you want them to or think they’re supposed to or don’t, that somebody listens to you, understands you or doesn’t, that you are exactly where you’re meant to be, doing and saying exactly what you’re meant to be saying and what you are-

Warwick Fairfax:
And that will leave a positive influence on your kids, friends, somebody you meet at the grocery store, these imperceptible imprints, you will leave if you’re your best self, you’ll leave a positive mark. And so that your legacy doesn’t have some big nonprofit. It can be in 100, 1,000 relationships, meeting conversations, that can be part of your legacy. It may not be tangible, but it may still be beautiful, if that makes sense.

Sharon Land:
Yes, yes, exactly.

Gary Schneeberger:
I’ve been uncharacteristically quiet in this entire conversation, partly because truly Sharon, I can tell, I’ve been through enough of these with Warwick, when he’s really interested in what a guest is having to say. So every time I think I’m going to be able to jump in, he has a follow-up question, which is great.

Warwick Fairfax:
Sorry about that.

Gary Schneeberger:
No, that’s what makes the show what it is. But I’m curious, one of the things that we stand for, that Warwick stands for at Beyond the Crucible a lot, we encourage people to find that life of significance, what he defines as a life on purpose, dedicated to serving others. And when we talked before we started recording, you told me something that I’ve circled on my paper that tells me you are indeed living that life of significance. And you said this to me, that you’ve discovered the giver is always the receiver.

Sharon Land:
Yeah.

Gary Schneeberger:
Is that a fair analysis of all that you’ve been talking about right here on this episode?

Sharon Land:
Yes, yes, yes. There is no greater gift than to see someone in their fullest expression, and especially when we all have living examples, we see it, we’ve experienced it, people close to us or people who we’ve known in the media where there was such a deep pain within them that they felt they couldn’t live in their expression and it ended poorly for them. So to me, most of my life, I was like the Cyrano de Bergerac of helpers. So I was always behind the scenes, never really seen whatever, and the one whispering the whatever, and that there was a great gift in that. But now that I find that I am doing it in a way where I am divinely guided to do, and being front and center, being interviewed by you, by being on stages, by speaking, by being on television and all of that, I believe that there’s such beautiful alignment and that the more I can give from a place of safety, truth, presence, authenticity, life is good.

Warwick Fairfax:
When you’re who you are and you’re giving to others out of the very essence of what makes Sharon Sharon, and you’re helping people and once in a while, probably very often, they say, “Sharon, you got me through this tough time. I’ve never been more fully who I am. I’ve never been more joyful. Life isn’t necessarily easy, but yet I have a bigger smile on my face than before we met,” that has got to give you so much joy in which you say, “Well, thank you,” and it’s okay to be filled with joy when you somehow make a small or a big difference. It’s okay to feel that pleasure and satisfaction, and at least from my spiritual time, I say that, “Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Jesus for the opportunity.” And yeah, I greatly, it means a lot to feel like you’re doing something and making a difference in the world, be it small or big, nobody may know, maybe many will know, but you know. And that matters. Does that make sense?

Sharon Land:
It totally makes sense. I’m in partnership with someone and we have a wonderful relationship, and so we go to the gym together and I work with professional athletes, and so no one knows. No one knows that I’m working with that particular professional athlete. I don’t go out, I have no need to tell anyone who my clients are. Actually the Live My Legacy retreat is such a high touch, bespoke experience to protect the identities of the people that are coming. But it’s so great that when I see my client on the TV screen, as we’re at the gym working out, at least I have someone who I can like… You know? There’s joy in that because we both love them because many times we work together and we have some things that we do together. So we both know this particular client and we absolutely adore who we’re working with and honor them. So yeah, it’s a beautiful thing. It’s beautiful.

Gary Schneeberger:
I’m going to jump in again here because I’d be remiss, Sharon, if I didn’t give you the chance after all you’ve talked about here that you help people with, if I didn’t give you the chance to tell our listeners and viewers just how they can find out more about you and your services on the worldwide web. So where can they go?

Sharon Land:
Thank you so much. I appreciate that. Well, my website is sharanjeanland.com. My Instagram handle is @SharonJeanLand. You can find me also on LinkedIn. And I love working with community and I love creating movements for other individuals. I have a few different ways that I work with individuals and groups, and I would say my primary is more of a high touch service where I’m working one-on-one as a mentor. And when we speak holistically, we’re talking about all areas and aspects.
So from professional, business, personal, relational, physical health, financial health. And I was just talking with someone this morning before our call and said, “You’re only as strong as your weakest link,” so I wouldn’t feel like I was doing my job if I wasn’t able to help to work within all of the complexities of all of the moving parts of somebody’s life. So I do that from my own personal success and experience and failures and things that I’ve learned from, and I really do it well and am able to really get in there and help individuals not have to completely obliterate their lives in order to be able to move forward in a different way. So I’m a little bit of an artist when it comes to that.
We do have our Live Your Legacy Retreat coming up in October, and it’s a very small, intimate group, which we do have space for the right person who is a high performer, looking to really understand the essence of who they are and understand the legacy that they’re here to live and create a greater alignment within themselves. So it’s a wonderful opportunity to be able to just take space, which most high performers don’t ever feel like they have time for. Yeah, and we have some performance where we work with some high performance people who are professional athletes and out there on the big international stages. So I work with people globally as well. So acculturation is really important and I love that piece as well.

Gary Schneeberger:
So Warwick, as always, the last question or questions, because you get to pick if you want to ask one or two or three or four, the last question or questions are yours for Sharon.

Warwick Fairfax:
So Sharon, there might be somebody listening and watching today that maybe they feel like today’s their worst day, they might feel like the mistake they made is unforgivable or what was done to them might just seem so painful, and maybe that’s manifested itself in illnesses. What would a word of hope for that person be? Because today they might feel pretty hopeless and that there is no path forward. What would a word of hope be if today was somebody’s worst day?

Sharon Land:
Well, to be aware of the fact that it’s one of your worst days is a blessing and a gift and a sign of your health and a sign of your capacity to grow and serve and expand. Even though you might feel hopeless, to recognize that says that you have something there. And it doesn’t have to be a huge phoenix rising moment for you. And that some of the best ways to show up in life are making small, tiny measurable steps in percentages of 1%, half percent, 10% differences in your life. And if you feel down, it’s okay. Let yourself feel down. Remember what it feels like, remember where you are right now, and honor all of these experiences that you have physically and emotionally and spiritually because this is a sign pointing you in a direction of where you can go to help to address where you’re meant to go.

Gary Schneeberger:
Friends, I’ve been in the communications business long enough to know when the last word on a subject has been spoken. And our guest today has indeed spoken it not only the last word, but she’s also spoken… Go back and listen to this and watch this again. You, Sharon, are a master dropper of metaphors. Love it. There’s like three or four things I’ve written down. The metaphors that you speak about the things that you encounter and how we can overcome them are grand. So bravo for that.
So Warwick, we’re just minutes after we closed our conversation with Sharon Land, and it was a wide ranging conversation that people will notice when they watch it you are particularly engaged in. So I’m dying to know what’s the big takeaway that you got from our time, our chat with Sharon?

Warwick Fairfax:
Sharon has an interesting view of wellness. One of the things she talks about is in Western medicine, we can be so focused on the cure that we don’t consider other ways of healing, other approaches. And she’s not against Western medicine, that can be very helpful. But I think what she’s advocating is looking beyond just trying to cure the disease to what are some of the factors that led to it? So she looks at the whole person, emotional, spiritual, and physical. Some obviously as we know, diet and exercise can definitely help in terms of making you healthy and lowering cholesterol, and there are some things we all know about, but just looking at overall wellness, certainly high stress can lead to adverse health consequences. The exact connection, it’s not easy to tell, but I think it’s known that there is some connection. So what are the ways we can reduce stress as well as just increasing wellness overall?
And it’s interesting hearing about Sharon’s story. She shares that when she was 12, 13, and a teenager, obviously as a child you’re not really in charge of your health, your parents are, and she went through a number of challenges. But what was interesting is when she said that she had a stroke in 2005 and then a committed relationship she was in broke up, those were absolutely devastating. But I sense from what she said that as devastating as it was, she has some tools to help her that she didn’t have when she was a child that helped her deal with those better and bounce back.
So she has a number of private clients, some are probably pretty well-known athletes, but it’s obviously all confidential and she wants to protect that, and she’s able to just give them a wide variety of tools, different spiritual modalities, so to help people just get in touch with who they are, what are some of the causes of it? How do you manage some of those things? How do you accept maybe the new normal? Just doing more than just traditional medicine, as good as that is, but just try to deal with the whole person.
And as people are bouncing back from their crucibles, you’ve got to deal with the whole person. You’ve got to deal with how you process your crucible to bounce back. You’ve got to understand the causes. You’ve got to make a choice to move forward and not wallow in what you went through. There are consequences that sometimes won’t change. You’ve got to learn how to live in the new normal. So she dwells in a space that definitely has overlap with what we do.
So yeah, medicine is useful, but there are things that you have to do beyond just taking traditional medicine, which is helpful, to deal with the whole person, the underlying causes, what’s leading to stress, is it unresolved conflict? Using prayer or other spiritual modalities. So it was very thought-provoking discussion about what does wellness mean in the broad sense of the word?

Gary Schneeberger:
Yeah, those areas that you said that she overlaps with Beyond the Crucible, I was struck by one at the end of the process, the life of significance process. She said this, which I just thought I’ve never heard a guest phrase it this way, but it’s so true with what we know from our own experiences and the experience of the guests. She said this, that she’s discovered the giver is always the receiver. There’s a life of significance right there. As you give, you receive. I mean, talk about that a little bit. That’s a pretty profound statement, and it definitely aligns with what we do.

Warwick Fairfax:
It sure is. I mean, that’s such a great point, Gary. One of the things we say is, yes, you’ve got to understand what happened, your crucible, you’ve got to have times of reflection. We talk about this quite a bit in the Actionable Truths series that we’re going through. But really one of the things that we say is one of the keys to getting out of the pit of despair is to have a vision, a life-affirming vision that leads to a life of significance, a life on purpose, dedicated to serving others. And very often, for many, if not most of our guests, their life-affirming vision comes out of the crucible, “I don’t want anybody to go through what I went through. I want to help people that went through what I went through to bounce back.”
So when you’re focused on helping others and you see that you’ve made a difference, and somebody says, “Boy, Gary, Warwick, what you did, it kind of helped me,” and when you feel like what you’re doing is making a difference, it’s kind of a bit easier to get out of bed in the morning. It feels like life has purpose. It’s easier to be grateful. It’s easy to be thankful. And there’s some level of internal emotional, spiritual healing which, who knows, might have physical benefits too. But yeah, when we’re focusing on giving and not just receiving and focus on helping others, there’s definitely some, I think, overall wellness and certainly spiritual and emotional benefits.

Gary Schneeberger:
Folks, until the next time we’re together, please remember this truth. We know your crucible experiences are hard. Warwick’s been through them, Sharon’s been through them, I’ve been through them. But we also know this, they’re not the end of your story. That’s what we talked about here today. In fact, they can be the beginning of a new story that can be the best story of your life because where it’s going to lead you is to a life of significance.
Welcome to a journey of transformation with Beyond the Crucible Assessment. Unlike any other, this tool is designed to guide you from adversity to achievement. As you answer a few insightful questions, you won’t just find a label like The Helper or The Individualist. Instead, you’ll uncover your unique position in the journey of resilience. This assessment reveals where you stand today, the direction you should aim for, and crucially the steps to get there. It’s more than an assessment. It’s a roadmap to a life of significance. Ready? Visit beyondthecrucible.com, take the free assessment and start charting your course to a life of significance today.