We all carry an “invisible bag.”

It’s a concept Robert Bly once used to describe the repository of every childhood memory, every trauma, and every part of ourselves we were told to hide to be accepted. Think of it as a sack we drag behind us, filled with the 'excess' parts of our personality—our anger, our wildness, or our sensitivity—that we tucked away to fit into our families and societies. For years, the prevailing wisdom in personal growth has been to open that bag, name the shadows, and sit with the pain.

But what happens when you spend so much time in the bag that you forget there is a world outside of it?

The young woman I spoke with recently is the personification of this modern dilemma. She is highly self-aware. She can trace her anxiety back to its root; she can name her archetypal patterns with clinical precision. Yet, she feels a persistent, cold ache. Despite all her “work,” she is still a pinball in a machine, bouncing off the same stress bumpers.

She has reached a threshold, but she hasn’t crossed it. As she looked at the trophies of her successful life, she asked a question that should haunt us all: “I’ve done the work. I know my wounds. So why does none of it feel like it matters?“

The answer lies in a psychological phenomenon we rarely discuss: we have begun to organize our lives around our wounds.

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The Threshold of Integration

Today on the Passion Struck podcast, I am joined for a second time by Keila Shaheen, the creator of the million-copy sensation The Shadow Work Journal. In our latest conversation and her profound new book, The Light Work Journal, Keila reveals that self-awareness—knowing the story—is only half the journey.

The other half is psychological integration: the process of turning inner wisdom into an embodied way of being. Without this second step, we become "porous," soaking up external energies and personas because we haven't built our own internal source of light.

THE GROWTH GLOSSARY

• Shadow Work: The “weeding” of the soul. It involves deconstructing the past, identifying trauma, and uncovering the parts of ourselves we’ve suppressed.

• Light Work: The “planting” of the soul. It is the practice of spiritual hygiene—building the habits, values, and energy that allow you to bloom.

• The Gray Area: A state of numbness and exhaustion where we are aware of our problems but lack the energy to change them.

• Integration: Moving from knowing your truth to living it.

The Architecture of the Integrated Self

Keila puts it bluntly: shadow work is the mud; light work is the bloom. Lots of people dig forever in the mud and never allow themselves to bloom into a clear, lived purpose.

Integration requires moving from a reactive, unconscious way of living into a state of intentional consciousness. This involves three key shifts:

• From Deconstruction to Mobilization: Moving past “why I am this way” to “how I will show up now.”

• System 2 Thinking: Activating the deliberate, conscious brain to override the “pinball” reactions of the unconscious.

• The Ego as a Vessel: Keila argues that the ego isn’t an enemy to be killed. Instead, think of it as a vessel. If the vessel is ruptured or weak, it cannot contain your psyche. A healthy ego is a sturdy cup that holds your "light" so it can be shared with the world without leaking into past grievances.

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Breaking the Numbness through "Spiritual Hygiene"

Keila’s research into over 148,000 emotional check-ins found that the most common modern emotion is exhaustion. We are living in a digital "simulation" of over-analysis that leads to a "gray area" of disconnection.

To heal, we must practice Spiritual Hygiene. Just as we brush our teeth to maintain physical health, we must actively manage our energetic frequency. This means identifying “glimmers”—moments of awe that rewire the brain away from fight-or-flight triggers.

How to apply this today:

• Audit your Integration: Stop digging for new wounds. Ask: What is one truth I discovered in shadow work that I haven’t actually practiced yet?

• Practice Energetic Grounding: Step out of the digital simulation. Physically touch the earth or a tree. This signals safety to your nervous system and stops the “leakage” of your mental energy.

• Find a Glimmer: Look for an act of “moral beauty”—a stranger’s kindness or a moment of quiet discipline—and allow yourself to feel its resonance.

The Alchemy of the Invisible Bag

While shadow work helps us open the bag, light work is the process of sorting the contents. We often find that the very traits we were told to hide are actually the "gold" required for our purpose.

The Shift: You cannot find meaning in a wound you refuse to heal. Meaning is the byproduct of taking the "waste products" of your suffering and recycling them into service. This is the transition from self-preservation to transcendence.

How to apply this: Perform a “Shadow Audit” to identify where your hidden traits can become your greatest frequency:

• The Reframe: Take a trait you’ve judged (e.g., “I’m too sensitive” or “I’m too controlling”). How can that sensitivity become the high-resolution empathy you use to lead? How can that need for control become the disciplined stewardship of a project?

• The Service Bridge: Ask: “How does the specific shape of my scar allow me to see someone else’s pain more clearly?”

When you use your story to make others feel seen, your wound ceases to be a trap and becomes a bridge.

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Reclaiming the Mystery: Awakening the Soul

Keila’s work offers a vital pivot: you must stop treating your psyche like a machine to be repaired and start treating it like a vessel to be filled. True growth isn't about collecting a toolkit of 'hacks' to fix what is broken; it is about subtracting the noise of the familiar shadow so your purpose has the space to resonate.

The Shift: When you focus on your significance—the fact that you matter—you stimulate the neurological resilience required to break the epidemic of exhaustion. You are moving from being a “prop” in your life to being the conscious architect of your character.

How to apply this: Move from self-analysis to Intentional Embodiment:

• Identify the “Analysis Paralysis”: Where are you over-analyzing a past wound as a way to avoid taking a scary present action? Recognition is the first step out of the trap.

• Commit to a “Light Ritual”: Choose one practice from The Light Work Journal—like an “Imagination Shower”—to clear the mental fog before you engage with the digital world. This is spiritual hygiene in action.

• The Glimmer Practice: Today, find one moment of “moral beauty”—an act of quiet integrity or a sudden spark of awe. Does this glimmer remind you of your intrinsic worth, independent of your “work” or your wounds?

Which feels more present in your life right now: the "mud" of introspection or the "bloom" of action? Share your thoughts in the comments.

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Check out the full conversation with Keila Shaheen below:

Download the FREE Companion Reflection Guide here.

Get the book The Light Work Journal.

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Share The Ignited Life: Philosophical First Aid for Being Human

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Every 🧡, restack, or comment you share here on Substack

is like a signal flare…..

It helps this message find the person who is still walking

their own “schoolyard” alone.

Thank you for being part of this ecosystem.

I love turning these essays into a two-way conversation

So please let me know your thoughts below.

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Transformation rarely announces itself. It hides inside the smallest habits, like the one extra rep, the quiet morning run, the decision to keep going when it would be easier to stop.

The smallest 1% changes, repeated daily, rewire identity.

This week on Passion Struck, I sat down with , the CEO of The Atlantic and author of The Running Ground: A Father, a Son, and the Simplest Sport. Together, we explore how running became Nick’s lifelong teacher — shaping his mindset, revealing the limits of his endurance, and ultimately transforming how he sees success, failure, and self-worth.

For Nick, every race was more than physical. It was psychological — a mirror reflecting the struggle to stay disciplined, curious, and authentic, even when life’s terrain turned uphill.

The 1% Rule: The Science of Incremental Mastery

Runners know this truth better than most: you don’t conquer the marathon overnight. You get there one small 1% improvement at a time.

“You don’t have to transform your life all at once. You just have to take the next step.” — Nick Thompson

Nick describes his own evolution this way: each run taught him that consistency beats intensity. The tiny daily decision to lace up his shoes — rain or shine — rewired his brain for resilience. He wasn’t chasing perfection; he was chasing progress.

This 1% rule applies far beyond running. Whether you’re building a company, writing a book, or trying to live more intentionally, growth rarely comes in bursts. It’s the compound interest of effort.

But what happens when the 1% rule isn’t just a strategy — it’s a mirror?

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If this idea of small steps creating big transformation resonates, you’ll love my Substack — The Ignited Life. Each week, I share science-backed tools and stories to help you grow your 1%: in purpose, resilience, and impact.

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When Running Becomes a Mirror for Life

Nick’s book, The Running Ground, is both a memoir and a meditation on movement. It begins with his early memories of running alongside his father — a brilliant but turbulent man — and evolves into a reflection on legacy, discipline, and love.

Running became a thread between generations. It was how Nick stayed connected to his father, even after loss. But it was also how he learned to distinguish between pain as information and pain as truth, one of the book’s central lessons.

Pain, he explains, isn’t always a signal to stop. Sometimes it’s your brain’s way of protecting you from your own potential. Learning to listen, but not always obey, became part of his mental training.

The same principle applies to life. Whether it’s the discomfort of rejection, failure, or change, growth begins when you stop mistaking temporary pain for a permanent limit.

Breaking the Ceiling: How Belief Masks as Data

One of the most fascinating parts of Nick’s journey came when he hit a wall — literally and figuratively. For seven years, he couldn’t break the 2:40 marathon barrier. His peers even gave him the nickname Mr. 2:43.

But then a coach reframed his thinking. What Nick thought were data-driven limits were actually belief-driven ceilings. His mind had quietly decided what was possible and then built evidence to support it.

Once he realized this, everything changed. Training smarter, trusting his coach, and resetting his perception of “fast,” Nick shattered that invisible ceiling and ran a 2:29 marathon at age 44.

The takeaway? Every human has a version of Mr. 2:43 — that internal barrier we defend with logic, when in truth, it’s fear. The breakthrough begins with questioning it.

The Leadership Parallel: The Discipline of Showing Up

Nick’s story doesn’t just speak to runners — it speaks to leaders, creators, and anyone trying to live with purpose.

At The Atlantic, he leads one of the world's most respected journalistic organizations while still finding time to train, write, and parent. The throughline? Intentionality.

He treats leadership the same way he treats running: as a practice in small, consistent, 1% improvements. Each conversation, each decision, each setback becomes a rep — a chance to refine how he shows up.

It’s a lesson that mirrors my philosophy on Passion Struck: success isn’t born of grand gestures but of the discipline of showing up: fully, intentionally, and repeatedly.

The Finish Line Isn’t the Point

At the end of The Running Ground, Nick reflects on how running taught him to find meaning not in the finish line but in the process itself.

When he finally won the race he’d dreamed about as a kid, and later ran beside his son in that same event, the lesson wasn’t about victory. It was about legacy. About learning when to lead, when to pace, and when to step back and let others run their own race.

And that’s the real 1% mindset: to live with patience, to lead with humility, and to move through life knowing that what matters most isn’t how fast you go — but how intentionally you take each step.

Want to go deeper? Listen to the ad-free episode that expands on this post—plus get a companion workbook for Passion Struck Episode 683.

Download the Companion Digital Workbook HERE.

One more thing: My first children’s book, You Matter, Luma, is now available for pre-sale. It’s a story for 4-8 year olds about kindness, courage, and the ripple effect of knowing you matter, lessons every adult at work could use, too.

My conversation with has stayed with me for an entirely different reason than I expected.

When people encounter Suzanne’s work for the first time, the focus often lands on mediumship, intuition, or the possibility that consciousness extends beyond physical life. Those topics are undeniably compelling. Yet, after sitting with our discussion for several days, I realized that what struck me most had very little to do with the afterlife and everything to do with the limitations of the lives many of us are living right now.

Suzanne spent decades operating inside one of the world’s most demanding institutions. She served as a Navy commander, worked directly for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and built a career defined by discipline, competence, and service. She understood hierarchy, evidence, and responsibility at the highest levels. The systems she inhabited rewarded clarity, precision, and the ability to function under extraordinary pressure.

I recognized something deeply familiar in that story.

Although my path unfolded differently, I spent years inside organizations that prized many of the same qualities. The military taught me to suppress uncertainty in favor of action. Corporate leadership reinforced the idea that every meaningful problem could be solved through analysis, strategy, and execution. Those lessons served me well. They allowed me to build a career, lead global teams, and create opportunities I never imagined growing up.

But eventually I encountered questions that competence alone could not answer.

No framework explained why achievement felt increasingly disconnected from significance. No strategic plan clarified why the external markers of success failed to produce an equivalent sense of internal peace. The methods that worked so effectively in managing organizations proved far less useful when confronting grief, identity, meaning, or belonging.

The deeper questions demanded a different kind of intelligence.

Discover How to Build Real Significance

The Limits of External Navigation

One of the ideas Suzanne shared that continues to resonate with me is her description of what she calls our human belief system—what she playfully shortens to human BS. The phrase is memorable, but the underlying observation is profound. We become conditioned to experience ourselves as isolated individuals whose worth depends on performance, productivity, and external validation. We accept separation as reality and spend enormous amounts of energy trying to secure ourselves within it.

Modern life rewards that orientation.

We measure everything.

We optimize everything.

We seek answers through search engines, analytics dashboards, performance reviews, and increasingly sophisticated technologies. We have unprecedented access to information while simultaneously experiencing profound uncertainty about ourselves.

The assumption beneath all of it is that more data will eventually resolve our deeper questions.

Yet some of the most important moments in life refuse to cooperate with that logic.

You know a relationship has reached its natural conclusion long before you can articulate why. You sense that a career path that once felt meaningful no longer aligns with who you are becoming. You experience a quiet conviction about a decision despite lacking evidence that would satisfy anyone else. These moments arise from somewhere that operates differently from rational analysis, even though they are no less real.

Suzanne’s work invites a reconsideration of those experiences. She asks whether human beings possess ways of knowing that modern culture has systematically undervalued.

Whether one approaches that question spiritually, psychologically, or philosophically, it deserves serious consideration.

Because many of us have become exceptionally skilled at navigating the external world while remaining surprisingly disconnected from our interior one.

The Burden of Self-Reliance

Growing up, I learned early that resilience meant handling things yourself.

You worked harder.

You complained less.

You kept moving.

The military strengthened those instincts. If something hurt, you pushed through it. If circumstances became difficult, you adapted. Emotional endurance was not merely encouraged; it was expected.

Suzanne described a similar experience. After witnessing the devastation of September 11 and later enduring the sudden loss of her stepdaughter, she realized that she possessed tremendous discipline but very few tools for processing grief itself. Her response, like so many high performers, was to continue functioning until life demanded a different approach.

I think many people live inside that pattern without recognizing it.

Self-reliance is a remarkable strength until it becomes an identity. The moment we believe that we must solve every problem alone, we cut ourselves off from forms of guidance, support, and reflection that might fundamentally change our experience of being human.

This is one reason I found Suzanne’s emphasis on stillness so compelling.

Her practice of the “SIP of the Divine” begins with a deceptively simple invitation: sit in peace. Observe what arises. Become curious about the thoughts moving through your awareness rather than assuming that you are identical to them.

That distinction matters.

The ability to notice our thoughts rather than automatically obey them creates the possibility of choice. It interrupts autopilot. It allows us to recognize that many of the stories governing our lives were inherited, adaptive, and perhaps no longer necessary.

The question shifts from What should I do next? to What assumptions have been directing me all along?

Leadership Beyond Hierarchy

Another aspect of our conversation that has continued to unfold in my thinking concerns leadership.

Suzanne observed that leadership in the military was fundamentally organized around separation—officers and enlisted personnel, chains of command, clearly defined roles and responsibilities. Her understanding of leadership today feels rooted in something far different: interconnectedness and wholeness.

That perspective aligns with ideas I have increasingly embraced in my own work.

For years, I viewed leadership primarily through the lens of execution. Great leaders articulated a vision, drove accountability, and delivered results. Those capabilities remain essential. But experience has convinced me that lasting leadership requires something more nourishing.

I often describe this as gardener leadership.

A gardener cannot force growth. The work involves creating the conditions under which growth becomes possible. You prepare the soil. You provide nourishment. You remove obstacles. You recognize that development follows rhythms that cannot be accelerated through pressure alone.

Human beings operate much the same way.

People flourish when they feel seen, trusted, and connected to something larger than themselves. They grow when given space to experiment, fail, and discover capacities they did not know they possessed. Leadership, at its best, is less about directing people toward predetermined outcomes and more about helping them remember possibilities they have forgotten.

The language of remembering appeared repeatedly throughout my conversation with Suzanne.

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Forgiveness as Remembering

Perhaps the most powerful idea she shared was her understanding of forgiveness.

Her daily prayer is simple:

Forgive me for ever thinking I was anything less than love.

What moved me about that statement was its orientation.

The focus is not on condemnation or self-punishment. It rests on the recognition that harmful actions often emerge when we lose contact with our deeper nature. We forget our connection to others. We forget our inherent worth. We forget that fear and scarcity are temporary conditions rather than permanent identities.

I find that framework remarkably useful even outside explicitly spiritual contexts.

Many of the behaviors we regret most originated as attempts to protect ourselves. Perfectionism, overachievement, emotional withdrawal, and people-pleasing often begin as intelligent adaptations to earlier environments. They helped us earn approval, avoid rejection, or create a sense of safety.

The challenge is that strategies designed for one chapter of life frequently persist long after their usefulness has expired.

Forgiveness allows us to acknowledge those patterns without remaining imprisoned by them. It permits gratitude for what once protected us while granting permission to live differently now.

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The Questions I’m Carrying Forward

The older I become, the less interested I am in dividing human experience into rigid categories of rational and spiritual, measurable and mysterious.

Life consistently refuses those distinctions.

The most meaningful decisions rarely emerge from analysis alone. Love cannot be quantified. Grief does not follow project plans. Purpose arrives through experimentation, reflection, and moments of insight that often appear uninvited.

The conversation with Suzanne reinforced something I have been slowly learning for years: flourishing requires both competence and contemplation.

We need the ability to build, execute, and contribute meaningfully to the world around us. We also need practices that reconnect us to the parts of ourselves that productivity alone cannot reach.

Without that balance, success risks becoming an endless exercise in external navigation while our inner life remains largely unexplored.

Joining the conversation:

• What questions in your life cannot be solved through achievement alone?

• Where have you mistaken self-reliance for genuine strength?

• What practice helps you listen to forms of wisdom that exist beyond analysis and productivity?

Listen to the full episode featuring Suzanne Giesemann.

Share The Ignited Life: Philosophical First Aid for Being Human

Every 🧡, restack, or comment helps this message reach someone who may be discovering that the answers they seek cannot be found solely by moving faster, working harder, or accomplishing more.

© John R. Miles 2026. All rights reserved.

These are not just tales of resilience—they’re roadmaps for turning pain into purpose, setbacks into stepping stones, and struggle into self-discovery.

If you’ve ever felt like life’s obstacles were detours, this episode will remind you: they might actually be the way forward.

From the moment we started talking, I was blown away by Michael’s raw honesty. His story is nothing short of extraordinary—and not because of what he’s survived, but because of the courage it took to face it head-on. He was born into trauma—a violently abusive mother who severed his finger at age four, a chaotic childhood of neglect, addiction, and poverty. By his twenties, he looked like he had made it in Corporate America. But beneath the surface, he was unraveling.

What resonated with me was how he described that moment of choice—when he decided to stop running and start healing. He didn’t wait for someone else to save him. He became the hero of his own story.

In our conversation, we explored:

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In this unforgettable episode of Passion Struck, I sit down with Kara Robinson Chamberlain, a survivor whose strength and story have stayed with me long after our conversation ended. At just 15 years old, Kara was abducted in broad daylight from her friend’s front yard and forced into a plastic storage bin in the back of a stranger’s car.

What followed was a harrowing 18-hour ordeal. But Kara didn’t just survive—she fought, escaped, and helped law enforcement identify and apprehend a man who would later be revealed as a serial killer responsible for the deaths of at least three young girls.

But this episode isn’t just about what happened in 2002. It’s about the years that followed—the emotional toll, the healing process, and the way Kara transformed unimaginable trauma into purpose. Today, she travels the world empowering others to reclaim their voice, their identity, and their strength.

In our conversation, we explore:

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