Shannon Cooper has an interesting background as a philosophy major. She had long dealt with anxiety and it wasn’t until she stumbled across the Three Principles that she found any relief from that. Shannon now works as a coach, helping others to connect with their innate wisdom and well-being. I was lucky enough to have been taught by Shannon in a Principles course I took in late 2018. Shannon’s style is so gentle and loving that I had to have her on the show so you could experience some of that.

You can find Shannon Cooper at EvergreenInsight.com.

You can listen above or on iTunes or your favorite podcast app or watch the video here. Highlights, notes, resources and full transcript below.

Show Notes

• On ‘testing’ the Three Principles in our own lives
• How it’s possible to see that our experience comes from the inside out
• Writing as a way of connecting people with the Principles
• Running a business with an awareness of the Three Principles
• What to do when you feel you’re not ‘getting’ this understanding
• Why everything you’re looking for you already have

Resources Mention in this Episode

• Dr. Amy Johnson
• Nicola Bird’s A Little Peace of Mind
• The Inside Out Revolution by Michael Neill
• Shannon’s YouTube channel with a free video each week

Transcript of interview with Shannon Cooper

Alexandra: Hi, everyone. I’m Alexandra Amor. This is the “Stop Suffering About” podcast, and I’m here today with Shannon Cooper. Hi, Shannon.

Shannon: Hi, Alex. So glad to be here.

Alexandra: Oh, I’m so glad to have you here today. So let me introduce our listeners to you.

Shannon Cooper is a transformative coach and author living in beautiful, British Columbia, Canada, where I live, too. Having been fortunate enough to discover this life-changing understanding in her early 20s, she’s dedicated her life’s work to sharing the simple yet surprising way human beings actually work. A nature lover at heart, she’s passionate about sparking a deeper conversation to the true nature of life. I love the way you said that.

Shannon, just tell us a little bit more about your background and how you learned about this understanding.

Shannon: I didn’t grow up thinking that this is what I was going to do. I went to university with the full intention of being an environmental lawyer and just thought that that’s what I was gonna do.

I was doing my philosophy degree and in philosophy, we talk a lot about how humans work and the nature of the universe, and I found all of that extremely fascinating. And it just so happened that I decided during my degree that I don’t actually think going to law school was right for me, and so I graduated with a degree in philosophy and no idea what I wanted to do for a career.

I gave myself a few months off after my graduation and stumbled across Dr. Amy Johnson. I have so much respect for Amy. I absolutely love her and stumbled across her in a way that I was even searching for her or this conversation.

At the time, I was subscribed to a blog called “Tiny Buddha,” which is just self-help articles, and none of it was working, and I was really anxious. I was an anxious wreck my entire life from a young child all the way through university.

And at some point, I saw that her articles were saying something different than this self-help conversation because the whole time before that, it was, like, everything was saying, you know, fix yourself. Do the affirmations. Do the mantra. Get better. This is all on you. You can make life how you want it.

Amy was saying something different. She was, like, do you know that you’re already perfect and you just have something getting in the way that says you’re not? And I was, like, what?

My curiosity got piqued, and I decided there might be something here. So I basically read every blog that she currently had out. At the time, she’d only had one book out, binged that. I kind of fell into this conversation.

I didn’t go into this thinking, “This is going to be my career,” or, “I’m going to be a coach,” or, “I’m going to learn about something called the three principles,” none of that. I just kind of followed my nose through a series of kind of cool unfoldings.

And then within about, I want to say six months after my first Dr. Amy binge, I was, like, wow, I’m living in a different life. Like, I don’t feel anxious. I don’t feel stress. I don’t feel like life has to be endured. I don’t feel like a victim, and that’s when I was, like, okay, there’s something to this.

And through another series of kind of coincidences and happenings, the very day after I thought, there might be something to this, I might wanna help others see this, Amy announced that she was training a group of life coaches, and I signed up instantly. I opened the email, and I was, like, done. I’m there. And that was the start of how I came to do this work.

I really didn’t think this is what I would be doing with my life, but sometimes, you just come across things. That it’s, like, the universe is so clearly pulling you in a direction that it would be silly not to go.

Alexandra: Right. Yes. Exactly.

I was in Nicola Bird’s “A Little Piece of Mind” class last fall, and you were the coach for that semester, with that group, and one of the things that teaching or that class focuses on is anxiety and having this conversation around the subject of anxiety.

You had mentioned that that was one of the things that you tended to have trouble with. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Shannon: I was anxious, basically, from the time that I can remember up until stumbling across these principles. And what I see now that I didn’t see at the time is that I, because I fundamentally misunderstood how life works, how the mind works, how humans works, I just really made a thing of all of my anxious thinking.

And I see now so clearly that the only difference in every single human being on this planet has anxious thing from time to time. You will not find a single one of 7 billion of us who doesn’t know what that’s like.

But what made me chronically suffer from it, chronically struggle with it and all of the kind of the health stuff that goes with living in chronic states of anxiety, all of the social life stuff that goes with it, like, it was not a fun 10 years of my life.

What was interesting is I just never understood that the mind isn’t actually capturing what’s out there. It’s coming from within me. And when I started to really see that, like, oh, I’m not sitting here in life the victim of an outside scary world or outside terrifying things or people or whatever is going on out there, I’m having that come through the system and paint that to be my life.

I realized, well, but for me doing anything with that, it’s going to come through, give me what it gives me and leave. And really, again, I have to thank Amy because she said, “Well, don’t take my word for it. Just test it. Just see if what I’m saying is true.” And when I tested it, I saw, wait a minute, that is true. When I don’t make a thing of how I’m thinking and feeling in the moment, I get something new.

And so for me, seeing through my anxiety…and I have to preface it by saying that that was not really my intention. I didn’t come into this conversation thinking, I need to learn about these principles to be free from anxiety. I found them in this kind of weird way and being a philosophy nerd, I was, like, oh, this is fascinating.

These people are saying that life works 180 from how I was taught. But what was so great to see was, like, wow, all of my suffering, all of my struggle, and all of my life being more difficult for me than everyone else, was a result of a simple misunderstanding. That’s it.

Nothing’s wrong with me. Nothing’s wrong with my brain. Nothing’s wrong with my life. I was under a misunderstanding. And to