Shay Holloway shared their story and experiences with us recently and you can find our conversation below.
Shay, so good to connect and we’re excited to share your story and insights with our audience. There’s a ton to learn from your story, but let’s start with a warm up before we get into the heart of the interview. What do the first 90 minutes of your day look like?
Really love this question!
I like to be intentional about the way that I start my day. For the last several years, curating a routine that truly feels like my own-one that brings me the ease that I desire-is something that I’ve worked really hard to do. There have been periods where it has felt chaotic, misaligned, or I simply just was not making an effort to commit to anything, routine-wise. I’m at a point right now where the first 90 minutes of my day feel sacred, a time that I fully dedicate to pouring into myself. Don’t get me wrong though, some days are better than others-absolutely-it’s not perfect 100% of the time, that much I do want to make clear. However, as often as possible I spend the first 90 minutes of the day with myself.
Yoga has been something that’s been part of my first 90 minutes for going on 2 years, coupled with meditation, the very basics of Qigong, and breath work. The actual structure looks like: Breath work-to calm the mind and body, Meditation-for visualizing and setting intentions for the day, Qigong-to move my body and begin energy flow within the body, and finally yoga-to tie everything together and move even more mindfully and intentionally. All of these phases of my first 90 minutes help me to arrive in my body and ease into the day in a way that feels nourishing to me.
The first part of my day has morphed into something that truly feels like it’s mine, feels like it’s for me and I’m happy to have spent time figuring out the things that help me be centered, focused, and grounded.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I’m a self taught visual artist specializing in colorful abstract art-my work spans various styles, mediums, and subject matter. What makes it unique is that it’s uniquely me. My work is a representation of the way that I experience life-with a lot of experimentation, a lot of exploration, and a lot of discovery.
When I started doing art, I had no formal training. I’ve always been creative, but it was never something that I was given a gentle push to explore deeply. I also never really thought about exploring further myself. In fact, I went to school and majored in Psychology and Criminal Justice-much different from what I do now. Although, there is a little bit of psychology that seeps in due to the fact that colors can and often do have certain psychological affects on the viewer.
But I digress. I AM the brand and what that looks like is me being and creating art in ways that please me. Sure I have an “ideal client”, a “target audience” that I’m aiming to reach, but ultimately my brand is a representation of me. I do and operate my art business in ways that feel aligned with me and the way that I desire to live life. My work is colorful, it’s abstract, it’s sometimes childish, it’s experimental, it can be messy and all over the place; it’s all the greatest parts of me expressed through art!
Thanks for sharing that. Would love to go back in time and hear about how your past might have impacted who you are today. What part of you has served its purpose and must now be released?
These are some really great questions!
Right now, and I say right now because I feel like I go through phases where this thing needs to be released, then this thing, then this other thing. But, right now I’d say the part of me that must, and is in the process of being released is the part that relies on physical proof to demonstrate that I am heading in the direction of the life that I desire.
Lately, I’ve been exploring and doing internal work related to quantum shifting and cleaning up my energetic frequency. Part of this internal work has looked like taking a long, honest look inward and figuring out what my default emotional state is. What’s my baseline? The answer to that was urgency coupled with a little bit of doubt. Those baseline emotional states were birthed from reliance on seeing everything in the physical before being able to embody abundance and believe that my efforts are taking me in the direction of my desired reality.
Anybody can be in a good mood and feel confident about where they’re heading when they’re seeing physical signs. The true test of one’s belief, at least the test of my belief anyway, has been in feeling confident when the physical signs aren’t immediately present. Before being able to shift into my desired reality, urgency and doubt had to be shed, but they couldn’t be shed unless my need for “proof” was shed first.
Up until this point I feel like signs have been there! I’ve aligned with some amazing people and opportunities, and honestly I continue to align with amazing people and opportunities. However they just have yet to be THE opportunity. You know that saying “All it takes is one”-all you need is the right yes. I haven’t come across that one yes, yet. Typically, what would happen is an opportunity presents itself and I have felt like “Okay, this is great, I’m close!” I’d feel all juiced up about the opportunity and would look at it like it’s about to be THE catapult for me on a career level. But then, because whatever catapulting moment I was waiting for didn’t immediately happen, I’d emotionally plateau. In this plateau is where I’d be more susceptible to feelings of urgency and doubt-further delaying alignment with my desired life.
Releasing the need for everything to show up immediately, releasing the need for alignment to present itself in loud, firework ways frees me from the trap of thinking that abundance only lives in the moments when things are happening in the physical. Releasing the urgency and doubt as a result of needing physical proof cleanses my energetic frequency allowing me to better align with the reality of my life that already exists…according to the science of quantum shifting.
What did suffering teach you that success never could?
Any of the suffering that I’ve experienced up until this point has been emotional. I’ve had to dig myself out of some dark emotional holes, and unlearn/relearn beliefs about myself and the world that I didn’t realize I was holding on to. Emotional suffering has taught me SO much but some of the most important things I’ve learned is that: feelings are invitations to learn-they are not to be pushed down, and that the mind is WAY more powerful than I think a lot of people give it credit for!
Over the years, the older I’ve gotten the more I have allowed time for myself to sit with feelings that arise-the ones that feel sticky, and hang around for a while. It means there’s something there that needs to be unfolded and processed. Processing sticky feelings has helped me to unlock different layers of myself as well as reshape my perspective on various things such as life in general, my career, personal relationships, the way that I respond to occurrences in life, etc. When I was younger I would sulk. I’d sulk in whatever I was feeling until I just came out of it, but having not really processed anything for real. It’s been in the processing where I have grown to love myself, to love life, and to cultivate gratitude overall.
I think our readers would appreciate hearing more about your values and what you think matters in life and career, etc. So our next question is along those lines. What’s a belief you used to hold tightly but now think was naive or wrong?
I don’t think this is something that I held tightly but it definitely was something that I believed for a period in time. I used to believe that any opportunity that came around was an opportunity that I should take. The reality is, that’s absolutely not true.
When I was first starting out (and even still now) my goal was to grow and expand my reach as an artist. So when opportunities came around it felt easy to think “yea I should definitely take this opportunity because I’m new and I’m trying to grow.” That’s valid, however, I started realizing that sometimes I would take opportunities based out of fear that if I say no to this one thing me saying no would stop the flow of opportunities. Saying no to things, especially if they don’t truly align with my goals or how I see myself establishing longevity as an artist has been a major source of growth personally and professionally.
Understanding my relationship with turning down opportunities has helped me to understand how abundance flows in my life. More often than not, I’ve turned down opportunities that didn’t align with me only to have something better and more precisely aligned with me show up. I feel like when you can say no and release the tendency that a lot of people have to feel bad after saying no, you’re showing the universe that you can and are willing to wait on the things that truly feel like they’re for you. Patience. Saying no is not a sign of ungratefulness nor does it close the door of abundance. It actually opens the door for abundance in opportunities. It’s a demonstration of ones faith in the belief that there are things out there more aligned with you waiting to find you at the right time!
Yes, exposure is a great thing to have and you NEED it so that people know who you are and what you do. However, in most things, people want to progress and move forward. Saying yes to anything that knocks at your door doesn’t equate forward momentum. Sometimes opportunities are only lateral movements and you can’t move forward by only making lateral movements-it’s impossible. This is where assessing opportunities comes into play. If you know where you’re going, you can decide whether the opportunity presented is one that’s going to take you a step closer to where you desire to go.
Okay, so let’s keep going with one more question that means a lot to us: What do you understand deeply that most people don’t?
I think I deeply understand how important rest is, and how harmful it is to feel like you have to run yourself into the ground because you feel like you have to take care of others.
Ever since I can remember I’ve leaned into self-preservation. I’ve actually been called selfish because of my thoughts on taking care of oneself before taking care of others. Selfish is something that I assumed was true about me because I would hear it from someone that I cared about at the time, then it became something that I had to unlearn. I unlearned it and realized that my natural inclination toward self-preservation is precisely what enables me to live life in a way that align with my spirit. Some may say self-preservation is selfish and think I’m selfish because that’s how I operate…I’m okay with that. But I digress.
Rest. Rest is something that people often see as something that they have to earn. They feel like they can only rest when they’ve done x, y, and z thing. I 100% refuse to agree with anyone thinking that rest is something we should earn. It’s literally essential to one’s survival. Rest is healing the body, nourishing for the mind, and soothing for the soul. To think that you have to earn something that we have a fundamental right to, something that we are required to have in order to function efficiently is absolutely insane to me. We’re not machines; but even machines will run hot if they’re in use for too long.
Don’t get me wrong, I get it. I get where this thinking comes from. We live in a society where it seems as if only the people who are rewarded for their efforts are the ones who are going hard all the time every second of the day. We live in a society that champions productivity over taking care of oneself, but it’s harmful, in my opinion. We feel like we have to fill our day with 1 million things and do all of them just so we can feel like we have value and that’s a tiring, sad place to live in. It’s what creates burnout. It’s what creates a community of people who view their biological need for rest as laziness. I saw this meme the other day that said “I’m all about that G.R.I.N.D – G – Get Rest, R – Rest, I – I Like to Rest, N – Not a fan of not resting, D – Don’t bother me, I’m resting”. I couldn’t do much but laugh because that felt was so on the nail for me!
I’m a little bit of a nerd when it comes to things related to the body and self development because the greatest, most intricate project we’ll ever work on in the lifetime is ourselves. I said that because I’ve collected a whole running list of videos and podcasts of people speaking about the brain, the body, rest, and how all of these things play off of one another. I’ve learned a lot from listening to different views and research findings about rest, but I’ve also just tuned in to my own body and have come to understand how I operate when I’m well rested and how I operate when I’m not.
I say all of this with the understanding, and with acknowledging that it’s not easy to break away from ways of operating that have been engrained into one’s being. It’s not easy to reshape our thinking around things like rest when a lot of us have seen “busyness” being modeled to us whether at home or in the media. But, I do think it’s important to at least start with understanding one’s relationship to rest and why it’s that way. I feel like getting to the root of why something is the way that it is opens the door to begin the work necessary to undo it.
A little while ago I saw a reel where someone was talking about “hard truths” and one of the hard truths was “The world doesn’t reward effort”. And I thought, “Hmm. Well, good thing I’m not trying to impress the world, I’m here to properly align my body, mind, and spirit while in this body.” A second thought I had about that was, “The world may not reward effort, but the UNIVERSE does”.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://artgirlshay.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/artgirlshay
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/artgirlshay
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@Artgirlshay
Image Credits
Adriana Pineda
Shelley Mouber
DeQuan Whitley
Virgil Stanford
