Shelly Davies - Lessons in Badassery

T O MY CARVER BOY MIKE: I know you miss Demure Shelly sometimes. But fuck, babelook what the safety and reassurance of your hand on the small of my back has allowed me to become. Plus, #entertainmentvalue. Ko koe te tau o taku ate. I wouldnt be this me without you.

To my offspring, Lainn, Cody, Grace, and TheCrew: You have all been the greatest authors of my badassery. Ill forgive you for the excruciating pain in those lessons if you forgive me for all my years pre-badassery. Seeing you loving each other as adults and rocking your own worlds is a joy I simply never even knew was coming. E poho kerer ana au i a koutou.

To my parents and big sisters: Just love you. So. Much.

To the Unfuckwithable Girlfriends: you are my OG badasses!

To Lauren, SE, and the team at Lauren Taylor Shute Editorial: theres no one else I would ever entrust with my heart and soul embodied in print. Tn rawa atu koutou.

shelly davies has been described as the love-child of Brene Brown and P!nkalthough her very awesome parents would probably disagree. Shes of New Zealand Mori descenta fact that is literally etched onto her chinand shes known internationally for her unconventional and irresistible work in the field of plain language and clear communications.

At age thirty-seven, Shelly walked away from her familys five-generation commitment to a conservative Christian religion and started the exploratory period of her life, also known as fucking shit up. She drank alcohol and coffee for the first time, started showing some skin to the daylight, and dedicated herself to fluency in a whole new language: profanity.

She now uses her hard-won lessons in badassery to inspire audiences around the globe to know themselves, love themselves, find power, and have joy. Shelly Davies lives in Rotorua, New Zealand with her Carver Boy, unless shes at home on Aotea, Great Barrier Island, not wearing pants.

Brown, Bren. Daring greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead. New York, N.Y.: Gotham, 2012.

Brown, Bren. Listening to Shame. Filmed March 2012 at TED, Long Beach, CA. Video, 20:22. www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_listening_to_shame.

CliftonStrengths. Home. Strengths Finder. Last modified July 13, 2021. www.gallup.com/cliftonstrengths/en/home.aspx

Napoletano, Erika. "Rethinking Unpopular." Filmed February 2012 at TEDxBoulder, Boulder, CO. Video, 16:54. www.tedxboulder.com/videos/rethinking-unpopular.

Young, J.E., Klosko, J.S., & Weishaar, M.E. Schema Therapy: A Practitioners Guide. New York: Guilford Press, 2003.

I TS CRAZY TO ME, but somehow, Ive become powerful in my world. Its something I notice in small moments, not big ones.

Like the other day when a potential client kept pushing back and sweet-talking me and disrespecting my boundaries when I had declined to take on his project and I replied with one line: Its a hard no from me.

Powerful.

Like when someone online has an opinion on me or my work or my brand or my way of being in the world. That sounds like a you problem and not a me problem. #bless. #zerofucksgiven.

Powerful.

I think a lot about the concept of power because we tend to think of it hand in hand with controland thats a bad thing. When we think of powerful people we think of selfish, manipulative dictators, wielding their power.

But me?

Im powerful in my world.

This is me standing in my power. Owning my purpose. Showing up.
WAIKATO DISTRICT COUNCIL

I have the power to choose, at any given moment, to act or not to act. To speak or to stay quiet. To go left or go right. To be resistant or be open. To take on a client or not. To charge what I want for my services and expertise. To be generous, to love, to be vulnerable.

And because I KNOW the choices are all mine, Im powerful.

When people started asking me, how did I become THIS Shelly, the one they see on a stage, owning a room, the one they see facilitating a group of resistant people to completely reframe and reposition themselves, the one who keeps getting up again and again even when life throws her suicidal, addicted, or just plain broken-hearted kids, grandchildren too soon, dead husbands or asshole exes, and ALL THE THINGS, I would answer them:

I dunno, Im just like everyone else. Ive just learned some good shit.

Its taken a long time to fully step into my power, but I think Ive found it.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY SACHA

So here you go. A small collection of just some of the good shit thats helped me to learn about and love myself and recognize that the power is in me.

Lessons in badassery, you might say.

Hey, Badass. Shall we become powerful together?

N O, REALLY. All of it. The ability to take control of your life, your emotions, your future, your PAST, its ALL IN YOUR HEAD. All of it. Life is not about actionsits about thoughts. Success is not about actionsits about thoughts. HAPPINESS is not about actions. Say it with me now: its about thoughts.

So what?

So get therapy. A lot of it.

START NOW.

Heres why.

We think that life is what goes on around us. What we experience, what gets thrown at us, what we do.

Its not.

Life is what happens in our head in response to those things. Theres literally no correlation between external things and happiness. We all know you can be rich and famous and live in luxury and still be miserable. And we also know you can live a simple, quiet, inexpensive life and still be completely satisfied. You can find joy and beauty in every moment.

So, its ALL. IN. YOUR. HEAD.

Thats where therapy comes in.

The more we can learn about the way our brains work, neuro-biologically, cognitively, and psychologically, the more power we have to choose how we respond to any given situation.

By the way, I use the word therapy pretty generally. Counseling, coaching, psychotherapy, mentors, wise friends. Take your pick.

Because every human has every resource inside us to be able to thrive, AND I simply dont know of a way to access all those resources alone, we need each other. There is SO MUCH POWER in a skilled outside perspective. Someone to mirror back to us what theyre hearing, help us notice faults in our logic, challenge our perceptions and positions.

Wanna know what that looks like in someones life? Well, take me for example (I mean, duh, thats why youre here). My beautiful Carver Boy (AKA my partner) refers to the old me as demure. I refer to the old me as mousy. Compliant. Definitely forgettable. (Ask anyone who sat next to me in math in high school. Shelly who?)