039: Sharmeen Bhanji-Abeysinghe - Creating A Delicious Relationship with Money Through Healing, Movement, and Energetics

Jonathan DeYoe: Hello. Welcome back to the Mindful Money podcast. We continue to get some really nice listener feedback, and I wanted to share one of those reviews before we introduce today’s guest. The reviewer states a unique perspective on personal finance. The host blends the intangible elements of money with evergreen principles and looks for voices that are not often heard from. Highly recommend. Five stars. So thank you for leaving that review, and thank you for the kindnesses that we get on a regular basis. If you do enjoy the podcast, let us know. Leave us a review@ratethispodcast.com. Forward slash mindfulmoney. It helps us spread the word, and it helps us with those pesky algorithms as well. On this episode of, uh, the Mindful Money podcast, I am chatting with Sharmeen Bhanji Abe Singh, Abby Singh. I’m going to get it right one day. Sharmeen is a spiritual and somatic movement mentor. She speaks of movement as medicine, and she’s on a mission to eradicate childhood trauma due to poverty. Sharmeen welcome to the Mindful Money podcast.

Sharmeen Bhanji: Thank you so much for having me.

Jonathan DeYoe: I’m excited to have the conversation.

Sharmeen Bhanji: Me too. And I love that review. It’s so fitting for today.

Jonathan DeYoe: Thank you. Sharmeen Just before we get into the meat, where do you call home? Where are you connecting from?

Sharmeen Bhanji: I am currently in innisville, Ontario, Canada, which is just an hour north of, uh, Toronto, Canada. And I literally just moved in last week, so I’m fairly new here.

Jonathan DeYoe: Where’d you move from? Uh, elsewhere in Canada, or did you come from the states?

Sharmeen Bhanji: From Toronto?

Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah. Okay.

Sharmeen Bhanji: Yeah. So we just moved an hour north, but it’s completely different than being in the big city, right?

Jonathan DeYoe: Small town versus big city?

Sharmeen Bhanji: Absolutely.

Jonathan DeYoe: Did you grow up in Toronto?

Sharmeen Bhanji: I did. I actually came to Canada when I was two years old, and I lived in the ghetto of Toronto for a few years, and then my family moved to the outskirts of the GTA, to a, uh, place called Mississauga. And we stayed there for few years until we came back to being around Toronto.

Jonathan DeYoe: GTA is greater Toronto area?

Sharmeen Bhanji: Yes, it is.

Jonathan DeYoe: Never heard that abbreviation before. So you moved around a little bit as a youngster, as a kid. Any, uh, good lessons or bad lessons you learned about money or entrepreneurship when you were growing up?

Sharmeen Bhanji: So funny that you ask. Growing up, because my family was actually in and out of poverty. My dad owned a business buying and selling used cars and fixing rundown cars and things like that. And my mom worked for Canada Post and just different jobs. And as she was building through her career, we were in and out of poverty, depending on whether or not dad sold the car or not, that was on the lot. I also grew up with my dad, who has a lifelong gambling addiction. So at, uh, points they’d be going to Bahamas for the weekend, and other points my mom would be eating our leftovers because there was not enough meat for everybody.

Jonathan DeYoe: Wow. I think I want to start here. So do you mind sharing some of the. I know you talk about childhood trauma around poverty, and it sounds like you experienced it directly, so can you share some of those early memories you have, not just eating up leftovers, but whatever else that came with? Uh.

Sharmeen Bhanji: We were, like I said, we grew up in the kind of the ghetto of Toronto at the time. It’s a much better area now, but at the time, it was kind of like the ghetto. And I remember being the only one and being very embarrassed for shopping at byway, for example. Byway doesn’t even exist anymore, but it was like the dollar socks and the leggings that you could get for your kids and things like that. And I was very embarrassed with that. I also remember my parents worked really hard to provide for us, and yet we didn’t have a cottage. And the other kids at school, especially when we moved around Toronto and Mississauga area, they had cottages and we didn’t have a cottage. They went on vacation every year.

Jonathan DeYoe: What’s a cottage? Explain. Cottage.

Sharmeen Bhanji: Oh, okay. Rather than just your city home, they have like a separate home in the country.

Jonathan DeYoe: Vacation home?

Sharmeen Bhanji: Yeah. Like the pool and. Yeah, country home. Country home.

Jonathan DeYoe: Not having those kind of things. Kind of growing up without. What lessons did you draw from that?

Sharmeen Bhanji: I saw my parents working so hard and the cycling of, uh, money, and I never had a good grip or understanding of money because they didn’t either. So when we talk about things like financial literacy. I have no idea what that is. I no clue of how to have money come in, how to hold money, because remember, in my jeans, my father, if he has $100, it doesn’t last in his hands because he needs to go and put it on the table so he can play a casino game. So money was always very fluid, in and out, coming and going. And it was something that was never really talked about. It was hushed, it was kept under the rug. But I do remember there’s a lot of trauma and sad stories, but I do remember what actually came out of that was the tenacity, the ability to put two, two together, figure things out. I watched my mom budget like crazy and try to figure out how she could make dinner for four of us for the week in just this amount of money with coupons and all of those things. So I learned a lot of life skills. In that sense.

Jonathan DeYoe: I realized that I did a little research on you. Uh, it’s unlikely you did a lot of research on me, but I have a very similar background and experience. And I remember going through the weekend circular, the weekend thing you used to get that had all the coupons, and my mom would say, okay, now you’re going to look for coupons for vegetables, and now you’re going to look for coupons for canned food. Now you’re going to look for coupons. And I was so embarrassed when we went shopping then. And we had to use the coupons to save $9. Right, exactly. Totally hid from friends growing up in that scenario where your friends weren’t having to do this and you were, what did that feel like?

Sharmeen Bhanji: Takes my breath away still, it, ah, felt so embarrassing and like, I was always less than. And as a woman of color, um, coming from an indian background immigrant in Toronto in the 80s, there was a lot of racism. And so it was constantly feeling like we were keeping up with the Joneses without actually trying to keep up with them because we couldn’t, there wasn’t any funds. Like, we never had art on the walls. And that’s something that I didn’t realize that we never had until they walked into, grew up and walked into other adult homes where they have art on the walls. It’s like, oh, that’s a luxury that we never had.

Jonathan DeYoe: Art on the walls would be beautiful. I just wanted cars that the back doors would close on. That’s what we were hoping for, right? Just those kind of things. The back doors would swing open. We tied them closed with a rope.

Sharmeen Bhanji: Oh, my gosh, it’s pretty resonate with that because my dad would pick us up from school or, uh, try to drop us off at school, and it would always be in this broken down gelappy. So I would say, drop me off at the corner, I’ll walk.

Jonathan DeYoe: Yes. So, years later, before you get into the work and translating this into helping others, how did you work through this stuff?

Sharmeen Bhanji: It’s very interesting. I’m still working through it, of course. Still a work in progress. Basically, what I’ve learned is the energy behind what money actually is. And when we move it from this physical, I can’t have paper substance to the understanding that it is energy. Then it changes the perspective on how much we can have. And so for me, it’s been my relationship with money has, ah, actually blossomed and grown and become this delicious relationship that I’m fully in love with through healing and through movement and through energetics.

Jonathan DeYoe: Okay, so that’s how you learned yourself. Now, how do you translate that into, I can use this knowledge and experience that I’ve gained to help other people?

Sharmeen Bhanji: That’s a really great question. So I actually teach my clients how to connect with that divinity, that energy within them. And it’s all about feeling worthy, right? It’s all about this feeling of safety, because, as you know, growing up in poverty, the mind and the body, it grows up differently than those who are not struggling to survive. Because most of our energy is actually spent surviving and trying to keep, uh, up. Our brains are wired different. And so when I work with my clients, we rewire the brain and the being of the person through the body and through movement. So allowing them to actually feel that sense of safety within them so that they can actually hold the abundant energy of money.

Jonathan DeYoe: Okay, so I wasn’t going to go down this path, but the way you presented that, I want to explore something real quick. It resonates with me, the concept that you’re still working through these things. Last year, I basically merged my company into a larger company. And then some people would say that you sold your company, and that’s probably an accurate representation. So I have the means, I’m fine. Like, my family is taken care of. We are in great shape, better shape than I ever imagined I would be. And yet I have this little thing in the back of my head that is just so terrified that it’s all going to go away. I’m anxious about it. I don’t need to be anxious about it. That’s the kind of thing that you actually work through movement. How? I’m very curious how.

Sharmeen Bhanji: It is so individual for each body. Basically, I use different modalities to rewire the structure of the body. So there’s a lot of physical movement that happens. And so we’ll be moving and physically changing the structures of the body. So, for example, some people may experience, like, rounded shoulders coming in. This is a protective posture, right? This posture isn’t about necessarily technology, although it is reinforced through technology. But this posture is a posture that says, I’m not safe. And so the body is sending these messages to the brain saying, I’m not safe. And so when we reopen the posture, when we make structural changes in the posture, the body now sends messages to the brain saying, it is safe, you are safe to thrive. And when we bring energetics into it, this little voice inside that says, it’s not safe, I don’t have enough, it’s all going to go away in a moment. That is old programming, and that’s like an energetic block. So because energetics are tied to emotions, what I would do with a client, for example, is we’d go in and have a conversation, maybe do a little eft tapping on. What does it mean? Where is that fear coming from? Because the bank account is different. The bank account is telling a different story that there is no fear. And yet, uh, there’s still this fear deep within the cellular information. And so a lot of people will say it’s mindset, right. You can change your mindset and do affirmations. Well, the truth of the matter is that the, uh, harder way to do things takes vigilance and rigidity and consistency, whereas my work is through the body, where we’re actually integrating those lessons that we’ve learned in a positive way, so that the body can feel safe and calibrate to a level that it can hold all of the energy that’s in the bank account right now and feel safe with it.

Jonathan DeYoe: And imagine this is not justify. And I’ll explain this with a quick story, but imagine it’s not just finance. It’s almost any kind of trauma you can work through. And I say this because literally two weeks ago, I was at a meditation retreat, and I’ve been dealing with emotional overwhelm when I meditate because I lost my Brother 18 months ago and I finally sat down with him. This is 18 months of struggle trying to figure this out and trying to sit down for 30 minutes without crying, right? And somebody finally said, okay, Jonathan, just when it comes up, just put your hand on your stomach. Is it tight? Put your hand on your chest. Is it tight sense in your body? Are you heating up? Are you pressing your hands? Are you grinding your. Where in the body is this overwhelm showing itself? And I’m imagining that the financial trauma leads to some similar bodily experiences that you can identify, maybe before you’re overwhelmed. Is that kind of what we’re talking about?

Sharmeen Bhanji: It is so much, very much what we’re talking about. It is really about connecting with the sensations in the body. And my belief, through my years of research and even my own experience, is that, uh, the subconscious mind, our subconscious programming the things that are sticky and still holding us, ah, in those fear states or any of those high emotional states, lives in the body and communicates with us through the body sensations. And so when we learn to really tap into what’s happening inside, we actually have this. We’re bringing it into consciousness. The natural process of neuroception, which is the process of the body checking the internal environment and checking the external environment and checking the relational environment. And it does this all the time. And we’re programmed as human beings to do this from birth. So it’s something that’s constantly going on. But when we start to intentionally go in and say, okay, where am I feeling this tension? Where is this hurt? Where is this pain that is coming up and keeping me stuck in this moment where I cannot move past the pain of losing a family member or the pain of financial trauma is a big thing as well. So when you go past it and you get into the body, you’re bringing this neuroception into conscious awareness, where that’s where change happens. Because in conscious awareness, we can fiddle around here, we can make action and make moves and take action.

Jonathan DeYoe: So imagine maybe you attract people that are already sort of lean towards this as a possibility. As somebody that’s worked in finance for 25 years, even, uh, though I’m meditating, even though I’m pretty cerebral, and I think I sense in myself a pushback against the financial trauma being cellular. So how did I get. How did we get so disassociated from our bodies that we don’t note that our body is a thinking organism. We think about our minds and our brains, but we disassociate that from physical. So how did that happen?

Sharmeen Bhanji: It’s an evolutionary process. And also, I believe it’s the societal process that happened with the influx of technology and government and leadership and things like this. This is my own belief that we moved away from, because there are cultures out there, even still today, that are very much in tune to their bodies, that are very much in tuned to their spirits. And that, uh, actually connect with each other in other realms, which is amazing. And in this society, in this realm, we are actually taught to stay up here. Right when we grow up, our parents say, you’re okay, you’re fine. Don’t cry. And so our bodies are hurt, our feelings, and our bodies are saying, I’m, um, not happy right now. I really wanted that Barbie. And you’re telling me, no, that hurts inside of me. And when your parents think you’re fine, what we’re actually teaching our kids is, don’t listen to what’s happening inside of you. Listen to what I’m saying, because I know better than you know. And so that programming, if you think about it, going over generations, just like we have brown eyes or blue eyes or dark hair or light hair, we have money, trauma, we have beliefs, we have self worth. All of these parameters are all passed down generation to generation. So I think about society, especially when you think about money. For example, if we have ancestors who grew up in the depression, who had to scrounge and save, how many people are overweight because they overeat, because they can’t throw anything out, they literally cannot scrape the plate into the garbage, because their grandmother’s cells are saying, you cannot. You have to eat that. And so they do. But it’s not a conscious thing. It’s a subconscious. And that lives in the cellular information body.

Jonathan DeYoe: So what is the first step? If someone presents themselves to you and says, hey, I, uh, have all these issues, and you have to somehow open up the awareness for them of their bodies and where the stuff is residing in their bodies, how do you guide them in order to find that feeling in their body?

Sharmeen Bhanji: That’s a really good question. And I’ve had some clients who say, Sharmeen I don’t have a good imagination. I can’t imagine that. And I always say it’s not really about imagining anything. The amazing thing that happens is because we’re social beings, we’re human social beings. Our nervous systems are wired to connect to each other. And so the amazing thing that happens on it, I’m cerebral, just like you. I’m very scientific. So an amazing thing that happens when two human bodies become close and interact. If you’re having a conversation in person with a grocery store clerk, for example, you’re actually exchanging cellular information with that person. So you leave the store with some of their cells, and they’re at the store with some of your cells, because the cellular information actually travels between each other. So when I’m with a client and they say presenting with whatever concern or issue that they have that they want to transcend, part of it is a very natural process of connecting nervous system to nervous system. So whether it’s through movement, 90% of the time it’s through movement in my work or it’s through having a conversation, when the nervous system feels safe with the other person, that’s when we actually open the portal for healing to occur naturally.

Jonathan DeYoe: That’s kind of how all coaching works. Like, you trust somebody enough to open up enough that they can poke just a little bit and maybe help you open up even a little bit further. Right. That’s that trusting environment, it sounds like.

Sharmeen Bhanji: Absolutely. And so many of us have unknowingly, uh, grown, uh, up in environments that are not as trusting as we would like them to be or as we needed them to be. And as much as our parents tried, people can only do as much as they can do with the resources they have available in the moment, right?

Jonathan DeYoe: So I’m imagining that childhood trauma, especially around financial lack, comes in a lot of different varieties. And I’m just curious about what are maybe the two or three that seem to show up the most when you’re working with people.

Sharmeen Bhanji: Got it. So the financial trauma piece or the childhood trauma piece, many of my clients will have the self worth, whether it was direct neglect or verbal or physical abuse of any kind, or it was just simply parents who didn’t have the skills, who just did what their parents did and continued on the cycle because they were just doing what they could. Either way, the impact on the psyche, the impact on the way the brain is actually formed. And it’s not what the brain thinks, but how it’s formed. It’s the structural beingness of the brain that changes when we experience trauma. So, um, I forget what the question was.

Jonathan DeYoe: It was like, what are the varieties of childhood trauma experience that seemed to come up the most?

Sharmeen Bhanji: Yeah, the varieties of trauma that I tend to witness the most with my clients are self worth, definitely worth any sort of emotional trauma, and as well as sexual trauma from the past. And all of this always relates down to financial trauma. Whether it’s something like we were coaxed to investing in something like that was ended up to be a scam, like me, actually, my inheritance from my grandmother, which was very little, I was coaxed into investing that into the scam. And so that financial trauma of like, shit, that is the only time I’m ever going to have a big lump sum of money, right? That’s not necessarily true. It’s just a belief that I held.

Jonathan DeYoe: Working through that, a lot of narrative. Maybe this is wrong, but many people have told me, in fact, I have a small group of four friends. We’ve been friends for 25 years. One of the group, and this all comes out after my brother dies. And we spend a lot of more time together, and they become very supportive, and they’re really important. One of them comes to me and says, jonathan, never thought you were approachable. I always thought you were above it. I thought you were tough and strong. And I present as if. And I think everyone attempts to present as if we’re okay. We got this. All my shit’s together, right? We present this way. And in reality, I had this sense that we’re all like, every one of us is suffering from a lack of self worth. Those that appear that they suffer the least, actually probably suffer the most, right. How is this different? Like, if we’re all walking around suffering from a lack of self worth, a, how do we overcome? And I know movements can be a part of it. B, how are we really different then? I mean, it seems like some of us recognize it and become honest about it, and some of us maybe don’t.

Sharmeen Bhanji: That’s the difference right there. That is the difference. It happens with movement. So how do we recognize it? I’m going to ask the question again. My brain is going like. It’s just trying to answer too many things.

Jonathan DeYoe: I just have this image. So it starts with this idea. I have this image that we’re all posing as better off than we really are. And if that’s true, and we’re doing that because we see everyone else posing, I look at you and I see, oh, she’s got this together. I have to appear like I have it together so that I don’t feel less than, even though I actually do feel less than. So we all end up putting these masks on and posing so we seem tougher than we really are, so we don’t let anyone inside. And so it seems like one of the things you’re providing is an opportunity to be authentic, to say, you know what? I don’t have it all together. And you’re providing that through movement. So how do you connect those two things? What is the movement that are you saying, hey, let’s do yoga, and it’ll come up? Or is there, like, specific movements? Or how does that happen?

Sharmeen Bhanji: I love this question because it’s very specific movements, and this is the path for me. I’m a recovering perfectionist, so my childhood trauma taught me to care for other people. I spent 19 years of my journey as an early childhood educator, being a caregiver. And, uh, this is why child development and development of human development is so important to me. But because we’re all masquerading around thinking, you’ve got it together, and I’m thinking, you have it together, and so we’re trying to pretend we both have it together. What movement taught me is how to get better, actually. So, as a recovering perfectionist, I never moved my body as a child. In growing up, I hated sweating. I hated sweating in front of people, and I hated doing things that I wasn’t good at. So if I couldn’t immediately dunk a basket because I’m five foot, I stopped playing basketball. I don’t touch basketball. Right, but with movement. And it’s not necessarily yoga, although yoga is a great modality to try. For me, that wasn’t my path. The specific movements that I do are actually making structural changes in body. So m we would be making. Creating space in between the joints. We’re shifting the way the body holds certain bones in angles and things like that. But what ends up happening is we start to see with movement this incremental change. And better. If you go for a run and you time yourself, when’s the first time? You’re like, and then you go tomorrow, even if it’s 3 seconds further or 3 seconds longer, you can see this change. And the more you do it, the more you notice how far you can go. So that’s part of it, right? It’s the incremental change that, um, movement allows us, uh, to make mistakes and still be okay with it. One of the examples I give is actually with a ball. When we throw a ball at the beach, right? You’re throwing a ball at the beach, and you drop the ball, it falls into sand, you pick it up, and you keep throwing the ball. We don’t do this in life, right? If we throw the ball in life, we mess up in a project or something happens, we give up. We say, oh, I suck at it. I didn’t get clients with that post or whatever it is, right? I suck. I should give up. I should do something else, and we start changing the whole strategy. But what movement teaches us is that you pick up the ball and you get better and better and better at it. And it does so in a backdoor way for the subconscious to start reprogramming these beliefs. And for me and my clients, it’s actually such an easy way to spread the message across the entire realm of our lives. So all areas of our, uh, lives. Oh, if I can drop the ball in my session with, uh, Sharmeen and pick it up, maybe I can go for a run or maybe I can say, ask somebody out on a date and get rejected and be okay with that. Be okay with somebody saying no. So many ways that it influences our life.

Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah, it sounds like. I mean, I want to simplify it. Uh, but through the body, you’re finding a way to develop both resilience and, I think, emotional intelligence. Recognizing that I can fall down and I can stand back up or I can drop the ball and I can pick the ball back up. You talk about. I don’t remember where I saw this, but one of the purposes of getting really good with movement, uh, is imprinting an abundance mindset. And maybe mindset is the wrong word. That might be my word I’m applying to what you said. But why is it so important to have that, uh, imprinting of abundance?

Sharmeen Bhanji: I love this question. Because we hear so much in the coaching world, right, about money mindset. Money mindset. Money mindset. It’s drilled into us. We have to have this money mindset and do affirmations and meditations and all of these things. But the truth of the matter is that, uh, the mindset that we are trying to change the structures in the brain, we’re forgetting that it’s also in the body. So every memory we have in our brain. So if we’re trying to rewire a story that we have around money, and a common story is that, uh, people who have money or people who are wealthy are evil or mean or irresponsible to the earth or something or another, right? Some negative connotation. So if we want to rewire this and we’re only focusing on our thoughts and trying to believe it up here, meanwhile, the parts of our body are holding tension or still feeling like, stuck. We’re missing out on the whole story, right? I would say 80% of the story is in our body. And so when we want to imprint the money mindset into our body or the abundance mindset, what we’re actually doing is creating a vessel that can hold the energy of abundance. So essentially we’re creating a bigger container. So if we had a small container and we could fill forty five cents and then it would be full. We want to create a big container that we can hold more than want. And so we do that through imprinting it into ourselves by clearing out mum’s money trauma and our dad’s money, trauma, and all of the traumas that no longer are serving us in this life.

Jonathan DeYoe: Wow. I want to make this really sort of concrete. So put yourself on an airline flight across the country. You got five and a half hours. Somebody sits down next to you. They are really engaged in this topic. At the end of the flight, you want them to walk away with one thing that they can really focus on that will improve their outcomes, and then one thing that they probably are focused on that they should not be focused on. So what’s one thing they should do and then one thing they should stop doing?

Sharmeen Bhanji: So one thing that you should do if you would like to improve your relationship with money and abundance is to look at it. Visit your bank account on a daily basis. Date your money, date it literally. My husband literally made 14. He did a 14 days of Valentine, February 1 to February 14. I got a little gift every single day. He wooed me. Right? So we need to woo our money, our relationship with money. How can we do this? If money was person, how would you respond to it? Would you ignore it and only look at it when you had to pay a bill? Only look at it when you need, when it’s an anniversary? Or would you woo it? Right. So that’s one thing that we really should do every single day, is create this relationship and spend time with your money every day. And it can be as simple as checking your bank account.

Jonathan DeYoe: So before you move on to the next one, I just want to have to interject because your husband makes us all look bad. I’m leading that part of this episode because my wife cannot hear. That just happened.

Sharmeen Bhanji: I’m going to have to take a lesson.

Jonathan DeYoe: That’s awesome. 14 days. Very. That’s awesome. What’s one thing people should stop doing?

Sharmeen Bhanji: One thing people should stop doing? Stop saying it’s too expensive. It is not too expensive. The price is exactly right. The price of, um, what? It is exactly right. This $0.99 tennis ball can be sold for $3,000. And it would be exactly the right price. It’s just that it’s not a priority for me to buy a $3,000 tennis ball. That little shift in saying it’s too expensive, I can’t get that. That’s a negative. Feel that in your body when I say that, right? It’s too expensive. I can’t have that. It feels yucky. But if I say $3,000, that’s a perfect price. It’s not a priority for me. Right. It just feels better in my body. I can actually feel. I don’t know if you feel it, but I feel flowing and relaxed.

Jonathan DeYoe: The second one, what’s empowering, really? You’re not saying, in the former, you’re saying, I am not good enough to afford this thing. In the latter, you’re saying, at that price, I just don’t really want the thing. It doesn’t make sense for me, and that’s a personal choice. That’s beautiful. I’ve never heard that restated that way, and I’ve been doing this for a long time, so kudos. That’s great. I want to go back before we wrap, I want to go back to something personal real quick. So, what was the last thing you changed your mind about?

Sharmeen Bhanji: It’s actually very recently, and it was during this move. It was a hard move, m. And things did not go smoothly as much as I tried to manifest a smooth move. And I was in tears at a hotel because we didn’t close on the same day. And so it was like, what did we do? And how is all going to work? And all my stuff, everything was just off. And so the last thing I changed my mind about was holding the grudge, being angry, being the victim, um, and really saying, okay, where are the lessons here? This happens to our, uh, family for a reason, and I do not want it to happen again. And so I am looking for the lesson, and it’s a process of accepting what’s going on, being with the feelings, crying them out, and then saying, okay, what are the lessons? So that we can actually look at the lessons, receive the lessons, and not have to deal with it again.

Jonathan DeYoe: I love the beginning of that, because what I heard right from the outset was I was trying to manifest a thing. The thing didn’t happen the way I wanted it to, and I was okay. And, uh, that’s something that’s really important for us all to realize, that you can manifest. You can law of attraction. You can attract stuff in your life, and it may not happen the way you expect. It may not happen when you expect, it may not happen on your timeline, but you got to be patient. You got to be okay as you move through these things. Right? So I love that. I love it. Is there anything that people don’t remember about you or don’t know about you that you really want them to know?

Sharmeen Bhanji: I’m a very memorable, and I’m a pretty open book. So I think one thing, I guess, what I really want people to know, especially, uh, as a woman of color and an immigrant to this country, is that somebody who grew up with trauma. I left my house at 17 years old. 17 years old with $40 cash, no job, my high school textbooks, and two suitcases of clothing. And I just moved into a million dollar home. And so if I can do this, absolutely anybody can do this. I am not special in any way, more than anybody else. And we can all. Absolutely. It’s just a matter of integrating.

Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah, it’s all accessible. Uh, you have to plug in the right way.

Sharmeen Bhanji: Absolutely.

Jonathan DeYoe: How do people connect with you? Where do they find you online? Where do they find you socially? Et cetera.

Sharmeen Bhanji: So you can find me on Facebook at, um. Or you can find me on Instagram with the same handle, Charlene. Or you can find me on my website, which is Ww, um, myalignedlife, uh, ca.

Jonathan DeYoe: Great. All that stuff will be in the show notes. Sharmeen I really appreciate having you on. At some point in the future, we’ll probably have something else to talk about, and I look forward to that conversation as well. Thank you.

Sharmeen Bhanji: Thank you so much for having me, Jonathan.

Jonathan DeYoe: You’re welcome.