The Spiritual Shitshow Podcast— where the magic meets the mess.
This is my little corner of the podcast universe, where we make personal growth feel a little more human — and a lot more fun. Here, I share the ups, downs, sideways spirals, and surprising sparkles of healing, self-discovery, and spiritual misadventures — all with a wink, a laugh, and a whole lot of heart.
Because here’s the thing: healing doesn’t have to be so serious. It can be joyful, playful, messy, beautiful, and unapologetically real. Self-development isn’t about coloring inside the lines — it’s about love, connection, freedom, and daring to tell our very human stories.
I’m Julie Nguyen — intuitive channel, certified life coach, somatic practitioner, dancer, teacher, and fellow imperfect human — and I’m here to walk (and sometimes cha-cha) alongside you as we amplify the magic, embrace the mess, and cheer each other on through it all.
Come as you are. Let’s make it weird, wonderful, and wildly alive.
If you’ve been calling yourself lazy, unmotivated, or “behind,” I want you to consider a sharper possibility: you’re not stuck because you’re broken. You’re stuck because you’re trying to force a door that was never yours to walk through. I share a personal reckoning that hits hard, the kind that makes you stop mid-thought and go, “Oh… wow.”
We get real about inherited dreams and conditioned goals, the ones we absorb from family, friends, social media, past relationships, or pure survival mode. I talk about what it feels like to grieve a future that never happened and why so many of us are actually grieving identities we’ve outgrown. This is a conversation about spiritual growth, alignment, intuition, radical self-honesty, and the uncomfortable but freeing work of self-accountability.
I also share my own long arc with the dance world, why I spent years trying to resurrect something that ended, and the moment I finally saw the truth: time already spent is not a reason to keep abandoning yourself. When we stop fighting the closed door, we can finally see the open one that’s been waiting all along. If you’re craving clarity, life purpose, and a grounded way to “let go” without bypassing your grief, you’ll find it here.
If this resonates, subscribe, share it with a friend who’s in a crossroads season, and leave a review so more people can find this kind of support. What dream are you ready to stop forcing?
✨ Thank you for tuning into this episode of Spiritual Shitshow! Remember, the journey to your most authentic self isn’t always neat, but it’s always worth it. 💖
🎧 If today’s episode resonated with you, share it with someone who needs to hear it, and don’t forget to leave a review to help more people find this space.
🌟 Let’s keep the conversation going—connect with me on Instagram @julienguyen.online or drop me a message about what’s lighting you up or challenging you right now.
For 1:1 sessions or support, go to www.julienguyen.online.com
Until next time, stay messy, stay magical, and keep showing up for yourself. 🌀
Hello, and welcome back to the Spiritual Shitshow podcast. My name is Julie Nguyen, and if you've been following this podcast for a while, first of all, I wanna say thank you. And second of all, I wanna say that this podcast was created from my own pain point in needing to understand myself, life, and these radical spiritual concepts like radical forgiveness or the power behind letting go or anger or forgiveness, self-love. And today we're gonna talk about something that might hit a nerve, and honestly I kinda hope it does. The growth process, the development process, it sometimes requires us to do our own work. We have to call ourself out on our bullshit, and that is never easy. But I'm here to share because this is what hit me today. This truth bomb just landed right in my fucking heart today and I was like, "Damn!" But listen, sometimes the reason you feel stuck isn't because you're lazy, it isn't because you're unmotivated, and it isn't because the universe forgot about you. Sometimes you feel stuck because you're still trying to force a life that was never meant for you. And I know that that can be hard or maybe a concept that may not resonate with you We have been talking about abundance, alignment, and the space between where you are and where you want to be.
But today I wanna take this conversation just a little bit deeper because before we ask, "How do I get what I want?" We have to be brave enough to ask, "Do I actually want this?" Or, this is what came to me today, did I inherit this dream? Did I absorb it from my family, my friends, my industry, social media, an old relationship, childhood survival mode, or a version of myself who simply did not know another option was available? There's a huge difference between a dream that comes from your soul and a dream you accepted because it was presented to you. And I think so many of us are grieving things we believe we lost, guilty as charged over here, when in reality we are grieving identities that we outgrew. I had this realization today.
I've been deepening my meditation practice, and I wanna say this first, that creating space for yourself is not some cute spiritual luxury. It's a necessity. When you are constantly busy, constantly scrolling, constantly reacting, constantly doing, constantly trying to solve every problem right now, listening to the podcast, reading the books, doing the things in your life, you cannot hear yourself. You cannot hear your intuition over the noise of your fear. You cannot hear the next instruction when you are screaming at the universe for the last chapter that you just lived to come back. And for a long time, so annoying, but literally this has been the past decade of my life, has been healing and unraveling and learning, like I said earlier, about radical acceptance, forgiveness, self-love, how to really forgive myself. And what I realized is I was gripping so tightly, stubbornly to this old version of my life, an old identity, an old dream, or what I thought was my dream.
Turns out, and I know this to be true at the core of my being, owning a dance studio was never my dream, ever, ever And I have spent years trying to resurrect something that ended. I've spent years trying to get back to who I was, trying to make sense of why things fell apart, trying to prove that I could rebuild what I had lost, that I could resurrect these dreams and that version of myself, and I was devastated by it. I've spent 10 years trying to get back into the dance industry, and let me tell you, 10 years later, has that worked? No, it has not. And I have felt angry, I have felt abandoned, I have felt stuck, I have felt frustrated, I have felt pathetic, I have felt all the feels. I felt like life has taken something from me that I had worked so hard to create. And the pain is real. I do not want to bypass any of that. When you lose something, it hurts. When your identity dissolves, it hurts. When the future you planned for does not happen, it hurts. And you are allowed to mourn. And eventually, there comes a moment in healing where you have to stop asking, "Why did this happen to me?" and become open to the question, "What if this happened for me?" Not because it was easy, not because it was fair, not because you deserved it, but because maybe the thing you were clinging to was never your final destination Maybe it was a lesson in becoming the person you needed to become before you could choose your real life I am sharing this, like I said, because it's what's been landing in my awareness. So
let me give you a little backstory. In one of my meditations, I was guided back to my high school self, and the guides, or spirit, my higher self, whatever you wanna call it, um, asked me if you had felt really supported back then, like if you had someone helping you see your gifts, your potential, your possibilities, if you had a support system, if you had parents who were present and, you had possibilities, you thought you really could go to college, and you could desire a dream. Back in my high school years, I was just trying to get out of the house. it was survival mode all the way. And being brought back to but if, but if What would you have chosen? What would you have chosen to do? And that question just kind of like sat with me because I realized that so much of my life has been built around reacting. It's been built around surviving. I guess I'll do this, or I guess the next step is, or I guess the opportunity is here, so I should take it. I, I guess this is who I am now. But choosing, truly choosing, at 47, I'm like, I don't know what I have really actually chosen for myself in my life. It's either been handed to me, thank God, by, from my husband, or, you know, this... I had this reckoning within myself of all these years I've been talking about, you know, I built a dance studio, and then it disappeared one day, and with it, all of the community. These things are not happening to you, they're happening for you. And my internal reckoning was, "Julie, get honest with yourself. You never wanted a fucking dance studio. That's also why there's a part of you that cringes when you walk into dance studio spaces. It ain't for you, girl. It's not for you." And so what the universe was doing was literally stripping away a dream that was not mine, so I can awaken to what I can choose in my life And yes, it can be terrifying, and it can be so hard when you realize that you have spent so much time and so many years and have worked so hard for something. And we think, "But I put so much into this, I can't let it go." But hear me.
time already spent is not a reason to keep abandoning yourself. And if I look back at those years at the studio, how often was I abandoning myself, my dreams, my desires, how I really wanted to live my life? You do not need to keep paying for an old decision with your future. You do not need to keep proving your loyalty to a dream that does not love you back. My God, I wish I would've heard that 10 years ago. I'm gonna say that one again, 'cause that's good. You do not need to keep proving your loyalty to a dream that does not love you back. That is not the way the universe works. This is not what we came here to do. We came here to be in a state of joy, love, abundance, service to other people, ease, flow. And we have to realize that sometimes the universe closes the door not to punish you, but because you keep trying to enter rooms where you have already learned everything you came to learn And when you finally stop fighting the closed door, I'm hearing this for myself right now, you may look around and realize there has been another door open the entire time. You just couldn't see it because you were too busy grieving the one behind. And that is the work. Not pretending that loss does not hurt because it does. Not forcing yourself to be graceful before you're ready because there's power in anger, and grief is not bad And allowing yourself slowly and honestly to see what is available to you now, to see the gifts, to see the redirections, To see the opportunities that your past pain may have made invisible. Because sometimes the life you think you lost was actually blocking the life you're meant to choose. And when I sat with that, I had this beautiful, almost funny realization. I always say it's like a cosmic joke from the universe. You always kinda think it's in one direction, and then the universe comes in it, and then the universe comes in and is like, "Ha ha ha. It's not that way at all." But on my drive home today, it just became so clear to me.
I couldn't initially answer if I was in high school again and I had guidance and I was supported, what would I have chosen? That was left open for a couple weeks, and today on my drive home, it was very clear to me that what I would have chosen for my life is what I am doing now. I would have chosen to be a life coach, a spiritual intuitive. I would have chosen and have been so lit up by the idea of helping other people to realize their light, to see their potential and their possibilities, to encourage people every single day to be in joy, to feel supported, and more importantly to feel loved The thing I would have chosen, the thing that feels most aligned with my soul, is what I am already doing. Supporting people, coaching, creating spaces for healing, helping people remember who they are beneath the conditioning, fear, trauma, expectations, and old stories. And maybe I had to do the work first so I can help others. But the realization that it was here all along, The universe is always working in your favor. And I know when I was in the throes of it, I did not wanna fucking hear that. I wanted to be in the, "Look what happened to me. Look how much I'm struggling. This is so unfair." So I get it. I totally get it.
And if you are in a season where nothing is working, I just want you to pause. Before you push harder, pause. before you force another plan, pause. Before you tell yourself you're behind or broken or failing, pause. Take a breath. And then ask yourself, "What am I still trying to force, and why? What dream am I afraid to release, and why? What identity am I protecting, and what am I actually holding myself back from? And if I stopped forcing this just for one moment, what possibility might I finally be able to see?" I could not see how all of this was working out for me until today. And it's been a long untangling and unraveling process. And for so long, I was like, "I don't know how to give it up, this dance piece. It's who I was for all of my life, so I'll do both." No, nothing has worked because the truth is, what I'm doing now is what my soul would have chosen You just need to be willing to tell yourself the truth. The truth about what is no longer working. The truth about what you want. The truth about who you are becoming. Your life gets to be chosen and you get to choose it. There is power in the choosing and your dreams get to be yours. And your next chapter does not need permission from the version of you who was simply trying to survive. Let this be a moment you stop chasing what is gone. Let this be a moment you look at what is present. Let this be the moment you choose your life on purpose in alignment with your soul, the thing that lights you up.
And if there's any resistance to anything that you're doing, I would just question it. To be honest, I tried to get into the dance world, like I said, for 10 years, but honestly, every time I walked into a dance space to teach or for a workshop, I never felt like my best self. I either felt like an imposter. I felt like I couldn't move. I felt like I was being judged. I felt like I had to protect myself from that space, from the do you like it, do you not like it? Are they gonna ask me back? Do they... Like, all of that So that was not for me. It's never been for me. I just, in my early 20s, didn't have my own dream, so I rode the coattails of somebody else's dream, which is why it makes sense that the person who had the original dream is still in it and I am not Your penthouse life is not built by forcing the wrong door open. It is built by recognizing the door that has been waiting for you to walk through all along. If any of this resonates with you, I am sending you big love because this work, this self-accountability, this, "Oh, my fucking God, fuck," type of stuff is not easy. It is not easy. But the cool part is when you can realize, remember who you are, what your gifts are, and to powerfully and courageously choose your life, this is what it's all about, and I'm here to support you along the journey. Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. Until next time
