How to Know When to Take Action on a Desire or Wait for More Guidance

Hi there friends!

This week I’m sharing a podcast with you on one of the most common I receive from clients and students:

How do I know when to take action on a desire or goal versus wait for more guidance from my higher self?

Have a listen and let me know what you think!

Major Themes:

• There is tension between waiting and listening to your intuition vs. taking action 

• It’s not comfortable

• The difference between basic human tension and battlefield intensity tension

• Transparency regarding my own process choosing my ideal client

• What do we normally do to numb out from the discomfort? 

• Instant gratification and instant relief as a way to distract from the discomfort

• Some questions to ponder to give you more insights into your own process

  
  
  Let me know in the comments what came up for you! xo, Jen

https://f.convertkit.com/def0085359/1391a36671.js

How to Access Your Intuition (and how to practice doing it)

Who says you can't bottle up motivation?

Or put inspiration in a pill?

Actually..they're right. You can't. You've actually got something even better.

Yes, I'm about to tell you something that you may have never realized.

In fact, you may experience a lot of resistance to this idea.

Your ego may begin to throw all sorts of ideas at you:

"Too good to be true". 

"Yeah, it's just not that easy". 

"That sounds great, but I don't have that!"

"This is a crock of new age b******t!!"

Yes, I get it. I know exactly what it feels like. I'm also on a first name basis with tons and tons of ego thoughts that have gotten in the way of accessing this part of myself.

I also was never taught this growing up or even in young adulthood.

Soooo I'd like for you to practice this resistance antidote for the next few moments.

Resistance Antidote

Pause for a Moment Right Now + Get Centered

Take in a deep breath, exhale.

Do it again.

Ask yourself, “would you be able to listen without judgment for the next few moments?”

Ok... Here we go:)

So what is this magical place that we each have unlimited access to?

That contains all of your drive, all of your passion and all of your purpose?

Well it's literally been right in front of you all along.

Actually it's even better than that. 

Your inner drive, passion, and motivation is literally located in your body. It is tangibly located.  

You, just by the nature of being a human being, are born with a visceral  experience of your INTUITION.

My experience with tapping into this place inside

Years ago, I heard a snippet of an energy exercise from Kristin Morelli where she was leading everyone to tap into the magnet in their stomachs. 

While I missed most of the exercise, it gave me a hit and instantly drew me  deeper to the physical experience in my body that I am literally being pulled by something inside me to the next moment, level, and energy in my life.

When I checked in, I could feel a motor running, a solid energy source that was intently and gently, pulling me from a gut place into the next course of action in my life.

This force was strong in a solid, dependable, secure and safe way. And really deepening my awareness of this core energy gave me that always beautiful aha recognition that..ahh yesss... Here I am. This is Me.

For some of you, this may be a bit far out right now and that's okay. 

Everyone has intuition and if you are feeling frustrated or confused right now about how to access this know that is completely normal.  Because this skill is experiential, practical, and real. And you will be able to tell this by practicing to it over time, getting to know it better, and watching how it guides you in your life.

There is a catch

The key though is that this drive, passion and motivation cultivated by your intuition does not work for just everything.

It works when what you are experiencing and moving toward is aligned with you.

No amount of tapping into this inner place within (The True Self) will make any difference if what you are trying or forcing or convincing yourself that you “should” be doing is not really what is resonating and aligned with your heart and your intuitive higher self.

The good news is this is a positive thing! This means there are certain things and experiences and passions and people that are aligned with us and as we keep fine tuning this radar, we will flow into what is meant for us more and more.

How does this apply to life and biz?

Once we understand that we have an internal guidance system inside, an inner radar, we can use it to our advantage. We can use this place within us that we have unlimited access to as a compass that can guide us. We can depend on it. We can use it’s intelligence and 6th sense.

When we start feeling stressed, burnout, anxious or doubting, we can check in and see what our internal guidance is saying.

Do we just need some rest?

Do we need to change directions?

Is our daily schedule in line with our values?

Permission to Practice

It takes practice. Despite having heard this exercise years ago, I still am training my mind to let go and allow access to this guidance within me. I use to think I could just do one exercise and instantaneously “I’d get it.”

Ha! Boy was I wrong, It was even harder for me because growing up I wasn’t allowed to process things, or learn things, or grow. Judgment and shaming comments and lack of awareness kept me trying to push forward into adulthood when what I really needed was permission to breathe and course correct and fail and then learn as a child does.

I needed to be nurtured in a way that allowed me to access my own inner guidance. To trust myself.

This is root cause of self doubt. Learning we can’t trust our internal guidance, our reactions and responses to life.

A Quick Meditation Practice for Accessing Your Unlimited Guidance (Your Intuition)

So I am going to guide you through a little experiential practice: 

Take a moment to sit back and relax your body.

Create a willing posture with open arms, feet flat on the floor, palms open, and taking in a deep breath in and out.

As you continue breathing, start to bring your attention to the place a couple inches above you belly button.

You can even touch it lightly with your fingers for a moment or rest the palm of your hand there.

Start to generate a feeling of warmth there that feels like it is directly inside the center of your body.

Allow yourself to notice a solid feeling right in that spot and notice that the more you put your attention on it, the more solid it becomes.

Start to be aware of a "motor" running inside you. You may even notice a pulsing.

Breathe.

Just notice this, allowing any thoughts or judgments to be there and gently guide yourself back to this solid feeling inside your core.

Breathe.

Try this several times throughout the day. Maybe throughout the week.

Practice checking in with it as well and seeing how it feels in different situations.

Get to know it, patiently. With curiosity.

Let me know how it goes! Now that I’ve rediscovered my intuition I love geeking out on it :)

Love, Jen 

P.S I hope you enjoyed this article! Please like and share with those who will find it helpful :)

And if you’ve found yourself doing the continuous head nod during this post, you may find my Confident CEO Assessment helpful.

It will assess the 4 areas where Imposter Syndrome shows up, one of them being TIME!

P.P.S. We’ve got a lovely group of women already invested in the November Confident CEO Mastery 4 week class “Let go of Self Doubt + Step Into Your Calling”.

We begin first week in November and it’s such an important course I’ve created.

You have gifts.

They are meant to be shared.

Period.

If you are finding that second guessing yourself, indecision and fear of visibility are affecting you from rising up into your full self, check out all the details for this November here: bit.ly/CEOMasteryExperience ⭐️🙌🏼

Releasing Shame To Uncover Your Worth + Confidence

Your worth is already a given.

We each have always been on a level playing field on what we have been gifted within.

A child is born. A bright shining light. Only their joy and self expression and personalities to offer the world. 

For the longest time in my life I thought that the relationships people had, the way people looked, acted, and thought, as well as what they were wearing, the houses that they had, and basically everything I could see was based on worth.

As a child I grew up having enough to survive, yet instead of practicing gratitude as a family, the drum beat was the energy of not having enough. Lack. Scarcity. Fear. 

In particular, the contrast of living in a wealthy area where I would see the images of a mom and a dad, shiny new cars, outgoing personalities, vacations, and big family get togethers, beautiful, gigantic homes, and so much more of what looked "great" and "perfect".

When I looked at these outside circumstances surrounding me I saw that mine were different .

I lived in an apartment and shared a room with my brother. Our family had little money, my father was absent and didn't support us financially. I had a very small family, more broken relationships than I could ever count that festered into chronic loss, heard a lot of judgment and found myself in the middle of adult conflicts that I tried to solve because I couldn't bear the pain of it. 

I wondered what it was about ME that caused my life to go this way and for other people to have it so "good".

Add in the fact that young children go through the developmental stage of  thinking, "I am the center of the world" and all of these experiences accumulated into chronic inhibited grieving and perpetual trauma.

I was also an extremely sensitive, intuitive, and aware child....

And there you have it. The perfect storm was created!

I internalized EVERYTHING.

You could say I was a sponge for self-blame. You name it, anything that happened was my fault.

I lived tortured on a moment to moment basis, highly aware of these thoughts from a very young age...embarrassment, insecurity, fear, and believing it was all something I did...and not knowing what to do, how to relieve myself, and how to vocalize what I was going through..

I didn't know the way out. I wasn't meant to know it. I was just a child.  But I didn't know that.

I thought it was my worth.

I thought that there was something about me that was causing me to experience such deep pain all of the time.

A life of massive shame bombs felt like what I was destined for.

As time went on it only seemed to get worse. I would constantly be disappointed.

Each hurt would build up upon the other until a massive shame detonation, deep depression, took over for 15 years. 

I now understand that this was complicated PTSD. There was no name for it back then and therefore, I remained untreated.

Yet, despite this, there was always something inside that was nudging me forward and asking me to take another step.

Whispers of intuition, grace, wisdom, and a heart that yearned to be opened had me searching for answers to the pain.

All the while "there's something wrong with me. it's my fault" noisily blasted in my mind day in and day out.

It was a mental nightmare along with an incredible ability to keep functioning more consistently than not. Functioning was my way to dissociate and to continue having a high tolerance for discomfort, as well as a really strong resiliency.

There were many, many, moments and times that I felt like I was never going to get through. I tried and did what felt like failed. I felt abandoned by God, the Universe, every adult in my life, every family member. I felt punished when my cat died and like there was some evil force keeping me from having a loving relationship. 

I picked myself up off the floor over a thousand times and died another thousand. 

I thought it was me. I was unlucky. There had to be something terribly wrong with me. 

It wasn't until finally one of my next steps led me to the office doors of a talented therapist (someone who has been in recovery for the same pain) that I started to recognize that all of these excrutiating feelings were actually NOT signs that there was something wrong with me. 

Feelings were feelings and didn't mean anything about who I was. Feelings also were a direct result of me reacting to a situation.

I learned more about my situation as well. I learned that I was powerless over the circumstances I was born into. I learned that there are consequences of unhealed trauma and dysfunction and that no child could navigate those turbulent waters and deep black depths by herself. 

I learned that who I am is a gifted, brilliant, shining, happy and deeply feeling being who had to shut herself off because getting snuffed out by my surroundings were too many deaths to bear.

It took me 7 years to learn some things about this intellectually. (As well as pile an avalanche more of ungrieved griefs right on top of what felt like an already unsurmountable pile.

It took me almost 8 years to learn this over and over again emotionally. And I still am learning it today. My feelings are still scary but I am grateful that I can feel now. 

But I want to share that every little bit, every little shift, has taken me to where that I am now. I can't say that I have reached the point where I am grateful for the abandonment I experienced. I honestly don't feel like my inner child ever could. That's her loss to keep and I'm not taking it from her because it is a badge she bears. 

However, my adult self continuously learns over time that struggles can become lessons when I allow myself to ask for help and receive it. That rejections are just signs from the universe that something is not the right fit and isn't jiving, that material items don't represent inner value, that beauty and self acceptance comes from within, that loving relationships are created in direct relation to how much I love the hurting parts of myself...that self care triumphs over all..

I keep taking the shifts forward. Because there is no other way for me to go but up. When your bottom is at a very young age, there is nowhere else to go but up. Even though every step felt like that shaky stair was trying to kill me. 

I am not my shame. My shame was just a response to feeling like I couldn't be me. 

And with all the releasing and searching, what ends up being left underneath is my worth. 

Because I am worthy just for existing. And so are you. 

Your worth is a given. There isn't some "in" club like I always thought there was. The popular or the cool kids don't really exist. The perfect family with the white picket fence doesn't exist. The fairytale where only the princess gets the prince doesn't exist. You don't have to be a celebrity to be abundant. And you don't have to have things that other people have to be abundant. Though you can have those things if that is what you so choose.

It IS your birthright and it IS who you are to feel good, even when life hands you a crappy deck that's appears to missing all the aces, kings and queens. 

You ARE the Ace, King and Queen all rolled into one. 

And if you can't see it, ITS NOT YOUR FAULT! It is the result of the circumstances you have been born into. It was never true and it never will be. 

Do ANYTHING and EVERYTHING you can to continuously uncover your worth, the GOLD MINE that you are sitting on and you will have everything you have ever wanted.

Keep finding the next person to help you. Keep asking. Until you find someone who gets you. 

Listen to what excites you, what makes you feel good. If you don't know what makes you feel good, start talking about what doesn't. Forget the runor about not being negative. Let it out, don't hold it in. You will naturally feel better and start shifting to having more compassionate thoughts towards yourself. 

The message today is...go back inside and dust off that shiny diamond that is you!

Knowing Your Why in Business is More Important Than Your How

Your why is the foundation of WHY you are doing what you are doing. In order to have a fulfilled life and a sustainable business we need to know the true reason and purpose behind our message. 

If we don't, then when bumps in the road come, frustration ensues, and we are exhausted or drained, we won't want to continue. 

Knowing our why keeps us connected to our Rebel Radar Self so that if we've had a hard or long day, we know we will wake up in the morning and our purpose will still be there. 

In addition, having our sole purpose as spiritual entrepeneurs to be focused on money will never fly in the end. Am I right? 

Money is energy, it's numbers, it's neutral. It's the icing and often ingredients for the cake but YOU are the warmth. You bring the love. You bring the connection. That's the difference!