Brenda Winkle 00:00:01 Welcome to your yes filled life. I'm Brenda Winkle, energetic leadership guide, psychic, medium and somatic coach for ambitious leaders who know their gifts are real and who want to stand fully in them. Here you'll learn how to trust your intuition, embody your vision, and step into the freedom you've been creating, all without chasing more certifications or carrying stuff that does not belong to you. Every week, I'll share powerful practices and conversations with thought leaders and changemakers that help you transform your vision into embodied confidence. Claim your gifts without apology and lead with both clarity and freedom. Because your gifts aren't cute, they're powerful. They're real, and they're needed. Start today by downloading my free energy audit at Brenda Winkle forward slash audit. It's the exact tool I use to track what's fueling me and what's draining me. It will help you discern between that hit of achievement and true joy, so that you can lead with more clarity and impact. This is your space to stop proving, start embodying and live fully in your gifts.
Brenda Winkle 00:01:16 Welcome to your yes filled life. Hello and welcome to your yes filled life. I'm your host, Brenda Winkle. I'm a clarity coach, intuitive guide, trauma informed breathwork facilitator, trauma informed somatic coach. And I'm so glad that you're here today. We're talking about something that has been at the core of my own evolution, and it's something that I see with almost every leader that I work with. I work with creatives and entrepreneurs and business leaders, physicians, educators, musicians. And what I notice is what happens when you stop hiding is almost like magic. So when I say hiding, I'm not talking about the dramatic kind of hiding, but the subtle, quiet ways that we filter ourselves, that we tell ourselves we're not feeling what we're actually feeling, the ways we shrink a little, dilute our magic, and hesitate to show up in our full expression. So this episode is for the person who knows there's more to bring forward, but also knows how scary it can feel to be fully seen and fully expressed.
Brenda Winkle 00:02:35 So I want to start by sharing a moment from my own journey. I have a background in the performing arts. I grew up the daughter of two performing artists. They were Yamaha performing artists, literally. That was their term. My dad was a college band director in Chadron, Nebraska at Chadron State College, and my mom owned a private woodwind studio and I don't remember going to my first concert because I was a teeny tiny baby. I also don't remember my first performance because I have been performing my entire life, which is really relevant to this conversation around hiding, because as a performer, someone who is very seasoned on stage, I've performed thousands of times. I've directed and conducted thousands of concerts and shows and musicals. I've spoken hundreds of times on stages all across North America. And when I say that I was showing up fully, I really believed that to be true. So the first time that I heard someone talk about visibility, I thought to myself, oh, I don't have an issue with visibility.
Brenda Winkle 00:03:46 I am really comfortable being visible. Well, being visible on stage and performing may or may not be the same thing as being fully visible and expressed in your life. And here's what I mean. When you're fully expressed, you stop the performance so many times. And this was definitely true for me. We are performing different roles in our lives. We're performing the way that we think we should. Even down to the emotions we allow ourselves to feel and express, we're performing what is expected, what is quote unquote normal, what we think is socially acceptable. And anytime that we're performing and we're not also tapping into our true authentic self, we're hiding a little bit. And there's even more, because if we're hiding a little bit, we're hiding our emotions. We're hiding our expression. It's very likely that you might also notice very subtle fear of being misunderstood, fear of being too intense, too big, too much, too intuitive, too emotional, too expressive, too artistic, too opinionated. And I remember the moment that that really cracked open for me.
Brenda Winkle 00:05:14 And it was such an Because I'm a manifesting generator in human design, and human design is a map where we can understand ourselves a little bit better. So I'm a manifesting generator. There are five different types inside human design, and this one is a very common one. We love to start things. We love to create ideas. We love to generate. Like things happen in the world because of manifesting generators. We get the ideas, we get the ball rolling. One of the things about manifesting generators is we don't love to finish things. we really enjoy the starting process and that's one of our gifts. But this is important because one of the things that I had thought was sort of a personality flaw was this tendency that I have to start things and explore and express and feel into things, and then to realize, oh, well, I'm kind of complete on this. I think I'll go try something else. And so all of that's to say, I have been in this exploration for decades of trying to be fully expressed.
Brenda Winkle 00:06:19 And, you know, at one time I thought it was being able to be on stage with very little nervous energy. There's always a little bit of nervous energy, especially if you care about something. But because I was so seasoned as a performer and conductor, it didn't really affect me. That's also what makes me a great podcast host and a great podcast guest, and a great keynote speaker, is that I really do love that aspect of being on stage and performing. It comes very naturally to me. What I didn't understand that I was doing is I was performing a role. I was performing the role of the professional, the conductor, the appropriate educator. I was playing a role. And it wasn't that it was a bad thing, but when I look at the motivation of why I was doing it, it was because I was sure it was making me more likeable. It was helping me to avoid judgment. It was really keeping me safe, or so I thought. But the truth is, anytime we're masking our fullest expression of ourselves and masking who we are to be more palatable, to be more professional, we're actually limiting ourselves.
Brenda Winkle 00:07:38 We're making ourselves smaller. And that's a form of hiding, too. So when I said, I remember the first time this cracked open for me, it was pretty recently. I have been intuitive and a channel for my entire life. And then when I became a Reiki master in 2014 or 2015, I began to more openly talk about that because I had community around it and I had shared language, and so I didn't feel like the weird one in the room anymore. It was like, oh, these people are like me. And so that felt really good. And then also being a musician, I'm around people with deep empathy, deep compassion, deep expression, deep artistry. And so I felt like I was really rounding out my needs, rounding out my communities with my Reiki community and my musical community. But I was still holding back a little bit because I didn't really tell the Reiki community that I was so involved in music, and I didn't tell the music community that I was involved in Reiki and and other types of energy work, and it really felt like I was silencing parts of my life.
Brenda Winkle 00:08:46 And one of the things that I wanted more deeply than anything else when I left teaching full time in 2022, was I wanted to be the fully expressed version of me. I wanted to be someone who loves to direct choirs and loves to sing, and someone who also channels and offers psychic readings and tarot readings and offers trauma informed breathwork sessions and then can go sing. I wanted it to all come together, and I remember in a conversation where I felt like I was revealing myself for the very first time, and I felt this, and it's really important for me to say I felt it because that was my perception. I was revealing this and I was talking to my friends Jason and Cody and Sidney, and I thought I was like, dropping a big bomb. Well, they looked at me like, yeah, and like, what are you telling us? That you don't think we know? And I was a little bit stunned because I somehow hadn't realized that it had all come together in my mind. I was still silencing things in my mind.
Brenda Winkle 00:09:53 I was still like a choir director over here on one side, and all of my other artistry over here on the other side, and they had seen me for the fully expressed version of me, because that's how I was showing up. And when I realized that without any effort or any intentionality other than to be myself, I was being my full self. It added fuel to my fire because I realized that if it was safe enough to do with them, it was safe enough to do in other places. And then the interesting thing is, I realized I had been doing it for longer than I thought, and this is probably true for you. So that's why I'm mentioning this, is because a lot of times, as we're evolving into this fullest expression, express version of ourselves, where we allow ourselves to feel the emotions, we allow ourselves to be who we really are, and we bring together the parts of ourselves that we may have felt disconnected. It just feels like, oh, I can breathe freely for the first time.
Brenda Winkle 00:10:55 Just feels so good. And one of the reasons that we don't do this is we fear judgment. We fear abandonment. But what actually happens for us is more alignment, more ease, more resonance. And as I begin to talk more openly about this with my clients on social media, in my email list, with my friends, with my family, I started to get messages saying things like, thank you for finally saying this. Thank you for saying this. I know that you see me because I'm experiencing this too. And so over time, I began to stop performing professionalism and start embodying my full presence. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm still very professional. I do a great job. In fact, I just recently led breathwork for a choir retreat for the Oregon Chorale. I am a professional. I'm really good at what I do, and I understand how to be professional in different settings, but that doesn't mean that I divorce my professionalism from who I am, and that is the magic of showing up fully and stopping hiding.
Brenda Winkle 00:12:14 And so from that place. Business got easier, offers landed better, and I started being magnetized to the right people, both right peers, right clients, right mentors, right friends and not feeling like I was chasing them. And I want to go back to one thing that I said I was talking about fear of abandonment. It would be untruthful for me to say that I haven't lost people along the way in this journey. There were some people who really were benefiting from me staying small from me, not connecting to my truest self, from me pretending like it's just quieter over here, and it's just all of my other artistry over here. There were people who were more comfortable with that, and there were people who were benefiting from that. That are no longer part of my journey. Not because I don't love them, not because they don't love me, but because our paths just simply went apart. That's not to say they won't come back together one day, but I do want to say that one of the things that keeps people from showing up fully is fear of their loved ones leaving them.
Brenda Winkle 00:13:21 And I wouldn't be telling you the truth if I didn't tell you. There is real risk that that can happen. But I need you to ask yourself if someone leaves you because you are being your fullest, most authentic, best version of yourself, whether we're talking in a professional capacity or a personal capacity, is that person actually in your life right now? And the answer is no. They're not because they're in your life Additionally, they're conditionally in your life as long as you play this specific role that you've been playing. And I know that can be really confronting and painful to hear. It's definitely something I've gone through. But when you get to the other side, oh my gosh, it feels like freedom. It feels like freedom. It's not like you don't miss them, but it feels like freedom. So here's the thing hiding doesn't always look like silence. Like when I say, what happens when you stop hiding, it could mean that you're not speaking up. It could mean that you're being silent.
Brenda Winkle 00:14:22 But it also means things like this over explaining your work so that it feels legitimate, or leaving out the intuitive side of your creative genius, or playing small because you don't want to make anyone uncomfortable. Oh, I see this one a lot. Or avoiding visibility until you feel more quote unquote ready Or this one is a really common one. Avoiding feeling any negative emotions because you don't really feel like you have time or space or capacity to process them. That's a form of hiding too. And what I want to name is this. Hiding in any capacity is a nervous system response. It's not good or bad. It's not your fault. You're not doing it wrong. It's how you've learned to keep yourself safe. Especially when visibility, whether that's visibility like on stage or visibility in your business or even visibility in your relationships, didn't always feel welcome, celebrated, or safe, especially when you were growing up. But my question for you today is what if being fully seen wasn't dangerous and it was actually your liberation? Because that's what I have found to be true, is that the more fully expressed I am, the more free I feel and the more authentically I can show up in my relationships.
Brenda Winkle 00:15:54 And they're getting richer and better. And I'm just it feels so good and I'm watching it happen with my clients, too. One of my clients started working with me, and she was a newly retired educator when we began working together, and we had been friends prior to this. And she came to me with kind of the overarching question around like, what's next for me? And as we got going in her program, she began to realize that she wasn't showing up authentically in her marriage, and that there were a lot of things that she felt and wanted and thought that were not being expressed. And instead she was feeling tremendous resentment. So as she began unlearning all of the ways in which she'd stayed hidden and pretended like she didn't have feelings or desires or needs that weren't being met. Her relationship began to improve, and most recently, she's reported that she and her husband are the happiest they've ever been in 35 years. And there was a time in this process that she actually wondered if she should stay in the marriage, because she was at this crossroads where she was asking herself, is it better for me to start over and create a new identity where I'm just fully myself? Or is it better for me just to begin to be myself now, and to admit to the people in my life, hey, I've taught you that I don't have any needs and that my needs don't matter, and my preferences and desires don't matter, because I've always put yours in front.
Brenda Winkle 00:17:34 And I don't resent you for that. But I need you to know that I'm going to be trying something new. It's going to be a little bit clumsy. I might not get it right every time, but I'm really trying to be completely honest and transparent in all of my relationships, and it was uncomfortable for a while. And now things are going better than they've ever gone. So I want to offer you a simple practice today that you can try right now. One of the things that really blocks your ability to hide, or your ability to show up fully and is causing you to hide, is fear of actually feeling your emotions. And so if you can find a safe way to allow yourself to express, it will be the unlock for you to find clarity. And we're talking about clarity in any capacity, whether it's your professional life, your personal life, your business, your creativity, it doesn't matter. You, you really have to feel the emotions. Why? Because if you think that not feeling your emotions is supporting you, you're mistaken because your emotions are actually the thing that's guiding you to the next right step.
Brenda Winkle 00:18:49 When your emotions are feeling positive and you feel things like joy, love, expansion, excitement, possibility that is telling you more of this, go there. It's like the hotter, colder game, right? And when you feel emotions like despair, anger, frustration that's telling you, ooh, something's not quite gelling the way that it should. But if you're not letting yourself feel your emotions, you're basically turning off the GPS of your life. And I mean that sincerely. And then what happens from there is you end up signing up for things that you don't want to do. You end up resenting the people that you love the most. And most of the time, the baseline emotion that you experience is anger or anxiety. And as soon as you begin to untangle and unwind this, you may have some emotional releases that are necessary. Because the truth is, you can't Just not feel negative emotions. If you're not feeling emotions, you're not feeling the positive emotions either. And that's where practice, like breathwork comes in, because it can safely allow you to feel some emotions.
Brenda Winkle 00:19:58 And we know from so much research, whether that's neuroscience or psychology or even the blood work from hormone experts, we can track the hormonal. I don't know what you call it, but we can track when the hormones are released in your body because of emotions. And we can do blood tests to recognize that this one thing is true. Even the most difficult emotions will last 90s if we allow ourselves to truly, truly, truly, truly feel them. Now, I'm not trying to say that something as complex as grief is going to take you 90s and then you're done. I just lost my dad of 2024, and I'm the first to tell you that you'll you'll need to keep coming back to that and allowing it to process each time. It's asking for love and attention. But in the moment, in the moment, you can let the emotion pass and it will only take 90s. So the invitation here is to really allow yourself to feel. So I'm going to invite you into a five minute practice today.
Brenda Winkle 00:21:08 It's going to be five minutes because we're going to breathe for three, and then we're going to reflect for two. Now you can extend this if you want, but I know that you're busy, and I know that you might just be trying this out, seeing if it helps. So for the three minutes we're going to breathe. The reason this works, the reason this is important is because when you take control of the breath, which is normally an autonomic nervous system response, you are communicating to your nervous system that you've got it. And when your nervous system understands that you've got it, you're taking care of the nervous system. The nervous system says, oh, okay. It's safe for me to relax. It's safe for me to let down a little bit. And a lot of times, what happens when your nervous system begins to relax and release a little bit is you're going to feel a lot of emotions that you have been covering up. And so it's not uncommon for you to feel emotional in a way that you can't really quantify or even talk about.
Brenda Winkle 00:22:04 You just know you're feeling them. Sometimes it's being expressed with like tears running down your cheeks. Sometimes it's expressed with anger, but a lot of times it'll just kind of flow through the body. If you let it for those 90s, and then you'll feel better and it'll be really hard to describe. But I promise you, it works. I promise you it works. I just did this with, I think it might have been around 60 or 70 people, with when I led breathwork for the Oregon Chorale, and I watched it happen in real time, and I watch it happen every single week. So I lead three breathwork drop ins a week, and I have for the last three years. And so the three breathwork sessions that I lead a week, I can see that in the first two minutes, a lot of times there's a little tug of war with the ego and the nervous system, where the nervous system and the ego are going, wait, who's got it? Who's in charge? Who's in control? And then by that third minute, the body begins to relax, and then the breath takes over.
Brenda Winkle 00:23:07 So I want you to breathe for at least three minutes, but you can extend it up to, you know, 7 or 8 if you'd like. And just take slow, deep breaths in through the nose and out through the mouth at the perfect pace and depth for you, for whatever you set the timer. My favorite way to set a timer is to choose a song and use the song as a timer. My invitation when you're choosing a song, would be to have something that is more of a meditation or a breathwork, kind of a song. I can give you recommendations. If you're curious, DM me on Instagram and I can send over a playlist that I have with like every breathwork song I use in the world, it's a really big playlist. It's not one I would actually play from, but it has so many great songs on there. And the reason is if you play your favorite song that you're listening to from, you know, Pandora or Spotify or, or Apple Music, it's easy for you to get distracted and sing along with the lyrics.
Brenda Winkle 00:24:04 So I would prefer it to be an instrumental song, especially if this is new for you. And then you're going to set your timer for 3 to 5 minutes, or the length of the song, breathing in and out through the nose, letting yourself fully feel whatever you feel. And then after that, take about 1 or 2 minutes as integration, just to feel the change without doing or being or rushing off to do anything else. Just let yourself feel it and then begin to reflect. And you can reflect either in a journal, if you like to write, or one of the things that I've started to do that I really love is you can reflect into voice. Note you can open the Voice note app on your phone and then do some reflection. And then as you're reflecting, open invitation to share anything that came through for you in the breathwork session first. And it's not really a session. It's more like just a little exercise, but reflect first and then ask yourself the question, am I saying the truest thing to myself, even if it's messy and imperfect? Am I saying the truest thing to myself, even if it's messy and imperfect? And that is the doorway into being seen.
Brenda Winkle 00:25:25 Not for attention, not for performance, but for actually showing up and being seen in your life as who you are. So what happens when you start? When you stop hiding is things begin to move. It won't happen overnight. It doesn't happen in a viral explosion, but it does happen in a deep, soul aligned way. And here's what I've seen for myself and my clients. That begins to happen. Offers feel easier to sell because they're rooted in your full expression. Careers begin to align in exactly the way that they're supposed to align, where the right job turns up. If you are working for someone else or the right idea pops in your mind. If you're a creative or an entrepreneur that leads to that ultimate success. Clients find you faster because your energy is clear and magnetic and resonant, and the content that you produce actually connects because it's connecting from deep within you. And probably most importantly, your nervous system relaxes because you've communicated to the nervous system that you're safe so that you can stop performing unless you're making a conscious choice to perform, whether it's on stage, in front of a choir or as an artist.
Brenda Winkle 00:26:45 And that's the power of clarity. Clarity comes from creating this space to get real and present with what's here. Now, it's not about fixing. It's not about doing more. It's about trusting you enough to say your truth out loud. Now, if this conversation is hitting something deep for you, I would love to invite you to come join me inside the Clarity Workshop. We'll be live on November 6th. There is a replay included, and if you happen to be listening to this after November 6th, you'll still have access to the replay. And in this live, intimate space, I will guide you through the five part your yes filled life method, where we look at ways that you can create this clarity and stop hiding in every aspect of your life with energetic sovereignty. That means strengthening and protecting your energy with the zip up method. With all of the different things that I teach inside of all of my programs, and with all of my one on one clients, and you will get clear on what you're here to do.
Brenda Winkle 00:27:55 You'll get clear on what is next for you. You'll stop deluding yourself to be more palatable or marketable or likable. You'll just be you. And the coolest part about that is when you're just you, you're automatically more likable, you're automatically more marketable, and you're more successful too. This is just a $25 investment to join, and I promise this is not just a training full of tips. This is a powerful activation and implementation for leaders who are ready to show up fully. And if you've been holding back, waiting, wondering when you'll feel ready, wondering when it's going to be safe for you to actually admit how you feel. This is your invitation to move with what you already know. So head over to the link in the show notes or go to Brenda Winkle. To save your seat. And here's what I'll leave you with today. Your clarity isn't something that you have to find. It's already there within you. We just need to uncover it. And one of the ways that we uncover the clarity is we stop hiding.
Brenda Winkle 00:29:05 There's this version of you. The one who trusts, the one who loves deeply. The one who feels emotions deeply. The one who shares, the one who leads that version of you is already here. And hopefully I'll see you inside the workshop. If you're feeling that nudge. And if you're not quite ready for a workshop, invitation to go download a free clarity guide that I created with a five minute clarity method. That's very similar to the breathwork that we talked about today, but not the same. And it's also got ten steps to clarity and a guide for choosing a mentor, so you can grab that at the link in the show notes. Or go to Brenda Winkle for a guide. Until then, thank you for being here and thank you for being you and showing up fully in the world. We really need you and your gifts, maybe more than ever. If this resonated for you, if this was helpful and supportive, would you please share this episode with someone that you care about? And if you could, please leave the podcast, your five star rating and review wherever you're listening.
Brenda Winkle 00:30:10 It is one of the most helpful things you can do, and it really does help the podcast grow and get into the ears of more listeners. Thank you for being here inside your yes filled life. I'm your host, Brenda Winkle. Until next time, I'll talk to you soon. Bye.
