Speaker 1 00:00:00 So let me just give you the top ten signs that you might be an empath that you probably aren't expecting. Welcome to your yes, build life. I'm your host, Brenda Winkle, educator, healer, speaker, guide, and fierce advocate for your yes, I help sensitive and successful men and women find, reclaim and live from their full embodied. Yes. Through empowering you to understand your energetic hygiene, establish healthy boundaries, and heal your nervous system, you'll be able to create your yes filled life and move through your days with more freedom, more ease, and more joy. You'll hear inspiring stories of people who found their full bodied yes thought leaders who pursued their own dreams and are living life on their terms, and learn new ways to find the courage, joy, ease and freedom to more fully step into your yes filled life. Saying no to the good so you can say yes to the great. Join me on this journey to discover your yes filled life. Whether you're looking to break free from the golden handcuffs, start a new business, find your dream job, or simply live with more intention and mindfulness, I've got you covered.
Speaker 1 00:01:24 Let's explore the possibilities together and make your dreams a reality. Ready? Let's do this. Let's get you to your yes filled life. Hello and welcome to your yes filled life. I'm your host, Brenda Winkle. I'm so excited that you're here today. We're going to be diving into surprising signs that you may not have known what they meant until now. So I have been part of Samantha Kelly's life mastermind for the past year and a half. Life stands for lucrative, impactful, fun and easy. And I have been asking my Life Mastermind peers to join me in connection calls where I can ask them about their experiences being entrepreneurs with high levels of empathy and compassion. Before we dive into that, I want to tell you a little bit about my own story. So we're going to start in February 2007, and I just arrived home from a leadership conference where I was thinking on the plane, finally, I can create the life of my dreams. I'm feeling alive with excitement and expansion and possibility. I feel beautiful, capable, and inspired.
Speaker 1 00:02:47 And as soon as I pass through the security doors and see my family, my heart sinks. Not because I'm not happy to see them, but because I come face to face with a life of compromises and people pleasing that I've created for myself. I already feel smaller than I felt on the plane. The joy I had felt mere hours before morphed into tears of despair. That night, as I lay curled up on the floor of my closet, sobbing into a pillow again. I don't know what I like, what I want, what I need, or who I am. I just know that something has to change. Not today though. Today, all I can do is curl up in the closet and sob. I grew up in a tiny town called Chadron, Nebraska. My dad was the college band director, and my mom was also a professional music educator, and she taught private lessons in our house after school. My parents were hard working Midwesterners, and they often traveled for professional musical events. When I was a little girl, I could feel others around me and sense what they needed.
Speaker 1 00:03:53 I was told not to be so sensitive, and when I began to show intuitive abilities. People said it was all in my imagination, but I knew it wasn't. I started people pleasing because I couldn't stand to feel their discomfort or disappointment. I felt everything, their pain, their needs and their desires. And part of me resented all the people pleasing, while another part took pride in my ability to read what people needed. Can you relate to that? Being the daughter of musicians, it was easy to become a music educator myself, and I wanted to be the best. Just like my parents, I honed my skills, I built my resume and became a well-recognized and highly respected music educator. And while I loved the work, I hustled for my worth. I chased opportunities, awards, and recognition like they were oxygen. And it was never enough. Somewhere along the way, I stopped listening to my body and my inner knowing. I kept working, but my body talked. I talked back with antacids, ibuprofen, and caffeine with Mary Kay.
Speaker 1 00:05:01 I found myself in a community of women who believed in me far more than I'd ever believed in myself. Their belief in me buoyed me until I could learn to truly believe I was worthy of happiness, love, and fulfillment. This all shifted when I found myself on that closet floor in 2007, and in that final time of sobbing on the floor, I had had enough. I asked for help. My Mary Kay sisterhood rallied with the support I could never have dreamed of providing resources and help, furnishing her home and loving me while I healed from the divorce and offering friendship and community. Their belief in me saved me and taught me to believe in myself. I rebuilt my life, and I recognized that I needed to shift so that I could call in healthier relationships, friendships, and connections. I decided to reclaim my empathic and intuitive gifts and then discovered they were much more developed than I'd originally thought. That led me to energy healing, and I went on my own healing journey. I studied energy healing and became certified in several modalities.
Speaker 1 00:06:09 I learned to read Oracle cards, and I'm an advanced, trauma informed breathwork facilitator and somatic coach. And now I'm surrounded by people who respect and love me for who I am. I love to give and nurture others in a way that's fueling to me. And now I give from this place of overflow and genuine desire to serve. I no longer people please. I live from a full body. Yes, and teach other empathic entrepreneurs to find their full body. Yes. So today I'm an energy healer and work with the most beautiful empathic entrepreneurs and aspiring business owners who are probably also told, don't be so sensitive and you're too much. And these days when I'm in my closet, it's to put on clothes that make me feel beautiful. So I don't know if you can relate to any piece of my story, but I want to pull out a couple things. One is, I knew I was different, even from a very young age. I didn't necessarily know how to quantify that, but I knew I was different.
Speaker 1 00:07:15 And as I've spoken to my peers and colleagues inside the Life Mastermind, I'm realizing that this is a very common thread. In fact, most of us don't have language to describe the deep empathy and deep compassion that we're feeling until adulthood, if ever. And for some, it's been very recently that they learned the term empathy. They never heard of it. They didn't even know what that was. But here are some of the characteristics that these women who are very successful, empathic entrepreneurs experienced. I felt I didn't fit in at a very young age, Especially as a teenager. another one said, I learned about energy vampires when I was listening to a book on tape in my 20s, and I recognize, oh my gosh, I am being energy vampire. So if you don't know the term energy vampire, it's describing when someone is draining you of your energy. So if you've ever spent time with somebody and then after spending time with them, you felt really tired or drained. It could be that there was an empire or an energy vampire component.
Speaker 1 00:08:31 Another person said, I remember that I used to have to go to church as a little kid, and I could pick up on people's energy around me, and I'd want to start crying when I felt their pain. Another one said, I think I've always known that I feel very deeply, but I don't think it was until I became an energy healer myself that I realized so much of what I was taking on wasn't mine. And this person also said that she didn't realize that she was feeling the intensity of other people's emotions. So if you ever just kind of wonder if you're taking on other people's emotions, there's a good chance you are. And you know, there's there's a gift and a distortion to everything. And so we don't want to make being an empath bad. We don't want to make taking on other's energy and emotion bad. Because again, there's a gift and a distortion. The gift is that we can feel and sense what other people are going through. The distortion is when we take it on inside our own body.
Speaker 1 00:09:33 And for most people, until they've received some training, they are taking on the energy inside their own body. It's not just tapping in to know what someone's experiencing, it's actually experiencing it in your own body. The other thing I'm learning from talking with these women is that there have been no support systems in place to teach them how to deal with their deep empathy and compassion. So if you've ever wondered if you feel things more deeply than other people, probably you do. If you wonder that, chances are you do. And if you wondered how to navigate that, I am. I'm. I just want to say you're not alone. And if you ever wondered how to navigate it, I have something really special for you. In fact, I'm developing this based upon the conversations that I'm having within the Life mastermind, because I'm realizing no one out there is offering this support. And so I have created a new offer. It's called the Power Strategy and Healing Session. Now, Power is an acronym for a framework that I developed.
Speaker 1 00:10:45 And each letter stands for a word. And in fact, I'm going to create a five part series where we unpack the power framework, where each week for the next five weeks, we're going to be doing a deep dive into each of the components of the power framework so that whether or not you're working with me, you can receive some support, some relief, some education around what it takes to be a successful empathic entrepreneur without taking on the energy and emotion around you. So if you haven't yet subscribed to the podcast, wherever you're listening, invitation to go do that now because you are not going to want to miss a single episode of this next five part series. So the power framework stands for presence, optimize, wisdom, evaluate, and renew. Each letter correlates to one to the power presence, optimize wisdom, evaluate, and renew. And this framework came out of my nine years working with people with high levels of empathy and compassion and my lifetime of being an empath. So as I have become more and more educated as an energy healer, I have learned that there are certain things that you can do that will really support you.
Speaker 1 00:12:13 They won't block your empathy and compassion, but they'll allow you to take on less inside your own physical body, which means that you get to keep more of your beautiful energy. That means that you get to protect your vitality, and you can be done with people pleasing and being drained. Because as an empath, sometimes it's easier for us to people please and to take on energy around us than it is to set the boundary. And when I'm talking about boundaries, I'm talking about two kinds of boundaries that I help people set. One is the actual boundary, like creating a boundary statement or a boundary framework around different things in your life. And the second thing, which is probably even more impactful, is setting energetic boundaries. There are so many ways that you can set energetic boundaries that will actually reduce the need for you to have a difficult conversation, because you can create the boundary with your own energy. In fact, that's a big part of what I teach in this new offer that I've created for empathic entrepreneurs called the Power Strategy and Healing Session.
Speaker 1 00:13:23 Now, Power Again is the acronym that stands for presence, optimize, wisdom, evaluate, and Renew. When you activate those five components, it's amazing what you can do. You know, there aren't very many empaths that become entrepreneurs and with good reason. If you've never been taught how to really dig into your gift, how you can actually tell someone, know and not feel like you're dying inside, how you can set a boundary and disappoint people and not take on that disappointment in your own system. Being an entrepreneur would be very intimidating. In fact, I'm learning in my conversations with these women in the life mastermind that many times. In fact, so far with everyone I've spoken to, there was a slight delay in them starting their business, and a slight delay can vary by, you know, a year or two to 10 or 15 years because it took so much courage to start their business, because they knew that they had this gift of empathy and compassion. And so my goal in these power strategy and healing sessions is to empower you, the empathic entrepreneur, to set the boundaries to heal your nervous system and to understand your energy in a really unique way.
Speaker 1 00:14:41 I want to give you the tools and the skills so that you can have more of that beautiful energy, keeping more of that beautiful energy so that you feel the vitality and the the bigger and the sovereignty and agency so that you can create the thing that you want to create. You know, there's such a gift in being an empath with high levels of compassion, because you look at the world differently and you already know that, and there's something on your heart that you want to create right now. And the world really needs that. And my goal is to provide you with the the skills and the tools so that your empathy can live in your body as the gift that it's meant to be. So it doesn't feel like it's something heavy to carry. I've heard so many times over the past six months something to the effect of being an empath sucks, and it can, but it doesn't have to. And that's why I'm so excited to be offering these power, strategy and healing sessions. I'm shifting away from my business model where I've only offered healing and strategy sessions inside a package, and this is the one thing that you can purchase a one off.
Speaker 1 00:15:58 So if you've ever wanted to work with me and you want to just, you know, sample what it might be like to work with me in a longer container. But you want to just do one session at a time. This is your chance with this power strategy and healing session. The Power Strategy and Healing session is for the empathic entrepreneur to support you to increase your income and impact with ease while you learn to understand your energy, your motivations, and provide you with the tools that you can use far beyond a single session. So it might be that you're successful on paper, but you may not feel that way. Maybe right now you feel like success is coming at the cost of your inner peace. Maybe you find yourself dreading conversations or wondering how how to even begin a conversation. One of the beautiful things about offering these one off sessions is that we can customize it to you. For example, I worked with one entrepreneur who is a podcaster, a therapist, a coach, and a speaker, and something that was happening for her was she was experiencing exhaustion after her speaking gigs, whether that was speaking inside of a group, interviewing someone for her podcast, being a podcast guest, or actually having a speaking gig.
Speaker 1 00:17:14 And the exhaustion was crushing so she would be able to maintain her energy all day long, and then she would come home at night excited to spend time with her family and collapse. And this was a pattern that was really taking a toll on her and her family. And when we started to work together in a power strategy and healing session, we realized that she was actually leaking her energy to the audience. And when she learned how to keep more of her precious energy inside her own system, everything shifted, In fact, she had two speaking engagements the day after we work together, and she told me that she had so much extra energy after she worked with me that not only was she able to maintain her energy through the two speaking gigs, but when she went home that night, she had enough energy to take her daughter and her family for frozen yogurt, and they were able to talk to each other about their days. And she was so excited about that because before she learned how to keep more of her energy, she was so exhausted that would not have happened.
Speaker 1 00:18:22 So in these sessions, you get to create whatever it is that you're needing. Maybe you need help around visibility. Maybe you need help around the day to day operations and managing your time. Maybe it feels like there's so many distractions around you. You don't know how to prioritize things. Or perhaps it's difficult to set some boundaries, around how you manage your time. Are you prioritizing other people's needs in front of your own? This can actually be one of the symptoms that you're an empath. If you find yourself prioritizing the requests and the asks of other people over the things that you know you need to do. So let me just give you the top ten signs that you might be an empath that you probably aren't expecting. Number one, it feels difficult to manage your time. Other people's requests and priorities often take precedence over the things in your own calendar, and it feels frustrating and you keep wondering why you allow yourself to do it. But you don't stop doing it. Number two, you know that you feel things more deeply than other people, and when your family members or loved ones tell you to let it go, that they tell you you're just feeling too much or too sensitive, you literally don't know how to do that because it just feels like the only way.
Speaker 1 00:19:47 And there's no other option for you. Number three, being around large groups of people can be exhausting. Now, this can also be true if you're an introvert, but if you're an empath, if you're around large groups of people without any type of energetic protection, it will literally drain you. Number four, you can read the energy in a room. You know who's happy, who's sad, who's frustrated, and you sometimes feel like you have to walk on eggshells because of all the things you know. And you wonder why no one else seems aware. It's because they aren't. This is because you have a special gift and and the other people aren't tapping into it. Number five, you sometimes feel responsible for other people's emotions. Now, this can also be a sign of codependence. And so I just want to name that. But there's something different about this. Because if you have been feeling responsible for other people's emotions because of your empathic abilities. There's a really simple solution, and I'm going to talk about it when I share the five part power framework.
Speaker 1 00:20:57 Over the next five weeks, we'll talk about how you can create some spaciousness so that you don't have to take on things like that. Number six, if you have ever sat across the table from somebody and then found yourself mirroring their emotions whether they're happy, sad, angry, in love, or just excited, and then when you leave, you realize that that wasn't your emotional state and you wonder what happened. That's a pretty good sign that you are an empath and you're taking on subconscious empathy. This can also happen when people may take an interest in you that isn't reciprocated. And that's why you can go out for dinner with somebody, have a wonderful time, really be enjoying and laughing and having so much fun. And then you get in your car and you feel like you've been sapped and you wonder if you can even lift your arms. And you wonder, why was I having so much fun there? But I feel so drained now. That's another sign that you might be an empath. And that fact that's number seven.
Speaker 1 00:22:02 Number eight is that you feel deep emotions even if you're not in the room, meaning you can read the energy in a text, you can read the energy in a commercial, you can read the energy in a movie. And it affects you deeply. So you might find yourself crying at a commercial and wondering what's wrong with me because no one else is crying. Nothing's wrong with you, my friend. You just have deep, deep empathy because you're an empath. And number nine, if you ever feel physical sensations in your body that appear suddenly and then leave suddenly when a person around you also leaves the room, or perhaps you remove yourself from the room. That could be you picking up on their physical sensations. And number ten, if you've ever been told you're too sensitive or you just need to let it go, or you just are being ridiculous, or you just are feeling too much, or you're making a big deal out of these feelings that you're probably an empath. This is something that's very, very common for empaths to hear, unfortunately.
Speaker 1 00:23:15 So my goal is to provide so much juicy content on the podcast that even if you don't decide to work with me, you'll have the tools and skills that you need to really unleash your own freedom, agency, and sovereignty as an empathic entrepreneur. And if you do choose to work with me, you can work with me in a power strategy and healing session. And I offer a group coaching and healing program that I'll talk to you about after your power, strategy and healing session. So one of the things that is really important to me is accessibility. And so I have these right now priced for the rest of 2024 at $333 per session. Each session is 90 minutes and you receive two weeks of Voxer support, unlimited Voxer support after your session. So for $333, that is an incredible value. So you can learn more by clicking the link in the show notes or going directly to Brenda winkel.com/power session. And you can see if a power session might be the right thing for you. Now, the next five weeks we're going to be unpacking the power framework presence, optimize wisdom, evaluate and renew.
Speaker 1 00:24:31 So each week we'll be doing a deep dive into each of the components of the framework. And you aren't going to want to miss it. So make sure that you click the little subscribe button or the plus sign to subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss any of those. And coming soon. I have a series on Divine Feminine and Divine Masculine coming up that I'm so excited about. I have incredible guests coming on the podcast to help facilitate those conversations. If you like this episode, would you please go leave the podcast? Your five star rating and review. It takes you about 30s and it means so much each week. I spend a lot of the week creating content for you on the podcast, and it would be such a gift to me if you could take 30s and go leave a rating and review. It is literally one of the most impactful things that you can do to support the podcast. Aside from this, if you know someone or care about someone you think could benefit, please share this episode with them.
Speaker 1 00:25:33 Thank you so much for listening. Bye for now. Until next time.
