Speaker 1 00:00:00 Welcome to your yes filled life. I'm Brenda Winkle, an intuitive leadership coach and somatic guide for high performers, high achievers who want more freedom, ease, joy and energy. You are a visionary, leader driven, intuitive and ready for more more flow in your work, more presence and joy in your life and relationships. More trust in yourself and the decisions you make every day. Here we explore the intersection of intuition, leadership, and energetic sovereignty, blending practical strategy with energetic alignment so you can create success that feels deeply fulfilling at work, at home, in your relationships, and in your own well-being, you'll hear inspiring stories, practical strategies, and high level conversations designed to help you integrate the woo into your daily life. Because when your energy is aligned, everything flows ready to elevate how you lead and live. Start by downloading my free energy audit at. Com forward slash audit and discover what's fueling or depleting you. Let's do this. Your yes filled life starts now. Okay, so you've built this beautiful life and your successful career.
Speaker 1 00:01:23 Powerful presence and a calendar full of responsibilities that once lit you up. But lately, something has made it feel just a little bit heavier. So let me ask you something. What if this was your moment to soften into a new way of leading? I'm Brenda Winkle, a psychic medium, somatic coach, and intuitive guide, and I work privately with high achieving women who are ready to trust themselves more deeply, to reclaim their energy and lead from the inside out. In our one on one coaching. Together, you'll experience the kind of support that's both deeply spiritual and highly strategic. I'll bring my psychic gifts, mediumship and somatic tools to help you move through emotional residue, to help you get really clear on what matters most to you. To help you clear your energetic field and lead in a way that feels powerful, precise, and completely aligned with who you really are. Leadership can feel really lonely, but it doesn't have to. This isn't about doing more. It's about being more you. If you've been craving personalized support, intuitive insight, and energetic sovereignty, this is your invitation.
Speaker 1 00:02:38 Go to Brenda Winkle to learn more. Because your yes filled life. It starts the moment you say yes to yourself. Hello and welcome to your yes filled life. I'm your host, Brenda Winkle, and today on the podcast, we're going to be doing a deep dive into how we can reclaim our own power in these uncertain and chaotic times, and how we can find the strength, the courage, the inspiration and the community to make the changes that we know we need to make. Now, if it sounds like my voice is a little bit different, or maybe you're watching me on YouTube right now and you can see I'm watching. I'm wiping away my tears. You see, every time before I sit down to record a podcast episode for you, I do a little activation ritual and sometimes that means I dance. Sometimes it means I sing, sometimes it means I put on a particular song. And today I was really guided to, to do something a little bit different. So I was asking my spirit team, how do I know what to come to you and talk to you about today? And I heard the very clear message play the High Vibes playlist, which is a playlist that I have.
Speaker 1 00:03:57 I've shared it with lots of people. If you want to just DM me on Instagram and I'll send it over to you. and so I pushed shuffle and the song, oh, I'm a little bit emotional. the song that came up was The Black Eyed Peas Where is the Love now, if you haven't yet listened to this song or you don't know this song, I'm going to invite you to go do a Google search for it, find it on Spotify, find it on Apple Music, and really listen to it and let the lyrics wash over you because it is, it's so current and. You know, my, my, the very first time I heard this song, I was watching a movie called I am, which was, created. It's a documentary created by Tom Shadyac. And in the in the movie I am, Tom Shadyac talks about going from being a multi-million dollar producer, a movie producer, you know, creating films with Jim Carrey and living in multi-million dollar mansions, owning multiple multi-million dollar mansions.
Speaker 1 00:05:20 And he had an experience where he was injured and got a concussion and ended up with post-concussion syndrome. And this movie I am talks about the awakening that happened for Tom Shadyac after after he began to heal from this post, concussive syndrome. And it's a really cool film. If you have ever wondered about spirituality or wondered about quantum physics, or just been curious about, how things work or wanted to hear a different perspective. Invitation to go check out this this film. It's great. It's a little bit older. I mean, I was living in Boise when it came out, and I. I've not lived in Boise for almost four years now, so it is probably 6 or 10 years old. It's worth finding, even if you had to purchase a copy. So anyway, I heard this song Where Is the Love? As I was watching, I am and I was coming here to talk to you about ways to really claim back your power. And then this song came on the playlist and it just it, like, hit me.
Speaker 1 00:06:44 it really hit me. And so there's, there's a couple things that I really want to dive into today. One is there's so much pain in our collective right now, and there's two things that you can be doing right now that will not only ease your pain, but they will ease the pain of the collective. And so even though I'm a little bit emotional and you're probably thinking, oh, Brenda, you have kindly finally come unhinged. there is going to be some grounding groundedness here. So there's two things I really want to focus on. Number one is how can you find and feel and sense love on a daily basis? There is a ton of hate and divisiveness. And somehow in the American culture, I don't know when this shift happened for sure, but there has been a shift And all of a sudden being blatantly unkind, cruel, hateful, racist, homophobic, sexist has become the norm. And people who have those beliefs have become emboldened. And so it's up to those of us who believe in love, believe in true equality, believe in diversity, believe in helping each other, and believe in the collective all coming together.
Speaker 1 00:08:25 You know, with the the philosophy of a rising tide lifts all boats. It's really up to us to do what I'm going to say next. So number one is we're going to focus on the love. Number two is in dark times. It becomes very important for those of us who hold light to shine that light more brightly. And so yeah, times are dark here in the United States, and I don't think I'm saying anything that people would disagree with. And if you do disagree with that, maybe you can find yourself a different podcast because, you're not going to like the rest of what I have to say either. So, getting myself back into groundedness here. And so invitation just to use this as a meta moment. And I'm going to ground myself and you can ground with me. So I'm going to put my feet so that they're not crossed so that they're both touching the floor. And I'm going to widen my stance. And then you can begin to hear my voice shift as I'm grounding.
Speaker 1 00:09:38 I'm also going to imagine dropping a red laser beam of light down from my tailbone into the center of the earth. Oh, oh, that feels better. And so what I'm doing here is now I'm calling on the Earth energy and Mother Gaia to support me and sort of a remembering of my subconscious. I'm not doing this by myself. In fact, I'm doing this with my whole spirit team. They're all around me this morning. They're really, really present. Which is, I think, why I'm feeling so emotional. Because, you know, there's been some times lately that I have not been tapped into my true gifts. And that's a podcast episode for another time. But I am tuned in, turned in, tapped on. However you say that. And so this is going to be a transmission for you. And I would invite you to please, please, please share this episode with people that you care about because you know the pain that we are sensing in the collective. If you're sensitive, empathic, intuitive, not only are you witnessing it, and maybe you're experiencing it in your own individual level, but you're also feeling it in the collective.
Speaker 1 00:10:54 And so there's a couple of things that we need to do to maintain our sovereignty, to maintain our power, to maintain our hope really. So on the table of Woohp podcasts which is my other podcast that just started episode two is called Protect Your Energy. And so if you don't yet know how to protect your energy that's going to be a great thing for you to go listen to. All of those episodes are under 30 minutes. There's no guests that are going to come on the table of one podcast. It's all solos and, it's under 30 minutes and it'll be really, really helpful for you in order to protect your energy. So that's number one is you have to protect your energy to create your own sovereignty. And anybody that takes issue with you protecting your own sovereignty and protecting your energy is benefiting from you, not protecting your energy and your sovereignty. I once had a coach. I was in this high level mastermind, and I had a coach tell me this is pretty much verbatim. I know what your problem is.
Speaker 1 00:12:03 Your problem is you're trying to teach people to to protect their energy. Do you think any of the big spiritual teachers of the world, like Buddha or Abraham, are teaching people to protect their energy? Of course not. You can't teach something so fear based, she said. Now, obviously I'm no longer with that coach. In fact, I have completely distanced myself from that particular individual. I'm sending her all the love in the world. But, you know, if there's anybody that has an issue with you protecting your energy, they're benefiting. They're absolutely benefiting from it. So people who really, really care about you want you to have energetic sovereignty. And so if you don't yet know what that means, go listen to that episode on the table of Wu. So let's talk about two things that are so important. One is, of course, tuning in to the love around you. And this might mean that you go inward to your own family. I believe it was. I might have the quote wrong, but there was a very famous quote.
Speaker 1 00:13:10 I think it was Mother Teresa who said, you want to change the world? Start by changing your own family, meaning the love that we give each other in our own family units trickles out. And so if we're being kind, nurturing, loving, accepting, supporting of one another in our own homes, it gives us a different capacity to deal with the rest of the world. And so that's really, really important. Do not underestimate the importance of those those nuclear relationships that you have. And then, gosh, my nose is still running. sorry about that. I'm not going to edit this out. In fact, I'm done editing stuff like that out because I think it. Well, I don't even think it means something. And I just, this is part of our conversation, but it's also part of our bigger conversation. I'm no longer capable of putting on the mask and pretending that I don't have these deep spiritual gifts and this, this spiritual knowing, and I'm done masking in in any way.
Speaker 1 00:14:23 so I'm not going to edit it out because that would be part of the mask. I invite you to consider ways that you're masking too. So anyway, back to the love then. You know, there are people in all of our lives that might challenge us to find that sense of love. And, you know, I am a student of Gabby Bernstein, and Gabby Bernstein is a student of A Course of Miracles. And she taught me something years ago that literally changed my life. And it's this one question that you can ask yourself, which is, how can I find love in this? And you know what? Sometimes it's really tricky. Sometimes it takes a couple of minutes to figure out how you could find love in this, but I promise you, it's always there if you're willing to shift your perspective. And it does require a perspective, a perspective switch. And the other thing that has to happen with this is we have to be willing to let go of our judgment. Not only do we need to be willing to let go of judgment of others, but we need to be willing to let go of judgment of ourselves.
Speaker 1 00:15:34 Which leads me to the second thing, which is, how can you shine your light more brightly As a highly empathic, compassionate, intuitive, loving person. You do hold light for a lot of people, and you know what they say about light, right? Darkness cannot exist with light. Even one match in a very dark room will bring light. And please don't underestimate the impact that you bringing your light has on the rest of the world. So the question then becomes, how can we make sure your light stays bright? How can we make sure you feel safe enough to shine your light? And what are some practical ways that you can do that? And maybe are there some things that you can avoid. Okay. So that's where we're going to dive in today. And I'm going to share some of the content that I created for my group coaching program called your yes Filled Life. last week, and this is going to go hand in glove with our topic of being able to find ways to find love in every situation and then to share your light.
Speaker 1 00:16:53 So every single thing that each of us experience is part of our unique curriculum now curriculum, in case that word is foreign to you. I was an educator for 26 years, so curriculum means something to me, but maybe it doesn't to you. So curriculum is essentially what you're learning. It's the, you know, the scope, the sequence, the standards of what you'll learn. Every single thing that you experience in your life is part of your unique curriculum. And sometimes these are individual curriculums and sometimes they're collective curriculums, at least in my belief. So. And, you know, my spirit guides would tend to say the same. So we're in a collective, curriculum right now where there is a new earth that has begun. We are coming alive. We're becoming more aware. We're becoming more spiritually tapped in. We're becoming more aware of our own gifts, and we're becoming more willing to share those gifts, whether we share them through our writing, through our teaching. Whether you're sharing them working at the paint store, or you're sharing them while you work on your fiber art, it doesn't matter how you share them.
Speaker 1 00:18:13 As long as you do, as long as you do share them. So if we can look at everything as curriculum as what you're learning, I would love to remind you of high school. Now, I don't know about you, but for me, I did not enjoy every class that I had in high school. There were some I really enjoyed and there were others I could barely tolerate. So sometimes in life we have a curriculum that we didn't really sign up for. We would never have chosen it for ourselves. And yet here it is. The same was true in high school, right? I mean, would I have taken geometry on my own? Oh my gosh. No. I mean, no offense to Mr. Hallquist. You were nice and all, but still. No. No geometry for me. If I could have avoided it, I would have. So if we're continuing to avoid our lessons in our life curriculum, what happens is we keep getting signed up for different versions of the same class, and that's when we start to feel stuck.
Speaker 1 00:19:17 That's what happens when we start to feel a little bit hopeless, like we're never going to change. Like it's never going to shift. It's because we're avoiding doing the homework. We've been assigned the homework and we're like, no, I don't want to do that. I don't like that. So I'm not going to do it. But you know what happens if you're in high school and you decide not to do the homework in the class. You get signed up for the same class again, right? It's the same. It's the same. Now, the people may change in your life circumstance, but you will still get the same lessons over and over and over until you finally do the work. So how can we make sure we can shine our lights brighter? Well, we have to do our own curriculum. We have to do our own work. So there are four ways. Four signs that you might be avoiding your own curriculum. And I'll talk about what those four signs are. There are four.
Speaker 1 00:20:17 Well there's three costs to avoiding the curriculum. And then there's one thing that's a cost. But it's also just a guiding question. So there's four signs that you're avoiding your unique curriculum three major costs to avoiding the curriculum. And one guiding question. And then we have some things that you can do instead. Okay. So all of this is coming from one basic umbrella of thought, which is how can you be kinder to yourself? You probably didn't think I was going to say that, did you? I'm talking about love and sharing the light. Why would I talk about shining? About being kinder to yourself? Like, how does that relate? Well, it relates because if you're not being kind to yourself, you are building up resentment and anger, and that is going to come out as impatience, intolerance, perhaps anger, perhaps not being your best self. And so all of everything that I'm going to say today is really encouraging you to be kinder to yourself when you can be kinder to yourself. You're going to notice that you have more capacity to be kind to others.
Speaker 1 00:21:48 Because the truth is, if you're being unkind to yourself, you're withholding pleasure, you're withholding joy, you're withholding your basic needs even if you think you're being kind to other people. There's still this energy that's coming through where, you're not being as kind as you could be. So here are four signs that you might be avoiding your unique curriculum. Number one, you find yourself blaming. That could be blaming other people, blaming systems, blaming organizations blaming situations. Number two, finding yourself in victimhood like, oh, woe is me. This all happens to me. Somebody help me! I can't help myself. Those are all signs of victimhood. Number three, you make feeling good dependent on the external. In other words, you'll tell yourself, oh, I'll feel good when XYZ happens. Or when so-and-so does this thing that's making feeling good dependent on the external. And number four is discharging negative emotion before you've gotten the information, the emotions trying to tell you. And I'll talk more about that when we talk about the costs because we're headed into the cost now.
Speaker 1 00:23:11 So quick recap the four signs you're avoiding your curriculum. Blame. Victimhood. Making feeling good dependent on the external and discharging negative emotion without letting it flow through you to get the information from it. So here are the costs. Number one, you're missing the emotional directions. So when I say this. When I say emotional directions, I'm talking about emotions that function as your internal GPS. So you could hear this, termed like Martha Beck calls it your internal compass. Gabby Bernstein calls it your ING, ING, ING. But essentially, your emotional directions are your internal GPS. If something is feeling good, it is telling you, oh, this is more aligned for me. This is where I should be going. If something is feeling bad. It's like, oh, move away from that. Don't do that so much. And if we're ignoring our emotionality or we're discharging it, or we're not learning from our curriculum and we're just thinking that we're like victim to our emotions, we're missing out on the really important information that our emotions are telling us.
Speaker 1 00:24:26 Let me give you an example. So Let's take loneliness. Loneliness has been coming up in a lot of conversations recently. Loneliness is not a positive experience. Listen to my voice change. listen, I got a little throat chakra activation going on there. so loneliness is a common experience, but it doesn't feel good. And so my daughter moved out. As you know, she had grown up. She was going out on her own. It was like October of 2022. And I had been a single mom since she was five. And that happened in like 2007. So from 2007 to 2022, I lived with my daughter and then I was, you know, married before that. And I hadn't lived alone except for like one semester when I was 18. And for the rest of that time, I had always had somebody else in the house. But then in October of 2022, I became an empty nester. I didn't have a dog. I didn't have a partner. I didn't have a cat. I literally was me.
Speaker 1 00:25:32 And the plants and loneliness hit me in a whole new way. And I knew that I was lonely. But there was some shame I was carrying because, you know, the culture talks about, oh, well, learn to live alone. Learn to be alone with yourself, you know, like that's some sort of moral platitude that, makes you better somehow if you can tolerate being alone, which I understand what they're saying. There is benefit and value to spending time alone. But I don't think that there's benefit and value in being alone and feeling lonely. So anyway, I, I didn't quite know how to deal with that loneliness because I was in a pretty new city. I had just walked away from, being a full time teacher. I was not really a part of either of my elementary school communities when I was working in the school district, because I went to every other school I went to. I went to a different school every other day. For the entire first year. I was in the Portland area when I was still teaching, and so I was just barely on the surface of getting to know people and getting to be part of their communities.
Speaker 1 00:26:50 And, and then I got transferred to a middle school. So the elementary schools thought that I had left them, which, I mean, I did. And so I lost that community. And then right before the school year started was when I went out on my own in my business. And so I didn't become a part of the middle school community that I had been transferred to. So the little amount of community that I had enjoyed in the public schools went away, and my daughter moved out, and then I sold our house to be able to finance the business. And there I was, alone, and it was very unpleasant. Really, truly it was. It was very, very difficult. And there was a stretch of time that I went three days without seeing another person. Like, it wasn't that I wasn't leaving the house, it was that I, I did not see another person, did not have a conversation with anyone that I knew for three days. Not even that, like lock eyes with somebody that lived in the apartment complex I was living in at the time, and I was desperately lonely.
Speaker 1 00:28:02 I was starting to worry about my mental health. I was starting to worry about my mental stability because I kept questioning, like, is this real? Like, is, is this, is this real that I'm just alone all the time? Is this all there is? And then this box elder bug, do you know what Box Elder Bugs are? If not, look it up. This box elder bug came into my apartment, and it was like the first sign of life that I had seen in three, three and a half days. And I cried with relief when I saw that bug because I was like, okay, there is still life moving out there. And, you know, between the grey skies and the rain and not seeing people, it was it was very, very difficult. in 2022 and even the first part of 2023 was really, really difficult. Not that it's gotten that much easier because then last year my dad died. But the point is, being able to sit in those emotions and understand how deeply lonely and sad I was.
Speaker 1 00:29:16 Gave me the courage to make changes. And so I went on a retreat to Bali. I went on a retreat to San Diego. I joined a different group. I made new friends. I forced myself to join some things that I felt deeply uncomfortable doing. But if I wouldn't have actually allowed myself to sit in the sadness, I wouldn't have known to do those things because I wouldn't have been able to follow the emotional direction. So even the uncomfortable, unpleasant emotions have value because they can direct us to the things that would actually make us feel better. Okay, so that's one of the costs of ignoring your unique curriculum. Another one is missing the lessons. So a lot of times if we just take a moment and we were to ask ourselves questions like these for what can I learn from this? What miracle am I being shown? Am I being protected from something right now? And how can I take responsibility for my part? When we ask ourselves those questions. We can get into deeper meaning from what's happening around us, and understanding that deeper meaning means that we're actually learning the curriculum, which means that we won't be signed up for the same class.
Speaker 1 00:30:36 Plus, it gives you your power back when you start to ask questions like that. It's a beautiful way of doing something that feels like you're reclaiming your power, because you're not being reliant on the external situation to change before you feel better. There's something really, really cleansing and empowering and energizing about asking those types of questions. What can I learn from this? What miracle am I being shown? Am I being protected from something? How can I take responsibility? And then the third Q or the third cost of missing out on the curriculum is what if you're missing the miracles? Sometimes what's happening to you is part of a bigger blessing, but you can't see it, and especially you won't be able to see it if you're stuck in the negativity around it, helping you to bring something forward that you would never have chosen, or maybe forcing you into a decision you don't quite feel ready for. Or maybe it's compelling you into an action that you've been avoiding for a long time. And when you start to get really curious around what miracle am I possibly missing right now? Oh my gosh, it's like things open up.
Speaker 1 00:31:52 And then the last thing, which is like a guiding question that I would invite you to ask is, what are you making this mean? So if I would have asked myself that question as soon as I felt lonely, like on day two, on that three day stretch where I didn't see any people, if I were to ask myself, what am I making this mean, I would have probably thought, oh, it means I don't have any friends, it means blah blah blah. And it would have challenged My feelings, because then I would have said to myself, well, wait, is it true that I don't have any friends? Well, no, it's not true that I don't have any friends. I have a lot of friends all over the world. I just don't have that many that I can do things with in person in Portland. But that's not the same thing as not having friends. If I would have asked myself that question, it would have really saved me a lot of pain in that three day stretch where it was so, so, so painful.
Speaker 1 00:32:45 And so when you start to ask, what am I making this mean? I wonder if I could be curious around. I wonder what I can learn from this, or I wonder what this is about, or I wonder what this is showing me. Or even is there a skill that I can be practicing here? When you start to ask those questions, you are reclaiming your power and it feels really, really good. And not surprisingly, that's also when you're going to get all kinds of new ideas. Because when you start to think about things differently. New ideas pop in. Another way to say this is you can't solve the problem in the same energy. Oops. Let me try that again. Yeah, that was right. You can't solve the problem from the same energy. You have to find a different energy to find the solution. So what do we do instead of all this? So I've told you, you know the four signs that you might be avoiding your unique curriculum. I've showed you the three costs of avoiding the curriculum.
Speaker 1 00:33:47 I've talked about one guiding question. What can you do instead? Well, here's the thing that I find really gets in the way for people. Feeling our emotions is the same thing as finding our internal GPS. It's like the big direction finder. It's like the map with the flashing arrows. Go this way, go this way. Avoid this. But what happens if you're in a circumstance, a situation, a career where you can't actually feel your emotions in the moment? And this is real because let's say you're a teacher and you have something that is very stressful and very challenging happening. Are your 30 students going to sit down and just let you process? No they're not. Especially not at their eight. Right. If they're eight year old students and you're teaching second grade and you have an emotional thing happening, you're going to need to find a way to regulate yourself in the moment and come back and process the emotions later. Same thing if you are a doctor or a nurse, you know, one of the nurses that that I work with said, you know, I work so hard to keep my face neutral even when I know there's really bad news coming or I see that something really scary is happening.
Speaker 1 00:35:04 I try so hard to to stay neutral, but it's exhausting. And I work with an ER doc and she was saying that, you know, in any given day she could have, 3 to 4 really serious emergencies coming in, and she used a lot of medical language, like, I could have somebody come in on a code, which means they're they're in the process of needing to be resuscitated. So if she's trying to save somebody's life by administering CPR or other life saving types of things, can she stop to feel her emotions? No. Probably not. And that's also the beauty of our endocrine system and our hormones, because our hormones make it possible for us to keep going when those big emotions keep coming. But now we're going to get into my field of expertise, which is nervous system and emotional regulation. Okay. So essentially the work that I do is to help you feel safer being you and to help you feel safer coming forward into your spiritual gifts. So, when I was talking with this, with this, client who is an ER doc, I was asking her.
Speaker 1 00:36:15 I said, do you feel like you have access to your intuition in those moments? And she said, yes, absolutely I do. She said, I can take one look at a kid because she's a pediatric E.R. doc. I can take one look at a kid and I can know if this kid is going to do well or not and what to do to support that child. She said one look and I said, do you trust your intuition? And she said, yes, 100%. And she said, people ask her all the time, how do you know? And she's like, I just know. And she completely trusts it at work. However, in her personal life, with her friendships, her family, her community engagements, that trust is harder earned because there's not the same push of adrenaline. And so sometimes our work is learning to trust our intuition. When we don't have the hormone cocktail that says, oh, I really have to do this. So how do we learn to trust our intuition and regulate our emotions and regulate our nervous systems in a way that is sustainable and allows us to process emotions that we may have pushed down because our work or our family situation or whatever happened just didn't make it feasible.
Speaker 1 00:37:32 So there are a number of ways I'm going to teach you. Let's see 4 or 5 of them. And I just want to really double down on something here. You are a unique being. So the things that I suggest for you are literally just suggestions. These are not prescriptive. These are not the only things that will work, but they are things that might work for you. And I invite you to try them and just see how it goes. Experiment with which ones make you feel the best, and then just ignore anything that doesn't make you feel good. Because at the end of the day, your yes field life is about you, right? And so let's bring it back just in case you're like, wait a minute, Brenda. We're getting pretty far away from where we started, which is how can we find more love in the world? I need you to stay with me. Because here's the thing. If you can't find love for yourself, it's going to be a lot more difficult for you to find love for others.
Speaker 1 00:38:34 And there is a lot of crazy, crazy craziness out there. And if we can't come at it with a little bit of of groundedness and maybe not neutral in the sense of right or wrong, obviously there's things that are completely wrong that are happening. But neutrality in the sense of you're not, activated by it, then you're going to have a lot more clear thinking. You're going to be able to handle the situation in a more loving way. If you are supporting yourself in this way because if you are depleted, undernourished, under-resourced, under rested or your otherwise just not meeting your own needs, you're diminishing your capacity to deal with this kind of stress. So, let's talk about these ways. One really important thing to do is to start tracking how you feel. And so that's why I created the energy audit. And I'll tell you the story behind it. I was traveling full time and I knew that I wanted to travel full time. It's it's a lifelong dream. I probably will go do it again at some point.
Speaker 1 00:39:49 but I was really motivated because I needed the flexibility to be around my dad. He was very sick all of last year, and I knew things were were not going to. I knew he wasn't going to survive the year. And so I decided that I wanted to be flexible enough to be able to just go to Madison whenever I needed to be. But I knew that, something was not quite right because I had been traveling. After his death, I went to Ohio. And then I traveled just briefly through Indiana, Illinois, and then into, you know, Wyoming and and so forth up to Boise. And I spent two weeks in Boise at my friend Kathy's just kind of resting and recharging and being loved and loving her and her family and, just healing, after my dad's death. And then I came back to Portland, and I stayed on the east side of Portland, which I hadn't spent much time at before. And I was staying southeast, and I really liked where I was staying, but it was also far from my daughter.
Speaker 1 00:41:00 And my daughter lives in the West Side in Beaverton. And so I decided that if I was going to stay in Portland, I really needed to get to the West Side because, you know, a 45 minute drive isn't the end of the world, but it also cuts down on how often we can see each other. And so I moved into a different Airbnb on the west side, right near Multnomah Village. And as I was moving into the Airbnb, I had a panic attack. Massive panic attack. Now, I haven't had a panic attack since I was married. And I, I left that marriage in 2007. So it's been a long time since I had a panic attack. I it took me a few minutes to even recognize what was happening, but I had this panic attack, and it was so severe that I could barely get myself checked into the next Airbnb. In fact, I had to ask the host for support and thankfully he was very, very kind. A really, really lovely, couple and their son were the hosts, and they are accustomed to hosting lots of different people on their property because they rent out several different spaces in their property.
Speaker 1 00:42:12 And so he and his son helped me carry all the things in from my car and just were so kind and gentle. And he had lost his mom earlier in the year and and seemed to think that my panic attack was related to the death of my dad. And the reason he knew my dad had died was because we'd been in contact for a couple of weeks on Airbnb, just making sure it was a fit. Because if you're going to stay in somebody's property in their apartment, you know, at the back of their house, you want to make sure it's a fit, right? So anyway, he knew about that. And, he was just kind and gentle. So after this panic attack, I got the help and support I needed. And then I was thinking to myself, okay, something is really off here. And so I started to track my energy. And I was tracking every interaction, every conversation, every meeting, every activity. Every place that I went. Everything that I did.
Speaker 1 00:43:12 And it was really informative because I was thinking that I was going to continue to travel probably until March of 2025, like just two months ago. But when I started to track, I realized that I was spending a lot of bandwidth in decisions around where to live and that it was costing me bandwidth and energy that I didn't have simply because of the grief after my dad's death. And so I continued to track it, and that's what led me to realize, oh, I need to, like, actually find a place and move into a place and not travel for now, just to cut down on the amount of decisions that I'm making. And that's what led me to be in the place that I'm in now. And that energy audit. I've used it since October of 2024 and it is game changing. I come back to it. every week I do just a couple days of tracking and then once a month I'll track it again for a number of days and just really look at okay, is what I'm doing actually doing what I think it's doing? Or are there things that I need to be considering differently? And so go download your energy audit at Brenda Winkle forward slash audit.
Speaker 1 00:44:24 And then if you are a digital person and you love things that are digital digital you know what I mean. just email me. And I've got a digital copy that I will send to you with dropdown arrows and it's color coded and it's really cool. And it can give you an idea of what is your energy, really, what are your emotions really telling you. And it's it's game changing. So it's the same reason that you would track nutrition is why you track your energy. So if you're not paying attention to things, it's easy for you to start to tell yourself magical things like, I'll give you an example. My magical thinking was I'm eating a 400 calorie breakfast. But when I started to track it, it was not a 400 calorie breakfast because I had changed the granola to a high protein peanut butter granola, and my 400 calorie breakfast turned into a 680 calorie breakfast. so you got to track stuff once in a while. You don't have to track it all the time. You don't have to become obsessive about it.
Speaker 1 00:45:26 But just like a a little, you know, a little tracking here, a little tracking there can be super informative. And then after you track it, it's really important to create some practices where you can feel your feelings in some kind of daily capacity, whether that means you're journaling at the end of your day or journaling at the beginning of your day, or you have a breathwork practice, I highly recommend a breathwork practice. I'm a big, big, big proponent of of breathwork, obviously. In fact, I host breathwork twice a week. I host Breathwork Mondays at 5:30 p.m. and Wednesdays at 8 a.m. both times are Pacific and you can drop in for breathwork anytime you want. Just go to Brandon winkel.com/breathwork and you can come to any of our breathwork sessions because we're doing it almost every week. so come breathe with us. And then the other thing is daily exercise. And I don't mean just tracking on your Apple Watch or your phone that you get the right number of steps. I mean, actual exercise.
Speaker 1 00:46:33 And the reason I'm saying actual exercise and separating that out from just your movement at work is because for this reason, for the emotional piece, you need some exercise to process and alchemy the emotions. And just taking 10,000 steps at work is not going to be enough to alchemy the emotions. You probably need 15 to 20 minutes of something else. At least you could do more, but you can also just do if you did a ten minute walk before you head home from work, or a 15 minute walk before you head home from work, you're going to be amazed at how much your capacity to function in the rest of the evening improves. So let me go through that again, because I know I talked about stuff and it told stories and things, so I would invite you to track your energy. Not every day, but just like go get go get some tracking. Do it weekly. Do it monthly, however that works for you. And then find a way to feel your feelings and some ways that you can process your feelings.
Speaker 1 00:47:35 Journaling, regular breathwork or daily exercise. Okay, so I would invite you to try some of those things. I hope this has been helpful and supportive. So this came from, a group called the. I prepared for my group coaching program called your yes Filled Life and your guest filled life is going to be open for enrollment in July. We start again with a new cohort. Not a new cohort, but I'm adding people to our cohort in July of 2025. And so if you're curious about joining a group program where we talk about things like this, where you can bring in your lived experience and your daily life, and you can find community who are doing work on this, finding their own unique curriculum for life, where they can be kinder to themselves, where they can make themselves feel like they matter. Like their needs matter. Where they're chasing dreams again and they're living into their best selves. Go check out Brendan Winkle. Com forward slash your yes. Filled life. All lowercase. All one word.
Speaker 1 00:48:41 And you know, I always think of my own journey. And I think of my own journey because I try and remember like what was it like for me when I felt really in it and I knew I wanted to change, but I didn't know how. And I remember reading a book, called There's Nothing Wrong With You. And I feel like that book was a real, a real change maker for me because I wanted to believe so badly that there was nothing wrong with me. But I felt so damaged. I felt damaged by an abusive marriage. I felt ashamed of the choices that I'd made that led me to that. I felt ashamed of being unhappy in some of the career choices that I had made, and I felt ashamed because I had a really good life. I had, you know, a stable career, a stable income. I was providing for my daughter. And yet I felt deeply unhappy, like something was missing. And I just wanted to feel fulfilled. I wanted to feel alive.
Speaker 1 00:49:53 And so after I read that book, I signed up for a chakra class. and that chakra class was the beginning of my own journey into. Self kindness, which really unlocked everything else. It was because of that chakra class that when I learned about Reiki, I was like, oh yes, I want to. I want to have a Reiki experience. I want to become a Reiki practitioner. I want to become a Reiki Master because I felt and knew the difference that it had made in my own life. When I began to care for my chakras, it was literally the first time in my life I had been really kind to myself when I began to take care of my chakras. And so if you're looking for a little dose of self-love, a little dose of self kindness, and some really tactile, tangible, tangible things that you can do on a daily basis that will completely change your life. Invitation to come join me at a chakra workshop. We'll be live! May 20th 2122 from 5:30 p.m. Pacific to 7 p.m. Pacific all three days.
Speaker 1 00:51:01 And we're going to talk about all the seven major chakras. We'll talk about how to identify that if there is a block there. And then we'll talk about ways to support the blocks. And that's what I'm talking about when I'm talking about kindness to self is how do you recognize, oh, this isn't me. I like have a block chakra. This isn't something I'm doing. It's not moral failure. It's not weakness. I have a blocked chakra. And maybe if I just eat some blueberries, I'll feel better, right? It really can be that simple. And those little acts of self kindness build up over time. And the more capacity you have for self kindness, the more you increase your capacity to be kind to other people. And that kind of brings us back to where we started, which is how do we find more love? How can we keep sharing our light? And so I'm doubling down on my commitment to shining my own light and to supporting other lightworkers, other mystics, healers, empaths, intuitive, highly sensitive people in whatever career you have, whether or not you even do that kind of thing for your work.
Speaker 1 00:52:15 I'm doubling down in my commitment to serve you and to be a light for you. And if this episode has been helpful for you, it would mean a lot for me if you would consider sharing it with a friend. And you know, the more ratings and reviews a podcast has, the more likely it is to get into the ears of other listeners. So if this has been helpful for you, please share it with somebody that you care about. And then please go give this episode a rating and a review wherever you're listening. Thank you for being here. Bye for now. Until next time.
