Speaker 1 00:00:00 Welcome to your yes filled life. I'm Brenda Winklel, 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 Brendawinkle. Com/audit and discover what's fueling or depleting you. Let's do this. Your yes filled life starts now. Hello and welcome back to your yes filled life.
Speaker 1 00:01:19 I'm your host, Brenda Winkle and Energetic Leadership Guide, psychic, medium and somatic coach for ambitious and intuitive leaders who are ready to lead with more intuition, more ease, more joy. Today, I want to take you behind the scenes and let you in on something pretty uncomfortable. I made a decision this week that did not make sense on paper, but it did make perfect sense in my body. I pressed play on an entire podcast series, most of which I had already recorded hours of work. Amazing guests all lined up, but still I said no. Why? Because alignment matters more than appearances. Energy is more valuable than effort, and sometimes the most powerful move we can make as leaders is an inconvenient pivot. So in this episode, I'm going to take you behind the scenes of this pivot, what I learned in the process, and how you can apply the same principles to your leadership, your business, and your life. So I have been feeling a sense of unease when it comes to the podcast.
Speaker 1 00:02:39 Yes, this very podcast you're listening to for quite some time. I started tracking the data at the beginning of 2025, and noticing that it just wasn't doing what I had hoped it would do. It wasn't serving you, wasn't serving the community. It wasn't serving my clients in the way that I wanted it to. So I thought that the solution would be to create a more refined interview process for guests. And I did that. And the quality of guests, I think you'll agree, has been absolutely phenomenal. I have been so impressed and so grateful for the contribution of every single guest that I have had the opportunity to record an episode on, and some of those episodes that that are not going to be in the series will eventually come out, but they won't be coming out as part of the series. And I'll tell you more about that in a second. But I got an email from a guest who was coming up to her podcast recording that made me really uncomfortable, and I got that email on Friday.
Speaker 1 00:03:52 Today is Saturday. It is September 8th as I'm getting weight. September 6th. It's September 6th. It's Saturday. I'm jumping ahead in the future. It's September 6th as I'm recording and on September 4th I did something really special. So this is all going to make sense in just a second. But on September 4th, I went to an incredible event in Albany, Oregon called the Bloom Together Soiree, hosted by Ellen Yin. And Ellen had this all star lineup of guest speakers. It was absolutely incredible. So Melora Hardin was the featured fireside chat speaker. She's best known for her role as Jann in The Office, in addition to some other incredible roles like Cindy and Thunder, and she is now the founder of a new, beautiful, scarf. I'm simplifying it. It's so much bigger than this. But it's called storyboards by by Melara, and it's scarves and wallpaper. And the story about how this came to be is absolutely incredible. We also had guest speakers that spoke on a panel with Ellen Tory Dunlap, who is the financial feminist and the host of her first 100 K Les Alfred, who is the host of She's So Lucky.
Speaker 1 00:05:19 Amy Lacy, who is the founder of the very first Cauliflower Pizza, and now she is the creator of Soursop Gummies and Lyriq Fryer, who is the founder of Work Play Branding, which is a photography and video company that supports entrepreneurs. So it was literally an all star lineup. Well, on my way there, I was driving from my home in the Portland area, which is like pretty much Beaverton. I mean, it's a little complicated if you know Portland, Portland loves to do things in a little out of the box way. And so I won't bore you with the details, but basically, I live in Beaverton and I was driving from Beaverton to Albany, which was about an hour and a half, maybe an hour and 40 minutes. And I knew that I was in for a really incredible event. And I know when I go to these types of events that I'm going to be expanding in ways I can't yet conceptualize. And I've been listening to Ellen's podcast long enough and Tori's podcast long enough, and following work, probably branding long enough that I knew I was going to really learn something.
Speaker 1 00:06:35 I knew I was going to be in the room with some incredible leaders and speakers, and I was so excited to get to learn more about Les Alfred. And if you haven't yet listened to She's So Lucky podcast. I've been doing a deep dive on that this week and absolutely love it. And anyway, all this is to say, I knew going in that I was going to be expanded and expansion is never comfortable because in order to expand, a lot of times we have to let go of the constraints of things that are holding us back. And so I asked myself out loud in the car on my drive there, what am I pretending not to know? And you know, the answers always come. And so I also answer myself out loud, and I record it in a voice note. And I love to do this when I'm driving. It's part of what happened when I was traveling full time for five months last year, was I would ask myself a question out loud and record the answer and voice notes, and it really helped me process and think as an extrovert, as a manifesting generator in human design and as a verbal processor and someone with a really, really active.
Speaker 1 00:07:50 Throat chakra. That is a very supportive thing for me to do. Invitation to try it. And as I was talking to myself and giving myself the answer about what am I pretending not to know, I had a huge drop in a huge a huge awareness. The feeling state of putting something on credit feels away in my body, where even if I can pay it off immediately, it it feels a way that I'm going to describe as just overextension. I know that I'm just I'm at risk of overextending myself when I use a credit card to pay for something and no judgment. If you use credit cards, I use them too. That's not what this is about. But then I realized something even deeper, which is that I have that same feeling in my body when I'm getting ready to overextend myself in relationship to how I'm spending time, and in relationship to how I'm getting ready to spend or give energy and bandwidth. And it was a massive to think, oh my goodness, I have been having body cues this whole time of when I'm overextended, whether it is perhaps financial or physical or time or spiritual or energetic, I'm getting body symptom symbols and and awarenesses and sensations the whole time.
Speaker 1 00:09:23 And I hadn't quite put that together. And as somebody who tracks energy, this was big. I mean, I've been doing the energy audit for almost a year. It's 11 months at this point that I've been doing the energy audit, which, by the way, if you haven't downloaded yet, I'll put the link in the show notes. It's life changing. and this escaped me until this week on this ride. So I had that whole awareness. It was very raw, very tender when I arrived to the bloom soiree or bloom together soiree. And then I got there, and it was picture perfect. It was literally something you would see, on a Pinterest board. It was perfectly executed, beautifully decorated. Everything was Instagrammable. They had, beautiful charcuterie cones made by charcuterie. Me, who is a local Portland female founded organization. They had, special cocktails and mocktails created by the Tipsy Lemon, which is another Oregon local company. They had vendors from female founded organizations. And then these this incredible lineup of guest speakers.
Speaker 1 00:10:42 And everywhere you looked, it was beautiful. There was a color scheme that was represented. It was so visually pleasing. And that was even before that was even before the speaking began. And so when I got there, I decided I would just stand in a line with my tickets once I got checked in and I would talk to people in the line. And that happened, and I made some new friends. In fact, I made five new friends that exchanged contact information with me. And I always view an event success by how many friends I can make. And so that felt really good. And then I got to meet Ellen in person, and I've been following her for a number of years. Do you remember Frenchie Firenze when she was on the podcast? Well, Frenchie has coached me in my business several times off and on over the years, and she was telling me a couple of years ago, she's like, Ellen Yin lives out in your area. You need to get to know her. And so I started following Ellen, and then we became Facebook friends.
Speaker 1 00:11:49 And then I signed up for this event because I was so drawn to it. And then I got to meet her in person, and she's just lovely. And so, you know, we've exchanged, messages before, and we were in a group call that she was hosting for this event. And so it wasn't the first time that we had spoken, but it was the first time that we had met in person. And so we hugged in the line, and I just felt like so much gratitude and so grateful to be there. And in the company of 200 other founders and entrepreneurs and ultra curious. And there were a lot of women. It was mostly women, but it was not exclusive to women. There were several men present. And then the speaking began, and we started with the panel, which included Tori and Less and Amy and Lyric and Ellen and I could feel. I could feel myself shifting, and I could feel the way I was looking at things in my life, in my business, in my podcast, in my offers, in my clients, in myself, shifting as they were speaking.
Speaker 1 00:12:58 And I could feel myself expanding and rising to a new level, a new level of leadership, a new level of community commitment, like really feeling deeply held and loyal to the the community that Ellen had created, but then also deeply loyal to you, deeply loyal to the your yes filled life community. And as they were speaking, I realized there was something kind of wrong. And I was in the moment I was being present. And so I decided I would come back to it after the event, but just put a little mental note. This needs more time. This needs more space. This needs attention from you. So we finished the panel and then we were walking around this incredible garden. It was so beautiful. And there was appetizers and of course there were drinks available. But it was also very, very hot, especially for Oregon. And so I was sticking to water and got to make some, some friends, like I mentioned, and had some great conversations and took some pictures and got my colors done.
Speaker 1 00:14:14 Turns out I'm an item that was very exciting. to learn that. And then and then we had our pictures taken one at a time in front of a really cool background that they're kind of like, holographic where you posed twice, and then you could see, like the two poses together sort of superimposed. Anyway, it was very cool. So then after that we went back into the garden for Laura's fireside chat with Ellen, and I just fell more in love with Flora and Ellen. It was it was so incredible. It was so heartfelt, and I could feel like my heart growing. I could feel my commitment to you growing. I could feel my commitment to the mission that your yes filled life has growing. And I could feel this, also like, misalignment. And I still couldn't name it, but I could feel it. But I also felt so inspired and so joyful. Like I kept saying, Brenda, just come back to this. It'll be there for you when you're ready. And I was so incredibly grateful.
Speaker 1 00:15:23 I had some wonderful conversations with people. Great connections with Ellen. Got to speak to each of the speakers and thank them for coming, and Becoming truly was absolutely life changing to meet them and to be in their presence. and then when I drove home. I had another hour, hour and 40 minutes to really think about everything that I'd learned, everything that I wanted to be a part of, the ways I was feeling in the presence of these clear channeled leaders. And then I was thinking about the things that are upcoming in your, yes, filled life and in the podcast. And I feel very aligned with how I'm serving my clients. I feel like that's going better than it's ever gone. I feel very aligned, but I feel very misaligned with how things have gone in the podcast, and that's emotional. It feels all the ways. and, you know, if you own a business, if you're an entrepreneur, you know that these feelings happen every time you expand like. Entrepreneurship is not for the weak of heart.
Speaker 1 00:16:36 Like this is the biggest personal development course you will ever take. Ever. And so I knew that there was something more. And my mind. My mind kept saying, but Brenda, you've recorded all these episodes for this upcoming series and you still have three more episodes to record, and you know, you've got the next three months of the podcast. Even if you released two episodes a week, you've got three months of podcasts. Oh my goodness. I mean, so we're talking about like the the myth of the sunk cost. We're talking about the feelings that come up when we know we're getting ready to disappoint others. We're talking about the feelings of coming up when you don't want to waste work. But then. Then we come back to the truth and the body and the body is saying, this is not aligned. It's like heavy and it feels uncomfortable and it feels scratchy. And even if I just like, kind of pretended to to let go of the series and to pivot the podcast, even that with all of the other considerations about the sunk work and all of the conversations I would have to have if I would, if I was going to pivot all of that.
Speaker 1 00:18:00 Did not compare to the feeling of spaciousness and ease and lightness that I felt in my body when I considered allowing myself this pivot, I could breathe easier, and this is the thing that I teach to everybody I work with. Your body is the most reliable liable guide that you have. And so I had to listen to myself. I had to listen to my own body, and my body was screaming, no, this has to stop. So all of that happened Thursday. And then Friday came. And Friday I had a really interesting conversation with a network about having the podcast hosted on a network, and it was a lovely conversation. I really enjoyed the people that I talked to. And then I realized when I got off the call with them, that if I were to put the podcast on this specific platform, that it was going to change the podcast from serving the community to creating content for the masses. Well, not the masses, but you know what I mean. The masses And so that was on Friday.
Speaker 1 00:19:28 And then Friday evening I got an email from one of the upcoming podcast guests, and I have a very well designed email series that goes out to podcast guests. Every one of them comments on how great it is that they've never seen anything so good that it's so organized, it does such a good job of coaching them, so on and so forth. And I'm really proud of it. I really took some time and thought and energy into developing it. So that goes out to people one week before their their interview. And well, I mean, there's a, there's a series of them, but there's one that goes out one week before and then there's one that goes out three days before. And that was the one that she was responding to. And it talks about how you that I'm talking to you actually how you perceive the podcast and how we can best show up to serve you. And her reply was, Well, you know, this is not actually how I do things. Here's how I will be a guest on your podcast, and here's how you can ask me the questions to get the best answers.
Speaker 1 00:20:33 And this is the idea that we need to have. And there cannot be more than one expert on this topic in this interview. And she said it more politely than I'm saying it to you, but that's the meaning. And so all of this is coming together, and I hope I'm not boring you, but I want you to get a big picture of, like, any one of these things might be enough for me to have a question whether or not this pivot was necessary, but for all of them to happen between Thursday and Saturday in less than 48 hours is like, oh, okay. I guess it really is a clip season. Let's do this. Let's release on the full moon. Let's just release this whole podcast series which, you know, full moons are all about releasing and shedding the skin. And oh my goodness, we're in the year of the Yin Wood Snake. As for 2025 and holy cow, I don't know about you, but I have been shedding like crazy. And so any one of these things would have been enough.
Speaker 1 00:21:39 All of them together. It was like, I cannot ignore this. And though I don't typically work on a Saturday, I sent out, a lot of emails. I sent out a lot of emails to the guests who have already recorded episodes explaining that I don't have a timeline anymore on when their episode will be released. I sent emails and cancellation notices to some other guests that we have not yet recorded that are not aligned and. Oh, it was a lot. But here's the thing. I had a choice to make. I could honor the appearance. I could make it look like everything is going well, even though it isn't. Even though it feels like I'm wearing a too tight wool sweater. I could have pretended all the way through that series. Or I could have chosen what was a line for me. When we make these choices, I want you to know that I get. It's not simple and it's not easy. But it is important. And actually, it kind of is simple. It just.
Speaker 1 00:23:00 There's complexities that come with it. Right? As we get ready to to communicate our decisions with other people as we get ready to realign. But there is something about it that feels absolutely amazing. And it comes back to the energy audit. Thinking about what fuels you? What fuels your mission? What drains your mission? What depletes it? It really is that simple. It's there's no neutrality. Either it's fueling you or it's draining you. And in my experience, the longer you wait to manage the things that are depleting you, the harder it is on you and everyone around you. But I also recognize that it takes it takes a minute, it takes a minute. And if we look at the cycle of change, there's four parts of the cycle of change according to the cycle that I use in my coaching. There's the understanding I need a change phase. Just the awareness that something needs to change is a whole phase. Then there's the preparing to change phase. That's when I'm thinking about making the change.
Speaker 1 00:24:17 I'm investigating things. I'm not quite ready to do it, but I'm thinking about it. I'm getting my resources together. I'm asking questions. I'm thinking about it. Then stage three is I'm doing the change. I am implementing the change. I'm in that messy action phase of the change. And then stage four is maintaining the change and integrating it into your life. And then guess what happens? We start over again with step one, which is maybe I need a change in awareness that something needs to happen. And we're always in that cycle of change on any different topic. We can be in different places, so it's very unlikely that you're in the same cycle of change in every topic in your life, which is what makes it kind of confusing, right? So let's say if your relationships are you're integrating the change, you're just maintaining the things that you have been doing and things are going really, really well. But then in your career or your financial life, you're realizing, oh, I really need to make a change.
Speaker 1 00:25:19 That's more typical than having everything go completely smoothly all at the same time, or everything need to get blown up all at the same time. Does that happen? Yeah. For sure. It does, but I don't think it's the norm, at least not in my life and not in the lives of my clients and not in the lives of my friends and family. But hey, if that if that's you, I kind of want to have a conversation. If you are always aligned in the same cycle of change all the time. So we do need to get really cute into what's happening in the body. What are the sensations you're feeling? And a lot of times they're very subtle. It could be like a feeling of heaviness. It could be a feeling of stomach upset. Maybe it's a headache when you talk about something. And every time you talk about it, you get a headache. Maybe it's tension or tiredness behind your eyes. Maybe it's that you have a bathroom emergency every time this topic comes up.
Speaker 1 00:26:18 Or maybe you've kind of ignored some of those more subtle ones. And now there's a health crisis. I've been there too. So as you're listening to the subtle things that are like, hey, I need some attention, invitation to get curious. And the thing is, almost all of us know what that change is, really. We do. We might not know quite what to do. We might not know how to do it, but we all kind of know. Don't you think we kind of know when we need a change, when we need to address something, when we need to adjust something. And then the what and the how. That's where someone like me comes in. Whether you decide to work with me or not. That's what a coach, a healer, a psychic, a guide does for us is it supports us in those ways with the what and the how. So when you have a pivot, I want you to think. I want you to think that like, do you remember? Do you remember that scene from friends with Ross? You only have the stairs with the sofa and he's like, pivot, pivot.
Speaker 1 00:27:37 Do you remember that? Okay. It doesn't have to be that hard. It can be much, much simpler. It can be like if you're walk, walk, walk. Walking. Stand up on your toes. Turn the other direction and pivot. It can be very, very simple. Will there be things to manage? Yes, 100%. Maybe you'll have emails to send to, just like I did today. Or maybe you'll have conversations that you need to have. Or maybe there are habits that you'll need to adjust or whatever the case may be, but my invitation to you is to get support from people who believe in you enough to support the pivot. And if there's any wobble in you, if you talk to your closest friends and family, oftentimes they'll try to talk you out of it. Not because they don't love you and not because they don't believe in you, but because they're picking up on your wobble and they want you to be safe. And so they're they're picking up on your insecurity and they'll reflect it right back to you.
Speaker 1 00:28:51 So when you're getting ready to make these changes, please pick someone who believes in a big vision for you. Someone who can hold the vision. Someone that you can talk to when the people closest to you are like, oh, I don't know if you should do that. Someone who can help you discern what is your intuition saying versus what are the fear of other people saying. So I have a couple of invitations for you to reflect on. So my questions I've got two. One is, are there places in your life where you're pushing something that's not aligned? And I know firsthand this is not an easy question to answer, but it's really important. Where in your life are you pushing something that's not aligned? And the second question is where are you saying yes because you think you should, but your body is saying no. Where are you saying yes because you think you should, but your body is saying no. And those two questions seem kind of similar, but they're not invitation to journal on those.
Speaker 1 00:30:12 I'll put them in the show notes, and you don't need my permission for anything. But sometimes it feels really good to have permission. So an invitation to imagine this as you are giant permission slip. Okay. Inconvenient pivots are often the doorway to the ease that you want. So permission to pivot. Permission to make a change. Permission to get realigned. Permission to say no. Even if you've been saying yes for a really long time. So maybe you're wondering what does this pivot mean for the podcast? Well, it's going to mean more solo episodes. They're going to be shorter. They're going to be very potent, very aligned to three content pillars that I have determined in multiple, like double digit multiple calls with entrepreneurs just asking questions about what do you need? Where do you need help and leaders to? A lot of these people aren't entrepreneurs that are leaders in their field. They're curious. So I've been asking questions. So the podcast is going to revolve around those three content pillars. And you'll hear from guests only when their expertise deeply serves you, the community, and they're willing to serve you and not treat the podcast like their own platform.
Speaker 1 00:31:50 Like like the like that the podcast is to bolster their social media or notoriety and every conversation that you're going to hear from now on, on your useful life is going to somehow be tied to the three pillars, which are intuition, energy, and embodied leadership. And this is not about quitting. That is not going to happen, but it is about refining and reinventing. And the truth is, I have found that that that's the constant. It's not that once you like, redefine something or redesign something or even refine something, that it's set in stone forever. I mean, think about the podcast was originally called waves of Joy, and now it's called your yes, Filled life. It's already done a massive pivot. And this isn't a pivot in terms of how it's going to serve you, except that it's going to serve you more deeply, I hope. I hope so. If you have specific Affect things that fit into energy, intuition, and embodied leadership that you would like me to talk about, that you would like me to bring more in the podcast? If you've got questions about my life, about how I work with clients, about what you would suggest or what I would suggest for certain scenarios, please reach out.
Speaker 1 00:33:16 I love to hear you. I love to hear from you. Both of those things are true. If there's one thing that I hope you take from today's conversation, it's this pivots are not failures. They're actually signs of alignment. They're proof that you're listening to yourself more deeply than you're listening to the shoulds around you. I'm committing to making your yes filled life a space where every conversation serves you and reflects the kind of leadership I believe in embodied, intuitive, and joy filled. And if you're ready to make your own inconvenient pivot, start with my free energy audit. It's the exact tool that I use to track what's fueling me and what's draining me. And it will help you to spot your yes and your no in real life. You can find it at Brandon Winkle. Com forward or through the link in the show notes. Hey, thank you for being here today. If this episode resonated with you, would you please share it with a friend and go leave a rating and review? If what I'm doing is serving you? If what I'm doing is helping you in any way, I really need to hear from you.
Speaker 1 00:34:30 Please reach out. Please give me feedback. Please tag me on social media. Please leave reviews. I really want to know if this is serving you. Until next time. Remember, alignment is not always convenient, but it's always powerful. Bye for now. Until next.
Speaker 2 00:34:50 Time.
