Brenda Winkle 00:00:00 Hello and welcome to your yes filled life. I'm your host, Brenda Winkle. Today on the podcast, we are going to be talking more about the concept of what our commitment can sometimes do for us in terms of growing and evolving and sometimes staying in what's present isn't growth.
Brenda Winkle 00:01:58 Sometimes it's just hope dressed up as commitment. And so you probably know this loop very well. You may say things to yourself like, well, maybe if I just try a little bit harder or it's not really that bad, or there must be a reason that I'm here. Sometimes what we can call patience is actually self abandonment in a responsible disguise. So. This can apply to anything. This could apply to a job. It could apply to a business venture, a friendship, a marriage, a volunteer opportunity, even a habit that maybe you're telling yourself is supporting you in some way. But if you're really honest with yourself, it's not supporting you in the ways it needs to be. And let me give you a really quick example of that. So in the year 2020, we all know what happened in 2020. In the year 2020, I began a practice, a self-soothing practice of making a s'more. You know, the marshmallow with the chocolate and the graham cracker. And I love s'mores. They're like a family thing.
Brenda Winkle 00:03:23 My sister and I love them. We know how to make them on a stove, on a campfire, on a candle, on even an electric burner. We can make us more. Under any circumstance. And so there was a time in March of 2020, when the world began to shut down for Covid, that I was telling myself, you know, I think this is actually going to make me feel better if I make us more. And it sort of did, in a way. And that was also my daughter's senior year in high school. we had endured the loss of a family friend that year. She had lived through two concussions. I mean, it was it was a tough year before Covid and then Covid came. So this more thing. So every night we would make us more well, she graduated in her car in May of 2020. And then through that summer the summer tradition continued. Sometimes it would be outside, sometimes it would be over a candle. A lot of times it was over the electric burner of the stove once in a while in the microwave.
Brenda Winkle 00:04:27 But you know, that just almost seemed like it wasn't worth the challenge. And then she moved into the dorm for, for her first semester at college, while the world was still shut down and my summer behavior habit continued. And I kept telling myself, oh, this is like conjuring family memories. This is conjuring a feeling of connection with the family, and it's a little sweet treat. And it's not that big a deal until I looked up at one point and realized it had been nine consecutive months of eating us more a day now. Once in a while I think is some more. Probably is totally fine. I don't know that it's the best thing for me, or for anyone for that matter, to have us more every day. And so I had to get real with myself and be like, okay, I'm telling myself this is quote unquote self-care, but is it really? And the answer, as you probably already know, is no, that's not actually an example of self-care. This also happens to us in jobs that are misaligned, in relationships that are misaligned, in marriages that are misaligned, in business ventures that are misaligned.
Brenda Winkle 00:05:46 And here's the thing. This is the truth that you already know. You already feel it in your body the longer you stay in a particular situation, the quieter your clarity gets. It becomes more difficult to hear what's really happening inside of you. It gets more difficult to hear the intuitive nudges. And here's the the kicker. The more capable you are, the higher performer you are. The longer you override yourself and your nervous system knows. Your body knows even when your brain is trying to rationalize behavior. And so the thing that it's really important for those of us that are empathic and high achievers and intuitive to really understand, is sometimes staying is not commitment. It's self Abandonment wearing responsibilities clothing. So if we look at my small habit of 2020, what I had told myself was helping me was absolutely not helping me. It was raising my blood sugar. I was eating too much fat, eating too much sugar. I was absolutely numbing my emotions. So I wasn't processing because I was just eating this more.
Brenda Winkle 00:07:13 That is actually a form of self abandonment. By not allowing yourself, or in that case myself, to process the emotions. And so this is happening for many of us in many different topics. And what I have found is the better you are at something like the higher capacity you have, the more respected in your field you are, the harder it is to really listen to the inner nudges because the responsibility sounds very loud. Your reputation becomes important because you've worked for it for all of these years. So when I think about the times in my life when I have overstayed, a lot of times it was much more serious than eating us more. Although we could argue that that is serious, but a lot of times it was much more serious than eating us more. It was staying in jobs where I was being actively mistreated. It wasn't even up for negotiation. It was something everybody could see. And the reason that I stayed in those jobs is because I cared. I cared about the people. I cared about the position.
Brenda Winkle 00:08:36 I cared about the ethos. I cared about the mission. And when that has happened to me. And by the way, it happened to me really recently, you know, I told you on the podcast a couple of episodes ago that I had taken on an additional choir, and it is not a match. Not because anybody is bad. Not because anybody is a bad person. It's just not a match. The hope in these cases is real. The hope that, oh, it'll turn around in. If I just fill in the blank, it'll turn around. If I just stay more likable, it'll turn around. If I just do this thing, it'll turn around if I just give it time. When we have that kind of hope, it's not a bad thing. The hope is real. But so is the toll that it takes on you. It takes on your health. It takes on your emotional health, your physical health, your well-being, your energy, your capacity to show up in other places in your life.
Brenda Winkle 00:09:47 And here's the thing. You don't need saving. And neither did I. We don't need to be rescued from these positions or these situations. We need the space to understand exactly what's happening. Because when we get the space to understand what's happening, we can begin to zoom out and we can look at the entire system, the entire framing of whatever it is that's happening. And then we can recognize, oh, this is what the system is asking for. And this is why it's not aligned for me. Again, it doesn't make anybody bad. It doesn't make anybody wrong. But if we ignore those little tugs of this is not aligned for me. This is not something I should continue to do. It's not good for me if we ignore that. We're setting ourselves up for some real problems. So there is this idea that if we just stick in it, it'll turn around. If we just try harder, it'll resolve. And the truth is, I have not actually found there to be merit in that.
Brenda Winkle 00:11:07 I am someone who has historically overstayed, overstayed in relationships, overstayed in jobs, and I am. I am breaking that pattern actively, intentionally breaking, breaking that pattern. Because. And you can listen. I'm like getting emotional. I'm starting to stutter. The truth is, none of us need saving. We need space to create nervous system safety, which gives us the clarity to know what to do next, and from that clarity to know what to do next. Which, by the way, is not missing in the first place is just out. what's the word I want to say? It's overpowered by the other sounds. The noise of the system, the noise of the circumstance, the noise of. I have hope that this will resolve. And our own commitment to trying to do the right thing. All you need is space, and then you can hear it. You may not like your options, but you always have options. So I have a client named Maria who I, I dearly love, and I'm so impressed by her.
Brenda Winkle 00:12:19 When she came to the most recent retreat, she didn't come in broken like she was ready. She had done a ton of inner work, a lot of inner healing. She's very self-aware, and at the retreat she had hands on practice, which gave her trust in herself, so being mirrored by the environment that she was in and mirrored by the nervous system. Practices that I was guiding gave her that trust in herself, and it was so cool to witness because her purpose re-emerged through the course of that retreat. It was quiet. It wasn't like loud or forceful, but it was powerful and profound. And because of that retreat, she says that she stopped getting swept up in other people's chaos. And what's even more important is she could still stay in connection with other people and not get swept up by the chaos. In her own words, she said, I didn't need to be fixed. I just needed space to remember who I am. And the cool thing that she said. And this is direct quote from her.
Brenda Winkle 00:13:42 I can still be involved without being pulled into the drama. Oh my gosh, I love that because sometimes there's this fear, especially if you're an empath, that if I don't get involved with the drama, somehow I'm not being caring enough. And that's not actually true. We can care a lot and still choose to support our own nervous systems by not getting involved in the drama or the chaos. So when we think about the real path to the clarity that you're seeking, and I said this in the last episode, you say that you want clarity, and I believe that you do want clarity, but clarity is already within you. It just needs space to land. By allowing your nervous system to slow down enough to feel safe enough that it can really feel into that feeling of, oh, this is my truth. And from that, when you really let that feeling land of this is my truth. Next thing that happens is your confidence builds. Confidence comes from practicing. It's not just some esoteric quality that like, you're suddenly confident it comes because you're practicing something.
Brenda Winkle 00:14:56 So the more actions that you take around anything, whether we're talking about music or we're talking about writing or speaking or literally anything, you will get more confident when you put in the reps. So you got to put in the reps, right. So the more often that you tune into your nervous system and you stop outsourcing your truth, asking for decisions to be made by committee, the more that that happens, the more your confidence builds. And then here's a really cool part. When you can find community that reflects back to you the version that you're growing into, that mirroring. It's like. It's like water when you're parched on the desert. It is so nourishing. I love having people in my life that do this for me. My friends and my peers and my mentors who can mirror back to me the version that I'm becoming. And it is so powerful because as you step into that new identity, things stop looking familiar. The ways in which you've responded look different. The feelings that you have are different.
Brenda Winkle 00:16:14 Even the clothes that you're choosing probably look different. Like this weekend, for example, and I've talked about the clothes over the last several episodes that I'm going through. Like, I look in my closet and I'm like, well, those are nice, but, do they really represent me? So this weekend, I had been talking to my daughter for quite a while, and I was like, hey, can you and your friend come over and help me rearrange the living room furniture? And they had both agreed and and that was the plan. But I woke up Saturday morning and I knew I was going to go meet my friend for dinner that night, and I was just looking at my living room going, I cannot stand it one more day in this configuration because I have changed, my identity has changed, and I needed my outward environment to feel the same. And so Saturday I spent the day rearranging my living room and it looks so good. It looks so good. And I sent a text to my daughter at the end of the day, because my daughter has always done this, when she goes through an identity upgrade, she will rearrange her furniture in her room.
Brenda Winkle 00:17:18 She's done it since she was tiny. She was always reorganizing and rearranging things in her room, including the big furniture pieces. Like she wouldn't hesitate even for a second, you know, to move something. And then if she needed help, she'd ask. But she wasn't going to let it stop her. So I texted her a completed picture of the living room and I said, hey, do you remember when you were growing up, how you used to rearrange your room all the time when you had an identity upgrade? turns out you're the apple and and I'm the tree. so anyway, it it will create these urges to make your externals represent the internal changes. And I'm just naming that because that's normal in this process, as you change, grow, evolve, become more of you, you will want that to be reflected. That's the same reason why you see people do a major hairstyle change after a particular life event, whether it's a new job or a new relationship, or the end of a relationship or the end of a job, you'll see massive hair changes.
Brenda Winkle 00:18:29 You know, you dye your hair purple, you cut it off, you grow it long, you add extensions, whatever it is That is the same thing as we're trying to make the external reflect the internal. So the work that I do is the internal work. And when you can find a community that reflects back to you those internal changes with that mirroring that reflects that version that you're growing into. Oh my gosh, it is absolutely game changing. So for me over this past I would say two months month for sure, but maybe two months, as I'm thinking about the version of Brenda that I want to embody. A lot of times, even though I've been doing this work for a long time, there's still a part of me that waits for some big event, for some big thing that arrives and is like, oh, there it is. And I was noticing myself having a little bit of a desire for external validation, and I realized that's the work, right? The work is to validate our own internal experience so deeply that we don't need the external validation.
Brenda Winkle 00:19:50 It just becomes a nice to have. And I have to say, I'm really proud of the way that I have been able to lean into my own internal validation and then use the external validation as a nice to have. And it hasn't been my whole life that I've been doing that. It's probably been the last five years that I've really leaned into that internal validation. It's still nice to reach out to people, and I do reach out to people. There have been, you know, 3 or 4 people that I've talked to about this particular situation that I've been navigating, and it's been very supportive, but I'm not asking them for advice. I'm asking them for support. And that's a really important difference. We should not expect ourselves to go through any type of these identity changes or shifts or reclamations of our own personal power alone. That is not the goal. The goal is to disconnect from the need for external validation before we can make a move. That's the goal. And when you're able to do that, you're going to feel a sense of peace.
Brenda Winkle 00:21:03 It becomes not about pressure. You may still have an emotional response to whatever it is you're navigating, but underneath all of it, the foundation is peace. So when you think about the fear of activating the next change, whether it's stopping eating s'mores every night or leaving a misaligned position or stepping into or out of a relationship. Just know that you're not avoiding anything by deciding what to do. You're not leaving. As a way to get away from doing something that's hard. You're actually leaving because you know that staying would cost you yourself. And that's how you know the difference of what you should do. And so I'm going to invite you into some reflection. This isn't necessarily a fix. This isn't a prescription for fixing anything, but it is a reflection, just an invitation to think. And my question I have two that I'm going to ask you. One is if nothing changes. You know. Excuse me. If nothing changes, would this still be worth it? And second question is, am I staying for truth? Because it aligns for me, or am I staying for hope? Those answers don't need to be loud.
Brenda Winkle 00:22:49 In fact, they probably won't. They'll probably be fairly subtle. They just need to be yours. If you want to do some deeper work. Invitation to come join me at the Intuitive Leader Retreat. We'll be live together in real time, in person, March 3rd through five, 2026, in Lincoln City, Oregon. This retreat is not about telling you what to do. It's about creating safety for your clarity to rise so that you're not carrying that question alone anymore. So if that calls to you, go to Brenda Winkle. Com forward Slash Retreat 2026 and save your spot. There are three bonus calls and we begin the first one. Well, by the time this podcast airs that will be complete. So there'll be two more bonus calls that you can get pre retreat just to help you integrate and set things up for the retreat that you get when you register. And enrollment goes through February 26th. 2262 6th February 2626. Thank you so much for being here, for listening to the podcast, for being a part of the journey.
Brenda Winkle 00:24:15 If you haven't subscribed wherever you're listening, invitation to go do that now. And if you could, please leave the podcast, your rating and review, that would be amazing. It'd be so so so helpful. Thanks for being here. Bye for now.
