Brenda Winkle 00:00:01 Welcome to your yes filled life. I'm Brenda Winkle, energetic leadership guide, psychic, medium and somatic coach for ambitious leaders who know their gifts are real and who want to stand fully in them. Here you'll learn how to trust your intuition, embody your vision, and step into the freedom you've been creating, all without chasing more certifications or carrying stuff that does not belong to you. Every week, I'll share powerful practices and conversations with thought leaders and changemakers that help you transform your vision into embodied confidence. Claim your gifts without apology and lead with both clarity and freedom. Because your gifts aren't cute. They are powerful. They're real, and they're needed. Start today by downloading my free energy audit at Brenda Winkle. Com for audit. It's the exact tool I use to track what's fueling me and what's draining me. It will help you discern between that hit of achievement and true joy, so that you can lead with more clarity and impact. This is your space to stop proving, start embodying and live fully in your gifts.
Brenda Winkle 00:01:16 Welcome to your yes filled life. Hello and welcome to your yes filled life. I'm your host, Brenda Winkle. So today on the podcast, we're going to be talking more about identity, the impact that it has on the choices that you make, the way you spend your time, the things that you do, the people that you spend your time with, and basically every area of your life. When we think about your life, I like to think about the wheel of life. This is what I use inside my coaching. We talk about the Wheel of Life with eight sections, and we want to be focused on all eight sections. So relationships. Intimate relationships. health, career, spiritual development, personal development. And I forgot the other two. Oh, and by the way, I'm going without notes today. I often show up with bullet notes or bullet points, and I decided today I want to go rogue. And I want to go rogue because. I'm just feeling a little bit of rogue energy.
Brenda Winkle 00:02:28 And that brings me to something really important I want to talk about, which is everything is shifting for us energetically. You can feel it. You can see it in the way that our systems and structures are collapsing and crumbling around us. You can see it in the chaos that is present in the United States government. With all of the corruption that's been revealed, you can feel it. You can just like work with kids or people or the public. And, you know, things are changing, right? Well, this is that energetic change that I've been talking about for several weeks. We've got multiple things happening at once. We have some major astrology that is shifting, and it's shifting in ways that we, in some cases, haven't seen for series of like three years or seven years, or in one case, ever. And then we also have the Lunar New Year coming up on February 17th. And as I'm recording it is February 12th. So we are five days away as I'm recording from the Lunar New Year, and by the time this podcast goes live will be two days away.
Brenda Winkle 00:03:32 And so that's to say we are transitioning from the year of the Yin Wood snake, meaning we're introspective, we're inward facing. It's a lot of personal growth and development and tons of shedding. And this is one of those years where I hear the general public talking about the Lunar New Year. That almost never happens. At least it's never happened before. And I'm hearing it all over social media. Oh, the year of the snake. Because it was rough, right? At least it was for me. I won't speak for you. And here's the thing. We're not going to see this energetic configuration again for 60. That's six zero more years between the next time we move from the yin wood snake into the yang fire horse. So the yin energy is introspective. It's a lot of inward facing growth and shedding. And then we're going to move into the Yang fire horse energy. Yang is action. It is forward movement, momentum. And then we have the fire energy. So wood is very growth minded.
Brenda Winkle 00:04:42 It is very it can be slow growing, building stability. But we had to crush some structures and systems, right, to be able to grow. And that was where the shedding came in in a big way. And that's about to shift. And it's going to feel like the world has been sped up when that new energy hits. And if you have been thinking to yourself, I'm just going to wait for the energy to shift and that's going to be enough. you're going to be disappointed because what you're being asked to do right now is the inward facing work. Now, here's the good news. Yeah, we're moving out of the year of the Yin Wood Snake and into the year of the Yang Fire Horse. But you still have all of the next Lunar New Year to do any work that you need to do. It's not going to be as easy as it would have been in the Wood Snake year, but I'm I mean, let's be clear, it was not easy. It was not easy for anybody doing their work in the year of the the wood snake.
Brenda Winkle 00:05:42 The thing I want to say is don't depend on the energy alone. You have to do the work too. It can't just be the energy. It can't just be the astrology. Those are Guideposts. There's sort of like a map of how to work with the energy, what you might be able to expect, what you might be influenced by, how you might be influenced. It does those kind of things for you. It doesn't do the work for you, and that's a really important thing to get. So if you have been hanging out thinking, I'm just waiting for this year to be over for the year of the the wood snake to be over, and I'm going to really do the thing in the year of the Fire Horse. Well, if you have done your work, that is going to go very, very well for you and it will be fast moving momentum. If you haven't yet done the inner work, it could feel like a wild horse and it might feel a little bit that way anyway, but it might feel like you're being, you know, stampeded by a wild horse.
Brenda Winkle 00:06:42 So it's really important to do the work you're being called to do. And you know what? That is better than anybody else. No one needs to tell you what that is. You know what that is? Whether it's shifting old patterns or shifting out of programming that's obsolete in your own life, in your own spirit. Which brings me to the thing that I want to talk about today, which is the identity piece. So I'm a mac user. I've been a mac user since I think around 2008 is when I bought my first Mac. I love it, and I'm not really here to debate whether or not we should be pro Apple or Pro Mac. I'm just telling you, I'm a mac user. So I got my Mac, my big beautiful Mac in 2008. I was still at that time, I was still teaching full time, and that computer allowed me to run my photography business and edit the photos. And it was a big, beautiful 36 inch screen. And I loved that computer. In fact, I took that computer with me when I traveled full time.
Brenda Winkle 00:07:48 I still have the original box and the styrofoam, and I would carefully package that giant computer in my car, and I traveled around for five months with that computer in my car. I didn't pull it out everywhere, and I did leave it for a time in a storage unit. When I went out to Wisconsin when my dad was dying. But otherwise I had that computer out because I really loved it. Now, one of the things that I was starting to notice on that computer is that there were new updates that were happening. You know how it says, like, I think the last one I saw on this computer that I'm on right now was like, update to Tahoe, something OS, which stands for Operating system. And so those kind of things were coming through as messages on the computer, and I knew that I needed to do the updates, and I had it set so that it would auto update any updates that came in. So one day it said that the update didn't take on my computer and I thought, well, that's weird.
Brenda Winkle 00:08:54 I wonder what's going on. And so instead of stopping to think about why that update didn't take in my computer, I manually updated the update and in the process have now made my Mac inoperable. It's like white screen with a question mark. I'm not even. I'm not even kidding. It's like a white screen with a question mark. And when I looked up on the computer that I'm recording on now what that might mean, it's that the operating system on the computer does not match the programming. The operating system and the programming don't match, which means it's inoperable. Now, by the way, if you know anything about computers and you know a workaround for this, I really do need help. I just haven't gotten to it yet. So if you're that person, could you please reach out to me? Because I will at some point need to get all my stuff off of the computer. In the meantime, it's back in the styrofoam. It's back in the box. Up at the top of my closet.
Brenda Winkle 00:10:02 But I really do need to get to it. So a little aside there. If you're a computer person, help, I need help. But let's talk about how this means or what this means for your identity. This happening made me realize, okay, so we can have the operating system which may not match the programming. That's what's happening when we have an identity upgrade. We have a disconnect between your operating system, your baseline and the programming. So you can say all the livelong day the thing that you want to have happen. And that's the programming. And if your operating system won't support it, it just won't support it. So in this metaphor, your operating system is your nervous system and your subconscious. If your nervous system and subconscious are not on board with the thing that you want, no matter how much action you take. You probably are not going to make very much project progress. Project. He may not make many projects either, but you definitely won't make progress because the operating system and the programming don't match.
Brenda Winkle 00:11:11 So let me tell you a couple of examples from this week in my own life from this week. Okay? One example was I was feeling very frustrated, very, very frustrated about my inability to make a decision around the next offer. You know that I've cancelled my main group program, which was called the same name as the podcast or yes, filled life and I have been floundering for months. Like what is going to come next? And all of a sudden this week, as I was doing some work, some somatic work, breathwork work, which is all nervous system stuff, all of a sudden it hit me, oh my goodness, I know what the problem is. And the problem is I had some unforgiveness towards myself about some choices that I've made over the last four years since I've started working full time, and there was a part of me that was really angry and upset because I had a very secure life. Living in Boise, I owned my home. It was almost paid off. I had a very secure job.
Brenda Winkle 00:12:22 I was close to retirement, and I have given up a lot of security to run this business, a lot of security. And there's a part of me that was really judging me harshly for that. And when I felt that click in that awareness of, oh, I need to forgive myself, oh, everything shifted so naturally. I went out for a walk, which is typically part of my process when I go through something big. So I had the awareness, went through a forgiveness practice, did some somatic practices, breathwork tapping, went for a walk and came back and had complete crystal clarity on what's coming next. And I'll tell you more about that in a couple of weeks. But it's good and it's simple and it's back to basics and I'm so, so excited about it. So I'll tell you more about that in a couple of weeks. If you think you have a guess, send me a DM over on Instagram. If you think you have a guess of what it means for me to go back to basics, I can't wait to hear what you think.
Brenda Winkle 00:13:28 And then the second thing was, I had been invited to have this speaking opportunity inside of a group that's invitation only, and it's a group that does not exist on social media. And so it felt like a. Almost a secret invitation to be invited into this group whose whole premise is building businesses off of social media. It was a really big honor. I was so excited to do it. I really appreciate the founder. We've gotten to know each other in a coffee chat and an in-person event in September, and there was definitely a connection there, and it seems like we're on shared missions and it just felt so good. And so we got in this coffee chat a few weeks ago and agreed that we had some ways that we could work together and collaborate together and got off the phone call. Or I was a zoom call and it just felt great. And then I thought to myself, okay, well, we're going to wait a little while til, til we make things happen. And she had prepared me that there were things happening.
Brenda Winkle 00:14:34 And so I wasn't worried about timing timelines at all. And then I got an email early this week that said, I want to invite you to be our featured guest speaker next week in two weeks. And I was thrilled. So, so, so excited to have that speaking opportunity and to get to meet her community and to bring my work into her world and to get a taste of her work. And I'm just so excited about it. And so after I accepted the speaking invitation, the next thing that happened was that she sent me an email, along with a carbon copy to her assistant, inviting me to send her my press kit, my bio, my headshots and different things. And I'm telling you four different times. I sat down at my computer to send that exact email, and four different times I literally forgot to do it. I would get distracted. I would do something else. I would record a podcast, I'd make a social media post. I would call somebody, I would contact a client, I would respond to something in my school community, the spiritual CEO, and I would not get back to that email four different times that happened.
Brenda Winkle 00:15:50 And then I realized, Oh, we have a little identity gap going on here. So this is a bigger visibility for me. This is aligned clients. These individuals are the kind of people I love working with, which means that I'm putting myself in view of people who might choose to work with me. And I had a nervous system response about it, and my body read that as a threat and helped me forget. Help me be like, oh, you know what? You don't need to reply to that email right now. Why don't you do these 43 things first, four different times. It took me about 20 hours, including sleep. It's not like I stayed up all night. I slept, but it took me 20 hours from receiving that email to reply, which is not typical for me when it's something I'm excited about. If it comes in during working hours, I'll typically get it right out. But it took me 20 hours. I got it done, I got it done, and everything is going to be fine.
Brenda Winkle 00:16:54 And that that talk is happening later this week. And I'm so grateful, so appreciative, so excited about it. But I wanted to share this with you, because I don't want you to think that you're the only one that this stuff happens to. The reason I teach this stuff and talk about this stuff all the time is because I'm living it. I need this work. Just like you need this work because we're all humans. And this arrival fallacy that someday you're never going to have to work with your nervous system, and you're just going to be, like, as evolved as you can possibly be. Is truly just that, a fallacy. We need to continue to do this nervous system work, this subconscious work, to make sure that our operating systems match the programming. Because every time we step into a new level, whether it's a new level of visibility or a new level of positioning ourselves, or a new level of stepping out of some kind of box that we may have either stepped into willingly, on our own, or been placed in by society or culture, or the different kind of work situations that you might be in.
Brenda Winkle 00:18:01 If we're not taking time to make sure that the operating system matches up with the programming, we're screwed. And then here's the next part. And this is so important to get. And it goes back to what I was talking about at the beginning of the episode with the energy. There's a choice point here. So yes, nervous system, subconscious unconscious. Yes. All of that, all of that matters. All of that has an impact. But if you're not willing to make the choice to do the thing, it won't happen. So yes, be aware that you can have some things that look an awful lot like self-sabotage come up if we're not tending to our nervous systems. But if and we can also have different things slip in that might be impacting our ability to show up fully when we don't have the programming and the operating system matching and talking together nicely. But if you don't actually make the choice to take the action, you're screwed. So if I would have sat down that fifth time and I wouldn't have said to myself, Brenda, you're not going to do one other thing until you send this email.
Brenda Winkle 00:19:14 And I literally was tapping on my collarbone points, taking some breaths while I did it to make sure I did. It took me like all of three minutes because I have those materials ready to go, but if I wouldn't have taken the action, I might have missed out on a speaking opportunity. You have to take the action, which is what I'm telling you about this energy as we move from the wood snake to the fire horse. And it's happening this week on the 17th. So as I'm recording, it's the 12th. But you get what I'm saying? It's happening. What is the action you're going to take? How are you going to get into motion as this new energy comes into our physical experience. What's the action? What action are you going to take that is going to communicate to the universe? I am willing to do this thing. I am willing to do my part. I'm willing to meet you halfway. What is that action going to be? And let me be really clear. Listening to a podcast is a beautiful thing, and it's a helpful thing, and it can actually move the needle in your life.
Brenda Winkle 00:20:26 And I hope that this podcast is doing that for you. That's my intention. But if you're not taking action from what you hear on this podcast, if you're not doing the things, then you're not going to get the results. You have to take the action. You have to take the action. And at a certain point, and I'm noticing this in a couple of circles, not Not so much with my clients. My clients love my clients. Thank you for listening, by the way. my clients are not doing this, but I am seeing this in other circles where it's just like, oh, well, my nervous system wasn't on board. And then there's sort of a, well, I have to get my nervous system regulated and then I can. Okay. Yeah. It's true. We do have to tend to our nervous systems. Absolutely. That is the core of what I teach. Yes, we need to do that. And also we need to take the action. And you can't wait until you're not scared because that day is never going to come.
Brenda Winkle 00:21:28 We're not waiting until you're certain, because guess what? That day is also never going to come. There has been never, ever in my entire life or in the lives of anybody that I've worked with, that there has been absolute bedrock certainty in any decision. There's been this feels like the right thing. This feels like it might be the next aligned thing. That certainty that we want. That is a very human need. But we don't have certainty, right? We try to create it. We try to create certainty in a lot of different ways. We try to create predictability. We try to create it through routines. We try to create it in the systems that we have in place. But if there's one thing that we have learned over the last six years, starting in 2020, it's that the systems and the structures that are in place that we have been certain about are actually not as certain as we think. So, yes, we do have this desire for certainty, but we also have to be willing to show up when we think something is right and we're not 100% certain certain.
Brenda Winkle 00:22:53 Because if we wait for that certainty, you're going to be waiting for the rest of your life. I heard a podcast this week. Christina Hollinger, her podcast is manifesting with Feng shui. It's a great show. And she had a guest on her podcast this week, and she was talking about the Three Doors, and I've heard about the three Doors before, but I really liked the way that she put it. Door number one is you do nothing. You just decide you're going to stay with exactly how things are. You're not going to rock the boat. Everything is just going to be okay. If you just stay the course. You do nothing, you change nothing. And of course, door number one, the change nothing door. And this is my iteration of it, by the way, this is not exactly what Christina's guest said. My iteration of it is everything is changing anyway. So even if you try to stay the same, that may not actually be possible right now, because the world is changing and you can feel it.
Brenda Winkle 00:23:58 Door number two is you can decide you want to do the work. You can do the work. You want to make the operating system match up with the programming you want to do the work. And then door number three. And of course this is I'm iterating here, right? I'm not taking it word for word. And I'm even changing the context. Door number three is you're just going to num. You're just going to numb it away. You're going to Netflix, you're going to scroll. You're going to overeat over drink. Just numb it away. And I feel like door number two, the matching the programming with the operating system. It feels and sounds sometimes like it's the harder option. But is it really? I don't think it is because it's the option that allows you to evolve. It's the option that allows you to keep feeling to be present with what's happening for you. It's the option that allows you to iterate and grow and develop and expand. And in my experience, draw number two.
Brenda Winkle 00:25:09 Making sure that the operating system matches up with the programming allows you to be the architect of your own life. And that is a yes filled life. I mean, that's the goal, right? It's your yes filled life. What is it going to be that you want to call in to your yes filled life? That's the question, right? So if you want to do some deep work, that's fun in community, in person, where we can do a lot of this work in a very short period of time, you need to be at the Intuitive Leader retreat. It's March 3rd through fifth, 2026. It's coming up in just a few weeks. Enrollment closes on February 26th. If you want to do this work in community, this is the place to be. I know this retreat works, and by the time you leave this retreat, you're going to have complete clarity on what your next steps are, and you will no longer feel like you have to wait until you're certain. That's the beauty of it.
Brenda Winkle 00:26:13 So I'll put the link in the show notes. But if you're not a show notes clicker, then it's at Brenda Winkle Retreat 2026 retreat 2026. And if you're looking for some targeted one on one support, I do have a limited time offer of single coaching sessions, and I'll put that link in the show notes to you. That's just a calendly link. And then stay tuned, because in just a few weeks I'm going to make an announcement I'm so excited about. It's that back to basics announcement that I talked about. But trust me, basic is not basic. Like if you've watched Emily in Paris, you know what I'm talking about. Basic is not basic. Basic is just the foundation. Thank you for listening to this podcast. Thank you for being here today. Thank you for sharing the podcast with people that you care about. I appreciate your comments. I appreciate your reviews. This is a free resource to you. It is cost free for you. It's not free. It's not free for me to produce.
Brenda Winkle 00:27:19 It's not free for me to host. It's not free for me to spend my time. And so I would very much appreciate from the from the lens of reciprocity. If you could please share this episode, share the podcast, talk about it. It makes such a difference and it means a lot. Thank you so much for being here. Bye for now. Until next time.
