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. Today on the podcast, we're going to be talking about the moment you stop shrinking. And I want to acknowledge that it's likely you don't know you're shrinking on the completely conscious level. You might, but it's probably running in the subconscious to a certain extent. Although you likely are having moments of awareness when you think to yourself, I'm acting just a little less confident right now, or and pretending like I don't already know the answer or. I'm pretending like I'm content to sit here on the couch and watch mindless television when I'm not. And I relate to all of these. And my guess is you do too. To a certain extent. I remember dating this person and it was probably 2017, 2018, maybe even 2019 somewhere in there. I don't really remember, but this person was a self-proclaimed homebody. And by the way, no judgment against homebodies. I can be one myself, but I also enjoy going out.
Brenda Winkle 00:02:39 But it's relevant because this person loves television and movies, and this person did not enjoy travel. You know how much I love travel. And this person just it was not his thing. He didn't enjoy travel. He didn't enjoy experiences. He liked to go to church. He liked to go out for lunch at diners on Sunday mornings after church, and that was kind of the extent of the excitement that he had in his life. And again, no judgment. This is not coming from a place of judgment. It's also coming from my own place of I like a little novelty, I love routine, it helps me feel safe, it helps me know what to expect. And I love travel, I love experiences, I love doing different things. I love getting together with people. So I'm the person who is looking for seasonal activities. Like, I'm going to be planning something at the tulip farm for my girlfriend's group later this month, and I'm going to be planning to go see the cherry blossoms down at the Waterfront in Portland later this month.
Brenda Winkle 00:03:52 That's I that's the kind of thinking that I like to do. I love to go out and take advantage of community events and to be part of the community, and to think about different things and to be around different people and to have different experiences. And you know how much I love travel. In fact, as you're listening to this podcast, I am traveling right now. You wouldn't notice it by the background, but it's because I prerecorded this. And so while you're listening or watching this, I am in Madison, Wisconsin with my family. And this is really important to say because when we look at the compatibility, obviously there wasn't the compatibility that it needed to be. But I cared about this person, and this person cared about me. And I remember thinking and it was an overt thought, like it came in like a sentence. I wonder if I could be happy just sitting here on the couch watching disaster movies. And the answer was no. I feel like I'm living my life vicariously like I'm watching other people live their lives on TV.
Brenda Winkle 00:05:05 Like I'm watching it. I'm not a part of it. I'm not actively living. And so I knew that it wasn't aligned for me to stay in that relationship long term. But again, I cared about this person and he cared about me. And it in some ways was relatively easy, in other ways not as much because of the differences that we had. But I found myself spending less time on my business when I was with this person. And if I had two hours in the evening because I was still teaching full time at that time. So if I had two hours in the evening scheduled to work, but no one was actually on my calendar, I might not actually work. I might instead go over to his house where we would watch a show or something, and in a certain way it was fun and in a certain way it felt Connective because I was spending time with somebody that I cared about, but I would always leave feeling a low grade disappointment in myself because I hadn't kept the promise to myself to work on my business.
Brenda Winkle 00:06:15 And it wasn't that I worked every day, two hours after school, but I did several days a week, and that's how I built my business was I needed to put in the time. And I'm telling you this story because I think that it's relatable and it's coming up for a lot of my clients in my private one on one clients in my groups, and it's coming up in a lot of conversations I'm having with people right now where there may be a slight shrinking that's happening, and maybe it's because there's a misalignment of things you like to do in ways you'd like to spend your time, but maybe it's because you have played a specific role in the relationship, and that role is being informed by an identity that has now shifted, and that's the place where I want to invite us to do some work. So we are in the year of the Fire Horse. It's the the fire, meaning the element of fire. The horse meaning the animal on the 12 year zodiac cycle. So each two years there's a different element, which is why we're going to have fire horse this year and fire goat or Fire ram next year.
Brenda Winkle 00:07:27 It's why we had the wood snake last year. In the previous year it was also wood. So it goes in two year cycles with the element and then the animal changes each year. So we're in the fire horse energy right now in 2026. As of the time of this podcast episode airing, we are also in the Sign of Aries, which is a fire sign, and there's a lot of fire, energy and fire. If you are a water sign or an Earth sign or an air sign, or you just identify more with emotions or intellect or feelings or groundedness and action. Fire energy can feel something that might be described as uncomfortable, maybe even unsafe. Because fire energy is very fast moving. It's fierce. It can burn you, but at the same time, fire can be beautiful and calming and warm. Think about the fire of a candle, the wick burning gently, or the fireplace, the gas fireplace that just lights up the room and fills it with warm ambient light and actual warmth. That's why our energy too.
Brenda Winkle 00:08:46 If we are ignoring our internal nudges, if we're ignoring parts of ourselves, if we're shrinking down this year, in particular with the fire horse energy. The fire is likely to burn and we're going to get bucked off the horse. So this is an opportunity for us to do some introspective work and to come into alignment with what your soul is asking you to do, what your higher purpose is, that thing you know, and with what your actions are doing. So if you notice that there's a disconnect between the promises that you're making to yourself and the way that you're following through, we're going to talk about that. So this can happen for a couple different reasons. One might be that your body, your nervous system, your subconscious is reading the thing that you want to do as a threat. And most often I see this threat manifesting with two one of two fears. Fear of changing relationships or fear of being successful, which also is rooted in the fear of changing relationships. Now there are some other fears that can come up.
Brenda Winkle 00:09:59 There are just a few baseline fears that I find clients deal with. I'm not worthy. I'm not good enough. I don't deserve it. I don't deserve love. And then if we combine all of those, and if you have more than one of those subconscious fears or even subconscious beliefs, or perhaps there's a level of consciousness to it, it can be really challenging for us to take the actions that we want to take, because if you have those subconscious beliefs, then your nervous system is going to code those beliefs as truth. And anything that you do that comes up against that belief that potentially threatens that belief by taking an action that might be outside of that belief, like maybe you're doing something where you have to believe you're worth it. Your nervous system and your body is going to hijack the action, and it's going to make it almost impossible for you to follow through. You'll forget what you're doing, you'll over schedule. You'll continue to consume information instead of taking action, you'll be frozen on the couch binging Netflix.
Brenda Winkle 00:11:03 Oh my gosh, have you seen The Way Home on Netflix? It's like a hallmark special. It's like time travel meets romance anyway. Just delightful. Just delightful. I was watching that last night. If we're not paying attention to our actions and bringing some conscious awareness to our actions, we can mistake them as being real and aligned. Like, here's an example. Let's say that you're exhausted, you're depleted. You're raising kids at home. You're in the sandwich generation where you're navigating things with aging parents, and you're navigating things with your teenagers or young adults, and you're telling yourself that you're exhausted and depleted, and yet you continue to take every phone call as though it's an emergency. There's a stress response going on, and the stress response is likely causing you to think it's essential for you to answer that phone, even though the Higher self part of you is like, no, I obviously shouldn't take that phone call right now because I need to rest. I need to protect my health. And by the way, when we get to a certain age or a certain state of health, when I say protect your health, I mean it because if we don't tend to ourselves, our mind, body and spirit, we can accelerate the presence of real dis ease and illness in our bodies if we continue to add stress.
Brenda Winkle 00:12:34 And it's really interesting because the more stressed we are, the more we have a tendency to pile stress on, especially if you're in the flight. Excuse me, fight response. And so if this sounds familiar to you, there's a stress response that we need to untangle. We need to create some nervous system safety somatic in the body with some really simple daily practices and maybe some somatic coaching so that we can get to the bottom of it so that you can move through it again. The Netflix example, this comes up a lot where I see people like, I know I have to do these 43 things, and yet here I am watching a show, or I know I'm depleted and I know I've been to 15 band concerts for my kid. This, you know, last two and a half years. But I'm going to go to this other one, even though it's my only night, I could possibly rest. Those are all symptoms of being in a stress response and activated stress response. Or how about this you get ready to people, please, as though your life depends on it, even though you know you don't want to, you know it's not aligned.
Brenda Winkle 00:13:43 You have done a ton of work. You are easing your people pleasing ways. You even identify as a former people pleaser because you've done so much work. And then this one thing happens, and next thing you know, you're nodding along and agreeing to do things you don't want to do. There's nothing wrong here. You are not bad. You haven't gotten it wrong. What's happening is you're in a stress response. And we need to process that schematically. Because if we try to think our way out of any of these stress responses, it's like adding gas to the fire. It will burn hotter and louder and bigger. We cannot think our way out of this, and we can't think our way out of the way that we're shrinking in our relationships, or shrinking in our businesses, or shrinking in our lives. Because again, the thinking part of this equation is going to mean you're pouring gas on the fire because now you're creating resistance around it. You're creating a little bit of shame, a low level of guilt, and next thing you know, you're over explaining yourself, which means you've just given the people that you're talking to, objections to overcome.
Brenda Winkle 00:14:53 And what's the number one thing we know to do when somebody gives us an objection to overcome, we overcome the objections. So you get ready to say why all these things can't happen today. Thing one, thing two, thing three. And next thing you know, the person you're saying no to is telling you about all the ways you could possibly solve these problems so that you can do the thing they want you to do. Sound familiar? Yeah, I've lived it, I've lived it, and I coach it. I see it in all my clients at this point over the last 11 years. It's hundreds, hundreds of clients. And this is textbook. So I really want you to understand there is nothing wrong with you. You are not weak. You are not bad. You just have a nervous system. We all do. And I want to be really clear. This is not a box to be checked. This isn't like one and done kind of thing. Like you're going to regulate your nervous system and then you're done.
Brenda Winkle 00:15:50 No, it's like brushing your teeth. You don't brush your teeth once and then you're done brushing your teeth. Right. We need to tend to the nervous system every day, probably multiple times a day. If you saw the numbers of ways that I take myself through daily practices to manage my own nervous system, in fact, you know what I'm going to do the week that this goes live, I'm going to actually take you behind the scenes in my stories on Instagram. So be sure you're following me at Brenda Winkle, because every time I get ready to do a stress response intervention for my nervous system, I'm going to take you through. And interestingly, I'm going to be traveling on one of those days, so you'll get to see me preparing to travel, traveling, coming home. So I'll have a lot of content to share. So be sure you're following me on Instagram, because I will be taking you behind the scenes of what I do every day, all through the day, to manage my own stress responses in my nervous system.
Brenda Winkle 00:16:52 Because as somebody who has complex PTSD from a lifetime of abuse from the ages of 0 to 35. Pretty much because I went from the age of 0 to 16 with sexual abuse from a quote unquote trusted family member, and then I didn't really do any healing or inner work on that. Found myself in the middle of an abusive marriage a few years later, and that ended at the age of 35. So I feel like my actual, my actual life began at the age of 35 when I began to heal all of this. And so while I have very well managed complex PTSD, I have complex PTSD and it is possible for me to get triggered. My stress responses are more intense. I am not calm by nature. I'm calm because I use these practices. I'm regulated because I use these practices. I am centered because I use these practices. It's not the other way around. I wasn't drawn to these practices because it comes naturally to me. No, I was drawn to these practices because I needed them to survive.
Brenda Winkle 00:18:02 Because up until the age of 35, I people pleased my way through life because I didn't know another way. I people pleased everything. Everything. And when I say everything, I mean, if you could think of it, I found a way to people please through it. I didn't even know who I was at the age of 35. I didn't know what my favorite colors were. I didn't know what I liked to eat. I didn't know what my favorite foods were. I didn't even know if I had favorite foods. I didn't know what flavors I liked. It wasn't until I was turning 40 that I realized, oh, I love lemon. I love desserts that have lemon, lemon cake, lemon blueberry cake, lemon meringue pie, lemon cheesecake, lemon bars, lemon. Oh my gosh, I love lemon. I don't love lemon tea. It's just interesting like that. I love lemon tea. No, not for me. Which is weird anyway. Little bird walk there. But the point is, I did not have any awareness of who I was, what I wanted, what my preferences were at the age of 35.
Brenda Winkle 00:19:13 I'm 52 now, and so it's been a minute. I've been in this process for a minute, and I've been doing this work for a long time. And so if you are being hard on yourself because you just started this work and you're still having to remind yourself with alarms and timers and sticky notes, you're not doing it wrong. You just haven't done it long enough. And by the way, I still have alarms on my phone at least twice a day, and when I know I'm going into a stressful situation, I will preset additional alarms. I will preset additional ways to care for myself and to manage any stress response that I might have. So when it comes to the question of When you know what to do, but you're not doing it. The answer is in your nervous system. But I know that that's a little bit ambiguous, right? You're like, okay, Brenda, in my nervous system, what does that mean? Well, I'm going to tell you exactly what that means in the free workshop when you know what to do but don't.
Brenda Winkle 00:20:20 And you can register for it at Brenda winkle.com. Next level. This is the next step. If you have related to this podcast episode today, you need to be there at this workshop. It's your next step because I'm going to be sharing some daily practices that you can use and a framework that I use in all of my teaching and coaching, called the Power Method. And the power method is a simple way that I remember. And I teach people to remember to protect their own energy, to create their own sovereignty, and to tend to their own nervous systems. And because it's just five simple pillars, It is easy to remember even if you're in an activated state. So go get registered for the masterclass and if you enjoyed this episode, if you feel like you know people who are also really in it right now, would you please consider sharing this episode with them? Because the thing is, this is more common than we would like to think. And one of the reasons why things are happening in the United States the way that they are, is because we have systems of oppression and systems of power that need to crumble in order to be rebuilt.
Brenda Winkle 00:21:34 And it's a lot right now, and there's general stress, general rage going on. I feel it, too. I feel enraged that we still have the level of, complicity with the Epstein files not being released and no charges being made, while we have hundreds of women who have actually faced criminal charges for losing babies. But yet no one is being held responsible for the Epstein files. Yeah, I'm enraged, but I'm also regulated because I know that it's not my place to be in a state of rage. It's my place to support the leaders who can make that change. It's my place to keep being regulated enough that I can articulate what I believe to be true. It's my place to stay centered in my own mission, in my own central channel, in my own energy, so that I can continue to support with the podcast, with the social media, posting, with my clients, with my family, with my friends, so that I can continue to do this work. Because I know that your role in this is very important.
Brenda Winkle 00:22:53 You have something really unique to contribute to this next phase, and I know you can feel it happening. You can kind of watch it burn, and it probably brings up a lot for you. But I want to assure you, if you are willing to do the introspection, be curious, be bold and stop shrinking. We can all make a difference in turning this world into the world that we all want to live in. And it really is up to us. It's like Gandhi said, we have to become the people we want to be to in order to be the change that we want to be in the world. So with that, thank you for listening. Thank you for being part of the journey, a part of the mission of your life. I care deeply for you and about you, and I'm so grateful that you're here. Bye for now. Until next time.
