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. I have been really working on dialing in my messaging, in my content, both in terms of the podcast and emails and social media, and a lot of my content has been landing really deeply. And I'm getting messages and comments like, this has cost me years or ooh, this hits today, or I knew this, but I couldn't actually say what it was. And I love that because it means that we're talking about something that people are really experiencing and may not have language around. And I want to say that even awareness of something happening with not completely trusting yourself, not really listening to your intuition, and letting empathy lead or override some of those inner knowing, even that awareness is actually an important step along the way. Because as soon as you're aware of something, then you can do something about it. But there's a next step that matters just as much, if not more, because awareness alone may not change your life.
Brenda Winkle 00:02:47 In fact, awareness alone, without some other action that corresponds or correlates to it might leave you feeling frustrated. So let's talk about that. Let's talk about. When we are overriding our intuition, when we have empathy, hangovers, when we are seeking that nervous system safety to be able to do and say the things we want to do. In fact, we can talk about those things all the live long day. We can understand it on an intellectual level. We can use our intelligence to understand it, but if we don't actually create some changes inside the body, in how your nervous system, how your body is responding and reacting, you can understand it and then still do the same thing tomorrow. And what we want to do is to begin to shift some of these patterns, because understanding something on the intellectual level is not the same thing as applying what you've learned. And so a lot of times in my own life. And maybe, maybe you can relate to this. Pain is what opens the door.
Brenda Winkle 00:04:08 Pain is what has created an awareness of this situation, this thing, this relationship, this circumstance does not feel good. Pain is often that first key that, oh, there's something going on here, but it's not enough to get you to walk through to the other side to create change. What actually creates the change is when we combine your desire for change with an identity that supports the change with the possibility, and then the nervous system regulation, that means we're taking the body out of stress responses around the possibility of change, so that you can actually get the change to happen. So We are not talking about any kind of shaming here. There's no shame allowed here on your guild life because we are all humans and we are all owners of nervous systems, and our nervous systems are running the show whether we want them to or not. And so when we understand that we're actually working with the stress responses inside the body, we're working with how our brain is communicating safety with the body, how the body is communicating safety to the brain.
Brenda Winkle 00:05:36 We can take away some of the guilt and some of the shame and start to work with our bodies, our identity, our inner dialogue so that we can let go of the shame around. I need to stop doing this and turn it into something even more powerful, which is this is who I am becoming. I absolutely love that because if we were to start doing affirmations, I've talked about this recently on the podcast. Affirmations for the most part, unless they are already reflective of who we are. Won't work even if we think they do. Even if we think they will. Even if they make us feel good to say we know from the research, affirmations on their own are not enough to create change. Because if your nervous system or your subconscious does not agree with what you're saying for your affirmation, it will absolutely stop you moving forward. It will create roadblocks. I remember when I first came to know about affirmations, I thought, oh my gosh, this is the most amazing thing ever. And so I created this little booklet.
Brenda Winkle 00:06:51 I used a ring like you'd have for a three ring binder, except it was a standalone ring. And then I would hole punch three by five index cards, and on each index card I would write affirmations, and I had pictures of the tile floor that I wanted to put in my kitchen. I had pictures of trips I wanted to take. I had pictures of the speaking gigs. I dreamed of having all of these things. I had like the dollar amount I wanted to earn, the dollar amount I had in my bank account, and then every day I would flip through that little book and I would look at the pictures and I would say the affirmations that I had written for myself. And do you want to know what happened? Well, what happened is everything got worse, a lot worse, because as I was looking at the tile floor, I would think to myself, I would say out loud, I'm going to have this beautiful tile in my home. And then I'd say that out loud.
Brenda Winkle 00:07:53 Then my subconscious would come in with, yeah, but how are you going to afford that, Brenda? And is this the house that you really want to stay in? Because at the time I was flipping through this book, I was living in Boise and I loved my home, but I also knew that it was unlikely to be my forever home, and I knew that I wanted to be somewhere more walkable, somewhere perhaps more urban. I wasn't sure where I was going to live at the time anyway, so I'm reading this out loud. I'll have this tile floor, and then my subconscious is like, no, you won't. How? I mean, how are you going to afford that? What house is it going to be in? Is that really going to match the cupboards? And all of this was happening on the subconscious level. I was a little bit aware that it was happening because I was aware of the thoughts and the questions, but I didn't know the energetics of it at that time.
Brenda Winkle 00:08:43 And so, excuse me, I would have like checks written to myself in increments that I thought sounded really good. And they weren't actual checks, they were just the three by five index cards that I had turned into a check. And I would look at the check, and then I would feel tremendous shame because I didn't know how to get there. That was so far out of the realm of what I was making as a teacher, that it felt like a big lie. And then I felt really uncomfortable, like I felt my body tensing up. I felt my shoulders coming inward every time I looked at that check. And then it started to create shame around, oh, I'm not actually increasing my income at all right now, let alone to this level, because I think it was like it was like $1 million or something. And as a teacher, that was way, way, way far outside of what I was earning. And so all of this is happening on the subconscious level in my body.
Brenda Winkle 00:09:42 My body was tensing up, seeing these things, and I kept feeling a sense of lack, like, I'm not doing enough. Why is this not happening? Why am I not getting the speaking gigs? Why do I not have the tile in the kitchen? Why do I not have the trip to Italy? And it took a long time to realize. The reason was I was actually feeding the doubt. I was feeding the lack. I was feeding the not having this by continuing to focus on the phrases, I am a speaker who's paid to travel to Italy, which I do hope that one day happens. I learned from a book called The Little Book of Affirmations by Noah Saint John, that when you shift the intro statement, you can shift the energy so you can shift it to I am becoming someone who or what will it feel like when? And all of a sudden there's a softness that begins to happen in the body, and there's not the pushing against in the subconscious, which is really, really important because we want to keep in mind that if we are shaming ourselves or we're involved in any practice that's causing us to tense up, that's causing us to contract or make ourselves smaller or feel bad.
Brenda Winkle 00:11:13 It's not doing the work we want it to do. We want to feel self-love. We want to feel self-acceptance. We want to feel self trust. And the way that you can begin to expand your energy and your reality is by being kind, loving and compassionate to yourself. So every single thing that we do inside of all of my coaching, all of my programs, all of my retreats is really, truly rooted in how can we be more self compassionate? How can we be more loving to ourselves? How can we trust ourselves more? Because if we are shaming ourselves or making ourselves feel bad about who we are, what we've done, what we have been doing, what we will do. We can't move forward. Why would your brain say, yeah, I want more of this when you're making yourself feel bad, that makes no sense at all. Your brain won't do that. In fact, your brain will say, you know what? Let's push this away. So let's talk a little bit about what it could look like when you fully trust yourself.
Brenda Winkle 00:12:22 Because the truth is, most people don't know how to trust themselves. I signed up for one of the one of the psychic apps, and have been giving dozens of readings per week and really studying the patterns of the people that I talked to. And I'm telling you, even in my highest level way to work with people, the one on one containers, everyone inside my one on one work has said a version of I want to trust my intuition. I want to develop my intuition. And in the readings I'm hearing, I want to trust myself more. And so much pain is happening inside the lives, bodies and hearts of people who don't trust themselves, but they know something is amiss, or they know something is just slightly misaligned. And they know, or at least they have some breadcrumbs of what would feel really good, but they're not trusting it. Because self trust is not loud, it's not certainty, it's not perfect decisions. And it's absolutely not about never getting it wrong, as evidenced by the last episode where I was telling you about how I overrode some of my intuition.
Brenda Winkle 00:13:45 Self trust is much quieter. It looks like not replaying conversations in your head. It looks like not saying or not spiraling After you say yes to do something, or you say no to do something, it just is a a solid yes or a solid no. It looks like you feel freedom and expansion and ease in your body later, after the decision, instead of feeling like the stomach turn or the tension in the back of your neck or your shoulders after you've agreed to do something, or that flash of a headache after you said yes to something you want to say no to. So when we're really talking about what self trust is, it's just clarity about what the next step is. It's not forceful, it's not dramatic, it's steady. You truly do know when something is a no for you. You don't have to explain it. You also know when something is a yes for you. And again, you don't have to explain it. But we have been inculcated. I had to look up that word.
Brenda Winkle 00:15:02 Like back in 2008, I heard that word inculcated, and I literally looked it up in the dictionary because I was like, what does that mean? It means we have been taught by our culture to do things a certain way. And if you are identifying as a woman or in a female body, not only have you been inculcated to not trust yourself, but you've also been inculcated that you should listen to men over your own knowing. And it comes in overt ways throughout all of our cultural messaging, and it comes in really subtle ways. Like, for example, I was a judge at a solo competition, locally here for middle schoolers, meaning they came to sing and there was one individual who was another peer of mine who is is male, and this person kept changing where I would ask singers to start in their song. So what happens is they come in, they sing their song, they perform it, and then I offer feedback. It's not competitive. Nobody's like winning or losing. It's really just for enrichment and learning and instruction and getting a chance to work with professional musicians and getting to hear them sing.
Brenda Winkle 00:16:25 And so that was my job. I would sing with the with the kids on different parts, and so it was necessary for me to say, okay, can we start at measure such and such major 40, for example. And there was one individual who kept saying, you know, no, I think it would make more sense if you started at major 36. That's where we're going to start. It's that kind of thing. And I have worked with so many gentle souls, mostly women and a few men who don't correct me that I had forgotten what that's like, because the men that are currently in my life, both in terms of the acquirers that I direct for Pacific Youth Choir and the clients that I have that are male. They don't talk over me. They don't assume they know more than me. There's an equality there. There's a mutual respect. And I had forgotten because I haven't been in the general pool for a while for like four and a half years. How prevalent it is for men to talk over women.
Brenda Winkle 00:17:27 And in some cases, in this case particular, there was just like it was just for the sake of not letting the students start where I said they should start. It was just a way of very subtly taking away power. And this is what women experience for their whole lives. So of course, self trust becomes an issue for us because we're taught we can't trust ourselves. And so it's not until we start to unpack our own internalized patriarchy that we can start to realize, oh, this is actually somebody who's disempowering me right now, and we can begin to peel back the layers on the ways that we might have been allowing our power to be taken. And so when we are learning to trust ourselves again, we're pushing against the things that we have learned for our whole lives. We're pushing against a lot of society. And then we also have our own nervous systems. And so we want to be really, really gentle as we pattern this. And I want to be clear that when you start to trust yourself, a big part of that is letting go of the need for external validation.
Brenda Winkle 00:18:47 So many of us have, myself included, have been taught that we can't trust ourselves, and so we need somebody outside of us to externally, externally validate something. So that's a lot of the reason why people ask for decisions by committee. What do you think? What do you like? What do you like? What do you think I should do? We're taught that. And when you really get to be in a state of true self trust, you might still love to have other people's perspectives because you just want to share things with them, and you want to know what they think. But you will no longer need their validation, because you will have a steadiness and an absence of the internal noise, because you're going to have a solid knowing who this is mine. And that's what happened to me at this vocal festival. I was like, no, really, I do want to start there. And here's why. And I was able to justify every single one, which I don't enjoy being in a position where I have to justify things.
Brenda Winkle 00:19:48 It can bring out a rather assertive side of me, but I am capable and willing to do it if needed. Now here's the thing. Part of this that we're talking about is an identity shift. So part of it's the nervous system stuff where we feel safe enough to say, this is for me, this is not for me, but part of it is identity shift. And when your identity shifts so that you become someone who totally trusts herself, you move differently. You decide faster. Although the goal is not speed, I'll talk about that in a second. You trust your. No. You stop over explaining. You feel calmer in your body. A big part of the deciding factor I want to come back to that is not that you actually decide faster. It's that, you know, to take a pause before you make the decision so that you can decide cleanly. This doesn't happen because you learn more. This doesn't happen because you have more information. It happens because you stay with yourself in the small moments You truly learn to prioritize the inner nudges the I think I should moments, and you learn how to understand the cues that your body is giving you, that something either feels aligned or not.
Brenda Winkle 00:21:16 And if you've been listening to the last several episodes and you keep thinking, oh my goodness, I think this is my problem. Or maybe you just found me on social media and you think, oh my gosh, Brenda is talking to me. I want to offer you this. This is also your greatest potential because the same sensitivity, the same awareness, the same empathy that has you not trusting yourself is exactly what allows you to develop and build that self trust even faster. If the version of you feels far away, that's okay. It's not built overnight. It doesn't happen in a day. If you've been with me for any length of time, you know that this current place where I am has been an evolution. And if you're just coming into my world and you're just getting to know me, go back and watch some of my old videos. There are some on there where you can tell I am like, so worried about what I think or what I sound like or what I say. I'm like locked up and trying to be prim and proper and trying to show you how smart I am.
Brenda Winkle 00:22:30 And that has changed. And I want to also name that when we're shifting identities, it is not because an identity has been bad or wrong or not even one that we loved. That's one of the myths about identity, is that when we move into a new identity, it's because we didn't like the old one. That's not true. I have loved who I am at every step of the way since I went on this healing journey beginning in 2007. I genuinely have loved myself at every step of the way, and so part of the reason that we don't want to step into a new identity is because we worry. What will happen to my old identity? I mean, what about the people that I learned to love in that time? What about the people that loved me in that time? What about the experiences? Does all of that just go away? Is all of that not good? Is all of that invalidated? And the answer is no. None of that is invalid. All of it matters, you know.
Brenda Winkle 00:23:33 Just this week, I created some coworking time for my membership, the Empowered Empath Collective, and we were doing out some. We were doing some cleaning out and we didn't specify the topic. It could have been like cleaning out digital files or mail or clothes or the garage didn't matter. And I happened to be working in my closet, and I was cleaning out clothes in my closet. And one of the things that I was noticing is I love all the clothes in my closet, even the clothes I put in the bags that no longer represent who I am. I still love them. I love the person I was when I wore them. I love the person that I am now, that they no longer feel like they're part of who I am. Identity shifts are not about disliking or not honoring who you've been. It's the opposite. The more you can truly honor who you've been, the easier it is to step into the new identity. And that allows you to pause longer instead of reacting or auto guessing.
Brenda Winkle 00:24:49 Something like saying yes to fast, it allows you to notice what's happening Instead of just overriding yourself or pretending like you're not getting the nudges that you're getting about either. Things you should be doing or things you should not be doing. And it allows you to really stay with yourself instead of betraying yourself or leaving what's best for you just to make someone else feel better. This is exactly the work we practice inside of the membership the Empowered Empath Collective. It's not about understanding the pattern. I mean, that's part of it, but you can understand things. The real work is catching it while it's happening in real time with support, so that you can take the next right action. You can know a whole bunch of stuff, but if you don't do anything with it, it just will frustrate you and lead to negative self-talk. And for some of you, you want to collapse time. You want to do this in, you know, three days you want to leave your daily minutia and really integrate and immerse yourself into an environment to allow an identity shift to come through.
Brenda Winkle 00:26:04 And you don't need that ongoing support. Or maybe you do, but you want this collapsing time and you want some space. You want some separation from the daily minutia of the laundry and the picking out the meals and the grocery shopping and the that type of thing. And you want more of an immersive experience. And for you, I created the Ignite Retreat because this is where we slow everything down. We get really clear on what's right for you. We learn how to interrupt the pattern of not staying with what we know, not staying with what we trust and and are hearing from our internal voices. And that identity shift happens at the root. And the retreat is literally where we collapse, collapse time. So invitation to apply. Applications are now open for the ignite retreat. You can do that. I'll put the link in the show notes. The application is just to make sure that this is the right experience for you. It's not necessarily like a job application. I don't want you to think of it that way.
Brenda Winkle 00:27:14 It's making sure that this retreat will actually serve you in the way you want to be served. And if it won't, then I'll have other suggestions. And if it will, then we'll talk about next steps. We'll get in a call, we'll talk about it, and then we'll move forward from there. But I have some reflection questions that you can use this week or over the next several days till the next episode drops. I have four questions for you to ask yourself. Number one, what would it feel like if I trust myself more? Number two, what would be different in my daily life If I trusted myself more. So number one was what would it feel like to trust myself more? Number two, what would be different in my daily life if I trusted myself more? Number three where am I still overriding myself in small ways. Number three again, where am I still overriding myself in small ways? And number four. What would it look like to really stay with myself instead? Number four again, what would it look like to stay with myself instead? The beautiful part about this work is you don't have to become someone new.
Brenda Winkle 00:28:36 You just need to embody and feel into the identity that you know you're on the verge of, and stop leaving yourself and start building the version of you that stays with yourself so that you really trust yourself. Are you going to have moments where you make mistakes. Yes, 100% you are. This is not a box to be checked. This is not like we're going to fix anything because nothing is broken. This is learning to trust yourself so that more of the time, eventually, most of the time, you are completely locked into what is right for you. What is your intuition saying is your next step? That's the gift of doing this work. Thank you so much for listening to your Yes Filled Life podcast. If you could please go leave the podcast, your rating and review on Apple Podcasts. It would mean so much. If you're on other platforms like Spotify, you can leave a comment on this episode. Please do that. Please leave your rating on wherever you're listening. It means so much.
Brenda Winkle 00:29:43 And if you got something out of this episode, if you felt like it touched any part of you, I know that you have people in your life Who also need to hear this same message that it is safe to trust ourselves. And all we have to do is look at our political climate to know we need a new version of leadership. And I'm not talking necessarily just about the national level, although that is true too. I'm talking about we need new leaders in our families, in our schools and our communities and our businesses in our states. And it starts with being able to trust ourselves. I guarantee you that we would not be in the position that we are in currently if we all trusted ourselves. And that's my mission, is to help you. The deep feelers, the compassionate people, the empathic leaders really trust yourself. Thank you for being on this journey with me. Bye for now. Until next time.
