Brenda Winkle 00:00:03 Hello and welcome to your yes filled life. I'm Brenda Winkle, and this podcast is for high performing, empathic women who are ready to stop second guessing themselves and start trusting what they know. Maybe you're successful in your career or business. People rely on you. You make difficult decisions every day, and yet sometimes the moment someone else's emotions, expectations, or opinions enter the conversation, your own clarity starts to disappear. If you've ever wondered, how can I be so confident everywhere else in my life, but struggle to trust myself when it comes to my own needs? You are in the right place. Each week we'll explore self trust, nervous system regulation, emotional energy, boundaries, intuition, and the everyday moments where your life changes not because you've become someone new, but because you learn to stay connected to yourself. I'll share clients stories, my own experiences, practical tools, and honest conversations to help you stop abandoning yourself and start creating a life that's truly your own. Because I believe you already know more than you trust and that is a yes filled life.
Brenda Winkle 00:01:24 I'm so glad you're here. Let's begin. Hello and welcome to your yes filled life. We are finally into season eight of the podcast. We started season seven of the podcast on September 17th, 2025. I have no explanation for that. It makes zero logical sense. And yet that feels so true. And here's the thing I noticed that in the astrology that the node of fate was in the sign of Pisces, and I am a Pisces, and I was reading in some article about astrology that it was really, really deeply affecting people with sensitive piscine systems. And all I can say is it feels like my system is absolutely tracking that, because welcome to season eight of the podcast. Do you like the new intro? Do you like the new music? I chose it especially to reflect where the podcast feels like it's going. So I've been thinking a lot about what has changed in my life since season seven of the podcast, which was not really a season at all. It was more like, you know, an era.
Brenda Winkle 00:02:48 And people often assume that it was about learning better boundaries or regulating my nervous system or some energy healing, somatic coaching, intuition. And, you know, those things mattered. And a lot of them happened and it really did make a difference. But the biggest thing that has shifted between season seven and season eight is I am no longer a good girl, and I'm really happy to tell you that, and I hope that you might be able to let go of your good girl era, too. So what do I mean by being a good girl? Well, think about how many times we're told as children go, be a good girl now and fill in the blank. Or we're told overtly, these things are bad, these things are good. And then we're rewarded for doing the good things, whether it's attention, praise, positive reinforcement, or even rewards and were penalized or punished for doing the wrong thing. And we learn really quick what it means to be good. Good oftentimes could actually be used instead of compliant.
Brenda Winkle 00:04:16 When somebody rewards us for being good. Often they don't mean that we're kind. They don't mean generous. Thoughtful. They mean we were compliant. We did what we were told and that that era is in the past for me. And I would like to help support you to make it in the past for you to, because good girls are not making the changes that they need to make for their own lives, for the lives of the people they serve, for their families. And it's not really helping anyone except the systems of oppression to really stay in oppression because good girls keep the peace. Good girls go along to get along. Good girls don't disappoint people. Good girls are low maintenance. Good girls are agreeable. Good girls take care of everyone else even if they don't have capacity, bandwidth, time, or resources. Good girls get praised for being easy, but not that kind of easy. Good girls don't make people uncomfortable. Good girls don't need to much. Sound familiar? Yeah. So I was thinking about this episode as I was driving to my natural paths, and I was thinking about what I wanted to say to you, and I was thinking about my relationship with being told I was a good girl.
Brenda Winkle 00:05:50 And so for contrast, I went to ways in which I learned I was potentially a bad girl. And I'm not talking about Courtney Cook's loving little thing that she says, oh, you bad girl, when she has a really decadent recipe that she's tried, or somebody gives her a recipe that's really, really good. It's not that kind. It's the actual kind of bad girl that causes us shame. It causes us to shrink. It causes us to shut down. And I was thinking about one really impactful thing that I had to unlearn. Actually, there were two. And you're going to be surprised when you hear what they are, because there are two things that I do unapologetically and out and open publicly now. Do you want to know what they are? Dancing and cards? I was told good girls don't dance And I was told, good girls don't play cards and we never play cards on Sunday. Any kind of card didn't matter what kind of card, didn't matter if it was old maid or Uno or a card deck.
Brenda Winkle 00:07:10 And God forbid it was tarot cards or oracle cards. Which, by the way, I don't know if you know what's sitting behind me. Now, let me just move out of the way. In case you haven't seen it, I'll show you on YouTube here. I have around 40 Oracle and tarot card decks behind me, and I've had them here since I've lived in this house. Yep, there they are again. And those aren't even all of the decks. So it took me unlearning what a good girl was to be able to do this. It took me unlearning that I could be punished for doing the things I want to do because good girls don't dance. Not only do I dance, but I dance. Latin dances, which the people who taught me that dancing and cards were sinful and bad. Oh my gosh, they would hate it. Which there's a part of me that kind of loves that they would hate it. I'll just be honest. But I also love it because I love it.
Brenda Winkle 00:08:20 It's sensual and it's expressive and it's connective and it's rhythmic and it's connected to music and it's a way to interact with another human, and it's responsive, and it is a way for you to embody emotion, to embody your own sense of expression and sexuality and sensuality and be met by another human. I love it, but I had to unlearn what it was to be a good girl in order to have the courage to even try it. It took me until I was 50, before I had the courage to admit I really wanted to do it, and then to commit. I had danced Latin dance, and I had dance partner dance prior to that, but never with the intention of really learning. I would take a class here and go to a Latin night there and I, I have danced for many, many years. I danced a hip hop fitness kind of dance when I was living in Boise called hula, which if you're in Boise, you should go check out hula there. They're so active there and it's fabulous, very uplifting.
Brenda Winkle 00:09:37 And it's also attuned to the chakras so you can actually get some energetic support. All that's to say, I have loved dance and the expression of physicality and the embodiment, but I had to unlearn a lot And whether or not you're a dancer is not the point. The point is, you probably have some things in your life that you really want to do that you're drawn to, that you're curious about, you're potentially passionate about, and there's a part of you that's holding back because you want to still be a good girl. So if every time. You did something that you were drawn to do that you were curious about, that you were excited about, you were told you're being a bad girl and then you're rewarded every time you ignore what you really want to do, and instead just put down the deck of cards or stop dancing or God forbid, don't move those hips. If every single time you stopped doing that because somebody else was uncomfortable and then it created a little bit of relief in that situation, in that relationship.
Brenda Winkle 00:10:57 Guess what you learned. You learned to self abandon. You learned that it is preferable to abandon yourself and have a little bit of comfort, or at least a version of comfort, if not actual comfort. Maybe keeping the peace, and that was preferable to standing up to it. But also we have the fact that there is an actual power differential in many of these cases because these are coming from parental impactors. They're coming from people that actually have real power over us. And so it is a lesson that we have learned well. And I, for one, am ready to let it go. How about you? And I think that many empaths or empathic people, depending on how you identify, become exceptionally Good girls and good boys. And part of this is because they can feel and sense and track the discomfort that is caused when they dive into their own form of expression, whether it's cooking or dancing or playing cards or drawing or crocheting, whatever it is. If there was a person around you who was slightly uncomfortable by you doing that thing, even if it was reading a book, you had to really push against that, and it may not have been completely safe for you to do so, depending on the situation.
Brenda Winkle 00:12:30 And so as empaths, the more that you learn to harness your own empathic gifts, and the more freedom you allow yourself, the more you allow that expressive soul within you to become liberated, the more access you have to your empathic gifts. And I have yet to meet an empath who is not also very intuitive. And if you are an empath who is not yet liberated, has not yet harnessed her empathic gifts, then a lot of times the intuition doesn't feel trustworthy. It's still there. You're still connected to your intuition, but it doesn't feel safe to trust it. And so one of the really cool byproducts of learning to harness your empathic gifts is your intuition gets stronger. And we all have intuition. And I want to be really clear here, I'm not giving up the good girl because I don't want to be considerate or because I want to be unkind. None of that's true. I'm still very considerate, and I'm kind. I'm also not a doormat. And I'm also not going to be told what's right or what's wrong by someone else, or that something is sinful or bad by someone else.
Brenda Winkle 00:14:00 I want to be congruent with me. I want to be honest with myself and in how I'm showing up in my life. I want to be really present because present is one of the pillars of power. It's the first pillar of power and present in terms of power has a couple different meanings. It means being present with other people, being present in the moment, but it also means being present in your own body in the moment. And the reason that's so important is when you are present, it becomes so much easier to discern what's yours and what's not, and then you can find a way to work with your nervous system to allow yourself to become safe enough that you can sit in the discomfort of someone else being disappointed by your choice, and you're still okay. Now that woman or man is a completely different person. There's not a lot of value as far as I'm concerned, in being a good girl. Like why? What would be the point? Because as I said at the beginning, good has oftentimes been used to mean compliant.
Brenda Winkle 00:15:21 I'm just not going to be compliant anymore. So this season of the podcast, season eight, let's see how long it lasts. The last season lasted like what is that, September to July? You do the math. September 2025 to July 2026. Let's see. August. September. Oh, almost two years. That's silly. so that season of the podcast lasted almost two years. I don't know what season. Season eight will be. Maybe it will be ten episodes, maybe it will be 12. But I will feel into when it feels like this topic is complete and then we'll move on to season nine. So I suggest, I hope that you subscribe to the podcast wherever you're listening right now, because you're not going to want to miss a thing. This is going to be our unlearning, so that we can reconnect with ourselves so that we can really trust what's coming through for us. And you might be thinking, well, what am I going to be unlearning? We're going to unlearn that rest is lazy.
Brenda Winkle 00:16:34 We're going to unlearn that boundaries are selfish. We're going to unlearn that. Intuition is irrational. We're going to unlearn that feeling or sensing things is crazy. We're going to unlearn that your worth comes from any form of usefulness or accomplishment. We're going to unlearn that caring about people requires carrying their emotional baggage. We're going to unlearn that love means self abandonment. We're going to unlearn that peacekeeping means piece and we're going to unlearn that. Nice is the same thing as kind. And we're definitely going to unlearn being the good girl. I for one I am in my villain era now. I'm not actually a villain, but I am willing to become the villain in somebody else's story if they need me to be, because I am done with the whole good girl era. That was all of season eight. Well, not really. I haven't been a good girl in a long time, but you get the point. So I really want to say, I don't want to teach you how to become someone new, because you don't need to be someone new.
Brenda Winkle 00:17:51 What I would love to invite you into is to becoming more of you, to remembering more of who you really are. I want to help you remember who you were before you learned to be compliant, to remember who you were before you learned that being good is better than being true to you. So welcome to season eight. Let's unlearn some things together. And I'm so grateful for you being here for the journey. Please share this episode with someone who you think might be ready to unlearn her good girl era and ready to step into something new, something more true into her or his yes filled life. I'll see you next time. Bye for now.
