It's an Inside Job

The Art & Science of Intuition: Mastering Intuitive Decision-Making & Building Resilience.

• Season 7 • Episode 29

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"We tend to rationalise ourselves out of intuition, but that quiet voice inside of us often knows the answer before our mind catches up." - Elysia Skye

In this episode, I sit down with Elysia Skye, an intuitive business coach, speaker, and host of The Brilliance Methodpodcast. We explore the power of intuition in decision-making, how to balance logic and gut instincts, and the role of mindfulness in reducing stress. Elysia shares practical strategies for trusting yourself, overcoming self-doubt, and making aligned choices as a leader or entrepreneur. She also tells a powerful story of how listening to her intuition literally saved her life.

What We Cover in This Episode

  • Why intuition is more than just a feeling and the science behind the brain-gut connection
  • How to distinguish between fear-based decisions and true inner guidance
  • The importance of self-trust and self-compassion in overcoming doubt and building confidence
  • How to balance logic and intuition, especially in high-pressure situations
  • Mindfulness techniques to clear mental clutter and gain clarity
  • Strategies for overcoming decision fatigue and stopping overthinking
  • Elysia’s personal experience with stage three breast cancer and how trusting her intuition led to life-saving action

Key Takeaways
Intuition is a practical decision-making tool backed by science, not just a fleeting instinct.
Slowing down to create space for reflection allows you to separate fear-driven thoughts from real inner wisdom.
Trusting yourself is a skill that grows when you reflect on past moments where your intuition guided you correctly.
Decision fatigue can be minimized by reframing challenges and focusing on clarity rather than overthinking.

Bio

Elysia Skye is an intuitive business coach, speaker, and host of The Brilliance Method Podcast, dedicated to helping entrepreneurs and leaders trust themselves to make aligned decisions in both their personal and professional life.

She believes that true success stems from clarity, self-awareness, compassion, and the ability to embrace change.

With a background in corporate consulting, mindfulness coaching, and course creation, Elysia helps businesses and individuals integrate stress management, intuitive leadership, and conscious decision-making into their daily practices. 

She has worked with GAP Inc., Banana Republic, Paramount Global, Humanity HR, The Producers Guild, and other brands, empowering leaders to empower their mindset, enhance communication, and foster meaningful relationships with colleagues, clients, and themselves.

Contact

Website: https://elysiaskye.com
Podcast: https://elysiaskye.com/podcast
The Emerald Collective of The Brilliance Method: https://innercircle.thebrilliancemethod.com/emerald
Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/elysiaskye/
Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/elysiaskyecoach
X:  https://x.com/ElysiaSkye
TikTok:  https://www.tiktok.com/@elysiaskye
LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/elysiaskye/

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[0:00] Music.

[0:06] Welcome to It's an Inside Job, the podcast where we equip you with actual skills to build resilience, enhance communication, foster well-being,

[0:14] and lead and coach with impact. I'm your host, Jason Liem, and every Monday we bring you expert insights and real-world stories to help you thrive and succeed. And with that said, let's slip into the stream.

[0:27] Music.

[0:34] Hey folks thank you for joining me at the top of a new week and a fresh episode today we are going to explore intuition intuition in how we make decisions intuition as to what direction we might want to go but sometimes we suppress that little voice i mean have you ever made a decision that kind of just felt right, even when logic or rationale told you kind of otherwise? Or have you ignored that gut feeling, that little inner voice, only to regret it later?

[1:05] Well, joining me today is Elysia Skye. She's an intuitive business coach, speaker, and the host of the Brilliance Method podcast. She's dedicated to helping entrepreneurs and leaders trust themselves to make aligned decisions in both their personal and their professional lives. In our discussion, we talk about intuitive leadership, decision-making, and mindfulness, and how tapping into your intuition can reduce stress, how it can improve your communication, and definitely how it can enhance your productivity and your performance. In our conversation, we also explore the science behind gut instincts and why your intuition might be more reliable than you think. Also, how to balance logic and intuition in especially high pressure situations. We also explore the role of self-trust and self-compassion in overcoming doubt, fear and our own self-critical voice. We also talk about practical mindful techniques to reframe challenges and to make better choices and also a personal story of how trusting her intuition

[2:05] literally saved Elysia's life. So now turn your attention inwards and listen to that little voice that's saying you know what take some time and listen to this episode.

[2:18] Music.

[2:36] Yeah, we're connecting between Nashville and Oslo today. That's right. In the southern part of the United States. I'm originally from Florida, but then lived in Los Angeles for 20 years. So similar to how you went from Canada to Norway, and it's quite a big change. It's quite a big change for me as well, being here in Tennessee. Could we kick off by you introducing who you are and what you do? Absolutely. So I am an intuitive. I focus mostly on business, personal development, communication, and resilience. Most corporations and small businesses and even some individuals hire me mostly for stress reduction to increase productivity. And it all connects back to mindfulness, which is based on your intuition. So the work that I've done primarily with very large-scale brands has been a lot in the HR space and learning and development. And really coming together to help people just be better people and to be kinder and more compassionate in their communication. And it starts from the inside out, which is why I was so drawn to your show, just even based on the title. It is an inside job. Well, thanks for the plug.

[3:52] So I'd like to maybe dive into there because I think that was one of the most interesting things I found about yourself is the description of an intuitive business coach. Maybe could you elaborate maybe deep in the picture for us what that means and how we use it? Because a lot of us sometimes we have this gut instinct, but we tend to ignore it. And we don't need to go into the science of it right now, but maybe that's something we could also explore.

[4:18] Sure. So, yeah. Our intuition, and they call it that gut feeling, and there's science behind that, which we can talk about in a bit, it's innate within us. It is just as strong of a sense as seeing, tasting, touching, feeling, right? It's our knowing. We were built with this. And for centuries and centuries, we've relied on our intuition to guide us. And, you know, Jason, when you just know. You know, when someone's telling you something and you just know, it's almost like you can't explain it, right? And it's that tool built within us to help us make quicker, clear decisions that could inherently change our lives, save our lives, and help us navigate through any pivot, through any embracing of change that we might feel some resistance to. It's such a beautiful gift that we all have. You don't have to study and work with psychics and mediums or anything to really understand your intuition. What I encourage all of my clients to do is just start noticing it. And that's connected to mindfulness. So this intuitive thing that we all have, I bring it into the business world. I've had a lot of success in business. I started in, oh goodness, I moved to Los Angeles actually to pursue an acting career. And I did pretty well. I got my Screen Actors Guild card and was having fun in the industry.

[5:44] And this is a little bit of a long story. So let me figure out a way to cut this middle part out. We'll come back to it. I wound up getting into video production, spending so much time on set. I got so curious. Many actors would stay in their green room or, you know, backstage.

[6:01] And I would walk up to the camera guys and be like, what's this? What's that light meter? What's this? You know, talk to the director, ask her what's going on over there. I was such a curious person. Intuitively, I was led, I want to know more, which I think inherently led me to having my own video podcast and so many other things.

[6:20] In building up a accidental, very successful production company and being a very energetically driven person, a spiritually driven person, I also started officiating weddings. You might think, why would you start doing that, right? But I felt called. My sister and my father and my grandfather were all wedding officiates. And they said, hey, why don't you do it? Like, okay, I'll do it. I'll see what that's like in my 20s being curious and creative. So I started officiating weddings. Now, there's a point to this story. There's two points, actually. One, my company quickly became the number one wedding officiant company in Los Angeles.

[6:59] And I wound up purchasing some investment properties, having a nice portfolio, running Airbnbs. My friends would joke with me, like, it seems like whatever you touch turns to gold. What's that about? Can you teach us how to do that? So that's essentially where the business coaching came in and I wound up coaching a lot of corporate teams and entrepreneurs.

[7:18] What's interesting about the wedding piece is I was officiating a wedding for the head of learning and development for a company called Banana Republic. So you probably have heard of Gap, the clothing brand, right? And so Gap is the parent company at the time we're recording this of Banana Republic, Old Navy, Athleta, just a whole bunch of brands. And through the mindfulness and the listening to the intuition, this couple that I married, they told me the next day, it was the most beautiful piece of feedback, Jason, that they remembered every moment of their wedding. And they had previously been married to other people before it was their second wedding. Like that felt magical. Most people don't remember every moment of an entire day. Right. And maybe that's exaggerated. They remembered the majority of it, but they said, We remember every moment of our wedding. Can you please bring this mindfulness to Banana Republic and start leading and teaching mindfulness for this brand so that everyone can feel as peaceful and calm and loved and compassionate as we felt this day? If we can bring that into the corporate world, what a better place it would be for everyone. People would stop using PTO for sick days because they've run out of sick days because they're so stressed and burned out and worked out, So I said, absolutely. I think this is 2014. I hung up the phone and I Googled, what is mindfulness?

[8:45] I actually had no idea. But I was like, sure, I can help everybody feel the way I helped you feel. Oh, there's a name for that? Of course there's a name for that. So in that little story, I hope to inspire everyone listening that if your intuition tells you, yes, yes. Oh, because I just said, what is mindfulness? My Google Alexa thing started talking. Okay, let me go back. So for everyone who's listening to this, if you've got this intuitive hit that you feel led to do something and you might not have all the answers, know that it doesn't have to be perfect. You just have to bring more of your authentic self to the table. And so that's what I did. And so when I looked up this, what is mindfulness thing, I was like, oh, this is similar to Zen Buddhism, which my mother raised me very much to be, in addition to a Jewish faith, and we're just a mixed bag of everything.

[9:36] But anyhow, long story longer, I wound up leading a lot of corporate mindfulness events for some incredible groups, some incredible teams, and really helping people to listen to and trust their intuition, because listening to my intuition saved my life.

[9:52] Yeah, I'd like to explore that, because I think I read your bio, or deeper, is third stage or stage three cancer of some sort that you're a survivor of. But if we could just trail back towards sort of the gut instinct, many of us will sometimes feel a pulling of that gut instinct, that intuition that I should go this. But a lot of times we tend to ignore it. You know, sometimes, for example, a common example is someone sitting on a subway, someone sitting on a bus and their intuition something tells them that the person across them there's just not something right that you should get up and go but because we don't want to make people feel bad or whatever we sit there in the discomfort when our guts are screaming to us there's something not going on right now that's not right just get up and move what is the reason you think people tend to squash that little inner voice, that gut instinct, and tend to go with more sort of the.

[10:59] Logical narrative that's going through our heads at the moment, in the moment. Yeah, well, I think you nailed it. It's people pleasing. It's I don't want to disturb. I don't want to disrupt. I would like to be a good citizen and fall in line. And of course, there's also, you know, many people that would just, maybe they would get up because they don't like the way that person smells, right? And they just move. They don't care. And then some of us just sit through the stink because we don't want other people to feel uncomfortable. So when you really break that down, you know, there's a compassionate element to it. There's a kindness to it. It's not all bad. And I wouldn't label it as bad. But when you start to look back, and I would encourage everyone to take some time, grab a notebook or type it out, all the times you were right.

[11:50] And I'll come back to your question as well, right? If we truly start to study all the times we were right, we will stop hesitating when we get that gut feeling. And I like the term gut feeling, even though I do believe intuition comes from our heart center. But we actually have brain cells in our gut. It's the only other place in our body where brain cells exist, which is really interesting. It's connected to our fight or flight response. So why don't we get up when we have that bad feeling? Yeah, we don't want to make people feel bad. We don't want to be disruptive. And I just want everyone to know it's okay, right? It's okay to disrupt once in a while. Sometimes that disruption creates that ripple effect that creates immense change for the betterment of everyone involved. You don't know if you're not just making it safe for you but for other people as well right because if we moved what would happen we would get up from our sea we would find a new place to sit or stand right and if we had to kind of squeeze in somewhere we would probably say oh yeah i just got a weird feeling about that there's someone over there i just got a weird feeling and what does that do that then alerts the new person you're standing near to also look over and filter through their own intuition oh yeah something up maybe someone's seen that person before maybe that person is bad Maybe we need to alert the authorities.

[13:16] I think it's interesting what you said, you know, we have brain cells because I think it's called the enteric system. And I believe there's something like it's the size of a cat brain, almost the brain cells that surround our guts. And it is connected to our to our brain. And so this sense that we sometimes have, we can't sometimes articulate what that sense is. But there's a deeper resonating message coming through that sometimes if we can't put words to it it's still based on some sort of experience or knowledge and it could be an amalgamation of many things but it shows up as this signal as this message and we can call it a an emotion right we can call it or something but that's what those from what i understand is emotions are these chemical messengers and sometimes they come up uh and i just wanted to explore the science behind it because i find that fascinating because a lot of people just oh it's just a gut system but if they if you truly dive into it alicia as you do obviously there's there's much more uh science behind it is there could you speak more to that from your perspective sure and uh and i don't claim to be a scientist by any means but let's just start with the emotional piece emotions are amazing, right? It's what separates us from plants and most animals.

[14:37] And I think when we get into corporate and ladders and money and all this stuff,

[14:42] you know, we build up this armor around us. And, you know, I don't know how different it is. And I'm curious, Jason, in Norway, but in.

[14:55] To feel sensitive, or to be emotional. And, you know, there's people suppress their words, their concerns, because they don't want to come off as sensitive or emotional.

[15:09] And I truly would like to change that. I'm not encouraging everyone, you know, to be crying all day at work. That's not what I'm saying, right? There's a time and a place, if you need to cry, go cry, all right? Go to the bathroom, cry it out, go to your car, take a walk. But there is no reason to feel bad about having an emotional response ever, right? And if you're finding yourself consistently feeling anxious or depressed or incredibly emotional, then look into it, right? And perhaps it might even be a hormonal balance, imbalance, or something that needs to be corrected. But if we need to get ourselves more centered and focused and healthy and happy, do it, do what it takes to do that. And also know that sometimes these emotional waves come in phases, but when it comes to our intuition, that doesn't go away. That's not, oh, I'm now this age, so I'm more intuitive or less intuitive. It's always been there. And going back to the brain, you know, I'm going to, for those who watch, there's a part of the brain in the back of our brain. I'm sorry, I don't remember what it's called right now, but this is basically our fear response, right? There's a fear response in the back of the brain. So when we get scared of something, when we feel that, I don't know how I feel about this, it takes a minute, right? Not an entire 60 seconds, but it takes a minute to get from this fear response up to rationalization and reason. Right?

[16:39] Right? And so when you're talking about, should I just sit here on the subway? What you're doing in that time, if you really have a bad feeling about someone, is you are rationalizing, I'll just sit here. Right?

[16:52] And that fear has shown up for a reason. And we tend to rationalize ourselves out of it. And it's a calming response, right? It's a response for us to find a way to just feel better about whatever it is that's going on. But we have the option to take action. And there's nothing wrong with taking, what's the harm in just moving seats?

[17:15] Why do we think that everyone thinks we're thinking about them and that everyone's going to get offended? It's actually not the truth, right? If you and I were sitting next to each other on the subway and I just got up and moved, you would probably think, oh, I had to stop coming up soon. Like you probably wouldn't think, oh, does that girl think I smell weird or something's wrong with me? And if you do, you're probably not going to think about it all day and it's not going to ruin your life, right? So when it comes down to this behavior, which is called fawning, this people pleasing, this not wanting to make anyone feel bad. And I'm, you know, I'm a sensitive person. I don't want people to feel bad, but I've done too much fawning and people pleasing in my life, which I believe is connected to why I wound up getting breast cancer at 24 years old. I'm now in my 40s. So I've had a lot of time to reflect and think about it and a lot of medical conversations to reflect and think about it.

[18:07] So I hope I've answered your question and let me know if there's any more to that.

[18:11] Or if there's any more that you're curious about. So what I hear you're saying is listen to the emotions. You know, if you have an emotion come up, if it's fear-based, it's still good to question it because a lot of our intuition could be correct. But at the same time, it could be over-exaggerating the problem, turning a paper tiger into a tiger. And sometimes it's about the emotions are coming up, but maybe it's questioning, okay, what are these emotions based on? What's it trying to communicate to me? and what should I do about them? This is what I understand what you may be communicating. Am I sort of in the same ball field here? Yeah. Blank field? Yeah. And can we have a slight spiritual conversation real quick? Yeah. Kick it. Yeah. Okay. So I believe we have an ego and we have a spirit, right? So if you're someone who doesn't believe in that, it's okay. Just listen. Try this on.

[19:09] You don't have to, or just skip ahead 30 seconds. It's fine. All right. So we have this ego. This ego is connected to our fear because our ego is here to keep us alive. Our ego wants to make sure, Hey, you know, don't take those big chances. If you ask for that raise or that promotion, what if they don't like you for it? What if you get rejected? I want to protect you from rejection. I want to protect you from death. Our ego is constantly flaring up fear to protect us from death. Why would it do that? Because the ego cannot survive without a body. The ego is not eternal.

[19:45] Where a spirit or a soul, perhaps, or that energy, that eternal life that is within us that I do believe carries on. Remember, I was raised Buddhist, so there's past lives and karma and all that stuff we could talk about another day. Or you can come listen to The Brilliance Method, my podcast, and we get into it all the time. But our spirit's eternal. This is the energy that believes in everything we're creating, everyone we're connected to, everything we feel. Go for it. Go for the dream. Ask for the raise. Start your own job. Fall in love. Ask that person out on a date. Go to the concert. Go on the cruise. Go, go. Just a cheerful subject for joy. So that fear sometimes shows up inaccurately because the ego is trying to keep us playing small to keep us safe so that we don't die because then the ego ends its journey.

[20:37] Just my belief. So you're talking about sort of the short-term perspective and the long-term perspective. Correct. If we put other vernacular onto ego or the spiritual side of things. Because it can get tricky, like what you're saying. Sometimes there's fear, but if our fear is not always connected to our intuition, what's it connected to? We want to have a reason for that. It's the ego. So how do we know the difference between a thought-based fear, an ego-based fear, and a gut or a heart-based fear? And how do you tell the difference from your experience? Right. So there's a couple ways. First of all, if you've gotten into the habit of tracking and trusting your intuition, right? Like I said, I like you to keep a journal. I just call it, you were right. And just write down every single time you were right. Even if it's, I was thinking about this person and they called you. Or I knew I was going to get the job and I got it. Or there's so many times. Jason, can you remember a time where you just kind of knew something and then it absolutely happened?

[21:37] Definitely. Definitely. Yes. Yes. Like, I mean, I think it happens to a lot of people that you're just thinking about someone and then there they are on your phone. Right. They just call. You know, the skeptic in me says, you know, it's just coincidence. If you look at the number of times and you calculate it. And then the skeptics thing, it was just circumstance, right? It was just the stats played out. Then there's another side of me that's more thinking, wow, what happened there, right? So it's like two little voices on each of my shoulders, the skeptic and the believer or whatever you want to describe that other Jason on the other shoulder there. So yeah, I'm back and forth with this sort of thing. But it is to listen to the gut it is i i do listen to it but i question it i just don't, at least from my perspective alicia is that i don't blindly just follow what my gut says it'll come up and then i i take time to create space to allow that little quiet voice out in that vacuum out in the ether to kind of move from the background to the foreground it's not like i have a conversation with it, but I sit there and I kind of listen to it.

[22:58] Sometimes I do ask some sort of questions and I might just use pen and paper and just start scribbling and see what kind of comes out.

[23:08] That's my perspective of things. That's a beautiful process. And when you're talking about this voice here and this voice here, one's the ego, right? The skeptic is the ego and that's totally healthy. It's totally normal. Like have it, use it, allow it to question. Right. And here's the thing. When we have a skeptical mind about something, that's good, right? We are then rationalizing. We are discerning. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I'm very often a skeptic about lots of things. So I use my intuition to move forward in what it is I'm skeptic about. So it gets a little, gets a little meta, but let me ask you, have you ever had a gut feeling about something and then you were wrong. Uh, yes. Yes. Tell me about that. Um, well, I was gonna, I was going to do, um, a business partnership with someone and on the outside, he or she looked really good on paper and such. And my gut said, yeah, this sounds good. But then I got into the, into the relationship, the working relationship, and I just saw a side of that person.

[24:20] Which didn't really appeal to me. It's like, you know, sometimes when you, you can talk to a lot of people, they've hired someone in the interview, they're great on paper, they're good, they're competent, they hire them and they find out that.

[24:35] Education-wise, knowledge-wise, they are very, very good. They're at the top of their game. Psychosocial-emotionally-wise, they're a basket case. They're actually toxic to the team. But during the interview, they came off as amiable, as cordial. But once they were up and running, then they realized they made a bad choice. And in this business partnership that lasted just a slight while, I just knew that my gut was wrong in that case and I, you know, I just, I tanked the relationship, and we were two shifts that went through different directions. That was something that happened to me. All right. So I have, I have two thoughts on that. All right. Yeah. So one, a lot of what you just said was on paper, on paper, on paper, right? So, and going back to answering, how do we know if it's our fear or really our intuition. When we are analyzing and being very analytical, when we are in the brain, we're in the head, right? And sometimes when we're thinking about something, if we're trying to make a decision about something, it's so fascinating, Jason. We'll even use body language where we start touching our forehead to make the decision. Anytime you catch yourself trying to make a decision while you're touching your head.

[26:00] Pause, move your hand away, take a breath, bring it back down to that heart center, that gut. So when we say, Hey, and even you describing candidates, right on paper, they look good. The interview, you know, they came off very cordial. Those are all decisions based on, well, here it is. They went to the great, the schools, right on paper, on paper, on paper. So I would challenge you and say, was it really like your heart and soul said, your gut said, yes, this is the right person. I'm so excited to be working with this person. It feels so great, right? Now, intuition doesn't always feel great. And we'll get into that when I talk about my cancer diagnosis. But when you know, when you're excited about something and it feels really good and you don't have any hesitation around it. Like, in fact, the only hesitation you might have is when you're listening to your brain and it doesn't, it conflicts with your intuition. And then you're like, ah, I feel that. But logically, this doesn't make sense, right? Love and romance is the best example. Love is almost never logical. When it comes down to is this gonna work? Is this the right person? We can't logic our way to falling in love, right? That never works out. So, so one, I feel like, perhaps you were feeling like, well, yeah, that was my gut. My gut said, go for it, Right. And you weren't correct, but it sounds like you probably were talking yourself into it and potentially ignoring some of those feelings. So what's that about?

[27:30] I believe that everything that we are supposed to learn and experience to grow and be better will occur for us. You can call it fate. You can call it plan. You can call it maybe an outline of our life. It makes us better people. And sometimes we have experiences so that we learn to later trust our intuition more. So it's very possible that for you or anyone else who's listening, if you're like, no, I really had a good feeling about this. Why didn't it work out?

[27:59] There was something else there you either weren't paying attention to, and I'm not telling you to blame yourself at all, but it's a lesson for you to go back and remember to truly trust yourself on a deeper level and not ignore the tiny whispers that says, I don't know about this.

[28:12] Music.

[28:18] In the first half of our conversation, we examined why many people suppress their intuition, often due to people-pleasing or a fear of disrupting the status quo. Elisa suggested that reflecting on past moments where intuition proved correct, well, it can help rebuild trust in our own instincts. We also touched on the science behind gut feelings, discussing that the brain-gut connection and its link to the fight-flight response. Emotions, ego, and the role of intuition. Well, Elisa emphasized that emotions should not be suppressed or stigmatized, but rather acknowledged and examined. Especially when it's fear-based, she reflected on her own experiences with people-pleasing and how it may have impacted her own health. We also explored the difference between ego-based fear and gut-based intuition, discussing how intuition can guide us even when skepticism rises.

[29:13] Now, we also looked and explored into the importance of balancing intuition with logic when making decisions, particularly in high stress or complex situation. She encouraged pausing and breathing before making choices, as this simple act can help separate genuine intuition from fear or ego-driven reactions. Taking time to pause and break and just sit in the moment, even in a highly complex, fast-moving, dynamic situation.

[29:43] Well, the logic is this, and it may sound counterintuitive by slowing down we actually speed things up meaning that if we sit down and as Alicia advised listens that little voice and explore what that voice is saying it might help us find clarity and coherence in making the decisions that we want to make, the decision that leads in the right direction, so let's now slip back into the stream part two of my conversation.

[30:11] Music.

[30:19] In a situation that has some sort of change or complexity or challenge that has shown up on their doorstep, Alicia, uninvited, it becomes very hard for all of us to sometimes to delineate what is the true essence, the message, the intuition, the gut feeling, and what is fear or ego-based. And I understand mindfulness is part of the process, but in that moment, a person may not have the ability or the patience to go into a sort of a mindful practice per se. How can a person distinguish in the moment between what is the signal and what is noise? So unless you're in an emergency situation, you've got a minute. Truly, you've got a minute. So if you need to excuse yourself, if you have to make a decision in front of everyone, and it's okay to just pause for a second. People will be listening, waiting for your decision. You just breathe, right? I encourage you to break eye contact from the person you have to make that decision with or for. Just turn your chair, right? Look at a wall or a window.

[31:34] And just breathe. And truly just drop it down. Give yourself a moment to hear the truth of what's the next step for you. Because you do know. The majority of the times we make mistakes is when we've rushed. And I always say to my clients, don't rush. Do it right. And this is about excellence. And a big part of this excellence is that mindful moment.

[32:00] Doesn't even need to be a full minute. that moment to pause and give yourself permission to listen.

[32:10] Just listen. We all know when we're making a decision just based on the numbers or the money or the relationship. And it feels pretty good. But there's still that one little, that tiny little pit. You feel it and you're ignoring it because you're like, I guess this is going to come back and teach me later. And I promise you, Jason, if we could go back in time, you would have had that little teeny tiny pit or whisper that was like, oh, there's still, it's not 100%. You know what? You're probably correct. This was a few years back and I'm just kind of recalling it now. But again, if we come back and we got a little more nuts and bolts, so you talk about having a mindful moment, disconnecting eye contact, maybe to have a bio break, go to the bathroom, just kind of sit in the stall and just find that space, right? To kind of center per se.

[33:07] But you know with the emotions you know whether it's cortisol or adrenaline or whatever it is running through us because we're in a stressful and emotionally entangled moment we've taken ourself out we're sitting there in a mindful moment but i guess my question is even deeper into the weeds here how can we separate the grass from the weeds i mean how are we is there a particular questions we should ask ourselves at least from your deep experience in that moment to distinguish between ego and instinct or not instinct intuition i'm sorry yes am i making this decision from a place of fear and if if the answer is yes i'm making this place it is fear-based, then what tends to arise if a person's thinking okay i've asked myself the question i know it's fear-based what next i mean is it to just to stay in the moment what should that what would you suggest for that person? Sure, sure. So I love that. If you realize, if you're aware enough and mindful enough to go, yeah, you know what? I am making this decision out of fear.

[34:16] If I made this decision from a place of love, from a place of joy, from a place of groundedness, what other decision would I make? A lot of people make fear-based decisions around money. How could they not, right? It's based on their safety and their survival. So if i said okay we'll take money out of the equation right you've got plenty of money what decision would you make oh well then i would do this okay how can we do more of that maybe we can't do all of that yet how can we do more of that.

[34:52] So it's by reframing or re-engineering the question to take out maybe the variables or the constants that are fueling the fear. Is that what I understand you're saying? Yeah, we should not be making decisions based on fear. One of the things I wanted to talk to you about is, you know, when leaders and managers or anybody, they're facing some level of complexity and they're sort of back and forth on either side of the fence.

[35:19] And all of a sudden they're starting to feel decision fatigue how does someone deal with that how does someone overcome that fatigue that exhaustion when it comes to oh what am I going to choose yeah and that can come up a lot especially with like mass layoffs even just letting go of someone that that you really enjoy in your company you know and you're just weighing on it weighing on it or even something really wonderful like should we accept the sale right Maybe somebody wants to buy the company. And what is that going to look like for everybody? So there will be some fear. I'm not saying for you to eliminate fear from the situation. I'm asking you to make your decision not from the scared place. So if you're feeling scared and you're like, I'm just so scared or I'm fatigued, as you say, and I have decision fatigue, what can I possibly do? Again, pause, breathe. Okay, and back in the day, we would write out here's the pros and here's the cons, right? So that gets back into the logical brain. And if that helps you, then do that work, do that exercise, don't rush, do it right.

[36:23] Okay, I've looked at all the pros, I've looked at all the cons. When I look at this, how do I feel?

[36:29] You know when people flip a coin to make a decision? Yep. They don't usually do what the coin says. The coin proves to them how they actually feel about the decision. Right? If you're like, okay, do you want Chinese tonight or do you want Italian? You're like, I don't know, flip a coin. All right, head's Chinese. It lands on tails. You're like, I really want Chinese. Okay, great. Right? It helps you get clarity on your decision. So it's just understanding and knowing yourself enough to trust yourself to make a good decision. If you fully trust yourself, and this is an intuitive practice, I trust myself, I know that I make great decisions. And any incredible leader out there who's gotten to where they've gotten probably makes pretty great decisions. So if you know that you're trustworthy, you can start to heal the fatigue because you got a pretty good chance you're not going to screw it up because you haven't screwed it up before. Doesn't mean you won't screw it up, but lean into trusting yourself. Now, at every level of any job, people feel a sense of, you know, imposter syndrome, right? There's so many words for it. But I don't think that ever truly goes away, but it's only as real as we make it.

[37:50] And if you lean into the celebration of imposter syndrome, it's truly a joy of, oh my gosh, like who gave me this much power? Who gave me this much permission, right? I'm a surgeon. I'm in here opening up someone's heart. Who told me I could do this, right? Sometimes I think about that, Jason, when I'm driving my car. I'm like, look at all of us human beings. We're such a mess. we're so distracted. We're so weird. And they've given us permission to drive these death machines or like who gave us this permission, right? And then you just start to lean into just the silliness of being human.

[38:27] Stop taking it so seriously. And then when you can lean into just a moment of play, bringing in that emotion, lightening it up, we can make a decision. It's a very astute point you're making.

[38:43] On paper, it sounds good. In this conversation, it sounds good. Just to be the devil's advocate here, to trust ourselves.

[38:54] I know so many people who are so self-critical that have so much self-doubt that there's more self-flagellation than there is self-compassion and the ability to trust themselves is logical and rational they know it but emotionally they're not aligned with that because in the heat of the moment that self-critical voice that ego-driven voice throws throws it up to them and they can't and they they find that they can't trust themselves they they find that they get lost in the the negative narrative that is spun by the negativity bias of our survival brain as you've called it right the the fight and flight but the question i guess the question is you know when someone's caught in a cycle of negative thinking rumination overthinking again how do they apply the brakes if because for me what you're saying makes is a salient point it is a very salient point but for me my my head's going in order to trust oneself one has to have a lot of experience he or she has to have gone through the gauntlet of experience and experience is the best teacher what works what doesn't work what we need to improve what we should continue with best practice but a lot of us are so locked into self-flagellation.

[40:17] Self-critical voice, how do we make that evolutionary step towards trusting ourselves?

[40:25] This is doing the inner work. So when you say, you know, we need to have a lot of experience.

[40:31] Yeah. And we don't need to have a great resume to have a lot of experience. And with that said, if you've got a great resume, maybe you're a VP or you're a CEO, you're running the joint. How much life experience do you have? Right? There's one thing to go, okay, I've graduated with honors, got my alma mater, and I'm doing it. I'm doing the damn thing. And on paper, right? Got the house, got the kids, got all this, got all this, got all this. But what have I ignored to get here?

[41:06] And when we ignore that true sense of self, when this goes back to talking about feeling our emotions, making more choices from a place of joy and love, not from fear, like maybe for example, you want to take your family on vacation and that feels really joyful and lovely, but I can't really take that much time off work. What if people judge me for being gone? What if I don't trust the person running it? We start to question and not do the things that fill us up with joy. So we start to create these stories around ourselves, around our lives, around our work, and we are only focusing on what didn't go well, right? That self-flagellating. And I believe what we focus on expands. And if anyone's ever studied even the law of attraction, right? The more you put your mind to something, the more it'll happen. And there's plenty of books about this, Think and Grow Rich, and old, old books that this is science. There is quantum physics behind this. What you focus on in your life expands more of. So if you're always thinking about, oh, yes, I did great. I won the award, but I could have done better. I didn't do enough. We can always do better.

[42:17] Sure, we can always do better. But as long as you did your best in the moment, and it was the best you could have done then with what you had, great. Let yourself have it. Let yourself own that win. And with my clients every week we focus on our wins and we focus on what's working, and if I'm doing a private session with someone and they've got a lot of crap they need to work through the first thing we do at the top of the session is okay before we get into the story, of what's not working and what's going wrong what's going well and why like if I ask you to give me a gratitude I don't just say write a gratitude list people roll their eyes at that stuff nowadays. But if you actually have something you're grateful for, tell me three reasons why. When we start to understand the why underneath something, whether it's a gratitude list or even a task, we feel more connected to it. And then we are more driven to follow in that path. So if you are someone who is constantly beating yourself up for not doing good enough or reflecting back on your years and your quarters and going, ah, it just wasn't great, right? A lot of people will start a new year and they'll look back at the previous year and be like, yeah, that year sucked.

[43:33] And I was guilty of this. In the beginning of 2025, I was like, I just kind of looked back at 2024 and I was like, no, thanks. I don't want to do that year again, right? No, thanks. I was looking at, it wasn't the year that I made the most money.

[43:49] I'm like, why am I putting that in front of everything? I made more money in 2023. So why was 2024 not better, right? In 2024, I was sick a lot. I'm like, oh, I wasn't as sick in 2023, right? We're comparing, comparing, comparing. I'm like, so I'm going to blanket statement and say, yeah, 2024 was terrible. But I need to do my own work. So I'm not a hypocrite. So the first thing I did on New Year's Day when I was like, yeah, 2024 sucked. Like, wow, Alicia, watch your words. your words or your wand, what you focus on expands.

[44:21] I don't want more terrible years. I want more abundant, great years. So I actually looked back and I went through, I have three calendars, Jason. I have my digital calendar. I'll get your iCal or your Google Cal. I've got a calendar in my office, a paper calendar. And then I have the family calendar in the kitchen that we all write anytime there's days off or vacation. And I looked at all my calendars. Now here's the thing. When you've got a calendar and something terrible happens, you usually don't write it in, right if you're like oh i i was sick today right you don't write that on your calendar you probably write it in a journal or you don't write it so when i looked back at everything i did like i was on vacation for about five months out of the year.

[45:02] I i love the band pearl jam and they actually have a song called it's an inside job i'll send it to you i listened to that back in the 90s yes so i love pearl jam and i have so many friends in the Pearl Jam community, and I started the year in January. I went to New Orleans. I just felt called to travel. I traveled. I launched my podcast. I went to so many new states I hadn't been to. I went to Australia for a couple of weeks. I was out of town and off work the majority of the year. Of course, I didn't make as much money. I was gone. I wasn't working at all, really. I had my private clients. I did some speaking engagements. I worked when I wanted to work. I actively chose to work less. So in the end, when I was like, huh, on paper, it didn't look like as good of a year, right? And the year started, like I said, I got sick. I wanted to take a lot of time off to fuel me for the future. So the point is, when I looked back and I wrote out the whole list of all the things I did and all the places I went and all the, I got to spend more time with my family. It's like, oh my God, 2024 was actually amazing. Why was I being so analytical about it? And the times that I got, you know, I got the flu once and I got a sinus infection. Of course I did. I was probably on 40 different airplanes in 20 different states across two different continents.

[46:27] Right? So when we actually look at why do I think something is bad, break it down for yourself. So if anyone is looking back at the last year of their work or quarter or their life and be like, I'm just not where I want to be, please pause and journal it out, write it out, type it out. All the things you did accomplish, all the things you did do, all the choices you made that filled your heart and made your family happy. It's not always about the metrics. And everything that I did in 2024 has set me up for so much success this year.

[47:02] It's unbelievable the opportunities that have come from just the rest and time I took off and the people that I've met. Well, what's interesting, what I hear is then, you know, back to the trailhead of this particular part of this topic, to move from self-critical thoughts and self-flagellation to trusting yourself.

[47:19] It's talking about how we filter what we're looking at. It's about reframing. At the top of this, you talked about gratitude. What are we appreciative for? We can say our kids and our family, but maybe the small things every day, something special that happened that day in that sense of grateful. And as you said, at the top of a client meeting, that's what you will focus on, what went well or what was good that day. Because what I hear that does, that primes my thinking because I'm focusing on something already constructive or positive. And then I take a much more objective look at maybe the things that haven't gotten so well. What I also hear, what you're saying is we don't calendar in our sick days, right? Or when we have a sinus infection or whatever, a cold or a headache or something. But it's to actually expand the picture. Because when we are in a negative, uncompassionate state for ourselves, in a self-flagellation state, we have only a small filter that we're seeing things. But if we expand it, as you did to 2024, you were traveling five months, different states, Australia, what have you. And the seeds that you planted in 2024, you can harvest now in 2025 by expanding the picture for any of us.

[48:38] Well, maybe the negativity is too much what we're focusing on when we broaden that picture, the latitude and altitude of our perception.

[48:48] We can bring a much more nuanced way of looking at life. It's not just black and white, but a multitude of colors per se.

[48:57] A hundred percent. I love the way that you wrapped that up for me. And in going back to the gratitude, why? Grateful for your kids. Why? One gratitude, three reasons why. I believe it was UPS when they started giving instructions to their teams, starting up more on the management side and the corporate side, they made a rule that every time they instructed anyone to do anything, when they initiated a task for an employee, they told them why.

[49:26] And after they did that, everything shifted like people were i think it went up by about 60 to 80 percent of effectiveness in their work so you could look up this study it's pretty fascinating when people start to understand so people sorry the ups united parcel service just to open that acronym so what the company did they would ask the employee like would the employee be in a problem and the the ups would ask them why or could you expand on that sure sure sure so perhaps they're going to send out an email that says, Hey, everyone, we're changing your uniform to this. I'm just making this up. Here's why we're making this change. This is why we're making this change, right? Or Hey, everyone, from now on, we're gonna have, you know, on Fridays, everyone leaves at 4pm. Here's why. Or Hey, everyone, you are now required to attend a mandatory meeting on Monday morning at 830. Here's why. When people are just blindly told to do something, they don't want to, right? That's that little kid in us that's like, why? Because I said so. What do you mean because I said so? I was that kid. Because I said so was not the answer I was ready to hear, especially people in business, entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, people who are very passionate about what they do. We want to feel purposeful.

[50:44] Without that purpose, we are less motivated. So by telling somebody why we're asking them to do something, just adding that second line to the email or the meeting, then they can connect inherently to their own purpose.

[50:58] And the reason why people burn out, feel fatigue, or wind up leaving jobs they've been at for a long time is because they don't feel purposeful. And what we don't want at the end of our life is to go, yeah, I don't know if I made a difference. Well, you had a beautiful family. And it's like, yeah, but did I contribute? Right? And if we're not reflecting on it and understanding the why behind the choices we're making, we can start to feel that emptiness inside that leads to those moments where maybe I don't trust myself.

[51:27] So all these pieces add up, Jason, like, we have to, we really have to feel some significance. Otherwise, you know, you zoom out on this earth, and we look like tiny ants, does anything we do matter? You know, and then we compare it to do I need to win a Pulitzer Prize to matter, you know, or a Purple Heart? No, what you do every day matters. If it's meaningful to you, how can we make it more meaningful to me? Where can I understand my own purpose and significance? You know, it kind of goes into what Gay Hendricks teaches about the four zones of consciousness. Are you familiar with that? No, I'm not.

[52:04] There's this incredible book called The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks. And Gay Hendricks, if you heard the term, your zone of genius. I've heard that, yeah. Is that from him? Right. That's from him. So Gay Hendricks coined that term. And essentially, there's four zones of consciousness. And the idea is when we live fully in our zone of genius, that's when we have the capacity to make the most money. That's when we're the most happy. We just do what we are motivated and inspired to do. It's like my husband calls it mad scientist mode when you're just doing your thing and you don't even realize how much time goes by because it's been so much fun like this episode, right? You're just doing what you're meant to do. That's your zone of genius. And maybe it's not always fun. You know, sometimes your zone of genius might be something, you know, maybe you're a grief counselor that's not always fun, but you just feel so connected to it. You just want to keep doing it. So beneath that is your zone of excellence, which I call the golden handcuffs. That's usually the corporate job we have where we just feel in our heart and soul like something's missing.

[53:06] And maybe it's not, well, I'm not at the top of the food chain. I'm not at the top of the ladder. So that's what's missing. No, there's something within you that you're not fully living, fully expressing, fully being connected to your work. Right? And maybe we'll give a weird example. let's say you know you work you're corporate high up in a retail company but you've just, always had a passion for art does that mean you're going to quit your job and go be a painter or go be an art dealer probably not but you can start to heal and be inspired by spending more time at museums maybe picking up a paintbrush maybe doing some things and lo and behold people are starting to ask you questions about it like the universe starts to conspire in your favor to support your zone of genius. But when we stay stuck in our golden handcuffs, in our zone of excellence, we may live a very, you know, on paper fulfilled life with a great salary, win a lot of awards, receive a lot of accolades, but it just feels like something's missing. And when I was a video producer full time, I produced from 2005 up until about 2020, working for other big companies, producing their content and their shows. That was my zone of excellence, right? It's like, Alicia, how could you ever leave the industry? You're so good at it. You're so good at it. You hear it over and over. How could you quit? You're so good at it.

[54:26] Wasn't 100% fulfilled, maybe like 85% fulfilled, wasn't 100% fulfilled, not good enough. This is my lifetime. It's my only time around as Alicia.

[54:36] I want to do it right. Even if it's scary, even if it means taking five months off, traveling the world, right, and going into savings to do it. So then even below that, there's your zone of competence. Your zone of competence is probably the job you got right out of high school or college that you're really not great at, but like maybe a friend referred you and you just need some money and you probably shouldn't be doing it. I worked at Keller Williams in my early 20s, early 20s, you know, just, I wasn't a real estate agent, but I was the director of agent services, just like answering phones, helping people make flyers, right? But where I got to lean into my zone of genius is clients would, real estate agents would come into my office and shut the door and just start really talking to me as their counselor, not my job but oh at least i'm so stressed and da da da and i really want to do luxury but you know we're in this neighborhood that's and right so then i got to lean into that and discover more and more of that so that's zone of incompetence zone of incompetence if you're listening and you're in a zone of incompetence in your job just quit now it's not worth it you usually spend.

[55:44] And waste more time and money than you make in your zone of incompetence um sometimes we do tasks in our zone of incompetence. For me, it's assembling like flat pack furniture or like building, like putting together an office chair, right? You know, when you order from Ikea or Amazon, it's like, do you want to spend the $80 to have somebody else build this for you? You're like, no, I don't want to spend the $80. Then what do you do? You spend your entire weekend trying to put this stupid thing together. You've realized you put this one backwards. You got to take it all apart. You're so pissed. You're fighting with your spouse.

[56:17] Oh my gosh, just spend the $80. It's your zone of incompetence, right? If you're a terrible cook, get a meal service ordered. If you're, if you are really bad at cleaning, you just not one for details. You don't like it. Hire a housekeeper. You will save time and make more money when you replace any area in your life of your zone of incompetence. So those are your four zones. And I hope that you will spend more time in your zone of genius. And, uh, maybe you'll have Gay Hendricks on your show. It's a great book. So at the top of the conversation, we talked about intuition. And the intuition is the ability to filter from fear-based to actually gut-based. Remove that. And as you were talking about, it's about asking ourselves.

[57:01] Better engineered questions and that may be what are we grateful for what has actually that that's gone well for us and that allows us to over time with experience to begin to shift from self-critical thoughts to trusting ourselves and through that trusting ourselves there's a groundedness where we start to build almost a sense of self-confidence in what we're doing but we need to be able to filter this through different ways as you said there could be a gratefulness practice it could be writing out our thoughts uh taking a mindful moment to try to strip away the fear and try to look at the core the the hub of what's what are our guts uh trying to communicate to us it's to understand what the emotion is trying to communicate to us.

[57:48] And it's through that filter that we create a broader latitude and altitude we start to see the nuances of our perception, of the different information we should be taking in or can take in or want to take in to make much more informed choices. By making informed choices, this helps us to avoid decision fatigue,

[58:10] going left, right, left, right, up and down, but actually finding where we want to go. Because we've talked about a number of different things, but everything's connected. It's almost like a sphere and we've taken out different chunks of the sphere, but it It all fits back together, right? That's my metaphor. What you're saying makes so much sense because that is what puts the brake on rumination. Because what's rumination? You're going over and over and over. The same thing, trying to close the decision loop. But you don't find the off-ramp. You're just going in circles and circles, overthinking your negative thinking.

[58:45] And what I hear, what you're saying, Alicia, is take a moment, quiet down, find some sort of center, plant your feet somewhere and just kind of sit with yourself just slow things down and then slowing things down you may actually speed things up. There it is and as you were talking about you know all of it is just kind of circling what's inside is that heart that decision right your heart or your gut however you want to describe it but it's all here it's the truth within you it's your internal guidance system.

[59:20] We've trusted this, like I said, for centuries. You know, people remember in history, people would have seers and soothsayers like come to the palaces to say, what do you feel? What should I do? Right? Because the kings and queens were just so distraught, right? And so here I am touching my head, even thinking about distraught. So just move it in. Your body is such a good barometer for the truth of what is best for you. And I'll even go into kinesiology with this sometimes. If I'm having a hard time making a decision, I will stand up and I will imagine, okay, I'm going to do this, right? Or I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. Do I feel my body leaning towards it or leaning away from it? When I start to think, okay, right, maybe I'm going to take this full-time consulting offer for this new brand, right? If I close my eyes and I stand up and I listen and I say, okay, I'm taking the offer, I'm taking the offer. Or do I gently start to, and sometimes it's really subtle. Our intuition can be really subtle, which is why it's important to quiet your mind and just tune in. Do I start to lean back on my heels a little bit? Or do I start to lean towards my toes a little bit? So I use kinesiology as a fail-safe when I can't get out of my head.

[1:00:38] That's a very interesting tip. That's a very interesting tip. So what do you do? You actually physically stand, close your eyes, put the question into your your mind and then you kind of yeah right so i'm standing okay so i'm going to turn this way and so let's say okay i'm going to accept this full-time consulting offer nope right i start to lean back i'm like that's going to take away all my freedom all my opportunities going to take away from the show there it is okay i'm going to go all in on my podcast, right? I'm going to go all in. Yeah, that feels good. Like my heart is just leading me forward, right? And so it's not just about thinking. So for those of you who are listening, instead of watching, I actually stood up and I was noticing where my body went and I hadn't actually asked myself that question yet today. So that was kind of fun to feel like, oh, I feel really led to just keep doing my own teaching, right?

[1:01:32] Not to fall under someone else's umbrella right now, right? Maybe that question will be different in three months, right? We don't know. it's okay to ask ourselves again but when we quiet and we listen and we just feel, like like i said our body knows the truth and before we wrap up jason i'll just briefly share the story of my breast cancer diagnosis which was completely intuitive please when when i was 24.

[1:02:06] I was in the shower and I wasn't specifically doing a breast check or breast exam, but I felt my pinky graze over my right breast and I felt this lump. And that's the moment that I just knew. And I almost saw inside my own body and I just touched my forehead like a third eye, right? I saw inside my body, oh, this is serious. I have cancer. I'm not a hypochondriac. I don't have anyone in my family who had cancer like that.

[1:02:31] I just knew. Logic would say, you're too young to have cancer. Nobody in your family has cancer. You don't know anything about cancer. I just knew. I paused. I was so still. I remember the water running down my body. And it wasn't great news. It wasn't this joyful, exciting, intuitive hit, but I was still enough to hear it. I wasn't doing mindless activities and then second guessing it and tell myself, well, statistically, and shut it down. So I called my doctor, made an appointment. That was a Friday night. By Tuesday, a second lump had shown up in my armpit, which is my lymph nodes. So my doctor said, my doctor who I trust, and all of us, if you have a medical professional you like, they are the authority. They went to school on this. They know better than we do. My doctor said, it's probably just a cyst. Why don't we wait a month and see if anything changes? The one in your armpit kind of worries me a little bit. So long story short, I wound up getting it tested. And it turned out I had stage three breast cancer. It was advancing so fast. The oncologist, the cancer doctor said, we need to have, this was now, I think this is a Thursday. She said, you need to have surgery tomorrow. you could be dead in the next 30 days. Wow.

[1:03:56] Hmm. Well, had I listened to the professionals, had I thought maybe this isn't a big deal. I don't need to go to the doctor yet. Had I logicked myself out of it, I would not be here. And the, and I've talked to so many people who have been through so many different illnesses and when it's really advanced, the majority of them say, I wish I had gotten it checked sooner. I wish i had i wish i had so for anyone listening if you have any of those regrets in your head i wish i had done this about anything in your life right like who's the girl that got away in high school are you still single look her up right like go for it any of those i wish i had there's a reason you're still making those wishes that that little you that that innocent person inside of you that young spirit that's like, I believe in magic, right? Like the world hasn't proven to me that maybe, you know, gravity isn't a hundred percent.

[1:04:59] There's truth and joy in there. So listen, reflect back, not just all the times you were right, but what else is still kind of hanging over you that you're like, huh, maybe this is still possible for me. And listen to that song in your heart. Maybe you've got a book you've always wanted to write and you're logically thinking, I'm too old or I don't know any publishers or how does that even happen? Or that sounds like a lot of work, right? That's the ego. That's the fear keeping you small.

[1:05:31] Freaking go for it. Write the damn book, right? If five people read it, amazing, right? When I look at my podcast and like some episodes, you know, there's lots and lots of downloads and some, there's only a few. And when I'm like, huh, maybe there was only 20 or 30 downloads, episode just came out or that person didn't promote it. And I get in my head about it. And I'm like, that was, those were 40 people. Those were 30 or 40 individual human beings with their own lives that took the time to listen and learn.

[1:06:00] And maybe you've changed someone's life just by having that one conversation. It matters. And these little things add up to that significance that when we start to feel it, then inherently we start to trust ourselves more and more and more. Like you said, it's all connected. Alicia, it's been an intriguing episode, a conversation with you.

[1:06:24] If someone wanted to reach out to connect with you, where would be the space or the place to do that? Thank you. My website is my name, elisiaskye.com, E-L-Y-S-I-A-S-K-Y-E, like the Isle of Sky, dot com. And you can learn about my programs. I come and teach mindfulness, of course, and intuitive development. On a corporate and a personal level. And I do individual sessions as well. I have some online courses. And of course, the podcast, The Brilliance Method, available where all your favorite podcasts are held. So thank you. Brilliant. Thank you very much for sharing your deep knowledge, your experience, and your intuition with us.

[1:07:05] Music.

[1:07:17] Examined how self-trust, emotional awareness, and reframing perspective, well, how we can transform the way we approach challenges. Alicia shared valuable insights on recognizing and overcoming fear-based decision-making, leveraging mindfulness to navigate uncertainty and embrace intuition as a practical strategic tool rather than just a fleeting instinct.

[1:07:41] Alicia also talked about the importance of role of self-compassion in reducing decision fatigue and building confidence, how to balance logic and intuition for more effective leadership in our own personal growth, and the importance of aligning decisions with clarity, purpose, and long-term vision. There's a reason we all have intuition, that little voice in the back of our heads that tries to inform us, tries to help guide us. And the connection is between the brain and the gut, and a lot more elements that we don't fully comprehend. But sometimes that gut instinct, that's based on deep knowledge and experience that could span decades. And it's hard for us to consciously and cognitively articulate what that is. And sometimes it shows up as that little signal. And as Alicia said time and time again, it's to sit down with that signal, allow it to grow and to explore. Because in the end, it could really be the answer that we're looking for. Alicia, thank you very much for a great conversation today. I really appreciate it. Folks, I will leave her contact information in the podcast notes and in the episode notes and reach out to her if your intuition lights you up. Well, folks, I will see you on Friday for Bite Size Fridays. And until then, keep well.

[1:09:03] Music.


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Jason Birkevold Liem

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