The Tilted Halo
The Tilted Halo podcast has a refreshing and honest perspective on the challenges pastors face in their ministry and those involved in ministry as a whole. Hosted by Pastor Kathleen Panning, who has seen it all, this edgy show explores the idea that we all have a "tilted halo" - a recognition that we are not perfect and all make mistakes.
Through personal experiences, interviews with fellow pastors, leaders, and insights from scripture, this show offers advice and encouragement for those struggling with the weight of their imperfections. From burnout and rude awakenings to personal failures and shortcomings, The Tilted Halo provides a safe space for pastors to share their struggles and find support from a community of like-minded souls around the globe.
With a focus on authenticity, vulnerability, and humanity at large, this podcast challenges the notion that pastors must have it all together and invites listeners to embrace their humanity and lean into the grace of God. Whether you are a pastor or someone looking for a fresh perspective on life's challenges, The Tilted Halo is a must-listen in the search for hope, healing, and a renewed sense of purpose.
The Tilted Halo
EP 57: Leading from the Soul: How Faith Creates Authentic Leadership in Business and Beyond
Journey into the intersection of faith and leadership with host Kathleen Panning and Ambassador Terry Earthwind Nichols in this thought-provoking episode that challenges conventional wisdom about power, choice, and authenticity.
Ambassador Nichols shares profound insights on how women of faith bring unique strengths to leadership roles. Far from the stereotype of "soft and gushy," women who lead from spiritual groundings demonstrate remarkable resilience and effectiveness because they're connected to something deeper than position or title.
The conversation explores our capacity for conscious choice—a revolutionary perspective that frees us from self-judgment and creates space for growth. "There is no good choice or bad choice," Nichols explains. "There's simply a choice, and we get to change our mind anytime." This framework allows leaders to make decisions from their hearts, use their souls for counsel, and keep their brains for storage.
Perhaps most fascinating is Nichols' perspective on humanity's evolution toward community-centered leadership. Drawing from both Native American wisdom and scientific understanding, he suggests we're moving into a new phase of consciousness where power-based approaches will give way to recognition that "we are all one." This shift mirrors quantum physics' revelations about interconnectedness and resonates with spiritual teachings across traditions.
Whether you're navigating ministry challenges, leading a business team, or simply seeking to understand yourself better, this conversation offers a refreshing framework for embracing imperfection as the very space where growth occurs. The "tilted halo" isn't a flaw—it's an invitation to authentic leadership that transforms both the leader and those they serve.
Welcome to the Tilted Halo. This is a new podcast and it's for anybody who's a woman in ministry. You might be a pastor like myself, a bishop, a priest, a rabbi, music minister, elder children's minister whatever your title is, you're absolutely in the right place, especially if you're someone who loves your ministry and you're doing it well and you're feeling pressure to sometimes be perfect and deep down inside, you know you're not. And how in the world to deal with that? And men, you're absolutely welcome here too, because this is about ministry and the same thing can happen to you. So you're all in the right place. Let's get started with the show. It is my great honor and privilege to have a guest with me today on the Tilted Halo and someone I met recently at an event Mostly women present, but we had a few wonderful, good-natured and helpful gentlemen with us as well.
Speaker 1:This is Ambassador Terry Earthwind Nichols, creator and grandmaster of repetitive behavior, cellular regression. He believes we are born with a predetermined personality. Through a CR session, terry helps his clients step into who they are and who they came here to be. Ambassador Terry shares many pertinent messages with the world, including the get-to versus have-to mindset. He is an internationally known author, mentor, world thought leader, speaker and business strategist. Terry has been part of the world peace and environmental movement since completing his very first vision quest as a retired US Navy profiler and after discovering he was Native American at age 46, Terry endeavors to live in a present state of awareness. He believes that presence is the point where manifestation becomes action and helps his clients connect their heads with their hearts. Terry is a commissioned Stephen minister and some of you will know what that is all about. Some of you may not. So for those who do not, ambassador Terry, would you share a little bit about what Stephen Ministry is?
Speaker 2:Stephen Ministry is an international non-denominational ministry, headquarters out of St Louis, missouri, and I was commissioned through my church in Minneapolis, first Lutheran Church. We go through. Basically what we do is we are a ministry that serves people who are in need in various crises. Grief, end of life are two that we use a lot Divorce there's well, there's need for ministry in a lot of different places and that helped me kind of set up a lot of what I do in my mentoring as well.
Speaker 1:That's really wonderful. I helped facilitate a very similar program at one of the congregations I served and we also that congregation had sponsored a group home for men who had schizophrenia. So I learned with that a lot about at least a little bit about some mental illness issues and ministering in that kind of a setting, as well as those that you're speaking about. So it was a very powerful and important program for not only for members, but many times it touched people far into the community as well, to the community as well. So, and I'm sure you found that as well. So, but, Terry, you are here with me and we're going to talk a little bit about women's faith in leadership in this world today and connecting that with what you do as well. So what do you see as some of the issues and the strengths that women of faith bring to leadership in the business world?
Speaker 2:Dynamic question and is so commonly overlooked is the fact that when one is attached to a belief that touches their soul and gives them nourishment and, through that nourishment, gives them confidence to move forward and be a connector and a and be a connector and a conduit for those who work for them and work with them, they become the example because they live a life that is from the soul and from the heart. That doesn't mean that they're soft and gushy and those kinds of things that men like to call women. They're not at all okay. They are excellent leaders. They are people who how do I say this? Grouped together as children and grew up in an environment that nurtured their participation. Later on in life, as they grew in their organizations or started a new organization, they were able to take that group connection and expand it to send it out.
Speaker 2:I have a personal belief that you cannot give what you do not have. So if you want to give love and understanding to those around you, you have to have love and understanding inside you, and often that is in the form of prayer and connection with those of similar beliefs. Sometimes it's different religion but similar beliefs. You know, we are human beings living a spiritual experience, okay, and others say that we're spiritual beings living a human experience. Well, in my opinion, there's no real difference. If you're spiritual, you're in touch with yourself, you're connected to the great beyond and all the love and the connection that that brings to you. You become a stronger spirit, a stronger person, a stronger parent, a stronger part of the community that nourishes your beliefs and your connection with God.
Speaker 1:Yes, and I heard a quote recently with some of the things going on in the world today about what makes somebody a great person, and it went like this Great men I was talking about a man in this case make decisions that other men can't, and it was spoken of someone who is a leader in a very public way and has a very deep faith. And that says to me you know that our faith in leadership enables us many times to make some of those tough decisions, and they're not necessarily soft and mushy, but they can be some of those tough decisions that other people wouldn't be as willing or as able to make because they don't have that foundation there and they don't have a connection to a broader community to help support them in that sense and I see that for women as well as men. In that sense, does that fit with how you're seeing all of this put together?
Speaker 2:Yes, I think it does.
Speaker 1:Yes, I think it does.
Speaker 2:You know my observations of people. I've been a lifelong people watcher and that helped me to create the repetitive behavior, cellular regression sequence and what I have found consistently throughout the world. I was a I am a retired Navy man US Navy and I traveled a lot of the world. There is no difference when it comes to peoples of different backgrounds living in different countries, living in different neighborhoods. The fact is, when there's community, the walls that separate men and women and black and white and all of those kinds of things start to crumble, or they do crumble, in that we're all in this together. We all have different jobs. That's how I teach my people too. We all have different jobs.
Speaker 2:It doesn't matter if you're CEO of an international corporation like mine, or the partner in a mom and pop health and wellness company in rural Minnesota and that's not saying anything against them either. It's, you know, my wife and I. She's the love of my life and I'm the love of her life, and we argue because we're two different emotional units and we've got a system that when that happens, we have a way of self-claiming a timeout. We go I'm going to a one. That means 15 minutes. We don't talk to each other about whatever we're arguing about, gives us a moment, take a breath and let the mind just rest. And then, when we get back together, we're two adult beings and we sit down and say, well, this is what I meant when I said now that I think about it, I probably should have said, and the other person will say well, this is what I heard and that triggered me, and when I had a minute to think about it, I went out and I found why that triggered me. Now, this big blow up situation has now become a connected communication where both of us can move forward as lovers, as partners on this journey of life, and the same holds true with business partners two males, two females or any combination of that. If you can take a moment to step back, get a hold of yourself, because nothing's going to happen until you're in control of yourself. If you're doing everything from your ego, good luck. You're doing everything from your heart and your soul. Now you have validity within yourself and you can then give validity. And I, in my experience a lot of companies that I worked with and as chief ceos, senior, uh, politicians of countries uh, one thing that that holds true with their leadership ability is their ability to stop and listen, to understand not listen, listen, to reply. Right Recently we had the international Nelson Mandela Day.
Speaker 2:A great spiritual man and spiritual leader and everything was against that man most of his adult life until circumstances freed him. That whole time he was in prison he was not a man of anger and all those kinds of things. He ministered to the guards that guarded him every day. Wow Okay. He helped them understand their lives, who he was and his beliefs and the just cause that free religion and free people could do. And you know, he converted his captors to a point where a couple of them spoke in his behalf. A few years later they cried with happiness, literally cried with happiness, when he walked out of that prison.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:And that is a person that could have been the complete opposite, right, a bitter person, and take that prison with him, out those gates, and could have been major trouble, gotten himself killed or whatever. He didn't. He made a conscious choice from his heart. A conscious choice from his heart I can either take this prison with me and have it be a slave of it the rest of my life, or I can leave it here and I can resume the life that I left. And that's what he did, and I think that place in women, in leadership, is no different. You can either drag the things that drag you down around or you can just leave them back there, learn from them and move forward with the vision and the mission and the faith that you possess within your heart to guide you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's a word that you said that always I'm delighted when I hear it. It's the word choice. It's just, you know, it's a.
Speaker 1:We live in a country where we say we have so many choices and you know, freedoms and all of that, and yet so often we do not realize that we have the choice of how we feel and how we respond to things and we think the common phrase you make me so angry and suddenly it's the other person who's forcing me to do something and I give up my choice even in those words. And just flipping the words and say I'm angry when you say that or I feel anger about that, totally changes things. And for us to start rethinking even our just simple little things of vocabulary, open up that choice and the power of that in leadership, to have leaders be able to say those kinds of things to people they work with, to family members. When I learned that, it was, you know, kind of an internal prison opened up because I was no longer subject to what other people were forcing me to do or making me feel.
Speaker 1:And yet the language that we hear so often in the media and even with news you know, national news correspondents, I hear them ask questions. How did that make you feel when you know something happened? Or someone says and I'm just like, please just change your language. And you know something so simple as that and yet so very powerful, and that's one thing you help to show people, people yeah, you know, um choice.
Speaker 2:there is no good choice, there is no bad choice. There's simply a choice, and we, as human beings, get to change our mind anytime we want. The key is, you know, the world is not full of a lot of choices. The world is full of a choice for you in the moment. Now you choose to go along with those people that you know are bad for you. That's your choice. It's not good or bad, it's the choice in the moment. Right, and you get to change that choice anytime you want to.
Speaker 2:In that knowledge of non-duality, where everything just is okay, you learn everything from the past and you ignore, for the most part, what's in the future, because it doesn't exist. It's what we create in our mind. Is all these scenarios? Well, we're taught that from youth. That is a society of high angst and high control factors for the use of power. It, you know, it has nothing to do with us. We can blame ourselves for this or that, and it doesn't mean anything unless we're blaming ourselves because we felt like we did something that we shouldn't have done. Well, ok, change it. Yeah, you know, it's like. It's like.
Speaker 2:You know, there's a lot of things going on in the Middle East right now. Well, guess what, ladies and gentlemen? There's a whole lot of Palestinians and a whole lot of Israelis that are in community with each other. Yes, okay, why? Because they're in community. They are out of the leadership of both of these powers, are doing their own thing. They're not doing anything for the Israeli people, they're not doing anything for the Palestinian people. They're doing power struggles, and all those innocent people are in the middle.
Speaker 2:Okay, we pray for them. You know we pray for the homeless person down the street. Well, get to a point where they can make a decision to stand up and move forward, or even accept the kindness of a person that can change that, realizing that acceptance, and make that choice, or change their life and change the projection of their journey in life. Right now, everything just boils down to uh, okay, just make a choice. You know you can carry that with you all the rest of your life or you can let it go, learn from it and move forward with the person you know you are.
Speaker 1:And that is something that I find, especially for women. Figuring out who we are can be very difficult because of all of the things that were taught growing up about who we're supposed to be and you know. So who am I? Can I really do this? Can I really do this? When I was a young girl, there were no women in leadership in the church, you know. I didn't see anybody there. I had no clue that I could be a pastor. It never even dawned on me to think about that, and yet there was something inside of me that was leaning in that direction, and so when the opportunity for that changed, it was like oh yeah, that's it for me. But there are many other women, especially and I think this is also true for a lot of men who it's hard to know who we're meant to be. How do we find that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I help people with that all the time. You know, we're all, as you mentioned earlier, we're all born with an established personality already. You mentioned earlier, we're all born with an established personality already and as we age, we become witness to various stimuli in the world and how we will act and react to it. And that's all by choice. What happens to that choice is those who are nearest and dearest to us parents. Usually we love them, we emulate what they do, what they believe good or bad, and that is a person that we create, not a person that we are. And when something very high emotional value occurs, we witness something or we're attacked or whatever, and we're young enough to where we can't tell mom and dad what just happened because we don't know how to talk it. We don't know that, we don't have the language. We create an amnesiac situation.
Speaker 2:Amnesia is not broken. Amnesia is there to protect you from remembering this bad memory and it closes off the neural pathway in your brain that holds that memory and all the memories before it. Okay, we lose our early childhood, have no memory of it, and when we create a new neural pathway through this, the RBCR sequence, we go back to the back of the brain using the five senses. That back here is called the baby brain or the basis of the brain, and it houses all the five senses right in that area and when it goes forward it completes the circuit, talking like energy or electricity. It completes the circuit from a new wiring system and all of a sudden you have all the memories of your early childhood back and you have that memory that caused this whole thing, but you have it in a different perspective now. Okay, you're looking at it as an adult going through a situation so everything changes. At it as an adult going through a situation so everything changes.
Speaker 2:And when we're growing up, you might be living in a house where there's a lot of chaos all the time, and chaos can mean a lot of different things.
Speaker 2:Chaos can mean nonstop people walking in and out of the house. That creates chaos because there's no stability. There's also chaos where mom and dad are screaming and yelling at each other, physical attacks, all those kinds of things you know too much of, substances that alter their brain, their way of thinking, and then all the people that mom and dad hang out with have this way of thinking against a certain people or whatever it is, and pretty soon you're an adult and you don't want to change that, because you don't want to lose your community you grew up in, so you become part of that community instead of listening to your heart and acting from your soul. You know, we often say make your decisions from your heart, use your soul for counsel and keep your brain for storage, because that's the purest thought that is you, that is the deepest part of you making a decision that is good for you first. Now, don't misunderstand, that's not being selfish. It's being good to you first so that you can be good to other people.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, I think that's part of the key. It's what really is good, not only for me, but then broadens out to other people. So the selfish part would be if we cut it off at the just good for me, you know, leave everybody else out to do you know too bad for them. But if it's good for me plus them, then it's no longer selfish. Would that be an accurate way to look at that?
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah, you know, in my adult life I've had superiors come to me and really dislike a decision I make and it was very counter to the community or the company, and say what were you thinking? I guess who? Well, here's what I was thinking. This is what I know and that by Bob. Bob, okay, and based on this, that was the best decision to be made. Would you agree with that? And my superiors go. You didn't know about blah blah, blah, blah. No, I did. I had no knowledge of it.
Speaker 2:Now, if I had known then, what I know now, that would not have been a decision. Oh, I understand. Now, listening to understand as opposed to listening to reply. Now I simply could have said yeah, I don't know why I was thinking that day, it was just a crazy day. Whatever you know, I didn't like those people, whatever it is, that is giving up to something that's not even true in the first place, whereas I made a very good decision, it did not have all of the information for me to make the better decision that could have been made, which I would have easily done, but by making the decision at the moment with the information I had, that was the right thing to do and there are no good decisions, there's no bad decisions, there's simply decisions, and we can always change them, which I did are simply decisions and we can always change them, which I did, you know.
Speaker 1:Giving oneself what you're talking about is something I also learned giving yourself the permission to realize that, yes, we do make the best decisions at any given moment based on the information and the beliefs we have at that moment, and to be able to then look at those, especially when there's the light of other information that's available, you know and to consider maybe some other beliefs that might be better for us or for other people, that then we can make a different decision Totally. You know, it might be slightly different, it might be totally different, but then we don't beat ourselves up about, oh, I made such a horrible decision back then. No, I made the decision based on what I knew and what I believed at that moment.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and what did I learn from this?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and what did I learn from that?
Speaker 2:So I can help other people not repeat that.
Speaker 1:Right, right and to grow forward from that as well. Yeah, yeah, all wonderful things about leadership. One other question where does faith to you fall in for the future of business and leadership outside of the religious realm? It might be politics, it might be, you know, communities, whatever. Where does faith fall in all of that?
Speaker 2:faith is what you have inside of you and what you believe in your heart and in your soul. Whatever that is Okay and it may differ from everybody around you, but it's your faith and as long as you hold it true to yourself, you're being true to yourself. And you know, right now there's there's great turmoil in a lot of places around the world. America is going through its quad annual craziness, the presidential election process, and there are no holes barred for lies and disbelief and finger pointing and all those kinds of things and finger pointing and all those kinds of things which I find quite surprising, because there are cell phones flying live stream on the internet while they're lying, while they're doing it, they're not red-handed and then completely deny it. Well, here it is on video. How can you deny it? Those kinds of things? Well, here it is on video. Well, how can you deny it? Those kinds of things?
Speaker 2:Humanity, there's a vibration at various levels of humanity and, through the evolutionary process of millions of years, humans are better able to tap into their mind and how it works and how they think at various levels, and science has come to terms and have identified, starting at the very beginning of this century, in 26 or 2010, something like that that the next level of evolution of humanity, of humankind, is now in process, and they don't know what that's going to look like. You know there's young people born in this century that finishes the sentence of the person next to them and they're not identical twins or, uh, they get this um message. If you will uh about a friend or a relative in a different place, and they pick it up and and say are you okay? I just got this, this hit that that you're not okay. How it's to know that it did happen. And try to be aware that you know the way we think and how we think is about to get to the next level, which you know is hugely important to us, the day-to-day people. And I say it that way because those who survive based on power over people, they're going to have much less of that power. Power is not going to be the future of humankind. Wow, it's community, it's.
Speaker 2:You know we're all in this together and I don't care what your beliefs are or where you live, or what you eat for dinner or don't eat for dinner, None of that matters, it's. We are all and you know I am all and all am I, I am everybody out there that's listening in and thank you for doing so, and you're part of me, okay? So how can I war against you or anything like that? I'd be warring against myself. Why do I want to hurt myself? We're all in this together. We are all one people. Humankind are humans. You know. There's no subspecies or anything like that, so science can't take it down lower than a human being, right? So we are now evolving into the awareness of all of us being one human being, one human race, and not even using the word race anymore, because that's the piece. There's winners and losers. Well, there are no winners and losers. We all are right.
Speaker 1:That's a very interesting perspective. There are people who would perhaps tie that in with quantum physics and things like that for people who know about those kinds of things, but for people of faith it brings in the notion of the oneness of God, bringing us all together in that kind of a severe. That would be the language more people of faith would understand. And yet there are many scientists who are embracing that oneness and that faith perspective as well, because there's from what I'm, the little I know of this they're seeing more of that oneness and recognizing that there's far more out there and a power, a force, a pulse, a life, whatever you want to call that um, a spirit, universe, god, uh, that um that we still don't understand.
Speaker 1:And there's so much about this world and about us as humans that there's so much more potential there than what we currently see and understand. And that kind of gets into. How do people know things about somebody they've never met or a relative they haven't talked to for months and years and those kinds of things. Some of that some people call it ESPs. You know all kinds of different words, but that there is a reality to those things and that oneness that you talk about and for us to be able to, as faith leaders or people of faith in leadership, to be able to tap into that as much as possible and bring that into our workforce, our life force, our faith communities and the broader community as well, especially in this time when there's so much division and divisiveness verbally on many levels within our world as well. So it's kind of a good counterbalance to some of the other things we see going on.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, ambassador Thierry, please let people know how they can get in touch with you if they want to learn more about the work you do and you know, find out about your books and other things like that. Please let them know how to do that.
Speaker 2:Go on to your search engine Bing, google, whatever and look up Terry Earthwind Nichols. There's one in the world. That's the easiest way to remember it Terry Earthwind Nichols. Earthwind is my Native American tribal name. Dado Onule means his breath across the earth, right, because my tribe understood that I travel a lot and that was appropriate. So Earthwind, otherwise Terry Nichols, there's 15 to 20,000 of us in North America alone. So I tell people, look up Terry Earthwind Nichols. So I tell people, look up Terry Earthwind Nichols and you'll find me and my books and my speaking, my companies, everything. That's the easiest way to do it. Or you can look up this company right here. That's not a bad idea either.
Speaker 1:Yeah, nichols is N-I-C-H-O-L-S. Some people spell that correctly, but yes, and it's been. I've thoroughly enjoyed this conversation and there's so much that we share in common and background and things like that. It's a beautiful thing. I hope that we can continue this conversation at another time perhaps and go deeper, but I thank you for being here and being part of the Tilted Halo today. This is a podcast for women of faith and leadership who know perfectly well that we're not perfect, but that means that we have all kinds of room to grow and to explore those beliefs and new things that can come along as well. So thank you, terry, a great pleasure to have you here and God's peace and blessings to all that you do in the world these days.
Speaker 2:Thank you, kathleen. You're a wonderful person and a very loving soul, and I do hope that we can continue our conversation as well. And for those of you again who are watching this podcast, thank you very much for doing so and if it does resonate with you, do reach out to me. Yes, I have an international company, but I'm pretty easy to get a hold of and I speak to all and welcome all, okay, so thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Thank you very much, and to all of our listeners and watchers, god's peace and blessings to you today as well. You have been listening to Tilted Halo with me, kathleen Panning. What did you think about this episode? I'd really like to hear from you. Leave me some comments. Be sure to like, subscribe and share this episode and catch another upcoming episode. For more conversation on ministry life mindset and a whole lot more, go to wwwtiltedhalohelpcom, where I've got a resource guide and other resources waiting for you, and be sure to say hi to me, kathleen Panning, on LinkedIn. See you on the next episode.