Getting Quiet with Barb ~ Listening to the Wisdom Within

Trusting Your Inner Wisdom

• Barbara Robitaille

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Ready to cut through the TMI  of daily life and tap into your own wisdom?

This episode promises to guide you through the art of self-discovery, using the power of presence to reveal your inner truths. We'll look at how to view everything as energy, set healthy boundaries, and even equip you with a unique technique for those major life decisions.

Let's journey together towards a stronger, more connected self, building an inner foundation that empowers us to listen to our own voices amid the world's external noise.

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Speaker 1:

Hi, I'm Barb Robitaille. I invite you to join me in the Radical Act of Getting Quiet. When you think, believe, know you are a lot of other people, but the moment you feel you are nobody but yourself. That's a quote from EE Cummings. We can't know how we genuinely feel until we get quiet and sink into our heart space. It's in that place within that we can hear ourselves, minus the noise of the world. All the voices in our heads telling us what to do, how to think, need to be turned off so that we can feel into our own selves. Ah, but you say I don't want to feel what might be waiting for me. I don't want to go there. I don't want to feel the emotions that I try to ignore. Sometimes we're afraid to feel.

Speaker 1:

We've become so disconnected from our soul's core that we don't trust. We even have one, at least not one that isn't a minefield of grief, confusion and harshness. Without a strong inner foundation, we're at the mercy of the world shouting at us. It leaves people vulnerable to following others, or a leader who embodies often an illusion of strength, clarity, and who puts forward an agenda to follow so that you don't have to think for yourself. The thing is when we don't have a strong inner foundation of knowing who we are. We adopt a false version of ourselves and then we're a bundle of confusion because we're carrying all the outside voices, beliefs and judgments of others All this on top of our own stuff. We have plenty of our own stuff. Thank you very much, right, so what's ours? What isn't? Confusion reigns. Without truly knowing ourselves, we come to not trust ourselves. It's like we've made a bank transfer transaction. We've transferred the trust from our interpersonal account to an unidentified offshore account. So how do we shift from too much information TMI to Trust My Information? How do we reconnect with ourselves, our inner knowing? I look at everything as energy, so from that perspective, I've learned a few things. We tend to match the energy of the world around us, so pay attention to where you put yourself, where you put your energy.

Speaker 1:

Boundaries are all about energy. So when you feel you need to set a healthy boundary, ask yourself this simple question how much energy do I want to give this relationship, this situation, this project, this idea? How much of my life force, my energy, do I want to spend here? I like this approach to setting boundaries because it offers a fluid experience. It takes the charged reactive energy and softens it into a more responsive energy, which usually creates more ease in discerning our next steps. It brings it back to you, leaving the drama off to the side for a moment. It takes the focus off the charged details of whatever you're recognizing needing boundaries around and puts the power back with you. How much of my energy am I willing to spend here? It simplifies things, making clarity come into focus with more ease. When the drama falls away, we can feel into what's true for us, for our well-being. When we feel into our truth, and only our truth, we take back creative control. You reclaim your energy, your life force, your power. Your body can be a trustworthy guide too.

Speaker 1:

I remember when I was looking for a place to live after leaving my marriage of 28 years. For the first bit of time, I stayed with a friend just to catch my breath as I mapped out my next steps. Top of the list was finding a place to make a new home for myself and my son my daughter too, though she was already on her own, but would also be staying with me from time to time. So here I am in a very emotionally challenging time definite drama and trauma happening and needing to make a big decision, an important one. A neighbor contacted me to offer her support and, with that, a place to live on their property. Well, this option seemed to be the one that would be best, for several reasons. First of all, it was close to the family home I'd left, so my son could easily walk or bike between visits with his dad and me. It was a familiar place in a time of turning his life upside down, and it would also be easier on my budget and I could stop fretting about finding a place. No application process, no first and last month payment deposits, easy, ready to go. My logical mind was on board.

Speaker 1:

That same day, the friend I was staying with came home from a walk, having seen a sign in the window of a house in the village, a charming home on First Street, steps away from the shops and the beach, but also a stretch for my budget, and it felt like a bigger leap in this time of starting over. My son wouldn't be able to come and go independently, so that touchstone of familiarity that the neighbor's house offered was lost. So there I was with a dilemma. I was guided to use a technique that led me to a level of connection in my body, of feeling that opened a clear path forward from a place of being nobody but myself. I share this technique with clients who are at a threshold of needing to make a major life choice, or even not so major, but can help if you're exhausted from thinking about your options, spinning round and round about which choice to make.

Speaker 1:

And here's how it works First, lie on the floor. You could rest your head on a pillow, close your eyes and take a few deep breaths, exhale, letting go of all the emotion, the thoughts that have you spinning as you weigh your options. Feel yourself relaxed and stay in that relaxed energy, just breathing in your natural rhythm. Now you're in a neutral state of being, your emotions are in the off position, your mind at ease. Once you are holding that place of emptiness, imagine that you have already decided on one of your choices or options. I like to imagine each of my options as outfits I've selected to possibly purchase and I'm going to try each one on to help me decide which one I like best. I see them hanging on a rack and I'm taking only one outfit into the dressing room to try on.

Speaker 1:

In my situation in choosing a new home, I declared to myself that I had made the decision to take my neighbor's mother-in-law cottage as my next home Done deal. Decision made, I felt into the decision, allowing myself to be held in the energy of imagining being in the mother-in-law cottage. And as you do this, as you're trying on your first option, you tune into your body, notice how your body feels. Doing this connects you to your inner wisdom. Your body will talk to you and you can trust your body. So just notice and don't judge, and stay in this place for as long as you need to be able to tune into the sensations in your body and then, when you're ready, shift yourself into neutral again. So it's like you've taken off the outfit and you're standing naked in front of the mirror. You try on one choice and then you take it off. You slip back into neutral and hold neutral until you feel completely at ease. And then imagine you've made a different choice, trying on your next outfit, whatever your next possibility might be. In my case, I imagined that I said yes to the house on First Street. You've decided Allow yourself to be in that decision Again, notice any sensations in your body without judgment and hold that until you're ready to come back to neutral, then assess how your body felt with each of the choices you made For me.

Speaker 1:

I was stunned at how my body responded to choosing the generous offer of my neighbor, the choice that I thought would be logically best for my son and for me too, in several ways. Yet my body responded with my jaw clenching and a pit in my stomach, imagining that I had chosen my neighbor's home, the First Street house. My second option brought a feeling of peace and excitement. I chose the First Street house and it was the ideal place for a fresh start. My body accessed a place of feeling deep within that my mind could not. What my logical mind thought was best, and echoed by a few close friends as well, who also thought it was a hands down. Yes, even though I didn't feel completely comfortable, I let my logical mind and the voices of others overrule a sense of unease hovering beneath the surface. I'm so grateful for the experience of going deeper and connecting with my body's wisdom. Feeling brought me to a place of being me, just me, and then trusting myself alone to make the decision I needed to make TMI.

Speaker 1:

The next time you see that, translate it into Trust my Information. Begin to trust your own information and speak your truth with integrity. That's where our foundation lies and where we can rest and discern what is best for ourselves. Our strength, courage and power depend on spending time being quiet, of knowing ourselves and trusting the wisdom of our souls. Being nobody but yourself, tmi, are you ready to do the transformational work of digging deep into your heart to discover your deepest truths, embracing all that you are and aligning your life with your soul's purpose? To know how that feels to meet yourself with compassion and curiosity?

Speaker 1:

I've created pilgrimage into presence with the intention to bring together six courageous women ready to devote themselves to walk the path of our inner landscapes. This is not a journey for the faint of heart. It requires bravery, dedication and vulnerability. We come together in a spirit of radical acceptance, speaking our truths and bearing witness to one another's journey with empathy and grace. I invite you to join us and contribute your unique gifts to our circle as we walk the pilgrim's path together. To take the first step, go to my website talkwithbarbcom fall 2023, and you'll find the information there about the pilgrimage, and then set up a call with me to talk more about the pilgrimage and answer any questions you may have. Until next time, let's live and lead from love.