Balance & Beyond

Moment: Kittens, Intuition, and the Power of "Hell Yes"

• Jo Stone • Season 4 • Episode 1

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Welcome to Balance & Beyond Mindset Moments, a brand new bite-sized short in which Jo shares more of her powerful insights or some of the best clips from previous episodes. For this first moment, we have a journey of intuition, decision-making, and embracing what feels right unfolds through a family's quest to adopt kittens. The story highlights the importance of trusting your gut and knowing when to say no in pursuit of what truly fulfills you.

• Family visits a shelter with hopes set on cute kittens 
• The emotional conflict between immediate desire and intuition 
• Understanding the concept of "hell yes" in decision-making 
• Discovering the right kittens strengthens the family's bond 
• Lessons on patience and faith over fear 

If this resonated, share it with a friend who needs to hear it today, and don't forget to subscribe to Balance and Beyond for full episodes and more of these bite-sized breakthroughs. 

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to Balance and Beyond Moments. Your weekly dose of insight, wisdom and mindset shifts, all in 10 minutes or less, whether it's a powerful truth, a fresh perspective or a spark of inspiration. This is your space to pause, reflect and reset. Let's dive in. Welcome to your first Balance and Beyond moment. That's right. I've had so many requests for more episodes, for more content, for more breakthroughs, that I've decided to drop a new episode for you every Saturday morning, which will complement the usual Wednesday drop of a full episode. This is going to be your opportunity to enjoy either some wisdom from me, some perspectives or some shorter stories that don't fit in the normal format, or you're also going to get to enjoy some fabulous extracts from past episodes that are particularly relevant at this point in time. So enjoy the extra bits of us. We're really excited to come to your ears on a more regular basis.

Speaker 1:

For this first episode, I wanted to share with you a fabulous recent adventure you would say that my family's undertaken and how it has been such a beautiful representation of everything that I have been trying to teach myself and my girls. So, if you haven't seen it yet on social media, we got kittens a couple of weeks ago and they are absolutely gorgeous and absolutely beautiful, but it almost didn't turn out that way. So how this whole adventure unfolded is we went to a cat shelter that my husband has been stalking and looking at for a really long time and we found these two really cute kittens. They were a little bit older than we wanted, but they were cute and gorgeous and fun, very, very rambunctious, very adventurous, very, very high energy. I'm like all these are great, but particularly my little one is a little bit afraid of animals, like, oh, they might be a bit intense. And then they brought in this beautiful, oldest, six month old, lovely, sweet tabby, who was a singleton, who wasn't going to be with any other cats, and we were torn. In the end we've done this flip-flop Do we get the little ones there's a pair, which is what we want, but they're a bit too adventurous, there's a bit too much energy there, or we're going to have to sacrifice and we're going to get this kind of cuddly, beautiful little kitten who's a bit older than we want and she comes by herself, so she's not quite right. And we flip-flopped and flip-flopped and spent time with them and cuddled them and in the end I had to call because my gut was saying this isn't it, these aren't our cats. Meanwhile, everyone else is in tears because they wanted a cat. We'd spent weeks and weeks and weeks picking out names and it was all going to be.

Speaker 1:

This Friday the kids rushed home from school because today's the day we're getting a cat. So I said to my kids girls, if you are not a hell yes, then we're a no. And I've been trying to teach them the power of intuition, but this was the best opportunity to do that. Their gut was saying no. We came home. Lots of tears on the way home, everyone went to bed and we woke up and my daughter went oh, but you know, if I could just push them together, I want to, but I want that personality and not so intense, and I want them cuddly and and. But all right, I'll, I'll take this one.

Speaker 1:

She was prepared to settle on what she wanted because she wasn't sure that what she wanted was ever going to happen. And this too often happens to us, when we almost end up believing in the fear or the scarcity of it's never going to happen versus the faith and our belief in abundance. So we woke up the next morning and my husband said look, let's try somewhere else, let's go to another shelter. So we went to another shelter and walked in and there were 15 beautiful kittens to choose from. And you know, we've started the process of elimination because we're not taking all 15, despite attempts by everybody to say well, you know, we can just start our own shelter. Anyway, I digress.

Speaker 1:

We ended up finding these three little kittens Don't worry, I just ended up with two who were gorgeous and adorable, and we initially picked one and you get to go into this beautiful sort of meet and greet room and this one was perfect. She was little, she was healthy, she was cuddly, she was cute, she was a female, because some of the others were males. And, oh my gosh, she ticks all the boxes. And we then, you know, tried her with another kitten, didn't quite work out, tried her with the second kitten, because they're not siblings and so not from the same litter and cats can be very temperamental as to who they're prepared to go hang with and in the end it was this oh my gosh, these ones are exactly what we wanted.

Speaker 1:

My daughter looked at me and we're looking at these two little kittens running around this room. One with a beautiful fluffy tail looked at me and we're looking at these two little kittens running around this room one with a beautiful fluffy tail, super cuddly, kitten, energy, but not frenetic, not frantic, not sort of with the intensity of the other ones that we saw yesterday and she looked at me with eyes wide and she said this is my hell yes, this is my hell yes. She's like this is everything that we wanted. They're cute, they're a pair, it looks like they're going to get along, they're healthy, they've got some energy, they're kitten and they're cuddly and they're kind of calm because they match the energy of our family. There was this oh my gosh, this is a hell yes.

Speaker 1:

My girls finally understood what a hell yes was like because they were able to tap into their gut. So you know what? We had to say no to something that was close. And then we were presented with exactly what we wanted. And the whole way home with these beautiful kittens in the car, there was this really magical conversation we had around trusting your gut. We had to walk away, even though it was hard, even though it was tears, even though we desperately wanted to take those little kittens home. And what if no one else takes them? And there was so much emotion involved, but there is something.

Speaker 1:

So it's such a gift for you to give yourself and your life and your family the ability to walk away from something that's close and have faith that whatever you're after is going to arrive. We've done this with houses, we've done this with jobs. We've done this with opportunities. Go, you know what. It's not quite right. We are not going to settle Now. I'm not saying I've got excruciatingly high standards here. There's a difference. It's not driven by fear, it's driven by this is what I really want. I'm being really clear in being presented something close. I'm able to push that aside and say close, but no, I'm prepared to wait because I know I have faith that what I want is out there and it will find me.

Speaker 1:

And ironically, the beautiful part of this is we sat in this little meet and greet room and this beautiful little white, fluffy cat came and they often say that cats choose you. You don't get to choose your cat. We're sitting in this room and this cat sort of walked past everybody else and walks and just sits on my lap. Everyone's looked at me and gone. Her name is Cloud. I guess Cloud has chosen us. She has now declared you are my family, you are going to take me home, you have my ticket of approval and as I record this, I have Cloud on my lap, so nothing has really changed.

Speaker 1:

This gives you an idea of the type of kitten that she is, but I share this story to encourage you that if you are ever presented with anything that is close, it is requiring you to settle on your dreams, requiring on you to give up some of your desires. That it doesn't have to be that way. You can have what you want, especially when you know what it is. Sometimes you simply have to go through some pain. You may have to go through some emotions and hold onto that faith, that hope, that optimism that what you want is just around the corner.

Speaker 1:

So my question for you today is where do you need to lean in to? Faith rather than fear? Is there a decision that you're about to make? Is there something that you're settling for? Is there something that you are tolerating that is actually not true for you? And if you can only tap in to that beautiful desire of yours, if only you can use all the powers of the world, your manifestation power, your ability to be magnetic, your truth that you can have what you want, then it may come to you. So here's to faith over fear, and I'll see you next time you want, then it may come to you. So here's to faith over fear, and I'll see you next time. Thanks for taking this moment for yourself. If this resonated, share it with a friend who needs to hear it today, and don't forget to subscribe to Balance and Beyond for full episodes and more of these bite-sized breakthroughs. See you next time.

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Jo Stone

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