Born To Be Her
Born to be HER is the podcast for women who are ready to rise into the life they truly desire. This is your space to remember that you actually can—despite the stories you carry, the self-doubt you’ve battled, or the old patterns that try to keep you small. Together, we’ll explore how to hold your shadow with compassion, transform it into wisdom, and step boldly into the vision of a life that feels expansive, aligned, and deeply yours.
Because you were Born to be HER.
Born To Be Her
Part 2: The Art Of Listening Within
Big decisions get loud on the outside and quiet on the inside. Today we lean into that quiet and learn how to hear it clearly. I share the second step in my self-trust method: building a reliable connection to your inner voice by reading your body’s signals and practising fierce compassion for your patterns.
We start with a heartfelt life update about moving home after nine years abroad and the emotions of closing a chapter in Sydney. From there, we unpack why awareness without kindness can become another stick to beat yourself with, and how compassion creates the space where real change happens. I bring in a yogic lens on the nadis to explain why breath, water, movement, and stillness matter for clarity, then translate that into simple, repeatable practices you can use today.
You’ll hear a concrete decision story from my business that contrasts the “safe and familiar” option with the “stretchy and expansive” one. By mapping sensations—dullness, heaviness, brightness, tingles, heart-opening—we separate anxiety from activation and reveal what a true yes feels like in the body. Expect practical tools: a quick daily check-in, sensation mapping for choices, and ways to shift attention from external noise to internal knowing. If you’ve been second-guessing yourself, this conversation will help you recognise your inner yes, hold your nerve, and choose the path that actually fits.
If this resonates, subscribe, share with a friend who needs clarity, and leave a review to help more people build self-trust. And if Greece over Easter is calling, send me a DM for the early bird link—let’s make space for your truth together.
Hello, welcome back to the Born to Be Her podcast. I'm your host, Vanilla Wiley, and in this episode, we're going to be diving into all things connected to my unique methodology around how you can cultivate more self-trust. This episode is actually part of a series, so if you haven't listened to the previous episode where I talk about the first step in cultivating self-trust, I invite you to go back and start there. Um, and we're going to be diving into the next step that we can take in cultivating a beautiful relationship of self-trust with ourselves in this episode today. But I thought I would start with a little bit of a personal update because all of the changes are happening right now. If you are listening to this episode as it goes live, we are now just less than a week out from moving home. Well, not moving home just yet, we're leaving Sydney, um, going travelling for 10 days in Perth and then heading home after nine years of living abroad. So the feels are so real, and it's funny having pre-planned these episodes around self-trust, because of course, making a big decision like moving home requires a lot of trust in what it is that we want and desire, and continuing to trust that as that decision starts to pan out, and I can really feel how powerful that work has been that I have supported myself with because even though all of the emotions are so real right now, even though the goodbyes are unbelievably hard, I can really trust in the fact that I have made the right decision for this particular season of my life. So it is so important that we cultivate this ability to know what is true for us in whatever facet of life that looks like for you right now, because there always are decisions that we're sitting on, things that we need to make our minds up upon, and really having this ability to know what's true for us can ultimately be the best thing that supports that. I also just ran a retreat last weekend, my final one in Sydney. I honestly have no idea how many I have ran here now. Um, the last time I counted, I think I had ran around 15 retreats. That is worldwide, though. I've been running them in Bali and in Ireland as well. Um but last one here in Sydney, which was so beautiful and also so emotional. Some of the women who came on that retreat with me have been at three, four, five, six plus retreats now. So we obviously have a really beautiful relationship together inside of my work, and there were lots of tears and lots of emotions in that closing closing piece. Something that I shared whenever we were in our closing circle is I do always trust that you know our paths connect in this type of work for a reason when we feel called to work with a particular person or a mentor or whatever it might be, and that if we're supposed to cross paths again, that we will. So I really do trust that it's not actually a goodbye. Um, it's just a goodbye for now. But all of that has been really big and has just reminded me of yeah, how powerful this work in trusting yourself is in terms of how we then lead our lives from that place. And the retreat I ran on the weekend was actually all about self-trust. That was the theme that we worked with, that was what we dove into, and it was really beautiful to hear lots of the women's reflections around what has actually supported them to cultivate more self-trust in their own journey in becoming more of themselves. So let's dive into the second step around what we can do to cultivate more self-trust. The first thing that I talked about in the previous episode, if you haven't gone back and listened yet, is this ability to have awareness. So noticing the spots in our lives where we abandon ourselves, where we aren't listening to what our own truth is, or we're finding it tricky to land inside of that, and instead we are choosing to look externally for answers around decisions that we're making, or spots in our lives where we're actually being asked and invited to go inwards a little bit more. So that's always the first step is bringing awareness to those tricky spaces where we get a bit stuck, and we all have our own patterns around that. Something that I spoke about on a previous episode was my pattern around asking other people around what I should do or the things that I should think about in terms of decisions that I was making, and ultimately that being something that I brought awareness around and the ability in order to be able to shift it. So awareness is really incredible whenever we have it. And if you have done to build awareness inside of your own self-journey, you will probably also know how irritating it can be because you have the awareness, and now you're like, oh my god, I'm doing that thing again. And you can start to really witness and notice the times where you are abandoning yourself, where you are doing the thing that you no longer want to do. And before we move into what the second step is around that, the first thing that is really, really important in any work that we do on ourselves is to have so much compassion. Whenever we witness ourselves inside of a pattern that we no longer want to play out in our lives, compassion is actually the thing that gives us space to create any kind of change. If we notice the things that we're doing and then that now becomes something else for us to beat ourselves up about, it's really difficult for us to actually move to a place of change with that kind of energy because suddenly we've now got all of these other things to give ourselves a hard time about. And if we know anything about energetics in particular, in order to expand into more beauty, more connection to who we truly are, we cannot do that from a space of berating ourselves, of you know, being in that strong energy of being really harsh. Expansion and calling ourselves deeper into who we truly are has to come from this place where we are our own biggest supporter. So if you're in that spot right now where you've got awareness around patterns, notice if there is an opportunity for you to bring a little bit more compassion around that. It's like, oh, I'm doing that thing again. Look at that, instead of, oh my god, I'm doing that thing again. I can't believe I'm doing that. I've learnt this thing about myself so many times before. And just really starting to build whatever a voice of compassion looks like for you. Sometimes for me personally, it can be actually just making a bit of a joke out of the things that I want to shift and change because that brings like a lightness to what I want to shift. So think about what might work for you inside of that, in terms of yeah, just being a little bit kinder to yourself. So you've started to notice the spots where you abandon yourself where you are not choosing to trust in where it is that you're headed and what it is that you desire, or the decisions that you're sitting on and want to make. And the next thing that we want to do is to begin to cultivate a connection to our inner voice, a connection to our truth. And obviously, that can be tricky because when we are connecting to our truth, we can also hear the voices of fear, the voices of worry, the voices of anxiety, the patterns of overthinking. And so it can be really tricky to know what's what. And I'm sure you've been in that spot before. I certainly have. So, how do we start to build a connection to what our inner truth is? Something that was really interesting on retreat is that this actually looks very different for all of us. We all have our own ways of tapping into what's true, but one thing that was a collective thread around what people shared in terms of what allowed them to connect to trusting themselves was a moment that came where they just knew. And you might be able to reflect on a time in your life where you really chose to trust yourself. Maybe it was in choosing to move abroad, for example, maybe it was in a decision to leave a relationship, maybe there was a point in time in your career where you made a new choice. Think about the times where you started to cultivate that energy of self-trust around what it is that you wanted, around what it is that you desired, and what actually allowed you to make a decision around that, or what allowed you to anchor into what was actually true for you, because there will be real nuggets of wisdom inside of that in terms of connecting to what your truth is. I wanted to speak to this a little bit more from a yogic lens. So in yoga philosophy, they talk about how we have 72,000 nadis. Nattis are these energetic lines that run through our entire body that allow us to connect to the essence, the truth of who we are. So there are so many ways that we can activate these nadis, these energetic portals that allow us to feel more deeply who it is that we truly are. And it's really simple things that allow us to activate these noddies, these energetic lines that run through our body, things like our breath, drinking water, allowing ourselves to move, allowing ourselves to do things like sit in stillness and meditate, things that allow us to feel more connected to ourselves. For you, maybe it's things like taking out your journal or doing a particular practice. It really allows you to feel more connected internally. And really, this is where we want to start to bring our focus and our attention is to start to allow our attention to come from the external and to move towards our internal world in a deeper way. And this might be where you reflect on maybe come into your yoga practice, or maybe you've had an experience on a retreat before where suddenly you just have awareness around what it is that you want because you've had all of this time to connect more deeply to what is true for you. You've been kind of removed from all of the things that externally pull us out of our truth on a day-to-day basis. And one thing that is really important and really powerful is to start to understand the language of your body, to start to understand how your body communicates with you. Often we can feel a sensation in our body and we can straightaway label it as maybe anxiety or overwhelm or fear, for example. When actually, when we tune in with the sensations in our body and what is showing up for us in terms of what's happening in our body, those can actually just be signals around an activation that is happening, or your power literally coming online because there's a desire to do something. And so something that may become a practice as you connect in with your own desire to have more self-trust is to start to label the sensations that are happening in your body and to get really curious about them. So you might notice that you have a tingle in your belly when you think about a certain decision that you're going to make, or maybe you feel a heaviness in your heart or a softening around your shoulders. Just noticing how your body actually communicates to you. And you might play with that inside of if you're making a decision, noticing when you play with one decision, how does that feel? When you play with the opposite decision, how does that feel in your body? And just notice if that allows you to get any new information about what it is that you are about to step into or what it is that you're desiring to trust yourself more deeply around. Because the more that we can become attuned with the language of our body, the more we can start to understand what our body is communicating with us, the more we can start to differentiate those voices that I spoke about in our heads. So when it feels really challenging to know, you know, what is fear, what is worry, what is overthinking, and what is actually true. Because our body has a slightly different way of communicating with us. And so maybe that can become a practice to just start to witness what happens in my body as I am being invited to trust myself around wherever it is that life is inviting me in to make a decision around next. And even the simple practice of connecting with our body in general can really allow us to receive so much clarity around what's happening in our mind. I don't know about you, but as soon as I step onto my yoga mat, it's like my mind begins to slow down a little more because I've got this connection to my body and I'm moving my energy, and then suddenly I know exactly what it is that I want to do, or I have so much more clarity around what it is that I am stepping into. And I want to share a little example here around a decision that I was making inside of my business. And this is just going to really solidify the things that I'm talking about because you'll probably resonate between a decision where you're making where one option feels safe and comfortable, and one option feels stretchy, expansive, and therefore probably scary. Um, you might feel unsure about it, you might feel like you've got lots of worry around it, or you're overthinking what it is that you want to do. So that's the picture that I'm gonna paint around a decision that I was making inside of my work. So I had one offering that I was playing with putting out into the world, and I kind of knew with that offering that I would easily sell it out. I knew that it would be a no-brainer for people, I knew that I had already done quite a lot of marketing around it, so there wasn't gonna be a whole lot of work for me to do in a season of my life that was really busy at the time. So that was the first offering, and then the second offering that I was thinking about sharing with the world instead felt big because it was something that I'd never did before. I wasn't sure if people were going to be interested in it or not. I knew that I would have to do quite a little bit of work around it, like quite a lot of marketing, quite a lot of um allowing myself to expand into the identity of what it is that I wanted to hold. And so when I was logically thinking about this decision, there were lots of things coming up around, well, it feels really comfortable in my body to do the first thing, so maybe that's what I should just go and do. Um, it feels like there is a little bit of resistance around the thing that feels stretchier for me, so maybe that's a sign that you know it's not the time, or you know, it's bringing up these sensations, so maybe that means that I'm not quite ready to do that thing yet. And so I had a little play one day where I just allowed myself to play out both decisions where I allowed myself fully to imagine that I had released out the offering that felt very comfortable, and then I took some time to allow myself to imagine that I had made the decision around doing the thing that felt stretchy, and this was so interesting. I learned so much inside of this because when I logically was thinking about doing the offering that felt quite comfortable, something I've done a million times before, I knew it would be a no-brainer, would be easy. When I felt into the sensations in my body, the things that were coming up were things like a dullness, a heaviness, um hard to describe, but a feeling like in my valley, which I was interpreting as comfortable or easeful, um gentle, grounded, because I hadn't actually allowed myself to tune in with the fact that I wasn't being lit up by it. I was just cognitively thinking, well, that must just mean that you know this feels easeful. And in this season of my life, maybe that's the thing that I'm actually being invited to do. And then when I felt into the stretchy offering that I felt drawn to, it was so interesting to interpret and notice the sensations in my body that I had been interpreting as anxiety or overwhelm. Because actually, whenever I tuned into them, I was having things like tingles in my belly, I was having this sense of opening and expansion around my heart space. I literally was having like all of this activation around my throat, and what I had been ignoring around those sensations or interpreting in my mind was actually my body coming online because I was being so activated by this offering that I was really being called into. And when we think about power and when we think about how our body communicates to us, of course, whenever we're doing something that feels expansive and stretchy, our body is going to need to come online to support us with doing whatever that thing is. And so this was a really beautiful learning for me because it just allowed me to notice that some of the ways that I had been interpreting the sensations in my body weren't actually what was true and what was real for me. And that allowed me to know exactly what it was that I wanted to do around that decision. So, of course, I went with the expansive stretchy one. So maybe there's a point in your life or there's a spot in your life right now where you're being invited to trust yourself more deeply, where you're being invited to connect in with your inner truth, with your inner voice, and you can gift yourself some space to just witness what that might be telling you, what that might look like for you right now. Maybe it's in some of the simple practices around activation of those nadis in a deeper way. You know, maybe you can meditate, journal, get on your yoga mat, go for a walk, nurture your body in whatever way it needs to allow yourself to connect in with whatever that truth is. Or maybe you can play with this practice of actually listening and connecting in with the sensations in your body and just noticing what they're trying to communicate with you and what they're trying to tell you. And of course, for any of these things, we need to allow ourselves space, we need to gift ourselves the opportunity to be drawn from the external to the internal so that we can really get to know what that voice sounds like for us individually. Because as I shared from the reflections that we had on retreat this weekend, this looks different for absolutely everyone, and you will find your own way and you will find what actually works for you in terms of allowing yourself to connect with whatever that truth is. And I lastly wanted to let you know about my retreat that is upcoming in Greece next year, happening over Easter, where you will be gifted with five full glorious days to connect to the beauty of your own truth in the deepest ways. We will be practicing yoga, you will have this whole extended time out of your everyday life to nurture and be with yourself, to be with your own truth, to be with your own beauty, which will ultimately allow you and gift you the opportunity to be more connected to your truth in your everyday life. It will give you clarity that you didn't even know you needed around what you want the next year of your life to look like. It will gift you the opportunity to come right back home to the beauty of all that you are if you've had a stressful year or you're needing time out or you're needing some replenishment and rest. It will gift you with the most beautiful community, and I can say that hand on heart because I always attract the most incredible humans onto retreat with me so that you can shine beautifully and authentically as your truest self. These retreats are beyond what I can put into words. Having just ran one on the weekend, I feel so lit up by this work that I get to do because retreats really have this special energy that no other work that I do has. And I think that that is really just the power of community and being around like-minded women inside of your life. It always just gives each and every one of us this beautiful experience where yeah, there's a depth and an honesty and a love that can't be replicated in one-to-one work. So if that feels like it's calling you, we are on the last few days on recording of this episode for early bird pricing. If you missed out on the link for that, just shoot me a little DM on Instagram and I'm so happy to send it across to you. Um, and if you have any questions about Greece, come let me know. I'm so happy to have a conversation with you if there's anything that you would like to chat about there. Um, and if I see your application come through, I can't wait to have a read of it. And I hope you have the most incredible rest of your day.