Reclaiming Your Authentic Self: Breaking Free Through Intuition and Alignment

What if the life you've been trying so hard to live was never truly yours to begin with?

In this deeply empowering and thought-provoking conversation, we explore what it means to step off autopilot, reconnect with your intuition, and give yourself permission to create a life that feels genuinely aligned. From releasing societal expectations to honoring the wisdom of the body, this episode invites us to trust ourselves and embrace the path our soul is quietly calling us toward.

My guest, Megan Gillman, Transformational Life Coach and creator of the "Good Girl Deprogramming" movement, combines grounded psychology with spiritual practice to help individuals break free from limiting beliefs and rediscover their authentic selves. Drawing from her background in student counseling, cognitive science, yoga, and mystical traditions, Megan offers a compassionate and practical approach to personal transformation.

Together, we discuss the importance of slowing down, listening to the messages within, and recognizing that our thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations are all deeply connected. Megan shares how learning to trust our intuition and challenge old conditioning can open the door to a more joyful, fulfilling, and purpose-driven life.

These insights are especially meaningful for anyone feeling stuck, overwhelmed by expectations, or longing to reconnect with the person they were always meant to be.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

Breaking Free from Conditioning:
How "Good Girl Deprogramming" helps uncover the beliefs and expectations that may be holding you back.

The Wisdom of the Body:
Why your physical sensations can offer powerful guidance about what aligns with your authentic self.

Listening to Your Intuition:
How small, everyday choices become opportunities to strengthen your inner knowing and trust your gut instincts.

Moving Beyond Autopilot:
Why slowing down and creating space for reflection can transform the way you approach life, work, and relationships.

Permission to Be Yourself:
How giving yourself permission to evolve, pivot, and choose differently is one of the greatest acts of self-love.

This episode is an invitation to quiet the outside noise and reconnect with the wisdom that already exists within you.

If you've ever felt the pull toward something different but questioned whether you should follow it, this conversation will remind you that your intuition is there for a reason and that living in alignment begins with trusting yourself.

Connect with Donna McDine

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 My thank you to you is the one-time $10 off your first Reiki session, class, or product via the welcome email.

Website: https://energyofserenity.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/donnamcdine/

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Instagram (Reiki): https://www.instagram.com/energy_of_serenity_reiki/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DonnaMcDineEnergyofSerenity

Connect with Megan Gillman

Website: https://megangillman.net

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/megangillman/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@witchylifecoach

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Everything is everything. So when you get really aligned and you start to trust yourself in one area of your life, it's easier to access that in all the areas of your life. And you just start acting and speaking in a way where you feel aligned and you feel in control. And the words that are coming out of your mouth are the words you actually mean.

unknown 0:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

Instead of just one of those like Barbie voice boxes where this is what I say when you pull my string, right? And the ripple effects of that are incredibly powerful.

SPEAKER_00 0:30

Hi, I am Donna McDonne, and welcome to the Energy of Serenity Podcast. Here we unleash empowerment through the power of the word. Join me and my guests as we share stories, tools, and insights to help you feel grounded and aligned. Let's dive in. Hello and welcome, Donna McDyne of the Energy Serenity Podcast. I am over the moon excited to have Megan Gilman here today. So, Megan, welcome. So excited. I'm so excited to be here, Donna. Great. So before we really dive into our conversation, I want to share with the listeners a bit of your background. So Megan is a transformative life coach known for blending grounded psychology with unapologetic magic, with a background in student counseling in cognitive science, plus a lifelong devotion to spiritual growth, yoga, and mystical practice. Megan brings a uniquely integrative approach to personal evolution. Her specialty, good girl deprogramming. Oh my gosh. So I want to dig in right away to good girl deprogramming.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

Yeah, that's my favorite. I am gonna have to come up with a new name. I found um there's a woman who wrote a book called Good Girl Deprogramming, and it's brilliant. Um, and I found it after I had coined that for example. All right, we're gonna rethink it. Um, because we respect uh we respect intellectual property, but it is just the idea that so much of our behavior, our thought patterns, and the way we live our lives comes from societal programming, family programming, um, responses to big traumas and small traumas throughout our lives. And it often works really well for us and gets us to a certain level of success or achievement or happiness. And then it stops and it starts to hold us back instead and prevent us from our next level of growth. And so the women I work with, that's generally the first thing we need to do is take a look at what are the thoughts that you believe are true or that you're acting like they're true when maybe you don't believe them anymore. And how do we start the process of really turning off or tuning down that default operating system in our brains and our psyches so that we can intentionally install new behaviors, new thought patterns, new beliefs that align with who we're becoming instead of who we've been.

SPEAKER_00 3:26

Beautiful. And I love the word intentional, that we really bring forth what our deepest desires are and coming out of the conforms of what society has dictated to us, the family nucleus that's dictated to us. And it's not bad in an essence, but then when we start to get stifled as to who we truly are, it's exhausting.

SPEAKER_01 3:54

Yeah, and it can create that sense of spinning your wheels, of knowing what you should be doing, but not being able to do it. And and that's generally when people will find me.

SPEAKER_00 4:08

Right. And when you say not able to do it, does that come from a place where they have this deep desire to start living differently, whether in their day-to-day life or changing their career pattern, but don't know the next steps to take for that without imploding what they feel everything around them?

SPEAKER_01 4:30

Um that might be part of it. I think I think that is a part of it, especially in career transitions. There's a lot of identity that gets tied to your profession, especially in the US, where most of my clients are based. And so it can be that like stepping away and changing career paths or changing the way you move through the world, there's a fear that other people won't understand or accept you and it will kind of blow up. Right. I think also many of my clients are really intelligent and really interested in personal growth and self-improvement. And they kind of get stuck with like, well, I know I should probably meditate, but I I can't seem to actually meditate on a regular basis, or I know I should exercise more, but I can't do it. Like I'm just it's not happening. Or, you know, I know I should change careers, but every time I think about applying for a job or interviewing, I start to worry, or maybe self-sabotage and all those things that I mean, my clients are so smart. They know that they have Google, they know what would probably help them feel better. Um, and there's often just a block of being able that from the gap between like knowing what action might help you and kind of resourcing yourself to prioritize actually taking that action above how you've been operating on autopilot for so many years.

SPEAKER_00 6:10

Because we do, we get in. I like that you use that word autopilot, because we tend to do the same actions every day. And then we're wondering, wow, 10 years have gone by, I'm really not feeling this in my career, or how I'm nurturing myself that it's the bottom of the list and really trying to get away from autopilot and it's okay to pivot and go a different direction. We're not meant as human beings to stay in this little lane and then not expanding. So when you're working with your clients, what first propelled you to become a life coach and really provide this well-needed resource for people? Because now, especially since COVID, with all the technology, your clients are just not in your so-called neighborhood, they're across the globe. And that's a beautiful aspect to be able to do. But you as a beautiful woman, knowing that you wanted to provide some type of enhancement to people's lives, what propelled you into this line of work?

SPEAKER_01 7:30

That's a great question. I I don't know if I was propelled more so as like a slow pull. It was less like launched out of a cannon and much more like a lazy river, and then you just kind of end up here. So I um I will say I'm I'm an eldest daughter. I have two younger sisters. Um, and they will tell you that I've been coaching, um, unsolicited coaching and advice for much longer than I've been doing it professionally. Actually, I don't think it's until I got my first coach training that I became like and saved my relationship to my sisters because I learned a lot about only coaching or advising when people want it, when they ask for it and when they consent for it. Up until that point, I had been probably insufferable to my sisters, but I was working in higher education for my first few jobs out of college. I really loved helping students through their transition into college. It's a really big change in a lot of people's lives. And although there's a lot of support, I don't know. It's also really challenging for a lot of individuals. Um, you know, you're in a whole new place, you're building your identity and your authority as a person. You go from realistically, you go from having to raise your hand and ask someone else permission to use the restrooms to having complete free reign over your life in the course of like a month. Exactly. And and at the same time, you're expected to make huge decisions. Like, what do you want your career path to be? And and a lot of small decisions as well. Like, what kind of person do you want to show up as? And who do you want to be friends with? And what clubs would you like to join? It's it's a lot. And I really enjoyed that process. And through my roles, I got to do a lot of leadership development as well with young people. And I really just sort of stayed in that. I thought that was going to be my whole career. And then at one point, I was really lucky that an office I worked for had a coaching program for students who came into college who needed a lot of extra support with the transition. So they would have a dedicated coach. And I was not one of those coaches, but they had an extra like two seats open in the training. Like they had paid for, you know, 30 people and they only had 28. So they were like, does anyone else want to sit in? And I immediately raised my hand because I really wanted to learn more about it. That's beautiful. And I was like, oh, this is it. Coaching is coaching is what I love doing. That's what I've been doing. It just gave a word for the work I, the part of my job that I really, really loved and that came sort of effortlessly to me. And so eventually when I was starting to feel like hit accomplished what I could accomplish in my last role in education, and I was looking for a way to, as so many people are, to like lower my stress level and free up some time in my schedule. I decided that I would start my own coaching practice and start working with um at the, I mean, honestly, I would work with anyone because I was just starting out. I was like, if you have money, I will coach you. If you don't have money, I will coach you. I just want to be a coach and um and get things started and rolling. Um, but I found a really it's funny because when I worked in college um environments, I ended up having a like sort of a specialization in really high achieving borderline neurotic um women who are like really, really focused on their goals and starting to burn out. I mean, as young as, you know, as young as 19 and 20, women are already starting to burn out because they're such high standards for themselves and such high expectations, and they feel like they have to do it all alone. So I was already starting to specialize in really high-achieving, really passionate women who needed a little bit more support. And I'm not surprised to see that that has really kind of continued with my private coaching practice.

SPEAKER_00 11:58

And that's beautiful because the expectations, especially for these young women, and of course the young men, as they're going through all their SATs in high school and figuring out where they want to apply to college and should I go away? Should I stay home? And then having this, I have to decide now what I want to do for the rest of my life. And you want to be able to be successful, but especially for those that go away. Now all of a sudden you're sharing small living space with a complete stranger. You're you're not having, hey, get up, you're gonna miss the school bus that you're responsible for all your time, but then wanting to achieve in your academics, and then hopefully getting involved in the clubs and having that pressure of everything at once, to have this real niche of this guidance for these young adults is so imperative. I know myself, I'll be 59 this year. It's lovely to have guidance still from other people, to get that outside perspective as to what is going on in your own inner thoughts and your own strives of what you would like to accomplish. So, how beautiful that you've opened up that gateway for people. Um, in your client sessions, without getting too specific with the confidentiality of it all, how does the power of the word really come forth?

SPEAKER_01 13:35

Hmm, I love that. I love that you have a focus on words. I don't know if I mentioned, but my uh my bachelor's degree is in linguistics. I'm obsessed with words.

SPEAKER_00 13:45

Beautiful, beautiful. So you're very intentional then with it all.

SPEAKER_01 13:51

Yeah, and there is a lot of my work is really informed um by neurolinguistic programming and and cognitive therapy, is where our for most of us, not small, I won't want to say most of us, because everyone's brain works in a beautiful and slightly unique way. Right. But our thoughts tend to run in like sentences in our brain. Some people are more pictures, some people are more feelings, but a lot of us have sentences running and they move quickly. Thousands and thousands of sentences going through our mind every day. When I'm in with a client and I hear them say something, often I will stop and I will repeat the exact sentence back to them because that's what we don't do with our own thoughts is stop and look at each one and be like, whoa, that was an interesting thought. I wonder where it came from. I wonder what it means. Um, I wonder if I believe it's true or not. I wonder if I want to act as if I believe it's true. Right. And and that will be incredibly powerful, just stopping and looking at like these are the words you actually said. Let's take a minute to connect and and just investigate that and really feel what that means. I'll also have clients um sometimes repeat back to me, like they'll say something that I think is brilliant and gives them a lot of permission to grow. And so I'll repeat that back to them and I'll write it down and I'll be like, okay, now close your eyes and say it again and just feel how it feels in your body. So there's a lot of work that we do around really engaging in my clients' words as a portal for self-growth, for self-realization, and for self-inquiry.

SPEAKER_00 15:43

I love that because then it really gives them that permission to slow down, to pause, to actually pay attention to what their inner thoughts are really guiding them to. Whether it's like it's time to release this or it's time to embrace this, but but giving your client that permission, slow down. Let's let's peel the onion back on this a little bit. Let's see how this makes you feel. So, and I love the fact that you're bringing those words from their thought process, but into how it's making their body feel. Because the body, I would like you to expand on that, Megan, what the body can be telling us at times about those thoughts that are racing through our mind a million times.

SPEAKER_01 16:39

Yeah. I don't want to overgeneralize and say that it's like an all-women thing, but at least with the women I tend to work with and I tend to resonate with, we are really comfortable looking at our thoughts and analyzing our thoughts and uh often completely cut off from what's happening in our bodies. We are taught at a really young age not to trust the feelings in our bodies. Like when you get that uh gut feeling around like around like a strange man, you're taught like be polite, smile, like right. And there's good, I don't want to say there's good reasons, but there are reasons for that. Um, but we're we learn really young to ignore and not trust our gut instincts and and our physical sensations. We learn not to trust our arousal, our interest, our excitement, our fear, right? How many times have I mean, as a mom, I've even I tried not to say it because I know the power of words, but when my son is like afraid or really worked up to be like, oh, it's not a big deal, but his body is having a big emotional reaction to something. And so when we can kind of reconnect the thoughts to the physical feelings, it opens up a whole way of knowing that often we've cut ourselves off from for a really long time and a way of processing and understanding that gets us back into our whole self, our physical body and our mind, instead of treating them as separate and and different. And that's not even to get into like body image issues where we we think our our brains are important, our thoughts are important, that's where our value is, and then our body is just like, well, sometimes it's sometimes I love it, sometimes I hate it. Right. But our body is a source of knowing.

SPEAKER_00 18:37

Yeah. And I love the idea that you're bringing the the mental thoughts, our spoken words, and our physical feelings together because they really tie into one another. If we're depleted physically, our brain is exhausted, and vice versa. And the better that you speak to yourself and really take those little snippets of, okay, nope, that's not working for me anymore. Oh, this gives me energy. It gives me excitement to really put a spring in my step and to move forward with that. But to be given that permission to really slow down and listen to what the mind and the body are telling one another.

SPEAKER_01 19:25

And then to use that as a decision-making tool. Yes. Which I think is really, I'll use that with a lot of my clients. If they have to make a decision, we'll kind of I'll get them into a really receptive and relaxed state. And then, okay, visualize, visualize option A. Really let yourself imagine what it would look like and what it might feel like and sound like, like, then wipe the etch a sketch off and visualize option B and really tune into how your body feels and which one feels more intense. Does it feel hotter or colder? Does it feel kind of like buzzy or like which one do you feel more drawn to? And sometimes there will be a strong physical sensation from one or the other. It's a great way to tap into your intuition when making big or or small choices. Sometimes the small ones are harder because they don't really seem to have a consequence or a clear answer.

SPEAKER_00 20:22

That's interesting because we always think like the simp, the simple decisions are not such a big deal, but they can be because once we start honoring what our intuition is telling us, what that gut feeling is, just as something as simple that if you drive the same way to work every day, but all of a sudden one day, like, you know what? I'm taking this other route. Don't know why. May take me a little bit longer to get there. And then you arrive to work and you hear that there's a roadway shut down or there's been an accident and traffic has been blocked up, and you kind of outskirted it because you listen to the gut. And when we listen to our gut, I know for me my energy source. And I for the longest time I kept getting inclination. Create this podcast, create this podcast about the power of the word. And for whatever reason, my inner naysayer was like, No, who do you think you are doing this? And all of a sudden, I was having this great conversation with the girlfriend. She goes, just go for it. What do you got to lose? Just go for it. And it's been so beautiful with everyone that I've been connecting with. And so I really implore to the listeners out there, listen to your gut, quiet your mind down. And so, Megan, do you primarily meet with clients in person, online, or a combination of both?

SPEAKER_01 21:50

Yeah, primarily I work with clients online just because it's easier for everyone's schedule. And I do have a lot of clients who are just not in the same geographical location. Um, but I mean on occasion I've had clients who are local and I'll we'll meet up at a coffee shop or something like that. I don't I don't have an office per se, I just have my house.

SPEAKER_00 22:13

So uh there your house is your office, it's it's your sanctuary, and you you create such beautiful connections. And I love that aspect that you meet with your clients primarily online because I know for me, with the clients that I see through my Reiki practice, some come in person, some come online, and I really strive to them. I don't want this to be like, oh, another to-do thing on my list. And being able to create that beautiful, safe haven of connection online. They don't have to travel to go see you, have that beautiful session, and then travel back home. And because people people are busy. So it's nice that they don't have that extra beginning and end time to have that time with you. And I love it that you are open to in person as well, if they're in the geographical area that is feasible. Because even if it's a 45-minute ride, that's a lot more to add on to people's day. And so that is so beautiful. What can a prospective client typically expect from a session with you?

SPEAKER_01 23:34

Oh, well, I always do I always do a like an intake session or you know, a free conversation. I call them discovery calls, where for me, I think coaching is really personal. You have to make sure it's a good fit. It's almost like a first date, right? Like you could think I'm a great coach and we could talk, and you could be like, oh, it's just not, you know, like it's not working, the vibes are off. Um, so that energetic connection is important. So in that session, we'll normally do. I have some questions I love to ask, and that's another power of the word thing, like the the way you ask questions to really help people dive into realizations. And we'll try to figure out like what is what is blocking you? What what are the things that you want to see yourself achieving? What are the things you want for your life right now? And what have you already tried to get there? What have you tried that has worked a little, but then you fell off the wagon, or what have you tried that you thought would work and hasn't helped at all, or made you stress even more? And by the end of that session, my goal is to have always a clear idea of whether I feel like I can help improve. Like, do I think that this is something that we could work on together, or is this something that maybe doesn't require coaching that really you're you're almost there on your own and you just need like a little bit of permission? I've had people say that like that intake session was better than therapy.

SPEAKER_00 25:09

Wow, that's that's impactful.

SPEAKER_01 25:12

Yeah. And so it's not always sometimes it's not a fit, and that's okay as well. Um, but that that's the always the first thing is really curiosity of what is going on and and what might it look like? What would we be working towards? How would we know if you're making the changes that fit? And then from there, it really goes, it really goes a lot more fluid and flowy because every time we meet, something different is gonna have happened in your life. Right. And so I really use some coaches have like a very set framework where we like we go through this process. I choose to let the clients experience their life sort of set the curriculum.

SPEAKER_00 25:59

And so I love that because then it's not one size fits all. And like you said, that from when you meet to the next time you meet, so much has transpired in one's life. So to be able to focus it on that instead of staying in a boilerplate and it's much more impactful. Much more impactful. I love that.

SPEAKER_01 26:26

Yeah, and I think it's really important for me because my goal is for my clients to walk away trusting their own inner knowing at a level that they maybe never have before in their lives. And I don't believe that that can happen if you're following someone else's plan. You have to be in the driver's seat. So it's almost more like, you know, whatever happens in their life becomes what we talk about, what we focus on, what we process. And there are several activities or assignments that almost all of my clients will do at some point, but the order is based on what they need at a specific time. So there's almost always some inner child healing, there's often some somatic work, um, you know, and some uh like affirmations and and things like that. There the tools are all there. Um but the way that we use them and what we focus on is is completely dictated by what is really relevant to each client in each session and the outcomes. I'm like, when I started, I was like, this can't work, right? Like, how am I gonna be able to say, like, you're gonna get you're gonna get a raise or a promotion just by just by chatting about what's going on in your life every week. Um, and then you just I see the results with my clients. You know, it when you everything is everything. So when you get really aligned and you start to trust yourself in one area of your life, it's easier to access that in all the areas of your life and you just start acting and speaking in a way where you feel aligned and you feel in control. And the words that are coming out of your mouth are the words you actually mean instead of just one of those like Barbie voice boxes where this is what I say when you pull my string, right? And the ripple effects of that are incredibly powerful.

SPEAKER_00 28:25

Beautiful. And I love it that you've used the words alignment with permission. It's because it's time that we give ourselves that permission. And it's not the people around us giving the permission, it's our own soul giving us the permission to go in alignment, what means something to the individual. So I love that. I love the aspect of that whole concept of it that it's very individual to that specific person. So, Megan, before we close out, what is the best way for the listeners to connect with you?

SPEAKER_01 29:05

I think the best way to connect with me, I have an email that I send out weekly. It's called Magical Mondays. Yes, beautiful. It's I I just reached a year of doing Magical Mondays, um, which is incredible to me because I never intended it for it to be like a thing. I just um couldn't think of what to write one day. So I pulled a card and I wrote about that and it became really popular. And um so I kept doing it, and now it's been over a year of these weekly emails. And what I do with them is I'm an intuitive tarot reader to the extent that I am a tarot reader at all. You know, I I look at the image of the card uh and interpret it through the lens of what's like what season we're in, what's going on in the world, um, and current events, and and I try to bridge the gap between like what is what is universe saying, what is universe reminding us of, and then what can we actually do to live into the lesson, to kind of bring this into our lives. And if you are interested in connecting with me, that's a wonderful way to sort of see how my brain works, I guess. Um, I love writing, it's one of my favorite ways uh to connect with people. I used to be all over social media, um, and I just really don't connect with those like quick 30-second attention-grabbing sound bites. It's not how my brain works, it's not how my soul works, and it doesn't always feel good. Um, so I've been trying to focus more on a written word, and that's a great way. It's a free email newsletter, and it's it's been a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_00 30:55

Great. And your email address, Megan?

SPEAKER_01 30:58

It's just Megan M-E-G-A-N at MeganGilman.net. So yeah. And um, but you can also, if you go to my website, which is MeganGilman.net, there's a link right on the front page to you can book a discovery call with me if you're interested in coaching or learning more about that, or you can get on the email list from there as well.

SPEAKER_00 31:19

Beautiful, beautiful. So I love that you're doing that on a weekly basis because I know it's powerful when I receive that in my inbox myself. And it really feels deeply authentic. And it's just it's a beautiful way of setting the tone for the week. So I thank you for that. So, Megan, is there anything else you'd like to share before we conclude for today?

SPEAKER_01 31:47

No, not today. I just, it's a it's a Saturday. Sun is out, spring is coming. Just like hang in there, everyone. We got this.

SPEAKER_00 31:56

Go and enjoy. So, Megan, thank you. Truly honored for you to be on the Energy of Serenity podcast today. And those listeners out there, please connect with Megan. Your week will start off on a high note with her beautiful email. And uh, so namaste to you, Megan, and I wish you all the continued best. Thank you for tuning in to the Energy of Serenity podcast. I appreciate you taking the time to explore the power of the word, mindfulness, and common practices with me. My gift to you is $10 off any energy serenity service, class, or product. When you opt in to the energy serenity newsletter and energy, on serenated.com and forward slash newsletter and entertainment colored hands. And until next time, may your energy to be serene and your words be empowered numbers.