What it Actually Means to Lead From Your Higher Self

How do you know whether you're following fear, intuition, or your higher self?

In this episode, I'm exploring what it actually means to lead from your higher self and why this spiritual concept is so often misunderstood. Rather than treating your higher self as either a mystical idea or a source for everyday answers, I share a grounded perspective on how it can become a practical guidance system for decision making, personal growth, and authentic leadership.

We also explore the relationship between your higher self, subconscious programming, intuition, and soul, and why so many people mistake fear, conditioning, or external validation for inner knowing. If you're seeking greater clarity, trust, and alignment in your life or business, this episode offers a framework for understanding how to make decisions from a deeper place of wisdom.

In this episode, you'll hear:

• What it actually means to lead from your higher self
• The difference between your intuition, subconscious programming, and higher self
• Why inner knowing often comes before logical proof or understanding
• How to recognize the difference between fear and genuine inner guidance
• Why leading from your higher self isn't about having all the answers, but trusting yourself to take the next aligned step

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:55

Welcome back to the Limitless Life Podcast, or welcome if you're new here. I'm your host, Brenda Johnston, and today we're going to be diving into something that came up in the awakening session experience I did in June. It just kept coming up in conversations after that. And normally when that happens, I'm like, oh, this is something I need to pay attention to. And this is what people apparently want to hear more about. So we're going to be talking about the higher self some more, specifically what it actually means to lead from it. Because I feel like this concept has been so mystified on one side of things. And on the other side of things, it's been so completely dumbed down, and I'm saying that with love, that we have ended up somewhere between, I asked my higher self what I should wear today, and this untouchable spiritual idea that feels nothing like your actual life. And neither of those is what I'm going to be talking about. What I see a lot in the people I work with, in the conversations I have, in the questions that showed up in that room, is that even people who are doing serious work are still treating the higher self like this nice idea instead of a real guidance system that they can work with in all areas of their lives. So that's really what I want to dig into today. And as always, take what resonates, leave what doesn't. What I'm sharing today is my experience, my experience with the higher self, with learning about and studying and working with the different levels of consciousness over the years. This isn't the only way to look at it. It's the way that has made the most sense in my life, in the work I do, with the women I work with. So just take it, try it on, see what fits. So the year before I left corporate, something was happening that I could not fully explain at the time. I had this knowing. It wasn't a hope or a plan that I had talked myself into. It was a knowing. It was the kind of knowing that lives in your body before it even becomes a normal thought. And every cell of me understood that I was meant to finally leave, that the next version of my life was already waiting. And the only question was whether I was going to walk towards it or keep deferring it. For those of you who don't know my story, I had a side hustle for over 10 years while I was working in corporate. And every year I would tell myself and other people, oh, this is the year, this is the year I'm leaving. And then another year would pass and nothing had changed. So when the time finally came, I didn't have any proof that my business was going to work. I didn't have any evidence that the business was going to work. In fact, I would say actually had proof that it might not work because years before corporate, I was doing design work on my own. I'd left the ad agency business and was working as a consultant, and that was just a fucking disaster. Yeah. So I really didn't have any proof or beliefs that this could actually work going out on my own, especially in an industry that was so different from what I had been doing. But what I did have was certainty. And this certainty was so complete that failure actually felt genuinely inconceivable to me. And it's not because I'd convinced myself of that, it's because I knew from somewhere deeper than logic, deeper than strategy, deeper than the part of me that had built a very successful career by being very good at analyzing things and planning. I just I knew. So I hired coaches, and let me tell you, it wasn't because I had money laying around and I could do that, because I actually had to max out two credit cards to do it, and I was also going through a divorce. I did it because something in me had already decided, and I was simply aligning my actions with what was already true. And it was already true at a level that I couldn't even fully explain at that time. And before you write this off as something that maybe has only happened to me, I want you to ask yourself something. Have you ever known that you needed to leave something before you actually had proof? Maybe it was a relationship, a job, a friendship, a version of yourself. Have you ever had a decision that felt true way before it felt logical? Maybe your spreadsheet was saying one thing and every expert was saying one thing, and every person around you was saying one thing, but something inside of you already knew that you did not agree with them. Most of you have had at least one moment like this. And the reason I'm asking this is because if you've experienced that, then you've already touched the thing we're talking about today. You've touched this layer. You might not have called it your higher self, but you've experienced it. That's what this episode is about. Not about how to think more positive, not about manifestation as a concept. It is about a very specific layer of you that already knows and what it actually looks like to work with it. So let's talk about what the higher self actually is. If you listen to the episode I released a few weeks ago, the one where I talked about the four layers of consciousness, this is going to build directly on that. I'm not going to reteach that whole framework here. So if you haven't heard it yet, go back and listen to that first. It'll make this land a little bit better. It was episode 241, I believe. What I will say is this most personal development work, even the really good stuff, operates mostly at the conscious level. Then we have the subconscious layers, and that is the real work where it really matters as far as I'm concerned, because that's where I work with people. But there's also this layer above all of those things, and it is the superconscious, your higher self. And then we also have the soul level, which I'm not getting into. So again, I'm not teaching the framework today. I'm going deeper into one specific layer, which is the superconscious, the higher self, those are interchangeable, and what it actually means to operate from that space, not occasionally, not just when you're in meditation, but like daily as your default. Because there's this massive difference between knowing that that layer exists and actually intentionally working with it. So let me tell you what the higher self actually is in practice, not the definition, but like the experience of it. The higher self doesn't think, it just knows. That's the first distinction, and it's a very important one. The conscious mind thinks, it analyzes, it weighs options, it builds cases, the subconscious reacts, it runs its programming, it pattern matches, it keeps you safe according to the rules that were written a long time ago, according to your beliefs. The higher self does neither of those things. It simply just knows. And the knowing arrives very whole. It doesn't come with a pros and cons list attached to it. It doesn't have an agenda rooted in fear. Every layer below the higher self is to some degree shaped by protection if you really take a good look at it. Subconscious is running strategies designed to keep you from getting hurt. Your conscious mind is managing perception, managing risk, managing outcomes. The higher self has no interest in any of that, okay? It's not trying to protect you from anything. It's not pointing you towards the outfit you're supposed to wear. It is pointing you towards what is true for you. And here's the thing that I think gets lost in how this concept gets talked about a lot. The higher self is not separate from you. It's not a guide that lives outside of you. It's not something that you have to channel or connect to like a phone call and hope that it goes through. It is you. Your higher self, your superconscious, is your higher consciousness, the most essential, most unconditioned version of you. The part of you that existed before the world got its hands on you and started telling you who you had to be. Now, in human design, and I'm going to keep this light for those of you who aren't in the human design world, your strategy and authority are essentially the mechanism that your specific design gives you to access the signal. Your authority isn't a preference or personality thing. It's the way your higher self communicates through your particular energetic wiring, because we were all unique, people. Don't forget that. This is exactly why I use human design as a very strategic tool when I'm working with people, not because I want to give them another label, it is literally a map for how you are specifically designed to hear and trust your own knowing to connect to your highest consciousness. Okay, cool. So if the higher self is this reliable, this available, this intelligent, then why don't we all just lead from it? Why do so many people who've done serious work still feel like they're operating from something smaller than they actually are? Because the higher self doesn't speak in logic. It speaks in knowing, in feeling, in certainty that has no justification attached to it. And we, as humans, live in a world, and most of us built careers that require justification, evidence, rationale, a reason that sounds reasonable to other people. So we override the connection. We're not doing it intentionally, we override it because our conditioned self is very loud and very persuasive. The ego, the part of you shaped by every experience you've had, every fear you've absorbed, every message you've received about what was safe and what wasn't, has decades of information. And that information might sound like wisdom or caution. It could sound like, oh, I'm just being realistic. And it is very, very good at making the higher self signal feel irresponsible. There's also this. The higher self operates ahead of the evidence. The knowing comes before the proof, which means acting from it requires this kind of trust that most of us have not been taught, and it makes us very uncomfortable. We have been taught to wait for the evidence and then decide. The higher self is asking you to decide and then let the evidence follow. So that year before I left corporate, that was that territory. I didn't have proof the business was going to work, but my higher self didn't need the proof. It already knew. And my job was to decide whether I was going to trust something that lived in every cell and fiber and consciousness of my being, or wait another 10 years for a level of clarity and certainty that was probably never going to come from the outside. This is where a lot of the work in the Limitless Life Collective actually lives. We're not just doing stuff at the subconscious layers. We're releasing old beliefs, clearing old patterns. Yes, that work matters and it is a part of what we do in the collective, but underneath that work is something so much bigger. Learning to hear your higher self clearly enough that you actually just trust it. Until leading from that layer isn't something you have to work at, it's just how you operate. Have you ever wondered why you've done so much work on yourself, but you still find yourself repeating the same patterns? You don't need another strategy, because no strategy can outperform the subconscious patterns quietly running your life, the beliefs you didn't choose, the emotions you never fully processed, the active fear patterns influencing your decisions without you even realizing it, until those change, you'll keep creating different versions of the same results. That's why I created the Limitless Life Collective, to help you transform what's underneath so you can expand your capacity for more wealth, more freedom, more peace, and more joy. If you're ready for a different kind of transformation, visit Brenda Johnson dot com forward slash collective or click the link in the show notes. Now let's get back to today's episode. So let's talk about what that actually looks like because I want to make this concrete. I think it can all sound very beautiful and still be useless if it stays abstract. So leading from your higher self looks like making a decision before you have all the information. Because that signal came before the evidence, and you've learned to trust that sequence. It can look like a much different quality of certainty. It's not that pretend confidence that comes from talking yourself into something, but it's like this settled, strong, knowing, it's grounded, that doesn't need anyone else to agree with it. It doesn't need external validation, and it doesn't argue with you. It just knows. It also can look like actions that just feel natural, like you're not forcing anything. When you're operating from the conditioned self, from fear, from the should, from trying to logic your way around the answer, that is forced effort. When you're operating from the higher self, action has a different, I want to call it like a different texture. It still requires courage, but there's no force required. It just feels softer. And this is one of the most reliable signals that I know. When the higher self speaks, the body responds first. There's gonna be this sense of resonance or an absence of it that happens before your analytical mind even has a chance to like get in on the conversation. So if you can learn to read that, it's one of the first most useful things you can do. Now, am I consciously always living from my higher self? No, I'm fucking human. I doubt myself all the time. I have days where my conditioned self is so loud and so convincing, and I absolutely let it run the show for longer than I'd like to admit. This is not about perfection. It's about having a relationship with this layer of yourself that is strong enough that you can find your way back to it faster and faster each time. Now, let's go back to what this kind of relationship looks like. It looks like a particular relationship with outcomes. When I left corporate, I wasn't attached to making it work in any specific way. I was attached to the truth of the decision that I had to make, which was it's time to leave corporate. There's a big difference. But the condition self is outcomes focused. It needs to justify things, it needs the result to justify the choice. The higher self knows that the choice is already right, and it trusts that the result will reflect that as long as you take the actions. Now, this doesn't mean you're not ever going to feel fear. You will. You're human. The conditioned self doesn't disappear. But when the higher self is your natural operating system, the fear doesn't get the final vote. Now, when I said when I left corporate, I wasn't attached to making it work in a specific way. That does not mean that I was not attached to it not working, but again, because I was so connected and I just truly believed that success wasn't an option, I was more open to being open to the many possibilities of how it could work. So here's what I want to leave you with. You have a higher self. It's part of you. It's not something you need to develop or earn or become more spiritual enough to access. It's already there, it's already been speaking to you. The question is not whether it's available to you, it's whether you've been treating it like a last resort or a first resource. What would change if you consulted that lair before all of the logic? Before the pros and cons list, before you sent the voice note to three friends asking what they thought, before you let the condition self built, it's a very compelling case for why this isn't the right time to do something. What would change? For the next week, I want you to notice the difference between the first knowing and the story that your mind starts to build after that knowing comes. Because some of the most significant decisions I've made in my life, the ones that actually change things, didn't come from analysis. They came from that deeper place, that deeper knowing. And what I know now, having done this work for as long as I have, that's not just luck. That's what it looks like when you let your higher self lead. If this episode is opening something up for you, if you're starting to recognize this gap between what you know and how you're actually living, that's the work. Because the answer usually isn't more information that you never do anything with. Most of the people I work with are already very insightful. They've spent years trying to understand themselves. What they're missing isn't intelligence, it's integration. It's understanding themselves so deeply enough that they can finally see what's been driving the patterns and the decisions and all the ways they've been holding themselves back. It's learning how all of the layers of who they are work together. The conscious mind, the subconscious conditioning, the deeper wisdom that's been there all along. It's clearing what's in the way so every decision doesn't have to become this internal debate between what they know is true and what they've been conditioned to believe. That's the work I do with people. Whether we're working together one on one or inside of the Limitless Life Collective, that's the journey, moving from understanding yourself conceptually to actually living from that understanding. Not as another framework to study or as more information to collect, but as an actual way of operating in your life that feels very clear, very grounded, and very true. So if you're curious about what that could look like for you, honestly, the first step is just applying. You apply, and then we have a conversation, we look at where you are, we figure out what kind of support makes the most sense for you. You'll find the link to apply in the show notes. And if today's episode helped you understand something about yourself that maybe you hadn't been able to put in words before, pay attention to that. Because understanding is usually where the real change starts.