How to Hear Your Inner Guidance, Lessons From a Month Off Instagram, & Letting Go of the How
I’ve been away for a hot minute and it’s been a journey. For any returning listeners, just know that I’m always so appreciative of you taking the time to listen to my podcast, my words, and my energy and I never take that for granted. I’m here to share and unpack/unravel the learnings I’ve received and the learnings I’ve been integrating and really just be as vulnerable and honest as I can--showing up in all my being. Something to think about: If you’re not willing to see yourself, how can you allow others to truly see you?
Before we dive in, I wanted to acknowledge that the format of the podcast is changing because I have taken time off podcasting and to be honest with you, it’s been on my list of things to do and I haven’t been doing it. My good friend Lucas always says, procrastination is feedback and I procrastinated and I finally decided to do the work and and look within myself and ask why am I procrastinating. Why do I keep putting off the things I love doing, this is part of my purpose and one of my favorite things to do to help and reach people--why am I pushing back? I know that you resonate with that, there’s probably something that you’ve been wanting to do for a long time and you keep thinking about it, you’re just not taking action. So I was in this space and I decided to do the work and look within and what I realized was that I am different and I’ve evolved immensely, therefore the format and structure of my business and how I create content and how I speak on my podcast is also allowed to shift and change--that’s truly what was keeping me stuck. I realized this when I was writing my show notes and didn’t feel like recording--I realized that I was trying to fit myself that isn’t me anymore and I gave myself permission to pivot, adjust, and change the way I want to show up. Today’s that day!
How to Hear Your Inner Guidance
This is something that I teach my clients how to do, we start every coaching call with a grounding - and when you ground/do a mini meditation, what you’re doing is that you’re really becoming present to the now, present to who you’re with and what you’re doing - not being on your phone during your call, not thinking about your to-do list when you’re supposed to be investing in your personal growth - what happens is the act of/practice of grounding is going to help you silence your inner critic.
Short answer of how to hear your inner guidance: silencing your inner critic, silencing expectations and internal pressure you constantly have on yourself. We do that in a myriad of different ways - personally, one of the ways of not being able to hear my inner guidance was by keeping myself so busy. Here’s a reflection point/journal prompt: Where are you keeping yourself busy, because it’s much easier to stay busy than it is to slow down? It’s much easier to put more stuff on your plate so that you can continue to have an excuse of not really knowing what’s next. Sometimes the busyness of our lives is just buffering, it’s not actual productive time, it’s just busy work to keep us in auto-pilot. I think a lot of times when we’re busy and a whole week flies by and we look at our list of things to do and nothing gets checked off, I think that’s when we’re living in auto-pilot. When you’re allowing patterns that aren’t serving you and different neural-pathways and auto-pilot stuff that runs the background of our life, we’re not really realizing it.
In order to hear your inner guidance, it’s important to ground because when we get present we can then silence the inner critic and we can just allow expectations and pressure to be relieved off of us for a second - one of my favorite lines to say during a grounding is “Give yourself all the time and energy and space you need to just be, in this moment there’s nothing you need to achieve. Allow yourself to just be.” - when you can achieve this state, that is when you can start to hear your inner guidance, that is when you can tune in and start to recognize what is your intuition trying to tell you - this only works if we have self-trust; self-trust only works when you trust yourself even when you don’t feel like trusting yourself. My whole journey of starting off as a fitness/nutrition coach, competition prep coaching, etc--what I really uncovered about working with my clients is that we’re truly coming home to who we are. It’s almost as if we’re remembering who we truly are. When you start to hear your inner guidance, you’re going to start hearing yourself. It's knowing what you have in your heart when you aren’t honoring your boundaries. It’s that feeling you get in your gut when you know something’s a “hell yes” or a “hell no.”
Hearing your inner guidance is all about tuning into what your heart is trying to tell you. I remember journaling about this years ago and I was very frustrated because I couldn’t hear my inner guidance; this took place in 2014 and it wasn’t until 2018 where I was able to truly hear myself. 2018 was when I decided to fully commit to my healing journey, my practices of meditation/journaling/breath work, really committing to breaking patterns and generational trauma and slowing down--I got married in 2019 and what feels like a rite of passage was choosing to not have my father walk me down the aisle--this decision allowed me to stand in my power of this is my life, this is what I want, and this is what makes me happy--no longer fall into that pattern of the wounded inner child who just wants her parents to love her so she’s going to do and say whatever they want so as to not make conflict. So when I really committed to stepping into my power, to doing the deep work, and doing the healing it came with action. Reflection point: Where are you keeping yourself busy instead of taking the action that you know you need to take to heal? What are some patterns you're ready to shift? What are some conditionings you’re ready to let go of that are no longer serving you?
Lessons That I Learned From Being Off Instagram
To be completely honest with you, for a couple of weeks I was feeling really depressed. Depressed might not be the right word but I was feeling melancholic--I was sleeping 10+ hours a day, feeling no motivation to create anything new, having no emotional bandwidth to give to anything else besides what was already on my plate, and really feeling down. I didn’t feel like I was good enough for my purpose anymore, even the thought of creating Instagram content has me triggered and stuck on the “how” and overall feeling out of practice with the action of it.
What came about while taking this time off Instagram and not creating a timeline, I discovered the amount of energy was being channeled in my intentional breaks with Instagram and it’s not a productive type of energy but the kind that was keeping me stuck in a loop of hustling for my worthiness. Even though I had systems, flows, and automations that allowed me to show up on Instagram without really having to be there--that was me hustling for my worthiness. The energy in which you do something is more important than the thing you do itself. The repurposing of content and having that be automated and going out, for me personally, that wasn’t coming from the right energy, that was coming from an energy of, “I need to be on Instagram” and the easiest way to do that was through repurposing. While that is true, there’s always going to be a truth to something and there’s always going to be a shadow; the shadow in this case was me thinking I needed to be on Instagram. What I’ve taken from this is that I want to show up more authentically and I am ready to start speaking about the things that I talk about my clients with--the incongruence between who I am and how I show up on my podcast as well as on Instagram, there is a very polished look to it. Being unpolished isn’t bad but I believe this new podcast format is going to help me lean into and show that part of me more.
I also felt really scared about how I can build my business without using Instagram because that is primarily where I have built my business and it’s what I know and I have done so much healing work around removing my ego and not needing followers and removing the likes count and engagement off a specific post--now I realized there’s a next level of identity and the identity that I’ve been meshed with when it comes to showing up online--I’ve been doing deep reflections on how my current identity is serving me, how it isn’t, and maybe this is who I was but is this who I want to continue to be? That’s a really powerful reflection because there’s nothing wrong with who I was, that’s just who I was then and who I am now is different so I get to adjust and pivot. Taking time off Instagram helped me realize that I don’t really want/like to use it anymore personally and for my business. I have a lot of fun using it with my kitten rescue and creating for that account but I’m not finding joy when it comes to creating for my business on Instagram. I’m going to continue unraveling and unpacking this, I’m currently in the midst of it and it’s something I’m going to continue journaling on and meditate with. I’m going to try posting from my heart and not have anything scheduled or not having so much stuff from the podcast repurposed.
The thought of playing around with a new method is what excites me, to not have pressure on myself of needing to show up in a specific way and to give myself grace and also to really call in my wonder child and have a lot of curiosity and excitement around this. I think that’s the anecdote to a lot of things, we find ourselves in a position of being stuck and feeling internal resistance--where one part of you feels one way, the other part feels another--just know both parts of you want the end result which is your highest good. When you have internal conflict, they’re both trying to help preserve the body and the mind. So when you understand that both sides of you have their highest intentions at heart, you can start to integrate both parts and pieces of you and the quickest way to that is curiosity. Reflection point: I wonder what it would be like if I did it like this/that? Release internal expectations and internal pressures and just find ways to bring more pleasure to what you’re doing. Can you increase your capacity for pleasure 5% more? Instead of falling into the “all or nothing mentality” when you realize you don’t like something and decide to not continue, how can you have fun with it?
Letting Go of the How
After I decided that I wasn’t sure I wanted to build my business on Instagram anymore, the next thought was: How do I reach a larger audience or continue to nurture my audience if I’m not there? Do I start TikTok? Do I double down on podcasting? What does that look like?
What I do know is that deciding is more important than the how. The ‘how’ is going to reveal itself along the way. Unpacking, unraveling, letting go of the control, and trusting that the how will come up--I just need to decide. I get to decide where I put my energy and how I want that to feel. What I decided was that I am ready to learn, I decided to learn other platforms and release the guilt that I have around not wanting to use Instagram, and I decided to release the shame that I feel I am letting people down. The ‘how’ is going to reveal itself along the way. The ‘how’ is very masculine and sometimes requires a step-by-step and the steps can be found through your feminine.
I was sitting here about to record this podcast and noticed the original title of this episode was “Your Healing Journey '' and I had the show notes written out but I didn’t feel excited to record. I have all these other titles that I’m ready to speak on but the notes weren’t pouring out of me like they normally do and I realized this is a time where I can practice what I preach. I’m not loving this, what can I do instead? I closed my eyes and did Owaken breath work and tuned into my inner guidance and asked myself, What is it that I need to know? That’s when my inner guidance showed up and said, You’re not the same person anymore. You don’t have to continue doing it in this format when that’s not what’s serving you, that’s not who you are, and that’s not how you want to show up. That is the how--I don’t have to do it this way anymore and I can choose to do it however I want. What most people do when they get stuck, they don’t tune into their inner guidance but instead go on Google and look up different ways of how to do things differently. Yes, you might get good strategies from researching but it’s not going to be YOUR strategy.
If there’s one thing you can take away from this episode is that I hope for you to start listening to your inner guidance--just remember your energy is the pilot and your mind is the co-pilot. Your energy is going to dictate and set the tone and your mind does the administrative work. Listening to your inner guidance is all about connecting with your energy; leveraging the power of your feminine and masculine energy and taking divine, inspired action from there. I promise you that you have all the resources you need already within you, what it takes is your devotion and your commitment to your inner work, to yourself, to taking action, to listening to your inner guidance, to uncovering your intuitive blueprint, to doing the work, and healing; and really recognizing when you’re operating from a wounded place and when you’re operating from your highest self.
Some Action Steps:
Create a ritual practice for your own inner work: for me that’s my morning routine. Moving my body, calming my mind, and connecting to my heart. I don’t do all three all the time, I have a list of things that I like to do and pick from it--it looks like yoga, stretching, going on a walk, doing breath work, meditation--it doesn’t have to be in the morning but create your own ritual and stick to it
Reflecting/Asking yourself: Where am I keeping myself busy? Where am I not slowing down enough to listen to my own inner guidance?
Journal prompt: What is the current identity that I’m operating from? How is this identity serving me? How is this not serving me? Get really honest with yourself about who you’re being. This is a very powerful practice and writing down who you’re being and who you want to be and noticing that contrast is going to give you the ‘how’ you’re looking for.
