Brenda 00:00:01 Welcome to your yes, build life. I'm your host, Brenda Winkle, educator, healer, speaker, guide and fierce advocate for your. Yes, I help sensitive and successful men and women find, reclaim and live from their full embodied. Yes, through empowering you to understand your energetic hygiene, establish healthy boundaries, and heal your nervous system, you'll be able to create your yes filled life and move through your days with more freedom, more ease, and more joy. You'll hear inspiring stories of people who found their full bodied yes thought leaders who pursued their own dreams and are living life on their terms, and learn new ways to find the courage, joy, ease and freedom to more fully step into your yes filled life. Saying no to the good so you can say yes to the great. Join me on this journey to discover your bias filled life. Whether you're looking to break free from the golden handcuffs, start a new business, find your dream job, or simply live with more intention and mindfulness, I've got you covered.
Brenda 00:01:15 Let's explore the possibilities together and make your dreams a reality. Ready? Let's do this. Let's get you to your yes filled life. Hello and welcome to your yes filled life. I'm your host, Brenda Winkle. Happy new year. I'm so glad you are here today. I recognize that there are so many places you could be listening, and it means a lot that you are right here on your yes, filled life. So today on the podcast, we're going to be talking about energy leaks, what they are and how to solve them. So let's develop some shared language around what an energy leak is and why it matters. So let me change the context just a little bit. So have you ever done the dishes and you didn't have the plug exactly in the right spot in the bottom of the sink, and you turned around for a minute to wipe the counters or to grab a different pot. And when you came back to the sink, it had less water than when you started. Okay, that's a great example of an energy drain.
Brenda 00:02:26 They're subtle. They aren't obvious, but over time you notice that something is changing. Something's literally leaking. So this happens in our lives when we are taking on too much, when we're saying yes to things that we don't want to say yes to, things we really wish we would say no to. When we're absorbing energy or emotions from other people, when we're doing things we really don't want to do, and we haven't found a way to either change the perspective to make it fun, or to somehow just make ourselves feel better about it. We can also develop energy leaks when we start people pleasing, and I'll talk more about that. This can be kind of a vicious cycle. Sometimes we people please, because we have an energy leak, and sometimes we have an energy leak because we're people pleasing. And I'll talk more and unpack that a little bit here in just a second. So the slow energy leak is like what happens with your drain? It's slow, it's subtle, but it happens in a pretty noticeable way.
Brenda 00:03:34 So if you've ever come home at the end of the day and you've been exhausted, chances are there's an energy leak involved. Now that's a pretty obvious kind of energy leak. There are also even more subtle signs. Let me tell you a story I'm not proud of. But but I think this really illustrates the point. So I'm going to start in January 2024. There was a great big ice storm in the Portland area, and last year I was living in Lake Oswego, and Lake Oswego was very hard hit by the falling trees, and we had massive ice for days, and a lot of homes were destroyed. And, it was it was really a thing. So when I noticed that one of my tires had less air in it than the others, I was like, oh, it's from the storm and didn't really think too much more about it. Over the next several months, I would go to the gas station, which was really close to my house, and I would fill it up and I noticed it was happening more and more frequently.
Brenda 00:04:40 So I thought, I must be doing it wrong. So I went to the tire store and the tire store filled it up, and they said that if I continued to have that kind of problem, I should probably come back and get it repaired. But I didn't have the bandwidth for that. that's the part I'm not proud of. And, you know, in the meantime, my dad was getting sick. I was starting to travel full time in June of 2024, and off I went on my merry way, and I just kept filling the tire up whenever it needed it and not thinking too much about it. Well, eventually my travels led me out to Wisconsin, where I landed at the end of July and where I stayed through the end of August, and I was spending time with my family and my dad. He was sick and ultimately died while I was there in August. And at the end of August, I think it was August 30th or 31st, maybe even September 1st. I can't quite remember, but it was in that period of time my mom was getting nervous about me continuing on my travels, and she said she wanted me to take my car back to the to a tire store there, have the air checked and the tires checked and all the things, and I was a tiny bit resistant to it, but she reminded me how important it would have been to my dad that I was traveling on freshly checked tires.
Brenda 00:06:00 So I was like, okay, that's fine, I'll go. So I went and they told me that I had a nail in my tire. Now, bear in mind that the first time I noticed my tire wasn't holding air was January of 2024. This is now August of 2024. Oh, and by the way, I have driven from Oregon to Washington to Idaho to through Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, back to Wisconsin and was headed out through Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio on a tire with a nail in it. So that's an example of a slow energy leak. It's slow. You notice it once in a while. You try and refill it. You try and plug it up. You do the best you can and it still ends up depleted. Now we all have both kinds of these energy leaks in our lives. The subtle but slightly more obvious ones, like the kitchen sink where we're exhausted at the end of the day. And then we also have these more subtle signs of an energy leak that we just don't have to tend to.
Brenda 00:07:14 Very often. We keep trying to fill it up and tell ourselves, oh, it's not that it couldn't possibly be that. Like, did I know there was something wrong in my tire? Well, yeah, kind of. But at the same time it was, you know, holding air well enough that I didn't worry too much about it. Do I know how dangerous, dangerous it was for us to have driven 2500 miles on a tire with a nail in it? Well, yeah, now I do, What? I have done that intentionally. No, probably not, but it's a good story. And it's really good learning for someone like me who teaches about empathy and energy management and slow leaks. And look, we all have them, as evidenced by my two stories that I just shared, right? We all have them. And the more we can do to shore up the energy leaks, the more full, radiant and free lives we can live. Because when we're not managing our energy, we also are going to have difficulty managing our empathy.
Brenda 00:08:22 Why does it matter? Because if you're not managing your empathy, you're making decisions based on other people's preferences and desires, even if you don't mean to. So, I'm going to tell you the story in just a minute of a cookie that my mom and I shared over Christmas in Wisconsin. I just got back on Friday night from visiting my mom, my sister, my brother in law, my two nieces. It was our first holiday without my dad and my daughter. Maya wasn't able to go because she had work. She's now an assistant general manager at the place where she works and so proud of her. And I was very happy to be able to spend Christmas Day with her in Portland and then fly the day after to visit the rest of my family. But anyway, my mom and I were sharing this, this cookie. And I'm going to tell you what happens in just a second. But it it was an empathy management problem about a cookie preference. Now this can happen to anyone. And when it's not around a food preference, the stakes get much higher.
Brenda 00:09:26 When you're trying to make big decisions like jobs to take and places to live and and what behaviors you want to have to create the healthiest version of you the most radiant, abundant, prosperous, healthy, loving version of you. If you're taking on energy and emotion that's not yours, it can really affect you. And so inside the Unlock Your Energy Challenge, which went live on day one today, which is January 6th. I'm going to outline some symptoms that you might have an energy leak and some behaviors that you might have an energy leak, because maybe you don't really pay attention to what's happening with your body. And so maybe the symptoms won't necessarily grab your attention, but I bet the behaviors will. So this is about an eight minute excerpt from the Unlock Your Energy challenge. And there's still time for you to join. If you choose, you can register at Brendan winkle.com/unlock energy. All lowercase all one word. Let's dive in and listen to this eight minute clip on the symptoms and signs that you might have an energy leak.
Brenda 00:10:41 So when we have these leaks or these drains, it opens up space in our lives and in our energy fields for us to absorb things we may not want to absorb. We may not even be realizing that we are absorbing them. And so. But that's the number one reason why you might be absorbing energy and emotion that's not yours is you have a leak in your energy field, and a leak in your energy field will also, because you're highly empathic, a leak in your energy field will also create empathy management problems, meaning your empathy is going to go off the charts and it's going to lead you to think that certain things are your decisions, your preferences. And they may not be. They might be, but they may not be. I meant to bring them upstairs, but I forgot my mom sent these cookies home with me. Now, when we went to this German bakery last week, it was called European Bakery. So I was like, oh, French croissants and what do I want? But it wasn't.
Brenda 00:11:47 It was German Bakery with gingerbread and stuff like that. So my favorite, it is hers. But anyway, we got these cookies and it was the night before my sister and her family came home. So it was still just my mom and me, and we just brought the cookie tin, which, by the way, don't do this. We brought the cookie tin over to the couch and we were just like, eating the cookies. And they were delicious. They were so good. And she was like, well, they have nuts. My oldest niece has nut allergies and wasn't the same nut allergy, but we're just always really, really careful. So she was like, just take them home with you, put them in your bag. So I took them home and then I, I got back home last, Friday night. So then Friday night, my daughter came over and I was like, here, grandma sent these cookies, and I tried it, and I was like, oh my God, that's gross.
Brenda 00:12:40 It's gross. And I, I was smelling it and I was like, it doesn't smell any different than it did, but I tasted it again. I was like, there's something wrong here. So I taste it again. And I was like, this is gross. I do not like this cookie. It is not sweet to me. It is not flavored nicely to me. I don't like this cookie. And my daughter took one sniff and she's like, I'm not even that. She's like, I don't like those. And so I was like, what happened? Because they're not bad. They're just like two to 2 or 3 days old. And I was like, oh, I had an empathy management issue. I didn't even realize it. It can sneak up on all of us, and it can create preferences that you don't even know are there. So you think you like something and then you don't like it. I the reason that we want to talk about empathy management and energy management is so that you have more awareness around this.
Brenda 00:13:31 So so what are the symptoms. You might have an energy leak. Let's talk about them okay. Resentment, anger, fatigue doing things that are out of character for you where you wonder like that's not like me suddenly liking things. You don't usually like finding yourself dressing or talking in ways that aren't normal for you. Physical symptoms that suddenly appear and disappear just as suddenly. Fatigue that's in there twice because it's a major symptom of an energy leak. And then, depending on your level of self-awareness, you might not notice the symptoms. But you might notice that you have some behaviors that you're doing. So maybe you don't notice the symptoms depending on your body awareness, but you probably will recognize the behaviors. Saying yes when you want to say no. People pleasing agreeing to do things you don't want to do, or don't even like. Pretending you don't have preferences that might sound like, oh, I don't care where we go for dinner. Yes you do, you totally care. But you're just like, yeah, whatever you decide is fine.
Brenda 00:14:40 That's that's a sign of an energy leak. Refusing or feeling difficulty in making decisions like just not deciding. Prioritizing other people's feelings over your own, even minor children. If you're sacrificing your own needs to meet theirs, that's an energy leak. Now, when they're babies, you're going to have an energy leak. That's the way it works. That's just the reality of the name of the game. But once they get to be school age, you can tell them, I'm tired and I need a break. And we as an educator, and I know there's other educators in here, that's actually a good thing. here's another symptom or another behavior. Pretending you're okay when you're not ignoring physical sensations that tell you something's off. Like, maybe it's, a stomach tension, or maybe it's like heartburn. Or maybe it's like a random you start, like, tooting or burping and you're like, I don't know what's going on here. I ate the same thing yesterday. Those kinds of things are actually a symptom that there's an energy leak.
Brenda 00:15:50 Delaying conversations you know you need to have. Trying to talk yourself out of feeling the way that you are feeling, justifying bad behavior from yourself or from others. So here's the thing about energy leaks. Once you have them, it becomes so much easier to have an empathy management problem. Empathy management looks like people pleasing. Exhaustion, burnout. Chronic illness. I'm not saying chronic illness is caused by an energy leak, but it will certainly make chronic conditions worse. There's a lot of science to back this, so when we think about people pleasing, there's three reasons that your people pleasing. Number one, you aren't managing your empathy and your people pleasing almost by accident in response to the cues that you're picking up from people. Think about the cookie story. That was an example of not realizing what was happening. Number two, you were raised in a chaotic or abusive home. Now, this may have been abusive, but it may have just been chaotic, meaning there were lots of change, lots of job changes, lots of schedule changes, moves, those types of things.
Brenda 00:17:01 Or it could have been something that was like a divorce or a cross-country move. it could even be just parents that thought a lot would count as a chaotic home. And that can create some people pleasing behaviors because parent fighting is feels really awful to kids. number three, you only felt safe, or even maybe today when everyone around you is regulated, and so you need everyone in the room to be okay so that you can be okay. And that's a nervous system issue. Okay. I'm just curious, how many of those did you identify with? Were there more than one? More than two? More than four. We were laughing inside the challenge because one of the participants wrote in the chat, stop it. As I was, as I was outlining, the symptoms and behaviors that indicate an energy leak. So if you have those, we're not going to make it mean anything. We're going to just observe it and so that we can create an awareness. Why? Because the more aware you are about something, the more opportunity you have to make a conscious decision about it.
Brenda 00:18:14 So we don't want to make it bad because it's impossible for us to change something we don't like. We have to love and accept all the parts of us, and that's when a beautiful change can happen. And even if you're not going to create a change, it's worth loving and accepting yourself. So I would invite you to download a new free worksheet that I've just created. It's called the Energy Audit, and it's going to give you some steps to take so that you can assess what is fueling your energy and what is depleting your energy. And if you want to take it a step further, you could even audit yourself throughout the day and just pay attention to what kinds of things fuel you and really energize you, and what kinds of things deplete you. So you can grab that free guide at Brendan winkle.com/audit audit all lowercase. And that guide is going to inform what you want to incorporate more of into your days and your life. And maybe some things that you need to be shifted or changed or just a perspective, a perspective adjustment, or maybe even things you need to stop doing.
Brenda 00:19:32 So invitation to go download your free guide your free energy audit guide at Brenda winkle.com/audit. And remember that there's still time for you to join the Unlock Your Energy challenge. If you would like to do that I'm actually going to create this into a course. And so if you want to do this on your own, that's going to be an option in in a while. I'm not quite ready for that yet, but it's coming down the pike where you can unlock your energy on your own, which you can watch those videos at any time, day or night. They'll just be on demand, ready for you. With all of the assets like the Expanded Energy Audit Guide, the Say No with Grace PDF, where we're going to really dive into the formula that you can use to say no with grace and without guilt. And it even has ten PDF scripts to say no for a variety of situations. And that'll be part of that as well. So I'm just curious, now that you know what energy leaks or drains might look like, what changes do you think you're going to incorporate? I would love to know.
Brenda 00:20:45 DM me over on Instagram at Brenda Winkle. And if you do this, I have a free phone wallpaper that I will give you that just reminds you how much your feelings matter, how much it matters that you feel good. So DM me over on Instagram at Brenda Winkle and I'll send you that free phone wallpaper. And if you would do something for me, I would be so so so grateful. Could you please leave the podcast a rating and review? The more ratings and reviews a podcast has, the more potential it has to grow. And my goal is to get this podcast into millions of of listeners ears this year. And I'm going to need your help to do it. So can you please give the podcast a rating and review and share it with someone you care about? Thank you so much for listening to your guest filled life. Bye for now. Until next time.
