Brenda 00:00:02 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. Say no to the good so you can say yes to the great. Join me on this journey to discover your yes 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. Today we're going to be talking about how you can more deeply trust your intuition. Now, this is going to be beneficial for you. Whether you identify as an intuitive or you've never really thought about intuition before. This is going to be really beneficial for you. Why? Because every single one of us has an intuition, and your intuition is connected to your higher self. It's connected to the divine, Whatever you call that, whether that's universe, God, source creator, Allah, whatever term you use, your intuition is connected to it. And the more that you can learn to tap into your intuition, the more you're going to find that you're making choices that feel really aligned with what you want. And you know what else is going to also be true? Your life is going to feel just a little bit more of a sense of ease.
Brenda 00:02:33 Now, I'm not promising you an easy life. If you trust your intuition. But when you trust your intuition, things do have an energy of ease. There's just so much less stress or hustling or fighting against. And how many times have you said to yourself, I knew that I should have done something different because I knew that, or I just had a feeling that was going to happen. Have you ever said that? Those are both really common things to say when you're tapping into your intuition, or in those cases, when you didn't listen to your intuition. So today we're going to be talking about a couple of things that are impacting your ability to access your intuition. We're going to be talking about decisions and energy. Okay. So let's first talk about energy. When I say energy in really broad terms. I mean your energy. So if you've ever said, oh my gosh she lights up a room or oh my gosh, they totally owned the stage. Or I just feel good when I'm around that person.
Brenda 00:03:56 What you're responding to is their energy. And you have this too. We each have our own unique, energetic imprint or energetic signature that we bring into any space. And you and only you are responsible for your energy. There was a book and it was written by Doctor Jill Bolte Taylor. It was called My Stroke of Insight. It was written several years ago, and it was talking about her experience with a major stroke. And forgive me for not knowing, you know, the details anymore, but she lost her language ability as part of the stroke, and so she wasn't able to articulate words or speak words for a while while her brain healed, and instead she was able to sense and feel energies so she could sense when someone was walking into her hospital room that was loving and nurturing and she could sense when somebody was impatient or maybe even harmful. She could absolutely feel it. And for somebody who and she self-identified as a scientist, that was, you know, very data driven, very focused on the evidence.
Brenda 00:05:18 And she talks in this book, my stroke of insight about how different it was for her to not have access to that part of her brain and to only have access to the part that understood and read energy. And one of her big takeaways was you are responsible for the energy that you bring into a room. And so when we're talking about energy, understand that you have an energetic signature. And so we mean several different things. When we say energy we're talking about like how much energy do you have. Do you have the energy for that thing? That's one way we talk about energy. But then the other thing is, are you contributing in a positive way to the energy around you and within you. Or are you the dark storm cloud that brings the energy down? And so there is a level of responsibility. Even if life is lighting on you, it is possible to maintain a very high level of energy. Some people call that high vibe. So I'll give you an example from my own life.
Brenda 00:06:26 My dad died in August of 2024 and has it impacted me? Absolutely, absolutely. It's impacted me. And also, I know that I'm responsible for the energy that I bring to my life, to my relationships, to this podcast, to my clients, to my friends. I know that I'm responsible for that energy. And so I allow the emotions to flow and then I come back to center. So it's not that I'm not experiencing Seeing the emotions that come with the death of a parent. I am, and I'm also not letting it affect my energy because I'm very intentional about what I call resourcing myself. So when we think about the word resources, we often think in terms of natural resources, right? Well, if you resource yourself, what you're doing is you are making sure that you are resourced for your life. And so for me, and this might look different for you, but for me that means I track hydration, I track nutrition, I track movement, I make sure that I'm connecting with somebody that I care about every single day, whether that's on the phone, in a text, in an email, in a Facebook message and an Instagram message.
Brenda 00:07:47 I'm connecting with people that I love every single day as part of my resourcing. I'm also making certain that I get good sleep by having good sleep hygiene practices and I'm making sure that I have fun. I do something fun. Just for the sake of fun every single day. And that's how I resource myself. If I wasn't doing those things, I can tell you for sure that my energy would be very, very different. And so when I say that you are responsible for the energy that you bring into the room. Yes, life might be lighting on you. And also you have choice. You may not be able to choose what's happening, but you do get to choose. If you're going to take care of yourself through it. You do get to choose. If you're going to make sure that you get the support you need by coming to breathwork, by going to get an energy healing session, by, you know, scheduling a somatic coaching session, by going to visit your therapist, by whatever resourcing you need to do.
Brenda 00:08:54 That's how you can take responsibility and be more responsible for the energy that you bring. Now, one of the other ways that I want to think about energy, or I invite you to think about energy as well, is what is actually having an impact and what is that impact? So my word for 2025 is impact. And this means several different things for me. One thing that it means is I'm really looking at what is my impact on others. How am I impacting the people that I'm serving? How am I impacting my friends and family? What is my impact? And then I'm also looking at what is the impact on me of different situations, of different conversations, of different environments, so that I'm really filtering everything through this lens of impact. So maybe your words not impact, but you can still do this. Okay, so I have a free downloadable energy audit where you can really dig into what is fueling you and what is depleting you, and you can access that at Brenda Winkle. Forward slash audit audit.
Brenda 00:10:04 And here's what I promise you. When you start to track your energy, you are going to. Learn things that are going to surprise you. How do I know? Because I'm doing this work all the time, and I'm very aware of energy, of how things make me feel. And every time I've done the energy audit, I'm surprised by something. There's something that just slips in. It's sort of like, you know, how you brush your teeth twice a day whether or not you need it. I approach the energy audit the same way. And so because this is a new tool that I'm offering, I am using it every day just. And now I'm not suggesting you use it every day. You can. There's nothing wrong with it, but I'm using it every day because I want to make sure it really, really works. And it does. Because when I'm honest with myself about what's draining and fueling my energy, I am able to make more intentional choices around how I'm spending my time, energy, and bandwidth.
Brenda 00:11:06 And when I said things are slipping in, things are slipping in. So there's like a conversation that happens, and I notice afterward I feel like I, I almost need to sleep, but if I wasn't actively tracking my energy, I might write it off to an afternoon slump. But it's not an afternoon slump. It's an energy leak. How do I know this? Because I'm tracking my energy every day, and I know that typically I don't have an afternoon slump. That's not something that happens for me. But in the middle of a conversation, if I start to notice I'm getting really tired and it's in the middle of the day, I know that that's not typical for me. And by being aware of how is my energy, typically I can become aware when it's not feeling normal and then make different choices. So I have become a master of saying no, not today, not this week, as a way to honor my own energetic needs. And I invite you to do the same. So go down on.
Brenda 00:12:13 Don't. Ooh. Got tangled up in my words. Go download that energy audit. It is literally going to change how you are spending your time, energy and bandwidth. When you get honest with yourself about what is fueling you and what is not fueling you. And it's going to really bring some awareness to that, which is the whole point. Now, I mentioned decisions, right? So as I have been doing my own energy audit daily for about three months now, I'm noticing that decision fatigue significantly impacts my ability to make decisions and to make choices that are aligned with what I want my energy to be and how I want to feel. So let me say that again in really simple terms. If I'm making too many decisions, I end up making decisions that don't support my goals. In other words, I'll choose to have the conversation that depletes me. I'll choose to spend time in the environment that doesn't make me feel good. I'll choose to say yes when I really mean no, just because I'm not aware of my energy.
Brenda 00:13:28 So when I say decision fatigue, let's unpack that just a little bit. We know that we make literally tens of thousands of decisions every day. Every single day. And I mean, there's data around this. You can Google it. How many decisions do I make in a day for average? You're going to be astonished at the number of decisions. And there are some things that we do, maybe without totally thinking about it, that are absolutely impacting not only your decisions and contributing to decision fatigue. But they're also eliminating your own access to intuition. So let's talk a little bit about decision fatigue and and what that is and how it impacts you. So if you imagine that you have, let's say just for easy math, that you have a total capacity of 10,000 decisions a day. You don't you have way more than that because you're making way more decisions than 10,000 a day. I promise you, you are. But let's just say for easy math, you have 10,000. So you decide what to make for breakfast.
Brenda 00:14:34 But that's not one decision. That's. Am I going to make coffee? Am I going to have anything in the coffee? Am I going to cook breakfast or is it going to be a cold breakfast? If it's cold breakfast, what am I going to have? If it's hot breakfast, what am I going to have? So already we've got like six decisions just around breakfast. And then it's it's like, am I going to wash my hair today or am I just going to condition it today? Or maybe I'm not even going to get it wet today. There's another decision. Am I going to wear full makeup or partial makeup? There's another decision. What am I going to wear? Oh my goodness. So before breakfast we have made probably 30 decisions. And I'm not exaggerating. Now here's what's happening for many of us. And I'll I'll admit I'm guilty of this and I'm changing it right now. But I have my phone by my bed because I love to listen to meditations as I go to sleep.
Brenda 00:15:29 And then every morning I start with a meditation. So I typically meditate twice a day. And, you know, once as I drift off to sleep. So I don't actually count that as a meditation, although it is, but I don't count that towards my meditation because I'm sleeping. anyway, I had a bad habit of opening up the phone to check notifications, to just glance. Did anything come in through email that I need to attend to because I work, with different people internationally. So people over in Europe and the UK, often will message me overnight. And so I was just, you know, checking email, thinking, oh, I'm just getting ahead of the day and then I'll go check social media. Is there anything I need to respond to? Is there anything I need to do? Not realizing that every single decision I'm making around that is taking from my decision bank, and it's taking from your decision bank too. So let me give you an example. If you open up email, then you're making decisions.
Brenda 00:16:32 Which emails am I looking at? Which emails need response right now? What's my response going to be? Should I do this right now while I'm laying in bed? Or should I wait until I actually start work hours? Can you see where I'm going with this? Your phone and looking at emails and Instagram and Facebook and TikTok and all the things is, is literally taking some of the decision bank from you each day. So if you could do even one thing differently to give yourself more decision capacity throughout the day. Don't look at your phone first thing in the morning unless it's just to play a meditation. And you can actually set your phone so that those apps don't open automatically. It slows you down just a little bit with the password that you have them open on your phone for just, you know, between this hour and this hour. That kind of discipline is really impactful because you're going to give yourself more decisions to make. Now here's the other piece. If you could turn notifications off on your phone.
Brenda 00:17:39 Oh my gosh. It's a game changer. Now, I was in a training last week, and I learned that the average time to refocus after an interruption is 23 minutes. So let's say you've been working. You've been working on something deep focus. You get a notification on your phone, it interrupts you. You pick up your phone to see what the notification was. According to this research, it's going to take you 23 minutes to get back into a focus state. 23 minutes. Now, what happens if you respond to every notification on your phone and then you get 23 minutes here, 23 minutes there, 23 minutes here, and pretty soon all you're doing is working as hard as you can to refocus. And so if you've ever gotten to the end of the day and you're like, I feel exhausted. And yet I didn't complete anything. Invitation to take a look at your phone. Do you have notifications turned on or off? Do you respond to every notification in real time, or do you let yourself actually focus? And so if you could do one thing differently around that invitation, just to put your focus on for 2 to 4 hours a day.
Brenda 00:18:59 You're going to cut down on so many decisions just from those notifications. It's going to be absolutely game changing. Now, how does this get into spirituality and intuition and all the things. Okay. So here we go. This is the meat and potatoes of of what you probably wanted to hear today. Your intuition needs time and space to come through. If you don't ever have white space, the intuition is still there. It's still talking to you, communicating with you. But it's so easy to pretend that you don't know it, to pretend that you don't hear it. And it sort of feels like a whisper off in the distance. So when you're not ever slowing down to create that white space with intentionality to connect to your intuition, it's really easy to ignore. And you know, now more than ever, you need your intuition because especially if you live in the United States right now, and I'm talking in 2025 with our current leadership, you need access to your intuition. Because if it looks like a duck and it walks like a duck and it talks like a duck and your intuition is offline, you're going to begin to excuse a whole lot of terrible, abusive gaslighting behavior as normal.
Brenda 00:20:30 And this happens to people in abusive relationships. Ask me how I know. One of the ways that abusive relationships are able to be perpetuated is by overwhelming people with number one decisions to be made, and number two, keeping things so busy, moving at such a fast pace that you can't access your intuition. And then number three, telling you that your intuition is wrong Your intuition is not wrong. Your intuition is connected to your higher self and the divine. So when you know something to be true, it's true. Now, I want to be really careful here in saying that you know what's true for you, and you know what feels right in your body, and you'll know that it's in your body when you feel like a sense of peace, or it feels like to use a word that doesn't make a lot of sense, it feels kind of smooth in the body. When intuition comes in, it's just smooth. It is peaceful. It is subtle. And when it's not intuition, when it's based in fear, or when it's based on something that you tell somebody else tells you, it can have just a little bit more of an edge.
Brenda 00:21:51 It feels slightly sharp. It comes in really fast and kind of forcefully could even be aggressive. That's not intuition. That's something different. Because, you know, there's a lot of energies out there for us to tap into at any given time. And so if it doesn't feel good in your body, it's it's just not intuition. It's really that simple. Your intuition is always going to be solution based okay. And what I mean by that is your intuition is going to say I need to move. I need to get away from this. I need to make a different choice. I need to clean the garage. I need to email this person. It's always solution based. Okay. It's not going to be problem based. It's not going to continue to feed the problem. So for example, your intuition is not going to tell you 101 ways why this person is a bad person. What might happen instead is your intuition will tell you 101 ways that you could change your perspective, change your proximity. Do you see what I'm saying? Your intuition is going to lead you to a solution.
Brenda 00:23:05 It's not going to lead you to a problem. So if you notice that you're thinking about things that are leading you toward more problems, toward thinking more about things you don't want or don't like, that's not intuition. That's something different. And we can talk more about that if you have questions. I am on the verge of creating something to help you learn more about intuition. So I do want to know, are you curious? Do you want to know more about intuition and what questions do you have? And I'm going to invite you to connect with me over on Instagram at Brenda Winkle and tell me what comes up for you when we talk about intuition. So if we recap today, we have talked about energy. We've talked about decisions and decision fatigue. And we've talked about your intuition. These are all related because if we're making so many decisions in a day that we're exhausted, it'll impact our ability to access our intuition. And the ability to impact your intuition has a direct relation with your energy, because if you're not actively connecting with your intuition, your energy changes a little bit.
Brenda 00:24:19 You kind of go on autopilot, and that leads to exhaustion and overwhelm and deplete and burnout and all the things. So if I had to sum up something that I would invite you to do into three really simple short things. Number one, go download the energy audit at Brenda Winkle. Com forward slash audit number two set a timer on your phone or on the microwave for five minutes a day to create white space where you don't consume anything. You're not doing anything. You're just creating a little bit of spaciousness to tap into what you know. And if at first, the first few days you do that, nothing happens. That's totally fine. That's normal. If you have been, you know, years and years and years away from tapping into your intuition or even giving yourself the spaciousness to listen. That's not going to be uncommon. It might take you a few days, but keep at it. So number one, go download the energy audit. Number two, create some spaciousness. And number three, find ways that you can reduce the amount of decisions that you have to make in every day.
Brenda 00:25:28 So this can be limiting your time on the phone. It can be strategically choosing time on your phone. It can also be automating a few things so that you're not having to decide. That's what makes routine so impactful. If you have a routine, you're not having to make decisions because you just do it in the routine order. So one of the things that you can create for yourself as a way to to cut down on decision fatigue is create workflows. Create routines. Create automations so that every day you do it exactly the same way. So you don't have to make a choice, especially at the beginning of the day. And, you know, knowing that your decision bank in other words, how many decisions you can make a day before you feel fatigued is finite invitation to make the most important decisions of the day first. In other words, if it were me, I wouldn't be spending my time on social media or email first thing in the morning. I would be doing something more impactful. Again, back to that word impact.
Brenda 00:26:37 Thank you so much for listening to your yes filled life coming up on the podcast next week, we have a beautiful spiritual teacher named Joe Figueras coming on the podcast to teach us about a new methodology that she has created to map your soul purpose, And I can't wait to have her on. Be sure that you have subscribed wherever you're listening so that you don't miss that. I tell you what, the guest lineup for your Westfield life for 2025 is on fire. Oh my gosh, we have the best guests coming on. We've had great guests also, but I'm doing some batch recording and really strategic, selection of guests for 2025. And it is going to be highly impactful for you. And if you could please leave the podcast a rating or review wherever you're listening, that that has so much, impact on the podcast. It helps the podcast get into the ears of more listeners. And if you really like this episode, if you think somebody might like to learn from a little bit about what we talked about today, please consider sharing it.
Brenda 00:27:47 Thank you so much for listening. Go grab your free energy audit at Brenda Winkle. Com forward slash audit and I'll talk to you next time. Bye for now.
