Can we trust our intuition?

In this episode, we dive deep into the profound wisdom of intuition and explore why it's more than just a source of answers - it's an invitation to sit with the questions that matter most. We discuss the importance of listening to our gut and how it bypasses rational thinking to tap into a deeper knowing.

We'll explore the gift of cultivating and trusting our intuition, even when society and workplace cultures push us to do more, plan more, and achieve more. How do we trust the whispers from our body that tell us to slow down? How does our "doing" mind react to pausing? And what happens when we make a full-body commitment to what our intuition tells us?

We invite you to gift yourself time and space to be with yourself - without distractions. We'll discuss the discomfort that comes with this practice and why it’s essential to normalize it.

This episode invites you to turn down the noise, pay attention to what your body is telling you, and see what unfolds when you truly listen.

We want to thank the team that continues to support us in producing, editing and sharing our work. Jonah Smith for the heartfelt intro music you hear at the beginning of each podcast. We LOVE it. Hillary Rideout for writing descriptions, designing covers and helping us share our work on social media. Chad Penner for his superpower editing work to take our recordings from bumpy and glitchy to smooth and easy to listen to episodes for you to enjoy. From our hearts, we are so thankful for this team and the support they provide us.

Transcript

Speaker 2 0:17

here we are for another episode after a bit of a break here, another episode of Trust on Purpose. I'm Charles Feldman.

Speaker 1 0:26

And my name is Ila Edgar, and so, of course, charles and I have had the conversation before the conversation for about 45 minutes. Now I think we should record, because what we were saying in the last five minutes, yeah, it was really, really interesting. So let me pause that to say. The topic that we would like to dive into today is about intuition, and I'll put a little plug in for an amazing book that I have been reading, called Listening in the Dark Women Reclaiming the Power of Intuition. I love this book and have very much enjoyed it. Every single chapter is written by someone else, and then Amber Tamlin has put this creation together, and can I read the quote that?

Speaker 2 1:18

we started with yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 1:20

Go ahead.

Speaker 2 1:20

That book is by a woman and by women and generally aimed for women, and I think that I want to say that men also could benefit from reclaiming intuition. I think feminine intuition is a little different from masculine. I don't know, I'm not sure, but I think it may be a little different. But I certainly wouldn't want to restrict this to women.

Speaker 1 1:46

I thank you for saying that and I a thousand percent agree that there is such a gift in all of us developing and cultivating the listening to our intuition. So I'm almost at the end of the book and now this is a transcript of a conversation between Amber Tamblyn and America Ferreira. And America says I think there's a lot of power in saying you don't have a yes or no yet, that your gut still needs time to process or consider what it has received. It needs a little more time for you to just take things in. And Amber responds with this beautiful sentence intuition is not just what gives you the answers, but what makes you sit longer with the question.

Speaker 2 2:36

And we had a lovely little conversation just before we started recording about what's going on there and what that is. And even now, as you read that, it's even stronger sense for me that what we call intuition we often call it, you know, listening to our gut, and I know that my experience is that intuition doesn't just come from my gut. It seems it comes from listening to my entire body that what I call or consider intuitive hits bypass perhaps is the word bypass my rational thinking and show up from some other place altogether. And so the question often for me is how can I trust that? Is that something I can and should trust?

Speaker 1 3:32

I was sharing that there's a quote about oh shoot, I'm going to budge, right. But it's something about basically like when her feet hit the floor, the devil's like oh shit, she's up. I feel like that is often. I hit the ground running. Most days I don't need to like roll into the morning. I'm awake, my feet hit the ground and it's like let's go.

Speaker 1 3:49

I got stuff to do and in the past few weeks I have been inviting I was going to say challenging I have been inviting myself to do something different, and that is go, sit outside, enjoy the beautiful sunshine, quiet, the still of the morning and gift myself time to read a few pages from the book and also to just be where. There's no deadline, there's no timeline, there's nothing I have to do, there's nothing I have to rush to. And in this space, this listening, I don't even know that I had a question. I was pondering. Maybe there was, Maybe there was a little question, and if I stayed in my brain to figure it out, I think that I would have gone back to the hustling, the rushing, the like oh my gosh, there's all this stuff I have to do and that gift and pause has actually given me something else, which I would have never considered before.

Speaker 2 4:53

I'd like what you're saying there in that, well, you use the word invitation and I think that's so often for me, what comes as an intuition is really an invitation to look at something in a very different way than I have been, take a different perspective on whatever it is. And again, I may have something that I've been questioned or something I've been pondering, or it may just come out of nowhere, apropos of nothing in particular, and yet there it is. And so, wow, what is? And so, wow, what is this? And what's the invitation here? What's this inviting me into?

Speaker 2 5:30

And my planning mind and my part of me that wants to figure this out and do that and accomplish this and plan, that tends to reject that kind of information, that that kind of invitation, and just motor on with all the things that, yeah, I think about. And when I do stop and really allow the question that maybe arises if it's a challenge that I'm working on, or maybe if it's just something that pops up, or maybe if it's just something that pops up when I do just sit with it, it does tend to. First of all, I have to slow down to do that. I can't do that while I'm following the locomotive, the bullet train of my brain, my thinking planet, brain, brain. I have to actually make myself slow down and take in this something that's a larger context than what my thinking brain, my planning brain, has been presenting me with.

Speaker 1 6:36

I'm laughing a little bit because I would describe the thinking planning part of my brain actually is the shitting. There's a whole bunch of shitting going on. I should on myself when I feel that there's a franticness. So June was a really my dance card was super full in a lot of ways and so there was no extra space and time and I came out of that month feeling like literally frantic, like I've got to figure I don't have time to pause, I don't have time to do anything. I just need to, like, get in my office and figure out what I'm going to do for the fall. What does my business look like? I can even hear in how I'm speaking.

Speaker 1 7:19

Right now the franticness is coming back. Franticness is coming back and in the first few mornings of sitting outside, I will tell you, a thousand percent uncomfortable, so foreign in so many ways, and very easily the little itty bitty, shitty committee is like you've got things to do. You shouldn't be lollygagging out here in the beautiful sunshine, even if you're reading a book. Get your ass back inside and get stuff done. And I think you know, as we relate this back to clients that we work with, I think that this is something that we have unintentionally designed in our world the do more, go faster, and so when we even get a little whisper from our intuition or from our body, it's really easy to dismiss it. Or maybe later, or oh gosh, you're saying earlier, is that indigestion or is that like something that I need to pay attention to?

Speaker 2 8:16

Yeah, I know you brought this to some of your clients and I certainly brought it to some of my clients this idea of taking time, of slowing down at least some point during your day, or maybe, even if you can't do it during a day, maybe you can do it during the week at some point. And so I've had clients commit to taking a couple of hours at some time during their week, their work week, to do that, and they've recognized that it puts them in a different place. Again, like you said, I have to get them, help them, make a strong commitment to doing that, because their planning mind goes or their should mind or whatever you want to call it goes into high gear, freaks out at this blank space of time and they feel like they should be, if nothing else, they should be figuring the problem out and thinking about it. Yes, but I'm trying to get across this idea more of just letting it be, letting what arises arise as an invitation, as a gift. That is different from the franticness of the planning mind.

Speaker 1 9:30

So you saying an hour or two put me into like, oh shit, there's not a chance I would do that? That sounds horrible. Is it the right word? I don't know that I could do that, and so I think again, the invitation is where can you start? And maybe it's one minute, maybe it's five minutes, maybe it's something small, but that we develop the rigor and the commitment to, even though it's wildly uncomfortable, the quote like practice what you need when you don't need it, so that when you need it it's available. You know, if I relate back to this franticness of June and the tiny question I've been pondering and where I've arrived about what I want to do and how I want to be, I would have never gotten there had I stayed in the hit, the ground running and the devil going oh shit, she's up. Here we go, because I'm not giving space.

Speaker 2 10:32

So yeah, and I know that for me, that question how do I want to be it's not even a question I can address when I'm being how I habitually always am being. So I learned that a long time ago, fortunately. So I've been able to look at that and think, okay, so the only way that I can be differently, show up in the world in a different way, is to be able to stop being my habitual self for some period of time so that I can let in the possibility of different ways of being, so that I can let in the possibility of different ways of being. And that takes a commitment. You know, like you said, maybe initially it's five minutes in a day, no-transcript.

Speaker 2 11:14

So I'm going to tell this story which I was reminded of when I was with some friends and colleagues this last weekend a man who was a brilliant coach who recently passed away. Several of us coaches had met together in a sort of remote place and we were spending a few days together and just learning from each other and so on, and he led us through this exercise. That was very, you know, like we were out in this open space and he created this space with ropes. You could go around the entire thing and not really figure out how to get out. But the point was to get out without ducking under a rope, and there was a way to do it. Okay, and then we're blindfolded.

Speaker 1 11:56

Oh, okay.

Speaker 2 11:58

So we have to negotiate all of this and we can talk to each other. Anyway, the point about all of this is that if you got out, you were supposed to raise your hand and he would come and tap you out if you really were out. Otherwise he would tell you nope, you're not out, you got to keep looking. And so at some point, after a while, I thought I had gotten out and I kind of put my hand up partway because I wasn't. You know, I was like, oh, I'm not even sure I'm out, but I'm going to try it out. And then, when he didn't come over, I couldn't put my hand down and I put it up again a little bit and did that about two or three times. He didn't come over and finally, after he tapped out several people, he came over to me and said you're outside too.

Speaker 2 12:44

And I said well, I've been out for a long time. Why didn't you come over? And he said because you didn't really commit to raising your hand and saying I'm out, which was such a huge lesson to me around commitment, I'm out, which was such a huge lesson to me around commitment. What has since allowed me to commit to certain practices that have allowed me to change my way of being Meditation Well, I was already committed to meditation, but now in a totally different way, and other practices as well Tai Chi and other things. So the point of that is it's not just a mental commitment to doing something like that. What you're describing doing is walking out into the outside world, sitting down, committing yourself to not listening to the Russian roar of your planning mind doing something very different, and it was a whole body commitment and that's what it's allowed you to do and I would propose that that's what's allowed whatever has come of that process to change you in some way.

Speaker 1 13:51

You also just gave me a huge gut punch in telling that story, so thank you. I think Totally a mad story, so thank you.

Speaker 2 13:58

I think You're quite welcome. This was one of those big ahas for me that really changed how I am around commitment.

Speaker 1 14:06

Yeah, so the mornings on the deck has been lovely, and maybe this message and the gut punch that you have gifted me this morning is around getting clear on my commitment gifted me this morning is around getting clear on my commitment, and so I have recently made a declaration in my family about August and September and how I want to design what that looks like for me.

Embracing Intuition and Trust in Leadership

Speaker 1 14:31

And, as you're telling the story, I am totally doing the. Yeah, I think this is what I'm going to do. It's a half commitment and underneath the surface, I'm paddling like a duck to figure out how I'm going to make it happen, and so I'm back into my habitual pattern, and so thank you for the gut punch again, and now I see that I need to fully commit to and as I say that out loud here to our lovely audience, it's really interesting I have many people that say I'm so brave in navigating the cancer journey that I'm on and I don't really have a choice. I think it is my life, it is what is life. Inviting you into what I'm about to do is probably the biggest, ballsiest, bravest thing that I have ever done for me, and so, yes, I do things that other people assess as brave, but literally, charles, what I'm about to do is probably the bravest thing for me and that deserves a full body commitment, not a half-hearted kind of sort of maybe.

Speaker 2 15:49

Yes, absolutely. What a great understanding. Realization about that, yeah, that yeah.

Speaker 1 16:04

And there again, it's one of those intuitive understandings that, if you trust, it will take you to a new place. Yes, and I wasn't fully trusting it.

Speaker 2 16:10

Yeah, interesting.

Speaker 1 16:12

I was gonna figure it out Again. I've got my little ducks sitting over here, my little ducks feet under the water, yeah. And so what happens if I truly trust that this is what I need to do and make a full body commitment to doing that?

Speaker 2 16:31

There again, I think there's something really critical about that full body commitment, because I have gotten to places where I needed to make a commitment to something and I've been kind of in the shade, and then when I go to make a full body commitment, my body says no, this is not something to commit to which is just as important to recognize this is a full body.

Speaker 1 16:54

No, A full body? No yeah.

Speaker 2 16:56

So taking the time to be in that state where we're not just being our habitual selves in the world, so that we can appreciate and try out something. Try out that commitment to see what our body's going to tell us about it, because sometimes it's going to tell us no, going to tell us about it Because sometimes it's going to tell us no. Or sometimes it's going to tell us, yes, make a commitment, but not to what you thought you were committing to. You're actually committing to something else. And what is that?

Speaker 1 17:29

And understanding that, yeah, I think the other interesting piece that comes up for me is that I don't think that our culture, our society, gives merit or encourages us to listen to our intuition or our gut sense. And yet why is it that we pay attention if we're walking down a street, we shouldn't be walking down, or our spidey senses tingle around our safety. We pay attention to that. I think more often than not we pay attention to it. Sometimes we don't make the judgment call, but when our body is sending data points and we talked before the recording about some of the data and the science around incredibly wise and all of the data that our body does give us, how do we start to help leaders cultivate that more? And, I think, how do we normalize this as something to pay more attention to versus less attention to?

Speaker 2 18:29

Yeah, that's a good question. I know part of it is that in order to get the value of it, someone has to experience it. It can't just be something that's just in the head, because then it'll just be processed along with everything else. There'll just be more grist for the mill. So to really get it requires actually trying it out, and not just once, but, like you said, committing to going out and sitting on the back deck in the morning, and not just this morning, but tomorrow morning and the next morning and the next morning.

Speaker 2 19:03

Or for me, the starting to meditate was committing to doing it every day for originally about 15 minutes and then, you know, make it longer, that commitment to doing it no matter what else was going on. So some mornings it means I get up earlier than I ordinarily would, or whatever. But I think part of it is, and has to be actually experiencing it and experiencing what happens, which may not happen right away. Initially, like you said, your planning mind was going what? We're going to just sit here and do nothing? So you have to be a commitment to trying it out for a while until you get a sense of the value that it can bring. That's not easy. Our clients are working in a cultural context within their organization and within a larger society that is always telling them that they have to be doing more, more, more, doing, doing, doing more more more Well, and then they're rewarded for doing more.

Speaker 2 20:08

For doing yeah exactly.

Speaker 1 20:10

We're not rewarded for sitting with a question, we're not rewarded for chewing on a problem. We're rewarded for solving it and getting shit done. Yeah, exactly yeah, I think the other thing because stillness has been difficult for me in the past and so I want to also offer one of the other things that I do is when I go take the dog for a walk. There's no music, there's no podcasts, there's no nothing. And that also I think you've heard me say this, my clients definitely hear me say this is my best. Questions come three days later, when I'm walking the dog and again allowing some space where I'm not focused on any one particular thing, but rather just being able to turn the volume down and allowing whatever to show up. And that is also an incredible gift, and I'm thinking of a friend who's recently we're having a conversation about, you know. Oh yeah, that's when I listened to my podcast, because I don't have time and we really appreciate people that listen to podcasts.

Speaker 2 21:14

Yes, thank you for listening to our podcast as you're walking your dog. Thank you for listening.

Speaker 1 21:18

Yes, and it doesn't mean that you never listen to a podcast while you're walking, but maybe once you just try, or maybe for half of it you just try and see what happens, or maybe it's also you sit somewhere or you whatever it is the time and space that you gift yourself to just be with yourself.

Speaker 2 21:41

And getting back to trust, trusting that that can be as valuable a use of your time and your energy, your be, as all the other stuff that you do and how you do it, all the other stuff that you do and how you do it and the only way that you can find out if that's something that you can trust is to try it and do it for a few times.

Speaker 1 22:02

So let's just put another caveat. You don't do it once and magically your life changes. There is rigor and commitment to something, to see what might be different for you.

Speaker 2 22:13

Absolutely.

Speaker 1 22:14

And I want to maybe wrap us up in that we're rewarded for living here right Going through school learning and knowledge solving problems.

Speaker 2 22:25

Taking tests.

Speaker 1 22:26

We're rewarded for living in our head and in our knowing, our traditional knowing, and I think you know you and I have spent time and space studying and learning about the wisdom of our bodies through somatics. Really, like for a moment, think about how incredible our bodies are.

Speaker 2 22:47

Yeah, and if we're just using them to take our heads from one meeting to the next, what a waste. I've got to say, because our bodies can give us so much information and can do so much, can be so much an important part of how we show up. Like you said, the coaching questions. I do the same thing. I'll be walking my dog and thinking about a coaching conversation and all of a sudden that, oh my gosh, that would be a really wonderful question to ask this person. So I get to do it in my next coaching call. Sometimes it just fizzles, but most of the time those questions that come up in that space are really rich and provide something. Take my client somewhere where they hadn't gone before. How?

Speaker 1 23:34

beautiful. We mentioned Julio Olaya in our conversation. Before the conversation there was, I remember, one quote he shared around, not looking for the answer but falling in love with the question.

Speaker 2 23:49

Yes, I remember him saying that as well. And getting back to our starting point here, intuition helps us stay with the question longer. There is another person who first studied in under and then worked with Julio Troll Corsi wanted to say I want to find questions that are going to take me five years to answer, and so that's been a challenge for me periodically. Okay, what's the next big question for me?

Speaker 1 24:21

Oh, I love that. I love that, and so our invitation for our listeners is to, even if it feels wildly uncomfortable, try it on. See what happens when you gift yourself even a little bit of time and space and pay attention to what your body is sharing with you, and not judging it, not making it right or wrong, or I should or I shouldn't listen, or what does it mean. Let's just see what shows up and fall in love with that gift of time for yourself.

Speaker 2 24:56

Thank you, that's well put. Enjoy that, mind it, be with it. It's part of who you are.

Speaker 1 25:04

Beautiful, beautiful. Thank you for this conversation.

Speaker 2 25:08

Thank you, and thank you all of you who are listening. As usual, we would love to hear from you thoughts about this particular topic and conversation and other conversations around trust. Have a great couple of weeks.

Speaker 1 25:23

On behalf of both Charles and myself, we want to say a big thank you to our producer and sound editor, chad Penner. Hillary Rideout of Inside Out Branding, who does our promotion, our amazing graphics and marketing for us, and our theme music was composed by Jonas Smith. If you have any questions or comments for us about the podcast, if you have a trust-related situation that you'd like us to take up in one of our episodes, we'd love to hear from you at trust, at trustonpurposeorg.

Speaker 2 25:56

And we'd also like to thank you, our listeners. Take care and keep building trust on purpose Until next time.

Speaker 1 26:06

Until next time.