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[00:00:00] Welcome to Wholehearted Coaching: The Podcast. If you're looking for more purpose, more passion, more joy in your life, then you have come to the right place.

I am your host, coach and Life Alchemist, Shirin Eskandani. And I have worked with thousands of people showing them how to create their dream lives while also living their dream.

Hi love. Welcome to Wholehearted Coaching: The Podcast. This is where we take a deeper dive into my Mindset Monday post, which you can read on Instagram at @wholeheartedcoaching. Or if you want to go even deeper into this week's episode and get my free weekly journal prompts, sign up for my email list and you'll be able to explore the topics we're talking about in this episode. Even further, you can do that in the show notes or by heading to my website: wholehearted-coaching.com.

And if you're interested in working with me, whether that's one-on-one in one of my group programs or one of my transformational courses, you can head to my website, wholehearted-coaching.com/offerings to find out more. And of course you can also head to the show notes and all of this information. We'll be waiting for you there. All right, love. Welcome to this week’s episode.

[00:01:46] Today's episode is all about intuition and I'm telling you there is something for everyone in this episode. If you're looking to strengthen your intuition or create a greater connection to your intuition, or maybe just figure out how to listen to your intuition and what you're even listening to. This is the episode for you.

[00:02:08] If you have been part of this community for a while, you know that intuition is one of the key pillars of what I teach. I truly believe that if all of us, if every single person listening to this podcast started to lead their life from their intuition and started to trust that inner knowing, then that's when our lives transform and change for the better.

[00:02:33] When I learned how to listen to my intuition and not only just how to listen to it, but then trust and take action from my intuition. That is when my life became what it is today. So today's episode is a crash course in intuition. How can you distinguish what intuition sounds like? How can you tell the difference between ego and intuition and how.

[00:02:58] Can you understand if you are making an impulsive decision or an intuitive decision. Now we're talking about all of this, because if you are listening live, you have one more week to sign up for my free week-long masterclass, the inner compass experience in the inner compass experience. We're going to be talking about a lot of the things we're looking at today, but even deeper.

[00:03:23] And we're going to be expanding. The Inner Compass Experience is about you learning how to become your own north star. Again, meaning that you become the guide, the expert of your own damn life. This is a transformative week that you get to spend with me. It's completely free and it runs from April 10th to the 15th.

[00:03:46] And if you can't join us, live for the calls, everything will be recorded for you. So if you want to find out more, if you want to sign. Head to whole at-coaching.com/experience, or you can just go to the show notes. All right. Let's get into today's episode and I am so excited to see what resonates with you from what we're going to talk about.

[00:04:11] Because the ripple effect of what we're going to be learning is going to be so huge love. So there technically isn't a mindset Monday today. If you had to Instagram, you will see a carousel, which means a bunch of different images. And the first image reads know the difference between intuition, ego and impulse.

[00:04:33] That's what we're going to be talking about today. Each one of these voices, what they feel like, how they communicate to us and ultimately what they want us to do when you have this knowledge, love of really understanding how these three different voices manifest in your body, how they talk to you, how they communicate to you and what they ultimately make you do.

[00:04:55] That's when you start making decisions that are based in what you truly want. Not what your fear wants, not what your mom wants, not what you're supposed to do, but what you really, really want. And the domino effect of making multiple decisions like this, right. Decisions of what you truly want. That's what changes lives.

[00:05:15] I will say that today's episode is great to listen to. If you've also listened to last week's episode, now you can listen to this one independent of last week's. But in last week's episode, we go into some of the deeper reasons of why we don't listen to our intuition. So I really recommend listening to that.

[00:05:36] And today we're going to be expanding upon some of the ideas we looked at in last week's episode. Okay. So let's talk about intuition. Now. Intuition is something that many of us feel like we are disconnected. Perhaps we know we have it. Maybe we've had moments where we're in touch with it, but when it comes to our day-to-day lives, our big decisions, we feel like we can't connect to it.

[00:06:00] We don't know what it is. So I want to talk to you about what intuition is, what it feels like. Again, it'll be different for you, but there are some basic things that we can truly understand about it. So the first thing I want us to understand is that all of us have access to our intuition. All of us. I know you may be listening to this and saying, you know what, Shirin, I may be like the small percentage that does not have access to my intuition.

[00:06:26] And to this, I say lies. Okay, we're going to do a little exercise. That's going to prove to you that actually you do have access to your intuition. I want you to think of the last time that you said to yourself. I knew better. Go ahead and think of that last time that you said to yourself. I knew better. I knew I shouldn't have said no.

[00:06:52] I knew I shouldn't have said yes. I knew I shouldn't have gone on that second date. So thinking of a circumstance and it doesn't have to be a recent one, but perhaps a circumstance that you can remember in which you wanted to do something. And you went against that. And later on, you said to yourself, I knew better.

[00:07:14] So low. If you have ever, ever, ever, ever uttered the phrase I knew better, then that means you have intuition. You have innate knowledge. It means that you had an intuitive download, but you decided not to listen to it now. That's okay that you didn't listen to it again. If you want to go deeper into this head to last week's episode.

[00:07:39] There are a lot of reasons why we don't listen to our intuition. But what I want you to understand is that if you've ever said that phrase of, I knew better, that means that you have access to your intuition. What we have to understand is in these moments, what that feeling is, what that knowing is. So if you can think about that memory.

[00:08:07] Right. If you can take yourself back there, I want you to ask yourself, how did my intuition communicate with me? What did my body feel like? Was it a voice? Did I dream up the answer? Did I just instinctively know thinking of that moment and really queuing. What were the feelings, the sensations, the voices, the images, the downloads that I had in that moment.

[00:08:39] Now this may be difficult for some of you and that's okay for those of you who find this exercise difficult. I want you to think, okay. What did it feel like to not listen to my intuition? This may be an easier. Now years of doing this work, some of the common answers I hear of what does it feel like? Not listening to my intuition are I get tension headaches.

[00:09:04] I can't sleep at night. I make constant pro and con lists. I ask everyone for their opinion, my body hurts. My belly is a knots. So you can either think of this as, what does it feel like when I listen to it? Or what does it feel like when I don't listen to it? This is knowledge. This is key. So for those of you who can really tap into what it feels like to listen to your intuition, amazing, write down what those sensations, those feelings, those downloads are like for you.

[00:09:43] And just take note of that. And for those of you, and I'm in this case, Who can only tap into your intuition by understanding what it feels like to not listen to it, write that down and take note of that. Right? So next time you're making pro and con lists. Next time, your belly feels a certain way, you know, to check in and say, oh, okay.

[00:10:07] It seems like I'm not really listening to myself. I find that the energy of intuition is really soft and stuff. Intuition is not going to yell at us. It's not going to force us to do anything because it knows that eventually we're going to have to listen to it, right. That eventually we're going to get in the same situation again and again and again and again, and that finally, we're going to be like, okay, I'm ready.

[00:10:33] I'm ready to listen to you. And that's what makes it so tough to listen to intuition because it is often the most softest voice. It is a very nurturing energy. It's a very loving energy, right? Whereas ego ego is the first voice. We usually hear ego that voice of fear, ego masks itself as intuition all of the time.

[00:11:03] And that's why it becomes a really hard for us to understand well, which voice is intuition and which voice is. And especially if you haven't been in touch with your intuition for awhile, it's really hard to make this distinction. Right. I often call intuition a mother of two. Uh, mother tongue that we have just kind of lost practice and that's okay if we've lost practice, right?

[00:11:27] Just like with a language, the more and more we use it, the more and more proficient we become in that language. But you have to understand that at the beginning, it's going to be really messy, really messy, trying to make sense of what is going on, right. Again, like a mother tongue, like a language you used to be really good.

[00:11:47] Oh, my goodness. Like I actually, I speak Italian tooting my own horn here, but I used to speak really, really well. And uh, if I hear Italian now, I'm like, what, what you want pasta is that lasagna. They're like not even talking about pasta and lasagna, but I really want to tell you that at first, this work is going to feel really disorienting.

[00:12:09] It's going to feel really. But trust me the more and more you practice, what we're going to talk about today. And if you come to the inner compass experience, what we're really going to delve into deeply there is understanding how to really distinguish these different energies and voices. Right? So intuition, soft, loving, nurturing, it's soft and steady.

[00:12:35] Whereas ego instead is loud. It's. Ego is going to throw tons of worst case scenarios, your way you often know you're in that place of ego and fear, because all you can think about is everything that could go wrong and everything that went wrong in the past. So ego is really fixated on how many times you've failed in the past.

[00:13:00] It's very rooted in that and what could possibly go wrong in the future? It's not about the present. Whereas intuition is just about the present moment and about expansion of what could be. Whereas ego is all about what could go wrong. I find when I'm in a place of ego, I feel an anxiousness. I feel an untetheredness to who I am.

[00:13:29] Whereas intuition is a lot more centered. It's a lot more quiet. It's rooted in who you are. Here's a tough thing. Intuition will often ask us to do things that feel uncomfortable. Things that feel scary for us, things that go against what we have been trying to create. They go against what society tells us we should do.

[00:13:50] They just go against what we believe we're supposed to do. Right? So there is kind of this element of fear with that and not knowing, however, there's also the sense of. This is actually right for me. Like, it doesn't make sense, but this is right for me. Whereas ego is all about this could go wrong. That could go wrong.

[00:14:11] It makes you feel really anxious and not rooted to yourself. So for me, it's really about taking a deep breath in these moments where I'm trying to figure out which voice is which tapping into what it feels like in my body. Tapping into the thoughts that I'm having tapping into, whether I'm fixating on the past or the future or the present and possibility.

[00:14:39] And you can slowly that way start to understand the difference between the two and start to eventually take action from and listen to, and make decisions from that intuitive energy. Okay. So that's kind of a crash course in ego and intuition. Let's now talk about impulse impulsive decisions. Now impulse is tricky because it's connected to both our intuition and ego impulse appears.

[00:15:09] After we get a really clear signal from our intuition about what we need to do now. Right. It's that moment when you realize that your job isn't for you, your partner, isn't the one, or that you need to have a really courageous conversation or send that email. These are all really great insights. But what happens with impulse is that it picks up on what your intuition is saying, but then it operates from that fearful place of your ego.

[00:15:39] So, this is when you send that email at like 12:59 AM and the next day you're like, oh, why did I do that? And even though you needed to express the things in that email, perhaps they could have been expressed better. Maybe they could have been set in a different way or a different time. Right. That is impulse.

[00:16:00] So impulse does this because impulse has seen you ignore your intuition before. And it seen the effects of you ignoring your intuition and it wants you to take action now. And so it convinces you that if you don't do this now, you're never going to do it. Which to be fair to impulse has probably happened before in your life.

[00:16:23] I also call impulse the burn, this bitch down mentality, right? It's all about forging ahead. Not thinking of the ramifications of your actions. Impulse makes you fixate on timelines, comparisons, and worst case scenarios. That's how it creates so much urgency for us. When we lead with impulse often, what ends up happening is that we put our own wellbeing at risk, right?

[00:16:51] We make a financial decision that makes us, you know, face financial hardship, or we have a conversation with someone perhaps in a way that isn't so compassionate or kind of. So intuition is going to ask you to do uncomfortable things, but it's never going to put your wellbeing at risk. Instead it asks you to do things in service of your well being.

[00:17:17] So it's really important to also understand when we are leading from this place of impulse, because while impulses, knowledge and wisdom, Is wonderful and amazing the way it takes action. Often isn't, it's often quite harmful for us and we see impulse happening a lot in the world of wellness, a lot in the world of self-growth for me, with a lot of my clients who want to quit their job, I'm always like, wait a second.

[00:17:46] Let's work through it. Let's see what your intuition truly, truly wants. And some of my clients end up quitting their jobs and some of them. But impulse is all about this place is terrible for you. This place is making you sick. You got to get out now, listen, you should get out, but maybe not now, maybe it's about waiting.

[00:18:07] So when we are leading from impulse, we are going off of wisdom, but there is an anxious, overwhelming, urgent energy to all. I like to say that if each one of these voices, intuition, ego and impulse had a catchphrase intuitions, catchphrase would be, let's just see what happens, right. An invitation to possibly.

[00:18:34] Ego would be, it's never going to happen. Right? Ego is making you look at the past and the future and it's like, listen, this is not going to happen. Just don't do it. An impulse impulses catchphrases. If this doesn't happen now, then it's never going to happen. Right. So understanding that with impulse, it's all.

[00:18:58] You got to do this now, or you're never going to ever do it. When you can start to really decipher between these three voices, these three different energies I'm telling you your life will shift and change in incredible ways. So as we're nearing the end of the podcast, I have some homework for you, but I'm not going to call it homework because homework is just a terrible word.

[00:19:23] What we're going to call it as home growth home. So all of us have an area in our lives in which our intuition is actually super, super strong. So for me, my intuition has always been super strong in the kitchen. When I'm in the kitchen, I just feel like I know what I'm doing. I'm in the flow. If things go left, I know how to make them go.

[00:19:47] Right? Like in the kitchen, I cannot be questioned or I will never question myself. So I want you to think of that space in your life, that area in your life, when you really feel like you are connected to your inner knowledge, your inner wisdom, and you really trust it. I want you to find that thing. And then I want you to take note, like really write it down of why you trust yourself in this arena.

[00:20:19] Why you listen to your intuition. What are the factors, the things that make you really feel like you can listen to yourself in this area, and then just taking that knowledge and seeing if you can apply it to other areas in which you don't feel that connection to your intuition, whether that is your personal life, your professional life, your romantic life, whatever it means for you.

[00:20:47] I'm telling you this is going to be really incredibly insightful. So this my love was a crash course in intuition. If you want to go deeper with me, I really invite you to join me for the inner compass experience. If you're listening live, you have one more week to sign up. Before we begin on April 10th, you can head to whole hearted-coaching.com/experience to find out more, or just go to the show notes.

[00:21:21] So before we say goodbye, I want you to think of one thing that's really resonating with you from today's podcast. And as you think of that thing, we're going to take a deep breath in and out holding onto that reflection. So breathing in

[00:21:39] and out. Until next week. Love, I will talk to you then. Thank you so much for joining me this week. If you liked this episode, please share it with a friend subscribe or follow where you love listening most. And if you haven't yet leave a review, you can do this on apple podcasts. Castbox pod chaser, or podcast addict until next week, Love.