Off The Vine with Kaitlyn Bristowe - Courtney Thomas | Unlocking Intuition and Embracing Mindfulness

Episode Date: June 6, 2024

#743. In this meaningful episode of Off The Vine, Kaitlyn Bristowe welcomes intuitive mindfulness coach Courtney Thomas to share powerful practices for personal growth and self-fulfillment. Courtney discusses her intentional morning rituals and the societal pressures that divert us from true happiness. They explore the importance of living in the present, recognizing beautiful opportunities, and embracing discomfort as a catalyst for greatness. Kaitlyn also opens up about her struggles with body image, emphasizing the journey towards self-love and acceptance. Listeners will discover the incredible power of intuition and learn how to reconnect with this innate ability. Courtney offers practical advice on changing our language to align with our deepest desires, taking brief moments to reset emotionally, and positively influencing our environment. This episode is filled with wisdom, practical tips, and heartfelt moments, inspiring you to embrace mindfulness and intuition in your everyday life! If you’re LOVING this podcast, please follow and leave a rating and review below! PLUS, FOLLOW OUR PODCAST INSTAGRAM HERE! EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (1:31) - Courtney discusses her intentional morning rituals for a positive start. (5:11) - Importance of living in the present and recognizing opportunities before they pass you by. (15:58) - Embracing discomfort as a path to greatness. (29:48) - Practical advice on taking brief moments to reset emotionally. (33:33) - Reconnecting with the power of intuition. We are all born with it! Thank you to our Sponsors! Check out these deals! Aura: That’s See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Okay, let's talk about the original enemies to lovers story. Before all of our reality TV couples, before the rom-coms, we binge, there was Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy in pride and prejudice. And Audible has just dropped a brand new original that will have you completely hooked, I am. It's not just any audiobook. This is a full cast performance. So Marisa Abella, you might know her from industry, brings Elizabeth Bennett to life.

And Harris Dickinson from Baby Girl and Where the Crawdads sing is Mr. Darcy. And honestly, the chemistry, you guys, it's everything. Plus, you've got icons like Glenn Close, Bill Nye and Will Polter in the mix. Talk about a dream cast. Now, what I love is how Marissa pulls you right into Lizzie's world, her stubbornness, her wit, her messy family dynamics, and of course, her complicated feelings for Darcy. And with a vibrant new adaptation and original score by Grammy-nominated composer, it just feels so fresh and modern while still keeping that timeless Jane Austen charm.

So whether it's your first time experiencing Pride and Prejudice or you've read it a million times, you're going to fall absolutely in love all over again. So go listen to Pride and Prejudice now at audible.ca slash Jane Austen. I'm Caitlin Bristow. Your session is now starting. Welcome to Grape Therapy. I'm your host, Caitlin Bristow. I'm so excited. Everybody knows who you are because of my podcast and how often I call you my spiritual coach.

But I'm going to let you take the floor and introduce yourself and then we'll jump into so many important topics today. Everyone I work with have different ways to describe me to them. And what aligns, I guess, for me and the way I explain it to most people is an intuitive mindfulness coach. Okay. So through intuition.

I hold the space for you. That's where you've experienced working with me before. And then we always lead into mindfulness tools afterwards. So that's where my certification sits is in mindfulness. And then I've been held in so many ways to access my intuition, which is what you've deeply experienced with me too. You have really just helped me in so many ways, but to process a lot of different emotions.

How are you able to compartmentalize every client's, emotions and not carry it with you? It has to be a ritual every single time before and after a call. Really? Yeah, I just, I think that holding space for myself in an energetic way and clearing and cleansing, what's not mine. And sometimes there's experiences where it's a lot heavier than others. Right. But I have very intentional rituals that I do every single morning. So I have to move in some way. I have to write in some way and I have to breathe in some way intentionally every morning. Every morning. Do you have like a specific time or does it even matter?

Well, I wake up quite early because my kids aren't awake yet so that access is a quiet home for me. So usually I'm up by like 535, 45. I mean. And then my kids wake up around like 7.15, 7.30. Wow. So, but I do not hold a rule to myself. So it's not like I have to do this crazy hit class or I have to move my body. for 30, 40 minutes or I have to be journaling for 20 minutes because I find that if I do that,

then I'm stuck in my ego where I am having a condition as to how my morning needs to look versus actually tuning into how I want to feel and what it is that I deeply desire. But these kind of three pillars give me just access points that I find allows me to really drop in to allow myself to get deeply quiet. And then when I'm really quiet, I can actually really truly hear my, the truest, wisest part of myself speak. Yeah. And then I get myself grounded for the day. And then throughout the day as I'm doing these intuitive coaching calls, I'm able to channel and drop into their energetics.

And that's what you've experienced with me. I have realized over however amount of time that we've worked together just how much I function through ego. Mm-hmm. I am so ego-driven, and I would never want to ever admit that in the past because that sounds like I'm an egomaniac and I'm just so full of myself. Like, ego sounds so bad. But how would you explain? Like, to me, I wake up and I go, I have to push myself to the limits today. And if I don't get this sweat in and if I don't burn this many calories, if I don't lift this amount of weight, like, what a waste of a day.

And if I don't do it. Like, I lead with ego, which we're trying to work on, obviously, with me. But how do people kind of approach surrendering to the fact that they have an ego and turning it into something else? First of all, you're not alone. Like, be so gentle on yourself. Because we are all raised in a very egocentric conditional society. When we were growing up, we were put into a system. We are in a system that tells us that our happiness and our joy exists outside of us.

So we're essentially taught, if you have this thing, if you look this way, if you get this accomplishment, then you're going to feel a certain way. So your ego is built on these conditions that say my happiness, my joy, my calm, my success, it all exists outside of myself. And so... I do that all the time. Yeah. And most of us wake up in the morning with this productivity debt where we open our eyes

and we're like, okay, here's all the things that I need to do in order to feel. like I'm enough in the world in order to feel like I'm worthy in order to feel like I'm successful and you know I can't over extend myself because then I'm burning myself out and I can't go too little because then I'm not enough so I have to actually find this very perfect line and it's impossible and so what happens is that we do we mostly live in the ego state but that is not our truth and there's so many brilliant tools like our phones that are pulling us out of the present moment and it's essentially numbing us out and distracting us from what is really true. And I think that we're really focused on the arrival.

So you're focused on the arrival in your next hour. You're focused on the arrival in the next year, in your lifetime to go, what are all the things that I need to accomplish? What are all the things I need to get? And when I get that thing, then I'm going to feel a certain way. And we are missing out on so many beautiful opportunities because we don't enjoy the process. What would you say as an example of a beautiful opportunity that we might pass by because we are looking for the next thing? Well, failure, I think, is one of them, right?

So let's just say, for example, that you are working at growing, like your business. Let's say you're an entrepreneur. And you are not enjoying any part of the process of putting yourself out there, doing something brave, reaching out and extending, like, for an opportunity. And even if that person says no, if you can really start to embody the, feeling of accessing the brave parts of you, the parts of you that really trusts your greatness, the parts of you that really just deeply believes in yourself, that's part of the process. We are missing out on so much of how beautiful life can be because we're so stuck on the

arrival. And then when we get that thing, we miss out on it. Another example that I think people maybe our age can relate to is trying to grow a family. Again, sometimes that's a struggle for people, I struggled on it. So you're so stuck on this arrival that you miss out on this intimacy with your husband and this playfulness you can start to have. So that's another beautiful example of just enjoying the process.

And hey, if you're a person that has struggled with infertility and you're listening right now, I understand so much. I struggled for five years with it that to understand it's hard to not get caught up in how you really want to grow your family. But that's just another beautiful example as to how there's

so many moments of our days, our weeks, our months, where we miss out on how beautiful life can be. And like, you're in the grocery store. You pick the wrong grocery lineup. And one's flying past and you're like stuck and you're like, what the hell? Like you're just like, you're pacing. You're starting to like, and if you can start to just look around and be like, okay, let me just start to notice a smile on every person's face.

I actually want to just look at the abundance in my cart of like, I'm feeding myself. Maybe you're planning a beautiful dinner that evening. having friends and family over, and you're just starting to actually embody, like, what is true versus this arrival of, like, getting out of the grocery store. The other day, I was in the airport, and I picked the right line. And I was like, whoa, whoa. I mean, you read about it, but until it actually happens. That feels good.

It was like for a second, and then I was like, at the end of the day, I just get there on the other side of it, like, a minute later or whatever. But I thought of you when I was doing this Laundre bathing suit shoot, I have had like severe dysmorphia my whole life with my body and thinking it looks a certain way when or believing what it looks like makes it not worthy. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I've worked on it for so long. And this is speaking of those moments where it's like instead of missing out on like a beautiful opportunity, I actually was able to see it in the moment. I said something that makes you want to cry. It was.

No, no. Yeah. Go for it. It was so sad, but I was like in my bathing suit, and I saw like a photo back, and I was like, I don't even want to eat for the rest of the day? And I was like, and I caught myself in that moment. And I was like, oh, my God, I've worked so hard to like love my body and get to where it is. And I said that out loud. And I went, oh, my God. But I stopped myself. And I was like, that's not a healthy way of thinking. And you love your body. And just because I was scrolling before and of course I see a bathing suit shoot on somebody else and they have got all the perfect

lighting and they've got the body glimmer and the body makeup and they've got the cutest suits and they're at a beach and they're probably on a tropical vacation for the swimsuit shoot and I was in a garage in like very bright natural light I wasn't even allowed to put body makeup on because they're really promoting like loving your body and loving the skin you're in and I went what a cool opportunity for me to be like I get to like support a small Canadian business who talks about confidence and doesn't edit, which is something that I could have loved to see all growing up instead of these edited photos

that we saw in magazines. And I get to show up the way that I'd want somebody to show up on Instagram. And I, like, turned the beat around and I ended up having so much fun. And I feel like instead of marinating in that misery and the self-doubt and the comparison and all that stuff, I was able to quickly come out of it

and be like, no, this is such a cool opportunity. Yes. That's such a powerful example because we have to ask ourselves to this is just the gateway to get to what you're talking about to get ourselves out of the ego and get ourselves into what I call the soul's perspective or get yourself into which is like an unconditional life which essentially means I live my life with no conditions there's not all these things I need to do or look like or have that are outside of me in order to feel a certain way a beautiful gateway to that is to ask yourself how do I want to feel so you look at this photo of yourself at this photo shoot and you immediately you caught yourself first of all like take a pause to just acknowledge that that the awareness is so key yeah and then you ask yourself how do I want to feel right now and we'll answer that like what what did you want to feel on the photo shoot I wanted to feel empowered I wanted to feel like I was going to empower other people

I wanted to feel confident I wanted to feel happy and I wanted to feel proud of that what I was doing compared to, not compared to, don't compare yourself. Yeah. But like when it comes to scrolling on Instagram and the things that I was seen, I wanted to show up the way that I wanted. Yeah, you wanted to

feel all of that in that moment. Yeah. Not later. Yeah. Not before. You wanted to feel it then. Yeah. And so you stopped and you looked around and I'm imagining you looking out and seeing all the women that were around you, seeing people laughing, hearing the music, just getting back.

into your body and actually noticing, okay, well, how can I start to access feeling confident and playful and happy and just having empowered right now? And it might not happen every single time, but it's just about accessing the feeling because so often I hear people say, I just want to feel calm. And an example that I'll give you is, you know, I had a moment where I put on Instagram a poll or a question of like how do you want to feel today and I said I'll go first and my answer was I want to feel playful and that day I actually remember I visualized myself walking and past the playground I was like today when I pick up my kids I'm going to like swing on the swings and then I'm going to be playful and then I picked up the kids and we went to the grocery store and I remember

both my boys like chucking a banana bread across the room like football like just and laughing and just throwing a bunch of shit everywhere and I literally had to think like this is not really what I meant about being playful. Like, I don't want to be playful in this moment. But I could hear what I call my big voice be like, you don't get to decide how to feel a certain way. You have to access this at any point in time. What's the invitation here?

Yeah. And it was like, okay, right, because I'm not going to, I'm not really going to learn how to embody playfulness when I'm on a swing set every single day. It's when things are really uncomfortable, things are really hard it's pushing me past my discomfort that is where I'm going to learn the muscle of playfulness so you want to learn how to be empowered you want to learn how to be confident yeah throw you in a no filter bathing suit shoot yes babe you are not on a beach no spray tan you probably actually

will feel the opposite when you go to I mean I don't know you might have done one before where it's like when you're at a photo shoot and they are touching you up the entire time or, you know, if it is a Photoshop shoot and you look at yourself after and like, sure, you're probably like, oh, I look really good. But there is probably a conscious part of you that's like, they touch that entire thing up. Yeah. Whereas now you're going to look at these shoots that aren't touched up and go, yes, this is, that is how you're going to actually build the muscle.

Yeah. Does that make sense? Oh, yeah. 100%. And that's, I feel like, because I have been building that muscle slowly. but surely I was able to jump back in and remember why I was doing this shoot in the first place and partnering with these people that I've always wanted to and loved their messaging behind their bathing suits

and the different shapes and sizes and colors that they celebrate in women. And I was like, okay, there's a little baby muscle there being flexed right now. Yes, because there is a difference between reacting and responding in life. Okay. So this is like a really big foundation I try to live by and share as tools. So anyone listening, your first reaction typically is going to be an ego-based reaction. It's going to be a conditional reaction. So your knee-jerk reaction when you see the photo of yourself is to have this feeling of lack, this feeling of I'm not enough. Because you are taught in this system that your happiness exists outside of yourself. That only when I look a certain way, have a certain thing, achieve a certain thing. I will feel this way. Whereas responding is shifting into your soul's perspective. And truly, your response will always shape your experience. It will always shape your experience.

You get a choice every single day. Even when life is difficult, you have the power to choose to be happy. Yeah. One of my best friends in the whole world, her friend just died very suddenly and very tragically. And it was awful. and this woman was a light. Her name was Kim, and she was an absolute light, and she was president of this company,

and she had two boys, and she was happily married, and she had all these things. And another thing, when I went to go post that bathing suit reel today, I thought of her because I was like, like anyone would do anything for her to have a moment back to feel insecure, to feel these feelings that life is all about. You don't walk through life getting to not feel insecure, or have some sort of, you know, like shame or whatever it is that you feel,

nobody walks your life without it. And it's like, so even just having that perspective of being lucky enough to have an opportunity for growth or moment of insecurity or, and sharing that with, you know, people who follow us is powerful too. Pain is part of the process. Yeah. We are actually supposed to be uncomfortable. Yeah.

That is how we're going to push back or push through into our greatness. you want to expand in the world and you want to start to show the world your greatness, you can't do that without facing some discomforts. You and I have talked about this so many times when you feel like you're feeling suffocated where you feel like you're holding yourself back and you do just want to be comfortable

but some of your and my most expansive moments in our life is when we looked at these challenges and we reframe these as invitations and opportunities for us to expand. I think that you have many moments in your life where even though it's hard, even though it's sticky and uncomfortable, you got through them. And now you're like, thank God I had this experience. Okay. I almost feel messier now than I ever have with emotions, but I feel like it's because I'm not avoiding them.

So I'm like embracing the mess that I am with emotions because I go, well, this is, I'm going through them. I've pushed so many down. And even though, you know, we've talked about me having emotions and my therapist telling me versus supporting the emotions and everything that we've done with my emotions, it's like I'm actually processing them now instead of just like letting them out with reactions and then pretending it didn't happen or moving past it. I feel like I'm actually going through the mud. Yeah, I think that we spiritually bypass our feelings sometimes where we think that we just

need to have a smile on our face every single day. And as long as we have that, then we are perceived that we're whole, that we're enough, that we're aligned, that we're a light in the world. But it's actually sometimes in the most uncomfortable places and spaces and we access vulnerability that that's where we can make the most triumphant transformations in our life. And I think you are right now in a portal where you're moving through a lot of discomfort and my compassion has always been so big for you that you're doing it in front of the world to judge you and we are raised in this judgment system that society instills in us and I think

you and I've talked about how you know you've made these changes in your life and people see them and they have these knee-jerk reactions they have these ways that they want to because when they see you step into something that is your true alignment and I don't know maybe I'm speaking for you but I also find that sometimes this happens in friendships and families where people will see you doing something that is really brave and uncomfortable but they're so used to something of you because that's their comfort and then when you choose a different way when you step out of it and you do something for you and your alignment often it's a mirror for them to go well what am i holding myself back with right now what am i avoiding right now what am i not feeling right now

and so even though i know you're in this portal where you're going through so much and you're on this to share it with the world, I think you're actually making a massive difference also in people's lives because I'm sure a lot of people have kind of noticed, okay, what can I start to also process in my life that maybe I'm avoiding? It's so challenging too because I see marriage and children is such a beautiful thing, but I don't see it as like the only accomplishment I'm supposed to have in my life. And I feel like a lot of people that, I don't know if it's the people that follow me. a lot of them, or it's the people who watch shows like The Bachelor. I don't know what it is, but a lot of people think that your worth is questioned if you don't see marriage and children as the, like, greatest accomplishment.

Like, I do, but I also see, like, finding myself and who I'd want to actually be married to have children with and not just do it, you know, I could have done it in my last two relationships, just to seem accomplished, just to portray this image of, look, I'm doing what's on the right path for me. But I'm choosing actually what's the right path for me. And I think you're right. I think it makes people uncomfortable. This is it.

You've totally framed it, which is truth, is that we're raised in a linear society. We're raised in this judgment system. So again, happiness is when you get married. Real deep love is when you get married. Growth is when you have children. All of those things are true. Of course.

And at the same time, you have recognized, and it's so important to acknowledge that it's not just you that so many of us can, where we begin to rediscover what it is that we really deeply want for ourselves. And so when you ask yourself, how do I want to feel and you're in a situation that you may have been in the past, in your past relationships where you're like, I don't feel fulfilled, I don't feel whole, I don't feel enough, I don't feel happy. So you've done something different about it. You've started to shift out of it to say, I'm going to go and find this for myself. I'm going to go create this for myself. And you have. You maybe aren't in a marriage right now, but you're starting to access points of feeling happy, of feeling whole, of feeling fulfilled. But this is triggering for people because they're like, well, wait a second, I'm raised in this linear life.

This is supposed to happen. And then they label it in certain ways to order to like feel better about their choices. This isn't everyone, but this is the majority of a lot of people in society where we're kind of numbed out and living our life for other people instead of living for ourselves. And I know that you know that statistic that came out where Tom Golovich researched people in hospice and 73% of those people that were at the end of their lives said, my biggest regret is that I live for other people instead of live for myself. And so you've done something to step out of that. And that can be really triggering for people because they're like, well, what does this mean? Maybe I could do the same thing. And so many of us live for other people instead of ourselves.

I mean, it's even challenging when you have a platform, too, to live for, you know, other people's opinions. And I know you and I always talk about, so many times I still catch myself and I've told you I want this tattooed. We talk about how I say, I need to be more like this or I need to let that go. I need to. And you're like, switch need with want. You want to let that go. I really want to let go of my emotional injuries like the things that have hurt me in the past relationships in the family system in my life things that I've gone through I really want to like heal those things so that I can be ready for a healthy relationship how do you recommend to any because I'm sure that we all have some sort of you know our are traumas and our shadows and our things and each relationship I do work on it but I carry them into the the next. And I don't want to put that on a partner for me to continue to maybe even put them

in a box. I hear your question. For those listening, not sure what Caitlin's talking about for like needs versus wants. Notice yourself in the next, let's say day, week or month, when you say the word I need. Because when you say the word I need, what that does is it sends an energetic message to your universe. It's a vibration that you send out into the world that says you're lacking. If you don't have that thing, if you don't get that thing, then again, you're not enough. So I need to do this. Let's simple. I need to meditate. Well, what if you don't meditate? What does that mean for you? And then... I think that you're talking about with waking up in the morning. I need to work out. I need to do all these things. Like, what if we dropped into what we actually want?

Yes. Okay. Totally. Because there are times in the morning where I wake up. And again, I notice myself starting this productivity debt. I need to work out. Let's just everyone can relate to that. Okay, I need to work out. I need to work out for the next 40 minutes. There are times where I'm like, I want to work out. And then my immediate response, like, now I don't really want to work out. I actually want to just stretch. I want to just go for a big walk with the dog. I just want to be able to throw a dance party this morning. So I'm going to throw on some music and I'm just going to dance for five minutes. I don't want to go do a crazy hit class. Yeah. And so if you start to change your language from need to want, everything begins

to change because you actually get to tune into your deep desires as to what it is that you really deeply desire for yourself instead of for other people. Because typically when you're saying, I need to do something, it's for somebody else. It's for something else outside of you and that it can change everything when you just start to reframe it to start to live life for you instead of other people. Now, I hear you that you want to be able to shift and change experiences that you've had and not carry them into your next relationship. And one of the things I want to just invite into your perspective is everything has happened for you and not to you.

And I know that you believe this. I know that you trust this. So when you want to not carry it in, I believe I'm hearing from you that you actually want to shift the experiences that you've happened to a place of unconditional love versus from a place of conditional fear. Yes. So, for example, I was, you know, surrounded in my family by a lot of infidelity growing up. It was just something that was at the forefront of my life.

And so in my marriage now, it's something I have to constantly be aware of and police to not bring into my marriage. And gratefully, I'm with a man that I deeply trust. And there are times where my knee-jerk reaction wants to say well what what is he doing like maybe I should check something and it's actually nothing to do with him and he's like anyone who knows him is probably listening and laughing because they know this is like he can't even watch a show where there's cheating because he just has to like walk away he gets very uncomfortable yeah it's very funny so it's not his stuff it's my stuff the dream

is I can acknowledge it prior to taking the action to say hey like but but to actually go into it with a vulnerable piece and now gratefully we're 13 years into our marriage and there's a lot of humor and playfulness that I can bring in or I can say like ooh like this is a little bit of a trigger point for me I'm feeling deeply uncomfortable and gratefully I'm with a person who can nurture me give me unconditional love to say like I know I totally understand this like what can I do to make you feel safe because that's essentially when you know I without getting into details of our own personal lives. That's essentially the two foundations is, am I safe and am I loved? Yeah. I think about that with this mindset of, like, I'm going to push them away instead of looking at all the lessons I've learned and how I'll show up now in a argument or a feeling of being uncomfortable. So instead of a knee-jerk reaction, even though those will always, of course, still happen, but instead of just assuming and then bearing

my feelings and then resenting and then bringing it out in other nasty ways, I can hopefully show up in another relationship and say, oh, I'm feeling uncomfortable and here's why. And then I'm with a nurturing partner that can say, thank you for telling me in that way. And it's not an attack. It's not accusatory. It's, you know, which I've done in the past. I think also it comes down to when you start living your life for you and trusting your greatness and trusting the actual magnetic, magnificent being that you are. And this is for anyone listening. Like, you have to to trust that you make a difference in the world and that you matter. So what happens is that energetic that you start to just believe in yourself is that when

you go into a relationship, you're vulnerable, you're honest, and you believe that, okay, if this person doesn't accept me for all of who I am, all of the parts of me, and at the same time, you're working on yourself, right? You're starting to actually be able to name things to tame them, to be able to say, like this isn't yours, this is mine. So often at times I have to say that to people in my life. This is not yours. This is mine.

But I do need a pause. I do need five minutes. I do need to go and one of my tools is sometimes I will take myself, remove myself from a situation and just set my timer for 90 seconds because it actually takes 90 seconds for an emotion to leave your body. Really? But the problem is that we just play it out so many times. We play this story over and over again.

So let's just say, for example, you're feeling triggered. Somebody says something to you, and you start to feel like a trigger where you're angry. You go into the bathroom, you're like, I'm angry right now. Like, I'm so angry. I'm so angry. And you kind of just deep feeling it asking yourself, okay, well, what's underneath the anger? I just don't feel safe right now. I don't feel safe.

I don't feel like I'm enough in this room. I feel actually really unworthy. Okay, so you're sitting there. You're sitting there. The timer goes off in 90 seconds. Typically, you've kind of gotten yourself to a place where you're back in the parasit. sympathetic nervous system, which is essentially your brain saying it's the rational part of your brain. It's saying, okay, I'm safe. I'm in my body. You're getting yourself back into the present

moment, right? Whereas in the room, if you don't remove yourself, if you don't set that timer for 90 seconds, typically your amygula, which is the irrational part of the brain is like hijacking everything and you're just like feeling this knee-jerk reaction. So accessing your breath is so important. That's why I breathe every single morning with intention. And just six conscious breath is a form of meditation. So you're just breathing in and out for a bit and taking control. Is six specific to anything or is that just like for you personally? I just feel like it's long enough. Yeah. I just, this is kind of actually, this is what Eckart-Tolle says. Well, I would definitely listen to that. Well, just listen to what he says, right?

I want to talk about like our own superpower, which is intuition. And, how we know the difference between feeling fearful and scared and just having a gut feeling that something isn't right and vice versa knowing when something is right, like trusting ourselves. Yeah. So we are all born intuitive beings. And you meet any child and you can see that there is deep intuition. And then going back to this judgment system that society instills in us at a really young age. And it's actually sadly getting younger and it's getting louder because of social media. And so what happens is that we begin to let go these really unique parts of ourselves in order to fit in in the world. That's so sad.

Yeah, it is sad. Yeah. But one of the things that I want to encourage everyone to really trust is that if you want to begin to access your intuition again, it's a remembering. It's not a learning and earning. It's part of you. It's just that it might be a muscle that's laid dormant for a really long time. Because again, you're asking and waiting for everyone around you to give you the permission to be something. But when you get quiet, it's the deepest part of you, the truest, most wisest part of you that really deeply knows.

That's your intuition. That's your soul. How does one reconnect with its intuition? Because I know we've worked on it where I can now access it a little easier than before, thanks to, like, obviously, therapy, Hoffman, you. there's so many helpful things that I've experienced in my life that allow me to do that now where you can go okay what is your higher self saying what is your spirit guide saying and I can like totally nail it I'm like well this is weird but that's what's coming to me and that's my intuition I feel like you are not giving yourself enough credit you have such a big intuition

think of okay so take yourself back to the time where you applied for the bachelor yeah The Bachelorette. Was it deep inner part of you knowing? Yes. There was a deep knowing, right? Yes. Before I even, so Bree sent in everything, before she even sent in things, I somehow knew I was going to be on. I know you did.

I just know you did. It's great. I know because, and look, everyone who's listening might be like, okay, well then can I do this thing, be this thing? what happens is is that accessing your intuition is again getting yourself back into the feeling that you deeply desire and so you deeply desired confidence empowerment making a difference in the world and I without knowing you feel that most likely you were actually doing that anyways and so you started to master these energetics and the universe was actually just holding you and supporting you to show you and lead you into a way for you to keep

working this muscle. So, and I think there's probably been a lot of other times in your life where you deeply knew, like winning, dancing with the stars. Yeah. I feel like a part of you knew that you were going to win. It's so funny because I kept telling myself there's no way. They're not going to have a second bachelorette in a row because Hannah Brown won

the year before me. There's no, but I like deep down knew. Right. You were like, I can do this. Yeah. I can do this. So you do access your intuition quite often. It's just when you start to surround yourself with the noise of all the beings in your life telling you good, bad, better, worse, right, wrong. That language is something I want to encourage every listener to start to

remove from their life. Yeah. Because that is conditional. So leaning back into unconditional love and accessing your intuition, first tool I would say is allow yourself to get quiet once in a while to hear what I call your big voice. So it's this real, true voice inside of your heart. It's not in your head where you hear all of the shoulds and coulds and needs and wants. It's your actual heart. And even right now, if you can kind of dance between like, okay, what does it feel like to be in my head? What does it feel like to be in my heart?

And even kind of move between the two, you can start to access like, okay, what is my heart telling me to do? and if you knew that you'd be supported and if you knew it would all work out, what would you do? Yeah, right? I think that's a really important, like you kind of said earlier where people go, okay, well then I want to be a billionaire and they're going to sit there and like see it and whatever,

but you're saying actually get quiet with what you desire in your life. Listening to your intuition, which is the truest part of you, that you begin to deeply live your life, in an unconditional way, an unconditional life. So you gave the example of, okay, maybe people are listening and they're like, well, I want to be a billionaire. Then I want to be a billionaire.

I want to start to manifest being a billionaire. Take a pause for a moment and ask yourself, what do you want to feel? Why do you feel? What is it that's the condition telling you that in order to feel a certain way, you have to be a billionaire? Because I can actually guarantee you. you don't want to be a billionaire. I agree. There are a lot of people that I know that have so much

and they are not happy because they are not actually living their life for themselves and they are actually not accessing the points of feelings that they want to have. If you want to feel calm, then how can you start to feel calm today? If you want to feel content, do you think that your feeling of contentment is going to be when you start to try to become a billionaire? Probably not. It's just actually understanding that you're so deeply supported and trusting that life is unfolding for you and not to you. And I know this is not to bypass that things are hard. There are some people who are experiencing deep pain right now listening to this. And if you can allow yourself just little glimmers in your life to feel certain points that you deeply want to.

And it might just be giving yourself five minutes to sit on the mat, quiet yourself down and listen deeply to your intuition. and allow yourself just to breathe for five minutes. I know that it's a tool that people talk about a lot, but meditation is a powerful one. It's a powerful one to allow yourself to get quiet. I would also think about maybe allowing yourself to have maybe no phone for the first hour. You and I talk about that a lot of just not picking up your phone for this first hour. Getting to things that are true, that are real.

I mean, I talk about this all the time on this podcast and in my life. It's like, how do you know what's real and what is a freaking illusion when you're being fed illusion after illusion on the thing that you're looking at the most. Like, how are we supposed to stay in the what's real when we're being fed an illusion at all times? It, I think, comes down to that's the unconditional love. That's like, am I doing this for something else outside of me? Am I doing this for the likes? Yeah. Am I doing this for the money? Am I doing this for the fame? Am I doing this for, you know, the quantity of friendships that I want to surround myself with. Am I doing it for the new car? Am I doing it for the brand new house? And if those things are lovely bonuses, but if you're

not enjoying the ride along the way, then what's the point? So what's real is what's in front of you right now. Be where your feet are. Be where your feet are. And that's where it's like really allowing yourself to look at your reality and look at how you're responding versus reacting and allow that to shape the experience. Stop handing your experience over to a situation, right? Take the actual power back to say, this is how I want to feel in the day. And there's going to be times where people are going to trigger you and you go, yeah, this is, I matter. How I feel deeply, deeply matters. And that's your deepest highest alignment. Because sometimes it might take somebody, you know, a lot longer than three breaths and a meditation to get there, but it's a practice too, right? Like it's something

that you should incorporate into your day instead of, like you said, picking up your phone in the first hour. Well, why not take a few deep breaths and start to try and find your intuition again? And I know you're big on writing things down. And you have so many good journal prompts and meditations and you have so many good things that I use all the time. And the, you know, the fear monster, and I talked about this on my solo podcast that I did that you helped me with, it was so much on like, what are, what monster are we feeding? The fear monster, the love monster, the, you know, want versus need, the conditional versus unconditional. There's so many things that you can write down. Do you have those on your website?

I have them in a lot of my programs. Okay. Yeah. So I have an app that's called the Bodie Effect. It's just an app that you can go on. There's lots of free programs that you can go on and you can start to. to just practice. There's a lot of different manifesting packages and things that you can start to access these journal prompts. I do a flow writing workshop every Wednesday morning. So people

log in and it's live and we do journal prompt and then we do a kundalini meditation, which is essentially an active meditation because not everybody can just sit in stillness. So kundalini is something that really resonates with me. And these are just gateways. These are just access points. So I want you to really think of how, and you and I've talked about this, is that you're building a muscle. So if your intuition has never been used, if feeling calm, if responding overreacting, if really living your life for you has not been something you've ever done, the same way that if you were to say, teach me how to build a bicep, it would make sense that you would have to work that bicep out for 10, 20, 30 minutes a day. And in the first day, you wouldn't expect that it would be this

massive, yeah, this bulging massive bice. it takes time. You have to be so gentle on yourself. And so work this muscle out every single day. And I promise you over time, you're going to begin to notice, whoa, I actually didn't react in that situation. Wow, I actually really confidently set that boundary and stood in my truth. And I love myself with no conditions.

I'm actually going to really trust that I matter in this experience. Because, like, how do we think we got here in the first place? We built a muscle that was self-doubt. was the world teaching us what we should think and feel and need and want it's it's like we got there by flexing working the wrong muscle yes our whole life so it's going to take patience and time but I always say how fast did the last five years go like that was that was rough how fast five years went but think about if you started working on yourself right now today doing these small practices in five years where you could be and then go I'm so glad I started that five years ago and didn't

put it off and not choose myself that day. Yeah. And start to really take an inventory of your life to start to notice beautifully put by what muscles are really strong. So for example, I grew up in a house that in order to be heard, you had to be loud. That's really the only way. So if I want to be loud and nasty now in my family, I know how to do that. That is a very comfortable suit for me to wear. I know. But so I have to actively police myself to say, because that is, you know, anger muscle is defined. Like, I can, that is a defined, it's a ripped muscle. And so for me, I'm like, okay, I actually want to deeply learn how to access a different

muscle. So I kind of have to stop working it. And I just have to police it to notice, okay, so take the inventory of your life. What are some ways that you show up that maybe you don't want to anymore? And what are some things that you really deeply desire to feel now? and how in your life are you surrounding yourself with things that are feeding like you said the fear monster and the love monster what's feeding your fears what's feeding that muscle to be really defined the shows that you're watching to the books that you're reading to the conversations that you're having to the people that you surround yourself with all of these things deeply deeply matter and how you talk to yourself yeah how you talk to yourself is the biggest one of course of course and so really start to surround yourself with things that make you feel feel deeply loved and aligned that are going to support you building those muscles. So if you're around a person that's constantly gossiping and you don't want to live your life

in judgment anymore, doesn't mean cut them out and make this massive change in your life, but lean back. Yeah. Lean back and step away and step yourself into alignment that feels really deeply. I like the take inventory thought. I think that's a really important thought that makes, that's what I've been thinking lately, the inventory thing is I feel like that's what, that word constantly replays in my head. every day.

Good. Yeah. Yeah. It's so important. Yeah. Because everything has a vibration. Everything has an energy. Yeah.

You really have to take a look at like, what are these things making me feel? Yeah. And also with this energetics, what's the energy and vibration then that I'm having? And what am I sending back into the world? And if I'm sending that thing out, is it coming back to me? And so the way that you perceive your life is how you're going to perceive your life. and the world will only acknowledge you when you really begin and to the degree that you acknowledge yourself. Whoa.

Yeah. It's true. It is true. I can think of numerous times in my life where when I was listening to noise and feeding into the noise, how it just kept coming back and slapping me in the face. And like it's just, you said it beautifully. Yeah. Yeah.

If you're holding yourself back because you're, you are scared or you're insecure or you're worried about what people are going to say or people are going to think how, well, first of all, how dare you hold the world back from your greatness? There's actually right now someone, whoever's listening right now, that is waiting for you to step into your light. And so we can't acknowledge you any further than the degree that you acknowledge yourself. It's time. It's time for all of us to begin to step into our light and trust that we deeply matter and I see you do it every single day

and I think it's worth acknowledging it is. Thank you. You do. I think you're surrounded by a lot of noise and I think that you step into your power as much as it's hard sometimes but you are making a difference in people's lives. Everybody can and

it's awesome that you have this platform but you don't need one to make a difference. No, you don't. You can be the asshole at the grocery store who's pissed off at the lineup taking so long or you can be, you know, look at the smiles and notice and trust that you matter. You can be the person raging in traffic and cursing everyone, or you can just be the one who, like, turns on your favorite dance song

and just lights up the world with your presence. Yeah. I think that's really important. I think that's a really high vibration to end on, too. Like, I love that. And I hope everybody really listens to that and replays it in, well, they can just hit rewind and play it again and again and again. And I hope they do every day to remind themselves that. And we all have to remind ourselves is the thing, too.

Yeah. If you wake up in the morning and ask yourself, what are all the things I need to do? And if I do this thing, will I acknowledge myself? And no, it starts the other way around. Acknowledge yourself now. Trust in your greatness today. Yeah. And anything that deeply inspires you, do the thing.

Right? If you want to paint, pick up a paintbrush. If you love music, start dancing. if you want to you love cooking throw a dinner party like do the things that bring you deep joy do the things that bring you deep alignment for your soul's activation not for anyone else but for you and i promise that you're going to actually look back on these micro moments you create in your life that will make up the macro as to how you feel and it is that's i think how you do it so going back to your question that you asked me around like relationships and stuff it's like these micro moments

are going to deeply matter to how you're going to feel in the macro of your life yeah yeah i always think about how i want to feel in my life now and it used to be it used to be wealthy and successful and now it's calm and happy and i just want like a like a wellness center with horses and land oh my gosh that sounds amazing can you invite me that would be beautiful you're going to host dinners with me and events and i really think that would be so cool like Well, you just answers your question about how do we decipher what's true and what's not. That's truth. Yeah.

Meeting in person, surrounding yourself with people who have open hearts on, like by nature, around nature with heart-led food, like, oh, beautiful. What do you hope people take away from this podcast today? To get curious. Yeah. You start thinking about their inventory in their life of what is, you know, making them happy and what makes them feel the way they want to feel. Yeah. And to start to live your life unconditionally. Start to really look at the things that you tell yourself that you need in order to be enough in the world and to reframe it to say you are already all of those things. If you can see something in yourself, you need to believe it. There's an actual energy inside of you that's your soul saying, I am this thing. And so live your life unconditionally. Step into your power. And any time you notice yourself with these conditions,

you just stop and pause and get curious, why do I want that thing? Why am I telling myself that that's what's going to give me that thing and it's existing outside of me? What can I do right now to feel that way? Yeah. And then last thing, where can people go to get your programs and join your Wednesday? Mm-hmm. Flow writing.

I was going to call it free writing, flow writing, where you just head to paper and you just start writing. and it's really powerful what you end up writing. It's such a powerful Tuesdays. So where can people find all of this? All of ways to access me is through the Bodie effect. So that's essentially what my brand's under through social media. Bodie is the and then B-O-D-H-I effect with an E.

You can also download the app, the Bodie effect, and tons of my programs. I have one that's called Free Yourself from Judgment. That's coming out on June 10th. Do you imagine bringing yourself of judgment? Yeah. It's a really beautiful course. It's a 10-day audio course followed by a five-day virtual master class. So you'll watch online videos and you have the option of upgrading to do a one-on-one session with me.

I'm doing that. It's really beautiful. I'm definitely doing that. Yeah. Yeah, I'll send it to you. Ten days and then five, like you can tune into a video. Yeah. Yeah.

So you have all access. And it's all on the app. So you can just put those little. earbuds and your ear holes and go for a walk and listen to it for the first 10 days and then the last five days it's about 20 minutes a day and you just watch a video and there's all these writing practices meditations kundalini practices but a lot of self-inquiry as well where you start to ask yourself really powerful questions and i would say that that course i trust and along with another course i have called manifest you are kind of my big foundational pillars of people transforming a

lot into their power. Well, I have seen the difference in myself from working with you. So it's so awesome to have you in person here today. I love being able to connect and not be on our phones and just be talking about things that matter. And hopefully people take a lot away from that podcast. Thank you. I'm Caitlin Bristow. Your session is now ending. And if I'm being honest, I wouldn't mind a rating and review. Grab a coffee and discover Vegas-level excitement with BetMGM Casino, now introducing our hottest exclusive, Friends, the One with Multi-Drop. Your favorite classic television show is being reimagined into your favorite casino game

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