The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Higher Self: Reclaiming the Power of Your Intuition by Mory Fontanez

Episode Date: March 10, 2025

Higher Self: Reclaiming the Power of Your Intuition by Mory Fontanez Eight22group.com Amazon.com Intuitive Life and Leadership Coach Mory Fontanez offers a transformative vision: when we align with our intuition, we unlock not only personal fulfillment but also the power to create meaningful impact in the world. By attuning to this profound inner wisdom, we are free to live authentically, unapologetically, and in alignment with our true purpose. Yet, for many of us, the connection to our intuition has been severed. Overwhelmed by societal expectations and external pressures, we’ve lost touch with our Higher Self—the source of infinite potential, love, and wisdom that resides within us. As an expert crisis manager, Mory Fontanez has guided Fortune 500 leaders and public figures through high-stakes crises, including public scandals and major organizational change. Her work with executives, celebrities, and teams has shown how intuitive decision-making is essential for navigating chaos, rebuilding trust, and leading with clarity. Higher Self teaches readers how to tap into this same inner wisdom, breaking free from reactivity and fear to make grounded, authentic choices, even in the most turbulent times. In a world increasingly defined by division, the need to reconnect with this inner guide has never been greater. Higher Self offers a compelling pathway back to our intuitive essence. Drawing from years of experience coaching influential leaders and from her own personal journey, Mory demystifies intuition, breaking it down into accessible, actionable steps. Through powerful client stories, thought-provoking insights, and practical guidance, she leads readers on a journey of self-discovery and healing, empowering them to trust and nurture their Higher Self. Mory’s work reveals a profound truth: when we reconnect with the highest version of ourselves, we begin to heal the wounds of shame and rejection, transcend limiting beliefs, and thrive in ways we never imagined. This voice within—the one guiding us with clarity and certainty—holds the key to living in alignment with our own highest good and the greater good of others. Higher Self is not just a book; it is a call to reclaim the wisdom, power, and purpose that have always been yours.About the author Mory Fontanez is a highly sought-after Intuitive Life and Leadership Coach, host of the acclaimed Signal podcast, and Founder of Eight22 Group, a consultancy dedicated to elevating organizational consciousness. A former crisis manager for Fortune 500 companies, Mory’s career pivoted when she recognized a universal truth: many leaders struggle because they are disconnected from their intuition and deeper purpose.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Cause you're about to go on a monster education rollercoaster

with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi folks, it's Voss here from the Chris Voss Show.com. Welcome home. Ladies and gentlemen there, ladies and gentlemen, that makes it official. Welcome to the big show, as always, the Chris Voss Show. As family loves you, and just don't be evil. That's our main policy. Go to GoodRees.com, Fortress, Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com, Fortress, Chris

Foss, Chris Foss 1, and the Tik Tokity, and all those crazy places on the internet. Today we have an amazing young lady on the show. We're going to be talking about her hot new book that's going to be coming out on March 11th, 2025, called Higher Self, Reclaiming the Power of Your Intuition. Maury Fontanez joins us on the show. Fontanez, did I get that right? Maury Fontanez. Yes.

Maury Fontanez. So we're going to get into her background and what she does. She is a highly sought after intuitive life and leadership coach, hosted the Claims Signal podcast and founder of 822 Group, a consultancy dedicated to elevating organizational consciousness. She's a former crisis manager for Fortune 500 companies. Her career pivoted when she recognized a universal truth. Many leaders struggle because they're disconnected from their intuition and their deeper purpose. Welcome to the show. Maury, how are you? Thank you, Chris. Thanks for having me. I'm great. How are you? Thank you. I am excellent. And give us your dot coms. Where do you want people to find you

on the interwebs? Sure. So I'm at mauryfontanez.com, and then my organization that I founded is 822group.com. So give us a $30,000 overview of what's in your new book. Jai Radha Okay. You know, Higher Self is really just a reminder to everyone that the wisdom that you seek resides within you. And I wrote this book really because I know what it feels like to be lost and to be looking everywhere else but within for the answers. I know this because of my own life being so full of chaos and crisis, but also because I managed crisis for so long. And I realized that if only we were taught to trust the wisdom within, instead of looking for that externalized

voice from outside, we would find the answers much more quickly, we'd be more connected to our purpose, and we would be living a life that's not only free of crisis, but free of fear and suffering. Pete You definitely don't want to live the other way, so it really helps. Are you talking in the book about activity? Tell us a little bit about that and what that is and means. Jennifer You know, I think that our culture and especially that of the working world, we've really been conditioned to react to what's coming

to us, especially as things are getting noisier, where, you know, there's more news coming at us. Social media is constantly feeding us information. And so we haven't really been given permission to pause. And what I find with a lot of CEOs, for example, that I coach, is that they get themselves in hot water when they don't pause, when they are just reacting. And that reaction actually is a moment in time from the past where something is emotional within the person that they're bringing to the present. So, you know, that saying, if it's hysterical, it's historical. Reactivity is about give yourself a minute to take care of that little self who's in

the emotion so that you can then tap into a more present voice that is not coming from fear but also doesn't react in a way that creates more harm to the people around you. Pete Oh, wow. Yeah, I mean, that can definitely make a difference. So give us a little bit of history on your journey through your life. You mentioned some of the things you did and of course, you were working with Fortune 500 companies. Tell us a little bit about your journey, how you were raised and some of the challenges

that you overcame. Dr. Kirsten Kiehl Yeah, you know, it's interesting when I say, I always say I was born into crisis. I'm the daughter of two Iranian immigrants, refugees from the revolution, born in the US, and then, you know, a mom who felt so separated from her people and her culture that she wanted to take her baby back to meet people. And we got stuck in Iran during an Iran-Iraq war for a year and a half. And so I really feel like crisis is a part of my DNA.

It is how I came into this world. And so what did I do? I sort of sought crisis in my life because it tended to be the thing I was most comfortable with. Whatever you grow up with, as insane as it is, is also a comfort zone for you in many ways. And so I turned it into a career.

I ran towards the fire that other people were running away from. And so when people were in crisis or significant change, I'd find myself there. And I'd find myself there with a clear answer in my mind. And so what that caused me to recognize is, oh, you're depending on this unseen voice that no one talks about that knows exactly what to do in these moments of crisis. But it's clear for you, for me in that moment, because I don't have all my own fear. I don't have all of my own noise in there. It wasn't until I had that moment of crisis in my own

life, eight months pregnant, on the ground, crying because of the marriage that was not serving me, I was in a job that was crushing me, but I started to listen to that voice. And I realized if I listen to this voice and I follow what it says, all of a sudden it created this path to freedom. And so I built a coaching method around that very same moment in time for me, which is I have to look within for the answers. And if I have the courage to follow what that voice is telling me, which is I have to look within for the answers and if I have the courage to Follow what that voice is telling me then freedom opens up instead of pain Hmm. Hey freedom is good. I like pain is pain is not fun. What's that? That's the headline. Yeah

Anyway, so fun is fun and you went you went through this journey and then you saw the same thing when you work in corporations I don't know if you want to expand a little on that. You saw Fortune 500 companies having issues as well. Yeah. I mean, again, because we're conditioned to search externally, we can get bombarded with a lot of noise and CEOs are no different, leaders are no different. They've got shareholders, they've got boards of directors, they've got customers and employees. And so what I noticed in corporations and continue to notice, I still consult organizations and their CEOs and founders, is that they have not been given permission to take a moment of pause and know that they have within them the wisdom of what to do next.

And so what they do is they hire a lot of highly paid PR people to come in and tell them what to do. And that creates a cycle of lack of trust, lack of trust in yourself. If you don't trust yourself as a leader, your employees don't trust you. If your employees don't trust you, your customers don't trust your brand.

And because it's so noisy out there, it's really hard to get people to have a loyalty to you, your business, your organization, if in the DNA of that organization is not inherent trust. And that starts with the leader trusting themselves. Now, how does somebody know if, you know, there's an old saying by George Carlin, think about how dumb the average person is, realize 50% of the people are dumber than that. I joke people, but it's true. About 30, 35% of this country has always been insane. And I think even if historians are on there, the show that we've talked about

with that, it's one thing to be intuitive and to trust yourself or think you should trust yourself, but how do you know you're trustable? How do you know that your intuitive nature is good or trained up? I mean, I'll give you an example. When I was young, I was dumb as a rock, especially at 18. But now I hopefully maybe as smart as a flower, I moved up from the rock to the flower there. But I don't claim to be brilliant or smart in any way, shape or form. There's lots of work to do, but I have a Dunning-Kruger sort of attitude where I realize that the less I master something, the less I know. But there's a lot of people who claim to be very intuitive and claim to be very knowledgeable and you talk to them and you're just like,

have you ever left the house? Anyway, how do you know if you can trust yourself? Kirsten I love that question and here's what I want to say, I bet you those people, if they had been taught to decipher the difference between an intuitive thought and a fear thought, the difference between an intuitive thought and a thought that is chasing validation, a thought that is chasing acceptance, then they wouldn't be mistaking those limited thoughts as intuition. So I think that's what you're seeing is that people think they're being intuitive, but they're actually chasing the thought that is the most contracting thought,

which is, I need this person to like me, so I'm going to do X, Y or Z. I need this person to validate me, so I'm going to make this decision. That's not your intuition. That's a limited self. And that's where I think the confusion happens. Pete Slauson And don't you have some knowledge preparation? I mean, say for example, when it came to business or leadership, you know, I could try and be intuitive when I was 18, but I really don't think I had enough moxie or knowledge under my belt to, you know, and there were a lot of intuitive things I tried in my early business years that failed miserably, that I'm like, God, if I would have read a book, I would have skipped all that. So, I don't know.

Tess Terrible Without those things, I don't think I'd be sitting here talking to you today with such a successful podcast. So, there are no accidents. But that said, I think that what we need to understand about intuition is that it's not about a psychic ability that's predicting the future. It's about in the moment, what is the very best next thing I can do right now to lead me to my best path? And oftentimes, if we're listening to intuition, which is free of ego, intuition will say, keep learning.

You're here right now to learn. You're here right now to get the experience. So for a perfect example, you're in a job where you don't love the dynamic with your supervisor, okay? What you want more than anything for your dignity is to get out of that situation. So, you might feel like it's your intuition telling you to quit. But actually, if you're able to decipher the difference between a contracted thought that says quit because this feels bad and an expanded thought,

which is how intuition feels that says, you're here to learn something and I promise you'll learn it. And then you'll come out of here even stronger, even more resilient, even more brilliant than you were before. You can do this for another six months. Then you have the roadmap right there. Pete Yeah. So, you know, it's not always about knowing what to do 10 years from now when you're 18. It's about tapping into the wisdom that says, you're here for a reason, let's trust this. Pete So, how do we separate knowing what an ego intuition is from not? Because like I said, I've had a lot of great business ideas and my intuition has told me that, you know, listening is, okay, this is a good idea, I'll run it past other entrepreneurs, it's a great idea,

turns out it's a horrible idea. So, I mean, how do we separate the ego knowing that it's an ego thing? Kirsten That's a great question. Your ego is searching for validation. Always. Your intuition does not care about that. So your ego is going to look for how can I succeed and stand out and look like the best at this? Your intuition is interested in what is the purpose of this?

How will I bring my skills and my natural, things that I just tend to feel fulfilled around? How will I bring those two things together to create impact on the world? And if your idea can answer those questions, then it's your intuition speaking to you. If your idea is about, how am I going to get credit because I've never gotten it before, or how am I

going to prove to that boss who laid me off that they made a big mistake, then that's your ego. So, it depends on the origin point, the intention of these ideas. And if they're connected to purpose, then you know it's intuitive. Pete Slauson Hmm. That's good to know. Deidre McCloskey Does that answer it? Pete Slauson That's good to know. Deidre McCloskey Does that answer it? Pete Slauson Yeah, yeah, yeah. As you've done the research for your book, what were some of the other things that you found that were important for helping people get to their higher self?

Deidre McCloskey You know, there's a few of them. First of all, perfectionism is an anxiety. Let's just name it what it is. Perfectionism is an anxiety that is celebrated in a lot of our corporate cultures because it creates high functioning people who are very hard on themselves and get things done and they get them done well. So it's never labeled as anxiety because it creates a reward for your organization, but perfectionism is not possible. And so when we suffer under the illusion that we're going to create something perfect, it's no different than being anxious about something else.

That's the first one. The second is I have this beautiful opportunity of sitting across the Zoom from some of the most incredible leaders and people I grew up watching on screen and film and coaching them. Imposter syndrome leaves no one behind. Every single one of those people has imposter syndrome. And the thing about imposter syndrome is it convinces you you're the only one who believes that you can't do it.

You're the only one that doesn't have the experience, the know-how, the skill set. And in fact, again, it's an illusion because even the person you're looking up to who you think, oh, that person has really got it made, even they are suffering under imposter syndrome. And so, there's something in knowing that that breaks you free of the hold that it has on you. Pete Slauson Oh, wow. That's good to know. That's good to know. And so, you've helped a lot of people with crisis management. What's the, like, the number one thing you see people struggling with nowadays that come to you for counseling and help? Kirsten I think nowadays, because we went through

such a severe bout of cancel culture, there's a fear of speaking the truth. There's a fear of saying what we really think. A lot of that has been deeply politicized as well. And so right now, as a crisis manager, I'm no longer writing talking points as a PR person that I want you to say, Chris, to get your reputation back in order. What I'm doing is working with you to say, what is your truth here? Where did this action come from? How can you speak with more honesty about how you got here and what you believed and what you're aiming to do? And I think that, you know, that's the crystal.

Like, if I were to give you one answer to navigate your way out of crisis, it's that people need to trust you again. It's really about finding out what is true for me and how do I communicate that in a way that connects to other people. Instead of reading a bunch of messages somebody wrote, and people can tell they're intuitive.

Remember, we're all intuitive beings. People can tell when you don't walk the walk, when you don't mean the thing that you're saying. So, I really think it's about speaking truth from a place of pause and true self-assessment and self-awareness. Pete So, as we go out, final thoughts you have on the book and telling people, you know, what are some of the offerings that you have on your website? I believe you have the podcast we should probably get a plug in here for? Yeah, so I co-host a podcast with my best friend. She really plays the foil to my metaphysical conversations all the time by just being,

you know, asking you the questions that a stay at home mom would have or, you know, an average person would have. That's called Signal. And then I, you know, like I said, I work with organizations. I have a wait list, so I don't work with one-on-one people so much, but that's what the book is about. The book is really about handing you this roadmap

to really learn how to shed the fear. So one of the big points is to listen to your littles, the little selves inside you that are still stuck in an old story, and to really understand how they're projecting those things on you. And then it becomes about learning what your higher self looks like, sounds like, acts like, what dignity it has, what values it holds, so you can look for that voice within you. And the book is really just about giving you a very actionable roadmap to being

able to bring those things together and trust yourself more and be more empowered and less fearless in a world that is really triggering all of us into fear constantly. Pete Slauson Yeah, there's a lot of scary things going on in the world. Kristin Larkin There are. Pete Slauson If you focus on that, then you miss the good stuff and the pleasure and the good things that happen. Kristin Larkin That's right.

Pete Slauson Like the funny stuff and the Chris Fosha. As we go out, tell people how they can onboard with you, how they can reach out to find out more of working with you, etc., etc. Maureen Eichhorn Yeah, you can follow me on Instagram at Maurey Fontanez, Dan the same, and then you can buy Higher Self anywhere that you buy your books, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and you can listen to Signal anywhere you listen to podcasts. Chris Fosha Well, thank you very much, Maureen, for coming to the show. We really appreciate it.

Maureen Eichhorn Thank you for having me, Chris. Chris Fosha to podcasts. Pete Well, thank you very much, Morrie, for coming to the show. We really appreciate it. Morrie Thank you for having me, Chris. Pete Thank you. And thanks, everyone, for tuning in. Order of the Book where refined books are sold. Hire self, reclaiming the power of your intuition, out March 11th, 2025. Go to Goodreads.com, Forge's, Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com, Forge's, Chris Foss, Chris Foss One, The Tick Tockity, and all those crazy places. Be good to each other, stay safe. We'll see you next time.