This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - The Icelandic Art of Intuition with Hrund Gunnsteinsdóttir | 307

Episode Date: May 7, 2025

We’ve turned intuition into a buzzword—flattened it into a slogan, a gut feeling, or a vague whisper we don’t always know how to hear. But what if intuition is so much more? What if it's one of the most powerful tools we have—and we’ve just forgotten how to use it? In this episode, I’m joined by Hrund Gunnsteinsdóttir, Icelandic thought leader, filmmaker, and author of InnSæi: Icelandic Wisdom for Turbulent Times. Hrund has spent over 20 years studying and teaching the science and art of intuition through her TED Talk, Netflix documentary (InnSæi: The Power of Intuition), and global work on leadership, innovation, and inner knowing. Together, we explore what intuition really is (hint: not woo-woo), how to cultivate it in a culture obsessed with logic and overthinking, and why your ability to listen to yourself might be the most essential skill you can develop. In This Episode, We Cover: ✅ Why we’ve misunderstood intuition—and how to reclaim it ✅ Practical ways to strengthen your intuitive muscle ✅ What Icelandic wisdom teaches us about inner knowing ✅ How to use intuition during uncertainty and decision-making ✅ Why trusting yourself is an act of rebellion (and power) Intuition isn’t magic—it’s a deep, internal guidance system that already exists inside you. The question is: are you listening? Connect with Hrund:  Website: www.hrundgunnsteinsdottir.com  TedTalk: https://www.ted.com/talks/hrund_gunnsteinsdottir_listen_to_your_intuition_it_can_help_you_navigate_the_future?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare Newsletter: https://hrundgunnsteinsdottir.com/blog/      LI: www.linkedin.com/in/hrundgunnsteinsdottir IG: https://www.instagram.com/hrundgunnsteinsdottir/  Book: InnSæi: Icelandic Wisdom for Turbulent Times  Related Podcast Episodes: How To Breathe: Breathwork, Intuition and Flow State with Francesca Sipma | 267 VI4P - Know Who You Are (Chapter 4) Gentleness: Cultivating Compassion for Yourself and Others with Courtney Carver | 282 Share the Love: If you found this episode insightful, please share it with a friend, tag us on social media, and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform! 🔗 Subscribe & Review: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music

I am Nicole Kalil, and on this episode of This Is Woman's Work, we're going to talk about something that uses no spreadsheets, no KPIs, has no clear ROI, and is frankly hard to measure or quantify. But it also happens to be one of the most powerful forces we have as human beings, and that's our intuition. Call it a gut feeling, instinct, inner knowing, discernment, or if you're Icelandic, insight. Whatever word you use, I bet that you've felt it.

That quiet voice, that internal nudge, that this doesn't feel right, or this is exactly what I need to do, even when it makes no logical sense. I'm a big intuition person. I've followed mine into career changes, away from toxic people, towards new opportunities, and also straight into the occasional shitstorm. Because let's be real, following your intuition

doesn't mean that everything magically works out or that you're all of a sudden skipping down a glitter path of immediate gratification. Sometimes it's messy, murky, and totally unclear, and I'd argue still the best thing we could do. But also, I wonder if we've misunderstood intuition in the same way we've misunderstood confidence. We've slapped cutesy slogans and oversimplified advice on it, diluted its depth, and turned it into something that sounds great on a t-shirt but gets muddy in real life. So,

I wanted to explore intuition on a deeper level for all of us. What it actually is, how to strengthen it, and what happens when we really learn to trust it. Which is why I've invited Rund Gunnestadda. Did I say that right? I didn't. Rund was perfect. And then the last name, it's really hard. Gunnstendstotir.

Gunnstendstadda. Yes, perfect. Thank you. You know, one day I'm gonna get it right. Gunsten Stottir. Gunsten Stottir. Yes, perfect. Thank you. You know, one day I'm going to get it right. Friend, this is one of the hardest parts about hosting a podcast, is getting everybody's name right because it's important. Welcome to the show. Harund is an Icelandic filmmaker, thought leader, Ted and keynote speaker,

and the author who's literally written the book on intuition. Insaïe, Icelandic wisdom for turbulent times. She spent over two decades studying, teaching, and reshaping how we understand and use our intuition at work, in leadership, during uncertainty, and in life. Her documentary, Insaie, The Power of Intuition, was shown on Netflix around the world, and she's developed

everything from university programs to global initiatives on this topic. So Haroun, thank you for being our guest. And I want to start by understanding more about what intuition actually is, but also what it isn't. Thank you. It's such a great pleasure to be with you on your podcast. I'm a big fan. So, you know, when I started to delve into what intuition is, it was interesting to look at, because the way I kind of happened to do it was both through practicing it myself, because I desperately needed to reconnect within to save myself. But then I also started to reconnect within to save myself.

But then I also started to do some reading and practices, and I would find information, sources and guidelines from around the world, mostly in English, but also through conversations in Icelandic. So my language was intuition and in say, around intuition. And one of the things that I discovered quite early on, within a few years, was that, you know, we have a way to define intuition, which is like intuition is an irrational impose

that you should never rely on, depending on the discipline, all the way up to intuition is something voodoo that hasn't been backed by science, something new aids. And in between all of those, and also within these two extremes, intuition is something voo-voo that hasn't been backed by science, something new-age. And in between all of those, and also within these two extremes, I would find amazing, rigorous research and also stories of practices that really taught me so much about intuition and also just kind of made me realize it, which I didn't quite. I mean, maybe I did inside, but I didn't like

logically, you know, I'd never been told this, that intuition is fundamental to our intelligence. So all this research and conversations and brewing brought me back to my home base, to my home yard, the Icelandic ground from which I come and the Icelandic language and I saw the Icelandic word for intuition as if for the first time. So the Icelandic word is it's you know, when I think about the word, it starts moving because it's made out of two parts in and sajj. In means inside or into and sají means to see or the sea. So the Icelandic concept for intuition is, you know, it starts with the sea within. So this ever flowing, ever moving, unconsciousness that we have always making connections beyond words, the world of imaginations and feelings and directions in life.

And then there's the second meaning, to see within, to see inside yourself, to know yourself well enough, to be able to discern intuition from biases, of fears and wishful thinking, and knowing when to rely on it and when we shouldn't. And then the third meaning is to see from the inside out. And that is all about how we are aligned with our intuition and how we're able to navigate the ocean of life

with a strong inner compass. So like you said earlier, intuition is not always right. Like we can't always be 100% right about it. It's not about that. But that also applies to all other ways and means we use to think and decide and take decisions with. What makes sense for my mind is to say that when I,

because I used to be disconnected from my intuition and from within, I really used to live in my head and it ended in a very dramatic way. And so when I learned to really aligned with intuition, to turn within, I shifted the center of gravity in how I navigate and that has a certain meaning for me. Things become, I navigate with more ease when I'm aligned with my intuition. I'm much better at discerning and prioritizing. My mind is much clearer. And I'm much better at setting my own boundaries.

I'm much better at allowing myself to be a little bit eccentric about what I need and what I want and what I'm willing to offer and give. Okay, so there were a lot of powerful things in there. I want to go back to something you said early on, which was you needed to connect within to save yourself. I don't know what that meant in your life, but it spoke to me because I felt the same way

when I started really working on building my confidence, which I define it as firm and bold trust in myself. It was to save myself because I was going down a path that brought very little joy, that brought very little alignment or happiness. So I don't want to underestimate the power of intuition here. When you say you needed to save yourself, what do you mean? What does that look like? Yeah, it's a great question. So I was in a position, I was, you know, very early on, I was given amazing career opportunities. I dreamt about working for the UN, making the world a better place.

I went very fast into that career. You know, I was leading one of the UN agencies in post-conflict Kosovo when I was 27. I then moved on to work for the UN, and I a permanent position which was and I think still is a very rare thing to get and I was moving very fast up what I considered a career ladder and and I also went through some really challenging times in my private life. Working in post-conflict Kosovo was very hard because I was, I would say my intuition there was quite mature, you know, compared to the AIDS I was in.

I did well at work, but it was very bad in my personal life. So I had no way of setting my own boundaries or knowing. And I wasn't, I didn't have the confidence to speak more openly from my intuition because that's not what I was trained to do. So one thing leads to another and over a period of I guess about four years, I would go from like going up the career ladder in great speed to just totally collapsing, hitting a wall. I didn't know the word burnout then. This is in the beginning of the century word burnout then. This is in the beginning of the century. And we didn't talk that much about burnout, at least not about me. And so I just hit a wall and I was in a position

to like, I would look in the mirror, there was no sparkle in my eye. I was the shadow of myself. I didn't know where to find hope. I had always had this like strong kind of strong sense of purpose in her drive and I couldn't find it. Physically, doctors told me I might not ever be able to work full-time ever again, diagnosed with three sleep sticks in my spine and so on and so forth. So it really forced me to look within. It really forced me to look within. And you know, when I look back and think about this period in my life, I've always had discipline, not always, but as a teenager and a young adult, discipline to study hard and work hard.

But this time, I needed to harness all the discipline I could find to tune in, to connect within, to take these moments and periods seriously where I needed to sleep, reflect, love, and recharge my batteries. Because this is something I was not good at. So intuition was like the key to my ability to revive my energy and heal and get back, like find my way back into the world that I and feel like I really belonged in it. So that's how I think about saving myself. There was a difference between being fully alive and merely existing.

I think many of us can relate to that experience. and merely existing. I think many of us can relate to that experience. You talked about when we should listen to intuition, when we should not. You also mentioned bias and fear and other things. My question is, how do we differentiate between intuition and fear and bias and all of that?

And then when should we be listening to our intuition? So, first of all, we all have intuition, but it's absolutely up to ourselves to hone it and harness it. And that could be quite a challenge in today's noisy, fast paced, rapidly changing world. So first step is always self awareness. And I always recommend, you know, there are certain things that I think are becoming more common that we hear about and do, that's meditation, mindfulness, reflection, reflection techniques. What I always recommend is journaling. So there are different types of journaling. In my book, I cover two fundamental types of it.

And what they do is that they help you put down on a piece of paper. And it's important to write in a journal, I think. And research supports that as well. So you put down on a piece of paper the thoughts that are swirling around in your head that you may not be so aware of, as you might think. And you start to recognize these patterns in what are like, what is a good intuition? When did I? So I was writing about, I had this intuition about hunts about something, and then it turned out that it was the right hunt.

Where did it, where did I feel it in my body? You know, did I listen or didn't I? And so on and so forth. And you also start to see that on some days you have more fear or you have fear in certain environment and context and it's about being more aware about how your intuition moves and flows with you throughout the day being more aware and in tune with that intuition because we are so unaware of it but it doesn't mean that it's always at work that it isn doesn't mean that it's always at work, that it isn't always

at work. It is always at work guiding us whether we are conscious about it or not. And then you asked when should we not listen to it? So first is to be self-aware and get to know your intuition and marvel in it. Don't judge it. Just allow it to be what it is and recognize it and witness it. And then secondly, when should we not listen to our intuition? You know, there are certain things that intuition is not good at. For example, probability, you know, just allow other things to help you measure probability, for example. Don't like if you feel emotionally upset, you can be super anxious. I'm not talking about healthy anxious or healthy stress.

We're always talking about extreme when we say emotionally imbalanced. So you can be super anxious, stressed, you can be angry or you can be totally falling in love. Like so happy. Everything is rosy and amazing. In all these cases, the advice is just to sleep on it and see what a good night's sleep gets you. And that's like probably one of the oldest advices that we have in the world, right? So just sleep on it and see how you feel about it tomorrow when you wake up. There is also when we are under a lot of pressure. So most of us are under some pressure.

There's family pressures, there's financial pressures, work pressures. In these moments when we are under pressure, we need to be aware of it when we are. Then life is as it is and we easily are under pressure. But the thing is here is just to know that you are under pressure and this might not be the best time

to consult with your intuition or do something that helps you cue it. So for example, step aside, step outside on a grass if you can, take a deep breath, like really activate your parasympathetic nervous system to regulate your nervous system because that will set your brain into a better shape in order to consult with your intuition. Be in tune with your body. You know, it's when I always ask people when was the last time that you didn't listen to your intuition, where did you feel it and what happened as a result? And then the second question is when was the last time you did listen to your intuition? Where did you feel it in your body and what happened as a result?

The reason why we do this is because intuition is an embodied intelligence. Our whole body is picking up sensory data, information, consciously and unconsciously throughout every minute of every day. This is informing our perceptions, senses, and we process this through our whole body, not just the brain. The brain is super important, but we need to remember that the first and foremost role of our brain is to keep our body functioning. So take one step after another, make sure the heart is beating and stuff like that. When it's in like full energy, 100% focus on doing that,

we're not capable of doing much more like deep listening, thinking creatively, empathizing. You know, it can be literally neurologically hard for us to do that. So being tuned with our own body is really key to being able to listen to your own intuition as well. I find it fascinating. I think it makes sense to my logical brain to not expect your intuition to pop up or to listen to it or be able to discern it from other things when you're under stress or overwhelmed or dysregulated.

But the flip side of being, as you said, in love or infatuation or any of those like really blissful feelings, I've never really thought about it that way, but you're right, those sort of extremes on either end. And what I'm hearing is our next step should be to regulate, to ground, to connect, like sleep on it, so that our intuition can actually come to the forefront versus all of those other things.

So thank you for walking through that. That was really helpful for me. You also mentioned, and I think this is so important, you didn't say what we would feel, you said to pay attention to what your body feels. was really helpful for me. You also mentioned, and I think this is so important, you didn't say what we would feel, you said to pay attention to what your body feels. And what I took from that is we might all experience our intuition in wildly different ways.

For me, it's a gut thing. I really feel it in my stomach and then it kind of goes through my body and there's a feeling of clarity and I often tear up. That's what intuition feels like for me. And when it's under stress or anxiousness or whatever, it's a completely different thing that pops up. It's a completely different experience.

But all of that to say, what are some other examples of ways that you've heard people experience intuition? Absolutely. So some people talk about intuition as a color. Some people see a certain color. They just, something gets more in the direction of one color, which I find very interesting because I don't get it that way.

Some people feel if something is right, color, which I find very interesting because I don't get it that way. Some people feel if something is right, like I'm also like more in the stomach in many ways. So if something is right, there is peace in my stomach and it's not hard to breathe deeply. It's like there's just this space and I can just really feel it. For some people it's when something is right, they get this warmth over their chest. They just feel this warmth over their chest and calmness. When people feel something is off,

it's very, very common that other people also reference the stomach. Some people get like lots of sensing through the skin. So like chills down their spine, they get goosebumps. And sometimes there's sound, and I resonate with that, and a lot of people explain it even deeper. It's like sound is kind of... I don't even know how to explain it, but it's like it zooms out.

So the noise around you just kind of becomes what people are saying. You see their lips moving, but there's something percolating inside you and you realize you need to tune in and listen to what that is. Yeah, so there are so many ways that people feel that. And I think it's, this is the work we need to do, right? It's tuning into our own system. So that's, I love to use the word and think about the word ecosystem when it comes to intelligence and intuition, because it really is an ecosystem. It doesn't like being put into boxes, you know, the sea within. If you put it into boxes, it ceases to flow. It needs to be making all these connections and we

need to kind of tune into how that works. And I also like to talk about the logic of intuition. It might sound counterintuitive, but there is a system around it. And when we tune into it, it's in my experience, and also just obviously the research I've seen and read is that it's the work we need to do. And the world is always changing. It always has been. And so it's up to us to change with it and adjust and adapt and tune in and adjust and adapt and tune in. And so it is a way of being to be aligned with your intuition. And I think we are finding ourselves

more and more feeling disconnected in our world. Yes, from each other, but definitely from ourselves. So I think of a couple things I know in my life when I start paying attention or caring too much about what other people think or other people's expectations, that serves to disconnect me from myself. Technology, one thing that's popped up a lot recently

is this belief that it needs to be hard in order for it to count, like this idea that, you know, hard work, hard grit and grind and all of that. And you've mentioned this earlier about ease and clarity when you're in a space of intuition. Basically what I'm asking is what are some of the things that we should be paying attention to that might be disconnecting ourselves from our own intuition, so that we can protect ourselves from those. And then there's a second part to my question, which I'll save for after you answer that one.

So that is a great question. And I want to go and take an example of something that's very in a way mundane. You know, so two examples. One is you're sitting in a meeting, which is maybe typical for many of us who are engaged in this conversation is you're sitting in a meeting, which is maybe typical for many of us who are engaged in this conversation. You're sitting in a meeting, you're at work, it's very stressful, and you're not thinking about how you're feeling, but this is the time to tune in. And you realize that your system is very tight, stressed. In this stressful moment, you have the possibility to put both

feet on the ground. Just remind yourself that there are soles beneath your feet and they're touching the ground, even if you're wearing shoes. Be aware of that. Take a deep breath and breathe consciously through this storm that you're going through. It shifts the center of gravity in how you are. You become more present. You have more opportunity to hone and harness the knowledge, expertise, and the experience that you have in the moment. And you become better prepared for the unexpected.

Like, this is so powerful, right? And then there's another example I want to take, which I think touches on what you've just mentioned, like we think about expectations towards us. So one of the things that I, I realized only a few years ago, and it's, it's, it's the following, we, we want our folks, our families and friends to be happy, we want everything to be okay around us and at work. So we very often put aside how we are experiencing things,

something rubs us the wrong way. We are not happy about somebody's reactions or whatever. And we can't always react to these. Sometimes we just need to take a deep breath and reassess. But sometimes we are putting aside like real feelings and we are dishonoring sometimes we are putting aside real feelings, and we are dishonoring how we are experiencing moment. And when we do this repeatedly, it can be in a relationship with somebody

that we really love deeply. When we do this repeatedly, what happens as a result, and it's very subtle, is that we are undermining our confidence in our own sensing of the environment and One of the most important ways that we access our intuition is through our sensing So we begin to distrust our own sensing and experiences of things and circumstances and people and that also undermines Our intuition and I I just want to take us back to journaling is very powerful to take a moment to be with yourself also,

to catch yourself in the moment and help you understand what happened to you on that day and so on and so forth. I feel like our intuition and confidence, again, firm and bold trust in self, is very much interwoven and interlinked, because that's my experience is when you listen to yourself, when you trust your intuition, you may not get the result you hoped for,

it may not work out perfectly, it may not all be some sign in rainbows, but what I have done, and every single time I have trusted my intuition is learn that I can. With the benefit of hindsight, I can always look back and think about how things worked in the way that they were supposed to to get me where I wanted to go or to help identify what was most important. But it's a sense of pride and a sense of just, God, I can trust myself. That feeling is so worth

cultivating. So the question I wanted to ask you is, do you find that to be true too? Like, if you trust your intuition, that doesn't mean it's all going to work out all the time, right? Like, your intuition has led you in places where you're like, really? Why this didn't work out? Is that fair? Yes. Okay. Absolutely. So to me, like the way that I, that I went through that learning, because I wanted to, to, I was asking questions many years ago is into it, can intuition

always be right, you know, and I had to really crack that question and then. What, so I, I totally agree with you. So intuition is can be as right as anything else, like we mentioned earlier. But intuition is about being in connection with you through life. And it enables you to grow. If we're disconnected from intuition, it can result in us becoming physically ill or mentally ill or just things going off the rail in ways that we, you know, that's totally a possibility.

But there is also a way to go through life without growing much. You know, we all know this feeling, right? Most of us have gone through parts of our lives in that mode, we're kind of like zombies. We're coping. We're just kind of shadowing through it all. We also know people who we think are doing that a little bit.

They're just avoiding themselves the whole time and just connecting hats to hearts. There's a reason why we use all these expressions. So yeah, I think intuition is really, and when we relate it to insights and creativity, intuition can be very naughty. It takes us to places that really disrupt our plans for the future or we didn't plan this,

I didn't budget this into my life or whatever. It does stuff like that. Intuition is also something that I think a lot about water when I think about intuition. I love that. Yeah. When I think of intuition, I think of old, ancient, like wisdom-type things. And then we, you know, are in our modern world

and there's so much going on. How do you see intuition as a superpower today? Totally resonate with what you've just said. The world we live in today is, what I sometimes see is that our attention is the key to within. It's a ten... Our attention is the key to our intuition, how we feel inside,

and how we're doing physically, mentally, all these things. Most of the things that occur in most of our lives is about things that are constantly hijacking our attention. There is so much noise, there is so much speed, and there is a lot of uncertainty which comes with a lot of sense of insecurity. So we don't like, we have experts telling us to do this and this and that. We have political leaders taking us in different directions. We want to belong to a group that feels this and that way,

but we may not always agree. We don't know what we think anymore. So in the modern world, the intuition is super important in order for us to find this deepest inner security that humans can ever find. And that is the anchoring of being aligned within to the world within you, to your intuition, to your inner compass. That's the reference to it. This is ancient wisdom. But what I also think is important to mention is that, you know, with the advent of AI, false news, misinformation, but also just our adoration of stuff that lies external

to us, how we place so much trust in all these things. I think that's the reason for us. We also need to pause a little bit and we need to regain the stewardship over our own attention and intuition, which also means that we need to regain ownership of our own intelligence. We need to trust more. Could it be that we actually have a big bias against our own intelligence? We don't trust our own choices and judgment and intuition, so we just place that trust into the hands of technology that we are looking at opposite ourselves. So I think it's like it's time we put ourselves back into the universe, the real life, and

just take the risk to trust more in our intuition, but we need to honor the fact that it's up to us to hone and harness it. So it takes, there's a way, a part of it is like, it takes critical thinking to learn to hone and harness your intuition. Because do you know what I mean? So that's part of the logic of it. You need to, you need to bother to make a difference between pettidism and intuition and biases and intuition. It's important because, because that is what intuition asks of us. Yeah. I think of it as both a challenge and a gift, right?

You talked earlier about growth. And if we believe everything we think all the time we never grow. Oh. And if we spend time with ourselves and get to know ourselves and care about ourselves, I think that all of us experience this questioning of what we think we know

or this openness or curiosity or this voice that says, mm, you might not be right or maybe this. And that's part of the... You said earlier, like, it might tell you to do something where you're like, what? That's not on my plan or that doesn't seem... And the risk and the trust that gets built, and I don't know, the feeling that comes from that when you listen,

I think, is probably the magic of today's day and age. Because as you're saying, we can listen to ourselves or we can listen to other people. Either way, there's no guarantee it's all gonna work out. There's no guarantee of pure joy on the other side. But we get to live our lives in our own bodies for the rest of our lives. There's no guarantee it's all gonna work out. There's no guarantee of pure joy on the other side. But we get to live our lives in our own bodies for the rest of our lives.

We might as well like connect to it. Listen, I don't know. I feel like I'm kind of, but it's just, there's so much of what you're saying that speaks to my intuition, that speaks to my experience. And I wish I could, I wish I would have learned that earlier. I will continue to learn it, and I wish I could bottle it up and send it out

to the younger generation and all the women in the world, because I think that's what our world needs today, is more women trusting themselves. Yes, I love the way you... Thank you for... for that inspiration you just gave us. I think that is soup. And I honestly think that the single most important thing

that we can train in ourselves, in our kids, in our folks, is to harness our intuition to be aligned with ourselves. Because what I believe happens when we do not follow our own inner compass to a large extent, we can't always do it, but to a very large extent, what happens is also that it really drains our energy and sense of agency. So it's also that. So it's like when you give away your decisions, like decision-making power, when you give away your agency, you don't fully trust yourself with it. Of course, there are moments when we don't.

I mean, obviously, that's why we need experts and help and advice and oh my goodness, all the time. But to a certain extent, we need to trust ourselves to take these decisions because there's an alchemy. There's a magic in doing stuff. It's like sitting and just asking AI to give you answers. It's not going to transform and teach you in the same way as you would learn when you do the work and you dive in and you do the reading

and you do the you touch the material you're working with. You put spirit into matter. You you do trial and error. You learn from experience. That's how we learn most. This is this is scientifically known. Mm-hmm. Harunda, thank you for an important and powerful conversation.

I know, myself included, we're all gonna wanna learn more. So, a reminder, the book is called Insa'i. It's available on bookshop.org or go to your local bookstore. Harunda also has a TED Talk and is on Instagram. We'll put the links to her website and all the things in show notes, but let's all go get the book and let's all trust ourselves. Harunda, thank you so much again

for such a great, great, great topic and conversation. Oh, thank you too, Nicole. It's such an honor to speak with you and such a pleasure to have this conversation. We should talk more. I would love that and the pleasure has been all mine. Okay, friend, if there's one thing I hope that you're walking away with, it's that your intuition isn't some vague woo-woo thing reserved for psychics and poets.

It's deeply human, incredibly practical, and wildly underutilized tool that already lives inside of you. We just have to make space to hear it, develop the courage to trust it, and the patience to follow it, even when the path it points to doesn't come with A-Z instructions. It may not always lead to instant wins or feel-good moments, but in my experience, it always leads to growth, confidence, and alignment. And in a world that's constantly trying to sell you someone else's version of who you should be,

trusting yourself just might be the most rebellious, powerful, and necessary thing that you can do. You are the only expert on you. So the next time your gut speaks up, your body tingles or your heart says yes before your brain catches up, listen, no one else is better qualified to live your life than you. Trust yourself because that is woman's work.