b.nourished Live: Listening to Our Inner Wisdom

Many of us are drowning in content and losing touch with our inner wisdom. It’s time to listen to ourselves!

Watch this session to learn more about tuning back in.

Full Video Transcript

Hi, I’m Katie McDonald with b.nourished, and we’re here to really question where the experts are. See, we don’t need more content, we are swimming in content, in advice, in guidance we don’t need. We don’t need any more. There aren’t any solutions we don’t know about yet. What we need is our filters to curate the content. The excess mass quantity of content that is burying our own voices. You see we’re looking outside of ourselves over and over again. And in doing so, we’re drowning out our own voice. Maybe we’ve never even heard ourselves speak.

I discover how many of us, especially women in leadership, are looking outward for input, for validation, for advice, for guidance. That’s a wonderful thing. Love collaboration, but we need to collaborate with ourselves first. We need to resist the urge to seek more and more information, and more and more advice and counsel. And in fact, simply just ask ourselves, “What do you think?”

So what we really need are the filters, and we need a content cleanse. We gotta shut off the tap of information that is coming at us, fire hosing us, and drowning us, as I said before, in too-muchness. And sometimes it’s us. Right? Actually, it’s always us. Let’s be clear, the relentless search for more and more information thinking that this one ounce of guidance, this one guru, this one class, this one book, this one podcast, it’s going to make all the difference. It’s going to answer all our questions, it’s going to give us the peace of mind, we crave it’s going to give us all those things.

I mean, hey, I get it. This is me too. I am a seeker. I love new information, and yet at some point, it becomes too much. At some point, I forget myself. At some point, I don’t even consult myself. I am so fixated on everybody else’s input. So I’m asking you to really question what’s underneath that. What I’ve discovered when I dig around in my own life, and also in the lives of my clients, over 12 years of doing this work is that there’s scarcity in all this abundance. There’s this question of: Am I enough? Do I have enough? Do I have everything I need? Will I be caught off guard? Will I be exposed as a fraud for not having the information at the ready… for not being informed enough?

There is a scarcity. There’s a fear underneath this relentless pursuit for more information. And how can we have any confidence in ourselves when we are constantly seeking the counsel of anybody else but ourselves? So the more that we’re looking for information, few of which we actually ever implement… I mean, how many times have you read a book, listened to a podcast, heard some guru, and said, “Oh, that’s really interesting,” and then done nothing with it? If we implemented a fraction of what it is that we actually ingested, our lives would change in meaningful ways. But our confidence erodes every time, we don’t pause and say, “Hey, what do you think?” Right? Meaning, “What do I think?” What do I think? What’s my opinion? What’s my stance? We need to be curious about that.

Here’s some insight that I want you to really own. You are the expert on you. You are the expert. No one else. Of course, defer to doctors. There’s wisdom there, but I’m talking about when it’s too much. So one of the things we want to do first, when we start repairing the relationship we have with ourselves, when we start coming to know ourselves as the expert on ourselves, we become curious about our own wisdom. So I actually challenge my clients to go for a two-week period. And resist the urge to ask for advice. Like really just shut it down. Don’t seek anybody else’s advice for a two-week period. So if our default is to immediately say, “Oh, I don’t know, let me go ask so and so,” I want you to slow your roll.

I want you to practice a new way. Start asking yourself for your own advice and wisdom. It’s really uncomfortable if your default is to go outward for all your answers. I want you to just understand and hang out in this discomfort and then bring a new way. Bring some curiosity into your own wisdom. I also want you to consider shutting down all content, all inflow. So here I am on social media. And here I am a content creator, right. Thought leadership, all that stuff. However, there’s a time and place for it. What I’m going to ask you to do is entertain the thought of shutting down social media for two weeks. It’s really uncomfortable. My clients really don’t like this. What I need to do is to shut out the outside influences, the tendency to compare ourselves, comparison-itis, the tendency to look outside for answers and guidance when in fact, all the wisdom, it’s already here.

We simply need to excavate it from the layers of stuff that we have buried it in the expectations, and everybody else’s wisdom. Right? I want you to learn how to listen to yourself. What my clients reveal is how insanely uncomfortable it is to shut down the social media, and how much time they’ve liberated when they do and how much they actually like themselves again. That they love the freedom of not looking outside, of not getting new information, buried in content. They actually wake up their own wisdom.

You know, people often ask me, “What’s the magic of being an artist? Why are people getting the results that they do?” And over 12 years, this sounds like an infomercial, yeah, it is a little bit. But here’s the thing. It works because it’s not about me saying, “This is what to do. Just follow me, do what I say.” It’s not that. My work is actually bringing you back to the wisdom of yourself. We get rid of all the BS, all the distractions, all the shoulds, everything else, and we start awakening that wisdom that was already there, and the resources that exist within you already. We remove everything else. And you know what happens? You become an unapologetic advocate for yourself. That’s what happens when we get quiet. That’s what happens when we go inward.

And here we are in a pandemic, and we can’t go out. So go in, go in and be curious about your own expertise. It’s a powerful, powerful tool for lasting transformation. My clients get lasting change. They will fall off their path, but they have a path and they know immediately how to get back on. And they close the gap between when we veer and when we course correct. It could have been months. It was you know months, sometimes years where we’ve lost our way. We actually get it down to minutes, hours, maybe. But minutes where we’ve just caught ourselves, we’ve course-corrected immediately and remedied all the consequences that come when we lose our way. But we have to quiet ourselves, we have to get reflective and introspective and allow our voice to come alive. And really respect and honor the wisdom that we’ve earned through life.

All the Hard Knocks, all the difficult experiences we’ve had, all the growth opportunities, the learning opportunities, all the beauty, all the bounty in our lives. These are lessons and there’s wisdom within it. And when we rely on that, and we shut down the outside world, we do it for a window, I’m asking you to consider two weeks shutting down the tendency to ask for advice, shutting down all the content that we get… shut down those RSS feed, shut down the social media, shut it all down for two weeks, and then decide to what degree do I want to bring it back. We have to abstain so that we can understand the pull.

I will, on regular intervals, look at different habits and be like, “You know what, I think that has more power over me than I like, and I’m going to play around with it. I’m going to abstain for two weeks, and then I’m going to bring it back in.” Or I might even do it for 90 days. And then decide: do I want it? Is it worthy to be back in? Is that habit, substance, is it worth coming back in? So you might do that in lots of different ways. But let’s do it around content. Let’s curate the content, put those filters in place, and actually give ourselves cleanses so that we can step into the authorship of our own lives.

If your life isn’t fascinating enough, if the lives of strangers on social media or the perceived fantasy lives of the experts are far more compelling, that’s on you. You have got to make your life way more interesting. And it starts with your cultivating and getting to know what your interests are. Cultivating them. Exploring them. Being curious about yourself, and rewarding and celebrating what it is that makes you uniquely you.

And pretty soon the confidence follows because you understand, “Oh wow, I am the expert on me.” And there might be a lot of fiefdoms that we could lead but we got to start with ourselves. Right? The Kingdom, the Queendom, whatever it is we’ve got to lead our own lives. This is about self-leadership. And that’s how we wake up to the wisdom.

So cultivate some interest in yourself. And the way we do it is by shutting out all the noise. You see other people’s opinion of you is none of your business. Other people’s expectations or perception of you – none of your business. But it is your business and responsibility to step into the responsibility of being your best self. To lead yourself with intentionality, and to be discerning about what you let in, what content comes in, what you ingest.

So I want to remind you, you are the expert on you. You are enough. You have enough. You have everything you need. If that makes you uncomfortable. And my guess is that it might… I want you to sit with that. What would that be like? What would it be like if there was no new information that you actually needed? Nothing that you needed to add for you to act, for you to take the next step. Wherever you’re hesitating. For you to grow in leadership. For you to immerse yourself in a different way in your family.

What if you didn’t need anything, and you were actually enough, and you had enough? I’m not asking you to not have a growth mindset anymore. I mean, that is the prerequisite for all the high achievers that is the common denominator for everybody with whom I work. And frankly, you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t have a growth mindset, if you weren’t committed to your own development, personally and professionally. But what if the growth came from within? What if the growth came from your own wisdom and not from some external data or expert or anything else, but it just came from you? That can be growth, and it’s a growth that we dismiss all too easily.

So this is what I want to have happened for you, I want you to first note the tendency to give your power away to seek advice and counsel without consulting yourself first. I want you to decide which challenges it can be: I’m going to shut all content down for the next two weeks, get off social media, shut the RSS feeds, no podcasts, nothing, just shut it down and allow. Allow your own intellect and your own dreams and vision and thought leadership to emerge. So decide which approach you want to do, or every variation, whatever it is, and then set a deadline. Say “I’m starting this day, and I’m going for the next two weeks.” You might actually want to communicate, if you’re choosing the social media platform, communicate and say, “For the next two weeks, I’m going silent.” My clients report that every time they do that, and when they go public about it, people reach out to them and say “I didn’t know you could do that. Like you’re doing that?” We forget we have permission and frankly, an obligation.

So the next step is actually to journal throughout. Journal through those two weeks to be like, “What am I noticing when I’m not getting that podcast and that high of new information? Like when am I feeling that? How am I feeling that? How am I experiencing that?” And you know what I discovered? Every client that I asked to do this assignment when their heads are full, there’s too much clutter, there’s too-muchness, and they’re feeling that it’s not enough, what happens is they discover they like their life better. They start repairing that relationship where their spirit, their soul, their heart, their intellect. It’s all open lines of communication again, because there’s no competition. Right?

There’s a clear path for that wisdom. And it shows and they feel alive and creative, and resourceful, and resilient. All of the things we need to feel now more than ever. So study that journal, note it and then evaluate it at the end. And then decide to what degree… If you have social media, you did that example and that experiment. Then to what degree do you do social media? Maybe it’s 15 minutes a day, maybe it’s every other day for half an hour or 10 minutes? Or maybe you outsource it all together? So these are the things that we get to question when we have enough distance. Or you decide who are those experts that I really value their input, that I really get tremendous value, and oh, by the way, I actually implement? Because the rest is just mind candy. It’s junk food. It’s not nourishing you if it doesn’t get down to the granular level. If it doesn’t get to the strategy level. You’re just filling your head.

And what I’m asking you to do is to act your way, mind shift our way of acting too. So all of this stuff, don’t just let it pour in this new way. Now that you’ve evaluated and you’ve had this break, this cleanse of content, decide who are the most meaningful. Who did you miss most? What content did you miss most? How could you reassure yourself that the FOMO, right, fear of missing out can be JOMO and that we’ve raised the standard for what we let in? All this is designed to repair whatever frail confidence we might have in our own abilities. To step into the leadership that we already have. And we’re just diluting with too much other information on the outside.

So we started this discussion with filters. Right? We need filters, we don’t need more information. We need filters. And we need faith. Faith in ourselves. Faith that we’ve learned a lot along the way. Faith that we have a lot of insight that’s worthy to consider.

I’m really glad that you joined me. And I hope you continue to do that. I hope that you continue to reach out and by all means, sign up for my newsletter. I know, it’s totally hypocritical, but here’s the thing. If it’s a value to you, then you keep it and if it’s not, you don’t. That’s okay. Be discerning. Again, you’re the expert on you. Don’t forget that for one moment.