S08|05 - Coming Back to Oneself: How to Grow Your Intuition

Crystal The Parenting Coach: Hi, I'm Crystal The Parenting Coach. Parenting is the thing that some of us just expected to know how to do. It's not like other areas of your life where you go to school and get taught, get on the job training, or have mentors to help you, but now you can get that help here.

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Hello and welcome to today's podcast episode, Coming Back to Oneself: How to Grow Your Intuition. 

I first want to say thank you for everyone who's left me a review, who's given me five stars on whatever platform you listened to, who shared this with somebody else, who's posted it on social media and tagged me; I love seeing the energy of this work getting out there. 

And I think that this message is so needed, especially today's message, especially if you are going to share one episode with a friend, let it be this episode. If you're going to listen to one episode, let it be this episode because; this, I feel like is my mantra right now…this is my message right now for the world…this is what I want to get out there, and it's just so good. 

So, I'm really excited to dig into this episode today. And also, if this is kind of the energy and work that you want to continue with throughout the year, I invite you to check out The Creation Room. It'll be at a link in the show notes.

And this is the energy that we're going to go through the rest of the year with The Creation Room with. So, if you love this, you will love that also. Also, thanks to everybody who has been coming to my breathwork classes, those have been so fun. I also had a lot of people come to do hypnotherapy that has been really fun, and I'm excited to see both of those practices really grow; and I love what they can do for us, which will tie into what we're talking about today.

One of the questions that I get asked most is, how did you learn to grow your intuition and how can I do too-- do it too? And typically, it's like; what book did you read? What course did you take? What certification? Like it's going to be like knowledge and wisdom that's in a book that we're going to get that somehow is going to give us this access to our intuition that we don't feel like we have. 

Well, the very first thing I'll say is that it didn't come from a book, not for me, and it won't come from a book for you. Books might give us some insight; they might give us some of those slight shifts. They might be helpful, they might be supportive. Lots of books have been that way for me, but it is not going to be the thing that helps you come back to oneself – that helps you to grow your intuition. 

The importance of intuition

I think I've shared this in the podcast before, but I created 100K year last year in my business. And as I was walking across the stage and I was getting my award from Brooke Castillo, who runs The Life Coach School, she had asked me to share just like a sentence of how I got there and that could maybe help the people that are wanting to get to the same stage as me. 

And there was a lot of great advice and great tips and great wisdom, but I knew as soon as I was asked that question – right in my heart, it came to me. It came like, it wasn't even to my brain like it was to my body, and I knew exactly what I needed to say, and it was this; "My only business plan is my intuition". 

And I had so many people ask me about that afterwards, both online and in person. What does that mean? What does that look like? What do you mean by running a business intuitively? How do you-- How do you do that? How do you set out your day? It just sounds so out there. 

And so, this episode is for you, for all of you who ask that, who wonder that – even if you do not run a business, this will help you in parenting…this will help you in your relationships…this will help you in whatever it is that you want to create. 

Because as we lean more into our intuition, that is how we're able to become creators – create whatever it is that we want, whether it's relationships or wealth business, a promotion at work. All of those things come from tapping into our intuition, listening to our deepest desires and thoughts and ideas and inspiration that come. And so, this is the book that you looked for, that you couldn't find because there isn't a book out there that teaches this.

But here is my experiences and I hope that some of it will help you, and you don't have to take it all. You don't have to feel like, 'Okay, well, now I have to do all of these things.' It's not like a step-by-step approach. It is just going to be ideas that have helped me and looking back, how it was that I was able to grow it; and I hope that it will help you also. And that maybe you can take just one or two of these points and get yourself there also. 

I'm going to tell you what life looked like before I became "intuitive". And if intuition doesn't resonate with you, you can think like gut instinct or spirit – just that inner knowing, that inner wisdom that we have. And I'm going to be calling that intuition. 

What a life without intuition looked like; and how hustle, numbers and books made it worse

I want you to think-- I want you to come with me back in time, several years ago, even before I started my business, when I was just in parenting; and I was a stay-at-home-mom, I had these four little kids – a couple of them are neurodiverse. I really struggled. I knew how I wanted to parent. I really struggled to parent in the way that I wanted to. 

So, I just loved books. I would read book after book after book. I would watch things online. I would take little courses here and there. I would go to those parenting programs, like that the government puts on or whatever in your local areas – I don't know if you have that in your local areas, but we did. And I never felt like I was getting the answers that I needed. 

Some of them, more than others, were helpful in that they helped shift things for me slightly. They helped me see things in a slightly different way, in a slightly new way; and maybe over time, the shift came. 

But I really wanted to learn how to parent more intuitively and to parent in a more of the way that I wanted to, and I just could not figure it out. It really wasn't the books that were supportive for me. 

And in fact, I interviewed one of my favorite authors, Dr. Deborah MacNamara. And I was asking her about these tips that she would give parents or whatever now, and she said like, "Listen to you, you are your own expert." And this was years ago. This was like right at the beginning of my own intuitive journey. 

And as she said that, it really hit me because I thought she was going to say, "Go read chapter this and verse-- this section from this, and it will help you." But it wasn't that. 

It was, "You have the answers inside of you. You are the answer. How can that be true? How can you tap into you more?" 

And I feel like I really outsourced that to other people; I outsourced what my answers were because I felt like other people had more experience than me…they knew better…they were older than me…they were whatever, more than me. 

And so, I went to that; and I really gave away my own authority, my own wisdom, to the point where I didn't feel like I had any – like I was just striving for this thing that would fill this hole that I felt like was inside of myself where I didn't have access to this parenting wisdom. 

Fast-forward to business I started to understand and make those shifts within parenting slowly, slowly, slowly. 

Fast-forward to business, and I'm starting my business. And again, I'm feeling like I don't know what I'm doing, I've never ran a business before. I've been a stay-at-home-mom for 12 years at this point, maybe 13 – didn't have any entrepreneur experience, didn't have any business knowledge or experience, did not take that in university and really felt like I just didn't know. 

So, again, I did what I did; I read all of the books, I went to all of the courses, I signed up for all of the things that I could to fill this hole that I felt like there was of like, I don't know, somebody knows more than I do. 

Again, really outsourcing that wisdom that I have inside of myself to somebody else thinking somebody else has the answer for me because they have more knowledge, they have more experience, they have more money – they've made more money, they have more clients…they'll know the answer for me. 

And I see this so much with my friends and families running businesses, trying to grow businesses; we often do this. This is kind of what-- This is kind of a bird's eye view of what my life was like then. But also, there was a lot of hustle, there was a lot of worry; even when I wasn't working, I was thinking about work. It was like I was working all the time. 

When I look back and I'm like, 'Okay, I was working like 20 to 25 hours a week,' it did not feel that way. It felt like I was working 40-plus hours a week because the rest of the time, I was thinking about it; I was so in my business all of the time because I felt like it just wasn't working and that somebody else had an answer that I needed to get, and I needed to grasp onto their answer so that it would work for me and all of those things. 

I was looking to other people for that answer. And I was also shaming myself for not getting there fast enough. I was feeling bad about myself, comparing myself to other people and where they were – even if they had like way more years of experience or knowledge or whatever, I would be like, 'Oh, I should also be there.' It didn't make sense even in the way that I was comparing myself. 

I didn't celebrate myself at all. I remember being at a Life Coach School Mastermind with my friend Abby, we had a great time; there's this big huge board and it's like, 'Write down your celebrations, we really want to celebrate each other.' 

So, there was little like sticky notes, and you had to write down something you were really proud of that you had accomplished that year. And I don't remember if she had written down something or not, but I was like--  

She was like, 'What did you write down?'

And I was like, 'I don't know, I can't even think of anything.' 

She was like, 'You can't think of anything?' 

And I was like, 'No, I can't think of anything at all.' 

Nothing came to my mind. And I just told her a little bit about my podcast and how it was going and stuff. And she was like, 'Didn't you just say that you reached 20,000 on your podcast, 20,000 podcast downloads?' 

And I was like, 'Yeah, I did.' 

And she's like, 'Why are you not celebrating that? That's a big celebration.' 

And in my mind, I was like, 'Oh, I want it to be a hundred thousand (100,000). I want it to be a million. I want it to be 5 million.' 

So, I didn't even stop to celebrate the 20,000 because I just didn't think it was a big deal; I didn't think it was enough.

And what's interesting is no amount of enough got me there, right? It doesn't matter if that number was 200,000 or even 2 million, I probably would've not felt like it was enough because it was my brain that was seeking this external thing to make myself feel better…like things were working for me. 

I didn't feel like I had whatever it took inside of myself, so the numbers really didn't make a difference. I wouldn't have celebrated anything. I also remember having this goal to make a hundred thousand (100,000) in my first year because wouldn't that be amazing? And people all talk about it and whatever, right? This goal is kind of like given to you. 

And I did make close to half of that in my first year, which is amazing. But even looking back on it, I didn't feel good about it. I felt like it should have been more. I never felt like I celebrated myself; and in fact, I only shamed myself because of how much I had not created because I felt like, 'Well, it should have been possible and I didn't get there.' 

The other really big thing here is that I felt super dysregulated – really up and down, triggered really easily by other people…even my other people's successes. Do you ever find this way? Like, I like look at their reels and I'm like, 'Look, they're getting so many views.' 

I don't even know if reels were a thing when I was looking a few years ago, but maybe they were. Or looking at people's email lists or the money that they were making or the success they were having externally, and just feeling so triggered by it all. Not knowing that I was feeling triggered, not knowing what was happening under the surface or even above the surface, but just feeling like, why is this not working for me? Right? 

How to tell if you’re in “not-enough-ness” in any area of your life and how to shift out of that

That's where that shame of like not-enough-ness is coming in; and not-enough-ness as in like, I don't have enough money, I don't have enough clients, I don't have enough business, I'm not doing good enough in parenting. But also, it boiling down to this deeper, not-enough-ness, which is what a trigger really is.

So, that kind of paints the picture of where I was at. And I figured out how to do this in parenting first. And it took a while to understand and how to shift this also to business. 

What intuition did to change my entire life and way of being, from parenting to business and more

But in parenting, it first looked like stopping reading the books – like entirely. I'd spent all these money on books and some of them are still on my shelf, and I'm like, 'Oh, maybe one day I'll read them,' and I haven't read them in years. But I had all these books, and I just allowed myself to just not read them for a while – to just throw away the books or keep them or give them away whatever.

But not to focus so much on trying to find more information – not listening to more podcasts, not looking for more courses, not reading more books because I wanted to really tune into what is my answer inside myself. 

And I started to really tune into my own intuition and parenting. If I was feeling connected, if I was feeling confident, if I was feeling calm…how would I have responded to that situation? 

A lot of the time it happened after the fact, after I hadn't shown up in the way that I wanted to. But then it gave me an opportunity to come back and to repair and to reconnect and to try again. And as I did this process over and over and over again, checking back in…if I was feeling calm and connected and confident, how would I have responded? There was always an answer.

Sometimes I would literally ask myself, what if I was coaching my client right now? 

I had this lovely client back then, she's my client again now in a new offer; and I remember thinking specifically of her, what would I tell her on a call? 

Like if she was telling me this right now, what advice would I be giving her? And immediately would open up these ideas that would flow in. And it's not that that's exactly the advice that I would give her; I have no idea what would've happened. But listening, just allowing myself to really shift out for a minute, zoom out of that experience for a minute, helped me to tune into ideas and just allow those ideas to flow. 

So, like I said, I figured it out in parenting. I felt like I was pretty intuitive with my parenting. That doesn't mean that I always got it right. That doesn't mean that my kids never struggled. That doesn't mean that I didn't have hard days or they didn't have really tough experiences because that is all true; we have had all of those, and I'm sure you can relate to that as well. 

It doesn't code-- It's not like a programming code where I can be like, 'Well, I'm going to delete all of the heavy, all of the hard, all of the negative feelings and all of the struggles from my kids' life and from our parenting life.' That's not going to happen. There's no code that's written like that, but it's allowing and accepting and feeling and moving through; and intuition helped me to do that. 

So, I made some pretty big shifts in parenting. And as I was leaning more into intuition and learning more about feminine energy, which I've talked about on calls before, so I won't dig into too much of that. 

But as I was starting to tap into this kind of side of me more, I realized that I could use the same principles I was figuring out in parenting in my business also and in growing my business. And this was really interesting because there were so many things that connected, right? 

Like we talk in parenting about personalization, not making our kids' behavior means something about us and our value and our worth. Well, we do the same thing with our business. We do the same thing with our partner relationship. We do the same thing with things not going wrong at work, right? 

We make other people's responses to things mean something about us. We make their actions and their behaviors mean something about us. And so, it was really separating that. 

I also started to realize that I wasn't leaning into my intuition at all. I was still leaning into; other people know more than me, other people have more wisdom than me. So, I wasn't even taking time to listen to myself.

Keys that helped me tap into my intuition, that might help you too- and that don’t come from a book

So, I'm going to give you a few tips on what I did that helped support me; and maybe you can find something in them that will help you as well.

(a) Throwing away the books unless they help you spiritually

Number one, like I said, was throwing away the books – unless they help you spiritually. So, not so much as like, I'm going to give you information, I'm going to give you the steps, here's the way to do it, here's my way it will work for you -because you're a different person, you have a totally different personality, a totally different background. 

Somebody else's steps might not actually work for you. And shaming yourself that their steps that you took on, then didn't work for you is just going to get you even farther than you are right now. 

So, throwing away all of the books and all of the information…stopping consuming information so much, just like pausing that for a moment unless they help you spiritually. 

So, things that have helped me spiritually besides like, I have a religious beliefs and so I also read scripture. But Sue Monk Kidd was really good for me for that - especially her nonfiction spiritual writings from like the seventies, eighties, nineties, that area – I don't even know exactly what years they were, but I think maybe the 80s and 90s – those really helped to lead me towards more enlightenment, more opening, more awakening, and just having more shifts. 

But it wasn't so much like, do this or don't do this; they were just like interesting little opening and awakening moments. So, if you're feeling like you're reading books that are helping you get that, it's not like information that you're looking for because you're missing it and you need something – but it's just helping with that little shift, that little subtle shift in your mind that can be really helpful.

(b) Doing work around enough-ness

Another one is doing work around enough-ness. So, you can join my next breathwork class, somatic breathwork helps with this, hypnotherapy works with this. I'll be offering breathwork classes probably pretty regularly in the future. You can also find a really good therapist or a really good coach who can specifically help work with this enough-ness. 

You can find a workbook type book like How to Do the Work by Dr. Nicole LePera, Secure Attachment by Eli Harwood, my book Burn This Book that helps you really implement mindset and emotional tools to help deal with this issue of enough-ness. But I find that often this enough-ness that's underlying it – not feeling like I'm enough, that's blocking me from my intuition – is more of a in the body process. So, even more than a workbook, I would try to find something you can do that's going to help you in the body. Sound healing is another thing that's really cool.

Shame and not-enough-ness block us from our inner knowing. So, one thing that you can ask yourself, you can even take out a piece of paper and a pen as you're listening to this, is; in what ways do you feel like you are lacking? Where are you feeling like you seriously need growth or change? Like, I really wish I could just change this part about me. 

Especially if there's urgency or like really frantic energy there, it's because we're seeking for something that we don't feel like we have inside of us. And we'll constantly be seeking for that, and that will consistently block us from our intuition. So, you can ask yourself those kinds of questions like, where am I trying to seek for this validation or this not-enough-ness? 

(c) Allowing it all

Another one is allowing it all; allowing all of the thoughts, allowing all of the emotions. As we started in The Creation Room, one of my clients said, "I'm just recognizing that I have all of these not-enough-ness thoughts everywhere. Like I didn't even realize that I had them. And now that I'm becoming more aware, I'm realizing that it's everywhere, and it's a little bit overwhelming." 

And so, I just want you to allow that. There's going to be so much emotions come and so many thoughts that come; and we don't have to resist them, we don't have to make it a problem, we don't have to feel overwhelmed by them. We can just allow them to come in and allow them to come out. 

One of the books we're reading right now in The Creation Room is The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down. And he is a Buddhist monk, and he just talks about allowing them to kind of float in and float out like clouds; we don't need to attach to them, we don't need to resist them. The more pressure that we feel around them, the more we're actually going to stick ourselves to them. 

So, allow the feelings to come in, fully feel the feelings as they come in. As you do this work, you might notice that there's a lot of grief, a lot of sadness, a lot of hurt, a lot of anger that comes up, and all of those are accepted. And all of those are welcome part of this process of finding our enough-ness of finding our inner voice, listening to ourselves, and really tapping into our own personal authority. 

How to access that idea of inner knowing

The last one I'll mention is how can we access that idea of inner knowing? Like how do I actually get there? 

Well, there's a few steps; one is, get out of your head. It doesn't come to you intellectually; you can't figure it out in your brain. So, do something that gets you out of your head; going for a walk, doing gymnastics…knitting, crocheting – doing something that's not trying to find the answer and the answer will come. 

Nature really helps me with this, or doing something in my body specifically. It comes to our body. The answers come to our body – and not in our mind when we're trying to like figure out like the pros and cons…and understand how this is going to logically work out. That's not how intuition works. 

Powerful questions that will help you create more space physically and emotionally- today!!

The other thing I'm going to leave you with is, how can you create space for yourself right now? Oftentimes we're being blocked by our intuition because our mind's going a million miles a minute. We are overscheduled. We don't take time for ourselves. We don't take time to just sit in stillness.

So, for the month of January in The Creation Room, what we were working on is this idea of creating space; how can I create a physical space in my room, in my home – to like have, that's just my own, where I can go there with a journal and a pen and music and a candle and whatever that is?  

We don't-- It doesn't always have to look perfect like that, by the way. But creating that space can be really helpful. How can I create more emotional space and availability for myself to be with myself more? How can I create more space and time in my home physically? Also, in my schedule, how can I kind of slow down and say no to a lot more so that I can say yes to spending time with myself – more time for me and with me? 

I also want to invite you to join us in The Creation Room. And if it's like I want to create more relationships in parenting, or maybe it's business or maybe it's both, maybe it's a promotion at work, maybe it's wealth, whatever it is that you want to create, that's what we're going to be doing in The Creation Room. 

But it's more about this idea of enoughness and regulating my nervous system, and how do I want life to be like as I'm creating the thing that I want to create this year? 

You can also join my next group breathwork class; just make sure to get on my email list, there'll be links below to get on my email list. And once you're on there, I will let you know when the next breathwork class is. 

The last thing I want to say is I was reading Brené Brown's last little newsletter – she hasn't put anything out in a long time – and it was called Hard Seasons and Wild Hearts. And this is what she said, "It turns out that I do know it, I do have it in me. But over the past few years, I've slowly become separated from myself and from my knowing; and most importantly, from my spirituality." 

I just want to leave that. If Brene Brown struggles with this, it's so common that we're all going to struggle with it. Like it's a natural human thing for us to struggle with; listening to ourselves, trusting ourselves, tuning into our inner knowing. 

You have wisdom inside of you, you have divine wisdom; you are connected to a source of wisdom that's unending, that's greater, that's bigger, that holds you for every area of your life. 

It doesn't matter what question you have. Write down a question and allow yourself to get out of your brain and just get into your body and just move and not think about it too much and wait for that answer just to come in – don't think it out. Allow it to be received when it wants to be received, when it wants to come in. Allow those beliefs and those thoughts and those feelings to shift as they need to. 

And I just want to remind you that healing is remembering. Healing isn't I'm broken, so I need fixing. Healing is a coming back to oneself. It's remembering my wholeness, my worth, my divinity…that when I came to earth when I was born, I had, I still have now – and that has not changed or shifted. 

It's not connected to what I do and don't do. It's not a connected to my accomplishments or to what I don't accomplish. It's not connected to my to-do list or to my certifications. It is just here inside of me always, and it always has been. 

And the more that I can remind myself of that, the more I'll be able to tune into my intuition – how my intuition speaks to me, what it feels like in my body, what the thoughts sound like when it's coming to me intuitively…which is going to be different for everyone, it's not necessarily going to be the same. It might be similar, but it's probably not going to be exactly the same. 

So, allow it to just be like a muscle that you grow, like you're going to the gym and you're working on this intuition muscle. And keep sending me your little ideas of like, 'Okay, this really worked for me or this didn't,' or even questions. You can DM me on Instagram or Facebook. You can send me an email. I love hearing ideas on what you want to hear on the podcast. I love hearing how these episodes are landing for you and if they helped or if they didn't or if you have more questions you want to dig into. 

Thank you for being here. I invite you to join us in The Creation Room if you want to continue in this energy. And also, get on my email list so that you can check out my next breathwork class. Have a great day. 

Thanks for listening. If you'd like to help spread this work to the world, share this episode on social media and tag me – send it to a friend, or leave a quick rating and review below so more people can find me. If you'd like more guidance on your own parenting journey, reach out.