Dirt Road Less Travelled

honoring your gut hits because yeah intuition is for real

• Maia Wilde • Season 1 • Episode 30

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We’re definitely not taught to listen to our intuition, to trust our gut. So, how to work up the nerve to tune in and trust that there's an actual inner voice sending us messages?

But, what if we could learn how to access our inner compass and from there discover our personal life path?

It’s a sure-fired way to release ourselves from ever feeling helpless, and shift into becoming the creator of our life experience.

And it’s the only real way to rescue ourselves from the vagaries of life, and to make our lives really our own.

Note: Dirt Road Less Travelled, the radio show, is no longer on the air, but this podcast is continuing on into the glorious indefinite future.

More about Maia at MaiaWilde.com

Maia's mechanisms for self-realization at MaiaWilde.Thinkific.com

Orig. Aired June/July 2019 On WIOX 91.3 FM

Note: The point of views of guests on this podcast are not always the view of the podcaster. And the podcaster is only expressing her own opinions. This is the disclaimer portion where we remind listeners to do their own due diligence, and that Maia is not a doctor or therapist and that you are a responsible adult, who is capable of knowing when to stop listening and when to seek professional support and help.

Maia Wilde:

This is Dirt Road Less Travelled, where we talk about life with a capital L and take on the big questions such as Who am I really? And why are we even here? I believe we're here to express the hell out of our true selves freely and unapologetically. So this is the show where we talk about how to do just that. I'm Maia Wilde, welcome to Dirt Road Less Travelled. We're gonna be talking today about that little intuitive nudge that you get that little gut check or intuitive hit, that you get that you totally breeze past and ignore, because we're not taught to really tune in and listen to those very subtle cues. And we're going to talk about how do you identify them? Like, how do you work up the nerve to recognize when you're getting an intuitive hit, and how to honor those little nudges, even though it's scary, and often. We're not encouraged to listen to our gut, right? And yeah, you know, and I'm using gut and intuition interchangeably, but I think that they are slightly subtly different, right? When you hear somebody talking about, you know, listen to your heart, it feels different than when you say, well listen to your gut, what's your gut telling you? And to me that even feels different from what's your intuition saying to you, I can actually experience a difference in my body. When I say those, my heart, I just feel this sort of love feeling and a heat in that heart area, like my chest area. And then if I say my gut, it feels a little bit stronger, more masculine, even a little bit sharper, like that visceral reaction, that sense of just gut check, you know, for sure. And then when I say intuition, feels more spacious, expansive, energetic, like it's connecting to my whole energetic field. What about you, this is where I want you to get curious, and start to check in with yourself, because that's what this whole show is all about. Right? It's helping you get more tuned into yourself, listen to your own inner compass, and discover your own life's path based on your own inner compass. And it's interesting, I had a conversation with a coaching client yesterday, we were talking about the difference between being a victim of life circumstances and being an in shifting off what's known as the Karpman Drama Triangle, you can look that up. If you're not familiar. It's this idea that you get on this cycle where you're the victim. And then you need a rescuer. But you've been perpetrated against, right so there's a perpetrator that creates you as a victim, and then how are you going to rescue yourself? And the idea is that it's we're pretty helpless. We're constantly just cycling around that victim triangle going like, Oh, I was just victimized by life now what oh, I just need to drink heavily to feel better, or I need to go fight with my spouse to take the edge off. Or that's it. You know, what I deserve just a big, I don't know, gambling spray or, you know, it can be anything. Some of those things can be fun, right? You know, having a drink, or sometimes some of us like to fight a little bit or, you know, play in the slots. Why not? But it becomes a problem when you're always looking outside of yourself to get rescued, right? You're always being victimized. And then that puts you also in a helpless position because you can be perpetrated against any time, right? Anytime, with the weather. another human being your body, sometimes we can feel betrayed by our bodies when they get sick, right? You could feel victimized by COVID-19. You could feel victimized by anything, basically. Right. So the idea, but then oh, here's the other fun part is that you can also switch roles, right? So sometimes you're the victim, sometimes you're the perpetrator. We don't normally, we do not normally see that for ourselves, do we? We're not really looking around going like this is where I was the perpetrator. Who does that. We don't like to do that. Nobody likes to do that. Although some people actually, I'm going to, I'm going to amend that a little bit because some people actually love to be the bad guy. Right? And be there almost like being the perpetrator but playing the victim simultaneously, like Well, I'm just a jerk. That's what that is. When there's more to the story than that, right? That they're just not wanting to stand up and get empowered, which is the place we're going right after I finished this description of the Karpen drama triangle, but so you can be the perpetrator, the victim, you can also be the rescuer. Now, clearly, some of us have certain roles that we prefer to play in life, right? You'll notice those like the recurring role that I tend to play as rescuer. You feel good about it, write something about it just feels juicy and delicious to be the rescuer. And we also have judgments about like, well, it's better to be the rescuer than the victim, right? But some people just feel like good being the victim. I know, when I'm in that victimized place, there's some part of me that just latches on like, yeah, I'm gonna just be victimized, right. So we just we dance around that the in those different roles and you know, it's, we're trapped, we're trapped on that. But if you want to get empowered, you need to shift over to the empowerment dynamic, where there's still challenges, right? You're not being victimized by a perpetrator, you're being challenged by an experience. And what do you need to look for instead of rescue of some kind, you look to somebody or something, a tool to coach you, right? So you're like, whoa, whoa, something crazy is happening here. Let me look for some support to have a breakthrough. Look at this differently. Wait, I'm losing track of what the other three are, it's, you're going to face a challenge, you're going to look for a coach of some kind doesn't have to be a life coach, it can be right could be a therapist, it could be a book, a podcast, a tool you've heard about, like meditating, maybe now I meditate, right? I keep getting challenged by my anxiety, hey, instead of drinking, or just, you know, giving into it, and letting my life be run by it, hey, I'm going to try meditation, right? Then you're trying a new tool? because now you're becoming the creator of your experience, not like you're in control? Are we ever in control? No, be nice to think so sometimes, we are really trying very hard to control things. But ultimately, we're not in control. But we are then we can choose right between those two, like the victim, or the empowerment dynamic. So the reason I went into all of this is that I had shared module from a self study course I created with a current private client. And yesterday, she was like, I don't know, I said, I think I want you to we're just talking. And I said, for homework, I think I want you to revisit that module and really look at becoming the creator of your life experience. And she said, I, you know, I gotta tell you, the whole victim thing. I mean, sometimes you are a victim of life, like, what do you have to say to that sometimes something very bad happens, and you're victimized. And I'm a big proponent of meet ourselves where we are, and I could see, you know, knowing this client, and hearing what she was saying, and knowing how important it is that we meet ourselves where we are, and also start to trust ourselves, right. So I'm not ever trying to impose a belief system on someone. So I said to her, that's so interesting. I said, I feel like for you, you have a foot in both camps. One is, like this creator experience, because she's really smart. And she loves to utilize tools. And she actually is dealing with some anxiety. And she's finding ways to plan to communicate in different tools to break up that experience of continuous anxiety that she's dealt with. So she's really playing in that creative command empowerment mode, much of the time, but there's also some places where she's like, this has been hard, and that my life situation in this arena, and this area really stinks. And, and so I've saying you know what, a couple of things here, one, I think you've got a foot in both, right? And if you haven't healed, some of the places where you have been a victim, you haven't made sense of them or healed them, whether it's from childhood or now, you know, then it's time to go back to the drawing board and heal that stuff. Right? So and then I said, I want you to go back and listen to the module. Just start playing with like, what's your spiritual belief system? What's your psychological belief system, see where you disagree with me and bring back to me the places where maybe you really full on disagree with me. Because part of what she's working on is really getting in touch with her own inner opinions and beliefs and ideas and starting to trust herself, that she doesn't have to always give into somebody else's opinion. That's been something that she's been dealing with, like, how do I really believe in my own ideas, and my own expertise? How do I do that without just always looking outside myself? Like, well, what do you think? What do you believe? Is this a good thing for me? Right? She wants to, she wants to be innereliant. So I said, you know, maybe a game you want to play for homework over the next few weeks is really just getting super opinionated because she's like, I'm so diplomatic. I said, that's a great skill. We need more good diplomacy in the world. But maybe you need to get really opinionated for a time. And maybe you need to become what was the phrase? It came off my tongue in an instant I loved it. It was to be instead of being diplomatic and seeing everybody side and right getting in the gray area and like Well, I mean, I know how I feel, but I can also see how the other person feels, which are great strengths, right? But she needs she's already strong in that area. So she needs to strengthen something else. So I said, What if you became a conscious extremist for a time. And she started laughing, I love when you know, I'm not this is not I don't normally coin expressions. But sometimes something comes to me and in fact, intuitively arises from a conversation. And so I was like, oh, that was good. Conscious, be a conscious extremist, meaning using being extreme in your opinions as a tool to get stronger and trusting yourself. So all of that is to say to you today, as you're listening to me talk about intuitive nudges, you know, trusting that you have an inner compass that's directing you, how do you? How do you start to do that? Well, sometimes you have to push back. So if you disagree with me, disagree with me all the way right now? I don't think so. And just play with that. I mean, obviously, I find people who are devil's advocate, totally annoying and frustrating, because I'm like, but aren't we trying to figure out I want to hear what you really think and feel. And Can't we come to some kind of an understanding consensus, the truth, your truth, but some people just love to play devil's advocate. So if that's you, you don't get to do that. You don't get to be a conscious extremist. Although maybe if you're trying to switch out of extremism, you might, the next step might be to get conscious, right? So Alright, so all of that is to warm us up to say, Hey, we're going to be talking about those really subtle nudges, just take what I'm saying, see how it lands. See if for instance, you do have a distinction in the way that you experience coming from the heart, listening to your heart, listening to your gut, listening to your intuition, right, and see what your mind is telling you. If there's any old beliefs there. Or, you know, just this is where you're just gonna start tuning in and seeing if you can hear yourself more clearly. And today, we're talking about those subtle, intuitive nudges, those little, those little pinches of a gut check that we all get, that we tend to ignore. And so we're going to be looking at how you can tune into what's happening with you right now. And looking at just the whole idea of what do you believe about life? What do you believe about intuition, I very firmly believe that our intuition, our gut, our heart, all of those are talking to us at all times and sending us messages that we're meant to pay attention to. But we live in a culture where that sounds far out and ridiculous and stupid, basically. So we're taught to be rational and weigh the pros and cons. And then we wonder why we're feeling like we're stuck up a back road loss, not loving our life. And we don't know how to make sense of it all. So this is the show where we talk about how do you start to make sense of it all in a way that fits for you. So this is always what it's about right? getting you more tuned into yourself and figuring out what what is what what do you believe? What, how do you want to make sense of your life? And you know, I don't know if you related to that Tracy Chapman song at all that the first one we listened to "At This Point in my Life", but I felt like that was a great place for us to start with today's theme. Because Where are you at? At this point in your life? I know for me, I would say that my 40s have really been like the dawn of my 40s when I turned 40 I felt fantastic. Everything seemed great. Really, I felt like I was entering the promised land. Have you had a time like that in your life? where you're like, Ah, this is it smooth sailing from here out. And then it's like, no, you're you know, you're hit with the cosmic two by four or just something bad happens or things veer out of control, and you're left like, holding the bag, like what just happened? How do I make sense of this? And so my 40s have really been a, I've had some amazing things happen. Just really interesting things in terms of creating a new career for myself traveling, finding great mentorship, having this spiritual renewal program thrust upon me by life when everything fell apart shortly after I turned 40. Like weeks, I was high and then it all came down. And so you know, you get to a certain point in life, you've accrued enough disappointments, that there's sort of a sludge that we're all carrying around. And I'm interested in how do you shake off the sludge? How do you clean it out of your system? How do you find that renewal or that personal Renaissance where you can feel refreshed, trusting your intuition? You know, your heart's not just all broken in places you know, you're not just covered with debris. And how do you reconcile What's happened with who you are now with what, how you want the rest of your life to unfold. So the lyrics from that Tracy Chapman song, I actually I printed them and I highlighted them. That's, I guess the student in me, I was a terrible student in high school. So I'm constantly amazed these days when I do something that looks like it could have been a homework assignment in high school that I never, I never did my homework in high school a few times when I did it. And I remember those times, you know, so people can change. I just want to say that to you. Also, as a quick aside, for years, all through my 30s, I kept thinking, I'm a bad student, I'm a bad student. And then I realized No, I was a bad student in high school. I just for a lot of reasons. But in life, I've been a very good student, because I've been into the subject material, right? There's been something in it for me. So I just, I want to run through some of these lyrics from that song. And see if you can relate is does this at all hit the mark for some of how you feel in your life where you are right now. She says, done so many things wrong. I don't know if I can do right. You see, it's been a hard road, the road I'm traveling on. I really, you see, I've been climbing stairs, but mostly stumbling down. I've been reaching high, always losing ground. You see, I've conquered hills. But I still have mountains to climb. And right now, right now, I'm doing the best I can, at this point in my life. At this point in my life, I'd like to live as if only love mattered, as if redemption or insight, as if the search to live honestly, is all that anyone needs. No matter if you find it. Words of wisdom and poetry from Tracy Chapman out of her song"At This Point in my Life." And I feel like it really applies to where so many of us find ourselves midstream in life. I went kayaking with my boyfriend over the weekend. And you see some, you know, different family groupings out on the water. And I saw this one canoe come by with the I think the older sister and the mom, the older sister was upfront, the mom was in the back and they both had paddles, and they were rowing, you know, down the river. And then there was this, the youngest of them a young woman in the middle. And I was like, Oh, nice way to you know, just get taken, right. You're not here just you get to just relax and be be rode down the river. And her mom said no, she wants to have a paddle. And I thought, isn't that so interesting? Isn't that how life happens? Right? But you're just not given one. You're not given the paddle. And it reminded me I was telling Mike I said you know, I am from Treadwell. If you're local to the central Catskills, you might know that the sweet little hamlet of Treadwell and it is a Hamlet. You know, people say oh, I'm from a small town, how many people oh, just 14,000 or something, whatever we consider small. I'm like, oh, I'm talking like 250 people in Treadwell. So that's that's where I'm from. And there used to be a general store. Barlow's general store, I'm giving a shout out to a now defunct landmark. But they used to sell postcards, and they were these black and white postcards. Where it was like an old timey photograph. And then in red, it would say greetings from Treadwell in New York. And then there'd be a caption to the photograph. And my favorite I I don't know who I sent this to. But I know I collected some of these postcards. And there was this one, it's this grainy black and white photograph of three people in a canoe. Greetings from Treadwell New York, and the caption says, that's me in the middle. without a paddle. I just always loved it. I was like, that's how it feels sometimes, right? That's me in the middle without a paddle. I wanted one. Nobody gave me one or I had one I lost it or Oh, are their paddles, right? It's just that feeling. So if that's where you're finding yourself, and you feel like there's this debris that you're lugging around with you, I do believe that there's ways to clear and cleanse it, right. And I think that the first thing that we need to do is just, you know, I'm going to say it in this in this phrase, and resent myself as I'm saying it simultaneously, you got to get present with yourself. See, I gave myself the heebie jeebies. Because that's such an overused phrase right now. But the truth is, you have to get present with yourself. You have to you must connect to yourself, and just tune in and see, like, what are some of those nudges? What are some of my wants and needs? What do I like? What don't I like where am I overriding my likes or my dislikes, meaning where am i doing stuff that I hate doing and hate myself that I'm doing it maybe over caretaking other people, maybe working a job that just feels all wrong. Maybe you're in a marriage that's like, this is the wrong marriage? Or maybe you know, there's stuff that you love to do and you're like well, you know, once I'm done once I have finished everything on my to do list or lost 20 pounds or made$100,000, or whatever these impossible bars are that we set for ourselves before we can go have a good time, if you're not honoring your likes and your dislikes, and you're overriding your instincts there and just basically dismissing yourself out of hand, get started paying attention to something this simple, and it might sound even spiritually malignant, like, well, if I am really going to be a spiritual person, I shouldn't have likes and dislikes, okay? We're not at that level. Like, we're not playing at that level. Right now we're playing at the level of, you're in the middle of your life, and you're going man, I think I've betrayed myself, I think I've abandoned myself or I don't like myself, or I don't like my life, or there's this little nudge that's going, something's off. If you start paying attention to just the simple ways that you are dishonouring yourself, and then you start to tweak it a little bit, so that you're like, I like this. I like sitting outside with nothing to do and nobody there staring off into the distance. And then you start doing that more, or you're like, God, this person just really wears on me whenever I call her back, and I listened to all of her problems, I feel, I feel like I'm, I'm jangly afterwards. And I, I just want to I need to go have a drink or something, then you're like, you give yourself permission to sit and stare off into space, and you give yourself permission to not talk to that person on the phone, I don't care how related you are to them. Once you start doing that, honoring your likes and dislikes, and really listening to like, I want this, I need this, that sets you on the pathway to discovering your actual soul desires. where it's like, what is it that my soul is really desiring in this lifetime. But you have to start incredibly small. And in fact, it goes both ways, right? Because once you're really honoring your likes and dislikes and listening to your you know, really discovered your soul desires, maybe even your calling or your mission in life, then if you're there at your if you're at that place, now you can really listen to those subtle nudges. What's so interesting about those subtle nudges is that there's always this edge where something feels off, but you don't know if it feels off because it's good medicine, for you to be in that situation. Like a job that you don't love or a relationship where you're like, forget this, I'm leaving, to quote myself a lot in recent years, to then discover way when I really drill down, it feels off because we're hitting up against an unresolved wound that I have, or like an ego problem, like a pride issue that I've got. So it's actually good for me to be here and play my edge, right? versus figuring out. It's that edge where it's just off. And it's a no. And you need to just remove yourself from the situation. So there's a lot of nuance and subtlety, and a lot of experimentation. But really, what's the important thing, meet yourself where you are like, take a read a temperature on yourself in your life. And just look at this is the big question we're going to be returning to all day today, is there somewhere in your life, where you're getting a slight nudge. And you've been breezing past it. Because it makes you uncomfortable. Or you don't want to have to deal with it or you're scared. I had a physical thing that's been happening the past, I want to say six to eight months, it could be longer. And I finally talked to Mike about it. I finally said I have this thing. I don't know what it is. And we started to make a plan, right for me to take care of it. Instead of me like oh my god, it's probably the worst possible news. So I'm just going to ignore it. Have you been there? I've been there. So this is the place where you're just going to meet yourself where you are. And you're gonna just play with like, What do you want now? Okay, this is not evolved super advanced, right? When we talk about wants, but I want you to swim around, I want you to play with like, what do I want, because sometimes there's like that little child voice like, but I want but I want. And that's because there's unfinished business from the time when you were a child, and sometimes giving yourself permission to want and then to fulfill it or even sometimes just to want it, but often to find a way to fulfill it for yourself. Now as an adult. It satisfies you, you complete that circuit, right? And so I'm giving you full blown permission. You don't have to even think about what are my soul desires. What's my bigger purpose? How do I be of service we're not we're not getting lofty right now. We're looking at where's the little nudge Whereas maybe something that you're just wanting, were some unfinished wanting that you have. Today, we are talking about listening to those subtle, intuitive nudges that are trying to point you in that direction that you're meant to go in, and how so often we ignore them. And that a good place to start is, what do you want? Where do you feel like you you're wanting something and this permission, maybe to even be a little whiny, wanter for a while, you know, and it could be something as simple as, like, I just want time to myself, that would be me, and then realizing, I need to create my schedule, so that I have time for myself. Because there's this whiny part of me that is actually communicating really important information. When I give myself time for myself, guess what, I have really cool ideas, I feel happier, I'm a nicer person, right. So there's a lot of reasons why you want to tune in and pay attention to yourself. And you don't have to do it for you do it for the people around you who are going to like you more. We're talking about listening to your intuitive nudges, connecting maybe at the most basic level with what you want. And maybe the places where you just feel a little broken and sad, right and lonely, like, but I wanted life to be different. But I don't want to have my heart broken. But I didn't want things to go that way. You know, there's a lot of ways that we dismiss ourselves and ignore those inner nudges. And in fact, as I'm talking now, I'm thinking, this might be more of the heart realm, where I'm going at this moment, this idea of that emotion, sadness, or heartbreak or disappointment, and that maybe your heart is speaking to you saying, I'm sad, pay attention to me. And as adults, we just go not right now, or that was 15 years ago, get over it, you know, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, or we go more to the victim mode, and just sit in front of the TV, and overeat and just numb out right to try to remove ourselves from that pain. But is your heart sending you a nudge saying, hey, there's this brokenness that we haven't dealt with, you don't have to, like throw yourself into the fire to heal it, you just have to notice it, acknowledge it, and maybe take two seconds to sit with it and feel it. Maybe you can do that through music, maybe you can do that while walking or crying in the shower. You know, there's a lot of different ways to connect to that without doing you know, another, I don't know, 20 years of therapy or feeling completely sorry for yourself endlessly. But there are ways to start to heal just by tuning in and paying attention and acknowledging that you don't have to then be expending any of your energy to try to tamp it down or ignore it. Because you're going to heal it. That's the thing that they don't tell you, right, that you can actually heal this stuff. And that one way to do that is just to acknowledge it, pay attention to it and give it a little room to express itself. Literally, this is you nurturing, paying attention to acknowledging an aspect of yourself. Sounds weird, right? But somehow it works. This is this is part of the mystery, isn't it? So let's delve into a little bit of that heartfelt stuff like the sadness and the places where you wish things had been different. But today, we're talking about listening to those very subtle, intuitive nudges. Your heart nudges your gut nudges your general intuitive nudges just that warning system that is in place in all of us that most of us have not been trained to listen to much less trust. And so there's a certain amount of learning how to interpret, practicing, listening, practicing tuning in, and then also practicing trying on, as they say, believing in at all and I've spent years exploring all of this stuff, and I've come to some pretty solid feeling conclusions for myself, which is that Hekia we've got an inner compass, and there are ways in there are inroads, right? You know, so if you feel like you are always rushing or always being busy or always caretaking other people or always distracting yourself somehow whether it's with food or worry or feeling irritable, or just paying attention outside yourself to things whether it's the weather, maybe you're complaining a lot, maybe you're running a constant complaint loop in your head. Or a worry loop in your head, maybe it's not even something external to you. And in fact, maybe if you're not tuning in at all, you don't even notice that you've got a level of denial happening, or a level of worry or anxiety, because it's just how you're used to feeling. So if you start to tune in, then it often gets much more uncomfortable for a time. And that's, that's a great sign that you're paying attention and you're on the right track to something shifting to something. What I like to say to steal from Eckhart Tolle a is transmuting. That by paying attention to something for a sustained period of time, it has the chance to shift. And you see this if you take care of kids, or if you have animals, you notice there is a quality to how they absorb your presence and your acknowledgement. They drink it in. And they're different. Afterwards, I had a private coaching client, who was noticing that her daughter who's four years old, was really just very needy and clingy. And always wanting more and more and more attention time that she would get up as soon as she heard a parent Get up. And so she sneakily devised a plan, where she, she and her husband sat down, put their heads together, and she masterminded, okay, when you get up in the morning, you know, the kid is going to get up to like this, this child just immediately wanted time with her dad, so. And he was driven a little nuts by it, because he loves this little girl. And he just needed some quiet time in the morning to get his own stuff together for the day. And we're talking really early, you know, my clients say, she said, Listen, if he got up at four, this girl

would be up by 4:

15. So it doesn't matter what time he gets up, right and so here's the plan. As soon as he gets up, and the little girl comes into the kitchen, he has her chocolate milk ready for her. So he's making himself coffee, he hands her her chocolate milk, and says go into your room while daddy prepares his coffee and gets ready to make mom's breakfast. And then I'll be in and we'll talk about what clothes you're gonna wear. Because this kid doesn't ever want to dress herself who does at age four, right? I remember, I remember being left in a big armchair with a pile of clothes when I was about three and my dad said, dress now I'll be back in five minutes, he came back, I don't remember what happened in between. I just remember he said that threw some clothes on me. And then I went into this kind of reverie in the chair. Right. And then he came back and he was so mad because I had no clothes on. But I wasn't being belligerent or disobedient on purpose. I just drifted because what I was three years old, right? So you know, there's, there's. That's just the reality for some of us for the rest of our lives. So they were like, okay, she's not going to dress herself. But at least we can in fact, prepare her chocolate milk the night before. So it's in the fridge. So as soon as she walks into the kitchen, he can hand it to her, send her back to her room promise that he'll be in in five minutes. And then they start the day. What winds up happening is I can't I my client reported this to me when it had happened two days in a row. And it changed everything. So she said that her husband got up at six by 10. After six their daughter was in the kitchen. He and they had also let me say this the night before said tomorrow we're going to do things a little differently. And they walked her through the plan. So she already knew what was coming. So they didn't spring a surprise on her she was prepared. So she comes into the kitchen, he hands her her chocolate milk, she goes back to her room. He's making coffee and starting to prepare the rest of the family's breakfast. She walks back in 10 minutes later, fully dressed. She's like while I was in my room drinking my chocolate milk. I just thought I'd get dressed daddy. And he was like, What? And of course it wasn't temperature appropriate clothing. So he said Okay, awesome. Tomorrow, let's talk about the weather so you can choose what clothes you wear. So my client normally just hides in bed until the last possible minute because there's so much yelling and crying and chaos with the kids and her husband in the morning. And this time she said she woke up and it was really quiet in the house. And she could hear the murmur of voices. She's like what's going on there? I guess I'm going to go out and she said they had prepared her breakfast for her. And for the rest of the day. This little girl was just fine. Why? Because she knew she had time with her dad. There was no one no one else there. No mom, No brother, no nobody else. And she knew what what to expect. And they plugged her into a ritual that satisfied her satisfied her father, you know, and like, completely changed how she felt because she wasn't feeling like she needed to be needy or grasping anymore, right for the rest of the day trying to get attention or affection because she got it. And she knew every morning now she's going to get it. And that's what I'm talking about. When I talk about acknowledging your own little child. Within your inner little child, it really that sometimes we just need the attention. And so if you didn't get it when you were a kid, because how many of us really solidly did solidly did or, you know, a client was talking to me yesterday, he said, you know, we keep trying to go over my childhood to see where some of this stuff started. I don't think it started in my childhood, I think it started in my marriage. So that's very interesting. I've never seen that happen before. But no matter right now, he's really looking at, okay, where are the places where I showed up, and I got shot down in my marriage. So the whole point here is that you need to be paying attention to those unacknowledged parts of yourself like you would if you were caretaking another and then see what shifts, see what happens. So this is this is the process of just starting to tune in and pay attention to yourself and it can heal your old wounds, it can also clarify a new direction in your life, the suddenly you're going, what do I really desire? What do I really want? And then as you start stepping out, of course, stuff will go completely awry. And you're gonna have to check in with what am i believing? What kind of meaning Am I making about this? Where do I need to course correct what isn't working, right, but just start by acknowledging yourself like you would a little kid and see what happens. And I want to talk a little more about that edge, where it feels something feels completely off. But you can't tell if it's because it's good medicine, like holding your feet to the fire, like, Okay, I'm just acknowledging and paying attention. So things feel like they're heating up and getting worse. But really, they're actually about to shift. Or if something feels off, because you need to quit the job, leave the marriage, go see the doctor, whatever it is, right. And that's an interesting experiment. I honestly have felt in, in my current relationship is very, it's very amusing. I'm going to share a little personal story that that has our therapist, absolutely charmed. But I've just noticed in my current relationship, there are these moments where I just think this feels terrible. I should not be here. But then I'm going. Yeah, but I my longest term relationship was six years. And I haven't had like, you know, a 10 1520 year relationship that felt really solid and good. I feel like all my old stuff keeps coming up as much work as I've done on myself. And so I just started to think, hmm, I'm not going to move so fast. This time, I'm not going to just rip off the band aid, right and be like done with the relationship? Because I started to get curious about how do you tell if it's not the right relationship for you? Or if it is the right relationship for you? Because it's going to be healing for you. Right, if it's going to be good medicine. So, a few weeks ago, Mike and I started something called Imago Therapy. Are you familiar with this, it's not the fun kind of therapy where you sit side by side on the couch as a couple and you know, you both are not touching and you're crying or raging or being very cold and silent and hoping the therapist takes your side. This is something developed by Harville and Helen Hendricks, you could check out the book "Getting the Love You Want." And so this is a style of therapy known as Imago dialogue where you are facing your partner, eye to eye need to knee and the therapist is just coaching you on how to, in a productive way communicate with each other, and dialogue with each other. It is one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. It is so intense you are your soul is bared. Everything is just you're just there with zero protection, except the key thing is that there's this creation of it as a safe space. Our therapist is phenomenal. And there have been times especially in our introductory session, but it's come up. It's come up since where we shared you know, Mike shared and then I shared like, what's the biggest thing? Like what's the biggest glitch in the relationship and what you know what bothers you the most and of course, the therapist goes, ah, you are an amazing Imago match. Because the theory behind Imago is that we subconsciously choose romantic partners, because we sense that they have the best and the worst qualities of our early caregivers. Which means that it's supposed to be in that kind of a relationship, the the arena for the most healing you've ever imagined. The there's potential for everything that has wounded you or traumatized you to be here. And fixed, and for you to feel whole and complete and seen and acknowledged and important and loved and accepted. And so oh, our therapists just get such a kick out of these moments where Mike and I come at it from like, you know, totally whatever the subject is, it could be food, it could be housekeeping, it could be sex, it's anything where one person thinks one has one take on and the other has the exact opposite. Take the theory here is that perfect, you're a perfect match, given the right tools, in this case dialog, to heal what created that glitch for you in the first place. So again, this is where you're going to have to just experiment and explore and maybe get some outside eyes on your situation, whether it's in a relationship or with your eating or in your career, or wherever it is in your life, maybe you've got a lot of clutter in the house, you're trying to figure that out, definitely helps to get an outside perspective, like the right outside perspective, to start to suss out that edge like, is this off, because my intuition is telling me to leave? Or is this off, because I'm in the right place to heal. And that is not necessarily something that you can trust yourself to figure out, right. Despite all the work that I have done, I honestly realized in my 40s, like, I don't really know, I'm not I'm not, I'm not prepared, competent, or not competent to make the decision about this relationship, I can't be trusted. So stay curious with yourself, be a little playful about it be amused, and also start to look at those places in your life where you have been so amazingly steadfast with yourself, where you have listened to your intuition or your heart or you your gut, and you knew you just knew. And so it's okay, if it's a little murky, or there's some confused spots. That's okay. But remind yourself, remember that time when I just knew, and also, let me just throw this out there to this idea of just knowing can come from a disturbed or traumatized place, right. This is why you sometimes need to get in there with another person and have them help you sort it all out. That was Savage Garden with"Truly, Madly, Deeply." We started off that three song set with I Would Make, I would wait,"I'd Wait a Million Years," by the Grassroots. And right in the middle there. Of course, we heard the Proclaimers with "500 Miles" isn't that amazing song. I finally why listening to that song, this time, instead of just jumping around and enjoying it, I actually looked up what it means to haber. Because you hear that in the song where he said, you know, it's like, "I'd walk 500 miles just to fall down at your door." It's that idea of he do anything right to be with her. He said something like, you know, and I'd however, if a as long as I'm the one who's hovering for you. For 20 something years, I've wondered what that means. Turns out it's Scottish to talk foolishly, or babble, as in Tom havered on, aren't you glad it didn't attempt to Scottish accent in that moment, I was so tempted, and I had to decide in a split second if I was going to go with a bad Scottish accent, or just read it like myself. So it's that idea of like, what would you hate Iran for? What would you babble on and look like a fool for? What would you walk 500 miles for? The whole point right now is how do we get you tuned into those nudges, those intuitive nudges that you're that are uncomfortable, they've been giving you some discomfort, but for whatever reason, it feels like it's better, safer, more comfortable, not to pay attention to them and listen, like live with that. Just slight discomfort under your surface at all times. Then to turn and face them and acknowledge them and really experience them full on. And then from there, tackle them, fix them, heal them, transform them, change them, transmute them. And so I'm suggesting there are places in your life where you're showing up big time. And it's been hard, but you're doing it anyway. We've all done that. Maybe it's for a child, or a dog you owned or a lover, or in a crisis situation. Maybe you showed up in this brilliant, incredible, heroic way. You couldn't even believe it afterwards. Right? You're just not showing up in that same way, in these other places for whatever reason. How can you inspire yourself to start showing up in those places where you're getting those subtle hints from your inner self that something's off here and needs you to be the grown up and pay attention to it. I was inspired to do this show today based on that really Internal, subtle, almost invisible nudge because I had been experiencing it for the past. I want to say a month and a half, two months, as relates to this radio show, and I couldn't figure out what was going on. I love doing the show, I have been at wi x for two years. I started for the first six months with a show called the moment, which was an hour long show. And then segwayed, about a year and a half ago into dirt road less traveled this two hour show. And I have loved it. This has been an amazing experience. I was so scared the first time I came to the studio, I was just sweating. I couldn't figure out how to turn the AC on was late June 2018. I was just and the next person the next show hose came in. I said I'm just so hot. And I just I couldn't figure out how to turn the AC on because I had so much else on my mind, right that of like not messing up on air have so scared. And she just looked at me maintain eye contact, walked across the room to the AC and just press the power button on. And that was it. There was nothing to figure out. But I didn't have the bandwidth right to even go there. And I have absolutely passionately love doing this show. And I'm actually in the process of having it edited into a podcast that will be also titled dirt road less traveled. But in the past month, month and a half every time it was a Thursday, and it was my time to come over to the studio. I just felt this feeling. I I could only describe it if I were and I ignored it. I just ignored it endlessly, right? But it felt a little like dread or heaviness or like, I don't want to write just that I don't want to. And I'm thinking I love this. Why don't I want to what's going on, I finally had to pay attention after a few weeks of this happening and me going Wait, I love this thing. I love it when I'm there, what's up, and I had to notice, oh, I need to create some space and time for me to do some other things. And I came to this place where it started to be me thinking, let me take a shower to off in the summer. That sounded Okay. And then I was like, No, I need to take a hiatus. And so I this is my final show for a while. Because I listened to that inner nudge, I didn't want to write and I feel a real pain right now. Because I've had a great a great day again today, talking to you about all this good stuff and listening to some good music. But I really trust that when we listen to her intuition, it's gonna guide us it's gonna lead us and it might just be as simple as me just needing a break, sitting in a lawn chair for the summer, and being able to focus on getting my new website up getting this what a year and a half's worth of shows turned into podcast episodes, learning how to launch a podcast, I have no clue how to do that. And I don't know what it is. But I've learned over the years of following these intuitive nudges that it's always going to be leading you to where you need to be. And so I really invite you to just tune into those places where you've been avoiding or ignoring. Listen, even if it's hard and you don't want to hear what your inner self has to say. And then take whatever actions you need to take care of yourself and to honor that intuitive hit or that heart nudge or that gut visceral message that you're getting. We are going to go out with a song I want to read you a few lyrics from the song It's called"From the Flames" and believe it or not, the name of the group is Soul Desire. Here Here are some

of the lyrics:

"have you lost all sense of direction? obsess over imperfections? are you petrified of rejection? Would you try? Would you try guided through the rain you will burn so bright, a phoenix from the flame learn to see the light. by fighting through the pain you will burn so bright, like a phoenix from the flame from the ashes will rise again. It's never too late to change your fate. It's your life to choose nothing left to lose. It's never too late one's life to create. It's your life to choose nothing left to lose. Learn to see the light inside by fighting through the pain inside a phoenix from the flame." inside. I added that last inside. But that's the message I want us to go out on today. Hey, it's Maia I just wanted to say hey, and if you liked this episode, hit share on it with a friend with all your friends. Why not spread this message that we are permitted to do life our way right? This is our one and only beautiful life. And if you would be interested in me coming to give a talk to your organization, and by organization I mean it could be a group of friends. It could be an entrepreneur group. It could be your company as a staff development day. I am ready to hear from you. I have talked prepared I've been delivering them for years and I would love to share with you what I have on offer. So you can hit me up at MaiaWilde.com or email me directly at hello@maiawilde.com. What's the Dirt Road Less Travelled? It's owning the unexpected adventure of your life. Yeah, you're covered in mud, no map in hand, but you feel so alive. Like your life has real meaning, and you're absolutely on the right path. You've been listening to Dirt Road Less Travelled. If you like what you hear, share an episode with a friend or share many episodes with several of your friends and make sure that you hit subscribe. And if you want to find out how to connect what we talked about on the show to your own life. Check out what's happening at MaiaWilde.com, the conversation over there is all about how to live like you're on a mission and what's that mission? Doing life is the real you living on purpose, healing all the old being able to envision the new and of course expressing the hell out of yourself. That's MaiaWilde.com. I'm Maia Wilde. This is Dirt Road Less Travelled. Until next time, stay true to yourself out there.