Redirecting Your Nerves (and negative energy) with Whitney McNeill

We have far more control over our energy than we think, including nerves like stage fright.

Today, my guest, Whitney McNeill joins me for a conversation about the connection between our mind and body, managing your energy through those pesky nerves, the power of affirmations and mindset and so much more (plus of course a few random tangents from yours truly).

Whitney is a Certified Medium and Spiritual Teacher that teaches entrepreneurs how to connect with their intuition and energy so they can make aligned decisions, live their life purpose, and attract abundance into their business and lives.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey, I'm Heather Sager and you're listening to Finding Your It Factor- Episode 27. Today I'm bringing on one of my dear friends, Whitney McNeil, and we are having a good conversation about helping you manage nerves. Imposter syndrome and so many other mind games when it comes to your business. We all know as entrepreneurs, there's a lot of them. I can't wait for you to hear this interview, so let's go ahead and jump right to it.

Speaker 2: 0:30

[inaudible]

Speaker 3: 0:30

Have you ever wondered how some people just seem to have a way with words? They have this spark that lights you up when you're near them? They have the It factor and while most people think it's something that only a few are born with, I believe that you can find it so it can become your super power to grow your business. It's about you bringing your brand to life by becoming a magnetic communicator in person and on camera, showing up with confidence, authenticity, and inspiration. So are you ready to become magnetic? I thought so. I'm Heather Sager and I'd like to welcome you to Finding Your It Factor.

Speaker 1: 1:19

Friends, welcome back to another episode. Can you believe it's almost the end of February. I almost said April and that would have really, that would've really been shocking. February, it's almost the end of February and that means my birthday is in just a couple of weeks heads up. I like to make a big deal out of my birthday. Side note, last year on my birthday, I uh, the, the internet went out and by the internet, I mean Facebook like March 13th of 2019. Remember the day that Facebook crashed the entire day? That was my birthday. And uh, you know how like, you know how nice it is to get so many Facebook comments and messages on your birthday. That didn't happen and I felt like my day didn't exist. And I know I sound like a whiny millennial right now, but it's just a funny thing that happened. Anyways, I tell you this because coming up I am doing a special birthday edition episode of the podcast and I need your questions. Yup. I want to know what questions do you have around speaking about online business, about personal development? About me and my cute, adorable dog named Chompers or my bullet coffee, whatever it is you want to know. I need your questions. So would you head on over to the gram, shoot me a direct message and just let me know what questions you have for the show and I will be answering them on my special birthday episode. If you also, if you follow me on Instagram, I'll do some stories and capture those questions too. But I just wanted to put the little bug in your ear. It's time to send your questions. I'm doing an episode all about Q& A. Fun fact. I might even see if I can get my husband on the show to answer or excuse me to ask the questions. So if you have any questions you'd like to ask him around living with a crazy lady, send them on over. Okay. Weird way to start the show. But I just felt like that needed to get out there. All right, so today's episode, another good one. I am so thrilled that I'm able to bring some incredible guests on the show to talk about a variety of things. And this topic today, I have to tell you, it's so good. So good. I can't wait for you to hear from my friend Whitney. Let me tell you a little bit about her real quick. So Wendy McNeil, I met her for the first time last September. We were in quite a few different online programs together. I kept seeing her name come up. We met in person in September in Niagara falls of the legendary event and then hung out again at, uh, Amy Porterfield's event in October. And then now we're in the same mastermind that we talk all the time. She's incredible. But here's the formal bio. So Whitney McBeal, she's a certified medium and spiritual teacher that teaches entrepreneurs how to connect with their intuition and energy so they can make aligned business decisions, live life with purpose and attract abundance into their business and their lives. Now I'm just going to go right in for it. What is a medium? And I have to tell you, six months ago I'd have been like, what? Like medium, like the guy from uh, the each handle who worked with the Kardashians talking to their dad. I know, I know. I was a very skeptical person. I have to tell you up until about September, I had no interest in anything woo related to business. And to be perfectly honest with you, I still am a little resistant to it. Dare I say that out loud, but I know many of you fall in the same boat. So you're in good company. I'm not a person who does crystals. Do you do crystals instead of, I don't even know how to talk about crystals. That's where I am on the spectrum. If you don't even know what crystals are, you're in good company because I didn't either. Uh, I don't know anything about those. I don't know anything about spirit guides or spirit animals or I don't know guys. I don't know anything about these things. I'm learning and here's what I've learned. I've determined that I am woo curious, meaning I'm curious about finding ways to become the best version of myself. Finding ways to become a better wife and a better mom, and a better friend and a better leader for you and for my team and my business. And I'm finding ways to chase really big, scary goals that I've put on paper. And I know in order for me to level to, to reach a level that I have never reached before, nor do I know how to get there. I know I'm going to have to do things that I'm uncomfortable with and things that I have I didn't even know about and I've never learned. And I've never thought that way before. And so that for me, that means being open to learning new things, be open to learning new beliefs in different ways if other people have elevated their lives. So I identify now as well, curious meaning I'm curious about the woo, I'm curious about this mediumship. I'm curious about understanding intuition energy. I can't even say it. Intuition and energy in a way that makes me feel good about myself and what I'm doing. And if that's weird, I'm okay with it. So if you, whether or not you will embrace the woo, you're woo curious or you are like, girl, what are you smoking? I, I don't know. I live in Oregon side. No I don't, I don't smoke the things that you could smoke in Oregon, but uh, I, you know what I'm embracing, I'm embracing in all the thoughts and all the things because I've committed to the journey of becoming a better version of myself and I hope that you are too. So by the way, we don't get weird and talk about weird stuff today on the show. It's actually a super practical show where when he talks to us about the connection between our mind and body and how we actually can have more control over the nerves, especially when it comes to speaking on camera or on stage, we have far more control than we give ourselves credit for. So she's actually got some really tangible tips for you today. So let me stop scaring you off and say a weird things about my skeletons? As much as you jump straight to it. Here we go. Welcome to the show, my friend, Whitney Mayfield.

: 7:38

All right, friends, welcome back to another episode of The Finding Your It Factor podcast. I am thrilled to be back today with another guest on the show talking about a topic that I think is a little, how do I describe this? I think a lot of people embrace, a lot of people are curious about and a lot of people have no clue what the hell I'm about to talk about. So I brought on my friend Whitney and first I just wanted to say, Whitney, welcome to the show. Hey Heather, thanks so much for having me. I'm so thrilled you're here because I talked about this a little bit in the intro, but my experience with getting into more of the inner work to help me show up better for my audience, it's been something I've worked on. Personal development has always been something that has been a priority for me, but in the last six months particularly, I've been embracing other ways to elevate. Um, I don't just that inner work and I'm really excited today because honestly I don't know a lot of the terminology. I don't know a lot about it and I am curious to actually learn alongside my audience because I've already started seeing the benefits of just some of the few things that I've implemented since our time meeting together. So why don't we just pause there for a second. How about you introduce yourself, tell the audience who you are and what you do so they know what the hell I'm talking about. Thanks Heather. So my name is Whitney McNeil. I'm a certified medium and spiritual teacher and I love helping entrepreneurs tap into their own energy to manage their own energy, tap into their intuition so they can make aligned decisions, live their life purpose, and attract abundance into their life and into their career as well.

Speaker 1: 9:15

Okay, that sounds so great. And I have to say, most people when they hear the word medium. Again, that's where they sit on the fence, they're like, huh. They're curious. They're skeptical or they're like, Yes. And my experience with that has been, it's going to be so embarrassing to do. You're probably gonna kill me for saying this, but watching an episode of the Kardashians years ago where they brought in a medium to try to talk to their dad. And I really had never thought about it before until you and I were in a session last September. I haven't talked about this on the podcast before, but we were in a session last September doing breath work. And I had the most interesting experience where, Oh my God, I'm going to sound like a crazy person. But I had a full conversation with my mom who passed away almost 20 years ago. So side note, I think I'll circle back and I'll probably need to tell that story now and clarify it in a future episode. But the reason why I wanted to share that until that moment, I had never even considered that it was possible to tap into something more. And I remember you came up to me after the experience and you're like, hi, would you like to chat? And I was like, yeah. And before that moment I never would have. So if our listeners were thinking right now and they're still like, huh, I'm curious, this is a really great episode because we're going to talk about a lot of different things. Um, I think related to the work you do as a medium, but also I think more practically speaking, we're going to be talking about how to tap into some of these things to help you, my listener around how to get more confident in situations that stress you out. So this is going to be a fun episode because we're going to talk about both the spiritual side of things, but also the practical side of things about how to elevate your speaking capabilities. So I'm curious when you talk, talk a little bit more about what you do in your business and how this plays out.

: 11:04

Oh, I love it. So I help entrepreneurs and those who are really ambitious and they really want to tap more into their energy and harness what they have. I really fully believe that we all have these different abilities to understand more about our spiritual side and to understand the right aligned decisions that we need to make in business or to really align to our path of what we're wanting. And so that's what I really love to do. And I do that in my online program for those who just really want to have abundance in their life and they just want to tap more into their own selves and align their energy. And so I believe that it's really important to actually harness and work with our own energy. And what you were saying, something about confidence when we're not really harnessing our own energy, that's when our energy just freaks out. And that's where imposter syndrome comes from. That's where we feel unaligned. And then we're like, what do I do? I don't understand what my next decision is. And so we really need to get in touch with ourselves on a spiritual level and we need to get in touch with ourselves on emotional, mental, physical level as well so that we can feel in balance centered and then approach the next steps to take in our business or to the next steps to take in our life as well. So all of that is what I do. I love the chat. I love that. And you know, it really wasn't until I got into the online space as an entrepreneur where I heard people openly talking about this idea of aligning with your energy. And at first I was like, gosh that sounds so like so foofy like I'm like gut intuition, do the hard work, get what you want. Like I'm a goal setting kind of person. And so I think what's funny is sometimes we put different terms, but I think a lot of people aligned with idea, idea about being intentional and going after what you want. And so I'm curious, can you break down, when you talk about energy? Like what, what do you mean by that? And how do we, how do we tap into that? Like how do we understand what our energy is and what it's doing? I think we most of the time understand it by the emotions that we're feeling. So everything is energy, right? Like we learned that in science class when we're in high school, everything's energy. And also we have different areas of ourselves that correspond energy. So our physical body, when it's tired, we say we have low energy. When we're really hyper we say we have high energy. So our physical body is made of energy. But also our emotional body is made of energy and our mental body, like our thoughts, our energy and then the spiritual part of ourselves. Like you know when we ask ourselves that question, why am I here? Or you know, I want to connect more into that spiritual part of myself. That's energy as well. And so anytime we start feeling like we don't have guidance, anytime we start feeling like we're not confident, any of that stuff is a ding, ding, ding and message of Oh I'm out of alignment. Something is not right here. And so we have to dive into the different energies that we have to say, well what part of this is not aligned? What am I doing? And you know what happens, Heather, is a lot of time entrepreneurs just keep going. They're just full force. I'm just going to keep on going and I don't have time to deal with this stuff. And then it's like, you know a crap shoot where they're just kind of throwing darts that's some random targets because they're not aligned and so they have to actually take time to work on themselves. And you were saying that you've been doing some inner work and when you do that inner work and you become aligned, it's like you're breathing this fresh breath of air and you feel guided on the next steps of your path. We always need to feel guided on the next steps versus, I don't know, I'm just going to randomly choose cause that never turns out well. So I would say the indicator is when you're feeling like you're not confident, imposter syndrome is coming up or you're feeling like, I don't know, I just feel like something's a bit off. All the emotional indicators are usually what's going on there. But hey, there's also physical indicators. If you're tired or you feel like your thoughts are just kind of running rampant, those are also indications to that. You're out of alignment. Yeah. You know, I'm sure the opposite applies to where when you feel super motivated and excited and it just had this like, I dunno the gung ho zest nature. Words are not coming to me right now, but like the opposite of like the low energy piece. Like on that high thing when you know you're on to something and you're doing work that not only you're good at but you're excited about. So how, I mean, how do you see that play out in, in your work?

Speaker 4: 15:54

Absolutely so. Well, anytime I feel super inspired. So inspiration's a big one. Oh my gosh. I feel so inspired to do this. And what happens is you may have heard this term of synchronicities. So it's like when you are in that vibe, when you are aligned and when you're starting to see these opportunities just open up or you're like, Hey, I just had a thought about this. And then Oh my gosh, this opportunity just popped up for me. Or this person just mentioned this. That's what I call synchronicity. And as basically your energy is in alignment and so therefore it's attracting opportunities that are in alignment with your energy. And so law of attraction is a whole different topic, but it's more of I am starting to see and attract these energies that are in alignment with my thoughts, emotions, actions.

Speaker 1: 16:44

You know, it's uh, I'll, I'll call out the elephant. I don't know, I've never heard of that word before. Synchronicities. I don't, I'm like big word. I feel like I should know that. I don't. So I'm glad you describe what that is, but it is, when you start talking about that idea of the law of attraction, I always think about like as a kid when you played the game slug bug and it's the, you never noticed like Volkswagen bugs on the road until you want to punch your sister in the arm and then they're everywhere. So it, I mean we've been experiencing that kind of thing since kids, but now it's thinking about it in a more intentional way and it works both in the positive aspect and also in the negative aspects. So I love, I love that concept. I want to come back maybe a little bit more to that and how my students and my listeners can maybe bring more opportunities for visibility into their business. So let's, uh, let's, let's put a pin in that one. What I'm curious about is when you were mentioning this idea of being out of alignment with your energy, when you start feeling apprehensive or nervous or whatever those feelings are, how do you tell the difference between when you're in that uncomfortable like zone around you're just doing something new but you need to lean in versus this thing is not something that you should be doing. Like how do you tell the difference in your own energy?

: 18:00

Well, I will tell you one of the big things is actually there's certain what I will call like signs as well that become very apparent if you're not in alignment, so that means the doors are just not opening or I'm trying to do this thing over and over and over and I keep getting blocked from doing it. That's, that is definitely a, Hey, your energy is telling you that it's not time for you to go forward in that. As far as when you're excited about something though and you feel inspired and you're motivated. What I love to do, Heather, and I tell my students this, when we know that we are in alignment because you have felt guided, you've seen those synchronicities, these doors open and you've been wanting these doors to open and you're just nervous and you know that you're just nervous. One of the things that I encourage you to do, and this usually works and it's an indication that you're just nervous and it's not out of alignment, is if you can take a moment and if you're looking at it and you're saying, yes, I'm excited about this. Yes, I feel like it's a good decision, but I'm a little nervous. I'd like for you to imagine that you're on a roller coaster and you know when you're going all the way up to the top of the hill and you're getting ready to go down. I physically, this is what I do and this works is to take a few moments imagine that you're on this ride of your life and I really want you to throw your hands up and go, woo, this is exciting. Just take that fear and those nervous butterflies and turn them into excitement and say, I am just so excited for this because it's the same energy, Heather. The nervousness versus the excitement is the same. We just have to reframe it with our mental energy of what that is and generally speaking that works and then we become very excited about it. You know it's funny is it's such a simple concept and so I've done that before. I teach that, like that idea around just if those nerves that and excitement, they're the same feeling but a lot of times we don't, we don't believe that. We're in the moment that it's so scary. So how do you, how do you encourage people to be reminded? Because sometimes I feel like when we're in that moment of fear, we're so unaware and move into a panic. Like how do you remind someone like, Hi this is where you are like jolt yourself out of it. I love that question and I'm going to go a little bit deeper with it too. So I feel like if you are somebody that has that recurring coming up over and over, then that is definitely assigned for you to say, you know, I need to do some more inner work here. So one of the quick things that I would say to you is when you're getting that trigger or you're getting that emotional energy, if you're making it a routine in your, and it's a trigger that's come up over and over, it's going to be easier to identify if you are making it a priority to be consistent and flipping and reframing your thoughts and your mindset. However, one of the things that I would always say is become more aware of your body and if you feel it tense up or you're feeling fear, I love for you to just take a deep breath and then you can feel your body relax. And what I encourage my students to do is to focus in on their heart chakra. And it's okay if you're not familiar with heart chakra, but let's just say heart energy or love, right? And so we can just focus on the center of our chest because that's where we're breathing and just focus on that heart area and this breathe out love. And so I think the awareness part is always very key. But one of the things I really wanted to share, Heather, for somebody that is wanting to do deeper work or somebody that is like, gosh, I'm always triggered by this. The more that you make it a routine or consistency in your day, the easier this'll become and the more results that you'll see. So we've talked about energy, we've talked about how the physical body is made of energy, the emotional body, mental and spiritual bodies, all energy. And so one of the things that I would encourage you to do in that moment of fear is to work on affirmations. So are you familiar with affirmations, Heather? Do you use those at all? So I've known about affirmations for years and I've randomly, like I use them in my teaching and sessions for like particular moments. But I've never in or up until recently I had never embraced the idea of affirmations. And earlier this year, my listeners know this. I started doing a new routine in the morning using the Miracle Morning model. And I was like, alright, Ha;, let me try your, your affirmations. And I literally printed his recommended affirmations and there were three different handouts that were his examples. And I'm like, I don't know enough to create my own right now. So I'm just gonna read Hal Elrod's affirmations and kid you not Ive been reading those every morning and I, I have been shocked at the difference it's made. So I want to hear you talk about this more, but this is a new area for me and I am such a, like an advocate believer on this and I can't write, wait to actually write my own. Yeah. I'm so excited that you're working with that. And some people here are just like, I don't know, but affirmations, you know, I don't know, I've heard it, but I'm not sure how they work. I just want to kind of give you a-couple examples. I'm going to give you a negative example and I'm going to- I have to, I have to say real quick because as you just said, like some people might not be familiar. The only image that just came in my mind is did you watch Friends? Yes. Okay. My favorite episode of all time. Remember Rachel's boy. Oh gosh, what's his game? Um Oh, what's the actor's name? Where he comes on as a guest actor and he's like looking in the mirror and he's like, I am amazing. I am. Or like you are a big deal. You are wonderful. Gosh, what? He's like such a famous actor. Somebody who's going to post on that and be like, Oh my God it's that guy. But it was like what are the most funny moments of Friends? But like that's what affirmations sound like to a lot of people are like you are a big deal, you are worthy, you are enough. And like some of those things are great but I'm excited for you to maybe take that into like a wrap. So talk about the negative and the positive.

Speaker 4: 24:16

I love that. I relate to that cause I was one of those people where I just saw like the Saturday night live skits. I'm like, yeah, I don't know about affirmation, but they really do work. So let's just say something that's um, I'm going to use a negative example. So through culture and from whatever we said to ourselves, even jokingly, we can just say sometimes like, Oh, I'm so stupid. That's just horrible to say to ourselves. But let's just say we say it sometimes or we'll say, Oh, I'm so stupid, so stupid. And we can just laugh when we're saying it. But then what happens is we end up saying it more frequently because there's less resistance because we start making it a habit. And so when we say I'm stupid, we're saying it on a mental level. And then usually we say it when there's a situation of frustration attached to it. Like, Oh, this was stupid. And then what happens when I say that with emotion is my shoulders start kind of clenching up and kind of my posture gets bad. And I'm like, Oh, I'm so stupid. And then what happens is we may feel like we can never be aligned, which is on the spiritual level. So that is how all of those emotional bodies, mental, spiritual, and physical work together. Now, if we start reframing that and we start making a habit, even when we're frustrated and let's say that we didn't get something right or we're not good at tech or whatever it is, we can say, you know, I'm catching myself saying I'm stupid and I'm going to start saying I'm confident, I'm confident, or I'm smart. And then we start saying it and then we start attaching an emotion of I'm confident, I'm confident, and then my shoulders go back and my posture improves. I am confident because I've attached that emotion of like, I can do this. And then we feel realigned again with our energy, which is on that spiritual level. And so the more that we implement the negative or positive routines into our lives, that's really gonna affect our energy. So that's why I want to shift to the positive. And one of the biggest things that's helped me is if I caught myself in a negative or a limiting belief, I would take a moment and say to myself that is something that I, I'm going to change and flip. And I would immediately say a positive to counteract that. And every time I limiting belief would come up, I would take that and have my new positive statement. So it can be I can do this or I am smart enough, whatever it is. And I just, I'm laughing cause that's kind of like what we've talked about. But something of I can do this. Yeah I've got this and we just want to shift our energy so that we are aligning with those positive things. And you can see if somebody said some negative things over the years how much it would affect. And so we need to shift that energy for sure.

Speaker 1: 27:03

I'm thinking about, I think sometimes even that example around I'm, I'm an idiot or I'm stupid. Go and like it usually is related to when we make mistakes or something's happening. So even you don't have to do like such a positive extreme, you could always do a, I'm resourceful. I always figure it out. Like lean into, okay, so what do you know to be true? So you're not, you're not feeling inauthentic by saying that thing like I know sometimes. So side note I, so I used to, I was, I've been trying to a lot of different journaling work over the last 12 months and I've adopted a few journals that are out there around writing things out every day, writing your dreams down, writing your goals down. And I have a practice I do now, but one of the things that I struggled with for a while was I would hear somebody say their quote unquote dream goal or affirmation. And I think a lot of people blend those all together. And I think they're different things. But I would hear them say it and then I would write it down and I would never really like, it wouldn't really sit with me. So if some of the recommendations we're giving today, if you're like, ah, that doesn't like I'm not, if saying I am smart, I'm confident, I'm enough. Like if those things you're like, ah, it just doesn't quite fit. Find the word that rings true for you, that brings you into a feeling of like, Oh I think that's just really important because the words that we tell ourselves are so important and you want to make sure they're your words, not somebody that you just take from somebody else because you think it's a good one.

: 28:30

100% and I'm so glad you brought that up and that's definitely how I teach that as well cause my word can mean something very differently. Even though it's the same word to you, you could have a different definition attached to it. But one of the tricks that I like to use is if there is something that you feel like, you know, I just, let's just say that you wanted to say I have abundance or something of that sort. You're feeling in lack and you're like, I'm just lying to myself if I say I have a abundance. So what you can do is say I give myself permission to receive abundance. So you're saying I'm giving myself permission to X, Y, Z, and it changes your perspective as well. So you can take that tip, but just make sure you're taking the energy of your own words for sure. So that you are really aligning to your authentic self.

Speaker 1: 29:19

Can I poke into that for a second? Cause I, there's, here's like a real time example. The word abundance to me it feels so, I don't know what the phrase is. It feels so unrelatable to me. Like that's the word doesn't like that's an example of a word that doesn't resonate with me. In real time, can you help me figure out, okay, so what would be a like a different word that I could replace? Cause when people talk about abundance, I'm like, yeah, that's great. All the more things. But it doesn't click. But I know it's important, but I haven't found a way to click that. So could you like let's banter on that for a second.

: 29:53

Sure. So I would ask you, well what do you want more of? Okay. So coming back to the more and making it real and not just generally saying abundant. And when you're thinking of what do I want more of? That is where we're going to look at. Okay, let's just say it's more for someone it's more clients. Let's just say it's more clients. So what I would love to say to that person, if their answer was clients, I would say, all right, well how does that, how do you feel about that? What are you really after here? And so perhaps it is financial freedom. And so the affirmation could be, I have financial freedom. I allow myself to receive financial freedom in my life. Things of that sort as well. So looking more into, well, what does that mean for you? Because the term abundance can be financial prosperity, spiritual prosperity. Give me more family time. It can be, um, different opportunities in business. Abundance is very general for everyone. And so it's, I love it because it's not limiting. But it's different for each person and how they view that. Okay. I love, okay, I love that. I'm glad we pause there for a second because I think this is an example of sometimes when we hear terminology or we hear words that are used, they're used a lot and we're like, Oh yeah, we believe in that. But it's the taking the moment to really consider. Okay. So what does that mean for you and I, one of the things I've embraced over the years, there's, I follow goal-setting through Michael Hyatt. Like I love his approach. I've been using his systems for years. And one of the things that I learned from him when I took one of his courses, I don't know, eight years ago, was this idea that you have different areas of your life. And when you get more intentional about making those areas be what you want them to be like when it become more intentional around your spiritual work, your um, your business, your relationships and so forth, you can create more for yourself. And so I think I just had this moment of clicking that abundance for some people they might hear that and be like, I don't care about making more money, but I really care about more time with my family. Like make that what works for you. But don't get caught up in the term not having direct meeting or having somebody else's definition.

Speaker 4: 32:09

Absolutely. It's always going to be how it works for you. And that's what I love about this system is everyone's energy is unique and different. And so you take these lessons and you apply them specifically to you and how you're gonna display your unique qualities and gifts to the world and how that means, how the meaning is displayed in your life, career or family.

: 32:37

I love that. Okay. So we've talked about energy. We've talked about affirmations. Let's pause for a second and talk about how these things might show up for an entrepreneur who's stepping in to more visibility, elevating their marketing this year. I would imagine there's going to be a great level of discomfort that comes with that. So whether that's putting yourself out there, I've been talking about pitching a lot lately. I've been talking about speaking on stages. It could be going out to more Facebook lives. Just getting more out in front of new people. Can you talk a little bit about how these things play into that?

Speaker 4: 33:14

Absolutely. So again, I'm going to talk about our energy cause it's such a big thing and you know we have energy and if it's chaotic, if we feel if we're feeling chaotic, that means that we're not grounded. So one of the things about visibility, we need to imagine, I'm going to say it this way symbolically, let's just imagine that we are surrounded by this beautiful light, right? And that light needs to grow consistently brighter. And if we try to be all the things that light is going to become more translucent and not as focused. We want to make sure that as we're becoming more visible, that we're focused and more grounded and we're expanding our energy more so in that way. So there's a couple of things that come to mind when you chat about this, Heather, when you talked about this, one of the things is if you are finding yourself feeling blocked or you feel like you have imposter syndrome, I always take a few moments and talk to it and talk to myself. All right, what, what is this fear showing me right now and why am I experiencing this? And I'm just allowing myself to respond to that question. So I'm just talking to my own energy. I'm talking to myself and Heather's sometimes their responses can be different and it can be, well, if I'm more visible, then I might have more clients, which is maybe somebody's goal, but then I don't have the support team in place. So perhaps it's that, or maybe it's, I don't know. Then everybody's gonna want my energy everywhere. So we just want to talk to more so the root of, well, what's holding you back? Like what is it? If you're finding yourself moving forward in that way. And then once you have that, you can one logically say, Oh, why need to look at hiring more support? Or you can also reframe those negative thoughts. Maybe it's I'm not good enough or I'm not worthy and we can take those affirmations that we chatted about and place them into those areas. But one of the techniques that I like to give real world is whether you're getting ready to get on stage through Facebook lives or visibility, whatever it is. I love for you to just take a few moments and I like to stand and feel my own presence and I like to take a deep breath in and when I breathe out I like to breathe that breath out through my feet and just imagine that it goes to the Earth's core. And then I like to, on my next in-breath, visualize the grounded earth energy coming up into my body as well. And we have a lot of power, Heather, right there in our gut. You know, like sometimes when people feel fear getting out on stage or they feel fear, they're like almost feel like there's a punch in the gut or they'll feel like this like ripple effect kind of in their stomach or they're like, Oh, I don't know. I'm nervous. We get the butterflies. I'd love for you to actually tap into that area where you get that excitement or those butterflies and just visualize that it's a beautiful ball of white light. It could be yellow light and just breathe into it for awhile and then you can continue to breathe and just expand that energy all the way through your physical body out into, I would say two feet around you. So basically you're visualizing that you're expanding this light all the way in front and around and above you so that you're inside of this beautiful white egg light shape. And what this does, Heather, is for the introverts out there who are afraid of chatting with other people, this helps push their energy out around them so that they're surrounded by their own energy and what normally happens, introverts just kind of close up or clam up and we need to push our energy out. For the extroverts, extroverts can be all over the place and they will allow other people's energy to affect them. They can essentially kind of feed off of other people, but they still need to be more grounded and just surrounded by their own energy. So this helps extroverts and helps introverts as well. And so as you're expanding your visibility, making sure that you're surrounded by your own energy and that you are making decisions in alignment for you versus allowing other people's energies, opinions, all those things to affect your next step.

Speaker 1: 37:49

I have so many thoughts around this and I love, I love, love, love that. You talk about it being a light so much. I, okay. This is a slightly weird analogy, but I think a lot of people go into speaking or group situations where they're putting themselves out there with this really big focus waiting for the audience to bring them this inspiration and energy. And like I always think about like, I dunno the idea when you go to a party and it's BYOB, like you gotta you gotta break your own stuff with you. Maybe granted we should talk about the kind of parties I go to, but I want you to think about like when you are showing up on a platform, whether it's a Facebook live or a stage or a webinar, you have to bring the energy to the group and sure they're going to give you some of that back a bit. But you're the one who sets the pace. And I love this idea when you talk about being a light, like it resonates. I mean with the show theme so much, because I talk about this idea is if you want to be a magnet for the right people to come into your business to come into your world, be following, turn into customers, turn into clients, you have to put the right energy out there. You have to be the kind of person that they're inspired to work with. So if you think about yourself as this torch that lights up other people, like you have to burn bright enough to be able to spark that in others. So I love, I love that you talk about that and I really appreciate that you bring up that difference between introverts and extroverts because I think it is different. I never really considered that you can protect your own energy as an introvert. Like that's a really interesting concept to me.

Speaker 4: 39:38

Yeah, it's so important. I'm an extroverted introvert, so I totally relate to the introvert and it can be a big deal when you're affected by other people's energies and you're allowing yourself cause you don't know any protection techniques as far as how can I protect myself with my own energy. And I love the, it's like a BYOE- Bring Your Own Energy to the party.

: 40:04

You could, you could use that. You're welcome. And you can just take that as one of your model go-to phrases. I think it's amazing. So the more that you allow yourself to hold space, um, so introverts generally when they get into an elevator, they kind of clam up. And what happens is other people can literally step into their energy and it's like they don't even understand that they're there. So for an introvert to breathe and visualize their energy from their stomach area, just moving out into all around who they are, they're essentially surrounding themselves with their own energy. And they're also more comfortable because they're in their own energy. I remember I delivered a speech to some people and it, I was talking about mediumship. And so there were some skeptics in the crowd and one person came up to me afterwards and said, you just look completely unaffected. Like this is who I am and I'm competent and this is what it is. And I'm like, thanks so much. Really. I'm an introvert. And yeah, I might've been a bit nervous, but I used this technique and it really calmed everything down for me. And I felt so surrounded by confidence of, yeah, this is my own energy, this is what I do. And that's it. It's a fact. There's no nerves about it. It's interesting.

Speaker 1: 41:26

It's fascinating. And so side note, I don't think a lot of people realize about this. I'm also an introvert, so II'm right on the line between introvert and extrovert, but it's, it can be. I, I know the difference between when I'm exhausted from being very social and being out there and when I'm not. And what's interesting for me, I never really thought about this before, but where I get exhausted is when I have to do networking events and put myself out there for the chitchat piece. And it's always, I've actually talked about this on the show before, it's always been perplexing to me around how that is so daunting to me. However, like me showing up as a speaker in front of 5,000 people like sure, I'll be nervous about it and treat it very seriously, but I could rock that. But standing next to women at a coffee thing at a conference like that gives me total anxiety. And I'm wondering, it's because I'm not actually setting up the right energy for myself. So I'm curious. You're not, we're on video and Whitney is nodding. So I want you to talk about this a little bit because I'd never considered that I'm not bringing the right energy to those situations, but it's now making perfect sense as I'm saying this out loud.

: 42:35

Hundred percent. So glad that you said this. Um, so I'll give you a little bit more on the technique too. So just pushing your energy out there. And I encourage my students, cause they're usually highly impassive, they're picking up other people's energy and there are other people are kind of taking their energy and advertently. And so before you enter a public space, take a few minutes, feel grounded, feel the earth energy, push out that energy from your stomach and just visualize it. If you can't visualize, just feel it or just know that it's there. And I always say, do this about two feet in every direction. So you're inside of this bubble and then you can just visualize that the outer parts of that bubble just become like a filter. And so that you can still breathe, right, breathable. But any kind of heavy stuff just bounces off. So you can also shift that as well. And then Heather, go into the coffee chat or go into the restaurant or wherever you are. This is what I do and it is essential to me because I am an introvert when I go to conferences and I also have to make sure that I'm taking some breaks in between for just chill time as well. So I need alone time to just allow myself to breathe and to just be with my own energy. So bring that in to the party, see that works. I'm so fascinated because in my head I'm still trying to, I'm trying to put like a, what's the right word? How do I put it into practice? I'm like, theoretically I could see what you're saying about like this. This white light egg around me comforted me as a bear. I'm like, I still can't. I, I'm excited actually to to start thinking about what this feels like because, okay, this is a weird example, but to me what you're describing is the difficulty I have describing sound to people when I talk about my hearing loss, like to describe a gap in hearing loss or describe what I hear and what I don't hear. It's something that's intangible that you can't really put words to. So when I describe things like when I'm talking to my audiologist and we're describing things, sometimes they'll be like, it's sounds yellow and they'll be like, what does that mean? I'm like, I don't know. I'm trying to describe what this thing is, I'm having to smell it when I'm realizing that I'm, this conversation today is going to have this ripple effect that I'm going to have to start thinking about it over and over and asking myself, but what does that feel like for me? What do I do to make that happen? And I know there's going to be a moment where that clicks. So I want to hit on that because I think if some of you listen and you're like, this sounds logical, but how do I put it into practice? Like I'm right there with you. I think discovering different things and tangibly speaking, it's funny that you were talking about this networking thing because I did this at the last event I went to last week and in my head I just had this mental shift of going, I want to go in as a person who's like smiling and encouraging because other people don't know people. I don't really know people like how do I actually go out and have myself be my brand, which is encouraging and supportive and comfortable. And I was very intentional going to this conference and I felt very comfortable. I didn't have any moments of feeling like the discomfort I'd had at previous conferences. And so now I'm unpacking like what was different about that? But I'm off on a tangent right now, but in my head I'm working through so many things. I'm so glad we're having a little mini coaching session. You and I. Yeah. And I wanted to give you a tangible example. So you know, energy is this thing that we can't necessarily see, right? But we feel it. Like we'll feel good or we don't feel good or we feel drained or we feel excited and full of energy. And so taking more of a tangible approach, a visualization can be super helpful, but you can also just intend as well, because we have control over our own energy. But here's a tangible example. So it would be, if you don't do any protection techniques and you're just walking into a crowd, it's like you've taken two eggs and you've cracked the shell and the yolks are mixing together. And so your yoke is mixing with other people's yolks and then you feel dry and drained or tired or you now feel like, Oh my gosh, I don't have my own energy, I got to get outta here.

Speaker 1: 46:56

And then it's messy, right? And so I'm giving you a technique, so it's like two hard boiled eggs, like walk into a bar. It sounds like I'm having a job. I'm telling you it's like two hard boiled eggs where their energies are not, you know, mixings in an unhealthy boundary kind of way. So you want to make sure that your, your egg shells still porous, right? So like an egg shell still is porous. It is a filter. It can absorb things, but it's not going to allow yourself to be mixed with other people's energy. So that's my tangible visual representation. We want to make sure we have our own energy and our own space versus just mixing together and so if you can't see the light, feel it and intention is super important, like that's what you were using Heather and intention. When I walk into this place, this is my intention of what my energy is going to be doing and you have control over that. Sometimes we feel like we don't have control over our energy, but we do. We absolutely do. It's, gosh, there's so much good stuff in this episode and I'm just thinking about ways to apply this. There's so many aspects of business and personal life, but I think going back to, and this whole thing is around energy and just developing that awareness for how, you used a word earlier that I wrote down because I think it's really important you use the word trigger, like when are you triggered? And I, I've been thinking a lot about that lately and I, I observe this a lot. Let me use an example. We're both part of a lot of Facebook groups and I'm sure my listeners are as well. You're in Facebook groups. And I think what I see oftentimes is when people are triggered or when people, something happens and they have a reaction, so they're triggered by something, they freak out or like try to go all these places to get the answers. And I bring up this example because I think it's really important for us to start grooming more awareness for how we react in different kinds of situations, especially if like if we're already feeling uncomfortable about speaking or doing Facebook lives or doing more Instagram stories or whatever visibility efforts are on your mind. If you're already identifying with the fact that you're terrified of public speaking or that thing is gonna be scary, you will be triggered. So I'm curious, I'd love for you to talk just a little bit more about that awareness piece and those triggering reactions.

Speaker 4: 49:29

So one of the things that I wanted to share, and I loved that you were saying, if you're already terrified of public speaking, if we continue to focus our energy on what we're terrified on, it's just going to create a block and therefore we are not going to move past that. So taking some of these techniques with becoming more aware, right? Implementing some affirmations of, you know, it's not that big of a deal or I am competent, I allow myself to be confident to do public speaking. Those things can shift and change, but it is important no matter what we're doing in our lives to check in with our feelings cause that's a great thermometer of where our energy is. How do I feel when I do this? Okay, I'm feeling triggered right now. Do I feel good when I do this? Do I feel bad? And one of my biggest beliefs is we're here to have joy in our life. And I really truly believe as entrepreneurs we're here to live our purpose and we need to be living our joy and our true. That doesn't mean that we have to do a couple of things like we have to do some tech stuff that we don't like, but take a few moments when you are triggered and do some breathing. Come into your heart and just breathe it out, can be really helpful and reframe your situation. So when you do feel triggered, like you said, awareness. Okay breathing. I'm going to do some affirmation and then I'm just going to make sure my energies out and that can entirely shift and do this and just see how you're feeling. I'd love to know for, for your listeners, you know, I'd love to know how are they feeling when they are doing this. It really does shift 100% your energy, so becoming more in tune with how you're responding and more presence and mindfulness in your life. Like being mindful of how am I feeling right now and I think that we can get too much in our head and how they're, when we're too much in our head, we're not grounded. We need to be grounded and taking some time to just breathe and feel connected or leave the computer and go outside and just allow nature to soak in into your energy for a little bit and then you will come back with a different perspective.

: 51:48

I completely agree. I think the getting the present piece in just getting quiet and just understanding. You mentioned at the top of the episode this idea of you have your physical body, you have your feelings, you have your mental energy, you have your spiritual checking in on each of those and just getting present and even if it's just asking me in a question of how am I feeling, like why am I feeling that way? Like what's bringing this on and getting comfortable. Just asking yourself logical questions will help you move through that. I think sometimes we don't really want to slow down to reflect and have that conversation with ourselves and we find it's just easier to go Google the answer or go ask strangers on the internet the answer, And I think what this comes back to is even when you're scared and even when you're uncertain, you still have this really powerful thing inside you, which is really strong intuition, whatever you want to call it, if that's your, if that's your energy, if that's your inner knowledge, whatever word you want to put on it is when we get quiet, I think clarity comes, you just have to sit really comfortably in that presence.

Speaker 4: 53:01

100%. One of the things that I am a huge believer in, so when I teach somebody how to tap into their intuition, I always say, the first thing you need to do is clear your mind. And even in stressful situations or situations where we're triggered, let's clear our mind. Let's get all that junk out, right? And one of the easiest ways that we can do that is taking a few moments and we can actually just intend for our mind to be clear and we can say out loud, clear times. There are times people say, cancel, clear, delete. And we just allow ourselves to get really quiet instead of moving in the action. The way that we connect to our intuition and receive our own answers is to get out of action and our bodies are a big indication of, are you in action? Are you not? Because when we're sitting in our chair, we can tense up. Just like we said, we can move forward like what is the answer and we need to take a step back. Breathe. You can just send 10 doesn't say clear. There's a couple other ones too that I love. The one I would love to share with your audience. And then when you have cleared, breathe and literally sit back in your chair like remind yourself, wait a minute, I need to just receive here and because I don't need to be in action. If I'm in action, I'm not going to tap into my intuition to get that guidance that I need and I'm just going to be operating from the ego mind. I'm going to be operating from freak out mode. Nobody wants to operate from freak out mode. That's not the right answer. We need to be tapping into ourselves, but I want to come back around to a great technique that I use because I think it will speak to your audience very well. One of the things I love to do is to imagine a stage, what a stage, and you can imagine that there's curtains on the stage and to clear your mind, literally I visualize my hands moving to the right last and I'm just opening. Or you can be in the audience and you just see those curtains move to the right and pull up. And their mind is clear and you're just setting that intention. But that came up for me because you work with stages. I had to share that.

Speaker 1: 55:19

That's good. I love that you talk about this. I mentioned a few episodes back. This idea that when you're feeling frantic and when you're feeling overwhelmed or stressed, that's an indication that you need to stop, slow down and declutter your mind. And I think it's interesting. One of the other things I talk often about is this idea that clarity comes with action. And I want to clarify on this for a moment is there's two things happening. One where when we are feeling stressed and overwhelmed or out of alignment, you have to get quiet to gut check. Like where are you at? How are you feeling, why are you feeling? But you can't just sit there in that mode. Like the whole idea is to get clarity to figure out what's the next action I can take. And then it's through that action. You start breeding more confidence and then you stay in alignment with, okay, am I feeling I'm on the right course or not? And then if as soon as you start feeling out, you have to get quiet again. So it's this balance between the two that you don't want to always be an action because then you're going to be like a frantic person, but you also can't just sit there and quiet because you'll never actually go where you want to go. So I understanding those balances between those two. I love that you bring that up because I talk about those all the time and it's so important to get really clear that there's a purpose for both.

Speaker 4: 56:32

Yeah, and when you get clear then you then you can take aligned action because you have your guidance. One of the things I share with my students all the time is you cannot sit on your couch and binge-watch Netflix and eat a bag of potato chips and think that you are going to create all these things that you're and achieve the goals. If you're doing that all the time, you have to create action in your life. But we have to take aligned action and if we are always in action, we are going to burn out. We are going to get overwhelmed and then we're not going to have enough energy to achieve our dreams and our goals. What we want to do. So it is a balance of rest, recharge, action. Making sure that we're taking a line actions similar to our phones, our phones run on a charge and then we have to plug it back into the wall. So we have to think of ourselves the same way. Let me plug back into the earth. Let me feel grounded when we just receive and take some time off. And then all right, batteries charged. I'm ready to go.

Speaker 1: 57:31

Great. Great analogy. I love analogies on this show. So that was, that was a great one. Okay. So we've talked about energy, and affirmations, intuition. We've covered a lot of a lot of stuff today. I think what we're going to do is pause there cause I think we could probably go into a very lengthy discussion on this, but I think this starts getting people thinking about this connection between how we're feeling and the questions. Maybe we need to be asking ourselves to reframe and reposition. So I love this. I think there's so many applicable uses for what we cover today. Um, before we, before we end things up here, I do have a couple questions that I love to ask all of my guests. So well you're listening to Finding Your It Factor. So I think a lot of people have different definitions around what the It factor is and who has it, who doesn't. I'm curious, how would you define like what it factor is?

: 58:25

Mmm. I would say It factor for me is like your personal sauce your gift, the energy that you want to share with others. Cause we all are super unique and whatever that secret sauce is that you have like bad. I feel like your It factor and how you shine out light for others in this world. I agree. And what would you say is your It Factor? H mm. I like to bring more of these topics into more s tep by step grounded ways and that's I feel like something that is a passion of mine. And t wo, I love to chunk it down for people and to really talk about how the spiritual world is a thing and how we can apply it into our day to day lives.

Speaker 1: 59:15

Yeah. I think, I think it's a gift that you have to be able to bring something that has a topic attached to it that some people really embrace. But some people are just curious. And then I talked about here this recently, this idea is when we don't know about things, we're resistant to them. But the more that we ask questions and at least open our minds to start understanding a bit, dabbling a toe here on there, it's actually pretty, it's pretty incredible how I've thought about abundance, but how much more is out there than we allow ourselves to learn because of the previous beliefs that we've had. I mean that's a very, like it was a lot of words in that thing here, but I, I'm just continually excited about my business and about life because I'm approaching it with this way of how do I learn more, especially around things that I never knew anything about. So I'm super grateful that you've opened up doors for me and considering other things and it's just so wonderful. So I would love for you to share how can my audience learn more about you and follow you so that they can have more abundance in their life.

: 1:00:22

Awesome. Yeah. So you can find me at messengerofspirits.com and you can find me on social. It's@messengerofspirit on Instagram and Facebook as well. Perfect. And I'll link up to all of that in the show notes so you guys can check those out there. Whitney, I am so appreciative of you for taking the time to be here today and talk to the audience and help us understand how we can use these things in our lives. Before we say a final goodbye, is there any final message that you'd like to share? I just really want to thank you for being so open and I'm so glad that we have this opportunity for others to learn more about themselves. I think that it's a message of gratitude actually for you, Heather. So thank you so much for shining your light and everybody listening for shining your light as well as you're making this world a better place and living in your dream and purpose. I couldn't have said it better. I, I love, this is probably my absolute favorite part of the show is to help people reignite or, uh, glow, their light even brighter. Sounds kind of douchey to say. But I mean, I mean we've had a lot of talking about, right? It's like that idea of how can we shine just a little bit brighter. Not because we're trying to be the light for other people, but we're trying to inspire people to light themselves up. Like that's really what this whole thing is about and it's like it's, I'm very, very passionate about cause I think every single person has the ability to inspire others and I think you've inspired a lot of people to think in a different way today. So thank you so much. Thank you. All right, Friends. Thanks for joining in this week. We will see you next week on another episode. Bye

Speaker 3: 1:02:06

Guys. Thanks so much for listening to Finding Your It factor and Hey, if you have a talk coming up, you have to check out my free resource. It's called nail your next talk. 10 must ask questions before taking stage so you can show up as an authority and turn that talk into future business. These are the questions that I use myself to prepare for my life talks and they're going to help you ask the right questions of the person who booked you for the event. So the meeting planner or the client, and it's going to help you serve your audience to the best way possible. It's going to help you anticipate potential tech or 80 snags. Turn the Q&A time into a strategic place for content and make this speaking opportunity, a lead generator for your business. So go get it now. What are you waiting for? It's over at heathersager. com/10 questions.

Speaker 2: 1:03:11

[inaudible].