Welcome to the Unfolding Podcast. I am Erica Voell and I am a Decision Mentor and Inner-Trust guide. And I work with women mainly those in midlife, trust their inner guidance, understand their unique strengths, and stop saying yes to what drains them using human design coaching and reiki. We clear the noise so their no feels powerful and their yes feels true. And before we get to the episode, I am so excited to announce something. I'm excited to announce that I will be hosting the Roadmap to You Workshop series. This is a set of live interactive sessions focused on women in midlife who are ready to stop guessing themselves and start trusting their. Energy and their inner knowing, and we have the first one coming up on Friday, October 24th with three more scheduled in November. You can find the link in the show notes to get more details so that you can register for these workshops. We will cover everything from your type, how you make decisions, your purpose to your energy centers, to fears, and then even to goal setting and so much more. I'm sure there will be new ideas coming as I host them, and I hear from you about what you wanna learn about. Plus, if you attend or you watch the replay, there are some bonus goodies that I am so excited to share. So let's get to the episode. When was the last time you paused and really thought back to your journey on this life? Maybe it was a moment or a decision you made, or maybe it was a trip you booked or maybe it was when you hit send on an email or a text. Think back to that time to the very beginning. What do you notice? Not the beginning of your life, but like when something started to shift for you. I talk about this in one of my other episodes back from the spring about how one decision made a huge change for me, but this came up again. And I recently attended a closing ceremony for a membership that I have been part of for a number of years that was led by Sarah Jenks, and I was a member back when I was trying to figure it out, back when I thought my spiritual practice needed to look a certain way. And during the ceremony she led us through a meditation to meet our past self. The one who just started. I started that practice and it took me back to my 2017 self. I was so afraid of doing it wrong. I had a candle. I wanted to make sure that I had a altar that was just right. I was so afraid of not getting it right and not doing. The right things and not getting the right results. I had this idea of this outcome, it needed to be, and I didn't feel that I knew enough about a spiritual practice that was not linked to a religion, but what I learned, and I still am learning today, is that there is no right way. This meditation with Sarah was so deeply emotional, and it's one I feel like I'm gonna be revisiting in various ways. It made me realize how far I have come, how much I have changed, and how much that's 2017 Erica could not have imagined where I am today. It was just so powerful. And how often do we look back? You know, we think about would we have an idea of where we want to go, but we don't tend to look back and look at the footprints in the sand. So for me, it all started one morning when I lit a candle and I decided to try something new. We were in this meditation. We were to tell our past self something and what came through for me was so powerful. "There is no right way. There just is." This was such a good reminder that. The steps that I take now that feel super insignificant, like lighting a candle, may be igniting a flame, (and there is a pun intended there) that will start something that I cannot fully comprehend or imagine right now. I have to give my 2017 self so much love because she was in a job that was sucking the living life out of her. I had a narcissistic boss that found ways to criticize even when we were in celebrations and that 2017 self. She needed a way to cope. She was grasping for anything that would help her come back to herself that would make her feel whole. I felt she felt so broken and it did not help that there was a narcissistic boss that could pick at every part that felt broken. And also that there were other, I also thought she thought that there were other people that had the answers and the tools that would help her, and they did. But they could not solve all of her problems. She was in such deep desperation and also learning to live with a new allergy diagnosis that had thrown eating into an entire maelstrom. She was also living in continuing patterns that she had learned so long ago. Things that had come up, even from being a kid and beating herself up when she didn't wake up feeling great or wasn't happy. I had this idea that I needed to be happy every morning, and even though depression is something I've dealt with my entire life, and it comes in waves, hers came in crashing waves. So in 2017. It started with buying the Dreambook and Planner and making a conscious decision to get up 15 minutes earlier to meditate. That made such a difference, which then led me to having a morning Pilates practice and incorporating, and as I learned more spiritual practice. So there was so much work done to lay a foundation for where I am today. I had no idea, and I know now because I'm looking back and I want you to remember that it's so easy to feel like we're moving through life and never quite reaching that far off point that we dream of. We have an idea of how we'll feel at that time and what things will look like, and when they don't meet it, then we're kind of like, Ugh. I haven't met that yet. I haven't gotten where I wanted to go. I told my therapist one time, I was like, I just wanna get to this destination. And she told me, "Erica, there's no destination in your life when you've reached that destination. You're going to be dead." That woo. That would hit me. So I was achieving milestones, but I was still so unhappy with myself. I just wanted to get to a place where I felt good. And I realized that. I was setting up those expectations that we've talked about before. That only led to my disappointment because I was not looking back at how far I had come. I was not taking time to celebrate my wins and even acknowledge that I was where I wanted to be. And maybe it didn't feel exactly as I'd hoped, and sometimes it was better, but I could not see it. I was so clouded with what. My misery and my expectations and just feeling like I need something. One of the most transformative tools I've found, you know about this. You've heard me talk about this, was human design. When I started to learn my human design, it was learning that's become a daily practice and it's not a one time fix. And I have a defined emotional center and I experience emotional waves. Anyone with a defined emotional center will experience these waves. That is 53% of the population. We all experience them differently based on our design, and I used to wake up and judge myself and beat myself up for feeling blah. It happened the other day, but what I learned from human design is that I cannot force myself out of these waves. When I woke up the other day and I was just like, "oh, I feel blah, I, I don't know why I feel this way." I felt myself judging myself, and then I knew that I needed to do something to get myself out of it. Not to stop it, but to ride it. 'cause judging myself for not feeling happy all the time, or even 95% of the time, does not get me out of the wave. It just really leads to more self-criticism and learning to ride the waves, learning to feel them, and then to notice what's happening and asking myself, "what do I need right now?" That is a question that has been so helpful. "What do I need right now?" It may be getting on my mat and doing yoga to get myself out of my mind. That worked the other day. It may be going for a walk. It may be slowing down and writing in my journal with an intention of letting go and releasing. And then I can go about my day just noticing, but not judging myself or beating myself up. And a lot of times what happens is the wave will have passed and I don't even realize it. I can forget that I felt so blah that morning and some days. I will be honest, the wave lasts a lot longer, but learning to ride it all the way through instead of trying to speed it up or to try force myself out of it, that has been a real game changer. Just learning to ride that wave, learning to give myself some grace and be okay with where I am on any given day with these emotional waves has softened that inner critic, that inner roommate that is so. Loud some days, but then also I call her my inner roommate because she's also some days she can be my biggest cheerleader to like be kind and remind myself to be gentle with myself. I'm in a program with Julie Ciardi. She is a human design business coach, and her daily podcast really hit me. We are in an energy of releasing, but we're also in the energy of. Process and seeing things through or letting things go that are not meant to for us to see through. So in her podcast, she asked, "Are you enjoying the process? Or are you so focused on the outcome that your attitude. Your state of being is negative because you want the outcome so much and you're not enjoying the process, the journey, celebrating the journey as much as the outcome. This is a critical lesson, embracing each cycle with joy. If you are not enjoying the process, it has a huge impact on actually getting to the outcome. Here's the irony, because you're so discontented and so overly focused on the outcome, you're entire frequency will be low. Do you think you will attract what you want? No. You can't." End quote. So often we are so focused on that outcome that we forget to notice the journey. Think about when you've gone on a road trip or you've gone on a hike and you're like so focused on getting there, that you miss all of the scenery that you have around you. You miss some of that amazing journey. You miss some of that process, and I am so guilty of this myself. I am one who is always striving for the next thing and not noticing the joy in the process. And after I listened to this podcast episode, I have really been noticing what I'm enjoying in my day to day work because I love creating workshops. I love putting together a website, and I love creating beautiful reports for my clients. And in the moment while I enjoy it, I also become so focused on the end piece that I miss, the moments when I feel pure, ecstatic joy in my work. So I invite you to think back on your own journey. What is one small moment that shifted everything? Was it getting up one morning and choosing to do something different? Was it sending that email or that text? Or maybe it felt very insignificant at the time. Maybe it was just like lighting that candle, but only now you can see what it sparked. And is there a part of your journey that you rushed through, that you were so focused on the outcome that you missed the beauty of the becoming and of the journey? And maybe today we'll have a small moment that you can look back on someday. Maybe this was the day that something started to shift. If you've been nodding along and this feels like your story, I would love to support you beyond the podcast. My workshop, the Roadmap to You workshop series is where you can go deeper into your human design, your energy, and then you'll learn how to start making decisions that actually feel like you. The next workshop is October 24th, which is a Friday. And don't worry if you can't make it live 'cause everyone who registers gets a recording, a private podcast feed. A personalized report and there will be some bonus things for you to help you keep exploring. 'Cause this isn't surface level stuff. This is real support helping you to stop following someone else's formula and to start trusting yourself again. You can grab a spot. For the workshop in the link in the show notes. And please, please, please share it with a friend who may be in a place that you're like, I think that this would be great for you. So if this episode resonated with you, I would be so grateful. Follow the show, leave a review and share it with someone you know who needs it. Be well, and I will talk to you soon.