Welcome to the Unfolding Podcast, a space where we explore what it really looks like to trust yourself, say no without guilt, and live your life like it actually belongs to you. I am Erica Voell and in my work as a decision mentor and inner trust guide, I help women in midlife trust how they are uniquely designed, reclaim their authority, and understand their unique strengths. Using human design as a lens, we clear the noise of conditioning, so there no feels powerful. Their yes feels true, and they can move forward without self-doubt, guilt, and the pressure to prove anything. On this show, we have honest conversations about self-trust, boundaries, energy and identity, especially for women in midlife who are done living by the shoulds and second guessing themselves. You'll hear stories, insights, and tools rooted in human design, coaching and real life. Not to tell you what to do, like another self-help book, but to help you hear yourself, so you can stop overthinking and start making decisions that feel clear, grounded, and true. So how often are you in a lull or a low period and you see something, it may be a new pair of shoes, and you're like, "I need those." Or you hear about a new book on a podcast and before the end of the podcast episode, you have put the book on hold at the library, or you have ordered it? Because this may finally be the book that will help you feel less, whatever you're feeling. It may feel less drama with your family. It may be that you feel less stressed about your job. It may be that you finally feel like it will help you fix that one thing about you that nags you about yourself. I know this feeling all too well. I read so many self-help books. I did so many programs. The programs that would help me figure out how to get more clients or to the meditation that would help me feel less stressed in the morning. The book that might help me finally understand my kid better. And the big ones were the ones that would help me feel less broken. There's actually a technical name for this. You might have heard of it called Shiny Object Syndrome, but it didn't dawn on me until earlier this week in a business class that I have shiny object syndrome and I have it bad. I've had it before, but wow. It definitely it has shown up a lot in my business lately. I'm finding myself not looking outside of myself for shiny objects. What's happening is I'm finding that it's a pattern with my relationship with my business itself. I feel really confident about sharing human design. So what do I do? I want to expand. I wanna host a new workshop or create a new group. I wanna share human design in a new way. But what's happening is that my clients and the people who are coming to my workshops aren't looking for human design in a new way. They are new to human design. They don't know a lot about it. They might know their type, but they just want the basics to also feel like there's nothing wrong with them. In your human design chart, there's actually a hierarchy of what we're here to learn in our life's work. And for me, one of the biggest lessons I am here to learn is my hunger for new experiences. At its lowest it can look like I'm getting pulled into drama or feeling pressure to make life exciting for everyone else. But at the highest it shows that I am here to lead through lived experience, sharing those experiences, showing that their growth and expansion can help keep you balanced. And wow, it explains so much that new adventure is part of the why behind this podcast. I learned that and I was like, I have something to share. I had not trusted that I had anything to share until I learned about the Communication Center in Human Design, which is where this piece of my life's work lives. And then I was like, oh, I do have something to say. I can share my experiences, and as I've dug deeper through classes in the past few weeks, it's dawned on me that I love sharing and starting new things. I love the feeling of finishing something, but then I'm right onto the next thing. I don't spend a lot of time reflecting on how things could have changed. I'm always thinking about what is the next workshop that I want to offer? What's the next step? It's exhausting because I don't allow time for that pause, and it doesn't bring consistency to my work if I'm constantly doing the next thing, people don't get to know me for what I am doing because I want to share that next exciting thing with my audience. When really I need to go back to the basics. I need to focus on the one thing that has brought me clients in the past. Our culture in the US is like this. I mean, think about it. We finish something and we are right on the next thing before we even finish it sometimes. I saw it at multiple libraries where I worked. There would be so much excitement about the new thing, especially in leadership. The next leadership book to read, the next tool that will help managers understand how to work with staff better, but the follow through and using the tools would get talked about a lot until there was the next bright and shiny object to come along. We all have our bright and shiny things that draw our attention away and distract us, and we're ready to abandon whatever we've been doing or whatever tool we've been using for the next shiny object. Our phones are designed to keep us in that bright, shiny mode all the time. That next app that's going to give us the dopamine hit. Maybe we'll check Instagram after we check our email. We get into this. What's new? What's the new show that everybody is watching? I mean, it is human nature to get distracted. It probably kept us alive in ancient times. And to get excited about the new shiny thing. But if we're using that bright and shiny thing as a way to bypass the hard stuff to face that part of us that we don't want to acknowledge, it's often called the shadow side of us. But it's often a challenge that we don't want to have to face. And when things get challenging, what we do is we learn that we can go after something new. We get distracted with this bright and shiny thing. Instead of really digging in or really focusing in, it's easier to give up and say, oh, I'll never be able to do X, Y, Z. We don't wanna do the hard work. So what do we do? We follow the next thing. I am dabbling in watercolors right now. I got a little kit about a month ago, and I'm loving it, and there's a part of me that's like, oh, I'll never get it right. I'll never look as good as the pictures, but, but I am making myself focus and to try. And to remind myself it's not gonna look professional. I'm doing this for fun. I mean, when we were little kids learning to walk and we fell down and did we sit down and throw up our hands and say, well, I guess I'll never learn to walk. No. We kept trying. Until we succeeded, we kept failing. It's part of learning. It's part of growing. It's part of being a human 'cause we don't stop growing. At 30 or even 20 when we get out of college, we learn these things that make us wise, people look to the wise women, even if we are told that we are washed up after 50. But what happens is those bright and shiny objects allow us to throw up our hands and to go on to the next thing and to tell ourselves that we're not good at following through or that we can't stick with something and therefore that there is something wrong with us. In that part of my human design chart that's always ready for that next adventure. It shows up for me as overpromising, creating drama unconsciously to feel significant, feeling like I'm gonna be blamed when things don't go as others expect. And it also creates emotional instability for me. And oftentimes there are comments from others that play into this feeling that something's wrong with us. Our parents or our partners will say, why don't you stick with one thing? Or can't you stay at a job for more than two or three years? You don't have to be a manifesting generator to hear this. It may be what we were originally focused on wasn't for us anyway, which is great. But I find that those who are going for the next book or the next project are often looking for something. They want to feel better, they want to trust themselves. They wanna stop feeling that there is something that needs to be fixed about them. What if I said that there is nothing that needs to be fixed about you, and that that bright and shiny object will most likely not solve that. Feeling that you, for you either. So what are you trying to fix? What are you avoiding? For me, in my business, the bright and shiny is about looking for a new way to share human design with more people, not to share it in new ways, not to share the next big workshop or the next thing I've learned. I am sharing new things that I'm learning with others all the time, but what I'm finding is that I can share it in ways that bring it more practical and more to life for people. I feel like human design is this secret sauce recipe that I want to share because I've experienced such a huge transformation for myself. I've seen the transformations in my family. It has changed my relationships and I have seen it with my clients. And what's amazing is that the simple things are what have had the biggest impact. Learning that my daughter needs to sleep on, on her decisions huge. It saved us so much money. Knowing that my husband is a manifesting generator and that he can move fast. While I wanna be in a more step-by-step approach, huge. Now, I'm not beating myself up for not being able to keep up with this energy. Knowing that my sister is a projector and that her unsolicited advice isn't criticism, that she can see things that I can't see. That has completely shifted our relationship. Not because she changed, but because I have an awareness of how she operates. And human design is not about giving you a label to fit into a box. If you've taken Myers-Briggs or the Enneagram, they give you a label. In human design, a lot of people know their type. They're either a generator or a manifesting generator or reflector, or a projector or a manifester. But that's not a box to fit in. It is one very small piece of a very large pie. Think of like your type as your nose. There's a whole lot more about you than your nose. I mean, if your nose is small and a button nose like me, that doesn't define who I am. So your type helps you understand your energy and others' energy. Just like my nose helps me understand how to smell, but it does not define my whole being. Many people know their type, but they don't know the inner workings of that type. But there are other parts that are so impactful on helping you make decisions that feel good, your purpose and your life's work in the world, how you communicate and your innate strengths. Knowing any of this information isn't going to fix the parts of you. It's about having a language for your lived experience, and it can feel a little unsettling at first, like how can a system that has all these numbers and all these shapes know so much about you. When I first read about my human design, I literally started crying. I was sitting at a public service desk and I was crying, okay? My eyes were leaking. If you wanna be a little more technical, but I felt my body relax and it was like someone finally gets me and how does it know this about me? I mean, just knowing that I need to sleep on my decisions was a game changer. I had said yes so often, and I would hope that I would get sick, so I would be able to get out of that obligation. I regretted so many of my decisions. I've had other crying spells in the last four years as I studied my design, and I used to offer readings, but I've learned that that's just giving you information when really studying your design is what helps you embody it. This is not about taking in information and changing yourself with that new bright and shiny object. It's not like buying a new pair of shoes and feeling like they're gonna change your life. It's more about being able to notice when something is coming up for you. Are you reacting or are you able to step back and take a pause before you say something hurtful? As some of my former clients so beautifully explained, it helped them stop comparing themselves to other people and how they thought that they should be or how they should think. And the greatest gift was understanding themselves in a different way and being able to befriend themselves in a way that they hadn't before. To trust themselves. So while I love the next bright and shiny thing. In my business, I'm going back to basics. I'm slowing down and I'm meeting clients one-on-one for sessions. I'm not gonna be trying to create a new group. Until they're asking for it. I'm gonna offer some one-off sessions to give people time to dabble in human design before they jump into a longer time with me. Will I still be holding workshops? Heck, yes. It's one of my favorite things to do, but I'm also going to be exploring, sharing human design in different spaces on other podcasts. Doing in-person workshops, and I'm still definitely going to be doing my online workshops, and I'm also gonna be posting on Substack to get a larger audience, to get to know me. I will always be up for a new adventure, but I'm using that sense of adventure to ground me and to give me some balance to find rhythm in my work. Because I have been looking for the next shiny object to bring me clients in this time since I left my job. But I'm not going to be off trying the next new thing. I'm going back to what has worked for me in the past. So do you have bright and shiny object syndrome? What is your bright and shiny thing trying to distract you? Is it a new book, a new podcast you've been listening to? Is it something everyone else is talking about and you're hoping that maybe this will be the one new thing that will help you feel less broken? And, and what are you trying to escape from or avoid with this bright and shiny object? Because as I have learned after moving to three new cities in three years in my twenties. No matter how bright and shiny the object appears in your life, you will always still be there. That was a huge disappointment for me as a 20 something, no matter where I went, no matter where I lived, no matter how great my apartment was, I was still the same old me with the same old crap. Because when the shininess has worn away, you still have to face those fears and the places you had hoped to fix. I mean, it sucks, but it's a real part of life. And we like to think that we learned these lessons in our twenties, but then like something triggers us and we're like, oh, ooh, I might be 50, but it's still there. So I would love to help you notice what patterns keep coming up for you. Where you keep getting distracted by these shiny objects. I've renamed my introductory session. It's gone through several iterations in the past few months, but now it's called the Life Pattern Review. It's where we look at how you've been moving through your life, the roles and the responsibilities you've picked up, the patterns you've repeated often without even realizing it because you were living on autopilot. The overgiving, the trying to fix yourself, the saying yes when you meant to say no. Trying to be the version of you that made everyone else comfortable and who you thought you should be. I want to invite you into that Life Pattern Review. You can find the link in the show notes, and if this episode resonated with you, I would be so grateful. If you click the plus sign to subscribe, share it with a friend, and if you are feeling generous, leave me a review. I would love it so much. I'll see you next time. Be well friends.