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 their inner guidance, understand their unique strengths and stopped saying yes to what drains them. I help them dismantle conditioning, regulate their nervous system and reclaim their authority so their no feels powerful and their yes is unmistakably true a. 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 and coaching. And real life. This is not to tell you what to do, but to help you hear yourself so you can stop overthinking and start making decisions that feel clear, grounded, and true. So let's get to our episode. During this time of year in the Northern Hemisphere, it is near the winter solstice. There is so much talk of light, mostly the lack of sunlight We start to celebrate the return of the light during the solstice, but everyone right now is talking about the late sunrise and the early sunset. When I was a little kid at church, we learned this song. You might know this song, and it comes to mind at this time of year, "this little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine this little light of mine. I'm gonna let it shine." I always imagined when I was a kid that like I was holding this light in my hands, but what I never considered was that this light was inside of me. No one had ever told me that I was born with this light inside, like we sang the song in church, but it never dawned on me that it was part of me. And do you know that light? Do you feel it inside of you? Or does it feel so dim, so dim that you need a flashlight on high to find it? That realization that I had a light inside of me did not come until I was an adult in my forties. We actually don't talk about it enough. What we tend to talk about is the people outside of us who light up that room when we, they walk in. You know those people, they just have something about them. People talk about how they light up the room as soon as they walk in and you can't quite put into words what it is about them, but they just light up the room and they light up the people around them. They even have this like certain glow about them. And that light attracts others so much so that you wanna be around them and you want to know what their secret is, but you can't quite put your finger on it. But you just love who they are. You love how you feel when you are around them, and you can tell that they love what they are doing in their life and how they are just being in their life. So often we can see a light in others, but how often do we recognize it in ourselves? One of the most powerful moments in my life happened when someone saw a light in me that I could not see in myself. I was in a really dark place. I was so sad inside. I was in a job that I didn't enjoy with a verbally abusive manager. I felt so lost and I like, I didn't know what else I could do as a career, let alone in my life. Now, I loved my husband and my 3-year-old daughter at the time. But I felt like I was going through the motions and I felt like a shell of a person. I felt so lost and so unlike myself, and on top of it, I was sick a lot. My body was so depleted along with my spirit. My husband was so supportive of whatever I needed to do, but I felt so dark inside that I didn't know what else to do with myself, and I began to wonder if I was one of those people that, which just didn't have that spark that others seemed to have. That was until I met my first coach. Her name is Anne. I've talked about her before on this podcast. At our first session, I felt so seen in a way I had never felt before. What I noticed the most was that after our hour together, my whole body felt physically lighter. I felt like this glow inside of me. It was a pin prick of light, but it was there like maybe I did have a light inside of me. I just couldn't see it for myself in the middle of all of this dark. The more I worked with Anne, the more I could feel that light inside of me expanding. And the real turning point was when I began to recognize that I was worthy of claiming that light as my own, but it was not instant. It took me a while before I started to feel that light emanating from me, that I was that person that could light up the room. It was definitely not a quick turnaround, nor was it like that bolt of lightning moment. This process was slow. It took me over five years. I needed to experience burnout in 2022, which was one of the hardest periods of my life, and it's just been in the last couple of months. That I have started to see that there were actually some gifts in my burnout. It really, really required me to dig deep, to heal myself, which in turn helped me see what I have to offer, not just to my clients, but the light I can offer to the world, and a light that's been deep inside of me all along. I needed to be able to see it for myself. Within myself, outside of the high expectations I had placed on myself and also outside of the jobs that I felt like had sucked the life out of me. I was recently asked by my current business coach, Julie Ciardi, what lights me up? What can I talk about for hours with people and when I am able to share or talk, what about it lights up my whole body? So much so that others feel my inner light and I'm reminded that I had that light inside of me? And I didn't even really have to think about it too much. There are three things that light me up so much. When she asked me that question, I was like, oh my gosh, I know exactly what it is. So what are those three things? Human design, talking to people about how they can make confident decisions using their human design. Oh my gosh. Decisions. Decisions. Decisions. And the other thing I can talk about for hours is how. The self-help and the personal development industry gets us stuck in a loop of believing that there's always something about us that needs to be fixed. I was that person who was stuck in that loop, and it was, when I discovered human design, I was like, oh, oh my gosh. There is something about me. I have that light. Anne saw that light in me, but it was through me studying human design that I started to see that light in It wasn't just about how I make decisions or how doing work that I love lights me up. It was really when I started to see my gifts, my own magic, that I started to really embrace my whole self. That I started to see my own gift of being a leader who delivers practical solutions and helps others find their natural rhythm and flow and move from a place of feeling on the extremes to a place of self-trust, which then brings in this self-love and this feeling confident in their decisions. What I had struggled with so much of my life was feeling this need to prove my worth, which is actually a gift that I can now help others with. I was recently doing some work around my business studying my own human design, and this sentence came up and it gave me chills. I don't know where it came from. It was in my writing. It was that "I am not here to fix you. I am here to reflect your brilliance back to you so that you can finally see what's been there all along so you can see that light inside you." That's what Anne did for me. And this perfectly describes what my work in the world here is to be. So I want to ask you something. What completely lights you up? When you talk about it what do you feel? Just lights up your whole body. It doesn't have to be your work. What really lights you up? Because that light inside you has been there since the very beginning, and for most of us, unfortunately, it's been covered up by layers of conditioning and expectations from others. Many times those who did it with the best of intentions. And all of the stories you have layered on yourself. The hurts, the traumas that keep you from seeing your own light, and sometimes it takes someone else to see it in you. For you to see it. Many times others can see it in us before we've even seen it within ourselves. And it's so unfortunate as women that sometimes we need someone else to call out our brilliance inside of us. But when we start to see it within ourselves and the unique gifts we bring into the world, then something starts to shift. So I want to ask you again, what lights you up so much that you become a light for others? Because that glow, that light has been there all along, even if it feels like it's been buried by that expectations, that doubt, and even that burnout. So I wanna remind you, your light is not gone. It's there and it's waiting for you to look inside yourself to see it for yourself. And if it feels like just that pin prick and you're like, I don't see it, I don't know, Erica, then I want to invite you to ask a friend that will give you such a pick me up. 'Cause I guarantee you they can see that light in you. It can shift your whole day. And if you're listening and thinking, I can't keep living like this, I don't see my own light and I don't trust myself to choose differently. I want to invite you into a Life Energy Audit, which is really a decision audit. Well look at how you make decisions, what drains you and why your yes might not feel true. So that you can stop second-guessing and start trusting your own direction again, you can find the link to book in the show notes. And lovely listeners. I hope you have a wonderful day and that you feel that light inside of you starting to grow brighter because it's there. It's been there since you were born. It's been there even before you were born, and I want to invite you to take some time with yourself to see that light, to feel that light. Until next time, I'll talk to you soon.