Episode 10

Using Intuitive Intelligence in Business with Nicole Drummond

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EPISODE SUMMARY

This week I’m talking with Nicole Drummond, an Intuitive Healer and Channel. Nicole works with Highly Sensitive People to support them to break cycles of chronic anxiety and start developing healthy boundaries by working with the underlying cause - emotional trauma using Energy Psychology. Often working on a multidimensional level on both this life and past lives. More recently her work has begun to open up and evolve as she is beginning to support clients who are waking up to their ‘soul mission’, to help them discover their calling. As part of this she has a passion for teaching intuitive development and helping others to learn how to live more intuitively.

In this episode, we dive into how to cultivate intuitive intelligence and how it can be used as a superpower in your business, allowing you to work with a greater sense of authentic flow and alignment. We talk about how to use it in combination with business strategy and what can happen when these two things come together to make a powerful combination.

CONNECT WITH NICOLE

If you would like to find out more about Nicole and her work you can connect with her in the following places:

• Website: www.nicoledrummond.com

• Instagram: @nicoledrummondtherapy

• Facebook: /nicoledrummondtherapy

• YouTube: /Nicole Drummond EFT

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

00:03 - Debbie (Host)

Welcome to Beyond Business the podcast, the show for impact driven egopreneurs who want to be part of a bigger change and make a difference that reaches beyond your business alone. This week on the podcast, I'm talking with Nicole Drummond, an insurer of Healer and Channel. Nicole works with highly sensitive people, supporting them to break cycles of chronic anxiety and start developing healthy boundaries by working with the underlying cause. More recently, her work has also evolved to support clients waking up to their sole mission, helping them discover and follow their calling in life. As part of this, she has a huge passion for teaching intuitive development to others, and in this episode, we dive in to talk about how we can cultivate this intuitive intelligent as a real super power when it comes to business, allowing you to work with a greater sense of authentic flow and alignment. So I hope you enjoy. Alright, we are good to go. A very super warm welcome to you, nicole. I've been looking forward to this for quite a long time and it is so wonderful.

01:17

I'm so delighted that we have made it happen. Even amongst everything else we both have been going on in life. Life with little people and businesses. It's a full plate.

01:31 - Nicole (Guest)

Yeah, absolutely yeah, it's a delight to be here, thank you.

01:36 - Debbie (Host)

I wonder to begin with, I wonder if you could share a little bit more about yourself and the work that you do in supporting highly sensitive people.

01:49 - Nicole (Guest)

So I call myself an intuitive healer and I'm working with the mind and emotions of individuals and basically working with trauma on an energetic level, but of this life and of other lives.

02:04

So I'm finding my work is sort of splitting into two at the moment. So I'm, like you say, working with highly sensitive people who are struggling with panic attacks, chronic anxiety and struggling to set healthy boundaries. And also what is emerging in my work is, when people are out of that healing phase, is individuals who are opening up to their soul mission, I would call it. So there's a calling that's starting to emerge, the sense that there's something they're meant to be doing. But then we're working with the emotional development work or the wounding that's there that's preventing them from accessing either the unfolding information or the fear of becoming more visible, or the confidence to do their artistic work, or so it can be quite varied who I'm working with there, but it's really that stretching into the potential. So, yeah, two different, and in that work it's often soul psyche work is what I call it. So it's where it's the vowels, the cording we've brought with us, the emotional bundles that we came into the world with, that are preventing us from really expanding. Yeah, amazing.

03:16 - Debbie (Host)

I find it such a fascinating area and I remember reading just a little while ago about how we carry. I guess the energy, or it was it implied that it was embedded in our DNA somehow, but the energy from like seven generations before us, yeah yeah, yeah, absolutely.

03:37 - Nicole (Guest)

I was working with someone yesterday. It's quite interesting, yeah someone who is in adoptee and to see the impact, kind of literally that it was watching the energy going back through the generations and how there's like that separation created a missing imprint, basically in an activation on a cellular nervous system level. So it is, yeah, really fascinating of working on this life and, as you say, how it goes back, not only your own experience, but what's carried through the generations and then, as a soul, into the other lifetimes and what you've brought through in terms of death, trauma or beliefs that you created in a moment where, as somebody I was working with, where they experienced torture and in that moment they made this decision not to trust humanity, and then that's come through into their life now as this struggle to make connections with people and to trust. So it's sometimes we can wonder where has this come from? And actually it's bigger than now and it goes into the soul's memory.

04:44 - Debbie (Host)

Yeah, it's so fascinating, I know because it's funny when you talk about, when I hear you talk about soul's mission, like I. For me it's this. I really have that sense of a calling, but it's something that lives in my body. I think I've always had it. I always had this niggle, described like a niggle, inside.

05:07 - Nicole (Guest)

Yeah, I'm exactly the same. I just remember being really small and I was about four and feeling as though there's something I'm meant to be doing and I didn't know what it was. And I often now just get this voice saying remember, remember, remember. And it's as though we are seeded with this, this job to do, this role that we have in the world. So how I would describe a soul mission or how it's come it's just been a download of information.

05:36

For me is there are lightbearers in this world is how it's been described and that have come with a mission that's going to help the collective consciousness evolve. So we each come to earth with the desire to learn, but not and evolve, and there will be different lessons there. But when you have a soul mission, it's this extra element where actually you're supporting this collective consciousness, so rising up, so you're bringing light into the world, hope into the world, wisdom into the world in your own particular form. And there's this act of waking up and I can literally see it as a torch in people like this calling waking up and there's this need to listen to our intuitive intelligence, to allow it to unfold and to follow that path.

06:26 - Debbie (Host)

Basically, I can see how, for you, this has been a really natural evolution from where you started your work with highly sensitive people. And I wondered, just before we jump in, like for me, I have heard the term highly sensitive more and more these days, but I wonder, for anyone listening who might not be so familiar with that term, could you give us a bit of an overview as to what it means and what it refers to, and how you know?

07:03 - Nicole (Guest)

So I read an article in the Guardian recently and it was calling it the missing personality traits, and I think it's really true. There's. Elaine Aaron coined the term and has done lots of research on it. You can kind of look at her books if you're curious. And she yeah, about 20% of the population is highly sensitive. So it's in one way it means that you've got a more sensitive nervous system.

07:27

So if you're highly sensitive, you're most likely been told that you're too sensitive. You need to grow a thicker skin and it can end up feeling like there's something wrong with you because you're responding and reacting to things in a way that everybody else is fine and they're not even noticing. So that might be. You know you're at work in the strip lighting and it gives you a headache, or you're a concert and the loud noise to everyone is fine, but for you it is ringing. When you're in a crowd, you come away and you just feel completely depleted because you're picking up on what everyone else is feeling and absorbing their emotions, your sensitive to atmospheres in the room. You walk in and you just know there's been an argument. Or we have incredibly sensitive somatic empathy. So I remember being in the workplace and bumping into someone and asking a colleague is John okay? And they'll say well, yeah.

08:26

I just asked them. They're totally fine. I'm pretty sure someone's died. You know I chat to them, sure enough they'd be going through a grief experience, you know. So you pick up on information about others that people don't Feel. That can make you feel, it can be overwhelming, that you don't exactly know what's yours or what someone else is, and because we can get flooded by the emotions of other people. So then that can make it very difficult to Form healthy boundaries, because we feel the pain of others so we can, naturally caring nature, you can want to lean in and give them what they need, but it can be open to abuse then, so sometimes highly sensitive to feel like they're dealing with energy vampire types or narcissistic personalities or on the spectrum of yeah, narcissism, because actually they find it hard to say to say no. So that's some examples of some traits.

09:27 - Debbie (Host)

It's interesting as well, because I think that I guess we all become normalized to our own experience and I guess, as a highly sensitive person, you assume that everybody else this way. So there's this like, oh well, like why? Why is no one else like see me, like suffer or feel this in the way that I am? Like, isn't it obvious?

09:51 - Nicole (Guest)

Yeah, yeah, and I think that's you know I literally for so many years, was there's something wrong with me, like what is wrong with me and it? And you know I did. I mean, personally I was working with trauma symptoms, so I did have to work with that, but then I I think it's a when you're highly sensitive you often do need to train your skills, and that's kind of partly what led me to training. My intuition was I need to get a handle on the amount of information that's coming in, because it's just too much, and I need to Create boundaries around the way I work, where I work, who I work with, because I'm it's just it's too much for me. So you know, that's an example I work from home.

10:32

I choose to Work on zoom because actually it was too intense doing body work and I was just getting flooded and exhausted and when I became a mom it's like I don't have the energy to do this and you doing the school run and the drop off. I then don't want to spend more time running into town to See people in person and expend more energy when actually I just need to look after myself and be on my own in my own bubble in my own house. So it's just Knowing yourself well and and learning know this is my needs are different and how do I adapt to look after myself. It's really important. I think it's why it's a revolutionary for some people to realise that they're highly sensitive, because then they can start to prioritize those needs.

11:17 - Debbie (Host)

Yeah, even just. I think even just having it as a label is really valuable in itself, like knowing that yeah, 100%.

11:25 - Nicole (Guest)

It was so transformative for me. I remember when I was doing my shouts you training I'm. You know, we're tuning in putting our hands on someone and, as I did, there was always light being suddenly appeared in the room and I went up to my teacher and I said, well, we would meant to be tuning into the energy body of this person and I said what's going on? And she just said, oh, took me aside and said I think you're highly sensitive, because I was picking up on these fields of frequency that no one else in the room at that moment was, or maybe they were, but they were not articulating it. So that was when I heard the label and then I started reading about it and realizing, oh, it's a thing, I'm not just not broken, you know, there's benefits to this, like I can lean into this skill and I can really refine it. So that's I'm definitely the other side of that now where I feel like, oh, it is a gift, it's not this curse, and I can really use it as a force for good in the world.

12:23 - Debbie (Host)

So yeah, yeah, I really hear that like personal story in it there and I know you touched on it a little bit there. But I wonder if you could like share a little bit more about how you find your way into this work in particular.

12:41 - Nicole (Guest)

Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I In terms of, I think, like most healers, I it was my own journey that got me to this point, trying to work with my own wounding. So part of that, you know, when I was I'm 18 starting therapy and and I didn't know that my, my rage and anxiety was really tied up into having trauma symptoms by that point. So I went into talk therapy and that gave me a much better understanding of what was alive for me. But I was still feeling massively triggered. I wasn't, you know, I was having panic attacks daily and I thought, right, okay, well, there's this yoga thing that seems to be quite new, I'll try that out or new to me. So I thought, right, I'll go in and start working with the body. And then that led to right, I'm more curious about this, I want to go deeper and I want to be able to work on myself. So then I learned shiatsu and I was really trying to work with the subconscious mind, with the programming, with the limiting beliefs, with the memories I could see that were being triggered and that led me to EFTNLP hypnosis. So it was really my own healing journey that got me to this point and then trying to work as I learn, you know, work with my own sensitivity. So, yeah, I learned about those traits as well. I'm just thinking about the intuitive development side of it as well.

14:06

So around my mid-twenties I'd gone through two breakups and I remember thinking one had been I'd been in for three years and the other was five years. So each one was ended by my intuition. So I kind of got curious about how we make decisions. So, alongside this healing journey, I was trying to understand what path I should go down and how to decide. You know, what was right for me. And in those situations those boyfriends it was my head would be arguing we can make this work, we could do this, let's try that, it's going to be fine. And my heart would be saying no, I don't want to leave them, don't make me leave them. And then by the end it would be my intuition and it was really the voice of the inner hag, voice of the intuition. There's like different voices there, but it's. That was just a no. Tough love, it's not working, stop now.

15:01

And the first it came through in dreams of just chopping my hair off, where that, for me, was a symbol of you leave a relationship, you transform your hair. And the other was whenever I thought about having children with him or buying a house or getting married, there'd just be such a knot in my stomach I couldn't could barely walk and I just knew it was wrong. So I just started listening to that intuitive voice. I read women that run with the wolves and that was a real turning point of, okay, stop ignoring that part of you and start listening.

15:40

So yeah, that was kind of really connected in with me honing that sensitivity as well, and learning shiatsu and tuning into subtle information started to kind of come together with the intuitive skills I was developing and eventually that sort of led to channeling, which was only sort of a year ago, where I, you know, I kind of took all the tools that I'd learn and then I saw a mentor and I said what is up with my sensitivity? And he said, oh, you're a channel, you're a medium, and I thought what now?

16:16

And I thought, oh, and then it took me a couple of weeks and I thought, oh, that's what's going on. Okay, suddenly you know, someone just gives you a reframe and your whole life. You look at it in a different lens. It's kind of crazy. That's where these labels are so helpful. And I realized, right, okay, well, what if I stop running away from being a weirdo quote unquote and start leaning into it and seeing it as a gift and a skill? And so in sessions where I was doing the FT, I just said can we do this thing for 10 minutes where I just experiment and open to the mind and what the mind wants to present and what I can feel and what it wants to clear, instead of me poking around and searching? I just open up.

16:55

And then, basically, client after client kept saying, oh, you said, what was the weird thing you did with my friend? Could I have a whole hour of that? And then it became my practice. So that was the real example of that. You know the sole mission unfolding was I couldn't logically plan for that. I just had to go through all of those experiences, my own healing process, to then eventually, 15 years down the line, reach a point where some suddenly something dropped in and there was a big yes like yes, this is it, this is how I work, like the other models, it just wasn't quite it. Each time I felt sort of constricted. Does that make sense?

17:35 - Debbie (Host)

Yeah, it strikes me as like really really taking this leap of faith into the unknown in many ways and, I guess, hoping or hoping, trusting.

17:49 - Nicole (Guest)

All those words yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I did.

17:53 - Debbie (Host)

We'll be there to support you on the other side.

17:55 - Nicole (Guest)

Yeah, it's, yeah, it's. Someone said to me recently it's like stepping into a dark room and and hoping the senses are going to come on. It was. I like that as the description, but it was. It was a very clear choice for me, again in my mid 20s, where I said, ok, I want to live intuitively, and what that means for me is I've got to stay open, be vulnerable, be willing to take risks, listen to the voice when it's not giving me the full map, when it's telling me, ok, step out into the dark here's your torch and listen to that in a compass and start walking.

18:28

It's just is an incredibly it can be incredibly inconvenient. It means, you know, go leave this stable job now and go over there, go leave this community that you really love, because it's not where you meant. It was a stop off and keep going, you know. And so it does take a lot of courage to keep doing that when you're when your people around you might be saying what are you doing? You insane. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs can really experience that, because sometimes we are stepping out of a steady paycheck and all the benefits and we're walking towards something that we don't know what it is yet and we've just got to practice and we've got to let it unfold. And it, yeah, there is a lot of faith, but when we're working with a knowing, it's not based on nothing. It's that intuitive voice telling us move on, move forward.

19:18 - Debbie (Host)

Yeah, I really it's so interesting because I so what you describe as your as a calling. I really relate to that as well. Like I said, for me it's this niggle somewhere inside and I think I've always described it as purpose. I use word purpose quite a lot, like this sense of a deeper purpose and, yeah, for me, like that was a big part of why I chose to pivot my career path and I wonder, like, do you see so I guess people like us who relate to that, do you see people like that particularly being drawn to entrepreneurship?

19:59 - Nicole (Guest)

100%. Yeah, it's a really natural articulation of that calling, I think, Because when you you know it doesn't have to be.

20:08

When that information came through to me at first it was you know. It could be a mother that's helping a mental health support group, or it could be a tree surgeon who is then informing people of how to look after the environment. It's you know, it doesn't always take that form but I definitely see it. You know. Some examples would be working with a visionary artist currently. You know that she's emerging, finding her own voice, that she's really this channel, for it's a message is coming through in her work. The energy of her work is deeply moving to people and it's helping that shift in consciousness and mystic musicians that are kind of learning how to tune in and be an intuitive flow, so something moves through them instead of feeling constricted, and someone that's an eco activist realizing where she's meant to put her energy and effort and intention to kind of it looks like it might be helping seals. There's something there. You know it's still unfolding or a teacher who's stepping out of that realm to start doing international facilitation. But it's just the whole time you're following a feeling and that's sometimes part of that work is what I'm doing is channeling that information that's coming through, but also helping with the blocks around that development and that expansion that can be.

21:26

You know, the confidence, the fear of visibility that, yeah, there was. Did I mention the coach that came in around she's? Yeah, she came into the world with this. It is like really strong terror of just being seen in the world, like it's just not safe to be seen. And then when we started working together on a soul level, she'd experienced which trials, like a number of which trials that led to traumatic deaths and it. So, in those situations, her mind, her body had learned it isn't safe for me, the world isn't safe, and it's definitely not safe to be different, and that's what she came in with. But to actually stretch into helping the people she needs to be of service, she's got to get over that wounding. So I think there's such a spiritual journey involved with the work that we're doing that can that, yeah, as we're stretching and expanding that we've got to work with all of those triggers that come up for us as well as trying to figure out what we're doing.

22:29 - Debbie (Host)

Yeah, it's so true. It's like I think there's something about the freedom.

22:36

I guess, that being a solopreneur brings, which it definitely has its challenges as well, but at the same time, there's that like yeah, this freedom to meet your own needs, I think in a way, that's slightly different from like, for example, needing to be in an office space every day or an office space that doesn't work for you and also just the creative, the creative freedom it brings as well. I really. I really see developing, growing, building a business as a real vehicle for personal growth and personal development as well. It's almost like a modality in its own right yeah, so.

23:23

And so I wondered, like I heard you mentioned earlier on, about how you had learned to see your high sensitivity as a superpower, and I wonder how yeah, how can we use sensitivity as a superpower in business? And I'm thinking like, particularly since we live in a society that is so geared towards like logic and structure and linear thinking, and I think it just doesn't give priority often to things that are, you know, based on a feeling or, using my air quotes.

24:04 - Nicole (Guest)

So I think, yeah, with our sensitivity, it opens the door to that subtle information that we can become very aware of. So it's more, it becomes easier to tune into our intuitive intelligence and the information that can come through from that. So we're talking about a deeper state of mind which can lead to visionary ideas. You know bold ways of moving forward. We can have our finger on the pulse of. I just have this feeling that you know, when we don't realize why, but in 20 years time, there's a certain sector that suddenly explodes or, you know, becomes really big, that just doesn't exist at the moment. You know, we look at our whole work now of online webinars and conferences and all of that. It wasn't even a thing before.

25:00

So sometimes it's that we can tune into that intuitive knowing that has access to future information, basically, and then we can, even if we don't know the why and we don't know the map, if we follow the feeling, it can really channel success into what we're doing as well as align us, like you say, to that deeper sense of purpose and to be really an ethical alignment with what feels right for us, our passions, our creativity. But with that we have to be willing to step forward and not have a map and, you know, step into the unknown and take risks and, yeah, have that courage and to face those inconveniences, like we said before. And for the, the soul, I kind of think of it as like the soul self wants to be stretched and it's. It's going to be taking the egoic, small self, kicking and screaming with it, because that part of us will want security, safety and the known, whereas the voice of intuitive intelligence, which can be, you know, more universal mind, higher self, inner crone, spirit guides, is going to be giving us hits of information that, yeah, isn't going to make complete sense, logically, but we just we need to learn to have faith, to trust it and to and to follow it. And that's, yeah, that's where our sensitivity can be really helpful, because it can really start to get us traction with our confidence around that.

26:42 - Debbie (Host)

Yeah, and it strikes me so when I hear you describe it like that, it also strikes me as something that's super precious and because it's so unique to us as individuals like no one else can access that. And yeah, it's like it really is, especially in as a solopreneur as well, it's that it's almost like part of your, your brand. I guess it's like where that that comes from.

27:13 - Nicole (Guest)

Yeah, yeah.

27:15 - Debbie (Host)

I was also interested in what you said there about like touching on structures and plans, because I think on the surface it can seem that intuitive intelligence is sort of in conflict in some way with like having a plan. And yet I know, I know, like you know, I know that you also put a lot of effort into your business development and I wonder how you use your own intuitive intelligence, like in combination with a business strategy.

27:52 - Nicole (Guest)

Yeah, I mean you've hit the nail on the head, because for me there is a great deal of conflict. I think there is such a rub there, so to have some it feels like I'm dealing with Yin and Yang.

28:07

Basically, the intuitive part of me can be saying just go with the flow, just take the next step. And then the strategist is saying, well, what's my five year plan, where are we going? But I can't know what that is until I take the next step and then that gives me the answers as to what to grow next. So in that way, I can read like this is speaking to me. Personally, I can really struggle with that, where I'm being very intuitively led. It's like I've just got to, I've got a trust in the process. So, for example, you know I mentioned the channeling. It's like well, I didn't. Three years ago I didn't know that that was going to happen in my business. And then six months ago, when I started getting this download of information around soul mission, I didn't know that either. It was through the journey that I took. So there's a, there's a quote I really like by Einstein. Actually, the intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is the faithful servant, and we have created a society that honors the servant, has forgotten the gift, which is exactly what you're saying. So I think you know when I I was musing on it and for some reason I was thinking about my daughter's swimming lessons and having a vision. It's so.

29:21

The intuitive to me is the visionary part that has this, this greater idea, the whole, where we can't see all of those parts. And so with my daughter, for example, the vision is she starts swimming and I know that once she can swim she can wild swim she could save our life as a survival skill. She could go to swim parties, she could start doing water sports. But for her, what she knows is mommy takes her every Thursday to this boring thing and it's. She doesn't want to get her face in the water and it's wet and it's cold and she's not a teacher looked at her funny, so we're going to fight about it. But I know that further along the line, once we've gone through state one, two, three and whatever, that she's going to be really grateful for the potentials that it gives her.

30:06

And I think this is the same with the intuitive part of us it sees what is unfolding but you can't tell us all the answers. It's like when we learn algebra if our teacher just sat us down with the question and said it's 98, that one's 220. When we go into the exam we don't have the skills to do it ourselves. So it's like we've got to be led through a process that we don't know why. We're learning the lessons we're learning and we're at the side of the pool and our intuition is going, kicks us and goes in. You get and we're going. I don't want to Exactly. There's all these stages that we have to go through and we don't know what it is, but it's. It's that greater mind that actually is, knows the potentials that are coming and you know what could unfold. I'm just thinking of a friend. You know, an example being she's a writer and we were in the car and I hadn't seen her for a while and I said, oh, how's it?

31:04

I was just getting. Often what happens when I'm channeling is just get really hot. So I was like, okay, I need to talk to her about this. I said how's the writing going? And she said, oh no, I'm not doing anything at the moment. I said, oh, is it the book ideas? Not there. I said, oh no, I've got four fully formed book ideas.

31:20

I was like okay, what's going on. She said well, the publishing, publishing industry is just too hard. Like I have all this negative thinking. I've got it. It takes time and energy. I just I don't know what I'm doing. And you know, when I'm tuning in and I'm getting messages for her, what I could see was her spirit guides all smiling, going yeah, it is going to be hard, but do it anyway, you know. So it's a lot of the time we'll have it through. Each of us it's different. It's a lot of the time we're feeling, or she has a whole vision there, but the strategic part being you've got to do the hard grafts and we don't always have all the information, but you just you've got that faith piece that you've got to keep going. There's a lot of resilience involved in that way.

32:06 - Debbie (Host)

Yeah, I love that too, that where the like yeah, what I hear from, that is the feeling almost can be the driver, like, if we really tap into that, it can be, yeah, a source of energy. I mean, as in like to keep us committed and determined and you know, yeah, just with enough to keep going.

32:28 - Nicole (Guest)

Yeah, and to have that. You know, like for that example with my friend, was after that conversation I was I sort of tentatively got in touch because I didn't want her to feel any pressure after four months and said how's it going? And she said I've written 50,000 words.

32:44 - Debbie (Host)

I've been working on it. I've been working on it 25,000.

32:46 - Nicole (Guest)

I've been working on it 25, for 25 minutes a day, you know, and I was just felt so pleased for her because she then sometimes we need that, that that kind of guidance or support. So you know, choosing those mentors and whether it's going to be for us strategically and then having those structures or whether it's the intuitive aspect, I mean I definitely need both. I'm going to go and see my friend who channels for me and go. You know, for years I was going. Am I on the right track? She was like, just keep going, just keep going.

33:17

But then I also need to have be doing the market research. You know I'm not going to do one over the other or have the intuitive hit in the vision and then just sit, sit on my hands because nothing is going to happen. So there's definitely this dance that that goes on. You know that kind of yin yang dance.

33:36 - Debbie (Host)

So how? How would you use it to assess a strategy in in business, like knowing what, what is like the right strategy for us, or like what is or isn't working?

33:50 - Nicole (Guest)

Yes. So I think sometimes you've got to have confidence in your own knowing. I was thinking about my experience more recently, changing my business and I'd been doing. I had my Shihatsu practice, I had a bunch of clients, I could have my daughter as about to go back to work and we really needed the money. But I could sense there was this very quiet voice in me trying to give me a different direction. And each time I went in there were kind of loud personalities there, as lovely as they were, and I just couldn't hear myself and what I was meant to do and what all I could think to do was I've got a step out of everything. I need to just take a completely different track.

34:41

So from the offset my husband was saying what on earth are you doing? We need the money. Can you just go and get a nine to five job then? And I just kept saying please just trust me, just trust me. I just need you to trust me for a year and let's see what happens. So strategically it looked like a really bad move and I was just following that feeling and then within a year, luckily, I was actually earning three times as much as I was in my old practice and I had flexible time. I know I'm really grateful for him supporting me in that as well. But now I mean it's amazing, three years in I was kind of going over my tax return with him and I said, well, that's not quite where I want it to be and this is the vision. And he turned around and he said I trust you, I have faith, and that just really meant something, because he's kind of he's trusting my intuition now as well, that actually I have a sense of what comes next.

35:34

So sometimes something can look like a mad idea on the surface, but actually we just know we need to follow it. And I think, yeah, in terms of if the great inventors listen to the naysayers, we just would have no advancements in technology. And if Martin Luther King had listened to the people around him, we wouldn't have had that social change and Steve Jobs wouldn't have put basically a computer and a sound, a kind of music system, on our phones and we wouldn't have Tesla and do-do-do-do-do. It's just, in a way, it is Elizabeth Gilbert talks about in her book. I think it's Big Magic, and she kind of describes it as there's these ideas in the world that want to be birthed, but it's really about whether we're willing to be open and to be conduits for it, and it takes a certain personality and bravery to do that.

36:32

There's Bonnie Weir, who's written a book around the top 10 regrets of the dying, and the first one is something around I wish I'd had the courage to be myself, and I think living an intuitive life is exactly that. It's our authentic voice, it's stepping into our truth, it's being willing to be vulnerable, but try it and fail and keep going Sometimes. What I'm encouraging you to do here is to take risks and is to listen, and it gets easier with practice when, over and over, it gets proven okay, that did. I took the leap and I didn't know what was going to happen and it worked out okay. Basically, even being here today, it's stepping into the uncomfortable, but I know I'm growing and I'm stretching and it's a value, even when I'm just thinking of an example, of something that can look like a promising proposition. There was this great tweet by Monica Lewinsky where she said work at the White House. They said it will look great on your CV.

37:45

They said you know, so it's just like you don't know what will come the eveningly great situations either.

37:53 - Debbie (Host)

So yeah, Wow, when you were talking there before, like I could feel that. You know that, like tingly feeling. I feel that far in my belly. But I wonder if so, if someone listening Fancy's giving this a go but maybe doesn't want you know about the huge leap of faith, just yeah like they do want to leave their job or make any drastic life changes at this point in time, like what would be a simple, maybe accessible first step.

38:29 - Nicole (Guest)

Yeah, well, just setting the intention to start to develop a conscious relationship with your intuition and to give it weight and to give it value. You know, there's so many times where I see clients and I'll say, you know, just pick up what I'm sensing intuitively about a person they're talking about and they'll say, oh yeah, I knew that as well. But I just you know the times where we think, oh, I don't trust that person, oh, I'm being silly, oh, that's that. You know, they've had a bad upbringing.

39:02

Yeti, yeti, yeti but we're just not listening, we're not placing value on that voice that comes up, is what I would advocate is start to listen and start to give it weight and start to to lean into it. Whether that's where you choose to go on holiday, when you choose to go on holiday, who you choose to go on holiday with, you know, yeah, how you're scheduling your time, which friends you're seeing. Yeah, how you manage certain situations in relationships or work. It's just what does your intuition say? Go there first and see, feel, feel into it so you can start to practice and, and, yeah, develop that kind of conscious relationship. So there's a willingness required there to be, to be open to the unknown, and, and having friends around you that are more intuitively led can be really helpful, because when you're kind of going against the tide, you want some support, and whether that's listening to podcasts or whether that's checking in with a friend and saying you know, I've just got this funny feeling about so and so what do you think?

40:06

and they're like, yeah me too and so you're both learning to trust together. And you know, one of the biggest things for me has been doing that internal clear out, because one of the most confusing factors I found with developing my intuition was knowing is this fear from old triggers or is this my intuition telling me no? And so there's a phrase when it comes to being a shaman, they talk about being an intuitive flute and I want to remember the phrase.

40:38

It's like basically being a clear vessel, and so you want to. The clearer I get, the more I know when it's not a resonance within me that it's coming information coming from outside. So try and get help with those triggers, the the old fears that get tripped up in you. So then you think, oh, am I just projecting this is my old fear of x, y and z, and I'm projecting it. Or am I picking up on information from this situation? Does that make sense?

41:08 - Debbie (Host)

yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And I love what you said about listening to podcast, because there's something in me that I'm like oh, maybe this is like someone's first port of call this very conversation. So I wanted to wrap up could you tell us a little bit more about where someone might find out more about you and your work?

41:31 - Nicole (Guest)

yeah, so head over to my website just Nicole drummondcom, and you'll find my social media feed on that. And yeah, I've written some blogs on this subject. If you're curious, have a read, and then I'll be doing some intuitive development training this year as well. So always welcome to join the mailing list if you want to stay in touch and and yeah, hear about my latest blogs amazing.

41:56 - Debbie (Host)

I think your blogs are incredible. I love, love reading your blog so much. The style of writing is just beautiful so beautiful, you're very beautiful, and I'll put links to those in the show notes as well.

42:11 - Nicole (Guest)

Thank you, thank you, it's been wonderful it has.

42:14 - Debbie (Host)

It's been such a pleasure and thank you so much again for your time and your openness and all that you've shared with us this morning, nicole. It's really very much appreciated absolute pleasure, thank you thank you so much for listening to this episode of beyond business. If you've loved what you've heard, I would be incredibly grateful if you could rate and review the podcast so that together we can create a global ecosystem of changemakers, pioneering business as a force for good. Until then, I look forward to speaking to you in the next episode.