How to Trust Your Intuition When You're Running on Empty

Have you ever reached the pinnacle of success, achieved everything would make you happy, and still felt empty inside? In this episode of The Flourishing Edge, I sit down with Courtney McDermott, whose journey has taken her from corporate leadership to writing, speaking, and coaching people, helping them transform their lives by not fixing the external world, but by starting within. Uncovering our own beliefs, thought patterns, ways of operating that are creating our own prisons, according to Courtney, is where we start to transform our outside lives. In this episode, we talked about intuition, burnout, nervous system recovery, the dangers of living externally sourced lives, and how to really connect with our intuition and true inner intelligence that's already guiding you. This was a deeply soulful and powerful conversation, and I think it'll stay with you. Let's dive in. Welcome to The Flourishing Edge, the podcast where we share weekly tips on making flourishing your competitive edge. I'm Ashish Kothari, your host, and each week we'll dive deep with flourishing experts, changemakers, and executives to share best practices that can help you unlock higher performance through science-based interventions. Let's step together into the edge of what's possible and live, work, and lead with more joy, health, love, and meaning. Courtney, it is such a delight to have you on our Flourishing Edge podcast. Thank you for joining us, my friend.

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

So look, your journey has taken you from corporate leadership to writing and speaking. You've written two books. You do a lot of coaching. You do a lot of truly helping people transform from the inside out. And I'm curious, what was your own personal turning point?

Which one do you want?

What led you to this work?

There have been so many. Uh, well, I often, I'll often go back to the place that everyone thinks they wanna be at. So, mm-hmm. I led my first book with this of getting to that place where, you know, you've collected all the gold stars and you've done everything that society or family or whomever it is, whatever it is that's been telling you, this is, this is what success success looks like. And I, you know, joked in that first book that I was miserably successful, that I had, I had all of the accolades and the titles and, you know, jet-setting around on a private jet and wearing the Jimmy Choos and mother, wife, marathon runner, you name it. Like I was doing the thing that they said you're supposed to do. And yet something just kept feeling really off. And I had multiple cold shower moments. I had so many moments where I just felt like this can't be it and kind of breaking down. And I've heard He said once something along the lines of, you know, breaking down to break open or something along those lines. And it's resonant with me in the sense that I feel like sometimes it's like the phoenix has to blow up and whatever it is that you told yourself was what it was supposed to look like has to kind of give way. And so, yeah, I'll often start at that place because instead of just to shorten the learning curve for anyone who thinks that success is somehow external. That it is somehow, your success is somehow determined, or your wellness or your sense of well-being is somehow determined by what's happening outside of you. And as soon as you take that power back and you start to internally source your success and internally source what's true for you, the whole world changes.

Yeah. I mean, we covered this topic so, from so many times, right, on this podcast. And I'm curious, was there a particular moment? Was there a particular incident, something that it was like that really just became the last straw on the camel? Or was it like a slow evolving feeling of this isn't it that you were like, you know what, I'm gonna go do something different?

Yeah, those cold splash stories, they're fun. And even in my first TEDx talk, I talked about being on the corporate jet, sipping the espresso, having it all, and being, you know, just realizing what is going on, 'cause My daughter had actually, at the time we were using iPhones and BlackBerrys, and she had blocked my BlackBerry, and that's where I had all my scheduling stuff. And it was a, it was a way to tell a story, but the truth of the matter is what you were just saying, it was a kind of a cold and lonely hallelujah. It was sort of one of those things that many, many pieces had come together to show me that this isn't it. And, and then I started to, instead of just ignoring them and chasing after yet again, another quote unquote goal, not that goals are in and of themselves the problem. They're really not. They're fabulous. But chasing after that as an indication of my worthiness was never ever going to hit the mark. And so, yeah, for me it was a lot of, it was a lot of slow drip, like this, no. And then waking up, you know, all of a sudden to a whole new life when you start to drip in another direction, when you start to source internally the way I just mentioned. Yeah.

So take me to that moment when the cup ran full and spill over. What enabled you to actually pull the ripcord and do something different? Because there's so many people who are failing, are successful and are completely miserable, right? Perfectly curated external lives, hollow, suffering-filled inner lives, and they just continue on and on. What helped you wake up and break from that spell? What did you do?

Well, the cup wasn't full. That's the point. It didn't runneth over. The cup was empty. The cup was, was an emptiness and not as an emptiness in the way that's like, oh, I'm devoid of like fear, any of that. It was an emptiness in the sense of a real sense of there's not enough anymore, any to, to keep going this way. And I've seen so many quote unquote high performers get to that place where they're just, I can't, I can't, I can't. And they do, they stretch themselves again and they push again. Again, pushing in and of itself, just like the, the, the goal, right? Going for it is not the issue. What the issue is, is if you are running on empty and the resources that are internal resources are not there. And that's what I see over and over is that people are pushing rather than really engaging in this kind of, I like to think of it as a pull energy because there's this inner intelligence will pull you and it will, it'll pull you to situations, circumstances, events, all of it based on what you have created internally versus being dictated and your actions and your motives being dictated externally. And that's a zero-sum game. You will never win that game.

Yeah. Well, I mean, it resonates a lot. You know, I have talked about this in our podcast, my own journey, right? I was a very successful successful partner at McKinsey with a completely full life, right? Lovely family, love my wife. We'll be together for 20 years this year, married for 18. Back then I had a 6-year-old son, great client work, highly impactful work, great set of friends. I love the firm. Everything was green lights. Everything was green lights. And yet there was this internal turmoil. It actually was almost, you know, for me, It showed up in the form of anxiety every morning. And then it would go away as I go about the day because like it wasn't anything I was anxious about. It was just this, my body was basically saying, hey, this is not what you're meant to be doing. You're meant to be doing something different. And I was lucky because I actually managed, you say when the teacher is, you know, when the student is ready, the teacher appears and it appeared for me in the form of a gift of a retreat that was being organized at McKinsey. And I found my why, right? And it was, again, this notion that, long story short, 10 years later when I decided to leave the firm in pursuit of my bigger why, which was to help a billion people flourish, a lot of people asked me, because I had the perfect life within the firm I designed, "Why do you leave?" And I said, "I am not leaving." And people said, "Oh my God, you're so brave, right? You're leaving a 7-figure job." You're 17 years here. You know everyone. You have a client portfolio that's amazing. You work 36 hours a week. You have everything going for you. This is so courageous to leave and start your own company. And I said exactly the words that you just used. I said, it wasn't courage that set me free. It was the pull of my purpose, my why. The gravitational pull of fear of continuing and, right, holds you back. You have to find that why. And for me, that's the why that I was like, this is what I want to dedicate the second half of my life for. And I'm willing to walk the path. It's not going to be an easy path, and that's okay. But I would rather choose this path rather than path of comfort and continually externally full jars, but sitting out of coherence. With kind of what I'm here to do.

Yeah, it sounds like your dharma was screaming at you. It was calling. And you know, you reminded me of when you were talking about it, of Rollo May. He wrote this book, Man's Search for Himself, not to be confused with Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. And in it he said, the opposite of courage is not cowardice, it's conformity.

Yes.

It's conforming to what you think is what you need to do rather than listening to this inner intelligence that we're talking about. And yet it's the most frightening thing in the world because when we jump out of that conditioning, and I sometimes refer to it as con-ditioning, right? When we jump out of the con, it's very scary for us and very scary for the people around us. And we don't know if the people around us are even going to to support us. I mean, the fact that you had colleagues and people saying, that's courageous. I had so many times people telling me, that's just crazy. I mean, how could you do that? That's nuts. Like, you're leaving an amazing job. Or even before that, when I had visions of myself and the growth trajectory that I had in my mind when I was in corporate, and people would just tell me, that's not even possible. What are you dreaming up? And yet all of those dreams came to fruition. And I think when you are listening the inner intelligence or whatever metaphor you want to use for this massive intelligence that's guiding everything that's occurring both within your body and outside of it, it will, it will lead you and it'll lead you in ways that you don't even understand that don't even seem to make rational sense. And it seems like you just, you got that call and you answered it. And I think a lot of people, they get to the place of they've demucked enough that they get the call, but when they get the call, it's is so frightful to answer. It's— their side of it is a liberation and kind of just where getting to dance wherever you want on the stage, I guess.

Exactly. Well, my friend, in your first book, and I wanna start from there, and you alluded to this now as well, right? You make a powerful change that often transformation begins internally. Mm-hmm. That was your first book, right? Change Starts Within You. There's so many people who try and change their lives by changing the external environment. I'm gonna change a job. I'm gonna change the team. I'm gonna— change where I live, I'm gonna change my spouse, right? Like all of these, we make these changes externally. What keeps people from truly doing the deeper work of changing themselves rather than changing the external world?

Well, taking responsibility for your own inner conduct is, I think, the hardest thing in the world for the vast majority of humanity. I would venture to say that Somewhere between, if I'm being, if I'm being liberal, I would say somewhere between 97 and 99% will never ever undertake that responsibility of saying, hey, the external is reflecting, is a reflection, is a representation of belief patterns, behavioral patterns. That I have expressed through my being. And so they won't take that responsibility. Now, whatever it is that needs to fall away in your external environment to meet you as the person you are becoming internally will by and of its own accord disappear. It has to, because the vibrational frequency of that cannot meet you where you are internally. If you cultivate this kind of internal-led, internally-led way of being, it can't meet— it basically can't survive within your field. So it's not the— it's not that things don't change externally. Oftentimes they change dramatically externally when you take this responsibility. And I love that word responsibility. It's funny that I brought up Viktor Frankl because I'm pretty sure this came from his book, but it's also in Stephen Covey's book, The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People, which I think I read 2 decades ago, but I think it's in there too. There's this line that responsibility is your ability to respond. And I love that because it's not saying you're to blame. It's not giving you any particular fault in whatever's happening. And in the first book, I actually talk about it a little bit like you have to know where you are in order to figure out where you're going, right? So if I wanna get to Chicago and I'm originally from Chicago, I lived overseas for over half my life, but I'm originally from Chicago. If I wanna get to Chicago, but I don't know if I'm in LA or New York, I have a problem, right? I have a problem. I might go into the ocean if I don't know. So I've got one of the oceans, so I've got to figure it out right now. Once I figured out where I am, say for instance, New York, I don't get all upset about the fact that I'm in New York. I don't get upset that that's the physical representation of where I am in any given moment, right? I'm not, oh my gosh, I can't believe, I can't believe I'm in New York. Maybe, but if I do, there's an expenditure of energy that is quite useless, right? So once I've recognized that's where I am, that's the responsibility. That's the ability to respond is this is the result. Now, once you have that clear in your head, you think, okay, so if I don't wanna be here in New York and I do wanna be in Chicago, I have to, I have to wanna get to Chicago. I have to be able to imagine Chicago, right? For instance, in, again, in that first book, I talk about Timbuktu being this place that you're going to. And whenever I ask audiences around the world and I say, Have you ever been to Timbuktu? And no one has ever been to Timbuktu. Like no one's ever been there, but everyone knows that it exists. At least we think we do. Right. It's like, I haven't been to the Bermuda Triangle, but I think it exists. Right. So I have to hold that image. And then I just start making my way. Now there is something really phenomenal that can happen and change where you don't need those steps, you know, to get there necessarily. And there are faster routes. You know, I remember talking to a client of mine, only time I ever worked with a really young client. She was a, I think she was 8 at the time we started working together, came from a very prominent family in Central America. And we're working together and I said, hey, if you needed to get from Florida to up into New York, how would you get there? And I was imagining she'd say, oh, I'd have my parents drive me or I'd get on a train or take a bicycle. And she said helicopter. So like some of us have, you know, we're taking helicopters places, whatever. Some of us are driving, some of us are taking the bicycle, some of us are walking, but there's that there's that path, like, you know, you can get there. And so for me, all of that to say, once you reclaim that responsibility, that ability to respond, and you start to source internally without judgment about where it is, who it is you want to be, then the actions happen of their own accord. It's like you are going there. The vehicle is in motion and those actions that you're taking then are met from reactions in the environment, which is just Physics. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And from that place, you can start to make the moves based on the resources that you have rather than the resources that you wish. And you can shift from blame to, you know, really taking action. You know, it, there's a beautiful story that Thich Nhat Hanh talks about in one of his books. And he poses this as a challenge to, you know, to this, to this person who says, you know, my relationship with my spouse, you know, They don't see me the way they used to see me before, right? Earlier, it's a woman says earlier, he used to treat me like this beautiful flower and now like I am, you know, I'm unseen. And he asks her this question. He says, imagine if you have a flower and somebody gifts that to you and it's in a pot and you notice that by the 4th or 5th day, the flower is starting to wilt. What would you do? She says, as would most of us, right? If I asked you, there's a flower I gave you and it starts to wilt, Courtney, what would you do?

I would give it more water. I would make sure it had enough sunshine. I would nurture it in any way I could.

Right? Yeah. You would not blame the flower. Yes. You would, you would say, what does this flower need? How can I help it come alive and become fresh again? And so the invitation in a relationship that he says is, what are some things that Your husband is missing because of which his love for you is wilting. And so we can talk about what's wrong with me, but more about what do you need? It's not even about what is wrong, it's about what is needed right now and how can I give that? And if I give that, things start to change, right? So this, again, this notion of responsibility, and I think if we can shift from blame, what is not happening to me, to what actions can I take? Because at one point this was We rarely walk into situations where something isn't the case. Now, for some it is, but when you are, take action and from there start to make the change. But I think we have to reflect really within first.

Yeah, and I think lots of times, especially for women, it's less about necessarily considering what someone else needs because most women are thinking almost exclusively about what other people need and their cup isn't running over, right? And so asking yourself, what do I I need, but not what do I need from the perspective of what my husband gives me or what a friend gives me? That's where we miss the mark. What do I need in terms of what do I need to give to myself?

Yeah.

How much love, how much vision, how much space, how much time, how much care? What do I need to give to myself? Again, not what someone else needs to do, because you're always going to miss the mark with that, or not what I need externally in some sort of symbol of whatever it is, but rather, how do I become the person who feels nurtured? How do I become the person who feels loved to be and continue to be that love? Because otherwise, yeah, I just keep running into that wall.

Yeah. And you talk about that so beautifully in your second book, right? Give Yourself Permission. You talk about, you know, how can you focus on giving yourself You know, and cultivating confidence, happiness, becoming more fully yourself. So talk a little bit about that book and how does one go about doing that?

Well, so confident and happy, right? They're both in the subtitle, but lots of times we hear those terms and we think, okay, confident means I, I can speak up or I, whatever, I look this way or I'm that way in a, in a social situation. But confidence, the word comes from confidere. Which means with trust or with reliance. So the point that I'm really making and driving home in that book is how do you start trusting in yourself so you can trust in others and you can trust in life and you can lead from that place? Because that's true confidence. True confidence is never boastful. It's never competitive. It is creative in spirit. It knows exactly what to do and it will guide you every time. So that was a main piece. And then happiness, again, we get this idea that happiness means, oh, I'm just positive and Pollyanna. And I mean, Pollyanna got a bad rap. Actually, Pollyanna saved everybody. So being positive in and of itself is fantastic. And there's nothing against that whatsoever. The point is that happiness sometimes comes in the most astonishing ways. And when you can tap into happy, doesn't it? Doesn't look like a pre-scripted route to anything. Happiness is, and sometimes happiness will bring you to your knees in tears, like of how stunningly even the polarities that we see and what it inspires in the human spirit is something that you can derive immense joy from, but it doesn't look like joy, right? So people will say, well, that's not— no, joy is whatever. I don't know. I got this job or something. But really it's this deeply set, I believe it's this deeply set connection again. And it comes back to once again, that reliance and knowing like I can trust this. I don't understand it, but I fully, and I never will because those mysteries are beyond our conscious mind, but I can trust it and I can love it and I can enjoy it. And I think that's where, again, you take back a lot of your power.

You know, I talk about this a lot in my book, Hardwired for Happiness, Courtney, where I talk about happiness. First of all, it's subjective wellbeing, right? It's the technical, like if you look at psychologists and that what's happiness, they'll say it's subjective wellbeing. Because different things bring happiness and well-being to different people. But second is it's not, it's a lot more than an emotion, right? So I talk about this notion of fundamentally it's about cultivating a state of being that allows you to dance in the rain, to be able to handle all the emotions that come with it. And that state of true surrender and acceptance, it's a state of, you know, living in orientation to your purpose. It's cultivating presence, being in the here and now rather than constantly being torn apart, languishing the past and worrying about the future. It's around relationships and one that fuel us. So it's all about that foundation, right? That truly allows us, it's a place from which we can handle suffering. It's a place from which we can actually handle things that don't go well and not be completely overridden by it. It's not a state that you can hold onto, but you can hold a state that allows you to cultivate how to be happier, which is from that foundation change, again, take responsibility and take actions. Many people who, when you look at this work, often say, oh, so you mean you can be happy all the time? I'm like, no, absolutely not. Because happiness, what you're talking about is happiness is an emotion. It's not happiness as a way of being. And I think you talk about the same in your book, right? You're talking about happiness as a fundamental way of being. It is way more than an emotion. So we're quite simpatico on that. So listen, if there are listeners that are listening and say, look, I get that. I buy in that change needs to start with me. Like if I want to change my external life, it needs to start with me. I need to give myself permission to do this. What are some 3 things that they could start to do? This conversation is brought to you by Happiness Squad, where we help leaders build new mindsets, new habits, and transform their ways of working to truly flourish. If you're ready to unleash the untapped human potential in your organization and operate at your best, Come visit us at happinesssquad.com and start your journey today.

First, the preposition within is really important because sometimes people hear change starts with you and they think they have to do something to affect the external environment. And so the preposition within is actually extremely important because it's like, no, actually we just need to bring it back. Well, not need to, but we're invited to bring it back internally, which again is the hardest work in the world. And the reason why it's so hard before we get into 3 simple, very simple ways to start to access this is it's very, very hard because everything in your external environment will be signaling you potentially in a different way. So if everything external and all of your senses are being bombarded by that, and you're being told through your senses, so through what you see, what you hear, what you taste, what you smell, what you touch, you are getting the impression from the environment that the result is this way. And so that'll feed a thought. Thoughts are electric. The electricity of that thought will then go down kind of into the, into the subconscious and become an emotion, right? And we've looked at this, just energy in motion. And again, that's chemical. So then that may be feeding a response in your body of, for example, high cortisol, high adrenaline, whatever that looks like. And then you're taking an action based on that pattern. And again, that action is producing a like reaction from your environment, which once again is just basic physics. Like, this is how our brains work, how our bodies work, and how the external environment responds to that, because it must, because there's no other choice, because that's a frequency. Now, once you start to get the fact that out here, these results that you're seeing do not have to be your de facto results and they do not have to be your default. And so again, once you— within change starts within you, once you decide, okay, I want a different result, which is just like, I want to go to Chicago. Okay. I don't have to worry about it or freak about it. I just know that a different result is possible. These, you know, there's supposedly infinite potentials in the field, right? So I can kind of pick whichever one, don't have to get overly excited or crazy or whatever about it. I just chose that one. Then you start to diminish those external stimuli that are telling you one thing. You stop looking at appearance to define who you are. And once you stop doing that, and once you start internally sourcing who you are, that's when you can begin to see that real change. Now, 3 really simple ways to do this. One of the things that I love— well, here's the thing too. You have to pay attention to what your baseline is right now. So a lot of people are running around in high beta. And those are cycles per second in their brain. And it's essentially the best way I ever heard that described is like you have a first, you have a 4-gear race car that you're driving around in first gear. Okay. So you have this magnificent machine, you have a Ferrari and you're driving it in first gear. Okay. So once you start to realize, like if, if you're in high beta and you're running around and you're stressed and everything, you gotta time out. Like don't try to do more. Don't listen to another podcast. Don't read another book. Don't digest more information. You are oversaturated and you need to time out. What that looks like, the first thing that I would recommend for most people, because a lot of people are in this state, probably not someone listening to this podcast, but you know, you never know. And there's no shame in that game. We've all been there, is to really rest, rest your physical body as often and as much as you can. Now, this seems counterintuitive, but the reality of the situation is that you're thereby changing your brainwave frequencies almost instantaneously. So within just a few minutes, you're gonna be moving out of high beta. Again, those really, really fast cycles in your brain. You're gonna move into mid-range, low-range beta where you have more access to creativity, where you can devise and decide a new direction for yourself. You can't do that if you are taking off from New York.

Oh yeah.

And you're trying to get this car to go and there's something wrong with the engine. You better just stop and fix what's going on with the engine before you start going, cuz you might get there, but it's going to be at an enormous expenditure to the machinery that you're going around with. So Once you've rested and many people will need many pockets of this because we need to basically redefine what it means like to live successfully and to live well. You know, people are always telling me, oh, you must be so busy. And my response is always, I'm the least busy person you've ever met. I removed that word from my lexicon probably about 6 or 7 years ago. I would never say I'm busy. I will say, you know, life is really full. It's really magical. It's really magnificent. All of these things are coming in and flowing to and through me. That's phenomenal. And I'm not busy. Like, I don't run around. I'm not a bee. You know, I'm, I'm right here right now with you. So once we start reframing that and we allow ourselves these pockets of rest, once again, we're changing our frequency. Not only that, we're sending a message through our vagal nerve, right? Which is the, basically the largest connection and nerve networks that we have in our body that say you're safe. Now, most of us, most of the time are not feeling safe. That's how we got in beta in the first place. But once you actually lie down, you're sending those signals, you're relaxing that nerve circuitry. So you're sending signals to your endocrine system. And that is going to start releasing a whole host of other neurochemicals that are really in, in, in chemicals throughout your bloodstream. Neurotransmitters is what I was looking for throughout your bloodstream. That is going to be extremely beneficial to you again, toward your creativity. So first and foremost, rest, literally Lay your physical body down. If you can only do it for 30 seconds at first, that's fine. Pop back up, do it another 30. Einstein was a great proponent of this. He talked a lot about nap. I've been talking about it, I think for at least 15 years. I was used to write articles for it in the Huffington Post and other places where I was just like, you gotta take a nap. It's the most regenerative thing. And that was when I was living in Italy. So we would take long naps in the middle of the day. Now, first thing, rest. Second thing, I would say move. Most people are not moving enough, and if you're not moving, you're not releasing stuck stagnant energy from your body. And if you're not releasing that that stuck stagnant energy, you have a lot of muck in the way of that inner voice. So you're literally just mucking, mucking. And this happens naturally as we go through the day, we're going to accumulate some muck, right? We go around, we're exposed to environmental toxins, noise toxins, people, you know, whatever is going on. Right. So we're accumulating some of that. So you've got to free up the energy and the greatest and fastest way to do that is to move. Once you've moved, you've changed your state. Once you change your state, you can change your story. Again, coming back to how, how you change and how you start thinking of a different result and sourcing that internally rather than externally. The third thing, if I, you know, again, I mean, I could go on and on and my books explain and give very accessible, easy ways for people to move into different frequencies. But I would say another big thing that I've noticed is like, it doesn't have to look any particular way. You gotta find your way. So for instance, I, I often talk about, and I talk about it in that second book, how yawning and laughing are the two of the most powerful meditations you can do. And surprisingly, they are these inner technologies that we were told not to use. So growing up in school, we were told, don't laugh, don't yawn, you know, don't do these things. These are some of the most powerful inner technologies that we have. Yawning is considered the greatest kept secret of neuroscience. It energizes you and relaxes you at the same time. That's why animals use it before and after a fight. We yawn so that we release enormous amounts of energy. Our body starts releasing oxytocin, serotonin, all again, all sorts of neurotransmitters that are really powerful and hormones in our, into our body that connect us, that, that relax us, that allow us again to take those decisions from a place of, of inspiration rather than desperation. Yawning and laughing, if you can do it, especially with groups of people, you're gonna be, you're gonna be playing at an entirely new level of your game.

Beautiful. I think we are so sleep deprived as a nation and most people are running on sympathetic nervous systems. Mm-hmm. Like when we did this research at at the firm, like 80 to 90% of the time people are running on these and they don't have access to the creativity, right? So recovery breaks through the day, right? You might do nap, you might do an NSDR, just any which way, like you can actually even 5 minutes of mindful breathing might be enough to kind of start to calm yourself. Movement against something that we have forgotten. Mayo calls sitting the new smoking. Because we literally don't move and constrain our creativity, staying in boxes from back-to-back meetings. And this notion of, like, I love your yawn and laugh, right? We don't laugh at work. We don't laugh with colleagues. Powerful. In your books, you also make a big, big case for cultivating intuition. Let's talk a little bit about why in our hyperproductive, constant on place, And now in this AI-fueled craze for productivity, intuition might be even more important than it has ever been across generations.

100%. So intuition, again, I love the origin of words, etymology, other languages. I'm fascinated by why we use the words we use. Intuition, if you think about it, intuition is your inner teacher. And all of us have it. We all have it. And even if someone says, I don't know what you're talking about, they've had that moment, that spidery sense, whatever they call it, right? Where you go in and it's, oh, something in my gut, or I just realized something that this intuitive factor is something we all have. And it's something you've either developed or you haven't developed. All of our technologies are actually based on technologies that we come equipped with. They are based on our original equipment. If you don't know that, then you will rely on the technologies excessively so to a point that you have eclipsed and forgotten that you had all of that in the first place. It's like T.S. Eliot saying, we shall not cease from exploration and all our exploring will be to return to the beginning and to know it for the first time. I'm giving a talk, but I'm preparing one of the keynotes I'm preparing is I, I, I, which is your inner intelligence. I, I, I trumps AI every time. And people ask me, how did you come up with that? Or, you know, how'd you come up with the talk? I literally lay my body down and I allow this inner intelligence to tell me what needs to be done. If you start again cultivating that, these are faculties of the, as far as we know, the mind, and I'll call it the mind. We can get into that if you want, but they're faculties available to us, right? That we can either invest in and understand more about and learn about and try to figure out within ourselves, or they're ones that we are ignoring to our own detriment. And so, at least as far as I can tell, so I'm a big proponent of you do, you know, people will come to me all the time and they'll want answers about something. And I always say, I don't have your answers is one of the first things I say, but you do have your answers. And if someone's telling you, just take these 5 steps, run in the opposite direction, like don't walk, run, because you're the one who knows. But if something is deeply resonant with you and you sense it as truth, then yes, tune in, listen, because it's reminding you of something you already know. And your intuition is the same. It will keep hammering just like yours did. It'll keep kind of showing you something's a little off. And again, the extent to which you ignore that is, is, is the extent to which you're living a life that is inspired and that feels really good to you versus one that may feel depleted.

What are some ways that you invite people to cultivate their inner intelligence or intuition? How do you help people develop that?

Well, like I said, one of the biggest ways is you gotta relax or rest or however you wanna think about it. You know, people are running around and they're getting super hyper-distracted all the time. And we live in a society that has entrained us to that. And so you opting out is of paramount importance. Like you actually saying, time out, I'm gonna go lay down. Not with music, not with a guided meditation, not with this, not with that. I'm just literally gonna go rest. Rest, because again, once you start resting, your brain is going to start moving into different brainwave frequencies. Once you start accessing, once you start accessing those, your intuition is going to be a little bit louder than it normally would. Like, it's going to, it's going to become more apparent to you. And this is one way. Other people get it while they're doing things that for them are deeply meditative, which again are changing their brainwave frequencies. For instance, I met a man once who was interviewing me who said, that his greatest meditation was mowing the lawn. I'm like, absolutely. I've met people who, for them, it's washing the dishes. I've met people, many people who, for them, it's driving. Sometimes even driving with music and they'll get those, and I'm talking about billionaires, like driving with music and then they'll get those creative insights. So not like this is what they run on. The vast majority of people I know who are actually really changing things are running on this inner intelligence for the most part. And when they're not, it's like, when I'm not, for instance, I'll notice immediately if whatever is, is that I'm doing, if it's character-led and I literally will stop myself and say, nope, I don't have the answers. I'm not trying to have the answers. Use me, you know, use, yes, use the acumen, use the experience, use, use the knowledge, use all of it, but use me and put me back in that place because then you don't have to be actively, you know, muscling anything. You're literally being driven by this intelligence and it's using you in the ways that you are uniquely designed to be used.

What are those moments when you are at your most intuitive?

I get a lot of intuitive hits while I'm lying down for sure. And oftentimes I will time myself out that way. So if I feel in any way depleted, I will go and lie down. And I will get, I get an enormous amount of hits while I'm lying down. I get intuitive hits often when I'm on stage. I get intuitive hits when I'm working one-on-one. I get a massive amount of intuitive hits when I'm working one-on-one. It's very niche. I don't work with a lot of people. I have a celebrity client base and I don't accept a lot of new clients, but when I'm working one-on-one, I will get enormous amounts of hits from this intelligence kind of telling me exactly what is needed for that millimeter change in that person's game and for them awakening to different realms of consciousness that'll become immediately apparent to me. It works through me as well. Yeah, I would say primarily in those ways, but it works. I mean, I invite it to take over entirely. I ask the divine to totally take over and guide everything. And that's my intention. And I think that it, you know, more and more as it becomes a clear and pure intention, That is how, how I operate virtually. I wouldn't say all of the time, cuz there are times when I forget and I'm like, oh, I'm playing, I'm forgetting that I'm playing a character. Uh, but for the most part, I remember, I actively remember I'm playing characters and I'm not, that's not the truth of who I am.

Yeah. You know, beautifully put Courtney. Like for me, like I cultivated a practice of, especially in the morning when I wake up and then just, Lying in bed for those 10, 15 liminal minutes where I think it's just a beautiful place to be. And so many people, I invite people to actually cultivate that because people wake up and they wake up with the phone and then they rush. And that space between the unconscious to the conscious is this really ripe space. You know, the second one for me personally is walking externally in nature, especially surrounded without a phone. I do listen to podcasts or like an Audible, but oftentimes I'll just shut it off and just truly, especially just walk and just and see what comes, you know, what comes to you. And then I have a meditation practice, like I meditate for 45 minutes sitting down. And that's really a critical moment for me. All of the work that we are doing now is all guided, like my 10-day Vipassana was transformative for me, became the foundation for our Rewire program. And yeah, I think if we create the stillness, if we create the space, if we break from the busyness, all of us have access to this unbelievable level of intelligence Intuition, but most of us are so noisy. Even if we are in a quiet space, we are noisy in our heads that we can't listen to the whispers of the universe and we can't listen to the whispers of our inner souls telling us the way to go. And then we take immediate signals as we start to move there from the external world and shut down rather than really give it the space to manifest in ways externally that we want.

Yeah.

I want to bring it back to kind of, you know, the point as we, as we close. But I think your invitation, Courtney, is if you don't like the scenery out there, start by examining our own inner ways of being and changing our own beliefs, our ways of operating in order to actually create the change out there. Um, I think it's, I've loved your work. I had a chance to, thank you for sending me the PDFs. I had a chance to look through both of your books. It's been wonderful having you on our podcast, if there is any final words you would wanna say, right? Your last kind of big takeaway for our listeners, an invitation, so to say. What's that invitation you would want to leave them with?

Well, I would say all of our greatest spiritual traditions and our science has pointed to the same exact conclusion, which is that your, your directed consciousness is, is shaping so-called reality. In other words, you are literally shaping the molecules. So once you start, as you're saying, examining that a little bit, but being very soft with yourself and understanding that there are specific ways to start to source internally. And we've discussed some of them here today. I would say anyone listening, you're pretty amazing, you know, getting also this far and being on this path of growth and with your podcast specifically and all the beauty that you're bringing. That is this great reminder of like this truth that lives through and as you, it wants to express. In very beautiful ways that are specific to you. And so the more you can actually make that your devotional practice, like it doesn't need to look like anything. You don't need to, you know, your meditation. I'm meditating right now. You know, meditating is dancing with the divine. Like, how do you want to dance with the divine? How do you want to show up every day? What practices or habits or beliefs like really support you? Going back to that piece we talked about before, it's not you needing to be better or be different. It's like, How do you support yourself in love so that you can shine in all the ways that the divine wants to move through you?

Beautifully put, my friend. Look, thank you for coming. Thank you for joining us. I appreciate you. Have an amazing weekend.

Thank you. Same. Blessings.

Thank you for joining me on The Flourishing Edge. If today's conversation inspired you, share it with someone who's ready to flourish too. Subscribe, leave a review, and stay connected. For more tools to achieve breakthrough performance through flourishing. Until next time, keep learning, practicing, and growing into your fullest potential.