Do you ever wonder how to be yourself? Because it really can be hard sometimes.

Let me ask you this: are you one to go with the flow and let things come to you, listening to your heart?

Or, do you tend to get in your head and overthink everything?

I’ve always been more of an in-my-head kind of gal, personally. But it’s something I’ve really been working on shifting in the last 8 or 9 months.

The rewards have been huge.

What I’ve found is that the more I lean in and listen for my intuition – my heart’s voice, I find I waste less time spinning in indecision, I have better self-awareness, and less stress. I feel safer and more secure.

Well, most of the time. 😊

:Lately, I’ve been noticing that as I continue this journey of living in my truth, as the fullest, most authentic expression of who I am, things can get dicey. 😬

I’m learning that being authentic is about so much more than showing up in a group of people and just being yourself.

Or wearing the clothes that you like to wear without worrying about what anyone else thinks.

Or ordering red wine when everyone else is ordering water. Whelp.

It’s those things too, but at the core of it, it’s really living every single moment in integrity with your heart and soul. It’s not trying to sneak past them in hopes they don’t notice that you’re just gonna bypass this one little thing.

It’s making the choices and decisions that are integrity with who you say you are, even if you think no one will notice.

And sometimes, that’s super hard. It really is.

But this whole idea of tuning into your intuition – your heart, is at the center of all of it. And you need this – it’s your inner GPS – to light your way.

Your heart will always lead you in the right direction. And even when it’s hard, your heart will reassure you that it’s the right move, even if your head is freaking out – IF you listen.

This has all been really present for me lately as I navigate some things that are really asking me to look closely at what is true to who I am.

The second piece of this is letting your heart show you the way to who you truly are. When things get difficult it’s tempting to want to just slide by and do the easy thing. And maybe no one will notice, but your heart will.

That’s where leaning into your intuition, listening to your heart, comes in.

When in doubt, it’s time to get quiet. Close your eyes. Take a few deep breaths. Hand on your heart.

Tune in to the thing that will never fail you – your heart. Your intuition.

As Rumi said, there’s a voice that doesn’t use words. Listen.

That’s your heart.

Your intuition is an important tool with the big things, like staying in integrity with your truth. But you can also practice listening to your heart in small ways, too. That way, when the stakes are higher, you’ve already gotten to know your heart’s voice and you’ll have an easier time hearing it, sensing it, feeling it, and trusting it.

Here’s an example.

Normally spend a bit of time choosing a topic, planning, and outlining each episode of Real, Brave, & Unstoppable. But this week, I felt the pull to just get quiet, listen to MY heart and do the first thing that came to me.

No plans, no outlines, just a microphone, and some recording software.

And little ol’ me.

It was freeing, fun, and liberating. Blissful even.

So this week on the podcast I’m just talking about this very thing – how to be yourself, even when it’s hard, and how listening to your heart can lead the way.

And I love what came through.

So thank you heart ❤️ for leading the way. (And thank you brain 🧠 for staying OUT of the way).

I hope you enjoy the episode!

Want to learn more about my programs? Let’s Talk.

Click HERE to schedule a call.

Transcript of Episode 75: How to Be Yourself, Even When it’s Hard

Ep 75

[00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to episode number 75. I don’t know, I feel like this is a big milestone. Episode 75.

I’m going to try something a little different today. Normally I spend a lot of time thinking about what topic I want to bring to you. And I spend a lot of time outlining it and making sure it’s…Ah, I guess maybe there’s a little perfectionism in there if I’m being honest with myself!

So, today I decided to do something a little different.

I’ve had on my to-do list to make a plan for the year for the podcast and roughly outline like what topics I want in each episode. I haven’t done that yet. I’ve been kind of focusing my efforts in some other places.

I was on retreat a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve just had my mind on some

[00:01:00] some less planning-oriented things. I also hosted the goals with soul challenge, so, you know, I’ve been kinda busy with some other things. And, I haven’t made that plan. I had on my to-do list today to record a podcast. Normally, I have them recorded in advance, like a little further in advance, but I sat down, I was like, what do I want to do this week?

And I started to go through my list of content ideas and then I said, you know what? No. I’m going to just sit down and I’m going to close my eyes. Connect with my breath. And I’m going to just tune in and talk about the first thing that comes to me. Cause that’s intuition. That’s letting things, letting your soul or your heart guide you. Right? So actually today, what I’m going to talk about is that very thing – is letting things come to you. And I maybe have talked about this before. I don’t know, but today will

[00:02:00] be from a different perspective. I can tell you that much. So to give you a little background of why this comes up for me or why this is really present for me is that I have been working on some coaching certifications since June and,  Darla LeDoux who was on the podcast last time – episode 74, we talked about energy shifting energy patterns.

She is the creator of the programs that I’m in right now. And she’s a college friend. We had kind of fallen out of touch for a lot of years. But she’s brilliant. Brilliant in what she does. I reconnected with her several years ago and didn’t start working with her right away because at that time, I wasn’t even sure I wanted to be at coach. I didn’t really even know it was a thing that I would be interested in or able to do.  But I guess probably six years later, I just really had this feeling that working with her was the right thing.

And the cost of it was – in my past that would have stopped me. You know, how to afford it. It’s not cheap.

But I learned from her, actually in a conversation with Darla, when I reconnected with her, about money – that really changed my life. She had invited me to a retreat that was like $14,000. And at the time I was like, that’s ridiculous. I can’t, who does that? Like, I can’t even imagine spending that much money on myself.

And it was in that conversation though that I realized that I had a really limited set of beliefs around money and myself. And the conversation that I had with her, I can’t even really explain to you what it was exactly other than I left that conversation

A little pissed off because she really challenged me. And in my limited thinking I couldn’t really see the possibility that she was putting in my, you know, out into my consciousness.

While we were on the call, she talked about feeling into the retreat and letting my intuition tell me if it was for me or not.

And that was kind of foreign to me. I mean, come on, I’m an engineer by education. Uh, engineers…you know, we operate on data and logic. Not intuition. That’s kinda woo and fluffy, airy fairy. Like what the heck is that? Right?

But I left the call and I started to do that. I started to just kind of like, let go of my thought stream. And I started to kind of just feel into it. And it turned out what my intuition told me was that her retreat that was a lot of money for me, yes, but even so, it just wasn’t right for me at that time.

And it wasn’t necessarily about the money. It was more that it just didn’t feel right. But that conversation really changed my beliefs about money and investing in my own education and self-care. But it also, it also changed my life in terms of this amazing tool that we have, which is intuition.

And, intuition is really energy. And so that’s, what I want to talk about today is just listening.

Getting quiet. And allowing your spirit, your soul to talk to you.

I’ve been doing a lot of work around showing up in the world as the true person that I am. And what I’ve been learning is that it’s really easy to, well, it’s not necessarily easy, but if you’re thinking about being authentic on the level of showing up

[00:06:00] in a group of people and being yourself without worrying about what other people think,

that’s not necessarily easy. But it’s, it’s work that’s tangible and it’s work that we can kind of understand. But what I’ve been learning lately. Is that there’s a saying in my industry, maybe you’ve heard it, maybe you haven’t, in terms of personal growth, new level new devil.

What that means is that your journey of personal growth, personal development, soul development, whatever it is  – that growth journey that you’re on. It’s never done. And so you can hear that and go, oh shit. It’s never done, or you can look at it or you can hear that and say, Wow. That’s really beautiful. I always get to learn something new about myself. I invite you to choose whichever thought works for you. But.

I really invite you to consider the last one I mentioned, because it just makes your life feel better.

[00:07:00]  What I’ve learned is…

I’ve learned to be super aware of my truth. And showing up in my truth. And what I realized is that it goes beyond being yourself in a group of people or, you know, being yourself in what you wear, how you express yourself. It goes beyond that. And when it goes, when it goes beyond that, that’s where you reach that new level.

Because some of the things that you are going to be faced with when you have that next level of awareness are difficult to do in your truth.

Let me give you an example.

I’m in a relationship right now that has been a little rocky. And it’s not

feeling necessarily true to me anymore. And so there’s a

[00:08:00] piece of me that it’s like, what do I do with this? I need to be in my truth. And what is my truth? And in this sort of a situation, there are a lot of things. And if you have something that’s difficult in your life right now where you have to make a decision,

there are a lot of things that your brain will throw out at you that are going to try to impact that.

Your brain is going to say. Yeah, but I don’t want to be alone. Your brain is going to say. Yeah, but I don’t know if I want to try this on my own. I don’t want to do this on my own again. I  don’t want to go through all of the stuff again, or, you know, if you’re thinking about leaving a job that’s not working for you, maybe your brain says Yeah, but what if you don’t find something. Or what if the next job is worse?

Your brain always wants to keep you in the comfort zone. We talk about [00:09:00] that a lot on this show!  Your brain always wants to keep you safe and it will do anything to try to keep you safe. So what I’ve been realizing, and the relationship is just one example,

I’ve been learning that this piece of living in your truth, being authentic, it just, it goes so deep.

And so where I’m going with this is…

Yes, work on the simple things or, you know, the seemingly simple things like. Expressing. Testing yourself and showing up in groups of people and being yourself. And trying to

[00:10:00] let go of having to have things perfect. And, you know, just come back to you. Come back to your intuition. What feels important?

How do you want to feel? Like I did in the goals with soul challenge. We talked the whole week about how do you want to feel in your life and setting your goals around that. And how you want to feel is such a great emotional GPS. It’s a great way to think about it because your feelings will always guide you.

If you’re not feeling good. You’re not on the right track. You know, something that you’re working on or the, uh, situation and that you’re in. Is not feeling good.

You’re not on the right track. It’s a signal to course correct.

And in the challenge. We talked a lot about course correction and why it’s okay. In our society, we’ve been taught that that’s failure. If you give up on a goal or if you. You know, make it easier. Or water it down. You lost. You failed. You’re quitting. Right, but that’s not true.

If you come back to your heart and what you want to feel in your heart. You can never fail. Because you’re the one who gets to decide that. And to know how you want to feel, this is I’m getting to the intuition piece, is you can always come back t othat intuition.

How do I want to feel, what does my heart say? And that means getting out of your head. And, and that’s hard for a lot of us, like, trust me, like I said, trained engineer, logic data. All in the head. Right. So, getting out of my head was a really hard thing to be able to do. But when you’re in your

[00:12:00] head, that’s where perfectionism happens.

That’s where people pleasing happens. That’s where not believing in yourself happens. You’re letting your ego run the show. And like I said, your ego always wants to protect you. Your ego always wants to keep you safe. And like I also said, it will do anything to keep you safe and comfortable.

But. As I always tell my kids that is not where the magic happens. And they always roll their eyes at me and they’re like, oh God, mom, that’s please don’t say that anymore. But it’s so true. It’s so true.

I think that using our intuition when we’re afraid, when we’re about to step out of our comfort zones is so important. So, let me paint you a picture. When you’re about to do something scary.

Let’s say you’re going. To have a difficult conversation with your partner. And you’ve been avoiding it for a long time. It’s in your comfort zone to just let things go at the status [00:13:00] quo.

So having this conversation. Is. It’s. Definitely scary.

There are a couple of things that work really well. And I want to plant these in your head. The first thing that you want to do is tune in to your heart, just get quiet. Put your hand on your heart. Breathe. Close your eyes.

Breathe through your whole body. There are some other breathing techniques too, that really help you get out of your head and in your body but do that. And when you can do that, you can start to really feel that intuition. And it’s not really words. Rumi said, there’s a voice that doesn’t use words. Listen. And it’s like that. It’s like a feeling.

And if you listen to the episode I did with Talia Joy, I don’t remember what episode it is (in show notes), but it was about intuition and the different types of [00:14:00] intuition. Go back and listen to that episode because some people will see visions. Some people will hear things. Some people will sense things. Some people get a feeling and everyone is different.

So, if you can learn to recognize the way your intuition speaks to you. It’s super helpful. So, get into your body and connect with your intuition.

And when you can do that, that’s where you can ask yourself, how do I want to show up in this situation? How do I want to feel? First of all, if you’re going to have a conversation with your partner that’s difficult, you might want to feel nonjudgmental. You might want to feel open. You might want to feel love. Curiosity. Respect. Respectfulness.

Really good to start there. And you have this home base, then you have an [00:15:00] emotional GPS for your conversation, for the hard thing, whatever it is.

And then you can, when you’re in the middle of it, You can use that as a touch point. You can remember as you’re going through. You can keep those words in mind. As you’re going through your scary situation. And you can remember. And here’s the other thing that I want to really impress upon you is.

Your intuition is your guide, but it will not do the work for you. So listen to your intuition, you ground into how you want to feel. And then you use those, those two things to guide you through the situation. You use those things to guide you.

As you step outside of the comfort zone, you’re going to feel uncomfortable. You might feel stress, you might feel it in your chest. You might feel like if you get tension in your neck, but pay attention to your body.

[00:16:00] Really be present in these times. When you’re really present, you’ll be able to ground into those words that your intuition gave you, that your heart and your soul gave you.

So important. So important.

This is also work that I do with people when I’m coaching them. Same thing. So it’s hard to sometimes to come up with the words because we’re not used to naming them and naming the ways of the way we want to show up. We’re not used to doing this work. So. When I work with clients on this sort of thing,

we will source these words together. And I will help pull them find the right words for them. And then I will give the person something to do and experience to have that will help them embody those words. So that’s the other piece of it.

You [00:17:00] use your intuition to know how you want to feel and how you want to show up. You have that conversation internally.

And then you give yourself an experience that helps you embody that. Because it’s a different way of being, and that’s why people try to do this work and  they’re not successful in it. Because it’s one thing to have an insight. But the other side of it is that you have to give yourself a different experience. You can’t just say, oh, I’m going to go into this conversation feeling open and respectful and nonjudgmental and not do anything to really ground that in you. So that’s why the experience is so important. Really important. And when you can do that, you’re going to shift your entire energy pattern.

And, you can then go back to your body in those hard, uncomfortable out of your comfort zone situations, you can come back to your body because your body is now [00:18:00] going to know what it feels like to feel those things, those feelings that you want to feel that your intuition said, this is my sourced energy. This is how I want to show up.

And the more you do that, the more it becomes a part of who you are. And that’s part of what I do too, is the integration part of, you know, making that part of the fabric of your being. That’s that just becomes who you are. And that’s how you show up all the time. It’s building a really big habit, essentially.

It’s one of the hardest habits, because there’s so many little pieces to it. We have all of our pre-programmed beliefs, the little stories that we’ve grown up believing that keep us from getting out of our comfort zone from really making meaningful change. There’s all these little things that it’s like a web or like a [00:19:00] rope that gets tangled.

And you’ve got to untangle all of these things before you can really show up in the way that you’re meant to show up. And it doesn’t have to take a long time. But sometimes it does. It just depends on how tangled up everything is.

But you always have to start by connecting with that intuition.

So today as I started this podcast episode, I didn’t, I didn’t script it. I didn’t even make an outline. Uh, the only thing I knew when I hit record was that I was somehow going to talk about listening to your intuition. And I really didn’t know the direction that this episode was even going to take.

But there is some reason that. I was supposed to deliver this message to you today.

It came through me in a really cool way. And so I invite you to try that. To be open. [00:20:00] to different ways of being. And to connect with your inner self, your higher self, your intuition, your heart, your soul, your word, whatever word resonates for you. You have to pick one that resonates, but to just really tune into your being – not your head to decide how you want to show up.

And it’s really kind of fun. Like, this was fun for me to just show up and start talking. And it was a little, you know, a little uncomfortable because sometimes when I don’t have the. The outline. I tend to talk a lot and go off the rails a little bit. Uh, or at least that’s my story. But today it was different.

I didn’t have that thought, oh my God, I might go off the rails. I had a different thought. My thought was, I’m going to tune into my intuition today and I’m going to see what comes to me and I’m just going to go with it. And I’m going to trust that. [00:21:00] My higher self, Source ,God, whatever is coming through me is going to deliver what needs to be said.

That’s that was my process here. And I’m inviting you to try the same thing. And start small. You know, what are, what are you going to have for dinner tonight? Don’t sit and overthink it. My daughter, she has the hardest time making decisions. I’ll say, do you want applesauce or do you want carrots in your lunch today? And she’s like, oh, which one’s easier for you or I don’t know.

And I say, no, just stop. Put your hand on your heart and tune in. Which one do you want? First thing that comes to your mind, that’s the one. And she just looks at me like I’m nuts. But really you can practice with the smallest little things. And

when you do that, you’ll start to get used to hearing the voice or the feeling or the sense, whatever it is that. Your intuition works [00:22:00] best in.

And have fun with it. It is really kind of fun to just. Get out of your head and see what happens.

Try it with the little stuff. And you’re going to start to see, oh, this you’re going to start to feel like it’s fun. And then. When you’re ready to tackle some bigger stuff with that. You can get into your body and really source those feelings you want to feel in how you show up. And you can let those guide you.

And if you need help with that, I’m pretty good at helping people with just that thing. Tapping into their intuition to feel into who they want to be or who they are and how they want to show up. That reflects that true self living in your truth, no matter what, even when it’s hard.

It takes some trust. It takes some surrender. But you can do it and I can help you do that. Let’s talk about it. Kortneyrivard.com/lets-talk.  Schedule a call [00:23:00] it’s free, no obligation, I just want to, you know, educate you on how this kind of work can help you get from where you are to where you would love to be.

And it is possible. Right now, if you don’t feel like it’s possible, or if you’re having a hard time, your brain is getting in your way and you need help getting. Your brain out of your way. So let’s talk.

But do practice this, do practice getting out of your head. And into your body. To listen or feel, or sense, whatever. However your intuition works. But to listen to what your soul is saying to you. Because you always know you have it, you have everything that you need inside of you to make decisions, handle things. Decide what you want for dinner.

Be healthy. All of those things. You have everything inside of you that you [00:24:00] need to feel like a whole, complete person, because you already are a whole complete person. You just need to find it. So start with your intuition. Start with that. And you’ll never go wrong.

One more thing. No, two more things before I go one. Temporarily, I’m going to go to an every other week schedule for real brave and unstoppable. And while you’re at it, I would really love if you would share this podcast with someone that you care about.

And it would be an awesome bonus if you’d give me a rating. Super easy to do. Whatever streaming platform you’re listening to. You just go and click how many stars. You want to give it, and if you’re really feeling generous, if you’d leave me a quick review, that would be super awesome too.

Okay. Friends have a wonderful couple of weeks and I will see you next time.