Latest / Your Money, Your Rules | Financial Mastery, Wealth Mindset, Leadership Principles, Intuitive Decision-Making, Human Design / 218 | What Ignoring Your Intuition Is Costing Your Business

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218 | What Ignoring Your Intuition Is Costing Your Business · Your Money, Your Rules | Financial Mastery, Wealth Mindset, Leadership Principles, Intuitive Decision-Making, Human Design

• 0:01
  Erin Gray: Welcome back to the podcast.
• 0:03
  Erin Gray: I am currently paying the price for not listening to my intuition.
• 0:06
  Erin Gray: I know that I talk about listening to your intuition all the time and letting that run your business.
• 0:10
  Erin Gray: And I am a true, I like to consider myself a true embodiment of my work and sharing when I am not following what I preach.
• 0:19
  Erin Gray: And I am not just talking about money, I'm talking about time.
• 0:22
  Erin Gray: I'm talking about the energetics of it.
• 0:25
  Erin Gray: I'm talking about the frustration, the delays, having to go back and redo something that I knew from the beginning I wanted a certain way.
• 0:32
  Erin Gray: And so today on the podcast, I want to discuss what not trusting your intuition is actually costing you.
• 0:38
  Erin Gray: So let's dive in.
• 0:40
  Erin Gray: So I knew I wanted an entire new website built because even though I've always mentored and advised on business and money, the old website that I had up didn't really elaborate or illuminate what I actually provide to clients.
• 0:57
  Erin Gray: So I knew I wanted an entire new website built.
• 1:00
  Erin Gray: And when I talked to them, because we had started off about working on maybe some different taking my podcast and making some blog posts.
• 1:09
  Erin Gray: But when I approached the idea with them, one of the things that they told me was, you know, we can we can modify your current website with the new copy.
• 1:19
  Erin Gray: And in my body at that moment, I knew that that's not what I wanted.
• 1:23
  Erin Gray: I wanted a whole new look because if you listen to my previous podcast, episode 217, about feeling grief with up-leveling, I grow often and I grow quickly and I grow a lot.
• 1:36
  Erin Gray: And so who I was six months ago is not who I am now.
• 1:39
  Erin Gray: And I knew that I wanted that this website that I currently had was not going to shine a light on or really show and illuminate my gifts and really what I provide to clients.
• 1:52
  Erin Gray: And so I knew I wanted to have a new website.
• 1:54
  Erin Gray: And like I said, they told me that they could modify the one that we had.
• 1:56
  Erin Gray: And so I let that go.
• 1:59
  Erin Gray: And as we were redesigning the copy, and as I was suggesting different things along the way, and I would push back when it came to the design perspective, the designer and I had a very candid conversation with each other.
• 2:18
  Erin Gray: And he said, You know, Erin, you are really hard to please.
• 2:22
  Erin Gray: And I said, I'm actually not hard to please.
• 2:25
  Erin Gray: What has happened is I have allowed you and a couple of other people on his team to make decisions that I actually was against because that's what you wanted, versus me standing up and saying that this is actually the way that I want to do it.
• 2:40
  Erin Gray: Even though that's not the way that your process is, because we went into a whole thing about his process and how he does it.
• 2:46
  Erin Gray: And I was like, I don't like it.
• 2:48
  Erin Gray: That that doesn't work for me.
• 2:49
  Erin Gray: Maybe that's worked for you and all of the people that you've built websites for, but it's not working for me.
• 2:54
  Erin Gray: So in the beginning, what I was noticing I was doing is I was acquiescing.
• 2:58
  Erin Gray: I was saying okay when I really meant no.
• 3:01
  Erin Gray: And then I noticed my people pleasing coming out.
• 3:03
  Erin Gray: And I recognized that I was going along to make peace versus stand up and say actually what I wanted because I didn't want to create friction.
• 3:14
  Erin Gray: Because I had and have stories around, you know, like asking for too much and being too demanding or too bossy, or all of the beliefs that we carry that pop up when we are up-leveling.
• 3:28
  Erin Gray: And so he and I had a very candid conversation.
• 3:31
  Erin Gray: I asked him his process.
• 3:32
  Erin Gray: I told him that process doesn't work for me.
• 3:34
  Erin Gray: And I said, this is actually how I want to do it moving forward.
• 3:38
  Erin Gray: And so after having that conversation, we actually went back to what I originally wanted months before and recognizing the energy and the frustration that I was feeling because I was allowing someone else to make decisions for me, or I should say, I'm acquiescing my power to them and allowing them to do it their way because that's what was convenient for them or that's what they're used to.
• 4:02
  Erin Gray: Which that is another thing that I want to bring up here is a lot of times we will go against our intuition or what we want because it makes those other people, I don't want to say it makes them feel uncomfortable, but our growth sometimes can have it can create an uncomfortable feeling in someone else's body because we are asking them to think at a higher level or a different level or to do things that they're not used to doing.
• 4:26
  Erin Gray: And the frustrating part is that I knew from the get-go, like this wasn't a situation where I didn't know what I wanted.
• 4:34
  Erin Gray: I knew what I wanted, and I let somebody else's experience and expertise override my own knowing.
• 4:42
  Erin Gray: And it made me think about, you know, what is not following our intuition actually costing us when we don't trust ourselves.
• 4:53
  Erin Gray: How is that actually showing up in our business?
• 4:55
  Erin Gray: And what is that actually creating for us in more time or more money or more frustration or mental bandwidth or whatever it might be?
• 5:03
  Erin Gray: And so for all of us, the first thing we have to think about is sometimes you already know before you ask anyone else.
• 5:11
  Erin Gray: Like I think a lot of times that's what we do.
• 5:13
  Erin Gray: We know before we ask anyone else.
• 5:15
  Erin Gray: And in my experience, we almost always know and we ask because we're looking for external validation.
• 5:21
  Erin Gray: Like I said, I don't always follow my intuition perfectly.
• 5:24
  Erin Gray: I'm getting better.
• 5:25
  Erin Gray: I'm probably, you know, 90-ish percent 95% at a place where I follow my intuition, but there is still that people pleasing part in me where I still acquiesce and I still think it might allow my head to take over rather than my intuition.
• 5:43
  Erin Gray: And so because we're looking for that external validation or because we have those people-pleasing beliefs within us and we're not wanting to challenge them, we outsource our knowing, we override our intuition because it's ultimately is to make everybody else feel comfortable.
• 5:59
  Erin Gray: But really, what we're doing is we are the ones that feel uncomfortable, right?
• 6:03
  Erin Gray: Like, so I was people pleasing and I was saying, okay, well, we'll do it this way, we'll try it, right?
• 6:08
  Erin Gray: Because that's what they wanted to do.
• 6:09
  Erin Gray: But who was the one that was actually feeling all the frustration?
• 6:12
  Erin Gray: Yes, he might have, but I was the one that was, you know, and so really understanding that when we people please, we're actually betraying ourselves.
• 6:22
  Erin Gray: We are not being very kind to ourselves.
• 6:25
  Erin Gray: And yes, that probably is where a lot of our growth is for us is to stand up for ourselves to say, no, we're not doing it that way.
• 6:33
  Erin Gray: That's not how I want to do it.
• 6:34
  Erin Gray: And so it's also being okay with whatever those consequences are.
• 6:39
  Erin Gray: Because I did have the conversation.
• 6:40
  Erin Gray: Like, either we're maybe we're at a point where we don't need to work together anymore.
• 6:43
  Erin Gray: Like I understand and I honor that this is your process, but this process does not work for me.
• 6:47
  Erin Gray: And so if this is how you want to continue, maybe we aren't the best fit for each other, right?
• 6:51
  Erin Gray: Having that conversation versus avoiding having that conversation in the very beginning, right?
• 6:56
  Erin Gray: And I don't think I did that consciously, but instead of saying, no, that's not how I want to do it, getting into his way of thinking, his line of thinking, his understanding his thinking and being like, that's not how I want to do it.
• 7:08
  Erin Gray: And I know that that might be how you do every other client, but that's not how I want this process to work for me.
• 7:14
  Erin Gray: And having that more uncomfortable conversation in the beginning versus allowing it, you know, to be pushed down the road or, you know, the ball to be pushed down the field, and then to then have that conversation months down the road.
• 7:26
  Erin Gray: And there is a difference between I haven't landed yet.
• 7:30
  Erin Gray: So ask me some questions.
• 7:31
  Erin Gray: Like me as a generator, like I do really good with yes or no questions.
• 7:34
  Erin Gray: I tell everybody that I work with, you know, ask me yes or no questions.
• 7:37
  Erin Gray: Do not ask me open-ended questions because I can't get there.
• 7:40
  Erin Gray: I can't tap into my intuition that way.
• 7:42
  Erin Gray: But if you ask me yes or no questions, I can definitely tell you.
• 7:45
  Erin Gray: So there is a difference between I don't know yet, I haven't gained the clarity yet.
• 7:50
  Erin Gray: I need some questions to help me get there.
• 7:53
  Erin Gray: And the difference of I know what I want and I'm still asking someone else and allowing their opinion to override mine and talk me out of it.
• 8:02
  Erin Gray: Especially as successful women, right?
• 8:04
  Erin Gray: We're surrounded by experts, we're surrounded by a CPA, an attorney, someone that helps us with our marketing, or multiple people that might be helping out with our with our marketing, or a website developer, the banker, the business mentor, whatever.
• 8:17
  Erin Gray: Like if you have a fractional CFO or your bookkeeper, like you have so many people, your team, you have so many people around you that have an opinion and that are highly experienced in what they do.
• 8:29
  Erin Gray: And there is nothing wrong.
• 8:31
  Erin Gray: I'm not saying don't get expert advice, right?
• 8:34
  Erin Gray: Like we value, we pay for people to be in our corner, but someone can know more than you about the area of expertise that you're asking about and still not know exactly what it is that you want, right?
• 8:49
  Erin Gray: They're not gonna know more about what you actually want.
• 8:52
  Erin Gray: Like you have to advocate for yourself.
• 8:54
  Erin Gray: We've been trained, we've been conditioned to believe that because they're the experts, they know better.
• 8:59
  Erin Gray: And I think that when we when we come from that place, it's a very disempowering place.
• 9:05
  Erin Gray: Like we can hold them at a level of like, wow, I really value their experience and their expertise.
• 9:11
  Erin Gray: But the fact that we are outsourcing our intuition or our decision making to them, right?
• 9:18
  Erin Gray: And slowly moving further and further away from our original knowing and what we want.
• 9:23
  Erin Gray: I think the other thing too is not trusting yourself actually has a tangible cost, right?
• 9:29
  Erin Gray: Like we tend to talk about intuition like it's this woo-woo thing and it's something that just happens, you know, it's very abstract and it's spiritual.
• 9:36
  Erin Gray: But every single time I have ignored my intuition, I have paid a price.
• 9:41
  Erin Gray: I don't necessarily like thinking of it like that, but like for explanation's sake, like I have paid a price, either with money, with time, with frustration, with rework, with mental bandwidth and jumping through hoops or whatever it might be.
• 9:56
  Erin Gray: Like, and sometimes it's several of those things all at the same time.
• 9:59
  Erin Gray: And so I have a lot of evidence of when I have ignored my intuition, what actually has happened, how it didn't pan out.
• 10:07
  Erin Gray: And I have a lot of evidence of when it actually does.
• 10:10
  Erin Gray: And I think that this might be a really important exercise for you to do because if you are someone who is newer to listening to her intuition and really sinking into it and and following it, I think that the head sometimes can get in the way.
• 10:24
  Erin Gray: And I think that you really have to, like, this is what I had to do in the beginning.
• 10:27
  Erin Gray: Like, I had to make a list of like what was it that when I followed my intuition, what happened, what was the result?
• 10:33
  Erin Gray: I needed my brain needed that evidence for me, versus what was it like when I didn't follow my intuition?
• 10:41
  Erin Gray: And the results were like glaringly obvious.
• 10:44
  Erin Gray: And you know, sometimes you end up doing exactly what you originally wanted, anyways, except like now, you know, you're six months farther down the road, more money has been spent.
• 10:58
  Erin Gray: Maybe there's more frustration.
• 11:00
  Erin Gray: And I think that we always kind of come back to our intuition.
• 11:03
  Erin Gray: Some of us have to, and I've been here, right?
• 11:05
  Erin Gray: Some of us have to like go around the back door to come in the front to recognize, you know, how valuable our intuition is.
• 11:11
  Erin Gray: And I truly do believe that everything works out for us.
• 11:15
  Erin Gray: That is a very empowering belief that I do believe.
• 11:19
  Erin Gray: And I also believe that if we can just trust our intuition, we can lean into our knowing, we can act on that.
• 11:27
  Erin Gray: We can skip a lot of the heartache, the frustration, the financial lessons that we might, or commitments that we might have had to learn along the way.
• 11:39
  Erin Gray: And if you're listening and you're thinking, yeah, well, Aaron, I did follow my intuition and I spent money or I invested in this and I got a yes for this, or I hired this person and I was getting a yes, right?
• 11:50
  Erin Gray: And they weren't the best fit for me, or it didn't pan out the way that I thought that it was going to.
• 11:54
  Erin Gray: My question back to you would be, what was the lesson that you actually needed to learn there?
• 12:00
  Erin Gray: Because I think sometimes we look at our intuition and we think like, oh, if we follow our intuition, it's gonna be rainbows and daisies, and like everything's gonna work out perfectly.
• 12:07
  Erin Gray: And it does work out.
• 12:09
  Erin Gray: It's just sometimes I think with our intuition, like it is for the growth.
• 12:14
  Erin Gray: It is for those uncomfortable lessons that we actually need to learn.
• 12:19
  Erin Gray: And so I don't want you to beat yourself up if you're like, I did listen to my intuition.
• 12:24
  Erin Gray: Like a friend and I were talking the other day.
• 12:26
  Erin Gray: She was like, Yes, but I did get a yes to hire this person.
• 12:28
  Erin Gray: And they ended up not, you know, like down the road, it ended up not being where I wanted to be.
• 12:33
  Erin Gray: And I said, Yes, of course.
• 12:35
  Erin Gray: Because what was the growth that you needed to have?
• 12:38
  Erin Gray: Like the intuition said yes for you to hire that person.
• 12:42
  Erin Gray: And how much growth have you had by working with them and recognizing and you know, having the contrast of what you like and what you don't like, and what you are willing to tolerate and what you are not willing to tolerate.
• 12:52
  Erin Gray: So I don't want you to look at decisions that you have made with your intuition and use that against you to beat yourself up when the result hasn't actually come to fruition for what you thought your head, you know, like what the mind made up versus, you know, our intuition is just like a yes in the moment.
• 13:10
  Erin Gray: And we take that first step and then we have another, you know, then we follow the next step and the next step.
• 13:16
  Erin Gray: Like I think a lot of times we we have this idea in our heads of what it's going to look like.
• 13:22
  Erin Gray: And that's not necessarily what I've ever experienced of what has occurred when I follow my intuition.
• 13:28
  Erin Gray: And so I think you need to give yourself grace if you have followed your intuition and yet you did hire someone and it didn't work out, or you know, you did invest with that person and it didn't work out.
• 13:38
  Erin Gray: Like everything, that's why I said earlier, is like everything for me has the way I like to look at it is from a very empowered place.
• 13:44
  Erin Gray: Like there are so many lessons, even when I followed my intuition and it didn't look the way that I thought it would.
• 13:50
  Erin Gray: And I I think the last thing that I want to say here is, and I've said this in multiple podcasts before, is that expertise is information, you know, but you are the CEO, you are the founder.
• 14:00
  Erin Gray: Like it is always going to come back to you.
• 14:03
  Erin Gray: And I think that when we outsource our knowing, when we outsource our decision making, sometimes it's because we feel fear, sometimes it's like laziness in a way.
• 14:12
  Erin Gray: Like sometimes we just get very comfortable with allowing our CPA to make that decision.
• 14:18
  Erin Gray: If you have a financial advisor, like allowing your financial advisor to make decisions on your behalf because it's just kind of simple.
• 14:26
  Erin Gray: But simple and easy isn't necessarily what we're going for.
• 14:29
  Erin Gray: And I think that when you take control or you own, you take responsibility for every single decision that you make, I think you grow into a completely different person first and foremost.
• 14:43
  Erin Gray: And also you build that muscle where you are unwilling to let make to let people make decisions for you.
• 14:52
  Erin Gray: And obviously, I've said numerous times, and I'll say it till I'm blue in the face, I'm not saying don't have experts.
• 14:59
  Erin Gray: I'm not saying don't listen to experts.
• 15:01
  Erin Gray: I advocate for hiring amazing people.
• 15:04
  Erin Gray: Ask the questions, do your due diligence, get access to the info, you know, that you may not have or you don't understand.
• 15:12
  Erin Gray: Like listen to the different perspectives that they have and still run it through your filter and make your intuitive decision.
• 15:21
  Erin Gray: So I want to leave you with where in your business or in your life do you already know what you want, but you're allowing somebody else's opinion or perspective or years of expertise or good old boys' club or whatever it might be to convince you otherwise.
• 15:43
  Erin Gray: And what might not trusting yourself and following your intuition ultimately cost you?
• 15:51
  Erin Gray: And if you're listening to this and you're thinking, you know what, I want somebody who's gonna advocate for me, who's gonna be in my corner, who's gonna have my back, who's gonna bring the business experience along with the perspective, and who isn't going to gaslight me, who's going to tell me how to live my life or run my business, and who's really going to be alongside me.
• 16:09
  Erin Gray: That is exactly some of the work that I do within my private advisory with my clients.
• 16:13
  Erin Gray: I'm there for you to ask questions.
• 16:15
  Erin Gray: I'm there to give you perspective.
• 16:16
  Erin Gray: I'm there to challenge you and to look at the numbers and the business with you and ultimately help you, like at the end of the day, help you trust yourself to make the decision that's best for you and to really empower you to trust yourself.
• 16:30
  Erin Gray: And if you want that kind of thinking partner and that kind of support in your corner, you can inquire about working with me in the show notes.
• 16:39
  Erin Gray: Okay, that's all I have for you today.
• 16:41
  Erin Gray: I want you to really contemplate and think about where is it?
• 16:45
  Erin Gray: Because I think for some of us, it's it happens so quietly, right?
• 16:50
  Erin Gray: Like it doesn't start at this big thing.
• 16:52
  Erin Gray: It's like, I mean, that's what started with me in the website.
• 16:54
  Erin Gray: It was like, okay, well, we can do that.
• 16:56
  Erin Gray: You know, it's like the nice girl energy versus standing up and saying, no, that's not what I want.
• 17:01
  Erin Gray: That's not what I want to do, that's not what I've envisioned.
• 17:04
  Erin Gray: I don't want to do it your way.
• 17:05
  Erin Gray: So really contemplate and think about where you are outsourcing and not trusting your intuition, or I should say, not following your intuition and standing up for yourself.
• 17:16
  Erin Gray: Okay, I'll see you in the next episode.