I recently had a huge sucker-punch right to my intuitive gut. I literally thought I was going to lose my cookies it was such a shock….and yet, it wasn’t a complete surprise, only the details were mostly a surprise.
Long story short, I followed a couple recommendations from very trustworthy sources about inviting a local male speaker to come present to our local women’s networking group. Nothing out of the ordinary there, except that I do try to have female speakers as much as possible because there are so many awesome ones out there, and our audience seem to really connect with female speakers.
When I first heard about him I had the slightest reservation – a slight niggling in my awareness. Chalking that up to my preference for booking women, I decided it was time to branch out and get a male perspective. I reached out and we set a time to talk.
Honest to God, the moment we got on the phone I knew this wasn’t going to be a good fit. Something was “off” in his energy and in the way he spoke about his topic. But my mind and some deep-seated habitual pattern overrode this knowing. He was very smooth and able to talk fast and say exactly what I needed to hear to feel at ease.
I watched it happen, felt my gut-knowing* slip under the desire to get someone booked and fast so I could move on to my next task, and I asked him questions to see if there was some other topic he could speak on that may be a better fit and more relevant to our audience. We found something that sounded interesting and agreed he would speak.
I hung up and felt relieved that I had fulfilled my “duty”and hopeful that despite my initial reservations, it would be OK.
A couple email exchanges later I was feeling doubtful again, but let it go.
Sometimes I feel that way because I’m picky about my speakers and writers and I want to look good as the speaker chair. (I’m human, can you blame me?)
Increasingly anxious over the next couple weeks I kept feeling “off” about the event and whether or not this was the right choice to have him on our stage. I even debated not attending because I didn’t want to be there with him speaking, I wanted to put distance between myself and him. Again, I wrote this off as my ego getting all bunged up, and I knew I wasn’t willing to run away anymore when situations potentially got uncomfortable. I had a job to do, and I was going to show up and do it to the best of my ability.
About a week before the event I’m told that we need to cancel this speaker because we got information that he is a convicted child-molester.
WTF?????????
Are you kidding me?!?! Seriously, I almost threw up when I read the articles and saw the picture of our speaker in shackles and an orange suit.
Dammit. I have always trusted my intuition when it comes to vetting speakers, with pretty solid & positive results. The one time I didn’t…
Oy.
I KNEW it. I KNEW something was off AND I DIDN’T LISTEN!
I knew that my intuition hadn’t failed me. I had failed to heed it.
…this was perhaps the most gut-wrenching piece of the whole debacle.
I also knew 2 others things in that moment:
- Most people don’t know how to discern their intuition from fear or unconscious
beliefs and patterns - Most people do exactly what I did: override their intuition with logic or rationalizations
This must stop.
Seriously. If we are to evolve as human beings we must learn how to use this fine- tuned instrument (and teach our kids to use and TRUST it) if we are to have real and authentic relationships and conversations with one another and even keep ourselves and our kids safe!
Imagine if the parents of all the girls he ‘befriended’ on the internet could discern when someone or something is off, or run the other way when meeting face to face and in a risky situation?
So, once I got over the initial shock, I asked myself one of my favorite questions (because I KNEW there was a lesson & healing in there for me):
“What’s right about this situation?”
Here’s what I got:
- My intuition is ALIVE & WELL and seriously fine-tuned! It works!!!!!!!! (Total user error – which I can change!) I can trust it. I can tell when I’m overriding it. I GOT THE POWER!!!!
- If my intuition is alive and well and working (and I KNOW when someone is lying or unhealthy – which I do), then I can finally forgive myself for honoring it and leaving a group of women who were not healthy for me, treated me as if I was the “one with the problem” and who sucked my energy. I wasn’t sure I could trust my intuition, maybe I was making it all up??)
YES!!!!!! What a freeing feeling and totally validating. I can forgive them, and most importantly forgive myself for overriding and not trusting myself in the first place and letting the inauthenticity fester for so long because I didn’t want to rock the boat and I didn’t know if what I was experiencing was real.
Oh, but it was.
So, THANK YOU ex-speaker, ex-con, for showing up in my life and helping me heal my relationship with my intuition. Thank you for inspiring me and motivating me to come out of the intuitive closet and get fired up about this, and share my passion, insight, knowledge & experience with parents and their children so we can keep folks like you out of business (and perhaps even be able to help you heal.)
Friends, we can do this…one intuitive hit heeded at a time.
From My Heart to Yours,
Kris
PS Join us for next week’s Ask Kris call…we’ll be covering intuition in a way you’ve never heard before! See details below.
*Not everyone is designed to listen to their gut by the way! Click here for more insight into that…
Ask Kris: The Highly Conscious Family Hour
Wednesday July 15th 12:00pm PST
To kick off this free monthly series I will be diving right into the good stuff:
Psychic or Psycho? How to understand and use your intuition and
help your sensitive family members do the same
*** You are part of a family, so even if you don’t have kids, this call will help you
understand your own family of origin dynamics!***
We’ll be covering:
- The difference between psychic and intuitive – is there one?
- Intuitive “hit” or hallucination? How to tell the difference.
- Empathy: connector or destroyer of relationships?
- Care and feeding of your intuitive, sensitive, highly gifted family members (maybe that’s YOU!)
…and of course answering your questions!
