Inner Wisdom – Michael Neill
SUMMARY
Michael Neill, an internationally renowned transformative coach and bestseller author of The Space Within, talks about following inner wisdom. On this episode, he shares how we can identify if it’s our inner wisdom guiding us.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
When you follow your inner wisdom, your life can be even better than you imagine.Following your inner wisdom doesn’t necessarily mean you’re inside or outside of your comfort zone.
A comfort zone is not a navigational tool. It’s a point of interest.
Listening to your inner wisdom may seem like it’s a voice, but for a lot of people but it is an internal sense of direction.
Following inner wisdom is like getting a taste for good wine. If you drink cheap wine, you won’t notice its taste until you sampled a good one. Then, you can’t go back to drinking that cheap wine again.
Following your inner wisdom can be seemingly completely innocuous, or it can be magical and miraculous, but in every case, you’re just going with what you know to do.
If you fill yourself up from the outside, you don’t have any bandwidth left for what’s inside.
Inner wisdom is in the quiet between the thoughts.
TRANSCRIPTION: INNER WISDOM – MICHAEL NEILL
Kamala Chambers
In this episode, we’re going to be talking about living a life following inner wisdom.
Luis Congdon
Today’s guest is Michael Neil. He’s an internationally renowned transformative coach. He’s also a best-selling author of a fantastic book that I had an opportunity to check out called The Space Within, and another book that I haven’t read quite yet called The Inside-Out Revolution.
What Michael Neill brings to us today is fantastic. It’s an incredible energy for us to settle in, slow down and yet, find new levels of productivity and success that maybe we haven’t tapped into yet.
A little tidbit more about Michael, his books has been translated into 17 languages. His videos TEDx Talks has been viewed by over 150,000 people around the world.
It’s my pleasure and honor to welcome Michael Neill onto the Thriving Launch podcast.
Kamala Chambers
Welcome to the show.
Are you ready to launch?
Michael Neill
I am ready.
Following Inner Wisdom As A Way Of Life
Kamala Chambers
This topic is just so near and dear to my heart because I think that following inner wisdom is the only way I know how to move through my life. That’s what’s most important.
Luis Congdon
As entrepreneurs, that’s something that we can get lost in. As people who are trying to find their mission and share something with the world and get our message out there can be easy for us to get headstrong or wrapped up on how we have to do it or how it has to happen. One of the practices I go back to is finding a way to listen to inner wisdom.
That’s something I’m excited and feel passionate to dive in with you today Michael.
Michael Neill
Yeah.
For me, it is fundamental. People do it within a project anyways. We know if we’re headed towards a goal. We know that we’ve got to follow the inner movement if we’re going to find our way there. It’s rarely linear.
But, the fact that you can let your whole life be great at that way sometimes is bigger than what most people envisioned following inner wisdom might look.
Kamala Chambers
Yeah.
It can mean a lot of things to different people. One thing following inner wisdom means to me is listening, paying attention, and noticing where I feel guided naturally, and what feels the most exciting choice, where at the most clarity comes in and I feel the most relaxed making the choice. It doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m in my comfort zone, though.
I’d love to hear more about your view of following inner wisdom and what that looks like.
Inner Wisdom And Your Comfort Zone
Michael Neill
The funny thing just quickly is that it also doesn’t necessarily mean you’re outside your comfort zone.
A comfort zone becomes a whole different thing. It’s not a navigational tool. It’s just a point of interest. “Oh, I’m uncomfortable about this,” “Oh, I find this easy.” It’s like sometimes I wear a red t-shirt. Sometimes, I wear a blue t-shirt.
I think the listening piece is huge.
Listening to your inner wisdom may seem like it’s a voice, but for a lot of people, it is an internal sense of direction.
Michael Neill
I remember from me. The first time I saw it. I used to do a process every year for myself with my clients called Best year yet, and it’s based on a lovely book written by a woman named Jinny Ditzler called Your Best Year Yet! You’d set your ten goals for the year, and you’d do monthly reviews. It’s a very linear mathematical kind of a process.
I noticed after a year at the end of January, I had done some stuff on my ten goals, but there was this whole other path that my life was taking that has nothing to do with them. It was just kind of what I was doing in my spare time. It was what was happening anyways.
I got interested in the difference between these two pads. The paths I had laid out and was trying to make happen and the path that was laying itself out step by step so naturally that I didn’t necessarily even feel like I was on it. I followed that through that year, and I began to see there is always what I call a path of the soul.
Following Inner Wisdom And Create Big Change
Michael Neill
There is always an unfolding if you’re willing to wait for it to unfold. It’s just like a beat later than the one you make up in your head.
It’s not like wait for it for ten years. You get to the end of everything you know, and then there’s a pause where you feel like there’s nothing else, and that’s when it shows up.
Luis Congdon
I resonate with that and for me, one of the most recent times in my life was when Kamala came into my life.
A lot of you guys here at Thriving Launch know enough about my story now that you’ve gotten the gist that I met Kamala at a point where it seems like everything had broken down and I just didn’t know where to take life anymore.
I had degrees. I had had a wonderful job. I had lost a job. I had ended an amazing relationship that had run its time and got to a place where I just didn’t know where to take life and sat there for nearly a year. Kamala shows up, whisks me off, and opens up the gateways to these other possibilities, and it wasn’t the way that I envisioned my life going but it was the way that I felt inspired to go. Something about it was right.
As I think about what you’re saying, and reflect on that experience, I’m curious, do you think we always had to get to this kind of breaking point to have that turning point? Like “Oh, I’m being guided because I know nothing anymore and so, there is nothing left,” is it possible to cultivate or find that silence?
I don’t know what it is because it feels like such a vague thing.
Inner Wisdom Is Like A Fine Wine
Michael Neill
People often do find they’re being guided when they’ve done as much as they can do and there’s that pause where it’s like you’ve done everything you know to do, but it’s not a prerequisite.
It’s just that most of us are so sure the answers are in our heads that it’s not until we exhaust our own will and our head that we find it.
One of the metaphors I use for it is it’s like getting a taste for good wine. If you drink cheap wine, which my wife and I did for years because we were students and that’s we could afford, you don’t notice. You just say “This is fine. This wine is great.”
But then, you have really good wine, and you see it’s a whole different thing. It has flavor and richness, and it doesn’t give you a hangover. It’s this whole other thing and then you know you can’t go back to drinking the cheap stuff.
When you start to recognize where your inner sense of direction is taking you and how beautiful that unfolding is compared to your best efforts, you lose your taste for your own will, and you develop a taste for this dance with life that is always there.
There’s an old saying, a tribute to Nietzsche that “Those who dance were thought insane by those who could not hear the music.”
When you’re following inner wisdom, you’re dancing to an inner music. Like with music, you don’t know what’s happening next and when you’re in the dance, you don’t need to know because you’re just moving with the music as it plays.
That dance is for me, one of the most thrilling experiences that are available to us in our lives. By some beautiful kindness of the design, it seems to take us to the perfect place again and again.
Following Inner Wisdom For The First Time
Kamala Chambers
I have a liking to this to walking through a door that you can’t come back through.
Once you’ve lived or decided to live life with that listening, the guidance, and that inner knowing that is propelling you forward, you can’t go back.
Michael Neill
I think fortunately or unfortunately, you can.
It’s just that when you go back, you feel a bit lost because something is missing.
Kamala Chambers
That cheap wine just doesn’t taste as sweet.
Michael Neill
You can go back to cheap wine. It’s just no fun anymore.
Kamala Chambers
My first experience of this was when I was 15, hitchhiking around The United States. It was 1999, and I had no idea where I was going to go. We just basically went wherever the ride would take us. For me, that experience was crucial because it showed me how just following the flow and following that inner guidance was so important for safety, for manifesting, for creating incredible experiences and attracting things.
I remember waking up one morning from a dream that we got picked up by a school bus. I thought “Well, that’s a strange dream.” Then we got dropped off right in front of a prison where it said “Do not pick up hitchhikers for the next 100 miles.” I thought “We’re going to be out in the middle of the desert with no ride.” But circumstances happen where the next thing happen we got picked up by a school bus.
Magic can happen when we do follow that guidance.
Michael Neill
See, it’s interesting. I love that. I have stories like that. I love it when it happens like that, and I think sometimes, we wait for it to look magical and we don’t notice that it’s there in the ordinary moments too.
It’s there in deciding to have a cup of coffee versus a cup of tea. It’s there in for some reasons, striking up a conversation with somebody had a bus stop or in a coffee shop when normally you wouldn’t.
Following that guidance can be seemingly completely innocuous, or it can be seemingly magical and miraculous, but in every case, you’re just going with what you know to do.
You’re going with what occurs to you at the moment and rather than making you into some impulsive, spacey, unreliable person. You can do all that within the structure and basic reliability of making and keeping agreements that make the world go round.
It’s just you do that what/where it’s fundamentally coming from is different.
Kamala Chambers
One question I hear people asking about this is how do I know I’m listening to that inner guidance and that inner knowing versus just operating out of fear or operating out of my head? I’ve seen some have this trouble deciphering.
Michael Neill
Yeah.
That is the most common question, and there is a pretty reliable answer, which is that if you’re feeling out of sorts, confused, worked up, scared, uncomfortable, angry, that’s not wisdom. That’s what our thinking feels like.
If there is a sense of expansiveness, of ease, of well-being, of clarity, of almost not having a decision to make, you’re just almost doing it because why wouldn’t you, that’s what our wisdom feels like.
I wrote a line in my first book, which was that “The still small voice within doesn’t think you suck.”
How To Follow Inner Wisdom When You Don’t Have Time
Luis Congdon
I like that.
One of the things that come up for me, and you and Kamala are starting to touch on it, is if you’re a parent, you’re running a business, you got out a job. We got all these different things, and you do have to maintain some schedule and regularity about your life. You touched on that.
I’m curious. Are there some things we can do that can help cultivate that space that will allow you to tune in and listen to that guidance? Are there things that you do in your life that enable you to tap into that to make sure that you’re not just overwhelmed with the voices in your head or what the demands of life or the external things that pull you away from that?
Michael Neill
I know it wasn’t a deliberate set-up, but I did write a book called The Space Within. That’s exactly what I talked about it like.
Kamala Chambers
I think Luis knew that.
Michael Neill
The space is already there. We fill it up with noise. So no, I don’t have any particular practices, but I do know that my life works better when I’m in touch with that space inside myself. I am drawn towards that inner quiet. I’m drawn towards that inner spaciousness. I’m less inclined to fill it up with more Facebook posts or books.
It’s not about being online or offline.
If you fill yourself up from the outside, you don’t have any bandwidth left for what’s inside.
Michael Neill
If you spend all your time reading books, you don’t have a chance to read consciousness.
Cultivating A Rich Internal Life And Inner Wisdom
Kamala Chambers
There’s something to say about cultivating a rich internal life.
When we create that quiet and that space, it’s amazing what kind of company you can keep when you quiet down all the voices.
I think one of the reasons for reaching for excess input from other people or media because we don’t want to hear what’s going on inside our own heads. That adds to the noise. Going outside and going outside.
Michael Neill
I don’t want to imply that you need to go on an information-fast. I think most people could do with at least some intermittent fasting.
If you haven’t explored the inner library, it doesn’t matter how full your other library is. I say this is somebody who’s read over 2,000 business books, personal development books, and spiritual books.
I love books. I write books, and there’s a certain point at which you have to stop looking outside you, and you have to start listening to this real-time wisdom that we all have inside us.
Kamala Chambers
I’d love to hear just a little bit more what that looks like, what that feels like so we can bring the Thriving Launchers into that experience.
How Does It Feel To Follow Inner Wisdom
Michael Neill
This is the difficult or funny thing. It doesn’t necessarily look like anything because it’s an internal experience.
In a very simple way, when you get up from your desk and go to make a cup of coffee or go to the bathroom, or go to do something other than what you’ve been doing. If you drop into yourself, when you stop engaging in activity, if you come back home to yourself, you got time in your day to tune in regardless of how busy you are.
But what most of us do is the activity never stops. As soon as we get up from our computer, we’re on our heads about the next thing. While we’re making the cup of tea, we’re working on the next thing. While we’re brushing our teeth we’re reading the book and working on the business plan and then we’re back online.
It’s not necessarily that you have to have periods of reflection. Though, most people I know do wind up getting a little bit more reflective and more contemplative in their lives. It’s more a case of just recognizing that’s where your bread is buttered. What you’re looking for is in the quiet between the thoughts. It’s not in the habitual thoughts themselves.
Luis Congdon
I love what you just said, and I connect to it. Because, this morning I got up, it’s something I’m working not to do as often is I reach for my phone in the morning. That’s one of the first things that I do.
Listen To Inner Wisdom And Quiet Everything Else
Luis Congdon
This morning, I woke up and I’m telling myself I’m not going to do that, and I’ve been doing this for the past few days, weaved in and out of this habit. This morning, I thought “I’m just kind of close my eyes and think of a few things that I feel grateful for and just breathe for a moment.”
I did that, and then I did a few other things. Then, I went to my computer and my phone. I started opening up all these tabs, doing things with the social media, the email, work related things, and I started thinking “Man, it’s hard for me to get any work done this way.” Because I have all these windows open and all these things in my head going on “Do this, do that.”
So I shut all these stuff down and closed my eyes again and thought “Productivity for me is probably slower than I think about it right now, so I’m going to slow down.” So slow down for a moment, took a few deep breaths, opened up and focused on one task.
Now, this is information that I already know but I consistently have to come back to the basics of life and the things that I’ve realized, it’s not a one-time realization. I go back to this stuff.
So I focused on one thing, and as I finished that, I was like “Oh, so much easier when I just give space to that one thing, work on it, take a little moment, switch to the next thing.” It’s so much easier for me to feel fulfilled because that moment was filled instead of trying to scatter it.
Follow Inner Wisdom Consciously
Michael Neill
There’s something I want to pick up on what you’re saying, Luis, because it’s the missing piece for so many people with this.
You don’t have to have a list of things to do. Instead, it occurred to you. “You know what? I’m not going to grab my phone first thing.” It then occurred to you “I need to take a few deep breaths. I’m going to think of some things I’m grateful for.” Later, it occurred to you, “Hey, one thing.”
We already know our inner wisdom, our inner knowing already knows how to be more productive, how to live more of an inside out inner wisdom and it’s continually telling us in real time.
You don’t have to have a checklist because as you go, that very inner voice that had it occurred to you to not check your phone, to focus on just one thing, to breathe deep and think of things that you are grateful for is always on and always inside you. It’s like a homing mechanism, and you can rely on it.
The more you rely on your inner wisdom, the more reliable it becomes.
Luis Congdon
I love that. It reminds me of one of the interviews that I did with Nirmala.
One of the things that he talked about is this kind of spontaneous realization or life occurring in the moment and being very present, and being led to “Oh, this is what’s next, and this is what’s next.” We can still have plans, but leaving space for that other part of ourselves that is ever present and moving moment by moment, and moving with that even within a context of scheduling.
The One Thing You Need To Know About Inner Wisdom
Michael Neill
That is something Kamala said that I say it doesn’t look like anything but I can say, one of the things that look like in my business is we have to book things sometimes, a year to 18 months in advance. Instead of trying to plan out a year ahead or plan out 18 months ahead, we now look to have my schedule about 40 – 50% set a year out because we need a certain amount of structure.
We need a certain amount of things in place to maintain a business of the size and scope that we’ve got, but we know that what comes up along the way is often richer and more alive, and more perfect than what we could plan, so we do very deliberately.
Yes, we set things out into the future, but we also leave lots of space for things to arise.
Luis Congdon
Thank you so much, Michael Neill. I appreciate the reflection that you’ve given me today, the reflection that you’ve given all of us here at Thriving Launch.
Just in this dialog and this conversation and chat, I feel like a part of me came home more into myself relaxed, slowed down. I was very here with you.
I want to thank you for bringing that energy into the world and thank you for joining us here at Thriving Launch.
Michael Neill
Thanks for having me.
