From Awareness To Action!

✨ Hello, I'm Fran, your NLP Coach. In this episode, I'm interviewing Yolanda G Brooks to discuss relationships, identity, and somatic writing - from awareness to action!

Meet Yolanda - The Conscious Life Coach & Psy/Soma Therapist guiding you from awareness to conscious communication.  

She explores relationships and identity, and as a skilled somatic writing teacher, she helps you reconnect with your body and voice to create meaningful change.

You can connect to Yolanda in the following ways ⬇️
https://linktr.ee/lettingthelightin
https://www.facebook.com/yolanda.g.brooks

Find me @ www.melancholymentor.com

* As a coach, I listen without judgment, understanding that others’ views may differ from my own.

#nlpcoach #nlpcoaching #creativity #inspiration #transformation

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome, Guest Intro, Shared History
• 1:36 From Gardening to Somatic Writing
• 6:20 Discovering Free-Flow Writing & Tears
• 11:00 From NLP to Somatic Attachment Therapy
• 16:50 Journaling vs Subconscious Somatic Writing
• 23:10 Mindfulness, Dissociation, and First Steps
• 29:30 Noticing, Self-Sabotage, and Choice
• 36:40 Triggers, Overreactions, and Responsibility
• 43:00 Anger, Labels, and Childhood Patterns

Transcript

Fran: 0:00

Hello everyone, welcome to the Melancholy Coaching Podcast. I'm brand your host and NLP coach. Join me as I interview inspiring business owners and self-improvement seekers about their experiences while delving into personal development, motivation and strategies for overcoming challenges. Let's ignite our creative potential together. Hello and welcome to Melancholy Coaching Podcast. I'm Fran, your NLP coach, and I'm delighted to introduce an inspiring guest, Conscious Life Coach and Sisoma Therapist, guiding you from awareness to conscious communication. She explores relationships and identity as a skilled somatic writing teacher and helps you reconnect with your body and voice to create meaningful change. Yolanda, welcome to the show. Ah, just for complete transparency, Yolanda and I actually know each other. We met online and then met in person. So we kind of, and I've been in your beautiful cabin where you do your writing as well. And then what we'll do is we'll just have a chat around those questions, if that's okay with you. I am also completely transparent about the fact that I love to work from notes and I work with a prompter and all the rest of it, and it just helps keep my mind fresh. So the first one that I've actually got for you is how did your journey into therapy and somatic writing begin? What inspired you to dedicate your work to these fields?

Yolanda: 1:52

I'm just going back to being a teenager for like one minute. I wanted to be a counsellor when I was a teenager, but life happened and I was I was not in the right state to pursue that career. I had a lot of problems when I was younger. So for fast forward to just after COVID, I was 49. Was I 50? I think it might have been 50. I decided I needed a change because I'd been gardening for seven years. And it was, I've had a lot of jobs in my life, a lot of very different jobs, you know, trading, salvage, painting furniture, financial services, working in a school, all sorts of things that you know, and everything was always very different. But the gardening was my reconnecting after a lifetime of depression and anxiety, and I found it really therapeutic. And I think that kind of got me back into acknowledging that the natural world was therapeutic for me. I was able to close my, you know, my mind went quiet when I gardened. There's only two things that stopped my mind worrying. It's gardening and it's being in the sea. And gardening was one of them. And for seven years that's what I did, and it was really therapeutic, physically as well as mentally. But after David, I'd worked really hard because my husband's job vanished. He had just become self-employed. So he came to work with me, and we just worked flat out. And after that, I was exhausted. I was approaching 50, and he said, Well, why don't you take some time out over the winter? Don't do any winter gardening, and just start looking for ideas of what you want to do. And in the autumn, sort of very late autumn, November, I signed up to do a little winter writing, a 10-day winter writing sanctuary, it was called. That sounds lovely. It was it was, it was, and that was very ritually, because I would get up in the morning, go into the spare bedroom, light a candle, blanket around the shoulders, a beautiful new notebook, and then join in with, you know, she'd read poetry, she'd talk, and then she'd give you prompts and you'd write. Not Shakespeare, it wasn't earth-shattering, but it was it was poetic prose, it was thoughts that were coming out with rhythm, and a lot of it felt really out of my control in a way. It was it was coming from here down my head, down my arm, and onto the paper. Like a download. I was a download, yeah. Yeah, and yes, that that's like my sort of quite a significant step into my spiritual sort of learning about because I'm I am very in touch with my intuition, but this felt very different. And I had an image of a man as well that was helping me, which was very nothing I'd ever experienced before. So I just write these these pros, these poetry, and quite often I wouldn't really grasp what I was writing because there was no stopping, it was there was no editing, it was nothing like that, it was just free flow of writing. Towards the end, I would think to myself, what on earth have I written there? And rather than read it, I'd go off and get a cup of coffee or nip to the loo, come back, and then I'd read it. And several times I would just burst into tears. And I thought, oh, this is interesting. So it was it was the sort of I'd never journaled before, I'd always refuse to journal because conscious journaling for me felt more stressful because it was repeating negative things that I was experiencing and feeling and making them feel more concrete. And I didn't, you know, it was bad enough having these thoughts in my head. I didn't want them on paper as well. That's how I felt about journaling. So it was really interesting that this course spoke to me and the effect it had on me. And because it was so good, I found another one, different but similar, you know, writing at home from an online little mini mini course. And this is why this is one reason if you create your Facebook algorithm to suit you, magic happens. So Facebook sent me another one, and more things and more things, and then started moving off to superconsciousness work, really tapping into your intuition, your higher self, your in all those magical things. And I think in the space of three months, I must have done about 50 to 60 of these masterclasses, workshops, webinars, anywhere between an hour and a week long. I was just literally all day doing, oh, oh wow, I need to do that, oh, I'm gonna do that. And Facebook just kept throwing things up at me. And eventually it brought me to coaching. And I thought, wow, everything that I've actually been able to let go of, I was able to forgive people, my anger went, anxiety reduced even further. I understood myself, I knew where these these sort of patterns of behaviour had come from. So I ended up doing an LP coaching like you. So I've got that certificate and I thought, hmm, I like this, but it's not enough. I want to go, I want to go deeper. Because I'm I'm I've always been a bit of a digger into people's heads, I'm my own head. And eventually what came up was a training in somatic attachment therapy. So somatic means soma means body, so it's all about the body, which is why I'm a si-soma therapist, because I I've got my psychology, I've got my physiology, got my molecular neuroscience background from a long time ago. And to fit it in with what I was seeing in front of me, this somatic attachment, it just is just perfect. So it's about the body and the attachment, you know, attachment theory is how we relate to people and the world based on our formative years, and whether you see the world as a safe place or or an unsafe place, or happy or scary, it's all and you know, the way you can trust people and interact with people, communicate, all happens when you're young. So it's combining body work, mind work, and childhood. And because my because my patterns had been formed in childhood through not not one huge traumatic event, but a lifetime, as most of us are, the lifetime of things compounding that affect who you are and who you think you are, the way you behave, the way you see things. So I decided to train in that.

Fran: 9:36

And then you know, the add-ons of sorry, I was just gonna say, is any of this lent itself to a different belief now about journaling? Or are you still of the same mindset of journaling?

Yolanda: 9:49

I don't do yeah, I don't do conscious journaling. I don't really see the point of writing. I mean, I I I've write books for everything, I write lists, and but I don't write the things I'm thinking because it's conscious, and I'm fully aware that it's the subconscious that drives your behavior and the way you see things, your beliefs, your emotions, your thoughts. A lot of it is subconscious until you make it conscious. So, what worked for me was digging into the subconscious, reaching into the superconscious, your higher self, your intuition, whatever you want to call it, your universal energy, and bringing those two into conscious awareness so that you can change your patterns. You become unstuck when you change your patterns, you become unstuck when you understand the why and the how of the way you behave. So journaling to just write what I'm thinking and feeling, no, but I don't uh the way I do it is going through into deep sort of hypnotic meditations, and then I have specific for specific topics, issues, themes, and then I have prompts that don't sound they're not your usual prompts. It's not what do you think about this or some of them are a bit odd, but it's a way of digging into the subconscious to get out something that you maybe don't want to admit, hadn't realized. There's a lot of dots getting connected when you do the subconscious or somatic writing because it's coming out of your body. And the reason it's different to normal journaling is because normal journaling is in your head, it's your thoughts. Whereas you never have an emotion in your head. Now, some people find that quite challenging if they've detached from their emotions. I can say to a client, Well, what are you feeling? Anger, right? Where's the anger? Well, it's in my head, is it the thoughts are in your head? And that's and I'll say something like, Imagine your there's a there's a trapdoor between your head and your body, and the anger's in your head, but this trapdoor opens, and this anger drops into your body. Just watch it for and tell me where it lands. You know, and then I'll then I'll identify which part of their body it lands in, and that is reconnecting because your emotions are in your body. You've never had an emotion in your head, you have thoughts in your head, and you have emotions in your body. And so the work is about connecting people with their emotions, because when emotions are suppressed, they contribute massively to your patterning and your reactions, and quite often your over-reactions, but it's also detaching the old emotions that don't work and letting them go.

Fran: 12:57

I just want to say as well, there's absolutely no judgment for any of this. So if anybody listening or watching this, because this goes out on YouTube as well, and they resonate with journaling and they resonate with just journaling some thoughts or that conscious stream of writing, and that's where you're at, that's absolutely fine because that's where I'm at, and it works for me. Yes. This this is this is like it's almost like we blend these techniques and these toolkits together, don't we? We blend the things together because your access into coaching was very it was similar to mine, but but different because I started trying to help myself with depression after receiving no help from my GP, etc. You know, through no thought, but it was just the system at the time. And I started to do little courses that I found online, just generally online, that was little CPD courses in mindfulness and in journaling and things like that. So that was my routine to then discovering coaching. So I tend to like the mindfulness part of it because I'd I'd disassociated so hard that I hadn't realized that I didn't come back. I didn't even realise I was disassociated. I mean, it was due to the depression. And mindfulness really helped centre me in the present moment in time. So potentially for me, the work that you then went on to do that would have been too deep for me at the time.

Yolanda: 14:26

I I wouldn't know because well, it's interesting because yes, the journeying that you've done, the mindful thought release, it's important because we go through life, not not really ever being able to say out loud some of the thoughts we have, you know, because in in case people think we're crazy or self- you know, we have people have a lot of thoughts in their in their lives that they think are not normal, that they think are extreme. But the thing is, part of the human experience is are these thoughts, and nobody is unique in that way. We all have different life experiences, but I can almost guarantee that whatever thought you've had, you cannot possibly be the only person in existence of humanity who had that thought. It's just not possible. There are so many crazy even if they even if you have a thought that scares you or unnerves you, and you think, well, I can't I can't entertain that idea. Why am I having why am I thinking such a horrible thing? You know, about a person or about uh an experience, it's just normal part of human the human condition. And I don't know. If somebody had taught me how to journal the way people journal now, the way you did, it might have been fantastic for me. Because I was one of these people who never said what she was thinking and feeling and wanted. But I wonder sometimes if I just literally bypassed that by by not knowing how to journal and going straight into kind of writing that I learned with. So maybe if I had if I'd had enough emotional stability to journal, it might have been like for you, it might have been the start of something amazing a lot earlier. But I didn't experience it like that. So it's not that one way is better, it's like you say, different, you come at it from different directions, different experiences. And for me, it just so happened that my first writing was this kind of writing. So I'd already done this some thematic learning, some meditation, the superconsciousness work, and I think that kind of just took me straight down into the subconscious, you know, like that world and wanting to go from there because I realized I think what I realized, and the difference for me maybe, was that I was as a kid, I was quite academic, I was quite clever, and I became one of these people who over-analyzed everything, and I had to learn everything. I read all the books. I was reading about psychiatry from the age of about 14, and I think that people who over-analyse live so much in their heads they they disconnect from their bodies, which is where the emotion is. So you're always trying to intellectualize why you do this, and then you get to the point of, well, I know so much, why do I still feel like this? And I and I wonder if that was the thing for me, is that I'd spent so much time learning and thinking and analysing that, like you, I was so cut off from my body and my true identity that conscious journaling I maybe that's why it didn't work for me, because I was always thinking, always ironalizing.

Fran: 18:18

See, whereas I've I've always had a curious nature, like that curiosity, but I could never I've I've always been more of a feeler, so I would feel things, but but not necessarily be able to put it into words. Interesting. So I feel things from things around me and and things in my body, but there's no words that go with it. So it was it was a process of finding the words for me. With all of these things, we don't know that these things are available until we know. How how how would we know that these things are available? Sometimes it is follow following those threads of curiosity, isn't it, to see where it leads us from you know from a safe place just to see where it leads us on to. Because I would never have known that any of this, I didn't even realise that I could have a growth mindset. I didn't even know there were different mindsets.

Yolanda: 19:10

How would I? Yeah, it's when you're in this world, this all becomes sort of normal, and you kind of you can't forget, don't you, that people don't know what you know, and and you realise actually I've I've come a lot, you know, I have come a long way. I have I'm still learning, I still love learning, but I'm so much more in touch with like you say, psychological wellness and growth, as opposed to always trying to find out how to fix by intellectualizing.

Fran: 19:51

Yeah, this this leads nicely to my next question, actually, which is for somebody new to somatic practices, what some simple exercises or techniques that they can do. So, what would you recommend for them to start their journey towards a greater self-awareness, but based on somatic practices in our personal journey for somebody who is maybe dissociated, disconnected, in a lot of pain emotionally numb.

Yolanda: 20:27

I think this is it. I think a lot of us when we live in anxiety and depression, we become very numb. And you know, you're living on autopilot. So I for me personally, the most important thing is literally noticing. Because when you're numb, you're not paying attention to anything. You're going through your day, you're performing, but you're not feeling and the noticing comes in you can start physically noticing, it's simply us noticing your fingers and your toes, because if you are dis disconnected from your emotions, you're also disconnected from your own body, because the two are to they they live together. So quite often it's a mindfulness thing. Walking around the supermarket doing the washing up, notice use your senses, notice your fingers, notice the sensation of the water, notice the shape that the bubbles make. Just take ten seconds at a time to be fully in the moment of noticing what's around you. That's enough to start calming your nervous system because you're not thinking, moving on, analysing. You're just you're just literally living in that 10 seconds of time. And then extending that that time to 15 seconds, half a minute, until you're actually noticing that you're experiencing life rather than just trying to force your way through it without without being a part of it, which is what what it felt like to me, is like I I'm here, the world is out there, I'm not part of the world. But when I started noticing things like the sunlight in trees, the shape of flowers, I have a dog, and you know, even when she first arrived 11 years ago, although I was in still in quite a bad headspace back then, there was a noticing of how much she, how much joy she got from going on a walk, seeing a squirrel, you know, and it's like, and I started watching her, and it was like I was living vicariously through my dog. See, and I realized that I could imagine seeing things through her eyes, because she was a rescue, she'd been born in a shelter, came from a shelter. She hadn't seen the sea when we moved here. We lived by the sea, she'd never seen the sea. She was petrified, but she kept getting closer and closer, and we kept throwing her a ball, and then it, you know, a little bit further and further away. And then one day, because she was quite sort of a ball-led at the time, she was desperate to get her ball, so she went for it, and then sea lifted her up a little bit, and she realized she was floating. And I mean, long story short, she is basically an otter. She would live in the sea if she could, she's in and out all the time. But that really brought home to me that the living of every moment, although it's the first time you've seen it, it sounds it sounds too simple to make a difference, but it really does because you're living in the moment, you're connecting with nature, you're seeing what's actually around you rather than this narrow world that we tend to drop into when we're depressed and anxious. And it really did open everything up for me. So noticing the outside is like the first step, and then you can start noticing the inside. So when you feel triggered, when you feel any emotion, when you feel numb, the job at the beginning isn't to fix it, it's to notice it. Because the more because you bring you know what I said about bringing the subconscious into the conscious mind, and you'll notice how many times during the day you fade out, or you feel anxious, or you have a negative thought, just keep noticing, and the pure act of noticing over to over a short-ish amount of time reduces the amount of time you do that thing.

Fran: 25:03

Because you know for me, I'd I'd have a lot of negative thoughts. Like I enjoyed being negative, it was a nice, comfy, safe place, you know, to be that glass half empty, and you know, I quite liked it. I taught myself to catch those negative thoughts and not exactly challenge them, but just kind of go into reframing or seeing where it had come from, getting curious about them, you know, not not blaming myself for having these negative thoughts. But also choosing not to stay there, because otherwise I would, I would stay in that negative place because it felt comfortable.

Yolanda: 25:43

Yeah. Well, that's um that's one of the things I I work with is self-sabotage, and that sitting in a place of sadness, you know, wallowing in self-pity. We've all done it. I you know, we all we all do it, but but do you live there or do you visit it and then leave it behind? You know, when you have a duvet day, yeah. You do you have a duvet day, not you know, you try not to make it any longer of a holiday. But the thing about while being in self-pity, that's called the victim saboteur, and that goes back to a childhood, and it's so prevalent that it's not that this is a huge trauma issue, this is human experience. Is that any child from pre-birth to the age of seven who is who doesn't get the comfort they need from the outside when they need it on a regular basis or for them means that they learn to soothe themselves. So it's not it's not a slight on parents, it's nothing to do what with what the parents do in most cases. It's part of being human that when you don't get what you need in terms of, in this case, comfort, you do it for yourself. So you might start off with some uh thumb sucking, you might be a nail biter. I bit my nails until I was in my mid-40s, and obviously, in the extreme, you end up with alcohol, drugs, any kind of addiction. That is a self-soothing mechanism. So, you know, you've got people pleasing, the victim, the avoider, over, achiever, you've got all sorts of ways we sabotage ourselves, and it's interesting because although they although when they become extreme, they hurt us. When we have awareness and control over them, and I don't mean force control, but when you're aware of something, you understand it, it doesn't have the same hold over you. You get to choose, and this is at the state thing. Am I going to stay in this state of self-pity? How do I get myself out of it? Really hard when you're depressed, really hard. But this is again where the noticing comes in, noticing that you're doing this.

Fran: 28:02

Because it's hard to have that awareness without feeling defensive as well. Like I'm not having a pity party, you know. Um, whereas now, yeah, I cho I choose my moments because I'm more self-aware, so I can choose my moments. Yeah.

Yolanda: 28:18

Um but when you notice, the thing about noticing is then you move on to acknowledging, yes, this is happening, yes, I feel this, but also then accepting. Okay, I don't like feeling like this. I feel a little bit embarrassed, I might feel ashamed, but this is how I feel.

Fran: 28:38

So, do you think that that's all part of taking responsibility for ourselves and our actions and our thoughts it's taken?

Yolanda: 28:46

Because responsibility is a word that offends people because it sounds it sounds as though you're being blamed for something. But what it actually is, you look at the word, it's responsibility to your ability to respond, not react. Yeah, when all this stuff is unconscious, if you if you've never overreacted to a comment or a word or a person, that's a trigger that is so strong in your subconscious that you at the at this time have no control over it, it just blare. But when you notice it, accept it for all its embarrassment or shame or some you know, part of you you don't want to be the shadow, the shadows work, and you acknowledge its present, you like I say, it releases it releases its power over you, and then you learn to take you learn to respond, you learn to pause, yeah. Whether it's whether it's after the fact so this is this is something that that is quite interesting to watch. You will Overreact to something. And when you have this awareness and this noticing, you'll realize you've overreacted. You might not know why, but you've realized it, you've seen it. If you keep noticing and keep noticing, eventually you'll notice you're overreacting in the middle of an overreaction. And you'll go, Oh, I'm overreacting. I need to take a breath and stop. And you keep doing that, practice, practice, everything's a practice. Keep practicing that. And eventually you get to the point where you think, I think I'm about to overreact, like a spoilt child or an angry whatever. And you go, hmm, I'm not going to overreact. What can I do instead? So you have taken that overreaction and noticed and acknowledged and accepted to the point where you go, I am taking responsibility for what I do next. I am able to respond. And I think that because I was growing up, I was the angry one. I was so angry. I was such an angry person. And people who know me now have your expression. They're like, What we I know.

Fran: 31:12

I was the quiet one. I didn't really speak to people. I spoke to ladybugs and snails and things like that. They were my friends. Like I was very, very, very quiet for many, many years. So I'd feel rather than verbalize.

Yolanda: 31:29

Yeah, I was I was the quiet little one. I was always told I was shy. I was always told there was something wrong with me. And I think that over my sort of later teenage years, sort of like 16 onwards, that turned into sh just anger, like you wouldn't believe. And probably until my 40s, I was so angry. Yeah. Yeah, told who I was, being given no choices, being given no voice, being told that what I felt I was making it up and it wasn't true, what I remembered wasn't real, being told I was mentally ill as a teenager, you know, that nobody liked me, all these things just compounded to eventually in my late teens, just erupt. Would you class that as gaslighting? Yeah, well, gaslighting to me is a bit of a tricky term because it's one of these terms that suddenly exploded and everybody's a gaslighter or being gaslighted, gas lit. The thing is, it's a person, it's it's the behaviour. And actually, if we were to have mixed ourselves, we've all done it at some point with somebody.

Fran: 32:57

But possibly not realised what it was called or identified that you know it was an actual thing that wasn't cool.

Yolanda: 33:05

It's not it's not even it's not. I mean, I think the term gaslighting makes it sound intentional and it's not.

Fran: 33:12

Right, okay. Possibly actual gaslighting is intentional.

Yolanda: 33:19

Yes, the proper, like the the real sort of psychiatric psychological con behaviour, yes, but what most people are doing is surviving, and part of human nature is to survive, and that means taking care of yourself, and if that's corrupted, you end up manipulating, not in a horrible way, not in the conscious or intentional way, but we all try to influence other people's behaviors so that we are okay. It's how children survive, it's part of one of the four fear responses. You know, everybody knows about a fight and flight. We also have freeze, which is what we know in trauma, stroke, ADHD world, but there's also fawn. As a child, particularly, you learn to fawn, you learn to keep people happy so they don't push you out of the group, so they keep help keep you alive. That becomes a people pleaser, saboteur, because you're just more concerned with other people's happiness than your own, because that's how you've grown up. So this so this is connected to that in in that you learn to manipulate other people for your own survival, you know, and I guess even the word manipulate sounds awful, doesn't it? But what it means is you influence somebody else's behaviour.

Fran: 34:44

But I actually think that with most, if not all of these things, it's it's down to the intention. That the intention is survival, but the intention is also to cause no harm. You you're not doing it with detriment in mind, are you?

Yolanda: 35:00

No, it's it's also conscious for most of us. You know, we want we want somebody to to do something for us, and we don't feel we can ask outright. We might put an idea into the head, you might suggest suggesting things is a form of manipulation, isn't it?

Fran: 35:16

Yes, planting little seeds. Yeah, yeah. I like planting little seeds. No, plant little seeds of love. It's all good.

Yolanda: 35:26

Manipulation, yeah. It's the words, it's the meaning of the word, and it's the intention, and it's the connection, it's the purpose.

Fran: 35:35

But it's also the meaning that you place upon the word, yeah, due to interpretation of it. This stuff is fascinating. I've got to move us on though, because I want to ask you what's next for you. So, what are you most excited to explore and develop next?

Yolanda: 36:01

I've got my I've got courses planned for the autumn and winter. Mindfulness of meditation for people with anxiety and depression, because it's one of the things that saved me. Wild Words is my umbrella sort of project. I've got three or four different writing containers used for creative expression, mental health, subconscious journaling, writing. I'm probably about to do another another course on Escape the Loop, which is the self-sa beating self-sabotage. But all those three things are very much connected because that's that's how I healed and how I became the me that I should have been all along. Yeah. But and I'm also developing a course that contains pretty much everything I do from making peace with your past using somatic somatic therapy to sort of put your some of your pains to rest, moving into present to live in the current moment so that you can then move to the future you want using the coaching NLP. It all ends all together. Something I'm absolutely have to crack on with, and it's been in my head for about a year, and I think you know about this. Long story short, I'm writing a series of books and journals, and I went on a weekend course on sort of structure, how to plan, how to make it not overwhelming. And on second day, the lady said, Well, which of your journals are you going to do first? Which topic do you want to cover first? And over here, that that voice came back and he said, None of them. And I and I'm like, Oh, what? What do you mean, none of them? And at that actual instant, Lila, my dog, who is my rescue, jumped up onto the sofa and put her head on my lap, and the voice in my head said, You're writing a journal for people who lose their dogs. Okay, that's what I'm doing. And it's been nagging me ever since.

Fran: 38:13

Do you think that potentially you've got like a a guide, or you know, whatever you want to name it? A guide, a guardian angel, or do you think that or do you think that potentially going deep and going through through the layers of of your mind and your body and connecting it together, you're actually listening to your own voice?

Yolanda: 38:35

Yes, yes. I I see this this is the this is the part where I'm undecided. Do are there spirits, are is it just an energy of every human that's ever been around connecting with you, specific humans, specific people, or is it your own intuition that you've just learned to tap into? I kind of I think I do believe that there is a universal energy, and we all come down with a plan for us, and if we can get on that plan in this lifetime, excellent. And I think and I feel that's where I am, but but because this image of this man, you know, he was like maybe Central American, Native Indian looking, dark, short, black hair, and I'dn't I'd never had I've never been into spirit guides, never believed it.

Fran: 39:37

Now, see that sounds more like the description of a guide, doesn't it?

Yolanda: 39:41

Yeah, yeah. And when he and when he appeared behind me there, it wasn't oh who's that, what's going on? It was oh okay, you're helping me. And it was bizarre. And I wonder if that was the you know, I didn't I didn't see his face when I had this thought about the journal. But I do I do wonder. And the thing is, you know, I have some, I'm an ex-scientist. I didn't used to believe in anything. I was all about science and the facts and the figures and the proof, and that's changed a lot. I still do a lot of research, I still need evidence, but I'm also I have a lot of friends who who are you know believe in all when I say all sorts, I mean all sorts. I have such an open mind about it, and the thing is that I don't necessarily believe what they believe, but I don't not believe it because I don't know. And for me, having lived with anxiety, raging anxiety, and I mean debilitating anxiety for most of my life, the not knowing is such a blissful relief. It's one extreme to the other. I had to know everything before, I had to plan it, I had to imagine every outcome, I had to, you know, it the stress levels were phenomenal. But in my own life, I love change, I love not knowing what's coming, and I love the fact that I don't know what's really true in the world, because it means there's more adventures, there's always going to be adventures, and I love that.

Fran: 41:19

See, I I like that as well, and I'm I'm all one for if somebody believes that their guide is God or a God or their grandma or whatever it be, or whether it's your inner voice that you're in tune with, if that whatever you're listening to and whatever you believe to be true is guiding you to just a little bit more self-awareness or or a little bit more towards where you choose that you want to be, it can't be wrong. There's no wrong, is there?

Yolanda: 41:51

No, no, as long as it feels because there's a whole pinkal difference between intellectualized intellectually going, I believe this, and then experiencing something that feels so real that it cannot be true. You know, I I would I would never have believed in spirit guys, yeah. I saw and felt this man. It was like for three or four seconds, but it was so strong, it was like, oh, okay. It was bizarre.

Fran: 42:26

Then I I I wouldn't necessarily that I'd I'd have been fascinated to hear about it, but I wouldn't necessarily have believed it until I actually experienced near death. So I've kind of got my own experiences there. Right, we're gonna wrap this up. We're gonna wrap this up, Yolanda, because we'll be chatting all day. Um it could be right. So thank you so much for sharing your insights and your journey with with us as well. It's been truly inspiring, and I'm sure anybody listening will take away valuable tools about this and perspectives to support their own growth, because that's what this is all about, is supporting growth, however that be. No, because it's just you know, there's no wrong. There's no wrong, there can't be a right either, can there? So for anybody that's a whole nother wormhole to go down. For those of you interested in learning more about Yolanda and her work, you can visit letting the light in. And you've got a link tree, haven't you, on your social media? Yeah, and it's letting the light in. So if you look up Yolanda or you look up letting the light in, you're going to find you're going to find a where do you mostly so you mention Facebook, just a little nod to social media, actually, because you mentioned Facebook. Now, this thing about curating your your environment as such, your online environment works for other platforms as well. So the the Yolanda's comments from earlier about kind of curating it, and then it led you on to other things that you'd be interested in. That works on other platforms. It, you know, any search engine will work like that. So use it to your advantage, you know, manipulate it how you want because it would just show you lovely, lovely things. So predominantly, where can anybody find you? Is it Facebook that you're mostly on?

Yolanda: 44:16

Well, my Facebook profile is where I live. I do send things to Instagram, it's all set up, but I tend to live on Facebook because it's where I've been for however many decades. Yolanda G Brooks, yeah. That'll be underneath.

Fran: 44:31

Thank you. And if you're interested in more content like this, be sure to visit. This is where I get to promote myself. So it's www.melancolymentor.com. Follow us for the latest updates. And until next time, stay curious, keep igniting your creative potential, and go and find Yolanda at letting fight in. Thanks, Yolanda. I know it's the awkward bit now. Who waves goodbye first? You got in you got straight in there. Bye. Bye. See you then. Thank you for joining me on the Melancholy Coaching Podcast. I'd love you to subscribe. For queries or to connect, email info at melancholymentor.com. Until next time, keep igniting your creative potential.