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What if the reason you’re not where you want to be has nothing to do with effort?

For years, fear drove my success. And it created results… until it didn’t.

In this episode, I’m sharing the most profound shift I’ve experienced—learning to differentiate between the voice of my mind (logic, fear, protection) and the voice of my heart (truth, knowing, clarity). This one distinction is changing everything in my business and life.

Key Takeaways

• Why pushing harder isn’t always the answer and what to do instead when effort isn’t creating results

• The real block keeping you from growth—it’s the subconscious emotions you’ve built your entire reality to avoid

• How to know the difference between your mind and your heart and why the heart is never wrong

• A simple exercise to access your inner knowing for both big business decisions and daily choices

 _____________________________________

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READ THE EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Emily Hirsh:

Well, I’m not where I’m, I wanna be, and so maybe I just don’t want it bad enough. Likely it’s not something you are doing or not doing. It is something that you are afraid to face and be able to overcome. That’s what that like very tightly gripped, white knuckling it feeling is in business. The mind thinks the heart always knows 80% of our nerves and signals go heart to brain if you’re not ready to hear it.

That’s okay ’cause I wasn’t ready to hear this before. Embodied CEOs don’t chase trends. They pave the way they lead from within. Moved by purpose, unshaken by noise. When you are the source, you do not need permission. Hello everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. I hope you guys are having an incredible week.

We are down to the last like, what, two months? Just over two months left of the year. Now is the time to start to get clear on how you wanna end the year, how you wanna start the next year, and being really intentional with that. I am seriously in one of the most profound. Periods of my life. And while I can’t share some of the details of that there’s a lot of lessons that I get to bring to the podcast as it relates to it without sharing the details that I’m not ready to share yet.

‘Cause I’m in it, right? And sometimes we have to process things before we can share ’em. However, there’s so much real authentic learning that is happening for me right now. As a leader and just in my life, like it’s truly one, it is truly the most powerful time. And last week’s podcast episodes both kind of touched on lessons and things related to that, and the response from them has been incredible.

So I’m really grateful for that. Today I had a follow up point that I wanted to make based on questions and comments that I got on the last episode to this one, and then something I wanna share deeper that has been transforming and evolving for me that I think will help you guys because I think we’re all so alike, and I am somebody who.

Spends a lot of time in my mind and in a state of kind of analyzing and wanting to control and overpower myself oftentimes. And it’s created. Success for me, but I’ve hit this point where I feel like I’m, I’m finally like expanding beyond that in a way that things that didn’t make sense before now are just like clicking into place and I’m in a place of clarity like never before.

Where everything is just so clear. Even the, even the hard things and the hard decisions are so clear and I feel so much peace. And so free. So the first thing that I wanted to touch on is kind of a continuation of. Last Thursday’s episode. So if you haven’t listened to that, go back and listen to that.

But someone actually a mastermind member of mine asked a question that I think is really important because I think that this audience can fall into the category of very quickly judging and blaming themselves for things So. Last week I did a podcast all about how bad do you really want it and challenging you guys of like, okay, how bad do you really want it?

And what’s the evidence in your life to prove that? You know, are you taking the actions, are you creating the situations and the you know, environment and accountability to really have what you want? And a couple of you came back with, well, I’m not where I’m, I wanna be. So maybe I just don’t want it bad enough, like maybe I need to push harder.

Maybe I need to force, you know, this harder. And I really understand where that’s coming from because that used to be me is like, this is where I wanna be. I’m not there. And so I just need to push myself harder. I just need to force myself to do this. I just need to overcome these emotions or overcome these blocks.

And if I push hard enough, then surely I’ll have it. While I think that is true for some people, I think some people need, and it’s different in different seasons of life, I think some people need that push of like, do it anyways, do it uncomfortable you know, put yourself in the situation where you are scared, where you are uncomfortable, but it’s still in alignment with you.

And I think sometimes we do need that. Other times I think that the block of being where you wanna be is very subconscious and actually comes from avoiding. Things we don’t wanna feel because we have deemed them as not productive or helpful. And so this individual, my, my intuition when she asked this was, I don’t think you’re not where you wanna be for lack of actual physical effort.

Sure there are, there are plenty of entrepreneurs that that is the reality is they want, they wanna be somewhere and they want it to come to them very easily. I think there’s also a lot of you, and again, I fall into this bucket all the time as I speak these things, who we’re not where we wanna be because we can’t see that we are subconsciously creating a reality.

Blocking us from that because there are things that we don’t wanna face. And so the solution to that is a really hard one, and it’s one that we all avoid, which is sitting with those parts of us and those emotions that we build our entire reality to avoid. Let’s just create an example. If you are not where you wanna be in your business.

Like, you’re not making the money you wanna make yet you’re not, you don’t have the growth, you don’t have the platform, you don’t have the impact yet, and you feel like you’re not really making progress. You know, I think it’s a process, right? So if you feel like you’re working towards that every month and it’s working, that’s one thing.

But if you kind of find yourself in this cycle where it’s like, I, you know, do this and then I end up right back here, and then I do this, and it’s like three steps forward, three steps back and the effort is there, the actual physical effort in trying. ’cause for this individual, I watch her and it’s like the effort is there.

You’re, you’re putting in the effort you’re taking the actions, you’re making the investments, and you’re not afraid of growth. It’s a perspective shift that needs to happen. Now, in order for that to happen, you need to sit with those, those parts of you, that your entire system is like, we can’t, like, that’s death to us.

Now how you do that is through a. Very uncomfortable experience of fully accepting what is, and I have been going through this where, man, it’s so, it’s like none of this is black and white, you know? And I think that’s why it’s sometimes hard to, to actually get people to see these things because it’s so embodied.

It’s like I can’t logically explain a lot of these things. I try, but you know, I spent a lot of my life only focused on. The emotions I wanted to feel happiness, success, accomplishment being seen and completely blocking out and hiding from anything that I didn’t wanna feel like shame, rejection, fear sadness, even, you know, sadness is a, is a very overwhelming emotion for me.

And I hit a point, and this is recent and I did share this on the podcast, where I realized like the only way for me to expand and evolve past this is to sit in those to, to sit in it and, and let it have this space that it has wanted for so long. And sitting in that. Is awful. It’s scary. And sometimes it’s micro moments.

Sometimes it’s actually like sitting in it for 10 minutes is just like allowing it to come in. So if you are somebody who is not where you wanna be and you’re like, I am pushing so hard, I am trying so hard, I’m making every decision possible. And then your reaction to that episode that I had is like, how can I blame myself for this?

Likely it’s not something you are doing or not doing. It is something that you are afraid to face and be able to overcome. So this individual, I said like we talked through a few things and I said, I want you to sit in stillness and feel that part of you. I want you to feel and ask that part of you, like if you had a voice, what would it say?

So for me. Like my big block is fear. Fear drives a lot and fear, I think a lot of us experience this where like we can be very fear led, scarcity led, where like I started my business with, didn’t have any money, had a newborn baby, was in total survival mode. And so everything I did was motivated by fear.

It was motivated by, if I don’t do this, I won’t be able to live, I won’t be able to. Put food on the table. And I don’t know if I even had those like direct thoughts, but my system did. So everything was driven by that fear. And for me too, it was also proving I needed to prove to people that I could be a successful young mom and not just like make it but thrive.

And that became this like motivating thing for me and it created a lot of success. Until you fulfill that and you’re like, now what’s driving me? Fear also shows up a lot for me in different decisions in my life. You know, even small ones in the business of like allowing fear to drive a decision to not invest in something or to not bring on extra support or even to like push our company resources to the brim because they always wanna make sure we are maximizing it to the fullest potential.

Fear is, it’s constantly there. And here’s like, the subtle difference with this is you can either run from the fear and tell yourself logically, you know that’s not true. Here’s, here’s the reasons why. List them out. Give yourself the evidence and kind of continually go in that loop with yourself logically.

And I did that for a very long time. Or you can pause and say, let me actually fully feel this fear. Let me allow myself this space. And it doesn’t have to be a long time. You don’t have to sit in it for a day or a week. I mean, literally it can be 20 minutes, but it’s like a river. It’s like you’ve gotta let these things move because otherwise you’re running from them and you’re controlling them.

And, and that’s what that like very tightly gripped white knuckling at feeling is in business where it’s like, if I let go of this grip, everything’s gonna fall apart. And I think we experience this in life too. So in that case, it’s actually a matter of going, instead of running from this, instead of trying to logically tell myself why I shouldn’t be afraid and all the evidence and like overpower, the mind cannot overpower the body.

The body always knows the body is always right. Now there’s also the balance of you are not the body, but you’ve gotta acknowledge it and give it the space. So when you do that, it really dissipates it. It’s like. It’s not that scary or, or let me acknowledge that fear and then let me make a conscious choice to choose not to operate from fear.

Because the fear, it’s a, it is a story that we have made up. And so in this person’s case, I said, I need you to go into that pain. She has pain around being seen and. I’m seen and then someone rejects me. It means this. And so that’s causing her to make decisions about not putting herself out there, not taking these actions.

And so instead of trying to logically overcome that and tell yourself why you shouldn’t be doing that, first thing is you have to fully see it and like shine the light on it and give it the space and, and ask it what it’s got to tell you. Now, that doesn’t mean it’s all truth. But it is real. So I wanna explain that difference.

’cause if you listen to that podcast and you’re like, well, I just need to push myself harder, I just need to try harder. I just need to make better decisions. Sometimes the accountability of how bad do you really want it is asking yourself, what are the things I’m afraid to face? What are the things. I’m running from within myself.

What are the things that I am trying to control and what would happen if I just surrendered all of that and see what comes of that? Because I, I think sometimes when you ask yourself, how bad for me, what I would say is, if I asked myself three months ago, how bad do you really want it? My honest answer would’ve been.

You want it really bad in this whole bucket and area of your life that you continually show up and, and go. You get after it. And I do. And then there’s this other like very subtle piece inside of you that you’re in a loop. Convincing yourself it’s okay because you’re afraid to face fear, pain, rejection, shame.

That’s what I got. What would happen if you walked through that fire? What would happen if you just said, okay, like I am ready to walk through all this. And it really, you know, it’s not easy. Like again to the system. It often feels like death to actually go through those experiences. But for those of you guys who create your business success and you get your drive from fear, which I, I think a lot of people do, because fear is a very motivating emotion.

There is another side to it, and you can. Create success from that place of wholeness, that place of love, that place of purpose and surrender. And I’m there and it’s taken me like, I think my whole life to get here. You know? So if we say like, okay, around six, seven, you six, oh my gosh, six, seven. I can’t say that without thinking what the kids say these days, around six or seven years old.

You start to develop these things. And so from there to now, that’s all that’s taking me to like learn this. So I wanna follow up with that. And then the next thing I wanna talk about, and to be honest with you, man, sometimes I do these podcasts and I truly am, there’s this critic in my head and I I share this ’cause I want you guys to know this.

As a content creator, I create amazing content. I know my content is really good. Lately my content has been so heart led, like just so dialed in because I’m so clear and I have no noise. But sometimes I do go to create this and there’s this like critic in my head that’s already criticizing my content before I create it.

And yeah, I, I, I will sometimes create this and have fear that you guys are gonna, you know, it doesn’t make sense, but. Also anytime I feel that it’s like my best content. And so I will feel that I’ll put an episode out and then I’ll get all these messages and it’s like, that’s the one that I thought wasn’t gonna make any sense to everyone.

So here we go, because this experience right here has been the most profound experience of my life. And it’s, and like I, I’ve boiled it down to this, so I, like most of you am very. Head driven, right? I am logical. I’m a strategist. I am very like black and white. I am intelligent. My brain is intelligent. I can separate emotion.

I can strategize and create and do a lot from that place. And I can easily turn off emotions. I can override emotions like you don’t feel like doing that. You’re gonna do it anyways. It’s a superpower of mine and. When the pendulum swings so far, it creates disconnection. And I have spent several years, you know, doing a lot of somatic work of a couple of plant medicine ceremonies of my meditation practice, and I think all of that has led me to where I’m at now, which is finally, finally.

Understanding the difference between the voice of the mind and the voice of the heart, and I’m, I’m just fascinated by this because this is what happened to me. Is I hit this point and I talked about on the podcast, so I don’t need to repeat it all, but I hit this point where I was like, this is the truth inside of me coming from my heart, and it just keeps getting louder and louder and no matter how much my brain tries to convince me that it’s not the truth and convince me why it’s wrong, or convince me why, here’s the real truth, or this is what you should be thinking and feeling, it just kept getting louder.

And when I finally had hard conversations and even like ha had hard conversations with myself of like, honestly, this is where you’re at. When I finally did that, the, the state of my being, like the, this feeling of freedom, peace, joy was equivalent to. Actually, you know, doing a, a psilocybin journey or something like, it was just so loud of this response.

And what I’m realizing is this, and this is through a lot of things, but the mind thinks, the heart always knows. The mind is the strategist, it’s the protector. It has a purpose, you know, our brain really does. It’s the most incredible. Incredible thing to study is our brain and how powerful it is and how necessary it is.

Like it’s not, it’s not bad. It’s just wired for survival and it’s wired for protection. The heart and the body is never wrong, ever. It always knows. And there’s two voices inside of you. The heart is the voice of truth and the mind is often the voice of reason and logic and fear. Because that’s its job.

Sometimes they’re in sync, sometimes they’re not. But the heart and the body always knows, and you could have told me this, you know, a month ago, six months ago, a year ago, in fact, I’ve had many mentors tell me this. And I, I just, I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready to fully embody it, but now I have found the voice of my heart.

And it sounds so woo. Like I don’t even, it’s, this is one of these things that I’m like, if I heard someone say this a year ago, I probably, I probably would’ve been like, I don’t understand what you’re saying, but it’s getting so loud and it’s getting so clear, and it’s guiding everything in my life. I’ll give you, you know, some things that you can do to tune into this.

I mean, it’s your, it’s your inner knowing. It’s your higher self, whatever you wanna call it. That’s your heart. I don’t know if I’ve shared this on the podcast either, but I learned that 80% of our nerves signals go heart to brain. Only 20% go brain to heart. But we spend almost all our time in the brain, in the, in the voice of the brain.

And again, I, you know, it has a purpose. It’s, our brain is not bad. It has a purpose. We have to know that purpose. The heart, its feelings. Okay? And it, and it’s however. Feelings are a state of being. Feelings are energy and motion. So they change, and I’m witnessing how emotions can change from one minute to the next.

And it’s insane. It’s like, wow, you know, I just swung from like, feelings of this to feelings of this in a minute. But the heart always knows. And so if you can teach yourself to listen to that voice and, and. Differentiate it. You will never need an answer from somebody else ever again. From the smallest thing to the biggest things.

And you’ve probably, like everyone has experienced this before, where there is something that you’re faced with or you just get this like inner knowing and you’re like, that’s what I need to do. It comes up when it’s time to make a big life decision, and all of a sudden people have like, I need to move to this place, or I need to leave this relationship, or I need to pursue this relationship, or I need to start the business, or I wanna have the kids.

Like those big decisions usually come from the heart and this like, we can’t ignore it anymore. But you can also use this for. Small day-to-day decisions, like, I mean, I do it all the time in, in the business now. Like now that I’m like learning the voice, I’m playing with it, like it’s an experiment and it, it’s never wrong, but it’s very subtle and I, I witness this experience in myself where like I will feel a truth.

Then immediately my brain comes in with reasoning, analyzing, and then it can get confusing and it can get cloudy. And it’s like, where is that coming from? But the heart is emotion. The heart. The heart speaks in emotion and it speaks in feeling. So if you’re sitting with a decision, something you can do is you can.

Close your eyes. You’ve gotta get in your body. ’cause the heart is your body, it’s, and your body is your subconscious. So you close your eyes and you imagine yourself making both decisions. So you’re playing out a scenario, you’re playing out, making a decision, and you, you fully imagine it. You fully envision it.

Which one do you feel? Ease relief, peace around. And here’s the thing, it’s not always gonna be the decision that you wanna make logically. In fact, a lot of times it’s not. A lot of times it’s the decision you don’t wanna make because it’s the scarier decision. It’s the more uncomfortable decision. It requires having hard conversations or making a decision that could potentially hurt somebody else.

So, you know, in all of my relationships in my life, from my family, to my husband, to friends, to even small like people at CrossFit, I have had this new experience of. When there is something that I need to voice, sometimes I don’t need to voice it, but when there’s something I need to voice and it’s a truth for me, I now listen to that.

What I used to do is hear that voice and immediately tell myself why it needs to quiet down, why it’s not right, why that person probably didn’t mean it, whatever. And there’s like this separation of. You can, you can speak your truth from a place of love and separate yourself from the other person’s response.

And I don’t mean like, say, you know, mean things. I, I think that I’m convinced that we can, we can speak what is honestly on our heart. Any time, in any way from a place of love without it may hurt someone. It may hurt someone’s feelings, but that’s not, if you say it from that place, it’s actually not about you.

And so I’ve had some really hard conversations that I needed to have in my life in many different areas, and every single time, every time that I have it from that place, I feel so free. It’s like. I’m alive because my body and heart is like, you’re finally listening to us. You’re finally not shoving us down with your brain.

And, and it’s been conversations that are really challenging and, and even conversations I’ve to have with myself. So in business and in life, when you have those decisions or those thoughts and we get into that analyzing, the first, the first thing I’ll say is this. An exercise you can do is create some sort of stillness for yourself.

Meditation, go for a walk, unplug, get into your body. You have to be able to feel your body, feel the places in your body that you can feel emotion, and then ask yourself the prompt of, what does my heart have to say? If you don’t resonate with heart, you can say, what does my body have to say? What is my higher self, my subconscious, they’re all the same.

’cause that’s the voice. Truth, what does it have to say? And then just write and don’t judge, like, don’t judge what’s coming up. Don’t judge what’s coming up. Don’t analyze it. Don’t create meaning. Don’t create reason. That’s all your brain do that. See what comes up. That’s your truth. And you might be surprised, like when I did it, it was like, oh my gosh, so much.

It was pages of my journal that came up that I was like, oh, and I felt so good. It’s like you haven’t even acknowledged these things within yourself in years. And then that GA gives me clarity on conversations I need to have decisions I need to make. But I am telling you guys this is, this is a massive superpower because then when the small little business things come up.

Where it’s like, Hey, we need to make this decision. Do we launch this thing? Do we do this thing? Do we hire this person? Do we not hire this person? When those things now come up, there’s a connection for me. Sure. I’m still using my brain, like I’m still using strategy. I’m still using logic, but I run it through that connection and it’s ’cause that’s never wrong ever, even if it’s the hard thing.

Even if it actually. Leads to something that, let’s say we lose money or we, we say no to a sale. The key is you still have to listen and trust that that’s the right choice. But in every relationship and in every part of my life right now, this has been. The most powerful thing, and I think that I’ve spent years trying to get here ’cause I just didn’t get it.

I’m like, what would happen to me was I would have this, you know, this is the truth, or this is, this is what my heart says. And then I didn’t like what it was saying because I’d be like, well that means this uncertainty or that means this, this thing in my future. Or I don’t want that to be what I, what I feel like I wanna feel this instead.

And so I’d override it and I would ignore it and I would logic and reason my way out of it. And what happened is I think that eventually I just got to a point where, where my body’s like, Nope, it’s too big. Like we’ve expanded beyond this and so we are gonna shift this. So. I don’t know if this makes sense to you guys.

And you know what? I actually think some of you probably do this already. I think this is a block I had, but I also know out of a lot of the people that I coach, this is also the block that they have. And somebody asked me, I. As I was talking about this recently, somebody said, how do I know the difference?

How do I know the difference between my heart and my mind? And it’s a good question because I have the same question. My answer to it is. Understanding the mind is the, is the voice of reason, of logic, of analyzing and oftentimes of making you wrong or right of that black and white feeling. It usually comes from a place of fear, of thinking of the future you know, and that back and forth, the heart is an emotion.

And when you make a decision from the heart, you will always feel peace and you’ll always feel ease and, and enjoy. And that doesn’t mean it’s the easy decision. More often than not, you weigh the scenarios or you weigh the the truth and then you go, this is what my heart, my body’s saying, and. You feel ease and relief by acknowledging it, but the mind will jump in and say, but that means you have to have a really hard conversation or you have to make a really hard decision, or you have to walk through a situation where you’re gonna feel fear and those things you don’t wanna feel.

It’s still the truth, and then it’s up to you to follow it or not. The more connected you are to this, like I’m telling you, you won’t need. Another person. You know, I’m not saying that mentors aren’t good, like we need perspective, but you, you have the answers. And I’ve always said this, like the truth is within you, it, it always has been.

It always will be. We just forget. And this is always the truth. So my challenge to you guys today, my prompt to you is to sit down and say, what does my heart have to say? And if you’re like, Emily, this is way too woo for me. That’s fine. You’re not ready to hear it, and I get it ’cause I was not either a few years ago.

But this connection is a superpower. And what it’s doing in my life is allowing me to have the deepest connections I’ve had in relationships because I’m being so radically honest. And when you’re radically honest, even if it’s not what somebody wants to hear, they. Feel such a connection because it’s like, this is the truth.

You’re not sugarcoating, you’re not pretending, you’re not protecting like you’re, you’re just being all of you, which is all you can do. It’s creating that depth, it’s creating massive clarity for me, like massive clarity. And then also when, when something happens in my life, I’m able to now decipher and I’m getting better at it.

Like I’m getting better at it every day, but I’m able to decipher and go, oh, like there’s the brain. Like here’s the fear, here’s the what ifs, here’s this. And that’s not true. Thank you brain for that. It’s not true. Back to what I, what is the truth? And the more I can decipher that, I’m gonna get faster at it.

I’m gonna get better at it because I’m sure there’s places that I’m still not seeing it, and that’s gonna allow me to make decisions. For my higher self, for the future, for where I’m going, getting out of my own way and, and taking myself there. So it has been thi this has been the most life changing two weeks, and I said it last week, but it’s like nothing happened.

I mean, it’s a regular week, it’s the day to day, and it’s been life changing. Because of a, a perspective shift, a twi small twist on the dials. And once you know these things, you cannot unknow them. So I record this because there’s somebody out there who’s gonna hear this, and it’s gonna change their perspective and it’s gonna change their life.

And if you’re not ready to hear it, that’s okay, because I wasn’t ready to hear this before and like it didn’t make sense. It could logically make sense, but I couldn’t embody it and now I can embody it. All right, everybody. Thank you so much for tuning in. I’ll talk to you guys next time.