The Wisdom Of No - November 16

Over the past few years, Liz has been trusting her inner compass — her intuitive wisdom — more and more. In today’s 5 Minutes in Nature, she explores how this inner guidance gives clear signs, especially when she’s heading in the wrong direction. While her compass never points to the final destination, it can always be trusted to nudge her toward the right path.

Liz notices that the “no” from her inner compass is often much clearer than the “yes.” What is your inner compass telling you today?

Transcript

Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me, Liz Scott, And it is a grey November day. It really has been quite a grey November this year and I'm just out and about, Kind of up on Dartmoor, Just recharging my batteries because even though it's grey I just love the open space and getting out. Today is just a reminder about your intuition, Is about that inner compass that you've got within you and how it turns up. Now I'm going to tell you a story of how it turned up for me and I don't want you to try and make this story fit you. I'm just illustrating how my inner compass turns up and I want you to lightly reflect on your inner compass, Your intuition, Your wisdom. So yesterday I met a friend and as you probably know I've been reflecting on how I might engage with older women and one of the things I was thinking about and my friend and I have worked in the community for a little while is I was thinking about starting some women's groups in the community. I thought that might be a nice idea, I'll start a women's group. I met my friend and we sat down and we talked and we came up with ideas and I started the conversation. I had this real glowing flame of enthusiasm and inspiration about reaching out to older women and finding older women and supporting them and creating support networks and as we talked and we started to come up with ideas I began to realise that this flame of enthusiasm was starting to diminish within me and what was being replaced was not enthusiasm but a kind of a sense of oh this just feels like hard work. Now as we were talking we both are inspired by the inside out understanding but as we were talking we were coming up with ideas and we were thinking about how we might do it and what we might charge and how we'd get people along and as we were just planning all of these things I realised deeply that I was being given a really strong message. My inner compass was letting me know that this was not the right direction of travel for me. For me I've been trusting this wisdom and intuition now for a couple of years and I'm quite tuned in now to following a thread of inspiration not quite knowing where it's going and often for me I experience a no much more clearly than I experience the direction of travel and this was my intuitive wisdom saying no this is not the right direction for you and as I was talking to my friend and we both noticed that the energy had gone out of our conversation we just respectfully listened to each other and we realised that actually this was a really good outcome. What we'd done is we'd come up with some ideas and we'd played with them and we had realised that this wasn't the right direction for either of us and actually it's really good to know where not to put your energy. That's what I'm finding as I get older rather than trying all these things out. It's good to know that that is not where I'm being asked to put my energy and we paused the conversation and talked about other things and then we both left having had a cup of coffee together and I was curious like hmm well if that's not the direction of travel I wonder what is and my friend then got back to me and we exchanged some text messages where we were exploring another idea maybe a more of a conference or a one-day gathering for older women and I can feel that that's got more energy for me there's a kind of like yes this might be the right thing to do to engage in moving forward. So today I just wanted you to reflect on your inner compass. It's a really good guidance system. Often I get a clear no and I don't necessarily get a clear yes. I certainly don't get a signpost saying go in this direction but what I do get is often a nudge or an encouragement to explore something and when I'm not going in the right direction it's really good to get a clear no because I don't need to invest or waste energy in something that is not my direction of travel at the moment. I'd love to know a bit about your inner compass. Do you experience that? Do you get a clear no? Do you get a sense of the direction of travel? We rarely rarely get an idea of the outcome or the actual goal in which we're heading in. Usually we just get nudged and pushed along following a trail a little bit like a dog following the scent of something. You don't know where you're heading to but all you can do is pick up the scent trail and follow it as best as you can. That's what it feels like to me as I follow my inner compass and I'd love to know what it feels like to you. So please do let me know.

Reviews

This is very helpful Liz-“no” is just as helpful (maybe more?) than “yes” ! I sometimes think of it as “ if it’s not “hell yes” then it is NO” when gauging my feelings around something.