Transcript: How to Tap Into Your Intuition and Follow Your Inner Voice

This is a text transcript from The First Time Mum’s Chat podcast. The episode is called How to Tap Into Your Intuition and Follow Your Inner Voice and you can click on the link to view the full episode page, listen to the episode and view the show notes.

Helen Thompson: Many of the women I speak with find themselves lost after pregnancy, which is hardly surprising. Not only do you need to recover from giving birth, but you’ve also got another precious life to support, and you hardly have the luxury of time on your hands to adapt to your new circumstances. It’s all about hitting the ground running isn’t it?

This week’s guest, mom of two, Jill Wright, knows all about this after feeling lost and being thrown into a tailspin when her journey into parenting commenced. Jill is a mindset mentor, time management guru, and alignment coach for mom’s. After realigning and rediscovering herself, she embarked on a journey to share her knowledge and tools with other moms who were facing the same struggle with overwhelm, chaos, and guilt.

During our chat, you’ll hear Jill talk about how intuition is the key and how reconnecting with yours helps everything come more easily. How to learn to recognize those moments in your life where your intuition is aiming to talk to you. The importance of making time for quiet time so that your intuition’s quiet voice has space to come out and really speak to you.

And so, so much more…

Hi Jill, and welcome to First Time Mum’s Chat. I’m delighted to have you here today and I’m looking forward to chatting about how moms can tune into their intuition and inner voice. So can you start by telling us a bit about you and your background?

Jill Wright: Well, thanks Helen for having me. I’m really thrilled to be here and chat with you. I think that we’re gonna have a really interesting conversation today. So thanks for the opportunity. I’m a mom. I’ve got two small kids. They’re 5 and 3 and I struggled when they were first born quite a lot with losing my identity and I couldn’t remember what I liked and I couldn’t remember what I enjoyed doing and who I was, outside of this new profound role of motherhood and so I kind of took this inward journey and did a lot of work on personal development and spiritual growth and a whole bunch of different tools and what I am most interested in is being able to pass those tools on to moms who are struggling with the same kind of thing. Because I think it’s quite common, but it’s not something that’s talked about a lot.

And what I personally found was intuition was the key to everything. It’s sort of that underlying piece that if you can nail that, then everything comes a little bit easier cuz you’re able to trust yourself and so that sounds great, right, everyone wants that.

The question is the exact one that you posed, how do you do that, how do you find and connect with your intuition, right? The good news is that it’s not something you need to find. We all have it, it’s already there. We’re just not encouraged to listen as much as maybe we could be and so we’re out of practice but everybody has an intuition. I like to think of it as your highest self, that highest version of you that wants the best for you and your intuition always knows what’s right for you and what’s wrong and so trusting that is the first piece of it.

Helen Thompson: So it’s a bit like, if you think about the chakras, like the crown chakra that if you trust in that, the spirituality teaches you what you need to know.

Jill Wright: It always does, and I think the better we get at listening to our intuition, the more that we can sort of strengthen the muscle, the easier it becomes to tune in and what I find is super interesting is that your intuition will talk to you in different ways. There’s lots of different ways that you can experience your intuition. Sometimes it’s just as simple as a gut instinct. We’ve all had those right? Understanding and listening to those gut instincts. Yeah and you can have experiences of all of a sudden just feeling happy or excited or laughing and all of those are your body’s way of being a compass for you and saying, yes, this is right for you, or no, something’s not quite right here, hey, listen to me, pay attention here. Those are your body’s cues and that’s your intuition’s way of talking to you.

Helen Thompson: Yeah, I’ve experienced both of those. You feel really happy about something and you feel really good about something, and then other times you may feel a little bit sad and you think, why am I feeling sad? What’s this feeling and what’s affecting me and why am I feeling that way? Asking yourself questions.

Jill Wright: That’s right and giving yourself space, right? It’s a noisy world. There’s always inputs coming into our minds and in our environments. If we’re in a busy, noisy area, our intuition’s a quiet voice within and so we need to give it quiet and space to come out and really speak to us in a place where there’s space for that and so getting quiet and going within, whether it’s through meditation or going through a walk in the forest and just listening to breeze running through the trees or the water in the shower when you’re showering. I get all of my great intuition hits in the shower. It’s amazing because that’s the time where your brain can be clear and your brain needs to be clear, and you need to have quiet to be able to hear that inner voice.

Helen Thompson: Yeah, I like going out for a walk in the bush because you’re in touch with nature and you’re just relaxing in nature and you can really hear what’s going on around you in a natural way and then your intuition sort of kicks in and it says, all right, well this is what you should be doing and that’s what you should be doing.

Jill Wright: It comes in a couple of different ways doesn’t it too because you can have those ideas, I like to say they sort of download in your head. They’re just there and they’re fully formed, and you’re like, oh my gosh, yes, this thing I didn’t realize is suddenly so clear. But then you can also have intuition and connect with your intuition in a way where you’re asking it questions or you’re asking for signs or help or guidance.

For me, something that’s been, probably since I was 14 or 15. So we’re gonna say over 20 years ago and has continued the entirety of the 20 years is on the clock. I see the time 11:26 every day and It’ll be on different ways, but I’ll see 11:26 come up always. And I just know that that’s my intuition’s way of reminding me, hey, you’re on the right track here, things are good and I know that if I miss seeing 11:26 in some way, for a number of days or weeks. Then I really connect in and I say, okay, what’s going on, what could maybe be off right now because I’m so used to seeing that number come up for me every day? It’s a super clear indication when I don’t see it and it can be different things for different people. It can be dreams too. Your intuition can talk to you in your dreams.

Helen Thompson: Yeah, I sometimes have dreams and I don’t remember them the next morning, and I sometimes even say to myself, look, I’ve gotta remember that dream, but if you don’t write it down straight away, you don’t remember it.

Jill Wright: And you know what, I think that that’s okay because I’ve heard recently this idea, and I really loved this because I also don’t remember my dreams and it used to frustrate me because I wanted to find the meaning and why did I dream that? But I heard recently the idea that sometimes your dreams are your mind’s way or your inner self’s way of either preparing you for a situation or acting out a scenario, not necessarily in exact, but it might be in different symbols or whatever makes sense for you in your brain, but of having that experience subconsciously so that you don’t have to deal with doing it consciously.

So maybe a good example of that would be if you’re having conflict with someone, sometimes you’ll have dreams that are more disturbing or a little bit uneasy during a time where you’re experiencing conflict, because that’s your body and brain’s way of dealing with this without having to experience it in real life and go through that conflict in real life. So I really liked that too.

Helen Thompson: Yeah, I like that, I think that’s really nice. It’s interesting how you say that’s what triggered, and I guess that’s the same for moms in a way that they may trigger something that they remember in their childhood when they have a baby or a child.

Jill Wright: Yeah, I think there’s a lot of reflecting and inner work that needs to happen when you become a mom because it brings up all kinds of things from your past, good or bad, lots of programming that you just were sort of brought up with. It puts into quite stark realization if you had different views or if you’d like to raise your children differently or the same as how you were brought up and that can create a lot of internal turmoil, which creates this sort of anxiety that our body’s trying to tell us, it’s not right here, we need to listen, we need to sort this out but it gets shoved down and because we’re so busy as moms, there’s always somebody else who needs us, who needs our attention and so it’s extremely difficult to find the time to be a ble to just breathe and just listen to your body because we are always being touched by somebody or wiping somebody’s butt or changing a diaper or feeding them or helping them with their ABCs or whatever it is, it’s nonstop, right? And that’s one of the things that I really help moms do is find the pockets of time where they can at least start to feel comfortable having a few minutes and using those few minutes to connect with themselves and really listen, what does my body need, what does my heart need, what does my brain need right now? What do I need? And as soon as you can get quiet and just ask yourself that question, what do I need, it’s the first thing that comes to your mind because the intuition is always gonna be first cuz it’s the truth, and then your ego kind of comes in and it wants to keep you safe, which means it wants to keep everything the same because the same is, it knows what’s common, even if the same is crazy, even if it’s chaos, even if it’s too much and overwhelming the ego’s job is to keep you safe and so it’ll say, no, no, this is what you need. You need to keep going, or you need to get better at this, or you need to do laundry, you don’t need to have a rest but if you can hone in on that really quick first response, that’s your intuition.

Helen Thompson: Yeah, I agree and I think that for a mom is actually very, very hard to do because there’s a lot going on, they’ve got a lot of kid pressures and whether they’ve got a baby or whether they’ve got a child that’s 3 or 5, there’s always something going on and it’s just sitting down. I don’t know how you describe it, but even if it’s just sitting down when the kids have gone to bed and giving yourself that time or saying to your kids, I need to have some quiet time right now because that way you are encouraging your kids to have that quiet time as well and if you trust in that, as you say, you’ve got to trust in your intuition. If you trust it and teach your children that you need that time, you’re also teaching them the same thing.

Jill Wright: I do that every day. I have my kids on the weekend where it’s a full day, just me and them. We have quiet time and they don’t nap anymore. My youngest one might, but normally doesn’t, but I always need that time and I always make sure I take that time. If it’s 60 or 75 minutes or whatever it is, they know that it’s mom’s quiet time. I can do with that time, whatever I want. Sometimes I work, most often I sleep cuz that’s what my body’s telling me I need. It’s so important and it’s hard to do because there’s a lot of guilt associated with that. There’s a lot of feeling like you can’t ask for help if you can’t get the opportunity to take yourself away from your kids cuz they’re too small or whatever. It’s for sometimes moms to ask for help so that they can take time for themselves. You know, it’s difficult to fit that time in, but it’s so important that we do.

Helen Thompson: Yeah, I was thinking of a scenario where they’re little, that if you take that time, which is important to do, when they’re old enough, four or five, if there’s something wrong, they can always come to you and you can always say that to them, look, this is mom’s quiet time, but if there’s an emergency, please come and get me. Don’t not come and get me just because it’s mom’s quiet time. If something happens and you need me please come and get me. You’re teaching them that respect for you, but you’re also teaching them that respect for them, and you are teaching them about trust, you’re teaching them about how to gain that trust and how to accept that.

Jill Wright: Yeah, absolutely. The more that we can teach our kids about trust the better, and it’s especially impactful if we can model it for them. We can show them that we trust ourselves and that we trust them and my word for 2023 is trust. That’s like the whole theme of my year this year. And one way actually that I encourage people to do that is kind of fun. We give them an advice diet and so they go for a week or two or however long without asking anyone else for their advice. They solely trust their own instincts. They solely look inward for answers because we’re used to looking externally, especially as moms.

We’re in an age where there’s more information available to us than any other generation of mothers and more differing opinions. Do you potty train this way or this way, do you sleep it out or do you co-sleep or cry it out or co-sleep, what is the best? There is so much information that we’re paralyzed. We don’t know what’s the right thing to do, but the right thing to do is so dependent on you and your baby and your family and every time a new baby comes in, then that changes too and every time each baby goes into a new phase of development, what’s right changes.

And so especially with new moms, I encourage them, just take a week, don’t ask for advice from the internet, from Dr. Google, from your girlfriends, from your mom, from book. Don’t get advice from anyone and just take a week and act what you feel. You can’t screw it up. And that builds a bit of trust and that’s a huge foundational step.

Helen Thompson: Yeah, I think that’s good. I think you just need to go with your family and be with them for the first week when you come home from hospital, or even if you’ve had a home birth. Just spend that time with your family and just get to know each other, get to know you, get to know the changes that are happening. And I think a lot more moms are actually doing that now. I think a lot more moms are respecting that and especially when they’re born in hospital, they’re saying, right, I don’t want anybody in apart from my husband or your chosen person, whoever that is and you just bond with your baby and you just connect with them. Cuz I teach baby massage and I think what we’re talking about with the baby and the bonding and the connection is all part of your intuition, it’s all part of your trust. Trusting yourself with your baby and trusting that touching your baby and talking to them and communicating with them is so important as well.

Jill Wright: Exactly, it’s a big part of connecting with yourself, but also once you can trust yourself, you can have better connections with those people around you as well.

Helen Thompson: Yeah, definitely and that takes a lot to do and I think you can tell if you are off as you say with your 11:26 time. Can sense if you’re off or if you’re not in the right space. Once you know how to trust yourself, you can do that. So, what would you do for a mom who came to you who was like that? How would you support them as a mom?

Jill Wright: It starts really with addressing the mindset because if we can understand where the challenges are in terms of, is it guilt, is it overwhelm, is it burnout, is it resentment? What is the root cause and how can we maybe without necessarily changing any of the external circumstances yet, how can we change the internal that’s happening? So I focus a lot about that on mindset and then once we’re really clear on, okay, here’s what we’re dealing with. A lot of times it’s guilt. I shouldn’t wanna take time away from my baby, or whatever the case is. If we can identify that, then I get into really providing the right tools and resources for creating time.

Time management is such a huge part of what I do because as moms that’s what we all do all the time, is we’ve got 24 hours and we’ve got so many things that need to be accomplished. And so reevaluating how you’re spending your time where you can ask for help, how you can get support, how you can support yourself, how you can become more efficient or productive in certain areas and free up time.

And then once we’ve created a bit of space and we sort of understand, then we look towards, okay, well what’s one thing we can do for you? Because if they can get motivated to start to spend some time on something that they love or they wanna work towards or dream, even if it’s just I wanna read more or I wanna make sure I stay connected with my girlfriends outside of the mom, friends. Whatever it is, it can be big or small. It could be I wanna start a business or write a book or get healthy, whatever. Then we start to figure out, well, how can we get you there. Now that we’ve got some extra time, now that we know, like your mind’s in the right space, how can we actually get you to focus on these things that are going to help fill your cup and support you?

And it all kind of comes together full circle and they experience this big transformation in all areas because we’ve got the mindset working with the goals, with freeing up time through all of that, trusting self and doing meditation exercises and different things, different challenges here, and there is a great way to sort of foster that trust for self and it builds as you go through the program, so it’s really very interesting to see.

Helen Thompson: It sounds like a really good program for moms to relate to because as you say, you’ve got the guilt, you don’t wanna leave the baby, cuz you think if I leave my baby, I’m a bad mom, or if I go and have a shower I’m a bad mom and you are not a bad mom. You’re just looking at it thinking I need to be with me and I need to go and find me. And you mentioned girlfriends as well, not in the mom’s space and that must be quite hard because if you’ve been used to going out with your girlfriends, going out to parties or doing whatever you do without kids, and suddenly you’ve got a kid and you’ve got a girlfriend that doesn’t have a kid, unless the girlfriend is understanding, which I’m sure a lot of them are, it’s a hard one because they may not want to be around kids. They may just wanna have the time with you, and you can’t give the time.

Jill Wright: Right, yeah, it is tough. It can be a struggle and I think a lot of relationships change in that stage. It’s up to us to really decide what’s an important relationship to keep and what’s okay to move on from. Not all relationships are going to last us the course of our whole lives.

Helen Thompson: Yeah, I think what you said there is so true, and I think that’s all part of your intuition is to find out, to check in with yourself is this girlfriend or is this person I’ve known all my life and I was really close to, do I still want to connect with them or not and that can be a really hard decision.

Jill Wright: It can be and one thing that I’m really focused on now is encouraging people to separate between an inner circle and everyone else. And your inner circle doesn’t necessarily have to just be made up of the people you love and the people who love you. It is made up of people who support you and who give you good energy and who fill your cup, who recharge your batteries when you spend time with and sometimes the people we love and the people who love us, drain us through no fault of anyone.

They’re just a different energy or they’re not supportive or understanding of the situation, the dream, whatever. However, maybe it’s how you want to parent or how you want to stay home or not stay home with the baby, or whatever your choices are. And so the inner circle is really an idea of people, a small group of people who support you, fill up your cup and sort of recharge your batteries and give you that good energy and it’s okay if the people you love aren’t necessarily in that inner circle. They don’t have to be, that’s not necessarily the purpose.

Helen Thompson: Yeah, I’ve experienced that a lot of times. You go out with friends and you think, I’m just going out with this friend just to be social, but they’re not filling up your cup and they’re not being supportive of you. But then if you go out with people that are, it really feels good to have those people around you.

Jill Wright: It’s a whole different energy and that’s a completely other topic that I could go on for ages about is the energetics of everything and how it makes you feel and it’s so connected with intuition. If you can start to trust your intuition, you’re gonna start to feel the energy of things around you and how that impacts you, and you’ll be in tune to notice it and it all works together in this really beautiful way.

Helen Thompson: Yeah, I understand that, cause I’m like that with my family sometimes. Sometimes they’re great to be around. They all live overseas, in the UK and there’s sometimes when I call them and I’m thinking, why did I call you?

Jill Wright: Yeah.

Helen Thompson: I know we could talk for ages on this, but do you have anything else that you’d like to share?

Jill Wright: I think just to remember that if there’s something that your intuition is trying to tell you and you’re not listening or you’re not sure how to listen, don’t worry because it will try to tell you in a different way. I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced this, where you have to learn a lesson over and over or go through the same type of situation over and over until it really hits home and you’re like, oh, dammit won’t do that again. A lot of times it’s in relationships, like you date the same type of guy or girl over and over and you’re like, why is this not working? Finally, it hits you. That’s your intuition. It’s gonna keep coming at you and it’s gonna keep coming at you stronger and stronger until you listen.

So don’t worry. It’s easier for you if you can start to listen early cuz you’re not gonna get faced with all of those challenges. But just know that you always can trust what’s happening within your mind and your body and the answers always come from within. You don’t have to find the answers, validation, or permission from any external source.

Helen Thompson: I like that. If anybody wants to get in touch with you and find out more about you, how do they go about doing it?

Jill Wright: Yeah, my website is LivingWithHeart.ca. I’m in Canada, I’ve got some digital courses on there if you are interested in a self-paced kind of thing. I also offer one-to-one coaching and a hybrid group coaching program. I’m on Instagram and Facebook. I’m at Grow Like a Mother on both of those, and that’s also the name of my podcast Grow Like a Mother. So, lots of different ways. I’m kind of everywhere.

Helen Thompson: Thank you. I love that name for your podcast, Grow Like A Mother. I think that’s a really lovely name for a podcast. Thank you for being here, Jill. I could talk to you forever about this topic. Thank you for sharing all about the intuition, cuz I think that’s a really powerful thing for first time mums to learn about.

So thank you for sharing. I really appreciate that and I will put all that information in the show notes.

Jill Wright: Perfect. Well, thanks for the opportunity to talk about it and it’s been such an honor to be on with you. I appreciate the time.

Helen Thompson: I hope you find Jill’s tips and insights about reconnecting with your intuition as fascinating as I did. I think that there is no better time for getting in touch with this part of you, during this time of your life where everything is so new. I’ve included links to Jill’s website and social media in the show notes, which can be found at MyBabyMassage.net/podcast/113.

Is your little one suffering from colic, constipation and have problems sleeping? Baby massage maybe the solution you’ve been looking for, to help you experience less crying, less stress and have a happier, more contented little one and household. I’ve created a free introduction video to Baby Massage that demonstrates its many wonderful benefits and how it can help both you and your little one. You can access this video by going to MyBabyMassage.net/intro, that’s MyBabyMassage.net/intro.

Next week I’ll be sharing how baby massage can help with postpartum depression. Be sure to listen to this episode when it comes out and please subscribe to First Time Mum’s Chat via your favorite platforms so that you get quick and easy access to all our episodes when they are live.