The Signal You Keep Ignoring

When was the last time you listened to yourself and actually acted on it? And I'm not talking about the version of yourself that consulted three people. I'm talking about the version of you, though, that's quiet. The one who already knew that you didn't listen to her.

Welcome to the Unblocked Woman podcast. I'm Amy Sanders. For years, I believed the next level of my life and business would come from a better strategy. Working harder, figuring out that perfect plan.

But eventually, I saw the real truth. The biggest ceiling in our lives is not strategy. It's identity. The patterns we don't see.

The subtle ways we play small. The version of ourselves that we keep defaulting back to even when we know we're capable of more. This podcast is where we bring those patterns into the light. We talk about identity, leadership, growth, and what it actually takes to become the woman who can truly hold the life and business she wants.

No fluff. No performance. Just honesty. Honest conversation about stepping fully into your power.

So go ahead and subscribe and follow the show. And remember, the moment you see the pattern, you can finally break it. Hello and welcome back to the Unblocked Woman podcast. I'm Amy Sanders, creator of The Unblocked Method and also creator of The Mirror.

And today we are talking about something that I think is so important, but something that so many high-achieving women are not doing, which is trusting yourself. And when you can see your pattern, you can literally change your life. That's what all of this work is about. Every episode is going to talk about this in some way or another.

But today is all about self-trust. And here's what I want to ask you before we even dive in. My question to you is, when was the last time you listened to yourself and actually acted on it? And I'm not talking about the version of yourself that consulted.

Three people, you went to your best friends, you asked them what their points of view were on your question. Or the version of you who read like 10 articles about that specific topic before you actually moved. Maybe you texted your group chat and then you still second-guessed yourself. I know that this is probably landing because, as women, so many of us do this.

I'm talking about the version of you, though, that's quiet. The one who already knew that you didn't listen to her. Most of the women that I work with are really smart. They're capable.

They're driven. They're into personal development. They're doing all of the things. They're journaling.

They have all the affirmations written down. They look at them all the time. They even have their vision boards. They are literally doing all of the things.

And yet, they still don't trust themselves. Not completely, not fully, and not in the way that matters. And that's why I think this topic is so important. And honestly, I've been guilty of this, too.

And I still find myself, all the time, doing little things where I am not building self-trust with myself. In fact, I am pushing myself further away from self-trust, which is why I wanted to bring this to you today. When you are taught that your voice isn't important, or you get used to not feeling heard, it is normal to question yourself. And as females, we are faced with this all the time.

And here's the thing. Self-trust is not a confidence problem. So many women who struggle with self-trust think it's because they're not confident. That is not true.

The problem is that it's a pattern. And so today, I want to redefine self-trust for you. And I think most of us have been taught that there's a version of you that's set up to fail if you trust yourself. We've been told that self-trust is all about confidence, about being sure about everything, and that when it comes to self-trust, we don't have any doubt.

Like, the people who actually trust themselves don't have any doubt. But that's not self-trust. All that is is self-certainty. And self-trust and self-certainty are not the same thing.

Self-trust is not the absence of doubt. You can have deep self-trust and still doubt. But self-trust is not the absence of doubt. Self-trust is just a decision to actually honor that own signal.

You're honoring yourself and what you're feeling even when doubt is present. It's about deciding before you're sure that you have the answer inside of you that's best for you. It's about listening to yourself, even if it's not kosher and it's going against the grain of what everybody else is doing. But you have that little signal inside and you listen to it.

That's what self-trust is. That's what self-trust is about. In the Unblocked Method, in my program that I have, I teach that every woman has an internal signal, an internal knowing, a read on a situation that is almost always more accurate than you're giving yourself credit for. You do know what's best for you.

You have a very old, wise soul inside of you. But the problem is that you've gotten. You're used to not listening to that signal and your action is sitting on a pattern. And that pattern is overriding the signal now.

And that pattern is causing you to delay or defer that answer that you actually know. Today, we're going to name the pattern because you cannot shift what you can't see. But once you see it, you absolutely can shift it. So we're going to talk about the override loop.

Basically, when you override. What you know you should do. And here's what this loop looks like. Tell me if any of this sounds familiar.

You get a feeling. You get a nudge. A clear no about something. Whether it's in a relationship, a big decision, a small decision, an opportunity, something.

And then your brain starts negotiating. Your brain starts saying, but what if I'm wrong? I don't want to be too sensitive. I don't want to be mean.

I don't want to be too much. Maybe I'm being too much. Or maybe I'm being difficult. Let me just get a little more information before I make this move.

What if people think that I'm selfish for wanting that? You start negotiating. And next thing you know, you're asking around. You're sitting on it.

You're waiting for more evidence to prove that that nudge that you got, that clear no that you got, is actually a no. You're minimizing the signal until that signal gets quiet enough that you can just ignore it. And that's when you start negotiating. And then one of two things happens.

Either you follow someone else's read of your own knowing. You already knew, right? But you decided to listen to someone else. And things go sideways.

And then later you're like, oh my gosh, I totally knew. I knew and I didn't listen to myself again. Or you finally trust yourself. It works out.

And then you still don't fully give yourself credit for knowing. You call it luck or you say that the timing was just right. You disagree. You discount that part of you that made the right decision.

And you give the credit anywhere but back to yourself. That's the pattern. That's the override loop. And it costs you way more than the wrong decision.

Because it costs you the relationship with yourself. It literally is costing you self-trust. So let's talk about it. And I like to look at it in four parts.

The first part is self-trust is not built by getting it right. It's built. It's built by being brutally honest with yourself. It's built by being honest.

What's normal here is that we think that we'll trust ourselves more when we have more evidence. And at that point we're like, okay, now we know that we're right. So we will wait for the wins. We'll wait for the proof.

But self-trust isn't constructed from outcomes. It's constructed from being honest. The moment you say, I felt that and I ignored it. And you don't shame yourself.

You don't blame yourself for it, but you note it. In that moment, self-trust is being built. Even though you ignored it. You're actually seeing, hey, I saw that.

I felt it and I ignored it. Because you acknowledge it, self-trust is being built. The moment that you say, that didn't feel right from the beginning and I need to name that. Even now, self-trust is being built.

The moment you say you actually make the decision because you know it's the right thing and you follow through. Self-trust is being built. Self-trust is always being built when you're being honest. Honesty is the foundation.

It's not accuracy. Self-trust will still be built if you're honest, but you end up making the wrong decision, but you're honest about it. You're still building self-trust. So I want to ask you, where have you felt something clearly and you've talked yourself out of it?

And what did it actually cost you? I have done this a million times. So many times. I'm like the queen of this.

I literally married a person that I knew I wasn't supposed to. The minute that he was on his knee proposing to me, my entire body was alarming. Head to toe. And not because I was excited like, oh my gosh, he's proposing, he's proposing.

I'm so excited, I have butterflies in my tummy. It was not that. My entire body was incomplete. What's even the word for it?

Hysterics? I don't know. I mean, my heart. My heart was beating crazy.

My gut was in knots. My head was pounding. My body was alarming that this is not the move. And as it was alarming, I still agreed to marry him because he told me that his dad, my dad, told him yes.

Because someone else told him yes to me marrying him, I decided that I had to too. I completely ignored it. And it's like one of the most important decisions you can make, getting married. That literally.

Broke. Whatever self-trust I had, it broke it completely. I completely self-betrayed. So when I ask you where have you felt something clearly and talked yourself out of it, and what did it cost you?

I'm asking you that because I know firsthand how much it can cost you when you self-betray, when you move away from self-trust. Part two is your pattern of override was learned, and it actually made sense once. It was something that you learned to stay safe. And I mean this with full sincerity.

The override loop, it didn't appear out of nowhere. You didn't start overriding your self-trust out of nowhere. At some point, trusting your own signal, that own little alarm inside you was not safe. Or maybe it wasn't modeled.

You didn't see an example of it. Or when you did follow it, people around you made you pay for it. You're nervous. The system learned, check with someone else first, get permission, make sure, don't be too much, don't be wrong.

The pattern protected you. And now it's the very thing that's keeping you from the life that you say you want. Like I mentioned earlier, I learned firsthand because I grew up in a house that wasn't safe to have me speak my voice. To have me even really speak up.

I was number five of seven kids. Very overlooked. And I had to become independent. Really, really.

We were not allowed to play and be loud and have fun, especially girls. The girls in my family, what we learned is that in order to be part of that family, we could not ask for what we wanted. We needed to be super agreeable, behave, and minimize our own needs. And by the way, I have a big personality.

How I was taught to be safe in my household is very opposite of what my personality is. But that's what I did. That's what I learned. The work here is about seeing where your protection became your prison and then choosing something differently from a place of awareness, not shame.

I love this work literally because I'm my biggest client. I've had to completely change my belief system and rebuild my life completely more than once. I've had to start over. And what it's done is it has taught me to question everything.

Like what do I actually... What do I actually believe for myself? And is it serving me? Do I trust that this is best for me?

Or am I just falling in line with what taught me to be safe as a child? Am I moving from safety of old patterns or am I moving from self-trust today? And I want to ask you that. Like when did you first learn that it wasn't safe to trust your own read on things?

To decide for yourself what's best for you? And I want to ask you that. And what was it that you learned to do instead? For me, it was literally falling in line.

And it was shushing my voice. And to be quite honest, I still to this day have to speak up. Like have to tell myself that it's okay to speak up. Partly why I have a podcast is just to get my voice out there and show myself that it is okay to speak up.

It's okay to have an opinion. It's okay to voice my own opinions. I just said opinion, but you know what I mean. This is the work.

Part three is self-trust as a practice. Not a personality trait. So many women think that other women that have full self-trust, it's just something that they were born with. We treat self-trust like it's something that you either have or that you don't.

Some women are wired for it and others are not. But that's not true. Self-trust is just like any muscle. You have to use it and it builds through you.

Not through perfect execution. When you see a woman that's full of self-trust, it could be. That she grew up in a household that was more safe when she was younger, so she didn't have to do as much work as you. But she still had to do the work.

If you grew up in a household where maybe it wasn't as safe, you might have more work to do. But you're here listening to this podcast, so my guess is that you're up for the challenge. So what does the work actually look like? What does it look like to practice this?

The very first thing you need to do is you need to notice the signal. That little alarm that's inside of you, you just notice it. You don't have to analyze it. You don't have to justify it.

You just notice it. Hmm, this is interesting. Something in me is saying X. The second thing you do is now ask, what does this little signal need from me?

You don't need to know what it means. You don't need to ask it what it means or whether it's correct or incorrect. All you need to ask is, what does it need right now? And the third is that you give it that.

Even if it's small. Even if it's imperfect. Even whatever it is. You just honor it.

And every single time you do that, every single time you notice the signal, you ask what it needs. And then you give it that. Every time you do that. Every time you choose your own signal over the over loop.

The override over loop. Excuse me. I'm saying that wrong. Over the override loop.

You send the message to your nervous system that I am someone who can be trusted to listen to myself. So to put it in context, let me give you an example of what this might look like. So let's say that a woman gets offered a business partnership. And she actually likes the person with the partnership.

And the opportunity. The opportunity sounds right. The money potential is there. So she says yes.

But in 24 hours after she agrees, she keeps rewinding the email that she owes them. She keeps delaying the call. There's a low-grade dread that she keeps showing up to. And she keeps labeling it nerves or imposter syndrome or I just need to push through.

The dread is the signal. Her body has clocked something that her brain hasn't caught up with yet. And maybe it's the other person's communication style. Maybe it's a value.

Use alignment that she glimpsed once and then filed away. Maybe the partnership requires her to show up in a way that doesn't fully fit her life right now. And she's not really paying attention to which one it is, but something inside her knows. And instead of listening to herself and slowing down, she's negotiating with herself.

She's telling herself, this is just fear. I always feel this way before something big. Or I don't want to be the person who self-sabotages. So she pushes through.

She does it with the other woman. She becomes a partner. And then three months later, she's resentful. And she's overextended.

She's miserable. And she says, yeah, I always knew it. I knew it from the beginning that something was off. And now here I am.

That is the loop. And that's what it costs. And that's also how the relationship with yourself gets built. By being honest in those moments when you feel that nudge.

You're honest with yourself and you take some time to get to a clean yes or no. So I want to ask you, a little reflection. What's one signal that you've been overriding? And what would it look like if you were to honor it?

Even a little bit. Even just partially this week. What would that look like? And how would that help you?

The last part, part four, is the woman who trusts herself becomes magnetic. Now, if you've been in my work for any time at all, you see that all over the place. You're going to see it shift. It become magnetic.

That's our tagline. And it's because the woman who trusts herself does become magnetic. What I see in my clients as they start trusting themselves is they stop explaining. And they just make the moves.

They stop asking for permission from other people. They stop second-guessing themselves. And they start making decisions from different places. Not from fear or getting it wrong, but from genuine alignment with what they actually want.

And people feel it. Other people. They feel that magnetism that I'm talking about. And it's not a vibe that is manufactured or that you're pretending to have.

It's literally magnetism. Because you're not at war. You're not at war with yourself anymore. And when you're not at war with yourself anymore and when you are aligned, you're magnetic.

People feel it. They're attracted to you. And it's because you're not fragmented or split energy anymore. Instead, you're able to become whole.

And when you're whole, you're magnetic. So my question is, what would change in your life, your relationships, your business, your daily decisions, if you genuinely trusted yourself? If you moved from self-trust and you listened to that nudge, how would your life look different today? What would be different?

Before we're done here, I want to do something with you. I want you to think about a decision that you're currently sitting on. Something that you already have a read on. Like you kind of know what you're supposed to do, but you haven't fully honored it yet.

And I want you to think about where you feel it in your body. Not what you think about it. I want you to get out of your head and into your body. Like where you feel it.

That's your signal. That's the part of you that already knows the answer. And I want you to ask her, the part of you that knows, not your brain. Move away from your brain.

But the part of you that already knows, like what she needs from you right now. And it doesn't have to be anything big. It probably isn't. It's probably just one honest step.

Whatever has come up for you, that is the work. Not the decision itself, but the relationship with the part of you that already saw it clearly. Because she's been there the whole time. That inner knowing, she is waiting for you to move.

She is waiting for you to ask her and to move from self-trust. So here's what I want you to walk away with today. Self-trust. Is not something you earn when you've proven yourself enough times or asked enough people.

Self-trust is something that you practice in the small moments, the daily decisions, the places where your signal is speaking and the override loop is saying wait. You're not broken for struggling to trust yourself. All it is is a pattern. And remember that patterns can shift.

That pattern has kept you safe in the past, but it is now holding you back and it is time to let it go. That is what this work is built to do. To help you see that pattern clearly enough, that it loses its grip on you and you can move forward freely. Once you see it, you can always choose something different.

Just like I say, see it, shift it, become magnetic. And if you want to go deeper in this work and you want to see the patterns actually running your decisions and starting to interrupt them on the daily, check out the mirror. The mirror is literally the coolest product I have ever created. And it's powered and built on the method that I talk about all the time.

So if you are interested, go to the website, amysanders. co forward slash mirror and check it out. But it is something that will help you see your patterns in real time. And I love it.

Anyway, if you liked this episode, make sure that you share it with your friends. Make sure you give us a review. All of those reviews help us reach more people. And our goal is to create a global movement where we help women see their patterns and become unblocked.

Also, I do respond in my Instagram. So I'd love to hear what landed for you. And how this work is helping you with that. Take care and I will see you next week.

Bye. Thanks for listening to the unblocked woman. Listen, you don't rise by waiting. You rise by leading.

So if this episode sparked a shift, send it to a woman who needs to hear next. And if you're ready to go deeper, join the unblocked woman collective or begin the unblocked method at amysanders. co. And remember, see it, shift it, become magnetic.

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