Who Is Driving the Car? The Ego or the Soul?

** Welcome to the Intuitive Health podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Anthony Rafferty, a medical doctor, a PhD, Reiki, and shamanic intuitive healer.** I'm here to bring you on a journey of holistic healing that explores the science of the physical body combined with mental and emotional well-being, energetic, and spiritual health. And I am so excited to have you here today with me, just me, today on this journey exploring what the difference is in ego versus soul decision making. So, this is something I've been navigating myself quite a lot and I thought it'd be quite cool to really explore this with you guys as listeners of the podcast because I'm seeing it a lot in my clients as well. And you know, as we go on this deep journey of coming back to our authentic sense of expression and identifying kind of what our souls purpose is and how we make decisions that are in alignment with what our intuition is telling us, with what our heart is telling us, with what our gut is telling us. How do we know that we're making the right decisions that are in alignment? So, I wanted to explore today essentially different kind of features or feelings you may get in the body with regard to when a conditioned behavior is rearing its head and the ego might be calling the shots versus when we feel in alignment with our soul and we're making soul-based decisions. So, I'm super excited to get stuck into this content today. Now, this has all kind of come about after just finishing the six-week awaken your voice course that we had run live online with the most beautiful group of souls. We were going deep into the wounds of expression. So, things that block our authentic sense of expression through our voice and how we just show up in the world like are we showing up authentically on the day-to-day and what wounds have we inherited that actually block us from showing up in the most authentic way. And the deeper we got into the content, we were exploring the most amazing fears that basically created limiting beliefs that led to the development of facades or archetypes that basically we live by in a very unconscious way that run the show on the day-to-day.

** And you know when we kind of look back through all of these these kind of patterns by which we we live out our wounds on the day-to-day. It really strips us back to kind of make us think to ourselves, oh my god, what fears are are underlying all of these behavioral patterns**. So if you've ever questioned whether your choices are coming from fear rather than deep inner truth, this episode is for you. And we're going to explore exactly why that may may be the case. So hopefully by the end of this podcast episode, you'll have a bit more understanding of what this ego is, what the soul is, how to recognize whether the ego or the soul is guiding you with regard to decision-making. And I'm going to give you some tips to live a more soul aligned life. So let's get stuck in. So what is the ego? What is the ego? And you know when I first heard this word, it used to trigger me so much because you know when you actually hear the word ego, you think to yourself this kind of delusion of grandeur. And I'm sure there's a couple of people that you've met on your path at this stage that you'd consider to have a dominant or overriding ego. But we all have an ego. It's part of being human. And you know, sometimes we don't cut the ego enough slack in that it was actually an identity that we constructed or created in order to survive in the world, in order to be accepted in the world, and in order to succeed in the world. So, I really really love that we can kind of look at this from a different kind of angle and it's so important to recognize that this ego has kept us safe for most of our lives. And it's interesting to get really curious about it and why it actually came to be in the first place. So the egoic mind or the monkey mind some people refer to it as it's shaped by early childhood conditioning by societal norms. It's shaped through trauma that we've experienced through praise through rejection and through fear. And essentially its job is to protect protect us. Its job is to keep us safe. And you know, the human soul just wants to feel like it belongs. It's part of a community. It's understood. But sometimes kind of this desire to belong.

** It can skew how we show up, you know, and usually our conditioned behaviors which present itself as the egoic mind that will ensure we belong. no matter what**. And in order to ensure we belong, the egoic mind will develop strategies or practices which basically will allow us to fit in. And this is often at the expense of our own authenticity, the expense of our own really true heart-c centered way of showing up. We develop methods and mechanisms and ways of being that ensure that we fit in with the with the masses, rather than allowing our crazy weird freak flag to f fly and to just be our authentic selves and to be different. Like what a gift to be different in this world, you know, and we're all so unique and we're all just so powerful and beautiful. We all have really individual gifts and that we are here to express in the world. And so it's so important to kind of really take a deep dive into our egoic wounds so that we can begin to really identify what aspects of our behavior or our being is just trying to fit in and and stay safe rather than allowing ourselves to be fabulous and different and authentic. So generally speaking, I just want to kind of speak into how the ego usually operates. So the ego usually operates through the mind and how does it do this? It does this through looping thoughts. It does it through anxiety and it does this through fear-based narratives. So stories that we tell ourselves that are rooted in fears. So it's often fueled by shoulds or regret. So you know I should have done this or even kind of showing up in a position that you feel you have to. So that's also rooted in fear as well. I have to do this. I should do this. And I have to tell you like these narratives dominated my life for very very many a year. I never knew what it meant to say no to things. I stretched myself so thinly and the facades that I created on my journey to get here. Oh my god, looking back through some of these wounds it was just wild.

** But the thing is at the time until I got deep into this healing journey, I didn't even know that those facades, I didn't even know that those egoic decision-making practices or the looping thoughts that were going on in my mind, I did not realized that they were not me, that they weren't part of my authentic, gorgeous light**. They were literally just narratives and facades that I'd created through my journey as a human in this world. And when I started going for therapy many years ago, I remember I started getting these crazy light bulb moments. So much clarity and wisdom and all this this insight used to come in like very early on my therapy journey because it was like I was basically presented with all of these different ways of viewing myself and it blew my mind. Now, it also rattled me to the core and I will never forget I will never forget my therapist at the time. I was living in Australia. He was an absolutely gifted therapist. He was a magical man. And one day he said to me, "Tony, I'm going to I'm going to make up a nickname for you." And I was like, "What? what do you mean? And he was like, I'm going to start calling you phony Tony and I nearly died. My ego was so wounded that in that moment I felt like I'd been hit by a bus. And I said, "Why are you saying that?" I was like, "That's so cruel." And he turned around to me. He said, "Because I want to highlight the extent to which you actually abandon yourself to show up for others". He is like, "The version that you are putting out into the world It's phony because you are doing it only to be liked, to be loved, to be accepted. That isn't the true authentic nature of your soul. He was like, "And the sooner I can get you to realize that, the better." And I tell you, that was such a poignant moment in my therapy journey because it made me realize, oh my god, like maybe the version of me that shows up on the day-to-day, the people pleaser, the peacekeeper. You know, all of these different facades and archetypes that I'd created as a gay man trying to fit into the world in a very safe way. Wow. It just rattled me to my core. And it made me really start questioning, are these versions of who's showing up on the day today, is that actually me?

** Who even am I? So, if you've gotten to the point in your journey where you're like, who the hell even am I in here? Congratulations. Congratulations. because it takes a lot of courage to get to that space**. And it takes so much courage to actually acknowledge that, oh my god, maybe there's parts of how I show up and behave that aren't in alignment with actually the true essence of my soul. So, fair play for getting there. Now, generally speaking, the ego also tries to control things. It likes a sense of certainty. It loves external validation and it identifies by roles. So, if you put yourself into the achiever box, the caretaker, the rebel, if you're the peacekeeper, or if you are the people pleaser, just maybe start to tap into kind of some of these identities and begin to question them. Where do they come from? Like, why do you feel it's okay to identify by some of these things? You know, so it it's really important that if you identify by any labels in your life at the moment, begin to question to yourself, what does this label give me? You know, does it create a sense of safety? Or perhaps it sense gives you a sense of kind of having a place in the world. You know, I tend to find that sometimes when we really let the ego lead the way with decision-m, we may take jobs for prestige over passion. We take uh we take jobs because they sound good on paper. they have lovely fancy titles rather than actually following what your soul or your heart is telling you. Sometimes we end up saying yes because we have a fear of being disliked. Oh my god, absolutely was me on the journey. And sometimes we overachieve to feel worthy. And you know if I can't associate with this one anymore, I don't know who I'd be. But the overachieving piece can be so huge. And the thing is our worth gets wrapped up in a lot of these things. So, are you overachieving to basically validate yourself and to feel like you are worth taking up space? Because actually the true light and the essence of your soul that we'll get into that is your medicine. That is your gift to the world. It's not all the degrees that you have.

** And don't get me wrong, like I obviously want to see certain certain people in certain genres of life because they have the qualifications to be able to guide me or mentor me or or review my health file**. But when we kind of start chasing some of these things in our life, is it just to to um to feel like it are as we are worthy of taking up the space? So really important questions to begin asking yourself. And another one I tend to see in practice quite a lot is staying in a relationship because of what others might think. And this is a huge one. I have had myself a couple of serious relationships went through a a big separation for many years. And you know, sometimes when I look back at the decision making that was linked to embarrassment and regret that kept me in spaces or one particular relationship for longer than I probably should have been in and actually let it evolve to spaces where I knew from the get-go that maybe that's not where it should have gone, but I didn't trust my intuition. I didn't use discernment at that time. I kind of went based on kind of what other people were saying to me and put other people's opinions on a much higher pedestal than my own internal judgment and navigation system. And unfortunately this has happened on many many many occasions and I used to beat myself up about this until I realized that actually these were conditioned ways of being. And then when I started going back and giving those younger versions of myself love and understanding because he didn't know any different. That is when things began to change for me. So essentially, let's move now into what the soul is. So we've discussed a little bit about the ego and what ego may operate as and I've kind of given you some examples of what ego-led decision-making looks like. But what is the soul? The soul is beautiful. It's eternal. It's wise. And it's the most authentic expression of our of self. It's essentially who we are. It's the essence of who we are beneath all of the roles and all of the wounds and all of the conditioning that we hold. It is the true light of our soul.

** So basically the way I tend to look at this as an energetic healer is that the soul is this beautiful pure energy that is eternal and move from life to life and through all of these beautiful lives that we've lived**. And carries a deep understanding of all of these past lives. And it is essentially this kind of eternal energy that comes into this physical world and takes up residence in our meatsuit in our body and essentially it kind of goes on this journey or this dance with our human mind. And essentially has a much deeper and intuitive knowing about why we came here in this physical world to do the things that we came to do to learn the lessons that we came to learn. However, the soul doesn't operate the same way that the ego does. The ego is constructed by the patterns and the conditioning and the relational life that we've had within within this physical life. However, your soul holds the memory from multiple multiple lives. It's wise. It's wise beyond what we can even comprehend. And although the ego speaks in looping thought and narrative patterns in our mind, the soul is more linked to feeling. It's more linked to intuition, what resonates with us, what sparks a much deeper and inner knowing about what is right and wrong on this path. The soul does not seek validation. What the soul seeks is actually truth. It seeks alignment and it seeks growth. And They are all beautiful, beautiful words to kind of really anchor in kind of what what it means to be on a journey with the soul. And I tend to say to people, you know, when people are suffering from anxiety or low mood, it's because the monkey mind, the egoic mind, there is something out of place in regard to our soul alignment. We've allowed the egoic mind to take root and the looping thought patterns based on our conditioned behaviors and all of these things. That's what's taking over. However, your soul wisdom and knowing and your intuition is becoming so strong in the body, a battle ends up forming internally. And do you ever go through those times when you feel like there's such deep internal chaos, there's a battle going on internally?

** That's the battle between your soul and the wisdom you hold and the egoic conditioned mind**. And And it's so so interesting because you know when we go on a journey with the soul, the soul whispers. It does not shout. The egoic mind shouts. And for anybody who has gotten trapped in loops of anxiety and intense thought patterns, like I went on a deep journey with this back before I began medical school. It's how I actually found my way to the Buddhist center where I learned to meditate and quiet the mind to go on much more deeper journey with my soul and my inner world. And that's what reconnected me with my soul was basically the Buddha center and all the beautiful teachers and mentors at the Buddha Center. And I'm going to speak into what spiritual awakening is and how it's a remembering of of your true nature and going back to your soul in another podcast episode, but it's quite fascinating because actually the wounds of the egoic mind and the torment that it was causing me at that time led me to seek solace within the face of my soul. And in order to do that and to actually hear the whispers of what my soul was trying to telling tell me, I had to find a sense of silence. I had to find stillness in my body and I had to return to my body. I had to return to my body to ask it questions about what felt right and what felt wrong. You know, the soul actually invites surrender. It invites trust into our world and it's aligned with creativity and love. So essentially when we can identify what creative endeavors light up our heart and make us feel love and joy in this world that is when the soul is speaking to us you know so soul-led choices might not make sense on paper but they're actually deeply right feelings in the body. They they make us feel alive in some senses but in a really calm beautiful way. So hopefully you're getting a sense of the difference between chaos that the egoic mind creates versus the peaceful, beautiful energetic aspect of the soul and how that makes us feel.

** And usually when I'm getting to the space where I'm going through this big death and rebirth or a big um uh death of the egoic mind, which I ha which happens to me so regularly on this journey as we return to our soul knowing, we go through these huge big ego deaths where actually we identify that parts of the structures and the conditioning of what we've learned to keep us safe, they need to die away**. And sometimes I'm literally white knuckling it. I'm holding so desperately onto that part of my egoic mind and that part of how I used to view myself that it causes so much chaos internally until I actually just let go. I let go of that part of me and I allow my soul to step in and actually take the lead and the peace just comes back in, you know? So hopefully you're getting a bit of an idea now as to kind of the egoic mind versus the soul-based feelings and what what's being conjured up in the body even listening to this. So generally speaking soul-led decisions tend to um you know make you feel that things are in alignment. You know it might result in you leaving kind of a job or situation or something that might actually look perfect on paper but actually makes you feel misaligned. And you know this happened to me in relationships it's happening to me in living situations it's happened to me in jobs. I have four actually on a journey with a fifth degree at the moment and you know that was a lot of that was seeking and chasing validation and having the perfect resume. I remember I used to think to myself oh my god my resume is amazing I have like over 40 or 50 published papers I've spoken at all the these conferences. Look at all the degrees that I have. This is amazing. But actually when I used to go to the hospital every day because I had a deep connection with spirit, a deep connection to energy. The way we did modern medicine just was felt so misaligned to me. I couldn't give people time. I couldn't give people my energy. I couldn't talk to them about everything that that I needed to talk to them about the trauma that led to some of these physical body conditions.

** And although everything looked perfect on paper, I was had followed the perfect career trajectory to be a brilliant doctor on paper. Something just felt misaligned**. So, it's really important to tune into the body to see what feels misaligned to you on this journey. Even though people and our conditioned mind might tell us, but things look perfect on the outside. Now, soul-led decisions also might look like saying no, even if it disappoints others people. And you know, guilt is such a huge thing in the Irish culture. I've spoken about this in previous podcast episodes. And it's a wasted emotion. It's a wasted energy because actually it gets nobody anywhere, you know, and it's often what prevents us from saying no and stepping into a place of the conditioned egoic mind because we don't we're so worried about disappointing other people, you know. Another example of a soul-led decision might look like pursuing a calling that doesn't guarantee success, but it actually brings you peace. What What would it look like to pursue something like that? What does it look like to choose healing over the hustle culture that exists? And this is such a catchphrase over in the States. My friends from the States use it all the time. Do you have a side hustle? Where do you make your extra money? And I'm like, that all sounds like so much work. Can you heal these wounds of the egoic mind that you don't need to pursue the side hustle? Or do you feel like you're constantly hustling in your job right now? Like hustling in a relationship, what does it look like to you? And can you make a more soul-led decision around that? So, I'm going to speak a little bit now into how the ego runs the show. So, signs that the ego might be in control might look like having constant mental chatter or overthinking. Oh my god. Back when I used to suffer from anxiety about 15 years ago, before I found my way to the Buddhist center, I used to lie awake at night thinking, overthinking everything. Oh my god. My mind was on constant looped feedback patterns, you know, and a lot of it was fear-based decisionm. So, what does it look like if I fail? What will people think of me? Do you make decisions that are based from fear? Have a little think about that.

** Also, seeking external validation or proving yourself to others. How do you try and prove yourself to others on the dayto-day? Do you seek external validation for what you do on the dayto-day, you know, do you avoid discomfort at all costs?** Now, that to me is a complete rejection of self, of your needs. A complete rejection because a lot of the time if we're feeling discomfort in relational settings, it's because something's arisen that we don't feel happy about. But if we're we have a deep fear of conflict or confrontation, that might may mean that we actually just avoid difficult conversations. But do you avoid discomfort in other aspects of your life, too? Are you fearful of sitting into the shadow? Are you fearful of sitting into aspects of your being that that just make you feel icky and sticky? We can't always live in the light. We can't spiritually bypass our way out of some of these crappy feelings. Sometimes actually the breakthrough comes from allowing yourself to sit in deep discomfort. Another way in which the ego may show you that it's in control is if you're living by default rather than by design. Now what does that mean? So when we are in touch with our creative soul energy, we create the world that we want to live, we pursue a path, we draw in the energy of creativity and this beautiful way of being that we are trying to actually manifest in the world. However, if you look at our default patterns of behavior, it might be looping situations in relationships, in jobs, in friendships, how we show up in the world. Is that the default loop that's playing out in our world? And that's the ego that's controlling the show. What does it look like to step into a new way of being rather than allowing this loop to continue to play out? And that's so scary because actually, if we step into a new way of being, we're stepping out of a default loop. And what what happen happens when we do that? It's uncomfortable because we can't predict the outcome. We have no control over the outcome.

** Whereas, if the ego is at play, of course, even though you might be repeating something on an ongoing basis that actually makes you feel so uncomfortable in the body, it's not in alignment for you, but there's safety in knowing the outcome**. It's a a subtle way in which we manipulate the situation because we can predict how things will go even if we don't like it. You You know, the egoic mind wants us to stay within safe spaces that might be deeply uncomfortable for us rather than actually stepping into a new beautiful way of being in which it can't control the outcome. So really begin to challenge and question yourself about this. You know sometimes actually we we begin to feel deeply disconnected from ourselves and we constantly feel anxious if the ego is running the show. Now core beliefs that the ego may hold might be things like I'm only valuable if I'm productive. That love is earned rather than inherent. Was the love that you received as a child based on the things that you did? Did you have to do things to feel loved? So, this is a really important one and one I see all the time with my clients. Was being different dangerous when you were growing up? And you know, as a gay man, I felt completely different. I didn't know any other gay men. There was actually no role models in my life growing up as a gay man. So I felt completely alone and completely different. And the narrative around gay men when I was growing up was obviously to do to do with health scares through the HIV and AIDS circumstances that had happened for the decades before I came into the world and just homophobic comments. that played out in society as I was growing up. So, you know, it was dangerous to actually be different in that circumstance, you know. So, it's really important to kind of really start to think to yourself, well, actually, how does that extend to my world? How does that extend into my life? And I knew actually when I stepped out of the mainstream medical model, to do things differently, to be more holistic and integrative, to combine science and soul, that felt very different. And it it felt nerve-wracking to step into that space.

** case because you know it I felt I was I was stepping into a space in which you know there was danger around because nobody understood the role**. It was like I was paving a new path that nobody understood and usually when people don't understand things they immediately vilify things. So have a little think about your journey and whether actually you're yearning to do something differently in the world. What does that look like? Do you feel like it's dangerous to show up? Another core belief to do with the ego is that rest is laziness. And oh my god, I have literally like listening to myself speak this, it's actually resonating in my own soul. You know, when I rest, I feel, oh my god, you're not being productive. You're not doing the things you're supposed to do. And this results in burnout quite quickly, repeatedly burning out. So really listen to your body if it needs rest. Try and battle against that egoic mind that's trying to tell you to keep going, you know? And another deeply deeply rooted one especially and I feel this one so much in the solar plexus of people who come through deeply linked to worth and sense of self. Who I am isn't enough. If you in this very current moment feel like you are not enough in how you are showing up in your job, in your relationship, in life, in friendships, that is an egoic belief structure that has made made you feel that way through your conditioned behaviors. So, you know, my heart literally is sending so much love to you if you're listening to this and that resonates with you. It's absolutely of a journey that I've been on and I can 100% say that it's something I still battle with on the day-to-day. So, you are not alone in this, but I see you. I feel you. I'm holding you in that. Okay. So, I just want to now explore what awakening to your soul's knowing look looks like. And how did these awakening moments actually begin to happen? It often happens through periods of of having a big emotional breakdown. Perhaps you've gone through burnout. Perhaps you're going through a deep sense of grief. That can be the loss of a loved one. It can be the loss of a relationship. Could be the loss of a home. It could be the loss of a job. Whatever that might be.

** Or maybe it's just through spiritual curiosity that you've started to actually kind of think to yourself, my god, God, actually, I'm questioning who I am in this world and what I'm here for**. And that's okay, too. You don't need to go through these crazy big deep dark shadow periods in order to kind of begin to go on a journey with your soul. But these are typically things I tend to see in the practice. Um, I think what triggered mine was, um, the breakdown of a significant relationship, a separation, and I was living in Australia at the time and moved back to to uh or move to the UK to study medicine. So, of course, I'd left a relationship of all of my gorgeous friends, the place that I absolutely adored and loved. I had an amazing amazing job there with an incredible team. And I came back to start this new journey with medicine. Um and I just went down an absolute rabbit hole. Like an absolute dark night of the soul, very dark period. I suffering from burnout. I suffered from grief. I there was so so much stuff going on for me at the time. I was like I need to find some sense of peace and found my way to the Buddha center. Um so obviously spiritual curiosity crept in at that point and just giving myself the opportunity to to sit and quiet my mind which was so hard at the beginning when the ego was anchored so deeply into success and validation and all the belief structures that are going on within our world. So generally speaking another thing to kind of recognize that the the awakening of your soul might be coming online is when the outer success doesn't feel like inner alignment or fulfillment anymore. And you know, back in my previous jobs, I'd reached such success. I was winning tons of awards for my research and I was doing amazingly well in my job. I absolutely loved what I was doing at the time. But something internally just felt empty. I didn't feel fulfilled by all of this success anymore. And at that time my intuition just became louder than my logical mind. Even finding the Buddhist center, my intuition was like, you need to find some support to quiet this crazy monkey mind that's running the show at the moment. My intuition became so much louder than the logic.

** And you know, a lot of people who find their way through to work with me, this is the point in which they're at**. They intuition has become so so loud, they feel such internal chaos. The the egoic mind is struggling to continue to control certain aspects of their life because their intuition is so deeply trying to guide them that this internal chaos arises. However, it's really tricky because people don't know how to navigate that. They don't need know how to navigate that and sometimes you just need a mentor, a guide to be able to support you as you work your way through that and actually release the old versions of yourself. and allow yourself to step into a new way of being. Now, there's a couple of practices that can help you to awaken your soul. And like I said, when I found my way to the Buddhist center, deep meditation and being within a spiritual community that you could have these conversations with was so key. And there's a beautiful Buddhist center here in Dublin. I take part in the Triatna community. And they have a lovely center, a beautiful community, and they teach meditation all the time. I encourage you to seek them out. If you are going through mentally challenging time, the beautiful community that can help to hold you in that. Going on a journey with breath work is amazing. It shifts energy. It's absolutely brilliant. It's still a very core and key tool in my journey with my soul with shifting energy and emotion that has been stuck in my body for over 40 years. And finding a sense of stillness. So sometimes I get into my body. I do my yoga. I do my dance. I do my movement. I do these things as bodybased practices so I can begin to feel what's in my body rather than think through things. After I've done that, I allow myself to just sit. Sometimes I don't even go into active meditation. I allow myself to just sit and be still. And I love it. It's a lovely time after you've done some somatic or body-based work to actually find yourself in a space of stillness. Allow yourself to listen to what the soul is saying. The soul is deeply connected to nature and it's deeply connected to solitude. We're not made to be around people 24/7.

** And if you're someone that struggles to be alone, I feel you so deeply**. It's often because we're we don't want to sit with ourselves. We don't want to sit with the crappy feelings and the thoughts and all of these things that are coming up. And I encourage you to go on a deep journey of the egoic and conditioned mind, if that is you, to be able to be okay in the presence of your absolutely beautiful, radiant energy. It is okay to take periods out to find yourself and to be by yourself. And solitude is such a precious gift in this world. We're not programmed to show up h and be around people 24/7. Other practices to help awaken the soul is to do some deep inner child healing and shadow work. That is what I do through my shamanic practice. And it's so important to explore your shadows because they're all linked to this egoic mind that shows up in a certain way and also allow yourself to lean into creative expression like I spoke about earlier. This this love for how you express yourself in the world. So the soul tends to speak to us when we're quiet enough to listen to what I have to say. When we allow ourselves to drop into our heart and in our gut, our gut feeling. Oh my god. This is why gut health protocols are so important when it comes to my my journey with clients because we actually need to heal our gut. in order to to know what our gut feeling feels like. So, a physical body gut health plan with regard to appropriate nutrition, the right supplements and the herbs to heal, literally heal physically your gut, has been such a huge turning point for me and for my clients in order to be able to fully listen to the gut feeling again, you know. And I encourage you to follow curiosity rather than follow the logical mind all the time. What are you curious about? What makes you curious in your world? I love it. And generally speaking, when we're in a sense of presence and flow, the soul can speak to us. It will present what it needs us to see. So, I just wanted to provide some comparisons about what it looks like to be in an egoic decision-making process versus a soul-led decision-making process.

** So, the ego will make fear-based decisions whereas the soul will make love or heart heart-centered decisions**. The egoic mind will want to control a situation and will want certainty of the outcome. Whereas a soul-based decision will allow us to trust the outcome, trust the universe and allow ourselves to surrender to what actually is for our greatest good. The egoic mind will want to seek validation whereas the soul will want to seek truth, what feels true to you, you know? And See, this this is so tricky in some senses with this journey that I've gone on in in medicine in so many ways because actually we constantly want to to validate our decision-making based on what we've been told through our medical practice. But actually when you take a very soul-based decision or management plan approach to working with the clients, it's actually seeking out what suits their soul the best, their physical body, their mental and emotional body, you know. You know, it's actually by looking at the truth of what is right for each individual person. You know, it's it's completely different. Just to continue on with our journey with these comparisons. So, the egoic mind will react from past pain if you're being triggered or there's something coming up for you. It's the egoic mind trying to trying to raise an alarm system to keep you safe. It's trapped in your nervous system. This energy is trapped in the nervous system. Whereas soul will respond from inner wisdom, that deeper sense of knowing and being and embodiment within us. The ego will focus on outcomes. So it's very outcome focused whereas the soul focuses on alignment. I absolutely love this point. I love this point because actually if we are so focused on the outcome of all of these things, it keeps us in this rigid way of approaching things that doesn't allow the flexibility or the freedom of the soul to come in and bring us on a path that will actually lead to something even better because actually our soul has a creat greater and deeper sense of knowing and awareness with all of this stuff to lead us to brilliant and beautiful places. Um that the ego could be blocking you know so it's really important to be aware of this. The ego tends to be loud.

** It's very anxious and it's pushy in its decision-making**. If something feels that it needs to be done immediately if you feel that there's an urgency to making a decision That's the ego. That is absolutely the ego. Whereas the soul, it will speak to you in a beautiful whisper. Like I said, it's quiet. It's grounded. And it feels really spacious. It feels really spacious. So rather than sitting in a space of what do others want, sit into a space of what feels true to me? What feels true to me? So I just want to leave you guys with some tips for soul-led living. And these are just a couple of things that I think can really help people just as a few top tips as we finish out this episode. So, one thing I will say as we start this list is to look at your why with things. Why? Why? Why? Ask yourself a million times with all of the decisions that you're making. And you know, when you're making decisions, why am I making the decision? Is this decision rooted in fear or is it rooted in love? So, the ego if you're following a fear-based decision might say to you, "But what if you fail at that? Don't do that because actually you could fail." But the soul will ask you, "What if it changes everything? What if this literally changes your life?" And that's the thing about this, you know, and if we think to ourselves, if we make decisions that change our life and have such huge potential to bring about all the things that we want in the world, maybe your nervous system needs to regulate the new way of being that will actually allow those things things to come in. So just something to consider. The second tip is to tune into your body and not just follow what the mind is telling you. If your gut tightens up, if you get tension in the body, if you feel shrink wrapped, this is something I hear regularly. It's almost like you're being wrapped by energy. It's these energy bands, these this tightening in the body. That's the egoic mind. That's the egoic mind constricting you. Whereas actually, if you tune into the body and your heart feels open and you have a lovely sense of inner calm and grounding. That's the soul. So tune into the body is my second tip.

** The third tip is to give yourself time because soul-based decisions need spaciousness**. You know, no decision well there's very few decisions in this world that need to have an immediate action. We generally don't need to act on things immediately. So give yourself some space. Delay reacting to something. Sit with it. And sometimes we actually act in an in a sense of urgency because we we are worried about what the other person will think or we feel we're letting someone down. You know, give yourself the time. Give yourself the time to make a decision that feels in alignment. Give yourself the space. Delay reacting in the moment and just sit with your feeling. If it takes you an hour, if it takes you a day or two days, that's absolutely fine, too. But at least it will be a more so aligning decision at the end of the day. So my fourth tip is to journal or voice note to yourself about what your soul is saying to you right now and explore what comes up for you when you ask that. Um if one thing I would love for you guys to explore especially when you're journaling is you know if you are being placed in a position where you have to make a decision ask yourself if I wasn't afraid if there was no fear in my body what would I choose in this situation? You know, and actually write down well, you know, if there is fear creeping in here, what are they and are they logical? You know, he said, this is just such a basic basic tip that that can literally transform how we look at things. If I wasn't afraid, what would I choose to do in this circumstance? And if I am afraid, what are the fears? And just allow yourself to explore it. The fifth tip that I tend to recommend is track your patterns. Track your patterns. and identify where where something is looping out looping through your life. So have a little sit and a think about past decision making that you've made past decisions were they ego decisions or were they soul-based decisions and you know you can really start to identify these major decision and turning points in your life. Was it based on any of the aspects of what I've spoken into regarded the ego speaking or was it truly aligned with the soul? Was it from a space of calm?

** What were the outcomes from these scenarios? And what are you learning by leaning into actually looking at these things in detail? And my final tip, my sixth tip is to create soul time every day**. Create some soul time. Even if it's just five minutes, even if it's 10 minutes, to just create some space to meditate, to walk around, you know, unplugged from the world, unplugged from the internet, from your phone, all of these things. Put your feet on the ground. Oh my god, what a gift you're giving yourself every day for five minutes just to connect with the soul, connect with the wisdom of the land and the soul of the earth. Allow the energy to move through you and just ask yourself in those in that beautiful quiet space what you need in that moment. You know, let your soul speak to you before the noise of the day takes over. So maybe in the morning time, tuning into the body, tuning into the soul and asking what it needs. So I'm just going to give you guys to close this out a couple of journal prompts that you can potentially use. So, when you sit down, potentially feel into these three things.

• When have I made a decision that felt deeply right, even if it didn't make sense? And I want you to sit down and write about that. Connect with the energy of that decision. Connect with the time. Connect with the version of you at that time. Connect with why you made the decision and how it felt right? What how what made you think it was deeply right, even if it didn't make sense at the time?
• The second journal prompt is, what core beliefs do I hold that might be driven by fear or ego? Now, core beliefs are fascinating. They are absolutely fascinating. They literally can control our entire lives because they're usually born from fear. And we are currently creating our wounds of expression course, our awaken the authentic voice course so that people can access it on demand on our intuitive health institute website to help you exactly explore what we're talking about today. What fears do I hold that prevent authentic expression? What are my core beliefs linked to these fears? And what archetypes and facades do I hold?

** So if you're identifying by sitting with some of these things, things today that you may have core limiting beliefs or fears are driving how you turn up in the world that might be a lovely course for you to actually take a little sit into and see what comes up**. It has been transformative for the people who have gone through it so far.

• The third and final journal prompt is what does my soul want me to know right now? And allow yourself to just write right. What does it want you to know? And just trust that what intuition you hold in your body will find its way onto the page.

So that is it for us today. I hope you have enjoyed our journey. I hope you've enjoyed our journey with the ego and the soul and how to reconnect with your soul-based decision-making. And you know to go on a journey with soul-based decisions unfortunately we have to steep oursel in the fears in limiting beliefs in the archetypes that have been created to keep us safe and we need to strip those back so we can finally come back to ourselves, come back to this beautiful authentic light that we hold. So with love from my heart to yours, have a gorgeous week, Dr. Anthony.