What it actually looks like to trust signs and your intuition

Happy Sunday, Soothers. This is the last week to book a call for my mastermind for highly sensitive women, Soothe.

And you know what?

Enrollment for Soothe this year is about at a third to a half of what it was last year.

And about a fifth of what it was when I created it in in 2021.

And I don't think this is a bad thing.

In fact, I'm taking it as a sign from my business.

Let me explain.

When you choose to run a business as an intuitive person, it requires a ton of deconditioning. You really start to see how hard patriarchy and capitalism tells you things should and have to be and the fear and shame that can come along if your business isn't matching up to their marching orders, some of which include...

• Offers should always be the same and last in perpetuity.

• You must be increasing and growing quarter after quarter, year over year.

• Consistency is prioritized at all costs!!!

• If things AREN'T growing and ever-increasing, then something MUST have gone wrong, and you must force and effort harder, harder, harder, bend the outcome to your will, dominate everything.

The truth was I knew that Soothe would only last a few years at its max, even though every business program out there would tell you your job is to create a "flagship program" and launch it 2x a year, to ever-increasing enrollment and profits.

When enrollment was down from 25 women in its first year to 16 women last year, I knew my business was telling me it might be time to wind Soothe down, but I decided to offer it for one more year and see how it unfolded.

And now that enrollment will probably end up being 6-8 women this year (but also, who knows) I'm not seeing it as a problem or evidence that I haven't worked hard enough to promote it, or that I did something wrong.

Fewer people enrolling in a program of mine is simply a sign that it's time to change, evolve, shed.

It's not a sign that I need to double down and work harder and more frantically to ensure more people enroll, to try to force or convince or cajole folks to try to get them to sign up.

The lowering enrollment is an offering from my business:

"Stop resisting what we're trying to get you to do, Catherine. Melt into the change."

Your business (and your life) is always in conversation with you. And my business is sending me all the signals that it's time to shift and evolve.

This upcoming Soothe mastermind group is full of incredible women, and I'm going to work my ass off to make their year life-changing and impactful. We'll be doing plant medicine, working with energy like never before, and also studying and deploying the concepts that have created the bedrock of an incredibly successful group coaching program for highly sensitive women.

And, it will also be a goodbye to a certain, more traditional way of teaching and coaching that carried me through the first four years of my business.

My goal beginning in 2024 is to change the Sunday Soother brand into one that offers teaching, writing, retreats and community on spirituality, energy, plant medicine and magic for the highly sensitive person.

My aim and desire for myself is to step fully into the identity of a spiritual teacher, writer and mentor.

This shift doesn't come without some significant resistance on my part, knowing that many (if not most?) people don't take this work seriously, or outright mock it.

The part of me that deeply desires acceptance and approval of external forces cringes at more fully stepping into this role. Fears I will be cast aside, left behind, mocked, deemed not cool enough, people will talk behind my back — all my old childhood and adolescent wounds are still here.

I know it will make some of you, my beloved readers and followers, leave, too. (Which is also natural, and good. It's a shedding, for both of us. You should always be finding new sources of inspiration and education.)

Yet, it's what signs around me, and my intuition, are essentially yelling at me to do.

So as with many changes and evolutions I've gone through before, I'll cover my eyes and leap through the fear.

How do you know if this is coming up for you in your life, too? That change is here, that signs and intuition all around you are trying to guide you to the shift?

Here are a few ways it might be showing up...

• Something in your life isn't working with as much flow and ease as before. It might be like me, a flagship part of your business or life seems to be winding down or having less impact or it just is getting blocked or tossed about left and right

• Part of you thinks you just need to "work harder" to make what worked before, work again, but this work feels heavy and drags you down to do it. It feels like a forcing of energy and effort.

• And you think you "should" be able to do the work, and the thing "should" just be able to go back to its flow and impact it had before

• All signs seem to be pointing to the change or shedding of the thing, but you're resisting this very strongly, and thinking if only you work harder, or try different tactics, or "get creative," you should be able to get things back on track

• You feel it's your job to control everything and dominate all effort so that nothing changes

• And thinking about releasing, ending, or quitting this thing causes a ton of fear in you — in fact, you can't really see what life might look like without it, and so you're holding on tightly

Instead, what might be helpful for you to do is acknowledge and try out the following...

All things change. It's okay to release something. It may come with challenges and grief to let it go, but it's just like a tree shedding a leaf. The leaf doesn't disappear or go anywhere. It only changes form. It's simply composted in the forest floor and becomes part of the ecosystem that feeds the forest once again.

My path could have been that I doubled down on promotion and marketing of Soothe, berating myself along the way for lower enrollment numbers, thinking I was doing something "wrong" or that my business was failing, hiring tons of business coaches or marketing gurus to try to "fix" the problem.

Instead, I just accepted what my business presented me:

It was time to end Soothe.

And that is okay.

The ending of Soothe is what will allow the iteration of my next offerings and teachings to come through.

And so the cycle will continue.

It's really, really hard to be a human. It seems we, and things, are always changing, and that sucks. Once we master a concept or finally get our hands around it, the whole game shifts and eludes us again, and we're stuck flat-footed once more, wondering when we'll be able to relax and never have to deal with learning, growing, struggling again.

Spoiler alert, we all know intellectually that will never happen.

But we can start to embody less resistance to change, and paradoxically, this is finally what begins to make life a little bit easier.

So loosen your hold.

Say goodbye to the thing, even if it feels scary.

Know it's simply dropping to the forest floor to take a new form.

And with your hand having let go of your iron-clad grip, you can soften your palm, unfurl it, and open it to the sky, saying,

"Show me what's next."