I learned the hard way that you can achieve your wildest dreams, your biggest, boldest goals, everything you’ve ever dreamed of and more, and still feel empty inside. Still feel unfulfilled, uninspired, and unconnected from yourself and this amazing life you’ve achieved.

And I was reminded of this recently when I started thinking about going after something big to mark a milestone birthday later this year. Something that feels like it would be truly iconic and memorable.

But as I began planning for it, I realized it was going to demand a whole lot more for me than I first imagined and I had to stop and ask myself a crucial question. Is this just another bright shiny object I’m chasing because I think I should? Or is this something that will truly add meaning and fulfillment to my life?

That question invited me to step into a season of reflection, reevaluation, and reconnection. And it’s what we are talking about today.

Welcome to The Self-Creation School podcast, for women who are ready to ditch mediocrity, step up and get more of what they want, and finally say YES! to a life that sets their soul on fire. I’m your host Leanne Letica, Self-Creation Coach, founder of The Self-Creation School AND Queen of YES!. If you’re ready to play life by your own personal rule book, and give yourself permission to say YES! to yourself and your wildest dreams, this podcast is the place for you.

Hello and welcome to today’s episode where we are talking about something that I think is one of the most important questions we can ask ourselves as ambitious women who want to create remarkable lives. But not just lives that look good. Lives that feel every bit as good as they look.

It’s a question that I am very much living in the question of right now. What matters, truly? And it has been very much brought on by this goal I mentioned a moment ago that I’ve been thinking about going after to mark a milestone birthday that’s happening for me a little later this year.

I actually planned to share this goal with you this week and how it is I reverse and engineer my goals in general. But I’ve got to be honest, this particular goal is something that I thought would be a breeze for me and it was only when I started reverse engineering it that I realized achieving it is going to demand a whole new version of me far beyond the me that I am in this moment.

I also very quickly discovered that this goal was going to demand much greater effort from me than I expected. And so with that, I knew I would need to be very strong in my why I wanted this, so that I would have that as a strong and very solid foundation to support me through the identity shift that I would need to make. I needed to get crystal clear on how achieving this and living the experience of it really, truly mattered to me.

And so this, along with already feeling lately a little less connected than I would like with myself and the things that matter in my life right now... if you’ve been listening in for a while, you will probably have heard me talk about my ambitious nature and workaholic tendencies. And I have indeed been in a very focused season of work, of building the self-creation school, of building this podcast. And generally being very committed to making the impact that I am on a mission to make in the lives of women like you all around the world.

So much so that some of the important things in my life that truly do matter to me have kind of been sidelined. And I’m starting to feel the effects of that. My husband is feeling the effects of that. Our life is feeling the effects of that.

And so when I realized that this goal was going to be a much bigger and bolder goal than I first thought, I knew that right now I needed to be sure that it mattered in the right way. Because right now I’m being called to reconnect and refocus on what truly matters and to step back and rethink or redesign, that might be a better word, the areas of my life that have been a little too demanding. Admittedly because I have allowed them to be.

So, I will share my reverse engineering process for making goals happen in a future episode. But I really feel pulled today to share more about the shift back to what matters that I am working through before I add in any new goals. I know for sure there are areas in my life that need simplifying and other areas that really do deserve so much more of my attention.

And this got me thinking that in now 73 episodes, I haven’t really shared my thoughts on how do we actually know what matters? Really, truly matters.

Listen, I know for my own journey and working with countless women just like you, we can get so caught up in the doing, in the achieving in the constant pursuit of more because we can and we’re capable, right? But we get so caught up that we forget to ask ourselves that fundamental question. Are we chasing the right things? And not for anyone else, but for us.

Now, I’m not going to share my whole story here today. You can read about that on my website. And if you listen in for any length of time to this podcast, you’re going to hear about it along the way. But what I will say is this. I know what it’s like to go from having nothing to achieving everything you think should make you happy, only to discover that it doesn’t. I know what it’s like to build a life that looks like a fairytale life from the outside and still feels like you are Cinderella in rags on the inside.

And that’s exactly why this question of what matters, truly matters has become just so important to me. Because I’ve learned the really hard way over the years that sometimes the next bright shiny object doesn’t lead us to more of a life we love. Sometimes, it leads us to less. It takes us further away from what actually will make us happy.

You probably know all about the bright shiny object trap too, right? And this trap is particularly sneaky for women like us who are ambitious, goal-oriented, and driven to create big, bold lives.

Here’s the thing about being an ambitious woman. We love a good challenge. We love setting goals and achieving them. We love the high of crossing something off our list and then moving on to the next thing. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that drive or with that ambition. In fact, it’s one of the things I love about the women that I work with.

But somewhere along the way, a lot of us have fallen into this bright shiny object trap that disguises itself as progress, or as growth, or as living your best life. We start believing that more equals better. That next equals progress. That if something is a good opportunity, and it might be, that we should take it regardless of whether that aligns with what actually matters to us. And that because we know something is possible, we should go ahead and make it possible.

We get caught up in this idea that we should always be reaching for more, always growing, always pushing ourselves to the next level. And while growth is beautiful and ambition is powerful, when we’re chasing the wrong things, all that growth and ambition is just taking us further away from the life we actually would love to live.

And I’ve seen this play out in my own life and again and again with the women in my world. Women who have achieved incredible things, but they still feel empty. They feel like something is missing. They feel disconnected from themselves and their lives.

And digging deeper often reveals that they’ve been chasing those bright shiny objects instead of what actually matters to them. Often they’ve been building someone else’s dream life. They’ve been living by someone else’s definition of success because they’ve been led to believe that this is how to live a good life, a happy life.

And those bright shiny objects can really be quite seductive because they promise that this next thing, this next achievement, this next level will finally make you feel complete. But the truth is, if you are not clear on what matters to you at the soul deep level, no external achievement at the surface level will ever be enough.

This is exactly why I found myself questioning this new goal of mine. Am I being called to this because it would genuinely feed my soul and matter to me for years to come? Or am I being called to it because I think a milestone birthday should be matched with something equally big and grand and impressive? That’s a very different question. And the answer changes everything about whether this goal is worth the effort it is going to require from me.

More of the wrong things will never add up to a life that feels right. It will never equal a life you love. You can achieve goal after goal after goal. You can accumulate success after success after success. And still feel very empty inside if those achievements aren’t aligned with what truly matters to you.

So let me ask you this. What bright shiny objects have you been chasing? What goals are you pursuing because they look good, because they sound impressive, because they’re what you think you should want, rather than because they truly matter to you at the deepest level? Sometimes the next bright shiny object isn’t actually taking you towards the life you want. Sometimes it’s taking you further away from it.

Which brings me to something I would like to share with you today that has become one of the most important tools in my own self-creation toolkit. And it’s what I call the Soul versus Shoulds Test.

Most of us, if we’re being honest, have been filling our lives based on shoulds. We should want the promotion. We should buy the bigger house. We should have our lives figured out by a certain age. We should be grateful for what we have and not want more. We should put everyone else’s needs before our own. We should retire by a certain age. The list of shoulds, they go on and on and on.

But a life you love isn’t built on shoulds. It’s built on soul deep YESES!.

Now, to do a Soul Test is quite simple, but it’s not always easy. Because it does require you to get really honest with yourself about what truly matters to you, not what you think should matter.

Here’s the kind of questions I like to ask myself to check in at the soul level. Does this light me up from the inside? Does this energize me or drain me? Does this feel heavy or does it feel light? Does this feel aligned with who I really am and who I would be happy to become? When I imagine myself doing this, having this, experiencing this, does it make my soul feel more alive or less alive?

If you’ve been listening in for a while, you’ll have heard me share earlier this year that my husband and I are living in the question of setting up a second home in the south of France. And we were initially looking at a whole lot of smaller towns and villages. But after a couple of weekend expeditions to explore them, we both realized that quite literally, we could feel the light being sucked right out of us.

We were both feeling the same way. We were both really in sync on this. In the depths of our souls these places, they felt heavy, they felt draining, like we were literally running out of air.

But here’s the thing. We really had a very broad scope for this goal. We didn’t know exactly what we wanted or where we wanted to be. So we just started living in the question because we knew that the only way we could find out what we wanted was to start taking action to find out. And sometimes you have to be willing to live in the question of what you want in that way. To be open to where things land and where they lead you.

We now both know for sure that we would need to be in a place that has much more life than the smaller villages tend to have. And we are much clearer on the kind of things that we are looking for in a community. So that’s progress, that’s a win.

And this is the power of checking in at the soul level. Of listening to what your inner most intuition is telling you. Of asking yourself the kind of questions I shared just a moment ago and feeling the answers in your heart, in your body.

Sometimes you don’t always like the answers, especially when you do have a firm idea of what it is you want in your head. But like I said before, a life you love is built on soul deep YESES!. If it really isn’t a YES! in your soul, then that is going to be worth paying attention to.

So the counterpart to the Soul Test is the Shoulds Test. And here’s the kind of questions I ask for this.

Am I doing this because I think I should? Because it’s expected of me? Am I pursuing it because it looks good to other people? Or because I feel like it would make me more worthy, or accepted, or valued by other people? You have got to be willing to be really honest here. And am I saying YES! to this because I’m afraid of disappointing someone or being judged if I don’t?

Now, what’s tricky about this is that sometimes the things that pass the Soul Test also pass the Shoulds Test. Maybe you genuinely love your career and it also happens to be something that makes your family very proud. That’s beautiful when it happens. But what we’re looking for are the mismatches. The things that pass the Shoulds Test but fail the Soul Test completely. And even more importantly, the things that pass the Soul Test but you’ve been avoiding because they don’t pass the Shoulds Test.

I see this all the time with the women in my world. They’ve made decisions based on what they think they should want, what would look good to others, what feels safe, what feels acceptable. But they’ve lost touch with what actually lights them up from the inside. I was one of those women. And from time to time, I still get pulled back into that trap. I’m very mindful of that and much more attuned these days to when that is happening.

And so, this is exactly why I’m pausing to ask myself some very deep questions about this milestone birthday goal. When I really tune in, when I do the Soul Test, does this goal light me up from the inside because it’s something that would truly matter to me? Or am I being pulled towards it because I think I should mark this milestone with something equally significant?

The difference matters. Because if it’s coming from should, then no matter how impressive the achievement, it’s going to leave me feeling empty afterwards. But if it’s coming from soul, then the journey towards it will be just as fulfilling as the destination.

Your soul knows the difference between what you want. And what you think you should want. Your body knows the difference between what energizes you and what drains you. But we’ve been so conditioned to override these signals, to dismiss them as not practical or not realistic, that so many of us have lost the ability to hear them clearly. But they’re still there. They’re still speaking to you. You just need to start listening.

So think about your current goals, your current commitments, the things that are taking up time and energy in your life right now. And ask yourself, are these things passing the Soul Test or just the Shoulds Test? What would change in your life if you started making decisions based on what lights you up from the inside rather than what you think you should do? What would you pursue? What would you let go of? How would your days feel different?

Life’s too short to spend it building someone else’s version of success, my friend. Life is too precious to fill it with shoulds instead of soul deep YESES!.

And this brings me to sharing something completely different I am creating this summer, both here on the podcast and in my weekly email CREATED. Something that might seem a little risky for someone with an established podcast with loyal listeners, but something that feels absolutely necessary and like a soul deep YES! for me right now.

You’ve been hearing this from me the entire episode. I am being called to get back in touch with what matters most in my life right now. To reassess, realign, restore my energy, and regroup with my vision before I move forward. I am craving space. And taking that space will require that I show up differently in my world and for you on this podcast.

Now, immediately a whole long list of shoulds and shouldn’ts showed up for me. I shouldn’t change what women have come to expect from me. I should just keep pushing through. I shouldn’t risk my podcast. I shouldn’t gamble with what’s working. And on and on and on. My storyteller went story wild with the shoulds as soon as my soul asked to slow down, to step back and take some space.

But I asked myself, how can I create space and still show up for you here each week and in my business? Because that absolutely is still a priority in my life. And the answer felt like a soul deep YES! to me. So I am trusting that YES! And I am not looking back.

Let me be honest, I do have a highly ambitious nature with workaholic tendencies and a love for perfection. And the idea of slowing down to me is not really in my nature. But these things combined can really start to throw things out of balance when they’re left unchecked for a little too long.

And I see this happening for so many women in my world too. They are heads down hustling away every day in lives that aren’t always moving the needle towards a life they actually love to wake up to and live out every moment of. They are silencing their deepest desires. They’re keeping them secret under lock and key, tucked away behind what is often self-imposed responsibility, expectation, or the lie of constant busyness. And the fear or doubts about what will happen if they stop.

This is exactly what I’ve been doing a little bit too much myself lately. I’ve been pushing parts of my life and my desires aside for these same reasons. And it’s time for me to press pause. And I think for a lot of women in my world, it might be time for a similar pause and a similar check-in. Which is why this felt like such a YES! in the depths of my soul.

So, this European summer season, I am choosing to step away. Not from you, not from my loyal readers. But from the full speed hustle I’ve been gradually getting caught up in over the past couple of years, which has been ever so gradually pulling me away from what matters most. I’m stepping away from the overworking, the overgiving, and the overdoing that my future self has outgrown. And I’m inviting you to join me and do the same.

For the next 13 weeks, instead of my usual longer podcast episodes, I’ll be sharing shorter five minute episodes that focus on one powerful mindset shift per week. I’m calling this my Summer Secret Series. And each secret builds on the one before and together over the 13 weeks of the season, they will form a complete process for reconnecting with what matters most.

Now, I could tell you this is a strategic decision. That shorter episodes are better for busy people. That it’s good to risk my business and try new formats. And those things might be true. We’ll certainly find out. But that’s not what is at the heart of this series.

I’m doing it because I really honestly need the space to show up for myself in a different way right now. And I think a lot of women in my world need this right now too. The permission to slow down, to reconnect, to get back in touch with themselves, and what truly matters.

Listen, most of us are really good at achieving things. We’re really good at checking those boxes and hitting those targets and making things happen. But we’re not always good at making sure those things actually matter to us. We just get so caught up in the doing, the achieving, and the constant forward motion that we forget to check in with ourselves about whether we’re even heading in a direction that still lights us up.

And so this is what the next 13 weeks is going to be all about right here on this podcast. It’s not just about slowing down. It’s not just about making space in your calendar to pause all of the busyness. But it’s about being more intentional about what you choose to fill that space with moving forward. It’s about making sure that your days, your goals, your commitments, are actually aligned with what matters to you at the deepest level.

Think about it this way. You can have all the space in the world all the time and freedom and opportunity, but if you fill it with things that don’t light you up you’re still going to feel empty. You’re still going to feel disconnected from yourself and your life. That my friend, I can tell you from firsthand experience, it does not feel like freedom or fulfillment.

But when you intentionally fill your life with things that pass the Soul Test, when you build your days around what truly matters to you, everything changes. You don’t just feel busy, you feel alive. You don’t just feel productive, you feel purposeful. You don’t just feel successful, you feel fulfilled.

My summer secrets are about helping you get back in touch with what makes you soul feel most alive. They’re about giving you bite-sized mindset shifts to help you distinguish between what you think you should want and what you actually want. They’re about helping you create a life that’s not just impressive from the outside, but deeply fulfilling from the inside.

Each week I’m going to share just one secret that is helping me reconnect with what matters this season. And I’m not just sharing this as a theory. These are part of my own real-time process of getting back in touch with myself and what I want my life to be about.

Because no matter how much work we do on ourselves, no matter how clear we get about our goals and our values, life has a way of pulling us off course. The demands and the shoots and the bright shiny objects, they will have a way of accumulating until we look up one day and we realize we are living someone else’s life again.

And when that happens, we need to be willing to pause. We need to be willing to step back and ask ourselves what matters, truly? What lights me up from the inside? What would I choose if I wasn’t worried about what anyone else thought? Or following through on this just because I started it?

These are not easy questions. They require courage to answer with honesty. They require courage to act on the answers. But they’re also the most important questions we can ask ourselves. Because at the end of the day, the goal isn’t just to have a successful life. The goal is to have a life that feels successful to you. The goal isn’t just to achieve your dreams. The goal is to make sure your dreaming your own dreams, not someone else’s.

So, start thinking about what in your life right now truly lights you up from the inside? And what are you doing simply because you think you should? What would change if you started making decisions based on the Soul Test rather than the Shoulds Test? What would you pursue? What would you let go of? How would your days feel different?

And most importantly, are you ready to spend this next season, wherever you are in the world, reconnecting with what makes your soul feel most alive? If you are, I want to invite you to join me for my Summer Secrets Series. It’s an invitation to give yourself permission to slow down, to reflect, and to reconnect with what makes your soul feel most alive.

But I want you to know this. These 13 weeks aren’t just about consuming content. They are about taking action towards a life that matters. They’re about giving yourself permission to pause, to reflect and redesign your life around what truly lights you up. Because a life you wildly love isn’t about having more, it’s about being intentional with what you choose to fill it with. It’s about saying YES! to the things that light you up from the inside and having the courage to say no to everything else.

The Summer Secret Series start next week, and I can’t wait to take you on this journey with me in real-time. And maybe, just maybe, by the end of these 13 weeks, we’ll both be clearer on what matters, truly.

In the meantime, start asking yourself the Soul versus Should questions. For every commitment, every goal, every way you spend your time and energy, ask yourself, does this pass the Soul Test or just the Shoulds Test? The answer might surprise you and it might just change everything.

I’ll be back next week with the first Summer Secret, and I do hope you’ll join me. Make sure you hit subscribe so it’s queued and ready for listening inside your favorite podcast library. And if you want these secrets delivered straight to your inbox each week as a reminder to pause and take just five precious minutes for you, you can join the Summer Secrets email series at https://selfcreationschool.com/created.

Thanks for spending this time with me today, my friend. I’ll see you next week for our first Summer Secret.

Until then, be the woman who says YES!

Hey, want to know what’s stopping you from saying YES! to you and a life you love?

Head over to https://selfcreationschool.com/yesblock and take my free 60 second quiz to find out what’s standing in your way today and I’ll send you my Self-Creation Shift process for shifting it.

That’s https://selfcreationschool.com/yesblock. I’ll see you there.

I learned the hard way that you can achieve your wildest dreams, your biggest, boldest goals, everything you’ve ever dreamed of and more, and still feel empty inside. Still feel unfulfilled, uninspired, and unconnected from yourself and this amazing life you’ve achieved.

And I was reminded of this recently when I started thinking about going after something big to mark a milestone birthday later this year. Something that feels like it would be truly iconic and memorable.

But as I began planning for it, I realized it was going to demand a whole lot more for me than I first imagined and I had to stop and ask myself a crucial question. Is this just another bright shiny object I’m chasing because I think I should? Or is this something that will truly add meaning and fulfillment to my life?

That question invited me to step into a season of reflection, reevaluation, and reconnection. And it’s what we are talking about today.

Welcome to The Self-Creation School podcast, for women who are ready to ditch mediocrity, step up and get more of what they want, and finally say YES! to a life that sets their soul on fire. I’m your host Leanne Letica, Self-Creation Coach, founder of The Self-Creation School AND Queen of YES!. If you’re ready to play life by your own personal rule book, and give yourself permission to say YES! to yourself and your wildest dreams, this podcast is the place for you.

Hello and welcome to today’s episode where we are talking about something that I think is one of the most important questions we can ask ourselves as ambitious women who want to create remarkable lives. But not just lives that look good. Lives that feel every bit as good as they look.

It’s a question that I am very much living in the question of right now. What matters, truly? And it has been very much brought on by this goal I mentioned a moment ago that I’ve been thinking about going after to mark a milestone birthday that’s happening for me a little later this year.

I actually planned to share this goal with you this week and how it is I reverse and engineer my goals in general. But I’ve got to be honest, this particular goal is something that I thought would be a breeze for me and it was only when I started reverse engineering it that I realized achieving it is going to demand a whole new version of me far beyond the me that I am in this moment.

I also very quickly discovered that this goal was going to demand much greater effort from me than I expected. And so with that, I knew I would need to be very strong in my why I wanted this, so that I would have that as a strong and very solid foundation to support me through the identity shift that I would need to make. I needed to get crystal clear on how achieving this and living the experience of it really, truly mattered to me.

And so this, along with already feeling lately a little less connected than I would like with myself and the things that matter in my life right now... if you’ve been listening in for a while, you will probably have heard me talk about my ambitious nature and workaholic tendencies. And I have indeed been in a very focused season of work, of building the self-creation school, of building this podcast. And generally being very committed to making the impact that I am on a mission to make in the lives of women like you all around the world.

So much so that some of the important things in my life that truly do matter to me have kind of been sidelined. And I’m starting to feel the effects of that. My husband is feeling the effects of that. Our life is feeling the effects of that.

And so when I realized that this goal was going to be a much bigger and bolder goal than I first thought, I knew that right now I needed to be sure that it mattered in the right way. Because right now I’m being called to reconnect and refocus on what truly matters and to step back and rethink or redesign, that might be a better word, the areas of my life that have been a little too demanding. Admittedly because I have allowed them to be.

So, I will share my reverse engineering process for making goals happen in a future episode. But I really feel pulled today to share more about the shift back to what matters that I am working through before I add in any new goals. I know for sure there are areas in my life that need simplifying and other areas that really do deserve so much more of my attention.

And this got me thinking that in now 73 episodes, I haven’t really shared my thoughts on how do we actually know what matters? Really, truly matters.

Listen, I know for my own journey and working with countless women just like you, we can get so caught up in the doing, in the achieving in the constant pursuit of more because we can and we’re capable, right? But we get so caught up that we forget to ask ourselves that fundamental question. Are we chasing the right things? And not for anyone else, but for us.

Now, I’m not going to share my whole story here today. You can read about that on my website. And if you listen in for any length of time to this podcast, you’re going to hear about it along the way. But what I will say is this. I know what it’s like to go from having nothing to achieving everything you think should make you happy, only to discover that it doesn’t. I know what it’s like to build a life that looks like a fairytale life from the outside and still feels like you are Cinderella in rags on the inside.

And that’s exactly why this question of what matters, truly matters has become just so important to me. Because I’ve learned the really hard way over the years that sometimes the next bright shiny object doesn’t lead us to more of a life we love. Sometimes, it leads us to less. It takes us further away from what actually will make us happy.

You probably know all about the bright shiny object trap too, right? And this trap is particularly sneaky for women like us who are ambitious, goal-oriented, and driven to create big, bold lives.

Here’s the thing about being an ambitious woman. We love a good challenge. We love setting goals and achieving them. We love the high of crossing something off our list and then moving on to the next thing. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that drive or with that ambition. In fact, it’s one of the things I love about the women that I work with.

But somewhere along the way, a lot of us have fallen into this bright shiny object trap that disguises itself as progress, or as growth, or as living your best life. We start believing that more equals better. That next equals progress. That if something is a good opportunity, and it might be, that we should take it regardless of whether that aligns with what actually matters to us. And that because we know something is possible, we should go ahead and make it possible.

We get caught up in this idea that we should always be reaching for more, always growing, always pushing ourselves to the next level. And while growth is beautiful and ambition is powerful, when we’re chasing the wrong things, all that growth and ambition is just taking us further away from the life we actually would love to live.

And I’ve seen this play out in my own life and again and again with the women in my world. Women who have achieved incredible things, but they still feel empty. They feel like something is missing. They feel disconnected from themselves and their lives.

And digging deeper often reveals that they’ve been chasing those bright shiny objects instead of what actually matters to them. Often they’ve been building someone else’s dream life. They’ve been living by someone else’s definition of success because they’ve been led to believe that this is how to live a good life, a happy life.

And those bright shiny objects can really be quite seductive because they promise that this next thing, this next achievement, this next level will finally make you feel complete. But the truth is, if you are not clear on what matters to you at the soul deep level, no external achievement at the surface level will ever be enough.

This is exactly why I found myself questioning this new goal of mine. Am I being called to this because it would genuinely feed my soul and matter to me for years to come? Or am I being called to it because I think a milestone birthday should be matched with something equally big and grand and impressive? That’s a very different question. And the answer changes everything about whether this goal is worth the effort it is going to require from me.

More of the wrong things will never add up to a life that feels right. It will never equal a life you love. You can achieve goal after goal after goal. You can accumulate success after success after success. And still feel very empty inside if those achievements aren’t aligned with what truly matters to you.

So let me ask you this. What bright shiny objects have you been chasing? What goals are you pursuing because they look good, because they sound impressive, because they’re what you think you should want, rather than because they truly matter to you at the deepest level? Sometimes the next bright shiny object isn’t actually taking you towards the life you want. Sometimes it’s taking you further away from it.

Which brings me to something I would like to share with you today that has become one of the most important tools in my own self-creation toolkit. And it’s what I call the Soul versus Shoulds Test.

Most of us, if we’re being honest, have been filling our lives based on shoulds. We should want the promotion. We should buy the bigger house. We should have our lives figured out by a certain age. We should be grateful for what we have and not want more. We should put everyone else’s needs before our own. We should retire by a certain age. The list of shoulds, they go on and on and on.

But a life you love isn’t built on shoulds. It’s built on soul deep YESES!.

Now, to do a Soul Test is quite simple, but it’s not always easy. Because it does require you to get really honest with yourself about what truly matters to you, not what you think should matter.

Here’s the kind of questions I like to ask myself to check in at the soul level. Does this light me up from the inside? Does this energize me or drain me? Does this feel heavy or does it feel light? Does this feel aligned with who I really am and who I would be happy to become? When I imagine myself doing this, having this, experiencing this, does it make my soul feel more alive or less alive?

If you’ve been listening in for a while, you’ll have heard me share earlier this year that my husband and I are living in the question of setting up a second home in the south of France. And we were initially looking at a whole lot of smaller towns and villages. But after a couple of weekend expeditions to explore them, we both realized that quite literally, we could feel the light being sucked right out of us.

We were both feeling the same way. We were both really in sync on this. In the depths of our souls these places, they felt heavy, they felt draining, like we were literally running out of air.

But here’s the thing. We really had a very broad scope for this goal. We didn’t know exactly what we wanted or where we wanted to be. So we just started living in the question because we knew that the only way we could find out what we wanted was to start taking action to find out. And sometimes you have to be willing to live in the question of what you want in that way. To be open to where things land and where they lead you.

We now both know for sure that we would need to be in a place that has much more life than the smaller villages tend to have. And we are much clearer on the kind of things that we are looking for in a community. So that’s progress, that’s a win.

And this is the power of checking in at the soul level. Of listening to what your inner most intuition is telling you. Of asking yourself the kind of questions I shared just a moment ago and feeling the answers in your heart, in your body.

Sometimes you don’t always like the answers, especially when you do have a firm idea of what it is you want in your head. But like I said before, a life you love is built on soul deep YESES!. If it really isn’t a YES! in your soul, then that is going to be worth paying attention to.

So the counterpart to the Soul Test is the Shoulds Test. And here’s the kind of questions I ask for this.

Am I doing this because I think I should? Because it’s expected of me? Am I pursuing it because it looks good to other people? Or because I feel like it would make me more worthy, or accepted, or valued by other people? You have got to be willing to be really honest here. And am I saying YES! to this because I’m afraid of disappointing someone or being judged if I don’t?

Now, what’s tricky about this is that sometimes the things that pass the Soul Test also pass the Shoulds Test. Maybe you genuinely love your career and it also happens to be something that makes your family very proud. That’s beautiful when it happens. But what we’re looking for are the mismatches. The things that pass the Shoulds Test but fail the Soul Test completely. And even more importantly, the things that pass the Soul Test but you’ve been avoiding because they don’t pass the Shoulds Test.

I see this all the time with the women in my world. They’ve made decisions based on what they think they should want, what would look good to others, what feels safe, what feels acceptable. But they’ve lost touch with what actually lights them up from the inside. I was one of those women. And from time to time, I still get pulled back into that trap. I’m very mindful of that and much more attuned these days to when that is happening.

And so, this is exactly why I’m pausing to ask myself some very deep questions about this milestone birthday goal. When I really tune in, when I do the Soul Test, does this goal light me up from the inside because it’s something that would truly matter to me? Or am I being pulled towards it because I think I should mark this milestone with something equally significant?

The difference matters. Because if it’s coming from should, then no matter how impressive the achievement, it’s going to leave me feeling empty afterwards. But if it’s coming from soul, then the journey towards it will be just as fulfilling as the destination.

Your soul knows the difference between what you want. And what you think you should want. Your body knows the difference between what energizes you and what drains you. But we’ve been so conditioned to override these signals, to dismiss them as not practical or not realistic, that so many of us have lost the ability to hear them clearly. But they’re still there. They’re still speaking to you. You just need to start listening.

So think about your current goals, your current commitments, the things that are taking up time and energy in your life right now. And ask yourself, are these things passing the Soul Test or just the Shoulds Test? What would change in your life if you started making decisions based on what lights you up from the inside rather than what you think you should do? What would you pursue? What would you let go of? How would your days feel different?

Life’s too short to spend it building someone else’s version of success, my friend. Life is too precious to fill it with shoulds instead of soul deep YESES!.

And this brings me to sharing something completely different I am creating this summer, both here on the podcast and in my weekly email CREATED. Something that might seem a little risky for someone with an established podcast with loyal listeners, but something that feels absolutely necessary and like a soul deep YES! for me right now.

You’ve been hearing this from me the entire episode. I am being called to get back in touch with what matters most in my life right now. To reassess, realign, restore my energy, and regroup with my vision before I move forward. I am craving space. And taking that space will require that I show up differently in my world and for you on this podcast.

Now, immediately a whole long list of shoulds and shouldn’ts showed up for me. I shouldn’t change what women have come to expect from me. I should just keep pushing through. I shouldn’t risk my podcast. I shouldn’t gamble with what’s working. And on and on and on. My storyteller went story wild with the shoulds as soon as my soul asked to slow down, to step back and take some space.

But I asked myself, how can I create space and still show up for you here each week and in my business? Because that absolutely is still a priority in my life. And the answer felt like a soul deep YES! to me. So I am trusting that YES! And I am not looking back.

Let me be honest, I do have a highly ambitious nature with workaholic tendencies and a love for perfection. And the idea of slowing down to me is not really in my nature. But these things combined can really start to throw things out of balance when they’re left unchecked for a little too long.

And I see this happening for so many women in my world too. They are heads down hustling away every day in lives that aren’t always moving the needle towards a life they actually love to wake up to and live out every moment of. They are silencing their deepest desires. They’re keeping them secret under lock and key, tucked away behind what is often self-imposed responsibility, expectation, or the lie of constant busyness. And the fear or doubts about what will happen if they stop.

This is exactly what I’ve been doing a little bit too much myself lately. I’ve been pushing parts of my life and my desires aside for these same reasons. And it’s time for me to press pause. And I think for a lot of women in my world, it might be time for a similar pause and a similar check-in. Which is why this felt like such a YES! in the depths of my soul.

So, this European summer season, I am choosing to step away. Not from you, not from my loyal readers. But from the full speed hustle I’ve been gradually getting caught up in over the past couple of years, which has been ever so gradually pulling me away from what matters most. I’m stepping away from the overworking, the overgiving, and the overdoing that my future self has outgrown. And I’m inviting you to join me and do the same.

For the next 13 weeks, instead of my usual longer podcast episodes, I’ll be sharing shorter five minute episodes that focus on one powerful mindset shift per week. I’m calling this my Summer Secret Series. And each secret builds on the one before and together over the 13 weeks of the season, they will form a complete process for reconnecting with what matters most.

Now, I could tell you this is a strategic decision. That shorter episodes are better for busy people. That it’s good to risk my business and try new formats. And those things might be true. We’ll certainly find out. But that’s not what is at the heart of this series.

I’m doing it because I really honestly need the space to show up for myself in a different way right now. And I think a lot of women in my world need this right now too. The permission to slow down, to reconnect, to get back in touch with themselves, and what truly matters.

Listen, most of us are really good at achieving things. We’re really good at checking those boxes and hitting those targets and making things happen. But we’re not always good at making sure those things actually matter to us. We just get so caught up in the doing, the achieving, and the constant forward motion that we forget to check in with ourselves about whether we’re even heading in a direction that still lights us up.

And so this is what the next 13 weeks is going to be all about right here on this podcast. It’s not just about slowing down. It’s not just about making space in your calendar to pause all of the busyness. But it’s about being more intentional about what you choose to fill that space with moving forward. It’s about making sure that your days, your goals, your commitments, are actually aligned with what matters to you at the deepest level.

Think about it this way. You can have all the space in the world all the time and freedom and opportunity, but if you fill it with things that don’t light you up you’re still going to feel empty. You’re still going to feel disconnected from yourself and your life. That my friend, I can tell you from firsthand experience, it does not feel like freedom or fulfillment.

But when you intentionally fill your life with things that pass the Soul Test, when you build your days around what truly matters to you, everything changes. You don’t just feel busy, you feel alive. You don’t just feel productive, you feel purposeful. You don’t just feel successful, you feel fulfilled.

My summer secrets are about helping you get back in touch with what makes you soul feel most alive. They’re about giving you bite-sized mindset shifts to help you distinguish between what you think you should want and what you actually want. They’re about helping you create a life that’s not just impressive from the outside, but deeply fulfilling from the inside.

Each week I’m going to share just one secret that is helping me reconnect with what matters this season. And I’m not just sharing this as a theory. These are part of my own real-time process of getting back in touch with myself and what I want my life to be about.

Because no matter how much work we do on ourselves, no matter how clear we get about our goals and our values, life has a way of pulling us off course. The demands and the shoots and the bright shiny objects, they will have a way of accumulating until we look up one day and we realize we are living someone else’s life again.

And when that happens, we need to be willing to pause. We need to be willing to step back and ask ourselves what matters, truly? What lights me up from the inside? What would I choose if I wasn’t worried about what anyone else thought? Or following through on this just because I started it?

These are not easy questions. They require courage to answer with honesty. They require courage to act on the answers. But they’re also the most important questions we can ask ourselves. Because at the end of the day, the goal isn’t just to have a successful life. The goal is to have a life that feels successful to you. The goal isn’t just to achieve your dreams. The goal is to make sure your dreaming your own dreams, not someone else’s.

So, start thinking about what in your life right now truly lights you up from the inside? And what are you doing simply because you think you should? What would change if you started making decisions based on the Soul Test rather than the Shoulds Test? What would you pursue? What would you let go of? How would your days feel different?

And most importantly, are you ready to spend this next season, wherever you are in the world, reconnecting with what makes your soul feel most alive? If you are, I want to invite you to join me for my Summer Secrets Series. It’s an invitation to give yourself permission to slow down, to reflect, and to reconnect with what makes your soul feel most alive.

But I want you to know this. These 13 weeks aren’t just about consuming content. They are about taking action towards a life that matters. They’re about giving yourself permission to pause, to reflect and redesign your life around what truly lights you up. Because a life you wildly love isn’t about having more, it’s about being intentional with what you choose to fill it with. It’s about saying YES! to the things that light you up from the inside and having the courage to say no to everything else.

The Summer Secret Series start next week, and I can’t wait to take you on this journey with me in real-time. And maybe, just maybe, by the end of these 13 weeks, we’ll both be clearer on what matters, truly.

In the meantime, start asking yourself the Soul versus Should questions. For every commitment, every goal, every way you spend your time and energy, ask yourself, does this pass the Soul Test or just the Shoulds Test? The answer might surprise you and it might just change everything.

I’ll be back next week with the first Summer Secret, and I do hope you’ll join me. Make sure you hit subscribe so it’s queued and ready for listening inside your favorite podcast library. And if you want these secrets delivered straight to your inbox each week as a reminder to pause and take just five precious minutes for you, you can join the Summer Secrets email series at https://selfcreationschool.com/created.

Thanks for spending this time with me today, my friend. I’ll see you next week for our first Summer Secret.

Until then, be the woman who says YES!

Hey, want to know what’s stopping you from saying YES! to you and a life you love?

Head over to https://selfcreationschool.com/yesblock and take my free 60 second quiz to find out what’s standing in your way today and I’ll send you my Self-Creation Shift process for shifting it.

That’s https://selfcreationschool.com/yesblock. I’ll see you there.