Transcript: Connecting with Intuition with Dina Cataldo

You are listening to the, be a better lawyer podcast with Dina Cataldo episode 1 92. So how do high achieving lawyers break through generations of being taught that we have to grind ourselves into the ground to get results for clients, build a successful business and create a life we love while law schools are busy teaching the rule of law, they're slacking on teaching us how to be a better human to create for ourselves the success we thought we'd achieve after law school. This podcast bridges the gap between law school and life. Hello, my friend, how are you doing today? Let's talk about intuition. Shall we? Intuition kind of seems like a fuzzy topic. Doesn't it? It's another way of saying trusting your gut, having a feeling hunch a sixth sense, but connecting with intuition is really connecting with yourself on a deep, emotional level. You've done the work to know what you want, and you act in accordance in alignment with what you want.

You know, you have a knowing of whether or not your actions are going to move you towards what you want or away from what you want. But 99% of people do not do this. They do not know what they truly want because they haven't asked themselves the questions to get there. They haven't decided what it is they want in their life. They haven't determined what their values are. And when I was going through this, my desire was just to connect with intuition. Like I really just wanted to have that knowing, but I didn't know the work that went into it. I mean, I did everything to try to connect with intuition, right? right. Like I went to Bali and went on a yoga retreat. I did all kind meditation and psychedelic breath, and I've done all kinds of stuff, right? To connect with intuition, meditation, all of the things.

But what really helped me understand what intuition was, was the mindset work? Because the mindset work is what helped me understand that I was not creating my life. I was reacting to my life. And when we react to our lives, the stimulus that's happening around us, the, you know, busyness that's happening at the office, right? Like there's coworkers talking, or you've got clients who have demands, or maybe you're working with, uh, other attorneys who, you know, you have a lot of thoughts about that. They are not helpful. You know, whatever your thoughts are about the people in your life, the situations in your life, they create emotions. Right? And if you are just reacting to the emotions, because you have thoughts about the people and those thoughts are creating the emotions, then all you're doing is reacting. You are not connecting with what you want and connecting with the intuition that tell, tells you like, yes, this is what I want.

No, this is not what I want. And you've probably had experiences yourself where you really thought that you were getting intuition. You were getting some kind of insight. Right? And like, sometimes we talk about it when we see people were like, oh, that was a red flag. And, and yeah, like sometimes we are really connected with our intuition and that feeling inside of us. And it helps guide us in the direction that we want. But what I think most people are doing is they are reacting to negative emotions and they're calling it intuition instead of digging into their mindset, digging into the thoughts they're having about the situations. So let me give you an example about this. Sometimes I'll have attorneys come to me and they tell me, you know what? I don't trust my gut anymore. Like I, I can't tell, like, I, I thought this is what I really wanted, but you know, I just don't know if it's the right thing anymore.

And I've talked about making a decision in other podcasts. I'll, um, I'll link to of them in the show notes. But they think that because there isn't like a light shining down on them, that is illuminating the right answer. that, that means that their intuition is telling them, no, they shouldn't be doing it. Cause they think there's a right answer or they're searching for the right answer. They want someone to tell them the right answer, you know, and if they feel negative emotion, whether it's fear or doubt or whatever that is, they then call it intuition telling them that they shouldn't do something. And that's where we get into trouble. Because if I had allowed the fear and the doubt to tell me what to do, then I would not be a coach I would not left have and would not have left. The legal profession would not have done all kinds of things in my life that have gotten me to a point where am in love with my life.

And I can see that where I was looking for intuition outside of myself, right? Like I was going to ball. like find my intuition as if I had lost it right. As if it was just gone. That what I I really needed to do is I needed to sit with myself and I needed to ask myself some tough questions, which were things like, what do I really want? And what am I willing to feel so that I can have those things. And what I mean by that is when we decide to go after something we desire, okay. We always desire something because of the way we think it's going to make us feel happier, more joyful, fulfilled, whatever it is. But there are emotions that we label as negative of that are gonna be on the way to that goal. We are going to feel anxiety and worry.

We are going to feel overwhelmed and we are gonna feel some stress. But what we can do is we can understand what thoughts are those feelings for us. And we can learn to manage our mind and become more resilient. Those emotions are not bad emotions. We wouldn't have emotions if we weren't meant to have them in some capacity. But the thing is, is if we are using those emotions and reacting to those emotions, like if we're just reacting blindly and we're not analyzing, we're not like taking a look at our thought processes to see why we're reacting the way that we are. Then we are not going to get the results that we want. If I were to let feed take over. Right. That means I wouldn't be on social media. Right? Like if, if I had fears that I was gonna say something stupid or that it wasn't gonna be good enough, or I was judging myself and, and beating myself up and all of that, which I had done in the past, right.

If I allowed those emotions to rule my life and called it, intuition that I shouldn't be doing that, then I wouldn't be showing up on Instagram. I wouldn't be showing up the way that I am here on the podcast. I wouldn't be creating content at the level that I am to help people. But what we do is we say, oh, I feel negative emotion. Therefore it just must mean I don't want it enough. It must mean that I'm not meant to do that. It must mean that I'm my gut is telling me this is wrong. That's not true. That's not connection. That's not connecting with intuition. That's not having a deep, vulnerable relat with ourselves when we allow that to happen. And this has been my life's work. And I think it's work worth doing is building that relationship with ourselves so that we see when we are feeling negative emotion, that it doesn't mean anything. It just means we're having a thought. It just means we are thinking something that is creating a vibration in our body that we label as negative.

And if we allow those vibrations in our body and we label and we just label them, we just say, okay, this is labeled as a bad feeling. And therefore it's a feeling that I shouldn't be doing this. Then we are denying ourselves connection with intuition, cuz we never truly get to the point where we are with to feel negative emotion, to get what we want. And this is just such an interesting way to think about it, right? Because if we don't think about intuition in terms of going after what we want, then we lose, we lose something there. Like we're losing our ability to connect with ourselves cuz we're denying what we want. It's really interesting to think about it this way. Like I've, I've never truly thought about intuition before as something that I could cultivate within myself by deciding what I want. And so if you were in the same boat, I was, I don't know how was it?

Four years ago now three years ago now where I was looking for intuition where I wanted to connect with intuition. Cause I wanted something to guide me. I wanted something to tell me what the right decision was. I didn't wanna do all of the, the mental work to figure out and decide what I wanted and then decide that I was willing to feel negative emotions in order to create the life that I wanted. Like, it was really interesting. Like I really wanted something outside of myself to tell me to validate what I wanted and I called it intuition. Like I wanted the intuition to tell me what to do, but really all intuition is, is a byproduct of allowing yourself to want something. Cuz there we wouldn't want something in our life if E or we wouldn't like desire it the way that we do, if it wasn't possible, if we weren't meant to do that.

Right. And this was really interesting for me because I was a full-time lawyer and I had just kind of dabbled in journaling and noticed that I kept writing that I wanted to start a business over and over and over again. I just noticed it. It spotted throughout my journals every so often. And I, I thought to myself, when I went through it, one time I got curious and said, wow, like, why do I keep writing this? Like my brain wants, wants this. Like, there's something inside of me that wants this, but I wasn't allowing myself to want it because it seemed so out of the ordinary, when I was a full-time lawyer, how is I gonna start a business? But because I kept seeing it over and over again, obviously I had a desire for it. And so I needed to decide what I wanted that business to look like.

And that took some trial and error. I had to kind of figure some things out. I didn't have a coach at the time. So I was kind of just like feeling my way in the dark. But once I started down the path of looking into creating a business for myself, I realized, yes, this is actually exactly what I want. I mean, there's some things that I'd like to change about the kind of business that I have. And that's why I changed from having like a physical product. And then I found coaching and it felt so perfectly in alignment. Right? When you were talking about in intuition, right? Perfectly in alignment with my values, which I, I had to dig up, I had to do the mental work to do that. My values were, I wanted to help people, right. I wanted to fulfill myself. I wanted to fill myself up.

I wanted to learn cause that's something I'm passionate about. And I wanted this freedom, um, that I was not a, for as a lawyer because I needed to be in the office. And you know, now things are changing right within the legal profession. There's a lot more options there, but there was something about coaching that felt so much more fulfilling to me and was in connection with my values. But I had to do the work. Like I had to get a coach to do this because I needed the mental work. Now I've done a few podcasts that can help you along the way. All right. So I'm gonna link to some of them in the show notes. What I want you to do if you're coming to this episode and you're saying, this is, is great, but like I don't have time to like just kind of figure out my intuition and find all of that.

That's okay. That's why I created the busy lawyer guide to getting back five hours a week. So if you haven't downloaded the updated version, you can download it at Dena cataldo.com/busy lawyer that it's Dena cataldo.com/busy lawyer. If your brain is telling you you're too busy to do this work, then you've gotta do this work even more. Right? Like it's so it's so funny. I say that because I remember when I was learning meditation, they would say, look, if you are feeling like you can't do 10 minutes of meditation, then you need to sit there for an hour. I was like, that's the work you've gotta do the work. You've gotta, you've gotta do the reps in order to create what you want. That connection with yourself. And connecting with yourself can look like a lot of different things. There's a lot of different practices, but know way a lawyer's brain works.

I know that coaching is a fabulous way to do it. Like that's how I did it. I gravitated to my particular style, causal coaching. Um, I don't know if you know this, but I was trained through the life coach school and that particular kind of coaching spoke to me because it was so deliberate. It was so mathematical and artful at the same time. It just made sense to me. And if that kind of work, if you're listen, this podcast and that kind of work is resonating with you and you are noticing that what I'm saying makes sense to you. Like you can't even explain it. You're just like, yeah, that makes sense. I want you to book a call with me. You can go to Dena, cataldo.com/strategy session and get on a call with me. And we can talk about how we could work together to get you what you want.

And that requires this deep connection with yourself. It's a relationship you're building with yourself. It's a relationship that gets stronger over time. And when you have the skills, the rules to do that, it just gets richer and richer. I have been working on this relationship with myself for years. I hadn't always been working on this relationship with myself. Um, but when I found this work coaching and I discovered that not only could I, I feel more productive, right? Like I, I wasn't feeling overwhelmed. I had my time managed. I felt like I had time to myself that I could just sit and think. And that was when I could really start to have that relationship with myself. And that's really where I start with my clients is helping them calm down their practice, right? Like pour some water on the fires and then start working on that relationship with themselves.

Cuz until we create that quiet, we can't start really digging into this work. And so that's what I help my clients do when they come to me and they are in that overwhelm state. And then we start doing all of this work where not only are they connecting with like what they want, they're not getting decisive about what they want. Only. They're starting to understand what actions are gonna be in alignment with getting the result that they want. So if this is clicking with, with you book a call with me, go to Dena, cataldo.com/strategy session. Let's get on the books. Let's talk, it'll be fun. I have a good time on these consults and you get some coaching. So I hope you enjoyed this episode again. I'm gonna link to some additional episodes in the show no***@de*********.com slash 1 92, kind of help you on this journey. All right, my friend, I will talk to you soon. Bye.