The intentional leader podcast

Having lived with clutter for almost twenty years, I know first hand what it's like to live in a house that overwhelms you. It affects your energy levels, your mental clarity, your mental health even and tends to isolate you because you refrain from letting people come to your home.

So let me start these show notes that I am approaching this episode with zero judgment. If I come across as judgmental nevertheless, then I want to apologise. Please let me know how I can do better. I know, for example how some people who struggle with organisational skills have it harder than others and executive function can also take its toll.

I am setting the intent that you will receive the energetic push that you need to get started and maybe the confidence that you can do it, from listening to my episode. I also highly recommend listening to the Declutter Hub Podcast, which has been instrumental in helping me get my house ready for sale in 2024. And also Karen Kingston's small and easy to read Clear your clutter with Feng Shui.

Clutter is any collection of things that is untidy... according to the Oxford dictionary. It can also be broken items, unwanted or disliked gifts, meaningless activities, friendships that have run their courses, containers with missing lids, lone socks... in no particular order.

Clutter can happen for a variety of reasons but most of them pertain to our mental or emotional state. Though the fact that where I live capitalism is rife does not help. Who had not been lured into buying unwanted things because they were a good bargain and sounded like a good idea. Or the famous Black Friday offers. Mostly, though, clutter happens due to a small number of reasons:

1. Fear of not having enough
2. The belief that the more things we have the happier we will be
3. The lack of respect for our home
4. Wanting to do only fun things in life
5. Over-consumption

I want to explore in particular the overconsumption that derives with the capitalistic model of consumption. It's big. It's in our faces constantly. It's been an underlying message ever since the industrial revolution that started between the 16th and the 18th century. So much so that it is sometimes hard to see it for what it is: a model that destroys our planet and creates more problems then it solves. Capitalism is based on the need for us to constantly want more. Sadly it has also created social harm, pollution, inequality, inhumane treatment of workers, and oppression through slavery, colonialism and imperialism.

I finish the episode by giving you a couple of tips on how to get started.

Last week I talked about new Earth, this week I am exploring new You from an energetic perspective. From very young, our parents show us how important it is to clean our bodies and clean our rooms. Most of us anyway, and there is no judgment from me either way. Whereas we are never educated as to the importance of keeping our bodies, our minds and our houses clean energetically.

So let's dive in.

In the first part of the episode, I talk about how our bodies, our minds and our homes get energetically dirty. Things like arguments, worry. illness, or just what I call the sponge effect: us absorbing the negative energy of others. I then give you some methods that you can use to clean your body, mind and house energetically, with things like salt, journalling, guided meditations, crystals or spending time in nature.

For your home, decluttering is incredibly important and for inspiration, I recommend the Declutter Hub Podcast.

I share with you a particular way of journalling that helps you allow the negative energy to exit your body through your arm, into the ink of your pen and onto paper.

But the one thing I do not recommend, is to use white sage or palo santo as it is cultural appropriation and it encourages over harvesting, which is damaging to indigenous people.

I have done a podcast episode about the five things you need to know about energy. Click here to listen. I have an energy intelligence for sensitive entrepreneurs course on my Thinkific platform that goes in much more depth into this, which also includes a reiki one attunement. To purchase that course, head over here.

If you would like to book an energy cleanse with me, use this link.

First of all best wishes for 2025. I am so happy we are all getting the opportunity of a fresh start, of setting intentions and feel we have a blank page to write a new story on. If you want help on how to do that, head over to episode 17 from last January where I explore the difference between New Year Resolutions, Intentions and Goals. We will be referring back to quite a few episodes in this blog post.

The reason I am referring back to that is that I heard on another podcast that we have a whole year (2025) to shift our ways on a global scale in order to create New Earth, where humanity treats the planet the way it deserves to be. I heard on that podcast that we don't own the Earth, we rent it. And it made me feel that we were very poor tenants indeed.

Sometimes we think that we do can't really make a difference because the problems are so big. I want you to leave this blog post feeling that you actually can. And in order for you to do that, I want you to understand the power of prayer and tiny steps. I did a whole episode on Prayer back in October 2023, so I invite you to go listen to that. If you don't have the time, know that prayer works and that we don't have to be religious or spiritual for it to work. This episode goes more in depth into how to do it and why every single prayer works.

I share a story in it that made a huge impression on me at the start of my spiritual journey. Caroline Myss was a great inspiration and in one of her books, she shares the story of one of her clients who had an NDE in a car accident. As Caroline's body floated above her body, she saw the cars that were withheld on the road because of what happened to her and most of it was not pretty to see. Everyone was complaining about the traffic, but then she noticed a car that seemed to shine amongst the traffic jam. It seemed to broadcast some celestial music and the most beautiful fountain of multicoloured light. She approached that car and saw that the driver of that car was praying. She noted the car plate and remembered it after she came back into her body and decided to send flowers to that person to thank them for what they did for her.

What a story. Don't you think? Since hearing it, I always send angels and prayers when I see emergency vehicles and although i have not witnesses car accidents other than my own in 2019, I never complain about traffic.

At the end of today's episode, I make a list of things we could collectively pray for as I heard in one of the NDE videos I listened to to prepare the episode on NDEs that collective prayer is even more beautiful than individual ones. Let's pray and value all the tiny steps that we take to make this planet a better place.

I also mentioned the Sacred Heart Prayer group that I manage on Facebook, so if you want to join, click here.

We are continuing to talk to babies in spirit in this episode, but whereas the last episode was more about Lauren's journey of becoming a baby soul communicator, in this episode a collective of baby souls came forward to talk about difficult topics such as:

1. Autistic children
2. Transgender kids
3. Kids that have a challenging or life threatening health condition
4. Kids who chose to die young

These kids have so much to teach us and I am still in awe of what these souls have chosen to share with us on the podcast. The information that came through Lauren is both surprising and powerful. It confirmed to me that children are here to teach us, not the other way round. Of course, we are here to teach them about being human, but they are here to teach about bigger things that relate to the journey of the soul.

Some of the pearls of wisdom that these souls shared:

• "Stop trying to define me"
• "My parents need more support than I do"
• Some kids choose challenges as an act of service to their parents
• For kids who dies young, sometimes even babies who die soon after birth "I chose quality over quantity"
• "I just wanted to come and kiss the Earth"

Have your heart opened wide by listening to the whole episode. And share widely with parents of professionals involved with children who need to hear what these incredible kids have to say.

Although none of my loved ones died by suicide, I have supported suicidal people in my life almost as a constant since teenage. I am not a professional, but as a spiritual teacher I wanted to talk about this topic that from a religious and spiritual point of view is often labelled as a sin. If you have listened to my podcast before, you know I am here to debunk myths. I need to say right off the bat: it is not a sin and you won't go to hell. Or your loved one won't.

This is where I am angry at religion and spirituality: there is no need to add insult to injury. People who contemplate suicide are usually in situations that feel unbearable and they see death as the only way out, be it that they experience pain, challenging illnesses or sometimes domestic abuse. Not everyone who contemplates suicide suffers from mental ill health.

It is time we remove the stigma around suicide. One in five person will have contemplated it once in their life. It's common. There is nothing to be ashamed of.

The risk factors are the following (and the more ticks on this list, the higher the risk so watch out for your loved ones): harassment and bullying, a previous attempt, family history, difficult life events, trauma and abuse, stressful events such as job loss, divorce or debt, feelings of hopelessness, feelings of worthlessness, feelings of isolation, use of drugs or alcohol, chronic pain or disability, domestic violence, and certain mental health conditions. The risk of suicide is incredibly higher for transgender individuals and other LGBTQIA community members.

In this episode I share some tips from my own lived experience and the ten myths listed by the Samaritans, a UK based organisation that offers a hotline: 116 123.

If you know someone who is at risk, you can absolutely make a difference but always ensure that you don't do more than you can cope with. Professional help is always there to step in. I briefly want to mention Papyrus for Youth Suicide in the UK. Know that there is a trust that supports young people called Winston's Wish. And the NHS has a service called Help is at hand. If you are not in the UK, hopefully you can find resources on Google, but your doctor should have some information for you.

Last but not least, I want to refer you to a YouTube Video by a near death experiencing who met a family member who had died by suicide on the other side and who tells of how they were in a good place. If you like to read and are open to the idea, I also recommend a book called My son and the afterlife by Elisa Medhus, M.D.

I am a mental health first aider so feel free to message me on my FB profile here.

There was a time when I was so obsessed with Near Death Experiences (NDEs) that I wished I had one myself. That was, however, at the start of my spiritual journey. As I progressed in my spiritual journey, I had what people label as Spiritual Experiences (SEs) and now, I feel these are much more gentle. I have come to the personal conclusion that not all of us need NDEs to learn spiritual lessons, and that perhaps those who do needed something much more drastic to "wake up". There is no judgment in what I just wrote. It's just an observation.

I want to recommend three books if you want to learn about NDEs: the first book is called After by Dr Greyson, the second is Dying to be Me by Anita Moorjani and the third is Proof of Heaven by Eben Alexander.

Contrary to popular belief, not all NDEs are pleasant. Not everyone goes to "heaven". Some people go through to a very dark place that some even describe as Hell. My understanding of this is the reason you go to the place of light as opposed to the place of darkness has nothing to do with how good you have been but more to do with the proportion of light you have inside of you as opposed to the darkness. We all have both light and darkness in us. Anyone who tells you that they are pure light is lying to you. As humans, we are born into duality. And we all have done things when gripped with fear that we are not very proud of.

What are the main teachings that Near Death Experiencers bring back from their experience?

1. The body can heal from the most extreme illnesses and even death when one changes the way they look at life.
2. When it's not our time to go, we are strongly encouraged to come back, but it's always a choice.
3. We go through a life review after we leave our bodies. This review is not a judgment. It's mean to be educational.
4. Life is a play - Earth is a playground, albeit sometimes a very tragic one.
5. The only thing that matters in our experience on Earth is love.
6. Life on Earth is a playground, not a court room.
7. Dying can be easier than living.
8. We choose our parents
9. Doctors and nurses are assisted by angels regardless of whether they believe in them or not and regardless of whether they are aware of being assisted or not.
10. The spirit world wants to help us.
11. We "survive" death as we are more than our physical bodies and our brain, and this is experienced the most by atheists.
12. Love is all that matters and the source of all existence.
13. We are never alone.

I have just signed to join Toastmasters and when I asked myself what to talk about in the icebreaker, the very first speech one does in front of the club, the words that came were "Six degrees of separation".

The concept of six degrees of separation was originally conceived by a Hungarian author called Frigyes Karinthy, although he did not use these words precisely. And the idea is that people are six or fewer connections from each other. But the way I was supposed to use this expression was different. I was supposed to use it to talk about the fact that through life, we separate from our true selves and the idea was that I chose six events that brought me back to my true self.

In this episode, I share with you those six degrees. I have given them titles and they are little stories in themselves.

1. Degree 1 is called Rue de Rennes, and is about how I escaped a bombing in Paris in September 1986
2. Degree 2 is called Mike and Wendy Noah and is about how I communicated with these people in my dreams
3. Degree 3 is called San Francisco and is about how I found out mosaics was going to be the medium I would use in my art
4. Degree 4 is called Angel dust and is about a psychic reading where the medium told me I had angel dust coming out of my hands
5. Degree 5 is called Sugar in the Tank and is about the first time I had the courage to share angelic guidance with a friend
6. Degree 6 is about my first public speaking experience

These six steps or experiences allowed me to reclaim a part of me that I had lost and took me from being a lawyer (in 1986 I was still a student) to who I am today. I call myself a spiritual lawyer, but really I am a modern mystic.

These six steps are an excerpt my memoir called Spiritual Lawyer which is coming out in 2025. So if you would like to be informed when it is available for sale, sign up for my author newsletter with this link.

Back in the early days of my career as a clinical hypnotherapist, I wanted to talk to babies in spirit. So you can imagine how excited I was when I came across Lauren Dionysius who does precisely that. Lauren is a former registered nurse who worked extensively in the NICU and helped lots of babies get better but also witnessed many baby deaths.

In this episode, which is the first in a series of three, Lauren talks about her personal journey of working with babies and how that led to burn out. She took a year sabbatical to reflect on where she was supposed to go next and ended up going back to the NICU.

She shares one of the most transformational experience there when a new born whose parents were unreliable communicated with her telepathically. I won't spoil the story for you as she tells it so eloquently on the podcast but be prepared to have your beliefs challenged, in the nicest possible way.

Lauren now works full time supporting families and communicating with not yet born babies, babies in the womb, babies who have died and so much more. Her work is phenomenal and I feel honoured she came to share about her work here on the podcast.

As the episode came to a close, I felt the presence of a collective of baby souls who wanted a voice and had a lot to say, so we literally recorded the second episode right after the first one. It will be released in a month's time and it tackles issues that I have personally been wondering about for the longest time. We also have a third episode in the works.

Not only that, but this collective has asked for the episodes to be released now, when I had initially scheduled Lauren's interview for March 2025. This has completely upset my podcast interview scheduIe but I am actually delighted to make space for these mind blowing but more importantly heart opening interviews.

To find out more about Lauren, click here.

Until we understand how our minds work, we believe we are our thoughts and we also believe we have no control over our thoughts. We even identify with our beliefs so deeply that we can become defensive when someone enters our world and challenges them.

This is the reason I believe that in order for us to awaken, we need to understand how the mind works. And this episode is all about that.

I was lucky enough that I trained in clinical hypnotherapy in 2007 and it rocked my world. Both in the literal sense, as in created tremendous change. One of these changes is that it helped me overcome a ten-year writer's block without even trying. And in a metaphorical sense because it opened the door to a way of living I had no idea even existed.

I had had years of therapy before that, but the therapy, although useful to reflect on things and to connect the dots, never took me beyond my thoughts. I was limited to explore a room that contained past experiences and beliefs but with no real awareness of the vast world that existed outside that room. And not only outside that room, but in other realms.

It is estimated that we have an average of 70,000 thoughts per day. If we don't realise that we are not our thoughts, we stay prisoner of these thoughts which most of the time go into many contradicting directions and distract us constantly from what is happening in the now.

Once your realise you are not your thoughts, you can also become more aware of the beliefs that are thrown at you constantly by the media. And mostly, these are negative beliefs because it is what sells. But our minds becomes the repository of those beliefs and we might want to curate our space with more helpful beliefs.

We have a choice.

Although a belief is a thought that we think is true and usually we have ample evidence to support it, it might be worth us deciding if that belief is supporting us and then reverse engineer what we want to create in our lives and then choose the beliefs that support that version of reality we want to create. Once you do that, you will be amazed how you can find evidence to support this new belief, because the truth is, our beliefs act as filters. If you don't believe in aliens (and I am not suggesting you do or don't) then you will deny any evidence of them when you come across it. If you do, you might actually interpret facts around as evidence regardless of whether they are. It all starts with the belief.

In this episode I also talk about the different parts of the brain that you need to know about so you understand how every thought that crosses your mind can take you down two paths: the negative path or the positive path. This, of course, is not to indulge in toxic positivity, but my experience has taught me that with anything that happens to us, our beliefs can increase or decrease the suffering we experience depending on what thought we think about the situation.

I hope you enjoy this episode and if you do, please share it with someone who needs or needs to listen to it.

We live in a society that values knowledge and intelligence above wisdom and kindness. Personally, wisdom and kindness rank above but it goes further than that, so I wanted to explore this topic in depth. I was encouraged to explore after listening to a very thought provoking podcast by Rory Stewart called the Long History of Ignorance on BBC Sounds.

Rory is a politician. He knows how to make a good argument and I could see how ignorance is not necessarily a bad thing in four situations.

1. When you are about to face a challenge or tragedy - this is important for us psychics. Knowledge of the future is not good enough. We need to have the wisdom to only impart to our clients what is going to be useful, uplifting and for the highest good of our clients.
3. When you need to learn something. Having knowledge about something can actually come in the way of our learning especially if we think we already know the topic.
5. When you are looking to solve a problem. You need to put aside what you think you know so that better solutions can be found. This is very important in science and Rory actually quoted a psychiatrist that claims that most scientific discoveries have not been made with the scientific method but by some intuitive leap.
7. When you are looking to connect to Universal intelligence (see my previous episode about channeling called Not My Words, Not My Thoughts.

If you would like to hear what I have to say in a bit of a stream of consciousness kind of episode, listen to this episode. I have also mentioned the podcast The rest is politics.