Wendi McGowan-Ellis  0:11  
Welcome to "Your Authentic Path to Powerful Leadership" with Marsha Clark. Join us on our journey as we're uncovering what it takes to be a powerful woman leader. And Marsha, welcome back.

Marsha Clark  0:24  
Thank you, thank you. Here we are yet again. And welcome to our listeners, our viewers. So hopefully you have a chance to watch this as well as listen to it.

Wendi McGowan-Ellis  0:35  
Yes, we are already at Episode 61. So we're well over a year now into this and that's  super exciting. Well, Marsha, I know that our guest today is super special. So I'm going to let you introduce her.

Marsha Clark  0:48  
Absolutely. We have LaRue Eppler here with us today. And LaRue and I met in a group that is fondly and preciously called The Up To Something Group.

Wendi McGowan-Ellis  0:58  
Oh, so I want to be up to something! Wow!

Marsha Clark  1:03  
And it was something. The name of that group is exactly what it sounds like. We were all up to something and many of us in a more independent way, and so we had a chance to support one another in our up to somethingness. And so I met LaRue as a part of that group. And after hearing her and her work, knowing the work that I was doing with women, and her work is the work of intuition. So our title today, "A Woman's Knowing"  is representative of what it means to be a woman and to trust our intuition. We've heard it, we've had it all of our lives. And, you know, we've been told don't trust it. And yet what LaRue is here to tell you is to bust that myth all over the place. And LaRue has written a book and I'm gonna let you give all the particulars about all of that. And she's also created a methodology called the Evo-K Method and she has certified, you know, that's a certifiable kind of thing. So I think our listeners are going to really enjoy, because we're going to put some structure and framework around this sort of nebulous thing called intuition. And so we have the expert here. I also want to say LaRue, really, she wrote chapter seven. I did a little bit and she wrote chapter seven in the book. I want to give her all the credit for that and, again, to provide some framework for our listeners and our readers to understand this topic a little more.

Wendi McGowan-Ellis  2:28  
Excellent, wonderful. Okay, so LaRue, before we dive into the content today, I'd like for us to start as Marsha mentioned with chapter seven. So Marsha, you open up this chapter of the book with a powerful declaration about the power of intuition. So for our listeners, and our viewers who haven't read the book yet, shame on you. But if they haven't read the book yet, please share that story.

Marsha Clark  2:54  
Yeah, and this is one that LaRue and I talked about when we first started collaborating and thinking about how we could reinforce and support one another. So this goes back to 2011, so 11 years ago. I was scheduled to go out of town, out of country to deliver some programming, leadership programming. And lo and behold, about a week and a half before I was supposed to go, I started itching all over my body. You know, so I'm thinking, Okay, this is crazy. And let me just preface this by saying one, I have really good health and two, I have a high tolerance for pain. And so what I thought, someone had treated my yard  with chemicals to get rid of the weeds and stuff, I'd gone to the mailbox and I'd picked up the sign out of my yard that said we treated your yard today. So in my you know, infinite medical wisdom, it was well I've come in contact with something. I've got an allergy. So I don't have a primary care physician. And I didn't have one then because I never went to the doctor because I was healthy. And so I went to the drugstore and they gave me Benadryl and cortisone cream. And they said if this doesn't clear this up in three days, go see somebody. So not having a doctor, I went to one of the doc in the boxes, you know, and what they initially diagnosed as you probably have a gallstone, right, because, okay, I don't know. I can tell you now I've learned a lot about this, is that that is what allows the bile to go out of our systems, through the gallbladder and out the bile and into our intestines and out our bodies. And so if it gets blocked, the bile backs up in our blood system, our blood flow, okay, and that was causing itching all over.

Wendi McGowan-Ellis  4:44  
Okay.

Marsha Clark  4:45  
Okay, so that's the lay of the land. He sends me to get a sonogram. Well, if that was 11 years ago, I was 58 years old. I never had a sonogram because they didn't give you those when you were having babies back when I was having babies. So I go. They took about an hour and a half. And I didn't know, I didn't think there was anything wrong with that, you know. Lo and behold, it usually takes about 10 minutes, but they're really poking around on me down here. And so then I get the call from the doctor when he gets the results at the doc in the box, and he says, come in to see me and I'm like, I don't have time to come in.

Wendi McGowan-Ellis  5:18  
Just tell me.

Marsha Clark  5:18  
And yet, and yet, here we go. There's that nagging little voice. Okay, maybe I need to go. I need to go talk to him. You know, I'm trying to get out of the country. Do I really, just take the gallstone out, just be done with it, let me get on with my life. But I paid attention because I trusted my intuition because something was just a little awry. So I go, he tells me that I have a three centimeter tumor on my ampullary duct, which is where your pancreas comes into, it connects to your pancreas, then to your colon. So long story, hopefully a little shorter, is I was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, which I didn't know but it has a 6% mortality rate because you usually don't have symptoms until it's stage four. So because the ampullary duct for all those who are watching my left index finger is touching mine. And this is the bile duct, my right hand and the ampullary duct is my left hand. The tumor was large enough in my ampullary duct to block my bile duct. That's what gave me symptoms, not the pancreatic cancer in and of itself.

Wendi McGowan-Ellis  6:35  
Wow.

Marsha Clark  6:36  
So I trusted that I needed to actually follow up and go to a doc, you know, in one of the doc in the box places. I trusted that I needed to go in and hear what he had to say. And I trusted him when he then referred me to a surgeon and I subsequently went through a 13 hour whipple surgery taking all of that out, a third of my pancreas, the ampullary duct, six inches of colon, my gall bladder, my gallstone, I mean all that and was in the hospital for 13 days, and I refused to be one of the 94% who don't make it. And so here we are today, 11 years later. And I just say all of that was the nagging and the tugging of my instinct on this ain't business as usual. (Right.) Do what the doctors are telling you to do, which I've been known not to do that so much. So that's my story.

Wendi McGowan-Ellis  7:32  
Okay. I've lost my... Oh. Okay. Did you have to go through chemo or radiation or any of that or did they completely...

Marsha Clark  7:45  
I did not. So it was that what's called an encapsulated tumor. They checked every other part of my body and said it had not spread because I caught it in a first stage.

LaRue Eppler  7:54  
Thank God you didn't take the trip.

Marsha Clark  7:57  
Because I would have gone, I was going to countries that are not known for their medical capabilities. One was an emerging third world country and one was only recently would be considered a mid level, you know, country.

Wendi McGowan-Ellis  8:09  
Okay.

Marsha Clark  8:10  
And so I wouldn't have had the care. I wouldn't have had the ability to treat it sooner rather than later to make sure it hadn't spread.

Wendi McGowan-Ellis  8:17  
Thank god. Wow, wow. Okay, on to better topics. LaRue, our listeners know that we love to start our podcasts with definitions. So what is your definition of intuition?

LaRue Eppler  8:35  
Intuition, to me, is knowing what you know without knowing how you know it.

Marsha Clark  8:42  
I love and I love that definition. We know it.

LaRue Eppler  8:44  
We do know it with all our heart and soul. We have no proof of how we know. We have nothing to base it on. We just know.

Wendi McGowan-Ellis  8:53  
Right. Okay. So the phrase that's coming to mind for me is digested knowledge. It's not necessarily a thought that just comes out of the universe, but it's something that comes from within us.

LaRue Eppler  9:11  
Absolutely. So that digested knowledge, which I talk about in the book, Marsha's book, is typically what scholars would say is that intuition, their definition of intuition is it's things we've experienced long ago that come to the forefront when it's needed. That's not what I'm talking about today. To me that's not true intuition. (Okay.) True intuition, again, is knowing what you know without knowing how you know it, like Marsha had never been through that cancer scare before. You know, her mind, which would I think mine would have made it up too when you go to the mailbox and they spray the pest you would think, logic would say, well, I'm just itching from that. But something deeper inside her said I better go to the doctor. I'm getting on a flight. I better go. There was some urgency probably to it wasn't there? (Absolutely.) And she listened.

Wendi McGowan-Ellis  10:06  
So, a question for both of you, what do you think is the benefit of listening to your intuition in a workplace environment?

Marsha Clark  10:16  
Oh, this is when I have so many thoughts rambling in my head with this question. So one is that when we talk about our authentic power and our authentic path, if I'm in a work situation, and I feel like there's a certain way, a certain strategy, a certain process, a certain methodology, and I don't know why I know it, but this one's different, I may have done something similar or routine several times. And yet something about this makes it different. So I need to move faster, or I need to include this party that's never been included before. Or I need to do a little further research on something else, right. So those are the things that come to my mind that says, if I trust those things. And the contrast, I want to say is, it's kind of like leave your feelings at the door. Right? And so this is a feeling. It's not a piece of data, or it's not, you know, a white paper or a competitive analysis, or, you know, some of the things that we are often asked to produce in order to support what we're thinking or planning or proposing to do. But this is one that says, again, I can't tell you why I know it, and yet, I want to trust my feelings or my instincts on this one.

Wendi McGowan-Ellis  11:39  
Okay. LaRue?

LaRue Eppler  11:41  
Yeah, absolutely. I think that it helps us make successful decisions. And like you were saying, like decisions on the fly, where you don't have a lot of time to do research sometimes on certain things, you know, and, you know, again, scholars mentioning scholars in, you know, fancy business schools, that, you know, they have these models for making decisions, right. But but the I heard someone, you know, a professional recently say that those models are kind of out the door these days, because we have the social media and things everything is happening so fast. You can't use...

Wendi McGowan-Ellis  12:13  
You can't break out a framework. Or you can, but it only captures a point in time, which is now quickly blown by.

Marsha Clark  12:22  
And, and you're getting lots of resistance for it too. And I think too, LaRue, what makes this timely is pre pandemic and post pandemic. So the rules of life have changed accordingly. And even while people are going through the pandemic, you didn't know what to do because we had never been there. (Right.) So there were no answers, even if you wanted to go find answers you couldn't. And so that's what I love about what you're describing is, there's not a rulebook, there's not a, let's do a benchmark, or let's do a best in class or something like that. We've got to do it. We've got to do it now. And there's no precedent, so we've got to make it up. And yes, trusting our instincts isn't necessarily making it up. And yet it can look like that to others.

LaRue Eppler  13:05  
Yes, absolutely. Yeah. It looks like we're just on the fly. But it's really, if you're following that deeper thing that's coming from deep within your being.

Wendi McGowan-Ellis  13:16  
So I have a note here about the six distinct ways intuition communicates with you. LaRue, let's talk about that.

LaRue Eppler  13:24  
Yes. Let's talk about that. So we'll do a high level of them. You know, I'll go into a couple of deeper ones later, urge and inspiration. But the first one is urge and it is an inner nudge to do something or not do something, okay. And then there's snapshot click. And a snapshot click is like the connecting points of your life like, it's like, well, I'll go into it more. (Okay.) And then there's wonderment, which is the presence of awe. Well, that wonder. Exactly. Right. And inspiration is the energy of creation. And then there's no time and no space, it's where time, or time, there's no time in expanded space where time collapses, and there's this sense of spaciousness. So, those are the six ways.

Wendi McGowan-Ellis  14:19  
Okay, let's go a little deeper into all of these. So, I'll let you start with the first one, urge, that nudge that guides you.

LaRue Eppler  14:30  
Okay, so urge is, it's something that you can feel as, maybe Marsha felt it when she went to the doctor. It's a nudge and a magnetic pull that wants you to take a certain action or avoid a certain action. (Right.) We have them all the time. (Okay.) You know, all of these things I'm talking about everyone has experienced. It's just that we're highlighting them here. You can go, oh, oh, I really need to not ignore that next time.

Wendi McGowan-Ellis  15:06  
Right. Right.

LaRue Eppler  15:09  
And so that's the power of urge. And it's always there.

Marsha Clark  15:15  
And I just want to say, for our listeners as well, when we think of nudge, there's a physical push. So that's right. That's the one we think about when we say nudge, or people are trying to nudge me with words or, you know, influence me in some way. This isn't those things. No, it's from inside of me. And it's not a physical push, where it's not someone externally trying to influence me. There's something inside of me, it's almost like you said, that magnetic pull that's pulling me to something, or if it's pulling me this, it's because it's pulling me away from that. Right. So I mean, I want to differentiate that in that way. It's an inside out job.

Wendi McGowan-Ellis  15:55  
Okay. Okay, snapshot click. Let's go deeper on that one.

LaRue Eppler  15:59  
This connects the point, all the points in your life. It's kind of like, there's the snapshot, the event that happens. It's a significant event or a memory in your life that stands out from the background. It could be even a conversation with someone, it could be lyrics to a song you're listening to that resonates with you. And you notice yourself singing it over and over, or kind of in your head or whatever, there's something significant about that that you really need to pay attention to, right? And so then the click comes and you don't know, it can come quickly, it could come 20 years from now but when the click happens, you'll go,  Oh, now I know why that happened.

Wendi McGowan-Ellis  16:44  
Okay. Okay.

Marsha Clark  16:46  
So here's the visual image that I get. You know how you can take pictures and it's a blurry background but the foreground is very clear. That's what I think of. There's a lot of stuff going on in that background place. But this one, it becomes crystal clear to me.

LaRue Eppler  17:05  
Yeah. It just stands out. It's almost like it's all you notice. Right, you know.

Wendi McGowan-Ellis  17:10  
So I have a quote from the book that you wrote, she contributed mainly. So I want to just pull this out. "Did this experience possibly come to you in a dream, during a meditation, a recurring image that you can't even explain or a memory from the past that won't go away? A snapshot click could be a single experience or many experiences woven together over time, and then it clicks into place." So what are the three steps of this snapshot click experience?

LaRue Eppler  17:49  
Okay. All right. Well, the first one is to locate the snapshot. And that's where you recall a memory or an event where something stood out, like, you know, the background was blurred, but it was highlighted, you know, in some way. And you're going to write down what was significant what stood out to you about that, right. And then number two is to locate the click. And again, you may not be if it just happened, you may not be able to locate the click right now. The click might come a few years from now. What happened for me when I found my purpose, it's like, oh, that court reporter you know, on Career Day in high school. Oh, that's what that was about. But that was 10 years later, right, without going into the story, right? The click, like, Oh, that was significant. Like, I don't remember anything else about that day except that court reporter coming. I thought I was going to be a court reporter. (Oh, got it.) And so, and I went, that was my next step anyway, in my evolution was to take that step. And it clicked for me 10 years later, like, oh, this was now guidance saying pay attention to this. This is going to be important to you so that you can take the right step. (Right. Okay.) And then the third one is to locate the message. And again, in my example, I didn't get the message until 10 years later. Right? There's always a message. So sometimes, you know, and that's, that's when it clicks, right, is when you're or actually when it occurs in your life it's like, oh, okay, that's why it happened. And it just, it's like a puzzle piece. It kind of all just drops in.

Wendi McGowan-Ellis  19:19  
Yeah. Any comments, Marsha?

Marsha Clark  19:23  
No, I'm following.

Wendi McGowan-Ellis  19:24  
Okay. All right. Let's talk about the third one, wonderment. What's the difference between, I have in my notes here, that there's two different types of wonderment. Let's talk about that.

LaRue Eppler  19:39  
Oh, I love this one. So there is spontaneous, I call it wondering, spontaneous wondering where we're just wondering about something, and then there's deliberate wondering about something. So spontaneous wondering is you're going about your life and you just well, I wonder how Mary who I haven't seen in 20 years is, or I wonder you know, where I'm gonna get some good vitamins or whatever. And that wondering you're not planning on going to look for the answer. You're just wondering. And a few days or a few hours or a few minutes later, that person calls you. Right?

Wendi McGowan-Ellis  20:17  
This happens to me quite a bit. Yes, they call or you see the email in your inbox. Yeah. Yeah.

LaRue Eppler  20:23  
And when they call you need to answer because you've already wondered about them. So you're probably not going to let that go to voicemail unless you absolutely can't answer, right. But you're going to contact them because there was a divine thing trying to connect the two of you. Right? So you don't want to ignore that because who knows what magic can come from that or what important information. And then deliberate wondering is very intentional. It's where you have a problem that you don't know how to solve, you have a question you need an answer to and you just, you're racking your brain and you don't know how to answer the question. So you can just, well, I wonder what the solution is, I wonder what the answer is, and you let it go, wherever, wherever it goes. Because the power of wondering is when we're wondering, you know, wonderment, when we're in awe, there's no attachment. Do you notice how free you feel? The advantage you feel? And so you just let it go. And when you let it go, then pay attention. And then notice what you notice because something inside you, your intuition, your unconscious mind, whatever you want to call it will say, you'll turn to something or you'll hear something, you go oh, there's my answer.

Marsha Clark  20:23  
Well and I will tell you, too, what I've experienced is I wonder how Mary's doing. And I'll send Mary a note that you were on my mind today. I was thinking about you. And she's writes something back like were your ears burning? Were you in the conversation I was in an hour ago? And I've been wanting to talk to you and all of a sudden then everything flows from that. And you know, what I've learned from this, especially since learning from LaRue is if somebody's if somebody's on my mind, if that's, you know, if I'm wondering how somebody is, send them a quick note. I don't know why, but I learned to do that and it has turned out beautifully.

LaRue Eppler  22:15  
You get confirmation every time, don't you? (Yes.) So do I. Yeah, yeah. And good for you that you're acting on that.

Wendi McGowan-Ellis  22:22  
So give us an example of how this would apply in a work environment. I want to come back around to that. You've had an idea. Go from there.

LaRue Eppler  22:35  
Yes. Okay. So you're at work, you've got a problem you need to solve, right? And you've tried every avenue to try to solve it. You've talked to your peers, your friends, your colleagues, whatever, your mentor, your coach, or whatever, and there's no solution. So what you can do is just say, I wonder what the solution is? Go home and go to sleep. And when you wake up in the morning, notice the first thought on your mind. Because your unconscious mind is going to be talking to your intuition, your soul, whatever you want to call that, because there are many names for intuition. And I would be surprised if the answer isn't on your mind the first thing when you wake up.

Wendi McGowan-Ellis  23:17  
Wow!

Marsha Clark  23:17  
So for anyone who knows me this is one of those where I coach people to say you've given one of your team members something to do and they bring it back to you. And they say, well what am I supposed to do about this? Well, instead of me just automatically giving them the answer, I say, well what do you think we ought to do about this? And they say, well I don't know. If I knew I wouldn't come to you. So someone taught me this long time ago, and I made this connection with LaRue's work. I then ask them if you did know, what would you say? Right? So because, and you know what? 99 times out of 100, they have an answer.

LaRue Eppler  23:54  
That is so brilliant, Marsha.

Marsha Clark  23:56  
Because it is up to them, for whatever reason, they're not comfortable telling you what they're really thinking, or they may think it's incomplete, or you'll think it's silly, or it's something you've never done before. And yet if I give them the invitation based on my wondering if you did know, it's a simple question, if you did know what would you say?

Wendi McGowan-Ellis  24:17  
And I love how that question is a validation. It's first validating whatever is going to come out of their mouth, and therefore it allows them to have the space to express whatever it is that might have... and I'm also I'm wondering if, you know, just I wonder if it's not true that they really didn't know until they got that question and then it like came out.

LaRue Eppler  24:49  
It's true. Our mind doesn't know. Our soul does. And so that's the brilliance of the question as it elicits the soul and it's it cuts through the mind. You know, it's like, well, if you did know. it's a brilliant intuitive question, if you did know, and that invites intuitive wisdom to come forth.

Marsha Clark  25:09  
So our brains can say that's not logical, that's not practical, that's not, you know, doable, all of that. And yet when it comes from that deeper place, all things are possible. That's, that's what I love about it. All things are possible.

LaRue Eppler  25:23  
Absolutely.

Wendi McGowan-Ellis  25:24  
Okay, so the fifth of the six distinct ways is what you call the experience of inspiration, the energy of creation. Tell us more about that.

LaRue Eppler  25:35  
Oh man, when you're inspired, have you ever been inspired and did it cause depression like immediately?No, it gives you energy, doesn't it? When we're inspired it's like we can go from zero to 100, right. We're just in filled with energy and it's an energy to act, to create, to do something, to make something happen. And again, to me, it comes from our inner being, you know, our soul. The root word of inspire, we think about inspire is to breathe in life, right?

Marsha Clark  26:09  
Because to expire is to die.

LaRue Eppler  26:10  
So when we're inspired, man, we're fully alive. Lifeforce energy is flowing through our body and we can create things that we could never do without that.

Marsha Clark  26:22  
And I think about the attraction of that. If I am inspired and I can speak in captivating ways, people are like, I want to be on your team. I want to follow you. I want, I want, what is the line from When Harry Met Sally I want what she's having. I want to be a part of that.

LaRue Eppler  26:40  
Yeah, that is you. When I think of Marsha, that's what I think. You are so inspiring and I hear that from people all the time.

Wendi McGowan-Ellis  26:46  
Yes, I agree. I agree. So, LaRue, share your personal story about what compelled you and inspired you to actually write your book.

LaRue Eppler  26:58  
Yes, well, not only, you know, later did it inspire me to write my book, but it got me in my life's purpose. And what had happened is I was in a very dark time, this is in the 80's, I was depressed and you know, been a really bad place, and really needed a makeover for my life. And a friend of mine had been to a workshop the night before and she called me the next day. And she said, LaRue, you've got to go to this. There's another free event next week. This is what you're looking for to change your life. And as I said earlier, truth resonates. And when she said that, I felt something. I felt a joy come alive that I hadn't felt inside myself in years. And I could hardly wait. It was a whole week I had to wait for this event. But I went there and experienced this, this methodology. And I it changed something in me that night, because I volunteered for them to work the process on, right. I left there that night going, that's not only what's going to fix me, it's my life purpose, and I knew it and no one could talk me out of it. (Wow.) And so years later, I ended up writing a book as a result of being on this path.

Marsha Clark  28:09  
And the name of the book is

LaRue Eppler  28:10  
"Your Essential Whisper: Six Distinct Ways to Recognize Trust and Follow Your Intuition With Absolute Certainty".

Marsha Clark  28:18  
Oh, so I also want to say you spoke about that from an inspiring standpoint. But one of the ones I'm assuming we're going to talk about next is the knowing. Yes. You knew you were supposed to go to that a week later. I mean, something in you said "go."

LaRue Eppler  28:36  
I did. Couldn't shake it. It's all I could think about. I was, it was not couldn't shake a horrible feeling was I couldn't shake didn't want to shake a wonderful feeling away. But it was like, everyday, it's all I thought about. I could feel my life was about to change finally. Finally, after years of depression. (wow) And that was my knowing. And, and then when I left her that night, I also had a knowing like I'm going to do what that woman does. I knew it. I had no money. I convinced her to train me with no money. And I said, I'll pay you after I graduate. And I did and I opened an office right away and paid her back. I don't know how in the world, but it was meant to be is all I can say. (Exactly.) That's right. She trained me, you know, on a loan, so to speak.

Wendi McGowan-Ellis  29:21  
Wow. Wow. Well, a quote from your book is, "When the energy of inspiration arrives, you must act on it. Decide right now to choose inspiration over fear and doubt." You want to expound on that?

LaRue Eppler  29:36  
Yeah. Well, you know, once we've acted on inspiration a few times and had some good experiences from it, it catalogs it in our brain is that's a really, really good thing to do. And in the very beginning, if we're not used to doing that, we need to make a choice that we're going to act on this stuff, right? Because that energy is given to you for a reason. Right? And if we don't act on it, we can miss an opportunity. We can miss our path and our purpose. I mean, what if I hadn't gone to that event that night?

Marsha Clark  30:07  
Yeah, because you were too depressed or it was too dark or I just wasn't feeling it.  

LaRue Eppler  30:11  
Exactly. Or like, nothing ever turns out good for me so why should I bother? I know, I got excited. But why go?

Marsha Clark  30:18  
Yeah. And I want to say too, when I think back at what this story is prompting me to think about is when I first started The Power of Self Program, everybody was saying, I felt like I was the little puppy dog. Really good idea. And it would be like, then pat me on my head and say, and I almost heard the muttering as they walked by good luck with that, you know, because how are you going to monetize it? Nobody's gonna buy that. And we were ahead of our time. But it was a knowing that knew that. And there was a bit of, I guess, so check me on this, the snapshot click because I'd been a woman growing up in a very male dominated and I knew I would have loved to have somebody play a role like I was about to play in other women's lives. I had been to a program where once again, outside of my work force, this is one of our earlier, Cape Cod Coup episodes, way back in the earlier days of our podcasts, where the women once again, our voices got quieted, and we were pushed to the side and all of that. And then you know, this idea of I have an opportunity to start my own company, what do I want to do, and all of those things that had happened over the years, came into focus in ways that they'd never been before.

LaRue Eppler  30:18  
It's a perfect example of a snapshot click and knowing. And something I haven't said already, is that these six ways that we're talking about today, sometimes you can have all of them in the same event.

Wendi McGowan-Ellis  31:23  
I was going to ask if you could have multiples.

LaRue Eppler  31:25  
Absolutely. Our intuition doesn't work like our logical mind where it's this or this or white or black.

Marsha Clark  31:58  
You're in single focus. (Right.)

LaRue Eppler  32:00  
Yeah, you can have them all. I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't have all of them somehow involved.

Marsha Clark  32:05  
I wouldn't be at all surprised either. There was a nudge to make it happen even when people we're saying that, why? Why would I spend money on that? Why would I prioritize that? Why would I...

LaRue Eppler  32:16  
But you knew that.  

Marsha Clark  32:17  
I knew, and there was something nudging me inside and things came clear in this snapshot focus.

LaRue Eppler  32:24  
Women appreciate your suffering so you could come and help them later. I mean, we do, they do appreciate you.

Marsha Clark  32:29  
I know. I know. And I love and appreciate them.

Wendi McGowan-Ellis  32:33  
Trailblazing is tough. Yeah, it's tough. So the sixth distinct experience is known as no time or altered time and space in the here and now. What's involved in that?

LaRue Eppler  32:47  
Well, if you ever had a time, Wendi, when you're so engrossed in something, or you're in a conversation, or you're doing a task or whatever, and you look up and hours have gone by. And you go, wow, where did the time go? You've just had an experience of being so fully present that time has disappeared. Because time is created by the mind. Yes, right? You've so associated with your inner being, if you will, and gotten so out of the mind, or that you're using your mind to do whatever talk or write or whatever. But you're so associated with your inner being that time collapses. And, and in and when time collapses, and you're so present, it's impossible not to hear and recognize your intuition when you're that present. Because you don't have the busy mind trying to talk you out of it. You're just there.

Marsha Clark  33:42  
And you're not even trying to find words that will convince others because you don't care about the others, right? I'm so immersed in having my own experience that that's not, this is getting me to that place where I can know what I know.

LaRue Eppler  33:56  
That's right.

Wendi McGowan-Ellis  33:57  
So if you're in this place of you know what you know, my question is, my next question is, how do you convince others of that? Like say you're in this situation in a work environment and you've had the big enlightening "aha moment" but the rest of the team is over here bumbling around in the weeds. How do you translate that, communicate that, pull them along?

Marsha Clark  34:25  
To be able to bring others with you with whatever you know?

Wendi McGowan-Ellis  34:28  
Yes. Yes, that's my question.

LaRue Eppler  34:31  
Well, yeah, that's a little trickier when you're involving others, right? Because if it's just you and your own life and okay, fine, right. That's easy. But when there are other people, it's a very good question, Wendi. First of all, you're you don't want to try to convince them because that's a push energy, force energy and they're going to push back, right. So what I like to do is I like to again, go intuitive and ask for guidance in how to do this. How do I proceed with this? Maybe You know, if I can, if it's not an immediate thing that needs action, again, I can sleep on it, I can take my time, what would be the approach? Is there something I can do? And usually, it will come. Well, I don't know about usually. But oftentimes, there will be a question that you can start to engage. People like you, a good example earlier with people, you'd ask them a question if you did know, or whatever. But a question because then they've got the floor. Right? They've got the power to answer that question. And it gets them to start thinking, because a lot of times, we just need to get them on the same page. And what's happened is they're on an old paradigm page. (Exactly.) And so with questions, you're not telling them, you're asking them, and you can help them start to see if they're willing.

Marsha Clark  35:48  
Well, remember how I talk about powerful questions start with what now?  So this is a little bit in that what would that look like? How would that work? How could we make that happen? What would be required? Am I ? (Yep. Perfect. Perfect.) What and how questions are, I think, helpful (excuse me) to help us in that, you know, the sixth one. I don't know. I just think we I love the idea of questions. And. And yet, I'm having a split screen experience here. And let me just explain myself. So if I can't give you all the data and all that kind of stuff so I'm going to ask questions, that's a powerful use of questioning. If I have a point to make, and I make it as a declarative statement, that's when others either limit, squash, defend, you know, it becomes who do you think you are? And why do you think that would work? And all of the who, why questions come in, which are often more derogatory, but the how and what keeps it the possibilities open. I guess that's where as I process, that's where I kind of want to go. It's what and how keeps the possibilities open. We get to explore further, rather than defending or minimizing or any of that.

LaRue Eppler  36:03  
Yeah, and sometimes, Wendi. And that's great. Marsha, I've seen that when you take that approach, the original idea that you had a knowing about sometimes when you get group involvement, that idea can expand even greater or even different. Yeah, but you birthed an idea so that you could birth the conversation to get the bigger idea.

Wendi McGowan-Ellis  37:31  
Yeah. So yeah. Well, I know that two of these distinct ways you wanted to go a little bit further on, LaRue,  the urge and knowing. So let's shift to talk more about those.

LaRue Eppler  37:42  
I kind of went a little deeper on the urge a little earlier. So why don't we go to, but just as a reminder, you know, urge we talked about is that nudge, that tug, that magnetic pull or repulsion that says don't do this or do that. Right. And the knowing, okay, let's go to that one. I love knowing because knowing is a resonance of truth where you just know something. You don't know how you know. And we're not talking about that, I know mine, like I know, I know. Don't tell me. Not that. I know nobody heard that. Right. Or Yeah, right. It's, it's a deeper thing than that. And there's some, there's a presence to it. And it doesn't come from up here. It comes from below the neck, right in the body. It's a feeling. And you can't explain it. You don't know how. I'll give you a good example. So like, we're here in Texas, right? And you remember the ice storm in 2021 around Valentine's Day, February. We will never forget it, will we? Six weeks before that I was awakened by a force at about three or four o'clock in the morning and my body just propelled out of bed. And I saw on a mental screen an image of a camping stove with yellow writing. Now I don't camp, ladies. I shouldn't even know what a camping stove is. And, and I had this other flash that simultaneous flash of being in a dark cold house, my home and it was freezing inside. And I was propelled to order a camping stove and it's like three or four o'clock in the morning and I'm going my logical brain is going I am sleepy. This is ridiculous. I'll order it in the morning. I'm not going to order at all and I start to crawl back into bed and I felt this feeling of regret. Like you're going to regret this. You're gonna regret this. So I stumbled to my office, Googled, you know and up came the first thing that came up was a black camping stove with yellow letters. I kid you not it looked exactly like (what was in your vision) and I just did add to cart. Six weeks later, I had no power for three days. It was near freezing temperatures in my house. I could heat water in tea and soup and the week before I intuitively made a pot of soup and froze into individual bags.

Wendi McGowan-Ellis  40:04  
Oh my goodness.

LaRue Eppler  40:05  
That's how I ate and how I stayed warm. I would drink my tea or my, you know, my soup and get under the cover and I would perspire. I never was afraid of freezing. Because I knew I was liquidated. I was warm. I didn't have to drink ice cold water, freezing water. I think it saved me. And that was a knowing. I remember thinking. We're in Texas. The power grid's not going down.

Wendi McGowan-Ellis  40:32  
And it's definitely not gonna get that cold. Yeah, it's not gonna get that cold.

LaRue Eppler  40:37  
But some aspects. Six weeks, it wasn't December 31 of 2020 I ordered that thing. (Wow.) Was on the other day and looked ahead of time.

Marsha Clark  40:47  
You know, and I gosh, I mean, I did just think about that. Because after that polar vortex, as we called it, or the, you know, there was a waiting list for generators because now everybody wanted generators or camping stoves or whatever it might have been after the fact. But the fact that you knew so clearly that far in advance and acted on your knowing.

LaRue Eppler  41:07  
I tell you what, I could not not act on it because like I said, I started to crawl back in bed. I was tired, right? It was a ridiculous thought, but the feeling of regret that came over me like you're gonna regret this. This is going to be one of the biggest regrets of your life.

Marsha Clark  41:22  
Now and Wendi, because you've seen LaRue in action (Oh, yes.) I just want to say to our listeners and viewers, you may be going oh that stuff is woo woo. So I don't know what she's talking about. Or you might be saying, well, I kind of get that. Or you might be going oh my gosh, you know my life. Even the most skeptical women that have come through the program, because I don't include you in our coed the coed programs that I did because I know, for women, this takes on a whole other importance and sort of thing. So by the end of the hour and a half, two hours that we give LaRue in class, everybody's sold on it because she brings and demonstrates. There's some things she can do that we'll have to, pretty mind blowing. It is mind blowing. And you can't deny it when you've seen it firsthand. Or when you've been the one that says I'm going to volunteer because I can show her that I can break you know this. And they never do, right. I mean, so for eight years, nine years, ten years, whatever it is, I've never broken.

LaRue Eppler  42:26  
It's never been broken, all over the world where I've done it.

Marsha Clark  42:29  
Okay, I give, you know, I mean, yeah, there must be something to this. And so I just want to offer that to our listeners that says if you're having a bit of skepticism about any of this, or it's a little too woo woo, or out there, or any of that kind of stuff. And for some of our listeners I also offer this. Remember the quote from Wayne Dyer that and this is one of my favorites, too, it's that "We speak to God in prayer. God speaks to us through intuition." And when I begin to put that in not a wayward, out there, skepticism kind of way, if your faith is strong and you think this is too alternative to all of that, maybe if you put it in the framework of we speak to God through prayer and God speaks to us through intuition it might give you, it might invite you to explore the possibility.

Wendi McGowan-Ellis  43:23  
And notice.

LaRue Eppler  43:24  
And notice.

Marsha Clark  43:25  
And notice. Exactly.

Wendi McGowan-Ellis  43:27  
So talk to us, LaRue, as we're starting to wrap up here about the resonance of truth.

LaRue Eppler  43:34  
Well, you've had experiences in your life where you heard something, and it felt right. And true. See, truth resonates. Right? It just it just does. You just know it's true. A lie you can also feel. It just feels off. It just, something just feels off. And we must pay attention to those things, particularly in the day and age that we're living in right now. Right? But truth resonates, and you can always trust truth.

Marsha Clark  44:09  
And I think about it from a centeredness and groundedness place. If I'm centered and grounded, I can receive something and really more clearly see whether it resonates with me or doesn't resonate with me.

LaRue Eppler  44:23  
Oh, I love that you said that. Because you know, we live in a busy world and busy society. And it's so easy to just move on, right? Instead of taking a breath, taking a moment to tune in, to center, or take three minutes to just sit in a chair and just breathe. Yeah, right. Yeah. And that's a good way to access it. Yeah, yeah.

Marsha Clark  44:43  
But you've got to quiet yourself to the point this is the slow down to speed up. You have to quiet yourself so you can hear it, feel it, sense it, notice it in a way that you can't if you're just always on the go, go go.

LaRue Eppler  44:55  
That's right.

Wendi McGowan-Ellis  44:55  
Yeah. So I think our listeners and our viewers would love to experience a LaRue exercise. So will you walk us through one of the your intuitive exercises as we wrap up?

LaRue Eppler  45:08  
I'll walk you through knowing. Okay because we've all had it, that's a common one, you know, we all have. So think of a time where you, you can even close your eyes with this, if you want to, think of a time when you knew something. And it might be a memory or an experience you had. You knew something, but you didn't know how you know or how you knew. (Okay.) All right, got that? And feel what that felt like in your body, to know that. Where did you feel it? Did it come from your head? Did it come from outside your body? Did it come inside your body? Like? What did it feel like? Where did you feel it? Got it? Right? And is that different from an intellectual knowing? (Oh, yes.) Did it come from a different location? (Yeah.) Do you make the distinction? Right. So again, this is one of those getting centered feeling exercise where you can tune in to by just reliving a time where you experienced a knowing or you had an urge and you kind of review it and think like where did where did you feel it? How did you feel it? And then you get you start to go, wow, this is really valid. This is really real because you've already lived these, all of these. Right. All of them.

Marsha Clark  46:32  
Yeah. You know, I'm sitting here thinking about one, the book, "The Body Keeps the Score" because that's one that where it's not just listening to our knowing, our body is telling us something so what the connection I make, LaRue, is the how is the intuitive knowing different than the intellectual knowing? What are you feeling differently? Here, there's this logical pride of I can I have three supporting bullet points right for what I think. (Exactly.) I've done my research, but the warmth and the certainty with which I hold myself when it comes from that intuitive place, it's not a prideful knowing or a logical knowing or a rational knowing. But the warmth goes throughout the body. So if I begin to understand what happens in my body when I'm having an intuitive moment, that can enable me to connect with that and utilize that moment, that feeling, that intuition, that experience, in a more productive way.

LaRue Eppler  47:39  
That is perfect. And thank you for saying the word warmth. Because when we are in our knowing, and we're experiencing our intuition, there is a warmth that is present, a peaceful warmth inside.

Marsha Clark  47:53  
Well, and what I was taught, even when we started doing women's programs, is that if you are freezing to death, and we always had a bucket of blankets, right, (I remember the blankets) and how many people would go get it. It could be like it is today 100 degrees outside. And it wasn't just that the air conditioner was running, you know, on a low temperature. And there would be women in there that were both fanning themselves, right, because it was warm and there would be people that would literally be in the fetal position covered up with a blanket. And I was told that means there's something happening for you. When you have that kind of coldness, lean into it, take care of yourself. I mean, you know, that kind of thing. But just notice that and so I just, once again, I always learn, I just make that connection.

LaRue Eppler  48:43  
That's beautiful.

Wendi McGowan-Ellis  48:44  
Wow.

LaRue Eppler  48:45  
Snapshot click!

Wendi McGowan-Ellis  48:49  
Okay, so I want to just kind of start wrapping up here. I love, LaRue, that you've been talking about the polarity of both intuition and logic and how we need to work with both of those to be successful leaders. So as we're wrapping up, give us some final thoughts about both holding these polarity ideas at the same time.

LaRue Eppler  49:13  
We've been conditioned through education to be more, you know, analytical, right and to ignore our intuition, because again, there's no proof, right? But you think about it, we have a right brain and left brain, we have an analytical and a creative brain. And as far as I know, they're pretty equal in size. (Yep.) Why would our Creator give us this beautiful creative brain and we're not supposed to use it. (Right.) You know, imagination is the key to intuition. And so I believe that we need to use yes, if you've got an important decision to make, there's something coming up, gather the facts, get the data, use your left brain, and then run it by your intuition.

Marsha Clark  49:57  
I love that. Let them review it and see how it settles.

LaRue Eppler  50:01  
See how it settles and you might, you know, come up with a better idea or whatever. But you use both, right? Not either or.

Marsha Clark  50:08  
Well, I'll tell you this story that this reminds me of and Gary .... if you're listening, this is a story for you. When I first went to work for engineering, left brain dominant, all of that, right, and I used to bring him ideas. And he would say, well, where's the evidence? Where's the data to support your idea? And this was back in the days before everything was data driven, evidence based, in decision making. And again, I agree with you, there's, we got to have some of that. But he would say you have to triangulate the data. I'm like, what the heck? You need to bring me three sources that corroborate why you're doing what you're doing, you know, kind of thing. Well, and I say this in all my classes, we know we can go find whatever data we need to support. And so, what I learned is, I had these ideas, they were good ideas, because we implemented lots of them and they got the results I intuited they would because we had no evidence that they would yet I knew, right? And so I'd go find the data to support it. And that's another variation. And it may be, I own this part, it may be a little bit of the manipulation of the balancing logic and intuition. And yet, I somehow always found enough data to corroborate or support my intuition. So it legitimized it in every way for those who needed that.

LaRue Eppler  51:30  
It's actually very smart of you to do that.

Wendi McGowan-Ellis  51:32  
Exactly. Yeah. Because you can't just say, I've got a feeling that this is what we need to do. That really doesn't fly in corporate America.

LaRue Eppler  51:42  
We're pretty sure it'll work.

Wendi McGowan-Ellis  51:43  
Exactly. I can hear that. That's going to be a new one for Scott. You need to triangulate the data. It'll be a new word in our house. Well, LaRue, thank you so much for coming on today and sharing with us how we need to tap into our intuition more.

LaRue Eppler  52:03  
Thanks to both of you for having me. It's been a fun conversation.

Marsha Clark  52:07  
Yeah.

Wendi McGowan-Ellis  52:08  
Your book, again, title is

LaRue Eppler  52:10  
"Your Essential Whisper".

Marsha Clark  52:13  
Your Essential Whisper. Even that just inspires.

Wendi McGowan-Ellis  52:14  
I love that, I love that. So any parting words of wisdom or main points as we wrap up here?

LaRue Eppler  52:21  
I have a statement from Mary Kay Ash, the founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics,

Wendi McGowan-Ellis  52:27  
Well, we're here in Dallas. So we love Mary Kay Ash.

LaRue Eppler  52:30  
Yeah, exactly because she's from here. Yeah. She says "I can't explain it analytically, but when the feeling is deep inside me, I know the right thing to do. I've talked about this sense with many women who say that, although they can't explain it either, they've learned to trust it. Over the course of my career, I have worked with thousands and thousands of women. An objective observer would have predicted failure for a number of those who ended up succeeding. And relying on their instincts they saw a path where no path had been charted and they had the faith to take it. Their stories reaffirm my belief in women's intuition that has helped me so much."

Wendi McGowan-Ellis  53:11  
Wow.

Marsha Clark  53:12  
I love it, I really do. And, you know, when you can push ahead in the face of all the logical odds that are out there and when you have that knowing, when you feel that urge, when it's in your mind's eye for whatever reason it is in and how many ways and things have come together to create that, I mean, that's intuition at its finest. And I would, my parting words on this content is, how many times have you said to yourself, I wish I'd trusted my gut. I wish I'd trusted my intuition. I wish I would have trusted my instincts. And when I hear gut instincts and intuition, in my mind, those all kind of get blurred and are, you know, synonymous. And the invitation here is to say, let's have no regrets (Right.) and let's do trust it. And hopefully, these are some ways where you can make it a bit more accessible (Exactly) and recognize it for what it is and then act accordingly.

LaRue Eppler  54:17  
And like it's validated now. We just validated intuition for you. You can do it.

Wendi McGowan-Ellis  54:21  
Right. Well again, thank you both for being here today. Listeners, viewers, you got a treat with Ms. LaRue Eppler today. So thank you for joining us. And please download, subscribe and share this podcast with your network of friends. And please visit Marsha's website at marshaclarkandassociates.com for all the tools. Chapter seven is where LaRue is the star. And finally, yes, check out her book and magnets on the website.

Marsha Clark  54:56  
We have all of that, yes. Listeners, viewers, thank you for joining us today. You know, we cover a lot of different topics on here and in my mind at least, right, that they're all connected to us being powerful women and trusting our intuition to me is a part of believing in what we're hearing and knowing and sensing and feeling, being, holding on to that power. Intuition is a power. Hold on to it. Don't diminish or denounce or, you know, criticize it away, judge it away. It is a source of power for us and let's recognize that. And, as always, I leave our listeners and viewers with here's to women supporting women!

Resource Link: 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CU_1faRePnurKcmAb77ZU63H_xzMegRZumegXAg5BX0/edit?usp=sharing