The Intuitive Leader: Arriving Home to Oneself

We need intuitive leaders in our world now more than ever, but what does it truly mean to be an intuitive leader? And how do leaders step out on their path in a way that is nourishing and aligned with what this world needs?

This is the first in a series of articles that I will be writing about what it means to be an intuitive leader and how to begin stepping into your limitless leadership potential. This specific article highlights the path of coming home to yourself, and the articles to come will be more focused on what this means for your leadership.

Who is the intuitive leader?

In a Medium article I wrote in December 2021, I define an intuitive leader as “someone in a position of power or influence who tends to rely on more than facts and figures to make decisions.” While traditional data is important in decision making, intuitive leaders go a step further to factor in unseen information when making decisions, such as sourcing their inner knowing and/or interpreting messages from spiritual connections.

And in a world where we have effectively severed much of our connection to the unseen for various reasons, we find ourselves in a place where intuitive leaders must step fully onto their spiritual paths to guide us all toward something better than we are seeing now.

This article provides guidance for intuitive leaders to begin to step out on that path in service of bringing more balance, joy, and hope to our world — and just in time.

What does it mean to arrive home to oneself?

As a shaman, spiritual guide, and leadership expert, I have a very specific idea of what it means to arrive home to oneself. The best way to illustrate this is by first understanding what it means to be separate from our true self.

I know this well because just a couple of years ago, I was suffering from this notion of separateness from self. (I even published a book about it and the process by which I began to address it and remember who I truly am.) I was in a corporate job that felt quite soul-sucking at times, not because of the people or the work itself, but simply because I was off-path. I was doing work that felt meaningful for the most part, but I wasn’t doing all that I knew on a soul level that I was meant to be doing. In my home and personal life, I engaged in relationships where I was not allowing myself to be fully seen or prioritizing my needs, even and especially in my marriage. I was depressed and anxious, and although I experienced a sense of ease and alignment at times in my life, my resting state was one defined by my suffering.

This separateness from self is incredibly common in our world today, especially amongst those of us who are deeply intuitive or spiritually connected. Those of us who are sensing that something is deeply wrong with our world are feeling pulled toward getting our lives into greater alignment. In shamanism, we call this being in right relationship with oneself.

When I describe the self, I mean the higher self, which I define in another article I wrote about trauma and the higher self. Some call it our soul, our intuition, or our essence. It all means the same thing: it is essentially the divinity that resides within each of us. It’s what is left when our humanness is stripped away completely.

The state of our world and the things that we have collectively agreed to place value upon (such as money, time, and status) have gotten us to a place where this separateness from self has become so commonplace that when we encounter someone who gives convention the proverbial middle finger and follows their intuition’s call, we see them as exhibiting superhuman bravery or even recklessness.

The spiritual reality could not be further from the truth. These are the people who are reshaping our world in a way that we deeply need. These are the ones who are reclaiming our true humanity, the way that we were meant to experience our humanness in this realm. These spiritual nonconformists are our hope for a more generative and holistic world.

So you think you are an intuitive leader. Now what?

The first and perhaps the most critical step of your intuitive leadership journey is to begin connecting with your intuitive or spiritual gifts. Intuitive messages are quite literally always flowing to you; what is your specific way of interpreting them?

One simple way to think about this is to consider your five senses, which is a very common way for intuitive information to flow to us. Do you see images in your mind’s eye or even see signs in the physical world that provide you with information about how to proceed with regards to a decision? Do you hear guidance in your mind or perhaps hear noises or songs that give you confirmation that you are seeking? Do you feel emotions or physical sensations that you find difficult to explain but provide you with clarity? (Many intuitive leaders are also empaths or highly sensitive people that can sense the mood of a room or the emotions of others.) Many receive intuitive information by an inexplicable knowing. These are people who cannot explain why a specific path is the right way to go, but they trust it and often turn out to be right.

When you take a moment to reflect on how you are receiving intuitive information, chances are that one or more of these methods are going to resonate with you. Pay attention to that. It is a beacon from your higher self urging you to arrive home to yourself and to begin to trust your inner knowing.

Cultivating and strengthening your intuitive gifts takes repetition, and it is important, especially in these early moments of awareness and discovery, to practice trusting your interpretation of your intuitive senses and acting on them with consistency. It also helps to enlist the support of a spiritual guide and coach to build your confidence around your intuitive gifts and receive guidance while walking your path.

The importance of shadow work

The path to becoming an enlightened, conscious leader is beautiful and nourishing, but that is only possible if we are willing to come face-to-face with our shadows. When I think of my own shadows, I think of anything that has caused fear, anxiety, or difficult feelings (such as shame or self-loathing) within myself.

I have grappled with shadows associated with my taboo personas, a term that my good friend and fellow spiritual baddie Josette LeBlanc introduced me to after having completed work with Carolyn Elliott (author of Existential Kink). These are basically all of the parts of myself that I am afraid to show others for fear of social rejection.

I have also reckoned with other parts of myself that feel difficult to navigate, such as my internalized anger and rage, self-hatred, and impatience. These shadows have taken years and, in many cases, lifetimes to come to be, so reckoning with them has been an exercise in deep empathy for myself and my behaviors and patterns. After I reckon with and experience healing around my shadows, I get to make choices about how to engage with them going forward rather than allowing them to subconsciously drive my actions. This awareness allows me to expand into the version of myself that I believe I am meant to be in this life.

Shadow work can be a deeply challenging process to navigate alone, and people who choose this path should consider not only enlisting the support of a spiritual guide but also someone to support their mental health along the way, such as a therapist well-versed in all things existential such as my dear friend and colleague Kristine Guevara.

Integration: Bringing it all together

Truly arriving home to oneself requires a thoughtful focus on integrating the healing. Integration can look different for everyone. My process of integration has been a mix of seeking greater alignment in my work and relationships as well as seeking energetic healing from practitioners such as Josette LeBlanc and spiritual guru Meesa Pedrozo.

When I am seeking alignment in my life, I make it a practice to track my energy closely. What activities bring me more energy? When do I feel as though my energy is lacking or depleted? Who lights me up and who drains me? Where in my life do I find more or less ease? Don’t overthink it; just notice. Notice where you are drawn and where you are not.

Rather than cutting anyone or anything off completely and abruptly, begin to ask yourself: What is it about this [activity, person, task, etc.] that brings me energy or takes from my energy? Get more and more granular and keep a journal of it all.

For those things or people that seem to deplete your energy, begin to ask yourself questions like:

• What is my responsibility here? How am I enabling this to happen?
• Where are I silencing my truth? Where am I keeping myself small?
• What incremental changes can I make so that I can begin to stand more fully in my divine truth? In other words: How can I begin to make this practice of arriving home to myself more actionable and allow my true self to be seen by those around me?
• How can I begin to live my spiritual truth out loud, come what may?

An interesting thing begins to happen when we focus on expanding our awareness in this way. There is neuroscience research that shows us that simply becoming more aware of these sorts of behavior changes and the ways in which we hope to show up differently in our lives automatically begins to cause shifts in the ways we show up.

And, of course, the next step would be to begin to make choices that honor your spiritual truth and who you are meant to be in this life. I personally made a lot of changes in my life all at once in order to bring things into greater alignment. I quit my cushy corporate role and let go of relationships where I did not feel as though I could show up fully, including my marriage. But this is not everyone’s path; it simply illustrates the shifts I needed to make in my life to get into right relationship with myself.

Starting out on your path back home to yourself is one of the toughest things you will ever do. It requires a level of courage and honesty with yourself and your circumstances that can be difficult to navigate at times, especially in our incredibly depleted state as a human collective. But as someone who has been walking this path for some time, I will tell you this: I don’t regret it for a moment. My life is richer and I experience joy, love, and presence much more deeply than ever before. It is not a journey for the faint of heart; and yet the rewards outweigh the costs a hundred times over.

If you are ready to arrive home to yourself in service of becoming the intuitive leader you are meant to be, let’s explore what it could look like to walk this path together.