The Chapter I Never Planned + Magic Unfolding

0:00Hello, my friends, and welcome back to Good Skin Circle. I am your host, Ageless Ashley, and today's episode is about something that we all go through at some point, those seasons where life feels really heavy, confusing, or like everything you thought was certain suddenly starts shifting and like the ground starts shifting beneath you. I have come to realize that some of the darkest moments in our lives are often the very things clearing the path for the brightest ones to show up. The things that challenge us the most can end up shaping the next chapter in ways that we could have never planned for ourselves. Before we dive in, a quick update. My one day is low-flowing school to workshop just launched for Sunday, June 14th, and we're headed to Orange County, California with very limited seats and a VIP option available.

1:03These intimate classes tend to fill up quickly because I like to keep the class sizes small. May and Los Angeles is already sold out, so if you've been wanting to learn my advanced facial massage techniques, hands-on, and all of the anatomy behind it, you can grab us a spot through the link and show notes. All right, so let's get into it. One of the most powerful skills you can develop as an institution, as a provider, as an entrepreneur, and honestly, just as a human being is learning how to trust your intuition. I know you all hear me talk about this a lot, but I'm not talking about the woo-woo intuition. I'm talking about the quiet inner signal, the physical signal that tells you this partnership isn't right. This job doesn't feel right, this collaboration doesn't feel right. Your body knows before your brain does, and the biggest mistakes I've made in my career

2:08have almost always happened when I ignored those gut feelings. I remember being offered a partnership a few years ago that looked really incredible on paper. It was good money and great exposure. It was a brand that everyone recognized, and logically it made total sense for me to join forces with this brand. But the entire time I was in the conversations and in contract negotiations, my body felt off. And it really wasn't dramatic. It wasn't a dramatic feeling at that time for me. I don't think I was very in tune with my intuition at the time. It was just a quiet sense of unease, and I kept trying to talk myself out of it. You know when your brain is saying this would be so stupid to pass up, and I should just do this, but your gut keeps whispering something else.

3:10That's the moment intuition lives in. And that gut check applies to literally everything, not just brand partnerships. It applies to jobs, business partnerships, hiring decisions, leasing agreements, locations, romantic partnerships, opportunities that look amazing on paper. But if something doesn't feel right, even if you can't logically explain why, please, I'm begging you to listen, because intuition is usually pattern recognition happening faster than your conscious mind can process. Something I've noticed looking back at my life is that every major turning point started with something deeply uncomfortable, sometimes painful, sometimes confusing, sometimes something that really felt like rejection or loss at the time, but almost every single time in the common denominator between all of these times are that these moments cleared the

4:12path for something better to emerge and come into play in my life. In the past few years, I have had some incredibly hard experiences, big losses, front-chips ending, saying goodbye to places I love, most recently, a near-death experience and being thrown to the pavement on my morning walk after being hit by a car. That's where I genuinely wondered what direction I was supposed to go next. And if I'm being honest, there were moments where it felt like the universe or God was completely against me. But hindsight has a way of revealing something really powerful to us if we can just look back. None of those experiences were actually working against me. They were redirecting me and serving as the contrast they needed to open my eyes up to what's next. And what I've realized is that the darker seasons often give you the crystal clear certainty

5:15that you could not access before because when everything feels stable and comfortable, you stay inside of your existing vision and your limited beliefs. But when things shake up your world that suddenly start asking yourself and those around you different questions, what do I actually want? What do I not want anymore? What am I ready to build next? And I'll be honest about something about myself. I can be a little bit rigid. I like structure and plans. I like knowing where things are going, but the past two years have really forced me to soften in ways that I didn't expect. To surrender, to stop gripping so tightly to what I thought the future should look like. A big part of that was my husband and I making the decision to move to Phoenix. We moved here with really clear intentions to be close to family and to start a family of our own. Both of those things have been a lot more complex and emotional than I ever imagined.

6:17Infertility is one of those things that quietly humbles you. You realize very quickly that some of the most meaningful things in life are completely outside of your control. And at the same time, I've been here watching my grandmother, who is 97 years old, go in and out of the hospital and struggle with her health and being close enough to show up for her during this chapter of her life has been incredibly meaningful, but it's also been really heavy. Life has a way of putting you right in the middle of these deeply human experiences that you cannot plan for and you cannot schedule and you definitely can't control. And when those things happen, you realize that the version of life you had mapped out in your pretty little head might not be the version that's actually meant to unfold for you. That might not be why you're here. And it often opens your eyes up to a much bigger picture, which is what has been happening

7:20to me. And when life changes in those ways, when things don't go according to your plan, when you're sitting in hospital rooms and navigating things that you never expected to face, it forces you to create new, more fulfilling, more dimensional objectives in life and goals that are bigger than business and goals that are rooted in your deepest purpose and goals that create legacy. You start to shift on your path into the kind of life that you actually want to build. And strangely enough, those moments of uncertainty can become the clearest mirrors you'll ever look into because they strip away the noise, they strip away the distractions, they strip away the things that were never truly aligned in the first place. And what's left is the next chapter that's quietly waiting for you and waiting for you to just see it, just acknowledge it.

8:24Over the past year, through a lot of reflection and prayer and long walks and heart conversations and a few spiritual wake-up calls I didn't see coming, something has become really clear to me. There is a next evolution of what I meant to build for all of us, something bigger than a workshop, something bigger than a retreat, bigger than education only. And while I'm not quite ready to reveal everything, yeah, I will say this, it feels like the most aligned thing that I have ever created, something really beautiful is coming for this community. And if you've been following long for a while, you're going to understand exactly why this feels like the next step. I have a few tips for you, based on my recent reflections and things that may just be your reminder for some of you to ponder on and reflect on. And my tip number one is pay attention to your body signals, your physical body signals.

9:28One of the clearest places intuition shows up is in the body. You might feel it as a tight stomach or a heaviness in your chest or in your throat or a sense of contraction or unease somewhere in the body or the opposite. You might feel excitement, lightness, curiosity, a feeling of expansion. Those are the feelings that I tried to follow. And these feelings are random. It's actually your nervous system responding to information faster than your brain can articulate it. There is a fascinating area of science around this called the gut brain axis. And your gut contains over 100 million neurons and communicates directly with the brain through the vagus nerve. We're all familiar with the vagus nerve as a statisticians, but if you're not, that's why people call the gut the second brain. Research shows that our body can detect subtle patterns and inconsistencies before our

10:31conscious mind has time to process them. So that physical signal that got feeling is your nervous system saying, pay attention. Hey, I'm over here, pay attention to me when I feel expansion and the excitement and that sense of curiosity, I know that I'm moving in the right direction, like I said. And when my body contracts, when it tightens, when it feels uneasy, when I feel just a little bit off about something, I try to give myself time and take that seriously. But number two is notice where you're forcing things. Another sign, something isn't aligned is when you constantly feel like you're pushing a boulder uphill. If something requires endless convincing, over explaining, or constantly trying to make it work, that is often a signal for you to pause. And there's actually a psychological research on this called cognitive strain when something is misaligned with your values or instincts, your brain burns more energy trying to rationalize

11:36it. The line opportunities tend to feel different. That doesn't mean that they are always effortless, oftentimes they are not effortless, but there is a natural flow about them. Conversations just move forward with ease, doors open up, things unfold with a surprising amount of ease and even when you're still working hard and you're getting gritty, you're not fighting the current the entire way. Tip number three is time refills everything. One of the most underrated tools for intuition is simply giving things time. When we're in a rush to make a decision, we tend to rely heavily on logic, pressure, emotional highs or lows or outside opinions sometimes. And there's a concept in neuroscience called diffuse thinking and it's when your brain continues processing information in the background while you're doing something else. So that's why our best insights often come when we're on a long walk or when we're in

12:40the shower or when we're driving or for me when I'm on an airplane and I'm 3,000 miles up in the sky, your brain is quietly connecting patterns and information without forcing it. So if you're unsure about something, if you're not sure about what decision to make or which direction to go, just step back, give yourself a minute or two, give yourself some time a day, a week, a month if you need to, I mean sometimes big decisions just take time and there's nothing wrong with that. Let time do some of the work for you. Youth almost always reveals itself with a little bit of distance. So for me, living in Phoenix has been a huge source of getting back to my intuition and giving myself more time than I ever have in my adult life to figure out what I really want. But you don't have to make a big move like I did to access this. Just make sure that you are carving out real time and space for yourself on a regular

13:40basis. What number four is trust the quiet voice, the really, really quiet one, the one that's whispering, learning to trust that voice inside of you is so, so essential. The loudest voices in your life will almost always be other people's opinions, friends, colleagues, social media, industry noise, but intuition rarely shouts. It's usually super quiet, calm, steady, and the more you practice listening to that voice instead of overriding it or second-guessing it, the stronger it becomes. Because intuition is like a muscle. The more you trusted, the bigger it gets. If you're in a season where things feel uncertain, if doors have closed, if plans have shifted, if things feel darker than you expected or confusing, or if you feel a sense of hopelessness, just know that sometimes those moments are the exact ones shaping the next chapter of

14:40your life, the things that challenge us the most often become the fuel for the most truly meaningful things we build. And I can tell you from personal experience, sometimes the path forward becomes clear only after everything you thought you wanted, falls away and crumbles to the ground. Something new is coming and I can't wait to share it with you. We'll chat soon. Thank you so much for being here with me today. If this episode spoke to you, it would mean so much if you left a quick review on Apple podcasts or tap the stars on Spotify. It helps more of our people find this show and join our community. Share this episode with someone who needs to hear it and tag me on Instagram at Ageless Ashley or at GoodsConsourable so I can see what landed for you. Take care of yourself. Keep choosing alignment. I love you and I'll see you on the next episode.