Listen to Your Body for Clarity When Making Decisions with Michelle J. Howe • Ep 66
Have you ever made a decision that looked perfect on paper, logical, smart, the "right" move, and yet something in you just felt... off?
That experience is more common than most of us realize, because our bodies are constantly communicating with us. The question is, are we paying attention?
Episode #66: Show Notes
The "Gnawing Knowing"
Michelle calls this body communication a "gnawing knowing," that internal signal that something is off, something is not working, something needs to change. And she said that most of us ignore it. We override the system even when the system is clearly saying, this is not working anymore.
For Michelle, that signal once showed up as a migraine she has never forgotten, and she does not get migraines. She was putting off a major decision, again and again, until her body essentially forced her hand. The migraine was so out of character for her, so severe, that she finally got the message.
As she put it, when your body speaks that strongly, especially in a way that is totally out of character for how you function, you had better pay attention. It is trying to communicate something.
Learn Your Body’s Language
A lot of people in my circles mention it shows up in the stomach first, as unexplained stomachache. It can feel like nervous tension that just sits there, like the body is bracing for something it doesn’t want. Michelle described the gut as the place where you receive information. A stomach ache can be your body anticipating, or grinding through something you really do not want to be doing.
Maybe you don’t get migraines or stomach aches. Maybe your signals are quieter. But they are there.
Here are some other common signals you might recognize in your own life: Clenching your jaw at night. That heavy, dragging fatigue that hits the moment you think about a particular situation. A subtle dread on Sunday evenings. Holding your breath without even realizing it.
These are small signals. Quiet ones. But they add up, and they are worth paying attention to.
Listening Early and Saying NO
Michelle has built the skill of listening early. If she does not get a clear "yes" inside her body about something, an event, a commitment, a decision, she does not do it. If her body says no, she doesn’t care how logical the choice seems. She will not force herself to do something that does not feel right.
I suspect that most of us are not that good at listening to our own bodies yet. I know I spent a lot of years ignoring gut feelings, over and over, until they got stronger and more severe. And then, once I was on the other side of whatever had been stressing me out, I would look back and think, oh, my body was telling me that for two years. Now I get it.
The goal is not to cancel on everyone every time you feel a little off. What we’re talking about is building the skill of noticing how your body feels. Most of us have been so trained to think our way through decisions, weighing pros and cons, making lists, doing what is expected, that we have gotten genuinely rusty at feeling our way through them.
Your body has not stopped sending signals. You’ve just trained yourself to ignore them. And today is about starting to turn that around.
The Inner Tug of War
A lot of us have a strong "doing and achieving" drive, and that drive can easily override the quieter internal signals our bodies are sending. Some people refer to these two pulls as your masculine, logical, doing side and your feminine, feeling, nurturing, creating side.
Michelle grew up with a very strong masculine side. She knew what she was doing, where she was going, and how she was going to get there. But the feminine, emotional side of her wanted something completely different. She wanted quiet, rest, and to hang out at the beach, not in the limelight.
Have you ever had one part of you want something and another part of you want something that felt completely opposite? That internal tug of war is one of the most exhausting things we carry, because both sides are you, and they both have valid needs.
Michelle described it this way: one side would make decisions without holding what she called a "board of directors meeting" to get everyone on the same page. And then the other side would push back: That's not what I wanted. That's not my priority. She had to ask herself, how many voices need to be at this table?
I love that image. In a real board meeting, every voice gets heard before a decision gets made. Nobody steamrolls the room. So I want to ask you: which voice has been getting steamrolled in you lately? Is it the one that wants to slow down? The one that has been saying a quiet "no" to something you keep saying "yes" to?
The Feeling Side Is Wisdom, Not Weakness
The feminine, feeling side of who we are is not a liability. It is actually what the world needs more of.
Michelle explained that our masculine side is wired to fix, to push, to produce. While the feminine side nurtures. It uplifts. It holds things together and shifts the dynamic of everything around it. Michelle admitted that earlier in her life, she used to look at women who leaned into that nurturing side and think they were leaving cards on the table. That they were not driven enough.
And then she had her own children, and everything changed. That feminine side of her would have nothing to do with putting her child in daycare, and she found herself in tears trying to figure out what her own "board of directors" was going to decide.
I understood exactly what she meant. When my children were young, I changed my entire career. I opened a licensed childcare center because that nurturing side took over and said, wait a minute, this is what matters right now.
And that’s the hard part. We live in a world that rewards the doing side. We get praised for pushing through, for producing, for staying busy. Nobody gives you a trophy for resting, or for saying no, or for sitting quietly long enough to actually hear yourself think.
So if that softer, feeling side of you has gone quiet lately, it is not because she left. It is because somewhere along the way, she got the message that she was not the priority. Part of this work is simply giving that part of you permission to speak again.
Finding Your Inner Definition of Success
I asked Michelle how we can find the balance between what we actually want and what society and expectations tell us we should want. She said that we need to stop feeding the outer space of things, the superficial stuff, and tap into an inner definition of what genuinely makes us happy and who we truly are.
Because at the end of the day, when the fame fades, when the achievements pile up and then quiet down, what’s left? She encourages us all to think about the people in our lives and our legacy. That’s the real metric.
Rebalancing Doing and Being
So how do we actually start doing this? Michelle encouraged something that might feel counterintuitive for high achievers: try to sensitize yourself to how you are feeling inside.
Many of us are wired to think our way through everything. And there is nothing wrong with loving to do things. A lot of us get genuine energy from it. But if we are stressed all day from doing and doing and doing, we are not in balance. We are not nurturing the part of us that needs to receive, to hold space, to integrate the pieces of ourselves that got left behind.
Rebalancing those two modes means making sure you are being, not just doing. It means slowing down enough to notice. Not every quiet "no" requires you to cancel your plans, but every quiet "no" deserves to be heard.
How to Start Tuning In
If you want to begin rebuilding that connection with your body's wisdom, I encourage you to start with some quiet time and focused breathing. Then sit with these two questions, with curiosity and no judgment:
Where in my body have I been feeling tension, tightness, or discomfort lately?
What decision or situation keeps coming to mind that I have been avoiding?
You do not have to have the answers right away. Just let the questions open the door.
It’s Time to Listen
The board of directors inside you has been trying to hold a meeting. Every ache, every knot in your stomach, every Sunday night dread, every burst of exhaustion, those are voices asking for a seat at the table.
You do not have to wait until the migraine. You do not have to get to the crisis point before you pay attention.
Start small. Start with noticing. And trust that your body, in its own quiet language, has been trying to guide you all along.
Michelle J. Howe is a visionary leader and founder of Empath Evolution™, where she helps accomplished professionals transform their contemplative gifts into conscious, strategic influence. With her distinctive background as both a CPA and certified energy healer, Michelle bridges business strategy with profound inner transformation through her signature program Expansion to Joy™—a six-month journey for professionals ready to exchange pressure for presence and embody Living Resonance™. Her mission: to lead a global evolution where sensitive, deep-thinking professionals no longer hide their depth but lead from it—creating success that feels like peace, not pressure.
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