Listen in on today’s podcast episode. Michelle talks with Sue Riekels about living a life driven by big aspirations and goals, desiring more and creating a congruent life you love, rebalancing power in relationships, coming to trust your own inner guidance and voice, finding your life's direction, having trouble with your personal spiritual connection, and retraining the brain. Welcome to Dr. Michelle Barr's Podcast! Dr. Barr is a Manifestation Expert and Spiritual Life Coach, Speaking life back into you. She is a Spiritual Entrepreneur, Teacher, Speaker, and Author. Consider this your safe place to land and your Next Level Upgrade.
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A Conversation with Sue Riekels For High Achievers Who Desire More In Their Lives
Michelle: Hello and welcome to my Loving What's Next Podcast at lovingwhatsnextpodcast.com I'm really excited today because I'm sitting here with Sue Riekels, and we're going to have a conversation, and we wanted to have a conversation that included you. I've had quite a few conversations with Sue, and I want you to know about her, that she is a high achiever herself, and she serves high achievers who desire more. She's a therapist who's built a very successful practice, and then she started having desires to do things in a different way, to really bridge some worlds in her own life, and bring all of her expertise together and follow what she felt she was being called to next, and she desired to serve in a way that she has really changed her business and changed her life in a lot of ways, things she had been doing with people. she's really solidified that, and she's showing up now as Success Coach and as this Spiritual Coach, helping people. She understands the trials and tribulations that you face and the challenges you face when you are someone who has big aspirations and big goals and wants to achieve them, and when you get stuck both with what's going on outside around you and with your own internal conflict and struggles.
One of the things we're going to start out talking about with Sue that I love is when I was talking to her over and over and over again, she had examples in her life where she would get her desire and want to follow that desire and follow that internal guidance and voice and other people said, No, don't do this. It won't work.
You can't, you shouldn't, and how she overcame that. So Sue, I'm really glad we're here to talk about this today, and I'd love for you to open by talking a little bit about that, because that's one of the biggest things, we go out there with this big dream and this big goal, and we share it, and then other people start putting their input on it.
Sue: Well, first of all, Michelle, thank you so much for having me on today. It is an honor to have this conversation with you and everyone. Yes, there has been quite the journey behind me, and again, I'm excited about the journey ahead of me as well. Throughout my career, I was in business for many years, and was doing hospice volunteering, and would come home from work. My husband was like, your bucket is full, honey, after hospice work, and unlike when you come home from your business work, have you ever thought of going back to school? I was like, we got two small kids. Are you kidding me that can't work? It's like, of course it can. So gave it some thought, went to quit my job, making a good income, to pay to go to school and go into a career that is pretty well known to not pay very well. Even our financial advisor was like, seriously, this is not wise. And went ahead and did it. A great decision I have made just as much or surpassed I should say what I used to make, but the key is, I love the work that I'm doing. I love the work that I'm doing. I can't say that enough.
So I would work then as a therapist, and for a while, I took insurance and was credentialed with insurance companies. Some events happened where I was like, this isn't feeling right. You're taking money back from me. Some other things were going on in the insurance realm. So I was like, I think I'm going to go out and do no insurance. I was told by colleagues that, will you'll never make it, you can't nobody will pay well, the last six years, that's exactly what I did, and I built a very successful practice.
Then this year, I also felt called to do something different for this next phase of my life, and I really want this message to be broader reaching, instead of one person at a time, to really have everyone recognize who they are at their best. So my focus as a therapist was really on complex trauma and things that happened to us in the past, and while that is very important work, and I don't deny it's 100% needed, what I am looking to do is really focus on who we are at our best.
So yes, when we know who we are at our best, that work back here gets easier, but it also lays the path forward. What do we want to do? Who do we want to become? What do we want to accomplish? When I say high achiever, it isn't about these achievements as much as being who we are at our best. So it isn't about checking off a box of like I am this or I'm this title or I'm whatever, it is about living authentically in all aspects of our life.
I do believe the divine wants us to achieve what we're capable of, and that isn't again, a title or anything else. It's about shining our best out into the book.
Michelle: I love that, because on your website, you talk about it, and when we've talked so I like that you brought that up high achiever, it's people like you. I can really relate to it as well, where we're just driven to be our highest potential and our highest expression. We know what it's like to be driven by those ambitions and those goals, but also that inner voice and that inner guidance and follow that so I love how you shared. It's a big piece of creating the life and the work and the vision that you want. Another thing that you talk about that you use the word congruence, and we talked a lot about this because it's a really important distinction when you talk about when that inner and outer are balanced and there's an equal balance there. So talk to me a little bit about how you approach this, because this is really one of the values in your work and in your life is this idea of congruence.
Sue: Yeah, and so congruence, to me, means the same or, you know, there is the same emotion in many different aspects. Like, it's not like, oh, work is going great, but home life really sucks, you know, like we are really about, how can we bring up all of them to a place where we're finding joy, not only at work or not only at home, but in all aspects of our life? We can only do that if we know ourselves the best, and that's why I keep coming back to my chest of like that inner core, knowing of what your gifts and your strengths, we all have them. We all have different, unique ways of saying things. So you and I do similar like messaging, and it's very different. You reach certain people, I reach certain people. All of that is again, beautiful, because we're coming from this internal place of how we say it and what we're doing. So building back to that congruence is what drives you, what excites you in the morning to go like, I'm ready for the day and get up. What in your home life brings you joy with your family? Are there things that need to be repaired, or, you know, worked on but if we focus more on the joy and the positive attributes, trust me, the negative will always get your attention. We have no problem recognizing those. But what we do have a problem, I think, as a society, is who we are at our best and seeing it in each other as well. How can we encourage others?
Instead of like, wow, she really messed up, versus saying, I love this part. Yes, we can always tweak this part. So really seeing it from that aspect of congruence, being finding joy in all aspects of our life, not just.
Michelle: it's so important because you're right with that example of, I love my work and my relationships are suffering. You can't have that embodiment of joy in one area when the other areas of your life are suffering. Another thing, you have several on your website, several different areas that you work in really this kind of work, you can help people like you're saying, with every area of their life, because we want joy and satisfaction and fulfillment in every area.
One of the other things you and I have talked a lot about is when there are equal versus unequal balances of power in relationships, and a little bit about how that affects the person and the relationships and why it's such an important thing to address and pay attention to.
Sue: Yeah, thanks for bringing that up. So whether it's in marriage or with our children, we can often end up in this relationship that feels this way, where one is telling the other what to do. Yes, as parents, we do guide our children, and we do give them, you know, guidance in these younger years. But again, how do we transition into more, allowing them then to become their own person, while we guide that along.
So in a relationship like significant others, it is about equality and open communication. Most of us haven't learned how to communicate. Well, how do we deal with conflict? How do we address like that? Really, I'm feeling this way and the other reassuring or like I recognize, thank you for saying that. It might not have been what you meant, and it's how it came across. So again, learning how to communicate it in a way that brings this equality together. Usually in relationships, we find somebody who mirrors what we don't have. I always laugh. I'm like, Oh, that's a You gotta be kidding me. You have a sense of humor. You match me with somebody who is the opposite of me, but in a beautiful relationship, then you compliment each other. In a relationship that has power struggles, that's when you hit each other, or, you know, like you come not hit each other, your emotions hit each other. So how can we recognize each other with strengths, acknowledge those, but also talk about those weaknesses and look at them from an aspect of like, you bring something that I don't have, and I bring something you don't have, and that creates this power balance. Same thing with children, kids don't have the words to tell us, heck, we don't know what we're saying some of the times as adults, but we look at our kids and expect them use your words.
They don't have them, and often times we haven't modeled it for them, either. So really coming in this place of learning and growing, being respectful to yourself, gentle with yourself as you make changes and revisions, nobody's doing it wrong, but we can do it better. So that's my goal, is to get that message out and to provide that hope, that you know what your relationship can change. You're the person who can start.
Michelle: Your approach is a really great balance of the very practical, but another really important piece is the intuitive and the spiritual, and you're very much about that connection, that connection with Spirit, and helping people to reconnect to themselves, and that spiritual connection so they can use that in their life.
You had your own journey from a young age that involved religion and spirituality and that spiritual and personal growth connection. So talk to me a little bit about that, because it's been woven into your journey, and now people come to you for that help a lot, and that's one of those, you know, like I do, people don't know to ask about. We just see that it's there and that they're needing support and guidance in that, and it changes everything. So I want to start by saying the Divine or Spirit, what that is, or how I see it. I see it as some people connect that way through religion. Some people call that a certain name, God, Yahweh, Buddha, Jehovah like there's lots of different names that God is known by.
Some people don't connect to God at all, but are in nature and really feel something much bigger than they are much deeper. So I'm not into theology, I am not here to get into what is right and what is wrong. There is none of that. It is about how do you connect personally to that which is bigger, and not listen to any of the outside words of how that's supposed to look or how you're supposed to connect to the Divine or God, or anything that is large enough, and so that is making that connection for yourself. For some people I've worked with, they have not believed in anything and would consider themselves atheist. However, when they sit in the sun and they feel the heat and the the warmth and the energy of the sun, they know the sun is bigger than and there's something that still moves within them.
So we can say, then, like God works through the sun. Or we can just say, for the sun, it might look like God or Divine to that person, not getting into the nitty gritty of what each person believes, but it is reconnecting, because we all can feel that, and when we feel that, we can work under the power and the guidance of something much larger than us, that I believe what's good for all of us.
Michelle: Very much. Yes, another thing I want to bring up is the brain spotting and the work with the brain, because we talk about that a lot as well. You have this technique that you have an expertise in. You're very much again, you can talk, in one moment about the divine and the interconnection and Spirit, and then in another moment, about that very practical the brain human behavior and weaving those together. So tell me a little bit about what you love to share most about the brain.
Sue: So when it comes to the brain, the brain and body are connected, and we don't notice or we haven't talked enough about. If I use my hand as the brain, if this is our brain stem, and these are those two bumps in the back, the cerebellum, then in the middle part of the brain is the limbic system. This is where all of those emotions lie, all of our memories lie. Then the last two forms is the cerebrum, or this prefrontal cortex, and that's all the reasoning. But the reason this limbic system is so important is because our spinal cord, going through the brain stem, ends in the limbic system. So guess what's happening is we are sending and receiving messages constantly to our body, from our brain, from our body, to our brain, to our body. So experiences that happen to us, even pre-verbal, are still stored in our body. So you imagine like something might trigger, and again, our system where we can't do something because it gets nervous, it gets over activated, which is an autonomic process, but we can train it.
We can also process those emotions so that that doesn't show up anymore. So brain spotting is a process that I have been trained in and certified for many years, and that is we process through our eyes and through the felt sense in our body. So when we can do that process, this no longer responds the way that it used to. Now we don't have to remember the exact events, and that's the beautiful part, we don't have to talk about the exact event. So in my work, I am not working now as a Coach to process old stuff, but what I'm using it for is to process where you want to go. I call that expansion work. So we can use this the same way when we start to recognize where we want to go, what we want to accomplish, and we process it through our eyes and through our limbic system.
It actually becomes we start to take that physically, that excitement, that head knowledge, or vice versa, it might be the body is excited, and we need to get it into our brain. Both ways, this expansion work really makes a difference. I've used it with athletes and again, clearing in order to make the jump that they've always wanted to make, in order to do the triple toe in order to act. I use it with actors as well to get into character. It can be used in so many ways like that, to help us get to where we want to go.
Michelle: Yeah, that's all such important work, where we're paying attention to the mind, the body, the spirit and all of that together. In your own story, you talk about, through your life, being very aware of both the internal conflict going on and the external judgment, which includes your beliefs, and it includes your own self-discovery, but also societal expectations and what others put on you so really, having this approach of dealing with both the inner and the outer work together, and that's what you've really done in your life and how you help others.
Sue: Definitely, and if we don't know the inside, we're much more apt to follow whatever is being told to us on the outside, and that's the piece where, again, guidance and wisdom can come from learning from others. I'm not taking that away.
But when you hear something and it doesn't land right, get more information. Take that in differently. Notice what is going on within you. So whether that is like I need to read up on this, or I need some more information, versus Oh, well, Sue said this, so I'm going to do this. No, no, no, I want you to always check back here, because what was right for me might not be right for you. What is right for you might not be right for your oldest child or your spouse or your best friend, and so we can share like, this is what help me, but then I want you to come back to yourself of like, if I took that concept, what would be most helpful to me, and what do I think of that as I sit with even like we just talked about the Divine. What do I notice as the divine? What do I notice as God or that that is bigger than me? What just heard Sue say.
Michelle: Yes. So you're there for that, support and guidance for them, helping them to learn their own guidance, their connection to themselves.It's very true what you said, the more we can do work, the less we are susceptible to just what other people are putting on us, and then we can really tap into like I teach our desires. So you are a good example right now where you're following your desires. Oh, I have this successful business here, but I want more. I want to serve in a different way, and I want more in my own life. Then you follow that desire, even when you have people saying, Don't do that.
One of the biggest things when you're getting those messages from the outer world and you're telling me about it, I notice it's people saying, everything's good right now, so just stay where you are and don't rock the boat and don't try to go bigger, because it's all okay where it is now, but we're really about following our desires and that expansion that you help other people with.
One of the things you also talked to me about was you have a tool you love to use. You created it as a free gift, and it's available on your website. So tell me a little bit about that gift that people can get from your website, that you used in your own life.
Sue: It's a walking nature meditation, and what I find is when we we have the ability to program our brains, and I think that is so amazing, how we and so one of the tools is this meditation.
Meditation looks many different ways, but what meditation does is it quiets our brain so that we can connect to who we are at our best, the world is very noisy, and it's often hard to find even a moment of quiet and it's also hard for people to just sit sometimes in quiet meditation. So what I've created is a process of walking while meditating, so you don't have to have a certain quiet place, but go out into nature, hear it, follow it. So yes, feel free to find it at my website.
Michelle: That's great. Yes, all forms of meditation and helping people make it work for them. Again, that connection to yourself, connection to the Divine and connection to nature, and bringing all of those together. If someone were coming to you right now, and they're hearing what you say, and they're saying, oh, that's me, and I'm struggling, what would be a word you would have if they're like, where do I start? I don't know what to do, or just one word you would tell people that they could use right now to start clearing the way and moving forward. Well, hope is one that always comes to the top of my mind is when we have hope anything is possible, and often times, when we're struggling, it doesn't feel like we can see the end of the tunnel, so to speak.
So I would pause and just remember one word that you like about yourself, one word that brings you back to you at your best. Now there might be taking it to an extreme. It might end up being not that, but I want you to stay in the positive, whatever word, so it might be confidence. Are there times that you're confident? Now we don't go to arrogance, because that's not when you're at your best. But I want you to just take one word that resonates with you, that you know at your heart you are.
Michelle: Yes, that is great, because then you're really connecting again with yourself. It is about the positive. I love what you said earlier that I want to bring back around like we're always going to find the negatives. We're we're going to focus on those. So you're really talking about focusing on those little positives, and I think hope is the big one in this journey, you and I have had to dig deep and find that hope. We both can tell people that it's so possible to change, to rewire your brain, to retrain, to work on your belief systems, to reconnect to your true self and to create that congruence in your life.
So thank you so much for being here with me today. I've loved this conversation I will have in the show notes for this episode, how to connect with Sue at her website, sueriekels.com and she's also on Facebook and Social media.
Sue: Thank you so much, Michelle. I so enjoyed our time together.
Michelle: Thank you.