DOWNLOAD MP3 | LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD
How do you know if something is true or not? In complex situations, how do you decide what to believe?
Logical, type-A personalities may not be as open to experiences using internal data and intuition. Critical thinkers may base their decisions on what is tangible and what they can see. This is important data, but it is not the only data. So where do you turn when you need more information?
Special guest Suzanne Guillette is back with more insight for us on seeking truth. Listening to your own intuition can be a powerful tool to discover your truth. Suzie walked us through her process to discern truth.
No matter what angle you come from—whether it’s a medical one or an astrological one— everything starts in your body. The importance of tuning in to your body’s physical cues cannot be underestimated and will help you make quick and effective decisions.
For example, if you’re telling a lie, how does it feel in your body? Do you feel a heaviness in your chest? Do your palms get sweaty? Or do you feel a sinking sensation in your stomach?
Instead of reaching for fact right away, insisting on finding something “certain” or what you can know “for sure,” sometimes you need to sit with uncertainty and see where that leads you. If there’s something you’re unsure about, practicing giving over your uncertainty to your subconsciousness can help you exercise your spirituality.
Give yourself space. You don’t have to prove your bad feeling about a person or your uncertainty with moving forward on a project. For whatever reason, your subconscious knows things instinctually, intuitively. You might altogether miss important Information coming in from your subconscious, if you don’t allow yourself to listen to your body and tune into your feelings.
You should trust yourself more than you trust outside sources. Tuning into your own body and listening to yourself is your spiritual super power… Why? Because the more you get comfortable exploring the unknown and the more you practice self-trust—the better (and faster) you will be at discerning who and what to trust around you.
Knowing what you believe and speaking your own intuitive language allows you to explore curiosity without feelings threatened in yourself. Knowing what you value allows you to measure new decisions and experiences against what you know matters to you.
Let’s explore truth together…
HERE’S OUR CONVERSATION:
Suzanne Guillette: So you asked the question—how do I know whether something’s true or not?
Doctor Neha Sangwan: Yeah, I would like to explore the idea of how we know if something’s true, right. So what’s the process that we go through, I’d like to share that and maybe give our listeners some structure around how we do it so that they can find their own structure to follow, because I think a lot of times people don’t do this in a way that they understand. Mm hmm. They do it more in a way. Like, I don’t know how, I don’t know why, but I do. And I thought it might be helpful if we described our way. And then, you know, and then they can hopefully build their own way.
Suzie: You know, everything starts in the body. Sometimes I have epiphanies that feel more mental. Primarily, I feel my way through everything. So what are the sensations in my body? You know, I actually had this teacher once, who had me tell a lie. And she had me keep repeating the lie. And it was that I loved working in an office building with fluorescent lighting, which I didn’t, I didn’t, and I wouldn’t but so I said it, you know, multiple times. And she really helped me break it down, like,
Well, how do you feel like what are the sensations that you’re having? Well, I had a heaviness in my chest, I felt like breath was hard to find my stomach felt tight. And then she said, And now say something that’s true. So I think the number one thing that I do is explore. And it’s very, very, even though sometimes I absolutely know something. And this is this is about walking the unknown. I also instead of reaching for the certainty of what I absolutely know, sometimes the situation or life calls for being in a wide open space of just letting, letting the thought the interpretation, the feeling, like letting it just breathe, and seeing where that leads you.
The other night, a friend called me and said, You know,I had this, she’s dealing with something. And she said, I had this feeling. And then I had this thought, and so she was making connection between things that don’t appear to be connected. And she immediately wanted to kind of downplay that, but that my I’m probably just overthinking. And like, I think we all know that I certainly know that mechanism, you know, of the rational brain jumping in and saying, Well, can you prove it right now? And so I would say number one, like explore let yourself off the hook. I think there is absolute validity and the fact that you made that connection, she wasn’t trying, she wasn’t reaching for it, it just kind of floated into her mind. And so how does it feel to explore that I might work with, you know, if there’s something I’m really unsure about, I love working with dreams. I do this all the time with writing projects with decisions that I have,
I will give it over to my dreams, my subconscious and say, Okay, show me and it doesn’t mean that I’m gonna wake up and know the answer or that I’ll have a dream that exactly correlates but it does require a certain amount of faith. And it’s also exercising that connection. It’s simply reminding myself that I like in my rational brain, I don’t have to have all the answers. So it’s for me a lot. And then sometimes the connections are absolutely astounding. But and there was a book on this actually called the butterfly and the net, which is broken down in terms of getting your the default network of your brain and the executive network of your brain to kind of work in concert with one another instead of being overly reliant on the executive functioning.
But yeah, so I would say that that’s that’s really important is just to kind of open up and and know when, like, sometimes You know, there, I’ve had times where I get a funny feeling about a person. And I, I don’t know why and everyone else might seem to love that person. And, you know, so I try to give myself space there too, and just say, You know what, I don’t actually have to prove my bad feeling. I’m having it. So I probably don’t, I know, I don’t want to hang out with that person. And I don’t have to tell anybody that. But it’s, but I trust myself enough and respect myself enough to say like, you know what, I could be totally wrong. But for whatever reason, I know that I should not be, you know, engaging in XYZ with this person? Well, it’s
Doctor Neha: Reminding me of times when someone’s walking out to a parking lot, they got that know, something’s not right here. And they overrode it. And then something bad happened, right? Someone was waiting by the car, or whatever it is. And I think, almost like an animal instinct, like instinctually animals have that sixth sense. That’s what I’m hearing hearing you speak to? Is like a knowing information that comes in that can easily be overridden if you don’t tune in, but more importantly, if you don’t trust it, right. And, you know, one of the ways that I do this, right. So I told you this whole scientific background, you know, being raised and schooled by scientific parents in a scientific community with school and education, all the way through 31 years old.
So where I differ from a lot of my colleagues, is, if there were a huge table in front of us, just an enormous table, and on that table, was everything we know, because we’ve researched it, because we you know, physics equations teach us this, by the way, a lot of research changes every few years. But let’s just say this is the known table. What we’ve explored, it’s what we know. The question becomes, what do you do when something is not on that table? Hmm. If this is what scientifically, we know, as fact. What do you do when something’s not on that table? So I’m going to use an example of maybe it’s like whether or not I should go see an intuitive. Okay. Just like I talked to you about the astrology session. So should I goes or should I go see an energy healer, okay? Alternative Medicine, energy healers, all sorts of new and old ways of being in the world are emerging.
So the way I think of it is, okay, if something’s not on that table, meaning there’s no double blinded, placebo controlled trial of n equals 10,000 People who have been measured in a very methodical way to prove this. What decision do I make for myself? Well, most people say, Okay, if it’s not on that table, it’s not true. Mm hmm. I don’t really say that. I say, Well, if it’s not on that table, we don’t know yet. Mm hmm. And if we don’t know yet, rather than me looking for a white paper on the subject, or, you know, a research trial on it. That’s what I move into N equals one. Hmm. So n equals one, I believe is as valid as N equals 10,000. And N = 1, to me, what that really is determined by is what you were saying, like, what aremy body’s sensations?
What’s my physiology telling me? What’s my inner world, telling me? And sometimes could it be, you know, speaking from fear of something in the past that’s unhealed? Absolutely. And it’s my job to be curious about that and discover what it is. Is it a reaction to a fear of something I’ve had? Or is it my own inner knowing? So I think of data, not just from the outside, but I also think of it as my lived experience, of being here, of what I know, of the experience I’ve had with my family with education with a job with fluorescent lighting in a building because I’ve had it right. That’s, that’s my lived experience. And then there’s the my intuition, which is that sensing that instinct that knowing, as a mother, as a woman, as a leader, as a doctor, right, what is that accumulated experience because to me, that’s, that’s as important as what other people are telling me about cohorts of people.
Suzie: Right? Absolutely.
Doctor Neha: And if I weigh other people’s opinion More than I weigh myself, my own opinion, I trust outside sources more than I have self trust. Mm hmm. And ideally, my goal is to be able to know how I decipher who I trust. Hmm. And every day build, I think of it like an hourglass, like dropping sand into the self trust. If I can build more and more self trust, I’ll know who to trust externally. Absolutely. And I feel like when it’s a vacuum of the self trust, I can easily be driftwood in the ocean going whatever way the wind blows. Because I don’t actually have an anchor. I don’t actually know what I believe how I sense things, how I determine whether it’s true or not.
Suzie: Yes, when I that is so beautiful, Neha. I really believe we all and intuition is a becomes a different form of lived experience when you track it, right. And when you can say, well, the last time you know that I had a dream about X, you know, this turned out to be true or whatever, whatever it is, however, you interpreted, however, the intuition comes, but but we all this, that’s what I think is so cool about intuition is we all have our own intuitive language. And I’ve spent a lot of time studying mine, it sounds like you’ve spent a lot of time studying yours.
I think that’s really where the curiosity comes in is, I mean, gosh, it’s like a whole rich world to dive into when you start kind of paying attention to your particular intuitive faculties. Because they’re not like everyone else. You’re not like everyone else. And so they’re not, those faculties are not like everyone else’s either.
Doctor Neha: I agree. And I would say, you know, my older sister is actually the one who originally gifted me those colors. And you know, astrologer, like she’s always been quite fascinated with that. And, you know, if we go back to, should I go to this energy healer or not? I do believe that some version of caution and understanding who you’re dealing with is very important, especially, just like with a doctor, not all doctors are created equal. Not all healers are created equal. And so there’s a way that I think through it, and if there’s so the first thing is, in modern medicine and traditional medicine, there are aspects of healing that we are really good at.
So you have an acute injury, you get in a car crash, you need me to help reset your bone, you’re having a heart attack, and you need me to help open that artery. You’re having pneumonia, and you need antibiotics, or your appendix burst and you need surgery, come to traditional medicine, because they’re going to help you they’re going to help you fast. Mm hmm. I don’t find traditional medicine as useful for chronic disease.
I have found naturopathic and functional medicine, much more systems focused and healing root cause focused Hmm, not a temporary fix or a bandaid for this symptom. Let’s make that symptom go away. And the best way I can say that is your headache is not an Advil deficiency, right? So if you have repeated headaches, right, you can get through the next meeting the next deadline, but it’s not going to get you through not having headaches, there’s usually a root cause there. Now, when people don’t get what they need, let’s just say in the medical system, oftentimes, they want to know, how do I explore like, what’s for real? Mm hmm. And I’m just going to use that as my example.
Let’s say you were telling me, hey, you should really see this energy healer. So how would I go through that? Well, if I have had an experience before, and I’d say oh, my gosh, great idea. Since he didn’t think of it, I should I’m going to give so and so a call and I’m going to go do that already have a trusted resource. If I it’s a new energy healer, I might want to gather more information from you.
Why do you think this person would be a good fit for me? You know, I already see Mary, and you’re suggesting someone different? Is there a reason? So maybe the fit on that? I might want to gather information through their website, I might want to ask questions. I might want to talk to other people who have seen this person and hear what they’ve gotten out of it. Right. Now, if I’ve never had this experience before, I’m oftentimes because I am someone so relational. I will try it anyway because I trust you, and you recommended it. Mm hmm.
Someone else depending on what they value might say, um, what can what can it hurt? It’s free anyway, she gave it to me as a gift. Okay, so then we know that their barriers, I’m not partying with money. Mm hmm. Price something? I don’t know. I’m going to do it because it’s very, I wouldn’t I do it. Yeah. If you have not had it. The other piece to also think about is what are the logistics cost? What are the surrounding items? You should know? Do you have to go somewhere? Does it require an appointment and travel? Is this something you can do virtually? And one of the big questions I always ask myself is how invasive? Is this item? To me? So are they cutting my leg off? Are they giving me a pill? Are Am I laying down on the couch? And it’s non invasive? Yeah. Right. Like, what is the impact here going to be in my pain, tolerance or invasiveness? So as a doctor, I always think of that. And if I can answer those questions, it helps me navigate depending on what I value, it helps me navigate whether or not I’m open to a new experience.
Suzie: Yeah. Does that make sense? Absolutely. You do have to be really careful. I agree. 100%. I don’t think you can assume that. Everybody is the right fit. Maybe that’s like the most generous way to say it
Doctor Neha: Can you trust your instincts when something seems off? Yes. When when somebody starts behaving in a way that doesn’t make you comfortable, right? Are you someone who gets quiet and shuts down? Or are you someone who speaks up and says, I actually don’t want to go in that closed room? I’d like to do it right out here in public. And I would like to, you know, sit on this chair. Do you know your own preferences? Do you know what you need? Because then you can navigate the unknown more confidently?
Suzie: Absolutely, absolutely. And to also, I mean, I’m just thinking of, when I was 25, I was training for a marathon. And about a month before the marathon, I was having horrible knee pain. And so I went for a massage, just random person I found. And at the end of it, she said, Okay, like, let’s, let’s sign you up for five more massages. They were really expensive, especially at the time. And she said, so we’ll sign you up for five more like, you know, give me your credit card now. And, and I didn’t really want to do that. I you know, I was kind of like, I don’t know, if I that seems excessive. I don’t really know if I like her. But I was also feeling like uncomfortable saying no, you know, I did say no, but she kept pushing. And I all of a sudden was like, is it just easier if I sign the credit card slip? And so anyway, but she said to me? Well, you really she made it into an emotional issue. Like something about like, well, you would sign this if you really cared about like, so there was any letter clear? Yeah. Something like really ridiculous. And I did at the time ended up saying like, Oh, no, definitely not. Like, that’s not what I need. But so I think part of it too. And I’m saying this based on experience running into people who kind of, I guess, offload what I would call their responsibility to be accountable to their behavior to how they’re conducting themselves to their own boundaries, really, are they are they in alignment when they’re treating you are they is their own baggage getting into the room somehow.
And I think most of us probably can sense that. But it’s much harder to really clearly articulate, and then also, you know, turn around and walk away, which is what I would do, but, you know, I’ve had I had a psychic once he did something that was borderline inappropriate. I mean, what actually knows, totally inappropriate, but he seemed like such a nice person. And so when I said, you know, I feel really uncomfortable with that, what you’ve just this gesture that you’ve just made. So I should probably tell you the story, because people minds are gonna be like, What is she talking about? But it was, it was not cool. But I also didn’t think he was a harmful person. You know, I didn’t feel like I was in danger. I thought he was generally well intentioned. And so but I still you still have to, I mean, I think it’s important to just there’s nothing wrong with stating your experience that’s part of boundary setting. And so I said, you know, I’m really uncomfortable. And he said, Oh, my guys must have made me done that you must have needed that for a reason. And I just was like, really? No. Like, That’s not. That’s not good boundaries that’s not being responsible. And so obviously, I never saw him again.
Watching out for things like that, too. And I guess I’m really speaking to people who don’t have a lot of experience in this realm, who, for whatever reason, you know, might be susceptible, possibly to, to manipulations like that it’s easier than you think to fall for. I mean, we hear stories in the news, you know, of like a psychic bilking somebody out of $600,000, and you’re like, how did that happen? But in the minute to minute, it, I mean, it’s not out of the realm, I guess, a possibility.
Doctor Neha: Yeah, and I think I think that’s a really important point, which is, the more you learn to trust yourself, the more you’ll be able to notice that even if someone says something absolutely outrageous in a calm and even tone, even if they seem really gentle in their spirit, that doesn’t mean that they may not do something that feels outrageous to you, and may feel like a discrepancy, like it doesn’t go together. But this is where trusting yourself comes in. Totally.
Suzie: I was just gonna say I think a part of that is watching for a tendency to assume that because someone holds a respected position, that they are that they carry an authority that you don’t, meaning they absolutely probably carry authority, you know, of their own, that involves their own expertise, their own training, background, whatever, but nobody has a stronger self authority than the individual we all have our own self authority is the strongest.
And I think that that’s very much correlates to self trust, you know, do you trust that self authority? How do you exercise that self authority? And art? Is it like a clear channel? Meaning, are there voices that come in and say, Oh, but you should do it this way? Or your family? Did it this way? Or whatever it is.
Doctor Neha: Someone else’s voice. Yeah, I think what you’re really speaking to is the difference between positional power and personal power. That some people are in a positional space of positional power, in an organization in a family, in a church, in whatever it is—and you’re basically saying don’t confuse your personal power, with their positional power.
So, each one of us has an equal amount of personal power that we can exercise. And oftentimes people diminish their own personal power, their agency, their truth, trusting themselves in the face of someone else’s positional power. And those two are not the same.
Suzie: I love that distinction. Yes, it’s very much don’t abdicate your personal power in favor of someone else’s positional power. And it doesn’t have to be so black and white, right? Like you, you can voice your feelings and standing your power, you know, and exercise your agency while also having a dialogue from with this other person that incorporates, you know, aspects of their positional power. So, it doesn’t mean that you miss out, um, you know, if you don’t completely agree with the other person, in fact, you know, I would say probably quite the opposite if the person isn’t aligned.
Doctor Neha: Yeah, except I do believe that some people think that because of their positional power. They shouldn’t be questioned, there shouldn’t be curiosity. It’s “because I said so,” it’s because “these are the rules around here.” And I think an important point to pay attention to is when rather than taking personal accountability for something, somebody blames it on “my guides told me to do it,” or, Oh, someone must have mis directed me or they blame it on a third party. Well, I must have been the, you know, merchandising team, it wasn’t our team. Right, we start to see people play what I call the hot potato game of blame.
Yeah, that’s a huge signal that they will figure out a way not to be responsible for their behavior, right? Absolutely. And most of the hate most outcomes are a combination, not only their behavior, but other factors that usually come into play, which is fine. There can be other factors that come into play, but in absence of them telling you what their part in it was. That’s a big red flag. Yeah. Well, that you all got a lot out of this experience around. How do you know if something True or not? And how do you make decisions around that. And please write below and tell us any thoughts you have about how you know if something is true or not.
