Your soul nudges aren't stupid. They're your GPS.
Here's how the body whispers your soul path, plus the test to tell a real nudge from a brain spiral.
Okay. Sit down. Pour the matcha. We need to talk about the way you’ve been doing the math.
Quick lil story before I dive into the juicy juice…
Last week, I decided to buy the most outrageous, completely unnecessary, absolutely RIDICULOUS bouquets. Tulips. Daffodils. Ranunculus. Something fluffy I don’t even know the name of. $100. For flowers (that died in less than a week).
Here’s how this even came about in the first place…
I’m part of something magical called The Living Temple with Sarah Jenks where we gather every six weeks in ceremony (outside of Boston) during the seasonal turning points of the year: the quarter and cross-quarter holy days: Samhain, Winter Solstice, Imbolc, Spring Equinox, Beltane, Summer Solstice, Lammas, and Fall Equinox.
Here’s what went down for Beltane…
I arrive on the land and am invited to make a flower crown.
Now…I’m really NOT a flower crown girly. But I’m sitting there like, “I’m here…fuck it, might as well!”
Then something weird happens. Time slows down. My hands start doing their thing. And all of a sudden, I’m noticing petals, stems, textures, colors, and scents. I’m soooo present to the magic that’s here in front of me.
We walk into the ceremony and the altar is STUNNING. Flowers, candles, sacred scents galore.
I feel it in my body before my brain catches up.
Somewhere in the middle of the ceremony I get a hit, “go home and fill your house with flowers!”
My brain: lol, noooo.
My body: do it.
Cut to the next day as my arms are overflowing with flower bouquets and my hubby Jake is looking at me amused and confused and asking, “Wow, what is all this for? Your mother’s blessing or??”
I beam at him and say, “Nope! It’s just for ME! I’m gonna make bouquets to fill the house. And they’ll make me happy. You’re gonna love it.”
Sweet man that he is, he just smiles and says, “Cool.” lolol I love him.
After the kids fall asleep that night, I spread the flowers all over our kitchen island and start cutting stems and arranging THIRTEEN (ha!) small vases, making a glorious mess everywhere.
Jake who is at the table putting together a laundry basket for my new organization system (hardcore nest mode over here), comments, “This seems like a lot of work…” And I reply, “It IS but I’m having so much fun!!”
An hour or so later, I set the vases all around our great room and just…stand there. Marveling.
Then I’m lighting every candle, dimming the lights, and suddenly our home is A VIBE.
Jake and I end up on the couch—me sipping a hot chocolate protein elixir, him enjoying a Spindrift—and my body feels simultaneously sooo relaxed and at peace AND so alive.
It was YUM.
The next morning, I come downstairs and am greeted by a full flower explosion. Color EVERYWHERE.
My whole body goes giddy all over again.
And my daughter says to me, “Did fairies come last night?!”
YESSS baby, they did!!
And yaaa…the flowers died. Of course they did.
So I bought new ones and made new bouquets (bonus was I made them with my sis who was visiting this time and it was so nice).
My FAVORITE thing about our home right now is these lil bursts of color that light me up every time I walk in the room.
And to think I ALMOST talked myself out of this JOY because $100 on flowers felt “wasteful.”
These flowers did something my morning meditation or years of shadow work couldn’t touch.
I felt THE THING.
That little zing. That p*ssy tingle. That holy fucking t!tt!es how is this my life?! kinda thing.
Getting to take in the absurd, maximalist, soft-petaled evidence that I exist and I’m alive and an “average Monday morning” now gets to feel like a fairy realm…um yesss plzzz.
Meanwhile…I have a skincare graveyard in my bathroom that cost me probably $400 this year (ok, maybe more) and I can’t tell you what half of it does. I’ve spent $80 on a mediocre dinner I cannot remember. I’ve bought a course I never opened. None of it made me blink. None of it made me feel guilty.
Moral of the story?! Pleasure is NOT frivolous or stupid. Your soul nudges aren’t random. Ok, welllll maybe they SEEM random, but they’re the realest of real guidance you can get.
The little voice that says buy the flowers, drive the long way home, text her back right now, lie down on the rug, eat the pomegranate, wear the ridiculous earrings to the grocery store—thaaaat voice is your soul path GPS.
And the reason your life feels weirdly flat right now is not because you need more discipline or another framework. It’s because you’ve been ignoring your soul nudges in favor of your to-do list.
Your soul does not speak in lists and spreadsheets, boo boo. It whispers. And the whispers you’ve been calling stupid are usually the missed turn.
Let’s explore this further, shall we?!
“But Lexi…why does my brain keep calling my soul nudges stupid? I just can’t seem to get past this!!”
Because your brain was trained by a culture that worships productivity and treats pleasure like something you have to earn. If a nudge doesn’t have an obvious ROI, your brain files it under frivolous and buries it in a deep dark hole.
Buy the flowers? Stupid, they’ll die in four days.
Drive the scenic way home? Stupid, it’s seven minutes longer.
Sign up for the pottery class even though you’re not going to become a potter? Stupid, what’s the point??
It keeps you choosing the practical mug over the one that makes you gasp. The functional underwear over the lace. The reasonable dinner over the one with candles and the long table and the friend who makes you laugh until you can’t breathe. The healing modality over the rager.
Guilt is the tax on your aliveness. And you’ve been paying it for so long you forgot it was optional.
That part of you that keeps saying “stupid” is the part of you that learned somewhere along the way that worth has to be justified on a P&L. So when something soft and weird and unmonetizable rises up from inside you, your brain swats it down before you can even feel it land.
And then you wonder why everything feels beige, and blahhhh, and boring AF.
The receipts we don’t question
Let’s actually look at where the money goes when we’re being “good.”
The serum that promised something
The forgettable dinner with people we tolerate
Another course on healing the thing we already healed three times
The gym membership we use guiltily
The Amazon cart at 11pm
The certification that was supposed to be the ONE!!
Nobody calls this frivolous. We call it self-improvement, adulting, and investing in ourselves.
And then. AND THEN. We hesitate at the candle. The velvet dress. The matcha out instead of at home. The fresh flowers. The ceremony. The thing that has no productive outcome, no ROI, no measurable transformation—except that it made us feel ALIIIIVE for thirty seconds and we still remember it three weeks later.
That’s the budget line item nobody taught us to track…but like…why not?!?!
Introducing: Aliveness ROI
Here’s the math I’ve been doing instead.
Not, “was this useful, or did this fix me, or was this a smart investment in my growth?!”
The new questions:
Did this turn me ON to my own life?
Did this give me pussy tingles, even small ones?
Did this make a regular Tuesday feel like a fairy realm?
Did this make me want to LIVE in my body/life/marriage/motherhood/world instead of escape it?
Did this make me feel like the woman I actually am, or the woman I think I should be?
That’s why dropping $100 on flowers was more valuable than spending an hour being “productive.” Not because flowers are magic (welllll, they kind of are). Because the act of buying them for myself without permission was the medicine. The act of saying my aliveness is a line item now, and it’s not the last one = EVERYTHING!
> Pause here. What’s a small, slightly embarrassing nudge you’ve ignored in the last 7 days? Write it down. You don’t have to do anything with it just yet. But plzzz acknowledge it, k?
“But Lexi…how does the body actually whisper?”
It def doesn’t announce itself with trumpets. At least not at first. The body usually whispers in tiny, illogical, often slightly embarrassing increments of YES.
A pull toward a color in the store.
The random thought to stop at the bodega for a single peach.
The sudden urge to leave the dinner party at 9:47pm even though everyone is still having the time of their lives.
The quiet *go home and fill your house with flowers* that comes out of nowhere on a Sunday.
The body whispers through sensation, not logic, which is exactly why most women have stopped hearing it. Sensation feels like a soft tug behind the sternum. A flicker of yes. A weird little smile that shows up in your face for no reason. An involuntary leaning toward.
Usually whispers require a quiet enough nervous system to actually be heard.
Sooo if your days are scheduled to the second and your phone is on you 19 hours a day, you’re probs not going to hear the whisper.
“But Lexi…whose job is it actually?” Brain vs body, and who you’ve been letting drive
Here’s where most of us got the wires crossed.
The brain’s job is execution. The body’s job is direction. And we’ve been letting the brain pick the destination this entire time, which is roughly the equivalent of letting your GPS choose where you live.
Your brain is BRILLIANT at *how*. How to plan the trip. How to budget for the thing. How to schedule the call. How to logistics the logistics.
Your body is brilliant at *what* and *where*. What is alive for you right now. Where you actually want to go. What feels soul fucking good vs. what just looks good on that boring piece of paper.
When you let the brain pick the destination, you end up at the place that made sense, that looked impressive, that everyone agreed was the smart move, and you stand there wondering, “Ughhh, why does this not feel like mine?!”
It doesn’t feel like yours because nobody asked your body. The body was in the back seat the whole time, knocking on the partition, whispering things like *not this one* and *take the next exit*, and the brain had the radio up too loud.
Byeee brain as captain. Hiii brain as the world’s best chief of staff.
“But Lexi…how do you tell a soul nudge from anxiety or a spiral?”
This is the part everyone wants to know, because once you start listening to the body, the very next question is *but what if I follow the wrong voice?*
I sooo get it. This has been a biggy for me. Here’s the body test.
A soul nudge expands. Anxiety contracts. Every single time.
When you tune into a true nudge, the body does something subtle and specific:
a soft opening
a little exhale you didn’t know you were holding
a giddy tingle
a quiet *yes* that doesn’t need to convince you
curiosity, not urgency
an IRRATIONAL desire to follow
When you tune into anxiety mistaking it as guidance, the body does the opposite:
tightness in the chest or throat
held breath
an urgent *I have to do this RIGHT NOW or something bad will happen* (gahhhhd this one is familiar!!)
a loop that keeps comin’ atcha from all angles
a sense of running from or avoiding, not moving toward
Soul nudges move you toward aliveness. Anxiety moves you away from a feeling you don’t want to feel.
When in doubt, drop into the body and ask: *does this feel like an opening or a closing?* The body knows. It has always known. It’s been waiting for you to ask.
> Try this: think of a decision you’re sitting on right now. Imagine saying yes to it. What does your body do? Now imagine saying no. What does your body do? That’s your answer. Not the pros and cons list your mind has been circling around a zillion times.
“But Lexi…why are the most illogical nudges usually the medicine?!!”
Because the nudges that scare your brain the most are the ones aimed at the parts of you that have been dimmed the longest.
The more illogical, embarrassing, or frivolous the nudge feels, the more likely it is the EXACT medicine your soul has been begging for. Oooh, I have shivers just typing that because it is SO SO TRUEEE!
Think about it. If your nudge was something your brain would high-five it and easily let it through, it’s probs because it’s no threat, productive, expected, and within the well-worn groove of your comfort zone.
But a nudge like *take yourself out to lunch alone in the middle of a Wednesday and order the most expensive thing on the menu*? Your brain flips a table. Because that nudge is aimed at the part of you that has forgotten she’s allowed to want things just because she wants them.
The nudges that feel stupid are stupid to the version of you that’s been running the show. They are not stupid to the woman underneath, the one who is starving for MORE (and no—not more as in the GIMMEEEE EVERYTHING, but the more as in more LIFE and ALIVENESS and PLEASURE and TRUTH and SOUL YUMMM). These nudges are the LIFEBLOOD of the one who has been asking for color and texture and pleasure and weirdness for years and getting overruled by the part of you that thinks aliveness has to be earned.
Permission slip, signed by me (not that you need one, but hey): you do not have to justify your soul nudges with an outcome. Following them IS the outcome. Aliveness is the result!
“Sooo Lexi…what happens when I actually start listening?”
Your life starts feeling like yours again. And hey, maybe it’s a dramatic reinvention-worthy moment, butttt it could also be in really small, deeply ordinary ways.
Maybe your house starts feeling more like a home and sanctuary than a place to keep your belongings and sleep. Or your wardrobe starts feeling like an expression of your soul. Maybe a Saturday morning isn’t just another weekend day, but a chance to frolic and find activities that light your soul on fire. Perhaps the relationships that don’t feel like you start quietly composting themselves, because you stopped feeding them attention you didn’t actually have.
And one day you look around and think, “Holy fucking titties, how is THIS my life?!” Not because anything huge changed. Because you finally let the right voice drive.
The soul nudges were never the detour. They were THE path.
“Lexi…I have a few more q’s before I buy into this…”
What if I follow a soul nudge and it turns out to be wrong?
It won’t be wrong. It might not give you the outcome your brain was hoping for, but soul nudges aren’t optimizing for outcomes, they’re optimizing for aliveness. Following a nudge always teaches you something about your own yes, even when the result looks like a *no*.
How do I hear my body nudges if I’ve been disconnected for years?
Start smaller than you think. Ask your body what it wants for breakfast. What temperature it wants the shower. Whether it wants to be touched right now or not. The big stuff opens up once the little stuff has a channel. Aliveness comes back through the side door, not the front.
Are soul nudges the same as intuition?
Close cousins. Intuition is the broader knowing, the just-knowing-without-knowing-why. Soul nudges are the specific, embodied invitations that come from that knowing. You could say intuition is the radio station and soul nudges are the songs on the station.
What if my nudges feel selfish or indulgent?
That’s your conditioning talking, not your truth. A woman who is fed, lit up, and connected to her own yes is not a danger to anyone. She’s actually the version of you that can finally show up generously, because she’s not running on fumes and resentment. Selfish is a word patriarchy invented to keep women small. Ignore it.
How do I trust myself enough to follow the weird ones?
You build the trust by following the small ones first. Buy the flowers. Notice you didn’t die. Notice you felt a little more alive. Stack enough of those tiny moments of *I listened to me and it was good* and the bigger nudges become easier to follow. Self-trust is a practice, so ya know, you gotta practice ;)
Psssst…I have another recent soul nudge to share with you soon that was waaay more “weird” than the flower one…but because I listened to the flower one, I knew and TRUSTED that I had to follow this one too!
Let’s make this magic REAL!
> DO THE SOUL NUDGE THING!! What’s your “this is so stupid and silly” thing your brain is saying no to, but your whole body is lighting up around? I double dog dare you to spend at least 20 minutes or $20 on THAT thing. And then I want you to track it. Not the dollar. The ALIIIIVENESS.
Did it turn you on to your own life? Did Monday feel a little more like a fairy realm? Did you catch yourself smiling at seemingly “nothing” in the middle of your day??
Thaaaaat’s the data we’ve been missing.
Report back in the comments! For realsies though. Tell me what you did or bought and what it did inside your body. I want all the freaky deaky details. I want to read your receipts of being alive.
Because your life isn’t supposed to just look good on paper, boo boo.
It’s supposed to feel SOUUUUL f*cking good in your body.
Got it? GOT ITTTT.