“Listen to the still quiet voice in our mind.” — Katie Peuvrelle

I had the opportunity to sit down with Katie Peuvrelle, masterful high-performance coach and author of Leap: Own Your Excellence and Engage Your Best Self in Business, Sports, the Arts & Life.

Katie is passionate about elevating leaders, founders, and athletes to the next level in their careers and capabilities. 

We discuss: 

• Leaping and leveling up mindsets 
• Holding onto fundamental values  
• Intuition as a physical sensation

Leaping and leveling up mindsets

Looking at improving our mindset as a destination instead of an evolutionary journey can hinder growth and potential. Name a mindset you had a few years ago that you believed in wholeheartedly—do you still hold that same mindset today as it was? And if so, has that had a negative or positive effect on your life?

“To me, mindset has evolved into what I feel is a belief system and a philosophy.” Katie explains, “We talk about growth mindset—which we know is a common idea and something that we're all very much following—sometimes that seems like that could create a conflict. That's a little bit of a dichotomy. We're setting the mind, and yet we're growing.”

We may have a mindset for some time, but without the willingness to grow into the next level of our philosophy as we learn more about ourselves and form new ideas, we risk kneecapping our progress. 

“Underlying all of that growth is a collection of principles or a set of philosophies that are driven by our internal values of what's important to us in whatever it is we're doing in the world as human beings.” Katie continues.

That moment of transitioning into a new mindset is where the leap comes in, and that leap can take the shape of countless starting points and endpoints.

“Some leaps are small at certain times in your life. It might be a simple shift in consciousness where you realize, ‘oh, okay, I'm here.’ But in anticipation of it, you might think that it's an enormous chasm to cross.”

There’s a reason we have the saying “leap of faith.” Every change we make in life takes a willingness to accept the unknown and to understand that when we jump, we might slip. We must have the courage to trust ourselves and stay present in that freefall as we move into the next level of how we want to show up in the world.

Holding onto fundamental values

With these leaps comes the inevitable landing. Where will we end up? How do we keep our balance?

“Even if we're not skaters, we can resonate with the term leap.” Katie explains, “And what happens in skating is; you leave the ice. You no longer have contact with the terrain. As part of the learning curve, as you progress and you do more and more difficult jumps, and you're rotating more and more in the air, you spend more time in that space where you're not connected to terrain.”

It’s in that condition we learn proprioception, how to know where our body is in time and space. It can be disorienting to leave the safety of familiarity and risk landing in a new way of life.

“Ultimately, we need to trust that wherever we land, even if we land and fall, we'll pick ourselves up.” Katie continues, “Even if we fall and it hurts, that's alright, we can nurture ourselves, we can soothe until we get back up and try again.”

For this practice to succeed, we must develop an understanding of what our underlying philosophy is. We must know ourselves through self-reflection. 

“Search for these answers so when you take that leap as a leader, as a founder, then it's this sense of you're not quite sure where you are in time and space, even if you're disoriented at that moment if you know what your foundational principles are, and you know that, ‘okay, when I land, I still have my principles to hold me, I still have my philosophy to hold me, I still have my why, I still have the whole reason I started this in the first place.’” Katie explains.

Intuition as a physical sensation

What do you think of when you hear the word “intuition?” Is it a mysterious concept? Do you have a clear idea of what it feels like?

Intuition comes from a place of deep peace with ourselves. To better understand what our intuition is telling us, we must find the core of our inner world. Katie refers to this as multi-dimensional leadership. 

“If you're aware of what's at the core, it extends out like a new paradigm.” she explains, “For each individual, there's a multi-dimensionality in terms of being able to access not just a left brain rationale, but also a right brain creative space of wisdom, and perhaps accessing the sage part of themselves, and then even transcending both of those into a place of intuition.”

Here are a few questions Katie asks to cultivate intuition: 

• What do you value? 
• What is your purpose?
• Where are you at with XYZ?

“Coming home to who you really are and why you're doing what you're doing is a precursor to being able to trust yourself enough to stop and think, ‘Well, how do I feel about this? What is my intuition telling me? Am I hearing a small still voice in my mind that might be in conflict with what my rational, reasonable brain is saying?’” she continues.

For Katie, intuition is a physical sensation, separate from the rational mind and the right or left brain. “It's another knowing that has a different quality. And the interesting thing about that other quality is it's often the quietest voice, it's not the one yelling at you saying you need to go do this or this is the next project to implement or this is the firm that you want to go to with for your Series A round.” she explains, “I stop and scan the whole thing. That's what I do for myself, I pause and listen and then make my best choice.”

Confirmation of intuition might feel like peace and clarity, your chest relaxes, your shoulders lose tension, or it might come in a burst of energy to get up and move. 

“The body speaks through sensation and a change or a very, very subtle shift in the physical experience of what's happening as you pay attention to your body,” Katie explains.

When have you taken a leap of faith? What do you do to cultivate intuition?

Be sure to check out Katie’s full episode for further insight on leveling up your mindset, and learn more at KatiePeuvrelle.com!