Do you ever feel like you know what you want to create, but still find yourself spinning your wheels, second-guessing your next step, or bumping up against old resistance? What if that resistance isn’t something to power through, but a gentle nudge to pause and reflect?

In this episode, Nancy and I are inviting you behind the scenes of our personal and professional process as we step into May. 

We start this episode by asking three grounding reflection questions:

What lessons did we learn in April? What vision crystallized for us? What themes do we want to continue exploring in May?

These questions are opening the door to something deeper. Because here’s the truth: even when clarity arrives, there will still be obstacles blocking our path. And rather than ignoring them, we’re slowing down and tuning in—naming the fears, old patterns, and limiting beliefs that bubble up when we’re on the edge of aligned action.

Together we explore:

The importance of reviewing the past month before diving ahead (04:15)

Our April vision—and why we ultimately decided to change course (09:45)

How fear, scarcity, and perfectionism get in the way of what we truly want (17:30)

The four-step process we’re using to work through our blocks (34:50)

How we're reclaiming trust and making space for deep rest retreats (43:45)

Here's a reminder of the four steps we’re using this month to clear space and move forward with more ease:

1. Get clear about the obstacles.
2. Share them with someone you trust.
3. Consider what kind of healing work or accountability is needed.
4. Be realistic about what change actually looks like.

This isn’t a formula—it’s a practice. We talk through the fears and narratives that shaped our April, why we’re shifting our May plans, and how we’re staying connected to trust and intention along the way.

If you’ve been pushing through your resistance or trying to override your inner knowing in the name of productivity, this is your permission slip to slow down, reflect, and re-align. You don’t have to do it alone—we’re right here in it with you.

Find us on YouTube to watch the video version of this discussion. https://youtu.be/7qNkALbsYc8 

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[00:00:24] We here at Deeply Rested believe that spring is the real start to the new year, and the spring season is the ideal time to get really clear about what you want to bring forward in your life and business for the year to come. After you crystallize that vision, the next step is to do the inner work. The inner work of clearing the blocks and obstacles that are going to make it difficult for you to actualize the vision that you crystallized in April.

[00:01:18] So buckle up, dive in with Nancy and I as we share our blocks and obstacles with you, and give you a four step process that we think will help you do the inner work this month to clear some of those blocks so that you can become Deeply Rested and bring your crystal clear vision to life. I really hope you enjoy this monthly episode. See ya on the other side.

[00:02:31] Maegan: Nancy, welcome back.

[00:02:38] Maegan: It's May.

[00:02:41] Maegan: I am loving these episodes and these conversations that we're having and we got great feedback after April that folks are enjoying what we're creating here. So we're going to take another stab at it this month and see how it goes. Yeah?

[00:03:02] Maegan: Okay. I love it. Well, welcome back. The theme for May is removing obstacles. We are going to be talking today about how we release fear, limiting beliefs, scarcity, how we identify and really work with all of the things that block us from actualizing the visions that we have for our businesses, Uh, this feels like a really great follow up to what showed up in April, and I'm excited to dive into it, but before we dive into it, I feel like it would be a good idea in these episodes for us to take some time to walk people through the process of reviewing the previous month in a similar way that you and I do in our monthly meetings.

[00:03:49] Nancy: Yeah, that sounds great.

[00:04:36] It's all about wisdom and trusting our own inner wisdom. So I'm just planting that seed, dropping that intention here as you and I dive into this conversation today. Any thoughts about that before we talk about April?

[00:05:09] Maegan: Yeah, like honoring that, celebrating that we are chock full of wisdom if we acknowledge that within ourselves.

[00:05:18] Maegan: Okay. Where do you think we should start in reviewing April?

[00:06:02] And I think that the way that it connects to our theme for May in removing obstacles, is that we can have this really clear vision, but if we're thinking about the vision as a river, that we're traveling down a river and we're going down this river and we like run into all of these boulders, like those are our obstacles and we're going to get tossed around a little bit.

[00:06:43] Maegan: Nancy and I both love rivers. So you're going to hear lots of river metaphors in these monthly episodes, I have a feeling. We love floating down rivers, swimming in rivers, paddle boarding on rivers. We just live in rivers and I love that image that I want my vision to just flow so freely. I want it to be like the best mid-July float that I've ever been on before.

[00:08:01] So looking back at April, it's like what threads are really alive and vibrant, and how can I intentionally grab onto those threads and pull them through into the month ahead so that I'm actively weaving my tapestry, right? I'm not bypassing anything. I'm not ignoring anything. I'm grabbing onto the threads that are present, and I'm pulling them through into the next month as I gently shift my direction.

[00:08:57] Nancy: Sure, I think the best way to start would be to outline a few reflection questions that we can use to do that, to weave those threads through. So these are reflection questions that we can go through right here. Anyone who's listening can use these questions as well and the three questions are one, what lessons did you learn in April? Two, what vision crystallized for you in April? And three, what themes do you want to continue exploring in May? How do you feel about those questions?

[00:09:50] Like really articulating clearly what wants to follow us into May. So lemme take a breath and just think about what feels true for me and you in our process. And again, our intention with these episodes is to first and foremost give you a process that you can use, listeners, to integrate into your own business and we want to do that by fully modeling with transparency, how we're doing it here, and Deeply Rested. The biggest lesson I think that we learned last month, Nancy, is that it takes more time than you think it should to let a vision crystallize.

[00:10:30] Maegan: I want it to happen fast, right? I wanted to meditate one time, and then I'm like, I know exactly what to do, but what I'm finding is that when I'm going fast and when I just pull an idea out of my mind and I'm like, this is it. Let's go. Let's get started. That often the choice I'm making is coming from my logical brain and my logical brain is really closely connected to all of the obstacles that we're going to talk about today. Fear, scarcity, limiting beliefs. So if I go fast, the vision that I pluck out of my brain is probably not the most aligned vision, and it's definitely not the most sustainable plan.

[00:11:44] Nancy: Yeah, I think that, I've really also noticed, as we were going through the month that like you were saying, what we thought the vision was at the beginning is not necessarily where we are today. And one of the things that I've noticed coming up for me is that, when we have an idea or something and I'm like, okay, let's go, let's do the thing, do this, do that, go through the whole to-do list. That to me is a little bit of a clue that there's some urgency creeping in and just to be really curious about why am I feeling a sense of urgency and to just step back and take it slow, go back into that patient slow process.

[00:12:24] Maegan: That feels so real. I'm just thinking about a WhatsApp text I got from one of my private coaching clients this past week and I was like watching that happen in real time for somebody else where she was like so grounded and tapped in and was like really connecting to a more intuitive vision and then she started talking to chat GPT, which I'm all for talking to Chat GPT.

[00:13:04] And then because the robots are obviously conditioned to be capitalist thinkers, the robot was like, and here's how you can, you know, take that and turn it into an empire and then I was like watching as my client was getting sucked into that and starting to move really fast, and there was that sneaky urgency that you called out so beautifully, so, so wisely.

[00:15:19] Right? Where did we feel that energy of the flowing river, of the current? Where we landed is three things. We are going to focus on this podcast this year. We're going to focus on optimizing and calling in more clients for Catalyst, which is our private coaching offering, deeply rested.com/coaching if you're interested. And then perhaps most exciting and true to our souls, but constantly getting thrown to the sideline because of all the obstacles we're going to talk about today.

[00:16:33] We're going to maintain those things, and I s that so that everyone listening knows that as a business owner, you're constantly like maintaining some things, creating new things and composting things that are ready to die, are ready to end. So we want to be thinking about all of that as we move through this process.

[00:17:21] Quickly discerning in my body when I'm in the channel that feels easy, useful, and when I get out of it and I'm struggling or I'm forcing instead of allowing. So that's something that's a thread that I want to pull through, into this next month as well. Okay, Nancy, those are my reflections. Anything you want to add on to that?

[00:18:30] So, I'm interested to talk about some of these obstacles.

[00:18:53] Like we're so good at getting in our own way and blocking. We know deep down in our souls what we're here to do, what we're meant to offer the world, how we're meant to be of service, however you want to think about it. We know, or at least like we have an inkling about what is right and then I feel like so much of our work in life is just like taking laps around the track over and over again as we understand like what's blocking me from just being purely authentic and honest and, yeah, this is a huge conversation, but going to make it digestible for the month of May, which also is my birthday month. Just throwing that out there. So I kind of love that too. I love that as I'm celebrating another year of my life, that there is this opportunity for me to go even deeper into the obstacles that I know I'm here to work through in this lifetime.

[00:19:46] Maegan: That's enough waxing poetic about that. Let's talk about it. Let's talk about removing obstacles. So here we are. It is May. It is time to get some shit out of the way. and I guess before we dive in, like I want to say that it's so common. I see it in myself. I see it in my clients. I see it in society at large.

[00:20:28] So we feel the excitement. We want to just jump right into implementing the plan, but when we do that, when we jump on that wave and move from idea to plan to implementation, often what we're doing is bypassing or skipping over the inner work that is here for us to do. Because business is really, it's just a fancy form of therapy, right? Like our businesses, our creative projects, like they are ripe with opportunity for us to do our own shadow work, our own healing work. Whatever inner work is here for you to do in your life, your business is offering you an opportunity to see what it is and to do it and to do it in a timely way, right?

[00:21:40] Going back to that beautiful image of the river, when we move the blocks and the rocks, when we move them out of the river, oh, you can just lay in your tube and float. You know, you can close your eyes, you can just put your face in the sun and let the river take you where you were meant to go. So this month is about not bypassing, right? It really is about taking the time to go inside of ourselves to do the work that we need to do.

[00:22:47] Maegan: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And we just at one of our Council gatherings a few weeks ago, the whole session was about clearing obstacles. This is what inspired this month's episode and it was really interesting to see just how common the obstacles were for each person in the group. Everything was very similar but with its own flavor.

[00:23:45] But now that I say that, I'm like, oh, actually those could be two separate things, couldn't they? Like where am I overextending myself? You know, being a people pleaser, being an over-functioner, overworking, doing these things that really exhaust me, and then another category would be overstimulation. Where am I putting myself in environments where I am getting overstimulated and then it shuts me down?

[00:24:17] Nancy: Yeah.

[00:24:33] Nancy: Yeah, so I am curious, Megan, um, what are some of the obstacles coming up for you that you want to work on removing.

[00:25:12] That's the other thing is you're going through your obstacles, like they're all connected, so, you know, you don't have to be super black and white about it, but for me, limiting beliefs, okay, so I have a lot of limiting beliefs yeah, I think it, kind of boils down to me to a childhood teenagehood, college years where I was always kind of the black sheep, right? I was like, the person, like one of these things is not like the other. That was me. And I had friends, I had community. I wasn't alone, but I was acutely aware that what I said and thought and wanted to do was always just a little bit different than what everybody else wanted all around me

[00:26:16] You want to do that, you really want to do that? Okay, well, heads up, no one else is actually going to want that, or not enough people are going to want it for it to be sustainable. That shows up for me a lot. That is like a limiting belief that's really sneaky and it's so deeply ingrained in me that I think I really need to do some extra work this month around spotting it and noticing like, where is that old story showing up? Getting in my way from taking the bold action that I know I need to take to make the vision reality, and can I trust that my soul is telling me the truth?

[00:26:55] Maegan: That's what it is, right? It's there's this opportunity in my own healing process to trust the voice of my soul over the voice of old stories. Okay, so that's like really working with that, perfectionism ongoing, I'm sure that will be real and alive forever for me. and just noticing where perfectionism slows me down. A task that really should take 15 minutes, takes an hour and a half, because I'm being a perfectionist about it

[00:27:57] Nancy: Yeah, similar to you, limiting beliefs are a big one, and I think the biggest one for me is scarcity and like the fear of financial scarcity. So I know one of the things that I really want to work through or work on this month because let's be real, like I'm not going to work through all of it this month.

[00:28:51] Like when I was much younger in my very early adulthood, I had no fears of scarcity. And that's not to say that I just had everything that I ever wanted, right? But I just didn't have this financial scarcity fear that I have now. And then, my husband and I had a kid really young, and so we spent like our early twenties and the rest of our adult lives just really hustling to try to make ends meet every month.

[00:29:43] Just like you were saying, it feels scary to have this be a focus of this business because my limiting beliefs come in and they're like, okay, how are you going to do this? Are people going to want this? Are they going to show up? So a lot of my limiting beliefs are very closely intertwined with scarcity

[00:30:30] Maegan: I love that Yeah going back just to, I love what you're saying about like you have this felt memory this time in your life when this particular block wasn't in your river around financial scarcity and I love this reframe that you're kind of talking about, that it's not that you were fearless back then 'cause you were about how old. You did a big, I’m going on the road, I'm traveling.

[00:31:25] Nancy: Yeah.

[00:31:57] Nancy: Yeah.

[00:32:13] I totally agree with that sometimes, but I think that when, that's just what's in the zeitgeist. People feel the fear and do it anyway, that actually there's a bypassing that can happen when we're just like, you know, gripping and pushing through because we think that's what we're supposed to do. Can we actually pause in the fear and get really curious about things like why am I afraid right now? What am I not trusting?

[00:32:39] Maegan: I think that's a more interesting question personally. Okay, I digress.

[00:32:44] Maegan: Thanks for sharing.

[00:32:46] Maegan: Love that we're putting this stuff out there. I also love that we are naming what we want. 'cause that's something that I know you and I have been talking about, separate from obstacles or maybe it's actually not separate at all.

[00:33:41] Nancy: Nancy, can you kick us off? We have four action items that we want to offer you all this month in your efforts to remove your obstacles. Tell us what the first couple of steps in this process are. So step one is getting really clear about what those obstacles are. So what are the obstacles that are blocking you from realizing your vision? So that's step one. Step two is to not do this in isolation and to share this. So share your obstacles with someone that you can trust. So a therapist or a business friend. Or a coach. The point is that you want to be witnessed, you want to have these obstacles witnessed and do this in community, so you're not feeling like you're just pushing this boulder out of the river all on your own with no help or support. So those are the first two.

[00:35:04] We have to be in community around these things that feel sticky and real and vulnerable, but beware. So disclaimer here about sharing. It's really important that you choose wisely who you share these obstacles with. You don't want to share these obstacles with someone who's going to criticize you.

[00:35:46] So it is vital that you choose people who are also on. A journey of personal growth, of self-discovery, of healing, like you got to choose wisely so that the people you're sharing this with know how to meet you and can really just hold your reflections as a witness and not try to do anything to shut you down or to fix you.

[00:36:28] What is the inner work going to be for you? It's not going to go very far if you identify what the block is, but then you don't do anything specifically to move that block out of the river. So we want to make this actionable and step four is about commitment, because like you said earlier, Nancy, it's not realistic for any of us to expect that one month of focused work, and like we obliterate our blocks forever. No, we're continuing our healing journeys and we will continue past the month of May. So I think the real invitation here is to commit, to use this month to deepen your healing work, to deepen your inner work and to commit to continue working on removing these blocks and obstacles moving forward.

[00:37:25] Maegan: Okay.

[00:37:33] Maegan: That seems fair. Seems like a reasonable next step. Okay, we'll be succinct. Since we're coming to the end of this month's episode, here we go. Step one, we're going to get really clear on our obstacles, which we've done here in this episode today. We're working with limiting beliefs, scarcity, perfectionism, financial scarcity.

[00:38:24] Nancy: So I think the next step is like what kind of healing work, what kind of accountability do we need to begin removing some of these blocks?

[00:38:35] Maegan: Three, what are we actually going to do about it?

[00:38:38] Well, one of the things that we have just recently, very recently started doing is we have a place to record our doubts. So we've got a Google doc, and it's called Our Doubt Lives Here, and as this vision is coming up and crystallizing and forming, and we start noticing doubts, we're going to write 'em down and we're just going air them out. going to let them live on that Google doc, and that's where they can live, and they know once they're on the Google Doc, that's their home. They no longer need to reside here. So that's one thing.

[00:39:24] Nancy: I'm sure we will.

[00:39:35] Yes, okay, so we're going to write down our doubts. Something else that we have talked a lot about. You know, off mic is personal practice, right? We're sharing, you know, together what blocks we are bringing to the table, but what are we going to do outside of our collaboration to work on healing these obstacles within ourselves?

[00:40:16] I am committed to talking about them with you and with business friends who, you know, are, have been witnesses for me in this journey in the past 10 years and deepening my spiritual practice, I think is the main way that I am working on releasing and transforming these blocks in my life right now.

[00:40:54] Nancy: Sure. Yeah, I am really working on my own financial scarcity, the fear of scarcity. My husband and I are talking with the financial planner for the first time. We're both mid forties and this is the first time we've ever done that. so there's some like practical things that we're doing and there's some mindset work that I am doing to kind of heal that scarcity, but yeah, it's all about doing that personal work on our own because this business didn't form with financial scarcity already, right? Like I'm bringing that to it. So if I'm not healing my own obstacles here, then like I'm just bringing them to this business and that's not fair. So, yeah.

[00:41:41] Nancy: Yeah.

[00:41:56] A lot of people listening are solopreneurs, so you don't have someone who is a collaborative partner in your work. You are going to have to find that outside of your business, right? And this is where I love having a biz bestie, which it sounds stupid, but it's just also accurate, you know, like it's your biz bestie. I have several. And I highly recommend it, especially if you're a solopreneur, is finding another business owner where you can say, hey, can we be accountability partners for each other? I really need someone who gets it, who is invested in me and my vision, and we can do a mutual exchange of that together.

[00:42:56] Lower the bar. This is about developing a practice, committing to the process of step one, identifying your blocks. Step two, saying them out loud, having them witnessed by another person. Step three, doing the healing work, finding the accountability that you need to actually remove the blocks, and step four, committing to being invested in this practice as a business owner for as long as you and your business shall live. That's what we're working on this month. I love that we were able to distill that into four steps. That's awesome.

[00:43:31] Maegan: That's what we've got this month, right?

[00:43:35] Maegan: So much is flowing through. We are at this point in spring where everything is bursting, bursting with life and new growth. When folks are listening to this, it will be right around Beltane, and this is the cross quarter holiday between spring and summer when creativity and sensuality and life force is just bursting through. So we invite you to just harness that energy. Really just let yourself surrender to the energy of spring, the energy of Beltane. It is the perfect time to do this work, and you're in really good company doing it with me and Nancy and we're so glad to have you here in the Deeply Rested universe.

[00:44:35] We want these episodes to be so helpful for you. And we only know if we're hitting the mark with your feedback. So we would love if you could take five minutes to do our listener survey and another thing you could do to really help us out if you're loving these episodes is to share them with your biz besties, any colleagues or business owner groups you're in, people you think would enjoy these Deeply Rested conversations. Please share the episodes. That is the greatest gift you can give to us and of course, if you're interested in working with Nancy and I, let us know. We'd love to hear from you. You can learn more about our coaching offerings@deeplyrested.com/coaching.

[00:45:28] Nancy: Whew.

[00:45:33] Nancy: Yeah, it feels a little scary, but that tells me that it's the right thing to do.

[00:45:48] Nancy: Yeah.

[00:46:48] Nancy: So good.

[00:46:52] Nancy: Sounds great.

[00:46:56] Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Deeply Rested. If you enjoyed this conversation, I would love to invite you to join the deeply Rested Weekly newsletter. You can sign up at deeply rested.com/newsletter. I hope to meet you in my inbox very soon.