Constant input from social media, business advice, trends, and other people’s opinions can slowly pull you away from yourself without you even realizing it. What feels inspiring at first can eventually turn into mental noise.

After taking a year away from social media, I started noticing quiet but significant changes in myself. I felt more creative again. Less distracted. More connected to my intuition. More intentional with how I spend my time, energy, and attention.

This episode is a personal reflection on the shifts that happened when I stopped constantly consuming and started paying attention to what actually felt good, calming, aligned, and true for me.

I talk about rediscovering creativity through art, changing my relationship with social media, making decisions from intuition instead of logic alone, investing in myself differently, and how much my identity has shifted over the past year.

Some changes happen loudly. Others happen so gradually that you only notice them once you pause long enough to look back.

Work with me:

1. The Leaders Table: https://www.samanthapenkoff.com/leaders-table
2. Breakthrough Intensive - You already know you should slow down, delegate more, stop overcommitting & be emotionally present. So why can't you? That's what we figure out in 90 minutes + integration call 1 week later. Book your Breakthrough
3. Exhale: Private Coaching - For women ready to do this work until it sticks and you can't revert back. 3 open spots: Work with me

Connect with Sam: Instagram | Facebook

Hello, welcome back to Beyond Awareness. I have been more active on social media lately, to my surprise and shock, to be honest. But with that, I've been more inspired to actually post. And the other day, I thought about doing a reintroduction post on Instagram. You you always see people do that.

And normally it's when they at least say that they have a bunch of new followers and they're like, my gosh, I have so many new followers. Let me introduce you, say who I am. Here are 10 facts about me and all of that. And I do have new followers. So hello to all my new followers and listeners. But because I took a hiatus from social media about one year ago, exactly one year ago, that is why

That's the catalyst of changes in myself. And so I wanted to do this reintroduction post, not necessarily for those newbie followers, but truly because I feel like I'm showing up differently on social media, even though I'm kind of back online. And as I started to type out this post, I realized this is way too long. This needs to be a podcast episode. And so here it is. I think that you will see

yourself in some of my growth or maybe you'll hear permission that you've been waiting for. I'm really curious to hear how this lands for you. And also if you have seen any similar growth in yourself, I am into things like human design and I don't even know, like meditation, but I follow Christina the channel, if anyone's ever heard of her, and I do her meditations.

And she's always doing like energy work and talking about other realms and whatnot, which I'm super into. And she's been talking about how there's just like a thin veil, if you will, like between us and other realms. And now more than ever, growth is happening super fast. And so that was unexpected to share, but I'm curious for you guys if anyone else is feeling like you are becoming a different version of yourself. Okay, so.

When I was a child, I won art contests. I remember going to our local public library and standing in front of a picture when I was a little kid because I had won something. And I remember when I was in middle school, maybe, my parents put me in like weekend art classes just for fun because I wanted to explore that. In high school, I was really interested in marketing.

Episode 38, actually, of journal entries before this podcast was called Beyond Awareness, I had Judy Haller on the podcast. she said, you know, her episode, think, was all about purpose and finding what lights you up. And she said and challenged my listeners, what did you do as a kid that lit you up? Add more of that into your life. And I truly remember feeling not just then, but for years afterwards, I don't know. Like, I remembered singing, but I'm not going to

go ahead and become a singer. I remember backup dancing and coming up with dancers. And I did want to become a backup dancer for like Britney Spears, but I'm not going to do that. I remember like liking swings, things like that. But I could never tap into what did I like doing until my social media hiatus. And one of the very first things I did, because one of the last things I saw on Instagram was texture art. And

I became so fascinated with how it looked and I went out and invested in all of the materials and purchased every single thing, including like bonus materials you don't even really need just to look like make cooler designs. And I did texture art and it was just so calming for me. And it inspired me to take all of my existing card making supplies, which I did have my aunt taught me how to do that. So it's not like I never.

was creative, but I only did card making once a year with my aunt. I took that out and I started learning more applications for that and just doing card making. There's a way that you can use a brush with stamps. And I just did that in my journal for fun instead of actually turning into a card. I was coloring with my son and I was probably more into that than he was into it. And I kept coloring in his blipy journal even when he

was bored and moved on to a new activity. And lately I'm doing art meditation with acrylic paint markers. I did an Instagram reel on it, but it's just super cool. And after doing all these things, I realized, wait, this is what I love. This isn't random and I'm like trendy trying to do this. I've always had an artistic side to me and that has truly felt like permission.

to any time I find something creative, I should pursue that. I want to pursue that because that's the thing that makes me feel calm. It's the thing that makes me feel more creative in other areas of my life and it reduces my stress and it has just so many benefits. So I am more creative and it feels like it's been a huge benefit and add and perk to my life. The second thing, I'm less distracted.

I've talked about this on a few different episodes, but I did not realize how distracted my brain was when I was on social media until I was off of social media. I was just constantly thinking of ideas. And here's the sneaky, tricky part, is it felt inspiring. It felt helpful. But I was constantly...

thinking about what I should be doing in parenting, of a helpful tip that I should do, or even a fun activity that I could do with my son, or the next real audio that I should be making, or the video that I should apply to an audio that I saved a month ago, the next type of business move that I should make based on an Instagram reel, or what I saw somebody else in business do on social media.

the next course that I want to save up for ⁓ based on what I saw somebody else promoting, the next newsletter topic. know, Instagram is amazing for ideas and the fact that we can all put ourselves out there. But you, I needed to learn how to have a filter to not be influenced by literally everyone and everything. I remember I told everyone that I was going to go on a one month social media break.

And when I literally deleted the apps from my phone, I had fears then about coming back on June 1st. And the fears was because I didn't trust myself to use it again. It felt really good to not think about a post that needed to be done. Like not even being influenced by everything I just said.

all of the stuff that I put my energy and time into. Like even the other day, I did do a post that I turned into a carousel. And you guys, that took me probably 40 minutes. I will not be doing that again. That was a nightmare. But that's the type of stuff that I would do every day. And so much of my brain power went into content strategy and whatnot. And I was so fearful about coming back online without

boundaries and I just knew internally I didn't have the strength to set boundaries or even know what I wanted those to look like even though at the time my business coach and my sister who were of course online for their businesses they were like you know you could just post once a week download your apps on Monday do your post and delete them and in my head I'm like nope nope nope nope can't do it

I had so much resistance to it. And so I waited until it felt safe, until I felt safe. And there was a genuine desire to come back, not because I was bored or avoiding, whether I was avoiding rest or uncomfortable feelings or not because I was fearful that I needed to post. I felt like I should post to get business or I should be doing that.

I waited until I wanted to share something with the world. And I did end up sharing, I think in the middle of June or end of June about a sister's trip to Napa. So I did that. And then I didn't share for like another month. And it just felt so nice. I deleted my apps a few times throughout there. And even though now I'm back on, it feels different. I'm not logging on in the same way with the same intentions and even with the same desire.

and that I was before. Right now I'm on, back on social media, and interested in posting because I'm inspired with what I'm doing again. I had an episode recently about the leaders table. I'm so genuinely inspired about helping other women in this way and connecting other women in this way.

that I just want to talk about this. Like right after this episode, I'm going to be talking about the very first member spotlight. And I'm excited to do that. And so I'll do that. And then I'll log off. So I post and then I get off. Like I still don't know anything that's going on with my friends on social media. I don't follow anybody really. Like I do, but I'm not looking at that stuff. I feel very disconnected in that way. But

don't use it in that way and I like it. I do use Facebook Messenger to connect and to chat with people about the leaders table and whatnot. And then I get off and I feel so much strength around what I want to use social media for. And it all comes back to my mental bandwidth and how I don't want to feel, which is distracted. That was like the worst feeling. And now that I shook that, I...

know how I want to feel, that I can use social media in a way that feels good for me. Number three, I lead with my intuition. This was a huge priority for me in May of last year. This was kind of unrelated to any social media break. It just aligned with that. It was a personal challenge. And it came at the perfect time, because right after my challenge to start listening to my intuition and

Following it is like a little test from the universe because right after that I started to feel probably in July of last year August pretty lost in What I was building and I started to question what I wanted to build and Again, I had another episode more on this so I'm not gonna share too much in depth but I ended up closing down all of my group programs because

That's how used to run all my other businesses, but my passion lied and lies still in private coaching. That's just what I love. I love helping people one-on-one and in person in this networking capacity, which I now know, but it took a while to get there. And so I listened to my intuition, even though that felt scary to literally take offers.

out of my business and tell clients, nope, sorry, I'm not renewing this and basically turn people away. After that, I got right ear pain and I've had ear infections before. It felt like an ear infection. However, all of my ear infections have been because I'm sick. comes with stuffy noses and maybe a fever.

all that stuff. And this, there is zero other symptoms except this ear infection feeling. And so I asked Claude, who is, that's who I use for chat GPT, like AI. I asked Claude, what does right ear pain mean? And I explained the whole thing. And it said that it's basically you're not paying attention to your feminine side and your intuition and signs outside of you from the universe and whatnot.

And so that was another sign of like, okay, what, like stop overthinking, stop trying to create from my head and start following like what feels easy? What do I want to do? What do I want to pursue? What is the universe trying to tell me? And that helped me make decisions. And the biggest thing here is that I trusted them, even when my head said it was wrong. So I lead with my intuition now, even when

It feels wrong, even when the old Sam would say, nope, this isn't logical. I am now trusting myself and things are happening faster for me and things are aligned and it feels really good. The fourth thing is I've invested in myself differently. I used to invest in anything that promised it would grow my business. But when I stopped chasing shiny objects,

Which is exactly the time that I logged off of social media because social media is shiny objects. It's everyone doing a really great job promoting their offers. That was like one of my first realizations that I had is like, wait, of course I want to buy everything. Everyone's promoting their stuff, whether it works or not, or, you know, whatever the case, they're doing their job. I had that shift of like, wait, they're just doing their job.

It's not that like I was meant to see this. Maybe I was, maybe I wasn't, but like, I don't know, just thinking of it as they're doing their job just hit me differently. So anyways, when I stopped waiting to find like the, this is the thing that's going to make my business explode or get me in front of millions of people or whatever, I realized that what I really needed to be investing in was myself.

And that's when my business will grow. That's when I'll be a better mom. I'll be more, even more patient. That's when other relationships of mine will also benefit. Right? And so I've invested financially in like better quality supplements. I've invested in babysitters so that I could go on dates or shop without my son with me, which is so much easier. I've also invested in a house cleaner once a month.

Shout out to Ashley's cleaning service. She's a member of the leaders table. ⁓ These are all things that just help me feel centered and grounded and healthy and happy. And that also time, I want to say that is something I've invested in as well, which is not financial, but time. I've given myself time to go on those dates, to go to the gym, to go on errands instead of just work, work, work or dishes, laundry, all of that stuff.

Give yourself time to do these things. Also time to process my emotions and to think through what I want. That through therapy and journaling, I started going to therapy more frequently instead of kind of, I was on like an on-call with my therapist and now I'm just more consistent. And with journaling, I stopped journaling for a large part of last year. And well, maybe not a large part, but for a consistent

And it was because things were going pretty well. Like, my world wasn't crashing, even though I was just saying that I felt lost and whatnot. Nothing was, awful. And it just felt like one more thing to do. And so I just didn't journal. And once I realized that, and I realized, like, wait, that's the thing, though.

that helps you feel better. That's a thing though that gives you clarity. That's the thing that helps you get closer to your intuition. I incorporated it again, remembering also that it doesn't take a lot of time. It's literally 10 minutes or less, normally five to seven minutes in the mornings, just a few mornings a week, that it's been a game changer. So to me, that's investing in time into myself. And last but not least,

I have, this is just another change, I have no photos of myself on my phone anymore. Like new ones. I'm trying to post more, right? Because I want to. And I open up my photos of like, okay, what picture can I post with this? I've got like nothing of myself. If I do, it's with Griffin and I don't want to always be posting my son on social media.

And even those, it's like we're being silly or something. just shocking to me. Again, going from posting every single day, back in the day, I was posting five times a day. I was like the selfie queen. I would have millions of selfies. And I actually feel weird taking a selfie now. Yesterday, was about to take a selfie in my bathroom because I have a new shirt.

And I was like, oh, let me take a picture in the bathroom with this new shirt on. And I never ended up taking it because I was like trying to get like a good angle. And then in my head, I was like, wait, do people even take bathroom selfies even more? And I was like, do I put the camera in front of my face to the side? And then I was like, oh my God, I'm not even doing this. And so I just left. Cause I'm like, no, not even worth my time. If it takes more than like a couple seconds for me to...

authentically want to do something that I'm not gonna do it. So yeah, that's just the thing. I do want to get better at that. I want like my sister to just take pictures of me, not branded like, let's go to a park and take pictures. I just want her to somehow take pictures of me when I don't realize it so that I can have something to post. But anyways, my reintroduction and a little bit about me.

In the past year, I've become more creative, less distracted. I lead with my intuition. I've invested in myself differently, like actually in myself. And I have no photos of myself on my phone anymore, which that's something I might be working on. So that's me. I would love to know more about you and what has changed about you in the past year or just recently. I would truly love for you to take some time to reflect because

I bet more has changed than you think at first glance. And those changes ripple into all other areas and all other people of your life, around your life that are in your life. And I think for the better. So thank you for learning more about me and for tuning in. And I will see you next time.