Fear or Fact? Your Nervous System and St. Pete Real Estate Decisions, with Shakti Rios

Every real estate cycle has a version of the same sentence: "If I knew then what I know now, I would have bought." This episode is about the moment before hindsight, when the offer is on the table and your body takes over.

Nicole opens with something she hadn't shared publicly: crying in a hospital hallway over a decision her mind had already accepted. Her body knew first. She sees the same thing at closing tables all the time.

Shakti Rios, psychic strategist, shamanic healer, and author of Allowed, explains what's going on inside us when big decisions get hard, and gives listeners simple tools to come back to a calm, clear place.

Key takeaways

• Your mind wants the status quo. It will say "no" to change, even good change. Expect that "no" and work with it.
• The kitchen-table meltdown isn't about that moment. It's often old, unprocessed experiences adding up until one decision tips the scale.
• Clear the feeling before the decision. When an emotion is loud, a sound decision can't come through. Grief, especially, has to be honored first.
• Shame is the most dangerous emotion in a financial crisis. It isolates people and keeps envelopes unopened. In Florida, there is often still time to sell before a foreclosure.
• "Waiting for the right time" can be a freeze in disguise. Shakti separates the "right" time from aligned action, which can still feel scary.
• Desperation makes bad decisions. Never waive an inspection unless you're tearing the house down.
• Happy moves are stressful too. New baby, empty nest, relocation, dream home: excitement and fear live side by side.

Try this before you sign

Shakti's 20-minute exercise:

1. Set a timer for 20 minutes.
2. Tap the center of your chest.
3. Say every thought out loud. ("I'm scared of making the wrong choice.")
4. When you feel a lump in your throat or tears, stay with that thought.
5. When the timer ends, look at the contract again. Excitement means yes. A pit in your stomach means no.

Memorable quotes

• "Feelings without facts create fiction." (Nicole, quoting a coach)
• "The unfamiliar is scarier to us than the possibility of something better." (Shakti)
• "What is for you can't miss you." (Shakti)
• "Your home decisions should belong to you, not to your fear." (Nicole)

Resources mentioned

• Allowed by Shakti Rios (Amazon)
• Shakti on Instagram: @shakti.rios
• Shakti's website: therebelrich.com
• Nicole's earlier episode with Shakti: Episode 69: How Human Design & EFT Transform Business Success
• If you're behind on payments: a real estate attorney, a HUD-approved housing counselor, or Nicole, who holds the Short Sales & Foreclosure Resource (SFR) designation and has guided sellers through short sales

Work with Nicole

Thinking about buying or selling in St. Pete? Nicole moves at the pace of a clear decision, not a panicked one.

Call or text 719-201-5022 · [email protected] · sellingstpetefl.com

This episode is for education only and is not legal, financial, or medical advice.

# Sovereignty: Making St. Pete Real Estate Decisions From a Calm Place

**Nicole Saunches:** But you don't need a time machine. You need to know if the decision you're stuck on right now is fear or fact. Why is buying a home so stressful, even when you know it's the right move? You've made 100 decisions in your life. You're smart. You've done your research, and then you're sitting at the kitchen table with an offer in front of you, and suddenly you can't think straight.

**Nicole Saunches:** Your heart is racing, or you go numb, or you want to run. That's not a character flaw. That's your nervous system. And here's something agents don't usually say out loud: It doesn't matter how good your agent is or how organized your lender is, or how smart the deal looks on paper. Your body doesn't know the difference between a smooth transaction and a scary one.

**Nicole Saunches:** So I want to introduce you to Shakti Rios. Shakti is a psychic strategist and shamanic healer for unconventional CEOs. For the past 20 years, she has built four different brands across the metaphysical and wellness space, working with trauma in the body, mind, and spirit. Shakti, welcome to the pod.

**Shakti Rios:** Thank you.

**Nicole Saunches:** Yes. Well- Yeah ... and before we get into real estate, I wanna share something I haven't talked about publicly.

**Nicole Saunches:** It's the reason this conversation matters so much to me. Last year, last spring, I had a near-fatal uterine hemorrhage that was followed with a hysterectomy. And for more than 30 years, I had worked to preserve my fertility just in case I met the man I could build a family with. I had had six surgeries in that attempt to preserve that, and then in one surgery, that door closed.

**Nicole Saunches:** Mm-hmm. My body recognized the finality of what had just happened before my mind was ready to accept it. They say the body keeps the score, and that day I felt it. And- That's true ... I share that because I see the same thing in real estate all the time.

**Shakti Rios:** Mm-hmm.

**Nicole Saunches:** Someone tells me they're fine selling the house.

**Nicole Saunches:** They've made peace with it. And then we get to the final walkthrough or the closing table, and their- Right ... body says something completely different.

**Shakti Rios:** Yeah.

**Nicole Saunches:** So what was happening in my body in that hallway?

**Shakti Rios:** We have a physical gross body, which is what you see, I see of ourselves, and then we have intangible bodies, a mental body, an emotional body, an etheric body that we can't see, but they exist around us. And the combination of the mental, emotional, and etheric body comprise what we know of as the aura. And the aura is a measurable electromagnetic field that exists around every single human being.

**Shakti Rios:** It is a measurable field. It extends about six feet. Within that auric field, ... there are three levels of field that exist or bodies that exist, the mental, emotional, and etheric body. And what ends up happening is that information ... The body is kind of like the last place where information presents itself.

**Shakti Rios:** And the unconscious mind is actually dictating what shows up in the body. It's the level that then gives the body, like, information to go out in the world and do things with. This is why a lot of times when people are trying to change behavior from the behavior standpoint, it doesn't work. You have to go into the subconscious programming 'cause that's what's writing the script for behavior.

**Shakti Rios:** It's very good at disassociating. It's very good at compartmentalizing. It's very good at surviving because the mind is the tool with which we survive. It is because of the mind that you can live through something very difficult and still get back up and continue to live. If it weren't for mind, we wouldn't be able to do that.

**Shakti Rios:** But that subconscious part of our mind doesn't forget anything. It stores everything. It is a massive storehouse of information, and it is expressing that information through the body constantly, right? So your posture, your tone of voice, your pace, your gait, your eye contact or lack thereof, even how you look, right?

**Shakti Rios:** So that's what was happening in that moment is your body was expressing information from a subconscious mind state that your conscious mind was not necessarily on board with, which is why you were like, "It's weird that I'm not emotional," which we experience consciously, "but I'm having an emotional expression," which was occurring in the body.

**Nicole Saunches:** There have only been two situations where my physiology has been disconnected from my emotional state, and both were in deep grief.

**Shakti Rios:** Yeah.

**Nicole Saunches:** without- Survive ... going through it.

**Shakti Rios:** Yeah.

**Nicole Saunches:** Yeah.

**Shakti Rios:** You're just- you're, you're wired to survive. That's what people need to understand. That's not an error in, in, like, wiring. Like, you are wired to survive. Your mind is wired to do exactly that so that you don't stop living, so that you don't stop doing the things that you need to do.

**Shakti Rios:** But there is a, there is a cost to that when we're not conscious of it.

**Nicole Saunches:** Yes. And I, I found that out over the last year because I healed physically-

**Shakti Rios:** Mm-hmm ...

**Nicole Saunches:** but there was a lot of residual emotional healing- Yes ... that took me months to do, and I'm probably still working through that because- Yeah ... for so long, I kept trying to just compartmentalize it.

**Shakti Rios:** Mm-hmm. As

**Nicole Saunches:** you and I were working together on-

**Shakti Rios:** Mm-hmm ...

**Nicole Saunches:** other business stuff-

**Shakti Rios:** Mm-hmm ...

**Shakti Rios:** that.

**Shakti Rios:** Yes.

**Nicole Saunches:** Thanks to the help of you. so why would a home in particular trigger this so strongly? It's shelter, it's safety- Yeah ... identity, family history, and usually most of our net worth.

**Shakti Rios:** It is. And it is also the setting of some of the most significant life experiences that we ever have. It is the setting on which we brought our child home from the hospital when we had them.

**Shakti Rios:** So oftentimes when you then go walk out of that setting and you know that you're ready for a new chapter, but you look back and you remember everything that that particular place held for you, it becomes actually really quite difficult to let go of that. Change in general, humans are just not pro-change.

**Shakti Rios:** We do not like change. The mind is not on board for change. I need everybody listening to this podcast to understand that. The mind does not want change, whether the change is for your good or not. The answer is always gonna be no from the mental plane because the mind is designed to just do one thing, keep the status quo.

**Shakti Rios:** Most people don't get that we will stay in something even if it's uncomfortable, a house that doesn't really fit us, or a relationship that doesn't really fit us, because we're just so uncomfortable with the idea of something new. The unfamiliar is scarier to us than the possibility of something better.

**Shakti Rios:** So any time you're closing a chapter and moving to a new one, just prepare yourself to be like, "Uh, no." Just immediately assume the answer's gonna be no from the mind. Just assume that. Allow for that immediately, and then you can work with it. I think a lot of people go into these major decisions like buying a home or selling a home thinking, "Well, something better is coming after this," and they just assume that their desire for the better is gonna be strong enough, and it's just not.

**Shakti Rios:** It's not.

**Shakti Rios:** Yes.

**Nicole Saunches:** What happens in the body when that energy doesn't get to move? And how does stuck stress show up in a big decision?

**Shakti Rios:** So, uh, another thing I don't think people realize is that all time is happening at the same time, and this is a pretty high-level conversation, but I'm gonna ask everybody to stay with me.

**Shakti Rios:** It's like your experiences of reality, your mind sees time very linearly. You're born, and then you're 5, and then you're 10, and then you're 12, and then you're 20, and whatever. But that's not how reality actually operates. So something that happened to you when you were 5 is very well and alive moving through the circuitry of your board when you're 45 and trying to buy or sell a house.

**Shakti Rios:** And you have an experience with you're 5, and all of a sudden one of those ley lines gets clamped, and now the energy is not flowing through that ley line. And then you have an experience when you're 11 and another one gets clamped. Then you have an experience when you're 25 and another one gets clamped.

**Shakti Rios:** By the time you are 50, you have so many clamps on your meridian lines that now the energy is not flowing through your body the way it should. It's trying to reroute itself to get where it needs to go. It's trying to kind of like compensate for everywhere you're clamped off, but it can't really do a good job of that.

**Shakti Rios:** So now you have disharmony in your body happening, and now you're sick. And now you're having a panic attack. And now you have to make a big decision, and you're like having a meltdown at your kitchen table because you can't make a decision, and you don't understand why you're crying when you're just looking at like an offer.

**Nicole Saunches:** And how does emotional freedom technique (EFT) play a role in moving that energy or moving through that stuck energy?

**Shakti Rios:** So I'm trained in, uh, in several different modalities as well as, like, things that I just understood how to do because of my, how I came into the world, which is a very unusual story in and of itself. But EFT, what I loved about it when I first found it, and I just recognized the value of it immediately, is that it allows the meridians of the body to become clear of obstruction in a very gentle way, without the use of something...

**Shakti Rios:** And what's fascinating about EFT is that it's, it is one of the most, and I mean, it's been third-party tested. You could find so many scientific articles on this. It is one of the most effective tools to turn off the limbic system part of the brain, which is the panic button. I call it the panic button in the back of your brain, which is associated with, like, the amygdala, the reptilian part of the brain, which goes into panic very quickly and, you know, tiger, sees a stressful moment, identifies it as a tiger, and shuts down everything else.

**Shakti Rios:** When that happens in your body, actually the part of your brain that's designed to make creative solutions, the prefrontal cortex, the front of your brain, shuts off. So what EFT does very beautifully is it turns down the volume on the panic button so that the creative solution part of your brain turns back on, and now you're looking at the same problem with a very different view because now you have a different lens through which to look at the problem.

**Nicole Saunches:** Yeah. And I have my own, personal experience. I think I shared it on- Yeah ... our previous episode- Mm-hmm ... where I had a looping story.

**Shakti Rios:** Mm-hmm.

**Nicole Saunches:** And, you know, one of the sayings that a coach I work with says is, "Feelings without facts create fiction." Mm-hmm. And, and I was having this fictitious loop, and had, that had been going on for a couple of years.

**Nicole Saunches:** Mm-hmm. And in one 20-minute tapping session It was done.

**Shakti Rios:** Yeah.

**Nicole Saunches:** And it is- That was very

**Shakti Rios:** powerful ...

**Shakti Rios:** Mm-hmm

**Nicole Saunches:** prefrontal cortex gets hijacked.

**Shakti Rios:** Yeah.

**Nicole Saunches:** So the first story is after Hurricane Helene- Mm-hmm ... I worked with a seller who had been widowed, not too previously before the storms.

**Shakti Rios:** Whoa.

**Nicole Saunches:** Already-

**Shakti Rios:** And so, yeah ... we're coming out of the gate hot with-

**Nicole Saunches:** Exactly ... too

**Shakti Rios:** many things.

**Nicole Saunches:** So she wasn't just dealing with water in the house-

**Shakti Rios:** Oh, no

**Nicole Saunches:** she was grieving. Yes. And then the house that they had built a life in was damaged- Oh, gosh. Too ... every room held a memory, every decision about that house felt like- Wow ... a decision about him, too.

**Shakti Rios:** Wow.

**Shakti Rios:** Yes.

**Nicole Saunches:** When grief and a financial decision land on someone at the same time, what's going on inside of them?

**Shakti Rios:** They can't address the financial decision at all, because the grief... One of the things I teach my clients very early on is that whenever you need to make a decision, the first thing you have to clear out is a feeling.

**Shakti Rios:** I wrote a whole book, it's called Allowed, and it's, the whole point of that book is to help you understand how to allow your emotions and how to work with the experience of emotion, because when, when the volume on an emotion is loud, there is no such thing as a reasonable decision coming out of you.

**Shakti Rios:** That's needs to be the first thing that has to be handled. In fact, I would think so many, real estate agents would have a much easier time selling if they had someone like me in their world to defer clients to in those moments, to then be like, "Go handle that, and then let's come back to this conversation."

**Shakti Rios:** Because after that gets integrated and that gets honored, and it gets seen, and it gets processed in the way that it wants to be processed, then the part of your mind that can make a very sound decision comes back online, and now you're in the game again.

**Nicole Saunches:** Yeah. Yeah. It's not just the windows. No. I think about selling a, a parent's home after a death-

**Shakti Rios:** Yes

**Nicole Saunches:** or when a parent has to move into a nursing home- Yes ... and adult children- Same ... are cleaning out the house that they grew up in or-

**Shakti Rios:** Yes ...

**Shakti Rios:** Correct ...

**Nicole Saunches:** or a divorce and- Correct ... the house becomes the last battleground.

**Shakti Rios:** Correct

**Nicole Saunches:** There's another kind of stress I wanna name because it comes with so much shame that people often hide until it's almost too late, and that is financial hardship.

**Nicole Saunches:** Mm-hmm. Maybe you've missed a mortgage payment, maybe you've received a lis pendens, which is the notice that a lawsuit has been filed against your property, or maybe you've been served with a foreclosure lawsuit. And if that's you, I want you to hear this. In many cases, there is still time to sell before a foreclosure ever lands on your credit report.

**Nicole Saunches:** for moving expenses. I earned my, short sale and foreclosure resource designation because I've watched options disappear when people freeze. The worst outcome usually isn't the hard conversation. It's the unopened mail. So why do people go silent at exactly the moment they most need to act?

**Shakti Rios:** It will sink you faster in the hole. and shame is a very uncomfortable emotions for us to feel. So for most people who are in that situation, they would rather avoid the feeling and thereby put themselves in a terrible physical logistical situation than face the feeling. And I see that all the time with CEOs.

**Shakti Rios:** They have to make very high-stake decisions, and it's like if you don't face this feeling that you're having right now, the danger is much higher on the other end. So we've gotta roll up our sleeves and get to work with the feeling

**Nicole Saunches:** When opening that envelope feels impossible, what's the smallest first step someone can take?

**Shakti Rios:** Because something happens to the brain when you speak to yourself in third person. You actually listen more than if you're speaking to yourself directly. It feels like a parent or something like that, which you wish you would have had when you were younger and you didn't have. So I would speak to myself and I would say, "I see that this is really hard for you to open this envelope right now.

**Shakti Rios:** I can see that you're so afraid. You have so many emotions running through you in this moment about this experience, and I want you to know that no matter what happens, we've got you, and you're gonna be able to do this. You have the ability to do this." So this whole third-party speak to self is, one of the biggest tools I teach my clients, and having hand on heart so that you stay present and you don't disassociate.

**Nicole Saunches:** And how can a spouse or family member help without adding to that shame?

**Shakti Rios:** Witnessing is usually the best thing I tell them to do.

**Shakti Rios:** It's like really see someone in their process. Don't try and give them advice. Don't try and be very logical with them when they're super emotional. Help them feel what they're trying to avoid. The best thing you can do is help them feel what they're trying to avoid, and then hold them as they feel that without judgment

**Nicole Saunches:** I love that.

**Nicole Saunches:** I was showing a house and a person who lived across the street came over and said, "You know, when you're done, can you come to my house?" And at the time I used to have magnets on my car, and she had seen my car at a store, and then all of a sudden it's parked in front of her house, and she's like, "That was a sign from God that I needed to talk to you."

**Nicole Saunches:** And they were underwater on their home. And, um, she asked if I could help them sell. And the next-door neighbors wound up buying the house. They had adopted, children who are now young adults who are developmentally disabled, and they wanted them to have their own freedom, but be close enough that they could keep an eye on them.

**Nicole Saunches:** Mm-hmm. And, you know, the universe just delivered and, Amazing ... got the sellers out of the bad situation they were in, while also helping the neighbors.

**Shakti Rios:** Mm-hmm.

**Shakti Rios:** Mm.

**Nicole Saunches:** The fear of making a bad decision, the fear of buying at the wrong time.

**Nicole Saunches:** Buying at the wrong time. Mm-hmm. Fear of paying too much, getting stuck in the house with a rate they regret. But here's what I see from where I sit. Right now there are real opportunities and real room to negotiate.

**Shakti Rios:** Yep.

**Nicole Saunches:** That when the rates- Right ... drop, a lot of buyers who are sitting and waiting will come back at the same time, and more competition means that room- Yep

**Shakti Rios:** Freeze can look like looping.

**Shakti Rios:** It can look like looping in a thought pattern and not being able to move beyond it. It can look like procrastination, not taking action, avoiding text messages, avoiding conversations. it can look like, deferring. So instead of you making a decision, you're like, "No, someone else can make that decision for me," and not, like, taking ownership of the decision.

**Shakti Rios:** It can look like that as well. It can look like all of those behaviors.

**Nicole Saunches:** Yeah. And I have worked with many clients who want to defer that decision to me.

**Shakti Rios:** Yep.

**Shakti Rios:** Mm-hmm.

**Nicole Saunches:** sometimes I'm waiting for the right time is a freeze response in disguise.

**Shakti Rios:** Mm-hmm. Delay, yeah.

**Nicole Saunches:** What would you tell someone who's experiencing that?

**Shakti Rios:** So I have this conversation a lot with my clients and prospects, 'cause when they're deciding whether they're gonna invest in hiring me, for example, to come into the company and, work with them, there's a difference between aligned time and what you're saying is the right time.

**Shakti Rios:** When something is aligned, you know. There's a very strong instinct in you that's like, "This is the correct thing to do. This is the correct person. This is the correct next step. This is the correct thing." The problem is that people mix up alignment with feeling easy. They think that because it's aligned, it's gonna be an easy decision.

**Shakti Rios:** Because waiting for the right time is very often a guise. It's a cop-out for having to make a challenging decision, and having to have your own back in the decision, which is the hard part.

**Nicole Saunches:** Yeah. How does the fear of regret affect decisions? And what's a healthier way to relate to it?

**Shakti Rios:** So regret is another one of those that's a very, like, waste of time and energy. What regret does is it steals your present moment And so it's one of those whenever I speak to someone, I'm like, "There could be not a greater waste of time than living in shame or living in regret."

**Shakti Rios:** They tend to be a lot more, forgiving about stuff like that, and then they move around it, than the ones that hesitate or don't take action or don't do things just because they're waiting or they're trying to be responsible or whatever that thing is. And then more time passes by and the situation still hasn't resolved itself because they weren't waiting for the right time.

**Shakti Rios:** They were waiting to not feel afraid, and they never handled the fear, so they're still afraid, and there is no right time is what's really happening there. and then they have regret, and that's why they say things like, "If I knew then what I know now." And it's like, well, you did know because you had an instinct to move, and you just didn't 'cause you were scared.

**Shakti Rios:** And instead of addressing the fact that you were scared, you deferred the moment, and then you ended up in a place you didn't wanna be.

**Nicole Saunches:** Mm. Which, by the way, please don't ever waive your inspection unless you're tearing down the house. Yeah, that's a bad move. but, you know, people will do crazy things because they feel that pressure that they're going to be... They're not gonna get what they want because of the amount of competition.

**Shakti Rios:** I do not ever recommend making a decision in that energy.

**Shakti Rios:** I actually wrote a letter to the homeowners with a picture of my family, and I explained to them why we wanted their house, and then they took my bid over everybody else's even though it was less money. Because sometimes the best answer is a creative solution, not money, and people just don't see that.

**Shakti Rios:** But I was in a very calm state when I had that idea. Mm. I was not triggered by people wanting this house. I was in a creative place because my panic button was not on, so I had this insight. I was like, "I wonder if I wrote this to them..." 'Cause I knew that the sellers were Cuban and I'm Cuban, and I was like, "I wonder if I wrote them this letter, if that would make a difference."

**Shakti Rios:** I've bought many houses. Don't do that. You don't want that, right? No. So, but those are the types of things desperate people do because their brain is not all the way on, and that's not an insult, it's the truth. It's like your brain literally is not all the way on when you're stressed out. It's, like, partially functioning.

**Shakti Rios:** You don't want that. When you're making a big decision, you want all of your brain on. You want all of your brain and everything you can manage to be present.

**Nicole Saunches:** Yeah. And, and not every move comes from loss. Right and not every stressor comes from something negative. 100%. Even the happy ones can hijack us.

**Shakti Rios:** 100%.

**Nicole Saunches:** Of course. You know? Of course. New doctors, new roads, new friends, not knowing where anything is. and- Totally ... and I see that in my relocation clients too. That's why for me, it's so important to have a very detailed intake. Right. I would rather take a couple of hours, really digging in, or their first time here, taking a day just to drive around and for them to feel what neighborhood speaks to them- Right

**Shakti Rios:** Mm-hmm

**Nicole Saunches:** does it matter if you love the house?

**Shakti Rios:** Mm-hmm. That's true.

**Nicole Saunches:** So, for someone who's listening that has an offer to write or respond to this week, what can they do in the moment to come back to a calm, clear place before they sign?

**Shakti Rios:** The, the fastest and easiest thing is to sit with all the feelings they feel, and you don't even have to know how to tap. I mean, tapping is something there's a million videos of that everywhere online you can find.

**Shakti Rios:** But you don't even have to have that. You can literally just, that same point that I just said to you, which is the center of the chest. Here's a very simple exercise that someone can do. You have the offer in front of you, you're feeling a bunch of stuff, or maybe you're not feeling, you're kinda numbed out, which a lot of people are.

**Shakti Rios:** And you could say something like, "This feels like a really big decision. I'm not sure I feel capable of making this decision. I'm scared of making the wrong decision. I don't know if this is the right decision. I don't know if my partner's gonna like this decision. What's gonna happen when I make this decision?"

**Shakti Rios:** You're just gonna start saying all the things that you're thinking in the moment, and you're... What's gonna happen is your body's gonna start to, to talk. So either you're gonna feel, like, a lump come up in your throat, or tears are gonna start coming out of your eyes, and when that's happening, you've hit something.

**Shakti Rios:** And I want you to stay with whatever triggered that. Go back into that emotion. I'm scared. I'm worried. I don't trust my decision-making. The last time we bought a house, this happened. da, da, da, da, da. Whatever that thing is, for 20 solid minutes, you're gonna do that exercise, and by the end of those 20 minutes, you're gonna feel a physical difference in your body.

**Shakti Rios:** So after you do those 20 minutes, I then want you to go back to that contract, and I want you to look at it again, and I want you to see what's happening with you in that moment. If after you do those 20 minutes you feel a sense of excitement in you over this, then the answer is yes. If after those 20 minutes you feel a dread or, like, a pit-of-your-stomach feeling, then the answer is no.

**Shakti Rios:** And you're much more likely to be able to intuit that once you've turned down the noise on the emotional body

**Shakti Rios:** Yes ...

**Nicole Saunches:** if we're working together.

**Nicole Saunches:** Because I'm not there to tell someone their fear is wrong-

**Shakti Rios:** No ...

**Nicole Saunches:** or that their excitement is naive.

**Shakti Rios:** Right.

**Nicole Saunches:** What's good for one person might be bad for another.

**Shakti Rios:** Yep.

**Nicole Saunches:** I learned that a long time ago. My job isn't to hand out judgment.

**Shakti Rios:** Right.

**Nicole Saunches:** It's to help someone see clearly enough to make their own call.

**Shakti Rios:** Totally.

**Shakti Rios:** Yeah, so just, I think that's a great tactic. If you notice that you're starting to get into your head, you're getting stuck in a loop, you're freezing, you're hesitant, put a timer on for 20 minutes and be like, "We got a new exercise in front of us for the next 20 minutes." Yeah.

**Nicole Saunches:** Yeah. Our job today wasn't to tell you what to feel, it's to protect your sovereignty in this decision, to help you see clearly enough to decide for yourself.

**Nicole Saunches:** So Shakti, can you tell everyone where they can find you?

**Nicole Saunches:** And where can people get your book?

**Shakti Rios:** Oh, Amazon. It's called Allowed, just one word, and you put Allowed Shakti Rios and it should pop up, and it's literally about how to work with your emotions to stop ruining your own life. That's actually the title of the book. And it's a really quick read. It's an amazing field guide for handling difficult emotion.

**Shakti Rios:** It literally walks you through. There's like places to write in the book, and how to put it all together, how to use EFT. I make it very, very simple for you to use these tools and to understand what you're feeling when you're feeling it.

**Nicole Saunches:** Amazing. If there's one word I want you to leave with today, it's sovereignty.

**Shakti Rios:** Yeah.

**Nicole Saunches:** Feelings are information.

**Nicole Saunches:** Emotions are energy in motion. They're meant to move through us, not get stuck. The goal isn't to stop feeling them, it's to notice them and to let them move, and then decide from a steady place.

**Shakti Rios:** Yeah.

**Nicole Saunches:** And if you're thinking about buying or selling in St. Pete, and you want someone who will move at the pace of a clear decision, not a panicked one, please reach out.

**Nicole Saunches:** This has been Selling St. Pete. Thanks for listening, and take care of yourself this week