Permission to Kick Ass

Forget what you "should" be doing with Alex Pursglove

August 21, 2024 • Angie Colee • Episode 183

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Alex Pursglove just blew my mind with her take on living life with ecstasy and radical trust. We're digging into the struggle of high-achieving women (been there, done that) and how to break free from the "never enough" mindset. Alex shares some serious insight on embracing who you are right now (not who you think you should be). 

Can't-miss moments:

  • The unexpected connection between ecstasy and... business success? Alex's definition will make you rethink everything...

  • A gut-punch reality check about external validation and why it's probably screwing you over right now

  • Constantly looking for ways to improve but still struggling? You might have crossed into the "dark side of the high achiever" (this one certainly hit close to home)...

  • Alex's jaw-dropping story about following her intuition that led to a healing moment with her dad... just weeks before he passed away

  • The simple mindset shift that helped one of Alex's clients increase revenue by 70% in under a year (and it's not what you think)

Alex's bio:

Alex Pursglove guides women in becoming fully expressed and cultivating radical trust to elevate business growth, while living with more ecstasy in daily life. As a master coach, Alex has helped hundreds of women across the world with accelerating in business, and more importantly, learning how to accept and love their most authentic selves. She is a speaker and contributor to Authority Magazine, the host of the Igniting Ecstasy in Business podcast, and she has been featured on the SPEAK stage in New York as well as in Brainz Media and Swaay. She lives in Austin with her beloved husband, Adam, and their daughter, Stella Love.

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Angie Colee:

Welcome to Permission to Kick Ass, the show that gives you a virtual seat at the bar for the real conversations that happen between entrepreneurs. I'm interviewing all kinds of business owners, from those just a few years into freelancing to CEOs helming nine-figure companies. If you've ever worried that everyone else just seems to get it and you're missing something or messing things up, this show is for you. I'm your host, angie Coley, and let's get to it. Hey, and welcome back to Permission to Kick Ass. With me today is my new friend, alex Purseglove. Say hi, hi, everybody. We were spending a whole lot of time talking about setting up recording environments and stuff like that. We almost forgot to hit record. So tell us a little bit about your business.

Alex Pursglove:

Yeah, happy to dive right in with that. So what I essentially do is I guide women business owners, specifically high achieving types, into living with radical trust and self-acceptance, while also becoming their most fully expressed selves, so that they can not only elevate in business and bring true desires to life, but also live with more ecstasy in daily life. It's a good word.

Angie Colee:

I don't think I have ever heard ecstasy used in conjunction with business Well, maybe like an illicit business, but in this case we're not talking about drugs, we're talking about actual physical ecstasy. That is a fantastic word. What? What got you to?

Alex Pursglove:

that word. Yeah, it's been quite a journey and I really did a deep dive into using this word ecstasy and really reflecting on if this was a word that felt aligned with how I describe what I do and it really is, because, after doing some researching and then also how I integrate it into my own life, I have essentially three definitions of ecstasy that correlate to the three aspects of full expression. So when we're fully expressed, we've got our creative expression, our sexual or sensual expression, and then our spiritual expression. And so when I talk about living with ecstasy, there's the emotional state of joy and passion and excitement, elation, and so I believe that we feel those things when we're in our full creative expression.

Alex Pursglove:

And then there's also a spiritual state of being so deeply connected to your highest self, to your true self, and when you're in that kind of connection with who you really are, it creates a state of living in ecstasy, and it's not always about feeling positive or joyful or in bliss or happiness, but it's about being really present and aligned with who you really are and that creates an experience of you know, this ecstasy of being alive. And then there's also your sexual or sensual expression, which includes feeling physical ecstasy when you're in your pleasure. So, to me, being really connected to who you truly are, seeing the beauty of who you are, being aligned with what you're doing, doing what makes you passionate, what lights you up inside, and then also honoring your pleasure and being connected to your body creates this experience of living with ecstasy and joy and passion.

Angie Colee:

Oh, that's awesome. You know, one thing that popped into my head as you were describing all of that, and it's so great, it's like I feel what that feels like in my body and the times that I can recall kind of being in that state that's the word being Like I was not thinking, I was just in the moment I was there. Usually for me that's on stage because I'm a performer, so like this is very much being. And then when I'm on stage and I was singing with my band, there were points like I don't want to say I lost time, but I almost lost time, like I don't even recall being on stage. I was just in the moment having fun, and then I was off the stage and I was totally trained.

Alex Pursglove:

Yes, yes, that's exactly how I'd relate to it. It's when you're in that state of being so fully present and in the now, right, and so our ego really attaches to the past and the future and is, you know, future projecting or focusing on, you know, what we did wrong, what we could do better, regrets, or even just using the past to dictate what's possible. And when we're in that state of ecstasy, we're fully present in the now and fully connected with what's actually here.

Angie Colee:

I think that's really interesting. I mean, I've heard a lot about ego and attachment, but I haven't heard it phrased quite like that, that like the ego is constantly attached to the past or the future. And that's really interesting to me because I think that's where a lot of us live, like either anxiety over the future or dread or shame over the past, and it really keeps us from actually doing the things that we want to do, even when we're not consciously thinking of these things Like right, it's just running like a program, dragging on the ram in the background, slowing everything down, yeah.

Alex Pursglove:

Yeah, absolutely Well, because because all it does know is the past, right, and so our ego is really attached to. It's attached to our patterns and it's attached to safety and to the known right. So the only way the ego has to measure what's safe is what it already knows, which is its experience from the past. So, when we can, can, you know, integrate with our ego, and so I don't believe in making the ego wrong. Right, I think this is something and as a high achiever, I had this experience and a lot of people I connect with we tend to should on ourselves or shame ourselves for our ego popping up.

Alex Pursglove:

It's like the pattern arises. Then you're like no, I know better than that, like I'm more evolved, I should be more involved than this right To have this pattern showing up. And when we're doing that, that's actually a form of self rejection, because our ego is part of us, even though it's not, um, the deepest truth of who we are. It's, it's not our highest self, it's still a part of us, it's in there, and so what it actually needs is to just be accepted and acknowledged. Of course you're here, of course you're showing patterns coming up to keep me safe, and I don't need to let the pattern drive anymore, because the pattern is addicted to the past. It's using the past as its only example and there's so much more possible and here and available for us outside of what we know from our past.

Angie Colee:

Oh, I love that perspective and this is. This is such fascinating work. Like, how did you actually arrive to this as your business, as as your purpose?

Alex Pursglove:

Well, it's been quite a journey, as most people have when we get to finally feeling aligned with what we're really doing. So for me, let me actually go back to the first experience, Angie, and this is a little bit of a story.

Alex Pursglove:

But when I was, let's see, almost 25 years old, I was living in Dallas, texas, working in the film industry at the time, and on the surface, I was living this life that had checked a lot of boxes, that seemed like it was exciting or intriguing. You know, according to my friends and what I was sharing with them, I was working in film, I was in this relationship with a very successful older entrepreneur that I had moved to Dallas for, and so, on the surface, everything looked like, you know, it was going well. And then, out of the blue, I was diagnosed with a tumor in my pancreas tissue. And when I received that phone call, got this diagnosis, it's, needless to say, I mean, completely rocked my world, and I'm 24 and thinking how on earth did this happen to me? And so I went home that night that I got the diagnosis and I fell to my knees on my bathroom floor just sobbing, and I started to really look at the truth of my life and how everything I think that's fair to say, just about everything in my life felt very misaligned with what I actually wanted and who I really am. And so there were things that became very clear to me that didn't matter in my life, like the external validation I was getting or the boxes I had checked, producing a film or trying to keep growing in film None of that mattered to me. There were two things that were so clear that they mattered, and one was feeling much more connected to God, to divine unconditional love, and living what actually felt purposeful to me. I knew that I had so much more inside of me to give that I was.

Alex Pursglove:

I was basically an errant girl in the film industry, um, so it might've seemed kind of sexy on the surface to be working on movies or TV shows. I've underneath felt purpos, bored, underutilized. So I wanted to use so many more of my gifts and talents. I knew that I wanted to make more of a significant impact and, like I said, wanted to be more connected to divine unconditional love, because I realized that I had a very hard time actually being able to receive that in my life because I didn't feel worthy or good enough for it. And so I saw that my relationship was completely misaligned. It was an abusive, verbally, an emotionally abusive relationship. I was bored in the film industry, all the things. So my tumor turned out to be incredibly rare and non-aggressive. I ended up getting into a clinical research trial at the National Institute of Health to have my tumor removed. And so, after I was recovered from the surgery, cured from the surgery, a few months later, I quit the film industry.

Alex Pursglove:

I left my relationship, moved back home to Pittsburgh, which is where I'm from initially, and decided that I was going to basically start this quest to living my fully expressed life, like how could I live a life that actually was aligned with what I desired and that would light me up and that would help me own my worth from the inside out? So that was the very beginning of this journey. And then, a few years later, I started my business. I've been through so much testing and experimenting and I mean I started out as an executive coach and you know just all the different things that we go through right and building a business to try to learn where my my sweet spot was and through all of my own inner transformation, work and my own growth, I realized that what I was most aligned to do is to help women who were like me, who had a similar journey to me, who had that pursuing all the external achievement, to feel really good about yourself and recognizing that's not it Hitting the goals to see validation from other people? It's not it.

Angie Colee:

It's not what's most fulfilling.

Alex Pursglove:

So yeah, so that landed me here.

Angie Colee:

So, looking at what does it actually take and look like to live life in a way that we feel really amazing about who we are and then aligned with what we're creating, that's so interesting unrelated things and I just find it funny that, like the podcast guest that I spoke to just before, you was talking about the same thing like external validation, not being able to figure out what's really wrong or misaligned in your life and then just like setting out on this path of like experimentation is one thing that I wrote down and another thing that I wrote down after listening to all of that was underutilized. How many of us are just kind of coasting through our lives? I know I've been there feeling like we're not doing as much as we could be doing. And I don't mean that in the capitalistic you need to be productive sense. I mean that in the I am so good, I have so many passions, I have so many interests and there's so much more that I could be doing that I'm just I'm not. I feel like I'm wasting away at this day job. To you I say come to the entrepreneurial dark side. We would love to have you in. There are cookies. There's also another interesting pattern that I didn't know until you stated it.

Angie Colee:

I was also in the entertainment industry and I started in Pittsburgh. I got my graduate degree from Carnegie Mellon and we had one year in the entertainment industry in Pittsburgh and then we went out to LA and I was a production assistant and was aiming for development. But yeah, I experienced the same thing where people are like Angie's living this glamorous life off in in La La Land and I was like Angie is in a studio teaching people how to play minute to win it games. It's fun and it's astonishing that people get paid to create games like that full time as a job. But like is that the glamorous red carpet lifestyle?

Alex Pursglove:

No, this still kind of makes me chuckle to this day that my big claim to fame with my friends when I was working in the film industry was that on one of the films I had to buy Mark Wahlberg's toilet paper for his trailer and go and restock the toilet paper because it ran out. And I remember thinking like I don't know if this is something to brag about with my friends, or or should I just not own up to this and not share this with anybody, but which I know.

Angie Colee:

I just share it with everyone.

Alex Pursglove:

But yeah, that's. That's the kind of errands that I was running.

Angie Colee:

I have one too. I was an executive assistant. This one was at Warner Brothers and I'm like at the desk just typing away doing something and Chris Tucker from Rush Hour and the Fifth Element he just pops his head in the door, all casual, and goes yo, is this Kevin McCormick's office? And I was like for everybody that just heard, silence. Straight on the video you'll see that I'm just kind of like blank face, I don't know what to say, pointing in another direction, until a much more sophisticated and self aware assistant came along and said right, this way, mr Tucker, I'll show you where to go. And I was like, oh my God, it's a famous person. They just showed up in my office. I don't know what to do. Yeah, yeah.

Alex Pursglove:

Isn't that so interesting, angie, how we have that whole culture, the celebrity culture, right, and I experienced starstruck moments working in LA. And yet it's so interesting. Over the last few years, you know, as I've done such a deep study about what actually fulfills us in life, right, and the secrets, right To fulfillment, to more happiness, and I come back to this idea that you know the, the, the things that we perpetuate in our society uh, hitting fame, achieving the big goals, making a ton of money, that this is what's going right to fulfill you, and so, um, well, I think a lot of us have, um, uh, a conscious understanding that that's not all it takes, right to reach happiness or fulfillment. That conditioning still shows up in all these little ways and how we're showing up in business with and, where I see it, with entrepreneurs, especially as that cycle of when I just make more money, when I just hit this next level, then I can feel good about myself, then I can relax more than I can, you know, um, finally take more risks, then I can create the program that I actually want to run, and it's it's that that belief system of the external result will finally give me permission, right, to live my more fully expressed life or to feel good about myself. We're so conditioned away from actually feeling good on the journey, and this is where I think when I talk about, you know, ecstasy, and why I get so passionate about it is because that was my whole life, was waiting for some future destination to finally make me happy.

Alex Pursglove:

And this is why being diagnosed with that tumor really was this amazing experience of being kind of catapulted into the now, because I didn't know how much time I had when I first got that diagnosis. I didn't have someday Island to look to anymore because I thought this tumor is here and it's happening now, and so it made me take a really good, hard look at my life at 24 in a way, you know, I think a lot of 24 year olds aren't exploring but it made me stop and say like I'm actually miserable in my life. Right now. I'm checking these boxes and, you know, achieving these things that I always thought would make me happy, but I don't actually feel good. I felt terrible about myself. It was my lowest point of self-worth in my life and I just wasn't fulfilled by what I was doing. And so you don't, you know, have to be. There's a scale right From misery to ecstasy. But even just waiting to feel really good about who you are and where you are now is living in a myth.

Angie Colee:

Yes, it's living in a myth for so many reasons. One, because you're actually like putting off living, right You're, you're telling your, your brain, you're telling yourself, you're believing that I don't deserve this right now because I haven't gotten to this stage, this invisible stage that tells me I'm worth it. And I had a. A. A similar thing. I wrote about this in my book, like when I realized that I wanted to do a long, leisurely morning routine right. A lot of the hyper achievers in our industry talk about get up at four o'clock in the morning and do a cold plunge and if that works for you, hey, no shade, I am not a morning person and we will not be plunging this bootay into any ice cold water. Thank you very much, um.

Alex Pursglove:

I like to get up around seven.

Angie Colee:

I like to leisurely enjoy my coffee and stare off into space or stretch or play with the cats or whatever the hell comes up for a couple hours and not people before noon. That is like my pretty hardcore rule. I've relaxed it to about 11, but like if I can get up at seven and not have to talk to people until around 11, it's that's my kind of day and I didn't do that for so long because I had this story in my head about someday when, exactly like you said, we're going to plant this seed right now, If you've got as soon as just. You know what did I write down? When I just do this right Someday, when those are your trigger words to let you know that you are putting your life on pause, maybe start to look at ways that you could start living right now, right where you are.

Alex Pursglove:

Yes, yes, because the the most powerful thing about this, too, is not only does it help you enjoy the journey, which is really actually what is most important, and it actually helps you create greater results. I mean, there's so much research and study that's been done that shows that that happiness is tied to productivity, that happiness is tied to success, and so success that actually feels good, because how you show up on the journey is how you experience the destination. So, again, this thinking of you know, just once I finally, you know, get to this next level, then I'll be happy it. It doesn't just magically shift your state of being once you hit a new result.

Alex Pursglove:

And this was something I was actually just talking with one of my clients about the other day, because she had hit just milestone after milestone in her business and again, checking off all the boxes, right Like she started adding team members, she had surpassed six figures in revenue, she was just doing all the things that she thought would make her happy in her business. And yet she said I'd hit this point where I realized, no matter what I achieved, it was never enough, because how she was showing up on the journey was that it wasn't good enough yet, and her whole viewpoint was around looking for the gaps, the gaps, the gaps, the gaps, right, what still isn't enough yet, what still needs to be improved, and that's, that's, the dark side of the high achiever right.

Angie Colee:

As the okay.

Alex Pursglove:

Well, I always see room for improvements. I'm always focusing on what I could be doing better. And really, when, when you're in that kind of mentality, consistently the subconscious message you're sending to yourself is I'm not enough yet, I'm not enough yet, I'm not enough yet until I hit this next level. And so when she and I looked at really this, this biggest shift, it was the most significant thing she and I did. Almost I'd say 75% of our efforts together were around removing self-judgment, removing the judgment that it wasn't good, and focusing instead on radical acceptance, because radical acceptance is the portal to trust. It's the portal to feeling good right now on the journey. It's not about getting all the external things perfect and all the circumstances perfect. It's about you owning how you are, imperfectly perfect. You owning right that who you are right now today is good enough, and so we focused on that one shift. You know right that who you are right now today is good enough, and so we focused on that one shift. You know, just removing that judgment.

Alex Pursglove:

And it was amazing to see how, not only did her inner world experience change, where she said I'm starting to actually feel happy during my days, I'm taking more walks, I'm slowing down, I'm creating more space, I'm enjoying myself, I'm present with my kids, I'm enjoying time with them in ways I used to always feel stressed, like I still had all this stuff to do, and so she was also or not only experiencing more joy regularly. But then she increased her business revenue top line revenue by 70% in under a year. I mean, it was unbelievable. I had this incredible growth in her business and she didn't even have to do a lot more things right, she just had to shift. Her state was the most significant shift. So you can tell I'm passionate about this topic because I really believe all of us deserve to feel good about who we are now and to see the beauty in who we are now, cause we so often look for what's not what needs to change and what's not good enough yet.

Angie Colee:

Oh yeah, and two things came up for me when you were talking about that. One was yeah, there was a shift that I made too, and I'm I'm grateful to have a best friend in my life of over 20 years. We met in college and have been friends ever since, and one day I don't even remember what brought this out, I just remember how much this just like impacted me at a soul, at a cellular level right, we just made a rule. I can't talk to me, I can't talk to myself in a way that my best friend would not talk to me. So like if I'm coming to my best friend and saying, oh my gosh, I'm miserable, I made this mistake, I screwed up. My best friend is going to come back to me and be like oh honey, you get to be human, you get to do this, it's okay, you know a solution.

Angie Colee:

Have you been in a situation like this before? Why don't we put our heads together and brainstorm a way out of this? Right, that's how my best friend is going to approach me, whereas inside my own head, it sounds a little bit like you piece of shit. Why can't you just get it together? What the hell is wrong with you? Why do you keep failing right? We use ourselves as a punching bag, and so my life has drastically improved since I instituted that rule of I have to treat myself like somebody I give a damn about, like somebody I want a good relationship with, because somebody that I care about I would never approach them.

Angie Colee:

On a day I'm starting to get like a little teary eyed saying this, like, if you're depressed, if you feel like you messed up, if you are super upset and you go to your best friend and they go, what the hell is wrong with you? Why did you do that? Are you going to be best friends with that person for much longer? Are you going to trust exactly what you said? Are you going to trust that person? No, so don't do that to yourself. And then the other thing that came up for me was how you show up is how you experience success. You experience success.

Angie Colee:

Just talk about another pattern, because when I was starting to investigate my money stories, right, having grown up the eldest of three kids with a single mom, there was a lot of struggle, right, and I had a lot of money narratives in my head and somebody said to me once you know who you are now will only be amplified when you achieve that wealth. So if you are stingy, if you don't give now, that's exactly who you're going to be when you're rich. If you are generous and you give now and you support people, now, that's who you're going to be when you're rich. Don't meet yourself someday when. Meet yourself now. And I just thought, gosh, I have to tell Alex this. I have to tell her.

Alex Pursglove:

So good. Yes, it amplifies who you are already being a hundred percent, and that's why, if you're showing up in that pattern of it's not enough. Yet I remember thinking this when I first started my business. You know it took me my first four years in business. I think I made under $60,000. It was like I was grinding it out, trying to figure things out, like doing a ton of experimenting and testing. My background was in film and nonprofit, so I knew nothing about sales and marketing or, um, or really the operations of running a business, Um. So I did a ton of experimenting and so at that time I remember thinking, oh my gosh, surpassing even six figures in revenue would feel like you know, this huge leap forward. And I thought, oh, once I hit that, I'll never worry about money again, I'll never be stressed about money again.

Angie Colee:

And then um, I left for young, naive, aspirational us that don't understand how fast six figures go. That's me sending all the love to all of us. Yeah.

Alex Pursglove:

Yeah, we I feel like every business owner has been there right At some point just about um. And so, yeah, at the time I thought that would just solve all my problems. And then, um, when I hired my first business and transformation coach, it completely rocked my world, changed my life. I took this huge leap of faith to make this significant investment, uh, to work with her, and over the next year and a half I 10 X my business growth and so I was making more money than I have ever made in my life and I started doing workshops for women around the country. I was running group programs. I just had this huge elevation in my business.

Alex Pursglove:

And I remember specifically doing this one launch where, again, made more money than I'd ever made before, just in this one launch. And I sat down with my husband that night we were actually pregnant with my daughter, so he got me a sparkling grapefruit juice to toast this launch. And I remember saying to him I feel like I should be so ecstatic. I feel like I should, I should be so happy right now. This is amazing. And my head knew it was amazing. My head knew it was a lot of money. My head knew these new clients were going to be wonderful and that and that this was a successful launch.

Alex Pursglove:

And I said, but inside I feel like, but why wasn't it a six figure launch? It was more money than I'd ever made before in a launch, but why isn't it a six figure launch? It's not enough. Yet I got to figure out what I got to do better and in that moment was the first time I think I really stopped and realized, wow, I've been teaching about living in enoughness and enjoying the journey. I've been teaching it from my head. My head knows how to enjoy the journey, but inside I still don't feel it. Yeah, and it wasn't embodied heart knowledge yet. And I can look back at that, angie, and say it's, that's okay, that's not a wrong experience. I personally think we all kind of have to go through or most of us have to go through this journey of creating the bigger results, hitting the bigger goals, like creating the achievement, to realize from personal experience that it's so much more than that, that that embodied experience of enoughness.

Alex Pursglove:

Um is the path to greater fulfillment. But it's like we have to prove to ourselves that we can hit the big goals. So then we can see there's more.

Angie Colee:

Absolutely, and I find that I've had this conversation with so many other entrepreneurs too. It's interesting, and I find that I've had this conversation with so many other entrepreneurs too. It's interesting, and this is something that I'm passionate about too, because if you're in the early stages, you have to be careful who you're talking about your dreams with. Right, I can't share with everybody what you just shared.

Angie Colee:

Why wasn't this a six figure launch? I'm let down, which is a totally valid feeling. It is attached to something that I made up that's tied to feelings of self-worth, but it's still a valid feeling and, like the last guest, we were talking about examining feelings right, when you reject the feeling, that's when that stuff just keeps roiling underneath the surface and driving the bus right Without you being aware of it. So you've got to acknowledge that. What better place to do that than with other entrepreneurs who get the fact that, like well, that was a $99,000 launch. I'm a little bit disappointed. It wasn't a hundred thousand dollar launch. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm grateful that it was 99,000. Like, woohoo, I understand objectively, like with the perspective that I'm doing better than a lot of people, and I'm still allowed to be disappointed that I didn't hit this arbitrary goal that I set for myself.

Alex Pursglove:

Yes, well, it goes back to what we were saying at the beginning about not making your ego wrong, not making it wrong. You know, you mentioned about um you think of when the harsh thoughts come up. You'll think about how you talk to a friend. Um, since I became a mom, this has been huge for me. My daughter is such an incredible teacher she's two and a half and, um, actually almost three, uh now. So she's incredible teacher and I'll think about how, when my daughter is disappointed or when she has a tantrum, um, you know, when I was growing up, I was taught stop the tantrum, stop it like behave, behave, get over it, you're fine.

Alex Pursglove:

You're crying Like, don't cry, don't cry, you're fine. Um, I think many of us received that kind of conditioning as kids and what I've come to learn and experience and see now is that she just needs acceptance. She just needs love and acceptance. She doesn't have impulse control. Tantrums are normal. It's a healthy expression of frustration and feeling of being out of control for a two to three-year-old and so when she has a tantrum, when she feels disappointed or frustrated, it's oh honey, you're allowed to be disappointed. It's okay to be disappointed. Like, yeah, you thought you were going to maybe talk me into giving you a cookie before dinner. I understand being disappointed. You're not getting the cookie, that's okay. I'm disappointed too sometimes when I say no to cookies. It's okay.

Alex Pursglove:

You're a human, human emotion have experiences. We're meant to experience negative emotion, just like we're meant to experience positive emotion, because if we don't experience the negative, we can't know the positive. It's the universal law of polarity, right? Everything has an equal and opposite. You have to be able to experience the downs to experience the ups, and it's the same with rage and passion being on the same neural pathway. If you can't feel rage and anger, impassioned, being on the same neural pathway. If you can't feel rage and anger, you can't feel the extent of passion, and this is why, when I talk about living with ecstasy, I really stress this point that living a life of ecstasy is about feeling so completely alive and owning that.

Alex Pursglove:

I get to feel these emotions, I get to feel disappointed that I didn't have the big launch and you know what? There's probably something in this for me, there's something to look at, there's something I can tweak with my launch, that I can get more aligned. There's probably ways I am blocking myself from making the money that matches me. And, oh, I'm allowed to also feel really good and standard enoughness that this launch is exactly how it was supposed to be, and it's amazing that I've created the lead created and that I got to work with these clients right. So it's holding that duality of both and that's what creates feeling alive, is being present with what's here.

Angie Colee:

I love that. I love that you brought up that polarity too, because the thought that popped up into my head, to circle back to that, was you mentioned rage and passion being on the same spectrum. I heard that it triggered this quote, that I heard the difference between I'm paraphrasing a little bit but the difference between excitement and fear is the breath, and I went yeah, oh, oh, I can when I'm terrified of this thing I'm about to do and I am, you know, spiraling on all of the ways that this could go wrong and I might humiliate myself. What if I just focused on the breath and turned that into excitement of like, here's a grand experiment. What are we about to get ourselves into?

Alex Pursglove:

Yes, yes, you know, I love that quote, I actually.

Alex Pursglove:

So I just had a session with a client last week where we were working through some discomfort that she feels when she feels anxiety or fear in her body, and we looked at it and looked at how, when you can separate the story about it and the judgment about it and just pause and say what am I actually feeling? What are the sensations in my body right now? And it was, oh, like some, some tingling, some, you know, flipping stomach, like some, some like swaying motion, like in her body, and you know just feeling that energy, right. And when we stop and look at what if the emotion and the sensation just is, what if it's not right or wrong, it just is, that's just what you're feeling? And then you can look at okay, is the sensation? Is it pleasurable or not pleasurable? Sure, there's some sensations, right, that feel good or that don't feel as good. And when you can remove the story, you get to decide if it's fear or excitement. The fear or excitement is based on the story that you tell yourself.

Alex Pursglove:

So so often we feel fear, we're just having a physical reaction in our body. Our body is conditioned, our nervous system knows like. For me, I tend to get the flippy stomach or the tight knot in my stomach, but I feel fear and excitement through my stomach. When I'm excited, I feel this, the same energy, but it's about if. Am I focusing on, you know, embracing the unknown and what I get to create and, you know, bringing my expression out into the world, or am I worrying about what could go wrong? And it's the story I'm telling myself that creates fear, excitement or anger or passion.

Angie Colee:

They're all connected. What you were talking about being present, being in your body. What I came to the conclusion of and like this is my amateur diagnosis was I could never be in flow state as long as I was in my head thinking about what I was doing. Like, being in my head thinking about what I was doing, I was always a few like minutes behind or a few minutes ahead of what I'm actually doing because I'm kind of analyzing it. So everything's not in the moment, it's not instinctual, it's overthought, it's over calculated, almost even though it's happening super quickly. And the times that people have told me that, like they were blown away by my performance, were what I told you about that.

Angie Colee:

I can't remember being on stage. I don't really. I remember getting off stage that night and people going oh my God, that was great. But I don't remember being on stage. I don't really. I remember getting off stage that night and people going oh my God, that was great. But I don't remember being in the moment other than this, just the joy of performing, and I think that's the beauty of just like allowing yourself to be. I don't know where I was going with that thought, but it came up so.

Alex Pursglove:

No, I love it. I mean that's. I think the essence of what we're talking about is your beingness, right, and that's really been. I think the most transformative lesson for me, in my life as well, is, you know, I talked about making this 10x leap a few years ago. It was the first time from working with this mentor that I came to really understand that your success in business, I'd say, is probably about 20 to 25 percent what you do and 70 to 75% who you be, or 80, sorry, to 75% who you be.

Alex Pursglove:

So how you're showing up, how you're thinking, how you're connected to your intuition, how you're connected to your body I mean, our body is an incredibly powerful guide, right. Our body has incredible wisdom. Our intuition is so powerful it's always guiding us towards more expansion. Our intuition is so powerful it's always guiding us towards more expansion, towards our desires, towards opportunity, towards growth. I mean, our intuition always knows exactly what we need, always knows exactly what we need. So when you're tapped into your intuition, when you're trusting in yourself the unknown, when you're cutting out the people pleasing the approval, seeking the validation from other people right, and really operating from your own compass and letting your most authentic self-expression be heard and witnessed. That's when you experience quantum leaps. That's when everything changes, when you accelerate your results in a way that feels good.

Angie Colee:

Wow, yes, I love that. I'm passionate about this because I feel like I also artificially held myself back for a long time, like, in many ways, this podcast is when we talk about coaching our younger selves. Right, this is me talking to a younger Angie going yes, you have permission to do what you want to do, even if it doesn't make sense to the people around you. You have permission to follow your heart, to be your authentic self. You have permission to follow your heart, to be your authentic self. There's a time, five, 10 years ago, like I'm holding up my hair now that is bright, purple and red I wouldn't have dreamed of doing this because I thought I would scare people away. This is the beacon right here that brings people into my world who go I love your hair, I love it, I love your hair. What color is that? And then now we're relating on a completely different level from so what do you do for business? Oh, I do this. Here's my 30 second elevator pitch blah, blah, blah. Gag me Right.

Alex Pursglove:

I love what you just said about your red hair and like that, that owning your authentic self-expression. And if I can share this one story cause it's a recent story actually, but you know I love that this is that your whole podcast is around conversation right and real conversation, and so I'd love to share this personal experience I had that, I think, was really such a deepening in me understanding this practice that I've been believing in and living by. But when I experienced it, it just took it to a whole new level, and so it was just this past fall I was invited to speak in an event that focused on sharing ideas through personal storytelling. It's called the platform's called Speak, a great up-and-coming platform to support speakers and their personal stories, and so there were short talks and as I was preparing mine, I was stuck for a little bit.

Alex Pursglove:

I thought, okay, I knew the general idea, but I couldn't really find the essence of my story yet and what I wanted to share, and so I was wrestling with it a little bit, and then one day I finally I got by at time and I sat down and just really connected to my heart and where it was guiding me, and all of a sudden this idea came up that I wanted to share about my experience in childhood and growing up in an angry home and how I personally experienced my father yelling at me when I was a little girl, and so this idea came up and then I thought, oh wait, but I've never talked about that publicly before.

Alex Pursglove:

I've talked about it with clients and in small groups, but I've never done it on a. This talk is going to be on YouTube. You know, I've never done it on a public platform. And so I realized, if I was going to share the story, that I would need to talk to my dad and tell him that I was going to share this, and that brought up I mean, my people, pleaser, went crazy it was like, oh my gosh, what's my family going to think?

Alex Pursglove:

What will he say? My dad and I have never talked about this before. How is he going to react? Am I, you know, a bad daughter, all the things? And then I stopped and thought okay, I'm allowed to have all that fear. And what's my highest self, what's my intuition guiding me to? My intuition is screaming, but it wants to tell the story, and I believed it would be in service to my my people, cause I know a lot of women I work with have had this experience of having anger in their homes.

Alex Pursglove:

And so, um, I decided to have this conversation with my dad and to tell him that I was going to share the story, and it took a little bit, you know, we had to talk about it a little bit. It was a surprise for him because we had never talked about its effects on me, but towards the end, he was able to receive what I was saying and actually ended up apologizing for how it affected me. It was this beautiful, healing conversation where I felt like I got to show up with real compassion, because I made it a point not to bring in people pleasing, not to need his approval for it, but to simply tell him you know and share my experience and really to own. It wasn't about him, it was about my experience. So we had this beautiful conversation and then I committed myself to just living in that truth that this would be in highest service to all. So when you follow your intuition, when you follow your desires in highest service to everybody so I committed to that, I did. The talk felt amazing about the talk, had some incredible things happen from that, but what was most powerful was that three weeks later my dad had a heart attack and went into cardiac arrest and a month later he passed away.

Alex Pursglove:

And my very first thought when I got the call to go to the hospital and heard that he had a heart attack was that I was so grateful that I got to have that conversation with him.

Alex Pursglove:

I didn't know how the conversation would turn out, but it ended up being this, this feeling of closure with my dad, that I got to actually talk to him about my experience as a kid and have him apologize and have me forgive him. And it was the very first thought I had and to this day I share it and it gives me goosebumps because I thought when I had that inspiration to do that talk. I was thinking about how it was going to serve my audience and okay, well, it would serve them. And now I see it was so in service to me and my family and my relationship with my dad right before he passed. And so, like I said, it was this experience of just taking that knowledge deeper into, this embodied knowing your intuition never steers you. So, letting that guide you, the more you can remove all the thoughts, the approval seeking thoughts, what other people think you should do the comparisons, thinking you have to do it like everybody else and follow your own inner compass. It will create just the most powerful opportunities in your life.

Angie Colee:

I'm just like letting that sit for a second because that just feels like such a mic drop, like thank you for sharing that with us, like I can feel the emotion and the spirit from here and that just feels like the perfect note to wrap on Just trust yourself. Your intuition doesn't steer you wrong. These things are working for you Well. Thank you for being such an incredible guest. This is making my heart feel so good, so happy, so smiley today. I really appreciate you. Tell us more about where we can learn how to work with you. See your speeches all of it.

Alex Pursglove:

Thank you, angie. Well, I'll start with. I have a gift to offer your audience. It's my ebook on radical trust a woman's guide to manifesting true desires, joy and passion. So it gets a lot deeper into these concepts of how you can connect to yourself, your intuition, and really trust yourself in a greater way. So that's at alexpersklovecom backslash radical trust. You can also find me at alexpersklovecom and I love to connect with people. I'm all about authentic human connections. So anyone who just has a thought, an insight, a story, a question from this podcast, I love to get to know people. So you can find me online on social media. I'm sure there will be links in the show notes. Just send me a message. I'd love to hear what resonated with you from this conversation.

Angie Colee:

Love it, love it, love it. And look if you're hesitating and wondering, is she talking to me? Yes, yes, if you feel called to respond, if you feel called to reach out, do not talk yourself out of it. Practice trusting that intuition right now. Go click on the show link. There's going to be clickable links in the show notes. Go click on those. Reach out, say what you need to say and trust. Oh, I love it. Thank you so much for being on the show. I appreciate you. Thank you, angie.

Alex Pursglove:

So enjoyed it.

Angie Colee:

That's all for now. If you want to keep that kick-ass energy high, please take a minute to share this episode with someone that might need a high-octane dose of you can do it. Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to the Permission to Kick-Ass podcast on Apple Podcasts, spotify and wherever you stream your podcasts. I'm your host, angie Coley, and I'm here rooting for you. Thanks for listening and let's go kick some ass.