Managing Confrontations as a Highly Sensitive Entrepreneur with Evelina Åström - EP 030

 

 

In this episode, Evelina Åström, a trauma-informed leadership mentor and relationship expert, offers valuable insights on managing confrontations for highly sensitive female entrepreneurs. She explains how trauma and sensitivity are interconnected and how they can impact an entrepreneur's ability to handle confrontations. She explores various scenarios where entrepreneurs might face confrontations, such as with team members, clients, and business partners, and provides strategies for approaching these situations more effectively and in alignment with one's values.

In this conversation, we discuss the power dynamics in relationships and how to approach confrontation in a way that promotes healing and growth. We also explore the concept of being heart-centered and how it can help in managing confrontations. 

Evelina shares her insights on setting healthy boundaries and the importance of self-awareness. We also discuss human design and how it can guide individuals in finding alignment in their work. Overall, the conversation emphasizes the importance of listening to oneself and acting from a place of love and authenticity.

Join us for this enlightening conversation and learn how to navigate confrontations with confidence and grace as a highly sensitive entrepreneur.

 

Takeaways

• Highly sensitive entrepreneurs may struggle with managing confrontations due to their sensitivity and desire for integrity.
• Confrontations can occur in various areas of an entrepreneur's life, including business and personal relationships.
• Approaching confrontations with a balanced mindset and focusing on resolution rather than conflict can lead to more positive outcomes.
• Understanding the connection between trauma and sensitivity can help entrepreneurs navigate confrontations more effectively. 
• Setting healthy boundaries is important in maintaining healthy relationships.
• Self-awareness and self-regulation are key in managing confrontations.
• Human design can provide insights into finding alignment in one's work.

 

Episode Chapters

00:00 - Introduction and Background of Evelina Åström

08:21 - Understanding High Sensitivity and its Impact

26:57 - Approaching Confrontation from a Heart-Centered Space

32:59 - Finding Alignment Through Human Design

 

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Episode Transcript

 

Rachel (00:01.582)

Hello and welcome to Pleasure and Profits. I'm your host, Rachel Anslohn, and I'm just getting over a little bit of a cold, so I sound a little scratchy. I've got my water. Hopefully we'll make it through this episode without coughing along the way. Send me good vibes. And I'm really excited to introduce you to our guest today. She's coming all the way from Sweden. 

Her name is Evelina Åström, and she is a former counselor turned trauma informed leadership mentor and relationship expert. So lots of great stuff to share with us today. She specializes in confrontation management for highly sensitive, big hearted female entrepreneurs. With over eight years of experience helping women see their heart's truth, she has dedicated her life to empowering and inspiring women around the world to guard their feminine light and shine brightly without being dimmed by confrontations. She's here to help us understand how the power of managing confrontations differently and the profound impact it can have, not only on our lives, but on the lives of all of those around us. Welcome to the show, Evelina. Yeah, I'm thrilled that we could make this work. I know it is in the evening, late evening, your time. So thanks for staying up late to be here with us.

 

Evelina Åström (01:15.972)

Thank you, I'm so happy to be here.

 

Evelina Åström (01:27.844)

So grateful and I'm also having a cold so I am.

 

Rachel (01:30.354)

Um, yeah, I know we were chatting before I started recording. We both getting over colds for both a little squeaky and, uh, Evelina has her tea. I have my water and we will, um, we will. We have a little competition to see who can get through this without coughing. We'll see how it goes. Um, so Evelina, tell us how you got started as an entrepreneur. You are a counselor and then you moved into this world of coaching and mentoring.

 

Rachel (01:58.154)

What kind of counseling were you doing and what inspired you to move into coaching and mentoring?

 

Evelina Åström (02:04.188)

Yeah, so I've been a counselor in different areas. I've been in hospitals, in schools and all. Yeah, and so I decided it took a while to decide and really like now I'm gonna start my business and I was focusing on I really wanted to help women with trauma to heal. That was my like first know was an inspiration for me. I have worked in the women health clinic as well and I really felt I wanted to continue working with that. 

But when finding my niche, because I felt like I need to find a niche, like I need to you know, I'm all about you know getting inspiration from, I can get inspiration from anything, you know, you get an idea from, you know, and, and I was just scrolling one night at Facebook and I saw a post from an entrepreneur online who was really devastated around the confrontation. 

She was asking other entrepreneurs like how do you manage when you know clients confront you or when you know, people do stuff online that really harm and hurts, you know, it harms your reputation, but it also really hurts. And she asked specifically like, how can you stay calm when this happened to you? You know, and it was really late in the night and I was so inspired by this post. I really wanted to give her an answer and I was new as an entrepreneur by then.

And I was really clear about that. Like I have not been in the entrepreneurial world for a long time. However, I have been working as a counselor for many, many years. And, you know, in the university, when I was studying, something we really was teached was to like, how do you manage people that are upset or angry and be, and stay professional, you know? So I felt really confident in talking about that.

So I wrote a really long comment and then afterward I just realized like maybe this could be, you know, a course or, you know, there was so much good stuff in that comment. And I realized that I was this, this is my expertise, you know, I was showing what I am good at and I felt so confident. And I also have gone through a personal journey with this. So, I have also personal experience and find my own way of dealing with confrontation because I am highly sensitive as well. So yeah, that's how I found it.

 

Rachel (05:11.623)

Yeah, there's so many little nuggets there I want to touch on. So number one is that I think there's so much beauty in taking something that you have had a career in and developed expertise in. And then you reach a point where you realize I can do this for myself with very specific people that I want to work with. I don't have to you know, be employed in a job. 

I can do this as an entrepreneur. I can consult, I can coach, I can mentor people because you have a skillset that's needed in those spaces too. And every entrepreneur isn't going to, you know, be able to hire you as a full-time person, right? But they could coach with you. They could have you as a mentor to advise them. In my experience in the entrepreneurial space, well, actually I'll go back earlier than that.

Having worked in, primarily in the hospitality industry for many, many years and having grown up, I think I'm a little bit older than you, growing up as a teenager in the 90s, in that sort of, that wave of feminism that was really around not being feminine. It was very much like, if you wanna play this game, you have to act like the guys, which means you can't.

 

Evelina Åström (06:26.352)

Exactly.

 

Rachel (06:28.162)

You can't be sensitive. You can't, you know, you have to show up and be tough. And, you know, don't take any shit really. It was kind of the messaging. And so becoming, moving into the workforce, having learned that, I became a manager and a leader who thought that I had to manage and lead without emotion, without really very strict, like here's the rules. You follow them or you don't.

I remember having conversations as a manager in my early 20s, all the way up into my 30s of like, really, it was very black and white. This is the job. You do it or you don't. It was very, very masculine in the way that I was taught to do that. And I would struggle with that. I remember firing an employee very cold. These are the things that I'm supposed to say.

And saying them and she left the room and I just started sobbing because it just broke my heart, you know, but that's what we were taught. And then coming into the entrepreneurial space, it's like, well, I don't want to do it that way, but I don't really know any other way to do it. And so, and then I'll just quickly, and then I see, you know, from where I'm sitting now so many helpers and healers who don't have management experience, who don't have experience of dealing with people in these types of situations.

They're there to teach and to heal and support. And now they have a team and they have clients. They have contracts and they don't even have that old outdated way of doing it. They don't have any understanding of how to do it. And so I think there's so much value in what you're bringing to the space. Let's talk about this highly sensitive person stuff because I think that there's so many of us that fall into that category.

How did you start to learn about that? And what does that mean to you? And what does that mean in your work?

 

Evelina Åström (08:27.448)

Me personally. So I think to me personally I started to... I heard about highly sensitivity far away like when I was studying in the university for many years ago. But when it really had a big... It was important for me to start reading about it and really understand it.

It was at a point in my life when I was more sensitive than before, because I had been through trauma and I was trying to heal from complex trauma myself. And I did. But one important thing for me was to understand my sensitivity and really take it seriously. And not just, you know...it doesn't matter, I just feel that way. It's nothing, you know, starting to take it seriously and really listen to my and use my highly sensitivity. So that's how I started to, to really learn more about it myself. And when it comes to my work now and the people I help and being an entrepreneur, and being highly sensitive and also big hearted because I think, you know, being highly sensitive means you we have a strong sense of, let's see if I can find the word, but you know, with a strong conscious, no strong. We want to, we are kind hearted, we really want to do stuff with integrity and you know we…

 

Rachel (10:25.474)

Yes, like want to have an impact. We're very, very like mindful of like how we're serving and how we're showing up in the world. Yeah.

 

Evelina Åström (10:33.352)

Exactly, exactly. And one thing that I think is something many entrepreneurs that are highly sensitive struggling with is that, you know, being an entrepreneur means a lot about, as you say, it's a managing thing. And it's also like you're gonna, you have to sell and you have to find your way. And there is a lot of like, masculine or ways of doing it. And I think many entrepreneurs can feel that it needs to align with them. They can feel tricked by some people or they can feel, you know, so there's a lot going on outside in the entrepreneurial world that doesn't really fit you if you're a highly sensitive entrepreneur.

And especially confrontations and accusations and managing all those stuff can be really tough.

 

Rachel (11:40.663)

Yeah. I think one of those things I can say from my own experience is around the sales process. I think there's a lot. And so there are so many people who teach that the sales process, the way to sell effectively, is to set up this situation where the potential customer feels like they're missing something and they need you to fix it. And there's this sort of a little bit of a manipulation happening there and a lot of circumstances and then pressure. You know, ending up in a sales conversation with a coach or with anyone who's like giving you this really ultimatum of if you really want this, you'll buy it now. You know, if you walk away, it means that you're not committed you know, these sort of structures that so many people have been taught and implement. 

And I know for myself, it doesn't, I can't sell that way. It doesn't, it feels completely out of integrity to me. And also when somebody tries to sell to me that way, it really causes like a level of resistance because it's so overbearing. And so if you are an entrepreneur and you're trying to learn how to sell, and this is what everybody's teaching, then what you end up doing is resisting selling because you don't wanna do it that way, that way feels yucky, you know? And so instead you end up just not making the sales because you don't know how else to do it, right? And so learning how to have those conversations in a way that's more in alignment and more integrity. And there are people out there teaching it. You just have to find the ones, right, who...who, and it's a little bit different process, you know? Yeah.

 

Evelina Åström (13:42.028)

Yeah. And also, well, being highly sensitive makes you also so sensitive to, you know, what's happening, you know, behind the, you understand the hidden agenda behind when someone is selling to you. And obviously you might not want to lead with that yourself.

Like we can know the truth behind people's, you know, we know the intention behind the behaviors. And I think that's really, it can be overwhelming to have that knowledge and to sense that all the time, especially when it comes to angry people or people that are upset or the people that complain and all those stuff, those type of, it's just the tension that you can sense.

And it's hard to deal with if you don't know.

 

Rachel (14:45.866)

So I want to come back to talking about dealing with clients, customers, team members, that kind of stuff. But I want to touch on something that you just said there or something you've been speaking about, this highly sensitive person, and also trauma. And I know that it's a topic I'm a little bit obsessed with these days. I know a lot of us are because there's sort of all this new information coming out for myself. It's, you know, being...45 entering into perimenopause, suddenly finding hormone change is happening, realizing that A, I've always known that I'm highly sensitive, B, that I probably have undiagnosed ADHD because girls weren't diagnosed with it in the 80s and the 90s when I was growing up. And I developed all these coping mechanisms, right, in order to live. But now here I am at this place where like, oh, those coping mechanisms.

They don't work anymore. And so I've gone down this pathway of learning about the ADHD brain. Some people say that it is the hunter brain. Some people call it the driven brain. It's this entrepreneurial personality that's like I can see how the pieces fit together differently than other people can. But also what comes with that is this high sensitivity of I'm picking up everything that's going on in the room, what people are thinking, what they're feeling, what their intentions are, because there's this element, whether you call it the hunter brain or the driven brain or the highly sensitive brain, it's like we're prepared for anything that could happen. 

And there are people who believe that this is the result or is exacerbated by trauma, whether that's a severe complex trauma over a long period of time. And there certainly are people who say, you know, any person, woman in particular, living under capitalism and having been trained their whole life to not feel what they're feeling or, you know, to hide all that stuff away, that itself is a complex trauma. So I'm curious what, you know, with your training and your experience, what's the relationship that you see there or what are your thoughts on the relationship between trauma and sensitivity.

 

Evelina Åström (17:14.388)

Yeah, well I think it's a topic that I really like as well. And I think, you know, between highly sensitivity and trauma, I think that's, you know, when you are sensitive in the first place, so you have that personality and you're going through a trauma that can definitely make you even more sensitive because, as you say, you're always alert because your body has been through something that just makes it scared for threats, right? So you're searching the room for threats. That's like a normal thing as well. 

But I think also that many times, no matter if it's a trauma or just like just an experience in your life that just made you create belief systems and fears in your life that affects you still today. Doesn't matter if it's a trauma, just like a more normal experience, it can still create really big impact in your life and how, yeah, in your life basically. So, and I think when I talk about managing confrontations and with my clients, we do a lot of inner work.

So we look at what has actually made you feel the way you feel. Because the clients that come to me, they feel really affected by confrontations. They can be confronted and it can ruin the whole week, basically, because they can't sleep and they are thinking about it and they're discussing in their head, like, how should I manage this, what should I do? And as you said in the beginning of our conversation, the old way of not listening to your feelings and to have this macho way of dealing with people is just not, it doesn't work for them and they don't really know any other way of dealing with it other than maybe people pleasing and that's not an option, right? So, yeah, and I think, so that's why I think fears that is affecting us in different ways in life is definitely due to different experience that we have with us.

 

Rachel (20:00.718)

So let's talk about confrontation and sort of some of the different places that an entrepreneur might run into these confrontational situations and need to learn how to handle them in a better way, in any way at all. And so maybe just not avoiding. I think we tend to think you're either avoiding or you're like throwing yourself into the wolves, to the intensity, to this scary situation. And so, you know, there is a place in between there where you can resolve conflict in a helpful way. I think that conflict with, I would say, there's this sort of category of team members, whether they're employees or contractors needing to resolve confrontation in those places.

And then similarly, because we have people who are on both sides, like they are either the employer who's employing contractors or they are the contractor. They are the one who's been hired by some other entrepreneur and needing to learn how to navigate those conversations in an effective way.

 

Evelina Åström (21:10.7)

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, all those situations. And it can also be, you know, business partners or collaborations in different ways or clients. And yeah, so there is a lot of different stuff. And by the end of the day, if you have confrontations in your personal life as well, in your family, a family member that is confronting you, texting you just when you are supposed to work and meet your client or customer or so. So that can also affect your business. And so my clients can have confrontation both in their business, affecting their business, or outside of their business, in their personal life, still affecting their business.

 

Rachel (22:06.23)

So what are some ways that a highly sensitive person, a heart-centered entrepreneur, might approach those confrontations differently than they've learned in the past?

 

Evelina Åström (22:18.544)

So I think, you know, there is, as you talked about, there is a middle place between being the warrior, just throwing yourself into this situation, and being a people pleaser, not really standing up for yourself, or managing it in a good way, right? And I think...I think also when we talk about confrontation, I love to talk about confrontations and not conflicts because

 

Rachel (22:52.938)

Okay, what's the difference in your mind? What's the difference between the two?

 

Evelina Åström (22:56.988)

So when we talk about conflict management, we are in a conflict, we are in a situation where emotions running high, we have a disagreement.

 

Rachel (23:06.702)

Oh, it's like you're already farther down the road at the point that you're in conflict versus confrontation. You're not there yet. It's like choosing how you're going to approach it. Oh, that is a great distinction. Thank you for making that.

 

Evelina Åström (23:13.024)

Exactly. And yeah, and it can either, you know, develop into a conflict or it can just be someone confronting and by dealing with it differently, you can actually, you can actually make the confronter, even if it's a like a toxic person in your environment, you can make that person change and actually support you. So how we deal with it is important because we can learn.

 

Rachel (23:44.854)

So I'm just thinking, I'm sorry, I want to make this one more distinction that I think is really important before you go on, which is as you were saying that, what I realized is that I was saying the word confrontation as if it was a bad thing, right? And it's not in the way that you're using it. And I think it's a really important, the confrontation, we sort of as at least in our American culture, the word confrontation has a negative connotation that it's a bad thing that you have to confront somebody about it, about something, right? And so what I'm hearing from you is that it doesn't have to be a bad thing. It can be that confrontation is a tool not a and it's not good or bad is the way you show up to it.

 

Evelina Åström (24:36.684)

Yeah, because I still think, like in my opinion, it's still something that, you know, it's triggering for people to be confronted. And I don't, I really dislike, you know, the idea of, you know, when someone says to you like, oh, you should just confront them, setting your boundaries and defense yourself. You then you become that warrior that just rush into the situation and it's most probably will develop into a conflict, right? So I think that, you know, it's totally normal for people to confront when we, stuff can happen that just triggers that inside of you. If you just react, if you're not acting, you're reacting, right? So it's totally normal, but how we deal with it.

And I would say also it's especially normal when you are a person that wants to create change in the world and for people. Because when people are faced with that, you know, like it is possible to change the situation, some people will confront you. Like that's a normal reaction to that situation. And that's why for me it's really important to help women that are highly sensitive, that are really kind and big-hearted, heart-centered to be able to manage those confrontations so they are not deemed, so they can continue with their work. Because I think when we get in a situation where someone confronts you, we can choose. Like we can choose to either, as I said, jump into that situation, defend ourselves, because that's the natural reaction, right? At the same time, I think I've talked with a lot of people that says...they get this advice of like, you should just go and talk to them or you should, you know, defend yourself and it doesn't really align. It doesn't really feel good. 

And so what I teach is to meet that situation in a way that doesn't trigger any more development of the situation that actually like create, because if you work, do the inner work and you heal yourself, when you meet that person that are confronting you and are reacting to something, you can meet that person in a way that kind of put a seed of healing inside of the other person. And you could, especially if you can stay with inner peace, as I am teaching my clients how to do, we can basically make not only you feel really good and not being you know so affected by this situation but we can also like make that person stop doing that basically so it's like a beautiful effect just healing and not healing just you but also people around you so yeah

 

Rachel (27:59.374)

I'm having this, I'm just like having all these realizations for myself as we're talking about this. So I'm going to go down a little path here. And you could tell me if I'm off base, if I'm not understanding correctly, but here's what's triggering in my thought process is I believe that in relationships, any relationship, whether it's romantic partner, a friendship, employer, employee, business partners, customer in a business, whatever the relationship is, that there is a power dynamic. And we have like historically in the patriarchy, under capitalism, there's this belief that having more power is important. And that once you have that power, you have to hold on to it. And that the way to hold that power is to dominate in some way. And so what I've learned for myself in my relationship with my husband, and this has been an evolution, I would say, over the last 10 years is starting to understand that in a true partnership, that power dynamic doesn't exist. That that's a fabrication, that's a construct, and that doesn't have to be that way. And that in a true partnership, that part, there is no difference of power. There is no more dominant person and more sub, what's the word I'm looking for? This is my sick brain not working. Submissive, so dominant and submissive partner. And so in our learning of like capitalism and the way you run businesses, there's also that.

You know, we've been taught that there's that power dynamic. You're the CEO, you're the owner. And so you have more power and you need to be the dominant person in this environment and that if we approach it from a feminine perspective, then we're all partners and we all bring something to the table and it might be different things in different quantities. And, but we're all bringing something to the table and that we don't have to exist in these spaces and in a dynamic and an environment where there is a power differential that we can be partners in, in true partners. And if you approach confrontation with a true partner, the way you approach that is, here's how I feel in this situation. Here's the outcome that I want to get from this. How do we make this work? Instead of coming in accusative, either accusatory or defensive.

Am I on the right path, Evelina? Is that, am I getting what you're saying?

 

Evelina Åström (30:55.093)

Yeah, absolutely. But also like, it's when we were talking about the power dynamics, like every person on this earth wants to feel power over their lives or their business. Yeah, empowered. That's a good word. So when we approach people that maybe have an You can sense they're upset, you can sense, you know, and that's the thing when you're highly sensitive, you also have this, you know, we're not even preventing when it comes to talking about confrontation, we can actually sense when a confrontation will happen, like earlier before it even happens, the event. So being highly sensitive makes you able to actually prevent it long before it actually happens. If you are, if you know how to decode what you're sensing. But anyway, but yeah.

 

Rachel (31:52.558)

Mm-hmm. No, I think that's really good. And so if you do sense that and you don't know how to deal with it, then what ends up happening is you just end up avoiding. You avoid that person, you avoid that situation. So the fact that... Yeah.

 

Evelina Åström (32:05.12)

Yeah, avoiding is not the answer, but at the same time, like, I am all about, like, I think the beautiful thing if you're kind-hearted is that you don't want confrontation, so you're kind of avoiding it. But if a situation happens, you can deal with it. Like, you're not, you're not avoiding it out of fear, you're dealing with it when it happens, but still, you have, you know how to act and manage to actually avoid it in your life. Because the thing is, people don't believe it's possible to have a life without confrontations, a business without confrontations, but it's possible. And I think that's also a thing that I want to share with people because this possible, I don't remember what we were talking about.

 

Rachel (32:59.482)

Okay, it's okay. I think this happens. We go in circles. It's one of the reasons I love talking to women. And probably some of the men I talked to are like, what's happening? Because we talk in circles and I like it that way. 

Okay, so what I would love to get clear on then is if the goal, potentially, is to be able to avoid, not avoid confrontation, but not have a need for confrontation, because you can sense what's happening and find a way to resolve it beforehand. So it's really like being proactive about challenges that come up and finding opportunities to come to a consensus or a resolution before a confrontation is needed. What I don't know is, what do you call that? Like what's...the word to describe that or how do you describe that to your clients in a way that makes them understand.

What the intention is there or what the process is or what that sort of pre-confrontation phase is.

 

Evelina Åström (34:15.568)

I think, you know, there's many things I want to talk about, but let's... So one thing that, you know, I think many of us have both struggling with, but also trying to work out, like, how do I set healthy boundaries in my life? That's normal for highly sensitive to trying to figure it out, right? Because it's easy to become a people pleaser.

And I think, you know, to me talking about setting boundaries, then we are already in like a conflict. We're all already in a conflict zone when we need to set boundaries. We are already there. So I like to, I like to talk about the preventive stuff because if we are in tuned, not only to others, but also in tune to ourselves, we can, we can act before we need to set boundaries. So.

 

Rachel (35:13.146)

So then you don't you're not even in the position where you have to say, okay, this has gone too far I mean you you're setting up an expectation then it becomes really about communicating a clear expectation

 

Evelina Åström (35:26.676)

Yeah, yeah. So of course I'm helping my clients to set boundaries because I'm not teaching them to people please or you know, when I talk about like my signature program is called Guardians of Feminine Light so we guard them, we guard their kind heart, we guard their open heart because what happens when we are confronted is that…kind of close our, we freeze and we close ourselves, we might not listen to our inner voice, our feelings, our senses, you know, and I am helping them to guard that so it's not being frezeed instead we can stay open and still act aligned with our heart. So, that’s really important when it comes to confrontations.

 

Rachel (36:21.783)

Yeah.

Do you find that many of the very sensitive people that you work with are so focused on what they're picking up from other people that they're paying less attention to what they're feeling themselves?

 

Evelina Åström (36:40.12)

Yeah, especially when it comes to upset people. They are very... I think, you know, you can... I think it's so interesting to work with confrontation as well, because you can practice a lot of self-awareness, at home in a safe environment, but when it comes to confrontation, a lot can... You know, that's a situation where most people do feel threatened and do feel... You know, it...awakes a lot of emotions and fears and stuff. So practicing and heal the stuff that happens when you get confronted so that you can feel inner peace when you're confronted then you have a really high level of self-awareness and yeah a deep level of healing.

 

Rachel (37:36.21)

Yeah, I imagine it's similar to yoga. We practice creating this sort of state of equanimity on the mat and grounding and presence and listening to the breath and all those things. And it's very different when you're in traffic and somebody cuts you off, right? It's learning how to take that inner strength that you're cultivating out into the world and being able to apply it when you're surrounded by noise and people and intensity and sort of all these things that are happening. I can see that, and I sense that for myself often where I'm like, I think I'm doing great these days. And then I like go out in the world and I'm like, ah, no, I need to go back in my house. There's too much, I can't take it. And so when we're talking about confrontation and challenges in that way, especially for entrepreneurs, it can be easy to just kind of hole up at home, right?

And be behind your computer and do all the things. But if your goal is really to impact people's lives, then you have to get out there and you have to be able to have the difficult conversations and put yourself in situations that maybe are a little bit challenging and trust that you've cultivated that strength of this sort of inner knowing the ability to listen to yourself that you're talking about.

 

Evelina Åström (38:38.319)

Yeah.

And know how to regulate yourself so that even if you get confronted you know that you will have yourself on your back. You know how to guard yourself so there's no problem in that. And you know how to understand what's happening inside of you when that happens. So it's a self-awareness and it's a...And my clients especially, they talk a lot about how my program also helps them to really stay in their heart and know what their heart wants to do. And not listening to the ego and all the fears that just interrupts you when especially those... When someone comes and are like and tell you like accuse you for something or...are really upset on something and they can still stay in their heart. They know what the heart wants to do in that situation. So they can like, you know, guard their heart from their fears and ego that just wants you to do a lot of stuff. 

So that's the, I would say that's the middle thing that we were talking about. Like not being a people pleaser is about...you know, then you're abandoning your heart. Being a warrior, then you're not, then you're abandoning. I want to say like you're abandoning all the other hearts basically because you're going like a warrior against everyone else. But the heart, our heart really wants to, when we guard our heart and the voice of her heart. We also, when we act from that space, we also kind of guard all the other hearts in this world as well. I mean, that's how the healing works as well. When you deal with a confrontation from a heart centered space, you also put a seed of healing in their hearts as well. Right? So that's this middle space that we were talking about.

 

Rachel (41:21.898)

Yeah, I think, you know, not to get too esoteric or to get too far into any kind of like quantum physics discussion. But if you are doing that, if you're leading from your heart, and that's what you're putting out, then there's a resonance that happens where the hearts around you actually start to come into alignment with that energy versus, you know, what you were saying of like, you're abandoning your heart and giving from some other place, then it becomes about neediness, trying to find worthiness, right? That's an entirely different energy. Or the warrior, right? There are two ends of the spectrum. And that there is a resonance of the heart that is contagious.

Evelina Åström (42:06.242)

Yeah, it is, it really is. And it also becomes so much easier to stay calm in that situation if you know that you have acted from a space of love and heart centered space. When we act from a space of love and from a space of heart, we can also feel much more, it's easier to feel calm when that happens if we are confident that, you know, we have acted with our heart in this situation. 

 

Rachel (43:24.734)

And so I don't want you to give away all your secret sauce, but it sounds like you do a lot of work with teaching people how to regulate their nervous system. Is there any tip or trick or tool that you would be willing to share quickly with us?

 

Evelina Åström (43:43.4)

So the most important thing that I definitely want to talk about is what I was talking about recently about, you know, tapping into like even like when you, if you're heart centered when you do stuff, if you can know for sure that even if someone gets upset on me now, I can feel confident that I have acted from my heart not and if fear that wants me to do this stuff, it's from a heart space, it's from love, then it's easier to manage the people that are upset as well. So tapping into your why and why you're doing what you're doing, that's so important. So, and it's always, there is always time to just take a moment and, you know, ask yourself that as well. Like, why am I doing this?

So you can stand up for yourself.

 

Rachel (44:45.758)

Yeah. I love that. Understanding why so that when a confrontation happens, if a confrontation happens, you're so grounded in your reasoning and your purpose and knowing that your intentions are pure and from the heart that you don't have to question and get uncomfortable and think, did I do something wrong or say something wrong? Like, you know where you're coming from. I love that. Yeah.

Um, before we wrap up, I, uh, I did see that you are a reflector. Um, you are, and so I work with human design with my clients as part of the way that I help them identify what the strategies are that are right for them because it really has to align with themselves and learning. My human design was so incredibly powerful for me. So you're a reflector, which is less than 1% of the population are reflectors, which is incredible.

And I just made a little note here about your role, that you as a reflector, your role is to be a mirror, to reflect the human condition and its potential, and to sort of be the barometer of the alignment of humanity. From where I'm sitting, it looks like you found the perfect work for that. Does it? Yeah.

 

Evelina Åström (46:05.688)

No, and also I am a 5'1 reflector, so confrontation is also a big... I mean, I really feel that, yeah, when I was learning about human design, it was after I started my business and I saw that and I felt like, wow, yeah, definitely I'm doing something that I'm here to do on Earth, yeah, for sure.

 

Rachel (46:32.95)

It's beautiful. I see that often that, you know, I, for myself, I had this moment of like learning the human design initially and being, and this was probably seven or eight years ago and being sort of confused by it and trying to understand like, what does this mean about all these things and having sort of a peripheral understanding of it. And then, um, sort of putting it aside for a while and really just focusing on what I would describe as alignment for myself like what feels right, what feels good in my body, all these things. And coming back to it years later, realizing that I had created something that's really in alignment with my design, and that it was really about learning to listen to myself and to listen to what my body's telling me about what feels good, what feels right. And so if you are listening to yourself and you are finding the things that feel aligned for you, of course, you'll end up in the perfect thing that fits exactly who you are. And then you can look at your human design and go, yep, that fits perfectly. It makes so much sense.

 

Evelina Åström (47:41.913)

Exactly, yeah. And you know, even if I learned about human design and like, okay, I still, you know, no matter what advices that comes to me from different angles, no matter if it's astrology or if it's, you know, a mentor or whatnot, I'm always asking my heart and aligning it with myself, no matter what. Like, is this is this what I'm gonna do or you know and I think you end up doing the things you should be doing when you do that for sure.

 

Rachel (48:18.526)

Yeah, that's beautiful. I love that. Where can people find you if they wanna connect with you, if they wanna see what you're up to and they wanna check out your work, where can they come to find you?

 

Evelina Åström (48:28.976)

So my main social media is on my Facebook profile, so they can definitely go there and become my friend on Facebook. So they can find me at evelinaaustrom.com. And that's the same for my Instagram. And I also have a website. It's www.evelinaastrom.com.

 

Rachel (49:00.91)

Excellent. Well, you've all include those links in our show notes and it's been such a pleasure to speak with you. Really enjoyed this and I love the work that you're doing in the world. So thank you again for being here.

 

Evelina Åström (49:13.22)

Thank you for having me, I'm so grateful.

 

Rachel (49:16.11)

Thank you. And thank you all for joining us. Until next time, I am wishing you even more pleasure and profits. Take care and we'll see you soon.