Self-Enquiry, Energy & Manifestation with Efia Sulter
Many of us are on a constant quest for self-improvement, but how do we do this from an embodied perspective?
In this episode I’m joined by mindset coach, Efia Sulter to dive deeper into all things mindset and manifestation.
In this eye-opening chat, we explore:
How to balance your masculine and feminine energies
Reframing our so-called negative traits
Making meditation less intimidating
How to find all the answers you need within yourself
Journalling for self-enquiry
Efia's signature framework for manifestation
And the importance of setting boundaries
This podcast is for YOU, so if you ever have any questions you’d like me to answer on the show, or topics you’d like me to cover – reach out to me on email here or over on instagram @eleanorhadley
Links & Resources
Efia Sulter is a mindset coach who is obsessed with helping millennial women squash their limiting beliefs and create empowering new stories so they can manifest the lives of their dreams.
You can connect with her on instagram @efiasulter_
Efia’s website
Manifestation Course - effytalkslife.com/conscious-alchemy
Facebook community - Facebook.com/groups/thehighvibesoultribe
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of The Sensuality Academy Podcast!
The Sensuality Academy Podcast is edited and produced with thanks to Music Producer/Mixer, Matthew Hadley. You can find his work at www.matthewhadley.net
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Episode Transcript
Hello! Welcome to episode 30 of The Sensuality Academy podcast! So if you’re here, you’re likely interested, on some level, in self-improvement and self-enquiry. Today I invited a special guest on the podcast to dive deeper in to all things mindset and manifestation.
Efia Sulter is a mindset coach who is obsessed with helping millennial women squash their limiting beliefs and create empowering new stories so they can manifest the lives of their dreams.
In this eye-opening chat, we explore:
How to balance your masculine and feminine energies
Reframing our so-called negative traits
Making meditation less intimidating
How to find all the answers you need within yourself
Journalling for self-enquiry
Efia's signature framework for manifestation
And the importance of setting boundaries
It’s a really wonderful chat and I know you’re going to love Efia. You can find her over on instagram at @efiasulter_ (spell)
Enjoy the episode!
[INTERVIEW]
ELEANOR: Welcome Efia to the Sensuality Academy Podcast Thank you for joining us. It’s so lovely to have you here. Thank you for joining us.
EFIA: Thank you for having me.
ELEANOR: So, today we are talking about the power of Self Enquiry, Mindset, Energy and Manifestation. You are a Mindset Coach what does a Mindset Coach do? Tell us a little bit about your passion?
EFIA: I am passionate about empowering millennial women through Mindset and Manifestation work that combines both the spirituality side and also the strategy and really taking action from a soulful and aligned place.
ELEANOR: Amazing. When you talk about Spirituality and strategy this sounds a lot to me like utilising the masculine and feminine and I know that this is something that you have talked about in your work before and this is something that my listeners will be very familiar with because I talk about it all the time. Can you tell us how this plays into your work and why this is important?
EFIA: I think the balancing of energy is so important because so closely related to everything we do but typically especially for women in the business side - so focused on the masculine, of the hustle and work harder and that is something I really believed myself for a long time - If I work harder, if I just stressed out myself more, if I just play into the hustle then I’m going to be more likely to successful. actually what I was led to was the sense of burnout and detachment from myself and it's really when I learned to own and honour the feminine energy that I not only became more successful in my business but I felt more connected to who I was. I think that it is important when I am coaching women that it's about the balance of these energies and we do say masculine and feminine energy. Obviously this doesn’t just relate to females having feminine, males having masculine energy. They have whatever energy. This applies to everyone. So balance for some people might be 40% masculine, 60% feminine but it's just finding the balance that is right for you.
ELEANOR: That is such a great point and I think a lot of people miss because when we think of balance we think 50/50 on a scale and that it must be half what is called masculine and half what is called feminine. So, how do you find that people can discover which is their most nourishing balance? Which works best for them and how they would lean towards one as opposed to the other?
EFIA: I think that it's important that people realise that we are so unique. Everyone has such a unique blueprint and nobody’s balance will be exactly the same. It’s not like every person will go away with this one formula, follow these exact steps and this will be your energy’s balance. It’s about taking stock of your life and having a sense of self awareness around how you are feeling, how you’re showing up and then understanding that you could be wounded in this area and this obviously where I need to work on and balance out so I feel more at peace with myself.
ELEANOR: Yeah. I think that is so important. A lot of us don’t take the time to really discover ourselves and in my work I focus on self enquiry, which is the way I start when I work 1-1 with clients or group coaching clients where we start with the external world. I know that this is something that you do a lot as well in terms of self discovery. I’d love to know in your experience what do you think is the biggest benefit for taking the time to discover yourself more and also how do you do it?
EFIA: I think the biggest benefit to taking the time to discover yourself more is to have a greater connection not only to yourself but also what is going on in the world around you. It’s easy to look online to see the “positive” aspects of your life and realise I manifested this amazing thing which is great to see that to inspire you but it's also to track yourself in the moment that doesn’t feel as good because this is where the sense of self awareness becomes in because we have been taught to hold positive emotions and negative emotions. Whereas the way I see the world is that the only negative really is how you are viewing typically negative emotions. Eg: I would say one of my traits is that I am quite stubborn which is seen as a negative trait but actually what makes me feel negative is the guilt I feel - oh my god, I’m being stubborn - whereas when I have a sense of self awareness, I can be like - ok, why is this coming up, what’s another way I can look at that? Being self assured is actually very important when you are in business for yourself, being self assured is super important for having boundaries. Where can I see this in a different light? Having that sense of self awareness means when it comes to self compassion you really understand yourself and how you as a human works.
ELEANOR: I love that reframe. It’s something that I wish more people would do. Reframing these “negative” emotions or qualities is so powerful and i have seen it in my clients as well and for those listening and think that sounds great but I don’t know how to do it. It doesn’t feel possible to me. What would you say to them?
EFIA: The number 1 thing to start doing is meditation. It is important for quieting down all the bullshit that is going on outside and really turning inside yourself. We spend so long looking outside for the answers. I’m sure you have this when your clients come to you. Maybe they are expecting you to say - do this, go away and life is going to be amazing but actually it's how can we go inside so that you are able to cultivate answers from yourself moving forward.
So, meditation allows you to quiet all that noise and ask yourself what you really want? How do I actually feel? And I know if you are getting started with meditation it can feel intimidating and feel like you have to sit and not think about anything for 10mins but really thoughts are going to come up, that’s what happens. Meditation is the act to acknowledge that I deserve to take time out for myself whether it be 5mins, 10mins. It’s the time to disconnect from everything else and turn inwards and connect to yourself. The first few times it may feel awkward or uncomfortable or wondering if I am doing it right, just continue and stick with it, through time you will come to realise that you will enjoy this detached time for myself. Another thing is how we see meditation. Typically we see meditation as sitting crossed legs, in a room for hours, silence that type of situation. Meditation is synonymous with mindfulness. For me a shower is a really meditative state for me. I don’t have any technology, no one else is there. It's just me and my thoughts relaxing or taking a walk away from technology that’s very meditative for me so it's about finding a meditative style that is right for you. Know that it's not about getting meditation right or wrong it's just about being able to hear yourself really think.
ELEANOR: So powerful. I love that you said meditation is akin to mindfulness and for me in my work I often talk about mindfulness being akin to sensuality. It’s simply about being within the senses, being present, being highly aware of your environment at the same time as your internal world. I really like how that correlates with this idea of going internally and being with yourself. Sometimes it can be a really hard thing for people to do.
EFIA: Yeah definitely. I think as we become more addicted to technology you rarely spend time by yourself. Actually coming back home really through things like meditation. That is why it feels so uncomfortable when you first begin to do it because it is rare that we have time to just sit with ourselves.
2) Journalling. Writing down in your journal when you wake up. It doesn’t always have to be answering, the journal prompts its getting out of your head. When I first heard about people doing journaling in their adult lives. I thought that this was like a dear diary situation that we did as teenagers. When I actually sat down and did it, I realised this is life changing. To begin with I was going to write whatever but the amount of discoveries that I have had through physically taking a pen and paper is not the same if you type it. It has to be pen and paper. You get to realise this is how you feel about situations, this is a different perspective that I didn’t know. It’s so powerful and so beautiful to see how your brain works.
ELEANOR: I totally agree. I was exactly the same as you when I started journaling. I know you wrote in one of your blogs you said - I already know what I’m thinking so what’s the point in writing it down, I’m too fucking old to be writing Dear Diaries. That made me laugh so much when I read it because I felt exactly the same thing. What is journaling about? Is it like writing what I did today, how boring. But when I started to master the art of journaling it's really truly self enquiry, its creating that ability to ask yourself questions and what I say, questioning your conditioning and thinking why is it that I feel like this? What is going on for me? And what could this be bringing up for me? Really working through things, it can change the game. It’s so powerful.
EFIA: Absolutely. There is this quote - Your new life will cost you your old life - I think the message of that quote has been misconstrued and what I actually see the quote as is - your new life will cost your old programming - because you can move away, you can change your clothes, you can change who you spend time with but if you don’t change your internal state, if you aren’t aware of the programs whether you are responsible for putting it there or not nothing is actually going to change in the long term basis.
ELEANOR: That is such a great point. I would love people to take that on board because so often with social media and with comparisons in general we are thinking what can we change externally? I know a lot of people initially come to me in my work because they want to change something externally. You are a coach as well, you know that everything starts internally. It starts with us really taking time to figure ourselves out. I would love for you to share more about programming. How do we recognise what the programming is, what our limiting beliefs are and how they are holding us back and what we do about it once you figure out those things that are getting in our way?
EFIA: I think often for people it is not necessarily straight away being able to to identify a limiting belief it is more what repeated behaviours and thoughts are coming up for me that are no longer serving me? It is through the behaviours and thoughts when you realise there is a reason why this keeps coming up for me and you can go to your journal and meditation and ask yourself when you have gotten to that point. Why is this actually coming up? So much of the time we approach these things at a surface level - I’m procrastinating or I’m lazy - then you get to the heart of it, actually I’m procrastinating because at school I was told I would never amount to anything and now I’m scared to show up and do something because it is never going to work because nobody else believes in me and then when you get to the heart of that its like - this is what is going on.
ELEANOR: Yeah. It can be so eye opening. For anybody who is listening and is thinking - that sounds great I would love to enquire about what patterns I am repeating and discover what is deeper. How would you guide that process? What would you say to someone who wants to find that out and change where they are at?
EFIA: The first thing is seeing with yourself what do I really want, what do I truly want if anything is possible? Really thinking about that. What are the immediate thoughts after that? Are they - yes, I can do this, I can do anything I want or is it something else? Is it I'm never going to make the money to see this through or this is never going to work out? I don’t even know how this is possible. With my clients they go through an 8-step process from identifying the behaviour to understanding where this behaviour has come from and other memories associated with this behaviour because it is important to look back to see - ok I know this behaviour comes up for me, where in my life has this played out in other areas and that way you can get to the root cause of why it's coming up.
Finally, when you understand the root cause you can go into the belief I no longer want to have and let's reprogram into something that is serving me better. I don’t like to say - let’s turn a negative into a positive - because I don’t really like those terms it teaches you to have this ill around - oh no this has come up and makes me reject parts of yourself and I don’t think we should ever be rejecting part of ourselves by having self-compassion, loving and honouring every part of ourselves. When you can get to that place of loving and honouring every part of yourself then all these behaviours, all these limiting beliefs actually become a gift because when you get to the root of those you can turn them into even more powerful programming to propel you forward rather then other way.
ELEANOR: I love that. Thank you so much for sharing that. I think that’s so powerful and I’d love to ask you now about manifestation. I know that this is something that it is totally your wheelhouse and I know for a lot of people manifestation sounds like a bit of an esoteric term and it can sound like a dream and it's something that a lot of people struggle to really understand and see through. I know that you have got your own framework around manifestation as well. Could you share with us what is manifestation, how does it work and why should we start manifesting our lives?
EFIA: At the root manifestation is simply having a vision and really bringing that goal to life and many peoples first introduction to manifestation is the film The Secret and the repeated message in this film is - thoughts become things. -people are leaving with this message and they are realising they can't just think about something and it magically appears and you would be right. You need to be able to put in the effort to both understand and breaking free of any limiting beliefs that get in your way. Also in taking inspired actions so that you are actually moving yourself forward. Anyone can sit at home and have a dream but the people who actually take action of these dreams are a lot less. If you are someone who thinks that manifestation doesn’t work. Either it works or it doesn’t based on your sense of belief. It’s whether it’s going to come into your life or not. Manifestation is about having a vision, having a goal and seeing it through and combining both the spirituality of yes I’m supported by the universe but also the strategy of being supported by the universe I actually need to take some steps, I need to meet the universe halfway to get what I want.
ELEANOR: Yeah, and it goes back to the idea of masculine and feminine. The masculine holding space, structure. The feminine allowing that creativity and flow and trust as well.
EFIA: Absolutely. I think that everyone should have in their life because we are all working towards a bigger vision, working to fulling our desires and the way we are brought up is often to reject the desires that we have - no we can't do that, this is not the way things are done or I haven't seen anybody else do this or what will people think. Really manifestation at the heart of it is connecting to your desires, honouring your desires and bringing it to life. I can't think of a reason why you wouldn’t want to embody that.
ELEANOR: Absolutely. Would you mind sharing with us more about your framework that you teach, giving us an overview of what that Vibe framework when it comes to manifestation?
EFIA: An issue for a lot of people, they will begin with what they want and move forward from that place. I remember people made a vision board and everything came true. I made this vision board and nothing came true. Looking at that - where have I gone wrong here? Why didn’t this work for me? Going back through the steps and seeing where I went wrong I actually ended up building a framework out of this, it enabled me to manifest consistently with a repeatable framework so many people will begin at the intention, vibes framework begins at embodying the vibe of your next level self because when you know what you are working towards, the kind of person you want to be, your values. Anytime you set an intention you are holding against that vision who you want to be. You are holding it against your values, you are holding it against your wider sense of purpose. When you do have the sabotaging thoughts, when you do have people who do not really believe in you. When something does come up you are focused on this higher vision. You are focused on this person you are becoming and nothing can get in the way of that. Once you get around embodying the vibe really stepping into the next version of yourself you start embodying that today it's not waiting until you have that thing, it's not waiting for the perfect time which doesn’t actually exist. It’s today I’ve got to start showing up like the person I've always wanted to be.
2) Saying an intention. Not just enough to set an intention it has to be powerful, has to be heartfelt. It has to mean something to you. A few of the things I had on my vision board - first class travel (which is great but it didn’t really set up soul on fire, it's something I thought that everything else first class, it wasn’t much of a priority.) Say the intention once you have embodied the vibe you can have this congruity check against - is this in-line with the person I want to be? Does this actually make sense for me? Saying a powerful intention you really believe about that and moving towards what you do want instead of what you don’t want.
3) Boundaries and holding strong energetic boundaries. This really dives into limiting belief also where you are putting your intention, what are you focusing on, who are you allowing into your space and your precious energy?
4) Balancing energies. Balancing between the masculine and feminine and healing those wounded parts and really embracing every part of that to take inspired action. So many people will be like - yes, that is it, this is the goal that I want. I just need to hustle, hustle, hustle and I’ll get it. It’s actually the beautiful balance between masculine and feminine and taking action from an inspired place. What is my intuition telling me to do today? This seems like it has no relation to what I want to do forever but it will feel fucking good to do in this moment so I know I’m in the middle of a launch but I am feeling called to go away and have a dance party so that is what I’m going to do and giving yourself permission to do things that feel good in order to get where you want to go.
5) Ties back into the feminine energy. Surrendering to the How. When it comes to manifestation surrendering to the how just allowing yourself to be a receiver of all that is coming to you, to have both faith in yourself and the universe that it is going to happen. I say for a lot of people who are really struggling to get their head around the concept of the universe, the entities, and all those kinds of things maybe you are new to spirituality. If at this point you can’t have faith in the universe have faith in yourself because when you have faith in yourself all the other parts will follow.
ELEANOR: Beautiful. I love that framework and I love the other focus on surrender in particular and understanding the energies.
Something else you spoke about is boundaries and it’s something that I think is so important in everyday life, something I talk about in my work and it's so interesting for that to come back within the work of manifestation and I think that boundaries are something in particularly women struggle with because we are kind of conditioned to have none and to be there for everybody else so I’d love to ask you for women who are potentially are in relationships or have children and women in general just end up giving their time to other people instead of themselves how would they go about setting those boundaries and setting aside time for themselves? There are probably a lot of women listening who even will struggle with meditation and journaling because we are not necessarily allowing ourselves that time, that permission to focus on ourselves and set a boundary that they deserve time to themselves as well.
EFIA: Absolutely. I think even when it comes to manifesting or working more so many women think it's selfish to want more and I don’t know if I should be allowed to want this and when it comes to setting boundaries it is really about having the knowledge that the more you give to yourself, the more you are able to give to other people. You can pour from a full cup. You don’t want to be giving so much of yourself that you are actually building this underlying\ element of resentment or discontentment. When you are actually giving that time to yourself you are not only showing up fully for yourself you are showing up for everyone around you and I have actually had friends in the past where I have built up a stronger boundary around a relationship and made me take a step back and had friends come back in the future that have said - you know what, I really appreciate you setting this boundary in the relationship and it has caused me to look inwards and see where things weren’t working. You setting a boundary is actually a gift for someone else and it’s a gift for yourself as well.
ELEANOR: I totally agree and it's something that I know personally that I have had to work through as well with friends and partners. I went on a date the other day and I had to set a boundary - hey, I would really appreciate you getting in touch earlier to book something in and not messaging me on the day to see me that night. We had a discussion about this I remember. He was saying, you really put your foot down. And I was yeah, that’s just me setting my boundary. I value my time and I want you to value it as well. It’s simple. I am not angry. It's just if we let those things slide especially early, especially in relationships, if we let things slide then we are essentially allowing that behaviour. So boundaries are a way for us to really tell people and communicate what is ok and what isn’t. It’s protecting ourselves as well letting them know how to move forward in this relationship. I think that you are right, it serves you the boundary setter and also serves them because I think sometimes it inspires people when you stand up for yourself it inspires other people to go and look around at themselves and go oooh why don’t I do that? Maybe I should set my own boundaries?
EFIA: Absolutely. You are so right on that. I always like to say as well. When a woman steps into her power she is unconsciously giving permission for so many other women to do the same. Even if you feel people aren’t watching, they absolutely are and seeing you truly own it is such a blessing for the rest of the world. When you are raising your consciousness you are also raising the collective consciousness so having that respect for yourself and it also goes back to what are my values because everytime you betray those values you lose confidence in yourself.
ELEANOR: That is so true. I think that a lot of women have experienced it. I have experienced this too. Where you give so much of yourself to the point where you might end up leaving the relationship and you have no idea who you are because you haven’t dedicated that time and this is something that actually came up in the book I did a book club recently called “Women don’t own you pretty” - have you read that yet?
EFIA: No, but my friend has actually bought that for my birthday and I was like no, just after the book club has finished.
ELEANOR: I think I remember seeing you posting it in your stories. There’s a part in there where Florence talks about this idea of men having self care built in and she says it's called women and...right? YAY! So powerful because it is so true in any ways because if men grow up in a very “traditional” environment where their mum does the cooking and the cleaning and they get a wife and they do the cooking and the cleaning and the child rearing and all these things that labourers quite unbalanced in so many cases and that’s why we have such a huge market for “self-care” but the problem is that it's often packaged up into things that you have to pay for and it’s a consumers capital product - oh, here you buy this and that equals self-care. Go and have a bath with really expensive bath oil and suddenly tick self-care but really self-care is about what we have been talking about - meditating, journaling, taking time to be with yourself and it’s something that we don’t learn enough that it can be entirely free. You can do it all yourself but it does take that guidance as well.
EFIA: Absolutely. It’s not just self-care. It’s self-preservation. Making the most of yourself.
ELEANOR: Self-preservation. I love that thought. I love that idea.
One thing I wanted to ask you when it comes to manifestation, a lot of my work is all about femininity, about embodiment, sexuality, and relationships and I wanted to ask you have you ever had clients, have you worked with people and have you had this experience yourself - manifesting things like a better relationship with your body, a better relationship with another person, a great sex life or things like that. I know that when we think about manifestation like in The Secret it was really focused on things, material things like I’m going to manifest a car, what about those intangibles?
EFIA: I think to be honest most people want the intangible even if they say outwardly that they want the physical thing. It's really what we are chasing is the feelings. Whatever it is that we desire it is we are always chasing the feelings that come with it. One of the main things that my clients come to me is building that sense of confidence and trust and faith and belief in themselves and when you build that in one area you are really affecting every area in your life, everything is all connected and has a ripple effect on the other and one of my clients recently wanted to work on feeling more confident and free in her life and now that she has gotten to that place she is actually inspiring her friends and partner to do the same.
ELEANOR: Confidence is such an interesting one. I know that a lot of my clients as well, a lot of my listeners might be thinking the same thing. I want more confidence. I just don’t know how to get it. Other than the things we have been talking about so far in this episode, what would you suggest to someone who is really struggling with my confidence?
EFIA: I don’t know if you have heard about Ed Mylett he said this really great thing about confidence which is - confidence is simply the promises that you keep to yourself. I say that I am going to do this and I follow through with it. It’s not just promises that you make to other people but if you say you are going to work out today you are truly going to do it. If you say this isn’t for me you are truly stick to your word so you build promises you keep or don’t keep to yourself everyday.
ELEANOR: What a good way to start off your journey towards becoming more confident. To keep those promises to yourself.
Thank you so much for speaking with us today Efia it is such a pleasure and I know that a lot of our listeners will have gained so much insight from your words. So how can our listeners get in touch with you? To keep up to date with all your work? Where can we find you?
EFIA: You can find me over on Instagram, I mainly hangout on Instagram @efiasulter_ and also The High Vibe Soul Tribe Facebook Community where you can meet other women who are also on their journey, personal growth and personal development.
Thank you so much for having me.
ELEANOR: My pleasure. Thank you so much. I will put all the details on how to keep in touch in the show notes.
Thank you so much and as usual, stay sensual.
