Ep 23 | Is It Your Intuition or Just Anxiety? (ft Vincent Brathwaite)
In Between Mini-Series, Episode #1
Welcome to the first conversation in our special In Between mini-series — where we explore the quiet, messy, and often invisible moments that shape entrepreneurs far more than their highlight reels ever could. In this episode, our host Vivianne Castillo and Vincent Brathwaite, CEO & Co-Founder of gidens, tackle a question that often trips up so many of us in business and life:
How do you tell the difference between your inner wisdom and emotional sabotage? Is this my intuition telling me to do or think this … or is it my anxiety?
In this episode we’ll cover:
- The deceptive ways anxiety disguises itself as wisdom (and how to spot it)
- The subtle lies anxiety tells, like “You need to know more before you act” or “Someone else is more qualified, so why even try?”
- How fear, perfectionism, and comparison masquerade as prudence or responsibility
- What it looks like when we mislabel fear or doubt as intuition — and how that self-sabotage keeps us small
- The real cost of outsourcing confidence by seeking endless opinions or waiting for perfect readiness
- Stories of saying “yes” from the wrong place, and how to lead and repair after misaligned decisions
- Practices, tools, and rituals to help filter emotional decisions and build trust in your own voice
- Reflections on becoming the adult your younger self needed — and learning to move even without full clarity
One of many practical takeaways:
Three powerful self-inquiry questions to discern anxiety from intuition:
1️⃣ Is this voice keeping me safe or keeping me small?
2️⃣ Is this true inner knowing or my nervous system avoiding discomfort?
3️⃣ What would it feel like to listen beyond the fear to the deeper wisdom beneath it?
Our Favorite Quotes from this Episode
💙 “Trusting yourself doesn’t mean you’ll always feel confident. It means you’ll learn to move even when you’re not.”
💙 “Anxiety and scarcity are cousins: always lurking around the question of ‘enough.’”
💙 “Your way forward isn’t waiting on you to think harder. It’s waiting on you to try.”
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Choose Courage Inc. is a HmntyCntrd brand and this podcast episode is sponsored by CountrPT.
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Vincent Brathwaite is a Caribbean American multi-disciplinary design leader, educator, and speaker. For the past two decades, he has worked to transform communities through disruptive design thinking. Driven by integrity, empathy, kindness, courage, and resilience, his mission is to design experiences that help leaders positively impact the world.
