From Fashion Editor to Psychic: Following the Voice That Changed Everything with Nikki Novo

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About Today’s Show

Hi Nikki, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here.

Thanks for having me. I’m so excited to talk with you.

Before we begin, can you share with me a beautiful childhood memory?

What’s coming up for me is the very simple things. I’m just remembering going to a little lake with my dad, using these tiny fishing poles, and just fishing, even though I didn’t even know what I was doing, and just being with my siblings. It reminds me that the simplest things in life are the most enjoyable. Those are my favorite memories, when my parents could just chill and enjoy. Those were the best memories.

That’s beautiful. I miss Miami because we used to live on a lake, and it’s so pretty there. 

Miami is like a reincarnation of Atlantis. If you go there, you’re like, “This place.” I grew up there, and it wasn’t always like that. It has grown a ton, and I changed a ton, but it’s just so beautiful. You just can’t beat it. It’s just so beautiful.

What was your spiritual journey like? How did you start owning your teachings? When did you know, like, “Okay, I experienced this, now I can teach this?”

Every kind of spiritual journey begins with an awakening. I don’t know if you remember your awakenings, and they continue to happen. But my first real awakening was in my early twenties, when I was engaged very young to my high school sweetheart because I grew up Cuban and Catholic. My parents were very traditional. I always say there was this kind of thing, this ongoing message of you leave your parents’ house either in a white dress or in a casket. That was the only way I was getting out of that house. I met a good Cuban boy who was a professional baseball player. 

It was perfect. This guy’s my ticket out. We had been together for many years. Two months before our scheduled wedding, I decided to take a trip with my girlfriends to New York City because another friend of ours was getting her master’s there. Looking back as a 43-year-old woman who eventually did get married, it was like, “Wow, like no bride really goes out and parties like two months before their wedding when nothing was done. The wedding wasn’t even prepared. I need to get out of here.” I left and went to New York City, where I was at Rockefeller Center, which is a very loud, crowded place. I just had a moment alone while my friends were getting coffee at Dean and DeLuca’s, and I’m just looking. 

All of a sudden, I hear this voice in my ears, and it was very clear and authoritative. It was different from your own chatter; you listen to yourself talk and things like this. This was something I had never experienced before. The voice told me you are made for something bigger. It was basically telling me that the path I was on wasn’t the right one and that there was something more. I was so afraid to hear that voice because it was so inconvenient. I was trying to put my head down, do the right thing, marry this person, and get a good job. 

This voice was deep down inside, and I thought I had heard something similar months before, even years before, but I was trying not to listen to it. It was so interesting how New York, which is such a loud place, was the place where I could pause and actually hear myself and that inner voice. Hearing that inner voice changed the trajectory of my life because I came home and told my mom, who was very traditional. I was like, “I think that there might be something else for me. Maybe this is not it.” My mom is the good girl that she is. She looked at me and she said, “Well, Nicole, some people are just meant to be a wife and have children. That’s great. That’s enough.” I respect that because my mom was like that. 

I’m so grateful for the mom I had and honor the work she did, but I just knew that wasn’t my truth. It really made me understand that there are these voices outside of us that we always hear, and they can be much louder than the voice within us. I could see the difference in that moment. I’ve been following the voice of my mother, the voice of my ancestors, probably, the voice of my conditioning and my society. But when I really got quiet, I heard my true voice, and it was telling me something else. Spoiler alert: I called off the wedding, which was very difficult and led to all these changes. I left Miami and moved to LA because I wanted to work in the film industry, making all these changes in my life. 

That was like the beginning of me really honing that skill. I was like, “Oh, there’s like something about this thing. Maybe I can learn to listen to it better, hear it more, follow it.” I felt I was rewarded right away. As soon as I called off the wedding, I felt better. It wasn’t like my life necessarily changed, but I thought I wasn’t trapped, and I was rewarded by just following this voice. I told myself, “What if I could just follow this voice always? What kind of life would I live?” I didn’t know a lot about that voice. I didn’t have a name for it. I just knew it was mine. 

Later in my work, I delved deeper into it and realized that perhaps it was intuition. I learned that, at first, it was just my heart telling me where to go. I didn’t understand that I was like, “Mind, body, and spirit. I just thought, this is like the heart version of myself.” But then, later in my mid-twenties, I had another experience, another awakening, that made me understand I was mind, body, and spirit. That’s my intuition, that voice was the voice of my soul. What I really wanted to follow was my soul. 

I followed it all the way to training myself to be very intuitive. I guess I had signs as a kid, but I didn’t know that I was intuitive. I got really interested in learning how to not only hear that inner voice but also trust it, make it very accurate, and figure out when it was right and when it was wrong. That’s how I like it. I studied intuition, and that’s how I did it. I ended up here.

What was the second awakening in your mid-20s? Because you were in the film industry, were you an actress or a producer? What did you do there?

No, I studied public relations. I went, just loved creating. I always loved the media and creativity. I worked at film studios doing public relations. I had this love for writing that I discovered while I was there. I moved back to Miami and became an editor. I was an editor at fashion and beauty magazines for a while. I loved that job. I was so happy there. I loved expressing, writing and all that kind of stuff. During that time, I learned a lot of my lessons through men and romantic relationships. I met this other guy, and I was in a relationship with him for about two years. My intuition brought me to that person. It felt like the same voice I was following before led me to this person. I interpreted that voice as, like, “Okay, this is my person, lock in, this is it.” 

Two years later, when he broke up with me out of nowhere, I was very confused. I was like, “Wait a second. I’ve been following this voice, and it has rewarded me for all these years. I’ve been following it for like five or six years now. I really needed to understand how I got that one wrong.” It brought me to my first psychic. I grew up Catholic and Cuban. Going to a psychic or a big, an intuitive was like, “Oh no, you’re going to get struck down by lightning.” 

Everybody needs a friend like that.

But I had a friend who was also Cuban Catholic, and she’s the kind of friend that I don’t know if you have to bury a body; she probably knows somebody, it’s that you always have that friend. Yeah, you always have that friend in that back pocket. I’m like, this is the one that probably, and I like to remember reaching out to her, and I’d be like, “I feel like you would know a psychic.” She’s like, “I have three of them, I know many of them.”

She was the first one who took me to my first psychic, and the experience was really crazy; it was exactly what I was fearing. This person told me I was cursed, and then I was never gonna be happy. It was like everything my mom told me to fear about intuitives, but I didn’t give up. Serendipitously, a second intuitive came my way, and she was an angel reader. She likes to read about angels, and I thought, ‘Okay, angels are in the Bible, so this should be okay, like this shouldn’t be scary.’ I went to her and she was fantastic. She was so supportive, knew so much about me, and predicted many things that have happened up to this day. It really opened me up. 

One of the very strange things happened at the end of the reading. I was taking in all her information, and I said something to her that I didn’t expect myself to say, but I looked at her and I was like, “Do you think I could do what you do? Do you think I can be intuitive?” She was so great. She was one of the first people who made me understand that intuitives, or people who are psychic or anything like that, aren’t superhumans. I think that’s what we’ve been taught for sure. That’s like, ‘You’re either born with the gift or you’re not.’ She was really one of the first people who was like, “No, everybody has this gift. Some people have it more developed than others, but you can absolutely learn to be intuitive and psychic and get better.” 

That was what I was missing. Because that voice that told me to follow that relationship that blew up in my face, that intuition was correct; it was followed through on this relationship. This is significant. But what happened was that my ego added to that intuitive message. I said, “The intuition was follow, follow this relationship, go towards this relationship.” My ego said, ‘Because you’re going to be with them forever.’ My ego, our ego, needs the guarantee. I was like, “If you’re going to make me open up my heart and be available and vulnerable for this person, I’m only going to do it if I’m guaranteed.” At the moment, I needed that guarantee. I added a guarantee to my intuition. 

As I’ve studied intuition, I’ve learned that intuition does not give guarantees. There’s a ton of mystery and a ton of unknown when you follow your soul and your intuition. But in the beginning, I really was looking for you to give me these guarantees. When I met the psychic, she told me that I could study and that I could learn, and I was like, “Amazing, I’ll never make a mistake again. I’m going to learn to be the most intuitive person so that I never get my heart hurt again. I’m gonna kill it. This is great. I just learned the greatest hack of life.” That was really what inspired me to study; my intuition was to be perfect. 

We can definitely listen to people’s advice and spend time with others. But we want to see ourselves and use them as a reflection of what is true for us, rather than handing off our power to all these different people and just saying whatever they say is correct.

To become perfect, basically. I was like, “I’d like to be a wizard. Thank you very much. I would like to predict everything and just cruise through life. I think I teach intuition now.” I have hundreds and hundreds of students. I think many of them come to me for that reason, too. I would never shame that. Because whatever gets you through the door gets you through the door. I needed something at the time to fill this void because I was really hurt. I studied and I got really into the metaphysics. I learned by taking a Reiki course, which gave me a Reiki certification. After the second one, I started to see energy. 

I was activated through different things. I would sit in meditation and learned to read energy, which is super cool. It’s what psychics do when an intuitive person says, “Oh, I’m reading the energy of 2026.” They’re reading, focusing their attention on energy and absorbing the information. I learned to do that. Of course, if you look at my astrology chart, there are many signs that I am naturally intuitive, but I by no means showed any signs when I was a kid. I always say, my parents would have sent me to a nun convent or something to get the demons out of me if I showed any signs of being psychic. 

I basically trained myself through books and different experiences. I got into the metaphysics stuff, like spirit guides and Akashic Records and all those things. People started, and I began attracting people naturally and accidentally doing readings on them. When the word got out that I was doing something, more people came my way, and I was like, “Oh my gosh.” I was very scared because I was a fashion and beauty editor. I didn’t have on my bingo card that I was going to be a psychic and make money this way. 

I had just met my husband, who is now my husband, and he married a fashion and beauty editor, not a psychic. A year into our marriage, I was like, “By the way, I’m going to start this business and I’m going to start doing readings.” The readings were catching my attention so much, and the people kept coming, and I just couldn’t stop it. That happened because I was so dedicated to following my soul, and that was where my soul was calling me to in that moment. I got very good at reading and then became well-known for it. My work brought me here.

Yes, beautiful. Where do we go to find our intuition, Rockefeller Center, or where do we need to?

What are the loudest plays possible? First, we had to remind ourselves that we are mind, body, and spirit. As I always say, the body is like the car, the mind is your engine, and your spirit should be the driver. But definitely, we come into this life forgetting everything. We forget that we’re a soul. We look at our parents and we’re like, “No, I’m the child of these parents from this area, we give ourselves all sorts of labels.” At some point, to me, I feel like that breaking point, that awakening point, is usually a moment when you wake up one day and you’re like, “This reality, I don’t like it. I’m in the wrong movie. This is not me. This is not a full expression of who I am.” A lot of people feel lost when that happens, but the truth is that’s the first time that your soul is actually making contact. 

When you start to meet the soul, it can be very disorienting. It’ll often ask you to change a lot of things in your life. That’s scary because the life we live, we’ve built it on our ego, our protections, and our blueprints and all that stuff. But we’re really meant to live true to the soul, following the soul’s path. We first have to be aware and be okay with that. Like, “Okay, yeah, maybe I’m something more than just this mind and body.” Once we believe and understand that, we have to find quiet places to actually hear that soul. It doesn’t mean a physically quiet place, but rather a peaceful time. 

What’s interesting about your intuition and your soul is that they are not going to be louder than the other voices in your life. It will not scream over the media that you’re watching. It is not going to yell, ‘What’s your friend telling you to do?’ It’s actually much more chill, quiet, and subtle because it’s a calm confidence. That’s what the soul does not need to prove itself. It won’t jump over other things and will patiently wait for you. The first step is really about recognizing the voices you’re listening to right now.

Are you listening to other experts, the media, your parents, and your society? Disconnect from that for a little bit. One exercise I did, which I’ve done many times in my life, was a detox when I moved to LA after leaving Miami and breaking off that wedding. I listened to other people. I spent a whole year being grateful for the people who want to give me advice and have their opinions. I know people mean well, but I need to get strong in my own voice. For one year, I’m not going to listen to other people. I do listen to different people. I’m listening to a podcast, and we need inspiration. Of course, you’re not; you can’t help but hear other people, but I’m only going to listen to them for the messages meant for me. You might be listening to this podcast, which is one hour long. 

It does not mean that everything that we say in this one hour is absolutely for you, but there may be something that I say or that you’re like, “Yes, no, it’s true.” That I say that stands out to you, almost it’s in bold letters, that’s your intuition using another person to reflect your own intuition. We can definitely listen to people’s advice and spend time with others. But we want to see ourselves and use them as a reflection of what is true for us, rather than handing off our power to all these different people and just saying whatever they say is correct. We were talking off-camera about how nowadays we just live in a world of so much information. There’s even political talk about whether these guys are bad or good, and it’s really hard to know what is right or wrong. That’s the reminder that, “How do you hear yourself within all of that?” That’s what we’re really trying to look for.

Everything on social media today, including politics, is amplifying. It’s becoming increasingly distracting, and the algorithms are getting better and better. It’s very specific, and they are made to capture and cater to your triggers. If the voice of the intuition is not louder than the others, then it’s very easy to get carried away with the noise outside. What kind of rituals do you have, or how do you carve out time for yourself to listen in?

Remember that the algorithm is unnatural. It’s like an unnatural environment. Suppose you really want to listen to your intuition. In that case, you definitely want to balance your relationship with social media by engaging in in-person interactions. Picking up your kid from school and talking to one of the moms, or going to that candle-making class and chatting with someone from your neighborhood, are actually very natural. That is where the soul can get things through to you. That candle girl you just met told you about this really cool place to go on vacation, and it’s like you’re meant to go on holiday there. You don’t necessarily have to go on top of the mountain and be completely by yourself to hear your intuition, but you need to be in a natural environment to hear your intuition. 

The way we want to approach social media, or media in general, is to understand that it’s a good lesson for me to absorb and then determine what is true for me. Let myself be like, “I’m going to listen to this, even this person that I love so much, but like really see what is actually true for me.” That’s why I’m using it. But if you’re just like, “I’m going to get a sign from my Instagram,” whatever feed, it’s your algorithm, like you said, it is just reflecting certain behaviors. It’s very unnatural. The soul can get through there, but very, very rarely. We wanna balance that and make our consumption natural as well. Because, as humans, we have always consumed media. That is a natural part. We have always consumed information that is very natural to this lifetime, but the amount of consumption may be unnatural at this point. 

The amount of interaction or whatever may be unnatural. It’s up to us to figure out what my most natural consumption is and when it becomes unnatural. I’m definitely like, “I will unplug for a while. When I feel called to be entertained or to get information, I’ll go and do that.” But I am not trying to listen to something consistently. I also trust that even if I get caught up in a series, a Netflix series, there’s something there for me. But then, when it ends, I’m not forcing myself to find another series, let’s say, and going with the natural flow of what is calling me rather than using media to totally turn myself off. I want to actually be awake and engaged. That’s when I know the media is purposeful for me.

Do you know the term bibliomancy, where you open a book and then you get an answer? When you open a book to get an answer, and sometimes it works, some people use social media in the same way, setting an intention and waiting for something to show up. Is there any value in that or nothing?

You don’t necessarily have to go on top of the mountain and be completely by yourself to hear your intuition, but you need to be in a natural environment to listen to your intuition.

If you are in tune, you can decipher what is not for you and what is, and that is a type of intuition. For example, I can check the volume of my Instagram reel. My Instagram algorithm. Like you said, I’m like, “You know what, I really need a message about whether I should move or not.” I have to be able to go through that and know that when something is for me, because I’ve studied my intuition, then the message that’s for me is really bright. It feels like I almost say as if it feels bolded. I knew that message was for me when there were about 70 others, and I was able to say, “No, that’s not it. Because this is the one that lights up for me the most,” if you have a handle of your own intuitive language, as I like to call it, then go for it, but you might be in a place where you haven’t developed your own intuitive language; that’s when something like social could be overwhelming.

What do you think about getting answers through ChatGPT? Because I see a lot of people do that.

I’ve been playing with that too, to make up my decision. ChatGPT reminds me a bit of it; it’s definitely programmed to be that friend you call when you want to hear what you want to hear. Do you know what I mean? If I want somebody to tell me to quit my job, that’s really what I want to do. It might not be the best thing. It might not be my highest and greatest truth, but I know that if I call my mom, she’ll tell me to quit that job. I’m going to call her, and ChatGPT is programmed that way, too, so you can guide it to say what you want to hear. There is definitely that happening, but I also see ChatGPT behaving similarly to how I just explained social media. The best way I can explain ChatGPT is intuitively, it feels like a deck of cards. 

You have a deck of cards, and let’s say you’re using the deck of cards to understand, to reflect the intuition that’s within you, because the answer is within you. We use these things to reflect what is within me, not to hand off my power, and not as if the cards are going to tell me everything. It’s really that I’m going to pull a card, and from looking at that card, I’m like hearing what’s within me. If you’ve ever used a deck of cards and they’ve really helped you, but then all of a sudden they stop supporting you, and they stop working, that’s just a sign to get off of the cards; like that, you don’t need any further guidance. 

On the contrary, you need more action. Intuition is going to give you a few little breadcrumbs, and then you go, you follow your intuition, and then you come back for more. But if you just sit there wanting ChatGPT to hype you and tell you all these things without any action, then it’s like it’s not working for you anymore. You have to know when what you’re getting is crazy and more confusing. It’s probably because the initial intuition you had, you haven’t followed through on it yet.

It’s about being discerning and coming with a certain intention. Even now, when I’m looking at social media, I have to remind myself, “Hey, this is The Truman Show, this is being like this is a program they’re feeding me, whatever I need to hear.” I’m really gonna be discerning with any information, and then also, all of a sudden, when you think about it, you see the patterns, and it lessens the effect on you. You’re like, “Okay, and now I’m going to get this and I’m going to get that.” It becomes even boring. I think the more interesting thing is when you are in an awakened state, when you are connected, and all of a sudden, “Oh, I’m home. I’m listening to this still silent voice of mine, and I’m guided, walking on the right path. It’s not the noise of the outside. I’m back to myself.” What do you think? How can we ground more in ourselves, in our intuition, and return to that place where we are connected to the source, to God, creation, or whatever you call it, to receive direct messages, guidance, and healing?

I’m going to answer that question, but I first wanted to say that when you were talking about propaganda and other ulterior motives, and all the information, whether someone’s trying to sell you something or whatever, it’s important to look at content that way.

We are the product, always being sold to, especially on social media, whether it’s politically or it’s a sales platform. Even if it’s just an influencer who wants you to like them. We’re the product.

There are plenty of things I need to be sold to me that will definitely make my life better. There’s nothing wrong with being sold for sure, but it’s when we think that there’s nothing that they’re selling. This is just a reminder of how powerful you are. Even the so-called most powerful people in the world, like our presidents and leaders, recognize that your attention and agreement are what make them powerful. You’re actually the power, not them. You get what I mean? They still need you to buy into whatever they are selling you. 

Without you, there is nothing. When you realize that you have this, it’s a really powerful thing —my focus, my decision. You get to decide what you’re listening to, what you’re buying into. When you don’t like that person, they have less power because you are the power. When you recognize that you’ll approach things very differently, it’s when you’re going into an agreement, and the truth is that you have more to offer than they do, because you’re trying to get what you have inside. It’s important for you to flip the script and to understand that you are the powerful one.

You have more to offer than others do whenever you’re trying to express what’s inside you. Flip the script and understand that you are the powerful one.

I like that. That’s a beautiful way of looking at it. 

First of all, our focus is on our power. If I focus on making a million dollars or something like that, and that’s all I focus on, like, “Oh, I’m going to make a million dollars,” but when my focus gets diluted, like, “Oh, this person wants me to go on this vacation with them, or this person, wants me to help them,” that will little by little dilute me from my goal, and it’s just like a diluting of the power of my focus. At the end of the day, your focus is your most powerful thing because it is what actually creates your life. 

What you’re focusing on is created. Of course, when your focus is diluted by all these different messages, nothing is created. You’re like, “Wow, my life is boring and nothing’s happening.” It’s probably because your focus is on a bunch of different places. Anyway, that’s a talk on your power. But when it comes to reconnecting with your own intuition and voice, I think there’s always a bit of a detox process involved. Just deciding, “Okay, wow, I’ve been listening to all these other things. I’ve been listening to my partner, I’ve been listening to whatever media, and I’m just gonna detox from those things.” 

I’m basically just gonna take those voices; they’re still gonna exist. It’s not like they’re gonna go away, but I’m going to take those voices and I’m gonna take them down from the pedestal. My voice is meant to be the strongest voice and the one I can trust the most. I’m just gonna at first realize the detoxing is not so much that I’m gonna go and run away to a mountain and leave my kids and leave my husband. It’s more like, “Okay, we’re not really listening, we’re not giving much attention to all those voices. We’re going to try to hear myself.”

You gave me an idea where you can do an NLP exercise and have 20 pedestals and put little bubbles with whoever is on that pedestal. Then, like a little kitty, you just go and you take the ball down.

Exactly, or do it in meditation, I imagine those voices and I put them in a jar, and then I close the jar so I can’t hear that voice anymore, and then I’m trying to hear my own.

What you’re focusing on is created. When your focus is diluted by different messages, nothing is created.

That’s what I do with my son. My son loves to talk at bedtime. He loves to tell me everything, and I am homeschooling. We talk all day. He’s very cute. He’s six and he’s adorable and he likes to talk when it’s bedtime and I’m like, “Listen, now we’re taking all the talking and we’re putting it in the talking jar. The talking jar is closed, and here we’re just opening the very deep sleep jar and happy dreams.” Then it really helps.

I do a similar thing to him, to Ethan as well. I have a seven-year-old. It’s funny how you can get everything you want from your kids in the five minutes before they go to sleep. They’re trying to delay the sleep process so much that they’ll tell you anything to keep you there. 

But that’s really great to put it in a jar and in a bottle because our mind works with symbolism and metaphors. When we give our mind the symbolism of the jar or taking the ball out of the pedestal, it might sound like a fun game, but for our brain, it’s actually real, and it’s super effective in releasing those voices.

I love that. That also goes back to the idea that your mind is not the driver of this life, but it’s such a great tool. It’s the engine, so you can use your mind to help you. Your mind can take over situations as well. That’s where the problem happens. But doing something like that, those exercises are amazing. A lot of the intuition that I teach is through guided meditations. You’d be surprised if you bring yourself into these guided meditations and give yourself the space for imagery or something to come forward, it will be delivered to you that it’s very in you. It’s very capable, but you first have to decide what kind of person you are, and you’re going to go there. I’d also like to set the intention for you to turn up the volume of your voice.

I like that. That’s great. Everybody’s talking about how intuition is that silent voice. I, myself, am already buying into that. “Oh, intuition. I have to listen so hard to that little voice of intuition. Where are you? You’re so quiet. Turn on the volume.” Simple and brilliant. Thank you for that, Nikki.

We’ve just turned it down because it’s a muscle. We’ve given other voices more importance in our lives rather than the voice that’s within us. You being like, “I’m going to turn that volume up.” To me, that’s going to be the sound that I look for the most. Let’s say you have seven phones in front of you and they all have different ringtones. You’re going to realize that phone number three has a sound—a ringtone—and that ringtone is my true inner voice. Eventually, you can actually block out all the other phone ringtones because you’re only listening to number three. Like, “Do you remember that time I definitely followed my intuition, and it sounded like this?” 

There are different ways we can listen to our intuition. We can know our intuition. We can feel our intuition, and we can also see visually.

When I say sound, I don’t mean the way that we humans understand sound, the way you’re understanding my voice right now. That this is a different set of different waves of energy that comes through, it can also, in your case, be a feeling you’re going to be like, “I remember when I felt so strongly that I wasn’t supposed to put my son in this school.” I just felt it. Just knew, I thought it. You might not be hearing it. There are different ways we can listen to our intuition. We can know our intuition. We can feel our intuition, and we can also see visually.

For me, sometimes it’s annoying, but also visions. Sometimes I hear, but the strongest is the knowingness. Knowing visually.

It sounds like you’re very visual. The thing is, when you’re in the present moment with your intuition, everything happens at the same time. It’s hard to tell the difference, but you can; there’s been a time when you did hear your intuition. You can go back to that time and journal a little bit about, like, “What it felt like? Did it feel like it sounded? I know, if it had a smell, if it had a texture, if it was what that really feels like?” That’s the ringtone that we’re looking for. You’re like, “Okay, I remember how that felt. I remember how that sounds. Now in my day-to-day life, I’m going to look for that same texture again.  And I’m going to start training myself to have an eye, a feeling, and a knowing for that sound. That’s what I’m looking for. That’s my true voice.”

What’s the difference between your intuition, your higher self, and your spirit guides?

That’s a great question. There’s the Trinity for us. There is the human, and there is the soul that has lived many lifetimes, experiencing life as a human. The soul is the one inside the body, and it’s the soul that gives us intuitive information and other kinds of insights. The third level is the higher self, which is almost like your soul, but it is perfect. It’s in the future. It’s completely whole because the higher self is the part of you that is part of the divine. It is as close as possible to the one, which is all one, but we break up into all these little different pieces so that we can better understand ourselves. What are those little dolls where there’s one inside another inside another? That’s, I forgot what they’re called. 

Like a Babushka? Like a Russian Babushka? Like a Russian doll, one inside of the other? 

The higher self is when we think about our energy and connect to the divine within ourselves. We’re trying to get divine wisdom, and God’s wisdom is that from the higher self. But then your soul, which is living this human life, is still living in its expressions and having many different lifetimes, and all that kind of stuff. You can decide who you want to connect to. If you connect only to the higher self, you may bypass a lot of the human stuff that you’re supposed to do. Like you’ll get, you’ll, you’ll like not be grounded enough. You’ll be like, “What’s the point of raising these kids? Like I’m just a soul, like a living bubble.” 

I know I had a period of time like that. I used to go to a Naam Yoga in Santa Monica and did lots of breath work. After a month or two, I felt so spacey and disconnected from reality, and everything was really beautiful. I was just like, “Oh my God, wow, nam nam nam nam namaste.” It’s amazing. But I used to go. I had to find the balance for sure. I guess it was a part of connecting to those higher realms through breath work. Because when you work on breathing, you connect to the God molecule. It’s like a DMT trip where you really are in different realms and very highly connected.

In spiritual space, we often see that, but I find staying there disrespectful to the soul because I feel like I don’t know why, but my soul wanted to have a human experience. I am going to respect that my soul wanted to do the human thing. There must be something for me as a human. I am not going to pretend that the higher self is greater or smarter than this experience.

I love that. A lot of people are talking about connecting to your higher self, and I have to ask, excuse me. Your higher self is a separate entity from who you are, and perhaps a better version of you. I wish I could live as my higher self all day. But I love what you’re saying, where you’re everything, and everything is beautiful, all your parts and emotions are beautiful. Everything you experience there is gorgeous. When we embrace the whole, we are experiencing more. We’re connected more to the whole from above, from below, from everywhere.

Your soul chose your dad, it chose your partner, it decided all those things. Even if some of those things are hard, and even if where I live is hard, my culture is hard too. My soul set up some of those things, and my spiritual growth is within those very human challenges. To me, everybody’s like, “Well, now that I have my awakening, how can I?” Like you said, I live my higher self, or I feel like I hate this life and everything. I’m like, “No.”

It’s so much nicer to float in different realms than to do your laundry.

The soul is the one inside the body, and it’s the soul that gives us intuitive information and other kinds of insights.

I don’t know about you, Orion, but one of the most spiritual moments in my life has been the most human and kind of dirty. My husband, whom I’ve been with for many years now, there was a time when he had an addiction that I didn’t know about, and it was a very Miami story. I found out, and I was very betrayed, and all I wanted to do was leave the relationship. I was like, “I’m out. This guy lied to me. This is crazy. This is ridiculous. I’ve been raising these kids, and he’s been out drinking and doing all these things.” In that moment, the easiest thing would have been to leave. The hardest thing was to say. My soul was like, “Girl, you’re going to stay for this. Remember the last one that you did, it was about leaving?” The first story I shared was about leaving. That was hard at that moment. It would have been easier to stay. 

In this situation, it did a flip on me, and it was like, you’re gonna stay, and you’re going to benefit from this experience. I have a completely different marriage now, with a totally different husband and a beautiful life. It was because I followed my soul, and I understood that there was magic and gold in this, a very hard human thing, but it gave me the most soul growth that I’ve ever seen. That’s where I got the most spiritual growth. It’s not like meditation and breath work. Those things are good. Those are tools for sure. But that’s not where I’m going to get the wisdom. My soul came to this lifetime to expand itself, and I am going to respect and honor that, so I’m not going to check out.

It’s very easy to be spiritual when everything is easy. When you’re on the beach at sunset, surrounded by friends, and I agree with you, the most spiritual thing we can do is never give up. That’s where we hit rock bottom, just to climb with our nails, just climb up and fight for what we love and fight for who we are and fight for ourselves and for our values.

Ask people to love you, to change, and to say, “I deserve this, I’m worthy of this,” and let people meet you and just experience that uncomfortable growth. The human experience is not from a guided meditation. I was definitely prepared to work through things with my husband because of my spiritual training. I had a ton of tools, knew what to do, who to call, and how to shift my energy. I knew where I was falling short. 

That’s spiritual growth. But nothing prepares you for something like that. Doesn’t matter. Nothing prepares you for grief, any grief. When you go through that, that’s the real test. That’s like all the fluff aside, now it’s hard. How are you going to show up?

I get it. We don’t want it, but that’s the expansion. It’s in those things. You just said that.

You can always choose to be a victim or a co-creator at any point.

You were just talking about how you put your son to sleep, which is your soul self living a human life, and then there are fun things too. 

I love those moments. They’re so fleeting, and he’s growing up so fast and has those little moments, and every moment, I want to bottle every moment. If I had a bottle for those beautiful moments that I could drink every day for the rest of my life, would this be what we got? We have those moments, and they are gifts. We can either think about the future or worry about the past and miss all those beautiful moments in between, but why?

That is what the soul loves about Earth. Like Earth, humans have emotions when you’re in your soul self, when you’re just in the energy of yourself, you don’t have those things. You don’t have emotions; you don’t have these physical representations of what we have right now. That’s why there are a lot of excited souls; believe it or not, we’re all eager to come to Earth before it actually happens. Once we’re here, especially for souls from higher consciousness places or those who haven’t had many reincarnations on earth, we may experience unique challenges. 

They do end up here, and they’re like, “Damn, this place is horrible. It’s so different, it’s totally different. I always say,  “E.T. phone home, take me out of here.” Some souls have a harder time, and we see a lot of high consciousness souls coming lately. I think our children’s generation is definitely more conscious. They are pushing their parents to pave the way for the kind of world they’re going to live in because, if they were adults right now, they wouldn’t be able to handle it. They’re much higher in consciousness than we are, but we are aware, and the earth is trying to evolve. 

When you figure yourself out and live in this higher frequency, the earth, and all of us together, can continue living in that higher frequency, allowing the world to become what it’s trying to become.

That’s why some souls are really uncomfortable, but the souls that are the most painful are here to bring in the new earth. Being “Okay, if this environment feels harsh, how do I do my own healing work and figure myself out and then live in this higher frequency so that the earth, all of us together, as we keep living in that higher frequency, the world can then become what it’s trying to become.” It’s uncomfortable because we are ushering in a new earth, a new way of being, a new way of living. The human itself is trying desperately to evolve, and the process is a little clunky.

That’s beautiful. I like what you just shared. I would love to talk to you more, but I want to be respectful of your time. This was an extraordinary conversation. Thank you so much. Before we say goodbye for now, I’d love to have you on the show again. What are your three top tips to live a stellar life, and where can people find you, find your app, your books, all the community, everything?

Thank you, Orion. It’s been the best. I really enjoyed talking to you, too. My top three tips are to be really open to first listening to your voice, then trusting it—even if it takes you into the unknown—and finally following it. If we can live a life where we listen, trust it, and follow it. I hear, I trust it, and I follow it. That’s when your life becomes very true to you, where you’re like, “This is the movie, this is really what I wanna live.” That’s when it happens, but we have to be in that constant cycle of listening to it, trusting it and following it. 

If you like my voice and my work, I also have a podcast called Soul-Led Living, where I do a lot of fun intuitive messages and predictions every month. Those are always fun. You can find me on Instagram and YouTube under Nikki Novo. I offer many ways to go deeper into your intuition and trust. If you want to explore these further, you’ll find a variety of programs available when you find me.

Beautiful. Thank you. Thank you. It was a pleasure, and thank you for everything you do, for the beautiful wisdom you shared with us today, and for being our listeners. Remember to be open to listen, trust and follow your intuition and have a stellar life. This is Orion till next time.