Where Are You on the Woo Scale?

You don’t have to be woo-woo to be an intuitive genius. You heard me!

I’ve worked with some non-woo folks: scientists, tech designers, business school grads, lawyers, engineers… people who are analytical, professional, grounded thinkers. And they are still what I would call deeply intuitive. It just doesn’t look like woo-woo fairy unicorn goddess sparkles. Instead, it looks like gut-feeling, deep-knowing, creative downloads, visionary ideas.

This might be a freakin’ relief if you’re an over-educated pro who still follows the signs, pays attention to how things feel, and goes with your gut when it matters. Yes. Be relieved. You can be grounded, effective, intelligent, and deeply guided at the same time.

Where you land on the woo-woo scale mostly tells me how you translate the mystery, not whether you’ve got the secret access key.

I like to ask new clients and collaborators where they are on what I call the Woo Scale. It’s a playful question, but it tells me a lot about how to talk about stuff that matters.

A 10 on the Woo scale might be someone who is ready to talk about programming crystals, Saint Germain’s blue flame, spirit guides, angels, and their soul’s divine mission.

A 1 on the Woo Scale might talk about their instinct for the work, their wisdom borne of long years of experience, and those moments where they “just know.” They might even talk about the visions, the dreams, the serendipities, but also frame it as “weird stuff happening” instead of “my guides talking to me.”

Dude. Whatever. We don’t have perfect words for any of this stuff, anyway. So let’s just pick a lexicon and go with it!

The Woo Scale is not a spiritual ranking system. It’s not here to decide who is enlightened enough or holy enough to access their genius. God now. Don’t listen to that Spiritual Bypassing BS.

The Woo Scale is about meeting people where they are. It’s about choosing your metaphors, analogies, and mystery descriptors so that you can connect about the deep stuff.

When I’ve worked with product designers and technical designers in Silicon Valley, I don’t usually lead with the same language I might use with someone already fluent in guides, energy, and channeling. I use the language they are already using - and metaphors that speak to them. Isn’t that just compassionate communication, after all?

My tech innovator founder might call it “flow state” while my spiritual healer client might call it “channeling.” My Manhattan-based philanthropist client might call it a gut feeling, an instinctual hit, a tweaky feeling, while my trauma-informed psychologist client might say it’s a message from a spirit guide. Same Same.

I’m less interested in policing the vocabulary than in helping you recognize the information when it arrives.The language changes. The thing we’re pointing toward does not. That’s life!

I’ll be honest with you. I like using both sets of language. And I enjoy working with people who are willing to stretch their viewpoint and vocabulary in both directions. In business, your intuitive knowing eventually has to land somewhere real, help you make the right-fit decision, choose the timing that opens the doors of opportunity. You’re not going to give up on a product line just because “the energy is weird.”

The art is in landing the intuitive messages. Leaders don’t just float off into the universe with the angels. We harvest the best information from spirit, from earth, from mind and body, and we make the call. You might say the best leaders synthesize the best of both worlds. And that’s what I love to guide smart people to do!

You may know something before you can prove it. You may feel the next right move in your body before the spreadsheet catches up. You may get a flash of insight in the shower, on a walk, or in that strange moment between sleep and waking where the best ideas love to sneak in like tiny burglars with gifts.

Then the practical question becomes what you do with the knowing once it arrives.

Well, if you’re low on the Woo Scale, you might dismiss it because it didn’t come wrapped in evidence yet. Or you might hide your intuitive hit because you don’t know how to say it without risking the professional credibility you worked so hard to build. What a loss!

And if you’re high on the Woo Scale, you might explain it in so much woo language that nobody around you can understand WTF you’re talking about. You might go with the intuitive message without slowing down enough to evaluate if it’s a good direction here in the real world.

This is why I care about the middle of the Woo Scale.

The middle is where mystery and logic can both have a say. It’s where true genius lies, I think, because we tap the most mystical wisdom, and then ground it in real world results. We academic, analytical, or scientific folk can still make room for the mysteries they didn’t teach us in school. When we are comfortable across the spectrum of Woo, we can tap all the info, and synthesize it into genius.

When I was in law school, I was definitely not hanging out at a seven or eight on the Woo Scale. I was down at a 3, probably. I was praying and feeling and talking with god, but the answers were quiet and hidden in private. I was sort of “undercover” intuitive.

And then when I awakened to psychic stuff really fast, I found myself reeling. I was seeing angels and dead people and spirit guides, but I didn’t know the lingo. Super spiritual woo-woo people were so confusing and off-putting to me. Good thing I found people who could bridge the gap for me! I’m grateful for the teachers who could translate for where I was, instead of expecting me to pretend I already spoke a language I hadn’t learned yet.

That kind of translation is generous. It lets people discover their own way of navigating spirit/intuition, without making them perform belief or indoctrinating them into some new woo religion.

And yes, I can talk to the super woo people. After 25 years of navigating these realms, of course I can. But sometimes the lingo gets distracting. Sometimes it turns into its own ego trip, a club that only the woo belong to. Suddenly the words become a way to feel special, more tuned in, more evolved than the poor little muggles still using quarterly goals.

Woof.

I lived in a hobbit hut on a creek in a hippie hot springs commune-kinda place for seven years. (Thank you Harbin Hot Springs!) It was a place of healing, of profound community, and also - it was like an island away from the “real world.” When I first arrived, I was embarrassed that I couldn’t answer one of the most popular questions, “What’s your moon sign?” I realized that these spirit-filled bohemians had their own language, their own economy, their own culture. And I had to learn it!

After a few years, I admit I started to get itchy. I began working on a property development project down the road because I missed “real life” and business and heady talking and marketing and scientists and engineers and people who were, honestly, lower on the Woo Scale. It felt almost guilty sneaking away to the big city at times just to get a hit of high intellect and down-to-earth business strategy conversations.

Guess what? I got bored doing straight business again too.

That’s when I realized that I need to be in the middle, using both the high-woo and the low-woo languages in order to feel fully expressed, met, and satisfied.

So tell me, where do you think you fall on the Woo Scale (1-10)?

And what’s your fluency and willingness to communicate with folks at either end?