A Leap of Faith
Growing up, she never thought she would do the spiritual work she’s doing today. Instead, Dr. Lisa Thompson—intuitive transformational coach, author, and teacher—imagined she would explore oceans, swim alongside fish, specifically sharks. As a young girl, she loved animals. They were her obsession. Then, around the age of nine, Lisa read a book about Eugenie Clark, a pioneer female shark biologist, commonly known as The Shark Lady. It was then that she knew she wanted to follow in Clark’s footsteps.
So, it’s no surprise that Lisa decided she would become a marine biologist and study sharks. Not that she didn’t have a variety of interests or hadn’t seen other paths. In fact, Lisa grew up in the company of astrologers, psychics, tarot card readers, all friends of her astrologer mother. It was just that more than anything, she wanted to be like The Shark Lady.
Lisa went on to study biology, ultimately earning a PhD. After which, she entered the world of academia, where she secured a tenure track position as a professor. Despite accomplishing what she’d set out to do and having some amazing experiences along the way—like interning during summer breaks at The Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia—Lisa realized that her heart wasn’t in her work. She admits that fulfilling the requirements of her field, which included writing grants and publishing academic papers, wasn’t her true interest.
Lisa says that it took a huge leap of faith for her to leave behind the world of academia and set out on a new path. However, that’s just what she did. Once she left her teaching position, it took her about another fourteen years before she started doing the type of intuitive coaching she does today.
Drawing from her own experiences, Lisa knows that in order to operate as an intuitive takes trust. It takes being open and aware. An intuitive does not predetermine what needs to show up and how it needs to show up. She adds it requires being willing to take the next step when your inner authority gives you a yes. She says, “We all have that GPS inside of us that guides us if we will trust it.” Over the years, she has learned to trust and act on the little and big hits she gets that tell her: yes, go this way or yes, go that way.
In fact, one of Lisa’s favorite topics to discuss is the importance of how each of us must learn to hear and trust our personal inner wisdom. She points out that we are all different and receive guidance in our own unique ways. Therefore, she says, each of us has to come to recognize how our own inner authority shows up, how we receive answers. For Lisa, it comes immediately as gut instinct. She also says that it’s not enough for us to just connect with the knowingness, we have to follow it once it comes. That can be tough, she cautions because our human egos are great at justifying why we shouldn’t follow it.
Lisa knows that for women, following their inner authority can often be a challenge because of past conditioning and because of the familial and societal expectations placed upon them. There was a time when this happened to her. Even though her mother was a strong and independent woman who’d always told Lisa she could do anything in life, and despite being well-educated and financially providing for herself, Lisa admits she fell into unhealthy relationships. She believes this happened because she’d accepted what society deemed as an appropriate role for a woman and because her parents had not modeled a good and healthy relationship.
Looking back on those days, when she let the logical mind override her intuition and convince her to stay, Lisa explains, “I allowed myself to be in relationships that were not healthy, going through a series of toxic relationships and not trusting myself, not trusting my intuition, which was screaming at me, this is not the right person for you, this is not healthy.” It’s no wonder then that once Lisa starting working with her own inner authority, she eventually began helping other women to work with theirs.
It was through her own healing from toxic relationships that Lisa learned to believe in and follow the guidance she was receiving. She credits that knowingness with directing her to her spiritual path. She explains it was through a hand analysis, which she’d had done about seven years ago, that the seed for her future work was planted. The hand reader told Lisa that her life path was to be a spiritual teacher. Then, about four years ago, she followed her guidance to an international women’s conference, where she took part in a past life regression. She was blown away by the process, so much so that the following month she was being trained in it. From there, Lisa envisioned her spiritual career path.
Today, while enjoying a healthy relationship, Lisa consciously designs her life and her coaching practice around all of her artistic, creative, and spiritual gifts, and her continued love of animals, always letting intuition lead the way. She accepts the yes when her inner knowing offers it. She follows it even when it doesn’t seem to make sense, even if it scares her, she does it anyway. She’s become an expert at trusting her personal guidance system.
Because of that trust, Lisa recently moved with her family from Washington State across the ocean to Hawaii. Interestingly, she credits COVID-19 as being the catalyst for this big change. She says, “Covid actually is what prompted us to think outside the box.” It made her family ask themselves what they wanted their lives to look like and how they wanted to create that. When the answer came up as Hawaii, Lisa didn’t allow her logical mind to override her intuition. Once again, she took a leap of faith and set out on a new path.
By Karen H. Lizon
