Spark | by Suhailah is A Monthly Personal Growth & Transformation Newsletter providing you with tools and personal insights to help you feel better—and to feel, better. Let's embark on this journey of self-discovery together, embracing emotional and mental freedom.
Announcements:
Last month I released a new mini-course called Feminine Leadership: Leading from the Inside Out. To read more about the mini-course or access it, click here:
Also, get caught up on my Grow with Me by Suhailah podcast. Two weeks ago, we released the final installment of a 4-part series titled “Wade in the Water: Roadmap to Healing with My Energy Healer.” This series featured my very first podcast guest, Kim Cuhenids-Klaas. What began as a single sit-down conversation blossomed into this full series. All 4 parts are now available. Listen now and follow on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, and wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Share this with someone who might find the conversation, information, and tools useful…someone who could benefit too.
Quotes of the Month:
From me:
“Insight feels like an unraveling of something that has come before, like a carpet rolling out.” ~ Suhailah
“When we learn something new about ourselves or another in this way, it makes for a more compassionate, hopefully understanding and empathetic, human that is us.” ~ Suhailah
From others:
“Insight is intuition that has understood its object.” ~ Henri Bergson
“True insight is an inner technology that transforms perception into creation.” ~ Gregg Braden
“Insight is the gift of seeing deeply into the nature of things.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Insight is the beginning of all transformation, the flash that breaks the old pattern.” ~ Terence McKenna
“Insight is the real work of the psyche, illuminating the unseen depths.” ~ Carl Jung
“Insight is the sudden realization that what you thought was separate is actually connected.” ~ Alan Watts
“Insight is the moment when the puzzle pieces of our understanding suddenly click into place.” ~ Maria Popova
Centering Thought + Mantra (August):
Centering Thought:
Insight lives just beyond what I see, sometimes softly unfolding, sometimes striking like lightning with brilliant clarity. If I pause and open my mind, new understanding comes through.
Mantra this month:
Insight comes softly or shouts. I listen and act on its call, knowing it guides my growth.
Story Time:
The theme for August is Insight. And in both my personal and professional life and business I live here a lot…almost all of the time because I’m regularly seeking new understandings, especially about people, and to me that’s what Insight feels like. Understanding.
If you look it up, you’ll find that the right hemisphere - especially regions tied to holistic thinking and sudden connections - is often involved when we experience insight. And if you are anything like me, if you’ve ever gotten a flash of insight it often feels like a lightbulb that goes off in your head or somewhere in your being. It feels like an unraveling of something that has come before, like a carpet rolling out.
My belief is that the highest knowledge (and wisdom) is something that is recalled rather than learned - as if it was always there, waiting to surface when we’re ready. And so it is stored inside of us and maybe this is why insight feels so resonant, like an “Aha”… “I found you,” when we gain a new one that leads us to something that is truer than what we already thought we knew. Or, one that makes us understand and know something previously unknown. Like a pebble or hidden gem we just found.
This is why to me it feels and falls in the category of our “spiritual technology” - an inner capacity we can notice, tune, and apply - or one of our gifts that I’ve been talking about all year in these newsletters…meaning, it’s something that somehow also lives inside of us. That we access from within. This ability to be insightful and have insight.
It’s no wonder to me, then, that insight falls in the same region of the brain associated with creativity. At least for me, especially when it comes to work, a new insight often sparks new and deeper levels of creativity. Research even suggests that moments of insight can open up wide associative thinking, fueling creative leaps. That is exactly what happens for me.
In business, as a brand and marketing consultant, having worked in many industries (music, film and TV, tech, marketing and advertising industries, and beauty where I currently serve as Fractional Chief Brand Officer for NIKKI MAAR), consumer insights, brand insights, any insights...are something we actively search for in my field. It requires research and services we pay for to really understand the people…the audience…the customer…we want to reach.
For me, because I already consider myself an intuitive marketer, when I land on an insight that rings truer than the rest, or feels like the right one to lean into, creativity is the thing that 100% naturally follows.
We BUILD on it. And this connects to our overall newsletter theme this year: REBUILDING.
So far, we’ve explored:
• what it means to start with a Blank Slate
• the power of thought and imagination
• the role of repetition
• inspiration
• strengthening our intuition
Insight fits right in here, because every rebuild begins with seeing differently.
I’m experiencing it now with Nikki, the Founder and CEO of the brand I mentioned. Whenever I have a new insight, or even consider one that could be true, the level of creativity and expansive new ideas flow between us like a river seeking the ocean that has always been there, waiting for our arrival. Along the way, there are big and small rocks you can walk along at the river’s edge, markers that lead to greater and better views as you rise higher.
It makes work and life feel curious, and fun, and expansive, like the sky is the limit when it sets us out on new paths of discovery that lead to greater and higher and higher levels of creativity and ideas for the work we are up to. It’s an exciting thing to participate in and behold, like a doula helping to birth a new baby.
When it comes to insight in my work, often it is some level of active research that leads me to places, coupled with my deep interest, curiosity, and understanding of people and human behavior and potential, as well as my approach to myself in these same ways. So, in this case, although a seed has been planted through this outside inquiry, sometimes with the need for additional outside resources to help, there is something inside of me that told me to look there to begin with. And this builds on the Intuition I covered in last month’s issue.
And to me, that is what insight, not unlike intuition, is telling us: look there. Pay attention over here, and so on.
And when we learn something new about ourselves or another in this way, it makes for a more compassionate, hopefully understanding and empathetic, human that is us (the individual).
This, in turn, impacts (and hopefully elevates or at least expands) our understanding of the world we live in, the planet we call home, and her people. It also influences our ability and responsibility to create and contribute from this knowledge and understanding to make this world a better place.
Interesting to note…
Science does give us a little window into the “Aha” we feel. Researchers have observed that insight moments are often accompanied by a brief burst of activity in the right side of the brain, in areas that help us make connections and see patterns. Some studies using EEG (electroencephalography, a way of measuring electrical activity in the brain from sensors on the scalp) even catch a quick spike in high-frequency waves just before we consciously recognize an insight. And while that right-temporal pop shows up, insight itself draws on a wider network across the brain working together. Cool, right?
This lands close to what spiritual teachers have pointed to. Alan Watts often reminded us that what we call learning can feel more like remembering what was always there once we drop our filters. Gregg Braden speaks of an inner technology we can tune, one that lets heart, mind, and awareness shape what we create in the world. Feels true to me.
Happy August!
~ Suhailah 🖤 💫
Simple Exercise / Prompt for Insight
Pause and Reflect:
Take a moment today to pause and ask yourself: What might I be missing if I only look on the surface?
Then, soften your focus. Let your mind wander gently without pressure. Notice any new connections or thoughts that arise. Write down even the smallest spark of a new understanding. This is the seed of insight.
Announcements:
Reminder that my new podcast, Grow with Me by Suhailah has launched. Click any of the icons below to take you there:
My book, Awaken the Brand by Suhailah: Unleash Your Personal Potential Through Building Your Brand, is available on Apple Books, Amazon (including the free Kindle app), Google Play, and Gumroad. Visit my website for more details. Book & Course Bundle here.
Copyright © 2025 Suhailah H. Yoba. All rights reserved.
LOVE this "...every rebuild begins with seeing differently."