Episode 331: How to Quiet the Noise and Hear Your Intuition with Diana Firth
The Noise Is Not the Problem. Your Relationship with It Is.
There is a lot of noise right now. And I don't just mean the regular background kind. I mean the kind that follows you from your phone to your inbox to the news to the conversation you're still replaying in your head from three days ago. If you've started to feel like you can't quite hear yourself through all of it — this conversation is for you.
Diana Firth has been one of my closest friends for over 25 years. She's an Intuitive Guide, Author, and Speaker, and she is one of those rare people who can bring you back to spiritual simplicity without adding a single thing to your plate. We talked about what it really means to clear the noise, what spiritual clutter actually is, and why feeling stuck is almost never what it looks like on the surface.
One thing I want you to notice before you press play: Diana recorded this episode in the middle of her own grief, having recently lost her father. Pay attention to the grace and clarity she brings to this conversation, even from inside that loss. It is a living example of something she teaches — that our emotions, all of them, are here to guide us. That even in grief, there can be presence. There can even be joy.
If you've been running on empty, second-guessing yourself, or wondering whether the gift you carry has to become your entire identity — you're going to want to hear this one.
In this episode, we cover:
- Why feeling stuck almost always points to something other than what we think
- What spiritual simplicity is — and what spiritual clutter actually looks and feels like
- How to train your mind to return to the present without sitting cross-legged for an hour
- Why your purpose and your job don’t have to be the same thing
- What happened when Diana stopped hiding her gifts out of fear of being judged
- How working with your emotions instead of pushing them down changes what’s available to you
Watch the full episode
What Spiritual Simplicity Actually Means
Diana’s work centers on one core idea: most of us aren’t stuck. We’re cluttered.
Spiritual clutter, as she describes it, is anything that keeps you from connecting to your intuition and your inner voice. The mental noise — ruminating about conversations that already happened, worrying about things that haven't happened yet. The emotional noise — feelings that get pushed down because there's never quite a good moment for them. Then there's the spiritual noise — other people's expectations and opinions that you've been carrying so long, they've started to sound like your own voice.
Your intuition, meanwhile, is not going to compete for airtime.
“When you are listening to your inner voice, which is very quiet, that’s your introverted friend at the party, like, hi, I’m over here.” — Diana Firth
That inner voice isn't gone. It's been drowned out. Diana's red light, green light analogy from her memoir, Love Doesn't Pay the Bills, captures this perfectly. As a child, she was fiercely independent and completely trusting of her instincts. Then — as happens to most of us — the accumulated weight of other people's expectations started pulling her off course. She'd take a leap, then second-guess it. Make a bold move, then talk herself out of it. Green light, red light. Forward, then freeze.
The clutter is what's creating the pattern. And the clutter can be cleared.
No One Is Actually Stuck
Pay attention to this one:
“No one is stuck.” — Diana Firth
When you’re not moving in the direction you want to go, it feels like something is wrong with you. What’s actually happening is that the noise — mental, emotional, and spiritual — has gotten loud enough to block the signal. You can’t create from that place. You can’t hear yourself. When you can’t hear yourself, you start outsourcing the direction of your life to everything around you.
“We fill our lives with all of this noise and all of these distractions so that when we simplify our lives, and we live in present moment awareness, we can hear our intuition.” — Diana Firth
The path back is practical, not complicated — though it does require intention.
- Nature immersion.
- Focused attention.
- Taking the notifications off your phone.
- Giving yourself the first hour of the morning before any screen comes into the room.
Diana has been in daily practice of this for 16 years. And she wants you to know: if she and I — two women who used to be loud and rowdy in our 20s who would have laughed at the idea of meditating every day — can build a daily stillness practice, anyone can.
The Clutter Is the Permission Block
How do you know if spiritual clutter is running the show? Diana’s answer is practical: look at the gap between what you actually want to do and what you’ve been giving yourself permission to do.
“What is it that you really want to do that you’re not doing? And why are you not giving yourself permission to do it? And that’s the clutter.” — Diana Firth
The clutter lives in the answers to that question — and it almost always goes deeper than the surface-level excuse. The fear of being judged. The belief that following what your soul is asking will cost you financially. The quiet worry that if people really saw what you were doing — or who you really are — they’d think you were strange.
Diana knows that particular fear from the inside. As someone who has had intuitive gifts since childhood and spent years pushing them away, she understands what it costs to keep that door closed. She also knows what opens when you finally stop holding it shut.
Your Purpose and Your Job Don’t Have to Be the Same Thing
This one is for every woman who has been quietly wrestling with whether the thing she loves most has to be the thing she sells. Diana’s answer — and her father’s story — is a soft, clear no. She had been quietly recording voice memos of her father in his final months, knowing time was short. He spent his career as a Special Agent with the Capitol Police, working at high levels of government. A career he was genuinely proud of. But when Diana asked him where he found the most joy?
Prison ministry. Every weekend, volunteering his time — not as part of his job, not for recognition. Simply because it was where his soul felt most alive.
“When your vibration is in alignment with your soul gifts, that is when those opportunities come to you.” — Diana Firth
The goal is alignment — not a particular business model or a specific revenue strategy. Alignment. And when you are working and living from that place, something real shifts in how you show up, how people experience you, and what becomes available.
Your Emotions Are Messengers, Not Obstacles
So much of what Diana and I explored in this episode comes back to one thing: most of us are afraid of our own feelings.
Grief, fear, anger, sadness — we push them down because we don’t have time, or because we’ve learned that the work doesn’t stop for feelings. Diana’s take on this is clear and direct:
“When you think of your emotions as messengers, that is when you start learning what’s behind them, and you can release them. When you don’t release them, you’re going to cause illness in the body.” — Diana Firth.
The nervous system, she explains, is built for movement — like the ocean, always in motion, natural rhythm. Not a perpetual tidal wave. Most of us, though, are walking around in a state of chronic activation and have normalized it so thoroughly we’ve forgotten what regulation actually feels like.
When you’re building a business and external pressures are real — and right now, for a lot of women entrepreneurs, they are genuinely real — the reflex is to push harder. Push through. Feel the feelings later. Diana’s invitation is to recognize that the feelings you’re storing are exactly what’s limiting your capacity to move forward. Release them, and your capacity expands. Keep storing them, and the weight keeps compounding.
What Happened When She Let Go of the Fear of Judgment
Diana has had intuitive gifts since childhood. At age six, she saw her grandfather — two years after he passed. For a long time, she pushed that away because sharing it out loud made her the odd one. Other people’s reactions became a spiritual clutter of their own kind.
“The minute that I unlocked that judgment fear was when the gift came online even more.” — Diana Firth
About Diana Firth
Diana Firth is an Intuitive Guide, Author, and Speaker with over 15 years of experience helping people simplify their lives and reconnect with themselves.
Using intuitive insight and the ability to read emotional and energetic patterns, Diana helps clients identify the mental, emotional, and energetic noise that keeps them stuck in overwhelm, self-doubt, and misalignment. Her work is grounded, practical, and centered on nervous system safety, self-trust, and clarity.
Through her company, Simplify with Di, and her memoir Love Doesn’t Pay the Bills, Diana teaches that simplicity is not about minimalism or productivity — it’s about removing what no longer serves so people can live with greater ease, stability, and alignment.
Connect with Diana
- Website: simplifywithdi.com
- Instagram: @simplifwithdi
- Facebook: @simplifwithdi
- TikTok: @simplifwithdi
Diana’s Free Gift — Single Session for Intuitive Guidance
Diana is offering a single-session intuitive guidance experience at a special introductory rate for the first six months of this year. If something in this conversation stirred something in you — and you’re ready to get quiet enough to get clear — this is a meaningful next step. Click here for your session.
Related Episodes You'll Love
Episode 253: Ready to Reinvent Yourself? A Conversation with Anita Rombough — Anita’s exploration of soulful success and energy alignment speaks directly to what Diana teaches about living in alignment with your soul gifts. If the idea that where you are right now is perfect — and that the path forward starts with listening inward — stayed with you, this episode deepens that conversation considerably. Listen here
Episode 87: Is It Ok to Be Happy Right Now? — Diana’s entire framework circles back to one quiet, essential question: are you giving yourself permission? This episode follows the same thread and makes the case that you don’t need external circumstances to shift before you allow yourself to feel at ease. Short, powerful, and worth keeping on repeat. Listen here
Episode 240: Overcome Societal Expectations of ‘You’re Not Enough’ with Wellness Coach Ali Sempek — Diana talks about the fear of judgment keeping people from using their gifts. Ali Sempek takes that same conversation all the way back to where it begins — where does the belief that we’re not enough actually come from, and what does it take to finally put it down? This episode answers that directly. Listen here
Ready to Quiet the Noise and Move Your Business Forward?
If something in this conversation shifted something for you, let’s talk about what your next step looks like.
I offer free 15-minute consultation calls. We’ll talk about where you are in your business and see if working together feels right.
Connect with Sarah
- Instagram: @thesarahwalton
- LinkedIn: Sarah Walton
- Free resources for you
- Join the Game On Girlfriend® community — subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube
Love This Episode?
If something Diana said felt true, send this episode to a woman in your life who needs permission to slow down and listen inward. Sometimes the most generous thing we can do is remind someone else that they’re allowed to get quiet — and trust what they hear.
About Sarah Walton
Sarah Walton is a business coach and the host of the Game On Girlfriend® podcast. Her mission is simple: to put more money in the hands of more women. She helps women entrepreneurs build profitable, sustainable businesses without burnout — working through both the mindset and the strategy sides of growth. Because when women have more financial power, they don't just keep it — they use it to take care of their families, support their communities, and build something bigger than themselves. Through her programs — including the Abundance Academy and The Art of Receiving — along with her online courses and one-on-one coaching, Sarah works with women who are ready to build profitable businesses and use that financial power to make a real difference in the world around them.
Something Just for You
Freedom in your business is here. Make revenue that allows you to exhale. Grab my free Freedom Calculator below, and know exactly how much your business needs to make so you can be FREE.
Thanks for subscribing! Check your email for further instructions.