Big Stuff With Danielle Colley

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She was four years old when she told her mum that the man up the road had died in the night — She was right.
Chezzi Denyer spent the next four decades becoming the most logical, credible, provable version of herself she could manage. She built a career in television. She worked at Sunrise. She was a journalist. And she pushed that other part of herself so far down that she almost forgot it existed.
Then her best friend Amy died. And Amy, being Amy, refused to stay quiet about it.
Chezzi is one of Australia's most recognisable television producers, a certified psychic medium, a mental health advocate, and the author of the memoir The Weird Little Girl Who Talks to Ghosts. This is a conversation about grief, intuition, the gift that kept getting punished, and what it costs a woman to spend her life hiding the truest thing about herself.
If you've ever had a knowing you talked yourself out of — this one is for you.

CHAPTERS0:00 — Introduction
3:00 — Coming out 
8:00 — Self-protection vs living a lie
11:00 — Chezzi's first memory of the gift
17:00 — Catholic school, the cane, and praying not to go to hell
22:00 — ADHD at 40
26:00 — Holding it all together 
30:00 — Suppressing spirit 
35:00 — Intuition as a muscle
40:00 — Signs and the language you build with the universe
44:00 — Danielle's mum
48:00 — Losing Amy
58:00 — Medium school 
64:00 — Grant's accident
68:00 — The vision quest that wasn't
76:00 — The messages from spirit
80:00 — Unconditional love and losing the fear of dying
83:00 — For the woo curious

KEY TAKEAWAYS
Self-protection and living a lie can look the same from the outside — but only one of them is something you chose in order to survive. 
Intuition is subtle. But it's almost always the very first thing you feel — before the second-guessing starts.
You can choose your own language with the universe and ask for what you need. Chezzi asked for a crow mid-recording. Three came.
 The people we've lost aren't missing us the way we miss them — because they're still with us. They just want us to live.
The truest thing about you is not a problem to be managed. It may have been treated that way. That's not the same thing.
FAQS
What is Chezzi Denyer's book about? The Weird Little Girl Who Talks to Ghosts is Chezzi's debut memoir. It tells the story of a life spent hiding a gift she was born with — and the grief, courage, and surrender it took to finally own it. The last section of the book contains messages received from spirit, written in Chezzi's own hand.
How did Chezzi Denyer become a psychic medium?
 After the death of her close friend Amy in 2022, Chezzi began experiencing what she believed were signs from Amy — birds flying into windows, songs playing on radios that weren't on, her young daughter pointing to empty corners of the room. She enrolled in The Medium School in Canada, studied under renowned psychic Tony Stockwell at Arthur Findlay College in the UK, and became a certified medium in 2024.
What is claircognizance? Claircognizance is a form of psychic knowing — where you simply know something without being able to explain how. Chezzi describes not being able to leave the house the day of Grant's accident, and the same feeling the morning of September 11. It's different from intuition in that it arrives as a certainty rather than a nudge.
RESOURCES AND LINKS
Chezzi Denyer —⁠ Instagram⁠⁠The Weird Little Girl Who Talks to Ghosts⁠ — available now wherever books are sold⁠The Weird Little Girl Facebook Circle ⁠— Facebook group for woo curious community Danielle Colley — ⁠daniellecolley.com.au⁠ Big Stuff — ⁠bigstuffpod@gmail.com⁠

If this episode reached into your chest and squeezed something — share it with one person who needs to hear it. You never know whose permission slip this might be. 
Subscribe so you never miss an episode, and come find us at ⁠bigstuffpod@gmail.com⁠.

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What if the fight you keep having with your partner was never actually about the washing (or whatever your recurring thing is?)

Channel and energy healer, Sarah McGahan, has worked with over 700 women in private healing sessions all over the world, and across all of those sessions, the same three relationship patterns kept showing up, again and again. 

Not just in romantic relationships — with mothers, with children, with friends, with colleagues, and with themselves. 

Danielle has done her own healing work with Sarah personally, and in this conversation they go deep into what those three patterns are, where they actually come from, and why doing "all the work" doesn't always make them disappear.

The three most common relationship patterns Sarah sees in her private practice and how they are showing up in reality.
These patterns usually aren't random. They're typically formed in early childhood, before age seven, through what Sarah calls environmental conditioning.
The clearest sign of your own dominant pattern isn't the big dramatic moments — it's something far simpler.
Healing a pattern doesn't mean it never gets triggered again but what actually happens when you finally do the work.

As Sarah puts it: it's not your fault, but it is your responsibility. The pattern wasn't your doing, but breaking it now is yours to carry.

What are the three relationship patterns Sarah McGahan talks about? Fear of abandonment (and its variations, fear of loss and fear of betrayal), the need for control, and an unconscious addiction to pain and suffering or drama.

Why do I keep repeating the same relationship pattern even after years of therapy? According to Sarah, these patterns are often formed very early in childhood, often even before age seven, and can run so deep that they're often not fully resolved through talk therapy alone. 

How do I figure out which pattern is mine? One simple question shared by Sarah helps you to understand why even in different relationships, different jobs, different friendships, but the same dynamic keeps showing up. 

Find Sarah McGahan, Channel and Intuitive Healer
Sarah's website - ⁠sarahmcgahan.com⁠ Sarah's Instagram- ⁠@channelwithsarah⁠

Or find more Danielle -  Website - ⁠daniellecolley.com.au⁠
Contact Danielle - danielle@daniellecolley.com.au  Podcast contact: ⁠bigstuffpod@gmail.com⁠

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Sophie Bretag came on this show to talk about kindness. But what she really gave us was something far more important — a front-row seat to what happens when everything you've built your identity around is taken from you, and what you discover in the silence that follows. 

Two years ago, Sophie had surgery for tongue cancer — a rare diagnosis for a woman her age — and spent almost twelve months unable to speak clearly. For someone whose entire career is built on her voice, that enforced silence became the most profound teacher of her life.
This is a conversation about what it actually means to choose yourself — not as a concept, but when the stakes are real, when your husband is hospitalised the same week you are, when your kids need you, when going back to work two weeks post-surgery feels like the only option. 

Sophie is warm, funny, and extraordinarily open, and I found myself receiving things in this conversation that I didn't even know I needed. I think you will too.
CHAPTERS
0:00 — Introduction 
3:00 — The lump on Sophie's tongue 
10:00 — The diagnosis: "baby cancer" 
17:00 — The operation 
22:00 — Speaking for the last time before surgery 
27:00 — The biggest fears going under the knife 
33:00 — When your other senses take over
38:00 — The outpouring of love  
44:00 — Setting the hardest boundaries of her life 
49:00 — "I chose to choose me" 
54:00 — What kindness actually looks like day to day 
56:00 — What she would tell herself two years ago
RESOURCES & LINKS
Sophie Bretag — mettaleaders.com
The Kind Way — available for pre-order now, in store 30 June 2025
Sophie on LinkedIn
Sophie on Instagram — @sophiebretag

Danielle Colley — daniellecolley.com.au
Instagram - @iamdaniellecolley
Contact Big Stuff — bigstuffpod@gmail.com
THINKING POINTS
When someone you love is struggling, do you offer an open door — "let me know if you need anything" — or do you give them options? 
Think about one person in your life right now who might need A, B, C, or D instead.
Where are you still waiting for permission to stop going back to the way things were? You already have it.

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Six months ago, Danielle stepped back from the daily grind of running a business and gave herself something she'd never given herself before: time. 
Not because she didn't know what was coming — she did — but because she decided to meet it with open hands instead of a full calendar. What followed was two books, a body of paintings, and her very first art show.
This episode is about what happens when grief asks you to stop explaining yourself and just make something true instead. It's also about the five things Danielle learned from announcing something terrifying before she was ready — and why that's exactly the point.

CHAPTERS
0:00 — Introduction 
2:30 — The in-between 
6:00 — What grief actually asks of you 
9:00 — Why she made space before the hardest thing arrived 
12:30 — The art, the books, and what it all is really 
16:00 — Five things learned from hosting a first art show 
16:30 — 1. Do it scared 
18:30 — 2. Audacity is excellent 
19:30 — 3. The devil is in the details 
21:30 — 4. Release the outcome 
23:00 — 5. Deadlines are king 
24:30 — You don't need permission to begin

The As She Is collection — available to view and purchase via Danielle's Instagram @daniellecolley.art

If this episode landed somewhere real for you, send Danielle a message — she genuinely wants to know. 
You can reach her at ⁠bigstuffpod@gmail.com⁠ or find her at daniellecolley.com.au. 
And if you know someone who's been sitting on something — a creative project, a scary goal, a version of themselves they haven't shown anyone yet — share this one with them. 
That's exactly who it was made for.

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I’ve always thought of myself as someone who cannot lie. I’m a compulsive truth teller — ask anyone who knows me. But today’s guest made me realise something uncomfortable: that’s also a lie. Everyone lies. The question is whether you know when you’re doing it. And why.
Dominic Thurbon is a behavioural change expert, co-founder of Alchemy Labs, former world top-10 debater, Earnst & Young partner, founder of two businesses he built and sold, and author of books published in fifteen countries. 
His new book To Be Honest is one of the most rigorously researched and genuinely funny books I’ve read on why we lie, how misinformation spreads, and what it actually takes to make truth happen in a world designed to make that very difficult.
In this conversation we go into the Bollywood film Dominic lied his way into at 21 (yes, really), why even the most ethical people lie daily without realising it, the crucial difference between a liar and a bullshitter, and what it means to make truth a verb rather than a value.
 This one didn’t let any of us off the hook. I don’t think it’ll let you off it either.
 
CHAPTERS
00:00  Introduction
03:30  The biggest lie Dominic ever told
13:00  Why we double down on lies
18:30  Them truth, we truth, me truth
24:00  Everyone lies: the main reasons why
31:00  The gender difference in how we lie
34:30  Does my bum look big? 
40:00  Making truth happen
46:30  The misinformation economy and why social media is designed to work against us
53:30  Liars vs bullshitters 
59:30  The debating paradox
64:00  What it would take to change your mind
 
 
RESOURCES & LINKS

Find Dominic Thurbon on his website
      To Be Honest — available at major bookstores and online via Major Street Publishing
Alchemy Labs (Dominic’s behaviour change firm)
 Find Dominic on LinkedIn
 

Mentioned in this episode

•       On Bullshit by Harry Frankfurt (Princeton University Press) — the source of the liar vs bullshitter distinction
•       Lying by Sam Harris — the case that there is never a situation where lying is justified
•       Stolen Focus by Johann Hari — on reclaiming attention in a distracted world
•       Brené Brown on “being clear is kind” — from Dare to Lead
•       World Economic Forum Global Risk Report — misinformation ranked the #1 short-term global risk
 

Find more of Danielle Colley

•       Instagram: @daniellecolley
•       Email: bigstuffpod@gmail.com

If this episode got you thinking, share it with one person who needs to hear it. And if you haven’t already, take the burnout quiz at daniellecolley.com.au — it’s free, it’s quick, and it might just tell you something true about yourself that you’ve been