Is This Hidden Belief The Reason You're Stuck? For Alienated Parents

So today we're going to be talking about what keeps you disconnected from living the life that you want. If your life feels right now like one long string of negative outcomes, e court rulings, your money stress, the same relationship patterns, and you're thinking, "How am I still in this same spot when I am trying so hard?" Then this episode is for you. Because the problem isn't about you not trying hard enough or not being good enough or that even that God or whoever you believe in the universe forgot about you. The problem instead is that your beliefs and your nervous system are still lowkey married to a completely different story than the life that you

say that you want. So today we're going to start closing that gap. I'm walking you through somewhat of a mini version of my process that I do with my clients so that you can see exactly what's actually holding you back from a life of freedom and abundance and how you can begin shifting out of living at the mercy of your worst case scenarios and living your desires on purpose. Okay, so you are listening to the Beyond the High Road podcast with Shelby Milford, episode number 195. Stay tuned. Welcome to Beyond the High Road, a podcast dedicated [music] to healing your heart and life following the grief of alienation. I'm your host, Shelby Melzford, a twice certified life coach

[music] specializing in post-traumatic growth. If you're experiencing the effects of alienation and you're ready to heal, then this show [music] is my love letter. G. Stay tuned. You guys, for years, I was so frustrated with my life. I kept repeating patterns um that I didn't even know that I was following. And I was sure I was sure that I had been put at some permanent disadvantage, right? I thought I must have either had done something wrong sometime in my past that I was still paying for. Even though looking back on my life, I spent most of my time in either freeze or fawn mode, right? So, it wasn't like that I was out there doing all the things, doing all

the evil deeds. You know, I told myself that if I just had more money, the more guidance, I'm sure some of you guys that have listened before have heard me talk about this, more money, more guidance, the right mentor, even the right education, the right relationships, then opportunities would just finally plop into my lap. And then later towards the turning point, I would say a few years before that, I turned to religion. And then I was reading all the self-help books, you know, and I thought, okay, now things will start to look up. There's this idea in a lot of at least what I know is in a lot of Christian spaces and maybe in other religions too that if you're following God or who how

whoever you believe following God's will that favor will just come upon you as long as you are walking in the light that things will just come to you effortlessly and easily. And that can be absolutely beautiful and can be true for some, right? But it also kind of suggests in my opinion that anything that you have done in your past, anything that that's happened is condemnable. If you're thinking that you always have to be doing God's will that sometimes you don't even know what that is, then you're it it puts you in a place of shame and lack and not enoughness in my opinion. Well, how come their life looks so good? They must be following God's will. Like, it's almost

like comparing the Instagram what it looks like from the outside. They're driving the shiny new car. They have the jobs. They have their kids home with them. So then you start to shame yourself for the way that your life looks like from the inside, right? And so from that energy of comparison, I must have blown it somehow some way. Usually what will happen is that we disconnect from the very energy that's always there, the very energy you actually need to get to the good stuff. And by good stuff, I don't just mean external results. I mean that feeling that you have that I'm sure each and every one of you has felt before when you are aligned with what genuinely

feels good and true for you. So, if this is resonating with you, if you're tired of feeling like you missed your shot or like the trauma, the alienation, the lap of support set you permanently behind, I'm going to walk you through a mini version of the work that I do with my clients so that you can see exactly how to go from living at the mercy of your negative outcomes, right, the current negative outcomes in your life to living your desires on purpose. And we just came off, I don't know if it was a couple weeks ago. Anyway, recently I did an episode on desire, right? And why it's so important to live into those and how important it is to know what those

desires are in your life. And I over the last four years since this all the episodes began, I have talked a lot with you guys about much of what I'm going to talk about today. But I am always looking for new ways to teach what what I know what I know on the inside too from the experience that I had throughout my all of the work that I've done you know starting from in the deepest the darkest places um when I was living up in the house on the hill you know and so um a lot of the experiences I'm just now getting the words for and being able to come up with better summaries to then teach it to you in different ways that I know that will reach some of you and um on deeper

levels yourselves, you know. So, I guess what I'm saying is is that this is this episode is a definitely continuation of the recent episodes on desire and why those are so important. But also, I've just come up with a somewhat of a new way, some new examples. And actually, I'm going to bring some old examples in, too, and a way to optimize it the best for you guys to get something out of it and also have the same results in your own lives. Because that's my ultimate goal, right? Is I want you guys to also go from feeling like it's darkness, right? Well, I don't want you to be in the darkness, but I mean going from that to seeing the materialized results in your life, even

just from listening to this free resource that I have for you here, you know, so I'm going to immediately jump into the practical stuff. Okay. If shame, not enoughness, and that sense of being permanently behind are the energies that disconnect us from what we want, we need a way to connect or tap back in, right? But in order to do that, you actually need to see the stories that are feeding those feelings of lack that I just spoke about. Most of the time, they're running in the background like old code. You don't even realize that they're there. We don't even realize that they're there. So, wherever you are, if it's safe to do so, and by safe, I mean like you're not driving a car or whatever,

right? Um, I want you to grab a pen and a paper or open your notes app on your phone or on your device if you can't. If not, come back to this. You could listen to the whole episode, but I really would be really helpful for you to do these exercises with me real time. Okay? So, I'm going to say a few words and I want you to write down the very first thought that pops up into your mind for each word. Do not edit. Don't try to be positive. Don't make it sound healed or spiritual or any of that. Do not censor yourself. That is the whole goal because if you censor yourself, it's going to defeat the whole purpose of this exercise. Okay? Just capture the raw, honest,

true answer for you right now. Even if it's not all the way true, even if you don't want it to be true, just say the the real truth. Even if feel if it feels dark. So, here we go. I'm going to pause in between these words, but you can also pause and write obviously if I keep going. Okay? I would encourage you to do that if you need to. You want the first instinct response that comes to you. Don't think too hard about this. Okay? So, you ready? Here we go. money. What's the first thought that comes to you when you think of the word money? The next one, your problems. Your problems. What comes up for you when I say that? The next one is the problems in the world. What do you think about the

problems in the world right now? your dreams. What comes up for you there? Your family? your relationships, any of them, or relationships in general, your situation of alienation or arangement, whatever's going on for you with your kids or grandkids, your capabilities

comes up for you there. what's limiting for you or what is the what's the first thing that comes to you and your destiny? What does that mean to you? So, like I said, I urge you or encourage you to pause if you need to to finish any of the thoughts that are going on for you right now or come back also. But those words that you just wrote down or thought of if you're driving, that is your current running model. It's your subconscious script about how life works for you. For the rest of this episode, we're going to gently pull that script apart and we're going to start aligning it with the life that you actually want. Okay. All right. Before we move into what you can do, I want to talk about

something that can feel sometimes a little confusing for some people. The worst case scenario is actually okay to visit. Some people have a fear of speaking it out loud, but it's actually okay to visit as long as you're doing it intentionally, purposefully, like you're drawing it up, right? I t I've talked about the worst case scenarios in um earlier earlier episodes, but I think it's it's really good to call out the elephant in the room. Just look at what it is you're thinking about or that's the dun dun dun that's there. Bring it out and into the light. Right? There's a practice that philosophers and psychologists have used for centuries where you briefly imagine realistic

negative outcomes on purpose almost like a rehearsal. You walk yourself through like if this thing that I'm scared of actually happened, who would I be? How would I meet myself there? How would I cope? Who would I lean on for support or find meaning? How would I find meaning in this? Right? That kind of intentional visit to the worst case can build your mental psychological muscle, okay? It can help you feel more prepared, a little less fragile, and even more appreciative of what you do have right now. But that is very different from the kind of unintentional thinking that most of us do especially for coming from complex trauma and shame from years of being sitting in trauma response. Right?

Catastrophizing is when your brain automatically jumps to the worst possible conclusion and camps out there. Okay? You do not in that scenario. You don't choose it. It just runs. One mis text becomes they've abandoned me. Oh my gosh, clients will text me um all hours of the night, the day, weekends, whenever with these kinds of texts. They've abandoned me. Oh my gosh. And they know that that's what they're doing, but they just want to call it out, which I always encourage, right? Text me. Just get it out. Do put it out there somewhere. What What's going on in your brain? Right? Um, a court date becomes I'll lose everything forever. All of a sudden, you get served

and you're like, for I'm going to lose everything. Everything, especially coming from what we have, right? A bill in the mail becomes, I'll never get out of this debt. Just one bill. Next thing you know, you're all the way to the worst case scenario. But the way that this is done, the more that your your mind repeats those stories, the more that your mind believes them, the more that your body believes them, your nervous system gets used to that constant state of threat. It gets addicted to that constant state of threat actually. and you end up living in the same low, dense, disconnected state, which is exactly what keeps you from the energy that you need to create

the life that you want. So, we're not demonizing the worst case scenarios here. We're learning to use them on purpose to create meaning and growth instead of letting them use us, which will keep end up keeping you stuck. Keeping us stuck. And that's what we're doing with what you just wrote down. You're going to notice where your unintentional worstcase thinking is running the show. And then I'm going to walk you through how to line your beliefs back up with your desires. This is where things can start to feel a little extra. Just so you know. I mean, it's not it's nothing big, but when you look at what you just wrote, a lot of these automatic answers didn't come out

of nowhere. I would say all of them didn't come out of nowhere. They were modeled for you. They were inherited. They were quiet rules, the quiet rules of your family system. And for many of my clients, especially the men, and I know I say that I was that as I wrote this earlier, I was thinking this somewhere in the back of my mind. I do say that a lot like especially the dads. Maybe it's just that I notice it differently in them. But anyway, for many of my clients, there's this un No, I know why with this one. There's this unspoken belief that to say out loud that their parents gave them some of their hang-ups, you know, is a kind of betrayal. So many men especially, but I did this too. If I

look back on my life, I remember thinking maybe that it wasn't a betrayal, but I overestimated underestimated how much I actually did pull like how many habits um unwanted beliefs that I did pull from my childhood, which is inevitable, right? But I would on the outside I was running um in extended freeze and also in fawn mode. for most of my life, like I kind of mentioned a little bit ago, I think. Um, and so I steed through life a lot. Like I was either on a in a freeze or was speeding through peopleleasing and fluttering around like a butterfly. And I just told myself that my life was perfect. I had a great life. It was on paper. It looked great. It was a great

life, right? And so if you notice that you do that and you maybe either feel guilty about acknowledging that your parents might have given you some of these habits or these beliefs, I just want to let you know that acknowledging impact doesn't automatically mean that mom and dad were bad or that they didn't love you. You know, naming the impact of your parents and your upbringing isn't betrayal. It's just acknowledging the blueprint that you've been working from. It's just this is this is what I learned. It doesn't have to be bad or good. In fact, I it isn't bad or good. It's neutral. It's when we put a story to that whether that's bad or good. You know, the tone

of the story is what's going to affect your result in your life today. You know, so your parents' beliefs, their wounds, their way of handling conflict and connection all helped shape the core beliefs that you just wrote down. >> That's in a nutshell. It doesn't matter how old you are. Probably you've been working on a lot of these beliefs. Unless you've done a ton of inner work, you're probably running on a lot of the same beliefs. So instead of blaming or excusing, I want to offer you a different way of looking at it. Different if you haven't been listening to me for a while anyway. What if your particular parents and the exact mix of their strengths, their quirks, their

shortcomings were actually part of your custom path? Like they were custom curated, made for you, right? the path that was designed to grow you into who you're capable of becoming to your highest self. Right? That's where um if you guys have heard my doors backpack metaphor comes in and I'm going to walk you through that again next because the last time I told that was probably years ago and it's really fitting for today for this episode. So, let me give you a picture for all this because sometimes metaphors land deeper than explanations. I want you to imagine that when you came into this life, okay, you were handed a backpack, your own little Dora's backpack, and inside of that backpack

were all the things, everything that you needed to get through all of the challenges on your specific journey, your journey. Okay? If you've ever watched door the explorer, you know, with your kids or maybe even your grandkids or on your own, you know, you know that the backpack always has exactly what she needs for the next obstacle, for the next challenge, right? A map for the forest, a rope for the river, a snack for the long walk, whatever to get past Swiper and get over the drawbridge to get to the waterfall, flashlight, right, to go through the gate. It doesn't have everything. And that backpack too, it doesn't have absolutely everything like all the kitchen sink. You don't see it

overflowing with a bunch of tools in there. It's not. It's the perfect amount of tools, right? Your life works the exact same way, y'all. Your parents, your caregivers, the town you grew up in, the religion or the lack of religion, the culture, or the way the conflict was handled, the way that love was shown to you, or maybe the way that love was withheld. All of that is part of your path, your journey, and later those actually become part of your tools. These are things you're supposed to overcome. The alienation too, the abuse, maybe the financial instability, the whatever it is, the lack of guidance, the moment you felt completely unseen, all of it was

already planned and in your backpack or on your designated path. Those experiences that you had uh leading up until today shape the beliefs and also the survival tools that you carry today. They make sense of the survival tools that you carry today. Most of us were never told, "Hey, by the way, this is your backpack. These are your tools. You're allowed to take them out, look at them, decide which ones to keep, which ones to retire, which ones to upgrade." Instead, we just start walking. We just assume that whatever was in there was just how life is. Oh, this is this is the luck of the draw, right? And we blame the backpack or the people who packed it, whatever. We tell ourselves,

if we had different parents, if we had more support, if I hadn't had gone through this alienation, my life would look completely different. And maybe parts of that feel true still to this day. But notice what that belief does for you. It makes your entire journey dependent on someone else's backpack on a path maybe that was never even yours to begin with. So I want I want to offer you a little bit of a radical what if and what if at the soul level at your soul level you were the one that chose this backpack this backpack. What if your spirit chose these particular parents you the exact parents or lack of parents maybe even that you had their exact mix of strengths, quirks, shortcomings, all

of that because overcoming the patterns of your specific family, the court system, the financial story, all of this was going to grow you into exactly who you were meant to be. That doesn't mean that what happened to you is okay. Okay, I'm not saying that and I'm not trying to excuse any abuse or alienation or injustice at all. Right? It simply changes the frame from I was randomly cursed or I was cursed because my parents didn't love me to I was equipped for this path, my specific path, and now I get to decide how I want to use what I was given. You know, like it it puts the ball back in your core. It puts you back in the driver's seat when you begin to think this way. Because when you begin

to think or when you continue to think that you weren't given the right tools, that they you didn't have the guidance, that you didn't have this, you didn't have that, you don't have the right opportunities or the right amount of money or whatever it is. What happens then? You're at a complete disadvantage and you're coming from lack and shame and not enoughness, right? So what if all that stuff is actually those things are what you're supposed those are your obstacles. You can't go on somebody else's path with your backpack or the air backpack and have it work for you. The keys won't fit. The hammer won't be the right size. You know, whatever it is, all of your tools, they're going to

be mismatched. This path, what if it's what you chose before you even got to this earth? So here's the key. If you try to jump jump the tracks and live someone else's path with their parents, their partner, their bank account, your backpack will not make sense anymore. Even though it looks so much better when we're seeing from the outside somebody else's Instagram life or just the normal families that you see around you, why can't I just have that? There's a reason for it. Trust that there's a reason for it because the alternative is misery, you know? So, why even bother going there? because it only blocks you from all your fullest potential. I promise you this. So step one in this process,

the whole point of that story is that accepting that your path, as painful and unfair as it might look on paper, is yours. So that's where I was talking about the radical acceptance part from this place. Instead of saying my life would be better if I had a different backpack or if I had a different path, we get curious given this backpack, this history, this alienation, situation of alienation, what becomes possible when I actually start unpacking and using what I've got. That's the energy I want you in as we move through the next step because now we're going to pull some of those tools out of your backpack and look at them up close. your earliest beliefs about the area you feel most

stuck inside of. Remember that list that you wrote a few minutes ago? I want you to pick just one area that feels the loudest for you right now that feels the most challenging. Maybe it's money. Maybe it's your situation of alienation and your role as a parent, right? Maybe it's relationships or your sense of destiny. There is no wrong choice here. Honestly, you could pick any one of them. Whatever is screaming at you right now. Once you've got that in mind, I want to I want you to think back as far as you can remember, okay? And answer a few questions in that journal or your notes app or even in your mind. Right now though, I really, really encourage you, urge you to write this stuff down

because then by writing it down, most of you could probably say this script out loud because you know what I'm getting ready to say here. By writing it down, you have less of an opportunity to argue your way out of it because you're writing it down. When it's all up in your head, you will not even realize. you'll skip around and change the story because it's just uh it's um it's the way our brain works to try to keep us out of feeling any sort of pain or growth or doing anything different. Okay. So, writing it down helps you to find some clarity around it and acknowledge. All right. So, the first question pertaining to the area of most suffering for you right now,

whatever you wrote above could just pick one area. What is one of my earliest memories connected to this area is your first question for yourself. If it's money, maybe it's that you heard your parents argue about bills a lot. Maybe you were told often as a kid that y'all couldn't afford it. Maybe it's that your parents yelled at you if you didn't turn the lights off every time you left a room or that you needed to finish all the leftovers in the fridge before your mom would make a new dish or something. Okay, I'm just coming from lack here because that's usually where the pain points are. So, um like those of you that have a good feeling about money probably had early beliefs that were

good about money. Okay, when I say bad, good, you know, it's not it's all neutral, but how do you feel? Let's just label it as bad or good because it's just going to be easier to explain from here forward. Okay, so if it's money, what was your earliest belief pertaining to money? You got to sometimes you'll have to think about this. What was the theme that you lived with growing up? If it's relationships, I just want to give you some examples so you get the idea. Um, if it's relationships, maybe it's watching a parent leave, right? Or maybe you were the peacemaker in your womb. Maybe it was that your father or mother wasn't present. Maybe they were physically

present, but they weren't emotionally or mentally. Whatever it is for you, what is your earliest model of relationships? And by relationships, you can interpret that for yourself. If it's the alienation, which many of you, I'm sure, are most challenged by right now. This one can be so many things because I I put a really a a basic example. It's like the first time that you realized a parent could be turned on against another parent. But really, when it's the alienation, when you chose the person that would alienate your children from you, you were believing something about yourself, which caused you to attract the person, the alienating parent or the alienating

person in your life. What was that belief about you? What drew you to them? What was your role in the relationship? what made you feel comfortable with them to begin with. And I want to encourage you to stick with your beliefs, not what they did. Okay? That's the tendency is to immediately go to what they did. But we're not going to they're not here. We're not worrying about them because they're not actually the cause. Many of you might say it is. They're not actually the cause of what um like your current results in your life. And I know that they have probably done some horrible things, but it's your interpretation of those things that's causing that. It's a the best way to

take your power back in the situation. I could I have talked about this extensively in other episodes, but I'm going to leave it at that right now so we don't get in the weeds. Then ask yourself whatever the problem is pertaining to the problem. What did I decide about myself or about the world in that moment that you adopted that belief as a kid or even maybe in early adulthood. I'm going to give you some examples again. I was talking with a client late last week and hers was that people always leave. People always leave. They don't people don't stay as I think what it was. Um maybe another one I used to think I'm too much. I'm too much for people. It's a little extra,

you know. Um, I don't matter would be one probably uh fitting for many of you if alienation is the challenge right now. Area suffering. I don't matter. I have to be perfect or everything falls apart is another one. Okay, if you're a perfectionist, this might be for you. I have to do everything to a tea or else everything goes to I feel out of control. Or another one is maybe money is dangerous. Power people with power are dangerous. Whatever it is, what did you decide about yourself or the world in the moment you adopted the belief? You might notice that you never actually have said the sentences that you just wrote out loud before at all. They've just been humming underneath everything

sort of like background music. Skila and core belief work shows us that these early conclusions become the lens that we see everything through even decades later. Even if you know in your mind, in your higher thinking that these beliefs aren't rational, it doesn't matter because if they're running through your subconscious and you notice that your results are the reflection of those beliefs, then you want to actually you need to address them if you want to change your results. So, take a moment and actually write them down. Don't rush this part. Please do not rush this part. It's so important. I was talking about this maybe it was last week where I was like being my clients always want to

rush to the to the good part. Let's get to the good emotion. Let's get to the good results. Rushing only adds resistance to the current reality. And resistance to the current reality is the dream stealer. It is what will lock you up and keep you locked up until you let go of resistance. Okay? And wanting things to change. So don't rush this part. Okay? You're not going to make anything bad happen too like I was talking about with the worst case scenario. You're not going to need make anything bad happen by naming a belief. Okay? In fact, the research and in my own life, I can tell you that both show that when we bring these core beliefs into the light, they start to loosen

their grip on you. Okay? So, just like shame, shame's the same way. you want to open it up to the light and even if you can out yourself with whatever shame you have it releases it and it's freedom you know and it's the same thing here with these beliefs I'm going to give you some more prompts here just three of them okay one of the prompts is what did I have to believe about myself to survive that season whenever you adopted the belief okay why was it good for me then what did it help me do what unspoken rules did I pick up about this topic, whatever challenge that you have. Okay? And finish the sentence for yourself. Okay? The truth about money, relationships, alienation, whatever it

is, is the truth about let's say it's money. The truth about money is finish the sentence. The truth about marriage is finish the sentence. The truth about alienation, my situation of alienation is truth about my relationship with my kids is the truth about me is whatever. Okay. The truth about my future, the future about the truth about my capabilities, capacity, my destiny, my whatever. Okay? Write all of this without editing. This isn't about what you wished you believed. This is about what your nervous system actually believes right now. Your nervous system, not your higher thinking. We cannot shift what we don't name. Okay? What we don't acknowledge and allow. We have to allow

it. So many of us, so many parents that I talk with, people in general think that we need to talk firmly to ourselves and like, "Wow, don't believe that or don't do that because that way we'll learn our lesson and then we won't do those things." But that's actually only speaking to whatever you learned as a kid, right? And it didn't work then, it's not going to work now. The way that you shift, make the shifts in your life is to open up and not close down on yourself. Clamp down. So, now that you've named some of your earliest beliefs, I don't want you to try to solve all of this today. I do not want you to. As I was saying, this step, step three, is a week-long practice. It's about noticing

where this belief, the one belief that you chose from above, shows up in your real life, your everyday life. And I want you to practice not fighting it because the resistance, I shouldn't think this, I should be past this by now, is often the part that is the most painful. It's that we add this layer or maybe several layers of pain and shame on top of whatever we're believing and the results that we're getting as a result of what we're believing. It's a lot of extra unnecessary self-created suffering that happens after that. So, I don't want you to do that. I want you to just open up to it all coming from a place of wonder and curiosity like a four-year-old might. You know how many

questions four-year-olds ask? You know this, you know, three to five, sixyear-olds, they ask the craziest questions. Kids say the darnest things, right? because their egos aren't there and they're not so weighed down by the rules that we must live by that we all adopt over time throughout our lives. But none of those rules, most of those rules don't help us. They end up harming us, but we don't realize that. We think they're helpful at the time. Maybe they were helpful at the time, but in the long run for you, any of the clamping down, punishing, self-bullying that's happening is only adding on P. Okay. So, here's your only assignment for this step, for step three. Okay, write your

belief at the top of a page or in your notes app. again to start a new page. And for the next few days, every time you notice that belief pop up in the your engagement with people in your day-to-day life, in your thoughts even or your body or your behavior really just jot down a quick note. It's just like keeping a running tab, noticing where it's showing up for you. You might catch it maybe when you send a text. If you're still in communication, maybe your ex or to your kiddos, right? And you immed as soon as you send the text or you're think about sending the text, you immediately brace for rejection, some sort of rejection, like, oh my gosh, why am I even sending this? What

do I even say? How they're going to hate what I whatever that is, right? Notice that. What belief is that coming from? And is it the belief that you already wrote down? Okay. So, maybe another way you'll catch it is you open your banking app, right? and feel that familiar pit in your stomach or you don't open your banking account bank account like your banking app. You haven't opened it in who knows how long and you're just like la you want to escape from your financial life. Notice that and how is that showing up if your um unhelpful belief right the area that you're struggling is money. Notice how that is informing your decisions throughout your days through your decisions and how you

spend. don't spend, but also in how you engage with others or don't engage with others because you're worried about spending money. Whatever it is, write it down. Become very aware. Open up to it. Okay? Maybe you see a photo of your child with the other parent and your mind rushes to the worst case scenario or rushes to all the things that are wrong. It turns into like a uh what's wrong with this picture like or the where's Waldo? You're trying to find all the hints and clues of on in the photo, you know, write those things down. If it matches up with the belief that you wrote at the top of the page, instead of trying to change it in the moment, just say to yourself, "Oh,

there's that belief again. Here it is again. Look at it showing up." And that's okay when it does. Doesn't have to be like whack-a-ole. Just like, "Oh, almost like I say this all the time, and I got this from my coach years ago. is like is if you're holding a sentence like words in your hand, right? Oh, look. Here's that belief again. It's showing up right here in my life. Okay? And another way thing that you could say to yourself, of course, my nervous system goes here. It's been practicing this for years. It makes 100% sense that this is my pattern, right? But many of these patterns, sometimes we recognize them if they're really, really painful, but sometimes they're so low key, just

running that you don't even notice that they're happening otherwise unless you task yourself to do it. Okay? So, just after that, I mean, throughout each time that you do notice how the patterning is showing up, just breathe. It's okay. It's all okay. It all makes sense. So, your job in step three is not to be better, right? It's to build a relationship with this belief where you're not instantly at war with yourself. So, as you move through this week, let life show you where this belief is running the show. Notice it, name it, just let go drop the extra layer of I shouldn't be here. It shouldn't be here. That softening and letting go is already a shift in the

belief. It's allowing it to be there without having to act on it or act out because of it. Step four, you're going to start gently poking holes in it, basically, right? We're going to look for alternative truths for you. This is not about gaslighting yourself. Y'all are pretending it didn't hurt if it's when people left or when the money was scarce, okay? It's about shifting the spotlight from them or it back to you to the beliefs that you've been carrying and the ways that you have maybe left yourself in order to survive. In both CBT and in coaching, the turning point is often when we move from they did this to me instead to here's how I have been relating to myself as a result of

believing this. So let's take the belief that you've been working with and write it on the top of the page again. Okay, let's use I'm going to use for examples here. I'm going to use two common ones. One of them is people always leave me because we already started talking about that, right? And then the other one is usually around money because money is always in everybody's lives all the time. It's an easy one to go to and that could either be money is hard or money is the root of all evil is another one. So with the first one, if your belief is people always leave me instead of hunting for the one person who stayed, where have I left me? Okay, when did I begin leaving me? And

where am I doing that today? Maybe it's when did you silence your needs to help keep peace? Okay, that's another question that you could ask yourself. When did you abandon your boundaries to keep someone from leaving? Oh gosh, I can as soon as I said that out loud, um I can think of so many times where now many times with that last guy that I did that. It's so fun. It's well it's for another time but I the dynamic between the alienating parent and I and then that last guy who was also abusive in entirely different ways. So interesting how the dynamic was entirely different and they behaved entirely different but it showed up in me in very similar ways. A

lot there was a theme that was there but in the last I begged him when I knew that I didn't want to beg him. It was more coming from um being in trauma response, right? And me not loving me, me already have left me. Maybe another question you can ask yourself is where did you ignore your intuition because you were too afraid of being too much or too needy? Where did you say bye-bye to you so that you could make somebody else feel okay about you or about themselves? Then you want to ask because I believe the people always leave me. How did that inform my behavior with them? Did you clamp down? Did you test people? Did you overfunction? Did you undersshare? Did

you underfunction? Or did you choose emotionally unavailable partners because that is what fit the script. Did you preemptively pull away to avoid being the one left? Were you the one that left the people? Um from a law of attraction. And many of us, by the way, let me go back on that just a second. Is that so many I again I was just talking with that same client last week and it was she was this was one of her beliefs is that people always leave me. But then almost right after she said that she was like, you know what's funny is that I left a lot of those people. I was the one that ended those some of those relationships. And she hadn't ever really acknowledged

that. Anyway, from a law of attraction, the universe is a mirror perspective. What you expect, you tend to broadcast. You don't tend to, what you expect, you broadcast in your nervous system, in your tone, in your choices. And life mirrors that back. It's your frequency. If you're tuned into a specific frequency on a radio, you can only hear that frequency. 97.1, 101.5. You can't hear a frequency from another station. 88.9. You can't hear that when you're listening to 101.5. It's impossible. Whatever you're seeing, whatever you're telling yourself in your mind, that's what's going to show up for you in your life because it's a matching frequency. Life will mirror back to you

what you're already believing and you will attract what equals what you're already believing. So, this doesn't mean that you're to blame for other people's horn. I want you to know that. I'm sure you have if you've listened to my episodes before. It just means that your belief shaped how you showed up and your behavior helped to reinforce that story. Okay? So the questions become what if the core issue isn't that people always leave me but that I learn to leave myself first and then you can say to yourself you can ask yourself what would it mean to stay with myself my needs my truth my boundaries even if someone else does leave whatever they do is because

of their thoughts not about what you did or you it's their thoughts about that so you always have to remember that it's not about you and I Well, well, I'll just leave it there, okay, for now. An alternative truth might sound like, I learned to expect abandonment, and I've been abandoning myself to try to prevent it. I am now learning how to stay with myself, or I now choose to stay with myself no matter what other people choose. Some people will leave and some people will stay. This is another one. But the constant is my relationship with myself and I'm wi willing to build one with myself that doesn't leave me. I'm gonna build a relationship with me and I'm not going

to leave that. I'm not going to vacate that. This is the one true thing that stays from the time that you're born until the time that you die is you. You may as well build a rock solid relationship with you. Because when you love you, not only do you not care so much or need other people to love you too, though of course we'd all benefit from having others community and other people in our lives, loved ones, right? But also when you love you, it's magnetic, right? Again, the universe is a mirror. When you love you, then you attract people that not only will are ready to love, but also they love themselves. And those that don't that just happen to show up by happen stance, you you guys

don't won't even connect really because you love you, you know. So then the quality of your relationship with you is going to match the quality of relationships that show up in your world. So we're going to now we're going to move to the next belief. If your belief is money is hard or money is the root of all evil, we need to go straight to the logic of the belief and how it directs your focus. Okay? So you can ask yourself, we'll start with the money hard one first. Is money hard for everybody? Is it hard for everybody out there in every situation? The obvious answer here is no, it's not. There are people who experience money as supportive, creative, and relatively easy, easeful,

which means money is always hard is not a fact. It's a lens that you're wearing. Okay? And whoever's believing this is wearing. If my if your brain believes, you can ask this to yourself. If my brain believes that money is hard, how has it been following that instruction? Because your brain is going to go to work for you on whatever you're telling it to believe. So if you're saying money's hard, then it's going to be like, "Oh yeah, money's hard. Money's hard. Let's find all the reasons that we believe to all the pieces of evidence to support that money's hard." And then that's all you'll see. And then that's going to act as all these little barriers for you.

You want to look at where that's showing up for you. Do you procrastinate on money tasks because they feel doomed? Do you feel doomed? Right? Like I was talking about earlier, do you not open your bank account like your app? Because you're like, I used to do that all the time. Do you choose under earning? Do you actually choose it without even realizing that you're choosing under earning or undercharging even? Because making more feels like more hardship or even more danger like I don't want to ask because maybe they'll turn me down depending on what you do, you know. Um, also I had a friend, she's not alienated, but she's a radiologist. She was working the same

job for the same clinic for 12 years at the time, I think, and she would not ask for a raise because she felt it felt awkward and odd. And she never got a raise. They just never did it. They never did any cost of living raise or nothing. And so I I was so like with love frustrated with her because I wanted her to know her own worth, right? And just asking the question actually, especially in a situation like that can raise your perceived worth because you are the one that's advocating for yourself. often those that don't advocate for themselves in especially in the money arena area um professionally then people aren't going to value you because you're not advocating for you so

why would they you know so the ask is always on the table it should be anyway you know anyway we that's a whole different subject but the next question you can ask yourself is do you avoid opportunities because would be too hard or it will turn me into a bad person or I don't know if I can live up to the money that I'm asking for or whatever it is. How do you shut money away like no I don't want money. You maybe you desperately do want it but at the same time it's like you're acting like a reflector like a you're like you're holding up a shield to it like no money no money. [laughter] And we do this in the same thing with our relationships with love and with

connection. This I see a lot where and you see it in movies and everything where people desperately want love but then they act defensive and they act it's all coping strategies because they don't they fear vulnerability and then they're just shielding off and love or connection will never happen because they keep pushing it away because of their fears. So is that happening for you in some area of your life? you know, how are you pushing what you truly want away from you? Last example we're going to do here is the money is the root of all evil. So, the original idea or concept of the money is the root of all evil. It's actually the love of money. And I know that there's even a further

explanation for this, but let's just keep it at this. It's actually the love of money, the obsessive, the worship of money can lead to harmful choices, not that money itself is evil. Because money itself is neutral. It doesn't have a brain. It's a tool. It's an amplifier for us as humans. It lets people be more of who we already are in the hands of someone committed to healing, to integrity, and love. Money expands. It helps you to expand healing, expand integrity, to show yourself more and love more. You get to do more things. Money gives you choices, gives people, it offers choices, opportunity just by having it. Now, I'm not saying that if you don't have money that there aren't

choices and opportunity. It's just that money is another tool that you can add to your toolbox even if you don't have it already. So, anyway, so you might write alternative truths if this is you. That maybe money feels hard because I've been telling my brain that it's hard. I can begin to teach it a different story, one action, one belief at a time, one many belief at a time even. Another truth you can offer to yourself is money is neutral. It's a tool that enables choice. It amplifies the heart of the person using it. and I trust myself to use it in alignment with who I am, who I've always been, and who I'm even stepping into. Okay? I am committed to using money as a channel for support,

for safety, for service. And when you can tune into that, what you can use money for, how you can utilize it to support, to create, to inspire what you actually want, like what your true desires are. This is where you've already struck gold, my friends, before you've even made the money that you want to make. Okay? Um, this is where you can start tapping into the energy you've been searching for all along. Because then your focus is no longer attached or fixed on how impossible or how dangerous money actually is. You're solution focused. You're asking, "How can I partner with this money? How can I utilize this and let this be one of the tools in my backpack that helps me build

the life that I'm here to live? How can I use this to open up possibilities for others? Maybe how can I use this to elevate my stance and show others, lead others, teach others, do good for others, whatever it is, even if that's like your your family, your children, whoever. How can I do good with money? It doesn't have to be the root of all evil. In fact, it's not. That's some story. Maybe you were conditioned to believe that. Many people, this is an old belief that has been I know I just got stuck on the whole money thing, but that's because it's a root of a lot of people's it's thought errors. These are belief errors like the root of a lot of people's suffering because they

somewhere in them a lot of times very unrecognized or unspoken. They believe that if they have money then it's taking money away from other people or that it's selfish that that it's going to make them bad or turn them into something different. That is only if you're not rooted in who you are and who where you're going what you want who you want to be. If your intentions are bad and then you get muddy then of course it's going to enable you with choice to do the the the bad intentions, right? Do things bad if that's what you want to label it as. But I can guarantee that if you're sitting here listening to this far into this podcast episode that this is not going to be a problem for

you. Okay? So you can poke holes in that if this if money is your the source of your suffering right now or your beliefs. Sorry, let me say that again. Your beliefs about money are the source of your suffering right now. Okay? Because it's never money. Money is the neutral. All right? From that place of allowing money to flow for you and for your purpose, for your destiny, for all the things, right? The universe, life, whatever language you use here, has something new to mirror back to you. Not fear and avoidance, but intention and possibility. Across both of these beliefs, the the through line is this, you guys, is that the old beliefs trained your focus in

your behavior. the universe, life, your nervous system, however you language it, however you say it, mirrored that back. When you shift the belief in your relationship with yourself, the mirror begins to change. You're not trying to prove that nothing bad ever happened. You're simply refusing to keep calling your old belief a fact, refusing your old belief to hinder you moving forward at all. In fact, instead of having the old belief shut you down, you want to open up to that belief and use it for you moving forward. All right. So, for time's sake, we're going to pause here and I'm going to we're going to continue this steps five, six, and seven next week, which is actually kind of a

perfect time to pause because um you had some homework to do this week, noticing where the current belief is showing up in your everyday world. Okay. So today you named your automatic stories. You met your backpack, right? And you started seeing how the old beliefs have been searing your life, especially around money, relationships in your situation of alienation. That's already huge. I want you to sit with step three, like I was saying this week, and notice where the belief is showing up for you, dropping the resistance to it, and just say, "Oh, there you are." instead of going to war with yourself. Next week, we're going to take all of this a level deeper. I'll walk you through how to

write alternative truths so that your body can actually believe those truths, right? And how to build a working relationship with the future you so that you can reverse engineer a plan from your desires back to today. Okay? So, bring your journal, bring your backpack metaphor, and I'll meet you here next week too for part two. Okay, I love you guys so much and I'll see you next week.