Don't Abandon Your Dreams | Limiting Belief Rewriting

Let me start by saying that this is not the episode I set out to record. I had intended to talk about the ways that I had abandoned my dreams and sort of got off track in my life and my business.

But as I was talking about the last three months, I began to realize that this idea of "abandoning my dreams" was simply a sneaky little limiting belief that I was telling myself. Tune in as I take you through the journey of realizing, shifting, and rewriting this limiting belief into something more positive.

I hope this episode inspires you to look at every story you tell about your life with wonder and curiosity and to believe that you have the power to make a shift whenever you want.

Transcript

Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Wild Free Well podcast.

Today I want to talk to you about abandoning your dreams.

I feel like I'm doing a little series on everything that I lived through this summer and just catching you guys up and basically this should be like a series of like Alacia's bad behaviour.

All the things that I did wrong this summer and like how not to copy what I did.

So I should preface this by saying that I didn't abandon all of my dreams but that there has been a part of me that has been questioning a lot of like what I do and how I do it and like wow I just realized that this episode is about to get like a lot more personal than I think I had originally intended but here we are and here we go.

So I how can I say this in a way that is yeah I have a lot of beef with the industry that I work in.

I love mindset work and I love coaching and I love mentoring and I do not love the way that the industry represents itself and I do not love the way that it that it over markets over sells over everything.

I don't love it.

I really really don't and this is something that I'm still in the process of coming to terms with because it's something that I felt for a really long time and you guys know that because like I've got snotty episodes of the podcast where I talk about like how I hate the buzzwords like we're always talking about trauma and he's a narcissist and I'm being gaslighted and all of these things that are just terminology that none of us should be using because we don't really know what the hell they mean.

They have psychological you know backgrounds a lot of them and like coaching should not be dealing with those things in my opinion that's not the purpose of coaching.

Not that we're ever denying what people are going through but I do think that there's a time and a place for all of these things and I don't love the way that coaching has become prohibitively expensive and I say that as somebody who like I try to keep my prices fair but that's also something that I really struggle with because my prices are so much lower than everyone else in my industry and so there's a lot of there's a lot of like even like self-worth stuff that goes into this discussion and I say this now and I'm saying this publicly knowing full well that this could all change my view of this could change my my my my behavior could change my prices could change so I really I'm I'm putting an asterisk in this but the reason why I'm saying this because I have been having especially in 2023 a massive identity crisis in terms of my work and my business and how I want to show up in the world and this led me to like wanting to take a break not from the work because Lord Almighty I love the work I love it God I love it so much there is nothing that lights me up more than having conversations like what we talk about on the podcast with clients where we're really diving into like the way that they think in the way that they move in the world and the way that like their particular struggles and like why that is the case and like how they can move forward and like when people actually build up that momentum and they actually start moving towards what they want and they start embodying the person that they know that they can be and that I know that they can be it's just so satisfying it's so incredibly rewarding so it's never been about that but it has definitely been more about the marketing side of things and like where my place in the industry falls essentially and so this coupled with a lot of travel and a lot of movement which I talked about on the last episode of the podcast led me to sort of abandoning my dreams I think is the word that I would use so just like the overall confusion of like who am I in this industry and what is my place and how how do I balance what I want and what I need with like what I wish for the industry and what I wish to be true and and all of these things and I'm gonna be totally honest I'm still working through a lot of this I don't have any answers it's like when I talk about capitalism like I know for a fact that the the version of capitalism in which we live is not okay it isn't in my opinion it is not okay it creates a huge divide it leaves so many people suffering and I don't agree at all with the system I just don't however I also recognize that I don't have a solution for capitalism the best that I can get to is some form of conscious capitalism where we're using our money we're using our power our voting our our spending power all of those like our minds our power to converse with friends and family about these topics where we're using our power to really do things differently and to make things more fair okay but that's as far as I've gotten I'm not certain that's actually a solution I or really just a band-aid for a bullet wound like a an improvement on what is in my opinion a deeply flawed system and so I want to be really clear that I feel the same way into an extent about the industry so my experience of it has been you know really up and down I've had I've worked with many coaches over the years I have had one good experience out of all of the coaches that I've worked with I think I've worked with four or five and I've only had one really truly positive experience and that is not to negate the power of coaching I just think that like it's on me too I made decisions maybe in a hurry or I worked with the wrong people or like I worked with people while they were transitioning sort of out of the industry a couple of times which is on their part they should have made that made that clear to me but whatever and all of it is good and all of it is gold remember that because there are no wrong decisions there are no mistakes everything that happens happens for a reason and it is ultimately leading you exactly where you need to go so all of those things needed to happen for me to be here having this conversation with you I don't regret any of it but all of it has left me with this sort of like huh where do I fit in and what do I want for the industry and how do I want things to change and so coming from a place of where I was already sort of questioning things and questioning where I where I fit going into a summer that was so full of movement so traveling for a month and then just a lot of back and forth between cities here in Italy it really made it too easy for me to just kind of put my hands in the air and be very Jesus take the wheel about all of this and I sort of like I really just let my dream of what like the dreams that I have for my business the dreams that I have for myself even outside of work honestly fall by the wayside because it was easier than dealing with it and again there are no wrong choices there are just choices so even that is ultimately probably going to lead me to the solution it hasn't yet I'm not there but I did just sort of be I did sort of just say well like I don't really have the time or energy to dedicate to this right now I'm just gonna let it go and I'm sure that that will prove valuable but let me tell you how it felt while I was doing it not wonderful because before the trip to Cambodia in July I was questioning my place in the industry and questioning what I wanted to do and how I want to be known and how I want to be seen whether or not for example even coaching is the right title if it's better to use mentorship if I want to change completely if I want to change strategies and come at things from a totally different way and when I came back from the trip I just didn't give myself the time to focus on any of these things I just kind of said well you know maybe this isn't my path anymore and the minute I slowed down is when I start to realize that that's so not the truth of the situation because I can't imagine not having these conversations whether that be in my personal life or on a public platform like we're having right now I just can't imagine my life without these conversations because this is the foundation of everything for me you can't have a life without mindset you can't function in the world without knowing yourself and I don't think I could ever abandon having conversations like that but given the situation and the circumstances that I found myself in and being in a bit of an energy deficit it was really easy to just kind of let it all go and I see in in saying this I'm I wanted to talk about abandoning my dreams and maybe that's not even the right word because I don't know if I abandoned them or if I just let go for a moment and as I'm saying this to you my my mindset around it and my perception of it is changing because what if I hadn't what if I hadn't let it go what if I hadn't just said okay I need I need a break I need I need to not think about this or I can't think about this because life is too busy and there's too much going on you know and this is too a huge oh so much is unfolding as I'm having this conversation with you I'm sorry like the whole point of what I came down here to talk about is shifting because where is this idea that taking the break is bad coming from is that mine mm-hmm and I brought up capitalism earlier in the conversation which is not something I was planning on doing but now I wonder in having said that and this idea of this fear of like letting go of things for for a second you know it we are browbeat with the idea that consistency is king productivity is the only thing that matters and the only value that we have as as humans in the system in which we find ourselves is what we produce is is not even what we produce so much as how much we produce right because you need to be working for 40 hours per week and if you work and if you live in North America or any kind of like really advanced first world country then chances are the expectation of you in terms of work is actually really much higher so it's probably even more than that you are probably expected to work even more than 40 hours per week and like that is what society values about us as humans like how much we produce and and you know the conversation even about like how busy we are Lord Almighty I hate that but how many times do we have that conversation with each other like it's just been so busy it's just been so busy so I haven't been able to do anything I don't have any time for myself I don't have any time to slow down and like that's worn as like a badge of honor isn't it so I do believe to an extent that I I abandoned my dreams because I do feel like I made the choice to a certain extent to stop and then after that when I had the opportunity to make another decision to kind of refocus on them I let other things take precedence and I really didn't set aside the time to focus on them so I do think there is a bit of that but then what if I don't take the break am I having this conversation with you right now sorry about this but I am working through this as I'm as I'm talking to you and I hope that that's valuable in and of itself because I know that I've seen other coaches work through their limiting beliefs like live in front of in front of people and that has been massively massively helpful so why don't we try doing that why don't we try and take this story that I'm telling myself and like really we rework it because the story that I have been telling myself pre recording this podcast and having this conversation with all of you is that I totally and completely screwed myself that I really was you know so inconsistent and that I wasn't showing up for myself and I wasn't showing up for you guys the way I wanted to that I wasn't showing up on social media Lord Almighty there in in and of itself is its own conversation but that I wasn't doing the things I need to do in order to be a truly valuable and productive human being so I was basically saying like you know I let go of my dreams and I just totally gave up on what I wanted in order to focus on other things but mostly I was prioritizing other people's needs I'm gonna be totally honest with you so I didn't even like give up for like some altruistic reason at the beginning I decided to take a pause and then towards the end it was totally different I just was prioritizing what everybody else needed instead of giving myself the time and space to actually focus on what I want so if I was to look back on it now if I wanted to rewrite that story one of the things that we could do is we could pick apart what I was saying to myself by saying is it really true so is it really true that I abandoned my dreams well at the beginning no it wasn't because I made the choice to slow down I made the decision to take a break because I had to focus on other things which was mainly the trip I had to focus on preparing the preparing the trip for my trip and and that felt more more relevant and I had been doing the podcast consistently for six months and I felt like I needed a break that I wanted to use my time in Asia as a way to maybe come up with content and and I didn't I'm gonna be honest with you I did not I mean I guess now I'm using I'm using Asia as content but I didn't necessarily set aside time while I was there to like kind of envision what I wanted for my business so I just but I don't know if that's actually true that I abandoned it so if that's not true what story can I tell myself about this situation what can I say about my lived experience about what happened so I chose to take a break and then I chose to prioritize other people and their needs in my life and from that space I chose to relax and I chose to get back into a space of wellness and as soon as I made that decision the the ideas for the business just came back like really quickly too because it's only been a short period of time that I've really been in a space of pause and the ideas have been flooding in really quickly in that time which is also a testament to what happens when you really care for yourself when you really love yourself when you really show up fully for for who you are and what you want so like actually not even what you want what you need so I don't think that if I was to be honest I don't think that I abandoned myself I think that I chose to take a break and I chose to take time to focus on something that was more important at the time which was the trip because it was the culmination of 22 years of wanting I this trip to Cambodia and and being able to go to Angkor Wat it was literally the process of making a dream come true so even that I'm telling myself that I abandoned my dreams but I abandoned my dreams maybe if even if I was to say that only in my business because the entire trip of Asia was to make two new dreams well one old dream and one new dream a reality which was one to go to the Angkor Wat complex see all of the temples and I mean we really did a lot of them we went to a lot of them and the second was to connect even deeper with my partner which was which was who I was traveling with and I did both of those things so I made two dreams come true this summer despite telling myself that I didn't do anything and how often do we do that to ourselves how often do we bully ourselves into thinking that like we need to be doing more we need to be pushing even harder we need to you know refocus and whatever and I and I do feel that now I do feel like I want to refocus but it's coming from a totally different energy it's not coming from that like well what the hell am I doing with my self-life it's coming from that like I'm feeling well or certainly better and now I have something to give I have something to say and like that is so much more powerful than the story that I was telling myself so if I was to like say something to tell a new story I would say that I made the decision to take a break I made the decision to focus on other areas of my life and when I was ready I which is now I I was able to refocus so that's another thing we want to start using affirmations when we're when we're like refocusing when we're getting into that place of like changing a limiting belief so if I'm no longer telling myself that I abandoned my dreams what am I going to tell myself I'm going to tell myself that I chose to take a break and I'm going to say what I want for the future so what is my intention where am I going what is my focus and my focus is that I am it's literally I'm focusing on my dreams I'm focusing on I'm focusing on let me see here I'm focusing on on carving a path and a space out for myself in my industry that feels really good that feels really really good that is of the industry and outside of the industry as well because I want to be associated personally with the good aspects of this industry and not the social media sort of overly marketed versions of this industry so I really want to come at this from a centered place so like I am grounded in my wholeness right I am worthy of taking up space I am worthy of creating a space for myself in my industry so I hope that this is helpful in seeing how I kind of took myself on that journey just in talking to myself and to let you know that you can do this too that you can have these conversations with yourself whether that be maybe recording a voice note on your phone or journaling through something but you can have these conversations with yourself as well and really take yourself through the process of rewriting the story that you've been telling yourself it took what we're at 20 minutes just about now to rewrite an entire story that I'd been telling myself for the last three months and that I was able to and in doing this like you know this idea of like really the one that sticks out for me the most is being grounded in my wholeness and really carving out a space for myself in the industry so saying those things to myself and taking these new beliefs as like what I want to have moving forward that is just it's going to make moving forward so much easier and it's such a more positive spin on what I was saying before and even the fact like realizing that I actually did if I stop and slow down I made many dreams come true this summer you know more than maybe most people get to just because of you know privilege and and luck and and the life that I have designed for myself as well so I just I got to make so many dreams come true I got to go to to anchor Watt and cry for two hours because I just couldn't believe that I was there I wanted it for so long for so long and I made that happen I got to connect deeper with my partner I got to work while I was traveling you know which is something that not everybody can say so I did a lot of really beautiful things I never gave myself credit for until we started having this conversation and so sometimes we just need that moment to slow down and really assess all of what we're feeling and assess the story that we're telling ourselves in order to be able to write a new one and if you feel like you need support reach out reach out to a coach reach out to somebody that you love reach out to your journal you know what I mean talk to yourself on your voice notes app like get it out let the thoughts live somewhere outside of you because when they do they will be so much easier to put into context this was not the episode that I set out to record and I think it's actually infinitely more powerful than what I had actually set out to do because because I gained a new perspective from it and I hope that me going through this process helps you gain a new perspective as well so if you have any questions comments critiques or concerns you know I'm always here you can reach out and otherwise I just I hope that you take yourself through this process take one story that you're telling yourself and just rework it and and see it for what it is because it may not even be the truth and if I think about my years of doing this honestly it probably isn't it really probably isn't the truth so give yourself the grace and the and the compassion and the time and the space because that is so fundamental to look at what you're telling yourself and see if it's actually the truth and then just rewrite it because you can you can do that you have that power you are that strong you are that good so yeah take that with you take what serves you take what works what resonates leave the rest and I will see you on the next episode of the podcast ta for now