How to cultivate unshakeable self-confidence

0:04 This is Crappya Happy, and I am your host, Cas Dunn. I'm a clinical and coaching psychologist and mindfulness meditation teacher and of course author of the Crappia Happy books. In this show, I bring you conversations with interesting, inspiring, intelligent people who are experts in their field and who have something of value to share that will help you feel less crappy and more happy. Hello and welcome to another solo episode of Crappy to Happy. Today, I have had the absolute pleasure of running a free live workshop on how to cultivate unshakable self confidence. I told you, guys, I was running that, and I offered you the opportunity to join. Several people did sign up. Obviously, not everybody was able to make that session, but it was pure joy.

1:02 I just love being live as live as you can be on a zoom screen with a group of people, and everybody seemed to gain a lot from the session, as short as it was. I mean, it's really hard to kind of solve the problem of self doubt and imposter syndrome in an hour long session, and so I really wanted to use today. I wanted to use this opportunity to kind of recap what I covered in that live session, because I know that we're all time poor. If it's really difficult for you to join in on a session like that, and certainly the time was not us friendly depending on where you are located, but if that wasn't available to you, and you would be interested to know what I covered in that session. And also full disclosure, I am opening my paid program, which is called Beyond Confident. It's actually open for enrollment right now, and I also wanted to just kind of give you an overview of what is in that program, the way it's set up, what you could expect if you were thinking of joining something like that, how it will be helpful who it's for. But you know clearly I'm not here to give you a big sales pitch. I really don't want anybody to feel like I'm doing a hard sell on this program, because I just feel like if it's calls to you, if you feel like, yep, that sounds like exactly what I need, then I would love to invite you. But I'm certainly not doing a big sales pitch. But I think it is really important to give some context and some background to how I came to be doing what I do now and to share with you why I was really driven to create a program that I believe gets to the root cause of

2:36 your imposter syndrome or your self doubt, your lack of confidence, those core feelings of unworthiness, not enoughness, not belonging. You know, they're really pervasive, and they're really widespread. Lots of people experience this, and it manifests in different ways in your life. We talk about imposter syndrome, and even I talk about imposter syndrome largely to do with work and business. If you are in your own busines, or if you're working in a corporate job, which many of my clients are, and you're potentially feeling held back, playing small, not achieving what you could be, really gripped by anxiety and self doubt. Or if you're choosing or thinking of going out and doing something on your own and it's showing up there, either in a failure to launch literally or really limiting yourself in terms of the fees that you charge, or just self promotion. It's a really tough thing. So we talk about it a lot in the context of that work, career, business, entrepreneurship, but as many people on the call mentioned to me.

3:39 It shows up in socially as well. It shows up in relationships, it shows up in parenting. And this is really like spoiler like when I came across the pervasiveness of this issue, the reason that I focused on it, even if we do tend to think of it as a career kind of issue, the fact is, underpins that problem, those core feelings of unworthiness, undeservingness, not belonging, not being good enough, those threads run through every aspect of your life. And so I really figure, no matter what the presenting problem is that brings you to a program like this or has you looking for answers, then the truth is, I believe that when you get to the core of that issue, then you solve all of the problems like it just unravels, because it's the same problem that is underpinning the all of the other issues in every other aspect of your life. So let me just do this.

4:34 I really just want to recap, hopefully more succinctly, what I covered this morning, so that you don't feel like you missed out on anything. I also want to tell you straight off the top of the hour that there is an early bird price for that program, and it is a three month intensive with twelve months of support beyond, so a total of twelve months asterisk. It's actually lifetime. I just don't want to promise you that I'll be there with you for the rest of your life in case I decided to do something different, but it is lifetime, so minimum of twelve months support. It's about a two hundred dollars discount if you get in early. So if you don't listen to the end, there's a link down in the show notes that if you want to go and have a look and join, you certainly can. But let me tell you now why you might consider joining this program and what you might be experiencing. If you're completely new to me, you wouldn't have heard this background story.

5:21 If you've been around, you can fast forward this bit. But essentially you know I have a background in psychology, mindfulness coaching, grew an audience through a podcast and wrote some books, etc. And I also was selling some online programs. I was selling a mindfulness course and a Crappy to Happy basically a positive psychology course, both of which I've retired. Now I may bring them back, but I've parked them for now. And then at this beginning of the pandemic, essentially April twenty twenty, I really was called to move away from online programs and offer a membership. That membership was called Beyond Happy because it was crappy to Happy, and then it was Beyond Happy. Got it. So Beyond TAVI kicked off in April twenty twenty, and we covered a different topic each month, and there were private podcasts, and there was exercises, and there was meditations and etc.

6:09 And it was great, and each month we covered a different topic, and then we got to a point where we covered imposter syndrome. And when we covered imposter syndrome, it struck everybody in the group, and it struck me that this was a really, really big issue. And most people initially didn't think that it was an issue for them. They didn't actually resonate with the term imposter syndrome, which is why I don't use imposter syndrome in the title of the program actually, But once we started talking about how it presents in life and in work, then everybody could really see how this was playing out for them, and what they realized was that they were constantly second guessing themselves over working, overfunctioning, allowing themselves to be completely crippled by maladaptive perfectionism, you know, stressing all the time, like even outside of work, not really being able to let go of work, just overfunctioning generally and on the flip side, avoiding, procrastinating, and some people even recognize that they had opted out of opportunities that had been presented to them. And overall there was this It really did just boil down to this core feeling of not I don't believe I can do that, but who am I to do that? There was more a sense of this worthiness, this identity issue, this belonging issue, feeling of not being enough or not being okay as you are to have a place in any room, even though you potentially, you know,

7:42 look good on paper, got all the qualifications, got the degrees, got the runs on the board, but at your core, still don't believe that you really are deserving or that you really belong in those spaces. I really it was a revelation to me, It was a revelation to a lot of people, and I kind of made up my mission to dig into this topic and fast forward. And that's where we are now with me doing the work that I do. So let's talk about first and foremost what is self doubt and what is imposter syndrome? Because they are different. One is more extreme example of the other, But how do they present differently? Because these terms get used interchangeably all the time, I see people saying they have imposter syndrome, when really what they have is pretty standard self doubt because they're doing something that they have never done before. Normal if I am starting a business and I've never run a business, and I feel that's normal to kind of question can I do this? If I'm even getting a promotion, you know, like, even though you might know that you've got all the runs on the board and the experience in the background, you can still quiver a little and think, oh, you know, it's a bit daunting to step up into a bigger role.

8:49 When you experience self doubt, there is a part of you that really knows that even though this feels scary, I know that once I start doing it, like I know I'll be able to find the resources that I need. I know I'll be able to find my feet, and that once I start doing it, I'll feel okay. Like the experience gives you the reassurance that actually you can do it. You're able to internalize that achievement and that success and let that bolster your self confidence from within. That's all really normal and healthy. If you never experience self doubt when you are going to do something new and challenging that you have never done before, I would be concerned about that. So that's really normal. Imposter syndrome is the persistent belief that you are not as smart or talented, or capable or experienced as other people think you are, despite all evidence to the contrary, despite all evidence to the contrary. So the fact that you are doing it, you're acing the course, you've got the job, you are killing it, You're getting rave reviews in all of your performance appraisals, you are doing what it takes.

10:01 You are demonstrating your expertise, your experience, your knowledge, your qualifications. People are telling you you're great in relationships, people want to be with you, but deep down you don't believe it despite all evidence to the contrary. You know before we talked about you go out and you do the thing, and you are successful, you achieve, and then you are able to internalize that and take that as evidence that actually you can do it, you are okay. That helps to bolster your confidence. The thing about imposter syndrome is that you can have the runs on the board, get the results, have the achievements and the success, but you fail to internalize that success. You bat away success. I know I've talked about this before. I'm repeating myself, but I'm going to get to you know what to do about this in a minute, so that you bat away success and you attribute it to all sorts of outside circumstances.

10:55 You will often attribute it to either luck or fluke. Right place, right time, just took a shine to me, somebody liked me, I got a foot in the door, my dad knew someone, my friend introduced me. Just got lucky. There's that kind of attribution where you attribute your success to luck or fluke or just some just miracle, and any time now people are going to realize that you're not that smart or the other one is that you are so anxious about feeling not good enough that you overfunction, You over prepare, You spend hours and hours way beyond what other people would consider to be reasonable, overthink everything, turn everything into a big deal. You feel constantly overwhelmed, and constantly on and busy and extending yourself in order to get the job done. And so therefore, when you're successful, you don't internalize that as being evidence of your capability.

11:51 You attribute it to how hard you had to work to get there, and you assume that if you didn't work that hard, if you weren't overachieving, if you really did just do what needed to be done and relaxed about the whole thing, that that wouldn't have cut it. The only way you got to be successful was because of how much extra effort you made, which means which I either path that you go down if you overfunction and you are successful, you will continue to believe that the only reason for your success is because you overfunction. You attribute your success to effort, not ability, which means that in the future, if you're offered another opportunity, offered a promotion, then you assume there is this internalized belief that the only way you'll be able to make that a success is if you continue to overwork. And I've seen people turned down jobs and turned down really great opportunities because the assumption is in order to do that, in order to be successful at that I would have to like have no social life, I would never see my family, I would be stressed out all the time.

12:52 I could never do it in the hours that I want to work. It's an assumption, it's not a fact. They assume that the only way they could be successful is by completely overextending themselves, and therefore they turned down opportunities. If you attribute your success to luck, just got lucky, you just in the right place at the right time, then your success is kind of on shaky ground. You can't actually assume that you're going to get lucky again. You can't assume that you'll be able to repeat this because it was a pure fluke. And again, so therefore, next opportunity presents itself, you are completely flooded with self doubt and anxiety again because you haven't internalized that actually, no, you did, that, you achieved, that, you got the wins that you've got so far, because you are inherently capable, because you are enough, you know enough, you do enough.

13:44 You don't have to be or do anything more. So that's how imposter syndrome is different. And so that is also why no matter how successful you become with imposter syndrome, it never goes away. Because in fact, the more successful you become, the more visible become, the more expectation that is put on you, the more fearful you become. That this is going to be the moment that everybody finds out, This will be when it all comes crashing down because you can't you know, the jigs up basically, and so again, this is why many people will turn down opportunities. So I know that I've explained that before, but if you're new around here, then hopefully that's a helpful explanation. Now. The reason that I started to want to do the work that I wanted to do was because when I started to look into well, what do we do about this?

14:30 How do we treat this? How do we overcome this? All of the advice that was out there was to do with mindset, And let me tell you, experts around the world will tell you you've just got to change your thinking in order to fix this problem. To solve this problem, you're just buying into some faulty belief that you need to be perfect, or that you need to do another course, or you need to know you're not allowed to do it, not allowed to ask for help. You've got to do it all on your own. These are all faulty ways of thinking, and if you can shift that belief, then you'll be fine. Imposter syndrome won't be a problem for you. You anymore now, I don't know about you. And we had this chat in my live session this morning. Everybody there agreed with me. Telling yourself to change your thoughts and think of different thought and just don't believe that story hasn't done any of us much good. Doesn't seem to cut it when we're talking about making lasting change, which is why I, you know, it was really determined to find a solution that does work because the other bit of evidence out there is to do with behavior, and this is you know, this is all valid. It's all valid for self doubt. Let me say that it is all valid if what you have is kind of garden variety self doubt. The other one is fake it till you make it. Like just act confident, present yourself as confident, you know, act like you know what you're doing.

15:41 Just do the thing, step out of your comfort zone and do the thing, and you'll quickly find that actually you can do the thing, or you can get help from somebody, or you can ask somebody you can find out what you need to know and you'll be fine. And again, if you can do the thing even though you really are scared, feel the fear, and do it anyway essentially, then if you're able to do that and you do do a good job, go you. Then if you are able to internalize that as evidence of your inherent capability, happy days, Happy days. Like I said before, though, if it's imposter syndrome, you're not going to be able to internalize that success and impostors are faking it. They feel as if they are faking it every single day.

16:29 Telling somebody who suffers genuinely with imposter syndrome to fake it till you make it worst advice ever. They already feel like a fraud. They already feel like they're fooling everyone, So telling them to continue faking it unhelpful, largely unhelpful. So this is why I don't think that that advice is necessarily useful. Now, there are elements of that advice that I think is useful. All I'm saying is that I think that there are more layers that need to be worked through in order to get to a lasting solution or a lasting trance formation and You may never get to a point in your life where you're completely free from this, but you can certainly get it to a point where it is not an issue for you that gets in your way, not something that hijacks your thoughts and your emotional state and really keeps you in that state of stress and overwhelm. Like, you can absolutely get it down to a more manageable level so that when it does show up, you've got tools and strategies that you can really quickly manage it and bring it under control, bring it back into a perspective, and get on with living your best, happiest life. Now, having said all of that, I have been pretty vocal about the fact that this whole change of thought business like I've never been a fan, and I shared with the group today that you know, even when I was training in clinical psychology, doing my master's in clinical psychology, when we were learning about CBT, I honestly I struggled. I was like, are you telling me that this is the best that we've got, Because at the time I was doing my master's in clinical psychology, I had already been doing coaching, and I had a master's in coaching, so cology prior

18:00 to that, and I already had been working with people as a coach for several years, and I found this whole change you're limiting beliefs thing not that effective. And I was really, truthfully kind of struggling with how am I actually going to help people to change, because I know that this shit isn't going to cut it. And so I discovered mindfulness and act acceptance of commitment therapy and that really resonated with me, and that's kind of the path that I took, and happily since then, I've found lots of other things that have I've learned and things that I have studied and trained in and that I'm able to really feel confident do work am We're talking about things like obviously mindfulness and meditation, but also body based work, somatic work, regulating your nervous system, EFT tapping, doing just some of that deeper emotional work I'm just in the moment looking at like narrative work. There's a whole lot of other processes and tools that are out there, and I think combined that can be really effective. We didn't learn all of those back when I was doing my training. But having said that, despite me kind of being a little bit. I'm not anti CBT. I'm anti CBT being the single solution for anything, because I don't think it is. Having said that, there are some aspects of CBT cognitive therapy managing your thinking, which are really really useful. So I want to first of all, this is one thing I shared in the workshop today that I want to share with you now. The way that we develop core beliefs is from our earliest experiences in life,

19:31 our interactions with our caregivers, and then later as we grow up and we go to school and we experience certain events in life, we witness events in life, we get an education, you know, certain things that happened to us, and all of this stuff helps to shape our core beliefs. Core beliefs are dormant until they get activated in the moment. They are like the operating system that's running you, like the software that kind of runs you. You're not really aware of it. It's just there in the background influencing you and influencing decisions and influencing what you think and how you behave So I do think it's worth really doing some work to dig into what some of these core beliefs are that you might be carrying because, like I said, I'm not good enough, I'm not worthy, I'm not deserving. All of these are examples of core beliefs, and absolutely we need to be unpacking what those are and doing some work to dismantle them. I guess my issue is that when I walk into a meeting, and I walk into a room and somebody asks me to give a presentation, and my first thought is, oh, my god, I can't do that. That would be a disaster. I am hopeless at that kind of thing. That's not a core belief, that's just the automatic thought that I had in that moment. There are many levels of beliefs before I get to the root, like the really deep core belief of not being good enough, not being smart. So let me just talk through what they are. So the core belief, like I said, is it's shaped from your earth least experiences, and your core beliefs relate to yourself,

21:03 other people, and the world. So a core belief about yourself could be negative, could be positive. You'll have loads of them. So a cool belief about myself could be that I'm smart, I'm capable, I'm cute and lovable, I'm a good person. I deserve good things. Ah, my opinions matter. I've got something to say, I've got something of value to contribute. I am valued, I am loved. That's all core beliefs about me. You could equally have core beliefs around I'm not that smart, I'm not capable. Nobody's interested in my opinions. My opinions don't count for anything. I mess everything up. I am not worthy, I don't deserve good things. I'm ugly. All core beliefs all formed in your earliest earliest experiences and then shaped and molded as you grow up. Then you have core beliefs about other people.

21:52 So these are just the general assumptions, the things that you fundamentally believe to be true that you never really question. That just kicking around there in the back of your head about other people. So they could be that people are trustworthy, people are inherently good, I can rely on other people. People are friendly, people are kind. It could be all men of bastards, that kind of thing. It could be about rich people. We had this come up in the meeting about money. You know, maybe rich people are selfish or greedy, you know, So it's other people are the groups of people. It does, you know, stereotypes kind of full and biases full into that as well. Fat people are lazy, you know, all these kinds of care beliefs. They can be you know, people are fundamentally untrustworthy, people can't be relied on. People are out to get me, people are people are rude, people are mean, people aren't kind.

22:46 So that kind of thing, you get it. Then there are core beliefs about the world around you. Life is fun, the universe is friendly, life is fair, There are always opportunities available. The world is a safe play or on the flip side, the world is not a safe place. Nothing ever turns out there's not enough to go around. There are never opportunities. You know. Some of these will overlap, you know, but essentially yourself, other people, and the world these are core. Based on those core beliefs, you'll then have a whole lot of kind of rules like these intermediate sort of beliefs. But there'll be things like maybe my core belief is that laziness is bad maybe in my family, like if you were sitting around doing nothing, like being lazy was like the worst thing that you could be, and so therefore I have like this intermediate belief, which is a rule that I need to be doing something all the time because God forbid I should be sitting down, because that would be lazy, and lazy is bad.

23:46 So then that develops into this. You know, we all have these kind of cognitive distortions, these patterns of unhelpful thinking, all or nothing thinking, black and white thinking, generalizations, crystal ball reading, you know, anticipating what's going to happen in the future, assumptions that we make. These are all just examples of cognitive distortions, but they will also come out of these intermediate beliefs or these rules. So we're up to level three. We've got the core belief that we've got the rules that you kind of come up with to navigate life and other people in the world, These rules that you establish about how you should be and what you should do, and how other people should behave and what they should be doing, and then you have these cognitive distortions. I always I can never sit down to relax, and if I do sit down to relax, then my automatic thought is I'm just being lazy. I really should get up and do that washing, I should get up and clean the kitchen. So just one really simplistic example, but there's that sort of layers of thinking will spring out of any core belief that you have, and they're running your show. They're running your life every time you do something impulsively or erect to something, or judge somebody or judge yourself. Anytime that you get upset with the friend because she didn't return your call in time, you've got some rule running about what she should have done, what it is to be a good friend, or what it says about you and your worthiness as a friend.

25:11 Life is happening all the time, and you are filtering and making judgments and opinions and reinforcing existing beliefs a lot of the time based on all of this programming that's running, But most of the time you're not questioning it. So it is absolutely worthwhile digging into this stuff and holding it up to the light and questioning where some of this came from. Now, what I was going to say before is sometimes like the issue is that when you say you see a psychologist or you see a coach and they say to you, well, what happened, Well, I got asked to run the meeting, and I froze because I can't do that I can't speak in public. It's just not I will not do a good job. A CBT approach would be, well, what was the story that you told yourself? Well, I told myself that I'm terrible at these kinds of things. It would be humiliating, It world be a disaster. The people would judge me and criticize me, and it would be awful, and I can't do it. So then we start to challenge that automatic thought. But there's so much more underneath, Like that automatic thought was just the thing that popped up in that moment, and there'll be plenty of other automatic thoughts that pop up all the time in life in response to certain situations. Challenging the automatic thought, or even you know, being mindful and letting go of the automatic thought because thoughts aren't facts, and we can take a breath and let that go and realize that that's not a fact, it's not true. But even if we're working at that level of these automatic thoughts and cognitive distortions, none of it is really kind of getting to the root cause of them, if you know what I mean, Like, it's not really getting to that core belief. And I understand

26:44 that this is all still helpful, Like, the best pathway into those core beliefs is to examine all of these automatic thoughts that you have. Probably more effective is to actually look at your life, actually look at how you're behaving in life, because what you're doing in life, how you're interrp acting with people, the way you operate in the world is probably a more direct path to uncovering what core beliefs are running the show than actually asking you to tell me what you think, because the core belief stuff is kind of unconscious, you know, whereas the thoughts that you think they're very conscious, you can tell me what they are. But digging in deeper to all of that underneath program, a lot of that is so unconscious you're not even aware of it. So that's my first point. If we're going to talk about mindset, if we're going to talk about changing your thoughts, then we need to be doing the work to get to the deeper thoughts. We need to be getting trying to really dig into those unconscious beliefs for that to be effective, and to then have strategies for unraveling those and questioning and dismantling them. But I don't necessarily think that just looking at these automatic thoughts. I mean it's useful, don't get me wrong. Every psychologist listening God please don't come for me. Of course it's useful. But I think that we need to be doing some deeper work to get to the deeper core beliefs. Now, the second important point that I would make, and that I did make in my workshop today, was that all of these core beliefs, all of these ideas that you formed in your early experience, they developed as an adaptive strategy to keep you safe

28:17 in the world. So when we get to grown up status, when we get to adult status, and we've got all of these old programming running, and we're limiting ourselves, and we're anxious, and we're overwhelmed and running these programs of perfectionism and performing and people pleasing and hiding and feeling like we're not good enough. Like we can get really down on ourselves for having these limitations. I guess these flaws is how we see them. Really, they're holding us back in life, and we do everything we can to run from them, to hide them, to beat them into submission, to avoid them. So, for example, if I feel like I'm not good enough, I'm so busy running to perform and to perfect and to please in order to not feel that way that I'm not actually stopping to actually go into being curious and exploring where that's coming from and what purpose it might be serving for me. We don't like these thoughts and feelings that are keeping us stuck and limited. We want to get rid of them.

29:18 You know, if you're thinking about enrolling in my course, there's a big part of you that wants to be rid of all of that, so that you want to be free from all of that. And the paradox is that to be free from it, sometimes we actually have to go in really close to it, get really curious about it, and really give it space to be seen and felt and heard and expressed. And this is also mindfulness. And this is also what I have always loved about mindfulness is that mindfulness is not I mean, it's more than mindfulness. There are other techniques, but it's not about going off to a happy place and meditating and chilling out and just disconnecting from all of the stresses and worries in life. It is actually about learning to sit and be really present with what is deeply uncomfortable, being able to be present with what is hard, not running from it, not going to shopping, not going to Facebook scrolling, not going to a glass of wine to avoid what we're feeling, but actually being present to what we're feeling.

30:14 So what I'm hoping and aiming to do in my program is to take that even one step further, actually really get in and get curious about what is this trying to teach me? These core feelings of unworthiness, How did they develop, where did they start? What is their higher purpose for me? What does this part of me that feels unworthy and that keeps me spinning my wheels, or keeps me overworking and overperforming, and keeps me constantly spiraling and anxiety? What does it want for me? And we did an exercise. In fact, we might even do it now. Not if you're driving, obviously, not if you're walking the dog, but if you're sitting somewhere where you can be present. You might want to try this yourself, where you actually canneged in with that core feeling of unworthiness, the core feeling of not enoughness, or something that's caused you to feel worried or anxious recently, somewhere where you feel a bit stuck or like you're not doing a good enough job, or you are out of your depth.

31:17 Go to that feeling in your body, take a breath, close yourss. I would invite you to close your eyes if it is safe and comfortable for you to do that, And if you don't want to do that, then I would maybe put a marker on this part of this podcast and come back to it later when you can, because I think it's worth doing, and that is to take a breath, connect with that feeling, and now ask yourself, is this feeling new or is it familiar? I'm pretty much going to guarantee that you tell me it's familiar, and without trying to overthink it or go looking for something.

32:01 Is there a memory or an image or anything that comes to mind as you connect with that feeling. And you may have an image or a memory. You may not, that's fine, it doesn't matter. But if you do, if you connect, and if you resonate with a younger part of you that felt like this, a younger version of you that felt like this, then I would get curious and this might feel weird, but just trust me. You might want to ask her what does she need? What does she need from you, Well, what does she need that she never got? What does she want to say or he I'm sorry, because maybe he or she is saying, I'm scared. I feel like nobody's listening to me, nobody's paying attention to me. This is scary, I don't feel safe.

33:12 I need to be protected. I'm worried I'm going to get in trouble, whatever it might be. And then, as your adult self, you're fully adult, well resourced, grown up with a fully formed prefrontal cortex and a big heart. What would you say to her? How would you reassure that younger part of you that feels afraid and scared and feels like not enough and is worried, doesn't feel safe.

33:53 Could you protect her? Could you offer her some reassurance? Could you give that younger part of you what you never got at that time, and you know, just reassure that younger part of you that you've got this now, it's okay. She doesn't need to keep on tugging at you and reminding you and calling out, you know, invoking this anxiety in you, because that's all she's trying to do.

34:39 She's all she's trying to do is to protect you, because we grow up into adult bodies and we walk into adult rooms and adult jobs, and we put on grown up clothes. But there's this little part of us that we take with us everywhere we go. And so this is why sometimes things get activated in us and we find ourselves having these feelings and we think, oh my god, I'm a grown up. Gosh, I'm surely I've dealt with this by now. This is ridiculous, and we shut ourselves down and all we're doing to ourselves is the exact same thing that was done to us when we were really little. And so by doing exercises like this, and if you're with me, you can come back and open your eyes now, give you a little wanna hug, and tell her that you'll be back to talk to her anytime that she needs some reassurance. But you can come back to me now, and you can realize that by trying to shut down this part of you, you're just doing, repeating, reinforcing the same message that you got when you were younger. And so to continue to do the same thing and expect to somehow be free from this is it's insane. So the way through is in to go into those feelings to actually get in touch with, you know, those kind of more core wounds or injuries that you experienced when you were young. Now, if you didn't have a memory or an emotion about that, then another thing that you can do is just stay with the feeling in your body. Where do you feel that sensation in your body, Make space for it, create a feeling of safety within you instead of looking for safety outside of you, instead of looking for the world to be safe, and for you to never be in a

36:10 situation where you feel out of your depth or out of your comfort zone. Actually cultivate that feeling of safety within you so that you can feel safe in your body, in your nervous system, in any situation. And there's loads of strategies and tools that we can use to do that as well, so that you're no longer looking to control and manipulate the outside world and your outside circumstances, and for people to behave a particular way, and for people to give you positive feedback, and for you to never be in a situation where you're called to speak in front of a meeting when you're unprepared or whatever it is, so that you never have to feel unsafe or feel out of your depth, you cultivate because that's a losing game. You cultivate that feeling of safety internally, you learn to regulate your own nervous system, and you learn that you are enough. You cultivate those core feelings of worthiness so that you're not looking for that outside of you anymore. So there are some other ways that we can work to overcome self doubt and imposter syndrome.

37:09 The reason I started with that go to the core memory thing is because even the most challenging or difficult or dysfunctional kind of core beliefs were created within you to serve a purpose. And the purpose that they were designed to serve was to protect you, to protect a vulnerability in you, to keep you safe, to keep you connected to the people, to keep you connected and supported and safe within the group that you were born into, or the people who were around you tasked with caring for you. So little babies or clever, clever clever clogs, like little babies, even pre verbally, they learn very quickly what they need to do in order to be accepted and loved by their caregivers. They learn very quickly how they need to behave whether it's safe to express an emotion or not, whether it's safe to wander off and play and explore, or whether they need to stay really close, whether it is safe to come in for comfort, or whether they need to keep their distance because that's not safe.

38:11 This is all work that we will do inside the program. Let me tell you comprehensive, like all of the layers, all of the things that I have ever learned about attachment theory, about somatic work, about all the cognitive stuff, the mindfulness and act and values. Learning to cultivate a deep sense of your own self worth based on who you are at your care your strengths, your values, your qualities, your kindness, your integrity, so that you are no longer looking outside of yourself for other people's approval, because you can trust that you are enough exactly as you are. So layers and layers and layers of transformation that can happen, but they naturally have to happen over a period of time. Time.

39:00 All I can do is tell you that this is the kind of thing that you might find helpful, and that this is the kind of stuff that I have packaged together into a program where we will meet every week and work through some of these things together to help you to get a transformation. But just to backtrack a little bit, when I talk about somatic work, you know, we're talking about cultivating safety in your body because your if your nervous system is primed to go to fight or flight or freeze or shut down again because of your early experiences and you know, past situations or past traumas or whatever. If there is a pattern there where your nervous system is on high alert all of the time and its sensing queues in your environment that signal threat or danger, your nervous system will react before your brain is even on board. And so this is the other problem that I have with cognitive approaches that try to fix the problem from the from the prefrontal cortex.

39:59 From let's look at your thoughts. What's the story you're telling yourself, Because there is a phenomena which I have talked about on this show before, which is that the story follows the state the state of your nervous system. Your nervous system reacts, and then your brain's job is to make meaning of that. So it overlays a story, It imposes a story over the top of what your nervous system is doing because it's trying to work out what's going on here. And so rather than trying to talk to the story, talk to the thinking brain. Physiology only responds to physiology. Physiology doesn't respond to language. You can't talk yourself out of a nervous system response. You have to breathe your way through a nervous system response, or you have to find other ways to manage and regulate your body physiologically, because no amount of talking or thinking, or rationalizing or reasoning is going to help that. So this is why there's loads of stuff as well about how do we affect change on a somatic level? Do that body based work. I've just done a it's called somatic polyvagal theory in Yoga for trauma. Is that what it's called? Some course like that, very long with the mouthful of a course, But this is what I'm doing.

41:13 This is how I'm investing my time and my resources to learn this stuff so that I can then pass it on and share it with you. Yoga for Trauma for nervous system regulation. I'm doing my own professional development in that area so that I can then bring that to you. I'm continuing to invest in my own education and my own upskilling so that I can continue to share that with you. So when I sell you, it's one thousand bucks Australian for three months intensive and you stay in for the rest of your life for as long as this program is running like it is really good value because I have spent much, much, much much more than that to learn the things that I'm going to teach you and that are going to come to you all packaged and coherent in a way that you can work through methodically and see that change progress over time.

42:07 You know, you can go out and you can look up YouTube and do this course and that course, and you can go and do a sound healing and a mindfulness class, and you can see a therapist, and you can read a book and listen to a podcast and watch your YouTube and try and cobble all that together to a solution. Or you can hop into a program like this, But I have curated it, all packaged it together, and I'll show up there and be there with you every single week to help you to work through this until you get the transformation. Because God knows none of us needs more information. The world is overflowing with information. We're all over the Internet. We're all over the YouTube and the tiktoks, and we've got all the information in the world. What we actually crave is a transformation. We need to put this into practice, applied in our lives and get a transformation. And that is my hope for you.

42:59 So there's an early bird price nine ninety five. It's going to run out really soon Wednesday night. I'm going to get this podcast out asap so that you can have a listen. Hopefully grab that early bird. I may extend the early bird for another day because I haven't given you a lot of time. But even so, even the full price, it is really great value compared to what else you could spend to get all of these tools and resources. I hope that that is helpful to you. I think I have done a good job of summarizing what we covered in the workshop. You can always go and look at the replay if you want to see my face. But hopefully that is enough to give you a sense of what to expect. And we start next week. The way it goes just some quick logistics. It's eight modules, but we deliver it over twelve weeks, so I build in break weeks so that you never feel overwhelmed. There is some pre recorded content that you know, videos you can watch, and stuff that you can listen to, but honestly, that's all helpful, that's all educational. That gives you some context for why we're doing what we're doing. But then the real value is going to be when we show up on the live calls. We do these exercises and processes together. We work together each week. After the first three months, we will continue to have those live calls even after the content is finished. Obviously you can take as long as you want to work through that content, but we will continue to get together either fortnightly or monthly, depending on demand, and we will just keep on keeping on, keep on working together for as long as for as long as we need to, and I think that you will love it. I think you'll love the community. I'm going to stop talking now because this podcast has gone for way too long, but the link will be down

44:29 in the show notes, and I would love to see you in the program. Email me cass at cash Done if you would like any more information. All right, you guys, that is it. Thank you for being here as always. I'll be back next week. I am just holding off on interviews for the moment while I'm running this program, but I will be back soon enough with guests. But I will be back next week for another episode. I'll pray me to happy