Episode 38 of the Fuel the Fire Podcast hosted by Shanon Safi, RD, LDN.
Imagine transitioning into a new phase of your life - you're caught in a whirlwind of change, indecisiveness, fear, and anxiety. It feels like you're flailing, lost in a sea of confusion, with only yourself to hold accountable. This sounds like a nightmare, right? Well, it was my reality. I've been in your shoes, grappling with the societal standards and internal turmoil that often leave us stuck and overwhelmed. But guess what? It doesn't have to be this way.
Let's journey together through these grey areas, peeling back the layers of confusion, and overcoming our fear of negative perceptions. We'll tackle my personal struggles with anxiety, shedding light on how it seeps into life decisions. We'll also learn from Joe Dispenza's mind-boggling insights about the human brain and how to use it to our advantage. It's time to take action, to gain clarity, and to understand ourselves deeper, to let things flow freely without obsessing over finding the 'right way'.
As we cross this blurred line, we'll also uncover the magic of manifestation. We'll demystify the process of creating the life you've always wanted - from visualizing your desires to tapping into the feelings that come with it. Remember, it's not about control or fixation on specific outcomes. It's about surrendering, trusting the process, and staying open to every opportunity that comes our way. So buckle up! This episode promises clarity, direction, and a newfound understanding of life's endless possibilities. Trust me, you don't want to miss it.
Episode Transcript:
And then it takes practice, consistent effort, showing up day after day after day, even if it feels like little to no progress is made from day to day. You have to stay committed and that's what working with a coach or doing the program really helps with. It's that accountability piece Because, again, like it's really difficult to make that shift when you're the only one holding yourself accountable in a way at times because you're not going to be able to rely on your motivation to do this or to overcome it. There are so many things that are going to come up for you in this journey of gaining that clarity and reprogramming. Hello, hello, welcome to the Fuel the Fire podcast with your host, shannon Safi. So recently again, the business has been going through this transition and I'm taking everything step by step and what was really coming through for me and something that I felt like I really wanted to share, that I've been seeing in clients and really in the collective friends having this conversation a lot around feeling confused on what the next step is in life For me. This hit really deeply and has been something that I've been really working through to get clarity on what that actually looks like and so the background of this so many of us like. We build up this beautiful image of what we want life to look like. We have this idea that it's going to feel a certain way when we accomplish all of these things when we have the house, when we have the relationship, when we have the car, when we have the job, all of these things right. We have this image of what we want life to look like and we focus so much on acquiring those external things and then, when we actually get there, it doesn't feel the way we thought it would feel and we start to question what's going on. We have those moments where we're like is this actually what I wanted? Why doesn't this feel as good as I thought it would? And when you start to ask yourself those questions, what you'll start to find or at least what I found was that is this truly what my soul wanted for me? Is this a deep desire that I really had, or was it something that I was conditioned to think that I wanted because of standards that either came from society, family, friends, ego, desires, things of that nature? You start to peel back the layers and notice that there is something that feels like it's missing, and you just can't quite put your finger on it. You start to notice your wheels are spinning and you're asking yourself I don't know what to do. You start to allow things to fall away or you just lose your motivation to keep showing up in the way that you are and through that process almost what I call the unbecoming process you're trying to figure out what it is that you really want, because you know well this isn't exactly it. So what is it that I can do to start to feel that feeling that I'm looking for? So for me, I felt so much confusion around what the right direction was. I felt like I was flailing. I went through that phase where I peeled a lot of the layers back. I let go of so much in my life and I found myself in this gray space of not knowing where to go. I would constantly be asking, begging, pleading for signs to show me what I'm supposed to do, for, what decision I'm supposed to make, for what my business is supposed to be about, how I'm supposed to help people, what should my career be? Where should I live? Who should I be with? Who should my friends be? Once I shed all of these layers, I just felt raw and lost and confused. I knew I couldn't stay where I was, but I also felt held back by this fear of making the wrong decision. I worked so hard to step away from these certain things in my life. I worked really hard to build up the courage to shift my business. I worked super hard to become aware so that I could start to see myself for who I am, to start to create a life that's more in alignment with my essence, with my being. But I was so afraid to move forward because I was still fixated on making sure that it was the right choice. So I was stuck in that state of confusion for so long because it wasn't clear what was correct for me and what wasn't, and so, instead of making or taking any action, I took no action or I just kept flip-flopping. I would choose one, go back to the other, go back to the other, go back to the other, and that is so, so messy. And the hard part of that was that I didn't hide it. People were so aware, which made it definitely a level more challenging to have to be witnessed in this stage, and many of you likely will be. Maybe. It's not on a public forum the way I chose to do it. But maybe you're afraid of your partner having a certain feeling or perception of what you're experiencing or going through. Maybe you're worried about how your family will perceive it, and it's normal to have these thoughts. You're only human, right. We care about the people around us and there's a small part of our ego, of course, that cares about how we're perceived. Alright, and I think it's really beautiful to say don't care what people think about you, do whatever you want. But if you're a recovering people, please are like myself. It's never as easy as it seems to just make choices and just not care about what people are thinking. But on the flip side of that, if you stay stuck in that stage the way I did, it is so much more painful for yourself than to just go and do the thing that you want to do, because being stuck in that state of confusion and indecision just made me feel less confident, less secure in myself. I felt frustrated. It brought up so many deep feelings of like I can't trust myself. I don't know how to choose correctly. Maybe I need someone else to tell me. Maybe I'm not the one to make this decision. Who am I to disrupt the status quo? Who am I to start walking a different path. All of those feelings of fear come up, thinking about the what ifs of every possible path that I could take and then just stewing in all of those what ifs of like, oh well, if I take this job, then I won't have any freedom and I'll feel really insecure and stuck and rigid in what I can do. Or if I stay close to this sort of friend group, will it feel like I'm being pulled away from what my divine life purpose is. That's just an example and I think what those really showed me, all of these what ifs I played in my head, none of them were actually rooted in reality. Right, all of these fears that I was having were around these deep, rooted, essentially patterns that my brain was used to running in. I had such difficulty with anxiety for many years of my life, for as long as I can remember, to be quite honest. There was always a feeling of I should be doing more, or I should be somewhere else, or I should be working harder, and I always felt like my life was just being lived in a rush, more or less, like I always felt like I couldn't keep up with how much needed to be done for me to accomplish what I thought I needed to accomplish. I gave myself no credit for anything that I did and I would just, at the end of the day, look at myself saying you should have done more, you should have worked harder, you should have pushed yourself further. And so that anxiety followed me Like I remember being young and just being at my friend's house, just being a kid, like middle school. We'd be hanging out, just goofing off, and I would just have so much anxiety, thinking I can't be here, I need to go study, I need to get ready for this test, or I need to be practicing basketball, working on my jump shot or my free shot or whatever. If I wasn't doing something to be productive, if I wasn't physically working on a goal in a tangible way, then I would just well with anxiety. And even when I was working on that goal, it just constantly felt like I couldn't work fast enough to accomplish it. And the reason that is so relevant to this state of confusion was being in that state. That was in the back of my mind whenever I was trying to add back things into my life after I shed so much of it. There was a fear that if I go back, if I reintroduce things into my life, that anxiety is going to come back, that pressure, a feeling like I need to do, perform and accomplish more, was going to flood back in, and I would undo all of the work that I did to try to calm my nervous system down. And so the thought of doing the wrong thing was making me fear that I would end up with those feelings again, those feelings of anxiety, worry, stress, and I just knew that I didn't want to feel those again the way that I felt them previously in my life, before I started on this personal development journey. And so, in this state of not knowing where to go, it's easy for those feelings to start to sink in, to start to overwhelm you, to start to take over and leave you feeling absolutely stuck. It'll leave you feeling afraid to jump, it'll leave you feeling like you will never be able to have anything different than your past or what your current reality is. And it's interesting enough, I was actually just listening to a YouTube interview with Joe Dispenza and he was talking about the human brain and essentially, I think, something he maybe he wrote a book or something where it's called you Are your Own Placebo, or maybe it was a piece he wrote. I'm not sure exactly what it was, but he referenced it during this YouTube video and what he talked about was when we're trying to change, when we're trying to shift out of something, it is so uncomfortable and scary because you are breaking patterns and likely years, likely a lifetime of conditioning that you have around this behavior, around these feelings that come up around certain actions. It is so deeply wired and deeply conditioned in your brain to be a certain way to have a certain emotional response to your reality, to certain actions, behaviors, all of this. And so when you are trying to change or make a decision or get out of this state of confusion in which direction to go, it feels really difficult to not keep choosing the same thing, even though your brain is saying that you want something else. That's only not. That's only 5% of your abilities, right? Your conscious mind can really only be responsible for 5% of your reality. 95% of your reality is caused by your subconscious mind, which most of us aren't taught about in school or in most programs that you're looking for transformation in. But all of the magic has to happen in the subconscious in order for you to move forward in the direction that you want, or that you're consciously wanting, but subconsciously your brain is keeping you right where you are in that exact state. So I'm sure that brings up the question of how do we tap into the subconscious mind, how do we start to access that and rewire the patterns that are coming up for me so that I can move forward, and this is something huge. This is what I work on with my clients. This is what I teach in my online courses and programs, which, if you haven't checked out, more will be coming that I'm really excited about. So stay tuned. I'll try to link it in the show notes to include the links to my programs and, of course, make sure you are subscribed so that you can get access to the new ones that come out, because what I'm talking about it's kind of wild. It's been around for a long time, but it's just starting to become something that we have scientific evidence to validate. So a lot of this stuff isn't taught because we didn't have a way to measure it or prove it to be true for so long, and now science is finally starting to catch up with a lot of this and it is being proved, and it's being proven again and it's being retested, and we're really starting to see how powerful your subconscious mind is in controlling how your reality appears. So, with this, what we want to start to do is get into that deeper layer and try to understand what's operating under the surface. If this is something really new to you or something that's that you're exploring for the first time or revisiting in a way where you're trying to take tangible, real action towards that solution, I really do recommend working with a coach, and I'm not just saying that because I am one, I'm saying it because it's really hard to do this alone without reflections and guidance. Right, like if you wanted to learn how to play the piano, you wouldn't just sit there and hope that you'd just become Mozart. Right, like you need someone to help you to learn what the keys are, how to read music. And then it takes practice, consistent effort, showing up day after day after day, even if it feels like little to no progress is made from day to day. You have to stay committed and that's what working with a coach or doing a program really helps with, just that accountability piece because, again, like it's really difficult to make that shift when you're the only one, holding yourself accountable in a way at times, because you're not going to be able to rely on your motivation to do this or to overcome it. There are so many things that are going to come up for you in this journey of gaining that clarity and reprogramming Right. So at least, as you're listening to this, I am going to give you some really tangible steps that you can start to take and at least open up to and plant the seed and let it marinate. But you need to find a way that you can stay committed, whatever that looks like for you. Maybe it is accountability with a friend, maybe it is signing up for a program, maybe it is seeking it in some manner, in some way that you know you can build a new habit with. Tying it to something else that's already a habit is a great example. So if you're already showing up, for example like brushing your teeth, just tie it with that. Be like okay, every time I brush my teeth, I'm going to do XYZ right after. Linking habits really helps with your ability to stay committed to something All right. So here are my little steps to help you start to break out of this and gain clarity on what direction you want to move. So the first step is really important that you've peeled back the layers of what other people want for you versus what you want for you. The hugest, biggest, largest part of this solution is to have clarity on who you are. It's to understand yourself very deeply so that you know what it is that you want to move towards. And if right now, it feels like, well, I don't know what I want, nothing's really bringing me joy, nothing's making me feel great, even the things that I like doing aren't making me feel great, I know that feeling. I have absolutely been there. I totally, totally get it. And so, from this point, what you need to do is start to create the space to allow things to flow through. So, for example, if you're constantly busy, you're constantly in your head. You're never going to find the answers that you're looking for. So things that create space for things to flow through can look like a movement practice, like doing yoga or working out at the gym, taking a walk. Anything that physically gets your body moving really helps move energy through the body and create space to receive, to connect to source, to gain that mental clarity you're really looking for. Meditation is another powerful one that's, like always, my favorite thing to bring up, along with movement. I think both are super duper important and really, really powerful. But through creating that time to truly meditate, you're going to see a lot more clarity around what you're asking for, and I think the challenge with that is a lot of people don't know how to meditate or they think meditation is stop thinking. But meditation is really about not blocking your thoughts, not trying to control your thoughts. It's about releasing resistance, releasing control, surrendering to what is. And when you do that, when you surrender, when you let go, when you stop trying to make yourself find something or come up with something or do something and you just be, things will flow so much more naturally. So I would highly highly recommend starting there a consistent movement practice and consistent meditation and break it down, make it simple, make it easy so easy to do so that you can start to relieve your brain a little bit from how much turmoil we put it through when we're trying so hard to find the right way. Part of the solution is letting go and thinking that we need to find the right way. There is no right way. There's just ways and decisions and you just choose. That's it. It can be that simple. So next, what's going to start to come through for you? You're going to start to tap into what it is that you want and when you tap into that, you have to tap into what it looks like, what it feels like physically, emotionally, spiritually. Paint that picture so vividly for yourself and really access it. For some people it might be easier to feel the feelings of what you want to feel. For others it might be better done in creating a really specific image. We're all kind of different in how we manifest, but regardless, you need to access that vision one way or another. Whether it's emotionally or a visualization. You need to put yourself there. You need to put yourself future-paced into living what that looks like and ultimately, it should feel like something in your body. It should feel expansive when you think about it. If it's not feeling expansive, if it's not feeling exciting, then that likely isn't it. Or, like I said before, if you're not really finding excitement or joy towards anything in life, what you need to do is put yourself in a space to relieve yourself, to access those emotions, which means slowing down, which means getting into your body and out of your head, like I talked about with meditation and the movement practice. Once you release some of those blockages, you're going to allow for space for clarity to come through. And what can be really hard about this is sometimes we get attached to a certain way. We want to find the clarity or a certain way we want things to look, and what's important is to be open to how it could look, by really understanding how you want to feel, because you're going to recognize how it feels before you recognize how it looks. And that sounds silly, but I'll give you an example. So I've been trying to find a way that I can use all of my gifts, all of the things that I feel really confident in, knowing that this is how I want to help people, tapping into those natural abilities. And so I was like, yeah, I want to use my business knowledge, I want to have autonomy, I want to be able to build out a program the way I see fit, I want to include meditation and yoga. So I had all these different pieces of what I wanted to include in it and I knew that it would bring me the sense of fulfillment, deeper connection, living in my divine life purpose, that feeling of expansion in my chest, warmth in my heart. That's what I wanted to feel and those are the different pieces that I wanted to be in there and I was so stuck on it looking a certain way I'm like it has to be this online program helping this population, like I felt. Like you know, everyone's advice in business is like niche down, niche down, pick one group, and I was just like so blocked on that that I couldn't move forward because I couldn't, like I was just really stuck to how it was supposed to look or how I was going to have my gifts delivered. And then an opportunity came to me that I initially had no interest in because it didn't look the way I thought it was going to look. I was so stuck on it looking the way my brain, my human mind, wanted it to be, and I had to really pull back and feel into it. It was part logic and part spiritual, part emotional, where I had to say, like, is this going? What am I going to feel being in here? And it got really messy in the sense that I also had a lot of negative thoughts tied to this specific opportunity, in the sense that I was seeing it as doing this would actually cost me XYZ. So I thought if I pursue this route, then I won't have the freedom that I desire. It feels like I'm losing the ability to travel around the world the way I always visualized, and the thing about it is I'm limited in my perception of the future. We are all limited. We can't see the future. Maybe to some degree all right, that's debatable in the world of psychics but aside from that, we cannot 100% say this is what the future will be. You can never be 100% certain about anything in the future. The only thing you can do is be present and choose from this moment. And so when I really started to peel that back and ask myself the questions and start to release some of those limiting beliefs and reframing what this opportunity actually means, I was starting to realize that I did manifest that clarity. I did find something really aligned, and I'm not sharing it with you guys just yet, I'm sure soon enough you'll find out but holy moly, when I started to see this, I was like, wow, if I wouldn't have let go, if I didn't surrender to the co-creation process, I would not have been able to see how aligned this opportunity actually was for me. And so it's really emphasizing the ability to surrender to this process of finding clarity, because your human mind wants to control, and so you and I, all of us, what we'll do is have that tendency to really want to construct it with our own hands and really take power into our own hands on exactly what that's going to look like. But if you forget the peace of God and divinity helping you create this reality, you might miss something. That's exactly what you've been praying for, exactly what you've been asking for. So it's really surrender, surrender, surrender. I cannot say that word enough and I have to remind myself of that. It's like a daily, hour to hour practice of surrendering. So it's just letting go, sometimes Elivating the pressure of feeling like we need to know, letting go of thinking that there's one right way. It's just letting go of feeling like it has to happen now. The second you pull back, the second you let yourself go and just forget about it and come back to what brings you joy, happiness, pleasure, and to genuinely feel it. Now just go through the motions like, actually feel it and be in those happy, joyful, pleasurable sensations and emotions, and when you're tapped into that, more will come through for you. You'll be able to tap into what else gives me that feeling. How else can I activate this? Can I feel this in certain situations, can I imagine or visualize myself feeling it under certain circumstances, and that's going to lead you to the step, the next step for you. And it's also knowing that, even if you walk down a path that's not exactly aligned, you're always guided, you'll always be guided back to a place of more alignment, because action creates clarity. So often we try to do it backwards, where we want to be really clear before we take the next step, before we take action. But it's the reverse. It's through taking action that we become clear on what feels aligned and what doesn't feel aligned. If you're not taking that step, you'll never really know how it feels. So sometimes you have to just let go of wanting or thinking that this thing feels this way and just kind of saying like, okay, well, what's the worst that can happen? If I dance down this path a little bit and oftentimes it's not as bad as we might think, it might be right Like I think our mental brain attaches so much to well, if I do this thing, then I'm going to be able to do it. Well, if I do this thing, then your brain goes into like catastrophe mode and you think all the worst things will happen, or it feels like it's going to be such a waste of energy or so difficult to do that thing. But so often, again, it's not as bad as our brain makes it to be, because, again, our unconscious mind wants us to stay in the space that we are at now and even if that change is right, even if that change feels good and I don't want to say right, because there's no right or wrong but even if that change feels aligned, it's going to still feel uncomfortable because we're disrupting our patterns. So it's giving it time, it's walking down it and really allowing yourself to be present in the experience of what you're choosing and really being in it. That presence piece. Again, I really want you to take note of that. Give that decision. You're all Be fully committed to whatever choice you make, because if you are like half committed to it, then you're not getting the full experience of what it would be, so you're not going to get full clarity on what you want it to be or what it could be. So it's really being present, being completely focused, not thinking about all the what ifs. When you start walking down one path. It's just reminding yourself like, well, what is now? Where am I now? What do I feel now? Am I here or is my brain somewhere else that I can't even feel where I am? So, yeah, I'm going to leave you on that note. I hope that this resonates with you guys. If it does, I'd really love to hear what you think, what's come up for you. Shoot me a message. You know the drill, but I hope this helps. I hope you start meditating, start moving your body, start connecting with what feels more aligned, and so, if you can shoot me a message, let me know and, again, check out some of the programs or get on the email list so that you can be the first to know about any of the new programs that I come out with. I appreciate you guys listening so much. Love you lots. Bye. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you're enjoying listening to this podcast, I have a special gift for you. If you leave a review and send me a screenshot, I will send you something personally in the mail just to show you how much I appreciate your help in helping me spread the empowerment across the world and showing other women the magic that they have within themselves just the same way you do. Babe, if you're enjoying this episode, then I would love it if you took a screenshot and posted it on your story on Instagram and tagged me at fuel the underscore fire. Let's have a conversation about it. Let's chat about it. I love to hear your thoughts and your feedback. I'm here to support you in any way that I can. I love you guys so much and I'm excited to keep coming at you with some new guests, new information and new techniques to keep blowing your mind and making you feel invincible. Thanks for listening. Love you Bye.