Why Your Brain Fights the Life You Say You Want - 60

Why does change feel so hard—even when it's something you genuinely want? 

In this episode, we explore the psychology and neuroscience of reinvention, including why the brain often prefers familiar discomfort over unfamiliar possibility. You'll learn how identity, habit formation, predictive processing, and nervous system regulation influence your ability to create lasting change. This episode offers a science-backed look at why transformation can feel uncomfortable and how to work with your nervous system instead of against it. 

Key Topics 

• Why the brain confuses familiarity with safety 
• The neuroscience of change and predictive processing 
• Status quo bias and resistance to growth 
• Identity shifts and the psychology of reinvention 
• Why success can feel threatening 
• The role of nervous system regulation in personal transformation 
• How to create lasting change without relying solely on willpower 
• Moving from survival mode into intentional growth and alignment

Transcript

Autumn (00:00)

Welcome back to the podcast. As we close out the month of June and our theme this month, I just want to revisit some of the topics that we've been chatting about over the last several weeks. We have covered everything from burnout, nervous system regulation, identity, future self-work, and the process of creating meaningful change in your life.

Today we're building on those conversations because there's a question that I hear all of the time. And a lot of times it comes in the context of fitness goals or professional and health related goals. And that question is always this. I know what I want. Why am I not doing it and following through? Why is it so hard for

Really intelligent, capable, and motivated people to affect the changes that they want? Why do they stay in careers or relationships or habits and identities that no longer fit them? Why do those types of changes just feel so exhausting? And why do we sometimes unconsciously sabotage the very things that we say that we want?

The answer is something we're going to explore today. And let me just cut to the chase. It's not that you're lazy, it's not that you lack discipline, and it's not that you don't want the thing badly enough. The answer usually lies at the intersection between psychology, neuroscience, and nervous system regulation. So today we're going to talk about the psychology of reinvention

and why our nervous systems may be resisting the very transformation that we consciously want so badly.

My goal in today's episode is to provide you with a better understanding of why sometimes these things are so hard because sometimes simply that awareness and understanding that it's not just us and there's not something wrong with us is enough to help us kind of cross that threshold and start taking meaningful action on the things that we actually want.

I want to begin our discussion today with this idea that reinvention is not just behavior and actions. It's a lot more neurological than I think a lot of us realize.

This for me is the crux of some of my struggles with the coaching industry in general. It is not hard to decide I want to get a new job or I want to lose weight and then develop a plan of how to do it. That is not hard. The hard part is the follow-through. And I have worked with so many coaches over the years. I've had many coaches of my own, and I have sat in a lot of programs.

Where they basically tell you that the reason you're not following through is just because you're not believing the right things yet. And while I think that's in there for sure, our mindset and what we tell ourselves is always part of why we do or don't do almost anything. But I also think we have to recognize that there's real nervous system things going on that can sometimes make it nearly impossible to believe the things that we need to believe to follow through. And so

I have a real struggle with coaches that just sort of believe like, I'm gonna set the goal and help you develop a plan to achieve it. And then I'm just gonna push you to do it and that's gonna solve everything. I don't think it's that simple. And I hope today we'll kind of paint the picture as to why I think it's more complicated than that and help you understand why I have so many random and seemingly unrelated certificates in these different modalities that really drive nervous system work because I think that we need.

Better tools to attend to our nervous systems as we try to implement change and achieve new goals.

There are plenty of coaches out there that will tell you the only thing you need to do is just decide. Decide if you're going to do the thing or decide if you're not going to do the thing. And yes, that is certainly part of it, but it's not as simple as just deciding to leave the job or deciding to start the business or lose weight or stop people pleasing or set better boundaries. While those decisions certainly matter, and we need to ensure that you are committed to this decision, because if you're really not in it,

It's never gonna happen. Neuroscience tells us that behavior change is much more complex.

Part of this is because our brain's primary job is not happiness and it's not fulfillment and it's not finding our purpose and all of those lovely things. Our brain's primary job is simply survival. Makes sense. Our brain is constantly scanning for threats, conserving energy, and attempting to predict what will happen next.

What this tells us about humans is that we're not often responding to reality as it plays out in real time. Our brain is constantly making predictions based upon past experiences. In other words, your brain isn't asking what would make me happiest right now. Instead, your brain is really seeking what's familiar and what feels right. And that's a really important distinction because familiar and safe.

Are not always the same thing.

This idea that familiarity is often mistaken for safety, I think, is one of the most profound concepts that I've encountered both personally and professionally. Our nervous system frequently prefers a familiar and known discomfort over unfamiliar possibility. And I want you to really think about that and consider.

moments in your life where you knew something wasn't working for you and you probably weren't even enjoying it or happy in that experience. But the idea of changing it and doing something new and potentially scary and uncomfortable or risky, that felt even worse. And that unfamiliar possibility is often trumped by the discomfort that we know and understand. You can be miserable in a job.

And still really struggle to leave. You can know that a relationship is really unhealthy and still stay. You can recognize that a habit is hurting you, but yet continue to repeat it. Not because it feels good, but because it feels known and our brains love certainty, even painful certainty. Several months ago I was chatting with a an older client of mine, and he said to me,

Know you seem like a really smart girl, and I understand that you spent a long time in an abusive relationship. It's really hard for me to understand how you would get yourself into something like that. And I said to him, until you understand the psychology of abuse and how our brains work, of course it's going to be confusing to you. But the reality of it is that.

A lot of us get us ourselves into these situations where we know deep down this is not okay. Like this is bad, this is dangerous, this is scary. But the idea of what could happen if you left, what could happen to you, what could happen to your life, and the fight that's ahead of you in leaving is horrifying and and terrifying. And I don't think people talk about that enough and recognize that enough.

It's a lot easier to stay with the devil that you know than the devil that you don't know. And there's a lot of psychology support around that. And and for me, that was my first kind of aha moment of like, holy cow, you know, this, even when I know this is so bad and so wrong for me, it's so much easier to stay here than to do all of the hard things and risk all of those things to make it right.

Psychologists have a name for that, and they refer to it as status quo bias. And that's the tendency to prefer existing conditions over change. Because change requires uncertainty. And uncertainty can feel very threatening to our nervous system. Our brain doesn't really distinguish between real or perceived threats. So when you're thinking about doing something unknown, your nervous system that wants to avoid pain and seek

Pleasure doesn't want to go there. It sees it as a threat to safety and will come up with all sorts of reasons why you should just stay where you are.

So for me, when I hear someone saying, you know, I'm in a really unhealthy relationship and I just don't know why I keep going back, I have deep empathy and understanding for that sentiment. And it really is rooted in science. It's simple biology trying to keep you safe. You know, you often hear people say things like, I don't know why I can't move forward, or I just don't know what's wrong with me and why I can't stop doing these things that aren't for my greater good.

Often it's not a lack of desire. It's just our nervous system attempting to keep them inside what it already understands, even if that space it's keeping them in isn't the best or the happiest or even the safest. But psychologically, from a nervous system perspective, it just feels safer and known. And that's what your brain puts the importance on: the known versus the unknown.

This brings me to what I think is really the root of this challenge. One of the biggest reasons that reinvention feels so difficult. Again, it has nothing to do with action and behavior, but it has a lot to do with identity. When you're thinking about making a change that could threaten the identity that you have built so carefully. Research in psychology suggests that humans.

Work really hard to maintain consistency between their behaviors and their self-concept. Simply put, what that means is we act in ways that reinforce who we believe ourselves to be. So if you have spent years identifying as the responsible one, the caretaker, the high achiever, the perfectionist, the good employee, the team player, the people pleaser.

Then changing your behavior can feel very threatening because it challenges that identity that you have built, consciously or unconsciously. When you do that, your brain starts asking questions like, well, who am I if I'm not the person that always says yes? And what are the implications of that? What are people going to say? And how what are people going to do if I'm not that person anymore? Who am I if I'm not?

The successful lawyer. Who am I if I'm not the person that everyone depends upon? A lot of people think that they're afraid of failure. And yeah, sometimes that's part of it. But I think what what's more true is that there's afraid of that loss of identity. And what do we fill that vacuum with? Because every reinvention requires the death of some version of yourself, not literally, but psychologically.

The version of yourself that once helped you survive may no longer be helping you thrive and show up.

When I started exploring identity shifts and and reinvention, and I knew that I was misaligned in my legal practice working as a corporate lawyer, it was tremendously painful to think about what it meant to change, to leave. I had a lot of fear around what people would say, but even more so, I had a really hard time of letting go of that identity as a lawyer.

In our society and our culture, one of the first things that people ask is, what do you do? And and now that I've sort of left that identity behind, one of my biggest tells of my comfort level with someone is when they ask me what I do. If I still answer, I'm a lawyer, this person's making me uncomfortable. And I feel like I have to put that armor on. And that's something I'm still working through after all of this time. Because that identity.

Came with a certain level of respect or clout. And a lot of those identities do, being the team player, being the people pleaser, being the perfectionist. They all come with certain benefits. And when we decide to let them go, it's almost like standing naked on a pedestal and just like opening yourself up to criticism because people don't like having to change the way they think about you. People aren't gonna understand why you would leave that identity behind. You're opening yourself up to criticism and judgment.

and I think even more painful is that question of if I don't describe myself as a lawyer because that's not really who I want to be anymore, how do I answer that question? And what feels in alignment for me? And I will tell you, it took me years to figure out how I wanted to answer that question and what I wanted to say. And some of that I think has to do with a little bit of my disdain for the coaching industry in general. I didn't want to say, like I'm a life coach. I wanted to come up with something different.

that I think reflected how I approach coaching in general. But it's still when I bump into old law partners or old clients, there is still that discomfort where my brain and my nervous system, they want that power and clout with saying like, yes, I'm still a lawyer. and finding comfort instead in my true more aligned answer. And it it's a process and it does take time.

But I think the beautiful part of it is that you're forced to really experience that dissonance and that discomfort and really see firsthand how hard it is to own a new identity and let another identity go. And I think it can be really empowering, but I think it can also bring a lot of awareness to how people valued you and how people saw you and what was important to them to think about you.

And so it really forces you to reevaluate, reconsider your role in all the relationships in your life, and maybe consider whether some changes may be necessary. And all of that, again, feels tremendously scary and can be tremendously scary. But it at the root of it all is the value and the benefit of living in greater alignment with who you want to be and making those changes that resonate with you. There really is nothing greater.

And you get to this point where you just start caring less and less and less, but it's a slow process. Initially you're gonna care a lot. And the next time you do it, you're gonna care a little bit less. And over time, your nervous system learns that there is safety here as well if we commit to practicing and being this new identity that we're trying to create.

Another reason that I think change feels so uncomfortable that people don't often talk about is really, I think, surprisingly very practical. Your brain consumes a tremendous amount of energy. It makes up a very small percentage of our body weight, but it uses a significant portion of our body's available energy. So as a result, our brain is constantly looking for ways to be efficient.

And this is where habits come into play. Habits are very energy-saving mechanisms for our brain. The more automatic a behavior comes, the less conscious effort is required. And so it's about conserving as much of our literal brain power as possible. So this can be amazingly beneficial and wonderful when the habit serves you.

Getting up, going to the gym, getting up and meditating, getting up and spending time outside, whatever that habit is, if you can automate that in your brain, that's fantastic. But that automation and efficiency process can also harm you if the habit is not as beneficial for your body. And it can be something like at the end of the day, we have a habit of having a glass of wine or having a drink or scrolling on our phone long after we decide that we want to go to bed.

When you decide to change a habit or reinvent yourself in any kind of a way, we are essentially asking our brain to build new neural pathways. And that requires attention, it requires energy, practice, and repetition. If you think about our brains like a large corporation, right? And we've got all these workers kind of automating tasks and doing the same thing every day. And then if we decide we want to do something different, we've got to kind of pull the workers off.

And reallocate their energy to making these types of changes. And so it's a real reallocation of resources. And your brain is gonna naturally resist that because it's a lot more efficient just to keep doing what it already knows how to do and what it knows how to do really well. Again, this isn't failure, it's just biology, and it's really helpful for us to know that this is why it can feel so hard to make any changes because it

actually requires more brain power to rewire those neural pathways. And then you add in the fact that your your brain wants to continue doing what it's doing. It doesn't want to be uncomfortable. And now we have to add on more energy. Like, no, thank you. All the reasons I don't want to do this, right? From a biological perspective.

As you think that through logically, then it follows that the nervous system doesn't just resist negative change, it resists positive change too.

What this means is if you identify a habit that you know is not healthy or helpful, and if I just stop scrolling after I say I'm gonna go to bed, I'm gonna be so much more rested and so much happier the next day. You can know all of those things. Your brain doesn't care. All it wants is to be efficient, it doesn't care what it's efficient at, good or bad.

Similarly speaking, and this is, I think, something that is tremendously powerful to understand. If you're someone who has a goal and you're tying that goal to happiness. And so it could be something like: if I get a promotion, I will be happy. If I launch my business and it's successful, I'll be excited. If I finally achieve my weight loss goal, everything will feel amazing.

The problem with that type of thinking and goal setting is really twofold. First and foremost, before we achieve that goal, we probably have thought patterns of my life isn't good enough. I'm not making enough money. My body is disgusting. I need to get out of this job and start my own business. We have a lot of negative thought patterns around what's not working. So once you achieve the goal, that thought pattern is still gonna be there.

And what that tells us then is even though you achieve the goal, you're still gonna have those crappy thoughts that make you feel really unhappy. Okay. So even when you have the thing, your brain is not automatically going to change and rewire those patterns to actually let you be happy or excited or feel amazing. The other reason that this type of logic is flawed is because when you are doing something new, achieving any kind of a goal, any of those, for example.

Growth often feels like uncertainty to our brain, which makes sense. If we haven't done it before, there's going to be unknowns that go with it. Uncertainty activates our stress response in our nervous system. So as we start to explore this path forward and try and achieve this goal, new opportunities are going to feel very uncertain and very risky. And what's more, those new opportunities likely come.

With new responsibilities. And that can mean more visibility, more expectations, more unknown, scary stuff. That is why so many people find themselves procrastinating on opportunities that they genuinely want. Consciously, they say, Yes, this is in line with my goal. This is what I want. But their nervous system is saying, I don't know about this. This feels very uncertain. This feels very scary. This feels very unclear what happens next.

And that can trigger danger, resistance, and stress response.

This is really helpful to know for two reasons. On the one hand, we have to recognize that achieving any goal that we set is never going to impart those feelings of happiness and success and peace in us. We have to change our thinking and neural pathways in order to experience those emotional changes. So any goal that says, once I do X, I will be happy.

It's just never going to give you the feelings that you want because those crappy thoughts are going to go with you when you get there. What's more, thinking that way is really, really flawed because inherently, if you have set a goal, there is going to be struggle along the way. It's going to bring uncertainty, and your nervous system's going to resist it because this is new. It's uncharted territory. And even if we meet the goal,

Now everyone's looking at us and there's more responsibility or whatever it may be. And the nervous system isn't going to like that either. So we have to be really careful about putting these goals on a pedestal. And instead, I think as we focus on the goals, do our own work to understand what we're making this achievement mean and what we think this achievement will give us, but also learning to regulate our nervous system so that we can work towards the goal from a healthier

more balanced and regulated nervous system so that maybe we are a little bit happier along the way. And maybe when we do get there, we are better practiced at regulating our nervous system. And maybe we can be a little bit happier when we achieve the goal. But we have to start that work along the way instead of thinking that the goal is going to give it to us because it just doesn't work that way. This is why I talk so much about nervous system regulation.

You cannot sustainably force yourself into a new identity or a new goal through willpower alone. willpower, grit, tenacity is a finite resource. But safety is sustainable. So if we can stop trying to power through and just, I'm just gonna achieve this goal no matter how terrible and scary it feels, and when I get there, I'm gonna feel a million times better and be happy.

If we can let that go as just a fallacy entirely and instead focus on regulating our nervous systems and and exercising maybe a little bit of self-care along the way, it's gonna be a lot easier to make decisions, to tolerate all of the uncertainty that's gonna go with the next steps in your reinvention or achieving the goal. it will make it easier to achieve new skills, to take calculated risks.

but also to recover from any kind of a setback that are going to be inherent in this process.

This is one of the many reasons why meditation, mindfulness, breath work, sleep, social connection, and stress management practices are so powerful. They're not just helping you relax, they're helping you increase your capacity for change. Our goal is never to eliminate fear. The goal is to create enough internal safety that fear no longer

Drives the process and that discomfort no longer feels like a stop sign.

This topic, I think, has recently kind of come full circle for me in a weird way. Every year, when I have to renew my malpractice insurance for my law firm, I go through this whole identity crisis. Why am I spending this money to keep a license? Why am I still doing legal work? And when I started off on this journey, I kept my law license and I formed a firm.

To continue some of the legal work I was doing. Absolutely. And I think that's the answer that my logic and my nervous system really liked. well, just you know, it provides options and flexibility and this, that, and the other. And I think behind it really was fear. What if this doesn't work out? I want to be able to fall back on being a lawyer again, even though the reason I was on this journey was because I definitively did not want to be a lawyer anymore. So I kept.

my law license. And every year, the farther I got from working in-house and kind of a traditional legal practice, every year my malpractice insurance would come up and I'd say, why am I doing this? I don't want to spend money on malpractice insurance. Like I don't even want to practice anymore. And every year I'd say, well, you know, just in case, what if this doesn't work out? And that way I have a fallback, this, that, and the other. And as the years went on, I finally got to a place where I said, I think I'm ready to let my law license go inactive.

But the discomfort of it drove me to reach out to a lot of people, just like a litmus test, just to see what they were thinking about it, which a lot of us do when our nervous system is sort of signaling discomfort. We're like, okay, I know what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna pull the masses and see what they think about this. And of course, people that don't understand law licenses and how they can go inactive and you can simply reinstate them.

lost their minds. Why would you ever do that? You worked so hard for it. And it's like, well, I don't, I don't want to do it anymore. I don't, I don't like it anymore. And I felt myself arguing with people about why this was the right decision for me. And I had a real moment where in in those kind of arguments where I realized, wow, I really am ready to let this go. And I think it kind of coincided with my ability to articulate clearly who I am

And what I do without reaching for I'm a lawyer. And again, if you ever see me in real life and I say to someone, I'm a lawyer, I'm uncomfortable this person is making me uncomfortable. And it's like it's a shield that I have put on. And we're still working through it. But I do think that I've gotten to a place where I am perfectly comfortable saying, you know, I'm a retired attorney. If it even comes up, I prefer not to mention it and kind of let people find out later on and then watch the way they change, how they interact with me. I think that's always very telling.

But over time, I was able to really get comfortable with this idea that I'm gonna let go of my law license. And it was a really empowering place to kind of spend a moment and take a breath and recognize, wow, like I really have come full circle. I have no fear or discomfort of letting go of this. And I no longer have those very grown-up logical arguments of what if?

Like what if you need something to fall back on? What if, what if, what if? And my answer is, I'm not gonna be a lawyer, I'll find something else. And that has been a tremendous kind of turning point for me in recognizing that my identity really has finally fully shifted. Now, unfortunately, I still have my law license and I paid my malpractice insurance this year only because

I have a handful of legal clients that I really enjoy the work that I do for them. I care about their businesses and I don't want to stop doing that. But here's the kicker. If for whatever reason this business that I am doing stops working, I know I will not go back to being a lawyer. And that's a pretty beautiful thing. In my mind, that work has become my side gig. And when I get panicked about money, I no longer go out.

And look for law jobs. So it's a it's those little signs that that give me comfort and really allow me to kind of honor how far I've come in changing the way I think about myself and getting comfortable letting go of that identity. And that's not to say that over the last seven years there haven't been some really dark nights of the soul where it's like, what am I doing? Why would I throw that away? Why would I let go of a potentially lucrative line of business?

And I just kept answering it again and again, like that's not what I want. That's not who I am. It doesn't align with who I want to be. It doesn't light me up in the same way. And I'm willing to let it go for good. And just being able to pull my energy back from that and go all in here has been really freeing. but I think it really goes to say that these types of shifts and identity changes, they just take time. Our nervous system is not a light switch.

And one day you will, as long as you chip away at it, one day you will wake up and see that that past identity no longer has a pull over you that it did. And again, you'll go through those days and you'll go through those moments where it's really hard. but coming into full alignment with who you're meant to be and who you're called to be, in my opinion, is 100% worth it. But that's not to say

It's easy. If you look at my Instagram and my TikToks, I might look like the easiest thing in the world and none of that is true. And I know we know that logically, but I want you to hear me when I say it. There were a lot of tough times that are hidden behind some of those posts. but yes.

It was often really messy, super emotional, and it it rarely looked as clean and polished as what you're seeing that I'm putting out there. Everything in life is yin and yang. For better or worse, social media only cares about the positive side. So for those of you that may be going through a reinvention or trying to change yourself in any kind of a way, my message here is to just keep trying, just keep showing up. Over time, your nervous system will adapt and it will get easier, I promise.

With that, I just want to caution everybody here before we wrap up today. One of the biggest misconceptions I think that I see about personal growth is that reinvention means becoming a completely different person. And I don't believe that that's true. I think that it's more of a process of remembering and returning and uncovering and peeling away the layers of time and conditioning and expectations.

fear in old survival strategies.

If you were to go back and be a fly on the wall and watch me as a young girl, what you would find me doing is reading metaphysical books. I there was a period in time where I I spent hours trying to bend a spoon with my brain. But I was reading about astral projection and psychics and I read a lot about witches and paganism and honoring nature.

I read about all sorts of different religions. I was always writing. I was always reading. I spent a lot of time alone. I loved to speak and kind of be on stage and sharing my thoughts. And then over time, those things kind of get, you know, chipped away or hidden or made fun of or whatever your path is. But we pull away from those parts of ourselves. And so I see reinvention as it's just you trying to find that true part of you once again.

I think the future you that a lot of us are striving for or trying to unpack, it's not someone new, it's that older version of yourself that's kind of been waiting underneath all along. I truly think today I am more like myself as a little girl than I've probably ever been in, you know, my 40 plus years. It's reconnecting with that version of yourself that no longer needs to earn worthiness through.

striving and exhaustion. And it's that part of you that really just trusts who she is and likes what she likes without any explanation or or need to apologize. It's that person or that part of you that doesn't have to prove any value through achieving anything and understands that it's okay to rest. You don't always have to be productive in doing to prove that value.

That version of you and the I think this younger versions of a lot of us really understand that being successful without alignment, it isn't really success, but somewhere along the lines, we kind of get conditioned away from that. And I think as we create habits that better align with who we want to be and maybe undergo kind of a full reinvention or glow up, however you want to think about it.

I think we find more and more that there's so much more value in that and that alignment and that fulfillment that comes with that than monetary success. And and sometimes the two align beautifully.

In conclusion today, I want to just say that if you're in a season of reinvention right now, listen and hear me when I say that resistance doesn't necessarily mean that you're moving in the wrong direction. Sometimes that resistance is simply evidence that you're moving beyond what's familiar and you're evolving. Your nervous system just may need time to catch up.

To the vision that that your heart is already kind of seeking out. And the goal is not forcing that transformation, it's to start working on creating safety and awareness and self-compassion so that we can continue to transform. Because true and meaningful lasting change, even if it's just a simple habit, it doesn't come from self-criticism or or being really hard on yourself. It comes from understanding one small step.

one new choice, one courageous little decision at a time. And eventually what once felt really unfamiliar becomes your new normal when you're a hundred, two hundred baby steps into it. And that's how reinvention happens. In in my experience, certainly, and I get to see it every day. It doesn't happen overnight. It's just moment by moment and choice by choice.

Before we wrap up today, I want to leave you with one final thought. If you've been listening to this episode and maybe recognizing yourself in some of the patterns and identities that I mentioned, like people pleasing, perfectionism, overachievement, or the need for constant validation, know that you're not alone. I see it all the time. And in many ways, these behaviors, they're just adaptations. They were strategies that your nervous system developed.

To help you feel safe, accepted, loved, or even successful. The problem is that a lot of those strategies continue in us long after they've stopped serving us. And that's really what I want to be pivoting to next month. Next month we're going to start exploring approval and perfectionism. And we're going to go through an approval detox, as I'm calling it.

We're gonna take a deep dive into the hidden ways that approval seeking shapes our lives, our careers, our relationships, and our sense of self-worth.

During the month of July, I want to explore some pretty crucial questions. Why do I care so much what other people think about me? How does people pleasing become a survival strategy? Why do high achievers often struggle with external validation? What happens when your self-worth becomes tied to performance?

How do you begin trusting yourself after years of looking outside of yourself for answers?

And I think most importantly underlying all of these questions is the exploration of how do I stop abandoning my own needs, my own desires and my own intuition in order to keep others comfortable? How do I do that?

We're gonna explore the neuroscience behind approval seeking, the connections between attachment patterns and validation, how social conditioning influences our behavior. And I'm gonna give you some real practical tools to build genuine self trust again. Because the truth, as I see it, is that many people aren't really living the life that they want. They're living the life that they think will earn them the most approval.

approval and eventually that's exhausting. The goal of our approval detox in July, it's not to stop caring about other people, but it's about learning how to stop outsourcing our worth.

On the premium side, private space of the podcast, Becoming Her, subscribers there are going to get guided meditations designed to strengthen self-trust, journaling exercises and reflection prompts, nervous system regulation practices, shadow work around people pleasing and perfectionism, practical challenges to help you begin breaking approval seeking patterns in real time.

They will also receive access to exclusive coaching style episodes that take the concepts from the public podcast but helps you to apply them to your own life.

if you've been enjoying this podcast and everything around personal growth, nervous system regulation, identity, and reinvention, July is really going to build on everything that we've discussed so far because reinvention is not about becoming somebody new. It's about learning how to choose yourself instead of everybody else.

And as you know, if you find yourself in a season of transition or burnout, reinvention, or just uncertainty, please know that you don't have to navigate it alone in addition to the podcast. I offer private coaching for professionals and entrepreneurs or high achievers of all backgrounds who are really ready to start creating meaningful change in their lives and in their careers.

My coaching is is unique in that I combine evidence-based coaching tools with all of the nervous system support tools that I mention on here. Mindfulness practices, meditation, holistic wellness approaches, and energy work to help you create change that feels sustainable but not forced.

I also offer guided meditation experiences, Reiki, Sound Bass, Wellness Workshops, leadership training and speaking engagements for organizations all over the country. So if your organization is interested in creating healthier, more resilient teams, don't hesitate to reach out and see if we can come up with an event that would align with your goals.

In some, regardless of where you are in your career or whether you're trying just to overcome burnout or get through the day, I just want you to know that I would be honored to support you in any way that I can. You can find information about coaching, events, upcoming programs, everything is listed in the show notes. Once again, everybody, thank you so much for spending time with me today.

And as we head into July, I invite you to begin paying attention to one simple question.

Where in your life are you seeking permission when you really just need more self-trust?

That is where we will begin our approval detox journey in July. Until next time, take care of yourself. Be gentle with the parts of you that are still learning. And remember that

You were never meant to build your life around earning approval. You were simply meant to build it around becoming fully, authentically yourself.

As always, my friends, thank you so much for listening and thank you for sharing it with your circle that could also benefit from this information. Any questions, don't hesitate to reach out, Autumn at the Uncomfortabledream.com.