All right, so let's get to it. Welcome back to unlocking your more podcast with me. Janna Holterman, so why you don't feel successful even when achieving your goals? This comes into play so many times for us, like high achieving women and I live this out so many times in my life where it was like, Okay, I'll be happy when, like, I'll be able to relax when I'll when I get here, like, everything will be cool, I'll be happy, I'll be satisfied. I'll be fulfilled. And simultaneously, I never actually felt those things, or if I did feel them, they were such, like, short term, it was like, immediately gone, and then I was still pushing myself further and further and further, because I was telling me something like, I kept telling myself that something outside of me was going to be the thing that created that feeling of satisfaction, of success, of fulfillment within my life. And you can look at this from my nursing career, of like, finishing school and being like, Okay, starting in a flow pool, and then being okay, like, critical care is going to be the thing that makes me happy, and then going into critical care, flow put and then being like, okay, hearty, the cardiac ICU is going to be the thing that makes me happy, and then going into cardiac ICU, and then it was like, Okay, well, I'll be happy and successful in the cardiac ICU when I get all these certifications and get all this training and checking all those boxes, getting all those certifications, getting all those training, and still not happy and satisfied, and then moving to a new cardiac ICU, and I'll be happy and satisfied when I become an ECMO specialist, which is kind of like that next level thing, becoming an ECMO specialist, I'll be happy and satisfied then, okay, well, nope, it didn't, didn't happen then. So I'm going to, you know, step into more leadership roles and be a team leader, and do more quality improvement things around the hospital, and make more higher level system changes within the hospital organization to help others. And then that's going to be when I'm satisfied and happy, all of those things didn't make me feel the way that I wanted to feel, because I literally had two like, there's two pieces of things that are happening. First off, an outside thing is not going to give you long term and sustainable emotional results, right? Like, if we want to feel successful, we want to feel satisfied. We want to feel like we've made it. We want to feel fulfillment. An outside thing is not the thing that creates those emotions you might have that, like, momentary high of, like, getting that next level of you're like, oh yeah, this is amazing. This is amazing. But as soon as that honeymoon period wears off, you don't continue to feel that way. And there's kind of like, part of it, the first part of it being that external thing cannot create the way that we feel. So what does create the way that we feel? What actually creates the way that we feel is our brains. And our brains have so many like baseline ways of thinking, of handling exit, like this situation, like X, situation happens, your brain is like, Okay, I'm going to use this neural connection, this brain pathway, I'm going to think about this situation the same way. And then you have y, you know, situation that happens in your brains, like, Okay, I have this neural pathway, and I'm going to think about these kinds of situations in this way. And then your brain is constantly going through life being like, okay, which category can I put this situation, a circumstance that's in front of me into? And then I'm going to choose to think about that situation in this whole pre programmed brain thing. And so when were these brain programming is actually programmed from the age of, like, literally zero, right when you're born, all the way up until like seven, most of them being between zero and five years old. So all of the things that have influenced you, your parents, your teachers, your school, movies, TV, magazines, all of this stuff that you consumed and witnessed as a child, of how things were happening, and through a child's perception of those things happening, right? Like these are what created the neural connections our brain, and especially the strong emotional things that happen to us as a child, which is why, when you look back at your childhood. You know, if you're like many of us, high achieving women, you may have dissociated from a bunch of it and not remember half of it, but the things that really stand out to you are emotionally significant, whether it be positive or negative. It could have been the trip to Disney World that you went on, or it could have been like some really shitty, traumatic thing that happened to you. Those are the things that stand out because. Are emotionally significant, and that is what our brain focuses on and creates neural connections based off of things that are emotionally significant, which is so important for us to save for later, for when we're actually working on reprogramming our brain. We need the emotions to tell our brains, hey, this is significant. We need to remember this. This is important. So the thing that's so important for us to recognize, and we're kind of living in this unconscious, like, going through the motions of, like, I'll be happy when the next step is going to make me feel successful, I'll be fulfilled, blah, blah, blah. And we keep going, and we keep going and not feeling those way. I'm sure you've recognized already, but I think it is important to mention that, like, there is no magic switch when it comes to those neural pathways. There is no moment where your brain was like, Oh, yeah. Like, this is it. We're good. We don't have to think that other way, because we've hit this point. This is like, the turning point for a null connection and a whole new neural connection. Neural connection is formed. No, that's not the way that it happened. So if you have very limiting and hard on your self belief systems, which most high achieving individuals do, you don't automatically wake up one day and not do that without actually taking action on it. And so a huge component of what the work I do for myself, the work I do with my like, one on one mentorship clients, is actually figuring out what those neural pathways and those neural connections are like, what are these limiting beliefs that their brain is telling them? Like, when you have this situation, you know you follow this neural pathway, but that neural pathway is not supporting their growth or helping them move forward, and generally, that neural pathway is holding them back. It is pulling them into that fight, flight, nervous system response. It is, you know, creating this self sabotaging, beating the crap out of your self Life program that is in direct opposition for the things that we want. So you want to feel fulfilled. You want to feel like you're making an impact. You want to feel like you're actually living your life, rather than like the previous podcast episode where we talked about being numbed out, right? Like we want to actually experience the good that comes with life, like there is good things that happen, but if we can't feel those, and a lot of the times, it is because we've had all these limiting beliefs from our societal programming and our parents and our teachers and our friends and all these things as a child that are holding us back from moving forward. So I just kind of decided to look in with my intuition to the collective who's going to listen to this and who this would most benefit of, like, okay, like, what is a limiting belief that is holding so many of us back that we could, like, kind of go through the tools today? So the belief system that came through was, nothing I do is ever good enough. And here's the thing, this is so deep and so buried, you might get pieces and glimpse of it, and like, when you start to actually start looking at the way that you're handling situations and how you're feeling about yourself, you're like, Oh yeah, maybe I could see it. But this is, this is what happened for me, is
I have been and still am to some degree, but I've significantly improved on how incredibly hard I am on myself, but I was not aware of how hard I was on myself. So in percentages, I was like, 90 or sorry, 89% hard on myself out of 100 so 100 is the hardest you could be on yourself. I was like 89% hard on myself. But then I looked and asked, like, Okay, how much awareness do I have of how hard I am on myself? And it was only 23% awareness. So there's so many times, there's like, 60 whatever math, percent of the time that I'm being hard on myself, but I'm not even catching it. I'm like, literally. And this is the thing with our brains, like our brains are designed for efficiency, which means that we will have like, whole thought trains and actions and behaviors and feelings that are going on, like behind the scenes, and then we're not even conscious of them happening. And that was what was happening with me, is I was having all of these belief systems that were beating the crap out of myself and telling myself that I was not good enough and I didn't add value, and that people didn't want to have, you know, have my authentic experience with all this things under the surface. And so once I started peeling back the layers, and I. I could see like, oh shit. Like that makes so much sense on why I have created some of the results that I've created for from, like, just sheer tenacity and force and will, but then some of the other things that I like, desperately wanted in life, I didn't create in the way that I wanted them to. But then when I was looking at like, Okay, well, how was I treating myself? What was I thinking about this thing? What was I thinking about myself doing this thing? And then I'm like, Oh, shit. Checks out on why I didn't create those things when my brain was literally being like, well, nothing you do is ever good enough. And so looking at it that way, if nothing you ever do is good enough, there's two components of sometimes you're just going to give up before you've even tried, because nothing I ever do is good enough, so I'm going to not even try for that thing. So maybe there is a like, leadership role that your higher self and your soul is like, Oh, you'd be amazing at this leadership role. And even consciously, you can be like, yeah, no, I would be a good leader. Like, I mean, I look at everybody else who is in leadership roles, and I see what they're doing, and I'm like, I know I would handle this so much better, right? Like we have those thoughts like we do. And so the limiting this belief system of nothing ever do is good enough, could hold you back from even applying for that role. Or what happens is we try to prove it like we're like, oh well, like, I have to prove myself. I have to prove myself to validate my parents to say, Oh yeah, look at I am good enough. I have to get it from, you know, even past teachers, or you're like, you know what? That like thing that that kindergarten teacher told you that you're still like, trying to disprove to this day, yeah, that shit created a neural connection that is literally still running your life right now. So what happens is your subconscious brain is going to constantly find evidence to reinforce that brain program, reinforce that like limiting belief system. So if that limiting belief system is nothing I do is ever good enough, your brain is literally constantly you have a single reticulating, activating system. So what this basically does in your brain is constantly scan your environment to filter in the things that your brain finds like, beneficial or like, even if it's like unsafe things, but like, what your brain thinks is important for you to recognize. So there literally could be, like, millions of things happening in your world, but your brain is only filtering a small percentage of those things, and like, making you aware of those and the things that it's making you aware of are based on your brain's programming and what it thinks is important. And your brain is always trying to find evidence to prove its belief systems correct. So if your belief system is nothing I ever do is good enough. Your brain is constantly scanning its environment, scanning all of the interactions you have with other people, all of the things that you do, and looking for evidence to reinforce that nothing you ever do is good enough, which in turn makes that brain programming that neural connection stronger and stronger and stronger, so The more evidence that your brain has, and if you get emotional about that evidence that your brain finds. So if you get emotional about that evidence, all that does is tell your brain, hey, this is significant. We need to remember it even harder. So this is how these nerve like these brain programs, become so strong and so what happens in our brains is when we have brain programmings that we've practiced believing over and over again, and we have lots of evidence to support, they become non declarative. What that means is that as part of your identity, that is part of the way that you are, and you no longer consciously think about it, it happens automatically, which is why that unconsciously, like sabotaging or beating the crap out of yourself like I was doing happens is because these brain belief systems are non declarative, so your brain is just doing it under the surface, constantly beating the crap out of yourself, which shows up in the results that you're creating in life, and the situations and how you interact with others and How others treat you, really, truly gives you such a strong idea of like, where are your beliefs and your like identity that your brain has created from you based on those belief systems that you picked up as a small child. So how do we shift this? I wouldn't tell you anything that like, I mean, I feel like this is like, I wouldn't say like good news, but I wouldn't tell you something that you wouldn't be able to shift and change. So every single time that you were reinforcing those belief systems, that belief some system of nothing I ever do is good enough, is evidence. Is that your brain is programmable, and you have something called neuroplasticity, which means that you can shift and change belief systems. So when I'm working with my one on one mentorship clients, like we figure out generally by going based on like, Okay, where is it problem that they're having in their life, or situation that they like, don't want, or they have goals that they want, and so we look at and see, okay, what is causing the problem that they're having, or what is holding them back from creating that thing that they want? And most of the time, it's emotions and thoughts that are happening, right? So when it comes to these belief systems, these thoughts that are happening. Each thought comes from a specific area of life, and we won't go too much into this, but basically there's eight areas of life that things happen to us in, so especially these programmings that come from when, like, we're a child, most of the time they're either like in the family area of life, or the social area of life, which is generally like friends and school and all those things. And we pick up this information, but it could be in other areas of life. But the the reason I mentioned this is because when I work with my one on one clients, what we do is we figure out the specific area of life that this belief system started. So this basically means, like, the first moment where your brain was like it created that emotional response where the situation that said, hey, this would be a really good thing to think on repeat, right? Like this is important. We need to remember this, that first moment happened regarding a particular area of life, and when we know that particular area of life, we can go and like, pinpoint how to undo it by finding the evidence or proving it wrong, which is the tool I'm going to teach you today from that particular area of life. So if the area of life is social, right? So it could be like friends and situations. Social also includes like relationships, like if you're dating somebody, but prior to, like, moving in with them, when once they move in, it becomes family area of life. But so you have this limiting belief system of like, nothing I ever do is good enough in the social area of life. So it could have come from like, you know, kindergarten, where nothing you seem to do is good enough to get people to like you in the way that you wanted, however that could look right. So if we know that the area of life that it originated in is social, we can target the brain reprogramming that we're going to do to start like decreasing the strength of that nothing I ever do is good enough, and increasing the strength of the new neural connection that we want to be the one. It doesn't necessarily replace it, but it like overpowers it. So the stronger neural connection always wins. So we want to build that stronger neural connection that's going to win when we are faced with situation x, right? Remember, we have different situations. Your brain is like looking at it and seeing, okay, which neural connection am I going to use to handle this situation? What we want to do is build a new, stronger neural connection that your brain is going to choose when faced with certain situations that it's applicable to. So if we know the area of life that it started, we can kind of pinpoint how we reprogram it, to undo it the fastest and reprogram the fastest. But because I can't pinpoint it for each and every single one of you, and this is the more general thing that so many of us deal with, I want you to just do it general for life, or you can pick different areas of life and like find evidence for it. So when it comes to reinforcing that, that's what I do with my clients, is we pick it so the specific area of life in that like 10x the shift so much faster. So before we go into the brain for reprogramming tool, which we'll get to in a second, another thing that I always do with my clients is find the any emotions that could be tangled up with this. So remember, I said the emotion like, if something has to be emotionally significant for your brain to be like, Yeah, let's remember this. Let's reinforce this. And then that also happens when you are going through life and you get emotional about that evidence that your brain is finding, hey, emotionally significant, let's remember this. So for the people who are listening to this, the emotions that came up for this belief system, nothing I ever do is nothing I ever do is good enough. There seems to be a lot of guilt and shame. And what ends up happening when we feel guilt and shame. So guilt and shame come from basically, like separation from our true, authentic self, and it comes from that, like not feeling enough good enough in and accepting and loving your like true self, you feel like you need to be somebody else or act a certain way or do. Certain things to be accepted, to be recognized, to be validated by others. So when we have this guilt and shame it comes, what happens is we are pushing ourselves to work harder, to try to prove yourself to those other people, to get the response that we want to have, and then we also end up like living our lives and doing everything for somebody else's benefit or validation. So the guilt and shame really force us to live outside of ourselves. So we are not again experiencing our own lives, experiencing our own emotions. We are doing everything for somebody else's experience, feelings, emotions, and then it comes back again to you can't feel like you're successful, like you've made it, like you are fulfilled, or living the life that you want to have when you are living for other people, because then you're just reinforcing and Trying to make them feel a certain way versus yourself. And here's the thing, external things cannot make you feel differently than you already are feeling right. So one external situation, you might feel a momentary whatever it is emotion from that situation, but long term, your brain always goes back to its pre programmed neural connections that are super strong, which come along with emotions. So if you keep feeling, you keep thinking, nothing I ever do is good enough, you're going to keep feeling that emotions of guilt and shame that reinforce that and create this so much stronger and constantly leave you in the cycle of living for everybody else, which makes it so much harder for you to feel that success, to feel like you've made it, to feel fulfilled, like you're making the difference that you want to so we have to recognize how you're living for others, and once you start changing the brain, programming, one of the key components, and we're not going to really dive into it on this episode, but it's really, really important for us. Emotions are not they don't vanish. If we don't process them, we don't deal with them, they don't disappear. They get trapped in your body, and they stay until they are felt, until they are experienced. And that is something I do a lot with my clients as well, and that's something that's also in my membership, is just some emotional processing tools
to help you shift those out. So we have to feel like, what does that guilt and shame feel like in our body? We have to feel those to allow them to be released so we can make space for those new emotions that go along with the new belief systems. So the brain reprogramming tool that I want to share with you, I basically, I have lots of brain reprogramming tools, and again, when I work on work with my one on one mentorship clients. Like, we will take, like, how their brain works and find the brain reprogramming tool that is most beneficial for them, right? Like, certain people, it's going to be sitting there and writing things down, but if you're like, super ADHD, you can't focus like that. So like, what would be the tool that works for your specific brain? But here's a general brain reprogramming tool that seems to work like across the board, and I found really beneficial, and I've been doing it a lot more lately. So what you're going to do is basically prove the belief system wrong in the moment. So most of the time we don't just have this, like, nothing I ever do is good enough come straight up word for word. It's the underlying, like category where we have other thoughts that come back to it. So like, it's like the root belief system. But then there's all these other thoughts that kind of like trickled down from it and are created from it. So when you feel that like, okay, nothing I ever do is good enough, like the trickle down thoughts of a certain situations or experiences. And I'm going to give you a client kind of case study example that I literally was working with the client this week on and I feel like this is a good example of this. So we want to kind of pause in that moment, if you don't recognize it till later, that is totally okay. The more you practice this, the better you're going to be at, like pausing it, stopping it, and like being able to shift it in the moment. But what you're going to do is prove it wrong. So if your brain is suggesting, okay, I'm not good enough because blah blah or, like, nobody accepts me, because, blah, blah, blah, what you're you literally are going to go down that. Okay, you could go down two ways. You can go down like, okay. Is that actually true? Whose thought is this? Like, a lot of the times, we're picking up these belief systems from others when we were kid, right? So like, is this your mom's belief system? Is this your grandpa's belief system? Like, this was your do. First grade teachers belief system, like, sometimes that helps of taking that, like, a little bit of distance from it, of like, oh, yeah, this isn't even my belief system. Like, that doesn't even belong to me. I don't want to own it. Let's, let's pause on that. But sometimes our brain creates these whole, I don't know, like, thought systems that don't even make sense, like your brain telling you that you're not successful. But then when you ask your brain, like, what does success mean to you, your brain doesn't actually have a definition. So if you don't even have the definition of what success actually means to you, how can you actually compare where you're at to success? Because success has never actually been defined. So how can you achieve something that's not definable, right? This is what happens with our brain. So sometimes we have to go down the rabbit hole of like, does this thought train even make sense? Is there actually a backbone to it? And maybe there is, and maybe there isn't. But both of those awarenesses are really important for us to start shifting the belief systems so you can do it that way. And then the other side of it, of is just finding evidence to prove it wrong. Okay, so if your brain is telling you nothing ever is good enough, okay, like, how do I prove that wrong? Like, what are things that I do that are good enough and and don't go, like, big life, things to start with, start small of like, literally, like, I went to the grocery store and procured the groceries so that I could eat for the next week. Like, was that not good enough? No, like, I literally had a task. I completed the task with great efficiency, and now it will eat. And that is completely good enough start with those little things that are like, quote, unquote, seemingly insignificant to your brain, and then work up to the big things, like career and relationships and family, all those things that are a little bit more emotionally weighted, but the more evidence that you can find, and once you find that evidence, try to get emotional about it, like feel whatever it is the the better feeling feelings. And that's going to tell your brain, hey, this is significant. We need to remember that. And that builds those new neural connections that start becoming stronger than the old neural connections. And the strongest neural connection is one that wins in the situations. So the little case study from my client, we'll call her l we were literally on a call, and this was kind of just like a side track that we went on. But I was like, this is such a good evidence of, like, the belief system, of, like, nothing ever was good enough. So her mom has dietary restrictions, and so going out to eat food with her mom, like, if she just went to a place that literally only had like, one option for her dietary restriction. Like her mom would be like, Oh, why would you choose this place? Like, I came I can only eat one thing on this whole menu. Like this is like, you know, terrible. Like, why would you choose this? And then she would change, and what she would do is she would choose a entirely, like a restaurant that was like, entirely fit into her dietary restriction, or, you know, a menu that had like 15 options, like plenty of options, for her mom, and then her mom would still find something to complain about, or literally just order, like, the burger she could eat was the one thing she could eat at the other place, and now she just ordered a burger. And so it was kind of like, nothing I ever do is good enough. So I literally changed everything, and then there still was a problem. So first off, we go down the like, okay, so what your actions changed. You solved the problem, but the mom still had the same emotional response. First off, what we know about brains, why was that? Why is that like her mom still had the same emotional response, because her neural connections didn't change. Because you changed her restaurant, her neural connections were still programmed to find something wrong with the choice. Regardless, her neural connections were to be, you know, a Debbie Downer of like you will, nothing ever, you know, nothing ever she does is good enough. So I'm just gonna find something to reinforce that. So can we guess also, where this belief system of nothing that she ever does is good enough came from, right? Her mom? Right? Obviously, it came from her mom, but this is so important for us to see of like, okay, so she did all of the things and it didn't change the outcome for mom, because mom's brain programming is to evaluate a situation and then categorize it with the neural connection and the brain programming that she has to behave in a certain way, to show up and to feel certain things in certain situations. So we can guarantee, and this is a game like, I literally told her that she can play of like, guess what she's gonna complain about, right? Like, make it fun. Like, you're like, Okay, her brain is programmed this way, and which means that she's going to choose that neural connection. She's going to respond in a very predictable way for her brain pattern. So we can be like, okay, like, what is it that her brain is going to focus? On this time. Like, what can we do and what can we find? Like, place bets on it with yourself, like, what our brains gonna do? And this is so, like, it creates this distance where you're no longer, like, in the thick of it emotionally, because you're like, Okay, I can predict that her brain is gonna behave this way, and it has nothing to do with me. It has everything to do with her brain programming. So that's huge. That's one half of it and the other half of it is that prove it wrong. So if this is the way that mom's brain programming is, let's actually look at the actions that my client took. So she had a situation where there was only one, you know, option that fit the dietary restriction. She changed the restaurant. And I'm sure this happened many times, like it wasn't just like a one time thing, but she's sort of finding restaurants that had more options that were would accommodate the dietary restrictions. So how was that a good enough action? Well, she was kind of considerate of other people. She was like, like, taking the person's dietary restrictions and making sure that they were like, thought about that they were like, considered that they had options. Like, she even though her mom was being difficult, she still cares about her mom. She loves her mom. She wants to, like, do things that, like, help their relationship evolve grow, all these things like, so when you look at that situation for my client, how was that more than enough?
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
