Mindy Duff's Guide to Shattering Self-Doubt and Achieving Dreams

Have you ever felt the pull of a dream so strong, yet it seemed like invisible forces were holding you back? That's the resistance I grappled with on my path to becoming a public speaker. In a heartfelt exploration, I peel back the layers of my own story, sharing the trials and triumphs of overcoming the hurdles to pursue my passion. This episode isn't just about my journey—it's a beacon for anyone who's ever doubted themselves, a roadmap through the thickets of self-doubt that often keep us from reaching our full potential. I'll take you through the process of confronting these challenges head-on, offering not only inspiration but also practical advice on how to dismantle the barriers to your greatness.

With raw honesty, I delve into the transformational practices of affirmations and the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), or tapping, revealing how they've revolutionized my outlook. Imagine a world where your negative thoughts no longer have the power to anchor you down. Through personal anecdotes and a step-by-step guide, I demonstrate how to harness the synergy of tapping and positive affirmations to rewire your thoughts, aligning them with your aspirations. This episode equips you with the tools to foster new, empowering thought patterns and to ignite the change within you, enabling you to stride confidently towards your dreams and redefine your idea of success. Join me as we chart a course through the mental landscapes that often go unexplored, tapping into a wellspring of inner strength and resilience.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

hey friends, this is your host, mindy duff, and you're listening to up level your life with mindy, your number one personal growth podcast that will bring you closer to uncovering your greatest self. As a certified holistic health and nutrition coach, I created this podcast for anyone who desires to improve physically, emotionally and spiritually. I'll be interviewing experts and sharing tips and tricks that have helped not only my clients, but that have guided me on my own transformational journey. I believe that we all have a greatness that lies within. We just need to uncover it. Are you ready to level up? Then let's begin. Hi everyone and welcome back to Uplevel your Life with Mindy.

Speaker 1: 1:01

I am your host, mindy Duff, flying solo today. I just wanted to do a little mini episode. I say mini episode and then watch me talk for an hour and a half. Just kidding, I won't talk that long. I just had something that I've kind of come across recently that I really it's just been on my heart to share it with everybody and in hopes that it will help you, like I feel like it's helping me, and so this is in the realms of goals and achievement and resistance. Now, I have talked about resistance a lot before. I have had experts on talking about resistance. I've shared my own things, so if you really want to know more about it, I'd encourage you to dig back into past episodes. But right now I just want to acknowledge the fact that resistance is a thing. It exists. There's reasons why I'm not going to get into that part in this episode today, because I want to share a little tool with you here in a minute. A little tool with you here in a minute. But what I was noticing in my own life is I had a goal that just I wasn't working on like I thought I should, and you know what I wasn't even going to share. I'm just going to share it. I'm going to share that I have decided that I really, really enjoy speaking and I wanted to do more of it.

Speaker 1: 2:24

I actually decided this like five years ago Okay, a long time ago, decided that I just love speaking and I have this podcast and it's wonderful and that kind of scratches the itch, so to speak, in some regards. But I will say that for me, doing the podcast, as much as I a hundred% love doing it, I miss that interaction with real humans Not that you people listening aren't real humans, but you know what I mean there's not that live interaction and getting to talk with people afterwards, and that's part of what I enjoy, beyond just the actual act of physically speaking, which I still do enjoy. So I decided several years ago that I really enjoy speaking. I just feel lit up and excited when I'm doing it and I want to do more of it. And so, okay, what do you do if you decide this is the first time you've decided you want to be a speaker, let's learn how. So I purchased a pretty inexpensive course just to get me the basics on how do I even begin doing this, how does one become a professional speaker. And it was a short course, not something that was very time-consuming really great course but just not a time-consuming, intensive, drop everything and do this kind of a thing. Something pretty easy that I should be able to get through in a short amount of time. And it took me literal years to get through it. In fact, I think I had purchased it oh, I can't remember if it was 2018 or 2019, but it took me a full year before I even like, did lesson number two and why We'll get to that in a little bit to, and why We'll get to that in a little bit and then fast forward a little bit.

Speaker 1: 4:10

I have learned more, I've taken more steps towards becoming a speaker. I've done more speaking. But I know, just because I've studied and researched and learned and kind of been in it for a bit, that if I really want to be speaking the amount that I would like to be doing, I need to be doing certain activities. I won't bore you with what those are, but they're just certain things that I need to be doing. Pretty mundane things, step one being like apply to places to speak right and things like that. Not things that are hard, not things that are beyond my capabilities. Nothing that I don't already know about. I do. I know how to do all of it, a hundred percent. That doesn't mean that I know how to become some multimillion dollar, sought after, world-class speaker, but I know how to do these things. And guess what, friends, I ain't doing them. I'm not. I'm not doing them to the caliber that I should be doing to get the results that I want. And this just fairly recently, within the last few months, just really struck me. Why, why am I holding myself back? I know that I want to do more of this. I enjoy it. It's fun. What is it that's holding me back? Why am I not doing these things that I know that I should do? If I want this result, I need to do these activities. Why am I not doing them? And so, one day here's what I want you to really latch in on here comes the tools for you to use in your own life.

Speaker 1: 5:44

One day, I sat down with a notebook and if you know me, you know I'm big on journaling. I don't journal every day, but it's hugely important in uncovering things that you didn't know were going on. So I sat down with a notebook and at the top of my notebook I made this list. I said reasons why. It's something like reasons why I can't become a speaker, reasons why this is a terrible idea and I shouldn't do it. And then I just started writing things down, and if you've ever done an exercise like this before, you probably noticed that once you started doing it, like you get the juices flowing and then all this stuff starts coming out Stuff where I'm writing it down. In my conscious mind, I'm like that's. I know that's not true, but yet part of me believes it. So everything goes.

Speaker 1: 6:41

I wrote it all out on this paper and I spent a while doing it and I'm sure that as time passes, more things might kind of pop into my awareness. But this was a pretty lengthy list. I filled several columns on. A whole page just covered and all these reasons why I thought that this was not a good idea for me. And then I took a little time and I read through that list and I really really took the time with each item that I put on that list and asked myself is this really true? Do I really believe that this is true? And for almost all of them the answer was no. No, I don't really believe that. That's. I mean, my conscious mind is like no, of course you can do that, of course that this isn't true, of course that's not a thing. But somewhere in my subconscious it thinks that no, this is not a good idea and it's trying to protect me from being hurt. So now that I have all these beliefs out on this paper, I can look at them and go okay, cool, this is what's kind of running the show. So now I have this awareness, so when those thoughts pop up again I can go all right, we've dealt with this before. That's not actually what I think, but, or what I want to think I should say. I have been going one step further with this and I'm just I'm not super far into the process. I can't tell you that, oh, my life has just made all these dramatic changes. But I tell you what I can feel a shift in my own energy. And here's what I've started doing.

Speaker 1: 8:17

I took that list of all the reasons why I couldn't do it Because I'm not good enough. I'm a failure. Who wants to listen to me? I'm not an expert enough, I'm not fill in the blank, whatever. I'm not enough, basically. And I took each one of those statements and I rewrote it in a positive way. I flipped it. So, gosh, I wish I had it in front of me so I could give you an exact example. But let's just say that I had one that said I'm not interesting enough. I'm not interesting enough. Who wants to listen to me talk? I'm not interesting, right? So that's a belief. I think that actually is on my paper somewhere. I'm not interesting enough for people to want to actually hire me to speak. So what I did was I rewrote that, as I am interesting and people enjoy listening to what I have to say. So I wrote the opposite of that. So I went through the whole list and I wrote the opposite of everything, so that it's positive and empowering and encouraging. And I took it one step further, beyond that, because right now I have this list of affirmations, essentially so all these affirmations and some people might just read through it every day and that will do something for you. But I went one step further.

Speaker 1: 9:38

If you're familiar with tapping or EFT emotional freedom technique this is where I think it takes things to the next level. So I have a whole episode on tapping. I'm not going to go deep into it today. It's one of my first episodes. I want to say like episode three, maybe top five for sure, with Jules Siebert, who is a tapping expert, and we share a lot of the how-tos on how to actually do it. So if you're like, well, I don't know how to do it, then go back to that episode or you can look it up.

Speaker 1: 10:10

It's pretty simple, but when we think of tapping, a lot of times we think of I have a problem, I'm upset, I'm sad, so I'm going to calm myself down by doing the tapping and that is what it's used for a lot Maybe, even if you're I've been angry at my kids before because, like, oh my gosh, nobody is picking up their messes and I'm so frustrated and I've asked you a hundred thousand times and I am getting worked up and I'm getting emotionally reacted to it and I know that's not how I want to feel. I've gone into the bathroom, taken a few deep breaths and just tap, tap, tap until I can kind of calm myself down a little bit. So again, just a really really quick, quick background on tapping. What you're doing is you're tapping on acupressure points on your physical body, the first one being actually the first one is on the side of the hand. That's where you kind of get to like complain, you get to state what your problem is and then you don't do that one again.

Speaker 1: 11:07

But right on the inside of your eyebrow is one like kind of the corner closest to your nose. On the outside of your eyebrow is one like kind of the corner closest to your nose. On the outside of your eye is another Underneath your eye, underneath your nose, underneath your lips, like in your chin. That little divot you got there On your chest, if you can, kind of right below your collarbone. It usually sometimes it's a little tender there. It might feel nice to tap there Underneath your left arm ladies, this would be about where, like your bra strap might be and then on the top of your head and you just go through that same cycle tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.

Speaker 1: 11:43

How long do you do it until you feel better, basically? So what I have been doing is taking this list of positive affirmations that I have created that are the reverse of what my brain has told me, are the reasons why I can't do this thing, and so now I'm saying no, but I want to, and I think that I can and I know that I can. So let's rewire my brain. Okay, now, this doesn't happen overnight. It takes time, because these in your brain you can think of your thoughts that you keep thinking on repeat, which, again, I mean, there's studies out there. I can't think of the number. It's like the most thoughts that you think throughout the day are the same thoughts you thought yesterday and the day before that and the day before that. Okay, there's some number out there. You can Google it. I don't have time for that, anyway.

Speaker 1: 12:34

So these thoughts that you're thinking constantly, every single day, it's like ruts in a dirt road. It's a well-worn path. You can create a new path, but it takes time and effort to stop going in the ruts and to create, basically, new ruts, new positive ruts, ruts for the direction you want to go. So when you do the EFT tapping, combined with these, what would? Essentially? They're positive affirmations, designed to be something to get you what you want.

Speaker 1: 13:05

Basically, you can't keep acting the way that you've been acting. You can't keep being the person that you've always been and then have some different outcome. That's not going to happen. However you've been behaving and however you've been acting, whatever you've been believing, whatever you've been thinking, that's what's given you the life that you have now. If you desire a change, you have to change something in your thinking, in your beliefs, in your habits, in who you are, at your core, to make that change happen.

Speaker 1: 13:45

So when you're tapping and you're saying these things like I'm an interesting person and people can gain lots from listening to what I have to say you're tapping on those acupressure points, you're calming down your lizard brain, your amygdala, the part of your brain that's the most primitive part of your brain, that's the part that's fight or flight, that's the part that's safety, that's the part that's telling you nope, even though you have other thoughts and feelings and wishes and desires that say, oh, this would be great for me, I would love this. We see danger, so we're going to just shut her down. Whether you are aware of it or not, we're shutting this down and then we're going to make it so you don't do the thing, okay. So when you're tapping on these acupressure points, it's caught the physical response. Even if you didn't say anything, you can just calm your amygdala down.

Speaker 1: 14:35

But when you say these positive statements, you're rewiring your brain, you're reprogramming essentially your brain's just like a computer. So you're telling yourself who you are now. This is who I am now. Not this is who I want to be in the future, but this is who I am starting now. And I tell you what it's hard to see those results instantly because, again, you're creating those ruts. You're creating those ruts in your brain, so to speak. So it's not going to be obvious. The very first time that you do it you will feel better, you will feel empowered, you will feel more confident, you will feel more like you can take on the world.

Speaker 1: 15:18

After just one little session and how long does this take? I don't know. Five minutes, I mean. You can do it longer if you want to, but five minutes is probably plenty. It depends on how long your list is but this is one of the first steps into creating a new you, essentially, which is who you have to be to get this new thing that you've never had before, that you want.

Speaker 1: 15:41

So take a look in your own life. I want you to think right now, this very, very second. If you're doing something else, if you're folding laundry, if you're I don't know cooking supper, just set down the spoon, put down the socks and just take 30 seconds right now and ask yourself what is the one thing that I really, really, really really want in my life right now? Maybe it's a financial goal, maybe it's a health goal. What's the one thing that you really really want right now? Okay, whatever that thing was that popped into your head first, that's the one. Don't try to talk yourself out of it right now and go, oh yeah, well, I've always wanted that, but like, let's do something more realistic. Being realistic is not the key here for this game.

Speaker 1: 16:29

Okay, so write that down and when you have a minute, sit down, light a candle, get a soft blanket, whatever. Get to get a place where you're not distracted and do a list. Write down all the reasons why this is not going to happen for you. Write down all the reasons why, if it's a weight loss goal I would love to lose 50 pounds Maybe that's your goal and maybe you've had that goal for 5 years or 10 years or 20 years.

Speaker 1: 16:59

Write down all the reasons why you can't do it. Other people can. You've seen other people do this thing that you want, but it's not true for you. You can't do it. Why? Why can't you do it, even though other people, time and time again, have proven that it's possible. It's possible to lose 50 pounds. It's possible to become financially independent. It's possible to be in the relationship of your dreams, it's possible to get more speaking engagements. Why isn't it true for you? Write down all of the reasons and do not hold back. The more you hold, holding back is doing a disservice to yourself.

Speaker 1: 17:42

You want all the, even when it comes out, of the pen on the paper, and I would recommend not typing this. I would do a pen on a paper or a pencil when it's coming out, even if part of you is like well, I don't think that. That, I know isn't true, I'm just being mean. Nope, let everything out, all of it, the good, the bad and the ugly we want. The uglier the better, okay.

Speaker 1: 18:03

And if you have to come back and do it again until you have a really really long list and then write your own reverse of each one of those those things, write your own little affirmations that prove contrary, and take some time with each item. Maybe there's something on there where you're like oh, you know what. That actually is true, and here's why I'll give you an example. There's something on my list that says well, I don't apply to places to speak. Yeah, if no one knows, I'm a speaker, I'm probably not going to get a lot of speaking engagements right. So that's one where it's like well, that's on me, I need to just take some action.

Speaker 1: 18:45

So you might find that there are some things where you can take some pretty easy action, but it's more than just taking the action. You have to do the work to rewire the brain, to recreate that new persona, to believe that you are that person that can lose 50 pounds, to believe that you are now the type of person that can be in an ideal relationship, you are that type of person that is financially independent Until you can change that belief. Until you can change that identity, all you're going to get is what you've been getting. So sit down I highly encourage you to do this. I just and sit down today, tomorrow, try and set yourself a goal to get it done in the next week. It doesn't have to take a long time, um, but I think that this can be one of the most eyeopening and beneficial things that you can do for yourself in terms of reaching your goal. I know you've got a goal. I know you've got many goals. We all have goals. So give yourself that gift. Take the time to examine what it is that's holding you back.

Speaker 1: 19:53

Louise Hay, dearly departed. Louise Hay has a famous quote that says if you want to clean your house, you have to see the dirt right. So take a look at what's going on in the background, what's running in the backgrounds of your subconscious here that is holding you back from living the life that you desire, from living the life that you deserve, life that you desire, from living the life that you deserve. And then, once you have done this activity, I would love to hear from you. I always want to hear. I love when people email or message. You can email me at mindyduffcom or reach out through my website. However you want to do it, I don't care. But message me and tell me oh my gosh, I did it and look what I uncovered. Or I started tapping and now these things started happening in my life. Okay, so I hope that you found this beneficial. If not, I guess let me know that too. I'll be curious to know one way or the other. So that's all I'm going to leave you with today.

Speaker 1: 20:57

Again, this is kind of a little mini episode for me. I just it's been on my heart to share this for a little while and I just really wanted to hit record, I guess, and put it out there. So, all right, well, wherever you are at today, friends, I hope that you are having a fantastic day. Know that you are enough. You can achieve these goals, it is possible and you are well on your way to achieving them. So I hope you're having a fantastic day. I will catch you on the next one. That's it for today, friends. If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe or, even better, leave a review and let me know what resonated with you the most. The more you tell me what you love, the better I'm able to create future episodes with even better content. I'm sending you so much love and light. I'll see you in the next episode.