Your Heart Magic

Radical Self-Belief: Mental Health Toolbox

• Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright • Episode 76

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How can we embrace a radical sense of self-belief and faith in ourselves? Join us for this episode of Mental Health Toolbox, where Dr. BethAnne, with her unique blend of psychology and spirituality, will share tips and tools for mental health support on the topic of the day. 

In this episode, key takeaways include: 

  • Tools for staying in our lane and believing in unique heart wisdom and vision
  • How to believe in our right to be our most soulful expression of self
  • Easy and fun tools and ideas for fostering self-belief
  • Supportive perspectives for mental health from her experience in the field

Tune in next week for a July Akashic Energy Update. New episodes of Your Heart Magic drop weekly each Thursday at 6 pm HST.

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Your Heart Magic is a space where heart wisdom, spirituality, and psychology meet. Enjoy episodes centered on mental health, spirituality, personal growth, healing, and well-being. Featured as one of the best Heart Energy and Akashic Records Podcasts in 2024 by PlayerFM and Globally Ranked in the top 5% in Listen Notes.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright is a Licensed Psychologist, Spiritual Educator, and Akashic Records Reader. She is the author of the Award-Winning Lamentations of the Sea, its sequels, and several books of poetry. A psychologist with a mystic mind, she weaves perspectives from both worlds to offer holistic wisdom.

If you’d like to explore what your Akashic Records have to share with you to guide you on your path at this time, you can find more about Akashic Magic Sessions HERE. Alternatively, sign up for the monthly newsletter Akashic Magic. Each month offers a unique perspective on the current energies along with intuitive writing prompts! Members enjoy a free gift— a complimentary copy of  Dr. BethAnne's book, Cranberry Dusk— upon signing up. 

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Below is a transcript of the episode as generated by Otter.ai. (*please note, this transcript has only been edited to put in line breaks for easier readability and may contain errors where a word or phrase got lost in transcription.)

[0:13] Empowering self-belief for well-being, overcoming fear, and trusting inner wisdom.

Aloha and welcome to Your Heart magic and illuminating space where psychology spirituality and heart wisdom meet. Here's your host, Dr. BethAnne Kapansky. Wright, the clinical psychologist with a mystic mind.

Hello, hi, everybody. This is Dr. BethAnne Kapansky. Wright, and welcome to Your Heart magic. We have a mental health toolbox episode today where we will be looking at some perspectives and tools and strategies to help with some aspect of well being. And today's theme is self belief. I believe I titled this episode, bolstering self belief because Alliteration is always fun. But I did want to look at how do we empower the quality of self belief within ourselves? 

And what does that actually mean and what might get in the way of self belief. And one of the things that I've learned about self belief throughout my own journey, but really over the last few years in particular, is how much we have to keep learning to believe relentlessly on ourselves. 

Because I think when we are able to believe in ourselves, it allows us to take a step forward, instead of shrinking back out of fear, it is oftentimes what will push us to do the next thing, or to make a change or to believe that there can be a better vision for life than maybe what we've created so far. 

Sometimes self belief is less about anything that we might push ourselves to do or accomplish. And it's more about just believing in ourselves and believing in our own strength, or believing in our own personal power. Believing our heart is big enough to overcome whatever might come our way in life, believing that our spiritual connection is strong enough, just believing that we are enough.

 There's so many ways that self belief takes place and can manifest within us. And when we get into fear states, or doubt states and feel really disempowered, that's usually when we are in the opposite feeling state of self belief, and we're experiencing self fear or self disempowerment, or some other form of feeling like we somehow don't have whatever it is that we need to be able to do the thing or survive the moment or work through something with personal transformation, whatever it is. 

So self belief is what allows us to not only stay on our path, but it's what allows us to trust ourselves when the path gets hard. And to believe that there's something enough inside of us that is going to help us weather the storm or is going to make it through. I think self belief is very strongly tied in with our heart wisdom, because where our minds sometimes will say, No, you can't do that, or it will throw up doubts or questions. If we can get into our hearts. 

Oftentimes, we will say but something inside of me resonates so strongly with this, I think it's for me, and that will be strong enough to override the doubts in our mind. So a shortcut I suppose to self belief is to spend a lot of time cultivating the space in your heart and connecting with your heart. Because when we can learn to listen to that over the fear in our mind, oftentimes we find what we need to overcome and to move forward on our path. So I wanted to talk a little bit about what self belief isn't. 

[4:15] Self-belief and manifesting dreams.

And self belief is not perfect confidence. It is not I 1,000% think I can do this and I have no doubt whatsoever. It's not necessarily this overly assertive, action oriented, I can do anything. Self belief is not about elevating ourselves over other people. It has nothing to do with grandiosity, our hierarchies or feeling like I believe in myself at the expense of somebody else. 

It has nothing to do with that kind of quantification or anything like that. Self belief is simply saying that enough of me believes in this that I am going to move my energy in the direction of whatever it is that I'm feeling called to, to do to believe, to act to think, to feel to shift to receive, it just means that we might have all of that fear, doubt stuff come up. But we do it anyways, and enough of ourselves has this piece, this piece of hope that says, But I think something is bigger than me than these doubts.

 Oftentimes, the way that we cultivate a stronger sense of self belief is to have every doubt in the world and do in any ways, and have a success experience and say, Wow, I really surprised myself. And that's what allows us to gain some confidence and esteem. So we see how big our capability is. So self belief is not about not having any doubts or fears. It's more about developing and nurturing this light inside of us that says, well, despite all that mental chatter stuff, and despite those very human qualities, something in me is spurring me to keep moving forward with this. 

And so I'm going to listen to that I'm going to keep compassing myself to that. And I'm going to just keep coming back to that even when I have doubts, self belief has nothing to do with what anybody else is up to. Self belief is inherently about believing in our own capability. And we can believe in our own capability without looking to what others are doing. 

Now, it can be helpful to look to other people for inspiration, it can certainly be helpful to say, Okay, if all these other people did this thing that feels really scary to me, and they can do and maybe I can too, maybe I can find something in myself, so other people can inspire us. But ultimately, self belief is about ourself.  And it's not about others, it's certainly not about comparing yourself to others. It's really about coming back to believing in ourselves and believing in our ability to create whatever it is that we're wanting to create. 

So a while back, I wrote a blog on self belief. And I wrote down these three core concepts that I thought were fun to share today, that are central to self belief, believing in our ability to create and manifest our dreams, believing and our right to live and be our most soulful expression of self believing and our unique vision of self which is given to us to actualize and embody and this world, these are three things that I jotted down in this blog post that I felt were part of self belief that it is believing in our ability to create and manifest our dreams, I do believe that if there's a dream in our heart that it has been given to us to bring out into the world in some shape or form. 

Now, we might not always know the form. And that's where a lot of people do a lot of second guessing and can doubt themselves and kind of wonder if they're on track. But I tend to think that if something lights our heart up, and we say oh my gosh, like I really want to do that. Because there's a lot of things in this world that we could choose from this life is a choose your own adventure, buffet of choices. 

And so if there's certain things that resonate with us, while others we could like totally leave it it has like doesn't resonate at all the stuff that resonates, the stuff that we secretly wish for, and hope for and dream for. I believe it's in our heart for a reason. And that we are meant to bring some aspect of that out into the world in some shape or form. 

And that is open to interpretation, depending on what the dream is. But I do think that it's there as part of our soul blueprint and that there's something there for us to stay with and to continue to explore, and to be creative with and think how am I live out this aspect of what's in my heart. And we have to believe in ourselves. In order to do that we have to believe I think as well that that dream is meant for us and not for somebody else. A lot of times the reason that people don't follow through on things is they think somebody else already did it.

 And so we might not get started in the first place. Or we might not feel like it's for us. But if it's in our heart, it's for us. We might not know exactly how it's supposed to look. But we know that that core component, those core qualities that get us excited, are somehow meant for us to experience and actualize and to make somehow tangible and our lives believing in our right to live and be our most soulful expression of self. 

[9:44] Self-belief, manifestation, and personal growth.

This kind of builds on this idea of believing in our ability to create and manifest our dreams. But I think there is something to do with when we believe that we are here for a purpose and that it's our birthright our divine being birthright to be our brightest light to find a way to be our most authentic version of self. 

And as we talk about a lot on your heart magic, that's not so much about what you do in the world, it's just about your essence, it's about who you are trying to be your most real, most authentic version of you that you know, to be on any given day. And believing in our ability to do that, because I think when we are in our authenticity, that's what allows us to grow, after a while sometimes will start to feel that something no longer feels right for us, or that we're ready for a new opportunity. 

When we're in our authenticity we can feel when something's no longer in alignment. And so we can go about the work of releasing or transforming or shifting perspective or trying something new making a change. However, we're being called to move our energy in a more authentic way. And when we do that, I think that allows us to be our most soulful expression of self at least that we know to be in that given moment. Being our most soulful expression of self is not a destination, it is a journey. So it is not a hey, you crossed the finish line.

Welcome, your your most soulful expression. Now. I think it's more about trying to follow our hearts as best we know how and just be the most authentic us that we know to be in that given moment. And when we feel called to change or grow or do differently and follow our hearts and listen to that. And then the last one believing in our unique vision itself, which is given to us to actualize and embody in this world. 

So these all tied together. And when we have self belief, we believe not only in our dreams and our right to manifest them and our birthright to be that soulful expression. But there's a fundamental belief there that there's something unique and special about you, each of us is unique and special, we're also no better than and we're no less than we are just all part of the whole of the ecosystem. 

But that doesn't mean that we don't have something genuine and real and beautiful inside of us to express and only the way that we've been given. And I think everybody has a strange beauty to them, and gifts that they have to offer the world. And and the way that we get in touch with those is just by listening, it's by being our most authentic version of self. 

And again, that unique beauty isn't necessarily doing something huge or grand. It can just be living in accordance in alignment with your heart and being a positive contributor to light on the planet at this time, and the ways that you feel called that's a powerful journey. That is a beautiful journey, that is a journey as somebody who is conscious minded and really dialed into their heart. 

So as I said, all of these are open for interpretation. So a few ways today to cultivate a sense of self belief and really foster that with ns. These are just fun activities that I've picked up throughout the years. The first one is to make a list of your accomplishments, a list of all the things that you have already accomplished or achieved or had some sort of success experience within this life. 

And let's break this down a little bit. For what exactly what might be on this list. If you are just doing this in general, for sort of a generic, I want to believe in myself more than anything can go on that list that you want. And that list could be anything that you have overcome. 

Anytime you faced a challenge and you resolved it. It could be things that are very tangible, whether it's something that you achieved, it could be a degree, it could be something you learned, it could be something that you had a success experience that it could be something where hey, I tried out a cooking class, I am a power Walker, and I stay really dedicated to that. And I've been doing it for a long time. 

You get to be creative with this. I actually encourage creativity. This should not be a list of just like big ticket accomplishments, because that's not fun. And it's the opposite of your heart magic. I love the big ticket stuff.

I think it's great when we do Korean things like go us I celebrate that in us. But so much of life is composed of the small things that are growing us forward. The small things that we're doing that represent these personal triumphs and little wins and ways that we've grown and sites that we've had things that we've overcome things that nobody else might ever know about. But when we look at them and take a step back, we can see that they're supporting us, and growing a sense of self capability and self confidence and growing us in the direction that we want to go. So this is a fun list to make. 

[15:17] Using success lists to boost self-esteem.

It's a great list too. If you're not feeling great about yourself and you need a self esteem boost. The first time that I think I heard this as an idea was in the context of triathlon actually. And I was preparing to do an Ironman back in 2009. That was a one and done thing for me. I did one once once was enough. 

But it was a big deal in my life at the time and something I never seen myself doing. And I was freaked out. I was very freaked out about six weeks before it was going to happen. I had done all the training, I've done a couple shorter distance triathlons, I know I did a half Ironman at that point, like a half distance. But the idea of the actual race itself, for those who might not be familiar with it, it's a swim bike run. 

And I think this swim is 2.4 miles, and then it's 112 mile bike ride, and then it's followed by a marathon. And I was really afraid of what that day might look like. And so it was something that I'd gotten from a triathlon magazine or triathlon blog or something like that. And it was such a suggestion that had been made, that when you are preparing for a race, and you're getting really scared to like, make a list of all the things that you've successfully accomplished in training. And so it suggested like write down like every long bike ride or run that you've done maybe like write down I got up how many times it was at the pool, like 6am and Alaska. 

And the it was in the fall, it wasn't quite winter yet, but it's, you know, still freezing cold outside and below freezing. And there I am, you know, swimming laps, like anything that you had done, that you had overcome anything that had been really hard any horrible moment in training, where you thought, wow, I quit. This is like the worst idea ever, what gotten into my head, but I wanted to do that. 

And somehow you stayed with it. And you showed up next day, and you know, showed up for the workout, like write it all down, write down all those success, success experiences, and write down if you've done any other, like smaller races or anything like that. And I thought that was a great idea. I probably did some version of that. 

And it helped a lot, because it did give me a sense of confidence going into the day. And I've adopted that idea throughout the years and kind of morphed it into like my version of this, which is what I just presented with making a success list of all the things that you've done a growth list all the things that you've accomplished so far. And you can also make it specific. 

So if you are, let's say you're freaked out, because you're going through big life change. And you feel like I don't know that I'm going to make it through this. i This is so hard. Maybe my heart's breaking over something. Or I'm having a hard time working with my feelings right now. And sometimes I just feel like I'm going to collapse in the waves of the crashing sea of emotions.

 Maybe you just sit down and think about what kinds of conflicts or self crises or life crises have you made it through before? What emotional storms have you successfully navigated. And successful doesn't always have to be where you navigated it with grace and ease, successful, it's just being able to say, oh, man, I survived, I made it through. And you know, here's some wisdom that I learned. That's what allows us to see our own strengths. 

So when we do this list, that's why we make it it's to see that each of us possesses gifts we possess and our resources, we possess the ability to grow, to push through our limitations. We possess inner strength, we possess the ability to surprise ourselves. Sometimes it feels like our darkest hour. And then we have a spontaneous epiphany, sometime in that tunnel of darkness. And all of a sudden, it's like the sky opens up and we see the light and we realize we're not in a tunnel of darkness. We just had the lights out. And now that we've grabbed onto something hopeful, we're able to see our way through. 

That is one of the beautiful things about the human journeys. We never know when we might have a spontaneous moment of inspiration or insight or breakthrough or something like that. So when we write these lists, it allows us to believe in ourselves to tap into that quality of like, wow, like I have made it this far on my journey. And I learn things on the way I've developed skills, I've developed resources and that helps us look at them and see what those things are. The next one that I wanted to share. 

[19:57] Self-belief, affirmations, and energetic connection for personal growth. 

This is such a fun activity. It's called habit. Gold Star day, going through your day and being intentional about finding gold star moments. So if you remember, as a kid, oftentimes, at least my teachers did this, there was a star chart. And if you got a star for something, you got like a sticky star on the star chart. 

And it would be for like turning in a homework assignment or doing something in class. Or maybe it would be if you were help somebody on the playground and a teacher saw you, I don't remember what all it was awarded for. I just remember one teacher had colored stars, and like gold, silver, red, or red, silver, green, all of those were like, Oh, you got a star. But if you did something really exceptional, you got a gold star. 

So my idea was to have a star chart, it is good, be real. If you want to get a sticker book and put stars in it, that could be fun. But to metaphorically keep a star chart in your mind and just set a day of like, I'm going to give myself a gold star every time I do something that I think is worthy of one. And I think it's important to be very generous with our gold stars, we should not end the day thinking iron to gold stars today. 

Like we should need another chart, we so many gold stars on it. So it could be Oh, I chose kindness in that moment where this happened. And I could have been unkind and I chose to be kind. It could be, hey, I got out of bed today. And I put a lot of laundry and did my chores, adult skills. Gold Star, make it humorous, make it fun. 

But many of us struggle with giving ourselves credit for the things we're doing well, and we struggled to see the growth, we struggle to see that all those little things that we do that we often take for granted that we just do them because we're supposed to, or we have to or they're part of life, that they're actually opportunities that we could have a little mini celebration, and give ourselves some acknowledgement and credit. 

And really tap into again, the quality of self belief and allowing for ourselves to believe in our own capability. The last thing I wrote down is to utilize your energetic connection as a tool for bolstering self belief. Now our energetic connection, that's our connection to the invisible realm. It's our connection to energy to spirit to our higher self, to the role of color, however, we want to think about all of that. 

But it's interesting to me how often we forget to ask for help, and that help us available. And if we are trying to grow our belief in self, then why not ask our angels or guides or whatever it is that you believe in, and that resonates with you. Why not just put an intention out and say help me to gain confidence helped me to overcome my fears and doubts helped me to have more belief in myself helped me to feel a greater sense of efficacy. 

Give me a sign that this thing is meant for me, helped me feel supported that I meant to live my dream. And I'm feeling like taking this next step. So could you give me some synchronicity? So I feel like I'm on the right track like ask. And I think we often forget to ask, or we forget to maybe set an intention. And after we've given ourselves every reason maybe that wants to talk us out of something. Maybe we could use our energetic connection, and we could do an affirmation. 

And we can say, Well, those are all very good reasons not to do something. Now look,
let's look at why I could do this thing. And maybe we use that and develop an affirmation and say I believe I deserve to live with freedom and boldness and to excavate my most authentic self. And that affirmation helps us tap into that energy of self belief. 

We don't always have to like come up with it from inside of ourselves, we can open up to energy and tune into whether it's spiritual help or just tune into the intention or positive visualization, visualizing ourselves in a space of actually complementing or being or embodying whatever it is that we are trying to step into through a space of self belief. So we can use our connection to the intangible in order to help lay the energetic grid work and create the path forward. It's fun to do, and these are great ideas for again, affirmation work or positive visualization. 

[24:53] Overcoming limiting beliefs to step into a bigger version of self. 

Part of how I came up with a lot of these in the first place is, this is back in 2018. And I was putting together an E course. And I was terrified, oh my gosh, I was so afraid. The idea of putting myself out there in this bigger way, and speaking more openly and taking my ideas and putting them into form that other people could access that strangers could access that I might not know. 

And what if they had a judgement about it? What if they really hated me? What if they thought I didn't know what I was talking about at all, that was all my self doubt stuff. And so I was really running into those things as I sat down to put these materials together. And like I said, this was 2018. So I hadn't quite developed a platform yet of feeling more comfortable just putting my voice out there. A lot of those limiting beliefs, I've either worked through them. 

So they're a non issue at this point, or sometimes I'll think about those things. But I'm like, Well, that's the old story. And that's the old mental chatter that says, Don't do the thing, because it keeps you small and safe. And I really choose to keep cultivating and creating a bigger story that I'm here to teach on heart wisdom. 

And one of the ways I've been called to do that is through teaching. And so how am I going to teach? If I'm afraid to put myself out there? How am I going to teach? If I make sure that the only faces in a room are the only people who access my work are friendly? And who are going to be like, Oh, good job that Dan Goldstar? 

You know, how am I actually going to have the freedom to share the things I feel like I'm here to share if I don't overcome those things. So a lot of it I've worked through and found ways that I have kind of grown myself up bigger than those old limiting beliefs. But that was really the origin of a lot of this work. For me, I'm sure I taught some of it back in my private practice in Alaska. 

But so much of this came from me doing my work as I was making this life transition from Alaska to kawaii and stepping into being an author and teaching and speaking and more self confidence, and believing all these things that were in my heart, and needing to show up for myself in a really powerful way. 

And ultimately, I think that's what self belief is about. It's about showing up for ourselves. It's about showing up for who we feel called to be in this world. Because we can find somebody a good coach or a therapist or somebody, we can read a good book that inspires us, we can find somebody else who will tell us to show up for ourselves, and they'll give us encouragement. And maybe they'll even give us a gold star so that we don't have to do it ourselves. 

And there's certainly room for that kind of support. I'm very pro support, pro drawing on others and supporting us as we're on our journeys. But ultimately, the only person who can show up for you is you, the only person who is going to show up for me is me, the only person who is going to show up and figure out what my dreams are and why I came to kawaii that was all me, the only person who is going to show up and make that ecourse. Like that was me. 

And in the end, it's not so much about any one thing. It's never about going back years ago, it was never about the Iron Man, it's never about the ecourse. It's never about whatever the thing is that you're trying to inspire belief to do. It's never about that one thing. It's about breaking through limitations. And when we have an individual call to step into a bigger version of self, it's learning how to answer that. And so oftentimes, the way that we'll do that is through feeling called to try something new, or take a tangible step or maybe do an action. 

So we actually have something to experiment and play with a little bit and learn about, if we're always just thinking about it, then we're not really moving our energy in the world. So oftentimes, we will feel called to do something to help us step into that bigger version of self. But it's never really about that thing. It's about what we learn in the process. And that inspires us to keep doing things to keep growing, to keep believing to keep expanding, to keep allowing for ourselves to be vulnerable, and to try something new and possibly fail and learn lessons from that and figure out how to get back up again. That's where the growth is. 

That's where we learn our soul lessons. That's how we become bigger. That's how we become more authentic. That's how we keep stepping into a more authentic version of self, not by playing safe, but by daring to continue to open and the ways that We feel called to open believing that we have the right to live from that beautiful, open hearted, courageous space. 

Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode and we will be back next week with an Energy Update for the month of July and just bringing in some fun information on the energetic forecast for this July. So until then, have a beautiful week. Keep believing in you. Be well. Be Love, be you and be magic.

You've been listening to your heart magic with Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright. Tune in next week for a new episode to support and empower your life