Are you falling for the illusion of Personal Development & "doing the work" w: Sarah Scully Leaf

Are you stuck in the personal development hamster wheel but getting no-where?! 

Have you been "doing the work" for YEARS...but still can't get out of your way?!

BUCKLE UP.

We received so much insane feedback from our last chat with Sarah Scully Leaf that we are BACK....and this convo is JUICYYYYYY. Controversial, even 🧃🤐

In this episode, we spill the tea on our thoughts and feelings about the state of the "personal development" industry. 

We spill:

* The difference between self-awareness and *actual* growth.

* Common pitfalls in personal development: Getting addicted to courses and content without seeing real change.

* When to look for new methods or different coaches for further growth.

* How to tell if you're looping on learning...rather than evolving. 

We’d love to hear your thoughts on this episode! Tag us in your posts @iambreannamay & @sarahscullyleaf!

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Round 2 of The Mind School Method is still available! Secure your spot today before they’re gone. Click here to enroll—you won’t want to miss out! 

Transcript

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Okay, we are back with Sarah because we are having so much fun, like the most fun, having conversations, both on and off air. And after the last episode, to be completely honest, we weren't planning on doing another one together, but we had so much fun. And then yesterday, we were hanging out in Bali. We're just doing business stuff, working on our businesses, but the conversations that we had, we needed to bottle up and share. And this particular topic, the illusion of personal development, is one that we both feel very, very passionate about, and that is because we have both worked in the personal development space for a long time, the education space, the coaching space, where we have observed through coaching hundreds of different people, a little bit of a pattern where people are under the illusion that they're doing the work. They're almost a bit addicted to the work, but things aren't changing, and they're giving their power away. And there's all sorts of shadowy things going on. And Sarah and I were sort of talking about how business model is not the smartest, because we want to be redundant as coaches, we actually want our clients to not need us and to not need to keep quote, doing the work but getting nowhere. And so we needed to have this conversation. What to you? Sarah, is personal development? Let's start there. Oh, that is a great question. Yeah, personal development is developing as a human, same as personal growth. It's growing as a human. I think where this conversation goes is people are under the illusion that they are inverted commas, doing the work, because they're in the courses, they're in the containers, they're listening to podcasts, they're reading the books. They're having more again, quote, unquote, conscious conversations, but they're looping in the same cycles. Yeah, if anything, I see what the pattern for a lot of people is, they come into the space. They get so lit up and excited, because all of a sudden there's language and labels for them to understand themselves. Yeah, I'm a people pleaser, I'm a perfectionist, I'm anxiously attached. They do all this conscious mindset work, which, don't get me wrong, you need that. But then there comes to a point where that will they'll start hitting their head against a wall because they can't move past it, and that's where this conversation comes in. They're not actually embodying any of the work that they're doing. They've become self aware, but they're self aware and increasingly frustrated because they're not actually changing anything. They're not actually developing as a human past the point of self awareness. Oh, that is so good. It kind of reminds me of some quote which I'll probably butcher, but it's about education, and it's like learning without execution is not wisdom. And that's kind of like personal development if you're actually just consuming and you're just like, I know so much, or I'm so self aware, but I actually my reality has not changed. My ability to regulate my emotions has not changed. I have the same triggers, I have the same everything. Then all of this work is possibly not even getting you to the goal of personal development. And for us, this is really frustrating, because we don't want this for clients at all. And with I've observed it in the space, why is it so frustrating to you? Because there's not actual change happening. If clients are coming to you for a transformation, you should they should be able to transform the thing that they're coming to you with. And this is a lot of the gripes that I have with mindset coaching and talk therapy. I know that's a very unpopular opinion, because a lot of people have been in therapy for years. I was for years. Yeah, the thing is, I was still going to my therapist, to my mindset coach for the same issues with just a different flavor or texture. It was this avoided man, instead of that avoided man. It was this boss that was making me pissed off, instead of this co worker that was making me pissed off. It was the same triggers. And yes, again, like the self awareness. I needed it in the beginning, but I was still looping in the same patterns and behaviors, but I couldn't clock it because it was a different circumstance, yeah, but it was actually the same thing playing out. And you and I both have a really high value for integrity, which means that we don't want to continue seeing clients that are looping in the same problems. I want to make myself redundant, right? Or I Up skill. And for me, that's been in, like, say, a new modality where I bring a client with me, they don't evolve past me because my skill set has enhanced. Yeah, but if I was when I was a mindset coach, there's going to come a point where my clients should be able to mindset themselves. Yes, they should be able to self coach themselves. A good coach should be empowering you to have the tools that you can lead through anything that is going on in your life. And so you're only with them because you want to go to a next level, or you want to create something, maybe you want some external accountability. Maybe you actually just enjoy being in that energy, but not because you need them. You're not dysregulating and being like, Oh, my friend, God, I just need to get in with my coach. I can't this thing has happened. Yeah? Need to get in with them. No, yeah, which can actually be a really unhealthy dynamic. And I know that we're going to talk about this at the end and give the listeners, probably it's like our prescription or checklist of like, are you investing from the right place? Are you actually evolving? Are you actually doing the work? What are the red flags to look out for, even in those dynamics that you spoke about, if you feel like you need your coach, and that coach is actually enabling that, to me, that's just, you know, a bit of an integrity problem from the coach's perspective. And you did touch on something that I wanted to add. This is why I think we're the same person, and we've literally had the same lives. We even followed the same business trajectory. And I did notice that I was a mindset coach for a long time. My business for people that even listened to this podcast years ago. It was the Miss mindset podcast. I rebranded because of that. I was like, well, mindset takes you so far. NLP, takes you so far, and it's great. It is transformational. 1,000% stick to that. It's transformational. I want every kid, every student, every home in Australia to learn the basics of mindset. NLP, all those things, but it only takes you so far, and it can actually create self obsession, looping and all these things that we're going to talk about, yeah, if you don't have other modalities to support yourself and clients, if you're a coach, and that's why I love the integrity of you and myself, if I don't say so much, but it's like, well, I can see that there is a loop happening here. And if I don't have the ability to take the client further, I now need to upskill, because that's frustrating. As a coach, I want my clients to have bit deeper, yes, sustainable results, or have the integrity. And I've actually had coaches do this with me where they're like, Okay, maybe you need to go and see a womb coach or a feminine embodiment coach, if you're working on your feminine where, either they upskill so they can take you there, or they're honest and lead with integrity. They're not even necessarily to say you don't need me anymore, but that discrete thing that you need go to someone who has that zone of genius. So many coaches, they don't want to lose a client, lose money, lose them somewhere else, and so they keep clients that they either need to upskill to help them, or they need to refer them on, because your client has transcended your skill set. Yeah, which they should if you're like a good coach and giving them the tools for them to lead themselves. Yeah, you should be making it's a terrible business model. You should be either making yourself redundant because your clients are empowered or consistently up leveling and upskilling so your clients can come with you. Yes, and there is almost no one that I hear talk about this, yeah, because it's not in their financial interests. So true, and sometimes it's not even from an intentionally manipulative place. They don't even know, because they're just modeling what was taught to them, whether it was from the business coaching world or their own coaching, or because they've NLP themselves so much that they don't think that they need other modalities, because they everything is mindset, which it's not, oh, that's another loop that can have people looping. It's like, I need to find, have you heard this one? I need to find my mindset, block. There must be a block here. I need to find, I know this is a mindset. I just feel there's a block. I just don't know what it is. Yeah, especially when it's like, oh, I can feel there must be some block. And I'm like, a lot of the times when I hear that it's actually just a skill. It's you need to build the skill. Your mindsets, great. I've we've coached you. You're great, you're solid. You need reps, which we spoke about in the other episode. It's a skill set. So even having the abilities to be able to discern, actually, I don't have a mindset thing right now. I need skills. And that can be a big thing too. So we've already started to go into like patterns, behaviors, things that we observe, that we see when we know clients are looping or under the illusion that they're doing personal development, but they're actually not. So what are the patterns that we've observed? What are the things that we want to go rogue and spoke about, speak about today, a massive one that I see the illusion of personal development is the use of conscious language to bypass taking a different type of action, and that's why you keep looping. So for example, oh my God, there's so many I could use. But for example, let's say in relationship settings, because I see this all of the time, people talking about being with their twin flame or under a soul contract, rather than like, No, you're just in a fucking toxic as fuck situationship. It's no different to the dynamics you were playing out five years ago when you hadn't been doing this work, but now you're using spiritual jargon yeah to bypass Yes, actually leaving yes or, like, saying no, I'm not going to play that out Yes. Or, for example, in communication. I've had even friends with me that I've had to clock and put a boundary around where they'll lash out and they'll say nasty things and think that things that aren't nice, but then they'll come back and they'll be like, Oh, I was triggered. My abandonment wound came up. My inner teen that was bullied was triggered, and it's like, well, if I wouldn't accept that behavior without conscious language, the behavior is unacceptable. Yeah, just because you're working on it and you're aware of it doesn't mean that you are embodied in the work. You are looping in language to either excuse yourself or other people rather than choosing differently. It's the same one of the other patterns is playing. Detective, when you try to understand somebody else's behavior, why did they say that? Is it their father wound? Is it their avoidant like avoidant tendencies? Is that why they don't want to commit? Is it because I said this, and then maybe I should phrase it this way? What's the perfect text to send? It's yes, you're looping in conscious jargon rather than going none of that matters. How am I being treated? How do I feel? And make a choice differently. I literally could kiss you right now, but that like a fucking men, and that's why I've made a joke several times on this podcast about conscious Dick swinging, and I'm like, shut the fuck up. Like with your spiritual language, and you're therapising everything, and be a human that takes responsibility, because what happens is, like you said, we're using this conscious language to bypass responsibility too, not just emotions responsibility. And that's where I've seen another loop or a pattern, which I see in this I don't know if it's the personal development, the coaching space, the therapy space that, and it might be because of talk therapy being quite normalized, and that's a great thing. There's nothing wrong with that. But what that is often doing, and even if you think of psychology and the basis of psychology, it's like, tell me about your childhood, tell me about your past. Tell me so that we can understand, okay, great, we can understand why I'm like this. That doesn't mean you don't take responsibility. And what I see people doing is, oh, I need to figure out where this came from. Oh, I can see that I'm doing this thing. Let me figure out why this is and they'll start sentences. So for people listening, if this is something that you can just clock and bring attention to, if you're starting sentences either with your coach, with your friends, like you've said, this happens all the time with anyone that goes because of my mum. I'm really blah because of my abandonment wound, yeah, because of my attachment style. I'm this because of my mum and then, and I've witnessed this in clients, where I'll pull it to their attention and say, This is not the work for you to do right now. If I bring a blind spot, or I show a behavior, and they go, oh yeah, I can see why that happened. Because when I was seven, when I was 10, because of my mom, because of this, in high school, because of that, and it's great that gives you awareness, but that doesn't excuse, or it doesn't get rid of the fact that you now have choice about how you respond moving forward. So the because of and the detection, like the detective vibes, yes, you may be looping exactly, and it's also, again, where you might transcend a modality to another one. So a lot of the time when people start the work, they're incredibly self critical, incredibly unrelenting standards, yeah. And so understanding where it comes from can bring compassion, yeah, and it beautiful. It's beautiful. And it can bring awareness. But then when you get to the point that that is no longer serving you, you've almost transcended that as a as a tool or a modality that you need, then allow contradiction. I don't need to know why at all, to choose differently. Yeah. And that is and Shadow Work or pattern disruption, that type of work is actually what's needed, and what's your work in that moment, I don't need to actually know why I'm doing this. Yeah, no, I don't actually need to know where this comes from. I can just make a different choice when I clock a behavior. Oh, the responsibility is getting me hot under the collar, right? Guys breeze like, giving me the eyes right now, you should say so. Last night, I went out to I went out to dinner somewhere, this beautiful place, by the way, it's in cafe, best food. Oh, yeah. Oh, went there for my Indonesian curry. And my husband was, like, going through some, you know, he'd spent the day doing some journaling. And just like he's kind of hate me for saying this. He did some journaling and reflecting and just, and then he was going over as we were at dinner, and I looked at him the same way I looked at you just, and I was like, Oh, you're I love you so much. Like this work makes me so I remember a man that I was seeing we were reading the Untethered Soul at the same time. No, wait for it, I read it every year. It's like, my favorite book, yeah, he would voice record his favorite passages as he was reading and send it to me. And I was like, oh, it's like a new erotic level. Forget, forget smart. Just read me these books. Yeah, it's like the deep Yeah. Oh, men listening if Listen up, listen up. Women need to, like, share this with their husbands. F flowers, yeah. Voice record me some personal development. When you see a guy by the pool and they're reading, like, one of those books, or you can see them, they're doing I saw someone actually yesterday outside the sauna doing some journaling, and I was like, fuck yeah, there's got to be single women that are just eating you up right now. Yeah. Love it. So we digress, we digress. We digress. We have the detector you're always looking and what that often is, is you're avoiding looking at yourself, yep. So you're you're playing looking at everybody else's shadows, how you're analyzing everybody else, or you're over analyzing yourself, and going on this rabbit, this witch hunt of who did this to me and why I'm like this. Yeah. But another, I might add in one of the other key detectors to clock, if you're doing that, or they're doing that, is that trying to figure out how you feel or what you do that. I don't know if this is my stuff. I don't know if this is their stuff that you are in detector there, yeah, 100% and that's there's so many pieces to that. I think this will come up with another pattern that we've listed down. But one of the ones that I said yesterday when we were chatting was also, and I've been guilty of this. This has definitely been one of mine that I have to clock because I love learning and I'm obsessed with knowledge. I can't help myself. It's like crack cocaine, yeah, I assume I've never actually, I assume it's really addictive, but I just need another course. I'll just do another course. It's like the course junkie that I need this course. I need these things. And what that can do, or what I see is you don't actually need the course, but you're using the course or the learning to avoid just doing the damn thing. You don't need another marketing course. You need to implement and show up online. You don't need another business course. You need to start doing business. You don't need another business coach, you've been told the same things, do the thing and put away the content for a little moment. I've definitely done that as well. I can actually, I actually have to clock myself doing it now, and actually really self inquire, do you really need this? Is this something genuinely to upskill? For example, I just did a call with a podcast agency because I'm starting my own podcast. Yeah, have I podcasted before only as guests? So, yeah, yeah, there is some upskilling. Yeah, I could do it on my own, but there is some upskilling. Of course, I can learn that versus, do you need another course on your patterns? Do you need another course on your mindset? Yes? Or are you doing that to avoid launching the business, putting your services out there, actually selling something on Instagram. Are you trying to convince yourself that you need more to avoid taking action? And I think, a way that someone can clock if this is true for them or not, is whatever the action is that you're avoiding, and people, it'll intuitively come to you. How do you feel about taking that action. Yeah. And if fear comes up, if potential, like scared of being rejected, comes up, your work is in doing that thing and exposing yourself to that thing, not another course. Amen. It's that the cave you fear most holds the treasure you seek. Don't do another course. Do the thing that you're avoiding, and that probably leads to another one that we spoke about, which is, I'm going to sit with that I need to process that. I need some time to process that. I'll let me sit with that. Sometimes, yeah, for sure. Sometimes people need a process. There's an absolutely we need integration time all of that. But what have you noticed with or what can be going on underneath. Let me sit with that and process that avoidance, hard avoidance. Most of the time you don't need to sit with something. You're just saying it to avoid taking action. The only time you ever need to invert a commas, sit with something. I don't use that language anymore. Yeah, for me, will be if I'm not, truly not clear, yeah, something and not using that as a like people also use I'm confused. I don't know what I want as a block to avoid the thing that scares people. If I'm genuinely not sure, you know, say, for example, I want to start talking to new people in my audience, and I'm not. There's a couple of directions I can go, and I'm not actually clear on that yet, I will create space in my life so I'm more rested, more energized, more in fun, more in my creativity. Yeah, and I will really be attuned to my heart, yeah and how I feel, yeah. And I will feel into both directions, yeah, and I will feel which one feels expansive, alive, energizes me, and which one feels like contracting. A bit like, yeah, that is the only time you sit with it. I inverted commas, sit with it, yeah. It's a very, actually intentional strategy to create space for me to feel into what my heart wants. Yeah, not like I need to sit with my thoughts and like, work out, should I launch this business or that business? Or do I need another toolkit or another modality or another course? Like, yeah, yeah, another journaling prompt, another this, another that. And the telltale sign there is, have you been sitting with this for 5000 calendar days? Yes, yeah, huge, yeah. How many days have you been sitting Yeah? And how many 11 pages of journal sessions have you done, yeah? And how many times have you brought the same thing to your coach or to your friend? And where are you repeating the patterns and not moving ahead? And it's also late, it's a lazy coaching toolkit. If your coach tells you to go sit with it, yeah? Or if you say, I need to go process that, all right? I mean, Coach process with me live. What are you processing? What are you processing that, to me, says you want to go be avoidant. You want to go avoid doing this thing and so that your mind can convince you why you don't have to do the thing instead. Agree, Agree. And the nuance to that, I've definitely said to clients, sit with it, do exactly what you just said, feel into both options. That we've spoke about today, and then you will see you, and I had a conversation similar to this yesterday. We're talking about two business directions, and I saw the moment. It was like, That's expansive for you, because your whole energy expanded in front of me, and I turned to you, and I immediately said, I was like, that was it look at like, how my body responds? Yeah, but it's I'm not when people say they want to sit with something, they often mean their thoughts, when what you actually need to sit with is your feelings. And again, this is another modality, somatic stuff, where life is a felt experience. Yeah, but people try to think their way through life. And again, that's where like mindset is only going to get you so far. It's gonna keep you looping because you're trying to think your way to the right direction, and you're only ever going to know by taking action and seeing how you feel after you've done it. That is so fucking true. So then what would you I'm thinking from the lens of someone listening who is very good at being in the head and loves strategy and loves logic and loves to be strategic. Let's say what would you say then to the person who's like but you've got to be strategic, you've got to be realistic, you've got to be planned, and all of those things. You can't feel your way into everything. So life is duality, and you can have both, literally, that's why. So for example, a perfect example is yesterday, Bre has been helping me with my messaging, yeah, and potentially, if I want to audience change or not, yeah. And we sat down intentionally with strategy, and we went, these are the two options. This is what it looks like. This is what that looks like. I felt into both. One felt really aligned. And then also we ended and we were like, Okay, I'm gonna continue going into seeing how that feels. Is it expansive? Does it feel aligned? Yeah. Is it the direction that I wanna go with it? Let me go get a really good night's sleep. Also see how I feel in the morning, which it's both duality a lot of people talk about, you know, the masculine and the feminism. And it's one of the other we all have our own internal polarity, yes, and it's being able to dip in and out when you're constantly thinking and doing and looping. It's masculine, and that's why you are getting burnt out. Because if you're a woman, you want to be more in your core feminine, which is being, receiving, surrendering, letting go. It's not constantly striving. Yeah, you get to have both Amen to duality, and you get to have both. I feel like that needs to that's my whole message in my in all my courses actually stop. And that's another sign too, that you might be looping either because you're only being coached and coaching yourself in one modality, where you're making yourself right or wrong or others right or wrong, because you are clinging to one particular way of doing things. And that, to me, can also be a sign you don't have a wide toolkit to help yourself, and you are clinging to one way of doing things, which can also keep you looping. I would say on that as well, and I've been guilty of this, especially in the early stages of my personal development, is you're probably looping if you're starting to judge others for not doing the work. Yes, and that brings us to another pattern we spoke about. It's that like superiority, ego, spiritual ego. Your spiritual ego, you become the conscious one of your friends. Yeah, your friends start coming to you, which feeds your spiritual ego to help with their problems, because of your unique perspective, yeah? And then you getting frustrated because they just don't know better. They're not choosing better, yeah? And that judgment is actually usually your own shadow, where you're still doing the same thing, and it's ego re evolvement, yes, yeah, just judging them for not choosing differently. But you're sitting there sitting on a business decision for the last six months. So true, people don't trigger you without there being some kind of work there for you to do. So true, there's so much of that too, with the the ego, the spiritual ego, and, like I said, the dick swinging, and the I'm and I actually completely, I remember doing this I've spoken about on a different episode. I held this belief that my friends, and most of my friends, they're not in the business world, they're not in the coaching world. They wouldn't sit around and talk about 10k months, 50k months, like the whole thing that happens in the industry, whatever they'd be like, eighth of every month they get paid by my boss. Yeah, like they don't have those conversations, but I did. I held on at first to this belief that they can't meet me. They don't care. They're not interested. They're not into this work, which was absolute bullshit, because they are the most conscious humans without even needing to do the work, and they do meet me every time and expand me when I allow it, when I open myself to it, and when I don't have my fucking superiority ego flaring up, which is something you need a clock always. Because when you start doing work, and I see this so often, often superiority comes up. Like you mentioned, I'm I'm more evolved, I'm more conscious, and it's like, well, now you're actually judging me. They don't get me anymore. It's like, yeah, actually, maybe you've worked on some things, but your judgment pattern is really coming up. Your ego is coming up massively, because the sign of the work is embodiment. And I've seen this with friends. I've even seen it with men. I remember there was a man i. Seeing for a few months last year who was in the men's containers, the one that sent me the voice recording with reading my book, like, yeah, like he was doing all of the work, yeah. But then when we spent time, so I live in Bali, he was living in Sydney, he came over to see if we could make it work, yeah. Soon as we were together, there was no embodiment. I couldn't talk about my childhood, not even necessarily that bad, without him shutting down and not being able to speak for 30 minutes. Yeah. And then a few months later, I went on a few dates with another man who was not in the work at all. Right? I remember talking to him about, like, some journaling I was doing, and he was like, What do you mean? Like, Dear Diary, and I had to clock, I had to clock my ego. At the time that was like, oh, no, this isn't a conscious man. He's not. There's no future here. But I clocked it, yeah, because I was enjoying spending time with him, we'd gone on a few dates, and he hadn't, he hadn't said thank you for anything I paid for, and it was really bothering me. So I was like, it's important for me to speak up, yeah? So I just said to him, I was like, Hey, can I bring something up with you? And he's like, yeah. And I was like, it actually really bothers me when you don't say thank you, when I pay for something. And he immediately stopped me, turned to me, and he was like, I am so sorry. When people do that to me, it makes me feel so unappreciated. Thank you so much. And also, thank you for giving up the most important thing, which has been your time. And then 10 minutes later, he stopped me again, and he was like, thank you so much for how you brought that up with me, bringing it up in a calm way and communicating clearly. I haven't had that before, and I really appreciate it, and it shook me sideways because I hadn't even realized my own little freaking shadows that had been so I want a conscious hair. And this man that's in no work on himself, he's not listening to the party, laughs at your diaries. He loved my dear diaries was the most embodied example that I had had in years of dating. Yeah, and that's what it is. It's the embodiment. Yeah, not. It's not the courses of the coaches and the program. That's like, how do you speak to people? How do you show up? How do you communicate when someone is bringing something to you that you could become defensive about. I love that that's so good, and that leads exactly like to the next one that we wrote down, which was defensiveness and that shutdown and these patterns that maybe you came into the personal development world to heal. But if you really look, you're still not able to have those tough conversations, you're still very defensive, and you can't actually regulate your emotions, and you find yourself flying off the handle or being reactive, and then later being like shit. I just snapped shit. I just did this thing. That person still triggers me. La, la, la, have you actually done the work, or have you just been distracting yourself consuming content about the work? And I think a real key indicator for people to clock there is, how do you respond when someone brings something up to you? Oh, good one, because you even pointed out a little busy blind spot that I had yesterday. My response was like, Oh, cool. You did you that to me? And also, I think this is a great conversation that to me, the way you responded to a blind spot was testament to how embodied you are and why you consistently grow in your business, in your life. Because a lot of people, I have to be really conscious sometimes, of like, are you okay if I share something that I'm witnessing? Are you do you want me to see? There's a blind spot here, I you know, and some people will, their defenses will go up, and so you've got to tread carefully, because it breaks rapport. Yeah, you lit up like, I've just given you a Christmas present. And I was like, That's sick. And also I want to add, that was learned, yeah, through the developmental work that I've done, because I was the most defensive, hostile human through my childhood, my predominant response was a fight. I mean, that's why I went into law. I love me a fight I would arc up, yeah? And then I had to really unlearn that defense, yeah. When people bringing something up didn't mean that I was wrong, it didn't mean I was broken. I didn't this is where another loop people come into, Oh, it's another thing I have to go and work on. Oh, my God. Whereas for me because, like, and again, this is shadow work that has been such a powerful modality. I see blind spots as so empowering. Yeah, when you show me that, I'm like, fuck yeah, yeah. Because when it's my own, yeah, when it's something I can take responsibility for, I can change that. Yeah, it's exciting and expansive, especially in a business setting, because I'm like, What can I do now that I can free that up? Yeah, it makes you see things that you couldn't see so you no longer need and this is like we said in the beginning, when you learn these tools and these different modalities to apply to yourself, you actually can coach yourself through so many things, and there'll always be the benefit of having someone to point out blind spots. But ultimately, if you can train yourself to be like, thank you. I've just seen something in myself. I've seen a limitation. I've seen a blind spot. I've seen where I'm being shady. I've seen my cooked behavior. I've seen my shadowy shit a fucking men instead of, oh, woe is me. Why is this work never done? And victim again, exactly? And because. I have worked with people and become a self led human. I don't have to spiral and go sign up to another five month coaching container to go work through that. I'm like, Cool. It's enough that I'm aware of it. Yeah, I can clock it when it comes up, and I can just choose differently. Yeah, choose differently. Choose literally it. You don't need to go find out why mommy said this to me when I was, yes, I'm gonna go process it. Yes, I don't need, I no longer need to know where it come from. Came from, how it developed, how it's going to show up, how it's affecting every single facet of my life. I'm like, Cool. There it is. Let me choose differently when it pops up. Do you know what if, if there is one takeaway for all personal development? Yes, we could save you 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of dollars. Guys like, if there is one takeaway from all the work, the modalities that everything choose differently, is probably the answer in most of the cases you get choice, yes. So another thing that we spoke about, I love, because this can also be a reflection of maybe you're looping in one modality. Maybe you need a bigger toolkit, or a coach that has a bigger toolkit to lead you, if you're somebody who is constantly reframing and fighting your thoughts, and it feels like you're in a battle with your head. It feels like you're like, No, no, think positive. No, no, think positive. Don't think that. Thought redirect, don't think and it's like you're you're always reframing, and you're in this, oh no, shouldn't be thinking this. That, to me, is another sign that you haven't actually done the work, because those thoughts are still coming up consistently for you. They're still looping for you, rather than healing the thing underneath those thoughts. And it's a sign for me that you've done I don't want to say too much mindset work, but mindset work is no longer the problem or the tool that you need. And it's also because when you get into the when you start getting into this work, you hear like, mindset is everything, yeah. It's like, fix your mindset, fix your life. And it's like, yes, you need mindset, yeah. And then when you start fighting in your mind, it's probably not a mindset tool that you need anymore. And these are the people that, really, most people that I work with really overvalue mindset work. They overvalue thinking, yeah, oh my god, yes, yes, you and I constantly say to people you cannot think your way through a problem. You are already overthinking. So true. So so true. And it's so interesting when we ran the mind school method, because the curriculum is very much, we spend the first three days with mindset, NLP, all of those tools, all of those techniques. And it was so interesting to receive feedback, where every graduate was like, I came in for the mindset, because obviously they love they think that that's the that's great, and it is. It's empowering. All those things. They were like, I came in thinking, My the NLP was the thing that was going to be the thing. And so they had resistance. When we started moving into emotional embodiment, somatic embodiment, healing, Shadow Work, there was so much resistance that came up because there was an overvalue of thinking of logic. You know, Pts are a great example. We had some PTs in the course, and they're so strong with their mindset. They are so good at overriding they're because they're like, doesn't matter how I feel, I'm getting the rep star, and it's great. There is so much power in that which we love. But then if you reject the other polarity, that emotional, that feeling, that healing, the shadows, you're only living through one lens. Yes, what was so interesting was that all those people that resisted the feeling work, the healing work, the shadow work, powerful breakthrough, the most powerful breakthrough, yes, of course, insane, but so much resistance, because what will often happen, and this is another sign of looping, and this has been some of my, I would say even my more recent work, is when your mindset becomes so strong you truly believe things that are not true. In your body, in your nervous system, confidence is a huge one. And this was some of my work that I had to do where I was like, No, I am confident. I'm confident I can do it. I can do the thing. I know I can. I'm just like, yep, yep, yep, but my body somatically, yeah, when I had to launch, when I had to have challenging conversations, I would get dysregulated. The thought of like speaking up and expressing a boundary, or like telling a man that I desire commitment would be like dysregulating. But my mind had such strong neural pathways around an opposite story, yeah, I was overriding what was actually true for mathematically. Oh so true. I think so many people would have experience of that. And I remember telling you, I have a similar story that I told myself for so many years. My body was like bullshit. This like bullshit. So I had this story for years. I'm not maternal, I'm not maternal, I'm not maternal, which is wild. And you know, there's so much work that I've done around that, but every time I would see gender reveals and people announcing their pregnancy, and I was bloody teacher for a long time, the most maternal teacher ever. I cried at every assembly. I cried every reel. I'm a I'm like, Why are my eyes deceiving me? I'm not maternal. Why am I leaking water? Why am I leaking from my face? And it's like, because you've lied to yourself and you're born. Body Knows. Your body knows. And that is when somatic work comes in, and this is where mindset work, yes, it is important. But however, if you are looping, if you are in course to course to course to course, if you are not actually embodied, you have outgrown the mindset work that you are doing, and you need Shadow Work, self responsibility and choice. Yeah, if you struggle to actually choose differently, you need somatic work, whether that's nervous system regulation, whether it's actually being attuned to what your body is telling you to do, you actually need a different style of work so that you are embodied, because embodied is in body. Yeah, it's kind of in the name think you're way too embodiment. Yeah, so guys, if you're listening like looping, listening to podcasts, reading books, you are looping in thinking, and you're actually not embodied because you haven't done other modalities that you need to get you there. Yeah, I think that that. I think that that's exactly and that leads so perfectly to what we wanted to leave listeners with, which is actually what to look out for within yourself, how to know. And I want to bring nuance to this conversation, because Sarah and I both still have mentors, massively, we still have coaches, and we don't need them. Yeah, I don't. I wouldn't hire a mindset coach. I just wouldn't I can mindset coach myself. That's fine, but I always have a mentor. I always have a coach, however. So this conversation is not saying don't do the work ever, and don't evolve anymore and completely go off it, but we wanted to give you the way that we lead ourselves to what is actually an expansive, yes, what is coming from a place of I actually want to evolve into this human what is coming from a really grounded, neutral, healthy place, and will breed a healthy dynamic with you and your coach or mentor, so that you can make sure you're no longer looping, and so that you can make sure you're making aligned investments, and you're not one of those People that feels burnt, because, actually, maybe you were investing out of a shadowy place. So what for you? Because I know you still invest, even though you don't need to, what for you is your metrics or your little checklist that you use to make sure you're not looping or getting distracted in just being a little bit of a court whore or one of those things, I agree, but I'm also going to almost challenge a little bit of what you said, at least from, like, my perspective, I don't need to, but also I will invest in people that are skilled in areas that I'm not skilled in, or a modality that I don't have. Yeah, necessarily, that will take me to a place that I want to go. Yeah? So for example, like, I have been working with someone that does like, a lot of womb work, yeah? Or they do like a lot more energetic style of work, yeah, I'm not trained in that. You're not skilled in that, yeah, yeah. I probably could get to where I want to go without it, but I choose to invest in them because it's not something that I can access for myself yet to self lead, yeah? So I will choose someone where I can't self lead myself yet, or I will choose to invest where I know someone can take me deeper than I can take myself. So for example, a lot of one of my primary modalities is transformational, breathwork and you need a facilitator. Yeah? I can do it myself. I can make a playlist. However, I know my patterns, and everyone has a little bit of an avoidance when you're talking about deep excavation, emotional release, like it is primal, it is ugly, like you will block yourself, even if I tried to do it myself. So I will get someone to take me deeper than I could take myself, Yes, but then also I will step back when I don't feel like I just want to integrate, I just want to move through things, and then also I might see an area where I'm feeling really called forward to. So for example, like my sexuality, my sensuality, has been one recently, and then I'm like, Okay, I will step back in to an intent, like I'm about to start an eight week mentorship, which is like, really, really deep work, yeah, but then I might step out again for a year. Yeah? So it's where do I feel called forward to explore? Yeah, where has something come up in my life that I know I might not be accessing the depth that I need to to actually release the emotion and someone else can take me there deeper? Yeah? And also, is there maybe an area that I'm feeling called to work in, or I think would help me get to a place faster that I'm not skilled in yet to self lead. I love it. What about you like, how does how do you know similar thing, I would say it's checking. It's the the contradiction, the duality of you know you need to check in with yourself, but you also need to be aware that you have blind spots, and so you need to ditch the ego and be a student a bit same as you. I know that I'm not embodied in all areas of sensuality, womb, healing, all of those things. I wouldn't teach it. I wouldn't be the same human. And so I will go and find a mentor who is I've had a I've spoken to my sex coach on this podcast. Yeah. I was really inspired by her and triggered. And I was like, great, that's my work to do. Triggers you. They're probably your coach. They're your coach. They are your coach. And so validate you. You're gonna loop, oh, exactly. You feel loved and seen and happy with your coach. You're probably gonna loop, yeah, and, and you want to see, seen, and all those things that create a safe space. Yes, yes, yes, yes, and be challenged. And we want to be challenged. And that's another thing that I actually look for in a mentor. And I know when I'm investing from a grounded place, they challenge me rather than speak to or they they don't activate any lack. And because that's another thing that I've seen in the space, is a lot of marketing that actually vultures off lack, and it's almost like playing to people's insecurities, the people that I invest in. It's that feeling, like you said, of grow towards. It's an expansive feeling. It's a want and a desire, not a need, and I need you to fix me. I hate that language. I would never it's a overflow sort of thing, and a skill set that I might be lacking also, I don't want clients that are coming to me as a last resort and they think they need me to fix them. You need to be self LED. Yeah, you need to be self empowered. It's always yours. Yeah, yeah. What, like? What Is there anything else where you might dip in or dip out of coaching or mentorship. I think definitely, in the last four years while growing a business, I've dipped out and dipped in of business coaching, and that's been very intentional. And interestingly enough, in the year that I grew, I think Forex, my business income amazing, I didn't have any coaches. I had. I knew I had been doing the thing that I do, learning, investing, consuming, inhaling, it all. And then I was like, Brianna, enough go do and I just had to trust myself and sort of put my blinkers on and come back to me. And I went for a year with no business coach, and that year was so much growth for me, but I got as far as I could see how to go. And then I was like, Okay, I need someone to show me how to go further. So I definitely think business coaching, I've dipped in and out of, because there's always more levels sensuality. I always dip in and out of, because it's all I feel like my astrological chart would confirm this is, you know, because it's my there is a lot of work for me to do there, and I'd say more dipped in. I don't really dip out of that, but I do take time to integrate, yeah. I love that. It's yeah, it's just knowing. And again, you have to be self LED. Don't buy into a course, because there's some catchy marketing, and now you feel like somebody needs to fix you. It's truly, truly being self led in something, yeah, and knowing, okay, I need to upskill in this thing more this modality is no longer helping me. I want, I want to explore a new modality. Yeah, that's it. And I think that the thing that you can again, look for in a coach that will expand you is, what are their modalities like? Yeah, do they have different modalities? Are you going to be looping with the same questions and reframes and affirmations and journal prompts and things that you've been doing and doing and doing? Maybe it's looking for, where's the modalities I need? What coaches actually embody this? Yes, embodiment. Yeah. Embodiments, the answer to all of it. And I think that's the takeaway, too. For the, I'd say, the discernment about whether or not you're doing the work or you have the illusion that you're doing the work is, how embodied are you in this thing? Do you need someone else to still give you the script, the template, the magic formula, or do you know how to do it yourself, and is it almost unconscious to you now, like, like we said, we wouldn't need a mindset coach, because we can unconsciously work through it. We just do it and it's fast. Doesn't mean mindset. Things don't come up. It means we can move through them faster, and we don't need someone so to me, I think embodiment and how much you've actually changed since you've been doing the work is the big, real kicker for whether or not you're doing it or you're you're deluding yourself. I totally agree. And I think really looking at the work that you have done, how many modalities have you actually explored? Because the analogy I like to look at is, say you had a problem in your business, like, say you're in a really big business, yeah, let's say ASX listed company, yeah, there was a problem. Yeah. You hired a sales coach to come in, then they're going to diagnose you with a sales issue and give you a sales solution. You hire a marketing expert. They come in, diagnose you with a marketing issue, marketing problem. Hire an accountant. They're going to come in, yeah, here's a tax solution. However, you hire a business consultant that is trained in all of them, whichever one that they give you, you know, they've given it to you because that is actually the problem. And what they'll probably do is they'll probably combine all three. They might triage how to, like dress, which you start with, where you go to next. And you can actually be really grounded in knowing that the advice that they're giving you is not because they only have one lens. And I've even had to clock this in my own business, like because it's. Much online messaging online is amazing. Yeah, you really need to. I've muted pretty much everyone except my business coach. Yeah, even my friends. Yeah, I'll, I'll mute them because, like, I don't want your phenomenal messaging, you're so good at what you do, to convince me that I need your work, that I that I need to try this Instagram reel, this sales tactic. I don't need any of that. What I actually need is someone for me that has all of it, and I can trust them, and I can go and implement the tools, and then when I feel like I've reached my level, I either step back and I just integrate, or I go and hire someone else. Yeah, yeah. Beautiful. So summary, if you could summarize that for people, if they want to know whether or not they're stuck in a loop and they're actually deluding themselves that they're doing the work. What would you say to look out for? I would say two things. One, is there something that you're avoiding doing by doing the work? Like, yeah. Are you avoiding something? Whether it's a hard conversation with someone, setting a boundary, starting a business launching something, are you avoiding something? And also, because it's almost always dual, and also, what style of modalities have you tried? Yeah. Have you gone beyond mindset work? Yeah. Have you because, if you're looping, I can almost guarantee that you haven't, actually, I will guarantee. I would say, if you think you haven't, it's blind. I would agree with that, yeah, 100% I would say that's where the somatic, the embodiment, the shadow work, it all comes in, yeah? And that's just a great way for me to say, guys, that you can join the mind school right now because we are opening for the next round, and we're going to Queensland, which is very exciting. And now I'm thinking we should come to Bali and do one. Oh, my session. It would it be so good? So love that. Yeah, listeners, we don't have Bali yet, but we have, we have Perth, and we have Queensland and we're going to Brisbane, so all of the information is in the show notes. And also, if you want to come and follow Sarah, if you want coaching in any of these modalities, where will people find you? Sarah Scully leaf, Instagram handle or website? Yeah, just one word, lowercase, and podcast coming soon and podcast coming really, yeah, soon, and Bree and I maybe a side podcast together. I feel like we need this. I feel like we should. Guys, let us know. Please put in the put on Instagram. Get into our DMS. If you think Sarah and I should, should just do a podcast together. We're so open for it. Well, so are we just seeking external validation for something that we really want to do, but do let us know our Eagles would love to, love to know, and also, please let us know, amazing. So we'll see you either back on here or back on Sarah's or back on our own. Yeah, the Sarah and Bree show amazing. Thank you for having me. No worries. Bye.