Episode 5 (Final) - What School Never Taught You About Success
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Welcome to the Starlit Success Podcast. I am your host, Jessica Gaines, and today I wanna talk about something that you did not learn in school. At least I didn't, and most of everyone I know never learned it. And that is the power of your subconscious mind. You're taught so many things.
And you're never taught how to use your actual mind and the power that it holds. You can do anything you set your mind to. You hear that a lot, but they don't actually teach you how to do it in school.
Most of us grew up just accepting what society considered as normal. You go to school from a very, very young age and you're in school for gosh, I don't know until you're 18. And they teach you so many different subjects.
Math, [00:01:00] science, English history. You probably have a gym class. I mean, , I learned how to do archery. Okay. In my, in high school, I have never touched a bow and arrow since I learned how to do trigonometry. I have never used that since I learned the different elements in chemistry.
Chemistry was. Okay. Not the best class for me. I was a straight A student and I really struggled in chemistry, but I can tell you that I've never used any of those things in my adult life. I am somewhat of a history buff. I do love history. At the time in high school, I hated history
but I wish I would've paid attention more actually.
Now I do think that that's important, But you're never taught how to actually. Use the power of your mind and the power of your emotions and all of that, the things that you were just born with. And I find that so interesting. It's like we are being [00:02:00] told what to think. We are being told what is important or what is considered important, and what will make us successful.
But truly, it's the power of your mind that is gonna take you farther than any class ever could.
Think about what else school teaches you. It teaches you how to be on time. Well, they get to determine what time you're supposed to be there. They teach you. Or tell you, I shouldn't say teach you. They're telling you how to dress, they have a dress code. They tell you what's acceptable, what behavior's acceptable.
They have all of these rules and restrictions and guidelines about what is actually appropriate and. We just take them as truth. If you hear something enough and it's repetitive, you hear this over and over and it's a constant theme in your life, you tend to start [00:03:00] accepting it as truth I, so going to school, getting good grades means I'm a hard worker.
Getting good grades doesn't necessarily mean that you will be successful. Yeah, getting good grades means maybe you're disciplined. Maybe you pay attention. Maybe you like that subject, but it doesn't necessarily make you a leader. It doesn't make you creative. It doesn't make you compassionate. It doesn't make you a good person.
It doesn't make you resistant to temptations. It just means that you were able to follow a set of instructions and execute it accordingly. Now, yes, it can lead you to higher levels of education. And if you're going to school for a particular occupation, of course it's going to require that you pass certain classes and get a certain degree, but it doesn't necessarily mean [00:04:00] that , you will be.
Successful in the sense that I consider successful and what you should consider successful. And that means being happy, filled with purpose and filled with passion. Yeah, you might get a good job, it might pay well, you might have a decent salary, but are you gonna be living in your truth? Are you gonna be living in alignment with what you actually want to do and with what is aligned for you and who you truly are?
School isn't teaching you. How do you use the power of your mind? How to use the power of your emotions, how you can actually train your mind to go after whatever it is that you want in life.
And I think another thing that, and I'm not blaming school for this. Because school is ingrained in us at such a young age, and it's pretty rigid as far as what we're taught. I was never given an option, and no one I know has been ever given an option where you get to decide what it is that you want to explore.
So for example, [00:05:00] my youngest son, he's 12, . He hates that he has to sit in a desk all day and listen to a teacher talk all day. Read a book, do a worksheet, write an essay. Take a test. There's no creativity involved. There's no interaction. There's no engagement. Maybe there is here and there, but for the most part it's, study the subject, watch this video, listen to this lecture, and do the work.
And that's it. And to him, that is beyond boring. , He likes to use his hands. He likes to use his mind. He likes to be creative. He likes to be resourceful. He likes to think out of the box. And while he is a great student and his teachers love him, and his classmates love him. He is feeling out of alignment.
He is not happy in school. And the thing is, is like a lot of those kids, those are the kids that become the, the entrepreneurs that have other people working for them because they think outside of the [00:06:00] box. The people, and I was one of these for a long time, the people who are the straight A students who follow all the rules, those are the ones that have more of that limited mindset and who, who have.
That idea of it has to be this certain way, and if it's not this certain way, it won't work.
And I'm sure most of us grew up thinking that following your dreams were unrealistic. You hear the stories or you see the movies where the kid wants to be a rock star and the parents are like, oh. Okay, but you need a degree. You also need to go to school and you need to put school first, and school is the most important thing.
And that that's gonna be dependent upon your own values. My oldest son has always been a star student ever since he was little. I don't know that I would say that he loves school. It's not like he raves about it every day, but he's never complained about it. He gets straight A's.
. And while I think that is [00:07:00] something to be proud of, I don't necessarily think that , it means what everyone thinks it means. You know, I was a straight A student, I got four point ohs. That doesn't mean that I was happy with that.
It didn't do what I expected it would do for me. Look at people who have actually followed their dreams and who've gone outside of the box. When I say the box, I mean the people who have gone and done something different than just going to school and getting a career. People who pursue their dream as.
A musician or an entrepreneur or
insert whatever field or Profession that is not , something that you would actually go to school for.
There's this idea that you have to go to school, go to college, get a degree to be successful, and that's really not the case anymore. I know it was for a really long time, and it probably is, if you wanna be a lawyer or a doctor, there's going to be degrees that you have to do and there's certain requirements that you have to fill, but.
To follow your [00:08:00] dreams and live in your truth. You don't necessarily have to follow that path. There are kids out here on YouTube that are millionaires from unboxing toys, okay? There are teenagers out here that are making millions just streaming, just being themselves. You can do anything you wanna do now.
Why are we still falling into that belief that these are the rules that you have to follow to be successful? I truly feel like if everyone did. What it was that they truly loved and truly lit them up. I feel like everyone would just be so much happier. The world would just be so much more peaceful.
I mean, think about all the places that you go where you're like, oh, they definitely hate their job. I mean, I can count on one hand in a week how many encounters I have with that. Like you don't have to do that. You don't have to work somewhere that [00:09:00] you hate. Just to get by, do something that you freaking love. Most of us grew up just accepting what society considered as normal.
But the thing is, is you know, most of these, these limiting beliefs that we have, thinking that we have to go through life in this certain way in order to be successful or in order to be socially accepted. They're really not your thoughts. This isn't something that you were born with. These are things that you've adapted over time and you've heard them so much either from, teachers or parents or some kind of authority figure coaches.
Maybe it's even from the media, maybe things you've read. They were suggested to you and it was repeated so many times that your subconscious mind now has accepted them as truth. . You probably never even questioned whether those beliefs were yours.
And honestly, I'll admit. I didn't even know I had [00:10:00] limiting beliefs until I understood more of what they were. I thought that it was just, that's just the way it was, that I had to go to school, I had to get a job, I had to get married by the time I was 30, and buy a house and have kids and have a happy family.
Like That was the American dream. And I'm not saying I'm not happy with my life in any way. But now the way I'm raising my kids is. You follow what you wanna do. And I encourage anything they wanna try. I mean, my little one, he's, gosh, he's got into skateboarding, he's got into playing the piano. He now just got an e-bike.
He's got into reselling. He has his own business with his older brother doing car detailing. He was like a cologne guy on TikTok for a while. He said multiple different accounts on there, trying new things. I'm like, try everything. Try everything that you want. [00:11:00] You never know what's gonna stick.
I'm not the mom that's gonna be like, oh no, that's, that's unrealistic. Just go to school, get good grades, and that'll take you far in life. No, you know who's gonna take you far in life, you and your mind and where you wanna go, because you know yourself better than anyone else, and no one else can tell you what's best for you.
Only you know that.
So what happens is when you. Listen to what everyone else has to say, and you start accepting all of these beliefs, all of what society has programmed you with, your subconscious mind acts like a servant and it accepts everything as truth and your mind is really, the way you should look at it is it's like a railroad track.
And your life is the train. Okay? So if your subconscious mind is like a railroad track and you put this track down, okay? Wherever the track is [00:12:00] laid, that's where the train's going. There's no steering wheel. You don't get to move it around. You just, you're on that track. So. Wherever those tracks are laid or however those tracks are laid, that's where your life is going.
Okay? So as you have developed all of these different subconscious beliefs that you're probably not even aware that you have, that is the track you're laying your life on. So your subconscious beliefs are about what you believe is actually possible for you. So if you lay your subconscious mind down on tracks of struggle, of skepticism, of self-doubt, of lack, you have this idea in your head that people like me can't get rich or I'm not good enough.
I am not as smart as them. People like me don't become successful. I can't afford to start a business. Change is too risky [00:13:00] and it's just, it's safer to stay where I am. You know, If I try that new thing, people are probably gonna judge me and, if I succeed, I might lose my friends and family.
, If you have all of these thoughts going through your head, that is what's going to be real for you, Your subconscious mind will make it so if you keep repeating those thoughts, thoughts on repetition associated with an emotion sink down to the subconscious mind as a belief, then so you are training your mind to believe that.
And a lot of people don't even realize that they're doing it because, it's just become ingrained in them. It's like you see these, these wealthy and successful people and it's almost like they're , like a different, um, like a different breed.
Like it's not. That's not possible for you because you didn't come from wealth. I didn't come from wealth. I, up until probably a couple [00:14:00] years ago, I didn't believe any of this was possible for me. All my family, they're all like blue collar , hardworking people. But no one is ridiculously wealthy.
No one is living. I would consider their dream life. , If I were to ask anyone like,, what is your dream life? I bet you it's not something that they're actually living now. And why is that? , Why, why aren't we, you can, you just have to put in those tracks of belief.
So unless you change that track, nothing's gonna change. So I actually looked up the definition of belief because, you know, I like to look up definitions of words. A belief is acceptance of a statement is true or something exists. So. You are saying, I accept that whatever society is telling me is true and that it's real.
But what happens if you actually put your subconscious mind on a different track? You put it on a whole different track [00:15:00] and you're like, you know what, no, I am gonna be ridiculously wealthy. I am going to be. Like stupid successful. I am going to be so freaking happy. I'm gonna live a life of freedom. I'm gonna be so creative.
I'm gonna do whatever it is I wanna do. I'm gonna be super confident. There's opportunity everywhere and everything's possible for me. What if you start thinking about that? What if you're like, you know what, what if I, what if I could do that thing? For me, I've lived a pretty normal, what I would consider successful life, my whole life, and it just, it wasn't enough for me.
Like it wasn't filling me up, as I've mentioned so many times before. And then I had to look at myself in the mirror, like, , why isn't my life filling me up? What would fill me up? What matters to me? You know [00:16:00] what? I'm gonna start thinking for myself now, I'm gonna stop thinking about what society thinks is acceptable for me
I want something bigger. I wanna look out here, while everyone else is actually, I would consider pretty content living there, nine to fives and going on their vacation once a year and. Putting their kids through school or sports or what have you, I am just like, that's not enough for me anymore.
I want to do something that lights me up. I wanna be able to inspire others to think the same way that I'm thinking now. I want everyone to want so much more for themselves and know that anything is possible for you. You just have to program your own self, your own brain.
Here's what's wild. The main difference between wealthy people and people stuck in poverty isn't even intelligence. It's not education. [00:17:00] It's not your background. It's not where they're from. It's. What, How they think about themselves, how they think about life, what they think is possible for them.
You hear so many stories about these rags to richest stories, and why do you think that is? It's because they, they decided to make those decisions for themself.
You know, 60% of the Forbes 400 richest people don't even have college degrees. Some of 'em didn't even complete middle school. Why do you think that is? They had bigger ideas. They wanted more for themselves. Steve Jobs dropped outta college
and look where he ended up. Education doesn't create wealth. Your habit of thoughts, do what you believe to be possible for yourself. That's what actually creates success. I love this quote from Henry Ford. I say it all the time, whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right.
Your subconscious mind will make it. So if you [00:18:00] constantly tell yourself, that's too hard. I don't know how to do that, that's not possible for me. I'm too old to start that. Then yes. Then your mind will look for all of the reasons that you can't do that. It will look to validate you. It wants to preserve you.
That's its number one job. It's a servant. You're telling it what to do. You're like the CEO, and it's your employees. So you're saying I can't, they're like, okay, you can't. Here's all the reasons you can't. If you're like, you know what, no, I, I can do that. And you know what? Even if you fail at that thing, try the next thing.
It's all feedback. There's no failure. It's just feedback. But you have to tell yourself that you can do it and that you will do it.
You get to choose what you believe. So what if you chose to believe making money and getting rich was easy? What if it was easy? What if you could do something that you absolutely loved and you made money doing it? Look at all the successful people out here doing [00:19:00] it. I bet you if you asked I don't know Drake or who else do we got?
Taylor Swift, or my mind's drawing a blank.
I guess I'm, I'm stuck in the music industry. I'm trying to think of something that is beyond music. Oh. If you were to ask these famous YouTubers Mr. Beast, if, if making money was hard, what do you think he would say? I am thinking he would probably disagree with you. Making money for him now is probably pretty easy.
What if you chose to believe your dream life was actually possible? You know what if you thought gee, I could actually do that. Hmm. I could become rich. And it's not just about the money, but what money can get you? Why do you want the money? Do you want the freedom? Do you want more time with your family?
Do you want to make others wealthy?
What if you thought all of this was available to you and that anything was possible? What if you thought opportunities were everywhere? What if you believe [00:20:00] success wasn't reserved just for, the lucky few, but it was reserved for you? We were all meant to be wealthy and abundant and happy and healthy.
So Your brain actually has something called neuroplasticity. So it has the ability to rewire itself. This is actually scientifically proven, so you can create. A new thought pattern, new emotional habits, and really even a new identity, if you really want to. You think with , your conscious, your rational mind, your critical thinking mind, but whatever you think repeatedly and you tie it to an emotion, it really starts to sink down to your subconscious mind.
And it becomes your belief system. So once your subconscious accepts a new idea, it starts to actively pursue it. It's like, okay, this is what you want. We're going to get it. It's almost like , your, your mind is like a missile and you're giving it a target [00:21:00] and. It does anything it needs to do to get to that target. Once you set that intention, , think of your mind like a garden. So your subconscious mind is the soil and your thoughts are the seeds.
Okay? Whatever you plant. And nurture will grow. So you've got the soil. What seeds do you wanna plant? Do you wanna plant beautiful flowers? Do you wanna plant some really delicious herbs? Or do you wanna plant poison ivy? It's up to you. You pick what you wanna plant and what you wanna nurture. If you consistently.
Think negative. Not even necessarily negative thoughts, but thoughts of lack money doesn't grow on trees. I've heard that, I don't know how many times, but if you think about it, money is, this took me some time to process, but money is really not that hard to [00:22:00] make. I mean, think about it, if you were to, to go knock on maybe an elderly person's home and say, Hey I'm offering services to declutter your home or clean your home or help you with technology or whatever service that you're offering. If you were to knock on 20 doors, I bet you someone would take you up on that.
My kids, they started a detailing business. They're making thousands of dollars at 12 and 16. But now, if I would've told them, Hmm, no, I don't know. You've never done it before, and I don't know what kind of equipment and what if you damage a car? And if, if my mind was wired to all of the things that could wrong, what do you think they're learning from that?
I'm like, go ahead. Do you go crazy? You'll figure it out.
And what I'm doing right here, I. I would have never in a million years guessed that I'm going to start my own podcast and talk about all the different [00:23:00] ways that your mind works and how to manifest your dream life I would've never thought that I would be here today, but it's the fact that once you set your mind and your intention on something.
You have no choice but to go after it. Like your subconscious mind does not have the capability of knowing the difference between what is imagined and what is real. So one of the things that I've done is actually visualized. The life that I want. And I, I didn't necessarily know how I was gonna get there, but I just constantly envisioned what it was that I saw our life looking like.
And what tends to happen then is because you're constantly putting that vision in your head and you're tying those emotions to it, and you're feeling how great it feels, your subconscious mind has , no choice. But to go after that thing and it's going to constantly [00:24:00] take you the route that you need to go to get there.
The way I can describe it is like have you ever drove on a route so many times that, let's say now you're taking that route, but you need to go somewhere different. But you're, you're still taking that route.
It looks like that route, but you need to go straight instead of turning left, for example, this time. Okay? And what does your body do? You turn left. You were supposed to go straight, but you turn left. You're like, oh, why did I turn left? I'm supposed to go straight. I'm not going there. Well, because your subconscious mind has done it so many times.
It's trained. It's trained to take you on the path that you've always gone. You have to break free from that. You have to give it different energy, different thoughts.
So the truth is, your, your conscious mind is only 5% of your mind. That's your, your logic, your willpower, and your goals. Your subconscious mind is [00:25:00] 95% of your mind. That is your beliefs, your thoughts, your habits, your emotional reactions, and your identity. And the truth is, I love this saying,
as within, so without. So your external world is always reflecting what's going on inside of you. You don't attract what you want. You attract what you are. What are you thinking? What are you feeling? If you think you're not capable of something, your subconscious mind will prove to you that you can't, and therefore your external world will show that.
But when you learn to work with your subconscious mind, you release. Habits and fears that have held you back for years. You let go of limiting beliefs that you inherited from your family, from your teachers, from your culture, from society. You build confidence and [00:26:00] clarity to actually pursue your dreams, and you stop living by default, and you start living by your design.
So how do you start shifting this? Well, first it just starts with awareness. Notice the beliefs that just tend to run on autopilot. Write them down. Whose voice is that? Is it even yours? Is that someone else's voice telling you that you're not capable of something or that something isn't realistic?
Another belief that I had was that rich people, they were just handed their wealth. , It was just given to them. They didn't work for it. Is that true? No. So many successful people started on their own. They started from the ground up. Because they believed they could.
Okay. Second is just reframe it, instead of saying that's gonna be so hard, think of it like, what if it's easy? What if? What if it's not hard at all? What if making money was easy? What if I [00:27:00] could live my dream life? What if everything I ever wanted is out there for me and all I had to do was go grab it?
And another thing is your subconscious mind does not process negatives. So you have to focus on what you want, not on what you don't want. So think of it this way, if I tell you, don't think of a rainy day. Don't think of a rainy day right now. What's the first thing you thought of? You thought of a rainy day Because your subconscious mind can't process negatives.
You just have to tell it what to focus on. Okay? Because whatever you focus on , you're gonna get more of that. I'm sure you've heard the, where attention goes, energy flows. So the more attention you give something, the more energy you're giving it, the more you're keeping it alive.
You have to starve the attention from all the negativity and give all the attention to everything that you want in life,
and every belief that you have starts out [00:28:00] as a single thought. What is a thought that you have that maybe you can change what's, what is a perception, an observation, or something that you've heard from someone else that you can change? That you can reframe in a way that is actually serving you?
And then the more you repeat that thought and the more emotion that you associate with that, that's how you start to really reprogram . That is where it sticks. That's where it really starts to marinate and it starts to gel. So that repetition and that emotion that, that thought of what if this was actually possible?
What if I could do it? How excited does that make you feel? Picture that in your head. What does that look like? What does that reality look like? What do you look like? What do you feel like, what are you doing? What are you seeing? What are you hearing? Who are you with? Keep that alive. As long as you're constantly nurturing that thought and your subconscious mind is, is that soil you're nurturing that [00:29:00] seed.
It has no choice but to grow.
And then once you've repeated that thought enough, your brain starts looking for evidence to confirm that it's true,
and your beliefs determine your perception. So if you believe you can't. You're not gonna try, you're gonna self-sabotage. If you're telling yourself that you can't do it, then you're right. Then you can't. You're gonna find all of the ways that you can't do it, because you already set out that intention.
If you believe you can, and you truly believe you can, and you train your mind to believe that you can, you start looking for all of the evidence. If they can do it, why can't I do it? If there are successful people everywhere, well then why is that not possible for me? If there are successful musicians and successful YouTubers and successful basketball players and successful entrepreneurs, then why am I saying that that's not possible for me?
What makes them any different?
And the final thing is you have to own it. You have to stop waiting for life to change [00:30:00] for you. You have to change you as within, so without. You can't just be gliding through life expecting for some day. All of your dreams are just going to come true, and you have done nothing. To get them, they just fall in your lap.
That's not realistic. That's not gonna happen. You have to change something within yourself, and I love this other quote is, whatever. You're not changing, you're choosing. So don't complain about the way your life is. Don't complain about your circumstances, don't complain about your situation. You're in control.
And I understand that there are some things that are out of your control, but you have the control as far as how you respond to it. Everyone goes through struggles, everyone has challenges, but how can you transmute that into something good? What can you learn from it? How can you move that into a trajectory of success and happiness and wellbeing?
If you're just gonna [00:31:00] sit here and play the victim and all this happened to me and there's nothing I can do about it. Yes, there is. There's so many things you can do about it. And the first thing is your mind and how you're thinking about it. Okay? Something bad happened, process it. You're human, you're going to feel emotions.
But then, then it's time to move on. Now it's time to get out of the problem and into the solution. And maybe it's not necessarily something that you can just fix. You can't just fix everything that happens. But can you look at it a different way? Can you learn something from it? Can it make you stronger in some way?
Can you help maybe someone else that this has happened to? And be like a mentor or a guide for them. Can you help shed some light on this for someone else?
So for your challenge this week, I want you to identify one subconscious belief and reframe it to [00:32:00] something expansive, something that's just full of possibility. And then ask yourself, what if you could, what if you could do it?
Your subconscious mind is the gateway to infinite intelligence. This is where inspiration comes from. This is where your intuition comes from, and this is where those downloads come from, where you get those, those magical, just bright ideas that come outta nowhere. The more you learn how to use your subconscious mind, you're gonna stop living on autopilot and you're gonna start creating intentionally, and you're gonna create the life of your dreams.
But you have to believe it that it's possible and believe it to be true for yourself. So I hope this helped. I hope this resonated for some of you. I know this took a lot for me to. Me to learn on my own. But the more you just keep exposing yourself to this type of content and believing whatever [00:33:00] you want in life is truly possible and start putting these things into practice, I promise you your life will change.
So thanks for tuning in. Hope to see you on the next episode.
