EP23 (Final) - Life Changing Lessons (#1) Train Your Mind for the Life You Really Want
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[00:00:00] You're like the stars in outer space. Something about you radiates. And it feels so nice, and it feels so nice, yeah
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Starlit Success podcast. I am your host, as always, Jessica Gaines.
so as someone who has struggled with my career identity, with finding my purpose, with just kind of feeling lost, like knowing I wanted more out of life, but not really sure what it was, how to get it, where to start. I was so focused on raising my family and establishing, like, a solid career, that I kinda feel like I lost myself along the way.
And if you've been listening to my story over the last five years or so, I've been on this journey of self-discovery, trying to find myself again.
And I went from, you know, working for someone else's dream or working on someone else's dream to [00:01:00] realizing I would like a dream of my own, and I would like to work on my dream. I'm not saying I won't work on someone else's dream, 'cause I love helping other people work on their dreams, but I should work on my own too.
If I'm gonna work on theirs, then... why am I not working on my own?
But through this whole process, I really discovered my true potential, and not only my true potential, the true potential of everyone around me. Like, I Never really paid attention before. I think we just become so programmed in life that you really lose sight of what you're truly capable of.
which is the whole reason I started this podcast, is because when I realized that everything is in your mind, and you're really capable of anything that you want to achieve, I had this strong desire to... I wouldn't even say desire. It was almost, like this, like this calling. Like, something was telling me, "You need to share this with the world.
other people need to hear it. [00:02:00] And not only do they need to hear it, they need to hear it from you." So that's why I'm here.
And along this journey, I have learned so many lessons, and obviously, that's w- what this podcast is all about. It's all about all of the lessons I've learned but there have been a few, I would say, maybe core lessons that have really, really shifted
the way that I look at life, the way that I show up,
and I realized, you know, maybe I'm a few steps ahead, and I can help you save some time and some frustration.
And I also just wanna point out that if you're a regular here, you know that these lessons must have shifted something, because I am a professional quitter. So for me to continue with this, these must have made a real difference.
Personally, I have never enjoyed learning things the hard way. I would much rather learn from someone else's mistakes than my own. So lucky for me, I have an older brother who has made [00:03:00] many of them for me. Bless him.
He probably still calls me a tattletale.
But honestly, I don't think he realizes how much better he's made my life by helping me learn from his mistakes
So that's what I want to do for you. I want to help you learn from my mistakes and save you some time.
So the plan was to, to share these core lessons in one episode. And as I'm planning and planning it, I'm like, "Oh man, this sucker's getting long. I don't wanna lose people."
' I wanted to have them like a little pile of golden nuggets that you could just come back to and devour at any moment. But then I'm like, you know what? I think they each need their own space, and I think they would be easier to digest separately,
so we're gonna do a miniseries where each of these episodes are going to be focused on one core lesson that made such a big difference for me and made me really feel like pursuing my own dream is actually possible, which I think a lot of us need to hear.
So today we're gonna start with the [00:04:00] very first lesson, I'm gonna try to do them in order of impact. So this is the, the most transformative one that I learned, and it's simply becoming aware of the story that's keeping you stuck.
When I say story, it's really just something you've been telling yourself or , maybe just a core belief that you have. So here are a few examples of the stories that I was telling myself.
One of them was thinking that your value or your worth comes from something else. So it comes from your job, , it comes from your kids, or it comes from some kind of role that you play in life. I think my son dealt with this a lot with basketball. Like, he felt like his value or his worth came from his success on the court.
The other one was thinking that pursuing a dream is unrealistic.
Or even if you have a dream, that if you're my age, like if you're in your 40s, it's too late to [00:05:00] pursue it at this time.
Um, another one that I would tell myself was that either I could be really successful or my kids could be really successful, but it had to be one or the other. It couldn't be us both. So I felt like if I focused on my career, my dreams, whatever, that I would be neglecting them, and that if I put all the focus on them, they would be the successful ones, and then I just couldn't.
But now, having gone through this whole journey, I've realized none of those stories are true None of them. It's just what I was telling myself. It's just what I was believing. And where that came from, whether it was something I put in my own head, whether it's something I got from society's programming, I don't know.
But the problem is, is when you think these long enough, when you believe these stories long enough, they don't feel like stories. I didn't realize that they were stories. I just thought it was a fact. It's just, this is just [00:06:00] how it is.
But I learned at some point you have to be willing to let that story go and try on something new. Try on a new story and see how it fits.
Because as long as you continue to believe these stories and you continue to feed them or reinforce them, you will never take the leap. You will never take the next step and do the scary thing.
And as we've talked about, your brain, your subconscious mind is always looking to serve you. So as long as you keep telling yourself whatever story it is that you believe, your brain is always going to look for evidence to support that belief.
And then when you continue to have evidence to support the belief, that just continues to reinforce it.
this reminds me of a story that I heard once. It was one of the first things I heard when I was on this whole mindset journey. And it's a story of this elephant and the rope or elephant and the tree. it goes something like this. [00:07:00] So there's a baby elephant and they tie the baby elephant to the tree so that the baby elephant doesn't run away.
And the elephant is still a baby. So he's kind of small. he tries to break free. He tries, he pulls and he tugs and he just, no matter what he does, he can't get loose, right? So he stays tied to this tree through adulthood, which makes me sad thinking of an elephant tied to a tree.
But it's a metaphor. It's not, I hope it's not real. So this elephant turns into an adult and he's still tied to the tree. He's massive. He's huge. He's strong. But he doesn't even try to break free anymore because he just believes that he can't.
Isn't that so sad? And think about, like, how many of us are this little baby elephant. We've gotten so big and so strong, but we just stopped trying to break free. We don't think it's possible anymore.
Maybe you tried to break free so many times and you just, you thought it was impossible so you just settled for what you [00:08:00] had.
I never knew my purpose. I never knew my passion. I never thought I had a talent. So I just gave up for so many years. I wasted so much time. We'll probably cover that in another episode.
So maybe you've been doing the same thing for so long
that you don't expect anything to change. You don't even realize how much stronger and wiser and more aware you are now.
You're not the same person that you were when you first tried to break free from that tree.
Don't discredit your life experience, all the lessons you've learned, all the challenges you've overcome.
Wherever you are in life, I know life has taught you a few things.
it's probably taught you a lot about yourself too.
That is something I credit to my 40s. You know, I know a lot of people talk about- Oh, I'm getting older, gonna be over the hill or what- I, I love being in my 40s. I feel so [00:09:00] wise. I feel so comfortable in my own skin. I know who I am. I am not that little baby elephant anymore.
I am not that 20-year-old girl who didn't know what she was doing and didn't know what she wanted out of life. I know exactly who I am, I know exactly what I want, and nobody can tell me any different. And I want that for you, too. And I'm not saying you have to be in your 40s to get there. hopefully you'll get there a lot sooner than me.
And I'm not saying you have to be in your 40s. You can be in your 50s, you can be in your 60s, you can be even older than that. This can come to you at any time.
Because all of us are so freaking powerful. We have the greatest gift ever, and this is something that I never understood until now, that you have the gift of your mind.
And your mind shapes how you see reality. Not your eyes, your brain. Your brain filters reality based on your thoughts, your experiences, your emotions.
And that's why two people can [00:10:00] experience the same exact event and have two completely different perspectives. That's why you say there's three sides to a story. There's this person's version, the other person's version, and then the actual truth. if you have kids, you probably completely understand this.
Like, my kids, when they would fight, I would hear two completely different versions of what happened, which is very interesting to me. Actually, the other day I was having a talk with my oldest son and he said something. He was like, "Well, you just said, you know, X, Y, Z." And I'm like, "No, I didn't. I never said that."
And thankfully, Eddie was in the room, and I looked at Eddie, and Eddie was like, " She didn't say that." But that's what he heard based off of what his beliefs are, based off of his emotion at the time.
So your brain is gonna serve you based on whatever you believe, based on whatever filters that your emotions are gonna add, whatever personal experiences you've had in the past.
But the best part, and this is another thing, this might be also [00:11:00] another episode, but you have neuroscience on your side. So your brain has something called neuroplasticity, where it literally has the ability to rewire itself.
So you can form and strengthen neural pathways in your brain just by your thoughts, your beliefs, your emotions, whatever you repeat. So you can start rewiring your brain whenever you want. We just don't know it. We just don't know how. We don't even know that this is an option. They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks.
Yes, you can. Yes, the F you can.
Think of it like, um, think of it like updating outdated software.
So whatever stories you've been telling yourself, , whatever beliefs you've had, you can upgrade those. You can turn those in and pick new ones.
And when we talk about beliefs, beliefs are just repeated thoughts that are backed by an emotion. So think of it like going to the gym for your mind. you need to create that repetition to really lock in those new neural pathways. start feeding that new [00:12:00] story. Start training it. Start reprogramming yourself
this isn't something that just happens overnight. This is something that I have been working on for years. They say, "Oh, just believe something new," and that's, it's not as easy as just like, "Oh, I believe this now." No. You have to constantly feed yourself, right? Over and over and over again
so the things that I did to train my brain to pick this new story one of them, as I've mentioned, I, I read constantly. I listened to podcasts over and over and over again. I would watch other successful people. So if you don't have a lot of successful people around you that are really goal-driven, you can borrow people from the internet.
So watch interviews, follow successful people's accounts, see how they're moving through life, start to believe that if it is possible for all these other people, it's possible for you, too. if that's just in your face all the time, in your face, it's in your ears, you're surrounded by it, it's [00:13:00] kinda hard to not believe when you see that much success around you.
another thing I did was I would visualize. I would just... I would picture my dreams having already come true, and I would do that over and over and over again. Not just one time, I would do it every single day. Because your brain doesn't know the difference between what's real and what's imagined,
so you can trick it. Isn't that fun? Let's trick our brains.
But your life is gonna follow whatever story that you keep repeating. So if you just keep repeating success and happiness and joy and ease, that's what it's going to deliver.
A quote from, Napoleon Hill, which I've mentioned him before, is, " Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve." So not only just conceive, you have to believe it. So you have to continuously repeat those thoughts to the point where you start to believe 'em. I think...
it makes me think of, like, compulsive liars. they lie so much that it [00:14:00] really seems like they believe themselves I knew someone like this and like I honestly think he believes his own lie.
He probably did 'cause he repeated it so much that his brain was like, "Okay, this is it. This is the truth now." So make the decision to believe a new story because when you make it possible in your mind, and you build that belief...
it just makes you wanna take action. And again, when you take action, that builds momentum, and then when you have momentum, you're consistent and then things happen.
And that's what creates change.
But I honestly think the biggest shift in all of this is you stop feeling stuck, and you start to feel like you're in control. You stop feeling like there are no possibilities for you because you're not believing that old story anymore. You've created this new story, you believe it, and you're like, "No, this is my life now, [00:15:00] and I'm gonna run it how I want to."
I feel like when you, when you have faith that something can actually happen, you stop second-guessing things all the time.
And then things start to feel a little bit easier, honestly. You're not fighting yourself anymore.
You're not stuck in that weird place of wanting more but not doing anything about it because you don't believe it's possible. Now you know you can do it, you know it's possible, and- You take action. So
that internal conflict starts to fade. You, you go from hoping your life changes to actually changing it.
and think about what would your life look like? if you had no limitations, if you had nothing holding you back, if you believed everything was possible for you or anything was possible for you?
But you have to get specific on what that actually looks [00:16:00] like.
And then make it real in your mind. Start visualizing it. Start believing it. Train it.
How do you show up differently? If this version of your life actually exists, how do you move?
Because I can tell you when I, when I made it real in my mind that this can actually happen for me and I trained myself and I repeated it over and over, it honestly feels like it's already happened. It's already there in the future. I don't know when, that's not my job. I don't know how, that's not my job.
But taking action is so much easier because now it feels like these are just the steps to get there. This is just part of the process because it's already happened. But you have to train yourself to believe that. It can't, it's not just like an overnight thing, like I said. I know I would listen to a lot of coaches and spiritual mentors and they [00:17:00] would, you know, they would talk about this and it was like, I, I don't know how to do that.
And it's gonna feel weird at first, I'm not gonna lie. It felt weird for me. But when you do it over and over again, it starts, it's like, uh, it's like, it's hard, it's like going to the gym. You, you go to the gym first, it's hard. You're sore. Man. You do it over and over, you start to build that muscle, you build those reps, you build that self-confidence, you build that belief.
So this week, I want you to, think about what is a story that you've been telling yourself.
That might not actually be true.
And then what is the new story that you want to believe instead?
I'm not saying you have to change anything. Just start noticing it.
And when you're ready, then you can start implementing those steps.
And in the next episode, we're gonna talk about how once you've had your story and you build your belief, sometimes that's not enough, and how just chasing money or easy opportunities will probably keep you [00:18:00] stuck.
And what actually makes you unstoppable. So tune in next week for the next lesson. if you're feeling generous, please rate the show. I would love to hear your feedback. Let me know what resonated with you. I want to hear your stories. And if you're not following me already follow me on YouTube or on Instagram at Starlit Success. And again, thank you for spending your time and energy with me today, and I will see you on the next episode
It's all so bright, brighter than the sunshine
