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Brad Kearns

I am so pleased to introduce a fantastically awesome show with Thais Gibson, creator of the Personal Development School!

She sent me a very intriguing overview of what she might talk about on the show and I said, “Sure, let’s talk about it,” but I gotta tell you, I was blown away—this is one of my favorite shows I have ever had on the B.rad podcast!

Listeners, I think this will be tremendously valuable and potentially life changing for you—I will say now that it will be for me, and I’m sure it helped that I unknowingly became the Guinea pig for a lot of the show. In this episode, you will hear essentially a live coaching call where Thais demonstrates her expertise and her methods on real life examples from me, Brad, especially my incongruence between my stated goals and my behavior patterns. We picked out the pursuit of wealth and financial security as something that I at times get frustrated by or feel deficient in, (perhaps because of subconscious patterns kicking in) and you will hear Thais explain the causes of self-sabotage and how to reprogram certain thoughts—which is especially interesting to hear once Thais explains that we are operating from our conscious mind three to five percent of the time!

If you have been listening to the podcast a lot and you read and you educate yourself, your conscious mind may be doing really well, acquiring the knowledge and skills you need to succeed, but your subconscious “needs” still will come in and oftentimes interfere. So, it’s time for Brad to get processed and dig deep and explore what is going on here when self-sabotage kicks in.

Thais Gibson is a counselor, a bestselling author of a book called Learning Love and the co-founder of the fabulous Personal Development School. She also has a Ph.D. and over 13 certifications in modalities ranging from CBT, NLP, somatic experiencing, internal family systems, to shadow work and hypnosis. Thais had nearly a decade of experience running a successful private practice and founded The Personal Development School, an online learning platform, to provide a more accessible, authentic way for clients to transform their lives. I enrolled immediately after we finished this recording, and I want you to go visit her website and consider doing the same. She offers a test run where you can see what it’s all about—check it out at personaldevelopmentschool.com.

TIMESTAMPS:

People may not always be aware that they are self-sabotaging because it usually occurs at a subconscious level. [00:53]

Your conscious mind is responsible for roughly 3 to 5 percent of all of your beliefs, thoughts, emotions, and actions or decisions. Your subconscious is responsible for 95 to 97 percent. [04:48]

We all have subconscious personality needs. [07:54]

Thais uses Brad as an example to unpack what needs it relates to. She asks first, what does he do in his spare time? [09:34]

Where does he spend his money? What does he like to learn about? [12:10]

Our subconscious mind is also the host of all of our limiting beliefs. [19:46]

There is a tool for how to pull up what your limiting beliefs are. [21:42]

We’re scared of something that’s hidden in the periphery at a subconscious level of mind [24:29]

Reconditioning is a tool for reprogramming. [26:25]

Thais identifies characteristics of people who have been in a relationship with a narcissist. [30:41]

Look for the things that trigger you. Plan your limiting belief and use its opposite. [33:02]

Step one: What is your core belief and its opposite? Step two: what are 10 memories to support? They can be recent memories, really old memories, doesn’t matter. 10 memories to support this new idea about yourself. I am, in fact, good enough. Step three: listen back for 21 days. [34:17]

When thinking about financial security, many people struggle with their subconscious as in feeling they don’t deserve it or some parts of society that have a distaste for the inequitable distribution of wealth. [43:10]

There are seven areas of life that need attention. Career, financial, mental, emotional, spiritual, physical and relationship. To ignore one area, we will pay for it later. [52:45]

What specific things or set of things are you going to do on a daily basis to reprogram? [59:13]

So much futile energy and effort toward change without addressing these core issues is going to be tough. [01:06:13]

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TRANSCRIPT:

Brad (00:00:00):
Welcome to the B.rad podcast, where we explore ways to pursue peak performance with passion throughout life without taking ourselves too seriously. I’m Brad Kearns, New York Times bestselling author, former number three world-ranked professional triathlete and Guinness World Record Masters athlete. I connect with experts in diet, fitness, and personal growth, and deliver short breather shows where you get simple, actionable tips to improve your life right away. Let’s explore beyond the hype, hacks, shortcuts, and sciencey talk to laugh, have fun and appreciate the journey. It’s time to B.rad.

Thais (00:00:38):
First thing is to recognize your conscious mind is not sabotaging you, it’s your subconscious that we have to unpack what’s there. The two major things that affect us when we self-sabotage are because we have needs that are not in alignment with our conscious goals. Or,

Brad (00:00:53):
Hey, listeners, viewers, I am so pleased to introduce a fantastically awesome show with Thais Gibson, creator of the Personal Development School. She sent me a very intriguing overview of what she might talk about on the show. I said, sure, let’s talk about it. But I gotta tell you, I was blown away. This is one of my favorite shows I’ve ever had on the B.rad podcast. I put John Gray at show number 500 ’cause he’s one of my favorite guests of all time. And I have to say at the end of this show with Thais, I’m gonna rank her right up there. I think this show is gonna be tremendously valuable and potentially life changing for you. And I’m gonna say that it will be for me. Uh, it helped that I became unknowingly the Guinea pig for a lot of the show. So what you’re gonna get is sort of a live coaching call where Thais demonstrates her expertise and her methods on real life examples from Brad, especially my incongruence between my stated goals and my behavior patterns.

Brad (00:01:59):
And we picked out the pursuit of wealth and financial security is something that I at times get frustrated by or feel deficient on, and perhaps because of subconscious patterns kicking in. So we’re gonna learn about the causes of self-sabotage and how to reprogram. It’s gonna be interesting, especially when we start out learning that only three to 5% of the time are we operating from our conscious mind. And I feel like if you’ve been listening to the podcast a lot and you read and you educate yourself, your conscious mind is doing really well, acquiring the knowledge and skills you need to succeed, but your subconscious needs in quotation marks come in and oftentimes interfere. So, it’s time for Brad to get processed and dig deep and explore what’s going on here when self-sabotage kicks in. Thais Gibson is a counselor, a bestselling author of a book called Learning Love and the co-founder of the fabulous Personal Development School.

Brad (00:03:05):
And I enrolled immediately after we finished this recording. I want you to go visit and consider doing the same. There’s a test run where you can see what it’s all about at personaldevelopmentschool.com. She has a PhD and over 13 certifications in modalities ranging from C-B-T-N-L-P, somatic experiencing internal family systems, shadow work hypnosis. And she reports an amazing 88.7 success rate with her students toward life transformation on a self-paced study program. That’s absolutely stunning results. And I think you’re gonna find out why in the first few minutes of this show, this lady has special talents and skills and gifts, and it’s such a great pleasure to bring you Thais Gibson of the Personal Development School, Thais Gibson, we connect. I’m so excited. You got a lot to say. I love your podcast, your YouTube videos, and thanks for joining us.

Thais (00:04:03):
Thank you so much for having me. I’m looking forward to our chat. Already had some interesting discussions and excited for this episode.

Brad (00:04:12):
You stopped me in my tracks with a couple of these sentences. One of ’em is that people may not always be aware that they’re self-sabotaging because self-sabotaging behavior usually occurs at a subconscious level. So of course, I’m not self-sabotaging, I’m confident, poised, driven and focused. But wait we only operate three to 5% from our conscious mind. So it is time to unravel this. I’m a little afraid of where this is gonna go, but I think I’m gonna have a personal growth experience and perhaps find out if there is some self sabotage going on.

Thais (00:04:48):
I love that. So I guess we can start by just telling the listeners exactly what you just said, which is that your conscious mind is responsible for roughly to three to 5% of all of your beliefs, thoughts, emotions, and actions or decisions. Your subconscious is responsible for 95 to 97%. And it’s funny because a lot of our western world, there’s a lot of great like, you know, components of the western healthcare system or therapeutic modalities in the western world, but there’s also some downsides. Like we spend a lot of time in like the behavioral therapy realm, focusing on the conscious mind, not actually how we can recondition our subconscious mind. And when it comes to self-sabotage, I often tell people there’s no actual such thing as self-sabotage. The way we’re thinking of it as, basically what’s happening is our conscious mind sets a goal and our subconscious mind has a different focus.

Thais (00:05:40):
So it can happen in two different ways. Okay? You can have needs, our subconscious mind has needs all the time, and they’re running the show beneath the surface. We’ll get really into that. Or we can have limiting beliefs. And either way, if your conscious mind says something like, I wanna make more money, for example, okay, a common one for many people. But then your subconscious mind says, well, our needs, our priorities are about social time, family time, materialism, and approval. Your conscious mind isn’t gonna be on board with your subconscious. What we experience as self-sabotage is our conscious having one goal and our subconscious going, no, we’re going in this direction instead. And because it runs the show, we experience that as self-sabotage. It’s our conscious and subconscious being out of alignment. Nobody’s waking up and consciously saying, today I’m gonna sabotage my life. Right?

Thais (00:06:27):
These are, this is a form of cognitive dissonance between conscious and subconscious mind. So let’s say we go back to that example and somebody says, I wanna make more money. And their subconscious mind is focused on materialism approval, family, social. Their subconscious mind essentially is gonna say, no, I’m not interested in trying to work harder or generate a second stream of income. I’m interested in spending my money on materialistic things, approval and spending my money going out with friends and family because I care about social and family dynamics. And so that’s gonna actively take time away from these needs that we all have as programs. So we can talk about how to unpack those needs and how to find out why that happens to each of the people listening. But the other branch of this is if we have limiting beliefs, if we say I’m gonna make more money, but our subconscious men believed already in its own conditioned patterns, well, I’m not good enough. I’m not capable of making more money. We’re just gonna experience going through life with a gas and the brakes on at the same time, our conscious mind says, let’s make more money. Our subconscious mind says, no, you can’t do it. And that’s another version of what we’ll experience a self-sabotage.

Brad (00:07:32):
I can relate, making money and then seeing it flow out of the scene really quickly. And then, you know, waking up going, why did this happen? A few times over the timeline of my life. So, um, absolutely. It sounds like the needs are wired in to subconscious.

Thais (00:07:54):
And yeah, I’d love to break down each one. So, so you’ll see that we all have, they’re what we actually call our subconscious personality needs. They’re a big part of what our own individual personalities are basically derived from. We all have them. And the way I like to think of them is almost like our personal GPS coordinates. I don’t know about you, but I’m not very directionally oriented. I need a GPS to get anywhere. I am not the best at directions. And whenever I miss an exit, you know, in in history, if I miss an exit, you know how your GPS is like rerouting and it like reroutes you. I think of that all the time as like an analogy for our personality needs. If you start going away from them, your subconscious mind is gonna reroute you back into your needs again. Now, the ways you can find out what those needs are, are that they are showing up in your behavior, not your desires.

Thais (00:08:46):
Why? Because your behavior is subconscious. So it’s the things that we are already doing because these are the already conditioned patterns into us and they focus on a few key areas. One of the first key areas is where we spend a lot of our free time. Each person, how they spend their free time is gonna be that we spend free time to meet our own needs. So for me, I have big needs around personal growth, emotional connection, health. And so a lot of my free time is spent connecting with people I’m close to. Reading personal growth books or taking courses, reading about health or articles, or listening to podcasts. So you’ll naturally see where you spend your free time. So I’m actually curious for you, and we can even go through this together ’cause it’s a good example for listeners, what do you tend to do in your free time? And I’ll help you unpack what needs it relates to.

Brad (00:09:34):
Yeah, I’d I’d say, fitness oriented behaviors. So, maybe not an extreme, um, devotion to it for hours and hours, like going to the gym every day for three hours. But, um, that might count. Watching HighJump videos on YouTube as well as practicing HighJump earlier that day. And just being, um, you know, sort of a, a fan or a consumer of information as well as a participant relating to athletics, personal, uh, peak performance.

Thais (00:10:05):
Beautiful. So right there you already have, and that you can start narrowing it down, right? So you have a health or a fitness need, we’ll. Is health a big thing too? ’cause they’re actually slightly different. Health would be like, you’re trying to fuel your body Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> make sure that you’re eating in healthy ways, whereas fitness may just be about what you’re achieving in terms of fitness.

Brad (00:10:23):
Yeah, for sure. Good distinction. Yeah, and of course my career is, is devoted to health and fitness, two different things. So if I’m not out there training, I might be driving across town to a premium market to selectively purchase the best foods and, and so forth. So it’s all, it’s all in that realm. And I like how you use the word needs, but it might not be in the typical perspective because these are like subconscious needs I’m gathering.

Thais (00:10:49):
Exactly. Yeah. And they’re part of our identity, right? Personality needs are like part of your identity. So you’ll see them show up in your life in many avenues. So that’s one. So clearly health and fitness is a big pattern. I’m curious too, ’cause another one I heard in there was like achievement. Like, do you feel like you’re always pushing yourself to that next level and that that’s a big focus area? Or are you more just like, I wanna be healthy, I wanna be fit? Or are you measuring and competing with yourself regularly?

Brad (00:11:13):
Yeah, for sure. The latter my whole life. And I’ve learned to manage that because I was a, a professional competitor, Thais, a long time ago on the triathlon circuit. And, um, when you get too obsessed with, uh, results and measuring the results and, and measuring your self-esteem against those results, you struggle secret top secret, uh, revelation from, from racing at the highest level. And so I strive to release the attachment of my self-esteem to the outcome. But I’m extremely competitive and I love to measure things and, and strive to improve, hopefully with the right mindset. But, you know, it’s, it’s a constant challenge, as I’m sure you’re gonna get into further.

Thais (00:11:53):
Yeah, but that’s fantastic. So we, you know, it’s, you’ve probably always had an achievement personality need, but you’ve just come into it in a healthy way. ’cause we can have an unhealthy relationship to our needs or a healthy one. So that’s, that’s really powerful. Now there’s a couple other ways to discover needs and I’ll, I’ll go through the other questions just a little more quickly. So where you spend your free time.

Brad (00:12:10):
Where you spend your money, it’s another way because our money is like our units of energy. So if you had to look at the big patterns that you spend money around, what do you find shows up there?

Brad (00:12:22):
I think this run also, slap me in the face, stopped me in my tracks because as soon as you said that, I realized probably from listening to a lot of content, that we can either spend money or save and invest. And I feel like that’s the crossroads of, of my life. And one of my biggest challenges is like, man, a hundred bucks out the door on a nice meal. You most people aren’t gonna go home and invest a hundred dollars more in a mutual fund, but in 12 years time, if we do that, especially if we take the, the hot tip from my friend, Brett five years ago to buy this company called Nvidia. Now it would be like $9,000 or something, whenever that a hundred bucks was. And so I’m trying to re reflect on that further. But to answer the question like, how do I spend my money? I freaking spend it. And that’s like my main answer there, rather than <laugh>

Thais (00:13:11):
Invest it. Good. And you’ll actually notice if you go a little deeper, which is so interesting ’cause this is actually like a pattern you’ll see with so many people. I’m sure so many listeners can just relate to this in this moment. But you’ll see it’s actually patterns and those patterns actually represent your personality needs. And there’s a way to hack your weight totally out of this and change your spending patterns probably by the end of this conversation honestly. But, so you’ll see, and I’ll give you some examples of this in a moment, but you’ll see, um, do you spend it on nice meals? You said healthy food, do you spend it on other people, going out to dinner, social events? Like what are those things?

Brad (00:13:43):
Listeners? Isn’t this great? I’m, I’m getting a free coaching call and I sure as heck hope you’re listening very carefully. ’cause I’m gonna bet that this applies to a ton of people. So I really appreciate this interactive journey. I, I think it’s really helpful, not just ’cause you’re asking me the questions, but we all to reflect on this stuff. You know, I would answer like, I I have no interest in the indulgences and luxuries that we typically see with consumerism world. And so I don’t have a brand, um, sophistication. I love my 2008 Toyota Prius that has duct tape on certain loose parts, but it’s such a nice car and I keep fixing it and repairing it because I have no desire to, um, you know, have, have the, um, have the, have the bells and whistles in my life.

Brad (00:14:30):
However, um, when you asked me about the free time and my commitment to health and fitness, I would say there’s a fair amount of you know, expenditures in that category. And I know sometimes going in the market, seeing some of the prices, but I tell myself this story, like I don’t skimp on good food because I prioritize that to the very top. And I guess same with things like wanting to connect with family and perhaps, uh, organize a big trip where we’re hosting a bunch of kids and that makes me feel great. I feel like it’s a great expenditure. And then some of the other expenditures are, are more frustrating. But, uh, so just like you answered, it’s very important to you to have social connection and health and fitness. Yeah, <laugh>

Thais (00:15:18):
<laugh>. Okay. So see how you’re starting to see the patterns. Like, it’s, it’s not that we’re like just spenders, it’s that somebody who has an approval or materialism personality need, they’ll probably spend on that fancy car or that flashy house or jewelry or whatever it might be. But somebody with big health, fitness, and connection needs will probably spend on those big trips, bring people around, take care of other people’s expenses, sometimes spend money on health and fitness. And so, so you’re starting to see these patterns. Now, there’s a couple other questions to get into it further, but I feel like we’re starting to really see these patterns emerge for just listeners, if they’re gonna go through this on their own time. Some other questions to ask in detail. And you just, again, keep bringing up the patterns that you’ll see emerge from these questions are what triggers you the most.

Thais (00:15:59):
For example, if you were worried that your health was not in good shape, that might be a very triggering event. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Or if somebody messed with something to do with your health or fitness or achievement. You know, you, you see those things like hurt or affect you the most. Um, and also what do you love to relearn research about in your spare time? Um, again, will point you in the direction of your personality needs and also what lights you up to talk with other people about. I often give the example, if I sit down on the park bench and I meet a stranger and they wanna talk to me about personal growth, I’m gonna light up. But if I meet a park bench stranger and they wanna talk to me about like geography and history, I’m gonna be like, how quickly can I politely leave this conversation <laugh>?

Thais (00:16:37):
So we’ll see these main themes, and they really have these patterns emerge into what our personality needs are. And I’m gonna tell you a story about how this is all relevant to self-sabotage. So I had a client years and years ago, and she had, she came to me and she said, Thais, I’m sabotaging every year my goals. And she actually came and she said, I really wanna be healthier, but every single year I said a New Year’s resolution. And I say, I am gonna eat healthy and I’m gonna lose weight because her health was not in good order. And she said, for the last seven years in a row, I sabotaged by like day five or six. And so we sat down and we looked at what are her subconscious personality needs? And hers were comfort, security, social connection and family. Hmm. And so she, we, we looked, and the first thing we know is her conscious mind says, go to the gym, eat healthier, do all these things.

Thais (00:17:25):
And her subconscious mind says, no, I don’t feel comfortable. I don’t feel secure, and it’s gonna take time away from social and family. So now what we do is we merge these things. Okay? Sometimes it requires a little bit of creative brainstorming, but in her case, what do we get her to do? Go to group fitness classes with friends she already had. Join a hiking club with her husband, take more walks with her kids in the evenings when she wanted to actually, you know, go to the gym. We had her do group like online fitness programs so she could learn and she could feel comfortable and safe going to a gym knowing how things worked. And then, you know, by merging your conscious mind’s goals or intentions with the new understanding of your subconscious needs, you’ll see half the resistance get diminished, right?

Thais (00:18:10):
Because now your subconscious says that this is not a threat to my needs. I get to go do this new thing and it’s actually a strategy to meet my needs. I go to the group fitness class, I see my friends, I get the social connection, need met. I go, I join a hiking club with my husband. We have this bonding time together. So now our conscious and subconscious mind are working together instead of against each other. And that’s 50% of diminishing the resistance. There’s still another 50%, but does that all start to make sense so far?

Brad (00:18:37):
Yeah. That’s fantastic. I think all of us are aware of our goals and our written goals, and I wanna lose weight and I wanna make more money, and I wanna do this and I wanna do that. So then you took us through those several questions. How do you spend your free time? How do you spend your money? What are your triggers? Um, what do you love to read and learn about? What, what gets you excited? And so when we, um, gather those answers up and then we compare and contrast with our stated goals that we’re falling short of, that’s when you talk about blending.

Thais (00:19:05):
Exactly. And we start, and

Brad (00:19:07):
That’s only 50% though, <laugh>,

Thais (00:19:08):
That’s 50%. Okay. We do 50 people’ll <laugh>. What I’ll do too is actually have a list of the most common personality needs. I’ll actually send them over to you after the episode. So if you wanna post them in the show notes or something for anybody to just take a look, they’re welcome to be like, oh yeah, that’s a big need for me. That’s a big need. It’ll just help them gain that more, more insight. So yes. So to summarize exactly what you said, you know, first thing is we find these subconscious mechanisms that are at work, these needs. We answer those questions, we’ll start to see these obvious patterns emerge when you reference that sheet too. You’ll be, it’ll be really clear what these big themes are, and then we start linking your conscious goal to these subconscious needs. And we get rid of half the resistance.

Thais (00:19:46):
Now, the other half is that our subconscious mind is also the host of all of our limiting beliefs. So your conscious mind doesn’t have limiting beliefs in the same way because your conscious mind doesn’t wake up and say, I’m gonna tell myself a hundred times today that I’m not good enough. <laugh>. Like, these are not conscious choices. These are subconscious, preexisting programs that we’ve often acquired from difficult past experiences. So whenever we go through something hard in the past and we can’t emotionally process, we give it meaning and we store it. And our brain is wired to hang on to negative meaning more than positive as a survival mechanism. I often give people the analogy, if you’re walking through a forest tomorrow and you see a bear and you run away and you escape, but then the next day you have to go back through that same path in the forest, you’re not gonna be like, oh my goodness, I remember this beautiful flower bed next to the bear.

Thais (00:20:36):
You’re gonna be like, I remember the bear and its teeth, right? Like, that’s what your mind’s gonna hang on to. And so we do the same thing when we have experiences. It can be small things. For example, having critical parents growing up, you may not know how to emotionally process it. So you hold onto it to protect yourself from it. Just like you would hold onto the bear and the image of that in your mind and you go, oh, I must not be good enough. That’s why my parents are critical. So we have these core limiting beliefs as people, and as long as those are running the show, they’re gonna block us. So if you say, I wanna make more money, or I wanna lose weight or be healthy, you know, that client that I was talking about, her big limiting beliefs were, um, I don’t know how, so I’m not capable, I’m not good enough, I’m gonna fail. And so of course her conscious mind says, do these things, but your subconscious is running the show and it says, no, don’t do them. You’re gonna fail. You’re not good enough. It’s not gonna happen. Does that make sense?

Brad (00:21:32):
Oh, sure. Right. I hope everyone can relate to this ’cause um, they’re definitely in there even as much as we try to distract or suppress them.

Thais (00:21:42):
Exactly. Now there’s a tool for how to pull up what your limiting beliefs likely are, and it’s a really easy one. Exactly. <laugh>. So, so what we do is we ask ourselves, why haven’t I achieved my goal already? Right? So why haven’t I saved more money already? Why haven’t I lost weight already? Why haven’t I reached my, you know, career goal already? And when we write out the narratives that are there, we’ll see, it’s things like, well, I don’t have enough time, or, that’s not possible for me, or, I’m not educated enough or prepared enough for that. Or, you know, whatever stories are there, start to pull out and they will start to come to the surface. So that’s question one. Does that make sense so far?

Brad (00:22:28):
You are asking me to write out the reasons that I think I haven’t made enough money, uh, to date sort of thing. And then we

Thais (00:22:37):
Gonna I was just saying in general, yeah, but if you wanna share yours, right? I don’t wanna put you on the spot too much,

Brad (00:22:41):
But I’m, you wanna share yours? I’m, that’s the exercise is you actually wanna write it out.

Thais (00:22:44):
Exactly. Yeah. Okay.

Brad (00:22:45):
Exactly.

Thais (00:22:46):
And, and what that does is it allows for somebody to start gaining that insight, right? Sometimes people will be like, oh, ’cause I don’t know how, or because as soon as I do this, you know, I, something bad will happen or, and I’ll share some of the common limiting beliefs that people have. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, um, people think I’ll be a burden, I’ll be abandoned. I’m not good enough. I’m unworthy. I will fail. I’m not capable. I will be an imposter. People will be jealous of me.

Brad (00:23:17):
And he says, looking on her index card, laminated card that you carry around in the wallet, like, oh my gosh, these are so common. So these are the, the validated from research. These are the things that are holding us back. Is this this common list?

Thais (00:23:31):
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And, and you’ll hear, you know, in this what what peoples tend to be, you’ll start to see like, oh my goodness, that’s probably mine. Some people think like, oh, I’m gonna achieve this goal, then something bad will happen. They’re like waiting for the other shoe to drop. Or some people are like, oh, I’m gonna do this and commit to it, and then I’m gonna be trapped or powerless or helpless, or I’m gonna change and then I’m gonna be abandoned by my loved ones. Or I’m gonna ask for more in my life, but then I’m gonna be a burden to other people. Like, you’ll hear a lot of these old stories that come up and as soon as we can really start isolating these, that’s where we have the power. Because none of these you were born with, they get conditioned Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And we can actually talk in a minute about a tool to recondition them leveraging principles of neuroplasticity. So if people are like, I’m done with feeling like this. Mm. We can move these outta the way. So just to summarize so far, ’cause I know I’m like, fire hosing information.

Brad (00:24:25):
That’s why, that’s why I have you on this. Is this is solid gold. I love it.

Thais (00:24:29):
<laugh>. Well, thank you. That’s so sweet. So just to summarize for everybody so far, you know, first thing is to recognize your conscious mind is not sabotaging you. It’s your subconscious. So we have to unpack what’s there. The two major things that affect us when we self-sabotage are because we have needs that are not in alignment with our conscious goals. Or we have limiting beliefs that we’re carrying at the subconscious level that we’re, you know, actually quote unquote sabotaging our goals with because we’re scared, right? That’s really what it’s boiling down to. We’re scared of something that’s hidden in the periphery at a subconscious level of mind So we ask those, those five major questions we talked about, we start to see the patterns of our needs. We’ll often realize by that point, like, oh man, I have a goal that I’m setting that has nothing to do with my needs.

Thais (00:25:16):
And so no wonder I’m not seeing the traction that’s there because my subconscious who’s running the show is pushing me in a different direction. And then once we start saying, okay, well how can I line up my conscious goals with my subconscious needs? We’ll, we’ll feel like that resistance that’s there, we’ll start to dissipate. We’ll feel like, wow, I’m actually looking forward to taking some of these actions. I don’t find myself resisting or procrastinating all the time. And then we get into the other half, which is, what are those limiting beliefs? So you can ask yourself this question, okay, why haven’t I achieved my goal yet? And see which of those stories come up for you that I listed off? Those are the, the major ones. And then you can also ask yourself the question, if I do achieve my goal, what am I afraid will then happen?

Thais (00:26:03):
And that can be another thing that comes up. That’s where you’ll usually see more of those like, oh, I’ll then be trapped, or then people will not like me anymore, or my friends will reject me. Or I’ll then have to be stuck in committing to this thing forever. Or I’m gonna gain this thing and then lose it. You know, you’ll hear a lot of those same narratives, but you’ll, it’s just another like way of trying to pull up that information.

Thais (00:26:25):
And at the end of asking those two questions, we now get to move into the exciting part, which is the reconditioning Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And I’m gonna share a tool, but I wanna make sure that first I let you, if you have any questions or anything like that, you know, let me know. But I can share a tool for how we can reprogram these limiting beliefs that have probably been a thorn in our side for a long time.

Brad (00:26:48):
Yeah, that’s great. And when you ask what am I afraid of upon reaching my goal? I, I I would gather that the conscious mind throws down and says nothing. What are you talking about, Thais? I’m not afraid of anything, but I know there’s some more exploration to do here. There was a famous story of an Olympic gold medal athlete and world record holder. And it was a front page news article. He worked with a friend of mine, a practitioner. And, um, they discovered that this athlete was afraid of success. And the reason this fantastic athlete was afraid of success is because once one achieves these lofty goals, win the gold medal, break the world record, we’re afraid of what’s beyond that because now we’ve realized our dreams. And so, somehow subconsciously the athlete will self-sabotage to create a struggle such that one can wake up in the morning with a purpose and something to conquer and something to to challenge.

Brad (00:27:48):
And I think about that myself sometimes. ’cause um, I’ve been dealing with some recurring injuries that are interfering with my training and competing in, uh, old man track and field that happens that old athletes get injured more than younger athletes. And I’m like, wait, why do I get injured when I think I’m smart and making good decisions, but perhaps I’m pushing myself too hard because I like that struggle and that challenge to go beyond what I really should go rather than keep things, you know, under the radar and sophisticated and, and know when to stop so I can continue to progress toward my goals. And so I think, especially in the athletic realm, I really appreciate that question. What am I afraid of if I were to reach my goals? And we talked about wanting to make more money and be wealthy and have all our dreams met, but I know some extremely wealthy people that don’t have to work, and they relate that they have a struggle to redefine and recalibrate their purpose because it’s no longer kicking butt in the workplace and making a contribution to the economy.

Thais (00:28:51):
100%. I think that’s so beautifully and powerfully laid out. And it’s so interesting because there’s two sort of things that came up for me when you were talking about this. One is that it’s an identity issue, right? Like, if we reach all the goals that we’ve been striving for forever, like who do we then become? Right? Like, what happens to that, that struggle that we’re used to striving for, which is exactly what you were saying. And the second thing is, um, our subconscious mind works very, very hard to maintain its comfort zone. So here’s another really interesting tidbit before we go into the reprogramming part, which is that what you’ll see is, like for people, for example, who grew up, let’s just say in chaos, okay? This is one of many examples. If life, if childhood was chaotic, then our subconscious comfort zone says chaos is safe.

Thais (00:29:38):
And even though our conscious mind says chaos is not good, or even though, you know, people who in in business can say, you know, the the struggle, I’m done with the struggle. It’s not normal. If we grew up in that, the subconscious mind says, well, that’s foreign save fully. You know, being in a calm state that’s foreign. I’m gonna opt for what I know because what I know is familiar and thus I’m more likely to be safe and survive. And so our subconscious works very hard too, even if we come from a history of chaos or frustration or, you know, a a stressful environment or background, or we’re used to the struggle until we actually do reconditioning work, that can be a part of our identity for a very long time. And our subconscious will do extremely interesting things to keep that cycle alive.

Brad (00:30:22):
Yeah. Especially in relationship dynamics. You hear about, um, you know, you, you end up dating the same type of a abusive emotionally abusive person five times in a row because you keep plunging into the, the familiar subconscious negative patterns.

Thais (00:30:41):
100%. Yeah. I’ll, I’ll tell you one other detour story here for a second. But I worked for a long time with clients one-to-one, I retired my practice when we moved into the online space, but I used to work with people one-to-one all the time. And I would see people coming out of relationships with actual narcissistic personality disordered individuals. Not like the throw around term, but like true abusive people. And I never saw, and I wanna be clear, this is not me blaming the victim at all, but I never saw a person who was in a long-term marriage or relationship with a narcissist, a true narcissist that first didn’t have these core patterns. Number one, violated their own boundaries to please people all the time. Number two, were very harsh and critical to themselves and their own internal dialogue. Number three, struggled to empathize with their own feelings and needs.

Thais (00:31:32):
And number four, manipulate themselves to be what they thought other people wanted of them. Guess what the four, some of the clearest patterns are of the narcissist, they’ll violate your boundaries. Just like the, you know, that person will violate their own boundaries. They’re very harsh, critical, cruel, and how they speak to people once they’re past the love bombing phase, they will manipulate you and they won’t empathize with you.

Thais (00:31:53):
And so what happens is your subconscious mind, if you already have that trauma in your background in various degrees, you’re now a match to that person. ’cause your subconscious is gonna go invest because it says, oh, my conscious mind sees these red flags, but wow, I just like them so much. They just feel so familiar. Now it’s not that person’s fault, of course, that’s usually actually a result of past conditioned trauma in some degree from childhood or past events. But it’s so important for people to be aware of that until they break those patterns within themselves. They do have that risk of ending up reinvesting in similar personality types. So exactly to your point, it it really is a truth.

Brad (00:32:30):
Yeah. It’s like a, it’s like a match, A match made in hell where you’re magnetized to these subconscious flaws or whatever you want to call ’em, and then someone who’s throwing down right at ’em. Yeah. Scary

Thais (00:32:44):
A hundred percent. Yeah.

Brad (00:32:46):
And I mean, that’s an extreme example, but I think we have minor examples every day where we’re struggling to have relationship peace and we trigger and then you know, retreat into subconscious patterns, comfort zone

Thais (00:33:02):
A hundred percent. I give people this little tool sometimes when if you, even if it’s like your boss or your coach or your mentor, whoever it is, if you feel triggered by them, ask yourself, what are the specific things that trigger me? And where do I also do these things to myself? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And sometimes we’re like, oh, <laugh>, they’re critical to me and it’s so triggering ’cause I’m so critical to myself now we clean it up in ourselves and guess what will happen? We’ll, we won’t stand for it. And other people will be like, Hey, I’m not okay with that. Can you speak to me differently? We’ll actually have the conscious awareness to end the cycle. Mm-Hmm. Anyways, that’s a, a whole rabbit hole that we went down. So I’ll come back to the, the reprogramming if we go back to those beliefs.

Thais (00:33:39):
So, so going back to the original topic of self-sabotage, right? We find our needs, we link them to our conscious mind goals. We find our limiting beliefs. Now we have to reprogram them. And this is actually like one of the coolest things ever in my opinion, because we can actually shed these beliefs. It’s not this crazy thing. And we’ve seen at this point now more than 40,000 people come through our programs use our belief reprogramming tools, and 88.7% of people report reprogramming their beliefs. And these are self-paced programs. These are not even like, you know, like, you don’t even know if the person’s doing the proper work every day. So that’s like a staggering metric in my opinion. So anyways, so here are the steps to reprogramming. Okay.

Brad (00:34:17):
You called it reconditioning or reprogramming,

Thais (00:34:20):
Exactly. Yeah, I’ll use those terms interchangeably, but we can actually call this exercise, autosuggestion reprogramming. It’s, it’s a, it’s a term. I have a background in hypnotherapy. And I didn’t like the power dynamics of hypnotherapy. People are so dependent on you. So instead, I like to teach people how to recondition their own mind without having to go into weekly hypnotherapy session. So this is one of those tools. So first step plan your limiting belief iand its opposite. So let’s just say like, to keep it simple, we say, I am not good enough. Okay? So what the opposite is I am good enough. And if anybody doesn’t know the opposite, you can just go search like antonym tool on the internet. For some people it’ll be a burden or I’ll be abandoned. No, I’m worthy of connection, or I’ll be trapped, I’ll be free.

Thais (00:35:02):
Right? So you just find the opposite step one, step two, we have to speak to the subconscious mind. I find it so funny, like, a lot of people will focus on affirmations, but affirmations don’t help. They’re not doing much, honestly. Hmm. Why? Because the subconscious mind speaks in emotions and images. It doesn’t speak language. And here’s a really good example of this. If I say to you, Brad, whatever you do, do not think of the pink elephant. You think of a pink elephant. Your conscious mind here is do not, your subconscious speaks emotions and images. It sees the image of the pink elephant, I imagine. So nobody’s waking up being like, I’m gonna tell myself I’m not good enough all day and see how I feel. Right? We were talking about that earlier. Like that’s nobody’s choosing that. These are subconscious, preexisting programs.

Thais (00:35:50):
So we have to speak to the subconscious mind. Well, how do we do that? Well, the, the subconscious, as I said, speaks in emotions and images. And guess what the container is for all emotions and images. It’s memories. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. If I say, tell me your favorite childhood memory, and let’s pretend you’re like, I was playing on the playground with my siblings and my friends, you would see the images of the slide and of the playground. And as people recount memories or old stories, they smile, they laugh, all the emotions are still intact or subconscious stores those emotions in there. So step one, what’s the limiting belief and its opposite? Step two, we need to fire and wire new neural networks. Mm-Hmm. We need repetition, emotion, and imagery. Okay? It fires and wires new neural pathways and really gets them cemented in there. So we need 10 for repetition memories for emotion and imagery.

Thais (00:36:44):
Just 10 memories, that’s it. Of when you felt good enough. So you could be like, I showed up as a friend this way yesterday. I achieved this goal last week. I showed up for my health in this particular capacity. They don’t have to be these like, astronomical breakthroughs. They can just be things where you feel a little sense of like, Ooh, that was good enough. I feel good about that. And step three, we record it into somewhere we can listen back to it. And we listen back for 21 days because research into neuroplasticity shows us 21 days to start forming those new neural pathways that become solid enough that they’re programmed into us. So three steps. What is your core belief and it’s opposite? Step two, what are 10 memories to support? They can be recent memories, really old memories, doesn’t matter. 10 memories to support this new idea about yourself. I am in fact, good enough. Step three, listen back for 21 days. And I really hope people try this who are listening because it takes three minutes a day to listen back to it in the morning. And I promise if people really do it for that 21 days and they stick it through these painful, terrible ideas we’ve been carrying about ourselves for sometimes decades will actually go away. And it’s incredible. So that’s, that’s the, the overarching theme of the tool.

Brad (00:37:58):
Incredible. Right? So whatever the limiting belief is, we’re gonna work on that specifically. You said, the example was I’m good enough or I’m deserving. Then you pull up memories of where you felt appreciated welcome, connected and all that.

Thais (00:38:15):
Exactly. Right. Exactly. 10, 10 memories to support the new idea.

Brad (00:38:20):
So if I’m going back to the incongruence between my goals and my subconscious needs, and one of my goals is hey, I need to earn more income. And then I ask you the question, um, why am I not there right now in, in step two, um, to recondition that I am, I’m losing the, the connection here to, yeah. Is there, is there a limiting belief in there where I don’t, I don’t deserve it? ’cause I am, I I don’t talk enough or, or something like that? Yeah. Oh, I

Thais (00:38:56):
Can fix that one. Well, you already found the limiting belief. I’m not, I feel like I’m not deserving.

Brad (00:39:01):
If that is in fact it, which yeah, I, I don’t did that show up? Don’t think. I don’t, I don’t think so, but okay. I feel deserving. And then, I’m still trying to, um, connect the dots here. I’m just making a personal example, but like,

Thais (00:39:15):
Let’s do it together.

Brad (00:39:16):
Sure. Yeah. So,

Thais (00:39:17):
So what comes up for you? So, so tell, let’s do it really specifically. ’cause you this more specific you get the better. So are, do you feel comfortable sharing a financial goal, like to save a million dollars or like, what would be, or you can even say X amount of money and keep the number in your head, but like, what’s that, that number, that goal for you? Do you know?

Brad (00:39:35):
Well that’s a good question because I can’t spit one out right away, so maybe I have some work to do to be more, structured and quantified, honestly. Yeah,

Thais (00:39:44):
That helps too, because sometimes if you’re not clear because your subconscious speaks emotions and imagery, you’re not even like engaging your subconscious mind and goal setting if you don’t have a picture of it, which is sort of another benefit to the process. But, but we’ll keep going with it anyways. Okay. So let’s say your goal is to save much more money. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and save and invest much more money. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So why haven’t you achieved that goal yet? If I were to ask you what comes up for you?

Brad (00:40:11):
Yeah, this is, this is great. I’m on the spot. I guess, um, maybe with my free-spirited personality and self-directed career path, I’ve always been able to do what I, do, what I like and what I want and what I’m called to do and, and motivated by. Uh, but maybe there’s a compare and contrast where, I’ve not taken a path where I can grind away and get to this stated goal, which I’m actually self-sabotaging because I’m unwilling to, you know, compromise my, um, my free time and my freedom and things of that nature. You know, I don’t want to buy into the, the rat race. And I should mention like, I started my career at the world’s largest accounting firm after I graduated college, I lasted 11 weeks. I said, this sucks. This is BS.

Brad (00:41:06):
I hate this tie on my neck. I can’t stand it. I don’t like the commute to the building. But most people at my age, college graduates studying accounting and going off to this career, they would’ve stuck it out for one year, two year, 12 years or 20 years and then say, oh, I’m burnt out. And I quit at age 40. I only made it 11 weeks. And I switched over to training for this crazy sport of triathlon because I wanted to be a professional triathlete. So I think that’s a, a character revealing insight where I completely, you know, disengaged from a very carefully cultivated career path. And, maybe I’m doing something similar even today, <laugh> years later. Right.

Thais (00:41:47):
That subconscious comfort zone in a sense. Well, so, so there’s a couple things in here. So you said you’ve very clearly spoken to the I’m trapped core wound or, or core belief because you were like, oh, I am unwilling, I’m gonna be trapped if I have to spend all this time in the rat race. First of all, it’s a belief that I have to be in the rat race to make more money. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, which is interesting. Mm-Hmm mm-Hmm, <affirmative>. Um, which I would challenge that ’cause there’s ways of working smart, not necessarily hard in the rat race, and second of all, you could hear in your language so clearly that you were like, I’m gonna feel trapped. Now, interestingly enough, we went back and obviously you and I kind of like glazed through the personality needs questions, where we talked about some of the needs and we got some really core ones outta there that were very clear. My hypothesis is that if we talked about the other three further, ’cause we only did the top two, the

Brad (00:42:34):
Triggers. What do you love to read and study? What gets you excited to talk about? Yeah,

Thais (00:42:38):
Yeah. What trigger exactly. And, and my, my hypothesis would be that you’re gonna see that you have a freedom and novelty need as well, which are also personality needs. And so you actually probably have both things kind of working against you, where like you’re, you see that committing to try to make more money will take away from, from novelty, take away from freedom. And on top of that, ’cause we can have a trigger that actually goes in alignment with our personality needs. Oh, I’m gonna feel trapped if I have to do that. So the limiting belief would be I am trapped. How do those resonate with you so far?

Brad (00:43:10):
I’m, one thing that’s resonating is I know a lot of wealthy people that seek freedom, novelty and are have a, you know, very similar kind of, um, haphazard career path. So I, I think I’m, I can embrace the idea that I don’t have to go back to the tall building and wear a tie to pursue my financial and security goals going forward. Um, so I guess that still leaves me stuck because I’m not gonna say that, um, making more money is going to entrap me.

Thais (00:43:41):
Yes, exactly. So, but now your conscious mind understands that, right? Oh, what about myself, subconscious mind, your subconscious mind doesn’t have the programming for that, right? You’re mm-Hmm, <affirmative>. So that’s how we’ll talk about how to pattern those things in. So, so can you actually, your conscious mind, I think if, if, and again, tell me if this was your experience, but your conscious mind was able to reframe it and be like, oh, I see that there’s people who have freedom and have wealth, but when you first brought it up, your emotional resistance to it was like, I don’t wanna be in the rat race. I quit this job after 11 weeks. It was BS. Like, you, you could feel the resistance there. So for sure the beliefs that

Brad (00:44:16):
Feel the resistance, anger, resentment, frustration, <laugh>, <laugh>, 30 years later, it’s still there. Oh boy.

Thais (00:44:22):
Yeah. So it makes a lot of sense to me so far. And honestly, if we just had like, you know, there’s probably other things you’d find in there if we kept digging, but like you can already see this taking shape, you can see that like your needs are health-related, so you spend a lot of money there. Makes sense. Then you get really into the space of wanting your novelty and freedom. That sounds like that’s an important dynamic for you. And if you see, and if your historical programming is, well, making money means the rat race, that’s gonna take away from my freedom. And then you’ve got a limiting belief that says, and I’ll be trapped. So this is cool, like now we have this sort of thing that we’re part starting to to shape together here right now. The cool reframe. So if you’re trying to actually get your subconscious mind in your needs section of it, you know how we did the 50 and 50%, that first 50% in your needs, you need to start programming in.

Thais (00:45:13):
And you do this through repetition and emotion over time in regards to your needs, that making more money will give me financial freedom so that I can be financially free. That actually when we talked earlier about getting more specific, that should actually be your goal. I’m gonna get more specific and, and my goal will be whatever amount of money I need to set as a goal to feel financially free. So through passive income, through, you know, other income streams that are, you don’t have to be working like a dog or a hamster on a wheel. So that would be a great way to start your goal. Now you’re actually impressioning with your subconscious mind in the process. And then you would start linking your needs. And this is the re-patterning part, right? You wanna do this across that 21 day period. You would start writing out how does making X amount of money and getting financial freedom actually support freedom for me, actually allow me more novelty, allow me more time to focus on health and fitness.

Thais (00:46:08):
How does that support my journey in these areas? And, and as you write all those things out that you can find that link those things together and as you reread them and the morning is a habit for 21 days, you’re gonna find that you naturally have inspiration and motivation because you’re getting your conscious and subconscious on the same board in communication with each other. And you’re not gonna see that, oh my gosh, going into this space is the rat race and it takes away my freedom and my novelty and these things I value. And so your subconscious rebels instead, you’re gonna feel like these things can come into alignment on that needs section. Does that make sense so far?

Brad (00:46:44):
Absolutely. Yeah. That makes sense. Listeners, you get, you get this, I get it. I feel it

Thais (00:46:50):
And I think it’s cool ’cause we’re doing a live example for people, which is like, I think the best way for people to learn honestly, is through seeing these things. The flip side is then you’ve got this limiting belief. I will be trapped if I try to make more money. So again, you’re just reconditioning from the belief side. And you’ll hear some overlap here. ’cause you have a freedom need and a trapped wound. And so the opposites will be together. But you’ll say it is possible for me to be more free by generating financial freedom and making more money. And you want 10 reasons or pieces of evidence or memory why this is true. You can come up with people that you’ve seen that have shown up this way, like any memory of an, an experience you’ve, you’ve seen or been a part of. Or even things like, oh, you know, when I have more financial freedom in my life, I feel more free emotionally. Like there’s so many pieces of evidence, you’ll be able to drum up there and then again listen, record that into somewhere, listen back. So if you record the needs part and the linking part with your needs to your goal and you record the opposite of that limiting belief and you just listen back to these things on a daily basis for 21 days, I promise you it will change your motivation around money.

Brad (00:48:00):
I am also thinking of examples like, you know, getting in better shape and, you know, taking better care of the body of the other major goals that people have. And then there’s a disconnect because they associate the gym or running on the trails with pain and suffering from past programming and failed weight loss efforts or whatever you wanna call it.

Thais (00:48:26):
Exactly. And, and I wanna, we’ll talk, we’ll touch on that in just a second. I wanna say one other thing that’s so interesting when you’re doing your needs work of linking. So obviously you’ll see how you can have more financial freedom by achieving these goals and how that relates to freedom itself. But you can even look, ’cause health and fitness, were big ones for you once to link those. You can be like all the cool treatments and therapeutic things I’ll have access to, to improve my health and fitness and recover quicker from injuries when I have more financial freedom. And if you link those things, see how you’re lining up health and fitness with making more money as well, like, there’s all kinds of cool treatments out there. Like the red light therapy or you know, there’s a million things, but hey, you’ll have access to more things that can repair, um, injuries that can support your recovery time, that can, you know, by having more money to choose Mm-Hmm, <affirmative>. So as you link those more and more, you’ll see a lot more of that momentum in a shorter period of time. But to your point with, with other people, right? That’s where people don’t achieve their goals from. They associate the goal as being uncomfortable or making them feel not good in some way. So when we can unpack what those things are and then we can link them together by reframing and and repetition and emotion that in for 21 days, that’s where they’re gonna see that needle move.

Brad (00:49:44):
Yeah. I think there’s a certain segment of people that have, uh, you know, a distaste for the inequitable distribution of wealth in modern society. And so there’s kind of a rich-shaming or disgust, and maybe that’s, uh, something that can hold someone back whereby a, a different belief would be that, um, you know, money’s just an economic, economic exchange and you contribute to the betterment of society, and you’re allowed to earn a reward for that. Um, putting aside the ramifications and, and ways that we can improve society in the coming years, um, but it doesn’t have to be, um, nasty and, um, you know, uh, uh, uh, uh, obnoxious, uh, where we see the, the excesses and, you know, some of that stuff really is distasteful.

Thais (00:50:33):
Absolutely. And you know, what’s so interesting is, like some other core beliefs you’ll see specific to money are things like, like less so specific to goals, but money can be a big goal that we set, right? Are, um, if I want money, I am bad. I am greedy. Yeah. Um, money, there’s not enough money to go around. People will judge me if I make more money or try to make more money. Um, other things around money too. There’s so many, I can’t earn money can be one for people. I can’t save money can be a limiting belief around money for people. I’m just trying to think of other money. Ones actually have this like online course and there’s 30 core beliefs around money. Um,

Brad (00:51:09):
I I’ve tried to start a business and it failed 20 years ago. So I can’t be entrepreneurial.

Thais (00:51:18):
<laugh>. Exactly. That’s the, that’s the, I will fail belief. I know we touched on that one, but that one can be huge there. Money doesn’t grow on trees. Um, if I get more money, people will be jealous of me or envious, I’ll lose friends. Like, you have all these like, common beliefs around money and, and the, there are gonna be things I understand like that point of view, where people, of course there are some not great people that are doing some not great things in the world. I get that.

Thais (00:51:45):
But unfortunately, our system operates around money. And I actually personally find it to be self-harming in its own sense to say, okay, this is one of the core areas of my life. I can’t get out of the fact that society that I’m wanting to be a part of operates with money and for me to ignore and repress the need for money and think of it as exclusively bad, or I’m bad if I care about it. Unfortunately, two things are gonna happen. One thing is that you’re giving whoever you’re stressed about in the first place, more if you’re power. Because if there’s greedy people doing bad things, you’re saying, yeah, I’m actually gonna dislodge from the system in caring, and now you can have more of my money and more of my suffering because I’m not paying attention to my life in that area. The second thing that happens is when we get into this position where we end up outsourcing, like, Hey, this is a bad thing. We’re just gonna ignore this area of our life as a whole. Unfortunately, if people wanna be really honest about this there, if you’re not paying attention to your money area of life, guess what you’re gonna have to do in five years? Go ask somebody for their money. Go take from somebody in a way that maybe is actually kind of greedy or selfish because you are in survival right now.

Thais (00:52:56):
So every area of our life actually matters. Like I say, we have, you know, this is a known thing. We have seven areas of life. We have career, we have financial, we have mental, emotional, spiritual, physical and relationships. And unfortunately, when we ignore or deny any one area of our life, we’re gonna pay for it later in some kind of difficult way. You can see the obvious, right? Maybe we have career guy Bob on Wall Street and he’s crashing career and financial, but never takes care of his health. One day, has something wrong with his heart and has to go take two years off working to go deal with his health issues, right? Whenever we ignore, deny, deflect one of those seven areas, we will pay for it later and we’ll have to go about trying to get that area better or give it attention in a more desperate way, which can lead to actually the things that we’re fearing in the first place.

Brad (00:53:42):
Yeah, I guess I can identify that distraction is one of my coping mechanisms with the integrated family systems a approach and, and the distractor comes out. And, um, if I’m feeling, let’s say stressed about money matters, um, I will go take care of my health and fitness instead. And, and so maybe I’m trying, I’m not trying to hijack the whole show, but I do feel like there’s a lot of value to have a personal example here. So if I can contend back to you, let’s say that I feel like my beliefs around money are healthy and not holding me back. I contend that money, definitely leads to freedom. Um, I feel like, um, capable and not lacking confidence. However, I’m still here with one of my stated goals that I, that I have not achieved, which is I would like a certain level of financial freedom. I don’t have to quantify it right now, but I’d really like to have that never be a stressor again for the rest of my life. And what does that mean? It means I don’t have any debt. I’m doing this, I’m doing that. So if I’m not there and I’m going through this whole exercise in the show, and I’m gonna, maybe I’m bullshitting myself. ’cause you, we said that the very first line of the show. But if I think my beliefs about money are healthy and empowering,

Thais (00:55:03):
Yeah.

Brad (00:55:04):
Can I, can I put that over to Thais for more help?

Thais (00:55:06):
Yeah, absolutely. So I think there’s, so there’s two parts first. So the part is that I think the freedom, health, all those things, not being like think about this first, right? Your personality needs are not really about money. There’s actually like wealth building, financial freedom as personality needs. Mm-Hmm. So obviously that goal is gonna take away from freedom from health. All those things we did. Now, it, the reframe the insight is like the aha moment. But the real work happens when you re-pattern it or the 21 days. When you link those things here them back, that’s where you’re gonna see the momentum and the growth, right? Not just from having the awareness now. ’cause that’s conscious, mind awareness, conscious mind’s, logical thinking, mind subconscious is the programmed mind. The second is there are, there is the, I’m gonna be trapped and that the core limiting belief will affect you.

Thais (00:55:48):
But, as we, as you just brought that up. Now, the other thing that also showed up, as you said, I distract, okay, the distractor. So internal family systems, I’m fairly familiar with, um, um, the distractor has its own core wounds and needs. Okay? So that part has its own core wounds. Usually when we distract, it is a means of trying to get out of a place where we feel out of control or helpless, which is a core belief and into a space where we have control. And that’s really the need that we’re trying to meet. So we’re trying to get away from the discomfort of feeling like we are out of control. And so I’m curious if we dig into that deeper together, do you feel like you are really well equipped to make financial decisions? You know where to start, you know, that those action steps, the roadmap. Like you, I would think that if you have really clear financial goals, so if you were like $300 a week, I’m gonna invest in these things and here’s how and here’s why. And you had that map for you, that would feel easier. But if it’s more this like background goal where you don’t have a roadmap or clear specifics, you probably think you wanna do it, then you feel helpless thinking about it, and then you just distract yourself from it. Mm-Hmm. How does that sound for you so far?

Brad (00:57:01):
That is, that is pretty accurate, ma’am. I think you got me here, <laugh>. I appreciate that very much. And I think that, uh, you know, my conscious mind, my knowledge base is sufficient, so why am I not executing at the highest level? And that’s where the, um, the distraction comes in and, you know, the incongruence there. So I think one thing I’m getting out of this taking takeaway is like, perhaps place greater importance on financial freedom as a vehicle to meet my needs that we already covered. And again, another analogy just to broaden the conversation for all listeners, like, if you’re not at your desired fitness level and health status, and you know everything and you’ve read all the books and we know that junk food’s unhealthy and we know that exercise is really good for you, but it’s not happening, place greater importance, greater emphasis on it. And then probably we need to get into like habit building too, uh, to, you know, maybe I should get up every morning. I don’t have any problem exercising every morning. There’s no need for tools, tricks and motivators. But maybe I should get up and spend seven minutes reviewing online banking situations. Just like I review my, the health of my right foot, which is recovering from an injury. I mean, I could, I could redirect easily.

Thais (00:58:28):
Exactly. And, and it’s funny ’cause we’ll all show up really well in our personality needs. Nobody has to tell us, right? Like your health, your fitness, nobody has to tell you. Those are the places where we’re really organized. We’re reliable, we show up really effectively. It’s the places that are just conscious desires, not subconscious personality needs that will struggle. And so, you know, you can see it in your routine and all the things we talked about, right? Like that you naturally show up for those things. So, you know, for you just to be more specific, the funny part to me is because you’re, you’re actually learning about financial dynamics. So there’s an element there. So yes, linking it is huge. All the stuff we talked about re removing the limiting beliefs, getting out of learned helplessness. But I actually think that just making something tangible is a really great way to get out of learned helplessness.

Thais (00:59:13):
So I would ask you in our conversation now, what is the specific thing or set of things that you’re gonna do on a daily basis until it’s programmed into your subconscious mind as the new normal for 21 days? Is it gonna be, I’m gonna review my bank statements on Mondays and Thursdays? Is it gonna be, I’m gonna do something to invest my money or be mindful of what I’m saving and, and reinvesting in two on Tuesday, Thursday? It’s like, what’s gonna be those, those commitments for the 21 days? Because once you pattern it in, that’s gonna be your set point.

Brad (00:59:43):
Those suggestions that you just coughed up are perfect. I’m gonna do exactly that, which is beautiful. You know, immerse more deeply rather than distract and avoid. And I now realize and admit that I’ve done that my whole life. Like in the old days when they didn’t have online banking for you older listeners, you can reference your credit card statement would come in the mail at the end of the month. Thais probably doesn’t know any of this ’cause I know it’s way past you, but, and it would be like, it would be like either a thin ish envelope or it’d be a really fat thick one if you went on vacation and you had a nine-page statement and I’d get to the mailbox and pull this thing out and it would just be a sense of dread and perhaps disgust and despair and all these things because I had no, I didn’t have a close connection to, um, my spending habits when I’m just busting around with plastic until 30 days pass.

Brad (01:00:41):
And then here comes the balance due and, you know, an interest rate if, if you don’t pay that balance. And then compare and contrast to my friend, my lifelong friend, Dr. Stevie. He takes out a Google spreadsheet and types in each credit card transaction each month. And I said, Steven, do you know that you can download a QIF file and put it into QuickBooks and it’ll categorize your transaction. You don’t have to type anything. And he says, oh no, I prefer to type it sell by sel to go and feel that $170 sushi bill on Tuesday the eighth, to, you know, further connect with his expenditure habits. And you might guess, uh, what category he falls in with his disciplined, extremely disciplined spending, saving, financially astute preparing for, uh, security and all those things that I aspire to.

Brad (01:01:34):
But I’m like, type in each transaction in a cell when you can download it a there in four seconds and spit it right into your thing <laugh>. And then even when I do download the QI files, I don’t even read ’em anyway. It’s like, I’m just, I’m just going on to my, my next workout. So you’ve had a great breakthrough for me here, and I hope listeners, uh, you can nod your head right now and kind of see some of these patterns. You use that word a lot at, at the outset. And it’s so, it’s a heavy word because, um, that means we’re walking around as robots with three to 5% conscious and then, you know, 95%, uh, zombie land <laugh> not, not, not too not too appealing, you know,

Thais (01:02:14):
Honestly. Yeah. But also when people start learning about their subconscious and how it works, then your conscious mind can rewire your subconscious, your conscious mind has the capacity to change it. It’s just that when we are just running around doing the same old things, it becomes more difficult. And you can hear in your friend that you mentioned, like he probably his personality needs are probably financial security, wealth building, comfort. Like you can hear what somebody’s needs are in that kind of space. Yeah.

Brad (01:02:38):
But mine are the same. Thais. Wait, wait, me too, me too.

Thais (01:02:42):
Financial security. Those are desires. Remember, it’s in what people are doing already, right? What they’re desiring.

Brad (01:02:48):
I’m full of crap. I’m fooling myself <laugh>, you know, Hey, I want exactly what you, how you behave. No, I don’t, I don’t because I’m not doing it <laugh>

Thais (01:02:58):
And because it’s, you know, you can even feel the resistance to the spreadsheet or typing it in, right? Like, I don’t do it. ’cause that probably feels like it infringes on freedom or novelty or health or fitness or all the other things that you’d rather be putting your mind to instead. Yeah.

Brad (01:03:12):
Yeah. That’s brilliant. And again, just for, to bring like an exercise example in, because I deal with that so commonly for so many years where people are stuck just like I’m reporting that I’m stuck on the financial side. I think one of them is that it often seems like an all or nothing. Like, oh, I gotta change my personality and become a fitness freak, but I’m not a fitness freak. I like to read a book by the fire when it’s a cold winter day. And it’s completely easy to recalibrate that by saying, look, can you, can you spend two minutes on an exercise, uh, effort before you go read by the fire? Whatever the, you know, Atomic Habits number one bestselling book right now is always talking about those baby steps to help you rewire. And similarly, you’re asking us for a three minute commitment for 21 days to completely change our life. I’m totally in on that.

Thais (01:04:03):
Absolutely. And I wanna share one thing just for the health and fitness. Obviously it’s your demographic, but, um, around eating, so not necessarily fitness goals, but around health and food. What’s so interesting is most people’s earliest subconscious associations and programming around food is what being breastfed. When people are breastfed, there’s a, I

Brad (01:04:23):
Don’t have that good of a memory. I, uh, yeah. I

Thais (01:04:25):
Can only, well, you’re subconscious, you’re subconscious, deeply stored, even if you’re conscious mind doesn’t know. And, and breastfeeding when there’s a child being breastfed, the mother and the baby both produce a tremendous amount of oxytocin, which is the bonding neurochemical. So the, our earliest programmed associations to food are emotional connection, comfort, because we’re being held and cradled and safety. And so often people, when they’re starving for junk food, they’re starving actually for emotional connection, comfort and safety. Yeah.

Brad (01:05:01):
Let’s pause. So everyone can write those three down. <laugh> emotional connection, comfort and safety equals Y especially indulgent reward food, but uh, you know, just, just food in general. Yeah,

Thais (01:05:15):
Exactly. And so often what’s happening is when people are going through these emotional eating habits, or they struggle with that kind of dynamic where they’re unwilling to give up, like not good foods for them that they know are maybe infringing on their fitness goals or journey. Often what’s actually happening is there are deeper buckets. I like to think of our needs, like buckets that need to be filled. And if you had proactively more emotional connection in your life, perhaps through more vulnerability or just through more prioritization of that area, a more regulated nervous system, which bring you a deep sense of comfort and safety, when you’re not in fight or flight all the time. Hmm. And when you’re prioritizing things that bring you that sense of comfort and safety, not, you know, overspending or outliving your means or putting yourself in a work environment that makes you miserable, you know, these types of things. We have a more innate sense of comfort and safety. And then when we have that emotional connection need met, you’ll actually find that these three things that a root cause level have a huge impact on people’s emotional eating habits.

Brad (01:06:13):
Right. And so much futile energy and efforts toward change without addressing these core issues is gonna be tough, you know? Yeah. Like the whatever Weight Watchers where you go to the meeting and you say how many points you ate and all that nonsense, boy. Yeah. Yeah.

Thais (01:06:33):
Every, I, I tell people all the time, every single thing that our, our subconscious mind does is a strategy to get its needs met. Everything <laugh>. So like, even if you look at, one thing I would always laugh at is like, people would come in sometimes and they would tell me, oh, Tice, I’m here. I have to work on my anger issues. I have anger issues. And I’d be like, okay, what work have you done so far? And they’d be like, well, I was in anger management and they told me to count to 10 and hold my breath or like these crazy things. And I’d be like, okay, you counted to and held your breath. Well then

Brad (01:07:00):
I not that guy have it <laugh>, right? Like what was it? Uh, Marky mark on the, I just saw a movie clip where they were teasing him and you know, baiting him and he was counting to 10 and he just beat the crap out of everybody after he finished his 10 count. Yeah.

Thais (01:07:15):
<laugh>, you’re like, how did that work for you? And so what happens is your conscious mind cannot out will your subconscious mind. It can reprogram, but it can’t out will. And that’s why people will be like, I have to stop eating emotionally, or I have to not be angry. And it doesn’t work like that. You can’t count to 10 and, you know, 10 count your way away from something. So what happens is if you look at unhealthy anger, people yelling or things like that, what’s so interesting is yelling, guess what needs your subconscious is intending to get met? To be seen, to be heard. I get big and loud and I raise my voice. It’s my, my primitive subconscious trying to get seen and heard. Can you guess what else might be in there?

Brad (01:07:54):
I guess respected

Thais (01:07:57):
Exactly right. Often respect to take our power back and is set a boundary often, you know, and, and in my history of working with people, I never saw somebody struggle with big anger issues that didn’t first struggle with feeling seen and heard. ’cause they weren’t communicating and conveying themselves, telling their needs to people honestly and transparently. They didn’t have a good time with boundaries, believe it or not. So anger became their strategy to set a boundary. Mm-Hmm. They would hold things and hold things and not say anything explode. And that was their way of feeling respected or, you know, connected and honest about what’s going on for them. So what we do is we work on root cause. We get them with better boundaries. We get them to communicate more clearly to people so they can get seen and heard, open up a little more about your needs, be a little more vulnerable. You’ll feel seen and heard. We get them to work on making sure that they’re assertive so they feel respected or like they have their personal empowerment. And now anger goes away because anger was only the symptom deal with root cause those surface symptoms fall away. But those have to be patterned into the subconscious mind.

Brad (01:09:00):
Yeah. I mean, it’s a great way to set a boundary, which is 70 meters further down the path. And it should have been in the first place. So then, then the anger comes out. It makes a lot of sense.

Thais (01:09:12):
Yeah. And also self-sabotage is our lives and relationships.

Brad (01:09:16):
Right? Right.

Thais (01:09:17):
But there’s no actual such thing as self-sabotage. It’s just a subconscious strategy to give different needs met than your conscious mind intends. Right. It comes right back into that same sort of theory or principle.

Brad (01:09:26):
So wasas that the quote you said every self-sabotage is a strategy of the subconscious mind to get their needs met.

Thais (01:09:34):
Exactly. Yeah.

Brad (01:09:35):
Exactly. Yeah. Right. And we should put needs in quotes, because they’re not, you know, it’s not used in a, uh, typical positive context. It’s like these leftover, destructive <laugh> needs, if you will. Yeah,

Thais (01:09:50):
Yeah. Or it’s not even that the needs are destructive, it’s usually that the adaptation or the strategy we have to try to get them met is not the healthiest one. The need is never bad, it’s just the way we’re going about getting the need met may be kind of dysfunctional.

Brad (01:10:02):
Yeah. Got it. So you talked about how you were in private practice and then you transitioned over to this wonderful Personal Development School that 40,000 people have gone through with 88% success rate.

Thais (01:10:16):
Yes. 88 point, incredible. 7%. Thank you. Yeah.

Brad (01:10:20):
Um, let’s, let’s hear more about how we can get involved with the personal development school.

Thais (01:10:26):
Yeah. So, that is at personaldevelopmentschool.com. If anybody wants to, they can go to personaldevelopmentschool.com /free trial and you get to just go in there and like nosy around and see what’s going on and if you’re interested, and actually go through some of the courses and check them out. But I’ve written 60 courses on all personal development related topics, whether it’s achievement, goal setting, self-sabotage, procrastination, relationship issues, boundary issues, communication, all kinds of stuff. Um, specifically personal development for your subconscious mind, because my bone to pick with some of the systems that we try to deal with a lot of things at just the conscious mind level and it feels sometimes futile or frustrating. So every course is about how to actually program these things into your subconscious without having to go see a hypnotherapist or without having to go into years and years of therapy. So you’ll get a lot more rapid results in the process.

Brad (01:11:19):
And what is it, you said it’s a self-paced course, which is 88.7% success rate is amazing for, I mean, people leaving to their own devices. So it must be a very compelling and very well presented, but what does a course journey look like?

Thais (01:11:34):
Yeah, so people can come in, they get an onboarding quiz, it helps ’em discover what area of their lives they wanna work on and fix. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And then after that they’re recommended specific courses that are about how to fun, function and, and thrive and break through those problems or challenges. The courses are in there, they’re all mapped out, but then we actually have like a ton of support. So the course material itself is self-paced, but every single day we have either myself teaching a class live, like a webinar where people can come in, ask their questions. I do them on three days of the week. And then I have other people that I’ve trained that are counselors or coaches who come in and they also are there. So Monday through Saturday every day there’s live support for, for students and we separate from that, have small, um, peer support groups, and they’re all part of the whole, um, process. So there’s peer support groups on different topics. You can go in there, and again, counselors, coaches are leading them and really helping to answer any questions or give any support throughout.

Brad (01:12:29):
It’s like a, it’s like a virtual college campus with 40,000 people walking around, going to class, going to their tutors. I love it. Yeah. Thank you. I’m gonna, I’m gonna promote the heck outta the personaldevelopmentschool.com. I can already tell. It’s, it’s gonna be super awesome.

Thais (01:12:43):
That’s so cool. I really appreciate that. Thank you.

Brad (01:12:46):
I mean, Thais, you, you brought the heat today. I want to thank you so much. It was incredibly valuable show. I know a lot of it was me as the, as the Guinea pig, but I hope the listeners agreed that you can, you know, ask yourself these questions and realize how how many games we’re playing with our conscious mind and not getting to the heart of things. It’s, it’s pretty stunning and I think it’s time for transformation, people.

Thais (01:13:10):
Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. I really, really enjoyed chatting with you, and this was a really fun episode.

Brad (01:13:16):
Thais Gibson, the personaldevelopmentschool.com that wasn’t taken that you URL Oh my gosh,

Thais (01:13:22):
How lucky is that? That actually it’s not the personal development personal, I think that one too. Personal development school.com. Exactly.

Brad (01:13:29):
Love it. All right. Go there right now after listening to the show, everybody, thank you so much. Thank you so much for listening to the B RAD podcast. We appreciate all feedback and suggestions. Email podcast@bradventures.com and visit brad kerns.com to download five free eBooks and learn some great long cuts to a longer life. How to optimize testosterone naturally, become a dark chocolate connoisseur and transition to a barefoot and minimalist shoe lifestyle.

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