On yesterday’s episode of the “Unapologetically Outspoken Podcast,” Stephanie and I talked about the power of the subconscious mind and how re-wiring your subconscious can literally change your life. Before I started intentionally living my life according to the principles of the Law of Attraction, I really didn’t know anything about how critical and powerful the subconscious mind is, and this was a concept that took a while for me to fully grasp and understand.

I had always looked at my subconscious as the involuntary part of my brain that I couldn’t control. While it’s true that the subconscious mind does control involuntary actions like breathing, digestion, and muscle memory, it also controls your feelings, thoughts, emotions, beliefs, and attitudes towards pretty much everything in your life. When you think about it, your subconscious is the basis of your entire identity because it shapes the things you think and believe about yourself, whether negative or positive.

Understanding this concept was a breakthrough for me. I’ve always been of the mindset that since my conscious mind is the “logical” part of my brain that controls my decision-making and the way I rationalize or react to things, all I have to do is focus on directing and controlling my conscious mind to make deliberate choices to change my habits and behaviors, regardless of my feelings or emotions. Basically, I believed that if I just shoved my feelings aside, worked hard enough, and committed myself to outperforming my mind, I would achieve success – kind of like trying to control my life by force. And, to some extent, it worked because I’ve been successful in many endeavors throughout my life, but it always took a lot of hard fucking work to get there, and it was always with a “struggle” mindset.  

When I came to understand that the subconscious mind is ruled by emotion and instinct, I realized I was basically sabotaging myself by constantly suppressing my emotions. At first, I thought this concept was totally confusing. How the fuck am I supposed to allow myself to be ruled by my emotions and at the same time not feel the emotions that are causing me to have my core beliefs in the first place?

The lightbulb for me was realizing that the subconscious mind controls without judgment. So, regardless of whether my emotions are positive or negative, to my subconscious they just “are.” Everything I think and believe is just a fact to my subconscious, which means that whatever I truly believe about myself, my abilities, and my situation in life will become my reality. When I learned that the key to changing my thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors was through focusing on my feelings from a different perspective, it was like, holy shit, it’s really just as simple as convincing my subconscious mind to accept the beliefs, emotions, and habits that I want to experience in my life.

Simple, right? In theory, sure, but in reality, “simple” does not equate to “easy.”

When I first started getting into the Law of Attraction, I thought it was just about saying positive affirmations over and over again to myself, hoping that eventually I would believe them. However, as I read more and more books on the Law of Attraction and manifesting, I realized that one of the common themes in every book is a chapter or a section about addressing your limiting beliefs. Regardless of the book, almost every author who’s worth reading will tell you that until you fully dive into recognizing and working through your limiting beliefs, nothing in your life is really going to change because you will always have the same underlying habits, fears, memories, motivations, etc. You can say positive affirmations all day long, but if you don’t change your limiting beliefs and truly feel and believe the things you are affirming as your reality, they won’t mean shit.

What is a limiting belief? In short, it’s a false belief you have about yourself that limits or prevents you from pursuing your best fucking life. Most of these beliefs are stored in our brains based on memories from early childhood, and they’ve stuck with us throughout our lives. As we grow up, our limiting beliefs become the core values and beliefs that we define ourselves by, and they tend to resurface over and over again in all of the decisions we make and all of the thoughts we have, without us even realizing it.

Things like “I want to exercise, but I don’t have time to fit the gym into my schedule,” or “That’s so cool you left your career to start something new, but I’m not strong enough to do something like that,” or “I’ve tried everything, but no matter what I do, I just can’t lose weight,” or “I’m not good at spelling because I went to a shitty public school, and the teachers sucked,” or “I’d love to start my own business, but I’m not skilled enough to be an entrepreneur.”

All of these statements can be traced back to some kind of limiting belief that you learned earlier in life, either from an experience you had, comments you heard, or the way you were raised. Essentially, limiting beliefs are just excuses. And the worst part is they are excuses that you truly believe about yourself that result in you leading a mediocre and unfulfilling life. They are excuses that enable you to stay in your comfort zone and sabotage your own success.

Limiting beliefs are fucking dream killers.

One of my primary limiting beliefs has always been that if I don’t work really hard and constantly push myself to excel, I won’t be successful in life. And for me, “success” has always been defined by having a stable career with a secure paycheck. When I started doing the work to understand my limiting beliefs, I realized I could trace this mindset back to my childhood and the memories planted in my subconscious as a result of my dad dying when I was 2 years old.

My mom didn’t have a career – she had a job. And, it was a job that she really didn’t like. For years after my dad died, I recall watching my mom struggle to make ends meet until she met my stepdad. My mom and I talked about this not too long ago, and she doesn’t remember it being that bad, but my perception of the situation growing up was enough to imprint in my memory that we were struggling and she hated her job, and we were in that situation because my dad had died.

So, I decided early on in life that I would never depend on a man to support me because I didn’t ever want to be in a situation where I had to rely on someone else financially. In turn, I developed the core belief that in order to achieve success and make money, I needed to have a stable career and not just a job. I believed this to such an extreme that, for many years, having a successful career came before everything else in my life – my family, my relationships, my friends, my health, etc. When I started digging into understanding this limiting belief, I realized how it has subconsciously affected every single one of my failed relationships and all of the important choice I’ve made throughout my life, up until this past year.

People think I’m “adventurous” or “gutsy” because I’ve changed careers several times and started over from the bottom each time. On many occasions, I’ve been told by friends that they “wish” they had the guts to just pick up and start over when they’re not happy in a job. Sure, I have taken more risks career-wise than a lot of people might, but what most people don’t realize, and what I only recently realized myself, is that most of the career changes I made throughout my life were always done with a safety net in place.  

When I left my position in the corporate world at Disney, it was for a government job with more security in a municipal fire department. I basically traded a 401k for a pension and a job where I couldn’t be fired unless I did something illegal or against policy. When I left the fire service and became a cop with LAPD, yes, I was starting over in a new career field, but I was still working for a government agency under the same type of parameters, with a secure paycheck and a pension. And, when I left LAPD to go work for a small police department in Washington State, I lost my seniority and my rank, but I was still entering a job in the same career field, with a government paycheck and the opportunity to build a pension. So, even though I made these risky career moves with starting over multiple times, they were all fairly calculated risks because it had been hardwired into my subconscious since I was a child that it was a non-negotiable for me to not have a solid career with guaranteed financial security in order for me to feel successful.

I share this example of my limiting belief about my self-worth being tied to my career and financial security because it subconsciously impacted all of the major decisions I made throughout my life, both good and bad, and I had no idea it was even happening. You can’t rewire your brain and change your subconscious if you don’t understand or acknowledge what your limiting beliefs are. Once you identify your limiting beliefs, the key is to learn how to recognize when they come up (because they always will) and how to use your conscious and subconscious mind to work together in breaking old habits and beliefs and forming new ones.

When I made the move from Washington State to Texas, I did it without having any kind of job security in place at all. It was the first time I really challenged my limiting beliefs about money and my career defining my identity. In doing so, I had to address the fears, motivations, and habits that had been ingrained in my mind for over 40 years. More importantly, I had to trust in myself to have faith in my abilities to manifest an incredible life for myself without having my career to fall back on. Although it was scary and uncomfortable as fuck, changing my mindset and reprogramming my subconscious allowed me to become open to opportunities I never would have even considered or dreamt of if I hadn’t been willing to take action and do the work to change my deep-seated beliefs.  

I no longer equate my life success solely with career and financial success. Do I want to make a lot of money and have financial security? Fuck yeah. And I’m working on making that happen. But my job no longer defines me, and I’ve developed a healthier perspective when it comes to creating balance in my life. Instead of working a shit ton of overtime hours and feeling tired and stressed out all the time, now I do fun stuff like writing these blog articles, recording podcasts, raising some goats, and pursuing hobbies that lift my spirit and contribute to my overall wellbeing.

I’m not trying to sound like Mary Poppins here. Addressing your limiting beliefs doesn’t mean that they just magically disappear, and your life is suddenly all sunshine and rainbows. Working on sorting out your shit is hard. My limiting beliefs constantly try to squeeze their way back into my subconscious all the time. Keeping them at bay is something I frequently have to intentionally work on. I also have a lot of other limiting beliefs swimming around in my subconscious that I haven’t even started to address yet, and despite the fact that I believe in the Law of Attraction, I’m still a regular human being, facing the same issues and problems as everyone else. I’m just learning new tools to handle things in my life more effectively.  

Even if you don’t believe in the Law of Attraction, and you aren’t into any of the woo-woo shit that I often write about, the way the subconscious mind work realistically just comes down to actual science and facts. So, if shit keeps happening in your life that you aren’t happy about, or you’re not making progress on the goals that you set for yourself, maybe it’s time to take a deeper look inside yourself and start examining the excuses you’ve been making for why you are or aren’t doing something. You might be surprised by what you find out about yourself.

Unapologetically Outspoken,

Tara