Stop Self-Sabotage to Actually Reach Your Goals
Episode 484 | Host: Emilie Aries | Guest: Thais Gibson
How do you rewire your subconscious to make real progress on your goals?
Imposter syndrome, limiting beliefs, self-sabotage — it’s easy to get in your own way on the journey to achieving your most ambitious personal and professional goals. What’s happening in our heads to render our resolutions so often unattainable? Why are our goals sometimes unmet despite our best efforts?
Thais Gibson has answers. The founder of the Personal Development School, Thais is a counselor who holds a PhD and certifications in an astounding 13 modalities, including CBT, hypnosis, and somatic experience. She is the leading expert in attachment therapy, and her very own Gibson Integrated Attachment Theory is extending the frontiers of psychology.
Thais’s deep knowledge of how our brains form connections and pathways ties directly into not only understanding why we self-sabotage but also how we can train ourselves to stop.
The conscious mind vs. the subconscious mind
The great news is that we can become the people we aspire to be when we make those big plans. However, changing our behaviors calls for rerouting neural pathways we’ve been reinforcing since childhood. Counseling can go a long way to helping secure your desired outcomes, but this can be accomplished on your own, too.
Here’s what you need to know about the conscious vs. the subconscious minds:
First of all, the conscious mind is responsible only for 3–5% of your daily thoughts and emotions. The subconscious commands the other 95–97%.
Unsurprisingly, then, the conscious mind isn’t capable of overpowering the subconscious. This means that if your conscious mind wants something (to hold better boundaries at work, say), and what your subconscious mind believes contradicts this (your job will be in jeopardy if you begin setting boundaries), then your subconscious is going to win. Every single time.
While your conscious mind responds to language, your subconscious mind does not. Thais finally confirmed my long-held opinion that affirmations aren’t backed by science: telling yourself you can do something isn’t going to convince that stubborn 95%, which learns via the repetition of images and emotions, not through words.
The cycle of “self-sabotage”
Thais is quick to point out that “self-sabotage” is a bit of a misnomer. It implies we’re setting out to derail our dreams, which isn’t the case. It might come as a comfort to learn that what’s getting in the way is deep in your subconscious. While this means it’s not your “fault,” per se, it’s still your responsibility to resolve.
When we face a ton of resistance while trying to achieve something—let’s stick with “build better workplace boundaries” as an example—it’s because we’re wired to fear what we think the outcome will be. That aversion comes from occurrences early in life that began creating these particular pathways. As we keep bowing to the assumption that was proven true once, or twice, or many times in our young lives, we create deeper and deeper ruts that make that belief—“if I stand firm with my boundaries, I will fail”—our truth.
That truth was formed with the singular, often outdated aim of keeping you safe at any cost, so when your conscious mind pushes back, you experience cognitive dissonance, and, as we established earlier, your subconscious is going to win that battle. The only option, then, is to create new pathways that match what your conscious mind desires.
What are you afraid will happen if you achieve your goal?
If it sounds like it takes work to essentially stop believing what you’ve believed for ages, you’re not wrong. But, Thais stresses that it is possible and it only takes three key steps.
Before you start on the steps, you need to determine your aversion. Do this by first identifying the pattern you want to change. What is it that you want? In keeping with our example, this would be something like, “I want to learn to have healthy boundaries at work.”
Now, why haven’t you achieved this yet? What are you afraid will happen if you follow through? Maybe it’s that “If I do less, they’ll realize I’m not good enough to be here.” Keeping that in mind, you can start the steps.
Rewire your pathways to change your behavior
Step one: What is the opposite of your underlying fear? For our example, it’s “I am good enough.”
Step two: Speak about a memory—perhaps of playing outside as a child. You aren’t just saying words, right? You are actively envisioning the colorful jungle gym, the kids running around, the laughter. You’re also probably feeling the emotion you felt in that moment.
You’ll recall that imagery and emotion are the cornerstones of the subconscious. Memories are the containers for those components, and they are what you use to begin creating a new neural pathway.
Come up with 10 memories. They don’t have to be life-altering experiences—fleeting moments are just fine—but they should all confirm the opposite of your fear that you determined in step one. So, in this example, you would need to tap into 10 memories that evoke a feeling of being good enough. Write down or voice-record these memories in detail.
Step three: Repetition is the other component that makes subconscious pathways really stick, so that’s what you’ll do next. For the next 21 days, set aside five minutes a day to listen to or read through your 10 memories. Just when you wake up or just before bed is ideal since that’s when our minds are most suggestible.
Thais has shared this process with tens of thousands of people, and it works. Not only do you build a new neural pathway that aligns with your conscious mind’s goal, replacing cognitive dissonance with resonance, but you also stop reinforcing the old pathway. Like a muscle, the path you’re ignoring begins to atrophy.
In our conversation on the podcast, Thais and I go even deeper into the neuroscience behind the subconscious mind and so-called self-sabotage. We discuss the societal and systemic barriers to this work and how she guides patients for whom the steps prove particularly difficult.
I want to hear your thoughts. How has self-sabotage shown up in your life? What work have you done to align your conscious and subconscious minds, and how might you implement Thais’ teachings? Weigh in on the Courage Community on Facebook, join us in our group on LinkedIn, or reach out to me directly!
Related links from today’s episode:
Watch Thais’s daily YouTube videos
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[INTRO MUSIC IN]
EMILIE: Hey, and welcome to the Bossed Up podcast, episode 484. I'm your host, Emilie Aries, the Founder and CEO of Bossed Up. And today I am excited to be sitting down with Thais Gibson to talk all about overcoming self-sabotage…
[INTRO MUSIC ENDS]
…and how we all can be the people we want to be, that we aspire to be, that we aim to be when we're, you know, writing in our planners or making New Year's resolutions. This episode is about why those New Year's resolutions, frankly, rarely come to fruition, and what we can do to actually change our behaviors by changing our subconscious neural pathways.
Thais Gibson is the person to talk this through with me because she's a counselor, bestselling author, and co-founder of The Personal Development School. She's got a PhD and over 13 certifications in modalities ranging from CBT, NLP, Somatic Experiencing Internal Family Systems, to things like Shadow Work and Hypnosis. Thais has nearly a decade of 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 to transform their lives.
Thais is a leading expert in attachment theory and her cutting edge research is extending the frontier of psychology. With her modern Gibson Integrated Attachment Theory. Through her academic training and client based research, Thais has created renowned and inspiring courses for personal development, relationships and for all areas of life. Thais is on a mission to empower individuals to reprogram any limiting thoughts and behaviors to create long lasting and enlightening transformation.
Thais welcome to the Bossed Up podcast.
THAIS: Thank you so much for having me. Excited to be here.
EMILIE: So tell me a little bit about your story. How did you get into this work and helping folks really thrive in their personal and professional lives?
THAIS: Yeah, I definitely came from probably a background where there was a lot of chaos. And I think from a very young age I was super interested in like, why people behave the way that they do and what makes people tick and lights people. And so, I went through like a really deep journey of introspection myself at a pretty young age and came out of that journey of introspection being like, oh, wow, there's a lot of information, I think, out there in the world that we're not being told.
And it's not because it's like being hidden on purpose or something, but just because I think, like, you know, the way our system has evolved over time. And the big focus area for me around that was the difference between the conscious and subconscious mind. You know, a lot of like the western modalities of healing and therapy have a lot to do with dealing with our conscious mind. A lot of, like, talk therapy. Let's talk about things. But there's two really important facts to note.
One is that your conscious mind cannot out will or overpower your subconscious mind. So for anybody who's had the experience of being like, I'm going to quit eating chocolate, or I'm going to get healthy, or I'm going to, you know, they tell themselves all these different things that they're going to do, but they find themselves falling back into those same old patterns. It's because we can't will our way into new habits or out of bad habits. We can only really recondition the systems that are at play. And the second thing is that your conscious mind is responsible for three 3% - 5% of your daily thoughts, emotions, belief patterns, decisions, and your subconscious is 95% - 97%.
So I spent a lot of time originally in the field of hypnotherapy, is what I originally specialized in, and then really teaching people how to recondition their own subconscious without having to be under a state of hypnosis and really just helping people understand, like, if there's patterns I want to break, if there's things I want to change, I can't just be targeting the conscious level of mind. And I was, like, um, obsessed with that concept because it helped me so much overcome and change things that I wanted to work through or move in a different direction from. And so that's a lot of what sort of got me into this field to begin with.
EMILIE: That's exciting. I mean, it's also a little alarming to hear that, right? Because we think we have so much more power and agency over our behavior than we do. And yet I can also see people who would feel relieved to hear that, which is like, okay, if I've been trying to self help my way through overcoming procrastination or dating toxic people, or finding myself, like, constantly overworked and burnt out, no matter where I work, no matter what job I get, there's some hope, there, isn't there, that, like, maybe looking at that subconscious part of our minds can unleash some new strategies. Right?
THAIS: Absolutely. And so much of how we make decisions that lead us into these things that you were talking about. So burnout or overwhelm is because we all have a subconscious way of operating. So, basically, our subconscious mind is very survival oriented, and it really is focused on how to keep you safe, not how to keep you happy. And so what ends up happening is when we go through old patterns in our lives that are familiar, even if they're not effective, from, like, a happiness point of view or a joy point of view, our subconscious says, well, we've been living, we've been surviving. So these things that are familiar, we're going to keep recreating them because we know that we're surviving, and thus they are safe.
And this can range from having really bad boundaries in the workplace or having habits where we take on too much all the time in a whole bunch of different forms or places where we sabotage different areas of our lives. And even though our conscious mind may know better or want something differently, like, oh, I don't want to feel this burned out or tired all the time, you know, if we don't break those habits at a subconscious level, it may be because they're just familiar to the subconscious mind, and thus, we're working on some level to stay in that comfort zone of familiarity.
EMILIE: Right. Yeah. And just to be clear, because I think there's a lot of folks in your industry who are, like, intuitive healers or who are more on the, like, what some might call woo spectrum, right? Like, a little more woo, woo. Like, yes, there's something to be said about the value of thinking beyond western medicine. And you've got a PhD and you're certified in, like, 13 different modalities, and you're a therapist. Right. So I just want to kind of credential yourself here while we. Before we dive in.
THAIS: Yeah, technically, I'm a counselor with a PhD. and, yeah, 13 different modalities and a whole bunch of different things. And, yeah, to be clear, like, this is very scientifically based. You know, a lot of our decisions, like, we're talking, like, neuroscience here more than anything, and also really understanding that, like, when we have these conscious dynamics of saying, I want to change my behaviors, well, if we have these subconscious programs where, like, we've had neural pathways fired and wired for decades that are, hey, we're going to stay in the same kind of pattern where it feels safe for us to people please and take on so much because we're afraid if we stop people pleasing, we're going to be disliked or rejected, then, you know, on some level, if we have those habits or belief patterns, then we keep recreating those dynamics, and our conscious mind can observe these things and say, ouch, I'm a people pleaser, I should stop. But we actually have to leverage how to recondition, how to refire and wire new neural pathways in order to see transformation and change.
EMILIE: Love it. Okay, so let's dive into how to do that when it relates directly to self-sabotage, because I love the idea of helping demystify self-sabotage because it really afflicts quite a few high performing women in our community in terms of setting ourselves up to fail in some ways or feeling like we just take on too much, that there's no way we can possibly be successful. So how do you define self-sabotage? And what's the underlying cause that makes that such a recurrent loop that's hard for us to get out of?
THAIS: Yeah. So there's no such thing as self-sabotage in the way that we are used to seeing it. Okay, so this is the first thing, I think, that's so important. Nobody wakes up consciously and says, today, I'm going to sabotage my life. [LAUGHTER] So what we experience as self-sabotage is actually a form of cognitive dissonance. It's when our conscious mind intends one thing, and our subconscious mind has different priorities or programming.
So an example of this could be, let's say somebody says, I have a health goal. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to be healthier on a daily basis, eat healthier food. Well, if your subconscious mind says, I'm not interested in that, because your subconscious programs are revolving more around, let's say, you're really interested in social connection, or time with family, or comfort, or security, because we all have these different subconscious needs that are actually driving all of our behavior all the time.
Then what happens is that system of needs that your subconscious has in its programming, which is often part of our own identity, says, no, we're not going to go change our patterns over here. That's going to take time away from these priorities we have here, like social, family, comfort, security. And so now we have this experience of push pull where our conscious mind is trying to will us towards something. Our subconscious mind has different motives. And at the end of the day, the subconscious mind, it can't be outwilled or overpowered. So it's going to end up back in its same old habits. And by the same token, it's not just our needs that drive our subconscious output. It's also our belief system.
So if we also have this limiting belief, for example, that says, well, I will fail or I'm not good enough, or I'm going to be rejected, when I try to take action in this new way, then your conscious mind can intend all the things, but your subconscious mind will say, no, we have to keep ourselves safe from that rejection or from not feeling good enough. So we're actually not really going to take action. And we'll experience, when we have this cognitive dissonance between our conscious and subconscious mind, whether it be based in our need system or our beliefs, we'll experience this as resistance, procrastination, sabotage. And it will feel very frustrating because we know better at a conscious level of mind, but our subconscious mind, again, is just running the show.
EMILIE: Well, it sounds like it almost calls into question your whole identity. Right? If you're running with that example around exercising more, but somewhere foundationally deep inside, you feel like if I were to take time to take care of myself, that would be selfish. I need to be there for my family. I need to be serving everyone around me. I need to prove my value because I am a hard working person that's foundational to my identity and who I am. Then if you start saying, I'm going to take care of me and go to the gym, that calls into question your whole identity of your beliefs and, like, who you are at some foundational level, right?
THAIS: Exactly. And our identity is often shaped by the ways we adapted to past experience. So, basically, when you look at, like, how part of our belief system and identity forms everything that we're exposed to through repetition and emotion fires and wires, neural pathways. So we tend to make decisions based on what gives us relief or positive emotion. And then when we have a lot of repetition of it, it forms, literally neural networks, and that becomes a part of who we are.
And so if, for example, somebody exactly like you just said, right, has this, like, foundational identity of being, like, the hard worker, I have to show up for everybody. You know, it's probably because at some point in their own childhood or upbringing, they had positive emotional associations repeatedly there, conditioning them to go, I get love or I get support, or I feel needed and important when I do these things and show up this way. And so then through repetition and emotion, we associate that as being a positive thing, and it becomes our conditioning.
And if by the same token, now we're trying to change that with our conscious level of mind, despite decades of this programming, conscious mind says no, we're going to learn to take ourselves into consideration and have a healthy degree of selfishness, and the subconscious says, no, we have all this programming here that says that that's bad and that it's good if we do it this way. And so that's where we'll feel that resistance. And there's ways to really unpack this and transform this. So we don't have to end up in that same old path of feeling like we can't change our patterning.
EMILIE: Let's talk about those. Because it's so clear to me, when you describe it that way, that our identities are socially constructed, too. Right? This isn't just about our own behavior. This is also about what was reinforced, among our parents or parent like figures when we were growing up or among our workplaces. Like, what gets us that social reinforcement is up to the society and culture that we live in. Right? And so how does an individual begin to change? Like, how do you begin to change that unconscious programming if it's been shaped so foundationally by your environment?
THAIS: Yeah, great question. So. So we know, first and foremost, from a neuroscience perspective, repetition and emotion, fires and wires. So we know that anything that we've had for a long period of time is fired and wired on one side of things. Okay, so what somebody can do first? Well, I'll break it down into a few steps.
Step one is they can ask themselves, what is the pattern that they want to change? Okay, so let's just use it as a simple example, that the pattern I want to change is to learn to have healthy boundaries and make more time for myself. Okay? And then we ask ourselves question number two, which is, why haven't I changed this yet? What am I afraid will happen if I do? And it's actually a way of making the subconscious contents of our mind conscious. We're bringing it to our conscious mind's awareness. And usually we'll hear things like, I'll be rejected, I'll be abandoned. I'll be a burden to people. I'll be seen as selfish or bad. Like, we can actually really hear those deep fears that are part of what our conditioning was running from and are avoiding in the first place.
EMILIE: And just as a note on gender around that, I bet that would be really hard for men to answer because we don't make it that okay for men to talk about being afraid in this world.
THAIS: I know.
EMILIE: Right? And so I could see a lot of women, like, who are listening to this podcast easily answering, okay, what are my unconscious fears here? Let me tap into that. And I could see my husband and my brothers and my dad and my son someday being asked that and saying, fear's not there. There's no fear there. So I'd be curious if you've seen that in your practice.
THAIS: Yeah, we can highlight it this way. For anybody who's feeling that way, is it can just be your aversion. What is your aversion. And really to be perfectly honest and straight up, like, the aversion is a fear, but it doesn't mean that with a fear that we feel, like, terribly afraid. Right? We don't have to be experiencing this, like, huge emotion, but we are actually trying to evade an outcome thing, something that we're afraid will happen to various degrees, even if it's a small fear. But that's just been repeatedly there for a long time.
So it's a great, great, insight, though. So you can look at your fear, aka your aversion, the thing that you're adverse to happening. And so then you take a look and you'll be able to source that belief. Like, I'm afraid of failure, or I'm afraid of not being good enough if I do something like that, I'm afraid of being seen as bad or selfish. So hopefully, people can start to really clearly see what that concern truly is.
And then once we've sourced it, we move into sort of part two here, which is we can actually recondition the fear or the aversion. And when we do so, we can actually change how we show up. We remove the block that was preventing our conscious mind's goals from getting into alignment with our subconscious programming.
EMILIE: Okay, what on earth does that look like? Are we talking, like, exposure therapy? Cause how do you rewire a neural pathway like that?
THAIS: Yeah. So I'll give it an exact tool, and it's a three step tool to do this. So that first sort of part is like, part one. And those, you know, couple of questions there are to, like, bring up the concern. Once we have that concern, we now have a three step way to solve for it. Now, this term is called auto suggestion. It's a form of belief reprogramming. And there's a couple things you want to know first. So, number one, your subconscious mind does not speak language. Your conscious mind does.
So, for example, if I say to you, whatever you do, do not think of the pink elephant, like you probably picture a pink elephant. So your conscious mind here is, do not. Your subconscious speaks in emotions and images. So when people are doing affirmations as a form of trying to change their beliefs, it's kind of garbage, because, and with all respect to affirmations, but it's just when you look at it like it's your conscious mind speaking to your conscious mind.
EMILIE: Okay, I've been saying this for years, but I didn't have the science to back it up, so I just feel very validated. That affirmations are not neuroscientifically founded. So, great. I feel validated. Thank you for that.
[LAUGHTER]
THAIS: There you go. So we start with, like, that, fear. Okay, so step one is we start with the fear. Now that we know that the subconscious speaks in emotions and images. And let's just say, for example, somebody's fear was, I'm not good enough. Okay? So they're like, I want to change, you know, being burnt out and taking on so much, but I'm scared that if I change, I'll be seen as not good enough. Okay, so step one, what's the fear and it's opposite? So I'm not good enough. I am good enough. Very easy.
Step two is we need to leverage repetition and emotion and imagery, because repetition fires and wires emotions and images are a part of that firing wiring process. But they also speak to our subconscious mind. Right? And so what we do here in step two is we're like, well, what's the container of emotions and images? How do we leverage emotions and images? Well, interestingly enough, every memory we ever have, is just a container for emotions and images. So if I were to say, tell me your favorite childhood memory. You might say, oh, I was playing on the playground with my friends, and you would see the images of the slide and the playground in your memory. And we've all seen when somebody retells an old story and they laugh or they smile or they, you know, their body language changes, and it's actually because your subconscious stores those memories with the emotion intact.
And so now that we know this, we say, okay, step one, what's that? Core belief and its opposite said, okay, I'm not good enough, I am good enough. Step two, I need ten for repetition, memories for the emotions and images of times I actually felt, good enough. Okay, and they don't have to be really big. They don't have to be like, oh, this huge award you got. They can just be little things that elicit that emotional response. Neuroscience shows us it takes about 21 days to really deepen those neural pathways. Where they're hardwired enough, they're not going anywhere.
So, step three is that once we have those ten memories, we record them somewhere, like into your phone, where you can listen back to them and you listen back to them, ideally in the morning or evening before you go to bed, like that first hour or last hour, because our brain is producing more alpha brainwaves at that time, even some theta brainwaves. And we're more suggestible, we're more open to being imprinted at that time. And so when we're trying to get out of these old beliefs that are blocking us from moving in the direction of our dreams, and a lot of really, our beliefs are those big glass ceilings in our lives that are preventing us from really seeing change. All we need is that three minutes a day, once we've done this exercise once, to listen back to these ten pieces of evidence and or memories that speak to your subconscious mind and feel and see about how actually we are good enough. And here's that proof. And it will actually rewire over time.
Now, a lot of people, I've done this with many, many, many people, over 40,000 people have come through our programs. Like, I've seen a lot around this. A lot of people where they go wrong is they get to day 14, and they're like, I feel like I don't have this belief anymore. Because you'll really see it pick up momentum around day seven and seven to 14, you'll start feeling like, I feel good enough, because we also have this mechanism in our brain called the reticular activating system, and it's sort of the filtering system of your brain.
So when we actually start looking at how we are good enough, it starts working on our behalf, too. It starts noticing more things throughout the day when we do feel good enough. So people will be like, oh, yeah, I've got this. No neuroscience says you have to make it to day 21, because that's where we actually have those neural pathways hardwired enough. And neural pathways are kind of like muscles. They atrophy over time. So if you're not working out your bicep, your muscle goes away. So if we're not feeding that old narrative of, oh, I'm not good enough it atrophies, and if we're plugging in this new narrative, it really wires in there. So we need that 21 days, even if we feel good at, like, day 14.
EMILIE: Yeah. That's so interesting. What do you say to someone who's working this process, which I love, and struggles to come up with ten stories? Because I've had clients who say, you know, I'm just a procrastinator, I'm a perfectionist. This is how I am. This is how I've always been. And if I were to ask some of those clients, well, give me ten stories in which you weren't procrastinating, they might look at me and laugh, right?
THAIS: Yeah. It's such a great question. So, the first step, remember, we did part one. Let's say somebody's like, well, I'm just a perfectionist, that's how I am. You would actually say, well, what am I afraid will happen when I'm no longer a perfectionist? And that sources, that underlying fear first. So you might hear in there, they go, well, I'm afraid that then people will think that I'm a bad worker, or that I'm a bad parent, or that I'll lose everything and I'll fail, or I'm afraid that I'll make a mistake and be rejected in front of everybody.
So first we source that fear, and then if somebody's really stuck on that and they have to start, they can't seem to come up with those pieces of evidence or memory, then we just start more general and get more specific over time. So, for example, if we use that original belief of I'm not good enough, we don't just say, I am good enough. We can say it's possible for me to improve. And then as we start to build resonance with that and we see the evidence of how it's possible to improve, then around day seven, we can ramp it up to going, I am getting better. I am improving. And then by day 14, as we start to have that momentum, then we get to the time of going, I am becoming good enough, or, I am good enough. And that's the hack. If we feel a little bit of resistance.
EMILIE: Interesting. And so what does that accomplish? That sort of lowers the bar a little bit? If it feels too lofty to provide that much self love. Right. And that much self affirmation. If your negative beliefs are just so loud that it feels, like, out of reach to give yourself that opposite narrative, kind of sneaking closer to something.
THAIS: Exactly. And then we keep it, like, realistic. And it goes back, like, when we tie it all together, we want to remember that. Like, if we have a big goal, we're trying to change something, we're sick of a pattern, we want to break it. And yet we find ourselves going through that same pattern over and over again, which I'm sure everybody's experience at some point, in some form, it's really because your conscious mind is trying something that your subconscious is out of alignment with. It has these blocks that are in there. And so what we're really trying to do is clean out those blocks, because then you'll have cognitive resonance on the path to your dreams. We'll actually feel like it's more effortless and will release a lot of that friction. So by starting more general and getting more specific, all we're doing is we're making sure that we don't have this emotional resistance. And when someone's in emotional resistance, like, if somebody ever says, I don't have any proof for how I'm good enough, I can't think of one thing. It usually actually just represents the degree of emotional intensity that they've been living in, that belief.
So usually we can find, like, at least a few things of how we're good enough unless we've had a lot of pain there and a lot of discomfort there. And so we've really come to believe that about ourselves. And at its core, the reason that we hang on to belief so hard is because if you look at our mind, our mind is survival wired. So I often say to people, like, let's say you're in the forest and you are walking through the forest to get to where you have to go, and you see a bear and you run away and the bear chases you, but you get away and you're safe. But the next day you have to walk that same path in the forest. You don't think like, oh, I remember this really beautiful flower I saw next to the bear yesterday. You remember the big, scary bear in its teeth.
And so we're actually wired to hang on to uncomfortable experiences, a little more than positive experiences, which, of course, as a human being, like, that's survival oriented, but it's not happiness productivity oriented. It can keep us really stuck emotionally on different things. And so, you know, we actually have to, on some level, in my opinion, to achieve our full potential, be mindful of the fact that that's the way that our mind works and be doing the work to kind of pluck out those unnecessary or unhealthy programs kind of like weeds in a garden, because we already know our mind is functioning that way, it's going to hold on to those negative things and it's going to block us with those negative things accordingly.
EMILIE: Yeah, I mean, that causes such heartbreak for me because I think about how that might resonate with folks of different lived experiences in our society, right? Like, if you have a history of trauma, if you have institutionalized trauma, right? Like, if we're talking about racism, sexism, all kinds of isms, right, that just disproportionately dole out stress in our world, basically what you're saying is, those folks are gonna have to work harder to not be self-perpetuating mechanisms, right? For that mindset to kind of hold you back. So it's almost like, if you were born in a really privileged position and have less trauma and stress for whatever reason, there's less work to be done. There is that sort of what I'm hearing?
THAIS: Unfortunately, that's the case, yeah, unfortunately, it's the truth. Like, when we go through things, that imprints the subconscious. The subconscious will hold on very tight to it, and it does what I call, like, reprojecting. Right? Like, if you just look at a very obvious example, let's say somebody grew up in foster care. Okay, so they were abandoned. Well, as an adult, that person's gonna have huge abandonment trauma. And what happens is as soon as they get close to somebody, they start, oh, the last time I felt this vulnerable to somebody, something bad happened. So now I'm going to reproject out and assume that I'm about to be abandoned all the time. And you'll see that trauma come up in relationships.
Now, there's, like, countless examples of that, whether it comes to work, relationships, family, all sorts of things. But that's there for people. And it's there because it's like the bear in the forest. Like, you're trying to keep yourself safe and protect from getting hurt like that again. But honestly, it really is a call for people if they've been through things. It's almost like if somebody has a health crisis, like, you have to take extra good care of your health, not like, oh, yeah, I'll just eat junk food because I'm going through this. And unfortunately, when we have that, like, trauma from the past, it's not your fault. But it's such a call for care, because if we don't care for it, you'll see it just perpetuates so often. And so it's such an important thing to do.
EMILIE: Yeah, I hear what you're saying. It's like, it's not your fault, but it is your responsibility if you want to break that cycle.
THAIS: [INAUDIBLE] so often. [LAUGHS]
EMILIE: I think a lot about cycle breaking as a parent of little ones, because I think there's a lot of transformation that can happen intergenerationally, dependent on someone's willingness to go here. So I wanted to ask you about that, because if I could just prescribe you to a few family members, that would be great. Obviously. I'm sure I could use a little bit of this myself, too. But of course, my laundry list starts with, like, how do I get these particular people to do this work?
Like, this is not something we can hoist upon others, right? Or foist upon others. We need to, like, what does it take for someone to recognize that they're in cognitive dissonance and to begin even trying to work on this. Like what are some of the signs? And is it always that, that person has to bring themselves to this work? They have to want to change and transform?
THAIS: It's such a great question. So in all honesty, yes, somebody has to want to do it themselves for sure. But what's interesting is because we also understand that like, our subconscious has different needs and priorities. Everybody has this internal system of needs and it's sort of like the hierarchy of the things we'll prioritize. And everybody's is different again according to their programming. So for some people, their big needs are like personal growth, achievement, wealth building, things like that. For other people, it's like social connection, emotional connection, family. Everybody's wired a little bit differently there. And you'll see it based on like our habits. So you'll see like where we spend our money, where we spend our free time, what we naturally read about or focus on. These are all actually mirroring back to us and showcasing to us what our hierarchy of needs is.
Now, interestingly enough, people are very likely to take action behaviorally if it's linked to their needs. So it's because these are our subconscious needs. So like, let's say for example, your biggest needs just we’ll pretend are, you know, family achievement, career growth, okay, things like that…
EMILIE: I mean, you're not far off. You're not far off. That was a good guess. Yeah, you're a quick read, a quick study. I like it.
[LAUGHTER]
THAIS: …So let's say that those are big needs. You know, if somebody came to you and let's say you had no other interest in this work, which obviously you do, because here you are doing this kind of podcast and this sort of work. But like, let's just say it was new to you, if somebody said, oh, this is really going to help your family and it's going to help you with career growth, and make more money, and here's how and why we're much more likely to take action than if, for example, somebody's needed are like comfort, security. And we go to them and we're like, hey, this is going to help you grow and change. Somebody's going to be like, no, that's going to take away from comfort and security.
So we want to position things to people based on what we can see about their needs. And also by that same token, if somebody actually had comfort and security as their two biggest needs, which is actually fairly common, you might say, hey, this work might be, you know, a little confronting at first, but ultimately you're going to be way more comfortable with yourself, more secure in yourself. Like, it's really going to help you feel that inner sense of peace. You know, if we can position things to people based on clearly what their needs and interests are, based on how they spend their money, their free time, what they talk to people about, what they're constantly reading and researching about, people are more likely to take action.
EMILIE: So funny, because I grew up, so to speak, professionally in the world of political advertising, and everything you're talking about is identity politics, too. This is how we market to people to get them to vote, right. It's like, here's what matters to you, and here's how I can position this candidate or this product or service as a value to you. So I bet this makes you a super advertiser as well in your own.
THAIS: Realm, because I actually don't do any of our advertising. But it's. I will say, I definitely am good when people come into our programs, if they're feeling stuck at getting them to take action so that they can have those breakthroughs based on, like, sort of seeing those archetypes. But it definitely makes sense that it would be, like, a good advertising thing, too, for sure.
EMILIE: Well, tell my listeners where they can learn more about you and the amazing work you're doing at The Personal Development School.
THAIS: Yeah. Thank you. So I'm at personaldevelopmentschool.com and we have all sorts of interesting resources there that people can check out for free. And then I'm on YouTube at Personal Developement School dash Thais Gibson and I put daily content out there and my instagram @peronaldevelopement_school
EMILIE: Well, we will link to all of those great resources in today's show notes. Thank you so much for sharing so much so quickly. I feel like we covered so much in 30 minutes here. This has been such a pleasure speaking with you Thais. Thanks for being here.
THAIS: Thank you so much. This was so much fun.
EMILIE: For links to everything Thais and I just referenced, and for an entire transcript and corresponding blog post that breaks down the great advice and wisdom Thais just shared, head to bossedup.org/epsiode484. That's bossedup.org/episode484.
And now I want to hear from you. What do you think about everything we just talked through? Have you had experienced that cognitive dissonance between who you are and how you act? And if so, what have you done to begin to transform your subconscious mind? How might you take action, like the actions Thais described today, to really align your unconscious or subconscious mind with your day to day behaviors.
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Let's keep the conversation going, as always, in the Bossed Up Courage Community on Facebook and in the Bossed Up LinkedIn Group. And until next time, let's keep bossin' in pursuit of our purpose, and together, let's lift as we climb.
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