Hello Wild Soul, in this episode of the Wild Soul Grove Podcast I explore what it really takes to create lasting change in the subconscious mind, and why willpower on its own is never enough.

I begin by looking at why surface level tools, like repeating affirmations, often do not work the way we hope. On the conscious level they can sound positive, but if your subconscious does not feel safe, or does not believe what you are saying, it will quietly hold on to the old pattern. I explain why real transformation has to reach the part of you where your beliefs and habits are actually stored.

From there, I introduce three core ingredients that the subconscious needs in order to change, safety, emotion and repetition. I talk about how safety opens the door to change, because your system will not let go of familiar patterns if it feels threatened. I then explore the role of emotion, how genuine emotional engagement gives new beliefs and experiences enough charge to register deep within you.

We also look at repetition, and why one powerful moment is rarely enough on its own. Your subconscious learns through what you come back to again and again, so we explore how consistent practice, over time, turns new ways of thinking and feeling into your new normal.

Throughout the episode, I connect this back to our earlier explorations of the conscious and subconscious mind, and the nervous system. You will see how safety in the body, emotional truth in the heart, and repeated practice in your daily life all work together to rewire your inner world.

By the end of this conversation, my intention is that you understand not just what needs to change, but how to work with your subconscious in a way that is kinder, deeper and much more effective.

Key takeaways

1. We have explored the difference between the conscious mind that thinks it is in charge and the subconscious mind where your patterns actually live.
2. Understanding the nervous system, especially the roles of the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems, is essential for creating the safety needed for change.
3. Rewiring beliefs in the subconscious requires three things, a sense of safety, emotional engagement and consistent repetition.
4. Change is far more effective when your thoughts, emotions and physiology are aligned, rather than relying on mindset alone.
5. Practices that create safety in the body and genuine emotional resonance give new beliefs a chance to take root.
6. The journey of transformation rests on the three pillars of safety, emotion and repetition, which together support lasting subconscious change.

Foreign.

Welcome back, Wild Soul, to episode three of this deep dive into the subconscious.

Over the last couple of episodes, we've looked at what the differences are between the conscious and the subconscious.

We've also delved into the nervous system to understand when the sympathetic nervous system is needed and when the parasympathetic nervous system is needed.

And we've also looked at why these patterns persist, specifically the feedback loop, and how compounding problems and thoughts and beliefs and then allowing for them to come true helps solidify these beliefs in our subconscious.

This week I want to try and illustrate how change actually happens and, and try and show you the honest mechanics of rewiring.

People often try to change beliefs through thinking harder.

So let's take confidence as an example.

When people want to become more confident, we often think of using affirmations and speaking words out loud.

I am more confident.

I am a confident person.

I am a confident person.

And whilst admirable, these techniques aren't brilliant at rewiring the subconscious, which we now know holds those beliefs and those habits.

Because whilst we sit in the conscious mind and we think more and more about something or we speak more and more about something, we're not really affecting change in the very place that, that it has been created, that it has been stored.

And that's because these beliefs, they live in the body, not just in the mind.

So if we don't believe in what we're saying, if we don't feel what we're saying, then it's very unlikely we're going to change.

You see, they're both emotional and physiological.

And the funny thing is, is that it's actually really simple to change once you know how to change it.

So I often see it as three ingredients, three key aspects to allow for subconscious change.

Aspect number one is safety.

The body needs to soften before the subconscious opens.

And what I mean by that is again referencing this parasympathetic nervous system.

We need to feel safe before we are going to be able to open up.

A classic example is if you've got something that you're worried about or somebody that you're worrying about, think of a time where you've got a classic case, a fight or flight, perhaps a family member's sick or you're waiting on a phone call for something.

When you try and fall asleep, sleep is very, very difficult, very, very difficult.

And you stay in very light sleep and you may dip in and out a little bit more, but you don't get to the same depths of sleep and the same rotations of sleep cycle that you do when you're feeling safe, when you feel comfortable.

And so safety is the most important thing.

And that's why is the, the, the technique for rewiring the subconscious is meditation.

Deep resistance breathing allows us to enter that state of safety and allows the subconscious to become open to us.

Ingredient number two.

Aspect number two is emotion.

The subconscious learns through feeling, not logic.

Now I want you to think about a time that you realize where a habit's come from, or a feeling about yourself, or a thought or a, a belief about yourself, that thought, that habit, or that situation and occurrence that came through some sort of feeling, some sort of emotion.

So perhaps it was fear, perhaps it was rejection, embarrassment, shame.

A good example.

If you go to a job interview and you either are consciously aware of something that you've made a mess about that you've mucked up on, or if you've got some bad news, the feeling that you felt, the emotion that you felt in that moment is what contributes to its solidifying in the subconscious.

So if you then try to undo that belief about yourself through just talking, it's unlikely to do it because there's no new emotion being attached.

Your conscious thought is not stronger than the emotion felt that put it in there in the first place.

Aspect number three is repetition, choosing the new state again and again.

Even if it's just for small moments, this is absolutely crucial.

We often come across programs and online platforms suggesting seven day challenges or habits, 21 days, 30 days and, and they pitch these ideas like that's the amount of times you need to do to change it.

And the truth is, and, or science studies have suggested that it's in fact somewhere between 64 and 66 days, depending on what study you read.

And so let's call it 65.

So 65 days of doing a habit is what's going get it to become something that you naturally start to do.

Now Even with the 7, the 21 and the 30, it shows the importance of repetition.

But with the 65, we realize how important repetition is.

It's not something we can dip in and out of.

If we want to commit to something, if we want to see change, we have to go back in again and again.

And the thing is, is that we're undoing negative emotions and remember the negativity bias of the brain.

It's much easier for the brain to remember negative things that have happen than it is positive things.

So if we're going to try and change a bad habit or a negative habit and replace it With a positive one, we're going to have to try harder.

So even though one time that bad thing happening, although it may be an enormous amount of emotion that was connected to it, or perhaps just a handful of times, I'm not saying that these subconscious thoughts, I am good enough, I am good enough need to happen 65 days in a row.

But it's going to take a lot of repetitions to make that change.

And so these are the three ingredients that make change in the subconscious.

Safety, a feeling of being okay so that you can learn new things, so you can take on new perspectives.

Emotion, it's got to be equal or greater than the emotion that was made to put it there in the first place.

And repetition, it's no good entering this confident stat just once, or this clear stat just the once or twice.

You need to go in again and again so that the body and the mind realize that this is the belief that you want, want to put into the subconscious.

So I've got a couple of examples here that I want to do that I want to share with you.

When I.

I'd become a father for the first time.

And this was a frightening moment for me, but also a wonderful, a wonderful time.

What I didn't know is that it tapped into a part of me that was going to open up wounds, that was going to trigger me and was going to ex.

Exacerbate some of the negative emotions that I had inside of me.

And I'm talking stress, anxiety, little bouts of depression, temper issues, anger.

It's something that I'd faced a lot of in my early 20s, my late teens, but I'd sort of masked away with new jobs and moving house and moving into a new part of the country and having different friends.

And I made excuses, in hindsight, I made excuses for, for the moments where those emotions showed up.

And it was when Covid hit, and this will be the case for a lot of people.

I was forced to look on myself and the little escapes that I could have done that would have got me through certain bouts of stress, they weren't there anymore.

We had this small child now dependent on us, and so we were able to have moments of bonding and true happiness.

But those negative parts of me that would flare up, would flare up in, in bigger ways.

And so I would become more stressed.

I would find myself needing to take myself away and sit on my own to decompress.

And it was over increasingly trivial things, things that really in the greater context didn't matter too much.

It was through this period where obviously with, with COVID where what I.

The job I had at the time, running a business with my dad, changes were happening, changes were happening with me, changes were happening with the business and with the, with the, with the country, with the planet.

And it's that you started to realize your the life being short or how easy things can change.

And so it was whether how to fix things up in the business, whether the things were right for me in that business, how to look after my family, how to help look after the employees.

There was a lot of thoughts going around and I started to get it in my head that perhaps I wasn't capable of change, perhaps I'm not able to make a difference.

And so when you started to connect that with being a new dad, it made for a very.

It made for a somewhat pessimistic future, making me wonder whether actually I was going to be the dad that my daughter deserved, whether I was going to be the man and the husband that I wanted to be, whether.

And so I needed to make a change.

But no matter how hard I thought about these things, no matter how many self help books I read, and I read a lot, very little made a difference.

But then I started to come across a couple of separate items, one of them being the book 5am Club.

And this book talks about finding a routine in the morning, building a specific way of being in the morning, but getting up at 5am and doing it every single day.

And this routine may last up to an hour, three.

Three separate things to do within the hour.

And so between five and six, you'd have to get up, you'd have to do something.

And this repetition shifted something in me.

It gave me a new perspective.

Now it could just be that it gave me a new way of finding an out for the stress.

I don't know because luckily for me, at the same time I coupled it with finding ingredient number one, which was safety.

So ingredient number one, safety came through my.

I mean, I always knew about meditation, but my love for it, my passion for it.

So after some research and starting using some apps, specifically Headspace, I found myself doing meditation daily.

And this daily meditation coupled with the 5am Club routine work that I was finding put me in a safe place every single day.

And over time, I was switching into the parasympathetic nervous system often enough that fog started to lift and clarity started to arrive.

And then What I was able to do was look forward and be excited.

And it was in those moments of excitement, those moments of joy and happiness, both in the future, but also very much in the present and the now, that I was able to change my outlook.

So those negative beliefs about me, about whether I can be the dad that my daughter deserves or the man or the, the husband that I, that I want to be and that my wife deserved this, that started to, they started to go.

I didn't really question that.

Now where I've gone from there, I've just gone.

Now I've.

Obviously I'm doing this rather than the job I was doing originally.

We're a matter of weeks away from leaving the country and going traveling around the world with my family.

So it's clearly had an enormous effect in the long run.

But what I wanted to show you here was those three ingredients that I mentioned before.

Safety, emotion, repetition.

Those were the three things that I needed to shift from where I was to where I needed to be to take the next step, steps to be able to push forward.

Now, I want you to understand that resistance is often just the body trying to protect an old pattern.

And this is somewhat out of your control.

Okay.

So don't be too hard on yourself.

Our bodies were designed to, or our minds and our bodies work together to keep us alive.

That's the point of existence.

Everything that we know from evolution is that it is how the species can continue on.

So it adapts to make sure it can continue on.

And for our species that's staying alive in threats, we're generally speaking quite, I suppose, a weak species in the animal kingdom.

We were born unable to walk.

We were born with very little ability to eat, eat or, or communicate.

And so we rely on, on community and on coming together.

I read a quite interesting one which suggested that our chances even against a goose are not that good.

So just watch out.

If you ever find yourself in combat with a goose and if that's, if that's what our mind and our body need to do to keep us alive is, is look out for dangers, then, then you're going to be at its mercy at certain times.

Going back 40,000 years, this made a lot, a lot of sense.

If you saw a predator or you, you came across something that you didn't know and it was a threat, then your mind and your body reacted in a way that kept it, kept you from doing it.

When we're children, we put our hand once in the fire and we tend not to do it again.

What happens well, the body and the mind work together to tell us, no, we're not going to do that.

But unfortunately it can't tell the difference between a threat that is not life threatening and a threat that is.

And so embarrassment within your friendship circle.

So not getting enough likes or getting a text that you can't really understand from someone.

So when people say it took something out of context, these are all examples of where the fight or flight brain kicks off and perhaps it shouldn't have done.

But unfortunately that's the way the body works.

So we're perhaps, if anything, not really designed for this modern world, our biological states.

So it's not your fault, it's not really the reason you're here, the reason you're listening to this.

If you notice anything about yourself in the words I'm saying, it's not really your fault.

And we need to accept that because rewiring isn't forceful, it's gentle, it's consistent, it's embodied, it's feeling it, okay?

It's not something that we're going to show up and beat ourselves with until we accept it, until we get it.

That's not how this works.

So we're not going to beat ourselves over the back until we accept something.

We're not going to punish ourselves for how we've been.

What we're going to do is shine a light on it and see if we can make a slow change to it.

But we know we've got the ingredients, so we should look forward to being able to change.

So in today's meditation, I'm going to guide you to release an old belief and introduce a new one through imagery and sensation.

Okay?

So wherever you are now, if you're in a safe place, I invite you to settle in for this meditation.

But if you're not, please pause it or take a note of where we are and do it later on, okay?

Don't be hard on yourself.

Now.

If nothing comes up, nothing comes up.

And if you don't feel like it's made a change, remember repetition.

Okay?

So let's drop in and do this one together.

So I want you to start by settling into the body.

Perhaps you stretch out your limbs, perhaps you tighten your hands into a fist for a moment and then let go.

You scrunch up your shoulders to your ears and allow them to drop.

And I want you to allow the breath to flow in and out of the nose.

Not forced, just a gentle breath.

Perhaps you can feel the breath, you can feel the air as it comes in through the Nose, perhaps you can feel it going down your throat.

Or perhaps you just notice the sensation of the body expanding in the tummy, in the chest.

Then I want you to notice the edges of your eyes and just release them, just soften them.

Just allow the jaw to open slightly.

Release any tension.

And then just check again in with the shoulders and just make sure that you've relaxed them.

Just take away any resistance.

And as you breathe, I want you to notice how your ribs expand and contract, expand and contract.

And then I want you to settle into the heart.

And I want you to feel a gentle sense, a kind sense that sits within your heart, that's here to support you during this meditation, Just allowing the breath to be slow and steady.

And now I want you to bring one old belief to mind.

And I want you to do this without judgment.

Now, you might have a couple, or you might have many, but I want you just to focus on one.

Just let one be right there in the center.

And we're just going to see it.

I'm just going to start to turn a light on it.

And as you hold this belief in mind, I want you to see where it fits in the body.

Where do you sense it?

Where do you hold it?

And again, no judgment, no questioning.

Just see where in the body this belief sits.

Now, whatever this belief is, I want you to see it slowly transform into something physical that can be released.

Could be a stone, could be a knot, perhaps a weed.

Watch it transform.

And then, using your breath, I want you to take a deep breath, holding this physical item in front of you.

And as you breathe out, I want you to let it go.

This physical item, whatever it is, allow it to be removed.

And then I want you to notice where it was.

There is now space.

You've cleared something out.

You've made space.

It's now time to let something in.

And so whatever comes to mind, I want you to come up with a new belief.

And I want you to see this new belief as a seed or a light, or even a feeling.

And I want you to place it in that space that you've created.

And this time, using your breath as you breathe in, I want you to breathe in this new belief into the body and notice where you feel it in the body.

We're going beyond thinking to feeling this belief.

Now, take a breath or two with this new belief in this space.

Feel it radiate throughout your body as you and it become one.

And then as you sit there, I want you to say silently to yourself, this is who I am.

Becoming.

This is who I am becoming.

You make a promise to this new belief to return to it as often as you need until it becomes part of you.

And so now, starting with your attention at your feet, begin to wiggle and move the parts of your body as you move the attention up, bringing the awareness into the body, feeling grounded and supported.

And whenever it feels right, gently open your eyes.

Sa.

Sam, Thank you for taking that time with me.

And as I said earlier, repetition is what's important.

So you can do this meditation again and again, but I invite you to change it up a bit.

The idea here is that we've let go of the old belief, so we don't want to bring it back in every time.

So perhaps the next meditation you do, you find a track that means something to you or that sits just right.

And in that meditation, you focus on relaxing the body, finding that safety, using the breath, and then bringing up the emotions that you felt with this new belief and then remembering the words, this is who I am becoming.

And that's about all we've got then for this week.

So thanks for joining me for this episode.

If you ever need to reach out to me, you can do that through my social media channels, Wild Soul Grove.

But you can also book a call with me, a compass call, because I believe in having a short conversation to understand whether what I do is right for someone, whether I'm the right fit for them, whether they're the right fit for me.

But there's always something that I can help with, even if it's just in the 15 minutes that we meet for on that call.

And if you want to do that, you can go to my website, www.wildsoulgrove.co.uk and in the top right corner of the the website you'll find book a compass call.

But until next time, then all that's left for me to say is that you can always find me in the grove, Sam.