Follow Your Heart and Stop Feeling Stuck with Tanya Bell

In this episode, Theresa sits down with Tanya Bell a Master NLP practitioner, hypnotherapist, and former counselor, to share how she walked away from the safe, expected path and started following the quiet inner nudge she could no longer ignore. 

Together they unpack why feeling stuck is an illusion, how subconscious stories keep you playing small, and the practical mindset shifts that help you see new options that were always there. You’ll hear Tanya’s journey from burnout and people‑pleasing to becoming the “closet rebel” who chose alignment over approval, and the simple questions she asked herself before finally putting in her notice. If you’re ready to stop overriding your intuition, trust your heart, and give yourself permission to become more of who you really are, this conversation will light a fire in your soul and remind you that you are not stuck—you’re one courageous decision away from a different life.

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Transcript

Theresa Cesare 0:06

Welcome to Heart to Talk the podcast. I am the host and creator Theresa Cesare My intention for this podcast is to deliver to you wisdom, inspiration, and consciousness. Through solo episodes and conversations amongst insightful people. It is my greatest honor to bring to you talks that come from the. Hey, my loves. Welcome to another episode with me. I'm so excited for today's guest, Tanya Bell. Tanya is a consciousness guide and hypnotherapist who helps closet rebels stop swimming upstream for success and start flowing with their own main character energy. She believes authenticity is the new currency. That the soul aligned life you really want is hiding behind things you can't see from where you stand. When she's not guiding transformations, you can find her connecting with the community and spending time with her family. Always looking for ways to make magic outta the mundane. Friends, I'm so excited to bring to you my conversation with the incredible Tanya Bell. Tanya, welcome to Heart to Talk I am so excited that you're here today.

Tanya Bell 1:21

Thanks for having me, Theresa. I'm so excited.

Theresa Cesare 1:24

We have something in common. We have turned the things that has helped us in our life, has become our purpose, and we love making magic outta the mundane.

Tanya Bell 1:32

We have the same language. Right. That was one thing we came away with when we met last time. It's not every day that you meet someone that speaks the same language.

Theresa Cesare 1:41

Yes. I'm like, we speak the same

Tanya Bell 1:43

language

Theresa Cesare 1:44

when people might call it, whoop, we're paving the way.

Tanya Bell 1:48

Yes.

Theresa Cesare 1:48

It's gonna be the norm. I love it. But that being said, I would love for you to introduce to the audience, who you are, what you do, and then if you can also go into the backstory.

Tanya Bell 1:57

Yeah, would love to thank you first for having me. I'm so excited to be here and yeah, I'm Tanya and I. I'm helping closet rebels stop swimming upstream for success and start flowing with main character energy. I begin this, this whole chapter, about nine years ago when I was a recovery coach at a treatment center in town. And I really loved just being able to guide people on their journey and get them to where they wanted to be, especially people in recovery. Um. They're at their lowest low. So to be able to help someone move from their lowest low to anywhere else is a giant step. And I loved I because. When you work in the behavioral health field, you have to follow certain rules and guidelines and use tools and techniques that are only evidence-based. And many of the things that we have to utilize as tools in our tool belts are things that have not all been evidence-based. We're still getting there. And one day something will happen where they're all maybe, going to be, looked at and be proven and all the things. But until then. They're not utilized in in healthcare and the compliance of healthcare and being able to get treatment that's paid from insurance. So with that, I thought, man, it would be so neat to be a coach, but be on my own so that I could help people with the tools that would actually maybe help them instead of spending hours and hours and hours in like talk therapy. But at that point in my life, I had all sorts of emotional baggage, right? I was like, man, I can't do that. Like, I'm not, I'm not good enough. Who's gonna pay me for that? What? Like, I better just stay focused and get my, you know, do my regular job. I don't know anything about business. And I kind of turned away from it, this little thought, this little seed that was planted. No, I can't do that. And so I instead, I took a different path, then I became a substance use counselor. I really loved helping people and I wanted to go deeper. I'm a five planet Scorpio and I love to go as deep as I possibly can go.

Theresa Cesare 4:08

I

Tanya Bell 4:08

love that. And yeah, and so I, I became a counselor and, I was helping people, but the caseload was really big. And again, I could only use a certain set of tools that the company could bill for. And so I was like, man, I just don't think that this is fitting. Maybe I'll do what you're supposed to do and climb this fancy corporate ladder and get up into corporate and maybe make some more money and help the people that are helping the people, because it just wasn't fitting anymore, um, with who I was. And so I did, I climbed this fancy ladder. I thought I was supposed to climb, but once I got up there, everyone around me was overworked. Many people were underpaid. People were miserable showing up to work every day, including myself. And I was like, man, this is, this is not what I signed up for, but I felt stuck, right? I was like, I don't know which direction to go, but like, why doesn't the company do this to make things better? Why don't they do this? And it was kind of just, why isn't someone else doing something about my situation? And that's when I hired a coach and this coach helped me to see that I had all sorts of power I didn't think that I had. And so. At that moment, I reevaluated and stopped blaming everyone else around me for my situation. And I was like, okay, I'm gonna do this thing I thought I couldn't do before because I thought I wasn't good enough and didn't know anything about business and I'm gonna learn. And so I learned hypnotherapy and NLP and muscle testing, all sorts of really cool things, and became certified as life coach. And then I quit my job, quit my corporate job, which was huge because that was all my stability, you know, like. The paycheck that comes in. Yeah.

Theresa Cesare 5:45

So scary. Oh my gosh. That is definitely one thing we both have in common. I remember when we first met, and when you introduced yourself and you had the same story, I'm like, oh my gosh, we need to connect because it is scary it. And in one moment you could be like full of self-belief, conviction, faith, and then, then the next moment,'cause we are human, you're like, oh my gosh, what am I doing?

Tanya Bell 6:06

Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. Every you think everyone is probably looking at you like you're nuts because you just did this thing that, that they themselves have not had the courage to do. Right.

Theresa Cesare 6:19

Was there a perfect chain of events that almost paved the way, or was it like one day you're like, okay, I'm done. Were you pushed to your limits, because of the situation or the people at work? Or was this an inner knowing where you're like, I'm not supposed to be here? A combination. What would you say for anybody listening who's probably like, oh my gosh, I feel this way, but I don't wanna risk and do you know, whatever the thing, because of fear,

Tanya Bell 6:48

I think everything happens for a reason. Like everything is meant for us to learn from and for us to grow. And the thing that pushed me over that edge, I had been building up to it, right? The work that I do with people I was doing with myself. And so I'm, I'm asking myself the questions like that I would ask another, uh, client of mine and, okay, well, what do I need to be able to leave? I need money, right? I need, I need a cushion. And I was like, but I don't have the cushion. Right? And, and then I was like, but I also need community and, and support. What else is keeping me in this job? Community and support. Because I know subconsciously that once I leave, I won't have that community and support. I had worked at that company for seven years. So, you know, I had a group of people, like every day was, you know, working in this, this system that I was in and I was like, okay, well let me find the community in support. I found the community in support and I was like, okay. I asked about the money and I was like, oh shoot, I forgot I had this 401k sitting here. So the money came right when I asked. Divine, energetic, whatever timing. It's like, actually you do have it. You have the community and support. Now I'm like, okay, well what else is keeping me? Like, why else haven't I pulled the trigger? And it was because I had this fear inside of disappointing others. And I was like, oh no, that's gotta go, you know? And so I did the work with myself. I let that shit go, and it was like five or 10 minutes later, I, I got up and I was walking around and I was like, oh, I'm gonna put in my notice tomorrow, like this whole time, you know, a year and a half of me thinking that I was gonna do it and building up, and building up and being like, why am I still stuck here? That, that was the last straw, the last thing that kept me in place. And then I, I did, I put in my notice that next day.

Theresa Cesare 8:37

I just love hearing your story over and over.'cause I know that feeling of when you finally have the courage, it's just powerful to follow that inner knowing and you and I can both claim that we practice what we preach. Yes. And there's nothing like when you step into the unknown, the magic that comes forth and you help people. Right in that, because you do two things. You do NLP, and then you do, hypnotherapy, which is so cool. Yeah. Can you tell us about that type of work? What each of those mean?

Tanya Bell 9:14

Yeah. So NLP is, is modeling successful people's behavior and what it is that they do, and using that to be successful in specific things for yourself. It's all about communicating with yourself and with others, and. A lot of it is about language, right? So I could say, um, something that was really big for me. Like, like I said, I had this, fear of disappointing others. Well, what is disappointment? Does anyone actually ever sit with what, what is the definition of disappointment for them? Do you know, do you know what it is like at your core? Because if you don't, then you're operating from a reality that you probably created when you were five, right? Of what disappointment is in your parents and you're operating that same way, and maybe you've added other definitions to it, but you may have this definition of disappointment that has nothing to do with who you are today, but you're still operating from that definition. And so I think that. Language is huge in how we see the world, how the world sees us, and what actually is happening in our lives. And so that's how NLP has a lot of tools and techniques that successful people have used. But that is, that is one thing that is. Really interesting to sit and look at and things can change for you in, in five, 10 minutes, right? Where you're like, that's

Theresa Cesare 10:36

incredible.

Tanya Bell 10:38

And hypnotherapy, it's, it's all about the subconscious mind, right? And the stories that we tell ourselves and rewiring those at a subconscious level. So I, I use those tools, but I also have so many more that, it's almost difficult to explain, but it's all about helping people rewrite their stories from the inside at the deepest level.

Theresa Cesare 11:00

I'm just so inspired by your work and I can't wait to keep learning from you. That being said, What is your mission?

Tanya Bell 11:06

My biggest mission is to give people permission to become more of themselves, which is the unraveling of who they thought that they were.

Theresa Cesare 11:17

I absolutely love that because I can say that I'm still unraveling myself. Thank God we're friends.

Tanya Bell 11:23

You can help me. Well, and I think it's, I think it keeps going right? As we evolve, we learn, we learn more and we come at it from different angles and we're like, oh, okaying now.

Theresa Cesare 11:33

That's amazing. Do you feel that you're like on purpose, do you feel like you found what you were meant to do?

Tanya Bell 11:43

I know that this is a big piece of what I'm meant to do. I know that I am meant to take in life and experience life and express that and help others, and, I really just. I really just wanna turn people on, and whether it's through coaching or speaking or writing, just helping people realize that life does not have to be so hard. Mm-hmm. And things that you think are boring or you're stuck in, or you don't like about your life, or you're missing connections. Like it does not have to be that way, but you just, you can't see it from where you're standing.

Theresa Cesare 12:17

I love that, so well said. Okay. For those listening and in the line of work that you do, what would be top three tips that someone listening can go in and take some action on?

Tanya Bell 12:30

Top three tips that you can take action on, I think comes from. Where you are in your mind and how you think about yourself and the world. And first one, for anyone listening, you are like a literal gift. You are worthy and deserving and good enough and anything simply because you, you exist in this world that the universe, creator, God's worst, God, whatever it is for you, because it's all energy, right? And everything that is in you is. Has conspired to put you here for a reason. It was not for nothing. Two, your uniqueness and gifts are meant to be shared with the world, and it's never too late to start. It's never too hard to start. And three, we are living in a time right now where people don't know if what they're doing for a living. Is actually going to be needed in society in 1, 5, 10 years. And that means that it's even more imperative that you right now take a deep look inside and find the fire inside of your soul that your soul wants to express. And do that right now. Don't wait anymore.

Theresa Cesare 13:47

Those are incredible and how can this audience find you, follow, you, connect, hire you?

Tanya Bell 13:55

Yeah, I'm, I'm on all

Theresa Cesare 13:56

the things, all the things

Tanya Bell 13:56

on the base, all the things. You'll find me on Facebook, on Instagram, my website and around the community. Tucson. So

Theresa Cesare 14:04

I love it and I'll drop her information in the show notes as well. And it's just such a joy. I love your energy, I love the work that you do. NLP and hypnotherapy is just next level. The fact that you took the the time to use it on yourself is just so powerful. So any last words, any mentions that you feel you wanna share with this audience before I pivot into those closing traditional questions?

Tanya Bell 14:32

Hmm. I'm ready for people to turn on and, and really follow their heart and stop thinking that they need to stay stuck and things that aren't working.

Theresa Cesare 14:43

I love that. I love that because it is an illusion, right?

Tanya Bell 14:46

Yeah. Yeah. And we're not taught that. We think we're doing the right thing, and then we get stuck and then we wonder why it's so hard, and it does not have to be hard.

Theresa Cesare 14:55

Well said. My beautiful Tanya. Okay. Yourself closing questions. The first one, because I love affirmations. That has been the tool that has helped me.

Tanya Bell 15:03

Yes.

Theresa Cesare 15:04

Affirmation

Tanya Bell 15:04

game.

Theresa Cesare 15:05

Yeah.

Tanya Bell 15:05

Yes.

Theresa Cesare 15:07

I wanna ask you, what is your favorite affirmation?

Tanya Bell 15:12

The mantra is everything is happening for me. I find myself saying this a lot. Everything is happening for me., And if you learn how to embody this as a practice, your reality can shift in a second. Things outside of my control have shifted just by using this like immediately. Once, once you really feel it.

Theresa Cesare 15:39

Love it.

Tanya Bell 15:39

Especially true when things are really hard because it opens up something in your mind where you can start seeing a different path.

Theresa Cesare 15:48

Beautiful. I love it. Okay, so next question. What is your favorite book?

Tanya Bell 15:54

Girl, this was so hard for me there's so many, I, I had a really difficult time with this, but I thought, what book have I read more than once?

Theresa Cesare 16:03

That's a good way. That's a good starting place.

Tanya Bell 16:05

Yeah, because I don't usually read things more than once. And this might be surprising, but it was the giver. The giver I read multiple times and I think that that made me question how as a society we work and what. Things are actually real or not. And how just by just how our society is built, um, that's why we're in the situation. We're in a big part of it, right? As a collective. And so the giver, I think opened up my eyes to, oh, like this is just the reality we are in. Like, we could have things different, right?

Theresa Cesare 16:38

Mm-hmm.

Tanya Bell 16:38

And so I think that that's. That. That was the one I came up with that I read more than once. That's

Theresa Cesare 16:43

a good one. Thank you for that. Okay. And then the next question, what inspires you, your work and your creativity?

Tanya Bell 16:53

Knowing that everything is changeable, knowing that we are co-creators of our reality, our, our perception of things on the outside is really just a projection of what's happening on the inside. And so we are, we're literally creating our world and. Knowing that means that we can change what's happening outside of us if we look on the inside and change what's happening within. And I, I get really excited about that because that means that there's something you don't like. You can change it. You just gotta look inside.

Theresa Cesare 17:23

Ooh, I love that so much. And then the final question, what are you most proud of

Tanya Bell 17:29

being a mom? Most proud of being a mom?

Theresa Cesare 17:37

Thank you so much for tuning into this episode. Please download, rate, subscribe, and share this podcast. Also, be sure to visit my theresacesare.com to check out my inspirational merch, connect to my social accounts, and much more may you continue to be filled with wisdom, inspiration, and consciousness. Otherwise, friends, I will be back for another episode of Heart to.