Ep 073 The Worthy AF Series: Your Self Worth isn't a Mindset Problem

Let's get one thing straight  you can journal until your hand falls off, read every self-help book on the shelf, and still feel like you're stuck in the same loop. Why? Because your beliefs don't live in your head. They live in your body.

In this episode, I'm breaking down why your self-worth isn't just a mindset problem and the three tools I swear by to actually rewire your nervous system from the inside out.

What we cover:

Your body is doing the heavy lifting: from the pit in your stomach before a tough conversation to your palms sweating before you ask for that raise. That's not weakness. That's evolution. Your nervous system is doing exactly what it was designed to do. The problem? It can't tell the difference between a tiger and your boss.

We talk about three powerful tools that go beyond thought work:

1. EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) : Yes, you tap on your body. No, it's not bullsh*t. Tapping on specific acupressure points sends calming signals to your amygdala (your brain's fear centre), literally reducing the charge on limiting beliefs like "I'm not enough" or "I don't deserve this" with repetition.

2. Breathwork: Specifically the 4-7-8 technique (inhale for 4, hold for 7, exhale for 8). You can't voluntarily control your cortisol spike, but you can control your breath and your breath controls everything else. Try 30 seconds of this before your next high-stakes moment.

3. Identity Work: The difference between "I have anxiety" and "I am an anxious person" is HUGE. When a belief becomes an identity, it drives every single thing you do. We're shifting that. "I am worthy, just as I am" — what does thatperson do differently?

These three tools are at the core of the Worthy AF Experience , a 4-week deep dive with 4 live coaching calls and 12 videos covering EFT, breathwork, and a serious amount of identity work.

Not ready to commit yet? Start with the free 7-Day Self-Worth Glow-Up Challenge happening inside a WhatsApp group. Link below.

Readiness isn't a state you reach. It's a decision you make. And you can make it right now.

🔗 Join the Worthy AF Experience

 🔗 Free 7-Day Self-Worth Glow-Up Challenge

Transcript

[00:00] Shalvika: Hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of Your Aligned as F*ck Life with Shalvika. And today, what I want to talk to you about is—your self-worth isn’t a mindset problem. And before we dive in, I just want to say that in the previous episodes, I talked a little bit about the lies that we inherited. It may be because of our conditioning, it may be because of our socialization, it may be because of your gender, right? And we did inherit a lot of lies.

[00:41] Shalvika: And I am doing a series of videos and podcast episodes on self-worth right now because I am launching my "Worthy as F*ck" experience, and it starts on May 2nd. We start in the first week of May, and it’s going to be a beautiful experience—a beautiful combination of life coaching calls as well as pre-recorded videos. And we are going to unearth your relationship with your worthiness. We are going to change your relationship with your worthiness.

[01:14] Shalvika: And a lot of times when I talk about self-worth, there is this idea of, you know, "Oh, but I can just read more a little about it and do it. I can just journal about it and do it. I can think better thoughts and do it." And you can, right? Like, I'm someone who is a massive, massive proponent of thought work—it’s something that I use very regularly in my work, and it's a very effective tool.

[01:37] Shalvika: However, today I want to share a different perspective on this. Today, I want to share about why your relationship with your self-worth is probably not a mindset problem.

The Body vs. The Mind

[01:58] Shalvika: I just want to kind of start off with this idea that your beliefs don’t live in your mind. And I know that just sounds, like, really weird—like, "What the f*ck, Shalvika? What do you mean my beliefs don’t live in my mind?" But just hear me out. Your beliefs are actually programmed in your body. Your beliefs actually live in your body.

[02:26] Shalvika: They live in the way your palms start sweating anytime you want to have a tough conversation with your boss, or with your partner, or with your child. They live in the way you round your shoulders every time you walk into a room where you know you want to really, really impress people. They live in that pit in your stomach that happens just before you're about to walk onto a stage or give a presentation in front of your entire team.

[02:54] Shalvika: Right? If you actually, like, right now close your eyes and think about all of those things that scare the sh*t out of you that you know you have to do—like, you know you have to go and ask for the raise, you know you have to go and have that tough conversation with your partner. You know all of that at a mind level. But then, every time you reach such points, your body actually has a visceral reaction to it. Your palms will start sweating, you’ll get that pit in your stomach, your heartbeat will start increasing. Sometimes you’ll start feeling faint, maybe you’ll black out. All of these things are actually a reaction by your body.

The Evolutionary Perspective

[03:40] Shalvika: So this is what I mean when I say that your beliefs don't live in your mind; your beliefs actually live in your body. And it’s a very evolutionary instinct. What I mean by that is—when we were hunter-gatherers, for example, when we lived in jungles and when we lived on tops of the trees, it was essential for our bodies to store that information. Because, imagine a predator like a tiger or a panther is about to chase you—you did not have the time that is essential, that is needed for you to think it through. That’s why your body needed to take over; your body needed to take control of what is happening.

[04:24] Shalvika: And that’s the same thing that’s happening today. Even though we all live in safe environments, even though we live in places where we can’t have a rattlesnake that'll come out of the bushes randomly and bite us—that there’s going to be no predators that's going to run behind us—but we still have that as a part of our brain, as a part of our reptilian brain that is responsible for fight or flight. And that is why a lot of our beliefs are stored at a body level and not at our mind level.

[04:55] Shalvika: Which is why a lot of times—I don't know if you’ve ever experienced an anger bout. I’m someone who’s dealt with a lot of anger issues in the past. And sometimes when you get angry, right, it just feels like it’s an out-of-body experience because I’m not thinking things through—my body just takes over for me.

[05:19] Shalvika: Right? And that is when our belief becomes a physiological state, right? And it starts living in our nervous system. So no amount of thought work, no amount of journaling, no amount of reading self-help books, no amount of listening to podcasts such as this is going to get you out of that funk because it is a programmed physiological state.

Three Tools for Rewiring the Nervous System

[05:46] Shalvika: So today, what I want to do is today I want to talk to you about three tools that I use and that we are going to be using inside the "Worthy as F*ck" experience, and I'm going to talk about why these tools actually are effective in rewiring our nervous system—in actually taking that belief out of our body and changing the charge on it.

1. EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique)

[06:17] Shalvika: The first tool that I want to talk about is EFT, which is Emotional Freedom Techniques. Now, if you’re new here and if you’ve never heard—Emotional Freedom Techniques is essentially tapping on various parts of your body, right? The first time that I heard about this, I thought this must be utter and complete bullsh*t.

[06:40] Shalvika: Like, what? You just tap on parts of your body and you’re telling me that my thought process is going to change? But I’m going to tell you today how and why that happens. When you are using specific acupressure points that are on your meridian system, when you are tapping at specific points on your body while you are saying or while you're focusing on a specific negative belief—for example: "I am not enough," "I am not worth making X amount of money," "I will feel like I belong only after I lose a certain amount of weight," whatever that looks like for you—when you are tapping while thinking about this, what that does is it sends a calming signal to your nervous system.

[07:33] Shalvika: We tap only at specific points that are connected to your nervous system, and it sends a calming signal to your amygdala. Now, your amygdala is a part of your brain that is responsible for your fear response. It is responsible for detecting a threat response; it is the part of your brain that’s responsible for your fight or flight response. So when you tap on those specific points, it changes your relationship with that thought.

[08:14] Shalvika: So imagine with repetition what happens is this thought—that "I am not enough," "I am not worthy," "I can't do this because..." (insert whatever your reason is)—over a period of time with repetition, the charge on that thought starts reducing. And that's how we reprogram our nervous system.

2. Breathwork

[08:35] Shalvika: The second tool that we are going to use is breathwork. Now, breath is that bodily function that is at the intersection of your voluntary and your involuntary system. What do I mean by that? You cannot voluntarily control the rate of your heartbeat. You cannot voluntarily control the cortisol spike that your body experiences when it's under stress.

[09:05] Shalvika: But what you can do is you can modulate the way you breathe—your breathing patterns. And that in turn can change your heart rate. That in turn can even change your heart rate variability. That in turn can change your stress response, your cortisol response.

[09:27] Shalvika: So when we talk about breathwork, what we are essentially doing is we are, again, training our nervous system to respond in a certain way. Specifically, when your exhale is much longer than your inhale. My favorite breathing pattern is 4-7-8:

• Inhale for 4 counts.
• Hold for 7 counts.
• Exhale for 8 counts.

[10:14] Shalvika: Even 30 seconds of practicing the 4-7-8 breathing technique, I can guarantee you that you will feel much calmer. And you can definitely use 30 seconds and try this breathing technique before a meeting or a tough conversation.

3. Identity Work

[10:43] Shalvika: And the third tool that we are going to use is identity work. Now, what do I mean by identity? A lot of times we treat beliefs as thoughts that reside in the mind. However, for a lot of us, our belief has become an identity.

[11:08] Shalvika: For example, if you’re someone who has anxiety issues—I’ve worked with clients who never tell me that "I have an anxiety problem" or "I experience anxiety." They say, "I am an anxious person." "I am this," "I am bipolar," "I am ADHD," "I am someone who does not keep the promises that she makes to herself," "I am not enough because blah blah blah."

[11:34] Shalvika: Do you realize that instead of saying that "I'm someone who's experiencing this," we say that "I am this"? So it becomes a part of my identity, and then our identity is the one that drives every single thing that we do.

[11:51] Shalvika: If you’ve read Atomic Habits by James Clear, he talks about this. He talks about how instead of saying "I'm going to have a salad every day for lunch," you should start practicing saying that "I am a healthy person." And then when you are choosing what to order for lunch, you ask yourself, "Okay, I am a healthy person, so then what would a healthy person do?"

[12:15] Shalvika: Similarly, worthiness: "I am worthy, just as I am." How would I act? How would I treat my body? How would I treat my needs? How would I treat my dreams and my vision that I have for myself? And identity work is at the core of the work that we are going to be doing. Because once you start shifting identities, your entire being changes—your beliefs, your thoughts, your actions, your results, everything is driven by your identity.

The "Worthy as F*ck" Experience

[12:48] Shalvika: And that is going to be at the core of the work that we are going to be doing in these four weeks. This is going to be a four-week experience—you're going to have four live coaching calls, you're going to walk away with 12 videos that's going to include breathwork, EFT tapping, and a sh*t ton of identity work because, again, your worthiness is rooted in your identity.

[13:17] Shalvika: And if you want to start doing the preliminary work, I’m right now running a free 7-Day Self-Worth Glow-Up challenge that’s happening inside a WhatsApp group. I'm going to put all of the links in the show notes.

[13:38] Shalvika: I want you to join this because I feel like you deserve to feel worthy without any conditions attached to it—without all the bullsh*t of "I'll feel worthy when I lose 5 kilos" or "I'll start my business after my kids are done with ABCDE." Readiness is not a state to be achieved; readiness is a decision, and you can make that decision right now from the space of being completely worthy.

A Personal Example

[14:14] Shalvika: Before I wrap up today’s episode with you, I want to share a personal example. I started my business six years ago—exactly six years ago in April 2020. When I started, there was a lot of narrative in my head that said, "Oh, I'm a beginner. I'm a new coach." Three years into my business, and I still believed that.

[14:48] Shalvika: I needed a coach to actually walk me through this idea that no, I've already worked with hundreds of people. Today, I am who I am and I charge what I charge and I make the money that I make because I worked on that piece of worthiness—where I'm like, "I am worthy as a coach, as an entrepreneur, as a facilitator just as I am."

[15:19] Shalvika: That has led me to the two most successful years I've had in business. It came from all this work that I was doing on my own sense of self-worth. When I started coaching the corporate clients—these were people who were country managers of this massive pharmaceutical industry—I was like, "Oh my god, these people have 20 years experience. Who the f*ck am I to coach them?"

[15:58] Shalvika: And then there was this tiny voice that said, "Who the fck am I not?" Because I know my sht. I know how to help people transform their identities. That is what I want you to experience—this assuredness in who you are, in the power that you hold, so that you can go and actually do all of those things that you've always said that you want to do.

[16:26] Shalvika: So here is me inviting you inside the "Worthy as F*ck" experience. It is 9999 for the entire four weeks with me. But before you get in, do join the 7-Day Self-Worth Glow-Up challenge.

[16:51] Shalvika: That is all that I had for you today, and I will see you soon in the next episode. All right, ciao!