48: Why Your Mindset Work Isn’t Creating the Change You Want

You’ve journaled until your wrist hurts. You’ve repeated affirmations like a good student. You’ve got the vision board, the podcast playlists, the books stacked beside your bed…

And yet, when you finally clear a weekend just for you, you spend half of it anxious and scrolling, with a gnawing feeling that you should do something more productive.  You let someone in - just a  little - and then you find yourself pulling back, suddenly overwhelmed and convinced that it’s just not going to work.   And what about that time when you got a financial windfall, and you walk around for a walk feeling a little nauseous.  

If any of this sounds familiar, this episode will help you stop judging yourself for those responses, and start making sense of what’s actually going on beneath the surface. We’re talking about nervous system contraction, capacity, and the missing piece in how your body might still be bracing against the very life you’re trying to step into.

➡️What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• The real reason why mindset work and manifesting often don't stick (even when you're doing all the right things)
• How subtle nervous system contractions sabotage your ability to receive, hold, and sustain abundance
• Why you can’t out-think scarcity if your body still feels like it’s not safe to have more
• The difference between regulation and embodiment (and why that distinction matters)

➡️Key Takeaways:

• Calling in abundance is about capacity more so than about mindset.  
• If your body is not on board, you’ll keep sabotaging what you’re trying to manifest.
• Visualization, affirmations, and mindset work are beautiful but incomplete without nervous system safety.
• You can’t create an expansive life while living in contraction. 

📩 Join the conversation:

• DM me your biggest insight! https://www.instagram.com/tertia_riegler_embodiment/
• Email me via my website https://tertiariegler.com/contact/

➡️Watch Free Training Your Burnout Exit Strategy: The 5 Step Path to More Energy, More Money & More Self-Expression - Without Burning It All Down

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Transcript

Tertia [00:00:00]:
If you have read all the books and you know the lingo and you've done all the journaling, but still nothing is landing and you cannot stay consistent in the things that you are magnetizing into your life, the things that you are calling in and the things that you are trying to manifest, I want you to know that it's not because you are doing it wrong. Welcome to Beyond Burnout for Driven Women. I am Tertia and this is where we go from burnout to abundance and we take your nervous system along for the ride. If you are doing all the right things but not feeling the shift, you are in the right place. Here we explore nervous system, healing, embodiment and what it really takes to be magnetic without over efforting or burning yourself out. I've created this new intro especially for today's episode and I must say I quite like it. So I think I'm going to stick with it for a little while. I recently listened to a talk about abundance and something that was discussed in this talk really triggered me a little bit. And so I decided this is definitely something that I need to talk to you about on my podcast because I'm sure that I am not the only one who feels that, who has experienced that and that is that so often we are trying to apply all of these tools that we learn about, that we read about in the books that we hear other people teaching us on podcasts and on YouTube videos and on their courses and their workshops. And no matter how much we try and do these things, they don't work. It still doesn't land. And it's not the not landing that's the problem. It's the shame, the self doubt, the lack of self trust, and the judgment that comes along with not being able to manifest your goals or to be as abundant as you like to be. So that's what I want to talk about in this episode today is what is the missing link? What is that thing that keeps abundance from consistently showing up in our lives? Let's dive in. A few years ago when I was in a coaching session, one of the things that jumped up in my face that I didn't even know I was holding was that of time scarcity. I had, as you know from my journey, or you most likely know if you listen to my podcast is I had come out of burnout. I'd been in burnout for a few years. I finally made my way out to the other side and I was busy rebuilding my life. And even though I was doing all the things in the outside world. And I was doing all the, all the healthy things and all the mindset work. What shocked me in the session with my coach was that there was a big time scarcity that was still sitting in me. And it looked like I was feeling like the seven years that I had spent in burnout and recovery and finding myself again, I had wasted time. And that seven years had put me behind my goals. And so I felt like I was running out of time to actually create the impact that I wanted to make in the world and to leave the legacy that I, that I dreamt about. And what I also know is whenever we are holding a scarcity, a feeling of lack, a feeling of not enoughness, what happens is we contract. And when you are in a state of contraction, when you are in a state of not enoughness, what happens is your body, your beautiful brain has got a very specific task and that is to always look out for those things that are most important to you. So I was holding this sense of running out of time, of scarcity, and also of shame. And guess what? As I was living my life, working in my business, going about my day, what did I see most of the time? I saw how little time there was available for me, how many things I had to do, and how I didn't have enough time to do all of these things and to make all of these things happen. And of course, if you are in a state like that, it is obvious that one plus one equals two. You cannot hold consistent abundance in a state of contraction. So the thing that triggered me about the talk that I listened to about abundance was they were in the talk, they were inviting us to visualize that version of ourselves that already has everything that we desire and to allow ourselves to feel grateful and to allow ourselves to feel safe in that moment. And here's the thing that bothered me about that. It was all happening on the level of the mind. You can go and visualize your pretty little backside off and it is not going to change what is happening in your nervous system. In fact, my experience has shown me that if you are holding any, any kind of contraction, any kind of tension, any kind of not enoughness, any scarcity or any lack in your nervous system, and you try and visualize the opposite, who do you think is going to be stronger? Your visualization or your nervous system holding, grasping and clinging on for dear life. And it's not who, it's what. But I think you, you get what I mean. And that was definitely my experience and that is something that I want to bring Home to you. So if you doing all of these things and yet you fail to manifest, you fail to call in the relationship that you want. You still having money issues, you're still having relationship issues. This is what I want to bring home to you. Your body doesn't care how many affirmations you say, if it doesn't feel safe, if your nervous system doesn't feel safe, if you don't feel safe to fully show up as who you are, your abundance is not going to stick. You are going to do things to sabotage the good that comes into your life. And I really don't want this to sound like a sermon, but it is so important for us to actually register this. I think even though with all of the mindset work that we have, and I have been on a big mindset exploration journey myself, make no mistake, so I do see the value in that. Our minds are beautiful and we want to use them, we want to utilize them. But our minds can also screw us over. And this happens when we create a Disney movie about what we want to create for ourselves. But our bodies are still living in the reality of today. And if we can't find a way to create safety in our bodies to live in that movie that we are creating in our minds, there's going to be a disconnect and nothing will work long term. It's not sustainable to try and create abundance, to call in the things that you desire only from the level of the mind. Abundance isn't just about what you believe. It is about what you are safe experiencing. If you don't feel safe being seen, if you don't feel safe slowing down, if you don't feel safe receiving, you will find a way not to have any of those things in your life. So when we talk about abundance not being consistent, what we are actually looking at is our capacity, our capacity to hold the abundance that we desire. Our capacity to hold the lives that we desire, to hold the relationships that we desire, to hold the bank account that we desire. And not how hard you're trying to call that into your life. Not how much you want it or how much you believe that you deserve it, but how your body feels in the experience of holding that more. Whether it's more money, whether it's more space, whether it's deeper intimacy in your relationships. Because if that more feels threatening, if it feels risky, or that the cost of that is too high, then of course you are going to sabotage. You are going to do things so that you don't pay the price of that and so for me, the work around my scarcity was not about telling myself there is enough time and telling myself that I am strong and telling myself that I will be able to do it. And seeing myself doing all these things and my time was expanding. The work was for me to feel safe in the time that I have, to feel that it was safe to be in the time that was still available to me. And it's very. It's very difficult for me to explain, to put this into words. And I think it's because the kind of coaching that I do doesn't happen on a mental level, it is on an embodied level. And our felt experience of it, the way that we make sense of the world through our internal felt sense, there's not always words that can explain exactly the process, what it is that we're going through, or the insights that we even land on. So I'm doing the best that I can with this. And the only way that I can explain what that experience was was that when I started cultivating feeling safe in the space and the time that was available to me, then my time began to expand, then I had more time available then I was in the experience of I'm actually not running out of time I'm having. There is enough time for me to do what needs to be done. I am okay and I am safe. And that's really what I wish for every person is to be in that experience of safety within themselves. This is how we begin to call in abundance, sustainable, consistent abundance, repeatable abundance in those areas of our lives, our relationships, our bank accounts, and the way in which we show up in general in our life. I also thought it would be helpful here just to look a little bit at what this scarcity or lack of contraction in our nervous system might look like in real life, because it's not always obvious. Sometimes we think we have an abundance mindset and we're doing all the affirmations and the visualizations and the journaling and the positive reinforcement self talk, but our actions are telling a different story. And that's really, I want to say that's where the jam hits the bread. I have no idea, but that just feels like, like the truth here. Your actions is the real you. Not what you are thinking or what you tell yourself you are thinking, but how you are showing up the things that you do tells the truth of what's going on inside. Some of the most common signs that I link to coming from scarcity or coming from lack, and a caveat here doesn't Mean this is the only reason why you are performing in this way. We are. These are only pointers and you use your own discernment and your own sovereign agency to decide if this is true for you. So I see this happens a lot when there's a lot of over giving and over proving happening. Where we keep on giving, we keep on making ourselves available. And that's followed by resentment or times when we make ourselves visible, we show ourselves. And then that's followed by almost like a vulnerability hangover or the need to retreat and completely hide yourself again. Because it feels like too much. The exposure feels like too much. And most telling is that feeling of tightness and a little bit of fear that we experience when good things happen to us. And for us to be able to notice those very subtle responses, we need to be sensitive to our internal world, right? We need to be sensitive to our inner felt sense, which is the feelings that speak the truth of where we are in relation to our life experience. It's how we experience the world. That experience can be translated into feelings and sensations. And it is our inner felt sense that transmits these feelings and sensations. And to be able to access that, you cannot be in your head. And that's why when you work with me, we spend a lot of time developing that sensitivity to the internal felt sense. And also to develop that safety to feeling safe, to be yourself, to feeling safe, to inhabiting your full self. Because if there is contraction happening in your body, even when good things happen, if you are able to sense that, if you are able to notice when the contraction happens and you have the tools to deal with the contraction, can you see that this is how we can start calling in more consistent abundance in our lives? Because you have to be in your body to feel the contraction, right? And that's how we can begin to create this consistent change. And this goes beyond nervous system regulation. I also just want to add that in here. When you're regulating your nervous system, the way that I see it is you are learning how to work with what's happening in the moment, like right here, right now. But when you practice the skill of embodiment, when you drop into your body to inhabit yourself and cultivate that internal sense of safety, it goes further than just working with the triggers that's happening in the moment. You actually redesigning and resetting your internal baseline. And I have seen time and time again how this is what allows us to have more consistent access to abundance, because we have more consistent access to, to our own flow. Now if you have really felt yourself ever before, wondering why your mindset work wasn't working and why you felt like you were going one step forward and two steps back and you were gaslighting yourself or not being more positive or not, you know, desiring your goal enough so that you can actually bring it into your life. Or you were even judging your own vibration and saying that your vibration must not be high enough and that's why you're struggling to create the life that you want. Then I'm hoping that what I shared with you in this episode today has changed your mind, that it's changed your mind, and that we can start to begin to create the change on a nervous system level in our bodies, because that's where our truth lies. So before I get too philosophical on this, I'm going to wrap us up for today. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, if it resonated with you, I would so, so, so appreciate you to leave me a review. If you are listening on Apple Podcasts and if you are listening on Spotify, then go ahead and leave a rating. It really helps to get this podcast under the ears of more people. And the more we can collectively exhale and live in a place of abundance rather than a place of scarcity, the better the world for us and for our children. I'll speak to you in the next one. Bye.