Transform Your Life - Just Count Me In

#35 Do It Scared!

• Sari Stone • Season 1 • Episode 35

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In this episode Sari shares a deeply personal story of courage and loss showing how identity shapes abundance. Learn how to step into a new self-concept even when it feels scary.  Backed by neuroscience and spiritual wisdom. Expand your capacity to receive. Do it scared.

Please share this episode with someone who might benefit, and like, subscribe and leave a comment to support the podcast. You can download the free journal prompts, affirmations, and guided meditation PDF linked in the show notes.
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Downloadable Journal Guide/Affirmations

Thank you for joining me!

Speaker 1:

Hey, welcome back, or welcome. If you're joining us for the first time to transform your life, just count me in. I'm Sari Stone, and today we're going to dive into how your identity shapes what you actually allow yourself to receive, and whether that's love or opportunities, money, support, and also the fact that sometimes, when we're living in alignment with our identity or trying on a new identity that we've shifted into, the universe gives us opportunities and we're actually asked to do something, even though we feel really, really scared. Think about people in performing arts. They love, they do, they're in their flow and sometimes, before stepping onto the stage, often what do they experience? Stage fright. Some people never even get past that. Some people transcend that fear with substances. Some transcend it just by merely practicing and making it familiar. But to remain aligned with who we are and who we've become in the face of fear is really challenging, and I'm going to share a couple of pretty personal stories about times that I've done it scared. Will Smith was quoted as saying this is not an exact quote, but if you go to his YouTube about jumping out of a plane and how it changed his life, on the other side of fear, he said, sometimes God places the most beautiful gifts on the other side of fear. Here we go, let's dive in.

Speaker 1:

I'm standing in the rain and I am 20 years old, pregnant with my first baby, in Tijuana, mexico, visiting my mom, and we didn't know at that time it was going to be the last time that I would see her alive. She was staying at a cancer clinic. There were floods at that time that had shut down where the cabs would usually drive me back to the border, and so my stepdad would normally go with me, but at this time my mom needed him to stay with her and it was just going to be too hard and she was too sick and no one could go with me. Well, I did not feel like a 20 year old who was about to become a mom. I felt probably like a five year old who was just literally petrified. The water was past my knees and I knew I was going to have to wade through that to get to the border and I was really scared. But my mom looked me in the eyes and I was crying. I was crying because I was leaving her. I was I never knew when it was going to be the last time. I was crying because I was petrified. But she looked at me and she cut my face in her hands and she said Baby, sometimes in life you're just going to be scared and you're going to have to do it anyway. Remember who you are. You're strong, we're strong, I love you. And those were the last face-to-face words she ever said to me and they absolutely shaped me. What she did at that time although she didn't well, she might have realized it she was into all this stuff was she helped remind me of my identity?

Speaker 1:

I identified as a strong person and, from a neuroscience angle, identity is your self-schema. It's stored in your brain. The RAS system in your brain acts like a filter and it's always scanning the environment for evidence that matches who you think you are. If your identity says I've never been good at math or I really don't deserve help from people, your brain literally filters out opportunities that contradict that belief. We always like to make ourselves right, but when you consciously upgrade your identity which we do I'm worthy of love. I'm a thriving learner. It's getting easier and easier for me to learn new things. Your brain starts noticing new evidence to support those opportunities.

Speaker 1:

One of the first things I do when I start coaching with my clients is we write an I am list and that just helps and it's something that they revisit and they embody the feeling of those words and it's what they believe about themselves. And when they come across a conflicting belief or an inner voice that argues if they're saying, for example, I'm worthy of love or I am affluent, then we write those down too and we can address those in coaching. You can create a whole new map in your brain. There's also a spiritual side to this, and your identity is like your energetic signature. It's like when you subscribe to something, the vibration that you hold sends a match out to the universe to flow back to you. Spirit is always offering abundance, but we can only receive to the extent that we believe we're worthy. Shifting identity is like tuning your radio to a different frequency and you suddenly receive a clearer, richer broadcast.

Speaker 1:

Teaching this early on to our children shows them that they're not stuck in who they think they are. There's also a place where the neuroscience of courage takes over, and that's taking action while we're scared. I used to think that when I was scared it's because something is dangerous, or it's because I shouldn't do it, or it just didn't occur to me that I should do it scared. Somebody always helped me when I was little if I was scared to do something and you know, maybe they should have told me to do it scared a little bit more back then. But the neuroscience of courage is that when you take action as you are scared, it activates the amygdala and stress circuits and each time you do it, your decision-making part of your brain, that prefrontal cortex, strengthens. Each time you do it your fear actually decreases and this is called extinction learning. Extinction learning is how new neural pathways of confidence form. Like a previously learned behavior gradually weakens and disappeared because its association with stimulus and the response is broken. So you learn to equate pleasure in new ways.

Speaker 1:

So let's say, when I was a lot younger I smoked cigarettes for a while. Back then if somebody said how many cigarettes a day did you smoke, I would have said 10. Now I would look at you like you're crazy. Because what my identity changed? I am a non-smoker, I don't smoke, I don't have anything in the house, I don't smoke. But while I was changing it, it took a conscious effort of doing it when I was very scared that I was not going to be able to quit because I was so addicted to the nicotine and now I learned the response that I got the stimulus of having a cigarette. The response I got was just revulsion after a while and it became easier and easier From a spiritual perspective.

Speaker 1:

Fear doesn't mean that you're off track, and I think that's where I made mistakes often. It's usually a sign, as long as you know that you're safe, that you're expanding beyond an old vibration or an old state, and I feel like God or the universe sees your courage and responds with support. Every single do it scared moment is an initiation to your next level of identity. So the do it scared moments are kind of like keys that unlock the door. If somebody is afraid of heights, part of the therapy is to gently expose them to heights in safe environments until they start to make those new neural connections and the extinction. That happens and they can do it. They can do it. So for practical steps, you can think about naming a new identity that you're stepping into I had to do it with this podcast and you can also think about taking one aligned action even while you're facing the fear Just one little step and celebrate it to anchor that new pattern.

Speaker 1:

An example that I really wanted to share is when my husband and I took our 13-year-old grandson on his 13 trip we do that when the grandkids turn 13. Old grandson on his 13 trip we do that when the grandkids turn 13, to Great Adventure because he wanted to ride the tallest at that time roller coaster Kingda Ka. We've ridden roller coasters before and we love them. We wanted to identify as the fun grandparents who did this thing with him and we thought how cool that a 13 year old is going to. A want to go on a with us and B want us to be the ones who ride the roller coaster with him. I mean, these moments you don't get back. So at the same time of trying to identify with being those awesome grandparents, we're standing in front of the long winding line. We look up at the 456-foot tower winding corkscrew roller coaster and the two of us experienced simultaneous terror. He was just excited. This roller coaster had, at the time, the longest drop of any roller coaster it was 418 feet. We were just flat out scared. But because we truly loved our grandson and we just had no choice, we did it and we did it scared. We actually loved it so much that we got off and did it again. I get excited even just telling you that story.

Speaker 1:

I'm going to suggest that you maybe play this episode a couple times or dig inside and think about some times that you have stepped into things that you were afraid of, that did feel aligned. You knew you were supposed to be doing them, you knew it was part of your expansion as a person and it was scary but exciting. And where in your life, right now, right this minute? And where in your life right now, right this minute, are you being invited to do something, even though you're scared? If your new identity already trusted that everything was going to be all right, what would you do today?

Speaker 1:

Here's some affirmations for you to try. Even when I'm scared, I move towards my true self. My identity expands. My ability to allow myself to receive expands. I gratefully receive. I model courage, I model abundance because I am brave and I am abundant. So I do have show notes and I will have those linked into the episode. You have a free journal, prompt affirmation and a guided meditation on a PDF that you're welcome to click on and download from this episode. I can just tell you that over and over again, I see it in my coaching and I see it in my tutoring. Kids and adults rewire their identity and stories and they expand what they allow themselves to receive and they are living their best lives. If you liked this episode or you know somebody who is at this point in their life where you think this episode would benefit them, please share it with them and please like, subscribe and leave a comment. It supports the podcast. Podcast. Thank you so much. I look forward to seeing you again.