Burn The Ships - The Power of Telling the Truth with Mary Beth Thomsen

What happens when you stop performing your life… and start telling the truth? 

In this episode, Fran Willoughby sits down with psychic medium, intuitive life coach, and author Mary Beth Thomsen to explore her upcoming book Burn The Ships: The Power of Telling the Truth to Yourself and the World. 

From spirituality and neuroscience to social media masks, limiting beliefs, and the fear of vulnerability, this conversation dives headfirst into why so many of us stay hidden and what it costs us. 

Together, Fran and Mary Beth explore: 

✨ Why people avoid telling the truth — even to themselves
 ✨ The curated “highlight reel” culture of social media
 ✨ How childhood conditioning shapes limiting beliefs
 ✨ The connection between truth, freedom, and healing
 ✨ Manifestation, choice, and personal responsibility
 ✨ Postpartum depression and the courage of honesty
 ✨ Coming out publicly as a psychic medium during the pandemic
 ✨ Influences including Eckhart Tolle and Dr. Joe Dispenza
 ✨ Why Mary Beth believes we’re living through a collective “great awakening” 

This is a conversation about masks, meaning, fear, liberation… and what happens when you finally burn the ships behind you and step fully into who you are. 

Sometimes the truth wrecks your old life.
Sometimes it saves it. 

About Mary Beth

Mary Beth Thomsen, owner of Soul Shines Coaching, is a Certified Master Color Energy Coach, Certified Spiritual Life Coach, a psychic medium, and Celtic Shamanic Practitioner. Her work centers on one core belief: that telling the truth—especially the ones we’ve been avoiding—is the doorway to healing, self-trust, and real transformation.

She is a contributing writer for Mantra Wellness Magazine. Her debut book in development, BURN THE SHIPS, is a teaching memoir exploring the courage it takes to tell the truth out loud, and what becomes possible when we do.

Through her work, Mary Beth invites others to reconnect with their inner knowing, release what no longer aligns, and live with greater clarity, honesty, and freedom.

Website: www.soulshinescoaching.com 

IG: www.instagram.com/soulshinescoaching

FB: www.facebook.com/soulshinescoaching 

If you have a story that you think would be good for the podcast, please do get in touch by emailing thepowerofthetruth@mojo-motivator.com. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Hello and welcome to the Power of the Truth podcast with me, Fran Willoughby. Today's guest is someone who approached me because they felt the synergy between our opinions was so succinct. Uh, I can't wait for you to listen to our conversation. Rather than a story of hope through adversity, today's conversation is one around the subject of truth. She's actually writing a book about the truth. She's extremely knowledgeable about everything to do with the truth and how neuroscience and psychology meets spirituality and the divine. It's fascinating, in my opinion. And I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoy recording it. If you do enjoy the conversation, please do follow and like on social media or wherever you get your podcasts. I'd be very grateful. And if you have any insights or comments or questions, please do email podcast at mojo-motivator.com. I'd love to hear your thoughts. And without further ado, I'd like to introduce to you Mary Beth Thompson. Okay, welcome to the power of the truth, Mary Beth Thompson. So nice to have you here. Thanks for being here today. Thank you, Fran. I'm happy to be here. Could you please just tell us a little bit about who you are and how you've ended up to be here today?

SPEAKER_02 1:33

Sure. So my name is Mary Beth Thompson. As you said, I live in the United States down in the south in Atlanta, Georgia. Uh, I am a truth teller, which is why we're here today. Uh I am a psychic medium. I am an intuitive life coach. I work specifically with color energy. So that might come up in conversation today as well. And I also practice Celtic shamanic work. And my lineage is from Ireland, so that's why I work under the Celtic umbrella of shamanism. And um, yeah, I'm an empath and I'm a spaceholder, and I'm a mother of two young girls who are five and eight. I'm married to a wonderful supportive husband, and I'm excited to talk about today's topic on your podcast. So thanks for having me because I happen to be writing a book about telling the truth.

SPEAKER_00 2:25

Exactly. And that's how uh you contacted me, didn't you? Uh sort of out of the blue, really, because the name of the podcast matched kind of the strapline of the book, right? Right. So tell us about the book. Where has the inspiration for the truth come from? Tell me.

SPEAKER_02 2:45

Wow, you know, so I I haven't told the story specifically about how I landed on this topic. So, for context, I have been writing my whole life since I was a little girl. Um, as I got older into my adult life, I I've written articles in magazines, I've written blogs, I've I've had, I even had a blind dating column a long time ago. So I'm a writer through and through. I um I love to write. It's it's like breathing to me. And so I always knew I had a book inside me, but I had a hard time narrowing down what the topic would be. And as I would get older and um my experiences would change, I felt like I kind of outgrew the topic of the book at the time. And then probably three or four years ago, I was listening to Oprah Winfrey interview a gentleman who had been on death row for decades. And um, he was wrongly convicted of a crime he didn't commit. And uh in the conversation that Oprah was interviewing him about, she said to him something to the effect of, um, what was the hardest part of reading writing this book? And he said to tell the truth. And something just struck me in that moment where I thought, oh my God, that that that is so powerful that telling the truth, and we'll we can unpack this today, is something that is so deeply difficult sometimes for a variety of reasons. And I reflected back on my life and how that has been a through line for me is in moments of light in my life, both through my, you know, religious upbringing to being a closeted medium, to, you know, friendships, finances, physical health. I mean, just through and through and through that there has been this common shared experience, not only with me and and people that I've talked to, but as you have a podcast now about telling the truth and the power of that, um, that's when the book kind of was born in my heart and in my mind that I knew that this was a topic that I could talk about with a lot of passion and conviction and a lot of um yeah, sympathy for for um the idea that a lot of times we don't tell the truth to ourselves, right? Because it can be too painful uh or in denial and or having a hard time telling the truth to others for for lots of different reasons.

SPEAKER_00 5:08

Absolutely. So tell us about the book then. So the book, I know it's not been published yet. You're working on it, aren't you? But um, so what's the title? Do you know?

SPEAKER_02 5:19

So so and unless it gets changed, which I don't think it will be, but right now the working title is called Burn the Ships: The Power of Telling the Truth to Yourself in the World. And so burn the ships is a phrase that I the story that I have known it to be for was from I think back in the 1600s, where there was a troop of soldiers who landed upon somewhere where they were trying to conquer, and they had ships that they had gone to shore on. And I guess the person in charge said, we have to burn the ships. And it was a way of saying literally and metaphorically, there's no going back, there's no retreating. And so in today's day and age, the expression, um, and in the context of my book means burning the ships means our lies. And so burning the ships of where we're holding ourselves back, where we're not being as authentic with ourselves or other people. And um, so so burning the ships or burn burn the ships is the name of the book.

SPEAKER_00 6:16

Amazing. So aside from that initial moment with Oprah Winfrey and the chap on Death Row who had been wrongly convicted, and obviously that sparked something in you that made you kind of, oh my God, you know, and I feel like this is a subject that I have to explore. Um, how long did it take you to get from that moment to where you are now to writing the book? Um, it's been a long journey.

SPEAKER_02 6:45

Yeah, it's been a long journey. So I so I'd probably say over two years. So um, I don't know if you want to get into the nuances of uh publishing a book or not, but basically when you do a non-fiction book, so a book on the truth, right? Like a memoir or something else, um, and you want to get traditionally published, you have to write a book proposal. And that can take that literally can take years to write. And so you don't write the book until the proposal's done if you want to get a contract with the publisher. And so that's kind of where I'm at now is I'm in contract negotiation right now with my publisher, and so I'll be writing the book for the next for the next six to eight months, probably.

SPEAKER_00 7:22

Amazing. That's so exciting. Yeah. So tell me, how do you categorize the truth? Break that down in terms of chapters.

SPEAKER_02 7:34

So basically, just kind of acknowledging that in in our day and age right now, with social media and all the filters and the photoshopping, right? So the physical representation of how we put ourselves out there on the internet is so deeply filtered. Plus, you know, people we call it our highlight reel, right? We're only sharing content for the most part. And I'm just I'm I'm generalizing, but that that makes us look like our life is all white picket fence and everything's perfect. And that's obviously just not true, right? But unfortunately, I feel like that's the conditioning where we're in right now is that we want to portray this altered version of reality, right? And you know, keeping up with the Joneses and wanting to fit in and wanting to be accepted, and how many likes did my posts get and things like that. So on top of that, I feel like because from a very young age, and this is my understanding and my belief, is around the age of seven, we are taught that if I tell the truth, I'm gonna get in trouble. That is a very common experience. So it's like if I, as a very young child, I made a mistake or I did something wrong, and then I'm reprimanded from my parents for it. And so we begin to associate at a subconscious level, if I tell the truth, I'm gonna get in trouble. So I feel like it's not our fault, right? We we've mostly been conditioned. Um, and so the book outlines why we don't tell the truth, um, which is because most of the time it's that we're very vulnerable, that we are afraid that we are going to be rejected, we're gonna be judged. And so kind of framing, framing the truth about why we don't tell the truth. And then every chapter goes over different parts of our life, like I said earlier, um, our mental health, our physical health, our financial health, our social media presence, family, friends, relationships, and things like that. So, so every chapter kind of through my own storytelling, through my experiences, plus, as a life coach, I have lots of clients who I've dug through limiting beliefs and why they may not be honest with themselves. And at the end of the chapter, there's an assessment that people can take to understand where they fall on the spectrum, to kind of do some deep reflection, to say, you know, where where could I stand to be more honest with myself in this part of my life?

SPEAKER_00 10:03

That kind of leads into my next question, really, which is that as a coach, you very much blend practical and divine, don't you? Your psychology and your neuroscience uh background, shaking hands with intuition and spirit. So, how does that unique mix help you explore truth in the book? How does that work? Because obviously you've got the sciencey bit and then you've got the the spiritual bit. So, how does that how does that work together?

SPEAKER_02 10:35

Yeah, so if I may just bring in astrology for just a quick second. I don't know if you're if you're into astrology or not. Years ago, I had my first, my very first astrology reading, and she told me about my north and south node, which is north node virgo, south node Pisces, which of course are the polar opposites. And it was like my whole life made sense in that moment because Pisces, of course, is a sign that is deeply intuitive. It's a water sign, it's very emotional and sensitive. And so that is me. That that is that is who I am, right? And then your north node is what you came here to learn. And the Virgo is kind of known to be um fact-finding and organization and synthesizing, you know, knowledge. And that's how my brain has always worked. And so it's interesting you bring up the question of the spiritual intuitive part, and then the science, you know, neuroscience part of this is literally feels like how my brain was designed. So I can always see things through um statistics and the psychology of why we are the way that we are and why we operate and why we do the things that we do. So that helps me better understand our minds and how uh we have neural pathways that, you know, lead us to think these thoughts over and over and over again, which then become our beliefs. And then we don't even realize why we think the way we think, because it's 80% of the time it's subconscious thoughts, right? So that's just the way that my brain synthesizes information is to understand the why. And then from an intuitive medium psychic energy worker, I have, I guess, I guess I could say like the lens in which I see the world, I will always see the spiritual meaning behind an experience of why something is happening the way it is. And so I call myself an intuitive life coach. When I went to get life coaching certifications, I would share this story that I was originally going to go see a Tony Robbins workshop experience, thinking I might go down that path. But then it occurred to me, no, I don't think, I mean, of course, I'll take the bits and pieces of the framework of that kind of coaching, but but but my essence is a light worker. And so I thought it would be nice to blend my intuitive abilities with the coaching. So it's practical, but it's also helping people remember who they are and to know that their answers are not outside of them. So I'd like to think that my book blends that together of how I even just operate as a person.

SPEAKER_00 13:14

I mean, I completely resonate because I do exactly the same thing. So I really understand that. And I think for me at the moment, I I'm so called by the power of choice, the power of personal choice, and how we use that to create our reality and how everything we do is a choice, and choosing not to do something is as much of a choice as choosing to do it. Absolutely, and I think it's so interesting how people don't acknowledge the feelings inside them of the choices they don't make and why they don't make them because they're so focused on what they're doing rather than what they're not doing, and uh it's coming up a lot for me at the moment. The power of choice is huge, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 14:17

Absolutely, yeah. And you're making me think of this coaching model called, it's literally called the model, and it's when you as a client or as anyone trying to get around why you're not doing something. So it's like, okay, so for example, I want to lose weight to feel like my genes are fitting, they're not as tight. And it's like, okay, well, what's the circumstance? The circumstance is that I am overweight. And the thought I have about that is that I think that even if I got up at 5 a.m. to work out, that it's not gonna make, it's not gonna make a difference, right? So the action or inaction that I take is that I don't do anything. I just, I just don't do anything. And so the result is nothing changes, right? So so I yeah, I I I love that you brought this into the conversation that choices also include the choice not to do something and how impactful that is. And so it's this kind of full circle moment to be able to figure out I say I want something, but yet I'm not doing anything about it. And so when you bring up the idea of choices and how choices are important both from making a choice to do something, but you're also choosing when you don't do something too.

SPEAKER_00 15:35

For sure. Yeah, so important. So, in terms of personal experience, you mentioned that there's a lot for you where truth has been woven throughout your life. Aside from the Upra Winfrey moment, talk to me about what experiences for you really leaned into this need to tell the truth. I'm assuming you said being a closet medium earlier, so I'm assuming that's got something to do with it.

SPEAKER_02 16:07

That was a big one. So I discovered that I had a mediumship ability um in my early 20s. And my grandpa, who died when I was eight, who I didn't really have a close relationship with, came into my consciousness. You know, I didn't have language for it back then, but it would be called Claire Cognizant. So just in knowing he was there, Claire Sentient. I just felt his energy and clear audience. I started to talk to him in my mind and was like, What are you doing here? You know, I was at the gym on a treadmill. I was like, what? And he had a message for me to share with my sister. And again, like I said, about writing felt so natural to me. Mediumship is is as natural as breathing to me. That that's how natural it is to me. So I ended up passing on the information to my sister. It it resonated with her. And that was the moment where I then, I guess you could say, turned on the switch of like, okay, I can connect with loved ones in spirit. And so essentially for the next 20 years, it was a secret in the sense that only my closest, closest friends knew and just a handful of family members knew. And I never ever dreamed that I would share it publicly whatsoever. And then fast forward to 2020 around the pandemic, right? Um, I feel like a lot of us went through a metamorphosis of reevaluating our lives and, you know, what am I doing? And so I had been in marketing. My professional career was in marketing for 20 years. And I felt like I was getting nudged from the universe to go look into life coaching. And literally one week before my website was gonna go live for Soul Science Coaching, I had an intuitive nudge that said, you need to share your mediumship abilities. And I thought, no way, Jose. Like that's I'm not life coach. I'm not gonna, I'm not doing mediumship readings. Is that crazy? And but this the feeling was so strong that I thought, okay, let me just gently come out of the closet and see what happens. And I posted on my personal Facebook page, and 60 people commented that they would like a reading. And I thought, okay. And so at the last minute, I added mediumship readings to my business. And to this day, mediumship and intuitive readings are the bulk of what I do in my business. And so telling the truth has changed my life in the sense of having the freedom to not care if anyone doesn't agree with this or if they judge me for it. I find that most people who judge you just don't understand. People sometimes are scared when they don't understand. And it's been very liberating for me and freeing for me to release the concern about, you know, and I love this expression, your opinion of me is none of my business. Um, and so yeah, absolutely the power of telling the truth of my truth that I am a media. I didn't ask for this, right? I I never even took classes of how to do it. So I felt uh very in alignment when I was finally able to just not hide it anymore.

SPEAKER_00 19:22

Yeah, amazing. Yeah, it and how do you deal with pushback? Do you get much do you get much criticism or pushback from people?

SPEAKER_02 19:33

Only my mom, who um that's a whole that's a whole nother story, but she's one of the people that knew I was a medium. Um, I grew up in the Catholic Church, and so it's very layered and complicated because I feel I feel like sometimes the Catholic Church inadvertently is kind of was like a training ground for me because you light sacred candles, they use special oils, you talk to entities that you can't see, and you trust that they're hearing your messages, um, you know, all the divine intervention through prayer. I mean, it's just it's crazy to reflect back on how deeply esoteric and magical the Catholic Church is in their in their practices. So I think my mom was okay with it when it was a secret, when it was just kept in the family. But once I came out to do readings for the public and and and reach out to spirit on command, whereas before it was always I was always just the receiver.

SPEAKER_00 20:37

You're the servant, aren't you? And the catch is catched.

SPEAKER_02 20:40

Yes, yeah. So so so if you know, if if a grandma came to me and then I'd pass the information along, I was just the I called myself the mailman. I'm just the mailman, I'm just passing it on. But but I think things got sticky when I did this as a professional, and now people are paying me for this, and I'm going on command to to retrieve these souls to come to me. That was like, oh no, no, no, no, no. Now now you're really um, you know, going against the fray. And so um, so generally speaking, I don't come across a lot of people who push back to your question. But to be fair, I also am um a like a quasi-professional manifester. And I um I I love manifesting, it's one of my favorite topics, and so I have manifested, I believe that I truly am really just surrounded, both online and in real life, with people who are deeply aligned with me. And that it's it's um it's a reciprocal experience. And so I generally, knock on wood, have been able to keep away any trolls or people who are not in alignment with me.

SPEAKER_00 21:51

That's amazing. I think it's interesting that you've manifested that the people you're around, you literally found me, and we are. On the same page. So it's so interesting, isn't it? That subject of manifestation. And the question is, I guess, how much of it is you've decided that you're only going to be surrounded by people who are good people, like-minded people, and so you actively seek them out because that's a choice that you've made in your brain, rather than I've manifested this and therefore it has it has happened, but actually you made it happen. And certainly in that in the case of our relationship.

SPEAKER_02 22:38

Yeah, yeah. So let me give you an example. So one of the manifestations I do, and I'm an angel number nerd. So when I see 1111 or whatever, I will use that as uh a reminder for me to do a manifestation. And so, you know, everything I do is through gratitude. So I'm not asking for anything, I'm thanking actively, proactively. Thank you for attracting new and repeat clients into my book of business who are energetically aligned with me and for all the referrals. Um thank you for attracting professional collaborations that I that fall into my lap and that's mutually beneficial and energetically aligned. Thank you for all the prosperity and money and abundance that flows into my household in ways that are expected, unexpected, and very clever. And I and so I have this whole thing, and I'm doing it with my hand over my heart, and I'm smiling, and I'm feeling it in my body, and it happens all the time. All the time. It's it's wild. And so, yes, was meeting you serendipitous. Absolutely. I'm listening to a podcast, you're the guest, you talk about your truth-telling podcast. That's literally essentially the name of my book. You and I hop onto Zoom, and we have so much in common. So much in common. I'm like, are you joking me? So I I believe that that was orchestrated from the universe from my intention setting. Yeah, I do.

SPEAKER_00 24:10

Amazing. I I just I love it. I uh and then you and then you become to think, and and this is something my mom actually used to question a lot. She would always say, I wonder if we have any choice. Really? Really, uh-huh, you know, she would say, I wonder if the if we the end point is the end point, and we do have choices along the way, but actually, where we end up, we have no choice over that, you know, or is it that we do have a choice and we can alter it, but there are certain things that have to happen to us along the way. We it was a it was a regular conversation we would mull over. Um, and it is fascinating because we don't know, do we? We don't know which way it works. Really? But I kind of think that's half the fun of it is not knowing why or how, but just trusting, and it's part of that surrender process that we talk about so much in mediumship, that we just have to trust that it is as it should be. One of it is meant for you won't pass you by, right? Yeah, anyway. So if we're getting a bit philosophical, which I feel like we are, yeah, who are the thinkers, teachers, spiritual voices that have shaped your thinking and your two? Who do you look up to?

SPEAKER_02 25:32

I would say the first spiritual teacher that made a significant impact on me is Eckhart Toly. His book, uh A New Earth, completely changed the trajectory of my entire life. And I mean that without trying to sound dramatic. I mean it sincerely. Growing up in the Catholic Church, I was taught that you have one life, you go to heaven or hell or purgatory, nothing about reincarnation. We're born into sin. I mean, all this whole structure, right? And so there was something, I think, divinely guided that I was meant to read his book at the exact time I did. I think I was in my early 30s. And it was as if I was reading the truth that I knew out of soul level, but it had just been like I just got the key to reading. Again, this is might sound confusing. It was the truth that I knew to be true, maybe in another dimension or something, because it wasn't the truth that I was taught, but I I read it and I thought, oh my God, that makes so much sense to me. And so that was like a portal for me to start to to second guess or to question if what I was taught was actually true, or is it possible that there that there could be other possibilities out there? And that that was the gateway for me, and I never I never looked back. So so I would say Eckert Tolley has been instrumental in uncovering these other, I'll I'll call them truths, probable truths, maybe. Um, and then also from a psychology standpoint, I absolutely love Dr. Joe Dispenza. So I really like when it comes to again, like manifesting and the power of our thoughts and how it all works and uh the psychology of it and the neuroscience of it. I could probably repeat his language word for word because I've listened to him so much. I've never been to his retreats before. I would love to go to one um sometime. But yeah, Dr. Joe Dispenza would be another teacher to kind of bring it all back to like the spiritual side and the science side. I feel like those two teachers have made a big impact on me.

SPEAKER_00 27:46

You know, uh talking about synergy, I went to uh uh a show, uh literary festival on Monday where they were doing a poetry readings with one of my favourite poets called Donna Ashworth. And she, I'd never heard of Joe Dispence before until Monday. No, well and the fact that you've just mentioned him and she's been on one of his retreats. Uh-huh. Um there was something else that was said. Have you ever heard of the word Beltane? Of course, yeah, yeah. I've never heard of it until very recently because the new company that I'm doing some work for um makes a cider called Beltane because of a Beltane festival, but I still didn't know the meaning of the word. And then she brought it up and talked about the the height of spring and beltane and all the rest of it. So that when she said beltane, and bearing in mind I'd ever, and now you've just done the Joe Dispenser, that's a sign for me because that's the second time now in the space of three days that somebody said Joe Dispenser to me. So clearly I need to go and look into his work, don't I?

SPEAKER_02 28:53

Um But and the reason I said of course is because I practice Celtic shamanic work, and so they very much interweave, they come fire festivals and different ceremonies throughout the year, and one of them is Beltane. So that's only why I said, of course, only because it's a Celtic tradition.

SPEAKER_00 29:11

Is it okay? You see, I don't know. I only know because uh, like I say, this company make a beltane cider, and it was made because there's an ancient farm near where we live that has this Beltane festival, and they made a cider called Beltane for the Beltane Festival. And other than that, I've never heard of the word, and I find it even more crazy that you do know what the word is because I I know, I know.

SPEAKER_02 29:36

Well, you're asking it several years ago. I don't know that I could have said I would have known, but um, yeah, Beltane marks the the middle between the spring and the summer, and um yeah, it's great.

SPEAKER_00 29:46

And well, I know because Donna told us on Monday that it's the point where uh everything is growing at its most prolific, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 29:56

Yes, yes, yes, absolutely. Yeah, it's beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 29:58

Many people talk about truth, and it can get a bit fuzzy, can't it? Because we talk about our truth, you talk about your truth.

SPEAKER_01 30:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:09

So, how do we define that in the context of a book? Tell me, how do you talk about that with authority? Because everybody's truth is theirs to own, right? Right.

SPEAKER_02 30:20

I think that's the most important. I think I was just referencing that a few minutes ago, is saying, you know, it's my truth, it's my truth. I'm not saying it's the truth, but it's my truth. And I think it's really important to acknowledge that. Um, so I'm gonna read you some definitions, okay? So a lie is a knowingly false statement told with intention of deceiving someone, okay? And the definition of vulnerability is to be susceptible to physical or emotional harm. So I think they're connected because sometimes we don't tell the truth because we feel vulnerable, which gives us susceptibility of harm, right? So it's kind of this full circle moment. And I think that again, we could unpack this at nauseum about the different reasons of why we don't tell the truth. And again, in my book, I'm talking about telling your truth to yourself, which I think frankly probably starts there, right? It starts there with where am I not being honest about, let's just say my relationship where I feel like we've completely grown apart and we're no longer in alignment. And maybe I'm not even in love with this person anymore, but I'm I'm not willing to make a change. So I just go along for the ride and I don't say anything. Or maybe I'm in a friendship and my friendship is one-sided, and this one person who I care about deeply never calls me, never checks on me, is always emotionally dumping on me, and I'm always holding space, but I don't feel like she's ever reciprocating that. And that's unbalanced. But I don't tell her because I'm worried she's going to, you know, fill in the blank. My financial health. Oh, I'm in a wild amount of credit card debt, but I'm not willing to face it because if I were to tell the truth, it could mean I might lose something. My physical health, I've put on, and this is a real example, gained and lost the same weight probably 30 times in my life, right? And so the truth of telling myself that, you know, losing and gaining the same weight over and over and over in this cycle and coming to terms with when I have put on weight, that I'm not even looking in the mirror anymore because I'm so ashamed of what has happened. Social media, I don't use filters. That's only because I feel like it would be hypocritical of me to be promoting the truth and then not even looking like I look in real life. So so I personally don't use filters. I I have zero judgment for people who do. But again, I and I frankly, I like I said, I don't think it's anyone's fault either. I feel like we've been conditioned, which I already went on that little tirade this earlier, so I won't repeat myself. But how am I showing up on social media and and where could I stand to be more honest? So telling the truth, I personally think starts with to ourselves. And then I think once we get honest about where we're misleading ourselves or in denial or just not facing it, then I think kind of the second phase would be other people. Like where could I show up in more truth towards other people in my life, whether it's a personal relationship, whether it's to the collective or whatever it might be. Um, but what I have found is that we tend to make up stories in our heads that aren't true. And we also tend to often think about the worst case scenario. And I think some people will be pleasantly surprised that when they actually give it a chance and expect maybe it's not gonna be as bad as I'm projecting that it could be. It's like, oh, well, that actually wasn't as bad as I thought it was gonna be. When I when I spoke up and told my friends, you know, I'm I'm really feeling like you haven't been supportive of me and it's really hurt my feelings. Instead of biting my head off or wanting to end the friendship, they actually apologized to me and said, I'm so sorry, you know, I'd like to make this up to you. So the power of telling the truth can be transformative if we just give it a chance.

SPEAKER_00 34:16

I agree. One thing that popped into my mind when you were talking then is though how we can be affected, especially as children, by what we're told. So just as a real life example, as a young child in infant school in kindergarten, I think you guys would say, I was bullied for being a show-off. Right now, I have always been quite a big personality. I went into professional musical theatre, I like to sing, I'm quite loud, I talk a lot, and I can be silly and I do show off and I quite enjoy it. But as a child, obviously, that bit of me, the flamboyance, the extrovert bit of me, because actually I am an introvert, but the extrovert part of me did skip round the hall doing my ballet skips that I did at the at class, you know, rather than skipping like all the other children were skipping. I was doing balletic skips around the thing, you know, and these, gosh, she's such a show off. And looking back, I can see why they called me a show-off. I was showing off, but it really hit me quite hard as a child, and it still affects me because I still think, oh, just be quiet. No one wants to listen to you all the time, you know. There's this, so there's this sort of conscious hangover from being told that so much between the ages of five and eleven. And it's and like you say, we tell ourselves these stories, but that's something that was someone else's opinion. But when you're a child, you don't understand that. You don't process that really what what they were saying was right, and it wasn't necessarily negative, although it was portrayed as negative at the time. So, how can we work through that as adults when we're told something as a child? I mean, it could be anything, couldn't it? It could be you're naughty. I've heard of times when people said, Oh, that child's evil. How do we let go of those things that we've been told the truth as children as we as we become adults? I don't know. I think that's an interesting one to debate.

SPEAKER_02 36:45

Yeah, it's fascinating. You know, you were talking earlier about synchronicities and how you know Joe Dispenza and Beltane and all that. Ironically, but not surprisingly, tomorrow, the day after we're recording this, I'm actually teaching. I have a membership called The Sanctuary, and the topic of the month is about um limiting beliefs and where they started and unpacking where they came from, when is the first time you remembered it? And so it's just it's so funny that you're bringing this up. Um, so yes, I think we we all have these limiting beliefs that mostly started in our childhood, just like you just shared, this kind of core memory experience where we were told something and we received it as the truth, right? So now it's lodged into our subconscious, and now we go through life through this filter and this little reminder in our brain that we have to hold ourselves back because of what we were told. So I think this is so relatable of what you've shared. What I help try to teach people is to number one, figure out what are your limiting beliefs to begin with. They could go anywhere from I can only count on myself. I am not worthy. I mean, that's a unfortunately that's a very, very common belief. I can only depend on me. Of course, there's lots of financial limiting beliefs that I, you know, I have to work harder to make money. And so I think just doing a deep analysis of what are your top limiting beliefs, and then once you've identified them, figuring out when was the first time this came into your consciousness, the first time you believed it or you heard it, identify, and I would do this probably journaling, is how has this played out in your life? So you have your first core memory, but then how else can you remember this playing out in your life? And then what I teach people is to come up with a script of reframing it from the limiting belief to laddering it. So you can't go, I am not talented to, I am in, I am amazing because you're not gonna believe it. So you you have to kind of come in the middle and say, it's possible that if I did such and such, that I would experience this. So kind of having having an affirmation or a mantra to get you closer to where you want to be. And I know you're smiling because you, I'm sure you do this with your clients too. And then identifying the feeling in your body of what it is when that would be true. And then lastly, catching being so deeply conscious of your thoughts, because I said the neural pathways I talked about earlier, that beliefs are just thoughts that we've thought over and over and over and over and over and over again. So you just have to catch it. Oh, there was that silly thought. And then maybe putting that thought into a little bubble and blowing it away, and then saying the affirmation of the mantra that you have rescripted to try to override that neural pathway. And you do that enough times, it's really just about repetition and rewiring or recoding that deep, deep, deep, deep neural pathway. So, yes, I think what you have brought up to this conversation is so relatable, and it takes work though. And I think that's where there's kind of the fork in the road, the fork in the road is it takes work to change, and it's easier not to change, and that's why we stay stuck in our pattern.

SPEAKER_00 40:16

So yeah, it's so interesting, and I find it fascinating to hear you talk about it in that way because what you're doing in that work is changing what you believe to be the truth, correct, your truth, right, and and and that it is possible to change your beliefs about yourself, and it doesn't mean that what you believed before was wrong, it just means that you've changed your mind about something, and again we come back to the power of choice about this decision to choose the option of a positive outcome rather than a negative one, and I I just think it's so important to recognize the power that we have over our own minds and that if you decide to change your mind about something, it doesn't mean you were lying before. It just means you've changed your mind.

SPEAKER_02 41:28

Exactly, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:30

And it's such an interesting line to cross, isn't it? Where we the the lies we tell ourselves, the truths we tell ourselves, how we justify things. You know, I know someone she could justify anything to anybody if it was something that she wanted to do.

SPEAKER_02 41:47

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 41:48

And she'll have a justifiable reason for why it's okay, even though it isn't. But she'll find a way to make it justifiable because it's what she believes. Right, right. And it's what she wants to happen. So she then makes it happen and then wonders why it all blows up in her face. But it's so interesting to watch. And once you start to think about it and analyze people, analyze situations or the way people's behavior, I should say, not analyze people, but analyze people's behavior, it's very interesting to watch, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 42:21

Yeah, it is. And I I'm really fascinated to hear your story because as you were explaining that people projected this belief onto you or this uh observation that they made, and you took it as a child as the truth, right? And yet you're able to identify that there was some truth to that. Yes, I can be a little bit loud. I can be a talker. I actually was showing off. That is true. I mean, so there was truth to what they said, but then it's the framework, I feel like, of what do I what do I believe this to mean? And then that's where things can get frayed, because it's like that I am naturally confident and I'm talented and God made me to be this shining, vibrant light, or I'm too, I'm too loud, I'm too gregarious, I'm too confident. Okay, now we got to bring this down. So I think um that this is so fast fascinating to overlay this with the context of the truth, your truth, their truth. You know, it's is yeah, it really is so fascinating.

SPEAKER_00 43:25

It is fascinating because the people who were telling me I was a show-off, they just didn't know what to do with me. And that wasn't necessarily their fault. I was just I was something else. I wasn't doing what everybody else was doing. And naturally, as humans, we try to fit in, we follow the crowd. And I wasn't, I was doing my own thing. I was running like Phoebe through the park and friends. Have you seen that episode? I love it. Yes, yes, I love it. Yeah, and it's that that thing about not caring what people think, yes, and and having the confidence of your config. Just to just be who you are. And I remember it like somebody's taken a picture and put it in my mind because I am clairvoyant too, so I definitely think in pictures. And I remember that moment of skipping around the hall and listening to my go, she's such a shower. You know, and and it did dampen me down for a while, but uh, you know, I soon realized that that was a superpower for me. Yeah, my confidence.

SPEAKER_02 44:31

Yeah, yeah. There there's a quote. Um, I his first name is Charles. I I think it's Bukowski. He said, Uh, can you remember who you were before the world told you who you should be?

SPEAKER_00 44:42

Yes, I love that. And I do believe that everybody's truth is their truth, and that's fine, but you just have to have the confidence to know who you are. Yes. And if you're okay with that, if you're okay with then, like you just said, what was the lovely thing you just said? Your opinion of me is no one else's business.

SPEAKER_02 45:02

What was yeah, your your opinion of me is none of my business.

SPEAKER_00 45:06

None of my business, yeah. Um, and that's it, really. But it does take a certain level of resilience and confidence to be able to say that.

SPEAKER_02 45:15

Yes, yeah. And I couldn't have said that 20 years ago. I'm in my late 40s now, and yeah, it's taken a lifetime to get to this point. But I really have appreciated this conversation about telling the truth in the lens of limiting beliefs and who told you that, and why is that true, and how is it true to you? And just kind of questioning is this true and do I accept this or not? And yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:44

And even if it is true, does it mean what you think it meant, or does it mean something else? Right. Because you can reframe it. Exactly. I love a reframe. So just to go back to the book a little bit. So when you're writing your book, obviously we know that you're coming at this from a neuroscience background, you're coming at it from a psychology background. But when you're actually writing, how much does your spirituality and your divine messaging come in? Do you channel when you're writing? I'm interested.

SPEAKER_02 46:19

Yeah, that's a really interesting question. I would say yes. I would say yes. I feel like maybe inspired, inspired writing through through my intuition is how I would say it. And yeah, I I definitely feel like this is this is a spiritual journey because the truth is I am sharing things in my book that are deeply, deeply embarrassing and things that I'm ashamed of. And there are things my husband doesn't even know that are going to be in the book that he's gonna be like, oh wow. Okay. So I mean, this is almost a coming out of the closet in in my own right by by sharing this book. And I have been a truth teller for a very long time. Uh, remember back when blogs became very, very popular? I don't even know when that was. Maybe that was like 2008.

SPEAKER_00 47:12

I still have a blog. I like to put things in my blog.

SPEAKER_02 47:16

We're the same age, like, but I guess just back when blogging first became very popular, and I wrote a blog and I had so many people, mostly women, reach out to me and say, you know, Mary Beth, me too, me too, me too. And my my husband, my boyfriend at the time would would kind of, I think, feel a little bit taken back to be like, wow, Mary Beth, you you really just put it all out there. But I I felt like not only was it cathartic for me, but I'm I'm holding space for other people who feel the same way. They've just never said it out loud or they've never acknowledged it. And so that's part of my goal in this book is to help people feel less alone and less shameful and feel hopefully then more empowered to get to get more honest.

SPEAKER_00 48:03

Yeah. It's interesting. I've had the same conversations with my husband about this podcast. Because he'll see he listens to them all and he said, you know, that was a bit close to the bone. And I'm like, well, it's about the truth. I've got to tell the truth.

SPEAKER_02 48:17

You know. Have a sense of humor about a pretty serious topic.

SPEAKER_00 48:39

I agree. That's exactly yeah, we're on the same page completely. So you said that there is some shame for you around some of the chapters. Can you share a little bit about anything? I don't want to ruin the expose. But what kind of topics are we talking about here?

SPEAKER_02 48:58

Yeah, well, some of the mental health chapter, I really go into my story as a new mom with my first daughter, and I had postpartum depression. And that was a secret. I didn't really share that with many people at all. And when I did confide in some people, they told me, Oh, either I had it or they said, I think I had it, because a lot of women are not never even diagnosed. And I thought, my God, like, why don't we talk about it? Why don't we share so it's less isolating to say, I mean, postpartum depression is just wild. And so I share stories about things that happened during that time period. Yeah, like I said, that were super, super shameful. And I'll tell you one story. My daughter was on the changing table. And you know, when they don't want their diaper change, you hand them a rattle or a brush or something to keep them busy. And so I always had strategically things around her so that I could hand her something just to get through the diaper change. And I guess there was a bottle of infant Tylenol that was within arm's reach, and I didn't realize it. And you know how they have the childproof locks on top? Um evidently she's like um a magician because she opened it within a matter of, I mean, probably 10 seconds from me turning around to go grab a diaper, get the wipe, turn back around. She had opened it and guzzled half of the bottle. And so, of course, I freak out. I end up calling a toxic hotline. I learned that she had to drink eight times the amount of that in order for it to be, which shocked me. I was like, oh, thank God. But I was so embarrassed and I was so ashamed that I allowed that to happen. And I didn't tell my husband because I thought, I don't know. I was like, is he gonna think I'm an idiot? Is he gonna think I'm incompetent? And I was so embarrassed that I I made that that big mistake. And that's one of many, many examples of things that, you know, that happens during a very dark period. And when you're when you're clinically depressed and you can't see straight, I say it's like looking through a lens that's very foggy. You you just you can't think clearly, you can't see clearly, you're not able to. And when you're so isolated and people don't talk about how deeply isolating and sad you can feel, that it just exacerbates the shame spiral of when you make mistakes and things like that. So, but again, as I'm telling the story, I'm still weaving and poking fun at myself for certain things. And yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:26

Yeah, I also had some post- post-eth depression after my first son. We were living in a new place. I was very isolated, so I can completely relate. And I think I hid it and masked very well. People didn't know, no one knew really that I was struggling. And it was only once my husband said to me, You need to go and speak to someone about your behaviour, because actually I was just really angry. Really angry, and I think a lot of that was to do with the truths that I was telling myself that I wasn't good at this, that I wasn't um and and that I, you know, I wasn't gonna be a good mum. Or and that actually, I think a lot of it related back to the fact that I ended up having a cesarean section, it was quite traumatic birth. My first one, it was all a bit of an emergency in the end. It never occurred to me that I would have to have a cesarean because all the women in my family had just been able to have babies like shelling peas, you know, they just popped them out, and that was the end of it, and I didn't, and it felt like failure, and I was angry with myself, I think, about that. And so the truth I'd told myself was that I'd failed at that, you know, but it wasn't true, it didn't matter. Of course, I had a healthy baby, he was perfectly fine and brilliant, and beautiful, and and clever, and and I was doing a great job, but that wasn't the story that I was telling myself at the time, and until I went down and sat with the doctor and spoke to him about how I was feeling, um, and said, I just feel so angry and got some support, and then things got better, and even just talking about it with someone made things better, you know, making it tangible, making it a real thing. But again, I I don't think maybe a handful of people know that about me. I mean, now more people will know that about me, and thankfully my husband uh could say to me, we're not carrying on like this. Oh, you need to go and speak to someone about how you're feeling. Um because yeah, I wasn't right, and you I wasn't right, but the worse you feel, the deeper, darker the spiral of shame becomes, right? So we just dig ourselves deeper and deeper into a hole.

SPEAKER_02 53:44

Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. And I'm glad your husband said something for me. And I actually tell this in the book, I had a sty in my eye. Do you know what that is? Yeah, a little infection. The only reason I got diagnosed was because I went in to get medicine for a sty, and I was six weeks postpartum. And in America, they make you fill out a survey of mental health questions. And I answered them mostly, honestly, for the most part. And they came back and they said you have moderate to severe postpartum depression. I was like, What? I mean, I just came in to get a sty medication, and I was like, Oh, really? I didn't know that what I was feeling wasn't normal. I thought every postpartum mom felt the way that I felt, which apparently was not normal.

SPEAKER_00 54:26

So yeah. Well, that was well, thank goodness for that.

SPEAKER_02 54:29

Yeah, yeah. And I that felt like divine intervention. I felt like the sty was just it was just, you know, the universe's excuse to get me in front of the doctor, right?

SPEAKER_00 54:38

So undoubtedly. Undoubtedly. So what myths do you think we have about truth and intuition and spiritual knowing?

SPEAKER_02 54:50

I mean, I think really the biggest misconception is that we're going to self-destruct if we tell the truth. I've been collecting quotes about the truth for years and leading up to this book. And what is that famous quote? The truth, the truth will set you free, but first it'll have its way with you. Or like the Phoenix Rising, where it's like the Phoenix gets like burned to the ground in ashes and then and then comes up even stronger and more beautiful than ever. So I feel like there's this portal of telling the truth that, yes, it might, you know, chew us up and spit us out, but on the at the end of it, you will feel more liberated, more empowered. And like I said to you earlier, oh gosh, that wasn't maybe as bad as I thought it was gonna be. So I think that would be the biggest misconception I would call it about telling the truth, is that it's not gonna be as gnarly as maybe you've projected in your minds that it's going to be.

SPEAKER_00 55:47

Yeah, interesting. Why do you think people are so fascinated with the truth? Because it's a big thing right now, isn't it? We're in this collective kind of unraveling, I think.

SPEAKER_02 56:01

I I think a coup a couple of things come up for me when you ask this. Number one is I think back to the book of New Earth I talked about earlier with Eckhart Tolle, that's what he's calling this time in our existence, is this great awakening. Where we're waking up and we're becoming more conscious. And they say that the generation who's being born in right now, like our children, most of them are probably going to be light workers and are here to help rise to the top of consciousness, right? So I think one, it's at an energetic level, is why it's happening. Number two is I think we're all freaking exhausted. I think we are absolutely unequivocally just beside ourselves, exhausted from the energy that it takes to keep up with the facade. And so I think this idea of telling the truth and being more honest with ourselves and with others is like, finally, I can just relax. And there's another quote that talks about if you just tell the truth, you don't have to worry about your like keeping up with your lies, right? So it's like just it's a lot uh more liberating to just be more honest. So I think we're collectively just so exhausted and tired that I think it's picking up steam, that it's like this proverbial um kind of ticket to getting out of your own jail. It's like here, come with me. I'm gonna tell the truth. And it's like, okay, yeah, yeah. Then I can tell the truth too. And so I think we're we're all just ready, we're ready to to be enough.

SPEAKER_00 57:39

Yeah, it's a relief, isn't it? It is a relief, yeah. And and also I do think, I mean, you talked about the generation like our children, their their generation, they surprise me. My boys surprise me all the time with how self-aware they are, and the knowledge they have around things that I wouldn't have even uh contemplated when I was in my teens. Things like narcissism and gaslighting and these terms that we now have for people's behaviour. I didn't of obviously we knew there was toxic behaviour in the 90s, but we didn't have names for it, right? And my kids, they are so aware and it's partly due to social media, it's partly due to the way that their the education system now has to work in order to help them protect themselves from all of this stuff that's out there in the world. But everybody's so analytical, and as a result, the children have to be so much more self-aware. So it's no surprise really that the young people of today are so much more self-aware and in touch with their feelings and their emotions because they're taught to be, and that's a good thing. I think for us and for generations that came before us, that you are actively discouraged from feeling too much because it made you vulnerable. You just had to put up, shut up, stiff up a lip, get on with the job, you know. It's so interesting how that evolution is taking place and how as a result of that we are also affected because we have to parent differently, we have to consider ourselves and and what what we think and how that affects our children in a totally different way to how our parents did it. Right.

SPEAKER_02 59:59

Yeah, and like I said earlier, I think the the the new earth, the the awakening, I think a lot of us, I don't know about you, but my observation has been a lot of us are here as cycle breakers. So, like you said, you know, reparent, you know, we're reparenting ourselves and then we're parenting our children differently than our parents raised us. And it's a totally different approach, I think. And I think it's not like we did not sign up for the easy class on Earth School this this time. No, we didn't. But evidently, as far as I can understand it, I guess we were we were up for it because I I I believe we signed up for it. So um, yeah, we're here, we're here to do some really hard work, but I think it's um gonna be very healing for generations to come.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:40

I agree. And actually, my niece, who's 37, is just about to have a baby, so she's the next generation. Um, and you know, she talks to me a lot about how she will parent and how that will be different. And you know, I mean it'll be interesting to see how it plays out because we all know that we have these um ideals in our minds before we have our first children. But I I genuinely think she will parent differently, and I and and it is it's interesting to watch. Uh, and that's her truth, and that and then that generation of children will be different again because by that point, by the time her little baby that's born this year is in the world of social media, it'll all be locked down and no one will have access to it until they're older, hopefully. And so she'll have a much more innocent upbringing than even our children and us who were around for the dawn of the internet when we remember it being invented, you know, which is crazy, isn't it? It is, yeah. Um anyway, thank you, Mary Beth, for this beautiful conversation. I think we could probably go on talking for hours. But before we go, could you please, if anybody has taken anything from this conversation and they'd like to get in touch or they want to know more about the book, where should they when it finally comes out? I know it's going to be a while yet, but yeah, just traditional publishing takes a while. Um it does, but this is we're just dangling the carrot here, are we? Um so where can people find you and find out more information about you?

SPEAKER_02 1:02:18

Yeah, so I would say they can go to my website. My uh my business name is soul shinescoaching.com. Um, they can sign up for my newsletter there. I would say that would be the most um um active way to stay in touch with the comings and goings. Um, I also am very active on Instagram and I also have Facebook. So those are also Soul Shines Coaching as my handle.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:43

Fabulous. I'll make sure all those links are in the show notes. But thank you so much for your time today. It's been absolutely beautiful, and I am so grateful for the conversation and thank you for reaching out to me in the first place.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:56

Yes, yes. I'm really grateful that we had this time together, Fran. Thanks for having me on your podcast. You're welcome.