You’re Not Lacking Confidence: Your Nervous System Doesn’t Feel Safe with Dr. Marianne Olaniran | Ep.29

Have you ever looked like you were holding it all together on the outside, but inside your nervous system felt completely exhausted?

In this episode of Aligned & Manifesting, I’m joined by Dr. Marianne Olaniran, also known as The Comeback Doctor™.

Dr. Marianne is the Founder & CEO of Joyfully Transcend™, an award-winning social and behavioural scientist, confidence strategist, global speaker and bestselling author who helps high-achieving women rebuild confidence, prosperity and joy after setbacks.

Together, we explore why confidence is not just a mindset, it is a nervous system state.

When your body does not feel safe, it can affect your ability to trust yourself, receive love, attract wealth, take aligned action, regulate your emotions and move forward after heartbreak, disappointment, loss or failure.

In this episode, we talk about:

• Why confidence is a nervous system state
• How your nervous system affects love, wealth, health and success
• Why overthinking, people-pleasing and self-sabotage can be nervous system responses
• How subconscious wealth blocks are created
• Why affirmations alone are not always enough
• How your environment shapes your self-worth and manifestation
• Why you need to be careful who you share your dreams with
• How gratitude can support you through grief and setbacks
• Why letting go does not mean forgetting
• How to rebuild self-trust after heartbreak or disappointment
• A simple 60-second nervous system reset for overwhelm

This episode is for the woman who is ready to stop carrying the past in her body, rebuild self-trust and remember that nothing that happened to her has diminished her worth.

You are not broken.
You are not too late.
And your past does not get to decide what you are available to receive next.

60-second reset:

Place your hand on your chest.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Say:

I am safe.
I am okay.
I deserve good things.
I am calm.
I am human.
I can handle this.

Connect with Dr. Marianne Olaniran:

Website:
https://www.joyfullytranscend.com

Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/dr.marianneolaniran

LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/marianne-olaniran

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello my love and welcome back to Aligned and Manifesting. Today's episode is for the woman who looks like she's holding it all together, but inside her nervous system is tired, like tired tired. Because I am joined by an incredible guest, Dr. Marianne Olaniran, founder and CEO of Joyfully Transcend, also known as the Comeback Doctor. Dr. Marianne is an award-winning social and behavior scientist, published researcher and best-selling author, and a key speaker for women, helping them reclaim confidence, unlock prosperity, and restore joy after setbacks. Today we are diving into the nervous system, how it shapes confidence, self-trust, burnout, and the ability to receive love, success, and ease. Dr. Marianne, welcome to the show. I'm so grateful you are here. Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_00 0:59

It's a joy to be here.

SPEAKER_01 1:01

So when you hear the phrase nervous system, what do you wish more women understood about it? That's a great question.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

When I think of the nervous system, I wish people understood how much it really impacts your confidence, your outcomes, how you feel about yourself, and how that determines what you get from life. So a lot of my work is around helping women to reclaim their confidence so they can go out there to create more prosperity, more joy, more wealth in their lives, however, they define wealth and success as well as joy. And so the nervous system really has an integral part in that process. So, see, confidence is not just a mindset. People think of confidence as a mindset, but it's quite literally part of the nervous system. It's a nervous system state, is how I like to think about it. Because when your nervous system is regulated, you're more likely to feel better about yourself. What happens when you feel better about yourself? You're more likely to do more. You have this behavioral patterns that are embedded in your brain, your mind. You rewire your brain to be able to have the habits that support the outcome that you want. So for me, I wish more women understood that they need to regulate the nervous system in order to be able to get the outcomes that they want. So that would be something that I would definitely want more people to understand, especially as it relates to how they feel about themselves, how they feel about what they can get from life, as well as how they feel about their past, even, because that significantly affects what they do with their future. So why do you think not many people know that it's so connected? I think that people have come to think about the nervous system as something woo-woo or that they think about it in terms of pseudoscience. So they're thinking about, oh, that's something that all those weird people talk about. But in reality, it is really part of your body. There is a tight connection between your body and your mind. So a lot of the things that we go through have physiological responses, not just the psychological. And I feel like if people understood that more about how everything is interconnected, then that would really help people to really seek the guidance that they need to get back from, you know. And I talked about reclaiming, so get back to where you were before setbacks occurred, before people taught you that you were not beautiful enough, or people told you that your acting was a certain way, or people told you that you made a mistake at work, so you're no longer ever going to do better in your life, or you had a relationship that did not work out. So now you're no longer ever, ever going to be able to get love. If people could understand that your nervous system has a survival mode and it has where it tries to help you not to be in the fight or flight mode, or it can also be in the safety mode. So when we talk about the nervous system, we're really talking about two different states. That sympathetic nervous system is where you see a lot of women in overdrive, they overthink things, they replay events that happen. I'm not sure if you have ever been in the situation where you went to an event and then you came back and you started to think about like, why did I say that? How did I say that? What did they say about what how do they feel about what I said? And you spend so much time thinking about that and wondering if you did a good job. See, that's too much. The doubting of yourself, the wondering, people pleasing, all the self-sabotage, even that's the sympathetic nervous system. We don't want to be that to be activated. We want to be in the parasympathetic nervous system. We want to be able to feel calm. You want your to feel safe so that you can attract the wealth that you you desire, the love that you desire, the health that you desire. So I'm going, I wish people didn't more people knew about this because then they would be able to seek out the opportunities or seek out the strategies. They would be able to seek out the strategies to really help them to calm their nervous system so they could feel safe. And it was when you feel safe that you're able to give the things that you want.

SPEAKER_01 4:45

Question I have is a lot of my clients do ask questions about where is this coming from? Why did I become the version of me I'm right now? Why my nervous system is acting like this.

SPEAKER_00 4:58

So, and that's a great question. We didn't get to talk about this, but I do have a proprietary methodology known as the Transcend framework, uh, which is based on neuroscience, it's based on social and behavioral sciences, it's based on spirituality, even. So it's it incorporates those three core components. And it's it's a five-step framework. The first step is release. Part of the release state uh step is really having people to sit back and think about what happened. How did you get to where you are? And this is a step where a lot of the women I work with don't like, right? They will start to cry actually in this step because now we're forcing you in some ways, force in quote, to really get back and think about what happened. When did you lose yourself? When did you go from who you are, who you used to be to, you know, to where you are now? And and when you understand that, that's how you start to really be able to utilize the strategies to really calm yourself. So that's one of the things is just really getting to that place, following strategies to help you release what's holding you back. And that starts with self-awareness. And then from there we start to help you to reclaim your self-worth. And then our third step is redesign because a lot of people talk about affirmations, and those are great, but there's a lot more that goes into really getting your nervous system working, rewiring your brain, helping you to be able to be comfortable with who you are. And that a lot of times will involve redesigning your environment. And so those are a lot of different things that we talk about and help women to really know what got them to where they are and how they can get to where they want to be.

SPEAKER_01 6:23

I agree. I I have a personal experience, you know, my father always have said nasty things about me. So in that situation, when you said changing your environment, if you have a person or environment around you, then it's really difficult. If you're saying affirmations, I'm beautiful, I'm clever, I can achieve whatever I want, but there is always something around you or someone who's been telling you that in the background, your subconscious is never gonna reprogram.

SPEAKER_00 6:51

That's a great statement because when we talk about manifestation or we talk about abundance or getting the things that you want, the keyword is alignment. And I really love the name on your podcast. I was gonna say manifesting is really great because people don't understand that alignment is what really you want to align your subconscious with your conscious. You want to align your thoughts, your emotions, your identity with your actions. And that's how you get your the abundance that people talk about. But just coming back to that, when we talk of environments, the different types of environments. And so when I work with women, I tell them if your physical environment, so maybe you're in a place where you can't leave, like some young people cannot up and leave their parents, it's very toxic. But in that time, you you still have what we call the information environment. You can still control what you consume. So a lot of people, I tell them, go when you go to watch something, pick and choose something that's going to make you feel better about yourself. You have the choice to do that. That's an environment. People don't think of that as an environment. If you cannot get out of a particular place, make sure that all the things that you're consuming are lifting you up. They're helping you to create messages in your subconscious that say, I'm a person of worth, I am beautiful, I am strong, I can do all things, I am made for more. All of these things, if you start to do that, then you're going to start to feel better about yourself, regardless of what's happening. And then, of course, when you're able to, it's important to actually remove yourself from the physical space. But we recognize that not many people can do that, depending on where you are in your life, your age, your marriage, a lot of things. But you can control what you put in your body because that subconscious that you mentioned, that's the key. No matter what you're doing on the outside, your subconscious controls a lot of what happens in your life. And so that's that's what I would say to that.

SPEAKER_01 8:34

And a lot of people forget about the subconscious, or you they're not aware of it. So, what would really help them to realize that their subconscious is actually the problem and then they need to reprogram it?

SPEAKER_00 8:46

So, a lot of times they need guide. You need somebody that can guide you. Many times we can't see what's going on because I mean, it's us, we're so used to it. A lot of the women that I work with have been doing the same thing for years. So that's part of them. They don't even see it as different. You need somebody, you need to get a mentor. So people you need to see a therapist, you need to get somebody that can sit with you and say, you're doing this, but what you're saying is not matched with what you're what I see in you. I'll give you an example. So there are a lot of people that will say things like, Oh, I want to be uh very wealthy, I want to be a millionaire. And then you're like, great. And then you start talking to them and you realize that no, at their subconscious level, they don't want to be wealthy. They actually think that wealthy people are bad. They think that if they're wealthy, it'll bring problems for them. I used to be one of those people. Oh, I'm married to my husband's a Harvard-trained physician scientist. Wealth is really important for, we've always talked about creating wealth for our children and maybe our children's children. And so I remember one time we were talking about money early in our relationship. This was a long time ago, and we're just talking, and I told him, I said, I don't want to be a millionaire. And he said, Oh, okay, why not? Not everybody wants to be a millionaire, that's not a problem. But it was the reasoning that I had for it, right? And I said, it's gonna be very hard anyway, it's gonna bring a lot of trouble. And so it was it took him by surprise. And so he probed a little bit more. He said, Well, what do you mean? It was not so much about what I said, but why I said it. It makes a lot of sense. And then I started to uncover what the problem. So what happened was that I had a corporate job at the time and I was making relatively good money, according to a lot of people. And I noticed that my relationship started to change. So a lot of my friends, they were no longer necessarily hanging with me because of me. I noticed that my friendships changed. And so I started to subconsciously associate wealth with the end of relationships or relationships becoming fractured. I didn't know this. And I started to work on that, and I had to get rid of that mental block around wealth that no, wealth does not bring trouble. Wealth does not end your relationships. If there are people who love you, they're not going to leave because you have more money. Wealth does not bring stress. I literally had to change how I thought about wealth. And now what I say every day is that wealth comes to me with ease and grace. And I tell my women to say that. And it does come to me with ease. And even when I struggle for different things, because I now believe it at my core, my body now knows, my nervous system knows that wealth is safe with me. Because guess what? When you're saying I want money or I don't want money, your self-conscious, like, great, wealth is bad. We're gonna do everything in our power to make sure she does not get wealth. And you see, some people, even when you mention wealth, they start to, you have a physiological response, they start to tend, sort of like, what is she talking about? Because your nervous system literally feels like wealth is a dirty word. Wealth is a bad word. Um, but that's the point. You have to understand that your subconscious is doing a lot of work. Getting that correct, getting that right is what's going to really help you to get the you know the things that you want. And I had to learn that. And I had to remove all the mental blocks around health, around weight, around relationships, around money. And then when I did that, and I was like, I'm safe. I could I can attract wealth, I can attract good health, I attract love, then it started coming. And because the interesting part of it is that it's not magic, but when you're doing this, it's you're embedding in your brain, your brain is going to start to have new neural pathways that really seek for those opportunities that you now consider safe for you. If you buy a red car, you start to notice red cars all over the streets because a part of your brain has now started to like set you up to see those things. So when you start to reprogram your mind, that's exactly what happens. If you start to say good things about yourself, wealth comes to me. I am beautiful, I am strong. Then all of a sudden, all those good things start to come. You start to see opportunities for more wealth, you start to see opportunities for more love, you start to see you have more motivation to go do all those things, and that's how it's all interconnected. But it starts on the inside. You have to do the work for the inside, and then it comes to the outside.

SPEAKER_01 12:43

I agree completely. And uh lots of my clients always go, so is it too late to reprogram it? And as you explain, it's never too late. You can reprogram it at any age because our brains, it's like a computer, you can reprogram it.

SPEAKER_00 13:01

Yes, and that's the beauty of it. Like the word neuroplasticity, I always tell people that's such a great word because it's a word of hope. I talk a lot about hope and optimism, but when you come to understand that you are never too late, you're never too like your brain, you can start today, right now, to rewire your brain, to rewire your mind. All the negative self-talk has to go. If you decide to start today, to start saying good things about yourself, to start thinking good things about yourself, it's going to motivate you to do things that's going to bring the things into your life that you want. And you're going to surprise yourself. There are many things that I have in my life today that if someone had told me just five years ago, I would have been like, What are you talking about? But as soon as I started to change my mindset, I started to change how I saw myself, my brain started to be rewired to want those good things, to know that it is safe for my nervous system. It started to know that it's not no need to be in fight or flight here. We're good. It's not a threat, it's great for me. Let's go, bring it. And so immediately I started to do that and just think about myself. Say good things about yourself. But not just saying it, but believe good things about yourself. That's when everything started to change for me.

SPEAKER_01 14:09

Yeah, no, I agree. Just uh tapping into the blocks, because I know there are lots of self-beliefs programs and uh blocks we create through the life. Can you just tap into how this is created? Because a lot of people are like, I I don't understand where this block for wealth came from. Like, I don't have a problem with money.

SPEAKER_00 14:28

A lot of these blocks come from society, religion, our families, even just your perception of what is acceptable. So you'll have somebody say, I'm a good Christian and I'm using Christianity because I'm a Christian. So I cannot be wealthy. I cannot be talking about money. And I'm like, why not? And these are real conversations that I've had. And they'll be like, I want to be holy. And like, so walk me through your thought process about being holy and wealth and how that those two cannot coexist. And they'll start to talk, and then you realize that they misinterpreted something in the scriptures, or they went to a religious leader who told them that this was wrong. And I was like, if you even study your scriptures, you will realize that people like Abraham and all those people who are very wealthy. It's not about the wealth itself. The wealth is literally just like it's a tool. It's about what you do with it. So if you have a lot of money and you go out there and you help a lot of people to get a lot of good things done, is that a bad thing or is that a good thing? That's a great thing, right? So, but if you have wealth and you start to show off and tell everybody to drive this and you use all your money and you focus on that, if your intention for having wealth is so that you can make others feel poorly about themselves, feel badly about themselves, then that's a bad thing. So it's not about the wealth in of itself. So a lot of religious people misunderstand that. And then there's a family too. A lot of family people will tell you that if you have this or if you don't have that, then you're treated a different way. So I would say that a lot of these blocks come from different levels of influence for us. And that even makes me talk about something that's near and dear to my heart. So I'm a social and behavioral scientist and we talk a lot about levels of influence. We talk a lot about how every behavior that you have, every thought process that you have is influenced by not just you, not just what you think on the inside. And that's why a lot of the affirmations alone will not work. But we have other levels, other factors that influence you. So we have the uh the intrapersonal is you, is your thoughts, your motivation. That's all you. Affirmations work really well there. But once you go to the next level, the interpersonal level, now we're really looking at your interactions with your family, your friends. What do they say about you? What do they say about confidence? Do they say good things that, you know, when you leave your friend, do you feel like, well, I can do this, let me go get it? Or do you feel like I'm I'm useless? I can't do it. That determines so they can really influence you. People in your inner circle have the power to make you more confident, or they have the power to make you feel completely useless. If you're listening, I want people to really understand that picking the people that know your decisions, the people that know your vision, even your mentors that could tell you, you can never do that. That's, you know, I don't think you're good enough because they're looking at you from the lens that they see you. They may have their own biases. Maybe you're too young, maybe they don't like your accent. There's a lot of things. So understand that. And that should be empowering. That should help you to just know who to choose to be in your circle. And then there's the community level factors. The fact that you're a woman, racism might be there as well, you know, for certain people, depending on where you are. So, all of those factors, understanding those, is how you really understand how to get the strategies to help yourself so that those factors don't lead to this block. So all the blocks come from different areas. And it's important to know this and know that it's not just one, and it's not one answer. It's like everybody's situation is different. We have even weight stigma. I do a lot of work with body image stuff, a lot of body image work, and a lot of this comes from their families. Your families will tell you or joke with you, like, oh, this is the fat one. They don't mean any real harm when you're young, but you hold on to that forever and you start to think, I'll never be beautiful. I am not pretty, I can never marry. You just negative self-talk, negativity bias, you start to get more and more negative stuff happen, and and that just leads to a different path in your life.

SPEAKER_01 18:04

So now this is this is great what you just said because I'm seeing it from a different perspective of energy level. So when you are surrounding yourself with people who uplift you, then your energy is up. But if you surround yourself with people who drain you, then you're always gonna be with energy levels down. And another thing is what I absolutely love in manifestation is when you want to quantum jump and you want to become a different person, you can't be stuck in the reality you are right now. So if you want to be wealthy, you need to start acting like a wealthy person. It's not just about wealth, it's about love, it's about success. Whatever you want to be, let's say confidence. If you want to be confident, going and having coffee and having a pity party with people talking about how bad it is, how it is difficult to go in a meeting, that's not gonna help you. If you go and surround yourself with confident people and they will go and talk about how they go in a meeting room and they own the room, then absolutely, because you will then become that person.

SPEAKER_00 19:12

Yeah, a hundred percent. Um, there's a lot of studies that actually show this, and I don't think that people give enough credit to just the energy like you mentioned, the support that that is out there. Um love. I remember when I was um not yet married, I had a friend tell me that uh I had told her that I told her the things I wanted in a husband. I said, I want him to be, you know, handsome and I want him to be educated and have a good job and love me and love. And I started talking, I was all excited. I thought she was my friend, I thought she was gonna be all excited. And then she says, Marianne, you're looking for a unicorn. And I just deflated. I'm like, a unicorn? I'm like, why would you say that? Literally everything I mentioned on there, I am I have it. Like I'm I'm educated. I have a good job. I didn't say he has to build a skyscraper or something. And so it made me feel a type of way and I realized that if I wanted to actually marry this kind of person that would love me and be there for me, I needed to stop telling my vision to this kind of people because it was too far removed from their understanding. They didn't think it was possible to have love. They didn't think it was possible to have a relationship with somebody that would love you and be there for you. And so your environment, if you want to lose weight, you need to hang around people who are interested in that. If you're hanging around people that just grab whatever and eat, you're the the chances are you are gonna do that too. So it's it goes for almost anything you can think about. You have to really think about your when you when you think about manifestation, you have to think about not just your internal, but even your environment as well, because that's going to determine to a great extent what you do manifest, what you do get. Uh, and then I think that's so important.

SPEAKER_01 20:44

Absolutely. Do you know what? That just made me realize something I've been talking on a social media is I call it the evil eye. People don't want to be nasty, but they are thinking they're being supportive, but by you telling them your dream and them seeing it from their perspective, they are putting your dream down. And then you start doubting yourself do I have my standards too high? Do I want to achieve something which is not achievable? No. Okay, people should not share that manifestation, they should just get on with it and then share it when it's achieved. My God, lost 10 pounds. This is amazing.

SPEAKER_00 21:22

Absolutely. That's I can't even tell you how true that it is. Because if you give your plans to the wrong person, it'll it will stay a plan forever. It really will. Because first of all they're gonna come and talk, they will tell you about a person that they knew that started this and it didn't work out. And I'm like, it doesn't matter about that person. I'm not that person. Why are you telling me? Like, and and again, a lot of them want to support you, or some of them don't, but some people may like want to act like they care. But the fact remains that your vision is different from their vision. Your knowledge of yourself is different from what they think, or whatever lens they'll look at you through. So always keep that in mind and know. That your who you choose, your environment is going to affect, you know, how you see yourself, what you want for your life. If you understand, and just even coming back, if you understand the power of setting intentions and doing the work to get those things, because it's not just setting your intentions. When you talk about manifestation, when you talk about visualization, all the things, it's not so much, it's not a woo-woo thing. These are very basic things to just show that if you do certain things, if you believe certain things about yourself, it's going to allow your body and your mind to be regulated. It's going to allow yourself to be comfortable. And it's also going to allow you to be able to take the action. It's going to present opportunities that you will take the actions and then you're going to get the desired outcome. That's literally how it works. It's not as dramatic as a lot of people think, and it's not woo-woo at all. And there's so many things that I have manifested in my life. Or, or if you're a religious person, I think think about it as faith. You're seeing something even before it happens. That's we're all saying the same thing in a lot of ways, I think. That's how I see it. It's worked for me. But the key word is alignment. Align your thoughts, align your feelings, you know, align your actions and your beliefs about yourself, your beliefs about yourself, rather, and you'll be able to get what it what it is that you want.

SPEAKER_01 23:10

I agree. Because I sometimes find it really difficult with social media because there are so many people out there who are saying, I'm the expert, and then you're hearing them saying things, and you'll be like, Are you? I'm not entirely sure. But because we are on social media, it's so easy to just absorb this. And as you said earlier, be careful who you listen to because then you can come up with this person and God knows where this person is taking it from. And let's be clear: no hundred percent of the information on there is correct.

SPEAKER_00 23:39

Oh, yeah. Garbage in garbage, it's processed, it's programmed in.

SPEAKER_01 23:43

So hey. 100% and manifestation work, but a lot of people believe it's I just close my eyes and my wish will come true. It's no genie, you still have to do the work. If you want a new job, if you sit on a sofa and do nothing about it, it's not gonna happen. What do we need to get? You need to get your new CV, you need to then start look for a job, go for interviews, and it will happen. So there is conscious work and you need to make the steps.

SPEAKER_00 24:10

When we think of manifestation, we're thinking about manifesting good things. We manifest every day. A lot of people manifest bad things into their lives by the thoughts they have for themselves. There are women that I work with that constantly have the same pattern of dating the same kind of guys, you're gonna get heartbroken. You're you're still doing the same thing. Why? Because on your subconscious, you don't think that you deserve a better person. Somebody told me once, she's like, that kind of man can't look my way. And I'm like, why do you say that? You tell me more about that. So you're manifesting negativity. It weren't, whether you're manifesting for good or for bad, you are manifesting every day. And as a matter of fact, I'll go as far as saying that wherever you are right now, you've in some ways manifested that. If you thought that you could go to school and pass and graduate, you went and did the work, you probably are graduating now. If you did not think you could do it, you probably didn't do the work and you're not, you know. So all of the things you're manifesting for good or for bad. And I think that that's a powerful thing to know is that we have the power to create the lives that we want. We can do this. We you know, you just need to learn how to do it, learn how to, you know, reprogram your own mind about yourself, reprogram how you think about the world. And if you think the world is good and that you can get good things, then you will get it. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 25:21

And there's an episode about choice. We have choice. It's every single thing happening to you, you have a choice. And we are the only beings on a planet earth who has been given the choice. You know, animals don't have a choice. When people use circumstances as an excuse, it's an excuse. They will tell you, this is happening to me because no, you still have a choice to do it differently tomorrow. You just choose not to. So that's the difference. And when people realize that their life changes so dramatically.

SPEAKER_00 25:54

100%. So a lot of the work that I do is really helping women who have experienced setbacks or personal setbacks or professional setbacks. So almost every woman that takes my program either felt is now feeling bad about herself because her relationship did not work out. There's you know, all these things from body changes. We have women who put on more weight than they would like or lost more weight than they would like. So they no longer feel attractive, they no longer feel sexy, and so their self-worth worth has gone down. So what I always tell them is like, you have a choice, 100%. You can decide today to choose that you are the most attractive person here and start to think about yourself, regardless of how much weight you've lost or how much weight you've gained. You are still you, right? You can decide that even though this didn't work out, and I have a lot of women that I talk to now that they had these positions of power, and then with everything that happened, they lost their job. So many people lost their sense of self. Their identity was for a lot of high-achieving women, it's our identity is somehow intertwined with leadership and money and success. And so all of a sudden they didn't have a job, they're now having to look for a job, and many of them are now underqualified, they just had to take a job, even though they know that they could get so much, do so much better. And I had to tell them, you have a choice though. You have a choice to really still see yourself as who you are and not look doubt on yourself and start, you know, giving up. So there's always choice there, and it's always reframing your perspective. You know, how you see something, no matter how difficult a situation is, there's always a reason to be grateful, to be hopeful, to know that tomorrow can be better if you make the choices today, if you decide to see yourself as a person of worth, if you decide to see yourself as somebody who can overcome. I talk a lot about overcoming. You know, you can overcome the self-doubt, you can overcome the shame, you can overcome the guilt, you can move forward and go on to have your most remarkable next chapter. And you just need to get the right guide and the right support, and you you can do it. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 27:40

I agree with that, and I'm so glad that you touched gratitude because gratitude is something I always tell my clients and they go, but I'm having such a difficulty right now. Even getting out of bed is really difficult. And I said, Do you have a bed? Do you have a roof over your head? So there are things a lot of people focus on the thing. I have a house, I have a well-paid job, I have this, I have that. But we really, if we are in difficult situation, and some people are in difficult situations, and I do appreciate it's really difficult to find what you're grateful for, but you have your health, or maybe you don't have your health, so focus on different things. Do you have somewhere to sleep? Do you have clean water? Because people don't. Not everybody is privileged to have that. And when you then go like a little thing, today was sunny day. I am so grateful that I had half an hour over lunchtime and I went and sat in the sunshine.

SPEAKER_00 28:37

Yeah, it's all about perspective. It's really, really all about perspective. And I even had uh something happen because um my I lost my beloved sister uh sister in 2023. One of the most difficult experiences of my life. And I remember I was talking about her earlier this year, and one of her friends found it difficult to see that I could still be grateful. And she was like, It's okay, you don't need to pretend to be grateful for your life. It's okay. And I'm like, what do you mean? So you're thinking that because of this devastating thing occurred, that I should never be grateful. I said I still have a lot to be grateful for. First of all she lived a wonderful life. I'm grateful for the fact that I even had her in my life. I'm grateful for the fact that I got to experience the kind of love that she gave me. And so you can, even in the most dire circumstances, there are things to be grateful for. I'm grateful for the last moments that we had. I'm grateful for a lot of different things. And I tell people all the time, there's a lot of things to be grateful for. And I feel like when you start to think about life like that, and even think about even in the very hard situations, just stopping to think about what could have even gone worse. And for me, it's like, okay, if I didn't get to see her at this time, it would have been worse. It's all about reframing. And that's what we keep going back to your mind and the you know, your body, the way you tell yourself a story, is going to really determine what happens. The mental picture you're giving yourself about any event is going to determine how you move forward. And gratitude is the key. I really actually call it the secret sauce for success. You know, once you're grateful in every circumstance, then your life takes a dramatic turn. You're able to like, you're able to bounce back. And for me, that's actually the secret for another secret that I tell women is that the faster you can bounce back after a devastating event, the more successful you will be. Just because something very terrible has happened doesn't mean that you should take 10 years off and cry and sit in the corner. Yes, it happened. It was bad. Let's, you know, where where's the help you can get, the support you can get so that you can get back on your feet because you still have what to be grateful for and you you can still move on. And that's my whole message is that you it's not over until it's over. And as long as you have you're alive, you can move on and you can be fine. You can have more joy and more success. Why not?

SPEAKER_01 30:41

I agree. I agree. And you know, there is room for grief, and I believe that people always talk about grief, but you can grieve something which you lost and that person's still there, but you can lose house. And you know, the house is still there, but you lost it, or you lost job, which was your dream job and you lost it. You can grieve, but you still then need to realize that it's your choice. Am I gonna cry about it for 10 years and blame the circumstances, or am I gonna allow grief and then go, do you know what? I'm grateful for this experience because it's gonna shape me into a different person than I was a year ago, two years ago. Let's do this differently.

SPEAKER_00 31:21

Absolutely. And you can even be grateful and still be crying. There's times when I'm like, okay, I'm grateful, thank you, Lord, for for this. I was like, my heart is so broken, but thank you that I'm here this morning. You can still be grateful, you can still grieve. I don't want anyone to think that we're saying don't grieve and just get up and go. No. You can still grieve, you can still allow space for that, but get the support. Understand that your loved one or whatever situation you had, you're not supposed to grieve forever. You're not supposed to lose yourself because of something that happened to you. That's not how life is designed. You can still be grateful in every circumstance while you're going through a hardship. Maybe there's you don't have money in your bank account right now, but you have life. It's all about perspective. It really, really is. And I don't want anyone to feel like we're dismissing pain. I know pain. I know that's very hard. I work with women who struggle with very, very hard things. And I validate that. But I always be, I'm always careful to let them know don't allow this swallow you. Don't allow this end you. It's not meant to end you. You can move, you can move past this and go be even greater than you were before this occurred. And I want that's the message I want people to get from this is that we're not downplaying your problems. We're letting that you can you still have a choice to be happy, you still have a choice, to be hopeful, you still have a choice to do what you need to do to go out there and have the life that you want, regardless of what has happened. You're not disqualified, it's not over.

SPEAKER_01 32:37

And this is so powerful having a choice and also the perception. It's so powerful having the perception on the situation. And when I changed looking at things differently, your life changes.

SPEAKER_00 32:52

I feel like we can all go through life just being stressed or being worried about everything, and things are gonna happen. Every day, something's gonna happen that could annoy you. You know, I mentioned traffic, you know, you're driving in some cities in the US and you just want to lose your mind. But you can choose to not be so offended by that. It's not that serious. Maybe they're in a hurry, maybe they need to get somewhere. You can choose to move on and you could or you just the refrain or remove yourself from a situation where you can. But I think that we owe it to ourselves to really keep our minds and our bodies at peace. To really, because there's a lot, like uh, you know, you mentioned earlier, I'm a public health educator and I talk a lot about stress. Stress is not a good word for most of us. Like, you know, we don't want to hear that word because it affects you. This is linked to so many, you know, chronic diseases. It's linked to everything from obesity, certain types of cancer, and of course, uh depression, anxiety, all the whole thing. So we really don't want you don't want to do anything or put yourself in any situation where you're constantly afraid, you're constantly stressed, you're constantly worried. You really need to work on trying to just let things be. Do the things in your power that you can do, align your beliefs, align your thoughts with your actions, and just do what you can, but don't overly spend time, you know, regretting things and stressing things. Just recently um just finished working on a resource that I have for women, and it's about regret to roadmap. It's what I call it. And it's really focused on helping women to let go of regret because that was one of the biggest things that I found from you know working with women is many of them are still living in regret, the relationship that did not work out. They're still talking about it, they're still worrying if you missed the boat, they're still worried about the job that someone treated them badly at the job, or oh, I had married that guy. And I just really want women to know that you need to release it. You're never going to move forward. And I literally created a whole resource for it and I made it, you know, so that anyone that wants it can grab it. It's I want women to know that you can release whatever, you can let it go, and you can go on to have your best life. And it you can let your body breathe, you can let your body feel safe that you are okay, you deserve good things, you are a person of worth. And nothing that has happened to you has diminished your value. And that's what I say almost every time I talk. It's like you're still a person of worth. No need to carry this regret in your body and punish your body and punish your systems, just let it go and you know, get help to be able to let it go and just leave happily ever after. Why not? I agree. Yeah, letting go is very hard.

SPEAKER_01 35:15

And uh I think many people just don't see the difference between letting go and forgiving and forgetting. So for me, for example, partnership, if something happened and you don't want to forgive, holding on to it is actually can get so bad that you can create an illness. So you just have to let go, you just have to forgive. Not forget, you don't forget because your brain will not let you, and that's absolutely fine. But when you let go and you forgive, you just gonna feel like the metabol on your foot is just disappearing and it's not dragging you down anymore.

SPEAKER_00 35:54

Absolutely, I agree 100%. And you're not even doing it for them. You know, no matter what they did, this is not even about them, this is about you because you control what you control, and that's what I one of the things I teach women is focus on what you can control. I can't control them or whatever they did. You can release that, let it go, let don't let it bother you so much, don't let it hold you back. It doesn't even matter what they said, we're moving on, and I want you to do get your healing so that you can attract someone that's a hundred times better than him. Because if he said that, then he's at the bottom of the barrel in the first place. There's no point sitting there and regretting it and holding on to that and allowing that to replay in your mind. Because again, remember what you believe in your subconscious is what's going to really take hold. And so, what you're telling me really is that at some level your subconscious, you believe that. And I don't want you to believe that because it's not true. You're a person of worth. So those are the things that I work with with the women I talk about is like really helping them see that, yeah, this is a real concern for you, but negative self-talk like that, those are lies. Those are not true statements, those are not factual statements. So you have to release them, you have to let it go. There's no need to repeat them. Don't say them again, let them go. And and you start the process. It's a long process for some people, longer than others, but you start the process and it will, like anything else, the more you do it, repetition will start to rewire your brain. It becomes embedded in in you and you start to see things differently. You start to see yourself differently. Um, and that's it's a remarkable feeling when you, you know, when a woman comes to tell me that, oh, I now feel like this. Uh I've I've let it go. I cried it out. Let's get the next step. Let's reclaim it, let's redesign it, let's radiate. So that's kind of what I want for people. I'm really passionate about this because I have a lot of people that are close to me who have gone through setbacks and unfortunately allowed it to really take, you know, you watch them down. And you, there's nothing as hard as seeing the light out of leave somebody's eyes, somebody that was so vibrant and so confident and so happy with her life, all of a sudden, just like uh just see if it comes, I'll take it, kind of a thing. And I'm like, no, no, no. Let's get you back to where you were before. Let's get you feeling good about yourself again so you can have the life that you want. So that's what I that's like my message I carry around. That's my mission, is really to help every woman to know that she can bounce back, she can get back, and she can be safe again in her own body, in her own, in her own skin.

SPEAKER_01 38:02

So, how do you rebuild self-trust when you had a setback without forcing positivity?

SPEAKER_00 38:08

There are a lot of strategies, and in my programs, it starts with your different levels, you start with your internal, what you say to yourself. So the thing with self-trust is that it's what I there's a thing I call the trust fracture. A lot of times when you did something, or maybe you chose a partner, I'm gonna use love again. You did all the work, you thought that he was a great guy and you did all this thing, and then later on you find out that he was fraudulent, he didn't love you, he was cheating on you the whole time. What happens for a lot of women is that you start to be like, wow, I thought I was a good judge of character. So if I could not even get this right, then maybe I'm not to be trusted. And then maybe I'm not as good as I thought I was. Maybe I don't need this. And so that trust fracture, as I call it, takes hold of you. And so you start to diminish yourself. You start to feel like, and then that's you know, you start to feel like you don't need, you can't get anything better, and then that spills over to your work. You start to not trust yourself in your work decisions. Like maybe I'm not even trustworthy. So one of the ways that you can change that is actually literally changing the self-talk, and that's where affirmations come in. You know, I am a person of worth. And in my programs, on my step four, we talk about reconnect. So here I help you to reconnect with what whatever you consider to be your higher power. What does your higher power say about you? Is that God? Is that the universe? Is that your ancestor? Whatever they say about you, I want you to connect with that. That's how you start to really become more confident, you become have the self-trust. And so for me, as a Christian woman, in my Christianity, there's a one of the affirmations right from our holy book says, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. So that's something that I say. And I'm like, if you are a Christian person, you say that. The universe, if you believe in the universe, the universe talks about abundance, how that's there for you. Tap into that. Say that my life is abundant, I can get this. And there's science to show this. There's research that shows that the connection between spirituality and success. If you have if you believe that you have a higher power that's supporting you, you're likely to have better health outcomes, better economic outcomes, all of that. So I told you to tap into whatever you need to tap into, but it's really about changing what you say about yourself and what you believe. It's all about changing that. No more negative self-talk. We start to help you to rebuild your self-trust so that you can heal what I call heal that trust fracture and start to believe in yourself again. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 40:15

I love that. Thank you. That's great. Um, so why do women become more high-functioning after heartbreak? And what is the body protecting them from?

SPEAKER_00 40:28

So, yeah, a lot of the times it's just a way for people to feel value in their lives. When you go through this heartache or you go through stress or something like that happens, again, you have this trust fracture, you no longer trust yourself, you feel disappointed in yourself. Now you're gonna grab onto the one thing or two things that you know you can do very well. So some people will go on this cooking spree and cook it, cook it, cook it, cook it, cook it. Right? And do whatever you feel like you can do and do it and really, really do it, right? And other people will just go out to work and immerse themselves in work and work from, you know, morning till night and not go home. It's again, it's a way to hide, it's a way to feel safe again, it's a way to kind of regain yourself in some ways. And your body is also trying to protect you. You're trying to re-regulate yourself the best way that you know how to do it so that you don't go home and sit at home and cry and eat ice cream all day. But I think that what is most important for people to know is that when you go through a setback, there are steps. You have to honor your pain. I talk a lot about this. You don't have to pretend that you didn't go through pain, you just went through a breakup, or you just went through, you know, a loss of any kind. Honor the pain, name the pain. You have to say it. I went through this and I did this, and this hurts, and this is hard, but I can move past this, I can do all things, I am strong, I can do hard things, and you have to start to work with the people that can give you the steps, the strategies, the help, the support to be able to get out of that. So, again, it's not about hiding in your pain. And some people actually go into addiction, not just high functioning, but they start to do other behaviors that are out of character for them. Again, it's all trying to feel safe again in some way that they know how to feel safe and to bring value to themselves some way. But I recommend strongly that you get help, you get somebody that can support you so that you don't introduce more negativity or more negative patterns in your behaviors. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 42:15

No, that's very helpful. So if someone's listening and they are overwhelmed right now, what is your quickest nervous system reset they can do under 60 seconds?

SPEAKER_00 42:26

Just let yourself breathe. And a lot of times I tell women, put your hand in your chest so that you can feel grounded and breathe, and then start to sit to say this. I have what I call the um, what do I call emergency self-compassion card? If you need to close your eyes, close your eyes, feel your body, just stand up, just you know, just release, breathe in, breathe out. Tell yourself I am safe, I'm okay, I deserve good things. I am calm. It's okay. I'm human. I'm allowed to have human experiences and release your body, let your body not be so tight and allow your body to just be calm. Give yourself time in our culture where you just go, go, go, go, go. But just give yourself time. I'm about to speak to yourself. Say I'm going through pain, I honor the pain, I know the pain, but I can handle this. I have the experience, I've handled it before. I can do this. So, whatever it is that you need to do, if you, you know, you need to kneel down, if you need to close your eyes, if you need to pray, whatever works for you. It's different for everyone. But I always tell people, speak to yourself, affirm, reaffirm to yourself that you can handle this because then your body starts to say, okay, no need to fight, no need to stress. We can we can relax, we're good. Your body, you start to you actually feel it. Sometimes when you're so tense, your whole body's like tight. And then once you start to say that and shake it out, and you know, you you start to feel better. Like, okay, I'm good, I'm safe. It's okay. And I even tell my children this you can say that, I'm safe, I'm good, you know, it's okay. You start to feel better. So that's what something I can say.

SPEAKER_01 43:56

You can do that's amazing. Thank you. It's so good that you tapped into your kids. Because I have a son and I do this with him as well. Because there's so many life circumstances for these little people where they take it so seriously and they think it's the end of the world, and you'd be like, You human, it's okay. Just breathe it out.

SPEAKER_00 44:17

Absolutely. And I think this is so important to, you know, understand that sometimes in high-functioning families, like in our home, we like really talk about education. You have to do this, and then there's the you know, sports and all this stuff. But I always tell my children that you're fine as long as you're doing your best. That's all I want. Regardless of the outcome, I want you to know that you're always loved, you're always safe, but I want you to work hard because nothing's gonna come to you easily. And I want you to be the best that you can be. I'm really big on potential. We're not gonna come to Earth and waste our time because this is not a we this is not a dress rehearsal. We don't get a do over. Once you're out of this planet, you need to wrap, right? So I want you to the best in your time. Yeah, so that's what I tell them. But at the end of the day, know that there's not a thing you can do. I tell my kids, there's not a thing you can do that can make me to stop loving you. So just do your best, be the best, show up the best thing you can, and you will be okay and you're always safe. My kids say affirmations every day before we get out of the car. They say everything. And even when we talked about wealth, my kids say, I am wealthy, I am healthy, I am smart, I am strong. Every single day. I say it, we say it, we do it, and we say it, and it becomes embodied for us. So I had a girl ask me the other time, yeah. You win so many things. How do you win so many awards? And I'm like, I expect to win. My body knows that I love it. So my body knows it's safe with me. You know, I understand my essence, which is a lot more powerful than external validation or material stuff. I know that I was created for a reason to help people, to help women know that they're not less than. So my body knows that. And so, because of that, we say these things and we we do these affirmations, and be because we believe in that, we expect that. I always expect to win. I've never in my life expected to go and do something and like, okay, I'll just take an eighth out of nine. No, I don't want that. I'm trying to be to the podium if that's and and then whatever happens happens. And so that's kind of how it is. It's like you expect that. And and I teach my kids that to know how much power you have just by what you believe, and what you believe in yourself, what you believe about the world is going to really shape your world your world in ways that you don't even know yet. That's what I tell anyone is just believe in yourself, you know, expect good things, but not look at it from rose uh colored lenses or anything. But we know that good things are there and we can attract good things to our lives by you know what we do and where we go and you know how we improve ourselves. So we we do it. I'm all about progression, get better, uh, do what you can, but just be safe, feel safe and know that you have what it takes to have a joyful, confident, prosperous life.

SPEAKER_01 46:49

I agree. Yeah, that was really well said. So tell me, Marianne, what guided you to this purpose? What was the trigger? What was the pivot? How did you get to do what you're doing today?

SPEAKER_00 47:02

I have a lot of loved ones that had problems, as I mentioned, that had uh setbacks, that were not able to bounce back the way that they should have, and and that really got me to thinking about this. But I would say the main reason why I decided that it was time to go was during my doctoral program, and that's when I developed my proprietary transcendent framework that I use now in all my programs, but I worked on a dissertation project that focused on assessing weight bias in men and women. Uh, internalization is just how you feel about your weight, and you know, if you feel negatively about your weight because of what society has said. So a lot of the people that I interviewed, these were affluent women and influential women, our study population were very, very successful people. And so they would come into the place, we had them dressed really nicely, and you know, they were looking really good. And then I start asking them the questions, and they would just change. So, how do you feel about your body? How do you feel your body has impacted your ability to get this, this, and that? How do you tell me about your past? What has your past done? You know, and then one lady actually started to cry. You know, she was people were sharing all the stories about feeling really bad about themselves because of setbacks that they had, about their weight, or about their mistakes, or somebody said about not being married, and so many different things. Self-esteem was so low and they looked so put together. I was extremely surprised by this because I felt like they looked great on paper. A lot of them were educated, and most of them actually had advanced degrees, a lot of money, and directors and the different things in talk organizations. I was surprised at the lack of confidence when it came down to it. And so after that lady was, when she broke down there, I was there in the capacity of a researcher. As a researcher, you're not there to give information, you're there to take information. So I had I had been coaching though, um, on the side uh for years, but I knew that the things I could tell her, but in that capacity, I couldn't tell her. I remember when I went back, I was telling my the other person on the program, I really wish I could have shared this with her. And I started to think about that. So that's kind of how it started. It's been amazing, it's been rewarding. Every day it feels like I've done something really great, uh, helped somebody. To me, it's more, you know, rewarding than I ever could have imagined. So that's kind of how I got here. It's just to continue the message, getting the message out there that women, no matter what you're going through, you're still a woman of worth. It doesn't matter whatever mistake you've made, it doesn't matter how you look, it doesn't matter how you speak, and I'm here to guide anyone that wants that. So that's usually that's kind of how I got here.

SPEAKER_01 49:20

That's amazing. Thank you very much for sharing that story. So if any of my listeners would like to reach out to you, how can they get a hold of you or seek help from you?

SPEAKER_00 49:30

You can reach me on Instagram or well LinkedIn, Dr. Marianne Lanieren, joyfulytranscend.com is my website. So they can go there. We have resources on there that people can use and just going towards the direction that they want. So we can connect.

SPEAKER_01 49:45

Lovely. Thank you very much for joining my podcast today. It was a lovely talking to you. So thank you very much everyone listening to our podcast today. And uh what I do always for you, I will link all the affirmations and adjournal prompts in the show notes so you can take a time with your heart and uh do some journaling and see you soon.