Everything Changes When You Stop Fixing The Wrong Thing

I'm turning 35 this week!! AHH! I'm reflecting on the lessons that changed my life over the past year. In this episode, I share the mindset shifts, nervous system work, and identity changes that helped me create more momentum and success this year. A lot of these are micro changes you can start implementing today.

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Welcome to the Expansion Edit Podcast, where if you hang around long enough, you'll learn that you can achieve anything by rewiring who you believe you are. I'm Chelsea, a licensed therapist, turned identity coach for the woman ready to create an extraordinary life and become the living manifestation of her vision board. Not through wishful thinking or fluffy affirmations, but through identity embodiment using proven techniques, rewiring protocols, and psychology-backed strategy grounded in neuroscience. Here we talk subconscious rewiring, nervous system safety, identity shifting, and manifestation in a way that expands your life from the inside out. So let's unlock your next level. Okay, welcome back to the podcast. So today's gonna be a good episode. I actually, I'm gonna set the scene for you as to where I wrote this podcast episode because I actually ended up just writing it down in my notebook yesterday when I was at the beach. And I was at the beach because yesterday I woke up feeling yesterday was Monday, just for context, like start of the work week. It was a big weekend, it was my anniversary, it was my son's fifth birthday, which uh, if you have kids, I don't know. I don't know if anyone else has experienced this, but my son turning five really hit something. Like, oh my gosh, he's already five. I don't know. There's just there, yeah, there was a lot there. So he turned five, and yeah, our wedding anniversary is on his birthday, which also happened to be on Father's Day this weekend as well. So we basically split up the whole weekend. Friday was anniversary, Saturday was James's birthday, and then Sunday was Father's Day, but also James's birthday too. So yeah, it was a busy weekend, and I just woke up on Monday feeling like just a little bit of overwhelm, just a feeling a lot of shoulds and false urgency around needing to get things done. I have to do this, I need to draft out my outline for this thing, and you know fix some back-end stuff with my membership, like just things that are normal things, but I was just feeling a little bit, yeah, just stretched thin and overwhelmed by the idea of it. And I've noticed that when I get into those states of feeling like, oh, I have to do this or I need to, the urgency that I now can recognize those things as nervous system responses because none of those things are actually urgent, and I have plenty of time to get all of those things done. So when I start to feel behind or like I absolutely need to do something and it's stressing me out, I see those now as signs that I actually need to just regulate my nervous system. And it's it's taken me some time to get to this point. And there's also that mind game of, oh, are you choosing regulation over taking the action of what's necessary to move the needle as a way for your subconscious to keep you stuck in the same spot? But what I have found after time and time again, and all of the growth that I've been through, is that if I prioritize my regulation, everything else falls into place and everything else is easier for me. So yesterday, instead of diving straight into work, I actually drove out to the beach after I dropped the kids off, went for a little beach walk. I don't know, being even though it was like foggy and cold, which generally is the weather here on the upper west coast of California where I live, like it's basically like that all the time, unless we get lucky with some sun. But even just being out there, I don't know, it's very healing, it's very grounding for me. So I went on a little beach walk and then I came back and I just sat down, brought a little towel, and just started writing. And something that I ended up coming to was just remembering that although we had all of these celebrations over the weekend, my birthday is actually this week as well, coming up on Friday. And I'm turning 35 this year. And so I really just took some time to reflect on the last year. And if you've been around listening to this podcast for a while, there was an episode that I did in January of, or I think it was maybe it was end of December or beginning of January about reflecting on your year and and how to do that. And I'm really lucky because my birthday is in June. So I kind of have the six-month mark of like I can reflect on the calendar year, but then I also have June to reflect on my past year of being on Earth. So that's what I did. I just kind of did a little reflection dump of the last year, and that was, I don't know, very regulating for me. And that is actually how I came to this podcast outline. And something else I just want to say is since I did choose to go to the beach and regulate and just spend some time with myself and chill and get myself back into the present moment, everything else has fallen into place. Since then, it's easier for me to make content that resonates, it's easier for me to come up with ideas, it's easier for me to say what I need to say and say it in a way that is gonna resonate and is going to help people change their lives. And I came back from the beach, I made some content, a few of those pieces of content actually popped off. And as I'm recording this podcast, I actually have created an online community on Instagram of 10,000 people, which feels so amazing and surreal. And I don't know, I have even more reflection points now than I did when I wrote this outline on Monday. But I'm just gonna share some of the really hard-hitting lessons that I have learned over the past year that have helped me get to this point of being able to step into the version of myself that I see for myself, the version of me who creates impact and helps people activate their voices and become the person that they want to become and build this business and have the strength and the certainty to walk through fear and uncertainty, but creating that certainty anyway, like all of these things that have gotten me to this point and just the fact that it is it has happened in the way that it has with this all coming to fruition in less than a year. I mean, I I feel like I started my journey with all of this probably a year and a half ago, but really since I started this business last August, you know, things have moved quickly, and it's because every single time I come up to a wall, I always prioritize inner work over fixing the external. And one of my coaches used this metaphor with me once, and it has stuck with me ever since of if you look at yourself in a mirror and you look at your reflection and you see something wrong on your face, maybe you have smeared mascara, you don't go up to the mirror and start trying to fix the mascara on the mirror. You take a Q-tip or whatever and you fix it on your own face. And I think this is the same with whatever we're trying to do and build in our lives. Like you fix yourself first, and then the reflection is created in the 3D world. That was a lot of talking, so I'm gonna actually get into the lessons now of the things that I have learned and the things that I'm prioritizing going into 35, which you guys, how am I 35? Like, it's so crazy. I don't even know. But we're here, so we're doing it. And I also just want to preface this by saying I have not hit all my goals. I am not in the place eventually of where I want to be, but I know that I am becoming or have become the person, the version of myself, who will inevitably hit those goals. The first lesson is that your time is more valuable than money. And I wrote down, you can never get back time, but you can always create more money. I used to think that money created freedom in life. And to a certain extent, I guess it sort of does, but now I realize that money is simply a tool that buys back my time. And I saw this, somebody was talking about if you were offered a million dollars, but you wouldn't wake up tomorrow, would you take it? No, because you're not gonna wake up tomorrow. So what's the point? You need to prioritize creating freedom in your life so that you can spend the time doing the things and being with the people and experiencing what you want to experience in this world because our time here is limited. And so everything that I do, well, to a certain extent, everything that I do is in the pursuance of freedom, impact, helping people, but also creating a life that I want to live. And I in doing so, it can serve as a reference point for other people. So everything that I try to do is using money as a tool to buy back my time, time with my kids and the people I love, and to experience the things that I want to experience in this life. So money isn't the goal, but it is the tool that we use to experience freedom. And in that lesson, I think there's a lot of deeper lessons underneath in terms of viewing money, having money as a good thing versus it makes you greedy, it makes you selfish, people who have money are corrupt. Like these are all kind of subconscious viewpoints that I think were ingrained in me growing up. And no fault to the people who raised me, my parents, or anything like that. It it just becomes this thing. Like when for me personally, I was surrounded by wealth growing up, but we didn't have it. I lived, I grew up in one of the wealthiest counties in the country in the United States, and my dad was uh law enforcement, so we did not, we were not on the same level as most of my peers. And I think a lot of the programming that was sold to me was, you know, money is corruptive and it makes people unhappy and it ruins everything. Like there was a lot of that narrative, and now I see that like that's just not that just doesn't have to be. Money is an amplifier of who you already are. So that was a tangent. But the first reflection is that time is worth more than money, and I create a life where I can experience true freedom through using the tool of money. The second lesson is the more you pour into yourself, the better you become for everybody around you. We a lot of time, especially women, have been taught that the opposite is true. You give, give, give, even if you have nothing to give. But in actuality, I think the biggest gift that you can give to the people around you, your kids, your spouse, you know, your life, your friends, whatever it is, becoming the healthiest, most regulated, most alive version of yourself. Because if that is the version that you are, you're gonna have so much more to give from such a more genuine place. So self-care is not selfish. I don't even really love the term self-care, but I'm gonna use it here because that's what we're talking about. Prioritizing your health, your wellness, your regulation, that is going to be where everything else stems from. And from where I'm sitting now and the growth that I've experienced, the more regulated you are, just the better everything is, honestly. Because then you're not operating from a place of lack, you're operating from a place of abundance because you are regulated, you're grounded, and you have tools and creativity to figure everything out. Okay, the third lesson, and this was such a big one, and I think this lesson was really learned through or learned, learned, learned, learned through creating my business and really growing it through social media and facing everything that comes with that. So the third lesson is self-trust. And listen, I've been through some hard things in my life. We all have, right? And you'd think that if you go through hard things in your life and you come out the other end, that you would trust yourself to know that you can handle it. But I actually think that when you voluntarily do hard things where it's not thrust on you, you're not in a traumatic situation, but genuinely going out and choosing to do something hard, volunteering for that, and then seeing that you can handle it, even if it doesn't turn out the way that you expected initially, that is where you build self-trust. Every uncomfortable conversation or moment, every workout, every piece of content that you chose to post and it didn't do well, like all of those things become evidence that you can handle what comes next. And now that I've done that, I've been through it and I've voluntarily put myself up to fail and seeing that every failure brings me closer to what I actually want to do and what I'm actually trying to say and the impact I'm trying to make, I genuinely trust myself so much more than I did at the beginning of 34. And I attribute a lot of that to creating this business and choosing to show up every single day, despite not having the evidence or the outcomes that I wanted yet. Under all of that, I feel like I've learned that the more that you challenge yourself on purpose, the more you come to understand that you can handle whatever is thrown at you. And that right there is where self-trust is built. And if you have that, your success is inevitable because you're never going to stop. You're always going to tweak and refine and figure out what works for you and you can show up despite not having the evidence yet. The next lesson is identity creates discipline. Discipline is born from your identity, not the other way around. So if you're sitting there trying to force discipline, which trust me, I've been there. I've totally 100% been here, where I'm like, I'm going to do this thing, even if it's out of self-deprecation, even if it's not serving my body, even if it's not serving my mind, like I'm going to do the thing because I said I was going to do it. But in reality, if you can flip that on its head and actually become disciplined from a place of self-love where you're saying, I am this kind of person, I'm the kind of person that X, Y, Z, and then you follow through on that, it's going to be a very different experience because you're not short-circuiting your nervous system or trying to push through burnout because it's not aligned with your identity. What you do instead is you change your identity and the discipline falls in line with that. So when you genuinely see yourself as somebody who follows through, discipline becomes an expression of that, not the other way around. So this is why, again, I'm so big on meditation and reprogramming the subconscious, because if your subconscious believes that you are somebody that follows through, you are disciplined, then you're just going to default to that. It's not going to be something where you have to push it uphill or push through or burn out to do it. So I always lead with identity and nervous system regulation, and the rest falls into place because you've crafted the type of person that you want to become. Okay, the next lesson, I'm just going to read this word for word because this is what came out, and I feel like it's great. Your limit of what you can achieve is only as high as you believe the ceiling is. Period. Like your limit of what you can do in this life is only dictated by what you believe that ceiling is. Somebody said this to me, and I think I made a piece of content about it. But there is no glass ceiling. Like the glass ceiling is as high or as big as you can dream and create. What do you believe the internal limit is? Because that is the limit. So I'm constantly expanding this limit, constantly expanding what I believe is possible for myself. And that is the internal work. That is the work that is gonna get you so much further than thinking there's something external that you need to break through. Okay, the next lesson. There's a lot, but you guys, I feel like this was a this was a big breakthrough year for me. So I'm just I'm just spitting out everything that came to me this year. The next lesson is your brain, my brain, is not broken, and neither is yours. There's nothing wrong with my brain. I just needed to learn how to work with it. Now, this one I think coincided with some stuff that came up with my kids as well to put things into perspective. But basically, I used to try to fit into whatever like the normal thing was, right? And I had trouble in school. I was in like the remedial reading group growing up, which is never fit with me in my self-concept because I did feel like I was smart, but yet I struggled with things like that. I struggled to stay focused, but I also was a girl, so I masked a lot of what I went through and just would push through things and try to push through anyway, even though it was challenging and difficult. And now looking back on it, I think it was more challenging and difficult than it might have been for somebody with a typical brain. And here's the thing: I've never been diagnosed with anything in terms of neurodivergency formally. I grew up in the 90s. I I do wonder sometimes if that would have been different if I was a child today. But I was never diagnosed with anything. My therapist a few years back did mention that he thought I would meet criteria for uh ADHD inattentive type, which I now seeing the symptom presentation do agree with him. But I'm saying this as somebody who's never had a formal diagnosis, so I cannot really resonate with that piece. However, I'm also saying that as a mom with two kids on the spectrum, and there's a lot of overlap genetically between that and ADHD symptoms and just having neurodivergency run in your family. So while I don't have a formal diagnosis, I've always had a difficulty with feeling like my brain doesn't work right, or I think differently, or I don't fit in. And the moment I could flip that on its head and say, there's nothing wrong with my brain, I just need to learn how to work with it. And actually, the way my brain works is a huge asset. Everything changed for me. I have changed the way I operate. I do not force things, I implement things like the dopamine reset you guys hear me talk about. If you've if you follow me on social media, you know what I'm talking about. But that changed my life. Being able to reprogram my brain of where I was getting my dopamine hits from, because if I'm not careful, that can get out of control. And so really focusing on pushing my dopamine response more towards building my dream life versus, you know, the short dopamine hits. And I've talked about this before, but basically putting in little things like that, doing the reset and changing the way that I structure my days and making sure I get my movement and really structuring it around who I am and what I need versus trying to fit into what is quote, normal. That has been a huge unlock for me. And it has also allowed me to unlock my creativity even more and communicate things in a better way and resonate with more people when I can be in that creative flow state. So knowing that my brain isn't broken, but we just need to flip that has been so helpful. And it's also been just really useful in terms of parenting and kind of looking at what I want my kids to learn growing up about the way that their brains work and how they operate and what I want that to look like for them. So that was lesson I think five, maybe six. I don't know. I'm not counting here, you guys. Okay, the next lesson is presence, presence, presence, presence. The more I regulate my nervous system, the more present I am. I'm dysregulated. It's almost like I go into replay mode, survival mode. The more I can become present, the more I am an active creator and not a reactor in my life. And this is why I talk about meditation, even like me going to the beach the other day, all of that is helping with creating presence. And that's what I want to feel in my life. Like I want to feel joy, I want to feel presence. I don't want to be worried about the future or ruminating over the past. Like, that's where I want to be present with people that I love in my life. That's it. That's the goal. Okay, the next lesson is finding my voice. I have found that the more real I am, when I say real, I mean the more expressive I am from myself, the more influence I build, the more I get in touch with who I really am, and the less I feel like I have to put on airs or try to appear to be something that I'm not. Because at the end of the day, I want to encourage other people who have creative gifts to feel comfortable being in themselves. And the only way to do that is to do it yourself first. So, as cheesy as it sounds, I have to tell you, I had a moment where I became so emotional. I was like tearing up because I realized so truly that the more I was in touch with my inner self, and the more that's where I expressed from, the more my message resonated with people. The more people could see themselves in me. And that felt very humbling and at the same time very encouraging that the only thing I need to do in order. To help activate other people is to truly be myself and show up authentically. I don't even like that word, but as who I actually am. The last lesson. Well, okay, actually there's two more because this is the last one I wrote down, but then there was one more I came up with after this. So I'll start. I'll do this one first and then I'll get to the last one. So the next one is being busy is not being productive. And I kind of already knew that coming into this year, but this has solidified so much for me because you can be busy and you can be doing things and distracting yourself and like cleaning, doing the laundry and like doing all these things that quote need to get done, but that doesn't make it productive. That just actually is a sign that your nervous system is dysregulated and you're trying to do things to prove yourself that you are being productive. When in reality, you probably just need to do the hard thing that you don't actually want to do. Like that's probably more productive or regulating your nervous system because that's almost harder, I think. It's harder to step away and sit down and be present and stay in a moment with yourself versus doing things that you feel like are gonna validate you to feel productive when you're not actually being productive. Like I would say going to the beach on Monday was actually a really hard thing for me to do because there were so many other things on my to-do list that I quote should have been doing, but I chose to do the hard thing and become present, and that had such knock-on effects of helping me become productive and create content that resonated and all of the other things. So sometimes it's just about choosing the hard thing. Well, a lot of times it's about choosing the hard thing and doing what's actually productive versus what's soothing your nervous system in the short term and not actually helping you make any progress. Okay, and the last lesson, and I think this is just kind of encompassing everything, is this year was such a foundation year for me because it's kind of the year I feel like that I came completely off autopilot. I stopped repeating old patterns, I stopped repeating old ways of being and really looked at. I mean, I started to do this before this year a little bit, but not the way that I have this year of really looking at what do I want my life to look like and how do I get there? And looking at tiny compounding actions, because the tiny actions in your life is what creates the outcomes of your life. And that sounds simple, but it's very true. So this is the year of foundation, and I've realized that and I this is what I wrote down, I will never stop becoming who I'm supposed to be. I won't let fear stop me, and I'm getting so much faster at picking up the pieces and moving when my when my nervous system gets stalled. So just learning how to do those little actions and having the self-trust again to know that fear's not gonna stop me, I'm gonna keep moving, I'm gonna become the version of me that I was put here to become. And that's that's it. Like I'm just I know now I have this foundation and I know I'm gonna keep going. And I think if you have that foundation and you feel that strength of, yes, I'm moving in the direction that I I need to, and I trust myself to fail and I trust myself to move through fear, like you can't be stopped. Like that's it. If we can instill that version of you, you're gonna be unstoppable. And and I say that also to say, like, I have a lot of goals this year that I haven't hit yet. And I'm not saying I won't hit them by the end of the year, but if I don't hit them by the end of the year, I know that I will hit them. And I think that's the difference. Like, I think sometimes it can be hard to set goals. And I I do feel like I experienced this at the beginning of 2026 of I had big goals, but I was scared to make them because what if I didn't hit them? What does that say about me? And now it's like it doesn't say anything about me. It just says that I need to tweak or refine or you know, change something. It doesn't have any reflection on my self-worth. And I think that has been a huge change this year as well. So this year, I think to sum up 34 was not the year that like I saw all of the physical, you know, 3D manifestations of all the work that I've done, although I am seeing that, and I have seen a lot of tangible results. But I would say it is everything that kind of happened foundationally underneath the identity, the nervous system, the self-trust, the voice, like all of these things that I know are gonna continue to compound as I move through this journey. And I'll just continue to refine that and move through that because your results are always going to arrive after the identity piece is solidified. And your identity can continue to change. I'm sure mine is gonna continue to change. I mean, I know it is because I have views of where I want to be and I know I'm not there yet. And, you know, there's been a lot of moments this year where I've been through pain and uncomfortability. And usually right before I have an identity shift solidify, I feel like I am in the throes of what the heck is going on, nothing is working, everything's falling apart. You know, I'm showing up, I'm doing the work, I'm continuing, and yet everything is falling apart around me. Usually those moments are the moments right before things solidify and fall into place, and I feel an immense level of peace. And then once that level of identity becomes comfortable, I know it's time to expand my vision again. So that was year 34 in a nutshell. Lots of changes. It's so interesting because I've had such big life changes at other points in my life, like getting my master's degree, getting married, having a kid, having two kids. Like you'd think that those would be identity change points. And for me, they really weren't because I think there was a level where I was still sort of on autopilot. And I think turning, I think it was middle of age 33, I was sort of like, okay, this can't be it. Like I knew something had to change because my life looked good on paper, but I didn't feel like it was mine, and I didn't feel super fulfilled by it. And I I say that with the caveat of like, I love my family, I love my husband, I love my kids, they're amazing. And you know, I wouldn't change anything about that, but there was this internal piece of me that I knew there was something more that I wanted to be doing, and I wasn't living up to that. And if you have that internal feeling, it's something to listen to. So 34 was the year where I stepped into that and really let go of fear and really moved on. Where I know my life can go, where I see it going, the impact I see myself making. So this was a longer episode for sure, but it's been a very big year. It's been a lot of lessons, a lot of learning, a lot of growing, a lot of crying, a lot of laughing. Like it's just been a big year. And if you listen through to this entire episode, let me know what you've thought of this one. Also, if you are listening to this and you are ready to make these changes in your life and you're ready to reprogram your mind and body to feel safe with the visibility, with the failing, with walking through fear, with all of these things that I've talked about here, join the Rewired Collective and I will walk you through it because that is what that space is for. It is a space to face your fears, it is a space to become the version of you that you want to be, map out your identity. We have live calls where I'll be doing a little teaching, but also answering any coaching questions that you have about implementation, blocks that are coming up, maybe like I just talked about everything's falling apart, like those things bring all of that, and we have twice a month live calls, and then there's also meditations, activations. I'm gonna be putting some EFT tapping sessions in there, and then there's also teachings on subconscious mind, how to reprogram it, all of this, all the things that I have done eventually will end up in this membership. It is new, so I'm continuously adding content and teachings into it every single month, and you will get to grow with that. So if you're ready for that work, I'll put the link down below. And I think that's all for this one.