Overcoming Limiting Beliefs: Suhas On Self Discovery

Beyond the labels, Suhas is blue, vast, and cerebral. In this episode, Suhas discusses pressure to define himself by career and the identity challenges he faced navigating Indian and American cultures. Suhas shares about his writing as a tool for self-discovery and the daily affirmation practice he uses to overcome limiting beliefs. We also talk about tapping into intuition by starting with low-stakes decisions. 

Find Suhas on Instagram and TikTok: @joywithsuhas 

Transcript

Rachel 0:00

Hi everyone, welcome to Unmasked. Glad we're back together. We have a great guest, as always. I think I say that at most episodes because they're all amazing. Before we dive in, let's just take a moment and ground. Feel free to close your eyes as always, lower your gaze and just tap into your normal breathing rhythm. Wherever you are, whatever today has brought is just fine. Can you give yourself some grace? As you continue to breathe, you showed up today, and that's what matters. Take one or two more breaths, and when you're ready. ready. So we'll get started. Sue Haas, welcome. Thank you for being here. Thanks for bringing me on. Rachel. This is such a pleasure. I'm excited to learn from you How are you doing today? Doing good. another day here in New York. It's been kind of warm actually. I've been really grateful for that. Sue Haass and I have met in the master's program here at Teacher's College in New York similarly to many guests so far. Spirit, mind, body program. I'd love to start with the three words that Suhas used to describe himself prior to coming on the show, which are drum roll, blue, vast, and cerebral. Wow. Very different from the guests prior to you, and I imagine what will come after you. Mm-hmm. Will you get into those words and tell us a bit about 'em. Yeah I feel like the task of bringing words to yourself that you feel like are true but not limiting. But then they're also not general like I could say, oh, I'm a soul, or I'm like a being, or I could say something that could apply to anyone, but then I don't wanna say anything too, or not specific, but then things that kind of feel like they could potentially, create a restriction on my kind of full self. And so how do you choose something that's both individual but then also kind of in awareness that you're usually a lot more than you cognitively realize yourself to be? so I'm vast. there's always more to be unfolded in what I know about who I am, and then blue is this kind of, it's blue is my favorite color. And, I feel like the meaning of.

Suhas 3:33

of What that could mean as a descriptive word for myself can always be changing, right? what it means that I feel blue or that I think I'm blue, or that I am blue. it just has this abstract quality to it. And yeah, it, it felt like something that, it feels really close to my, childlike essence. The color blue and in that, it also is the kind of word that doesn't, threaten to make me feel in, in a limited identity. And then cerebral, I think was, I use it as an adjective because it's one trait that I know about myself that has definitely stayed with me from when I was like very, very small till now, which is this kind of inquisitiveness, this curiosity, always asking more questions, this attraction to complex ideas. and not in this very dry, intellectual way, but in this kind of like heartfelt, artistic

Rachel 4:38

way. I love this. I'm obsessed with those words. Yeah. Incredible. Yeah. Thank you for such an intentional answer. Yeah. Behind all three of those, it's clear that you really thought them out. Yeah, and my favorite color is also blue. Oh, really? So, oh, well you're wearing a lot of boot today. as a my, yeah. It's a great color. I think it looks good on a lot of people. That's true. Yeah. Have you been asked this question before? the three words? there's probably context where, you know, as a icebreaker or something people said could describe yourself in a few words, or what are two words or five words but I think that, this isn't like an answer that I was pulling out from reference of when I've been asked this before. It was just, you said three words and I was like, oh, how am I gonna get out of this one? the reason that I like starting with this question is because most of the time when you go meet someone new, the question is, what do you do? yeah, that's fair and I would love if that changed to something like, who are you? What are your values? Yeah. And that's kind of the precedent that I'm, I'm hoping to set in this podcast, is understanding who you are, aside from some of the labels that you have carried in your life, or being a master's student, for example.

Suhas 6:05

Yeah. I think that's very astute. I do think that for a long time I felt this kind of pressure around, uh, career being the, defining label I felt really a lot of pressure to define myself into a career, that I would be able to carry as this badge of identity signaling that I need to find what I am willing for people to see me as, right? am I willing to, go down this career path and then people will, will associate with me with that career path and who I am but to your point, I really feel now in retrospect that the career itself feels like a very small, piece of, the full scope of identity. I think the careers can be transitory. there's a lot of life that exists beyond our occupation and so I really appreciate that. What are some of the labels you've carried in your lifetime now? I would say that especially as I was growing up, it was a lot of this polarity between being Indian and being American. So I was born here in California. And then from seven to 18, we moved back and then I completed my schooling there. And then at 18 I moved back for college. my parents, are Indian, born and raised in India, but then moved here as immigrants. and it's kind of like these two, their national identities, their cultural identities, that both have their own properties and you like them both. I think for a long time I would either be in the state of trying to create a version of myself that could fit both of them. Or I would be in this split where I would have to choose one or the other. I'm going to cut myself off from the more ethnically rooted part of side of myself. And I'm going to try to stay within, this American side to myself, or I'm gonna cut myself off from this freethinking, very independent, new world type of person and then try to live entirely in this traditionally or culturally rooted way. Not that it's black and white like that, the way that I'm describing it is not necessarily the lines. It might have been in a little bit in the way that I experienced them in my own life. So it's not a universal rule but I had phases where I would I move between those two poles? What did that feel like? it made me very, self inquisitive because after a point, I kept coming to this reckoning of you can't really take a model outside of yourself you can't, take some kind of representation that's in the media or a public figure that you look up to or something like that, and you can't just say okay, that's the way that I'm going to live. That's who I am at some point I just realize like you have to create your own thing. You have to, invent your own way of life. Otherwise you're always going to be cutting off a side of yourself. It's gonna be unsatisfying.

Rachel 9:45

Where Where would you say you land now in terms of labels identity. Do you think you've got a stronghold on who you are beyond those things?

Suhas 10:05

I I think I'm more comfortable now in saying I don't necessarily have language for who I am, or that if there is language, it might come to me in pieces or it'll be my own self invention. Like, I like writing a lot. I started writing a newsletter a few years ago. first I started, writing for myself, I just liked to synthesize what I was experiencing in my life into words. It really became a way that I could hold space for the complexity of my experience. and so then I started writing a newsletter and people really seemed to like the writing. when I write, emotional texture of the present moment starts to become expressed in words and it feels just really rewarding and You can see it all in this finer, richer, um, you can bring it into a light that is more, optimistic and, connected to your soul qualities to, to the, to the heart to the heart of why you're in that present moment. with all those things So it's not that every time that I write I'm able to get to that place, where I feel that way but writing I think helps me, bring a lot of that experience that I feel like there's no good words for, or I'm just getting it in fragments from what I'm reading or what I'm listening to or other people into, something that I can really look at and say, okay, these words make sense to me and I can finally see myself in these words. And so I've learned to tolerate the ambiguity of identity a little bit that, there's always more that I'm going to be discovering, and that's actually a great thing, because there means there's always more potential and that especially identity labels, they might have their place for a certain period of time. They might serve as kind of function that helps me learn the lessons that I need to learn. Or grow in a way that I need to grow, or maybe for some reason I need to take on a certain kind of personality in the world to, express myself in a certain way, but that those identity labels, more often than not, they tend to be temporal. They tend to be something that may feel like you for a period of time, they're not adequate in describing you and so if you hold to them too closely, then you're going to go back to this place where you thought you knew who you were then you realize you don't. Yeah. I think you mentioned something really important there, because I would never wanna demonize labels. I think they are really crucial, and they're a part of life. They're a way in which we express ourselves. the language around labels can be important as well. Instead of saying, I am a writer, I write, I think language can be a really good place to start when it comes to having a relationship and coexisting with labels that can sometimes become defining. So I like the concept of being friendly with our labels that we live with,

Rachel 13:33

They're not not a bad thing. But when we get too attached, I think that's where it can become dangerous, I try for myself to be able to feel whole and feel worthy and loved. If I knew that all of those labels would maybe get ripped away. Mm. Will you share some of what you write about? Is it around identity?

Suhas 13:57

when I was writing, I think the idea was this process of becoming and that, um, you know, that you're on the cusp of, maybe, discovering your, your talents or, what is really possible in your life. new kinds of experience. I think, you can be exposed to experiences that are beyond what you thought life, life has to offer hopefully positive ways sometimes, in destructive kinds of ways too but I think that I was, what was happening at that time. I was graduating college and I took this big leap of faith to go do this year long program in India and what I was experiencing in India was really, it had an emotional quality to it, and it had an emotional intensity to it that was new to me. I wasn't used to being in an environment where there was just so much depth of feeling constantly around me and people were able to actually like live with that amount of feeling and express it. And so that was very new to me. and then also taking that risk was me saying to myself that I believed in myself because to do that thing I had to overcome a lot of limiting ideas that I had about myself, that decision to go to India for one year and do this specific program I think it wasn't a part of the conventional logics, that I was used to. I had to trust this more instinctual, intuitive intelligence. what was the program? It was called the Young India Fellowship. It's a year long multidisciplinary leadership program. it's a hundred people. You live together, you eat together, and you take a ton of classes together, 26 classes in one year. the term length are six, six weeks each. And it's also kind of like isolated from an urban environment. so what happens is that it's like what would happen if you took a hundred people like out? Obviously that's not what happened, but if you took a hundred people out into the forest and you lived with a hundred people in that forest and just cut yourself off from everything else, it wasn't to that degree. Sounds fun. It, so it was extremely fun. but growth inducing, I think in jarring ways. I bet. Yeah. yeah. Will you share based on personal experience any tools that you use to get past limiting beliefs in your life? I'm a big fan of affirmation. So affirmation, as I have learned it, is, really a shift in automatic thoughts that we have about ourself. when you take an affirmation, and what I do is I first, as I've learned it and as I've been taught, I take the affirmation. So one that I like, I'm brave, I'm strong, perfume of success thoughts flow through me, flow through me. I'm cool. I am calm, I'm sweet. I am kind. I am love and sympathy. I am charming and magnetic. I am pleased with all. I wipe away all tears and fears. I have no enemy. I am the friend to all. so I take the affirmation, I say it out loud and then repeat it until it becomes a whisper. softer and softer. And then start to repeat it mentally and my understanding of what is actually happening is that over time you're crowding out the thoughts about yourself that aren't in alignment with that affirmation. So if there's a part of you that's growing, let's say from when you were young, you had this this guilt that was instilled in you by, authority figures in your life. And they made you feel like, there were all of these flaws that you had and these flaws diminished your, positive being, then you know that would become instilled as this automatic thought that you have, even if you don't realize it. And so over time, I think what you're doing is you're beginning to crowd those thoughts out with a thought that is closer to the truth. for instance, I'm brave, I'm strong. Maybe you don't necessarily feel that your actions have been very courageous so far. Maybe you think, okay, I find it too scary to talk to someone new. Maybe you still have those kinds of ideas, but chances are that in your life you have actually done courageous things. even if you currently think of them as quite small and that shows that quality of courage is there, it's latent within you, and can you affirm that that is actually your true nature and not, this self-critical voice that's saying, oh, you're weak. you have such a hard time public speaking. Can you say that? Okay. Maybe that self-critical voice isn't a good reflection of the truth. Maybe I am actually brave. And can you begin to invest in that idea more and more until it becomes one of your core ideas about yourself? Yeah. I gotta start doing that. How frequently do you repeat this? I do it just before I go to bed. The way that I've learned about it is that, because a conscious mind is such a small part of, the full mind, the subconscious mind is, it's so if there's an iceberg, it's like the conscious mind is the tip of the iceberg, and the subconscious mind is the majority of it. And just as you're going into the state of sleep, it's that the subconscious mind is a little bit more active and it's a little bit more receptive to new thoughts. So if you repeat it before you go to bed, then you're giving the subconscious mind a chance to work with it and then take it into to sleep and. So, do you have like magnificent dreams? You have, you've asked me this before, have I? Okay. Yeah. you said that you thought that I, that I have really great dreams, which I think that, in this, zooming out a little bit into this kind of SMB institute context that we're in, Where dreams are really strongly associated with intuition, mystical experience. messages from our higher self or that there's this amazing symbolic life playing out at the level of our dreams. If only we could have those dreams and remember them and be aware of them. I think that the value that those kinds of dreams really seems to give people is that there's intuitive messages embedded into those dreams. there's a professor here, you remember Dr. Sra? Yes. she. Came to TC for her PhD in the Spirituality Mind Body Institute. and it all started, I think she had another career, like as a marketer or as a model, or as a fashion designer. I think one of those. but then she started to have dreams about getting her PhD. Psychology and that eventually synchronistically led her to getting into the master's program, here at tc and then continuing in the PhD. I don't necessarily have dreams like that, but what I can say is that I have had some really nice dreams that, that were very emotionally meaningful. They were healing dreams. They really soothed me and comforted me, but I think that I, intuition for me doesn't really seem to present itself with as much color. Intuition to me feels like this kind of, it's like a quiet knowing. It's this intelligent force, and I can ask it a question and it'll start rearranging my thoughts. That's how I experience it. Dang. That's cool. Yeah.

Rachel 22:30

What do you think? and how has your experience been with the concept of masculinity and femininity and the logical brain that our society often taps into more so than this intuitive, emotional side of ourselves? Has that been challenging for you? Has it been challenging? I think that when I was starting to lean on my intuition more, my logical mind was really fighting back and I think that, I don't think that the intellectual mind is necessarily as much of an enemy of intuition as we might think, because I think that the intellectual mind is actually really receptive to the fact that intuition works. when you make intuitive decisions twice or thrice, or four times or five times, and you actually see, the results that you're getting, oh, I trusted my intuition that one time so I'm trained in HeartMath, which is this system that was developed, as a result of discoveries. Into the heart, not just as an organ of, it's not just this pump, but that it's this actually, it's this organ of perception and intelligence right? and part of what, you know, starting to kind of ask, what the full potentials of the heart might be, was that they actually discovered a lot about intuition. so if I am teaching a person to connect to their heart and learn to trust their intuition more you always start with smaller things. low stakes things what should I eat? Like you're at, you're in a dining hall, you see multiple options, or you're at a restaurant and you're looking at that menu. what do I order right now? So you start with something like that, not should I move and should I just quit my job? Should I start a new chapter of my life? sure, yeah, do that thing. But I'm saying that, if you're trying to consciously develop intuition, you start with a lower stakes thing because it makes it easier for the logical mind to be curious rather than in competition with your intuition, right? Because, if it's this high stakes thing, then you're gonna be really worried and that's going to actually make it harder for you to tap into your intuition, when you actively practice your intuition with smaller things It gives you a calmer state of being, And from that commerce state of being, you can actually connect to intuition a lot better. And when you see the results of your intuition, oh, I trusted my intuition that time, and it was good,

Suhas 25:25

right? then it gives the intellectual mind more proof to say like, oh, this thing that I was worried is going to, I don't know, take me in the wrong direction. Can actually be like a great resource and I'm gonna trust it more and more. But it was very hard. lots of times your intuition says things or tells you to do things that your intellectual mind doesn't understand. And especially when there's an emotional stakes involved in some of those things. And it's telling you to make the kinds of decisions. Or behave in certain kinds of ways or feel and think in certain ways that are new to you, that aren't your established pattern. yeah, it's going to be uncomfortable. Yeah. I do think dinner is a great place to start. It's like, what is your heart telling you you want on That menu is really simple, but it can actually go a long way. yeah.

Rachel 26:22

yeah. I'd love to give you the chance to share any last words or where people could find on social media, I know you like to share content of things that you're passionate about so the mic's yours. Great. yeah, so I share, content about science and spirituality and I'm also going to be having guests on, soon, to talk about some of their work. it's, joy with Suhas on TikTok and Instagram, so that's joy with suhas is my name, S-U-H-A-S and I am very thankful to have come on today and, I guess I would like to ask you a question. Oh boy.

Suhas 27:09

if if you could name an opportunity that people have when they're going through these big identity transitions, what would you think that opportunity potentially could be? And what advice would you give to people who are, who kind of feel like they're in this place between their old self and this new self that's coming? What a great question. Simply put an opportunity for growth and getting to know yourself more. Although the identity crisis per se, and transition to a greater knowing of ourselves can be really, really painful and hard and dark. You can only go up from there, it's a chance to really tap into who you are beyond those things, and it's a chance to learn. At least that's what I've experienced. So I'm grateful for the suffering that, I experienced as an athlete and that label that left me at one point. Unexpectedly. Advice I would give is to create an awareness around the things that someone loves, the things that someone wants in life, and why.

Rachel 28:36

And. To also think about values because I think those are the things that really matter and give us the chance to see who we are authentically, Thanks for asking. Of course. Thank you for sharing that. Blue, vast, and cerebral. Thank you Suhas. have a great day everyone. Thanks for tuning in.