At the beginning of the year I set an intention that I wanted to learn how to sing and some of that was because I wanted to explore accessing my voice more getting in touch with speaking from my voice and really feeling the energy of my voice and hoping that Wanda will help me get over some of my fear of public speaking but also just released some blocks around really speaking my voice and in the beginning of the year I had somebody that was assisting me on getting me on podcasts. And so she had reached out to somebody for me to be interviewed on her podcast. And so then she interviewed me on her podcast her name is Ariane and she actually is a voice coach. So at the end of the podcast, I told her what my goal was and I hired her to become my voice coach so we would talk every about every week sometimes twice a month. We would do singing lessons and so we built this relationship and then I interviewed her on my podcast for episode number ninety one which was claiming your voice the power of your voice and in the podcast, she said something that stood out to me and she was talking about the Avatar course.

I became curious about it. I had heard her talk about it several times but then she said a couple of things on the interview that stood out to me. At the end of the interview, I asked her about the Avatar course -- in which she told me she would talk to me about the Avatar course and we set up a time to talk about it. I knew that I would benefit from this course but had a lot of resistance around going to the course. I mean leaving my family going by myself. I just felt resistant to it. But at the same time, I felt like this calling like I knew that it would help me. And I knew that it would bust through some of my blocks that I felt like I had been experiencing. And you know she told me that the course was July. At this time, it was the end of June and I thought "I can't make it happen that quickly." It was too much of a mind shift for me to just be like "Alright I'm going to leave." But then we talked about a couple of things. She said, "You know your evolvement will help your family will help your son." And that really resonated with me. So I said to my husband, "I need to go on this trip. It's these dates." He said, "Okay." I booked my trip and I was ready I was ready to go but I was still feeling a little fear and resistance around it.

Three weeks later I get on the plane fly out of Florida and I get there. It was different from any other personal development or self-development course I had ever been to. There were people from all over the world. It was very unfamiliar. There weren't a lot of people who were my age (I'm 37). So a lot of people were either older and there actually were kids there that were doing this work too. And I had really had no idea what to expect. So you know I signed up I got the books and I started doing the workbook. And then you get assigned to a one-on-one mentor. I didn't know I would get one-on-one attention like that.

Essentially what we did was we really dove into our blueprint what beliefs have we formed what ideas do we have about our identity the world our self and just through asking questions through the question in the workbook and through different exercises just exploring what comes out right. And it was really profound. I mean the number of breakthroughs I had.

I don't think I've ever had that many breakthroughs in my life so much so that I started feeling unstable like I was feeling under rounded and they actually had to walk me through like a five-step process of getting more grounded through actually touching physical things like they had me pick up an object and hold it and describe what it felt like and then compare it to another object that I had picked up and describe what the difference between the two objects just so I could get more grounded and present in the room because once I kind of busted through my old belief system maybe feel really in balance and I guess I'll just tell you a little bit about a process that they took us through it I'm jumping way ahead to the work. But all breakthroughs begin with a breakthrough in belief. So it's like what beliefs are you operating from. And I consider myself somebody who's pretty introspective I guess. I do this work with clients so I ask myself these questions all the time and I could spew out my living beliefs pretty easily. Even the woman that was working with me was like wow this is this seems pretty easy for you. But the big difference for me was understanding the origin of the belief and I've done this before with clients and things like this but this was different because once we identified what a belief was we looked at it and we looked. Is this helpful or is this impeding? Now it is interesting because some beliefs like there is a belief I had that I'm fortunate. And while I thought that would be helpful I realized it was actually impeding. And the reason why is I was settling for things because I'd go Well I'm fortunate or at least I have this. And it was actually an impeding belief rather than a helpful belief. So if you can identify like okay like is this belief impeding or is this helpful. A lot of the beliefs we have.

They came from society our parents, teachers, maybe even the sports arena siblings culture religion and they were using the term in this course indoctrination meaning you didn't deliberately choose to have this belief this belief was kind of imposed on you in some way. So the next layer was to uncover. Was this something that was deliberate or was this indoctrinated. And so if we take my belief I'm fortunate I picked that up from someone along the way. It wasn't something that I think I intentionally chose. That's different from me but really choosing the belief. But I probably heard someone or somebody say along the way. Well, you should be lucky for what you have or you're very fortunate. And while that is true I was actually using it in a way that was impeding and therefore it wasn't deliberate. So the other piece is that if your attention is on these old beliefs or these beliefs that are impeding it robs some of your attention and if you don't have free attention then you don't have a choice. So a lot of the time we don't actually sit down and take out the trash that's in our mind. We just keep going. Imagine if you had a car and you never took it in the shop to get fixed. Like obviously that car wouldn't run well but also if you know were experiencing you know a bumpy path and you took it into the shop. The first thing one of the first things you would probably do is lift up the hood and a lot of time we don't investigate our beliefs or our thoughts or what the inner workings of our mind we just kind of keep going and we're not really taught this these skills in school and it's quite uncomfortable.

I mean I felt very uncomfortable because some of it is like it's surprising you don't even know what's going to come out sometime. But in the end it was so freeing. Afterward, I could literally feel a release and then I did feel like I had more free attention and then I can direct that attention towards what I want what I want to create. OK. So you might be thinking Anna all of this is great. You know some of it makes sense some of it might be a little bit confusing but like. Now what. What do I do? How can I identify what are some of these beliefs that are blocking me and part of my blueprint that isn't getting me the results that I want. And that's a great question because there is a process so essentially you know I used to think that that is true that your beliefs create your reality. But now I understand that it's an experience. Reality is an experience right. So like if you and I go to the same movie we each are going to have our own experience of that reality. So whatever your experience is is the reality that you're creating where does your experience come from? It doesn't come from the movie out there it comes from your own internal experience. So, if something is hard or let's say you're stuck in some area in your life whether it be health relationships your family a business your career. Look at that. The first question is what would I like to change?

So then you identify what you would like to change so if you have a moment I would say pause this and write down what is it that you would like to change. The next question is what belief might someone have in order to experience a let's say fear of talking to people that you don't know though if you have a moment pause this and write down the question and write down your answer the next question is how do you prove that this belief is true. So writing down like behaviors habits patterns tendencies that you do to prove this belief to be true. So I'm going to give you an example. This was an example taken from the workbook. It's called resurfacing techniques for exploring consciousness resurfacing by Harry Palmer.

So the guide asks, "What would you like to change?"

STUDENT: My fear of talking to people I don't know.

GUIDE: What belief might someone have in order to experience a fear of talking to people. He doesn't know.

STUDENT: People might say something bad.

GUIDE: How do you prove this belief to be true?

STUDENT I've got examples. I've seen it happen. I've done it.

(keep going until there is a breakthrough)

GUIDE: What other belief might someone have. In order to experience a fear of talking to people he doesn't know?

STUDENT: I might say something stupid.

GUIDE: How do you prove this belief is true?

STUDENT: I said something really stupid to my friend's wife.

GUIDE: What other belief might someone have in order to experience a fear of talking to people he doesn't know?

STUDENT: Don't talk to strangers. It's good advice for children. Aha. I just realized something. It's not because I don't know them that I don't talk to them it's because they don't know me. I'm the stranger. The belief is strangers are dangerous.

This is a beautiful process. That's the end of the process. But it doesn't always end there. But the idea is to keep asking the question about what belief might someone have in order to experience the fear. You can do this around comparison. You can do this around any area that you're stuck and then you want to ask yourself the question how do you prove that believed to be true and you keep going with it. Now I'm going to tell you another step that I've integrated on my own with this question is to almost all beliefs are motivated by three things they're either motivated by modeling someone like we saw somebody do it or we heard somebody do it. That was in our sphere most likely growing up that had an influence on us in some capacity. My mentor my mentor that was there told me a great story about this she said that when she was in her 20s she had this fear of birds and she couldn't figure out where it came from me you know and it was just like you know she was she had this fear of birds and she said and then one day she went back to her hometown.

She lived on her own at the time so she went back and visited her mother and she saw that her mother was afraid of birds and she realized oh that belief wasn't mine. It was my mom's and because she was able to understand that that belief wasn't hers. She could let it go. Another motivation behind forming beliefs is resistance so there's resistance behind some behavior. So let's say your mom was super unorganized and then you became like a neat freak. So you're kind of do the opposite or obedience like somebody said like you know you should grow up and get a 9 to 5 job and you just like follow the rules. So identifying where the motivation of that belief began. So that's a step that I've been adding to the equation it is part of the process but this is a really big process but I just wanted to give you a snapshot and share a little bit about some breakthroughs that I had with the intention of hoping that you can get use out of this and if you have any questions you can always reach out to me.

If you want to set up a complimentary coaching call to learn more about this process and how I can help you go to annagoldstein.com/coach