301 Joanna Hennon + Holly ~ Do You Really Want What You Say You Want?

Today’s Guest

Table of Contents

Joanna Hennon and I are back with another co-hosted episode! Today, we talk about stepping into the next version of ourselves and all that entails. We share some personal stories of recent situations where we say we want something new, but we’re not 100% ready to step into it. We explore what to do when we think we want something, yet we’re not taking the action to get there.

More About Joanna Hennon

Joanna is a #SoulSmart Success Mentor – she helps people to easily create more success by using the wisdom and power we all have access to at soul level. Living life from a place of soul power, in tune with your higher self and your Guides, and using the Law of Attraction with intention will literally change your life! To get started, grab one of these free resources.

Listen to this episode

What You’ll Learn

Becoming the next version of yourself and stepping into a new identity
What it really looks like when you’re Between Worlds
How to recognize when you’re experiencing the growing pains that come with spiritual growth
A reminder to be gentle with ourselves when we’re going through transition into a new phase
Why it’s so important to pay attention where we’re dragging our feet
How to know when we’re dragging our feet and not stepping into the next version of ourselves
The difference between wanting and choosing for and how this shift in perspective can change everything
Why we need to look at secondary gain: and how to dig deeper to the root of the situation
A reminder that the new thing is only uncomfortable for a little bit, and then it becomes our new reality
Why it’s okay to stay where we are sometimes: we don’t have to be constantly moving into new things
What self sabotage looks like: how to know when we’re doing it, and what to do about it

Questions to Ask Ourselves

What do I choose for?
What do I want to align with?
Where am I not choosing to step into the new thing?
Where am I not choosing for the new thing?
Where am I still choosing for the old reality?
Where am I being the sack of potatoes?
Where am I saying I want this new thing but in reality I’m not stepping into it?
Where am I not willing to let go of the old thing or the old me?
Where am I being resistant to change in my life?
What am I afraid of?
What am I gaining from being right where I am? What are the benefits?
Where am I using the word “want” instead of “choose for”?
Where do I not choose for what I say I choose for?
What if this current situation is exactly the right thing for me?

Exercise

Set aside three pages in your journal, or set up three columns on a page.

1. First column/page: write down all the things you
2. Second column/page: change the language so that you choose for these things.
3. Third column/page: write down what this means for you. Who do you need to be to choose for these things? What do you need to believe? What do you need to align with?

Things We Discussed

Connect with Joanna

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Transcript

The transcript for this episode can also be downloaded here (no opt-in required).

Holly: Hello and welcome to the Into the Woods podcast, episode 301. This is your host Holly Worton and I am back with another co-hosted episode with the fabulous Joanna Hennon.

Today, we talk about: do you really want what you say you want? We talk about stepping into the next version of ourselves and all that entails. We share some personal stories of situations where we say we want something new, but we are not 100% ready to step into it. We explore what to do when we think something, but we are not taking the action to get there. Or, we start taking the action, the universe nudges us along and we don’t like what that looks like, sometimes our path doesn’t look how we think it is going to look or how we want it to look, so we talk about how to deal with that.

So, what are you going to learn in this episode?

We are going to talk about becoming the next version of ourselves and stepping into a new identity. We discuss what it really looks like when you are between worlds. We explore how to recognise when you are experiencing the growing pains that come with spiritual growth. We talk about how to be gentle with ourselves when we are going through transition and into a new phase. We discuss why it is important to pay attention to where we are dragging our fee in this path forward and what that means. We explore how to know when we are dragging our feet and not stepping into the next version of ourselves. We discuss the difference between wanting and choosing for and how this shift in perspective can change everything. Now, I know we have talked about this concept before and it is something that I think took a while to really sink in for me and I feel like I have got it now, and it is a really huge shift. We talk about why we need to look at secondary gain and how to dig deeper to get to the root of the situation. We share a reminder that the new thing is only uncomfortable for a little bit and then it becomes a new reality, because sometimes it can be really uncomfortable stepping outside of our comfort zone but really what we are doing is we are expanding our comfort zone, so it is just uncomfortable for a little bit until the thing becomes our new reality. We explore why it is okay to stay where we are sometimes, we don’t have to constantly be moving into new things and constantly growing and in fact that can be really exhausting. Finally, we explore what self sabotage looks like, how to know when we are doing it, and what to do about it. We share a whole bunch of questions that we can ask ourselves when we are journalling or just exploring a situation and those are going to be in the show notes. Finally, we put together, as we were doing the episode, kind of an exercise that you can do in your journal and I have got the instructions for that in the show notes as well. I think this is a really juicy episode, certainly it has helped me a lot to get new perspective on something kind of crappy or something that felt crappy that happened earlier this week, and yeah I think I have still got some mourning to do and some grief to work through around that, but you will hear about that in the episode.

So without further ado I will hand you over to the episode, thank you so much for listening.

Holly: Hello Joanna!

Joanna: Hi Holly!

Holly: How are you?

Joanna: I am good, how are you?

Holly: I am excited about today’s episode.

Joanna: We are always excited!!!

Holly: We try not to talk about boring topics! {laughing} So, today we are talking about: do you really want what you say you want? We have kind of touched on, with all the episodes we did last year, saying about my house, which was not my house, in Avebury, but I think we have got kind of a different take on it today and we have some other things to talk about around this. So, how did we get on this topic?

Joanna: We got on this topic because of your YouTube channel Holly. So why don’t we start with your personal story of pain?

Holly: So, my personal story of pain… on Monday afternoon I went to share about my podcast episode that launched on Monday online and one of the things I do is I go to my YouTube channel and I update the thumbnail, the little graphic for it. So, I went to do that and I clicked on my YouTube channel and it no longer existed. And the second I saw that I realised what had happened, and what happened was that YouTube channel was linked to an old Google account that I don’t use for email, so I hadn’t logged into to it for email, but I was using it on a regular basis for my YouTube channel. And Google had been sending me emails for some time saying: if you don’t log into you account we are going to delete it and it was like some part of my brain didn’t connect that Google account for email to my YouTube channel because it just didn’t. So, I didn’t log in and I didn’t do anything, I thought well, goodI am not using that account, good for it to go away, I will just declutter things and I won’t take action and it will go away and I won’t have to delete it myself. Well, it also deleted my YouTube channel which had a couple of thousand subscribers, it had my video that had over 150,000 views which pains me so much and I lost it all. Then I spent three hours with Google support going here and there trying to get it back and a couple of people said that they thought I should be able to get it back, but the final person said ‘no’. So, I am in the process now of, I feel like I am still in denial, but part of me wants to dedicate an our of my time today to call Google support again and see if I get a different person and see if I get a different answer, but part of me thinks this is the perfect opportunity to let go of the past and start fresh with a new channel.

Joanna: This is what we are talking about because Holly has been moving on to different topics and a kind of different presence and a different focus area, so Holly with your book coming out now, I don’t know when this episode airs?

Holly: A week after the book launch so…

Joanna: So, Holly’s book has just launched YAY!

Holly: YAY! {laughing}

Joanna: If Trees Could Talk, go buy it, it is awesome. But we always said – Holly and I do a lot of masterminding – we always said, that that book is the beginning of a new chapter, so it totally makes sense that somehow the kind of remnants of the old chapter are falling away, whether by choice or subconscious or superconscious choice. So, we were talking about this because?

Holly: Or by self-sabotage.

Joanna: Yes. We think about this al the time and in fact have a card on my desk that reminds me of it all the time. It is card from Colette Baron-Reid, Wisdom of the Oracle deck, no. 3, it is between worlds. It is kind of divided into two packs, one is black and white, and one is coloured and there is a flamingo with part of its bottom still in the black and white bit and its head and its torso in the colourful bit. So, it is moving forward but part of it is still in the old chapter. And so, the card is called Between Worlds and I leave it on my desk because my SoulSmart work is all about stepping into that the next version of yourself, the super-successful you. So, this concept of dragging your feet a little, or keep hanging on to art of your old identity, or stuff that belongs to the world of your old identity, it comes up a lot for both me and for all of my clients. So, I decided to keep that card on my desk and then Holly called with her YouTube thing I was like: I have just the answer for you.

Holly: This is what you are doing! {laughing}

Joanna: This is what you want to do, you want to hang onto this, although it doesn’t quite fit in with where you say you want to go. So this is why we called the episode: do you really want what you say you want? Because, it is different to say that you want something, say that you want a successful business, say that you want to earn a million dollars next year, say that you want to slim, fit and healthy and it is a different story to actually make the choices that are aligned with that and to make sure that everything in your life aligns with what you say you want.

Holly: Even if you want this, there is a part of me who knows this, there is a part of me that is still mourning the YouTube channel, mourning the lost videos, that one video with 150,000 views, is totally not related to this book is about, or my writing, it is about muscle testing, but I don’t know…part of me it kills me, I know that’s the part of me that is hanging onto the past.

Joanna: Yeah, because it is nice to have had that success, a very visible success, people saw your YouTube channel, it clearly was a good channel, it had lots of stuff, lots of views and all these things and now you are starting from zero, so it is an ego thing, right?

Holly: Yeah, I used to log-on to see how many people had viewed that video because it made me feel good. Oh my God, I can’t believe that I just said that, but I would be like: 10,000 more people saw it, they liked it, not that everyone liked it, I got a lot of hate on that video too, but yeah!

Joanna: So, it is just recognising that the success you say you want comes from alignment with what you say you want and the energy of where you are going rather than seeing how many people saw your old video that doesn’t even match what you do anymore.

Holly: Exactly! And that is so interesting that you are talking about alignment because I just did an episode a couple of weeks ago about alignment, because I am starting to feel like I am finally in alignment with this author thing. I am really stepping up with the author thing, people are stepping up to help me, people are offering me help, it is feeling like I am stepping into this new version of me and I am seeing the results. And I think part of the results are my self-sabotage that led to the falling away of my YouTube channel. So I think there is a little bit of mourning that goes into the letting go of the old and I don’t know that I always recognise that. A couple of weeks ago, when I recorded that episode, I was super-excited about all the alignment I was feeling of stepping into the new thing, the author identity but maybe I need to recognise the mourning for letting go of the old.

Joanna: I think that mourning and grief has to be allowed that period of grief, I think it is a really big thing. This is where people pull death cards and things from oracle decks, you need to let something die so that something new can be born, it is the cycle of life, right? And we keep pressing forward towards the new and we kind of forget that we need to make peace with what we are letting go of. Sometimes that’s a really, really, long process and sometimes that all happens at the same time. It is not like you let go and then there is nothing and then the other thing is born. It is kind of the letting go of some bits and you are kind of processing all this stuff all the time. I think about this all the time because of our decision to move to Ireland. So, we want to move to Ireland and yet our life here in Belgium is awesome, we love our house, our son’s school and it is all really, really, great and sometimes I think: I am going to miss this so much! Sometimes I think: these are the best years of our lives and it is never going to be as good as this. It is just not true, because we wouldn’t be moving if we didn’t think that it was going to be even better. We know it is going to be really hard to let go of this house and let go of this life, unless we know that the next step is even better and is kind of the right thing. For me, that kind of grief and letting go is happening at the same time as the stepping into and I guess that is true for everybody.

Holly: There is a point where you start letting go of the old thing and you still don’t have the new thing and you are not fully into that, so you have got the middle part where you feel like crap because you feel like you don’t have anything…

Joanna: The people who are listening to this podcast you are people who have big dreams and ambitious people and you want to achieve something, or create something, so you are likely to be on a life path that includes a lot of growth and that means every few months you are going to be growing. Something will have to fall away to make space for the new, so I would think that you are probably going through this process all the time, I go through this process constantly in my business, constantly in my work, I need to let other things fall away in order to make space for new things and that’s just the way it is and sometimes it hurts more than others.

Holly: Exactly, growing pains. That’s the thing with personal development as well.

Joanna: For sure, and with everything right? Every change in life you kind of have to let go of the old, when you become the mother you let go of being the maiden, when you become the crone you let go of being the mother, it is all stages which are mutually exclusive, almost, not almost actually, they can’t be almost mutually exclusive. I think because we are not raise, normally, in a culture of self-kindness and self-compassion we don’t have this reflex to kind of be gentle with ourselves during transition times, and to say it is okay: it is okay to want the new thing and also feel like you are going to miss the old thing so much. That’s okay.

Holly: We feel like it has to be all or nothing, black and white, this or that and there is a transition, it is not just: this is over and now the new thing.

Joanna: Yeah and I think it is so important when you have lost something that is really, really big and really, really, important and it was really great and that doesn’t mean that you will never have anything great again maybe the next thing, or probably the next thing is even greater. So I think that kindness is very important anyway.

Holly: And I did not have a lot of that with myself on Monday, I was really beating myself up about it and then I lost three hours messing around with Google support and so I didn’t get any work done and then I found out I couldn’t fix it. I was extra bummed and so I just deleted everything from my calendar, and I was like: I didn’t get anything done today, and what is worse I didn’t go into that compassion.

Joanna: It doesn’t sound like kindness.

Holly: {laughing} So!

Joanna: I always say, I am not a big person for ritual but what I mean by that is that I am not a big person for sacred ritual with rules and stuff, but I am big on marking things and intentionally marking things and maybe what you need to do, Holly, or anybody who is going through something or let go of something old, mark it, even if you put half-an-hour in your calendar that just says: goodbye to your old YouTube channel. It sounds a bit silly, but just to say, ‘it is okay’, make peace with it. You know: you have served a really great purpose in my life, and my business, and now I am onto something else and that’s it, I let you go. Because what we don’t want Is to be dragging our feet, so Holly you know this, I always talk about the soul trying to guide us, towards what is right for us, towards the things that are really aligned. So I say towards big success but that makes it seem like towards giant things in the world it is towards whatever success is aligned with you and the soul is guiding you towards that and we, as the personality, as the ego, we drag our feet. We say: I am not good enough yet, I am not ready, I need to know more. I always say it is like the soul dragging you like a sack of potatoes. It is like you are going either way. If you are going to be the sack of potato it is going to be harder. That’s all it is, it is that resistance to the next thing.

Holly: Yeah, even though part of you wants the new thing or the next thing.

Joanna: This is it, right? This is why we are calling his episode: do you really want what you say you want? So, it is important to make that distinction between wanting something it comes from the ego self, from the personality and choosing for something which is the language of the soul, right? So, whenever you say: I really want this, but it is not coming, are you choosing for it? And more importantly, perhaps, where are you not choosing for it? Where are you still choosing for what you currently have rather than the new reality that you say you want? It might be just small things like, I don’t know, if you want to be fit, but you are choosing to watch Netflix for 17 hours a day…

Holly: {laughing}

Joanna: You know? So some of them might be really obvious and some of them will not be very obvious. It is a good practice to be honest with yourself on that.

Holly: Yeah, because change, part of us wants the new thing and part of us wants to stay where we are, because it is safe, it is the comfort zone, it is what is known. What if it is disappointing or not all we imagined, or if we fail, or what if it is a disappointment?

Joanna: What really settles me when I am in that state, I remind myself that it is only going to be uncomfortable for a little bit, the new thing will become my new reality and then that will be my comfort zone.

Holly: Yes!

Joanna: You know this is true, because when you look back on your life that has always been the case. There has been something a bit more challenging and you have done it and that feels comfortable and the next thing is challenging. So you will be comfortable again and then you will be called to be uncomfortable again as you grow. It is time to underline that it is okay if you want to stay, there is no judgement there, if you are comfortable where you are, there is no right or wrong. I remind myself of this all the time, I tell myself: we don’t have to move. There is actually nothing that is pressing us to move to Ireland, this is my choice, on a daily basis, we can make this choice as a family and we can change our mind and we can stay here. Yesterday, there was an ad for a school in my Instagram feed and I went to look at it, and I went to look at it and I was like: if I find the perfect school here maybe we can stay. You always want to stay in your comfort zone because, as you say, it is nice here.

Holly: It is comfy.

Joanna: And that’s okay. I don’t think that’s a bad thing necessarily, but you have to be clear about the things that you want, the things that you are choosing for and the things that you are willing to align with. The change can only come with the alignment of energy.

Holly: Exactly, you have to be conscious of what decision you are making. There are times, because I do so much mindset work and I am changing, there are times when I get to the point where I am like: oh my God I am so tired I just want to…I want things to be easy for a while. And then that’s when it would be natural to just stay where you are for a little bit then when you are ready you move on. So, I think, pay attention to what you need and want.

Joanna: And what decisions you are making, I think that is an important point. It is very different to stay where you are because you think that nothing more is possible, or you are too scared to do anything and you are constantly miserable and you complain about where you are and you don’t like it and you don’t do anything that’s a really crappy place to be living you life from, right?

Holly: Absolutely.

Joanna: But if you consciously say: you know what, it is not worth the hassle, for me it is not worth the hassle of growing, so I am going to live my life out in this comfort zone, that’s fine as long as that is a conscious choice and what you really want. It might be what you really want today and then tomorrow you will say: actually I am ready to do this new thing and sometimes, like in Holly’s case, you might say that you are comfortable here, and the soul, the higher self will decide…although you did still have a choice, you could have checked in on those email addresses, you could checked. There is something there and you knew it was the right thing to ignore it.

Holly: Part of me, I was aware that if I didn’t access those Google accounts those email addresses would go away and I thought: that’s great because I haven’t used them in a long time, one of them was I think it was my super-old business socially holistic, and I thought: this is great, I don’t need that stuff and I consciously thought at at least one point: great, this is going to get cleaned up, but I just didn’t want my YouTube to get cleaned up as well, you know? But of course the two are linked.

Joanna: Clearly if you want things “cleaned up” it included that. I think sometimes we don’t really understand what’s involved in the cleaning up, or in the next step, so we can get a bit surprised but if you actually look at it, when you take the emotion out of it, you can see that this is the right thing that happened.

Holly: Yeah, absolutely, and part of me sees that and part of me is like: meh.

Joanna: Well it only happened this week! That’s actually a really good question to ask and I was doing something this morning that I thought was going to be easy and then it turned out to be really complicated and there were all these administrative rules that they weren’t allowing me to do what I want, and all these things and instead of allowing myself to get frustrated I was like: okay, how can this be exactly the right thing? What is exactly the right thing, what is this showing me? Where is it leading me? So it always works out in my best interests. So this is about an intention I set for my life a little while ago, to always believe that everything that happens makes sure that everything works out perfectly for me, everything always happens in my best interests.

Holly: Okay.

Joanna: Always very aware, when something happens, and I think: well how? How is this happening for my best interests? And it kind of changes the perspective a little bit and allows you to see the way forward and how it is okay, basically, instead of getting stuck and just upset with things.

Holly: Yes. So I feel like we need to talk about self-sabotage, because I often think of self-sabotage as my subconscious mind trying to keep me safe in my comfort zone, but this is a different kind of self-sabotage and it is also like, part of me knew, I know that a google account is linked to a YouTube channel, I know that they are the same company. So part of me knew that by letting this Google account get cleaned up my YouTube account would also get cleaned up, I wasn’t totally ignorant to the process. So, I think that part of my mind did “self sabotage” because part of my brain probably knew that was only way I was going to let go of that.

Joanna: I don’t see how it is sabotage, because you are coming from the assumption that losing the YouTube account is a bad thing.

Holly: Yes, you are right.

Joanna: Whereas I am coming from the assumption that losing the YouTube account is the best possible thing.

Holly: No, no, I agree it is the best possible thing but there is a part of my brain that sees it as sabotage still.

Joanna: It is not right. If you had gone against what you felt was right and rescued those email addresses, that would have been self-sabotage because you would have self-sabotaged your future success or your future alignment by not letting go of the old stuff.

Holly: Like my head, I am still wrapping my head around this.

Joanna: And it is very easy for me to say as an observer, rather than as the one involved in it. I will share an example that I am grappling with and trying to get to terms with as well, I have been, for probably over a year, because I looked back on the first email you sent me about this Holly, over a year ago. I have been wanting to build a community on Patreon. Holly has already done this, and I have been wanting to do this because my Facebook group is dead, there is no engagement in there, and I would really like to have a place, besides my membership group community, for a wider community to explore the SoulSmart way and concepts and all these things. One of the things that I want to do is move the weekly channeled message that I sent out with my newsletter to Patreon. That would mean the message that I send out weekly for free would be paid but paid from like $1 a month. It is not a huge thing. But I have been sitting on this for months. First of all I wouldn’t even consider the possibility of doing this and now I have been sitting on it for months because I am afraid that I will move it and nobody will pay me $1 and therefore what does that mean? That means this message that I have been be putting my heard into every week, for the past five or six years, hasn’t been valued…

Holly: It is not value enough to pay $1 a month to get four weekly messages…

Joanna: $0.25 a message… {Both: laughing} so on the one hand I have this version of my colourful future where I have my paid community in the SoulSpace and I also have this wider community to share this message with engaged and wonderful and it is all rosy in there and on the other hand I am dragging my feet and unwilling to let go of the old, in terms of the old way of doing things, or the old way of delivering that content and I have been considering that for ages. Holly has been saying the same things I have been saying to her on this podcast: move on, and this and that, and I am just like: yeah, yeah, it is not quite. I say that I want it and yet I am not aligning my action with what I say I want. So, in fact what I am staying for, I am choosing to stay where I am and not have that community.

Holly: Right now, yeah.

Joanna: Hopefully tomorrow I will choose to have it…

Holly: {laughing} And also, when we started picking up the conversation about Patreon last week, or a couple of weeks ago, or whenever it was, you came up with the idea of transferring your weekly message from the email to Patreon and I said: yes, but I told you that a year ago and you said: no. You didn’t even remember that we had had that conversation, because you were so so closed to the idea, it was like: no, reject.

Joanna: I remember having the conversation about Patreon a year ago, but I do not remember you suggesting that I move the channeled message to be paid over in Patreon and yeah it is clear that this has been a really difficult part of my path. It has been a part of owning that I have something of value to say in the newsletter for years. I did that message so that people had value from my newsletter as if nothing else I can say had any value besides that message. So, if nothing that I ever say or put out there except for that one paragraph of the message has any value and then I transfer it to Patreon, and nobody pays me $0.25 and that also has no value and then I would be like: none of my work ever had any value! {Both: laughing} Right, so we make these things out to be really big and then it is really easy to drag our feet and make all sorts of excuses. It is like I don’t have time and I don’t have this, and I don’t know and…and I have been making them, being totally honest I have been making these excuses for a year. So, hopefully, by the time this goes live, we will be able to link to my Patreon account.

Holly: And also for those of you who are listening and are thinking about Patreon they are increasing their fees, so if you are interested you need to set it up now within the next couple of weeks because they are increasing their fees and if you start now you get into the old fees system, so do it.

Joanna: So there, that was my nudge that Holly brought to my attention a few weeks ago which started this up again and still, still, we have had this conversation now kind of ongoing for the past two or three weeks and I still haven’t don’t it. I have thought about it but I haven’t done it, so that’s the self-sabotage, when we talk about self-sabotage we are talking about us sabotaging having what we say we want.

Holly: Yeah. So what are some signs that you are dragging your feet? People who are listening to this, how can they know if they are dragging their feet in their life?

Joanna: Well, when you not doing the thing, you say you want a business and you spend your day, I don’t know, cooking. When what you are actually giving your attention to and your focus to isn’t the thing that you say you want. I would be very curious about where in your life you are using the word want in that kind of childlike whining way: I really want it! I want it so bad! Where are you saying that? If only someone would give me a million dollars! I really want to be making that kind of money! Where are you saying it with that energy?

Holly: Yes, and I feel like change the language from want to choosing for, that also implies taking action.

Joanna: Oh yeah!

Holly: If I choose for, if I choose for a a million dollar year in my business, or for my next book-launch or whatever that means that I have to take the action to get there.

Joanna: Well, exactly.

Holly: Whereas want is: I just want it.

Joanna: When you want something and this where that child energy is really interesting, if you want something as a child you are not in control of a lot of the things that you want and don’t get, right? So it is that, when you are in the want energy, then you are leaving the responsibility to somebody else. That is always, always, when you continue the sentence it is always, always, followed up by that energy of: but I am not getting it, you are not giving it to me. So it is: I want it and it is so unfair because life hasn’t, or the universe hasn’t delivered it. It is always the energy and if you are resistant to this, then be very honest with yourself and journal it out and you will see that it is always, always, always, this energy to wanting something really badly. It is something like you against something, you are waiting for something to give it to you. Choosing for brings the responsibility back to you, it is based on an assumption that you have that power to choose, that it is there for you to take if you choose to take it and that there is something that you can do to align your energy with that and when I say do it is not only action, doing action, it is also being action, becoming what you want, the essence.

Holly: As you are talking, I am thinking: I can’t wait to grab my journal and on the one hand write down what are all the things that I want and then change that language on the facing page to I choose for this and seeing what comes up there.

Joanna: And you want a third column, I am going to totally make this worksheet! {Both: laughing} You want a third column that is about: if I choose for this, what does it mean? What do I need to do? What do I need to be? What do I need to let go of if I am choosing for this? As I say this, I need to apply this to my own writing practice because I keep saying that I want to write a book and I am not doing any writing.

Holly: {laughing} Who do you need to be? What do you need to believe? …

Joanna: Yes, so if I want to write a book and I choose to write a book those are two very different things, right? So, you asked me, how can people tell that they are dragging their feet? Basically if you are not getting what you want then ask yourself: what is the secondary gain of staying exactly where you are?

Holly: Yeah, so let’s talk about secondary gain, because I think people who are in the coach/transformation industry know what we are talking about, but I realise not everyone does. So secondary gain, that’s like what are you gaining from being right where you are right now? I say I want the million-dollar book-launch but if I don’t get it and I stay where I am, what am I gaining? It is safe, it is comfy, I know this space, I don’t have to do all the extra work, I don’t have to invest money to get the money back in the book launch, you know, that kind of thing.

Joanna: Also, all sorts of things. The first time I heard of secondary gain it was in terms of losing weight, it was in that context. I said I wanted to lose weight, and someone asked me: well, what is the secondary gain? What are you gaining from where you are now? And, of course, the usual things came up, the simple things, I still get to eat what I want … but actually there were simpler things involved, it was a whole thing about identity and how I didn’t want to be, I wanted to be the smart, entertaining, person in the room, not being judged on my looks, but contributing…

Holly: Yeah, with your brain.

Joanna: Right, yeah. So, I haven’t lost the weight so I guess I haven’t quite delved deep with that piece but it is true, I have a very, very, deeply ingrained desire to not be judged on my looks, but that is a different story and a different conversation, but it comes from family conditioning so yes that was my secondary gain. That’s really, really, big because still now I don’t want to be judged on my looks, I don’t want people to be in my space or work with me or watch my videos…

Holly: {joking} Because you are pretty!

Joanna: Because I am pretty. {laughing}

Holly: {laughing} I only watch your YouTube videos because you are pretty! Who cares about the content you are pretty! {laughing}

Joanna: I know, does anybody even do that? Okay, silly conversation…

Holly: No, it is not a silly conversation because we have these beliefs. For me, with my weight loss a lot the mindset work I did was around being safe because I didn’t believe that I was safe if I was thinner, because then I would get more attention from men and that’s not safe. It sounds silly, but it is not, because our mind makes that stuff very important and it keeps us stuck, because it is safer to be where we are because of all this stuff that we have in our heads.

Joanna: So, just ask yourself, I am going to presume that anybody listening to this episode is going to have something that they want to experience in their lives that they don’t currently have, because presumably otherwise you would be I don’t know off enjoying whatever it is that you wanted instead of listening to an episode called: Do you really want what you say you want? Yes, so, whatever it is that you don’t yet have, journal it out: why would you not want it? Turn it around. What would be some really negative things about getting it? Try to go deep, there was one exercise that I got from something called Access Consciousness, it is not an access consciousness exercise, but I first heard this way of doing it, whenever you are listing reasons for wanting something or not wanting something or where you are trying to go deeper, make sure you list 20. The first 10-15 are going to be the, really, surface level stuff, like in my weight-loss example: I won’t be able to eat junk food anymore if I’m committed to being slim and healthy, but actually the deep stuff comes after. So you kind of have to clear…

Holly: …the surface level stuff.

Joanna: Yeah, be aware of that stuff before you can even be aware of anything underneath, so whenever you are making these lists make sure you set yourself a goal of at least 10, try to get to 20, so that you can go deeper.

Holly: Yes, that’s…because that’s where you get the stuff that sounds ridiculous, but it is not because your mind believes it, it is very real.

Joanna: Yeah, and your mind will keep you focused on the surface level stuff because that’s where you exist most of the time — in the conscious mind — and the conscious mind is only 5% of what is stored in there, so you really have to do a little bit of digging and allow the space for those things to come up.

Holly: And then what can people do? I see I am dragging my feet, I get clear on why, what can people do to stop dragging their feet?

Joanna: Make a different choice.

Holly: {laughing} And take a different action.

Joanna: People hate this, and I understand why, it would be nice if it was just magically delivered, but really everything hinges on the choices you make daily, if all we have is the present moment, if everything in what you call your future hinges on what you choose in this moment. So if you choose to eat a whole bag of potato chips you will have a different sort of outcome than if you choose to go for a run.

Holly: Yes, absolutely.

Joanna: You know there are probably some beliefs entangled in that was a basic example because there are beliefs entangled in that: running is good for you and potato chips are bad for you, I don’t necessarily agree with that, it is just a very basic, simple, example that people can relate to, every choice will impact your reality in some way, if you want something else you have to make a different choice.

Holly: Anything, anything, even if it is something small you have got to do something different.

Joanna: So, you can start small, I had a conversation with my coach yesterday about starting a walking habit again, because I have gotten super lazy {laughing}. I find a million excuses for why it is not convenient for me to leave the house, ever at all {laughing}. She suggested 10 minutes a day, to commit to 10 minutes a day, and that seems a waste of time to commit to something so small, it is not about the thing it is about your commitment to the thing and creating that habit to be… Holly, whenever I talk about moving into that new version of yourself, that whole SoulSmart concept, we talk about this idea, become the person for whom the reality you want is natural. So, you are not striving to be something, and you are trying to be something, but you are just the kind of person for whom the success just comes, because that’s who you are, Holly, and you are a bestselling author and that’s just who you are, there is no striving required! That’s just your reality, it’s natural, based on the fact that you sat down in a chair and wrote your books, as opposed to some other people, unnamed! {Both: laughing}

Holly: But also, this is a good example, actually, because this is my ninth book, but a lot of people don’t know I have written nine books because I didn’t talk that much about the first eight books. I sat my butt down and wrote the books and published them and very quietly launched them. Some people knew about them, some people read them, but not the wider, over-arching community of people that knew about this book, because I have talked about this book in a bigger way, I have promoted the book in a bigger way, I have invested in the book in a bigger way and I am getting it out there in a bigger way, which was my intention but I had to do a lot of different things and spend a lot more money on the project and take a lot of different actions with this book. And the energy around this launch is completely different and I have to say, I worked a lot, my calendar has been booked for the last couple of months, but it wasn’t stressful, it wasn’t hard, I was just choosing differently and choosing to take different actions and I am getting a different result already.

Joanna: You were aligning with a different energy. With the other books you were kind of aligning with the energy of being a writer, someone who writes books, and that’s fine, that’s what you did. But here you were aligning with becoming known for this message and stepping into this leader space around this messaging, so you had to do a lot of different things like let go of a lot of your business. Now, apparently, it’s not the same thing, so one of the things to get really clear on is what you want to align with. This is not just the difference between aligning with writer and aligning with author. There is a difference between aligning with money and aligning with wealth. Energies of all these things are very, very different and by the time this goes live I should have a new freebie thing in my space to help people figure this out because I recognise this element of really becoming super-clear on what it is that you want, or what it is that you should be going for right now. That’s really hard for people because there are so many choices and so much ego stuff involved and so much pausing and pulling in various directions that it is really hard to settle on that thing, so I am just working on something, so we can link to that in the show notes when it comes up.

Holly: Yes, absolutely. And we can also link to your new Patreon community in the show notes. Maybe. {laughing}

Joanna: Okay, I am going to choose for… Stop saying that I want thighs and choose for this instead and I am going to do it, so I will commit.

Holly: YAY!

Joanna: For all you listeners just be very, very, aware of what you are committing to and where you are saying that you want something, but you are not actually making the choices that support that thing that you want and are not aligned.

Holly:That image of that card really sticks in my mind, so think about where you are in the colour wold and where parts of you are still in he black and white world of the old, the old identity, the old life, the old comfort zone.

Joanna: Yeah and I don’t think it is always a big struggle. Your YouTube channel, it was not like that was weighing down on you or anything, you were stepping into this bestselling author identity, it was not like that was weighing you down anyway?

Holly: No absolutely not!

Joanna: And yet it still misaligned and only now that it has gone do we see exactly how misaligned it was. It makes perfect sense. I am saying this so that, to make sure that nobody goes into that judgement space or only focuses on the things that are really obviously. Just because aware of everything and whether it is really aligned. This is something that I talk about a lot as well, that commitment, that recommitment idea, so my husband and I had a hand-fasting when we got married, which is an old pagan ceremony, and in the very, very, very, olden days they used to have that ceremony every year and a day so you would commit to the other person for a year and a day and then you would reassess. I always thought that was really, really, cool but sadly my husband did not want to have a wedding ceremony every year! {Both: laughing} We didn’t have agreement on that.

Holly: But you committed!

Joanna: The concept I really, really like. You only commit for a year and a day, you don’t kind of clutch on to what you think is right in that moment, you leave space and the ability to change your mind so keep recommitting to stuff in your business, keep recommitting to the stuff in your life, keep recommitting to the stuff that you have worked on and now achieved. They might be…

Holly: They might be obsolete in six months from now. Reevaluate constantly: is this what I still want to be focussing on?

Joanna: Exactly, I think we have exhausted this.

Holly: And I think we have looked at the topic well enough to help people who are in this situation where they are half in black and white and half in colour and they want to move their flamingo forward.

Joanna: Half in the old and half in the new, dragging their feet, procrastinating and are not yet experiencing what they say they want. If you do have any questions you can always email either of us, I am at: [email protected] or

Holly: [email protected] or social media, Facebook, Twitter, I am getting more active on Twitter lately which I love. So yes, anywhere, thank you for listening. Bye!

Joanna: Bye!

Holly: That’s all for now, I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and useful. Thank you so much for listening and if you enjoyed this episode please subscribe on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts, and if you have already subscribed please leave me a review, it would mean the world to me, thank you so much.

Next week’s episode, I am not 100% what it is, I had some things rearrange themselves in my schedule for this week, hopefully it will be what I planned, if not, you will have something else.

As always, I will make it interesting and useful to you, so remember to visit: http://HollyWorton.com/301 for the show notes on this episode and remember you have jot journal prompts and the exercise and all kinds of stuff in there so you have got lots of juicy stuff to go along with this week’s episode. Thank you very much, have a good week.