00:00

Welcome to Make More Money Without Selling Your Soul. The podcast for bold entrepreneurs ready to simplify scale and reclaim their time. I’m Polly Lavarello, Evergreen scaling strategist and cushy business pioneer. Join me and my occasional guests as we explore the themes of wealth, selling and well-being, because building a business that works for you changes everything. Let’s dive in.

00:37

Welcome to the show. Today’s conversation is a juicy one. I’m joined by Cassie watts, self leadership coach, rapid transformational therapist and big leap guide, who’s here to unpack a very real and rarely talked about problem. What happens when you build the life or business you thought you wanted, and it still feels we’re going to talk about the hidden cost of success when it’s built on old wounds, the personas we wear to prove we’re enough, and how to spot when you’re accidentally sabotaging the very thing you’ve worked so hard to create. If you’ve ever had a big win that left you feeling quietly disappointed, or if you’re wondering whether success gets to feel easier, this episode is for you. Let’s get into it. Shall we welcome Cassie to the show? And I’m actually from my regular listeners who are used to me doing the whole who are you? What do you do? I’m flipping that on its head today, and we’re going to start with Cassie. What is the big problem that we’re exploring on today’s episode?

01:37

Hi, today we are exploring how you built the success that you have, and it does not feel like you thought it would, and you’re accidentally sabotaging it.  Love that, and what makes you uniquely qualified to talk about this today? Because I’ve lived that path and so much more, and so much more so I practice rapid, transformational therapy, and I’m a big leap coach, and that means I help people understand where their core beliefs were formed and how they are annoyingly showing up in their life, their family and their business today, and why their success doesn’t feel as good as it looks okay. And for anyone who’s new to rapid transformational therapy. Do you mind just sharing a kind of brief overview as to what that is, sure? So it’s a really, I mean, it’s what it does on the tin, really, in the name it’s a rapid type of therapy. Generally, it just takes one to two sessions to work on one specific topic. And this is where, you know your mind is a video camera that’s never turned off, and it records everything for you and then forms habits and patterns around what it’s what it’s the information that it’s taken in. And so rapid, transformational therapy helps us accurately and quickly get to the root cause of the core beliefs that you formed long ago. And because 95% of what we do every day is led by our unconscious conditioning. You know, I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to operate in my life, my business and my family from five year old me. Don’t know, right? 

03:11

But generally, I mean, I make some, like, food decisions from five year old me, yeah, yes, having dunked about five biscuits into a cup of tea just now. I mean, like, this is definitely not aligned with 39 year olds Polly’s health goals, but five year old me is delighted right now, right? And so that’s just one of those tiny weeny ways, but we don’t realize that we’re doing it. And so rapid, transformational therapy is a really swift and simple way to understand because I think some people feel frustrated with themselves. Why am I doing this? I’m meant to be this kind of person. I’ve built this success. Why can’t I just set the goal and keep it Why aren’t I feeling better than I am? Why aren’t I and there’s this whole like bitchy story in our head, and we feel confused, and we’re feeling confused because we don’t understand why we are the way we are, and why we’re operating from what we operating from. And so to have that understanding of, ah, okay, I can see in my left hand here are the experiences that I had, and in my right hand here is what I’m living now, and I can see the connection between those. And without that bridge, it’s really hard for you to understand that. And so in rapid transformational therapy, we also scoop up little you from those experiences that were hard, and we bring them to your life now, and I teach you how to become the parent or the caregiver that they needed at that time. And quite often, Polly, it’s not what you experienced, it’s what you took from that experience. And so we go in and we change the meaning, and when you change the meaning, you no longer have that that hurtful thought about yourself or your place in the world, or your capabilities or your worth, because we’re able to shine a truth light on it from adult you, instead of you interpreting it as the child. Wounded Child.

05:01

Yeah, this sounds like very kind of targeted in comparison to something like, let’s say, Talk therapy, which a lot of people have awareness around, so it works a lot faster, and in terms of how we change, the meaning is that something that’s done in the head, is that something done through subconscious practices? What does that look like? So that conversation is literally in the therapy session when, let’s say, for example, you go back to, I don’t know, the playground, and somebody shoved you over and said, We don’t want you to play with us. And so you would, I would take you back to that experience, or your mind takes us back to that experience. And then you go back as the adult, and you’re watching it happen. And then you might talk to the kid that pushed you over, and then you scoop up little you, and you say to them, Hey, I know that they said you couldn’t play, and I want you to know that’s not because you weren’t wanted, and that’s not because you’re not liked, because the children are always trying to find meaning for safety, and so they make the meaning of, oh, well, it must be me, because you didn’t push that child over. So it must be me. I must not be likable. And when you have enough of those experiences, that’s where the core belief is formed. And so part of the telling a new story for that is you going back as the adult and giving the child in that moment what they ideally would have been able to tell themselves, but obviously couldn’t. And so you’re able to scoop them up and say, I’m so sorry. That must have been really hard. I’m right here for you. I have all the time for you. I have all the space for you. I have all the energy for you. I want you around. I love you like whatever it is that they needed. And then, you know, you’re stronger than this. You don’t need to listen to what people say and and take it as truth, then maybe they were just having a bad day. 

06:44

I love that we’re talking about this, because this is something I’m not going to lie. I used to be incredibly skeptical about. I don’t know why I think is it’s so mainstream talk therapy. A lot of me was like, I don’t know, kind of maybe it was a vulnerability of going back to kind of core memories or things like that. But actually what I found really profound is that sometimes, for example, when I went to talk therapy, I would leave and it would feel like I just opened all the wounds up, and I was just free bleeding, walking the whole way home, thinking, This feels really messy. I actually feel like more vulnerable, more scared, more confused than ever, and there is no clear end in sight. And oh, now I have to wait two weeks or a week till I see my therapist again with no clear end in sight. And then when I did work, I haven’t done what I think I must have done something similar to this, because I’ve definitely done the whole going back to previous, you know, younger versions of me and being the ad and what you described. And it’s like afterwards, you kind of walk taller, like, like, there’s an actual somatic shift in your body, and almost a sense of like that kind of fresh energy enthusiasm we have when we’ve come back from a holiday. So anyway, so this is amazing work that you’ve obviously trained up in, but beyond that, you’ve since then trained up in big leap. As you say, it’s big leap, yeah, big coaching. Yeah. You heard of the book with the big leap by Gay Hendricks. It’s one of my favorite books ever. There you go. So what was the journey between having the RTT skills and then deciding this was your next step? So I actually listened to The Big Leap about nine years ago, and had such that was, like, my, you know, everyone has their like, oh, okay, I want to get into this kind of stuff. 

08:15

That was my book, and I’d had such a profound experience with that it was always kind of in there with me. And after I trained for rapid transformational therapy, I realized that you, as you said, you cannot open this stuff up for people and then just leave them with this big gaping hole. And even though, in the therapy session, we do some somatic things to release and some visualized things to help them alter those core beliefs. There was something wanting for me. I didn’t feel that it was safe and actually effective for long term change. I’m all about the long term change as well as the short wins, but primarily the long term change. I didn’t feel that it was best to just practice rapid transformational therapy. So there is rapid transformational coaching now, but because I had such a personal experience with learning from Gay Hendricks, I really wanted to learn more from him and his wife, Katie. So about two years ago now, I inquired with them. And because of actually the blessing of it being because of covid, they took everything online, so I was able to train with Katie and gay and so much of their work is, is body and mind intelligence and allowing us to unlearn all of the personas, all of the masks, all of the roles that we’ve played, which is so much of what you do in RTT, yeah, to learn about your essence, self, the truth of and you know, we know the Body Keeps the Score. We know who we are inside. It’s just unlearning enough and realigning enough to live it. And that’s really what the big leap coaching work. Allows you to do is to live deeper in your essence and not operate out of the personas and the roles that we have learnt and been conditioned to play. So it was just such a perfect union.

10:11

I’m going to pause you there, Cassie, because I like this and I want to dive deeper into this. And no, no, no, but there’s some coach talk going on here about living in your essence, and, you know, personas and all this stuff. And I want to get into the nitty gritty, because obviously that’s what we set out the beginning this episode, that we are going to dive into success and what, what you know, what success means, and how we actually truly honor what success is to us, and I can see that that’s where this is heading in terms of this big, elite talk that we’re talking about here. So I guess the question I want to ask you first is, why does all of this matter? Because when you are operating out of somebody else’s vision and unintentional vision at that who is the success for? What are you even shooting for, and why? And when you get there, is it as fulfilling as you thought it was going to be? And I have seen over and over again, and we, everybody can think of that person who’s blown their life up who’s got to midlife? And they’ve It’s all burnt down, yes, because what they’ve done is they’ve built a life for somebody else. They’ve built a life that they were conditioned to do you you go through school, you go to college, you go to uni, or you go and get the corporate job or whatever it is, and you get the marriage or the partnership. You have the kids, the holidays, the house, the car, and you wake up and you’re like, Shit, I’m still not happy, and so we keep chasing, and you chase the next thing, and you chase the next thing, and what a waste. Oh yeah, waste. When you could be operating from a place within yourself that understand so deeply what your values and what your mission and your goals and your your unique genius parts of you are, how powerful to be the person and to be around the kind of person who looks over and above the ego, who notices that they are in their ego or in their persona, and so they can step right out of it. For example, if you’re having a conversation with somebody, I hate gossip, right? I really, really hate gossip. But because I’m human, I catch myself in that loop when I’m with certain people that I used to gossip with, and so my essence, in my essence, she does not enjoy that. That is not a good feeling, that is not who I want to be. Now, when I’m playing the persona of the person that gossips to be in the circle, because it makes me feel better about the shitty stuff that’s going on in my life. I if I have enough awareness to say in the moment I’m starting to gossip, I have enough awareness to say, Oh, actually, do you know what? This isn’t feel good. So I’m just going to bow out. Bow out. That’s what I say in my head, it might look something like, Oh, do you know what I did see them do, though, I saw them do this really awesome thing, or, oh, did you hear about this podcast that totally just changed the subject? It doesn’t have to be confrontational. It doesn’t have to be anything. And you see this a lot in the coaching industry. There’s lots of people bitching about each other, or people within the same industry. And yeah, it matters, because when you are able to live more fully in your essence, it will have a ripple effect and repercussions and roots so deep and wide that you will not even live to see them.

14:01

And that is impact. So when you talk about essence, my interpretation, what you’re sharing is, it’s a combination of values and a kind of clear, I don’t know, north star as to kind of who you’re here to be, because, I guess values indicate, almost like a kind of compass as to how we navigate life, but then obviously having a clear direction as to where we’re going with that also informs that is, am I right in interpreting it that way? Because I just want to make sure that I’m definitely hearing it the way I’m meant to be hearing it.

14:33

Yeah. So that’s definitely a part of it. So when we were all born, we cried until our caregiver met the right need, like, if you were hungry and they didn’t feed you, you wouldn’t stop crying because they picked you up and cuddled you. Your right need was met, but over it over our lifetime, through different experiences, and many most caregivers do the best they can with what they have, right but we learn. Learn. Oh, maybe my need isn’t so important, and we learn. I if I do that, I get a smile out of you. If I do that, you’re happy with me. If I do that, you’re angry with me. So I’m not going to do that anymore. So I need to become the good girl or the smart girl, or the conscientious girl, or the strong one, or the successful one, or the sick one. These are the personas. The essence is the part underneath that is the almost, almost like we were when we were a baby, the part who said, no, no, this is my need, and that’s okay for me to have this need, and this is my want. And part of the essence is to be in the in the part of regenerative energy we have all is trust. It’s we have all the time. I have all the space that I need. I’m not in a rush. I don’t need anything from you, because I am enough for me. It’s the secure adult ego in us. It’s the peace part, it’s the fulfilled part, it’s the part that isn’t chasing anything. Yeah, yeah. So you mentioned earlier the kind of what it looks like when we’re not living in our essence, in terms of kind of reaching stages in our lives where we have a desire, or even actually act out on metaphorically or physically, burning things down, or running away from things, or, I guess, having that kind of midlife existential crisis. Does it look like anything else is there? Are there any other ways it kind of reveals itself? 

16:25

Oh, goodness. It reveals itself everywhere, even in the small things, like the gossip example. But in in business, yeah, it can flow into all parts of business. You might stop turning up to your own client calls. You might desperately want to put something out there. And even though you had, you know, a 200k launch in your last launch, for whatever reason, you cannot put this next thing out there, because your next thing feels really important. And the other thing was just performative. It comes out in how you communicate with people. It comes out in how you communicate with yourself, in what you eat, in what time you go to bed, like it comes out in everything that we do, because we’re either operating from essence or we’re operating from a persona, yeah, and there’s no between in that, yeah. I think what feels super relevant listening to you is that ultimately, where we struggle with burnout, that is a clear indicator, right, that we have gone enormously off piste, and, like you said, been kind of conforming to what other people show as success. And I think it’s challenging, because obviously we’re tribal by nature, right? Like we want to kind of fit in to a certain extent. And I know I’ve been like, my own, say, drug juggling, struggling, throwing around ideas as to, like, there’s certain things I’m clear success looks like, and obviously, hence my obsession with cushy business. But there have been other things, like people saying to me, like, Polly, when you’re going to write your book, or Polly, why are you when you’re going to stand on a stage? And that sense of like, oh, but do I need to stand on a stage? Is it a flex to be the person who’s like, actually, I’ve managed to live my introverted, anxious life and still make money and do the things I love and ignore the stuff I hate, or is I don’t know like that? There’s certain things like that where I can, to be honest with you, do my own heading around, because there is that. In fact, it’s something I talk about a lot where I’m like, That’s the battle. The battle is, am I honoring myself? When I say, You know what the idea of standing on a stage literally makes me want to wet my pants, like I could almost feel the sensation as I think about it, I’m like, I just know I would be a quivering wreck. Now, I also know it’s the kind of thing that if I got up there, I would probably gradually work through it, and at some point it would become normal to me, and I would no longer be this wreck. But there’s another part of me that’s like, but what a flex would it be to avoid all the stuff you don’t want to do that entrepreneurs tick box and just do the stuff that does light you up. And what if that gets to be enough? And what if you get to show to other people you don’t want to do that stuff, that’s okay. You don’t need to do that stuff. And Gen, that is the noise in my head, like, balancing between so and I know, and I’m showing this as an example, because I know that everyone’s got their own equivalent, right of like, where should I just be honoring me in my true essence? And obviously I’m undiagnosed autistic. ADHD, so there’s that sense me, like, Yes, I live with heightened anxiety. It’s kind of part of my biological makeup that I’m constantly managing that. And do I want to add additional stress? And at the same time, I’m very aware of areas of my life where I previously thought I will never be able to do this. And yet, here we are. This podcast in and as of itself, is a manifestation of something I massively over thought would be too much, and now I absolutely love. So how do you support people like that when they’re in this kind of space of am I honoring myself? Am I stretching myself? You know, knowing both could be success, which direction is the one that’s most true to my essence?

19:59

Yes. So this is, that’s a great question, by the way, because it’s something that comes up a lot, because we’ve, we’ve culturally and in society, been taught not to listen to your own intuition. You know, from a very young age, we all asked to go to the toilet at school, and we’re told you should have gone in break time. Well, I didn’t need it in break time, right? That’s just a really simple example of how we’ve been taught to ignore our own intuition. And so it I’ll just take your example that something that we focus on in big leap is the body intuition. And when you have a business, and there are things that you have to do in order to grow and scale your business, you’re just gonna have to have to get over it, or you’re not going to have the business that you want, right? And so there are tools around how you can learn how to speak on stage, right? We can do that if that’s the route. But when the question is, well, do I or don’t I, it’s very simple. Is it a route that you have to take to be able to speak on stage in order to get your business to where you want it to be. No, then don’t do it, and not just don’t do it. When you say, actually, I’m not going to do it, and I’m not ever going to let myself think about that again. I don’t need to think about that because it’s not a part of my plan. What happens in your body? Does your body then go, oh, okay, I can feel myself more deeply sat in my seat already. Yeah, my bloodmakers just unclenched.

21:28

Okay? You did literally. That’s what happens, no, but that’s really helpful, because that is literally your body intelligence is saying to you, this feels good, this feels like rest to me, and that’s the signal. But what people do probably is they ignore that signal because they’re so used to ignoring the signal and so stress and tightness and butt clenching muscles, they’re they’re so used to that feeling that they’re like then they think their way out of it. People try and think that they’re like, no, no, because I’ve got to do that. You’re thinking, stop thinking and feel your way out of it, and you’ll know your body intelligence will tell you, because if you have that squirming feeling of, oh, I don’t feel settled. I don’t feel settled about not getting up and speaking on stage, there’s a little bit of a signal to you that there’s more expansion to come for you in that area. But when you think about it, and your whole body goes and you’re breathing that in and that, yeah, okay, that feels peaceful to me. And it might be that six months down the line, because you’ve taken the pressure off, an opportunity comes up, and your nervous system has had enough time to relax, then an opportunity comes up and you say, Hey, do you know what this feels good to me? Yeah, it scares me, but it feels good to me.

22:50

I like that. And you know what? What I really like also about what you’ve just shared there is that I think sometimes we can put a pressure on ourselves, that we need to do everything right now. And interestingly, that is where my brain has been a bit recently, where I’m like, I trust it’s something at some point an opportunity will come up so good that I will be willing to overcome this. But right now, while it’s not there, I’m actually just really happy to not force it. I can, I can muster the strength when I have the motivation, but the motivation needs to be there first.

23:18

Okay, so I love this. Sorry. I just, I just have a question for you, actually, with that. Oh, yeah, go on. Okay, so where did you get the idea from that you need to speak on stage other people? It was going so I’ve been to atomicon Two years in a row now, and every single time I will bump into clients or peers, and they’ll nearly always turn around and say, Why aren’t you on there? Yeah, why are you in the audience? You should be up there, which is a lovely compliment, very nice to hear. And it’s one of those weird compliments that, of course, it’s a compliment, but at the same time as a part me going, I don’t know, like, you know, they kind of, you know, oh yeah. Why am I not doing that? Why have I stayed in the safe space of observing rather than participating, and I, last year, made the excuse up of, well, I just want to see what it looks like to talk I want to get a sense of, if I were up there, what, how would I use the space, and what would I talk about. But this year, I didn’t have that as my excuse. But then at the same time, yeah, it’s also a huge venue. So there’s a part of me thinking could start smaller to begin with, and work my way up to something as big as that. You know, I know sometimes you’re about big leaps, but do I need that to be my big leap? I don’t know, no. And the question is, for what purpose Am I on that stage? Like is speaking a part of what you do? Or is that not because not every leader in business, because you are, you are in a leadership role in your business. Not every expert, not every whatever needs to be an author, a podcast host, a one to one, a group, program, a speak. 

24:48

We don’t need to do it all, certainly not all at once. I think that’s one thing I’m really aware of, like one thing I did actually notice, funny enough from attending Atomicon. Was that a lot of the very established experts, their story spans decades. A lot of them, yeah, and it’s recognizing that a lot of these things, where you look at them, and yes, they often do have author, podcast, host, you know, all these things next to them over 20 years. Yeah, exactly. And there’s so many of us who are like, honestly, in the first three years of like, you know, in my case, five, but, but you know where everyone’s like, gotta do everything, and you’ve got to do it now, but there’s a lot of external noise, like you say, in the kind of entrepreneurial space and in the business space, and it can influence, I mean, even earlier on in business, I remember looking at some of my competitors who, you know will be kind of showing off designer handbags or super swanky places that they’re kind of living in or and I have such a different set of priorities, and I know that it was still a distraction, and I know I almost felt the need to kind of, but then I started to recognize that there were lots of other people who think like me, and that success for them is experiential and about how they live, hence how cushy business was born. Because I was like, let’s find a language for what this actually is, but it is, you know, for anyone who’s kind of listening and kind of thinking. Because I know this was me, like, back in 2019 the first coach I ever worked with, I remember her saying to me, what would you like your business to look like in 90 days if you really had it the way you’d like it to look? And at the time, I was really burnt out and exhausted. I mean, at the time, my children were like three in one, or, you know, like approaching four and approaching two. But I was really burnt out. I was working in the daytime, looking after them, putting them to bed. My son wouldn’t sleep till about 10pm and then I would deal with American clients who’d been in touch in the daytime, and be up till about midnight. And when covid came around, I was ill. I ended up having long covid. And I think that was all because I my body and brain had nothing left to fight that virus off with. Because I was I was like burnt toast. Anyway, I could describe it like that was me. I was like a shadow, a kind of skeleton of a human being, by the time that came around. And I remember realizing that that was the trajectory I was on, and that I was I was worried that as a parent of two little kids, I could end up being hospitalized and and obviously, I’m well, I was with covid, I ended up being taken into hospital, but fortunately, not for a long period of time where I then, you know, I could come back and be there for them, and by then, I had a boyfriend, thank goodness. Anyway, this is going into a big story here, but the main point is I one thing I will never forget is when she said to me, we’d obviously started off in the way that many coaching packages do, which was like, Where do you want to be in 90 days? Which now I kind of laugh, because a lot of this work takes a lot more than 90 days, but that’s where we started out. And I remember wanting to burst into tears because I was so far removed from what I wanted my life to look like, I didn’t even know where to begin, and I felt so exhausted and beaten down by the way life was, I didn’t really even have the energy. And there was a part of me looking at this beautiful coach with her lovely, long, glossy hair, sat in a beautiful wicker, kind of fancy, kind of retro chair in the south of France, looking like an absolute vision and a dream, talking very ethereally, like she was, like an angel out the sky to me. And she would start her day doing yoga, and she had such a beautiful life she’d share, like, in the afternoon, she’d go off rock climbing. And there was a lot of me just thinking, you know, like I was working with her, because I knew there was something she knew that I didn’t. But there was, at that point in my life a kind of element of, like, you get to have this I don’t entirely trust that I do. It’s not available to me. That is a really common belief. I’m fundamentally flawed. It’s not available to me.

28:41

Yes. And I think also, if you’ve ever grown up with a narcissistic parent, which I’m not saying I did, but if you did, let’s say, hypothetically, sometimes I think those people who have done that can associate confidence and pursuing one’s own desire as being selfish, and you fear that you may fall into the same kind of trap of being that person that perhaps you kind of were triggered by most your childhood, just saying hypothetically, of course. And so that’s where I was at back then, and who, when I look at who I am now, I am that different person. But it was a journey getting there, and I wanted to have this conversation with you today, because I know there are a lot of people still at that stage where they’re like, do I get to be that person? How do I even connect to what success looks like for me? Because I don’t entirely trust it’s there and it’s available to me. What would you you know like when we think back to that like 2019, Polly, what would you say to that person who’s kind of so far removed from what they want success to feel like, whether that’s because, I mean, back then, I wasn’t earning very much, but like you say, I’ve also been the person who had my first 25k months, and again, wanted to cry because I was like, if this is what it takes to have 25k months, I don’t want it put me back on benefits. I don’t want it. From. So I’ve been at both ends of the spectrum. So what would you say to that person who kind of feels so far removed from it and kind of wonders if they need a personality transplant to get closer to where they need to be?

30:11

Well, first of all is it’s so common and everyone, every business owner that I know, or I either work with business owners or people in high demand career, and every single person tells me the same thing, and every single person says, Oh, you’ve probably not heard of this one before, but I and then they’ll share this whole experience just like, just like your experience there. And underneath it all is this underlying current of not enoughness of they can have it, but I can’t. It’s available for you, but not for me. Or if I do get it, it’s going to be taken away, or the cost is too high. And I know lots of people who have built this outward success, and there is this fear that it’s all going to go, it’s not going to stay. And so I would say to you, if you’re listening, you are absolutely not on your own. Me, included Polly, included anybody that you are looking to to think, well, they’ve got it together. I can absolutely, 100% guaranteed to you they don’t.

31:16

Yes, they absolutely don’t. Never say this work is done. I always say, like it’s a work in progress, because I think you’re missing opportunities, right?  Yeah, and when people do say it’s done, they’re absolutely and completely in denial, like their ego has puffed up so big that they think that their work is done, or, yeah, they’re just totally, totally blind to it. So I would say to you, first of all, you’re not alone. So that feeling of, God, I can’t tell anybody. I can’t I can’t share this with anyone. I’m too embarrassed. I’m too ashamed, like I run a six figure company. How can I tell somebody that I’m not feeling worthy of it, or I’m secretly sabotaging it, or I’m sabotaging my personal life? This happens really often. You know, you you get to a level of success in one area, and so you have to sabotage another area, because the unconscious current in you believes that you’re not worthy to have across the board success. And so I would say to you, just stop for a moment, because the persona part of us, the need to prove part, lets us believe that I can’t slow down. If I slow down I’m going to drop the plate, or somebody will find out, or somebody will notice, and somebody will see who I really am. And so I just invite you to just stop for just a moment and give yourself long enough to feel into your body. And I know that you will have heard these practices before and think, Oh, it doesn’t work, but you haven’t consistently done it, because if you did, you would be reaping the benefits from it, and you would know that what I’m saying, in fact, does work. Stop, literally stop. Stop working. Put your phone on silent, close your laptop, turn the noise down for just a moment, and sit with yourself long enough to hear yourself and it feels uncomfortable. And you’ll get the edge to pick up your phone. You’ll get the urge to eat. You’ll get the urge to maybe drink alcohol, or, I don’t know, eat some mushrooms, or turn the TV on or watch porn or scroll or organize your stuff, whatever it is, you’ll get the urge to drift, because drifting and numbing is what feels safe and comfortable, because that pulls us back in to that smallness. And so I invite you sit stop for a minute long enough to hear what your body is telling you that like let your muscles physically like you said. I feel my muscles relax, let your muscles relax and just hear. Just sit with it long enough and you will hear something you absolutely will, and whether that comes out in tears. Sometimes, when we stop for even five minutes and long enough, people start to yawn. This is really common. They yawn, they cough, they sneeze, they shudder. There’s all of these physical things. They cry. Maybe they get a sore throat. They scratch their head. Maybe they fart release wind, they burp. There’s all of these different ways that when we stop long enough, just for a couple of minutes, and let our bodies relax and let ourselves breathe, we start doing all of these little physical things. And that’s maybe it’s crying, maybe it’s screaming, maybe it’s singing, but we have all of these little signals in our body that you’re holding it all in, and when you hold it all in, you can’t see straight. Yeah, and that’s an indication that you’re deep in this persona. You’re deep in this tightness, yeah, it’s not relaxed enough. And hmm, is a really great entry point into a spaciousness, so that you can give yourself the opportunity to feel into the edges of your experience, yes and

34:45

yeah, it’s amazing, actually, isn’t it? Like we’re kind of almost primed from everything in society and life, to avoid discomfort with every single cell of our being. And like you say, there’s so many things as you just kind of made. That long list of different things we do to numb or distract ourselves from that discomfort. It’s not surprising that we can often stay in the same loop. And I imagine for some people thinking about being with that discomfort, it can feel really overwhelming, and that’s where working with somebody like you is so powerful, to have somebody who can hold that space for you and be there to support you, and kind of hear what comes up in those moments, if it feels like it’s too much to hear alone. And I also really loved what you shared earlier, because I think sometimes we often associate that struggle with being earlier on in business. But actually there’s so many hyper capable, hyper independent, hyper intelligent women who have very successful businesses. And like I say, this has definitely been something I’ve come up against several times in my own journey, to the extent that I kind of massively redesigned my entire business model last year to kind of give myself some breathing space while I figured out what genuinely gave me joy and and I had to be really honest with myself about where there were energy leaks in how I was supporting clients, where I was allowing their own experience of me to dictate how I felt about myself. I mean, the self awareness journey that goes alongside running a business is profound, because this year, I’ve gone back to focusing on my group programs, because I took the time out to be with the discomfort of being in the void of being with the you know, what am I making this mean? What? Who do I need to be? How do I need to operate and move through life? And this is why I say like the work is never, ever done. No. And I do know sometimes people, and I wanted to share that, because I know sometimes people look at an established business owner like me and assume like, oh, it’s easy for you now, but if anything, in terms of who we’re being, it’s probably one of the hardest times, because you you almost feel like the higher you get in people’s estimations and in your success, the further you potentially have to fall. Like it feels less scary earlier on, because you’ve got less to lose, but it can feel a million times more vulnerable, particularly if you feel the need to portray that you’ve got all your shit together, and which you know in society, a lot of us are pretending, you know, and that’s the point, because

37:13

your entire business, particularly in a service based business, is based on this life that you’ve built. And when you start sharing a struggle. You’re like, Well, my whole business, the premise of my entire business, and getting people to want the life I have is based on me being okay. And so when we push that aside, and when we’re avoidant of those feelings, they actually grow to the point that we then burn out, or we have a midlife crisis, or we sabotage and we burn it down, and then we burn down other things that aren’t even to do with the original thing that if we’d have just been, you know, able to talk to somebody about all of the rest of our life wouldn’t be affected. But it’s such a is such an important topic, because we get into this perpetual shame cycle that we then feel like we can’t get out of because we’ve peddled the story for so long, we even start to believe that it’s true. And the reality is, there is no shame in saying actually, I’m expanding to my next level of capacity, and I need some support in here, because some old things that happened to me when I was two or when I was 25 or last week, then they’re now starting to show up, and maybe they didn’t show up before, because you didn’t need that level of grit. You didn’t need to peel back the layers for the earlier years of your business, because it didn’t require that of you. But the more you are seen, the more grit you need to dig deep. There’s something called unconscious commitments that we explore. And unconscious commitments are where, for example, as a child, you had to be the, let’s say, be the capable one, and and you had to be the parent, and you had to be maybe parent other siblings, or you had to parent your parents. And so there’s this there’s this part of you that’s like, No, I have to have it together. I’m the hero in every relationship. I’m the conscientious one. I’m the one who has to play this. And so it plays out in every friendship, in every in every capacity, with yourself. You can’t ask for help. You cannot be the one that breaks. And that’s where we get to burn out, and that’s where we get to all of that part. But when, when we have these unconscious commitments, what we end up doing is accidentally recreating the relationship from childhood, because then we become the person who is avoidant. We become the person who no one can communicate with. Your walls are so thick no one can get through, not your children, not your husband, not your business partner, not your best friends, because you’re the one who has got it all together and without even knowing it, we have. Have repeated the cycle that caused us so much pain, and that’s the unconscious commitment that our personas lead us to play out, even though we desperately don’t want to, and that’s why it’s so important that we have these conversations.

40:16

Yeah, yes, so important. I mean, this is the work. I mean, I was thinking about it like, the way I’ve navigated a lot of my last few years is I always use the lens of, like, compassion and curiosity, so that where I do see these kind of patterns coming up for me, that rather than judging myself or going, Oh, look at you, you’re doing that again, kind of showing myself compassion, but also getting curious and thinking about, how does this get to look different, and that’s definitely been a helpful compass to navigate things. But I also wanted to say that, like, I think the really important thing to kind of recognize with all of this stuff is that so often when we go into online business, you’ll hire somebody like me. Alyssa Blumenthal, hope so if you listen to this podcast, because, you know, it’s useful to have a GPS. It’s useful to know how you’re going to get to your end destination and what are the things you need to be doing along the way. And there’s nothing that takes away from that. Obviously, that’s why I do this. And and there’s a really important and here, like, like, we’ve all been in cars with different types of passengers, the nervous passenger, the passenger that breaks all the rules and decides to ignore the map and go, Oh, sod the GPS. I know better. Or, you know what, I’ve never liked going there on time. Anyway, let’s go this. And people all will be a different type of passenger. And there is the passenger who will get there on time with the most efficiency, and there’s the other one who, God knows how they got there, but they did, and they did it their own way. But the truth is, you know, like we can all have the same map, and how we manage that map, and how we use that map, and who we are. When we get through the site, some people get they go, oh. And actually, why did I want to come here in the first place? Like, this isn’t what I thought it’d be. These views aren’t the views I thought there’d be. And so that inner work that comes first is so important. I so often say to people like, you know, the reason why I do the work I do is because I am autistic. ADHD, so therefore I do struggle with, like, a membership. No, thank you. I would hate to have a membership of 150 people. You couldn’t even give me that I would run to the hills. I like I like going deep. I like intimate relationships. I like really getting to know my clients, I like supporting them high ticket problems. I like helping them. You know, with high ticket challenges, I’m not into that, and not against anyone who does that, or telling anyone they shouldn’t do that. But that to me right now, at this phase of my life, doesn’t look or feel like success. Maybe at some point that may change, but that’s where I’m at right now. But it it’s helpful to know that, and it’s also taken me dipping my toe in various areas, I mean, like, oh, no, thanks. I’m going to carry keep on going. But the really important piece here is that one thing I always say about strategy is it will only succeed if you are consistent, if you show up and you are devoted to that strategy, and you can have the discipline to keep on showing up even when it gets uncomfortable, even when there isn’t evidence that it’s going to work. And that is not easy. Like so many people know that if you go to something like atomic on and someone on stage says that we were like and how many of us could genuinely raise our hand and say, and we’re doing it. And this is where the success and the essence stuff really comes in. Because if you don’t know why you’re doing this, if you don’t know what purpose it plays in who you desire to be and what you want to be doing in the world, and you’re not confident about what that needs to look like in terms of finances, in terms of clients, in terms of all the other pieces, then you know the amount of people I’ve had, people come to me at the beginning of a one to one, or at the beginning of a one to one, or at the beginning of a mastermind who are like, Polly, honestly, once I’ve got to six figures, I’m going to be over there chuff and moon like I love the work I do. I know the money I want to make. I know the holiday I’m already going to book. I know what my husband’s going to finally say when I say, Yeah, did it. And then sometimes a year later, they’re like, Okay, so we superseded your goal. You pay 150k in the area you wanted to, you booked that holiday, and another one, and they’re like, and what? Still not enough. It’s not it.

44:08

So what if, let’s take your consistency example. What if they that person has an unconscious commitment to be a victim, to play the victim role, which means I can’t be consistent, and it’s not my fault. Yeah, I can’t do that. Or what if their unconscious commitment, that person who you know, superseded the goal hit 150k and it’s still not enough. What if their unconscious commitment is to be un to not be validated?

44:41

So where that is playing out for somebody? How would they? Because I’ve definitely worked with people who I have seen that in and I’ve been, you know, I’ve seen it myself occasionally where I’ve had to take a moment go Hold on a sec. Polly, yeah, you’re the one with the controls. Here you get to but I have seen it some people who are less conscious and aware. These patterns and behaviors in themselves. How would one first A identify that and then B, how do they shift that unconscious commitment that they have so that they get to operate and move differently in the world? Because one thing I know for sure is the clients in my world who are the most who have more of a positivity bias, more resiliency around failure and the ability to show up even when the evidence isn’t entirely there are the ones who succeed the soonest, the fastest and with the most joy most of the time, and the ones who feel like life is happening to them and who feel a huge sensitivity to failure or not immediate wins. Are the ones who it’s almost like wading through tar to get to where they desire to be, but they don’t necessarily always see it, and it’s a challenging one to have a conversation around. So A, how do I identify if we are that person? And B, you know, I assume it’s not a simple fix, but where would we begin in away from that?

45:57

Okay, so first of all, the way that you know if you’re that person is look at the evidence and be willing to see what is right in front of you, because the evidence will tell you in your relationships, in the success, in the financial success of your business, yeah, your how you treat your body, how you talk about yourself, how you Talk about other people, there is, I mean, there is literally endless amounts of evidence to show you your commitment. Well, that could be uncomfortable, right?

46:31

And so this is the whole conversation. There’s two things that I ask people before every single session. In every session, I ask them these two questions. Number one, are you open and willing to learning everything that you need to learn about yourself today in our work? And obviously they say yes, otherwise we can’t continue the call. And number two is, do I have the permission to fill a set facilitate that learning? And obviously they say yes, otherwise we can’t continue the call. And if they say no, that’s okay, because that’s where they are. But if you if you want what you want, what are you willing to do for it? Because it’s all well and good saying, Oh, I’m going to get somebody to help me with strategy and messaging and get someone to do my copy and my PR and my website, my social media. Great. That’s great. Good for you. But I can promise you that if you are not committed and dedicated to not just achieving it, but keeping it, you’re never going to keep it. You’re going to sabotage every single part of your life. And so the this, the simple way, is, look at the evidence. Look at all of the ways that you are distracting yourself from living this, the type of success you want to live. And this is something I really love about you, Polly, and you do posts on this, and I love this about you straight away in Spain, how it wasn’t about the shoes or the planes or the bags or the cars, it was about the outward view of success, and those things are great. And I’m like, I love holidays and shoes and cars and bags and all of those things. I love those but that’s not where it ends for me, because that is those things will burn. Those things are just they are, for all intents, distractions. Yeah, they’re distractions, and they’re very shallow, and they’re not the things that I’m not going to lay on my deathbed and think, Oh, I wish I had one bag only have that extra pair of boot and smile, right?

48:14

It’s, it’s not gonna happen. And so I mean, holiday, maybe, maybe holiday, but with the people, right with who? Or maybe, maybe you did just need one more holiday by yourself. Maybe your thing is that you’re constantly doing it with other people, and you need to learn to do things with yourself. It’s such a unique is such a unique path, but the evidence is always there, and if you are willing, so once a week I have a staff meeting with myself. I do one with my children. We start the week on a Sunday night. We plan the week. They know everything that is happening, mainly so I don’t get asked 500 times, but we have a big calendar on the wall. Everything is written on the wall. We have a meeting about what is expected from me this week, what is expected from them this week. And so we run through all of that. I also have a meeting with myself where I look back at my own In fact, my daughter said to me, I have ADHD. So it’s ADHD too. So I’m I jump around a little bit. Sorry everyone. My daughter said to me the other day she was laying in bed, she’s nearly 15, and she said to me, Mum, you know all of this self leadership stuff you do with us, I think it actually works, because I’m I’m turning to quite a good person. And I said, I said to her, You are a great person. And she laughed, and she went, No, Mom, I’m really not. But what I learned was, she said, What I learned was, is that my friends don’t really do this. My friends don’t really evaluate and look back at like things they do and they say to other people, and they don’t really talk about it with their parents. And I think because you’ve taught us to do that, I can see like, where I’m really good at things and where I’m great at things, and where I need to improve and and I think. That’s it for me, right? Self leadership is about being able to step out, zoom out, breathe, like I said before, get into your body and be able to say, Okay, this isn’t personal to me. I’m like, my business is a machine. When I’m evaluating my business, my business isn’t my worth. So you’re evaluating two things when you’re in business, a, you’re looking at your business, and B, you’re looking at you. And when you can take your own ego out of it, because that’s just the Wounded Child. If you can’t evaluate yourself, that’s the Wounded Child. That’s the ego. So the first thing is being able to self evaluate so that you can lead yourself, so that you can lead your business, your family, your life, whatever it is you’re leading. And if you can’t do that, you can expect yourself to not build or keep the success that you want. And that’s that’s flat out. So if you want the things that you want, and you want to keep them, you need to be having regular check ins with yourself. And you can even ask people who you trust, the kind of your inner circle of people who you can be your essence self with. You know they’re your ride or dies. You can say to them, Hey, when you see me in this situation, what do you see? What do you see in me that you think, Okay, I think this would be helpful for you if you implemented this, or if you dropped this, or whatever it was. Yeah, I love that, but you have to have ears to hear it and a heart open enough to hear it.

51:33

Yes, yes, I love everything you’re saying there about ego, because that’s definitely a theme I’ve brought up time and time again in this space that like, like you say, letting go of ego is so even just an awareness of ego. But anyway, that is so, so powerful. Cassie, and when we talk about success, what you just reflected about your daughter? I mean, that to me, is success right there, when you’re raising the next generation to have these levels of awareness that so many of us did not grow up with. I mean, just imagine what that makes possible. And yeah, to recognize that, you know, we when you are your business, the better you can work with and understand yourself, the more success you’re going to have. Just amazing, amazing, amazing, amazing. And I guess, as a little kind of final reflection for anyone who’s thinking about where and how this work fits in, I also would want to reflect from my own personal journey that not only did I do this work in 2019 but I did similar work back in 2022 before I launched this podcast. And one of the big moments for me were I know I want to launch a podcast. I know at some point I want to write a book. I know that there’s an extra level of visibility I’m wanting to claim, but I’m not feeling safe in doing it. And I do know like you like, as you referred to earlier, in terms of like, is it important? I was like, I do know that these are the next steps I need to take to achieve the level of brand authority and visibility and reach and impact that I desire to have, and that was, you know, I didn’t go off and work with another strategist. In fact, the majority of the support I’ve had over the last two, three years of my business has been somatic mindset, unfortunately, not with Cassie yet. But, you know, I really am a huge advocate for this type of work. Because, honestly, strategy, when you choose the right one, it’s persevering with it, but to be able to persevere with it, it’s having somebody who can support you on that journey and finding that person you can feel really safe with. So thank you so much for all your reflections today. Cassie, like usually my guest interviews like go on for about half an hour, and this one has just kept rolling because you’ve been sharing so much gold that I just know my listeners are going to love to hear. So anyone who’s listening and thinking, my goodness, I think I need a Cassie in my corner for the big moves I’m looking to make, or for this redirection, recentering that’s required to move away from being in a business that does not feel like my version of success. Where can they find you? They can find me on LinkedIn or Instagram. My website is cassiewatts.co.uk,

and my Instagram is, I am Cassie Watts amazing. And is there anything else you would like to share before we wrap up this episode? Is there anything that I’ve missed in this conversation that you feel my listeners would benefit from hearing as we wrap up this conversation.

54:25

Yeah, I just want really everyone to know my my mission is, is that you can, and remembering that our minds are always on the lookout for where I can’t is literally wired for that. And so I want you to know you absolutely can, but you do have to engage with it and you can. And it’s every single time you can. I’m always that one friend when somebody says, Oh, I don’t know if I should do this. Yes, you can. Just you can. And so that that fear, that story. Goes on in your head. You don’t need to believe it. You have a choice, and you can that’s beautiful every single time you can. Thank you so much for that, Cassie, I’m sure I’ll have you on the show again soon, because I feel like I could talk to you about this stuff for days.

55:15

Yes, thanks for having me.

55:18

Well, this was such an important conversation, and the kind of honest reflection I feel more business owners need to hear. So whether you’re in a season of burnout, a moment of expansion, or you’re starting to realize the success you’ve built, it doesn’t feel how you hoped. Please know this. You are not broken. You are most certainly not behind, and you do not need to burn it all down to come back home to yourself. If Cassie’s words landed with you, go find her at I am Cassie Watts on Instagram or visit cassiewatts.co.uk. The links are also in the show notes. She is the real deal, and she’s got a lot more wisdom where that came from. So do go say hi, and if you loved this episode, please subscribe, leave a review and share it with the high achieving humans in your life who look like they’ve got it all together, but might quietly be crumbling inside because they’re the ones who are going to find it the hardest to say that that is the case. Okay, this isn’t just a conversation about success. It’s a conversation about what really matters until next time, keep it cushy.