How to Protect Your Mindset When Your Growth Makes People Uncomfortable [ep. #259]
Hello lovely lady and welcome to The Subconscious Expert!
"How am I supposed to protect my mindset when no one around me gets it?" I get this question at least once a week. Welcome to the stage of growth that no one prepares you for!
When you start doing deep inner work, you'll be changing faster than everyone around you. You'll be healing, expanding, and suddenly the people closest to you are looking at you like they don't recognise you anymore. Your partner doesn't get your vision. Your family treats you like the version from five years ago (even though you're a completely different person). Your friends throw shady jokes about how 'you've changed'.
And all of a sudden, you're stuck between two worlds. The one that shaped you and the one you're building.
So in today's episode, I'm talking about how to protect your mindset, how to stop outsourcing your safety to other people, and how to hold and protect your energy while everyone else throws their doubts at you. And no, we're not cutting people off or building walls. We're strengthening the relationship you have with yourself.
Because you can't shrink yourself into being understood. And your job isn't to make them believe. Your job is to keep expanding until your certainty becomes louder than their doubt.
Topics covered on How to Protect Your Mindset:
The time when my ambition became a problem in my relationship.
Your subconscious need for belonging and how to rewire it.
How to protect your mindset when your loved ones project their doubts and fears onto you.
What does "protecting your bubble" actually mean without cutting people off?
Why did setting boundaries make my friends hate me (and why I kept doing it)?
Five subconscious practices for protecting your mindset.
Connect with Rebecca Haydon:
Quote:
"Love and growth don't always travel at the same speed. And not everyone you love will grow with you.”- Rebecca Haydon
Transcription:
Our AI tried its best, but expect a few quirky typos in the transcript. Embrace the imperfections and enjoy the read!
[00:00:00] Hello, my gorgeous lady. Welcome back to the Subconscious Expert. I really need to record this podcast episode because if I am asked this once a week, I wouldn't be lying. It is a topic that comes up again and again and again because there is a stage of growth. That no one really prepares you for. And I'm not talking about, you know, the first leap in your business here or the big milestone that you hit, but what I wanna talk about today is that middle part.
Where you have started changing faster than the world around you. And as business owners, we are growing, we are healing, we are doing the deep inner work as you should. When you run your own business and the people closest to you sometimes are still standing in the same spot. [00:01:00] And maybe they're looking at you like they don't quite recognize who you're becoming, or maybe your partner doesn't fully understand what you're building or what your vision is, or maybe your family still literally treats you like the version that existed five years ago.
10 years ago, maybe your friends have started to joke that you've changed or that you're triggering them and you can really feel that gap between you and them getting wider, and suddenly all of a sudden you find yourself almost caught between two worlds, right? The world that shaped you, the world that you grew up in, the world that you knew so well, and the world that you're building.
And this is what this episode is all about, because I really want you to know how to protect your mindset when others don't get it. How [00:02:00] to connect to you and to what you are building and where you are going without having or needing everyone to validate that. And more importantly, today I really want us to talk about how to hold.
Your energy study while the people around you are still actually figuring out theirs. Okay? And as I talk about this in the podcast episode, I want you to know we're not cutting people off. We're not building walls. It's actually today about strengthening the relationship you have with yourself. I want you to stop outsourcing your safety to other people understanding you.
And like I said, this is a topic that so many people ask me about, and I think it is going to be so powerful for you to have some actionable steps to be able to take this and put into your life too. So [00:03:00] let's start from the very beginning. A very good place to start because when I was growing my business in the early days, it's 2019.
I'm fresh with my NLP Masters and my hypnosis masters, and in every other qualification I did before I started my business, I was in a relationship in Australia where my ambition quietly became the problem in the relationship. Now. I just wanna preface, he wasn't trying to hold me back, but he definitely didn't want to join where I was going.
And actually now I look back. Ambition for him wasn't a value of his. It wasn't something he was striving for and. Quite frankly, I now see why that didn't work. I didn't see it at the time, well, it, it started to become more present at the time, but I had to be okay with that. And for many years I kept trying to ignore it [00:04:00] until I actually realized that I was trying to bring someone into a vision that they hadn't chosen.
And I think that is where so many. Ambitious women get stuck because we mistake understanding for love, right? We think, well, if you love me, you'll believe in this too. But actually, and what I found, love and growth don't always travel at the same speed and not everyone you love will grow with you. And that doesn't have to make them wrong, and it doesn't have to make you selfish either.
You know, for me it was one of the hardest, but to be honest, easiest things that I've ever had to accept. And if you've listened to the famous podcast episode, episode a hundred, you'll know that I did leave that relationship and really understood. [00:05:00] The reasons why I did that. You know, I could see the version of me that was becoming the woman that I wanted to be, right?
The woman who wanted to lead, who wanted to expand, who wanted to build, who wanted to create, and look, I've always been that woman. I've always been that woman, and I knew the more I grew. The more we would drift and we were drifting and I had to make peace with that. And actually, you know, I ended up having to choose the future over the familiar, and I'm not saying you have to leave your relationships.
Not at all. Not at all. But at some point you have to decide what you are no longer willing to shrink for. And that is truly what I mean. By protecting your mindset, and that is really having a look at staying loyal [00:06:00] to your evolution, to where you are going to what you see yourself doing, even when it challenges your comfort.
So let's start by just going a little bit deeper into why it actually feels so heavy when people around you. Either don't believe in your dream or question, your dream or whatever else is happening, happening for you right now in this particular area. So when someone doubts you, whether it's your partner, whether it's your mom, your dad, your friends, your brother, your sister, whoever it is.
It's not just their words hitting your conscious mind, right? What's actually happening is it's sending this signal that lands straight in your subconscious. Now we know, and if you've been here long enough, the subconscious is wired for safety, but it's also wired for [00:07:00] belonging. So if we actually look from like an evolutionary perspective, your survival once depended on being accepted by your group.
And if you weren't accepted by your group, you were cast out, you did not survive. Right. And even though we no longer live in tribes in that way, I feel like it's kind of getting that way at the way. But no, we don't live in those tribes anymore. But your brain still holds that same operating system. Okay?
So every day it is scanning every moment. For one thing, am I safe to be who I am? Where here, right? Am I safe to be who I am right here? So when we look at your growth and when your growth starts to challenge that status quo, when you maybe stop complaining about the same things, or when you start [00:08:00] putting boundaries in and start saying no to people.
That was a big one that happened to me. When you start investing in yourself in a different way, your subconscious could potentially register a threat. And we know that growth isn't unsafe, but actually right then. And when you are reaching towards where you want to reach to, that can feel like a disconnection.
Right? And that is why belonging is. One of the deepest subconscious needs that we have. Because belonging to humans equals safety. We are wired to seek it. We are wired to protect it. We are wired to preserve it, even if sometimes it means abandoning ourself in the process. So. When someone close to you, questions your path, questions what you're up to, questions, how you are thinking [00:09:00] differently, your subconscious isn't thinking logically in that moment.
It's thinking, if I keep expanding, will I still belong? Or if I keep changing, will I still be loved? Right. That's why you can feel so thrown off by a single comment that someone says, because actually it's not usually the comment, it's the potential blow up to the connection your system has built and wants to preserve.
Right? And until you make belonging an internal experience instead of. Something you chase externally, which is definitely what I had to do. You will always feel pulled between your vision and your relationships, and that is truly where protecting your mindset begins. [00:10:00] So we are not ignoring the noise, but we are actually understanding the wiring beneath it.
When we understand the wiring beneath it, that's when people can say those comments. People can judge, people can have their own opinions, but actually you can stand solid in what you are doing and where you are growing now. Every time you grow, your subconscious is balancing two competing needs. So we've got the need to belong and the need to become, okay, so the belonging side of things is like, stay the same, stay accepted, stay liked, stay loved, and then the becoming is like, let's fucking go.
Let's expand, let's evolve. Let's outgrow this. Right? And your conscious mind. Might choose growth, but if your subconscious still equates belonging with love or [00:11:00] being good enough, or that means it's okay for me to do this, it will literally sabotage the very thing that you are building. You will delay posts in the content because you don't wanna sound too confident, too bigheaded to show off.
You'll soften all the wins with your friends. I did that a lot. Right? You don't want to make them uncomfortable, fair enough. But you soften the winds, you, they're like, how's your business going? You're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's great. You know your question, your own certainty when your partner looks at you with that doubtful look that they might have, right?
That is self protection. That is your subconscious doing its job so very perfectly. It is keeping you safe according to, um, kind of an [00:12:00] outdated definition of safety. And the work with me is to rewire that definition. We wanna teach your mind that you can belong to yourself first. That you can love people, a hundred percent support people, be there for people, and still outgrow the dynamic of that.
You can still be connected to the people around you, and you can still be expanding. When belonging is internal, you stop needing permission to become you. Stop waiting for people to go. You're doing a good job, I believe in you. Yeah, go for it. Okay, so we need to understand the relationship to you owning it.
Okay? When someone doesn't believe in you. It's rarely about you. It is very, very rarely about you. [00:13:00] It is usually about the lens that they are living through. It is their internal map. It is their internal world of what's possible for them. And every person sees life through their own filters. Okay? So they see, they look at their own upbringing, they look at their own experiences, they look at their fears, they look at their beliefs, they look at their limits.
They look at what they've gone through in childhood, and they look down at this map, and then they project that onto what is currently going on. They are not seeing you. They are seeing the reflection of the map in your choices. So when someone says to you and hands up baby, hands up. If you've had this, when someone said to you, oh gosh, that's risky, or gosh, be careful, or you're spending how much or God, that would feel really [00:14:00] unsafe for me.
What I want you to know is you don't have to fix that. You don't have to fix that. You don't have to drag them into your vision or convince them to believe in you, okay? Because the moment that you try to do that, what actually happens is you step out of your own energy. And from an energy perspective, you start leading and driving your business from defense, and then it becomes, well, I'm gonna prove you wrong and oh, well watch me.
Right? Instead of actually coming from the energy of growth of direction of where you want it to come from. You can let people keep their map. I say it all the time. You can actually let people keep their map and you can respect that their reality is different. And more importantly than anything, you can still choose [00:15:00] yours fully.
Quite frankly, that is what emotional maturity looks like. Literally understanding that everyone has the right to their perspective, and you have the right to protect your energy from being shaped by it. That's where the world is going wrong at the moment. Right? So next time someone projects your fear onto you, don't make it about you.
Don't make it personal. I tell my clients all the time to ask the question, what am I making this mean? Right? You can simply say to yourself, that's their story. That is their map. That is how they've been brought up, what they believe, who they've been, and it doesn't belong to me or my subconscious. That is how you stop leaking energy.
Because actually what happens then is you start convincing and [00:16:00] then you've lost what we're actually doing this for. Okay, so now we've got a bit of the concept. Now you can see it's their map, not yours. I like to call what I'm gonna talk about next, protecting your bubble. Okay. So when I first started setting boundaries.
I tell you a secret, and I've spoke about it before. My friends hated it. In fact, it caused quite a big argument at one point. And I think I've said in podcast episodes before, I've been told by friends that I trigger them and the boundaries or the money that I make or the way our life is, um, even me bringing Jack into the business.
I know people talk, you know, we still have judgment from friends and family, even now, and I know it's only subtle judgment, but it's there, right? So. They were my friends were used to the version of me. When we look at the boundaries, who was [00:17:00] available 24 7. I was the yes girl, right? I said yes, even when it meant saying no to myself.
In fact, when I look at it, I was the biggest people pleaser, and I had no boundaries. I had zero boundaries, and I went away to Australia for three. Four years and I, this is where I started doing the really deep subconscious work. So when I returned home, I was a completely different person to when I went and when I returned home, they started to see, oh wow, okay, that's not the Becky we know.
That's not the Becky we know. And actually, when I stopped doing the things that they knew. I would do. They were triggered. They were triggered because actually when you look at boundaries, [00:18:00] boundaries are protecting you a hundred percent. But when you hold your boundaries strong enough, they actually reflect other people's discomfort.
And I, I really had to learn to be okay with that. Really had to learn to be okay with that. Now, protecting your bubble isn't cutting people off. It is about curating what and who you let influence your inner world. Your subconscious is always listening and it is absorbing your words. Absolutely, but it is absorbing your tone.
Your emotions, your energy, right? So if you are constantly surrounded by people who doubt, who complain, who compare, and you know, it's always that, that that quote where you're like, you are the combination of the five people you hang around with, right? Your [00:19:00] subconscious will start mirroring that back. So I want you to ask yourself.
Who do I let speak into my energy? Like whose voice I ask my clients all the time when they bring beliefs to me? Whose voice is it? Whose voice do I give authority to? In my mind, not everyone in your life has earned the right to influence your emotional state. So protecting your bubble is really about building an internal filter and this internal filter where you can hear what someone says a hundred percent without absorbing it, you can still love them.
Love them so deeply, love them so wholly, and still choose what you internalize and when you do that. You actually stop blaming the environment or stop trying to [00:20:00] control the environment, and you start controlling your focus because energy flows, baby, where your attention goes and focus is the most powerful form of protection you have.
You always have the right to have the steering wheel, so we wanna stop giving the steering wheel to other people. So let's bring this now into practice because listening to me and having these pops of aha moments is great, and having the understanding of this whole concept is one thing, but the real shift happens when you start actually living it.
Now, protecting your mindset for me is. I ain't gonna tell you about a morning routine. We're definitely not gonna jump in a bubble bath. For me. It is these micro moments, these micro actions where you choose you and your truth and what you are doing over their noise. So I've got five [00:21:00] practices that is gonna help you.
And they're gonna help you do exactly that. Okay? These are almost daily anchors, and they're gonna retrain your subconscious to feel safe in its own leadership. So the first one that I really want you to focus on today is to reconnect to your inner reference point. Now most people wake up and they immediately tune into the outside world, straight on your phone messages, opinions, the news, expectations it straight into your client messages before you've even had a sip of coffee, brushed your teeth, or got in the shower, right?
Their subconscious is already being told who to be and how to feel. When you start your day like that, you are outsourcing your direction before you even have a chance to choose it. So instead, before you open your [00:22:00] phone up, before you do anything, I want you to, and it can literally be as simple as this.
Take a deep breath, close your God eyes and say or ask, who am I choosing to be today? What energy do I want to hold? That one question resets your internal compass. It tells your subconscious, I decide the tone of this day. You are giving your brain a clear instruction. Follow my internal cues, not the external validation.
Okay. You can, I, I mean you can literally even visualize it. Imagine like tuning yourself into the radio of your frequency. Each morning you choose the frequency you want to broadcast from. What glasses are you putting on? Everything else, the noise, the opinions, the distractions, the person that you're just about to compare yourself to will start to fade away in the [00:23:00] background because your signal is stronger.
That's what it means to lead from the inside out. That's where we want to come from because your reticular activated system will then start to look for that. The second thing that I really want you to do, especially with the people around you, is I want you to separate their fear from your truth. You have to really dig deep in this one, especially if you've got beliefs that their doubt play into.
So when someone doubts you, and maybe they will, your first instinct might be to defend or explain or over prove or go, oh my God, yeah, they're right. Right? That's just your subconscious trying to literally hold onto the connection with them, right? It's saying like, please understand me. Please understand me so I can stay safe.
But actually real safety doesn't come from being understood. We all [00:24:00] think it does, but it doesn't. It comes from understanding yourself. So the next time that that happens and someone puts their map of their world onto you, I want you to pause and I want you to ask yourself, is this mine? Is this my map?
Is this voice speaking my truth or someone else's fear? You will feel the difference instantly, and actually if it comes up and it and it taps into one of the belief that you have, come and see me and I will help you. Right? Your body will tell you, your chest will soften. Your jewel will probably UNC Unclench.
That's your subconscious realizing and letting go of something that was never yours to carry. A lot of the belief work that I do with clients is very rarely a belief that they physically took on themselves. It's something and a situation that they've been in where [00:25:00] someone's actions or behaviors made them believe something about them.
You know, you could even say, I can love them. And leave this where it is. Right? That's what boundaries actually are when you look at them. That's what boundaries actually are. And when you do this often enough, I want you to practice this as if you are at the gym. You know, literally like this was a rep at the gym.
When you do this often enough, your brain starts to learn that disagreement isn't danger. And then you can hold what you believe to be true and still be connected with that person, for example. I mean, if it gets to the point where they are literally batting you down, then you can have a conversation with yourself and with them.
The third thing I want you to do is I want you to anchor your energy into safety so growth feels wobbly when you are Subconscious doesn't see the expansion as safe. That's why people [00:26:00] self-sabotage. That's why people come and see me. You want success, but your body still believes that success equals pressure or judgment or loss.
I get that a lot. Like, you know, who am I going to become or will people still like me? Will people still love me? Right? Your work is to show your subconscious that expansion is safe. Start really small. You know me love a micro action. So each day do one thing that kind of edges your comfort zone just slightly.
Maybe it's posting something that you've really wanted to say kind of honestly, or an opinion, or share a win, or ask for help or raise your prices. Or just fucking say no, right? And then notice, oh, I did that. I didn't die. I'm safe, right? Anchor it in physically. It's safe for me to expand. It's safe for me to expand.
It's safe for me to be seen. It's safe for me to hold [00:27:00] more. It's safe for me to be judged. I'll be okay. You know, you are teaching your subconscious through the evidence. That's how the subconscious works. The more evidence you build, the less resistance you feel. And actually if we look at beliefs that are not serving you anymore, it's because you've built a fucked ton of evidence around that belief, right?
So we can do it with other things. Confidence is built by proving safety, so keep doing that. Keep working towards that because I know how much you want this and I know you're not willing for people to, to get in your way. Right. The last two things that I want us to look at is refining really what belonging means to you.
Okay. So as I said right at the beginning, belonging is such a powerful driver that we will do absolutely anything to keep, even if it means putting ourself to the detriment of it, right? Even if that means. That [00:28:00] we hide or that we don't grow as quickly as we want to, or we keep saying yes to something that we really wanna say no to.
So what I want this practice to be is about bringing belonging to you. So making it internal rather than it staying external. So when you feel that old pattern kick in. Whether it's toning yourself down, whether it's explaining yourself, whether it's like this absolute need to be liked, that was one that I really had to do work on.
I want you to pause and I want you to remind yourself like, I belong here. I belong here, and that is okay. What does belonging feel like to you? And if it is so external at the moment, that's the work that we need to do because the moment that you stop needing others to validate your growth, you create this new kind of belonging.
It is so rooted in self-trust that you will walk into rooms differently. You will [00:29:00] post differently, you will sell differently. You are not. Performing all the time for connection or love or to be good enough or to get the teacher's approval, you are just leading from it. And then that shift literally changes everything.
Literally changes everything, especially the self-trust. That's the biggest bit that I see with my clients. And then lastly, as we've said, protect your bubble. Protect your bubble, and that is just through choice. We're not controlling anyone else, right? Protecting your energy doesn't mean that you have to go and live on a fricking island, or you have to avoid anyone who doesn't vibe high, right?
It just means that you are being intentional with what you allow to influence you. What you allow to influence your inner world. So your subconscious, like I said, is absorbing body language, stories, [00:30:00] energy, tone, frequency. So every conversation, every scroll hole that you fall down into, every environment leaves an imprint.
So ask yourself, who do I feel grounded around? Who helps me like fully be in me? What spaces are expanding me? And keep those close and equally be willing to lovingly distance yourself from spaces that drain you. Again, it's not from judgment at all. It's from this like, this is where I'm growing to.
Protect your fricking garden. You're growing it, you're growing it, you're watering it every day. So just start to notice when your bubble is protected by choice, not by control, and you will start to feel more open. You will start to feel more yourself, but know that [00:31:00] actually your energy finally has room to expand without this interference.
But know also that you can be around those type of people and still protect your own with, like I said, really choosing what you take on, who you listen to and what you make it mean. Yeah. That's when we can stop reacting and we can start leading again. So these five practices. Habits. Yes, but actually from a subconscious point of view, they are identity anchors.
They tell your subconscious, I'm the kind of person who leads myself even when others don't understand. Even when people don't understand, even when people judge, that's where your power lives, right? That's when you can connect to this. Self-trust and you have that reference point and you anchor safety in your [00:32:00] body.
You redefine what belonging means. Usually belonging for you is just so you could feel good enough, right? It is so, so powerful, and I still work on this every day. I do, I do. But this truly, for me, was one of the biggest things that I did in my business. The world around you still stays noisy, but actually how you take things on and what your mind make things mean becomes very quiet, which allows your path to be clearer.
It allows you to keep moving, to keep growing, and you can lead without fighting your want to be loved or needed or good enough. Okay. If this has resonated with you, I want you to know that you cannot shrink yourself into being understood, and actually, you don't need everyone to believe in you before you do.
They will always, always, always be people who [00:33:00] don't get it. They will always be people who can't see what you see. They will always be people who love you but can't meet you there, and your job moving forwards from today. Isn't to make them understand your job is to keep expanding until your certainty in yourself becomes louder than the doubt that they're projecting on you.
So protecting your mindset. Key and it, and it's not about pretending that you don't care. It's actually about caring more about what you think and what that is. That's where the power truly, truly lives. So this week, choose your map, protect your bubble, and remember that you actually don't need to be understood to be unstoppable.
E. So if this episode has landed with [00:34:00] you, I want you to share it on stories. Um, so many people ask me about this, so I know that this topic, like this exact topic is going to be so helpful for so many people, and your share might be exactly what someone else needed to hear today. So share it, share away.
Um, I hope it landed for you, and I will see you on the next episode.
More about The Subconscious Expert:
Welcome to The Subconscious Expert, the podcast where your subconscious becomes your one-way ticket to the mind-blowing results you desire in your life and business! I’m your host, Rebecca Haydon, The Subconscious Expert who went from being stuck in victim mode to a multi 6 figure business owner. Each week, I will be giving you the subconscious tools and techniques so you can become the woman who is living out her vision with a life and business that she is truly OBSESSED with. I have said it before, and I will say it 100 times again: "Your business can't outgrow your mindset, and if you want to grow your business, it always starts with growing your subconscious." So let's dive into the subconscious breakthrough you so deeply deserve!