Welcome to Part 1 of The Higher Self Habits Series. Today, we delve into the foundational stage of the Higher Self Habits Method: Awareness. Join us as we explore the profound power of intention and courage, and how they shape our path to lasting change.

The First Step in Solving Any Problem? Becoming Aware it Exists

In this episode, we unlock the secrets to sustainable transformation by integrating science and spirituality. The same framework explored in my upcoming book, Higher Self Habits, begin to discover how blending behavioral science, neuroscience, psychology, quantum principles, and timeless wisdom can revolutionize your approach to habits.

Key Takeaways for Transformational Habits from Stage 1 of the Higher Self Habits Method

• Intention as an Anchor: Learn why leading with intention is crucial for grounding and focus in habit formation.
• Understanding Limiting Beliefs: Explore how ancient brain patterns influence our behavior and discover strategies to override limiting beliefs.
• Emotional Addiction: Uncover the unconscious emotional dependencies holding you back and how to break free from familiar chaos.
• The Power of Action: Explore how habits shape your destiny and embrace the concept of compounding for gradual, sustainable change.

Why It Matters

By listening to this episode, you’ll gain invaluable insights into transforming your life from the inside out. Embrace a holistic approach to habit formation that honors your mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical well-being.

How to Tune In

Don’t miss out on this transformative journey! Listen to the full episode now on Apple Podcasts or Spotify (available below, too) to embark on a path of self-discovery and empowerment. Join us as we explore alignment and how to embody the person you aspire to be.

Ready to unlock your full potential and create lasting change in your life? Tune in to Part 1 of the Higher Self Habits Series and start your journey towards holistic habit transformation today!

Prefer Reading over Listening? Read the episode below!

Hello friends! Today is Part 1 of the Higher Self Habits Series where we discuss the first stage of the Higher Self Habits Method: Awareness.

Covering everything from the power of intention to overcoming fear with courage, this is an episode you won’t want to miss!

I’m really excited to bring you this series, which offers a high-level overview of the method I lay out in my upcoming book, Higher Self Habits, which will come out in May 2024. If you like what you hear, you can pre-order a signed copy by heading to alessiacitro.com/book.

In the intro to this series that dropped last week, I shared how I got into habits (spoiler alert – because I needed them), but I didn’t tell you why I went so far as to write a book on it.

Why Holistic Habits

There are a lot of wonderful books on habits out there that have helped me a ton, but they all focus on the behavioral aspect, not the holistic approach to transformation. Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself by Dr. Joe Dispenza is the closest to this – and I loved that book, by the way – but I would say it’s pretty advanced and I wanted to make it as accessible as I could.

So, what you can expect from this series and the book, and any of my coaching programs is that we are going to blend both science and spirit in a way that is easy to understand while still challenging you. We are spiritual beings having a physical experience, and we must tap into the deep reasons that resonate with us on a cellular and soul (soul-ular?) level, or our change won’t last.

We thus bring together behavioral science, neuroscience, psychology, basic quantum principles, and timeless spiritual wisdom to create a framework that addresses our mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical needs.

Where to Begin

So, how do we approach solving ANY problem? Developing awareness. Without the awareness of the problem or its roots, we’ll spin our wheels. We’ll treat the smoke; not the fire. If our problem is that we can’t get good habits to stick or bad ones to stop, the first question to ask is WHY? Specifically, WHY does changing this matter? What is my INTENTION in doing so?

I lead with intention because it’s an anchor. It keeps us grounded and focused. And because honestly, not all problems are worth solving. We have limited capacity and need to prioritize.

Once we know why solving the problem matters and we determine that it is, in fact, worth solving, we begin to explore factors perpetuating it.

Limiting Beliefs

I’m going to breeze through this first part because I did a whole episode on limiting beliefs two weeks ago and don’t want to be repetitive, but let me summarize the essence in one sentence: we have ancient brains that have not evolved from our cave-dwelling, tribal days to our current modern day, and the limiting beliefs you experience are your brain’s way of doing a damn good job at keeping you alive.

Knowing this fact will help you generate self-compassion with yourself and everyone else. We often think we can’t get out of our way because we are defective. In fact, it’s just the opposite. Your ancient brain is doing such a fine job at what it was built to do, that you need to override it.

A few ways to do this when fear and limiting beliefs pop up.

Transmuting Fear and Limiting Beliefs

The first is to bring awareness to it. When we go through life held back in this way, it just means our brain is on factory settings. We’re going to customize those settings to suit our needs, and bringing awareness to the fact that they CAN be changed is the first step.

Second, how do we change the settings? It starts with our beliefs. If you’re generally more negative than positive, how can you begin to shift that perspective by reframing your experiences and searching for a positive spin? In Napoleon Hill’s classic, Think & Grow Rich, he states several times that within every disadvantage, adversity, failure, or setback, therein lies an equal seed of advantage. Will you choose to find the advantage and blessing in everything that happens FOR you? Notice I didn’t say everything that happens TO you.

Changing our Thoughts

Beliefs in turn shift our thoughts. If you set an intention to shift your beliefs to ones that SERVE you, your thoughts will also begin to change.

Now that doesn’t mean it’s suddenly going to be all puppies and rainbows and ice cream in the six inches between your ears. You’re still going to have the negative internal chatter. Here’s a hot tip. Name the voice. Personify it. I named mine Pam. And my apologies to anyone listening with that name! This is extremely effective because it immediately shifts you into a state of observing the thoughts, and in doing so, it creates distance between you and the thoughts.

One of my longtime best friends, Elisa, put it to me this way after she got really into yoga and meditation. That stillness enabled her to step back and observe her thoughts as a waterfall, whereas before she had been standing under the waterfall, getting pummeled by it.

Shifting our Emotions

Once you begin to observe your thoughts and think more positive ones, you begin to focus on emotions. Are there specific emotions you are addicted to? Each emotion has its own chemical signature, which is what makes us feel different depending on the emotion we feel at any given time. This was a concept I hadn’t considered until reading Dr. Joe Dispenza’s Becoming Supernatural in Soul Sisters Book Club. By the way, shameless plug, we are reading it through March and you can join us free by visiting alessiacitro.com/book-club.

Addiction to Emotional States

So back to emotional addiction. Are there emotions you have unconsciously become chemically dependent on that aren’t doing you any favors? And I know some of you are probably calling bullshit but stick with me. I have an example that will demonstrate this. Think for a moment about an incredibly dysfunctional and/or toxic person you know. They probably cause a lot of drama, love being a victim, and chaos seems to follow them.

If you don’t know someone like this, congratulations. Let me know where I can mail your prize. For the rest of us who do, pause for a moment and consider why they’re like this.

The person I’m thinking of had a traumatic childhood in a highly dysfunctional home, and this became her baseline setting. Even though it’s far from ideal, these conditions are familiar, and so they’re confused as comfortable. So, throw someone like this into a happy family via marriage, for instance, and what do you think happens? They can’t deal with happiness and harmony because it causes psychological discomfort. Chaos is where they feel comfortable.

They can say they want to feel X, Y, or Z positive emotion, but their body and subconscious mind are not onboard, and will continue to keep them in a familiar hell instead of rising above to an unfamiliar heaven. And this is where the inner work comes in. You become aware, you change your beliefs, your thoughts, and you begin to try on NEW emotions that put your body into a state of coherence instead of familiar chaos.

Action: Titrate Your Changes

Next up is action. This is where habits come in. This is what determines your destiny. We are creatures of habit by default because if we had to consciously think about every action we took, we literally wouldn’t have the energy to do it. The brain loves going on autopilot and doing things without conscious thought. So, use it to your advantage. And we’ll talk more about this in two weeks during part 3: audit.

So, we’re aware we can change our factory settings. How else do we do so?

We must do it slowly, understanding that compounding is the 8th wonder of the world and our small changes will stack up. Gone are the days of all-or-nothing, go big or go home. That mentality is literally lying to you and keeping you stuck. It’s like telling a baby not to bother walking if it has to first build up the strength to sit up and crawl first. It’s absurd! But we do this ALL THE TIME. So become aware, and embrace doing things when you don’t feel prepared, ready, or worthy. You’ll figure it out along the way, and this will explode your confidence and resilience.

The Paradox of Modern Life

It’s a very paradoxical time to be a human being because on the one hand, we’re here with these old brains that haven’t evolved at the rate that modern life has. And yet, we’re now conditioned to instant gratification thanks to quantum leaps in convenience, like Amazon Prime, Doordash, etc. Actually, it just occurred to me – this is probably what makes the hardwiring of limiting beliefs so potent, particularly those tied to social cohesion. You’ve got the Amazon Prime expectations, intersecting with the highlight reel others are sharing on social media with ridiculous shit like making 5 figures their first month in business. So then if you aren’t experiencing overnight success, you think you must be a complete and utter failure, and you either hang it up or go into self-loathing. Or maybe I’m just projecting on you.

So we know we have neural architecture that is keeping us playing small. We know we need to intentionally upgrade our beliefs, thoughts, and emotions or we’ll have a snowflake’s chance in hell of lasting behavior change. And we know we need to get into tiny action, without expectations for overnight success. Easy peasy, right?!

Inner Work Gets to Feel Like PLAY

Look, they don’t call it inner work for nothing. Here I offer a perspective shift. What if the point of this game of life is to focus on who we are being while we play? I trust I win, and that we all will, and that’s just gravy. The point of the game is to PLAY! And the point of play is to have FUN!

So stop for a moment right here. What’s something that should be fun and joyful that you’re making too serious or that you’re not doing at all because you don’t think you’re ready or that you’ll be any good at it?

What is a creative exploit you could revisit? I bought a watercolor set a couple of years ago because I loved that as a kid. I painted a lion and let me tell you something. That son of a bitch was UGLY, but I wasn’t painting it to hang in a gallery – I was painting it for the PLEASURE OF IT!

What’s a dream you have right now that you’re holding off on because you’ve disqualified yourself, for any reason? If it’s there, it’s there for a reason. What is a TINY step you could take towards it today? Today as in, right fucking now?!

How did you like to move your body as a kid? Did you like to jump rope, do cartwheels, climb trees, or play tag? Go do that again – today! Playing tag solo might not be fun so recruit a friend, partner, or some kids.

You didn’t move your body as a kid to get swole or lean out. Why do you think you have to do it only for those purposes now? Do what feels GOOD! It’s good to feel good!

Next Week

Ok, I’m hopping off my soapbox for now but join me next week as we explore Part 2 of the Higher Self Habits Series: alignment: aligning to the person you aspire to be and how you can focus on being so that the doing takes care of itself!

Rate, Review and Share… and a Giveaway!

If you enjoyed this episode or got value out of it, please share it! Taking a screenshot and sharing to social is the best way to get the word out, and I’m also doing a weekly giveaway! For every five ratings the show receives each week, I will be giving away one signed copy of the book. Screenshot your rating and submit it to the link in the show notes to enter. The rating gets you one entry. To get five more entries, write a review, and to get five more entries, share to social and tag me @alessiacitro__.

Giveaway terms & conditions and link to enter are in the show notes, and I would appreciate it so much if this is a show you like and think more people need to hear!

I’ll see you back here next week for Part 2 of the Higher Self Habits Series. Until then, I’m sending love and blessings to you.