“A lot of times, as women, we’re having to really read the room to look around and say, “How much can I be myself? Can they take the full power of me? Am I going to be too much for this room?” We learn to be chameleon-like and people-pleasing and know we have to walk on this tight rope, playing the game of life and what a woman’s place is.”

Our society has LOTS of messages for women daily. Messages like “be attractive but not too attractive,” “be smart but not too smart,” “be confident but not too confident,” “be visible but not too visible,” “go after your goals and dreams but be an amazing mother and beautiful wife in the process.” 

These messages are so common and delivered in such subtle, sneaky ways, they are rarely questioned.  

SO, CONSEQUENTLY, THESE MESSAGES LIVE DEEP IN OUR SUBCONSCIOUS MINDS AND WREAK HAVOC IN OUR LIVES BY SHOWING UP IN WAYS LIKE:

• Not being in touch with our desires
• Burning ourselves out by overworking
• Feeling scared of our power
• Putting ourselves down
• Worrying what others think of us
• Not trusting our intuition
• Not honoring our cycles
• Acting/thinking/being more like a man, especially at work
• Choosing realism over our dreams
• Not being creative or relaxed in life
• Feeling/being worth less than a man
• Shrinking
• Experiencing imposter syndrome

…and so much more

If you’re a woman who experiences any of the things I list above, this episode is for you. Tune in as I teach you the common thoughts women believe that hold them back from accomplishing their goals and feeling fulfilled in the process.

This exercise is one of my clients’ favorites because it’s powerful to find these beliefs. You don’t want to miss it. Listen now via the link at the top of this page.

POST EPISODE RESOURCES:

Full Transcript

This is the Become an Unstoppable Woman podcast with Lindsay Preston Episode 114,
Common Women’s Beliefs.

[music]

Welcome to the Become An Unstoppable Woman podcast, the show for goal-getting, fearfacing women for kicking ass by creating change. I’m your host, Lindsay Preston. I’m a wife,
mom of two, and a multi-certified life coach to women all over the world. I’ve lived
through enough in life to know that easier doesn’t always equate to better. We can’t fear
the fire, we must learn to become it. On this show, I’ll teach you how to do just that. Join
me as I challenge you to become even more of the strong, resilient, and powerful woman
you were meant to be. Let’s do this.

[music]

Hi there, Ms. Unstoppable. Welcome to another episode of the show. As always, so grateful
to be in your listening ears. It’s always a privilege. Now, I must give a quick shout-out to
those who are leaving a review for the show. Just in case you don’t know this, when we hit
100 episodes of the podcast, we created a podcast book. This podcast book took all the
transcripts from all those hundreds and hundreds of hours of episodes.

My admin, Rachel, went through each episode and created a one-page summary of that
episode so that you can quickly just see the basic step-by-steps from each episode and
implement that content in your life so that you can get better results and bigger results
and more results in your life. I must admit this book has helped me out even in my own
life so much like when I’m feeling something, I’ll go and I’ll flip to that page of like, “Okay,
how do I deal with disappointment again? Oh, yes. Step 1, step 2, step 3.”

Many times when we are in our emotional brain, our logic goes out the window and so that
book can help you get back to the logical steps of how to get through something like I
said, disappointment, or if you’re making a change in your career, there’s an episode on
that, or if you’re trying to solve any problem, you can go to that episode and look at that
content. The book is awesome. You get it for free after you leave a review for the show. All
you have to do is go on your podcast player, leave a review there, or you can go on my
Facebook page and leave a review on my Facebook page.

Just search for Lindsay, L-I-N-D-S-A-Y, and then Preston, P-R-E-S-T-O-N, over on Facebook.
Find me, leave a review, take a picture of it and then submit it to lindsayepreston.com/100.
There’s always a link in the show notes if you just want to go there, and then from there
you’ll get a digital copy of the book that you can download and you can go get printed on
your own.

If you’re a current client, you get the book printed sent to you for free. Very cool. I’m so
happy that y’all are taking advantage of that. If you haven’t taken advantage of it, go do it.
That book is truly a study guide for life, my friends, and all you have to do is leave a review
for the show. It costs us a lot of money to make that book. Some people were like, “I can’t
believe you’re giving that book away for free,” but I want you to have it. I want you to
create great results in your life.

I also want to give a shout-out. Every week or so I get an email from a company called
Chartable. It tells me what charts I’m on all around the world. Recently, the podcast was
on the charts at number 96 in Poland. How cool is that? It’s so fun to see different people
around the world that are listening to the show. Shout out to everybody in Poland that’s
listening, so happy to have you here.

All right, let’s talk about this week’s topic. We’re going to talk about common women’s
beliefs, I believe. Is that what we’re calling it? I went back and forth. Is it patterns, beliefs?
Let’s see. What are we calling these beliefs? This is actually an exercise that I do with my
clients in week four of the current coaching process is we sit down and we look at what
are some beliefs they may have as women. I present them with a page of common
women’s beliefs. I say, “These are the things that women commonly struggle with, and you
tell me which ones resonate to you.”

A lot of clients tell me, just seeing that slide on that one video, that one training, and that
one week of coaching, where we coach for many, many months was life-changing. Today,
I’m going to share that with you of what these common women’s beliefs are, and these
common patterns are, because remember, our behaviors, our actions, and our results come
from our thoughts. If we are believing certain things about the world, then we are going to
create those things in the world.

This is why as women, we tend to struggle collectively with similar issues because we
have similar belief systems that are causing these patterns for us. A lot of what I’m taking
today goes back to a book that I’ve referenced often on this show. I actually had a whole
podcast episode about it called Patriarchy Stress Disorder. I interviewed the author, Dr.
Valerie Rein.

I’m going to link it in the show notes in case you missed that episode because it’s a great
supplement to this one. Her book is a great supplement to what I’m talking about today
because she really detailed in even more about how the patriarchy has impacted us as
women to have these certain beliefs and these certain patterns. I’m not going to get into
all the patriarchy stuff today, but it is very interesting. Instead, again, we’re just going to
focus on the things that are happening with women.

I’m going to talk about each one of these beliefs and patterns in-depth. We’re going to
cover a good amount. Now, before we get into all of that, I talked about how patriarchy
impacts us, I talked about how our thoughts create our results, but there’s one other thing I
want to talk about here.
Not only do we tend to have similar belief systems as women, just because society tends
to teach us common beliefs that we need to have as women, but we also have something
called epigenetics at play.

Though, in case you’re new around here and you don’t know what epigenetics are,
epigenetics is the research that has been done that shows that only do we pass on DNA to
our children of how we look and things of that sort and how we behave in some ways, but
also trauma. We pass that in our genes. For many thousands of years, women have been
oppressed, and in that oppression, women have experienced trauma.

If we’re just looking at today’s trauma, that many women experience are sexual trauma. It’s
all coming forth now with this Me Too moment. I think it’s something like one in four, one
in five women have experienced some sort of sexual trauma. They’re a lot. With that, then
if we are not dealing with that trauma and healing it in our own body, we are likely
passing that on to our children.

Not only are we looking at our own lives of like, “Where did this come from of these beliefs
and these patterns, where could this have come from in my life?” We’re having to look at
our moms and our grandmas, and so on and so forth of what has happened. Now, I’m not
going to get into all the epigenetic research here. You can go look that up if you’re like,
“Man, that sounds like a load of shit,” because my husband, a couple of weeks ago, I
brought up epigenetics and he’s like, “I don’t know about the epigenetic stuff, Lindsay.” I’m
like, “Dude, go look it up.”

If you haven’t explored any of that, it’s fascinating stuff. Again, let’s focus in on women’s
beliefs. For a lot of women, they are past the beliefs of things like, “Be seen and not
heard.” This is a common one beyond women. It’s for a lot of children, especially if we had
parents in the boomer generation and beyond.

Before that, that was a big thing, that children are seen and they’re not heard, which it
serves a purpose at some points, but then as we get adults, we carry this belief on. We
aren’t speaking our truth, we’re not standing up for ourselves, we’re just numbing out in
our lives, and it’s happening a lot with women.

Another thing with women it’s like, “Okay, we want you to be sexy and we want you to be
attractive, but you can’t be too attractive.” Many times as women, we’re trying to figure out
what is the delicate balance here of being pretty and sexy, but not too pretty and sexy. It’s
a very, very tricky balance because everybody has their own opinions on it.

For some people, it would be like, “Okay, you can show a little bit of cleavage and a little
bit of leg.” For other people, they’re like, “Whoa, that’s way too much for me.” For other
people, they’d be like, “You can walk around naked. I’m totally cool with that.” It’s really
hard. We’re always kind of walking on eggshells it seems, like as women of, can we do
this? Is this appropriate? Is this going to trigger anybody?

I even see this with my daughter’s school. She goes to a Christian school, which I know for
some of you may be shocking because I’m not super-Christian, but it just happens that she
goes to the school. They have some of this stuff with women. They’re like, “Girls, you can’t
wear athletic pants to school.” She wears uniform most days, but when they have freedress day, they’re not allowed to wear like yoga pants unless they have shorts over it. The
shorts even then have to be fingertip length.

I remember this as a kid growing up too. I had very, very strict dress code that was placed
on me, and I was in public school, where the boys, yes, they had their dress code, but it’s
like they could easily find clothes that would be appropriate. For us as girls, just shorts
alone was hard to find something that was in dress code at school.
What we’re saying there indirectly when we are putting girls under the strict dress codes is,
“Girls, it’s your responsibility to not be too sexy or attractive around boys and other people
because how they react to your body and your looks is your responsibility.” You best
believe I’ve told my daughter.

I’m like, “Listen, we’ll play the rules of this game at school and stuff, but it is not your
responsibility for however a boy reacts to you. Yes, you want to present yourself in a
professional way, and that how you feel is representative of you. Absolutely, but also it’s
like, you can play with this and if you want to do certain things in your life and wear
certain things in your life, it’s not, again, your responsibility of however people take that.”

I think as women we just put all of this on our plates of how it’s our job to take on
everybody else’s BS of whatever they think about us. Looks is one example of that. Another
one is be outspoken, or be loud, or be confident, but don’t be too confident. Don’t be too
visible. Again, it’s like, where do we meet these middle grounds? The research has shown
that men they speak up for themselves and they’re looked at as confident and direct and
bold and it’s attractive. Women they speak up, it’s looked at as bitchy and over the top and
not ladylike.

Again, as women, we’re walking this really delicate balance of where do we fall here?
Because the perception of women has changed so much, especially in the past 100 years,
and even just the past 50 years, there are so many different places that many people’s
brains are at with women. You talk to people who have done a lot of work around
feminism and a woman’s role and they’ll be like, “Yes, girl you speak up.” They do not feel
intimidated by women who really speak their mind.

Then, you go and you talk to other people who haven’t done work to change their beliefs
on women because they were passed down. Again, these beliefs and these epigenetics that
women have these certain roles and do these certain things, and they haven’t gone into
consciously change that. Many times people would even say like, “Oh, they live in this
1950s mentality.”

It’s tricky because it’s like, depending on the culture where you’re at and who you’re
around, some women are viewed as like, “Oh, that’s great and that’s awesome, they’re
confident, they’re speaking up and they’re standing up and doing all the things.” Then,
other environments it’s not appropriate and it’s too much and it’s not ladylike.

I feel like a lot of times as women we’re having to really read the room a lot and we’re
having to look around and say, “Okay, how much can I be myself in essence? Can they take
the full power of me? Am I going to be too much for this room?” We learn to be
chameleon-like and people-pleasing and know of we have to walk on this tight rope, in
essence, of playing the game of life and what a woman’s place is. We’ll just kind of walking
outside the boundary a little bit, like stepping off that tight rope from time to time and
getting a little fancy with it or push the boundary a little bit.

For the most part, men don’t have this. Men have where the doors are open for them. Men
can be anything and everything they want to be. Granted, of course, they’re going to have
some of this too, especially if they’re men of color, but for the most part, it’s like men just
get to be whatever they want to be and women are so kind of figuring it all out and having
to blast through a lot of barriers to get to this place.

The other thing I want to touch on here if we’re looking at epigenetics again of how
women have been oppressed for many, many centuries is for many women at certain
points in history, if you were too powerful and if you spoke your truth too much, you were
burned at the stake, or you were beheaded, or God forbid, nobody wanted to marry you.
This is something that still goes on today even the ’50s and ’60s. “My God, you can’t be
that outspoken, little Suzie. No one’s going to want to marry you. You have to be weak and
passive and all the things.”

I feel like I still experience this a lot in own life is being myself and really being this
empowered, God, I guess kind of feministy woman of like, equality, yes, yes, yes, but then
in my marriage of, “Okay, how do I balance that? How do I allow him to lead in certain
ways and us to be a partnership without me taking on this bad-ass bitch mentality and
really blending those two together?” It’s tricky.

I feel like my husband, he just shows up and he’s just my husband. I’m having to figure out
all this mindset stuff of all these beliefs that have been going on in my head to cause
these certain problems in my life of being too much or not enough, and who am I
authentically, and who’s going to be able to understand me and take in the room around
me.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of what women experience. I want to go deeper with this
and I want to give you even more common behaviors due to women’s patterns. Now, I’m
going to really touch on these behaviors because there may be a variety of different beliefs
that have led you to this behavior.
Your job, eventually, here in a bit after we talk through all these patterns is to find what
your beliefs are that have led you to this pattern.

Again, I want to start with more of the patterns so that you can see very clearly and easily,
do I do this or do I not do this because seeing our actions is so much easier than digging
deeper and looking in our mind of what are these beliefs that are going on here. This is
easier. It is.

Here’s the first common women’s pattern, not being in touch with your desires. I encounter
this a lot with clients. They come to me, especially if they have been extremely successful
in a corporate career because, in essence, they have taken on many aspects of being a man
or traditionally in a masculine energy for that’s how the corporate world tends to be.
They’re like, “Lindsay, I don’t even know what I desire anymore.” I’m like, “Okay, let’s add
that one to the list, and of something that we have to work through.”

As women or anybody really, you want to be in touch with those things. You want to know
what you’re desiring because otherwise, you’re like a numbed-out zombie version of
yourself and that is likely what’s leading you to listen to a podcast like this one or maybe
eventually do coaching with me is there’s something inside of you that’s like, “Oh, I want
more. I want more fulfillment. I want more peace and happiness and all those things.” It
goes back to you’re not in touch with your desires and yourself. Ask yourself, am I in touch
with my desires, yes or no?

The other thing, another woman’s pattern, is burnout and overworking. For a lot of women,
we have a lot on our plates and we do a lot. It’s so funny because I just got off a call with a
client and we were working through a pattern that she has in her life. She’s like, “Oh,
Lindsay, I just feel like I’m back in this pattern of being this badass bitch persona again
and I’m so mad at everybody and I’m overworking and I’m burned out.” As we dug deeper, I
was like, “Okay, what’s the belief there for her?” It was, “Everything is on my plate.”
When we unearthed that, I was like, “This one belief that everything is on your plate is
causing you to overwork.” That was her belief. You may have something different. I know,
for me, when I get into a pattern of burnout and overworking, it’s I’m not doing enough.
That’s what leads me to this overworking thing. It goes back to, for a lot of women,
impostor syndrome. That’s a great episode to listen to of the show if you haven’t listened
to it, I’ll link it in the short notes.

Impostor syndrome happens to many women. They don’t think they’re as good as maybe
some of the roles that they’ve been given. I get in this, as I said, of maybe I’m not as good
of a coach as I think I am, even though logically on paper, it’s like, okay, my clients have
gotten really good results, they’re really happy. I’ll just start to spin in that sometimes and
I have to really watch myself like that. Again, if you’re overworking or you’re feeling burnt
out or you have patterns where you get like that, that’s a woman’s pattern to add to your
list of beliefs that we need to find here in a bit.

Another woman’s pattern is feeling scared of your power. Again, this is something I so
relate to. Anytime I have an uplevel, it feels like someone is choking me and I will get
coached on it with a coach and I’ll just say, “I’m so excited and I’m so glad that I’ve had
this uplevel, but I’m also feeling really scared of the amount of power that I have.” It just
feels so foreign.

My husband doesn’t go through this stuff. I don’t know of any other man. They have these
uplevels and then they’re just golden. They’re like, “Yes, look at me. This is awesome.” I
feel like, for me, it goes back to epigenetic stuff of like, “Why would I feel like I’m being
choked every time I step into my power more and just get really, really scared of it?” It just
doesn’t make sense, but this is a common thing for women.

Another woman’s pattern is obsessing or putting down your physical appearance. So many
different beliefs can lead to this pattern because society feeds us this shit all day long,
wrinkle creams, fat creams, Botox, hair products, and I’m not above it. I dye my hair. I get a
little Botox here and there, I do my skin products, but also, I’ve gotten to a place where I
don’t beat myself up on the way I look. I stop it and it retracts.

Back in the day before I knew this mindset stuff and knew this was a woman’s pattern that
could change, I thought it was normal to sit around and beat myself up about how I looked
because everybody else around me was doing it. That’s how we bonded as women it seems
like, of like, “Oh, my God, look at my butt.” “Oh yes, well your butt looks tight, look at this,
look at that, look at this.”

If you’re in a place where you’re putting yourself down there, there is some work for you to
do with women’s beliefs, my friends. That does not have to be a normal behavior for you.
You can live beyond that. It’s so funny because a lot of my clients, as I work with them,
they will find that they just don’t relate to some of their friends as much anymore because
their friends are still just stuck in beating themselves up and beating other people up and
gossiping.

My clients are like, “I’m not there anymore. I’ve done the work to not be there anymore. I
so want them to get coaching, but they’re not open to it, or whatever the reason.” They just
find themselves wanting to evolve past that. For a lot of women, they just don’t see past
that, but just know there is a beautiful life on the other side of you beating yourself up,
especially with your appearance, and it is so nice on this side, my friend.

Another women pattern is worrying what others think of you. This is a big one. We’re
sitting around thinking, “What does so-and-so think of me or what does this person think
of me?” You’re in this boat of worrying what other people think about you. It’s so funny
because I used to do this big time. Here’s what I would do. I would post something on
social or I would write an email, and I would check it, and maybe I would double-check it
again. This is before I knew how to really speak from my authentic truth and all of that. I
would just write these things.

If I was writing an email, I would write it and then I would read back the email as if I were
that person, and I would think, “How is this person going to interpret it?” Then, I’d be like,
“Okay, maybe I need to edit this or need to edit this or need to edit this.” Most times, it was
just an email of just shooting the shit kind of stuff. I would email my cousin I remember,
and I would think sometimes of, “How is my cousin going to interpret this?” Then, I would
change things on that because I was really worried about how she thought about me.

If I was posting a social post, I would think about a couple of people who would interpret
it a certain way, and then I’d post it, and then I would still think about even more people,
“Well, how is so-and-so going to interpret this, and this person, and this person, and this
person?” There were times that I would then go and delete a post because I think, “Oh, I
forgot about so-and-so.” They’re going to really like, “Oh, judge me for this and this and
this,” and I’d sit there and worry about it. How silly?

I tell my clients, we do a tool called The Model where we’re looking at how our thoughts
create our feelings and all that. Sometimes they’ll be like, “Oh, I’m just so worried what my
so-and-so friend is thinking about me.” I just coached a client on this, so it’s top of mind.
I’m like, “Get out of her model, get out. Those are her thoughts. You cannot control her
thoughts. Just worry about you. Don’t even worry, just think about you and think about
what are my thoughts to drive my actions and that’s all you need to worry about. Their
interpretation of you is their work to do not yours now.”

Do we want to be sensitive? Absolutely. I’ve learned this a lot as I’m working with my antiracism coach is that before I do certain posts that may be triggering to certain audiences, I
do look at the lens of, okay, what are black women, generally speaking, going to interpret
this as, and what are Asian women and all of that, and making sure I’m at least just looking
at their lens of the world so that I can be more inclusive, but then I’m still checking in, and
this is work I’ve done with my anti-racism coach again of is this authentic to me still? If it
is, yes, go ahead.

I might pass people off, but as long as it’s authentic to me and I’ve at least just considered
the lens of different women outside of being a white woman, then I’m good, and
everything else I just need to let go of and not worry about it. Again, worrying what others
think of you, it’s a big one for a lot of women.

Another woman’s pattern is not shining or showing your full talents, in essence, you’re
shrinking. You just aren’t showing up as your full self in life, and this can be a hard one. I
feel like at work I show up more in my full authentic self, as a parent I do, in my marriage,
it’s like I’m still working on it a little bit, and in just my normal everyday living, especially
with COVID, I don’t feel like I really do that in my day-to-day life. I think part of that is I
haven’t been around a lot of people, so I haven’t been able to work on it, but I definitely
have been shrinking and shining for many years.

I did a post recently on social media that said, I didn’t tell people in my personal life that I
was a life coach for a long time. I just played it off as I was a stay-at-home mom because I
just didn’t really want to go there. I talked about some beliefs that I had that made me
make that choice but really at the end of the day, it was like, I just didn’t want to show my
full talents.

I feel like sometimes my brain says, “Lindsay, you’re just too much for people and you need
to really shrink yourself because you’re just going to be too much for the room.” I do this, I
find with men. It’s like, “Oh, I don’t want to be too much for the men.” I tell my husband
sometimes, “I feel like I’m going to outgrow you. I’m just going to be too much for you.”
This is just a common thing that I’m continuously working through.

Even with women, it’s like women who haven’t done mindset work, and then I’m in the
room with them and they’re talking about things that I’ve already moved past. Part of me
is like, “Oh, just shrink, Lindsay, just shrink, just play the game, just pretend that you still
care about how you look and all of that, and you’re still in the drama of whatever the
drama they’re in.” I have to catch myself and realize and be like, “No, I’m not doing that
anymore.” Just catch yourself when you’re doing that.

If you’re thinking, acting, or being more like a man, that can be a woman’s pattern. It’s a
really tricky situation here because sometimes we’re just presented with the way things
are in life, for example, work in the working world. We’ve just seen for so long how men
work, and they have a really great system for them and it works. They’ve in essence built a
lot of the corporate worlds and a lot of different entities. As women, we’re stepping into
these different entities and roles and it’s a masculine influence most times. We’re having
to ask ourselves of, how do we fit in here?

Sometimes we don’t even know what’s us and what’s not us because it’s just been so
ingrained in us from a very young age of, this is just how the world works. It’s not until we
really strip away those layers of like, “Man, yes, I don’t really want to wear this thing or I
don’t really want to present myself in this way because that’s just not who I am. I just felt
like I needed to do that in order to look more professional or be taken more seriously.”
I did a post on this on social media a couple of months ago where you can see these
photos of the progression of my business. At the very first photoshoot I had, I was in a
button-down and a blazer, and granted my hair was curled, but I looked very more
masculine. Then, the most recent photoshoot I’ve had, I was in a really flowy dress on a
bridge and I was dancing.

I talked about, I was like, “As I’ve grown in my business, I’ve stripped away some of these
layers that I have to be more masculine to be successful in my business.” It’s been so eyeopening because I would have never thought before of, “Oh, that’s not really me,” because
again, it just felt like such a part of me because that’s just how I thought I was because it’s
just been so ingrained in me.

Another woman’s pattern is not trusting your intuition. As women, we are very intuitive. It’s
one of the gifts that we have. Now, not all women have this, I’m generalizing here, but
especially if you have taken the Myers-Briggs assessment and you have N as one of your
letters, so you get four letters in that assessment. It’s either E or I, N or S, F or T, and F or J.
A lot of women end up in the N bucket, especially the women that I work with and I’m in N
as well. That means we’re intuitive. Even if you don’t have an N, it doesn’t matter, you’re
still an intuitive being.

It’s part of our feminine power is what I’ve learned over the years. That’s a whole another
topic. Trusting your intuition is so important and this is what I’m working on with my
clients all the time is like, “Trust yourself, trust yourself, trust yourself.” What I’m doing is
I’m showing them data from past decisions as we’re working together and current
decisions of, “Yes. Great. We coach through all these things, but you knew from the start
where you wanted to go. Trust it.” We’re building that muscle.

It kills me when I see women who are not trusting their intuition because again, that’s a
superpower, but because in our society we’ve looked at logic and fact and analytics as a
way to go– When you come in the room and you’re like, “Okay, well, why are you making
this decision, Lindsay,” if I’m like leading the meeting, and I’d be like, “I don’t know, I don’t
have the data. It just feels right. This is what my intuition is telling me.” People would be
like, “What? We’re just going to move forward based on your intuition with no data. This is
stupid. This is wrong. This is bad.”

Granted, maybe in some ways, I’m not saying it’s all good or all bad here, but it would be
seen as crazy in a lot of circles, but many times we know where we need to go. Many
people who have been massively successful, you ask them, “What has been your secret to
success?” They’re like, “I just trusted myself. I trust my intuition.” I feel like in my own life
with my success story, and I talk about this in my bonus episode of My Five Best and Worst
Decisions, in essence, my five best decisions were when I trusted myself the most.
That’s what led me on this path to having the business I have today and the life that I have
today because I knew deep down what was right for me, but I let other people talk me out
of that all the time. Once I started to trust that intuition, man, did life start to feel a lot
better. I started to encounter a lot less problems.

Another woman’s pattern and this is one I’ve been working on a lot in my life is not
honoring your cycle. I’ve been reading a book called Period Power. I think her name is
Maisie Hill who wrote it. I hope to have her on the show one day. The book is powerful. I’m
having to read it in doses of just a couple of pages and then integrate it because it’s blown
my damn mind. Maisie is talking about your cycle.

Of course, I’ve heard this stuff from other people, but Maisie’s book just really has hit it
home for me in a way that allowed me to understand of every month we have a Spring
week and the Summer week, and then a Fall week and a Winter week. During our Fall
week and our Winter week, our Winter week is when we have our period, and our Fall week
is leading up to our period, we just don’t have as much energy. Yet, in our society, it’s built
around the patriarchy of go, go, go, go, go, do, do, do, do, do, because men don’t have a
cycle as much.

We’re led to this standard of go, go, go, do, do, do, whereas women, in essence, our perfect
world would be where we work more in our Summer and our Spring. Then, we start to fade
off a little bit in our Fall, and then our Winter, we take a couple of days off and we’re really
just shedding and on our periods.

Granted, that may not be where you want to go, but just being aware of your cycle and
how your cycle impacts you is huge. It has been so huge. I’m just doing this a couple of
months now and really seeing how my cycle impacts me. It’s just allowed me to shed a
whole new layer of beliefs that I need to let go of.

Another woman’s pattern is not feeling creative or relaxed. If you’re just uptight all of the
time because again, we’re in a patriarchy where it’s like, “Don’t trust your intuition. Don’t
be creative. Let’s look at facts and logic.” Two, you’re in this space, in essence, of this world
that’s built for men and so you can’t be relaxed and be yourself because you’re not a man.
You’re walking on pins and needles a lot of time, especially if we’re looking at the cycle
piece of, “I have to keep up, I have to keep going. I have to make this work and I have to
keep everything on my plate.”

We typically have more things on our plate than men do again, generally speaking, but
typically that’s the case. We’re go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, and then, of course, we’re
going to burn out. We’re not going to be creative and relaxed. We’ve just got to be on this
forward driving machine in essence of go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go.
Almost, it’s like, we can’t be relaxed because we can’t be found out. We can’t be found out
that I’m more tired than I want to admit. We can’t be found out that I’m trusting my
intuition instead of looking at logic. I can’t be found out that it’s really hard for me to keep
up with everything that’s going on. Crazy. Right?

Another woman’s pattern is not living in pleasure. If you’re not doing things that are in
touch with your desires like I talked about earlier, you’re not living in some sort of pleasure
or just being able to take in the pleasures of life. I’m just briefly working with a sex coach
and this is just from seeing her free stuff when I’m saying, working with her. She is really
talking about a lot of, that sex is really just about pleasure. It’s not about getting to the
orgasm. It’s not about actually doing the act of sex. It’s being able to soak in pleasure, and
as women, that can be really hard for us.

We have been really in doctrine again, in this world of women need to be responsible, it’s
all on their plate. Women and pleasure, oh my gosh, what is that about? I’m not even
talking about sexual pleasure of just like a woman loving her body and doing things that
feel good to her and moving in the way that she wants to move, and dressing the way she
wants to dress, and being who she wants to be and not just being the sign piece, in
essence, to a man who has to pick up all his pieces and take care of the home and take
care of all his emotional needs and all of that.

That’s how we’ve been taught, and so then pleasure gets on the back burner. Even if we do
look at sex, do men tend to really focus in on how am I going to pleasure women? No, it
tends to be very self-focused. Again, I’m generalizing here, but it tends to be me, me, me,
me, me, what can you do for me? Let’s face it. The parts that they’re given, it’s easier for
them to have pleasure with a penis. It’s just very direct and easy and open of like, “This is
what I do and I feel good.”

With a woman, there’s more involved there. For so many men, they’re like, “I never knew
about this thing called the clitoris. I didn’t know that.” I didn’t know that for a long time. I
had to figure that shit out. It’s not like we’re taught this stuff. Again, that’s all, we don’t
know how to live in pleasure, sexual and beyond.

Another woman’s pattern is feeling and being worth less than a man. This is perpetuated
in our society because women are currently paid less than men generally speaking. We
tend to have these beliefs of like, “We’re not as worthy as a man. We’re not worth as
much.” Another woman’s pattern is choosing realism over your dreams.

That is something that’s highly taught in our society of like, “Be realistic.” Again, sex and
data and all the things. That’s realistic, but if we’re trusting our intuition and living in
desire and pleasure, and being in dreams, oh my, that’s just too much. Then, what do we
do? We diminish ourselves. We shrink ourselves. We’re moderately, if not heavily unhappy
because we’re just choosing realism over what we want.

For the last two, I want to talk about women’s patterns is competition and comparison
with other women. If you find yourself doing that a lot, there is some women’s beliefs to
clean up. Finally, the last women’s pattern is not speaking up. If you are not speaking your
truth and you are not able to confidently speak your truth, there are some women’s beliefs
to clean up my friend. Hopefully, you have a list now of some women’s patterns that you
are doing. I know for some clients are like, “Lindsay, I have every single woman’s pattern
that you have listed on there.”

It can feel very defeating. I’m like, “Listen, girl, I was there too. I’m still working through
some of these.” It’s a lot. We’re handed a lot of crap. I know that’s a thought, but damn,
some days it just feels like a lot, but we’re going to get through this. We’re going to work
through them. I promise you, as you work through one, you’re going to see the benefit of it
and it’s going to inspire you to keep working through others. Just keep the hope alive that
you’re going to break through all of this stuff.

If I may say now of how are we going to then find the beliefs behind these patterns? What
I want you to do is just start to think about what are the beliefs I have that are leading me
to these patterns? Let’s just do an example together. If you are not trusting your intuition,
for example, what are the beliefs you have to allow you to not trust your intuition.
I gave you some examples earlier of intuition isn’t respected. Logic is better than intuition.
Intuition is silly. I can’t trust my intuition, it’s been wrong in the past. Those kinds of
thoughts, bring those to the surface because those are the thoughts that are leading you to
the result that you have of this woman’s pattern. You just have to look at those and bring
those forth. Now, if you know the tool of, The Model, which I’ve taught in many episodes. I
always link it back to the Solve Any Problem episode, if you don’t know The Model, go to
that one and I’ll teach you that.

Then, you need to start to think, “What can I shift this to?” If you want to trust your
intuition more, what thoughts do you need to think to get the result to trust your intuition
more? It may be just as simple as, “I trust my intuition. I trust my intuition, trust my
intuition.” Think of something that’s just out of your comfort zone that you can believe
that that’s hugely out of your comfort zone. You’ll know, if you write something down
that’s a new belief, and you feel like, “Oh, this feels like makes me want to throw up,” or, “I
just can’t believe this, you’ve gone too far.”

Again, you want to believe that you’re like, “I can believe this a little bit.” Now, if it’s
something that you’ve written down here of like, “I can’t trust my intuition, my intuition’s
been wrong in the past,” for example, and you’re like, “Lindsay, I can’t even get on board
with even thinking about trusting my intuition in any sort of anyway.” That means there’s
deeper healing work to do, and that is a huge sign that you need to hire me as your coach
or somebody else to do that feeling, dealing, and healing work to then be able to shift your
thoughts.

Sometimes it’s just a very easy thought, you can just shift it really easily of, “Whoa, okay, I
don’t think I can trust my intuition. That’s silly. Let’s change that.” Then, intentionally
going in, and every day start to tell yourself the new thought you want to think. Now,
again, you may have many women’s patterns that you’re taking away from today and you
may want to go and tackle all of them at one time, I encourage you not to do that.

Pick one, maybe two, and start working on those. Then, once you feel like, “Okay, I’ve made
progress on this,” you can then decide, “I’m going to make more progress on it,” or you can
add in other ones. Like I said, for me, I’ve really worked on many of these patterns over the
years but the honoring your cycle one is one I’m just getting started on. I’m still on my own
growth with this. It’s going to be a journey for you, and that’s okay. It’s a beautiful journey.
Hopefully, then, you’re going to go on this journey of not having these women’s beliefs
anymore with these women’s patterns. You’re going to usher in other women who are
going to be like, “Whoa, how did you overcome that? How did you do that?” You’re going to
say, “This is what I did.” You’re going to be able to help other women be able to let go of
these patterns because we’re all in this together, my friend. We’ve all got to do this as
women, and really just let this shit go so we can all stand.

I always tell my anti-racism coach, I’m like, “I want to be where all women are standing on
third base. We’ve got Black, White, Asian, Hispanic, all the things. All my ladies right next
to me on third base, we’re all in this together, we’ve all busted through all these patterns.
We’re like, “Damn, we did it.”

Our girls that are coming up behind us, don’t have to do the work that we did today. For
me, it just makes me so motivated to go on and do this work by just looking at my very
small realm of my own world of, “I’m going to do this work so I can help my daughter do
this work.” I don’t want to have her go through these patterns. I want to do the mental
work so then I can help guide her through that. Then, too, if you want to just look at it
selfishly, it’s great to work through these patterns.

You’re going to feel so much better, life is going to feel better. You’re going to get your
goals with more ease. This is why I always say, I help women accomplish their dreams of
feeling better than ever because we go and we bust through some of this stuff. I hope you
gained a lot from this episode today. I love recording it for you and make sure to go leave
a review for the show on your podcast player or on my Facebook page. You can get that
podcast book, but otherwise, I’ll see you in the next episode, my friends. Bye.

[music]

Hey there, Miss Unstoppable. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode. If you enjoyed
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In my nine-month simple success coaching system, I am going to walk you every single
step of the way to ensure that you get the goals and dreams that you want. The first step is
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started. As always, my friend, remember, you’re only as unstoppable as you believe you can
be, so believe in yourself. You got this.