Letting go of Love Blocking Beliefs to Attract your Dream Partner with Mat Shaffer

We create this imprint of what we understand masculine and feminine relationship to look like, okay, from our relationship between our parents and also from our, from our watching our parents' relationship with each other and then our relationship with our individual parents, you know.

Welcome back to another episode on Into the Vortex with Aaron Doughty.

Love the name.

And it's kind of suiting. I'm here with my good buddy and relationship coach, empowerment coach for women, Matt Shafer.

What's up, guys? So happy to be here.

Yeah, I'm excited to have you on.

That's so cool.

We are in Tulum, Mexico right now at— on your— in your Airbnb, and it is freaking amazing. There's like an amazing view back here. And yeah, this is like— how magical has Tulum been for you so far?

It's honestly— I look at Tulum and I'm like, Tulum is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. I was like, I'm looking right into him and I'm like, this is literally heaven on earth. Like, what an incredible scene. I mean, it's paradise, truly. It really is.

Yeah, there's the, the, the ocean, the vibe. There's like almost a certain aesthetic here, you know, like even just like the clothes that we get and stuff like that. Yeah, you got your clothes shopping yesterday and stuff and got the hat.

Got to have— got to get the hat too.

Yeah, we got hats. Yeah, your— mine's there, yours is there.

The hipster sombrero. You got to have a hipster sombrero.

There's definitely a vibe out here and the energy out here, it's almost like, um, you know, like Sedona to me as like a vortex energy. I know you've been to Sedona many times and that's where, you know, moving my pretty much my whole trip to Sedona. Yeah. And then to me, Tulum is like another big vortex, you know, that you come to, to like elevate your vibration and stuff like that.

Well, because it naturally has a higher vibration point. Yeah. Then like a lot of other places— I grew up on the beach, right, in Florida, but the vibration on the beach here is on a completely different level than where I grew up, you know.

Yeah. I wonder why. Do you think maybe— I wonder if it's maybe like the Mayans?

I think it's that Mayan, that Mayan stamp, right, the energetic stamp that exists here because we're surrounded by ruins, right? Right.

It's just there's this ancient sort of energy energy here that you feel it.

It permeates, it permeates everything.

And it's— I think it's the same thing in Sedona because Sedona has like a lot of the Native Americans. And apparently in Sedona they used to do a lot of plant medicine there. From what I heard, it was like that was a place they, they went for that with the tribes and stuff. Uh, and that's why that energy that is there. And because you think about like a location has the energy of the civilizations that have been there before, the people.

Yeah, yeah. And I think, I think that really like a lot of times vibration comes down to people.

Yeah.

You know, so generationally, if it has a high vibe imprint, more high vibe people are gonna be drawn to that place, which is why Sedona continues to attract very high vibe people, and here as well, you know?

[Speaker] Wow, yeah, same thing. And I think that now more than ever, 'cause there's so much, one of the reasons we left, you know, we came here is to kind of get away from the craziness going on as well, and get into like a different energy. And right from driving in, like when we got here, we're here for a week, we got here 2 days ago, and we were driving in, I could just feel like that the resistance, and it's actually ironically enough, you know, we talked last night, there's, it's been bringing up stuff for me too. It's like my shadow, and like anytime we're around high vibration stuff, I find that it brings stuff kind of up. And you actually have an interesting, you know, and first off, just to preface this, this episode in general, yeah, the thing, you know, one of the main things we're gonna be talking about today are core beliefs and I know a lot of the work you do with the women that you, you help has to do with core beliefs around love and relationships.

Exactly.

Is that, is that right?

I absolutely love it. You know, I mean, I work with women like all over the world around this stuff because truly like beliefs and identity are core parts of relationships working or not working, you know? And we can only connect with other people to the extent that we're connected to and understand ourselves.

Wow.

And so, so much of the work I do with women is around you know, their inner world and their way that they perceive themselves. And that's all wrapped up in your beliefs, you know. So that's, that's, that's, that's the core of what I did.

And as women change their beliefs, they then change what they can allow or not allow into their life.

Yeah. What unlocks possibility.

Yes.

You know, as, as you work on your beliefs and how you see yourself and how you perceive what's possible for you, you know, more things open up. You know, the universe conspires in your favor truly as, as you start to shift. Your understanding of what you're worthy of, who you are, and you release often those old patterns and those old paradigms that were conditioned into you from your childhood and then throughout your, you know, relationship history that you had flowing out of that.

Wow.

Yeah, you know, yep.

And, and I think the interesting thing that we're going to get into eventually as well is attachment styles. I've been talking on my channel a lot about attachment styles. Oh yeah, we got the anxious attachment, the avoidant attachment, the secure attachment, And, um, that's something that I've made some videos about and talked about on the channel, but it'll be cool for us to kind of go back and forth. And I'd love to hear some of your perspectives on that.

I talk about it all day to my community and honestly with my clients and even with myself, you know, because I had to transition myself from anxious to secure through doing inner work. And that was really cool because I think a lot of people think their attachment style is a fixed static.

I know. Yeah, that, that's an interesting thing because I felt I felt that my attachment style has kind of changed as I change.

Exactly.

Right.

Yeah. Yeah. All of it, all of it's flexible. Your identity is flexible. You talk a lot about that, that your identity is fluid. Our beliefs are fluid and our attachment style, you know, I don't recommend that people intentionally try to change their attachment style because then you're sort of like trying to manipulate. If you're anxious attachment style and you're like, I'm going to be secure and you like go after it with that same sort of energy, you're not going to get there. But if you just do inner work as you heal and release those beliefs, release beliefs that are associated with your anxious attachment style, which often flows from trauma, you know, eventually you just find yourself naturally magnetizing towards secure attachment style, which is just really cool how you just shift.

That's awesome. I'm glad you said that too, because I think sometimes what we do is we might try to change and become more secure or even avoid it. Maybe we're tired of being anxious. Oh yeah, to attract somebody, we're like, oh, because what do they teach in like the pickup industry, for example, like when guys are learning how to pick up chicks Yeah, sometimes what they do—

neg them. You gotta neg them.

For those of you don't know, negging means— oh God, you go up to a chick, or—

he's a recovering pickup artist, is how he knows all this stuff.

But what they do is they go—

is there's books about it. Oh yeah.

Um, what they do is they, they make, you know, uh, a woman that normally probably has men coming up to her all the time, and what they do is they neg her. So they— he would say something to her that makes her feel less than good.

Yeah.

So that then her self-esteem goes down and no other guy treats her like that.

Yes.

So then she puts him on a pedestal.

It's a differentiator. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And really what that's doing is it's activating childhood wounds.

Yeah. It's just triggering her insecurity. It's destabilizing her identity, you know? Wow. And so—

The identity that many people see her as and put her on a pedestal.

Exactly. It's a conscious manipulation. Or the alternative strategy they use is they will, you know, identify the target, right? And then instead of talking to her, they'll talk to her friend and intentionally ignore her. Which also, you know, does the same effect, is meant to activate, which is all a form of manipulation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the other side of that, just because I mean I work with women, right?

Yeah.

There's so many, there's so many coaches out there that, that specifically preach nothing but leaning back. Like, if you're a woman, all you want to do is lean back, lean back, don't show too much, don't give them too much, you know, like keep, keep withholding, yeah, attention from that, from the masculine. And that, that creates the same thing.

That brings the guys to be anxious.

It creates guys to be anxious. It makes guys insecure. And guys make up this narrative, right, that women aren't interested because— or approachable. And so women oftentimes, they lean back so far that they put themselves on an island.

Wow.

And then the worst thing about that is, is that when you lean back so far that you're unapproachable, all the nice guys, all the, you know, like maybe a little bit insecure but good character men are not going to approach you. The only guys that are going to be willing to breach the wall and go to your island are the narcissists, the hyper-confident guys, the hunters who are there because they're playing a numbers game, right? And they're just going to talk to— and they don't care about getting rejected because they're just trying to put a notch in their bedpost, you know what I'm saying? And then those women create a story, oh, well, I keep leaning back, but all the guys I attract are, you know, assholes or whatever. And it's like, well, yeah, because you have cut yourself off. You're no longer open to connection. And that's like— it just reinforces that same paradigm. Wow. So it accomplishes the opposite result.

So in a minute, what I want us to talk about is perfect. Thank you for sharing that.

That's cool, dude.

We'll talk about like the patterns, like attracting similar patterns. But first off, there's this one thing in the back of my mind I want to talk about first. And you kind of know about it, but you told me a story, you know, we've hung out quite a bit now. We've got to know each other, which has been awesome. And you told me a story about you learning under a spiritual teacher or something like that. And then you had this mystical experience that then completely transformed your life. And I kind of wanted to go down that for a minute. If you can kind of tell the story of that and what happened with that, because I think that it is, I thought it was actually really cool and I've never had a spiritual experience necessarily like that. But I can tell, you know, I can see that your life has changed so much since whenever that was. I didn't know you, but I can just tell like you're at a really good level. You're successful. You do what you love. You're helping people in a similar way that I'm helping people. So what was that story? How did that come about?

[Speaker] I mean, what was interesting, 'cause it happened at a phase of my life where I had been an attorney You know, I had owned a restaurant. I had done a lot of it. Peter Pitt, Peter Pitt, San Diego State. If you went to San Diego State between the years of 2010 and 2015, I may have rolled your pita. I probably did, or I had one of my boys. Oh, my pizzas were the best pizzas, bro. Like, I was a master. The owner always makes the best food.

Don't mess around.

But no, I had, I had my own pita named after my dog. It was called the Bosco. I was very proud of it, you know. And so yeah, I mean, I did these two huge careers and At the end of the day, I found myself deeply unhappy and sort of unsure how I had gotten to this place in my life, you know. And so I was, I was at that point, you know, my restaurant sort of just like, and not, not doing so great. And I'm just leasing luxury apartments to people and just sort of like, what's my next step? Trying to figure it out. And I got in this woman, this, this, this, this older woman came in to rent an apartment from me and she looked at me and she was like, there's someone I think you need to meet. We'd only talked about apartments and I'm like, who is he? And she's like, oh, it doesn't matter. You know, but he's an energy healer, and I think that it's important that you meet him. And I'm just like, whatever, I don't have any plans tonight. Like, and this, if anything, this will just be a good story. I had no spiritual practice at the time, you know. I just, I had watched my dad meditate. I understood and I liked meditation and everything, but I had no spirituality at the time. I was honestly just really unhappy with like where I was at. And, uh, I went to, and so I went to this, you know, meditation, and it was a standing meditation, and this guy was doing hands-on work. With people and he was coming around the circle towards me. And every time he would touch somebody, they would just like melt into his hands. And I'm like, what's— what is this? This is what sort of weird culty thing is this? Like all my judgment, all my ego came up, you know? And I'm like, it's not going to work. This is dumb. Like, why am I here? You know? And then he put his hands on the small of my back and I felt this electric charge go up the back of my spine to the back of my head. And I had my eyes closed at the time and it was all red, right? And this counterclockwise vortex starts spinning in the center, like right in my third eye. You know, and I'm like, oh my God, what is happening? And then all of a sudden it was like this beam of like invisible light like hit me from above and immersed my entire body and my skin just started like electrifying and goosebumps and everything. And the sensation I felt in that moment was overwhelmingly, you know, new and also intensely familiar. It was like that feeling you feel when you listen to your favorite song and you're like, oh my God, this is awesome. This song speaks to my soul. It was like that sensation, like to an exponent of 10.

Yeah.

And it was like, so it was like me, it was like my truth, it was my energy just flowing through me like a waterfall. And I felt myself as like a wave in the ocean. Like I felt myself as like a divine echo of the collective consciousness for the first time clearly in my entire life. And I just burst into tears.

Wow.

And then he took his hand off me. It was only 5 seconds while he was touching me. He took his hand off me And the feeling got 10 times more intense and I realized it wasn't him, it was me. It was me as an extension of cosmic consciousness and I was just like so humbled and blown away.

When was this? What year was this?

Gosh, this was 2015.

Okay.

This was like beginning January 2015, like right around that time where I just was, and from that moment on my life took just a radical left turn because I realized that, you know, the, the divine and the physical, you know, are existing concurrently. You know, like, like, divine and the physical are both existing concurrently around us right now. Yeah, you know, like 4D and 5D exist, like, synonymous with 3D if you're open to it and if you're—

what do you think he was doing when he got the— when he touched you on your back? Yeah, and the energy in this vortex opened up and Was he aligning your system or what?

Well, how he explained it, he didn't explain it. I mean, what I understand now to have happened is I experienced like a full-blown Kundalini awakening, like in the course of like 10 seconds.

So this is like what some people call Shakti or what is that like where somebody, you ever see somebody like they talk about the Indian gurus that like go over to someone and they touch them on their third eye and then it's like their third eye is open.

It opens. Yeah, I mean, that's my understanding of what I experienced having researched it afterwards. But I asked him at the time, I'm like, bro, what did you do to me? 'Cause he was doing a Q&A afterwards. And he's like, he's like, just, and he was like a normal dude, you know, he was just like, just think of me like a plumber, man. He's like, I touch your back and I see all your energy pipes, you know, and I see where you've got blocks or things that are clogging you up. And all I do is I just clear pipes. And when I clear your pipes, your energy flows through you fully. And you know, you reconnect with your, with your true self. And I'm like, wow, what a, what a profound, what a profound and simple way of describing it. Like, you know, And then, but then the crazy part was then for the next 3 months, my entire life blew up.

So what happened?

Yeah, well, I had what's called a divine storm. I don't know if you've, if you've heard about that or if you all have heard about that, but, you know, part of, part of spiritual awakening is, you know, the ego death and oftentimes the collapse, right, of all the old things that you were attached to. And so I went through a 2.5-month divine storm where in less than 3 months, from the moment he touched me, I had a legit near-death experience Saved 2 people's lives in 2 independent events, shut down my restaurant, filed for bankruptcy, got kicked out of my house, and got fired from my job. Wow. My entire life, everything that I identified with myself with blew up. Wow. It was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. But in the middle of it, I legit thought I was gonna die, you know, because I was like—

because the I that you were, which was the ego, was dying.

It was.

Did he— did you ever ask him later on, like, hey, why did my whole entire life—

I asked him in the middle of it. In the middle of it, I went to another— a month into it, I think I had had my near-death experience where I was rear-ended by some dude going over 100 miles an hour on an empty road while I was going 70, you know, and we both walked away without a scratch. Yeah, which was like unheard of, you know. About a month into it, you know, I went to this guy and I'm like, you know, everything in my life is falling apart. Like, why is this happening? Am I going to die? And he's like, Matt, like, you're here for a higher purpose, and everything that your life was built on up until that moment where I shifted you was built on a faulty foundation. It was built on this distorted understanding of who you were. And so as soon as I cleared up that energy for you, everything that was connected to that had to fall away so that you could ascend to where you're meant to be and where you're going. And I'm like, where am I going? What am I supposed to be doing? And he's like, I can't tell you that, you know. He basically— he's like, you can't tell somebody, you know, where they're going because if you do that, it changes their time, changes their timeline. And it also gets them, you know, all their ego and all their fear and stuff will come up around that and oftentimes derail their ability to get there. But, you know, and I trust— but I just trusted that, you know. And I think that's been the biggest thing that's guided me in this complete journey off of the traditional path of my life. And I'm sure a lot of y'all out there can, can connect with this, right? It's just trusting in the process and trusting in yourself, you know, and just trusting that wherever you're going is perfect because the present moment is perfect in your life.

And I think that that beautifully goes— I know that you told me that soon you're doing something where you bring, you have people apply and you're gonna be doing live coaching or something like that. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah, man, well, yeah, I'm doing a live course, right? It's called Mastery of Connection. It's gonna be a 3-week course experience, right? And it's a free course, free live experience with me.

Uh, we're going to say, would you like take people through and show them the attachment styles?

I literally, all the stuff we've been talking about today, I literally take you by the hand. You get like 20 video lessons and you get live that I've, that I've narrated, that I've created. And you get live coaching with me, uh, twice a week for 2 hours at least. And we have a Facebook group, an incredible community. And so it's going to be a beautiful shared container where we're going to work through Belief Works, and I've created systems and structures to help you identify and shift your beliefs. And I also have tests and different processes to help you understand your attachment style, to help you identify yourself on the personality matrix. That's helpful. Yeah. And, and you can come to me with questions, right? Like, I, I hold space for you every week to really take you through this process. And, uh, there's an application process, and if you get in, you know, it's free. It's free for you. And I'm offering this as a gift to, you know, of appreciation for you and your community.

That'd be really cool.

Yeah.

He told me about this. I was like, man, I'd love to have you on, show you, you know, like, you know, introduce you guys to Matt and like the beautiful work that he's doing. But also he said he's creating this whole 3-week transformational free course experience that's gonna live take you through the belief work, the identity work, the attack styles work, all that stuff.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, and again, you're gonna get a, we'll be in a communal space, we'll be in a Facebook group where you'll be able to connect and share your breakthroughs, ask your questions. I do live coaching over Zoom for the group where you'll be able to bring your stuff on. And so many people have incredible breakthroughs during these Zoom interactions, during these coaching calls, you know, where everybody really gets to drop in. And I mean, there's profound experiences that happen during, during the live coaching. So, uh, you know, we've worked with like over 10,000 women around the world and I mean, like, it's been such an honor and a blessing to be able to take what I've learned and what's transformed my life. And share it with, uh, share it with the world in a deep, meaningful, and structured way. So, uh, just in time for Valentine's Day, right? Uh, we're gonna start February 8th and we're gonna go through the end of February, so it's gonna roll straight through Valentine's Day.

No matter what timing—

yeah, no matter if you're in a relationship or you're not in a relationship or wherever you're at in your life, this will fundamentally impact and change the way that you show up and your understanding of how you connect with yourself and other people. So it's really, it's laying the frame for a new house.

Yeah. Beautiful, man. Well, I appreciate you doing that. So if you want to apply to be a part of this live coaching, uh, 3-week transformational process with live coaching, all that cool stuff, and videos and the how-to of a lot of what we talked about.

Exactly.

Um, all you do is go to aarondoughty.com/matt. How do you spell— is it M-A-T-T?

M-A-T. One T, bro.

I know, I thought so. Just making sure. So go to aarondoughty.com/mat, one T, and you can apply there. That'll be a link that goes straight to the application process.

Exactly.

And you can apply there and be a part of that coaching process. I will say from experience too, I've been here, you know, with Matt for a couple of days. We've been going a lot over this belief work, this identity work. And you've given me a lot of insights with my own relationships. Even when we were in Colorado a couple of days ago, we were going through a lot of my, my— it really did help me understand a lot more about myself and really heal and become more secure. So I know that the work that you do is very powerful and I'm excited to, you know, show that and have my audience come in and go through that kind of process too.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. If you're listening to this right now and you feel called to it, if you're specifically a woman too, I believe, right?

Yes. Yes. So I'm a coach for women. That's important, right? I'm a coach for women and I do one day want to expand into offering this container to the masculine as well. But for like, for right now, feminine, or we could say feminine energy. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Right now, like, this container is really grounded in feminine, in the feminine energy and in women.

I think that helps the woman feel safe.

It creates a sense of safety. It creates, it helps women be able to drop in and really like go deep and really like makes it able to be really focused on the wounds that are, that do tend to be more exclusive to the feminine in relationships. So yeah, it's for the ladies.

So yeah, if that's something that you're interested in, you'll be taking applications. Go to aarondoughty.com/mat, with one T, M-A-T.

There you go.

It'll go straight to the application page and—

Super, super easy.

Starts on February 8th, goes 3 weeks. And it's twice a week that you have like 2-hour sessions plus videos they get access to.

They're gonna have like both of the first 2 weeks, they're gonna have video lessons and we're gonna have office hours twice a week. And then the 3rd week, I'm just gonna be doing a lot of live, coaching and Q&A and really dropping in and supporting you with the deeper work around these concepts and principles that you want to get access to.

Yeah, I've heard, I've heard some of the people that go through this process have very profound breakthroughs and stuff. So I'm very grateful that you'll come on, that you'll go through the, you know, people from my audience with that. And also, I just wanted to say thank you for coming on my podcast. Thank you for being such a great friend.

Oh dude, it's an honor.

And I Yeah, I look forward to doing more stuff and, you know, be traveling, stuff like that.

Absolutely.

And all that stuff. Where can people find you?

You can head to my YouTube channel. I have my own YouTube channel that, you know, we'll throw in a link, throw in a link to that. Yep.

Also, Matt Schaefer, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just Matt Schaefer. It's just my name. And then also, you know, MattSchaefer.com if you want to learn a little bit more about me and what I do. Those are the two best ways to connect with me.

Perfect. Sounds good. So thank you for coming on, Matt. And we're gonna get to the rest of the day here in beautiful Tulum. This was the longest podcast episode I think we've ever done, which is pretty exciting.

I will treat that as a compliment. It is a compliment, not a testament to our long-windedness.

So anyways, thanks, man, and thank you all for listening today, and we'll talk to you soon.

Talk to you soon, y'all.

Namaste. Namaste.