7. What is Self-Discovery and Healing?

Hello, my beautiful friend, and welcome to the Mind Body Alignment podcast. I'm your host, Tessa Romero, and also your coach. I'm here to help teach you all the skills, tools, and encouragement that you need to not only know who you are, but how to become exactly who you want to be while going through a healing journey that allows you to build a mindset that finally supports you. I'm so glad that you're here. Let's get started, my friends, tonight, today, whenever you're listening to this, we are talking about what does it mean to be pursuing like, self discovery and self healing and why should you do it, who should do it? Let's talk about all of that because I know I talk a lot about, like, oh, self discovery and self healing and I throw these terms out there and I just want you to feel so crystal clear on how you can be pursuing this type of journey for yourself and be on the same page as me as we continue talking about all these good things. And remember, my coaching program is literally designed around the concept of self discovery and self healing. These are things that I want you to do for yourself because they're things that I've had to do for myself. And now that I've kind of like created this roadmap that I've personally used and my clients have used for the past three years, I love to share it with you. Like, I want you to have this too, because I've seen just how far it's been able to take me in my life, with my relationships, with my career, as a mother, I mean, in all these other areas. And I've seen that with my clients. And I want to see in you too. So let's first talk about self discovery. What would it mean to go on a journey of self discovery? Well, think about it this way. Maybe you are uncertain in who you are. Well, that would be something that you need to discover, right? Maybe you're feeling very triggered all the time. Your kids are getting under your skin, your husband is just on the wrong page all the time. It feels like co workers, your boss, complete strangers, family members, especially around the holidays. Like, everyone seems to be triggering you. That's where we would do self discovery. What's going on with me that I'm reacting this way? That's self discovery. But that's not what we see a lot of. Right. We don't see a lot of self discovery and self reflection happening, do we? No, we don't. We see a lot of pointing fingers, name calling and blaming and a lot of that negative Mindset that we struggle with is coming from these places of insecurity, jealousy, resentment, anger from all of the things that we haven't discovered about ourselves. And when you don't know things about yourself, how are you going to heal them? So you see how self discovery and self healing really go hand in hand. Like, they make such a beautiful duo. You find something about yourself and you heal it and you do it over and over and over again. And the more you do this, the deeper you're able to go and you create this relationship with yourself where you truly are your own best friend. Your own best friend. You know that it's safe to find these things because you are not going to judge yourself and criticize yourself. You're just going to observe and self discovery. Being on a journey like that, especially with the right roadmap, I mean, I fully support you doing it on your own. I don't know why you'd want to do it on your own. I did it on my own and I really wish that I had a roadmap. But you know, whatever you want to do, I support you. Just as long as you're doing it, go after it. And hopefully I can be a great resource for you and just some type of mentor or guidance or coach along the way. I would love that. I would love to be a part of your journey in a meaningful and positive way. But think about like that, self discovery, going back to the idea of who am I? Or wow, I'm feeling really triggered right now. Instead of blaming someone else. Well, you're making me mad. You're making me ignore you. You're making me shut down. No one can make you though. So we would need to do self discovery to understand. Wait a second. Why is this affecting me so badly? Questions. Questions are a great tool for you to use when going through self discovery. And a lot of times it's like, well, what kind of questions am I supposed to ask myself? That can feel really confusing. Like, I don't know, when you're first starting that journey, it's gonna be a lot of. I don't even know what to ask myself right now. Because you're so in your thoughts and when you're not writing and you're just like literally sitting in your mind with your thoughts. Your mind outwits any type of positive thought that you possibly could try to come up with intentionally. It outwits it so quickly because your mind is just rapid fire. It's so creative, it's resourceful, it's very like imaginative. It just comes up with all the stories and we can appreciate those parts of ourselves while also understanding, hey yeah, I'm not my thoughts and I'm not my feelings. So when I coach you through your journey of self discovery and self healing, that's why we start with your identity. You've got to know who you are. Because my friend, you are not your thoughts and you're not your feelings. That's not who you are. You need to be that intentional seat of consciousness that says I know who I am and I feel irritated right now. Why do I feel irritated? Why is this affecting me so badly and what do I need? Because you're conscious, you are aware of the fact that you decide who you are. You control yourself. No one can make you anything. I mean, I could do a whole frickin episode on that. In fact, let's just take note and write it down. Episode. No one can make you okay, back on track anyway. But no one can make you. Your kids can't make you yell, your husband can't make you shut down, your mom can't make you ignore her. These are choices that we make. And when you've been on this journey of self discovery, you're able to see why you feel angry, why you shut down and why you go to ignoring or why you're drinking the glass of wine, why you feel like you need a snack, why you're feeling just very tense in a certain situation. You're able to know these things about yourself because you've been doing the self discovery. And if there's ever a time where you're like, I don't know though, I don't know why I'm doing this, you'll be able to figure it out. You'll be able to find it. Because remember just a few minutes ago I said you become your own best friend. You know it's safe to make new discoveries and new connections any day and every day of your life it's no longer something you're afraid of. And ask yourself, do I feel afraid to get to know the real me? It is valid to feel fearful about getting to know that most genuine and authentic version of yourself that maybe you lost years ago. You haven't been in contact with her and you don't know her anymore. And now you have this idea of yourself that you're this terrible person that isn't worthy, isn't deserving. You've done all these bad things. You'll never be who you want to be. All this shame that you're struggling with, it feels scary. To go on this journey of self discovery when you already feel so ashamed. Why would you want to know all of these answers? Why would you want to do the self discovery if you truly believe you're only going to find bad things? Why would you want to know? I wouldn't want to know. I mean, I feel like that's why I didn't do self discovery for so long and I didn't even understand it was because I did not like myself. I don't want to know that. It's my responsibility. I don't want to know that. I want. I wanted it. I truly wanted it to be other people's faults. I wanted it to be my mom's fault. I wanted to be her ex husband's fault. I. I wanted it to be my husband's fault that I ignore him. I would ignore Marcus for literally two days. Like, it became a joke that I didn't think was funny that he would say about me ignoring him. He's like, oh, well, you're just gonna not talk to me for two days now? And I'm like, no, and you're not gonna say that. Like, I think that was a big reality check moment for me where it's like, crap, he can't make me. Oh my gosh, my mom can't make me yell at her and her ex husband can't make me feel this way about myself. I'm choosing to feel this way about myself, and it's up to me to resolve this and to fix it. If I want to grow into who I want to be, I've got to take complete ownership of where I'm at. And that's where the journey of self discovery comes in. Because it's not just understanding like, oh my God, I think so terribly about myself, but it's why it's so much deeper. Like right now, you're listening to this maybe and you're just like, I don't love myself. I know I don't love myself. I'm not proud of myself. I'm not proud of the mother that I am and how I treat my husband and how I show up in my daily life and. Or whatever it is that you're telling yourself. And you say, well, I don't want to do the self discovery because I don't want to know. Just more of this. It's not more of that though. It's not. I mean, yeah, there will be parts that you are not proud of and there will be parts that you don't really want to know. I don't want to know again, like again those examples, I just said I didn't want to freaking know that. It's my responsibility to control myself. I didn't want to know that. But it's empowered me tremendously over the past almost eight years of my marriage, four years in motherhood, it has changed my life to do this self discovery work. So when you're, when you're thinking it's all bad stuff that you're going to find that's not true. Your mind is making a prediction based off of past experiences. Right now your past experiences are saying everything I learned about myself is bad. But that's not true. You're just only focusing on one perspective and there's always, always another perspective to focus on. And that's why I want you to trust that when you have my roadmap that I've used again for three years of coaching clients, one on one. And also in my personal journey, this is how I made it, you guys, because I've been through it. Nobody freaking taught me. No one taught me. I had to teach myself. And then I was like, oh my gosh, I'm kind of good at this. Like I'm going to piece this together. And it's just been amazing sense to see you grow too. But when you go on this self discovery journey with me, you're seeing how valuable you are. You're seeing how worthy and capable you are. And every time you tell yourself I'm so inconsistent, you're able to say that's not true. I'm extremely consistent. Because look at this over here too. And that's self discovery. It's not just discover all the negative things that you think about yourself, but it's also discover all of the experiences you've been through that have led to all the negative things that you think about yourself. It's discover what you've been through and what's happened to you that has led to why you do what you do. Self discovery is such a gift. It sounds scary, it sounds big, it sounds hard. But remember, hard isn't bad. Hard can be exciting. Hard can be fulfilling and rewarding and good. Hard can be good. And you want to know what the exact opposite is true. Easy can be bad. Easy can be defeating and completely out of alignment with who you want to be. When you choose easy, I'm not saying all easy is bad, right? And not all hard is bad. You get to decide what it means to you. And I'm telling you that self discovery is an actual gift that you give yourself to See, I really can be my own best friend. Because guess what? If your best friend, your actual real life best friend, knew every single thing that you've been through, even if she didn't know every single thing that you've been through, and you go to talk to her about how you're feeling, what is she going to say? Would she tell you that you're an idiot, you're a bad mom, you're a terrible wife, and you're never going to go anywhere in life? Oh, and you're also not deserving of what you want. No, of course not. Your best friend would never say that to you. Why? Because your best friend sees how great you really are. She focuses on how good of a person you are and the great things that you do and the intentions that you set. She focuses on that. And she also considers all of the hard things that you've been through. She considers that because she's your friend. So imagine if you had my material in front of you and I was teaching you how to be your own best best friend, to do this self discovery work so that you can view yourself with the type of compassion and love that it takes to actually connect the dots of like, oh my God, I went through this in middle school and then I started thinking this way about myself, but that's not true at all. And this person that did this to me, wow, they were really going through like their own hardship. And that doesn't make it okay that what they did, but it's helping me just find this whole new perspective of healing and forgiveness. That's what self discovery does for you. So I hope now that self discovery is making a lot more sense to you in terms of not only understanding who you are, but why you do what you do. Why, why, why? Next time your mind says something negative, ask it why, why? How does it know? It doesn't know. It takes one little piece of factual information and then creates this whole story around it. And usually the entire story is like 98% not true. It just took this one little piece and then said I'm a terrible person. Which is not true. It's not true. You're just only focusing on one thing. So I believe self discovery is such a gift to you. It's a key to your healing. And now let's talk about self healing. What is self healing? Who needs to focus on self healing? Like, let's talk about that. So if you are, for example, go back to the, the first example that I said, I mean at the beginning of this episode and I talked about a mom feeling very irritated, like my kids are just getting under my skin. I'm feeling overwhelmed. Your kids are triggering you and now you understand maybe why they're triggering you. This is where you have to go back to self healing. You can't just say, well, yeah, I know why they're triggering me now, but I just have to deal with it. I just have to get over it. It's not just going to like fade on its own. You have to actually work at healing those parts of you. Because when you go through the self discovery work to understand, oh my gosh, I never felt heard as a kid, you discover that about yourself and you validate it. And then we go into self healing to repair the relationship with yourself so that you learn how to start validating yourself. Actions are attached to it. You, you're not just going to discover something and then fix it. Like there has to be healing that happens so that you can sustainably, continuously become who you want to be every single day. We're never done growing and learning and becoming because life isn't over. The next day's gonna come. Another challenge is on its way. Like none of it's gonna stop. But when you have this, this roadmap and the tools and skills to help you do the self discovery work, next time you're, you feel triggered by your kids not listening, you can do the self discovery to see, like, oh my gosh, this is bothering me so badly because I just feel like nobody listens to me in my home. And that takes me back to my childhood where I felt like I could never communicate how I'm actually feeling. Wow, that's a whole lot freaking deeper than I'm just a bad mom because my kids trigger me. That's not true. That's not true. And you're not considering the discovery that needs to be done. Remember, pointing fingers, name calling and blaming is not discovery and it's definitely not healing. Right. That's our armor that we're carrying to try and avoid the feelings and the honesty. But you go through that, you discover, I never felt heard. And then you focus on the healing. I'm going to like, you're going to validate that part how you're feeling and then you're going to get into more healing work with beginning to really listen to yourself and ask for what you need and communicate effectively and call the attention that you desire. Like, and validating yourself like, and listening to yourself, all of that matters tremendously during your healing. It's not just forgiveness. Forgiveness is so powerful. Yes. But actions need to change. And it's not just other people's actions that need to change, it's our own actions that need to change. A lot of times when we go through our challenges and our hardships, we aren't necessarily mad at the people that did it to us. A lot of times we carry anger towards ourselves. You feel angry that you ever loved that person in the first place. You feel angry that you didn't leave sooner. You feel angry that you didn't stick up for yourself or ask the hard question. In the difficult situation, you're carrying this anger not only towards other people, but towards yourself. And once you discover the roots, where it's coming from, why it's there, you can move into healing, validate the way you feel, create that understanding with yourself so you can focus on repairing the relationship with yourself. You are in a relationship with yourself, right? But instead of building up a best friend in your mind, you've built up a critic and a bully. And then we just listen to this as if that's the way things are meant to be. And it's not. That's the enemy. Like we're not supposed to listen to that. We're not supposed to entertain this and nurture it and give it so much space. Like negativity is a healthy part of mental wellness. I believe that with every ounce of my being. But we're not meant to live there. We're not meant to live there. Negativity is supposed to show us what's not working, what needs improvement and what we're not very satisfied with in our life. And then our positivity increases our creativity to solve the problems, to change the things that we need change. But again, if you don't do the self discovery work in the very beginning to figure out what it is in general, well, now you're just judging and criticizing because you have a bully or a critic in your mind saying, I shouldn't have to do this, this is so unfair. No one ever listens to me. It's always going to be like this. It's always too hard. I can't. Lots of negativity and you just listen to it. You think it's fact and it's not. But why do you listen to it? Again, go all the way back to identity. If you don't know who you are, you will believe that you are your thoughts and you are your feelings and you are your roles. Your roles are a part of you. Your feelings are a part of you, your thoughts are a part of you, you are not a part of them. They are a piece of you. Okay? So it's very important to make that understanding in your mind and it will make your self discovery and self healing journey so much easier, so much more sustainable, effective, powerful, empowering. Like, you're going to have an amazing adventure here with the self discovery and self healing because you know what you're doing. So I hope this is making sense to you. Between self discovery and self healing, you find something and you heal it every single day. And you no longer fear what you're going to find because you are that gentle best friend that says, you know what, sister, I've got you. But this kind of best friend is different, right? Because no matter how close your best friend is to you and how long you guys have known each other, no one on this planet, a parent, a grandparent, a sibling, a child, a spouse, a friend, knows everything you've been through. No one. No one. Because they didn't live through it with you. They were not there 247 with you through everything. They weren't there. You were the only person in your life that has been through literally everything. So you're in a relationship with yourself. You are the person that needs to heal you. You are the person that needs to get to know you and fulfill your needs and protect yourself and respect others. You are the person that needs to do that. And we can have very close people in our life, but no one's going to know how, even if they knew about the situation. Like my sister, my older sister knows literally all of my big hard things. She knows all of them. But there's no way for her to understand exactly how it's affected me. There's no way. My husband, I told him everything, literally everything, down to the point of him saying, my woman trying everything at least once. That was a big moment, a big moment for us. And lots of relief came from hearing that. But still, he doesn't understand how all of those things that I just told him affected me emotionally and mentally and physically. And the changes that I made in my life because of those and how I never dealt with those feelings. Like, he doesn't know that. But I can, I can know that. And you can know that about you. That's self discovery, why you do what you do. And you are the one that has to be vulnerable enough to go on this journey because no one can take it for you. And that sounds like, ugh, no one can take this for me. Gosh darn it, I have to do it. Yes, but you get to do it. You're the woman that gets to do this. That's how you break generational cycles. You discover why the behavior is happening in the first place and you heal it. So we don't need to numb to avoid our feelings. We don't need to numb to escape things. Every generation before, you wanted to escape the feeling and you are the one standing up saying, you know what? I'm not afraid of this feeling. This feeling is a part of me. I'm not a part of it. It's a part of me. And I can heal it. I can get to know this, I can understand where it comes from and do better. And that's what I want for you. I want you to take this journey of self discovery and self healing so you can just be who you want to be. I'm not going to tell you who that is. I learn a little bit every day about myself and who it is that I want to be and I just strive towards it. Am I perfect? No. Do I want to be? No. If you're perfect, you don't get to learn new lessons. You don't get to try the new things. Like you don't get to do any of those things. If you're perfect, why would you ever change? Why would you ever try anything new? You're perfect. We want to be messy and imperfect and vulnerable and authentic and generous and genuine. We want that. And I want that for you. So I'm hoping that in sharing this episode with you about what self discovery is, who needs it, how it works, how they work together, I hope that it answered those questions that maybe just felt a little fuzzy for you. I hope part of this episode resonates with a piece of your heart that is just aching for self discovery and healing to happen. And I hope that if you're feeling called to take this journey, that you allow me to be a part of it with you. Whether it's through my podcast, through the email list, or you commit fully to my 12 week coaching program, I just want to do this with you. I want to support you because I know you can do it. If I can do it, you can do it. There is no doubt in my mind. But it does take the right type of roadmap and support and resources and those are the exact things that I've compiled in mind, body alignment for you. So consider it. And if it's really calling you in this direction. Registration opens December 13th through the 23rd and during that 10 day timeframe I am going to be hosting master classes where we are going to be talking about mindset. More specifically, the entire masterclass is going to be about 90 minutes long. The last 30 minutes of that is all Q and A. So you got me to help you through it and our topic is going to be how to change your mindset. You can, even when circumstances are out of your control. That's going to be a good one, right? So I'm going to help you through that. It's going to be amazing. I hope to see you on there. It's a 10 day period to find a masterclass that works best for you and it's also a 10 day window for you to register for mind body alignment. All of the information is going to come to you soon. If you have any questions at all, feel free to email me directly. Info bodybymommy.com Reach out to me on Instagram essaromero underscore and just connect with me however you see fit. Ask me the questions that you feel are on your heart. I don't care how vulnerable it sounds. I promise you I'm not afraid of your feelings or your shame. I'm not afraid of it. I am excited to hear about it. I'm excited to help you discover it and heal it. That's what sets my heart on fire with what I do for for my job here. Like, I feel so lucky that I got to go through all of my trials and hardship and challenges to become who I am today and help other women do the same thing. Like I. I never envisioned this for my life. I just thought I was always going to struggle with anger and I never knew that it was going to come full circle like this. And I'm just. I'm so grateful that it did. And I'm so grateful that you're here listening to this message, believing in what it is that I coach through with identity and mindset and shame and self forgiveness and how they all work together. Thank you. Thank you for being the woman with an open mind and a soft heart. I see it in you and I want you to see it in yourself. Thank you so much for being here for this week's episode. If this episode serves you, please feel free to subscribe to the podcast and share it. I love spreading the message of positivity and healing and how they work together. My goal is to continue serving you and I can't wait to form more meaningful relationships together here on the podcast and elsewhere such as Instagram and my email list. We'll talk more soon.