Speaker 1: 0:13

Welcome to Roots of the Rise with me, sarah Hope. This week I've been unpacking something I say at the end of every episode Know who you are, love who you've been and be willing to do the work to become who you want to be. Know who you are, love who you've been and be willing to do the work to become who you want to be Today. Let's talk about that last part, what it really means to do the work. Nothing grows without help and without a little destruction. Cynthia Ocelli said it beautifully For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, the insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn't understand growth, it would look like complete destruction, and that is why healing and growth can feel so hard, because it often is destructive. You will inevitably leave something behind Parts of yourself, old patterns, beliefs, jobs, homes, relationships. Growth requires letting go. Now it doesn't have to be a bloodbath. We don't need to burn down every bridge. We can learn to do it with grace, but in the beginning that is rarely how it goes. Early on, we often don't know how to communicate effectively. Maybe we are learning how to identify what we're feeling, what we're needing. Often we don't even know what we really want. Yet. All of that is a shout out to nonviolent communication. I'll link that episode below. We make choices that fit who we are in the moment at that time. But as we grow, those choices don't always stay aligned. Often they don't, and that's hard because we have to grieve what we're leaving behind while we are reaching for something new. So when I say be willing to do the work to become who you want to be, what I mean is becoming who you truly are, who you are meant to be, takes effort. Work does not happen passively. You can dream all you want, you can know your purpose till the cows come home, but without action nothing changes. Actually, I should correct that and say without correct action grounded action, supported action nothing changes.

Speaker 1: 2:29

There's a story about a man who believed fiercely in God and one day it started to rain and the authorities issued an evacuation order. But the man said God will save me and stayed in his house as the waters rose. Rescuers came in a canoe. He refused God will save me. The waters rose even higher. Now he's stuck on his roof. A helicopter came. Still, he refused God will save me. Eventually he drowned, and when he reached the gates of heaven, he asked God why didn't you save me? And God replied I sent you an evacuation notice, a canoe and a helicopter. What more did you want?

Speaker 1: 3:06

The point is help comes, but you still have to take the step. You still have to agree to the help. Life is full of signs, synchronicities and outstretched hands nudging us towards change, offering support, inviting us into a more life-affirming, more aligned way of living, or inviting us into a more life-affirming, more aligned way of living. But at the end of the day, it's still on you. No one can do the work for you. This is why I can't remember why I was talking about this, in what episode.

Speaker 1: 3:35

But this is why, when my clients come to me and they say oh, I don't want to burden you, I don't want to tell you this stuff, I don't want to ruin your day, I don't want you to take on my baggage, I always say don't worry, I won't, and I mean it. You know I will offer love and empathy and support and tools. I will hold your hand while you cry. I will be a safe space for your pain, but I will not carry it, because it's not mine to carry and it's not mine to fix. Only they can do that.

Speaker 1: 4:05

And guess what? You are not responsible for anybody else's happiness or healing or growth. You are only in charge of your own. This even applies to kids. Yes, we as parents need to help them be the best versions of themselves possible, but we can only do so much. In fact, there's actually research on this how being overly helpful can hurt kids in the long run. One of the most empowering things we can do is to stop doing things for them that they're capable of doing themselves. That's how they develop belief in their own abilities. This is from the parent speak book I was telling you about in some other episode.

Speaker 1: 4:45

You know we rarely say good job to our son. Instead, we say look what you did. You did it Because we want him to know deep down that he did it. Personal accountability, personal responsibility, that if he wants something, he has the power to make it happen. He is the creator of his own experience. And that's something we often forget as adults, often because we were not taught as children. We forget that everything around us, the life we live, the situations we find ourselves in, is in large part shaped by our beliefs, our choices, our actions. Doing the work means showing up again and again, even when it's uncomfortable, messy and hard. That's how we grow, that's how we rise.

Speaker 1: 5:29

So if we want to change our reality, if we want to grow into something new, the path forward at least the way I see it is threefold. We need to expand our consciousness, release subconscious programming and integrate our newfound wisdom into our day-to-day life. Let me break that down for you. First, we need a way to expand our consciousness. Einstein said something along the lines of we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used to create them, which means if we want different results, we need different thinking. We need a practice that helps bring the subconscious into the conscious, that helps us see what we couldn't see before.

Speaker 1: 6:10

For me, that practice is meditation. Not just any meditation, heart-based meditation. You know, not all forms of meditation create the same kind of change and they don't all work at the same pace. Heart-based meditation is what I've practiced for the last decade and it's what I keep coming back to because it works. I haven't hit a plateau. My awareness keeps expanding. I keep evolving. Yes, there are other tools I use to support the process, but the bedrock, the foundation, is this meditation practice, if you haven't already go listen to the episode on it, I'll link it in the show notes below.

Speaker 1: 6:48

Rj Spina actually has a great metaphor for this stage of the process. He says that when we raise our frequency, when we expand our awareness, it's like being handed a ladder. Suddenly we can peek over the walls of the maze we've been trapped in. We can see the patterns, the loops that exits. But here's where I think his metaphor is incomplete, because sometimes, even after we've climbed the ladder and can clearly see the way out, our feet feel stuck. We don't know how to climb down and actually walk the path. We see it, we understand it, but we still can't move. And that's why we need the other two steps, the second of which is that it's necessary for there to be a process for releasing subconscious programming and emotional complexes, the things that we now have the awareness to be able to see, but don't know how to move past. You know, the good news about expanding consciousness is that we become more aware.

Speaker 1: 7:49

The tricky part is that awareness alone doesn't always lead to change. In fact, sometimes all it does is show us just how much we need to change. Every now and then awareness is enough, but most of our programming it runs deeper. It's not so easy. I mean, we've all felt it, that inner knowing like I need to eat better, I should get more sleep, man, I've got to learn how to set boundaries, you know. So we can see it, but but we can't change, not because we don't want to, but because the old programming is still running the show. Want to, but because the old programming is still running the show.

Speaker 1: 8:28

This second step, releasing that subconscious programming is where things like traditional therapy, somatic practices, emdr, inner child work, energy healing, mentoring, can really come into play. Honestly, I believe the most effective approach is a combination of methods, and that right combination is going to look different for all of us. And that right combination is going to look different for all of us. You have to be a little like Goldilocks, trying different things until you find what fits just right for you. But here's the hard truth.

Speaker 1: 8:54

This is the stage where many people start to feel exhausted. They try 10 different psychologists, nothing seemed to shift. Or they pin all their hopes on one you know, really famous, supposedly a miracle worker, energy healer, expecting it to, you know, clear everything, and it doesn't. Or they cycle through pharmaceuticals, plant medicine, journeys, hypnotherapy, and still feel stuck. It is so frustrating, it is so disheartening. I mean, this is where I was until I found my perfect cocktail. I get it. You know, people experience what I call soul fatigue. It's this deep weariness from quote unquote, doing the work without feeling like it's working, stuck in that place of screaming at the universe what did I do to deserve this? Why is it so hard? Did I really sign up for this? Often not always, but often it's because something foundational is missing Either step one hasn't been fully established that expansion of awareness or step three is being skipped entirely.

Speaker 1: 10:04

And this third element is so important. It's where so many people go wrong and it's integration. We have to learn how to take our expanded awareness, plus all the wisdom we're gaining, and integrate it into our moment to moment experience. It's not enough to simply see the old patterns, or even to release them. We have to replace them. We need to create new neural pathways, new emotional defaults, new behavioral patterns.

Speaker 1: 10:36

This is about embodying the change, not just understanding it. We also need to integrate the higher energy centers, like our insights, our ideals, with the lower energy centers our grounded, physical, embodied experience. And for this, the heart is our greatest ally. I'll dive deeper into that next week, but for now I'll just say cultivating the facets of the heart is where real growth can happen fast. This is where we can deeply integrate spiritual principles like radical acceptance, presence, invincibility, joy, gratitude, alignment, forgiveness and compassion. When living heartfully becomes a trait, something embodied, not just visited occasionally as a state, you've got it. That's the integration.

Speaker 1: 11:26

But this also takes work. You know, you might have an incredible therapist who's helping you see your patterns so clearly, but if you're not integrating those insights, if you're not supporting your physiology, for instance, then the change won't stick. Because the truth is, up-leveling takes energy, raising your vibration, becoming a new version of yourself, breaking free from inertia. It takes a lot. There's often massive resistance encoded into our programming. So if your body is exhausted, if your central nervous system is maxed out, good luck trying to transform. You will struggle. That's why modalities like energy healing, craniosacral therapy, acupuncture, when guided by the right practitioner, can be incredibly stabilizing. They can help regulate your system so you actually have the capacity to do the deeper work. Even basics like sleep are foundational. I promise I'll do a full episode on that when we're done with the chakras.

Speaker 1: 12:29

And sometimes it's not even about not having energy. It's about how it's being spent. My mentor likes to use this explanation. Let's say you receive a hundred units of energy every day from the divine, from sleep, all the things. 100 units of energy every day from the divine, from sleep, all the things. If you spend 30 units resisting politics, 20 units resisting your body, hating your physical self, and another 20 units being upset about scarcity, about money, resisting money, you've only got scraps left. That's why we feel blocked, why we procrastinate, why it feels like now just isn't the right time. So here's a shift Take the straitjacket off the idea that this is something you have to do, that framing alone, the I should do this, triggers rebellion.

Speaker 1: 13:17

Parental dynamics, old conditioning around tasks and obligations Instead. Just notice how does it feel when you do these practices, the uplifting practices, the meditation. How does it feel when you don't? This moves the work out of the realm of shame and shoulds and into the realm of lived experience. When we realize we actually feel better when we do the work, when we notice our whole experience of life improves. That helps it to then become natural, self-sabotage starts to lose its grip.

Speaker 1: 13:50

I'm not saying it goes away, because we can have resistance to even feeling better. That can feel foreign and wrong, but it does help, and one of the other most powerful tools you can have in your toolbox is cultivating a growth mindset. At its core, this just means disidentifying with outcomes. So what do we anchor it to instead, effort, attach your identity, your sense of pride and motivation to the effort you put in, not the result. Celebrate the process of learning, the process, process of becoming better. When effort is what matters most, it becomes so much easier to pivot when things don't go as planned. The challenge, though, is that most of our mindset lives in the subconscious. We don't usually walk around consciously choosing how to perceive ourselves or our experience. It's all kind of woven into a deeper self narrative, and that's why it is so important to do these three steps to expand your consciousness as a foundational part of this process.

Speaker 1: 14:51

Dr Joe Dispenza's book Breaking the Habit of being Yourself explores all of this beautifully. He gives some of the clearest explanations I've ever come across about why change is so difficult. The book is divided into three parts. I'm sure I will talk about this more at some point, because it really is a wonderful book. Personally, I think the first two thirds are like perfection. The last third, where he explains his meditation mythology, just kind of didn't resonate with me in the same way. Nothing wrong with it, I just found it a bit excessive and more complicated than necessary. But his overall message is powerful.

Speaker 1: 15:27

We get stuck because we're fighting change on every level. Our systems love homeostasis, they love familiarity, and the longer a pattern has existed, the more entrenched it becomes physically, energetically, mentally, emotionally, intuitively, even spiritually. To shift it can not only feel hard but scary, because if you've always been the overworker, who are you without that? If you've spent your life avoiding conflict, what would it mean to start speaking up? What would happen if you actually enforced boundaries with the people who hurt you? What would it mean to finally go after your dreams? Maybe you have a hard time even imagining a different version of your life. That's one of the reasons why I share my story so openly, both in workshops and here on the podcast, because I want you to know, know that it's possible to change. I've lived through depression, darkness, dysfunctional relationships, bad choices, selfishness, poor communication you name it and I've also now experienced the opposite Joy, deep and authentic connection, healthy communication, laughter.

Speaker 1: 16:37

I share this not because I figured it all out, or because I never make mistakes, trust me, I do. Just ask my husband. But I share it because vision matters. It's like a preview of upcoming attractions. When you have a sense of what's possible, it becomes easier to take that next step towards change. Think of it this way If you get a brand new iPhone, like I just did, but you don't get a manual and no one tells you what to do, you might only ever use it to text and make calls. You have no idea it can shoot professional quality video or sync across your devices or who knows what else. I'm still figuring it out.

Speaker 1: 17:07

The point is, if you assume this is all there is or you tell yourself it's just my karma to suffer, you're cutting yourself off from possibility. But here's the catch Vision is meant to inspire, not to create judgment, inner growth, envy or a feeling of defeat. The trouble arises when we take the vision of what's possible and start using it as a ruler to measure where we're falling short. That becomes destructive. And yeah, that's hard because we're human and judgment is part of the package. But when we can step out of that, when we can redirect our focus towards staying grounded in the process, keep, you know, putting effort in and trusting the unfolding, which brings me to reminding you that the first and perhaps most important component of all of this is to simply be willing to do the work. It's not enough to know what needs to change or even to feel the shifts begin to happen. There's a deeper, more persistent effort that's necessary.

Speaker 1: 18:09

I spent the last decade trying to heal on every level I could access, and when I discovered something that created real, lasting shifts, something that made the path easier, I stayed with it. That's why I became a heart-based meditation teacher, why I trained as a spiritual mentor, why I studied biodynamic craniosacral therapy. These practices, especially in combination, became the key that unlocked real transformation for me. They helped me dismantle the old limiting beliefs I carried from childhood and start rewriting the faulty programming I didn't even realize was running the show. I also sought out mentors and healers who could help me see beyond my pain, who could reflect my potential back to me and guide me as I learned to transmute hardship into understanding, pain into strength. Steve Hoskinson says trauma is unintegrated resource. That line finally clicked with me, because now it is my felt integrated experience.

Speaker 1: 19:06

What once was utter destruction and desolation was actually a place of untapped power waiting to be reclaimed, and it's available for you too. It's available for every single person who chooses it, and another preview of upcoming attractions. It gets easier I swear to you it does. Once you find that winning combo that works for you, the patterns that were stuck for years can shift in months. Programs that you haven't been able to delete for decades will all of a sudden be rewritten. It can happen. It does.

Speaker 1: 19:41

So here are some questions for you. Do you have a clear vision of the life you want to leave? To help with that, what are three things that stress you the most? What are three things bringing you the most joy? Are there any challenges you find yourself repeatedly coming up against? What would happen if those were gone? And once you have a clear vision of what you want your life to look like, ask yourself what will I need to give up to find my way to this future? What will I need to embrace or cultivate to prepare myself to receive this future? And what is my next step to co-create the fulfillment of this future?

Speaker 1: 20:18

Doing the work is what this podcast is all about. I am here to help you navigate that journey, offering support, sharing ideas, techniques, tools connecting you with visionaries and teachers who can help you figure yourself out. This will not be the last time we dive into cultivating a growth mindset or expanding awareness or releasing subconscious programming, but the key ingredient in all of it is willingness. It's the foundation upon which everything else is built. If you have any questions, reflections or just want to share your thoughts, feel free to click the message me button if you're listening on Spotify, or you can always email me at rootsoftherise at gmailcom. And don't forget to follow or subscribe so you don't miss next week episodes where we'll be focusing on the fourth chakra, our heart. I hope you have a wonderful weekend and, even though I've said it before, I'll keep saying it Know who you are, love who you've been and be willing to do the work to become who you want to be.