Have you ever been in a situation where, if something doesn’t work, it feels like going back to square one? This might make you question where and what you should pursue in life. One thing that prevents us from reaching our potential is limiting beliefs. What’s holding you back, and how can you begin shifting your mindset?
In this episode, I’m joined by Taylor Lehn, the founder of Black Raven Coaching. Taylor shares her story, starting as an aspiring coffee shop owner and eventually finding her true calling as a wellness and spiritual coach. We dive into the importance of building community and the value of in-person connections. Along the way, Taylor talks about the power of following your passions, breaking free from limiting beliefs, and creating a life that truly aligns with who you are.
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Breaking Free from Limiting Beliefs with Taylor Lehn
Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. One thing that’s really important to me, in case you haven’t heard it in some of my other episodes, is bringing community together, bringing people together actually in person more and more. We have a lot of online platforms where people are connecting with one another and that’s great and that’s beautiful, but one of my goals going forward is going to be, and has been for years, is how do we reestablish on this community feel, someone to feel like you’re a part of something and that you’re actually interacting with the other people in your community. My guest today, Taylor Lehn, is a life coach and a local wellness event coordinator and the founder of Black Raven Coaching here in Denver, Colorado.
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Taylor, welcome to the program.
Thank you so much for having me.
Well, thank you for joining and I want to start a little bit by going into your story. Obviously, when you started this whole journey, you had a very different idea about what you were going to be doing.
Oh, definitely. Ever since I was young, I always knew that, as far as my career was concerned, that I just needed to be my own boss. So, entrepreneurship was always where I assumed I would go. However, when I was younger, I had almost no clue what I was passionate about and finding something that I could pursue that would actually fulfill me for my entire life seemed like a very daunting task. So, when I went to college, of course, and I studied entrepreneurship and economics and the only thing I really knew I was passionate about per se was, funnily enough, coffee. I’d always been a coffee snob throughout high school, into college, while going through college, when it came time to find a job, coffee shop barista was the number one. So I dove into that and loved it, absolutely loved it. Knowing that eventually I wanted to own my own business once I got out of college, I really pursued that path of becoming a barista, really thinking that opening and owning my own coffee shop someday was what I was going to do. So I spent about the next six years or so after college really pursuing that. However, as I learned the trade, met some amazing baristas, worked my way up to becoming a coffee shop manager, really learning the ins and outs of what it takes to get a coffee shop started and to keep it running, it is a lot of work. I would say owning a coffee shop is one of the most difficult businesses you could pursue. It usually takes a coffee shop about five years to even break even. Really seeing the inside of it, seeing the people who are at the top of their game and what they had to go through and struggle through just to keep their business and their dream alive, I started realizing that that might not actually be what I wanted to do for my entire life, and that left me feeling very confused and really just not knowing what step to take. I didn’t know what else I wanted to do.
Yeah, that’s a tough spot to be in, to be honest. And I think a lot of people out there listening probably have encountered that or know someone that they’re close with them that have encountered that spot where it’s like you had your mindset on something, maybe you had a passion that started from like when you were a kid, and then, all of a sudden, something about that path just didn’t work out for you.
Yeah, whether it’s a challenge that came up that you couldn’t get through or whether it’s just an interest or a passion that no longer fuels you the same way.
When you thought about this, you thought about the five years that it would take, essentially, kind of where you’re thinking, was it that the passion wasn’t enough to overcome that challenge and that you need to go somewhere else or did something else pop into your head that told you, okay, this is a sign that I was meant to do something different than coffee shop?
In the year 2020, which is about when I was starting to realize that the coffee shop, owning my own store wasn’t what I wanted to pursue anymore. I was still working in the coffee industry. And then, of course, COVID hit, and all barista jobs just disappeared. That kind of threw a wrench in my entire plan anyway, although I do believe, looking back at it now, it was a turning point that was really good for me. I think I needed a reason and a very big explosive thing to happen to kind of steer me away from that. Of course, when COVID hit for everybody, we were suddenly all staying at home, and that really gave me some time, just losing my job, not knowing where to go or what to do or how I was going to make money, feeling really fearful and also feeling just really defeated and really in this place of I had no idea, no idea what I wanted to do. And I think the struggle when you’re there is you tend to just want to chase money. When you’re in a place where you’re like, “Well, I don’t know what I’m passionate about anyway, so I might as well just go out and try to pursue something that is gonna bring me a lot of money,” but everything that I could think of, I tried a few different jobs, I tried working in insurance, spent a little time trimming cannabis for a dispensary, all these things, and I just could not figure out what I wanted to do and it’s just a really tough place to be in when you feel like you’re wasting your time, you feel like you have no skills, you feel like all the time that you put into this one thing and it didn’t work out, you’re just kind of like at square one. Luckily, maybe, I don’t know if it was divine intervention from the universe or from YouTube’s algorithms, but I started getting a lot of self-help videos popping up on my screen, especially like spiritual stuff about manifestation and how to reprogram your thoughts, a lot of Bruce Lipton and Joe Dispenza kind of information and that really got to me, that really hit. For the first time in a few months, it really sparked my interest. So I just went down the absolute rabbit hole, watching YouTube videos, listening to podcasts, reading books all about this, everything in this spiritual self-help world, like how I was just desperate for any information on how to get out of this unstuck place that I was in.
When you go down the rabbit hole, as you describe it, in your view, a sign or an indication that this is something that really interests you, like when you find out you’re looking into a certain topic and you want to just keep going, is that something that anyone that’s out there that’s feeling stuck in their place should be paying attention to?
Yes, I always tell people that they really need to be paying attention to what gives them that spark, what they are interested in, and
the more that you can follow your interests instead of following what you think is going to keep you safe, you’re going to start to discover a little bit more about who you are and what you really want and what your values truly are. Share on X
You talk about a lot of people going down this path of what you think is going to keep you safe, and I think that there’s tons of that instinct around what’s making money, what’s the most obvious thing, and that path can often lead to something relatively unsatisfying. You know that moment where you come in and you just imagine yourself 10 years from now still doing the same thing, and it’s suddenly like, whoa, right?
That’s kind of how I was feeling with the coffee shop, with pursuing my own career in coffee, is it really felt like it was a dead end pursuit and I felt like if I had continued down that path, that I would get 10 years into it and then just feel so unfulfilled with where I was at. A lot of people, they get on this path where they go to college, they choose a major, they pursue that major after college, they get 10 years down the line in their corporate job, and they hate themselves. Again, kind of what I was talking about before about how I was feeling when COVID had hit, a lot of people feel like that all the time, even before COVID, because the path that they chose wasn’t their passion and yet they feel so locked into it that they’re unwilling to leave. And when you’re unwilling to leave that place, that unhappiness and that unfulfillment leads into everything, your relationships with your partners, your kids, your family, your friends, it just bleeds into everything.
Yeah. I mean, it could bleed into your health too, because my serotype is that people are numbing their feelings with some combination of drugs, alcohol, perpetually being busy, and people will go one of two paths, either, okay, suddenly I’m drinking, doing an edible every night or something like that, or I’m just going to really, really lean into an unhealthy amount of fitness where I got this crazy regimen, right?
Yes. And yet nothing you do actually satisfies.
Yeah, and that’s a tough place to be in, because it’s like there’s so much invested in it and so you had maybe a smaller version of it, with knowing how much you’d invested in your childhood, long-term interest in coffee, not quite to the point where I’m imagining someone had maybe moved up a couple levers at their company and suddenly it’s part of their identity. When you were looking back at your interest in coffee, did you ever look back and try to find a deeper meaning behind it? Like, okay ––
Oh, yeah.
I do believe that there are no accidents and that what we pursue makes us. Share on XSo my pursuit of coffee really did teach me the skills that I needed to know to create the business that I have today. So I would not have learned the leadership, I wouldn’t have learned the managing skills or the people skills unless I had gone down that path, unless I had had that experience. And also, I will say, even to this day, I absolutely love coffee still. I know that it’s not the career that I wanted to pursue, but that love for it is still there, just the chemistry of it, how it brings communities together. I know it’s caffeine but the way it makes people feel, I think, goes beyond the caffeine of it. It’s really like a bonding thing. Every morning, when I make my cup of coffee, it feels like a ritual, almost. It’s a reason that I love getting up out of bed before my alarm is because I can’t wait to go make my coffee. It’s a big part of who I am still today and it absolutely was a necessary part of the journey for me, and I think that’s a great message for anyone who is feeling really stuck where they’re at right, is that everything that you have experienced up to now is such an important part of your end journey but it’s up to you as to when you want to go forward and take that next step into finding what truly is your passion. But I do promise that this time that you’ve been spending doing what you’re now not necessarily happy with has purpose and has meaning and is integral to the rest of your journey.
Yeah, it’s about finding that meaning. And another important aspect of this is also people recognizing that one thing does not define you, like so you have a child and just maybe even have a job right now but that job doesn’t define you. And there are plenty of people that their job pretty much is only just to pay the bills but then they find a passion somewhere else in life. So with Black Raven Coaching, what are your main offerings? What are the primary activities that you do with your company?
I have a few different ways that people can work with me. We can either do a monthly membership, where you get basically a weekly session with me, and that’s probably the most popular for everyone. I also have a human design package. I just love human design so much. I think it’s such a great way for people to learn about how they can best use their energy for themselves, not giving our energy away to other people, and it teaches you how to feel into yourself and how to know whether a decision is actually right or wrong for you. So I love human design. And then I also have an emergency session is what I call it. If you’re just dealing with an issue and you have no idea what way to go, I have a specific problem solving technique that I like to use that is just a one-session technique where we talk about the issue, look at the pros and cons, and then I help walk you through how to make the decision that’s in your best interest.
Tell me the story of an emergency session, like a typical emergency session, is it someone just like, “My partner just broke up with me,” someone is just like, “I just lost my job,” or, “I just got this opportunity, I’m not sure what to do”?
Yeah, that session is for when you have a decision that has to be made and you don’t know which way to go. So a lot of times it could be you got in a fight with a partner and you’re thinking about leaving them and we’re going to talk about the pros and cons of all that, or if you’re unhappy with your job and a new job came up, the pros and cons of which one you want so that one’s really good. It is kind of like a miniature version of what my formula is anyway.
Do you ever have anything more trivial come up in these emergency sessions? Have you ever had someone come and be like, “My favorite restaurant is closing and I don’t know where to find another restaurant with the same options at the same price range”?
Luckily, it hasn’t been anything quite like that. Yeah, I think it’s more so for the people who are really just in that spot where they’re so indecisive, and it’s usually for some bigger issues, like should I move, should I stay, should I do that, should I leave? Usually more life changing kind of situation. But we totally could.
Have you ever had someone have an emergency session where they had to ask, like, “Should I cut this family member out of my life?”
Yes. That one, I would say, comes up a lot, and, for that, I just take them through the process of identifying what it is that they truly want out of the situation. We really walk through a process of understanding that every single one of us, we’re all sovereign beings and we all get to make decisions for ourselves and I think that’s something that a lot of us kind of forget, is that I am 100 percent in charge of me and how I feel and how I act, and my mother or my brother or my father is also 100 percent in charge of how they feel, how they act. So, it’s really separating the idea that what I do is going to make somebody else so sad that that makes me a bad person. When we’re in a situation where we’re having a difficult time with a relationship, usually it’s because we have these entanglements and these limiting beliefs that we can’t do something with them because of how we’re going to make them feel or because of how they make, here’s air quotes, “make us feel.” It really depends on the person on how that decision is played, and it’s really whether or not, if they trigger you so much, if they’re triggering certain emotions so much, it’s really about teaching people how to handle and alchemize that emotion specifically more so than it is dealing with that other person. So a lot of the work that I do with people is really helping them, teaching them the tools and techniques to really own themselves. Because what I have found, especially if we get into talking about the path from feeling unfulfilled, empty, unworthy to getting to the point where you feel whole, you feel fulfilled, you feel happy, the biggest difference between those two people or those two polarities is how well you can take ownership over your own life and emotions.
It sounds like what you’re saying is that if someone’s out there saying, “I can’t be around my mother anymore because she makes me feel this way,” what’s really going on is about something way more deeper than specifically, “My mother says this, my mother does this, and I can’t be around it,” but it might be saying something more about yourself, some kind of a belief system that you have or some sort of a thought pattern that you have that’s preventing you from getting somewhere else in life. Maybe you need to distance yourself a little bit to let yourself kind of collect your thoughts a little bit if that relationship is really up in each other’s business, but really it’s about going deeper inside yourself and saying, “Why am I triggered by this? Why does this make me feel this way? And what can I do to or what do I potentially need to do to change that pattern?”
Yes, absolutely. And, sometimes, creating distance is the right answer, for sure, especially when you’re in the early stages of learning these techniques and getting on that path, because when you start to try to reprogram your mind and reset some of those limiting beliefs, sometimes you do need that to make that space with people. Again, that is 100 percent up to you. It’s up to the individual on what they feel that they need the most at that time. If they have to cut off a family member, they have to cut off a family member. But that doesn’t mean that it has to be forever. It’s just for as long as you need, because, oftentimes, they’ll cut off their family member just because they need that space, they’ll go through their own transformational healing process, and then they get to a point where they can then be that stable person within their family. They can reintroduce themselves to their family and then they have the tools, the techniques that their family members might need to grow as well. Because whenever we’re in these situations where someone is being really toxic to us, that person is in just as much pain as we are. Hurt people hurt people, and that’s really about just finding that healing but it’s not for everyone. If somebody doesn’t want to heal, they don’t want to heal, and, again, they’re a sovereign being and that is 100 percent within their choice.
because when you change, you become a person that they no longer recognize and they knew who they were because of who you were, in a way. And so as you change, it can cause a lot of fear responses from those around you. Depending on the situation that anybody is in, there could be an array of different action plans or ways to handle that.
Yeah, because I’ve witnessed this issue quite a bit. A lot of people go on personal growth journeys and there’s so many different methods, you talked about human design being one of your favorites, a lot of people have used that or used other areas in which they can kind of discover themselves, grow, develop better communication patterns, develop better relationships, and what’s going to happen is that you have people from your past or long-time friends, long-time family members and stuff, and some of them are going to be on a similar growth path to you and you’re kind of going to be growing together and some are not going to be interested in it. They’re going to want things to kind of be in a similar way, or maybe even your paths, you’re both growing but you’re just growing in a different way, you’re discovering stuff about yourself that makes the nature of what you once connected with this person on to kind of no longer really be there and the new stuff is very different. And one of the interesting things that I observed is how people manage those changes, because you have these friends and family members that you’ve had these great times with and you can’t really have it be the same way again. I think one of the quintessential examples, if there’s ever a group of people where I’ve tried to get out of the mindset of complaining about things, especially complaining about trivial things, and you have someone that’s like every little thing, it’s like, “I bet they raised the price of Pringles again,” or they’ll be like, “Oh, it doesn’t rain enough,” or “It rains too much,” and you’re just like, okay, I don’t want to spend so much time dwelling on it, but you’re oftentimes working with people about how they’re managing these changing relationships and when they have to still want to be friends with someone, you still want to be in contact with your family member, say, you just can’t do it in the way that you’ve done it with them in the past because of whatever they’re doing with themselves.
Yeah, 100 percent, and you could go two ways with that. You could tell them, you could say, “Hey, listen, I love our relationship. I love hanging out with you. However, I’ve noticed a lot that when I hang out with you, I just like to gossip and talk crap about things and nitpick everything and that’s an energy that I’m really trying to get away from. So can you help me, as my friend, to not talk about,” so you could either get them on board with how you want your experience with them to be, and if they’re willing to get on board, that’s great, and then that might even help them realize the negativity that they also feel negative when they’re just talking crap about all this stuff and then you can be that friend for them who you guys always try to talk about the positive things and then you can either use your experience and your growth to bring your friend along for the growth ride as well. However, if they aren’t interested in that, then it might just be something where you hang out with them every once in a while, or when you are hanging out with them, you allow them the space to be who they want to be and to talk the shit that they want to talk, and just know that they’re your friend and you’re here for them and you don’t have to agree or energetically match that. When you don’t match that energy, it tends to die.
I went to an event a little bit ago that was about setting energetic boundaries, which is essentially someone’s going to be at a certain energy and they’re sovereign beings so you can’t tell them not to be in that energy so all you can really do is protect your own energy and say, okay, just because a whole bunch of people are starting to do whatever, this type of conversation, this type of thought process, this type of actions, doesn’t mean I need to get engulfed by it.
Yeah. Doesn’t mean you need to contribute to it. You can just sit back and listen. And in those situations, especially when you’re the type of person who you used to be all for that, you used to love talking about those negative kind of things, because there is something very satisfying.
Yeah, of course.
For sure.
People do it for a reason.
Exactly. And so when you get to the point where that is no longer what is satisfying you, you can have empathy for the fact that you remember that that feels really good, and if they’re doing that to feel good, then, okay, that’s fine. You don’t have to participate in that. And, to me, that’s how you really hold that energetic boundary is you hold the boundary of love and acceptance for that person while you manage yourself and act in integrity with who you are.
I also want to talk to you a little bit about the events that you put on, the wellness-themed events that you put on on a regular basis. What kind of stuff do you do and what inspires you?
I really got inspired to start these wellness events, and I put them on –– the majority of them happen at Dandy Lion Coffee Shop. It’s in North Park Hill in Denver. Cutest little coffee shop, if you’ve never been to it. When I started my business about a year and a half ago, I wanted to have a stability, that was something that was really important for me is to be able to grow my business without worrying about how is it going to pay my bills. I actually did go back into the coffee industry. So I got a part-time job as a barista at Dandy Lion Coffee and I was able to split my time between that, which paid the bills, and then the rest of the week I was able to focus on my business. And it was a great way to start. If anyone out there is thinking about starting a business but is really worried about the financials, just find some kind of small job that you still love to do and that can bring in that money while you also are focusing on your passion. So meeting the owners, I made a really great relationship with them, and I just said, hey, a lot of my clients are really looking for that mindfulness practice. Making your own mindfulness practice is one of the integral steps that I have as my formula. I have developed a specific formula that I use for all my clients. One of the steps on that path is creating your own mindfulness practice. And for a lot of my clients, we would explore breath work, we would explore sound bowls and sound baths. We would explore meditation. For some people, it’s more about finding something artistic or finding some sport that they love to play. Whatever it is that gets you into that focused mindset is great. It doesn’t have to be meditation and you can’t tell someone to just sit down and meditate for half an hour every day, they’re most likely not going to do it, unless they really feel inspired to, so you really have to find what works best for you and what you actually will enjoy doing to find that mindfulness. A lot of my clients were really seeking community and a place to practice this mindfulness together and not just alone in their bedroom listening to a YouTube recording of some singing bowls or whatever while they’re trying to be mindful or meditate. So I worked with the owners of this coffee shop and I approached them and said, “Hey, can I start doing events here?” and they were like, sure ––
Yeah, it brings people in, right?
Yeah, and that’s kind of what created the sound baths at Dandy Lion. Over a year now, we’ll toggle between doing sound baths, workshops, or craft nights every Friday for the past year.
Since you said people that you talked to were looking for community for some of these events, is this the type of event where if someone is coming solo, because sometimes people feel a little bit nervous about going to an event, they need to kind of bring a friend or someone to support them, but if someone doesn’t have that friend and just needs to come solo, is that something that people have done and have felt comfortable and have been able to develop community through the events?
Yes, absolutely. A lot of people do come solo, and when they do, oftentimes, they’ll strike up conversations with the person next to them, or they don’t even have to talk to anyone and it’s almost just being in a room with other people who are there to do something similar to you. You can be an introvert and you don’t want to talk to anyone, you just want to come in and have space with people, that’s great too.
Yeah. You said you toggled between like a mindfulness type of event and a craft type of event.
Yes, yes.
Whenever you’re focused on creating something beautiful, to me, is just one of the many ways that you can practice mindfulness so that’s why I include that in the wellness events.
Do you oftentimes have people when it comes to mindfulness, needing to get out of this kind of rigid way of thinking of this is not a productive activity.
I think it’s a little bit of both. I think maybe when somebody signs up for this for the first time, they’re not really sure what to expect. A lot of times, first time people will be coming with a friend, like a friend says, “Oh, you have to experience the sound bath. It’s so amazing.” With the sound bowls, the singing bowls, it’s really amazing being in the same room as them, because the vibrations that they give off and the frequencies that they give off actually vibrate the water inside of our body and our body tissue. I always tell people that you can meditate, you can let your mind take you on a journey, or you can fall asleep. No matter what happens, you are getting that health benefit because of the way that the vibrations and the frequencies of the bowls are actually vibrating your body. And so, afterwards, it does give you this very light, lightening feeling. A lot of the stress and the tension that our cells hold on to have an opportunity to release a little bit, and also the thoughts that come up for you while you’re listening to these often are things that are asking to be cleared and are ideas and things that if you give it a little bit of attention and love, then you can actually really do some deep healing during these events. And I think it leaves people with such an uplifted feeling that they can’t wait to come to the next one.
I’m envisioning a scenario where, say, someone is around 30 years old and they had gotten used to going out to clubs, to bars and listening to music and dancing, and then a life circumstance changes, say, they have a child or their friends all move away or something like that, and that goes away. Now, all of a sudden, they’re in a very different mental state. And I bring up this scenario, it’s one of, say, many scenarios that someone can go in where somehow, without being consciously aware of this idea of healing, that one of your activities was giving you a certain amount of healing and then that activity goes away and now, all of a sudden, whatever the mental toxins, however you describe it, are starting to build up. Do you feel like this has happened, some of the clients that you see, do you feel like any of them have had situations kind of like that?
In many ways, we all have situations like that. To answer your question, I think it really goes down to how good are you at following your intuition. So, when you get those intuitive hits, you have an interest in something, something could make you happy, do you ignore that or do you pursue it? One era of your life might come to a close but that always gives an opportunity for new things to come in, new things that are going to fulfill you in the same way that that other thing did. It’s funny that you talk about going out to concerts and stuff and then like having a family, because, recently, I saw –– people have been putting on event called the baby rave, and it is literally in the middle of the day a rave intended for children. Parents get to bring their kids and there’s no alcohol, there’s no drugs, nothing like that, it’s just a really fun experience for parents to have with their children to gather as a community of parents and kids and get to have a dance party, and they’ll play a lot of kid friendly songs, but it’s got that same vibe, the same feel, they’re all dressing up in fun outfits. If that is something that you love, there’s always a way to recreate that thing that you loved in your now experience and your now version, you just have to get creative.
Is it also require getting a little bit deeper into why you love this. So it’s like this activity was such a big part of my life but what was it really giving me? Because sometimes it doesn’t always have to be the exact same activity, although some people get in their mindset where it’s like, “Oh, well, if I can’t have my fill in the blank, whatever it is ––
Right. If I can’t have a drink while I’m there, why would I go?
That type of thing. So what type of people have been showing up at these events, the craft events, the mindfulness events? Is there a mold or are you getting like kind of all different types of people in all different places in life?
I’m definitely getting all different kinds of people, for sure. However, the one common trait is that they’re all interested in sharing that mindfulness space. A lot of them are on the very beginning journeys of this but they all seem to be very interested in how to take time to really kind of look within. Everyone who does come is on the wagon of wanting to heal their mental state or heal their internal self. I mean, that’s where we all start is having that desire to want to feel good about ourselves, to feel like we have purpose and passion in our lives.
How do the people who are maybe a little bit further along in their journeys generally respond to the people who are just starting their journeys and just starting to get there and maybe still have some of those mental patterns that the people further along have actively gotten away from?
I would describe someone who’s further along on that path as somebody who has already gone through the experience of exactly what the people in the beginning are. So I would say that the people who are further along have a lot of compassion and be in understanding for where you’re at when you are feeling in the dumps because they were there too.
No, I’m just envisioning this kind of middle phase where they’re starting to change their thought patterns but they’re still being a little judgy about the old thought patterns, which I had a phase like that myself, to be 100 percent honest.
I always tell people that healing is not linear. Healing happens in a spiral. So you are going to go through a process of it’s kind of like one thing at a time. We kind of deal with one thing at a time. So you might be wanting to deal with a relationship issue. You kind of go through the process, focusing on one thing, and then you master that, and then something else pops up, and you go through the process again, master that, good to go, something else pops up. We always have something to work on, no matter what. Even the people who have been doing this for years are finding new things every day that they need to work on but you get so good at that process that it gets easier and easier to actually kind of integrate whatever emotion it is that you’re dealing with.
Tell me about the process. Let’s hear about it.
With my Black Raven Coaching, I have a framework that I like to take all of my clients through. When you sign up for the month or the weekly sessions, this is really the way that we kind of get you started. Number one, I always start people with visualization techniques. This is where we really get down into talking about, okay, you don’t like your life right now. Okay, that’s where we’re at right now. What would you like your life to look like? Let’s say you had all the money you needed. Let’s say you have unlimited time. You get to wake up in the morning and decide every day what you want to do. So if that was your circumstance, what would you choose? Let’s say that you’ve already done all the vacations you wanted to go on, you already have that beautiful house that you want, you already have that perfect relationship in the family, now what? The second question you want to ask yourself is if you could do anything every single day and you would do it for free just because you love doing it so much, no one can stop you from doing this one thing, what would that be? And you’re going to find something in between those two questions of what do I want every single day to look like for me and what would I do with my time every single day? And then, from there, once, we have a really tight visualization of what you want your life to look like, then we go to the next step, which is the limiting beliefs, alchemizing your limiting beliefs, discovering your blocks. Then we start to do –– a lot of it is very similar to what you’re going to hear with like shadow work techniques. We’re going to identify what’s blocking you and what’s keeping you from having that life right now. You’re also going to learn how to process and clear negative emotions. You’re going to think about something that you’ve always wanted and something is going to pop up for you that is a reason for you as to why you can’t have that. Maybe –– and right now, right? Because in my visualization, I may have all the money in the world, but right now, I feel poor. How do I make that jump? It’s really about identifying what comes up for you that is a block for you. Usually, it’s some kind of negative emotion. When we really get down to understanding what it is we want, why we feel like we can’t have that now, you are going to find an emotion attached to both of those, a desire to have a certain emotion and then what comes up for you because you don’t have it. For me, personally, I had so many limiting beliefs around abundance and stability, I really felt like my whole life, I had enough to get me by but I only had just enough that I didn’t have any extra for anything else, just from childhood. This was kind of the limiting belief that I had learned about money is that we always have just enough to be okay but nothing extra. And I wanted that extra. I wanted to be able to have the financial stability to go explore. And so that’s really what you want to start asking yourself is, okay, why do you want that financial stability? What does that mean for you? For me, I got it down to the point where I realized that one of my big values has always been freedom. And so what I wanted, I wanted the financial stability and that security because it would give me the freedom that I was looking for. Good, we figured that out. What I want is freedom, not necessarily abundance or financial stability, it’s freedom. Okay. So why don’t I think I can have freedom right now? Because I can’t afford to be free. I got to pay my bills, I got to feed the dog, the rent is due every month.
That’s important. Our dogs are amazing.
The reason why I was making the choices that I was making at that time was because I was trying to fulfill that security, and the reason why I felt unworthy is because I wasn’t finding ways in my life to experience freedom. That’s kind of what we find, when we’re working through limiting belief stuff, it’s identifying, okay, well, where in my life can I experience that without the financial stuff? How can I take 10 minutes a day to do whatever I want? How can I take half an hour every day to go do something that makes me feel free or makes me feel happy or maybe it’s something very self caring? It’s finding that limiting belief and then finding ways to prove it wrong. Whenever I get into the limiting belief stuff, I really love talking about Dr. Bruce Lipton and Joe Dispenza because they both have written some amazing books and talking about how to retrain your brain, really get control over your thoughts. And when you’re working with the limiting belief stuff, that’s kind of step one. They talk a lot about how, when we’re having thoughts come through our head, like every single day, “I’m not worthy,” “I can’t do that,” whatever it is for you, a neural network path. So those are synapses in your brain that are running every time you’re thinking that thought. And when you think that thought, imagine like a highway, these thoughts are cars going down a highway, you are strengthening and building that highway, that path to that thought of, “I’m a POS,” “I’m not worthy,” is strengthening every time you think it. What you can do, you want to stop using that road and begin using another one. But what that means is that you have to begin building new neural networks in your brain. You have to begin construction on a new highway and you have to start using that highway. A lot of times, your brain is going to want to use what’s easy. It’s going to want to use the highway that you’ve been reinforcing this whole time. So you have to find ways to stop that thought as it’s going and say, “Nope, instead, we’re gonna use this highway.” When it comes to your brain, it’s just repetition.
Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of people refer to it as subconscious programming, but the idea is that you’re comfortable thinking this type of way and thinking differently takes effort, and I know people said different number of days that it takes, I think it just depends on how often you do it, how consistent, but for at least the first 21 days, if not more, you have to be consciously thinking, “I’m not going to think this way,” come up with a different way to stop the thought and replace it with something else, but your brain, especially if you’re tired, I imagine it being the hardest when you either get tired or maybe you get drunk or something like that, where you’re like a little bit out of your mind, distracted, and all of a sudden that thought process comes back, even though you’ve been trying to get rid of it.
That’s when I really like to find either a mantra or find examples in your life right now that prove that limiting belief wrong, and then remind yourself of that every time you have that thought. Bringing it back to like abundance, because that’s what I really had to work through with myself, is every time I thought, “Oh, I can’t afford that,” I would say, “I don’t wanna say I can’t afford it. I just can’t afford it maybe right now in this moment,” but then you can either find ways like, “Oh, but look at what I can afford. I’ve got a roof over my head. I pay this office house every single month.” Start looking at what you do have and what you can afford, and say, “Oh, I can afford that.” Just start pointing out things in your space right now that you obviously could afford and that itself, your brain does really well when you give it evidence. And that’s a really awesome trick. So just finding evidence as to why whatever it is that you’re thinking, find evidence to disprove it and find evidence to prove the other one right, even if it’s not necessarily the situation that you want. Obviously, you want to afford that one thing but you can afford that one day, but right now, just look at what you could afford in your life.
To wrap it all up, so it’s about finding out what your limiting belief is around the topic that you’re specifically thinking at a time with this rinse and repeat for other things, find that limiting belief, but then also finding ways to disprove that limiting belief and replace it with something else, but rather than just saying something to yourself, like “I am worthy,” you could go out and be like, “Well, this person really wanted to come and see me last weekend so that means I’m worthy,” or something like that.
Yeah, exactly. Find reasons, find evidence. Instead of just saying, “I’m worthy,” even though inside you really don’t feel like that, say, “Oh, I’m worthy because that one example.”
Well, that is wonderful. Taylor, thank you so much for joining us today on Action’s Antidotes and telling us all about what we can do, first of all, with respect to looking a little bit deeper into what our passions are and handling these situations when our passions, I guess, don’t work out the way we had hoped. Also finding the evidence to disprove our limiting beliefs. I hope that everyone out there listening will kind of look into some of this and actually find ways to change your thought patterns. And, of course, if you need some help, what is the website of your…
If anyone looking to work with me or find me, you can find me at blackravencoaching.com and I’m also on Instagram, just under @black_raven_coaching. So feel free to reach out. I do offer discovery calls, which is the very first session, absolutely for free. So that is kind of a time where, if you sign up for a free discovery call, we get to sit down together and just see if we’re a good coaching client match. I take the opportunity to talk to you about what you got going on in your life, why you’re seeking help, and then I will walk you through my formula in a much more concise way and we’ll see if what I have to offer is helpful for you. And if it is, then we will go ahead and start that coaching client relationship.
Excellent. Well, hopefully it works out for as many people as possible. And from the wrap up, I also want to, as always, thank everyone out there listening, for taking the time to tune in to Action’s Antidotes today and, hopefully, you all have a wonderful rest of your day.
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About Taylor Lehn
After spending years feeling unfulfilled with the direction my career was going, I devoted myself to exploring personal growth and discovering my true purpose. Through my own journey of self-discovery, I’ve developed tools and techniques that transformed my well-being and led me to a deeply fulfilling career.
Now, as a certified Life Purpose and Spiritual Growth Coach, I specialize in helping my clients align their beliefs and habits to match the life they have always wanted. My mission is to help you unlock your full potential and achieve your goals by providing personalized coaching and guidance.