233. Why You Keep Falling Back Into Old Patterns (Even After Doing the Work)

Samantha Hawley (: 00:00

Welcome back to Beyond Awareness. Okay, so this episode is for a very specific person. This is for the woman who has done quote-unquote the work. She's been in therapy. She's likely gone to retreats. She's done coaching programs. She's done like hard conversations or had hard conversations with herself and other people. And she's actually gotten somewhere.

she's uncovered beliefs that have been quietly running the show. And it may have sounded something like, in order to be successful, I have to ignore my inner voice. Or in order to be loved, I need to put everyone else's feelings and needs above my own. Or in order to be safe, I can't share my voice or else I'll be rejected. Those are some things that either I have personally

uncovered that I've shared before on the podcast, but also that I've heard consistently when I'm giving workshops inside other communities. So I thought maybe those would be relatable for you or maybe it's something completely different, but you've named it and you've released it. You feel like it no longer is controlling you or it doesn't have as tight of a grip anymore. And so it feels good, right? You might feel free and then

A week later, you might be like, wait, why do I feel like that again? Or maybe it's longer than a week later. Maybe it's like a month later or a year later. You kind of like circle back to it. And you're like, wait, why did I just say yes to something that I didn't want to? Why am I filling every free minute with busy work, even though I have white space on my calendar? Why did I speak up and then apologize for it?

Why does guilt feel like it's louder than it was before? I thought I worked through this. And so what nobody talks about and what I have not yet talked about on the podcast is after you release a belief, releasing isn't the finish line. It's like the starting point. And so far on this podcast, we talk about awareness.

and how we then uncover the belief underneath it that has been keeping you from taking action. And then once you take action on that belief and you rewrite it and come up with a new one, something else happens entirely. And that's what we're talking about today. I have nine things that show up after you release the belief. And I want you to listen to this less like a checklist.

and more like a permission slip. Because if any of these are happening to you right now, or if they happen in the future, which they will as you do the work and grow, you aren't doing anything wrong. And in fact, it's the opposite. It's working. So I actually think that knowing this in advance and expecting one of these things to happen, it's almost like, ⁓ awesome, this is happening.

I'm prepared for this to happen, and then it's easier to move through it. And if you're experiencing this now and judging yourself for it, you're in the part that literally nobody talks about, nobody warned you about it. So that's my intention for you with this episode. And as you're listening to these nine things, kind of pinpoint if any of them feel resonant, like if any of them might actually be happening to you, or if you can find them in

past examples of your life. Because if you can see one and you're like, yeah, that is my behavior that I do, and that's what you've done in the past, that's likely what you're gonna do in the future. So it's kind of like a hint at how your patterns will show up again. And again, once you're prepared for it and you know that this is your comfort zone, your safety zone, then you can move through it quicker next time.

Okay, so number one is filling it with busy work. Okay? What this means is we feel the space after releasing a belief. We feel relief and hope and lightness, and then we immediately fill that with new tasks or projects or literally anything instead of actually sitting in what we want.

And I have so many examples of all nine things that I'm about to share with you. And I don't want this episode to be an hour long. So I do have some examples jotted down for each one and I'm going to try to stick to that. But what's coming up for me as I'm just speaking this out loud is when I was working with my client, Laura. It's funny because this is not the any of my, I have three examples that I wanted to share with you and this is not any of them on there. I was working with my client, Laura.

And one thing that she wanted before working with me was to create space on her calendar because she wanted to feel less overwhelmed. And anyways, we did end up creating space, but early on when we created space for her, she kept filling it. She would work a little bit later or get up a little bit earlier. She would do a little bit more yoga. She would do something instead of what she wanted to be doing.

And what she wanted to be doing was spending time with her son or going on bike rides or sitting in her cozy corner in her comfy chair with some tea and reading. It wasn't any of the things that she was actually doing. And so the work for her was she'd already created the space, right? She worked through that belief. And so now it was more intentionality around, okay, what do you actually want to do in that space? And

finding the, I guess like a new belief that it's safe to slow down. It's safe to read during that time instead of doing what you were doing, which was likely producing. It's safe to go out on a bike ride with or without your kids instead of cooking dinner or again, producing, performing in some way, or form. So that was number one. Number two.

is the void or panic or the loss of identity. And what I mean by this is the thought process of, if I'm not controlling everything, then who am I? Or wait, if I'm not ignoring myself, or rather, if I'm not putting everyone else first, then who am I?

Right? And so it's kind of like we work through our belief, but then we have a moment where we're like, wait, wait, wait, wait. I have all my life, I've been the person that is there for other people. So if I'm not that person and those people no longer need me in that way, who am I? You kind of feel isolated or with the whole control thing. If you release control, you're flying in the wind.

And it feels scary. I was chatting with someone, Olivia, and she literally said, I want to rest, but I don't know how to rest without feeling lazy. And I feel like that's just so common. We hear that all the time. And that's not a rest problem. That right there is an identity problem. She has been the woman pushes through for so long.

performing, producing for so long that she didn't know who she was without it. So much so that sitting on the couch felt unsafe. So maybe you see yourself in that one. Number three, there will be people who try to dim you. This is where people sense a difference in you. They sense your growth and they try to pull you

back to who you were because your change makes them uncomfortable. This is the saddest one. I hate seeing this. And the example that I have for you with this is actually with my twin sister.

So my sister is a doctor of physical therapy. And she started her career in the outpatient clinic area, that landscape. And she really loved it. She ended up getting certified to become an MS specialist. And kind of around the same time, she and I both got really into personal development.

And she just dove into that personal development and self-help and diving into herself and self-care while building her own business on the side. She started a business for people with MS. It's called The Missing Link. And so she was doing that on the side while working at this outpatient clinic. And her boss, I believe, and she believes as well, felt

this new version of my sister, this version of her that was like more confident in herself and had new beliefs about herself and her worth and all of this. And her boss was threatened by her and it was so evident. And at one point, my sister asked her boss for a raise and he basically laughed in her face and said, no, that she wasn't worth it, literally. And then he also said that

He wanted her to use her energy and brain power to grow his program instead of her own. That was his words, because he knew that she was working on her own program. And at that point, Gretchen knew that she wanted to do the opposite. She wanted grow her own business. So people will sense this positive shift in you and feel threatened by it. And it's going to test you. It's going to feel.

like it's going to make you so small. And that's your sign to step away and to step into your power versus accepting that and being like, yeah, yeah, you're right. I should stay at that clinic. I should keep that paycheck. I should stay small. Number four, guilty conscience. So what this is is like you start saying no or you start prioritizing yourself.

And then guilt immediately rushes in. And you might think, am I being selfish? Am I a bad mom? Am I a bad boss? Am I a bad partner? All of these things. And then it's just easier to go back to people pleasing. And my example for this is actually myself. And so I started doing more things for myself towards the end of my marriage. And it was because

we had moved back to my hometown. And so I started like going to yoga classes because my mom was teaching yoga at the time and I would do target runs and I just I loved being back home. felt guilty for being home and I felt guilty for being happier personally that I was literally giving my husband an allowance for doing nothing. He wasn't even really job searching. was

trying to surf and going golfing. like, I had a meeting one night for my business at 8 p.m. and my husband had me watch my son while he was on the couch watching TV. And I was like, okay, yeah, yeah, I'll make that work because I felt so guilty. And so people pleasing reared its amazing head. No, I should say ugly head.

And I just was doing these things. would buy him coffee if I was ever out, just so that he wouldn't get mad, but also so that I didn't feel guilty for doing that thing for myself only. And I would constantly question, am I a bad wife for taking that time for myself?

Am I a bad boss for sticking to shorter or just different availability now that I'm a mom and I don't have all day to work like I did before? And so going back to people pleasing just felt so much easier while simultaneously thinking, am I doing enough? And so it was just a really rough time and I...

failed that assignment, I will say. I stayed stuck. was working through beliefs and then going back down, working through a belief and then going back down. And I had to work through the same belief many different times and then work through this guilty conscience many different times until I finally, I want to say, like, conquered this challenge and realized that I don't have to feel guilty for those things. The next one is

your voice confusion or your intuition confusion. And so your inner voice gets louder after releasing the belief. And the other side, the flip side to it though, is that you don't know which voice to trust. The noise feels overwhelming and so you shut it all down again instead of listening to that intuition. So my example.

is with one of my clients, Katie. She described herself as a combination of a planner and a procrastinator. And she genuinely couldn't tell if the pressure-driven way that she worked is her superpower or sabotage. And Christy, one of my clients as well, literally said the exact same thing. So many of my clients say that

waiting until the last minute is their superpower, which I find so interesting. But that confusion between instinct and pattern, and also with Katie specifically, that she doesn't fully trust which one is her voice, that is the confusion. She doesn't know, I sabotaging myself or is this my power? That confusion.

happens after you release a belief. And that superpower or anxiety is the same thing. It's the, do I feel anxious when I wait until the last minute or am I fully stepping into my superpower and like owning that this is my style? And sometimes you wait until the last minute, you own it, but then there's still that fear or shame of like, yeah, but I shouldn't have waited that long.

This is such a unique, specific example, but I think it's so powerful of that judgment that we have where you're not fully trusting that that could be your superpower. It could be waiting until last minute, but you have that underlying fear or shame or thought that you're sabotaging yourself. I actually thought this way about myself, and I have this

I feel like a unique skill where I build websites really, really quickly. But for the longest time, I would say, I guess it's kind of similar to this because I build it quickly because I put it off where I could build like a full sequence for a launch, for example, if I wanted to like create a website for a new workshop that I'm doing and I want signups for or whatnot.

I could build that and a confirmation page and then the email that goes out saying, thanks for signing up, here's what's next, all that stuff in a week. But it takes other people months to do that. And I used to judge myself saying, ugh, I always wait until the last minute. Why do I do that? Until my business coach at one point was like, what if that's your superpower? And it just gave me permission to own that.

and to own that skill set truly of being able to execute all of that, that quickly doing it well, and it allowed me to listen to my voice in that way. So where in your day-to-day life could you listen more to your intuition instead of judging yourself? The next thing that happens after releasing a belief is emotional overwhelm.

This is simply where you start feeling your feelings more and it is scary AF. And you don't know what to do with it all because likely beforehand you were the person that was like positive Pam or you just like dusted everything under the rug. And now you're not. Now you allow yourself to feel the good, feel the scary, feel the unpleasant, but then it becomes all too much. You're like, during a busy week.

or when your kids come home and they have big feelings, it's just all too much. And so then you numb out, potentially with work, that's kind of jumping back to like the, just do busy work all the time, or with wine, or with scrolling your phone. And once again, I'm brought back to the beginning of my work when I was really working through the beliefs and I was journaling in the morning.

and then working and then being a mom all day to a whiny, whiny, whiny one year old. And I was just so overstimulated where in the mornings I felt like, yes, I was starting off my journal entries with yesterday was hard and just like brain dumping. But after that, I felt like, all right, I've got this. And I started my day off really well. But by the end of the night, I was so overstimulated that

At the end of the day, I would just sit down on my couch and scroll. It did feel like numbing out, like that was the only time for me. And there was another time where I was having a glass of wine every single night, which at the time was just very unlike me. The next one is what's called a reopening or retreating, like stepping back. And so this is where you speak up.

You do the thing, or you do something differently than before based on your new belief, right? What you now believe to be true about yourself. And then you immediately backpedal or you apologize or you soften it because vulnerability feels too raw, too real, too scary, too like, eww, how are they gonna take that?

And so you retreat back into silence to feel safe. Or I just really love the term, like reopen. So you reopen the decision. You thought you made a decision and now it's back open again. And so if you are an over thinker, this one really stings because it adds even more to your plate because here you are again, now needing to say the thing all over again or make the decision.

all over again, and you risk not making the one that you want to make because you're now doing it from a place of not setting the boundary that you want, right? Because you're backpedaling, you're apologizing, you're trying to make it easier for the other person to swallow. So just a quick example is like you make a demand, you say your price in your business or you set a boundary in a relationship, or you just say what you really mean.

to a friend, to your kid, to your family, and then you soften it, and what I mean by that is you say, or whatever you think. Like, here's my price, but I'm flexible. But are you, or do you really actually want the price that you listed? Or, I'm classic for this, you end your texts with LOL, when it's actually not funny. I do that all the time. I saw a text once, not a text, like a GIF, and it was like,

things millennials do, and that was one of the things. We either end texts with LOL or the laughing, crying face emoji. And basically, instead of sitting in our power and trusting our decision and our choice, we retreat, we go back on it. The eighth thing is the justified relapse. This is where you catch yourself doing the old behavior

but you justify it. So you will catch yourself doing the thing and then saying just this once. Or, yeah, but this situation is different because... Or, like the full sentence is like, I need to control this or I need to ignore myself or say yes to this person because it's an emergency this one time or it's...

an important, it's my dad, I have to, or it's a special circumstance, it's that one time thing. Someone, when I was giving a workshop to a community, someone spoke up and said that she worked through the idea of wanting to speak up to her partner more, but could see herself justifying, saying yes, or even pushing something under the rug if...

something seemed like a one-time thing versus ongoing, just because they would bicker. And so if she thought it was small enough, she wouldn't say anything. However, that's what got her to where she was in her relationship. And so she is now well aware of the justified relapse, and not that she's going to use that to cause an argument, which was how she approached things before.

but she's also not going to push things under the rug. She now has a way to state how she's feeling and a way to communicate that so that it doesn't spark an argument and she's getting her needs met. And last but not least is the test scenarios. So this one might be a little woo woo for some people, but I believe that the universe almost immediately tests you.

once you create that new belief or when you ask for something. And so what happens is you have this new belief or make an ask or make a decision and then the old pattern that you have feels so much easier, just like we talked about earlier. People pleasing feels easier than not people pleasing. And so my example for this.

group like this in January of: 2025

And I waited until January of: 2026

I have this wake-up call that my business has a 66 % conversion through referrals. So like when I talk to someone and they feel like the depth of my work and if it's aligned, they want to work with me. However, I have been so focused on

Like the landing pages, like I said earlier, and funnels, even my newsletters, which I do love writing, but my newsletters have had 0 % conversion. 0 % conversion. And so knowing that, that like my digital side of things has been fun, it almost feels like that's been a distraction and I should have been leaning more into the in-person stuff. And...

I've worked through so many beliefs underneath that. That's what I feel like a different episode will be. However, I'm leaning into it, right? And where I feel like the universe is testing me is because the day that actually, sorry, it was the day after that I typed out just tons of notes about it.

like who I want to be a part of this networking circle. I'm calling it the leaders table. who I want to be a part of the leaders table, what we're going to do, topics we can talk about, where I want to meet, just all this stuff. And it was so easy for me to type all this stuff out and so fun. And I was so lit up by it. And I even did a post about it on Facebook. The very next morning, I woke up to two emails. One.

is an email that says that I received a lead, which is like somebody that signed up for my free Calm Mind Blueprint from YouTube. And another one signed up for my free Calm Mind Blueprint. So both these people are now on my email list from Pinterest. Of all places, like I have my podcast. ⁓ and the third one was from my podcast. Three leads, which I

I get leads from my podcast, never from YouTube, never from Pinterest. And the old Sam would have said, ⁓ my God, I should obviously still build the leaders table, but I, you know, on the side, I should create more pins and I should go back to posting my podcast on YouTube because clearly people are interested, you know, just in case, but that's not the new me.

The new me, I am trusting that I need to build my leaders table in person. Social media, YouTube, Pinterest, all that stuff is just extra. And my content is already out there. So if people want to look at that stuff and follow it, they can. But my time is not like, it's not the best use of my time over there right now. That would be a distraction that would take away from.

I said, a year ago in January: 2025

I had the idea and life got in the way. I had so many excuses. It took me a year to actually do something about it. And when I'm recording this, it's March and I'm finally doing something about it. So those are the nine things that happen after you identify a belief and then you replace it with a new one. So whether you have done all of that deep work of releasing the belief,

and then coming up with a new one and embodying that, or maybe you're just starting to recognize the patterns. What I want you to take away from today's episode is that the discomfort that you feel after you're starting to change and that pressure to go back to who you were is not a sign that you shouldn't.

be the new version of you or that you're doing something wrong or that you missed a step or that you read the wrong PD book. What that discomfort is, is showing you that you're on the exact right path. It's working. It's literally like I'm envisioning, I know nothing's linear, but I'm envisioning a line and it's like, yep, yep, yep, you're doing it right. You're doing it right. And the guilt and the confusion and the weird urges that you might have to go back.

Literally is your nervous system just looking for familiar ground. And familiar isn't always better, it's just what's known. And how we can make the new version, the new belief and the new patterns known, there's a lot of different ways that we can do that. But one is finding proof by passing those nine tests that might show up.

And I just want to say that the women that I work with, they don't struggle because they aren't self-aware enough. And I bet that you aren't struggling with self-awareness. They're struggling because awareness alone doesn't rewire anything. That's the whole thing around beyond awareness. You have to be aware, but then keep going back.

keep questioning from like as neutral of a place as possible. Keep choosing the new thing, the new pattern, even when the old thing feels so much easier, especially when the old thing feels so much easier. And then finding proof that this new pattern is safe, that this new pattern lands with other people safely. And that's the work. And it doesn't have to be this

dramatic or overwhelming or years of therapy or even years of coaching, it can simply be 10 minutes with the right questions more consistently. That's literally what I did about four mornings each week. When was that? Like four years ago, right before I was going through my divorce and during my divorce and that first year. So if today resonated, maybe you noticed yourself in one of the nine things or a couple of the nine things.

But if you didn't, want a place to make your new belief become a mental habit, as I like to say, grab the Calm Mind Blueprint. It's free. That's how I prompted myself as I was working through my own self-sabotage, my own huge blocks during my hardest season. So again, it's free. It's in the show notes. And it's literally the framework not only that I use, but I also help my private clients go through.

to go from like spinning in mental overwhelm and the same patterns to actually making that shift. if you need more support, like if that's just one more thing on your to-do list, you actually need me to handhold you, which I do love doing, I'm here for you, then consider booking a Breakthrough Intensive with me and we can dig into one thing that's happening in your world right now and come out with a tangible plan and also relief.

where can take a deep breath and feel confident in the direction that you're going in. Thank you for listening today, and I will see you next