The Power of ‘I Can’ - start breaking through limitations

In this Thursday Thread, we're revisiting powerful insights from Dr. Craig Farney's previous episode to explore how the voices of "I can't" and "I can" shape our reality—both mentally and physically.

We’ll dive into how the "I can't" voice, often rooted in societal conditioning, shows up in our lives, limiting our potential. In contrast, the "I can" voice—driven by curiosity and possibility—holds the key to unlocking your true power and transforming your life.

Through practical somatic listening exercises, I’ll guide you to navigate this internal conflict, empowering you to shift your mindset with compassion and ease. We’ll also explore how these voices manifest physically, offering clues to where your limitations are showing up in your body.

Drawing inspiration from trailblazers like Kathrine Switzer, who ran the first marathon as a woman, we’ll uncover the power of embracing curiosity and possibility, proving that anything is possible when you choose to listen to the voice of "I can."

By the end of this episode, you’ll have the tools to confront your own limitations and dreams, and step into a more empowered version of yourself.

Key Takeaways:

• Why challenging the "I can’t" voice unlocks new possibilities for your life.
• How to listen to your body and use physical sensations to guide your mental and emotional shifts.
• How to tap into the curiosity of your inner child to move beyond limitations and embrace new growth.
• Why confronting both your fears and dreams leads to true empowerment.
• How to make intentional, empowered choices that align with your true self and open the door to limitless possibility.

Chapters

• 0:04 Inner Child Versus Inner Parent
• 9:17 Embracing Curiosity

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

Hi and welcome to Untethered with Jen Liss, the podcast that's here to help you break free, be you and unleash your inner brilliance. I'm your host, jen, and in this episode we're going to talk about how actually you can. It's Jen. Welcome back to the podcast for another Thursday Thread. It's a Thursday Thread.

Speaker 1: 0:38

We are pulling a thread out of Tuesday's episode with Dr Craig Farney Totes. Cool, if you haven't listened to that episode with Dr Craig, I'm going to pull out a thought, a concept, an idea from that episode that really resonated with me Now. First of all, dr Craig is such a fascinating person and we talked about all kinds of things that genuinely are so fascinating to me right now as well. It is an excellent episode for the curious, for if you're manifestation curious, if you are curious about the quantum, if you're curious about energy work, if you're curious about kinesiology, body work, parasites that might be living in your stomach and causing all kinds of things, energy in general. Please go listen to that episode. And I really want to dive into this concept that he talked about of I can't versus I can, because a lot of us have a voice in our head that says I can't. Probably most of us, right, we've all got this voice that says, no, you can't do that, versus the voice that says I can do this. And the truth is that both of those voices exist within you. The can't voice is coming from your inner parent and the can voice is coming from your inner child. We've got both of these existing within us. You have a parent that is telling you here's the way that you can move about the world, and you have your child that's like I want to have fun and I want to be free and I want to explore possibilities and I want to see all of the magic that's in the world. And this podcast is a voice for your can. What I am doing in this podcast is bringing voice to your inner child, to your inner creator, to that which in you knows that there is so much possible for you because actually you can.

Speaker 1: 2:34

We think we can't because that voice in our brain, the parent voice, is very loud and when we think about that as we're growing up, our parents want safety for us, they want to show us, they need to show us how to move about the world so that we don't hurt ourselves, so we don't harm ourselves, so that we do live a life that we love, that we're proud of, that we're so capable in, and our parents do the best job that they can to get us to that point and yet this voice, this inner parent, begins to come in. That is a reflection somewhat of our parents, somewhat of our teachers, other things that we experience in the world that become that voice of the parent. It's what I call the inner judge, the inner critic. It has very much a. This is the world that you live in. Here is how you move about the world. It teaches us those things.

Speaker 1: 3:30

The problem for so many of us is that we listen only or mostly to that voice and we don't give voice to our child. I thought it was fascinating to think about. Craig thinks that the inner child lives more in the gut. There's so many of us who have gut issues and so many of us who aren't listening to our inner child, so that's something it's more of a curiosity from him more than a fact. I thought that that was so fascinating.

Speaker 1: 3:59

But what is true and I know this from working with hundreds, hundreds of conversations with women it is so easy for us to fight for the can't, our brain, automatically, the ego side of our brain, our mind, our inner parent, our inner critic, our inner judge, fights for the can't. It says you can't do that. It fights for the limitations. It has strong opinions. It's very loud, it's very demanding. You do have that other voice. You have the child inside of you. The challenge that child has been told to pipe down. It's been told that its ideas are illogical, irresponsible, not possible. But that doesn't mean it's true. That's what we get to the point of realizing. Is that just because the mind tells us something, just because our parent tells us something, our parent brain, our actual parent, actual society, whatever it is that is parenting us, just because it says that it is so, doesn't mean that it's true? And what we're doing in the world of manifestation, what we're doing in the world of coaching and helping people see things differently, is to open up to the possibilities of the can, this other voice inside of us that has something to say. And because we haven't been letting it have its say, there are things in us that are actually physically uncomfortable and I've done a lot of exploration on this for myself. So I'm going to give you an actual physical manifestation that, if you did listen to Dr Craig's episode, this might be intriguing to you.

Speaker 1: 5:50

When I am out of alignment or when I am stressed, or when I am anxious, when I am worried, when I am feeling overwhelmed this is me, jen Liss in my body I feel this tight sensation across my gut. It's at the top of, like the very bottom of my rib cage, between the gut and between the upper half of me. And when I have gone in and done work I do somatic therapy and somatic coaching when I go in and I do work with this area of my body, it very clearly says you can't do that, you can't do that. And when I go a little bit deeper there is another voice, so this you can't do. That voice is so loud and there's physical sensation happening in my body that I never noticed for a long time.

Speaker 1: 6:44

But because I have been doing breath work and I've been coming back into my body and listening to my body and beginning to hear the messages that my body is telling me, I can hear it. So if you don't hear messages like this, I totally get it. This was not me a couple years ago, but I can hear the message now that it's telling me. It's very clear. It says you can do that when I hear that message and I say I see you, I hear you, thank you, thank you so much physical sensation for coming up in my body and I say, what else is here? I hear a little voice deep in my gut that says maybe I can, what if you tried? What if you could? Wouldn't it be fun? It's got all kinds of messages. It doesn't just say you can't, it has all kinds of curious, playful messages that exist within my gut and this is going to back up. For those of you who listen to Dr Craig, this is even going to be really nail home what he said.

Speaker 1: 7:53

When I allow those two voices to meet each other, when I say to both of them I see you, I feel you, I know you, I am you, thank you, I say that to both of them they meet in the heart and I feel this loving, soothing energy in my heart and this strength and this power that comes in me. That's like I hear this voice inside of me that is saying that you can't. It's trying to protect me and I hear this possibility and I feel so empowered and so free and so excited to go and try something with this, knowing that I'm listening to my inner parent and this, knowing that I'm listening to my inner child. So I give this as an example of how the I can't can be physically manifesting in our bodies. Now, this part in my stomach, if I don't listen, if I don't pause and listen, it can get very painful and I have had physical symptoms that happen in my body because I'm not listening. And that can happen because I'm not listening to either side. I'm not listening to the brain, I'm not listening to my gut. They're both talking all the time and yours might not be manifesting in the same area. In the same way. Our bodies speak to us in different ways. In the same area. In the same way Our bodies speak to us in different ways.

Speaker 1: 9:17

But the work really is going and giving voice, because the voice of the child is so much quieter, it's so much more gentle, it's so much more curious. The voice of the parent is very loud and demanding and, hello, are you listening? It's like putting the smack down. And so it's very obvious we can listen to our parents easily, we're guided by our parent, our inner parent, so often, but we're not giving voice to that quieter, more gentle voice and then that starts to manifest in our bodies as problems because we're not listening, manifest in our bodies as problems because we're not listening. But there are plenty of things that child is so curious and there's so many things in the world that have been done by people listening to their inner child, by listening to that creative voice, that voice of wonder. Think about the Wright brothers. They flew a plane. People thought that was nutty. No, that's not possible. What are you doing? You're going to get yourself killed. If they had listened only to that voice, they never would have tried what they were capable of doing.

Speaker 1: 10:24

Catherine Switzer, the first woman to run a marathon. We don't really realize how close we are to the moment when people thought that women physically could not do that kind of activity. Women physically could not. And what we are realizing? There are women now who are running marathons faster and faster and faster every year. We used to think that, people, you get slower as you get older. There are women who are starting to run their marathons faster. And what does that take? It takes a curiosity. It takes us not listening to the inner parent that's saying you can't do that. And these are extreme examples. Of course, we're talking about the first women to run a marathon, who dressed in disguise and got people tried to actually take her down while running it. Talk about parents parenting her from the sidelines and hopping in and trying to actually physically stop her.

Speaker 1: 11:27

But it comes down to the teeny, tiny choices that we can be making for ourselves and choosing the behaviors that we want to be engaging and that are truly aligned to us. It can come down to sharing something that's funny to us on social media. It comes to, you know, trying something new in our jobs. It comes to just having a little bit more fun in our day-to-day going for that walk that we wanted to, skipping along the path because it sounds fun. That's a vote for your inner child and who knows how that could reverberate not just into your day but into somebody else's Maybe. Somebody sees you skip and they're like, oh my gosh, look at that person having so much fun and it changes their day.

Speaker 1: 12:16

And all of this starts with us opening the door to being curious around the can to find ourselves more often spending time in the maybe I can. What if I could? The maybe I can? What if I could? What would it be like if I did? How often do we give voice to that side. We give voice so much to the other side, to the limitations, to all the reasons that we can't, and when somebody's coming into a coaching program and looking forward to changing something about their lives, they can get so stymied by all of the reasons why this doesn't make sense, without ever even trying to give voice to the other side. So I'm going to give us homework, kind of, from Dr Craig. It's a sort of homework assignment based on what he had shared.

Speaker 1: 13:15

There's something in your life that you're curious about that you might have some wonder around, something that you might want to do. Maybe it's changing your job. Maybe it's asking for a raise. Maybe it's starting a business. Maybe it's what if I could go solo travel somewhere by myself? Maybe it's moving to a whole new city. Maybe it's buying a home when you've been renting, what if it's moving from a house to a rental because you want to be more untethered? Something that you want to do. So think about that thing and then, when you do create a list of all the things Actually create two lists. We're going to go divide down the page. Here's the thing that you want to do Divide the page and on the left side of the page page and on the left side of the page, write all of the things that will happen if you do it, that feel negative, that feel limiting, that feel like the reasons that you shouldn't List all of those reasons.

Speaker 1: 14:28

So take about two minutes, just stream of consciousness, all of the things that feel like, okay, this is the reason that I can't do this. Go as far as you possibly can, as dramatic as you possibly can. Then, on the right side, write all of the things that could happen if you did do it. And go in the dreamy big possibilities fun, magical. Doesn't matter how far you go. It could be so ridiculous I become a huge, big name, celebrity and I get to sing on stage and I win an Oscar. It could be that may or may not be your dream that you can go as big as you want. I own a cruise ship. Well, what is as big as you could possibly go?

Speaker 1: 15:20

Go in both directions and then get curious about what you see. Get curious about what has come up for you and then get curious about what energetically feels most exciting about those possibilities that you listed. What do you see? What is new, what feels different here? And then we'll go in and ask your gut what it wants to do in and ask your gut what it wants to do. So, after you do this exercise, come back and let's breathe together on this. Let's see what's here for you, let's see what possibilities might be here, let's see what decision might be the best, most aligned decision for you.

Speaker 1: 16:12

So, when you're ready, coming back here and sitting down doing this exercise, sitting down where you can really tune in and close down your eyes and getting comfortable wherever it is that you were sitting and drawing an inhale in through the nose, exhaling through your mouth, completely letting that full exhale go, closing down your eyes if you haven't yet. Just bringing your awareness to your breath, the rise and the fall of your belly, the rise and the fall of your chest, noticing how each inhale naturally draws that air in, filling the lungs, filling the belly, each exhale pressing up through the belly and out, following that pathway gently as the air flows in and out. Noticing the physical sensations of the breath on the nostrils, physical sensations of the expansion, the letting go, bringing your awareness down to the seat beneath you On your next exhale, letting your body be held in your seat. There you go Now, bringing your awareness deeper into the body, sinking that awareness down from the heart, down to the belly, to the gut, considering this thing that you might do, this thing that has been on your mind, on your heart, and asking yourself can I do it, letting your body respond, noticing any sensations that arise, any thoughts that might arise? Can I do it?

Speaker 1: 19:47

Taking a deep breath into the nose, exhaling out through the mouth and asking a second question what if I did? What if I did? Do it Noticing once again any sensations that arise in the body, any thoughts that might arise in the mind, thanking these sensations, these thoughts for arising? Taking another deep breath into the nose, out through the mouth? Asking a final question Do I want to do it? Noticing once again what arises in terms of sensation, thoughts, letting it arise without judgment? Do I want to? You can repeat this process if it feels good to you, if you'd like to gain clarity on any of the answers, if you feel like you have an answer, a response, a bit of clarity, joining me in taking another final deep breath into the nose and out through the mouth, on that exhale where the chair or the seat meets your seat, feeling your feet wiggling the toes, wiggling your fingers, blinking your eyes open and coming back into the here and now the new sense of clarity, of curiosity, maybe a new sense of excitement to try simply to be more open and curious in a new way.

Speaker 1: 22:39

Thank you so much for listening to this episode and enjoying that exercise with me. If there's something that you gained from this episode or that exercise, I encourage you to share this episode with somebody who might gain something for themselves. You can forward this along to them. You can also take a screenshot of the episode on your phone and share it on social media. Tag me. I'm untetheredjen on Instagram. I'll always reshare your posts if you tag me and share. Thanks again for listening. You just keep shining your magical unicorn light out there for all to see. I'll see you next time, bye.