Today I’m sharing 5 steps on becoming fully self expressed and if you’re new me & this podcast, I’ll give you a little backstory. Before I showed up fully self expressed online as a business owner, as Self Expressed Babe, I was a yoga teacher. If you scroll back on my Instagram account, you’ll see my posts from being a yoga teacher and in starting my business from day one when I showed up as a graphic designer.

I knew that I eventually wanted to bring back in my spirituality from teaching yoga into my business because that’s what I love doing. And I thought that I was there by showing up as a spiritual healer towards the end of last year. [2021]

I realized that that was still too vague and that I was really close, but there was still something where I was like, I need to get more specific and I need to really realize what I have been good in my past? How long have I been good at this thing that I’ve been doing?

Now I’m showing up as a self-love coach because I’ve realized that I’ve been on this journey of growth since 15. And I’m 32 now.

So then I asked myself, what are the steps to being fully self-expressed that I took?

One: Awareness

For me personally, how that came about was I started going to yoga and meditation classes in 2014. So starting to go to this ritualistic space where I’m taking an hour of my day to just connect with my body. That was a huge, pivotal moment that just really made me aware of all the blocks I still had.

It wasn’t until I started doing yoga that I really became aware like, oh, I have confidence blocks and I’m carrying around guilt and shame for my childhood, and I’m thinking about money in a way where it’s like gonna run out like all these things. So that’s the first step, awareness.

Two: Acceptance

The second step from there is acceptance. Really just coming from a space where sometimes there’ll be a little bit of lag time between being aware that you’re doing something and accepting it. Sometimes we can become aware that we’re doing something and we kind make ourselves feel bad for it, or we wonder why is this showing up again, I thought I’ve dealt with this before.

But coming from a place of acceptance is the only way that you are going to move forward to get closer to that life that you want. Because if you’re going to be an enemy to yourself because of certain blocks or certain habits or certain beliefs… why would you change?

Shame is not a way to facilitate change. With shame, you might change your behaviors in the short term because like you feel bad and you wanna feel a little better. But for long term, sustainable lasting change, you’re not going to make a real change.

What can help is to make a forgiveness list too. What do you forgive yourself for?

I saw something about forgiving mistakes from Yasmin Boland and she put mistakes in quotes put in parenthesis something that when I read it I was like, oh my God, that is so true. And it just kind of like relaxed my shoulders and it goes along with this acceptance piece.

She wrote something along the lines of there really are no mistakes because everything happens for a reason. Everything is here to teach you something. And everything is whole and perfect and complete and unfolding in the way that it’s supposed to unfold. She had a shortened version of that, but that’s like my long elaborated version of that.

So come from a space of where you stop beating yourself up, let go of that guilt, let go of that shame because it’s okay that you might still be carrying trauma or patterns. It’s okay that maybe you maxed out a credit card. It’s okay that you’ve had unhealthy dating relationships.

Whatever it is, it’s okay. And it has nothing to do with your future. It has nothing to do with your future. It doesn’t mean your future is going to be a certain way. It doesn’t define your future. Only you get to define your future.

And as far as like with guilt and shame, I think we, we guilt and shame ourselves because of our “mistake” that we did we make it mean something bad about ourselves. The meaning you assign to something, if it’s not an empowering meaning, or it’s not something that’s like helpful for you or moving you forward towards a life that you wanna live, then you don’t need that meaning like, let that shit go. We don’t need that, biyeee

Three: Alchemizing

This is the part where you’re already aware of the pattern or of the thing that you want to change. You’re already aware of it. You notice it. The thing has come out of the shadows and into the light.

You’ve also accepted it, which these two steps can take you time. It took me a few years. Now in this third step with alchemizing where you’re going to take what you have currently have and start to transform it into something more helpful.

So this can look like. Writing affirmations for yourself that are helpful towards new beliefs that you want to adapt or new attitudes you wanna adapt, or a new kind of energy you really want to embody moving forward in your life.

This can look like really tuning into like, what is this? What is this limiting and old belief and this thing that makes me feel guilt and shame? Where does this live in my body? How does it feel?

And do something to move and to release it and to let it go. Alchemizing can also look like this exercise called future casting. You just get out your journal and you write a journal entry in the future. in a way where like you just created what you are currently now working on.

So for example, if you are working on launching your business, a future casting journal entry can be like, “oh my God, I’m so excited. I just launched my website today. I already have 10 people on my email list and I have this amount of followers on Instagram…” writing as if you are in the future and you just attracted or created or manifested the goal or the thing that you’re working towards right now.

The reason why alchemizing is so important is because it raises your energy. This is why I’m so grateful for everyone that I invested in 2021 to get me to this space of realizing I’m meant to be a self-love coach.

Because energy and spirituality and all of those like very like intangible things that you can’t see them…. but you can feel them. I hope this makes sense. Your energy is everything. There’s gonna be a completely different podcast episode about this topic in general about energy is everything, because I think online, like especially in this entrepreneurial space, there’s too much talk about mindset is everything. Which mindset is really important, but your mindset really is your energy and there’s also other energies that feed into your mindset.

Before I go off on that tangent, that is why alchemizing is so important, because you’re an energetic person and whatever kind of like energy you are vibrating on, that’s the energy you’re going to attract into your life. That’s the energy you’re going to bring in.

If you can get to a space where you can shift your energy, where you can hold your body in a different way, for example: I have these affirmations that I like to listen to for abundance while I go for walks. And it took me about six months until the affirmations, I could really feel that they were hitting my energy in a different way. Because while I would walk, I would just like feel my heart like so open and my shoulders relaxed and I would feel like really tall as I was walking and I’m just like, wow my heart has never been this open before. There’s like, something is shifting here.

So that brings us into our fourth step

Four: Have an action plan

Consistency is the only way you’re going to make a change. You could become aware of the thing. You could accept the thing. You can decide like, these are the new beliefs I’m going to adopt or these are the new attitudes I’m going to adopt. But without consistency, it’s not going to work.

Without consistency, it’s kind of like if you had like a garden and you decided to plant some seeds and you watered it for a few days and then you were like upset that there wasn’t a sprout yet. So you pull the seeds out and then you put in different seeds in there and you like keep doing the same thing and then like you, your garden ends up…. uh, being barren. Your garden ends up having no vegetation whatsoever in it because you keep starting over. So think of that analogy the next time you feel like giving up.

The interesting thing about that is yes, the work is hard. The work to fall in love with yourself on a quantum level and to shift your life and to attract a life where you like deeply accept yourself, and you’re spending your time with people you love, you’re choosing to do things you love, attracting freedom and abundance into your life…

It’s difficult, but everything that I already shared with you, these four steps, if you go back to these four steps, it’s like this cycle that you can continue to use throughout the process. So if you find yourself, if you find yourself in a space where you’re like, ah, I don’t wanna listen to these affirmations because I’ve listened to them for three days and I don’t feel any different, you can go back to step one, be aware of it.

Be aware of, I’m having some resistance to these affirmations or to whatever action plan is. I’m just using affirmations as an example maybe it’s just growing pains and resistance to change. Or maybe it’s that you need a different solution. Maybe the affirmations are, are not your problem.

But going back to that consistency piece, give the thing a chance, give the thing a chance for at least, people usually say like 21 days, but honestly, I would say 90 days. I would say to give, give a new habit, 90 days to really like materialize as manifesting new energies within your body.

Then going onto step two, accept that you have the resistance. This piece is so important because if we are beating ourselves up, that the change is hard. Of course, we’re gonna give up. But if we can accept it and confirm a space of, I like to have so. This might sound really weird, but like within my own internal dialogue, I like to have this voice that I call the inter, the Inner Mother.

I call it the Inner Mother, and I’ve spoken about this on other people’s podcasts before. This kind of stuff like always naturally comes out, which was another piece that came out in my, reflecting & taking time to reassess what direction I want to take my business so that could it be even more aligned with my authenticity.

So I have this inner voice of that I call the Inner Mother. How this Inner Mother would works, I would first address the awareness piece of having the resistance, then the acceptance piece. So this inner voice is telling me, this Inner Mother is telling me it’s okay. You have these feelings and what do you need? Like what do you need to be okay? Like maybe you just needed. To eat a healthy meal. Maybe you needed a nap. Maybe just, maybe you’ve like neglected your physical health and that’s why you’re having this like icky energy towards doing the things that you know you need to do to get to living the life that you would love to be living.

So that is the acceptance piece. And then you can go back into alchemizing by getting back to your action plan. Or maybe you need to readjust it a little bit. But again, with the readjusting piece, I really want you to stick with something for 90 days. Let things take time.

The first time I started listening to affirmations for confidence, I was 25 because at that time I was working for a startup yoga clothing brand and the startup decided to close. I remember my boss did an exit interview with me where we went over my strengths and I asked him what my weakness was, like, “what can I improve on?”

And he told me confidence. That was 2015. That feels so long ago. Wow. At that time, YouTube was already around, so I looked at affirmations on Confidence on YouTube and I started listening to those, but honestly, it didn’t work right away. It felt really good in the first few moments of just like hearing the audio of like, I am confident, but really I was coming from a space of “fake it till you make it.” (which is also the advice I kept hearing online at the time and even now)

So I was pretending to be confident. So for so long I would stand tall with like my shoulders back, but it was in a very forced and masculine way. It wasn’t like now with my heart space and my shoulders, my shoulders are back because they’re relaxed. They’re not back because like my muscles are forcing them back.

Five: Begin Again.

When you’re at a new level, you get to go back to step one because when you get to a new level of awareness, of self-love, abundance, of any new level in life, there’s still going to be room to grow.

I think that’s one of the reasons why I find self-development so fulfilling and so satisfying, and why I’ve been on this self-development journey for over a decade and I will continue to stay on this journey for the rest of my life because it’s so satisfying to know there’s always more to learn, there’s always more to grow.

Being in this path of self-development really helped me during the pandemic because while most people were bored and making TikTok accounts because they’re bored. I was not bored at all. I was completely content because I had things to work on.

If you’re committed to your growth and you see the results in your growth and you know that there’s always more to grow… but NOT in a way of, “you’ll never be enough” because you’re already enough right now simply because you exist. It’s in a way of being excited. Being excited that, life is so good right now and it’s only gonna keep getting better and better and better and better and better and better and better. ✨✨✨

If you come from that space, why wouldn’t you keep growing? Why wouldn’t you stay committed?

Another reason why I realized I’m meant to be a self-love coach, not only is it something that I would be very good at but like I’ve seen how it’s so needed in the world. We just went through a pandemic and so many people had a really hard time just being with themselves, and that is a symptom of not loving yourself. (not 100% of the time though, we are social creatures after all)

If you fully love and accept yourself, you could be alone, no problem. You could be alone with your thoughts. No problem. And this doesn’t mean that you have to be like fully healed or not be carrying any sort of trauma or any sort of guilt and shame.

You could be full of trauma and guilt and shame and still love yourself because you’re coming from a space of I accept. I accept that I have these feelings. It’s okay. You don’t have to be your own bully.

A note from 2023 Cilia:

Thanks for reading through this podcast episode, I’ve taken out names of certain coaches I was learning from in 2021 & 2022 because I don’t resonate with them anymore so you’ll hear a lot more in the episode. A lot of growth’s been happening that makes my voice and stance a little different now but I think the juice of this episode still needed to be share with you, so thanks for reading!