It started as a joke
When I graduated from college, I landed a dream job with Ernst & Young (a public accounting firm). Everyone knew that I was an accountant, but there was also an ongoing internal joke that no one really knew what I did. I even had family members who thought I did taxes, and instead of correcting them, I just let it slide. Part of me thought that was easier than explaining what an auditor does.
I recently realized that I had told the story that "no one really knows what I do" for so long that it had become a subconscious belief. When I worked as an accountant, it wasn't a huge deal because I worked with accountants who understood what I did.
However, that belief really started to hold me back when I became a life coach. Suddenly I didn't know how to tell people what I did, and that limited my ability to create and grow a business as a brand new entrepreneur. I took courses and programs to figure out what kind of coach I was, and no matter how much time or money I invested, there was still a part of me that felt like no one else understood.
As I moved into hosting healing experiences and more specifically, folding in breathwork, I began to notice this pattern repeating in a slightly different way. I felt like people would understand what I was doing if I was just hosting breathwork, but I didn't know how to explain my own personal breathwork style. Subconsciously my old belief was continuing to create confusion which made it difficult to explain to others what I was doing.
The Universe was kind enough to send me multiple signs that this subconscious belief was ready to come to the surface and be rewritten. First it sent a twinge of frustration when I was brainstorming marketing ideas with my Shaman and I felt like she didn't understand the full spectrum of the experience I was creating. Then I found myself feeling confused about whether to strip out some of the Breathe with Tiffany elements that were unique to me in order to align the experience with the general public's expectation of a breathwork session. The final clue was having one of my favorite E&Y partners reach out to me to connect out of the blue. That clue made me super curious and triggered a number of dreams the following night.
Sitting with my journal, all the pieces fell into place and the the old story that "no one really knows what I do" drifted into my awareness. As I sat with this story, I began to realize that the seemingly innocent joke from my younger years had turned itself inward and I had started unconsciously believing that I didn't know what I do. My mind was running with the belief and disconnecting me from my own internal understanding because I had repeated this joke so many times.
With that awareness, I knew that I needed to write a new story. A story that aligned with who I am now rather than who I was in my 20s. This is the story that I wrote.
Even though people didn't know what I did in the past, I now understand and appreciate what I do. I see myself and my work with great clarity and understanding. I see the value in what I am doing and I see myself in an authentic light. I understand with great accuracy what it is that I am doing now and how I am serving in the world. I have clarity in how I do what I do and I appreciate my own personal style of delivering this work into the world. I feel recognized. I feel understood. I feel valued. I am confident in sharing my truth openly. I am seen. I am understood. It's ok for me to speak up and share who I am and what I do. I get it. Others get it because I get it. It's easy to describe what I do and I do that clearly and in my own personal style.
I can't begin to tell you how many times I repeated the old belief, but now that it is in my awareness it's going to be much easier to notice and stop. I have used the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT or tapping) to start reprogramming my subconscious to align with the new story above. I will also continue to use these words as affirmations and repeat them out loud until this new story feels fully embodied.
Please subscribe, contribute or share using the buttons below. Thank you for your support!