Safe to Succeed

"Not everything is an identity problem. Sometimes the things we want to work on in our identities aren't problems at all. They're just things in life we would like to do a bit better."

-Melissa Sheffield

Everywhere you look right now, someone is telling you to become the woman who already has what you want, step into your next level identity and transform yourself until you are unrecognisable. In this episode, I take identity back to basics: what it actually is, when it's worth working on, and when the thing you're struggling with isn't an identity problem at all.

I explain why identity has become a social media buzzword, how squeezing years of subconscious and NLP work into 30 second clips skips the messy middle where the real change happens, and why advice has the potential to make things worse, depending on where you're starting from. 

I walk you through the 6 NLP logical levels using the example of a self-employed woman who has left the nine to five but still feels stuck, so you can work out which level you actually need to work at.

I also talk about what we are really telling ourselves when we keep hearing that we need to become unrecognisable, and why, for a lot of us, it isn't who we are that needs to change but our situation. 

Finally, I invite you to decide what success means to you so you are committing your time and energy to doing the work - at whatever level- that is right for you

Can we please stop talking about resetting everything? 

Because when you reset something, you take it back to its factory settings. And I know none of us want to be a baby crying, waiting for somebody else to come along and save us. But as humans, THAT is our factory default setting. 

- Melissa Sheffield

Clinical Hypnotherapist, NLP Practitioner and IEMT Practitioner

It's natural to want life to change things in life, and it's natural to feel nostalgic for simpler times as we mature and responsibilities increase.

In this episode, I talk about why I'm sick of so many influencers talking about the need to 'reset' constantly, and what we are really training our brains to think when we are telling ourselves to delete everything we've learnt in life. I invite you to think about adaption instead, and walk you through how this mentality is likely to set you up for success.

 "If the main thing driving your life is always going to be  "anything but that", 

you could spend all your life and all your energy just getting further away from some things you don't want, without ever getting closer to something that you do want." 

- Melissa Sheffield

There's a difference between wanting something because you're genuinely drawn towards it and wanting something because you're desperate to avoid what happens if you don't get it. In this episode, I'm looking at towards and away motivation, why both matter, and what happens when the thing driving your decisions is fear of going backwards rather than clarity about where you're actually headed.

I share my own experience with this, break down the psychology behind approach and avoidance motivation, and talk about how your subconscious beliefs, your attention and your nervous system can all be organised around the wrong thing without you realising it. I also walk through my Shift, Step, See framework and how it helps you move from knowing what you want to actually building a life that reflects it.

Money is never really the goal. It is always about what do you believe that money will get you, what will it give you that you don't have now.

So when somebody tells me they want to earn five grand a month, ten grand a month, one hundred thousand a year, whatever the number is, I'm always curious about the answer to the question:

 "What will change when you have it?"

- Melissa Sheffield 

In this episode of Safe to Succeed, Melissa Sheffield looks at why hitting your income goal rarely feels as good as you expected it to. 

If you have set a bigger number, hit it, and felt  flat instead of successful, this episode explains why that happens and why it isn't about setting the wrong target.

Melissa breaks down why money amplifies whatever belief is already there rather than creating a new one, why your subconscious tracks safety rather than revenue, and how your Reticular Activating System filters what you notice based on what you already believe about yourself. 

She also shares her Shift, Step, See framework, a practical way to start shifting the belief, instead of moving onto another income goal that is just as disappointing.

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Success is a judgement you make every minute of every day, against a standard that either you or somebody else has decided. 

And it's that set standard, that rule book that people don't look at. So whenever you catch yourself saying you want to be successful, the useful move is to unfreeze success and consider:

"Successful according to who?"  and  “What do I think is successful?” 

- Melissa Sheffield

Where did your definition of success actually come from? 

In this first episode of Safe to Succeed, Clinical Hypnotherapist and NLP practitioner Melissa Sheffield traces her own definition of success back to when she was eleven, and unpacks how deeply held beliefs about ambition, money and "a useful job" get absorbed in childhood, long before we're old enough to question them.

Mel walks through the three versions of success she's lived through: the checklist she grew up with, the bigger "adulting" checklist she swapped it for, and the intentional version she lives by now. Along the way she introduces three simple NLP tools, that help you catch when you're chasing someone else's idea of success rather than your own, and invites you to try free tools to get clear on your own version of success.

Subscribe to make sure you catch the new episode every Wednesday

Safe to Succeed is for women who have left their 9-5 and built a business that works on paper, but who don't yet feel the success, freedom, or alignment they set out to create. 

Hosted by Melissa Sheffield, a Clinical Hypnotherapist and NLP Practitioner, this trailer introduces the show and it's core theme: 

When success isn't feeling the way you hoped it would, the answer usually sits in your subconscious, your beliefs, and the identity moves you are yet to make.

Because your business shouldn't be running your life- it should be actively enabling you to live the life you actually do want to live.

Each episode looks at one of the beliefs that keeps coming up for women building their own version of success, what's actually sitting underneath it, and how to shift it so the change shows up in real life, not just in how you think.

Follow or subscribe now, so the next episode comes straight to you every Wednesday.