Here is the full transcript of entrepreneur and chiropractor Dr. Irum Tahir’s TEDx Talk on How to Change Your Limiting Beliefs for More Success at TEDxNormal conference. This event took place on November 7, 2015 at Normal, Illinois.
Have you ever felt like your life was stuck on repeat, like the same thing keeps happening to you over and over and over again?
You end up in the same kind of relationship, with the same kind of person, even though you say that this time, it’s really different. No, really it isn’t. You end up on the same kind of diet for that last 20 pounds that you need to lose only to be defeated.
Why does this happen to us? If you take a step back and really look at your life, you’ll see that there are patterns that happen, aren’t there? And these patterns keep repeating themselves over and over again.
The patterns haven’t changed because we haven’t changed and neither have our beliefs. We’re all at least a little familiar with the subconscious mind. It’s that fascinating part of our brain that drives our behavior, and it’s responsible for every single thing that we do. Every decision, every action, every thought, every feeling, every emotion comes from the subconscious mind.
In fact, neuroscientists have now found that 95% of everything we do comes from the subconscious mind. That means only 5% comes from our conscious mind. The job of the subconscious is to keep you safe.
Beliefs that we have come from our subconscious mind, and they are formulated from the age of zero to six. That’s when we’re looking to our parents for approval.
We want to make sure that we’re behaving in a way that meets their approval, and then we know when they have disapproved.
Now, your parents have taught you beliefs because their parents have taught them, and so on and so forth. Some of these beliefs have been great like, “Be a good person”, “Don’t steal,” “Don’t touch a hot stove,” “Don’t run in the street,” but some of these beliefs that you have today have been handed down from generation to generation, and it’s just what you think is normal.
You might have beliefs today like, “I’ll never have enough money,” or, “I’m afraid of failure,” or, “I could never be in a relationship with that person.”
Over the last 100 years, we found more than ever about the subconscious mind. We’ve tried so many different therapies to try to unlock its potential. We’ve tried classic couch therapy, shock therapy, even lobotomies. Positive thinking and affirmations only get you so far.
Over the last 100 years, we still need a gentle, speedy, and effective way to alter our deepest patterns. Everything you believe is in your body. Now, we know this with body language. As a chiropractor, I work with posture every day, and I’ve seen patients express beliefs that they have into their body. We’re actually all going to do this right now,
So I’m going to have you all slouched forward in your chairs just like this, drop your head, and say the words, “I am powerful.”
Do you feel powerful from this position? Not really.
Now, what if we sit up, take a deep breath in, say the words, “I am powerful.”
See how much more powerful, strong, and confident you do feel? This is an example of how the mind and the body are connected. Dr. Bruce Lipton in his bestseller, “Biology of Belief,” talks about how beliefs impact us on a cellular level, so that’s positive or negative beliefs that affect our physiology.
Now, imagine with me for a moment, you’re in Arizona with your family. You’re on a beautiful hike, and you come across something like this. If you’re like me, you would be totally creeped out by this. Your body language is going to say, “Run away as far as possible!” I hate snakes.
But what about if you were a herpetologist, somebody who studied snakes for a living? You might move towards the snake with familiarity and curiosity. You might even want to pick one up which is so disgusting. Because for a herpetologist, the meaning of a snake is going to be entirely different than what it is for me. For me, snake equals danger; for them, snake may equal familiarity.
What about if you’ve ever blushed? You know that if you’ve blushed, something embarrassing may have happened, or someone took you by surprise. That’s an example of how the mind creates a physiological reaction in the body. So we know that the mind triggers the body to react.
But what if we did the opposite? What if, to get to the subconscious mind, we actually went through the body to get there? There’s a lot of different ways to access the subconscious mind.
PSYCH-K
One of the tools that I’ve found is something called PSYCH-K. PSYCH-K is a way to transform limiting beliefs that cause us pain, anxiety, sadness, jealousy, hatred and transform that into what we do want: happiness, peace, love, ultimate success.
One of the components of PSYCH-K is the whole brain state. The whole brain state is a way to bring the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere of the brain together. The whole brain state is a place where you can have the ability to make better decisions, be more relaxed, more in harmony with your body, more in tune. It’s from here you can actually change those subconscious beliefs.
Now, we know that the left hemisphere of the brain controls the right side of the body, and the right hemisphere of the brain controls the left side of the body. We also know that we’ve identified ourselves as either left-brained or right-brained. So all my left brain people out there, raise your hand. You’re those logical, analytical, rational types, and I don’t understand you.
Now, you, right brain people, raise your hand. You’re those creative, emotional, intuitive types. I usually make the left-brain people crazy because I’m passionate and spontaneous, and they might not always like that.
Well, what if you didn’t just have to be left-brained or right-brained? What if you could have it all? What if you could be logical and creative? What if you could be intellectual and intuitive? The whole brain state actually does that for us. It’s a way to be able to bring both hemispheres of the body together, and that increases communication between the corpus callosum.
They actually did a study with 125 participants, where they found that 98% of them were able to get into the whole brain state within 10 minutes. Neuroscientists have found that while we access this whole brain state, we’re more at peace, we’re more in harmony, we have better relationships.
This is an example of a woman who underwent one of these studies. She actually was a tyrant for a leader. She worked in a business, but people hated working for her. She had uncontrollable anger, she didn’t have the best relationships, you could say.
Well, when she underwent the whole brain state and did a PSYCH-K balance, the results were pretty amazing: Within about two weeks, her relationships changed, her leadership style flourished, she had improved communication, more harmony, she was kinder, more compassionate, but she wasn’t just using her intellect, she was using her intuition to make decisions. In this situation, you can see that she is moving into a bilateral, symmetrical pattern, and that’s what the whole brain state does.
Now, I was actually pretty skeptical when I started using this work. I didn’t really think it was going to work. But when I started seeing changes in myself and in my clients, it was pretty amazing.
So I had a gentleman that came in to work with me. He’d been trying to work on this book for years. He was at a standstill. He tried everything. And once we started unlocking his subconscious beliefs, we found that he was so afraid of what people were going to think of his work. So that’s why he was at a standstill. So once we started transforming that, he’s actually on a book tour right now, and he finished his book in a matter of months. It’s pretty awesome.
I’ve seen this work with businesses where we work with not just the subconscious beliefs of the CEO but the whole team, where we want to make sure that everybody’s on the same page. And what does that mean? Improved relationships, increased efficiency, more productivity, and eventually, increased profits.
Now I want you to imagine with me, for a moment, a time in your life where you felt like you couldn’t speak up. It just didn’t seem safe to talk. Maybe you had a lump in your throat. That was me every day as a kid growing up in Brooklyn. I was the daughter of immigrant parents, and America was really overwhelming. I wanted to speak up, but I just felt like I couldn’t.
Fast forward to my time as a young woman, I entered situations where I felt like I couldn’t speak up, and it wasn’t safe to even stand up for myself.
When I started examining my own subconscious beliefs, guess where they came from? We all have challenges and experiences that have happened to us in childhood that now translate into pain or struggle as an adult. I’m a true testament to this work. Working with my own subconscious beliefs, I’m actually a speaker. I work all around the world on different stages. I’m able to express myself, use my voice comfortably, naturally, and easily.
I urge you to start looking at your own subconscious beliefs. Look at that number one pain point in your life; something that’s been holding you back for a long time. Start looking at it objectively. Take a step back, and say, “Well, is there something that could have happened to me before? Where did this came from?” Look to your parents and your grandparents for clues. You may have been handed down something that you didn’t even know.
I believe that we’re not just meant to survive in this world, we’re meant to thrive. Then once we start transforming limiting beliefs that have been holding us back, we will have more happiness, more peace, more passion, more prosperity, more love. Joy and fulfillment will become the new normal.
