Tracy Litt: Episode 326

Transcript

[0:00:20] RW: Hi, everyone. It’s Rae Williams, host of Author Hour, where I interview authors about their new books. Have you ever struggled with the feeling that you’re just not good enough? Maybe this feeling comes from your background, traumas you’ve experienced, what you have or don’t have or who you feel like you should or shouldn’t be. Whatever the reason, this feeling is impeding your ability to truly live your best life. Well, our next guest, Tracy Litt wants to open your eyes to an undeniable truth: nothing can or ever will influence your inherent worth, it is your birthright. Her book is aptly titled, Worthy Human and she’s going to share this today just a few of the ways we can embrace that you are both the problem and the solution and get out of your own head, get out of your own way and totally own every aspect of your life. Here’s our conversation with Tracy Litt.

[0:01:15] Tracy Litt: You know, as a certified mindset coach and a rapid transformational therapist, every day, I see people struggling. You know, with problems ranging from self-esteem and sabotage and stress and burnout and anxiety and all of these perceived limits and at the core, I know that it is underpinned with some iteration of “I’m not enough,” and it breaks my heart. Because the truth is, it makes me emotional right now as we talk about it. The truth is that every single one of us is born completely enough and completely worthy and totally lovable and significant and you matter. So, it was that kind of beginning point that inspired me to say, “I have a mission to make sure that everyone believes knows, and lives foundationally from a place where nothing can or ever will influence your inherent worth.” Because it’s your birth right and you deserve to know.

[0:02:12] RW: All right. What is it that is the crux or key message, the action item, that people can get to work on that’s in this book?

[0:02:22] Tracy Litt: There are so many actionable things and one of the other intentions I have with Worthy Human is you’re going to get great inspiration and theory and throughout the book, there are sections that I actually call the work. So that you have places to take action for yourself and your life, throughout the entire experience of the book. Because the work works when you work it 100% of the time.

[0:02:45] RW: All right. There are a couple of chapters that I wanted to touch on, to just get the basic idea and see why this is important. One of them is, are you willing to own your shit? Let’s talk about that, why is that important?

[0:03:00] Tracy Litt: I love that, okay. It’s important because nothing changes, if you’re bullshitting yourself. Nobody can transform, shift or achieve anything differently if you’re not willing to assume radical personal responsibility. Which is a component of being a worthy human. And that really means, what’s the honesty behind the honesty? What’s the motive for that? It means realizing that if you are going to grow, heal expand, you have to get rid of the excuses, the justifications, all of the rationalizing and all of the reasons why you are not who you want to be or where you want to be or feeling how you want to feel. It is absolutely a requirement like a starter requirement for any kind of real change. And I really do, I want to bring out something very specific to the connection of what’s so essential about understanding your inherent worth and how does that connect with your ability to own your shit, right? So, we were all brought up, generation to generation in this, your external dictates your internal. What you have on the outside indicates or influences how valuable you are as a person. That really outdated, completely unhelpful paradigm has created this way of being, where you look outside of yourself for the answers, you look outside of yourself to blame, you don’t really want to own your shit because if you actually take responsibility and get really honest about it, then in some way, you think it is an indication of your enoughness, right? In some way, it impacts your value as a human being, so you keep everything outside of you pushed away without any ownership. The beauty of my message to the world and how unbelievably it works for every single person who starts to access this depth of inner power that you have is because you are no longer negotiating your worth. Because you know you woke up today, boom, you’re enough. From that space, you can start to own your shit. You can start to take radical personal responsibility because, nothing that you own is an indication of how enough you are and because of that, you can really step into understanding that in every situation you experience, you are the problem. And after you're done being mad at me for saying that which is a very normal response, “what do you mean I’m a problem? My god.” It’s okay. Because once you let that in, you then quickly shift over into the deepest, most vast sense of freedom you will ever feel in your entire life which is the realization that you are also the solution and you no longer have to wait on anything or anyone else to change, shift or experience things in your life differently. Because all of your power is yours.

[0:05:56] RW: Now, just curious, how many people do you have that come to you and say, “you know, what do you mean I am the problem?” Why is it that – or you know, why is it that we don’t think that we’re the problem sometimes and it’s hard for us to accept that you know, like some of the things that are happening in our lives are because we are not acknowledging ourselves in the way we should be?

[0:06:14] Tracy Litt: Yeah, one of the biggest pieces of resistance I see to people embracing the fact that they’re the problem is because somewhere in their belief system, they think, well, if I’m the problem, then that means that I’m not enough. If I’m the problem, then that’s a negative judgment on myself. If I’m the problem, then how can I be worthy? Because we’re spinning out in a cycle of self-judgment and an outdated upbringing of things can actually influence your worth, right? We are grown up in a society, in a culture of do more, do more faster, what you have outside of you indicates how good you are, how much you multitask indicates how valuable you are, how much you do is a direct correlation to how enough you are. And it is such massive bullshit that is driving us to be more unhappy and more anxiety ridden and more depressed and more blocked than ever. When you really kind of go, “a wait a second Trace, I hear you. I am the problem because I have choices.” You can choose your beliefs, your thoughts, your focus and attention, the language you use, the actions you take, the behavior you exude, the energy you hold, how you show up in the world, these are all of your choices. So, when you're ready to say, “I am ready to change.” Real transformation comes the moment you are finally ready to call your own bullshit. Until you’re ready for that, you will never make sustainable long-term change.

[0:07:44] RW: All right, got you. So, another thing that I noticed is are you willing to give up the shit that’s killing your soul? And I feel like this is a kind of good transition from what you just said. Because we do live in a culture that’s kind of like we glorify busyness and we glorify doing all these things and are those some of the things that we – you have to acknowledge when you say give up the shit that’s killing your soul?

[0:08:07] Tracy Litt: The things I review and giving up the shit that’s killing your soul is are things that you might not even realize you participate in. They are things that are so common place in our culture that it becomes – I’m going to use the word acceptable even though it’s not acceptable, right? It becomes just what people do, we complain, we judge, we spit out expectations. Yes, of course I compare myself all the time but these things are actually blocking you from feeling, spending the hours of your day feeling how you want to feel and creating the life that you want to create.

[0:08:48] RW: All right. And how do we begin to give that stuff up because I can imagine that that’s hard for people? Especially if they don’t know that it’s happening?

[0:08:59] Tracy Litt: Absolutely. That’s really where the first piece to making any shift is saying, “okay, I’m in, I’m the problem and I’m the solution. I’m in, I’m taking radical personal responsibility.” From that space and then we move into awareness. Even on the course of reading about particular choice in the Worthy Human book, you will start to bring awareness, as soon as you have awareness. You now have an opportunity to notice and make new choices, right? Awareness itself can become curative. In and of itself. One of the elements that I review in terms of the shit that’s sucking your soul, is expectations. When you bring awareness to the expectations you have in your life, then you position yourself to make a new choice. Or if you take another component of what’s sucking your soul, in comparison and you start to bring awareness to, “oh, wow, I’m feeling really insecure right now. I’m feeling really paralyzed, I’m not taking any action in my life or my business or my career.” And you start to bring awareness to the fact that I’m completely sitting in comparison right now, over the person to my right or someone that I just saw on social media and then you’re able to, in that moment, because again, you started with radical responsibility, which means, no excuses, no reasons, no justifications, no rationalizing, own it fully through and through. And now you’re aware that in that moment, you get to go, “okay, now what new choice do I want to make?” And in it, I give you the work, stay in your lane. Realize that you want to do the things that’s going to move your life forward, that’s going to allow you to feel how you want to feel and you start to shift yourself.

[0:10:44] RW: All right, then, the last chapter that I wanted to touch on or the last choice I wanted to touch on is Are you willing to fall in love with fear? because that sounds scary. Tell us a little bit about that one, about falling in love with fear, why would we want to do that? What does that choice help us to do?

[0:11:00] Tracy Litt: Everything. Fear is your friend and when you start to understand it the way that I get to teach it to you. The goal is not about being fearless, that’s not even a thing and that’s a massive disservice. Because it’s not real. Your fear is biological and the truth with a TH at the end and I say that a lot because nothing’s true, you live in the perception of what you think is true, but it’s not truth. The truth about fear is that it’s biological. And every time you think about or start to move towards something different than you currently have, you are going to trigger your fear response. If you don’t learn how to fall in love with it, so that you can kind of own it, out of our responsibility, bring it towards you and understand, fear occurs because your mind has one single function and that’s to make sure you’re alive, right? Your mind doesn’t care if you’re thriving. Your mind doesn’t care if you’re happy. Your mind doesn’t care if you’re making money. Your mind doesn’t care if you are having sex. Your mind doesn’t care if you’re triggered and freaking out on your kids or if you’re at peace and at ease. That is not your mind’s job, but we’ve spent our entire lives giving our power away to our mind and that is one of the biggest pieces of the work that I do in the world. And what you get to master in this book, in this experience is you are not your mind and it’s time to stop letting it all have the power. Your fear response lives in your mind. Yes, you feel it in your body but it originates, something happens, you are about to go do something that you have never done before and the first thing your mind does is it looks for evidence that you have done this before. That’s what happens with your fear. I call it the fear rolodex in the book. So, you go do something and instantly, your mind scans for, “oh has Rae ever done this before? Nope, she hasn’t. Oh my god, it’s unfamiliar. It must mean that she’s about to die.” This is how your mind works and then triggers your fear response and your fear starts to tell you all the things it needs to tell you to get you to step back down. All the sabotage, all the self-doubt, all of the different things that are disempowering. So, when you love your fear, you’re able to realize, “oh you’re showing up because I’m expanding.” “You are showing up because I am about to do something I’ve never done. Oh, here comes that fear, I am working on going from being negative and worry full to being joyful and at ease. Yeah, this is weird. This is unfamiliar for my system. My fear is going to show up because what I’m doing is unfamiliar.” And anytime, you start to go into the uncomfortable, the unfamiliar, the unknown, fear will be there like a loyal dog. But fear is not a stop sign we are raised to believe that it is. Fear is a green light. Everything you want, every level of yourself, every expansion, every new moment, every new behavior is on the other side of your fear and when you love your fear, you actually move it from being something resistant and across the table from you and now it sits with you and you use its power.

[0:14:23] RW: All right, I absolutely love that. I do. So why is this important for people? So why does this matter for your reader and for the listener? What happens if they don’t do anything with this information? What kind of people do you see come out of not making those choices?

[0:14:40] Tracy Litt: This is an entirely new way to live. To me, this, Worthy Human, because you are the problem and the solution is introducing you to an entirely new way to live where you are learning that you have all of the inner power to feel how you want to feel and be who you want to be and create what you want to create in this magnificent lifetime. Every single person that’s listening to this, this is going to be like, “oh, well some people have this and other people don’t.” You have right now lying in you dormant and endless amount of inner personal power and when you understand how to use it, when you understand how to take responsibility, how to raise your awareness, how to own your worth, how to run your mind like the tool that it is, how to fall in love with fear, all of these different components, then you completely change your life. And for some people it is every component. For other people, it’s specific to relationships or money or starting a business or getting into your dreams. But to me, we have this one go, right? We have one go and you are going to get to the end of this life opportunity and one of two things is going to happen and there is no gray, by the way. One of two things, you get to the end, it is your last day on earth and you get to look back on your life because that’s what happens and you will either have gone, “shit. I could have changed this. I should have done that. I would have done that.” And you are filled with regret and there is no more time left. Or you’ll look back on it and you’ll be like, “yep, I did it. I put it all out there. I healed. I grew. I expanded. I learned and I truly became the person that I wanted to be that felt best to me.” So, to me, you know the choice to not do anything with this information is the choice to stay exactly the same as you are right now feeling how you feel, doing what you’re doing, being who you’re being and there is no judgment on that. If that’s working for you amazing. But if there is any area or piece of your life where you aren’t feeling great about it, this is an opportunity for you to change.

[0:16:57] RW: All right and then do you have any examples or what is your favorite transformation or success story from either one of your clients, you obviously don’t have to name or someone that you have seen take ownership of their life in this way and their result?

[0:17:13] Tracy Litt: My clients create incredible changes in their lives and nothing makes me happier than when someone is happier, right? I mean everything is about how many hours of the day you spend feeling the way that you want to feel, right? And the energy with which you show up in the world every single day because it directly impacts and creates the reality that you have experienced. There are a few specific client victories if you will that come to mind. And I also want to acknowledge that as much as I am here as the teacher and the coach, it is the client who does the work. You know I will often say if I could crawl up here and do all the work for you, I totally would, but growth is not that kind of thing, which is also where your need to take radical responsibility comes into play because this is for you to show up for yourself and honor your worth and do the work, so that you can experience the life that you want to experience. So, when I share client’s stories, it’s truly a testament to them choosing themselves and working the work. So, I had a client who had a very high achieving – you know if you were going to want to know what her story would be quick and dirty, everything looks amazing on the outside, high achieving, successful family, etcetera, etcetera, totally spinning out, highly anxious, “what is it all for, why am I not more happy on the inside?” And I’ll never forget a day I got a message from her. And she said, “I just want to tell you I was on my way to work and I was going to take a Xanax.” Because that was something that she used to do before we hung out together, “and instead I decided to work my work and I sat in the cab and I chose to practice my breathing and I brought my attention and awareness to the trees and watched a few birds fly by and went through some of the things I was grateful for in my life and it was amazing and I never took the Xanax and I had the most peaceful day.” And to this day and it’s been quite some time, Xanax was not a thing for her because she accessed her inner power. And she realized that she has everything she needs inside of her to build differently and that is what she did. So, it was amazing and then there is another client who was very – also a lot of my clients are very high achieving doers the way most of us are because we were all brought up in the same generation that raised us wrong. No offense but our upbringing created an overly productive, anxious, externally circumstanced driven population. So, I had a beautiful client who was ready to leave her full time job and start her dream, also in the coaching space, and was struggling a lot with confidence and caring on what people thought and taking things personally and through the course of her accessing her inner power and doing much of what I take you through in Worthy Human. She ended up more confident than ever, left her, we had an intention of her leaving her corporate job by a certain date. She left three months sooner and she now proclaims that she is a recovering perfectionist and she is growing leaps and bounds. Her business is growing leaps and bounds and she ultimately realized that no opinion is more important than her own and she chooses to not give her power away to what other people think and feel because it is none of her business. And she focuses on herself and she’s thriving, her clients are thriving and she is in her dream versus stuck in the corporate job that she was in. I don’t really like that one either, you can leave that out. I think we could just stick with the first example, I guess.

[0:21:07] RW: All right, no problem. So, if you had to give your readers a challenge, what would that challenge be something that can just change their life?

[0:21:18] Tracy Litt: If I had to give you one thing to do that I will actually promise you right now that if you choose to do it and honor it you will change your life and that is breathing. I always talk about breathing in Worthy Human and I tattoo the word breath on myself because it is in all things you can do, breathing is the best personal development tool you will ever have and the beauty of it is, is it costs no money and it is always on you. So, you get to take radical responsibility because it is not like you’re going to call me up and go, “oh well Tracy, I left my breathing at home.” It doesn’t exactly work like that. So, when you choose to breathe specifically in a different rate, depth and pattern than you normally breathe, what you are doing is you’re interrupting your nervous system you are dropping out of your head and into your heart and your body. You are creating space in a world where you usually take no space. And I am sure most of you listening feel like you are always do-do-do, I am so busy, overscheduled. And that perpetuated this chronic stress that we live in, which is part and parcel to many of the struggles that we all have. So, when you breathe, I am going to tell you five times a day. This is your direct challenge experiment. Five times a day I want you to set an alarm on your phone and I want you to breath in for the count of four, hold it for the count of four, exhale it for the count of four and sit at the bottom for the count of four and you do three rounds of four-count breathing five times a day and your life will change.

[0:22:50] RW: All right, awesome and then how can people get in contact with you if they would like to learn more?

[0:22:56] Tracy Litt: You can find me at thelittfactor.com and it is also The Litt Factor on Facebook, Instagram and I am Tracy Litt on LinkedIn.

[0:23:08] RW: All right, awesome and I love that web address that is so fun.

[0:23:10] Tracy Litt: Thank you. Thank you and I can’t take credit, my dad gave me that last name so it’s all him.

[0:23:15] RW: All right, thank you so much Tracy.

[0:23:18] Tracy Litt: Thank you.

[0:23:20] RW: Worthy Human is available right now on amazon.com and it’s something we should all read and then read again. Check us out next time for another episode of Author Hour.