If you've ever opened your bank account and felt a pit in your stomach, and then have a thought up here that says, well, maybe I should just do a certification, then I'll make money. Be ready. Whatever this episode is for you, you might be a leader. Looking at a new certification, you might be a coach, a therapist, you might be creative.

Maybe you have degrees and masters and programs and you have done a thousand workshops, but maybe you feel like your income isn't quite reflecting your intelligence. You've probably tried pricing and charging your worth to, but you're here because you're thinking about, well, maybe I should do another certification and.

I've been in the place of choosing to do a certification outta fear, scarcity, and shame, and honestly regretted it. I've seen a lot about my clients do this, and I also, and I've also been in the place of choosing to go for more education and certification out of empowerment and abundance and regulation, and had 📍 people, I'm not gonna say the word judge, but I really question.

Me and not necessarily trust my decision around that and maybe suggest that I was doing it out of imposter syndrome. So today we're unpacking all of these things so that you can make a really informed decision with no spiritual bypassing, with no imposter syndrome, something that's in the middle that will set you up for.

Sustainable success. Releasing any shame that you have around not finishing certain courses or certifications, and make sure that you understand that your success and your value does not hinge on somebody else's stamp of approval. But that you're also allowed to go forth and study whatever the hell you want.

 Welcome to Sustainable Success, the podcast for females in leadership who want to silence their inner critic overcome burnout, and connect with their intuition through their bodies and nervous system. Hi, I'm Sheridan anti coaching coach, somatic trauma therapist, and I will be your guide on this journey.

 So let's have a look. Coming back to the story I was alluding to before, I had been in the somatic coaching space for a couple of years. Most of my experience comes from experience just coaching people and experience sitting with people who. Teachers who, you know, are hidden in the mountains of Austria and of Columbia, and they're not launching big webinars and they're not necessarily the most well known, but they are highly skilled.

And my training, their training comes from a, a big, really big depth of experience. So I was sitting in this place where I knew the body. I'd walked clients through life changing experiences in different realms, and I really believed deep down in this feeling of embodied success and not necessarily chasing after credentials, but on one hand there was this other thing that said, oh, well maybe if I just do this other certification, then I'll be more legitimate.

People will take me more seriously. And, uh. I told myself that it was about furthering my education. I got into it. And I was like, okay, cool. This is interesting, but why are you just teaching the same stuff that I've been practicing now for years and it was maybe about 300 hours of education and I sat there and I hated every second of it.

'cause I was like, I already know this. I was so resentful, but I still did it because this part of me wanted this entity in this body that, you know, if we look back onto it, it's a lot of stuff around the father wound and wanting my dad's approval, but. I'm not gonna go there today. But I am. So it was like looking for someone to say, good work.

You've done a really good job. Congratulations. Yeah, and don't get me wrong, I actually use a lot of the insights that I got in that training, but I'm not a better coach before because of it.

And then I had this experience under my belt and I came back to Australia and I started getting this feeling in my body of like, I need to be in tertiary education. I need to go back to university. This is the third time in my life that I'd wanted to study this specific degree and. I actually had a lot of doubt come in.

I was like, no, no, no, no, no. Don't follow that. That's just imposter syndrome. I was like spiritually, like almost gaslighting myself into telling myself that I was just acting from imposter syndrome, but I just couldn't shake it. I just had this feeling inside of my body that made no sense. That was like, this is the path.

This is the path. Now, I've done a lot of work about getting in touch with your body-based intelligence to tell you that you are. The paths the least re resist, like the path to success that has the least resistance. I wrote a book about it. Somatic Intelligence for Success highly recommended it. We have three steps that we go through.

You can get that for $10 on Amazon. But it didn't make me immune. What it did help me do is welcome myself out of that self-doubt. So what I'm talking about isn't like a specific strategy, but it's a pathway to get out of the loop of. Denying your own desires, but also get out of the loop of like that next certification will save me.

And that's the key difference that I want you to take away from here. There is a cycle of this next thing will save me. That is coming from a dysregulated nervous system. I'm disempowered. I feel like my goal is too big for me. Yeah, there's something that feels really hard. I dunno how to make money. Oh, I'll get a certification.

I'm sure that that makes sense, right? Because we live in the system that, that says you perform really well and then you, you get a gold star and you get money and you're compliant, and you're impressive and you're successful and you prove how worthy you are. Right? So we see this cycle, which was the first one that I was describing, which is internal discomfort or imposter feelings arrives.

You reach for the next thing. Course credential coach tool. There's momentary relief and then the doubt returns, and now there's probably shame because you're like, well, I bought this thing or I did this thing and I didn't finish it because it wasn't truly coming from a place of genuine C Care for that specific thing.

It wasn't coming from. Yourself, your whole self, your somatic intelligence. Chapter six, inside of my book, somatic Intelligence for Success, speaks to this. What you found yourself in instead was a dopamine loop fused with attachment wounding, and it's actually quite intelligent because your body is trying to keep you safe from this thing that it thinks is really afraid, really scary, which is your success probably The problem is that it burns you out, drains your money, and then it disconnects you from your innate wisdom.

And that's okay. So we can come back to our innate wisdom when we do the, the release and the deconditioning work through regulating your nervous system through healing your trauma and then structuring your life so that you can come back. And I knew that my decision to pursue tertiary education was coming from, was coming from that drill deep desire because of how it felt in my body.

I've done a lot of sitting in your body, you probably have as well, and I've done a lot of untangling and. Unfortunately, this type of untangling can only be done in the presence of somebody else a lot of the time to get really into the nuances and the parts of your psyche that wanna protect you from the pain inside.

But some general cues that you can follow are that if you feel any type of urgency, panic, pressure, pressure about like needing something that's likely a protective pattern, and it's probably coming from imposter syndrome. Self-doubt needing the next thing, wounding of some sort. However, if your body feels, for the most part, expansive, curious.

Maybe it's afraid, maybe there's some fear. Maybe it's like, oh, maybe your mind is really active. Maybe you even feel a little bit sick inside, but it feels. Like a moment of expansion, a moment of you saying yes to yourself, of you getting in touch with a desire and that that felt feeling of desire is really different to, I really want this, which is urgency, but that like, mm, like deep in your belly, like in your legs.

Maybe if you resonate like kind of like in your womb or in your in your chest, like that desire, then that's probably a sign that it's your somatic intelligence. I am not gonna be one of those coaches that's like, you don't need another certification, you don't need another CER certification. If your goal is to make money, you're gonna need to learn how to make money independent of that certification.

There are two different skill sets and I work with people who both need certifications and also want to make money. And we work on both. But there is space for further education and honestly, a lot of the coaching industry. Manipulates you to think that you shouldn't, you should just spend your money on them, and that's really not fair.

Anyway, so the third option, third one we're talking about is like, if it feels like you keeping yourself busy so that you can avoid taking action, raising your prices, reaching out to people in your network, asking for help, launching, showing up, applying for a job, you are outsourcing your confidence and keeping yourself in busyness, you will burn out.

Not good. So ask yourself, what do I believe this certification will allow me to do? Why do I think I can't give myself that permission now? What would I do differently if I already felt legitimate? And then go do that. And also sit with the parts of you that are afraid. And also, if it's coming from true desire, go and do it.

Go and do it.

Okay. If you're caught in the spiral of this next thing will fix me and you want to help discerning this, if you download my AI code, Soma, she's free at the moment. She's based on she GBT, she's like cod, co assistant Colau Strategizer. She's everything. She's absolutely amazing. And we are doing a pilot program for her.

The data of recording of this, uh oh yeah, you guys can join it. It's basically how to use AI to support you and not like. Lose yourself, and we will have the Academy opening up later on this year. If you haven't grabbed my book, go ahead and grab it. And the next episode that I wanna do, that I really recommend that you listen to, is actually more about how your body speaks to you.

And it's with, therapist Grace. You'll find that episode, it's called Productivity is a Lie. It's number 211 or 212. I'll link it down on the show notes.