Episode 165: Repetition is Magic

You are listening to the Overcome Pornography for Good podcast episode 165, Repetition is Magic.

Welcome to the Overcome Pornography For Good podcast where we take a research-based, trauma informed and results focused approach to quitting porn. This approach has been revolutionary and changed thousands and thousands of lives. I’m your host, Sara Brewer.

Hey everyone, welcome to today’s podcast episode. I’m really excited to record this episode. I was like, hmm, what should we call this? I want to talk about repetition, but there’s some really, really magical parts about repetition, what should we call this? Oh, Repetition is Magic. I don’t know, hopefully it makes sense, I just kind of threw it out there.

Before we dive into the content today, let me just say thank you. You guys, thank you so, so, so much for the reviews that you are leaving me on the podcast. I just feel so privileged and full of gratitude to all the people that this is reaching. And it’s just really, really, like I said, a privilege for me to read these reviews that you send. Thank you so much. And it really does help the podcast get to more people who want to see it.

If you haven’t left a review yet, I would love it and appreciate it so much. You can do it anonymously, you don’t have to have your actual name there in the podcast review, but you can if you want to. We recently hit over a million downloads, which is a really big deal. And also we are in the 0.5% of world ranked podcasts.

Full disclosure, I don’t totally know what that means, but it’s a big deal. It looks like a pretty big deal. Like in the top 0.5% of worldwide podcasts. I don’t know how they rank that, if it’s based off of downloads, I’m assuming probably downloads and listens. But isn’t that awesome? Anyways, I’m just really thrilled about that. So thank you again for the reviews. Please go and leave one if you haven’t yet.

I would love to just share – Oh, there are so many amazing ones here that I want to share, but let me choose one. Let’s do this one. This one says, “I have struggled with porn and shame for years. It has affected my relationship and I finally started getting help about 6 months ago.

The therapist definitely helps, but when it’s once a week for an hour, it’s not always enough. I just found Sara and, wow, she fills in for when I’m not in therapy and the message she sends is like when I’m with my therapist. I’m excited to continue my healing by listening to Sara daily. Thank you for what you do.”

Yes, thank you so much. Anyway, again, thank you. I love being able to offer this free resource to fill in those moments when we don’t have those hour-long therapy sessions. Oh, this other one is so good, let me share it really quick.

Okay, this one made me smile. So they said, “When people imagine the kind of people who listen to this podcast, they probably would not imagine me; a young, gay, non-binary person who has never had direct religious influence in their life. I have never felt like Sara’s teachings don’t apply to me and I have grown so much since listening to the podcast. I am learning to let go of shame and apply the lessons Sarah teaches to all areas of life. Absolutely an invaluable resource.”

Oh, thank you so much for sharing that with me, truly. And, you know, we put a lot of effort into making sure that our content is inclusive to people from all different backgrounds, faith backgrounds, non-faith backgrounds. I try to be a really big advocate for the LGBTQ plus community because they just have my heart and I freaking love them.

So if you’ll notice in the background of my camera, I do have a couple of pictures and a little rainbow. That’s my little, just way of helping to stand in some solidarity and remind me and my clients of the inclusive environment that we’re working to create, and that we’re always open to learning and growing and working on being more inclusive and better. So I really did appreciate that one. That one specifically meant a lot to me. They all do, I love you guys. Thank you for sharing all of these.

Okay, let’s get into the content today. I don’t want to just sit and ramble on about reviews, but again, thank you. They really do mean a lot to me and they really help the podcast, but content today. So the power of repetition, repetition is magic.

One of the biggest tools that I use for changing and for changing and healing and creating something new or healing from some trauma or whatever is going on, is repeating phrases that help me get into the energy that I want to be in.

And so there’s a time and space for this. There’s a time and place for being validated, and validation is a big part of healing and just letting yourself be and being where you are. And then once we’re a little bit more grounded there, we can incorporate some of these mantras or thought work or trying to believe new things into that validation, healing, love space.

And so what this looks like for me is I do belief plans, and I do belief plans all the time. If you guys have heard my podcast, if you’re a longtime listener, you’ve heard this concept before. If you have not heard this concept before, please do yourself a favor and stop this episode and go and listen to the belief plan episode. There are a couple that I talk about it in, but specifically episode 34.

And I love this concept so much that I did a replay of it and have posted it a couple of times, but it’s this idea that we’re creating a plan for what we want to believe. And not only are we just creating this plan, but we’re also constantly repeating this plan and these mantras to ourselves to start to change what we’re believing and what we’re thinking and do some healing.

And so I do this in a lot of different ways. I do this with new goals that I want to accomplish. And I think about, okay, what energy do I need to be in to help me accomplish this goal the quickest, the best, the easiest? And then I get into that energy and I write down statements, paragraphs, or just sentences that help me feel those feelings.

If I want to get into abundance, I’m going to write down and create a plan or just like a whole list of different things that I’m going to read to myself every day that really help me get in that emotion. I do this for calls that I’m a part of. So I have a lot of calls that I do throughout the week, I have coaching calls and then I do my free classes. And before I get on those calls, I have a specific belief plan document that I pull up and I just take five minutes to read through it and it gets me in the energy that I want to be in.

And so this is part of the reason that I’m recording this podcast for you guys. I did a coaching call earlier today and I went to share my screen because I wanted to share something in the program, but I have two monitors and I accidentally shared the wrong monitor. And so what was on the monitor that I shared was the belief plan and I didn’t realize that. And it took me a minute to realize, oh, I’m sharing my belief plan.

And at first I was a little bit embarrassed because it feels vulnerable. And then I was like, oh, no, this is so good. I should actually share this with them and let them know what this is. And maybe I should do a podcast episode on this because this is one of my secrets that I use to really show up my very best.

And so right before a coaching call, there are things that I want to get into. I want to get into this feeling of certainty. And these are things that I also want my clients to feel. Certainty and joy and love and ease and confidence and in integrity. And I want to feel all of these things. And I know as I’m feeling them, I’m going to help my clients to feel that and to access that.

And so I have my plan. My belief plan exercise is just all of these different statements that help me get into this energy before my call. So I read through these things. There are mantras that help me feel confident. There are mantras that help me fill in integrity. There are mantras that help me feel all of these things and it just helps me so much.

So I have the same thing for my live classes. There are certain feelings I want to invoke in people in those live classes and certain feelings that I want to feel in those live classes. I still get nervous for those, I get tons of brand new people that have never met me before. And I can sometimes get in my head.

And so really, even though I’ve done so many of those, geez, how many have I done? Probably around 50 live ones. Anyways, I’ve done a lot, but to stay out of my head and to be in the right energy, I do this belief plan. So I have a different separate document with all these things that I read before a class that I’ve put together.

I’ve done it for healing traumas where I just want to feel more empowered and I want to feel more healed from this and I’m having a hard time trusting myself or I’m having a hard time getting into this space. And so I’ll create a belief plan for getting in that space more often.

I often will do it with a document and just read the document, but sometimes what’s really powerful is talking to my phone and creating a voice memo and then replaying that and listening to it and listening to it over and over and over and over again. 

So it’s this idea of repetition and repeating these things. And especially, you know, well, a little bit of brain information. In our brain we’ve got all these neural pathways that we’ve created from thinking something over and over and over and over again. And so our beliefs are really just thoughts that we have thought over and over and over and over again.

And so if you want to change a belief, you have to think a new thought over and over and over and over again until that new thought becomes its own neural pathway. It’s difficult when you’re first starting to do that because it doesn’t feel natural, it’s hard to get there. It’s like, instead of the super highway, right, that’s what our neural pathways are, they’re this super highway. We’ve thought it so many times, it’s so quick to go from point A to point B.

When we’re thinking something new, it’s like we’re going on the back roads and we have to go a lot slower. And it feels like it takes a long time. But eventually we do that enough times and it becomes faster and faster and easier and easier.

And so a belief plan is helping our brains start believing new things. And repetition is a really magical, easy way to start doing it. Now, the caveat here is that you have to be repeating things to yourself that you already feel and can somewhat believe. It’s not going to work if you’re trying to tell yourself something that you just don’t feel and don’t believe, right?

So it’s hard to go from, “I hate my body” to “I love my body.” It’s hard to go from, “I am a worthless piece of scum” to “I am the best person in the world.” So we want to find some middle ground. And this is why when I do these belief plans, I really prioritize the feeling. What’s the feeling that I’m trying to create? And then the sentences and the phrases come after I’m already in that feeling.

And then even if it’s not super natural and I don’t just go there naturally, I’m going to pull out my document and I’m going to read through these and really practice, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat these things to myself over and over and over and over again for whatever that is I’m trying to create.

This really is like one of my big secrets to changing and to showing up the best that I can. It works really well for me, and so I want you all to try it. And what I’m going to do is I’m going to create a little bit of a guided meditation to help you come up with your own belief plan and your own repetition magic statements that you can repeat to yourself, that you can read over and over again.

And I’m going to make this available to you for free. I’ll just have you sign up for it on a form. It’ll be sarabrewer.com/beliefplanmeditation. And we’ll link that in the show notes so you can go and listen to it anytime, but here’s a little bit more direction here.

So what we’re going to do in this meditation is we’re going to get into our heart and really prioritize feeling some deep, unconditional love in our heart. And I’m going to take you through an exercise to do that.

I want to shout out to my mentor, Kathy, who taught this to me. And I use it all the time, but there’s going to be a little exercise I’ll take you through in this meditation to get into your heart.

Once we are in that unconditional love space, we’re going to drop down a little bit further into peace. And in that peace space, we’re going to ask ourselves, okay, what is it that I’m trying to create? And what feelings do I need to prioritize? And what feelings do I need to feel in order to create this? And you’re just going to journal on that for a second.

And then we’re going to go into what statements help me feel this? And from that place of being in your heart, being in your peace, being in your best self, calm, loving self, we’re going to come up with these phrases and write down these phrases that are going to help us get into these emotions that we want to be in.

And then you’re going to repeat that to yourself. And then you’re going to do that meditation again the next day and write down more, and the next day and write down more until you’ve spent a good week at least or so of just really trying to access this and create a really beautiful belief plan. Because what’s going to happen is you’re going to do this and the first time you do it you might not have a lot that comes to mind, or you might have a ton that comes to mind.

And then you’re going to go throughout your day and another thought is going to pop in. You’re going to be like, oh yeah, that’s a thought I want to believe in. That’s a thought I want to work on. And that’s one that feels really good to me. And you’re going to write that down in your notes. And then the next day, when you’re doing this meditation, again, you’re going to pull it up and you’re going to write it down.

And you’re just going to create this beautiful document of lovely things to repeat to yourself. And what you’re going to find is that this is going to change your life so much and change it so quickly if you prioritize it and take it seriously. This is how you’re going to create those new neural pathways in your brain, how you’re going to start believing new things that you really want to believe.

So some things that you can apply this to are pornography, right? So if you want to quit porn, right? Like really believing that you can quit porn. Worthiness, feeling good and worthy and a good enough human. Feeling confident, maybe you just want to feel more confident in your life. Feeling lovable and loved and like you’re worthy of love.

Maybe it’s that you want to stop feeling resentment and you want to prioritize your own joy and your own happiness and your own pleasure in life. And so we can do a belief plan to help you feel worthy of that. Whatever that is, you can apply this to anything.

And then, of course, if you have work meetings or if you want to do one every day before work, you can do that as well. Or like me, if you have calls or something that would just help you to get into some good energy space, you can do that as well.

Okay, so go and download that meditation. Let me walk you through this exercise, let’s do it together. Sarabrewer.com/beliefplanmeditation. And remember if it’s a little bit difficult at first, if these things don’t come naturally to you at first, that’s okay. That’s why we repeat them over and over and over again. There really is so much magic in repetition. All right, you guys, thanks for being here. We’ll talk to you later, bye-bye.

I want to invite you to come and listen to my free class, How To Overcome Pornography For Good Without Using Willpower. We talk about how to stop giving in to urges without pure willpower or relying on phone filters so that you can actually stop wanting pornography.

We talk about how to stop giving up after a few weeks or months. And spoiler alert, the answer isn’t have more willpower. And then lastly, we talk about how to make a life without porn easily sustainable and permanent.

If you’re trying to quit porn, this class is a game changer. So you can go and sign up at Sarabrewer.com/masterclass, and it is totally free.