A Spell to Expand Your Capacity To Bet On Yourself

When was the last time you Went For It,

and took a chance on yourself?

Whether it’s been a while, or only a minute,

here is the reminder we all need sometimes,

that you absolutely deserve your own faith.

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Mentioned:

Mind Witchery Episode 20, A Spell for Harnessing Growth Mindset.

Carol Dweck, author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.

Make Magic:

When you bet on yourself,

when you trust yourself,

when you invest in yourself,

you don’t just do it for you.

You do it for everyone who has been told

to play it safe and stay the course.

Transcript: A Spell to Expand Your Capacity To Bet On Yourself

Natalie Miller:    Welcome to Mind Witchery. I’m your host, Natalie Miller, and I’m so glad you’re here. 

Hello, my loves. Today's spell is an important one. It's a spell for expanding your capacity to bet on yourself. And let me begin, actually, by telling you what I mean by "betting on yourself." To me, the idea of betting on yourself is, number one, like, taking a chance. Right? 

When we bet, we're saying, "All right, I'm going to go for this. I'm going to take a chance in a new direction. I'm going to take a chance on a new enterprise. I'm going to take a chance on an investment. I'm going to take a chance on an idea. I'm going to bet on this." So, that's one.

Also, to me, the idea of bet, like, placing a bet, does involve money. It's like putting money down on this. So, betting on yourself might be saying, "Yeah, I'm going to do this program or, yeah, I'm going to hire this person to help me or, yeah, I'm going to bet on my ability to write this book or bring this project to life." Yeah?

So, that's what I mean by betting on yourself. And this episode feels so important to me because I know that there's no way I would be where I am, there's no way I would be this happy, there's no way I would be this fulfilled, there's no way I would be this fucking resilient if I had not, again and again and again, bet on myself [laugh]; if I had not invested money in me, in my growth, in my potential, in my projects; if I had not been willing to strike out in new directions, and take chances. 

And, you know, we are not conditioned to do this. We are, many of us—and this might be related to your racial ethnic identity. This might be related to your gender identity. This might be related to your class. There are so many of us who are encouraged to play it safe and steady, and stay the course, even when the course isn't really going to take us anywhere. Right? 

When we stay the course, it's great for our shitty employers. When we stay the course, it's great for all of the systems and structures in our world, many of which are designed to rely on our compliance. So, I just want to contextualize this just (a) to say, yeah, you likely have not been encouraged or taught to bet on yourself, in fact, very possibly the reverse. 

Very possibly, you have been explicitly and implicitly encouraged to play it safe and stay the course, yeah? All the more reason that it is vital—vital—it is life-giving to you and to all of us, to our world, it is life-giving to begin to take chances on ourselves, to begin to invest money in our ideas and our projects and our growth and development. It really is not just life-changing. I believe it is world-changing. 

It brings into reality what is possible. And I don’t know about you but this reality, it doesn't work for so many of us, and it is time to build something better. It is time to step into possibility; to invest in possibility. And, very, very often, that begins with you, yourself; with you; with your growth; with your wellness; with your ideas.

So, here is what I find, both for myself and for my clients, gets in the way of betting on ourselves. It's basically the fear that we might be making a mistake. What if I'm wrong? What if it doesn't work? What if I spend all this money, and I fail? What if I spend all this time, and it doesn’t work?

I think that's what keeps us from betting on ourselves. I think we worry about our odds. We worry that the odds may not be in our favor; may not be in our project's favor. We worry that we might be making a mistake.

And, so, I have spells for you today, not just from myself but from three other women. I bet you've heard of some of them. [laugh] And it's interesting, I really felt called in this episode to look specifically to other trailblazing women to see how do they look at betting on themselves? How do they look at making an investment? How do they look at taking a chance in a new direction? Because, clearly, it's working for them. And if it's working for them, might it also work for me? What's their viewpoint, and can I adopt it?

So, I'm going to share three from other women, and then I'm going to share my own. And my own actually has just come into being this year. This year, I have really come to believe a little something about betting on myself, and about making mistakes. 

So, let's begin with a coach I worked with for a very important pivotal year. I worked with a woman named Juliana Garcia. I was Juliana's client for a little more than a year, and I learned a lot from her. And one of the very first things I learned when I entered into Juliana's universe was this. She said, "I always get what I came for. I always get what I came for, meaning, when I go into something, when I go into a new endeavor, when I go into a training, when I go into a coaching program, when I go into a relationship, I always get what I came for." 

Now, I want you to notice here that it is not, "I'm always given what I expected," [laugh] right, because I don't actually think it works that way, and I think that's Juliana's point. It's that in the broader sense, if I'm doing this coaching because I want to feel more confident, more powerful, I will get that through this coaching, no matter what. If I am going into this project because I want to express myself, because I want to bring a piece of my soul into the world, I will do that. 

I love "I always get what I came for" because it is so active. It's not passive at all. And I love the assurance in it that when we are clear on what we are after more broadly speaking then, somehow, some way, we will get it. We will get it. 

And I invite you right now to look back at your life. Look back at some of the places that you took a chance; that you bet on yourself. And, my dear, this is very, very important that we actually do this because our minds are very interested in looking back to learn from past experience. And, so, looking back at a place where you took a chance, you bet on something—it might have been a relationship; it might've been a job; it might've been a project; it might've been some kind of self-investment—that you look back at that, and you say, "Hmm, how did I get exactly what I needed, exactly what I was truly looking for in that experience?"

This is so important because if we look back at things that didn't turn out the way we expected, and we only lament that we didn't get what we were promised, that we weren't given what we were promised, we totally neglect that we are here as growing, evolving, learning human beings. We totally neglect that, in one way or another, yeah, that relationship didn't work out. But, through it, and even through its ending, you got exactly what you needed. You were able, through that experience, to cultivate in yourself what you were really looking for. 

Look back at a job that you had high hopes for, and it did not turn out to be [laugh] anything like what you wanted. But looking back, like, what kind of knowledge, strength, wisdom did you gain through that experience? What do you get to take with you, right? You bet on yourself? What did you win? Because you did, you won. Right? So, that's the first quotation for you from Juliana. "I always get what I came for."

Here's the second one. It's from Martha Beck. Martha Beck is a pioneering life coach, and I took her life coach training, and her master coach training. And in our master coach training, we got to be with Martha, and it was really amazing. And I can see her face. I can hear her tone. I want to tell you [laugh], Martha repeats this in my mind, in my memory. She repeats this at least weekly, in my head.

She said, "You cannot get this wrong. You cannot get this wrong." Oh, I don’t know why this is such a balm for me, especially because, in the broader sense, I do think that there is wrongness [laugh]. I do think it is. 

Actually, I looked up the etymology of "wrong" and, apparently, like, once upon a time, "right" meant straight, like, right and straight, and "wrong" meant crooked, right? And, so, in a way, I think, like, oh, yeah, lots of things are crooked and bent and windy, and there aren't actually a lot of right, straight lines, right?

I definitely believe that there is no one right way. So, when I'm going to bet on myself, if I get into a place where I'm asking, "What's the right decision?" I'm asking a very unhelpful question. It's just not a good question, because there is no one right decision. There's no one right way. 

And I think what Martha is saying when she's saying, "You cannot get this wrong," is she's saying, "Just like there's no one right way, there's no one wrong way either." It's like right and wrong, those don't apply to life. They don't apply to life because life keeps unfolding. Because if we make a mistake, it very rarely ends there. Life keeps unfolding. We keep moving forward. We take what we learned from that moment, and we apply it. 

And this, actually, is a perfect segue to the next quotation that helps me bet on myself. And it's from Oprah. Oh, Oprah. Let me tell you, if ever you're feeling like down or doubtful, just put Oprah quotations into your Google [laugh], and like receive lots and lots of wisdom from Oprah Winfrey.

So, this is what Oprah says. She says, "Learn from every mistake because every experience, particularly your mistakes, are there to teach you and force you into being more who you are—into being more of you who are." Our mistakes are teachers. 

You know, back in my episode about growth mindset, I talked about this too. Like, Carol Dweck, who writes about growth mindset, says, "Listen, mistakes are the best because mistakes are such potent fertilizers for our growth." She doesn't say that exactly, but that's how I remember it.

It's like as we're going along, and we're figuring out what works, what yields balance, what yields ease, what yields abundance, we are also learning that by figuring out what doesn't work; what causes stress; what drains us. There's no way to figure out what works without figuring out what doesn't work. There's no way to figure out what yields abundance once and for all because this world is always changing. Right?

When we think about the word "mistake" and we go into the etymology of this word, "miss-take," it's like I mistook it. I thought it would be one thing, but it turned out to be another thing. I thought it might work, but it turned out to not work. I thought it might give me X, but it turned out to give me Y. 

And my mistake is not a moral failing. My mistake is not evidence of my badness and unworthiness and damnation, right? I mean, we could choose to look at it that way but I sure as fuck don't. No. My mistake was a misapprehension. It was a misunderstanding. And by seeing it as a miss-take, now, I see more fully. Now, I understand myself better, and I understand the world a little better.

Oh, OK. Are you ready for my spell [laugh], the one that I've been brewing up just in this last year? And I want to tell you, this has been a year where I have really begun to bet more and more generously, more and more hugely on myself. [laugh] I've been taking my little chips, my little poker chips of life, and I have been sliding them across the table, like, yeah, I'm all in.

Most recently, it's with this planner that I'm creating. I've mentioned it before. I have a planner in the works, and it's really exciting. It's been an idea that's kind of been percolating and bubbling and sparkling for a very long time in my mind-soul. [laugh] And I'm really going for it. I'm choosing to believe in it. I'm betting on it, and I'm betting on myself.

And I don't at all want to pretend, like, "Oh, yeah, it's no problem, like, you know." [laugh] When I say those quotations from these other inspiring women—"I always get what I came for." "I cannot get this wrong." "Every experience, particularly the mistakes, are there to teach me who I am"—I don't say any of those lightly, even though I just did. There's gravitas in those because, oh, they are grounding. They are solidifying of the trust, the fortitude that it takes to bet on ourselves, yeah?

So, as I have been making these investments, as I have been taking a chance on me and on my ideas, this is what I've come to. And, so, here's a spell from me. Here's a quotation from me to expand your capacity to bet on yourself.

Even my mistakes yield abundance, even my miss-takes, even my misunderstandings. Like, I don't actually ever lose. I only gain. I gain in wisdom. I gain in experience. I gain in resilience. I gain in my understanding of how the world works. I gain in my understanding of how I work.

And that is a net positive, always, because the difference between betting on yourself and betting on, let's say, a number at a blackjack table—OK, maybe that made it very obvious that I don't actually know how blackjack works [laugh] but stay with me here, right? The difference between you betting on you, and you betting on something outside of you, is that, no matter what happens, when you are investing in you, when you are taking a chance on you, you will win. 

There is no losing. You cannot get this wrong. [laugh] You'll always get what you came for, and maybe not in the way you expected. You will be taught and, sometimes—and I love Oprah's choice of word here—"forced." You will be forced to be more of who you are. When you bet on yourself, believing that even your mistakes yield abundance, you only get richer in every sense of the word. 

And that wealth, that wealth of wisdom, of understanding, that shining example that you show to all the other people who are also encouraged to play it safe, and to doubt themselves, and to privilege the cold, hard reality over the shining possibility, you give an example to them. So, when you get richer, we all get richer. 

And that's really why I was inspired to pull in on purpose quotations from so many inspiring women, to show you they are making us all richer. When you bet on yourself, when you become more of yourself, it's not just for you. It's for everyone. 

All right, my love, that chance that you've been considering, that investment that you keep talking yourself out of, I hope you'll look at that in a new way, and I hope you'll go for it. And, hey, you might go all in. [laugh] You might say, "OK, I'm doing this." And you also might just make a small wager. 

Just make a smaller bet on yourself because what will happen is you'll make that small bet on yourself, and then you'll see the return. It'll make you richer, and you'll have more capacity to bet a little more next time, and then a little more, and then a little more. And then, before you know it, you are living a life with wisdom and truth and your fullest self at its center. 

All right, my love, thanks for listening. Bye for now.

    Thank you for listening to this episode of Mind Witchery. To catch all the magic I’m offering, please subscribe to the show, or if you want a little bit of weekly witchiness in your inbox, sign up for my Sunday Letter at mindwitchery.com. If today’s episode made you think of a friend or loved one, your sister, your neighbor, please tell them about it. We need more magic-makers in this troubled world. 

    Like all good things, this podcast is co-created by stellar people. Our music is by fabulous DJ, artist, and producer, Shammy Dee. Our gorgeous art is by the sorcerers at New Moon Creative. Mind Witchery is produced in conjunction with Particulate Media, K.O. Myers, executive producer. And I am Natalie Miller. Till next time. 

End of recording