Mantra with Jemma Sbeg - I Am Worthy of Success and Will Achieve My Goals

Episode Date: January 27, 2025

This week's mantra is I Am Worthy of Success and Will Achieve My Goals. Believing in your own success begins with acknowledging your worth and potential. In this episode of Mantra, we’re diving into the mindset shifts and habits that pave the way to achieving your goals. Success isn’t just about ambition—it’s about silencing self-doubt, setting powerful intentions, and trusting that your hard work will pay off. This Mantra invites you to reframe what success means and embrace the confidence needed to step into the life you deserve. For ad-free listening and early access to episodes, subscribe to OpenMind+ on Apple Podcasts. For more from OpenMind, follow us on Instagram @openmindstudios. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is Open Mind. Welcome to a brand new week. Here is your mantra. I am worthy of success and will achieve my goals. I'm your host, Gemma Spake, and I'm here to guide you toward a more centered and fulfilling life. Each week, I'll share personal stories and insights that are focused on a specific mantra,

plus journal prompts and a weekly challenge for all of us to help put it into action. Think of mantra as your mental reset button, a way to stay centered as you juggle work, school, family and whatever else life throws at you. Each mantra is a simple, powerful phrase you can repeat to refocus your thoughts and bring a sense of calm into your day. It's a small tool with a big impact, clearing your mind, lifting your mood

and rooting you in the present. If you've listened to my other show, The Psychology of Your 20s, you know that I'm all about those little nuggets of insight that make a big impact. So whether you're looking for some extra inspiration or you're trying to ground yourself amidst the chaos, you have come to the right place.

At Open Mind, we value your support. Share your thoughts on social media and remember to rate, review and follow Mantra to help others discover the show. For more exclusive content, monthly bonus episodes, early access and ad-free listening, join our Open Mind Plus community on Apple podcasts. This week, I'll catch you up on what's been going on in my life. And then we'll dive into today's mantra, which I am very excited about. I am worthy of success and I will achieve my goals.

This is all about recognizing your inherent self-worth, building confidence and committing to the path that leads to your dreams, regardless of what comes up for you. So stick around. We'll be right back after this short pause. I'm worried about my sister. You're engaged. You cannot marry a murderer. I was sick, but I am healing. Returning to W network and Stack TV. The West Side River is back. If you're not killing these people, then who is?

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Welcome back. We're going to get into this week's mantra in just a few seconds, but before we do, let's talk about my highs, lows, and who knows. On today's theme of achieving goals, feeling worthy of success, I want to focus on a high, and that high has been your wonderful reception of mantra of this new show. Because we are only on episode four, and already we have so many of you tuning in.

I just want to say a big, big thank you. Anytime you put something out into the world, you obviously already think that something out into the world, you obviously already think that it's a good idea and you've put hours and days into it behind the scenes and you really want it to reach the right people and sometimes all the magic comes together and you do. And it's just been such a pleasure to see how many of you have been really engaging in mantra. You've been adding it to your weekly commute, to your Monday morning.

And I just think that's really, really brilliant. And it's left me feeling very high on life, very high on a unique kind of success, the success that comes with building community and doing something that you're passionate about. So I also want to extend that gratitude to you guys, to the listeners. Thank you for tuning in. That's my high for the week.

Okay, let's get into it. It's time for this week's mantra. I am worthy of success and I will achieve my goals. Success and having a rich life is something that we all aspire to in some way or another. Even people who don't want traditional career or financial success, they have other goals. They have goals to do with recognition, with being appreciated, with making a difference, with living a deep and purposeful life or just being happy, every single one of us has a deep goal, a deep purpose, a deep idea of what a successful life would look like to us. And I want you to just take a second and really picture for me, what do you want from life? What big dreams and goals do you have? Even if they feel impossible,

even if they feel larger than life, can you picture yourself achieving that vision? Can you really feel it? As you pictured this, whatever it was for you, I'm sure that something else came up for you as well, and that is doubt. That is doubt, fear,

feeling like even though this is your dream, right, you came up with it, it came from your mind, you are not worthy. When we don't feel deserving, we don't act. When we don't feel deserving, we don't feel in control and we don't grasp what we want from life or even the things that life hands us, even the moments that we are just purely lucky. A lot of us struggle to feel like we're deserving in my mind because of three main themes or three main core reasons. Firstly, at some stage in your life, someone told you that you don't deserve success or

that you don't deserve what you want from life. Someone along the way said, you're not worthy, you're a loser, you're not good enough, you're not smart enough, you don't have what it takes. And those external voices that we heard became our own in the form of imposter syndrome, in the form of self doubt. And I really want to make this point to you today.

Any nasty voice that you hear in your head saying, you don't deserve that, you will never have the success that you want, someone else had to say those words to you first. Think about it. No child, no infant leaves the womb thinking, I'm not good enough. There is no two year old or three year old who walks around thinking that they

can't do, be, or have anything that they want. You know, children have like the craziest confidence in themselves. They're loud. They sing, they babble, they run around, they dress however they want. They say whatever they're feeling. They say they, they dress however they want, they say whatever they're feeling, they say they want to be president, they want to be Taylor Swift, because no one has said to them yet, you know, be realistic, be serious, you're not good enough for that.

But one day, someone does say that, and then someone else, and then we encounter cruelty and bullies and mean people, and we take all of those words that have been said to us, and we start to say them to ourselves in our own voice. So that's the first reason, self-doubt, external doubt that has been placed on us. I think the second reason that we feel we are undeserving of success is because of our fear of responsibility. We're scared of what it will actually mean to achieve all our goals, where we're going that we feel we are undeserving of success is because of our fear of responsibility.

We're scared of what it will actually mean to achieve all our goals, where we're gonna go from there, what if we lose it all? Maybe it's the case that you've just never seen someone in your life take responsibility for their success, or you just don't have a model for what success could look like. Thirdly, I think we're scared of not doing things perfectly,

and this is definitely, I think the faction that I fall in with. We don't feel we're deserving of success, of our goals, because we feel like we don't know how to go about it in the exact perfect way. We feel like we don't have a plan, we are afraid of misstepping, and essentially, I think being found out as this fraud. And what that really comes down to is imposter syndrome. And that's very similar to self-doubt, but it's much more insidious because self-doubt, I think,

can be proved wrong. When you find success, the doubt that you're ever deserving of it does begin to fade because the proof is in the pudding, you have it in your hands. But for imposter syndrome, no matter how much success you achieve, no matter how many goals you meet, you are never going to feel like you are deserving of them or that you were the one who controlled them happening, if that makes any sense at all. I always think about people who find incredible career success and they're always waiting for the other shoe to drop and I think that that was very much me for a long time. My journey with imposter syndrome has definitely been a long one and if you're a woman, that

is more likely to be the case. There is a lot of doubt that comes with being a woman who has done something new or been successful. In fact, when we talk about the idea of imposter syndrome, the very first study ever done on this phenomena was on very successful women who had PhDs, who had master's degrees, and still they would tell people it was a mistake, it happened by accident. For me, when my first show, The Psychology of Your Twenties,

started getting a lot of listeners, it was terrifying. I was waiting for everyone around me, everyone online, everyone listening, to figure out that I was waiting for everyone around me, everyone online, everyone listening, to figure out that I was a fraud. And I was especially waiting for my luck to run out. I was like, this just has to be a product of something else that has nothing to do with me. It has to be luck.

Maybe an element of that is because I'm Australian, right? Tall Poppy Syndrome is a huge thing here if you don't know what that means. It's basically that the flower that grows the highest is the first to be cut. So don't stick your neck out. Don't be the one who is showing off or who is successful. Stay silent, stay small.

And so I think because of that way of being raised and that conditioning and that philosophy, I was always waiting for my luck to run out. I thought that this was a fluke. I had someone actually say something to me the other day and I was describing to them this big cocktail of emotions that I've been experiencing and how I don't deserve my success. I need to work harder. I'm just lucky.

And this person said to me, "'Jemma, someone has to win the lottery. People win the lottery every single day. Why not you? What makes you any different? But specifically, what is it about you that makes you any less deserving? And honestly, it stopped me in my tracks.

It honestly left such an impression on me. I think it's something that I've been waiting for years for someone to say to me, and no therapist has ever said it to me, no family member, no mentor. Someone has to win the lottery. And not only that, luck is only a small part of the equation, right? When you work hard for your dreams, you basically put your name in the lottery basket, you enter yourself into the lottery, into the raffle, more and more times. Your odds of success increase because you are showing up and you are showing that you bet on yourself.

And seriously, who else is going to put your name into the draw? Who else is going to bet on you the way that you can bet on yourself? And that has been my whole mindset shift recently in the past few months when it comes to success, when it comes to feeling worthy of success, why not me? And why not you? Can you give me a reason? One reason that you are A, not worthy of success or B, not able to get there. It is very easy to think of a million excuses. I'm not smart enough. I don't know enough. Everyone else has a head start. I don't know where to begin. I can't do it as well as him or her or them. I have other things to do. And you know what those excuses all have in common? They are self-doubt, masquerading, disguising itself

as valid reasons not to do something that you are called to do. Essentially your self-doubt was designed to protect you from ever taking risks. It was designed to protect you from ever taking a leap of faith and it does that by whispering in your ear, just play it safe, don't be too much, don't let yourself fail. And the easiest way to not fail is to simply never do anything at all. But self-doubt is really at the end of the day just ego and our ego is actually just this very afraid little thing. It's very afraid of embarrassment, it's very afraid of being judged, of being seen, of

being laughed at. And so it makes you fear not just success, but all the challenges that may come along the way that threaten this really scared part of ourselves. And again, I really want to say, ego is not actually a bad thing. It's just there to protect us, but sometimes it also needs to be told to just be quiet. It needs to be told to just sit down, have a nap. If ego got to call every single shot, just imagine that for a second, if the most scared part of you got to call every single shot in your life, we would all be miserable.

We would be lonely, bitter, scared creatures looking through a window at life and wishing we could have it, but not knowing how to get there. So when you fear success, when you fear beginning, and with that, when you fear failure, know that ego is making all of those things seem bigger and scarier than they really are, and you have a choice. Listen to ego or listen to your true, pure self who is telling you, I deserve this, I want this, I'm gonna give it a go, I'm gonna give it everything, I'm just gonna try.

How I like to visualize it is like a big truck turning around and you're in the front, you're behind the wheel, you're turning the wheel, you're in the command center. And when you say, I deserve success, you turn that wheel sharply, and you turn it to the right, you turn it in the direction that you want to go, and then all the carriages behind you, your actions, your habits, your beliefs, they begin to turn too.

Believing you will succeed is surprisingly actually a big predictor of whether you will succeed. It basically means that you are more likely to act accordingly with what you want because it feels possible to you now. Believing you will succeed and therefore acting as if you have already done so in a way makes you high in something called self-efficacy. So self-efficacy is a core belief that represents your perception that you are able

to produce a desired outcome. So another way to think of it is self-confidence. Basically, it is a state of mind. It's an aspect of who you are that means you know that you can make something happen if you think it and if you act on that desire. And it's really, really important to have. It's such an important facet of our mindset of getting stuff done. And we can boost self-efficacy a few ways. Firstly, by acting more and thinking less. So just committing ourselves to doing the thing

and gaining mastery. We can also improve our self-efficacy by watching others. So say you've set a really ambitious savings goal or a fitness goal, seeing other people who are like you achieve that goal shows you that it's possible. And so that in itself increases your belief in your ability to bring about an outcome. Mental imagery is also so important.

So how you think about a problem, how you think about your success, how you think about your journey. So this is something that I do all the time when I feel self-doubt, creep in, when I'm low on motivation, when I genuinely just don't know where to go next. I actually imagine the person who I know is best at the thing that I want and I try and do everything that I think they would do in that situation. So say it's public speaking, just to use an example, I think of Michelle Obama and I think,

what would Michelle Obama do right now? What would this amazing woman do right now? How can I copy her? How can I emulate her? If she is someone who was a master at this thing, well, she's already set the example for me. I'm going to pretend that I'm her. I'm going to imagine everything that she would do.

And soon soon you feel so much more confident in your own ability. Another thing that's really, really important for self-efficacy is just encouragement. Encouragement from your family, from your friends, telling people about your small wins so that they can congratulate you, so that you give them the gift of being able to show you encouragement and love, and finally showing that love to yourself. So being gentle with ourselves. Something that I believe really deeply delays

success and undermines it is all or nothing thinking. Either I do this perfectly or I have failed. I either am working towards this every minute of every day with no distractions, no mistakes, or I've given up. It's a deep cognitive distortion that a lot of us face, but you talk to anyone who is actually successful and they'll say to you, oh, I failed so many times. You know, I almost gave up every day of the week. I tried so many different ways of doing this thing before it worked out.

You know, I was told no. I was told I was never going to make it. But you persevere and you just keep believing in yourself as cliche as it sounds. Sometimes the most cliche sayings often hold the most truth. And that's definitely one of them. All of that to say, success is neither about luck or perfection. It is about believing in your own worth and showing up for your goals, one step at a time. So simple. But coming up, let's get personal.

I want to talk about my doubts, my breakthroughs, and one of the moments when I really felt that pushing forward felt almost impossible, and how I stayed motivated, and I kept believing in my worth, that I was worthy and deserving of success, of my goals, of whatever came with it.

So stay tuned after this brief pause. Clear your schedule for U-time with a handcrafted espresso beverage from Starbucks. Savor the new small and mighty Cortado, cozy up with the familiar flavors of pistachio, or shake up your mood with an iced brown sugar oat shaken espresso. Whatever you choose, your espresso will be handcrafted with care at Starbucks. Now that we've looked into the meaning behind today's mantra, it's time to get a little bit personal with you all and share some of my insights and reflections about this phrase. So I want to talk about my biggest failure actually, because this was where I actually found the most valuable lesson on success.

And it has to do with the job that I really wanted at a big firm in my early 20s. So when I was in my early 20s, I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. And everyone around me was getting these impressive, high paying jobs at these big firms, these consulting firms, these law firms, these accounting firms. And a big part of me knew this wasn't what I wanted, but it seemed like the right pathway. It seemed that it was what everyone else was doing.

It was the traditional career path. It was stable. And so I committed to it. I committed to finding a job in this industry, and I went for, at the time, what I considered my dream job. It was as a health consultant at this huge firm in Sydney, and there were all these interviews in all these stages,

and I got to the last stage of all of these interviews and all of these stages. And I met with this really impressive person who was high up in the firm and I bombed my interview. I did so badly. I was nervous. At one point I thought I was going to cry. I was babbling and I couldn't think straight and I didn't know how to answer any of his

questions and I did not get the job. I did not get the job and I was devastated. I was so disappointed and that summer, this felt like even more of a failure. I went and I lived with my grandma. I lived with my grandmother on her property up in Queensland in Australia, and just basically spent half the summer feeling miserable and seeing everyone else on LinkedIn and everyone else posting about their cool jobs and all the money they could now spend. I felt like I had failed. It was there that I had an idea for a podcast called The Psychology of Your Twenties. As a fun passion project just to do on the side and I did not realize in that moment when I didn't get that job that I desperately wanted that would have made me feel successful

that actually that was a seed that was creating a whole garden. That was the first seed that needed to be planted to get me to where I am now. That story for me always reminds me every day, basically, that rejection is sometimes redirection. And I don't think that we fully understand what that means until we've seen it happen in our own lives and we have the clarity of hindsight, right? You know, in that moment, I had absolutely no idea that that failure was going to bring me so much because it felt so terrible. But if you are really struggling with a recent failure or a missed opportunity or something that just didn't go your way, I promise you, deeply promise you at this moment,

in a year, two years, five years time, I think that it might just be the critical link in creating a life that you love a whole lot more than the life that would have been possible if you had succeeded rather than failed. When I was facing that major setback, it felt like I'd missed the boat. I was so behind. Everyone else was getting on with their careers and I wasn't good enough for this firm. I wasn't good enough for this industry. And I just kept repeating this mantra to myself, I am worthy of

success and I will achieve my goals. Even when it was really, really hard to believe, I just thought how many other people have faced setbacks, so much larger than this and still succeeded. This is minor, this is amateur league. You know who I actually thought a lot about was Martha Stewart, so randomly. Again, it's that mental imagery. I thought about someone who had really screwed up,

who at that point felt like a failure, and despite all the odds become a success again. I thought, wow, if this person can do that, I can recover from not getting my quote unquote dream job. The other thing that this moment really taught me was that my goals had to be my own. And the same goes for you. You have to actually want what you are working for. You know, that previous goal that I had, although it was an amazing goal,

it wasn't my goal. It wasn't mine. And I think in hindsight, that's probably why it didn't happen either, because either I knew deep down or they knew or the universe knew, I didn't really want it. So it was never going to be mine. And I think our own goals feel very different, goals that we find incredibly important. There is this deeper feeling that there is no reality going forward in which we cannot have that thing. And so it will happen for us if we commit to doing something about it and if we actually

rewire our thoughts and our attitudes and our mindset to feel worthy of success and feel like we will achieve our goals. So if you are in a period right now of seeking success in any form, setting ambitious goals and really committing yourself to meeting them, there are a few ways that you can make this happen for you. Firstly, I want you to imagine that they've already happened. I want you to deeply, truly, viscerally visualize what success in the form that you are after will look like, feel like, smell like, taste like, what it will mean for your life, how it will change your life, what the daily habits of someone who have already achieved success

would look like. Visualize the process as well, not just the outcome. This creates something in us called learned industriousness, which essentially means you fall in love with doing rather than with achieving. And that is actually a really crucial thing behind a lot of those really personal goals that we have. When it is someone else's goal, we really just feel exhausted every single step of the way. We feel exhausted because all we really care about is the outcome. We're not doing something from a place of pure passion, pure enjoyment, pure purpose.

So instead of only imagining yourself at this big glorious finish line, visualize the steps, the challenges, and the behaviors that are required for you to get there. I think with any success, there is often a big chunk of time when nothing happens and where you will not be validated or rewarded or reinforced for your efforts. So it's the efforts that you actually have to enjoy doing. Third, I really want you to reframe setbacks as data, not as failures.

Thinking back to that job interview that I was talking about, you know, if I continue to go for interviews in that industry, I actually think that that previous interview would have been really, really valuable. And even now actually, when I have to do anything to do with interviews

or public speaking or getting up in front of other people, I still take the lessons that I learned from that terrible interview with me. And the lesson that I really learned was to pause before I speak, was to take it slow, take the moment for myself to come in prepared. And that setback that provided me with that really valuable information that now really helps me in this new version and this new chapter of my life. And psychologists actually call this a growth mindset where mistakes are viewed as opportunities to learn, adapt, and improve rather than as things that are going to sit over your head

for the rest of your life. And it really increases our resilience and our long-term motivation. It means that a setback is not the end of the road, it's just something we have to overcome. It's also incredibly valuable to create identity-based goals rather than outcome-based goals. Instead of setting a goal like, I want to lose 10 kilos or I want to make $100,000,

I want to be a millionaire. Frame your goal around who you want to become, rather than what it is that you want to have. For example, if your goal is to lose 10 kilos, you can say to yourself, I want to lose 10 kilos, that's something that I want to do. Or you can say, I am someone who prioritizes health. I am someone who prioritizes eating well.

I am a fit person. I am an active person. And that means that you're more likely to actually perform the behaviors of someone who will lose that 10 kilos. Another example that relates to that, I wanna be a millionaire goal, is I am a person who builds financial security. I am, I do.

It's more powerful than I want and a specific goal attached at the end. Research on identity formation really shows that aligning your goals with your sense of self, it increases intrinsic motivation, which is the most powerful form of motivation, and it makes habits that align to an outcome really stick. I think this is a really good place for our deep thought of the day. And our deep thought of the day comes to us from Nelson Mandela. It always seems impossible until it is done. The thing that I love about this quote and why I chose it this week is because of the

word impossible. Impossible. It's impossible. I can't do it. No one else has ever done it before. No one else has tracked this path. No one else knows what I'm going through. There are so many barriers to success and barriers to our ambition that are entirely mental. They entirely derive from what we choose to tell ourselves, to our ambition that are entirely mental. They entirely derive from what we choose to tell ourselves,

not what is actually reality. And then someone goes and does this big, spectacular, marvelous thing that we always felt that we could do. And suddenly we proved to ourselves that it could have been done. And what was different between them and you? Yes, there may have been a thousand contextual individual differences, but at the end of the day, how many of the barriers that we face to success actually come from just believing that we can't

do something, and it's only when someone else proves us wrong by showing us that they could, that we finally become convinced of our own ability and our own self-worth. So what I really want you to have instead is a mindset of why not me, why not now. I think that that really transforms us from a place of self-doubt and fear and impossibility to quite simply possibility and ambition and above all else, confidence. I'd like to take a few moments to just pause and really sit with the mantra for a second. In just a moment, you'll hear a custom music track created to give you a space to absorb today's insights and consider how you might bring this mantra into your week, maybe even beyond.

And if this practice isn't your style, if it doesn't resonate with you, feel free to skip ahead 30 seconds. So as you settle in, keep our mantra firmly in your mind. I am worthy of success and I will achieve my goals. Let it guide your thoughts, maybe visualize what success looks like for you as the music plays. And just give yourself a moment to reflect

and connect to whatever this mantra is bringing up for you. Beautiful. Up next, we are going to talk about how to put these insights into real action and bring this mantra to life. I'll share some journal prompts and our weekly challenge. So stick around for more after this quick break. Welcome back. Let's talk about how to bring this week's mantra into your daily life, starting with the journal practice. Here are three prompts designed to help you reflect on your goals, build confidence, and connect with the mantra in a meaningful way this week. Just remember, if you don't have your journal on you, if you're driving, just think about the answers that you would

normally have. Think about what you would write in your own mind. Firstly, what does success look like to you? Specifically, in five years time, if everything went according to plan, what would your life look like then? Next, what limiting beliefs hold you back from fully embracing your worth and what new affirmation could replace those beliefs? And finally, what is one goal

that you've been hesitant to pursue because of self-doubt? And what is one small way that you could take a step forward towards it today? Just one goal. Okay, I know that I've already given you a lot to think about, but there is more in store. Every week, you guys know I give you a challenge that features our mantra. It's really about taking this to a whole new level, right? So that what we talk about can be put into tangible, actionable steps in your life. I also want to do some check-ins

so that we can hold ourselves accountable. You can reach out to me at Mantra Open Mind to let me know how the challenge is going. And next week we'll do a recap on how things went. I might even share a few personal stories with your permission, of course, to help encourage others to participate in the challenge in the future. And remember, this is a two way street, so I'll keep you in the loop and share how this journey is also unfolding for me as well. So let's talk about last week's challenge. As a reminder, our mantra last week was, I cultivate peace within.

This really showed up for me because I recently did a road trip around New Zealand and a road trip will really get you focusing on peace quite a lot. Specifically, it will show you the ways in which you might need more of it. There is road rage, there are setbacks, there are flat tires, there are annoying people. And this mantra really had me pause a few times, had me pause and think before I react. Obviously, whenever you're doing any kind of travel, things always come up for me. I actually ended up really badly injuring myself and I really panicked.

I was really freaking out. I was worried about this ruining the trip, this being a disaster, and I had to just sit back and think, okay, this being a disaster. And I had to just sit back and think, okay, this is a decision. This reaction is my decision. This reaction of pessimism and of frustration and of panic is right now a mindset that I'm choosing to participate in.

Instead, I can think, you know, this isn't a great situation, but I'm going to make peace with whatever happens. It really basically made me realize that at that time, I could choose to have a good time or I could choose to have a bad time, and I chose to have a good time, and that all came back to this inner center of peace and choosing to respond rather than just react.

I also want to share some of the DMs that we got from the listeners about last week's episode. This first one comes from Zia. Your message about setting boundaries to protect my peace was such an aha moment for me. Thank you for the reminder that it is not selfish. Zia, you are so welcome. I think sometimes we do honestly just need someone else

to say it to us, especially when perhaps the people we're around are not telling us the same thing or make us feel guilty or bad for just asking for what we would like from our own life and what we would like from our relationship with them. So I really appreciate that you found that so helpful. This next message is from Nico. How do you recommend staying peaceful in

situations where emotions run high, like family conflicts or work stress? Mental distance, that is my critical phrase here. Mental distance. You might not be able to have physical distance, you might not be able to fully detach from a situation like with family or when, you know, you have to be at work, you have to do your job regardless of how stressful it is.

But I want you to really just detach from the outcome and detach from all the emotions that are flying at you. How I like to think about this is I'm just a statue that is observing. There is nothing that can penetrate into my core. So I will do what needs to be done. I will engage with the problem, I will engage with the people. But at the end of the day,

I have this mental distance that means that I'm not going to be pulled into the fray. I'm not going to be pulled into the rushing emotions and feelings and tension that everyone else is getting caught up in. Finally, one more comment. I never thought about peace as something that I create rather than something that just happens to me.

This episode was such a powerful shift in perspective from Leona. You guys are so very, very nice. That is such a nice compliment. Thank you so much, Leona. I'm such a nice compliment. Thank you so much, Leona. And I'm really glad that that resonated with you because peace, I think any emotion, any state of mind, nothing actually happens to us. That's something that I've learned a lot recently. Nothing actually happens to you physically. It happens to you mentally in

many, many ways, as much as it does physically. So I think that when it comes to peace, right, you have a choice in choosing to observe it, capture it, and experience it. So I'm really glad that that resonated with you, and I'm really glad that hopefully it's led to more peace in your life as well. And now it's time for the weekly challenge. This week, I actually want you to take 10 minutes to write a letter as your future self. Now I've done this exercise myself. I often do it at the start of a new year or whenever something big is shifting in my life.

And what I want you to do specifically is to write a letter as your future self, as if you've already achieved one of your biggest goals. You know, for example, if I was writing this, I might start out by saying, Dear Gemma, I am so proud of you for finishing your second book. And then I go into detail about my future successes. I'm so proud of you for this. It's so amazing that so many people loved it. The cover art was incredible and it feels so tangible.

The success that I can only imagine feels like it's much more possible when you engage in this exercise. Once you've written it, keep it somewhere visible, maybe on a bulletin board or in the top drawer of your desk. You can even frame it. I had a friend who framed this after she did this exercise in a class, and she has it on her desk at work. But the goal is really to keep it somewhere that it can serve as a daily reminder,

not just of your dreams, not just of the goal, but of your inherent worthiness and your ability to achieve this goal. And as a reminder, reach out to at mantra open mind to share how this challenge is working for you. Okay, as we wrap up this week's episode, I want to share a few final thoughts about this mantra, I am worthy of success and I will achieve my goals.

The big thing I want to conclude with is this, no one is ever really going to give you what you want. No one is ever going to say completely, you are worthy of success. I'm going to hand the success to you. I'm going to give you your goal and the outcome and the big celebration on a silver platter. You have to firstly, and before anyone else, bigger than anyone else, louder than anyone else, believe you are worthy of success. And you need to be telling yourself that.

You need to be repeating it to yourself so that your inner critic has no say in the matter. telling yourself that you need to be repeating it to yourself so that your inner critic has no say in the matter, your self-doubt cannot tell you otherwise. And I think that that is the biggest thing that determines who achieves their goals and who becomes successful. It's the people that already believe that it's theirs. It's the people who are already giving everything or even just something to the things that they really, really want.

As much as this is about perspective and attitude and mindset, it's also about being committed to yourself and trusting that you are capable of doing something enough that you actually do something about what it is that you want. So it's just as much about action as it is about perspective. And I really hope that this is what you take away from this episode. Hopefully that is something that is encouraging to you as you go about whatever goal it is that you wish to achieve. Thank you for joining Mantra, an exclusive Open Mind original powered by Pave Studios.

At Open Mind, we value your support, so share your thoughts on social media and remember to rate, review and follow Mantra to help others discover the show. For ad-free listening and early access to Mantra with me, Gemma Spegg, we invite you to subscribe to Open Mind Plus on Apple Podcasts. I will share another insightful and introspective mantra with you next Monday. Until then, keep showing up for yourself and your journey. I'm Gemma Spegg. See you next week.

Mantra is hosted by me, Gemma Speagg and is an Open Mind original powered by PAVE Studios. This episode was brought to life by the Mantra team Max Cutler, Kristen Acevedo, Ron Shapiro, Stacy Warren Kerr, Sarah Carroll and Paul Lieberskind. Thank you for listening.