In this episode, we're gonna be talking about The Second Layer, and I'm gonna share actual bonus content that I recorded from my paid clients. So you are gonna get access to the exact information that they did so you can have access to the same transformation that they did as well. You ready? Let's do it.

Hello, you are listening to the Love Your Life as a Performer podcast. I'm Kelli Youngman and I am The Life Coach for Performers. I help actors, singers, and dancers love themselves and their lives way more so keep listening to learn how you can love your life, both on and off the stage.

Hello, and welcome back to episode 39 of The Love Your Life as a Performer Podcast. Before we jump into today's episode, I wanted to make sure that you heard the amazing freaking news I've been doing, just a little bit of restructuring of my business and coming back to really the roots of why I started this work in the first place.

Now I stand behind my Past Self's decision to close The Performers Plan in the past, and I am absolutely delighted to reopen this community for good. You know, I shared a little bit in an email and on one of my posts on social media, but truly, the decision back then came from the desire to really hone my coaching skills and to feel a hundred percent confident about holding space in that capacity for hundreds and thousands of performers who are coming into this work, and after really spending the time with my one-on-one clients, I feel ready as fuck to over-deliver on that promise. 

I know with certainty that the tools and the concepts and the ideas that I've been utilizing for myself and for my clients, I know that they work and I know that they are life-changing and that they're bringing performers back to the truth of creating what they want with so much ease and fun and lightness.

So if you are a performer and you have been, maybe still struggling with negative self-talk or you know, having a hard time feeling confident after getting some rejection or getting some nos at auditions, right? If you're looking for a way to engage with your career in a positive way and have a community where you can go to recharge and rest and be supported and just be inspired to want to keep going, you want to be plugging into The Performers Plan Community. Okay? This is a lifetime access. Program and community. And once you join, you're in for life. Okay? Like you literally get to have access to coaching and energy and momentum for your career for forever.

So if you want to join us, make sure to go to kelliyoungmanwellness.com/magic, it will bring you to the enrollment page and you can join us. Now, we had our first live coaching call this week and people are already bringing their thoughts, creating new beliefs, getting coached, and being supported inside of the Community. Like right, right now it's already happening. And if you know that, you have what it takes and you just haven't had like-minded people to keep doing this work with - come join us because this is what we're building and we're having so much freaking fun in the process. Okay.

I will continue to invite you to get started with us, and let's jump into today's episode. Today I actually wanted to share a video that I created for my paid clients, and this was going deeper on the concept of The Second Layer, and I know that I have mentioned it before on the podcast, and it's the way that we add judgment and criticism to ourselves and the experience that we're having. I know that the first video that I recorded resonated so much with my clients and I've continued to go deeper with the concept, but I wanted to present it exactly how I presented it to them, so you have access to get the same results that they did. So I hope you enjoy and I will play that recording now. 

So in this video we're gonna be going deeper on a concept about self-judgment and about self-criticism and how you really can give yourself. A way to navigate through it. And the reason why I think this is really important is because I see time and time again in myself and in you oftentimes that there is a moment, right?

Something happens, and then there is a moment where there's a thought, a judgment about the thing that happens. What happens next though, is that there's another layer. A second layer of judgment about the judgment, and that is honestly where a lot of the friction and the tension comes from. So what I wanna offer is that in that scenario, you wanna just investigate what is happening.

And when I say investigate, I mean you wanna give yourself an opportunity to have loving curiosity. Right. Loving curiosity to give yourself the opportunity to zoom out to a bigger perspective. Because when we look at the foundational things like the structural things of what's happening, it's like there's a circumstance.

There's the way you acted or behaved, and then there's a judgment away about the way that it happened, right? A judgment about the circumstance or maybe even a judgment about someone else. Right, but either way, there's judgment piled on top of judgment, and it gets really confusing to navigate and especially when it's self-judgment, especially when it's something that you are navigating and you're thinking could have been different.

The thing that gets tricky about this is then you start approaching it and looking at it like it's a problem. And your brain starts trying to solve for it. Solve for like, why did I feel that way? Why am I feeling this? This is bad. Like I shouldn't be feeling this way. And then again, it goes into this like whole other cycle that's really optional and somewhat unnecessary.

And now we say that with love because we're not adding on more judgment about the thing. We just wanna start finding ways to alleviate and. Start creating space so that we don't go into that head space because we do. Again, it's just so draining, and we don't actually have to spend time there. So again, how do we do this?

We zoom out. We zoom out, and we're willing to witness what is happening. And this might be as simple as like, Hey Kelly, your brain is doing this thing right now. Your brain's doing it right. And we start normalizing it because it's not a surprise. Oftentimes we like to stay in the shock and like the appall of like, oh my God, I can't believe I'm here.

Why am I here again? Why is this happening? I shouldn't be here. I shouldn't do this. Right? And it's like that moment. Is, we're actually, we need the loving, generosity, compassion for ourselves because we're human. And when we expect these moments, when we are open to feeling all of the feelings, when we are not making it a problem, we don't have to use any energy to solve for it.

And I say this with the caveat of like, of course with loving inquiry, there's always growth that's accessible to us. There's always ways we can learn from the things that happened and be curious about evaluating and like making decisions, exercising our responsibility and our agency and our, again, like our power to do something different.

But that's very different than just being like, oh my God, why is this happening? And then trying to solve for it, right? Because when we're in the energy of like, This is a problem and we have our glasses on of like, this is a problem. We're gonna solve it and approach it and relate to it like a problem versus when we're really just like, okay, this is something that happens from time to time.

It's not a problem. And like I'm sure there's like another way, there's a better solution. There's like ways I can be more loving towards myself. Again, we're just not treating it like it's a problem or it's bad or something to be ashamed of. And that's two very different energies, two very different filters to be looking at this thing with.

Right. And the reason why I think this is so important is because when we really do give ourselves the moment of like, okay, this is what's happening with like genuine neutrality. There's so much space. It's like, oh, okay, that happened. If I don't make the way I interacted a problem, if I don't make the thing that other person said a problem, right?

If like genuinely none of the circumstances are a problem, then what? Then I have all of the freedom. I have all of the power. And I can really genuinely learn from what's happening. I can decide to expand and create more space for possibility. I can expand to create for, um, again, more curiosity. I can expand to make the decision that it's not relevant to me in this moment, right?

Whatever my brain is offering, I get to genuinely decide. What I wanna make it mean and what story I wanna tell myself. And in those moments, I find that the story most brains wanna go to is like, this is wrong. This is a problem. I shouldn't be here. I should know this by now. All of that story, and then we try to make meaning of it.

Like, why am I feeling this way? Right? That's what I'm talking about. There's like the double layer of things happening and we just wanna be willing to, at the first layer, Zoom out, create space, and again, like give ourselves permission to not make it a problem. I know that we talk about this over and over and over again and.

It's one of those things that just continues to expand and soften with practice. So I want you to be willing to look at where in my life am I currently judging myself? Where am I trying to create results from shame? Where am I trying to, um, fuel myself and motivate myself from this place of, you're already fucking it up.

You're wrong. You shouldn't be doing it this way. Right. And like, really, what does it look like to, with loving compassion? Know that you're allowed to be human. You're allowed to have whatever thoughts you're having and like they're genuinely, genuinely not a problem. I know that sounds so simple. And I want you to be willing to sit with that and explore what it looks like to be in a circumstance and not make it a problem.

To be in some self-doubt and not make it a problem, to be in confusion and not make it a problem. And like all of the, in all of those instances, right, when it's not a problem, there's room for a different choice. When it's a problem, again, remember your brain is gonna try to solve for it. It's gonna be spending all this energy looking at all these other things that like.

Genuinely are just a distraction. There are distraction from like actually having an and experiencing the thing that you do want. So from this video, just sit with what if this isn't a problem, what does it look like for me to start in the moment exercising my space in my brain? To zoom out, to witness what's happening and to offer myself freaking love, to really offer myself permission to not make myself wrong, to not judge myself, to just acknowledge it, right, acknowledge it, and then make a different choice.

Because we always have that choice even in moments where our brains wanna be offended. Hurt, judged, confused, all of the things. There's always space to zoom out, and the more you practice that expansion, the more you will be able to access it when you want to. Okay, zoom out. Release that second, that second layer, and give yourself some freaking loving support and space to come back to knowing that you can plug into whatever feeling you wanna have.

Even when your brain is trying to offer you something different. Okay, just try it on, play it around with it, and I look forward to hearing your discoveries. 

Hey, I wanna invite you to get started, because if this is blowing your mind, imagine the impact of when we actually work together. There are two ways to work with me privately one-on-one or inside of The Paradigm with high quality community. Either way, you're gonna go to kelliyoungmanwellness.com/launch to book your free launch call. We're gonna spend 60 minutes together with you and your unique dream and vision to co-create a plan to get you there.

Let's freaking go.