Awaken: How Your Inner Narrative Shapes Your Life (and How to Change It)

In this powerful episode of Naturally High, Jeanne Foot explores one of the most influential forces shaping our lives: our inner narrative. Most of us spend our days reacting to thoughts, stories, and subconscious programming we don’t even realize we’re carrying. From self-doubt and perfectionism to old survival strategies and limiting beliefs, these unseen patterns quietly influence how we feel, behave, and show up in the world.

Drawing from over three decades in mental health, addiction recovery, trauma healing, and personal development, Jeanne introduces the first pillar of her board-accredited AWAKEN Method—Awareness. She explains why true transformation begins when we stop believing every thought we have and learn to witness our internal dialogue instead.

Through practical examples, personal stories, and actionable exercises, Jeanne shares how to interrupt autopilot thinking, uncover the subconscious beliefs driving your decisions, and create meaningful change that lasts. If you've ever felt trapped by overthinking, self-criticism, anxiety, or recurring patterns you can’t seem to break, this episode offers a roadmap toward greater consciousness, freedom, and self-leadership.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why your inner narrative has more influence over your life than you may realize
• How subconscious thoughts and emotional drivers shape behavior and decision-making
• The difference between being your thoughts and becoming the witness of your thoughts
• A simple exercise to interrupt negative thinking and create conscious choice
• Why awareness is the foundation of all meaningful change
• How childhood experiences and early conditioning create your mental “operating system”
• The hidden cost of perfectionism, self-doubt, and negative self-talk
• Why understanding your emotional drivers is essential for sustainable transformation
• How the AWAKEN Method helps bridge the gap between knowing and doing
• The role of accountability, environment design, and micro-habits in creating lasting change
• Why small, consistent actions create more transformation than dramatic short-term efforts
• How to identify outdated beliefs and stories that no longer serve who you are becoming

Jeanne also introduces the concept of “creating a floor”—a practical strategy for maintaining momentum through life’s inevitable setbacks by focusing on the smallest possible action that keeps you moving forward.

This episode is an invitation to become more conscious of the stories running your life, update the outdated programming that no longer serves you, and begin creating a future aligned with who you truly want to become.

Resources discussed in this episode:

• The AWAKEN Method™
• ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) Assessment
• Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)
• Positive Psychology
• Clinical Hypnotherapy
• Breathwork Practices
• Naturally High Exercises
  
  

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Contact Jeanne Foot | The Recovery Concierge: 

• TheRecoveryConcierge.com
• Linkedin: Jeanne Foot
• LinkedIn: The Recovery Concierge
• Instagram: The Recovery Concierge
• Facebook: The Recovery Concierge
• Twitter: @recvryconcierge
  
  

Creators and Guests

Host

Jeanne Foot

What is Naturally High?

On Naturally High you’ll receive transformational tools and hear inspirational stories that will guide you into holistically healing trauma in every corner of your life. You deserve to invoke your inner healer. I'm so glad you're here!

Jeanne : [00:00:06] Hello, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of Naturally High. As always, I'm thrilled to be here with you. And today we're going to talk about a simple but life changing idea, your inner narrative. But most importantly, how most of your day is being run by your inner narrative and thoughts that you don't even know you're having. So that autopilot that just keeps on going, especially when you want to turn that voice off at 3 a.m. in the morning. It's the automatic chatter, the self-criticism, the worst-case scenarios, the what-ifs, the old survival stories quietly driving how you feel and what you do. And honestly speaking, if you don't really get a handle on it, it can actually take over your life. It can, you know, take on a new persona of its own. So this is what we're going to unpack today.

[00:00:55] The moment you begin to notice that noise as a pattern, instead of believing it as the gospel truth. You can create a tiny gap between stimulus and response. And in other words, what happens to you and how you respond. And that gap is the consciousness. And that's when choice is born. That's where real change lives, because you cannot change what we don't notice. But once you see it, you can start to rewire it. So today we're going to look at how we can shift from this automatic banter. This chatter to conscious choice is at the heart of what I think is emotional healing is what is all about.

Jeanne : [00:01:32] Now, this topic is personal to me for many reasons. Firstly, because I struggled like many people with my own inner dialog and the road to ever evolving, healing has been met with many obstacles in the road. And the work here is not to believe yourself. We think we're the only ones having these crazy, insane thoughts, but really, we're not. As I've always said, we're more alike than different. And so we're not the only ones. But unless we're sharing and being vulnerable with safe people, we don't know that. So recently I was a guest on another podcast and somebody asked me, exactly what do you do to help other people? Like, how do you do that? What is the lifestyle design mean? And after pondering on the frameworks I use with my clients, many people come to me in crisis. Many people come to me with substance use or early sobriety or something. Now I'm attracting people who just really want sustainable change. They know they're in their own way. So no matter where they start, the self-healing framework I use, I've developed over time helps them understand themselves, which is the first step for any change. Because unless you know, know thyself to be true, unless you know who you are, how can you make any changes? And so the interaction with your relationships, their environment happen at a much deeper level. When we understand who we are, and then we can really experience true identity change and the ability to flourish.

Jeanne : [00:03:03] So I've been in the mental health addiction and trauma and personal development now for over three decades, and in the last few years have been some of my most exciting moments of learning. And the reason being is they bring hope and agency to people suffering. In typical therapeutic backgrounds. We're usually going back to route drivers, and we're looking at the past and the coaching modalities. We're looking at change in the future. And the past does not infringe on the future, although it can. But it's typically we're moving from -5 to 0 in therapeutics and in coaching, we're moving from -5 to 0 is good, but plus five is even better. And I don't think too much of the therapeutic community focuses on the ultimate optimal life for that individual. We're just trying to get them from pathology crisis to stability. And that's good. That's a good destination. But why not flourishing? And this is what I want to really talk about today. So I have a framework I want to share with you and we'll dive into that soon. So I became certified in the last year, I've become certified in positive psychology as an integrative positive psychology coach, breathwork facilitation, heroic workshop facilitation. And it's not because I needed more training or letters under my name. I'm doing it for me. I know that every time I learn and grow, I'm healing a part of myself, and then that's available for other people.

Jeanne : [00:04:40] So it's not because of any other reason. But the reason I share this with you because I'm learning so much. There's so much agency and autonomy that you have over your life and your destiny that it feels it's too important not to share. Because I don't think there's a lot there's information on read this, do this, and all of those things. But I don't think there's an application on how to make the change happen. So we don't want to be librarians of the mind where we just consume and consume and consume. We want to be action takers because action diminishes fear, and that's where we want to be. So most of you do know that. But for anybody new, I started my healing journey back in the 90s when trauma wasn't even understood recognized in the DSM, which is the Diagnostic Statistical Manual for Mental Health Issues. In other words, clinical and medical professionals didn't know how to treat emotional trauma. And at best, addiction treatment was fundamental. There was mostly primary 12 steps no concurrent treatment, no somatic work, no nervous system regulation, and certainly no trusted guide or mentor who walked beside you. So the way I came through my own healing and personal growth and Self discovery and recovery, of course, is really through the school of hard knocks. There wasn't any mentors. It was like when I say the school of hard knocks, I'm talking about trial and error, where simply doing things over and over again.

Jeanne : [00:06:13] And if they didn't work one way, try another way until something landed. And what I learned was through this trial and error, how to move through unprocessed trauma and move beyond shame-based addiction recovery. Now, my journey could have been easier if the modalities that we have today existed back then, but they didn't. So this is why I want to talk to you about. So today I wanted to use everything I've learned to help you with one of the most relentless parts of the work, the mental noise that doesn't give up. So I want to also say to you, this is definitely you'll get more out of this episode if you can actually devote some time to it by not being multitasking or doing something where you're going, you could drive, definitely drive, but you know, obviously keep your eyes open if you're driving. If I'm asking you to do some internal process work, do not shut your eyes. That goes without saying. So I want you to take a moment and settle in and think back to a time where you were absorbed in your own thoughts or emotions, and they had a grip on you, and you felt like you literally couldn't escape replaying scenes that don't reflect your proudest moments. Telling yourself you should have done X instead of Y, and you're literally recycling the garbage of your mind on repeat.

Jeanne : [00:07:29] And it can feel like a toxic battlefield. I've spent a lot of time there, and if you recognize any part of this in yourself, listen up, because I'm going to share some ways that you can become more aware of your inner narrative and self-talk, and more importantly, how you can transmute it by learning to tame your mind. So I want you to know that if you are one of these people who has these thoughts, you're not alone. All of us have these thoughts. We're just not talking about it to one another, which is the real sad part. We think we have to put these heroic masks on, and we have to put this veneer and be, you know, you know, stoic in how we present, but we don't need to be. We just need to be real. There's a cost to carrying around all that armor. There's a cost to carrying around that mental chatter. It wears you down. Not only mentally, physically, it takes a toll. It zaps your energy on a physiology basis. It could be the precursor to dis-ease within yourself, within your body. Where? What am I talking about? I'm talking about that you actually end up with many different kinds of precursors that eventually become illness if we don't get a handle on it. So this is why it's really important to get a handle on your mind. And so I think we'd be hard pressed to find anyone who hasn't fallen victim to their own thinking.

Jeanne : [00:08:54] We all struggle with self doubt, negative thinking, not enoughness. Not enough at anything, for that matter. And that was very much a part of my story. And then if I was okay, I had to do it perfect. And perfectionism is probably the lowest bar of all is just simply unachievable. But the good news is you can do something about it. And that's exactly what this episode is about. It's about shining light on what may not yet be so obvious to you, and a simple exercise that we can do. And I'm going to jump in right now with this, because I think it could be helpful, is just to get the foundation. Earlier in this episode is you're having a negative emotion, you're having a negative thought. It just blindsides you out of nowhere. I want you to pause, stop whatever it is you're doing, even if it's for three seconds, five seconds. But interrupt the thought by stop and pause. Tune in. What is it I'm feeling? And name the thought. Name the feeling ask, is this true, useful, or just familiar? And if you say, is it true? And your little voice says, yes, it's true. Ask yourself how you know it to be true because it may just be familiar. Awareness is the moment you realize you're not your thoughts. You're the one who is the witness. You're the one who can see it. That small shift changes everything.

Jeanne : [00:10:26] Because once you can witness the pattern and you can begin to see yourself doing the witnessing, you can choose differently. Consciousness is about waking up to what is and becoming present enough to interrupt the autopilot. So out of decades of work, going back to that original question, what I was asked, how do I do what I do? I created what I call the AWAKEN method. Awaken in capital letters A-W-A-K-E-N. I Kind of use this manual for being human. It's a synthesis of my best professional methodologies and trainings I've taken over the years. And my daughter, Rachel Joy, enriched it even further with NLP, neurolinguistic programing, clinical hypnotherapy, time techniques, and other modalities. And today it has become a board-accredited certification.

Jeanne : [00:11:18] So for you listening today, it's beyond the scope of this podcast. I've distilled it down into six micro lessons. You can begin to apply immediately. So the first letter in the acronym is A which is awaken into consciousness. How do we understand the power of our subconscious mind? How do we understand where we are in our own life? So becoming conscious and present. Worthiness to support how we truly view ourselves. What are the narratives that hold us back? And unpack the unhealed parts of ourselves. Affirming. We have to affirm our experience as part of the reparative process. We can't just kind of bypass that this happened to us and say it intellectually, without any feeling or affirming that this is true or having validation from someone.

Jeanne : [00:12:06] So without affirming, we can't create a new blueprint for awakening to greater levels of happiness, success, and freedom within. K for knowledge. Closing the knowing-doing gap when all this information is one of the cheapest commodities nowadays. So it's how do we utilize this information and operationalize it in order to make impact in our own lives and next level you. New identity, a new way of being by design, not by default. And I think that's really an important part because we talk about hydroplaning all the time, right? I just made reference to it. We're just not in our lives. We're over our lives. And I think we have to drop in and drop down. So awareness is about waking to consciousness. So let's define consciousness as the ability to notice what's happening inside you and around you without automatically believing every thought that you have. So this is interesting. We have between 50 to 70,000 thoughts a day. I know I'm hard-pressed to remember ten. So you can understand how many are subconscious just running through your the various filters and that we learn more about that in the NLP communication model where literally everything is just moving past you all the time, and you'd be hard pressed to remember any amount of thoughts in a day. And this matters because 95% of our thoughts are subconscious. So unless we understand our emotional drivers, what's really driving our thought process or how we make meaning, or what narratives we sort of adopted from various experiences over our lifetime, we literally hijack our own lives.

Jeanne : [00:13:54] So we want to make our programming as optimal as possible and be more discerning like what fits in this stage of my life, what doesn't fit, what is still something that, you know, I've adopted from my earlier years. Think of it similar to a computer's operating system, it gets installed. And for us as humans, our operating system gets installed, actually, in prenatal psychology, there is such a thing, but let's say from birth to the age of seven, we are literally subconscious sponges. We just absorb everything around us. Like that's really what we do. And so we absorb from our emotional intelligence and our meaning that we attach to things comes from the culture around us, whether it's our caregivers, whether it's school, whether it's communities, whether it's peers, whether it's political environment, whatever we're exposed to at that young age becomes ours. It's downloaded no differently than an operating system. Or going back to the old, old days, those floppy disks in a computer. The problem is, is that we adopt those values and beliefs as our own, unless we are more discerning and change them. And we can, but we have to know that they're there before we could even change them. I'm saying we need to be more discerning. Does this still fit? Just because something has always been a certain way, which is what we tend to do, we tend to defend old defended ways, even if they don't make any sense anymore, because that means we have to do something about it.

Jeanne : [00:15:27] But imagine buying a computer in 1990 or even 20 years ago and never updating the operating system. Decades later, you have serious limitations. And that's no different with our mental and emotional software that hasn't been updated since childhood. So I'm going to give you an example. I grew up in a home where children should be seen and not heard, and you've heard me talk about this many times and expectations that you don't air your dirty laundry in public. Those were repeated mantras for me. But on the surface, they sounded harmless, like that was back in the day, and that's what people did. But an unsafe and abusive environment, they send a very different message, and they taught me that speaking up about what was really happening wasn't allowed. And I learned very quickly that my voice, my opinion did not matter. So as an adult, I made a conscious decision not to parent this way. When there was something to talk about, no matter how uncomfortable, we would talk and we'd enlist professional support when needed. We wouldn't just discount it that it's not really happening because it was happening. And this is what it looks like to bring the subconscious programing into the consciousness and choose again. Now, all of us have had some traumas in our life or experiences that define who we are today.

Jeanne : [00:16:48] Some are significant, some are insignificant. It doesn't really matter. What really does matter is the meaning we've attached to it and how we have either allowed subconsciously in particular to for it to run our life. And it really does control and dominate our life. So when we experience significant life traumas, otherwise known as adverse childhood experiences, and there's an Ace assessment, and we can tie that in to our resource center for anybody who's interested. And what happens with Aces is when we experience typically three or more, but everybody experiences at least 1 or 2. But the more adverse childhood experiences you have, the greater the chance that you adapt in a way that may not be optimal and it could be maladaptive for you. So I want to make sure that you understand this is not about digging up the past and causing more suffering. It's about trying to inform our future. Where are we still stuck? Where are there parts of ourselves that we could improve on or change unless we awaken and become more conscious, we will still run the same programming. So unless we awaken and become more conscious, we remain prisoners of our own mind, wishing for a different life while still running the same outdated scripts. So why does this matter? Why does change matter? It's crucial to understand who you are and what you really desire and what you really want.

Jeanne : [00:18:19] Especially if you want to make any type of change. Most of our decisions are driven by our emotional brain. That's why change doesn't happen so easily. People just say, just, just do it. All you got to do is exercise. You've got to go here or just put down that drink, whatever it may be. But when you set goals or dreams for yourself, and without working with the subconscious brain and the root drivers that drive that behavior in the first place, you're going to get a burst of willpower and you'll get a little bit of momentum, and then it trails off. But you really struggle to get back on track after a lapse. And that's why so many people have trouble with alcohol addiction in particular, especially diet in like, you know, we get some momentum and then the weight comes back. Because we haven't really when people are struggling with food, they haven't really identified what are they hungry for? I always say it's not what you're eating, it's what's eating you. So unless you identify the emotional drivers of where's the emptiness? I feel like I need to I can't stay with that. I can't stay in that moment. I abandoned myself and I go for the food. Then you're always going to be in that cycle. And that's why behavior change is so challenging. We don't have a motivation problem. We don't have a desire problem. People want to change.

Jeanne : [00:19:35] They want to lose weight. They want to achieve X. But often the problem is a design problem. Our environment is not designed to support our changes that we want to make. So if you want to succeed with a new habit or change, it needs to be engineered in a way that aligns with what truly matters to you. With a simple plan and also making sure there's contingency strategies built in because contingencies and setbacks are inevitable for those days that just will, wherein someone's ill or there's a more pressing demands. And obviously, accountability is a big part of change. We do much better, there's no question when we know someone's looking at what we're eating, when we have to report to someone. Yeah, we can lie, but we are also lying to ourselves. So having a level of accountability, our outcomes are like quadrupled. We can't just be librarians of the mind. We must take action. And I talked about that before, where we can't just be consumers. We have to learn how to consume and implement and take action. So one of my favorite tools to counter this is called creating a floor. So what is the minimal thing you can do when you're starting to create a new behavior? So I want you to think now about something you'd like to change. It may be starting something. It could be stopping something. It could be anything that you want. So hopefully you've got something in your mind now.

Jeanne : [00:21:07] And then I want you to look at what would be the minimum requirement you can do for that change. So for example, if someone's making changes in their diet or making changes in their habits, maybe it's substance abuse, even alcohol. You could do one clean meal a day, no sugar or processed food. For alcohol, it may be you can reduce to from everyday drinking or binge drinking to maybe a couple drinks at a time. Or maybe there's 1 or 2 alcohol free days in a week. That would be creating a floor that would be keeping you in the game of change without you feeling that you failed if you didn't reach your optimum goal today. So the idea of a floor is we protect our behavioral streak. So typically we start off with working out or eating the right foods and then we fall off or we same with not drinking alcohol and then we fall off. We want to protect the streak. So what is the minimum we can do? So when you're making change, you don't want to go right for the optimal change at day one. You want to go in the worst case scenario, what is the minimum I can do to keep this new behavior going and protect the streak? We want to do the smallest version of that habit to keep the channel open. So maybe that's one conscious breath. Maybe it's one thought of awareness being a witness to something that you weren't aware of before.

Jeanne : [00:22:45] As I said, maybe the meal, getting to the gym, once is better than no times. So it can be micro movements and there's evidence and data around this, that the small changes are the ones that create significant changes if we keep at them. Because one day turns into three, three turns into seven, seven into 30, 30, into a few more months. And before you know it, if we stay the course, we have the results we want. So I want to talk about why this is so important, because we have to have agency within ourselves, because people outsource their health and well-being and sometimes their willpower to therapists, coaches, and mentors all the time hoping that people will solve their problem, quote unquote, air quotes. But change really is not a do-to process. It's to do-with process. Having support is powerful, but your life still requires you to feel your emotions. For you to be part of the solution. Start something. Stop some things. And you are a co-creator in your own growth and evolution. So if not you, then who? So it's really important that we enlist these people in our lives when we know that we're struggling in an area. But it's not a passive process. It's an active, engaged process. So time has a habit of slipping away for all of us, right? The days are long, the years are short, and comfort is seductive.

Jeanne : [00:24:21] It really is like. Mm. I just love this feeling of being where I am and not having to do anything. And tomorrow sounds like a great day to change. Always. Except tomorrow never comes. So here's your invitation. Over the next few days, I just want you to simply notice your inner narrative, catch one re-occurring thought and story and ask, is this an old program of mine? Does this still fit who I'm becoming today? You don't need to fix it. You don't need to do anything with it. I just want you to notice it. Because you cannot change what you're not aware of. And when you bring the subconscious into the consciousness, the smallest moments can change everything. That's where real change happens. So into our next session, we're going to move into the W of awakening. And worthiness is where we're going. And this is such an important subject because how you view yourself is how you view everything in your life. And, you know, the quality of our life is due to the quality of our thinking. So unless we have an understanding of what our quality of our thoughts are and a quality of how we view ourselves, our life at best will be limited. And worthiness starts from our early imprinting. What were the messages we received about ourselves and what did we deserve relationally, and how can we change our identity if they no longer serve us? I hope you have found this episode helpful. And until next time, stay naturally high.