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BUILDING CONFIDENCE AND NEW PATTERNS OF BEHAVIOUR
Can you please tell our audience a little bit about yourself and how you got started doing what you do now?
Yeah, thank you, Kylie. It’s amazing to be here. My name’s Anna Bayliss. Essentially, I’ve lived a life, a big journey of firstly, being an Olympian was a big part of my journey.
I hold that dearly to my heart and yeah, just a lot of traveling, a lot of living life, a lot of setting goals. And achieving them. That’s been a big part of my journey and yeah, now a life coach. So with all the experience that I gained throughout my career as an Olympian and also Commonwealth Games athlete and Ironman as well to add in there.
A lot of experience in terms of that mindset of having a really strong mindset to achieve your goals and very much a healthy mindset. So a big value of mine is, is health and vitality. So knowing what’s good for my body, knowing what’s good for my mind, so that mind body connection and I love teaching clients and helping them on their journeys.
I’m exhausted just thinking about all that you have done and all that training and what you must have been through over the years, so maybe just share what I’ve come across to you through our social media business, done for you socials. And what I really love about what you do is that whole holistic approach you were just mentioning there.
And there’s not too much woohoo, but I do love a bit of woohoo, but there’s not too much of that. And I know all of this work has a bit of the woohoo element, but yours is like that really holistic approach and it’s based on your own lived experiences as well, so from being that Olympic athlete to going through trauma.
So maybe just share a little bit more about, you know, your Olympian journey, what sports and how that transformation happened for you:
Yeah, sure, the journey, I was always very sporty as a child involved in sport, whatever sport it was, I was involved in it and wasn’t until University where I was studying sports science that I discovered the sport of triathlon. And then that took me and led me into the sport of mountain biking through an injury, so I couldn’t run, so I’m like, okay, I’ll try mountain biking, and that was the sport that I represented Australia at these 2000 Sydney Olympics on home soil in front of my family and friends, which was an incredible experience, and it took me overseas to live for 13 years. I was based in Germany, racing, and also running a business.
The experience was incredible in terms of being able to live and breathe my passion. I think that’s something I’ve always done is follow that intuition, the inner guidance of what I want to achieve and what makes me happy as well. So riding my bike made me very happy in nature. So combining those values, it certainly took me on a journey where I could travel the world and base myself in another country and learn another language. I met my now ex husband on the journey as well and that sort of, you know, you mentioned trauma before, so I did end up leaving him and the country, which I thought I was going to live in for the rest of my life.
So that sort of led me back to Australia, back to my roots, back to base, square one, you know, with my eight month old baby at the time. I guess going through those traumatic experiences with my ex husband, he did betray me when I was pregnant with my son, so that was a trauma within trauma and trauma.
Having to firstly get through that experience and then build a new home or a new life here in Australia, that was something that, you know, is now 10 years ago. And it took me on this self discovery journey, essentially. So going through what I went through, I started to look within and then I was doing personal training for quite some time and one of the clients that reached out to me when we were sort of walking and talking, she’s like, you’re life coaching me and I was like, Oh, and then she’s like, yeah, you look this up.
So that’s how it started with this one client that just, you know, sort of opened my eyes to it and I very much lived the life of going my own ways, my own goals, quite selfish as an athlete. Learned a lot along the way and then I just had this shift in my life where I just, I thought I want to contribute, I want to help people, I want to share my story. I want to connect hearts and be able to give back because I had lived a lot of my life doing things for my own self and my own goals and my career. And I guess having a child changes that too, so the focus changes a little and I know how to look after myself.
I think that’s one thing that many people that come to me and reach out to my clients, the self care isn’t there. Perhaps they’re a people pleaser, perhaps they’re a caretaker, wearing these masks and facades that we take on in our conditioning to gain love or to gain attention or whatever it might be.
So yes, that I find very, very helpful that I have spent a majority, a big majority of my life figuring out how to take care of myself mentally, physically, emotionally. And then that woo woo spiritually or energetically, I call it. Yeah, so aligning all that to be able to be healthy and enjoy life and thrive.
I just had this gift within me, the more I dived into it and then studied and started coaching people. It was like, yeah, this lights me up. Something totally different than having it being all about me. So that’s essentially how the journey started and we’re continuing that journey now, which is beautiful.
How do we, if we’ve gone through those traumas, and everyone’s trauma and battles are different, How do we get that confidence back once it’s been knocked?
Yes, and knocked is it, it certainly does knock you to rock bottom, betrayal is something that yeah, you can’t describe it until you live through it. But yes, it does and I was shattered my whole world was shattered, I returned, as I said, 10 years ago to my roots, to my parents, and lived with them for a few years.
It wasn’t just the emotional trauma that I went through, but it was also financial. So I came back with literally $2, 000 in my back pocket and an eight month old. I left everything behind. I signed away everything. So the business we had was in financial strife and yeah, due to various reasons, but which I won’t go into.
And you know, I started from absolute nothing. So the confidence was gone. And for me, I did a lot of prayer, my dad is a church goer and I didn’t want to believe it. I wasn’t into it as a young, young girl. Like, no, I’m not going to church. But it’s that connection.
It’s that connection to that greater power, whether it’s God, whether it’s universe, whether it’s something bigger than you, the energy of that that helped me. I did a lot of that. A lot of praying, a lot of. A lot of, you know, connecting with friends and family again. And the first job that I got back into, I think that helped a lot.
It was customer service, it was at an aquatic center. And just getting myself back out there. I think that was the biggest thing for me. Just taking those little steps to build my confidence. Like getting in front of people again, because at the time you just don’t want to do anything. You don’t want to go anywhere.
You just, like I said, struggle to get out of bed some days. I mean, I had an eight month old, I had to keep going and often we need to find that in something to give us that purpose to get up every day as well. And he certainly helped me through my son, you know, having him there at the time.
But taking those steps, whether it’s getting out and doing a job that are going to force you to talk, to build your confidence, stepping into the fear. So here’s the big one, you know, fear of getting rejected again, fear of abandonment, looking into those patterns as well has helped me immensely.
And I carried an abandonment pattern. My very first love cheated on me, my ex husband. So I’ve got to look at how am I showing up for that to occur as well. And that’s helped me immensely. And I guess with confidence, there’s like a muscle in your body. Like going to the gym, we’ve got to train that confidence muscle as well.
So it’s doing things that you say you’re going to do. That’s a big one. If you say you’re going to stick to this routine and you’re going to start eating healthy, then it’s a matter of, you know, doing that. That builds confidence as well. So there’s, I guess, little steps to take to build back who, perhaps, you aren’t that person that you were at the time either, all right?
So at the time that this all happened to me, it was like, well, who was I being? I’ve had to dive deep into that authentic self that you mentioned to really discover, you know, well, who am I? Was I being me at the time? Or, you know, a lot of us get lost under those masks and facades that we just don’t know who we are underneath it.
And I think confidence comes with actually being you. So actually being that authentic self, expressing your needs, expressing your emotions, having that person or those close inner circle people that you can talk to instead of doing it on your own. So I think, yes, just certainly over my journey, I’ve noticed the more I’m being me, more I’m leaning into and living my passion and my purpose that confidence comes with it. You know, we can’t gain it from the external world. It’s not like you purchase a house or change a job or change your partner to feel more confident. As we all know, that doesn’t work. It’s about the internal world that needs to be first discovered and peeling away those layers of perhaps trauma that’s sitting in your body still energetically, emotionally, emotions are energy.
So if we haven’t dealt with and processed and felt. These traumatic experiences, the body holds on to them and then they come out in certain situations or we self sabotage, not to feel the emotion, that’s a fair bit of that inner work that helps with confidence, certainly. That’s a big one for me and what I see in my clients as well.
So is there some sort of a practical tool that you can share with our listeners to help them develop that or is there a tool or worksheet that we could work on to unlock trauma or start that inner journey on healing ourselves?
Well, firstly, getting to know yourself is a big one. So stopping and listening to what thoughts you’re telling yourself or the inner critic. So we all have this inner critic that we’ve formed. At a young age that might be your parent, it might be your teacher, sibling, whoever it might be that’s told you things and you’ve taken it on and then you tell yourself later in life or it continues throughout your life.
And often we just need to stop and reflect – what am I telling myself in this moment? So getting to know your thought processes is a big one. Getting to know your emotions. What am I feeling right now? And there’s certainly tools to feel emotions because we just haven’t been taught how to feel an emotion.
And that’s getting into your body again, just stopping. So I’m going to stop to do this. And a lot of us just do, do, do, do, do. And don’t stop to either feel or notice or witness what am I telling myself? What are my beliefs surrounding whatever it might be, money, health, relationships? What do I hold to be true about these things?
So you’re really getting to know the inner world, getting to know inner thoughts, beliefs, inner emotional world. Right. So that we can then use these strategies, even with stress as a big one too. It’s like strategies to reduce that stress in terms of breath work, just taking time to breathe and just stopping.
So I think one strategy or tool would be definitely stopping to reflect and get to know your inner world. And you can do this many ways. I mean, even meditation is very helpful or coaching, obviously is an amazing way to discover yourself and to be able to clear yourself of these blockages. You know, whether it’s the mental block in terms of the programs that you’re running, those belief systems that are creating your reality.
So until we know them, we can’t really change much. Because we’re going to stick to those programs that we’re conditioned to believe. All these beliefs, we’re conditioned to believe them. And we’ll do whatever we can to, you know, we’ll draw on evidence to support those beliefs. Alright, so it’s not until again, we stop the garden analogy is a great one.
It’s like the beliefs of those weeds that keep growing in your garden. And it’s not until we get to the roots of the weed to really pull it out of the garden to that belief system or the root cause. And often we can’t do that on our own. So coaching is, you know, therapy in a way so that you can pull it out from the roots and be able to plant a new seed.
There’s the neuroplasticity of the brain that we can rewire. We can create new thoughts and new beliefs. It’s an ongoing process though, but we sort of do need to find where those blockages are or emotional blockages from trauma. Like they’re the rocks in your garden, perhaps that are blocking these beautiful plants from growing, which is essentially our own self from flourishing and becoming that best possible version of yourself. So feeling into these emotions to release that energy that’s in the way and what is in the way, is the way, is a nice quote. So getting to know yourself is certainly the way to then implement certain strategies and tools.
Being aware, being present in the moment. Again, back to those thoughts. What am I telling myself right now? What am I feeling right now? Cause too often we’re externally based, always thinking about, what people will think of us, how we look, how we present ourselves and if they’re judging us.
I had this fear of judgment, so a lot comes into our world, our inner world, that reflects the outer world. And really, if we can make those adjustments on the inner world, we’re going to have a different external world. That’s essentially our relationship with our inner world, reflects the outer world. So if we can, if we want to make a change, it’s about going into that internal world and just, again, witnessing what’s going on, what am I saying to myself.
Can you share a little bit more about those learned behaviours or that conditioning that we have and how we can maybe halt or stop or change some of those emotional reactions?
Certainly. Emotional reactions is, like I said, when we haven’t felt the emotions from the past and the emotions don’t know time, like energy doesn’t, it just comes in at that time because you’ve been triggered by something and then you become the emotion. That’s what emotional reactivity is. Essentially, you’re reacting from that emotion, so you’re not sitting with it. You’re not witnessing it. You’re becoming it and it’s the energy of the emotion. So you’ll notice that that outburst or explosion or some withdraw and shut down. It can be either one that might resonate with some listeners as well.
Essentially with those triggers to change because we have emotional patterns, you know, these ones that we’re talking about the reactions. We also have the belief patterns and conditioning, but when it comes to specifically emotions, as you’ve mentioned here, it is about stopping and witnessing that emotion because essentially from the past, this emotion hasn’t been felt.
It’s been triggered by a person that said something that was similar to someone way back when you were 15, or something, a situation’s happened that reminds you of your 8 year old self or in that moment that something happened as an 8 year old, alright, and that emotion wasn’t felt because that 8 year old perhaps was at school and I didn’t want to cry. You don’t want to cry in front of your peers at school. So you suppress it, right? You don’t tell anyone about it. It sits within you. It stays within you. And then you come to the now present moment and a similar thing happens. Maybe you were laughed at for saying something that happens again.
And you’re like, Oh, that emotion. And then you feel like that eight year old. Alright, so that eight year old is actually from the energetic world has come back to express or it doesn’t know how to, still doesn’t know how to. So it’s not until then you go through these steps of getting into your body and actually just witnessing what’s the energy doing.
Where is it in your body? And feeling it, like feel to heal, we’ve got to feel the energy, the emotion can be painful, but it’s so rewarding on the other side, because then you’re connecting back to that, not just connecting back to that 8 year old self, like that is a beautiful thing, because that 8 year old you abandon yourself essentially by not feeling the emotion. And it’s a key thing when we don’t feel our emotions fully, we’re abandoning ourselves every time. So we’re not really being authentic. When we can connect back, we get that moment to sort of re parent or to actually grow emotionally. Like a lot of us are stuck in the emotional world of that eight year old or the 15 year old teenager, you know, slamming doors and whatever it might be.
It’s not until we revisit, reconnect, feel physically what’s happening in the body, owning it that it’s your emotion and that’s part of the steps of not blaming the teacher or the peer for making fun of you or blaming your ex boyfriend when you’re 15 for whatever happened. It’s about owning it.
It’s here in my body because it’s yours and often that’s a big blocker is not owning your emotion and wanting to blame someone until we then can fully feel it, own it. Release it. They’re like clouds, emotions, you have the sky’s always blue and when those clouds shift and you witness it and then you release it, that’s where you reduce the energy in your body, reduce the emotion.
It’s like we all have this bucket full of, I say emotion or trauma and trauma is any emotion that hasn’t been fully felt like you to think it comes in as an eight year old, you’re feeling humiliated. You don’t feel it, the circle doesn’t complete, not until you get triggered later in life, you get a chance to complete it.
And that’s the beautiful thing, because once you complete it, the energy in that bucket is lessened. Instead, explosion or reactivity, whereby it hasn’t been released, and it’s still in the body, until the next trigger. When the next trigger comes, that emotion will come with it. And it’s a beautiful process when we can, and that’s part of what I do with my clients, is reconnect back.
And then next time that that certain situation that you possibly would have been triggered. You’re no longer. It’s just like, oh yeah, that’s happened, alright, but there’s no emotional reaction from it because you felt it.
Can you share a tool, a resource or a book or podcast even that you think will help our listeners?
Oh, this is a good question. I have literally listened to so many different things and then we can sort of build our own belief system or what we take in certain things along the way. It’s not until sometimes you hear it from someone and it doesn’t sink in ten times or the tenth time it sinks in from someone else and they say at a different way. So there’s there’s just so many out there and I think you’ve got to listen to your own intuition as to where it guides you.
I don’t have a specific one. I have lots. I love Joe Dispenza for mindset. So he’s got, You Are The Placebo or Breaking The Habit Of Being Yourself. I love that mindset from him about changing your thought patterns and he goes into the science of it.
I very much love his meditations too and he’s been a big part of my journey. The emotional world, the emotional side, there’s a lot there. I mean, the holistic psychologists, they’re amazing when it comes to emotions and feeling them and trauma very much on the same page.
And then I’ve created my own program. So from everything I’ve learned from my own experience, from what I believe we need to be taught that we weren’t, for example, emotions, I put this all into one program called MOVE, so MOVE Outdoors Variety Education, or MOVE’EM for men, so just with an M on the end, so a group journey where MOVE I literally educate on all these things, including nutrition, purpose, setting boundaries, routines, rituals, intimacy, relationships.
It’s got everything in there that I believe. That we all need to know it’s education for life from everything that I’ve resourced and studied and lived. And especially from my experience with clients and so I’ve been running it now for two, three years now and having experience from it and knowing what the clients are really taking on.
And then it’s about actioning it. So yes, resources are amazing and books and podcasts, but it’s not until you actually action what you’re learning, because then you become a library and you become the person that knows everything. But until you take those steps to change and to really go against the grain, go against your conditioning, go against what you thought was true, feel into those emotions, which is again, taking action, got to take action.
And a lot of us don’t and can’t take action in a direction that’s either resourceful or helping us move forward in life because we’re blocked. Like I said, the garden, back to the analogy, there’s so many blockages that are in the way of taking that action that’s actually aligned with where you want to go.
So uncovering those is vital and that’s part of the journey as well that I take. It’s not just the education, it’s actually uncovering in 1:1 sessions what’s going on there. So you can build this beautiful garden to harvest for years and years and years to come. It’s planting those seeds early on in the journey and being able to then take action aligned with that. It’s that one stop shop where you got access to everything, you don’t have to go through hundreds of podcasts or books.They are good. Don’t get me wrong, it’s part of everyone’s journey that you have your own little pool of research and books that you refer back to or you learn from.
