Summary 

Does disbelief hold you back from taking the steps you know will lead to the results you want? You’re not alone—and today’s episode is here to help. In this special coaching workshop excerpt, I’m sharing a science-informed framework to guide you out of disbelief and into deep, grounded belief in yourself. This two-part episode dives into bridging the gap from self-doubt to confidence and how to take action—yes, even when you’re still wrestling with doubt.

Whether you’re planning for the new year or navigating the challenges of the holiday season, this episode equips you with actionable strategies to turn belief into momentum. If you’ve ever wondered how to stop second-guessing yourself and start seeing real results, this is a must-listen.

Bonus: Stay tuned for next week’s “Tiny but Mighty” mini-series, designed to inspire quick, impactful changes during your busiest time of year.

Learn more about the group: https://www.burnstressloseweight.com/group

Get the Hormones Training: https://www.burnstressloseweight.com/hormones

What You’ll Learn from this Episode:

• The five phases of belief and how to recognize where you are on the scale.
• Why disbelief is normal—and how to move through it without judgment.
• The exact steps to build self-awareness and practice belief daily.
• How to take courageous action, even when you’re not fully confident.
• Why results are directly tied to the quality of your belief and what to do when you dip out of it.

Listen to the Full Episode:

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Featured on the Show:

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Download the full transcript here.

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  You and I both know that it feels better to believe in yourself than to not we want to believe in ourselves, but maybe evidence from yesterday or this past year, an off plan moment, a pound up on the scale, a random wrench in your week. through you off kilter. You might have very normally and naturally dipped into disbelief, but there is a science to feeling better and it doesn't require a phlebotomist or a blood test. I've been talking on the podcast about evidence based tools that can help professional women feel better in how they're experiencing their life, your quality of life. So I am particularly excited to bring you today's episode, which is a step by step framework on how to feel better this is a coaching workshop. It's an excerpt from a call that I had with my clients from the Unstoppable group that I wanted to share with you as a podcast episode, because I get the Spidey sense, especially at this time of the year, that this concept is really going to help you. If you've been waiting to feel confident or feel certainty or completely doubt free before you take a podcast. Real new needle moving action. My friends, I hate to break it to you, but you're going to be left waiting. I don't want another year going by. I know that this holiday season is the time that we often reflect on the past year. We prepare for new years and our goals and our resolutions. And I wanted to bring this concept specifically at this time of the year so that we can really think about having the best quality fuel to drive you taking the best quality action.

  Today's episode on how to believe in yourself has two intentions. It has two parts. The first one is how to bridge your thoughts from a place of disbelief. To a place of belief. I walked through basically the five ladder thoughts that you are going to walk through. This is not a framework that I created on my own. It's something that has been deeply informed by my mentors and coaches of the past. And it is what I have used myself to get out of the normal dips of disbelief that I have. We all experience the second part of this episode and this is where the magic happens Is how to take action on the areas of your life that you want to see results in and how to take that action Even when you feel disbelief and doubt you need both pieces of this framework It's like two peas in a pod to literally guarantee your weight loss and wellness in the upcoming year. Before we get into it, I wanted to share something with you really quick. Next week, I'm doing something kind of fun and different on the podcast, rather than doing a big episode on the Tuesday, which is when this episode normally drops. I'm actually going to be bringing back a series. It's a really fun series of mini episodes that is really a celebration of this and the end of the year. I call these tiny but mighty concepts. Each episode is going to be maybe five to eight minutes long and it's enough. And I thought about, you know, what's happening for the busy professional mom during the holiday season. It's short enough that you can squeeze it in between your holiday, in between your grocery runs, in between loads of laundry. And if you are working next week, it is something you can schedule in between team meetings, clients, or patients. My intention with bringing you this tiny but mighty concept series next week is that you feel inspired to create the changes that you are dreaming of for yourself next year and to see this is, you know, a little sneak peek for next week that it doesn't actually take a lot of time. It doesn't actually take mountain loads of effort. It simply takes science informed strategy, key decision making that you can simply follow through on that is going to really move the needle on you hitting your goals next year. There are two ways that you're going to get to enjoy this mini series next week. One is just to come right back here to your favorite podcast platform, and I will meet you every single day next week. In the morning when this podcast episode drops, that's one way to enjoy this podcast series. Or if you want to, because you know, you're an overachiever like me, we want to have like as many episodes as possible to binge listen to. If you want to binge listen to the whole entire mini series in one fell swoop, because that's kind of like me, I want to make sure that you are on my email list because my email list only is going to be getting Monday morning, all of the mini episodes in one space. So you can actually just watch through binge, all of the mini episodes and you only are going to get that if you're on my email list. Now, if you grabbed my hormones training from last week and the week before, then you're already on my email list, but that's probably the fastest way for you to ensure that you get this email. So head over to www.burnstressloseweight.com/hormones, H O R M O N E S, and drop your email address so that number one, you're going to get the hormones training, which is an amazing training for you to just watch. It's 30 minutes. It's going to really help you see how you can start feeling better, which is the intention of this entire podcast. And also it will get you on my email list so you can get the mini series next week and you can just binge it all if you wanted to on one day. Okay. That is enough for all of my announcements. Let's get into. How to believe in yourself.

  Hey, unstoppable friend. You're listening to The Burn Stress, Lose Weight Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Priyanka Venugopal, a physician turned a stress and weight loss coach for professional working moms and the founder of The Burn, Stress, Lose Weight, Feel Unstoppable small group coaching program. This podcast is going to inspire change at the root for you on and off the scale. I've lost a little over 60 pounds while being a busy physician mom with two young kids and an unpredictable schedule. And along my journey, which was full of many, many imperfect moments, I have learned how to skip past the fads and the gimmicks. I am on this mission now to share with you how you can have a real strategy and mindset skills to really have more of the life you want that you have worked so hard for. Let's get into it. So we're going to talk about the belief scale. Your results on the scale today are a reflection of your belief in yourself hitting your goal over the last one year. The way that I'm going to be talking about the belief scale today is that it is a five piece scale or a five piece system. You can move from one phase of this belief scale to another phase. You can move in one day. You could take a week, you could take a month or months. You could take years. For some people, and this is likely, you know, people that are not in coaching, they don't understand the power of their mindset and the power of their brain, it might be never. I want us to think about the belief scale as simply an awareness tool. So the way that we're going to describe it in just a minute is just like for you to become aware of where you're at. And being aware of what phase you're in, being really honest with yourself without being mean, without being judgmental, without criticizing what phase you're in, right? That part's optional. Being honest about which phase you're in is going to be how you move out of that phase if you want to. The determining factor with the speed of which you move in and out of phases is going to be your self awareness. When I say self awareness, the reason I'm saying being objective and honest without being mean is because high achievers, overachievers have a tendency where they are like, I know what to do, But like, I just haven't done it yet. We become mean to ourselves and impatient and frustrated and irritated. And I just want you to catch how that is being incredibly mean. And it's going to hold you back, right? It's going to hold you back from really owning where you are in the process. So lesson number one, disbelief is normal. Stop judging it. And I've done this myself. I remember like there were so many phases of my life this is in. Definitely with weight loss as I was losing all of my weight, but even after I hit my goal weight, I gained weight after I hit 60 pounds. It's when I recorded that behind the scenes video diary, how I lost, you know, weight in like, I think I did a 30 day video diary. I felt a moment of disbelief. I'm like Priyanka, you're a coach, man. You're a weight loss coach. You're supposed to know how to do this. You're coaching other people how to do this. I felt disbelief for a moment. How can I teach other people how to do this when I gained my own, like I've gained weight back. This is the process I went through. To get my mindset on so that I could go solve the problem and then obviously record the behind the scenes for all of you. In fact, what I will say is to get to a place of true belief that inevitability that like this is just done, disbelief is actually normal. Disbelief dipping in and out of it is a normal step in the process. I almost think about it as like step one. And we often go back to step one. Even once you've gone so far, once you become an expert at something, sometimes you have to go become a student again. You have to come back to step one. That's normal. So these are the five phases, the five phases of the belief scale. Number one is impossibility. Number two is improbability. Number three is possibility. Four is probability and five is inevitability. These are the five phases of the belief scale. So this is what it'll sound like. Impossible is you're thinking it's never going to happen. Never. It's never going to happen. You say it like it's just the news. You'll know that this is you. If you basically don't even try. If you never even try, you never even put forth an effort. This is literally nobody in this room and I know that because you're all here. So you might be in improbability. We'll talk about improbability in a moment. But impossibility, you are literally not doing anything at all for it because you just do not believe it's possible for you. You will say it like it's the news. The next one, improbability. It was a fluke. I have so many. Listen, if this is you, again, I want you to have a chuckle with yourself because if I'm saying it, if I'm identifying it, it means that you're not alone.

  You lose a pound or two and you're like, that was a fluke. That's not real. I've done that before. Like, I'm probably going to gain it back. There's some flavor where you're not able to wrap your mind around owning your results. You feel kind of like it's slippery. You feel like it's going to slip out of your hands. Right? How many of us have ever felt like that? I know I have totally felt like that. And this is just not with the scale. This is like in real life, professional life, right? Like let's say you get a promotion or a boss or a colleague or a client or patient gives you a really positive feedback. You're like, me? Little old me? Do they mean that about me? No, no. But you can't just say thank you and like accept and receive it. You're like, no, that's just because someone else helped me. No, it was a team effort. You cannot own your results. It's improbability. Possibility. Possibility. I love, I just got goosebumps. I love possibility. It is where I see so much breakthrough happen. When we go from improbability to possibility, your life changes. This is my experience. It's the funnest place to live. It's like when we live in breakthrough, when you go from improbability to possibility, you go from like, Oh, I don't know if I could do that again to, Ooh, I think that this is possible for me. You start to feel a little lit up. It's like sparkle, like a little light went on. Like, all of a sudden, when you think about, when you're in possibility, you just, you start to see that actually there's another road out here that I did not even know about and I think I could get on it. All of a sudden, the possibility for your whole entire life starts to shift and this can be kind of addictive. Going from improbability to possibility, for people that love living in breakthrough, if you are a, you know, a self growth junkie like me, I love living in breakthrough, okay? But at the end of the day, we want to move out of improbability, possibility, like toggling back and forth. We want to move on into probability. Okay, so possibility, I think it's possible for me. Probability, it's going to happen. Okay, so it goes from like, I think this is possible, to it's happening. This is going to happen. Right. You can feel the probability that it is absolutely happening in our future. And then probability to inevitability is. This is done. It's done no matter what. You might not even have results in hand. Like, you might not have hit your exact goal, but you really can feel the belief in your body. This is done. It is happening no matter what. Nothing is going to get in my way. Now, as high achievers, overachievers, perfectionists, we want to be in inevitability. We want to just be 10 out of 10, believe in ourselves all the time because it feels better. Listen, believing in yourself. feels a hundred times better than not believing in ourself, right? So that's what I really want to believe in myself. I really want to get to, like, it's done. It feels better than not. But what we are not doing is we're not doing the work to get there. So the lesson that I really want to impart in today's teaching is that Inevitability will not fall out of the universe into your head. And I say this because I used to wish it. He's like, where is my, where is my belief? I'm believing I'm like, I'm believing I'm trying. It's like, you know, like the little engine that could like, I'm trying. No, that is not how belief will enter our body. It will not enter our brains. We have to do the real work, which we're going to talk about. How do you get to inevitability? You have to put forth the effort. So the worst thing. is actually not being an impossibility. The worst thing is not being in disbelief. The worst thing in my experience is not knowing what phase you're actually in. The worst thing is just a lack of self awareness, being completely unaware of where you are in this belief scale. So as your coach, I'm going to help you spot this. Okay, that is where we are going to coach. That's where, you know, doing your weekly audits and your monthly check ins with me, I will help you spot exactly where you might be on this belief scale if you cannot identify yourself. And then your job is to start to improve your self awareness, so you start to catch where was I in my belief scale this week, this month, and then decide what are you going to do now with that awareness, just being aware is the first step. Now we have to take new action with that awareness. So this is where we want to think about our results as simply data, right? We want to be scientists. I call this like, you know, being a playful scientist. When you look at your results on the scale that week, instead of being confused or getting critical or like all of that, get curious, be honest, and actually ask yourself, where was I at on the belief scale? Did I believe in myself this week? What you will find when you are in deep belief, like truly deep belief, not just like a homework assignment that you're checking off a list, like surface level, like I'm believing, I'm believing. We know when we're really believing in ourselves versus when it's kind of like surface level. I have, like, because I've taken a fine tooth comb through client results, when you are deeply believing in yourself, Your goal, the kind of actions you take, the quality of actions you take is higher level. The results will always speak for themself. Your results will always, always tell you where you are at in your belief skill. So the question might be, I can hear you asking, so Priyanka, how do I believe something new? If I'm an improbable or if I'm, if I'm impossible, how do I move up or go into the next phase? The way that you move from one phase to the next is you practice it. Like you would practice anything else. There's no agenda, no pressure, no fear, keeping it light, fun, and even humorous. Like the way that you would connect with yourself if you were a child. I like to use kid examples, right? So think about like when you're with your kid and you want to practice something new, they are so much more likely to want to practice it if we make it fun and light and playful and we don't like stick a grade on it. We don't like make an agenda out of it. It's like we have to practice the piano, right? 30 minutes a day because like, Piano lessons. It's like, so well, who wants to do that? The kid's going to just like fight you every step of the way. We're just like, how can we make this a game? How can this be light? How can we just practice this and actually walking yourself through this exercise on a daily basis?

  The way that I really like to think about this is just focusing on one day at a time. Just start with today. So when you start practicing, when you're going from like, Ooh, I don't know, it's a fluke. I don't know if I can. Normal, you're an improbability. And you want to go to the next step of like, it's possible for me. You just start thinking thoughts. that make you see that it's possible for you. I wonder how this might be possible for me. This is possible for me. Like actually thinking those sentences in your mind. And here's the thing. When you start thinking those sentences in your mind, you don't argue with yourself. The universe will conspire to help you see the reality of that. The universe will conspire for you. It will start to show you, wait a second, I think it is actually possible. And when you start feeling possibility, what, what ends up happening is you start taking slightly different action. So you start to lean in more, right? You put in more of an effort, and when you do that, you will create small wins, perpetuating more evidence that it is, in fact, possible for you. So this is like a cycle that we get to really build on. The reality is, because I was, I was, I was sharing at the start, this is not a linear, like we just go from disbelief to belief, we're going to go backwards at times. You might have had a series of wins, maybe lost a lot of weight, but then maybe you hit a plot twist. What happens then? You might very normally dip out of belief. Nothing has gone wrong. Now what will go wrong is when you hit a plot twist, you gain a pound, you go off plan, something comes awry. You might dip out of belief. Normal. This is where we need to use self awareness as a tool. Like, oh, I just dipped out of belief. Have a plan. We're going to talk about what that plan is. As opposed to what we might typically do. We dip out of belief and we let disbelief drive our car. Right? We lean out. We don't put in full effort. We don't prioritize this.

  We just like F it, screw it, next week, next month, right? So we don't want disbelief to just go on and on and on. We need to use this as self awareness. Disbelief is not a problem. You're going to dip in and out of it at times. The rate at which you dip in and dip out, stay in and stay out is going to be based on your intentionality, self coaching or self journaling practice, and the thoughts you're going to practice on a day to day basis. When you dip out of belief, normal. I dip out of belief all the time. I'm just gonna dip right back in. So the steps to do this when you dip out of belief is simply CalmHabit90 using the ABCD method. Do it anyway. So A is awareness. Awareness tool, right? Oh, okay, I dipped out of belief. Nothing's wrong. It's normal. I dipped out of belief. My results went up. You know, I scale went up. I went off plan. Normal. B. Take a breath. Ground. You're safe. You're okay. Nothing has gone wrong. C. Practice courage. Really feel courage. It's, listen, it's uncomfortable to take action when you're not believing in yourself. It's not the funnest. Belief is way more fun. Do it anyway. D. Do it anyway. Which means. Because even if you feel disbelief, do your plan anyway. That is how you'll start creating small wins and evidence, and you will start to step out of disbelief. Think about for yourself, on a scale of 1 to 10, what has your belief been in you hitting this goal? 10 out of 10 is like really full grounded belief, a 1 is total disbelief. When have you noticed the most results on the scale, like going in the direction you wanted to go? Where was your belief at that time? And vice versa, when you feel like you've gotten stuck on the scale, when you've gotten frustrated, when you've done the half ass, all of like the in and out, you know, where was your belief in yourself hitting this goal then? This is for everyone. I feel this is, this is going to be juicy. This is going to be a little, oh, for some of you, if your results are not what you want them to be, and that drives you to quit, give up micro little blah, blah, blah, I don't know that you were ever believing to begin with. That's let's say, you know, the scale goes up a pound.

  I don't ever think it's not working ever. Now my brain goes to, I wonder what I didn't do. Can we feel the difference? Right? So let's just say you have a plan and you're executing the plan, however, consistently, and you have some results. And what I have found is. If you go here, even 30 days, imagine that like you've been trying for 30 days. You know, I believe in myself 30 days. I believe in myself. I'm taking the plan. I'm doing it for 30 whole days, 30 days, no change on the scale at the 30 day mark. If you're like, see, it's not working. It makes me really wonder whether you were deeply believing in yourself during the 30 days, because what I would, what I would want to see at this point, obviously, yes, what you're saying is correct. Like actually getting coached, like, let's get curious. Let's figure this out. Like, let's get investigative. Like, why, why are these the results? The only way that that's going to happen is if you come here. Impatience isn't to me a siren song. I like anyone that feels impatience or frustrated and any of that. And I look, if this is you, I want you to know, I deeply understand the feeling because I have been there and I get it. I so get it. I'm not like, I'm not trying to be like, oh, I'm just never anyone that ever feels I'm like not, I'm a patient person. I'm the most impatient. I'm so impatient. But when it comes to results, whichever area, right? Like a marriage, it can be on the scale. It can be with friendships. It can be in the workplace. Any results to me, like impatience is a little, just a little siren song, the little signal.

  I hope that you enjoyed this excerpt from an Unstoppable group coaching workshop that I had with my clients in the Unstoppable group, my vision and my mission for this podcast is as a physician and as a stress and weight loss coach for you to have science informed strategies to feeling better For you to support your hormone health for you to lose the weight you want for you to feel better in your mind Because when you know how to direct your thinking you can actually decrease distress signals in your brain There's actual evidence of this which is Phenomenal and amazing. It means that your partner, your kids, your time, your boss, your colleagues don't all have to change for you to start feeling better and hitting goals. Really imagine the impact for you and what the trickle effect would be in every corner of your life if you simply practice this one skill. I want to invite you to make Actionable decisions as you plan next year, decide right now, what are the actionable decisions that you want to make? That is going to really move the needle forward for you. I know how fun planning is. Listen, new year's planning is one of my favorite things to do to get out the new planner with the new year. I know it is so much fun to plan, but just remember planning while it feels productive is not actually creating results. And as a professional working mom, I know your time is valuable. It is precious. I don't want you to spend it on just planning again and again, starting from scratch, again and again, guessing and piecemealing your wellness and weight loss approach. I really want you to feel the difference between planning and making active decisions, actionable decisions. I hope you all have an amazing week and amazing holiday and enjoy the mini series coming to you next week and have a very, very, very safe and healthy holiday season. Bye. Thanks for spending this time with me on the burn stress, lose weight podcast today. I hope that you are leaving today's podcast episode feeling a little lighter and more inspired than when we started. It turns out. that you don't need to have a stress free life to hit your goals on and off the scale. But when you feel more empowered to respond to your real life stresses with true strategy, we will game change how we show up and how we hit our goals. If you want to take what you're learning here on the podcast and put it into real life implementation, it might be time for us to work together in the burn stress Lose Weight Feel Unstoppable Group Coaching Program. Head over to burnstressloseweight.com and you can learn all of the details, the nuts, the bolts, when the next group is starting and exactly how you can join. Okay, friend, I'll see you next time.