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Sarah Small: Welcome to the Uncensored Empath, a place for us to discuss highly sensitive energy, illness, healing, and transformation. My name is Sarah small. I’m a life and success coach for empaths who want to create a thriving body, business, and life. Think of this podcast as your no-BS guide, navigating life, health, and entrepreneurship. You’ll get straight to the point totally holistic tips from me in real-time, as I navigate this healing and growth journey right beside you. This is a Soul Fire production.
Welcome. Today’s guest is an international seminar leader and speaker, author and creator of the deserving process. In today’s conversation, Dr. Josh Wagner and I are going to be providing some new insights on how to overcome self-sabotage and how to undo undeserving beliefs, so that you can thrive in both your business; if you have one, your life and most certainly, your health. Dr. Wagner is originally trained as a Doctor of Chiropractic medicine and found so interestingly in his practice that the patients and clientele that he worked with, that belief they deserve to heal were those that got the best outcomes, achieved the highest goals and got the best results.
So this simple DIY system called the deserving process helps to transform those undeserving beliefs into deserving ones in any and all areas of your life. We’re going to decode what this deserving process actually is, how to use it, and how you can benefit from it. At the end, you’ll also get a link and some details on how to listen to a guided process for free on his website as well. So let’s dive in. I want you to open your mind, I want you to notice where you might feel undeserving in your life, and see how this simple process may be able to support you specifically.
Welcome to the show today, Dr. Wagner. I am so excited to have you on.
Dr. Josh Wagner: Hey, I’m excited to be here and share with your audience. Thank you.
Sarah Small: So, you have a past history in seeing patients at a private practice as a doctor, as a practitioner, and have now evolved into this really powerful message that I think so many listeners are going to resonate today and that you write about in your book, ‘’You deserve it’’ around the deserving process. Can you talk to us and tell us the evolution of working as a practitioner, to then now becoming the speaker, leader, author consultant in the world?
Dr. Josh Wagner: Absolutely. So, I fell in love with chiropractic. I’m a chiropractor, and I fell in love with that. During my college years, both my brother and mother had had good results with basic back issues. Everyone knows chiropractic is for it. The more I drove into it, the all-natural, the holistic, the vitalistic premises of chiropractic that the body is self-healing and that it’s created to give its best ability to always heal, intrigued me. I was never someone to just pop Tylenol if I had a headache. What happened was I fell in love with the actual art and science and philosophy of chiropractic. But I realized that day to day, treating and taking care of patients wasn’t what really where my heart was and my passion.
Interestingly, I would say, I’m the opposite of the empathic healer because since I never experienced much musculoskeletal physical pain in my life, I really couldn’t relate to a lot of the patients coming in with either acute or chronic pain. It wasn’t just back and neck. I was taking care of people with MS and Parkinson’s and chronic headaches and more systemic issues, but I couldn’t relate, which means, I also couldn’t relate as much when they would see results and whether they went from 90% pain to 10% or nothing, and really, someone’s life is changing. When they don’t have headaches anymore, they can sleep through the night, they don’t have that chronic pebble in the shoe or a hard knife in the back.
So as much as I loved the practice, I loved the philosophy of it. The day to day practice just didn’t fill me up. But what I did see and what did make a difference is hearing the pain behind the pain. So not just the physical, the bodily condition or ailment, but how that stressed a patient out, of course, it stresses and hearing the difference in their life when the peace of mindset in. It was very common to have young females with fibromyalgia share about they would wake up scared every day, ‘’Is this ever going to go away? Is this going to be worse than the last day?’’ This level of nervousness and fear, totally outside of the actual physical pain of it.
Seeing that change was really fulfilling. That’s really what’s led me to contribute to people now outside of a chiropractic sense or a treatment sense and really focus on the headspace. What I came to see in patients of all walks of life, whether it’s a musculoskeletal or a more systemic, chronic issue, is the ones who had the best chance of seeing results and healing. I say the best chance, I’m not saying this was in black or white 100% difference, but the best chance, and made the most progress quickest, were the ones who actually believed that they deserved to get through their condition.
If you really stop and think, so you may be listening to this and currently dealing with a chronic ailment or condition. If you’re not, think about another area of life that’s really important to you, like maybe you’re building your wellness practice. If you feel stuck in that endeavor, or in your healing process, just quiet your mind and ask yourself this one question, ‘’Do I truly believe I deserve getting through this or getting the results I want?’’ What happens is that most of us actually don’t truly believe we deserve it. We’ve been conditioned that we’re supposed to be in pain or struggle or life to be tough or not work out. This is one manifestation of that. For some, it’s financial stress; for others, it’s physical; body, health.
That one mindset switch, which is what I teach when you mentioned the deserving process, the deserving process is a meditative process to flip your switch from undeserving to deserving, in a specific area you want to see a change in, and from all of my years of study practitioner working with individuals, both health-wise or just life and success wise, that’s what I’ve come to see as the single greatest determinant, the single greatest factor that changes whether the path is rocky and frustrating and unfulfilling and constant, quitting and failure and little results, or the path where you are seeing results, and it’s flowing naturally and the synchronicities of life, like the right practitioner, comes in at the right time, the right treatment, you notice things start working, and it doesn’t feel like you have to push the rock, the boulder up the hill.
So that’s my biggest contribution if you’re on this right now, any area of your health or your life is stuck, is really tapping into your deserving belief because there’s no inherent reason, it doesn’t matter your gender, your age, your religion, your background, your ethnicity, no one is inherently undeserving of what you want in life. But it’s easy to grow up and believe that, based on maybe what our parents said, or what the news said, or what the movies said, and what the bully said, and that’s what we’ve got to work through. So I’m curious to hear what do you hear from that.
Sarah Small: I just want to really drive this home to the listener and really help them understand that what you’re saying is, as I understand it, that in your personal practice and what you’ve seen is, someone could come in with the same ailment, and you could be doing the same exact treatments on that person, but the difference is a person who comes in with that mindset of, ‘’I deserve to be well, I deserve to heal, I deserve to have financial abundance or abundance in all areas of my life,’’ versus the person who feels like, ‘’I’m not worth this, I’m not valuable, something in my life has shown me, taught me, made me believe that I’m not valuable or worthy of experiencing abundance or health or wealth or whatever the thing is, that goal is, a successful practice or a business of their own,’’ that ends up being the thing that is really determining their trajectory in their path.
So I want to repeat really what you’re saying. So people really understand how big of potential this has if you then tap into your inherent worth, and the truth of that you are deserving, and how much that could change your trajectory if you’re feeling stuck or at a plateau in any area of your life. So, Josh, I’d love for you to talk more about this deserving process and how we can use it and benefit from it in all of our lives.
Dr. Josh Wagner: Absolutely. Thank you for restating that and going deeper into it, because that is the linchpin. So, before going into the deserving process, think about 10 people who have the same weight loss goals and go on the same exact diet. People can have the same diagnosis or back pain and have the same treatment. We all know they’re going to get 10 different results. That’s what whether it’s medicine, whether it’s holistic, whether it’s a diet, whether it’s a seminar you go to. The underlying factor is not the pathway, it’s what the way your brain is currently wired on the pathway and you’re not born with an undeserving stamp on your forehead.
Now, you may have undeserving beliefs when you’re born, like literally just genetically from your parents and grandparents and all of that. But it’s not imprinted, that can’t be changed. That’s a big thing. A lot of people think, ‘’Oh, I’m of Canadian descent,’’ that can’t be changed. Undeserving beliefs, for the most part, are acquired when you’re young, but it doesn’t mean something couldn’t have happened last month. There’s a way to get through them. So the deserving process, which actually, I have 20-minute audio of me guiding through the process on my website that anyone could have access to, so you can actually start doing it. It’s outlined in my book, but essentially, it’s first going to the place that most people aren’t taught to go to, and don’t want to go to, which is actually being aware of looking at, and addressing what are those undeserving beliefs.
When I asked you that question, probably if you were really thinking about an area of life that stuck, then most likely, you don’t have confidence certain, ‘’Yes, I believe I deserve moving through this or having the results I want.’’ Don’t worry, that’s natural. The more you’re aware of that, the more you look at, ‘’Well, why don’t I believe I deserve that?’’ Then start thinking about your history, think about your upbringing. What were the seeds that were planted in you usually from parents? Oftentimes, we inherit our parents’ deserving beliefs. It’s often easy to see in relationships and our financial life. We often believe we deserve the socio-economic financial situation that our parents had and that we grew up because of our parents.
Same with relationships. If you didn’t see your parents happy and in love, you’re conditioned to believe, ‘’Oh, when I grew up, that’s what marriage is supposed to look like.’’ They live together, they’re roommates, but they’re not happy and in love. Two different people can take that two different ways. A lot of people take it as ‘’That’s how it’s supposed to be, that’s what I deserve because that’s my parents and I came from them.’’ But other people can take it as, ‘’No, that’s not what I want. I know it can be fun and juicy and exciting. That’s what I want it to be like.’’
So starting to really look at where these beliefs may have come from, as a belief of, I don’t deserve to be pain-free, I don’t deserve to just be in a state of peacefulness and contentedness, which is hard when you’re in chronic pain or dealing with the fear and anxiety of, will it ever go away? Will this get worse? Am I going to be able to sleep through the night? So when you can find those, you have a much better ability to actually work on them and deal with them. So that’s the first part. It’s really a two-part process. The first is actually confronting your undeserving beliefs, because if you don’t work on it directly, it’s always going to be that elephant in the room of your subconscious and conscious, and you can’t sugarcoat it.
So, for instance, with entrepreneurs or business owners, it’s often so much about setting the goals and working backward, like you want to make this much money or you want to create this business, okay, what’s the vision, and then let’s work backward and go to it. That has a place, but if it’s on top of undeserving beliefs, again, you can use the same coach, go to the same seminars, have the same exact action plan as someone else with the deserving belief, and that other person is going to move a lot faster, quicker and actually get where they’re going.
So, if you’re focused on the treatment or the action plan or the goal or the vision board, but it’s on top of undeserving beliefs, it’s like creating a mansion on top of a swamp. You can have the best architects, the best equipment, all the money’s put into the finest materials, but it’s going to sink. So this isn’t discrediting the treatments, the pathway, the actions, but you’ve got to fill in that swamp, you’ve got to fill in that sinkhole, which is an undeserving belief, and undeserving beliefs because we will self-sabotage, we will reject the treatment, our body will reject the treatment. Holistic or not, if you can’t allow yourself to slow your mind, you’re not going to be able to meditate.
10 people can do 20 minutes of meditation and have very different results. So it’s really a first part, which most people don’t do, because it doesn’t sound nice, doesn’t feel great, is actually revisiting and experiencing what caused us those initial undeserving beliefs. If you really think about it, and you can’t find areas in your past, growing up that you believe really contributed to this, you can literally focus on the present and the now of your negative emotions that feel as though you don’t believe you deserve it, and literally work with those, so you don’t have to go back in the past.
Then on the other end, after you’ve done that work and you’ve dramatically reduced the undeserving belief, the intensity of it, the power of it over you, actually focus on what is the end result looks like. So if you have a chronic condition, illness, not just that it’s gone, but what does your life actually look like with it gone, all of it, and most importantly, how does that feel, not physically, but emotionally; the peace of mind, the joy, the love, the happiness and the big picture of your life.
So most people when they set goals, it’s all about just the attainment of something or the elimination of something, like I want to get married or I don’t want to have this pain, or I want to have a million dollars in the bank, but they don’t look at, well, how does this actually impact and affect my whole life, because we all know a lot of people who are married who are not happy. It’s not the marriage, it’s not the checkmark. I can tell you a lot of people have a million dollars in the bank who are more stressed than before they had the million dollars in the bank.
So looking at the whole picture, if you’re dealing with a chronic condition, and I believe you’re listening to this because you actually care about getting through it, are you focused on just getting it away, getting through it, or are you have you written down, are you able to see, can you focus on what does your life look like, when this is not part of you, and most importantly, what’s the emotion you feel? Oftentimes, that emotion is going to be the opposite of the emotion that the undeserving belief brings. You got to have the emotion and that’s the essence of the deserving process is, both of those focuses.
Sarah Small: I think an example of the first step you are taking talking about is even in siblings, where it’s like we grew up in the same household, yet our trajectory could be totally different. Yeah, we’re different people, but that mindset within that person, that was fed the same food and literally lived in the same house. I look at my family and the four of us as kids, my brothers have both passed, but it’s like, looking at the differences if you were to look at us, standing next to each other, and our lives as a snapshot, drastically different, yet we all grew up in that same household, and we had completely different mindsets from each other that I think, really started to mold the path of what our life did turn into, did evolve into.
I’ve seen other families and groups of siblings stand next to each other and I’m like, ‘’How are you all so different?’’ That mindset really does shift what we think we’re worthy of, and what we’re deserving of, and then ultimately, what we end up manifesting into our life and the goals that we do begin to achieve. I just think that that’s so fascinating. I assume that and you talked about seeing this as a commonality and a theme within the patients you were seeing as a chiropractor, but I have to also assume that you have applied this to your own life. So I’d love to hear how any hurdles you’ve overcome or how you’ve applied this to your personal life, if you’ll feel comfortable sharing with us, in seeing the success that you’ve seen in your life and business, by shifting into that place of, I deserve too, blank, and then, therefore, manifesting that my way more easily or exponentially faster than the person who doesn’t believe that that’s possible for them.
Dr. Josh Wagner: Absolutely. Without a doubt, apply this to my life. I still apply it every day because I’m human. Not only I like everyone who are filled with undeserving beliefs in all different areas, but we’re also acquiring them all throughout our life. So I’m constantly working like, Hey, what’s the next area? Then guess what, going and revisiting other areas because it’s just the process of life, you got it and then you’re never going to lose it, just like whether it’s your health or relationship or wealth. Just because you got something doesn’t mean you can coast. Just like you can’t eat well and workout to a certain point and then think, ‘’Oh, now I’m good for the rest of my life.’’ This is ongoing. So I’m in the process myself, and of course, have seen great results over the years from the process.
I think a reason people resonate with my books so much is that I share so many personal stories, and they can relate because we’re all connected, we’re all humans. You don’t get out of childhood unscathed in some shape, way, shape, or form. When you were mentioning, Sarah, about your brothers or your four siblings, but you’re also different, it sounds like it may contradict what I was saying before of, okay, we inherit this from our parents and the lifestyle we grew up in. Someone may think, ‘’Well, then how come four siblings who grew up in the same household under the same parents could be so different?’’ That’s just the base platform. The majority are specific instances that happened in just moments like someone said something to you.
Let’s say, for a female, it could have been as innocent as being a young girl and asking mom for a snack before dinner and mom saying, ‘’No, you don’t need that,’’ because dinner was going to be in 30 minutes, and the young girl felt that that meant she was overweight, even though mom had no intention that was not to them. Literally, just in a moment, but your brother never had that experience and completely different trajectories. That could turn into something as severe as an eating disorder, or it could just be a mild frustration over the body, but every day looking into the mirror, that’s significant throughout an entire life.
So, the biggest one for me, well, there are many, but the one I’m proudest of getting through is, up until just a few years ago, I had a very, very tough, volatile relationship with my own mother, because of years of being felt like I was being held to such a standard, I had an older brother who was an A+ student, captain of sports teams, never got in trouble. Even though I was the A- student, captain of half of my sports teams, got in some trouble, nothing was ever good enough. He even experienced it, even though he seemed to be perfect, he experienced nothing was ever good enough.
So, a whole youth and childhood of nothing’s ever good enough like I come home with the 95, and she says, ‘’That’s nice, but what happened to the other five?’’ Or, winning the basketball tournament and getting the MVP award, and she’s saying, ‘’I felt so bad for the team you beat.’’ It’s like, ‘’Well, what about my accomplishment?’’ It turned into even as an adult, never feeling fully accepted, loved by her, no matter what my accomplishment, just never feeling good enough, and also feeling triggered, like I’m not good enough.
So, at a certain point years ago, I remember just during a meditation, breaking down and feeling like, it’s not worth with the most significant relationship in my life; my mother, it’s not worth having anger, it’s not worth this not being peaceful and happy. Like I said in the beginning, being aware of it, confronting it, gave me the ability to say, ‘’You know what, I’m going to deal with this.’’ One of the practitioners I went to see about this, was very influential and one of the components of the deserving process, which is that first part of actually working through the undeserving beliefs, and for a good part of the year, I was doing this process.
I used to not be able to be around my mom for 24 hours, I needed space, there’d be a blow-up. I could literally spend weeks with her at her home, and sure there may be 1% of the time, some triggers and some reactions, but it’s just completely different. To have that relationship back in my life is incredible, it feels great. I know it means the world going forward with my other relationships, especially significant others in a female relationship, which has also come about since healing that and repairing that with my mom, is, an incredible new relationship of it’s about a year to the stage right now.
So, the family, significant other romantic relationship, I’ve done it in money and wealth because I grew up where we middle class, we just got by like it just worked out, but like most people, my dad worked on the weekends, I’d hear him talking about struggles with work, I’d hear him arguing with my mom about, we don’t have enough money, you need to get a job. Part of what that instilled in me was really craving financial freedom, absolutely craving that. Having that now and being completely grateful for it, contributing to others, and not taking it for granted.
Sarah Small: I’m still working through it in the moment right now, but seeing how this has applied to my own life, and I definitely see it in health. In that second step, you talked about the emotion of, what if you were deserving, what if I could heal, and what would that feel like on the other side, how would my life change, and what would the emotion be that replaces that negative association I was having with it. I feel like I was able to work through that one, unknowingly to this process, but I feel like I worked through that one just in a different way. It was in that realization that I could heal and that I was worthy of that healing, that all of a sudden, the practitioner that was going to help me in that process showed up at my proverbial front door stuff, and I started to see all these massive changes in my health, in my body.
I relate to you in growing up in a middle-class family household as well. Then, getting to adulthood and starting my own business and being like, ‘’Well, wait, what if I want more than that? What if I want more than what I came from, and not feeling deserving of that? It meant something about me like greed or selfishness or something.’’ That’s one that I’m still working through a little bit that is like, No, you deserve to have a surplus, versus the lifestyle you are used to for the first 18 years of your life of just getting by, and sometimes I let electricity being turned off because bills couldn’t be paid, and not having to have that same exact lifestyle as parents. My parents are divorced, so these two different households that I grew up in.
So I think that’s one that I could work on, is really feeling worthy and deserving of more abundance and overflow and surplus in my life, that breaks a generational pattern and allows me to break through the plateau that you talked a lot about in your work. It’s like, when you are stuck when you’re at a plateau, that would be a perfect time to look at these two steps and see, is this what’s blocking you.
Dr. Josh Wagner: 100%. You’ve used a few times the word, ‘’worthy’’. It’s interesting. There’s a reason I don’t use that in the book or when I think about it, a lot of people feel they’re synonymous, deserving and worthiness.
Sarah Small: That’s what I feel like I’ve been using them synonymously, but now, I’m super curious to hear your difference.
Dr. Josh Wagner: I mentioned this in the book, the reason I don’t use the word ‘’worthiness’’ is because it’s very easy growing up, to think about worthiness as someone else’s perspective on us. So that’s oftentimes religious-like we think a deity judges us are being worthy. It could be just gendered like as a female, it’s very easy that, ‘’Oh, I’m not as worthy as the other gender,’’ sexual orientation, ethnicity, all of that. So, oftentimes worthiness, it’s easy for us to think, ‘’Well, that’s not up to us, that’s societal or religion or something above me. But deserving this is my choice.’’ Something that’s your choice, you have power over and you can change.
So that’s why, if you’re listening to this, I want you to really focus on not whether you think you’re worthy or not, whether or not you believe you deserve having it. Again, nothing is set in stone. So if you admit right now, ‘’I don’t believe that deserve it, because that seems too good to be true,’’ it’s not stamped on you, it’s changeable, and it’s got to be the first step before finding the right path. The path will open up when you flip that switch; undeserving to deserving, or really, when you just start reducing the undeserving, it doesn’t have to be full-on black and white switch.
Sarah Small: I’m really glad you brought that up and distinguish between those two. Even when I say them, when I verbalize those words, there’s a different energy, a slightly different frequency to each of them when I say them. I’m just observing myself in this moment of like, it’s actually easier for me to say ‘’worthy’’ than it is for me to say ‘’deserving’’. So like, Ooh, there’s something to look into, in my own process, in my own internal self-talk of, what if I practice using that word ‘‘deserving’’ more often, and what results could that bring into my own life as well as the life of everyone who’s listening.
Dr. Josh Wagner: Absolutely. When you just said that about how can I make a difference in others, just some quick tips. So the deserving process is the main tool like you do this every day, you’re going to see massive shifts starting on the inside, meaning, you’re just going to feel less of the negative emotions around whatever you’re dealing with. Then you’re going to see externally, whether you’re taking new steps, people coming into your life, new ideas, things changing, it’s going to happen. But outside of the main process is being a contribution to others in this sense.
So we all know someone in our life who’s struggling somewhere, or who’s stuck somewhere, just letting them know that you believe they deserve what they want, and getting through what they’re dealing with, is twofold. One, it’s going to make a difference in that person, just hearing that. Out of the blue, they didn’t expect you to say it, of course, hopefully, you’re honest and you mean it, you do believe they deserve it. But hearing that is going to give them a boost of deserving belief. Two is that you can’t give away what you don’t have. So no matter how strong you may feel your undeserving belief is in one area, you’ve got great deserving beliefs in other areas. Again, your deserving belief isn’t over encompassing on your whole life, it’s set in every different area of your life, and in every area, there’s 1000 of them.
So when you tell someone that you believe they deserve to get what they want, it’s strengthening your own deserving belief to wherever you want to apply it in your life. So the saying, ‘’You can’t give away what you don’t have,’’ you can’t give love if you don’t have love. So if you’re contributing to other people’s deserving beliefs, it’s going to give you the ability to strengthen and create yours even better. So that’s what I’d say. As just a quick takeaway after listening to this, who can you call, text, email, contribute in a way that you know, letting them know they deserve it, will make a difference for them, even if it just makes them feel good, that’s worth it enough as a contribution.
Then, take a chance and start doing the deserving process and even just after the first 20-minutes session, and deserving process is something you do on your own, by yourself, you don’t need to get on the phone with me or interact with anyone. You’ll see a shift internally. My goal is that that gets you to keep doing it, so then you see the real bigger shifts in days or weeks or months later.
Sarah Small: I’m definitely going to go listen to that audio on your website and see what comes up for me, I’m so curious, and I’m so here for it, because the Shadow Work and looking at the spots that are not on the outside as sexy and appealing to myself to look at, and to confront, have ended up being the biggest moments of transformation for me to really to look at those parts that we can easily back away from and run away from about ourselves. So I’m excited to try it out. Josh, is there anything else that you’d like to share with the audience today? Please let us know also how to find the book in connection with you.
Dr. Josh Wagner: Yeah, absolutely. So you can find the book and the free audio at drjoshwagner.com. Really, what I’d love to believe you in, assuming you’re listening to this, because you want to see a transformation, you want to see a change, whether it’s in your health, your life, business, there’s no inherent reason. I don’t care how you grew up, what happened to you, what your ethnicity or gender is, there’s no inherent reason that you don’t deserve what you’re going for. If you’re alive on this planet, in this world, and what you want exists, there’s no inherent reason that you don’t deserve experiencing it or having it. So, go get it.
Sarah Small: That’s a perfect note to end on. Thank you so much for coming on the show today.
Dr. Josh Wagner: Thank you. Thank you for all you do, Sarah.
Sarah Small: As always, thank you so much for tuning in to today’s episode. As a reminder, I have a free guided hypnosis for you, that helps support cellular healing, more specifically, to boost and heal the immune system and start to just retrain the body’s habits and patterns that may not be as supportive or may not be working as efficiently or effectively for you to heal and your body and your mind and your energy and your whole freakin life. So in order to get access to this free guided hypnosis, simply go over to iTunes, share your honest feedback on the Uncensored Empath podcast, and make sure to screenshot your review, then email it over to Sarah with an H at theuncensoredempath.com, and in return, I will email you your free guided hypnosis. Thank you so much in advance for your support, and I’ll talk to you next time.
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March 31, 2020
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