127. Unlocking Confidence: Transform Fear into Strength with Erin Summ

Welcome to Mind Power Meets Mystic, The show where practical mind power and mystical wisdom collide with humor and wild curiosity. Yeah, we're not here to play it safe. I'm Cinthia Varkevisser, your resident spiritual shit disturber. I stir things up with mystic power and bold action. And I'm Michelle Walters, coach and Hypnotherapist. I bring strategy and transformative hypnosis to help you turn subconscious blocks into unstoppable momentum. Let's shake up your thinking, dive into your soul and make bold moves in your life. We'll take you on a journey of breakthrough and aha moments, exploring spirit, business, love relationships and self expansion. We're connecting you with your highest self and flipping fear into strength. So buckle up. We're doing this one wild, transformative conversation at a time.

Let's go.

y from shy to confident since: 2008

me so excited to have you.

Michelle and I were talking about, how in the heck does this really shy person turn into a confidence coach? Please tell us, yeah. Well, it's very interesting story. So I always, you know, I've always, even as a kid, as a shy kid, wanted to make a difference, like I somehow knew that I was put on this planet for a reason, right? So I always did things to help make a difference. As a kid, there was a group, an inner or not International, but national group called kids for saving Earth club, and anyone can start their own chapter. So I started my own chapter and taught kids in my school about recycling, and we wrote a letter to George Bush the first you know, and about elephants and all these different things. We made solar cookers. And all throughout my life, I've done different things to help people. And in after I graduated with a psychology degree, went to work for in a group home with foster kids, which I loved, but it was also a very challenging job, as you can imagine. And at the time, I was feeling like I wanted to do something different, but it wasn't sure what that was. So I had been to a few like networking in home parties at the time with the same the same it was the same type of parties, same consultant doing the parties, and she kept asking me if I wanted to join her team. And I said, Absolutely not. Like I I do not speak in front of people like that. Is not my jam. I'm way too shy. Um, and on top of that, it wasn't just like AVON or anything like that. It was actually passion parties. So,

yes, yeah. So one day, for some reason, I thought to myself, You know what, I really need to get out of my comfort zone. This could help me make some more money. Because at the time, doing, you know, working in the group home, I was barely making it, and I thought, this could be fun. Could help me build some confidence, make a little more money. And so I called her up one day. I said, You know what, I do? Want to join your team. So I joined passion parties, and I went around to people's, you know, women's homes, and we did parties, and I sold things that went lotions, potions, things that go buzz in the

night. And so I did that for five years, and I came way out of my shell. I gained tons of confidence. I built a team. I became Executive Director. I was almost always top one or two in sales on the team. And I really, you know, I really worked at it, and I really worked at my own confidence building. And it was during that time.

Question that one of the leaders, not my direct leader, but one a little bit above. She was a life coach. And I knew about life coaching at the time. I had, I, you know, I'd seen some stuff about it, and I thought it sounded really cool, but I wasn't. I didn't know a lot. And so she taught me a lot about, I can change my mindset. I can, I can rewire my brain. I can't, you know, she taught me about law of attraction. She taught me about all these different things. And I really fell in love with coaching, and I decided a few years later to go to coaching school, get my certification, and to become a coach. And I wanted to, I thought at the time, it was life mindset coaching, right? And so I made some morphs and shifts throughout the time, but it finally landed on confidence, because that's what I really wanted to support women with, because that was what I struggled with. And so I support women with their confidence and feeling, you know, more worthy, believing in themselves and getting out of their comfort zone, going after their desires, whether that's in business, or whether that's in their life, and just, I absolutely love it. I love watching the breakthroughs and the transformations that these women go through as they're gaining confidence and and realizing what the things that are holding them back and really starting to believe in themselves and feel more worthy.

Yeah, what an excellent story. I guess I kind of remembered that you had done this in the past, but I had forgotten about the passion parties. And

you know, most of our listeners are women, so they are going to appreciate the value of a passion party, and how, what a wonderful training ground, essentially, for

opening up.

Yeah, exactly. And I remember, like, I I had repeat customers quite a bit throughout the five years. And they would say to me often, wow, you've really grown a lot in the last year or two, or whatever, since I've I met you, or since I've seen you last so it was, it was fun getting that feedback throughout the years. Too,

beautiful, beautiful. Like about passion parties is that it's, it's kind of like a little microcosm of

your story is, I've gone to a couple, and it usually starts off, everyone is timid and nervous and so worried about whether what other people think and and then as you go along, you're like, holy shit, there's a whole there are a whole lot of

people who are ready to buy, and they're going to buy big, and it's really not about the money, it's about they're ready to explore. All of a sudden, there's a different kind of confidence. So I would love to hear you know, did you do? You have any stories about that where you could see people just shift their confidence in a party? I would have to think about that. I haven't done it for 10 years, so that's a good oh, sorry about that. I know it's been a while. How

about some of your other confidence, your other clients, where it's similar, where all of a sudden, it's, it's like, that aha moment and a quick shift, you know, yeah, a lot of times it's small stuff, but once a while it's like, it's huge, big light bulb moment for someone, yeah, yeah. So those stories are more easily produced by my brain.

I have one, one client that popped in real quick is

she was at my retreat, so I did a my first retreat right before COVID happened, and shut everything down. But it was just a weekend long, Friday night to Sunday noon, and she had massive breakthroughs during that retreat. She was extremely afraid since childhood, of speaking up, of using her voice. Um, she had a ton of, you know, trauma in her background from childhood and marriages, and she was basically told she didn't have a voice and couldn't speak up, or else she would get in, you know, trouble.

And she had massive breakthroughs at the retreat, and realized that she she could use her voice, and she it was safe to speak up, and it was all it was all okay. And at the time, she had been wanting, she's a accountant, and she was wanting to speak more. She was wanting to share more. She was wanting to be a business coach, and she was wanting to do all these things, write, you know, books and all these things. And the day after the retreat, she received a call asking her to do an interview, and she immediately said yes. And instead of being terrified, she was excited.

So normally she would have been like completely terrified, she probably would have said no or backed out. And immediately she shifted, and then she went on to become a business coach, and she went wrote chapters and books, and she started writing her own book, and she did all these things because she was able to have that breakthrough and say, I'm not scared anymore. I can put myself out there. I can't speak up. I can share my voice.

Breakthroughs are always so exciting. Yeah, I love it when, when things like, you know, boom.

And it all. And the energy shifts super fast, yeah, and and it and it opens, it opens doors. Yeah. I'm gonna give a little plug for Cinthia, just a little, tiny one here. So Cinthia does house clearings. And one time, she invited me to go with her to a house clearing, and we did all the things Cinthia told us to do around the house, to clear the energy, and we were putting away all the stuff, and somebody knocked on the door and said, Is this house for sale? No kidding, this happened. So it's different kind of breakthrough. But I think it's, it relates to me, because it's that, that sudden, when, when? I mean, sometimes energy shifts slowly, and sometimes energy just goes, what? And, you know, don't we all get excited about that? Yeah, well, it's so going back to that point too. During the retreat, I had a photographer who lived in the area we did in Tahoe, and she had to leave on Saturday for a couple hours in the middle of the day, and when she came back, we had done a ton of work, releasing, and, know, all this,

just lots of good stuff, overcoming of stuff, you know. And so she left for a couple hours, and she came back, and she walked into the house, and she was like, whoa. What happened in here? She was just like, the energy in you people are different. The energy in here is different. You guys look different. It was amazing how fast that shift happened. And the other thing that she had the idea to do was to take close up pictures of everyone's faces right when they arrived and right before they left. And we compared them, and boy, most of them had, just like, totally shifted. Their eyes were brighter they had instead of this kind of smile, you know, there was just like, this radiant, joyful, real smile, instead of being forced. And, I mean, they had so many massive shifts. It was incredible. Yeah, and that's what lights me up. You know, that's what it like, gives me life.

You have been listening to mind, power meets mystic with me. Michelle Walters and my co host, Cinthia Varkevisser, we want to tell you about a special gig the two of us have going on. It's called mind power meets mystic, the project, and it starts off on a zoom call with Cinthia. Cinthia tell everybody what they can expect. So for the first half of our session, you will be with me, and Michelle will be very quietly in the background preparing to do her work. What we will do is that we will talk about the one thing that you either want to amp up or that you want to release. And through the intuitive work, I help you get boil it down to its essence, and then give you an RX of three practical things to do to set you on your way. And then Michelle magically appears. What is it that you do that? Michelle, I have been listening in but not participating in the first half of the call. I have an excellent idea of what Cinthia means when she says something, and I have an excellent idea of quickly getting to what my client is all about and his or her individual strengths. I turn all of this into a 20 to 30 minute hypnosis session on the second half of the call, which, when we're done, I strip off and send you as an mp three that you can listen to over and over again. You also will have Cynthia's three point recommendations and the recording of the Zoom call. It is a fantastic one hour offering a great gift for yourself or for someone you don't know what to get such insights, and we've gotten such great reviews. So if you're interested, send me or Cinthia an email. You'll find our contact information in the show notes, and we'll tell you how to get started. You do these longer retreats, but then you also do some short retreats too, don't you well? So yeah, at the beginning of the month, I did a two day Saturday, Sunday retreat, and that was for visioning. So we did, we made vision boards on this last day, on the second day, but we did tons of work around mindset on the first day. Because I, I believe that if we have this big vision, but we don't believe we can reach it, you know, we have all these beliefs that I am not enough, I don't believe in myself. We have beliefs around, you know, in income, what we can make, or, you know, what we can attract. We're not going to reach that vision. So we do tons of work around mindset, limiting, beliefs, fears, all the things before we even move on to making vision boards, and that makes a huge difference for these women in reaching their visions. That's brilliant, because sometimes people don't even know what they're looking for, and so you're right, their vision is limited, or it's just in the wrong direction.

: 2025

It's beautiful. I think beautiful.

Where are you going in: 2025

building confidence and self worth and different things like that. So continuing to do that and just building more retreats for sure. Okay, so I know you did the passion parties,

and I know that you're a wedding efficient.

So do you do other things too? Erin, like you, you strike me as one of those people who's like, oh yeah. And then I do a little of this, and then I do a little of that.

Right now it's just wedding officiant and life coaching.

But yeah, I do, I do bilingual wedding ceremony, so I speak Spanish too. So I do do weddings in Spanish quite often, and I do do some premarital coaching with some of the couples as well. Who who are interested in that. So how did you get into doing work as a wedding officiant?

It sounds like really happy work. It is

actually funny story. So the woman who signed me up to do passion parties is also a wedding officiant,

long? What year was it like?: 2011

you know, I'm on lots of vendor lists and venue lists and all that. What distinguishes you as a wedding efficient? Why do people choose Aaron?

Besides the fact you have a great name for your business, I'm Aaron.

I mean, I think people like

that. I'm,

I'm neat, you know, like, I have that, like a personality that's fun, and I'm not super serious. You know, there are, there are wedding officiants out there. I think that are very like serious, or they're religious, and people are not looking for religion in their wedding ceremonies.

Yeah, my name to as you wish wedding. So that came from the Princess Bride. And I have been hired numerous times based solely on that

which is fun. Um, I get to do they want me to do the little uh,

speech from the wedding, as in the

past, the priest from the from the from the movie with the speech and everything. So that's fun.

But, you know, they see that I have fun in my pictures, and I I personalize the ceremony if they want to, to to put their story in what they love about each other, some like stuff like that. So it's fun. I would think that you're an amazing officiant based on your your speaking skills and the shyness aspect, because you're really listening to what they want, even though they don't they may not know what they want, and you can pop that in as well. Yeah, I was a wedding wedding officiant way back. I know. Can you believe that it was I know the.

Things that you this was, I thought I knew everything about you. Cinthia, okay, it was last century, and it was the same thing. My teacher wanted me to take on some of her she says, I'm getting too old for this. I don't want to travel as much and and get into it as much. It's amazing. It's so much fun to watch the transition. The one thing I didn't have at that time was I was still so nervous that I couldn't really pay attention and get out of my own way, because it's not about me, it's really their event, and all I'm doing is delivering what's so important to them, right in words, and because of your experience, I can see that. I can see that happening. I also think it's really incredible. You just can't you just told us the story about visioning, and you have these before and after pics. I also did real estate, and I love taking pictures from the buyers as they're they're signing their loan documents, and you feel like you know they're signing their life away, and then the day that they give their keys, because two completely different looks. So have you ever done that where you take pictures before the wedding for your own self to see them, because there's nerves, there's everything, and then, because you're so you're such a professional that you calm their nerves, get them to confidence, and then just get them to celebrate. Do you have pictures of those as well? Because that's, it sounds like, that's who you are, that's what you do, right? You give them that shift. That's very

observant of you. But yeah, yes, I do. Actually, I've had, I've never so two things, so No, I've never done that. In terms of the pictures, that's a great idea,

because I have had a lot of couples write testimonials and things afterwards who've said we're really nervous, and Erin was able to keep us calm and, like, help the nerves and everything. Because, I mean, sometimes they're standing up there and they are, like, freaking out at the top, you know, at the top of the aisle, and I'm sitting there going, Okay, keep breathing. Don't lock your knees, right? You're good. And they're trying not to cry, or they're crying and they're going,

like going, it's, you're okay, just keep breathing. You need help. And I they have, you know, given a lot of response about that, I am able to calm them down. So yeah,

I love that absolutely, absolutely beautiful. Thank you. When you are working with people to help them shift their mindset, what is one of the the biggest obstacles that you see people facing in terms of trying to to go from some kind of a negative or shortfall mindset to a more a more open or positive mindset.

I think

sometimes, you know, it depends on the person. Some people are very coachable and very open to that, and they make changes very quickly, and they take off very quickly. Others are very entrenched in their beliefs, in their maybe negative mindset or pessimistic mindset, or beliefs about themselves or the world, and it is much more challenging to

get them to see these are the beliefs that you're carrying, and I know that because you keep saying it like, you keep your verbally, vocally, saying it out loud.

And so those are the ones I find the most challenging, where there were so entrenched, and they just keep going back to that over and over and over and over and over again. And they're not enough that the world is against them, or whatever it is, you know. So there's, there's a lot of beliefs that we carry with us, and some of them come from childhood, some of them come from our own experiences. But as as we, if you know the law of attraction, we know that

what we believe we attract. So if we're having those beliefs in our heads, we're going to start attracting that. But we might think, well, the world keeps sending me these things, but we're in reality, it's really our mindset that is attracting exactly what we're getting. So it's it can be challenging sometimes to get those breakthroughs

when we're very, very entrenched and we can't see those beliefs for ourselves, right? Yeah, I mean, I see the same thing when folks contact me for hypnotherapy work, right? And and the folks who do better are typically the ones who are a little bit more open minded, a little bit more willing to play, a little bit more willing to recognize that, no, you don't have to do A after B. You could do B after A. Yeah,

you know, I know you've never tried it that way.

But what if you were to try it that way just once and see what happened? You know, but I do think you know, in alignment to kind of what you're saying is a certain degree of openness and willing to experiment and willing to, you know, if you don't have some

vision or expectation that it could be different, it could be better.

It's really hard to get there. Yeah, yeah. I actually like the challenging, entrenched clients. It can be frustrating, but they also tend to be the most loyal clients, because you're shifting the you're shifting that one thing that they just couldn't get over. And these clients are usually so smart that they just use a different different sentence for the same thought, right? So they think that they're they're working things in a different direction, but it's always, always the same.

I'd love to know when you have a client like that,

because we all have our own secret sauce of how to of how to deal. I would love to know one is, how do you identify them? Because I know that you can pick them up very quickly, like snap, snap, snap, right?

Do you have a secret ingredient on how to reach out and connect with them so that, so that they can go, Okay, I'm totally not into not totally not. I'm totally not buying into it, but I might be, you know, and that's, it's that little, that little thread of hope that keeps them coming back and keeps them coming back, and then the shift, yeah, I think continuing to show them when they are in that mindset, that here, you know, are you seeing that you're These are the words you're using right now. Um,

like, lack mindset, for example. You know, there's and I hear this a lot, too. At the visioning workshop, I heard this from multiple women, is, I can't make X money because then that makes me greedy and a bad person, because they have people in their lives who are financially very well off, and

they maybe aren't very good people, or they maybe are greedy, and they don't help other people. So then they turn that onto themselves and say, Well, I if I make more money, that means I'm greedy and I'm not a good person. So it's, it's showing them that, right? Like, well, just the fact that you think that and that you're worried about that means that that's never going to happen to you like you're not ever going to be that person, right? And so then continuing to ask them questions too, about to dig into that belief more. Well, do you really think that that will you become that well, what is it that you would do with more money, you know, versus your other family members who don't help anybody when they have money or whatever, and so like just continuing to ask them questions to get them to think and see, you know what that is. You're right. That isn't me, and that's never going to be me. And making more money, I will be able to help more people. Instead of being a victim to my circumstances and being stuck, I can actually, if I have an abundance, and I can actually share with more people, I can donate to that charity. I can help my family members. You know, what would you do with that money? So helping them to see what, where they can shift and,

you know, grow and actually help more people. So that's just a finance piece, right? Like a lack mentality, helping them to see that, that

totally makes sense. Okay, I have one more question for you, because this fascinates me. Yeah,

in our in this episode, you, you like to use the word words, right? And, and so, because you're a confidence coach, and you just came up with the, you know, the phrase that that you heard so much, what has been the, you know, what is the common theme, besides the the lack mentality, especially in finances, and do you do replacement words as well as digging into, you know, really getting down into the belief system. And if you do, what are they? Just a couple, yeah. So it kind of depends on the circumstance, but I like to help them rewrite, like a mantra or affirmation, right? So I'm

trying to think of a specific, specific words, but

things like when it comes to worth. For example, self worth,

it can be challenging for us to rewrite stories around our worth, or around, you know, any limiting belief.

So, for example, someone who doesn't feel worthy at all, who has very low self worth, they.

Like they're not going to just be able to say, I am worthy. I'm worthy of everything I desire. They're not going to be able to say that because it's not going to feel it's going to feel icky, right, to be able to shift that really quickly,

or to have such a drastic shift in in mindset. So I will tell them things like, okay, how can we make this affirmation feel good as you're working your way up to feeling worthy. So it could be something like, I am feeling more and more worthy every day. I'm believing in my worth more and more every day, instead of just like, Yes, I am worthy. Because that's they're just going to like, run away from that one, right? So helping them to do incremental changes in their beliefs as they're shifting, instead of just like a full on off the 10 foot diving.

I love that. I think that's so important and valuable. It's one of the things that I teach when I talk about work in hypnosis. You know, people somehow think that in hypnosis, they're gonna, I don't know, become a completely different person, or tell me that they, you know, hid candy in the sofa cushions when they were a kid. And this was just terrible, you know. And, and it's like, no, these things don't happen, yeah. But we have to, we have to change you by working within your belief system and kind of going to the level that we can get to today, now and then, over over time, those things add up. Yeah. So, Aaron, tell us about what you have next what, what kinds of great ways can you connect with people? Yeah. So there's lots of ways to connect with me. I'm, I'm the only Aaron some on the planet. So if you look up Aaron some, you'll find all my social medias, my YouTube, my Facebook, Instagram, all the things, um, but the things that I have coming up. I have a monthly empowered woman Speaker Series, and it's all on Zoom, so you can join from anywhere in the world. And we have, I have myself. I speak every month, and then I have three other speakers each month, and we talk about all things empowering women, all things confidence, all you know we there's all sorts of different subjects that we talk about. Michelle, you've been a speaker on there,

and we've had speakers, couple different speakers on ADHD. One spoke about post menopausal ADHD diagnosis. We've had people talk about healing trauma. We've had people talk about limiting beliefs, you know, all the things.

And so the next one is March 6, and it's in the afternoon, one to 230 Pacific, and you can register for it. You'll get the information. Then you'll get the information for each one moving forward each month. And,

you know, we have, we have a core group of people that tend to show up, and we're growing it, and they absolutely love being empowered and inspired each each month. And I had a great time when I got to be a speaker. It was a, it was a great series with you. Had other wonderful, wonderful people, really interesting, helpful speakers in your group. So thank you. Thank you for coming and joining us this week on mind power means mystic. Cinthia and I, we're so happy to get to speak to you today. Erin, thank you. Thank you.

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