132: When You've Done Everything and Your Reality Still Isn't Changing

Have you ever felt like you’ve done everything right—all the mindset work, all the strategy, all the “manifestation” tools—and yet, your life still isn’t matching what you desire?

I know how frustrating that can feel. In this episode, I’m diving deep into the hidden reasons why your outer world might not be shifting, even though you’ve been showing up and doing the work.

I walk you through three often-overlooked layers that can keep us stuck in repeating patterns—and how to gently start releasing them so you can finally experience real change:

💫 Nervous system repatterning: How our bodies can unconsciously “reset” us back to old comfort zones, and why feeling safe in expansion is key to sustaining success.
💫 Secondary gain: The subtle ways we might benefit from not getting what we want (and how to lovingly explore those patterns without shame).
💫 Radical approval: Why disapproving of “what is” keeps us trapped—and how genuine acceptance can become the fastest way to create the life you’ve been longing for.

You’ll leave this conversation feeling grounded, supported, and equipped with practical tools you can use today—like my favorite simple nervous system exercise that can help you shift your energy in under a minute.

Because the truth is, the moment you stop waiting for life to be perfect and start approving of what is, you’ve already changed everything. 🌿

🎧 Tune in now, and let’s explore how to align your body, mind, and energy with the abundance that’s already within reach.

👉 katenorthrup.com/reset — Download The Money Reset, my free guided experience to rewire your nervous system for wealth and calm your relationship with money.

“The fastest way to get what you want is to approve of the way things are right now.”–Kate Northrup

🎤 Let’s Dive into the Good Stuff on Plenty 🎤

00:00 Introduction to Abundance and Life's Finite Nature
00:37 Frustrations in Personal Growth and Change
01:06 Understanding Secondary Gain in Personal Experiences
02:20 Neural Patterning and Its Impact on Health
08:04 Exploring Financial Avoidance and Secondary Gain
10:10 Fear of Success and Its Implications
12:26 The Importance of Approval in Life
14:29 Transforming Disapproval into Approval
19:30 Key Takeaways for Personal Transformation

Links and Resources:

Mama Gena
Loving What Is, By Byron Katie

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Related Episode:

Healing Money Regret, Anxiety, and Physical Pain Through Neurosomatic Intelligence with Elisabeth Kristof (085)

Episode Transcript

Kate Northrup (00:00):
And our life is so finite. Our time here on

(00:03):
earth is so incredibly short.Why would we spend our lives
disapproving of what is? Thefastest way to get what you want
is to approve of the way thingsare right now. Welcome to
Plenty.
I'm your host Kate Northrup andtogether we are going on a

(00:25):
journey to help you have anincredible relationship with
money, time, and energy, and tohave abundance on every possible
level. Every week, we're gonnadive in with experts and
insights to help you unlock alife of hunting. Let's go fill

(00:46):
our cups. So I wanna dive inaround this topic because this
can be one of the mostfrustrating experiences to feel
like, I'm trying so hard tochange. Why is it not working?
So there's a couple of thingsthat aren't as common to discuss
when it comes to my externallife does not match what I want,

(01:09):
and I've done everything, andit's still not working. Let's
address them. There there'sthere's really three of them
that most people I don't thinkare understanding or talking
about. One of them is thesecondary gain. So I was talking
to a woman on a coaching callthe other day, and she was
having the experience where shewas a really sick kid.

(01:32):
And so her whole early life wasaround her caregivers
surrounding her to make sure shewas gonna survive. It was very
much tied into illness wasintertwined with love and care.
And throughout her life, despitehaving created beautiful

(01:53):
success, she ends up gettingsick a lot at these key moments
of expansion. And one of thethings that can happen, I don't
know that this was true for her,but she definitely in this
example had an early imprintingof when I am sick and having

(02:16):
trouble physically, I get love,care, and attention. And her
whole early imprinting was that,was this is love.
Love is I'm sick, I get caredfor. And so it made sense that
now in her adult life, she wasstill getting sick all the time

(02:39):
because that was her primary wayof relating from early days. And
so in a situation like that,someone would want to work on,
Okay, what ways am Iunconsciously manifesting
manifesting a a situation ofbeing sick or having trouble

(03:02):
because that's the only way Iknew how to get love or
attention, or those just gotpatterned together. And there's
no judgment here, right? Likeneural patterning is neural
patterning.
It's not a choice. It's not acharacter flaw. Right? Like a
baby whose nervous system isdeveloping, whose brain and body

(03:23):
are developing, it's not likethey're choosing to say, oh,
sickness matches with love. No.
Their nervous system is justwiring that way. And so it just
takes practice as adults torewire for different pairings,
for different neural patterning,and and we'll get into that in a

(03:45):
minute. But in her particularcase, there was a pairing of oh,
when I'm like this, I get I getlove, I get care. Other examples
of this might be that as achild, you may have needed to
act out in order to get love andattention. You may have needed

(04:07):
to achieve your parents proud interms of sports or academic
achievement.
You may have needed to look acertain way in order to get love
or approval. So all of us havethese different neural
patternings associated with whenI do this, I get love and care.

(04:30):
And that's normal, but it's notalways healthy as we get into
our adult years. And so that wasone piece that I wanted to say,
that if you are finding that nomatter what you do with quote
unquote working on yourself, youkeep getting the same result, it
is very likely that there's adeeper neural patterning in

(04:51):
there that is associating theresult that you keep getting
that you don't want with loveand care and safety. And what
would need to happen in thatcase is to practice consciously
signaling to your nervous systemthat it's safe while doing a

(05:14):
different kind of behavior.
So for example, if if you'resomebody who gets sick all the
time at moments of peakexpansion, when you are headed
towards the big success, right,like when it's looking like, oh,
wow, I'm gonna have the biggestlaunch of all time, or when you
start to really succeed at yourjob, or when you're about to

(05:36):
publish your book, or whateverit is, that's the time you need
to double down on signaling toyour body that you're safe so
that at the peak of thatmountain or at the peak of that
roller coaster, right, you'reclimbing, climbing, climbing,
climbing, the roller coasterthen doesn't need to bottom out
and, like, take you back down.It can actually just continue to

(05:59):
go flat or even rise again.That's when you need to use your
tools for neural repatterning.And there's, you know, if you're
just tuning into Plenty for thefirst time, I teach a lot of
these inside my programs, butone of them that I really love
that's simple is you can noticegravity. So this takes a little

(06:21):
practice, but you can do itright now as I'm talking, you're
listening.
But as we sit here together, youcan notice the weight of gravity
on your body. And you can dothat while breathing, and you
might be like, really? This isit? This is the whole tool? And
my answer will be yes.
Yes, it is. Nervous systemrepatterning can be shockingly

(06:46):
subtle. And that's why weoftentimes discount it because
we're like, there's no parade,there's no fireworks. Like, that
couldn't possibly be effective.We're so used to quick fixes.
We're so used to some kind offanfare. We're so used to, you
know, really intense stimulus.But actually, nervous system

(07:10):
repatterning is pretty subtle.And it's small changes over time
that compound to a completelynew reality. The thing that many
personal growth folks totallydiscount because they just don't
know is that if your nervoussystem thermostat is set for a

(07:35):
particular experience and youhaven't invested any time or
energy in the embodiedexperience of shifting that set
point, no matter what you do inyour three d reality, your
reality externally will notchange.
Because always, always, always,our nervous system is going to

(07:57):
bring us back to the thermostatsetting that feels like home. So
you've got to work on yournervous system. Okay, so that
was thing number one. Thingnumber two is secondary gain. So
secondary gain is the thing thatwe get to experience or not

(08:20):
experience or keep doing or keepbeing or keep, you know, or not
do by not getting the thing wewant.
Okay? So here's an example. WhenI was in my early 20s and I was
overspending and I was reallyunconscious with my money, and I
wasn't paying any attention towhat I earned or what I owed or

(08:40):
how much I made or any of it orhow much I spent. I was just in
full financial avoidance. I saidI wanted to stop doing that, but
I wouldn't actually change thebehavior, and there was a
nervous system healing piece inthere, but there was also
secondary gain.

(09:01):
I got to continue to be a childwhen I was financially avoidant.
I got to not grow up. I got tokeep being a little girl in
certain ways by not actuallypaying attention to my money.
The secondary gain felt reallygood. And honestly for me,

(09:23):
there's a lot of ways that Igrew up really early, and I
didn't feel like I could fullybe an immature child when it was
age appropriate to be animmature child.
So I kept that shit going oninto my twenties around my money
because I was getting asecondary gain out of the

(09:44):
behavior that I said I wanted tostop, but actually there was a
big part of me that didn'tactually want to stop because I
wanted the secondary gain more.So for you, ask yourself, just
be ruthless about it. No oneelse is listening. Just get out
your journal or ask yourself inyour head, what am I getting out
of not getting what I want? Whatis my secondary gain here from

(10:08):
not getting what I want?
And just see what comes up. Asecond layer of that is not
really secondary gain, but it'sbut it's related. And that's
another question you can askyourself that's a powerful self
coaching question, and that is,what am I afraid would happen if
I met the person of my dreams,if I built muscle and got really

(10:33):
strong, if I built a businessthat was paying me, you know,
$50,000 a month, if I got thebook deal, if I, you know,
finished the painting and soldmy first painting, whatever it
is for you. Ask yourself, whatam I afraid would happen if I

(10:53):
insert thing you want, thatyou're frustrated isn't
happening yet. And then just seewhat comes up, because it may be
that unconsciously orsubconsciously you have a fear
that is overriding actuallygetting the thing you want.
For example, if you say, what amI afraid would happen if my

(11:15):
business brought in $500,000 ayear? Well, and then you just
let your psyche give you theanswer. Right? This is not like,
oh, let me think logically aboutthis. You want to let your
psyche give you the answer.
And if the answer comes back,oh, I'm afraid that my family
wouldn't love me anymore, wellthen yeah, obviously you're not

(11:35):
going to take the actions youneed to take, or you're going to
subconsciously make sure yourbusiness never makes $500,000 a
year, because of course youdon't want to have your family
not love you anymore. So there'slittle gremlins, you know,
hanging out in there. There'sthese little parts of us that
are afraid, and we want to givethem a voice, because once we
give them a voice, the very actof voicing it, saying it out

(12:00):
loud, writing it down, makes itso that that part of ourself can
still be there, but that part ofourself no longer needs to run
the show because now we'reacknowledging it. It's not about
getting rid of these parts. It'snot about silencing these parts.
It's not about even letting go,necessarily, of old patterns.

(12:20):
It's about consciously It'sletting those parts of ourselves
have a voice and speak so thatthey don't have to try to get
our attention unconsciously bysabotaging our behavior or
sabotaging our reality. It'sreally amazing when you just let
those parts, those scared partsspeak, or whatever parts they

(12:43):
are, how much less power theyhave over us. And then they get
to still be here, but not drivethe bus. Okay.
So that was secondary gain, andwhat are you afraid would happen
if you actually had the thingyou want? And then the final
piece of this is approval. Whatdo I mean? Well, my friend

(13:06):
Regina Thomas Hauer, aka MamaGina, says, The sooner you get
into agreement with what is, thesooner what's next falls in your
lap. What does that mean?
What does getting into agreementwith something mean? It means
finding a way to actuallyapprove of and get pleasure out

(13:30):
of what is right now. ByronKatie's book, Loving What Is, is
another amazing resource forthis, but Mama Gina's work is
great. And so what does thismean? It means learning to
practice, being appreciative ofhow things are right now, and

(13:53):
find the perfection in the waythings are right now, exactly as
they are, no changes.
Why is that powerful? Becausedisapproval and resistance to
what is sucks our life away. Andit is the surest way to prevent

(14:15):
I mean, is the surest way toassure that we never actually
enjoy our lives. There willnever be a moment when your life
is perfect. There will never bea moment when your ducks are all
in a row.
There will never be a momentwhen you have everything squared
away. Ain't never gonna happen.But every single moment of your
life, you're here. Your heart isbeating, and our life is so

(14:36):
finite. Our time here on Earthis so incredibly short.
Why would we spend our livesdisapproving of what is? The
fastest way to get what you wantis to approve of the way things
are right now, unabashedly.Unabashedly. So what's an

(14:58):
example of this? Well, anexample of this is like, right
now, I live in a neighborhoodthat I don't like.
We've lived here for three and ahalf years. We're about to move
out, but I live in thisneighborhood I don't like. I
don't like it for a variety ofreasons. Number one, there's
stray cats everywhere. Numbertwo, it's like crawling with
roosters and chickens.
So there's just roosters cawingconstantly. Number three, people

(15:19):
don't clean up after their dogs.So when you walk down the
street, you have to, like, avoidall the dog poop. And there's,
like, trash everywhere. There'straffic.
Everyone in Miami is trying tokill each other on the street.
They don't pay attention topedestrians. It's like a whole
thing. And and then it's smellybecause people leave the trash.
So anyway, that's a lot ofdisapproval.
Right? Like, that's a lot ofdisapproval. I could walk my

(15:42):
kids to school and then take mywalk to the office in that state
of disapproval, like complainingand whining about everyone and
everything, and da da da da. Butyou know what? That is a solid
fourteen to twenty minutes of myday that is setting up the
energy with which I enter myday, and it is setting up the

(16:06):
energy with which I transitioninto family time in the
afternoon and evening.
Am I really going to bring thatlevel of judgment and
disapproval into my workday toshow up here with you in this
recording, or when I'm doingother people's podcasts, or in
my writing, or just in myinteractions with my team and my

(16:27):
husband here at the office? Youbetter believe I am not going to
do that because I know that whowe are is what we get. And what
we choose to put our attentionon determines who we are,
vibrationally speaking, likeenergetically speaking. So do I
every now and again have tobitch about it and, like, get it
out of my system? I do.

(16:47):
Am I moving? I am. Because Idon't like it. However, I find
ways to be in approval as we'rewalking to school in the
morning. So I like, look at howcute the little doggies are on
my way by, even if their ownersaren't picking up their poop,
because the dogs themselves areprecious.
I notice how funny it is that mygirls play in a playground every

(17:11):
day at recess where they'rechasing chickens. Like, that's
funny. I didn't see that as partof their lives. That's a whole
life experience that they'regonna remember. It's kind of
sweet.
It's kind of funny. And Iappreciate the cultural richness
of our neighborhood. I I I amnot going to have this level of
chaos again right on my street,and that's kind of fun.

(17:37):
Adventure. Right?
So those are ways. This is notthe most high leverage example,
but honestly, we got to useeverything we can in our lives
to shift us from disapproval toapproval. We know this with our
children. Right? Like, if youare a parent and you are
constantly telling your childwhat they're doing wrong,

(18:00):
constantly correcting them, theyare going to eventually just
become a mirror for all problemsthat you see in them versus when
you're celebrating them, whenyou're noticing, oh, hey, thanks
for putting your dish in thedishwasher.
Oh, hey, thanks for putting yourclothes in the hamper even when
I didn't ask you. Hey, you aresuch a loving, kind person.

(18:22):
You're so smart. I love you somuch. I love just hanging out
with you.
You're the best. Right? Like,when we pour approval into our
children, they get filled up,and we tend to receive the
version of them that also is inalignment with what we would

(18:43):
want to approve of. Now thatdoesn't mean we're trying to
control our children, and ofcourse kids are gonna have big
feelings and they're gonna, youknow, not listen to you, and
they're we don't only approve ofour children when they're
behaving the way we want themto, but it's the same with our
partners. Right?
If you're constantly naggingyour husband, if you're
constantly nagging your wife, ifyou're constantly, like, you
know, going on and on andbitching with your girlfriends

(19:04):
about all the problems, Iguarantee you, you are going to
be a match for the version ofyour spouse who drives you
crazy. Versus if you start torelate to them as the king or
queen that you know they are, asthe beautiful human that you
know is their most powerfulversion of themselves, that is

(19:25):
the version that will come outto play with you more often.
It's the same thing with ourlives. So in summary, if you
feel like you are doing all thethings, and you've put in all
this work, and your externallife is still not changing, I
have three things for you.Number one, you've got to look
at your nervous system.

(19:47):
Does your nervous systemactually feel safe to experience
the thing that you say you want?Number two, what is the
secondary gain you're receiving?What do you get to experience or
not experience or do or not doas a result of not having the
thing you say you want? Youknow, 2.5 is what are you afraid

(20:08):
would happen if you got thething you say you want? And then
number three is So we have one,two, 2.5, and three.
And number three is, how muchare you addicted to disapproving
of yourself, your life, andothers? Because the more you
disapprove of everything, theless you will get what you want.

(20:31):
But when you approve ofeverything as it is right now,
guess what? You instantly getwhat you want because you have
shifted yourself from instead ofwaiting until you get what you
want to be happy to insteadwanting what you have, which is
the surest path to happinessthere ever was. I hope this was
helpful.
Thanks so much for listening.See you next time. What if

(20:54):
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(21:17):
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