The Happy Engineer · 2026-08-11 · 56 min
Key moments - from our scoring
Substance score
54 / 100
Five dimensions, 20 points each
Tim Scher brings three decades of expertise in unconscious beliefs and hypnotic coaching to explain why harder work and intelligence aren't the answer for engineering leaders seeking advancement. Drawing from his traumatic childhood experience watching his father's near-fatal accident, Tim illustrates how 'big T' and 'little T' traumas form unconscious beliefs in our subconscious minds that we carry into adulthood without awareness. Engineers in particular often adopt a 'play not to lose' mentality rather than playing to win, which paradoxically makes them feel like they're always losing even when objectively succeeding. Zach White and Tim explore the distinction between subconscious and unconscious mind, trace Tim's pivotal discovery of hypnosis at Indiana University Northwest, and detail his breakthrough methodology. Through thousands of weight loss and anxiety cases, Tim discovered that motivation and willpower fail because they don't address the core limiting belief - the real mechanism behind sustainable change. His eight-step process, with a 99% success rate, uses hypnotic regression to access the initial sensitizing event where beliefs formed, reframes childhood traumas, builds new resources, and upgrades beliefs from 'I'm not enough' to 'I am more than enough.' This work generates staggering, sustainable breakthroughs that last because once a belief upgrades, you cannot revert to the old way of thinking.
Because motivation is temporary and willpower is finite; they don't address the unconscious belief driving the behavior. Until you upgrade the core limiting belief - such as 'I'm not worthy' or 'I'm not good enough' - your unconscious mind will sabotage your efforts, no matter how motivated you feel initially.
Your conscious mind is your librarian handling your aware thoughts, your unconscious mind is your hard drive storing beliefs and processes completely outside awareness, and your subconscious is somewhere in between - partially aware and passing files back and forth.
It uses hypnotic regression to take you back to the initial sensitizing event where a limiting belief formed in childhood, gives you adult resources and safety you didn't have as a child, reframes the experience, and upgrades the belief itself; once upgraded, you cannot revert to the old belief because you now know better.
Yes; your brain forms unconscious beliefs based on childhood experiences without your permission or conscious awareness, and most people never realize these beliefs exist or how they're sabotaging them because talk therapy addresses family dynamics but not the core belief itself.
Playing not to lose means your goal is to avoid bad outcomes rather than achieve good ones, which creates constant anxiety and a sense of never having enough; even when you win objectively, you feel like you're losing because you're driven by fear and the belief that you're not enough.
Our reviewer’s read on each dimension, with quotes from the episode.
The episode contains some valuable frameworks (the fear-laddering exercise, belief-to-results chain, level-one/two/three fear model from Susan Jeffers) mixed with substantial filler and repetition. Tim's core insight about unconscious beliefs driving behavior is solid, but much of the conversation circles the same ideas without adding specificity. The weight-loss case study is illustrative but not novel for audience members familiar with trauma-informed coaching.
I was playing not to lose. How do I not lose? How do I not lose? And when you play not to lose, you feel like you're losing even if you're winning.
Your biggest breakthroughs are hidden. They're hiding right now in the places you don't want to go. So wherever you are resisting, that's where you need to go next.
While Tim's One Belief Away method and hypnotic regression technique are presented as original, the core concepts - trauma forming unconscious beliefs, fear underneath surface problems, the need to reframe limiting beliefs - are well-established in CBT, psychotherapy, and self-help literature. The framing toward engineering leaders is tailored but not fundamentally new. Hosts of podcasts frequently discuss belief systems and fear; this episode doesn't challenge or complicate the conventional wisdom significantly.
It's not just the experiences we go through, it's the beliefs that form in our unconscious mind about what we think those experiences mean.
Upgrading beliefs and improving your communication skills, not your technical skills, will get you that next promotion.
Tim Scher is credentialed with 34 years of experience and 15,000+ sessions, which is substantial. However, he is primarily a hypnotist and beliefs coach without direct operational experience building or scaling engineering organizations, managing teams at scale, or navigating corporate hierarchies as an executive. His expertise is therapeutic/coaching, not engineering leadership. For an engineering-focused podcast, this is a tangential expert rather than a peer operator.
Tim Scher, the foremost expert on freeing people from anxiety, past traumas, and the bad habits.
the creator of a really powerful and revolutionary technique. It's known as the One Belief Away Method.
The episode lacks concrete data, metrics, and named examples relevant to engineering leadership. Tim mentions a weight-loss case study (non-specific), his son's experience with Dale Carnegie (anecdotal, not evidence), and broad claims about 99% success rates without defining success or providing independent validation. The host later adds a three-level fear model from Susan Jeffers but doesn't ground it in engineering-specific metrics, project outcomes, promotion timelines, or salary impacts that an engineering operator would find credible.
I did thousands of sessions to help people with weight loss.
it has about 99% success rate. There are every once in a while someone it just doesn't click for.
Host Zach White asks generally strong follow-up questions (unpacking Tim's background, probing the weight-loss mechanism, testing for outliers with the engineer's curiosity about the 1%), and demonstrates genuine intellectual engagement. However, he rarely pushes back or challenges Tim's claims; he largely affirms and builds on them. Zach doesn't probe the absence of clinical research, skepticism around 99% claims, or whether hypnotic regression is empirically superior to other modalities. The conversation is collaborative but lacks productive tension or critical scrutiny.
So real quick, Tim, the engineer in me has to get curious about the 1% or the 0.1%, whatever it is. And my test engineer days, it's like, you don't just want to dismiss outliers.
And so I guess I'm curious. How do we, as these analytical engineering types, kind of get out of our own way and out of our head to be open to this? Because, uh, it's very easy to be skeptical.
Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the words that came up most.
Watch the Engineering Director Promotion Plan (free): You know what to do. You just can't get yourself to do it. That gap isn't a discipline problem - it's a belief problem hiding in your unconscious. Zach sits down with Tim Shurr, a hypnotist and mindset expert with 34 years and 15,000+ sessions helping people rewire the beliefs that quietly run their careers. They dig into why smart, hardworking engineering leaders get stuck chasing promotions, working harder and harder, and still hitting the same ceiling - and what actually creates lasting change. If you've been passed over, burned out, or told to "work on your executive presence" with no real path forward, this one's for you.
Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.
Speaker A: I wasn't playing life to win, you know, Zach. I was playing not to lose. How do I not lose? How do I not lose? And when you play not to lose, you feel like you're losing even if you're winning.
Speaker B: Welcome to the Happy Engineer Podcast, the place where we help engineers to build your career, balance your life, and be happy. My name is Zach White, a former engineer, now turned CEO, lifestyle engineering coach, and your host. I believe that success without fulfillment is failure. Join me each week as we bring you an inspiring leader or message to help you enjoy both. Thanks for investing time with me today. Now let's do this. Do you work hard? Have you been hustling after success in your career and life for a long time? Are you the kind of person who does what it takes to get to the next level? I would imagine you are, or, uh, you wouldn't be a part of the happy engineer community. But here's the problem. When you're chasing success in your career and life, what you chase runs away. It's true for rabbits, and it's true in your career. What if you could change just one belief and start seeing success come toward you instead? That is what's possible. And today, you're going to meet the world's best unconscious beliefs specialist, my friend, Tim Scher. Tim is the foremost expert on freeing people from anxiety, past traumas, and the bad habits and things in our subconscious minds that sabotage your success. He is the creator of a really powerful and revolutionary technique. It's known as the One Belief Away Method. It's been developed through his facilitation of over 15,000 individual hypnosis coaching sessions and hundreds of group training experiences over the last 34 years of his career. Tim is going to explain and show you why working harder and chasing after intelligence and smarts is not the answer, especially for engineering leaders like you and me. We cover a powerful technique for self coaching in this episode, how you can uncover blocks and barriers in your career growth. And he's also going to show you how to use fear to your advantage. And I build on that with some really powerful frameworks about fear in the debrief. So stick around till the end. I hope you enjoy this one, because truly, the next level in your career in life, the happiness and the fulfillment that you desire, is just one belief away. Happy engineers, welcome back. And Tim, it is an absolute pleasure to have you here on the Happy Engineer podcast. Thanks so much for making time today. Man. This is awesome.
Speaker A: Oh, uh, it's an honor, Zach. I'm, uh, excited to spend this time with you and to, uh, have an awesome, really amazing conversation. I'm looking forward to it.
Speaker B: Tim, we had the privilege of connecting, I mean, I guess a couple months ago. Now it feels like just the other day, but in getting to know you and just hearing you speak and looking into your work, I was absolutely blown away by how many of the legends that I love you've spent stage time with and are friends with and authored with. And, I mean, I wrote down some of these, like Brian Tracy and Les Brown and Bob Proctor and Jim Cathcart, a mutual friend and our mastermind, and Mark Victor Hanson. I was just like, ah, uh, this is so cool. You've had incredible opportunities to do work alongside some of the greatest in the realm of personal transformation and change. And I just wanted to kind of get curious, like, how did that seed get planted for you? Can you just take us back a little bit? Like, where did your journey into this world of personal development and all the incredible things you do, like, where did it begin?
Speaker A: Well, I could take you all the way back to, uh, 1984. I was 14 years old at the time, and I was at home. The phone rang, and I answered it. Uh, hi. And the woman said, honey, find your mom. There's been an accident. Uh, my dad was an electrician at US Steel, and he was working on a big electrical panel, and it didn't get tagged right. So while he was in there, someone turned it on and boom. And exploded. Caught him on fire there. Degree burns, 40% of his body. Yeah, it was. It was pretty bad. And so he spent the next three months in a Loyola burn unit. And we, uh, moved in with our grandparents, my sister and me, and we weren't sure that he was even going to make it. It was a pretty traumatic experience. And everybody goes through what I call big T and little T traumas. You know, little T traumas are being embarrassed, not getting picked to be on the team, being humiliated in front of the classroom. And that's where most fear of public speaking is formed. Uh, and then the big T trau, you know, death abuses of various kinds, things like that. So he did make it, and he had lots of scars on the outside, but, you know, he was always the kind of guy that would take his shirt off and go for a swim in the summer and didn't care. And I always thought that was pretty amazing. But we all develop scars on the inside, too, and we all have these little scars, and they're. It's not just the experiences that I've learned over 34 years now, studying us humans. It's not just the experiences we go through, it's the beliefs that form in our unconscious mind about what we think those experiences mean. And your brain forms those beliefs on its own without your permission. And most of those beliefs, because we're kids when we experience it, we have a kid like brain that's giving us beliefs about ourselves, about others, about the world around us that we're going to use as adults. So much of the anxiety that we have, the self sabotage, the struggles that we have with our health, with our money, with our relationships, are because we have these unconscious beliefs floating around in the hard drive of our brain. Brain that we don't even know is there. So I had lots of anxiety, lots of fear that the next bad thing could happen at any time. The rug was going to be yanked out. I wasn't playing life to win, Zach. I was playing not to lose. How do I not lose? How do I not lose? And when you play not to lose, you feel like you're losing even if you're winning. It was never enough. Never had enough time, never had enough money, never had enough people that liked me or whatever it may have been. And so, uh, I went to school for psychology for years and found that, that, um, I learned a lot of data, but it didn't really teach me how to create fast, rapid change that would last, you know, how do you feel? Good now, you know, not ten years from now. And so. Oh, I'm sorry, I thought that was off.
Speaker B: No worries. Anyway, um, actually, so Tim, can you, can you back up just a second though? First of all, I really appreciate you sharing really personal moment growing up and talk about big T trauma. Like I've never experienced that, you know, with my parents. I've been fortunate. My parents are healthy and my big T trauma was around divorce. My dad disappeared from my life and really have no relationship with him even to this day. But, uh, I was curious because you talked about. Okay, it creates this unconscious belief as kids that then we bring that into our adult life. But do you have any memory at that time, like in the days or months, years that surrounded the accident of any of that belief forming, or was it your dad speaking to you that formed the belief? Or was it just culture and society? Or do you just sort of all on your own adopted this kind of play not to lose mentality? I, uh, Just like what was happening then? Do you remember anything about what you were actually at least consciously aware of?
Speaker A: What a brilliant question. I know you're known for your brilliant questions. So, no, I had no idea that was happening. It was all happening unconsciously, or people might use the word subconsciously, but it was out of my awareness. I did not know that that was happening. I didn't know I had anxiety. All I know is that I was scared a lot. And I was always worried that bad things were going to happen. And then when you go through life being scared, I attracted a lot of bullies, you know, so then I had more things to be afraid of. And then, you know, your own best friend, when there's you and your friend, you know, your life is wonderful. And then a third person shows up, another friend, and then all of a sudden, those two friends, like, turn on you, you know, and so people have had those experiences. I know I did. And then suddenly your best friend is like your worst enemy. And. And so. And plus, you know, I grew up in the 70s and early 80s where sarcasm was the norm. That's what you do. You cut down, everybody, rip on everybody. When, uh, Axl Rose sang about welcome to the jungle, you know, we got fun games, but. Yeah, but it trashes your mind, you know, and riddles people with insecurities, deep insecurities. And then we develop these dysfunctional coping strategies. And it's interesting because, you know, you said, well, I didn't have a traumatic experience as bad as yours. My dad just left and never talked to him again. That's about as bad as it gets. I mean, that's really traumatic. And people form beliefs that, you know, I'm not good enough to stick around for. And then that starts to create all kinds of, oh, you're going to leave me. And then that can lead to jealousy, and that can lead to all kinds of worries and fears, and, you know, I'm going to hurt you before you hurt me. All kinds of stuff forms in our brain, and then we try logically to work through that, because that's what we do. We try to logically figure out how to problem solve and get to a solution. But unfortunately, with the tools that we have, most people never get to that core level of what was the unconscious belief. They just talk about family dynamics, and it never changes.
Speaker B: And it feels true for me, what you just said, too. Like, I definitely do and still am doing my own work around the things that have happened in my childhood, but I definitely was not aware of any of it at the time. Kind of the same experience, the emotion of it or some of the difficulties of it, but I didn't actually know what was going on really quick, I want to get back into your story, but you made an interesting distinction, and I'm just curious if you actually define these. The. The engineer in me. Coming out here with subconscious versus unconscious mind, do you draw a distinction of in those two words? That's important for our, uh, conversation today.
Speaker A: Unconscious means that it is out of your awareness. It's being stored out of your conscious awareness. Subconscious means that maybe you're kind of aware of it. Your conscious mind is your librarian. You know, your unconscious mind is your hard drive, and your subconscious is maybe, I don't know, somewhere in between, passing
Speaker B: the files back and forth. Okay, that's really interesting. Okay. And, uh, so, uh, this whole thing stirred an interest in you towards psychology. You started studying this in university, and then kind of fast forward. I know you have, what, 34 years of unbelievable experience since then, but what were the key defining moments in your career that gave you such a passion? And maybe the. The.
Speaker A: Aha.
Speaker B: Uh-huh. Of how to create that lasting change that now you're famous for.
Speaker A: Okay, this is fun. So I'm going to give you a couple pivotal moments that I. One that I share often, but this one is earlier than that. This is how I decided to go into psychology. I had my first high school psychology class as a senior, and, uh, still had no idea what I was going to do. The academic advisor told me that I should pick out a nice broom because that's probably what I would be pushing after high school. Real supportive, serious football coach, his wife. Yeah, it was kind of brutal, I think. You know, it was that scared straight kind of attitude that everybody had back then because I didn't really care about grades. I care about getting people to like me. So I was the class clown, you know, always trying to chase approval. And one of the things that I've learned is, Zach, is that when you chase something, it runs away. So the more I chased approval, the more I never got it. As I got older and I gave myself the approval that I always wanted. Then all of a sudden, other people started giving it to me as well, because I gave it to myself. So I already had it. And I believe that if you don't need it, that's when you get it. Like when I was 20 and starving and had no money, nobody wanted to take me out for dinner or lunch. Now every day, someone calls up and says, hey, can I buy you some lunch or dinner? A cup of coffee? And I'm like, no, I'm good, because I don't need it, you know? And so they show up. The same is true for love, validations, approval, support. You know, how do you know when you're enough? When you decide you are. So I was in psychology class, and I'm looking at. They had set up a maze, and they had little white mice running through this maze. And I'd never seen an experiment in class, and I never saw a mouse in class. And the teacher was chewing gum, and I'm like, this guy's chewing gum in class, right? And he's got mice running around the room in a maze. This is amazing. This is awesome. You know, what is this? Psychology? And you can be a psychologist, and then what do you do? You figure out people's heads. Oh, that's what I got to do.
Speaker B: I got to do this.
Speaker A: That was the defining moment for me, where I decided I'm going to go into psychology. So then fast forward two years, and I'm sitting in a counseling processes class as a sophomore, uh, at Indiana University Northwest. It was an extension because I was too broke to go to Bloomington. And, um, so I went to school in Gary, Indiana.
Speaker B: Yeah, you're right. Right in my backyard. I live in southwest Michigan here, Tim, so.
Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah. Wow. We were close. So, you know, I'm sitting in class and they brought guest speakers in to talk about what they were doing. And one of them was a hypnotist. Now, I didn't know anything about hypnosis except you cluck like a chicken, stuff like that. And so I thought, here's an opportunity to make the class laugh, get people like me. I'm going to volunteer, right? So I volunteered. And I sat down and he starts telling me, I'm going to close my eyes and I'm going to relax. I'm, um, going to feel amazing. And I'm like, yeah, whatever, right? And so I closed my ey, and all of a sudden I hear people giggling. And I don't care. Like, I start to go into this sense of peace that I had never felt before. That knot that was always in my stomach, that anxiety just melted away. And the next thing I know, I am so calm and so peaceful and kind of in and kind of out and completely don't care what anybody else is thinking of me, which was so unusual.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: Uh, I felt amazing. And then I came out afterwards, and people are laughing and clapping, and I'm like, what's going on? And then, of course, everybody laughed, Right. And I just felt amazing. And he told me, I remember him telling me that I was going to feel really confident all Week. And all week I felt really confident, really peaceful. It really blew my mind. I didn't understand what was happening, and I didn't know what that was because I had done some talk therapy, and it didn't really do anything. And so I got hooked on this hypnosis stuff. But, you know, IU was very behavioral, so they didn't believe in anything like that. It had to be all behavior modification and B.F. skinner and the rats in
Speaker B: the maze and CBT and all. Yeah, totally.
Speaker A: Exactly right. And so we're just, uh, robots driven by pain and pleasure. And I think, no, that there's more to it than that. I ended up my senior year, I found a hypnosis school in, um, Terre Haute, Indiana.
Speaker B: Okay.
Speaker A: And they were all doctors and, uh, medical Doctors and, uh, DOS, MD, and one high school college, or one college senior psychology student, which was me. I talked my way in. I'm pretty good talker, I guess. And so I. I talked my way in to, um, Dr. Gisela Zuskowski, allowing me to enroll in this hypnosis course. And it changed my life. It was the best experience I ever had my whole life, and, uh, changed the course of my destiny.
Speaker B: No kidding. Okay, so this is a tough place in the journey because we could easily spend the next three hours just talking about where that moment m led you in terms of your career. And I just took a couple of stats on this from your content online. So it's 34 years of experience, 15,000 plus sessions, one on one, hundreds of groups, multiple books. I'm sure, uh, if you consider academic writing, uh, just prolific in terms of what you've done, I want to make sure we bring some of this pragmatically back to the happy engineer who's listening today. But can you just tell us, Tim, in all of that, I mean, 15,000 plus, uh, it's unbelievable, uh, for me, as a newer coach, just aspiring to that persistent pursuit of mastery that you have taken so seriously. And so in all of those moments, are there any either breakthroughs or sessions that just really stand out as unique or for you solidified your conviction around the power of the work that you do that might just give us a little bit more meat on the bones? I mean, of course, the nerd in me, the engineer in me, is. Let's talk about this. Really deep all day, but just a couple highlights. What do you think?
Speaker A: Yeah. Love your questions. You know, the. As they say, the quality of your questions determine the quality of your life. And so these are great questions. So instead of telling you a story about one specific person. I'll tell you a story that there might have been a thousand people that had the same experience. Because us humans aren't that different. We have four basic personality types. And then, you know, um, we vary within that. But the way that we operate is very much the same. And so I'll tell you a story. I did a lot of sessions for weight loss, because when you're a hypnotist, everybody wants you to stop. Help them stop smoking, lose weight, of course, and then anxiety, right? So I did thousands of sessions to help people with weight loss. And people would come in and they'd say, I know what to do. I just can't get myself to do it. What they're saying is, I'm smart, I'm logical, I'm intelligent, I could write my own cookbook, but emotionally, I'm still doing the same things, and I can't seem to stop. Okay, there's the problem. So then I think maybe they have the solution. So what's the solution? Well, if you could just help me get motivated. If I could just get motivated, you know, and break this bad habit, then I'll be okay. So I would get them super motivated, and they're like, I'm going to conquer the world. And they would leave my office and they'd feel great for about a week, sometimes three or four weeks. And then they would always come back and they would say, I think this hypnosis stopped working. And I'm like, okay, well, let's come back and I get them super motivated. And it wouldn't work as well. And over time, I noticed that it's not about motivation and it's not definitely about. Not about willpower. And it's not that they don't want it, because some people, like Dr. Phil used to say, you just don't want it.
Speaker B: You don't want it bad enough. Yeah, totally.
Speaker A: That's a total lie. And it's like, um, abusing the victim kind of. Because they do want it so bad, they torture themselves over it. And then you tell them that they don't want it, which is really messes with people's minds. That is false. Right? So what it is, is I found that I was doing hypnosis sessions and I learned this technique, hypnotic regression, where you take people back to the ise, the initial sensitizing event where that belief was formed. Now, I didn't understand about the belief that was formed back at the time. The idea was that you take them back to the moment when they had Some kind of traumatic situation. And you give them resources that they didn't have before and you have them view it from the point of view of an adult instead of a little scared kid.
Speaker B: Mhm.
Speaker A: And I thought, okay, so I was doing that and people were coming out of that and it had nothing to do with weight loss, the situation. So I'll be talking to someone and they, um, you know, um, I binge eat and okay, so we're going to go back. And they go back to when they're seven years old and they're being abused in some way. Right. And so I started helping them with the healing from the abuse. Because sadly, more people than not have been abused in all kinds of terrible ways. And so we go back, we make them safe, we give them back their power, we give them new resources, we change. It turns out you don't have to change the past, you just have to change the way you're interpreting what it means. So we will give them resources so that they feel safe, they feel strong, they feel worthy, they feel protected. So I would do that and then all of a sudden people would go and they would drop £20 and the sugar addiction would disappear. And they weren't binging anymore and purging, they weren't doing any of that. And I never once told them, you love salads, right? And I'm like, this is something interesting. So I started doing it with more people. And then over time, I realized it's not just giving them the new resources they had formed a belief in their mind that I'm not worthy, I'm not good enough, I'll be abandoned, I won't be loved, you know, people will reject me. You can't trust people. The world is a cruel place. If you walk around with those beliefs, it completely affects what your brain pays attention to and how it makes decisions at an unconscious level. Some research says that your unconscious mind helps you determine what decision you're going to make a full seven seconds before you have any conscious awareness that that decision has been made.
Speaker B: Seven, uh, seconds. That's unbelievable.
Speaker A: Seven seconds in some cases, yeah. And so that's like, whoa, that's a lot of time. Right? Because our mind's usually in milliseconds, right. Making so many decisions. And so that's extraordinary. And so I started upgrading those beliefs, going from I'm not worthy to I am, I'm not good enough to I'm more than enough, I can't do it to I can do it, I will be abandoned to no one can ever abandon Me, because I will never. I'm always going to be here for me. I'm always going to be my best friend. I'm always going to have my own back. And as long as I'm here for me, I'm good, right? And boy, you take that power back, you don't have to wait for other people to do the right thing anymore. You give it to yourself. You lock that in and you reinforce it. And then people were having staggering breakthroughs, significant that lasted through time, that were sustainable. Once you upgrade a belief, it stays upgraded. You can't go back to thinking that old way because you know better now. Right. And then, then over time, I kept forming more experiences. Like, well, you know, when you upgrade those beliefs, sometimes a lot of anger, a lot of guilt, a lot of shame, a lot of rage, a lot of resentment will come up afterwards. So session two was formed where we were releasing all that toxic emotional energy.
Speaker B: Yes, yes.
Speaker A: You know, and that deep healing and then bringing in forgiveness was born. And so I started doing that. So I created eight different unique experiences. I usually take people through the first four and it changes their life. And I go through these experiences and it has about 99% success rate. There are every once in a while someone it just doesn't click for. And then I've got other tools and then sometimes that's just I'm not the right fit. Or there's, you know, they have some serious stuff that going on with their hardware. It's not emotional, it's their hard wiring of their brain. You know, really strong, intense OCD and obsessive compulsive disorder. But 99% of the time it has significant results. It doesn't matter. I just did a session for a five year old the other day. I didn't even know if it would work. I told her mom, I said, don't pay me until we know it works. And then she gave me a credit card number. I'm like, yes, five years old.
Speaker B: That's, um, I mean, and that's so powerful because half of those trauma experiences haven't even happened yet. So you just start allowing for healing to take place even before you've built a whole decade of programming on top of how that's a success strategy for you. Right?
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker B: So real quick, Tim, the engineer in me has to get curious about the 1% or the 0.1%, whatever it is. And my test engineer days, it's like, you don't just want to dismiss outliers. Let's make sure we understand the special Cause or what's happening there and how does it inform the whole data set? Is there anything that you've seen to be true about whether it's. Is it a biology, like there's something that doesn't function the same in that person's brain or the systems of their body are different in some way, or is there something about.
Speaker A: That's what it is.
Speaker B: Okay.
Speaker A: No, that's what it is. It's almost always. Well, I actually, I'm going to say it's always that someone has some other stuff that's going on and I usually recognize it in the first session. I always give it a shot. Anyway. The worst that can happen is I just give them a refund and it didn't go well for an hour. Uh, the best thing that could happen is it could save their life.
Speaker B: Change their life. Yeah.
Speaker A: Uh, yeah. And so it's definitely a hard wiring with the ocd. They could do better if they gave it more time. But sometimes because of that they don't want to do it or they will push away. Sometimes it doesn't work because people aren't ready. Sometimes they have secondary benefits where there's a hidden payoff for, ah, not changing. But usually I can help uncover that after we have two or three sessions. But when it's just flat out doesn't work and we know it's not going to work, it's almost always because they have some really intense OCD that is, um, prohibiting them from getting where they could be in one session.
Speaker B: Sure makes sense. So what's super fascinating about this to me is you told the story like, hey, there's a thousand sessions like this and you used weight loss as an example. But the truth being the trauma or the. The was it ise that you mentioned that initial event sensitizing event. Sensitizing event had nothing to do with stuffing cake down your mouth. It's not like had anything to do with weight. It's completely unrelated. And so I know for the engineering leaders who I coach, and I'm sure for the engineering leader listening to this conversation right now, the idea that what I want most, that isn't going my way, the thing that I feel this resistance around or frustration or anger or even I'm depressed or I've given up or I've been passed over for promotion five times and I'll never be smart enough to make it to that level or fill in the blank thing, the notion that that could be connected to a trauma, big T, little T. That has nothing to do with academic success. Or career success or whatever could be totally different is very enlightening. So I guess I'm curious. How do we, as these analytical engineering types, kind of get out of our own way and out of our head to be open to this? Because, uh, I'll just be honest. It's very easy to be skeptical. Like, what do you. Tim, I don't know what you're talking about. You know, working on my daddy issues is going to help me grow my business faster. Like, I don't get it.
Speaker A: I didn't get it either. And I was skeptical, too. You know, I was the rebellious prove it kind of guy. You know, prove it to me, you know? And so, um, but then I kept having these experiences over and over, and I'm like, oh, well, I mean, you can't argue with results. And then when you have thousands and thousands of results and you just keep seeing it over and over to argue against it, well, now you're on the other side of the coordinate. Well, that's insanity to argue against kind of results. So our beliefs, definitely. There's two things when you. Let's talk about, like, I'm not getting that promotion. Okay. And I've been passed over five times. So the first part is maybe, just maybe there is, uh, some belief that gets in the way that causes you to show up in a way where you're not being the best team player. Right. Or you don't think that, um, you know, spending as much time building a relationship is important as long as you get the job done. Right. And that's because of what you were taught growing up or how you saw your father or mother. Uh, that's how they did it. Uh, right. And so that is getting in your way. It might be a blind spot that you have that you're not even aware of. I mean, almost everybody comes to my office thinking that it's one thing and it's something else. They don't know anything about this unconscious belief stuff unless they listen to my audiobook, the Power of youf Unconscious Mind. They. They have never heard of any of this stuff before. And so there's a blind spot. You just don't see what you. What you can't see. You can't see the label when you're in the bottle. Right? So the other part of it might not be your technical skills, because that's what we do. And that you and I have talked about that and you had said this, that we just rely on trying to be smarter or work harder. And sometimes those aren't the issues When I'm doing work with corporate America and, um, with companies and teams and stuff like that, the person that gets their promotion isn't always the smartest in the room. It's the person who connects with the most people, who has the best communication skills. And if you're super analytical, that might not be as important to you. And so I've had to do a lot of work with doctors over the years and engineers over the years because they didn't feel like that was as important as getting the job done. And when you're, uh, leading teams and you're not as much in the field and you're leading teams, which is usually what happens, they take you out of a position where you're awesome and promote you. Yeah, sure. Something where you're not as good, you know. So my son is an engineer. He's, uh, very analytical in that way. So when he was 16, I put a copy of how to Win Friends and Influence People. Right. With Dale Carnegie. Dale Carnegie. I put that book in his hand and I said, read it. And he said it changed him for the rest of his high school because he was very, you know, you know, we always kidding. Like, he's like Sheldon a little bit, you know.
Speaker B: Sure, Totally.
Speaker A: Yeah. And, um, and so when he started learning these communication skills and people skills and reading people and matching people and creating more rapport, he said it really helped a lot. He started to be able to get anybody to like him more in about 30 seconds. And so that's something that you can learn these days. Upgrading beliefs and improving your communication skills, not your technical skills, will get you that next promotion.
Speaker B: I love this, and I want to connect back to something you said earlier because I think it's important to the context, and I hear it from engineering leaders all the time. A. It's not that you don't want it bad enough. You know, this idea of if you wanted that promotion, you would actually do what it takes or work hard enough to get there. That false belief. Yeah. Leads to problem number two that I see all the time, which is they are working their asses off and they're already putting in 60, 70, 80 hours a week, uh, to try to get to that next level because they do actually desire it. But then that behavior leads to an imbalance in their life where their relationships at home fall apart or their health falls apart, and they end up really burned out, frustrated, and truly feeling stuck in this kind of trap. Like, well, how much harder can I work? I'm already doing everything I know how to do.
Speaker A: Right.
Speaker B: And we get into this place, and then maybe the shame of that belief that I need to work harder to get to it and how do I possibly work any harder kicks in. Can you talk a little bit about this idea of finding the belief that might actually be the root cause, rather than these things that we, on the surface think are the problem? Tim, is that something you can actually discover, to your point about, like the label, if you're in the bottle, you can't see it. Can you make progress or break through on your own in those areas? Or is this really something that you need the support of a therapist, a coach, a person to come alongside and help you with those blind spots? What's your perspective on that?
Speaker A: I think you. You need both. Right? So I'm going to give you a, uh, question, a simple question that you can ask yourself that can help you to start, to get started. But you do need somebody. Even if it's, you know, my $17 book where you go through the exercises and it gives you the language and the questions to ask because it's too hard doing it on your own. You know, we are interrelated, uh, an interrelated species. We need each other. And it's too hard to see your own blind spots. It's too hard to be objective with yourself. So you do need help in some way, even if it's through a book, to give you some insights. However, you can start today by asking yourself a question. You know, um, if I'm feeling stuck, what am I most afraid of? And then where did I get that idea from? Now, a lot of smart, strong, tough people who are in this spot who feel like, you know, I'm at work, feeling like I'm supposed to be at home. And when I'm at home, I feel like I should be working. And you're getting called a workaholic and, you know, but I'm doing it for the family, you know, and never feeling like you're appreciated anywhere, which is very depressing. Sometimes. We don't think of it as being afraid. We think of it as being stressed or angst or just under pressure or overwhelmed. Right. But if you dig deep enough, you realize that it actually is a fear because it's coming from scarcity. I don't have enough money. I don't have enough status. I don't have enough hours in the day to get it all done. I don't have enough energy to keep working one, uh, hundred hours a week, especially as I get older. I'm running out of time, you know, and that all is coming from scarcity, which comes from fear. So if you ask yourself, what am I most afraid of? And then you ask yourself that question about 50 times. M. I'd only have to ask it once with my method, because I know how to take you back and find it. But if you're doing it on your own, you got to ask yourself enough to get past the layers. You know how Shrek said we have layers? You got to get past the layers. Right. So what am I afraid of? I'm not afraid of anything. Okay. But what am I afraid of? Um, you know, afraid I'm never going to get what I want and you know, they're going to block me. Or what am I afraid of then? You know, I'm. Well, I'm afraid that I'm never going to get there. And what am I afraid of then? That I won't have enough money to take care of my family. And what am I afraid of then? Well, then they're going to lose respect for me.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker A: You know, or they might leave me. What am I afraid of then? Well then I'll be nothing. I'll be all alone, you know. What are you afraid of then? Well, I'm afraid of that I don't matter. I don't mean anything, you know, I'm not enough. Now you're scratching the surface. The deepest fears of not being enough, not mattering. Yeah, right. If I don't have this, um, you know, I won't have that. A lot of times over the years, women were looked at as sex objects and men were looked at as success objects. So a lot of guys tie their self worth to their net worth.
Speaker B: Mhm.
Speaker A: Right. I'm my bank account and if it dips below, then I mean nothing. And if I have to make more, then, uh. And even when I'm making more, we spend more. And then we just feel broke at a higher level. And it's this horrible game of never feeling like we're enough. And if you have a belief and your life is projecting out that I am never enough, then you will never have enough. You will never get that promotion. You will never have that new job. You will never make those choices that you know you should make. You come home, you say I hate my job every single day, quit and go get another one. Yeah, but I need the paycheck. Yeah, but you could actually eventually get another job where you would have a better paycheck or you would enjoy life more. You got to close that door to get the other one to open. But People have that head trash in their mind that, no, what if I don't get another job? Or what if I'm, you know, don't get hired? And what if. What if? And all that is coming from fear. So you do that, you know, what am I afraid of? And you get to that core one, and then you ask a second question. What would I rather believe instead? Uh, because beliefs are just opinions. You can have a new opinion anytime you want. What would I rather believe instead? Well, I want to believe that I am enough. And that no matter what, my family love me and that I'm going to love me, and that I'm good enough to be able to accomplish anything. And if, uh, I learn my people skills and I'm finding out why I didn't get the promotion and what I can improve on. And we have a pip in place. A, uh, performance plan with some performance improvement plan. Yeah, a performance improvement plan.
Speaker B: That's a naughty word around the engineering hallways. Tim. Um, we don't.
Speaker A: I know. I didn't, like. I didn't know what pips were or KPIs or anything. I came from the cornfields. Indiana steel mill kid. Right. So. So I didn't know what any of that was. But now we understand. All right, well, where can I grow? And then I actually take that serious. And I'm not working harder. I'm actually backing off, slowing down, figuring out where to work smarter. Engineers are very intelligent human beings. It's just, you got to study something different. And remember this always, Zach, your biggest breakthroughs are hidden in the places you don't want to go. M. Where you resist.
Speaker B: Say it again.
Speaker A: Your biggest breakthroughs are hidden. They're hiding right now in the places you don't want to go. So wherever you are resisting, that's where you need to go next. Where you resist, you must persist. And so, uh, if you don't want to go there, that's where it is. Brother or sister, you know? And you make that happen, and then that's what opens your door to opportunity.
Speaker B: I love this line of exploration. And, Tim, I talked a little bit before we hit record today. My business is Oasis of Courage. And the reason for that is deeper than I'll share in this moment. But part of it is because, fundamentally, I believe that fear is the force that's holding back all these amazing engineering leaders that I get to support and coach and train and work with in the workplace, in their homes, in their personal thoughts when they're alone and there's nobody but their own conscious Mind spinning. And so just to get really vulnerable around. What am I afraid of? I think that's such a powerful, powerful question. And I know we're short on time. I want to make sure to be respectful. We wrap before you have to go, Tim, but can you really quickly give your perspective on what is courage? Because just the work you do and how much you spend time in those darkest places of what people are truly afraid of at their core. What does courage mean and what does it look like? How do you define it? Just in the perspective of Tim, what is courage?
Speaker A: Courage is being scared to death and deciding to do it anyway because you have to either find out what you're made of or you're going to do it altruistically, uh, for somebody else. Right. Most of my life I've been afraid and I feel like I've become an incredibly courageous or crazy. But I prefer courageous human being because being self employed for 27 years, with all the volatility of all of that, it has been gut wrenching so many times. A massive amount of uncertainty to deal with. Not ever having a steady paycheck, ever. When paydays are awesome, it's awesome. And when it's not, it sucks. Right? And so I've had to have the courage to dig deep and be afraid and do it anyway to grow forward. I don't believe in failure. I believe in feedback. You know, there is no failure, it's just feedback, right? I'm going to mess up, I'm going to learn from it, I'm going to grow and I'm going to pivot my next time around and I'm going to grow forward and apply what I've learned, right? So everything is just feedback. So, uh, truly, that's how I look at courage. You cannot be courageous without fear. You know, it takes courage. It takes fear to have courage. So you do it, you go for it. Because we're all going to die anyway. And we never know when, you know, all of us can be dead tomorrow, truly. Right? So why tiptoe through life so that you can safely arrive at death? Why don't we just go for it, right? We came into this world naked and screaming, let's leave that way.
Speaker B: I love it. That's, uh, so good. Tim, if somebody wants to really go deeper with your work, everything with the one Belief Away method and explore this further, where can they go to find you and, and take this to the next level?
Speaker A: What we're going to do for your listeners is I'm going to offer a free Gift. That power of your unconscious mind audiobook is so awesome. And so let's just give everybody a copy of that. If you want to learn how your mind works and you want to hear amazing stories about how people achieve their impossible goals using, uh, my one belief away method, just go to Timshur.com gift like a presentation.
Speaker B: Timsheer.com gift I cannot encourage you engineering leader listening right now enough to go do that immediately. So we'll put a link in the show notes, please go click it and download that. Tim's work is absolutely life changing. You will not regret it. So, Tim, thank you so much for your time. Your generosity in this conversation, it's amazing. And I always end in the same place. And in a way, you've given us a brilliant answer already to this question. Question. But I'll ask it again and see. Maybe you have something else. Or, uh, just to reiterate this important point you've already made around what am I afraid of? But questions lead, answers follow. Whether it's great coaching, great engineering, creating success in any area of your life as you define it, we want to ask great questions. And so for that engineering leader who's been with us listening today, what would be the best question you would lead them with?
Speaker A: I gave you one of them, which is, what do you want to believe instead? What do you want to have happen instead? I think that's so important because our mind, especially when we're analytical, we tend to be problem solvers, so which means we're always finding problems so that we can solve them, but our mind is always finding problems. And so the question is, what do you want to have happen instead? So when you have scary scenarios that I'm never going to get that promotion, what do I want to have happen? I want that promotion. So imagine having it. Imagine you actually have it because that'll shift how you feel. And then one last question. What's one step that I can take right now to start to move in that direction?
Speaker B: Simple. Maybe not always easy, but I hope everybody takes that to heart and takes that action quickly. Uh, in the spirit of Tony Robbins, don't leave the side of that decision without taking the action to make it real. Right? So get after it.
Speaker A: Yeah. People are like, if I don't know how to do that? Well, that's why you have your show, Zach, because you're constantly getting on here and giving all these action steps. Do this, do this, do this. So if somebody says, well, I don't know how to do that, yes, you do. You subscribe to Zach's show. You listen to all the episodes and you'll find your answers.
Speaker B: I appreciate that. We've been blessed to have a lot of amazing leaders come on and give us those tips. And yeah, just keep taking action. I love. We don't want to go into death saying, I made it totally safe. I thought that was so powerful. I'm going to go sliding into home plate full on, man. Tim, um, you're the best. Thank you so much for your time today and can't wait to connect with you again and appreciate you. All the work you do and just keep changing lives the way you do. Your mastery in this space is unparalleled. So thanks again for sharing it with us today.
Speaker A: Thank you, Zach. It's been a pleasure.
Speaker B: If you're an engineer and you want to be happier, healthier and wealthier in your career and life, we would love to talk to you in other episodes. I explain a bit more, but all you need to know is that I've carved out a limited number of $500 coaching sessions just for podcast listeners for free, to gain extreme clarity on your current career blocks and barriers and to determine your personal action plan. Grab a time while they're still available on careerclaritycall.com that's in the show notes, click the big orange button. Pick a time to chat for 15 minutes with one of our coaches and they'll take care of the rest. Let's do this. Okay, happy engineer, it's just you and me for a moment and let's debrief on that amazing conversation with the world's best unconscious beliefs specialist, Tim Shur. He only scratched the surface of all the incredible, incredible knowledge and expertise and transformational work that he does and that he's continued to develop and take to the next level in his own field and specialty there with the unconscious mind, hypnotism, radical transformation of beliefs and then therefore results because your beliefs drive your actions and your actions create outcomes. So the work that Tim does is truly fundamental to creating a whole new life. And I want to come back to the question that Tim shared going through 50 times of what am I most afraid of? And peeling back the layers. I wish I could do a good Shrek impression. Tim brought up Shrek. If I was good at impressions, I would do a Shrek impression right now. But I want to take a moment and share again what that can look like to get below the surface when you ask about what you're most afraid of. If you're like me, it's really weird at first asking that question. It's kind of tricky to get below the outer layers, what I call the crust of my conscious mind, because we don't go there very often. And sometimes the language of these layers is new to us. We haven't really explored it before. And I'd encourage you to first go get Tim's book, if you didn't already click the link and download that copy of Tim's audiobook. That's an amazing gift and it's a great resource for you to tap into. So please make sure that you go and do that, because you're going to take your understanding of these topics to a whole new level by digging into Tim's incredible book. Then go back in the interview and listen to the example that Tim gave of the repeating question of what am I afraid of? And you can see how he peeled back the layers on a common example. But what I'd like to do is actually dig into a body of work from another one of the world's best in this area, the late Susan Jeffers, a Ph.D. whose book Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway sold more than 2 million copies. And, uh, for me, one of the fundamental works on what does courage look like and how we can really develop a deeper understanding of these layers in our mind. And Susan brings up three levels or three layers of fears that show up in our lives. And the top level, the surface level, are the things that we typically talk about, the things that come up most often when we ask the question, you know, what are you afraid of? Or what am I afraid of? And it's things that happen to us or things that are going to require action in our lives that trigger that feeling of fear when we think about them. So things that can happen would be dying, getting sick, growing old, becoming disabled, reaching retirement without, you know, knowing what you want to do or being bored. Uh, a natural disaster, you know, coming, a, uh, flood or tornado taking out your home. These kinds of things that can happen. Or some of the things in your life that you need to do, things that require action, that you're afraid to take that action. So it could be in the old days, maybe you were afraid of going back to school when you were a child. Could be a big decision that you need to make on a career change. Or do I leave to a new company or not? What career path do I go down? Could be approaching a new person and introducing yourself. Social anxiety and fear that comes up with making new friends could be fear of going to the doctor, fear of losing that Weight, you're not capable and, or what if you keep gaining weight and you have to take new action there? All these kinds of things Susan refers to as these level one fears. And I imagine, you know, as you just hear the list, your own are probably popping into your mind. Maybe some of you are even thinking, yeah, check, check, check, all of the above, and that's okay. But what I want you to understand is that these Level 1 fears are the things on the surface. It's the actual situations and things that happen to us in our lives. And when you really get below that, to what Susan Jeffers refers to as level two fears, that's where you get out of situation oriented explanations of fear and really into the place of fear that involves our ego or our identity in a deeper way. So we start to get again below the surface. And these level two fears are the states that we find ourselves in, these inner states of mind or the emotions that can come with those states. And this would be things like being rejected, right? Feeling rejection. Ah, vulnerability. The fear that comes with being vulnerable. The fear of failure could even be the fear of success. You know, too much success or too much of something that you don't feel ready for. A lot of people experience that. It could be a sense of helplessness. You feel helplessness. Um, it could be, you know, losing your, uh, approval or significance in the world, a loss of what builds your reputation, you know, these level two fears are deeper, okay? These are the things that penetrate into our life and we begin to protect ourselves from them because it just does not feel good to be in the presence of those level two fears. Then Susan introduces a level three of fear. And for her, this is the deepest level in her model of how fear manifests. And level three fear all boils down to one core idea in the model that Susan Jeffers teaches, which is that I can't handle it. It's the I'm not enough fear that I can't handle it. You know, at the bottom of every one of your fears, Susan Jeffers says that it's simply the fear that you can't handle whatever life may bring you. Now, I'd encourage you to go check out her work after you're done with Tim's book, if you want to go deeper on that. But the reason I wanted to share it with you is simply to open your heart and mind to what a exploration of this question. What am I most afraid of could look like for you? You. So start asking that question and ask again and again. And as an engineering leader, this would be something I think you'll be really good at. And you can get, uh, really deep into it, because it's just like the five whys that we learned in undergrad. You know, how to dig deeper into an engineering problem by asking why? Well, we're going to do a similar process, just asking, what am I most afraid of about that? What am I most afraid of about that? What am I most afraid of about that? Then after you've sat with that for a while, you've allowed yourself some space, and I encourage you to grab a journal when you're doing this. So if you're in the car or working out or, you know, taking a walk right now, take some time where you can actually sit with a journal and do that exercise around what am I most afraid of? But then don't forget to ask the second question. And I'm so glad that Tim brought this up, because I see it as one of the biggest, biggest gaps in a lot of coaching that's out there or talk therapy that's out there, where we just explore all of the things that we're afraid of and all the stuff from our past or the baggage in our. Our unconscious mind by asking new questions and digging into the fears and the uncertainty of our lives. But that's where we stop. And it's so important that you ask the second question, which is, what would I rather believe instead? One way to come at this from a different angle would be to ask, who would I be without the belief of these fears? Who would I be without the fear? It opens up a perspective about what's possible if that fear were not there. And what would I rather believe instead? Get curious. Write down some new ideas, some new thoughts. And to Tim's point, this is a powerful exercise to do alone. It is a transformational exercise to do with your coach. When you have a third party, somebody who's a true expert at exploring this with you, you can get so much deeper, so much faster, and have someone there on the outside of the bottle to read the label to you. But even if you're by yourself, get curious. What would I rather believe instead? I had a client one time who really confided in me and absolute respect and love toward him when I say this. But we got to this part of the exercise, and he said, I don't know if I really like this idea. Like, what do you mean, what would I rather believe instead? I don't just choose beliefs. I seek to believe what is true. And I just want you to know if that resonates for you, that I really do respect that. And I also have a deep pursuit of truth and in my life, and I believe in the importance of that. But here's the thing. Who said that the fear that you are believing in is true? Who is the one that's validating whether the beliefs you hold right now are true and where did they come from in the first place? And is choosing a new belief that you would rather have any different than how you got to the belief that you have right now in the first place? This process of choosing new beliefs is extremely important and I don't take it lightly at all. But it is a transformational process when you can renew your mind to something that is true, to something that is empowering, to something that is connected to who you want to be as an engineering leader, as a husband or wife, as a mother or father, as a brother or sister, as a friend, as a colleague. So this is a really powerful exercise. Tim left us with pure gold in this conversation. And again, what's the action that you can take coming out of this episode? Well, there it is. Block time and go dig in to what you're most afraid of and then reach out. Join our community. We would love to be a part of that journey with you in a place where there's no shame and no judgment of what you discover. Just a desire and the tools and resources and community to help you transform and get to those results. Love you, Appreciate you. So proud of the work that you're doing. And stay tuned with the Happy Engineer Podcast here as we continue to bring in new ideas, new thoughts, and therefore new beliefs that are going to transform your career, your life, and help you to be happy, my friend. That's all we've got for this episode of the Happy Engineer Podcast. Thank you again for investing your time with me today. If you're like me, then maybe you'll take some notes and share this episode with your fellow engineers. Why? Because it will help you learn deeper, remember these insights and and take action. So share this episode with two or three friends just like you who are committed to building their career. Lastly, make sure to link up with us at oasisofcurage.com, grab our free tools for career growth there in the resource hub and schedule a free call with our coaching team today. Uh, please just share, share, share this podcast with anyone who you think might enjoy it. Until next time, remember to crush, comfort, create courage, and let's do.
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