IAM246- Hypnotist and Transformation Coach Helps Individuals Achieve Their Goals and Live Boldly

Lydia Michalitsianos is a hypnotist and Transformation Coach in the Falls Church area where she works with individuals who focus on high performance, including athletes, entrepreneurs, professional speakers, and other highly motivated professionals, in order to help them get out of their own way to achieving their goals, and living a life boldly and unapologetically. In the past, Lydia worked as a personal trainer and competing in amateur bodybuilding competitions, and now combines hypnosis, neuro-linguistic programming, eye movement therapy, and many other healing techniques to create space for internal healing as well as external transformation for her clients.

• CEO Hack: Self-development by hiring coaches and learning to master my mind
• CEO Nugget: Do what matters most and be relentless
• CEO Defined: Being in control of your business and destiny

Website:  https://www.buildyourselfinside.com/

FB: https://www.facebook.com/lydia.michalitsianos
IG: @buildyourselfinside
Tw: @lydiamichalit

Full Interview

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Transcription:

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Intro 0:01

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:27

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresham from the I AM CEO Podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I've Lydia Michalitsianos of Build Yourself Inside, hypnosis, and life coaching. Lydia, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Lydia Michalitsianos 0:39

Thanks for having me, Gresham. It's great to be here.

Gresham Harkless 0:40

No problem. Hopefully, I didn't butcher your name too, too much. I was practicing and trying and trying. So hopefully I didn't mess that up. But I wanted to introduce you to Lydia so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. And Lydia is a hypnotist and Transformation Coach in the Ball shirt, Virginia area where she works with individuals who focus on high performance, including athletes, entrepreneurs, professional speakers, and other highly motivated professionals in order to help them get out of their own way to achieve their goals and live life boldly and unapologetically.

In the past, Lydia worked as a professional trainer and competed in amateur bodybuilding competitions, and now combines hypnosis, neuro-linguistic programming, eye movement therapy, and many other healing techniques to create space for internal healing as well as external transformation for her clients. Lydia, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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Lydia Michalitsianos 1:26

Yeah, let's do it.

Gresham Harkless 1:27

Let's do it. So the first question I had was to hear a little bit more about what I call your CEO story. What led you to start your business?

Lydia Michalitsianos 1:33

Yeah, you know, I feel like probably like most of us, like my business chose me, you know, it was a kind of a gift that I was almost forced to really recognize, you know, and at this point, I try and move away from it, it's even more painful, right? Because it's like, I feel like I'm here because I had this knowledge and I'm supposed to serve others. And it really started out you know, I went through a lot of trauma as a kid and I'm totally fine with sharing it here. You know, nothing new, you know, a lot of bullying because I was a very obese teenager who lost my dad when I was 11 years old.

So already like I had no father figure in my life pretty much and you know, no one's that kind of helped me learn how to protect myself and build boundaries and things like that. It wasn't up until about my mid-20s I realized there was something unusual about me that there was like, things I was dealing with others weren't and when that clicked was like, Well, why do others not have this problem of eating their emotions or you're eating their feelings and binge eating? I'm like, what if that person can not have this issue?

Well, why do I and that's when I start to investigate the gap between you know, someone who, when I started investigating was happiness, I started studying happiness, you know, after putting myself in the hospital multiple times, and, and trying to fix my happiness through losing weight, which was, a lot of people do a lot of people go on that quest, too.

They think losing weight will bring happiness and self-respect and all those things. And you know, it's impossible to try and build that from losing weight. And it's just, it's an impossible quest that we give our subconscious minds and I learned the hard way that this has to really be reprogrammed in our subconscious. And in our, in our own neurology.

Gresham Harkless 3:08

Now, I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. And this could be for like you or your organization, what what do you feel kind of set you apart?

Lydia Michalitsianos 3:13

You know, there's a, I think there's something when it comes to weight loss, you know, what I find, and especially doing market research is that you have weight loss centers, right? And what I find is, it's like a two or $3,000 program where they give you a pill, something that they're trying to sell or whatever, and then they give you some sort of cookie cutter, you know, here's the new nutrition plan and, and go work out.

And then I mean, you have personal trainers which are great, right? They're really there to give you advice on what to eat. But really, their focus is getting you right in the gym, you know, teaching you about the equipment teaching about the exercise. And then you have nutritionists you know, which are great too they're there to help you know, alleviate disease and diabetes and things like that. And what I really found was these people weren't really getting me to where I needed to be.

And, and because most of it really was coming from the inside it was you know, emotions drive everything we do, whether it's choosing not to do something or choosing to do something, it's always emotionally driven. And so, you know, I was talking to some organization yesterday, the SEIU something they have like a perks program and they wanted to add me to that, but I didn't want to pay their piece. But um, you know, they asked me the same question.

I was like, you know, I don't know any other weight loss centers or personal trainers or bodybuilding coaches or any kind of weight loss specialists that knows how to help you reprogram your mind for permanent weight loss, not just to help you lose weight, but had to help you build the infrastructure that most people don't have when they start on this quest, because where does everybody start in the gym?

Gresham Harkless 4:45

Right

Lydia Michalitsianos 4:45

And then they're getting up and they're getting knocked down and they're unmotivated and they're, they're eating their results away and now it's the weekend and it's time to report reward myself and you absolutely cannot keep results from a new habit unless you're maintaining and you're keeping on that you have it on a regular basis, it has to be you have to change your life.

That's really what it comes down to. It's so long-winded answer, but what I feel separates me is really permanency really changing, changing yourself from the core being and not trying to manipulate people in your environment and food and in your kitchen. But trying to change who you are at an identity level is where things need to happen.

Gresham Harkless 5:24

Yeah, and I absolutely love that I absolutely love your company name because it speaks exactly to that because it talks about, you know, I think a lot of people sometimes miss and I think, you know, correct me if I'm wrong, those parts do play a part like being able to go to the gym. But if you haven't really worked on that, and that inner game, so to speak, you haven't you know, dealt with some of the things you may not want to face or some of the things that might be traumas in your life or things like that, then you're it's going to be really hard if not possibly impossible. I don't like using that word, but to be able to get the results that you're looking for when you haven't dealt with that inner game. So to speak.

Lydia Michalitsianos 5:57

Exactly I mean, I'm not saying you can't lose weight. Of course, if you have an injured energy deficit, you can lose whatever way you want. It's just it's about maintaining that work. And I know you dieted for, I mean, probably since I was like a teenager, you know, I started out investigating weight loss pills and appetite suppressants and, and all the ways to push the balloon underwater, to try and keep that balloon underwater. And it was an uphill battle. It was what felt like an uphill battle.

And I'm like, again, why do others not have this uphill battle? And when it came down to was like, I was using food as a crutch for my emotions. And usually, this spills out, you know, so for people who come to me with relationship problems, they usually have poor habits with food, and they usually have all of their poor relationships, you know, their family and their friends.

They usually have awkward social skills, it's you know, and that's the beautiful thing about this work is when I had my trainer and hypnotist work on me in Nashville, the effects compound like a domino effect throughout your life. And the beautiful part is it's most of it's outside of your awareness. You don't even know you're you've changed your behavior. And when you go back and be like, Whoa, did I just do that? I just like to walk up to that person. Did I just choose that right? The right thing to do? It's on you no longer need willpower. You no longer need to be so disciplined and have that rope so tight around your neck. It's those things that only get you so far.

Gresham Harkless 7:17

Yeah, absolutely. And sometimes I guess, and definitely, you know, again, correct me if I'm wrong, because you're so close to it as well, too. And maybe it might be a trauma where you really don't want to face it anyways, that it's harder to kind of recognize that and maybe take actions to correct that. Do you find that with clients?

Lydia Michalitsianos 7:32

It is the scariest thing, I think to realize and accept that you have been behaving in a way for so long, that has been sabotaging you and making your life harder, or even hell, it's so hard to it's like coming out of a relationship you've been unconscious in for like 15 years or 10 years or even a year.

And I think it is very scary. It's why I asked really questions that are specific to people's neurology and unconscious. Because what that's when I hear whether they're coachable or not, like if I start asking them questions about what they're doing, and they get defensive, well, I know right then and there, there's nothing I can do. And it is fear it is it's for me, it was a fear of being seen for a lot of people, for a lot of people who come in for weight reduction, as I like to say now not weight loss, because weight loss implies that something has to be found, right.

So this comes back to neurolinguistic programming. But, you know, for me, the body fat was body armor, because I had received some unwanted attention as a kid, and my unconscious made a little I experienced basically what we call synesthesia, and it's two firing mechanisms. So it's a feeling and a visual response that happened at the same time that gets stored in the memory bank.

And then over the course of your life, your unconscious mind is looking for similar events. So it's trying to protect you in impounding those, those fears getting you to know, it's like being attacked by a dog as a kid, now you're going to be on the lookout for dogs, right? And you've been blind to other things. So, you know, for me, the body fat was more like body armor. So every time I lost weight, I would start to just get emotional and scared. I didn't know why. And that's the thing.

You might not even know why this is happening, which is the great thing about hypnosis you don't really need to know you can just talk to the unconscious mind, you can just get a response. And we can't not the unconscious mind can't ever communicate like you're nodding your head right now. Right? The unconscious mind that the body can not communicate. And that's where you'll find all the answers.

Gresham Harkless 9:30

Yeah, yeah, that makes perfect sense. Because a lot of times and your unconscious mind will kind of I guess lead your steps and lead your direction without you being aware of it though, I guess the whole idea of unconscious so it's great to hear that, you know, you've been able to kind of help people out with that and help people to kind of get to those goals and actually change their lives in a meaningful way.

Lydia Michalitsianos 9:48

Yeah, absolutely. It's not easy work. You know, I'll say right here. It's not easy work. It's not cheap to work. Hands up. You know, I have probably spent over six figures on just personal Development coaches and hypnotists. I work with a hypnotist at least once a month just for maintenance and then continued work. And I'm like it's an it becomes an addiction because it's less willpower. It's less discipline and it's more change that you want. And what could be more addicting than seeing yourself grow, improve build confidence, and make more money? I mean,

Gresham Harkless 10:16

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And so would you would you consider that to be like what I usually call your CEO hack, would you consider that to be the thing that makes you more effective and efficient, just like the investment in self-development?

Lydia Michalitsianos 10:27

Yeah, it's a different level of self-development, this is different. This is for people, you know, when I look at people who are at the top, you know, like that, like the top of the top, I mean, who were up there, who and not people who are on the grid, either, they, they kind of tend to stay off the grid, not like people who are on TV, I mean, I'm making kind of a blanket statement here. But for someone to really start making an enormous amount of money,

I mean, billions of dollars to be totally cool in front of like thousands of millions of people to be so secure in themselves. And to be so confident, that takes a different level of focus. This is not just like, I'm going to read a few pages of a book a night, this is like, I'm going to work on myself, I'm going to hire a speaking coach, I'm going to learn how to sell, I'm going to learn how to sell consciously, I'm going to learn how to be as effective as I can in whatever it is I'm doing.

And in order to do that, even if it's getting fit, you have to learn how to master your mind, you really have to learn how to be in control of your mind. So it's not controlling you because it's either one or the other.

Gresham Harkless 11:27

Exactly, you got to choose this or that. So make the right decision. Absolutely love that. And now I want to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. And this is a word of wisdom or piece of advice. Or if you can happen to be a time machine what would you tell your younger business self?

Lydia Michalitsianos 11:40

My younger self, my younger business self is that what you said?

Gresham Harkless 11:42

Yeah, younger business, self.

Lydia Michalitsianos 11:44

You know, I think the message would be do what matters, do what matters most. Because, you know, I started out this business knowing I didn't want to work with hypnosis and heal people. But what really is my driver is the nonprofit that I'm starting is working with the youth. That is really what I'm so passionate about. Like, I don't need to be paid for that. And obviously, I'm not going to be paid for it right now with the nonprofit, you know, so on, you know, I just recently met with the Alexandria public schools, and I'll be working with MacArthur Douglas to test my pilot.

And that is, it's such an importance to me, it's like in a place in my mind that nothing can touch it, like nothing anybody can say do. It's like a solid cement wall around it. And it's just gonna happen. Even my business coach says I don't think you can handle both your LLC and your nonprofit at this point in time. And I was like, I don't give a shit. It's gonna happen somehow, whether it's 10 hours a week or whatever, you know, I will not survive unless this is part of my life. So in the business world, so yeah.

Gresham Harkless 12:43

I love that. I love that relentlessness. You know, a lot of people say that that's not possible. That's not gonna happen. But sometimes it's just people that you know, roll up their sleeves and just put in the work put in the time, and just grit it out to get things done.

Lydia Michalitsianos 12:55

Yeah, there this is a conversation we all had in our class last week and some of the best hypnotists in the world are our doctors, right people in white coats, right? Because automatically, we their authority in our own minds. And already what matters is what they say Right? And I had doctors straight up telling me after I broke my leg, and I was having complications, and I was walking weirdly.

And my back was hurting. And they would just straight up tell me this is the new you. This is just what you do. Now. This is how things are. And I was like, okay, and imagine how long how much I've put me behind for so many years, because the doctor is like, No, this is just what it is now. And I was like, Oh, got it.

Gresham Harkless 13:30

I love that. I love that. And just to clarify so by hypnotist as you're saying people that aren't necessarily hypnotists, but they just because they seem like they're authorities, you take their word as gospel

Lydia Michalitsianos 13:39

Exactly. And all hypnosis is is is bypassing your conscious mind. That's all hypnosis is and we do this all day, every day. I mean, TV is a form of Self Hypnosis. Reading is a form of self-hypnosis, any sort of trance you go into whether it's when you're driving, or just being in this conversation right now is a form of trance, like a light state of trance. So I mean, imagine how deep you go, when you're watching television, or when you're talking to yourself, you're doing some affirmations or things like that.

These are all forms of self-hypnosis and influence. So think about anything that influences you is probably hypnotizing you to do something to go to go out to Target or to go buy this new car or you know, to do something that maybe doesn't serve you so well. And why not learn how to do that to yourself?

Gresham Harkless 14:26

Right, right, exactly. Exactly. You know what's happening. So like you said, it's either this or that. So why not leverage that as much to your benefit? So I love that perspective. And now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question the definition of what it means to be a CEO, and we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So, Lydia, I want to ask you, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Lydia Michalitsianos 14:44

Well, being a CEO means that I think the first word that comes to my mind is control. And it probably has kind of a negative connotation attached to it for some people, but for me, being in control of my business means that I can preserve my energy for the right audience, and I don't have to take people who are just looking for a shortcut or just looking to waste their time or my time. And you know, I'm getting ready to fire a client today. And part of me is I'm very torn, you know, I'm very torn, but I have to release people who are just in it to prove me wrong. And that's perfectly fine. So being a CEO means to me that I can control my destiny.

Gresham Harkless 15:25

I absolutely love that. And Lydia, I truly appreciate you for taking some time out, what I want to do is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional, you want to let our readers and our listeners know, and then how best they can get ahold of you.

Lydia Michalitsianos 15:35

Yeah, you know, and this message is for the right people, and they'll know who they are. And it's that don't, don't give up, just don't stop. There's, there's always someone out there that can guide you that can help you. And it's just a matter of finding them. So it's just to persevere. Just don't listen to anybody and just listen to yourself, practice listening to yourself. And if you want to get in touch with me, you can visit my website, that URL is buildyourselfinside.com all one word, and from there, they can find my social media information, my phone number, and also some contact information there too.

Gresham Harkless 16:10

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, I truly appreciate you Lydia for all the awesome things that you're doing and we'll make sure to have those links in the show notes as well so that anybody can click through and follow up but I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day and I truly appreciate you.

Lydia Michalitsianos 16:20

Thanks, Gresham. I appreciate you as well. Thank you so much.

Outro 16:23

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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