Liora’s Story: The Power of Allowing & the Art of Appreciating
An intimate look at healing and the Badass Method in action
The fears get louder. The sadness settles in. You look in the mirror and wonder, what happened? Why do I feel so lost, so stuck, so confused?
We’ve all had those moments when the world feels like it’s crumbling, when the noise of our worries drowns everything else out.
I call these Doubt Goblins—those nagging voices of resistance, rebellion, fear, anxiety, and limiting beliefs. They have a way of ruining happiness, disrupting self-care, and keeping dreams stuck in the clouds instead of grounded in reality. Doubt Goblins are pros at pulling us off course.
But you can become a pro at shrinking them in the face of something magical: Allowing.
There’s a three-step process I use all the time to help me ferret out those pesky destroyers of peace and possibility.
I could tell you what that process looks like (and you’ll find the steps in the free download for subscribers), but today, I want to show you.
This is Liora’s story.
Liora Meets Her Doubt Goblins
“When my husband told me he wanted a divorce,” she said, “it was a shock. I believed marriage meant safety, home, forever. He was my person. I was just beginning my spiritual awakening, asking big questions, not getting many answers, and then it all fell apart. Everything I thought was secure just wasn’t.”
After the divorce, she moved into a condo and stayed there for ten years, but it never felt like home. “I’ve been chasing that feeling of home ever since. Safety, stability, belonging. It’s been a theme. Every time I started to feel grounded, whether in a relationship, a job, or a friendship, something shifted. It got taken away, or I had to move on.”
As she spoke, her voice began to slow, softening under the weight of realization. It was as if she could finally hear the pattern that had been running her life.
I asked gently if I could mirror what I was hearing. She paused, then said, “Yes.”
“What I hear you saying is this: you’re not safe. You’re not stable. You’re not free to be you.”
Silence. The kind that hums with truth.
Then, a quiet exhale. “Yes,” she said. “Yes.”
Her Doubt Goblin had been with her for decades, whispering the same three lies: I am not safe. I am not stable. I am not free to be me.
The Weight of Inherited Instability
Next, we explored what stability would feel like.
“I don’t even know what stability feels like,” she admitted. “My mom has always needed me to live the life she wants, and somewhere along the way, I started believing that keeping her world steady meant losing my own. She’s been my Achilles heel my whole life. I’ve spent years making sure everyone else is okay, feeling like I owe her a version of me that keeps her world stable. But I’m so tired of feeling responsible for that.”
Her voice softened. “Some days, I wonder how I keep going. But I know this much—I don’t want to just survive anymore. I want to be me. Calm. Creative. Free.”
What surfaced next were all the ways she had built instability by trying to please others. “I see it clearly now,” she said. “I need to create a foundation that’s mine. Stable income. Stable energy. Stable self.”
The Myth of Stability
I could feel her exhaustion. This was a turning point, a shift from despair to something softer. Liora was beginning to name the difference between having stability and feeling stable in the most human and tender way possible.
“What does stability mean to you?” I asked.
She didn’t even pause. “Home,” she said softly. “Having my own space. That’s what stability is for me.”
Then she went quiet. “The strange thing is, I had that. For ten years, I had my own condo, my own life. But I never really felt at home in it. I couldn’t let myself receive it. I kept focusing on what I didn’t like, my neighbors, the HOA, and I never let myself settle into the safety I said I wanted.”
Her voice caught. “It’s like I had the thing I’d been praying for, and I still couldn’t let it in.”
That’s when the old familiar whispers told her she wasn’t safe, wasn’t supported, couldn’t trust what she had. That if she let herself feel secure, it would all be taken away.
They had been with her for so long, they felt like truth.
The Shift from Doubt to Appreciation
Every time she thought she’d found her footing, something changed. A move. A layoff. A loss. “Maybe the stability I’ve been chasing wasn’t out there,” she said. “Maybe it’s been trying to grow inside me all along.”
She exhaled, long and deep. “I think I finally get it. Stability isn’t about what I have. It’s about allowing myself to be.”
I smiled. “That’s it. The Doubt Goblins loosen their grip the moment you begin to acknowledge them.”
That’s the thing about Doubt Goblins. They don’t always sound like doubt. Sometimes they whisper in the language of survival: You’re not safe. You’ll lose everything. You can’t trust this.
For Liora, her Doubt Goblin’s name was Instability. It had been running her life for decades, disguising fear as practicality and resistance as responsibility.
She paused. “I keep shifting, growing, changing. And every time I do, the world around me rearranges itself. I thought it meant I failed. But maybe,” she smiled, almost surprised at her own words, “maybe I’ve been leveling up. Maybe stability isn’t supposed to look like stillness.”
That is when Appreciation slipped in, quiet, steady, patient.
The Power of Appreciation
Facing the Doubt Goblins requires courage. But self-awareness reveals the paradox so many of us live inside: we crave stability, yet when it finally shows up, the Doubt Goblins whisper that we don’t deserve it.
Appreciation is the antidote. It doesn’t force change; it allows it. It begins small, in the cracks where the light gets in.
I appreciate my breath.
I appreciate this moment of calm.
I appreciate the woman I’m becoming.
Appreciation rewires the nervous system faster than striving ever could. It slips past the Goblins guarding the gates of worthiness and whispers, See? You’re already okay. You’re already enough.
Liora nodded, tears forming. “So I’ve been trying to build safety from the outside in. But it starts here.” She touched her heart.
Exactly.
Badassfirmations: Rewiring from the Inside Out
“I get it now, Tina. Appreciation is different because it welcomes in.”
Yes. Appreciation bypasses resistance, the Doubt Goblins, and the noise of the monkey mind. It slips in quietly—steady, patient, unwavering.
The next step was to personalize an Appreciation practice for her. In this case, we created a simple badassfirmation™, affirmations you actually believe, for her to work with.
She chose the foundational statement: I am. I am safe. I am stable. I am secure.
With each statement, she tuned in to experiences that were one hundred percent true. For Liora, a woman deeply connected to the divine, stability and security were constant in that connection. So we sat together while she allowed the feeling of divine security to strengthen in her heart.
She whispered, “I am secure. I am safe.”
Naming it. Feeling it. Creating room for more of what she desired.
Badassery: Appreciating and Allowing
Liora shared that this was the most meaningful conversation she’d had in a while. In a season of upheaval, losing her father, her job, and living with her mother despite their long and tangled history, she felt something shift.
We don’t chase miracles. We open to them.
We don’t beg for blessings. We receive them.
Appreciate. Allow. Appreciate. Allow. Repeat. Repeat.
That’s how you begin to tame your Doubt Goblins, not by fighting them, but by turning toward yourself with gentleness, curiosity, and truth.
That’s the evolution of a Badass.
That’s manifesting and living bigly, with Sass and Soul.
That’s what it means for Liora to live on her terms.
Free.
