The Social Media Takeaway - Louise McDonnell

Manifestation & Hypnosis: Reprogram Your Mind for Success

• Louise McDonnell • Season 1 • Episode 51

Share episode

Ever feel like your own thoughts are the biggest obstacle to your success? You’re not alone.

In this episode of The Social Media Takeaway, I sit down with Danielle Serpico, a mindset coach, NLP trainer, and author, to dive into the power of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP)—a tool that can help you break free from limiting beliefs and rewire your mindset for success.

Danielle shares her incredible journey from hitting rock bottom during the Celtic Tiger crash to transforming her life and business with NLP. We break down practical steps to shift your thinking, harness the power of self-talk, and create the success you envision.

You'll learn:
✅ What NLP is and how it helps you break limiting beliefs
✅ Why the way you speak to yourself shapes your reality
✅ Practical strategies to rewire your mind for business success
✅ How to surround yourself with people who lift you higher
✅ The Observer Effect & how to manifest opportunities

✨ Plus, Danielle is offering a free hypnosis audio to help you build a wealth mindset!

If you’re ready to reprogram your mindset and unlock your potential, this episode is a must-listen. Hit play now! 🎧

SHOW CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction and Welcome
00:22 Meet Danielle Serpico: Mindset & Business Coach
00:52 Understanding NLP: Reprogramming Your Mind for Success
01:23 Danielle’s Journey: From Rock Bottom to Thriving Entrepreneur
03:24 The Power of Self-Talk & Presuppositions
04:19 Recognizing & Overcoming Limiting Beliefs
07:13 Practical Mindset Shifts for Business Growth
09:30 Surrounding Yourself with Positive Influences
18:40 The Observer Effect & Manifesting Success
22:13 Danielle’s Success Stories & Free Gift
23:41 Final Takeaways & Closing Thoughts

✨ GRAB your Free Audio here!

Connect with Danielle Serpico:
LinkedIn

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to my podcast because more like this is on the way!

If you'd like to book a call to see how I can support you head over to my website here. www.sellonsocialmedia.academy/hello

My 2025 Social Media Content Planner & Guide is now available! Packed with 400 content prompts, expert tips, and $377 worth of free resources to help you save time and get results in 2025.

Grab your copy now on Amazon!
Amazon UK
...

Louise McDonnell:

Welcome to the social media takeaway. I'm your host, Louise McDonald, and this is the show for business people that want to know how to use social media more effectively. to drive sales and leads for their business. If you enjoy the show, please make sure you subscribe. And if you know any friends or business colleagues who may benefit from this episode, please make sure that you share it with them. So today I'm absolutely delighted to be joined by Daniel Serpico and she is a mindset and business coach and NLP trainer, speaker, and author with a mission to help ambitious individuals break through limiting beliefs, master their mindset, and create a life of wealth, confidence, and success. You're very welcome to the show.

Danielle Serico:

I'm delighted to be here with you louise.

Louise McDonnell:

Good, good, good, good. So come here before I ask you anything else, I'm going to ask because I'm not a huge fan of acronyms. so when you say NLP trainers, like for people listening in who might not know what that means, what is that?

Danielle Serico:

Great question. Well, stands for Neuro Linguistic Programming, which very simply means neuro is in your brain, linguistics is in your communication and programming. So it basically means How we speak to ourselves and how we speak to others and the effect that that may have or not.

Louise McDonnell:

Mmm, I think this is going to be so, so, so interesting. Daniel, how did you, before we get into that in a little bit more detail, how did you get to be a specialist in this area?

Danielle Serico:

well, I stumbled upon it a bit, but looking back, obviously, I don't believe in, any coincidences. the short version is I, came to a point in my life where I hit rock bottom. I actually, went bankrupt in the crash of the Celtic tiger. I had my own little enterprise before that. I'd been an entrepreneur since I was. 19. I'd opened my first restaurant at 19 and at 37 years of age, , in the crash of the Celtic tiger, I went bankrupt and bust and, everything collapsed and I lost absolutely everything, including my home, everything, literally everything I had. And I hit rock bottom. thankfully, I didn't give up, very nearly did. and I went on a journey of self development, which led me by chance to picking up a book by some people have heard of Paul McKenna, the hypnotist. And I read one of his books and it Kind of helped me and then I read a book from his teacher who was a guy called Richard Bandler and I really liked his book as well and it kind of helped me and I started looking, googling them and looking it up and I found that Richard Bandler who was Paul McKenna's Main, mentor coach who also, taught Tony Robbins and people like that, is a guy called Richard Bandler. And he was the , co-creator of a system called Neurolinguistic Programming. And I started to delve into that and it was completely for myself. For selfish reasons, it was just to help me feel better and change my inner dialogue and I was talking to myself pretty badly at the time and putting myself down a lot and I had very low self worth and a lot of stuff from my past had come up and this stuff started to help. It was practical. It started to help. I started to feel better. I started to speak to myself better, and then I started to speak to others better, and that's how it all began.

Louise McDonnell:

Fantastic. Yeah, and I know I spoke with you, it's years and years ago now, we did a live interview on my Facebook page. I don't know what even it was called, but anyway, that interview, but I always remember, chatting to you. One of the things that I still remember to this day, I was saying to you, so I don't know how it came up, we were talking about how we speak to ourselves and I was saying, well, how can I sleep better at night? and you made the point, you go, you said, well, if you're going to bed saying to yourself, I'm not going to sleep, well, you're basically programming yourself not to sleep. And I have remembered. Every time that ever since, and so when you say the NLP, that's the first thing I think of now. It's just programming yourself for success. Yeah. And it's so funny. I always think of it. I am going to sleep. I'm going to have the best night's sleep ever

Danielle Serico:

because that is something I talk a lot about. It's called a presupposition. If we presuppose that we're going, something's going to happen, then we're hypnotizing ourselves and we're all incredible hypnotists. We are very effective at influencing ourselves. So yes, we'd be very careful of how we prime ourselves, how we set ourselves up.

Louise McDonnell:

and actually I also use it with my children as well, so say, , if you're going to go and do something, you have to imagine, you've already succeeded because you're programming yourself for success. Okay. So for anybody who is listening in here and they're just wondering if they have limiting beliefs, because I think a lot of people. don't realize that they do it. You know, hear people talking, you say, no, no, no, don't talk to yourself like that., if somebody's listening in here, how would they be able to just stop themselves now,, stop what you're doing, and have a little think, and Danielle's going to explain to you now how you will realize if this is something that maybe you're doing and you don't even realize it.

Danielle Serico:

Yeah. well, the first thing is awareness. It is awareness. I have a book and it's called The Black Lab Mastermind. And the first chapter is all about self awareness. And that is the key. If we don't know what we don't know, we can't do anything about it. Right. But if we become aware, it's like shining a light. We, we'll always know it's there. So most of us do have recognized once we allow ourselves to, and even the very act of listening to this podcast is helping you to realize that, okay, hang on a second. How do I speak to myself? Do I speak to myself in a negative way or a beneficial way? So notice that. Shine the light on it. Notice it. Now, the most important thing that I always say in this step is what most people do is after they notice that they speak to themselves badly or in an ineffective way, they tend to beat themselves up for it. That's what we call compounding. And that's the last thing we want to do. We don't want to compound an emotion. So in other words, if you notice yourself saying something like, Oh, I could never do that, or I'm no good at it, or I'm not good enough, or blah, blah, blah. It's one of those negative things. If you notice yourself saying that the next thing to come out of your mouth or in your head that we don't want is Oh God, I was so stupid to think that. Oh, I shouldn't have said that. And why am I saying things like that to myself because now what we're doing is we're compounding the original thought But underneath another thought and a thought that maybe might be linked to shame or guilt or frustration or anger to ourselves. So we're never addressing the original one. So that is, the last thing we want to do. What we do want to do is we actually want to congratulate ourselves. We actually want to go, Hey, Oh, wow, well done. And you can't see me here in this podcast, but you know, lick your fingers and sizzle yourself because like, you want to kind of actually recognize that you're amazing, that you actually noticed that you had the thought. Now, the reason why you want to acknowledge it in that way with, enthusiasm, with kind of like. well done for having noticed is because now you're anchoring and I talk a lot about anchors and NLP and hypnosis terms were anchoring a positive feeling to something that we want to notice ourselves doing. So, if we anchor a negative feeling like shame, guilt, anger, frustration, our subconscious mind will protect us from that and will stop us from noticing. But if we anchor a good feeling around it, well done for noticing, now it'll go, okay, let me notice more for you, let me notice more for you, and you'll notice when you say it. Now, when you notice, we have the power to change it. So, the next step after you've congratulated yourself is to just change it. It's to just change, break the neural pathway. And say something else. Now, a lot of people talk about affirmations. I'm not saying say something that is unbelievable. So instead of saying something like, for example, oh, I could never do that, and that's what you've noticed yourself saying, or, I'm not good enough to do that. I am not necessarily suggesting that you say immediately, yes, I am good enough to do that. Yes, I can do it. Easy peasy because you may not feel that right now. Yet. But do say something that is leading you down a different path. So say something like, well, maybe I can do this. What if I start looking at ways to do this? Is it possible that I can do this? Is it possible that I could say something that leads you in a better direction? And that's how you start the process of changing your internal dialogue. And it is extremely effective once you start doing it repetitively.

Louise McDonnell:

I can believe it because like that, you're just programming yourself for success, aren't you?

Danielle Serico:

Yes. It's like going through a garden path or a field of grass I will say if we go down one path all the way it's going to feel easy because we've worn a path, that's what's happening with our neural pathways if we keep saying things like I can't do it I'm not good enough or I'm silly or I'm stupid or these kind of things that we've often said to ourselves, then I'm unlovable I'm unworthy. Then we've worn a lovely easy path to walk down. And if we do it once, what happens is a lot of people fail because they stop. They fail because what happens is they give it a go. They try it out and they say, okay, I've heard this set. So they give it a go once or twice and they go, Oh, I'm not really feeling that. I don't know if that works. And then they give up. But remember you've gone down the other path so many times that that path is really. settled, but if you only go once or twice, you've only treaded, lightly on that path, and we haven't really worn a path, but if you keep wearing it down, you'll wear out a new path and then the old path will grow over.

Louise McDonnell:

Absolutely. And then as you're talking there, it's occurring to me that you could also have somebody in your ear telling you, you can't do things. I think that's also a huge part of it as well. And I suppose you have to just make a choice not to listen to them. Would that be right?

Danielle Serico:

You do. And talk about this a lot. how do we stop? A lot of people ask me, how do we stop ourselves from being affected or influenced by the people around us? And here's a two part answer to this. One is surround yourself by enough other people that will lift you higher. That's You know, balance the scales. If you have to be in the company of some people that are going to bring you down because you may happen to love them, they might be your parents or your children. And there's nothing you can do about it. You don't want to give them up. but surround yourself by other people that were going to lift you higher. Put yourself in rooms, put yourself in spaces. They say with the sum of the five people we spend the most time with. Put yourself in rooms with people that, will lift you. make that decision today to put yourself in those spaces. That's one. The other thing is, I'll share a little story as a little analogy. And I'm sitting here in my office and, at the moment and , it's chilly. And I remember my heating broke. This is a true story. My heating broke, Oil burner broke a couple of years ago and I bought this little electric heater and I put it in my big office space here and the room was freezing and I switched it in and the heater did its job. it worked its magic and in a few minutes the room was warm not for one moment, did that little heater look around the room and turn to me and say, Hey, Danielle, don't switch me on. And I didn't have to say why. And he didn't have to say to me because the room is so cold and I don't know if I'm going to be able to do what I do because the room is so cold. The room is much bigger than me, has a lot more cold and I don't know if I'm going to be able to heat it up. Not for one moment that little heater falter, it just did what it knew what to do. It switched on and heated up the room. And the same is true for us. If we focus less on what is happening around us and outside stuff, and we radiate out. Our own energy and our own stuff, it will affect the room around us. It will have an impact. Rather than protecting ourselves, because when we're in protection mode, and we're worried about what other people think and what other people will say, guess what? We're going to activate our reticular acting system, and we're going to spot it more, not less. But if we focus on ourselves and radiating out, we'll have an effect on everything around.

Louise McDonnell:

Another thing somebody said to me years and years ago and I thought was really really good advice is that they said you should never use the word try.

Danielle Serico:

100 percent the word try literally because our subconscious mind is very literal it's actually in some ways it's very clever in some ways it's quite you know not so clever and the word try is a perfect example it takes it literally so when we use the word try it implies. failure to your subconscious mind. So if you use the word try and obviously you don't we go around and we say to somebody, Oh, will you try and do such and such, we're actually hypnotizing them, influencing them to not do. And if you hear somebody using the word try, if somebody says to you, if you say, come check out my podcast and they say, Oh yeah, I'll try to try and check it out. They're not coming, that's a given you can take it that they've sabotaged themselves, whether they mean it or not, whether they've, already planned to or not. The subconscious mind might call it the little people inside your head. We'll find a way to stop you if you use the word try. unless you want people to fail. So in other words, As a hypnotist, and I don't want to give too many hypnotist secrets away, I will use the word try to stop somebody to feel something, to stop somebody thinking something. So I know the power of it. I will use the word try very intentionally when I want somebody to not do something.

Louise McDonnell:

When I hear people say, I'm going to try and do my best, I'm like, Oh no, you're just going to do your best.

Danielle Serico:

Exactly. 100%.

Louise McDonnell:

Don't do it. Yeah. Take out that word. Try eliminate it from your vocabulary. It does not serve you. Okay. Have you got any examples of people who, you've worked with that had really, really limiting beliefs and then having gone through your program have come out the other side just to like let people know the types of transformations that are possible.

Danielle Serico:

Well, I have hundreds. I mean, I've been coaching and mentoring people for 15 years now. and obviously since COVID, a lot more people online. I have, for example, I do a lot of NLP trainings. I do trainings abroad in Italy where I bring people on a retreat for a week and we do the NLP training. I had one girl, for example, there recently. Who came over to Italy and she cried every single day she was practicing speaking in public, for example, and putting herself out there and, speaking on stage or speaking in corporate or anything like that. And she literally could not do it. And she left thinking that it was just going to continue. And this was a very big block, a very big block and a big problem for her life. It was affecting everything, her business, her career, everything. And I think it was about three weeks after she came back from, being abroad in Italy with us, she had booked a speaking gig. I had watched her, witnessed her, as did some of my other students, and afterwards said to her, she did a one hour workshop in front of a whole bunch of people, and he said, so were you nervous? And she says, Oh, no, actually, no. This is somebody who just would have been in tears, just couldn't do it. So it was very subconscious. We did it. I did it very subconsciously. So she wasn't aware of it and was transformation. It's transformed her life and she's now all over social media blasting it out, putting stuff up everywhere, videos. So that's one, but is a lot deeper than that. I mean, I've had people, for example, I've had one woman, and this sounds very strange, a little bit woo. However, I do believe the subconscious and frequencies are very interlinked. She wrote a list of who, with my guidance, we wrote it actually together. I didn't tell her what to put on it, but like give her the process of who she wanted to attract into her life. And, she always liked the film, what's it called with Mr. Darcy. She wanted her own Mr. Darcy a year later, and this is no joke. She is with living with now her own Mr. Darcy, a man called. Darcy.

Louise McDonnell:

Literally. The subconscious took it on literally.

Danielle Serico:

Oh, basically, I will help people with whatever their blocks, their subconscious blocks are, whether it's, they want to find more love, they want to feel worthy themselves and find their own self worth. They want to scale the business, grow the business. They want to reach five figure months, six figure years. They want to, learn how to sell with confidence. They wanted to speak up with confidence. They want to attract love. They want to learn how to influence. They want to become a coach. I train people as coaches. it's quite varied. a lot of time coaches were told to niche. I don't really have a niche, but the niche is the subconscious. The niche is communication of the subconscious and the effect that has. So. it's across the board. If somebody has a limiting belief, a fear, something that they want to improve on and they want to have the confidence and self worth to believe in themselves and to go out there and smash it, I can help you do it.

Louise McDonnell:

Okay. And so can you, I know you're not going to answer all the questions in this podcast, but for anyone tuning in here, who's, interested in the topic. So if somebody did want to try and change their mindset, are there any steps that they can follow Danielle?

Danielle Serico:

Yeah, there's loads of steps. I would say, again, the first step is awareness. And actually, probably even before that, it's, like to say it's also right to be wrong. I would say, open yourself up to being wrong. Start loving, loving, loving being wrong. About, obviously, your limiting beliefs. Not about the good stuff, but about the bad stuff. Start looking for evidence that you could be wrong. That in itself will completely revolutionize, transform your life. We are so stuck in what's called confirmation bias. We want to believe, especially Irish people, our favorite words are, I told you so. We love to say, oh, you know, gather together, you know, women love to gather together, men gather together and say, oh, you know, my wife is treating me terribly or my husband or my partner, my boyfriend, you know, so and so, my boss is, absolutely awful to me. You should have seen what he does. You should see the way he acts. Watch. If we go out now to a dinner party tonight, let's watch when we go out , for a drink. Watch how he behaves. Watch how he never shows me affection. He's never afraid. Just watch, just watch, just watch, just wait for it. And then you're there. And there, you're nudging your best friend, you're saying, see, I told you so, I told you so, I told you so. We're constantly looking for the evidence to prove ourselves right. We love being right, but it is oh so right to be wrong. When we start looking for the evidence to, that we are wrong about things that are, holding us back, that are keeping us stuck, that are keeping us miserable. When we look for that evidence. That is the first step. Allow yourself to be wrong. And once people open up, and when I get somebody in here, I teach people how to do this process, I teach coaches and NLP and hypnotists how to do this, but the first step is always What I call taking the legs out from under it. If you've seen the Karate Kid, you may have heard of Sweep the Leg Johnny, right? And I'm a black belt. I'm a martial artist. And that's where the brand, the Black Belt Mastermind came about. It's about you becoming the black belt of your own mind. And the first step is the same. It's a bit like sweeping the legs out from under it. We want to rock that solid. Base of someone's old limiting beliefs of believing that they can't do it, that life is this way, that it's too difficult, that they could never change, that they're too old, that they're too fat, that they're too stupid, that they're whatever it is, and we want to rock the belief That negative belief from under them, you've got to take the legs out and you can do that to yourself. You want to prove yourself wrong. Start going out and asking yourself, Well, is it possible that I could be wrong? Has anybody else ever done this? Has anyone else? Look for the evidence to prove yourself wrong and your world will expand.

Louise McDonnell:

Fantastic. Okay. So awareness, step one. And the next step then is allowing yourself to be wrong so that if you have limiting beliefs that you can actually change them. and even for anyone tuning in. Let's start with that, and start, reprogramming the way we speak to ourselves and eliminating words like try out of our vocabulary as well. And do you also believe, Danielle, cause I definitely believe this as well, that what you put out in the universe, Is what comes back to you

Danielle Serico:

100%. I was just talking about it before this podcast and another program I was doing. And, it's that certainty. I mean, this might get a little bit woo, but this is also science. if you've ever. Touched on quantum physics, you may have heard of the observer effect and the observer effect was an experiment that was done with scientists that is now fact. It has been proven that when an object is smallest piece of matter, and this is what they did. They did an experiment where they took the smallest piece of matter, which is an atom and atom is the smallest piece of physical matter. So for all the skeptics listening in the don't believe in woo you believe in physical stuff. Right. The physical piece of matter, an atom was shot through this machine, the scientific machine onto a screen and it did what it was expected. It went in a straight line as expected. Now what was really interesting and what blows your mind and it's very hard for us human beings to comprehend is that when the machine was not observed by the human eye, guess what happened? It reacted every way possible. It went everywhere and nowhere and somewhere and somewhere and it did every single infinite myriad possibilities of results. It went everywhere. So, and they couldn't get their head around it, but basically quantum physics proved and it's called the observer effect. And it's called the field of potentiality that when a physical piece of matter is not watched by the human eye. Every single field of potentiality is there. Every single possible result is there. When it is watched by the human eye, because the human eye expects it to react in a certain way, then it will react according to the expectation of the human eye, of the observer. So that proves categorically my mind, that It is our certainty, our belief, our presupposition, as we were talking about earlier, if we believe something, so we are so certain, we are so convinced, this is like the glue of the mix that creates. If we believe something with such certainty, then we bring it into existence because that is the field of potentiality. so yes, what we believe actually manifests.

Louise McDonnell:

I actually think this is really, really important for anybody in business because like I'm not saying like, listen to what Danielle is saying and then I want you to believe you're going to win the lotto because the chances of that happening, okay, maybe I'm limiting myself and that's why I'll never win the lotto. But when it comes to business, what I'm kind of saying is you've got to believe that you can do it. you got to see yourself what success looks like for you. And then you've got to see yourself there. And I think the way that it, In my head, I rationalize it because I know you're talking about the woo and all of that. but I think what happens is if you really believe something's going to happen, you make different choices, you turn up in a different way, you present yourself differently. And when you present yourself differently, you get different outcome, you get different results. So if you come to it with a positive mindset and with. full 100 percent belief in what you can do and sometimes you can do stuff and it doesn't work and actually sometimes when things fail, it's a bit of a gift as well because then you've got to reset and try something else. Oh, I use the word try. You've got to do something else to get results. So for anyone tuning in here today, I think, now, if this is January, so you might be listening in July, which is fine, but most of you will be listening in January. What a great time to reset your brain, to reset your mindset. And if you need assistance with this, well, Danielle is absolutely the person to go with. And if you need assistance with your business, be sure to check out my programs as well as new ones starting again at the end of January. Danielle, you have a free gift for everybody here today. Do you want to tell people about it?

Danielle Serico:

I have an incredible audio. And again, whether you believe in woo or not, I I started off on my journey, not believing in woo at all. And as the more I've understood how the subconscious mind works and the fact that we are all energy, the more I believe in the woo as well. But it is practical. It is very rational because yes, exactly as you said, not even positive thinking. It's practical thinking. If you feel a certain way, it's practical. If you think a certain thought, you're going to feel a certain way. If you feel a certain way, you're going to behave a certain way. If you behave a certain way, you're going to get a certain result. So which way do you want to think and feel and henceforth the result that you want to achieve? So I created an audio, a guided hypnosis audio, probably about, Five years ago, six years ago now, which went on to help me. I truly believe this with a hypnosis repeated over and over. I created it for myself. It resulted in me having my first 50k week.

Louise McDonnell:

Wow.

Danielle Serico:

And I listened to 30 days. I'm not saying necessarily that everyone that listens to it for 30 days is going to have a 50k week. There has to be other steps in the process as well. Of course, I believe in masculine and feminine energy. The energy of doing and the energy of receiving both together. However, it will definitely get you in a higher frequency and a higher vibration and a better mental state. So it is called the wealth audio. And I'm going to give it to everybody that's listening to this.

Louise McDonnell:

Oh, that's so cool. Actually, I can't wait. to listen to it and to reinforce the successful voice in your head. So, Danielle, how do people find you?

Danielle Serico:

Very easy, theblackbeltmastermind. com, or Danielle Serpico, there's not too many of me, Serpicos, but yes, Danielle Serpico, theblackbeltmastermind. com, you'll find all about me.

Louise McDonnell:

Thanks so much for coming on and sharing all your wonderful advice. I think it's just really timely that we, reset, refocus, and reinforce all those positive voices in our head.

Danielle Serico:

It's been a pleasure, Louise. Thank you.

Louise McDonnell:

Thank you.