Business Growth Architect Show

Ep #160: Dagna Bieda: Are You a High Achiever But Still Feel Like an Imposter?

• Beate Chelette • Episode 160

Share episode

Had an AHA or Insight? Share it:

Your thoughts shape your reality—but are they working for you or against you? Brain optimization coach Dagna Bieda reveals how to identify your brain code and reprogram your mind for success, resilience, and confidence. Recode negative patterns, take control of your mindset, and turn challenges into opportunities.


Your mind is like a computer, running on programs that were installed long before you had awareness of the idea of patterns. We all have behavior and believe patterns but what if some of those programs—your thoughts, beliefs, and subconscious patterns—are actually holding you back? In this episode of the Business Growth Architect Show, brain optimization coach Dagna Bieda shares how to recognize the hidden mental blocks that are limiting your success and how to reprogram your thinking to create real change in your life. Whether you're struggling with imposter syndrome, self-doubt, or simply feeling stuck, this conversation will give you the tools to take back control.


Dagna explains how your brain operates on "legacy code"—a set of beliefs shaped by your upbringing, experiences, and even societal norms. But you have the power to rewrite this code if you are not getting the results you desire. Dagna walks us through how to identify outdated thought patterns and replace them with ones that serve your current and future goals. This episode goes beyond the classics of positive thinking—and goes into scientifically-backed techniques to train your brain for resilience, confidence, and success.


If you’ve ever found yourself wondering, “Why do I keep holding myself back?” or “How do I break free from negative thoughts?” this episode is for you. Dagna offers a step-by-step approach to gaining mental clarity, building a success-oriented mindset, and making better strategic decisions in both life and business. From simple daily habits to powerful exercises that shift your perspective, you'll walk away with actionable insights that can create lasting transformation.


Ready to take your mindset to the next level? Visit Dagna’s website to explore her coaching, courses, and bestselling book, The Brain Refactor. And we’d love to hear from you! Share your biggest takeaway in the comments—what’s one belief you’re ready to change? Let’s start the conversation and support each other in this journey toward success!


Resources Mentioned:

Dagna Bieda: Website | Linkedin | The Brain Refactor

_____________________
We appreciate you, thank you for listening. Let us know in the comments what resonated in this episode, we want to hear from you.

Leave a comment, like, share with one person who needs to hear the message our guest shared.

Take our QUIZ and find out what your talent is worth in this market: What's Your Talent Worth (http://WhatsYourTalentWorth.com)

Follow us on Instagram:
Check us out on Tik Tok:
Work With Us

Dagna Bieda:

Hi. This is Dagna. I'm the author of "Brain Refactor," and I'm a brain optimization coach, and in my episode for the Business Growth Architect, I will share how to reprogram your brain to get more success and fulfillment out of life, even in the face of a catastrophe. If you want to find out the exact strategy for dealing with hardships in your life. Go ahead and listen in to the episode, and

BEATE CHELETTE:

hello, fabulous person! Beate Chelette here. I am the host of the Business Growth Architect Show and I want to welcome you to today's episode where we discuss how to navigate strategy and spirituality to achieve time and financial freedom. Truly successful people have learned how to master both a clear intention and a strategy to execute that in a spiritual practice that will help them to stay in alignment and on purpose. Please enjoy the show and listen to what our guest today has to say about this very topic. Welcome this is your host, Beate Chelette from Los Angeles, this time from Santa Monica, and no longer from the Palisades, because everything burned. And today I have just the right guest to talk about what's going on in the mind, reframing and really helping our own brain to figure out what the heck is going on when we are going through life, or, as in my case, dealing with tragedies, natural disasters, overcoming really difficult things in life. And Dagna Bieda is with me from"The Mindful Dev." Dagna, I'm excited to have you on the show. Thank you so much for being here.

Dagna Bieda:

Thanks for having me. And wow, it's insane what we're going to talk about because the extreme loss and hardship you're going through, I can't even imagine losing your house and all your physical possessions to a fire that must be devastating.

BEATE CHELETTE:

Yes, it certainly, it certainly is not something that your brain is is used to, because my brain keeps trying to find a particular instance on to compare this event to, and it just cannot find anything. So for somebody who is not familiar with your work or never heard about you, will you just tell our audience who you are and what do you help your clients to solve

Dagna Bieda:

Absolutely. So I am a brain optimization coach, and I like to say that I moved from programming computers to reprogram in human minds, because that's what I do with my clients. As an engineer, I have this perspective on the brain, kind of being like a computer software. And then, you know, this is very empowering, because if you understand how it works, you can dive into the code and then reprogram whatever it is that is not working.

BEATE CHELETTE:

I like this. I like this idea. So talk to me about this idea of so that's an operating system then that runs in our brain. So explain to our audience what is this operating system, and what are the lines of code, and what kind of code. Do I even have control over in my brain?

Dagna Bieda:

So a lot of the things, if you think about how you operate on your everyday life, is being controlled by autopilot. There's a lot of routines, functions and systems that operate on the background, just keeping you going through your day without putting too much conscious thought into the process. And what happens is, if you keep on going on the autopilot, you might wake up one day and realize, hey, I'm not where I want it to be, like what's going on in my life. So there is an invitation from my end to become more aware and dig into the that code and understand how it was created, who put it into place. It's this legacy mental programming that you're dealing with that was created for as long as you've been alive. And really the question is, what are the obstacles that you're currently facing? What are some hidden bugs, what are some inefficiencies that you're dealing with, and what can you do in order to reprogram the thoughts those automated processes that are running in the background that are creating the life that you're currently living?

BEATE CHELETTE:

So you said there's a legacy code. So the legacy code then refers to something that has been programmed into me, or did I program this myself? Yes,

Dagna Bieda:

and I love that you're pointing it out. Beate, because in reality, you could think of yourself or your brain like AI. Is the hype right now? And how does AI become what it is. Well, it is trained on certain data sets, and you could think of your brain as being trained of your lifetime of experiences, of whatever happened to you that shaped your conscious thoughts and processes and the subconscious ones as well. So I. Call it the legacy code, because a lot of the time, what puts the programming in your head is the environment that you grew up in, is the culture that you grew up in, are the people that you observed and modeled after as you were living your life and learning what it means to be alive. But it's also the role models that you've absorbed from watching TV. So it's really everything that happened in your life that had impact on how you develop and how you think. So, for example, when I moved from Poland to United States, I was in for a rude awakening, because my programming was, you know, tailor made, custom made for living in Poland, but it wasn't really made for living in the United States. So as I moved I realized that, for example, my communication needed a lot of upgrading because I wasn't coming across as I wanted to all because of that legacy programming. Now the good thing is that it's kind of like as an engineer. If you join a new company, you take ownership of the new code. You can dive in, make it better, improve in real life, once you realize that this legacy code is running you and your actions and how you show up in the world, you also get to reprogram things. So this legacy code has been created a lot of the time by situations outside of your control, but now, as you become aware, you can take ownership and change whatever is not working. Do

BEATE CHELETTE:

you have like an example of how you first figured this out, or how we can bring this idea alive to somebody who says, well, we've done some mindset episodes on the business growth architecture, but I want to always help our beehive, our listeners, to understand that there is an automatic response that happens because that's just the way it is. That's the way we've been taught. But is there an example that you can share where that really bring this idea to life? So

Dagna Bieda:

let me see, for me, the things clicked when I ended up signing up for therapy, and in therapy, I realized that going through this process of like going back into my life and analyzing how my life created the version of who I was at the time. Was kind of like doing debugging sessions, except I wasn't going through line by line and code through different files. It was more of questioning my beliefs, questioning my thoughts, and understanding that they not they might not have been true. The things that I believed like, oh, the people should operate a certain way, which wasn't really the case. But I'm thinking of a good example, hidden bugs and if an inefficiencies that are in our mental code. A lot of the time cause issues like imposter syndrome, like burnout, like trouble dealing with other people, like trouble, self marketing yourself, right? So for example, a lot of the time people that I work with that are typically engineers, but also other professionals in tech. They have this mental model of what marketing is, that it's lying to people, that it's tricking someone to believe into something that isn't true. And when we can update their model of what marketing is, which the model that I update my clients to would be educating others on the value that you bring to the table as a professional, and all of a sudden that changes how you market yourself in the world, right? Because it becomes much easier to talk about the value that you bring to the table with integrity than trying to scam others and trick them. I hope that makes sense.

BEATE CHELETTE:

It's a great example. I love that you're putting it in touch with or comparing it to the imposter syndrome, because to your point, where is it actually coming from? When you are suffering or when you're experiencing imposter syndrome, it comes from a feeling that you're not worthy, or that you're pretending to know something that you really don't know, but you have the title, you're making the money, you already have the job, and you're still feeling like you don't have a seat at the table you're already sitting at. So how do you get over that? Well, it's not an external validation, is what I'm hearing you say it's the internal work. So let's go there and say I'm listening to this show. Now I'm realizing, well, I would love to help my brain to stop boycotting me like that. What do I do? Where do I start? So.

Dagna Bieda:

One example that I love my clients to start with is this simple exercise of talking to yourself in the mirror every day at night, and finding one thing that you did good, and giving yourself praise, looking yourself deep into the eyes while you're looking at yourself in the mirror. And the reason why it is very powerful is that our brains have been designed, not only by how we grow up. I mean, obviously that's a big part of us as individuals, but if you look at the human evolution, our brains have been designed with certain routines or programs in place, right? So negativity bias is, or was, critical to our survival back in the caveman times, but currently, like in the modern times, when your life is not being threatened, the negativity bias will probably do you more harm than good. It will keep you from reaching out for opportunities. So if you can rewire your brain by daily practice, by creating mental habits of noticing good things happening in your life, you can literally reprogram how you perceive your reality, and by changing how you see the reality around you and the models that are in your head about how the world works, you'll be able to show up differently, to act differently, to stack those confidence chips that you need in order to battle the imposter syndrome.

BEATE CHELETTE:

All right, so now I'm starting. I'm going tonight. I'm going to go in front of my mirror, and I'm going to say, here is an example. Here's something that I did really well. I just lost my home, I just lost my office. I lost everything I own. I have nothing to give to my daughter, no legacy pieces, no grandmother's pearls, no jewelry from mom, no no peace. You know, I don't even have a birth certificate, everything, everything is sort of burned. So in a situation where there's several levels to is what I'm trying to get to, there's one level where I can say I'm going to practice positive self talk, like you said, I did this good, you know, showing gratitude, stepping into gratitude. And then there's, I think, another layer, when you go through maybe something really serious, in my case, a natural catastrophe, and somebody may have gotten laid off, somebody may have maybe going through a divorce, or is looking for love, and they can Find their life partner or they there's an illness or a death even, are you finding in your work with the reprogramming that there are different difficulty levels on how to manage your brain? Is that's where I'm kind of getting to, if I have formulated that question even correctly,

Dagna Bieda:

I see what you're getting at. You're talking about the moments in life when it gets really tough. Yes, how do you get going? Right? So another piece of our mental software is the meaning making. So whatever happens to you, whether it's a good event or a bad event. In your case, the loss of everything you've been building your life in terms of like materialistic things, loss of all those things. The question is, what's the meaning that you're assigning to this particular event? And the reason I'm talking about the meaning making is because how you perceive reality is a big element to what is it that you're going to do about it now, right? So one way to go about it is, if you experience such a tragic loss like you have is to get depressed, Stop waking up, getting out from the bed, and being in a really bad and negative spiral. Now is that going to help you rebuild your life? Not really, right. So if you can see this event as something that, even though tragic had helped you maybe realize what's really important in your life, change your focus. The question is, what's the meaning that you're assigning to that particular event and finding the kind of meaning that will help you move forward? I hope that makes sense. Yeah, it

BEATE CHELETTE:

does make a lot of sense. I again, you know, I feel that there's many different layers to this. So the it's not my first disaster, and it's not the first time I'm going to rebuilding my life. It's just the third time. It gets a little tiring after a while, if you really want to know, but. Yeah, I think that the all the work that I've done in the mindset, and this is what we're talking about, when you do the work and you are getting your head around these concepts, I am probably better prepared to handle something like this than somebody who has not done the work. Yeah, dang. And I see this with my girlfriends. We had our lease signed within 24 hours. Three days later, we've been moved in, and we've focused for the first week just on getting stuff in here so we can have sort of a Airbnb meet Storm version of a workable environment, so that we can at least start to start somewhere. So all these mismatch things that we had given to our kids and kept for camping in the storage unit while that's the stuff that we're using right now. So I believe that when you when you do the work and something like this happens, you don't really ask yourself the why questions, because the why questions don't do anything. Can you talk maybe before we go into the into the second part of this on how do we strategically use it? How do I manage the why questions? Because the city of Los Angeles really screwed up. This was a firestorm in the true sense, where everything that could go wrong went wrong. There was no water, there were no firefighters, there were no there was no fire line. There was no water in the fire hydrants. The the basin, the reservoir had been emptied, because it was technically after the fire season and drained over 117 million gallons of water that shut down for repairs. It just had should have been used to put the fire out, right? Well, if it would have been there? Yes, then we would have gotten the water pressure because the reservoirs and in the mountains and just from the water running down the pipes, we would have had some of the fire trucks needed power, but we didn't have any power. The Santa Ana winds were the highest they've been in, what, 20 years. So it was a series of events that created this in incredibly difficult environment. So I want to, number one, ask myself, Why me? Why am I going through this again? And the second question I want to ask, Why did everybody else screw up? So help me get my head around this. Why question. Why did I lose my job? Why does Why did my wife Leave me? Why did my boyfriend cheat on me? Why do I have a difficult child? What happens when we ask ourselves these why questions? So

Dagna Bieda:

I hear that the questions that you're asking right now, BEATE, are a lot of them are focused externally, right on the things, unfortunately, we cannot control the city that you live in, other people, the environment that you're in, when, in reality, what you are. The only thing that you are able to control is you and how you react to what is happening around you. So for example, in the case of a divorce, you could ask, why did it fall apart? Is there anything that I could have done differently to prevent that from happening? Or maybe we were never really a good match. Why did we get together in the first place? Right? So it's really building an awareness, but from the point of curiosity, that gives you the agency to do something about it. And the only way you can do something about it is if you look inside, if you keep looking outside and trying to figure out, you know, what are other people doing wrong? You're trying to kind of put the responsibility on them, rather than take ownership of your life. And I know this sounds pretty harsh, right? Because I'm saying, instead of looking at others, look at yourself. But the reality is, the only thing you can control in life is what you do and how you interpret the events that are happening to you, right? This kind of goes back to the meaning making, which is how you interpret those events, trickles down to what you do about them. So if you get divorced again, you could get depressed, you might want to avoid finding the love of your life ever again, or you could realize that you were not communicating with your partner, that there were other issues that went unaddressed for years, and that's what broke the camel's back in the case of. The city that you you're living in, perhaps it's not the best place. So you could choose to move and find a place that's better suited for how you want to live your life. I mean, at the end of the day, life is risky and is difficult and it is hard. So what I'm trying to say is the only way to go through this is by figuring out what you can do about it, to have a intentional life, to make decisions that are good for you, the kind of life that you're trying to create.

BEATE CHELETTE:

What I heard you say is that when I ask myself about control over external circumstances, it's kind of pointless, because I have absolutely no control over Santa Ana winds of reservoirs being emptied, unfortunately. So I have control over what I have control over, which are my thoughts, my emotions and my mindset. So let's talk about this from a strategic implementation into business now life, as you said, happens? How do we help now our listener to understand that there is a part that we are always will be working on how we, how we process something, what the facts are, what the reality of it is, how we, how we react to it. But how do I take this now and calm myself enough down, or get myself mentally in a good enough space to then make better strategic decisions that are good for my career or for my business.

Dagna Bieda:

So I would ask yourself, what it is that you really want out of your life, right? And whenever I work with my clients, this is really the very first session where we figure out your Northern Star, this direction where you want to go towards throughout your life, right? And the question here is, what are your values? What it is that you truly care about, what makes you want to wake up every morning and do something? What lights your fire? What sparks your motivation? And when we can answer those questions about your values, it's so much easier to create an intentional life around those particular values, and reach for that reach for that kind of life, for that kind of potential that's sitting inside of you, for realizing that potential. Now, in terms of strategic things, of what you would like to do, I highly recommend focusing on ways in which you can build resilience so bad that you earlier mentioned that that's not your first disaster, and because you have experienced the difficult moments in your life, they prepared you to be resilient, to know what to do afterwards, to pick up the pieces and just keep going, keep moving forward. So you're right, we have the thoughts, emotions and the mindset that we can tweak and adjust in order to create more resilience that helps us move our life in alignment with the values, with the things that we care about, and, you know, with the thoughts and emotions and mindset, I like to compare to kind of like a software element of improvement. So by software element of improvement, what I really try to say is that this is how you update your software, your thoughts, your beliefs and your thought patterns. And coaching and therapy are phenomenal spots to start exploring those places, but there's also this hardware element right the actual physical structure of your brain. And that hardware element, you can improve it by focusing on your nutrition, on your sleep, on the amount of stress that is happening in your life over you know, bigger chunks of time, obviously you're in a very stressful moment right now, so it's not representative, but I'm talking in general, if there's any stress that could be avoided or minimized. And then a phenomenal tool that I've used myself for my hardware updates was a neuro feedback training, which is essentially a kind of modality where you go into a biofeedback clinic, into an office, they put this electrodes on your brain, and you're training your brain to become more resilient and more in tune by readjusting The brain waves, essentially, so you have these elements strategically of software improvements, right? If you were to think about your brain as your phone, we update our phones all the time. The software patches just keep coming. We don't even notice when they install themselves. And when it comes to hardware, a lot of the time, we swap our phones every couple. Is just to get the newest, best hardware. And the same thing goes with our brains. You know, we have this software layer that can be upgraded and the hardware layer that can be upgraded, and then we also have the psychedelics right, which can give us incredible insights and can help us tap into some things that we don't have access to in our daily life. As

BEATE CHELETTE:

you know, I'm a big fan of plant medicine, psychedelics. I think that the research that is shown is that it opens the neural pathways and connections in your brain that did not exist before, I don't think I would be as calm as I am and as prepared to manage what I'm dealing with right now. Was it not for some of some of my experience with this, because I have a firm belief system, and this really goes into a lot of what you said earlier, what we have here is only borrowed anyway, if I die, and when I die and I will die, I'm not taking any grandmother's pearls, but the meaning that I want to give it is that these were my grandmother's pearls that I really would have liked to give to my daughter, to give to her daughter, so that We have these legacy moments. But obviously that's not something I have control over right now. But you ask yourself constantly on what the meaning of these things really are, because if I attach myself too much to this right now, I'm gonna be in even more misery than I'm in already. And this is a serious grieving process. This is like death. You know, this reminds me very much of the emotions I felt when my father was dying and after he died amount of time. Because you really have a significant, significant loss. It's like every five seconds. It's something that you remember that you don't have anymore. Your favorite pen, and I will never open a Mother's Day card from that my daughter wrote when she was five years old. I didn't think about scanning them. You know, they were in a box. The box burns, so all of these things are gone. And for the business side of things, you know, what am I learning out of this? What is the, what is the strategy I want to take away from it? And in my particular case, and I want to really talk about this for a minute, is that what is taking me through this is the community, and you are building a community specifically for developers and people in that work in technology, is, if you don't have a community, and you're trying to do this by yourself, it is very, very difficult. So let us know about your community. So for somebody who now says, Well, if this sounds good, I want to talk to her more about what she does, where do we send them?

Dagna Bieda:

The best place to connect is LinkedIn, and I'm on LinkedIn, and if you're interested in knowing more, DM me. I love new connections and talking to people, and I'll share all the details whenever you reach out and DM me on LinkedIn.

BEATE CHELETTE:

Okay, excellent. And you also wrote a book. So let us talk about your book real quick.

Dagna Bieda:

That's right. The book is called the "Brain Refactor," and it's available on Amazon. It did hit a an Amazon bestseller book status, and I'm super excited that it talks about a lot of the things that we shared today in the podcast, it talks about how you can optimize your internal code to thrive in tech and engineering and get more success, fulfillment, money, opportunities, impact and growth by doing exactly what I shared earlier, which is refactoring hidden bugs and inefficiencies that are most likely creating the obstacles that you're facing, whether that's imposter syndrome, burnout, trouble dealing with other people, and self marketing struggles. So once you factor those things out, you'll be able to unlock that success that you've been looking for

BEATE CHELETTE:

that sounds amazing. I love that. I love that very much. And I'm on the board of directors for women in technology Hollywood. And I love that you chose a language that, especially people in technology, can relate to and understand, where we take some of these high flying spiritual concepts, even though whatever happens with the brain is really not a spiritual concept. A neuroscience is a scientific process, and we have enough data to prove it, but this, there are spiritual aspects of it. So I love that you are finding a language where we can take this in layman's terms and make this more available to everybody. And I, you know, can just thank you for being on the show today. It's been amazing having you and sharing you, having you share with our audience what you know.

Dagna Bieda:

Thanks so much for having me be out there. I really appreciate that, and I hope that you keep on finding the courage every day to rebuild the life.

BEATE CHELETTE:

Thank you so thank you so much. Dagna. I appreciate. At that, and that's it for us, for today. What do you take away from this episode, hopefully, is that no matter what the circumstance is, and as you can see, my circumstance, this is not, this is not child's play, this is, this is a real serious natural disaster, my whole community, the schools, the places, the coffee place, the pizza place, the Pilates place, the physical therapy place, the shoe maker, the tailor. Everything has burned to the ground. There is nothing left. So if I can use these technologies and ideas to control my brain, I hope you taking some nuggets away and maybe share this episode with somebody else to help you manage whatever it is that you're dealing with, reach out to us and say hello. We always like to hear from you, and that's it for us, for today and until next time, goodbye. So appreciate you being here. Thank you so much for listening to the entire episode. Please subscribe to the podcast, give us a five star, review, a comment and share this episode with one more person so that you can help us help more people. Thank you again, until next time. Goodbye. Bye.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Beate Chelette

Host
Head Shot

Dagna Bieda:

Guest