Reclaim Your True Identity

SUMMARY

How much of your true self did you leave behind in 2023?

Operating out of the performance trap — that approval addiction — tends to get all of us trying to be who we think everyone else wants us to be.

Well, stick with me because this week, I’m going to start a journey to help you come back to your authentic self.

There's only one YOU, and the world needs YOU with your gifts, talents, experiences, depth of knowledge, and everything you have come through that has made you who you are today. However, as with every human being on the planet, you've believed things along the way that aren't true because they made you feel safe and comfortable.

To reclaim your true identity,

• The first thing you need to do is realise that you are worthy of where it is that you want to go.
• Second, write down a list of all the negative thoughts that you have about yourself.
• Third, you need to leave behind those negative thoughts and beliefs about yourself that are holding you back.
• Fourth, replace them with new thoughts and behaviours.
• Lastly, repeat those new thoughts and behaviours so that they become the new normal.

Just like you, I’m still a work in progress. I'm not perfect, and it's never the goal to be perfect. My goal is to just keep moving forward and be the best version of me that I can today. I’m going to make mistakes and do things that are contrary to what I teach you. However, what I can do these days is recognise it a lot quicker and then shift to where I need to go.

As I said: “There’s only one of YOU”. We need YOU, all of YOU, and the true YOU. Not the one that you think other people need you to be.

TRANSCRIPT

How much of your true self did you leave behind in 2023?

Operating out of the performance trap — that approval addiction — tends to get all of us trying to be who we think everyone else wants us to be.

Well, stick with me because this week, I’m going to start a journey to help you come back to your authentic self.

Hi, this is Grant Herbert, VUCA Leadership and Sustainable Performance Coach and today, as I wish you a happy New Year, I want to help you reclaim your true identity.

For those of you who started the journey again with me last week, I gave you an empowering structure to look forward into 2024 so that, when you arrive at the end of this year, you've not only achieved what you want to achieve but you've gotten there without all the stress and conflict.

If you haven't watched that episode, I suggest you go back and go through it. However, to give you a quick recap, we talked about looking at the results you want at the end of the year. We then looked at the reality of where you are now, and that created the gap that you need to train and develop. Then, we talked about the roadblocks, which are the things you put in your own way that stop you from going from where you are now to where you want to go.

For many of you, that's been happening year after year. How do I know that? Because that's certainly my own experience.

The fourth thing we talked about was adding resources that would help you overcome those roadblocks and then get to where you want to go.

So, I want to start that this week by giving you resources and practical steps that you can take right now to get the results you want by removing those roadblocks once and for all.

There's only one YOU, and the world needs YOU with your gifts, talents, experiences, depth of knowledge, and everything you have come through that has made you who you are today. However, as with every human being on the planet, you've believed things along the way that aren't true because they made you feel safe and comfortable.

Those 3 universal fears that I talk about all the time; the fear of not belonging, the fear of not being good enough, and the fear of not being loved, sometimes force us to behave in a way that's counterintuitive.

It's not really helping us, but we think that it is.

> That internal dialogue and conditioning.

> What we've led ourselves to believe by things said externally to us.

> Experiences that we've gone through but that we've made mean a certain thing and then ruminated over time and again until they became your truth.

Some of these things are not healthy.

As I talked about last week, you need to repack your bags for where you’re going, and not bring those limiting thoughts and beliefs forward on this next leg of your journey.

They're going to weigh you down and hold you back. They are the roadblocks that I'm talking about that will stop you from going from where you are now to where you want to go.

To do this, you first need to give yourself permission to focus on YOU.

I talked about forward-focused reflection, which is where you can look at things in your past and things that are going on now, in a certain way. This is so you are reflecting on getting some data and some assistance to move forward and not camp back in that place where you don't feel good about yourself and you’re getting more evidence of what you believe you are incapable of doing. No. You’re going to do that in a different way.

You're going to calm that inner voice and take back control of who you are and who you are not.

Eleanor Roosevelt said: “What other people think of you is none of your business.” And that is so true. She also said, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

So, to reclaim your true identity, the first thing you need to do is realise that you are worthy of where it is that you want to go.

You need to realise that YOU, just as you are, although teachable and still on your own journey of imperfection (just like me), are good enough. You are more than enough.

When you shift that mindset (which I had to do a number of years ago), it will put you in the right position to make the changes you need to make.

It's not up to anyone else to change you. That's your responsibility. I'm not here to change you. I'm here to give you some resources that you can choose to take and implement in your own life if that's where you are and are ready to go right now.

If you're ready, throw your hand in the air and say: “Yes, that's me. I'm all in, Grant; this year is my year of breakthrough.”

Let's get started together.

The performance trap is where you perform to get the approval of others.

Whether or not you get that approval determines whether you feel good about yourself. That then determines how you think about yourself, which leads to your identity.

What you DO is your performance, but who you believe you ARE, and are not, is your identity.

And that is where the roadblocks come in.

For example, an opportunity comes up, and you start thinking: "That would be great for me to do that.” Then quickly, that inner voice pulls you back and says: “No, that's not for you. That's for someone else. You're not good enough for that. Remember those times when…”

And it looks at all the negative, and then you bring that up and you go: “Yes. What was I thinking of? How could I do that? That's okay for Grant and for others, but it's not for me.”

If that would happen to me now, I would challenge that, and I’m going to ask you to do that for yourself as well and look for evidence of the fact that you are good enough.

I've told you this story before about finding out what happened to me when I was a baby and what I made that mean. The meaning I had placed on what happened held me back and it was a huge roadblock that was insurmountable until I had a look at that again and shifted that belief.

This is totally up to you. This is not something that someone else can do for you.

So, how do you build this identity?

The first thing that you want to do is to write down a list of all the negative thoughts that you have about yourself. Write down those limiting and false beliefs that you've made true about yourself and the things that come up regularly that you ruminate on, and then you go: “Yes, you’re right”, and you hold back.

So, just write them all down in a list, one after the other, instead of stopping and allowing that to steal your energy and not going any further.

Once you've got that list down there, what I want you to do is for you to challenge those. I want you to look for evidence of what you can rather than what you can't.

I want you to look for evidence of when you did, rather than when you didn't, and give yourself a fresh set of beliefs to go forward in 2024.

As I said last week, we're repacking our bags. To repack your bags, you need to make room for what you need to take. You need to leave behind those negative thoughts and beliefs about yourself that are holding you back.

And we're not worried about anyone else in this exercise. This is YOU taking responsibility for who you believe you are. It's about drowning out those words of other people you have spoken over you, those words you’ve chosen to make mean something about you.

This is about you packing YOUR bags.

It's like when you go on a trip and you go through customs; they ask that question all the time:

“Did you pack your own bags today?” Well, you're going to be able to say: “Yes, I did.”

By packing your own bags, you take responsibility for what's in it and what you take forward with this journey that's ahead of you.

What if you believed you could?

What if you got rid of those negative thoughts that are holding you back?

Some of you are going to need some assistance. You may need someone like me to sit down with you, ask you some challenging questions, and help you go deeper beyond those pain points of where you normally pull back and go back to that old thinking to help you get that.

Or, you may be down the journey a bit further, and you are able to go: “You know what, I’m not believing that anymore. This is what I'm believing.”

That process of rewiring your brain is where you recognise those beliefs, thoughts, and behaviours that are holding you back and then reject them and go: “No. I’m not carrying those through anymore. They're not true.”

Then ,and only then, can you replace them with new thoughts and behaviours. Those are the resources that will empower you to become who you need to be in this next leg of your journey so that you get the results that you want.

After coming up with those three, the next thing to do is to repeat those new thoughts and behaviours so that they become the new normal and they're hardwired in your brain. So, when normally you would have a thought that would take you to the negative when something happens, you're going to go in this new direction. It's time for you to reclaim your true identity.

I count it as a privilege to help people do this all the way around the world. It's what was holding me back, and going through this same process with others and having my coach help me to get to that point meant that I was able to shed all those negative thoughts and beliefs — those things that were weighing me down, those roadblocks — and I was able to step into who it is that I was created to be.

Just like you, I’m still a work in progress. I'm not perfect, and it's never the goal to be perfect. My goal is to just keep moving forward and be the best version of me that I can today. I’m going to make mistakes and do things that are contrary to what I teach you. However, what I can do these days is recognise it a lot quicker and then shift to where I need to go.

As I said: “There’s only one of YOU”. We need YOU, all of YOU, and the true YOU. Not the one that you think other people need you to be.

Well, that's it from me for this week. Join me again next week as, when you bring along those new thoughts about yourself, I will help you understand your emotions.

You're an emotional being, and being able to navigate those emotions in a healthy way will help you take these new beliefs forward and get the results that you want in 2024.

I'll see you then.