3 Clues That Will Immediately Expose The Identity You're Operating From | Identity Work [ep. #297]
Identity work isn't about sitting down with a thousand journal prompts and a 17 step mindset routine (even though that's what the internet would make you believe). Identity work starts with observing your current identity: how you show up in your business, the language you use, the subconscious beliefs you hold about yourself.
So if you want to know how to change your identity, we start with something I call 'hidden clues'. It's what I listen for in every client conversation, in every message, and it's where your limiting beliefs give themselves away without you noticing.
Topics covered on Identity Work:
What are throwaway sentences, and what do they tell me about you that you can't hear?
Once you notice your throwaway sentences, ask yourself these 3 identity work questions
Why does your brain keep collecting proof of the identity you're actively trying to change?
Does your future self feel like someone else ENTIRELY? Good, that's exactly what we're looking for!
Connect with Rebecca Haydon:
Quote:
“You can learn so much about your current identity literally just by paying attention to how you operate in your business.” - Rebecca Haydon
Transcription:
Our AI tried its best, but expect a few quirky typos in the transcript. Embrace the imperfections and enjoy the read!
[00:00:00] You can learn so much about your current identity literally just by paying attention to how you operate in your business, in your life, whatever area you are working on. I'm obviously going to look at it through the lens of business today because that is what we do on the podcast. But you, like I said, can learn so much about the current identity that you are holding for yourself, that you believe yourself to be, that this is who I am, by looking at the behaviours.
[00:00:32] The behaviours, the thoughts, the feelings about what's happening right now. And that is really what I do as your coach. When I'm in the mix with a client, when I'm in a container with a client, I am listening and looking and watching and understanding how they're speaking, how they're feeling, how they're currently behaving.
[00:00:56] It gives me a lot of clues. It gives me a lot of scope and insight into their subconscious, and I am listening to the random things they're saying about themselves when things are happening, when sales have gone quiet maybe. And I am looking at what happens when one of their clients didn't get the results they wanted them to get, or watching what they do when they have to make a big decision in their business, or what's happening when another coach is absolutely smashing it online and they're comparing themselves.
[00:01:33] All of this is very, very useful information, and a lot of the identity that you have and that you hold about yourself is showing up in how you run your business, and it will show up for you every single day. Now, I obviously am trained to know what to look for, and I train my students to know what to look for, and now I'm about to train you.
[00:02:04] Because when you can start to see it in real time, in real life, it becomes a lot easier to work with. It becomes a lot easier to spot. And today, in this podcast episode, I am bringing your reticular activating system online for a few things that we're going to be talking about, to actually understand where there's this incongruence between who you want to become and where you're going, and the identity work behind that, and where you're currently sitting.
Why Identity Work Starts With Who You Already Are
[00:02:32] Now, in the last podcast episode, I went full deep dive into what your identity actually is, how it's formed, where it sits, what we actually talk about when we're saying "let's change identities." If you haven't listened to that one yet, I would definitely go back. You can carry on listening to this one without listening to that one, but this bit is a little bit of a part two.
[00:02:57] I'm making it very practical by having a look at the identity that you're currently living from, playing from, being in. Really, this podcast episode is to show you where your current identity is leaving clues. So we're going to be little detectives today, because we're looking at where your current identity is leaving clues throughout your business, throughout your life.
[00:03:21] Again, you can take this and apply it to any area of your life: health, finances, relationships, fun. All of the wheels of life, as we say. But having these clues and having this understanding is the best way to understand who you currently believe you are, rather than sitting down with a thousand journal prompts and putting time aside and everything.
Doing Subconscious Beliefs Work Without A 17 Step Mindset Routine
[00:03:46] You can do a lot of this work on the go. I think people get really blown away when they ask me what subconscious work I do and they expect me to say this big fucking 17 step routine that I do in the morning or in the evening. But actually, a lot of the time that I am doing subconscious beliefs work, it's catching myself in the moments of every day.
[00:04:10] I am doing subconscious work with myself every day, but that's not necessarily sitting down and journal prompting. And there is a time and space for prompts, and I give my clients a lot of prompts, but these things that I'm going to give you are things that you can be doing throughout the day. And to be honest, you're going to have to be doing them throughout the day, because we're looking out for a few things.
Set Up Your ‘Current Identity Clues’ Note
[00:04:35] So let's get into it. The first thing that I want you to do, what I would actually say as well, is I would love for you to create a note on your notes app or wherever you keep your notes, in your Google Drive or ClickUp, wherever you are. I want you to keep a little tab open that's almost, you can call it current identity clues. Let's just call it that for the sake of what this podcast episode is, because I think it would be good to actually put these clues down somewhere, rather than being aware of it in the moment and then we kind of forget about it.
[00:05:13] I want you to document it. So from today, you will be looking out for these things because I've brought it into your awareness. I think it would be good for us to have somewhere to keep these. So current identity clues, with the little emoji of the detective. I would definitely be putting that on there as well.
Clue 1: The Language You Use About Yourself
[00:05:29] And then we can start logging in there. So the first clue that you are going to look at is in the form of your language. Now language, aka what you say to yourself in your head and what you say out loud, is one of the predominant ways that I can really understand what is happening subconsciously for my client.
[00:05:55] I am very, very well trained in listening to the exact language of my client. It is part of NLP. Linguistics is the L of NLP, and there are a lot of tools, especially in master NLP, to be able to understand the linguistics of someone and what they're saying and why they're saying it.
[00:06:18] However, you don't need any of that to be able to start listening to your own language, and I think it's the... I even saw a reel that had gone quite viral the other day that was like, "Don't talk shit to yourself. Don't do this. Don't do that." And that's very well and true, but we're naturally programmed as humans to not talk well about ourselves, but to really kind of look at the things that we don't want, etc.
The Throwaway Sentences You Never Notice Saying
[00:06:51] So actually, language is very, very useful for when we want to start changing, and I am listening to little things that my clients are saying, whether it's halfway through a voice note, whether it's texting on WhatsApp, whether it's in a client session. And a lot of the time my clients won't realise they've even said it, and I can mirror back what they've said or ask them a question based on what they've said, and they're like, "What? Did I say that about myself?"
[00:07:17] Because basically they're throwaway sentences, and a lot of these throwaway sentences are coming from your identity, which is why you don't realise you're saying it, because it's so subconscious for you that it just comes out without you knowing, just the way that you drive now without even thinking about it.
[00:07:35] So the first thing that I want you to do is start to listen for these throwaway sentences that give us an understanding of the identity that you're currently living from. For example, "Oh yeah, I always overthink everything," is a very throwaway, flippant sentence, but that has a lot of information in there for me.
[00:07:59] Or, "I'm just not very strategic. I'm terrible with money. I'm just not one of those people that can sell every day. I'm just not." Now, they can feel really throwaway. They can feel really flippant at the moment, but those sentences are describing yourself. And language, linguistics, gives us this incredible window into how you are organising your experiences internally.
How Generalisations Become Limiting Beliefs
[00:08:33] It's really, really useful for us. Now, I want you to start to pay attention, and maybe just keep a track on what you're saying about yourself in your first set of clues, on your notes app. But I want to really start to hone in on these generalisations that you have about yourself, because as human beings, your brain has to generalise.
[00:08:58] There's just no way around it. We have so many bits of information coming into us, and we have to do something with them. Now, sometimes generalisations can be really good. Sometimes they can hold us back from what we actually want. And when your brain is generalising, it will look across experiences.
[00:09:17] It will find similarities within yourself. It will create patterns. So we don't have to consciously make sense of every single thing from scratch. When I'm teaching generalisations, I always say, as an example, generalisations are good because once you know how to open a door, you know how to open every other door that you go along, right?
[00:09:38] It created the experience. It then finds the similarities, and it creates a pattern. So once you know how to open one door, you can open all said doors. Really useful. However, sometimes the brain can take a series of experiences and create generalisations about who we are, and it depends what phase of life you're in.
[00:10:03] Say, for example, if you haven't been consistent recently with whatever you're doing, all of a sudden it can become I'm inconsistent. Now, if we actually look at it and we bring back what we've generalised, you might not have been able to be consistent recently due to a number of things, and we can look at the facts, and we can look at the logic, and we can observe that.
[00:10:27] But that doesn't mean full stop, blank line, I am inconsistent. There's probably a lot of things that you are consistent with. You probably consistently shower. You probably consistently eat. You probably consistently sleep. So that doesn't mean that you're inconsistent. However, your subconscious has taken one thing, like, oh, I haven't been consistent on social media recently, and boom, it's currently now an identity of, hello, my name's Rebecca, and I'm inconsistent. Can you see how these generalisations can literally take over your life, and then all of a sudden you are only playing through that lens, through the lens of being inconsistent?
[00:11:08] So of course it's going to find a lot of ways to prove how inconsistent you are, when actually we can look at and bring back in the things that you've generalised. You might be in a position where decisions feel really difficult all of a sudden, and all of a sudden, "I'm terrible at making decisions," but I'm sure you've made a lot of decisions.
[00:11:32] Can you see the difference? Oh, I've had a few launches that didn't sell how I wanted becomes I'm shit at launching, I'm not good at selling. So we've actually moved from something you've experienced or something that you've done, and that's moved into, very fucking quickly, something you believe you are.
[00:11:53] And once a generalisation starts sitting at an identity level, you've said it enough times, you believe it enough times, you've got enough evidence enough times, it can literally then become a reference point for the future. This is why we say what you're thinking, feeling, saying to yourself now creates who you then become moving forwards.
[00:12:15] So if you are thinking right now, "Oh, I am an inconsistent person," you can then have 3 amazing weeks of showing up on social media. You miss 2 days, and then you go, "Oh, there you go. See? I knew I'd do this. I knew I would do this because I am inconsistent." And somehow the 3 weeks of evidence gets no attention at all, right?
The Phrases To Keep A Beady Ear Out For
[00:12:44] Can you see these generalisations? So this is what I want you to listen closely to, because this is what I listen closely to, the phrases that you're saying that are similar or sound something like, "I am this. I am not this. I'm the kind of person who. I've always been on and off, in and out, 100% or no percent.
[00:13:14] I'm always all in or I'm always all out." There you go. It's in your identity. "I'm just someone who doesn't like to sell." Yeah, that's it. And I know you don't stay stuck in it, but these flippant comments, this flippant language that you say about yourself, once repeated enough, your subconscious is listening, and there is a lot of identity hiding in very ordinary conversations and language that you are saying.
[00:13:46] So your very first port of call for your detective identity clues is to start listening to your throwaway sentences, the beliefs you keep saying, who you believe yourself to be. And because we're looking at identity the most, I'm more bothered about the kind of phrases that include "I'm". I'm always this, I'm never that, I've never been, I always.
[00:14:16] Those are the sort of ones that I really want you to keep a beady ear out for. That is not the phrase, it's a beady eye, but keep a beady ear out for those phrases, okay?
Clue 2: What You Make Things Mean About You
Number two, so the second thing that's also got to go in your notes app, is I want you to start to look at what you make things mean about you.
[00:14:40] And I definitely have said this on the podcast before, but one of my favourite questions, and I have many, that I ask my clients is, "What are you making this mean?" So what I really want us to have a look at is the meaning you're attaching to what happens in your business. Because an event that's happened to you, for you, and the meaning you give that event, are two very different pieces of information that we can do something with. So let's take, for example, and I'm just picking this out because it was relevant to what my client went through this week.
[00:15:20] Say, for example, sales were quiet for you this week. Maybe it's sales were quiet for you this month, this quarter, this year, whatever it is. That is the event. Now, your brain will... That is information for your brain, but it doesn't stop there usually. It goes, "Oh, lovely. Okay, we've got some information here."
[00:15:41] But what we then like to do, especially when we care about our business, especially when we are so attached to our business, and your name is your business, we like to interpret it. And that interpretation that you give to things that are happening in your business is usually influenced by what you've experienced before, or what you believe, or what you're expecting to happen.
[00:16:08] So sales were quiet this week and suddenly it became, "Well, everyone else is growing and I'm going backwards. Maybe I'm not as good at this as I thought I was. This is never going to happen for me." Okay? So right now we have gone from what actually happened, to what it means, to what it means about me. Can you see that?
Why Your Brain Deletes The Evidence That Doesn't Fit Your Subconscious Beliefs
[00:16:31] That is the part that I want you to start catching like a slippery wet fish. Once you have already an existing belief about yourself, your attention can naturally be pulled towards information that fits it, even though it might not be the truth. So imagine if you have a belief underneath that's saying, "Maybe I'm not as good as everyone thinks I am," and that belief is just under there.
[00:17:01] It's just bubbling under the surface like a little tomato soup, and it's bubbly, bubbly, bubbly. Ready for autumn. I am so ready. Bubbly, bubbly, bubbly. And then, maybe I'm not as good as everyone thinks I am. You're kind of playing from that belief, and then you have a week where 3 of your clients are really struggling, and they're not getting results.
[00:17:23] And then your brain switches into place and automatically goes, "Ah, proof. We have proof that maybe I'm not as good as everyone thinks I am." However, those 3 clients versus another 17 clients that are doing absolutely brilliantly, but those 17 clients don't create the same internal response, because they don't fit the thing you're already bloody questioning.
[00:17:48] Can you see what I mean? This is where this deletion and distortion can come into it. We teach this generalisation, deletion, distortion for how we filter information. Now, like I said, there is so much information available to you at any given moment. Your brain has to filter it. It has to filter it, but what it lets through is really influenced by your existing internal map.
The 3 Questions To Ask Yourself
[00:18:17] So when you are looking at what you are making things mean about yourself, I think, first of all, just have a bit of an awareness of, "Oh, this has just happened. What have I made it mean?" But there's something that I want you to separate here, and this might be another section in your little notes app.
[00:18:37] I wonder how many notes people have on the podcast. I would love to know. If you keep notes on my podcast episodes, please DM me. I want to know. I want to know who's writing those notes down. I want to see those notes. I love notes. So yeah. In your notes app... Sorry, I'm segueing left, right and centre today.
[00:18:54] But in your notes app, what I want you to do with anything you're making anything mean, or even if an event has happened in your business, aka a client or sales or content or whatever it is, the first thing I want you to do is I want you to look with your logical glasses on. I want you to give me the facts, not what you think the facts are, what the facts actually are.
[00:19:21] What actually happened? So what actually happened? I posted and 3 people liked it. That's what actually happened. Then I want you to have a look at what meaning did I give it? Well, I gave it that I'm shit at writing content. And then what did you make it mean about you? I made it mean that I'm never going to be successful.
[00:19:52] Okay, can you see the difference with those 3 questions? So what actually happened, what meaning did I give it, and what did I make it mean about me? They are not necessarily the same thing. So the second thing I want you to do that's going to give us a lot of insight into your current identity is look at what you're making things mean, and look where it's going back to.
[00:20:20] Look where it's going back to in the order of your belief system. Again, I said in the last podcast that your identity is made up of a collection of so many different things. Your belief system is one of the biggest things that it's made up of. There are lots of different things that it's made up of. So yeah, let's really have a look at that as well.
Clue 3: What Feels ‘Not Me’ About Your Future Self
[00:20:40] Okay, the last thing that I want you to do, because I know I've already... Those two things alone I think will give you so much anyway. But the last thing that I want you to do is I want you to actually pay attention, especially when you are looking at who you're becoming, who you want to be.
[00:21:00] You've probably already done that work anyway. My job right now for the next couple of weeks is to not look at that. We are not doing a podcast episode on who you want to become, what she's doing, what she's eating, how she's feeling, what slippers she's wearing. I want to look at the bit before that.
[00:21:15] I think you've probably already got that, okay? But if you revisit that at any given moment, what I want you to do is I just want you to really pay attention to what kind of feels, as you look at that, not me. So when you look at that big plan that you have for your life, and the identity that you're going to be, and what you're going to be doing, and what you're going to be wearing, and how much money you're going to be making, I just want you to pay attention to what feels, quote unquote, not me.
[00:21:49] Because identity will show itself in the things that immediately feel outside of someone like me. I wish you could see my inverted commas little fingers right now, but someone like me, inverted commas. So maybe on your little dream board... Why can't I think of what the hell that's called? Vision board.
[00:22:11] What the hell? I had a real brain fart then. Maybe on your vision board, or your vision Pinterest, or your phone screensaver, whatever that is, maybe the woman that you want to become is the woman who sells every day. Maybe the woman that you want to become is the woman who is incredibly opinionated online.
[00:22:30] Or leading a team of 20, or making 50K a month. So whatever that is. And whatever is on your board. And I know a lot of the advice when you've done that is, "Go and do what your future self would do. Ask yourself, what would my future self be doing? And go and fucking do it." And preface, that can be useful.
When Parts Of You Pull In Different Directions
[00:22:52] It can be useful. But also, just whilst we're looking at what's currently going on, I also want you to understand why that behaviour feels so horrible doing it. Feels so incongruent. That's what I kind of say when I'm teaching. Now, congruence with you and your future self, and to be honest, I really want to get my clients to a space where they're congruent with their conscious versus their subconscious mind, which is a whole complete podcast episode on its own.
[00:23:24] But basically, we want congruency where parts of you are aligned with what you're trying to do and who you're trying to become, okay? And sometimes I will find with my clients that part of them wants that, so part of them wants to be a really visible, powerful leader, whereas another part of them is holding onto the fact that being visible means that we're judged, because there was somewhere in your life where you were really visible and you got judged, and we're holding you safe.
[00:23:57] Or if I'm too opinionated, people won't like me, or successful women are really intimidating. Whatever you've kind of heard as you're growing up. So now we've got different pieces of your internal world pulling in different directions, and that's why you might find when you're doing identity work, when you're kind of becoming her, quote unquote becoming her, you've got one part of you that's consciously like, "Let's fucking go.
[00:24:27] I am ready. I am here. This is who I'm meant to be," and then you've got another part of you being like, "Absolutely not. Absolutely not." I'm trying not to swear as much in the podcast episode, but I feel like, "Absolutely fucking not," just gives it so much more oomph. I'm so sorry, but you know what I am.
[00:24:45] Anyway, identity. So what I want you to actually do is, once you've got that, and you might have it already, so once you know who you are becoming, and if you haven't got that, please DM me and I'll send you some questions. But if you know who you're becoming, I want you to look at who you're becoming and who you want to be, and I want you to just question yourself, "What about being her doesn't feel like me?"
[00:25:15] What about being her doesn't feel like me right now? Like, okay, someone like me doesn't talk about money like that. That feels really scary. Or someone like me doesn't like to upset people. No, someone like me just isn't the boss. I just can't see it. Someone like me doesn't charge that much. Now we have something to work with.
Why You Default To Your Old Neural Pathways Under Stress
[00:25:40] Because actually, a lot of the time there is this essence of forcing yourself to perform like your future self and just hoping things fit into place, and it works for a week, it definitely does, and it's great, and you collect evidence, but because your brain needs a lot of energy to work, we like to do things that come very naturally to us.
[00:26:06] And what I would say is if you have played your old identity a lot, the moment you're tired, the moment that you're overwhelmed, the moment that you're stressed, you will always go back to those thicker, stronger neural pathways. So we have to do work in decreasing those neural pathways for your behaviour to become congruent with who you want to be.
[00:26:26] But I actually want to understand what the conflict is first. We actually call this parts integration, parts work in NLP, but we're really looking at what doesn't feel like you and what part is trying to protect you within that. Because there'll be a part of you who really wants to do it and really wants to go 100%, but there will be some parts of you that want to keep us safe, rightly so, because that's what they learned, okay?
How To Change Your Identity By Studying Yourself For A Week
[00:26:53] So we've got quite a lot to work with. All I want you to do with it is to just become very, very aware. We are not going to look at your new identity. You are not going to write my new identity at the top of the page. What you are going to do is you are going to spend a week studying yourself, studying the identity that you're already operating from.
[00:27:16] So listen to that language. Notice where something in your business means something about you. Notice where you're thinking about becoming your future self and you're like, "I don't think that's me." Just notice these things, because once you understand what you're looking for, identity then becomes quite tangible, right?
[00:27:39] It's in your language. It's in your meaning. It's in your filters. It's in your decisions. And then the things that feel completely outside of your current sense of self, we can go, "Okay, well, if my language is currently saying this, and these are the belief systems, we can do some work on that, and then I can start to change my language."
[00:28:01] And then once you can spot those things, we can then have a much better conversation about what actually needs to change. So I hope you've enjoyed today's podcast episode. I'm excited to see a screenshot of your notes app. Please share it with me, and I will see you on the next podcast episode.
More about The Subconscious Expert:
Welcome to The Subconscious Expert, the podcast where your subconscious becomes your one-way ticket to the mind-blowing results you desire in your life and business! I’m your host, Rebecca Haydon, The Subconscious Expert who went from being stuck in victim mode to a multi 6 figure business owner. Each week, I will be giving you the subconscious tools and techniques so you can become the woman who is living out her vision with a life and business that she is truly OBSESSED with. I have said it before, and I will say it 100 times again: "Your business can't outgrow your mindset, and if you want to grow your business, it always starts with growing your subconscious." So let's dive into the subconscious breakthrough you so deeply deserve!