In this episode of The Dr. Zoe Show, licensed therapist and life coach Dr. Zoe Shaw introduces her upcoming self‑talk course and uses personal anecdotes—a weekend getaway win and a missed theater ticket fail—to illustrate common struggles with procrastination and identity loss. She argues that many women (and parents in general) lose touch with their true selves due to societal expectations, caregiving roles, and the pressure to live others’ dreams, drawing parallels to Simba’s journey in The Lion King. Dr. Zoe explains how self‑talk shapes brain pathways, urging listeners to reframe negative internal dialogue and offering concrete exercises: envisioning one’s legacy at age 98, identifying non‑negotiables, and aligning daily actions with an ideal self. She discusses the importance of setting boundaries, recognizing groupthink, and distancing from toxic influences, while emphasizing that change starts with small, consistent steps. The episode concludes with a call to action to apply for the self‑talk program, subscribe to the podcast, and join her mailing list for ongoing encouragement.
Grab a cup of tea or listen as you go, ladies. This is your hour with Dr. Zoe, your life and relationship coach. With encouragement, on-point insight, inspiring guests, health tips, and advice, Dr. Zoe helps busy women keep their mind in the game by redefining your superwoman. You're listening to the Dr. Zoe Show.
Hey there! We're all about redefining your superwoman here. I'm your host, Dr. Zoe. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist. I have a doctorate in clinical psychology. I am a life and relationship coach, and I can work with you virtually to help you get unstuck. You can connect with me by going to my website, drzoeshaw.com, or @DrZoeShaw at any of the social media handles. Today's topic is remember who you are. But first, it's always Superwoman win and Superwoman fail. So my win is that I am taking the weekend. My husband and I are going to get a hotel room at the beach, and we are going to film my new self-talk course. So it's like a getaway, just the two of us, but it's also a working weekend, but it's a win. Because I'm really excited. I've been working on this course and it's gonna be launching in January. And now I just have to finish recording all the videos. And this course is gonna be a super intense focus on your own self-talk. We're gonna learn how it originates. You're gonna learn how to recognize it. And I'm gonna give you tools to transform it so that you can also transform your life and relationships. And I'm super excited about this because I do my self-talk work, obviously, in my therapy. I do it with you guys here on the podcast. But this is perfect for somebody who maybe doesn't want to do life coaching or therapy or doesn't feel they need to, but knows that they need to get control of their own self-talk. And they can just work on this little aspect and go about their life. So I am very excited to record it and get out my first course. And if this piques your interest and you think maybe this course might be for you, I've included an application in the show notes, and you can also go on my Instagram @DrZoeShaw and click on my bio, and you can apply for the course. And you can just hit me up if you have any questions about it. So that's my win. My fail is that my son had his very first opening night of his play at his college. He's a college freshman, if you guys haven't been following me, and I didn't get the tickets on time. We've been looking forward to going to opening night. He was the only freshman who got a lead, I believe the only freshman in the entire cast. And so we were really excited, and he got comped tickets for my husband and I, but I needed to get tickets for my other kiddos, and I got them too late. So a couple days before, I went online to get the tickets and they were all sold out. And the kids were really looking forward to going to see Kai in his play. So it was my fail. I just procrastinated thinking that the tickets would be there. So the good thing is that Stan and I still got to go, and I have a great friend who watched the kids for me so that we could go. It was a wonderful experience, but I just need to learn to stop procrastinating. So that night I went and I bought the tickets for the closing a couple weeks from now. So we're all gonna get to go as a family. So it works out, but the kids missed out on opening night. That was my fail. Gotta stop procrastinating. So on to the main deal. Woman, remember who you are. And this is actually a famous line from The Lion King. I don't remember who said it. Was it his father? Simba, remember who you are. Yeah, I think it was James Earl Jones, but I could also be completely wrong about that. But back to the topic. Remember who you are. Have you ever had an instant realization that you've allowed yourself to turn into someone you don't want to be? Sometimes you can have a fleeting moment and it hits you really hard, but then you rationalize it or you're too busy to pay attention. But there's this gnawing knowledge that you don't know who you are anymore. You might've experienced that on a small or large scale because it's easy to get lost. It's easy to get frustrated and not be confident in who you are. Those negative gremlins in our head can pull us down and make us feel like we're not good enough. I know that there have been times in my life where I completely got lost. I woke up and I literally didn't even know who I was anymore because of all the busyness, because of all the things that were going on. I really lost track, and it took me a while to find my way back to me. And believe me, it's not a one and done. It's a continual practice. And I think especially for women, it's an expected struggle in general because we have different seasons of our lives. If we become mothers, it's actually necessary for the focus to be off of us. We are born nurturers and we're created to pour ourselves into those people that we take care of. And that's a good thing. And actually, this isn't only for women. Studies have shown that men who have babies, their testosterone actually lowers if they're in the same home with their babies, and that decreases their drive to go out and conquer and be super productive, which actually ensures the continuation of our species because caretakers have to have a psychological and physiological drive to care. So that all makes sense. But we also know that all of this hits women so much stronger than men. And it comes from the simple biology that a man can have a child and never even know it. And that is an impossibility for a woman. So it's easier for us to get lost. But for you guys who aren't parents, we don't only get lost in our parenting. We can get lost living someone else's dream for our life. Simba got lost. He allowed grief, guilt, and fear to allow him to hide out and become someone he wasn't. And that can and does happen to everyone. And so I'm here today to remind you, remember who you are. Remember who God made you to be. So if you heard that and you thought, well, I can only focus on the bad things about myself when I think about who I am. I want you to know that, number one, that's a lie. You are not your mistakes. You are you who made some mistakes. One of my favorite sayings ever is that you are not required to be who you were 5 minutes ago. And it's so important to get that because, as Anne Morrow Lindbergh said, When one is a stranger to oneself, then one is estranged from others, So if you've lost who you are, you're going to see it in all aspects of your life, including your relationships. And remember, we can always use our deficits for good. We can use our shortcomings to inform us about ourselves, to tell us about others. And it's so important to reframe your negatives. That's a little bit about what my self-talk program is about. And it's not just a semantic game. It might sound like it. Well, yes, I'm just reframing it. I'm saying it in a different way. But what you have to understand is that your words are so very powerful, and the way that you say things to yourself about who you are, who the world is, affects you. Reframing our negative changes the way it lives in our brain so that we can use it as fuel. So if you don't quite remember who you are and you're feeling a little bit lost, what can you do? I absolutely loved this exercise by Christina Conti. She said, think about if you were 98 years old and you're on your deathbed. What would you be most proud of in your life? So I want you to write down 3 things. Now, write down this question: Is what you are doing and who you are on a daily basis lining up with what you want to be most proud of? And I have to admit, man, this challenges me on the daily because there's things I want, there's immediate gratification, And often some of those things conflict with who I want to be and how I want to show up in the world and what my priorities are. And it's okay if your ideal self doesn't always line up with your actual self today, but you have to remember your ideal self is still a part of who you are. You created your ideal self. Our drives and our deficits sometimes keep us from showing up daily as we are, Just like it did for Simba, but he just needed to be reminded of who he is today. And I'm reminding you to remember who you are. There is a spark inside of you that knows exactly who you are. And you have occasional reminders of this, just like Simba did. It might be a dream or the smell of something familiar. It might be an unexpected glance of yourself in the mirror. It might be something you read. Maybe it's this podcast. So I want you to think back to when you were a teenager. That's sometimes when we are in our most idealistic self, which is good, which is why young people can create movements that change the world. Think about what you remembered your idealistic teenage self thought you would be. Now what I want you to do is I want you to write down your non-negotiables about who you know yourself to be and what guidelines you want to live your life by. Next, it's super important that you drop people who don't support you living your best life. Now, this applies to people mainly outside of your family instead of inside, because cutting ties is not always the healthiest option with family. Sometimes it's about recognizing toxicity, putting up boundaries in your relationships and distancing, but not necessarily cutting yourself off. Although Simba had to do this, although they also weren't his family, but they were kind of his new family. He had to leave his fun crew in order to walk in the greatness of who he was meant to be. There's this concept called groupthink, and it's really a sociological concept, but it's real and it's been studied and proven. And it's why sometimes someone who is acting in a mob is so much more dangerous than they would be if they were acting on their own. Mm-hmm. Groupthink is the practice of thinking or making decisions as a group in a way that discourages individual responsibility and also can discourage creativity. So you really just start to think all together as one. And Simba's group, I mean, really, if you have more than 2 people, you've got a group. Simba's group convinced him that Hakuna Matata was the way to live, not the purposeful, intentional, big life that he was destined to live. That life that was inside of him. And although he had fun with this group, there was still this internal stirring. And so if you've forgotten who you are, you're gonna feel an internal stirring about it. There's something that you know is just not quite okay. But if making changes and trying to show up as yourself after a long period of not doing that feels overwhelming, Then pick one small way that you can show up as yourself every day in your life. Build on that. Simba started his walk back to his pride without having made the transformation. He just started taking steps. The transformation to who he was, to getting back to who he was, happened after he committed himself to the journey. So just commit yourself to the journey of remembering who you are. And start walking on that path. Don't make up stories about it. Don't allow your fear about whether you can really walk in yourself and all that you were meant to be, whether that's going to happen or not. Just start walking on that path and you will find yourself. Trust it. Write down this phrase and post it somewhere. Put your name. I'll say mine, Zoe. Remember who you are. So thank you for listening to the Dr. Zoe Show, Redefining Your Superwoman. New shows go up on Tuesdays. Please subscribe so you don't miss an episode, and also get on my mailing list. I send out reminders for my shows. I give some encouragement. You can do that by going to my website at www.drzoeshaw.com. And if you participated in the contest or knew about it, we got lots of questions for my Ask Dr. Zoe column, and I'm going to be getting back to answering some of those, uh, starting on my next episode. So have a super week and I look forward to connecting with you guys on social media.
You've been listening to the Dr. Zoe Show, Redefining Your Superwoman with your host, Dr. Zoe Shaw. Don't forget to sign up for her monthly newsletters to get encouragement, tips, and skills for keeping your Mind in the Superwoman Game. Connect with her now at www.drzoeshaw.com. Tell your friends and subscribe to her podcast on iTunes. Join us next time for another edition of The Dr. Zoe Show.
