2. What is identity?

Hello, my beautiful friend, and welcome to the Mind Body Alignment podcast. This is a place for us to come together and not only understand who we are, but how to become exactly who we want to be while developing the right skills and tools to help us do so. I'm your coach, Tessa Romero, and I can't wait to get started. Hey, hey, hey. It's time to start talking about identity. And for this first episode, we are really just going to be discussing what it is and what it is not. That way you have a great foundation to build your education on and really focus on your own identity. Coaching women through their identity is literally the foundation of my Mind Body Alignment coaching program. It's the first thing that we cover in my program and we discuss it every single week as to how it relates directly to your mindset, the shame, self forgiveness, setting boundaries, and even your nutrition. So everything that I coach you through revolves around your identity. And, and it's really important for you to understand that if you don't know who you are today, right now, in this moment, how are you ever going to become who you want to be? We need absolute clarity and certainty around who we are if we ever want to change, let's say, our habits. Why we do what we do stems from who we believe we are. So thinking about your identity a little bit further, let's imagine that we were on a little phone call together. Say it's 30 minutes, and I was going to tell you about my coaching program, but first I needed to know a little bit more about you. This is literally what I do for interview calls. I get on a phone call with you. This is what we do. So you'll be discussing just things about your life in general, day to day life. Tell me about your family, home life. Do you work? Do you not work? You can tell me about your nutrition, but more so we're talking about your mental health, your physical health, where you are currently, where you want to get, and what's keeping you from doing so. Just to make sure that my program's a great fit. So as we're talking, I'm going to be taking notes. Okay. And then a question that I'm going to ask you. I ask every single person on the interview call with me is, who are you? And the most common answer I get is one of two things. Number one, women will say, I don't know. I don't know who I am. And that's usually when we get really, really emotional. You might even start crying just by saying that you don't know who you are, because how awful of a feeling of it. How heavy does it feel to feel lost and to not know that answer? So that's one side. The other answer that I commonly get is saying things like, well, I am a wife, I am a mother, I am a daughter, sister. Insert your career here in this line and you'll tell me about your roles instead of who you are. Now, this is where people commonly get it confused. So I'm going to straighten it out right now. We are not talking about your roles, okay? And a great way to imagine this is if you're a mom and I'm a mom, those are our roles. What makes us different? If you're a mom and I'm a mom, what makes us different? Our identity makes us different. Who we are in that role makes us different. Because I'm also a wife and you might be a wife or in our careers, daughters, sisters, things like that. We all have similar roles, but what sets us apart is going to be our identity. And that identity is who you believe you are in those roles. My personal definition of identity is permission to be exactly who you want to be without fear of judgment or failure. So consider any role. Let's talk about being a mother, for example. And this is how I'm going to explain to you what I mean by identity and what we are talking about really, in every single episode of this podcast. Going through Mind Body Alignment podcast, all of these episodes are really building on your identity. So when I ask you, who are you? And we're talking about this, and you want to describe who you are to me as a mother, that's identity. And when you go back, let's think of the first answer. I don't know. I don't know who I am. Everyone, including you, listening to this right now, has an identity. Whether or not you can tell me what it is off the top of your head, you have an identity. You just may not like it. So when I told you that I take notes on these interview calls, it's because I'm writing down the identity. Anytime you say I am, you're talking about your identity. And you need to be very careful with whenever you say I am and you're describing yourself, because guess what, your mindset is listening. And we will be talking about mindset together. So, but let's talk about that identity part a little bit further. So if you told me I don't know who I am, we were on that coaching call together, interview call, so on, and I took down these notes, well, this is what I'm going to bring up to you is everything you told me. And I'll say, holly, I know who you are. You may not be able to tell me who you are, but I know who you are. You are exhausted, you are frustrated, you are annoyed, you are drowning, you are failing, you are angry, you are tired. I mean, these are things that I commonly hear on my interview calls, and I just take note, one after the other after the other, of how you're describing yourself. Some other really common ones are lazy, procrastinator, failure, inconsistent. Like, that is not a great way to describe yourself if you're trying to see positive change, right? So if you really think about it, are you encouraging yourself to change, or are you holding yourself back through that identity that controls your mindset? So let me describe identity a little bit further. Everyone knows that we have a mindset about something, right? If you've decided that something's going to suck, well, that's your mindset. Your mindset says that it's going to suck. But I could do that same thing and say, oh, this is going to be great, because my mindset said that it is going to be great. And that's kind of how the mindset goes. But what controls your mindset is your identity. And kind of a little formula to think of right now is identity plus mindset equals actions. Everything that you do is stemming from that identity and mindset, and they just kind of work in a cycle. So if you told me all those negative descriptive terms on our interview call, now think about your daily life. Maybe you feel so inconsistent and you don't follow through with the things that you say that you're going to do because you say, I, I am inconsistent. So your mindset says, okay, sweet. How can we be inconsistent? And then the actions follow. Well, we're definitely not gonna do a workout. We're for sure not gonna prep these snacks. And don't even get me started on peeling those garbanzo beans. Not gonna freaking do it. Like, we'll call ourselves inconsistent. We'll do it one time, and then we'll say, well, I'm not gonna do it again because I'm inconsistent. And that's kind of how it all circles back to that identity. So I hope that's making sense on here. And however, there is the option to, like, reach out, ask a question. Please do. So I'm new to this podcasting thing, so we're going to figure it out together. But going back to the identity, how you're describing yourself, that I am is really going to control everything. So whether or not you can tell me who you are, everybody has an identity. And you just really need to get crystal clear on what is your self talk like. Your self talk, the stuff, the talk going on in your mind throughout the day can tell you a lot about why you do what you do and who you believe you are. So maybe for a day you just want to kind of observe, like, okay, what's the first thought I have in the morning? I am tired. Oh, oh, okay. So that's probably not helping. All right, sweet. Let's say the kids are throwing a temper tantrum. What are my thoughts then? God, I'm so exhausted. I'm so impatient. What is wrong with me? I told myself I want to yell, and here I am yelling. Oh, okay. So calling myself impatient, I am impatient probably isn't helping either. If you can start to really observe that self talk, it will tell you a lot. And that's what I want to encourage you to do now. So now that you have a little bit of a better understanding around identity, and before we go talking about mindset and things like that, I really want you to observe yourself talk all the times that you say I am, and then ask yourself, does it make sense why I do what I do, given that I believe this about myself and that self belief? In my coaching program, we go much more in depth into your identity. And I mean, we stem it all the way back to childhood. There is a reason that you think these things about yourself. And one of my biggest goals, working with you is to help you understand why you do what you do, why you believe this to be true about yourself. Where did it all come from? Because I promise you, you didn't wake up one day having all this negative self talk. It came from somewhere, someone at some time. And it can be very healing to reflect on those experiences which we do in my program together. But the purpose of this podcast is to help anyone and everyone that maybe isn't in my coaching program has been on the fence. My coaching program hopes to do my coaching program, anything like that. I just want to give you guys a good starting point. So this is some of just the key takeaways of this week's podcast. Talking about identity. Number one, the definition itself, identity gives you permission to be exactly who you want to be without fear of judgment or failure. Key takeaway number two is going to be anytime you say, I am, you're referring to your identity, so be very careful. And number three, that I didn't quite cover here, but It's a very good point to keep in mind is you control what you think, say and do. That's it. Nothing more, nothing less. Those are the only things in your control and they stem directly from who you believe you are. So keeping those three points in mind, I hope to see you guys on next week's episode where we'll talk a little bit more about how your identity and mindset are going to work together and some simple things that you can be implementing to start seeing changes immediately. Make sure you subscribe so you don't miss any of the episodes to come and I'm really excited to make this a great space for us to come together and truly become exactly who we want to be. We without fear of judgment or failure as we grow the skills and tools to get us there. It is such a wonderful privilege of mine to be here with you in this space and I hope that you find all the value out of our time together.