Welcome back my friend…Are you ready for a 10-minute mind shift today?
Today, we are going to talk about…Living Into Your Potential instead of your identity.
Who am I?
We all ask ourselves that question occasionally. And when we try to answer it, we tend to look backwards to find the answer.
We tend to take look at our identity in this way when we are faced with unexpected changes to our life like losing a job, the end of a relationship, or the loss of a loved one.
But it also comes up when we are intentionally trying to create an outcome or accomplish a goal in which our future self will be significantly different.
For example…we trying to find their soul mate, lose weight, get the promotion launch the business…your life will be different when you accomplish this goal, you will become significantly different as a result of your journey.
Who we are, our identity, is how we see ourselves?
It is our thoughts about us.
How we see ourselves is what creates our results.
Why this is important is that we tend to live into our identity vs our potential.
When we do that, we create blocks to the future that we want to create.
We create barriers to creating the outcome we want to create.
What does living into your identity sound like…
- I’m just not organized
- I will never lose this weight
- I’m just a yeller
- I’m just not a person who…
- I’ve never been good with my time
- I never could hang on to money
- I am just not motivated
- I just can control my cravings and urges
- I am addicted to sugar
- I can’t imagine ever being a normal weight
- Just not a morning person
- I’m always late
- I am so busy, busy, busy
- My life is nothing but chaos
These little sentences seem very benign and harmless but when we describe ourselves this, we eventually create the outcomes of these sentences.
These sentences are the stories we tell ourselves and others about ourselves and then…this is how we show up.
I think a better question to ask yourself on your way to create your results is…
Who do I want to be?
What is my potential?
One of the things that I talk about with my weight loss clients is..
- Who they will be when they don’t overeat anymore.
- Who will they be if they aren’t making 2 and 3 trips to the buffet any more.
- Who will they be if they aren’t someone who eats a pint of ice cream before bed.
And the reason that I ask that is that sometimes we associate the things we do to who we are. We become attached to those behaviors as if it is part of our identity.
We can ask that questions for any results we want to create…
- Who could I be if I actually get up instead of hitting snooze 10 times?
- Who could I be if I show up as the manager that I want to be promoted to?
- Who could I be if I didn’t walk around with a chip on my shoulder feeling entitled?
- Who could I be if I just stopped thinking I was broken?
Whenever we are trying to up level our lives in any area, how you see yourself will create yourself.
When we don’t live into our potential and we live into our identity, we live into the person that we are.
When we don’t see the potential and start living into our potential, we pull our old self into the new outcome and what happens is, we rubber band back to the old identity.
This is really evident with lottery winners.
They take their old money thoughts and their money identity into their future self, they end up rubber banding back to their old money identity.
I read some crazy statistic that said 74% of lottery winners are broke within 7 years.
They lived into their money identity!
Many people who lose the weight gain it back and they do it knowing exactly how it happens but not realizing that they started living into their identity of always being overweight, instead of their potential to learn how to control cravings and urges.
Some of the stories that I told myself that had me living in my identity instead of my potential was.
- I’m just a judgey and critical person, I can’t help it.
- I’m fine being angry, he deserves all of my anger
- I only have so much emotional capacity, I’m saving it for people who show me that they care about be
- I don’t need help, I am fine.
- Do me wrong once and you don’t get a second chance.
So as you can probably imagine, I was not a whole lot of fun to be around.
More importantly, I wasn’t a whole lot of fun for me to be around!
As you can imagine, I did not like that person very much and I didn’t see why anyone would like me either…and when they did, I was very suspect.
When we don’t live into our potential, we miss out on being the person who can achieve any results we want, invite, attract and create any outcome.
When we don’t live into our potential, we miss out on knowing that we can have the job, the relationship the health that we want to experience.
When we don’t live into our potential, we carry the baggage of being the victim, the baggage of self-doubt and maybe even the baggage of self-loathing.
When we don’t live into our potential, we feel out of control and like our life is just happening to us and that this is just the things are, this is just who I am.
- We can have an organized life that is not dominated by worry, anxiety, overwhelm and chaos.
- We can love and be loved without the fear of rejection or humiliation.
- We can launch a business and scale a business and be wildly successful.
- We can create the income of our heart’s desire.
- We can be anyone that we want to be, we are not the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves.
This week, really listen to how do you describe yourself to others, listen to how you talk about you to you…that’s what you will create more of.
It does not serve you to stayed tied to the identity of your past unless that is what you want to create more of.
The story you tell yourself about yourself should be all about the person that you are becoming.
The person that you are aspiring to be.
Your future self. I spend a lot of time talking to my clients and students about their future self.
So I want to give you the 4 step process to living into your potential. And creating the new identity of your future self.
- Decide – Identify the story that you tell yourselves and others about yourself. Be very aware of the language that you use and decide to let go of the old story. Decide that the old identity does not serve you any longer and decide that that chapter of the story is over.
- Drop your old identity- Ask yourself who could you be without that thought. If I dropped the thought that I was a judgy and critical, who could I be, how could I show up if I stopped describing myself that way. Who could I be if I dropped the thought that I was a victim or that money just slips through my fingers. Whatever your go to thought is…who could you be without it?
- Define your potential – How would your life be impacted and up leveled by writing a new story about yourself? How would you show up if you stopped believing that you couldn’t control your cravings and urges? How would your life be different if you knew that you were in charge of your brain instead of the other way around?
- Start living your new story the one that has you living in your potential…
Here is my parting thought…
Your brain wants to prove your thoughts true whether they are true or not.
You get to decide which thoughts to prove true.
You get rewrite the story of who you are right now, today.
You get to design the person that you are becoming…
…you can start living into your potential today!
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