EP139 The Inherited Self: The Identity Running Your Life (Without You Knowing)

Just as an FYI, you don’t have a motivation problem. Or a motivation problem either. And you definitely don’t need another podcast, book, or morning routine to “fix” yourself.

What you actually have…Is an identity that was handed to you… 

…and you never questioned it.

You say, ‘this is just who I am’

But is it?

Is it really?

Or is it instead:

• what you were taught
• what you watched
• what kept you accepted
• what stopped you getting rejected

Because the thing is, you’re trying to build a next-level life… from a version of you that was designed to keep you safe, small, and acceptable.

That’s why:

• You overthink decisions you’re more than capable of making.
• You hold yourself back in rooms you’ve already outgrown.
• You feel like you should be happier than you are.
• You keep circling the same patterns… even though you know better.

And the maddest part?

You think it’s bloody you.

Spoiler: it’s abso-f*cking-lutely NOT.

It’s your inherited self.

The beliefs you didn’t choose.
The rules you never questioned.
The version of you that learned very early on:

“Be this… and you’ll be okay”

And it worked, didn't it?

It got you here.

But it’s also the exact thing keeping you from where you actually want to go next.

So if you’ve been sitting there thinking:

“Why does my life feel off when everything looks right?”
“Why do I keep holding back when I know I’m capable of more?”
“Why can’t I just be the woman I know I could be?”

This is the episode you need.

Because once you see this… You won’t be able to unsee it.

Inside this episode, you’ll start to clock:

• the beliefs you’ve been living by that aren’t even yours
• the invisible rules that have been quietly running your life
• the exact moments your identity pulls you back into playing small
• why “this is just who I am” is usually complete bullshit
• and the first step to taking your power back (properly)

This isn’t about fixing yourself.

It’s about realising… you’ve been living inside an identity you never consciously chose.

And once you see that?

You get to decide what stays… and what doesn’t come with you into your next chapter.

If something in your life feels off right now…

Don’t skip this one.

This is where it starts.

👑

P.S. Check out The EDIT Your Life: No BS Reinvention Journal to re-design this next level self in 12 weeks 🩷

🔥 DOWNLOAD FREEBIES TO FUEL YOUR REINVENTION

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Transcript

00:00

Hola, hola and welcome to the reinvention era podcast, where we not only work through all the shit that's holding you back, but then we take that to the next level, to not only design your next level self, but also install that queen as well. I'm Sarah Elizabeth, Queen of reinvention, and totally with you on this mission to crown as many women as possible.

00:34

And we need it right? There's been all this shit in the news about I don't tend to watch news because it depresses me. But there's been a lot about this

00:45

air quotes Academy, where 62 million blokes

00:52

visited this academy in February,

00:56

62

00:58

million blokes, that is not February supposed to be the month of love of Valentine's Day. I mean, what the fuck you know? And it's like that's still a hell of a lot of men. And it wasn't until, I think, 1991

01:16

that it was still legal for a bloke to rape his wife. What the fuck was that about? Now we have come a long, long way since then,

01:30

but if 62 fucking million men are to go by, we've still got a hell of a long way to go, which is why, for me,

01:39

it's another reason why it's so so important to deal with our shit and reinvent our sovereignity, you know, and step into our own fucking power as women and stand up against this bullshit, you know, like, I'm not anti men by any stretch of the imagination. And I've raised boys, you know, who are now men, and I'd be fucking horrified, horrified if they even

02:11

started to, like, even suggest that that's what they were thinking. And then it's just horrific. And also, I've got granddaughters, I want them to see a better future where we don't have to worry about this shit, you know,

02:30

like, I've got one of my

02:33

friends daughters, and she made this comment, and it's really stuck with me, right? She said to her mum,

02:42

half the population are scared of the other half of the population. That was from a 16 year old girl, a 16 year old girl, fucking hell. What world are we living in? So I don't know. It was a bit of a side note there to start the episode, but for me, it's just another reason why I'm so damn Passionate About Us girls taking our crowns as our best fucking level selves, because we deserve to.

03:16

Sorry, I really started on a tangent.

03:19

I have actually been in hospital, well, in and out of hospital now for a week.

03:28

I'm recording this Thursday for the episode to come out tomorrow, Friday, and it's been a mission this arm, the gift that keeps on giving,

03:38

is now infected five weeks after the operation, or four weeks when an infection started. And

03:45

yeah, I'm I'm having to go to the hospital every single day for IV drugs. So maybe that's why my mind's all over the place. But anyway,

03:59

I will get back off of Sare's soapbox, I will try and find some sense of sanity so that you get some sort of episode,

04:07

although I'm sorry, not sorry about complaining about them fucking men, 60, anyway, right? Anyway.

04:15

I think part of

04:16

the challenge maybe around this is that we spend so many years

04:26

trying to fix ourselves,

04:29

we try and fix our confidence, we fix our habits, we fix our motivation, we buy the books, we listen to the podcast, we save all the Fucking bows and never look at them again. And yet so many women still feel like something is off in their life, like this isn't quite it, and that's how they can end up in relationships and dependent on men. And I've gone off a tangent again. I'm sorry. I will come back. I.

05:00

Pulling myself back.

05:02

I'm reeling myself in but look

05:07

what I'm trying to say, and this is the core of this week's episode,

05:12

is that we

05:15

are as women,

05:18

trying to improve a life that was built on an identity that you didn't even choose, because no one's talking about that bit. No one's talking about it.

05:33

So I kind of was thinking about it when I was in in hospital earlier in the week. I was thinking, what do I want to talk about today? And I think that I want to do something a little bit different, because I want to break down what, what I call the layers of self. Because

05:50

if you actually want to

05:55

reinvent your life, I mean properly, not just tweak it round the old edges, but really, truly be your queen self.

06:06

You need to understand who in you is currently running the show.

06:14

So this week, we are starting with the level of self that almost nobody questions

06:24

the inherited self.

06:27

What the fuck is that? Sarah? I hear you ask. Well, oh, let me tell you, your inherited self is exactly what it sounds like. It's the version of you that was shaped before you had any say in it whatsoever.

06:44

It's the version of you that has, your beliefs, your patterns, your your sense of what's normal or what's possible or what's allowed, and all of it, all of that within you. You didn't consciously choose it.

07:05

You absorbed it

07:08

from your family,

07:11

from your environment,

07:15

from your school, from the people around you,

07:20

everything that you saw and heard and experienced in all every single bit of it just all just seeped in there repeatedly, over and over and over and over again. And then one day, you wake up as an adult thinking, but that's just who I am in it. This is just who I am,

07:44

you know. So you might recognise, like some of the thoughts, like, money doesn't grow on trees, you know,

07:51

don't you get too big for your boots.

07:55

Nice girls don't do that.

07:58

We're not the kind of people do

08:03

that, and all of those things you might have heard any or all of those, and it's not just what was said. It's what you saw. It's how you watched your mum speak about herself, how she

08:17

took herself, about her day, whether she worked, whether she didn't, whether how she was in a relationship with her partner, if there was one, even that, if there wasn't one, if you had a dad around, how the dad handled stress? What did he do? What was his role in the family?

08:38

You know what you saw at school and other people in the playground and other people's families. And you know, you might have overheard some adult chats. You know, who's not done that? Sat on the stairs listening to their parents or or listening to the TV. You know, this watching shit on TV nowadays, it's all social media. Fuck knows what our kids are seeing on social media now you know you learned through all of that around you, you learned.

09:11

You learned the shit that was praised,

09:15

what you were praised for. You learned what you were judged for,

09:20

what got you approval, what got shut the fuck down?

09:27

You learned who to become,

09:32

and that's you know. What's really going on here is that you weren't just learning these beliefs and patterns.

09:39

You were learning who to be

09:42

in order to belong.

09:47

And listen, look, this isn't about blaming anyone, you know, like it's not about going my fucking parents. You know,

09:56

I saw a book once called parents, they fuck you up.

10:00

But it's not about them. You know, our parents, our carers, whoever we were raised by, they

10:08

it was their first time on the planet as well. You know, they were working from their inherited self as well that they got from their parents, their parents, their parents, their parents. You know, this whole concept of generational trauma, and that actually, if someone experienced something in

10:27

in their lives, like war or serious, serious trauma, the impact is that on the body is passed down through something like four or five, six generations, in the in the genes, in the blood, whatever is piled down in, I don't know, bloody scientist, but you know, it's kind of

10:48

they were going through it too. So it's really not about going my bloody parents, they could have done better, because they they were doing the best that they could with what they had available to them as well, right?

11:00

So this isn't about blaming anyone they did their best. It's about breaking those patterns right.

11:12

And actually,

11:15

irrespective of whether you look back now and think, oh, that this was right, that was wrong, or whatever you think.

11:25

In any event, your inherited self actually did its job.

11:30

It did what it needed.

11:33

It did what you needed, as little you

11:37

to help you fit in, to help you stay safe, to be accepted, to be in the tribe.

11:48

But the problem is now is that you've grown up, your life has changed. Your desires have changed. Your wants and needs have really kind of expanded,

11:59

and yet,

12:02

a lot, if not all, but a serious amount of your identity,

12:09

who you are now

12:11

is still running on that old, inherited programming. And

12:20

you know what? This is where

12:23

there's a feeling that

12:26

some of my clients describe all the time, right? Like on paper,

12:30

everything looks fine. You've got the career, you've got the life, you've got the relationship, you've got the responsibilities. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, but internally, inside, just feel flat and

12:45

restless and

12:47

just a bit disconnected. Like, is this it

12:51

like? Why does this not feel like me anymore?

12:56

And it's because it's just inherited.

13:02

So how do we spot this? This is where it gets interesting, because once you see it,

13:08

you can't unsee you know, start noticing things like, like the voice in your head that sounds like someone else.

13:19

You know, if you ever, like, said something and gone shit, I sound like my mother. Oh shit. I sound like my Nan, like, you know, you suddenly realise that you kind of go bloody. Yeah, I've turned into me, mother, like, you know, that voice that sounds like someone else, that feeling that you've turned into someone else be aware of that.

13:45

It's that. It's kind of it's the rules that you follow without even questioning.

13:53

You know, there's some rules in life, like,

13:58

I don't know. I'm

14:00

trying to think of a rule now,

14:03

like, Do you know what one of the when I became a foster carer, one of the things that we was asked in our assessment was that, you know, they're talking about how we live our life and things, and it was one of the questions was something like, are you allowed to just go in the biscuit tin without asking. Or

14:24

is there a certain time of day you allowed to have the biscuit tin? Or, you know, you know, whatever like. And I was like, what? Because every, every person's got different rules, air quotes rules, right? But you and that's very basic example, but you know. Think about those rules that you follow like you must be polite. You must say yes, please. You must never say no, even if you don't want to do it, you know, who fucking said?

14:54

Where's it written? It's not law, you know. So think about things like that. The thing.

15:00

Things that you say to yourself, that you go, Well, this is just who I am, but I'm not the type of person.

15:07

Oh god no, like, I'm not the person that does that. When, when? Why? Why you're not?

15:13

Do you want to be that type of person?

15:16

That's one of my personal favourites, actually, like when you want to do something different and bigger and bolder and wild, and something in you is so excited, but then it goes, oh,

15:29

people like us don't do that.

15:32

People like us don't do that.

15:35

People like who?

15:38

see actually, this is where my work comes in because I truly don't believe that reinvention is

15:47

about waiting to feel ready or waiting to feel confident or waiting to somehow magically become a different fucking version of themselves, not how it works. It's

15:58

not going to suddenly land on your doorstep, in the post and go, haha. And that's

16:05

not how it works. You have to design yourself.

16:11

And that's what I that's what I call your alter queen.

16:17

That's who she is, your alter queen. And she's not fake. She's not some persona that you just pretend to be. She's a deliberately designed identity.

16:31

She's the conscious version of you who makes decisions differently,

16:39

who holds herself to a different standard, to a different level,

16:46

who moves in a completely different way? She that version of you, your altar queen. She is built intentionally. She's not inherited. She's not accidental, she's not reactive to everything and everyone around us. She is designed.

17:07

But the thing is, you can't

17:11

truly, properly step into your alter Queen whilst your inherited self is still running everything in the background, because you just end up, you'll keep second guessing, you'll keep defaulting back into into what you know. You'll keep shrinking without even realising why.

17:31

So this first step is not about changing anything yet. It's about seeing clearly

17:41

that inherited self, what you've inherited

17:46

and what's there so, you know, practically, keep it simple. Just try it this week. Nothing complicated, but just be aware of shit, right? So think about

18:02

over the coming week, your borrowed beliefs, right? Pick one area of your life, whether that's money, whether that's work, whether that's relationships, and just ask yourself,

18:20

what do I believe about this money? What do you believe about money? Is

18:27

it hard to come by?

18:30

Doesn't go on trees,

18:34

or one that I got money burns, a hole in your pockets. Sarah,

18:41

ask yourself, what you believe about that, whether you're choosing work, whether relationships, it might be I'm not the type of person to have a relationship. I can't hold down a relationship.

18:55

Oh, that Job's out of my reach. Just think about one area of your life, what you believe about it, and then ask yourself, Where did it actually fucking come from?

19:07

Right? Think about those borrowed beliefs.

19:13

And the second thing to pick up on and just notice this week, think about the 'says who' moment

19:21

anytime you hear yourself thinking,

19:25

I can do that, that's not me. That's not a bit of me. It's just not what people like me do. Just stop and go say's who?

19:34

because you might be a bit surprised by the answer, you know,

19:38

so notice, just be aware of when you shrink, when you hold yourself back,

19:49

when you stay quiet,

19:52

when you play small,

19:56

when your boundaries are shot to pieces. Just notice.

20:00

Because that's usually

20:02

your inherited self keeping things safe,

20:07

and this is where your reinvention actually starts. It's not with a massive grand plan, it's not with a goal. It's not with

20:16

new habits or anything else. It's with awareness, just seeing clearly. This isn't all me.

20:25

This isn't all actually me.

20:28

Once you see it, you get to decide what stays and what doesn't come with you. How amazing is that we've

20:40

got a lot of these levels of selves. Next week we're going to go into the survival self, which is the version of you that

20:47

you didn't just inherit, but you've adapted and you've coped and you've protected yourself to survive the inherited self. And trust me, this one runs so fucking deep, way deeper than you probably even think.

21:05

But what's important here is to start

21:08

noticing and start being aware that you don't just find yourself. You design yourself. You design who you want to be you design your alter queen,

21:23

but first you've got to see who you've been living as what you've been living inside.

21:34

So I hope that's helped for the first kind of layer of self for this mini podcast, series, if you like, just on these levels of self. Because I think it's really important that we can't just design ourselves. We have to know where the levels are. So that is essentially your inherited self. I hope that helps for you. If you want something to help to work alongside this Well, every single level of self, to be honest, but particularly this inherited self and survival self,

22:04

your edit, your life, no bullshit, reinvention journal. It's the journal where we design her

22:13

and we install her, and the Edit Code is how we instal her once we've designed her, which the Edit Code, if you, if you knew, here is the emotional rehab do the damn thing identity, Alchemy and thought detox

22:30

is designing her, then installing her becoming her. So do check it out that's available on Amazon. My love

22:39

any of the Amazons. You know.com, UK, whatever.

22:45

But that will really help, especially like the part in that because it's based on the Edit Code, particularly the emotional rehab and the thought detox. Well, you'll really start to see where those inherited self patterns and beliefs and potentially generational issues have come into and are feeding into your life and changing how you see yourself now. So do have a look at that. I hope, I hope you've enjoyed listening and thinking about the shit that you might have inherited, because it's so important to do this work before we get to designing her. But you think, Wait a minute, I am so grateful to you for listening. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being here.

23:32

I will be back in your beauts badass earbuds again next week, hopefully with less cannulas and whatnot and less fucking waffle to start the episodes. But we move. We move. So until next week, I'm sending you so much.

23:48

Bye.