EP144: You Broke the Glass Ceiling. Now Break the Identity That Built It

You've done it, haven't you?

The career. The salary. The title. The financial independence that your grandmother couldn't even have dreamed of. You've built the life that ticks every box that society handed you, and you've done it f*cking brilliantly.

So why does it feel like you're living someone else's life?

This week's episode is for the Gen X woman who is financially free and psychologically still asking for permission. The one who is awake at 2am thinking I can't do this for another 20 years... and then talking herself out of doing anything about it.

Because I believe that the thing that keeps high-achieving women exactly where they are isn't actually a fear of failure. It's the fear of becoming someone their current identity doesn't recognise.

Inside this episode, we get into:

• Why our generation specifically got wired to attach identity to career success
• The employee identity that's running most Gen X women's lives... without them even knowing it
• Why reinvention feels psychologically unsafe even when you desperately want it
• The difference between the employee identity and the CEO identity (and it's got nothing to do with whether you have a business)
• Why you don't need to burn your life down... sometimes it starts with one brave move
• And why you're not lost. You're just still running on an identity that was built for someone else's version of success

This isn't about quitting your job tomorrow. It's not about becoming an influencer or moving to Greece, tempting as that sounds. It's about becoming the CEO of your own damn life. On your terms. In your next era.

Because you didn't break through every ceiling to stay in a room that doesn't fit anymore, did you?

It's time for the identity to catch up with the woman.

👑 Ready to go deeper?

If this episode has you thinking yes, but how do I actually do this... that's exactly where The Queen Edit comes in.

The Queen Edit is my 1:1 VIP identity reinvention experience where we decode the identities that have been running you, design your Alter Queen and install her as your new normal. Not someday. Now.

Drop me an email at sarah@thequeenofreinvention.com to find out more.

And if this one landed? Share it to your stories and tag me. I love knowing who's listening.

Loads of love, 

Sarah x 

👑

P.S. Check out the Matt Hall deets here too: MATT HALL SUCCESS SCHOOL

🔥 DOWNLOAD FREEBIES TO FUEL YOUR REINVENTION

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Transcript

Sarah Elizabeth  00:00

Hola, and welcome, welcome, welcome to the Reinvention Era podcast, with me, your host, Queen of Reinvention, Sarah Elizabeth, and this is a podcast where we talk about reinvention and identity and being more of yourself for once, and going all in on that, and we also occasionally may have a full-blown existential crisis in the Waitrose fucking car park, yeah, might just be me, still part and parcel, right, balance all that. Anyway, today's episode feels really quite important, actually, because it's something I'm seeing a lot, and I genuinely believe that there are 1000s upon 1000s of women over 40,45 but particularly Gen X women who are plodding, settling through life right now, thinking shit along the lines of I can't do this for another 20 years. How the hell did I end up here doing this? You know that kind of vibe, and yet, and yet, they stay, nothing changes whatsoever. You know, they'll carry on in careers and jobs and all sorts of shit that they outgrew bloody years ago, and stay in roles that drain the fuck out of them, and they'll live these lives that look so damn successful on paper, but actually feel really not right to living to actually live that life, and it's definitely not about this ambition thing, because I love a bit of ambition, I think it's because the identity that is required of them to uplevel and to maybe leave their job or career or whatever feels so psychologically unsafe. and I'll be honest with you, I know this way too well, because I've lived it and I breathed it, and had the odd existential crisis, or 10 along the freaking way, as well. You know, maybe it's you as well. Like, do you find yourself like you can't answer who you are beyond what you do, you know, you default to your job title, your family role, or whatever, like who are you beyond that, like it's often like we're in this almost like a high functioning burnout that nobody else can see, but you know is going on, like you're still delivering at work, at home, you're still bringing up the goods, but it's coasting on like adrenaline and habit, not on energy or joy, you know. It's when you wake up tired, but you go to bed fucking wired because you can't switch off, and you know if you're anything like me, you've had a list in your notes app, or your journal, or the back of your heads of all these things that you want to do, but you've had the same freaking list for years, for years, and nothing changes, because you overthink everything. So, by the time you even get to start, momentum's gone, because you've like, oh my god, I can't do that, and then you convince yourself you're too old to start now, or it's too old to start over, but yet you feel too young to settle, like you're sort of stuck in the middle with nowhere to go, and you watch other women like your age from a distance who seem like so much more alive and more audacious, and you think, what have I got? I don't, you know, it's that, and I get how hard it is. I really do, because, like, I say, I've lived it, breathed it more than many times. I think that to really understand this and. Why Gen X women, particularly, and older millennial women struggle so much with career or job reinvention. Specifically, I think that to understand that we kind of need to zoom out a bit for a minute, because our generation, I personally believe, sits in a really kind of weird, almost in between place. Historically, our mothers and our grandmothers and great grandmothers came from generations where women had very limited choices, some couldn't even get their own bank account, for God's sake. It wasn't until 1975 in the UK that women got the legal right to open a bank account, apply for a mortgage, get a credit card, all that shit in their own name without needing a husband or a father to sign off on it. That's after I was born. I will forever find that wild, you know. But because of shizzle like that, it meant that so many women, as our ancestors were completely financially dependent on men, the social conditioning was that women were expected to get married, be a housewife, stay at home, have children, do all the childcare, you know, just survive life quietly, please. Don't ask for too much, you know. Women should be seen and not heard, and all that shit. You know, heaven forbid like that. You ask for too much, that you ask for more, that you want more, that you want your own fucking life. And then along came our generation, and suddenly women could, they could have careers and become financially independent and climb the ladder and become successful in our own fucking right and have the kids and the family, we could do it all right, and I fucking love that for us. Don't get me wrong, I fucking love it, but I also think that this, we can have it all mindset kind of led us a little bit astray, because I think so many of us, like, as a result of that internalised this idea that success, and particularly career success, equals safety. We became this high achieving generation because our ancestors, the women before us couldn't have it all, so we're going to do it for them, right? So we're the women who we worked hard, we pushed through, we proved ourselves constantly, that bloody proving energy, we held everything together, everyone, everything, all the shit together. It's all on us, and like I said, don't get me wrong, because I love ambition and I love drive, and that ambition was fucking brilliant, and it changed freaking lives, and I'm here for that, I really am, and I also think that what happened for a lot of women is that the career became way more than a job, a way to be financially independent. It became the whole identity, and I think then that leads to this, like almost like this employee mentality, I guess, and I think I just feel like nobody really sort of talks about it, because you don't just become attached to the salary and the status of the job and all of that external stuff, you become completely and utterly attached and dependent on who you are inside the role, so whether that's the one that's respected or the reliable one, the intelligent one, the senior leader, the executive, the expert, whatever it is, and then before you know it, you spent 1015, 2030, years being that woman, and the idea of leaving all of that behind, fuck. Now it's terrifying, right? And even if you secretly want something else, your brain goes, "Who the hell am I without this? And I've just done it, I get it, like I've just walked away from a high salary, high status job, and I've just done it, but fuck me, it messes with your head about everything you believe about yourself, and I think this is why so many high-achieving women feel so stuck where they are and in what they're doing, and shit, because externally life looks like the epitome of success, whatever success is supposed to be, you know. This success is defined by this good salary, responsible role, nice house, people impressed by the fucking title. It ticks all those external markers of success, right, but internally there's just this, oh, like disconnect, that's probably the way I would describe how I felt, this disconnect of this, this feeling of there's gotta be more to life than this, Who am I doing this for? That's that was one feeling I kept feeling like, who am I doing all this for? What am I doing all this for? But then, for us Gen X girls, particularly, along comes the guilt, isn't it? Because women, especially in our generation, because of where our ancestors come from, as well, we're kind of implicitly taught and told you should be grateful, you should be grateful, you've got the opportunity here to have a career, be financially independent, support yourself, like you've got the opportunity to fucking have it. Oh, you should be grateful. So we gaslight ourselves, don't we? And we tell ourselves shit like it's just maybe I'm just tired. It's just been a bit, a bit of a bad week, or maybe I've just been bitticulous. Oh, just stick with it, like it's too good to walk away from, and in the meantime, that gorgeous, authentic sovereign self of yours buried somewhere very deep inside that you might not even know exists, like your sovereign self's go screaming into a pillow, going, "I want more than this, though. I want my outside life to match the woman I know who's inside, and maybe you feel that too, like you're so tired of being defined by what happened to you, or what you gave up, or who you were in a relationship or what your job title says, it's kind of like you want a sense of self that's actually yours that nobody else gave you, but also nobody else can fucking take away and steal, and yet you won't make the jump, and I think the thing is, is most women seem to think, oh, that the fear is, what if I screw it up, what if I fuck it up and fell and look like a dick, but actually I think the deeper fear is more like what will people think of me if I change who I am? What, what if I become someone completely different? Then what? Because reinvention, it does, it totally threatens your whole identity, right? And if, if you left your career and started the business, or become more visible, or become the CEO of your own life, or upleveled your job, or went to a, you know, a real high level, you do all of that because you have this longing for something more, but then you're not any longer the same woman, you're not the woman that everyone knows and recognises anymore, including yourself. You don't even recognise yourself psychologically. Oh my goodness, that's massive. It's massive, and now layer on top of that this poxy good girl conditioning that so many Gen X women have, and you know, we were raised to not walk the boat and make good decisions and be sensible and don't embarrass yourself, love, don't be too much, so anything that. It might feel remotely like a little bit of freedom, or a little bit of visibility, or a little bit of wealth, or creativity, just more right. It's so freaking uncomfortable, even when we desperately want it so much. And this is why I keep talking about identity, because so many women are trying to build whole new lives based on a survival identity, based on resilience, based on ambition, based on gratitude to our ancestors, and I also believe that when it comes to careers with an identity that's still wired for employment, because it does, that that's how I was raised, you know, for employment, and that employee identity says Says you got to wait for permission, you got to wait to be allowed, you got to wait for someone to tell you it's okay, but it's safe, and you don't need to take any risks, and you can just follow the structure, don't get too above yourself, just follow the rules, whereas the CEO identity says you get to make decisions for yourself, you lead, you make the moves, you take the risks, and you trust yourself, and you put yourself out there, and quite honestly, when we're raised with that employee identity, that CEO identity to shift to that is huge, and actually, when you know, when I'm talking about CEO, I'm not just talking about business strategy, I'm talking about a CEO identity, as in CEO of your own goddamn life, even if you're staying employed, taking charge of your own life as CEO of your life. It's psychological when you become the woman who backs herself, who takes up space, who trusts herself to make her own decisions stops waiting for validation, for certainty, to feel ready for the waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting. It's a game changer. It really is a game changer. And I think so many women spend years in and out of this idea of reinvention in some way, like really, really want something different, and they've given all of their lives to this and everyone else, and they want to take some ownership back of their own lives, but then, oh God, they'll talk themselves out of it and make excuses and because they weren't too ready after time, I'm not ready yet. It's not good time, it's not good time for the death, but the truth is, you don't, you don't be hurt when you feel ready, you have to just be hurt now, that is what makes you ready, that's how identity works. And you know, the women I see are freaking amazing, they're smart, they're experienced, they're emotionally intelligent, like you wouldn't believe capable as hell, but so many of them, especially the business owners in their 40s and 50s, that I see in the online world, particularly that, because I suppose that's because I see a lot of that, so many Gen X women generally are still operating from these identities built around surviving their survival self and coping, and also that proving energy that you can do it, or you can have it, or you can, as well as being the good girl, none of it's operating from an identity of expansion or freedom or self leadership, and I don't know, like, for me, I don't just want a more productive version of my past life, now past life, I just don't want a better managed version of the same fucking job and same role. I wouldn't be able to walk into a room, any room, and feel completely unapologetically me. I want my outside life to match the woman that's inside. And this is why identity design matters so goddamn much, because reinvention does not start with strategy, it starts with who do I need to be for my next life, my next level, for my next move, and let me be so clear, I don't mean I'm not talking about just, you know, I've just quit my job, like, like, you know, that that was a long time coming, and a process, right? I'm not talking about just quitting your job tomorrow with no plan, I'm not talking about becoming an influencer next week or something, or selling your entire life and moving to Greece, that's not what this is about. Sometimes reinvention just means like making a decision, making a decision for you, having a conversation for you, putting a boundary in for you, it might be investing in yourself, it might be putting yourself in a room full of different people. That's that's what I've done over the past few years, I've put myself in a lot of different rooms of a lot of different people, and it's opened my eyes to the life and the identity I was operating from one brave move, that's all it takes, that's all it takes one brave move, but what really matters is that you just stop reinforcing an identity that's kept you stuck where you are, unless you do want to stay there for the next 20 years. If you do, then great. But for me, it's that feeling of what the fuck do I want to do this for the next 20 years of my life. And honestly, whether your next chapter is starting a business, whether it's changing your career altogether, whether it's writing a book, whether it's leaving the relationship, travelling the world, going back to university at 57 simply just becoming a woman who finally stops abandoning herself, whatever it is, the point is the same, you do not need permission from somebody outside of you to redesign your life. You get to take charge. You get to be CEO of your own life, and I think that's the bit I really want women of our generation to hear, because we were raised to survive, to cope, to keep going, to be sensible, but what I see is that so many Gen X women become this financially independent career success, but psychologically it's like still seeking permission from someone else, so what if this next era was actually about being more of you instead of yourself, giving yourself permission, not proving, not performing for some other fucker, not shrinking yourself into the version that everyone else knows, but actually giving yourself the permission to be the woman that you know you are underneath all the conditioning and survival patterns and all the bullshits, because I really, you know, for me what I think is a lot of women over 40, particularly are waking up right now and realising that you know you don't want just a better managed version of the same fucking life, you want more freedom, more alignment, more more you, and like I said, it doesn't have to mean burning your whole life down by the mother, sometimes, like I said, it starts with one decision, one brave conversation, just one moment where you stop talking yourself out of your own life. That's it. That's it. That's all I want for you. And if you are a business owner or secretly thinking about becoming one, then this is actually why I'm so excited about this masterclass happening on Monday. So, if you're listening to this on the day it comes out on the first Monday, the first of June, there is a free masterclass happening with Matt Hall, Matt is amazing at the business stuff, the strategy, the business models, the AI stuff, all of that, and he's amazing, and I'm super excited for that masterclass because of that. But the part that I'm so passionate about is that none of it matters if psychologically you're still operating from this employee identity, this fear identity that might to do this kind of label that you've put on yourself, and that's why I've decided that timing wise, if you do decide to attend the free masterclass on Monday through my link, and then also decide to join Matt's programme after that, I will be giving you my CEO identity audit as a bonus for taking the leap and making that brave decision, or making that brave move, and because this, for me, this isn't about learning business strategy, that's a bonus as well, but it's about becoming the woman who can actually hold the next level life you say you want, so Matt's free masterclass is on the first of June at 8pm British summertime, and the link is in the show notes. If you do want to come and join us, and then if afterwards you do decide to join Matt's programme through my link during Cart Open Week, I will send you my CEO identity audit bonus with your proof, you just need to send me your proof of purchase for the programme, and that's it. And this isn't about that. I think every woman needs to become an entrepreneur, because you know, I've just left my job to do that, but for me it's about that every woman deserves to become the CEO of her own damn life. That's the real point. That's the real point of this to not feel that we are our ancestors or we have to do things a certain way, because that's how we were told, that's our inherited self, our survival self, but to actually dig into our suffering self and consciously design a next level identity on your terms, do it on your terms, not your employers, not your families, not society, not the version of you that you built around survival, yours, because, like I say, you don't have to find yourself, you're not fucking lost, it's all in there, you've just got to be her now, that that changes everything. So, thank you, thank you, as always, so very much for being here. I will be back in your beautiful badass earbuds again next week for more of our reinvention era, my queen. Loads of love. Bye.