EP149: Why "I'm Becoming Her" Might Be the Most Comfortable Lie You Tell Yourself

Why "I'm Becoming Her" Might Be the Most Comfortable Lie You Tell Yourself 

On language, money scripts and the identity you're building every time you open your mouth

This week's episode came together from about four different places, and I'm not going to pretend it didn't. But it's also all kind of about the same thing: the words we use, the identities they're subtly building, and the very comfortable trap hiding inside one of the words we use most in this space.

I start the episode talking about my VIP day with the brilliant Sue Jones-Miranda, human design queen and someone who has this unsettling ability to see straight through you in the best possible way. I'd been doing all the things, finishing the book, planning the September event, pushing forward on every front at once, and I could feel the burnout highway starting to appear on the horizon. The day with Sue brought me back to myself, back to what actually lights me up, writing and in-person connection, and reminded me that even when this is what you teach, it can be genuinely hard to see it in yourself.

Then a few days later, at a property investing event of all places, a stranger said something to me that stopped me in my tracks.

I'd casually said, more than once, that I'm financially illiterate. And he looked at me and said, quite gently but quite directly: well, that's the problem, isn't it. The way you're speaking about it.

And he was completely right.

In the episode I get into why that landed so hard, including the inheritance of that language from childhood, my dad's obsession with pensions, the rebellious kid in me who switched off, and the years of financial abuse in my marriage that reinforced an identity around money I've been carrying ever since. It was one of those moments where you realise a script is still running the show long after the circumstances that created it are gone.

Which brings me to Abracadabra and why that is literally a magic word.

And then there's the word I think we all need to be a lot more careful with. 

Becoming.

On the surface, it sounds like exactly the right word for this work. And in some ways it is. We need the vision. We need to know who we want to become. But becoming lives in the future tense, and the future tense is a very comfortable place to park your dreams indefinitely. Becoming, left unchecked, turns into permission to wait. It becomes a polite, socially acceptable way of saying later, babe.

The shift I talk about in this episode isn't to stop having the vision. It's to stop letting her live permanently in the future tense and bring her into the now. Not become her eventually. Be her now. There's a difference, and it's everything.

I close on the difference between predictability and possibility, and why so many of us choose the devil we know over the woman we're actually capable of being. Certainty isn't coming. But trust? That's available right now.

In this episode:

• Why I nearly burnt out again and what a VIP day with Sue Jones-Miranda reminded me about coming back to myself
• The moment a stranger at a property event called out exactly what my language was building in real time
• Financial abuse, inherited money scripts and the identities we carry long after the circumstances are gone
• Abracadabra: I create as I speak, and what that actually means for the words you're using every day
• The trap inside the word "becoming" and why it might be keeping your dream permanently in the future tense
• Predictability versus possibility, and why trust is the only currency that actually matters here

Mentioned in this episode:

The EDIT Your Life Journal, available on Amazon now in paperback and hardback

If this episode landed for you, please share it with the woman in your life who needs to hear it. Leave a review if you've got two minutes. It genuinely helps other women find this show who need it most 🩷

🔥 DOWNLOAD FREEBIES TO FUEL YOUR REINVENTION

📲 FOLLOW on Instagram and Facebook

🩷

Transcript

Sarah Elizabeth  00:00

Hello, hello, and welcome to the Reinvention Era podcast. I'm Sarah Elizabeth, Queen of Reinvention, and this well, the episodes kind of come together from about four different places, which sounds like it shouldn't work, but I think by the end I'm gonna endeavour to get it all in one thread, we'll see so settle in, because this one's got a bit of everything, so it's about the language we use, how we see money, fear, plus the word I think we all need to use that hell of a lot more carefully, so let me set the scene. This has been one of those weeks where I've been doing all the things, all the things, finishing the book. I'm in the self-edit phase. I'm so fucking excited for this book. I fucking love it. Anyway, finishing the book, well, I finished the book in the self-edit phase. I am planning an amazing event in September. I will bring you more on that to come as it happens. Um, but save the date for Friday, fourth of September in London, my love. So excited, I am, I am, I am building and creating and pushing forward on every damn front at once, because that's apparently just who I am. I'm the grandmother who built this entire business from nothing in about 18 months, broken arm and a crohns flare thrown in for good measure, and somewhere in the middle of all of that, all of that doing, I started to recognise a really familiar pattern starting to creep back in that I'm on the highway to burnout, kind of feeling, you know, the achieving everything but feeling none of it kind of feeling, you know, you know what I mean. And I've talked about this on the podcast before, and I'll say again, actually, because it bears repeating, I fucking refuse to go back there. I absolutely fucking refuse. So I had a day last Friday with the brilliant Sue Jones Miranda. She's a human design freaking queen, and what came out of that day was actually something about coming back to actually who I am underneath all the doing writing, because it's the one place where I can lose myself for hours and come back as more myself, not less, you know, an in-person connection, because I need to be not just productive behind a screen, but have fellow queen energy, you know, so it's practising what I preach about coming back to your sovereign self and not letting that survival self stay in charge, that's what it's about. But that was so useful, and it is really hard to see it in yourself, even when it's what you teach. But anyway, but then it was a couple of days after that, on the Monday, Monday this week, that's actually given me a bit more the spine of this episode, whatever it ends up being about. I was at an event on Monday, property investing of all things with the fabulous Rochelle. Now, before you panic and think, oh God, she's going to pivot into buy to let's now, I wasn't there because I'm getting into property, I was there because of the people in the room. One of my mentors was speaking, and where she goes, I go, because the room she's in, all was full of fucking amazing humans. But anyway, at some point during the day, money came up, as it does when you're talking about property investment. So I made a comment soon a couple of times, but quite casually the way you do when you're not really thinking about what you're saying and the weight of your own words, and I said something along the lines, I'll say a couple of times, like I'm so financially illiterate, and the lovely guy sitting next to me, who was also a speaker, he was amazing, he was brilliant, he just looked at me and he said quite gently, but also quite directly, being a nice way, well, that's the problem, isn't it, the way you're speaking about it, and I sat there, okay, oh fuck, because he was completely right. I don't actually believe I am financially illiterate. I understand pricing and profit and cash flow and all that stuff, but there's also a part of me, because two things can be true at once. There's also this part of me, an old part, a conditioned part, the inherited self slash survival self part that still reaches for that language the second money comes into the conversation, investing pensions, anything like that. I just switch off, right, and I know that's partly because when I was younger, when I was a kid, my dad used to be obsessed with fucking pensions. He was obsessed with pensions, and he used to have the prudential guy, Bruce, round every bloody week, like the guy even came to the funeral, you know, and I suppose, as much as, as a child, you'll read about this in the book, as well as much as I was compliant and wanting to please, and you know, as we all do, because we learn what gets affection, we learn what gets us approval, as much as that was one part of me, there was also obviously another part of me, my sovereign self, that was quite rebellious, and you know, so I ended up not taking too much notice, and then when my mum and dad died, like my mum after four years of her pension, my dad then got two years of her pension, and then four years of his own. I was just like, well, you know, says a lot, don't it? So, you know, I just go a little bit like when it comes to things about pensions and investments, and so when I was all talking property investments and all of this, I was like, what comes straight up for me? I'm bad with money, I don't get all this stuff, I'm financially illiterate, and the bit that actually really stopped me in my tracks setting a bit, I want to be really honest with you about, because I think it also matters, I experienced financial abuse in my marriage. There was years of having money controlled, decisions made without me, financial information withheld from me, as I suppose a form of power, right? And in the year since I've talked about this on a previous podcast episode, when we were still the divorce chapter, there's a whole episode about the financial show, but in the years since, I've done so much identity work, so much reinvention, so much rebuilding, so much embodiment, but sitting in that room on Monday, I realised that some piece of that old story was still running quietly underneath my language. Every time I said I'm financially illiterate, I wasn't, I wasn't describing a fact. It's not a fact. I was just rehearsing an old identity repeatedly, and one that was created in childhood in some way, but that was heavily reinforced in a different way in a relationship where my financial confidence was systematically taken from me, basically, and that landed hard, and I'm not going to pretend it didn't. It did, right? And that's now something I have to work through. It is always new level, new devil, you know. As soon as you, you sort of elevate your standards and you elevate your identity, and you start drawing out your suffering self, there's another bit that comes up from the survival self, the inherited self, it's kind of inevitable, it's that it, that's what happens, but this isn't really a story about my marriage or money, even to a point, the bit I want you to take from it, it's it's a story about language, about how the words we throw around casually, almost on autopilot, can be ever so suddenly keeping an old identity on life support long after the circumstances that created it are gone, long gone, they've long gone, but it's still running the show, it's still the script underneath it all that's running the show, right, had those words that we use so casually, like I say, it's keeping us in a place where that survival self is taking the lead, and that's not the person we want in charge, yeah, that's not the person we want in charge. She's been brilliant, she's protected you, she's supported you, she's got you to where you are, but we need the survival self to ever have a bit downtime now, let the sovereign self out. Okay, and but these words that we use, like this, it's okay. Show, and you know, look, say I was just there throwing these words around, not even really consciously thinking about it, and it's also actually something I sent out in an email to my list this week.

Sarah Elizabeth  10:13

If you're not on my email list, why the fuck not? What are you doing? Get yourself over to The Queen of reinvention.com and get yourself on a VIP list, anyway. Um, but I sent this out in an email this week, and I just wanted to bring it to the podcast as well. And I think I might have mentioned it on the podcast before, but I'm using it now because it directly has a tie into this, right, the word Abracadabra. you know it as a magic word, right? You know it's something that you say before. I don't know, pulling a rabbit out of a house, putting a woman back together, that's been chopped off. I don't know, Abracadabra, we, we think of it in association with magic, don't we, but the actual translation of that word is I create as I speak, I create as I speak, so sit with that for a second, because that's you are literally have the power to create magic as you speak, abracadabra, every time you go against that and say shit like I'm told for this, you are not describing reality, you're building, you're creating that reality every time that you say that's just not me, I'm not that kind of person, you are not stating a fact, you're essentially casting a fucking spell on yourself one sentence at a time, and then living inside of it. I said I'm financially illiterate on Monday, and a stranger heard exactly what that sentence was doing, what it was building for me in real time, a smaller version of me than the one that was actually sat in that chair. Your words don't just describe the woman that you are, they install her every single day in conversations you don't even remember having. You are either reinforcing your survival self or you are quietly and consistently building your designed self, your alter queen, that's not just some woo woo stuff, that is identity in real time being spoken into existence by you about you, usually when you're not even paying attention, and I get it, because it's so easily done, like I've just been very honest, that's how it all came out, because that's clearly an old belief of mine, and these are old beliefs of yours that just stuff that we've repeated so many times, they're actually just thoughts, that's all it is, we think it's true, but all a belief is, it's a thought, and maybe not even our own thought, maybe a thought that someone else's thought, but it's a thought that we've had so many fucking times, we've absorbed it as a belief, and somehow we've made it real, which, like I say, it's exactly this new level, new devil stuff, and why this identity work is ever evolving. It really is how we speak and the words that we use, and me included. Hands up, 100% This is not something that I'm sitting here on some kind of fucking pedestal, going, 'I've sorted it, everything. I'm just showing you the way, that's bullshit. I'm doing this with you, right? I'm on this journey with you, and always will be. And I hate the bloody word journey, but yeah, you know, we move how we speak and the words we use, we have to watch it, because abracadabra we create as we speak, so if you hear me say anything, please pull me up, you know, which also actually brings me to the word that I think we need to be really genuinely a little bit careful with it, a lot careful with, and that was is becoming now. Hear me out, because on the surface, me saying that sounds like I'm contradicting half of what I teach, right? We Absofuckinglutely, need a vision. We need to know who we want to become, where we're heading, what the next version of us actually looks like. That part is non-negotiable. Without a vision, you're just drifting, and drifting is exhausting in its own bloody way. But the trap for me inside the word becoming, and it's a really subtle one that I've become increasingly aware of, writing the book.

Sarah Elizabeth  15:24

Becoming lives in the future tense, it's something that's separate from you, it's away from you, you're becoming, you're not there, you're just becoming, it's in the future the future tense, and the future tense is a really, really comfortable place to park your dreams, because nothing in the future, in the future tense, actually has to happen today. Whoa, so anything that's a bit scary, bit hairy scary. We can go on. I'm becoming, you know, I'm becoming more confident. That's so lovely. When, when I'm becoming the woman who runs her own business, brilliant. Starting when exactly? When are we going to see this business? I'm becoming financially literate. Literacy great. What am I doing about it this week? You know, do you see what I mean? Like, becoming keeps it in the future tense, and becoming left unchecked kind of turns into permission to wait, it becomes pun fully intended, it becomes a light socially acceptable way of saying later. Yeah, I'm becoming, I'll do it later, or as the cornish say dreckly. I learned that when I was having Furniture built in Cornwall. My brother lives there. They all say dreckly, which could mean whenever you know it's kind of like becoming, yeah, laters, babe. Once I feel ready, once the time is right, once life calms down a bit, you know. It's all this stuff we talked about last week. Life is not going to calm down. I can tell you that with absolute certainty, because I've been waiting for my own life to calm down for about 30 fucking years now, and it has yet to happen. So the shift is have the vision, get crystal clear on who you're becoming, but the moment you've got that vision, the work isn't to keep becoming her indefinitely. The work is to bring her into the now, not someday. Now, now, that's not a throwaway phrase for me, by the way. That's literally everything I teach: decode, recode, be her now, not become her eventually, you know, and there's one more bit to this, and I think it's kind of the piece that probably ties this whole thing together. I don't know if it does tie together, actually, but we're going with it. We're going with it, because we're this far-in now. A lot of the reason we stay stuck in the becoming, even stuck, stuck is one of those words, isn't it? Like the brain thinks in images, so you say stuck, your brain automatically, like my brain goes, or what, mine, a pot of glue, my feet are stuck in glue, I'm stuck, I'm stuck, my feet are stuck in glue, like if that's your what your brain is processing as an image, like we think in pictures, and that, so we say we're stuck, it automatically, you know. Anyway, let's go with stuck. A lot of the reason we say stuck in the becoming and stay stuck rehearsing old identities through our language, and we stay financially illiterate, or too old, or not a numbers person, or whatever the fucking script is for you. It is because predictability feels safer than possibility, put predictability is the devil you know, right? It's staying inside the identity you've already proven, so you've got no need to become, because you know this one, you've got the evidence behind it. It's the one that's never let you down, because it's never once asked anything new and scary of you, either, right? Possible. possibility is unproven. Possibility, potentiality, it requires you. It asks you to trust something that you can't yet see, you can't measure, you can't yet hold any evidence for. And that is genuinely uncomfortable for a nervous system that spent years, maybe decades prioritising safety over expansion. Okay, but certainty and trust are not the same thing. You will never have certainty about who you're becoming. There is no spreadsheet, no five year plan that gives you certainty about the woman on the other side of real change. What you can have is trust.

Sarah Elizabeth  20:36

You can have trust that you're capable of figuring out as you go the same way that you've figured out every other hard unprecedented thing in your life so far, you've got through some real hard shit right today, and you've got through every single bit of it, you know, and I think it's trust in knowing what you want and going back to the start and talking about Sue Jones Miranda and the human design day, the amazing day I had was so, you know, it was coming back to myself myself and trusting in myself to know what's right, but also believing in the potentiality and the possibility for me, you know, you know that man at the property event, right? He didn't give me any certainty about finance, but he did give me a mirror, and what I saw in it actually wasn't a woman that's bad with money, it's a woman who's still occasionally speaking from an identity that was built under conditions that no longer exist. That's the work. It's not finding the answer, it's not going to other people to find the answer, it's not becoming, it's. it's not staying using this language, it's building enough trust in yourself to move towards the possibilities before you've got the proof. That's what all this is about. So, everything this week, I don't know, I feel like it's been trying to tell me, and think it's trying to tell some of you as well, just watch your language properly, watch it, not in a can't swerve anymore, why? Because you know you know me better than that, I'm not slopping, swearing, but notice when you're speaking an old identity into the room out of habit rather than truth, just just watch it, and be careful with the word becoming. Have the vision absolutely fucking lutely, but don't let it live permanently in the future tense. Bring her into now and choose possibility over predictability, even when possibility is terrifying and predictability is comfortable, especially then actually you create as you speak. So this week, listen to what you're building and come back to you. You know that this thing about language and identity, all of it, and I don't know whether I have tied any of that together in any sensible way, but anyway, you know the point is none of us get this perfect, none of us, like I've caught myself this week mid conversation, still occasionally bothering a script that was never mind to be even begin with, that's just a human being doing identity work in real time out loud in front of actual people, instead of pretending you've already arrived somewhere, you've finished. Ain't gonna happen. I haven't arrived anywhere. I'm not sure anyone has. Think that's rather the point. So, if you take anything from this episode, just let it be that you catch yourself this week, not to judge it, not to spiral about it. Just notice when are you speaking from the woman you were conditioned to be, and when are you speaking from the woman you're actually building, not becoming, actually building. You don't have to fix every sentence, because it's hard. This stuff's ingrained, you know. I'm 50 in my 50s, I'm nearly 54 I'm not going to change this overnight. In none of us are okay, but it's being aware and start noticing which voice, which self is talking, and if you want to start doing that properly daily with an actual structure that is not just good intentions, it's an actual real framework. The edit your life, no bullshit reinvention journal. Is this is exactly what it was built for. This is 90 days of recoding work, same four pillars that I live by: energy rehab, do the damn thing, identity alchemy, thought detox, it's on Amazon now, in paperback and hardback. Honestly, it is the cheapest, most direct way to start catching your own shit before it catches you, and it's a work in progress. Just remember that it's always work in progress, right? I'm with you on it, and I think that's it. Just before I go down, I don't ask this nearly enough, so I'm asking properly today. If this podcast has ever helped you, if an episode has ever landed in your earbuds at exactly the right moment, or or anything. If it's ever done something for you in any way, please share it.

Sarah Elizabeth  25:50

Please send it to the friend who's been speaking herself smaller than she is. Leave a review if you've got two minutes, because it genuinely helps other women find this show who need to hear it, so please, please, please, that's the only real ask I have of you. This podcast only grows because women like you pass it on, and I don't ask enough, but I would absolutely love for more of the right women to find their way here. So, thank you in advance. Thank you, thank you, thank you, and thank you, as always, for being here. It genuinely means the world. I'm not sure I've made a lot of sense this week, but we'll go with it next week. It's episode 150 which is a biggie, so hopefully we'll make a little bit more sense. But I will be back in your beauts badass earbuds again next week. So, until then, I'm sending you so much love. Bye.