Sarah Elizabeth 00:00
Hola, hola, and welcome to the Reinvention Era podcast. I'm Sarah Elizabeth, Queen of Reinvention, and this week we're going all in on a phrase that I've been thinking about a lot this week, and I've used it in my emails to my to my peeps to my people. And if you're not on that email list, why are you not? Just let me know, and we can add you to the list because you know you get some juicy stuff. Before we actually go into it, though, I just want to apologise for two things. One, I have a new mic, and I haven't tested it properly. My eldest granddaughters were singing and dancing into my previous mic, and I'm not exactly sure what's happened. But we have a new mic, and it's pink, so you know everything works for a reason. Secondly, one of the neighbours is having a load of work done, so there's a lot of drilling. I've got all the doors shut; it's bloody hot, but we're going with it. We're going with it. So let's get on. This week we are going in on this phrase. When the game is over, the queen and the pawns go back in the same box. You know, you've got a chess game. You've got all the pieces on the board, but when that game is over, all of those pieces go straight fucking back in the same box. And I love that kind of because when the game is over, yeah, they're all just pieces. They're all absolutely just pieces. They're all equivalent. They've got no meaning attached to them. But when the game is being played, that queen is the most powerful piece on the board. She can move further than anyone else. She can move in all the directions that other people can't. She can completely change the fricking game. But, but none of that power means a damn thing. If the queen's sitting in the box, she has to be in the fricking game. And fuck me! I felt like I'm in the game this week. Oh my god! I'm recording this episode with Be You Now, my live event in London, just three weeks away. There are around 72 fucking million things going on. Things that I knew that I'd have to do things that I didn't know I'd have to do. Things I thought were sorted that apparently are sorted. Things that I assumed wouldn't cost that much money or would cost sort of an amount of money apparently require the GDP of a small fucking country. I've got people saying yes, people saying no, people changing their minds, opportunities coming at me exactly the minute I've got absolutely no room for any other opportunities. But you know, take them anyway. This week, I've been invited to a dinner that I really wanted to go to because it's great opportunity for the business, which is fucking amazing. Except, I have about a week's worth of work to do in about 90 minutes. I'm babysitting. I had my two granddaughters earlier in the week for two days, I've got my grandson and one of my granddaughters for two days. I've got an event to organise. I've got a book happening. Did I mention I've written a book? Oh, now did I mention I've got a book to go with the book? That's a whole other thing. We'll wait for that one. We've got this podcast. We've got emails. We've got content. We've got people to respond to. We've got decisions to make, and there are points where my brain just goes, "Can everybody just fuck off for 48 hours PLEASE SO I CAN CATCH UP? Which is obviously the calm and grounded and magnetic leadership energy we're all striving for. Did you just want to be me? But this is a bit about playing the bigger game that we don't talk about often enough. We talk about the outcome. We talk about the bigger businesses. We, you know, we've talked about the book and the stage and the event, and the opportunities, and the visibility, and the relationships, and the money, and the impact, and all of that-you know-the room full of people. We we just go all in on like creating this vision. Like we get the vision boards, we write all. The goals down, we decide what we're going after, and which was tunnel vision for that.
Sarah Elizabeth 05:04
We we go all in, and then the game actually starts. And suddenly, there are all these other pieces on the board. Right? There's all these other people. There's all these other decisions. There's other priorities, and there's all these other things that actually we can't always control, and that identity that was perfectly capable of handling this life that we've created in our vision suddenly finds herself being asked to handle a life she's never fucking lived before, and that, my love, is where the real work begins. Because I don't think that the biggest challenge of growth is always knowing what to do. Because most of us know way more than we give ourselves credit for, and in a ear lot of eye, information is at our fingertips. We know so much, right? Especially if you're an experienced founder or business owner, all right? You know, you've read the books, you've done the programmes, you've listened to the podcast, you've got the strategy. You've probably got enough bloody notebooks and PDFs lying around to start your own university. You know, information or lack of isn't necessarily the problem, right? Sometimes the problem is that the next level of what you're building needs a whole new version of you that you've never had speed before, and that for me is where identity gets really interesting because we love this idea of a new identity where she looks fabulous. You know, no one's future self is a burnout on the floor or stressed or anything. She's like living a goddamn life. She's confident. She's visible. She's beautiful. She's successful. She's got boundaries. She walks into a room and she owns them. She makes decisions quickly. She doesn't overthink. She's got a great outfit on. You know that's that's the vision of next level you, right? Obviously, but installing that new identity isn't just deciding what she'd wear, how she'd speak, or how she'd show up, or what she'd believe. At some point in getting that identity, life gives you the practical fucking ethan. So you kind of go, "I'm ready to play the bigger game, bitches, and life goes excellence. Here's some rejection for you. Here's a little bit of uncertainty. Oh, I'm just going to sprinkle on a bill that you weren't quite expecting. Oh, here's somebody backing out. Oh, oh, here's an opportunity that clashes with something else, here's a decision where neither option is actually that great. Oh, here's something you can't control. Here's a day when you're absolutely freaking shattered and you're overwhelmed, and you still need to bloody lead.
Speaker 1 08:22
Now show me who you are. Now show me who you are. That's identity work.
Sarah Elizabeth 08:33
It's not about who you say you are when you're sitting there journaling with a nice cup of coffee and everything's going beautifully. Who are you when the board moves? When the other pieces move? Who are you when someone else makes a move that you weren't quite bloody expecting, and it's thrown you? Who are you then? Who are you when your original plan doesn't work. Who are you when you don't have all the information, and it's like, oh, so many unknowns. Who are you when you can't control the outcome? And
Speaker 1 09:15
I had actually A really
Sarah Elizabeth 09:23
weird, strange, but amazing practical demonstration of this. Actually, a couple of days ago. Okay, with horses. Yes, horses, horses. I spent the day with the brilliant Jenni Winter-leach doing one of her horsepower VIP days. Now, if you want to get involved, just drop me a line, and I'll give you Jenni's details. Now, a horsepower day, a VIP day, beautiful. Now, before anyone gets a nice, you know. Jimmy galloping across the Surrey countryside, mane flying, looking like Beyonce on horseback. I didn't mind anything. This the Jenni does is about interacting with the horses from the ground, from like your energy, and using what happens between you and the horse to explore those parts of your identity, to explore your communication, like what's actually going on under the surface, including how you're leading yourself, and I'll I'll admit, I fully admit, I'll be open and honest and transparent, and I've been with Jenni. Like before, I went, I understood the concept. I get that horses are incredibly sensitive and they respond to body language and the energy and the intuition and that congruence and that you know these horses. They don't give shit what your job title is. You know they don't care how many followers you got. They don't give shit how articulate you may or may not be. They don't care whether you've managed to journal away your behaviour so fucking convincingly that you've only started. And I thought that was fascinating, right? But intellectually understanding that horses do this, and actually standing there with a few of them are very different things. Now there are parts of the day that I'm not going to share, and that's a bit deliberate because I think we've kind of developed this expectation. I think that if you have some kind of breakthrough or breakdown or an emotional experience, or a realisation, or something like you should immediately turn it into content, right? But I don't actually believe that everything has to be content. You know, some things get to belong to you. But what I can tell you is that I went into this day with the horses, with Jenni, with something particular on my mind, and I've done a lot of work on it. I thought I understood it. I'd thought about it. I analysed it. I'd explained it. I'd got my very sensible narrative, my very conscious, my very logical narrative about what was happening, and then there were the horses who could not give a flying fuck about my stories that I tell myself, which is I've got to say quite humbling when you're somebody who is very good with words. You know, I can talk, I can explain, I can analyse. I can make sense. Shit. Give me long enough, and I'll probably turn it into like four-part identity framework with an acronym and a trademark. You know, but none of that matters because you can't talk a horse into believing something that the rest of you is just not communicating. It's just not communicating, and at different points in the day, I was kind of asked to lead myself to communicate internally what I wanted to focus in on that energy to move to invite the horses to move with me, and not through any sort of force, you know, I wasn't dragging them or making them do something. It was just being clear enough in myself with my energy that I could almost lead the horses, you know, and sometimes it worked. Other times it fucking didn't. Let me tell you. Sometimes I thought I was in a really good place, and the horse was basically like, ah, you know. And when you've got like an enormous animal completely ignoring you, there's nothing quite like it to you going check, but what fascinated me
Speaker 1 14:30
was that what was happening inside of me when it didn't immediately work, when it didn't become obvious when it wasn't easy. Like,
Sarah Elizabeth 14:47
did I become hesitant? Was I trying harder? Was I questioning myself? Did I change direction in my thoughts? Did I become more focused? On what the horses were doing, rather than what was inside of me, was I reacting? Was I leading myself? Fucking hell! Fucking hell! If that isn't business, if that isn't life, because how often do we decide what we want, and then we immediately start looking outside of ourselves for evidence, for proof that we're allowed to want it, that it's possible for us. You know, we decide to launch something, create something, and then watch everyone else's reaction, and you know we so so if you're a business, you decide to charge more, then you become really hyper alert as to whether anyone looks uncomfortable when you say that price, you know, or you decide you want to become more visible, and then you have one person saying something really shitty, and suddenly we're questioning our entire fucking strategy and mission and life. You know, we set a boundary with someone, and then someone doesn't like that boundary, and we start wondering whether the boundary was wrong. Don't we? You know, you make a decision, and then someone else makes a different decision, so we completely abandon ours. We say we're leading, and then sometimes what we're actually doing is waiting around for everyone to reassure us that we're leading in the right direction. That ain't leadership. That's outsourcing your trust, your certainty, your who you who you are being, and I guess this is where the horsey thing really stayed with me because you know all of that. I can talk about leadership, but something you announce like it's something that's felt, and I don't just mean leadership in the corporate sense. You know, I spent years in senior leadership. I know what formal leadership looks like, and job titles, and teams, and structures, and meetings, and responsibilities. But self leadership is different. It's totally different because no one, no one appoints you. No one sends you like an email going, "Congratulations on Monday! You are officially the leader of your. Oh no! There's no promotion. There's no job description. There's no pay. There's no lanyard. You know you have to decide, and then you have to keep deciding. You have to decide to lead yourself anyway when there isn't a guarantee. To lead yourself anyway when someone, everyone disagrees. To lead yourself when you're fucking terrified. To lead yourself when the thing that you've decided to do becomes really damn hard or inconvenient or challenging, and you lead yourself back to the game when you discover that actually playing the bigger game is considerably bloody messier than fantasising about the bigger game. Doing the bigger game, being the bigger game, is so much harder than bloody what you think you think it is in your head, and that matters a lot for high-performing women, for accomplished women because so many of us have become so damn good at leading everything and everyone except ourselves, don't we? We we lead the teams, we lead the families, we lead the businesses, the projects, the households. We organise, we anticipate, we. We fix everything. We hold everything. We become this container for everyone and everything. And somewhere in the middle of it, of being so bloody competent, we stop asking, "Where am I actually going? Who's holding me? Not what everyone else needs to go, or what everyone else needs doing or being supporting. Not what keep everyone else happy. Where am I going? And then when we do finally decide we want something different, that old identity comes along with us. It's what I call the high functioning trap. It's because the behaviours that made you successful they don't suddenly fuck off and disappear because you've got a bigger vision. In fact, they quite often get even. Freaking louder! If your old way of creating safety for yourself was to control everything, you'll try and control the bigger business, the bigger game. If your old way of feeling worth and feeling value was being useful. You're still becoming dispensable to everybody in your life and your business. If your old way of avoiding rejection was being perfect, your space. weeks and weeks perfecting something that needed to actually be finished two weeks ago.
Sarah Elizabeth 20:49
If your old way of keeping people happy was saying yes, then growth and expansion will just give you more people to say yes to, and then we wonder, we wonder why the thing we wanted starts to feel fucking exhausting, and that isn't always even because the dream is wrong, the vision's wrong. Sometimes it's just because we're building or trying to build the new thing with the identity that was designed for the old thing, and that's a really, really different problem. And I'm seeing this myself in real time with BU now. Like this event is asking shit of me. Oh my god, it's asking me to be visible. It's asking me to sell, to ask, to negotiate, to make decisions, to deal with some really tough disappointment, to spend a hell of a lot of money that I haven't got to trust people, to let other people contribute, to accept that not everything is going to go exactly how I pictured it and how I want it. Yet to keep going when something doesn't go my way. A decision doesn't go my way. To to put up with that uncertainty and that not knowing, and yet to hold the vision and deal with the frankly very fucking unsexy reality of microphones and room bookings and ticket sales and invoices and I mean nobody puts get a couple of microphones and question your life choices on the vision board today. No one puts that bit on the vision board, but that's what building something looks like. And there have absolutely been points where I've just wanted to get everything under control before moving again back to the game. You know that feeling. Let me just sort this. Let me just get clear. Let me just get my head straight. Let me clear the inbox. Let me let me know exactly who's coming. Let me know how much everything costs. Let me have every speaker confirmed and all the assets done and all the content done, and let me get ahead. And then, and then, then I'll feel calm. Except that point never comes because when you're building something, when you're playing that bigger game, the board keeps moving, so the question can't be. And this is as much myself as you, believe me. The question isn't how do I get this whole board under control. The question just has to become, what's my next move? That's it,
Speaker 1 24:00
not the next 156, just the next one. What matters now? What deserves my energy? What can wait? What needs me? What doesn't actually need me at all?
Sarah Elizabeth 24:27
What am I doing because it matters, and what am I doing because my old identity feels a lot safer when she's busy, busy, busy, busy, doing fuck all, but busy. That last one's a fucking bastard, by the way, because us high-functioning women, we can make about anything look productive, just about anything. We can spend an entire day doing some really useful things and being very busy, and somehow avoid that one move that would actually change something. And that's why I keep coming back to that chessboard. That queen, the queen has so much freedom of movement. She's got more than anyone else in the game. The queen has the most power, But having all of those possible moves doesn't also mean that she should make all of them. I'm learning this as much as everyone else. Power's not about frantic movement. Power is being able to move, being able to have the freedom to move, and knowing which mood matters, and I think that's one of the biggest identity shifts that happens when you start playing that bigger game. Your capacity doesn't grow because you're becoming capable of tolerating more shit and more chaos, it grows because you stop giving everything equal access to you. You get better at choosing. You get better at saying no. You get better at letting something being perfect. It's hard, but fucking hell! You have to become better at it. You become better at allowing other people to be disappointed. You get better at asking for help. Jeez, you get better at recognising that urgency and importance are not the same thing. They're not the same thing. You get better at staying with your decision when someone else doesn't immediately agree with it or validate it in some way. But perhaps most importantly, you get better at trusting yourself when you don't yet know how it's going to turn out, you haven't got a clue what the what the end game is, and that is the piece that I'm really sitting with, particularly after the horses this week. I'm it's trust, not like that. Everything's going to work out. Trust, or the, you know, I'm suddenly going to get the universe to land my dream life on my doorstep for me in a parcel factor with a bow. I'm talking about self trust, like that I can trust myself to respond to what happens next. I trust myself to respond to what happens next, and that's so different. I don't need to know exactly how the event's going to unfold to trust myself to lead it. I don't need every person to say yes to trust the direction I'm going in. I don't need to know what the next five years look like to make the decision that's right for me right now today. I don't need to control everyone else's move. All I need to do is be responsible for mine and trust it, and that is the difference between control and leadership. Control says I can relax when I know what's going to happen. I just need to know what's going to happen. Leadership says I can move because I trust myself to deal with what happens, and that is completely different way of living. And I personally, I think reinvention asks this of us over and over and over again because if you're genuinely reinventing yourself, there will always, always be a point where you have to move before you've got evidence, Before you've got evidence, you have to make the move. Otherwise, you ain't doing nothing new. You're just repeating what you know already works, even if it's not actually what you want anymore. You know that designed self that I talk about. She ain't coming with references, and I guarantee love. She doesn't have a 10-year track record. You can check. You're creating her. You're designing her, and you have to make some moves as her, make some decisions as her before you have proof that she's going to work. And that's why I I say you don't find yourself; you design her, and then, then the important bit have to bloody live as her. That's the main bit. You're not just designing her. You're not just writing about her. You're not just putting her on a vision board or deciding what her standards are. You have to put her in the game. Put her on that. Bored. Let her make the move.
Sarah Elizabeth 30:02
Let her be seen. Let her get something wrong. Let her deal with shit. Let her deal with rejection. Let her change her mind. Let her discover that she is way more capable of handling so much more than that old identity ever could ever believed was possible, and that's really what I wanted to get across today. You cannot discover your power as the queen that you are while you stay safely in the box with the pawns. You've got to get in the game, and if you're listening to this thinking, "This is exactly where I am, this is exactly why I created BU now. It's happening on Friday, fourth September, at the Leonardo Royal Hotel in London Tower Bridge, and it's for founders and business owners who know, who absolutely know that the next stage of their business and life isn't going to come from nowhere. It's not going to come from doing more. It's not going to come from having another strategy. It's not going to come from having another plan. Because you can have the strategy, you can have the plan, you can have all the ambition, but eventually your life and your business will say, "Who are you being while you build this? While all the other moving parts are happening, who are you being then? And that's the conversation we're having in that room. It's all about identity and leadership and systems and self trust and the people around you and the decisions you're making and the things you've outgrown and who your life and business actually need you to be now, to be you now. Now we've got some brilliant speakers and partners, fucking gorgeous. We've got reinvention labs, we've got conversations, we've got a panel, gorgeous fireside with gorgeous Jodie Heywood. Importantly to me, this room is not going to be about that fucking weird clicky bollocks where everyone's like looking at your name badge to see if you're important enough. You're a normie. Now fuck that. I want people to leave with new connections and new conversations and a different understanding of themselves as the person leading their business. So, if you've been watching this event from the sidelines, listening to me, seeing me, and thinking, "I think I might need to go, let me tell you: get on the fucking board, make the move. You don't need to know exactly what you're going to get from the day. You don't need to know anyone else who's coming. You don't need to wait until your business is bigger or you've got your shit more together. Come as you are. That's rather the point. So you'll find the link in the show notes. But DM me if you've got any questions. Send me a message. As for me, I'm gonna carry on practising what I'm preaching, you know. Do what I say I do, and be who I say I be. I've got a lot happening, a lot of it happening, and a lot I can't control. But some of it I can, but a lot of it I can't. There will almost certainly be way more surprises between now and the fourth of September. There'll probably be points again where I question what the fuck possessed me to put on the event in the first place. There will be things that go wrong. There will be things that probably go better than I imagined, and people who surprise me, and probably at least one more invoice that makes me want to lie face down on the carpet and head back on the floor. But I'm in the game, and that's the point. You don't need to control the whole board. You don't need to know how the game's going to end. You don't need everyone else to make the move that you wanted them to make. You just need to decide who you are on the board and make your next move from there. Because your power was never in control in the game; it was trusting yourself enough to play it. So, my gorgeous humans, I will leave you with that for today. I will be back in your beauts, bad RC buds again next week for more in our reinvention era. And I am sending you so much love. Thank you for listening. Bye.
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