Sarah Elizabeth 00:00
Hello, hello, and welcome to the Reinvention Era podcast. I am Sarah Elizabeth, the Queen of Reinvention, and I firmly believe that you don't change what you do in order to change your life or business. Right? You need to change who you are first, because if you, at your core, don't see yourself as the kind of person who has the thing, then you ain't never gonna do the shit to get it done. And we have to be the thing first in order to do the thing, in order to have the thing, and we do all of that by designing the version of you who lives the life you want to lead, so that you can be that version of you, so that you can do the thing to have the thing, but you've got to be it first. Now, on that this week, I have been thinking about failure and when we're scared to be do or have the thing. Full stop, right? Oh, actually, do you know what? More to the point, I've been thinking about whether it is actually really failure that we're scared of at all, because I feel like we talk about the fear of failure all the time, don't we? You know, I'd love to start a business, but I'm scared it won't work, or that I won't be able to make it work. I'd love to write a book, but what if no one buys it, or it gets slated, or like I want to put myself out there, but what if no one's interested? I get trolled. I want to launch this thing, but it might flop. What if it flops? I want to change careers, but what if I regret it? Oh, what if I'm too old? You know that whole brain spiral, right? And what we do is basically package up all of that crap under this nice heading, this nice neat heading of fear of failure. It's all about a fear of failure. But actually, I wonder if there's something else going on underneath all that. Because imagine for a second, right, that you could try the thing completely anonymously. Nobody would know. Nobody'd ever know. They'd never see the Instagram post that only got three likes. Nobody would ever know that you've launched something and only a couple of people bought it. If that, nobody would ever know that you've applied for the job that you really want and didn't get it, nobody would know that you started dating again, and it won't spec that it's up with you. That's another loser. Nobody would know any of it. Nobody know that you started the business and six months later decided you fucking hated it. Nobody would know that you even tried, nobody would failing still feel quite so terrifying. Then, maybe, maybe it still would, but I kind of suspect that personally, I think that for a lot of us, it would actually be considerably less terrifying, you know, because perhaps what we're really frightened of isn't actually what if I try and it doesn't work. Perhaps it's more about what if everyone watches me try it and then it doesn't work, because I feel like those are two quite different fears. One is about outcome. The other is about what we think that outcome will say about us. Because there's something I don't know incredibly vulnerable about being seen trying, isn't it? Like before, you can be seen trying. You have to let yourself be seen wanting. You know, and this-I think that's a massive vulnerability. Like saying, "I want this. I want the business. I want the promotion. I want the relationship. I want to write the book. I want to speak on that stage. I want to make more money than I know what to do with. I want people to buy this thing. I want to build something bigger. I want a different life. Because the minute you say any of that out loud, other people know not what you want. Which means that now there's something to lose. If you can never tell anybody that you wanted the opportunity, that you wanted the thing, you can pretend you weren't that bothered if you don't get it. Bothered anyone? I didn't really want it. If you never launch the programme, nobody will ever know whether anybody would have bought it.
Sarah Elizabeth 05:25
If you never write the book, you can stay as someone who could totally, definitely write a book one day. Oh yeah, I've got a book in me one day. One day I've got a book in me. If you never properly go for the business idea. You can tell yourself it would have been successful if you'd have actually put the effort in, made if you'd have like tried it, you'd have made it work. There's some kind of protection in that, isn't there? Like potential is actually quite fucking safe, because nobody can criticise what you never even tried, can they? And I think sometimes we might stay in that potential for years because of it, and that's nothing to do with laziness or not wanting it enough, or because we're not bloody good enough. I think it's somehow that that leaving it in the future, leaving it in the potential, kind of allows us to to hold on to a really lovely version of ourselves. She's the person who could, the person who might, the person who would probably be pulling at it, Actually, trying almost puts that identity at risk, right? Because now we might be found out, and I think this is especially interesting for high-achieving women because if you have spent years and years and fucking years being known as the competent one, the successful one, the viable, the woman who gets shit done-you can't become quite attached to that identity, don't you? You become the person who achieves, and then you attach your whole identity to that. But what's more, other people become attached to it as well. You know what you're doing. You're that person. Everyone sees you as that person, the experienced one. You're respected. You know the rules. You know how the game works. You're the fucking queen of your own life. Other people have got you on this pedestal, and then you decide to go and fucking reinvent your life, didn't you? Suddenly, this absolute queen doesn't know what the fuck she's doing, and it's like shit. I'm a beginner again, and it's bloody horrible being a beginner, isn't it? Oh, like it's horrible. You go from being this person everyone comes to for all the answers to being the person that Google shit like how do I add a fucking button to a website? Jeez, guess who that one was? You know, you start a business, then you find out that there are about 47,000 fucking things that you didn't know that you needed to know. You start posting online, and then people see it. You launch something and discover that creating something that people want, and getting people to actually buy the bloody thing-completely different things, completely different skills. You decide you want to speak, you want the stages, and suddenly you're sending applications for stages to people who may well completely bloody ignore you. You write something that you're incredibly proud of, and then have to send it to an editor who comes back with a load of fucking changes. That shit can be absolutely freaking brutal for the old ego, because the identity that you've spent years building goes, I'm really bloody good at things. I'm really bloody good at things. An identity reinvention means saying, "Wait, you're really bloody good. Now come over here and be potentially shit at something for a bit-that's a really, really uncomfortable identity clash, you know. But it is also unavoidable. It does actually come with reinvention. You can't genuinely build a whole new life or business or. Identity, whilst doing shit and being your existing identity, because if you already were in that identity, you would already be ready doing it at some point. You have to become the beginner again, right? And believe me, this is 100% something I am had to really confront myself. Probably still confronting. I've spent years in a career where I knew exactly what I was doing. I had expertise, seniority, credibility. I had a job title that immediately told people something about me, and then you step into a whole new world, a whole different industry, and nobody particularly gives a shit what your old job title was. Nobody gives a shit. Nobody cares. You have to establish all of that credibility again. You have to learn. You have to ask shitty questions. You have to try things, and you have to get things wrong.
Sarah Elizabeth 11:06
And crucially, perhaps other people can see you doing it. And we talk a lot, don't we, about courage to start again-the courage that you need to start again-but we don't talk nearly enough about the courage that we need to let other people watch you fucking start again. Because starting again privately is one thing, starting again publicly, oh, it's whole other ball game, whole other ball game, And then, of course, we then have the people that we imagine are watching us doing all of this. Whether that's old colleagues, or people we went to school with, or our ex, or the ex's new partner, or that woman we vaguely know from somewhere that always seems to have a shit together. She always looks composed. People in our industry, old industry, new industry, friends, family, random people on Instagram who we have somehow appointed to an imaginary judging panel that they don't even know them on. They don't even know they're on this judging panel. It's all in here. We think, what are they going to think? And meanwhile, they're sitting on their sofa watching Netflix and scrolling Instagram and wondering whether they can be asked to put the fucking washing away. They're not thinking about us nearly as much as we think they are. We are all the main character in our own lives, and to most other people, we're an occasional supporting character at most, and I don't say that to diminish our importance. I actually find it incredibly fucking freeing because how many decisions have you made on an imaginary audience? How many things have you not posted because of who might see it? Who might see it. How many ideas have you kept to yourself? How many opportunities have you not gone for? How many times have you played fucking smaller than you wanted to? Because somewhere in the back of your mind, you were thinking, "Yeah, but what will people think? Which people? Seriously, name them. Name them. Who exactly are these people whose hypothetical opinion gets to decide what you do with your actual fucking life? And why have you given them that job? And you know what? I've been totally, totally living this lesson in real time lately with hosting my first event in this industry. Be you now, because there is absolutely nowhere to hide when you decide to put on an event. You book a bloody great hotel in London. You announce the date. You tell everyone about it. You invite the speakers. You bring the partners in. You create all the graphics. You talk about it on your podcast. You email your list. You pull it all over social media. You ask people to buy tickets, and then you keep asking people to buy more tickets. And There's no secretly having a little experiment behind closed doors and popping up afterwards, going look at this incredibly amazing successful thing I did earlier. Look at what I made earlier. People are seeing the build. They can see me trying. They can see me wanting it to work, and yes, there have absolutely been times where that's been so fucking exposing because I can't control the outcome. I can do everything I can. I can create something I absolutely believe in. Can bring utterly brilliant people into the room. I can promote the living shit out of it, but I cannot physically reach through someone's phone, grab their credit cards, and book the ticket for them. Which there are laws about that sort of thing, which is a little bit annoying. But you know, seriously, there is a point where I have no other option but to tolerate being visible without any certainty whatsoever, and that is a very different skill from confidence. Let me tell you, because I think we often assume that confident people are certain they're going to succeed there in confidence at all. Confidence is being willing to act when you don't fucking know. It's being able to say, "I want this. I believe in this. I'm going for this, without having any guarantee whatsoever that it's all going to work out beautifully before you even start, because we want the polly story, don't we? And look, social media really hasn't exactly helped with that, has it? You know, traditionally, we see the success story after we see the show reel after.
Sarah Elizabeth 16:14
You know, someone sells the company for big money, or someone wrote the bestseller, they got the dream job. Someone else has built this huge audience, or found the love of their life, or won the marathon, or created something wildly successful. Someone's done all of those things, and then we hear the lovely retrospective story about how hard it was, how the hard thing was won. But retrospect kind of makes everything look inevitable, don't you think? Because once you know the ending, all the messy bits become part of the inspiring story. At the time, they're just fucking messy bits. When you're in the middle, you don't know whether this is a really fucking difficult chapter before everything works out, or a terrible idea that you might laugh about in a couple of years with your mates after my time when I did that. You just don't know, and that's what makes trying vulnerable? There's no, there's no one standing next to you going, "Don't mind me, Sare. This bit's going to make an excellent chapter in the best-selling book down the line. You're just there thinking, "Whoa, fuck! and carrying on. And I also think this is where perfectionism comes in. Going to be honest, because perfectionism does get a bit of a fancy label on it, doesn't it? It's like high standards, and yes, absolutely, sometimes it is. Sometimes you genuinely care about producing excellent work. You know, in my social work world, I was working in child protection. High standards are non-negotiable in that world. End of. I'm not negotiating on my standards when a child might be at risk, you know. But sometimes perfectionism is actually just like some sort of gold-plated fear, because if it's not ready yet, you don't have to release it, do you? You don't have to let it out there. If you need another qualification, you don't have to start. You don't have to start until you've got a qualification. If the website needs another tweak, you don't have to send people to the website because oh, it needs a tweak. Well, let's not send people there. If you need to grow your audience first, you don't have to sell. Been there. If you need another six months to develop the idea, let it let it grow. Then nobody can reject it today, now, because we're still building it, perfect is safe because perfect can say private. Perfect can say in the future. Perfect doesn't have to be out there, but real shit that has to leave the bloody house. Real things get opinions. Real things get ignored. Real things get rejected. Real things get misunderstood. Real things sometimes fail. Sometimes they don't, and also they sometimes fucking fly. But you don't get access to that possibility without accepting the other one, but we tend to see it not working as some kind of humiliation or something. But failure and humiliation are not the same thing. And maybe actually this is another distinction worth making. Failure is saying the thing didn't work. Humiliation is more about believing that the fact that it didn't work has somehow reduced my value in other people's eyes, or even my own. Those are the same thing. You can launch something and it doesn't sell. That's fine. It's information. It's data. You can apply for something and not get it. Information. You can try a new career and realise you fucking hate it. Information. You can start a relationship and realise it's really not right. Information. You can build an offer that nobody actually wants really fucking useful information, actually. But none of those things automatically means I am so embarrassing. Oh my god, it's so embarrassing! I'm so fucking stupid. Everyone thinks I'm a failure. I shouldn't have even tried. Weird that we had that shit from our own stories, and we often add it on behalf of an audience who hasn't even said it. I've added way too much shit to a whole story on behalf of my dad, who died 20 years a fucking go. This is why I'm so fascinated by identity, because your existing identity is designed to keep proving itself right, proving itself to be true. If you see yourself as the capable one, you're naturally gonna gravitate towards situations where you can feel capable, right?
Sarah Elizabeth 21:46
If you see yourself as someone who doesn't embarrass yourself, you will avoid any situation where embarrassment might be a distinct possibility. If your identity is built around being respected. You're going to avoid being a beginner because beginners ask questions and get shit wrong. So when you start designing a different identity, you're not just changing what you do; you're changing what you're willing to be seen doing. You're changing who you're willing to be seen to be, and that really fucking matters, because the woman that you're designing may need to be willing to be misunderstood. She might need to be willing to be new, to be a beginner, to be willing to post something that nobody engages with. She might need to make the offer before she knows whether anyone wants it or not. She might need to say this is what I want without following it up with a million disclaimers about how she's totally fine if it doesn't happen. Though it's totally fine, totally fine. Didn't we want it anyway? She might need to be seen caring about it because, unfortunately, you can't reinvent yourself completely in private. At some point, the new identity has to be seen. It has to become visible. You can journal about her forever, visualise her, and create the vision board, and know exactly how she thinks and feels, and what she wears, and what she puts with, and what she wants, and what her standards are lovely, and don't get me wrong, I fucking love a bit of that. I love all of that. This is what my whole fucking queenology is based on. But eventually, she has to leave the fucking house. She has to be seen to make a decision. She has to be seen saying no, or saying yes, or asking for the money, or be seen wearing the thing, or leaving the person, the thing, launching the thing, applying for the thing, booking the room, posting the post, telling somebody what she actually fucking wants, and that's when identity design becomes really damn real. Because it's not about when you understand who you want to be; it's when your behaviour starts giving evidence that this is who you are now, and some of that evidence is going to be really, really messy. But actually, that's good, right? Because messy means you're actually doing something. You're actually being her Now, now, rather than waiting, so maybe rather than asking yourself, "What am I scared is going to vow? ask yourself, "What am I scared that people will see me trying to do?" Who am I scared of being if people see me being that? What are you protecting? Who are you protecting? Because the answers might surprise you a lot. Maybe you're not scared the business won't work. Maybe you're scared your oh colleagues or your ex will watch you promote it. Fuck! I'd do that when I was in divorce. It's like my ex might be listening to this and talking about our relationship and him and all of that. This was my story. I couldn't let myself think about if he was watching, listening, what he thought, because it wasn't about him; it was about me. You know, maybe you're not actually scared of dating again. Maybe you're scared of people knowing that you might want a bit of love again. Maybe you're not scared of waiting. Maybe you're not scared of writing. Maybe you're scared of calling yourself a writer and author before somebody else gives you fucking permission. Maybe you're not scared of launching, but maybe you're scared of launching and nobody buying. Maybe you're not scared of changing your life. Maybe you're scared that the people who were comfortable with the old version of you will watch you do it. And look, all of that is really, really valuable information. It's really useful data because then you can stop trying to eliminate this fear of failure and deal with what's actually happening. You're protecting an identity, a reputation. You're protecting yourself from potential judgement, and then the question becomes: Is that protection costing me more than their judgement ever fricking could? Because there's a cost to not trying to, but we don't call that failure. There's no big, obvious, dramatic point to that, is there? Nobody sends you a rejection email if you don't apply. Nobody comments if you don't post. Nobody laughs if you don't say anything.
Sarah Elizabeth 27:25
No, nothing happens, and that's the problem. Nothing happens. Six months passes. A year passes. Five years pass. 10. You're still thinking about the thing you could have done. Still protecting the identity that you outgrew a long time ago. Still keeping your potential pristine, untouched. They're they're always a little bit separate from you. It's like having a lovely new sofa and keeping the bloody plastic on it, isn't it? You're still not opening up to it. So perhaps we need to stop making this goal! Oh God, don't fail! I can do anything but fail. Maybe the real goal is let them see you try. Let them see you try, because someone who can be seen trying, you know, it's the thing. Let people see you learning. Let them see you change direction. Let them see what you care about. Let them see you build something. Let them see version one before you on version 20.9. Let them see you want something enough to risk not getting it because the people doing really interesting things with their lives are not the people who found some magical way to guarantee success before they even started. They're the people who became willing to be seen, to be visible during the bit where there were no guarantees. And yes, you know what? Some things won't work. They won't. Sorry, they won't. Somebody might judge you. Somebody might troll you, or somebody might secretly enjoy watching everything go fucking wrong for you. Some might think you've lost the plot. Fuck me! I've had a bit of that lately. What's Sarah doing again? Let them. They get an opinion, but they don't get a vote on my life. Your life can't be designed around maintaining this impeccable reputation with other people who aren't actually living your life, and maybe this next level for you doesn't need you to stop being afraid of failure. Maybe it just needs actually a willingness to be seen trying, because potential might be safe, but you can't build a life inside of it. And personally, I feel like I would much farther be the person who tried and who got some things spectacularly fucking wrong, and looked like a dick occasionally, and changed her mind and learned and tried again and still actually freaking lived. Why? I'd still rather be her than the woman who everyone thought could have done something amazing. Oh, she had so much potential. So go do the thing badly if necessary. Let them watch. Fucking let them. And before I go, speaking of being willing to be seen trying, be you now is happening on Friday the fourth of September at the Leonardo Royal Hotel in London Tower Bridge. And yes, I have been very publicly, very publicly building and creating and selling this thing because I wholeheartedly believe in the room I'm creating. It's for founders and business owners who know that building what's next isn't only about another strategy or another bloody to-do list or more AI or whatever. Sometimes the business can only change when the person leading it changes. So we are going to be talking identity and leadership and visibility and self trust and growth and what it actually takes to be the person capable of creating what you keep saying you want, and more importantly, we're gonna fucking fun while we do it. Ticket sales close on the 25th of August on Tuesday, and that deadline is real as fuck because I have had to give final numbers to the venue. So if you've been thinking about coming but haven't booked it yet, perhaps there couldn't be a more appropriate episode for me to say stop thinking about it, do the bloody thing. You'll find the link in the show notes, love, and I really would absolutely fucking love to see you. It's a it's love, and as for me, I'm off to do some more spectacularly public things, regardless of what anyone else thinks, because that's apparently who I am now.
Sarah Elizabeth 32:18
So I'd love to know what you think about this. Do you know that you can email me by the show notes? Yes, you can. Wows, wowsers to that! And you can also like and review the whole podcast while we're here if you are feeling ever so inclined to do so. It won't take long. I'd be incredibly grateful. So I would. and that's it for me. I will be back in your beauts earbuds again next week. Love ya! Bye.
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