Piece Of Mind Podcast
Welcome to Piece of Mind, where we piece together the parts of your mind to help you live a life that’s authentic, unapologetic, and absolutely fulfilling.
I’m your host Ashley Badman, a mindset coach and psychology student, here to guide you through the world of subconscious re-programming, relationships, belief systems, and patterns.
This isn’t your typical mindset podcast. We’re diving deep into the core of who you are, tackling everything from self-sabotage and people-pleasing to attachment styles and beyond. We’ll uncover the deeper shit that makes you who you are, so you can grow, evolve, and build a life you’re obsessed with.
Expect a mix of evidence-based insights, energetic shifts, and a touch of chaos as we explore how to heal, optimize, and re-program your life.
This podcast is for those who refuse to settle, who are committed to living life fully and getting the best for themselves.
Get ready for straight talk, practical strategies, and a few surprises along the way. If you’re ready to stop hiding from yourself and start living unapologetically, you’re in the right place. Tune in and let’s get into it.
Piece Of Mind Podcast
Ep 35: Your Identity Isn’t Fixed. Here’s How I Rewrote Mine
We dive deep into the concept of identity, exploring how our self-perception is shaped by survival patterns formed long before we had the language to name them or the power to choose them.
• Our identity isn't fixed – it's a collection of patterns formed as protection mechanisms
• What seems like personality traits are often adaptive responses to childhood experiences
• Understanding identity requires asking "where did I learn to be this way?" instead of "what's wrong with me?"
• Your nervous system remembers how you felt during formative experiences, even when you can't recall specific memories
• True identity change happens through consistent micro-decisions, not dramatic reinvention
• Rewiring your identity requires self-compassion and the willingness to face uncomfortable truths
• The version of you that feels most authentic already exists within – you just need permission to express it
Join the Academy to work on shifting your identity at a root level through our Identity Shift Framework program. We offer three monthly calls (two for mindset, one for business owners), plus a community forum for questions and reflections. It's application-only to ensure the right fit – check the link below to apply.
Built For Better Academy Link
Welcome back to the Peace of Mind podcast. Today we are talking about identity, not the surface level version that you show the world, not your job title or your relationship status or even how other people would describe you. I'm talking about the real stuff, what your identity actually is, the wiring underneath it all. I mean that should come as no surprise to you that I want to take it deeper than surface level, because that's what we're all about here. That's why you come to this podcast, that's why you listen in every single week. If you're listening every single week, I bloody love you and thank you for being here. But I don't like to talk about things on a surface level of like just change your habits and change your views and change your perspective. No, we like to take things a little deeper here, because I know that when we take things deeper and we're willing to go there, we're willing to look at the things that most people ignore. That is when we can create real change. That is when we have a true understanding of who we are and how we can accept ourselves and how we can have compassion, but also how we can grow, how we can evolve, how we can stop being trapped by our own limitations. So when I talk about identity, I'm talking about the patterns that you repeat without even thinking about it, the beliefs that you carry without even questioning them, and there will be many, many, many, many. We have a very complex belief system in our brain, in the way that we think we have thousands and thousands and thousands of beliefs, ones that we're aware of, some that we're aware of and so many that we are not aware of. But we are living by every single day. We are talking about the silent rules that you follow because at some point you actually had to, and most people think identity is fixed and not in the way where it's like you actually consciously say that, like my identity is unchangeable, identity is a fixed thing. We're not actually, we're not actually saying that Most people aren't even thinking about their identity. It just simply is.
Speaker 1:You think how you are is how you will always be, and even if that's not a conscious thought of like I'm always going to be this way for some people it is. For other people, they don't even think about it. They don't even have the level of self-awareness to see the way in which they behaved or act, or all their belief systems that are running the show, their subconscious beliefs. They don't even have the level of self-awareness, so they just live their whole life being who they've always been thinking how they have always thought. It's almost like you're born a certain way and that's it. Your upbringing impacted you, your parents shaped you, your school life, it shaped you all the different things and this is just how you are. This is just who you are as a person. You're either confident or you're not confident. You're disciplined or you're not. You're someone who follows through or you're someone who always gives up. But that version of identity, it is not the truth, it is not factual, it is not like that is it. That is who you are for the rest of time. You can never grow or change. Your identity is set in stone. That's just not the case. What your identity actually is is it's survival. It is a set of patterns that formed long before you had the language to name them and definitely before you had the power to choose them.
Speaker 1:And I want to tell you how I figured that out and how painful and confusing and liberating that process actually was. When I was 23, I joined the police force 23, guys, 23. I was an infant, I was a child and I was putting myself into an environment that I was naive about. I would say naive in what I thought was going to happen, how I thought it was going to go. When I tell people about my time of deciding to join the police, it was like when you have a celebrity crush like you have a celebrity crush that you're like I love this celebrity, I look up to them, they're amazing and then you meet them and they're an absolute fucking douchebag in real life and you're just like wow, that was extremely disappointing. That's what it was like to join the police for me. I was like this is my dream job, this is my career. I'm so excited, I was so proud of myself when I made it into the police and I still am proud of that. It was no easy feat. I was applying for the police in Victoria.
Speaker 1:I lived in New South Wales. I wasn't telling anyone and that's a whole other story but basically the reason I didn't tell anyone I was doing it was because if I didn't make it, I wouldn't have to tell everyone I failed and I wouldn't have to face the judgment that came with that. So fear of failure, fear of judgment, was very, very big for me then and I would rather tell no one that I was trying, so that if it didn't work out I didn't have to tell anyone. I would just deal with the hurt of that on my own. We've grown since then. We don't do that now. I share my goals and my dreams and my vision and I'm okay that they're not always going to work out and that I may fail, but with this I did it all by myself.
Speaker 1:I had to drive to Victoria. I remember driving from New South Wales to the border of Victoria, so just going over the edge, because they held one of the exams there and I wouldn't have to go fully into Melbourne and fly to Melbourne. So I drove overnight and then drove back. It was insane. I only passed the math section by one point, which was my most scared section, but I am still proud of myself for that process. It took me about a year, with the application process, traveling back and forth from New South Wales to Victoria, not telling anyone that I was doing it, being scared, shitless, having to do the panel interview, all the different things. I am very proud of the journey. I am very proud of myself for going after it. However, I would be absolutely fucking lying if I said that it was all that I had hoped it to be and all that I dreamed it to be. If it was all of those things, I would probably still be in the job, and it didn't play out for me how I wanted it to play out.
Speaker 1:An incident happened that was completely out of my control and I was young. I hadn't done any work on myself, I hadn't worked through my trauma. I had no fucking idea what belief systems were or subconscious beliefs. I had no idea of any of that. So I was really living based on my childhood trauma. I was really making decisions and showing up in my life based on that version of myself that was wounded, that lived from fear, that wanted acceptance, that was scared of being abandoned, and a lot of my decisions and my actions and my behaviors came from that version of myself, which, thankfully, I have worked on myself now, but I wasn't equipped to handle what had happened to me.
Speaker 1:I'm not going to talk about the incident, because this episode isn't about that, but it was very much out of my control and what led what was a result of that was a year of workplace bullying from multiple, multiple, different people or men. It was very shit. It was a very hard time, and that is when I got diagnosed with depression and anxiety. However, from the outside, when I joined the police, everyone was very proud of me and everyone thought I looked strong and collected and capable. I could walk into chaos and I could fucking hold it down without flinching another thing that I am very, very proud of. But now, realizing there was actually more to that, there was more to that I felt like I could handle the job itself. It wasn't the job itself that led me to no longer being in the job, it was the workplace culture. It was the bullying, it was the incident that occurred. I could walk into a job, I could go to the most crazy scenes and crazy jobs and I was okay. I felt good, I felt in control, I felt like I could handle it.
Speaker 1:But inside I was on edge all of the time. My anxiety, which I didn't even know, was anxiety then. This is how lacking in self-awareness I was back then. I didn't even know what anxiety felt like. I didn't know what it felt like in my body. I didn't know how anxiety manifested in my everyday life, in my behaviors, in my actions, in any of those different things. But on the inside, what people couldn't see was I was on edge all of the time. My nervous system was fucking fried. I was in a state of fight, flight or freeze or even fawn mostly fawn a lot of the time fawn actually for so much of my life, for so much of my day and I had no fucking idea. I had no idea that my childhood had caused me to be in a state of fight or flight. I had no idea that my nervous system didn't even know what regulation felt like. I was so used to being dysregulated that that was my baseline, that was my normal. I didn't know any different. I couldn't relax, I couldn't sit still, I couldn't be vulnerable with anyone. There is no fucking way you would have caught me dead being vulnerable which is so funny because I'm so vulnerable online now but sometimes that's still an edge.
Speaker 1:For me, being vulnerable was something I really really had to work on. I kept telling myself that this is just the way that I'm wired, but that's just how I am. That's just my identity. That, but that's just how I am. That that's just my identity. That I was built for pressure, that emotions were distractions. I didn't need to feel emotions. Or when I did feel them, there were big fucking explosions, let me tell you, because I never felt them, I never let myself be vulnerable, I never let myself seek out help, I never let myself even give myself space and time to ask myself how I was going or how I was feeling. Absolutely not. I didn't even think that was a thing. You know, know what I mean. Like I didn't think that was a thing. So when I did feel an emotion, it was big, like yelling at my partner, my partner yelling at me. Anger was like bigger than it needed to be, like sadness was a big like moment. It wasn't and it wasn't where I felt like I could express my emotions and I felt safe doing so, safe within myself, safe within my environment. To me it was like no, I don't need to feel, I just need to keep moving.
Speaker 1:I would make jokes about my trauma, like I didn't know it was trauma at the time, but I would make jokes about my childhood or my past or all those different things, and I thought that independence was my biggest strength, that I was like, you know, almost that, click your fingers, I don't need no man kind of gal Like I can do it on my own. I don't need no help. I don't need to ask for anyone. I need to figure it out. I need to make it work, and I was such a fucking perfectionist as well, so I wanted to do everything right. I didn't want to do anything wrong, and at the time I'm like, well, that's just who I am, you know what I mean. It makes me hard work.
Speaker 1:But it wasn't. It was strategy. It was self-protection dressed up as confidence, because being strong meant no one could hurt me. Being capable meant I didn't have to rely on anyone but myself, which meant I couldn't be abandoned, I couldn't be let down. I couldn't face that. Maybe if I was my authentic self, people wouldn't like me, which is a fear of mine. So I instead was just really independent.
Speaker 1:I didn't need anyone, and staying busy meant I never had to stop long enough to feel what was underneath. I never let myself feel. I never gave myself space to actually feel. I never even acknowledged that maybe. Hey, you actually are meant to feel emotions. You should probably actually allow yourself to feel. You've been through some shit in your life. It was like no, and it's like. That was so highlighted to me in the police when I would go to jobs that they did upset me. I'm not going to lie Like well, I wouldn't would I be human if they didn't? Some of the things that I saw were upsetting, but I would just come home, wouldn't really talk about it. I would kind of be like, yeah, I went to this job, but like I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm meant to be like, I'm meant to be okay with these things, like I would just cook dinner for my family and be like no, you're fine, you stop, don't, don't be silly. Like I wouldn't even give myself time to feel and it's like, yeah, I got to see that version of myself in the police, but it's like that's how I was actually living my life. That's how I was living my life before the police. That's how I was living my life in the police.
Speaker 1:When I look back on it patterns and beliefs that had been running the show for me about who I thought I was and who I thought I needed to be and that's really what our identity is. Our identity is who we have learned to be, based on our environment, based on our childhood, based on our experience with our parents. We learned from a very young age and continue to learn and continue to bring evidence of who I needed to be, to feel safe, to feel belonging, to feel loved. And we become that version of ourselves, whether it is someone who is a perfectionist or has an all or nothing mindset, or people pleases because they want to keep the peace, because that's what kept them feeling safe and loved, in a sense of belonging, when they were younger. All of the things that we think are our identity are actually parts of ourselves that we formed to protect ourselves. Being the confident one, being the shy one, being the one that never speaks up, being the one that always speaks up All of these things are things that we live our whole life by. We never question them. We never actually be like.
Speaker 1:Hmm, is that belief true, that I believe about myself, that I believe about the world, that I believe about other people, or is that something I have been taught to believe and not taught? Whereas someone sat you down and be like, you should believe this? No, a lot of the time, we don't even remember where we have gained that belief from. We don't even have memory of the experience or where it actually came from, but our brain and our nervous system has held on to it. Our brain and our nervous system has the memory stored inside of it in how we react, in what we do or what we don't do, and how we speak to ourselves. It's not like we remember the exact experience, but our nervous system and our brain remembers how we felt and that is how we behave and act and show up in our life, which is just fucking wild like this is why I love this work so much, because it's like it's almost like you have a blindfold on and you're just kind of navigating life, being like what am I doing? And then you take the blindfold off and you're like whoa, I see now why I think the way that I do.
Speaker 1:I see now why I show up in this world, in this life, the way that I do, why I doubt myself, why I hold myself back, why I overwork myself, why I never give myself rest, why I'm not vulnerable, why I'm stressed all the time, why I'm anxious, why I'm sad. We start to be like oh my God, it all makes sense. And it's like for some people it can be really upsetting to be like fuck, I have some shit to work on and I don't want you to think that If you have patterns that don't serve you, beliefs that don't serve you, rather than seeing that as like shit, I have so many, so you're just like, wow, I am so grateful that I'm willing to look at these. I'm so grateful that these are now in my awareness so I can do something about them, rather than live my whole life on autopilot, like majority of people are doing. You are stepping into your power.
Speaker 1:When you understand yourself deeply, you are taking your power back. You're no longer giving it to every experience that you've had in your life. You're giving it back to yourself and to me. It's like that is like the greatest gift you can give yourself. That is where you find peace and freedom and happiness and joy and fulfillment and achievement and success in a way that actually lights you up. That is where you start living in alignment.
Speaker 1:But you have to face it. You have to face that there are parts of you that you don't want to face, that there are behaviors that you place so many excuses on for why you are the way that you are, and sometimes we just have to let go of all of that, let go of our ego and be like I actually want to understand myself on a deeper level the good, the bad, the messy, the pretty, the ugly, all of it and that is what I had to do after the police. I didn't do this in the police. I went through the fucking ringer in the police and it wasn't until after and starting my business that I was like wow, there is so much that I have to learn about myself and if I don't, I'm going to keep playing out the same shit and attracting the same chaos for my whole entire life, and I don't want that, because what I really learned is that I didn't know that I was living my life from a version of an identity that had been shaped by fear Fear of being seen, fear of being too much, fear of not being enough, fear that if I slowed down, everything would just fall apart, including myself. That I had to be go go, go, go go figuring it out, always know what I'm doing, always making the decisions. Fast-paced, fast-moving is how I felt I had to live my life, because when I wasn't, it was after I had my babies and I was 18, and I was 19 and life felt very slow and life felt like I had no idea what I was doing and I wasn't making decisions, and that was a really low sad time in my life. So for me it's like if I slow down, I'm in a low sad time in my life and I have to keep moving, because I never actually questioned why I was doing the things I was doing. I never questioned what I was trying to feel or what I was trying to avoid, what fear, what discomfort I was trying to avoid.
Speaker 1:And then I left that job. I left the police. I stepped out of the uniform, I stepped out of the structure, out of the version of myself that I had, that had always been on, always been going, always been fast paced and moving, and I had no fucking idea who I was underneath. When I left the police I was in my darkest times depression, anxiety, diagnosed. I seen psychologists, I seen psychiatrists, like all the different things, and I had never, ever ever in my life dealt with anything in regards to mental health. Until this point, little did I know that my whole life I was like in literally a dysregulated state and I was anxious and all the different things.
Speaker 1:It wasn't until this incident and the bullying really took me to the darkness and from that darkness I had a choice. Do I let this swallow me, which it did some days, for a very long time actually or do I choose to actually understand myself? Do I choose to understand and sit with this and slow down? I was supposed to feel free when I quit the police. I was supposed to feel so proud, but instead I felt so fucking lost. I felt so unanchored, like I'd built a life around an identity that was not actually mine, and now I didn't know what the hell to do without it. And that is when the real work started.
Speaker 1:And let me be honest, because I think sometimes when people say the word healing and healing journey, it can feel like this beautiful self-discovery, all the things. It wasn't. It wasn't graceful, it was actually quite messy and quite emotional. It was full of moments where I questioned absolutely everything. And I think that's important to know, because it's not to scare people away of, like, buckle the fuck in if you're going on this journey. No, it's to validate that when you're going on this journey, you don't do it because it's easy, you don't do it because it's love and light and you always feel happy. No, and if we're seeking that, then we're seeking what we always have, which is familiar and which is comfort. And we all know by now, if you listen to this podcast for a while, that growth does not come from familiar. Growth does not come from comfort. Growth does not come from comfort.
Speaker 1:We have to be willing to face these parts of ourselves. We have to be willing for it to be hard and messy and emotional. We have to be willing for it not to be a straight line, for there to be ups and downs. There are going to be moments of joy and aha moments and you going after things and making better decisions and, like you, are going to reap the rewards from those harder times, from those harder conversations with yourself. But the biggest shift that happened for me was when I stopped asking what's wrong with me and I started asking where did I actually learn to be this way? You have to if you want to actually fully understand yourself. You have to stop fucking judging yourself. You have to stop asking what's wrong with you. You have to stop asking why am I still like this? Why do I do this? Why can't I be like this? You have to stop comparing yourself.
Speaker 1:Part of this journey is being able to release shame, release judgment, learn how to have compassion, know that you've maybe made decisions in your life up until this point based on that version of you that was in fear or in survival in a dysregulated state, and maybe you didn't make the best decisions. That's actually okay. We have to move forward. We have to move on. We can't stay stuck in blame or shame or regret or any of those things, because they do not get us anywhere. We have to open our mind, to be observant of ourselves, to be curious about ourselves. That is when we actually grow. That is when we start to realize what is this identity that I have formed, based on who I thought I needed to be and who actually am I.
Speaker 1:We can only do that through curiosity, like when I noticed that it was hard for me to rest, I struggled to actually just allow myself to stop, to fully rest, to fully fucking rest, not just physically, but mentally, learned that my brain never actually switched off. I never stopped thinking or criticizing myself or wanting to do the next thing or trying to figure it out. I was trying to intellectualize everything. My brain just never fucking stopped because I didn't let it. I would sit on the couch and be like, okay, you know what. I'm going to have some time. I'm going to have some downtime, I'm just going to rest and I just feel guilt creeping in. What should I be doing? What should I be thinking? How can I be more productive, like I was doing something wrong, by just being still? And when I traced it back, I saw the belief If I'm not achieving, I'm not valuable.
Speaker 1:And that belief wasn't just this random fucking belief that planted in my head out of nowhere. It came from years of praise being linked to performance. My family was so proud when I joined the police and I have seen my family be very disappointed in me when I was a teen mom and it looked like my life was all falling apart and that doesn't feel good. It didn't feel good and I know for the most part they were. They were trying to protect me, it was their own feet, all the different things, but it didn't feel good. What did feel good is like oh my god, she was a teen mom but now she's in the police. How amazing. We're so proud, like the praise from achievement, the love and the belonging that I felt from achieving things. That sticks with you and because we are wired to seek out that love and that belonging and that feeling seen and that feeling accepted. That is part of being a human. That is part of what we need to stay alive.
Speaker 1:Of course, we're going to form beliefs based on that and then it's going to dictate how we show up and how we behave and what actions we take. And that's what had happened to me from early on being you know, if I was achieving or the good one, the one who had it together, that's what kept me safe and seen, and that belief had become a part of my identity, not because it was true, but because it was familiar, because it served a purpose at the time and it protected me from being abandoned, from being judged, from being criticized, from feeling alone. And that's what we have to look at, especially if we think about how our brain works and how many beliefs we have. That's just one. That's just one example. We have hundreds of thousands of beliefs all of the time. We are consciously thinking things and we are subconsciously thinking things, and 95% of our decision-making is coming from our subconscious. So imagine how many things that we're doing each day and things we're making decisions on and not making decisions on that are coming from beliefs that we haven't even looked at. So it is so important that we observe ourselves, to be curious.
Speaker 1:Why do I feel guilty now? Why am I people pleasing here? Why am I shifting myself and learn from it? And then I started to see it everywhere, which is the funny thing. Like I see this now, when people are like just going on their journey to like understanding their beliefs and like you know the science behind it, all the different things, it's like, wow, now that I see it, I can't unsee it.
Speaker 1:The way that I avoided asking for help because I didn't want to be a burden, the way I kept my emotions at arm's length so I wouldn't seem too much. The way I said yes when I wanted to say no because conflict felt like danger. All of it was part of a learned identity, one that helped me survive but was now just keeping me very, very small and also just fucking unhappy. And this is what really changed everything for me. It got to this point where I had to realize I wasn't actually broken. That is a moment for me where it's like I truly think it changed the whole trajectory of my journey, to connecting back to myself, realizing I was not broken and I didn't need fixing. I was patterned, I wasn't failing, I was functioning exactly as I had been trained to do, and that's what I want you to hear today. Your identity isn't fixed. It's programmable, it's trainable and, most importantly, it is not a reflection of who you are. It's a reflection of what your system learned that it needed to be.
Speaker 1:I didn't rewrite my identity overnight. It wasn't some big fucking reinvention. It was dozens and dozens of micro decisions every single day, catching myself when I was about to over-explain, choosing to pause before saying yes to something I didn't actually want to do, letting someone see me cry and not actually apologizing for it, celebrating something I was proud of without waiting for someone else to validate it first. And one of the most powerful shifts came in my relationships. I used to be proud of being like low maintenance'd say things like you know, I don't need anything, I'm fine when I wasn't. But underneath that was a deeply wide belief that my needs weren't safe, that if I showed them I'd be rejected or made to feel like I was too much. And rewriting that meant learning that expressing a need actually didn't make me weak. It made me honest. And that lesson had to be repeated over and over and over again before my nervous system started to actually believe it was true. That is how identity changes not through, like a motivational speech, but through repetition, through safety and through consistency.
Speaker 1:You are not who you were 10 years ago. You are not even who you were last year, and the idea that you have to keep performing the same version of yourself just because it's what people expect, that is the biggest lie to your survival system that has ever been sold to us. You don't have to wait for permission to change. You don't have to have it all figured out. You just have to start catching the moments where your old identity is running the show and decide on purpose who you want to be instead, because that version of you, the one who's grounded and open and clear and bold, whatever it is for you, it is not a fantasy. That version of you is already in there. That version of you has been waiting for you to stop living from the old map and actually start creating a new one, while it's aligned and authentic. And actually you and you do not have to get a perfect. You just actually have to be willing to meet yourself honestly and consistently, and that is how it starts.
Speaker 1:I hope you enjoyed this episode. I really loved recording this episode for you. This is something I am extremely, extremely passionate about. If this is something where you're like I, actually want to work on this, please, I invite you to consider joining the Academy. We have a program in there, of course, in there called the identity shift framework, which is all about a framework on how to actually shift your identity from this root level, not from the surface level, so that's a program in there.
Speaker 1:We also have three calls per month. Two calls are dedicated to mindset. One call is dedicated to business owners, entrepreneurs who want to talk about mindset or want to talk about business, so there is the option to attend that. We have a community forum where you can ask questions, get reflections. It is just a one-stop shop for every single thing that you would need to work on yourself, to understand yourself, to better yourself, to be held accountable, to actually learn things.
Speaker 1:But to actually also receive coaching is the best space on the internet, if I do say so myself. It is application only, because I do want to make sure that the people coming in are the right fit. I will put the link in the show notes so you can have a read through it and hopefully pop in your application, because I would love to read it and I would love to have you in the space if I think it will actually benefit you. For now, I hope you enjoyed this episode, I hope you have a lot to take away from it, I hope you have a lot to think about and I will see you.