Living a Big Life — With an Identity Built for Survival? | Leah Coss (Teaser)

“If something in your life feels off - it’s not because you’re broken or unmotivated. It’s likely because you’re trying to live a big life… with an identity built for survival, not fulfillment.”
- Leah Coss

In this short teaser from my upcoming episode, Leah shares a powerful insight that challenges how we think about growth, purpose, and who we believe we are.

Leah Coss is the CEO and co-founder of Build a Biz Kids, a national Canadian charity equipping youth with future-ready skills and the confidence to lead their lives with intention - long before the world shapes their story for them.

🎧 In this teaser:

• What survival-mode identity really looks like
• Why ambition without alignment keeps us stuck
• And what real transformation begins with

The full conversation drops in 3 days - and it’s packed with personal stories, practical tools, and encouragement for anyone ready to grow into who they’re truly meant to be.

Here are a contact link to the upcoming guest, Leah Coss:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/leahcoss/

Here is another free resource from 
Life & Leadership Connected: “The Identity to Impact Starter Guide”
https://lifeleadershipconnected.systeme.io/32644969

Transcript

0:00

So for my story and why identity is so powerful to me, you can look at identity as mindset, which is a really big topic these days that people talk about all the time, right? But essentially identity is how are you How are you showing up in the world? So one is an external component. Reactivity is the biggest indicator. Like if someone cuts you off in traffic, if somebody says something that you don't like, are you the shy person who takes it? Are you the aggressive person that tells them where to go? Do you try to retaliate by being mean? What is that reactivity? Because it's when your guard is down that kind of who you are comes out or the insecurities that you have start to show. The other is when you're on your own, what do you say to yourself? What are you talking and saying in your head internally? How do you feel when you're by yourself? Are you a happy person when you're by yourself? Are you lonely? Do you feel like something is missing? Are you angry at the world? What is that internal dialogue? And that I believe is what really forms your identity. Because those are the things that essentially creates the lens with which you are viewing your world. And when we're kids, we just don't have a lot of perspective. Any identity we've been given, so much of how I viewed others or my strategies for feeling good about myself or the same strategies that my mom had or my dad had, and they were not healthy. You know, they'd be things like, you know, backhanded compliments, pulling people down so that you feel better about yourself. um Those were all things that I used to do. Now, the big shift though that I've reflected on and the thing that I'm so grateful for, used to say, I don't know why all of a sudden I changed literally overnight from that destructive teenager into a capable, successful human in life that could contribute meaningfully to society. I just used to always say there must have been something that was born in me. I'm just so grateful for it. Whatever it was, the light shone down. I've now come to realize that was not the case. I had already created a younger identity, a younger persona when I was about 10, 11 years old, where I really believed in my heart of hearts I was gonna take over the world. I was super capable. I was really confident. I was able to make good decisions. Ultimately, I just knew this. And then over time, because I was... flailing a little bit to feel a sense of self and autonomy. I made these series of bad decisions and it took me way off path. I was able to reflect in that moment and go, yeah, like this is not taking me to where I'm supposed to be. Like I really felt like I was supposed to be somewhere else after graduation. And at this rate, I'm not even going to graduate. And so when I look forward now, and there was a number of things over the last 10 years where it's just not feeling satisfying, it's still not where I feel like I'm supposed to be, I recognize that I kind of hit the limit of who I was and what I was capable of holding. Because practically, in this day and age, with technology, like what you're doing right now, like back in the day, you'd have to create a radio station and there'd be so many other things you'd have to do. Right now, you literally have a computer and you're good. Like, you you set up a piece of software and you get someone who wants to talk to you and you have got your own platform. And so things are so much easier for us to be successful and it's not difficult task wise to do the things you need to do to be successful. We just don't do them, because there's a part of us that says, I'm not that kind of person. But what if they replied to that email? What if they picked up the phone? I'm not the kind of person that knows what to say. I'm not the type of person that, you know, fill in the blank. So that's been that process and that journey for me over these next 10 years or for the past 10 years and now moving forward into my next 10 year chapter of who am I today? But more importantly, what is it that I want? And then who do I need to become in order to hold that, to have that, to achieve that in a way that feels really authentic and that I'm not going to be self-sabotaging and making life harder than it needs to be along the way.