Baby Bye Bye Bye

In this episode, we unpack the feeling of losing yourself and why “How do I find myself again?” might be the wrong question. We explore neuroplasticity, how life experiences and repeated choices shape the brain, and why the woman you were at 25 isn’t someone you need to get back to. This is a conversation about identity, the choices that build who you become, and how to stop looking in the rearview mirror and start casting votes for the woman you are becoming.

In this episode:
Why women feel like they’ve lost themselves during major life transitions
Why “How do I find myself again?” might be the wrong question
Neuroplasticity and the brain’s lifelong capacity to change
How emotionally significant experiences can reshape the way we see ourselves and the world
Why life events don’t automatically change us — and why our choices matter
The difference between finding yourself and building yourself
James Clear’s idea that every action is a vote for the person you want to become
The solar plexus, identity, will, and personal power
The sacral chakra, creation, joy, and following what pulls you

Summit takeaway: “Start casting votes for the woman you are becoming.”

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to the Summit Act, where science means cool and you don't have to pick one or the other. Hi, I'm your host, Elena Crocker, a geopathic manual practitioner and viking active teacher. On the pod, you're talking about body wisdom, energy, intuition, and becoming an expert at your own life. Whether you're looking to find yourself again, create a new version, or see, just here for the results, you're in the right place. I'm here to demystify spiritual curiosities while adding a layer of humanness to the healthcare experience. No gatekeeping, no pedestals. This podcast is for the woman who is ready to take her power back. Let's do it!

SPEAKER_01 0:41

Hello everyone! Happy Wednesday! I hope everybody had a wonderful week. Wonderful Canada Day. It felt like it just kind of extended through the whole week. Um, I saw this reel recently. I think it was referring to friends, but like when you've been friends with somebody for so long, you forget what their job was, but then you're too afraid to ask them because it's been so long. I've actually kind of been feeling that way about my brother. He works in the film industry and he has changed jobs a few times. So I used to know what he did, and then he's changed and he's changed companies, and recently he opened his own company. But I was like, okay, you know what? That reel came up. I was feeling this way. I'm like, I know he just opened a new company. This is the perfect time to be like, okay, so remind me again what you do. Um, and it was actually what he does is so cool. And he was really jazzed to talk about it, and it made me think of the real. Like, I think when you're really passionate about what you do, you wouldn't care that somebody asked you, what's your job again? Like, remind me because you want to talk about it and you like it, and you you love that somebody's taken an interest in learning about you. So if you have one of those people in your life, I would say just ask them what they do again. Unless they really hate their job, maybe don't ask them, but it I'm happy I'm dead. It was it was a great conversation. My brother is very cool and very creative. Um, and I'm I'm so happy for him. And I'm so happy that I know what he does now, so I can like pump it up. Anywho, today I want to talk about the feeling of losing yourself. And I don't want to say that this is exclusive to perimenopause because it's not. Um, I see this and I feel it myself at all different transition periods in women's life. It's just that perimenopause is coming up a lot in my clinic. Like that's a lot of what I'm treating. So that's in relation to like the conversation I'm having around losing yourself in this moment, but it is totally not exclusive to that. Um, it can it can be perimenopause, it can be menopause, it could be motherhood, it could be divorce, empty nesters, burnout. A big one, guys, that people don't realize is grief. And I think that if you're a woman, a woman, a woman, regardless of your age or life stage, you can relate to the feeling of losing yourself at some point, if not multiple points, right? And a question I always get asked is, how do I find myself again? Like, I don't even know where to begin. And I want to say that I think we're asking the wrong question. And I say that because I kept asking that question after I had Ray, like, how do I find myself again? And going through that process, that was the biggest one for me at least, I came to the realization that it that is the wrong question. When when we phrase it like that, it's almost like you're talking about something that already exists, like your keys or your phone or your wallet, and you've just misplaced it. Like some old version of you exists beneath the couch cushions, and you're just gonna reach in there and find it if you look really hard. And we know as human beings, it doesn't work like that. We don't work like that. Our brains literally rewire, like from the day we're born to the day we die. Our bodies change, our values evolve, our priorities mature. The woman you were at 25, she shouldn't exist anymore. Um, unless you're living underground. What's that movie? That uh Brendan Fraser and Alicia Silverstone. Blast from the Past. Okay, so unless you're living in a bunker where nothing changes, there's nothing challenging you, there's nothing hurting you, nothing excites you, nothing new enters your world. Like, remember in that movie, I think they were just watching like consistent reruns of I Love Lucy. Like nothing new is coming in. Then yes, maybe you'd be the exact same person. But that is not how real life works. And one of the most incredible things about our human brain is something that we call neuroplasticity. And neuroplasticity is our brain's ability to change, it's its ability to reorganize and form uh new neural connections, like through our entire life. So when we have experiences, they have potential to reshape neural pathways, especially if they're emotionally significant or if they're things that keep being repeated or they require us to learn to adapt. So for a long time, science believed this wasn't the case. Scientists believe that the adult brain was essentially fixed, that once you reached a certain age, I can't remember what it is, but around adulthood, that your brain was set and that was it. That was it. And there was no change. But we know today that that simply just is not true. Our brain remains adaptable, like I said, from the day you were born until the day that you die. So every major life event has the ability to give our brain new information. Things like falling in love, um, becoming a parent, losing a parent or a loved one, starting a business, divorce, again, perimenopause, grief, success, failure, all of these things, your brain can use them to update how you see the world as you and how you respond to the world, and ultimately how you see your own self. And the thing with neuroplasticity is though, it doesn't mean that life automatically changes you to a better version of yourself. So it's not constantly uploading the new version. Similar to like if you have an iPhone and it says like new ISO update available, you have to choose that that you're going to download that. And that's like neuroplasticity. It exists, you have the option, is there, but you have to choose it. So two people can go through the exact same event and become two very different people because it's not just the event that they went through that shapes the brain, it's the meaning they make of it and the actions they took afterward that's going to affect neuroplasticity and how they move forward and how they view the world. So that's why, even like I see it in my clinic, people who have the same injury or go through the same trauma, they all have very different outcomes based on how they perceived it, how they're dealing with it, what they think about themselves, that kind of thing. So when I say that the woman you were at 25 shouldn't exist anymore, it doesn't mean you've lost her, like she's completely gone. It just means you've lived, you've gathered your experiences, you've adapted, you've learned, and your brain has been reshaped by the chapters that you have lived through. So now if we bring it back to the question, why do I think it's wrong? Like, how do I find myself? I feel like we need to switch that question. And a better question is who am I choosing to become from here? And I feel like a mantra I've been repeating a lot lately, like in the face of I have a lot of uncertainty right now, um, I have a lot of anxiousness about the future or my current state. When I'm experiencing that, I try to just take a deep breath, shut it down, and I say, I love who I'm becoming. And I know it's because this version of me is loading. I'm not going backwards, I can't. I might feel a little bit lost in my identity right now, but it's because she's updating. Like, okay, I chose to download the new ISO. We know that shit takes time, right? You can't, you can't even do it in the day, you gotta do it overnight and it's gotta be plugged in. But here's the cool part neuroplasticity means your brain remains capable of change throughout your entire life. So if you're thinking like it's too late for me, I missed the boat, like that is so not true. It's not true. And we know that we can create change because of things we repeatedly choose to do. This brings me to one of my favorite ideas from um James Clear. So James Clear is the author of Atomic Habits. Um, I'm gonna use air quotes around it's a self-help book, but it's so much more than that. I think it's one of the most practical, again, we're classifying it as self-help books out there. Like if you actually read that book and lock in on it, you can like change the trajectory of your life. So something James Clear says in his book, uh, he's also a great follower on Instagram. Um, so I would follow him on Instagram, but he says that every action you take is like casting a vote for the type of person you want to become. So every action equals one vote. And we have to keep voting. So, like one workout doesn't make you an athlete, one meditation doesn't make you mindful, but every single action, every time you choose to do that thing, that's casting more and more and more votes. I feel like before we cast the boat, so before we try to do the thing, we spend so much time trying to find the confidence, like the confidence to do it. But it's like the hidden couch cushion. Like confidence isn't something that's hiding, waiting for you to stumble across it. You you build confidence by doing the things that scare you. So every time you do that, every time you do something that that scares you, that's a vote. Every time you keep a promise to yourself, that's a vote. Every time you set a boundary, that's a vote. Every time you choose rest instead of people pleasing, that's a vote. And eventually your brain has created enough evidence to say, oh, I guess this is who we are now. So I want to layer in the fun part here. I'm gonna classify it under spirituality, but you can call it whatever you want. You can call it manifestation, you can call it quantum leaping, like choose your own adventure here, folks, but this is what it is. When we look at energy, and we are looking at who we are at this point in life right now. We're really looking at our solar plexus and our sacral chakra. So, solar is who we are in our heart of hearts, like our will and our power, who we are meant to be in this lifetime, who we are in this lifetime. And our sacral chakra is many things, but a big part of it is where creation comes from. And and that creation energy always needs to be flowing through your body. And it's also where joy comes from. And this is where we want to tap in. This is where we want to explore because it's always giving you hints. We just need to pay attention. Your solar telling you who you are or where you're headed, or things that light you up. Like it is always doing a little pull or something's calling to you. Like you kind of know there's something in there that's who you are meant to be. And the way you get there is through choices. Your soul may already know where you're headed, but your nervous system, your body, your habits, they have to catch up. And how you catch them up is you start acting as that future version of yourself. So quantum physics tells us that particles exist as pure potential until they're observed. And what we know about the brain in reality is that it actually doesn't know the difference between a thought and what's actually happening in reality. It can't separate those, right? That's where a lot of anxiety and stuff comes from. So if you think and act as the future you desire already exists, then you're just pulling that pure potential directly towards you. Like, think about every version of yourself that you've been. You've been a student, you might have been a newlywed, you could have been a new mom, you were a business owner. Like none of those women appeared overnight. You built them by a decision, by habits, by uncomfortable conversations, or like a very big leap of faith. I always tell my osteo clients like, healing isn't one treatment. Healing is the exercises you do, it's how you move, how you breathe, how you sleep. It's the hundreds of tiny choices that you make between the appointments. The appointment, the that that hands-on piece, that's just one tiny, tiny little part of that. An identity works exactly the same way. There isn't one moment where you suddenly become a different person. Like you wake up, it's Friday the 13th, aha, I've arrived. Like, that's not how it happens. There are thousands of tiny moments where you repeatedly choose who you are becoming. And the great news is that our brains and our energy, they support that. There was no time limit on deciding who you need to be. Those that your energy and your brain are always in your corner working for you to make that a reality. So let's take a step back and let's take a big breath and say, hey, this is gonna be fun. I am literally just being asked to tap into what I find interesting, joyful, or exciting. Then whatever that thing is, whatever it brings out in you, I'm going to start acting like I am that thing. It could be a breadmaker, it could be a business owner, it could be a farmer or somebody who goes to the gym. The world is your oyster, but you have to stop looking in the rearview mirror. She's gone, babe. And that's not a bad thing. I want to tell you a quick story about a woman I met at a candidate party last week. So we were invited to a candidate party of one of my brother's uh friend's house, his parents' house. They're like the most lovely group of humans. So honored to be added to their group stuff, but there's still a lot of people in the group I don't know. So we arrived at the same time of a family whose husband Jay knew from other events he'd been invited to, but um neither of us had ever met his wife. And instantly, like when she got out of the car, I just was appalled to her energy. Like she had really good energy. Um, so once like we got the kids settled, I just kind of walked over to her and struck up a conversation right away. I knew she was somebody I wanted to talk to. Um, I'm also not a surface level friend. Like, I just want to know your hopes and your dreams and your woes in life right off the bat. Like, I don't care about the weather or small talk. So she shared with me that she works in marketing. She has a fabulous job in marketing. Um, but she's just finishing school, a university degree to do health coaching. And she didn't like really have a talent, but she's like, maybe in a year or two, like, got to sort some things out. I'm gonna start a health coaching business. And I was like, okay, this is why her energy is so good. She is somebody living in her heart and sacral chakra. Like she was drawn to a university program with a passion. She took her breadcrumbs, she didn't know the end goal, still doesn't, but she's going through the motions of following where her passions lay and unlimited potential. And before you say, okay, oh, I just can't go back to school, totally. And I get that. And I'm not saying it was easy for her at all. She's made a lot of sacrifice. Um, and like her timeline for how she wants to do this is kind of up in the air, right? Because she has a lot of very real responsibilities in her family financially. Um, but she's doing the thing. And I know she is going to be wildly successful because you can feel it as soon as you're in her aura. Like her energy is just incredible. And that is a woman who is building herself. And I was so happy to meet her, and I I honestly can't wait for the day she's on this podcast because she totally will be. And I think that's where I want to leave you guys today. I don't want to give you a list of five things to journal about, or I don't want to give you a whole homework assignment. I want you to ask yourself one question What is one vote I can cast today for the woman I am becoming? Not the woman I was, not the woman I think I should be. Here's an important one. Not the woman everyone else is more comfortable with me being for the woman I'm becoming. And I don't know what your vote is, but I honestly think that you do. Because I think that there's probably something that's been pulling at you for a while now. Something you keep thinking about, something that makes you curious, something that lights you up a little bit every time you imagine it. And you don't need to know where it leads. You don't need to know the end point, you don't need to know anything about it. The woman I met at Canada Day, she doesn't know what her business is gonna look like yet or where it's gonna be, how it's gonna run. She's just building herself. She's not waiting to find herself before she begins. She's following what interests her, she's taking the class, she's gathering the information, she's casting the votes because eventually her brain is gonna have enough evidence to say, oh, yeah, I'm a I'm a health coach and we're doing the damn thing. So maybe you've been feeling lost lately, or maybe you don't like really feel like yourself. Maybe you've been looking backwards, trying to figure out, you know, how do I get back to the person I was before kids or before I got married. I need you to stop looking in the rearview mirror. She is gone. And I don't mean that in a sad way. She's got you here. She raised the babies, she survived the heartbreak, she built a career, she walked through the grief, she climbed the mountains, and she learned the lessons. So thank her. Thank that version of you. But you don't need to go find her. You need to start building the woman who comes out next. And so today, just cast that one vote. That's it. That one vote, follow the things that calls you. Do the one thing the woman you are becoming would do. And just try saying, I love who I'm becoming. Because you're just loading, babe. You're loading, you're in the ISO. And to the woman you once were, in the famous words of NSync, baby, bye bye, bye. Bye-bye, guys.