Who Are You When You Stop Performing?

How much of your life is actually you ..... and how much of it is the version of you you've learned to be for everyone else?

The good mum. 

The reliable one. 

The strong one. 

The successful one. 

The person who keeps everyone happy, remembers everything and somehow manages to hold it all together.

But what happens when you stop performing?

In this episode, we're looking at the invisible expectations, conditioning and survival patterns that can shape the way we live - often without us even realising it.

I'll be asking some uncomfortable questions about identity, self-trust, people-pleasing, midlife, responsibility and that nagging feeling that there must be more.

Because sometimes you're not having a crisis.

Sometimes you've simply outgrown the version of yourself you've been trying so hard to maintain.

And perhaps the question isn't "What's wrong with me?"

Perhaps it's......

"What would I choose if I stopped worrying about what everyone else thinks?"

This is the episode where awareness starts turning into choice - and where we begin to open the door to the final question of Season 2:

What do you actually want?

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Welcome to the Dragonfly Perspective. This is a space for seeing clearly through travel, business, and real life. We explore what's real, what's not, and how to trust your own intuition in a world that often pulls you away from it. These are conversations about awareness, discernment, and building freedom in a way that actually feels right. I'm Paula Fern and I'm glad you're here. Welcome to the Dragonfly Perspective. We're joined today by Paula Fern, and this is our penultimate episode for season two. I'll be um after next week, I'll be taking a couple of weeks break, and then we'll be coming back strong with season three, and I'm excited for where that's gonna go. There's gonna be this season has been more me talking about my experiences and the things that I observe in the world. Season three, I'm gonna be bringing a lot of guests in to chat to me about their experiences and lots of inspirational people, so I'm excited for that. This week's episode, though, is asking you who you are when you stop performing, and I've been thinking about it a lot lately, especially during the summer weeks, whilst we're off with children, most of us, and um we're so busy uh helping our children, we're so busy keeping them busy, keeping them occupied, and finding things to do. And I think it might be one of the biggest questions that we've explored on this podcast as a whole throughout this journey so far. So, who are you when no one needs anything from you? This is about our identity, and a lot of us as parents lose our identity, and it's one of the biggest things that shapes our well-being in a lot of ways. So, when you're not being mum, you're not partner, not daughter, not employee, not business owner, not the person everyone comes to when there's a problem, when you're not the one who keeps everything together, when you're not the one who has to be strong all of the time, and you're not the one who has to have all the answers and make all the decisions, when you're just you, who are you? And if that question makes you slightly uncomfortable, I'm glad. Because I think there's something in that discomfort that we should recognise. We've spent a lot of time looking at the patterns. If you've listened to season two, and if you've not yet, that's absolutely fine. But go back and have a listen. There's a good um a good few episodes that will talk about patterns and how what that means for us, and you'll know that I've been banging on about patterns and how we need to be aware of those patterns, and the things that we do without really questioning why we do them, the survival responses, it's the conditioning, the beliefs that we've inherited from others that we don't even know that we're doing, the things we're told that are normal, the things that we consume that affect us, the subscriptions we sign up for, the media we absorb, the algorithms influencing everything that we see in front of us, the voices that we listen to, and eventually the voice inside our own head. Our last episode took that conversation into parenting. Because if we're completely honest, our children aren't the only ones being influenced by algorithms. We're all living in a world that's constantly telling us what to want, what to buy, how to look, how successful you should be, what your family should look like, what happiness should look like, what a good mother looks like, apparently, what a successful woman looks like. And sometimes I wonder how much of what we call my life did I actually choose for myself? Because here's the uncomfortable bit. We can spend years becoming incredibly good at being the person everyone else expects us to be, and people will applaud us for it. You're so reliable, you're so strong, you're amazing. I don't know how you do it. I get that one a lot. You're always there, you're such a good mum, you're so selfless, and we hear those things and think they're compliments. But what if some of them are actually descriptions of how well we've learned to abandon ourselves in the process? Now that's a difficult one. Because nobody tells you you're doing a brilliant job disappearing. They tell you you're coping, they tell you you're strong, they tell you you're capable, and so you keep going. None of it is their fault. Um, none of it comes from a bad place. It's the way that we have been conditioned to live in today's society. The summer holidays have been a perfect example of this. We've just talked about parenting through the summer. The noise, the emotional load, the constant demands, the guilt, the money, the expectation to create this magical childhood for our kids. And underneath all of that is another question: where are you in all of this? Because I think women are bloody brilliant at disappearing inside their responsibilities. We become the organizer, the taxi, the bank, the cleaner, the emotional support, the problem solver, the birthday reminder, the person who knows where everyone's shoes are. Even though nobody has ever seen fit to tell us where our bloody shoes are. And eventually we don't even know what we want anymore. We know what everyone else needs. But ask, what do you want? And suddenly, silence. Maybe you've been told you're indecisive, maybe you've been told you're overthinking, maybe you've been told you don't trust yourself, maybe you've been told you're too emotional, maybe you've even started to believe it. But what if you've simply spent so long outsourcing your decisions that you've stopped hearing your own answer? Think about it. What will they think? What will my family say? What if it doesn't work? What if I fail? What if I disappoint someone? What if I'm being selfish? What if I'm making the wrong decision? And underneath all of those questions is often one really uncomfortable one. Can I trust myself? This is where I think season two has been taking us. We started by looking outward. What influences influences us? What systems are we participating in? What patterns have we inherited? What's shaping our behavior? What are we consuming? What are we subscribing to? What are we being sold? But eventually you have to turn the mirror around because awareness isn't about becoming suspicious of everything. It's not about deciding that everything is manipulation. It's not about living in fear. Awareness is about getting your choice back. I can see what's happening, I can understand why I respond this way, and now I get to decide what happens next. That's the bit I care about. Freedom isn't about doing whatever you want. I talk about freedom a lot on this podcast, and freedom is my word of 2026. I talk about travel freedom, financial freedom, freedom from old patterns, freedom from conditioning. But I'm starting to think freedom is something much more ordinary. It's being able to say, actually, I don't want that. Without needing to justify it. It's being able to say, This doesn't work for me anymore. It's being able to change your mind. It's being able to disappoint someone. It's being able to leave something that looks perfect from the outside. It's being able to choose something that makes absolutely no sense to everyone else, but it makes sense to you. That's the freedom that we all deserve. And this is where midlife gets very interesting. Because I think a lot of women hit a point where the old version of themselves stops fitting. You might have spent 20 years being the responsible one and suddenly think, actually, I don't want to do this anymore. You might have built a career and you might realize it isn't yours anymore. You might have raised children and you realize you've forgotten who you were before everyone needed you. You can look at your relationship with money, your body, your work, your friendships, your family, your identity, and think, who decided this was what my life was supposed to look like? And that question can be terrifying. But it can also be the beginning. So what if you stopped performing? You won't have stopped caring, you don't stop being a mum, you don't stop being responsible, you don't stop loving people. You just stop performing the version of yourself you think everyone else needs. What would change? Would you say no more often? Would you travel more? Would you start a business that you never thought was ever possible? Would you leave the job? Would you make that phone call that you keep putting off? Would you wear that item of clothing? Would you dance? Would you make money? Would you spend less? Would you admit you're not happy? Would you finally do something you've been talking yourself out of for ten years? Or would you simply sit quietly for an hour and realize you don't actually want to do anything? That's okay too. I want you to try something. It's not a massive exercise, so don't worry. There's no workbook, there's no 10-step transformation. Just this. At some point this week, ask yourself three questions. What am I doing because I genuinely want to do it? Not because I should, not because somebody expects it, not because I've always done it, but because I actually want to. What am I doing because I'm afraid of what happens if I don't? And that's an interesting one. And finally, if nobody judged me, what would I choose to do? You don't necessarily need to act on it, just notice the answer. Because we're not trying to blow up your entire life by Tuesday. We're learning to hear yourself again. That brings me to season three, which is soon starting. Because this is where I want to take the dragonfly perspective next. Season one was about the map. Season two was about recognizing the things influencing the way that we navigate that map. And season three. I want to get out of my whole my own head. I want conversations, I want real people, real stories. People who have questioned the script. People who have changed direction. People who have rebuilt their world and themselves. And people who followed intuition. People who've completely fucked up and then started again. People who've challenged what they were told was possible and gone completely against the grain. And people who've created businesses, changed careers, walked away, started again, found themselves, lost themselves, and found themselves again. Because I don't want to sit here and tell you what freedom looks like. I want you to hear from people who've actually gone looking for it and found it. But before we get there, we've got one episode left of this season. And I think the episode needs to ask the biggest question of all. Sometimes discomfort is simply what happens when the old version of you realizes she's running out of reasons to stay. And maybe that's the real dragonfly perspective. Not telling you what to think, not giving you another set of rules to abide by, but helping you see clearly enough to make your own blinking choice. Because knowledge is power, awareness is freedom. And choice choice is where the interesting bit begins. I'll see you next time for the final episode of season two. And then season three. I'm excited for it. More voices, more stories, more questions, and probably a fair bit more BS to call out. This is Paula Fern, and I'll see you soon.