152 Identity Work

Are you a sweets or savoury person? A go-with-the-flow type? Someone who struggles with their weight? Identities shape our behavior; whether we say no to dessert or buy a bottle of wine on a Tuesday night. With zero judgement, we’ll uncover them to see how they might be impeding your fat loss goals and you’ll learn how to start letting them go.

In this episode you’ll learn:

• How doing identity work can help you with your food and body goals
• 3 mistakes to avoid when you’re trying to change
• The key to changing your identity

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Transcript

This transcript was auto-generated, please forgive any weirdness.

 Hi, and welcome to the Mindful Shape Podcast. My name is Paula Parker and I am a personal coach. I am just coming. You might have noticed the podcast wasn't running for a little bit. I had last week's episode with my sister and I was away, so I took three weeks off and it was very luxurious. I joked that about halfway through, I thought, what's going on?

It seems like I should be working. I have all this time on my hands, but I went to Calgary to see my sister and her family. I went to Salt Spring Island and spent a couple days there with my father-in-law, and overall it was just a very nice break. But I am happy to be back and diving into the podcast because I have lots of ideas.

So lots of topics will be coming over the next few weeks. And today we are going to be talking about identity work. Identity meaning what you think about yourself. So do you identify as a good driver? Do you identify as someone who is bad with names? Are you athletic? Are you introverted? There's all these different identities, right?

Are you a planner? Are you a goal oriented person? Is that how you think of yourself? It's important because how we think about ourselves. Obviously directly influences what we think we can or can't do. So how we show up, how we operate in the world, and then ultimately what we are doing on a day-to-day basis when it comes to our food decisions and how we move our body.

For example, if you've said a million times, I'm terrible with names. How likely are you to remember the name of the next person you meet? So this is a really fun trick, actually. Just test it out for yourself and see what happens. I started saying to myself, even though I had no evidence and it wasn't true, I started saying to myself and out loud to other people that I'm really good with names.

And I noticed I got better. So in today's episode, I'm going to share how identity work can help you when it comes to your goals around health, your food choices, body weight loss goals, all of that. Three mistakes to avoid when you're doing this kind of identity work and what will come up. And then ultimately the key to changing your identity.

Okay. 'cause it is changeable. So notice how I am very organized with today's episode. Yes. This is what happens when you are restored and refreshed. I can give you a little snapshot of what's to come. Okay. Let's get into it. So even though our identity, our thoughts about ourselves, they have such an impact on how we feel and on what we do.

We don't often look at them. And decide. You know, oh, I really want this identity, right? I wanna keep it, or I want to even double down on this part of myself. I want to amplify this part of my identity. Or alternatively, maybe it served me well up to this point, or it didn't serve me, and it's time to retire it.

Identity is fluid. It's changeable. Your personality isn't. Permanent. And I know there's a book on the out there that I have not personally read, but it's all about this topic. It's your personality isn't permanent. So if you're really interested in exploring more of this work, you maybe wanna check out that book.

Ultimately, you can be different if you wanna be different. Alright. How you can reframe this for yourself is to think of your identity as a habit, so a habitual way of thinking, feeling and acting. Your thinking leads to your mood. Your predominant mood leads to how you perceive the world, what you say, what you do, and that over time creates what we think of as your personality.

People are not one dimensional. Okay. So I know it's more complex than this, but just for simplicity's sake, I wanna give you a couple of examples. So maybe you can think of someone in your life who you would describe as an old curmudgeon. That's their personality. Why? Well, they complain. They have a pessimistic view of the world in general.

They tend to point out problems. They are maybe highly skeptical and they're typically in a low or kind of grumpy or bad mood. Instead of saying, oh, this is who they are, we can say, this is their habitual way of being. Now, we would never say that, but we in our brains, we can think, oh, this is not who they are.

In their essence, this is just their habitual way of being, of thinking, of perceiving the world, which then influences what they do, whether they watch more CNN or whether they go to a yoga class. So, which then of course influences how they think. And this cycle creates their personality or their identity.

On the flip side, you might know someone who you would describe as upbeat. They tend to be an outgoing, very social, very positive person. They tend to comment on how lovely things are. They always have something positive to say. They tend to smile a lot, laugh a lot, and generally be in a good mood. Again, this is their habitual way of being, of thinking of perceiving the world, which then influences what they do, whether they watch more CNN or even CNN in general.

I'm not picking on it, I just, we won't go there, but you know, it has its effect on people or go to a yoga class. So let me give you a little bit of behind the scenes on how this came about. So a couple of things. One is. My, this is give you an idea, kind of a little bit of how my husband is, but he will say something like, what's your identity?

I'm like, what are you talking about? He's like, yeah, what are your identities like? Tell me about that. I'm like, okay. So anyways, he gets out a piece of paper, gets out a pen, and he's like, just tell me all your identities. And he goes first. So like he's putting his identities down. I'm putting my identities down.

Some of mine are, you know, like I think of myself as an active person, but I don't think of myself as athletic, even though some people might think I'm athletic, I don't have that identity. All right. I do think of myself as somebody who is artistically talented, even though my don't really do anything artistic, right?

Like I don't, I don't draw, I don't paint. But I do know that there's like a latent talent there. Like I, if I wanted to get really good at it, I probably could. Okay. It's like it's just a dormant kind of talent. I think of myself as somebody who's self-reflective. I think of myself as somebody who's a good dancer.

So that was one thing that kind of got me thinking about all of this. Another thing, again, with my husband, I said to him, I was complaining actually. I was complaining about, I was like really tired. I was like so exhausted and I'm always thinking, you know, how can I remedy this? Like, what's going on here?

Why am I always so tired? And he said to me something that was quite confronting, which was, and we've been together 10 years, or actually 11, 11 years. He said, as long as I've known you, you've been tired. And it was like the, it was like just, you know when you hear something and it like hits you in a different way And I was taken aback and I thought.

Oh my goodness. Like this is, I was offended. You know, if something offends you, there's like something there to explore. And so I thought, wow, I think this is part of my identity. This is how I identify myself in the world. Like I am talking about this a lot. I think I'm tired a lot. I think that sometimes.

Yes, it could be true that I'm physically tired. I think sometimes if he asks me What's wrong, I might not be tired, I might be mad, and I will just say to him, I'm just tired. Right? Maybe. Maybe this is familiar to you. So it has become part of my identity. And there are also specific identities when it comes to food and body that you may consider changing.

So I'm gonna identify those. So mine, some of them I listed already, but just see if any of these that I'm about to share with you, if you think these things about yourself or you say them out loud to other people as a way of describing yourself and you say them as though they are facts. All right, so I have an addictive personality.

I have a sweet tooth. I am a sweets, or I'm a dessert person. I'm a savory person. I'm an emotional eater. I'm a go with the flow person. I don't like to be restricted. I am not disciplined, or I lack discipline, or I'm lazy. Or I'm an impulsive person, so I used to have that. I used to have that as an identity that came out.

I didn't, I wasn't really aware of it, but it came out in a coaching call where I saw myself as somebody who was impulsive. I had also had people in my life tell me that I was impulsive, and that was an identity that I really wanted to reframe, that I really wanted to shift. It was not serving me. You might have the identity that you like food too much to release weight or to reach your desired weight, or that you struggle with your weight.

Or that you have food issues. In quotation remarks, when any of these are part of your identity, they will be subtly or overtly influencing how you make decisions with food. If you think of yourself as a go with a flow type of person, it might be really hard for you to follow through on your plan. If you think of yourself as someone who has an addictive personality.

Then you're not really responsible for changing. If you are someone who has a sweet tooth, you're gonna eat lots of sweetss. Okay, so. Who do you want to be for real? You really get to decide that. Now, I wanna transition into the three mistakes to avoid when you are doing this identity work. And then as I mentioned, I'm gonna go into, okay, how do we actually do this?

What's the practical steps? Okay, so the first mistake is thinking these identities are true because you have evidence. If it's not a fact. Then it's a thought. You might say, no, you know what? I really do struggle with my weight. And you are very attached to that belief. Why would you want to hold onto that identity?

There is no upside. There's only one reason, and that's so that you can stay the same and your brain wants homeostasis. Your brain wants to stay the same, so it makes sense that it would wanna hold onto that identity and. Even if you think it's true and you're attached to it, be willing to let it go as part of how you think about yourself.

In most cases, you will be able to find evidence For the contrary, you'll be able to find times when you didn't struggle with your weight, or even times now where it's not hard to not overeat. Okay? But at the same time, you don't need any evidence for something to be part of your identity. I have no proof that I'm a good dancer, and yet I get to think that I actually have proof to the contrary because my husband makes fun of how I dance, right?

But I still think that I'm a good dancer. I just believe that. I also think that I am the perfect height. Now, there is no perfect height, but I get to think that that's part of my identity. And you know, sometimes to be fair, I'm not that self-reflective, but. I also get to believe that I am somebody who is generally self-reflective.

Okay. Number two. Another mistake we make in this work is that we want to jump into a new identity that we don't yet believe. We wanna think, okay, well. I wanna be disciplined, so I am disciplined, or I trust myself with food, and we just don't believe it. We just don't believe that yet. So there's no emotional resonance.

It's flat at best and at worst, the contrast triggers despair and we get discouraged. Let the first step be letting go of old identities that don't serve you anymore. So we give up the old identities and think of it as creating a clean slate upon which we can build. How you wanna be, who you wanna be in the world, all those new identities.

But first, don't. Don't skip ahead. Just stay with me. Stay with what are the ways in which I'm thinking about myself, my personality, who I am, what I say about myself that I just believe to be true. Or maybe other people have said it and you just kind of adopted it. Really questioning or pushing back or deciding for yourself.

Yeah, that is gonna be part of my identity. Or no thank you. That's not part of my identity. That's your stuff. Okay. So when we have a clean slate, then we can move forward, but not until then. So the third mistake is bolting from the discomfort from this ambiguity. Around your identity. I think I've mentioned it on the podcast before, but if you're new, maybe you've not heard it, so I'll just explain it briefly.

A great way of thinking about this is to remember the first job that you ever had. For most of us, the first job that we ever had was in some sort of service industry. So for instance, mine was being, well, I did some babysitting, but you know, my first like real job where I got a pay stub was at the grocery store bagging groceries.

And I always give this example of. I'm going there with my mom, like I started when I was 14, so I'm going there with my mom. We're buying the groceries. The next day I'm in the uniform and I'm begging somebody's groceries. That feels very weird. It's just like a weird feeling. I'm thinking, oh, they don't know this, but like, I shouldn't be in this spot.

Like, this feels weird. I don't really know what I'm doing here. Like, this is not part of my identity yet. Fast forward two weeks. You know, I'm totally begging the groceries. I'm chatting people up. This is totally my job. I've had a pay stub at this point. It's not a problem. I don't feel that discomfort. So just know the process of change, the process of shifting your identity, there is going to be that middle part where it is.

There is a lot of ambiguity and that can feel uncomfortable, and don't try to escape that by going back to your old identity. Okay. It can be uncomfortable, and that's okay. You've gotta be willing to accept that discomfort of acting in a way that doesn't really feel like you yet. And I put like you in quotation marks.

Okay? So it's like you're gonna be saying no when you maybe previously said yes, you're gonna be maybe moving your body when you've previously been sitting on the couch watching tv. Also, others may not understand what you're up to. They might question the new way you're eating that you're not eating that, you're not having a glass of wine, or you're not having a second glass of wine.

They might make a comment when you do have a glass of wine or you do have popcorn because they probably don't understand. Either you've included indulgences in your weight loss plan as part of the flexibility, or you are a human and sometimes you misstep. Okay? And it doesn't mean anything other than you are a human and you made a misstep and you're still changing.

It's just part of it. It's part of the process of change. But they may not see that, and that's okay. They don't need to see that. Okay. I've just given you a little preview. That is likely when you are changing your identity, it's it's likely that you're gonna dip back to that old identity every now and then.

It's not a problem. It doesn't mean that you're not changing. Let them not understand. Let them be wrong about you and. As I'm saying this, I'm thinking of let them, the book by Mel Robbins, which I have not read by the way, so I don't know if there's any overlap. I suspect there might be but I haven't read it yet.

Okay. How do we do this practically? The key to changing your identity is awareness, and there are two parts. The first part is. That you see something as part of your identity. So I'll give you the example. When my husband told me that I was tired, I previously did not see that as a way that I identified wasn't even really on my radar.

I just thought like I didn't think anything about it. I just thought I was tired. Right. So I was just like, I was reporting the news that I was tired, so I didn't see it as, oh, this is like an optional identity that I could shift. And I do wanna shift it because saying I'm tired, complaining that I'm tired, even thinking that I'm tired, I.

What is the outcome of that? It doesn't serve me. It doesn't give me more energy. If anything, it makes me feel more tired. The more I tell myself I'm tired, the more I feel tired because I'm making that salient. I'm drawing more attention to it, so I'm amplifying. I'm getting less of what I want and more of what I don't want.

Plus, you can imagine the effect it has on other people. Like what am I hoping from him? Am I trying to get pity like that doesn't feel good? Am I wanting him to fix? My situation, somehow he is responsible for my physical state. Like there's a little part that I think is somewhere in there, right? But of course, from this vantage point, I can see that's totally ridiculous.

So I do want to change it. But you have to be aware of your identities. Like what are the identities that are holding you back, that are maybe making you more tired, that are making you eat more than you want, that are preventing you from moving your body in the way that you wanna move it. All of that with so much like tenderness.

Self-kindness and no judgment. You just wanna wanna be aware. We're all human. None of us are perfect. This will be, I think this is an evolution. Your whole life is to be changing your identity right at each stage of your life. Things that were really important to you in your twenties are not gonna be the same things that are really important to you in terms of your identity in your sixties, and that is appropriate part two.

You have to notice it in real time just as we have the habit of the identity. So I want you to be thinking of it as, oh, this is an habitual way of being. So my habit is the habit of thinking of myself as somebody who is tired and reporting the news on that. Okay? So the second part is noticing it in real time.

Think of it as an urge to engage in that habit. I'm gonna say that again. Think of it as an urge to engage in that habit. Just like you would handle an urge to snack, to drink, to overeat, to buy something on Amazon, you've got to practice holding space for that urge, allowing it to be there. Without complying.

That's how we re-pattern it. Sometimes the awareness will be after, for instance, since I've started doing this work, I will still say I'm tired, or I'm so tired, and then I will notice it afterwards, but I only notice it after 'cause Ive. Decided I'm gonna change this identity about myself. And I think to myself, oh, I said it.

I don't beat myself up. I just notice, oh, I said it. I don't wanna say that anymore. So I just note it to myself. But more often what I'm noticing is that I notice the urge to want to say, I'm so tired. I notice the urge in real time, and then I hold space for it. And I don't say it. When I notice myself thinking I'm tired, I replace it with, I have energy in my body.

So for me, that feels very neutral. It's not rainbows and daisies. It's not like, oh, I'm so energized. Right? It's, I have energy within my body. I believe that that feels true. So it's accessible. I can. Sense some energy. It might be low level, but I can sense some energy. I'm breathing, I'm, you know, doing stuff.

Maybe if I'm just sitting reading books to my kids, I still have some energy to do that, and that helps me connect with it and feel more energized. So you can imagine. If I drop the identity just by simply changing that habit of saying, I'm tired of thinking, I'm tired of like noticing how tired I am, if I replace that with I have some energy in my body, you can imagine over time the impact of that, the compound results of that, right?

I will change my identity. I won't be somebody who says that anymore and. My husband might even notice it. We'll see. I'll keep you posted. Right? He might say, wow, you're really more energized. But even if he doesn't, that's okay too. I will have known that I identified something in myself that I wanted to change, and I am an intentional about who I wanna be, how I wanna show up in the world.

Okay, so this can is a small thing, but it can have huge implications on also just how you think about yourself, right? It has such an effect on our self-esteem, our self-confidence, all of that. So it has a ripple effect. So this work is important. I urge you to do the identity work. And then email me. Let me know what are the identities that you are noticing that you wanna shift.

I would be so curious to know. So you can reach out to me. You can email me directly, paula@mindfulshape.com. You can also send me a DM on Instagram. I'm on there at least once a day, and I would love to hear, you can find me on Instagram at Mindful Shape. All right, I hope that was helpful and that gave you a new perspective, and I will talk to you again soon.

Okay, bye.