Who Are You Really? - Lets Talk About Identity

Lets talk about identity. And by that I don't mean your title, social status or the labels you have - I mean at your core. Beneath all of the labels, expectations and noise from the outside. In this episode we talk about why we lose our true, authentic-selves, and how to find it again. I share a step-by-step process to help you integrate that into your own life and situation as well. Identity is something everyone struggles with, especially these days. And its one of the 25 core universal human, psychological and emotional blocks that I cover in my signature Ultimate Breakthrough System as well (you can check that out over here).  Enjoy this episode and - Thank you for tuning in.

Transcript

Welcome to Breakthrough, the podcast that helps you to get unstuck, move forward, move on and finally break through to that next level that you have been looking for. I'm Mickey Roothman, Transformational Breakthrough Coach, Speaker and Author, and your host right here on the Breakthrough Podcast. So get ready to break the barriers and break the limitations and let's dive right on into this week's episode of Breakthrough.

Hello there and welcome to the Breakthrough Podcast. If you are new here, I'm so glad you tuned into this channel. Thank you for joining us.

I'm sure you're going to feel right at home here. And if you're not new to this podcast, to the Breakthrough Podcast, and you're a little bit confused because there's only one or two episodes up right now, it's just because we changed hosting platforms because unfortunately our previous hosting platform lost all of our episodes from the last five years. Yes, guys, Breakthrough has been around for five years.

It looks brand new, but it's not. But they lost all of those episodes and that's part of why we decided to start over on a new hosting platform. And it's actually such a great thing that happened because just before that happened, I had been saying that there's some changes I want to make because I've grown a lot in the last five years.

The content that I want to put out has grown a lot in the last five years. So it was about time for the podcast channel and the content on here to change a little bit as well. So I took it as a sign from the universe, very sad about the content we lost, but not sad about the fact that we're starting over and we're going to talk about all of the stuff, guys.

All of the stuff that we're all thinking but none of us are saying and really diving into how do we get the breakthrough because that's ultimately what we want. If we're going through something or we're feeling stuck in life or in love or in business or in whatever area it might be, is we want to break through. And sometimes to get that breakthrough, what we need to do is to start asking the right questions, saying what we're not saying and changing our perspective on it.

So either way, it is wonderful to have you here. Let's dive into this episode of the Breakthrough Podcast. We're starting at the very foundation of your breakthrough journey.

We'll be talking about your identity. And when I say identity, what I mean by identity is who you really are at your core, beneath all of the titles, the labels, the expectations and the noise from the outside. Now, I want you to just imagine something for a moment.

You're about three years old and it's your birthday and there's a nice little birthday party at home for you. And your gran comes and she hands you a little gift. And as she hands you the gift, she says to you, this is something very special.

It used to belong to her gran and now she's giving this to you. So very excitedly, you tear away the papers and you take off the bows, you take it out of the box and it is a jacket. Now at three years old, you have no sense of style or what suits you, what doesn't suit you and what's fashionable and all of that stuff.

So as you take it out the box, everybody says, put it on, let's see what it looks like. And you put the jacket on and as you put it on, everybody's just oohing and aahing and telling you how beautiful you look and like this jacket looks like it was just made for you. And your gran says, that is so beautiful.

It just, it suits you so well. You should wear that jacket every single day. And what do you do? Exactly that.

Now, I'm sure if you have kids, they're also doing this when they have something new. They want to wear it every single day. So for the next two weeks, every single day, you are wearing that jacket.

Come rain or sunshine, you've got the jacket on, right? So every time you come out of your room in the morning and you're wearing that jacket, you get that validation again where everybody's like, oh, you look so beautiful. You're wearing the jacket. Yes, it looks so great on you.

I'm so glad you're wearing it. So you keep getting validation that this looks great. This is so you.

This is something you should wear every single day. But fast forward about two weeks later, now the novelty is starting to wear off a little bit. And one morning you just decide, oh, I'm not going to put the jacket on today.

But as you walk out of your room, every single person in your household says, where's your jacket? Because you've been wearing it for two weeks every single day. And as you say to them, kind of like, well, I just didn't feel like wearing it today. Everyone's like, why not? You know, you look so beautiful in it.

You love that jacket. So you just look at them and kind of go, oh, okay, I forgot. I'm the one with the jacket.

I look beautiful in it. That's what I should be doing. And you go back to your room and you put the jacket back on.

So fast forward into maybe your late teens, your early adult years, and you're still wearing this jacket every single day. But by now, this jacket's a little bit worn out already. It's tattered.

It's torn. It probably doesn't even fit you anymore. And it definitely is completely out of style already.

But you still put the jacket on every single day. Why? Because you're the one with the jackets. And the few times that you tried not to wear the jackets, every time you weren't wearing it, everybody was saying to you, but where's the jacket? You're the one with the jackets.

And perhaps it even became a little bit of a joke amongst your friends or your family where when you show up with a jacket, they'd be like, well, there's the jackets, you know, because you're the one with the jacket. So you just kept wearing the jacket every single day. And why do you do that? Because that jacket became your identity.

You're the one with the jacket, with that jacket. So I want to share a little bit of my personal journey with you when it comes to identity and that jacket. And the jackets that were handed to me from a very young age that I wore way into my 20s and how I worked through getting rid of those jackets and maybe altering some of them.

So when I was about three or four years old, I've always been a child from a very young age who asks a lot of questions. I'm a very curious person. And I used to always, when somebody tells me to do something, not just, you know, comply, I would always say, but why do I need to do it? What is the reason? Explain to me how this works.

And I do see today as an adult, why adults saw this as the label I was given or the jacket I was handed. But the jacket I was handed from a very young age is that I am cheeky. So cheeky became my jacket that I always wore.

I remember I heard my gran always say to my mom, for instance, this child is so cheeky. She always talks back. So my jacket and my label became the cheeky one.

And as I became older, that the cheeky one became the mouthy one, the one that can annihilate you with words if I wanted to. Because I remember when I was about, I think seven or eight years old, we went to a holiday resort and obviously all of the kids became friends from different families that were there. And I don't even remember what it was about, but I ended up having an argument with one of the girls that were a little bit older than me the one evening.

And that next morning, there was a note that she had slipped under our door because her and her family had left that day. And I will never forget what that note said. That note said, you need to be careful with your words because you have the ability to really hurt people with the things you say.

But at that age, instead of having the logical reasoning mind and all of that, I was like, but that's my jacket. I'm the cheeky one. I'm the mouthy one.

So I started wearing that label with pride. It was my stamp. It was who I am.

So cheeky eventually became sort of mouthy and the person who you don't mess with her because she will annihilate you with words. And like I said, I wore that badge with pride, but now fast forward into my teens when I was in high school. And this is another milestone on that journey that I will never forget because this is the first time I realized that perhaps this jacket that I am wearing or that I've been given is not the jacket I want to be wearing.

And I don't remember what this was about, but I do remember that I had to stand up for one of my friends in an argument. And again, like I said, I was that person who wore that label with pride. I was the one that you would call if you needed somebody to annihilate somebody with their words.

And I just so vividly remember that I was mouthing off with this girl and my brain was thinking in that moment, sure, that's a good one. You need to remember it. So I wasn't even really present.

My mouth was just running. And I still remember her friend standing behind her and his face looking mortified at whatever it was that I was busy saying to her. But what really stuck with me is the moment that argument was over and I presume in my mind won, I turned around and I walked away and I burst into tears.

And today I know the reason why that happened is because that was never really me. That's not who I wanted to be. It was a label I had that I proudly wore that was handed to me as a little girl and it morphed into I'm the one with the mouth and I wore it with pride, but it wasn't genuinely at my core who I was or who I wanted to be.

So what happened on my journey with that jacket, this particular one, there was quite a few. We all have more than one jacket that were handed throughout our lives. But what I had to do with that jacket is I eventually had to look at that jacket and ask myself, is this me? Is this even me? Why do I keep wearing this jacket? And is this a jacket that I need to throw out or is this a jacket that I just need to alter a little bit and perhaps rework so that it's really my style and that it actually does fit me.

So this particular jacket of being the mouthy and the cheeky one, which by the way, was never really true. It just morphed into that. I was actually just someone who was really curious and kept asking a lot of questions, which today is almost my superpower in what I do for a living.

And I now use my voice to help people and not harm them. But that jacket is still in my closet, right? I didn't throw it out. It's still there.

But the difference is that I only put it on now when the occasion calls for it. And the biggest difference is that when I do wear that jacket now, it's been altered. It doesn't look the same anymore because throwing that jacket out would have meant, and I did do this initially, I tried to throw it out.

It meant completely silencing my voice, rather not speaking up at all. And that's not healthy either. So eventually over the years, I ended up altering that jacket to a point where now that jacket, when I put it on and the occasion calls for it, is strictly when I need to stand up for myself.

But I can now do that from the space of love. And I can now use that curiosity, not as being cheeky or mouthy or whatever the case may be, whatever they labeled me with or the jacket they gave me. It is now my superpower because being really curious and questioning things is really what's helped me to find some of the solutions that I've implemented into changing my own life and my own journey, and now hundreds of my clients as well.

So let's talk about your jackets. And more importantly, how do you begin to either take those jackets off or alter them? Because initially when you try to take the jacket off or alter it a little bit, it makes you a little bit uncomfortable initially, and it could make a lot of other people uncomfortable as well. But let's do a little bit of a closet clean out for a moment, because I'm going to walk you through a step-by-step process so that you could really begin to identify what is your true self? What is your identity? What jackets have been handed to you that you're still wearing today but that isn't really you? That's not your style that perhaps doesn't even fit you anymore or was never really yours to begin with.

So if you want, grab a pen and a piece of paper because I'm going to talk you through a quick three-step process that you can use to begin to turn this around right now. So here we go. Step one.

The first thing I want you to do is you need to become aware of the labels. You need to notice what your labels are. What are the jackets that have been handed to you? So just take a moment and think about all of the different roles and the labels that have been given to you over the years by family, by friends, by colleagues, by teachers, maybe even by society.

And the key here is to be honest with yourself because that's what's really going to transform it. So don't filter yourself. Just allow them to flow out onto the paper right now.

And then step two is to question the source that they come from. In other words, for each of these labels or jackets that you just wrote down, I want you to ask yourself, who gave this to me? And sometimes the person who gave it to you, by the way, could even be yourself, but just become aware of who gave you that label. Who gave this to me? And then I want you to ask yourself, is this actually still true for me right now? Does that jacket still fit? Is it still your style? Is it something you still want to wear? Right? And some may still fit you, but many of them will just be outdated and outgrown.

So just write that down right now in step two. And then step three is to choose your own labels or your own style or your own jacket. In other words, replace those labels that don't feel right anymore with the ones that you actually want.

Now, for example, if one of the labels you were handed or one of the jackets you're wearing is, I'm bad at speaking up for myself, then that would become something along the lines of, I choose when and how I share my voice. Right? Or if perhaps there's a label that says, I am the dependable one, then that can become, I am dependable, but I also honor my own needs. So think about that for a moment and just give yourself new labels, ones that actually fit for you and that you feel comfortable wearing.

So here's something I want you to think about. If you can take off any of these jackets or any of these outdated labels today, which one would it be? And what new label would you proudly wear instead? One that's just more you. One that you've got to live with and you've got to wear every single day.

So let's quickly recap those three steps. Step one is to notice the labels that you've been given. Step two is to question the source that they come from and if they're still really true for you.

And then step three is to choose your own new labels. So repetition and consistency are accelerants to transformation, guys. So here's something I want you to do every single morning for the next week.

I want you to read those new chosen labels for yourself out loud every single morning. And I really want you to feel them in your body as you say them. Now at first they might feel a little bit awkward, like when you're trying on new clothes or you're trying a new style and that's normal.

But they will eventually start to feel like you. And like I said, there's sometimes many of these jackets, many of these labels that you can decide which ones to keep, which ones to alter and which ones you should completely throw out altogether. I know in my journey for instance, one of the labels that I had to throw out completely, one of the jackets I had to throw out when I was cleaning out this closet of mine, is one that was handed to me I think in primary school already.

And that is that I'm not good with numbers. And it's been holding me back my entire life. So it's one of the jackets and the labels I had to throw out.

And then there's still that I'm still busy altering and trying on and seeing should I keep this, should I not keep this. So this is a process and it is a journey, so start small. But here is the takeaway that I want you to take today from this module.

Your identity isn't something that's fixed, it's fluid, it's ever-changing. You're not the same person today that you were five years ago, two years ago, even 10 years, 20 years ago, however long that is for you. It's not something that is fixed, it's something that's fluid that you can decide on, that you can change at any single moment of your life.

And you're not the sum of other people's opinions or their outdated snapshots of who you used to be. You get to decide right here and right now who it is you are becoming and who it is you want to be. And when you're living from that truth, everything changes.