Who Would You Be Without The Role?

It’s been a very busy week here at Smith Central.

One going back to college, another heading off for a weekend away with girlfriends. It's been a frenzy of washing, passport hunting and bag packing. And as usual, everything was last minute, even though it has been on the calendar for months. I'm just glad I get to watch the chaos these days with a smile on my face, knowing I am not responsible for my adult children meeting their own deadlines.

If that wasn't busy enough, on Wednesday I ran my live event, Leaving Teaching: I Know I Can’t Do Another Year, and it was amazing to be in a room with awesome women who really needed to hear what I had to say. My founding cohort of Eight Weeks to Limitless starts in just 10 days, and I can’t wait to get started. The eight women who join me will be building a more hopeful, optimistic version of themselves, gaining more clarity about what they want, trusting in their own capability and knowing what their next steps are.

I didn't just throw some slides together and launch a Zoom room this week. Preparing for Wednesday took weeks of work and got me thinking deeply about the things that keep us stuck in a life that we no longer love.

Knowing that we want something to change and actually changing it are two very different things. We can know that the career we once loved is draining the life out of us. We can know that a relationship has run its course. We can know that a friendship or a group of people we've known for years doesn't really fit us anymore. So why do we stay?

Many reasons. Seven to be precise. But one of the biggest reasons is identity.

When we've been good at something for a very long time, the role we take on can become fused with our identity, with who we believe we are.

Teacher. Leader. Wife. Mother. Daughter. Partner. Business owner.

And that's fine until we start thinking about taking that role away, or having it taken from us. Because then the question becomes:

If I'm not a 'that thing' anymore... who the hell am I? What value do I have if I'm no longer this person I've spent years becoming?

And the separation from that can feel like grief. We are frightened to let go of an identity that has become so much a part of us because somewhere in the subconscious there's this idea that if I'm not that person anymore, either I was wrong about who I thought I was or I've somehow failed. And that sparks the primal fear that 'I'm not good enough'.

So we stay.

But what is identity really? It's nothing more than a label we give ourselves, or others give to us, that we believe is fixed and must determine who we are and how we should act.

But get this: all our labels are attached with Velcro, not superglue. We can simply take them off when they no longer fit.

We don't wear the same clothes we wore when we were ten, twenty or thirty years old. (That being said, I think I may still have a pair of baggy dungarees that I wore with my Docs in my 30s still lurking in the back of the wardrobe somewhere.) But you get the point. You don’t have to wear the same labels for the rest of your life.

You may have held a certain role and done it brilliantly for decades. But that doesn't have to define the limits of who you're allowed to become next.

The uncertainty of stepping out of an old identity before we know exactly what the new one is going to look like can feel more frightening than staying with something we already know isn't working. Fear becomes greater than the promise of something better.

So we keep going and hope it will get better.

We roll the dice and hope they'll land in our favour.

The problem is that when our plan for change is essentially I hope something happens, we're putting our future into the hands of circumstances. We're waiting for something outside us to change so that we can feel better inside.

It works the other way around.

When we change the way we think, feel and respond to the circumstances we find ourselves in, the world can start to look very different.

We notice an opening we might not have noticed before. We have a conversation with a friend who happens to know somebody. We sit next to someone on a plane who mentions a book we've never read and something in it shifts the way we see ourselves. We say yes to something we'd previously have dismissed. Or no to something we'd automatically have agreed to.

Coincidence? Synchronicity? Maybe.

Or perhaps we're simply seeing possibilities that were impossible to see while we were so busy looking for evidence that we couldn't change.

The question isn't: Who am I if I'm not this?

The better question is: Who could I be if I stopped believing this is all I can be?

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Making It Intentional

Your Next Step

Making It Intentional

This week, write a list of the identities you wear and ask yourself which of them still fit nicely and which need a closer look. Which ones feel liberating and joyful, and which ones feel like something you’re continuing to wear simply because you’ve worn them for so long, even though they no longer fit? No dramatic decisions required. Just notice where you might be confusing who you are with a role you’ve learned to play.

Your Next Step

If you know you want something to change and you’re ready to get to grips with what else is possible for you, my founding cohort of Eight Weeks to Limitless starts in 10 days.

Over eight weeks, we’ll work through the beliefs, patterns and fears that keep you stuck, so you can build greater clarity, confidence and trust in yourself and leave knowing what your next steps are.

For this founding cohort, the investment is £600 until Tuesday 29th September. After that, the programme will be £1,450.

There are just eight places, and when they’re filled, the doors will close.

You don’t need certainty to take the next step. You just need to be willing to see what else might be possible.