Sometimes, we find ourselves lost after the grief of losing someone we love - struggling to reclaim our identity without a significant person in our lives any longer.

Sometimes, a traumatic event completely and radically changes who we are and what we want. We know we’re not the same as we once were, but we have no idea (and no connection with) who this new person is (or how to even begin to figure it out).

Sometimes, the disconnection with our own identity happens so quietly we don’t even notice - over decades of shading just a little piece of ourselves here and there in an effort to earn approval (or safety) from society at large or our parents or our partners or our business associates - until we wake up one day completely astonished at how far away from ourselves we’ve come to be (and stare at a wall, agape and dumbfounded, that we actually have no idea who we are NOW after all of this).

There’s a lot of information out on the wild web - most of it full of helpful, but oversimplified (and thus impractical) advice like “Just start trying new things and see what makes your heart sing!”

Or “do more alone - travel, dine, etc - so you can determine what you truly like to do without influence!”

Again, it’s not that this is BAD advice, it’s just immensely difficult to implement like a light switch, because our subconscious ego exists solely to keep us safe - and if we’ve never done those things, it feels VERY unsafe to “just” start doing them.

Will some people just take a deep breath and leap into it? Sure.

For the rest, it will hopefully be a breath of fresh air to understand that NOT being able to do that is actually wildly normal for a vast number of reasons.

So what exactly, keeps us from taking this leap for ourselves?

If you’re here, I already know you’re brilliant, creative, and resourceful with a penchant for seeing solutions where others only see problems AND a big ol’ massive heart that’s gotten you into more than 100 sticky spots in your life - personally and professionally.

It also means there’s a boatload of fear that’s preventing you from accessing the very thing you want the most.

I don’t mean “that feels scary and makes me nervous” kind of fear. It’s much deeper than that.

This fear of judgment and rejection means:

• You battle a mean inner critic and a boatload of insecurities you work hard not to let others see.

  • You won’t let others know about or see these insecurities, because you need them to respond to the strong, resilient, in-control you, not the version of you that’s secretly riddled with insecurities, self-doubt, and constant second-guessing.

  • This is necessary for you, because you don’t innately feel worthy or deserving, so the only way you catch glimpses of what that feels like is to work hard and hide yourself to earn approval and praise from others.

  • The WORST things for you would be to feel pitied or to feel like a burden, which you feel talking about these insecurities and pain would open the door for.

  • These insecurities will turn a solo outing into feeling like an entire restaurant is staring at you in pity like a poor, sad human (even if nobody’s looking and hasn’t said a word) AND, thus, will make you feel like a “reject”. Incidentally, the “lizard”/survival part of our brain desperately needs to feel accepted and have a sense of belonging. Think back to the caveman era - if you weren’t allowed close to the fire or hunting with the tribe, you truly wouldn’t survive for very long. This is long-standing programming that has been passed down for generations even though, at least in the first world, we’ve moved far beyond needing others for physical survival - though we still need this belonging and acceptance for many other reasons.

  • Given the above, your subconscious brain may even activate a flight or flight style response to the “survival” situation you’re in. At best, it’ll be uncomfortable. At worst, it could literally induce panic.

Given all of this, there are two ways out:

1. Force yourself through the steps. Go through a constant trial and error of feeling terrified, uncomfortable, and rejected then going back into hiding, then summoning all of your courage to try again.

2. Acknowledge, address, and gather tools to help you understand and navigate the fear in a way that feels free + exploratory and, eventually, releases you from it (or, at the very least, allows you to effortlessly detach yourself from the control it has over you so you can do what you want to do)

In any case, there’s no “easy” button for this, so please don’t allow the oversimplification of this process to make you feel inadequate or weak or less than.

This process should really be viewed as an unfolding.

The process I walk my clients through is the opposite of forcing them into situations that hit all their panic buttons and then talking them through how it wasn’t as scary as they thought.

The very first step is teaching them how to tune into themselves so they can first identify the things they’re doing every day that just don’t feel like them (for whatever reason).

Awareness is the foundation of ALL true lifelong change.

After they get dialed into that, they learn how to start gently making different decisions - starting small so they can begin to build confidence that they really can do this.

Simultaneously, they learn how to amplify (or, in some cases) create trust in themselves and their decisions so choosing something even entirely different than what they might have done before to fit in or please others becomes more and more effortless.

How would it feel if you became instantly aware of something that didn’t resonate with you AND felt confident in your ability to navigate away from it without feeling like you were wrong (no matter anyone else’s response)?

Also, and this is IMPERATIVE:

It’s one thing to learn who you are again - it’s an entirely different matter to develop the assuredness and self-love that will allow you to BE that person without self-shaming or guilt.

Have you ever been in a situation where someone asks a simple question like “Hey! Do you like brussel sprouts?”

Internally, you immediately respond “Nope, sure don’t”, but aloud your deep desire to not hurt anyone’s feelings and your desire to belong blurt out “Absolutely!”

And then all of the sudden, you’ve got a plateful of brussel sprouts you have to choke down, because you didn’t…couldn’t…say what you meant to say.

Incidentally, if you’re willing to commit to this work, you can stop spending money, time, and energy chasing things you think will make you happy (or at least numb the pain) and spend more time pursuing things you KNOW will bring you balance and joy.

You’ll also save yourself a hell of a lot of time in the day-to-day, because you’ll be able to stop constantly second guessing yourself, researching a million potential solutions and then being too paralyzed to take action, or filling your overloaded plate with things you feel like you have to do to please others.

You should feel space in your life to be who you are and say what you need to say.

I WANT you to feel comfortable enough and empowered enough to speak your truth, figure out who you are, and BE that so you don’t have to keep doing things you don’t really want to do out of fear of hurting someone else.

I WANT you to realize the incredible freedom that comes with showing up as exactly who you are and letting people love THAT person (instead of constantly morphing who you are so people love the person you thought you had to be in order to “earn” their love and approval)

You deserve to live a life that feels incredible to you and you can. It DOES start with learning who you really are underneath all those layers.