[315] How To Let Go Of Identities That No Longer Fit

You can outgrow a label and still keep living like it’s true. We’re talking about the sneaky way old identities cling to us, even after we’ve healed, evolved, and built a life that proves we’re different now. I start with a rare quiet moment, a big love letter to this community, and a reminder that self-confidence isn’t about becoming someone new. It’s about remembering who you are and letting that version of you take up space again.

We also dig into practical tools for identity change: getting clear on the new version of you, catching your automatic “auto-reply” thoughts, and practicing a redo in real time. I share a helpful Human Design angle, the G Center or identity center, and how it can explain why some of us feel steady while others shapeshift around different people. Then we tackle comparison and social media boundaries with my favorite metaphor: we all have different microwaves, so stop timing your growth by someone else’s clock.

If you’re ready to crumple up a label that no longer fits and let the real you lead, press play. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs it, and leave a review so more women can find this kind of confidence work.

Join the Self(ish) Sisterhood: $33/month or $333/year.

Thank you for listening to Self(ish) Confidence! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend or on your social media and tag me @jess.clerke so I can personally thank you for helping spread some confidence + love!
 
 Check out my website at: www.jessclerke.com

If you're on instagram, come say hi!! 👋👋
My Personal Account ---> @jess.clerke
The Podcast Account ---> @selfishconfidence

Transcript

Welcome Back To Quiet

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Hello, hello, and welcome back to Selfish Confidence. It's Jess here, and I am hanging out, drinking some cold coffee or iced coffee, and just taking a moment to soak in the silence. For so many years of this podcast, I remember making episodes and being like, Can you hear that? Silence. I love a good silence. But for the last year and a half, there hasn't been a whole lot of that. It's like I had to find the pockets to record. And I know that it has been so messy getting to this moment of, you know, from birth to almost 18 month-old. It has been a wild journey. And if you're new here, welcome to selfish confidence. We are all about you figuring out your life and changing your mind and doing what's best for you, no matter what that looks like for the rest of the world, for society's standpoint. It's about following your authentic truth and being fully you in every aspect of your life. But sometimes we have to kind of hide away for a little bit and not share that with the world because we're not totally confident in the versions of ourselves that we want to be, the ones that we want to shine in the world and wear those outfits and be who we are. But it takes some practice and it takes a community like this to come together and to realize how badass we are and give us that confidence boost to step into the world as our full selves. And sometimes just like as dipping your toe in, right? Changing one piece of your outfit or getting that haircut that you've been wanting to get or that hair color you've been wanting to try and just testing out the waters of your confidence a little bit more and how the world around you is receptive to that. Because let's be real, we do want to be accepted and loved by society. It is hard to go against the grain, but here we're figuring that out together. And I have been doing that for a while now, since my year of confidence back in 2021, but also again since becoming a mom and figuring things out. And now my little guy is in childcare. We talked about that last week, and there were some curveballs last week. He literally was only there for one day, and that's okay. That's okay. We're figuring things out. But today he's there again, and I am sitting down and I'm hanging out with you, sipping my coffee, and just reminding myself of just how magical this community is and how magical I feel coming and hanging out on the mic. Like I was sitting here, getting ready to sit down, put everything together, writing some things out, making some notes, and I realized, wow, like I really, really love this. Really love doing this. And if ever there was an opportunity that came from this podcast, I would just be so excited for that. Like I just, I kind of feel like there's something on the horizon. I'm really excited about it. Anyways, that being said, whether you were out walking the dog today, taking a moment for you, driving for work, cleaning your house. Good for you, sis. Good for you. I am so excited to spend this time with you. And this podcast is your reminder that confidence doesn't have to have all the answers of becoming someone new. It's about remembering who

Sisterhood Picnic At The Kite Festival

SPEAKER_00 3:10

you are and coming back to that version of you that once lived so freely, probably as a little kid, right? And we get this opportunity to discover it a little bit more every single day, right here, right now, at Selfish Confidence. We just had our sisterhood picnic on the weekend. We went to the Atlantic Kite Festival here in Halifax, and we were able to find a nice shady spot and pull out our snacks and our sips and just hang out. And I thought we'd be there for like an hour, hour and a half, you know, it would be hot, we wouldn't be there too long. My husband literally called me and he's like, Um, don't you have a client this afternoon? And I was like, actually, that got moved. He's like, Oh, okay. I was like, I'll see you soon. I'll see you soon. Three hours later. We were on the hill for about four hours, maybe more, just chit-chatting and talking about life and hanging out and people watching. I loved watching people, this is gonna sound really crazy. I loved watching people get their kites stuck in the trees and problem solve and figure out how to get them out. It was just like an experience that I had never done before. I had never been to the kite festival, but it was really cool. And I feel like it's something that we need to do annually. Picnic at the kite festival. Like it was really fun and just so nice to be able to put life on pause for a little bit and experience just hanging out, chatting about anything, and like knowing you didn't have to run to the grocery store or clean the house, like you're just hanging out with the girls, and we need moments like that. I my weekend could be filled with work, with cleaning the house and doing groceries, like it could be the most boring weekend, it is often the most boring weekend because we only have so many hours and so many days in the week. But making that time to really just hang out was a game changer, and I think we need more of it. Maybe you need more of it too. So if you're looking for a community like this that is in your pocket and on the go, but also could be in-p in Halifax. If you live in Halifax, Nova Scotia, check out the Selfish Sisterhood. I'll put the information in the show notes for you. For $33 a month, you can come in and have our virtual connector calls where we hang out on Tuesday nights and chat about all things, life and business and whatever we're facing right now. And also our in-person aspects of having our socials and our meetups and first dibs to ticketed events and anything that's on the calendar, the selfish sisterhood is the place for that. And honestly, the women in there are amazing. They are next level. They are your biggest cheerleaders and supporters and lovers in a way that you may have never experienced in a friendship before. And so if you're

Join The Selfish Sisterhood

SPEAKER_00 5:40

looking for something like that, please check out the show notes, get your information on the selfish disturb, and send me a message. Let's chat about it because I see us. Sometimes we just need that little extra reminder that there is someone out there who wants to see us shine because that is exactly what this community is. That being said, let's dive into today's topic, today's podcast episode. I have been thinking a lot, ever I've been thinking a lot, period. That's it. Uh yeah, I have. I have been my brain's been on overload to the point where I wasn't really sleeping much the last couple days because I just feel like, yep, I'm just feeling a lot of things and thinking a lot and reading a lot and just spending time with this new version of myself. It takes time to get to know a version of ourselves. It takes time to release some of those old identities that we have been holding on to and I'm still holding on to all the time. It's it takes physically releasing them out of our hand for us to erase some of our identities. And I was thinking about this the other day when I was on a walk with my dog. And so we live by a fire station, and my dog likes to go and smell the grass there. I don't know why. She just loves it. There's actually a lot of little dogs that go up that way, and she just wants to go and sniff around, you know, roll in some smells and enjoy her walk when she can get it, right? So we go to the fire station and we come around the corner, and there is this massive security guard, this big man. And he looks at me and he smiles and he's like, Oh, are you one of the firefighters here? And I said, Thank you for the compliment, sir. Hard no, hard no, you do not want me fighting a fire. But in that moment, he looked and he saw my dog and he's like, Oh, can I pet your dog? And for many years, my dog has been quite reactive, especially to men. I believe she was abused by a man when she was rescued. I don't know the story. Obviously, I don't know fully where she came from, but she's always been a little hesitant with men, and I go into full protective mode, right? Like I almost put my guard up, like, oh, that's a bad idea. She's gonna go crazy on you. Okay. But do you know what Polly did? She went over and

The Labels We Keep Replaying

SPEAKER_00 7:55

she sniffed her and and said hello and was so kind and so excited for the attention from this person. And I do believe energy is everything. She knows who's a good person and who's not. There are some people who walk in our neighborhood that she would not do that for, and I probably wouldn't do that for either. Let's be real. But this person, obviously, was a really kind and loving person, and he had also said, like, oh, I have a couple dogs at home, and da-da-da-da, you know, the conversation. And Polly just like was her best self. She was calm and confident and so great in this scenario that I forget sometimes that she's not a reactive dog anymore. I forget that since we've had our son, she has calmed down a lot. She's not a baby anymore, and she is really confident in who she is. And in most scenarios, we have we've watched all of Caesar Milan's shows. We love it. We loved it when we were watching it. It was so much fun, and it helped us to build some skills around giving her the confidence that she needed because she's not a front of the pack dog, she is a middle of the pack dog, and so if I'm a leader, she feels really strong and confident in that. And same with my partner, right? We've worked on this for a while and really worked on some of these things before my son came because, well, that's terrifying to have a reactive dog and a baby around. And she's still a little crazy, right? She's still a little crazy, aren't we all? But she's just become such a good family dog, and I forget it. I forget it because I instantly go back to that initial anytime we walked by someone on the street that she would react. Or anytime she saw another dog and she was on leash, she would react. And I still don't let her do a lot of on leash greetings because, well, I'm more afraid of what's gonna happen than than anything, but she's so good. She goes hiking every single week with my neighbor who has a dog hiking business, and

Polly’s Glow Up And Mine Too

SPEAKER_00 9:55

she even says, like, you don't even really need you don't need to pack a leash, you don't need a collar. Polly is good, like she is really good, and I forget because I have this small dog in my head, and I have her original identity wrapped around her of a reactive, scared, abused rescue dog. And sometimes I think we're doing this to ourselves. We're bringing us back to those moments when maybe we were reactive, abused rescue people in different scenarios of our lives and in our darkest seasons, and we forget that we have evolved, that we have healed, that we have moved past that, and we keep these labels on ourselves that are no longer needed. I literally had to pause the recording after I said, you know, these labels that I have for my dog because I was so emotional with it. And we hold on to these things. Like we hold on to these labels for ourselves, maybe labels that we've been given from other people, maybe family members, right? When I was a kid, I was a shy kid, and I remember, you know, my mom always saying that, right? She's a shy kid, or she's, oh, she's my A student. And you would like to hold these labels to yourselves, these standards to yourselves that other people have given us because we've been told our whole lives we're certain things. It is hard to break those freaking chains. It is hard to break those beliefs, even though we know they're not ours anymore. Because it's just natural for us to keep going with it for me to label my dog as a reactive dog when literally she was so freaking friendly and so happy to see this person and get some attention. She's not deprived of attention, that is for sure. Literally woke up this morning and she's like curled between my husband and I in bed. Like she's she good, she's good. But it's these little moments that we notice these things that we've been holding on to for five years. So I ask you today, what are you holding on to? What have you been holding on to as a label about yourself that isn't true anymore? And is this something that you have given yourself, or is this something that you have been told, maybe since a little girl, that you have and are a version of you that just doesn't feel aligned anymore? And it really does take a lot of time to break this down. This is not this simple, like, hey, oh right, I'm not this anymore. I'm this and okay, now I move on and I live my life. It just doesn't work like that. Even for me, when becoming a parent, it took me a while for me to feel connected to this idea of having a human that was, you know, a part of me, right? I hid my pregnancy for a really long time. I didn't want to tell anyone because I was so not ashamed of it, but it was a new identity that I hadn't fully embraced. And even the other day, I was on a phone, on the phone with a girlfriend of mine, and she has

Breaking Old Stories About Ourselves

SPEAKER_00 12:55

known me for a long time now, and it almost felt strange to be in this chapter of like being a mom because it's just not who she knew or who I was connected to, right? And I remember hearing Hillary Duff talk about this in an interview. I think it was her interview on Caller Daddy, and she said that a friend of hers, she had her son really young, and she said a friend of hers had looked at her, had come over to see her, and they were hanging out, and afterwards texted her and said, Wow, it just feels so strange. Like I don't even recognize you anymore. And if you're listening to this and you are a parent, you know that's probably the worst thing you could ever say to someone who is a new mom because we don't feel like ourselves. We literally are new versions of ourselves, and that's probably one of our biggest insecurities. And then all of a sudden, for someone to call it out to you, it can feel really uncomfortable. Think about this in any scenario. Think about that with this identity piece we've been talking about. When someone calls out your biggest insecurity to your face, you're just like, oh, okay, so it's not just in my head, you can see it too. And that's really hard. So when I'm thinking of an example, for me, a big one is just even that piece of all of a sudden I'm a mom. And yeah, I've been a mom for a year and a half now, but it still feels strange. It still feels really difficult for me to release all of the walls that I've built up around this title, all of the things that I've told myself for so many years, especially depending on who I'm hanging out with. And this is no fault to them. I do this myself. I put my guard up for certain things or put on a mask for certain things. And it, yeah, it's just part of figuring out these identities and figuring out this acceptance of people who love us. Even though I know I'm so blessed to have so many people in my life who would accept me no matter what. I could make whatever decision in my life right now, and they would love and accept me. And I'm so grateful for that. But it first comes from us loving and accepting ourselves, and I think that's the hardest part. Not even I think that. I know that's the hardest part. At least it is for me. Maybe it's not for you. And I have a feeling if you're listening to this podcast and you're like really freaking confident and you're just like, I am the greatest, I am the best, you're probably not listening to this podcast. If that's your attitude, this is probably not your podcast. I'd love, like that's the end goal, right? Like, I'd love for us to get there. But I do think most people who listen to this are in that in-between stage that we're figuring things out, we are adjusting to new identities, and we're learning to have confidence in them. It's really hard and it's really scary, and it's just, yeah, our hardest critics are ourselves in these scenarios. So if that's you and you're holding on to some of these old identities or these things that are not aligned anymore, there's a couple things that I would suggest that you start to look at.

New Mom Identity And Insecurity

SPEAKER_00 15:45

And the first one is really getting clear on what your new identity is. And I know this is not easy. It takes time. It takes us asking ourselves simple questions over and over again. It takes getting to know new versions of ourselves, it takes playing identities when we go out in different social interactions. There's actually a piece in human design that can help you with understanding how you are in social interactions and how you are in um around certain people. It's your G center, it's your identity center. And so if you have it defined, it means that you have like a solid sense of identity. You know who you are, and it's not gonna shake based on who you are around. If yours is undefined or white in your chart, this can come up as like almost like a shapeshifter energy. With each person that you hang out with, you're gonna kind of mold based on who you're around. And I have found this piece in the human design chart to be really helpful, especially for those who struggle with this feeling of like, yeah, I change based on who I'm around. So I have a hard time understanding who I am. But there's a gift in that that we forget about. It's the fact that you can really deeply connect with a lot of people because you can resonate and connect with a lot of different people and a lot of different identities. And so if you are struggling with your sense of identity, I would look at this. So I'll put some information in the show notes for you to be able to look up your chart and see the G Center or text me. Like, send me a message on Instagram and be like, hey Jess, can you look at my chart so I can know if my G Center is undefined or defined? I am happy to do that for you. I love this stuff. I think it's really fascinating to know yourself on a new level through human design. But this identity piece can make a big difference. It can help us to understand where we're at and why we're feeling a certain way. So knowing yourself and getting to know this new version of you, this version of you you want to be, this version of you you're becoming is really, really important. The sooner you feel confident in that version, the easier it is to release some of these old pieces or to correct people when they remind us that we are a reactive abuse dog, a rescue dog. Like Polly was probably just like, Mom, I've been over that for a really long time. Like, it's like when your parents would say, like, oh, she doesn't like peas. And you're just like, I like peas now. They're good. I don't know what you're talking about. I've been eating them for a while, and you just have this one view of me because, well, that's how we see things, right?

Define Your Identity With Human Design

SPEAKER_00 18:10

We have opinions, that's part of it. So start to figure out yours, and then as you do, be able to shine that into the world a little bit more through your actions, through your boundaries, through the things that you're helping other people see for you. And the other thing that I would say on this too is that it is a process, as we know, and every time it comes up, I want you to catch yourself in it. I've done this a few times, like I've done it more than a few times, let's be real, where I catch myself saying something that is just like almost an automatic thing. It's like an auto-reply out of my body. That is not how I actually feel, it is not how I actually think. But maybe I've heard it so many times growing up that it's just so natural for it to come out. And I catch myself. And even after it's out of my mouth and it's there, and I'm like, oh, wait, wait a second. That's not actually how I think and feel right now. Let me just take it back a second. Like it just wasn't my auto reply. People are really receptive to that too, especially if you're around the right people. You can take it back, suck it back in and share what is actually the opinion you want to share. What it is that you actually want to put out there. Because we are in these identities for so long. They shape who we are, they shape our thoughts, they shape how we respond to things, essentially like an audit reply. And sometimes it takes us having a little redo, cutting the line and trying it again and practicing it over and over again. I picture it almost like when you put the rubber band around your wrist and you're trying to have a new thought about something, like, uh, I want to, like, let's even say, like, I want a cigarette, and then you're like snapping it on your wrist. I have a hair elastic on my wrist, so I can like like I can do the visual right now and I can feel it. But it's like that, that snap that you're trying to reprogram your brain, and it takes time, it takes effort and it takes energy. So if you are working with a new identity, if you are trying to reshape your self-belief, this takes time. So just keep snapping it, just keep coming back, just keep playing with it, just keep showing up and don't let it take the back burner. Let your new self shine, let your new self come out into the world. Put the old identity in the passenger seat and let's try something new, sis. It takes a lot of practice, right? It's just like when you're getting your driver's license, you gotta practice, you gotta take the road test, you gotta do all these things in order for you to become a driver. Well, it's exactly like that when you're playing with a new identity, when you're embracing who you are. It takes practice. It takes taking a test here and there, it takes getting your license, it takes you practicing on the road, and maybe even sometimes having restrictions on your license because you're not old enough or you need glasses or you shouldn't drive at night. It takes time, is what I'm trying to say. And when it takes time, we live in this society that wants things now, wants things last freaking week, right? Wants things as fast as possible, but that is just not how our human bodies work. So give yourself some time, give yourself some grace and play with some of these new labels. Forget the ones that we've been holding on to for so long that are telling us that we are not good enough or that we're still this old version of us because you're not anymore. You are a brand new version. You are the, you know, new iOS update on your phone. And you're still telling yourself you're the old iOS, but you're new, my sister. You're new. And if you're struggling with comparison, which I know we all do, especially in the world of social media, one, put your boundaries up on your social media, mute the people you gotta mute, delete who you gotta delete, do what you gotta do in order to keep your head in the right direction when it comes to who you're becoming. But I was thinking about this earlier when I was microwaving my leftover pizza for lunch. And I did two slices in the microwave. These analogies some days. I'm like, what? Really? You want me to talk about that? Okay. But my two slices in, I put it for a minute. It was not enough. It was still cold. And so I put it for a little longer, ate my pizza, enjoyed it, and decided I wanted one more slice. Okay. No shame in the pizza game. So I put another slice in the microwave and I did it for a minute. And it was sizzlein. It was sizzlein, okay? And it was this reminder that we all have different amounts of time that it takes in the microwave, right? A minute on the microwave

Practice The New You

SPEAKER_00 22:35

at home and a minute at the microwave at work are two different minutes. And you know what I'm talking about. Especially when you're making that microwave popcorn and the package says two and a half minutes, and you put it for two and a half minutes in one microwave and it's not long enough, and you put it for two and a half minutes in another microwave and it is burnt. That is what we're working with here, okay? We're looking at somebody else who's on a very different journey in a very different microwave. And we're like, well, they were able to embrace that identity and put it on social media and start living out loud so publicly in front of people, and they're not afraid of judgment, and they're not, you know, struggling with this new label or old labels that they've had. Like, why can't I do that? We all have our own microwaves. It is going to take a different amount of time for you to love and accept who you are than it might be for Sally Sue, who lives four houses down, who can be so loud and proud on social media. Okay, it's going to take a different amount of time for everyone, and I really want you to be okay with that. You cannot buy self-confidence on Amazon Prime. You think you can, but you can't. It takes time, it takes reps, it takes showing up for yourself, it takes doing the things that you said you're gonna do, it takes accepting your new identity, playing with your new identity, and just being you a little bit more. And remember, what we're seeing on social media is not always the reality. So just because you see someone posting something or doing something or sharing something, it doesn't mean that we know what's actually going on in their head, what's actually going on behind closed doors, what they're actually having in their bank account. I want you to take a deep breath here and remember that we're all on different paths, we're all on different timelines, and we all have different microwaves. So it's gonna take a little bit of extra time for some of us, less time for others, and also depending on the season you're in, it could be one minute a year ago, and now it's 30 seconds. It we don't know because it's always changing, it's always evolving. So test it out and have some fun with it. And if you're holding on to a label that is no longer serving you, I want you to crumple that shit up and throw it in the garbage can.

Your Timeline Is Your Timeline

SPEAKER_00 24:55

And this also goes for labels you have for other people, uh, outdated things that you have been thinking that might just not be what's the reality anymore. I want you to crumple that shit up and throw it in the garbage can, okay? It's time to embrace who we are, embrace our new labels and shine those into the world because the world needs you at your most authentic self. And again, remembering that who you're expressing yourself as now, what you're shining with now, it can change in a year, it can change in five years. If you would have asked me five years ago, there's no way I would have believed you that I was ever gonna be a mom. We can change our minds, we can do things differently, we can change our jobs. What's that Hillary Duff song? You can change your hair, you can change your clothes. Or is that Hannah Montana? You can change your mind, that's just the way it goes. I think it's Hillary Duff. Anyways, you didn't sign up for my singing, so remember that. You can change your hair, you can change your clothes. I can't remember who it is. I'm gonna have to look that up after this, but just remember, okay, you can change your mind. You don't have to stick with the same things over and over again. And once you change your mind, it's okay to release those old labels you have, okay? And if a security guard asks you if you're a firefighter, maybe play with that identity a little bit and say, mm, yeah, I could see it. I could see it. Thanks, thanks for that compliment, sir. I hope you're having a wonderful week. And I'm just, yeah, I can't wait to see you in all your magic and in all your glory and in everything because you are a shining star. Like you are. You are literally the magic that this world needs. And I am tired of you not seeing it, my sister. Okay? So keep shining. The world needs you to shine. I love you so much. I can't wait to talk to you next week.