Stop Waiting to Feel Ready: Change Your Identity

Natascha Bach: Welcome to In the Back of My Mind. Becoming or being? That's our question today. What if the greatest thing standing between you and the life you desire is shifting from becoming into being? Our minds are constantly preparing us for future experiences, and the stories that we repeatedly tell ourselves, they become our expectations. Then our expectations become our perception. Then our perception Influences are emotional responses, and then those responses reinforce the identity that we've chosen, and so many times it's not because we're choosing it consciously. Most people believe that they are still becoming on the Way to who they dream themselves to be. Many are just waiting to become it. I know I was. The subconscious mind accepts whatever we feed it. It doesn't discern between true or false. If we imagine something to be true, it becomes our truth. If we practice that story so many times, it becomes what is familiar. And then familiarity, that becomes what we're expecting to experience. then those acute moments. Reveal our chronic beliefs, the beliefs that we are accepting as truth for us. Are my reactions about a circumstance true or false? Or are they just things that I've rehearsed from the past? This is a question that I'm constantly asking myself. What story do I tell myself when life doesn't really go my way? Is that story true? Or is it just because it's familiar? Why is it so normal for people to become so disappointed? So irritated, so upset over the smallest things. The brain predicts before it reacts, and this might explain why we react with such irritation or disappointment. this is what I found out on Neurocity S-ITY.co. Predictive processing is a theory of brain function. Proposing that the brain constantly generates predictions about incoming sensory inputs, then updates those predictions based on the difference between what it expected and what actually arrived. Perception is not passive, it is an active construction. This is what I found out on Neurocity.co. Predictive processing is a theory of brain function, proposing that the brain constantly generates predictions about incoming sensory inputs. Then it updates those predictions based on the difference between what it expected and what actually arrived. Perception is not passive, it's active. this framework was developed by neuroscientists like Carl Friston and philosophers like Andy Clark. It explains how perception and consciousness are joined under one single principle. The traditional story about perception goes like this: light comes in, it hits your retina, the signals are sent to your brain, your brain processes those signals as you see it, the input goes in, the experience comes out, and your brain is a fancy camera. The actual story is really backwards in regards to this framework. Your brain will generate a prediction of what it expects. To see, and then it checks that prediction against the tiny trickle of sensory data that's coming through your eyes, and if the prediction matches, great. If the brain gets an error signal, it updates the prediction, and what you experience seeing is not just raw sensory data, it's the brain's best guess, corrected by whatever the senses can add to the experience. for 14 years my brain had been predicting a future where I was always one step away. One more accomplishment away where I was one more realization away or one more healing away. Always feeling like I wasn't there yet one step away from what I wanted to experience in my life. And no wonder I kept experiencing life that way. Cause why do those small little things that happen during the day feel so big? Someone cutting us off in traffic, being interrupted by somebody in a conversation, feeling dismissed, or someone doesn't respond to you the way that we would like them to, or rude email, disappointments at work. Irritations with somebody that we love. Why do we feel these little annoyances and why do we let them affect us so deeply, so intensely? Maybe today's circumstances aren't really creating the big feeling that we think is creating this big emotion. Maybe it's just confirming an old identity that we've been subscribing to for too long and a subscribe. That we need to cancel because what feels normal and natural for us based on our lived experience is how we're going to perceive life. because we're experiencing it on the outside, the outside is just a reflection of our inside. Experience, and perhaps it's because there's something that we are disappointed with ourselves about, those automatic thoughts will say, Well, if I was a valuable person, people would talk to me differently, and if I was a valuable person, people would treat me differently. And if I was a valuable person at all, people would receive my ideas better, And these thoughts further confirm some possible core beliefs that might be running in our subconscious mind. I'm not valuable, I'm not respected, I'm invisible, my ideas don't matter. Those thoughts create a sense that we are not safe. We're not safe where we are in this moment. A sense that we're not there. We're not yet who we desire to be. Because if I was that, then I wouldn't be having these rotten experiences. Safety changes everything. Stephen W. Borges wrote in his book, Our Polyvagal World, How Safety and Trauma Change Us, and I quote: There's a brutal irony to the fact that many of our features of our built world that are billed as keeping us safe also make us feel unsafe. If one wanted to take a cynical point of view, one might pose that at times this is an intended outcome and that certain individuals or institutions may want us to feel unsafe for their own selfish ends. But why would anybody actively want to make us feel unsafe? The polyvagal theory offers a simple explanation. When we feel unsafe, our bodies shut down our ability to critically think or learn in favor of a need for immediate survival. But what if your reaction isn't a part of your character. Like so many of us think, I'm just fiery, I'm just, you know, I'm just really anxious all the time. So we we kind of dismiss these reactions that we give as part of our character. So therefore we're adopting the identity of somebody who's anxious, of somebody who's fiery or quick to temper. But how do we prepare ourselves to stay steady? And to prime our subconscious mind to display an inner resilience and an inner calm that will serve us better for situations that perhaps we don't prefer. Can we shift our perception in the moment to revalue ourself? Can we shift our perspective of what we're experiencing even if it's not what we Prefer? how do we prime our minds to recognize the evidence that we can choose a different way instead of perceiving it, in a negative way that we've just been primed to from the past? If we can choose a different way of perceiving it, that will nurture us, that will revalue us and bring us back to a sense of wholeness and safety. Isn't that preferred? Isn't that the best possible result? Well, I want to share with you something that is from my own personal experience about that false promise of becoming. for 14 years I lived believing that I was becoming who I desired to be. And I did the journaling and I did the affirmations, I did the healing work, I was reading books, I was doing deep levels of personal growth and development, and I was always in the pursuit of becoming better. I was becoming successful enough to deserve the life I dreamt of. I was becoming thin enough to be successful. I was becoming wealthy enough to deserve things. I was becoming confident enough to take action. I was becoming healed enough to speak with confidence. I was becoming spiritually evolved enough. I was becoming the right version. Of myself that other people would accept, and every goal felt like another step toward the person that I hoped I would one day become. Continually feeding my subconscious mind the programs of: I'm not there yet, I'm not ready yet, I'm not smart enough yet. I I haven't learned what I need yet. I haven't I haven't healed. Enough from my traumas, and for a long time I believed I was growing and I believed that growth. And now looking back, I wasn't becoming. I was just waiting, waiting to feel worthy, waiting to feel ready, and waiting until I believed that I had finally arrived. And my life was me. waiting for it to be my turn. And the list of beliefs looks different for each one of us, But underneath there's really only one belief running. I will allow myself to be fully me when I achieve this, when I do this, when I heal more. Always in a perpetual loop of becoming. So what have you been postponing until you become someone else? Until you lose the weight, until you make more money, until you feel more confident, until you finally feel healed, until the kids are older, the turning point for me was someone sharing one simple idea. Here's the idea. You no longer have to live in the becoming. You no longer need to wait. You simply decide to be that person now. And in that moment, I felt those words. I felt them as truth. I felt them as a sense of bliss in my body, of the sense of calm, a sense of certainty. notice that I didn't feel motivated and I didn't feel excited and I didn't feel inspired. I felt truth. Something inside of me immediately recognized it as a sense of certainty. And that certainty knew the next logical step forward. And I stepped into being her now. why did my nervous system recognize that idea before my intellect finished analyzing it? Because congruence is not intellectual. It's something that your whole body recognizes. And when your inner voice receives truth, you awaken to that truth. So becoming or being, let's return to that concept. Carol Dweck PhD, author of Mindset, is quoted in her book saying, Becoming is better than being. And her idea helped transform and embrace growth for so many people. But what if there comes a point where becoming quietly keeps us in waiting? Waiting until we're ready, waiting until we're confident, waiting until we're successful, until we're healed. Just constantly focusing on becoming subtly reinforce that we're not there yet, that we're not enough yet. In my experience, it did. So my personal philosophy is that growth matters, yes, learning matters, and then there's a different question to ask. The question I believe we need to ask is who have I decided to be now? Because being creates congruence in yourself. An identity is a decision. Congruence is deeply felt in your body as I described. It is your beliefs, it is your thoughts, your words, your actions, all being aligned with who you desire to be. I love rituals. And especially during the year 2020, I found a lot of peace and joy in creating rituals for myself. Ethan Cross wrote in his book Chatter. The reason rituals are so effective at helping us manage our inner voices is that they are a chatter-reducing cocktail that influences us through several avenues. For one, they direct our attention away from what's bothering us. The demands they place on our working memory to carry out the tasks of the ritual leave little room for anxiety and negative manifestations. Of the inner voice. And this might explain why pregame rituals abound in sports, providing a distraction at the most anxiety-filled moment. We prepare ourselves for the life we desire through developing rituals. And those rituals, they can include rituals of thought and belief. And if we practice what we desire to experience, then practice becomes congruence. James Clear wrote in his book Atomic Habits: an easy and proven way to build good habits and break bad ones. Quote, Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity. This is one reason why meaningful change does not require radical change. Small habits can make a meaningful difference by providing evidence of of a new identity. And if a change is meaningful, it is actually big. That's the paradox of making small improvements. End quote. I love this idea. Where I differ from James, James he explains how identity is reinforced. And my work begins one step earlier. Identity is first chosen. Then every thought, every belief, every conversation, every action creates congruence with that chosen identity. James Clear also is quoted as saying: some people spend their entire lives waiting for the time to be right to make an improvement. If your mind is always preparing you, What are you repeatedly introducing yourself as? Most people unknowingly will begin their day with, I'm so overwhelmed, I'm just behind, I'm so frustrated with this situation, and I'm not there yet. And those become rehearsals. I invite you to choose differently. To feed your subconscious mind the beliefs that you are now ready to step into, make the decision. I am steady. I am grounded. I am calm. I am fully present. I am worthy now. I am enough. I am prepared for what today brings. I am excited for what today will bring. I am resilient. I am open to possibility. I am someone who responds thoughtfully. I am someone who speaks with intention. I am confident in my own voice. I am creating my future with every thought, every word, and every choice. I am living in congruence with the identity I have chosen. And for 14 years I kept saying, okay. I'll be enough when I do this, or when I discover this, or when I heal. But today my practice is so much simpler. I begin with I am. And then I spend the rest of the day living in a way that makes those words true. Perhaps the most powerful words that you'll speak today won't be to another person. They'll be the words that you say to yourself because your mind is listening, your nervous system is listening. And your voice is rehearsing what you believe to be true about you. Are you becoming or being? Who have you decided to be now? The answer is simple. I am. Your being creates congruence, and congruence is your truth.