#115: A Case of Mistaken Identity
We've all heard of the idea of a case of mistaken identity.
This is when we mistake somebody or something for what they're not.
We laugh when we see little kids pull on a random shirt and say, “mommy”, when that shirt sleeve doesn't belong to their mommy.
We dismiss it as cute, but as we get older, sometimes that case of mistaken identity can happen with ourselves. In fact, I would propose that if it's not happening on a regular basis, you might want to look a little bit deeper.
On today’s podcast, I'll be sharing my own journey- my own case of mistaken identity. Make sure to listen!
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Laura
00:00
We've all heard of the idea of a case of mistaken identity. This is when we mistake somebody or something for what they're not. And we might even feel a little bit embarrassed by saying, oh my goodness, it's you when it isn't the person that we thought it was, we laugh when we see little kids pull on a random shirt and say "mommy", when that shirt sleeve doesn't belong to their mommy, and we dismiss it as cute, but as we get older, sometimes that case of mistaken identity can happen with ourselves. In fact, I would propose that if it's not happening on a regular basis, you might want to look a little bit deeper at that. So I'm going to be sharing my own journey, my own case of mistaken identity, and today's podcast episode, which is more of a personal reveal on some of the transformation I've been experiencing lately.
00:57
Welcome to Next Level Leap, a podcast where we dive into the mindset and strategies of scaling your company and creating a legacy brand. As a top growth strategist, multi passionate entrepreneur, membership site owner, trainer, speaker, author and mom to three, I love exploring the journey of how we as founders can multiply our income impact and influence by landing on the other side of our next big leap, let's get started.
01:25
The idea of somebody else's identity might be something that we think about when we reflect upon our favorite movie, where we see the transformation happen within the plotline. Or we think about a transformation that takes place of an inanimate object, and maybe a room that becomes a different color and suddenly has a whole new feeling and mood to it. But what happens when we look at our own self identity? Well, recently, I enrolled in a reinvention experience with none other than Brooke Castillo, who you might be familiar with as the founder and CEO of The Life Coach School, she released a new course it was a beta based on her own desire to reinvent her business and her programs. And I signed up, it was just good timing for me, I was thinking about what was next in my career. Because quite honestly, when I closed down my brick and mortar about four years ago, at the time of this recording, I really couldn't have dreamed of the business that I have today. It is so fulfilling on every level, and highlights my own gifts and abilities. And most recently, I know helping other people create the same type of high ticket low volume consulting business that I have, which has been super rewarding. But in a lot of ways, I felt like I had plateaued, I had made it in a much shorter period of time than I thought I was going to. And I was starting to wonder what else I was going to do. What was next did I really want what was previously my ceiling to become my new floor. And so I signed up for this class. And I immediately knew I was in the right place when Brooks started helping us look at our own identity in completely new ways. And the whole idea of the course is that when we create and live from a future state, we are already making that moment a reality. And a lot of ways reclaiming the power and our future selves reduces the power of
any type of past self that we want to reinvent. And if I started losing you by now, don't worry, you're not alone. Even with the certified life coaches in the program, there was a lot of Okay, wait, what? What does this mean? There was a lot of brain twisting on my part, for sure.
04:01
And as I was journaling and working through some of the concepts, my mind was pretty blown. I'll be honest. And it was really funny because smack in the middle of when I was taking this course I was leaving getting my hair done. And you start looking at everything like should I have a new hairstyle? Should I be blonde? If I'm brunette? Should I start growing my hair out long? What do I like? What do I What's my favorite color? What's my favorite restaurant? Just because it's something that's always been that way should I be reinventing those aspects of myself as well. And as I left my hairstylist I saw from across the street, a gentleman that I recognized coming out of a car that I was familiar with and realized that it was my son Josh's soccer coach. And so I just kind of watched him and said to myself, oh, you know, if we end up in the same spot for lunch, maybe I'll say hello, which we ended up in the same spot. I grabbed a sandwich a couple people behind him and then I saw him looking behind and catching my eye. And I waved and I said, Hi, Trevor. It's so good to see you. I'm Laura, Josh's mom. And he looked at me like a flash of recognition. Oh, so I thought, and he said, oh, my name is Todd, Trevor's my twin brother. It happens all the time. I was totally confused, because I even thought, like I saw you getting out of Trevor's car. And he looked at me, and he said, I even have his car today. And I was laughing and kind of horrified and stunned. And I didn't even know what to say. I was so convinced that it was my son's soccer coach and calling into the sandwich shop. When I got home, I told my husband the story, and he laughed really hard. Because Trevor's a very fun loving, enjoyable person to be around. And he just pictured me going up to Trevor saying, Oh, hi, Trevor, good to see you, assuming that he didn't recognize me right away, because I'm normally in sunglasses and a hat. Because it's not actually Trevor. And so after we had a good laugh, and he exited, I realized how easy it is to mistake other people and how easy it is for us to mistake ourselves and our own identity.
06:17
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06:57
As part of the course that I'm taking with Brooke, she designed a exercise for us where she challenged us to think about 10 brand new possibilities for our lives. And this was kind of challenging, because I had realized that a lot of my identity was based on my past beliefs of what I thought was possible for my life of which I was currently living, which is not by accident. For so many of us when we start to visualize what is possible, and we even declare a new possibility for ourselves, we already start to create forward momentum in that direction. That's why a lot of times when you meet people who are just lamenting about the past or upset about what has happened historically, they have such a difficult time moving forward, because that's simply not where their direction is their direction is faced backwards. And for many of us who are entrepreneurs, this is where we find ourselves needing to our invent ourselves, reinvent ourselves the most often, I find that reinvention is a mother or as a wife or as a Christian. That's something that I think does happen. And it happens really, by requirement, right? That the person that shows up in one year of marriage is very different than the kind of person who shows up in year 10, or year 20. The kind of mother that's required to be good with toddlers is very different than the kind of mother that is required to be good with grade school children or teenagers. And so in a lot of ways, we either embrace that reinvention, or we end up in a really frustrating dynamic with the people that we love the most. But when it comes to the reinvention that happens within business, I think one of the most dangerous times that takes place is when you are complacent. When things are good, you're feeling pretty fortunate, you have no reason to create something new. Yet at the same time as entrepreneurs, we love the idea of creating something new, we love being an action. And for many of us, it can almost feel a little bit depressing and a little bit discouraging. And we start losing motivation without something new to focus on. But what I've found is that when we have these new goals, and we have these new aspirations, but we don't actually create a new identity to go with it, we end up sometimes self destructive on the way to get there, where we are creating new goals with old habits and old beliefs, and they can't happen synergistically. So with that realization that I've gone through in my own entrepreneurial journey, what it may be I had big goals, but I was still managing and leading as if I didn't, or I wanted to create some kind of massive impact on the world with a new business idea, but I didn't have the mindset around perseverance or dedication that I would have today. And so what Burke proposes is that this new possibility happens when our desire entered intersects with possibility, meaning that we have to be really passionate about the new possibility in order to sustain it for the long haul, and take enough action to get there.
10:28
What I found was most interesting in this journey is that as soon as I made a declaration for a new possibility, which is something that I'm going to be sharing with you very hesitantly and vulnerably, I started to experience that inner transformation. And it's interesting because as soon as I declared it within myself, I noticed new opinions about myself, and others that weren't exactly comfortable. And so our brain does all sorts of crazy things. We're in this process of reinvention. In fact, it can feel unsettled, and kind of awful. When I declared to
myself that I wanted to have a $10 million net worth, what came up for me was fear and judgment, or what other people might think if they'd known that I have bankruptcy in my history and other types of failures, that wouldn't be synonymous with somebody who has a $10 million net worth. And so what came up for me on all those ways is up for me to handle right. And then when I share it with you publicly, in that declaration, what might come up for you and potentially projected onto me is also something new to handle. But that's all part of creating this new identity. And what I found with that possibility, that new possibility, and I intentionally did not based on business size, I intentionally didn't base it on any type of top line number. I based it on net worth, because I wanted to see how creative I could be in getting there in terms of both action, logistics, the technicalities, as well as who I get to become, and as soon as I started asking myself, what would somebody with a $10 million net worth do? And I started messaging some people who I thought might be in that range of net worth and asking them, well, how do they think about problems? How are they approaching things maybe differently than I would? How are they leading their teams? And I started getting some of those answers back, I realized that if I were to make every decision, from the standpoint of what would the Laura with a $10 million net worth, do think, act feel?
13:09
Changed everything. It was mind blowing to me how within days, I started handling situations very differently, much more logically, much more calmly, less emotionally less fear base. So many of these changes happened almost instantaneously. Which is why it's so important, when you reinvent yourself to do it from a place of abundance, happiness and joy. And knowing that you do not no rush to get to that final destination. In fact, you might not even get there. But you're doing it because it transforms you from the inside out of who you most want to be in the measure of success is not to get to $10 million in net worth. But the commitment and the success in the commitment towards the person that you want to be because the actions and results are simply a reflection of the possibility that you declare when you are creating from your future and not your past. And what I realized is how much I was creating from my past without even realizing it. Because I wasn't looking at my thoughts from a place of observation. I was an autopilot with them. And I hope this is helpful to you. If you are plateauing in any way, whether it's spiritually or personally or in your life or in your business, it's likely because that future self isn't somebody that you yet have a relationship with.
14:49
And it's the imagining, and the visualization that allows us to live in the reality of that moment today. regardless of whether or not we've achieved that possibility. So I can promise you that if you are in a place of considering reinventing yourself, Brooke Castillo actually has a podcast episode on this, so you can check that out. But if you're shying away from this for any reason, I want to encourage you that it's, it's the declaration that changes you, not the achievement of the possibility. And the harder you focus on what you could accomplish, the much more likely
you are to not be surprised when challenges come up. And the much more likely you are to move towards that reality where you're acting from an as if position. And before you know it if you participate in any of Brookes courses, or even just take this opportunity from this podcast episode to challenge yourself in a new way. What you'll find is that you start becoming in a pretty short period of time, the kind of person who has achieved that possibility today. I would love to hear what you think about this episode. It is a little bit of a mine then for sure. And shoot me a message let me know in Instagram, you can just look me up at Laura E. Meyer. And let me know what you think I'll be curious to hear and I'll see you next time on The Next Level leap podcast.
16:27
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The Scale with Joy podcast dives into the mindset and strategies of scaling your company to the million dollar mark and beyond. Each week, we follow the journeys of innovators, disruptors, experts and leaders - sharing behind the scenes stories of their most challenging moments and greatest lessons learned-all while building their multi-million dollar empires.