Identity Shifting: Strip away the old stories and become more of your limitless self

For years, I did all the “identity work” the online world told me to do. Affirmations on sticky notes. Journaling every morning. Repeating new beliefs over and over until they finally stuck. And while some of it worked, it took me years to actually shift at a core level.

The truth? Most mindset work just doesn’t scratch the surface. It helps you feel good in the moment, but the second life throws you a curveball, the old identity comes roaring back. That’s because the subconscious is still holding on to the story.

And here’s what I now know with absolute certainty: if I had the tools I use today, it wouldn’t have taken me years to shift an identity. It would have taken me days.

The tool I’m sharing in this episode is the most powerful identity-shifting method I have ever seen. It doesn’t paste new affirmations on top. It dissolves the story at the root, so you can access the limitless, whole version of you that has always been there.

And if you’re a woman growing an online business, this is the real work. This is what releases the sabotages, clears the blocks, and creates the space for the results you’ve been dreaming of.

Transcript

0:05

Welcome to the Empowered Edupreneur Podcast. My name is Michelle Smit, and I'm an ex-teacher turned online business coach for Edupreneurs the owner of Digiteach and a six-figure entrepreneur. I am in love with empowering educators just like you to create freedom filled online businesses and lives they love. If you are looking to uplevel your skills, your finances, your mindset, and change the trajectory of your life as an educator in business, then you are in the right place. Think of this podcast as your weekly dose of business and mindset development to help unlock the infinite potential within you. To play bigger with your life and go after your dreams. We are going to have so much fun together. So thank you so much for pushing play today. Now let's dive in. Hello. Hello. So good to have you here with me today. As always, I have a very juicy, juicy episode for you today. So I want to ask you this question. Have you ever felt like no matter how much strategy you learn, no matter how many affirmations you repeat, no matter how many vision boards you create, that you just keep hitting the same ceiling in your business? The same sort of result. Now you want more, you want that bigger version of you to be there pulling you up. You want to become that person, but every time you try to step into her. It's like you snap back to who you've always been. I can totally relate to this and it's like no amount of affirmations and mantras can shift it. So that's what I want to talk about today is really identity shifting. And online, there's just so much talk about identity work and it typically goes like this. And I spoke about it like this as well previously because this is kind of how I viewed it. But my perspective has really changed, and I'm going to share that perspective with you in this episode and I think it's going to be revolutionary. So typically when people talk about identity work, it's like we need to take on a new identity, we need to take on new beliefs and paste them on top of ours and then repeat them enough times until they eventually stick. Now, I used to buy into this too, and I spent years of my life trying to shift my identity and it did work. I did shift my identity, but it took me maybe two to three years, which was a very long period of time to shift. I would take affirmations. I would say them over and over. I'd write them down, I'd repeat them. I did mantras. I did a lot of immersion type stuff where I put myself in places with people who I wanted to become more like. And all of that was really, really valuable. And it worked for me, but it just took a while. But here's the truth that I think most people don't admit is that that is really the slow path to identity shifting. And when life gets stressful, you will revert back to your core identity, that version of you beforehand. So it's not fully solid. So let me give you an example. Imagine you identify as someone who's bad with money. Deep down at your core, you believe that this is just who you are. So you decide that you're going to rewire that by repeating affirmations like, I'm good at money, I'm abundant, I'm wealthy. And you say it every day. You stick it on your mirror and you do a bunch of work around it, conscious work around it. And then maybe after a few years. It starts to shift for you and you start to identify as someone who is good with money, but then one day something stressful happens, maybe a big unexpected bill comes through or something happens money-wise and instantly you feel yourself shrinking back into that old story of, oh, I'm terrible with money. And that shame cycle that might come with that. And that's the problem with pasting new beliefs over old ones. So the subconscious rules the show. Those old stories don't dissolve just because we've repeated something new. They're still there. They're just buried under layers of affirmations waiting for the crack for them to come out again. And this really matters as a woman in business, because your identity plays such a vital role in the success and the results you create in your business. If you wanted to say, for example, go from 10 K months to 50 K months, that's going to require an identity shift because the version of you who made $10,000 a month is not the same version of you who is at $50,000 a month. And you don't get there by just trying harder and saying more affirmations. You actually get there by shifting who you are at your core, at a subconscious level. Now the tricky part is that most of this lives below your conscious awareness, so you're not even aware of most of the stories that are running the show. So much of our identity, we're not even aware of that we have these identities and these beliefs 'cause they are just so deeply rooted in our subconscious mind, which is why you can do all the mindset work in the world, but if the identity underneath hasn't shifted or dissolved. You'll keep hitting the same ceiling over and over. You'll keep hitting the same results. You'll keep hitting those 10 K months. No matter what you do, you'll just keep hitting those 10 K months. And this is something I have experienced myself in my own business. And so this is also why I've fallen so deeply in love with mind shifting. Which is this modality that I now use with my clients because instead of layering on more affirmations and helping you become someone else, it helps you dissolve your old identity at the root level. We don't make you become someone else. We don't paste new beliefs on top. We strip away the stories that were never yours to begin with, so they dissolve. Now, how powerful is that? And here's how I see it now. This is my belief system. At your core, you are already whole, you are limitless, you are enough. The identities you've picked up over your life aren't actually who you are. They are just stories that you latched onto and believed usually from your upbringing and your conditioning, your past experiences. Maybe a parent told you that you were shy. Maybe a teacher said that you were bad at maths. Maybe you grew up hearing that money doesn't grow on trees and it's hard to make money, and those things stick. And before you know it, you've built an entire identity around them. But those stories are cages. They limit you. They keep you from accessing your true limitless self. They become the walls you keep bumping into in business, these invisible ceilings that you can't seem to push past, and they stop you from raising your prices, from going live on Instagram, from putting your offers boldly out into the world from owning your power, stop you from showing up confidently. And the truth is, from a spiritual perspective. Your soul, our souls have always been limitless. We are whole. Inherently the self is whole. Our egos is what cages us in. It's those identities. It's those stories that we have adopted to become who we are. And those cages are often built in childhood, reinforced over time, and carried straight into adulthood and right into your business, changing your results completely. So think about it. If you hold the identity of, I'm a shy person, how do you show up online? You probably avoid video. You probably never want to go to networking events. You likely hide behind perfectionism or procrastination or all sorts of things. And so that will totally shift the results in your business. But when we use mind shifting, we don't then try paste. Okay. I'm confident on top of, I'm shy. That's not going to work because the I'm shy is so deeply rooted that pasting I'm confident on top isn't going to change the I am shy identity. So what we do is we bring the old identity to the surface. We acknowledge it. We bring it from the subconscious mind into the conscious mind. And by doing that, it already reduces the resistance just by bringing it from the subconscious into the conscious. And then I help you step into the version of you who already exists without that story, the version of you who is not a shy person, and you come up with that version of you. When you're not a shy version. Who are you? And you start accessing that part of your brain, that part of who you are. That is not a shy person and you start accessing her. And the wild thing is once you access that part of you, you start to experience it. And that's the whole thing about this mind shifting is it's really going into feelings and the subconscious and feeling the emotions around it. So once you start accessing that part of you, you'll start accessing the feelings and the emotions. And that version of you and become very real in your body. And it starts to become who you are almost. So what we're doing is we're dissolving the I am shy identity and we're helping you access the other part of you when you're not shy. And that's likely going to be a more confident version of you. And that's you who you are at your core. You just developed a story that you are shy and you've latched onto it, and it's just determined how you show up in the world. But when you dissolve that story, it can let you really play in that limitless field of I am limitless. I am whole. I can do whatever I want. And it's so, so, so powerful. And when you do that, you're going to show up differently in your business. So suddenly going live isn't going to feel terrifying. Reaching out to collaborate with someone is going to feel exciting. You're going to feel confident going and reaching out to people. You're going to feel confident and like connecting with people. And selling maybe is going to feel less terrifying. Lots of things will happen that you will then be able to do in your business that's going to help you create the results that you want. Because you have officially cleared the old identity and you're living as who you are, limitless and whole from that perspective. Now, how transformative is that? Do you see how life changing it is when you stop identifying with these stories, these old stories. And you dissolve them and you shift by dissolving them, you naturally shift into this other version of you. So I am just like mind blown by it. I just think it's so powerful. I had a coaching session yesterday with the client where we went deep into identity shifting and it was around selling and how scary selling is. And she identified as a fearful person. And when I went into this, we completely shifted that identity. She no longer identified it as a fearfull person and we shifted it at the root. And then today I got a message and she was like. I'm actually super excited to sell my program now. And that's within 24 hours. And that was a one hour session and she was really stuck. She was unable to take action in her business. So do you see how massive that is? And no amount of strategy can fix that. This is subconscious work, and that's why I'm so passionate about moving into the subconscious work world because I see how life changing it is. And this is why I no longer get excited about like surface level mindset hacks. That was the first version of me in my business and it worked for a while, and now it's like, no, I'm over it. I'm going deeper now. I'm going deeper with myself. I'm going deeper with my clients. And it's not like those things that I shared are useless. They're definitely great. Everything I shared, I still believe in, but they aren't going to fix the root problem. If there are really core identities and beliefs that are really tripping you up, they're not going to fix that. And you're going to create the same results regardless. And so it's all about shifting your self-concept. And your self-concept is what really determines the results you create in your business because your self-concept determines your actions and your actions will determine your results. if you are making, say, $10,000 a month right now and you want to move to $50,000 a month. It's not a strategy issue at this point. Of course, there's a strategy and maybe the business model needs to shift, obviously. But that's easy. The hard part is the identity, the version of you who lives at 50,000 has different beliefs about money, has different beliefs about selling, has different beliefs about receiving and her worth and her prices and what she's willing to stand for and her boundaries and all of that. And if you're not shifting at that identity level, then you can keep trying every strategy under the sun. It's not going to take you where you want to go. So this work that I'm doing is so powerful because it's fast. Where old identity work would take me years. Mind shifting collapses that time. So you can dissolve an identity in a single session. And when you do, your energy changes instantly and you start showing up differently without even forcing it. It is an energy shift that happens because you're accessing a new version of like a new part of yourself. And it's not a different part of yourself. It's not someone who you're not, it's just a part of yourself you haven't yet accessed.'cause we are limitless, remember? And so when we can dissolve that root identity, we can then access that other version of ourself that is within us. And this is just powerful, powerful work. And I want you to sit with this just for a moment and realize that every problem you're experiencing your business right now, maybe it's a struggle to be visible. Maybe it's the fear of raising your prices. Maybe it's the resistance to selling. It's a problem you're experiencing as a problem. It's a block and it's limiting you. And what's happening there is that there is an identity or a belief that is deeply subconscious that you may be not even conscious of. That's why it's in the subconscious, is likely creating that problem for you. And when you dissolve it at the root, you will dissolve the problems that come with it. So if you no longer identify as a fearful person, then the problems that you experience around having that identity will dissolve naturally.'cause you just don't identify with it anymore and it will just no longer be a part of the story you're living and then it shifts. And what if I could tell you that you could dissolve a story today. What if you could step into that version of you who's always been there. That limitless whole version of you that isn't part of the cage or the story. That version of you who is confident, who trusts herself with money, who sells with ease, who receives without guilt, who already is whole. And what if I told you that you could dissolve a really deep story that's holding you back today. What if you could step into the version of you who's always been there? That whole limitless version of you, that version of you who is confident, who trusts herself with money, who sells with ease, who receives without guilt. Because she exists. She is you. She has always been you. It's just through the conditioning we have adopted these stories that have told us otherwise, and it's often not even our own story. It's projections from our parents, from teachers, from family, from everyone around you who's projecting their own stories and their own beliefs onto you at a young age. And you've adopted them to be yours, but they aren't yours, and that you get to put them down. You don't need to carry those beliefs. And the powerful thing is, there are ways in which you can dissolve them and that is why I'm so excited about mind shifting and the work that I'm doing is because it changes everything. It's really deep work and it dissolves stories that have kept you trapped for maybe your whole life, and that is incredible. So my invitation for you today is to really reflect what story have you been living in that is no longer serving you? Remember, it's not who you are. You are limitless and whole. Whatever you're identifying with is a story that you have just clung to. That you now think is you, but that is not you. Okay? And you can allow yourself to imagine what life and business would look like without that story. So just allow yourself to imagine that. What if you didn't identify with that story? What would happen if you dissolve that story? What would you look like? How would you sharpen your business? What other results you would create? And I'm telling you, once you do this work you can never see yourself in the same way again. And it's really, really, really amazing. So if you're listening to this and you're like, yes, I need this. I'm ready to go beyond the strategy. And I'm ready to rewire my subconscious, I'm ready to dissolve blocks that have been blocking me and limiting me, and making me sabotage and repeat patterns, I'm ready to go there. And I'm ready to grow my business from the inside out. Then reach out to me and send me the word Mindshift and I'll connect with you. And we can see how we can work together. I hope you love this episode and it shook up something within you, and I can't wait to chat to you again next week. Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. If you love what you heard today, then be sure to share it with me by leaving a five star review so I can continue delivering these goodies. If you aren't already following me on social media, then come tune into some daily inspiration on Instagram by following at Digit Teach or visiting my website@digiteach.biz. I appreciate you so much, and I can't wait to connect with you in the next episode. In the meantime, go create a business and life you love.