The art of creating a new identity
4 clues and a call for your story
Welcome to another edition of It’s Not Too Late - weekly waymarkers to keep you caring about what matters most. I'm a best-selling author of 9 books including Why Bother? a writing coach who also leads amazing writing retreats, a devoted climate optimist & novelist in training.
This week I want to explore with you how we build a new identity.
I wrote in my post a while back:
“To stay with a desire, we must build a new identity. This takes far more time than we think it will. Are you allowing enough time to become the person who can embody this dream? Be patient while you build a new identity.”
I’ve been wondering: how do we create new identities, fresh bold stories that help us believe we can be the people who do the things we want to do?
I have four clues I’ve garnered over the years and then hopefully, your stories to help us.
Clue #1: pay attention to glimmers and epiphanies.
I coached Shannon Watts on the first draft of the book she’s currently writing and I had her on my podcast to talk about the process of leaving her identity as the founder of Moms Demand Action. She said:
“I just had sort of a little bit of an epiphany talking to you, which is I'm a writer. I've never thought of myself as that before. I’ve thought that I'm a decent writer, I thought I am writing a book, I thought I am writing on substack. But when we were talking, it made me think I'm a writer.”
It’s so so easy to overlook these moments when we get chills, when we see ourselves in a new way, to dismiss them with “That’s not me,” why bother, or “Who do I think I’m kidding?”
Instead, entertain these flashes, let them lead you forward wobbly step by wobbly step. What if they are singing the new you into being?
Clue #2: Don’t go it alone.
When I moved to Colorado 8+ years ago, I joined a neighborhood running /walking group as a walker. But I ended up running the first night out. Jabe, who organized the group, looked at me in her piercing way afterward and said, “You are a runner.”
I squinted at her, probably looking behind me. Do you have me confused with someone else? But saw me as a runner. Something clicked for me, being seen by Jabe and then over time, by the running group. I became a runner, and holding that identity has helped me see myself in a whole new way — stronger, more resilient, fiercer.
(You should know I believed I could never run because of a skiing accident in my 20s. So this was an extra big identity shift for me.)
Who sees you? Who tells you what is possible? Do you let them?
Clue #3: Let identities shift.
For the first 15 years or more of my writing career, I easily thought of myself as a writer which was awesome but eventually, that identity became limiting because I associated being a writer with being chosen. Pick me. Pick me Oprah! Pick me for that big speaking gig! Pick me, publisher! It became disempowering and depressing.
A big identity shift happened when I declared to my friend Marianne (on one of my magical writing retreats) that I was going to start to pick myself. I began that very day to build a new identity as a business owner who stopped waiting to be chosen and instead created a sustainable business that supported me. It was a giant shift for my well-being and my bank account. I still think of myself as a writer but with a different slant.
Is there a way of holding an identity that is disempowering and needs updating? I had a retreat participant a few years ago who couldn’t call herself a writer because she didn’t have a Ph.D. and everybody in her family but she did and that made them real writers. Shedding that story was empowering for her.
Clue #4: Banish your ghosts. With love. Or not.
Perhaps taking on a new identity means surpassing what your father, your sister, your 7th-grade art teacher, or your ex-partner said you were capable of. Or surpassing what someone else in your family or past had access to or was allowed to pursue, to own.
It can feel like a betrayal. Why am I allowed _____ and they weren’t? We can feel uneasy, exposed, undefended. Like the other shoe is going to drop, or be thrown at us.
Try naming who is haunting you. Maybe it was something specific they said or did, or maybe it’s a general sense of “don’t be a tall poppy.” Write it down briefly.
If it feels okay, wish these people the freedom to pursue their desires and if they are dead, feel your sorrow that this was denied to them or by them.
Then ask yourself, “What freedom do I have now to try that nobody can take from me?”
We need your story
Have you experienced an aha like Shannon’s that helped you start a new identity? Did a community or coach or teacher help you? Or did you experience a shift from one way of thinking about yourself to another that was empowering like mine from writer to business owner? Or what has helped you let go of past ghosts? Or maybe another clue that I didn’t think of
If you would consider sharing your story that would be so awesome. Only if you feel comfortable. Let’s create a sweet well of wisdom to encourage other people to see themselves as someone who can create what they most want.
Thank you!
Love,
Jen
I love this!
I recently learned about the idea of "identity retirement" when you want to move onto a different phase of your career as a creator or business owner.
This feels like the next step!
Thank you for this beautiful article, and the invitation to share a story. For me, my most dramatic identity shift was a full reclamation of motherhood. My husband and I lost our first (and at the time, only) daughter when she was about two years old. It was a long and difficult road, but we eventually had two more daughters -- each a unique miracle unto themselves. After my youngest survived a cardiac arrest when she was two, and she was subsequently diagnosed with an impossibly rare genetic condition, we finally had an answer as to what happened to our first daughter. And for some reason, being able to lay that mystery to rest was what it took for me to change my identity from "I am a mother who lost a child" to "I am the mother of THREE daughters."