Brenda Winkle 00:00:01 Welcome to your yes filled life. I'm Brenda Winkle, energetic leadership guide, psychic, medium and somatic coach for ambitious leaders who know their gifts are real and who want to stand fully in them. Here you'll learn how to trust your intuition, embody your vision, and step into the freedom you've been creating, all without chasing more certifications or carrying stuff that does not belong to you. Every week, I'll share powerful practices and conversations with thought leaders and changemakers that help you transform your vision into embodied confidence. Claim your gifts without apology, and lead with both clarity and freedom. Because your gifts aren't cute. They are powerful. They're real, and they're needed. Start today by downloading my free energy audit at Brenda Winkle. Com for audit. It's the exact tool I use to track what's fueling me and what's draining me. It will help you discern between that hit of achievement and true joy, so that you can lead with more clarity and impact. This is your space to stop proving, start embodying and live fully in your gifts.
Brenda Winkle 00:01:16 Welcome to your yes filled life. Hello and welcome to your yes filled life. I'm your host, Brenda Winkle. Today on the podcast, we're going to be talking about identity lag when your life moves faster than your nervous system. And this episode is going to name the thing that you have probably been blaming yourself for and is going to help release the pressure to fix it. So if you have ever felt like you should be clearer by now, or you should be at a different place by now, this is for you. Now, a couple of episodes ago, I realized that my sound was off. So I'm just going to take a moment right now and confirm. Okay, I did need to make a shift. All right. I am trying really hard not to edit the podcast because I think it comes through differently when I just do it in a flow. This is just something I'm playing with. So thank you for giving me the grace to do that. So let's talk about what I mean by identity lag.
Brenda Winkle 00:02:28 Identity lag is what happens when you have consciously made the choice to make a change, to do things differently, to show up in a new way. And you still find yourself in old patterns. They might be old emotional patterns, they might be behavioral patterns. And this can happen literally in any area of our lives. And in the last episode, if you haven't listened yet. Invitation to go. Listen, I was telling you the story about how I knew that taking on the role as a small church choir director was the right thing, and that I had done a very careful job of choosing wisely the people that I would be working with to make sure that the vision was aligned, the people were aligned, the ethos was aligned with me. And yet when it came to actually doing the work and showing up for the first rehearsal, I was in a two day tailspin because there was a little bit of identity lag. This can happen with any change. Like let's say you are trying to parent differently and you're making the choice to do things in a different way, but you keep going back to old patterns.
Brenda Winkle 00:03:44 It doesn't mean all is lost. It doesn't mean you're not doing it the right way. It does mean there is an identity lag. The same thing can happen when you try to make a change in your finances. So let's say you've decided that you're going to track finances in a new in a new year because you have read The Financial Feminist by Tori Dunlap, like my book club and me read in November, by the way. Highly, highly recommend that book. And I have been implementing the changes that Torrie suggests in her book, and I find myself in a little identity lag in a couple of places. It doesn't mean I'm not doing good work, it doesn't mean I'm not moving forward, but it means my identity is catching up to what my consciousness has said. My identity wanted to be my body. My nervous system is still a little bit stuck in the old way. So concrete everyday signs that this might be going on for you is decisions feel harder or heavier than they should. You know it's not that big a deal, but yet you can't make decisions or you know that you have clarity on this thing and yet you can't make a decision.
Brenda Winkle 00:04:55 Another sign might be, you know, the next step, but you cannot move. You can't take it. You know what it is. You have everything ready to do it, and yet you don't take it. An example of this would be, let's say you're going to decide to write your goals down every day, just like I taught the members of the spiritual CEO membership to do. And you find yourself knowing you should, but you don't. You don't put it in your calendar to remind yourself. You just don't do it and then you beat yourself up for it. Another concrete everyday sign might be you keep revisiting the same choice every day. You come back to the same thing that you're wrestling with, and you go through all the pros and cons, and yet you still don't make a decision. Or another sign might be. You delay the things that really matter to you. So in this case, you know that you want something to shift or something to change. Maybe it's related to your health, and you know that you want to put more emphasis on movement, getting enough protein and prioritizing vegetables, and yet you just don't sit down to make a meal plan.
Brenda Winkle 00:06:07 You keep doing the things the way that you've always done them. This is a really important distinction that I'm going to make here. This is not procrastination. This is not fear. This is not lack of confidence. It's not even self-sabotage. It's identity lag. So this is why high capacity experience this more. Did I say that right? Why high capacity people experience this more? It's because you hold more responsibility. In general, you have a lot of different things that you're doing in your life, whether it's managing family, friend relationships, social engagements, career. Maybe you run a business. Maybe you have volunteer. Things you hold more. You. You're also really subject to this because your choices have real consequences. This is not like, am I going to go to coffee on Tuesday or Thursday like some people enjoy? And by the way, there's no there's no shade being thrown at that. It's just that's not you. I know that's not you because you're drawn to this podcast and I know you know what I'm talking about.
Brenda Winkle 00:07:16 There are people whose biggest choice that they make every week is which day they're going to go for coffee and with whom, or are they going to go sing karaoke on Friday or Saturday? There's nothing wrong with that being the biggest choice that you have to make in a week, but I'm guessing that's not where your head is. And that's what I mean when I say your choices have real consequences. Things that you're going to have to live with, your family is going to have to live with your team, or your partners are going to have to live with. And the other reason that this shows up more for high capacity people like you is your nervous system is tracking more variables. So there's something really key here that would just be the overarching thing that I want you to know. Your nervous system is trying to protect who you've built and what you've built while you're stepping into what's next, which is what makes this very different from self-sabotage, procrastination, fear, or lack of confidence. It's because you've already built something that is meaningful and aligned for you.
Brenda Winkle 00:08:20 And now your body, your nervous system, is trying to protect it. So here's the reframe that can change everything. And we talked in a couple of episodes about the spotlight. So if your spotlight is going outward, then you're really thinking about the impact that your work has, that your choices have. And it feels different Then if the spotlight is turned inward on you, where all you're thinking about is, what will they think about me? What will happen to me? It's all about me, me, me. When we shift that spotlight out, we have a different way to look at things. So we're going to shift the meaning from I'm stuck, which is maybe what you're feeling, or maybe you're feeling not stuck. Maybe you're feeling stagnated or just slowed down. We're going to shift that to I'm integrating I'm integrating this identity lag. It does take time and we want to be patient. The other thing is I would like to invite you to create a shift around needing clarity. I don't think you actually need clarity.
Brenda Winkle 00:09:29 In fact, I hear that all the time. I hear it from the people that I interviewed last year. I did some interviews around spiritual entrepreneurs and empathic entrepreneurs just to find out what they need. And 100% of people said that they needed clarity. But in the conversation, I found that wasn't actually true. They had clarity. What they needed was safety. They needed nervous system safety. They needed to feel safe enough to do the things that they want to do. And my guess is that's also true for you. So we are going to make a shift here. We're shifting I'm stuck to I'm integrating and we're going to shift I need clarity to I need safety. Just feels better. It's a little bit lighter in the system. It's less judgmental. And we can all use with a little bit less judgment directed toward ourselves especially. And then the spotlight is going to shift as well, from self-monitoring to service contribution and leadership. And when we can make that shift, we'll start to find ourselves asking different questions.
Brenda Winkle 00:10:42 And when we can ask ourselves different questions, we're going to get different answers. So let me give you an example. There was a day last week that I was doing some some CEO work inside the business, and I was making decisions around the, around the long term, and I decided that I would set a timer on my phone and allow myself to meditate for five minutes before I really got into the work session. And as I was meditating, I realized that I was coming at the upcoming work session from a lens of what should I do right now for my clients and my business? Which is a perfectly good question, but it's also about like me, what should I do right now? So as I laid there and meditated, I could feel things begin to shift internally. And by the time my meditation ended, my question had shifted to what is it my business and my clients most need? That question completely changed the rest of my day and the rest of my decisions, because the answers to those two questions were very, very different.
Brenda Winkle 00:11:56 When I tuned in to what is it that my clients and my business need for me, all of a sudden I was thinking more broadly. I was thinking more long term, more sustainable, and the answers that I got felt really nourishing and surprisingly simple. So when you can shift that spotlight from self-monitoring into service, contribution and leadership, ooh, something unlocks there. It's pretty magical. And I've seen this happen with my clients, too. I had one client who built a 50,000 follower account on TikTok in about three months, And she did it with one thing in mind. She wanted to be of service. She just wanted to help people. And when we take ourselves out of the equation and we offer to serve in a really clean way, the universe responds and so do other people. When our spotlight's on ourselves and we're worried about me, or what should I do? It collapses and compresses the energy just a little bit. But when we can focus on service contribution and leadership, it expands. There's an important distinction here, though.
Brenda Winkle 00:13:15 This is not coming at any type of service leadership, stewardship, contribution from a a martyr perspective. We are not serving at the expense of ourselves. We are not serving to a place of depletion. We are making sure that we're filled up, nourished, fulfilled, resourced and then we can contribute. So I hope that makes sense. So there are a few ways that you can get support on this. One way is really present for me right now and it's called the elixir. This is 14 on demand tools that I have used over the past 18 years, probably even longer, but at least 18 years when I went through a really difficult divorce, lived in a domestic violence shelter for a period of time, and rebuilt my life with two suitcases in $400 in 2008. I was relying on regulating myself emotionally because I knew that I wouldn't make clean, clear decisions if I was in a dysregulated state, so I would allow myself to feel the emotions that I was feeling. And boy, let me tell you, there were a lot of emotions.
Brenda Winkle 00:14:39 But even then, without any training or any expertise into nervous systems, emotional regulation or even leadership, I intuitively knew it was essential for me to be regulated, to make good decisions. And so I've been using these tools for a minimum of 18 years. I think I probably would say I use them longer, but I, I can't really remember. There were several years it sort of disappeared right before that divorce, where I don't have access to them in my memory in certain ways, which is, one of the gifts of PTSD. So all that's to say, the elixir is there for you and it's moment to moment regulation there on demand. There's no need to set aside a time in your schedule for a call. It literally will work in your schedule. I designed it that way so that you can log in from your car, from your office, from your bathroom. And in 3 to 6 minutes, you can shift your emotional state and get regulated. Now, there is no live support in the elixir, which is why it's a $77 one time investment.
Brenda Winkle 00:15:46 So it's lifetime access, meaning lifetime of the offer, which I have no plans to eliminate the offer because it's solid, but $77 get you lifetime access to this. And I promise you, your life will change the minute that you become self responsible for your own emotional well-being and the moment that you decide you're going to prioritize emotional regulation, it changes in so many ways because you stop being a victim, you start taking responsibility. And that feels like empowerment. That feels like you're claiming your own power, stepping back into your own power. I'm telling you, everything changes the moment that you decide to regulate your emotions. So the other option for you is the retreat, the intuitive leadership retreat. Excuse me, not leadership. Intuitive leader retreat. That is March 3rd through five, 2026, in Lincoln City, Oregon. We're going to gather in a very small cohort. There's ten people max. We have seven spots remaining. So come join us at that retreat and we're going to be doing in-person work. We're going to be working on identity, child parts, protector parts, and your greater vision.
Brenda Winkle 00:17:05 You're going to leave this retreat, closing the gap on your identity, knowing exactly what's next for you, and building community in person with connections. People that are seekers just like you. I'm going to put the links for everything in the show notes so you can grab them there. Be sure you go take a look. The thing I really want you to hear is. this phase, this identity lag phase, the the the dirty diaper phase. As my mentor Tiffany Carter calls it, it doesn't mean stop. It doesn't mean you should quit. It doesn't mean it's not working. It just means we need to slow down and tend to our bodies, to our nervous system, and work with the body and the nervous system and embodiment to allow that identity to catch up. Thank you so much for being here today. If this was supportive for you, would you please share it with somebody that you care about? And as always, if you could please leave the podcast, your rating and review wherever you're listening, and especially on Apple Podcasts.
Brenda Winkle 00:18:16 That would just mean so much. Thanks for being here. Bye for now.
