THE REAL SELF PROJECT "HOW TO STOP FORCING CHANGE AND START LIVING IN ALIGNMENT" (WITHOUT BURNING YOUR LIFE DOWN) | HABITS FOR HUMANS

Hi, and welcome to Habits for Humans, the podcast where we explore the patterns, behaviors, and internal operating systems that shape our lives. If you're working towards a more intentional life. The science is clear. Sustainable change comes from the habits we build, not willpower.

So the future you want is created one small habit at a time. I'm super excited to invite to the podcast today, someone that I have interviewed in the past. When did we interview together? B, probably two or three years ago. Yep. Crazy. So here you are again. And now I'm super excited to invite VI as a host on the Habits for Humans podcast.

So welcome welcome. It's been so fun having you back in my life. Vi we were pretty connected, what, 10 years ago or so. And then have in the past couple of years become reconnected, and it's been so fun. So we're gonna talk today about the real self project, how to stop forcing change and start living in alignment without burning your life down.

So I am dying to talk to you about this because I have done this. But I had to burn my life down. So I'm really interested to hear on how to do that without burning your life down. So we're gonna get into all that good stuff, but first we've got several giveaways from our listeners at the end. So if you like free stuff, stay tuned all the way to the end, and a word from our sponsors.

This episode of Habits for Humans is brought to you by the Phoenix Retreat Center in Costa R. This is my retreat center. We host niche retreats to build a community of travel friends for life. So if you want a safe and easy way to travel solo and so fun as well, come to Costa Rica for your beachfront, reset and accidentally leave with friends for life.

And our second sponsor is the new Earth Center Violet Rain Freedoms Center. It's her there, sorry. Transformational company offering identity-based coaching. Shadow work, manifestation and embodied leadership. We help people stop fixing themselves and start living from alignment, self-trust and clarity.

Stay tuned at the end for a special listener bonus, and when V talks about, stop fixing yourself and start living from alignment. That is truly what you have done. So let me read your bio really quickly. A violet rain goes by. VV is a transformational coach, speaker, and retreat facilitator who helps people reconnect with their real selves and design lives that actually fit woo powerful.

Through identity work, healing and community centered experiences, V creates spaces where people can show up messy. Powerful and fully themselves and V. We've had several experiences together of showing up messy, powerful, and fully ourselves based in Utah. They frequently lead transformational retreats in Costa Rica and beyond.

So let's jump in. What I wanna ask you first is the Real Self Project, just the title, how to Stop Forcing Change and Start Living In a Limit Without Burning Your Life Down. Tell us your story. How did you stumble into living authentically? Ugh right out the gate I would say in high school I was a crazy overachiever.

I did everything, debate theater show, choir, basketball, volleyball. I also worked a job and I was just going. And I was really striving to meet all of these external expectations, the things that I thought everyone outside of me needed me to be doing. And that just. That theme carried through my entire life, into my business, into my relationships and everything I was doing, where I realized so much of my life was performative.

I was showing up and doing the things I thought I needed to do. Okay. I'm an entrepreneur. I need to go to all these networking meetings. I need to have a YouTube channel. Instagram. I needed to have a podcast. I needed to do in these certain ways to then be. Like the type of coach, the type of entrepreneur I needed to be, to then have what I wanted to have.

And I would just experience these growth, like huge explosions of growth. And then I would get myself somewhere that I couldn't sustain because it wasn't based on my true capacity, my true identity, my true passions. So once I had reached the goal. I had no desire to maintain it. And the biggest time I actually did this was in 2017, I decided I was gonna do a fitness competition.

I was gonna lose all of this weight, and I did, I was on stage with the big oily muscles and all of that. And then very quickly, like within a year, I went through a divorce and regained about 40 pounds. And it was because so much of my life was built on. Fakeness on performance, on masking. And it was in that year.

And in that journey, I really did burn down my life, blow everything up. I realized that I was gay and I came outta the closet. And there's so much that could be said about that. But that is what this is founded upon, is this idea that we don't need to fix ourselves. We need to come home to ourselves.

And this journey of self-discovery is really what it's about. Oh man. So powerful. Okay but I have to push on this a little bit. Yeah. So your topic is how to become authentic without blowing up your life. And you're saying, I blow up my life, and that was my experience as well. Like that midlife awakening that we have sometimes causes us to torch the life that we have because of that performative.

Is it possible to do that without blowing it up? It really is. And that's the thing is it's not just a one-time rebirth that we go through. Like even now, I am stepping into different layers and levels of authenticity and I'm not burning my life down. And the key to that is I'm being radically honest with myself.

When I am approaching, once you've burnt your life down and you realize it's because you've been so performative. You start to ask yourself the hard questions. You pause before you say yes to opportunities. It's not just, does this opportunity look fun and shiny? It's being really raw with yourself.

Can I maintain what this opportunity demands? And if I can't, how can I? Work with what I've got, leverage my skills leverage the skills of others to fill in my gaps and weaknesses so that I can take advantage of this opportunity. But it really comes down to radical honesty, but we can't be honest if we don't know who we are.

So that's the self-discovery piece. Can you give us an example of what radically honest looks like now and how it's different from how you used to live? Yeah, I used to think that I had. The ability, and I would for these small stretches of time to just be everything and do everything for everyone, and then I would just be so incredibly exhausted.

So one of the things I'm way more honest about is how much workload I can actually handle based on the different types of workload. So for example, when I work with clients, I've realized that to do my best, I need at least 30 minutes prep. Before I go into those sessions so that I'm centered, I'm calm, I'm reviewing where they're at and what's going on.

I'm just tuning in and getting into like my own little jji place. And then even after working with clients, I need a 30 minute buffer to wind down their energy, to clear them outta my system, take notes, do the things I need to do, make myself some tea, right? And I've just shifted the way I do my schedule so it's not so frantic from thing to thing, because I have found for myself.

That minimizes burnout. Before I would smash my schedule, so full by Thursday or Friday, I'm. I'm hating life. I'm grumpy. I'm not wanting to do things like to-dos are falling off of my list because I'm just too burnt out mentally to do any of it. No, I see. And some of this does play into discovering that I am neurodivergent and that I don't operate, like my executive functioning works different.

So tools and schedules that work for other people don't work for me. I need to be honest with myself and commit to things that I am sure I can do while maintaining my own capacity, my health. Yeah, that makes sense. That's a great example of how to be like rad, radically honest versus performative. Radically honest versus pushing yourself to be this superhuman. I wanna take us to relationships because I have recently. Gone through a big relationship transformation and in a new relationship, and that for me has been the, a really drastic shift for me instead of performing that I'm in a good relationship.

I'm actually being radically honest and it's deeply uncomfortable. 'cause I'm, I haven't built those like neuro pathways yet of choosing to do that. But here's a quick example. I'm in the car yesterday and my new partner, so I've been a coach, built a coaching business, a large coaching business. I know the coaching industry inside and out, right?

And my partner in the car starts giving me unsolicited advice on coaching. And I was like. Okay, inside. This is my cue. This is my Q view of when I am like not being radically honest in my mind. I'm like, just take it. Take the high road, let it go, whatever. When I am telling myself that is me.

Not telling my truth, right? And so I was like, Nope, I'm not gonna do this time. I was like, I don't want actually this feedback. I am like an absolute expert in this and I don't want any of your feedback in this. And he's oh, okay. No problem. And I was like, whew.

And that feels good. Can you give us an example in your life as well of, oh my gosh. I'm hearing those specific examples of what being radically. Honest looks is super helpful. Yeah. I actually recently had a situation like this, and without going into too many unnecessary details, I found out something about someone in my family that was incredibly disappointing and I.

Was so triggered by it. I was so frustrated by it, and I was talking it out with my wife, and I wanted to just be the one talking and venting, but she's jumping in and offering all these perspectives and then I can feel myself. I'm like, I'm tapped out. Actually. You can feel it talking about this anymore.

Ugh. I just, I can't. And so I finally found a break in the conversation and I just said, I appreciate that you're trying to help me work through this, but I'm realizing I'm completely tapped out on this conversation and I need a break. And before I would've bulldozed through needing to prove that I can hang in the conversation, having some sort of there's some sort of weird I don't know, grading system, like I'm gonna get an A or something for staying in the conversation when I don't want it, instead of just being honest.

And it's. Helping my relationship a lot because my wife's, one of her big wounds is feeling not heard or listened to. And so if I can't listen from a genuine place of caring and attention it's. Most kind to her nervous system, if I'm honest about that, so that she's not sitting in this weird space of it feels like you don't really care.

It's it's 'cause I don't actually right now I need a break. Can we talk about this later? So that honestly can change everything. And it's really fun when you get to that place, but you can't get there if you're judging yourself. Yeah. Yeah. Proving that you can take it. That's, I just wrote that down that you said that really hits home to me.

We're trying to prove that we're good enough. We're strong enough that we are, like developed and self-aware enough that we can like, take, like we expect ourselves to be like these Buddhist monks that live in a cave and nothing bothers them. And some reason like if nothing bothers me, then I am, then I get the a.

So I so relate with that. Okay. What advice would you give to someone who is on the fence? Not to someone who's clueless, who's still pretending, but someone who's on the fence. They know that they are living this kind of performative life and they can feel that, whether it's in their relationship, in their career in their family, they're just showing up as a shell of themselves.

What is, what advice would you give to someone who is do I jump the fence and risk blowing up what I have, or do I keep towing the line and stuffing it in a box? What do you say to them? Oh, it's such a situation by situation basis because there is some real need at times to have intention with how you step into being authentic.

Because you can impact your finances, you can impact your relationship, your stability of your home, your kids' lives, all of those things. But what I would say is that in order to actually tape take that leap, there is a very. Essential process of it's to really step in and be authentic. You're gonna have to grieve what the masking gave you. Oh, wow. When I stepped into my authenticity, I lost relationships. And the truth that helped me through all of that, that I would like every listener to hold onto. Is that if a relationship or a job or a career requires a false faked force version of you, it wasn't actually that real to begin with.

And when I stepped into my honesty and saw certain relationships fall away, it was gut wrenching. It was very sad for me. And there was this moment of wait, I don't wanna lose that. When you have to choose between like performing and authenticity, it's once you have that much awareness around it, how do you choose fakeness?

It's like you can't, your whole being is like allergic to that. Once you're aware that's what you're doing, and so you will start to find yourself, it's like a self-propelled journey. The more you're honest with yourself, the more you find yourself just. Saying the things you used to be so terrified of, become much easier to own and admit because the cost becomes too high of the fake life.

It's just too high, and the gifts and the joy and the vibrance that you get from authenticity, it's that's really living. You realize before that whoa, what was I actually doing? I was just acting out conditioning. I was just being how I thought everyone around me wanted and needed me to be. And honestly that quote that we've probably all heard many times, it's better to be rejected for who you are than to be accepted for who you not.

You're not. I find that to be the truth. Wow. I've actually never heard that before. Will you say that one more time for us? Oh, yeah. It's better to be rejected for who you are than to be accepted for who you're not. Wow. That's powerful. So what we're talking about really is performing versus authenticity.

And will you go back to this? I, you said something to be authentic, you have to grieve what the masking gave you. So let's talk about, what masking did you need to grieve? Or what did the masking give you specifically, like in your relationship or in your career? You say concreteness here.

Masking gave me the delusion that I was invincible gave me recognition, being seen as having it all put together, being so wise, being seen as righteous even being seen as kind. Because to be truly authentic, you get to risk being seen as mean because so much of the world has conditioned us that honesty is mean and it's cruel instead of like honesty is generous and loving, and that's part of the deconditioning work you have to do to start actually designing your life around your authenticity is letting go of those stories and those projections and those fears that are.

Don't actually hold up. When you're living life, the results of a fake life are burning it down. It eventually cracks, the mask cracks, and it comes falling down and crashing down. And when it does, there's a lot of disappointed people because you made them think that you could do something or be something that you never really could.

I wanna pick up that phrase like the mask will crack, it will fall down. I see people able to hold up the mask their entire lives, or they think they are right there. And I'm thinking of one person specifically. She is not happy. She is not happy. That kind of thing. And if anything, it's.

I don't know. The older you get you look at people who have lived their life authentically and had the courage to sometimes blow it up, versus people who hold the mask up their entire life. And, I don't know. Eventually I think the mask wants to crack. We wanna be more exposed, yeah. I'm going through a transition in parenting right now. That's been tricky. Grown adult kids and I recently went through a divorce. I have a new partner and the grown kids who probably will not be listening to my podcast, but if they are, that's beautiful as well. Struggle with I feel like.

They want me or maybe this is my lens. I want to be seen to them, I don't know, as being mom and only mom forever, like in that role of I'm a good mom and I'm self-sacrificing and I'll always be here for you no matter what. And all of those things are wonderful, but also I'm an adult and the way I live or want to live oftentimes doesn't fit into that really tight.

Mom role, and so I am, I'm working on grieving what that masking gave me, that masking gave me the thought of, oh, I'm a good mom. I'm connected to my kids. I'm close to my kids. Because me being me. Involves me going to Costa Rica a lot and my grown kids sometimes really struggle with that.

And me being me involves me dating someone new that upsets them. And that's, it's tricky to say like, where's the balance between pretending that I'm the same, that I didn't change, and being like, Hey kids, your mama is living a fun life, kind of thing. So I'm struggling with that balance there and easing.

Easing into it and not trying to disrupt the relationship so much. I don't know anything. Have you got anything for me on that one so much? We have a society, especially women, have been conditioned to be incredibly codependent. Where other people's emotions are our responsibility and there's something that we need to somehow adjust and edit and alter ourselves to be able to keep them feeling comfortable.

So my invitation would be to look at. What authenticity gives to the people around you. So for example if you're listening to this I'll describe how I used to look and how I look now. And if you're watching it, obviously you can see me, but I was born and raised a long hair, long curly haired, Nancy, that was my name, Nancy Ray.

And a lot of my family was very attached to that identity. And the way that I showed up as a. Very feminine expressing dress, wearing makeup, wearing woman. And as I have stepped more and more into my authenticity and how I'm living my life from the inside out, how do I feel in what I'm wearing versus how am I perceived externally?

A lot of that shifted, so I have no hair short. Hair now with a side shave got tattoos. I'm very masculine presenting. I identify as non-binary. So my request is they them pronouns and all of this is incredibly alarming and honestly dysregulating to my family to be around and to witness. But the truth is there's a huge gift inside of me just showing up and saying, I am worthy of.

Honesty, I am worthy of authenticity. It liberates everyone around me. I have had cousins come to me sharing personal details, things that they're struggling with and going on that they can't be honest to anybody else in the family about. They've gotta act like they have it all together, that they've got it all figured out.

They have to hide their mistakes. And I've had cousins going through really dark times where they're leaving marriages, where they've been, emotionally or physically abused for years, and they're trying to regain their confidence and get back out in the dating world, and they're trying to heal themselves, but they have to hide that process because it's just too messy.

But the truth is, everybody's messy. Everybody is messy and everybody has insecurities and things that they struggle with, and that the denial of that is so incredibly toxic and there's so much shame. And shame is the driver of abusive behavior and of addictive behavior and self-destructive behavior. So as much as it makes people uncomfortable in the short term, the long term gift of I come back to the Gandhi quote my life is my message, the way I make you feel isn't my message.

Your opinion of me isn't my message. My life is my message, and I see Kim here to live vibrantly and to show that you can be happy and fulfilled and in love and sexy, and traveling the world and playful and partying into your. Fifties into your sixties, into your seventies, like your life isn't about the role you play in giving birth and raising a child like you are a full spectrum human.

And honestly, your children need that permission too to be more than just a son or a man or a daughter, or a woman or a wife or a husband. To be the full. Unleashed version of their truest expression at whatever season and stage that is, and it changes, and you're showing them like life changes.

Welcome to Kim 5.0, and in 10 years it'll be Kim 6.0 and I'm always evolving and I give you permission to do the same. And my life is here because your kids are gonna do as you do, not as you say, and you're here eating up life, taking it on, taking yourself on, and just. Like creating the happiest, most joyful, like a well-lived life.

And that's a legacy. Wow. V wow. Chills. I wanna take what you just said and make it into quote and hang on my wall. Okay. What I'm hearing is, it's almost like I'm hearing my mom's voice in my head, my mom is a lovely human she is in a different generation than I am and a different religious upbringing and faith tradition than I am.

But I can hear her voice in my head and her voice is just keep it together. Yes, we are all a messy, but we don't need to advertise our mess. Just keep it together. Keep the facade strong. And what would you say, what would you say to that? Oh, I would just say there's a time and a place.

I would say there's a time and a place. I think that's great advice within certain contexts. For sure. But what happens is we get so good at keeping it together that we lie to ourselves. And we think this relationship is fine. I'm just keeping it together all the way. All the while not realizing like the healthiest best years of our life are draining and leaking out the back as we're just like keeping up this show for everyone and everything else instead of life really is precious.

It really is short and there's a time to, when you're alone or when you're in therapy or with a coach or at a retreat to just lift up the hood and let's be honest, let's be honest about what the mess really is and what's not working. I like to think of it like a, like an injury. We go through life and we get an injury and it's like we're covering it up with our pants or we put a bandage on it.

We just wanna lie and hide it all the while it's getting infected and it's gangrene and eventually, like the whole leg is gonna need to be amputated. And that's when our life gets burned down is when we. Put it off and we lie and we hide and we shove. And then eventually life situations and circumstances come to a climax and it's oh, you're gonna have to have this leg removed now because it's gone on too long in this way.

So that's what I would say time, a time and a place to keep it together. Good. Good analogy. Said. Said. Okay. We are out of time, but thank you so much for being on our show. I'm super excited for you to be hosting. I'm gonna be watching all of yours. If I can have you in my ear a couple times a month, every time you do one of these I wanna have that.

You have an offer or giveaway to our listeners today. Will you talk about that? Yes. What I'm offering is a free consultation. These are 30 minutes, and what we're gonna be looking at is we're gonna be looking at what is no longer working and where are you not being honest with yourself. I do wanna add one little thing.

Like sometimes people are so afraid to be honest with themselves 'cause they're afraid of what they'll see. But the truth is, under every like negative trait you have, or negative feeling you have, or shadowy behavior you have, I. We are far more wonderful than we realize, but we have to be willing to get beneath the shit.

So we're gonna play with getting beneath the shit a little bit in our consult, digging through the shit. So that's vs. Offered. Go dig through the shit with V for half an hour. Juicy. Who doesn't want it? Everybody is gonna be who dig through the shit. All right, I love it. So take advantage of that. Visit divine rebel movement.com.

This will also be in all the show notes, so look for that. And our sponsors also have giveaways. Go to Phoenix Retreat Center, that's Phoenix with an F-E-N-I-X, Fenix, actually spelled in Spanish Fenix retreat center.com. And check out all of our upcoming retreats from birding retreats to mermaid retreats, to relocating from outside the us.

A big topic right now. To lesbian and queer women events come to Costa Rica for your beachfront, reset and accidentally leave with friends for life. And our second sponsor is v's. Company the new Earth Center. Her transfer their transformational company at offering identity based coaching shadow work manifestation.

Embodied leadership. We help people stop fixing themselves and start living from alignment, self-trust, and clarity. And now that makes so much sense, visit divine rebel movement.com and fill out the application to give a free consult. Thanks for joining us v. And thanks to our listeners, this is Habits for Humans.

Remember to check the show notes to get all of your free gifts in the links. And thank you in advance for leaving us at Positive Review. Have a wonderful day.