EP126 Why “Just Be Yourself” Doesn’t Work for High-Achieving Women

Most high-achieving women don’t lack confidence. Not at all. 

They purely lack the right version of themselves in charge. That’s it.

If you’ve ever found yourself thinking:

• “I know I’m capable… so why the hell do I doubt myself?”
• “Why do I feel confident in some rooms but invisible in others?”
• “Why does ‘just be yourself’ suddenly feel like terrible advice?”

This episode is for you.

In this conversation, I talk about why the version of you that helped you succeed, cope, and be “good” might now be the very thing holding you back… and how reinvention begins when a different internal leader steps forward.

This is not about fixing yourself. It’s about identity leadership.

✨ In this episode, we go through:

• Why “just be yourself” is often unhelpful advice for high-achieving women
• How identity switching happens under pressure (without you realising)
• Why confidence doesn’t disappear (it just belongs to a different version of you)
• The psychology of enclothed cognition and how identity cues shape behaviour
• How over-responsibility, people-pleasing, and proving energy quietly erode self-trust
• Why reinvention requires a new internal boss, not more self-work
• The simple question that helps you choose the right version of you in the moments that matter

👑 This episode is for you if:

• Your life looks great on paper, but something feels misaligned
• You’re tired of overthinking, over-performing, or second-guessing yourself
• You’ve outgrown old roles but haven’t quite stepped into the next one yet
• You want to lead yourself with more certainty, presence, and ease
• You’re done with surface-level confidence advice and want something deeper

A question to sit with after listening:

Which version of you has been leading lately… and which one are you ready to bring forward?

This episode is part of The Reinvention Era… where we don’t fix women (you’re not broken), we help them lead themselves differently.

If this landed, share it with a woman who’s quietly outgrown who she had to be.

👑

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Transcript

Sarah Elizabeth  00:00

Hola hola, hola and welcome. Welcome. Welcome to the reinvention era podcast where we support high achieving female leaders to reinvent your internal reality in order to create a life that finally, finally fits who you are now, which is a goddamn queen. By the way, I'm Sarah Elizabeth, Queen of reinvention, or identity strategist, if you will. And this week, we're going to be looking at a spin on this strategy. And an age old piece of advice that I think most of us have been given at some point, like a sentence we've all heard. You've probably said it to someone else. I know I have, and you've definitely said it to yourself. And that advice is, just be yourself. Just be yourself. Love. And you know what it sounds, supportive, doesn't it like sort of all warm and lovely and encouraging, right? Only, I don't know, for a lot of high achieving women just be yourself, is actually the reason you feel stuck, even if you're not really, but you feel it. You know you're not broken, you know you're not lazy by any fucking means, but you just feel stuck with where you are in life, because that version of you that you keep being told to air quotes just be was Built for survival, not expansion, not growth, not becoming. And no one ever told you that bit. Did they So picture this right? You're sitting in the car, touching up your lippy before walking into something big, something that matters. It might be a meeting, a conversation, an event, just somewhere where you know you should speak up, and it's just sitting there waiting to go in, you're starting to notice your body feels a bit tight. Your chest does that subtle clench thing your brain suddenly gives you like this greatest hits album of doubt and uncertainty, and you think to yourself, I know what I want to say. I can't say it. Was it? Why do I suddenly feel about a foot smaller than I did five minutes ago. What's wrong with me? Well, love, let me tell you, there is absolutely nothing wrong with you, nothing nada, absolutely zero. What's actually happening is identity switching, and nobody's ever really taught us how this bloody works, because right mic drop time. You don't have just one self. That's what no one tells you. You don't have just one self, so be yourself. Which fucking one you've got multiple versions of you built across different seasons, different eras of your life, for different purposes, under different pressures, for different reasons. And the problem isn't that you don't know who the fuck you are. The problem is that you keep letting the wrong version of you take control in the times that it really fucking matters. So what I mean by this, which yourself, are we actually talking about, I think, for me, is that what I say most high achieving women do is that they end up defaulting to a version of themselves that looks something like the responsible one, the capable one, the one who holds it all together, or maybe the one who doesn't rock the boat heaven forbid. Or, you know, the one who gets results without making anyone else feel freaking uncomfortable, one that version she's Competent AF. She's organised. She's fucking impressive on paper, impressive. And she's exhausted, because this particular version of you was built in environments, in places where being liked mattered being chosen, mattered being good, kept you safe, proving your worth felt necessary and look fair play to that version, she did her job fucking brilliantly, amazingly. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to that version. But she was designed for coping, not for your next era, not for up levelling. And it kind of shows like, where women say shit like, I'm really confident of work, but not in relationships, or I know I'm capable. Why do I doubt myself? Or I feel powerful One minute I'm completely fucking invisible with the next. That's not inconsistency. It's more like it's more like a context dependent identity, right? Your confidence doesn't just disappear. It doesn't vanish. It doesn't abandon you. It just belongs to a version of you that isn't currently in charge. 

Sarah Elizabeth  06:35

There's this area of psychology that fascinates the hell out of me, identity geek over here, and it's called enclothed cognition, and at its simplest, it basically means that what you wear, what you embody and associate yourself with, completely, completely changes how you think, how you feel, how you behave. Your brain doesn't just respond to thoughts, it responds to symbols, to posture, to behaviour, to identity cues, which is exactly why you feel different, like in different clothes. So like, how you show up wearing a hoodie and leggings is going to be very different to how you show up in a sequin fucking mini skirt. You get me, you wouldn't wear the same outfit to go to the gym as you would to an interview, and each version of you acts accordingly, right? Like you speak differently in different rooms, how you'd speak in an interview, for example, is going to be completely different to how you talk to your partner or your dog. You know you show up differently depending on who you believe you're being and again, like who you are when you're in different places with different people, like who you are when you're like out on the town, out out, is not going to be the same person who goes around your mother in laws on a Sunday for a roast enclothed cognition. It's fascinating, and it's not all woo, woo. This is neuroscience meeting lived reality, and once you see it, you can't unsee it, because what so many high achieving women will not admit even to themselves, is shit like, don't actually trust myself in the times that it really matters, or I overthink because I don't feel internally LED. I haven't got any thing in there taking control. I keep looking for permission from outside of me, even though I do know better, and I do know better, and none of that is a confidence issue. It's really not. It makes us feel like that, but it's not a confidence issue. It's an identity leadership issue. You do not lack belief, you just lack a clear internal leader from all of these versions of you. It's almost like identity hats or coats, different hats and goats go on for different things and different people, and no Damn hat or Coat takes fucking charge anymore, a bit like the CEO identity we talked about last week. Who's the boss here, which version, and I know this is making us sound like we've got some kind of disorder or something, but you get it, hopefully something is landing here. It's like we have this shitty committee in our heads, all these different voices, different. Purposes and different things, and the wrong bloody one ends up trying to take control when we really need them not to. Like, have you ever worked anywhere where the admin has far more power than any bloody boss? I remember one place where we used to have to we used to have to demonstrate our one pen quota had, in fact, run out. I wasn't lying. It really had, look, look, it doesn't work. The notebook was, in fact, full. No, there isn't three lines left on that page and one on that page. Fuck me. It was exhausting. But I digress. Reinvention of your inner reality doesn't happen because you decide harder or journal longer or analyse yourself more deeply or learn something else. Reinvention of what's going on inside happens when a new version of you starts taking control and leading your decisions, not permanently, not perfectly, but deliberately, intentionally. 

Sarah Elizabeth  11:05

And one way you can start to do that is to ask yourself a bit of a different question. Because most of us ask ourselves shit like, how do I feel about this? Am I ready? Why do I feel scared? But high level women are something different, and that is who would handle this with ease, and that's not who do I need to become one day, but which version of me already exists and needs to step up right now. Which version of me can totally smash this? Because that shift alone changes everything. What nobody really tells us is that you don't need to create this whole new identity persona. You've already got access to different versions of you that you need for the Job in hand, the calm one, the decisive one, the woman who doesn't over explain, the one who trusts herself. She's in you. You've met her before, maybe only in quick flashes, in certain circumstances, in certain rooms, but she exists. She's there. So reinvention is not about it's not about fixing yourself. It's about letting the right version of you take the lead more often. And this is often where we stall because we've been rewarded for being agreeable and being reliable and being low maintenance and being easy to work with, no one rewarded you for taking up space or moving with certainty or being audacious as fuck or unapologetic as fuck, backing yourself without evidence leading from an internal authority. We never got the gold stars for that, did we? So of course, your system defaults to the version that kept you safe, but, but that doesn't mean she should run your future. But, oh, so instead of asking, How do I become more confident? How do I stop overthinking? How do I fix myself? Ask yourself which version of me needs to be here right now and then borrow her, bring her up front, go up front, her posture, her tone, her pace, her internal certainty, even for a few minutes. That's not pretending. That's leadership, self leadership, be it to see it, because we seem to think, don't we, that if we had the thing, if we just had the thing, then we would do what we need to do, and then we'd be the thing. So, like, if I just had the confidence, then I would own my place at work, and then I'd get the promotion smash it. We're basically waiting for the confidence to come and knock at the door like, Hello. Are you there? We need to flip that. It's not have, then do, then be. It's actually be, do have so if we want to become the bad ass babe who has that top level job, for example, we would speak up, show up, lead as her. And then we have the thing, the bad ass babe vibe, that that version, she doesn't come with the job. She's in you. And if you carry on waiting to be it first, then really sorry to have to break it in love, but you're never going to get it. You're never going to have the thing. You have to be it, to see it. 

Sarah Elizabeth  14:53

And it's like lottery winners. There's a load of research about lottery winners, because people don't see. Themselves as that version of a rich person. They've got all this money shit going on. They don't see themselves as a rich person. They've got all these stories about rich people are bastards, or rich people are tax avoidant, or rich people are this. Rich people are that from shit growing up, right? It's just part of your conditioning, part of your programming, and then they win the lottery, and then they spend it all again, and they go back to exactly how they were, because the version of them that's in control is their default version that doesn't identify as a rich person. So you have to become it. You have to be it to see it, and in order to do that, you just got to pick the right version of you to be it. Now, reinvention is not about becoming someone else or becoming something completely new. It's about stopping the wrong version of you from running the fucking show. You are not insecure, you're not broken, you're not behind. You're just using an identity, a past identity that was built for life. You've already outgrown your next era. It needs a totally new internal boss, someone else taking the lead. You get me, these, honestly, are the internal shifts that will actually change how you experience your life, not just how it looks on paper, because you're ready to lead yourself differently. I promise you, I promise you, it changes everything so bad ass queen, I'd love for you to let me know your takeaways from today. Which version of you have you let take the lead, and which version are we switching her out for? And I'll be honest, this is something I'm actively practising myself right now all the time, even in this season, this era where my body has literally forced me to slow down, I've been really noticing which version of me wants to take over, which one actually needs to take over. 

Sarah Elizabeth  17:20

So if this episode stirred something in you as well, there's no need to rush to fix it. Just sit with it. It doesn't need to turn into another thing to work on or get right. Miss perfectionist, just notice it. Sit with it. NOTICE which version of you has been running the show lately, and be kind to her. Be kind to her. She wasn't wrong, she wasn't weak, she wasn't failing. She was doing what she learned to do to keep you safe. Sometimes that reinvention doesn't look dramatic or like blowing your whole fucking life up. Sometimes it just looks like choosing a different internal leader, even when life has slowed you down, whether you're sitting still or in a quieter era than you used to, even then that's a leadership as well. So before your next decision, your next conversation, your next bit of visibility, whatever it is, just ask yourself which version of me needs to be here right now. When we say, looping back to the beginning, just be yourself. Which self are we talking about? Which self needs to be in control and let her take the wheel, even for a short time, because those small internal switches, they're the ones that actually change it up. Honestly, I'd love, love, love for you to just sit with this one and just notice what landed, notice what's happening for you, which version of you has been leading, and which one you're ready to bring forward love to know. Okay, Queens, I will be back in your beauts. Badass earbuds again next week. Until then, take care of yourself and remember you are not behind. You've just outgrown who you had to be I love you. Loads every single version of you, bye.