Your Life Is Listening to Who You Think You Are

There is a woman who believes she is adventurous, and another who believes she is practical.

They might have the same income, the same responsibilities, the same number of hours in a day. They might even live on the same street.

But their lives will probably look remarkably different.

One notices the invitation to go somewhere unfamiliar. The other notices the inconvenience. One considers the possibility that she could learn Italian, take a lover, open a business, or spend a month in another country. The other begins calculating why those things are unrealistic.

Neither woman is necessarily making a conscious decision about the kind of life she wants.

She's making decisions that make sense for the kind of woman she believes herself to be.

And she does it over and over again, until those decisions begin to resemble a personality, a set of circumstances, and eventually an entire life.

I find this fascinating.

We tend to think of identity as something rather fixed. Something we discover about ourselves, usually after sufficient introspection, a few unfortunate relationships, and perhaps an expensive amount of therapy.

We describe ourselves with extraordinary confidence.

I'm not athletic. I'm terrible with money. I'm an introvert. I'm not creative. I'm the responsible one. I'm too old for that. I've never been particularly adventurous. I'm just not the kind of woman who does those things.

Then we organize our lives accordingly.

We build entire worlds around these declarations, often without examining where they came from or whether they remain true.

A woman who believes she isn't athletic might never discover that she loves swimming in the ocean. A woman who believes she is bad with money may avoid learning to manage it. A woman who considers herself inherently shy might decline invitations that could introduce her to extraordinary people.

These beliefs become instructions.

Not necessarily because the universe is listening, but because we are.

The Stories We Mistake for Ourselves

Much of what we call personality is a collection of conclusions we reached about ourselves a very long time ago.

Perhaps someone told us we were difficult, and we learned to be agreeable. Perhaps we were praised for being responsible, and we became women who cannot imagine disappointing anyone. Perhaps our families valued modesty, restraint, or sacrifice, and we quietly absorbed the idea that pleasure was something to be earned after all the important work was finished.

Some of these identities helped us survive. Some helped us belong. Some were handed to us by people who loved us and wanted us to be safe.

Others were imposed by people who benefited from our smallness.

Some were simply accidents.

You were awkward at a party when you were seventeen, and somewhere along the way you decided you weren't socially confident.

You struggled financially in your twenties and concluded you weren't good with money.

You spent years being the woman who held everything together, and now you cannot imagine a life in which other people are expected to hold something together themselves.

The original circumstances may have changed decades ago.

The identity remains.

This is especially interesting to me when I think about women in the second half of life.

By fifty or sixty, most of us have accumulated a formidable collection of evidence about who we are. We've made decisions, established patterns, built reputations, and developed relationships in which other people have very definite expectations of us.

There is a certain comfort in this. People know what to expect. We know what to expect.

But familiarity is not necessarily truth.

And a long history of behaving a particular way is not proof that we must continue.

The Architecture of an Identity

I think of identity as a kind of architecture.

Our beliefs about ourselves influence the decisions we make. Those decisions shape our environments, relationships, habits, and experiences. Those experiences then provide evidence that our original beliefs were correct.

The woman who believes she is interesting seeks interesting experiences. She reads widely, develops opinions, visits unfamiliar places, asks better questions, and cultivates friendships with people who intrigue her.

Over time, she becomes a woman with a fascinating life.

The woman who believes she is uninteresting may avoid precisely those experiences, assuming she wouldn't fit in or wouldn't have anything worthwhile to contribute.

Eventually, she has less evidence of her own curiosity, courage, and capacity for adventure.

Both women may point to their lives as proof of who they are.

But those lives have been shaped, at least in part, by what each woman expected of herself.

Of course, identity is not the only force at work. Money matters. Health matters. Opportunity, discrimination, family obligations, and circumstance matter enormously.

We do not live in a world where everyone has equal freedom to choose.

Still, within the territory available to us, identity influences which doors we notice, which ones we approach, and which ones we assume were never meant for us.

That means identity is not simply a description of the life we're living.

It can also become a way of designing the life we want.

The Woman Who Has Excellent Taste

Imagine a woman who decides she is someone with excellent taste.

Not someone who owns expensive things. Not someone who follows fashion or knows the correct names of obscure French designers.

Someone who pays attention to beauty.

She begins noticing the quality of light in her home. She buys flowers at the market. She learns something about architecture. She develops an affection for beautifully made objects. She becomes particular about the music she listens to, the clothes she wears, and the environments in which she spends her time.

Perhaps she learns to cook three magnificent meals instead of twenty mediocre ones.

Perhaps she discovers a passion for ceramics, antique textiles, or the extraordinary pleasures of a perfectly ripe peach.

Her income hasn't necessarily changed.

But her relationship with the world has.

She notices things she used to overlook. She makes different choices. She develops knowledge, preferences, and experiences that reinforce her identity as a woman with excellent taste.

Eventually, other people may begin describing her that way.

But the interesting part is that she didn't wait for someone to recognize her sophistication before she started cultivating it.

She decided that beauty mattered to her, and began behaving accordingly.

I think we underestimate how much of a life can change through decisions like these.

Not because choosing a new identity magically transforms our circumstances, but because the things we believe about ourselves influence what we repeatedly do.

And what we repeatedly do has a way of becoming our lives.

You Are Allowed to Contradict Your Own History

One of the more peculiar expectations we place on ourselves is consistency.

We believe we should remain faithful to the women we have always been, as though changing our minds constitutes some sort of moral failure.

If we've always been practical, we hesitate to become extravagant.

If we've always been accommodating, we worry that developing strong preferences will make us difficult.

If we've spent decades prioritizing other people, choosing ourselves can feel like an act of betrayal.

If we've built a reputation for being sensible, the sudden desire to take tango lessons, wear enormous jewelry, study ancient mythology, or spend three weeks wandering through Italy can feel almost embarrassing.

But why?

Who decided that the personality we developed under one set of circumstances should govern every subsequent chapter of our lives?

The woman you were at thirty may have been making the best possible decisions with the information, responsibilities, resources, and confidence she had at the time.

You can appreciate her without continuing to live by all her rules.

You can even be enormously grateful to the woman who got you here while recognizing that she may not be particularly well qualified to decide what happens next.

I suspect a great many women are living inside identities that have simply outlived their usefulness.

We keep performing them because they are familiar, because other people reward us for being predictable, and because reinvention sounds like something that requires an enormous dramatic gesture.

It doesn't.

Sometimes it begins with an entirely private decision.

I'm a woman who has adventures.

I'm a woman who takes her pleasures seriously.

I'm a woman who knows how to make money.

I'm a woman who is comfortable being seen.

I'm a woman who surrounds herself with beautiful things.

I'm a woman who can learn something difficult.

And then, rather than demanding that the universe immediately rearrange itself around these declarations, we begin collecting experiences that make them true.

Identity Is Something You Can Practice

There is a considerable difference between pretending to be someone you're not and deliberately becoming someone you would like to be.

I am not suggesting that a woman with no financial experience declare herself a brilliant investor and begin making reckless decisions.

I am suggesting that she can begin identifying as a woman who understands money, and then take the steps that make that identity increasingly accurate.

She can learn. Ask questions. Read. Practice. Make mistakes. Develop competence.

A woman who wants to be adventurous doesn't have to climb Everest.

She can visit a neighborhood she's never explored. Eat something unfamiliar. Travel alone for a weekend. Accept an invitation she would ordinarily decline.

A woman who wants to become intellectually formidable can begin reading books that challenge her, attending lectures, and spending time with people whose knowledge exceeds her own.

A woman who wants a more sensual life can begin paying attention to what delights her senses instead of treating pleasure as an optional reward for productivity.

This is the part of identity work that interests me most.

It is not an exercise in convincing ourselves that we already possess qualities we have not developed.

It is the deliberate cultivation of those qualities.

I think it can be rather wonderful.

We are allowed to experiment with ourselves.

We can try on a new way of dressing, speaking, socializing, or moving through the world. We can enter unfamiliar environments and discover that we are perfectly capable of belonging there. We can develop tastes and skills that would have astonished our younger selves.

We can become women with richer inner lives, more interesting experiences, greater confidence, and a much wider understanding of what is possible.

Not all at once.

Not without discomfort.

But intentionally.

Your Environment Has an Opinion About Who You Are

There is another part of this that I find especially compelling.

Our environments are constantly reinforcing our identities.

Look around your home.

What kind of woman does it suggest lives there?

Not in terms of money or decorating style, but in terms of priorities, interests, pleasures, and possibilities.

Is there evidence of curiosity? Books you've wanted to read, materials for things you'd like to learn, objects collected from experiences that mattered to you?

Does your home make room for the things you claim to value?

Or is it organized almost entirely around maintenance, obligation, and the convenience of everyone else?

Think about your calendar.

Is there anything on it that reflects the kind of woman you'd like to become?

Think about your conversations.

Do you spend time with people who recognize your capacity to grow, or people who seem determined to preserve an older version of you?

These are not trivial questions.

A woman who wants to become an artist may find that keeping her supplies visible makes it easier to paint.

A woman who wants a more socially adventurous life may begin inviting interesting people to dinner.

A woman who wants to become stronger may arrange her days so that physical activity is a normal part of her life rather than an occasional act of willpower.

A woman who wants more beauty may find that changing her surroundings encourages her to pay attention to beauty elsewhere.

We can make our environments more hospitable to the identities we wish to cultivate.

We can also stop surrounding ourselves with constant reminders of who we used to be.

Other People May Prefer the Old Version

This deserves some attention because it can become one of the more uncomfortable parts of changing your life.

When you change your sense of who you are, your relationships sometimes have to adjust.

The woman who has always been available begins protecting her time.

The woman who has always been agreeable develops opinions she is willing to express.

The woman who has always minimized her accomplishments begins speaking about her work with confidence.

The woman who has always put her ambitions last begins making decisions that reflect what she wants.

Some people will be delighted.

Others will be inconvenienced.

A few may become quite determined to remind you who you used to be.

This does not necessarily mean they are malicious. People grow accustomed to the roles we play in their lives. They may have built their own expectations around our predictability.

But their familiarity with an older version of you does not entitle them to permanent access to her.

You are allowed to become less convenient.

You are allowed to develop standards that didn't exist before.

You are allowed to acquire ambitions, preferences, and appetites that surprise people.

You are even allowed to become a woman whose life no longer makes sense to everyone who knew her twenty years ago.

In fact, I think that possibility is rather exciting.

The Evidence Is in the Living

I am suspicious of approaches to personal transformation that require us to spend enormous amounts of time thinking about the lives we want while doing relatively little to inhabit them.

There is a place for reflection. There is a place for imagination. There is even a place for rehearsing a new understanding of ourselves.

But sooner or later, identity needs somewhere to live.

It needs to become visible in our choices.

If you believe you are a woman who values friendship, there should be room in your life for friendship.

If you believe you are a woman who loves learning, there should be evidence of your curiosity.

If you believe you are a woman who deserves pleasure, your calendar should not be an uninterrupted monument to obligation.

If you believe you are a woman capable of creating an extraordinary life, there should be some willingness to do extraordinary things, even very small ones.

Not every day. Not perfectly. Not as another exhausting standard against which to measure ourselves.

But often enough that the story we tell about ourselves begins to correspond with the way we're actually living.

That's the beautiful thing about this work.

We don't have to manufacture an entirely new personality. We don't have to reject our history or become unrecognizable to the people we love.

We can simply become more deliberate about which parts of ourselves we cultivate.

Perhaps more daring about which parts we have yet to discover.

An Entirely Different Kind of Woman

I'd like you to consider something.

What if some of the things you've always believed about yourself are merely habits of perception?

What if you aren't inherently unadventurous, but simply haven't made adventure a priority?

What if you aren't bad with money, but haven't yet developed the knowledge and confidence you need?

What if you aren't uninteresting, unattractive, undisciplined, or incapable of change?

What if those are descriptions of experiences you've had, rather than permanent truths about who you are?

And what if you were willing to test them?

You could begin by imagining a woman whose life you would find genuinely fascinating.

Not a younger, thinner, richer, more socially acceptable version of yourself.

A woman with a different relationship to her own possibilities.

Perhaps she is beautifully educated and gloriously eccentric. Perhaps she has a home filled with art and books and people who make her laugh. Perhaps she travels often, makes excellent money, loves her body, and speaks three languages badly but enthusiastically.

Perhaps she's known for her generosity, her exquisite taste, her formidable intellect, or her willingness to try things other people find mildly scandalous.

Perhaps she's simply a woman who feels remarkably at home in her own life.

What does she do?

What does she pay attention to?

What does she no longer tolerate?

What experiences has she made room for?

What does she believe is possible for a woman like her?

And which of those things could you begin practicing now?

I don't believe we can think our way into having everything we want. The world is far too complicated, and the circumstances of our lives far too consequential, for that kind of magical thinking.

But I do believe we have more influence over the identities we inhabit than we often recognize.

When we begin changing those identities through deliberate choices, our lives can begin changing with them.

The woman you believe yourself to be influences the life you consider possible.

The life you consider possible influences the choices you're willing to make.

And those choices, repeated over time, become the life you're actually living.

Which means you may have considerably more creative authority over your next chapter than you've been exercising.

I think that's an extraordinary possibility.

And I think it's worth finding out what kind of woman you could become if you stopped assuming you already knew.

A personal invitation

This is the kind of work I love doing with women in my private coaching practice. Not fixing them, optimizing them, or turning their lives into another ambitious improvement project.

We examine the identities, expectations, and inherited rules that have shaped their lives, then begin deliberately creating something that feels more expansive, more pleasurable, and more genuinely their own.

My private coaching includes four sessions each month, along with email and chat support, for $650 per month.

If you're ready to explore who you might become when you begin choosing on purpose, I'd love to work with you.

Lisa M. Hayes

Grown Woman Magic. A life with more pleasure, more freedom, and more room to breathe.