Identity Shift: Why Identity Is Not the Destination

Welcome Back to Soul Fusion

Hey, hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Soul Fusion Podcast. You know me for all of my conversations around identity. It’s interesting, because I was talking about identity several years ago, and I was talking about identity when only a couple of other people were talking about it, and one of those people was a mentor of mine, and he would speak about it in his coaching program, but not necessarily on social media.

Embodiment vs. Becoming

Now, everywhere I look, for the last year and a half, everywhere I look, everyone’s talking about identity. But people look at identity through different lenses. Some people look at identity as the alter ego. Let’s create an alter ego. Let’s create this identity that you want. And then other people talk about identity as in becoming, which is one of the ways that I talk about identity, except I speak about embodiment and remembering, not becoming.

And there’s a very distinct difference between an identity of becoming and an identity of embodiment, and I’m gonna share that with you, because identity is not the destination. However, it is part of the path. So let’s get into it here.

When You Identify With the Thing

In past episodes, you’ve heard me talk about attachments, being attached to things and attached to expectations, and how those attachments really lock us in. They’re almost like a prison that they create for us. And in the last episode, I talk about there being 1,000 shades of gray, and I talk about black or white thinking and either/or, and how that also traps us, and it puts us in a trap that can create fear, anger, chaos, and hopelessness, depending on the black or white thinking.

When we’re caught in those places, when we’re trapped by those stories, when we’re limited by that possibility, we can become so enmeshed in something that we identify with that thing. We don’t identify as ourselves, we identify with that thing. That’s what happens in politics. People identify with the political party, and they lose their sense of self. People identify with ball teams, and they lose their sense of self. You see this with people that burn cars and get into bar brawls and things like that when their team loses or somebody, you know, says something bad about their team. They lose their ish. That’s because who they are is enmeshed with something outside of themselves. They’re extremely attached. An offense to the thing that they believe in becomes a personal offense. When people can recognize and identify those stories, those attachments, and those beliefs, and they begin to release them, they begin to move up the ladder and develop their own self-identity.

This is part of the work that I’ve done for the last five, six years, is helping people to remember who they are here in this physical world, on this physical level, to remember who they are and what they believe in.

Next Level, New Devil

Over this six years, the way that I help people craft their identity has evolved. Initially, it was, “I am a great mom.” What does a great mom look like? Boom, boom, boom, they list it out. I am a great entrepreneur. I am really smart with money. What does that identity look like? Boom, boom, boom, and they lay it out. That was the first two or three years. And then I began to realize what would happen is we would build this identity, and once this identity was embodied, when they get ready to go to the next level, you’ve heard that phrase, next level, new devil? If you’re an entrepreneur, you have. If you’re not an entrepreneur, there’s this concept of next level, new devil, that basically, when you expand to fill the container that you’re in, when you have fully embodied the identity that you’re in, and now you’re ready to expand into something different, bigger, greater, more impactful, this identity that you built for yourself has become your new prison. It’s become your new cage. So now you have to go through the process of deconstructing this identity and constructing another new identity, and people go through what they call identity deaths or ego deaths or dark nights of the soul. And it’s because within that identity, we have all these stories around this identity.

So a few years ago, when I’m doing this identity work with people, I was like, “How do I make this identity fluid?” so that when people shift and grow, their identity expands with them. It does not constrain them. Their identity expands with them, because we’re no longer working with an identity that is based on black and white. We’re no longer working with an identity that is based on labels. We’re no longer working with an identity that is based on fixed, rigid beliefs. Then the identity is more about remembering what we truly are. And no matter what level a person is at in their personal journey, whether they’re spiritual or they’re not, we shape this identity in a way that it can move with them, it can grow with them, and they’re not having to constantly unlearn because they’re feeling trapped.

Emotional Mastery, Not Intelligence

Now, does this mean that all limiting beliefs are gone? No. What I’m talking about is helping an individual, helping a person, helping you, the same way that I’ve helped myself. And by the way, this process never ends, okay? To move into a place where there is so much self-acceptance and so much self-trust and so little entanglement of your identity in these stories that you’re open, you’re always open to seeing new perspectives, and your beliefs are always shifting and changing with you.

There’s something, you know, I don’t really like the way this is worded. However, someone commented this on a post that I made a few years ago. There was a lot of political stuff going on, and I did make somewhat of a political post saying, “I believe in this, and I believe in that. I believe in this, and I believe in that.” Like, I can see both sides of the coin, and I listed off multiple situations, which for some people are really intensely political hot buttons, but I can see both sides. There’s valid points on both sides, and the truth is somewhere in the middle. I don’t know. Depends on who you are. Someone came in and commented under that post and said, “It is a sign of intelligence to be able to hold two opposing points of view at the same time.”

And I say it’s not intelligence that allows you to hold two opposing points of view at the same time. It is rising to the level in your sense of self, in your sense of who and what you are as a human being, that you can allow yourself to step out of your feelings and emotions and consider both points of view. That has nothing to do with intelligence. It has to do with emotional mastery. It has to do with, are people outside of me going to be allowed to control me and my opinion and influence my emotions? Or am I going to do that for myself? Which is it gonna be? Which is it gonna be? And then I get to choose that.

Now, sometimes if I bump up against something and I’m like, “Oh, wow, gee, Penny, what are we attached to here? What’s our expectation?” Of course, I’m human. I have an ego just like you have an ego. We all have an ego. We can’t kill the ego. The ego is ego. We are here to learn to dance with the ego, and we, as spiritual beings having a human experience, we get to, if we choose to, we don’t have to, we get to, if we choose to, learn how to lead the ego so the ego does not lead us.

Why Identity Is Not the Destination

This is why identity is not the destination, because if you say, “I am,” and on the back end of “I am,” you’re putting a great mom, a great driver. For my mother, I’m an LSU Tigers fan. I don’t even go visit her on Saturdays during college football season, okay? If you’re putting a label on yourself after that, you’re limiting yourself. You are limiting your possibilities. You’re limiting your possibility to say, “I love LSU Tigers,” but not, “I am a diehard LSU Tigers fan.”

In 2018, someone bought my mother tickets for her birthday to the LSU Syracuse game. So I arranged with people at work. I had worked all evening the night before till 11:30 at night, and I picked her up, and we drove down to Louisiana to go to this game. And we were in the first row on the 50-yard line, and they have these scissor lifts. If you don’t know what a scissor lift is, go look it up. I can’t describe it on the podcast. But the cameraman was on the scissor lift. And it was when they were doing the coin toss at the beginning of the game. So where did they park the scissor lift? On the 50-yard line. My mother started raising holy hell. “Get out of my way. I can’t see.” I’m like, “Mother, would you be quiet? They are gonna throw us out. They will throw us out. Just, they’ll move in a minute. They’ll move in a minute.” She cracked me up. So she identifies as an LSU Tigers fan, and you better not talk about her Tigers, because you will be in very, very big trouble.

Now, if you’re an LSU Tigers fan and you wanna send her some Tigers memorabilia, email me. I’ll send you her mailing address, and you can send her Tigers memorabilia. She would just absolutely, absolutely love that. I’m just joking, okay? I’m kidding. To just make a point that identity is the halfway point to a much higher perspective. Identity is the halfway point to self-transcendence.

And I have this model that I’ve created. There can be parts of our life, and I’m gonna create a graphic for this. I’m probably gonna have to have AI help me, because I’m not a design person, and I don’t know how to explain very well what I want the design to look like conceptually. But think of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

We can have self-transcendence in some areas of our life and not others. Some areas of our life might be deeply tied to identity. Some areas in our life might be deeply tied to attachments. And in other areas of our life, we have really risen above and transcended. None of this is across the board. And when we can recognize that, and we can get out of our arrogance that, “Well, I figured this out, and you haven’t figured that out,” and in some parts of the spiritual world, some of the new age spirituality, there’s almost like an I’m better than you, I’ve figured it out, and we haven’t figured out jack. We haven’t figured out jack. I mean, the whole point is to come to the point that we have shed so many of our beliefs and so many of our attachments that we realize that we don’t know anything. When you realize that you don’t know anything, now you’re getting somewhere. That’s when you can really be in that state of being and not try to control anything. So I think I might have went a little over the top with that last bit there. But anyway, welcome back. Welcome back. I’m happy to be back. I’m happy to have you back. We’re gonna have many, many, many more episodes here on the Soul Fusion Podcast.

Now, I do wanna say, if you are interested in training, most of my hypnosis training content is going over on YouTube. The video version of the podcast will also be on YouTube, but most of my training-related content is going to be over on YouTube, so if you’re wanting to know how the mind works, how hypnosis works, the things that hypnosis is good for, what makes for a good hypnosis program, go over to YouTube and you search @pennychiassonofficial, it will take you right to the channel, and we’ll put that link in the show notes here as well so that you can go enjoy that. I will see you back next week, and we’re gonna be talking about when your strategies are no longer working. Bye now.