Who Are You When No One’s Watching? Your Answer Determines Your Stress Level.

0:00Welcome to Thera Fireside where feminine leadership gets rewritten. I'm your host, Dr. Cory Blake, nervous system educator experienced business strategist and founder of the Thera Collective, helping women lead from pleasure instead of pressure. Every week we gather here by the fire for a quick, po and hit of truth, strategy, and primal wisdom. If you're ready to lead without burning out, to trust your body as deeply as your brain, and build a life and business that feel like freedom, you're in the right place. Here at the Thera Collective, we blend grounded science with primal wisdom, feminine energetics with strategic leadership and rebellious self-care practices that actually move the needle in your business, your body, and your life. This is the feminine leadership revolution. Let's dive in. Hey, love. Welcome. I'm so excited to have

1:01you here today. So this week we're going to be diving into how identity matters in stress and leadership. As in, how much stress you're under is in relation to who you are and what your identity is. Okay. So the question is, when you think about the topic of who you are, is it based off of what you do or is it based off of the role you're playing? How do you know? Right. What are the signs that who you're being is based off of what you do or the role that you're playing? Okay. So typically, the signs that we're watching for are things like changes in behavior that are things that you wouldn't normally behave like. But because you're in this role, this is the way this role typically behaves. So that's the way you're going to do it. There's a lot of sheds involved there, right? Or this is

2:04who I'm identifying with, right? Like if I'm a attorney, right? Then it is my job to be stern and serious and blah, blah, blah, right? But naturally, that may not be you when you find yourself being quieter and more serious than you normally would be. You are showing up and identifying with the role versus fully with yourself. It makes sense. So if you're seeing yourself in that pattern, right? So like if you're seeing yourself dress for a job that you have even when you're not at work, right? You're dressing in that manner. Or the all the clothes that you're picking on are related to that. The way that job is supposed to look and portray themselves, right? That's conditional identity. So if you are basing kind of like who you are or you're associating so much with the job that you're doing or the role that you're playing like as a mom or a partner,

3:07and that's where all of your focus is, that's a conditional identity, okay? We'll have to flex as we lean into different life areas, okay? And the more we flex and the more chronically we flex, the more our conditional identity of being in that job or being in that role starts to become who we are, okay? Or it starts to feel like that's who we are. When we identify ourselves with that life area and we live into that identity, ignoring the rest of ourselves, then that conditional identity actually becomes a big issue because it gets in the way of you being connected to who you actually are, what you actually want, how you actually want to live, how you naturally are in your environment, in your job, in your life, okay? And when we disconnect from that, there's stress, there's stress that develops. It actually takes a lot of energy to maintain barriers between those things, okay? You've ever compartmentalized anything or acted one way

4:11in one situation and another and another. It actually takes a lot of energy to hold those two things without allowing the parts of yourself to kind of mingle, okay? And so there's sequela to that. So when you are associating yourself with a conditional identity on a chronic long-term basis, we start to see downstream effects, okay? One, we can start to feel lonely, we can feel like we're unseen, like nobody sees us, right? And they're not going to see us because it's not us that's showing up, it's someone else that's showing up because we're showing up into that identity, but it's not actually who we are, okay? So we feel lonely because we don't feel like someone's really seeing the real us in that situation. We can also end up actually all of that leaning into that conditional identity can end up backfiring on us. And we end up being perceived as either inauthentic or untrustworthy. And it's an energy that happens because people can feel

5:15when we're faking it, right? They can feel when we're not being ourselves, when we're not being authentic, when something is off. And that is actually repelling, right? Like people don't want to be around that. They're not going to trust you because they don't feel like you're being honest with them. Even if you're being honest with the technical things that you're doing, there's some level of dishonesty that's happening when we're showing up with a conditional identity that isn't really who we are. The other thing that can happen is that when we lean into this conditional identity on a chronic long-term basis, and we lose touch with the ability to bring into the world the truth of who we are, there's a lot of resentment and anger that can come up around that. We end up snapping at others. We end up being really angry with others that are expecting us to be in that role in a certain way when we don't actually want to be in it. When it actually takes a lot of energy for us to stretch and to flex into that role. For example, if you were an ER doctor

6:24and you naturally move at a slower, more methodical pace and you like to make sure that all of your teas are dotted, you like to research your cases to the nth degree before you make any decisions on things, right? And your manager is telling you you need to hit the ground running and when piece of patients need you, you need to go and you need to act. If you're in a situation like that and that's not your natural personality, if your natural personality isn't quick action impulse dopamine driven, then you being in that role is a conditional identity that you actually have to flex into as in you have to force yourself to go do that. And when you have to force yourself to go into that role, A, it feels uncomfortable, B, it feels unsafe, and C, it takes a lot of energy. Now that doesn't mean that you can't be an emergency room doctor if that's what you want to be,

7:26but there are different ways that we can go about it and how we bring our own identity into those jobs. The question is, is the job, is the space something that really aligns with who we are, or is the chronic flex that needs to happen, not in alignment, and is there a way to make it aligned or not? It really depends on you and how driven you are to be in that role versus whether you are open and willing to either find compromise or find another role that feels more aligned. Another thing that can happen with conditional identity is there can be a sense of unidentifiable sadness, like this grief that's there, the sadness, but you can't really figure out why. It's like this intangible thing of like it just feels like something's wrong, but you don't know what it is, and that's the attachment from ourself, right? Something's missing.

8:31It can also feel like something is missing, right, from your life. Like I've got all the stuff, I've got the career, I've got the family, I've got the partner, I've got the home, whatever, but something is missing, it's probably you. You missing from your own life is a problem, right? So we want to figure out how we get that back. So I think I already touched on this, but the other thing that I always think about with conditional identities is energetically, someone who comes up to me that is playing into a role, right, whether it's like outwardly, performatively happy, or whether they are doing a job that they really don't want to do, and they're just getting through the day, is that their identity, their persona feels false, okay? As in, I don't really want to engage that deeply with them, I don't really want

9:34to connect with them that deeply, which isn't like me, I'm a person that loves to connect with people really deeply, but I'm actually repelled by people that aren't authentic, and so that can happen with others too, right? So if you're in a situation where you are leaning into and acting into an identity that's outside of yourself, whether it's your profession or your role as mom or whatever, and you're having trouble connecting with other people while you're in that place, that could be a sign that you are leaning into a conditional identity without bringing yourself along for the ride, okay? Because if there is discordance between who you are and how you're acting or the identity you're holding, that doesn't feel good and people will not allow a deep connection with you as a result. So when you can actually lean into, support and promote your own unconditional

10:34identity, that is pure energy, right? That's resonance, you're channeling yourself, you're channeling your source energy, and you're allowing that to come through into the world, that is magnetic to other people. So when you are authentic, when you own who you are, regardless of the role that you're in, that's magnetic. So people will start to connect with you more deeply in whatever role you're in if you bring you to that equation, okay? So it's not have it first, do the thing, and then that dictates the person that you be, the person that you are, it's be the person that you are, then as the person that you are, do the thing, and then you have the result that you want to have.

11:35You don't wait until a certain time to be the biggest and the boldest and the most you that you can be. You'll be that in every moment in whatever role you're playing, okay? And when you do that, finding that and living that identity eliminates so much stress and it allows that leadership and influence to come forward because there's that pure energy that's there that you are channeling, that people can feel and they want more of that. That's attractive. So I'm curious how this shows up in your life. Where are you leaning into conditional identities and where could you start to find that unconditional identity within yourself and allow it to come through within the roles that you're playing? All right, I'll see you next week. Have a great day. Thank you for joining me at the fire today. If this conversation sparked something in you, make sure you're subscribed so you never miss an episode. And if you want to take this work deeper, join us inside the Ferric

12:39Collective, where we turn these insights into embody leadership, real strategy, and lives that feel like freedom, so you can lead from ground to power, not from burnout. Until next week, take exquisite care of your energy and keep leaning like the badass you are.