Today, we are diving in to the essence, the framework, the foundation of our identity. As women, as leaders as entrepreneurs, we’re going to be diving so deep. Why do we start with identity? Because anything we layer on top, our product, suite, our business, our pricing, our, whatever we do, our outreach, our marketing, our messaging, none of that matters, if we have a crack or a fissure in the foundation. The foundation profoundly matters. So today we are starting with identity. Rooting out inherited smallness from the root so that we can build with intention with a solid strong indestructible foundation to rise. 

So really getting into some of the more specifics, the nitty gritty of building, all of it starts with an infrastructure. If you’ve been in my world a while, you know, we talk about sacred feminine, sacred masculine, the way that they both weave so powerfully and beautifully in business. 

Are you ready? We’re going there. Okay…Get your notebook out. Get ready to dive deep because we are opening up the vortex now for the biggest version of you to be ushered forward. For the biggest version of you to make her way anchored in the here and now on planet earth.

Where do our identities come from?

I want you to go with me for a second and entertain the English teacher inside of me to unpack what the word identity even means. Identity. The fact of being who or what a person or a thing is that is the literal dictionary definition of identity. The fact of being who or what a person or thing is. Who are you, how do you explain yourself to the world? How do you experience yourself in the world in relation to what or whom? One thing that I am so clear about is the way in which we, as women have inherited, suggested, intimated ways of being in the world, ways of understanding ourselves in the world in relation to identities that actually have nothing to do with us. Some identities, we inherited some identities are ones that we’ve held for ourselves based on past iterations of ourselves.

For example, one past identity that I held of myself is I’m a teacher. I make $38,000 a year. I’m a teacher. I like serving people. I like being in front of the room. What I perceive as allowable as an income that barely allows me to save a single dollar per month. That is an old identity that I clung to, not just the identity of my occupation, but the identity of my worthiness. Does that make sense? So the identities that we perceive as allowable as permissible, as good as, as inherently okay. We cling to those long after we may have left the occupation, long after we may have left the relationship, long after we may have moved along in our journey and the narrative of our life.

What we perceive as allowable is still so strong with us. Some identities we inherit that exists in the collective imagination. How many times have we heard the identity of the starving artists, the academic living on ramen noodles, the barefoot and broke Yogi. Have you heard these terms? These are terms that exists as almost archetypes in the collective imagination. You know, I have to struggle if I’m going to be creative, I need to financially struggle.

If I’m going to be an academic purse devoted to the pursuit of truth, I need to be struggling financially, not sleeping, living on coffee and cheap food. Right? If I am going to be somebody who puts something powerful out into the world, other parts of my life must suffer. We do this bartering thing with our identity, this thing that allows us to have one element of what we want, but not the other. That requires extreme sacrifice in order to maintain a sense of self. Pretty fucked up when you think about it, but true for so many of us. Some identities we were given or inherited by our families of origin.

We were told repeatedly as children, you’re a good girl, you’re a good girl, you’re a good girl. And we learned not by any fault of our well-meaning parents or family, but we learned that to receive love was to behave in a certain way, to stay within a certain set of expectations that our families have had for us. We learn that our tribe, our people, we don’t do that, we’re from a working class family. We’re salt of the earth people. We don’t have money. Those are them. Has anybody experienced that? A family identity or narrative that said, this is who you are. And moreover, this is who we are. This is how we operate. Some identities that we inherit are value based.

For example, to be a steward of the earth, to be a humanitarian, to be a poetic soul, to be somebody who is a soul driven person means to share in the suffering of those you serve. Means to struggle financially before the sake of having some sort of empathetic, shared suffered experience. Let me remind you, and I know many of you have heard this before, but let me remind you that Mother Teresa, she flew first class. We’re going and unpacking all of these, but I want to just bring them all up. Like a silk rope of scarves, just coming up one after the other, after the other. Do you see how the identities that we inherit, the seven eights of the iceberg of who we are underneath the surface?

On the surface, we’re an entrepreneur, we’re a woman, we’re a coach. We’re this, we’re that. But there is an entire body of identity gunk that we carry around that is not necessarily ours. That has control over us until it no longer has control over us. Until we decide we are not available for that identity to determine who we are and who we become. An identity that for most of us was never actually ours.

Some identities that we inherit are relationship based. For example, in order to belong to this group of friends in order to belong to this relationship, this significant other, I must struggle. I must be in a state of, uh, you know, perpetual anxiety. I must be the hot mess express that I was in college, so all my college friends knew me as this, and I need to keep showing up like this because if I’m not, then who am I? How do I relate to this group if I’m not struggling, if I’m not sick, if I’m not financially in duress? If I’m not in a state of collapse and there’s no one to save me, who am I? Once we start to unravel all of these different layers of identity, the identities that exist in the collective, the identities that we inherit from our birth families, the identities that we formulate around groups, to which we desire to belong. Identities that are value-based, we recognize how much of the time, our entire way of presenting in the world, is so wrapped up in how will someone else love me?Will I belong if I allow myself to outgrow who I have been, if I allow myself to evolve, be in the iterative growth process of becoming a bigger version of me, an expanded version of me.

If I allow myself to do that, will I belong in anymore? Will I have a place that I can call my own? Is it safe for me even to be in the world? That might sound extreme, but when we get down to it, you guys, that is what we are talking about. That is what is happening on the sub most inner levels of our being.

When we allow ourselves to go deeper, like this work precedes mindset, work, this work, proceeds belief work. I say all the time, belief impacts behavior. The way that our beliefs and behavior impacts results. All of that is true.

How to embody a bigger identity

But before we even can look at our beliefs, we need to look at who is the one that is believing. Who is the identity that is thinking and believing and perceiving actually what is even available to me. Embodying, I want you to write this down. Embodying a bigger identity requires re-imagining your definition of what it means to belong. I’m going to say that again. I want you to write this down. I want you to let this work inside of you, embodying a bigger identity requires re-imagining your definition of what it means to belong.

If you are feeling like you only belong to a certain set of people, a certain set of relationships, a certain space in your life, whatever that may be. If you are scared and we let’s talk about how this plays out directly in our businesses. Let’s say that you have friends or extended family who judge you for showing up a certain way online. Who judge you for being bold, who judge you for posting photos of yourself in lingerie, or red lipstick, or being super dressed up or having a photo shoot just for you. If you have people in your life who are judging you for that, and that is causing you to temper your expression, your articulation, your creative poetic release of content into the world because you feel like you won’t belong to this group anymore.

You won’t belong to those relationships anymore. You will be without love. We literally have to examine and to look at what that identity, what our, what we’re receiving actually from being connected and tethered to that identity. And we have to be careful because some of the time it’s our own story and, and projection of those people rejecting you for being fully expressed.

Not actually that person’s perception, but I want you to really examine and look at what circles do you have in your life? What relationships do you have in your life? And is it really true that those relationships will cast you out, literally reject your presence because of you embodying a bigger perspective. Because of youth thriving, because of you being lit up in every single area of your life.

If that is the case, I want you to seriously reconsider whether or not those circles, those relationships are serving you. Whether or not it is worth sacrificing who you are and how you are allowed to be to belong in the confining shell of a past version of yourself. This might sound extreme, however, this is what happens.

This is in the subconscious, micro-moments. What shows up in the moments that we think to ourselves, oh, I wish I could show up like that, but I that’s a little bit edgy. Is it edgy or do you just not trust yourself to embody a new level, embody a deeper frequency, embody who it is that is most coming through you?

If you have been taught to identify playing small so as not to outshine somebody else being the same and fitting in as a gesture of love, it might feel profoundly uncomfortable to allow yourself to truly rip off the band-aid and let the biggest version of you come through. Because the biggest version of you, and I want you to do something for me in this moment.

I want you to close your eyes. I want you to roll your shoulders back and down, and I want you to take a big breath in. I want you to feel your jaw soften. I want you to feel your heart, open your shoulders, reaching back. I want you to feel the power in your chest and your hips and your feet, in your mouth. I want you to feel the potential energy, literally pulsing through your body right now. And I want you to imagine letting that energy pour through.

Every time you open your mouth, every time you talk about a program, every time you share a download of what’s coming through for you in your business, I want you to imagine feeling this level of power in your being. And I want you to imagine allowing that power to come out and to come through without having any filter blocking it. Any filter of that might be too much, any filter of what if my step-mom sees that, any filter of my college roommate will probably judge me for that. Any filter of I’m not allowed to show up this powerful, this bold, this beautiful, this magnetic, because somebody else might feel small.

Can you imagine, can you feel that in your body, that access to a bigger frequency? What we are doing in this event, what we are doing in this work, you guys is not about adding shit on. It’s not about puffing yourself up like an inflated balloon and inflated basketball with artificial bigness to make yourself feel significant.

No, what we are doing is accessing that pulsing potential energy that is already existing inside of you. That is already here, each and every one of you has inside of you right now in this moment, a bigger expression. Um, and when I say bigger, I don’t mean you have to be gregarious beating your chest like Tony Robbins on stage at date of destiny.

Bigger is truer, bigger is what is real and alive inside of your body. Bigger is your gifts unedited, unfiltered, unmuzzled, not held back or contorted to make other people in the room more comfortable. Imagine what your business and your life would look like if we let that bigness come through? If we let that bigness lead the way? That requires fundamentally questioning whether or not it is actually true. 

That smallness and playing small is a gesture of love. I am going to offer you an alternative. Playing small, not letting that biggest version of you, the one we just access, the one who is in your chest, in your mouth, in your hips, in your legs, in your hands, pulsing through your whole being. That version of you not letting her be the one to lead the show, not letting her be the ones who write your content, not letting her be the one to lead your entire life is the most selfish thing that you could possibly do.

And that might sound extreme, but I want you to feel me and go with me here. This world would not be, and you can apply this to every single area, this world that we live in right now in the most like tangible, practical material way simply would not be if brave men and women were not courageous enough to bring the bigness of themselves forward.

So you thinking that it is a gesture of love to, you know, like not be too out there, just fit in. Forget the lips, forget looking, not just, you know, don’t, don’t be too pretty. You don’t want to stand out. You doing that in whatever iteration it is, is literally robbing other people who are seeking change, who are seeking a mentor who are seeking a leader who are seeking somebody to support them. Whatever area of your business, whatever work that you do, you playing small, downplaying your gifts, you downplaying your potential is literally cutting off cosmic doors.

Have any of you seen the movie Sliding Doors with about the girl who catches the train and like, anyway, if you’ve seen the movie, you know what I’m talking about, but like literally the entire trajectory of life changes when we make certain decisions. When you withhold the gifts inside of you, and if you are a woman of faith, you know that this is literally, I think it’s from the gospel of Thomas. Like when you bring forward that, which is in, within you, it will save you, if you don’t, it will destroy you.

Like I’m no like preacher, but I believe that to the core. I believe that in a very literal way. I believe that your financial sovereignty, your financial abundance, the impact that you will make in the lives of your clients, the number of people that you will serve, all of it is directly connected to exactly what I am talking about right now. The movie I mentioned is called Sliding Doors. What I want you to think about and turn on its head is the fundamental belief, the fundamental story that if I am small, I am playing small to just to love other people, to not make other people feel bad. And I say, bullshit. That is a lie.

The fundamental story that you need to rewrite in order to step into the biggest version of yourself

You playing small is the most selfish thing that you could do. t is robbing, and I don’t mean intentionally selfish, it is robbing other people who need you in their life. Not just in your business, like, think about this in relation to your relationships.

I’ll tell you guys a little story, some of you might know this about my relation, oh, I’m going to like cry as telling this story. My role in my relationship with Toby. So I met Toby in 2015, March 26th, 2015. I had just come back from, and when I say come back, I really emerged from a month, up in the mountains at a yoga teacher training, a women’s leadership training was a 500 hour yoga leadership training. One of my sisters in the program invited me to go down to the beach with them for a few days. I had a solo, like a very eat, pray, love trip planned to Thailand in a couple of days, but I had some time open and I was like, you know what, let’s do it. Let’s just go.

And my friend and I were supposed to go down to the beach one afternoon, the afternoon of March 26 to take some photos. And she decided to get a massage. And I was like, I was a little bummed, but I was like, you know what, whatever, it’s fine. Um, I’m going to go down by myself. I still want to go. So I’m going to do that. I went down, I meditated, I took some like old school selfies on self-timer on my shitty iPhone, um, of myself at the beach.

And as I was walking back, there was a group of guys sitting at a table drinking BinTang the local Bali beer. And one of them said something to me. I was in my bikini, obviously walking by. And one of them said, said something. And I said, because one of these guys, which it just so happens was Toby was getting a massage by this balinese woman.

She had like a big glob of aloe in her hand and was rubbing it on his back. And I said something like, oh, it looks like you’re getting the royal treatment and he was like, well, sit down, like, I’ll shout you a massage. You can be next. The old version of me playing small, being like, oh my God, attention from a really gorgeous man.

He must be, he must be an asshole. He must be just trying to get some, there must be an angle. There must be a this, there must be that. I was living before this, I should say, in north Hampton, Massachusetts. So like, you know, real like fierce feminist kind of capital. I was very skeptical of men and this training just connecting me back with my divine feminine essence really cracked me open.

And so the woman who was there, standing in her bikini in front of this group of guys, trusted herself enough to be like, what do you feel Cait? And what I felt was an invitation, flirtiness, I was safe and I knew I was safe. And so I let myself sit down. When you embody a bigger identity, when you allow your bigness to come through, it does not just change the trajectory of your business.

Toby is now my husband. We have a daughter together. None of this would have happened if I had not allowed myself to actually receive, to actually feel like it is safe to let my inner intuitive guide, sit down in this table, hold my sexiness, hold my power, hold my beauty, hold my sovereignty. Know that I can leave at any time, but be safe being me in my full power.

I don’t need to hide it, walk away because it might just be too bright and maybe they’ll have bad intentions. So I need to hide this. No, I didn’t do that. I let it be seen. I let it be felt. I let it come out to play. And now, and this, you know, this is one example of literally hundreds, but I give you this as an example, because it would have been so easy for me to say this bigness, this beauty, this magnitude is too much for people to handle.

It’s too much for him to handle. He couldn’t possibly do that. I want you to ask yourself where in your life. Where in your business, you have been perceiving the other, whether the other is your audience, whether the other is your community, whether the other is whoever as not being able to hold your fullness.

Because this is what we do, right? When we have the deeply steeped identity story, that to be small and play small is to be loving, is to be good, is to be doing the right thing. Whenever we allow ourselves to inhabit our bigness, it becomes an act of revolution. It becomes an act of profoundly learning to trust ourselves again.

When we think about all of the ways that we have inherited the story of being big as not being safe, it really starts to make sense how many less than like 350 years ago, women were being burned at the stake for owning their gifts unapologetically. When we think about where tall poppy syndrome, I’m sure you guys have heard of that phrase before I have talked about this a lot.

It actually came from, uh, the, the concept was like most early dated. I don’t know if many of you know, this story from a tyrannical Roman king who, when a messenger came to him, sent from his son. His son was trying to ascertain and like one of the neighboring kingdoms, which was owned by this tyrannical king, what he should do, what the king did to the messenger, he heard the message, the inquiry from his son of what he should do. The king took the messenger out into the garden. He had a blade in his hand and he cut down in front of him, all of the tallest poppies, the heads, chop the heads off of all of the tallest poppies. And the messenger went back, told the king son what he had seen and the King’s son proceeded to execute all of the most powerful eminent figures in that kingdom.

Isn’t that wild you guys? This, this story of being the tallest poppy, literally off with your head for being bright, being big, there is a collective trauma associated with smallness, with sameness, with not standing out.

How to find success in all areas in your life

And yet what a trip this is because in entrepreneurship, success, and as I just shared that beautiful example for my personal life success in all of the arenas and all of its forms actually comes back to feeling safe in our being and in our body to embody the fullness of who we are.

And I want you to feel this distinction with me. I want you to feel this energy with me to be bigger, to access your bigness. To inhabit it as your core identity. Does not require you adding more on, it does not require you puffing yourself up. Bigness requires you stripping away these old stories, these old identities, these old collective traumas, and laying them down at your feet.

With respect with reverence and saying, I see you. I see where you’ve come from. I know that you’ve served me perhaps in the past, but I don’t need you anymore. I don’t require you pulling me down. In order to be safe. The safest place for you to be is in your essence, is in your fullness is in the fullness of your expression.

So I want you to ask yourself as a heart-centered entrepreneur, as a woman leaving a legacy, can you put down the story of being small? Fitting in is a loving thing and take on the story, the identity, the belief, the knowing, the perception that the more bright and bold and big I am, the more true I am, the more unleashed I am. The deeper service I am to the world, the deeper service I am to the collective, the more money I make with more ease, the more leadership I carry in my frequency. The more capacity that I contain.

It is safe for me to be big. In fact, it is the safest place on this planet, when I belong to myself. Remember earlier, I asked you to write down that phrase about belonging when you belong to yourself. Every place in the world is safe. When you belong to yourself, you are actually the one that creates container and community, where it is safe for other women to evolve, to shine, to glow, to be big. But you must belong to yourself first, you must belong to yourself first and foremost.

I want to bring us to one more point ladies: getting comfortable in your bigness requires getting intimate with your bigness. I’m going to say that again, getting comfortable with your bigness requires getting intimate with your bigness.

How does your bigger self, walk, talk? How does she think, how does she feel, how does she move through the world? How does she breathe? How does she drink her coffee in the morning? How does she write a piece of content? How does she show up to her relationships?

How does your bigger self move through the world? 

We can only create in the external you guys that, which we feel and hold as a resonant truth in our body. Your truest identity is not something that you have to put on, that’s why I’m saying your bigness does not come from like pumping yourself up to be bigger. No, your bigness comes from intimacy. Your bigness comes from accessing in the most intimate, true inside out space. Your biggest self is already inside of you. Not something you have to learn or adopt, not something you have to, to pump up in yourself.

It’s who you already are, who you already are. The way, the hack, the shortcut, the way home to that is always through you. How you feel. What you adorn yourself with from an identity perspective, from a belief perspective, from an throat Unmuzzled perspective. What are you allowing to move through you? How are you nurturing her?

This is my second question for you. If you’re riffing on what the biggest version of yourself walks like talks, like things like feels like, how does she express? What does she say? How does she lead? That is your pathway back to this identity, always an always. You are the one believing you are the one behaving. You are the one perceiving, it is all inside of you.

What you need to ask yourself when you feel resistance or contraction

So I want you to check yourself whenever you feel contraction, whenever ever you feel like there is something that is not quite sitting right inside of you and want you to ask yourself, is that bigger version of you free to be expressed right now? Or is some old identity and conditioning and trauma pulling you back and down.

You get to decide, you always get to decide what version of you meets the day. I can give you a very concrete example. There was a time like when I started my business, the identity that I had was a lot of what I shared with you. I am a $38,000 a year teacher, I couldn’t possibly make this kind of money.

There’s no millionaires in my family. We don’t do that. The version of me. Um, starting out my business and even the version of me making $10,000 in a month in my business, I was like, cool. I can do this. I can lead people. Want to hear what I have to say? The version of me who makes a hundred thousand dollars in a month, $200,000 in a month, that identity version of me had to profoundly shift because my ability to hold more wealth, more women in my field, more clients, a bigger community, a bigger service, a bigger impact. I can only hold to the degree that I am in alignment with myself to the degree that I am in alignment with the biggest version of my identity.

If my identity said, it’s only safe to make this much cool, Cait , you get, you made some success, but to be like wildly fuck off successful, that would just be too much. That would be wrong. That would be bad. I had to shed all of that. I had to check those bags at the door sisters to say, you know what, actually the bigger I go the bolder I am. The more beautiful I am. The more expressed I am, the more that I let the power inside of me flow through, the more, we all win. The more other women get to be activated and ignited into their highest potential. The more wealth that I generate, the more wealth that I circulate, the more wealth that I build, the more I can do with the resources available to me.

No, actually. I subscribed to the belief that the sky isn’t the limit. I subscribed to the belief that anything is possible for me. I am here for the version of me who makes a hundred thousand dollars, $200,000, $500,000 in a month. I am here for her because I no longer have any story that says to be that big is to be bad, to not love other people.

The identity that I now inhabit says to be fuck off successful, to be big, to be expressed, to be in my power in every sense, my expressive power, my financial power, my leadership power is a blazing trail for other women to create their versions of success. I believe that in my bones, in my blood, in my breath, in my core. That identity is the foundational root that sustains expanding into levels that you can’t even imagine. So you want to go to $50,000 months, you want to go to a hundred thousand dollars a month? Whatever that number is for you, you might be saying, Cait, I would be happy with a $10,000 a month. You might be saying, Cait, I’m ready for my first hundred thousand dollars a month.

Whatever that number is for you. I want you to ask yourself what bags do you need to check at the door? What beliefs are too small for you? What stories, what lingering narratives about what it means to be the identity of a woman with that level of power and impact do we need to leave and what new, beautiful identities and stories that we do, we need to write.

Can you imagine if you brought the lens of beauty of benevolence, of love to the version of you playing her biggest fucking game, making fuck off kind of money, can you imagine how lit up you would feel? Going out there making bank, knowing that you’re not just doing it for you, you’re doing it for the collective.

You’re doing it for your legacy. You’re doing it for your family. You’re doing it for your community of clients. The ripple effect is real. You guys, we do not need more women settling for, I guess I could do this. We need more women claiming I am here to let the holy bigness move through. And to do what I am put on this earth to do.

I believe my vessel, my being worthy of receiving at the highest level. I believe myself worthy of serving at the highest level. I am here for it. Asked you, how does the biggest version of you, your bigger identity act lead walk, talk, move through the world.

How does the biggest version of you earn? Name it say it put a number out there, even if it feels scary. I want to feel you in your power again, not contrived, not pumping yourself up, but just calling in. What are you claiming? What are you claiming as yours? 

This is so beautiful. And ladies don’t get like, oh, should I do this number ? It’s not about the number actually. It’s about the frequency. It’s about you belonging to yourself it’s about you being a frequency match for the biggest version of you to come through. I want to anchor us back into the questions of what is the most expanded version of your identity? Who are you to your core? Claim the gift that you are. Do not downplay your brilliance, your gifts, whatever your gifts are, your gifts of speech, your gifts of presence, your gifts of healing, your gifts of insight, your gifts of technical skill and website, building your gifts of graphic design and art, your gifts of motivation and articulation.

Whatever the gifts that you contain, this identity that you have been initiated into today, that you have been invited to activate in yourself today, these gifts are holy. They are sacred, they are safe and they are you. And you actually, your assignment, really your assignment, your divine assignment is to bring them forward, not to hide them.

You didn’t get your gifts to hide them under a freaking bushel. You didn’t get your gifts to bury them under a carpet. You didn’t get your gifts and get your one shot to look away and not make eye contact with opportunity. No sister, you have your gifts to use them, to do something with them. You now belong to you, first and foremost, your identity is not in, who allows you to feel safe because you’re fitting their version of you in an old fossilized shell.

No, who you are is a sovereign powerful woman who belongs to herself, who knows that she has impact to make legacy, to make a movement to lead. She is the one that gets to show up and call the shots from now on. She is the one who is the CEO of your company. When you allow the biggest version of you to be the CEO of your business and your life, watch out and buckle up sister, because everything is about to change.

Tingle tingle, tingle, tingle. All right. I’m so excited to be with you guys. I love you all so much.