Familiarity Is Not Identity

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What if some of the things you call your personality are actually things that you learn to do to protect yourself? What if I'm just quiet? Sometimes means I learned that being noticed carried a cost? What if I'm a perfectionist sometimes means I learned that mistakes make me feel unsafe, exposed, or unacceptable? What if I don't like confrontation sometimes means my brain learned to associate disagreement with rejection? What if I'm just not confident is not a permanent description of who you are, but the result of a response that you have rehearsed for so long that it actually now feels like identity. Because there's a difference between who God created you to be and some of the behaviors life trained you to be. And I want you to hear this very carefully. Familiarity is not identity. Something can feel like you simply because you've practiced it for years. You can be fearfully and wonderfully made and still have learned patterns organized around fear. You can know scripture and still shrink in certain rooms. You can know you're capable and still hesitate when it's time to be seen. You can believe God has a purpose for you and still hear something inside you saying, don't risk it. Don't say too much. Don't stand out. Don't get it wrong. Don't let anybody see you fail. Don't give them a reason to reject you. So today, I want us to go much deeper than confidence. If God says you are fearfully and wonderfully made, why has your brain learned to hide? Hello and welcome to Lead To Excel Podcast. I'm Maureen Chiana, your host. I'm a neuroleadership facilitator, neurocoach, and emotional intelligence specialist. And my work brings together neuroscience, neuroplasticity, emotional intelligence, and scripture. And on this podcast, I want us to go beneath the behavior. Because telling someone, be confident, think positively, believe in yourself, stop worrying about what people think may sound encouraging, but it does not explain why a highly intelligent, capable person can know exactly what they should do and still struggle to do it. It does not explain why you can know something intellectually, believe something spiritually, and still find yourself behaving from an old pattern. So I want us to ask better questions. What did my brain learn? What is the emotion beneath the behavior? What am I predicting will happen? What belief have I rehearsed? And what truth now needs to become practice? Today's episode comes directly from day 121 of my book Rewire Your Brain with Neuroscience and Scripture every day. So if you don't have your copy yet, go get your copy from the mindsight.com or Amazon. And you also can get the workbook which was just launched last week. So it's very new. And in the workbook, same principle, a page a day, 366 days daily guide. Get your copy. These books are phenomenal. There are 12 sections in the book and workbook. And you work through them either daily or if you decide that you just want to go to a section on the foundation of thoughts or relationships, becoming limitless, letting go of the past or goal setting, you do that. And at the end of each week in the workbook, you've got a wrap-up section. So get your copy. It will truly transform your life and enable you to achieve the goals, results, success that you desire. So let's get back into the

Identity Before Performance

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podcast. Like I said, today's episode comes directly from day 121. And day 121's the title is Embracing Your God-given identity. And the scripture at the heart of it is Ephesians 2.10. For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. I want you to notice the order. That matters because many of us reverse it. We live as though Scripture says, once you achieve enough, once you become successful enough. Once enough people approve of you, once you prove that you deserve to be in the room, then you can feel valuable. But that is not the order in scripture. We are God's handiwork. Then comes the work. Identity before performance. Being before proving. Design before achievement. When we get that order wrong, everything becomes heavier. Because if achievement becomes identity, failure becomes more than disappointment. Failure begins to feel like a verdict on you. If approval becomes identity, rejection becomes more than somebody having a different opinion. It starts to feel like evidence that you are not enough. If being needed becomes identity, you may spend your life rescuing everybody because being unnecessary begins to feel frightening. This is why identity matters

How Your Brain Learns to Hide

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so much. Your brain is constantly learning. What happened? How did I feel? What happened next? Was I accepted? Was I criticized? Was I embarrassed? Was I safe? What happened when I spoke? What happened when I trusted? What happened when I got something wrong? Over time, the brain uses experience to help predict what may happen in similar situations. That is useful. But sometimes an old prediction survives long after the environment that created it has changed. Imagine a child who repeatedly hears, don't show off. Who do you think you are? Keep quiet. Stop being so sensitive. You're the shy one. Maybe the messages were direct. Maybe they weren't. Sometimes an environment teaches you without anyone actually ever saying the words. Years later, that child is now a highly capable adult. They're sitting in a meeting, they have an idea, and it's a good idea as well. But before they speak, something happens. Their body tightens slightly. They start evaluating everyone else in the room. Someone has more experience, someone sounds very confident, and the thought then comes, maybe I should wait. Someone else will probably say better. So you stay quiet. The meeting ends and immediately there is relief. No one challenged you. No one disagreed. No embarrassment. Safe. And this is where something important happens. The brain learns not only what you do, but from what happens afterwards. If avoiding something reduces discomfort, avoidance can become easier to repeat. The next meeting comes, and what happens? You stay quiet. Relieve again. Another opportunity comes, you don't volunteer. Relieve again. Someone asks for your opinion. Make it smaller. Relieve. And after years of doing this, you might find that you stop saying, I learned to protect myself by staying quiet. And you start saying, I'm just not that kind of person. But the behavior you learned and the identity God gave you are not automatically the same thing. The label becomes the lens. And this is why labels are so powerful. I'm shy. I'm not clever enough. I'm difficult. I'm too much. I'm not creative. I'm not a leader. I'm always overlooked. I'm bad with people. I'm too old. I'm too young. People like me don't do things like that. A label can become a lens. And once it becomes a lens, you begin interpreting new experiences through an old conclusion. If I believe my voice doesn't matter, I stay quiet. Because I stay quiet, people don't hear my contribution. Because they don't hear my contribution, I feel invisible. Then I say, see, nobody notices me. The belief shaped the behavior. The behavior influenced the outcome, and the outcome appeared to confirm the belief. That

The Dust Is Not the Diamond

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is a loop. In day 121, I use the picture of a diamond buried beneath dirt. And I love this metaphor because dirt can change what is visible without changing what is valuable. If you drop a diamond into mud, the mud may cover its brilliance. The walking past may not even notice what is there. But the dirt has not changed the value of the diamond. The diamond remains the diamond, can put a lot of dirt on us. Rejection, failure, comparison, criticism, family expectations, cultural expectations, a painful relationship, a workplace where you're constantly undermined, a business that failed, the mistake you still haven't forgiven yourself for. The season when you didn't recognize yourself. The person who repeatedly communicated you're too much or you're not enough. And eventually you can look at the dust and think you're looking at yourself. And the narrative I failed becomes I'm a failure. I was rejected becomes there must be something wrong with me. I made a poor decision. That becomes I cannot trust myself. I experience fear because I'm a fearful person. But an event is not an identity. A wound is not an identity. A coping response is not automatically an identity. The dust is not the diamond. I see this repeatedly in my work. Highly capable people do not always lack ability. Sometimes the issue is that their nervous system has learned to treat visibility, risk, disagreement, or uncertainty as something to avoid. So the person keeps trying to solve the problem by becoming even more capable. Another qualification, more preparation, more research, more perfecting. Capability was never the real problem. The problem was that being seen made them feel. And if you do not identify that, you can spend years improving

Understanding Your Emotional Responses

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the wrong thing. And this is where emotional intelligence really, really matters. Emotional intelligence allows us to become curious instead of simply judging ourselves. So instead of saying, Why am I like this? Ask the question, What am I feeling? What triggered it? What am I predicting? Those are better questions. Also, what am I trying to protect myself from? And does that prediction still belong in this situation? Those are better questions. Maybe you feel nervous about speaking in meetings or public speaking. The feeling is real. But what conclusion have you attached to it? If I feel nervous, it means I'm not ready. Not necessarily. Maybe nervousness simply means the moment matters to you. Maybe you feel uncomfortable setting a boundary. Does discomfort mean the boundary is wrong? Not necessarily. Maybe you're simply doing something your old pattern is unfamiliar with. That is one of the important distinctions. Your feelings are real, but they are not always accurate forecasts. You can feel afraid and still be safe. You can feel uncertain and still be capable. You can feel uncomfortable and still be making a healthy decision. Emotional maturity means what I feel deserves attention, but it does not automatically get control of my behavior. Fear can enter the room. It doesn't automatically get to sit at the head of the table. I think Gideon in the Bible gives us one of the most powerful pictures in Scripture.

Gideon: The Winepress Does Not Define You

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When we meet Gideon in Judges 6, Israel is living under Midianite oppression. And Gideon is stretching wheat in a wine press. He is hiding. And his behavior actually does make sense. He has learned to operate in an environment of threats. Then the angel of the Lord appears to him and says, The Lord is with you, mighty warrior. Mighty warrior? He is hiding. And that is exactly what I find so powerful. God speaks to an identity. An identity that Gideon's present behavior does not yet appear to actually demonstrate. Gideon responds by describing himself through limitation. His clan is the weakest. He is the least. Weakest least. See the narrative? Gideon is describing himself through his environment, but God is speaking from purpose. God is speaking from the place where he said that he has created us in his image. God is speaking into what he knows he has created. Gideon sees the wine press. God sees the warrior. Perhaps some of us are still naming ourselves from the wine press, the environments where we learn to hide, the relationship that wounded us, the failure that embarrassed us, the family that underestimated us, the room we are speaking wasn't safe. That environment may explain the behavior, but it does not get final authority over your identity. The wine press does not get to name you. Now, this is where neuroplasticity becomes important. It's not enough simply to say

Turning Truth Into New Behaviour

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I know who God says I am. That truth matters deeply. But if you want an old behavioral pattern to change, eventually the truth you believe must meet the behavior that you practice. Because the brain learns from experience. And if you repeatedly avoid visibility, your brain receives very little evidence that visibility can actually be safe. So, new practice matters. If the old pattern says your voice doesn't matter, perhaps the practice is speak once in the meeting. You speak and you survive. That's new evidence. Maybe somebody listens, more evidence. Maybe somebody disagrees and you discover that disagreement did not actually destroy you. More evidence. If the old pattern says you must keep everybody happy, perhaps the practice is saying, no, I can't do that. And you do it, you say it kindly without writing a three-paragraph apology afterwards. You tolerate the discomforts. That's new evidence. If the old level says you're not ready, perhaps the practice is go ahead and submit the application. Maybe publish the work. Maybe make the phone call you've been avoiding. Just start. Every new action is not instant rewiring, but repeated experiences can make different responses easier to access. And this is the point. The truth you believe eventually has to become the behavior that you practice. So put on the new self. The workbook for day 121 also brings in Ephesians 4, which tells us to be renewed in the attitude of our minds and to put on the new self. I love that phrase so much. Put on. There is action in it. Put on. Imagine owning a beautiful coat, but leaving it hanging in the wardrobe. It belongs to you, but you're not wearing it. And there are truths some of us own theologically, but do not yet wear behaviorally. We say things like, I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Then spend the whole day comparing ourselves with somebody else. And you might find yourself saying, you know, we say this all the time, I'm God's handiwork. Then apologize for every gift God has placed inside you. You probably say, My identity is in Christ. Then allow one person's criticism to determine how you feel about yourself for the rest of the week, knowing the truth matters. But eventually put it on. Wear it into the meeting, wear it into the conversation, wear it into the relationship, wear it into the decision, wear it into the room where the old version of you would normally disappear. The workbook, like I said, takes you from the insight into practice. And this is exactly

One Truth, One Action

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why day 121 in the workbook asks the question What old label or belief has been shaping how I see myself? I want you to name it. Not vaguely like I lack confidence. No, be specific. You could do so, you could say something like, When someone more experienced than me enters the room, I assume their knowledge means mine has no value, so I stop contributing. Now we see the pattern. Then the second question says, What truth about who God says I am will I practice living from today? Notice the word practice. Not simply repeat, practice, and then choose one action, one truth, one action. Maybe the old label is I am not good enough. The truth is I am God's handiwork. The action, submit that application you've been holding on to. Maybe the old belief is my voice doesn't matter. The truth, God has given me gifts, wisdom, and a contribution to make. The action, speak. Maybe the old belief is I have to keep everybody happy. And the truth with that could be my value is not determined by universal approval. And the action, set the boundary. One truth, one action, give your brain a new experience. So I want to leave you with this. Perhaps you do not need to become a completely different person. Perhaps you need to just stop allowing an old environment, an old label, an old wound, or an old adaptation to keep defining the person you already are. Remember, the dust is not the diamond. The hiding is not the identity. The failure is not the identity. The rejection is not the identity. And the environment that taught you to hide does not have the authority to name you. Psalm 139 says, I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Efficient says you are God's handiwork. And scripture tells us to be renewed and put on the new self. So perhaps the question is no longer, who have I learned to be? Perhaps the better question is what would change if I started practicing life from who God says I am. Maybe your brain learned to hide, but the brain can learn from new experience too. It can learn my voice can be heard, disagreement can be survived, failure does not erase me. A boundary does not make me unlovable. Being visible is not automatically dangerous. Being imperfect does not make me worthless. And perhaps the most important thing, familiarity is not identity. So if you have the copy of the book already, just go to that day 121, embracing your God-given identity. And ask yourself the question: what old label? Write it in the space there, what old label has been shaping how I see myself? Where did I learn it? How has it been affecting my behavior? What truth does God say about me? And what one action will I take today that agrees with that truth? Because insight is only the beginning. Practice is where change happens. I'm Maureen Ciana, and this is Lead2 Excel Podcast. I'm so pleased you could join me in this podcast today, and I hope it's given you so much information to really help. Remember to like, share, subscribe wherever you're listening to this podcast, and share it with other people that you feel will benefit from it. Until next time, think better, live bolder, transform daily. And that's the tag for my new workbook. Have a wonderful rest of your week. See you in the next episode. Bye for now.