Finding your voice can show up in unexpected places, and recently it’s been meeting me while I’m doing something very ordinary: buying a car.
I am buying a car and it’s challenging me in so many interesting ways. I realised that the ways it’s challenging me are all about identity.
When I studied NLP, (Neuro Linguistic Programming), they taught that to change you must start by changing your identity. You change your identity and then your values and beliefs will automatically change. This is the way to get results.
This is very much the thinking of most of the life coaches on the internet etc. (cough cough, “let them”). All very good in theory but impossible for most of us to do without a tonne of therapeutic work first. Because identity that is made in the body stays in the body and if we “change identity” then we are just burying stuff. We are faking. We may convince other people, even ourselves to a point but we can’t necessarily convince our body. Our body remembers.
Privilege
It strikes me that the ideology of just taking on a new identity seems like it’s very much from a place of privilege and not something everyone can do. This approach clearly puts the onus on that person and denies the privilege some have and others don’t.
All that said I am aware that I may just not understand, or not be ready to understand. Ask me again in a few years.
Back to my identity crisis.
I’ll elaborate a bit more as it all sounds very deep and I think it is but it doesn’t sound deep when I tell you what this is really about.
I’m buying a new to me car.
I’m buying a car with an excellent warranty and that I know I can rely on. I’m not crazy enough to buy a new car because I know they lose value the moment you leave the dealers but I am buying a nice car.
It has fancy mod cons. It doesn’t stall. It has cruise control. The radio has DAB and so many other fancy features.
I feel like I’m not a good enough driver to warrant this car. It’s like how I share my Tanglewood guitar with people. I say, it’s a lovely guitar. I’m not good enough to merit it.
I worry I don’t look after my cars well enough to warrant this car.
I saved some inheritance I got a long time ago for this moment and yes, spending the money scares me because it’s about half of my savings, if not more, but that’s what the money was for. I saved it for that.
But who do I think I am buying a car outright and not getting sucked into the whole finance trick?
Who do I think I am to get such a lovely car?
I am crazy to spend so much of my money?
And then the charming sales man, (who honestly told me he’s not a salesman), says the words…
“How do you feel about a white car?”
What I heard was… “how do you feel about men on dating apps who take photos of themselves in front of their expensive looking white car?” “How do you feel about having a car that tries to tell the world you have lots of money?”
I am anti ostentation.
I am anti showing that you have money – whether or not you do.
I am anti showy cars. I don’t agree with them.
I used to live in a very fancy ex show-house. It was full of mirrors and beige, cream and a lot of magnolia. It is a fancy house.
I would show people around and say “it’s very nice but the bath is terrible.” “It’s very nice but I pay for it by having a husband who works away loads.” And now I’d probably say “I hated that house, it was sterile and it never showed how I am.”
Back to the car…
It’s white. It has more mod cons than I knew a car could have. It’s also 4/6 thousand pounds less than the other cars that the man showed to me. So clearly I can’t not get it when it’s exactly what I want but in white.
I’ve concluded I will just have to wash it more often. I will have to take better care of it, (I wonder if I will).
And I will have to get over myself about the idea of looking showy.
I will have to get over myself about the fear of looking like I have money.
Childhood Narratives – Identity
I know my sense of identity comes from a narrative in my childhood,
We were middle class at a school where most people had less money than us. Or different money than us.
We didn’t spend on clothes, we spent on food.
My grandmother’s German pension, (she escaped the Nazi’s and had never worked as a teacher in Germany but got a great pension), paid for our music lessons and holidays. We had enough money.
Not too much but enough. Money wasn’t a worry.
I have always believed I have enough money but not to show off about it. I never believed I had more than enough.
I believed it’s wrong to take more than your share so don’t be greedy.
If you have more than enough then give it away.
I am now 48 and I have no pension. I didn’t worry about that as I was going to share my ex husband’s pension. Now he’s my ex husband and I have no pension.
I can barely afford to take my kids away and I’m self employed with little buffer.
So I’m looking to change my identity around money and being seen.
I am ready to have more than enough money. I am ready to have enough money to take my kids on holiday.
I am indeed manifesting in this blog and yes I feel silly doing it here. (I don’t know if anyone reads these anyway.)
I am ready to stop being ashamed of having more than enough money.
It’s not like a pie
I believe the coaches who say that money, like love, is not a pie. It’s not like if you share it you get less. The more you share it the more there is.
I want to have more flow of money.
There, I said it. I even wrote it. In public.
I am ready to step into my power, financially.
I am also ready to drive a shiny WHITE CAR.
It’s all part of the same thing.
I wrote about this before in a different way so that blog might explain a bit more of what I’m getting at here… https://rebeccaschwarz.co.uk/a-rising-tide-lifts-all-boats/
Standing in my power.
Letting myself have nice things.
Letting myself achieve the things I want to achieve.
Not being afraid of being happy and blessed and lucky.
Not to go too far into it but I believe Brene Brown when she says we are afraid of joy and I love the Marine Williamson quote “”Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure,”
It’s not just about money. It’s about attention (and probably about love too)
So how does this relate to voice?
We deserve to have the good things? If circumstances mean you can’t have the whole “good thing” right now then find a way to have a it a bit.
A wonderful exercise I did years ago was…
What would you do if you won the lottery? How do you sort of do that now? Bring a bit of that “fantasy” into your life now?
It’s ok to have what you want in life (it doesn’t take it away from other people and it isn’t greedy).
It’s also ok to do something that feels like it draws attention.
it’s ok to be centre stage.
Own your spoken voice. Take the time for you to step into your power
if you are ready to step into your power this workshop will change your life.
It is safe to be brave and bold. – I seem to have started a new blog about that…