Ep 112: Why Identity Shifts Are the Key to Real Change | Cara Calvin
By Charlotte Cummings | Feel Better Podcast
Podcast Guest: Cara Calvin on Identity Shifts, Nervous System Safety, and Systems That Actually Support Women
If you’ve ever thought, “I know what I want… so why can’t I just do it?” — this conversation will land.
In this episode of the podcast, I sat down with Cara Calvin, a coach who works with high-performing women on identity shifts — the internal change that needs to happen before your external life can properly catch up.
Cara is the kind of woman who is unapologetically herself. She’s warm and non-judgemental, but also the sort of person who invites you to get radically honest (in the best possible way). And when women get honest? That’s when change becomes possible.
Here are the biggest takeaways from our chat — especially if you’re a high-functioning woman who’s tired of feeling like you’re doing “all the things”… but still not feeling like yourself.
Why Women Get Stuck Between Where They Are and Where They Want to Be
Cara shared something I see constantly in women too:
When the gap between “now” and “next” feels too big, many women don’t move at all.
It’s not laziness. It’s your nervous system.
When your system perceives the change as threatening, you can drop into fight / flight / freeze — and the most common response is freeze. You overthink. You stall. You tell yourself you need more time, more clarity, more energy, more confidence.
But confidence doesn’t arrive first.
Cara’s take is that progress comes from micro actions — small daily steps that compound. The problem is, many of us have subconscious programming (old beliefs, old conditioning, old trauma responses) running in the background, quietly stopping us from taking those steps.
The shift begins with one thing:
Radical honesty.
Not self-criticism. Not “what’s wrong with me?”
Honesty like: What’s actually happening in my life? What am I tolerating? What am I avoiding? What do I want?
“Ins and Outs” for 2026: What Women Are Choosing More Of (and Less Of)
Cara shared her “ins” for the year — and they’re especially relevant for female entrepreneurs and ambitious women:
In:
Multiple income streams (because life is expensive and women deserve options)
Investing in coaching/mentorship (not as a luxury, but as acceleration)
Trusting your intuition (making decisions from your inner knowing, not the outside noise)
Out:
Lack mindset (“I’m not enough”, “I don’t have enough”, “I’m not good enough”)
Quick fixes (because real change is built in micro steps, not magic moments)
Unhealthy relationships and environments (anything that leaves you second-guessing yourself)
One line I loved: wanting more doesn’t mean you’re ungrateful.
It means you’re awake.
The Hidden Reason Rest Feels Unsafe for High-Functioning Women
This part of the conversation hit hard — because so many women experience it, but don’t have language for it.
Cara and I talked about how, for high-achieving women, rest can feel unsafe.
Not because they don’t want rest… but because their nervous system has been trained to equate safety with:
achievement
productivity
performance
being needed
Cara described the fear many women carry underneath the hustle:
“That version of me got me here… and if I let her go, everything will fall apart.”
So instead of feeling emotions like fear, shame, disappointment, or overwhelm — women often overproduce to escape them.
They stay busy. They stay “on”. They stay functional.
Until burnout forces the conversation.
And as Cara said (perfectly):
No amount of holiday fixes burnout if the pattern stays intact.
Women, Leadership, and the Cost of “Pretending to Be Men”
We also talked about why the world genuinely needs women at their best — and why so many women in leadership roles feel like they have to play the game in masculine energy to succeed.
Cara explained it in a grounded way:
Masculine energy (not “men”, but a style of energy): action, proving, pushing, achieving, hustling
Feminine energy: intuition, creativity, empathy, receiving, nurturing
Many high-functioning women get stuck in a constant masculine state — and it disconnects them from:
creativity
intuition
emotional attunement
true internal safety
That disconnection is where burnout breeds.
What’s exciting (and honestly, long overdue) is what Cara described as the next wave of women:
Women who are embodied. Emotionally connected. Nervous-system aware. Comfortable telling the truth.
Not louder. Not harder. More real.
When Women Change, Relationships Feel It
If you’ve ever levelled up and then felt your relationships wobble, you’re not imagining it.
Cara said she sees this constantly: when a woman shifts her identity, she naturally develops:
higher standards
clearer values
stronger boundaries
different choices
That can be confronting for partners, friends, workplaces — even family systems.
The key is communication, but also courage. Because growth often requires:
honest conversations
naming what isn’t working
renegotiating roles and expectations
And sometimes the question becomes:
Do we grow together… or do I choose myself?
That’s not always an easy answer — but it becomes easier when women stop viewing change as a threat, and start viewing it as an opportunity.
The Systems Piece: Why So Many Women Feel Like They “Don’t Have Time”
This section was so practical and so needed.
Cara’s background includes high-level corporate roles (think: elite executive assistant / operations brain / “Donna from Suits” energy), and her systems advice was gold.
Here are her best tips for busy women:
1) Digitise everything
If you’re still relying on a paper diary, or your calendar isn’t shared with your partner, you’re making life harder than it needs to be.
Your calendar should be:
digital
accessible anywhere
shared (if you’re parenting with someone)
used for self-care blocks too, not just work and kids
2) Create a morning routine that sets you up
It doesn’t have to be elaborate — but it does need to give you some sense of grounding before the day starts taking from you.
The goal is to stop living on the back foot.
3) Do a weekly “comms meeting”
In businesses, people meet to plan the week.
In homes, we often don’t — and then wonder why it feels chaotic.
Cara recommends a weekly review (even 30 minutes) to look at:
trainings, events, assemblies, travel
where the pressure points are
who’s doing what
where gaps need to be created
She and her husband even do theirs in the sauna (iconic, honestly).
4) Choose your top three priorities daily
Long to-do lists can overwhelm your nervous system and trigger freeze.
Top three keeps you focused and realistic.
The Netflix Trap: When “Downtime” Is Actually Numbing
This was a gentle but real call-out.
Many women are exhausted, so they reach for the easiest relief: Netflix, scrolling, wine, distraction.
And sometimes that’s completely fine.
But when it becomes every night, for years, it often isn’t rest — it’s avoidance.
Cara’s point wasn’t “never watch TV”. It was:
When women say they “don’t have time”, sometimes there is time — but it’s being used to numb the feelings they’re afraid to face.
Why Clearing Your Wardrobe Can Help You Make an Identity Shift
Cara shared one of the simplest, most effective identity practices — and it’s surprisingly emotional:
Clear your wardrobe.
She called wardrobes an “identity morgue” — full of old versions of ourselves, stored as clothing.
There are two reasons this works:
1) Identity permission
Letting go of clothes you’ll never wear again is a somatic “I release her” moment.
You can keep the memory without keeping the item.
2) Energetic space
Clutter blocks newness.
If your life is full — cupboards, wardrobe, schedule, emotional bandwidth — there’s nowhere for new opportunities to land.
Cara’s metaphor was perfect:
If your hands are holding a rope too tightly, you can’t catch the tennis ball being thrown to you.
Goals vs To-Do Lists: The Identity Difference
One of the most useful parts of this episode was Cara’s distinction between goals and tasks.
A to-do list is:
✅ “Sell the car”
✅ “Renovate the bathroom”
A real goal is one that changes:
how you think
what you choose
how you tolerate discomfort
For example:
“Take my family to Australia” might be a goal… or it might be a booking.
But:
“I’m becoming the kind of woman who can create an extra $10,000 through a side income stream”
— that’s a goal.
Because it requires you to become someone new.
And that’s the point:
It’s not about what you want.
It’s about who you need to become to hold it.
A Final Note on Identity: You Don’t ‘Arrive’
We finished on something that is so true it almost stings:
Even when you reach the milestone you thought would fix everything… you still have to live with yourself.
Success doesn’t erase imposter syndrome.
Achievement doesn’t automatically create safety.
And there isn’t a finish line.
So the real work is learning to enjoy the road — and allowing your identity to evolve along the way.
Connect with Cara Calvin
Cara’s new website is launching at CaraCalvin.com and you can find her on Instagram at @cara.calvin.
She offers one-on-one coaching, and she’s deeply committed to confidentiality, clarity, and helping women build lives that feel as good on the inside as they look on the outside.
Want more episodes like this?
Browse the podcast archive on the Charlotte Cummings website — and if you’re in a season of change, keep an eye out for tools and resources designed to support your nervous system, your relationships, and the woman you’re becoming.
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So really excited to be here with you today and I planned how I was going to introduce you to people, whether I told some of your backstory in that introduction, but actually the thing I am most excited about and having guests on this podcast is being able to share amazing people with the people who follow this podcast. So what I wanted to do was tell people what I love about you. I think the key thing for me when I met you was that you march to the beat of your own drum and it's really obvious to people that you are comfortable in your own skin, that you've done a lot of work to get to that place.
Am I going to make you cry? So nice because we don't know how people perceive you and I love that you thought that because that's the way in which I like to be seen because I think it's different. But you're unashamed of who you are and your goals and your sense of calling to challenge other people to live their best lives, not just in terms of what they achieve, but how they are, how they feel in their lives, what they're capable of getting out of their own way is such a cool mission. And just the fact that you're doing that daily for yourself is super inspiring.
So it's so lovely to have you here. Thank you so much. Honestly, I was so happy when you invited me.
It's an honour to be here and yet you're amazing and what you do is amazing too. So thank you for inviting me. Yeah.
And I get to share you with other people. And we had this familiarity with each other though, because we actually went to the same school we did. And if we wanted to, and I don't think we do want to, we could try to ask also.
Oh no, let's not do that. But we didn't know each other at school, but it meant that we're super familiar with one another, which is a great start. Well, actually I knew who you were.
So I think a lot of people who I went to school with within the five-year bracket of being older or younger than me, I did know, because I've always been super aware of people and loved people and really enjoyed networking and getting to know other people and their stories. So I do remember you very clearly. And I think what you do is amazing.
And the fact that you've, like you said about me, you know, you're on your mission every day, doing the thing that you love and sharing all your gifts with your audience. How cool. And you know, the real test for me of this episode was I was away camping over the summer with friends and I was saying, oh, I've got guests coming on the podcast this year and let me tell you about the first person that I've got.
And when I explained the work that you do with high-performing women around identity shifts and around how we need to mentally kind of change our sense of who we are and sometimes catch up with that to achieve what we're capable of, they were like, oh, that's a thing. That is such a great thing. Yeah.
Well, people don't know they get so overwhelmed in the gap between where they are and where they want to go that they actually do nothing. Their nervous system goes into this fight or flight or freeze response and they actually don't move. And it's those small daily actions, those micro actions that move us to where we want to go and the things we want to achieve.
However, there are layers and layers and layers of programming, most of it subconscious that we don't know are stopping us from moving forward. But when we start to get radically honest with ourselves, who we are, and we start to create that self-awareness, we can actually move through that and we can achieve anything we want to in this life. Yeah.
Radically honest is such a good phrase. And I think that your presence invites that in people like there's no hiding with you, but there's also no need to hide because you're super nonjudgmental and you just want people to have the best lives they can. Absolutely.
And I actually see potential. I mean, I see patterns and I see potential in people. I don't see the limitations the way we see our own limitations.
I see what is possible for them. And it's really ourselves, our own glass boxes that we create that stop us from getting what we want and becoming the person that we want to become or who we need to become in order to achieve those things. Yeah.
Yeah. How exciting. Yeah.
Tell me, we're both back from pretty similar summers, wrangling children at cricket nets with lots of sport and lots of outdoor activity. I think mine involved more tents than yours. Oh, 100%.
You know that meme that says, you know, would you go camping? Yeah. Absolutely not. I'm a non-camper, but again, I own it.
I love an adventure, but I like also a holiday house or a hotel or resort. Super good. I did think of you when we were putting up our tent and when it was... And using public toilets with everybody else and showering with others and not my thing.
It's either an adventure that you love or you don't. My children would love it. My husband has been trying to get me to go camping for decades, but I'm just not a camper.
Sounds like you can send your husband and kids. Do you know what? I've been telling them for a long time, like, guys, just go camp. Go do your thing.
Leave mum. Yeah. I'm happy to do my own thing.
And you went to the cricket in Melbourne. I did. So good.
It was actually amazing. So we went on the first day, which was action-packed for the Boxing Day test. And my eldest son and husband ended up getting tickets to day two, which was the final day.
But what an experience being in the MCG with that many people for the Ashes. It was really amazing. So good.
Tell me what are the ins and outs for you this year? Well, the ins for me this year is multiple income streams. I think that's something that we all need to be looking at, particularly as female entrepreneurs, because the world is so different from what it was for our grandparents and our parents. And the financial demands and all the amazing things we want to do and the opportunities we want to provide ourselves and our families all cost money.
So for me, multiple income streams is a big one. Investing in a coach or mentor. And I'm not just saying that because I am one and you are too.
I'm saying that because that can really help to accelerate your growth. It has been probably the biggest cheat sheet for me in terms of my own growth is investing in myself, not just in self-care and those things that we think are important in terms of investing, but really investing in personal growth. That's a massive one for me as well.
The other two big ones and just trusting your intuition. I think that's a really, really important one for women is to trust that we can make decisions for ourselves and we can make the best decision and that we know what is best for us rather than listening to the noise, the outside noise of other people's opinions and what society thinks is best for us. And what are the outs in order to allow the ins? So for me, the outs definitely lack mindset.
I find with my clients and even myself, I find myself thinking I don't have enough. I'm not enough. I'm not good enough.
Doubting myself. And I think that when we can catch ourselves out and we can start to understand the language that we're using and some of those thoughts that are sort of creeping in in the background, lack mindset is definitely one that I've been catching myself out on. It's not by saying I'm grateful for it.
It is about saying I'm grateful for what I have, but also being okay to want more and knowing that when we are in a lack mindset, it puts us in lower frequencies, lower energetic frequency states, which we will speak about a little bit more. And what that does is it evokes lower frequency emotions. So when we think I don't have that, or I want that, but I can't afford it, we automatically feel sad, frustrated, angry, and that puts us in low energetic frequency states.
And as a result, we attract that back to us. So for me, it's just becoming very aware about the thoughts that I have around not having enough, not being enough. And another one is quick fixes.
It's for me, I think still inevitably we look for the quick fix and things, even though I'm very process driven. I know that the micro steps are the things that make change. And I understand it's the inner work that creates that change and acceleration and that change as well.
But inevitably, we still look for the quick fix. And I think for me, that's definitely out. This year, it's about knowing that these small things that I do every single day matter, and they compound over time.
And so those two things really, for me, big outs, as well as unhealthy relationships, unhealthy, unhealthy environments, and unhealthy experiences. It's about knowing when my body is telling me that I don't feel safe, my nervous system is sharing that information with me. And just being in environments and around people that really lift me up and that I can trust and that make me feel really great.
And I leave those experiences and those interactions just feeling really fired up and excited for my life rather than second guessing myself. Because when you are working every day to be the most authentic version of you, often there's a lot of mirror back at you, triggered people. And often I feel triggered as well when when I'm trying to be my authentic self and other people are struggling with it.
So being around people where you can be your authentic self is just invaluable. Yeah. And that's a really big thing for women to move into different environments where there are people who call them forward, who inspire them, who are encouraging them.
Tell me about what you observe for women with that journey around, you know, building community around their emerging identity and goals. Yeah, absolutely. So when we grow, different versions of us require different mirrors, as I just mentioned.
So when we are growing, we need to be putting ourselves in these environments that make us feel uncomfortable. And they do stretch us, because that's where we find that inspiration. And it goes hand in hand with that motivation.
Because I think when we've seen it in action, we start to believe that it's possible for us too. And being around women who are growing, these women are the women who will support you because they know how hard it is. Yeah.
And so we often hide. And we don't want to be putting put ourselves in those situations, because we don't think we're worthy. We don't think we're good enough.
We're not like them. I hear that a lot. But I'm not like you.
The women like that are different to me. But actually, that's the first sign where I'd be saying, if you're feeling called to do that, or you're inspired by it, but you feel afraid, or you feel nervous, or you feel like you're not worthy, that's the sign that you need to step forward into those environments. And there are incredible opportunities to get together and events to get together with other women who are doing incredible things.
And then when you're in those environments, you're starting to have these conversations, these opportunities come to you, these doors start to open, you're putting yourself in an environment where you can become your best self. And it's different from the environments that we're comfortable in. And that's what the most important part is, we need to be stretching that comfort zone.
And we can do that not only with our environment, but we can also do that with our identity as well. So just an aside of that, I always encourage my clients with the identity transformation work, to use Pinterest or other means like a vision board to create a futuristic identity board. So to look at pictures of women wearing different outfits, wearing, you know, wearing different jewelry or handbags or in different environments that you might not be familiar with.
But when you see these women at the supermarket, at the mall, at the school pickup, you think, that's a great outfit, but I could never pull that off. You know, that's a little nudge from your future self saying, actually, this is who you are. And a lot of the time, it's not about the outfit.
It's not about the material stuff. It's about the confidence that that starts to evoke within a woman. Because when we are being more authentic, and we are dressing to make us feel good about ourselves, the confidence is a natural byproduct of that, right? And a lot of the time, we're just wearing sports gear, and we're just throwing on a hoodie, and we're just throwing our jeans on, and we're not all the time dressed up.
But you know, as well as I do, that when you are, it really does help boost your confidence. Absolutely. So with the identity boards, it's a really great way to start to move towards that future version of you.
And it's not just clothes. Yeah. It's also words.
Yeah. Things like courageous, inspiring, motivating, fit and healthy. This is how we start to get clarity on who it is we want to become.
And that's when we can start to look at putting those actions in place to move towards that person. So it's not just about the vision, the stuff that we want on a vision board. It's about who is this woman who has these things, and how can I become her today? Yeah.
I'm going to ask you a question about why the world needs women to be at their best, because it's not all about being able to buy the latest designer thing, or just giving your children the education opportunities, or the holidays that you want to give them. It's so important for the world to have women at their best. What's your view on that? I really believe that women often offer something different to men.
And whether it's energetic, or whether it's not, it's really about a different style of leadership. So when we look at, as we've spoken about many times, masculine versus feminine energy, it's not necessarily about male and female. It's about what that evokes energetically.
So when we think about masculine energy, we think about chasing goals, proving, action, like hustling. It's very much driven based. When we think about feminine energy, we think about creativity, intuition, receiving, we think about empathy, and some of those things.
So I think holistically, when we had men in power, there was less feminine energy there, which is the creativity, and the intuition, and the nurturing. And I think the balance is important. And so when women have that influence, and they have that power, it doesn't only influence the people around them, it actually influences communities.
And so women have such a pivotal role historically in the home to influence the upbringing of their children. Now women are in the workplace as well as raising family at the same time. And that's really only happened in the last one or two generations.
For us, I think that same influence can be placed into the workplace and into the world so that there is that balance between proving, grinding, achieving, chasing, but also the creativity, the intuition. And that also for women can lead to burnout. So when women, often we find with high-functioning women, they are often in a very masculine energy state.
So they're trying to prove something, they are doing, doing, doing all the things, and they find rest very challenging. What that does is that cuts them off from their feminine energy. So that cuts them off from their creativity, it cuts them off from their intuition, it cuts them off from that nurturing aspect of them.
And without the balance, that's how women end up in burnout. And as a result, it disconnects women emotionally from themselves. And it's the emotions, it's the lack of feeling emotions that has got us to where we are now.
And it's a huge part of the work I do, is understanding that feeling those emotions is the way through. And it's the same for men. But historically, men have always been in those masculine roles.
And now that women are coming through and sharing those roles, and even in the home, you find men sharing those roles now too. The balance is really important, because I think the female influence is really powerful. Yeah.
I get really sick of watching women pretend to be men. And I see this so often for women in leadership roles, that they play the game like a man. And they're the ones who over the last number of years have kind of risen to the top because they've learned how to play the game, just like the boys do.
Absolutely. And here comes another wave of women who are actually embodied, connected to their nervous systems, know their emotions, comfortable to say what they really think. How exciting.
It's so exciting. And the reason why women are like that is because they've been taught. Yeah.
We've, you know, and even as high-achieving females now with baby boomer parents, we have seen our fathers. And we have worked for men in roles. And men often were in those leadership roles, particularly when I was younger.
So it's a learned behavior, it becomes environmental. And once we understand that our life is a reflection of our beliefs, and our upbringing, our experiences in our environments, we start to see how we are conditioned and how we are programmed, and how everyone is programmed differently. But yes, the women in these roles have seen how to become successful from men historically, and have become little men in women's bodies.
And again, that's all well and good for a period of time, I think it's important to understand that sometimes we have to use masculine energy. I use it during the day to get things done, to achieve. But there is also a part of me that had to learn over the last five years, to step into my feminine energy, rest, become more creative, become more intuitive, and allow myself to be in flow and in alignment, so that I can be more productive, more successful and more efficient in my day to day.
Because I have clinically burnt out twice. And there are a lot of women who are right on the borderline of that. And no amount of holiday is going to help you with it.
That is very much a behavioral and energetic thing. You have to be able to do things differently if you want to get out of that cycle. Absolutely.
You know, and I remember when I first recognized that I was in real trouble, I'd already burnt out clinically twice, which is the funny stories really, when I in retrospect, when I think about it, but a couple of years ago, I'd had surgery, it was planned. And I was lying in my bed. My husband was there taking the kids to school doing all the things.
My mum had taken time off work and my dad's retired. So they were both at my house, helping cleaning, you know, sorting out school uniforms. I had a full team.
And I was lying in bed with my book. And I felt like I was being attacked by a bear. I was lying in bed feeling like because I wasn't being productive, that I was worthless, that there were things that needed to be done.
My ego was telling me that others couldn't do it as good as me, and that the pieces were going to fall apart. And I remember sitting there thinking, right, I'm gonna have to sit with this. And I'm gonna have to really explore because my nervous system felt so unsafe resting.
And I had to go down this whole big journey of how do I find the balance? And how do I start to heal my nervous system? Yeah, I actually found that at the beginning of summer, I noticed how long it took me to start to wind down. And it really stood out to me that rest feels unsafe for us when we have been conditioned to be wired to be on all the time that our safety is through our achievements and our performance. Rest actually feels really freaking scary for a lot of women.
It absolutely does. And I think one of the key things, when I looked at it for myself, and understanding myself was that identity, that version of me, got me where I was and had created the success that I'd had to date. And I was terrified that if I let her go, my success, outwardly or internally, all the things would fall away.
So there was a real fear there. And I had to sit with the fear. Because often when we feel emotions like fear, frustration, anger, embarrassment, shame, those low frequency emotions as women, what we do is we think, I don't have time for this, I don't want to feel these emotions.
So I'm going to overproduce to make myself feel better or to distract myself from that. And that is behavior that I see in every single woman that I work with. And it was behavior that I lived for, you know, 15, 20 years.
Yeah, it's really interesting to me. And I'm keen to hear your take on this from your work with women, that when women change, especially when they're making an identity shift and stepping up in some way in life, that can be really tricky in the context of their relationship. Absolutely.
What do you see there? So I see that in every relationship. I think the key thing is communication. And I know that's the same with the work that you do.
I think having the conversations around the struggles that you're having, the work that you're doing with me, or with someone else, where you want to go, what the vision for your life looks like, because it may be different from the vision that you had originally. And keeping those communication channels open is vital. What that does, though, is it does open the gate to very, very difficult conversations.
So some more courageous conversations, because you, like we talked about radical honesty, you have to look at what's not working. And sometimes there are things within a marriage or a relationship that are not working. And the version of you that you're wanting to become is creating higher standards, has started to understand their values, starting to make decisions differently, because they want something different.
And as a result, that person, it starts to become really uncomfortable, because you're starting to move in a different way. And the people around you are starting to notice and it starts to become uncomfortable for everybody else, because change is uncomfortable. And what that does is instead of for me, I say, instead of offering that as something that's terrifying, offer it as an opportunity to grow together, and to have those conversations.
In a lot of instances, sometimes it's too much. And that's hard, because you've got to make a decision, do I choose me? Or do I choose my relationship? And there are people that you can work through together like you. But what you do find is that's very common.
It's common within friendship groups, it's common particularly within careers. So that's one thing that has been particularly evident for me and my clients this year is, I mean, I had four clients resign and completely change their careers. And I had three or four other clients within that, pivot out of the role they were in and ask for the role they wanted.
It's a bit of a hazard in working with a coach, isn't it? Yeah, it is. Holy shit, you might do some radical things like that. I know, and it is really uncomfortable.
But I always say to people, once you're in it, you don't know the difference between excitement and pain. Yeah, you're just like, this is working, but I'm terrified. This is working, but things are falling apart.
But it's meant to, because you can't have growth without resistance. Yeah. So if you're living your life day to day, and there is no resistance, then there is no growth.
But definitely the changing in relationships is something that I see all the time. But if we look at it from a different perspective, we can also see how it can have a positive impact. Because remember, no lack mindset.
Yeah. So we're thinking, what if I do this? What if this all falls away? Yeah, it's like mindset, we inevitably go to fear first as human beings. But what we want to do is we want to learn to be able to flip that as well to be like, yes, I might have to have a difficult conversation.
Yes, I may have to make some difficult decisions. But what if it's in the environment of everybody around me? What if it improves? What if it inspires my husband or wife to want to do work? What if it has a positive impact on my children long term? And often it will. But like I said, we are programmed to look worst case scenario first.
Yeah. And I see that a lot with women where they're like, oh, no, like I've moved the goalposts and who I am. And now my relationship's falling apart.
And it's so important to be able to ask, well, how can they come with you? Like, what does this look like? If this is something of a shared journey, what does this look like for your whole family? Because women never do this alone. Absolutely. And I think sometimes it feels harder, right, to change than it does to stay the same.
But really, if you were going to sit down and be really honest about what it looks like today for you, and all different areas of your life, you're going to score each area out of 10, you might be surprised at how confronting that is. Because if you look at your finances, if you look at your relationship, your marriage, if you look at your parenting, you look at your career, your purpose, your professional growth, your mental health, physical well-being, you look at all the different areas and you're being very, very honest about 10 being optimum. Where are you? It can be a lot.
So, you know, they often say you've got to have the pain of staying where you are has to be greater than the pain of growth. But actually, we can choose that. Because I think what we've done over the years as women is we've given our power away to outside sources.
So whether that's society, or whether that's other people, we have forgotten the true essence of who we are and the power that we actually have to make our own decisions. And, you know, there's that quote that we've heard a million times, we are only one decision away from a completely different life. And a lot of women I say, well, they say I want to do this, but I can't because it's a sentence I use a lot.
I say, you know, if you want to understand where you're to start with your limiting beliefs, start with the sentence, I want to X, but I can't because Y. So good. And when you start to see the Y, that's like, you know, I want to move to Australia, but I can't because my children are starting new schools in Christchurch or whatever it might be. I mean, simple as that.
Yeah. Okay, why? Why can't you? They have very good schools in Australia. Let's get to the bottom of this.
Because often it just seems too hard. I can't change my career because I can't start a side hustle because I can't, I can't, I can't. And what we're doing is we're creating this cage for ourselves where we're holding ourselves back from these limitations.
But actually, we can choose differently at any moment. Yeah. And that's how we take our power back.
Yeah. One of the things I notice is being a wee bit different between women and men in this regard is that women sometimes are a little bit better at imagining the future pain. Yes.
So they can see how it plays out. They can see where it's going to end up if they don't change. And guys are a little bit more 11th hour or there has to be some kind of crisis to enable that change.
Absolutely. I think, you know, you know, often we talk about women and the challenges that we face as women. But we have to actually be honest about the challenges that men face because they carry a lot of pressure to financially support a family and to think about ways they can make money long term for their family and the life that they want to lead long term.
And that can cause a lot of pressure. And often the men, they're forgotten, aren't they? Particularly in the work that I do, because they're working so hard for a purpose. And then all of a sudden, their wives or partners start to change and it starts to disrupt the plan that they had, which was for everybody as well.
And I find that really interesting because yes, women are in a different position. And I think we have been definitely generationally had a lot more trauma when it comes to our own personal growth. We have a lot more conditioning around the way we look, the way we speak, how we show up, you know, what people think of us.
And again, I think that that is so deeply ingrained generationally, that it's so difficult to unravel that. And I think to even raising boys versus raising girls, I don't have daughters, but the way I raise my boys is very much like, throw them into the fire pit. I feel like I would parent girls differently.
And that's really fascinating to me when I see these girls, my friends parenting these girls and the things that they have to deal with every day and the things that I have to deal with every day. They are so different. So I feel like when it comes to us in our growth journey, we have to be really specific about all of the challenges that we've faced as women generationally in order to move forward.
But we also need to start to really look at the emotions that we've been suppressing for generations. Because one of the things that I find so fascinating is people say to me all the time, this addiction is genetic, or whatever that looks like, this is genetic. Actually, it's never the addiction that's genetic.
It's the trauma. It's the emotional neglect. That is the thing that is holding women back.
And so we need to look at our emotions. It's the biggest part of the transformation journey has been able to sit with those emotions and feel them and understand them and then start to look at why they're there. Yeah.
Who programmed us? How we came to be like this? Then how do we overcome them? Yeah. And it's wild how many women are disconnected from their feelings when we kind of assume that that should be a thing that women can do. Absolutely.
And I think the reason is, is because we fear so deeply disappointment, shame, guilt, those low frequency emotions and all the fears, the fear of the unknown, fear of loss, fear of rejection, fear of somebody not liking us, all of that. But what that does is it means that we end up sitting in this vanilla frequency band where we're kind of numb. Yeah.
And we're not feeling the joy and the happiness and the love that we deserve and crave, because we're so afraid of losing it. So we stay in the numb phase. And that's what so many women do.
Because you don't get to a point in your life where you're like numb. You're like, I just woke up today and I was numb and yesterday I wasn't. This is months, years, decades of the same stuff that we've been ignoring and the same boundaries that we've been not holding.
And all of the times for decades that we have been choosing what we should do or what other people expect of us rather than what we want to do. And that's just chipped away at our self-confidence. And that is the hugest part of why so many women have low self-worth.
And it's so interesting because you'll often find with high-achieving women there's a huge control factor. Yeah, big time. So control is linked with trust.
And when I say that to my clients, they're like, oh no, but I trust my partner. I trust my career's safe. I trust.
And I'm like, but do you trust yourself? Yeah. And when we don't trust ourselves, we've lost trust with ourselves because we said we were going to do something and we didn't. We wanted to say no, but we said yes.
And we're constantly putting others needs before our own. What happens is we start to chip away at our own self-worth and our own self-trust. And then as a result, our behavior becomes controlling.
Yeah. We can't even hear ourselves half the time. Because the world is noisy.
Yeah. Let alone our small world. We've got so many external things that are noisy as well, from social media to opinions, to work, to expectation.
We never get a break from our own thoughts. It's a lot. It is a lot.
Yeah. And one of the things that often needs to change for women is some systems need to come around them to kind of hold up the parts of their life where they might have responsibilities to other people, for example, i.e. kids, running a house, a husband, all of that. And you and I live in the same world here with busy husbands, a full family schedule of stuff going on, which is wonderful.
But for so many high achieving women, they don't have systems. I feel like I'm pretty good at this. I feel like you are beyond excellent at this.
So when you talk about your past career, you describe yourself as being like the real life Donna from Suits. PA, executive assistant to the managing partner of a big firm. Travelling the world, doing your thing, bossing a whole lot of people.
Yes, men. Yes. And having to have systems around that, you became really excellent at those systems.
But so many women forget about the systems when it comes to running their everyday lives or even things like running their self-care and their own kind of plans for how they're going to look after themselves. Give us your best systems tips. Oh, absolutely.
So yes, systems have been a huge part of my life. I actually grew up with two A type parents as well. So being organised, time management and structure has been a huge part of my life.
And I think that's what really helped me excel in my corporate career and to do the roles that I was doing at such a young age. So what I find with a lot of women is they tell me they don't have enough time and I absolutely respect that. So some of the key things that I would say to busy women is digitise everything.
So many women say to me, oh, can I come back to you? I just need to check my diary. It triggers me. I start to like steam at the top of my head because we carry around these iPhones and we have to-do lists and apps and Google calendars.
We can literally manage anywhere at any time, our day, our diary. So I would say if you are not digitising everything and you're not sharing your calendar with your significant other, or then I would suggest that's where I would start is digitisation. The other thing I would say for high achieving women is having a very solid morning routine.
Now this might seem impossible, right? Because we go to bed late, we wake up to our children. I understand that people are in different phases of life, whether you've got a newborn or whatever that looks like, but I truly believe having a morning routine, going to bed earlier and getting up earlier so that you have that time in the morning to yourself to set yourself up for the day is vital. Because if we're on the back foot every day and we're not feeling good about ourselves because we're tired, we're caffeinated from 5.30 in the morning and we are feeling overwhelmed from the minute we wake up, it's gonna be the recipe for the rest of the day.
So that might not mean getting up like me at 5 o'clock, having a cacao or a cup of tea before I go to Pilates, doing a Pilates class at 5.45, doing a bit of journaling when I get home. It might not look like that for you, but we need to think about the things that make us feel good. And we need to be able to implement some of those things in the morning.
Because if we set ourselves up for success for the day, then we're likely to become more successful throughout the day. And again, like I said, getting to bed early and getting up early is one of the best things a high functioning woman can do. And the other thing I would say is I use my to-do list or the notes on my iPhone as a running to-do list.
Sometimes it is so long it goes, you know, you've got to scroll up on your phone. Not to overwhelm yourself with your to-do list, I always recommend on a Sunday night spending 30 minutes either on your own or with your significant other, your partner, looking at the week ahead and having a bit of a gauge on the sporting trainings, the school assemblies, the work commitments, the travel, all those other things, the birthday parties you're taking children to and get a gauge on what that looks like. And then really getting an understanding of where you've got gaps, where you need to create gaps, and then each day looking at what are my top three priorities today.
I call that the comms meeting. 100%. In every workplace we've ever been part of, there's been some kind of... The Monday morning meeting, right? Yes.
And then we don't do that for our busy home lives. Seriously. So Sam and I, my husband and I, we actually have a sauna.
Yeah. Best thing I've bought ever in my life. Shout out Alpine Spas.
100%. We got ours from Alpine Spas. And it's quite a big one because Sam likes a bit of room in the sauna.
We actually have our meetings in the sauna. So we, every day or every second day, have a sauna and we do a bit of a debrief. So great.
And we started doing it at about nine o'clock at night, once the kids were fully asleep. But it became frustrating to me because then I would drink heaps of water and I'd be up all night going to the bathroom because I was dehydrated, feeling dehydrated after the sauna. So now we've adjusted the time to between dinner and the kids' bedtime.
Yeah, cool. Because they're up mucking around, playing Lego, playing PlayStation, whatever that looks like for them. They might be outside playing bowling to each other, playing cricket.
So I'm like, we're doing it then. Yeah, cool. And it's been great.
And that is a kind of like, what's on for you this week? What does that look like? Are you able to get the kids Thursday? And the whole thing is sent in meeting requests. So like, Sam, pick up the boys Thursday, send a meeting request. Our diaries mirror each other.
And that's also for self-care. So I work with people with business blocks, self-care blocks. And I make those self-care blocks like a hair appointment.
And it's just wild to me that people throw out all their systems thinking when they're managing a family in a house. Absolutely. It's because they're on the back foot.
And often you find that women who live in chaos grew up in chaos. So they feel that feeling is normal. And when things are organized, when things are systematically operating in a very efficient way, they actually feel unsafe.
And so that's also a red flag to start to do this nervous system work, this inner work, because operating in chaos leads to more chaos. And actually, what you're doing is you're programming your children to operate in chaos. And what we want to do is we want to almost look at all of the things that we have struggled with and the things, the way that we've been programmed and be the circuit breaker to say like, I'm going to change this for you guys, because this isn't working for me.
So I know it's not going to work for you. But in terms of systems, the other thing people say to me all the time is like, I don't really want a schedule because I love the flexibility. This is the story they tell themselves.
But what people need to understand is the more organized you are, the more time you have, the more time you have for yourself, the more space you have in your diary to do the things that you love. And we are not here to work every waking minute of the day and be slaves to our children and just feel like we're constantly doing everything for everybody else. Because we forget that as women, we're not just mothers.
It's the identity that we hold on to. But actually, we are 40-ish-year-old women who are living life for the first time. This is your life too.
Absolutely. And we need to find the joy and happiness in the things that we do for ourselves too. But again, we're programmed by generations and by society to feel these low-frequency emotions like guilt that stop us from feeling our own joy and happiness as 40-year-old women.
I had this great client story last year. So just thinking about systems, thinking about morning routines, where we made one change to her life that she was like, I don't know why I hadn't ever thought about this, but it is just a game changer for me. She was staying up really, really late in the evenings, then waking up kind of as late as she could within her children's very normal morning routine, as late as she could.
And just like starting on the back foot, starting when things were already feeling like chaos. And I said, well, what matters more? Is it the night or the morning? How good would you feel if that was actually switched around and you started your day feeling ahead and feeling like you were winning and feeling like you'd already achieved? Wow. Game changer.
Game changer. I think too, women tell themselves that when the kids go to bed, they, uh, it's their downtime. So they go onto Netflix and they watch an episode and then it's a really good episode.
So they watch another episode and there may be a third episode. They've had a cup of tea or a hot chocolate. They've had a couple of Tim Tams and four hours have gone and they go to bed at 11 o'clock or 1130 at night.
And then the cycle starts again the next morning. However, these are the same women that say to me, I don't have time. I can't start a side hustle.
I don't make enough money in my career. I'm thinking you've got four hours when your kids go to bed, you could be building a business or you could sit in your store and do some planning, or you could jump on a, I've got a bike in my garage. There are so many times where we can find space to do things that are more positive for us than watching Netflix.
That's not to say that rest and enjoying a good movie with your family is not positive. I think it definitely is, but sometimes people are doing that every night for 12 hours. That is a lot of time of watching TV where they could be doing other things that would compound and be much beneficial for them long-term.
Yeah. And I think the sad thing about that is that people are so exhausted. They just reach for entertainment and it feels like what they want in the moment, but it's not actually helping them.
Absolutely. And I think too, they're exhausted because they're disconnected emotionally. And what they don't want to do is sit with that feeling of why they feel that way and what are the circumstances in their life that are leading them to feel that way.
And so what they do is they numb. So it's easier to put on a Netflix show or go down a social media scroll hole or have a couple of gins than it is to sit and say to your significant other, I'm struggling with this. This isn't working for me.
I'm really feeling this because they are afraid. Yeah. One of the things you said to me a while ago was you need to go and clear out your wardrobe.
You need to make sure that it reflects the person that you want to be and become. Tell me why you think every woman wanting to make an identity shift needs to do that. Well, this is, I love this.
This is a very simple way to start to make some shifts and it comes in two different categories for me. So the first is our wardrobe is a living, uh, identity morgue, so to speak. It is the living shelf of all of these different identities that we have.
And what it does is all of those different outfits are attached to the way we feel. So some of them are attached to our confidence levels, our emotional stability or instability, and also beliefs that we have about ourselves. And so if we have baggy jeans or a color jacket that we will never wear, and we have all of these clothes in our wardrobe that reflect old identities, when we throw them out, it's like a somatic permission to let go of her.
And so many people say to me, cause I am somebody who throws out a lot or, or donates gifts, right? People say to me, how could you do that? Like there's so many memories attached to that, whatever it might be. And my husband's a little bit like that. I'm like throwing out kids writing books and like old baby stuff.
And he's like, what are you doing? And you can still hold the memory fondly for the outfit, for the thing, for the item. You don't have to physically hold onto it. You don't lose the memory.
And the second part of that is energetic. So when we live in clutter and chaos, and we've got cupboards full of old mismatch cups, we have a wardrobe full of clothes that we were wearing at university 20 years ago, and we are not creating space energetically, it's blocking us. So what we need to do if we want opportunities, if we want new friend groups, if we want to go move into new communities, we have to create space.
And so I liken this to books on a bookshelf. If you have a dusty bookshelf full of books, and you're not removing them, donating, gifting these books, there is no room for new. So all of these new books that you potentially could be reading.
And the thing is, is that psychologically, we don't go and buy new books because we've got no room. We don't even know we're blocking ourselves from the new. And so one of the reasons I encourage people to do this is because one, it seems so easy.
And this is the thing that's wild. It's the things that are easy to do are also the things that are not easy to do. I always use the example of a probiotic.
We know it's important to take probiotic or some form of supplements. Often we don't get those nutrients from the food, most of us from the diets that we have. Yeah, it's very easy to take a probiotic every morning.
But do most of us do that? No, we forget. We don't, we just don't do the easy things. And so removing clothes from a wardrobe that you have not worn, you will not wear, like the jeans that you wore at university that are two sizes too small that we think one day I'm going to fit these.
If you do get back to fit those one day, just buy another pair. Just go and buy another pair that fit you. So I really encourage it, not only from an identity perspective, we're releasing the old identities, we have to be able to release in order to attract the new.
Energetically, it's important to make space. And I always say to people, if you're holding on to a rope too tight and someone throws you a tennis ball, you're not going to be able to catch it. Because your hands are not free.
And that's kind of the same reflection of the items that we keep. There are family heirlooms. I'm wearing my grandmother's ring.
There are things like that, that are really important to keep. They mean a lot. But you don't necessarily have to keep your child's first blanket or the denim jacket that you wore at university.
That's the way I feel about it. I think it's an easy way to give yourself permission to let her go. How cool.
And often I think for women, that kind of stuff is related to that lack mindset. I need to keep it in case this doesn't work out, or in case I can't afford, or they're constantly putting themselves at the bottom of the priority list anyway. Absolutely.
And they think, well, I don't have the money to buy another one. Of course you don't. If you think you don't, you never will.
You attract what you put out. So if you're thinking, I don't have enough, you're attracting that back at you. You're saying, I'm not good enough.
You're attracting all of the reasons why you're not. Because our brains are clever like that, aren't they? The reticular activating system in our brain seeks out proof of what we think, what we believe. Absolutely.
One of the things I noticed that you said over the summer on your social media was about goals and to-do lists. And actually, if you've just got a to-do list for the year of things that you want to achieve, that is just a to-do list. And if you've got goals, they should be scary.
Sometimes they are going to have tasks associated with them. Our goals are going to have action steps that are required to get there. But actually, if we've got identity goals, that looks quite a bit different to to-do lists.
Tell me more about that. Well, this is a really interesting one. Because when I work with high functioning women, they actually understand this cognitively.
And they are used to goal setting. In their careers, in their lives, they've been doing it for a while. And I think that that's really important to understand.
Because goal setting seems so simple. But actually, in reality, it's a little bit more challenging. So for me, a real goal is something that changes how you think, how you choose, and how you tolerate discomfort.
And the identity element of goal setting is I am becoming somebody who can focus on this for an extended period of time. So people say, a goal for me is to take my family to Australia. A goal for me is to buy a new car.
A goal for me is to, I don't know, renovate my bathroom. I mean, you can renovate the bathroom with an action list of steps. You can go and sell your car very easily.
You just go into Trade Me, you put the details in, you take a few photos, you clean it. Yes, it still takes time. Yes, it can still be uncomfortable because you'd rather be doing other things.
But in theory, you can see the difference between a goal and a to-do list. Something like I want to take my family to Australia may become a goal if it's financial based. So if someone said to me, do you want to go to Australia in April? I would just book flights.
It's a different situation. Some people would need to save, change their spending habits, potentially start a side hustle, do some extra things to earn money. So the goal itself is I want to earn an extra $10,000 to take my family to Australia.
The goal is I want to start a side hustle that generates $10,000 worth of profit so that I can take my family to Australia. So there's a difference and it is individual because everybody is different. Everybody's limitations are different.
So for me, I want to take my family around Europe to find business class. Well, some people have the ability to do that, no issue. I would have to change my daily spending habits in order to do that because that would be a $70,000 trip.
So it's different for the individuals. But if you think about your goals, if you've written your goals out and you think to yourself, how does this change how I think? How does this change what I choose? And how does this change how I tolerate discomfort? Then you know it's a real goal. Yeah, so cool.
And I think those identity shifts for women look really different in different stages, don't they? Absolutely agree with you. I remember one of my best goals was when I was a mom with three young kids and I had a goal for the year to be more vain. So that was about caring about my appearance because I had years just not caring about it, caring about my physical health or caring about what clothes I was wearing or whether I bothered to do my hair in the morning before going to play center or wherever it was.
And it actually starts at those kind of points in our lives where we're making those prioritizing ourselves goals that have got an identity element to them. Absolutely. And I think if we think back over the different seasons of our life, the goals, the big goals, the big vision has always been there.
Yeah. So, you know, even when you're at university or when I was a mom of two young children under two, I knew what Cara looked like in the future. I knew what she drove.
I knew, you know, what she was doing for a job. I knew, I knew where I was going and I still do. And it's funny because we get to these places where we think, you know, I, I thought that when I had a very popular and amazing podcast, I would feel like I was accomplished.
And then when you're there, you recognize that you have the same imposter syndrome that you thought that would disappear. And this is this irony of success because we're chasing something outside of ourselves. And often when we get there, we realize it doesn't feel as good as I thought it would, or I thought I would feel more confident, but this is the most important thing that I've learned on my journey is you have to enjoy the road the entire way.
It's the journey. That's the most important part, because I feel like you're especially high-functioning women. We never feel like we are going to arrive.
It's this infinite game we're playing, right? Where there is no finish line. And I think once we understand that, and we understand that identity shifts is part of the journey as well. And we, and other people have different views of us as well.
Other people have different identities and that's actually okay. And what's important is when we take our power back and we focus on what we want, why we want it and how we're going to get it. Yeah.
So cool. I've got a little story to tell you just as we close today. And it was really unexpected.
I turned 40 at the end of last year and had a little party, close family and friends. And my dad told this really unlikely story, you expect your parents to just do the, I'm so proud of you. My mom was beautiful and what she said.
And then my dad said, well, Charlotte's always been an entrepreneur. And I used to go and get my hair cut. And she noticed that I'd pay the guy $20 to get my hair cut every few weeks or whatever it was.
I liked going to the barber over the road. So she started a hair salon at home where she would brush my hair or wash my hair over the bathroom sink or something and charge me $20 for it. And I was like, what an interesting thing for him to choose to comment on.
He commented on my creativity, my desire to help other people, but also that sense of like wanting to create things that were new or different and being entrepreneurial in my life. And I was like, wow, like that was such an achievement for me to have that noticed by someone close to me and really special that that was something that he called out in that moment. So yeah, I loved that.
It was such an achievement. Oh, I love that. And do you know what's really powerful if I'm looking at it from my perspective is that you innately knew that too.
Yeah. And what you've done is you have leaned in bravely to all of those gifts and all of that understanding about yourself, self-awareness to use that to create a business that serves and helps others. Yeah.
And I'm getting there, but yeah, absolutely. Those identity shifts have been really big along the way. So yeah, I love being able to talk to you about this topic today.
If people want to connect with you, how do they find you? Yes. Well, my new website's about to launch, which is really exciting. CaraCalvin.com. Yeah.
But you can also find me on Instagram at Cara.Calvin. And I just love connecting with people. So feel free to send me a message. And I do one-on-one coaching.
That's really important to me. I love the confidentiality of it, the exclusivity of it. I love watching women that I work with thrive and just create incredible lives and just evolve so rapidly and do the things that they love and lean into their gift.
So like I said, love connecting with people, have loved connecting with you today on this podcast. And I think what you do is exceptional. So I feel very privileged that you invited me.
So thank you. Oh, great chat. Thanks, Cara.
